Then northward, leaving all gayety behind, to the nice quiet place, implicit in its very station, which breathed no atmosphere of hectic arrivals or feverish partings: there was her aunt, her fifteen-year-old cousin, Dick, with the blank resentful stare of youth in spectacles, there were the dozen or so estates with tired people asleep inside them and the drab village three miles away. It was worse, even, than Josephine had imagined; to her the vicinity was literally unpopulated, for, as a representative of her generation, she stood alone. In despair, she buried herself in ceaseless correspondence with the outer world or, as a variant, played tennis with Dick and carried on a slow indifferent quarrel at his deliberately spiteful immaturity.
“Are you going to be this way always?” she demanded, breaking down at his stupidity one day. “Can’t you do anything about it? Does it hurt?”
“What way?” Dick shambled around the tennis net in the way that so offended her.
“Oh, such a pill! You ought to be sent away to some good school.”
“I am going to be.”
“Why, at your age most of the boys in Chicago have cars of their own.”
“Too many,” he responded.
“How do you mean?” Josephine flared up.
“I heard my aunt say there was too much of that there. That’s why they made you come up here. You’re too much for that sort of thing.”
Josephine flushed. “Couldn’t you help being such a pill, if you honestly tried?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Dick. “I don’t even think that maybe I am one.”
“Oh, yes, you are. I can assure you of that.”
It occurred to her, not very hopefully, that under proper supervision something might be made of him. Perhaps she could teach him to dance or have him learn to drive his mother’s car. She went to the extent of trying to smarten him up, to make him wash his hands bidiurnally and to soak his hair and cleave it down the middle. She suggested that he would be more beautiful without his spectacles, and he obediently bumped around without them for several afternoons. But when he developed a feverish headache one night and confessed to his mother why he had been “so utterly insane,” Josephine gave him up without a pang.
But she could have cared for almost anyone. She wanted to hear the mystical terminology of love, to feel the lift and pull inside herself that each one of a dozen affairs had given her. She had written, of course, to Ridgeway Saunders. He answered. She wrote again. He answered--but after two weeks. On the first of August, with one month gone and one to go, came a letter from Lillian Hammel, her best friend in Lake Forest.
Dearest Jo: You said to write you every single thing, and I will, but some of it will be sort of a fatal blow to you--about Ridgeway Saunders. Ed Bement visited him in Philadelphia, and he says he is so crazy about a girl there that he wants to leave Yale and get married. Her name is Evangeline Ticknor and she was fired from Foxcroft last year for smoking; quite a speed and said to be beautiful and something like you, from what I hear. Ed said that Ridgeway was so crazy about her that he wouldn’t even come out here in September unless Ed invited her, too; so Ed did. Probably a lot you care! You’ve probably had lots of crushes up there where you are, or aren’t there any attractive boys--
Josephine walked slowly up and down her room. Her parents had what they wanted now; the plot against her was complete. For the first time in her life she had been thrown over, and by the most attractive, the most desirable boy she had ever known, cut out by a girl “very much like herself.” Josephine wished passionately that she had been fired from school--then the family might have given up and let her alone.
She was not so much humiliated as full of angry despair, but for the sake of her pride, she had a letter to write immediately. Her eyes were bright with tears as she began:
Dearest Lil: I was not surprised when I heard that about R. S. I knew he was fickle and never gave him a second thought after school closed in June. As a matter of fact, you know how fickle I am myself, darling, and you can imagine that I haven’t had time to let it worry me. Everybody has a right to do what they want, sayI. Live and let live is my motto. I wish you could have been here this summer. More wonderful parties--
She paused, knowing that she should invent more circumstantial evidence of gayety. Pen in air, she gazed out into the deep, still mass of northern trees. Inventing was delicate work, and having dealt always in realities, her imagination was ill-adapted to the task. Nevertheless, after several minutes a vague, synthetic figure began to take shape in her mind. She dipped the pen and wrote: “One of the darlingest--” hesitated and turned again for inspiration to the window.
Suddenly she started and bent forward, the tears drying in her eyes. Striding down the road, not fifty feet from her window, was the handsomest, the most fascinating boy she had ever seen in her life.
III
He was about nineteen and tall, with a blond viking head; the fresh color in his slender, almost gaunt cheeks was baked warm and dry by the sun. She had a glimpse of his eyes--enough to know that they were “sad” and of an extraordinary glistening blue. His model legs were in riding breeches, above which he wore a soft sweater jacket of blue chamois, and as he walked he swung a crop acrimoniously at the overhanging leaves.
For a moment the vision endured; then the path turned into a clump of trees and he was gone, save for the small crunch of his boots on the pine needles.
Josephine did not move. The dark green trees that had seemed so lacking in promise were suddenly like a magic wall that had opened and revealed a short cut to possible delight; the trees gave forth a great trembling rustle. For another instant she waited; then she threw herself at the unfinished letter:
--he usually wears the best-looking riding clothes. He has the most beautiful eyes. On top he usually wears a blue chamois thing that is simply divine.
IV
When her mother came in, half an hour later, she found Josephine getting into her best afternoon dress with an expression that was at once animated and far away.
“I thought--” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d want to come with me and pay a few calls?”
“I’d adore to,” said Josephine unexpectedly.
Her mother hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s been a rather stupid month for you. I didn’t realize that there wouldn’t be anyone your age. But something nice has happened that I can’t tell you about yet, and perhaps I’ll soon have some news for you.”
Josephine did not appear to hear.
“Who shall we call on?” she demanded eagerly. “Let’s just call on everybody, even if it takes until ten o’clock tonight. Let’s start at the nearest house and just keep going until we’ve killed everybody off.”
“I don’t know whether we can do that.”
“Come on.” Josephine was putting on her hat. “Let’s get going, mother.”
Perhaps, Mrs. Perry thought, the summer was really making a difference in her daughter; perhaps it was developing in her a more gently social vein. At each house they visited she positively radiated animation, and displayed sincere disappointment when they found no one home. When her mother called it a day, the light in her eyes went out.
“We can try again tomorrow,” she said impatiently. “We’ll kill the rest of them off. We’ll go back to those houses where there was no one home.”
It was almost seven--a nostalgic hour, for it had been the loveliest of all at Lake Forest a year ago. Bathed and positively shining, one had intruded then for a last minute into the departing day, and, sitting alone on the veranda, turned over the romantic prospects of the night, while lighted windows sprang out on the blurring shapes of houses, and cars flew past with people late home from tea.
But tonight the murmurous Indian twilight of the lake country had a promise of its own, and strolling out into the lane that passed the house, Josephine broke suddenly into a certain walk, rather an externallized state of mind, that had been hitherto reserved for more sophisticated localities. It implied, through a skimm
ing lift of the feet, through an impatience of the moving hips, through an abstracted smile, lastly through a glance that fell twenty feet ahead, that this girl was about to cross some material threshold where she was eagerly awaited; that, in fact, she had already crossed it in her imagination and left her surroundings behind. It was just at that moment she heard a strong clear whistle in front of her and the sound as of a stick swishing through leaves:
”Hello,
Fris-co,
Hello!
How do you do, my dear?
I only wish that you were here.”
Her heart beat a familiar tattoo; she realized that they would pass each other just where a last rift of sunset came down through the pines.
”Hello,
Fris-co,
Hel-lo!”
There he was, a fine shape against the foreground. His gallant face, drawn in a single dashing line, his chamois vest, so blue--she was near enough that she could have touched it. Then she realized with a shock that he had passed without noticing her proximity by a single flicker of his unhappy eyes.
“The conceited pill!” she thought indignantly. “Of all the conceited--”
She was silent during dinner; at the end she said to her aunt, with small preliminary:
“I passed the most conceited-looking young man today. I wonder who he could have been.”
“Maybe it was the nephew of old Dorrance,” offered Dick, “or the fellow staying at old Dorrance’s. Somebody said it was his nephew or some sort of relation.”
His mother said pointedly to Josephine: “We don’t see the Dorrances. Mr. Charles Dorrance considered that my husband was unjust to him about our boundary some years ago. Old Mr. Dorrance was a very stubborn man indeed.”
Josephine wondered if that was why he had failed to respond this afternoon. It was a silly reason.
But next day, at the same place, at the same hour, he literally jumped at her soft “Good evening”; he stared at her with unmistakable signs of dismay. Then his hand went up as if to remove a hat, found none, and he bowed instead and went on by.
But Josephine turned swiftly and walked at his side, smiling.
“You might be more sociable. You really shouldn’t be so exclusive, since we’re the only two people in this place. I do think it’s silly to let older people influence young people.”
He was walking so fast that she could scarcely keep up with him.
“Honestly, I’m a nice girl,” she persisted, still smiling. “Quite a few people rush me at dances and I once had a blind man in love with me.”
They were almost at her aunt’s gate, still walking furiously.
“Here’s where I live,” she said.
“Then I’ll say good-by.”
“What is the matter?” she demanded. “How can you be so rude?”
His lips formed the words, “I’m sorry.”
“I suppose you’ve got to hurry home so you can stare at yourself at the mirror.”
She knew this was untrue. He wore his good looks in almost an apologetic way. But it reached him, for he came to a precipitate halt, immediately moving off a little.
“Excuse my rudeness,” he exploded. “But I’m not used to girls.”
She was too winded to answer. But as her shaken composure gradually returned, she became aware of an odd weariness in his face.
“At least you might talk to me for a minute, if I don’t come any nearer.”
After a moment’s hesitation he hoisted himself tentatively onto a fence rail.
“If you’re so frightened of females, isn’t it time something was done about it?” she inquired.
“It’s too late.”
“Never,” she said positively. “Why, you’re missing half of life. Don’t you want to marry and have children and make some woman a fine wife--I mean, a fine husband?”
In answer he only shivered.
“I used to be terribly timid myself,” she lied kindly. “But I saw that I was missing half of life.”
“It isn’t a question of will power. It’s just that I’m a little crazy on the subject. A minute ago I had an instinct to throw a stone at you. I know it’s terrible, so if you’ll excuse me--”
He jumped down off the fence, but she cried quickly: “Wait! Let’s talk it all over.”
He lingered reluctantly.
“Why, in Chicago,” she said, “any man as good-looking as you could have any girl he wanted. Everyone would simply pursue him.”
The idea seemed to distress him still further; his face grew so sad that impulsively she moved nearer, but he swung one leg over the fence.
“All right. We’ll talk about something else,” she conceded. “Isn’t this the most dismal place you ever saw? I was supposed to be a speed in Lake Forest, so the family sentenced me to this, and I’ve had the most killing month, just sitting and twirling my thumbs. Then yesterday I looked out the window and saw you.”
“What do you mean you were a speed?” he inquired.
“Just sort of speedy--you know, sort of pash.”
He got up--this time with an air of finality.
“You really must excuse me. I know I’m an idiot on this woman question, but there’s nothing to do about it.”
“Will you meet me here tomorrow?”
“Heavens, no!”
Josephine was suddenly angry; she had humbled herself enough for one afternoon. With a cold nod, she started homeward down the lane.
“Wait!”
Now that there was thirty feet between them, his timidity had left him. She was tempted to go back, resisted the impulse with difficulty.
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” she said coolly.
Walking slowly home, she saw, by instinct rather than logic, that there was something here she failed to understand. In general, a lack of self-confidence was enough to disqualify any boy from her approval; it was the unforgivable sin, the white flag, the refusal of battle. Yet now that this young man was out of sight, she saw him as he had appeared the previous afternoon--unself-conscious, probably arrogant, utterly debonair. Again she wondered if the unpleasantness between the families could be responsible for his attitude.
In spite of their unsatisfactory conversation, she was happy. In the soft glow of the sunset it seemed certain that it would all come right tomorrow. Already the oppressive sense of being wasted had deserted her. The boy who had passed her window yesterday afternoon was capable of anything--love, drama, or even that desperate recklessness that she loved best of all.
Her mother was waiting on the veranda.
“I wanted to see you alone,” she said, “because I thought Aunt Gladys would be offended if you looked too delighted. We’re going back to Lake Forest tomorrow.”
“Mother!”
“Constance is announcing her engagement tomorrow and getting married in ten days. Malcolm Libby is in the State Department and he’s ordered abroad. Isn’t it wonderful? Your sister’s opening up the Lake Forest house today.”
“It’ll be marvellous.” After a moment Josephine repeated, with more conviction: “Perfectly marvellous.”
Lake Forest--she could feel the fast-beating excitement of it already. Yet there was something missing, as if the note of an essential trumpet had become separated from the band. For five weeks she had passionately hated Island Farms, but glancing around her in the gathering dusk, she felt rather sorry for it, a little ashamed of her desertion.
Throughout dinner the odd feeling persisted. She would be deep in exciting thoughts that began, “Won’t it be fun to--” then the imminent brilliance would fade and there would be a stillness inside her like the stillness of these Michigan nights. That was what was lacking in Lake Forest--a stillness for things to happen in, for people to walk into.
“We’ll be terribly busy,” her mother said. “Next week there’ll be bridesmaids in the house, and parties, and the wedding itself. We should have left tonight.”
Josephine went up to her room immediately and sat looking out into
the darkness. Too bad; a wasted summer after all. If yesterday had happened sooner she might have gone away with some sense of having lived after all. Too late. “But there’ll be lots of boys,” she told herself--Ridgeway Saunders.
She could hear their confident lines, and somehow they rang silly on her ears. Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be. She stood up, breathing quickly.
A few minutes later she left the house by a side door and crossed the lawn to the gardener’s gate. She heard Dick call after her uncertainly, but she did not answer. It was dark and cool, and the feeling that the summer was rushing away from her. As if to overtake it, she walked faster, and in ten minutes turned in at the gate of the Dorrance house, set behind the jagged silhouettes of many trees. Someone on the veranda hailed her as she came near:
“Good evening. I can’t see who it is.”
“It’s the girl who was so fresh this afternoon.”
She heard him catch his breath suddenly.
“May I sit here on the steps for a moment? See? Quite safe and far away. I came to say good-by, because we’re going home tomorrow.”
“Are you really?” She could not tell whether his tone showed concern or relief. “It’ll be very quiet.”
“I want to explain about this afternoon, because I don’t want you to think I was just being fresh. Usually I like boys with more experience, but I just thought that since we were the only ones here, we might manage to have a good time, and there weren’t any days to waste.”
“I see.” After a moment he asked, “What will you do in Lake Forest? Be a--a speed?”
“I don’t much care what I do. I’ve wasted the whole six weeks.”
She heard him laugh.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 214