Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (397 page)

“An exceptionally brilliant match,” remarked Aunt Cal on the eve of the wedding, as she sat in her house on Montauk Point and clipped the notice for the cousins in Scotland, and then she added abstractedly, “All is forgiven.”

“Why, Cal!” cried Aunt Josephine. “What do you mean when you say all is forgiven? Fifi has never injured you in any way.”

“In the past nine years she has not seen fit to visit us here at Montauk Point, though we have invited her over and over again.”

“But I don’t blame her,” said Aunt Josephine, who was only thirty-one herself. “What would a young pretty girl do down here with all this sand?”

“We like the sand, Jo.”

“But we’re old maids, Cal, with no vices except cigarettes and double-dummy mah-jongg. Now Fifi, being young, naturally likes exciting, vicious things — late hours, dice playing, all the diversions we read about in these books.”

She waved her hand vaguely.

“I don’t blame her for not coming down here. If I were in her place —  — “

What unnatural ambitions lurked in Aunt Jo’s head were never disclosed, for the sentence remained unfinished. The front door of the house opened in an abrupt, startled way, and a young lady walked into the room in a dress marked “Paris, France.”

“Good evening, dear ladies,” she cried, smiling radiantly from one to the other. “I’ve come down here for an indefinite time in order to play in the sand.”

“Fifi!”

“Fifi!”

“Aunts!”

“But, my dear child,” cried Aunt Jo, “I thought this was the night of the bridal dinner.”

“It is,” admitted Fifi cheerfully. “But I didn’t go. I’m not going to the wedding either. I sent in my regrets today.”

It was all very vague; but it seemed, as far as her aunts could gather, that young Van Tyne was too perfect — whatever that meant. After much urging Fifi finally explained that he reminded her of an advertisement for a new car.

“A new car?” inquired Aunt Cal, wide eyed. “What new car?”

“Any new car.”

“Do you mean —  — “

Aunt Cal blushed.

“I don’t understand this new slang, but isn’t there some part of a car that’s called the — the clutch?”

“Oh, I like him physically,” remarked Fifi coolly. Her aunts started in unison. “But he was just —  — Oh, too perfect, too new; as if they’d fooled over him at the factory for a long time and put special curtains on him —  — “

Aunt Jo had visions of a black-leather sheik.

“ —  — and balloon tires and a permanent shave. He was too civilized for me, Aunt Cal.” She sighed. “I must be one of the rougher girls, after all.”

She was as immaculate and dainty sitting there as though she were the portrait of a young lady and about to be hung on the wall. But underneath her cheerfulness her aunts saw that she was in a state of hysterical excitement, and they persisted in suspecting that something more definite and shameful was the matter.

“But it isn’t,” insisted Fifi. “Our engagement was announced three months ago, and not a single chorus girl has sued George for breach of promise. Not one! He doesn’t use alcohol in any form except as hair tonic. Why, we’ve never even quarreled until today!”

“You’ve made a serious mistake,” said Aunt Cal.

Fifi nodded.

“I’m afraid I’ve broken the heart of the nicest man I ever met in my life, but it can’t be helped. Immaculate! Why, what’s the use of being immaculate when, no matter how hard you try, you can’t be half so immaculate as your husband? And tactful? George could introduce Mr. Trotzky to Mr. Rockefeller and there wouldn’t be a single blow. But after a certain point, I want to have all the tact in my family, and I told him so. I’ve never left a man practically at the church door before, so I’m going to stay here until everyone has had a chance to forget.”

And stay she did — rather to the surprise of her aunts, who expected that next morning she would rush wildly and remorsefully back to New York. She appeared at breakfast very calm and fresh and cool, and as though she had slept soundly all night, and spent the day reclining under a red parasol beside the sunny dunes, watching the Atlantic roll in from the east. Her aunts intercepted the evening paper and burnt it unseen in the open fire, under the impression that Fifi’s flight would be recorded in red headlines across the front page. They accepted the fact that Fifi was here, and except that Aunt Jo was inclined to go mah-jongg without a pair when she speculated on the too perfect man, their lives went along very much the same. But not quite the same.

“What’s the matter with that niece of yourn?” demanded the yardman gloomily of Aunt Josephine. “What’s a young pretty girl want to come and hide herself down here for?”

“My niece is resting,” declared Aunt Josephine stiffly.

“Them dunes ain’t good for wore-out people,” objected the yardman, soothing his head with his fingers. “There’s a monotoness about them. I seen her yesterday take her parasol and like to beat one down, she got so mad at it. Some day she’s going to notice how many of them there are, and all of a sudden go loony.” He sniffed. “And then what kind of a proposition we going to have on our hands?”

“That will do, Percy,” snapped Aunt Jo. “Go about your business. I want ten pounds of broken-up shells rolled into the front walk.”

“What’ll I do with that parasol?” he demanded. “I picked up the pieces.”

“It’s not my parasol,” said Aunt Jo tartly. “You can take the pieces and roll them into the front walk too.”

And so the June of Fifi’s abandoned honeymoon drifted away, and every morning her rubber shoes left wet footprints along a desolate shore at the end of nowhere. For a while she seemed to thrive on the isolation, and the sea wind blew her cheeks scarlet with health; but after a week had passed, her aunts saw that she was noticeably restless and less cheerful even than when she came.

“I’m afraid it’s getting on your nerves, my dear,” said Aunt Cal one particularly wild and windy afternoon. “We love to have you here, but we hate to see you looking so sad. Why don’t you ask your mother to take you to Europe for the summer?”

“Europe’s too dressed up,” objected Fifi wearily. “I like it here where everything’s rugged and harsh and rude, like the end of the world. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay longer.”

She stayed longer, and seemed to grow more and more melancholy as the days slipped by to the raucous calls of the gulls and the flashing tumult of the waves along the shore. Then one afternoon she returned at twilight from the longest of her long walks with a strange derelict of a man. And after one look at him her aunts thought that the gardener’s prophecy had come true and that solitude had driven Fifi mad at last.

II

He was a very ragged wreck of a man as he stood in the doorway on that summer evening, blinking into Aunt Cal’s eyes; rather like a beachcomber who had wandered accidentally out of a movie of the South Seas. In his hands he carried a knotted stick of a brutal, treacherous shape. It was a murderous-looking stick, and the sight of it caused Aunt Cal to shrink back a little into the room.

Fifi shut the door behind them and turned to her aunts as if this were the most natural occasion in the world.

“This is Mr. Hopkins,” she announced, and then turned to her companion for corroboration. “Or is it Hopwood?”

“Hopkins,” said the man hoarsely. “Hopkins.”

Fifi nodded cheerfully.

“I’ve asked Mr. Hopkins to dinner,” she said.

There was some dignity which Aunt Cal and Aunt Josephine had acquired, living here beside the proud sea, that would not let them show surprise. The man was a guest now; that was enough. But in their hearts all was turmoil and confusion. They would have been no more surprised had Fifi brought in a many-headed monster out of the Atlantic.

“Won’t you — won’t you sit down, Mr. Hopkins?” said Aunt Cal nervously.

Mr. Hopkins looked at her blankly for a moment, and then made a loud clicking sound in the back of his mouth. He took a step toward a chair and sank down on its gilt frailty as though he meant to annihilate it immediately. Aunt Cal and Aunt Josephine collapsed rather weakly on the sofa.

“Mr. Hopkins and I struck up an acquaintance on the beach,” explained Fifi. “He’s been spending the summer down here for his health.”

Mr. Hopkins fixed his eyes glassily on the two aunts.

“I come down for my health,” he said.

Aunt Cal made some small sound; but recovering herself quickly, joined Aunt Jo in nodding eagerly at the visitor, as if they deeply sympathized.

“Yeah,” he repeated cheerfully.

“He thought the sea air would make him well and strong again,” said Fifi eagerly. “That’s why he came down here. Isn’t that it, Mr. Hopkins?”

“You said it, sister,” agreed Mr. Hopkins, nodding.

“So you see, Aunt Cal,” smiled Fifi, “you and Aunt Jo aren’t the only two people who believe in the medicinal quality of this location.”

“No,” agreed Aunt Cal faintly. “There are — there are three of us now.”

Dinner was announced.

“Would you — would you” — Aunt Cal braced herself and looked Mr. Hopkins in the eye — “would you like to wash your hands before dinner?”

“Don’t mention it.” Mr. Hopkins waved his fingers at her carelessly.

They went in to dinner, and after some furtive backing and bumping due to the two aunts trying to keep as far as possible from Mr. Hopkins, sat down at table.

“Mr. Hopkins lives in the woods,” said Fifi. “He has a little house all by himself, where he cooks his own meals and does his own washing week in and week out.”

“How fascinating!” said Aunt Jo, looking searchingly at their guest for some signs of the scholarly recluse. “Have you been living near here for some time?”

“Not so long,” he answered with a leer. “But I’m stuck on it, see? I’ll maybe stay here till I rot.”

“Are you — do you live far away?” Aunt Cal was wondering what price she could get for the house at a forced sale, and how she and her sister could ever bear to move.

“Just a mile down the line… This is a pretty gal you got here,’’ he added, indicating their niece with his spoon.

“Why — yes.” The two ladies glanced uneasily at Fifi.

“Some day I’m going to pick her up and run away with her,” he added pleasantly.

Aunt Cal, with a heroic effort, switched the subject away from their niece. They discussed Mr. Hopkins’ shack in the woods. Mr. Hopkins liked it well enough, he confessed, except for the presence of minute animal life, a small fault in an otherwise excellent habitat.

After dinner Fifi and Mr. Hopkins went out to the porch, while her aunts sat side by side on the sofa turning over the pages of magazines and from time to time glancing at each other with stricken eyes. That a savage had a few minutes since been sitting at their dinner table, that he was now alone with their niece on the dark veranda — no such terrible adventure had ever been allotted to their prim, quiet lives before.

Aunt Cal determined that at nine, whatever the consequences, she would call Fifi inside; but she was saved this necessity, for after half an hour the young lady strolled in calmly and announced that Mr. Hopkins had gone home. They looked at her, speechless.

“Fifi!” groaned Aunt Cal. “My poor child! Sorrow and loneliness have driven you insane!”

“We understand, my dear,” said Aunt Jo, touching her handkerchief to her eyes. “It’s our fault for letting you stay. A few weeks in one of those rest-cure places, or perhaps even a good cabaret, will —  — “

“What do you mean?” Fifi looked from one to the other in surprise. “Do you mean you object to my bringing Mr. Hopkins here?”

Aunt Cal flushed a dull red and her lips shut tight together.

“ ‘Object’ is not the word. You find some horrible, brutal roustabout along the beach —  — “

She broke off and gave a little cry. The door had swung open suddenly and a hairy face was peering into the room.

“I left my stick.”

Mr. Hopkins discovered the unpleasant weapon leaning in the corner and withdrew as unceremoniously as he had come, banging the door shut behind him. Fifi’s aunt sat motionless until his footsteps left the porch. Then Aunt Cal went swiftly to the door and pulled down the latch.

“I don’t suppose he’ll try to rob us tonight,” she said grimly, “because he must know we’ll be prepared. But I’ll warn Percy to go around the yard several times during the night.”

“Rob you!” cried Fifi incredulously.

“Don’t excite yourself, Fifi,” commanded Aunt Cal. “Just rest quietly in that chair while I call up your mother.”

“I don’t want you to call up my mother.”

“Sit calmly and close your eyes and try to — try to count sheep jumping over a fence.”

“Am I never to see another man unless he has a cutaway coat on?” exclaimed Fifi with flashing eyes. “Is this the Dark Ages, or the century of — of illumination? Mr. Hopkins is one of the most attractive eggs I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Mr. Hopkins is a savage!” said Aunt Cal succinctly.

“Mr. Hopkins is a very attractive egg.”

“A very attractive what?”

“A very attractive egg.”

“Mr. Hopkins is a — a — an unspeakable egg,” proclaimed Aunt Cal, adopting Fifi’s locution.

“Just because he’s natural,” cried Fifi impatiently. “All right, I don’t care; he’s good enough for me.”

The situation, it seemed, was even worse than they thought. This was no temporary aberration; evidently Fifi, in the reaction from her recent fiance, was interested in this outrageous man. She had met him several days ago, she confessed, and she intended to see him tomorrow. They had a date to go walking.

The worst of it was that after Fifi had gone scornfully to bed, Aunt

Cal called up her mother — and found that her mother was not at home; her mother had gone to White Sulphur Springs and wouldn’t be home for a week. It left the situation definitely in the hands of Aunt Cal and Aunt Jo, and the situation came to a head the next afternoon at tea time, when Percy rushed in upon them excitedly through the kitchen door.

“Miss Marsden,” he exclaimed in a shocked, offended voice, “I want to give up my position!”

“Why, Percy!”

“I can’t help it. I lived here on the Point for more’n forty-five years, and I never seen such a sight as I seen just now.”