Suddenly in a silence, she was talking, and his ears swayed away from his own conversation.
“. . . Helen had this odd pain for over a year and, of course, they suspected cancer. She went to have an X ray; she undressed behind a screen, and the doctor looked at her through the machine, and then he said, ‘But I told you to take off all your clothes,’ and Helen said, ‘I have.’ The doctor looked again, and said, ‘Listen, my dear, I brought you into the world, so there’s no use being modest with me. Take off everything.’ So Helen said, ‘I’ve got every stitch off; I swear.’ But the doctor said, ‘You have not. The X ray shows me a safety pin in your brassiere.’ Well, they finally found out that she’d been suspected of swallowing a safety pin when she was two years old.”
The story, floating in her clear, crisp voice upon the intimate air, disarmed Forrest. It had nothing to do with what had taken place in Washington or New York ten years before. Suddenly he wanted to go and sit near her, because she was the tongue of flame that made the firelight vivid. Leaving, he walked for an hour through feathery snow, wondering again why he couldn’t know her, why it was his business to represent a standard.
“Well, maybe I’ll have a lot of fun some day doing what I ought to do,” he thought ironically--”when I’m fifty.”
The first Christmas dance was the charity ball at the armory. It was a large, public affair; the rich sat in boxes. Everyone came who felt he belonged, and many out of curiosity, so the atmosphere was tense with a strange haughtiness and aloofness.
The Rikkers had a box. Forrest, coming in with Jane Drake, glanced at the man of evil reputation and at the beaten woman frozen with jewels who sat beside him. They were the city’s villains, gaped at by the people of reserved and timid lives. Oblivious of the staring eyes, Alida and Helen Hannan held court for several young men from out of town. Without question, Alida was incomparably the most beautiful girl in the room.
Several people told Forrest the news--the Rikkers were giving a big dance after New Year’s. There were written invitations, but these were being supplemented by oral ones. Rumor had it that one had merely to be presented to any Rikker in order to be bidden to the dance.
As Forrest passed through the hall, two friends stopped him and with a certain hilarity introduced him to a youth of seventeen, Mr. Teddy Rikker.
“We’re giving a dance,” said the young man immediately. “January third. Be very happy if you could come.”
Forrest was afraid he had an engagement.
“Well, come if you change your mind.”
“Horrible kid, but shrewd,” said one of his friends later. “We were feeding him people, and when we brought up a couple of saps, he looked at them and didn’t say a word. Some refuse and a few accept and most of them stall, but he goes right on; he’s got his father’s crust.”
Into the highways and byways. Why didn’t the girl stop it? He was sorry for her when he found Jane in a group of young women reveling in the story.
“I hear they asked Bodman, the undertaker, by mistake, and then took it back.”
“Mrs. Carleton pretended she was deaf.”
“There’s going to be a carload of champagne from Canada.”
“Of course, I won’t go, but I’d love to, just to see what happens. There’ll be a hundred men to every girl--and that’ll be meat for her.”
The accumulated malice repelled him, and he was angry at Jane for being part of it. Turning away, his eyes fell on Alida’s proud form swaying along a wall, watched the devotion of her partners with an unpleasant resentment. He did not know that he had been a little in love with her for many months. Just as two children can fall in love during a physical struggle over a ball, so their awareness of each other had grown to surprising proportions.
“She’s pretty,” said Jane. “She’s not exactly overdressed, but considering everything, she dresses too elaborately.”
“I suppose she ought to wear sackcloth and ashes or half mourning.”
“I was honored with a written invitation, but, of course, I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
Jane looked at him in surprise. “You’re not going.”
“That’s different. I would if I were you. You see, you don’t care what her father did.”
“Of course, I care.”
“No, you don’t. And all this small meanness just debases the whole thing. Why don’t they let her alone? She’s young and pretty and she’s done nothing wrong.”
Later in the week he saw Alida at the Hannans’ dance and noticed that many men danced with her. He saw her lips moving, heard her laughter, caught a word or so of what she said; irresistibly he found himself guiding partners around in her wake. He envied visitors to the city who didn’t know who she was.
The night of the Rikkers’ dance he went to a small dinner; before they sat down at table he realized that the others were all going on to the Rikkers’. They talked of it as a sort of comic adventure; insisted that he come too.
“Even if you weren’t invited, it’s all right,” they assured him. “We were told we could bring anyone. It’s just a free-for-all; it doesn’t put you under any obligations. Norma Nash is going and she didn’t invite Alida Rikker to her party. Besides, she’s really very nice. My brother’s quite crazy about her. Mother is worried sick, because he says he wants to marry her.”
Clasping his hand about a new highball, Forrest knew that if he drank it he would probably go. All his reasons for not going seemed old and tired, and, fatally, he had begun to seem absurd to himself. In vain he tried to remember the purpose he was serving, and found none. His father had weakened on the matter of the Kennemore Club. And now suddenly he found reasons for going--men could go where their women could not.
“All right,” he said.
The Rikkers’ dance was in the ballroom of the Minnekada Hotel. The Rikkers’ gold, ill-gotten, tainted, had taken the form of a forest of palms, vines and flowers. The two orchestras moaned in pergolas lit with fireflies, and many-colored spotlights swept the floor, touching a buffet where dark bottles gleamed. The receiving line was still in action when Forrest’s party came in, and Forrest grinned ironically at the prospect of taking Chauncey Rikker by the hand. But at the sight of Alida, her look that at last fell frankly on him, he forgot everything else.
“Your brother was kind enough to invite me,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she was polite, but vague; not at all overwhelmed by his presence. As he waited to speak to her parents, he started, seeing his sister in a group of dancers. Then, one after another, he identified people he knew: it might have been any one of the Christmas dances; all the younger crowd were there. He discovered abruptly that he and Alida were alone; the receiving line had broken up. Alida glanced at him questioningly and with a certain amusement.
So he danced out on the floor with her, his head high, but slightly spinning. Of all things in the world, he had least expected to lead off the Chauncey Rikkers’ ball.
III
Next morning his first realization was that he had kissed her; his second was a feeling of profound shame for his conduct of the evening. Lord help him, he had been the life of the party; he had helped to run the cotillion. From the moment when he danced out on the floor, coolly meeting the surprised and interested glances of his friends, a mood of desperation had come over him. He rushed Alida Rikker, until a friend asked him what Jane was going to say. “What business is it of Jane’s?” he demanded impatiently. “We’re not engaged.” But he was impelled to approach his sister and ask her if he looked all right.
“Apparently,” Eleanor answered, “but when in doubt, don’t take any more.”
So he hadn’t. Exteriorly he remained correct, but his libido was in a state of wild extroversion. He sat with Alida Rikker and told her he had loved her for months.
“Every night I thought of you just before you went to sleep,” his voice trembled with insincerity, “I was afraid to meet you or speak to you. Sometimes I’d see you in
the distance moving along like a golden chariot, and the world would be good to live in.”
After twenty minutes of this eloquence, Alida began to feel exceedingly attractive. She was tired and rather happy, and eventually she said:
“All right, you can kiss me if you want to, but it won’t mean anything. I’m just not in that mood.”
But Forrest had moods enough for both; he kissed her as if they stood together at the altar. A little later he had thanked Mrs. Rikker with deep emotion for the best time he had ever had in his life.
It was noon, and as he groped his way upright in bed, Eleanor came in in her dressing gown.
“How are you?” she asked.
“Awful.”
“How about what you told me coming back in the car? Do you actually want to marry Alida Rikker?”
“Not this morning.”
“That’s all right then. Now, look: the family are furious.”
“Why?” he asked with some redundancy.
“Both you and I being there. Father heard that you led the cotillion. My explanation was that my dinner party went, and so I had to go; but then you went too!”
Forrest dressed and went down to Sunday dinner. Over the table hovered an atmosphere of patient, puzzled, unworldly disappointment. Finally Forrest launched into it:
“Well, we went to Al Capone’s party and had a fine time.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Pierce Winslow dryly. Mrs. Winslow said nothing.
“Everybody was there--the Kayes, the Schwanes, the Martins and the Blacks. From now on, the Rikkers are pillars of society. Every house is open to them.”
“Not this house,” said his mother. “They won’t come into this house.” And after a moment: “Aren’t you going to eat anything, Forrest?”
“No, thanks. I mean, yes, I am eating.” He looked cautiously at his plate. “The girl is very nice. There isn’t a girl in town with better manners or more stuff. If things were like they were before the war, I’d say--”
He couldn’t think exactly what it was he would have said; all he knew was that he was now on an entirely different road from his parents’.
“This city was scarcely more than a village before the war,” said old Mrs. Forrest.
“Forrest means the World War, granny,” said Eleanor.
“Some things don’t change,” said Pierce Winslow. Both he and Forrest thought of the Kennemore Club matter and, feeling guilty, the older man lost his temper:
“When people start going to parties given by a convicted criminal, there’s something serious the matter with them.”
“We won’t discuss it any more at table,” said Mrs. Winslow hastily.
About four, Forrest called a number on the telephone in his room. He had known for some time that he was going to call a number.
“Is Miss Rikker at home? . . . Oh, hello. This is Forrest Winslow.”
“How are you?”
“Terrible. It was a good party.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Too good. What are you doing?”
“Entertaining two awful hangovers.”
“Will you entertain me too?”
“I certainly will. Come on over.”
The two young men could only groan and play sentimental music on the phonograph, but presently they departed; the fire leaped up, day went out behind the windows, and Forrest had rum in his tea.
“So we met at last,” he said.
“The delay was all yours.”
“Damn prejudice,” he said. “This is a conservative city, and your father being in this trouble--”
“I can’t discuss my father with you.”
“Excuse me. I only wanted to say that I’ve felt like a fool lately for not knowing you. For cheating myself out of the pleasure of knowing you for a silly prejudice,” he blundered on. “So I decided to follow my own instincts.”
She stood up suddenly. “Good-by, Mr. Winslow.”
“What? Why?”
“Because it’s absurd for you to come here as if you were doing me a favor. And after accepting our hospitality, to remind me of my father’s troubles is simply bad manners.”
He was on his feet, terribly upset. “That isn’t what I meant. I said I had felt that way, and I despised myself for it. Please don’t be sore.”
“Then don’t be condescending.” She sat back in her chair. Her mother came in, stayed only a moment, and threw Forrest a glance of resentment and suspicion as she left. But her passage through had brought them together, and they talked frankly for a long time.
“I ought to be upstairs dressing.”
“I ought to have gone an hour ago, and I can’t.”
“Neither can I.”
With the admission they had traveled far. At the door he kissed her unreluctant lips and walked home, throwing futile buckets of reason on the wild fire.
Less than two weeks later it happened. In a car parked in a blizzard he poured out his worship, and she lay on his chest, sighing, “Oh, me too--me too.”
Already Forrest’s family knew where he went in the evenings; there was a frightened coolness, and one morning his mother said:
“Son, you don’t want to throw yourself away on some girl that isn’t up to you. I thought you were interested in Jane Drake.”
“Don’t bring that up. I’m not going to talk about it.”
But it was only a postponement. Meanwhile the days of this February were white and magical, the nights were starry and crystalline. The town lay under a cold glory; the smell of her furs was incense, her bright cheeks were flames upon a northern altar. An ecstatic pantheism for his land and its weather welled up in him. She had brought him finally back to it; he would live here always.
“I want you so much that nothing can stand in the way of that,” he said to Alida. “But I owe my parents a debt that I can’t explain to you. They did more than spend money on me; they tried to give me something more intangible--something that their parents had given them and that they thought was worth handing on. Evidently it didn’t take with me, but I’ve got to make this as easy as possible for them.” He saw by her face that he had hurt her. “Darling--”
“Oh, it frightens me when you talk like that,” she said. “Are you going to reproach me later? It would be awful. You’ll have to get it out of your head that you’re doing anything wrong. My standards are as high as yours, and I can’t start out with my father’s sins on my shoulders.” She thought for a moment. “You’ll never be able to reconcile it all like a children’s story. You’ve got to choose. Probably you’ll have to hurt either your family or hurt me.”
A fortnight later the storm broke at the Winslow house. Pierce Winslow came home in a quiet rage and had a session behind closed doors with his wife. Afterward she knocked at Forrest’s door.
“Your father had a very embarrassing experience today. Chauncey Rikker came up to him in the Downtown Club and began talking about you as if you were on terms of some understanding with his daughter. Your father walked away, but we’ve got to know. Are you serious about Miss Rikker?”
“I want to marry her,” he said.
“Oh, Forrest!”
She talked for a long time, recapitulating, as if it were a matter of centuries, the eighty years that his family had been identified with the city; when she passed from this to the story of his father’s health, Forrest interrupted:
“That’s all so irrelevant, mother. If there was anything against Alida personally, what you say would have some weight, but there isn’t.”
“She’s overdressed; she runs around with everybody--”
“She isn’t a bit different from Eleanor. She’s absolutely a lady in every sense. I feel like a fool even discussing her like this. You’re just afraid it’ll connect you in some way with the Rikkers.”
“I’m not afraid of that,” said his mother, annoyed. “Nothing would ever do that. But I’m afraid that it’ll separate you from everything worth while, everybody that loves you. It isn’t fair for
you to upset our lives, let us in for disgraceful gossip--”
“I’m to give up the girl I love because you’re afraid of a little gossip.”
The controversy was resumed next day, with Pierce Winslow debating. His argument was that he was born in old Kentucky, that he had always felt uneasy at having begotten a son upon a pioneer Minnesota family, and that this was what he might have expected. Forrest felt that his parents’ attitude was trivial and disingenuous. Only when he was out of the house, acting against their wishes, did he feel any compunction. But always he felt that something precious was being frayed away--his youthful companionship with his father and his love and trust for his mother. Hour by hour he saw the past being irreparably spoiled, and save when he was with Alida, he was deeply unhappy.
One spring day when the situation had become unendurable, with half the family meals taken in silence, Forrest’s great-grandmother stopped him on the stair landing and put her hand on his arm.
“Has this girl really a good character?” she asked, her fine, clear, old eyes resting on his.
“Of course she has, gramma.”
“Then marry her.”
“Why do you say that?” Forrest asked curiously.
“It would stop all this nonsense and we could have some peace. And I’ve been thinking I’d like to be a great-great-grandmother before I die.”
Her frank selfishness appealed to him more than the righteousness of the others. That night he and Alida decided to be married the first of June, and telephoned the announcement to the papers.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 250