Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (176 page)

“No,” interrupted Marcia emphatically. “And you’re a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me.”

Horace stopped quickly in front of her.

“Why do you want me to kiss you?” he asked intently, “Do you just go round kissing people?”

“Why, yes,” admitted Marcia, unruffled. “‘At’s all life is. Just going round kissing people.”

“Well,” replied Horace emphatically, “I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn’t just that, and in the second place. I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits. This year I’ve got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty —  — “

Marcia nodded understandingly.

“Do you ever have any fun?” she asked.

“What do you mean by fun?”

“See here,” said Marcia sternly, “I like you, Omar, but I wish you’d talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever had any fun.”

Horace shook his head.

“Later, perhaps,” he answered. “You see I’m a plan. I’m an experiment. I don’t say that I don’t get tired of it sometimes — I do. Yet — oh, I can’t explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn’t be fun to me.”

“Please explain.”

Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him.

“Please explain.”

Horace turned.

“If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn’t in?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Very well, then. Here’s my history: I was a ‘why’ child. I wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear trouble — seven operations between the age of nine and twelve. Of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.

“I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because I couldn’t help it. My chief associates were professors, and I took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a freak; I decided that some one had made a bad mistake. Still as I’d gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton Laurier — with Bergsonian trimmings — and I’ll be eighteen years old in two months. That’s all.”

“Whew!” exclaimed Marcia. “That’s enough! You do a neat job with the parts of speech.”

“Satisfied?”

“No, you haven’t kissed me.”

“It’s not in my programme,” demurred Horace. “Understand that I don’t pretend to be above physical things. They have their place, but —  — “

“Oh, don’t be so darned reasonable!”

“I can’t help it.”

“I hate these slot-machine people.”

“I assure you I —  — “ began Horace.

“Oh shut up!”

“My own rationality —  — “

“I didn’t say anything about your nationality. You’re Amuricun, ar’n’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s O.K. with me. I got a notion I want to see you do something that isn’t in your highbrow programme. I want to see if a what-ch-call-em with Brazilian trimmings — that thing you said you were — can be a little human.”

Horace shook his head again.

“I won’t kiss you.”

“My life is blighted,” muttered Marcia tragically. “I’m a beaten woman. I’ll go through life without ever having a kiss with Brazilian trimmings.” She sighed. “Anyways, Omar, will you come and see my show?”

“What show?”

“I’m a wicked actress from ‘Home James’!”

“Light opera?”

“Yes — at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian rice-planter. That might interest you.”

“I saw ‘The Bohemian Girl’ once,” reflected Horace aloud. “I enjoyed it — to some extent —  — “

“Then you’ll come?”

“Well, I’m — I’m —  — “

“Oh, I know — you’ve got to run down to Brazil for the week-end.”

“Not at all. I’d be delighted to come —  — “

Marcia clapped her hands.

“Goodyforyou! I’ll mail you a ticket — Thursday night?”

“Why, I —  — “

“Good! Thursday night it is.”

She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his shoulders.

“I like you, Omar. I’m sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you’d be sort of frozen, but you’re a nice boy.”

He eyed her sardonically.

“I’m several thousand generations older than you are.”

“You carry your age well.”

They shook hands gravely.

“My name’s Marcia Meadow,” she said emphatically. “‘Member it — Marcia Meadow. And I won’t tell Charlie Moon you were in.”

An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper banister: “Oh, say —  — “

She stopped and looked up — made out a vague form leaning over.

“Oh, say!” called the prodigy again. “Can you hear me?”

“Here’s your connection Omar.”

“I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.”

“Impression? Why, you didn’t even give me the kiss! Never fret — so long.”

Two doors near her opened curiously at the sound of a feminine voice. A tentative cough sounded from above. Gathering her skirts, Marcia dived wildly down the last flight, and was swallowed up in the murky Connecticut air outside.

Up-stairs Horace paced the floor of his study. From time to time he glanced toward Berkeley waiting there in suave dark-red reputability, an open book lying suggestively on his cushions. And then he found that his circuit of the floor was bringing him each time nearer to Hume. There was something about Hume that was strangely and inexpressibly different. The diaphanous form still seemed hovering near, and had Horace sat there he would have felt as if he were sitting on a lady’s lap. And though Horace couldn’t have named the quality of difference, there was such a quality — quite intangible to the speculative mind, but real, nevertheless. Hume was radiating something that in all the two hundred years of his influence he had never radiated before.

Hume was radiating attar of roses.

II

On Thursday night Horace Tarbox sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row and witnessed “Home James.” Oddly enough he found that he was enjoying himself. The cynical students near him were annoyed at his audible appreciation of time-honored jokes in the Hammerstein tradition. But Horace was waiting with anxiety for Marcia Meadow singing her song about a Jazz-bound Blundering Blimp. When she did appear, radiant under a floppity flower-faced hat, a warm glow settled over him, and when the song was over he did not join in the storm of applause. He felt somewhat numb.

In the intermission after the second act an usher materialized beside him, demanded to know if he were Mr. Tarbox, and then handed him a note written in a round adolescent band. Horace read it in some confusion, while the usher lingered with withering patience in the aisle.

“Dear Omar: After the show I always grow an awful hunger. If you want to satisfy it for me in the Taft Grill just communicate your answer to the big-timber guide that brought this and oblige.

Your friend,
Marcia Meadow.”

“Tell her,” — he coughed — “tell her that it will be quite all right. I’ll meet her in front of the theatre.”

The big-timber guide smiled arrogantly.

“I giss she meant for you to come roun’ t’ the stage door.”

“Where — where is it?”

“Ou’side. Tunayulef. Down ee alley.”

“What?”

“Ou’side. Turn to y’ left! Down ee alley!”

The arrogant person withdrew. A freshman behind Horace snickered.

Then half an hour later, sitting in the Taft Grill opposite the hair that was yellow by natural pigment, the prodigy was saying an odd thing.

“Do you have to do that dance in the last act?” he was asking earnestly — “I mean, would they dismiss you if you refused to do it?”

Marcia grinned.

“It’s fun to do it. I like to do it.”

And then Horace came out with a
faux pas
.

“I should think you’d detest it,” he remarked succinctly. “The people behind me were making remarks about your bosom.”

Marcia blushed fiery red.

“I can’t help that,” she said quickly. “The dance to me is only a sort of acrobatic stunt. Lord, it’s hard enough to do! I rub liniment into my shoulders for an hour every night.”

“Do you have — fun while you’re on the stage?”

“Uh-huh — sure! I got in the habit of having people look at me, Omar, and I like it.”

“Hm!” Horace sank into a brownish study.

“How’s the Brazilian trimmings?”

“Hm!” repeated Horace, and then after a pause: “Where does the play go from here?”

“New York.”

“For how long?”

“All depends. Winter — maybe.”

“Oh!”

“Coming up to lay eyes on me, Omar, or aren’t you int’rested? Not as nice here, is it, as it was up in your room? I wish we was there now.”

“I feel idiotic in this place,” confessed Horace, looking round him nervously.

“Too bad! We got along pretty well.”

At this he looked suddenly so melancholy that she changed her tone, and reaching over patted his hand.

“Ever take an actress out to supper before?”

“No,” said Horace miserably, “and I never will again. I don’t know why I came to-night. Here under all these lights and with all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out of my sphere. I don’t know what to talk to you about.”

“We’ll talk about me. We talked about you last time.”

“Very well.”

“Well, my name really is Meadow, but my first name isn’t Marcia — it’s Veronica. I’m nineteen. Question — how did the girl make her leap to the footlights? Answer — she was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel’s tea-room in Trenton. She started going with a guy named Robbins, a singer in the Trent House cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night. Then we went to New York with meet-my-friend letters thick as a pile of napkins.

“In two days we landed a job at Divinerries’, and I learned to shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries’ six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his column — said that the style was like Carlyle’s, only more rugged and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a chance as an ingénue in a regular show. I took it — and here I am, Omar.”

When she finished they sat for a moment in silence she draping the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for him to speak.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly.

Marcia’s eyes hardened.

“What’s the idea? Am I making you sick?”

“No, but I don’t like it here. I don’t like to be sitting here with you.”

Without another word Marcia signalled for the waiter.

“What’s the check?” she demanded briskly “My part — the rabbit and the ginger ale.”

Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it.

“See here,” he began, “I intended to pay for yours too. You’re my guest.”

With a half-sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from the room. Horace, his face a document in bewilderment, laid a bill down and followed her out, up the stairs and into the lobby. He overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other.

“See here,” he repeated “You’re my guest. Have I said something to offend you?”

After an instant of wonder Marcia’s eyes softened.

“You’re a rude fella!” she said slowly. “Don’t you know you’re rude?”

“I can’t help it,” said Horace with a directness she found quite disarming. “You know I like you.”

“You said you didn’t like being with me.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“Why not?” Fire blazed suddenly from the gray forests of his eyes.

“Because I didn’t. I’ve formed the habit of liking you. I’ve been thinking of nothing much else for two days.”

“Well, if you —  — “

“Wait a minute,” he interrupted. “I’ve got something to say. It’s this: in six weeks I’ll be eighteen years old. When I’m eighteen years old I’m coming up to New York to see you. Is there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot of people in the room?”

“Sure!” smiled Marcia. “You can come up to my ‘partment. Sleep on the couch if you want to.”

“I can’t sleep on couches,” he said shortly. “But I want to talk to you.”

“Why, sure,” repeated Marcia, “in my ‘partment.”

In his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets.

“All right — just so I can see you alone. I want to talk to you as we talked up in my room.”

“Honey boy,” cried Marcia, laughing, “is it that you want to kiss me?”

“Yes,” Horace almost shouted. “I’ll kiss you if you want me to.”

The elevator man was looking at them reproachfully. Marcia edged toward the grated door.

“I’ll drop you a post-card,” she said.

Horace’s eyes were quite wild.

“Send me a post-card! I’ll come up any time after January first. I’ll be eighteen then.”

And as she stepped into the elevator he coughed enigmatically, yet with a vague challenge, at the calling, and walked quickly away.

III

He was there again. She saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience — down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An instinctive defiance rose within her.