IV
When she next recovered full consciousness she was in bed. She imagined a maid had undressed her, for on turning up the reading lamp she saw that her clothes had been neatly put away. For a minute she lay there, listening idly while the hall clock struck two, and then her overwrought nerves jumped in terror as she heard again that child’s cry from the room next door. The morning seemed suddenly infinitely far away. There was some shadowy secret near her — her feverish imagination pictured a Chinese child brought up there in the half dark.
In a quick panic she crept into a negligee and, throwing open the door, slipped down the corridor toward Knowleton’s room. It was very dark in the other wing, but when she pushed open his door she could see by the faint hall light that his bed was empty and had not been slept in. Her terror increased. What could take him out at this hour of the night? She started for Mrs. Whitney’s room, but at the thought of the dogs and her bare ankles she gave a little discouraged cry and passed by the door.
Then she suddenly heard the sound of Knowleton’s voice issuing from a faint crack of light far down the corridor, and with a glow of joy she fled toward it. When she was within a foot of the door she found she could see through the crack — and after one glance all thought of entering left her.
Before an open fire, his head bowed in an attitude of great dejection, stood Knowleton, and in the corner, feet perched on the table, sat Mr. Whitney in his shirt sleeves, very quiet and calm, and pulling contentedly on a huge black pipe. Seated on the table was a part of Mrs. Whitney — that is, Mrs. Whitney without any hair. Out of the familiar great bust projected Mrs. Whitney’s head, but she was bald; on her cheeks was the faint stubble of a beard, and in her mouth was a large black cigar, which she was puffing with obvious enjoyment.
“A thousand,” groaned Knowleton as if in answer to a question. “Say twenty-five hundred and you’ll be nearer the truth. I got a bill from the Graham Kennels to-day for those poodle dogs. They’re soaking me two hundred and saying that they’ve got to have ‘em back tomorrow.”
“Well.” said Mrs. Whitney in a low barytone voice, “send ‘em back. We’re through with ‘em.”
“That’s a mere item,” continued Knowleton glumly. “Including your salary, and Appleton’s here, and that fellow who did the chauffeur, and seventy supes for two nights, and an orchestra — that’s nearly twelve hundred, and then there’s the rent on the costumes and that darn Chinese portrait and the bribes to the servants. Lord! There’ll probably be bills for one thing or another coming in for the next month.”
“Well, then,” said Appleton, “for pity’s sake pull yourself together and carry it through to the end. Take my word for it, that girl will be out of the house by twelve noon.”
Knowleton sank into a chair and covered his face with his hands.
“Oh — — “
“Brace up! It’s all over. I thought for a minute there in the hall that you were going to balk at that Chinese business.”
“It was the vaudeville that knocked the spots out of me,” groaned Knowleton. “It was about the meanest trick ever pulled on any girl, and she was so darned game about it!”
“She had to be,” said Mrs. Whitney cynically.
“Oh, Kelly, if you could have seen the girl look at me to-night just before she fainted in front of that picture. Lord, I believe she loves me! Oh, if you could have seen her!”
Outside Myra flushed crimson. She leaned closer to the door, biting her lip until she could taste the faintly bitter savor of blood.
“If there was anything I could do now,” continued Knowleton — “anything in the world that would smooth it over I believe I’d do it.”
Kelly crossed ponderously over, his bald shiny head ludicrous above his feminine negligee, and put his hand on Knowleton’s shoulder.
“See here, my boy — your trouble is just nerves. Look at it this way: You undertook somep’n to get yourself out of an awful mess. It’s a cinch the girl was after your money — now you’ve beat her at her own game an’ saved yourself an unhappy marriage and your family a lot of suffering. Ain’t that so, Appleton?”
“Absolutely!” said Appleton emphatically. “Go through with it.”
“Well” said Knowleton with a dismal attempt to be righteous, “if she really loved me she wouldn’t have let it all affect her this much. She’s not marrying my family.”
Appleton laughed.
“I thought we’d tried to make it pretty obvious that she is.”
“Oh, shut up!” cried Knowleton miserably.
Myra saw Appleton wink at Kelly.
“‘At’s right,” he said; “she’s shown she was after your money.” Well, now then, there’s no reason for not going through with it. See here. On one side you’ve proved she didn’t love you and you’re rid of her and free as air. She’ll creep away and never say a word about it — and your family never the wiser. On the other side twenty-five hundred thrown to the bow-wows, miserable marriage, girl sure to hate you as soon as she finds out, and your family all broken up and probably disownin’ you for marryin’ her. One big mess, I’ll tell the world.”
“You’re right,” admitted Knowleton gloomily. “You’re right, I suppose — but oh, the look in that girl’s face! She’s probably in there now lying awake, listening to the Chinese baby — — “
Appleton rose and yawned.
“Well — — “ he began.
But Myra waited to hear no more. Pulling her silk kimono close about her she sped like lightning down the soft corridor, to dive headlong and breathless into her room.
“My heavens!” she cried, clenching her hands in the darkness. “My heavens!”
V
Just before dawn Myra drowsed into a jumbled dream that seemed to act on through interminable hours. She awoke about seven and lay listlessly with one blue-veined arm hanging over the side of the bed. She who had danced in the dawn at many proms was very tired.
A clock outside her door struck the hour, and with her nervous start something seemed to collapse within her — she turned over and began to weep furiously into her pillow, her tangled hair spreading like a dark aura round her head. To her, Myra Harper, had been done this cheap vulgar trick by a man she had thought shy and kind.
Lacking the courage to come to her and tell her the truth he had gone into the highways and hired men to frighten her.
Between her fevered broken sobs she tried in vain to comprehend the workings of a mind which could have conceived this in all its subtlety. Her pride refused to let her think of it as a deliberate plan of Knowleton’s. It was probably an idea fostered by this little actor Appleton or by the fat Kelly with his horrible poodles. But it was all unspeakable — unthinkable. It gave her an intense sense of shame.
But when she emerged from her room at eight o’clock and disdaining breakfast, walked into the garden she was a very self-possessed young beauty, with dry cool eyes only faintly shadowed. The ground was firm and frosty with the promise of winter, and she found gray sky and dull air vaguely comforting and one with her mood. It was a day for thinking and she needed to think.
And then turning a corner suddenly she saw Knowleton seated on a stone bench, his head in his hands, in an attitude of profound dejection. He wore his clothes of the night before and-it was quite evident that he had not been to bed.
He did not hear her until she was quite close to him, and then as a dry twig snapped under her heel he looked up wearily. She saw that the night had played havoc with him — his face was deathly pale and his eyes were pink and puffed and tired. He jumped up with a look that was very like dread.
“Good morning,” said Myra quietly.
“Sit down,” he began nervously. “Sit down; I want to talk to you.l I’ve got to talk to you.”
Myra nodded and taking a seat beside him on the bench clasped her knees with her hands and half closed her eyes.
“Myra, for heaven’s sake have pity on me!”
She turned wondering eyes on
him.
“What do you mean?”
He groaned.
“Myra, I’ve done a ghastly thing — to you, to me, to us. I haven’t a word to say in favor of myself — I’ve been just rotten. I think it was a sort of madness that came over me.”
“You’ll have to give me a clew to what you’re talking about.”
“Myra — Myra” — like all large bodies his confession seemed difficult to imbue with momentum — “Myra — Mr. Whitney is not my father.”
“You mean you were adopted?”
“No; I mean — Ludlow Whitney is my father, but this man you’ve met isn’t Ludlow Whitney.”
“I know,” said Myra coolly. “He’s Warren Appleton, the actor.”
Knowleton leaped to his feet.
“How on earth — — “
“Oh,” lied Myra easily, “I recognized him the first night. I saw him five years ago in The Swiss Grapefruit.”
At this Knowleton seemed to collapse utterly. He sank down limply on to the bench.
“You knew?”
“Of course! How could I help it? It simply made me wonder what it was all about.”
With a great effort he tried to pull himself together.
“I’m going to tell you the whole story, Myra.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, it starts with my mother — my real one, not the woman with those idiotic dogs; she’s an invalid and I’m her only child. Her one idea in life has always been for me to make a fitting match, and her idea of a fitting match centers round social position in England. Her greatest disappointment was that I wasn’t a girl so I could marry a title, instead she wanted to drag me to England — marry me off to the sister of an earl or the daughter of a duke. Why, before she’d let me stay up here alone this fall she made me promise I wouldn’t go to see any girl more than twice. And then I met you.”
He paused for a second and continued earnestly: “You were the first girl in my life whom I ever thought of marrying. You intoxicated me, Myra. It was just as though you were making me love you by some invisible force.”
“I was,” murmured Myra.
“Well, that first intoxication lasted a week, and then one day a letter came from mother saying she was bringing home some wonderful English girl, Lady Helena Something-or-Other. And the same day a man told me that he’d heard I’d been caught by the most famous husband hunter in New York. Well, between these two things I went half crazy. I came into town to see you and call it off — got as far as the Biltmore entrance and didn’t dare. I started wandering down Fifth Avenue like a wild man, and then I met Kelly. I told him the whole story — and within an hour we’d hatched up this ghastly plan. It was his plan — all the details. His histrionic instinct got the better of him and he had me thinking it was the kindest way out.”
“Finish,” commanded Myra crisply.
“Well, it went splendidly, we thought. Everything — the station meeting, the dinner scene, the scream in the night, the vaudeville — though I thought that was a little too much — until — until — — Oh, Myra, when you fainted under that picture and I held you there in my arms, helpless as a baby, I knew I loved you. I was sorry then, Myra.”
There was a long pause while she sat motionless, her hands still clasping her knees — then he burst out with a wild plea of passionate sincerity.
“Myra!” he cried. “If by any possible chance you can bring yourself to forgive and forget I’ll marry you when you say, let my family go to the devil, and love you all my life.”
For a long while she considered, and Knowleton rose and began pacing nervously up and down the aisle of bare bushes his hands in his pockets, his tired eyes pathetic now, and full of dull appeal. And then she came to a decision.
“You’re perfectly sure?” she asked calmly.
“Yes.”
“Very well, I’ll marry you to-day.”
With her words the atmosphere cleared and his troubles seemed to fall from him like a ragged cloak. An Indian summer sun drifted out from behind the gray clouds and the dry bushes rustled gently in the breeze.
“It was a bad mistake,” she continued, “but if you’re sure you love me now, that’s the main thing. We’ll go to town this morning get a license, and I’ll call up my cousin, who’s a minister in the First Presbyterian Church. We can go West to-night.”
“Myra!” he cried jubilantly. “You’re a marvel and I’m not fit to tie your shoe strings. I’m going to make up to you for this, darling girl.”
And taking her supple body in his arms he covered her face with kisses.
The next two hours passed in a whirl. Myra went to the telephone and called her cousin, and then rushed upstairs to pack. When she came down a shining roadster was waiting miraculously in the drive and by ten o’clock they were bowling happily toward the City.
They stopped for a few minutes at the City Hall and again at the jeweler’s, and then they were in the house of the Reverend Walter Gregory on Sixty-ninth Street, where a sanctimonious gentleman with twinkling eyes and a slight stutter received them cordially and urged them to a breakfast of bacon and eggs before the ceremony.
On the way to the station they stopped only long enough to wire Knowleton’s father, and then they were sitting in their compartment on the Broadway Limited.
“Darn!” exclaimed Myra. “I forgot my bag. Left it at Cousin Walter’s in the excitement.”
“Never mind. We can get a whole new outfit in Chicago.”
She glanced at her wrist watch.
“I’ve got time to telephone him to send it on.”
She rose.
“Don’t be long, dear.”
She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“You know I couldn’t. Two minutes, honey.”
Outside Myra ran swiftly along the platform and up the steel stairs to the great waiting room, where a man met her — a twinkly-eyed man with a slight stutter.
“How d-did it go, M-myra?”
“Fine! Oh, Walter, you were splendid! I almost wish you’d join the ministry so you could officiate when I do get married.”
“Well — I r-rehearsed for half an hour after I g-got your telephone call.”
“Wish we’d had more time. I’d have had him lease an apartment and buy furniture.”
“H’m,” chuckled Walter. “Wonder how far he’ll go on his honeymoon.”
“Oh, he’ll think I’m on the train till he gets to Elizabeth.” She shook her little fist at the great contour of the marble dome. “Oh, he’s getting off too easy — far too easy!”
“I haven’t f — figured out what the f — fellow did to you, M — myra.”
“You never will, I hope.”
They had reached the side drive and he hailed her a taxicab.
“You’re an angel!” beamed Myra. “And I can’t thank you enough.”
“Well, any time I can be of use t — to you — — By the way, what are you going to do with all the rings?”
Myra looked laughingly at her hand.
“That’s the question,” she said. “I may send them to Lady Helena Something-or-Other — and — well, I’ve always had a strong penchant for souvenirs. Tell the driver ‘Biltmore,’ Walter.”
THE I.O.U.
The above is not my real name — the fellow it belongs to gave his permission to sign it to this story. My real name I shall not divulge. I am a publisher. I accept long novels about young love written by old maids in South Dakota, detective stories concerning wealthy clubmen and female apaches with “wide dark eyes”, essays about the menace of this and that and the color of the moon in Tahiti by colledge professors and others unemployed. I accept no novels by authors under fifteen years old. All the columnists and communists (I can never get these two words straight) abuse me because they say I want money. I do — I want it terribly. My wife need it. My
[…the rest of manuscript is unavailable; 0ttached to the manuscript of this story is a short, typed synopsis by Harold Ober, which rea
ds: “Cleverly written story. Almost a satire on publishing business. Told by a publisher. He brings out book by famous psychic research man, purporting to be communication with his nephew killed in War [WW1]. Publisher goes to Ohio to visit author. The nephew who has been in prison camp arrives at same time. Girl he was engaged to also there. Both are angry at author & publisher. Book is selling at great rate. Shows nephew dancing with angels in filmy garments. Publisher offers them money to keep quiet for a while — but native of town arrives. Recognizes nephew because he owes him $3.85 lost at poker. Publisher decides to publish only love stories and mysteries. HO.”]
About nine months after beginning his association with the Paul Revere Reynolds agency and his relationship as a client of Harold Ober, Fitzgerald sent a manuscript with a letter to Ober. In this letter of 2 June 1920, Fitzgerald indicated that this story was “a plot that Sell particularly wanted for Harps. Baz and which I promised him.” Someone in the Reynolds office identified the story as “The I. O. U.” There is no evidence that the story was actually offered to Harper’s Bazaar, and that magazine published no Fitzgerald stories during his lifetime. Ober obviously offered it other places, because on 17 July 1920, Fitzgerald wrote concerning the story again: “If ‘The I. O. U.’ comes back from the Post I wish you’d return it to me as I think I can change it so there’ll be no trouble selling it.” No correspondence survives indicating whether Fitzgerald resubmitted the story in a new version or with a new title. There is not even a record of what magazines Ober offered it to. However, the manuscript and a typescript survive, and a note attached to the typescript shows that at some time (probably after Fitzgerald’s death) Ober reworked or considered reworking the story in an attempt to make it salable.
Unfortunately Ober’s assessment of “The I. O. U.” is not one of his better judgments. He seems to have read more complexity and subtlety into the story than actually exists. While it could be considered a “clever” story, and perhaps could have been worked up into a salable story, “The I. O. U.” is truly one of Fitzgerald’s inconsequential efforts. The characters lack the charm of his flappers and the appeal of his young men in such stories as “Head and Shoulders,” “The Offshore Pirate,” or “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” — all published in The Saturday Evening Post in the same year. No, this time the magazine editors seem to have been more perceptive than Mr. Ober.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 303