Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (16 page)

During the five or ten minutes he waited in the shadow of the fence, there was somehow this fire... that was as near as he could name it afterward. He remembered calling aloud:

“I want some one stupid. Oh, send some one stupid!” This to the black fence opposite him, in whose shadows the footsteps shuffled ... shuffled. He supposed “stupid” and “good” had become somehow intermingled through previous association. When he called thus it was not an act of will at all — will had turned him away from the moving figure in the street; it was almost instinct that called, just the pile on pile of inherent tradition or some wild prayer from way over the night. Then something clanged like a low gong struck at a distance, and before his eyes a face flashed over the two feet, a face pale and distorted with a sort of infinite evil that twisted it like flame in the wind;
but he knew, for the half instant that the gong tanged and hummed, that it was the face of Dick Humbird.

Minutes later he sprang to his feet, realizing dimly that there was no more sound, and that he was alone in the graying alley. It was cold, and he started on a steady run for the light that showed the street at the other end.

AT THE WINDOW

It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed in the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left word to be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in a pile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and then sauntered out to get some air. Amory’s mind was working slowly, trying to assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagery that stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning had been cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air on Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or how little Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently had none of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mind back and forth like a shrieking saw.

Then Broadway broke upon them, and with the babel of noise and the painted faces a sudden sickness rushed over Amory.

“For God’s sake, let’s go back! Let’s get off of this — this place!”

Sloane looked at him in amazement.

“What do you mean?”

“This street, it’s ghastly! Come on! let’s get back to the Avenue!”

“Do you mean to say,” said Sloane stolidly, “that ‘cause you had some sort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you’re never coming on Broadway again?”

Simultaneously Amory classed him with the crowd, and he seemed no longer Sloane of the debonair humor and the happy personality, but only one of the evil faces that whirled along the turbid stream.

“Man!” he shouted so loud that the people on the corner turned and followed them with their eyes, “it’s filthy, and if you can’t see it, you’re filthy, too!”

“I can’t help it,” said Sloane doggedly. “What’s the matter with you? Old remorse getting you? You’d be in a fine state if you’d gone through with our little party.”

“I’m going, Fred,” said Amory slowly. His knees were shaking under him, and he knew that if he stayed another minute on this street he would keel over where he stood. “I’ll be at the Vanderbilt for lunch.” And he strode rapidly off and turned over to Fifth Avenue. Back at the hotel he felt better, but as he walked into the barber-shop, intending to get a head massage, the smell of the powders and tonics brought back Axia’s sidelong, suggestive smile, and he left hurriedly. In the doorway of his room a sudden blackness flowed around him like a divided river.

When he came to himself he knew that several hours had passed. He pitched onto the bed and rolled over on his face with a deadly fear that he was going mad. He wanted people, people, some one sane and stupid and good. He lay for he knew not how long without moving. He could feel the little hot veins on his forehead standing out, and his terror had hardened on him like plaster. He felt he was passing up again through the thin crust of horror, and now only could he distinguish the shadowy twilight he was leaving. He must have fallen asleep again, for when he next recollected himself he had paid the hotel bill and was stepping into a taxi at the door. It was raining torrents.

On the train for Princeton he saw no one he knew, only a crowd of fagged-looking Philadelphians. The presence of a painted woman across the aisle filled him with a fresh burst of sickness and he changed to another car, tried to concentrate on an article in a popular magazine. He found himself reading the same paragraphs over and over, so he abandoned this attempt and leaning over wearily pressed his hot forehead against the damp window-pane. The car, a smoker, was hot and stuffy with most of the smells of the state’s alien population; he opened a window and shivered against the cloud of fog that drifted in over him. The two hours’ ride were like days, and he nearly cried aloud with joy when the towers of Princeton loomed up beside him and the yellow squares of light filtered through the blue rain.

Tom was standing in the centre of the room, pensively relighting a cigar-stub. Amory fancied he looked rather relieved on seeing him.

“Had a hell of a dream about you last night,” came in the cracked voice through the cigar smoke. “I had an idea you were in some trouble.”

“Don’t tell me about it!” Amory almost shrieked. “Don’t say a word; I’m tired and pepped out.”

Tom looked at him queerly and then sank into a chair and opened his Italian note-book. Amory threw his coat and hat on the floor, loosened his collar, and took a Wells novel at random from the shelf. “Wells is sane,” he thought, “and if he won’t do I’ll read Rupert Brooke.”

Half an hour passed. Outside the wind came up, and Amory started as the wet branches moved and clawed with their finger-nails at the window-pane. Tom was deep in his work, and inside the room only the occasional scratch of a match or the rustle of leather as they shifted in their chairs broke the stillness. Then like a zigzag of lightning came the change. Amory sat bolt upright, frozen cold in his chair. Tom was looking at him with his mouth drooping, eyes fixed.

“God help us!” Amory cried.

“Oh, my heavens!” shouted Tom, “look behind!” Quick as a flash Amory whirled around. He saw nothing but the dark window-pane. “It’s gone now,” came Tom’s voice after a second in a still terror. “Something was looking at you.”

Trembling violently, Amory dropped into his chair again.

“I’ve got to tell you,” he said. “I’ve had one hell of an experience. I think I’ve — I’ve seen the devil or — something like him. What face did you just see? — or no,” he added quickly, “don’t tell me!”

And he gave Tom the story. It was midnight when he finished, and after that, with all lights burning, two sleepy, shivering boys read to each other from “The New Machiavelli,” until dawn came up out of Witherspoon Hall, and the Princetonian fell against the door, and the May birds hailed the sun on last night’s rain.

CHAPTER 4. Narcissus Off Duty

During Princeton’s transition period, that is, during Amory’s last two years there, while he saw it change and broaden and live up to its Gothic beauty by better means than night parades, certain individuals arrived who stirred it to its plethoric depths. Some of them had been freshmen, and wild freshmen, with Amory; some were in the class below; and it was in the beginning of his last year and around small tables at the Nassau Inn that they began questioning aloud the institutions that Amory and countless others before him had questioned so long in secret. First, and partly by accident, they struck on certain books, a definite type of biographical novel that Amory christened “quest” books. In the “quest” book the hero set off in life armed with the best weapons and avowedly intending to use them as such weapons are usually used, to push their possessors ahead as selfishly and blindly as possible, but the heroes of the “quest” books discovered that there might be a more magnificent use for them. “None Other Gods,” “Sinister Street,” and “The Research Magnificent” were examples of such books; it was the latter of these three that gripped Burne Holiday and made him wonder in the beginning of senior year how much it was worth while being a diplomatic autocrat around his club on Prospect Avenue and basking in the high lights of class office. It was distinctly through the channels of aristocracy that Burne found his way. Amory, through Kerry, had had a vague drifting acquaintance with him, but not until January of senior year did their friendship commence.

“Heard the latest?” said Tom, coming in late one drizzly evening with that triumphant air he always wore after a successful conversational bout.

“No. Somebody flunked out? Or another ship sunk?”

“Worse than that. About one-third of the junior class are going to resign from their clubs.”

“What!”

“Actual fact!”

“Why!”

“Spirit of reform and all that. Burne Holiday is behind it. The club presidents are holding a meeting to-night to see if they can find a joint means of combating it.”

“Well, what’s the idea of the thing?”

“Oh, clubs injurious to Princeton democracy; cost a lot; draw social lines, take time; the regular line you get sometimes from disappointed sophomores. Woodrow thought they should be abolished and all that.”

“But this is the real thing?”

“Absolutely. I think it’ll go through.”

“For Pete’s sake, tell me more about it.”

“Well,” began Tom, “it seems that the idea developed simultaneously in several heads. I was talking to Burne awhile ago, and he claims that it’s a logical result if an intelligent person thinks long enough about the social system. They had a ‘discussion crowd’ and the point of abolishing the clubs was brought up by some one — everybody there leaped at it — it had been in each one’s mind, more or less, and it just needed a spark to bring it out.”

“Fine! I swear I think it’ll be most entertaining. How do they feel up at Cap and Gown?”

“Wild, of course. Every one’s been sitting and arguing and swearing and getting mad and getting sentimental and getting brutal. It’s the same at all the clubs; I’ve been the rounds. They get one of the radicals in the corner and fire questions at him.”

“How do the radicals stand up?”

“Oh, moderately well. Burne’s a damn good talker, and so obviously sincere that you can’t get anywhere with him. It’s so evident that resigning from his club means so much more to him than preventing it does to us that I felt futile when I argued; finally took a position that was brilliantly neutral. In fact, I believe Burne thought for a while that he’d converted me.”

“And you say almost a third of the junior class are going to resign?”

“Call it a fourth and be safe.”

“Lord — who’d have thought it possible!”

There was a brisk knock at the door, and Burne himself came in. “Hello, Amory — hello, Tom.”

Amory rose.

“‘Evening, Burne. Don’t mind if I seem to rush; I’m going to Renwick’s.”

Burne turned to him quickly.

“You probably know what I want to talk to Tom about, and it isn’t a bit private. I wish you’d stay.”

“I’d be glad to.” Amory sat down again, and as Burne perched on a table and launched into argument with Tom, he looked at this revolutionary more carefully than he ever had before. Broad-browed and strong-chinned, with a fineness in the honest gray eyes that were like Kerry’s, Burne was a man who gave an immediate impression of bigness and security — stubborn, that was evident, but his stubbornness wore no stolidity, and when he had talked for five minutes Amory knew that this keen enthusiasm had in it no quality of dilettantism.

The intense power Amory felt later in Burne Holiday differed from the admiration he had had for Humbird. This time it began as purely a mental interest. With other men of whom he had thought as primarily first-class, he had been attracted first by their personalities, and in Burne he missed that immediate magnetism to which he usually swore allegiance. But that night Amory was struck by Burne’s intense earnestness, a quality he was accustomed to associate only with the dread stupidity, and by the great enthusiasm that struck dead chords in his heart. Burne stood vaguely for a land Amory hoped he was drifting toward — and it was almost time that land was in sight. Tom and Amory and Alec had reached an impasse; never did they seem to have new experiences in common, for Tom and Alec had been as blindly busy with their committees and boards as Amory had been blindly idling, and the things they had for dissection — college, contemporary personality and the like — they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversational meal.

That night they discussed the clubs until twelve, and, in the main, they agreed with Burne. To the roommates it did not seem such a vital subject as it had in the two years before, but the logic of Burne’s objections to the social system dovetailed so completely with everything they had thought, that they questioned rather than argued, and envied the sanity that enabled this man to stand out so against all traditions.

Then Amory branched off and found that Burne was deep in other things as well. Economics had interested him and he was turning socialist. Pacifism played in the back of his mind, and he read The Masses and Lyoff Tolstoi faithfully.

“How about religion?” Amory asked him.

“Don’t know. I’m in a muddle about a lot of things — I’ve just discovered that I’ve a mind, and I’m starting to read.”

“Read what?”

“Everything. I have to pick and choose, of course, but mostly things to make me think. I’m reading the four gospels now, and the ‘Varieties of Religious Experience.’“

“What chiefly started you?”

“Wells, I guess, and Tolstoi, and a man named Edward Carpenter. I’ve been reading for over a year now — on a few lines, on what I consider the essential lines.”

“Poetry?”

“Well, frankly, not what you call poetry, or for your reasons — you two write, of course, and look at things differently. Whitman is the man that attracts me.”

“Whitman?”

“Yes; he’s a definite ethical force.”