Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated)

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  At once it was lonely in the office. Not because of Miss McCrary’s physical absence — her presence often intruded on him — but because she was gone for good. Putting on his coat Jason looked at the final memorandum — it contained nothing that need be done today — or in three days. It was nice to have a cleared desk, but he remembered days when business was so active, so pulsating that he telephoned instructions from railroad trains, radiographed from shipboard.

  At home he found Jo and two other little girls playing Greta Garbo in the living room. Jo was so happy and ridiculous, so clownish with the childish smudge of rouge and mascara, that he decided to wait till after luncheon to introduce the tragedy.

  Passing through the pantry he took a slant-eyed glance at the little girls still in masquerade, realizing that presently he would have to deflate one balloon of imagination. The child who was playing Mae West — to the extent of saying ‘Come up and see me sometime’ — admitted that she had never been permitted to see Mae West on the screen; she had been promised that privilege when she was fourteen.

  Jason had been old enough for the war; he was thirty-eight. He wore a salt-and-pepper mustache; he was of middle height and well-made within the first ready-made suit he had ever owned.

  Jo came close and demanded in quick French:

  “Can I have these girls for lunch?”

  “Pas aujourd’hui.”

  “Bien.”

  *****

  But she had to be told now. He didn’t want to give her bad news in the evening, when she was tired.

  After luncheon when the maid had withdrawn, he said:

  “I want to talk, now, about a serious matter.”

  At the seriousness of his tone her eyes left a lingering crumb.

  “It’s about school,” he said.

  “About school?”

  He plunged into his thesis.

  “There’ve been hospital bills and not much business. I’ve figured out a budget — You know what that is: It’s how much you’ve got, placed against how much you can spend. On clothes and food and education and so forth. Miss McCrary helped me figure it out before she left.”

  “Has she left? Why?”

  “Her mother’s been sick and she felt she ought to stay home and take care of her. And now, Jo, the thing that hits the budget hardest is school.”

  Without quite comprehending what was coming, Jo’s face had begun to share the unhappiness of her father’s.

  . “It’s an expensive school with the extras and all — one of the most expensive day schools in the East.”

  He struggled to his point, with the hurt that was coming to her germinating in his own throat.

  “It doesn’t seem we can afford it any more this year.”

  Still Jo did not quite understand, but there was a hush in the dining room.

  “You mean I can’t go to school this term?” she asked, finally.

  “Oh, you’ll go to school. But not Tunstall.”

  “Then I don’t go to Tunstall Monday,” she said in a flat voice. “Where will I go?”

  “You’ll take your second term at public school. They’re very good now. Mama never went to anything but a public school.”

  “Daddy!” Her voice, comprehending at last, was shocked.

  “We mustn’t make a mountain out of a mole-hill. After this year you can probably go back and finish at Tunstall — “

  “But Daddy! Tunstall’s supposed to be the best. And you said this term you were satisfied with my marks — “

  “That hasn’t anything to do with it. There are three of us, Jo, and we’ve got to consider all three. We’ve lost a great deal of money. There simply isn’t enough to send you.”

  Two advance tears passed the frontier of her eyes, and navigated the cheeks.

  Unable to endure her grief, he spoke on automatically:

  “Which is best — spend too much and get into debt — or draw in our horns for a while?”

  Still she wept silently. All the way to the hospital where they were paying their weekly visit she dripped involuntary tears.

  Jason had undoubtedly spoiled her. For ten years the Davis household had lived lavishly in Paris; thence he had journeyed from Stockholm to Istamboul, placing American capital in many enterprises. It had been a magnificent enterprise — while it had lasted. They inhabited a fine house on the Avenue Kleber, or else a villa at Beaulieu. There was an English Nanny, and then a governess, who imbued Jo with a sense of her father’s surpassing power. She was brought up with the same expensive simplicity as the children she played with in the Champs Elysees. Like them, she accepted the idea that luxury of life was simply a matter of growing up to it — the right to precedence, huge motors, speed boats, boxes at opera or ballet; Jo had early got into the habit of secretly giving away most of the surplus of presents with which she was inundated.

  Two years ago the change began. Her mother’s health failed, and her father ceased to be any longer a mystery man, just back from Italy with a family of Lenci dolls for her. But she was young and adjustable and fitted into the life at Tunstall school, not realizing how much she loved the old life. Jo tried honestly to love the new life too, because she loved things and people and she was prepared to like the still newer change. But it took a little while because of the fact that she loved, that she was built to love, to love deeply and forever.

  When they reached the hospital Jason said:

  “Don’t tell mother about school. She might notice that it’s hit you rather hard, and make her unhappy. When you get — sort of used to it we’ll tell her.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  They followed a tiled passage they both knew to an open door.

  “Can we come in?”

  “Can you?”

  Together husband and daughter embraced her, almost jealously, from either side of the bed. With a deep quiet, their arms and necks strained together.

  Annie Lee’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Sit down. Have chairs, you all. Miss Carson, we need another chair.”

  They had scarcely noticed the nurse’s presence.

  “Now tell me everything. Have some chocolates. Aunt Vi sent them. She can’t remember what I can and can’t eat.”

  Her face, ivory cold in winter, stung to a gentle wild rose in spring, then in summer pale as the white key of a piano, seldom changed. Only the doctors and Jason knew how ill she was.

  “All’s well,” he said. “We keep the house going.”

  “How about you, Jo? How’s school? Did you pass your exams?”

  “Of course, Mama.”

  “Good marks, much better than last year,” Jason added.

  “How about the play?” Annie Lee pursued innocently. “Are you still going to be Titania?”

  “I don’t know, Mama.”

  Jason switched the subject to ‘the farm,’ a remnant of a once extensive property of Annie Lee’s.

  “I’d sell it if we could. I can’t see how your mother ever made it pay.”

  “She did though. Right up to the day of her death.”

  “It was the sausage. And there doesn’t seem to be a market for it any more.”

  The nurse warned them that time was up. As if to save the precious minutes Annie Lee thrust out a white hand to each.

  *****

  As they got into the car, Jo asked:

  “Daddy, what happened to our money?”

  Well — better tell her than to have her brood about it.

  “It’s complicated. The Europeans couldn’t pay interest on what we lent them. You know interest?”

  “Of course. We had it in the Second Main.”

  “My job was to judge whether a business showed promise, and if I thought so we loaned them money. When bad times came and they couldn’t pay, we wouldn’t loan any more. So my job was played out and we came home.”

  He went on to say that the money he had invested in the venture — oh, many thousands, oh, never mind how much, Jo — and now all that mon
ey was ‘tied up.’

  Under the aegis of the old shot tower they slowed by a garage to fill the tank.

  “Why do you like to stop at this station, Daddy? Beside that ugly old chimney over there?”

  “That’s not a chimney. Don’t you know what it is? During the Revolution they had to drop lead down to make the bullets to fire at the British. This is a Historical Monument.”

  …They rounded the corner of the Confederate dead. Jo spoke again suddenly:

  “Americans have a hard time, don’t they, Daddy? Always fights about nothing.”

  “Oh well, we’re a fighting race. That’s what brought us here in the first place.”

  “But it’s not happy — like in Europe.”

  “They have their troubles. Anyhow you were just a child and all shielded.” And he added as they stopped in front of their house, “What of it?”

  “Mummy has heart trouble, and you lost your money, and — “

  “For heaven’s sake don’t get sorry for yourself!” he said gruffly. “That spoils people for good. We have a nice house, at least.” He felt a pang at knowing that they were going to have to give it up, but he did not want to put too much upon her in one day.

  But in the hall Jo was still absorbed in her inner story.

  “Daddy, we’re like the characters in Little Orphan Annie, only we haven’t got that dog that says Arp all the time. I never heard a dog say Arp did you? They always have dogs in the funny papers now that say ‘Arp’ or ‘Woof,’ and I never heard a dog say either.”

  He was relieved at the turn the conversation had taken.

  “I only like the Gumps. Except when I feel mean I like Dick Tracy and X-9.”

  Jo sighed as she started to her room.

  “Nothing seems so bad — when you only have to read about it,” she said ruefully.

  II

  Almost before Jo was adjusted to public school the news broke to her of their impending move. It was a far cry from the spacious house with the mutual, free-rolling lawns of the new suburbs, to the little apartment. Into which the big sofa and the big bed simply wouldn’t go and had to repose instead at storage, along with many other things. Jo derived a melancholy consolation from being allowed to act as interior decorator. With some difficulty her father restrained his hilarity.

  “I think it’s beautiful, Baby.”

  “Oh, I know you don’t. But Daddy, I thought I’d get tinfoil at the five-and-ten and make the whole room silver, like a room in the House Beautiful. But it rumpled. And now it won’t come off — no matter what I do makes it worse!”

  During Washington’s Birthday vacation she repainted her furniture. The man from the Cleaning and Dyeing Company looked aghast at the rug he was expected to restore. And that evening at dancing school mothers warned their children away from the violent rashes on her arms — and were appalled — no understatement is possible — by the clearly leprous quality of the green or purple patches that glared like menacing eyes — dull and sinister eyes — from her hair. There had been nothing to do about it; hair is not washed in tears. The patches remained, remained indeed for weeks. After a fortnight they took on a not unattractive hue — attractive, that is to say, to anyone but Jo — of the roofs of many European villages washed down by an avalanche. And mingled. Thoroughly mingled.

  The catastrophe discouraged Jo so much that she no longer wanted to go to the Beacon’s Barn dancing class.

  Jason argued for it — it was not expensive.

  “But there’s no use,” she said, “ — now I don’t go to Tunstall any more. They have secrets. I like a lot of people at school now.”

  “You’d better,” her father said.

  “Why do you say I’d better?”

  In their new isolation these two talked and fought against each other like adults, almost the old sempiternal dispute of man and wife.

  Jason hated that it should be that way, hated her to see him in moments of discouragement.

  *****

  “Let’s go out to the farm,” he said one Saturday at breakfast. “You’ve never been there.”

  “Can we afford to run the car?”

  “Jo, can’t you forget for a minute that I’m poor? I’ve explained; in the textile business there’re only three or four accounts that pay commissions. That’s like interest. You said you understood that.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the brokers who have them are naturally hanging on — they had them before I came here. As long as I have to sell second-class merchandise to — “

  “Let’s forget it and like the ride.”

  “It certainly can go fast, Daddy. Can we really afford to run it?”

  “It’s cheaper running fast. I want to get there before they finish making the first batch of sausage.”

  It was seventy miles between fields of frosty rubble, between the ever-dividing purple shoulders of the Appalachians, between villages he had never wanted to ask the names of, so much did he cherish the image of them in his heart…

  But Jo’s heart was still in France. She was less regarding than thinking.

  “Daddy — why couldn’t we just make a lot of money out of the farm? Like grandmother did. And just live on that. And get rich.”

  “But there isn’t any farm any more, I tell you. There’s just a — — just a large pig-sty!”

  He retreated from his coarseness as he saw her face contract.

  “It isn’t quite all that, Baby. Young Seneca does a little truck farming — “

  “Who’s Young Seneca?”

  “There was an Old Seneca and now there’s a Young Seneca — “

  “When it was a big farm how big was it, Daddy?”

  “As far as you can see.”

  “Far as the mountains?”

  “Not quite.”

  “It was a big farm, wasn’t it?”

  “It was good and big — even for these parts,” he answered, falling into the vernacular.

  After a time Jo asked:

  “How do they make the sausage, Daddy?”

  “I kind of forget. I think — let’s see — I think the formula is sixteen pounds of lean meat and sixteen of fat meat. And then they grind it all together. Then they knead in the seasoning — nine tablespoons of salt, nine pepper, nine sage — “

  “Why nine?”

  “That’s what your grandmother did.”

  — — Jason had fed Jo’s insatiable curiosity with as much as he remembered of the process as they turned into the washed-out lane that led to the farm.

  Young Seneca, plunged into work, hurried over to greet them.

  “How goes?” Jason asked.

  “Just startin’, Mr. Davis. We butchered last night. Then a couple of boys thought they had a right to sleep all day. Have I got to pay ‘em for that time? They just keep the dogs off.”

  “The dogs?” Jo demanded.

  He acknowledged her presence.

  “That’s right, Missy. Dogs down here are up to anything. We say: ‘It’s a poor dog that can’t keep his own self.’“

  Getting out of the car they walked toward the smokehouse.

  “We pay those hands well,” Jason said. “They still get the chitlings and cracklings and hogs’ heads?”

  “They gets the regular, Mr. Davis. Even them ditchers work right hard. You take now Aunt Rose that worked for your mother-and-law — she’s been kneadin’ that seasoning till her arms like to fall off.”

  The Negress in question greeted them cheerfully.

  “Day! Mr. Davis. Day! young lady.”

  She left her job momentarily to inspect the child, wiping her hands of the sharp spices on a big old kitchen towel.

  “And don’t you look like your mother did?”

  Jo wandered into the smokehouse. She passed barrels of flour, salt, lard — of brown sugar, of cut sugar, of sugar granulated. Coming out she ran into a colored girl with a bucket of milk on her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Without losing a bit of her b
alance the young woman laughed hilariously.

  “Don’t need to be sorry. There’s chits been threatnin’ to push me down three years, and none ov’em ever do it.”

  …Jo emerged from the smokehouse to find her father in argument with Young Seneca, who broke off from time to time to call instructions to his helpers.

  “That there’s a flour sifter you’re using, Aunt Jinnie. You ought to use a cornmeal sifter for getting out them sage stems.”

  Jo’s interest was divided between the sausage grinding and her father’s conversation with Young Seneca.

  “We’re not making a cheap sausage and listen to this.”

  He took a letter from his pocket and read aloud: “‘We cannot undertake to distribute your product any longer because of the cancellations.’ Now I can’t believe that’s just hard times. This used to be the best-known stuff of its kind in the East. It’s fallen off in quality. So where’s your pride, man? They didn’t use to be able to keep up with the orders. Something’s missing.”

  “Sure I don’t know what it is, Mr. Davis.”

  When they started back a hickory fire flamed against the white sycamores and it was cold.

  “Daddy, if the farm was mine I’d try to find out what’s the matter about the sausage.”

  Every day Jo lost a little faith in her father. Father had been “wonderful” once, and she went on, because she had been correctly tuned to the idea that duty is everything. She had been early made to put her back and wrists into that great realization — work isn’t all enthusiasm, though that is an essential part of it — in the long stress and strain of life it is more often what one doesn’t want to do any longer.

  III

  At high school Jo was behind in some subjects but in language classes her only difficulty was to bring her accent down to the level of the rest; her weak spot was Ancient History, which she had never studied — her remark that Julius Caesar was King of Egypt, remembered vaguely from a quick reading of Anthony and Cleopatra, became a teacher’s legend in the school. She made only a few friends at school; she was at the age of existing largely in her imagination.