Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (278 page)

She shook her head dazedly. Suddenly she seized Joel’s face and held it close to hers.

“You won’t go. You like me--you love me, don’t you? Don’t call up anybody. Tomorrow’s time enough. You stay here with me tonight.”

He stared at her, at first incredulously, and then with shocked understanding. In her dark groping Stella was trying to keep Miles alive by sustaining a situation in which he had figured--as if Miles’ mind could not die so long as the possibilities that had worried him still existed. It was a distraught and tortured effort to stave off the realization that he was dead.

Resolutely Joel went to the phone and called a doctor.

“Don’t, oh, don’t call anybody!” Stella cried. “Come back here and put your arms around me.”

“Is Doctor Bales in?”

“Joel,” Stella cried. “I thought I could count on you. Miles liked you. He was jealous of you--Joel, come here.”

Ah then--if he betrayed Miles she would be keeping him alive--for if he were really dead how could he be betrayed?

“--has just had a very severe shock. Can you come at once, and get hold of a nurse?”

“Joel!”

Now the door-bell and the telephone began to ring intermittently, and automobiles were stopping in front of the door.

“But you’re not going,” Stella begged him. “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”

“No,” he answered. “But I’ll be back, if you need me.”

Standing on the steps of the house which now hummed and palpitated with the life that flutters around death like protective leaves, he began to sob a little in his throat.

“Everything he touched he did something magical to,” he thought. “He even brought that little gamin alive and made her a sort of masterpiece.”

And then:

“What a hell of a hole he leaves in this damn wilderness--already!”

And then with a certain bitterness, “Oh, yes, I’ll be back--I’ll be back!”

TWO WRONGS

“Look at those shoes,” said Bill--”twenty-eight dollars.”

Mr. Brancusi looked. “Purty.”

“Made to order.”

“I knew you were a great swell. You didn’t get me up here to show me those shoes, did you?”

“I am not a great swell. Who said I was a great swell?” demanded Bill. “Just because I’ve got more education than most people in show business.”

“And then, you know, you’re a handsome young fellow,” said Brancusi dryly.

“Sure I am--compared to you anyhow. The girls think I must be an actor, till they find out. . . . Got a cigarette? What’s more, I look like a man--which is more than most of these pretty boys round Times Square do.”

“Good-looking. Gentleman. Good shoes. Shot with luck.”

“You’re wrong there,” objected Bill. “Brains. Three years--nine shows--four big hits--only one flop. Where do you see any luck in that?”

A little bored, Brancusi just gazed. What he would have seen--had he not made his eyes opaque and taken to thinking about something else--was a fresh-faced young Irishman exuding aggressiveness and self-confidence until the air of his office was thick with it. Presently, Brancusi knew, Bill would hear the sound of his own voice and be ashamed and retire into his other humor--the quietly superior, sensitive one, the patron of the arts, modelled on the intellectuals of the Theatre Guild. Bill McChesney had not quite decided between the two, such blends are seldom complete before thirty.

“Take Ames, take Hopkins, take Harris--take any of them,” Bill insisted. “What have they got on me? What’s the matter? Do you want a drink?”--seeing Brancusi’s glance wander toward the cabinet on the opposite wall.

“I never drink in the morning. I just wondered who was it keeps on knocking. You ought to make it stop it. I get a nervous fidgets, kind of half crazy, with that kind of thing.”

Bill went quickly to the door and threw it open.

“Nobody,” he said . . . “Hello! What do you want?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” a voice answered; “I’m terribly sorry. I got so excited and I didn’t realize I had this pencil in my hand.”

“What is it you want?”

“I want to see you, and the clerk said you were busy. I have a letter for you from Alan Rogers, the playwright--and I wanted to give it to you personally.”

“I’m busy,” said Bill. “See Mr. Cadorna.”

“I did, but he wasn’t very encouraging, and Mr. Rogers said--”

Brancusi, edging over restlessly, took a quick look at her. She was very young, with beautiful red hair, and more character in her face than her chatter would indicate; it did not occur to Mr. Brancusi that this was due to her origin in Delaney, South Carolina.

“What shall I do?” she inquired, quietly laying her future in Bill’s hands. “I had a letter to Mr. Rogers, and he just gave me this one to you.”

“Well, what do you want me to do--marry you?” exploded Bill.

“I’d like to get a part in one of your plays.”

“Then sit down and wait. I’m busy. . . . Where’s Miss Cohalan?” He rang a bell, looked once more, crossly, at the girl and closed the door of his office. But during the interruption his other mood had come over him, and he resumed his conversation with Brancusi in the key of one who was hand in glove with Reinhardt for the artistic future of the theater.

By 12:30 he had forgotten everything except that he was going to be the greatest producer in the world and that he had an engagement to tell Sol Lincoln about it at lunch. Emerging from his office, he looked expectantly at Miss Cohalan.

“Mr. Lincoln won’t be able to meet you,” she said. “He jus ‘is minute called.”

“Just this minute,” repeated Bill, shocked. “All right. Just cross him off that list for Thursday night.”

Miss Cohalan drew a line on a sheet of paper before her.

“Mr. McChesney, now you haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

He turned to the red-headed girl.

“No,” he said vaguely, and then to Miss Cohalan: “That’s all right; ask him for Thursday anyhow. To hell with him.”

He did not want to lunch alone. He did not like to do anything alone now, because contacts were too much fun when one had prominence and power.

“If you would just let me talk to you two minutes--” she began.

“Afraid I can’t now.” Suddenly he realized that she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his life.

He stared at her.

“Mr. Rogers told me--”

“Come and have a spot of lunch with me,” he said, and then, with an air of great hurry, he gave Miss Cohalan some quick and contradictory instructions and held open the door.

They stood on Forty-second Street and he breathed his pre-empted air--there is only enough air there for a few people at a time. It was November and the first exhilarating rush of the season was over, but he could look east and see the electric sign of one of his plays, and west and see another. Around the corner was the one he had put on with Brancusi--the last time he would produce anything except alone.

They went to the Bedford, where there was a to-do of waiters and captains as he came in.

“This is ver tractive restaurant,” she said, impressed and on company behavior.

“This is hams’ paradise.” He nodded to several people. “Hello, Jimmy--Bill. . . . Hello there, Jack. . . . That’s Jack Dempsey. . . . I don’t eat here much. I usually eat up at the Harvard Club.”

“Oh, did you go to Harvard? I used to know--”

“Yes.” He hesitated; there were two versions about Harvard, and he decided suddenly on the true one. “Yes, and they had me down for a hick there, but not any more. About a week ago I was out on Long Island at the Gouverneer Haights--very fashionable people--and a couple of Gold Coast boys that never knew I was alive up in Cambridge began pulling this ‘Hello, Bill, old boy’ on me.”

He hesitated and suddenly decided to leave the story there.

“What do you want--a job?” he demanded. He remembered suddenly that she had holes in her stockings. Holes in stockings always moved him, softened him.

“Yes, or else I’ve got to go home,” she said. “I want to be a dancer--you know, Russian ballet. But the lessons cost so much, so I’ve got to get a job. I thought it’d give me stage presence anyhow.”

“Hoofer, eh?”

“Oh, no, serious.”

“Well, Pavlova’s a hoofer, isn’t she?”

“Oh, no.” She was shocked at this profanity, but after a moment she continued: “I took with Miss Campbell--Georgia Berriman Campbell--back home--maybe you know her. She took from Ned Wayburn, and she’s really wonderful. She--”

“Yeah?” he said abstractedly. “Well, it’s a tough business--casting agencies bursting with people that can all do anything, till I give them a try. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“I’m twenty-six. Came here four years ago without a cent.”

“My!”

“I could quit now and be comfortable the rest of my life.”

“My!”

“Going to take a year off next year--get married. . . . Ever hear of Irene Rikker?”

“I should say! She’s about my favorite of all.”

“We’re engaged.”

“My!”

When they went out into Times Square after a while he said carelessly, “What are you doing now?”

“Why, I’m trying to get a job.”

“I mean right this minute.”

“Why, nothing.”

“Do you want to come up to my apartment on Forty-sixth Street and have some coffee?”

Their eyes met, and Emmy Pinkard made up her mind she could take care of herself.

It was a great bright studio apartment with a ten-foot divan, and after she had coffee and he a highball, his arm dropped round her shoulder.

“Why should I kiss you?” she demanded. “I hardly know you, and besides, you’re engaged to somebody else.”

“Oh, that! She doesn’t care.”

“No, really!”

“You’re a good girl.”

“Well, I’m certainly not an idiot.”

“All right, go on being a good girl.”

She stood up, but lingered a minute, very fresh and cool, and not upset at all.

“I suppose this means you won’t give me a job?” she asked pleasantly.

He was already thinking about something else--about an interview and a rehearsal--but now he looked at her again and saw that she still had holes in her stockings. He telephoned:

“Joe, this is the Fresh Boy. . . . You didn’t think I knew you called me that, did you? . . . It’s all right. . . . Say, have you got those three girls for the party scene? Well, listen; save one for a Southern kid I’m sending around today.”

He looked at her jauntily, conscious of being such a good fellow.

“Well, I don’t know how to thank you. And Mr. Rogers,” she added audaciously. “Good-by, Mr. McChesney.”

He disdained to answer.

II

During rehearsal he used to come around a great deal and stand watching with a wise expression, as if he knew everything in people’s minds; but actually he was in a haze about his own good fortune and didn’t see much and didn’t for the moment care. He spent most of his week-ends on Long Island with the fashionable people who had “taken him up.” When Brancusi referred to him as the “big social butterfly,” he would answer, “Well, what about it? Didn’t I go to Harvard? You think they found me in a Grand Street apple cart, like you?” He was well liked among his new friends for his good looks and good nature, as well as his success.

His engagement to Irene Rikker was the most unsatisfactory thing in his life; they were tired of each other but unwilling to put an end to it. Just as, often, the two richest young people in a town are drawn together by the fact, so Bill McChesney and Irene Rikker, borne side by side on waves of triumph, could not spare each other’s nice appreciation of what was due such success. Nevertheless, they indulged in fiercer and more frequent quarrels, and the end was approaching. It was embodied in one Frank Llewellen, a big, fine-looking actor playing opposite Irene. Seeing the situation at once, Bill became bitterly humorous about it; from the second week of rehearsals there was tension in the air.

Meanwhile Emmy Pinkard, with enough money for crackers and milk, and a friend who took her out to dinner, was being happy. Her friend, Easton Hughes from Delaney, was studying at Columbia to be a dentist. He sometimes brought along other lonesome young men studying to be dentists, and at the price, if it can be called that, of a few casual kisses in taxicabs, Emmy dined when hungry. One afternoon she introduced Easton to Bill McChesney at the stage door, and afterward Bill made his facetious jealousy the basis of their relationship.

“I see that dental number has been slipping it over on me again. Well, don’t let him give you any laughing gas is my advice.”

Though their encounters were few, they always looked at each other. When Bill looked at her he stared for an instant as if he had not seen her before, and then remembered suddenly that she was to be teased. When she looked at him she saw many things--a bright day outside, with great crowds of people hurrying through the streets; a very good new limousine that waited at the curb for two people with very good new clothes, who got in and went somewhere that was just like New York, only away, and more fun there. Many times she had wished she had kissed him, but just as many times she was glad she hadn’t; since, as the weeks passed, he grew less romantic, tied up, like the rest of them, to the play’s laborious evolution.

They were opening in Atlantic City. A sudden moodiness apparent to everyone, came over Bill. He was short with the director and sarcastic with the actors. This, it was rumored, was because Irene Rikker had come down with Frank Llewellen on a different train. Sitting beside the author on the night of the dress rehearsal, he was an almost sinister figure in the twilight of the auditorium; but he said nothing until the end of the second act, when, with Llewellen and Irene Rikker on the stage alone, he suddenly called:

“We’ll go over that again--and cut out the mush!”

Llewellen came down to the footlights.

“What do you mean--cut out the mush?” he inquired. “Those are the lines, aren’t they?”

“You know what I mean--stick to business.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Bill stood up. “I mean all that damn whispering.”

“There wasn’t any whispering. I simply asked--”