Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (187 page)

. . . She was calling, felt herself calling for Kieth, her lips mouthing the words that would not come:

“Kieth! Oh, my God!
Kieth
!”

Suddenly she became aware of a new presence, something external, in front of her, consummated and expressed in warm red tracery. Then she knew. It was the window of St. Francis Xavier. Her mind gripped at it, clung to it finally, and she felt herself calling again endlessly, impotently — Kieth — Kieth!

Then out of a great stillness came a voice:

“
Blessed be God.
”

With a gradual rumble sounded the response rolling heavily through the chapel:

“Blessed be God.”

The words sang instantly in her heart; the incense lay mystically and sweetly peaceful upon the air, and
the candle on the altar went out
.

“Blessed be His Holy Name.”

“Blessed be His Holy Name.”

Everything blurred into a swinging mist. With a sound half-gasp, half-cry she rocked on her feet and reeled backward into Kieth’s suddenly outstretched arms.

V

“Lie still, child.”

She closed her eyes again. She was on the grass outside, pillowed on Kieth’s arm, and Regan was dabbing her head with a cold towel.

“I’m all right,” she said quietly.

“I know, but just lie still a minute longer. It was too hot in there. Jarvis felt it, too.”

She laughed as Regan again touched her gingerly with the towel.

“I’m all right,” she repeated.

But though a warm peace was falling her mind and heart she felt oddly broken and chastened, as if some one had held her stripped soul up and laughed.

VI

Half an hour later she walked leaning on Kieth’s arm down the long central path toward the gate.

“It’s been such a short afternoon,” he sighed, “and I’m so sorry you were sick, Lois.”

“Kieth, I’m feeling fine now, really; I wish you wouldn’t worry.”

“Poor old child. I didn’t realize that Benediction’d be a long service for you after your hot trip out here and all.”

She laughed cheerfully.

“I guess the truth is I’m not much used to Benediction. Mass is the limit of my religious exertions.”

She paused and then continued quickly:

“I don’t want to shock you, Kieth, but I can’t tell you how — how
inconvenient
being a Catholic is. It really doesn’t seem to apply any more. As far as morals go, some of the wildest boys I know are Catholics. And the brightest boys — I mean the ones who think and read a lot, don’t seem to believe in much of anything any more.”

“Tell me about it. The bus won’t be here for another half-hour.”

They sat down on a bench by the path.

“For instance, Gerald Carter, he’s published a novel. He absolutely roars when people mention immortality. And then Howa — well, another man I’ve known well, lately, who was Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard says that no intelligent person can believe in Supernatural Christianity. He says Christ was a great socialist, though. Am I shocking you?”

She broke off suddenly.

Kieth smiled.

“You can’t shock a monk. He’s a professional shock-absorber.”

“Well,” she continued, “that’s about all. It seems so — so
narrow
. Church schools, for instance. There’s more freedom about things that Catholic people can’t see — like birth control.”

Kieth winced, almost imperceptibly, but Lois saw it.

“Oh,” she said quickly, “everybody talks about everything now.”

“It’s probably better that way.”

“Oh, yes, much better. Well, that’s all, Kieth. I just wanted to tell you why I’m a little — luke-warm, at present.”

“I’m not shocked, Lois. I understand better than you think. We all go through those times. But I know it’ll come out all right, child. There’s that gift of faith that we have, you and I, that’ll carry us past the bad spots.”

He rose as he spoke and they started again down the path.

“I want you to pray for me sometimes, Lois. I think your prayers would be about what I need. Because we’ve come very close in these few hours, I think.”

Her eyes were suddenly shining.

“Oh we have, we have!” she cried. “I feel closer to you now than to any one in the world.”

He stopped suddenly and indicated the side of the path.

“We might — just a minute —  — “

It was a pietà, a life-size statue of the Blessed Virgin set within a semicircle of rocks.

Feeling a little self-conscious she dropped on her knees beside him and made an unsuccessful attempt at prayer.

She was only half through when he rose. He took her arm again.

“I wanted to thank Her for letting as have this day together,” he said simply.

Lois felt a sudden lump in her throat and she wanted to say something that would tell him how much it had meant to her, too. But she found no words.

“I’ll always remember this,” he continued, his voice trembling a little —  — “this summer day with you. It’s been just what I expected. You’re just what I expected, Lois.”

“I’m awfully glad, Keith.”

“You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes — and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me — even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a million things came up to me and said: ‘Look here at me! See, I’m Life. You’re turning your back on it!’ All the way through that shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead of me, very frail and clear and wonderful.”

Lois was crying softly. They had reached the gate and she rested her elbow on it and dabbed furiously at her eyes.

“And then later, child, when you were sick I knelt all one night and asked God to spare you for me — for I knew then that I wanted more; He had taught me to want more. I wanted to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me. I saw you growing up, that white innocence of yours changing to a flame and burning to give light to other weaker souls. And then I wanted some day to take your children on my knee and hear them call the crabbed old monk Uncle Kieth.”

He seemed to be laughing now as he talked.

“Oh, Lois, Lois, I was asking God for more then. I wanted the letters you’d write me and the place I’d have at your table. I wanted an awful lot, Lois, dear.”

“You’ve got me, Kieth,” she sobbed “you know it, say you know it. Oh, I’m acting like a baby but I didn’t think you’d be this way, and I — oh, Kieth — Kieth —  — “

He took her hand and patted it softly.

“Here’s the bus. You’ll come again won’t you?”

She put her hands on his cheeks, add drawing his head down, pressed her tear-wet face against his.

“Oh, Kieth, brother, some day I’ll tell you something.”

He helped her in, saw her take down her handkerchief and smile bravely at him, as the driver kicked his whip and the bus rolled off. Then a thick cloud of dust rose around it and she was gone.

For a few minutes he stood there on the road his hand on the gate-post, his lips half parted in a smile.

“Lois,” he said aloud in a sort of wonder, “Lois, Lois.”

Later, some probationers passing noticed him kneeling before the pietà, and coming back after a time found him still there. And he was there until twilight came down and the courteous trees grew garrulous overhead and the crickets took up their burden of song in the dusky grass.

VII

The first clerk in the telegraph booth in the Baltimore Station whistled through his buck teeth at the second clerk:

“S’matter?”

“See that girl — no, the pretty one with the big black dots on her veil. Too late — she’s gone. You missed somep’n.”

“What about her?”

“Nothing. ‘Cept she’s damn good-looking. Came in here yesterday and sent a wire to some guy to meet her somewhere. Then a minute ago she came in with a telegram all written out and was standin’ there goin’ to give it to me when she changed her mind or somep’n and all of a sudden tore it up.”

“Hm.”

The first clerk came around tile counter and picking up the two pieces of paper from the floor put them together idly. The second clerk read them over his shoulder and subconsciously counted the words as he read. There were just thirteen.

“This is in the way of a permanent goodbye. I should suggest Italy.

“Lois.”

“Tore it up, eh?” said the second clerk.

Dalyrimple Goes Wrong

In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be given to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This work will have the flavor of Montaigne’s essays and Samuel Butler’s note-books — and a little of Tolstoi and Marcus Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful nor pleasant but will contain numerous passages of striking humor. Since first-class minds never believe anything very strongly until they’ve experienced it, its value will be purely relative . . . all people over thirty will refer to it as “depressing.”

This prelude belongs to the story of a young man who lived, as you and I do, before the book.

II

The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of adolescence to a mighty fan-fare of trumpets. Bryan played the star in an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp behind the retreating German lines, so luck triumphant or sentiment rampant awarded him a row of medals and on his arrival in the States he was told that he was second in importance only to General Pershing and Sergeant York. This was a lot of fun. The governor of his State, a stray congressman, and a citizens’ committee gave him enormous smiles and “By God, Sirs” on the dock at Hoboken; there were newspaper reporters and photographers who said “would you mind” and “if you could just”; and back in his home town there were old ladies, the rims of whose eyes grew red as they talked to him, and girls who hadn’t remembered him so well since his father’s business went blah! in nineteen-twelve.

But when the shouting died he realized that for a month he had been the house guest of the mayor, that he had only fourteen dollars in the world and that “the name that will live forever in the annals and legends of this State” was already living there very quietly and obscurely.

One morning he lay late in bed and just outside his door he heard the up-stairs maid talking to the cook. The up-stairs maid said that Mrs. Hawkins, the mayor’s wife, had been trying for a week to hint Dalyrimple out of the house. He left at eleven o’clock in intolerable confusion, asking that his trunk be sent to Mrs. Beebe’s boarding-house.

Dalyrimple was twenty-three and he had never worked. His father had given him two years at the StateUniversity and passed away about the time of his son’s nine-day romp, leaving behind him some mid-Victorian furniture and a thin packet of folded paper that turned out to be grocery bills. Young Dalyrimple had very keen gray eyes, a mind that delighted the army psychological examiners, a trick of having read it — whatever it was — some time before, and a cool hand in a hot situation. But these things did not save him a final, unresigned sigh when he realized that he had to go to work — right away.

It was early afternoon when he walked into the office of Theron G. Macy, who owned the largest wholesale grocery house in town. Plump, prosperous, wearing a pleasant but quite unhumorous smile, Theron G. Macy greeted him warmly.

“Well — how do, Bryan? What’s on your mind?”

To Dalyrimple, straining with his admission, his own words, when they came, sounded like an Arab beggar’s whine for alms.

“Why — this question of a job.” (“This question of a job” seemed somehow more clothed than just “a job.”)

“A job?” An almost imperceptible breeze blew across Mr. Macy’s expression.

“You see, Mr. Macy,” continued Dalyrimple, “I feel I’m wasting time. I want to get started at something. I had several chances about a month ago but they all seem to have — gone —  — “

“Let’s see,” interrupted Mr. Macy. “What were they?”

“Well, just at the first the governor said something about a vacancy on his staff. I was sort of counting on that for a while, but I hear he’s given it to Allen Gregg, you know, son of G. P. Gregg. He sort of forgot what he said to me — just talking, I guess.”

“You ought to push those things.”

“Then there was that engineering expedition, but they decided they’d have to have a man who knew hydraulics, so they couldn’t use me unless I paid my own way.”

“You had just a year at the university?”

“Two. But I didn’t take any science or mathematics. Well, the day the battalion paraded, Mr. Peter Jordan said something about a vacancy in his store. I went around there to-day and I found he meant a sort of floor-walker — and then you said something one day” — he paused and waited for the older man to take him up, but noting only a minute wince continued — “about a position, so I thought I’d come and see you.”

“There was a position,” confessed Mr. Macy reluctantly, “but since then we’ve filled it.” He cleared his throat again. “You’ve waited quite a while.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. Everybody told me there was no hurry — and I’d had these various offers.”

Mr. Macy delivered a paragraph on present-day opportunities which Dalyrimple’s mind completely skipped.

“Have you had any business experience?”

“I worked on a ranch two summers as a rider.”

“Oh, well,” Mr. Macy disparaged this neatly, and then continued: “What do you think you’re worth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Bryan, I tell you, I’m willing to strain a point and give you a chance.”

Dalyrimple nodded.

“Your salary won’t be much. You’ll start by learning the stock. Then you’ll come in the office for a while. Then you’ll go on the road. When could you begin?”