Feeling a little self-conscious she dropped on her knees beside him and made an unsuccessful attempt at prayer.
She was only half through when he rose. He took her arm again.
“I wanted to thank Her for letting as have this day together,” he said simply.
Lois felt a sudden lump in her throat and she wanted to say something that would tell him how much it had meant to her, too. But she found no words.
“I’ll always remember this,” he continued, his voice trembling a little — — “this summer day with you. It’s been just what I expected. You’re just what I expected, Lois.”
“I’m awfully glad, Keith.”
“You see, when you were little they kept sending me snap-shots of you, first as a baby and then as a child in socks playing on the beach with a pail and shovel, and then suddenly as a wistful little girl with wondering, pure eyes — and I used to build dreams about you. A man has to have something living to cling to. I think, Lois, it was your little white soul I tried to keep near me — even when life was at its loudest and every intellectual idea of God seemed the sheerest mockery, and desire and love and a million things came up to me and said: ‘Look here at me! See, I’m Life. You’re turning your back on it!’ All the way through that shadow, Lois, I could always see your baby soul flitting on ahead of me, very frail and clear and wonderful.”
Lois was crying softly. They had reached the gate and she rested her elbow on it and dabbed furiously at her eyes.
“And then later, child, when you were sick I knelt all one night and asked God to spare you for me — for I knew then that I wanted more; He had taught me to want more. I wanted to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me. I saw you growing up, that white innocence of yours changing to a flame and burning to give light to other weaker souls. And then I wanted some day to take your children on my knee and hear them call the crabbed old monk Uncle Kieth.”
He seemed to be laughing now as he talked.
“Oh, Lois, Lois, I was asking God for more then. I wanted the letters you’d write me and the place I’d have at your table. I wanted an awful lot, Lois, dear.”
“You’ve got me, Kieth,” she sobbed “you know it, say you know it. Oh, I’m acting like a baby but I didn’t think you’d be this way, and I — oh, Kieth — Kieth — — “
He took her hand and patted it softly.
“Here’s the bus. You’ll come again won’t you?”
She put her hands on his cheeks, add drawing his head down, pressed her tear-wet face against his.
“Oh, Kieth, brother, some day I’ll tell you something.”
He helped her in, saw her take down her handkerchief and smile bravely at him, as the driver kicked his whip and the bus rolled off. Then a thick cloud of dust rose around it and she was gone.
For a few minutes he stood there on the road his hand on the gate-post, his lips half parted in a smile.
“Lois,” he said aloud in a sort of wonder, “Lois, Lois.”
Later, some probationers passing noticed him kneeling before the pietà, and coming back after a time found him still there. And he was there until twilight came down and the courteous trees grew garrulous overhead and the crickets took up their burden of song in the dusky grass.
VII
The first clerk in the telegraph booth in the Baltimore Station whistled through his buck teeth at the second clerk:
“S’matter?”
“See that girl — no, the pretty one with the big black dots on her veil. Too late — she’s gone. You missed somep’n.”
“What about her?”
“Nothing. ‘Cept she’s damn good-looking. Came in here yesterday and sent a wire to some guy to meet her somewhere. Then a minute ago she came in with a telegram all written out and was standin’ there goin’ to give it to me when she changed her mind or somep’n and all of a sudden tore it up.”
“Hm.”
The first clerk came around tile counter and picking up the two pieces of paper from the floor put them together idly. The second clerk read them over his shoulder and subconsciously counted the words as he read. There were just thirteen.
“This is in the way of a permanent goodbye. I should suggest Italy.
“Lois.”
“Tore it up, eh?” said the second clerk.
Dalyrimple Goes Wrong
In the millennium an educational genius will write a book to be given to every young man on the date of his disillusion. This work will have the flavor of Montaigne’s essays and Samuel Butler’s note-books — and a little of Tolstoi and Marcus Aurelius. It will be neither cheerful nor pleasant but will contain numerous passages of striking humor. Since first-class minds never believe anything very strongly until they’ve experienced it, its value will be purely relative . . . all people over thirty will refer to it as “depressing.”
This prelude belongs to the story of a young man who lived, as you and I do, before the book.
II
The generation which numbered Bryan Dalyrimple drifted out of adolescence to a mighty fan-fare of trumpets. Bryan played the star in an affair which included a Lewis gun and a nine-day romp behind the retreating German lines, so luck triumphant or sentiment rampant awarded him a row of medals and on his arrival in the States he was told that he was second in importance only to General Pershing and Sergeant York. This was a lot of fun. The governor of his State, a stray congressman, and a citizens’ committee gave him enormous smiles and “By God, Sirs” on the dock at Hoboken; there were newspaper reporters and photographers who said “would you mind” and “if you could just”; and back in his home town there were old ladies, the rims of whose eyes grew red as they talked to him, and girls who hadn’t remembered him so well since his father’s business went blah! in nineteen-twelve.
But when the shouting died he realized that for a month he had been the house guest of the mayor, that he had only fourteen dollars in the world and that “the name that will live forever in the annals and legends of this State” was already living there very quietly and obscurely.
One morning he lay late in bed and just outside his door he heard the up-stairs maid talking to the cook. The up-stairs maid said that Mrs. Hawkins, the mayor’s wife, had been trying for a week to hint Dalyrimple out of the house. He left at eleven o’clock in intolerable confusion, asking that his trunk be sent to Mrs. Beebe’s boarding-house.
Dalyrimple was twenty-three and he had never worked. His father had given him two years at the StateUniversity and passed away about the time of his son’s nine-day romp, leaving behind him some mid-Victorian furniture and a thin packet of folded paper that turned out to be grocery bills. Young Dalyrimple had very keen gray eyes, a mind that delighted the army psychological examiners, a trick of having read it — whatever it was — some time before, and a cool hand in a hot situation. But these things did not save him a final, unresigned sigh when he realized that he had to go to work — right away.
It was early afternoon when he walked into the office of Theron G. Macy, who owned the largest wholesale grocery house in town. Plump, prosperous, wearing a pleasant but quite unhumorous smile, Theron G. Macy greeted him warmly.
“Well — how do, Bryan? What’s on your mind?”
To Dalyrimple, straining with his admission, his own words, when they came, sounded like an Arab beggar’s whine for alms.
“Why — this question of a job.” (“This question of a job” seemed somehow more clothed than just “a job.”)
“A job?” An almost imperceptible breeze blew across Mr. Macy’s expression.
“You see, Mr. Macy,” continued Dalyrimple, “I feel I’m wasting time. I want to get started at something. I had several chances about a month ago but they all seem to have — gone — — “
“Let’s see,” interrupted Mr. Macy. “What were they?”
“Well, just at the first the governor said something about a vacancy on his staff. I was sort of counting on that for a while, but I hear he’s given it t
o Allen Gregg, you know, son of G. P. Gregg. He sort of forgot what he said to me — just talking, I guess.”
“You ought to push those things.”
“Then there was that engineering expedition, but they decided they’d have to have a man who knew hydraulics, so they couldn’t use me unless I paid my own way.”
“You had just a year at the university?”
“Two. But I didn’t take any science or mathematics. Well, the day the battalion paraded, Mr. Peter Jordan said something about a vacancy in his store. I went around there to-day and I found he meant a sort of floor-walker — and then you said something one day” — he paused and waited for the older man to take him up, but noting only a minute wince continued — “about a position, so I thought I’d come and see you.”
“There was a position,” confessed Mr. Macy reluctantly, “but since then we’ve filled it.” He cleared his throat again. “You’ve waited quite a while.”
“Yes, I suppose I did. Everybody told me there was no hurry — and I’d had these various offers.”
Mr. Macy delivered a paragraph on present-day opportunities which Dalyrimple’s mind completely skipped.
“Have you had any business experience?”
“I worked on a ranch two summers as a rider.”
“Oh, well,” Mr. Macy disparaged this neatly, and then continued: “What do you think you’re worth?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Bryan, I tell you, I’m willing to strain a point and give you a chance.”
Dalyrimple nodded.
“Your salary won’t be much. You’ll start by learning the stock. Then you’ll come in the office for a while. Then you’ll go on the road. When could you begin?”
“How about to-morrow?”
“All right. Report to Mr. Hanson in the stock-room. He’ll start you off.”
He continued to regard Dalyrimple steadily until the latter, realizing that the interview was over, rose awkwardly.
“Well, Mr. Macy, I’m certainly much obliged.”
“That’s all right. Glad to help you, Bryan.”
After an irresolute moment, Dalyrimple found himself in the hall. His forehead was covered with perspiration, and the room had not been hot.
“Why the devil did I thank the son of a gun?” he muttered.
III
Next morning Mr. Hanson informed him coldly of the necessity of punching the time-clock at seven every morning, and delivered him for instruction into the hands of a fellow worker, one Charley Moore.
Charley was twenty-six, with that faint musk of weakness hanging about him that is often mistaken for the scent of evil. It took no psychological examiner to decide that he had drifted into indulgence and laziness as casually as he had drifted into life, and was to drift out. He was pale and his clothes stank of smoke; he enjoyed burlesque shows, billiards, and Robert Service, and was always looking back upon his last intrigue or forward to his next one. In his youth his taste had run to loud ties, but now it seemed to have faded, like his vitality, and was expressed in pale-lilac four-in-hands and indeterminate gray collars. Charley was listlessly struggling that losing struggle against mental, moral, and physical anæmia that takes place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes.
The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron G. Macy Company.
“It’s a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me. I’m quittin’ in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!”
The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month. They do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit around comparing their last job with the present one, to the infinite disparagement of the latter.
“What do you get?” asked Dalyrimple curiously.
“Me? I get sixty.” This rather defiantly.
“Did you start at sixty?”
“Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he’d put me on the road after I learned the stock. That’s what he tells ‘em all.”
“How long’ve you been here?” asked Dalyrimple with a sinking sensation.
“Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots.”
Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective as he resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him almost immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule was a thorn in his side. He was accustomed to his three or four cigarettes in a morning, and after three days without it he followed Charley Moore by a circuitous route up a flight of back stairs to a little balcony where they indulged in peace. But this was not for long. One day in his second week the detective met him in a nook of the stairs, on his descent, and told him sternly that next time he’d be reported to Mr. Macy. Dalyrimple felt like an errant schoolboy.
Unpleasant facts came to his knowledge. There were “cave-dwellers” in the basement who had worked there for ten or fifteen years at sixty dollars a month, rolling barrels and carrying boxes through damp, cement-walled corridors, lost in that echoing half-darkness between seven and five-thirty and, like himself, compelled several times a month to work until nine at night.
At the end of a month he stood in line and received forty dollars. He pawned a cigarette-case and a pair of field-glasses and managed to live — to eat, sleep, and smoke. It was, however, a narrow scrape; as the ways and means of economy were a closed book to him and the second month brought no increase, he voiced his alarm.
“If you’ve got a drag with old Macy, maybe he’ll raise you,” was Charley’s disheartening reply. “But he didn’t raise me till I’d been here nearly two years.”
“I’ve got to live,” said Dalyrimple simply. “I could get more pay as a laborer on the railroad but, Golly, I want to feel I’m where there’s a chance to get ahead.”
Charles shook his head sceptically and Mr. Macy’s answer next day was equally unsatisfactory.
Dalyrimple had gone to the office just before closing time.
“Mr. Macy, I’d like to speak to you.”
“Why — yes.” The unhumorous smile appeared. The voice was faintly resentful.
“I want to speak to you in regard to more salary.”
Mr. Macy nodded.
“Well,” he said doubtfully, “I don’t know exactly what you’re doing. I’ll speak to Mr. Hanson.”
He knew exactly what Dalyrimple was doing, and Dalyrimple knew he knew.
“I’m in the stock-room — and, sir, while I’m here I’d like to ask you how much longer I’ll have to stay there.”
“Why — I’m not sure exactly. Of course it takes some time to learn the stock.”
“You told me two months when I started.”
“Yes. Well, I’ll speak to Mr. Hanson.”
Dalyrimple paused irresolute.
“Thank you, sir.”
Two days later he again appeared in the office with the result of a count that had been asked for by Mr. Hesse, the bookkeeper. Mr. Hesse was engaged and Dalyrimple, waiting, began idly fingering in a ledger on the stenographer’s desk.
Half unconsciously he turned a page — he caught sight of his name — it was a salary list:
Dalyrimple
Demming
Donahoe
Everett
His eyes stopped —
Everett.........................$60
So Tom Everett, Macy’s weak-chinned nephew, had started at sixty — and in three weeks he had been out of the packing-room and into the office.
So that was it! He was to sit and see man after man pushed over him: sons, cousins, sons of friends, irrespective of their capabilities, while he was cast for a pawn, with “going on the road” dangled before his eyes — put off with the stock remark: “I’ll see; I’ll look into it.” At forty, perhaps, he would be a bookkeeper like old Hesse, tired, listless Hesse with a dull routine for his stint and a dull background of boarding-house conversation.
This was a moment when a genii shou
ld have pressed into his hand the book for disillusioned young men. But the book has not been written.
A great protest swelling into revolt surged up in him. Ideas half forgotten, chaoticly perceived and assimilated, filled his mind. Get on — that was the rule of life — and that was all. How he did it, didn’t matter — but to be Hesse or Charley Moore.
“I won’t!” he cried aloud.
The bookkeeper and the stenographers looked up in surprise.
“What?”
For a second Dalyrimple stared — then walked up to the desk.
“Here’s that data,” he said brusquely. “I can’t wait any longer.”
Mr. Hesse’s face expressed surprise.
It didn’t matter what he did — just so he got out of this rut. In a dream he stepped from the elevator into the stock-room, and walking to an unused aisle, sat down on a box, covering his face with his hands.
His brain was whirring with the frightful jar of discovering a platitude for himself.
“I’ve got to get out of this,” he said aloud and then repeated, “I’ve got to get out” — and he didn’t mean only out of Macy’s wholesale house.
When he left at five-thirty it was pouring rain, but he struck off in the opposite direction from his boarding-house, feeling, in the first cool moisture that oozed soggily through his old suit, an odd exultation and freshness. He wanted a world that was like walking through rain, even though he could not see far ahead of him, but fate had put him in the world of Mr. Macy’s fetid storerooms and corridors. At first merely the overwhelming need of change took him, then half-plans began to formulate in his imagination.
“I’ll go East — to a big city — meet people — bigger people — people who’ll help me. Interesting work somewhere. My God, there must be.”
With sickening truth it occurred to him that his facility for meeting people was limited. Of all places it was here in his own town that he should be known, was known — famous — before the water of oblivion had rolled over him.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 148