Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (409 page)

“Come along,” she says finally, “I’ll take you part of the way.”

They go out through the kitchen and, eluding Joe Jakes, start across the campus. Outside the dormitory where Cupid rooms with his brother, she tries to turn back, but Cupid sits down stubbornly on a step and refuses to move.

“I want to be taken home.”

More to get rid of them than to oblige them she leads them upstairs and opens the door of the study shared by the two brothers.

It is a large room with cushioned seats under the leaded windows, arm chairs, work tables, many books and a piano. A bedroom leads out from either side. On the walls are some framed groups — football teams, committees, etc., but no girls’ photographs and no pennants. At present there are half a dozen people in the room — Mimi, her mother, Grace and Ben, who are cooking a Welsh Rarebit, and two other boys, one of whom is playing the piano. Almost as soon as Dolly enters a definite hostility comes into the air.

“Good evening,” says Ben, polite but puzzled.

“They were sleepy,” explains Dolly, indicating Cupid and Herc. “I thought they’d be better off at home.”

The culprits go unashamed to the piano and become musical. Mimi remarks loud enough for Dolly to hear.

“Some people can always find an excuse for attending parties they’re not invited to.”

Dolly turns to her in surprise and is met with an insolent stare. In her annoyance she lays her purse down on the table, where it immediately catches Mimi’s eye. Mimi knows that in that purse is the lipstick.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” flashes Dolly. “This was forced upon me. Good night.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” says Cupid. “I’m going to take you home.”

“You stay right where you are,” says Ben angrily. “You’re not going out of here this evening.”

“I’ve got to take Dolly home.”

“I’ll take her home,” snaps Ben impatiently. Cupid subsides.

Mimi, her eyes still on the purse, has crossed the room and as Dolly turns to Ben with a crisp “Please don’t bother,” she dexterously slides Dolly’s purse from the table into a fold of her gown. Then she saunters cooly away, unaware that Cupid and Herc, though muddled and uncomprehending, have seen her action.

Dolly turns and starts down the stairs and Ben, excusing himself to Mimi and her mother, follows.

About this time Professor Swope confused and distressed by his experience of the evening is coming out of the faculty club. He is in disgrace — the Dean has accepted his protestations of innocence, but still believes that he is in some way responsible. Worse, the professor has lost Dolly. He doesn’t know whether she has departed with disgust at him, or with guilt at having taken the silver herself. At any rate he must find her.

He starts down the street one way, then turns and goes down the other. To Joe Jakes, under his lamp-post, his excited actions appear suspicious. Joe wants to know what has become of the two drunks who disappeared with and it seems to him that this little man is acting very oddly indeed. He takes a menacing step in the professor’s direction.

Professor Swope’s nerves are jumpy and his first thought when he sees the familiar figure coming toward him is that the Dean is having him arrested for stealing the silver. He quickens his pace, so does Joe Jakes, he breaks into a run — Joe Jakes follows.

Over the campus goes the chase, in and out of the moonlight. A branch knocks off the professor’s derby and Joe picks it up without stopping.

Up in the Mannys’ room Cupid and Herc are witnesses to a peculiar accident. They see Mimi remove something from Dolly’s purse and then, looking about for a hiding place, drop the purse into the thin space behind the window seat. There is a look of triumph on her face.

Meanwhile Dolly and Ben are walking silently across the campus, Dolly a little in the lead. They come to a low wall and, to take a short cut, he helps her over it — immediately she is in his arms. With the second kiss he begins to admit the fascination she has for him. Nevertheless he is ashamed of himself and seeing this Dolly feels helpless and unhappy.

Nearing Dolly’s hotel they come to an all night restaurant, crowded with men and girls. The smell of hot dogs drifts out into the night and Dolly thinks of the dinner she was too frightened to eat. She tells Ben she’s hungry. He hesitates — his chin tightens. No, he won’t appear with her in any public placeHe tells her to wait for him — he will get something to eat and bring it outside.

Leaning rather sadly against the door of the restaurant watching the gay horseplay of the couples inside, Dolly is startled to see Professor Swope dash wildly by her and duck into the restaurant, closely followed by the campus cop, Joe Jakes. What has happened? Her instinct is to take to her heels, but she doesn’t.

Inside the restaurant Professor Swope, to conceal himself from his pursuer, squeezes in front of two boys taller than himself and, in a trembling voice, asks for a lemonade. Joe Jakes’ eyes roam aboutthe room seeking him and fall upon Ben Manny just leaving the restaurant with a bag of hot dogs and two bottles of ginger ale under his arm. Joe wonders if this can be his man — he is in a dinner coat, and he wears no hat. He seems a little taller than the other one, but Joe determines to follow and see.

Ben and Dolly go along the University Arms which is separated from the street by a tall iron grating. Once inside they hesitate — he wants nothing except to kiss her again, but the moon throws the shadow of the iron grating across her face, as if she were behind prison bars, and sadly now, he turns away.

The long, wide flight of steps leading up to the front door are white in the moonlight. Dolly invites him into the hotel, but he shakes his head and insists these steps are a better place for the picnic.

While he lays it out she fingers a paper that she always carries in the bosom of her dress. It is the letter from her uncle, which clears her from the guilt she expiated in prison. After a struggle she decides not to show it to him. If he really cares for her, nothing will matter.

Ben has no bottle opener for the Coca-Cola.

“I’ll run back to the quick lunch and get one,” he says. “Wait for me for a moment.”

He has hardly gone fifty feet when Joe Jakes seizes him by the arm.

“Got you, young fella,” he says. “What were you doing in the faculty club?”

“Me?” cries Ben in amazement. “I haven’t been near it all evening.”

“Then what did you run away from me for?”

“Me? I didn’t run away from you.”

“You can explain that to the Dean in the morning. Here’s your hat.”

Ben examines it.

“That isn’t my hat.”

“All right,” says Joe. “If you don’t want to take it what do I care. Go right to your room.”

“But Joe — “

“Never mind Joe-ing me. Go to your room. A man my age don’t like Marathons. You can state your case to the Dean in the morning.”

There is no choice but to obey. After all it was just as well. Better not to see her any more at all. As Ben trudges gloomily off across the Campus, Professor Swope is just emerging timorously from the quick lunch. He must find Dolly. With great caution he dodges up the street toward the hotel and slips inside the gate.

There she is on the moonlit steps and then he sees that, tired out with her long day, she is sound asleep. He comes up to her, and thinks how beautiful and innocent she looks — bends over as if to kiss her lips. But No — he is afraid to disturb her sleep. On the steps beside her he sees the lunch prepared for two and his heart melts. What a girl — all this time she has been waiting for him here with something to eat.

He sits down and tentatively nibbles a hot dog — he is very hungry. With the opener from his pocket knife he uncaps a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Outside the grating Joe Jakes watches Ben’s form disappear across the campus. He looks at the derby in his hand. Then with sudden disgust at his unsatisfactory night’s work, he flings it over the iron grating, where it lands at the professor’s feet.

Professor Swope looks up vaguely as if it had fallen from the stars. It is a magical night. After a hard day, the Gods are kind-nothing can surprise him. He sits there, drowsy and content, eating hot dogs and holding Dolly’s sleeping hand.

V

I.

After a restless night Dolly made her decision. She would go back to New York on the first train. The man she loved resented even her presence here and she was too proud to stay where she wasn’t wanted. It was a mistake ever to have come at all. How could she have thought that, stained and stamped as she was, she could compete with these girls who had been wrapped in cotton wool since birth? Perhaps back in the city her money would buy her friends who would grow to care for her, and some day she would forget.

Listlessly she began throwing things into her grip — they meant so little to her now — the gorgeous evening dress that had seemed like a princess’s robe a few short weeks ago was less to her than a shapeless prison gown now that the prince had failed to look her way. Her shoes — she kicked one impatiently against the wall, scraping a gash in its leather side. Then she was sorry and wept over the gash, knowing all the time that she was weeping over something else.

She couldn’t find the purse with lipstick in it. Where had she left it — and yet what did it matter now? Let it go — and youth and love too!

A knock at the door. Professor Swope, bowing and beaming, stood outside. He had a letter for her, forwarded from New York in his care. Dolly opened it — it was from the lawyers who handled her money.

Miss Dolly Carrol

Dear Madame

It is with great regret that we inform you that your uncle has met with reverses in the West and will be unable to continue your allowance. In fact we must ask you to return the sum of $982.00 advanced you last week above funds in hand.

Yours Very Respectfully,

Barly, Bacon and Barly.

The letter stunned her. She read it again and then stood with her eyes fixed on the space over the professor’s head. Her fingers drummed idly for a moment on the dresser until suddenly the keys of a typewriter seemed to materialize beneath them. She drew back frightened. Why — there would be no more gold dresses, or French shoes to kick about, or limousines, or fashionable hotels. Back to the old life in an office and an occasional trip to the theatre with the young clerk who worked next door.

Back she swung — now the gold dress was important again and the shoes — yes, and the prom and the girls who were going to dance tonight and be happy. Never again — she had had her chance and missed. The doors of the great world were closed to her.

The professor suddenly noticed that her grip was packed and that she was wearing a traveling suit.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Are you going away?”

She hesitated. Her eyes filled with tears. Must she go? Couldn’t she have just this night, this last night? At any cost to her pride she must see him again and with the lipstick make him kiss her once more. Better that way than not at all. But — even the lipstick was gone. She had nothing.

Professor Swope came into the room and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

“What is it?” he inquired. “Can I be of any assistance?”

“I’m — I’m not going,” she faltered. “I thought I had an engagement in New York but this letter tells me I was wrong.”

*****

By ten o’clock that night a constant stream of bright fur and satin was flowing into the gymnasium. A student took tickets at the door and beside him stood Joe Jakes to see that no one entered with a flask showing on his hip or in a state of inebriation.

One  crossed the trophy  room  and  came  into the great gymnasium, gay now with bunting and streamers and flowers. The walls were lined with boxes, each designated by the name of a fraternity and used as parking places for chaperones — none of the young people came there except to borrow a pen or leave a loose buckle. Between dances they sat in the trophy room and its galleries or in autos outside or on the winding steps of an edifice called Honeymoon Tower.

Looked at from above the prom resolved itself into a central circle of closely packed stags around which hub revolved the varicolored wheel of dancers. Outside the wheel was a further ring of stags, flanked at each end by a celebrated orchestra from New York. The slow revolution of the wheel and the flashes of black darting out to dance with pink or blue or gold, kept the whole scene in constant, colorful motion.

The women’s dressing room presented a scene of equal, if less public animation. Five hundred girls pushed politely to a place in front of the long mirror, five hundred girls found some slight imperfections in the tint of a cheek or an eyebrow, five hundred girls remedied the defection with loving care.

But no girl was so particularly interested in this final moment as was Mimi Haughton. She had the lipstick and she was going to use it. Picture her in front of a mirror at one end of a long row of girls. Grace is at her side.

A glass shelf runs underneath the mirror from one end of the room to the other and this is what happens. Mimi and Grace take out their respective lipsticks, which are not unlike in size and appearance, and set them down on the glass shelf, their hands crossing as they do so. A moment later each of them, their eyes absorbed in the mirror, picks up the other’s lipstick. Grace, all unsuspecting, rubs the magic scent upon her lips — Mimi, all unsuspecting, rubs her lips with ordinary rouge.

But the tilting shelf has another trick to play. As Grace lays down the scented lipstick it falls on its fat side and begins to roll determinedly down the whole length of the shelf. A dozen girls grab at it absently, but it continues its course until brought to a stop in front of Dolly at the extreme end. She is so surprised and glad to get it back that she doesn’t inquire who has had it, but pops it into a bag that, this time, is affixed firmly to her arm.

This is destined to be the evening of Grace Jones’ life, the one that she’ll remember forever and tell about to her children and her grandchildren. For she is one of the belles of the ball. Man after man cuts in — even Cupid shows her marked attention until her round eyes almost pop out with happiness.