“What nice words,” she teased him. “If you keep on I’m going to throw myself under the wheels of the cab.”
Oh, she liked him. They dined together and went to a play and in the taxi going back to her hotel she looked up at him and waited.
“Would you consider marrying me?”
“Yes, I’d consider marrying you.”
“Of course if you married me we’d live in New York.”
“Call me Mickey Mouse,” she said suddenly.
“Why?”
“I don’t know — it was fun when you called me Mickey Mouse.”
The taxi stopped at her hotel.
“Won’t you come in and talk for a while?” she asked. Her bodice was stretched tight across her heart. “Mother’s here in New York with me and I promised I’d go and see her for a while.”
“Oh.”
“Will you dine with us tomorrow night?”
“All right.”
She hurried in and up to her room and put on the phonograph.
“Oh, gosh, he’s going to respect me,” she thought. “He doesn’t know anything about me, he doesn’t know anything about women. He wants to make a goddess out of me and I want to be Mickey Mouse.” She went to the mirror swaying softly before it.
Lady play your mandolin Lady let that tune begin. At her agent’s next morning she ran into Eddie O’Sullivan.
“Are you married yet?” he demanded. “Or did you ever see him again?”
“Eddie, I don’t know what to do. I think I’m in love with him but we’re always out of step with each other.”
“Take him in hand.”
“That’s just what I don’t want to do. I want to be taken in hand myself.”
“Well, you’re twenty-six — you’re in love with him. Why don’t you marry him? It’s a bad season.”
“He’s so American,” she answered.
“You’ve lived abroad so long that you don’t know what you want.”
“It’s a man’s place to make me certain.” It was in a mood of revolt against what she felt was to be an inspection that she made a midnight rendezvous for afterwards to go to Chaplin’s film with two other men — “because I frightened him in Maryland and he’ll only leave me politely at my door”. She pulled all her dresses out of her wardrobe and defiantly chose a startling gown from Vionnet; when George called for her at seven she summoned him up to her suite and displayed it, half hoping he would protest. “Wouldn’t you rather I’d go as a convent girl?”
“Don’t change anything. I worship you.” But she didn’t want to be worshipped.
It was still light outside and she liked being next to him in the car. She felt fresh and young under the fresh young silk — she would be glad to ride with him for ever, if only she were sure they were going somewhere.
… The suite at the Plaza dosed around them; lamps were lighted in the salon.
“We’re really almost neighbours in Maryland,” said Mrs Ives. “Your name’s familiar in St Charles county and there’s a fine old house called Lovejoy Hall. Why don’t you buy it and restore it?”
“There’s no money in the family,” said Evelyn bluntly. “I’m the only hope, and actresses never save.”
When the other guest arrived Evelyn started. Of all shades of her past — Colonel Cary. She wanted to laugh, or else hide — for an instant she wondered if this had been calculated. But she saw in his surprise that it was impossible.
“Delighted to see you again,” he said simply.
As they sat down at table Mrs Ives remarked:
“Miss Lovejoy is from our part of Maryland.”
“I see,” Colonel Cary looked at Evelyn with the equivalent of a wink. His expression annoyed her and she flushed. Evidently he knew nothing about her success on the stage, remembered only an episode of six years ago. When champagne was served she let a waiter fill her glass lest Colonel Cary think that she was playing an unsophisticated role.
“I thought you were a teetotaller,” George observed.
“I am. This is about the third drink I ever had in my life.”
The wine seemed to clarify matters; it made her see the necessity of anticipating whatever the Colonel might afterwards tell the Ives. Her glass was filled again. A little later Colonel Cary gave an opportunity when he asked:
“What have you been doing all these years?”
“I’m on the stage.” She turned to Mrs Ives. “Colonel Cary and I met in my most difficult days.”
“Yes?”
The Colonel’s face reddened but Evelyn continued steadily.
“For two months I was what used to be called a „party girl”.”
“A party girl?” repeated Mrs Ives puzzled.
“It’s a New York phenomenon,” said George.
Evelyn smiled at the Colonel. “It used to amuse me.”
“Yes, very amusing,” he said.
“Another girl and I had just left school and decided to go on the stage. We waited around agencies and offices for months and there were literally days when we didn’t have enough to eat.”
“How terrible,” said Mrs Ives.
“Then somebody told us about „party girls”. Businessmen with clients from out of town sometimes wanted to give them a big time — singing a dancing and champagne, all that sort of thing, make them feel like regular fellows seeing New York. So they’d hire a room in a restaurant and invite a dozen party girls. All it required was to have a good evening dress and to sit next to some middle-aged man for two hours and laugh at his jokes and maybe kiss him good night. Sometimes you’d find a fifty-dollar bill in your napkin when you sat down at table. It sounds terrible, doesn’t it — but it was salvation to us in that awful three months.”
A silence had fallen, short as far as seconds go but so heavy that Evelyn felt it on her shoulders. She knew that the silence was coming from some deep place in Mrs Ives’s heart, that Mrs Ives was ashamed for her and felt that what she had done in the struggle for survival was unworthy of the dignity of woman. In those same seconds she sensed the Colonel chuckling maliciously behind his bland moustache, felt the wrinkles beside George’s eyes straining.
“It must be terribly hard to get started on the stage,” said Mrs Ives. “Tell me — have you acted mostly in England?”
“Yes.”
What had she said? Only the truth and the whole truth in spite of the old man leering there. She drank off her glass of champagne.
George spoke quickly, under the Colonel’s roar of conversation: “Isn’t that a lot of champagne if you’re not used to it?”
She saw him suddenly as a man dominated by his mother; her frank little reminiscence had shocked him. Things were different for a girl on her own and at least he should see that it was wiser than that Colonel Cary might launch dark implications thereafter. But she refused further champagne.
After dinner she sat with George at the piano.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have said that at dinner,” she whispered.
“Nonsense! Mother know everything’s changed nowadays.”
“She didn’t like it,” Evelyn insisted. “And as for that old boy that looks like a Peter Arno cartoon!”
Try as she might Evelyn couldn’t shake off the impression that some slight had been put upon her. She was accustomed only to having approval gad admiration around her.
“If you had to choose again would you choose the stage?” Mrs Ives asked.
“It’s a nice life,” Evelyn said emphatically. “If I had daughters with talent I’d choose it for them. I certainly wouldn’t want them to be society girls.”
“But we can’t all have talent,” said Colonel Cary.
“Of course most people have the craziest prejudices about the stage,” pursued Evelyn.
“Not so much nowadays,” said Mrs Ives. “So many nice girls go on the stage.”
“Girls of position,” added Colonel Cary.
“They don’t usually last very long,” said Evelyn. “Every time some debut
ante decides to dazzle the world there’s another flop due on Broadway. But the thing that makes me maddest is the way people condescend. I remember one season on the road — all the small-town social leaders inviting you to parties and then whispering and snickering in the corner. Snickering at Gladys Knowles!” Evelyn’s voice rang with indignation: “When Gladys goes to Europe she dines with the most prominent people in every country, the people who don’t know these backwoods social leaders exist — — “
“Does she dine with their wives too?” asked Colonel Cary.
“With their wives too.” She glanced sharply at Mrs Ives. “Let me tell you that girls on the stage don’t feel a bit inferior, and the really fashionable people don’t think of patronizing them.”
The silence was there again heavier and deeper, but this time excited by her own words Evelyn was unconscious of it.
“Oh, it’s American women,” she said. “The less they have to offer the more they pick on the ones that have.”
She drew a deep breath, she felt that the room was stifling.
“I’m afraid I must go now,” she said.
“I’ll take you,” said George.
They were all standing. She shook hands. She liked George’s mother, who after all had made no attempt to patronize her.
“It’s been very nice,” said Mrs Ives.
“I hope we’ll meet soon. Good night.”
With George in a taxi she gave the address of a theatre on Broadway.
“I have a date,” she confessed.
“I see.”
“Nothing very important.” She glanced at him, and put her hand on his. Why didn’t he ask her to break the date? But he only said:
“He better go over Forty-fifth Street.”
Ah, well, maybe she’d better go back to England — and be Mickey Mouse, He didn’t know anything about women, anything about love, and to her that was the unforgivable sin. But why in a certain set of his face under the street lamps did he remind her of her father?
“Won’t you come to the picture?” she suggested.
“I’m feeling a little tired — I’m turning in.”
“Will you phone me tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
She hesitated. Something was wrong and she hated to leave him. He helped her out of the taxi and paid it.
“Come with us?” she asked almost anxiously. “Listen, if you like — — “
“I’m going to walk for a while!”
She caught sight of the men waiting for her and waved to them.
“George, is anything the matter?” she said.
“Of course not.”
He had never seemed so attractive, so desirable to her. As her friends came up, two actors, looking like very little fish beside him, he took off his hat and said:
“Good night, I hope you enjoy the picture.”
“George — — “
— and a curious thing happened. Now for the first time she realized that her father was dead, that she was alone. She had thought of herself as being self-reliant, making more in some seasons than his practice brought him in five years. But he had always been behind her somewhere, his love had always been behind her — She had never been a waif, she had always had a place to go. And now she was alone, alone in the swirling indifferent crowd. Did she expect to love this man, who offered her so much, with the naive romantics of eighteen. He loved her — he loved her more than any one in the world loved her. She wasn’t ever going to be a great star, she knew that, and she had reached the time when a girl had to look out for herself. “Why, look,” she said, “I’ve got to go. Wait — or don’t wait.” Catching up her long gown she sped up Broadway. The crowd was enormous as theatre after theatre eddied out to the sidewalks. She sought for his silk hat as for a standard, but now there were many silk hats. She peered frantically into groups and crowds as she ran. An insolent voice called after her and again she shuddered with a sense of being unprotected. Reaching the corner she peered hopelessly into the tangled mass of the block ahead. But he had probably turned off Broadway so she darted left down the dimmer alley of Forty-eighth Street. Then she saw him, walking briskly, like a man leaving something behind — and overtook him at Sixth Avenue.
“George,” she cried.
He turned; his face looking at her was hard and miserable. “George, I didn’t want to go to that picture, I wanted you to make me not go. Why didn’t you ask me not to go?”
“I didn’t care whether you went or not.”
“Didn’t you?” she cried. “Don’t you care for me any more?”
“Do you want me to call you a cab?”
“No, I want to be with you.”
“I’m going home.”
“I’ll walk with you. What is it, George? What have I done?” They crossed Sixth Avenue and the street became darker. “What is it, George? Please tell me. If I did something wrong at your mother’s why didn’t you stop me?” He stopped suddenly. “You were our guest,” he said. “What did I do?”
“There’s no use going into it.” He signalled a passing taxi. “It’s quite obvious that we look at things differently. I was going to write you tomorrow but since you ask me it’s just as well to end it today.” “But why, George?” She wailed, “What did I do?” “You went out of your way to make a preposterous attack on an old gentlewoman who had given you nothing but courtesy and consideration.” “Oh, George, I didn’t, I didn’t… I’ll go to her and apologize. I’ll go tonight.”
“She wouldn’t understand. We simply look at things in different ways.”
“Oh — h-h.” She stood aghast.
He started to say something further, but after a glance at her he opened the taxi door.
“It’s only two blocks. You’ll excuse me if I don’t go with you.”
She had turned and was clinging to the iron railing of a stair.
“I’ll go in a minute,” she said. “Don’t wait.”
She wasn’t acting now. She wanted to be dead. She was crying for her father, she told herself — not for him but for her father.
His footsteps moved off, stopped, hesitated — came back.
“Evelyn.”
His voice was close beside her.
“Oh, poor baby,” it said. He turned her about gently in his arms and she clung to him.
“Oh yes,” she cried in wild relief. “Poor baby — just your poor baby.” She didn’t know whether this was love or not but she knew with all her heart and soul that she wanted to crawl into his pocket and be safe for ever.
BETWEEN THREE AND FOUR
This happened nowadays, with everyone somewhat discouraged. A lot of less fortunate spirits cracked when money troubles came to be added to all the nervous troubles accumulated in the prosperity — neurosis being a privilege of people with a lot of extra money. And some cracked merely because it was in the air, or because they were used to the great, golden figure of plenty standing behind them, as the idea of prudence and glory stands behind the French, and the idea of “the thing to do” used to stand behind the English. Almost everyone cracked a little.
Howard Butler had never believed in anything, including himself, except the system, and had not believed in that with the intensity of men who were its products or its prophets. He was a quiet, introverted man, not at all brave or resilient and, except in one regard, with no particular harm in him. He thought a lot without much apparatus for thinking, and in normal circumstances one would not expect him to fly very high or sink very low. Nevertheless, he had a vision, which is the matter of this story.
Howard Butler stood in his office on the ninth floor of a building in New York, deciding something. It was a branch and a showroom of B. B. Eddington’s Sons, office furniture and supplies, of which he was a branch manager — a perfect office ceremoniously equipped throughout, though now a little empty because of the decreased personnel due to hard times. Miss Wiess had just telephoned the name of an unwelcome caller, and he was deciding whether he hadn’t just as w
ell see the person now; it was a question of sooner or later. Mrs. Summer was to be shown in.
Mrs. Summer did not need to be shown in, since she had worked there for eight years, up until six months ago. She was a handsome and vital lady in her late forties, with golden-grayish hair, a stylish-stout figure with a reminiscent touch of the Gibson Girl bend to it, and fine young eyes of bright blue. To Howard Butler she was still as vivid a figure as when, as Sarah Belknap, she had declined to marry him nearly thirty years ago — with the essential difference that he hated her.
She came into his private office with an alert way she had and, in a clear, compelling voice that always affected him, said, “Hello, Howard,” as if, without especially liking him, she didn’t object to him at all. This time there was just a touch of strain in her manner.
“Hello, Sarah.”
“Well,” she breathed, “it’s very strange to be back here. Tell me you’ve got a place for me.”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Things don’t pick up.”
“H’m.” She nodded and blinked several times.
“Cancellations, bad debts — we’ve closed two branches and there’ve been more pay cuts since you left. I’ve had to take one.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t expect the salary I used to get. I realize how things are. But, literally, I can’t find anything. I thought, perhaps, there might be an opening, say as office manager or head stenographer, with full responsibility. I’d be very glad of fifty dollars a week.”
“We’re not paying anything like that.”
“Or forty-five. Or even forty. I had a chance at twenty-five when I first left here and, like an idiot, I let it go. It seemed absurd after what I’d been getting; I couldn’t keep Jack at Princeton on that. Of course, he’s partly earning his way, but even in the colleges the competition is pretty fierce now — so many boys need money. Anyhow, last week I went back and tried to get the job at twenty-five, and they just laughed at me.” Mrs. Summer smiled grimly, but with full control over herself; yet she could only hold the smile a minute and she talked on to conceal its disappearance: “I’ve been eating at the soup kitchens to save what little I’ve got left. When I think that a woman of my capacity — — That’s not conceit, Howard; you know I’ve got capacity. Mr.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 329
