Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (415 page)

“Oh, it was so clumsy,” she interrupted. “Half a pint of corn whisky and then telling me you wouldn’t start the car unless I kissed you. I’m not used to that sort of thing. I’ve always had men treat me with the greatest delicacy. Men have been challenged to duels for staring at me in a casino — and then you, that I liked so much, try a thing like that. I can’t stand it —  — “ And again she repeated, bitterly “It’s so American.”

“Well, I haven’t any sense of guilt about it but I’m sorry I upset you.”

“Don’t you see?” she demanded. “If I’d wanted to kiss you I’d have managed managed to let you know.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” he repeated. They had dinner in the station buffet. He left her at the door of her pullman car.

“Good-bye,” she said, but coolly now, “Thank you for an awfully interesting trip. And call me up when you come to New York.”

“Isn’t this silly,” he protested. “You’re not even going to kiss me good-bye.”

She didn’t want to at all now and she hesitated before leaning forward lightly from the step. But this time he drew back.

“Never mind,” he said. “I understand how you feel. I’ll see you when I come to New York.”

He took off his hat, bowed politely and walked away. Feeling very alone and lost Evelyn went on into the car. That was for meeting people on boats, she thought, but she kept on feeling strangely alone.

II

She climbed a network of steel, concrete and glass, walked under a high echoing dome and came out into New York. She was part of it even before she reached her hotel. When she saw mail waiting for her and flowers around her suite, she was sure she wanted to live and work here with this great current of excitement flowing through her from dawn to dusk.

Within two days she was putting in several hours a morning Umbering up neglected muscles, an hour of new soft-shoe stuff with Joe Crusoe, and making a tour of the city to look at every entertainer who had something new.

Also she was weighing the prospects for her next engagement. In the background was the chance of going to London as a co-featured player in a Gershwin show then playing New York. Yet there was an air of repetition about it. New York excited her and she wanted to get something here. This was difficult — she had little following in America, show business was in a bad way — after a while her agent brought her several offers for shows that were going into rehearsal this fall. Meanwhile she was getting a little in debt and it was convenient that there were almost always men to take her to dinner and the theatre.

March blew past. Evelyn learned new steps and performed in half a dozen benefits; the season was waning. She dickered with the usual young impresarios who wanted to “build something around her”, but who seemed never to have the money, the theatre and the material at one and the same time. A week before she must decide about the English offer she heard from George Ives.

She heard directly, in the form of a telegram announcing his arrival, and indirectly in the form of a comment from her lawyer when she mentioned the fact. He whistled.

“Woman, have you snared George Ives? You don’t need any more jobs. A lot of girls have worn out their shoes chasing him.”

“Why, what’s his claim to fame?”

“He’s rich as Croesus — he’s the smartest young lawyer in the South, and they’re trying to run him now for governor of his state. In his spare time he’s one of the best polo players in America.” Evelyn whistled. “This is news,” she said.

She was startled. Her feelings about him suddenly changed — everything he had done began to assume significance. It impressed her that while she ad told him all about her public self he had hinted nothing of this. Now she remembered him talking aside with some ship reporters at the dock.

He came on a soft poignant day, gentle and spirited. She was engaged for lunch but he picked her up at the Ritz afterwards and they drove in Central Park. When she saw in a new revelation his pleasant eyes and his mouth that told how hard he was on himself, her heart swung towards him — she told him she was sorry about that night.

“I didn’t object to what you did but to the way you did it,” she said. “It’s all forgotten. Let’s be happy.”

“It all happened so suddenly,” he said. “It was disconcerting to look up suddenly on a boat and see the girl you’ve always wanted.”

“It was nice, wasn’t it?”

“I thought that anything so like a casual flower needn’t be respected. But that was all the more reason for treating it gently.”

“What nice words,” she teased him. “If you keep on I’m going to throw myself under the wheels of the cab.”

Oh, she liked him. They dined together and went to a play and in the taxi going back to her hotel she looked up at him and waited.

“Would you consider marrying me?”

“Yes, I’d consider marrying you.”

“Of course if you married me we’d live in New York.”

“Call me Mickey Mouse,” she said suddenly.

“Why?”

“I don’t know — it was fun when you called me Mickey Mouse.”

The taxi stopped at her hotel.

“Won’t you come in and talk for a while?” she asked. Her bodice was stretched tight across her heart. “Mother’s here in New York with me and I promised I’d go and see her for a while.”

“Oh.”

“Will you dine with us tomorrow night?”

“All right.”

She hurried in and up to her room and put on the phonograph.

“Oh, gosh, he’s going to respect me,” she thought. “He doesn’t know anything about me, he doesn’t know anything about women. He wants to make a goddess out of me and I want to be Mickey Mouse.” She went to the mirror swaying softly before it.

Lady play your mandolin Lady let that tune begin. At her agent’s next morning she ran into Eddie O’Sullivan.

“Are you married yet?” he demanded. “Or did you ever see him again?”

“Eddie, I don’t know what to do. I think I’m in love with him but we’re always out of step with each other.”

“Take him in hand.”

“That’s just what I don’t want to do. I want to be taken in hand myself.”

“Well, you’re twenty-six — you’re in love with him. Why don’t you marry him? It’s a bad season.”

“He’s so American,” she answered.

“You’ve lived abroad so long that you don’t know what you want.”

“It’s a man’s place to make me certain.” It was in a mood of revolt against what she felt was to be an inspection that she made a midnight rendezvous for afterwards to go to Chaplin’s film with two other men — “because I frightened him in Maryland and he’ll only leave me politely at my door”. She pulled all her dresses out of her wardrobe and defiantly chose a startling gown from Vionnet; when George called for her at seven she summoned him up to her suite and displayed it, half hoping he would protest. “Wouldn’t you rather I’d go as a convent girl?”

“Don’t change anything. I worship you.” But she didn’t want to be worshipped.

It was still light outside and she liked being next to him in the car. She felt fresh and young under the fresh young silk — she would be glad to ride with him for ever, if only she were sure they were going somewhere.

… The suite at the Plaza dosed around them; lamps were lighted in the salon.

“We’re really almost neighbours in Maryland,” said Mrs Ives. “Your name’s familiar in St Charles county and there’s a fine old house called Lovejoy Hall. Why don’t you buy it and restore it?”

“There’s no money in the family,” said Evelyn bluntly. “I’m the only hope, and actresses never save.”

When the other guest arrived Evelyn started. Of all shades of her past — Colonel Cary. She wanted to laugh, or else hide — for an instant she wondered if this had been calculated. But she saw in his surprise that it was impossible.

“Delighted to see you again,” he said simply.

As they sat down at table Mrs Ives remarked:

“Miss Lovejoy is from our part of Maryland.”

“I see,” Colonel Cary looked at Evelyn with the equivalent of a wink. His expression annoyed her and she flushed. Evidently he knew nothing about her success on the stage, remembered only an episode of six years ago. When champagne was served she let a waiter fill her glass lest Colonel Cary think that she was playing an unsophisticated role.

“I thought you were a teetotaller,” George observed.

“I am. This is about the third drink I ever had in my life.”

The wine seemed to clarify matters; it made her see the necessity of anticipating whatever the Colonel might afterwards tell the Ives. Her glass was filled again. A little later Colonel Cary gave an opportunity when he asked:

“What have you been doing all these years?”

“I’m on the stage.” She turned to Mrs Ives. “Colonel Cary and I met in my most difficult days.”

“Yes?”

The Colonel’s face reddened but Evelyn continued steadily.

“For two months I was what used to be called a „party girl”.”

“A party girl?” repeated Mrs Ives puzzled.

“It’s a New York phenomenon,” said George.

Evelyn smiled at the Colonel. “It used to amuse me.”

“Yes, very amusing,” he said.

“Another girl and I had just left school and decided to go on the stage. We waited around agencies and offices for months and there were literally days when we didn’t have enough to eat.”

“How terrible,” said Mrs Ives.

“Then somebody told us about „party girls”. Businessmen with clients from out of town sometimes wanted to give them a big time — singing a dancing and champagne, all that sort of thing, make them feel like regular fellows seeing New York. So they’d hire a room in a restaurant and invite a dozen party girls. All it required was to have a good evening dress and to sit next to some middle-aged man for two hours and laugh at his jokes and maybe kiss him good night. Sometimes you’d find a fifty-dollar bill in your napkin when you sat down at table. It sounds terrible, doesn’t it — but it was salvation to us in that awful three months.”

A silence had fallen, short as far as seconds go but so heavy that Evelyn felt it on her shoulders. She knew that the silence was coming from some deep place in Mrs Ives’s heart, that Mrs Ives was ashamed for her and felt that what she had done in the struggle for survival was unworthy of the dignity of woman. In those same seconds she sensed the Colonel chuckling maliciously behind his bland moustache, felt the wrinkles beside George’s eyes straining.

“It must be terribly hard to get started on the stage,” said Mrs Ives. “Tell me — have you acted mostly in England?”

“Yes.”

What had she said? Only the truth and the whole truth in spite of the old man leering there. She drank off her glass of champagne.

George spoke quickly, under the Colonel’s roar of conversation: “Isn’t that a lot of champagne if you’re not used to it?”

She saw him suddenly as a man dominated by his mother; her frank little reminiscence had shocked him. Things were different for a girl on her own and at least he should see that it was wiser than that Colonel Cary might launch dark implications thereafter. But she refused further champagne.

After dinner she sat with George at the piano.

“I suppose I shouldn’t have said that at dinner,” she whispered.

“Nonsense! Mother know everything’s changed nowadays.”

“She didn’t like it,” Evelyn insisted. “And as for that old boy that looks like a Peter Arno cartoon!”

Try as she might Evelyn couldn’t shake off the impression that some slight had been put upon her. She was accustomed only to having approval gad admiration around her.

“If you had to choose again would you choose the stage?” Mrs Ives asked.

“It’s a nice life,” Evelyn said emphatically. “If I had daughters with talent I’d choose it for them. I certainly wouldn’t want them to be society girls.”

“But we can’t all have talent,” said Colonel Cary.

“Of course most people have the craziest prejudices about the stage,” pursued Evelyn.

“Not so much nowadays,” said Mrs Ives. “So many nice girls go on the stage.”

“Girls of position,” added Colonel Cary.

“They don’t usually last very long,” said Evelyn. “Every time some debutante decides to dazzle the world there’s another flop due on Broadway. But the thing that makes me maddest is the way people condescend. I remember one season on the road — all the small-town social leaders inviting you to parties and then whispering and snickering in the corner. Snickering at Gladys Knowles!” Evelyn’s voice rang with indignation: “When Gladys goes to Europe she dines with the most prominent people in every country, the people who don’t know these backwoods social leaders exist —  — “

“Does she dine with their wives too?” asked Colonel Cary.

“With their wives too.” She glanced sharply at Mrs Ives. “Let me tell you that girls on the stage don’t feel a bit inferior, and the really fashionable people don’t think of patronizing them.”

The silence was there again heavier and deeper, but this time excited by her own words Evelyn was unconscious of it.

“Oh, it’s American women,” she said. “The less they have to offer the more they pick on the ones that have.”

She drew a deep breath, she felt that the room was stifling.

“I’m afraid I must go now,” she said.

“I’ll take you,” said George.

They were all standing. She shook hands. She liked George’s mother, who after all had made no attempt to patronize her.

“It’s been very nice,” said Mrs Ives.

“I hope we’ll meet soon. Good night.”

With George in a taxi she gave the address of a theatre on Broadway.

“I have a date,” she confessed.

“I see.”

“Nothing very important.” She glanced at him, and put her hand on his. Why didn’t he ask her to break the date? But he only said:

“He better go over Forty-fifth Street.”

Ah, well, maybe she’d better go back to England — and be Mickey Mouse, He didn’t know anything about women, anything about love, and to her that was the unforgivable sin. But why in a certain set of his face under the street lamps did he remind her of her father?

“Won’t you come to the picture?” she suggested.

“I’m feeling a little tired — I’m turning in.”

“Will you phone me tomorrow?”