The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories (46 page)

JULIE: Hello! (
No answer
) Are you a plumber? (
No answer
) Are you the water department? (
One loud, hollow bang
) What do you want? (
No answer
) I believe you're a ghost. Are you? (
No answer
) Well, then, stop banging. (
She reaches out and turns on the warm tap. No water flows. Again she puts her mouth down close to the spigot
) If you're the plumber that's a mean trick. Turn it on for a fellow. (
Two loud, hollow bangs
) Don't argue! I want water—water!
Water!

(
A young man's head appears in the window—a head decorated with a slim mustache and sympathetic eyes. These last stare, and though they can see nothing but many fishermen with nets and much crimson ocean, they decide him to speak
)

THE YOUNG MAN: Some one fainted?

JULIE: (
Starting up, all ears immediately
) Jumping cats!

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Helpfully
) Water's no good for fits.

JULIE: Fits! Who said anything about fits!

THE YOUNG MAN: You said something about a cat jumping.

JULIE: (
Decidedly
) I did not!

THE YOUNG MAN: Well, we can talk it over later. Are you ready to go out? Or do you still feel that if you go with me just now everybody will gossip?

JULIE: (
Smiling
) Gossip! Would they? It'd be more than gossip—it'd be a regular scandal.

THE YOUNG MAN: Here, you're going it a little strong. Your family might be somewhat disgruntled—but to the pure all things are suggestive. No one else would even give it a thought, except a few old women. Come on.

JULIE: You don't know what you ask.

THE YOUNG MAN: Do you imagine we'd have a crowd following us?

JULIE: A crowd? There'd be a special, all-steel, buffet train leaving New York hourly.

THE YOUNG MAN: Say, are you house-cleaning?

JULIE: Why?

THE YOUNG MAN: I see all the pictures are off the walls.

JULIE: Why, we never have pictures in this room.

THE YOUNG MAN: Odd. I never heard of a room without pictures or tapestry or panelling or something.

JULIE: There's not even any furniture in here.

THE YOUNG MAN: What a strange house!

JULIE: It depends on the angle you see it from.

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Sentimentally
) It's so nice talking to you like this—when you're merely a voice. I'm rather glad I can't see you.

JULIE: (
Gratefully
) So am I.

THE YOUNG MAN: What color are you wearing?

JULIE: (
After a critical survey of her shoulders
) Why, I guess it's a sort of pinkish white.

THE YOUNG MAN: Is it becoming to you?

JULIE: Very, It's—it's old. I've had it for a long while.

THE YOUNG MAN: I thought you hated old clothes.

JULIE: I do—but this was a birthday present and I sort of have to wear it.

THE YOUNG MAN: Pinkish white. Well, I'll bet it's divine. Is it in style?

JULIE: Quite. It's very simple, standard model.

THE YOUNG MAN: What a voice you have! How it echoes! Sometimes I shut my eyes and seem to see you in a far desert island calling for me. And I plunge toward you through the surf, hearing you call as you stand there, water stretching on both sides of you—

(
The soap slips from the side of the tub and splashes in. The young man blinks
)

THE YOUNG MAN: What was that? Did I dream it?

JULIE: Yes. You're—you're very poetic, aren't you?

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Dreamily
) No. I do prose. I do verse only when I am stirred.

JULIE: (
Murmuring
) Stirred by a spoon—

THE YOUNG MAN: I have always loved poetry. I can remember to this day the first poem I ever learned by heart. It was “Evangeline.”

JULIE: That's a fib.

THE YOUNG MAN: Did I say “Evangeline”
³
? I meant “The Skeleton in Armor.”

JULIE: I'm a low-brow. But I can remember my first poem. It had one verse:

 

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Eagerly
) Are you growing fond of literature?

JULIE: If it's not too ancient or complicated or depressing. Same way with people. I usually like 'em if they're not too ancient or complicated or depressing.

THE YOUNG MAN: Of course I've read enormously. You told me last night that you were very fond of Walter Scott.
⁴

JULIE: (
Considering
) Scott? Let's see. Yes, I've read “Ivanhoe” and “The Last of the Mohicans.”

THE YOUNG MAN: That's by Cooper.
⁵

JULIE: (
Angrily
) “Ivanhoe” is? You're crazy! I guess I know. I read it.

THE YOUNG MAN: “The Last of the Mohicans” is by Cooper. JULIE: What do I care! I like O. Henry.
⁶
I don't see how he ever wrote those stories. Most of them he wrote in prison. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”
⁷
he made up in prison.

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Biting his lip
) Literature—literature! How much it has meant to me!

JULIE: Well, as Gaby Deslys said to Mr. Bergson
⁸
, with my looks and your brains there's nothing we couldn't do.

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Laughing
) You certainly are hard to keep up with. One day you're awfully pleasant and the next you're in a mood. If I didn't understand your temperament so well——

JULIE: (
Impatiently
) Oh, you're one of these amateur character-readers, are you? Size people up in five minutes and then look wise whenever they're mentioned. I hate that sort of thing.

THE YOUNG MAN: I don't boast of sizing you up. You're most mysterious, I'll admit.

JULIE: There's only two mysterious people in history.

THE YOUNG MAN: Who are they?

JULIE: The Man with the Iron Mask
⁹
and the fella who says “ug uh-glug uh-glug uh-glug” when the line is busy.

THE YOUNG MAN: You
are
mysterious. I love you. You're beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that's the rarest known combination.

JULIE: You're a historian. Tell me if there are any bath-tubs in history. I think they've been frightfully neglected.

THE YOUNG MAN: Bath-tubs! Let's see. Well, Agamemnon was stabbed in his bath-tub. And Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat
¹⁰
in his bath-tub.

JULIE: (
Sighing
) Way back there! Nothing new besides the sun, is there? Why only yesterday I picked up a musical-comedy score that must have been at least twenty years old; and there on the cover it said “The Shimmies of Normandy,”
¹¹
but shimmie was spelt the old way, with a “C.”

THE YOUNG MAN: I loathe these modern dances. Oh, Lois, I wish I could see you. Come to the window.

(
There is a loud bang in the water-pipe and suddenly the flow starts from the open taps.
JULIE
turns them off quickly
)

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Puzzled
) What on earth was that?

JULIE: (
Ingeniously
) I heard something, too.

THE YOUNG MAN: Sounded like running water.

JULIE: Didn't it? Strange like it. As a matter of fact I was filling the gold-fish bowl.

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Still puzzled
) What was that banging noise?

JULIE: One of the fish snapping his golden jaws.

THE YOUNG MAN: (
With sudden resolution
) Lois, I love you. I am not a mundane man but I am a forger——

JULIE: (
Interested at once
) Oh, how fascinating.

THE YOUNG MAN:—a forger ahead. Lois, I want you.

JULIE: (
Skeptically
) Huh! What you really want is for the world to come to attention and stand there till you give “Rest!”

THE YOUNG MAN: Lois I—Lois I—

(
He stops as
LOIS
opens the door, comes in, and bangs it behind her. She looks peevishly at
JULIE
and then suddenly catches sight of the young man in the window
)

LOIS: (
In horror
) Mr. Calkins!

THE YOUNG MAN: (
Surprised
) Why I thought you said you were wearing pinkish white!

(
After one despairing stare
LOIS
shrieks, throws up her hands in surrender, and sinks to the floor.
)

THE YOUNG MAN: (
In great alarm
) Good Lord! She's fainted! I'll be right in.

(JULIE'S
eyes light on the towel which has slipped from
LOIS'S
inert hand.
)

JULIE: In that case I'll be right out.

(
She puts her hands on the side of the tub to lift herself out and a murmur, half gasp, half sigh, ripples from the audience.

A Belasco midnight
¹²
comes quickly down and blots out the stage.
)

 

CURTAIN.

John T. Unger came from a family that had been well known in Hades
¹
—a small town on the Mississippi River—for several generations. John's father had held the amateur golf championship through many a heated contest; Mrs. Unger was known “from hot-box to hot-bed,” as the local phrase went, for her political addresses; and young John T. Unger, who had just turned sixteen, had danced all the latest dances from New York before he put on long trousers. And now, for a certain time, he was to be away from home. That respect for a New England education which is the bane of all provincial places, which drains them yearly of their most promising young men, had seized upon his parents. Nothing would suit them but that he should go to St. Midas' School
²
near Boston—Hades was too small to hold their darling and gifted son.

Now in Hades—as you know if you ever have been there—the names of the more fashionable preparatory schools and colleges mean very little. The inhabitants have been so long out of the world that, though they make a show of keeping up to date in dress and manners and literature, they depend to a great extent on hearsay, and a function that in Hades would be considered elaborate would doubtless be hailed by a Chicago beef-princess as “perhaps a little tacky.”

John T. Unger was on the eve of departure. Mrs. Unger, with maternal fatuity, packed his trunks full of linen suits and electric fans, and Mr. Unger presented his son with an asbestos pocket-book stuffed with money.

“Remember, you are always welcome here,” he said. “You can be sure, boy, that we'll keep the home fires burning.”

“I know,” answered John huskily.

“Don't forget who you are and where you come from,” continued his father proudly, “and you can do nothing to harm you. You are an Unger—from Hades.”

So the old man and the young shook hands and John walked away with tears streaming from his eyes. Ten minutes later he had passed outside the city limits, and he stopped to glance back for the last time. Over the gates the old-fashioned Victorian motto seemed strangely attractive to him. His father had tried time and time again to have it changed to something with a little more push and verve about it, such as “Hades—Your Opportunity,” or else a plain “Welcome” sign set over a hearty handshake pricked out in electric lights. The old motto was a little depressing, Mr. Unger had thought—but now. . . .

So John took his look and then set his face resolutely toward his destination. And, as he turned away, the lights of Hades against the sky seemed full of a warm and passionate beauty.

 

St. Midas' School is half an hour from Boston in a Rolls-Pierce motor-car. The actual distance will never be known, for no one, except John T. Unger, had ever arrived there save in a Rolls-Pierce and probably no one ever will again. St. Midas' is the most expensive and the most exclusive boys' preparatory school in the world.

John's first two years there passed pleasantly. The fathers of all the boys were money-kings and John spent his summers visiting at fashionable resorts. While he was very fond of all the boys he visited, their fathers struck him as being much of a piece, and in his boyish way he often wondered at their exceeding sameness. When he told them where his home was they would ask jovially, “Pretty hot down there?” and John would muster a faint smile and answer, “It certainly is.” His response would have been heartier had they not all made this joke—at best varying it with, “Is it hot enough for you down there?” which he hated just as much.

In the middle of his second year at school, a quiet handsome boy named Percy Washington had been put in John's form. The new-comer was pleasant in his manner and exceedingly well dressed even for St. Midas', but for some reason he kept aloof from the other boys. The only person with whom he was intimate was John T. Unger, but even to John he was entirely uncommunicative concerning his home or his family. That he was wealthy went without saying, but beyond a few such deductions John knew little of his friend, so it promised rich confectionery for his curiosity when Percy invited him to spend the summer at his home “in the West.” He accepted, without hesitation.

It was only when they were in the train that Percy became, for the first time, rather communicative. One day while they were eating lunch in the dining-car and discussing the imperfect characters of several of the boys at school, Percy suddenly changed his tone and made an abrupt remark.