I'd Die For You

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  “Maybe.”

  They stood up.

  “I don’t know the girl,” said Lawson, “speaking impersonally I only hoped she isn’t trapped too.”

  He was tempted to snatch one more drink on the way out but that would have violated his rules. Then due to the slight frustration involved he made another slip.

  “Maybe Wardman isn’t such a prize physical package himself.”

  Stepping out of the club into the blinding sunlight Lawson felt triumphant and talkative; he was glad for the sake of discretion that George and he weren’t spending the evening together.

  . . . Later he stopped for a nightcap at a bar where young girls waited on the customers. On departing he tipped his hat in the Latin manner.

  “Multa gratia, Lucia,” he said jovially—and then to the other barmaid, “Adios Elsie.”

  He tipped his hat again and bowed and as he walked out left the two girls staring, unaware that he had bowed across two generations into an American past.

  The feeling of triumph persisted into the next morning when he entered his office late and full of new hopes for his son and himself. George was not yet in but on the desk was an envelope in his handwriting marked “Personal.” Lawson opened and read it. Then, as upon another occasion, he rang for his secretary and said “Please—no phones.” Then he read it a second time:

  —I guessed from your last remark that there was something phoney going on. I worried about it all night and this morning when I came in early your secretary handed me a letter which she said must have got into your files by mistake. Attached to it was your answer and I’m not even pretending that it was an “accident” that I read that too.

  By the time you get this I will be on the clipper. The cashier advanced the wages due me. In saying goodbye I want to state I have tried to be a good son and act like a gentleman as far as I understand what the word means.

  Not till weeks later, when he saw a newspaper item about George’s marriage (“the ceremony was performed in Elkton, Maryland—Miss Elsie Johnson, the bride, is sixteen years old”), did Lawson realize that, in the welter of good intentions, that doubtful quantity, Elsie, had been saved—but the sacrifice was his son’s.

  He was never quite able to realize how he could have acted otherwise, but at certain times thereafter he would remark upon modern young women and their ways. His kindest comment was that they were the only hunters desperate enough to bait a trap with crushed and broken portions of themselves. And he would qualify even this with: “—it’s not their own courage—it’s the courage of nature.”

  There were other things that he caught himself saying which cannot be set down. Wardman Evans, among others, might have been honestly shocked to hear them.

  FSF in uniform, 1918.

  Sometime in 1939 or 1940, when he was most of the time freelancing and working on the screenplays of other writers, Fitzgerald came up with this “original” of his own. A typescript copy survives in the Fitzgerald Papers at Princeton.

  “Love Is a Pain” is in some ways a return to the time and themes of This Side of Paradise, in that it is a mash-up of Princeton days and a world at war. Fitzgerald was long out of college, though, as he wrote it, and instead of the “war to end wars” he had missed fighting in as a young man, a more truly world war was beginning. That his mind should have returned to his own last days at Princeton is unsurprising, given that his time there ended on a campus that had by 1917 become an officer training camp.

  The war and the foreign country the secret agent in this scenario serves are not specified. Thematically, “Love Is a Pain” is reminiscent of both Ernest Hemingway’s strange Spanish Civil War play The Fifth Column (1937) and Hollywood’s allegedly “light-hearted” war movies of 1938–1940 that refused to name Germany or Hitler as the enemy while making melodramatic love plots their focus (think of Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X [1940], or South of the Border [1939], in which Gene Autry tries to save Mexico from “foreign spies” and falls in love with a beautiful local girl during a fiesta). “Love Is a Pain” is something Alfred Hitchcock might have filmed, were the college element stripped away. The dialogue around the game of cards is intriguing, and, as is often the case with Fitzgerald’s film scenarios, “Love Is a Pain” makes one wish he had developed it into a short story instead.

  Love Is a Pain

  A very pretty girl of eighteen, Ann Dawes, arrives back from Europe, one of the last travellers to get out of the war zone. Two young men meet her at the dock. They have trouble locating her because she is not on the passenger list. This is because her wealthy grandfather detests the glamor girl idea. Let her get her name in the paper three times before she’s twenty and she’ll get nothing from him.

  Did she get near the front?

  No. But she talked to a few who had, and she certainly was glad to be back.

  It is as they leave the customs house to drive to her grandfather’s estate near Princeton that we realize she is being followed. She has not escaped from the war zone. She only thinks she has.

  Tom, one of the young men, is observant and he notices the man. He remarks about it, but Ann merely laughs and his friend Dick accuses him of seeing things. Tom admits he must have been mistaken.

  But after they leave Ann at her grandfather’s, Dick too sees the shadower and they give chase, overtake him and capture him. But their prisoner, an extremely attractive man, shows a card which declares him to be a member of the American Secret Service and assures them that he has followed Ann Dawes for a good reason he cannot divulge.

  The two young men are shocked. They release him.

  Next morning they drive over to Ann’s house and try to make her admit that she has been up to some mischief. First Ann takes it as a joke, then grows angry at their priggish and super-patriotic point of view. She sends them away, goes up to her room. The quarrel has left her full of nervous energy and a sense of injustice. She starts something she was too lazy to do the day before—unpack her trunk. At the very bottom she finds an unfamiliar leather satchel in which is a forty-five pound, 156 mm. artillery shell.

  Her first reaction is fright; her second is to throw some clothes on top of it and close the trunk. Her third is to connect it up with the man who has evidently been following her. If he is a secret service man the police already suspect her and she might get some very unfortunate publicity.

  She is confused and hesitant. At this point I want to stress the fact that this part should be played by a young girl—perhaps a Brenda Joyce—a girl on the edge of maturity to whom parties are all important. A fully matured girl of, say, 19, would not hesitate about going to the police.

  Ann decides to go to her grandfather and asks him, without telling him the truth, what he would do in a parallel case. Her grandfather, suspecting nothing, tells her that of course she should be on the side of the law—whereupon Ann tries to phone the police. But the line is dead.

  She goes downstairs and out—on the front porch she meets an electrician who tells her he has come to fix the phone. We recognize, though she doesn’t, the man who shadowed her the day before.

  It is obvious that his mission has something to do with the shell—probably to get possession of it. But he had rather hoped to meet any member of the family except Ann. So they both stall. He asks to see the phone in her room, though of course he has cut the wires outside. Ann, fearing that he might not be honest, might open the trunk, goes upstairs with him and sits on the trunk as he works.

  They fall into conversation. He is obviously well educated and tells her that he was trained as an engineer and that he has been forced to turn electrician very recently. We notice a faint foreign inflection, perhaps French, in his voice.

  There is an immediate sympathy and attraction between them, but they are each absorbed in problems. Ann anxious to clear up the matter of the shell; the electrician anxious to be alone in the room. He asks for a hammer hoping she’ll go for it—but Ann rings for the maid. He asks her for water; mistrustfully, sh
e gets it from the bathroom. But finally he catches her off guard and when her back is turned throws some flaming waste out the window to land on a straw pile. Then he pretends to discover the fire. The ruse works. Ann runs downstairs whereupon he opens the trunk quickly and starts to lift out the satchel containing the shell.

  Downstairs we see that the fire has been noticed almost instantly from the kitchen and been put out at once by the servants. So Ann rushes back upstairs in time to hear the lid of the trunk falling. Cutting into the room we see that the electrician hearing her approach, has for a moment given up his intention of taking the shell. Connecting him now with the government she tells him frankly about the shell, and that she doesn’t know how or where it got in the trunk. The electrician accepts the identification of himself as an American agent, telling her he will take the shell away.

  She must forget the whole transaction. He is about to vanish from her life. But Ann has begun to feel romantic about this “G man” and doesn’t want this to happen. She asks him where he is taking the shell. When he says to Washington, Ann asks if she can ride with him as far as Princeton. The secret agent agrees.

  Ann elects to pass him off on her grandfather—to whom obviously he cannot be either an electrician or a G man—as an air-minded friend just come from a flying field. The grandfather accepts the electrician’s costume as that of an aviator. Ann says she is going to Princeton to visit a friend.

  Before they start out a letter from Dick is delivered in which he withdraws his invitation to the Princeton Prom. He still loves her and always will but everyone’s duty is to America now and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her till she “comes clean.” The letter, of course, is a veiled threat that if she comes to Princeton at all he will expose that she is in trouble with the police.

  This fits in with Ann’s plan. In Princeton she will let Tom and Dick see who she is with—thus clearing up the matter then and there. She doesn’t give a damn about the prom now but she does care about her mystery man. She doesn’t tell him this plan but when they get to Prince-ton gets him to stop his open car in front of the dormitory where the two boys live. She accosts a passing boy who obligingly yells up at the windows of Dick’s room. When Dick and Tom come down she pulls her coup surprising both the boys and the secret agent by saying that he will clear her name. He does so—but only in the most general terms. There is no mention of the shell.

  Dick, in his jubilation, insists that she stay the night in Princeton, will take no refusal. To clinch matters he reaches into the back of the car and starts to lift the satchel containing the shell.

  “What have you got here?” he exclaims, “Lead!”

  “That’s mine,” says the secret agent. “Leave it alone.”

  At this point a language professor passing along the walk sees the secret agent and calls him in a foreign language. His tone indicates his surprise at the agent’s presence in this country.

  This instantly suggests to Ann, Dick and Tom that the man is not an American citizen, and could not be a member of the American police. The secret agent impassively answers, “You must be mistaken,” throws the car into first and starts away—carrying Ann with him.

  On the outskirts of Princeton they turn into a road just at the moment that a man is about to put up a sign Detour, Highway under repair. Detour. They get on the road before the sign is put up. Then, a few miles out in the country, a tire blows out.

  Up to this kidnapping, Ann has been all for the secret agent who seems the most attractive man that she ever met. Now, of course, she turns passionately against him. He is undoubtedly a spy and he is, in point of fact, kidnapping her.

  He promises he will put her out of the car when they have driven further into the country, but not so near Princeton. She pretends to accept this but when he gets out to fix the tire she turns the key in the ignition and throws the car into gear. The secret agent detects her just in time, climbs in over the back seat and halts the car. When he gets out this time he takes the key with him, and also the shell as an extra precaution. This is done on his part with an air of perfect good humor.

  Once again Ann waits—until just as he is pushing the jack under the rear axle. At this point he takes off his coat and throws it over the back of the open car—and Ann has seen him put the key in the pocket of the coat. Stealthily she draws the coat over and slips out the key.

  This time she manages to get away. However, about fifty feet down the road she stops, keeping the motor running. She is afraid that if she leaves him there with the shell he will in some way disappear.

  The secret agent puts the shell behind some trees at the side of the road and with charming blandishment, tries to come near Ann. But each time he tries she drives a little ahead. He gives this up. His situation is that if he strikes cross country with the shell she cannot follow him, but she can and will return to Princeton for help, even with the flat tire. Ann, for her part prays for another car to come along. She doesn’t know what we know—that the road has been closed on both sides of them for repairs. No one will be along.

  So time, which Ann thought was for her proves to be against her. Night falls. There is a patter of rain. Ann tries to raise the car top and can’t do it alone. The secret agent takes advantage of this effort to sneak up on her—just as the clouds burst in earnest. She throws the key off into the underbrush, watching where it lands, but he doesn’t notice this gesture. The storm is too bad to fix the tire but he gets the top up and they sit under that faint protection until we FADE OUT:

  Next morning Tom and Dick at Princeton discuss the events of the day before. They know only that Ann has gone off, willingly or unwillingly, with a self-declared G man—whom a foreign professor claimed as a countryman of his. The professor’s words were that he looked enough like Captain So-and-so, to be his own brother. But the professor also admitted that he might be mistaken, which accounts for the boys’ confusion and delay. They decide to phone her grandfather’s house and see if she’s there, but a servant tells them that she has gone visiting a certain girl in Princeton. This, they know, is not true. Dick who is in love with her wants to tell the police. Tom remembers that Ann wants no newspaper publicity and thinks they ought to search for her themselves. Disturbed, they borrow a car and set out in the direction of Washington, knight-errants, with scarcely a clue to go on. The first thing they come to is the sign—Detour—Road Under Repair. They argue with a policeman but he will not let them through.

  Meanwhile our principals are awake and hungry. The secret agent has an “iron ration” in the car which they share. They wash—on the honor system—at a nearby stream—then he firmly insists she return to the car and he starts to fix the tire at last in the bright sunshine. Only now does he notice the key is missing. He asks her for it and she laughs. She has control of the situation unless he makes physical threats and it is carefully planted that he is a gentleman. Once more he tries guile. Getting out he disconnects the starter without telling her and then he starts back down the road for the jack, left there the night before. But he keeps an eye on her and sure enough, when he has gone a little way, Ann gets out and looks hurriedly in the shrubbery for the key. The secret agent comes running. He now knows where she has thrown it and presently he finds it. He is again top dog.

  It seems as if they have known each other a long time and there has been a good deal of humor in the running fight about the key.

  As they start along the road at last Ann at least tries to get some light on the mystery. How did the shell get in her trunk? It happened abroad, of course, but she had to pass through so many countries coming back that she doesn’t know in which one it occurred, nor does she know why it was sent here. He will tell nothing.

  “The customs officer might have found it at the dock,” she says, “if there hadn’t been such a jam of refugees.”

  Off guard he answers: “That was our only risk.”

  This makes it plain to her that he is a spy, for a G man could have arranged with the customs hou
se to possess the shell then and there. Her mood which has been gay all morning turns to anger. She has become a passionate patriot—though her mind had been full of nothing but dances just twenty-four hours ago.

  Meanwhile, Dick and Tom reach the point where the detour ends and curves back into the main road. Here also they find a sign “Road Under Repair” and the foreman of a labor gang tells them that no one has taken the main road since 5 o’clock the preceding day when a bridge collapsed. They know, therefore, that Ann and her abductor are somewhere back along that road. But no amount of persuasion will convince the foreman to let their car in to the closed strip. He has his orders. So they abandon their car and get in his truck crowded with workmen bound for the damaged bridge. Added to other worries about Ann, is their anxiety that the car might have crashed at the bridge.

  At the moment Ann and the secret agent are so absorbed by their quarrel. He has now admitted to her that he is not an American—he is a patriot of his own country, trying to do his duty.

  “If you feel that way I don’t think it’s quite safe to release you. You’ll just have to come along with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Not very far now.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Why bother?” he asks. “We’ll never meet again. If I’m caught, I’ll go to prison. If not, my mission on this side is over. In the little while longer that we’ll be together why bring hatred into it? Your country isn’t at war with mine.”

  “What about that shell?” she asks.

  “I can tell you nothing. It might endanger the lives of others.”

  “A lot of respect for human life you have to go around with that for your briefcase.”

  She indicates the article in the back seat.

  “We don’t always have the final word—”

  He breaks off with the sudden realization that the shell is not in the car but back on the roadside. She realizes it too and breaks out with laughter. He turns to look at her and at this point the car goes over the bridge.