Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (191 page)

She was quite surprised to see him.

“Why — hello,” she said. Samuel could tell that she was just pleasantly frightened.

“I thought we might lunch together. It’s so dull eating with a lot of men.”

She hesitated.

“Why, I suppose there’s no harm in it. How could there be!”

It occurred to her that her husband should have taken lunch with her — but he was generally so hurried at noon. She told Samuel all about him: he was a little smaller than Samuel, but, oh,
much
better-looking. He was a book-keeper and not making a lot of money, but they were very happy and expected to be rich within three or four years.

Samuel’s grass-widow had been in a quarrelsome mood for three or four weeks, and through contrast, he took an accentuated pleasure in this meeting; so fresh was she, and earnest, and faintly adventurous. Her name was Marjorie.

They made another engagement; in fact, for a month they lunched together two or three times a week. When she was sure that her husband would work late Samuel took her over to New Jersey on the ferry, leaving her always on the tiny front porch, after she had gone in and lit the gas to use the security of his masculine presence outside. This grew to be a ceremony — and it annoyed him. Whenever the comfortable glow fell out through the front windows, that was his
congé
; yet he never suggested coming in and Marjorie didn’t invite him.

Then, when Samuel and Marjorie had reached a stage in which they sometimes touched each other’s arms gently, just to show that they were very good friends, Marjorie and her husband had one of those ultrasensitive, supercritical quarrels that couples never indulge in unless they care a great deal about each other. It started with a cold mutton-chop or a leak in the gas-jet — and one day Samuel found her in Taine’s, with dark shadows under her brown eyes and a terrifying pout.

By this time Samuel thought he was in love with Marjorie — so he played up the quarrel for all it was worth. He was her best friend and patted her hand — and leaned down close to her brown curls while she whispered in little sobs what her husband had said that morning; and he was a little more than her best friend when he took her over to the ferry in a hansom.

“Marjorie,” he said gently, when he left her, as usual, on the porch, “if at any time you want to call on me, remember that I am always waiting, always waiting.”

She nodded gravely and put both her hands in his. “I know,” she said. “I know you’re my friend, my best friend.”

Then she ran into the house and he watched there until the gas went on.

For the next week Samuel was in a nervous turmoil. Some persistently rational strain warned him that at bottom he and Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see to the bottom. Every dream and desire told him that he loved Marjorie, wanted her, had to have her.

The quarrel developed. Marjorie’s husband took to staying in New York until late at night, came home several times disagreeably overstimulated, and made her generally miserable. They must have had too much pride to talk it out — for Marjorie’s husband was, after all, pretty decent — so it drifted on from one misunderstanding to another. Marjorie kept coming more and more to Samuel; when a woman can accept masculine sympathy at is much more satisfactory to her than crying to another girl. But Marjorie didn’t realize how much she had begun to rely on him, how much he was part of her little cosmos.

One night, instead of turning away when Marjorie went in and lit the gas, Samuel went in, too, and they sat together on the sofa in the little parlor. He was very happy. He envied their home, and he felt that the man who neglected such a possession out of stubborn pride was a fool and unworthy of his wife. But when he kissed Marjorie for the first time she cried softly and told him to go. He sailed home on the wings of desperate excitement, quite resolved to fan this spark of romance, no matter how big the blaze or who was burned. At the time he considered that his thoughts were unselfishly of her; in a later perspective he knew that she had meant no more than the white screen in a motion picture: it was just Samuel — blind, desirous.

Next day at Taine’s, when they met for lunch, Samuel dropped all pretense and made frank love to her. He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms and feel that she was very little and pathetic and lovable. . . . He took her home, and this time they kissed until both their hearts beat high — words and phrases formed on his lips.

And then suddenly there were steps on the porch — a hand tried the outside door. Marjorie turned dead-white.

“Wait!” she whispered to Samuel, in a frightened voice, but in angry impatience at the interruption he walked to the front door and threw it open.

Every one has seen such scenes on the stage — seen them so often that when they actually happen people behave very much like actors. Samuel felt that he was playing a part and the lines came quite naturally: he announced that all had a right to lead their own lives and looked at Marjorie’s husband menacingly, as if daring him to doubt it. Marjorie’s husband spoke of the sanctity of the home, forgetting that it hadn’t seemed very holy to him lately; Samuel continued along the line of “the right to happiness”; Marjorie’s husband mentioned firearms and the divorce court. Then suddenly he stopped and scrutinized both of them — Marjorie in pitiful collapse on the sofa, Samuel haranguing the furniture in a consciously heroic pose.

“Go up-stairs, Marjorie,” he said, in a different tone.

“Stay where you are!” Samuel countered quickly.

Marjorie rose, wavered, and sat down, rose again and moved hesitatingly toward the stairs.

“Come outside,” said her husband to Samuel. “I want to talk to you.”

Samuel glanced at Marjorie, tried to get some message from her eyes; then he shut his lips and went out.

There was a bright moon and when Marjorie’s husband came down the steps Samuel could see plainly that he was suffering — but he felt no pity for him.

They stood and looked at each other, a few feet apart, and the husband cleared his throat as though it were a bit husky.

“That’s my wife,” he said quietly, and then a wild anger surged up inside him. “Damn you!” he cried — and hit Samuel in the face with all his strength.

In that second, as Samuel slumped to the ground, it flashed to him that he had been hit like that twice before, and simultaneously the incident altered like a dream — he felt suddenly awake. Mechanically he sprang to his feet and squared off. The other man was waiting, fists up, a yard away, but Samuel knew that though physically he had him by several inches and many pounds, he wouldn’t hit him. The situation had miraculously and entirely changed — a moment before Samuel had seemed to himself heroic; now he seemed the cad, the outsider, and Marjorie’s husband, silhouetted against the lights of the little house, the eternal heroic figure, the defender of his home.

There was a pause and then Samuel turned quickly away and went down the path for the last time.

IV

Of course, after the third blow Samuel put in several weeks at conscientious introspection. The blow years before at Andover had landed on his personal unpleasantness; the workman of his college days had jarred the snobbishness out of his system, and Marjorie’s husband had given a severe jolt to his greedy selfishness. It threw women out of his ken until a year later, when he met his future wife; for the only sort of woman worth while seemed to be the one who could be protected as Marjorie’s husband had protected her. Samuel could not imagine his grass-widow, Mrs. De Ferriac, causing any very righteous blows on her own account.

His early thirties found him well on his feet. He was associated with old Peter Carhart, who was in those days a national figure. Carhart’s physique was like a rough model for a statue of Hercules, and his record was just as solid — a pile made for the pure joy of it, without cheap extortion or shady scandal. He had been a great friend of Samuel’s father, but he watched the son for six years before taking him into his own office. Heaven knows how many things he controlled at that time — mines, railroads, banks, whole cities. Samuel was very close to him, knew his likes and dislikes, his prejudices, weaknesses and many strengths.

One day Carhart sent for Samuel and, closing the door of his inner office, offered him a chair and a cigar.

“Everything O. K., Samuel?” he asked.

“Why, yes.”

“I’ve been afraid you’re getting a bit stale.”

“Stale?” Samuel was puzzled.

“You’ve done no work outside the office for nearly ten years?”

“But I’ve had vacations, in the Adiron —  — “

Carhart waved this aside.

“I mean outside work. Seeing the things move that we’ve always pulled the strings of here.”

“No,” admitted Samuel; “I haven’t.”

“So,” he said abruptly “I’m going to give you an outside job that’ll take about a month.”

Samuel didn’t argue. He rather liked the idea and he made up his mind that, whatever it was, he would put it through just as Carhart wanted it. That was his employer’s greatest hobby, and the men around him were as dumb under direct orders as infantry subalterns.

“You’ll go to San Antonio and see Hamil,” continued Carhart. “He’s got a job on hand and he wants a man to take charge.”

Hamil was in charge of the Carhart interests in the Southwest, a man who had grown up in the shadow of his employer, and with whom, though they had never met, Samuel had had much official correspondence.

“When do I leave?”

“You’d better go to-morrow,” answered Carhart, glancing at the calendar. “That’s the 1st of May. I’ll expect your report here on the 1st of June.”

Next morning Samuel left for Chicago, and two days later he was facing Hamil across a table in the office of the Merchants’ Trust in San Antonio. It didn’t take long to get the gist of the thing. It was a big deal in oil which concerned the buying up of seventeen huge adjoining ranches. This buying up had to be done in one week, and it was a pure squeeze. Forces had been set in motion that put the seventeen owners between the devil and the deep sea, and Samuel’s part was simply to “handle” the matter from a little village near Pueblo. With tact and efficiency the right man could bring it off without any friction, for it was merely a question of sitting at the wheel and keeping a firm hold. Hamil, with an astuteness many times valuable to his chief, had arranged a situation that would give a much greater clear gain than any dealing in the open market. Samuel shook hands with Hamil, arranged to return in two weeks, and left for San Felipe, New Mexico.

It occurred to him, of course, that Carhart was trying him out. Hamil’s report on his handling of this might be a factor in something big for him, but even without that he would have done his best to put the thing through. Ten years in New York hadn’t made him sentimental and he was quite accustomed to finish everything he began — and a little bit more.

All went well at first. There was no enthusiasm, but each one of the seventeen ranchers concerned knew Samuel’s business, knew what he had behind him, and that they had as little chance of holding out as flies on a window-pane. Some of them were resigned — some of them cared like the devil, but they’d talked it over, argued it with lawyers and couldn’t see any possible loophole. Five of the ranches had oil, the other twelve were part of the chance, but quite as necessary to Hamil’s purpose, in any event.

Samuel soon saw that the real leader was an early settler named McIntyre, a man of perhaps fifty, gray-haired, clean-shaven, bronzed by forty New Mexico summers, and with those clear steady eye that Texas and New Mexico weather are apt to give. His ranch had not as yet shown oil, but it was in the pool, and if any man hated to lose his land McIntyre did. Every one had rather looked to him at first to avert the big calamity, and he had hunted all over the territory for the legal means with which to do it, but he had failed, and he knew it. He avoided Samuel assiduously, but Samuel was sure that when the day came for the signatures he would appear.

It came — a baking May day, with hot wave rising off the parched land as far as eyes could see, and as Samuel sat stewing in his little improvised office — a few chairs, a bench, and a wooden table — he was glad the thing was almost over. He wanted to get back East the worst way, and join his wife and children for a week at the seashore.

The meeting was set for four o’clock, and he was rather surprised at three-thirty when the door opened and McIntyre came in. Samuel could not help respecting the man’s attitude, and feeling a bit sorry for him. McIntyre seemed closely related to the prairies, and Samuel had the little flicker of envy that city people feel toward men who live in the open.

“Afternoon,” said McIntyre, standing in the open doorway, with his feet apart and his hands on his hips.

“Hello, Mr. McIntyre.” Samuel rose, but omitted the formality of offering his hand. He imagined the rancher cordially loathed him, and he hardly blamed him. McIntyre came in and sat down leisurely.

“You got us,” he said suddenly.

This didn’t seem to require any answer.

“When I heard Carhart was back of this,” he continued, “I gave up.”

“Mr. Carhart is —  — “ began Samuel, but McIntyre waved him silent.

“Don’t talk about the dirty sneak-thief!”

“Mr. McIntyre,” said Samuel briskly, “if this half-hour is to be devoted to that sort of talk —  — “

“Oh, dry up, young man,” McIntyre interrupted, “you can’t abuse a man who’d do a thing like this.”

Samuel made no answer.

“It’s simply a dirty filch. There just
are
skunks like him too big to handle.”

“You’re being paid liberally,” offered Samuel.

“Shut up!” roared McIntyre suddenly. “I want the privilege of talking.” He walked to the door and looked out across the land, the sunny, steaming pasturage that began almost at his feet and ended with the gray-green of the distant mountains. When he turned around his mouth was trembling.