Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (251 page)

‘Better quit--better quit before you have to.’ He sat down with a long sigh of physical comfort and lit a cigarette. ‘Take it from a fellow who’s looked into the question scientifically. We can stand so much, and then--bang!’

‘If you’ll excuse me’--Roger made his voice as polite as possible--’I’m going upstairs and finish this work.’

‘Just as you like, Roger.’ George waved his hand carelessly. ‘It isn’t that I mind. I’m the friend of the family and I’d just as soon see the missus as the mister.’ He smiled playfully. ‘But if I were you, old boy, I’d put away my work and get a good night’s sleep.’

When Roger had spread out his materials on the bed upstairs he found that he could still hear the rumble and murmur of their voices through the thin floor. He began wondering what they found to talk about. As he plunged deeper into his work his mind had a tendency to revert sharply to his question, and several times he arose and paced nervously up and down the room.

The bed was ill adapted to his work. Several times the paper slipped from the board on which it rested, and the pencil punched through. Everything was wrong tonight. Letters and figures blurred before his eyes, and as an accompaniment to the beating of his temples came those persistent murmuring voices.

At ten he realized that he had done nothing for more than an hour, and with a sudden exclamation he gathered together his papers, replaced them in his portfolio, and went downstairs. They were sitting together on the sofa when he came in.

‘Oh, hello!’ cried Gretchen, rather unnecessarily, he thought. ‘We were just discussing you.’

‘Thank you,’ he answered ironically. ‘What particular part of my anatomy was under the scalpel?’

‘Your health,’ said Tompkins jovially.

‘My health’s all right,’ answered Roger shortly.

‘But you look at it so selfishly, old fella,’ cried Tompkins. ‘You only consider yourself in the matter. Don’t you think Gretchen has any rights? If you were working on a wonderful sonnet or a--a portrait of some madonna or something’--he glanced at Gretchen’s Titian hair--’why, then I’d say go ahead. But you’re not. It’s just some silly advertisement about how to sell Nobald’s hair tonic, and if all the hair tonic ever made was dumped into the ocean tomorrow the world wouldn’t be one bit the worse for it.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Roger angrily: ‘that’s not quite fair. I’m not kidding myself about the importance of my work--it’s just as useless as the stuff you do. But to Gretchen and me it’s just about the most important thing in the world.’

‘Are you implying that my work is useless?’ demanded Tompkins incredulously.

‘No; not if it brings happiness to some poor sucker of a pants manufacturer who doesn’t know how to spend his money.’

Tompkins and Gretchen exchanged a glance.

‘Oh-h-h!’ exclaimed Tompkins ironically. ‘I didn’t realize that all these years I’ve just been wasting my time.’

‘You’re a loafer,’ said Roger rudely.

‘Me?’ cried Tompkins angrily. ‘You call me a loafer because I have a little balance in my life and find time to do interesting things? Because I play hard as well as work hard and don’t let myself get to be a dull, tiresome drudge?’

Both men were angry now, and their voices had risen, though on Tompkins’ face there still remained the semblance of a smile.

‘What I object to,’ said Roger steadily, ‘is that for the last six weeks you seem to have done all your playing around here.’

‘Roger!’ cried Gretchen. ‘What do you mean by talking like that?’

‘Just what I said.’

‘You’ve just lost your temper.’ Tompkins lit a cigarette with ostentatious coolness. ‘You’re so nervous from overwork you don’t know what you’re saying. You’re on the verge of a nervous break--’

‘You get out of here!’ cried Roger fiercely. ‘You get out of here right now--before I throw you out!’

Tompkins got angrily to his feet.

‘You--you throw me out?’ he cried incredulously.

They were actually moving towards each other when Gretchen stepped between them, and grabbing Tompkins’ arm urged him towards the door.

‘He’s acting like a fool, George, but you better get out,’ she cried, groping in the hall for his hat.

‘He insulted me!’ shouted Tompkins. ‘He threatened to throw me out!’

‘Never mind, George,’ pleaded Gretchen. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Please go! I’ll see you at ten o’clock tomorrow.’

She opened the door.

‘You won’t see him at ten o’clock tomorrow,’ said Roger steadily. ‘He’s not coming to this house any more.’

Tompkins turned to Gretchen.

‘It’s his house,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps we’d better meet at mine.’

Then he was gone, and Gretchen had shut the door behind him. Her eyes were full of angry tears.

‘See what you’ve done!’ she sobbed. ‘The only friend I had, the only person in the world who liked me enough to treat me decently, is insulted by my husband in my own house.’

She threw herself on the sofa and began to cry passionately into the pillows.

‘He brought it on himself,’ said Roger stubbornly, ‘I’ve stood as much as my self-respect will allow. I don’t want you going out with him any more.’

‘I will go out with him!’ cried Gretchen wildly. ‘I’ll go out with him all I want! Do you think it’s any fun living here with you?’

‘Gretchen,’ he said coldly, ‘get up and put on your hat and coat and go out that door and never come back!’

Her mouth fell slightly ajar.

‘But I don’t want to get out,’ she said dazedly.

‘Well, then, behave yourself.’ And he added in a gentler voice: ‘I thought you were going to sleep for this forty days.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she cried bitterly, ‘easy enough to say! But I’m tired of sleeping.’ She got up, faced him defiantly. ‘And what’s more, I’m going riding with George Tompkins tomorrow.’

‘You won’t go out with him if I have to take you to New York and sit you down in my office until I get through.’

She looked at him with rage in her eyes.

‘I hate you,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’d like to take all the work you’ve done and tear it up and throw it in the fire. And just to give you something to worry about tomorrow, I probably won’t be here when you get back.’

She got up from the sofa, and very deliberately looked at her flushed, tear-stained face in the mirror. Then she ran upstairs and slammed herself into the bedroom.

Automatically Roger spread out his work on the living-room table. The bright colours of the designs, the vivid ladies--Gretchen had posed for one of them--holding orange ginger ale or glistening silk hosiery, dazzled his mind into a sort of coma. His restless crayon moved here and there over the pictures, shifting a block of letters half an inch to the right, trying a dozen blues for a cool blue, and eliminating the word that made a phrase anaemic and pale. Half an hour passed--he was deep in the work now; there was no sound in the room but the velvety scratch of the crayon over the glossy board.

After a long while he looked at his watch--it was after three. The wind had come up outside and was rushing by the house corners in loud, alarming swoops, like a heavy body falling through space. He stopped his work and listened. He was not tired now, but his head felt as if it was covered with bulging veins like those pictures that hang in doctors’ offices showing a body stripped of decent skin. He put his hands to his head and felt it all over. It seemed to him that on his temple the veins were knotty and brittle around an old scar.

Suddenly he began to be afraid. A hundred warnings he had heard swept into his mind. People did wreck themselves with overwork, and his body and brain were of the same vulnerable and perishable stuff. For the first time he found himself envying George Tompkins’ calm nerves and healthy routine. He arose and began pacing the room in a panic.

‘I’ve got to sleep,’ he whispered to himself tensely. ‘Otherwise I’m going crazy.’

He rubbed his hand over his eyes, and returned to the table to put up his work, but his fingers were shaking so that he could scarcely grasp the board. The sway of a bare branch against the window made him start and cry out. He sat down on the sofa and tried to think.

‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ the clock said. ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’

‘I can’t stop,’ he answered aloud. ‘I can’t afford to stop.’

Listen! Why, there was the wolf at the door now! He could hear its sharp claws scrape along the varnished woodwork. He jumped up, and running to the front door flung it open; then started back with a ghastly cry. An enormous wolf was standing on the porch, glaring at him with red, malignant eyes. As he watched it the hair bristled on its neck; it gave a low growl and disappeared in the darkness. Then Roger realized with a silent, mirthless laugh that it was the police dog from over the way.

Dragging his limbs wearily into the kitchen, he brought the alarm-clock into the living-room and set it for seven. Then he wrapped himself in his overcoat, lay down on the sofa and fell immediately into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

When he awoke the light was still shining feebly, but the room was the grey colour of a winter morning. He got up, and looking anxiously at his hands found to his relief that they no longer trembled. He felt much better. Then he began to remember in detail the events of the night before, and his brow drew up again in three shallow wrinkles. There was work ahead of him, twenty-four hours of work; and Gretchen, whether she wanted to or not, must sleep for one more day.

Roger’s mind glowed suddenly as if he had just thought of a new advertising idea. A few minutes later he was hurrying through the sharp morning air to Kingsley’s drug-store.

‘Is Mr Kingsley down yet?’

The druggist’s head appeared around the corner of the prescription-room.

‘I wonder if I can talk to you alone.’

At 7.30, back home again, Roger walked into his own kitchen. The general housework girl had just arrived and was taking off her hat.

‘Bebé’--he was not on familiar terms with her; this was her name--’I want you to cook Mrs Halsey’s breakfast right away. I’ll take it up myself.’

It struck Bebé that this was an unusual service for so busy a man to render his wife, but if she had seen his conduct when he had carried the tray from the kitchen she would have been even more surprised. For he set it down on the dining room table and put into the coffee half a teaspoonful of a white substance that was not powdered sugar. Then he mounted the stairs and opened the door of the bedroom.

Gretchen woke up with a start, glanced at the twin bed which had not been slept in, and bent on Roger a glance of astonishment, which changed to contempt when she saw the breakfast in his hand. She thought he was bringing it as a capitulation.

‘I don’t want any breakfast,’ she said coldly, and his heart sank, ‘except some coffee.’

‘No breakfast?’ Roger’s voice expressed disappointment

‘I said I’d take some coffee.’

Roger discreetly deposited the tray on a table beside the bed and returned quickly to the kitchen.

‘We’re going away until tomorrow afternoon,’ he told Bebé, ‘and I want to close up the house right now. So you just put on your hat and go home.’

He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to eight, and he wanted to catch the 8.10 train. He waited five minutes and then tiptoed softly upstairs and into Gretchen’s room. She was sound asleep. The coffee cup was empty save for black dregs and a film of thin brown paste on the bottom. He looked at her rather anxiously, but her breathing was regular and clear.

From the closet he took a suitcase and very quickly began filling it with her shoes--street shoes, evening slippers, rubber-soled oxfords--he had not realized that she owned so many pairs. When he closed the suitcase it was bulging.

He hesitated a minute, took a pair of sewing scissors from a box, and following the telephone-wire until it went out of sight behind the dresser, severed it in one neat clip. He jumped as there was a soft knock at the door. It was the nursemaid. He had forgotten her existence.

‘Mrs Halsey and I are going up to the city till tomorrow,’ he said glibly. ‘Take Maxy to the beach and have lunch there. Stay all day.’

Back in the room, a wave of pity passed over him. Gretchen seemed suddenly lovely and helpless, sleeping there. It was somehow terrible to rob her young life of a day. He touched her hair with his fingers, and as she murmured something in her dream he leaned over and kissed her bright cheek. Then he picked up the suitcase full of shoes, locked the door, and ran briskly down the stairs.

III

By five o’clock that afternoon the last package of cards for Garrod’s shoes had been sent by messenger to H. G. Garrod at the Biltmore Hotel. He was to give a decision next morning. At 5.30 Roger’s stenographer tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Mr Golden, the superintendent of the building, to see you.’

Roger turned around dazedly.

‘Oh, how do?’

Mr Golden came directly to the point. If Mr Halsey intended to keep the office any longer, the little oversight about the rent had better be remedied right away.

‘Mr Golden,’ said Roger wearily, ‘everything’ll be all right tomorrow. If you worry me now maybe you’ll never get your money. After tomorrow nothing’ll matter.’

Mr Golden looked at the tenant uneasily. Young men sometimes did away with themselves when business went wrong. Then his eye fell unpleasantly on the initialled suitcase beside the desk.

‘Going on a trip?’ he asked pointedly.

‘What? Oh, no. That’s just some clothes.’

‘Clothes, eh? Well, Mr Halsey, just to prove that you mean what you say, suppose you let me keep that suitcase until tomorrow noon.’

‘Help yourself.’

Mr Golden picked it up with a deprecatory gesture.

‘Just a matter of form,’ he remarked.

‘I understand,’ said Roger, swinging around to his desk. ‘Good afternoon.’

Mr Golden seemed to feel that the conversation should close on a softer key.

‘And don’t work too hard, Mr Halsey. You don’t want to have a nervous break--’

‘No,’ shouted Roger, ‘I don’t. But I will if you don’t leave me alone.’

As the door closed behind Mr Golden, Roger’s stenographer turned sympathetically around.