The situation was no less provoking to Olive for being comprehensible, and save for her position as a poor relation, she would have spoken her mind. Emily was well spoiled--eight years of men had assured her they were not good enough for her and she had accepted the fact as probably true.
“You’re nervous.” Olive tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. “Why not lie down for an hour?”
“Yes,” answered Emily absently.
Olive went out and downstairs. In the lower hall she ran into Brevoort Blair, attired in a nuptial cutaway even to the white carnation, and in a state of considerable agitation.
“Oh, excuse me,” he blurted out. “I wanted to see Emily. It’s about the rings--which ring, you know. I’ve got four rings and she never decided and I can’t just hold them out in the church and have her take her pick.”
“I happen to know she wants the plain platinum band. If you want to see her anyhow--”
“Oh, thanks very much. I don’t want to disturb her.”
They were standing close together, and even at this moment when he was gone, definitely preëmpted, Olive couldn’t help thinking how alike she and Brevoort were. Hair, coloring, features--they might have been brother and sister--and they shared the same shy serious temperaments, the same simple straightforwardness. All this flashed through her mind in an instant, with the added thought that the blond, tempestuous Emily, with her vitality and amplitude of scale, was, after all, better for him in every way; and then, beyond this, a perfect wave of tenderness, of pure physical pity and yearning swept over her and it seemed that she must step forward only half a foot to find his arms wide to receive her.
She stepped backward instead, relinquishing him as though she still touched him with the tip of her fingers and then drew the tips away. Perhaps some vibration of her emotion fought its way into his consciousness, for he said suddenly:
“We’re going to be good friends, aren’t we? Please don’t think I’m taking Emily away. I know I can’t own her--nobody could--and I don’t want to.”
Silently, as he talked, she said good-by to him, the only man she had ever wanted in her life.
She loved the absorbed hesitancy with which he found his coat and hat and felt hopefully for the knob on the wrong side of the door.
When he had gone she went into the drawing-room, gorgeous and portentous; with its painted bacchanals and massive chandeliers and the eighteenth-century portraits that might have been Emily’s ancestors, but weren’t, and by that very fact belonged the more to her. There she rested, as always, in Emily’s shadow.
Through the door that led out to the small, priceless patch of grass on Sixtieth Street now inclosed by the pavilions, came her uncle, Mr. Harold Castleton. He had been sampling his own champagne.
“Olive so sweet and fair.” He cried emotionally, “Olive, baby, she’s done it. She was all right inside, like I knew all the time. The good ones come through, don’t they--the real thoroughbreds? I began to think that the Lord and me, between us, had given her too much, that she’d never be satisfied, but now she’s come down to earth just like a”--he searched unsuccessfully for a metaphor--”like a thoroughbred, and she’ll find it not such a bad place after all.” He came closer. “You’ve been crying, little Olive.”
“Not much.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said magnanimously. “If I wasn’t so happy I’d cry too.”
Later, as she embarked with two other bridesmaids for the church, the solemn throbbing of a big wedding seemed to begin with the vibration of the car. At the door the organ took it up, and later it would palpitate in the cellos and base viols of the dance, to fade off finally with the sound of the car that bore bride and groom away.
The crowd was thick around the church, and ten feet out of it the air was heavy with perfume and faint clean humanity and the fabric smell of new clean clothes. Beyond the massed hats in the van of the church the two families sat in front rows on either side. The Blairs--they were assured a family resemblance by their expression of faint condescension, shared by their in-laws as well as by true Blairs--were represented by the Gardiner Blairs, senior and junior; Lady Mary Bowes Howard, née Blair; Mrs. Potter Blair; Mrs. Princess Potowki Parr Blair, née Inchbit; Miss Gloria Blair, Master Gardiner Blair III, and the kindred branches, rich and poor, of Smythe, Bickle, Diffendorfer and Hamn. Across the aisle the Castletons made a less impressive showing--Mr. Harold Castleton, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Castleton and children, Harold Castleton Junior, and, from Harrisburg, Mr. Carl Mercy, and two little old aunts named O’Keefe hidden off in a corner. Somewhat to their surprise the two aunts had been bundled off in a limousine and dressed from head to foot by a fashionable couturière that morning.
In the vestry, where the bridesmaids fluttered about like birds in their big floppy hats, there was a last lip rouging and adjustment of pins before Emily should arrive. They represented several stages of Emily’s life--a schoolmate at Briarly, a last unmarried friend of débutante year, a travelling companion of Europe, and the girl she had visited in Newport when she met Brevoort Blair.
“They’ve got Wakeman,” this last one said, standing by the door listening to the music. “He played for my sister, but I shall never have Wakeman.”
“Why not?”
“Why, he’s playing the same thing over and over--’At Dawning.’ He’s played it half a dozen times.”
At this moment another door opened and the solicitous head of a young man appeared around it. “Almost ready?” he demanded of the nearest bridesmaid. “Brevoort’s having a quiet little fit. He just stands there wilting collar after collar--”
“Be calm,” answered the young lady. “The bride is always a few minutes late.”
“A few minutes!” protested the best man. “I don’t call it a few minutes. They’re beginning to rustle and wriggle like a circus crowd out there, and the organist has been playing the same tune for half an hour. I’m going to get him to fill in with a little jazz.”
“What time is it?” Olive demanded.
“Quarter of five--ten minutes of five.”
“Maybe there’s been a traffic tie-up.” Olive paused as Mr. Harold Castleton, followed by an anxious curate, shouldered his way in, demanding a phone.
And now there began a curious dribbling back from the front of the church, one by one, then two by two, until the vestry was crowded with relatives and confusion.
“What’s happened?”
“What on earth’s the matter?”
A chauffeur came in and reported excitedly. Harold Castleton swore and, his face blazing, fought his way roughly toward the door. There was an attempt to clear the vestry, and then, as if to balance the dribbling, a ripple of conversation commenced at the rear of the church and began to drift up toward the altar, growing louder and faster and more excited, mounting always, bringing people to their feet, rising to a sort of subdued roar. The announcement from the altar that the marriage had been postponed was scarcely heard, for by that time everyone knew that they were participating in a front-page scandal, that Brevoort Blair had been left waiting at the altar and Emily Castleton had run away.
II
There were a dozen reporters outside the Castleton house on Sixtieth Street when Olive arrived, but in her absorption she failed even to hear their questions; she wanted desperately to go and comfort a certain man whom she must not approach, and as a sort of substitute she sought her Uncle Harold. She entered through the interconnecting five-thousand-dollar pavilions, where caterers and servants still stood about in a respectful funereal half-light, waiting for something to happen, amid trays of caviar and turkey’s breast and pyramided wedding cake. Upstairs, Olive found her uncle sitting on a stool before Emily’s dressing-table. The articles of make-up spread before him, the repertoire of feminine preparation in evidence about, made his singularly inappropriate presence a symbol of the mad catastrophe.
“Oh, it’s you.” His voice was listless; he had aged in two hours. Olive put her arm a
bout his bowed shoulder.
“I’m so terribly sorry, Uncle Harold.”
Suddenly a stream of profanity broke from him, died away, and a single large tear welled slowly from one eye.
“I want to get my massage man,” he said. “Tell McGregor to get him.” He drew a long broken sigh, like a child’s breath after crying, and Olive saw that his sleeves were covered with a dust of powder from the dressing-table, as if he had been leaning forward on it, weeping, in the reaction from his proud champagne.
“There was a telegram,” he muttered.
“It’s somewhere.”
And he added slowly,
“From now on you’re my daughter.”
“Oh, no, you mustn’t say that!”
Unrolling the telegram, she read:
I can’t make the grade I would feel like a fool either way but this will be over sooner so damn sorry for you
EMILY
When Olive had summoned the masseur and posted a servant outside her uncle’s door, she went to the library, where a confused secretary was trying to say nothing over an inquisitive and persistent telephone.
“I’m so upset, Miss Mercy,” he cried in a despairing treble. “I do declare I’m so upset I have a frightful headache. I’ve thought for half an hour I heard dance music from down below.”
Then it occurred to Olive that she, too, was becoming hysterical; in the breaks of the street traffic a melody was drifting up, distinct and clear:
“--Is she fair
Is she sweet
I don’t care--cause
I can’t compete--
Who’s the--”
She ran quickly downstairs and through the drawing-room, the tune growing louder in her ears. At the entrance of the first pavilion she stopped in stupefaction.
To the music of a small but undoubtedly professional orchestra a dozen young couples were moving about the canvas floor. At the bar in the corner stood additional young men, and half a dozen of the caterer’s assistants were busily shaking cocktails and opening champagne.
“Harold!” she called imperatively to one of the dancers. “Harold!”
A tall young man of eighteen handed his partner to another and came toward her.
“Hello, Olive. How did father take it?”
“Harold, what in the name of--”
“Emily’s crazy,” he said consolingly. “I always told you Emily was crazy. Crazy as a loon. Always was.”
“What’s the idea of this?”
“This?” He looked around innocently. “Oh, these are just some fellows that came down from Cambridge with me.”
“But--dancing!”
“Well, nobody’s dead, are they? I thought we might as well use up some of this--”
“Tell them to go home,” said Olive.
“Why? What on earth’s the harm? These fellows came all the way down from Cambridge--”
“It simply isn’t dignified.”
“But they don’t care, Olive. One fellow’s sister did the same thing--only she did it the day after instead of the day before. Lots of people do it nowadays.”
“Send the music home, Harold,” said Olive firmly, “or I’ll go to your father.”
Obviously he felt that no family could be disgraced by an episode on such a magnificent scale, but he reluctantly yielded. The abysmally depressed butler saw to the removal of the champagne, and the young people, somewhat insulted, moved nonchalantly out into the more tolerant night. Alone with the shadow--Emily’s shadow--that hung over the house, Olive sat down in the drawing-room to think. Simultaneously the butler appeared in the doorway.
“It’s Mr. Blair, Miss Olive.”
She jumped tensely to her feet.
“Who does he want to see?”
“He didn’t say. He just walked in.”
“Tell him I’m in here.”
He entered with an air of abstraction rather than depression, nodded to Olive and sat down on a piano stool. She wanted to say, “Come here. Lay your head here, poor man. Never mind.” But she wanted to cry, too, and so she said nothing.
“In three hours,” he remarked quietly, “we’ll be able to get the morning papers. There’s a shop on Fifty-ninth Street.”
“That’s foolish--” she began.
“I am not a superficial man”--he interrupted her--”nevertheless, my chief feeling now is for the morning papers. Later there will be a politely silent gauntlet of relatives, friends and business acquaintances. About the actual affair I surprise myself by not caring at all.”
“I shouldn’t care about any of it.”
“I’m rather grateful that she did it in time.”
“Why don’t you go away?” Olive leaned forward earnestly. “Go to Europe until it all blows over.”
“Blows over.” He laughed. “Things like this don’t ever blow over. A little snicker is going to follow me around the rest of my life.” He groaned. “Uncle Hamilton started right for Park Row to make the rounds of the newspaper offices. He’s a Virginian and he was unwise enough to use the old-fashioned word ‘horsewhip’ to one editor. I can hardly wait to see that paper.” He broke off. “How is Mr. Castleton?”
“He’ll appreciate your coming to inquire.”
“I didn’t come about that.” He hesitated. “I came to ask you a question. I want to know if you’ll marry me in Greenwich tomorrow morning.”
For a minute Olive fell precipitately through space; she made a strange little sound; her mouth dropped ajar.
“I know you like me,” he went on quickly. “In fact, I once imagined you loved me a little bit, if you’ll excuse the presumption. Anyhow, you’re very like a girl that once did love me, so maybe you would--” His face was pink with embarrassment, but he struggled grimly on; “anyhow, I like you enormously and whatever feeling I may have had for Emily has, I might say, flown.”
The clangor and alarm inside her was so loud that it seemed he must hear it.
“The favor you’ll be doing me will be very great,” he continued. “My heavens, I know it sounds a little crazy, but what could be crazier than the whole afternoon? You see, if you married me the papers would carry quite a different story; they’d think that Emily went off to get out of our way, and the joke would be on her after all.”
Tears of indignation came to Olive’s eyes.
“I suppose I ought to allow for your wounded egotism, but do you realize you’re making me an insulting proposition?”
His face fell.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I guess I was an awful fool even to think of it, but a man hates to lose the whole dignity of his life for a girl’s whim. I see it would be impossible. I’m sorry.”
He got up and picked up his cane.
Now he was moving toward the door, and Olive’s heart came into her throat and a great, irresistible wave of self-preservation swept over her--swept over all her scruples and her pride. His steps sounded in the hall.
“Brevoort!” she called. She jumped to her feet and ran to the door. He turned. “Brevoort, what was the name of that paper--the one your uncle went to?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not too late for them to change their story if I telephone now! I’ll say we were married tonight!”
III
There is a society in Paris which is merely a heterogeneous prolongation of American society. People moving in are connected by a hundred threads to the motherland, and their entertainments, eccentricities and ups and downs are an open book to friends and relatives at Southampton, Lake Forest or Back Bay. So during her previous European sojourn Emily’s whereabouts, as she followed the shifting Continental seasons, were publicly advertised; but from the day, one month after the unsolemnized wedding, when she sailed from New York, she dropped completely from sight. There was an occasional letter for her father, an occasional rumor that she was in Cairo, Constantinople or the less frequented Riviera--that was all.
Once, after a year, Mr. Castleton saw her in Paris, but
, as he told Olive, the meeting only served to make him uncomfortable.
“There was something about her,” he said vaguely, “as if--well, as if she had a lot of things in the back of her mind I couldn’t reach. She was nice enough, but it was all automatic and formal.--She asked about you.”
Despite her solid background of a three-month-old baby and a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue, Olive felt her heart falter uncertainly.
“What did she say?”
“She was delighted about you and Brevoort.” And he added to himself, with a disappointment he could not conceal: “Even though you picked up the best match in New York when she threw it away.” . . .
. . . It was more than a year after this that his secretary’s voice on the telephone asked Olive if Mr. Castleton could see them that night. They found the old man walking his library in a state of agitation.
“Well, it’s come,” he declared vehemently. “People won’t stand still; nobody stands still. You go up or down in this world. Emily chose to go down. She seems to be somewhere near the bottom. Did you ever hear of a man described to me as a”--he referred to a letter in his hand--”dissipated ne’er-do-well named Petrocobesco? He calls himself Prince Gabriel Petrocobesco, apparently from--from nowhere. This letter is from Hallam, my European man, and it incloses a clipping from the Paris Matin. It seems that this gentleman was invited by the police to leave Paris, and among the small entourage who left with him was an American girl, Miss Castleton, ‘rumored to be the daughter of a millionaire.’ The party was escorted to the station by gendarmes.” He handed clipping and letter to Brevoort Blair with trembling fingers. “What do you make of it? Emily come to that!”
“It’s not so good,” said Brevoort, frowning.
“It’s the end. I thought her drafts were big recently, but I never suspected that she was supporting--”
“It may be a mistake,” Olive suggested. “Perhaps it’s another Miss Castleton.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 225
