‘I don’t know about you two--what you want to do. But leave me out of it; you haven’t any right to inflict any of it on me, for after all it’s not my fault. I’m not going to be mixed up in your emotions.’
He turned and went out. His car was before the door and he said ‘Go to Santa Monica’ because it was the first name that popped into his head. The car drove off into the everlasting hazeless sunlight.
He rode for three hours, past Santa Monica and then along towards Long Beach by another road. As if it were something he saw out of the corner of his eye and with but a fragment of his attention, he imagined Kay and Arthur Busch progressing through the afternoon. Kay would cry a great deal and the situation would seem harsh and unexpected to them at first, but the tender closing of the day would draw them together. They would turn inevitably towards each other and he would slip more and more into the position of the enemy outside.
Kay had wanted him to get down in the dirt and dust of a scene and scramble for her. Not he; he hated scenes. Once he stooped to compete with Arthur Busch in pulling at Kay’s heart, he would never be the same to himself. He would always be a little like Arthur Busch; they would always have that in common, like a shameful secret. There was little of the theatre about George; the millions before whose eyes the moods and changes of his face had flickered during ten years had not been deceived about that. From the moment when, as a boy of twenty, his handsome eyes had gazed off into the imaginary distance of a Griffith Western, his audience had been really watching the progress of a straightforward, slow-thinking, romantic man through an accidentally glamorous life.
His fault was that he had felt safe too soon. He realized suddenly that the two Fairbankses, in sitting side by side at table, were not keeping up a pose. They were giving hostages to fate. This was perhaps the most bizarre community in the rich, wild, bored empire, and for a marriage to succeed here, you must expect nothing or you must be always together. For a moment his glance had wavered from Kay and he stumbled blindly into disaster.
As he was thinking this and wondering where he would go and what he should do, he passed an apartment house that jolted his memory. It was on the outskirts of town, a pink horror built to represent something, somewhere, so cheaply and sketchily that whatever it copied the architect must have long since forgotten. And suddenly George remembered that he had once called for Margaret Donovan here the night of a Mayfair dance.
‘Stop at this apartment!’ he called through the speaking-tube.
He went in. The negro elevator boy stared open-mouthed at him as they rose in the cage. Margaret Donovan herself opened the door.
When she saw him she shrank away with a little cry. As he entered and closed the door she retreated before him into the front room. George followed.
It was twilight outside and the apartment was dusky and sad. The last light fell softly on the standardized furniture and the great gallery of signed photographs of moving-picture people that covered one wall. Her face was white, and as she stared at him she began nervously wringing her hands.
‘What’s this nonsense, Margaret?’ George said, trying to keep any reproach out of his voice. ‘Do you need money that bad?’
She shook her head vaguely. Her eyes were still fixed on him with a sort ofterror; George looked at the floor.
‘I suppose this was your brother’s idea. At least I can’t believe you’d be sostupid.’ He looked up, trying to preserve the brusque masterly attitude of one talking to a naughty child, but at the sight of her face every emotion except pity left him. ‘I’m a little tired. Do you mind if I sit down?’
‘No.’
‘I’m a little confused today,’ said George after a minute. ‘People seem to have it in for me today.’
‘Why, I thought’--her voice became ironic in mid-sentence--’I thought everybody loved you, George.’
‘They don’t.’
‘Only me?’
‘Yes,’ he said abstractedly.
‘I wish it had been only me. But then, of course, you wouldn’t have been you.’
Suddenly he realized that she meant what she was saying.
‘That’s just nonsense.’
‘At least you’re here,’ Margaret went on. ‘I suppose I ought to be glad of that. And I am. I most decidedly am. I’ve often thought of you sitting in that chair, just at this time when it was almost dark. I used to make up little one-act plays about what would happen then. Would you like to hear one of them? I’ll have to begin by coming over and sitting on the floor at your feet.’
Annoyed and yet spellbound, George kept trying desperately to seize upon a word or mood that would turn the subject.
‘I’ve seen you sitting there so often that you don’t look a bit more real than your ghost. Except that your hat has squashed your beautiful hair down on one side and you’ve got dark circles or dirt under your eyes. You look white, too, George. Probably you were on a party last night.’
‘I was. And I found your brother waiting for me when I got home.’
‘He’s a good waiter, George. He’s just out of San Quentin prison, where he’s been waiting the last six years.’
‘Then it was his idea?’
‘We cooked it up together. I was going to China on my share.’
‘Why was I the victim?’
‘That seemed to make it realer. Once I thought you were going to fall in love with me five years ago.’
The bravado suddenly melted out of her voice and it was still light enough to see that her mouth was quivering.
‘I’ve loved you for years,’ she said--’since the first day you came West and walked into the old Realart Studio. You were so brave about people, George. Whoever it was, you walked right up to them and tore something aside as if it was in your way and began to know them. I tried to make love to you, just like the rest, but it was difficult. You drew people right up close to you and held them there, not able to move either way.’
‘This is all entirely imaginary,’ said George, frowning uncomfortably, ‘and I can’t control--’
‘No, I know. You can’t control charm. It’s simply got to be used. You’ve got to keep your hand in if you have it, and go through life attaching people to you that you don’t want. I don’t blame you. If you only hadn’t kissed me the night of the Mayfair dance. I suppose it was the champagne.’
George felt as if a band which had been playing for a long time in the distance had suddenly moved up and taken a station beneath his window. He had always been conscious that things like this were going on around him. Now that he thought of it, he had always been conscious that Margaret loved him, but the faint music of these emotions in his ear had seemed to bear no relation to actual life. They were phantoms that he had conjured up out of nothing; he had never imagined their actual incarnations. At his wish they should die inconsequently away.
‘You can’t imagine what it’s been like,’ Margaret continued after a minute. ‘Things you’ve just said and forgotten, I’ve put myself asleep night after night remembering--trying to squeeze something more out of them. After that night you took me to the Mayfair other men didn’t exist for me any more. And there were others, you know--lots of them. But I’d see you walking along somewhere about the lot, looking at the ground and smiling a little, as if something very amusing had just happened to you, the way you do. And I’d pass you and you’d look up and really smile: “Hello, darling!” “Hello, darling” and my heart would turn over. That would happen four times a day.’
George stood up and she, too, jumped up quickly.
‘Oh, I’ve bored you,’ she cried softly. ‘I might have known I’d bore you. You want to go home. Let’s see--is there anything else? Oh, yes; you might as well have those letters.’
Taking them out of a desk, she took them to a window and identified them by a rift of lamplight.
‘They’re really beautiful letters. They’d do you credit. I suppose it was pretty stupid, as you say, but it ought to teach you a lesson about--about sign
ing things, or something.’ She tore the letters small and threw them in the wastebasket: ‘Now go on,’ she said.
‘Why must I go now?’
For the third time in twenty-four hours sad and uncontrollable tears confronted him.
‘Please go!’ she cried angrily--’or stay if you like. I’m yours for the asking. You know it. You can have any woman you want in the world by just raising your hand. Would I amuse you?’
‘Margaret--’
‘Oh, go on then.’ She sat down and turned her face away. ‘After all you’ll begin to look silly in a minute. You wouldn’t like that, would you? So get out.’
George stood there helpless, trying to put himself in her place and say something that wouldn’t be priggish, but nothing came.
He tried to force down his personal distress, his discomfort, his vague feeling of scorn, ignorant of the fact that she was watching him and understanding it all and loving the struggle in his face. Suddenly his own nerves gave way under the strain of the past twenty-four hours and he felt his eyes grow dim and his throat tighten. He shook his head helplessly. Then he turned away--still not knowing that she was watching him and loving him until she thought her heart would burst with it--and went out to the door.
IV
The car stopped before his house, dark save for small lights in the nursery and the lower hall. He heard the telephone ringing but when he answered it, inside, there was no one on the line. For a few minutes he wandered about in the darkness, moving from chair to chair and going to the window to stare out into the opposite emptiness of the night.
It was strange to be alone, to feel alone. In his overwrought condition the fact was not unpleasant. As the trouble of last night had made Helen Avery infinitely remote, so his talk with Margaret had acted as a catharsis to his own personal misery. It would swing back upon him presently, he knew, but for a moment his mind was too tired to remember, to imagine or to care.
Half an hour passed. He saw Dolores issue from the kitchen, take the paper from the front steps and carry it back to the kitchen for a preliminary inspection. With a vague idea of packing his grip, he went upstairs. He opened the door of Kay’s room and found her lying down.
For a moment he didn’t speak, but moved around the bathroom between. Then he went into her room and switched on the lights.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked casually. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’
‘I’ve been trying to get some sleep,’ she said. ‘George, do you think that girl’s gone crazy?’
‘What girl?’
‘Margaret Donovan. I’ve never heard of anything so terrible in my life.’
For a moment he thought that there had been some new development.
‘Fifty thousand dollars!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Why, I wouldn’t give it to her even if it were true. She ought to be sent to jail.’
‘Oh, it’s not so terrible as that,’ he said. ‘She has a brother who’s a pretty bad egg and it was his idea.’
‘She’s capable of anything,’ Kay said solemnly. ‘And you’re just a fool if you don’t see it. I’ve never liked her. She has dirty hair.’
‘Well, what of it?’ he demanded impatiently, and added: ‘Where’s Arthur Busch?’
‘He went home right after lunch. Or rather I sent him home.’
‘You decided you were not in love with him?’
She looked up almost in surprise. ‘In love with him? Oh, you mean this morning. I was just mad at you; you ought to have known that. I was a little sorry for him last night, but I guess it was the highballs.’
‘Well, what did you mean when you--’ He broke off. Wherever he turned he found a muddle, and he resolutely determined not to think.
‘My heavens!’ exclaimed Kay. ‘Fifty thousand dollars!’
‘Oh, drop it. She tore up the letters--she wrote them herself--and everything’s all right.’
‘George.’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course Douglas will fire her right away.’
‘Of course he won’t. He won’t know anything about it.’
‘You mean to say you’re not going to let her go? After this?’
He jumped up. ‘Do you suppose she thought that?’ he cried.
‘Thought what?’
‘That I’d have them let her go?’
‘You certainly ought to.’
He looked hastily through the phone book for her name.
‘Oxford--’ he called.
After an unusually long time the switchboard operator answered: ‘Bourbon Apartments.’
‘Miss Margaret Donovan, please.’
‘Why--’ The operator’s voice broke off. ‘If you’ll just wait a minute, please.’ He held the line; the minute passed, then another. Then the operator’s voice: ‘I couldn’t talk to you then. Miss Donovan has had an accident. She’s shot herself. When you called they were taking her through the lobby to St Catherine’s Hospital.’
‘Is she--is it serious?’ George demanded frantically.
‘They thought so at first, but now they think she’ll be all right. They’re going to probe for the bullet.’
‘Thank you.’
He got up and turned to Kay.
‘She’s tried to kill herself,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘I’ll have to go around to the hospital. I was pretty clumsy this afternoon and I think I’m partly responsible for this.’
‘George,’ said Kay suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Don’t you think it’s sort of unwise to get mixed up in this? People might say--’
‘I don’t give a damn what they say,’ he answered roughly.
He went to his room and automatically began to prepare for going out. Catching sight of his face in the mirror, he closed his eyes with a sudden exclamation of distaste, and abandoned the intention of brushing his hair.
‘George,’ Kay called from the next room, ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
‘Jules Rennard called up. Something about barracuda fishing. Don’t you think it would be fun to get up a party? Men and girls both?’
‘Somehow the idea doesn’t appeal to me. The whole idea of barracuda fishing--’
The phone rang below and he started. Dolores was answering it.
It was a lady who had already called twice today.
‘Is Mr Hannaford in?’
‘No,’ said Dolores promptly. She stuck out her tongue and hung up the phone just as George Hannaford came downstairs. She helped him into his coat, standing as close as she could to him, opened the door and followed a little way out on the porch.
‘Meester Hannaford,’ she said suddenly, ‘that Miss Avery she call up five-six times today. I tell her you out and say nothing to missus.’
‘What?’ He stared at her, wondering how much she knew about his affairs.
‘She call up just now and I say you out.’
‘All right,’ he said absently.
‘Meester Hannaford.’
‘Yes, Dolores.’
‘I deedn’t hurt myself thees morning when I fell off the porch.’
‘That’s fine. Good night, Dolores.’
‘Good night, Meester Hannaford.’
George smiled at her, faintly, fleetingly, tearing a veil from between them, unconsciously promising her a possible admission to the thousand delights and wonders that only he knew and could command. Then he went to his waiting car and Dolores, sitting down on the stoop, rubbed her hands together in a gesture that might have expressed either ecstasy or strangulation, and watched the rising of the thin, pale California moon.
MORE THAN JUST A HOUSE
Saturday Evening Post (24 June 1933)
This was the sort of thing Lew was used to--and he’d been around a good deal already. You came into an entrance hall, sometimes narrow New England Colonial, sometimes cautiously spacious. Once in the hall, the host said: “Clare”--or Virginia, or Darling--”this is Mr. Lowrie.” The woman said, “How do you do, Mr. Lowrie,�
�� and Lew answered, “How do you do, Mrs. Woman.” Then the man suggested, “How about a little cocktail?” And Lew lifted his brows apart and said, “Fine,” in a tone that implied: “What hospitality--consideration--attention!” Those delicious canapés. “M’m’m! Madame, what are they--broiled feathers? Enough to spoil a stronger appetite than mine.”
But Lew was on his way up, with six new suits of clothes, and he was getting into the swing of the thing. His name was up for a downtown club and he had his eye on a very modern bachelor apartment full of wrought-iron swinging gates--as if he were a baby inclined to topple downstairs--when he saved the life of the Gunther girl and his tastes underwent revision.
This was back in 1925, before the Spanish-American--No, before whatever it is that has happened since then. The Gunther girls had got off the train on the wrong side and were walking along arm in arm, with Amanda in the path of an approaching donkey engine. Amanda was rather tall, golden and proud, and the donkey engine was very squat and dark and determined. Lew had no time to speculate upon their respective chances in the approaching encounter; he lunged at Jean, who was nearest him, and as the two sisters clung together, startled, he pulled Amanda out of the iron pathway by such a hair’s breadth that a piston cylinder touched her coat.
And so Lew’s taste was changed in regard to architecture and interior decoration. At the Gunther house they served tea, hot or iced, sugar buns, gingerbread and hot rolls at half-past four. When he first went there he was embarrassed by his heroic status--for about five minutes. Then he learned that during the Civil War the grandmother had been saved by her own grandmother from a burning house in Montgomery County, that father had once saved ten men at sea and been recommended for the Carnegie medal, that when Jean was little a man had saved her from the surf at Cape May--that, in fact, all the Gunthers had gone on saving and being saved for the last fifty years and that their real debt to Lew was that now there would be no gap left in the tradition.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 284