She was on her feet--her face faintly horrified.
‘Plant! Bowers! I must be crazy. Or it was that drink? I was mixed up a little when I first saw you. Look here! What have I told you?’
He tried for a monkish calm as he turned a page of the book.
‘Nothing at all,’ he said. Pictures that did not include him formed and re-formed before his eyes--Frontenac--a cave--Donald Bowers--’You threw me over!’
Nancy spoke from the other side of the room.
‘You’ll never tell this story,’ she said. ‘Stories have a way of getting around.’
‘There isn’t any story,’ he hesitated. But he thought: So she was a bad little girl.
And now suddenly he was filled with wild raging jealousy of little Donald Bowers--he who had banished jealousy from his life forever. In the five steps he took across the room he crushed out twenty years and the existence of Walter Gifford with his stride.
‘Kiss me again, Nancy,’ he said, sinking to one knee beside her chair, putting his hand upon her shoulder. But Nancy strained away.
‘You said you had to catch a plane.’
‘It’s nothing. I can miss it. It’s of no importance.’
‘Please go,’ she said in a cool voice. ‘And please try to imagine how I feel.’
‘But you act as if you don’t remember me,’ he cried, ‘--as if you don’t remember Donald Plant!’
‘I do. I remember you too . . . But it was all so long ago.’ Her voice grew hard again. ‘The taxi number is Crestwood 8484.’
On his way to the airport Donald shook his head from side to side. He was completely himself now but he could not digest the experience. Only as the plane roared up into the dark sky and its passengers became a different entity from the corporate world below did he draw a parallel from the fact of its flight. For five blinding minutes he had lived like a madman in two worlds at once. He had been a boy of twelve and a man of thirty-two, indissolubly and helplessly commingled.
Donald had lost a good deal, too, in those hours between the planes--but since the second half of life is a long process of getting rid of things, that part of the experience probably didn’t matter.
WHAT A HANDSOME PAIR!
Saturday Evening Post (27 August 1932)
At four o’clock on a November afternoon in 1902, Teddy Van Beck got out of a hansom cab in front of a brownstone house on Murray Hill. He was a tall, round-shouldered young man with a beaked nose and soft brown eyes in a sensitive face. In his veins quarreled the blood of colonial governors and celebrated robber barons; in him the synthesis had produced, for that time and place, something different and something new.
His cousin, Helen Van Beck, waited in the drawing-room. Her eyes were red from weeping, but she was young enough for it not to detract from her glossy beauty--a beauty that had reached the point where it seemed to contain in itself the secret of its own growth, as if it would go on increasing forever. She was nineteen and, contrary to the evidence, she was extremely happy.
Teddy put his arm around her and kissed her cheek, and found it changing into her ear as she turned her face away. He held her for a moment, his own enthusiasm chilling; then he said:
“You don’t seem very glad to see me.”
Helen had a premonition that this was going to be one of the memorable scenes of her life, and with unconscious cruelty she set about extracting from it its full dramatic value. She sat in a corner of the couch, facing an easy-chair.
“Sit there,” she commanded, in what was then admired as a “regal manner,” and then, as Teddy straddled the piano stool: “No, don’t sit there. I can’t talk to you if you’re going to revolve around.”
“Sit on my lap,” he suggested.
“No.”
Playing a one-handed flourish on the piano, he said, “I can listen better here.”
Helen gave up hopes of beginning on the sad and quiet note.
“This is a serious matter, Teddy. Don’t think I’ve decided it without a lot of consideration. I’ve got to ask you--to ask you to release me from our understanding.”
“What?” Teddy’s face paled with shock and dismay.
“I’ll have to tell you from the beginning. I’ve realized for a long time that we have nothing in common. You’re interested in your music, and I can’t even play chopsticks.” Her voice was weary as if with suffering; her small teeth tugged at her lower lip.
“What of it?” he demanded, relieved. “I’m musician enough for both. You wouldn’t have to understand banking to marry a banker, would you?”
“This is different,” Helen answered. “What would we do together? One important thing is that you don’t like riding; you told me you were afraid of horses.”
“Of course I’m afraid of horses,” he said, and added reminiscently: “They try to bite me.”
“It makes it so--”
“I’ve never met a horse--socially, that is--who didn’t try to bite me. They used to do it when I put the bridle on; then, when I gave up putting the bridle on, they began reaching their heads around trying to get at my calves.”
The eyes of her father, who had given her a Shetland at three, glistened, cold and hard, from her own.
“You don’t even like the people I like, let alone the horses,” she said.
“I can stand them. I’ve stood them all my life.”
“Well, it would be a silly way to start a marriage. I don’t see any grounds for mutual--mutual--”
“Riding?”
“Oh, not that.” Helen hesitated, and then said in an unconvinced tone, “Probably I’m not clever enough for you.”
“Don’t talk such stuff!” He demanded some truth: “Who’s the man?”
It took her a moment to collect herself. She had always resented Teddy’s tendency to treat women with less ceremony than was the custom of the day. Often he was an unfamiliar, almost frightening young man.
“There is someone,” she admitted. “It’s someone I’ve always known slightly, but about a month ago, when I went to Southampton, I was--thrown with him.”
“Thrown from a horse?”
“Please, Teddy,” she protested gravely. “I’d been getting more unhappy about you and me, and whenever I was with him everything seemed all right.” A note of exaltation that she would not conceal came into Helen’s voice. She rose and crossed the room, her straight, slim legs outlined by the shadows of her dress. “We rode and swam and played tennis together--did the things we both liked to do.”
He stared into the vacant space she had created for him. “Is that all that drew you to this fellow?”
“No, it was more than that. He was thrilling to me like nobody ever has been.” She laughed. “I think what really started me thinking about it was one day we came in from riding and everybody said aloud what a nice pair we made.”
“Did you kiss him?”
She hesitated. “Yes, once.”
He got up from the piano stool. “I feel as if I had a cannon ball in my stomach,” he exclaimed.
The butler announced Mr. Stuart Oldhorne.
“Is he the man?” Teddy demanded tensely.
She was suddenly upset and confused. “He should have come later. Would you rather go without meeting him?”
But Stuart Oldhorne, made confident by his new sense of proprietorship, had followed the butler.
The two men regarded each other with a curious impotence of expression; there can be no communication between men in that position, for their relation is indirect and consists in how much each of them has possessed or will possess of the woman in question, so that their emotions pass through her divided self as through a bad telephone connection.
Stuart Oldhorne sat beside Helen, his polite eyes never leaving Teddy. He had the same glowing physical power as she. He had been a star athlete at Yale and a Rough Rider in Cuba, and was the best young horseman on Long Island. Women loved him not only for his points but for a real sweetness of temper.
“You’ve lived
so much in Europe that I don’t often see you,” he said to Teddy. Teddy didn’t answer and Stuart Oldhorne turned to Helen: “I’m early; I didn’t realize--”
“You came at the right time,” said Teddy rather harshly. “I stayed to play you my congratulations.”
To Helen’s alarm, he turned and ran his fingers over the keyboard. Then he began.
What he was playing, neither Helen nor Stuart knew, but Teddy always remembered. He put his mind in order with a short résumé of the history of music, beginning with some chords from The Messiah and ending with Debussy’s La Plus Que Lent, which had an evocative quality for him, because he had first heard it the day his brother died. Then, pausing for an instant, he began to play more thoughtfully, and the lovers on the sofa could feel that they were alone--that he had left them and had no more traffic with them--and Helen’s discomfort lessened. But the flight, the elusiveness of the music, piqued her, gave her a feeling of annoyance. If Teddy had played the current sentimental song from Erminie, and had played it with feeling, she would have understood and been moved, but he was plunging her suddenly into a world of mature emotions, whither her nature neither could nor wished to follow.
She shook herself slightly and said to Stuart: “Did you buy the horse?”
“Yes, and at a bargain. . . . Do you know I love you?”
“I’m glad,” she whispered.
The piano stopped suddenly. Teddy closed it and swung slowly around: “Did you like my congratulations?”
“Very much,” they said together.
“It was pretty good,” he admitted. “That last was only based on a little counterpoint. You see, the idea of it was that you make such a handsome pair.”
He laughed unnaturally; Helen followed him out into the hall.
“Good-by, Teddy,” she said. “We’re going to be good friends, aren’t we?”
“Aren’t we?” he repeated. He winked without smiling, and with a clicking, despairing sound of his mouth, went out quickly.
For a moment Helen tried vainly to apply a measure to the situation, wondering how she had come off with him, realizing reluctantly that she had never for an instant held the situation in her hands. She had a dim realization that Teddy was larger in scale; then the very largeness frightened her and, with relief and a warm tide of emotion, she hurried into the drawing-room and the shelter of her lover’s arms.
Their engagement ran through a halcyon summer. Stuart visited Helen’s family at Tuxedo, and Helen visited his family in Wheatley Hills. Before breakfast, their horses’ hoofs sedately scattered the dew in sentimental glades, or curtained them with dust as they raced on dirt roads. They bought a tandem bicycle and pedaled all over Long Island--which Mrs. Cassius Ruthven, a contemporary Cato, considered “rather fast” for a couple not yet married. They were seldom at rest, but when they were, they reminded people of His Move on a Gibson pillow.
Helen’s taste for sport was advanced for her generation. She rode nearly as well as Stuart and gave him a decent game in tennis. He taught her some polo, and they were golf crazy when it was still considered a comic game. They liked to feel fit and cool together. They thought of themselves as a team, and it was often remarked how well mated they were. A chorus of pleasant envy followed in the wake of their effortless glamour.
They talked.
“It seems a pity you’ve got to go to the office,” she would say. “I wish you did something we could do together, like taming lions.”
“I’ve always thought that in a pinch I could make a living breeding and racing horses,” said Stuart.
“I know you could, you darling.”
In August he brought a Thomas automobile and toured all the way to Chicago with three other men. It was an event of national interest and their pictures were in all the papers. Helen wanted to go, but it wouldn’t have been proper, so they compromised by driving down Fifth Avenue on a sunny September morning, one with the fine day and the fashionable crowd, but distinguished by their unity, which made them each as strong as two.
“What do you suppose?” Helen demanded. “Teddy sent me the oddest present--a cup rack.”
Stuart laughed. “Obviously, he means that all we’ll ever do is win cups.”
“I thought it was rather a slam,” Helen ruminated. “I saw that he was invited to everything, but he didn’t answer a single invitation. Would you mind very much stopping by his apartment now? I haven’t seen him for months and I don’t like to leave anything unpleasant in the past.”
He wouldn’t go in with her. “I’ll sit and answer questions about the auto from passers-by.”
The door was opened by a woman in a cleaning cap, and Helen heard the sound of Teddy’s piano from the room beyond. The woman seemed reluctant to admit her.
“He said don’t interrupt him, but I suppose if you’re his cousin--”
Teddy welcomed her, obviously startled and somewhat upset, but in a minute he was himself again.
“I won’t marry you,” he assured her. “You’ve had your chance.”
“All right,” she laughed.
“How are you?” He threw a pillow at her. “You’re beautiful! Are you happy with this--this centaur? Does he beat you with his riding crop?” He peered at her closely. “You look a little duller than when I knew you. I used to whip you up to a nervous excitement that bore a resemblance to intelligence.”
“I’m happy, Teddy. I hope you are.”
“Sure, I’m happy; I’m working. I’ve got MacDowell on the run and I’m going to have a shebang at Carnegie Hall next September.” His eyes became malicious. “What did you think of my girl?”
“Your girl?”
“The girl who opened the door for you.”
“Oh, I thought it was a maid.” She flushed and was silent.
He laughed. “Hey, Betty!” he called. “You were mistaken for the maid!”
“And that’s the fault of my cleaning on Sunday,” answered a voice from the next room.
Teddy lowered his voice. “Do you like her?” he demanded.
“Teddy!” She teetered on the arm of the sofa, wondering whether she should leave at once.
“What would you think if I married her?” he asked confidentially.
“Teddy!” She was outraged; it had needed but a glance to place the woman as common. “You’re joking. She’s older than you. . . . You wouldn’t be such a fool as to throw away your future that way.”
He didn’t answer.
“Is she musical?” Helen demanded. “Does she help you with your work?”
“She doesn’t know a note. Neither did you, but I’ve got enough music in me for twenty wives.”
Visualizing herself as one of them, Helen rose stiffly.
“All I can ask you is to think how your mother would have felt--and those who care for you. . . . Good-by, Teddy.”
He walked out the door with her and down the stairs.
“As a matter of fact, we’ve been married for two months,” he said casually. “She was a waitress in a place where I used to eat.”
Helen felt that she should be angry and aloof, but tears of hurt vanity were springing to her eyes.
“And do you love her?”
“I like her; she’s a good person and good for me. Love is something else. I loved you, Helen, and that’s all dead in me for the present. Maybe it’s coming out in my music. Some day I’ll probably love other women--or maybe there’ll never be anything but you. Good-by, Helen.”
The declaration touched her. “I hope you’ll be happy, Teddy. Bring your wife to the wedding.”
He bowed noncommittally. When she had gone, he returned thoughtfully to his apartment.
“That was the cousin that I was in love with,” he said.
“And was it?” Betty’s face, Irish and placid, brightened with interest. “She’s a pretty thing.”
“She wouldn’t have been as good for me as a nice peasant like you.”
“Always thinking of yourself, Teddy Van Beck.”
“That’s a big wur-red.”
“All right. I’ll remember that when you come begging around for a kiss. If my grandfather knew I married a bog trotter, he’d turn over in his grave. Now get out and let me finish my work.”
He sat at the piano, a pencil behind his ear. Already his face was resolved, composed, but his eyes grew more intense minute by minute, until there was a glaze in them, behind which they seemed to have joined his ears in counting and hearing. Presently there was no more indication in his face that anything had occurred to disturb the tranquillity of his Sunday morning.
II
Mrs. Cassius Ruthven and a friend, veils flung back across their hats, sat in their auto on the edge of the field.
“A young woman playing polo in breeches.” Mrs. Ruthven sighed. “Amy Van Beck’s daughter. I thought when Helen organized the Amazons she’d stop at divided skirts. But her husband apparently has no objections, for there he stands, egging her on. Of course, they always have liked the same things.”
“A pair of thoroughbreds, those two,” said the other woman complacently, meaning that she admitted them to be her equals. “You’d never look at them and think that anything had gone wrong.”
She was referring to Stuart’s mistake in the panic of 1907. His father had bequeathed him a precarious situation and Stuart had made an error of judgment. His honor was not questioned and his crowd stood by him loyally, but his usefulness in Wall Street was over and his small fortune was gone.
He stood in a group of men with whom he would presently play, noting things to tell Helen after the game--she wasn’t turning with the play soon enough and several times she was unnecessarily ridden off at important moments. Her ponies were sluggish--the penalty for playing with borrowed mounts--but she was, nevertheless, the best player on the field, and in the last minute she made a save that brought applause.
“Good girl! Good girl!”
Stuart had been delegated with the unpleasant duty of chasing the women from the field. They had started an hour late and now a team from New Jersey was waiting to play; he sensed trouble as he cut across to join Helen and walked beside her toward the stables. She was splendid, with her flushed cheeks, her shining, triumphant eyes, her short, excited breath. He temporized for a minute.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 298
