I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  They are not hurt but are all wet again. They swim to the far bank, which is nearest and start to dry out. Ann suddenly notices a house that is half concealed by a grove of trees. She thinks of a trick to get there and to a possible telephone. She sees that the direct way to the house is covered by an expanse of sharp gravel. He has taken off his shoes to pour the water out of them. She still has her shoes on. Grabbing up his shoes she flees in the direction of the house. He starts after her on the gravel, but of course, the pain is terrific. He gives up and goes the long way around. She will reach the house comfortably in advance of him.

  Inside the house a sinister figure is looking out the window—a very little woman in the uniform of a trained nurse. As I said, she is sinister and mysterious, but not particularly villainous looking. We do not make up our mind about her for the present. It is rather the haunted, barricaded character of the house which gives us this sense of menace. The nurse opens the door and Ann runs in.

  At this point the truck loaded with workmen arrives at the bridge, and Dick and Tom, seeing the wrecked car, look about wildly. They spot the house.

  The secret agent is on the porch of the house, but seeing that Dick and Tom are coming toward it, he slips over the side of the porch and for a short time disappears from the story.

  Inside the house Ann has just stammered out a resumé of her situation. The nurse assures her that the man won’t be able to break into the house, that every door and window is shuttered and they go upstairs to telephone. But Ann sees no telephone—instead the woman turns on her with a gun and demands her watch and rings. She gags her and handcuffs her to a ring in the wall. There is knocking downstairs but the nurse says “If you open your mouth I’ll blow your head off.”

  Downstairs the two young men are trying to arouse the house. Not succeeding they conclude it is empty but decide to break in with the faint hope that there may be a telephone. Now they know disaster has come to Ann and the agent.

  They manage to pry off a shutter and are confronted by the nurse. She tells them she has seen nobody, that she heard the auto crash but nothing more. They ask her why she, a trained nurse, did not do anything about it. She says it was none of her business and this makes them suspicious. They determine to have a look around the house whereupon the nurse confronts them with a revolver and locks them up in a closet.

  The nurse now makes quick preparation for departure, keeping an eye on the workmen on the bridge. She packs a little bag, then carefully opens her window and whistles a bird call.

  Out in the woods the secret agent, who is sitting calmly under a tree smoking, hears the whistle. He answers it and goes to the house. It is apparent that this is the rendezvous where he was taking Ann and the shell. The nurse tells him she has taken the rings for a blind but he cannot leave Ann like that. He takes the rings to the room where Ann is and says he will phone the police news of her whereabouts when he is safely away. His regret and shame are sincere. He even leaves the key to the handcuffs, but out of her reach.

  With the nurse he starts out the door silently, lest the two young men hear the departure and raise a rumpus. The workmen at the bridge head have left their truck and gone to work on the bridge. The agent and the nurse approach the truck cautiously, get in and drive it across the field over a shallow ford to the other bank. They speed back along the closed road obviously to recover the shell.

  In the house, Ann has slipped the gag and having heard what occurred downstairs she yells that they’re gone. Dick and Tom break out, set her free. She tells them of the shell. They hurry to the labor gang at the bridge head. The foreman is waiting for another truck to go in pursuit. It arrives and Tom and Dick get in too.

  Back at the section of the road where the shell was left. An old fashioned Norman Rockwell hobo is coming along. He wipes his brow and sits down beside the road for a rest. In fact, sits directly upon the shell which is so laid in the grass that it might be a log. He takes a packet of cards out of his pocket and starts to lay out the first row of a solitaire game. To make things brighter he reaches into another pocket and takes out a half pint of gin, gazes sadly at the two ounces residing therein. He empties it and as he lowers the bottle down from his mouth it hits the shell and breaks.

  He eagerly opens the case, but when he sees the shell for the first time he is on his feet in a hurry, staring at it. He scratches his head and looks up at the sky. He shakes his head. How it got there, God alone knows. Suddenly he starts to run away from it, then his panic dies and obviously realizing that it must have some salvage value he goes back to it. He touches it gingerly, puts his ear down and listens to it; there is no tick inside. Gingerly he puts it back in its case, picks it up by the handles and lifts it with care. Then he hears the sound of a motor in the distance, steps with the case behind a tree.

  The truck, with the secret agent and the nurse comes to a stop. “It’s right about here,” he says.

  He hunts along the edge of the road, the tramp watching from behind the tree. Softly, the tramp sets down the shell behind the tree, moves away from it and into sight on the road, asking the secret agent if he is looking for anything. The secret agent describes the package at length. The tramp denies having seen it.

  “The thing is gone,” says the agent to the nurse.

  But now the tramp makes the foolish mistake of saying, “I did see a car pick something up here, half an hour ago.”

  The secret agent and the nurse are walking back to the truck in despair when the impact of this hits them both at once. The secret agent says: “He couldn’t have seen anybody pick it up. This road has been closed since last night. He’s telling a lie.”

  They start back towards the tramp. He tries to bluff it out. The nurse faces him with her gun and they try to get the truth out of him. As they are about to succeed they hear a motor—which is that of the truck in pursuit. He tells her to drive the truck off for it will betray them. He socks the tramp and drags him back into the shrubbery where he sees the shell. But the nurse is gone.

  The pursuing truck stops. Ann jumps out and looks where the shell stood the night before. But the foreman thinks of course it’s been picked up and suddenly he sees the first truck come into sight at a point where the road climbs a hill. Not even waiting for Ann to get in the truck again, he starts after it.

  Ann stands in the road. At this moment the shell which is on a slight knoll begins to roll in the direction of the unconscious tramp. It bumps him and he gives a groan.

  Ann starts at the sound. The secret agent steps into the road and putting his fingers to his lips as if he had just yawned. He says, “You’re a minute too late.”

  Cut to the pursuing truck and show that Tom and Dick, unwilling to leave Ann stranded on the road, are slipping off to go back to her. They have, however, already been carried half a mile.

  The secret agent’s situation seems hopeless. He is without means of transportation or hope of any, unless the “nurse” should elude her pursuers and come back for him. Not to mention the fact that he is in love with this girl and anxious to justify himself in her eyes. Besides, there is the tramp bound behind the trees who at any moment may become articulate. And in the thicket lies the shell—the shell which he has gone to all this risk to obtain.

  Ann once more has the upper hand—and resenting the hand-cuff business, is inclined to use it.

  “Now what?” she says.

  “Well, we can always play cards.”

  He refers to the tramp’s solitaire game which is still spread out along the edge of the road. He goes to it, sits down in the grass, gathers up the cards. She looks at him rather skeptically, wondering what he is up to now, this man who fascinates her, whom she could love if she did not have to constantly hate. She joins him reluctantly, sits down against a tree.

  “What’ll we play?” he asks, sorting the cards quickly in some fashion of his own. “Not bridge. We’ve had enough bridge.”

  He lays down first an ace. “One person alone—that’s difficult. But
there are so many things we have to do alone. Two. That’s better—”

  Ann interrupts: “Not always.”

  “But usually. Two hearts are better than one.” The card lying before him is a two of hearts.

  “I haven’t got a heart,” Ann says.

  “Oh, yes you have. I saw it three times.” He lays down a three of spades. “Once when I was an electrician, once when we were in the rain and once when the bridge wasn’t there.”

  He lays down a four. Ann touches the card with her finger and says, “That was before I knew you for what you are.”

  “Can’t think of anything for five,” he says, laying down the card. “But except for this wretched war I don’t think you and I would be at sixes and sevens.”

  After the six and seven, he puts down an eight and Ann says, “I can’t remember when we last ‘ate’—stop me, will you please?”

  He covers the eight with a nine and speaks more gravely:

  “Nine lives. That’s what I need for this job.” He looks quickly through the pack and she says, “You can’t find a ten, so the game is about up, my friend.”

  He has found the ten somewhere in the pack and he slips it on top of the pile. She lifts her hand like a person shooting:

  “I’m ready for the next one—come eleven!” and snaps her fingers.

  “You’re wrong for once,” he says, laying down a Jack, “Jaques—that’s my name or it was once. Really my name.”

  “Jaques,” she says, testing the monosyllable.

  “Silly name, isn’t it, for such a serious business.” He puts the queen on top of the pack, looks at it and then slowly lifts his eyes to hers.

  “That’s exactly how I feel about it,” Jaques says, very slowly, gravely and sincerely. He puts down one more card and adds, “—if I were King.”

  They are sitting cross-legged, facing each other. At this point when they are each drawn forward toward each other—Dick and Tom have arrived unobserved and crept up softly. They spring, pinion Jaques’ arms behind his back, with their neckties. It looks as if the game is up at last.

  The tramp who is lying very still in the grass, is awake. He is looking through the bushes, amazed at the scene.

  Dick and Tom look at Ann expecting applause. Instead she says almost with annoyance:

  “Saving the country again.”

  At this point a sound truck comes along the road. Out springs a newspaper man with a microphone in his hand.

  “Have you got anything to say?” he demands. “The program is ‘People Met on the Road.’ What’re your names?”

  He shoves the microphone at Ann. Into it she says:

  “My name is Glamor O’Hara. I believe in everybody minding their own business.”

  In disgust the reporter says: “You people don’t take this seriously.” He rushes back to the truck shouting into the mike, “Never mind, friends. Those were some folks rehearsing a play. They wouldn’t talk, friends. So now I’ll tell you more about that clean feeling—”

  But the stranded quartet are at his heels, the two young men grasping the secret agent by the elbows, Ann following unwillingly.

  “We’ve got a prisoner,” Dick says, “wanted by the police. He’ll talk if you take us to Princeton.”

  They pile into the truck. Ann next to the driver, the prisoner beside her. Tom and Dick on one running board and the reporter on another. As the truck turns around and starts back toward Princeton, the reporter thrusts the microphone toward the secret agent, but Ann grabs it.

  “He won’t talk, either,” she says.

  “That’s about right,” says Jaques.

  “The prisoner won’t talk,” says the reporter, “—but anyhow I think you’d rather have me tell you how to keep your clothes fresh and clean.”

  ***

  The outskirts of Princeton we discover that the sound truck is now being followed closely by the stolen truck driven by the nurse. Suddenly she drives ahead of the sound truck, stops suddenly, causing the sound truck to come to a swift and precarious halt, throwing the two young men off the running board and allowing Jaques to escape. During this play-by-play, the reporter’s voice has never ceased—whether we were showing the action of the escape or getting the reactions of Ann who in her heart is tremendously glad.

  “The prisoner has escaped, folks,” says the reporter. “I don’t know any details. It all looks very suspicious to me, friends, very suspicious to me.”

  On these words and upon an expression of regret in Ann’s face that her great adventure is over, we dissolve to the part of the road where we left the tramp. He is holding the shell and trying to thumb a ride. A nice-looking coupe slows up, and the tramp gets in with his precious burden. As they start off he asks the good samaritan, “How far are you going?”

  And the good samaritan says, “All the way to Washington. I’m a manufacturer. I’ve got business at the War Department.”

  The tramp thinks of the shell reposing at his feet and rises to the occasion: “So have I,” he says and we fade out.

  ***

  Fade in on a prom in the Princeton Gymnasium two months later. We follow Ann dancing, continually being cut in on by a squirearchy of boys. Her face is a little graver, more preoccupied than we have ever seen it. She is obviously not the high-spirited, careless girl we first met. Her expression suggests that she is looking for someone. As her partners are tapped on the shoulder for the cut-in, she turns eagerly to greet each newcomer. “Can it be him?” her eyes seem to say. But it never is and she adjusts herself graciously and politely to each disappointment.

  Somewhere in the story Jaques has learned that she is going to this Prom.

  And now suddenly he is there in a tail coat, sure of himself, unworried, undisguised, picking her out of the crowd with a look of expectation. As she sees him, she is frightened for him as well as for herself.

  “May I, please?”

  They talk, with an air of mingled fear, delight, repulsion and attraction.

  “You’ve got your nerve,” she says.

  “No, this time I am within the law. I’m at our Washington Embassy, as attaché.”

  “If Dick and Tom see you—”

  “I have diplomatic immunity.”

  At this she stops dancing.

  “I hate you,” she says. “I can’t dance with you. What are you? Won’t you tell me? What was it all about?”

  “Dance with me and I’ll tell you,” he says.

  She hesitates, wavers, then perhaps irresistible curiosity is the deciding factor.

  “Tell me,” she demands, breathless as they start dancing again.

  During this dance she is constantly interrupting the secret agent by turning to the boys who try to cut in and saying, “Not now, thanks.” Each time with a bright smile which changes to gravity as she turns back to face Jaques.

  “In one country you visited,” he said, “they had developed a shell that we wanted to know about. A collaborator of mine bribed a workman and got hold of the sample shell—on the very day war was declared. The question was how to get it to my country for examination and analysis. An American like you had the best chance of getting out of the country without a baggage examination—and your trunk was in the hall of a hotel marked ‘not needed on the voyage.’ He wired me in code. I won’t tell you how we got it by customs because it might put ideas in the heads of your countrymen.”

  She bristles at his last words and he continues hastily.

  “Excuse me, I mean our countrymen. When the war is over I’ll live here, and you and I will belong to one country forever.”

  “It’s not as easy as that. What became of the shell?”

  “You’ve got me.”

  She smiles suddenly.

  “Have I?” she asks as their arms tighten around each other.

  Dissolve to the portal of the War Department in Washington where the tramp now in uniform is proudly standing guard.

  FSF and dog in the Colosseum.

  A work in progress, “
The Couple” begins as a typescript, but the concluding pages of it are a manuscript in Fitzgerald’s hand. It brings us as close to his writing process as is possible.

  “The Couple” has been dated as early as 1920 and as late as 1931 by Fitzgerald scholars. The earlier side of this range is most likely. In the manuscript portion and on the penciled corrections to the typescript, Fitzgerald’s handwriting still has the looping exaggeration characteristic of the early to middle 1920s. Moreover, the typed portion is on letter-sized paper watermarked “Hammermill Bond.” This inexpensive Pennsylvania-made paper was a bestseller in the east, and easily available in the New York area, where the Fitzgeralds were living from April 1920 to May 1921. The manuscript end of the story, however, is on legal-sized Goldsmith’s Bond paper. Goldsmith Book and Stationery Company, based in Wichita since the 1880s, was one of the largest stationers, and publishers, in the Midwest. Much later they would have stores on the East Coast, too, specializing in home décor—but Fitzgerald most likely bought this paper in St. Paul, where he and Zelda lived from August 1921 until October 1922.

  So, too, Fitzgerald was fond of featuring people of his age, and fictionalizing events in his own recent past; every one of his novels follows this pattern. Here, the couple are in their middle to late twenties. They have been married for a while, and fighting for a while. Along with the watermarks, this points to the early 1920s as a composition date, when Fitzgerald, still young but not that young, and already mature, began looking to difficult themes of divorce and despair.

  The Couple

  The culmination of the tragedy took place on the great wide comfortable sofa which was almost the oldest possession of their married life.

  “All right,” said young Pawling, very serious and sad, “let it go at that. We can’t agree and so we’d better separate. We’ve tried it for a year and we’ve just played the devil with each other’s lives.”

  Carrol nodded.

  “You mean you’ve played the devil with my life,” she amended.