“Poor taxi man,” she was saying half aloud. “Oh, people have such a hard time — such a hard time!”
She rapped on the window and when the car drew up at a curb she got out. She was at the end of Fifth Avenue and it was dark and cold.
“Send for the police!” she cried in a quick low voice. “I haven’t any money!”
The taxi man scowled down at her.
“Then what’d you get in for?”
She had not noticed that another car had stopped about twenty-five feet behind them. She heard running footsteps in the snow and then a voice at her elbow.
“It’s all right,” someone was saying to the taxi man. “I’ve got it right here.”
A bill was passed up. Yanci slumped sideways against Scott’s overcoat.
Scott knew — he knew because he had gone to Princeton to surprise her, because the stranger she had spoken to in the Ritz had been his best friend, because the check of her father’s for three hundred dollars had been returned to him marked “No funds.” Scott knew — he had known for days.
But he said nothing; only stood there holding her with one arm as her taxi driver drove away.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Yanci faintly. “Lucky you came along. I left my purse back at the Ritz, like an awful fool. I do such ridiculous things — — “
Scott laughed with some enjoyment. There was a light snow falling, and lest she should slip in the damp he picked her up and carried her back toward his waiting taxi.
“Such ridiculous things,” she repeated.
“Go to the Ritz first,” he said to the driver. “I want to get a trunk.”
TWO FOR A CENT
When the rain was over, the sky became yellow in the west and the air was cool. Close to the street, which was of red dirt and lined with cheap bungalows dating from 1910, a little boy was riding a big bicycle along the sidewalk. His plan afforded a monotonous fascination. He rode each time for about a hundred yards, dismounted, turned the bicycle around so that it adjoined a stone step and getting on again, not without toil or heat, retraced his course. At one end this was bounded by a colored girl of fourteen holding an anemic baby, and at the other by a scarred, ill-nourished kitten, squatting dismally on the curb. These four were the only souls in sight.
The little boy had accomplished an indefinite number of trips oblivious alike to the melancholy advances of the kitten at one end and to the admiring vacuousness of the colored girl at the other when he swerved dangerously to avoid a man who had turned the corner into the street and recovered his balance only after a moment of exaggerated panic.
But if the incident was a matter of gravity to the boy, it attracted scarcely an instant’s notice from the newcomer, who turned suddenly from the sidewalk and stared with obvious and peculiar interest at the house before which he was standing. It was the oldest house in the street, built with clapboards and a shingled roof. It was a house — in the barest sense of the word: the sort of house that a child would draw on a blackboard. It was of a period, but of no design, and its exterior had obviously been made only as a decent cloak for what was within. It antedated the stucco bungalows by about thirty years and except for the bungalows, which were reproducing their species with prodigious avidity as though by some monstrous affiliation with the guinea-pig, it was the most common type of house in the country. For thirty years such dwellings had satisfied the canons of the middle class; they had satisfied its financial canons by being cheap, they had satisfied its aesthetic canons by being hideous. It was a house built by a race whose more energetic complement hoped either to move up or move on, and it was the more remarkable that its instability had survived so many summers and retained its pristine hideousness and discomfort so obviously unimpaired.
The man was about as old as the house, that is to say, about forty-five. But unlike the house, he was neither hideous nor cheap. His clothes were too good to have been made outside of a metropolis — moreover, they were so good that it was impossible to tell in which metropolis they were made. His name was Abercrombie and the most important event of his life had taken place in the house before which he was standing. He had been born there.
It was one of the last places in the world where he should have been born. He had thought so within a very few years after the event and he thought so now — an ugly home in a third-rate Southern town where his father had owned a partnership in a grocery store. Since then Abercrombie had played golf with the President of the United States and sat between two duchesses at dinner. He had been bored with the President, he had been bored and not a little embarrassed with the duchesses — nevertheless, the two incidents had pleased him and still sat softly upon his naive vanity. It delighted him that he had gone far.
He had looked fixedly at the house for several minutes before he perceived that no one lived there. Where the shutters were not closed it was because there were no shutters to be closed and in these vacancies, blind vacuous expanses of gray window looked unseeingly down at him. The grass had grown wantonly long in the yard and faint green mustaches were sprouting facetiously in the wide cracks of the walk. But it was evident that the property had been recently occupied for upon the porch lay half a dozen newspapers rolled into cylinders for quick delivery and as yet turned only to a faint resentful yellow.
They were not nearly so yellow as the sky when Abercrombie walked up on the porch and sat down upon an immemorial bench, for the sky was every shade of yellow, the color of tan, the color of gold, the color of peaches. Across the street and beyond a vacant lot rose a rampart of vivid red brick houses and it seemed to Abercrombie that the picture they rounded out was beautiful — the warm earthy brick and the sky fresh after the rain, changing and gray as a dream. All his life when he had wanted to rest his mind he had called up into it the image those two things had made for him when the air was clear just at this hour. So Abercrombie sat there thinking about his young days.
Ten minutes later another man turned the corner of the street, a different sort of man, both in the texture of his clothes and the texture of his soul. He was forty-six years old and he was a shabby drudge, married to a woman, who, as a girl, had known better days. This latter fact, in the republic, may be set down in the red italics of misery.
His name was Hemmick — Henry W. or George D. or John F. — the stock that produced him had had little imagination left to waste either upon his name or his design. He was a clerk in a factory which made ice for the long Southern Summer. He was responsible to the man who owned the patent for canning ice, who, in his turn was responsible only to God. Never in his life had Henry W. Hemmick discovered a new way to advertise canned ice nor had it transpired that by taking a diligent correspondence course in ice canning he had secretly been preparing himself for a partnership. Never had he rushed home to his wife, crying: “You can have that servant now, Nell, 1 have been made General Superintendent.” You will have to take him as you take Abercrombie, for what he is and will always be. This is a story of the dead years.
When the second man reached the house he turned in and began to mount the tipsy steps, noticed Abercrombie, the stranger, with a tired surprise, and nodded to him.
“Good evening,” he said.
Abercrombie voiced his agreement with the sentiment.
“Cool” — The newcomer covered his forefinger with his handkerchief and sent the swatched digit on a complete circuit of his collar band. “Have you rented this?” he asked.
“No, indeed, I’m just — resting. Sorry if I’ve intruded — I saw the house was vacant — — “
“Oh, you’re not intruding!” said Hemmick hastily. “I don’t reckon anybody could intrude in this old barn. I got out two months ago. They’re not ever goin’ to rent it any more. I got a little girl about this high — “ he held his hand parallel to the ground and at an indeterminate distance” — and she’s mighty fond of an old doll that got left here when we moved. Began ???lerin’ for me to come over and look it up.”
“You used to liv
e here?” inquired Abercrombie with interest.
“Lived here eighteen years. Came here’n I was married, raised four children in this house. Yes, sir. I know this old fellow.” He struck the door-post with the flat of his hand. “I know every leak in her roof and every loose board in her old floor.”
Abercrombie had been good to look at for so many years that he knew if he kept a certain attentive expression on his face his companion would continue to talk — indefinitely.
“You from up North?” inquired Hemmick politely, choosing with habituated precision the one spot where the anemic wooden railing would support his weight. “I thought so,” he resumed at Abercrombie’s nod. “Don’t take long to tell a Yankee.”
“I’m from New York.”
“So?” The man shook his head with inappropriate gravity. “Never have got up there, myself. Started to go a couple of times, before I was married, but never did get to go.”
He made a second excursion with his finger and handkerchief and then, as though having come suddenly to a cordial decision, he replaced the handkerchief in one of his bumpy pockets and extended the hand toward his companion.
“My name’s Hemmick.”
“Glad to know you.” Abercrombie took the hand without rising. “Abercrombie’s mine.”
“I’m mighty glad to know you, Mr. Abercrombie.”
Then for a moment they both hesitated, their two faces assumed oddly similar expressions, their eyebrows drew together, their eyes looked far away. Each was straining to force into activity some minute cell long sealed and forgotten in his brain. Each made a little noise in his throat, looked away, looked back, laughed. Abercrombie spoke first.
“We’ve met.”
“I know,” agreed Hemmick, “but whereabouts? That’s what’s got me. You from New York you say?”
“Yes, but I was born and raised in this town. Lived in this house till I left here when I was about seventeen. As a matter of fact, I remember you — you were a couple of years older.”
Again Hemmick considered.
“Well,” he said vaguely, “I sort of remember, too. I begin to remember — I got your name all right and I guess maybe it was your daddy had this house before I rented it. But all I can recollect about you is, that there was a boy named Abercrombie and he went away.”
In a few moments they were talking easily. It amused them both to have come from the same house — amused Abercrombie especially, for he was a vain man, rather absorbed, that evening, in his own early poverty. Though he was not given to immature impulses, he found it necessary somehow to make it clear in a few sentences that five years after he had gone away from the house and the town he had been able to send for his father and mother to join him in New York.
Hemmick listened with that exaggerated attention which men who have not prospered generally render to men who have. He would have continued to listen had Abercrombie become more expansive, for he was beginning faintly to associate him with an Abercrombie who had figured in the newspapers for several years at the head of shipping boards and financial committees. But Abercrombie, after a moment, made the conversation less personal.
“I didn’t realize you had so much heat here. I guess I’ve forgotten a lot in twenty-five years.”
“Why, this is a cool day,” boasted Hemmick, “this is cool. I was just sort of overheated from walking when I came up.”
“It’s too hot,” insisted Abercrombie with a restless movement; then he added abruptly, “I don’t like it here. It means nothing to me — nothing — I’ve wondered if it did, you know; that’s why I came down. And I’ve decided.
“You see,” he continued hesitantly, “up to recently the North was still full of professional Southerners, some real, some by sentiment, but all given to flowery monologues on the beauty of their old family plantations and all jumping up and howling when the band played ‘Dixie.’ You know what I mean” — he turned to Hemmick — “it got to be a sort of a national joke. Oh, I was in the game, too, I suppose. I used to stand up and perspire and cheer, and I’ve given young men positions for no particular reason except that they claimed to come from South Carolina or Virginia — “ again he broke off and became suddenly abrupt — “but I’m through, I’ve been here six hours and I’m through!”
“Too hot for you?” inquired Hemmick, with mild surprise.
“Yes! I’ve felt the heat and I’ve seen the men — those two or three dozen loafers standing in front of the stores on Jackson Street — in thatched straw hats” — then he added, with a touch of humor, “they’re what my son calls ‘slash-pocket, belted-back boys.’ Do you know the ones I mean?”
“Jelly-beans,” Hemmick nodded gravely, “we call ‘em Jelly-beans. No-account lot of boys all right. They got signs up in front of most of the stores asking ‘em not to stand there.”
“They ought to!” asserted Abercrombie, with a touch of irascibility. “That’s my picture of the South now, you know — a skinny, dark-haired young man with a gun on his hip and a stomach full of corn liquor or Dope Dola, leaning up against a drug store waiting for the next lynching.”
Hemmick objected, though with apology in his voice.
“You got to remember, Mr. Abercrombie, that we haven’t had the money down here since the war — — “
Abercrombie waved this impatiently aside.
“Oh, I’ve heard all that,” he said, “and I’m tired of it. And I’ve heard the South lambasted till I’m tired of that, too. It’s not taking France and Ger?many fifty years to get on their feet, and their war made your war look like a little fracas up an alley. And it’s not your fault and it’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just that this is too damn hot to be a white man’s country and it always will be. I’d like to see ‘em pack two or three of these states full of darkies and drop ‘em out of the Union.”
Hemmick nodded, thoughtfully, though without thought. He had never thought; for over twenty years he had seldom ever held opinions, save the opinions of the local press or of some majority made articulate through passion. There was a certain luxury in thinking that he had never been able to afford. When cases were set before him he either accepted them outright if they were comprehensible to him or rejected them if they required a modicum of concentration. Yet he was not a stupid man. He was poor and busy and tired and there were no ideas at large in his community, even had he been capable of grasping them. The idea that he did not think would have been equally incomprehensible to him. He was a closed book, half full of badly printed, uncorrelated trash.
Just now, his reaction to Abercrombie’s assertion was exceedingly simple. Since the remarks proceeded from a man who was a Southerner by birth, who was successful — moreover, who was confident and decisive and persuasive and suave — he was inclined to accept them without suspicion or resentment. He took one of Abercrombie’s cigars and pulling on it, still with a stern imitation of profundity upon his tired face, watched the color glide out of the sky and the gray veils come down. The little boy and his bicycle, the baby, the nursemaid, the forlorn kitten, all had departed. In the stucco bungalows pianos gave out hot weary notes that inspired the crickets to competitive sound, and squeaky Graphophones filled in the intervals with patches of whining ragtime until the impression was created that each living room in the street opened directly out into the darkness.
“What I want to find out,” Abercrombie was saying with a frown, “is why I didn’t have sense enough to know that this was a worthless town. It was entirely an accident that I left here, an utterly blind chance, and as it happened, the very train that took me away was full of luck for me. The man I sat beside gave me my start in life.” His tone became resentful. “But I thought this was all right. I’d have stayed except that I’d gotten into a scrape down at the high school — I got expelled and my daddy told me he didn’t want me at home any more. Why didn’t I know the place wasn’t any good? Why didn’t I see?”
“Well, you’d probably never known anything better?” suggested Hemmick mil
dly.
“That wasn’t any excuse,” insisted Abercrombie. “If I’d been any good I’d have known. As a matter of fact — as — a — matter — of — fact,” he repeated slowly, “I think that at heart I was the sort of boy who’d have lived and died here happily and never known there was anything better.” He turned to Hemmick with a look almost of distress. “It worries me to think that my — that what’s happened to me can be ascribed to chance. But that’s the sort of boy I think I was. I didn’t start off with the Dick Whittington idea — I started off by accident.”
After this confession, he stared out into the twilight with a dejected expression that Hemmick could not understand. It was impossible for the latter to share any sense of the importance of such a distinction — in fact from a man of Abercrombie’s position it struck him as unnecessarily trivial. Still, he felt that some manifestation of acquiescence was only polite.
“Well,” he offered, “it’s just that some boys get the bee to get up and go North and some boys don’t. I happened to have the bee to go North. But I didn’t. That’s the difference between you and me.”
Abercrombie turned to him intently.
“You did?” he asked, with unexpected interest. “You wanted to get out?”
“At one time.” At Abercrombie’s eagerness Hemmick began to attach a new importance to the subject. “At one time,” he repeated, as though the singleness of the occasion was a thing he had often mused upon.
“How old were you?”
“Oh — ‘bout twenty.”
“What put it into your head?”
“Well, let me see — “ Hemmick considered. “ — I don’t know whether I remember sure enough but it seems to me that when I was down to the University — I was there two years — one of the professors told me that a smart boy ought to go North. He said business wasn’t going to amount to much down here for the next fifty years. And I guessed he was right. My father died about then, so I got a job as runner in the bank here, and I didn’t have much interest in anything except saving up enough money to go North. I was bound I’d go.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 309
