‘You won’t go out with him if I have to take you to New York and sit you down in my office until I get through.’
She looked at him with rage in her eyes.
‘I hate you,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’d like to take all the work you’ve done and tear it up and throw it in the fire. And just to give you something to worry about tomorrow, I probably won’t be here when you get back.’
She got up from the sofa, and very deliberately looked at her flushed, tear-stained face in the mirror. Then she ran upstairs and slammed herself into the bedroom.
Automatically Roger spread out his work on the living-room table. The bright colours of the designs, the vivid ladies--Gretchen had posed for one of them--holding orange ginger ale or glistening silk hosiery, dazzled his mind into a sort of coma. His restless crayon moved here and there over the pictures, shifting a block of letters half an inch to the right, trying a dozen blues for a cool blue, and eliminating the word that made a phrase anaemic and pale. Half an hour passed--he was deep in the work now; there was no sound in the room but the velvety scratch of the crayon over the glossy board.
After a long while he looked at his watch--it was after three. The wind had come up outside and was rushing by the house corners in loud, alarming swoops, like a heavy body falling through space. He stopped his work and listened. He was not tired now, but his head felt as if it was covered with bulging veins like those pictures that hang in doctors’ offices showing a body stripped of decent skin. He put his hands to his head and felt it all over. It seemed to him that on his temple the veins were knotty and brittle around an old scar.
Suddenly he began to be afraid. A hundred warnings he had heard swept into his mind. People did wreck themselves with overwork, and his body and brain were of the same vulnerable and perishable stuff. For the first time he found himself envying George Tompkins’ calm nerves and healthy routine. He arose and began pacing the room in a panic.
‘I’ve got to sleep,’ he whispered to himself tensely. ‘Otherwise I’m going crazy.’
He rubbed his hand over his eyes, and returned to the table to put up his work, but his fingers were shaking so that he could scarcely grasp the board. The sway of a bare branch against the window made him start and cry out. He sat down on the sofa and tried to think.
‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ the clock said. ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’
‘I can’t stop,’ he answered aloud. ‘I can’t afford to stop.’
Listen! Why, there was the wolf at the door now! He could hear its sharp claws scrape along the varnished woodwork. He jumped up, and running to the front door flung it open; then started back with a ghastly cry. An enormous wolf was standing on the porch, glaring at him with red, malignant eyes. As he watched it the hair bristled on its neck; it gave a low growl and disappeared in the darkness. Then Roger realized with a silent, mirthless laugh that it was the police dog from over the way.
Dragging his limbs wearily into the kitchen, he brought the alarm-clock into the living-room and set it for seven. Then he wrapped himself in his overcoat, lay down on the sofa and fell immediately into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
When he awoke the light was still shining feebly, but the room was the grey colour of a winter morning. He got up, and looking anxiously at his hands found to his relief that they no longer trembled. He felt much better. Then he began to remember in detail the events of the night before, and his brow drew up again in three shallow wrinkles. There was work ahead of him, twenty-four hours of work; and Gretchen, whether she wanted to or not, must sleep for one more day.
Roger’s mind glowed suddenly as if he had just thought of a new advertising idea. A few minutes later he was hurrying through the sharp morning air to Kingsley’s drug-store.
‘Is Mr Kingsley down yet?’
The druggist’s head appeared around the corner of the prescription-room.
‘I wonder if I can talk to you alone.’
At 7.30, back home again, Roger walked into his own kitchen. The general housework girl had just arrived and was taking off her hat.
‘Bebé’--he was not on familiar terms with her; this was her name--’I want you to cook Mrs Halsey’s breakfast right away. I’ll take it up myself.’
It struck Bebé that this was an unusual service for so busy a man to render his wife, but if she had seen his conduct when he had carried the tray from the kitchen she would have been even more surprised. For he set it down on the dining room table and put into the coffee half a teaspoonful of a white substance that was not powdered sugar. Then he mounted the stairs and opened the door of the bedroom.
Gretchen woke up with a start, glanced at the twin bed which had not been slept in, and bent on Roger a glance of astonishment, which changed to contempt when she saw the breakfast in his hand. She thought he was bringing it as a capitulation.
‘I don’t want any breakfast,’ she said coldly, and his heart sank, ‘except some coffee.’
‘No breakfast?’ Roger’s voice expressed disappointment
‘I said I’d take some coffee.’
Roger discreetly deposited the tray on a table beside the bed and returned quickly to the kitchen.
‘We’re going away until tomorrow afternoon,’ he told Bebé, ‘and I want to close up the house right now. So you just put on your hat and go home.’
He looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to eight, and he wanted to catch the 8.10 train. He waited five minutes and then tiptoed softly upstairs and into Gretchen’s room. She was sound asleep. The coffee cup was empty save for black dregs and a film of thin brown paste on the bottom. He looked at her rather anxiously, but her breathing was regular and clear.
From the closet he took a suitcase and very quickly began filling it with her shoes--street shoes, evening slippers, rubber-soled oxfords--he had not realized that she owned so many pairs. When he closed the suitcase it was bulging.
He hesitated a minute, took a pair of sewing scissors from a box, and following the telephone-wire until it went out of sight behind the dresser, severed it in one neat clip. He jumped as there was a soft knock at the door. It was the nursemaid. He had forgotten her existence.
‘Mrs Halsey and I are going up to the city till tomorrow,’ he said glibly. ‘Take Maxy to the beach and have lunch there. Stay all day.’
Back in the room, a wave of pity passed over him. Gretchen seemed suddenly lovely and helpless, sleeping there. It was somehow terrible to rob her young life of a day. He touched her hair with his fingers, and as she murmured something in her dream he leaned over and kissed her bright cheek. Then he picked up the suitcase full of shoes, locked the door, and ran briskly down the stairs.
III
By five o’clock that afternoon the last package of cards for Garrod’s shoes had been sent by messenger to H. G. Garrod at the Biltmore Hotel. He was to give a decision next morning. At 5.30 Roger’s stenographer tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Mr Golden, the superintendent of the building, to see you.’
Roger turned around dazedly.
‘Oh, how do?’
Mr Golden came directly to the point. If Mr Halsey intended to keep the office any longer, the little oversight about the rent had better be remedied right away.
‘Mr Golden,’ said Roger wearily, ‘everything’ll be all right tomorrow. If you worry me now maybe you’ll never get your money. After tomorrow nothing’ll matter.’
Mr Golden looked at the tenant uneasily. Young men sometimes did away with themselves when business went wrong. Then his eye fell unpleasantly on the initialled suitcase beside the desk.
‘Going on a trip?’ he asked pointedly.
‘What? Oh, no. That’s just some clothes.’
‘Clothes, eh? Well, Mr Halsey, just to prove that you mean what you say, suppose you let me keep that suitcase until tomorrow noon.’
‘Help yourself.’
Mr Golden picked it up with a deprecatory gesture.
‘Just a matter of form,’ he remarked.
‘I understand,’ said Roger, swinging around to his desk. ‘Good afternoon.’
Mr Golden seemed to feel that the conversation should close on a softer key.
‘And don’t work too hard, Mr Halsey. You don’t want to have a nervous break--’
‘No,’ shouted Roger, ‘I don’t. But I will if you don’t leave me alone.’
As the door closed behind Mr Golden, Roger’s stenographer turned sympathetically around.
‘You shouldn’t have let him get away with that,’ she said. ‘What’s in there? Clothes?’
‘No,’ answered Roger absently. ‘Just all my wife’s shoes.’
He slept in the office that night on a sofa beside his desk. At dawn he awoke with a nervous start, rushed out into the street for coffee, and returned in ten minutes in a panic--afraid that he might have missed Mr Garrod’s telephone call. It was then 6.30.
By eight o’clock his whole body seemed to be on fire. When his two artists arrived he was stretched on the couch in almost physical pain. The phone rang imperatively at 9.30, and he picked up the receiver with trembling hands.
‘Hello.’
‘Is this the Halsey agency?’
‘Yes, this is Mr Halsey speaking.’
‘This is Mr H. G. Garrod.’
Roger’s heart stopped beating.
‘I called up, young fellow, to say that this is wonderful work you’ve given us here. We want all of it and as much more as your office can do.’
‘Oh, God!’ cried Roger into the transmitter.
‘What?’ Mr H. G. Garrod was considerably startled. ‘Say, wait a minute there!’
But he was talking to nobody. The phone had clattered to the floor, and Roger, stretched full length on the couch, was sobbing as if his heart would break.
IV
Three hours later, his face somewhat pale, but his eyes calm as a child’s, Roger opened the door of his wife’s bedroom with the morning paper under his arm. At the sound of his footsteps she started awake.
‘What time is it?’ she demanded.
He looked at his watch.
‘Twelve o’clock.’
Suddenly she began to cry.
‘Roger,’ she said brokenly, ‘I’m sorry I was so bad last night.’
He nodded coolly.
‘Everything’s all right now,’ he answered. Then, after a pause: ‘I’ve got the account--the biggest one.’
She turned towards him quickly.
‘You have?’ Then, after a minute’s silence: ‘Can I get a new dress?’
‘Dress?’ He laughed shortly. ‘You can get a dozen. This account alone will bring us in forty thousand a year. It’s one of the biggest in the West.’
She looked at him, startled.
‘Forty thousand a year!’
‘Yes.’
‘Gosh’--and then faintly--’I didn’t know it’d really be anything like that.’ Again she thought a minute. ‘We can have a house like George Tompkins’.’
‘I don’t want an interior-decoration shop.’
‘Forty thousand a year!’ she repeated again, and then added softly: ‘Oh, Roger--’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not going out with George Tompkins.’
‘I wouldn’t let you, even if you wanted to,’ he said shortly.
She made a show of indignation.
‘Why, I’ve had a date with him for this Thursday for weeks.’
‘It isn’t Thursday.’
‘It is.’
‘It’s Friday.’
‘Why, Roger, you must be crazy! Don’t you think I know what day it is?’
‘It isn’t Thursday,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Look!’ And he held out the morning paper.
‘Friday!’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, this is a mistake! This must be last week’s paper. Today’s Thursday.’
She closed her eyes and thought for a moment.
‘Yesterday was Wednesday,’ she said decisively. ‘The laundress came yesterday. I guess I know.’
‘Well,’ he said smugly, ‘look at the paper. There isn’t any question about it.’
With a bewildered look on her face she got out of bed and began searching for her clothes. Roger went into the bathroom to shave. A minute later he heard the springs creak again. Gretchen was getting back into bed.
‘What’s the matter?’ he inquired, putting his head around the corner of the bathroom.
‘I’m scared,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘I think my nerves are giving way. I can’t find any of my shoes.’
‘Your shoes? Why, the closet’s full of them.’
‘I know, but I can’t see one.’ Her face was pale with fear. ‘Oh, Roger!’
Roger came to her bedside and put his arm around her.
‘Oh, Roger,’ she cried, ‘what’s the matter with me? First that newspaper, and now all my shoes. Take care of me, Roger.’
‘I’ll get the doctor,’ he said.
He walked remorselessly to the telephone and took up the receiver.
‘Phone seems to be out of order,’ he remarked after a minute; ‘I’ll send Bebé.’
The doctor arrived in ten minutes.
‘I think I’m on the verge of a collapse,’ Gretchen told him in a strained voice.
Doctor Gregory sat down on the edge of the bed and took her wrist in his hand.
‘It seems to be in the air this morning.’
‘I got up,’ said Gretchen in an awed voice, ‘and I found that I’d lost a whole day. I had an engagement to go riding with George Tompkins--’
‘What?’ exclaimed the doctor in surprise. Then he laughed.
‘George Tompkins won’t go riding with anyone for many days to come.’
‘Has he gone away?’ asked Gretchen curiously.
‘He’s going West.’
‘Why?’ demanded Roger. ‘Is he running away with somebody’s wife?’
‘No,’ said Doctor Gregory. ‘He’s had a nervous breakdown.’
‘What?’ they exclaimed in unison.
‘He just collapsed like an opera-hat in his cold shower.’
‘But he was always talking about his--his balanced life,’ gasped Gretchen. ‘He had it on his mind.’
‘I know,’ said the doctor. ‘He’s been babbling about it all morning. I think it’s driven him a little mad. He worked pretty hard at it, you know.’
‘At what?’ demanded Roger in bewilderment.
‘At keeping his life balanced.’ He turned to Gretchen. ‘Now all I’ll prescribe for this lady here is a good rest. If she’ll just stay around the house for a few days and take forty winks of sleep she’ll be as fit as ever. She’s been under some strain.’
‘Doctor,’ exclaimed Roger hoarsely, ‘don’t you think I’d better have a rest or something? I’ve been working pretty hard lately.’
‘You!’ Doctor Gregory laughed, slapped him violently on the back. ‘My boy, I never saw you looking better in your life.’
Roger turned away quickly to conceal his smile--winked forty times, or almost forty times, at the autographed picture of Mr George Tompkins, which hung slightly askew on the bedroom wall.
TAPS AT REVEILLE
Published in 1935, this book of 18 short stories is Fitzgerald’s fourth and final collection printed in his lifetime. The book was dedicated to his agent Harold Ober.
The first edition
CONTENTS
THE SCANDAL DETECTIVES
BASIL: THE FRESHEST BOY
HE THINKS HE’S WONDERFUL
THE CAPTURED SHADOW
THE PERFECT LIFE
FIRST BLOOD
A NICE QUIET PLACE
JOSEPHINE: A WOMAN WITH A PAST
CRAZY SUNDAY
TWO WRONGS
THE NIGHT AT CHANCELLORSVILLE
THE LAST OF THE BELLES
MAJESTY
FAMILY IN THE WIND
A SHORT TRIP HOME
ONE INTERNE
THE FIEND
BABYLON REVISITED
Harold
Ober – Fitzgerald’s friend and agent
THE SCANDAL DETECTIVES
I
It was a hot afternoon in May and Mrs. Buckner thought that a pitcher of fruit lemonade might prevent the boys from filling up on ice cream at the drug store. She belonged to that generation, since retired, upon whom the great revolution in American family life was to be visited; but at that time she believed that her children’s relation to her was as much as hers had been to her parents, for this was more than twenty years ago.
Some generations are close to those that succeed them; between others the gap is infinite and unbridgeable. Mrs. Buckner--a woman of character, a member of Society in a large Middle-Western city--carrying a pitcher of fruit lemonade through her own spacious back yard, was progressing across a hundred years. Her own thoughts would have been comprehensible to her great-grandmother; what was happening in a room above the stable would have been entirely unintelligible to them both. In what had once served as the coachman’s sleeping apartment, her son and a friend were not behaving in a normal manner, but were, so to speak, experimenting in a void. They were making the first tentative combinations of the ideas and materials they found ready at their hand--ideas destined to become, in future years, first articulate, then startling and finally commonplace. At the moment when she called up to them they were sitting with disarming quiet upon the still unhatched eggs of the mid-twentieth century.
Riply Buckner descended the ladder and took the lemonade. Basil Duke Lee looked abstractedly down at the transaction and said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Buckner.”
“Are you sure it isn’t too hot up there?”
“No, Mrs. Buckner. It’s fine.”
It was stifling; but they were scarcely conscious of the heat, and they drank two tall glasses each of the lemonade without knowing that they were thirsty. Concealed beneath a sawed-out trapdoor from which they presently took it was a composition book bound in imitation red leather which currently absorbed much of their attention. On its first page was inscribed, if you penetrated the secret of the lemon-juice ink: “The Book of Scandal, written by Riply Buckner, Jr., and Basil D. Lee, Scandal Detectives.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 199