“Tantum ergo Sacramentum
Veneremur cernui.”
The words of the hymn gathered strength like a triumphant paean of glory, the incense filled his brain, his very soul, a gate clanged somewhere and the candle on the altar went out.
“Ego vos absolvo a peccatis tuts in nomine patris, filii, spiritus sancti. Amen.”
The file of novices started toward the altar. The stained lights from the windows mingled with the candle glow and the eucharist in its golden halo seemed to the man very mystical and sweet. It was very calm. The subdeacon held the Book for him. He placed his right hand upon it.
“In the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Ghost — “
MYRA MEETS HIS FAMILY
Probably every boy who has attended an Eastern college in the last ten years has met Myra half a dozen times, for the Myras live on the Eastern colleges, as kittens live on warm milk. When Myra is young, seventeen or so, they call her a “wonderful kid”; in her prime — say, at nineteen — she is tendered the subtle compliment of being referred to by her name alone; and after that she is a “prom trotter” or “the famous coast-to-coast Myra.”
You can see her practically any winter afternoon if you stroll through the Biltmore lobby. She will be standing in a group of sophomores just in from Princeton or New Haven, trying to decide whether to dance away the mellow hours at the Club de Vingt or the Plaza Red Room. Afterward one of the sophomores will take her to the theater and ask her down to the February prom — and then dive for a taxi to catch the last train back to college.
Invariably she has a somnolent mother sharing a suite with her on one of the floors above.
When Myra is about twenty-four she thinks over all the nice boys she might have married at one time or other, sighs a little and does the best she can. But no remarks, please! She has given her youth to you; she has blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of many eyes; she has roused strange surges of romance in a hundred pagan young breasts; and who shall say she hasn’t counted?
The particular Myra whom this story concerns will have to have a paragraph of history. I will get it over with as swiftly as possible.
When she was sixteen she lived in a big house in Cleveland and attended Derby School in Connecticut, and it was while she was still there that she started going to prep-school dances and college proms. She decided to spend the war at Smith College, but in January of her freshman year, falling violently in love with a young infantry officer, she failed all her midyear examinations and retired to Cleveland in disgrace. The young infantry officer arrived about a week later.
Just as she had about decided that she didn’t love him after all he was ordered abroad, and in a great revival of sentiment she rushed down to the port of embarkation with her mother to bid him good-by. She wrote him daily for two months, and then weekly for two months, and then once more. This last letter he never got, for a machine-gun bullet ripped through his head one rainy July morning. Perhaps this was just as well, for the letter informed him that it had all been a mistake, and that something told her they would never be happy together, and so on.
The “something” wore boots and silver wings and was tall and dark. Myra was quite sure that it was the real thing at last, but as an engine went through his chest at Kelly Field in mid-August she never had a chance to find out.
Instead she came East again, a little slimmer, with a becoming pallor and new shadows under her eyes, and throughout armistice year she left the ends of cigarettes all over New York on little china trays marked “Midnight Frolic” and “Coconut Grove” and “Palais Royal.” She was twenty-one now, and Cleveland people said that her mother ought to take her back home — that New York was spoiling her.
You will have to do your best with that. The story should have started long ago.
*****
It was an afternoon in September when she broke a theater date in order to have tea with young Mrs. Arthur Elkins, once her roommate at school.
“I wish,” began Myra as they sat down exquisitely, “that I’d been a senorita or a mademoiselle or something. Good grief! What is there to do over here once you’re out, except marry and retire!”
Lilah Elkins had seen this form of ennui before.
“Nothing,” she replied coolly; “do it.”
“I can’t seem to get interested, Lilah,” said Myra, bending forward earnestly. “I’ve played round so much that even while I’m kissing the man I just wonder how soon I’ll get tired of him. I never get carried away like I used to.”
“How old are you, Myra?”
“Twenty-one last spring.”
“Well,” said Lilah complacently, “take it from me, don’t get married unless you’re absolutely through playing round. It means giving up an awful lot, you know.”
“Through! I’m sick and tired of my whole pointless existence. Funny, Lilah, but I do feel ancient. Up at New Haven last spring men danced with me that seemed like little boys — and once I overheard a girl say in the dressing room, ‘There’s Myra Harper! She’s been coming up here for eight years.’ Of course she was about three years off, but it did give me the calendar blues.”
“You and I went to our first prom when we were sixteen — five years ago.”
“Heavens!” sighed Myra. “And now some men are afraid of me. Isn’t that odd? Some of the nicest boys. One man dropped me like a hotcake after coming down from Morristown for three straight weekends. Some kind friend told him I was husband hunting this year, and he was afraid of getting in too deep.”
“Well, you are husband hunting, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so — after a fashion.” Myra paused and looked about her rather cautiously. “Have you ever met Knowleton Whitney? You know what a wiz he is on looks, and his father’s worth a fortune, they say. Well, I noticed that the first time he met me he started when he heard my name and fought shy — and, Lilah darling, I’m not so ancient and homely as all that, am I?”
“You certainly are not!” laughed Lilah. “And here’s my advice: Pick out the best thing in sight — the man who has all the mental, physical, social and financial qualities you want, and then go after him hammer and tongs — the way we used to. After you’ve got him don’t say to yourself ‘Well, he can’t sing like Billy,’ or ‘I wish.he played better golf.’ You can’t have everything. Shut your eyes and turn off your sense of humor, and then after you’re married it’ll be very different and you’ll be mighty glad.”
“Yes,” said Myra absently; “I’ve had that advice before.”
“Drifting into romance is easy when you’re eighteen,” continued Lilah emphatically; “but after five years of it your capacity for it simply burns out.”
“I’ve had such nice times,” sighed Myra, “and such sweet men. To tell you the truth I have decided to go after someone.”
“Who?”
“Knowleton Whitney. Believe me, I may be a bit blase, but I can still get any man I want.”
“You really want him?”
“Yes — as much as I’ll ever want anyone. He’s smart as a whip, and shy — rather sweetly shy — and they say his family have the best-looking place in Westchester County.”
Lilah sipped the last of her tea and glanced at her wrist watch.
“I’ve got to tear, dear.”
They rose together and, sauntering out on Park Avenue, hailed taxicabs.
“I’m awfully glad, Myra; and I know you’ll be glad too.”
Myra skipped a little pool of water and, reaching her taxi, balanced on the running board like a ballet dancer.
“‘By, Lilah. See you soon.”
“Good-by, Myra. Good luck!”
And knowing Myra as she did, Lilah felt that her last remark was distinctly superfluous.
II
That was essentially the reason that one Friday night six weeks later Knowleton Whitney paid a taxi bill of seven dollars and ten cents and with a mixture of emotions paused beside Myra on the Biltmor
e steps.
The outer surface of his mind was deliriously happy, but just below that was a slowly hardening fright at what he had done. He, protected since his freshman year at Harvard from the snares of fascinating fortune hunters, dragged away from several sweet young things by the acquiescent nape of his neck, had taken advantage of his family’s absence in the West to become so enmeshed in the toils that it was hard to say which was toils and which was he.
The afternoon had been like a dream: November twilight along Fifth Avenue after the matinee, and he and Myra looking out at the swarming crowds from the romantic privacy of a hansom cab — quaint device — then tea at the Ritz and her white hand gleaming on the arm of a chair beside him; and suddenly quick broken words. After that had come the trip to the jeweler’s and a mad dinner in some little Italian restaurant where he had written “Do you?” on the back of the bill of fare and pushed it over for her to add the ever-miraculous “You know I do!” And now at the day’s end they paused on the Biltmore steps.
“Say it,” breathed Myra close to his ear.
He said it. Ah, Myra, how many ghosts must have flitted across your memory then!
“You’ve made me so happy, dear,” she said softly.
“No — you’ve made me happy. Don’t you know — Myra — — “
“I know.”
“For good?”
“For good. I’ve got this, you see.” And she raised the diamond solitaire to her lips. She knew how to do things, did Myra.
“Good night.”
“Good night. Good night.”
Like a gossamer fairy in shimmering rose she ran up the wide stairs and her cheeks were glowing wildly as she rang the elevator bell.
At the end of a fortnight she got a telegraph from him saying that his family had returned from the West and expected her up in Westchester County for a week’s visit. Myra wired her train time, bought three new evening dresses and packed her trunk.
It was a cool November evening when she arrived, and stepping from the train in the late twilight she shivered slightly and looked eagerly round for Knowleton. The station platform swarmed for a moment with men returning from the city; there was a shouting-medley of wives and chauffeurs, and a great snorting of automobiles as they backed and turned and slid away. Then before she realized it the platform was quite deserted and not a single one of the luxurious cars remained. Knowleton must have expected her on another train.
With an almost inaudible “Damn!” she started toward the Elizabethan station to telephone, when suddenly she was accosted by a very dirty, dilapidated man who touched his ancient cap to her and addressed her in a cracked, querulous voice.
“You Miss Harper?”
“Yes,” she confessed, rather startled. Was this unmentionable person by any wild chance the chauffeur?
“The chauffeur’s sick,” he continued in a high whine. “I’m his son.
Myra gasped.
“You mean Mr. Whitney’s chauffeur?”
“Yes; he only keeps just one since the war. Great on economizin’ — regelar Hoover.” He stamped his feet nervously and smacked enormous gauntlets together. “Well, no use waitin’ here gabbin’ in the cold. Le’s have your grip.”
Too amazed for words and not a little dismayed, Myra followed her guide to the edge of the platform, where she looked in vain for a car. But she was not left to wonder long, for the person led her steps to a battered old flivver, wherein was deposited her grip.
“Big car’s broke,” he explained. “Have to use this or walk.”
He opened the front door for her and nodded.
“Step in.”
“I b’lieve I’ll sit in back if you don’t mind.”
“Surest thing you know,” he cackled, opening the back door. “I thought the trunk bumpin’ round back there might make you nervous.”
“What trunk?”
“Yourn.”
“Oh, didn’t Mr. Whitney — can’t you make two trips?”
He shook his head obstinately.
“Wouldn’t allow it. Not since the war. Up to rich people to set ‘n example; that’s what Mr. Whitney says. Le’s have your check, please.”
As he disappeared Myra tried in vain to conjure up a picture of the chauffeur if this was his son. After a mysterious argument with the station agent he returned, gasping violently, with the trunk on his back. He deposited it in the rear seat and climbed up front beside her.
It was quite dark when they swerved out of the road and up a long dusky driveway to the Whitney place, whence lighted windows flung great blots of cheerful, yellow light over the gravel and grass and trees. Even now she could see that it was very beautiful, that its blurred outline was Georgian Colonial and that great shadowy garden parks were flung out at both sides. The car plumped to a full stop before a square stone doorway and the chauffeur’s son climbed out after her and pushed open the outer door.
“Just go right in,” he cackled; and as she passed the threshold she heard him softly shut the door, closing out himself and the dark.
Myra looked round her. She was in a large somber hall paneled in old English oak and lit by dim shaded lights clinging like luminous yellow turtles at intervals along the wall. Ahead of her was a broad staircase and on both sides there were several doors, but there was no sight or sound of life, and an intense stillness seemed to rise ceaselessly from the deep crimson carpet.
She must have waited there a full minute before she began to have that unmistakable sense of someone looking at her. She forced herself to turn casually round.
A sallow little man, bald and clean shaven, trimly dressed in a frock coat and white spats, was standing a few yards away regarding her quizzically. He must have been fifty at the least, but even before he moved she had noticed a curious alertness about him — something in his pose which promised that it had been instantaneously assumed and would be instantaneously changed in a moment. His tiny hands and feet and the odd twist to his eyebrows gave him a faintly elfish expression, and she had one of those vague transient convictions that she had seen him before, many years ago.
For a minute they stared at each other in silence and then she flushed slightly and discovered a desire to swallow.
“I suppose you’re Mr. Whitney.” She smiled faintly and advanced a step toward him. “I’m Myra Harper.”
For an instant longer he remained silent and motionless, and it flashed across Myra that he might be deaf; then suddenly he jerked into spirited life exactly like a mechanical toy started by the pressure of a button.
“Why, of course — why, naturally. I know — ah!” he exclaimed excitedly in a high-pitched elfin voice. Then raising himself on his toes in a sort of attenuated ecstasy of enthusiasm and smiling a wizened smile, he minced toward her across the dark carpet.
She blushed appropriately.
“That’s awfully nice of — — “
“Ah!” he went on. “You must be tired; a rickety, cindery, ghastly trip, I know. Tired and hungry and thirsty, no doubt, no doubt!” He looked round him indignantly. “The servants are frightfully inefficient in this house!”
Myra did not know what to say to this, so she made no answer. After an instant’s abstraction Mr. Whitney crossed over with his furious energy and pressed a button; then almost as if he were dancing he was by her side again, making thin, disparaging gestures with his hands.
“A little minute,” he assured her, “sixty seconds, scarcely more. Here!”
He rushed suddenly to the wall and with some effort lifted a great carved Louis Fourteenth chair and set it down carefully in the geometrical center of the carpet.
“Sit down — won’t you? Sit down! I’ll go get you something. Sixty seconds at the outside.”
She demurred faintly, but he kept on repeating “Sit down!” in such an aggrieved yet hopeful tone that Myra sat down. Instantly her host disappeared.
She sat there for five minutes and a feeling of oppression fell over her. Of all the receptions she had ever recei
ved this was decidedly the oddest — for though she had read somewhere that Ludlow Whitney was considered one of the most eccentric figures in the financial world, to find a sallow, elfin little man who, when he walked, danced was rather a blow to her sense of form. Had he gone to get Knowleton! She revolved her thumbs in interminable concentric circles.
Then she started nervously at a quick cough at her elbow. It was Mr. Whitney again. In one hand he held a glass of milk and in the other a blue kitchen bowl full of those hard cubical crackers used in soup.
“Hungry from your trip!” he exclaimed compassionately. “Poor girl, poor little girl, starving!” He brought out this last word with such emphasis that some of the milk plopped gently over the side of the glass.
Myra took the refreshments submissively. She was not hungry, but it had taken him ten minutes to get them so it seemed ungracious to refuse. She sipped gingerly at the milk and ate a cracker, wondering vaguely what to say. Mr. Whitney, however, solved the problem for her by disappearing again — this time by way of the wide stairs — four steps at a hop — the back of his bald head gleaming oddly for a moment in the half dark.
Minutes passed. Myra was torn between resentment and bewilderment that she should be sitting on a high comfortless chair in the middle of this big hall munching crackers. By what code was a visiting fiancee ever thus received!
Her heart gave a jump of relief as she heard a familiar whistle on the stairs. It was Knowleton at last, and when he came in sight he gasped with astonishment.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 301