Now the storm broke in earnest. Crest Avenue rang with gossip--how Mrs. Rikker had called on Mrs. Winslow, who was not at home. How Forrest had gone to live in the University Club. How Chauncey Rikker and Pierce Winslow had had words in the Downtown Club.
It was true that Forrest had gone to the University Club. On a May night, with summer sounds already gathered on the window screens, he packed his trunk and his suitcases in the room where he had lived as a boy. His throat contracted and he smeared his face with his dusty hand as he took a row of golf cups off the mantelpiece, and he choked to himself: “If they won’t take Alida, then they’re not my family any more.”
As he finished packing, his mother came in.
“You’re not really leaving.” Her voice was stricken.
“I’m moving to the University Club.”
“That’s so unnecessary. No one bothers you here. You do what you want.”
“I can’t bring Alida here.”
“Father--”
“Hell with father!” he said wildly.
She sat down on the bed beside him. “Stay here, Forrest. I promise not to argue with you any more. But stay here.”
“I can’t.”
“I can’t have you go!” she wailed. “It seems as if we’re driving you out, and we’re not!”
“You mean it looks as though you were driving me out.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“Yes, you do. And I want to say that I don’t think you and father really care a hang about Chauncey Rikker’s moral character.”
“That’s not true, Forrest. I hate people that behave badly and break the laws. My own father would never have let Chauncey Rikker--”
“I’m not talking about your father. But neither you nor my father care a bit what Chauncey Rikker did. I bet you don’t even know what it was.”
“Of course I know. He stole some money and went abroad, and when he came back they put him in prison.”
“They put him in prison for contempt of court.”
“Now you’re defending him, Forrest.”
“I’m not! I hate his guts; undoubtedly he’s a crook. But I tell you it was a shock to me to find that father didn’t have any principles. He and his friends sit around the Downtown Club and pan Chauncey Rikker, but when it comes to keeping him out of a club, they develop weak spines.”
“That was a small thing.”
“No, it wasn’t. None of the men of father’s age have any principles. I don’t know why. I’m willing to make an allowance for an honest conviction, but I’m not going to be booed by somebody that hasn’t got any principles and simply pretends to have.”
His mother sat helplessly, knowing that what he said was true. She and her husband and all their friends had no principles. They were good or bad according to their natures; often they struck attitudes remembered from the past, but they were never sure as her father or her grandfather had been sure. Confusedly she supposed it was something about religion. But how could you get principles just by wishing for them?
The maid announced the arrival of a taxi.
“Send up Olsen for my baggage,” said Forrest; then to his mother, “I’m not taking the coupé; I left the keys. I’m just taking my clothes. I suppose father will let me keep my job down town.”
“Forrest, don’t talk that way. Do you think your father would take your living away from you, no matter what you did?”
“Such things have happened.”
“You’re hard and difficult,” she wept. “Please stay here a little longer, and perhaps things will be better and father will get a little more reconciled. Oh, stay, stay! I’ll talk to father again. I’ll do my best to fix things.”
“Will you let me bring Alida here?”
“Not now. Don’t ask me that. I couldn’t bear--”
“All right,” he said grimly.
Olsen came in for the bags. Crying and holding on to his coat sleeve, his mother went with him to the front door.
“Won’t you say good-by to father?”
“Why? I’ll see him tomorrow in the office.”
“Forrest, I was thinking, why don’t you go to a hotel instead of the University Club?”
“Why, I thought I’d be more comfortable--” Suddenly he realized that his presence would be less conspicuous at a hotel. Shutting up his bitterness inside him, he kissed his mother roughly and went to the cab.
Unexpectedly, it stopped by the corner lamp-post at a hail from the sidewalk, and the May twilight yielded up Alida, miserable and pale.
“What is it?” he demanded.
“I had to come,” she said. “Stop the car. I’ve been thinking of you leaving your house on account of me, and how you loved your family--the way I’d like to love mine--and I thought how terrible it was to spoil all that. Listen, Forrest! Wait! I want you to go back. Yes, I do. We can wait. We haven’t any right to cause all this pain. We’re young. I’ll go away for a while, and then we’ll see.”
He pulled her toward him by her shoulders.
“You’ve got more principles than the whole bunch of them,” he said. “Oh, my girl, you love me and, gosh, it’s good that you do!”
IV
It was to be a house wedding, Forrest and Alida having vetoed the Rikkers’ idea that it was to be a sort of public revenge. Only a few intimate friends were invited.
During the week before the wedding, Forrest deduced from a series of irresolute and ambiguous telephone calls that his mother wanted to attend the ceremony, if possible. Sometimes he hoped passionately she would; at others it seemed unimportant.
The wedding was to be at seven. At five o’clock Pierce Winslow was walking up and down the two interconnecting sitting rooms of his house.
“This evening,” he murmured, “my only son is being married to the daughter of a swindler.”
He spoke aloud so that he could listen to the words, but they had been evoked so often in the past few months that their strength was gone and they died thinly upon the air.
He went to the foot of the stairs and called: “Charlotte!” No answer. He called again, and then went into the dining room, where the maid was setting the table.
“Is Mrs. Winslow out?”
“I haven’t seen her come in, Mr. Winslow.”
Back in the sitting room he resumed his walking; unconsciously he was walking like his father, the judge, dead thirty years ago; he was parading his dead father up and down the room.
“You can’t bring that woman into this house to meet your mother. Bad blood is bad blood.”
The house seemed unusually quiet. He went upstairs and looked into his wife’s room, but she was not there; old Mrs. Forrest was slightly indisposed; Eleanor, he knew, was at the wedding.
He felt genuinely sorry for himself as he went downstairs again. He knew his role--the usual evening routine carried out in complete obliviousness of the wedding--but he needed support, people begging him to relent, or else deferring to his wounded sensibilities. This isolation was different; it was almost the first isolation he had ever felt, and like all men who are fundamentally of the group, of the herd, he was incapable of taking a strong stand with the inevitable loneliness that it implied. He could only gravitate toward those who did.
“What have I done to deserve this?” he demanded of the standing ash tray. “What have I failed to do for my son that lay within my power?”
The maid came in. “Mrs. Winslow told Hilda she wouldn’t be here for dinner, and Hilda didn’t tell me.”
The shameful business was complete. His wife had weakened, leaving him absolutely alone. For a moment he expected to be furiously angry with her, but he wasn’t; he had used up his anger exhibiting it to others. Nor did it make him feel more obstinate, more determined; it merely made him feel silly.
“That’s it. I’ll be the goat. Forrest will always hold it against me, and Chauncey Rikker will be laughing up his sleeve.”
He walked up and down furiously.
“So I’m left
holding the bag. They’ll say I’m an old grouch and drop me out of the picture entirely. They’ve licked me. I suppose I might as well be graceful about it.” He looked down in horror at the hat he held in his hand. “I can’t--I can’t bring myself to do it, but I must. After all, he’s my only son. I couldn’t bear that he should hate me. He’s determined to marry her, so I might as well put a good face on the matter.”
In sudden alarm he looked at his watch, but there was still time. After all, it was a large gesture he was making, sacrificing his principles in this manner. People would never know what it cost him.
An hour later, old Mrs. Forrest woke up from her doze and rang for her maid.
“Where’s Mrs. Winslow?”
“She’s not in for dinner. Everybody’s out.”
The old lady remembered.
“Oh, yes, they’ve gone over to get married. Give me my glasses and the telephone book. . . . Now, I wonder how you spell Capone.”
“Rikker, Mrs. Forrest.”
In a few minutes she had the number. “This is Mrs. Hugh Forrest,” she said firmly. “I want to speak to young Mrs. Forrest Winslow. . . . No, not to Miss Rikker; to Mrs. Forrest Winslow.” As there was as yet no such person, this was impossible. “Then I will call after the ceremony,” said the old lady.
When she called again, in an hour, the bride came to the phone.
“This is Forrest’s great-grandmother. I called up to wish you every happiness and to ask you to come and see me when you get back from your trip if I’m still alive.”
“You’re very sweet to call, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Take good care of Forrest, and don’t let him get to be a ninny like his father and mother. God bless you.”
“Thank you.”
“All right. Good-by, Miss Capo--Good-by, my dear.”
Having done her whole duty, Mrs. Forrest hung up the receiver.
A NEW LEAF
Saturday Evening Post (4 July 1931)
It was the first day warm enough to eat outdoors in the Bois de Boulogne, while chestnut blossoms slanted down across the tables and dropped impudently into the butter and the wine. Julia Ross ate a few with her bread and listened to the big goldfish rippling in the pool and the sparrows whirring about an abandoned table. You could see everybody again--the waiters with their professional faces, the watchful Frenchwomen all heels and eyes, Phil Hoffman opposite her with his heart balanced on his fork, and the extraordinarily handsome man just coming out on the terrace.
--the purple noon’s transparent might.
The breath of the moist air is light
Around each unexpanded bud--
Julia trembled discreetly; she controlled herself; she didn’t spring up and call, “Yi-yi-yi-yi! Isn’t this grand?” and push the maître d’hôtel into the lily pond. She sat there, a well-behaved woman of twenty-one, and discreetly trembled.
Phil was rising, napkin in hand. “Hi there, Dick!”
“Hi, Phil!”
It was the handsome man; Phil took a few steps forward and they talked apart from the table.
“--seen Carter and Kitty in Spain--”
“--poured on to the Bremen--”
“--so I was going to--”
The man went on, following the head waiter, and Phil sat down.
“Who is that?” she demanded.
“A friend of mine--Dick Ragland.”
“He’s without doubt the handsomest man I ever saw in my life.”
“Yes, he’s handsome,” he agreed without enthusiasm.
“Handsome! He’s an archangel, he’s a mountain lion, he’s something to eat. Just why didn’t you introduce him?”
“Because he’s got the worst reputation of any American in Paris.”
“Nonsense; he must be maligned. It’s all a dirty frame-up--a lot of jealous husbands whose wives got one look at him. Why, that man’s never done anything in his life except lead cavalry charges and save children from drowning.”
“The fact remains he’s not received anywhere--not for one reason but for a thousand.”
“What reasons?”
“Everything. Drink, women, jails, scandals, killed somebody with an automobile, lazy, worthless--”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Julia firmly. “I bet he’s tremendously attractive. And you spoke to him as if you thought so too.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly, “like so many alcholics, he has a certain charm. If he’d only make his messes off by himself somewhere--except right in people’s laps. Just when somebody’s taken him up and is making a big fuss over him, he pours the soup down his hostess’ back, kisses the serving maid and passes out in the dog kennel. But he’s done it too often. He’s run through about everybody, until there’s no one left.”
“There’s me,” said Julia.
There was Julia, who was a little too good for anybody and sometimes regretted that she had been quite so well endowed. Anything added to beauty has to be paid for--that is to say, the qualities that pass as substitutes can be liabilities when added to beauty itself. Julia’s brilliant hazel glance was enough, without the questioning light of intelligence that flickered in it; her irrepressible sense of the ridiculous detracted from the gentle relief of her mouth, and the loveliness of her figure might have been more obvious if she had slouched and postured rather than sat and stood very straight, after the discipline of a strict father.
Equally perfect young men had several times appeared bearing gifts, but generally with the air of being already complete, of having no space for development. On the other hand, she found that men of larger scale had sharp corners and edges in youth, and she was a little too young herself to like that. There was, for instance, this scornful young egotist, Phil Hoffman, opposite her, who was obviously going to be a brilliant lawyer and who had practically followed her to Paris. She liked him as well as anyone she knew, but he had at present all the overbearance of the son of a chief of police.
“Tonight I’m going to London, and Wednesday I sail,” he said. “And you’ll be in Europe all summer, with somebody new chewing on your ear every few weeks.”
“When you’ve been called for a lot of remarks like that you’ll begin to edge into the picture,” Julia remarked. “Just to square yourself, I want you to introduce that man Ragland.”
“My last few hours!” he complained.
“But I’ve given you three whole days on the chance you’d work out a better approach. Be a little civilized and ask him to have some coffee.”
As Mr. Dick Ragland joined them, Julia drew a little breath of pleasure. He was a fine figure of a man, in coloring both tan and blond, with a peculiar luminosity to his face. His voice was quietly intense; it seemed always to tremble a little with a sort of gay despair; the way he looked at Julia made her feel attractive. For half an hour, as their sentences floated pleasantly among the scent of violets and snowdrops, forget-me-nots and pansies, her interest in him grew. She was even glad when Phil said:
“I’ve just thought about my English visa. I’ll have to leave you two incipient love birds together against my better judgment. Will you meet me at the Gare St. Lazare at five and see me off?”
He looked at Julia hoping she’d say, “I’ll go along with you now.” She knew very well she had no business being alone with this man, but he made her laugh, and she hadn’t laughed much lately, so she said: “I’ll stay a few minutes; it’s so nice and springy here.”
When Phil was gone, Dick Ragland suggested a fine champagne.
“I hear you have a terrible reputation?” she said impulsively.
“Awful. I’m not even invited out any more. Do you want me to slip on my false mustache?”
“It’s so odd,” she pursued. “Don’t you cut yourself off from all nourishment? Do you know that Phil felt he had to warn me about you before he introduced you? And I might very well have told him not to.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought you seemed so attractive and it was suc
h a pity.”
His face grew bland; Julia saw that the remark had been made so often that it no longer reached him.
“It’s none of my business,” she said quickly. She did not realize that his being a sort of outcast added to his attraction for her--not the dissipation itself, for never having seen it, it was merely an abstraction--but its result in making him so alone. Something atavistic in her went out to the stranger to the tribe, a being from a world with different habits from hers, who promised the unexpected--promised adventure.
“I’ll tell you something else,” he said suddenly. “I’m going permanently on the wagon on June fifth, my twenty-eighth birthday. I don’t have fun drinking any more. Evidently I’m not one of the few people who can use liquor.”
“You sure you can go on the wagon?”
“I always do what I say I’ll do. Also I’m going back to New York and go to work.”
“I’m really surprised how glad I am.” This was rash, but she let it stand.
“Have another fine?” Dick suggested. “Then you’ll be gladder still.”
“Will you go on this way right up to your birthday?”
“Probably. On my birthday I’ll be on the Olympic in mid-ocean.”
“I’ll be on that boat too!” she exclaimed.
“You can watch the quick change; I’ll do it for the ship’s concert.”
The tables were being cleared off. Julia knew she should go now, but she couldn’t bear to leave him sitting with that unhappy look under his smile. She felt, maternally, that she ought to say something to help him keep his resolution.
“Tell me why you drink so much. Probably some obscure reason you don’t know yourself.”
“Oh, I know pretty well how it began.”
He told her as another hour waned. He had gone to the war at seventeen and, when he came back, life as a Princeton freshman with a little black cap was somewhat tame. So he went up to Boston Tech and then abroad to the Beaux Arts; it was there that something happened to him.
“About the time I came into some money I found that with a few drinks I got expansive and somehow had the ability to please people, and the idea turned my head. Then I began to take a whole lot of drinks to keep going and have everybody think I was wonderful. Well, I got plastered a lot and quarreled with most of my friends, and then I met a wild bunch and for a while I was expansive with them. But I was inclined to get superior and suddenly think ‘What am I doing with this bunch?’ They didn’t like that much. And when a taxi that I was in killed a man, I was sued. It was just a graft, but it got in the papers, and after I was released the impression remained that I’d killed him. So all I’ve got to show for the last five years is a reputation that makes mothers rush their daughters away if I’m at the same hotel.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 251