Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (371 page)

“Who’s the blond-haired one who looks like a Greek god?”

“That’s Beau Lebaume. He’s going to Yale, too, if the girls will let him leave town. Then there’s the other Kavenaugh, the stocky one--he’s going to be an even better athlete than his brother. And finally there’s my youngest, Charley; he’s sixteen,” Schofield sighed reluctantly. “But I guess you’ve heard all the boasting you can stand.”

“No, tell me more about them--I’m interested. Are they anything more than athletes?”

“Why, there’s not a dumb one in the lot, except maybe Beau Lebaume; but you can’t help liking him anyhow. And every one of them’s a natural leader. I remember a few years ago a tough gang tried to start something with them, calling them ‘candies’--well, that gang must be running yet. They sort of remind me of young knights. And what’s the matter with their being athletes? I seem to remember you stroking the boat at New London, and that didn’t keep you from consolidating railroad systems and--”

“I took up rowing because I had a sick stomach,” said Barnes. “By the way, are these boys all rich?”

“Well, the Kavenaughs are, of course; and my boys will have something.”

Barnes’ eyes twinkled.

“So I suppose since they won’t have to worry about money, they’re brought up to serve the State,” he suggested. “You spoke of one of your sons having a political talent and their all being like young knights, so I suppose they’ll go out for public life and the army and navy.”

“I don’t know about that,” Schofield’s voice sounded somewhat alarmed. “I think their fathers would be pretty disappointed if they didn’t go into business. That’s natural, isn’t it?”

“It’s natural, but it isn’t very romantic,” said Barnes good-humoredly.

“You’re trying to get my goat,” said Schofield. “Well, if you can match that--”

“They’re certainly an ornamental bunch,” admitted Barnes. “They’ve got what you call glamour. They certainly look like the cigarette ads in the magazine; but--”

“But you’re an old sour-belly,” interrupted Schofield. “I’ve explained that these boys are all well-rounded. My son Wister led his class at school this year, but I was a darn’ sight prouder that he got the medal for best all-around boy.”

The two men faced each other with the uncut cards of the future on the table before them. They had been in college together, and were friends of many years’ standing. Barnes was childless, and Schofield was inclined to attribute his lack of enthusiasm to that.

“I somehow can’t see them setting the world on fire, doing better than their fathers,” broke out Barnes suddenly. “The more charming they are, the harder it’s going to be for them. In the East people are beginning to realize what wealthy boys are up against. Match them? Maybe not now.” He leaned forward, his eyes lighting up. “But I could pick six boys from any high-school in Cleveland, give them an education, and I believe that ten years from this time your young fellows here would be utterly outclassed. There’s so little demanded of them, so little expected of them--what could be softer than just to have to go on being charming and athletic?”

“I know your idea,” objected Schofield scoffingly. “You’d go to a big municipal high-school and pick out the six most brilliant scholars--”

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do--” Barnes noticed that he had unconsciously substituted “I will” for “I would,” but he didn’t correct himself. “I’ll go to the little town in Ohio, where I was born--there probably aren’t fifty or sixty boys in the high-school there, and I wouldn’t be likely to find six geniuses out of that number.”

“And what?”

“I’ll give them a chance. If they fail, the chance is lost. That is a serious responsibility, and they’ve got to take it seriously. That’s what these boys haven’t got--they’re only asked to be serious about trivial things.” He thought for a moment. “I’m going to do it.”

“Do what?”

“I’m going to see.”

A fortnight later he was back in the small town in Ohio where he had been born, where, he felt, the driving emotions of his own youth still haunted the quiet streets. He interviewed the principal of the high-school, who made suggestions; then by the, for Barnes, difficult means of making an address and afterward attending a reception, he got in touch with teachers and pupils. He made a donation to the school, and under cover of this found opportunities of watching the boys at work and at play.

It was fun--he felt his youth again. There were some boys that he liked immediately, and he began a weeding-out process, inviting them in groups of five or six to his mother’s house, rather like a fraternity rushing freshman. When a boy interested him, he looked up his record and that of his family--and at the end of a fortnight he had chosen five boys.

In the order in which he chose them, there was first Otto Schlach, a farmer’s son who had already displayed extraordinary mechanical aptitude and a gift for mathematics. Schlach was highly recommended by his teachers, and he welcomed the opportunity offered him of entering the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A drunken father left James Matsko as his only legacy to the town of Barnes’ youth. From the age of twelve, James had supported himself by keeping a newspaper-and-candy store with a three-foot frontage; and now at seventeen he was reputed to have saved five hundred dollars. Barnes found it difficult to persuade him to study money and banking at Columbia, for Matsko was already assured of his ability to make money. But Barnes had prestige as the town’s most successful son, and he convinced Matsko that otherwise he would lack frontage, like his own place of business.

Then there was Jack Stubbs, who had lost an arm hunting, but in spite of this handicap played on the high-school football team. He was not among the leaders in studies; he had developed no particular bent; but the fact that he had overcome that enormous handicap enough to play football--to tackle and to catch punts--convinced Barnes that no obstacles would stand in Jack Stubbs’ way.

The fourth selection was George Winfield, who was almost twenty. Because of the death of his father, he had left school at fourteen, helped to support his family for four years, and then, things being better, he had come back to finish high-school. Barnes felt, therefore, that Winfield would place a serious value on an education.

Next came a boy whom Barnes found personally antipathetic. Louis Ireland was at once the most brilliant scholar and most difficult boy at school. Untidy, insubordinate and eccentric, Louis drew scurrilous caricatures behind his Latin book, but when called upon inevitably produced a perfect recitation. There was a big talent nascent somewhere in him--it was impossible to leave him out.

The last choice was the most difficult. The remaining boys were mediocrities, or at any rate they had so far displayed no qualities that set them apart. For a time Barnes, thinking patriotically of his old university, considered the football captain, a virtuosic halfback who would have been welcome on any Eastern squad; but that would have destroyed the integrity of the idea.

He finally chose a younger boy, Gordon Vandervere, of a rather higher standing than the others. Vandervere was the handsomest and one of the most popular boys in school. He had been intended for college, but his father, a harassed minister, was glad to see the way made easy.

Barnes was content with himself; he felt godlike in being able to step in to mold these various destinies. He felt as if they were his own sons, and he telegraphed Schofield in Minneapolis:

HAVE CHOSEN HALF A DOZEN OF THE OTHER, AND AM BACKING THEM AGAINST THE WORLD.

And now, after all this biography, the story begins. . . .

The continuity of the frieze is broken. Young Charley Schofield had been expelled from Hotchkiss. It was a small but painful tragedy--he and four other boys, nice boys, popular boys, broke the honor system as to smoking. Charley’s father felt the matter deeply, varying between disappointment about Charley and anger at the school. Charley came home to Minneapolis in a desperate humor and went to the country day-school while it was decided what he was to do.

It was still undecided in midsummer. When school was over, he spent his time playing golf, or dancing at the Minnekada Club--he was a handsome boy of eighteen, older than his age, with charming manners, with no serious vices, but with a tendency to be easily influenced by his admirations. His principal admiration at the time was Gladys Irving, a young married woman scarcely two years older than himself. He rushed her at the club dances, and felt sentimentally about her, though Gladys on her part was in love with her husband and asked from Charley only the confirmation of her own youth and charm that a belle often needs after her first baby.

Sitting out with her one night on the veranda of the Lafayette Club, Charley felt a necessity to boast to her, to pretend to be more experienced, and so more potentially protective.

“I’ve seen a lot of life for my age,” he said. “I’ve done things I couldn’t even tell you about.”

Gladys didn’t answer.

“In fact last week--” he began, and thought better of it. “In any case I don’t think I’ll go to Yale next year--I’d have to go East right away, and tutor all summer. If I don’t go, there’s a job open in Father’s office; and after Wister goes back to college in the fall, I’ll have the roadster to myself.”

“I thought you were going to college,” Gladys said coldly.

“I was. But I’ve thought things over, and now I don’t know. I’ve usually gone with older boys, and I feel older than boys my age. I like older girls, for instance.” When Charley looked at her then suddenly, he seemed unusually attractive to her--it would be very pleasant to have him here, to cut in on her at dances all summer. But Gladys said:

“You’d be a fool to stay here.”

“Why?”

“You started something--you ought to go through with it. A few years running around town, and you won’t be good for anything.”

“You think so,” he said indulgently.

Gladys didn’t want to hurt him or to drive him away from her; yet she wanted to say something stronger.

“Do you think I’m thrilled when you tell me you’ve had a lot of dissipated experience? I don’t see how anybody could claim to be your friend and encourage you in that. If I were you, I’d at least pass your examinations for college. Then they can’t say you just lay down after you were expelled from school.”

“You think so?” Charley said, unruffled, and in his grave, precocious manner, as though he were talking to a child. But she had convinced him, because he was in love with her and the moon was around her.
“Oh me, oh my, oh you,”
was the last music they had danced to on the Wednesday before, and so it was one of those times.

Had Gladys let him brag to her, concealing her curiosity under a mask of companionship, if she had accepted his own estimate of himself as a man formed, no urging of his father’s would have mattered. As it was, Charley passed into college that fall, thanks to a girl’s tender reminiscences and her own memories of the sweetness of youth’s success in young fields.

And it was well for his father that he did. If he had not, the catastrophe of his older brother Wister that autumn would have broken Schofield’s heart. The morning after the Harvard game the New York papers carried a headline:

YALE BOYS AND FOLLIES GIRLS IN

MOTOR CRASH NEAR RYE

IRENE DALEY IN GREENWICH HOSPITAL THREATENS BEAUTY SUIT

MILLIONAIRE’S SON INVOLVED

The four boys came up before the dean a fortnight later. Wister Schofield, who had driven the car, was called first.

“It was not your car, Mr. Schofield,” the dean said. “It was Mr. Kavenaugh’s car, wasn’t it?”

“Yes sir.”

“How did you happen to be driving?”

“The girls wanted me to. They didn’t feel safe.”

“But you’d been drinking too, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, but not so much.”

“Tell me this,” asked the dean: “Haven’t you ever driven a car when you’d been drinking--perhaps drinking even more than you were that night?”

“Why--perhaps once or twice, but I never had any accidents. And this was so clearly unavoidable--”

“Possibly,” the dean agreed; “but we’ll have to look at it this way: Up to this time you had no accidents even when you deserved to have them. Now you’ve had one when you didn’t deserve it. I don’t want you to go out of here feeling that life or the University or I myself haven’t given you a square deal, Mr. Schofield. But the newspapers have given this a great deal of prominence, and I’m afraid that the University will have to dispense with your presence.”

Moving along the frieze to Howard Kavenaugh, the dean’s remarks to him were substantially the same.

“I am particularly sorry in your case, Mr. Kavenaugh. Your father has made substantial gifts to the University, and I took pleasure in watching you play hockey with your usual brilliance last winter.”

Howard Kavenaugh left the office with uncontrollable tears running down his cheeks.

Since Irene Daley’s suit for her ruined livelihood, her ruined beauty, was directed against the owner and the driver of the automobile, there were lighter sentences for the other two occupants of the car. Beau Lebaume came into the dean’s office with his arm in a sling and his handsome head swathed in bandages and was suspended for the remainder of the current year. He took it jauntily and said good-by to the dean with as cheerful a smile as could show through the bandages. The last case, however, was the most difficult. George Winfield, who had entered high-school late because work in the world had taught him the value of an education, came in looking at the floor.

“I can’t understand your participation in this affair,” said the dean. “I know your benefactor, Mr. Barnes, personally. He told me how you left school to go to work, and how you came back to it four years later to continue your education, and he felt that your attitude toward life was essentially serious. Up to this point you have a good record here at New Haven, but it struck me several months ago that you were running with a rather gay crowd, boys with a great deal of money to spend. You are old enough to realize that they couldn’t possibly give you as much in material ways as they took away from you in others. I’ve got to give you a year’s suspension. If you come back, I have every hope you’ll justify the confidence that Mr. Barnes reposed in you.”