“Sandra Pepys, Syncopated,” with an introduction by Peter Boyce Wendell the columnist, appeared serially in Jordan’s Magazine, and came out in book form in March. From its first published instalment it attracted attention far and wide. A trite enough subject — a girl from a small New Jersey town coming to New York to go on the stage — treated simply, with a peculiar vividness of phrasing and a haunting undertone of sadness in the very inadequacy of its vocabulary, it made an irresistible appeal.
Peter Boyce Wendell, who happened at that time to be advocating the enrichment of the American language by the immediate adoption of expressive vernacular words, stood as its sponsor and thundered his indorsement over the placid bromides of the conventional reviewers.
Marcia received three hundred dollars an instalment for the serial publication, which came at an opportune time, for though Horace’s monthly salary at the Hippodrome was now more than Marcia’s had ever been, young Marcia was emitting shrill cries which they interpreted as a demand for country air. So early April found them installed in a bungalow in Westchester County, with a place for a lawn, a place for a garage, and a place for everything, including a sound-proof impregnable study, in which Marcia faithfully promised Mr. Jordan she would shut herself up when her daughter’s demands began to be abated, and compose immortally illiterate literature.
“It’s not half bad,” thought Horace one night as he was on his way from the station to his house. He was considering several prospects that had opened up, a four months’ vaudeville offer in five figures, a chance to go back to Princeton in charge of all gymnasium work. Odd! He had once intended to go back there in charge of all philosophic work, and now he had not even been stirred by the arrival in New York of Anton Laurier, his old idol.
The gravel crunched raucously under his heel. He saw the lights of his sitting-room gleaming and noticed a big car standing in the drive. Probably Mr. Jordan again, come to persuade Marcia to settle down’ to work.
She had heard the sound of his approach and her form was silhouetted against the lighted door as she came out to meet him. “There’s some Frenchman here,” she whispered nervously. “I can’t pronounce his name, but he sounds awful deep. You’ll have to jaw with him.”
“What Frenchman?”
“You can’t prove it by me. He drove up an hour ago with Mr. Jordan, and said he wanted to meet Sandra Pepys, and all that sort of thing.”
Two men rose from chairs as they went inside.
“Hello Tarbox,” said Jordan. “I’ve just been bringing together two celebrities. I’ve brought M’sieur Laurier out with me. M’sieur Laurier, let me present Mr. Tarbox, Mrs. Tarbox’s husband.”
“Not Anton Laurier!” exclaimed Horace.
“But, yes. I must come. I have to come. I have read the book of Madame, and I have been charmed” — he fumbled in his pocket — “ah I have read of you too. In this newspaper which I read to-day it has your name.”
He finally produced a clipping from a magazine.
“Read it!” he said eagerly. “It has about you too.”
Horace’s eye skipped down the page.
“A distinct contribution to American dialect literature,” it said. “No attempt at literary tone; the book derives its very quality from this fact, as did ‘Huckleberry Finn.’“
Horace’s eyes caught a passage lower down; he became suddenly aghast — read on hurriedly:
“Marcia Tarbox’s connection with the stage is not only as a spectator but as the wife of a performer. She was married last year to Horace Tarbox, who every evening delights the children at the Hippodrome with his wondrous flying performance. It is said that the young couple have dubbed themselves Head and Shoulders, referring doubtless to the fact that Mrs. Tarbox supplies the literary and mental qualities, while the supple and agile shoulder of her husband contribute their share to the family fortunes.
“Mrs. Tarbox seems to merit that much-abused title — ‘prodigy.’ Only twenty — — “
Horace stopped reading, and with a very odd expression in his eyes gazed intently at Anton Laurier.
“I want to advise you — “ he began hoarsely.
“What?”
“About raps. Don’t answer them! Let them alone — have a padded door.”
The Cut-Glass Bowl
There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age. In the cut-glass age, when young ladies had persuaded young men with long, curly mustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass presents — punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses, wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and vases — for, though cut glass was nothing new in the nineties, it was then especially busy reflecting the dazzling light of fashion from the Back Bay to the fastnesses of the Middle West.
After the wedding the punch-bowls were arranged in the sideboard with the big bowl in the centre; the glasses were set up in the china-closet; the candlesticks were put at both ends of things — and then the struggle for existence began. The bonbon dish lost its little handle and became a pin-tray upstairs; a promenading cat knocked the little bowl off the sideboard, and the hired girl chipped the middle-sized one with the sugar-dish; then the wine-glasses succumbed to leg fractures, and even the dinner-glasses disappeared one by one like the ten little niggers, the last one ending up, scarred and maimed as a tooth-brush holder among other shabby genteels on the bathroom shelf. But by the time all this had happened the cut-glass age was over, anyway.
It was well past its first glory on the day the curious Mrs. Roger Fairboalt came to see the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper.
“My dear,” said the curious Mrs. Roger Fairboalt, “I love your house. I think it’s quite artistic.”
“I’m so glad,” said the beautiful Mrs. Harold Piper, lights appearing in her young, dark eyes; “and you must come often. I’m almost always alone in the afternoon.”
Mrs. Fairboalt would have liked to remark that she didn’t believe this at all and couldn’t see how she’d be expected to — it was all over town that Mr. Freddy Gedney had been dropping in on Mrs. Piper five afternoons a week for the past six months. Mrs. Fairboalt was at that ripe age where she distrusted all beautiful women — —
“I love the dining-room most,” she said, “all that marvellous china, and that huge cut-glass bowl.”
Mrs. Piper laughed, so prettily that Mrs. Fairboalt’s lingering reservations about the Freddy Gedney story quite vanished.
“Oh, that big bowl!” Mrs. Piper’s mouth forming the words was a vivid rose petal. “There’s a story about that bowl — — “
“Oh — — “
“You remember young Carleton Canby? Well, he was very attentive at one time, and the night I told him I was going to marry Harold, seven years ago in ninety-two, he drew himself way up and said: ‘Evylyn, I’m going to give a present that’s as hard as you are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through.’ He frightened me a little — his eyes were so black. I thought he was going to deed me a haunted house or something that would explode when you opened it. That bowl came, and of course it’s beautiful. Its diameter or circumference or something is two and a half feet — or perhaps it’s three and a half. Anyway, the sideboard is really too small for it; it sticks way out.”
“My dear, wasn’t that odd! And he left town about then didn’t he?” Mrs. Fairboalt was scribbling italicized notes on her memory — “hard, beautiful, empty, and easy to see through.”
“Yes, he went West — or South — or somewhere,” answered Mrs. Piper, radiating that divine vagueness that helps to lift beauty out of time.
Mrs. Fairboalt drew on her gloves, approving the effect of largeness given by the open sweep from the spacious music-room through the library, disclosing a part of the dining-room beyond. It was really the nicest smaller house in town, and Mrs. Piper had talked of moving to a larger one on Devereaux Avenue. Harold Piper must be coining
money.
As she turned into the sidewalk under the gathering autumn dusk she assumed that disapproving, faintly unpleasant expression that almost all successful women of forty wear on the street.
If I were Harold Piper, she thought, I’d spend a little less time on business and a little more time at home. Some friend should speak to him.
But if Mrs. Fairboalt had considered it a successful afternoon she would have named it a triumph had she waited two minutes longer. For while she was still a black receding figure a hundred yards down the street, a very good-looking distraught young man turned up the walk to the Piper house. Mrs. Piper answered the door-bell herself, and with a rather dismayed expression led him quickly into the library.
“I had to see you,” he began wildly; “your note played the devil with me. Did Harold frighten you into this?”
She shook her head.
“I’m through, Fred,” she said slowly, and her lips had never looked to him so much like tearings from a rose. “He came home last night sick with it. Jessie Piper’s sense of duty was to much for her, so she went down to his office and told him. He was hurt and — oh, I can’t help seeing it his way, Fred. He says we’ve been club gossip all summer and he didn’t know it, and now he understands snatches of conversation he’s caught and veiled hints people have dropped about me. He’s mighty angry, Fred, and he loves me and I love him — rather.”
Gedney nodded slowly and half closed his eyes.
“Yes,” he said “yes, my trouble’s like yours. I can see other people’s points of view too plainly.” His gray eyes met her dark ones frankly. “The blessed thing’s over. My God, Evylyn, I’ve been sitting down at the office all day looking at the outside of your letter, and looking at it and looking at it — — “
“You’ve got to go, Fred,” she said steadily, and the slight emphasis of hurry in her voice was a new thrust for him. “I gave him my word of honor I wouldn’t see you. I know just how far I can go with Harold, and being here with you this evening is one of the things I can’t do.”
They were still standing, and as she spoke she made a little movement toward the door. Gedney looked at her miserably, trying, here at the end, to treasure up a last picture of her — and then suddenly both of them were stiffened into marble at the sound of steps on the walk outside. Instantly her arm reached out grasping the lapel of his coat — half urged, half swung him through the big door into the dark dining-room.
“I’ll make him go up-stairs,” she whispered close to his ear; “don’t move till you hear him on the stairs. Then go out the front way.”
Then he was alone listening as she greeted her husband in the hall.
Harold Piper was thirty-six, nine years older than his wife. He was handsome — with marginal notes: these being eyes that were too close together, and a certain woodenness when his face was in repose. His attitude toward this Gedney matter was typical of all his attitudes. He had told Evylyn that he considered the subject closed and would never reproach her nor allude to it in any form; and he told himself that this was rather a big way of looking at it — that she was not a little impressed. Yet, like all men who are preoccupied with their own broadness, he was exceptionally narrow.
He greeted Evylyn with emphasized cordiality this evening.
“You’ll have to hurry and dress, Harold,” she said eagerly; “we’re going to the Bronsons’.”
He nodded.
“It doesn’t take me long to dress, dear,” and, his words trailing off, he walked on into the library. Evylyn’s heart clattered loudly.
“Harold — — “ she began, with a little catch in her voice, and followed him in. He was lighting a cigarette. “You’ll have to hurry, Harold,” she finished, standing in the doorway.
“Why?” he asked a trifle impatiently; “you’re not dressed yourself yet, Evie.”
He stretched out in a Morris chair and unfolded a newspaper. With a sinking sensation Evylyn saw that this meant at least ten minutes — and Gedney was standing breathless in the next room. Supposing Harold decided that before he went upstairs he wanted a drink from the decanter on the sideboard. Then it occurred to her to forestall this contingency by bringing him the decanter and a glass. She dreaded calling his attention to the dining-room in any way, but she couldn’t risk the other chance.
But at the same moment Harold rose and, throwing his paper down, came toward her.
“Evie, dear,” he said, bending and putting his arms about her, “I hope you’re not thinking about last night — — “ She moved close to him, trembling. “I know,” he continued, “it was just an imprudent friendship on your part. We all make mistakes.”
Evylyn hardly heard him. She was wondering if by sheer clinging to him she could draw him out and up the stairs. She thought of playing sick, asking to be carried up — unfortunately she knew he would lay her on the couch and bring her whiskey.
Suddenly her nervous tension moved up a last impossible notch. She had heard a very faint but quite unmistakable creak from the floor of the dining room. Fred was trying to get out the back way.
Then her heart took a flying leap as a hollow ringing note like a gong echoed and re-echoed through the house. Gedney’s arm had struck the big cut-glass bowl.
“What’s that!” cried Harold. “Who’s there?”
She clung to him but he broke away, and the room seemed to crash about her ears. She heard the pantry-door swing open, a scuffle, the rattle of a tin pan, and in wild despair she rushed into the kitchen and pulled up the gas. Her husband’s arm slowly unwound from Gedney’s neck, and he stood there very still, first in amazement, then with pain dawning in his face.
“My golly!” he said in bewilderment, and then repeated: “My golly!”
He turned as if to jump again at Gedney, stopped, his muscles visibly relaxed, and he gave a bitter little laugh.
“You people — you people — — “ Evylyn’s arms were around him and her eyes were pleading with him frantically, but he pushed her away and sank dazed into a kitchen chair, his face like porcelain. “You’ve been doing things to me, Evylyn. Why, you little devil! You little devil!”
She had never felt so sorry for him; she had never loved him so much.
“It wasn’t her fault,” said Gedney rather humbly. “I just came.” But Piper shook his head, and his expression when he stared up was as if some physical accident had jarred his mind into a temporary inability to function. His eyes, grown suddenly pitiful, struck a deep, unsounded chord in Evylyn — and simultaneously a furious anger surged in her. She felt her eyelids burning; she stamped her foot violently; her hands scurried nervously over the table as if searching for a weapon, and then she flung herself wildly at Gedney.
“Get out!” she screamed, dark eves blazing, little fists beating helplessly on his outstretched arm. “You did this! Get out of here — get out — get out! get out!”
II
Concerning Mrs. Harold Piper at thirty-five, opinion was divided — women said she was still handsome; men said she was pretty no longer. And this was probably because the qualities in her beauty that women had feared and men had followed had vanished. Her eyes were still as large and as dark and as sad, but the mystery had departed; their sadness was no longer eternal, only human, and she had developed a habit, when she was startled or annoyed, of twitching her brows together and blinking several times. Her mouth also had lost: the red had receded and the faint down-turning of its corners when she smiled, that had added to the sadness of the eyes and been vaguely mocking and beautiful, was quite gone. When she smiled now the corners of her lips turned up. Back in the days when she revelled in her own beauty Evylyn had enjoyed that smile of hers — she had accentuated it. When she stopped accentuating it, it faded out and the last of her mystery with it.
Evylyn had ceased accentuating her smile within a month after the Freddy Gedney affair. Externally things had gone an very much as they had before. But in those few minutes during which she had discovered how much she loved
her husband, Evylyn had realized how indelibly she had hurt him. For a month she struggled against aching silences, wild reproaches and accusations — she pled with him, made quiet, pitiful little love to him, and he laughed at her bitterly — and then she, too, slipped gradually into silence and a shadowy, impenetrable barrier dropped between them. The surge of love that had risen in her she lavished on Donald, her little boy, realizing him almost wonderingly as a part of her life.
The next year a piling up of mutual interests and responsibilities and some stray flicker from the past brought husband and wife together again — but after a rather pathetic flood of passion Evylyn realized that her great opportunity was gone. There simply wasn’t anything left. She might have been youth and love for both — but that time of silence had slowly dried up the springs of affection and her own desire to drink again of them was dead.
She began for the first time to seek women friends, to prefer books she had read before, to sew a little where she could watch her two children to whom she was devoted. She worried about little things — if she saw crumbs on the dinner-table her mind drifted off the conversation: she was receding gradually into middle age.
Her thirty-fifth birthday had been an exceptionally busy one, for they were entertaining on short notice that night, as she stood in her bedroom window in the late afternoon she discovered that she was quite tired. Ten years before she would have lain down and slept, but now she had a feeling that things needed watching: maids were cleaning down-stairs, bric-à-brac was all over the floor, and there were sure to be grocery-men that had to be talked to imperatively — and then there was a letter to write Donald, who was fourteen and in his first year away at school.
She had nearly decided to lie down, nevertheless, when she heard a sudden familiar signal from little Julie down-stairs. She compressed her lips, her brows twitched together, and she blinked.
“Julie!” she called.
“Ah-h-h-ow!” prolonged Julie plaintively. Then the voice of Hilda, the second maid, floated up the stairs.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 141