Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Illustrated) (73 page)

Captain Dunning reproved the company clerk (who had burst out laughing), and told Baptiste he would do what he could. But when he thought it over he decided that he couldn’t spare a better man. Little Baptiste went from bad to worse. The horses seemed to divine his fear and take every advantage of it. Two weeks later a great black mare crushed his skull in with her hoofs while he was trying to lead her from her stall.

In mid-July came rumors, and then orders, that concerned a change of camp. The brigade was to move to an empty cantonment, a hundred miles farther south, there to be expanded into a division. At first the men thought they were departing for the trenches, and all evening little groups jabbered in the company street, shouting to each other in swaggering exclamations: “Su-u-ure we are!” When the truth leaked out, it was rejected indignantly as a blind to conceal their real destination. They revelled in their own importance. That night they told their girls in town that they were “going to get the Germans.” Anthony circulated for a while among the groups — then, stopping a jitney, rode down to tell Dot that he was going away.

She was waiting on the dark veranda in a cheap white dress that accentuated the youth and softness of her face.

“Oh,” she whispered, “I’ve wanted you so, honey. All this day.”

“I have something to tell you.”

She drew him down beside her on the swinging seat, not noticing his ominous tone.

“Tell me.”

“We’re leaving next week.”

Her arms seeking his shoulders remained poised upon the dark air, her chin tipped up. When she spoke the softness was gone from her voice.

“Leaving for France?”

“No. Less luck than that. Leaving for some darn camp in Mississippi.”

She shut her eyes and he could see that the lids were trembling.

“Dear little Dot, life is so damned hard.”

She was crying upon his shoulder.

“So damned hard, so damned hard,” he repeated aimlessly; “it just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.”

Frantic, wild with anguish, she strained him to her breast.

“Oh, God!” she whispered brokenly, “you can’t go way from me. I’d die.”

He was finding it impossible to pass off his departure as a common, impersonal blow. He was too near to her to do more than repeat “Poor little Dot. Poor little Dot.”

“And then what?” she demanded wearily.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re my whole life, that’s all. I’d die for you right now if you said so. I’d get a knife and kill myself. You can’t leave me here.”

Her tone frightened him.

“These things happen,” he said evenly.

“Then I’m going with you.” Tears were streaming down her checks. Her mouth was trembling in an ecstasy of grief and fear.

“Sweet,” he muttered sentimentally, “sweet little girl. Don’t you see we’d just be putting off what’s bound to happen? I’ll be going to France in a few months — “

She leaned away from him and clinching her fists lifted her face toward the sky.

“I want to die,” she said, as if moulding each word carefully in her heart.

“Dot,” he whispered uncomfortably, “you’ll forget. Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know — because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”

“All right.”

Absorbed in himself, he continued:

“I’ve often thought that if I hadn’t got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you can’t have
any
thing, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it — but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone — “ He broke off uneasily. She had risen and was standing, dry-eyed, picking little leaves from a dark vine.

“Dot — “

“Go way,” she said coldly. “What? Why?”

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me you’d better go.”

“Why, Dot — “

“What’s death to me is just a lot of words to you. You put ‘em together so pretty.”

“I’m sorry. I was talking about you, Dot.”

“Go way from here.”

He approached her with arms outstretched, but she held him away.

“You don’t want me to go with you,” she said evenly; “maybe you’re going to meet that — that girl — “ She could not bring herself to say wife. “How do I know? Well, then, I reckon you’re not my fellow any more. So go way.”

For a moment, while conflicting warnings and desires prompted Anthony, it seemed one of those rare times when he would take a step prompted from within. He hesitated. Then a wave of weariness broke against him. It was too late — everything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water. The little girl in the white dress dominated him, as she approached beauty in the hard symmetry of her desire. The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. With some profound and uncharted pride she had made herself remote and so achieved her purpose.

“I didn’t — mean to seem so callous, Dot.”

“It don’t matter.”

The fire rolled over Anthony. Something wrenched at his bowels, and he stood there helpless and beaten.

“Come with me, Dot — little loving Dot. Oh, come with me. I couldn’t leave you now — “

With a sob she wound her arms around him and let him support her weight while the moon, at its perennial labor of covering the bad complexion of the world, showered its illicit honey over the drowsy street.

THE CATASTROPHE

Early September in Camp Boone, Mississippi. The darkness, alive with insects, beat in upon the mosquito-netting, beneath the shelter of which Anthony was trying to write a letter. An intermittent chatter over a poker game was going on in the next tent, and outside a man was strolling up the company street singing a current bit of doggerel about “K-K-K-Katy.”

With an effort Anthony hoisted himself to his elbow and, pencil in hand, looked down at his blank sheet of paper. Then, omitting any heading, he began:

I can’t imagine what the matter is, Gloria. I haven’t had a line from you for two weeks and it’s only natural to be worried —

He threw this away with a disturbed grunt and began again:

I don’t know what to think, Gloria. Your last letter, short, cold, without a word of affection or even a decent account of what you’ve been doing, came two weeks ago. It’s only natural that I should wonder. If your love for me isn’t absolutely dead it seems that you’d at least keep me from worry —

Again he crumpled the page and tossed it angrily through a tear in the tent wall, realizing simultaneously that he would have to pick it up in the morning. He felt disinclined to try again. He could get no warmth into the lines — only a persistent jealousy and suspicion. Since midsummer these discrepancies in Gloria’s correspondence had grown more and more noticeable. At first he had scarcely perceived them. He was so inured to the perfunctory “dearest” and “darlings” scattered through her letters that he was oblivious to their presence or absence. But in this last fortnight he had become increasingly aware that there was something amiss.

He had sent her a night-letter saying that he had passed his examinations for an officers’ training-camp, and expected to leave for Georgia shortly. She had not answered. He had wired again — when he received no word he imagined that she might be out of town. But it occurred and recurred to him that she was not out of town, and a series of distraught imaginings began to plague him. Supposing Gloria, bored and restless, had found some one, even as he had. The thought terrified him with its possibility — it was chiefly because he had been so sure of her personal integrity that he had considered her so sparingly during the year. And now, as a doubt was born, the old angers, the rages of possession, swarmed back a thousandfold. What more natural than that she should be in love again?

He remembered the Gloria who promised that should she ever want anything, she would take it, insisting that since she would act entirely for her own satisfaction she could go through such an affair unsmirched — it was only the effect on a person’s mind that counted, anyhow, she said, and her reaction would be the masculine one, of satiation and faint dislike.

But that had been when they were first married. Later, with the discovery that she could be jealous of Anthony, she had, outwardly at least, changed her mind. There were no other men in the world for her. This he had known only too surely. Perceiving that a certain fastidiousness would restrain her, he had grown lax in preserving the completeness of her love — which, after all, was the keystone of the entire structure.

Meanwhile all through the summer he had been maintaining Dot in a boarding-house down-town. To do this it had been necessary to write to his broker for money. Dot had covered her journey south by leaving her house a day before the brigade broke camp, informing her mother in a note that she had gone to New York. On the evening following Anthony had called as though to see her. Mrs. Raycroft was in a state of collapse and there was a policeman in the parlor. A questionnaire had ensued, from which Anthony had extricated himself with some difficulty.

In September, with his suspicions of Gloria, the company of Dot had become tedious, then almost intolerable. He was nervous and irritable from lack of sleep; his heart was sick and afraid. Three days ago he had gone to Captain Dunning and asked for a furlough, only to be met with benignant procrastination. The division was starting overseas, while Anthony was going to an officers’ training-camp; what furloughs could be given must go to the men who were leaving the country.

Upon this refusal Anthony had started to the telegraph office intending to wire Gloria to come South — he reached the door and receded despairingly, seeing the utter impracticability of such a move. Then he had spent the evening quarrelling irritably with Dot, and returned to camp morose and angry with the world. There had been a disagreeable scene, in the midst of which he had precipitately departed. What was to be done with her did not seem to concern him vitally at present — he was completely absorbed in the disheartening silence of his wife….

The flap of the tent made a sudden triangle back upon itself, and a dark head appeared against the night.

“Sergeant Patch?” The accent was Italian, and Anthony saw by the belt that the man was a headquarters orderly.

“Want me?”

“Lady call up headquarters ten minutes ago. Say she have speak with you.
Ver’ important.”

Anthony swept aside the mosquito-netting and stood up. It might be a wire from Gloria telephoned over.

“She say to get you. She call again ten o’clock.”

“All right, thanks.” He picked up his hat and in a moment was striding beside the orderly through the hot, almost suffocating, darkness. Over in the headquarters shack he saluted a dozing night-service officer.

“Sit down and wait,” suggested the lieutenant nonchalantly. “Girl seemed awful anxious to speak to you.”

Anthony’s hopes fell away.

“Thank you very much, sir.” And as the phone squeaked on the side-wall he knew who was calling.

“This is Dot,” came an unsteady voice, “I’ve got to see you.”

“Dot, I told you I couldn’t get down for several days.”

“I’ve got to see you to-night. It’s important.”

“It’s too late,” he said coldly; “it’s ten o’clock, and I have to be in camp at eleven.”

“All right.” There was so much wretchedness compressed into the two words that Anthony felt a measure of compunction.

“What’s the matter?”

“I want to tell you good-by.

“Oh, don’t be a little idiot!” he exclaimed. But his spirits rose. What luck if she should leave town this very night! What a burden from his soul. But he said: “You can’t possibly leave before to-morrow.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the night-service officer regarding him quizzically. Then, startlingly, came Dot’s next words:

“I don’t mean ‘leave’ that way.”

Anthony’s hand clutched the receiver fiercely. He felt his nerves turning cold as if the heat was leaving his body.

“What?”

Then quickly in a wild broken voice he heard:

“Good-by — oh, good-by!”

Cul-lup! She had hung up the receiver. With a sound that was half a gasp, half a cry, Anthony hurried from the headquarters building. Outside, under the stars that dripped like silver tassels through the trees of the little grove, he stood motionless, hesitating. Had she meant to kill herself? — oh, the little fool! He was filled with bitter hate toward her. In this dénouement he found it impossible to realize that he had ever begun such an entanglement, such a mess, a sordid mélange of worry and pain.

He found himself walking slowly away, repeating over and over that it was futile to worry. He had best go back to his tent and sleep. He needed sleep. God! Would he ever sleep again? His mind was in a vast clamor and confusion; as he reached the road he turned around in a panic and began running, not toward his company but away from it. Men were returning now — he could find a taxicab. After a minute two yellow eyes appeared around a bend. Desperately he ran toward them.

“Jitney! Jitney!” … It was an empty Ford…. “I want to go to town.”

“Cost you a dollar.”

“All right. If you’ll just hurry — “

After an interminable time he ran up the steps of a dark ramshackle little house, and through the door, almost knocking over an immense negress who was walking, candle in hand, along the hall.

“Where’s my wife?” he cried wildly.