The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories (65 page)

And she was alone at night in the room that had seen the glory of her marriage and then the pain. To meet Jeff again she went back in spirit to that wonderful year, that intense, passionate absorption and companionship, rather than looked forward to a problematical meeting hereafter; she awoke often to lie and wish for that presence beside her—inanimate yet breathing—still Jeff.

One afternoon six months after his death she was sitting on the porch, in a black dress which took away the faintest suggestion of plumpness from her figure. It was Indian summer—golden brown all about her; a hush broken by the sighing of leaves; westward a four o'clock sun dripping streaks of red and yellow over a flaming sky. Most of the birds had gone—only a sparrow that had built itself a nest on the cornice of a pillar kept up an intermittent cheeping varied by occasional fluttering sallies overhead. Roxanne moved her chair to where she could watch him and her mind idled drowsily on the bosom of the afternoon.

Harry Cromwell was coming out from Chicago to dinner. Since his divorce over eight years before he had been a frequent visitor. They had kept up what amounted to a tradition between them: when he arrived they would go to look at Jeff; Harry would sit down on the edge of the bed and in a hearty voice ask:

“Well, Jeff, old man, how do you feel to-day?”

Roxanne, standing beside, would look intently at Jeff, dreaming that some shadowy recognition of this former friend had passed across that broken mind—but the head, pale, carven, would only move slowly in its sole gesture toward the light as if something behind the blind eyes were groping for another light long since gone out.

These visits stretched over eight years—at Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and on many a Sunday Harry had arrived, paid his call on Jeff, and then talked for a long while with Roxanne on the porch. He was devoted to her. He made no pretense of hiding, no attempt to deepen, this relation. She was his best friend as the mass of flesh on the bed there had been his best friend. She was peace, she was rest; she was the past. Of his own tragedy she alone knew.

He had been at the funeral, but since then the company for which he worked had shifted him to the East and only a business trip had brought him to the vicinity of Chicago. Roxanne had written him to come when he could—after a night in the city he had caught a train out.

They shook hands and he helped her move two rockers together.

“How's George?”

“He's fine, Roxanne. Seems to like school.”

“Of course it was the only thing to do, to send him.”

“Of course—”

“You miss him horribly, Harry?”

“Yes—I do miss him. He's a funny boy——”

He talked a lot about George. Roxanne was interested. Harry must bring him out on his next vacation. She had only seen him once in her life—a child in dirty rompers.

She left him with the newspaper while she prepared dinner—she had four chops to-night and some late vegetables from her own garden. She put it all on and then called him, and sitting down together they continued their talk about George.

“If I had a child—” she would say.

Afterward, Harry having given her what slender advice he could about investments, they walked through the garden, pausing here and there to recognize what had once been a cement bench or where the tennis court had lain . . .

“Do you remember——”

Then they were off on a flood of reminiscences: the day they had taken all the snap-shots and Jeff had been photographed astride the calf; and the sketch Harry had made of Jeff and Roxanne, lying sprawled in the grass, their heads almost touching. There was to have been a covered lattice connecting the barn-studio with the house, so that Jeff could get there on wet days—the lattice had been started, but nothing remained except a broken triangular piece that still adhered to the house and resembled a battered chicken coop.

“And those mint juleps!”

“And Jeff's note-book! Do you remember how we'd laugh, Harry, when we'd get it out of his pocket and read aloud a page of material. And how frantic he used to get?”

“Wild! He was such a kid about his writing.”

They were both silent a moment, and then Harry said:

“We were to have a place out here, too. Do you remember? We were to buy the adjoining twenty acres. And the parties we were going to have!”

Again there was a pause, broken this time by a low question from Roxanne.

“Do you ever hear of her, Harry?”

“Why—yes,” he admitted placidly. “She's in Seattle. She's married again to a man named Horton, a sort of lumber king. He's a great deal older than she is, I believe.”

“And she's behaving?”

“Yes—that is, I've heard so. She has everything, you see. Nothing much to do except dress up for this fellow at dinner-time.”

“I see.”

Without effort he changed the subject.

“Are you going to keep the house?”

“I think so,” she said, nodding. “I've lived here so long, Harry, it'd seem terrible to move. I thought of trained nursing, but of course that'd mean leaving. I've about decided to be a boarding-house lady.”

“Live in one?”

“No. Keep one. Is there such an anomaly as a boarding-house lady? Anyway I'd have a negress and keep about eight people in the summer and two or three, if I can get them, in the winter. Of course I'll have to have the house repainted and gone over inside.”

Harry considered.

“Roxanne, why—naturally you know best what you can do, but it does seem a shock, Roxanne. You came here as a bride.”

“Perhaps,” she said, “that's why I don't mind remaining here as a boarding-house lady.”

“I remember a certain batch of biscuits.”

“Oh, those biscuits,” she cried. “Still, from all I heard about the way you devoured them, they couldn't have been so bad. I was
so
low that day, yet somehow I laughed when the nurse told me about those biscuits.”

“I noticed that the twelve nail-holes are still in the library wall where Jeff drove them.”

“Yes.”

It was getting very dark now, a crispness settled in the air; a little gust of wind sent down a last spray of leaves. Roxanne shivered slightly.

“We'd better go in.”

He looked at his watch.

“It's late. I've got to be leaving. I go East to-morrow.”

“Must you?”

They lingered for a moment just below the stoop, watching a moon that seemed full of snow float out of the distance where the lake lay. Summer was gone and now Indian summer. The grass was cold and there was no mist and no dew. After he left she would go in and light the gas and close the shutters, and he would go down the path and on to the village. To these two life had come quickly and gone, leaving not bitterness, but pity; not disillusion, but only pain. There was already enough moonlight when they shook hands for each to see the gathered kindness in the other's eyes.

THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUAINTNESS IN ONE ACT

 

The Scene is the Exterior of a Cottage in West Issacshire on a desperately Arcadian afternoon in August.
MR. ICKY
, quaintly dressed in the costume of an Elizabethan peasant, is pottering and doddering among the pots and dods. He is an old man, well past the prime of life, no longer young. From the fact that there is a burr in his speech and that he has absent-mindedly put on his coat wrongside out, we surmise that he is either above or below the ordinary superficialities of life.

Near him on the grass lies
PETER
, a little boy.
PETER
, of course, has his chin on his palm like the pictures of the young Sir Walter Raleigh.
¹
He has a complete set of features, including serious, sombre, even funereal, gray eyes—and radiates that alluring air of never having eaten food. This air can best be radiated during the afterglow of a beef dinner. He is looking at
MR. ICKY
, fascinated.

 

PETER: Often at night I sit at my window and regard the stars.

Sometimes I think they're my stars. . . . (
Gravely
) I think I shall be a star some day. . . .

MR. ICKY: (
Whimsically
) Yes, yes . . . yes. . . .

PETER: I know them all: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Gloria Swanson.
²

MR. ICKY: I don't take no stock in astronomy. . . . I've been thinking o' Lunnon, laddie. And calling to mind my daughter, who has gone for to be a typewriter. . . . (
He sighs.
)

PETER: I liked Ulsa, Mr. Icky; she was so plump, so round, so buxom.

MR. ICKY: Not worth the paper she was padded with, laddie. (
He stumbles over a pile of pots and dods.
)

PETER: How is your asthma, Mr. Icky?

MR. ICKY: Worse, thank God! . . . (
Gloomily.
) I'm a hundred years old. . . . I'm getting brittle.

PETER: I suppose life has been pretty tame since you gave up petty arson.

MR. ICKY: Yes . . . yes. . . . You see, Peter, laddie, when I was fifty I reformed once—in prison.

PETER: You went wrong again?

MR. ICKY: Worse than that. The week before my term expired they insisted on transferring to me the glands of a healthy young prisoner they were executing.

PETER: And it renovated you?

MR. ICKY: Renovated me! It put the Old Nick back into me! This young criminal was evidently a suburban burglar and a kleptomaniac. What was a little playful arson in comparison!

PETER: (
Awed
) How ghastly! Science is the bunk.

MR. ICKY: (
Sighing
) I got him pretty well subdued now. 'Tisn't every one who has to tire out two sets o' glands in his lifetime. I wouldn't take another set for all the animal spirits in an orphan asylum.

PETER: (
Considering
) I shouldn't think you'd object to a nice quiet old clergyman's set.

MR. ICKY: Clergymen haven't got glands—they have souls.

(
There is a low, sonorous honking off stage to indicate that a large motor-car has stopped in the immediate vicinity. Then a young man handsomely attired in a dress-suit and a patent-leather silk hat comes onto the stage. He is very mundane. His contrast to the spirituality of the other two is observable as far back as the first row of the balcony. This is
RODNEY DIVINE.)

DIVINE: I am looking for Ulsa Icky.

(MR. ICKY
rises and stands tremulously between two dods.
)

MR. ICKY: My daughter is in Lunnon.

DIVINE: She has left London. She is coming here. I have followed her.

(
He reaches into the little mother-of-pearl satchel that hangs at his side for cigarettes. He selects one and scratching a match touches it to the cigarette. The cigarette instantly lights.
)

DIVINE: I shall wait.

(
He waits. Several hours pass. There is no sound except an occasional cackle or hiss from the dods as they quarrel among themselves. Several songs can be introduced here or some card tricks by
DIVINE
or a tumbling act, as desired.
)

DIVINE: It's very quiet here.

MR. ICKY: Yes, very quiet. . . .

(
Suddenly a loudly dressed girl appears; she is very worldly. It is
ULSA ICKY
. On her is one of those shapeless faces peculiar to early Italian painting.
)

ULSA: (
In a coarse, worldly voice
) Feyther! Here I am! Ulsa did what?

MR. ICKY: (
Tremulously
) Ulsa, little Ulsa.

(
They embrace each other's torsos.
)

MR. ICKY: (
Hopefully
) You've come back to help with the ploughing.

ULSA: (
Sullenly
) No, feyther; ploughing's such a beyther. I'd reyther not.

(
Though her accent is broad, the content of her speech is sweet and clean.
)

DIVINE: (
Conciliatingly
) See here, Ulsa. Let's come to an understanding.

(
He advances toward her with the graceful, even stride that made him captain of the striding team at Cambridge.
)

ULSA: You still say it would be Jack?

MR. ICKY: What does she mean?

DIVINE: (
Kindly
) My dear, of course, it would be Jack. It couldn't be Frank.

MR. ICKY: Frank who?

ULSA: It
would
be Frank!

(
Some risqué joke can be introduced here.
)

MR. ICKY: (
Whimsically
) No good fighting . . . no good fighting. . . .

DIVINE: (
Reaching out to stroke her arm with the powerful movement that made him stroke of the crew at Oxford
) You'd better marry me.

ULSA: (
Scornfully
) Why, they wouldn't let me in through the servants' entrance of your house.

DIVINE: (
Angrily
) They wouldn't! Never fear—you shall come in through the mistress' entrance.

ULSA: Sir!

DIVINE: (
In confusion
) I beg your pardon. You know what I mean?

MR. ICKY: (
Aching with whimsey
) You want to marry my little Ulsa? . . .

DIVINE: I do.

MR. ICKY: Your record is clean.

DIVINE: Excellent. I have the best constitution in the world——

ULSA: And the worst by-laws.

DIVINE: At Eton I was a member at Pop; at Rugby I belonged to Near-beer. As a younger son I was destined for the police force——

MR. ICKY: Skip that. . . . Have you money? . . .

DIVINE: Wads of it. I should expect Ulsa to go down town in sections every morning—in two Rolls-Royces. I have also a kiddy-car and a converted tank. I have seats at the opera——