Reaching the stone bridge he sat down on a rock, his heart beating in loud exhausted thumps under his dripping shirt. Well, it was hopeless — Charley was gone, perhaps out of range of his help forever. Far away beyond the station he heard the approaching siren of the nine-thirty train.
Michael found himself wondering suddenly why he was here. He despised himself for being here. On what weak chord in his nature had Charley played in those few minutes, forcing him into this senseless, frightened run through the night? They had discussed it all and Charley had been unable to give a reason why he should be helped.
He got to his feet with the idea of retracing his steps but before turning he stood for a minute in the moonlight looking down the road. Across the track stretched the line of telephone poles and, as his eyes followed them as far as he could see, he heard again, louder now and not far away, the siren of the New York train which rose and fell with musical sharpness on the still night. Suddenly his eyes, which had been traveling down the tracks, stopped and were focused suddenly upon one spot in the line of poles, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. It was a pole just like the others and yet it was different — there was something about it that was indescribably different.
And watching it as one might concentrate on some figure in the pattern of a carpet, something curious happened in his mind and instantly he saw everything in a completely different light. Something had come to him in a whisper of the breeze, something that changed the whole complexion of the situation. It was this: He remembered having read somewhere that at some point back in the dark ages a man named Gerbert had all by himself summed up the whole of European civilization. It became suddenly plain to Michael that he himself had just now been in a position like that. For one minute, one spot in time, all the mercy in the world had been vested in him.
He realized all this in the space of a second with a sense of shock and instantly he understood the reason why he should have helped Charley Hart. It was because it would be intolerable to exist in a world where there was no help — where any human being could be as alone as Charley had been alone this afternoon.
Why, that was it, of course — he had been trusted with that chance. Someone had come to him who had no other place to go — and he had failed.
All this time, this moment, he had been standing utterly motionless staring at the telephone pole down the track, the one that his eye had picked out as being different from the others. The moon was so bright now that near the top he could see a white bar set crosswise on the pole and as he looked the pole and the bar seemed to have become isolated as if the other poles had shrunk back and away.
Suddenly a mile down the track he heard the click and clamor of the electric train when it left the station, and as if the sound had startled him into life he gave a short cry and set off at a swaying run down the road, in the direction of the pole with the crossed bar.
The train whistled again. Click — click — click — it was nearer now, six hundred, five hundred yards away and as it came under the bridge he was running in the bright beam of its searchlight. There was no emotion in his mind but terror — he knew only that he must reach that pole before the train, and it was fifty yards away, struck out sharp as a star against the sky.
There was no path on the other side of the tracks under the poles but the train was so close now that he dared wait no longer or he would be unable to cross at all. He darted from the road, cleared the tracks in two strides and with the sound of the engine at his heels raced along the rough earth. Twenty feet, thirty feet — as the sound of the electric train swelled to a roar in his ears he reached the pole and threw himself bodily on a man who stood there close to the tracks, carrying him heavily to the ground with the impact of his body.
There was the thunder of steel in his ear, the heavy clump of the wheels on the rails, a swift roaring of air, and the nine-thirty train had gone past.
“Charley,” he gasped incoherently, “Charley.”
A white face looked up at him in a daze. Michael rolled over on his back and lay panting. The hot night was quiet now — there was no sound but the far-away murmur of the receding train.
“Oh, God!”
Michael opened his eyes to see that Charley was sitting up, his face in his hands.
“S’all right,” gasped Michael, “s’all right, Charley. You can have the money. I don’t know what I was thinking about. Why — why, you’re one of my oldest friends.”
Charley shook his head.
“I don’t understand,” he said brokenly. “Where did you come from — how did you get here?”
“I’ve been following you. I was just behind.”
“I’ve been here for half an hour.”
“Well, it’s good you chose this pole to — to wait under. I’ve been looking at it from down by the bridge. I picked it out on account of the crossbar.”
Charley had risen unsteadily to his feet and now he walked a few steps and looked up the pole in the full moonlight.
“What did you say?” he asked after a minute, in a puzzled voice. “Did you say this pole had a crossbar?”
“Why, yes. I was looking at it a long time. That’s how — “
Charley looked up again and hesitated curiously before he spoke.
“There isn’t any crossbar,” he said.
THE UNSPEAKABLE EGG
When Fifi visited her Long Island aunts the first time she was only ten years old, but after she went back to New York the man who worked around the place said that the sand dunes would never be the same again. She had spoiled them. When she left, everything on Montauk Point seemed sad and futile and broken and old. Even the gulls wheeled about less enthusiastically, as if they missed the brown, hardy little girl with big eyes who played barefoot in the sand.
The years bleached out Fifi’s tan and turned her a pale-pink color, but she still managed to spoil many places and plans for many hopeful men. So when at last it was announced in the best newspapers that she had concentrated on a gentleman named Van Tyne everyone was rather glad that all the sadness and longing that followed in her wake should become the responsibility of one self-sacrificing individual; not better for the individual, but for Fifi’s little world very much better indeed.
The engagement was not announced on the sporting page, nor even in the help-wanted column, because Fifi’s family belonged to the Society for the Preservation of Large Fortunes; and Mr. Van Tyne was descended from the man who accidentally founded that society, back before the Civil War. It appeared on the page of great names and was illustrated by a picture of a cross-eyed young lady holding the hand of a savage gentleman with four rows of teeth. That was how their pictures came out, anyhow, and the public was pleased to know that they were ugly monsters for all their money, and everyone was satisfied all around. The society editor set up a column telling how Mrs. Van Tyne started off in the Aquitania wearing a blue traveling dress of starched felt with a round square hat to match; and so far as human events can be prophesied, Fifi was as good as married; or, as not a few young men considered, as bad as married.
“An exceptionally brilliant match,” remarked Aunt Cal on the eve of the wedding, as she sat in her house on Montauk Point and clipped the notice for the cousins in Scotland, and then she added abstractedly, “All is forgiven.”
“Why, Cal!” cried Aunt Josephine. “What do you mean when you say all is forgiven? Fifi has never injured you in any way.”
“In the past nine years she has not seen fit to visit us here at Montauk Point, though we have invited her over and over again.”
“But I don’t blame her,” said Aunt Josephine, who was only thirty-one herself. “What would a young pretty girl do down here with all this sand?”
“We like the sand, Jo.”
“But we’re old maids, Cal, with no vices except cigarettes and double-dummy mah-jongg. Now Fifi, being young, naturally likes exciting, vicious things — late hours, dice playing, all the diversions we read about in these books.”
&nbs
p; She waved her hand vaguely.
“I don’t blame her for not coming down here. If I were in her place — — “
What unnatural ambitions lurked in Aunt Jo’s head were never disclosed, for the sentence remained unfinished. The front door of the house opened in an abrupt, startled way, and a young lady walked into the room in a dress marked “Paris, France.”
“Good evening, dear ladies,” she cried, smiling radiantly from one to the other. “I’ve come down here for an indefinite time in order to play in the sand.”
“Fifi!”
“Fifi!”
“Aunts!”
“But, my dear child,” cried Aunt Jo, “I thought this was the night of the bridal dinner.”
“It is,” admitted Fifi cheerfully. “But I didn’t go. I’m not going to the wedding either. I sent in my regrets today.”
It was all very vague; but it seemed, as far as her aunts could gather, that young Van Tyne was too perfect — whatever that meant. After much urging Fifi finally explained that he reminded her of an advertisement for a new car.
“A new car?” inquired Aunt Cal, wide eyed. “What new car?”
“Any new car.”
“Do you mean — — “
Aunt Cal blushed.
“I don’t understand this new slang, but isn’t there some part of a car that’s called the — the clutch?”
“Oh, I like him physically,” remarked Fifi coolly. Her aunts started in unison. “But he was just — — Oh, too perfect, too new; as if they’d fooled over him at the factory for a long time and put special curtains on him — — “
Aunt Jo had visions of a black-leather sheik.
“ — — and balloon tires and a permanent shave. He was too civilized for me, Aunt Cal.” She sighed. “I must be one of the rougher girls, after all.”
She was as immaculate and dainty sitting there as though she were the portrait of a young lady and about to be hung on the wall. But underneath her cheerfulness her aunts saw that she was in a state of hysterical excitement, and they persisted in suspecting that something more definite and shameful was the matter.
“But it isn’t,” insisted Fifi. “Our engagement was announced three months ago, and not a single chorus girl has sued George for breach of promise. Not one! He doesn’t use alcohol in any form except as hair tonic. Why, we’ve never even quarreled until today!”
“You’ve made a serious mistake,” said Aunt Cal.
Fifi nodded.
“I’m afraid I’ve broken the heart of the nicest man I ever met in my life, but it can’t be helped. Immaculate! Why, what’s the use of being immaculate when, no matter how hard you try, you can’t be half so immaculate as your husband? And tactful? George could introduce Mr. Trotzky to Mr. Rockefeller and there wouldn’t be a single blow. But after a certain point, I want to have all the tact in my family, and I told him so. I’ve never left a man practically at the church door before, so I’m going to stay here until everyone has had a chance to forget.”
And stay she did — rather to the surprise of her aunts, who expected that next morning she would rush wildly and remorsefully back to New York. She appeared at breakfast very calm and fresh and cool, and as though she had slept soundly all night, and spent the day reclining under a red parasol beside the sunny dunes, watching the Atlantic roll in from the east. Her aunts intercepted the evening paper and burnt it unseen in the open fire, under the impression that Fifi’s flight would be recorded in red headlines across the front page. They accepted the fact that Fifi was here, and except that Aunt Jo was inclined to go mah-jongg without a pair when she speculated on the too perfect man, their lives went along very much the same. But not quite the same.
“What’s the matter with that niece of yourn?” demanded the yardman gloomily of Aunt Josephine. “What’s a young pretty girl want to come and hide herself down here for?”
“My niece is resting,” declared Aunt Josephine stiffly.
“Them dunes ain’t good for wore-out people,” objected the yardman, soothing his head with his fingers. “There’s a monotoness about them. I seen her yesterday take her parasol and like to beat one down, she got so mad at it. Some day she’s going to notice how many of them there are, and all of a sudden go loony.” He sniffed. “And then what kind of a proposition we going to have on our hands?”
“That will do, Percy,” snapped Aunt Jo. “Go about your business. I want ten pounds of broken-up shells rolled into the front walk.”
“What’ll I do with that parasol?” he demanded. “I picked up the pieces.”
“It’s not my parasol,” said Aunt Jo tartly. “You can take the pieces and roll them into the front walk too.”
And so the June of Fifi’s abandoned honeymoon drifted away, and every morning her rubber shoes left wet footprints along a desolate shore at the end of nowhere. For a while she seemed to thrive on the isolation, and the sea wind blew her cheeks scarlet with health; but after a week had passed, her aunts saw that she was noticeably restless and less cheerful even than when she came.
“I’m afraid it’s getting on your nerves, my dear,” said Aunt Cal one particularly wild and windy afternoon. “We love to have you here, but we hate to see you looking so sad. Why don’t you ask your mother to take you to Europe for the summer?”
“Europe’s too dressed up,” objected Fifi wearily. “I like it here where everything’s rugged and harsh and rude, like the end of the world. If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay longer.”
She stayed longer, and seemed to grow more and more melancholy as the days slipped by to the raucous calls of the gulls and the flashing tumult of the waves along the shore. Then one afternoon she returned at twilight from the longest of her long walks with a strange derelict of a man. And after one look at him her aunts thought that the gardener’s prophecy had come true and that solitude had driven Fifi mad at last.
II
He was a very ragged wreck of a man as he stood in the doorway on that summer evening, blinking into Aunt Cal’s eyes; rather like a beachcomber who had wandered accidentally out of a movie of the South Seas. In his hands he carried a knotted stick of a brutal, treacherous shape. It was a murderous-looking stick, and the sight of it caused Aunt Cal to shrink back a little into the room.
Fifi shut the door behind them and turned to her aunts as if this were the most natural occasion in the world.
“This is Mr. Hopkins,” she announced, and then turned to her companion for corroboration. “Or is it Hopwood?”
“Hopkins,” said the man hoarsely. “Hopkins.”
Fifi nodded cheerfully.
“I’ve asked Mr. Hopkins to dinner,” she said.
There was some dignity which Aunt Cal and Aunt Josephine had acquired, living here beside the proud sea, that would not let them show surprise. The man was a guest now; that was enough. But in their hearts all was turmoil and confusion. They would have been no more surprised had Fifi brought in a many-headed monster out of the Atlantic.
“Won’t you — won’t you sit down, Mr. Hopkins?” said Aunt Cal nervously.
Mr. Hopkins looked at her blankly for a moment, and then made a loud clicking sound in the back of his mouth. He took a step toward a chair and sank down on its gilt frailty as though he meant to annihilate it immediately. Aunt Cal and Aunt Josephine collapsed rather weakly on the sofa.
“Mr. Hopkins and I struck up an acquaintance on the beach,” explained Fifi. “He’s been spending the summer down here for his health.”
Mr. Hopkins fixed his eyes glassily on the two aunts.
“I come down for my health,” he said.
Aunt Cal made some small sound; but recovering herself quickly, joined Aunt Jo in nodding eagerly at the visitor, as if they deeply sympathized.
“Yeah,” he repeated cheerfully.
“He thought the sea air would make him well and strong again,” said Fifi eagerly. “That’s why he came down here. Isn’t that it, Mr. Hopkins?”
“You said it, sister,”
agreed Mr. Hopkins, nodding.
“So you see, Aunt Cal,” smiled Fifi, “you and Aunt Jo aren’t the only two people who believe in the medicinal quality of this location.”
“No,” agreed Aunt Cal faintly. “There are — there are three of us now.”
Dinner was announced.
“Would you — would you” — Aunt Cal braced herself and looked Mr. Hopkins in the eye — “would you like to wash your hands before dinner?”
“Don’t mention it.” Mr. Hopkins waved his fingers at her carelessly.
They went in to dinner, and after some furtive backing and bumping due to the two aunts trying to keep as far as possible from Mr. Hopkins, sat down at table.
“Mr. Hopkins lives in the woods,” said Fifi. “He has a little house all by himself, where he cooks his own meals and does his own washing week in and week out.”
“How fascinating!” said Aunt Jo, looking searchingly at their guest for some signs of the scholarly recluse. “Have you been living near here for some time?”
“Not so long,” he answered with a leer. “But I’m stuck on it, see? I’ll maybe stay here till I rot.”
“Are you — do you live far away?” Aunt Cal was wondering what price she could get for the house at a forced sale, and how she and her sister could ever bear to move.
“Just a mile down the line… This is a pretty gal you got here,’’ he added, indicating their niece with his spoon.
“Why — yes.” The two ladies glanced uneasily at Fifi.
“Some day I’m going to pick her up and run away with her,” he added pleasantly.
Aunt Cal, with a heroic effort, switched the subject away from their niece. They discussed Mr. Hopkins’ shack in the woods. Mr. Hopkins liked it well enough, he confessed, except for the presence of minute animal life, a small fault in an otherwise excellent habitat.
After dinner Fifi and Mr. Hopkins went out to the porch, while her aunts sat side by side on the sofa turning over the pages of magazines and from time to time glancing at each other with stricken eyes. That a savage had a few minutes since been sitting at their dinner table, that he was now alone with their niece on the dark veranda — no such terrible adventure had ever been allotted to their prim, quiet lives before.
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 314