*****
On Jason’s part it was no help in the dull late winter to know that Jo was losing faith in him. Her right to security and to special privilege as well — this, that was as much a part of her as her sense of responsibility — made a friction between them. But something was gone — Jo’s respect for the all-wise, all-just, all-providing.
He tried to keep up his morale with exercise, and with ceaseless pursuit of better textile accounts. His thin stream of commission money scarcely sufficed to keep his head above water. With one of the big ones he would be on safe ground; for he was favorably known here. Well disposed wholesalers tried to slant in his direction, but they were prevented by a class of merchandise they did not care to carry.
*****
There came the black day when he cracked — the blue black, the purple black, the green black of those unused to it. In the morning the grocer’s wife came; she said loud in the living room that she and her husband did not care to carry the account any longer.
“Be quiet!” Jason warned her. “Wait till the little girl gets off to school.”
“Your little girl! What about mine. One hundred ten dollar — “
Jo’s feet sounded on the stairs.
“Morning Daddy. Oh! Morning Mrs. Deshhacker.”
“Good morning.”
Temporarily, Jo’s imperturbability disarmed Mrs. Deshhacker, but after she had gone into the dining room, she delivered her ultimatum more firmly. Jason could only say:
“I’ll try… Middle of next week… Anyhow a partial payment.”
There was the silver: Certain pieces were inviolate — the Supreme Court Bowl, the Lee spoons with the crest of his grandfather —
Jason had seen the sign many times. Mr. Cale would take any security — was most generous, most reliable.
“How do you do, sir?”
With the infallible good manners of the Marylander, even of the humbler denominations, he stood waiting. His venality scarcely showed through his mask.
Jason mumbled something with a shamed face. Mr. Cale was used to that and stopped him.
“You want to raise some money?”
“Yes — on some silver.”
“What kind?”
“Table silver. Some goblets that have been a long time — “ He broke off — the indignity was intolerable — “and a coffee set.”
“Well naturally you have to show me.”
“Of course. There may be other things — some furniture. A few pieces — I’ll redeem them in a month or so.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will.”
Big chance he will, he added from his own experience…
At the hospital Jason was stopped in the hall and made to sit down by the floor nurse. Doctor Keyster was finishing his rounds and wanted to talk to him before he went into his wife’s room.
“About what?”
“He didn’t say.”
“She’s worse?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Davis. He just wants to talk to you — “
She was cleaning thermometers as she talked.
*****
Half an hour later in a little reception room Dr. Keyster spoke his mind.
“She doesn’t respond. There’s nothing before her but years of rest, that’s all I can say — years of rest. We’ve all got fond of her here but there’d be no service to you in kidding you.”
“She’ll never get well?”
“Probably never.”
“You don’t think she’ll ever be well?” Jason asked again.
“There have been cases — “
……Then the spring was gone out of life, April, May and June. That was all gone.
…April when she came to him like a rill of sweetness. May when she was a hillside. June when they held each other so close that there was nothing more except the lashes flicking on their eyes…
Dr. Keyster said:
“You might as well make up your mind to it, Mr. Davis.”
Going home once more from one of the many pietas to his love, Jason’s taxi passed through an agitated meat market; a labor agitator was addressing the crowd; when he saw Jason in his taxi he shifted the burden of his discourse to him.
“Here is one! And here we are! We’ll turn them upside down and shake them till the dimes and quarters roll out!”
Jason wondered what would roll out of him. He had just enough to pay the taxi.
*****
Up in his bedroom he felt for the third time the balance of the thirty-eight revolver — — life insurance all paid up.
“Help me to kill myself!” he prayed. “No fooling now. Put it in the mouth.”
— — The phone rang sharp and he tossed the gun onto the empty twin bed.
A woman’s voice said: “Is this Mr. Davis? This is Principal McCutcheon’s secretary. Just one moment.”
Then came a man’s voice, level and direct.
“This is Mr. McCutcheon at the High School. It’s an unfortunate matter, Mr. Davis. We have to ask you to withdraw your daughter Josephine from school.”
Jason’s tense breath caught in his throat.
“I thought you’d rather know before she reached home. I tried your office. We’re compelled, much against our sensibilities, to expel three of the girls for conduct that can’t be condoned. When a pupil falls below the tone of the school the individual must be sacrificed to the good of the majority. I called a committee of teachers, Mr. Davis, and they saw eye-to-eye with me.”
“What was the nature of the offense?”
“That I don’t care to go into on the phone, Mr. Davis. I shall be glad to see you by appointment any afternoon except Thursday between two and four. I must add that we were more than surprised to find Josephine linked up to this matter. She’s held herself — well, I must say, a little aloof; she hasn’t ingratiated herself with her teachers, but — well, there we are.”
“I see,” Jason said dryly.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
Jason reached for the revolver and began taking the cartridges out of the magazine.
— — I’ve got to stick around — a little longer, he thought.
*****
Jo arrived in half an hour, her usually mobile mouth tight and hard. There were dark strips of tears up and down her cheeks.
“Hello.”
“Hello, darling.” He had been waiting for her downstairs; he waited till she had taken off her coat and hat.
“What’s it all about anyhow?”
Furiously she turned to him.
“I won’t tell you! You can shake me, Daddy! You can beat me!”
“For God’s sake — what’s this all about? When did I ever beat you?”
“They wanted to this morning because I wouldn’t say what they wanted.”
Jo flung herself into a corner of the big couch and wept into it. He walked around the room, concerned and embarrassed.
“I don’t want to know, Jo. Whatever you do is all right with me. I trust you, Baby, all the way. I’m not even making any inquiries.”
She turned tired eyes up at him.
“You won’t? You promise, word of honor?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got an idea, a real hunch. Unless — or say till I get the Gehrbohm account, I have lots of time in the afternoon. Suppose I be your private tutor for awhile. I was pretty good once in Latin and Algebra. For the languages we’ll get a reading list from the library.”
She sobbed again deep into the big cushions.
“Oh Baby! Stop that. We’re not defeatists, you and me. Take a bath and then we’ll get up some dinner.”
When she had gone into her room Jason tried to think of something outside himself. Then he remembered what Annie Lee had said in their short quarter hour this morning.
“I can’t understand about the farm — it was all so simple. There was the seasoning — nine tablespoons of salt, then nine of hickory ash, then the pepper and sage. And of course always the tenderloin — “
“Hickory ash?�
� Jason had exclaimed. “Tenderloin?”
Stirred by his surprise she lifted herself up in bed, so that he had to ease her gently down again. “Don’t tell me Young Seneca isn’t using tenderloin — isn’t putting in the tablespoons of hickory ash?”
— — In the living room of the apartment Jason sat down and wrote Young Seneca.
When Jo came downstairs he said, “Take this over to the post office, will you? It’s about the farm.”
After examining the address Jo demanded:
“Father — do you mean seriously you’re going to teach me?”
“Am I? You bet! Teach you all I know.”
“All right.”
But in the grey dusk he was still bent over the ragged text-book.
“Caesar,” he said over the first text. “It’s addressed to the damn Swiss!”
He translated:
“In Switzerland they necked the Gods and the men — “
“What, Daddy?”
“Wait now: In Switzerland they necked the men and then they necked the Gods — This is difficult now — Latin didn’t seem like that in my day.”
Jason turned to Jo with exasperation. “Don’t they give you sentences to construe? Helvetii qui nec Deos nec homines verebantur — That means quiver I think — magnum dolorem. That means it all ends up very sad. Why did you ask me to translate it in the first place?”
“I didn’t ask you. I knew that part. It means the Helvetians who feared neither Gods nor men came to great grief because they were restrained on all sides by mountains.”
He read again: “Patiebantur quod ex omnibus partibus, and that means a rampart of ten feet,” he cried exultantly across the lamplight.
“Yah! You saw that in a footnote.”
“I did not,” he lied.
“Give me your word of honor?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“You fancy yourself as a teacher.”
That was the end of the first night’s Latin.
Thumbing over the book Jo found her place and read aloud slowly:
“If the government revenue from taxes increased from one billion dollars in 1927 to five hundred billion dollars in 1929, what was the increased percent?”
“Go on,” said Jason.
“Go on yourself, Daddy. You’re this wonderful mathematician. And try this one!”
“Let me read it myself:
‘If the sum of the reciprocals of two consecutive even numbers is zero. Then the sum of two other consecutive numbers is 11/60. What are the numbers?’“
Jason said, “There’s always for the X an unknown quantity. You have to have some system — haven’t you?”
“Swell system.”
“Got to start somewhere.” He bent over it again: “If the government revenue increased from five billions in 1927 to — “
He was temporarily at the end of his resources.
“Darling,” he said. “In a week I’ll know more about this — “
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Time for you to go to bed.”
There was a pregnant silence between them.
“I know.”
She came over to him and pecked briefly at an old baseball scar on his forehead.
VI
To keep the chronicle going one must skip through the days when Annie Lee’s farm came to life again — when Young Seneca realized that Mr. Davis actually wanted tenderloin put into the sausage — the day he recalled that an important appendage was nine tablespoons of hickory ash.
Orders for the buckets began to increase. From merely paying for itself, the farm began to dribble a trickle of profit.
VII
Some nights Jason used to go to her bedside and sit. Not tonight, though. He picked up in the living room the copy of Caesar’s Gaellic Wars.
The Swiss, who feared neither Gods nor men, suffered…
“Who am I to be afraid?” Jason thought. He who had led eight Ohio country boys to death in a stable in France and come out of it with only the loss of the tip of his left shoulder!
The Swiss who feared neither Gods nor men suffered —
He pulled the lamp closer.
The night wore on in a melange of verbs and participles. Toward eleven the phone rang.
“This is Mr. McCutcheon.”
“Oh, yes.”
“There’s a serious injustice been done your daughter.”
It seems that there had been some wild excursion into the boys’ locker-room — during which someone was posted as sentry outside. The sentry had run away but Jo was there trying to warn them at the moment when the monitors appeared.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Davis. There isn’t much we can do in these cases — except offer our sincere apology.”
“I know.”
The phone put on the voice of Mr. Halklite.
Here it was! The Pan-American Textile account.
“Hello, Mr. Davis! I’m in Philadelphia. We’ve had some correspondence — I’ll be down in your part of the world tomorrow and I thought I’d drop in. Sorry to call so late…”
Breakfast was waiting when, having made a journey to his office and back, Jason went to his bedroom — almost immediately Jo, who had heard him come in, knocked at the door and demanded in alarm:
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m just tired. I’ve been working all night. Say, if you have those girls to lumpshun — “ the words seemed extraordinarily hard and long — “then fix up the room afterwards. Very important. Business meeting.”
“I understand, Daddy.”
Holding to the bed-post he swayed precariously. “Whole future depends on this man. Make it nice for him.”
With no more warning he pitched forward across the bed.
VIII
Unexpectedly at eleven o’clock the colored girl admitted Mr. Halklite. On his tour of inspection Mr. Halklite had become, perforce, less and less kind, though he was kindly by nature. Keenness was his valuable business asset — exercising the quality had temporarily become dull — there was the necessity of weeding out the exhausted and the inefficient. Halklite could tell the dead from the living, and that was half of why he had just been elected a vice-president of Pan-American Textile. Only half, though. The other half was because he was kind.
A little girl came into the room.
“Good morning. Is your father in? I think he expected me.”
“Won’t you come in? Father’s got a cold — he’s lying down.”
In Jason’s bedroom Jo shook and shook the exhausted body without result. She went back into the living room.
“Daddy’ll be getting up presently,” she said. “He’s sorry he wasn’t dressed to meet you.”
“Oh, that’s all right. You’re Mr. Davis’ little girl?” Mr. Halklite said.
Jo crossed as if casually to the piano bench and turned back to him with sudden decision.
“Mr. Halklite, father’s had flu, and the doctor doesn’t want him to get up. He’s going to try to.”
“Oh, we can’t let him!”
“The doctor didn’t want him to. But Daddy’s like that. If he says he’ll do something, he does. Daddy needs a woman to take care of him. And I’m so busy at school — “
“Tell him not to get up,” Halklite repeated.
“I don’t even know whether he can.”
“Then tell him it doesn’t matter.”
She went to her father’s room and presently returned.
“He sent you best regards. He was sorry not to see you.”
Her heart was in agony. Keeping that agony out of her expression was the hardest thing she had ever had to do.
“I’m good and sorry,” Mr. Halklite said. “I wanted to talk to him.”
“How old is your father, young lady?”
“I don’t know. I guess he’s about thirty-eight.”
“Well a man can be young at thirty-eight,” he protested. “Isn’t your father still young?”
“Daddy’s young
. But he’s serious.” She hesitated.
“Go on,” Halklite said. “Tell me about him. I’ll leave you to your lessons as soon as I finish my cigarette. But I think you ought to stay out of your father’s room while he’s ill.”
“Oh, I do.”
“You’re fond of your daddy?”
“Yes — everybody is.”
“Does he go around much?”
“Not much — Oh, he does though. He goes out to see Mama once a week. And he goes to walk half an hour when I go to bed. He starts out when I start to bed and then I call down to him when I hear him open the door coming in — pour dire bon soir.”
“You speak French?” She regretted that she had mentioned it, but she admitted, “I grew up in France.”
“So did your daddy, didn’t he?”
“Oh no, Daddy’s very American. He can’t even speak French much, really.”
Halklite stood up, made his decision suddenly, perhaps irrationally.
“You tell your father we want to put our account in his hands. Maybe that’ll cheer him up and help him get well. ‘Pan-Am-Tex.’ Can you remember that? He’ll understand.”
IX
It was April again and they walked in the zoo.
“It’s been a hard year, Jo.”
“I know that, Daddy. But look at the peacocks!”
“This is your education, Jo. It’s most of what you’ll ever know about life. You’ll understand later.”
“I know we’ve had bad times, Daddy. Everything’s better again, isn’t it? Look at the peacocks, mon pere. They don’t worry.”
“Well, if you insist, let’s sit on the bench and stare at them.”
Jo sat silent for a moment. Then she said:
“We were peacocks once, weren’t we?”
“What?”
“They probably have sorrows and troubles sometimes, when their tails don’t grow out.”
“I guess so. What school do you want to go to next year? You can have your choice.”
“That doesn’t seem to matter any more. Look at the peacock — Look! the one that’s trying to peck outside the cage. I love him — do you?”
Jason said, “After all, considering everything, it wasn’t such a bad year.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 342
