Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (265 page)

Outside his window the autumn dusk was split with shafts of lights from passing cars. In these cars were great football players and lovely débutantes, mysterious adventuresses and international spies--rich, gay, glamorous people moving toward brilliant encounters in New York, at fashionable dances and secret cafés, or on roof gardens under the autumn moon. He sighed; perhaps he could blend in these more romantic things later. To be of great wit and conversational powers, and simultaneously strong and serious and silent. To be generous and open and self-sacrificing, yet to be somewhat mysterious and sensitive and even a little bitter with melancholy. To be both light and dark. To harmonize this, to melt all this down into a single man--ah, there was something to be done. The very thought of such perfection crystallized his vitality into an ecstasy of ambition. For a moment longer his soul followed the speeding lights toward the metropolis; then resolutely he arose, put out his cigarette on the window sill, and turning on his reading lamp, began to note down a set of requirements for the perfect life.

II

One month later George Dorsey, engaged in the painful duty of leading his mother around the school grounds, reached the comparative seclusion of the tennis courts and suggested eagerly that she rest herself upon a bench.

Hitherto his conversation had confined itself to a few hoarse advices, such as “That’s the gym,” . . . “That’s Cuckoo Conklin that teaches French. Everybody hates him.” . . . “Please don’t call me ‘Brother’ in front of boys.” Now his face took on the preoccupied expression peculiar to adolescents in the presence of their parents. He relaxed. He waited to be asked things.

“Now, about Thanksgiving, George. Who is this boy you’re bringing home?”

“His name is Basil Lee.”

“Tell me something about him.”

“There isn’t anything to tell. He’s just a boy in the Sixth Form, about sixteen.”

“Is he a nice boy?”

“Yes. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. I asked him a long time ago.”

A certain reticence in her son’s voice interested Mrs. Dorsey.

“Do you mean you’re sorry you asked him? Don’t you like him any more?”

“Sure I like him.”

“Because there’s no use bringing anyone you don’t like. You could just explain that your mother has made other plans.”

“But I like him,” George insisted, and then he added hesitantly: “It’s just some funny way he’s got to be lately.”

“How?”

“Oh, just sort of queer.”

“But how, George? I don’t want you to bring anyone into the house that’s queer.”

“He isn’t exactly queer. He just gets people aside and talks to them. Then he sort of smiles at them.”

Mrs. Dorsey was mystified. “Smiles at them?”

“Yeah. He gets them off in a corner somewheres and talks to them as long as they can stand it, and then he smiles”--his own lips twisted into a peculiar grimace--”like that.”

“What does he talk about?”

“Oh, about swearing and smoking and writing home and a lot of stuff like that. Nobody pays any attention except one boy he’s got doing the same thing. He got stuck up or something because he was so good at football.”

“Well, if you don’t want him, don’t let’s have him.”

“Oh, no,” George cried in alarm. “I’ve got to have him. I asked him.”

Naturally, Basil was unaware of this conversation when, one morning, a week later, the Dorseys’ chauffeur relieved them of their bags in the Grand Central station. There was a slate-pink light over the city and people in the streets carried with them little balloons of frosted breath. About them the buildings broke up through many planes toward heaven, at their base the wintry color of an old man’s smile, on through diagonals of diluted gold, edged with purple where the cornices floated past the stationary sky.

In a long, low, English town car--the first of the kind that Basil had ever seen--sat a girl of about his own age. As they came up she received her brother’s kiss perfunctorily, nodded stiffly to Basil and murmured, “how-d’y’-do” without smiling. She said nothing further but seemed absorbed in meditations of her own. At first, perhaps because of her extreme reserve, Basil received no especial impression of her, but before they reached the Dorseys’ house he began to realize that she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen in his life.

It was a puzzling face. Her long eyelashes lay softly against her pale cheeks, almost touching them, as if to conceal the infinite boredom in her eyes, but when she smiled, her expression was illumined by a fiery and lovely friendliness, as if she were saying, “Go on; I’m listening. I’m fascinated. I’ve been waiting--oh, ages--for just this moment with you.” Then she remembered that she was shy or bored; the smile vanished, the gray eyes half closed again. Almost before it had begun, the moment was over, leaving a haunting and unsatisfied curiosity behind.

The Dorseys’ house was on Fifty-third Street. Basil was astonished first at the narrowness of its white stone front and then at the full use to which the space was put inside. The formal chambers ran the width of the house, artificial sunlight bloomed in the dining-room windows, a small elevator navigated the five stories in deferential silence. For Basil there was a new world in its compact luxury. It was thrilling and romantic that a foothold on this island was more precious than the whole rambling sweep of the James J. Hill house at home. In his excitement the feel of school dropped momentarily away from him. He was possessed by the same longing for a new experience, that his previous glimpses of New York had aroused. In the hard bright glitter of Fifth Avenue, in this lovely girl with no words to waste beyond a mechanical “How-d’y’-do,” in the perfectly organized house, he recognized nothing, and he knew that to recognize nothing in his surroundings was usually a guaranty of adventure.

But his mood of the last month was not to be thrown off so lightly. There was now an ideal that came first. A day mustn’t pass when he wasn’t, as John Granby put it, “straight with himself”--and that meant to help others. He could get in a good deal of work on George Dorsey in these five days; other opportunities might turn up, besides. Meanwhile, with the consciousness of making the best of both worlds, he unpacked his grip and got ready for luncheon.

He sat beside Mrs. Dorsey, who found him somewhat precipitately friendly in a Midwestern way, but polite, apparently not unbalanced. He told her he was going to be a minister and immediately he didn’t believe it himself; but he saw that it interested Mrs. Dorsey and let it stand.

The afternoon was already planned; they were going dancing--for those were the great days: Maurice was tangoing in “Over the River,” the Castles were doing a swift stiff-legged walk in the third act of “The Sunshine Girl”--a walk that gave the modern dance a social position and brought the nice girl into the café, thus beginning a profound revolution in American life. The great rich empire was feeling its oats and was out for some not too plebeian, yet not too artistic, fun.

By three o’clock seven young people were assembled, and they started in a limousine for Emil’s. There were two stylish, anæmic girls of sixteen--one bore an impressive financial name--and two freshmen from Harvard who exchanged private jokes and were attentive only to Jobena Dorsey. Basil expected that presently everyone would begin asking each other such familiar questions as “Where do you go to school?” and “Oh, do you know So-and-So?” and the party would become more free and easy, but nothing of the sort happened. The atmosphere was impersonal; he doubted if the other four guests knew his name. “In fact,” he thought, “it’s just as if everyone’s waiting for some one else to make a fool of himself.” Here again was something new and unrecognizable; he guessed that it was a typical part of New York.

They reached Emil’s. Only in certain Paris restaurants where the Argentines step untiringly through their native coils does anything survive of the dance craze as it existed just before the war. At that time it was not an accompaniment to drinking or love-making or hailing in the dawn--it was an end in itself. Sedentary stockbrokers, grandmothers of sixty, Confederate veterans, venerable statesmen and scientists, sufferers from locomotor ataxia, wanted not only to dance but to dance beautifully. Fantastic ambitions bloomed in hitherto sober breasts, violent exhibitionism cropped out in families modest for generations. Nonentities with long legs became famous overnight, and there were rendezvous where they could renew the dance, if they wished, next morning. Because of a neat glide or an awkward stumble careers were determined and engagements were made or broken, while the tall Englishman and the girl in the Dutch cap called the tune.

As they went into the cabaret sudden anxiety attacked Basil--modern dancing was one of the things upon which John Granby had been most severe.

He approached George Dorsey in the coat room.

“There’s an extra man, so do you suppose I’d be all right if I only danced when there’s a waltz? I’m no good at anything else.”

“Sure. It’s all right with me.” He looked curiously at Basil. “Gosh, have you sworn off everything?”

“No, not everything,” answered Basil uncomfortably.

The floor was already crowded. All ages and several classes of society shuffled around tensely to the nervous, disturbing beats of “Too Much Mustard.” Automatically the other three couples were up and away, leaving Basil at the table. He watched, trying to pretend to himself that he disapproved of it all but was too polite to show it. However, with so much to see, it was difficult to preserve that attitude, and he was gazing with fascination at Jobena’s active feet when a good-looking young man of about nineteen sat down beside him at the table.

“Excuse me,” he said with exaggerated deference. “This Miss Jobena Dorsey’s table?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’m expected. Name’s De Vinci. Don’t ask me if I’m any relation to the painter.”

“My name’s Lee.”

“All right, Lee. What’ll you have? What are you having?” The waiter arrived with a tray, and De Vinci looked at its contents with disgust. “Tea--all tea. . . . Waiter, bring me a double Bronx. . . . How about you, Lee? Another double Bronx?”

“Oh, no, thanks,” said Basil quickly.

“One then, waiter.”

De Vinci sighed; he had the unmistakable lush look of a man who has been drinking hard for several days.

“Nice dog under that table over there. They oughtn’t to let people smoke if they’re going to bring dogs in here.”

“Why?”

“Hurts their eyes.”

Confusedly Basil deliberated this piece of logic.

“But don’t talk to me about dogs,” said De Vinci with a profound sigh; “I’m trying to keep from thinking of dogs.”

Basil obligingly changed the subject for him by asking him if he was in college.

“Two weeks.” For emphasis De Vinci held up two fingers. “I passed quickly through Yale. First man fired out of ‘15 Sheff.”

“That’s too bad,” said Basil earnestly. He took a deep breath and his lips twisted up in a kindly smile. “Your parents must have felt pretty badly about that.”

De Vinci stared at him as if over a pair of spectacles, but before he could answer, the dance ended and the others came back to the table.

“Hello there, Skiddy.”

“Well, well, Skiddy!”

They all knew him. One of the freshmen yielded him a place next to Jobena and they began to talk together in lowered voices.

“Skiddy De Vinci,” George whispered to Basil. “He and Jobena were engaged last summer, but I think she’s through.” He shook his head. “They used to go off in his mother’s electric up at Bar Harbor; it was disgusting.”

Basil glowed suddenly with excitement as if he had been snapped on like an electric torch. He looked at Jobena--her face, infinitely reserved, lightened momentarily, but this time her smile had gone sad; there was the deep friendliness but not the delight. He wondered if Skiddy De Vinci cared about her being through with him. Perhaps, if he reformed and stopped drinking and went back to Yale, she would change her mind.

The music began again. Basil stared uncomfortably into his cup of tea.

“This is a tango,” said George. “You can dance the tango, can’t you? It’s all right; it’s Spanish.”

Basil considered.

“Sure you can,” insisted George. “It’s Spanish, I tell you. There’s nothing to stop your dancing if it’s Spanish, is there?”

One of the freshmen looked at them curiously. Basil leaned over the table and asked Jobena to dance.

She made a last low-voiced remark to De Vinci before she rose; then, to atone for the slight rudeness, she smiled up at Basil. He was light-headed as they moved out on the floor.

Abruptly she made an outrageous remark and Basil started and nearly stumbled, doubtful that he had heard aright.

“I’ll bet you’ve kissed about a thousand girls in your time,” she said, “with that mouth.”

“What!”

“Not so?”

“Oh, no,” declared Basil. “Really, I--”

Her lids and lashes had drooped again indifferently; she was singing the band’s tune:

“Tango makes you warm inside;
You bend and sway and glide;
There’s nothing far and wide--”

What was the implication--that kissing people was all right; was even admirable? He remembered what John Granby had said: “Every time you kiss a nice girl you may have started her on the road to the devil.”

He thought of his own past--an afternoon on the Kampf’s porch with Minnie Bibble, a ride home from Black Bear Lake with Imogene Bissel in the back seat of the car, a miscellany of encounters running back to games of post office and to childish kisses that were consummated upon an unwilling nose or ear.

That was over; he was never going to kiss another girl until he found the one who would become his wife. It worried him that this girl whom he found lovely should take the matter so lightly. The strange thrill he had felt when George spoke of her “behaving disgustingly” with Skiddy De Vinci in his electric, was transformed into indignation--steadily rising indignation. It was criminal--a girl not yet seventeen.

Suddenly it occurred to him that this was perhaps his responsibility, his opportunity. If he could implant in her mind the futility of it all, the misery she was laying up for herself, his visit to New York would not have been in vain. He could go back to school happy, knowing he had brought to one girl the sort of peace she had never known before.