For a moment she almost believed herself but she was woman enough to cross her fingers.
***
Bill Craig came into the room less than two minutes after Trouble had left it. He saw exactly what she had seen but his first instinct was to ring the patient’s bell. When a nurse arrived he said:
“Do you know anything about this?”
“Why, Dr. Craig! He seemed all right this morning and Miss Rosalyn went in to say goodbye so I went for a quick coffee—”
“Miss Rosalyn was here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, notify the ward interne what’s happened, will you?”
“Yes, Dr. Craig.”
He waited till she was gone before climbing out the window.
***
It had been a red morning, and now it was a rapidly darkening afternoon as Bill turned into the station. The station lights were on and his borrowed whites seemed yellow in the light of half-burned out lamps. Unless a train had already carried the old man away he expected to see them both there: he understood Mr. Polk Johnston’s flight from the operation and he was almost sure that Trouble had either fled with him or followed him. The station was the natural destination—he left it to the hospital staff to search their own vicinity—for himself he scarcely looked out the window of the cab he caught on the outskirts of the small city.
In a minute he spotted them across the dingy waiting room, and turning into the cafeteria watched them through the smoky glass. She was sitting very still on her corner of the bench, her lovely eyes cast down gazing at nothing. As always he seemed to see something new in her. Trouble has that awesome quality, Trouble and Beauty, of showing new facets without preparation. People who passed her, salesmen, casual travelers, stopped for the break of an instant, stared, and then went on . . .
Bill finished his coffee and stood up from the counter, thankful to Harris for the whites—when he had accepted them it was without any idea of what the day would offer. They were scarcely soiled, scarcely mussed. As he approached the pair on the bench he saw that Mr. Polk Johnston, on the contrary, showed signs of his recent experience. What had looked to Bill like a swarm of bees incomprehensibly gathered upon him presently developed as a great gathering of burrs. They clung around him, as unnecessary epaulets on his shoulders and shin-guards on his knees; a full cluster adhered to his waist line and service stripes of them trailed down his cuffs.
They were engrossed in conversation when he addressed them.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Johnston. Good afternoon, Miss Trouble.”
Mr. Johnston looked at him with startled eyes. “And what are you doing here?” he demanded. “—did they send you after me?”
“No, I came of my own accord.”
Johnston relaxed.
“What did you do to your nose?” he inquired.
“Well, you see, Mr. Johnston, that ladder you made wasn’t strong enough for three people in succession and the joke was on me. One of the knots gave way half way down.”
Trouble laughed.
“I could have made it better,” said Johnston resentfully, “if I had the time.”
Bill had a picture of the whole hospital swarming suddenly out the window and down Mr. Johnston’s rope-ladder.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“About twenty minutes,” said Trouble. She looked at her wrist watch. “It took me about an hour—I got a bus at the city limits.”
“I hitch-hiked,” said Mr. Johnston complacently. “I got here only five minutes after she did.”
“I got a taxi,” said Bill, “and came in a poor third. We ought to enter the Olympics like Bonthron and Venski and Cunningham.”
“Hm!” said Mr. Johnston. He did not seem as friendly as upon previous occasions—in fact Bill got the sense that his presence was considered an intrusion.
“I’m not going to the Olympics,” Mr. Johnston continued, “in fact my intention is to go to Tibet this summer. I understand they have a drug that relieves high blood-pressure without this crazy operation.”
“That’s a long way,” said Bill.
“Oh, I’m not going alone. Miss Trouble has just consented to go with me—in the capacity of my wife.”
“I see,” said Bill, but he felt his face re-set in a curious uncomfortable way.
“I see you don’t like the idea,” said Johnston observantly. “Old man’s darling and all that. Well, why didn’t you ask her when you had the chance?”
And then suddenly Bill did ask her, not in so many words but by looking straight into her rather stricken blue eyes.
“Internes are not in a position to ask anyone to marry them.”
Trouble hardened protectively.
“You to ask me, Dr. Craig! You that only this morning referred to us as—”
“Can’t we skip that,” said Bill. “We’re out of the hospital now. Anyhow I guess I’ve intruded.”
“You certainly have,” said Trouble, trying desperately to make her eyes fall into line with her bitter voice. What was her choice—back to rock with her mother on the porch of a farmhouse through the best days of her life, or back with her sister making three night stands in movie houses from Bangor to Tallahassee?
So engrossed was she with her thought that only Bill’s eyes, leaving hers suddenly, made her look at Mr. Johnston. He was dead white, the left side of his face was twitching in time to his right hand and arm which played an invisible drum. Bill grabbed his shoulders just in time to keep him from slumping to the floor.
“Stay with him!” he ordered abruptly. “I’ll get coffee.”
III
He sent it back at a run by the cafeteria waiter and phoned the police emergency department for an ambulance. When he came back a small crowd had gathered.
“Stand back!” he ordered without raising his voice. “This man is very sick indeed.”
“What are you going to do?” Trouble demanded.
“Wait for the ambulance. Did he take all the coffee—pour it all into him, Trouble.”
“I couldn’t quite. I could feel his pulse in his shoulder. He just about hasn’t got any.”
“I didn’t think he would.” Again he motioned the crowd away from the bench, and beckoned the huskiest bystander.
“Give me a hand, will you? I’m going to try artificial respiration.”
He straddled the man and went through the motions. Just when he was sure it was hopeless he caught the quiver of a reaction beginning; simultaneously Trouble said in his ear:
“The ambulance orderlies have come. What shall I do?”
“Have them stand by.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Need any help, sir?” one of them asked.
“No—just keep that crowd back.”
Life was returning to Mr. Johnston—it came in a gasp, a lurch, then a sudden grasp on his faculties that made him realize his predicament, try unsuccessfully to sit up and almost with his first breath begin to gasp orders.
“Who are all these people? Take them away! Have them removed.”
“You lie down.” Bill smiled inwardly, as he climbed off the resuscitated torso, thinking: “What does he suppose they are, waiters?”
“Off we go,” he said to the orderlies. “You brought in a stretcher of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, load him on. We go to the Battle Hospital.”
He started to follow, somewhat exhausted by his exertion. He felt alone; then he saw what was the matter—Trouble was hanging back.
“Am I supposed to go?”
“Come on, you idiot. Of course you are. Hurry up. They’ve got him in.”
“Do you think anybody there would ever want to see you and me again?”
“Come on now. Don’t be stupid.”
In the darkness of the ambulance Mr. Polk Johnston weakly demanded a cigar.
“I don’t think they furnish them,” said Bill.
“Then I want to go in some ambulance where they
do. You ought to know—you’re the only doctor any good out there.”
“Well, I don’t think I can supply you with—”
Dr. Craig never finished that sentence. He was tossed forward precipitately to land on the chair ahead in the approximate straddling position he had used on Mr. Johnston. He saw Trouble flying past him at the same jolt, heard her yelp as she took it on a shoulder against the unbreakable glass. Mr. Johnston was flung up and back like a doll. It was a full minute before Bill could reach around the darkness of the ambulance and get out to see what had happened—then he saw plenty.
They had been run into by a school bus which lay, burning, half on its side against a tall bank of the road, with the little girls screaming as they stumbled out the back. He made a lunge for one who was afire, bumped into Trouble who had chosen the same one and rolled over on to another, beating at the flames with his hands. The two orderlies being in front had guessed the situation earlier and were already at it.
“Is there anyone left inside?” Bill cried after the first wild moment.
Simultaneously he saw that there was one, and acting deliberately wrapped a handkerchief around his palm and smashed the glass. The ambulance driver put his thick gabardine coat over the sill and they dragged the little girl over it. Bill was burning himself and he rolled for a moment in a wet ditch. Half a dozen other cars had come up and they had help now. A quick roll call of the girls by one of them showed no one missing.
“Anyone who lives close go for some flour,” Bill said. “You girls pile into the ambulance—all of you. One of you orderlies stand by the door and see that no clothes are still smoldering. Don’t let anyone you’re not sure of get into that ambulance.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Then go on, quick as you can. Emergency Ward.”
“How about you, sir?”
“I’m all right. I’ll get someone to take me.”
He went back to the ditch and plastered his hands with wet mud—then he discovered Trouble beside him doing the same.
“Let’s get a hitch right over,” he said. “I think maybe they’ll let us in now, don’t you?”
“How about Mr. Johnston?”
“I hadn’t thought about him. He’s off to the hospital in the ambulance. I hope they’re not sitting all over him.”
“They’re not. The orderlies lifted him out to make room. He’s lying over across the road.”
“Alive?”
“Very much so. They’ve tried twice to get him into that car.”
“The old devil. I’ll get that sock off him now or know the reason why.”
He repeated this remark as he knelt to take Johnston’s pulse.
“No, you won’t,” Johnston answered.
“Why won’t I?”
“Because it’s off. I felt sort of ashamed the way you people have to work, so I thought I’d do that for you.”
Bill stooped to the exposed foot.
“Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-gun. It’s nothing but a supernumerary toe!”
“You think that’s nothing! It’s worried me all my life.”
“We’ll take it off tomorrow.”
Bill stood up. He breathed.
“So that’s all it was. Well, it’ll cost you the expenses of all these little girls.”
“No,” insisted Mr. Johnston, obstinate as ever. “It’ll cost me enough to build you a pediatric wing for your damn hospital—if they’ll take you back. You and your girl.”
Scott and Scottie, 1937.
In late 1935 Fitzgerald began a series of stories about a girl in her early teens. Just the age of Scottie Fitzgerald at the time, Gwen, with her “bright blue eyes” and eager, curious ways, and her interest in boys, good northeastern colleges, and New York City, has much in common with the Scottie one sees in Fitzgerald’s well-known letters to her.
He wrote to Harold Ober in mid-December,
This story [“Too Cute for Words”] is the fruit of my desire to write about children of Scotty’s age. . . . I want it to be a series if the Post likes it. Now if they do please tell them that I’d like them to hold it for another one [“The Pearl and the Fur”] which should preceed [sic] it, like they did once in the Basil series. I am not going to wait for their answer to start a second one about Gwen but I am going to wait for a wire of encouragement or discouragement on the idea from you.
Although Fitzgerald was recovering from a terrible case of flu during which he spat up blood, he was in good spirits about his work: “I enjoyed writing this story which is the second time that’s happened to me this year, + that’s a good sign.” He worked hard on the story and its revisions through the spring; Ober was enthusiastic about the Gwen idea, not least because he thought it could save Fitzgerald from a return to writing for the movies: “I think it is much wiser for you to work on this series than to try Hollywood so let’s forget that.”
The Post accepted Fitzgerald’s first Gwen story, “Too Cute for Words,” and published it on April 18, 1936, without waiting, as Fitzgerald had wished, for “The Pearl and the Fur,” which was meant to precede it. Instead, they turned down “The Pearl and the Fur,” asking for substantial changes. Discouraged, Fitzgerald worked on the screenplay of “Ballet Shoes” for a while instead, telling Ober, “I’ve spent the morning writing this letter because I am naturally disappointed about the Post’s not liking the Gwen story and must rest and go to work this afternoon to try to raise some money somehow though I don’t know where to turn.” Fitzgerald’s own money struggles are reflected here in Gwen’s family: her father has lost money in the Depression and, evidently, has to deny her many things.
Fitzgerald soon returned to “The Pearl and the Fur,” but declined the suggestions for revisions supplied to him by Ober and Ober’s assistant Constance Smith. Ober disliked the whole taxi ride south, and the desolate beauty of Fitzgerald’s imagined Kingsbridge: “A good deal of the taxicab material seems to me improbable. . . . I have checked up on the subway station at Kingsbridge and 230th Street and it is as closely settled as any part of New York City. The subways leave every three or four minutes. If anyone were in a hurry to get from 230th Street to 59th Street one would never think of taking a taxicab and there are no subway terminals that are in unpopulated districts as you describe.” Smith objected, “Why would anyone take a chinchilla coat to the West Indies in Spring?” When the Post rejected the story again, Fitzgerald refused to resubmit it there. Ober’s files indicate that three versions of it were destroyed on May 14, 1936. The Post did publish one more story featuring Gwen, “Inside the House,” on June 13. Six days earlier, “The Pearl and the Fur” had been sold to the Pictorial Review for $1,000, with the characters’ names changed so it would no longer be a competing “Gwen story.” It never appeared, and the Pictorial Review—at the beginning of the decade a popular women’s magazine with a circulation of 2.5 million—failed in the spring of 1939, a casualty of the Depression.
The Pearl and the Fur
Gwen had been shopping all Saturday afternoon and at six she came home heavy laden. Among other things she had purchased two dozen little tin cylinders to attach to her hair at bedtime and let dangle through the night; a set of grotesque artificial finger nails which violated all disarmament treaties; a set of six inch pennons of Navy, Princeton, Vassar and Yale; and a packet of travel booklets describing voyages to Bermuda, Jamaica, Havana and South America.
Wearily—as weariness goes at fourteen—she cast it all on the couch and phoned her friend Dizzy Campbell.
“Well, guess what?” she said.
“What?” Dizzy’s voice was full of excitement. “Was it real?”
“It was not,” said Gwen disgustedly, “I took it to the jewel man at Kirk’s and he said it was just a piece of shell that they often have in oysters.”
Dizzy sighed.
“Well, then we don’t go for a trip this Easter.”
“I’m so mad I can scarcely see. Daddy was sure it was a pearl when he almost broke a tooth on it in the re
staurant.”
“After all we’d planned,” Dizzy lamented.
“I was so sure that I went to the travel bureau first and got a lot of books with the best pictures of people sitting around swimming pools on the deck and dancing with the cutest boys only seventy dollars minimum—if Daddy would listen to reason.”
They sighed audibly in full mutual comprehension.
“There is one thing, though,” said Dizzy, “—though it isn’t like the other. Mrs. Tulliver wants to take four or five girls from school to New York for a few days. Mother says I can go but I said I’d tell her later because I was waiting to hear about the pearl—Father said it probably wouldn’t be any good if it was cooked anyhow. This would be better than nothing.”
“I guess so,” said Gwen doubtfully. “But you don’t suppose she’d take us to the Rainbow Room and places like that, would she? Would it just be kind of museums and concerts?”
“She’d take us to the theatre and shopping.”
Gwen’s bright blue eyes began to come back to life.
“Well, I’ll ask Daddy,” she said, “He ought to do that anyhow after being wrong about the pearl.”
II
Five young ladies of fourteen and fifteen rode to New York the following Monday. Mrs. Tulliver’s original plan was to stop at an inn for women only, but upon their vehement protest that they wanted music with meals they put up at a “quiet” hotel in the fifties. They saw two plays and went to Rockefeller Center, bought summer clothes according to their allowances and had a touch of night life in the afternoon by going to a hotel famous for its tea dances and listening to a favorite orchestra play, though they had no partners of their own.
All of them had tried to provide against this contingency by pledging boys to “come up if you possibly can” and even writing frantic letters to long neglected swains met last summer that they would be in the great city on a certain date. Alas, though they leapt at the sound of the telephone it was invariably one of their rooms calling the other.
“Heard anything?”
“No. Had one letter—so sorry and all that sort of thing.”
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