The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories (41 page)

“Hello, Edith.”

She slipped again—was tossed forward by her recovery until her face touched the black cloth of his dinner coat. She loved him—she knew she loved him—then for a minute there was silence while a strange feeling of uneasiness crept over her. Something was wrong.

Of a sudden her heart wrenched, and turned over as she realized what it was. He was pitiful and wretched, a little drunk, and miserably tired.

“Oh——” she cried involuntarily.

His eyes looked down at her. She saw suddenly that they were blood-streaked and rolling uncontrollably.

“Gordon,” she murmured, “we'll sit down; I want to sit down.” They were nearly in mid-floor, but she had seen two men start toward her from opposite sides of the room, so she halted, seized Gordon's limp hand and led him bumping through the crowd, her mouth tight shut, her face a little pale under her rouge, her eyes trembling with tears.

She found a place high up on the soft-carpeted stairs, and he sat down heavily beside her.

“Well,” he began, staring at her unsteadily, “I certainly am glad to see you, Edith.”

She looked at him without answering. The effect of this on her was immeasurable. For years she had seen men in various stages of intoxication, from uncles all the way down to chauffeurs, and her feelings had varied from amusement to disgust, but here for the first time she was seized with a new feeling—an unutterable horror.

“Gordon,” she said accusingly and almost crying, “you look like the devil.”

He nodded. “I've had trouble, Edith.”

“Trouble?”

“All sorts of trouble. Don't you say anything to the family, but I'm all gone to pieces. I'm a mess, Edith.”

His lower lip was sagging. He seemed scarcely to see her.

“Can't you—can't you,” she hesitated, “can't you tell me about it, Gordon? You know I'm always interested in you.”

She bit her lip—she had intended to say something stronger, but found at the end that she couldn't bring it out.

Gordon shook his head dully. “I can't tell you. You're a good woman. I can't tell a good woman the story.”

“Rot,” she said, defiantly. “I think it's a perfect insult to call any one a good woman in that way. It's a slam. You've been drinking, Gordon.”

“Thanks.” He inclined his head gravely. “Thanks for the information.”

“Why do you drink?”

“Because I'm so damn miserable.”

“Do you think drinking's going to make it any better?”

“What you doing—trying to reform me?”

“No; I'm trying to help you, Gordon. Can't you tell me about it?”

“I'm in an awful mess. Best thing you can do is to pretend not to know me.”

“Why, Gordon?”

“I'm sorry I cut in on you—its unfair to you. You're pure woman—and all that sort of thing. Here, I'll get some one else to dance with you.”

He rose clumsily to his feet, but she reached up and pulled him down beside her on the stairs.

“Here, Gordon. You're ridiculous. You're hurting me. You're acting like a—like a crazy man——”

“I admit it. I'm a little crazy. Something's wrong with me, Edith. There's something left me. It doesn't matter.”

“It does, tell me.”

“Just that. I was always queer—little bit different from other boys. All right in college, but now it's all wrong. Things have been snapping inside me for four months like little hooks on a dress, and it's about to come off when a few more hooks go. I'm very gradually going loony.”

He turned his eyes full on her and began to laugh, and she shrank away from him.

“What
is
the matter?”

“Just me,” he repeated. “I'm going loony. This whole place is like a dream to me—this Delmonico's——”

As he talked she saw he had changed utterly. He wasn't at all light and gay and careless—a great lethargy and discouragement had come over him. Revulsion seized her, followed by a faint, surprising boredom. His voice seemed to come out of a great void.

“Edith,” he said, “I used to think I was clever, talented, an artist. Now I know I'm nothing. Can't draw, Edith. Don't know why I'm telling you this.”

She nodded absently.

“I can't draw, I can't do anything. I'm poor as a church mouse.” He laughed, bitterly and rather too loud. “I've become a damn beggar, a leech on my friends. I'm a failure. I'm poor as hell.”

Her distaste was growing. She barely nodded this time, waiting for her first possible cue to rise.

Suddenly Gordon's eyes filled with tears.

“Edith,” he said, turning to her with what was evidently a strong effort at self-control, “I can't tell you what it means to me to know there's one person left who's interested in me.”

He reached out and patted her hand, and involuntarily she drew it away.

“It's mighty fine of you,” he repeated.

“Well,” she said slowly, looking him in the eye, “any one's always glad to see an old friend—but I'm sorry to see you like this, Gordon.”

There was a pause while they looked at each other, and the momentary eagerness in his eyes wavered. She rose and stood looking at him, her face quite expressionless.

“Shall we dance?” she suggested, coolly.

—Love is fragile—she was thinking—but perhaps the pieces are saved, the things that hovered on lips, that might have been said. The new love words, the tendernesses learned, are treasured up for the next lover.

Peter Himmel, escort to the lovely Edith, was unaccustomed to being snubbed; having been snubbed, he was hurt and embarrassed, and ashamed of himself. For a matter of two months he had been on special delivery terms with Edith Bradin, and knowing that the one excuse and explanation of the special delivery letter is its value in sentimental correspondence, he had believed himself quite sure of his ground. He searched in vain for any reason why she should have taken this attitude in the matter of a simple kiss.

Therefore when he was cut in on by the man with the mustache he went out into the hall and, making up a sentence, said it over to himself several times. Considerably deleted, this was it:

“Well, if any girl ever led a man on and then jolted him, she did—and she has no kick coming if I go out and get beautifully boiled.”

So he walked through the supper room into a small room adjoining it, which he had located earlier in the evening. It was a room in which there were several large bowls of punch flanked by many bottles. He took a seat beside the table which held the bottles.

At the second highball, boredom, disgust, the monotony of time, the turbidity of events, sank into a vague background before which glittering cobwebs formed. Things became reconciled to themselves, things lay quietly on their shelves; the troubles of the day arranged themselves in trim formation and at his curt wish of dismissal, marched off and disappeared. And with the departure of worry came brilliant, permeating symbolism. Edith became a flighty, negligible girl, not to be worried over; rather to be laughed at. She fitted like a figure of his own dream into the surface world forming about him. He himself became in a measure symbolic, a type of the continent bacchanal, the brilliant dreamer at play.

Then the symbolic mood faded and as he sipped his third highball his imagination yielded to the warm glow and he lapsed into a state similar to floating on his back in pleasant water. It was at this point that he noticed that a green baize door near him was open about two inches, and that through the aperture a pair of eyes were watching him intently.

“Hm,” murmured Peter calmly.

The green door closed—and then opened again—a bare half inch this time.

“Peek-a-boo,” murmured Peter.

The door remained stationary and then he became aware of a series of tense intermittent whispers.

“One guy.”

“What's he doin'?”

“He's sittin' lookin'.”

“He better beat it off. We gotta get another li'l' bottle.”

Peter listened while the words filtered into his consciousness.

“Now this,” he thought, “is most remarkable.”

He was excited. He was jubilant. He felt that he had stumbled upon a mystery. Affecting an elaborate carelessness he arose and walked around the table—then, turning quickly, pulled open the green door, precipitating Private Rose into the room.

Peter bowed.

“How do you do?” he said.

Private Rose set one foot slightly in front of the other, poised for fight, flight, or compromise.

“How do you do?” repeated Peter politely.

“I'm o'right.”

“Can I offer you a drink?”

Private Rose looked at him searchingly, suspecting possible sarcasm.

“O'right,” he said finally.

Peter indicated a chair.

“Sit down.”

“I got a friend,” said Rose, “I got a friend in there.” He pointed to the green door.

“By all means let's have him in.”

Peter crossed over, opened the door and welcomed in Private Key, very suspicious and uncertain and guilty. Chairs were found and the three took their seats around the punch bowl. Peter gave them each a highball and offered them a cigarette from his case. They accepted both with some diffidence.

“Now,” continued Peter easily, “may I ask why you gentlemen prefer to lounge away your leisure hours in a room which is chiefly furnished, as far as I can see, with scrubbing brushes. And when the human race has progressed to the stage where seventeen thousand chairs are manufactured on every day except Sunday—” he paused. Rose and Key regarded him vacantly. “Will you tell me,” went on Peter, “why you choose to rest yourselves on articles intended for the transportation of water from one place to another?”

At this point Rose contributed a grunt to the conversation.

“And lastly,” finished Peter, “will you tell me why, when you are in a building beautifully hung with enormous candelabra, you prefer to spend these evening hours under one anemic electric light?”

Rose looked at Key; Key looked at Rose. They laughed; they laughed uproariously; they found it was impossible to look at each other without laughing. But they were not laughing with this man—they were laughing at him. To them a man who talked after this fashion was either raving drunk or raving crazy.

“You are Yale men, I presume,” said Peter, finishing his highball and preparing another.

They laughed again.

“Na-ah.”

“So? I thought perhaps you might be members of that lowly section of the university known as the Sheffield Scientific School.”

“Na-ah.”

“Hm. Well, that's too bad. No doubt you are Harvard men, anxious to preserve your incognito in this—this paradise of violet blue, as the newspapers say.”

“Na-ah,” said Key scornfully, “we was just waitin' for somebody.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Peter, rising and filling their glasses, “very interestin'. Had a date with a scrublady, eh?”

They both denied this indignantly.

“It's all right,” Peter reassured them, “don't apologize. A scrublady's as good as any lady in the world. Kipling says ‘Any lady and Judy O'Grady under the skin.' ”

“Sure,” said Key, winking broadly at Rose.

“My case, for instance,” continued Peter, finishing his glass. “I got a girl up here that's spoiled. Spoildest darn girl I ever saw. Refused to kiss me; no reason whatsoever. Led me on deliberately to think sure I want to kiss you and then plunk! Threw me over! What's the younger generation comin' to?”

“Say tha's hard luck,” said Key—“that's awful hard luck.”

“Oh, boy!” said Rose.

“Have another?” said Peter.

“We got in a sort of fight for a while,” said Key after a pause, “but it was too far away.”

“A fight?—tha's stuff!” said Peter, seating himself unsteadily. “Fight 'em all! I was in the army.”

“This was with a Bolshevik fella.”

“Tha's stuff!” exclaimed Peter, enthusiastic. “That's what I say! Kill the Bolshevik! Exterminate 'em!”

“We're Americuns,” said Rose, implying a sturdy, defiant patriotism.

“Sure,” said Peter. “Greatest race in the world! We're all Americuns! Have another.”

They had another.

At one o'clock a special orchestra, special even in a day of special orchestras, arrived at Delmonico's, and its members, seating themselves arrogantly around the piano, took up the burden of providing music for the Gamma Psi Fraternity. They were headed by a famous flute-player, distinguished throughout New York for his feat of standing on his head and shimmying with his shoulders while he played the latest jazz on his flute. During his performance the lights were extinguished except for the spotlight on the flute-player and another roving beam that threw flickering shadows and changing kaleidoscopic colors over the massed dancers.

Edith had danced herself into that tired, dreamy state habitual only with débutantes, a state equivalent to the glow of a noble soul after several long highballs. Her mind floated vaguely on the bosom of her music; her partners changed with the unreality of phantoms under the colorful shifting dusk, and to her present coma it seemed as if days had passed since the dance began. She had talked on many fragmentary subjects with many men. She had been kissed once and made love to six times. Earlier in the evening different undergraduates had danced with her, but now, like all the more popular girls there, she had her own entourage—that is, half a dozen gallants had singled her out or were alternating her charms with those of some other chosen beauty; they cut in on her in regular, inevitable succession.