‘And now you are so very old.’
With a sort of awe she moved back and away from him.
‘Yes, leave me!’ he cried. ‘You are old also; the spirit withers with the skin. Have you come here only to tell me something I had best forget: that to be old and poor is perhaps more wretched than to be old and rich; to remind me that my son hurls my grey failure in my face?’
‘Give me my book,’ she commanded harshly. ‘Be quick, old man!’
Merlin looked at her once more and then patiently obeyed. He picked up the book and handed it to her, shaking his head when she offered him a bill.
‘Why go through the farce of paying me? Once you made me wreck these very premises.’
‘I did,’ she said in anger, ‘and I’m glad. Perhaps there had been enough done to ruin me.’
She gave him a glance, half disdain, half ill-concealed uneasiness, and with a brisk word to her urban grandson moved toward the door.
Then she was gone – out of his shop – out of his life. The door clicked. With a sigh he turned and walked brokenly back toward the glass partition that enclosed the yellowed accounts of many years as well as the mellowed, wrinkled Miss McCracken.
Merlin regarded her parched, cobwebbed face with an odd sort of pity. She, at any rate, had had less from life than he. No rebellious, romantic spirit cropping out unbidden had, in its memorable moments, given her life a zest and a glory.
Then Miss McCracken looked up and spoke to him:
‘Still a spunky old piece, isn’t she?’
Merlin started.
‘Who?’
‘Old Alicia Dare. Mrs. Thomas Allerdyce she is now, of course; has been these thirty years.’
‘What? I don’t understand you.’ Merlin sat down suddenly in his swivel chair; his eyes were wide.
‘Why, surely, Mr Grainger, you can’t tell me that you’ve forgotten her, when for ten years she was the most notorious character in New York. Why, one time when she was the correspondent in the Throckmorton divorce case she attracted so much attention on Fifth Avenue that there was a traffic tie-up. Didn’t you read about it in the papers.’
‘I never used to read the papers.’ His ancient brain was whirring.
‘Well, you can’t have forgotten the time she came in here and ruined the business. Let me tell you I came near asking Mr Moonlight Quill for my salary, and clearing out.’
‘Do you mean that – that you saw her?’
‘Saw her! How could I help it with the racket that went on. Heaven knows Mr Moonlight Quill didn’t like it either, but of course he didn’t say anything. He was daffy about her and she could twist him around her little finger. The second he opposed one of her whims she’d threaten to tell his wife on him. Served him right. The idea of that man falling for a pretty adventuress! Of course he was never rich enough for her, even though the shop paid well in those days.’
‘But when I saw her,’ stammered Merlin, ‘that is, when I thought I saw her, she lived with her mother.’
‘Mother, trash!’ said Miss McCracken indignantly. ‘She had a woman there she called “Aunty” who was no more related to her than I am. Oh, she was a bad one – but clever. Right after the Throckmorton divorce case she married Thomas Allerdyce, and made herself secure for life.’
‘Who was she?’ cried Merlin. ‘For God’s sake what was she – a witch?’
‘Why, she was Alicia Dare, the dancer, of course. In those days you couldn’t pick up a paper without finding her picture.’
Merlin sat very quiet, his brain suddenly fatigued and stilled. He was an old man now indeed, so old that it was impossible for him to dream of ever having been young, so old that the glamour was gone out of the world, passing not into the faces of children and into the persistent comforts of warmth and life, but passing out of the range of sight and feeling. He was never to smile again or to sit in a long reverie when spring evenings wafted the cries of children in at his window until gradually they became the friends of his boyhood out there, urging him to come and play before the last dark came down. He was too old now even for memories.
That night he sat at supper with his wife and son, who had used him for their blind purposes. Olive said:
‘Don’t sit there like a death’s-head. Say something.’
‘Let him sit quiet,’ growled Arthur. ‘If you encourage him he’ll tell us a story we’ve heard a hundred times before.’
Merlin went upstairs very quietly at nine o’clock. When he was in his room and had closed the door tight he stood by it for a moment, his thin limbs trembling. He knew now that he had always been a fool.
‘O Russet Witch!’
But it was too late. He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
I
As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr and Mrs Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing history I am about to set down will never be known.
I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for yourself.
The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old custom of having babies – Mr Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut, at which institution Mr Button himself had been known for four years by the somewhat obvious nickname of ‘Cuff.’
On the September morning consecrated to be the enormous event he arose nervously at six o’clock, dressed himself, adjusted an impeccable stock, and hurried forth through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to determine whether the darkness of the night had borne in new life upon its bosom.
When he was approximately a hundred yards from the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen he saw Doctor Keene, the family physician, descending the front steps, rubbing his hands together with a washing movement – as all doctors are required to do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.
Mr Roger Button, the president of Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor Keene with much less dignity than was expected from a Southern gentleman of that picturesque period. ‘Doctor Keene!’ he called. ‘Oh, Doctor Keene!’
The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting, a curious expression settling on his harsh, medicinal face as Mr Button drew near.
‘What happened?’ demanded Mr Button, as he came up in a gasping rush. ‘What was it? How is she? A boy? Who is it? What –’
‘Talk sense!’ said Doctor Keene sharply. He appeared somewhat irritated.
‘Is the child born?’ begged Mr Button.
Doctor Keene frowned. ‘Why, yes, I suppose so – after a fashion.’ Again he threw a curious glance at Mr Button.
‘Is my wife all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘Here now!’ cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion of irritation, ‘I’ll ask you to go and see for yourself. Outrageous!’ He snapped the last word out in almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering: ‘Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional reputation? One more would ruin me – ruin anybody.’
‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Mr Button, appalled. ‘Triplets?’
‘No, not triplets!’ answered the doctor cuttingly. ‘What’s more, you can go and see for yourself. And get another doctor. I
brought you into the world, young man, and I’ve been physician to your family for forty years, but I’m through with you! I don’t want to see you or any of your relatives ever again! Goodbye!’
Then he turned sharply, and without another word climbed into his phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone, and drove severely away.
Mr Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied and trembling from head to foot. What horrible mishap had occurred? He had suddenly lost all desire to go into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen – it was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment later, he forced himself to mount the steps and enter the front door.
A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque gloom of the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr Button approached her.
‘Good morning,’ she remarked, looking up at him pleasantly.
‘Good morning. I – I am Mr Button.’
At this a look of utter terror spread itself over the girl’s face. She rose to her feet and seemed about to fly from the hall, restraining herself only with the most apparent difficulty.
‘I want to see my child,’ said Mr Button.
The nurse gave a little scream. ‘Oh – of course!’ she cried hysterically. ‘Upstairs. Right upstairs. Go – up!’
She pointed the direction, and Mr Button, bathed in a cool perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to mount to the second floor. In the upper hall he addressed another nurse who approached him, basin in hand. ‘I’m Mr Button,’ he managed to articulate. ‘I want to see my –’
Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled in the direction of the stairs. Clank! Clank! It began a methodical descent as if sharing in the general terror which this gentleman provoked.
‘I want to see my child!’ Mr Button almost shrieked. He was on the verge of collapse.
Clank! The basin had reached the first floor. The nurse regained control of herself, and threw Mr Button a look of hearty contempt.
‘All right, Mr Button,’ she agreed in a hushed voice. ‘Very well! But if you knew what state it’s put us all in this morning! It’s perfectly outrageous! The hospital will never have the ghost of a reputation after –’
‘Hurry!’ he cried hoarsely. ‘I can’t stand this!’
‘Come this way, then, Mr Button.’
He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long hall they reached a room from which proceeded a variety of howls – indeed, a room which, in later parlance, would have been known as the ‘crying-room.’ They entered. Ranged around the walls were half a dozen white-enameled rolling cribs, each with a tag tied at the head.
‘Well,’ gasped Mr Button, ‘which is mine?’
‘There!’ said the nurse.
Mr Button’s eyes followed her pointing finger, and this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white blanket, and partially crammed into one of the cribs, there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his chin dripped a long smoke-coloured beard, which waved absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming in at the window. He looked up at Mr Button with dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
‘Am I mad?’ thundered Mr Button, his terror resolving into rage. ‘Is this some ghastly hospital joke?’
‘It doesn’t seem like a joke to us,’ replied the nurse severely. ‘And I don’t know whether you’re mad or not – but that is most certainly your child.’
The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr Button’s forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them, looked again. There was no mistake – he was gazing at a man of threescore and ten – a baby of threescore and ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib in which it was reposing.
The old man looked placidly from one to the other for a moment, and then suddenly spoke in a cracked and ancient voice. ‘Are you my father?’ he demanded.
Mr Button and the nurse started violently.
‘Because if you are,’ went on the old man querulously, ‘I wish you’d get me out of this place – or, at least, get them to put a comfortable rocker in here.’
‘Where in God’s name did you come from? Who are you?’ burst out Mr Button frantically.
‘I can’t tell you exactly who I am,’ replied the querulous whine, ‘because I’ve only been born a few hours – but my last name is certainly Button.’
‘You lie! You’re an impostor!’
The old man turned wearily to the nurse. ‘Nice way to welcome a new-born child,’ he complained in a weak voice. ‘Tell him he’s wrong, why don’t you?’
‘You’re wrong, Mr Button,’ said the nurse severely. ‘This is your child, and you’ll have to make the best of it. We’re going to ask you to take him home with you as soon as possible – some time today.’
‘Home?’ repeated Mr Button incredulously.
‘Yes, we can’t have him here. We really can’t, you know.’
‘I’m right glad of it,’ whined the old man. ‘This is a fine place to keep a youngster of quiet tastes. With all this yelling and howling, I haven’t been able to get a wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat’ – here his voice rose to a shrill note of protest – ‘and they brought me a bottle of milk!’
Mr Button sank down upon a chair near his son and concealed his face in his hands. ‘My heavens!’ he murmured, in an ecstasy of horror. ‘What will people say? What must I do?’
‘You’ll have to take him home,’ insisted the nurse – ‘immediately!’
A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful clarity before the eyes of the tortured man – a picture of himself walking through the crowded streets of the city with this appalling apparition stalking by his side. ‘I can’t. I can’t,’ he moaned.
People would stop to speak to him, and what was he going to say? He would have to introduce this – this septuagenarian: ‘This is my son, born early this morning.’ And then the old man would gather his blanket around him and they would plod on, past the bustling stores, the slave market – for a dark instant Mr Button wished passionately that his son was black – past the luxurious houses of the residential district, past the home for the aged …
‘Come! Pull yourself together,’ commanded the nurse.
‘See here,’ the old man announced suddenly, ‘if you think I’m going to walk home in this blanket, you’re entirely mistaken.’
‘Babies always have blankets.’
With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small white swaddling garment. ‘Look!’ he quavered. ‘This is what they had ready for me.’
‘Babies always wear those,’ said the nurse primly.
‘Well,’ said the old man, ‘this baby’s not going to wear anything in about two minutes. This blanket itches. They might at least have given me a sheet.’
‘Keep it on! Keep it on!’ said Mr Button hurriedly. He turned to the nurse. ‘What’ll I do?’
‘Go down town and buy your son some clothes.’
Mr Button’s son’s voice followed him down into the hall: ‘And a cane, father. I want to have a cane.’
Mr Button banged the outer door savagely …
II
‘Good morning,’ Mr Button said, nervously, to the clerk in the Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. ‘I want to buy some clothes for my child.’
‘How old is your child, sir?’
‘About six hours,’ answered Mr Button, without due consideration.
‘Babies’ supply department in the rear.’
‘Why, I don’t think – I’m not sure that’s what I want. It’s – he’s an unusually large-size child. Exceptionally – ah – large.’
‘They have the largest child’s sizes.’
‘Where is the boys’ department?’ inquired Mr Button, shifting his ground desperately. He felt that the clerk must surely scent his shameful secret.
‘Right here.’
‘Well –’ He hesitated. The notion of dressing his son in men’s clothes was repugnant to him. If, say, he could only find a very large boy’s
suit, he might cut off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown, and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain something of his own self-respect – not to mention his position in Baltimore society.
But a frantic inspection of the boys’ department revealed no suits to fit the new-born Button. He blamed the store, of course – in such cases it is the thing to blame the store.
‘How old did you say that boy of yours was?’ demanded the clerk curiously.
‘He’s – sixteen.’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you said six hours. You’ll find the youths’ department in the next aisle.’
Mr Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped, brightened, and pointed his finger toward a dressed dummy in the window display.
‘There!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ll take that suit, out there on the dummy.’
The clerk stared. ‘Why,’ he protested, ‘that’s not a child’s suit. At least it is, but it’s for fancy dress. You could wear it yourself!’
‘Wrap it up,’ insisted his customer nervously. ‘That’s what I want.’
The astonished clerk obeyed.
Back at the hospital Mr Button entered the nursery and almost threw the package at his son. ‘Here’s your clothes,’ he snapped out.
The old man untied the package and viewed the contents with a quizzical eye.
‘They look sort of funny to me,’ he complained. ‘I don’t want to be made a monkey of –’
‘You’ve made a monkey of me!’ retorted Mr Button fiercely. ‘Never you mind how funny you look. Put them on – or I’ll – or I’ll spank you.’ He swallowed uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless that it was the proper thing to say.
‘All right, father’ – this with a grotesque simulation of filial respect – ‘you’ve lived longer; you know best. Just as you say.’
As before, the sound of the word ‘father’ caused Mr Button to start violently.
The Fantasy and Mystery Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald Page 11
