I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  He was silent on the way to the pier. Even when they were held up by a long line of strawberry trucks he said nothing and she wondered if he was envying those other boys who had no worries at all.

  She found out presently. When he had parked the car and they had started toward the pier entrance, he stopped suddenly.

  “This is foolishness,” he said in an odd strained voice.

  “What is?”

  “Returning this fur. She shouldn’t have left it around.” He talked faster and faster as if he did not quite want to hear his own words. “She has dozens of furs and this is probably insured anyhow. It ought to be finders keepers—it’s really as much ours as the pearl your father found in the restaurant.”

  “Oh, no it isn’t,” she exclaimed, “Because Father had paid for the oysters.”

  “We could probably get thousands for it. I could find out where to take it—”

  Shocked, she cut him off.

  “I wouldn’t think of such a thing—when we know exactly who owns it.”

  “Nobody knows we’ve got it except those boys, and you don’t live in New York and they don’t know your name—”

  “Stop it!” Gwen cried. “I never heard anything so terrible in my life. You know you wouldn’t do that. Come along right away—we’ll ride up on this thing.”

  Taking his arm she drew him toward the moving belt that was carrying baggage up to the pier. She plopped down on it thinking he would sit beside her but at the last moment he shook himself free; and as she was borne slowly aloft surrounded by bags and golf clubs he stood looking after her—with the cape over his arm.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” a guard called to Gwen, “That’s for baggage.”

  But Gwen’s impassioned voice cut across his.

  “Come right up here with that cape!”

  Ethan shook his head slowly, and called back:

  “You come down here—I want to talk to you first.”

  An English voice behind him said suddenly:

  “What’s all the trouble?”

  Confused, Ethan turned around to confront Peddlar TenBroek and his three friends.

  “The young lady went up on the moving belt,” he said, flushing.

  “So she did. Well, we will too.”

  The three English youths were in fact already on it, following in Gwen’s wake to the audible fury of the guard.

  “We’d better go up the stairs,” said Peddlar throwing a curious look at Ethan. But when they joined the others above Gwen said nothing—only she averted her eyes from Ethan Kennicott.

  The three Englishmen led the way clogging out the pier.

  For a moment the wild activity about the gang-plank, hurrying stewards, the rumbling iron wheels of a hundred hand trucks, the swift smell of the harbour—momentarily drove the episode from Gwen’s mind. On the boat they went along many corridors lined by stewardesses with correctly folded arms. A huge bouquet preceded them, a bouquet sheathed in night jasmine, made of rare iris, delphinium, heliotrope and larkspur, with St. Joseph lilies, fresh from New Orleans. They followed in its fragrant path. When it had been crowded through a door the steward guiding them said:

  “Here is Mrs. TenBroek’s salon.”

  A blond flower of a woman, chic by Gwen’s most exacting standards, stood up to receive them and one of the English boys said:

  “You can’t get away from the mad rhumba dancers, Mrs. TenBroek—even by going to the West Indies.”

  The words thrilled Gwen; this was the trip of the bright catalogues—of tropical moons and flashing swimming pools and soft music on enchanted beaches.

  Mrs. TenBroek saw the cape suddenly and exclaimed:

  “Oh, so it’s been found!” She took it and looked it over eagerly. “Tell me, where was it found?”

  “It may be a little dusty,” said Gwen, “It was out at 216th Street.”

  “But what was it doing out there? I lent it to Madame Rytina, the singer, and surely she doesn’t live out there.”

  “It was in this driver’s car,” said Gwen. “We both found it.”

  “Well, you must sit down and tell me about it. I’m so relieved because it’s such a nice little cape.”

  In a minute Gwen found herself telling what had taken her to 216th Street. When she had done Mrs. TenBroek said:

  “And now you’ve missed your matinee—what a shame!” She looked at Gwen tentatively, not quite certain how to proceed. “I mentioned a reward in the afternoon paper—”

  “Really this driver found it as much as I did,” Gwen interrupted quickly.

  They all looked at Ethan Kennicott and Peddlar TenBroek said suddenly.

  “That’s all very well—but I’d like to know what he was doing with the cloak down at the foot of the pier saying he wouldn’t bring it up to you.”

  Ethan flushed.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said something like that. Mother, she found the cape—he didn’t really have anything to do with it.”

  “I never claimed I did,” said Ethan.

  “Well, what about it?” inquired Mrs. TenBroek, “Who did find it?”

  She broke off as the bell rang and the door opened emitting a rancid breeze from another world. The arch type of all the taxi drivers of legend stood there—soiled, sinister and tough as pig-skin.

  “Anybody here lose a cape?” he demanded in no uncertain voice.

  “What’s all this, steward?” asked Mrs. TenBroek sharply.

  “He claims he found a cape, Madame.”

  “Not ezatly found it,” Mr. Michaelson corrected him, “But I was driving the car when it was left in it. Then I turn the car over to this mug—” He indicated Ethan—“and he finds it and doesn’t tell me about it. I thought there was something funny when he came to the garage this morning and the old guy at your house tipped me off.”

  Mrs. TenBroek looked impatiently from one driver to the other.

  “I ought to get a split of that reward,” Michaelson said, “After I dropped them parties last night I went to the Grand Central and slep three hours without movin the car, just as if I was taking care of it.”

  “But you didn’t know it was there.”

  “Not exatly. This young guy comes along this morning and drives the car away before I can look in it. Here I been with the company nine years and this is the first day he was ever out and he finds it and don’t say nothing. And me with a wife—”

  “I’ve had enough of this,” Mrs. TenBroek interrupted. “It’s quite plain that the young lady found the cape, and neither of you have the faintest claim to any reward.”

  “What young lady?” demanded Mr. Michaelson. “Oh, her.”

  “If you looked in the afternoon papers,” continued Mrs. TenBroek, “—you’d see I didn’t mention any sum so I’ll call it three dollars for each of you to pay for your time.”

  She opened her purse and took the elastic from a row of bills.

  “Three dollars for a chinchilly coat! Well, if that ain’t—”

  “Be careful now,” interrupted Peddlar TenBroek.

  “I got this guy to thank for it,” said Michaelson, “The rat never told me.”

  He took a sudden step toward Ethan Kennicott and hit him a smashing left on the jaw, knocking him back over a low trunk and up with a smack against the wall. Then snarling “Keep your small change, lady,” he left the room.

  “I say, he can’t get away with that!” exclaimed Peddlar TenBroek, and started after him.

  “Let him go!” his mother ordered. “I can’t endure such scenes.”

  One of the English boys had helped Ethan to his feet; he leaned rockily against the wall, his hand over his eyes.

  Fumbling in her purse Mrs. TenBroek found a bill.

  “Give this one ten dollars and tell him he can go too.”

  Ethan stared at the bill and shook his head.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  “Put it in his pocket,” she insisted, “And make him go.
”

  “Somebody ought to help him off,” said Gwen, agonized, “He’s hurt.”

  “I’ll help him off,” said the English boy. He asked one of the others to give him a hand.

  As Gwen, shaken and confused, started to follow, Mrs. TenBroek stopped her.

  “Do wait a minute till I get my breath? I want to talk to you.”

  “He shouldn’t have hit him like that,” Gwen said.

  “It was terrible—you shouldn’t ever get mixed up with such people.” She turned to her son. “Order me a glass of sherry, Peddlar, and some tea for this young lady.”

  “No, thanks, I’ve got to go,” Gwen said. “I have to telephone my chaperone at the hotel.”

  “You can phone from the ship. Go with her and find the phone, Peddlar.”

  Gwen hoped that her party had gone to the matinee as planned, but on the other hand Mrs. Tulliver might be still at the hotel worrying about her. After a few minutes she was startled to hear Dizzy’s voice over the wire.

  “Why aren’t you at the play?” Gwen demanded.

  “I was late—Mrs. Tulliver left two seats and a note for us and I was just going over.”

  “Well, tell her I’m all right.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m on a boat going to the West Indies,” said Gwen ambiguously.

  “What?” Dizzy exclaimed. “Did you find a real pearl?”

  “I mean the boat’s going, but I’m not. I wish it would start and I’d get left aboard by accident. Why were you late?”

  “I got locked up in the bird house.”

  “The what?”

  “I went to the zoo and the keeper went out to lunch. Oh, it was the dumbest thing—I never want to see a bird again.”

  When Gwen went back to Mrs. TenBroek’s suite, that lady was full of an idea.

  “It’s hard to offer a reward to someone like you,” she said, “But I’ve thought of something. I’m just making this trip to pick up an old aunt of mine and bring her back to New York and I wonder if you’d like to go along and keep me company—I’m sure I could arrange it with your family by long distance.”

  The magnificent prospect rushed over Gwen like a champagne cocktail, but after a minute’s reflection she shook her head.

  “I don’t think you could,” she said. Adding frankly, “Daddy would know your name, of course, but he doesn’t really know anything about you.”

  “I know quite a few people down there who might be willing to recommend me,” said Mrs. TenBroek.

  “I’m so much obliged, but I don’t think I’d better.”

  “Very well, then.” She had taken a fancy to Gwen and she was disappointed. “In any case I’m going to insist that you take two hundred dollars and buy yourself a nice evening dress, or whatever you want.”

  “Two hundred dollars,” Gwen exclaimed, “That’s ten evening dresses!”

  “Is it? Well, use it as you like. Are you quite sure you’d rather have the money than the trip?”

  Tight-lipped, Gwen said:

  “Yes, I would, Mrs. TenBroek.”

  —It was too bad the child was mercenary. Mrs. TenBroek had felt that behind those bright blue eyes lay the sort of romance that had haunted her own youth—she was sure she would have chosen the West Indies.

  She counted out four new fifty dollar bills.

  On the decks the cymbals were crashed and voices were calling “All ashore that’s going ashore.” When the Dacia had slid out into the harbour to the flutter of handkerchiefs the five young people left the pier. In the street Peddlar TenBroek said:

  “We thought maybe you could have dinner with us this evening. You said there were four of you, and there’s four of us and we haven’t a thing to do. We could have dinner and dance up in the Rainbow Room.”

  “That’d be wonderful,” said Gwen, “But I don’t know whether our chaperone, Mrs. Tulliver—”

  “I’ll talk to her myself,” he said confidently.

  “All right,” she hesitated, “But would you take me somewhere else first? Or rather two places—I’ve got to go to the first place to see where the second place is.”

  “Just tell the chauffeur where you want to go.”

  Half an hour later Gwen knocked softly at a thin door and at a listless response, went in.

  It was a barren room furnished only with table, chair, and iron bed. In the corner was a cardboard suitcase with books piled beside it; a street suit and a hat hung from a hook on the wall. Ethan Kennicott, the side of his face blue and swollen, sat at the table, staring straight ahead of him, through half closed eyes. When he saw her his head jerked up, and with a tense movement he got to his feet.

  “What do you want?” he asked harshly.

  “I just came for a minute. My father says nobody ever ought to go to bed angry no matter what’s happened.”

  “Tell that to one of those smoothies,” he said bitterly. “They can spend all their lives being polite. But it just happens that I lost my job.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “What did you expect? Sure, I suppose I deserved it too.”

  “I sort of think it’s my fault.”

  He shook his head defiantly.

  “It’s my fault—and I don’t care any more. I don’t care if I get an education—I don’t care about anything.”

  “You oughtn’t to feel that way,” she said, shocked. “You’ve got to get an education.”

  “Big chance.” He gave an unsuccessful little laugh. “I tell you I don’t want one. I’m not fit for one, but when you’ve been half starved for three months—and too proud to take relief and then you see a chance like that. You think I’m a thief, don’t you—well, let me tell you I never did a thing like that before in my life. I never even thought a thing like that, any more than you did.”

  “I thought it,” she lied.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Yes, I did—my family hasn’t got much money any more and I thought if we sold the fur I could go on a trip or something.”

  He looked at her, incredulous.

  “You did?”

  “I didn’t think it long,” she said hastily. “But I did think it.” A memory of the pearl that wasn’t a pearl rose in her mind to help her out, “I thought finders keepers losers weepers too.”

  “But you didn’t think like that very long.”

  “Neither did you.”

  As she gave him back his self respect moment by moment, his whole posture changed.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have,” he said meditatively, but with recurrent bitterness he shrugged his shoulders, “It’s too late now though—the job’s gone. And I don’t know when I’ll ever get another.”

  She had come up close to the table, her hand clasped tight around the four fifty dollar bills so that they had become a compact little lump.

  “This ought to help,” she said and tossed the wad quickly onto the table.

  Then before he could move or say a word she ran childishly from the room, slammed the door and hurried downstairs to the waiting car.

  It was very wonderful in the Rainbow Room. The floor floated in the sky while two orchestras tore the spectrum into many colors for Gwen’s avid eyes. The archaic quality of the English youths’ dancing was being dissipated under expert tutelage, and if the girls had felt that their trip had been wanting up to now, this evening atoned for everything. It was fun crying “Poop-poop!” at Dizzy and pretending to order birdseed for her; and it was fun for Gwen to know that Peddlar TenBroek was completely at her service and that she’d get letters from England all the rest of the spring. It was all fun—

  “What are you thinking of?” Peddlar asked her.

  “Thinking of?” She came back to reality. “Well, if you have to know, I was thinking about that young taxi driver. He really did want to go to Williams College. And now he has no job and I was just thinking he was probably sitting in his room feeling so blue.”

  “Let’s call him up,” said Peddlar promptly, “
We’ll tell him to come and join us. You say he’s a good fellow.”

  Gwen considered.

  “No, it wouldn’t be best,” she decided with a touch of wisdom beyond her years, “He’s sure to have a hard time and this wouldn’t help him. Let’s skip it.”

  She was happy, and a little bit older. Like all the children growing up in her generation she accepted life as a sort of accident, a grab bag where you took what you could get and nothing was very certain. The pearl her father had found hadn’t been a pearl but this night’s pleasure came from the fact that she had stumbled upon the skins of two-score South American rodents.

  Months later when Gwen could not have told what tunes the orchestra played, she would still remember the other pearl, the one she had strung upon her personal rosary—though of course she didn’t think of it like that, but rather felt a sense of guilty triumph that she had put something over on life. She didn’t tell Dizzy about that. She never told anyone at all. Girls never started anything, didn’t they? The pearl and the fur they were accidents—but it was no accident when she gave him her voyage to the blessed isles, gave to him out of a pity that was so deep in her that she could never even tell Dizzy about it—never told anyone at all.

  FSF, front row, second from left, 1918.

  “Thumbs Up” and “Dentist Appointment” are variant versions (with very different endings) of a story cut and changed into “The End of Hate” and published in Collier’s (June 22, 1940). Fitzgerald maintained, late in his life, that one day he wanted to write a Civil War novel. These stories, and the play he wrote as a teenager ([The] Coward), show his lifelong interest in the war.

  All three stories stem directly from Edward Fitzgerald (1853–1931). His father has scarcely been acknowledged as an influence on Fitzgerald’s life or work, but on June 26, 1940, Fitzgerald wrote to his cousin Ceci Taylor: “Did you see a very poor story of mine that was in Collier’s a few weeks ago? It was interesting only in that it was founded on a family story—how William George Robertson was hung up by the thumbs at Glen Mary or was it Locust Grove? Aunt Elise would know.” Robertson was Edward Fitzgerald’s cousin and neighbor, and was indeed one of John Singleton Mosby’s raiders during the Civil War. Edward himself was born at Glenmary Farm in Maryland, not far from the plantation at Locust Grove, also called the Magruder House, built between 1773 and 1781.