Mary wanted to exclaim, “Why? Why?” but there was no one to hear. He came awake as the stretcher was put under him to carry him to the hospital, repair the new breakage with a new cast, start it over again. Seeing Mary he called quickly. “Don’t you come. I don’t like anyone around when--when--Promise on your word of honor not to come?”
The orthopedist said he would phone her in an hour. And five minutes later it was with the confused thought that he was already calling that Mary answered the phone.
“I can’t talk, Joris,” she said. “There was an awful accident--”
“Can I help?”
“It’s gone now. It was my husband--”
Suddenly Mary knew she wanted to do anything but wait alone for word from the hospital.
“Come over then,” she said. “You can take me up there if I’m needed.”
She sat in place by the phone until he came--jumped to her feet with an exclamation at his ring.
“Why? Why?” she sobbed at last. “I offered to go see him at his hotel.”
“Not drunk?”
“No, no--he almost never takes a drink. Will you wait right outside my door while I dress and get ready?”
The news came half an hour later that Martin’s shoulder was set again, that he was sleeping under the ethylene gas and would sleep till morning. Joris Deglen was very gentle, swinging her feet up on the sofa, putting a pillow at her back and answering her incessant “Why?” with a different response every time--Martin had been delirious; he was lonely; then at a certain moment telling the truth he had long guessed at: Martin was jealous.
“That was it,” Mary said bitterly. “We were to be free--only I wasn’t free. Only free to sneak about behind his back.”
She was free now though, free as air. And later, when he said he wouldn’t go just yet, but would sit in the living room reading until she quieted down, Mary went into her room with her head clear as morning. After she undressed for the second time that night she stayed for a few minutes before the mirror arranging her hair and keeping her mind free of all thoughts about Martin except that he was sleeping and at the moment felt no pain.
Then she opened her bedroom door and called down the corridor into the living room:
“Do you want to come and tell me good night?”
DICE, BRASSKNUCKLES & GUITAR
International (May 1923)
Parts of New Jersey, as you know, are under water, and other parts are under continual surveillance by the authorities. But here and there lie patches of garden country dotted with old-fashioned frame mansions, which have wide shady porches and a red swing on the lawn. And perhaps, on the widest and shadiest of the porches there is even a hammock left over from the hammock days, stirring gently in a mid-Victorian wind.
When tourists come to such last-century landmarks they stop their cars and gaze for a while and then mutter: “Well, thank God this age is joined on to something” or else they say: “Well, of course, that house is mostly halls and has a thousand rats and one bathroom, but there’s an atmosphere about it--”
The tourist doesn’t stay long. He drives on to his Elizabethan villa of pressed cardboard or his early Norman meat-market or his medieval Italian pigeon-coop--because this is the twentieth century and Victorian houses are as unfashionable as the works of Mrs. Humphry Ward.
He can’t see the hammock from the road--but sometimes there’s a girl in the hammock. There was this afternoon. She was asleep in it and apparently unaware of the esthetic horrors which surrounded her, the stone statue of Diana, for instance, which grinned idiotically under the sunlight on the lawn.
There was something enormously yellow about the whole scene--there was this sunlight, for instance, that was yellow, and the hammock was of the particularly hideous yellow peculiar to hammocks, and the girl’s yellow hair was spread out upon the hammock in a sort of invidious comparison.
She slept with her lips closed and her hands clasped behind her head, as it is proper for young girls to sleep. Her breast rose and fell slightly with no more emphasis than the sway of the hammock’s fringe.
Her name, Amanthis, was as old-fashioned as the house she lived in. I regret to say that her mid-Victorian connections ceased abruptly at this point.
Now if this were a moving picture (as, of course, I hope it will some day be) I would take as many thousand feet of her as I was allowed--then I would move the camera up close and show the yellow down on the back of her neck where her hair stopped and the warm color of her cheeks and arms, because I like to think of her sleeping there, as you yourself might have slept, back in your young days. Then I would hire a man named Israel Glucose to write some idiotic line of transition, and switch thereby to another scene that was taking place at no particular spot far down the road.
In a moving automobile sat a southern gentleman accompanied by his body-servant. He was on his way, after a fashion, to New York but he was somewhat hampered by the fact that the upper and lower portions of his automobile were no longer in exact juxtaposition. In fact from time to time the two riders would dismount, shove the body on to the chassis, corner to corner, and then continue onward, vibrating slightly in involuntary unison with the motor.
Except that it had no door in back the car might have been built early in the mechanical age. It was covered with the mud of eight states and adorned in front by an enormous but defunct motometer and behind by a mangy pennant bearing the legend “Tarleton, Ga.” In the dim past someone had begun to paint the hood yellow but unfortunately had been called away when but half through the task.
As the gentleman and his body-servant were passing the house where Amanthis lay beautifully asleep in the hammock, something happened--the body fell off the car. My only apology for stating this so suddenly is that it happened very suddenly indeed. When the noise had died down and the dust had drifted away master and man arose and inspected the two halves.
“Look-a-there,” said the gentleman in disgust, “the doggone thing got all separated that time.”
“She bust in two,” agreed the body-servant.
“Hugo,” said the gentleman, after some consideration, “we got to get a hammer an’ nails an’ tack it on.”
They glanced up at the Victorian house. On all sides faintly irregular fields stretched away to a faintly irregular unpopulated horizon. There was no choice, so the black Hugo opened the gate and followed his master up a gravel walk, casting only the blasé glances of a confirmed traveler at the red swing and the stone statue of Diana which turned on them a storm-crazed stare.
At the exact moment when they reached the porch Amanthis awoke, sat up suddenly and looked them over.
The gentleman was young, perhaps twenty-four, and his name was Jim Powell. He was dressed in a tight and dusty readymade suit which was evidently expected to take flight at a moment’s notice, for it was secured to his body by a line of six preposterous buttons.
There were supernumerary buttons upon the coat-sleeves also and Amanthis could not resist a glance to determine whether or not more buttons ran up the side of his trouser leg. But the trouser bottoms were distinguished only by their shape, which was that of a bell. His vest was cut low, barely restraining an amazing necktie from fluttering in the wind.
He bowed formally, dusting his knees with a thatched straw hat. Simultaneously he smiled, half shutting his faded blue eyes and displaying white and beautifully symmetrical teeth.
“Good evenin’,” he said in abandoned Georgian. “My automobile has met with an accident out yonder by your gate. I wondered if it wouldn’t be too much to ask you if I could have the use of a hammer and some tacks--nails, for a little while.”
Amanthis laughed. For a moment she laughed uncontrollably. Mr. Jim Powell laughed, politely and appreciatively, with her. His body-servant, deep in the throes of colored adolescence, alone preserved a dignified gravity.
“I better introduce who I am, maybe,” said the visitor. “My name’s Powell. I’m a resident of Tarleton, Georgia. This her
e nigger’s my boy Hugo.”
“Your son!” The girl stared from one to the other in wild fascination.
“No, he’s my body-servant, I guess you’d call it. We call a nigger a boy down yonder.”
At this reference to the finer customs of his native soil the boy Hugo put his hands behind his back and looked darkly and superciliously down the lawn.
“Yas’m,” he muttered, “I’m a body-servant.”
“Where you going in your automobile,” demanded Amanthis.
“Goin’ north for the summer.”
“Where to?”
The tourist waved his hand with a careless gesture as if to indicate the Adirondacks, the Thousand Islands, Newport--but he said:
“We’re tryin’ New York.”
“Have you ever been there before?”
“Never have. But I been to Atlanta lots of times. An’ we passed through all kinds of cities this trip. Man!”
He whistled to express the enormous spectacularity of his recent travels.
“Listen,” said Amanthis intently, “you better have something to eat. Tell your--your body-servant to go ‘round in back and ask the cook to send us out some sandwiches and lemonade. Or maybe you don’t drink lemonade--very few people do any more.”
Mr. Powell by a circular motion of his finger sped Hugo on the designated mission. Then he seated himself gingerly in a rocking-chair and began revolving his thatched straw hat rapidly in his hands.
“You cer’nly are mighty kind,” he told her. “An’ if I wanted anything stronger than lemonade I got a bottle of good old corn out in the car. I brought it along because I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to drink the whisky they got up here.”
“Listen,” she said, “my name’s Powell too. Amanthis Powell.”
“Say, is that right?” He laughed ecstatically. “Maybe we’re kin to each other. I come from mighty good people,” he went on. “Pore though. I got some money because my aunt she was using it to keep her in a sanitarium and she died.” He paused, presumably out of respect to his late aunt. Then he concluded with brisk nonchalance, “I ain’t touched the principal but I got a lot of the income all at once so I thought I’d come north for the summer.”
At this point Hugo reappeared on the veranda steps and became audible.
“White lady back there she asked me don’t I want eat some too. What I tell her?”
“You tell her yes mamm if she be so kind,” directed his master. And as Hugo retired he confided to Amanthis: “That boy’s got no sense at all. He don’t want to do nothing without I tell him he can. I brought him up,” he added, not without pride.
When the sandwiches arrived Mr. Powell stood up. He was unaccustomed to white servants and obviously expected an introduction.
“Are you a married lady?” he inquired of Amanthis, when the servant was gone.
“No,” she answered, and added from the security of eighteen, “I’m an old maid.”
Again he laughed politely.
“You mean you’re a society girl.”
She shook her head. Mr. Powell noted with embarrassed enthusiasm the particular yellowness of her yellow hair.
“Does this old place look like it?” she said cheerfully. “No, you perceive in me a daughter of the countryside. Color--one hundred percent spontaneous--in the daytime anyhow. Suitors--promising young barbers from the neighboring village with somebody’s late hair still clinging to their coat-sleeves.”
“Your daddy oughtn’t to let you go with a country barber,” said the tourist disapprovingly. He considered--”You ought to be a New York society girl.”
“No.” Amanthis shook her head sadly. “I’m too good-looking. To be a New York society girl you have to have a long nose and projecting teeth and dress like the actresses did three years ago.”
Jim began to tap his foot rhythmically on the porch and in a moment Amanthis discovered that she was unconsciously doing the same thing.
“Stop!” she commanded, “Don’t make me do that.”
He looked down at his foot.
“Excuse me,” he said humbly. “I don’t know--it’s just something I do.”
This intense discussion was now interrupted by Hugo who appeared on the steps bearing a hammer and a handful of nails.
Mr. Powell arose unwillingly and looked at his watch.
“We got to go, daggone it,” he said, frowning heavily. “See here. Wouldn’t you like to be a New York society girl and go to those dances an’ all, like you read about, where they throw gold pieces away?”
She looked at him with a curious expression.
“Don’t your folks know some society people?” he went on.
“All I’ve got’s my daddy--and, you see, he’s a judge.”
“That’s too bad,” he agreed.
She got herself by some means from the hammock and they went down toward the road, side by side.
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes open for you and let you know,” he persisted. “A pretty girl like you ought to go around in society. We may be kin to each other, you see, and us Powells ought to stick together.”
“What are you going to do in New York?”
They were now almost at the gate and the tourist pointed to the two depressing sectors of his automobile.
“I’m goin’ to drive a taxi. This one right here. Only it’s got so it busts in two all the time.”
“You’re going to drive that in New York?”
Jim looked at her uncertainly. Such a pretty girl should certainly control the habit of shaking all over upon no provocation at all.
“Yes mamm,” he said with dignity.
Amanthis watched while they placed the upper half of the car upon the lower half and nailed it severely into place. Then Mr. Powell took the wheel and his body-servant climbed in beside him.
“I’m cer’nly very much obliged to you indeed for your hospitality. Convey my respects to your father.”
“I will,” she assured him. “Come back and see me, if you don’t mind barbers in the room.”
He dismissed this unpleasant thought with a gesture.
“Your company would always be charming.” He put the car into gear as though to drown out the temerity of his parting speech. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen up north--by far.”
Then with a groan and a rattle Mr. Powell of southern Georgia with his own car and his own body-servant and his own ambitions and his own private cloud of dust continued on north for the summer.
She thought she would never see him again. She lay in her hammock, slim and beautiful, opened her left eye slightly to see June come in and then closed it and retired contentedly back into her dreams.
But one day when the midsummer vines had climbed the precarious sides of the red swing in the lawn, Mr. Jim Powell of Tarleton, Georgia, came vibrating back into her life. They sat on the wide porch as before.
“I’ve got a great scheme,” he told her.
“Did you drive your taxi like you said?”
“Yes mamm, but the business was right bad. I waited around in front of all those hotels and theaters an’ nobody ever got in.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, one night there was some drunk fellas they got in, only just as I was gettin’ started my automobile came apart. And another night it was rainin’ and there wasn’t no other taxis and a lady got in because she said she had to go a long ways. But before we got there she made me stop and she got out. She seemed kinda mad and she went walkin’ off in the rain. Mighty proud lot of people they got up in New York.”
“And so you’re going home?” asked Amanthis sympathetically.
“No mamm. I got an idea.” His blue eyes grew narrow. “Has that barber been around here--with hair on his sleeves?”
“No. He’s--he’s gone away.”
“Well, then, first thing is I want to leave this car of mine here with you, if that’s all right. It ain’t the right color for a taxi. To pay for its keep I’d like to have you drive it just as mu
ch as you want. ‘Long as you got a hammer an’ nails with you there ain’t much bad that can happen--”
“I’ll take care of it,” interrupted Amanthis, “but where are you going?”
“Southampton. It’s about the most aristocratic watering trough--watering-place there is around here, so that’s where I’m going.”
She sat up in amazement.
“What are you going to do there?”
“Listen.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “Were you serious about wanting to be a New York society girl?”
“Deadly serious.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said inscrutably. “You just wait here on this porch a couple of weeks and--and sleep. And if any barbers come to see you with hair on their sleeves you tell ‘em you’re too sleepy to see ‘em.”
“What then?”
“Then you’ll hear from me. Just tell your old daddy he can do all the judging he wants but you’re goin’ to do some dancin’. Mamm,” he continued decisively, “you talk about society! Before one month I’m goin’ to have you in more society than you ever saw.”
Further than this he would say nothing. His manner conveyed that she was going to be suspended over a perfect pool of gaiety and violently immersed, to an accompaniment of: “Is it gay enough for you, mamm? Shall I let in a little more excitement, mamm?”
“Well,” answered Amanthis, lazily considering, “there are few things for which I’d forego the luxury of sleeping through July and August--but if you’ll write me a letter I’ll--I’ll run up to Southampton.”
Jim snapped his fingers ecstatically.
“More society,” he assured her with all the confidence at his command, “than anybody ever saw.”
Three days later a young man wearing a straw hat that might have been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage rang the doorbell of the enormous and astounding Madison Harlan house at Southampton. He asked the butler if there were any people in the house between the ages of sixteen and twenty. He was informed that Miss Genevieve Harlan and Mr. Ronald Harlan answered that description and thereupon he handed in a most peculiar card and requested in fetching Georgian that it be brought to their attention.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 266
