“At eight o’clock,” she said, almost abstractedly. “Good-bye, Juan.” The car moved off down the road. At the corner she turned and waved her hand and Juan waved back, happier than he had ever been in his life, his soul dissolved to a sweet gas that buoyed up his body like a balloon. Then the roadster was out of sight and, all unaware, he had lost her.
II
Cousin Cora’s chauffeur took him to Noel’s door. The other male guest, Billy Harper, was, he discovered, the young man with the bright brown eyes whom he had met that afternoon. Juan was afraid of him; he was on such familiar, facetious terms with the two girls — towards Noel his attitude seemed almost irreverent — that Juan was slighted during the conversation at dinner. They talked of the Adirondacks and they all seemed to know the group who had been there. Noel and Holly spoke of boys at Cambridge and New Haven and of how wonderful it was that they were going to school in New York this whiter. Juan meant to invite Noel to the autumn dance at his college, but he thought that he had better wait and do it in a letter, later on. He was glad when dinner was over.
The girls went upstairs. Juan and Billy Harper smoked.
“She certainly is attractive,” broke out Juan suddenly, his repression bursting into words.
“Who? Noel?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a nice girl,” agreed Harper gravely.
Juan fingered the DKE pin in his pocket.
“She’s wonderful,” he said. “I like Holly Morgan pretty well — I was handing her a sort of line yesterday afternoon — but Noel’s really the most attractive girl I ever knew.”
Harper looked at him curiously, but Juan, released from the enforced and artificial smile of dinner, continued enthusiastically: “Of course it’s silly to fool with two girls. I mean, you’ve got to be careful not to get in too deep.”
Billy Harper didn’t answer. Noel and Holly came downstairs. Holly suggested bridge, but Juan didn’t play bridge, so they sat talking by the fire. In some fashion Noel and Billy Harper became involved in a conversation about dates and friends, and Juan began boasting to Holly Morgan, who sat beside him on the sofa.
“You must come to a prom at college,” he said suddenly. “Why don’t you? It’s a small college, but we have the best bunch in our house and the proms are fun.”
“I’d love it.”
“You’d only have to meet the people in our house.”
“What’s that?”
“DKE.” He drew the pin from his pocket. “See?”
Holly examined it, laughed and handed it back.
“I wanted to go to Yale,” he went on, “but my family always go to the same place.”
“I love Yale,” said Holly.
“Yes,” he agreed vaguely, half hearing her, his mind moving between himself and Noel. “You must come up. I’ll write you about it.”
Time passed. Holly played the piano. Noel took a ukulele from the top of the piano, strummed it and hummed. Billy Harper turned the pages of the music. Juan listened, restless, unamused. Then they sauntered out into the dark garden, and finding himself beside Noel at last, Juan walked her quickly ahead until they were alone.
“Noel,” he whispered, “here’s my Deke pin. I want you to have it.”
She looked at him expressionlessly.
“I saw you offering it to Holly Morgan,” she said.
“Noel,” he cried in alarm, “I wasn’t offering it to her. I just showed it to her. Why, Noel, do you think — — “
“You invited her to the prom.”
“I didn’t. I was just being nice to her.”
The others were close behind. She took the Deke pin quickly and put her finger to his lips in a facile gesture of caress.
He did not realize that she had not been really angry about the pin or the prom, and that his unfortunate egotism was forfeiting her interest.
At eleven o’clock Holly said she must go, and Billy Harper drove his car to the front door.
“I’m going to stay a few minutes if you don’t mind,” said Juan, standing in the door with Noel. “I can walk home.”
Holly and Billy Harper drove away. Noel and Juan strolled back into the drawing-room, where she avoided the couch and sat down in a chair.
“Let’s go out on the veranda,” suggested Juan uncertainly.
“Why?”
“Please, Noel.”
Unwillingly she obeyed. They sat side by side on a canvas settee and he put his arm around her.
“Kiss me,” he whispered. She had never seemed so desirable to him before.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t kiss people any more.”
“But — me?” he demanded incredulously.
“I’ve kissed too many people. I’ll have nothing left if I keep on kissing people.”
“But you’ll kiss me, Noel?”
“Why?”
He could not even say, “Because I love you.” But he could say it, he knew that he could say it, when she was in his arms.
“If I kiss you once, will you go home?”
“Why, do you want me to go home?”
“I’m tired. I was travelling last night and I can never sleep on a train. Can you? I can never — — “
Her tendency to leave the subject willingly made him frantic.
“Then kiss me once,” he insisted.
“You promise?”
“You kiss me first.”
“No, Juan, you promise first.”
“Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“Oh-h-h!” she groaned.
With gathering anxiety Juan promised and took her in his arms. For one moment at the touch of her lips, the feeling of her, of Noel, close to him, he forgot the evening, forgot himself — rather became the inspired, romantic self that she had known. But it was too late. Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him away.
“You promised.”
“Noel — — “
She got up. Confused and unsatisfied, he followed her to the door.
“Noel — — “
“Good night, Juan.”
As they stood on the doorstep her eyes rose over the line of dark trees towards the ripe harvest moon. Some glowing thing would happen to her soon, she thought, her mind far away. Something that would dominate her, snatch her up out of life, helpless, ecstatic, exalted.
“Good night, Noel. Noel, please — — “
“Good night, Juan. Remember we’re going swimming tomorrow. It’s wonderful to see you again. Good night.”
She dosed the door.
III
Towards morning he awoke from a broken sleep, wondering if she had not kissed him because of the three spots on his cheek. He turned on the light and looked at them. Two were almost invisible. He went into the bathroom, doused all three with the black ointment and crept back into bed.
Cousin Cora greeted him stiffly at breakfast next morning.
“You kept your great-uncle awake last night,” she said. “He heard you moving around in your room.”
“I only moved twice,” he said unhappily. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“He has to have his sleep, you know. We all have to be more considerate when there’s someone sick. Young people don’t always think of that. And he was so unusually well when you came.”
It was Sunday, and they were to go swimming at Holly Morgan’s house, where a crowd always collected on the bright easy beach. Noel called for him, but they arrived before any of his half-humble remarks about the night before had managed to attract her attention. He spoke to those he knew and was introduced to others, made ill at ease again by their cheerful familiarity with one another, by the correct informality of their clothes. He
was sure they noticed that he had worn only one suit during his visit to Culpepper Bay, varying it with white flannel trousers. Both pairs of trousers were out of press now, and after keeping his great-uncle awake he had not felt like bothering Cousin Cora about it at breakfast.
Again he tried to talk to Holly, with the vague idea of making Noel jealous, but Holly was busy and she eluded him. It was ten minutes before he extricated himself from a conversation with the obnoxious Miss Holyoke. At the moment he managed this he perceived to his horror that Noel was gone.
When he last saw her she had been engaged in a light but somehow intent conversation with the tall well-dressed stranger she had met yesterday. Now she wasn’t in sight. Miserable and horribly alone, he strolled up and down the beach, trying to look as if he were having a good time, seeming to watch the bathers, but keeping a sharp eye out for Noel. He felt that his self-conscious perambulations were attracting unbearable attention and sat down unhappily on a sand dune beside Billy Harper. But Billy Harper was neither cordial nor communicative, and after a minute hailed a man across the beach and went to talk to him.
Juan was desperate. When, suddenly, he spied Noel coming down from the house with the tall man, he stood up with a jerk, convinced that his features were working wildly.
She waved at him.
“A buckle came off my shoe,” she called. “I went to have it put on. I thought you’d gone in swimming.”
He stood perfectly still, not trusting his voice to answer. He understood that she was through with him; there was someone else. Immediately he wanted above all things to be away. As they came nearer, the tall man glanced at him negligently and resumed his vivacious, intimate conversation with Noel. A group suddenly closed around them.
Keeping the group in the corner of his eye, Juan began to move carefully and steadily towards the gate that led to the road. He started when the casual voice of a man behind him said, “Going?” and he answered, “Got to” with what purported to be a reluctant nod. Once behind the shelter of the parked cars, he began to run, slowed down as several chauffeurs looked at him curiously. It was a mile and a half to the Chandler house and the day was broiling, but he walked fast lest Noel, leaving the party — “With that man,” he thought bitterly — should overtake him trudging along the road. That would be more than he could bear.
There was the sound of a car behind him. Immediately Juan left the road and sought concealment behind a convenient hedge. It was no one from the party, but thereafter he kept an eye out for available cover, walking fast, or even running, over unpromising open spaces.
He was within sight of his cousin’s house when it happened. Hot and dishevelled, he had scarcely flattened himself against the back of a tree when Noel’s roadster, with the tall man at the wheel, flashed by down the road. Juan stepped out and looked after them. Then, blind with sweat and misery, he continued on towards home.
IV
At luncheon, Cousin Cora looked at him closely.
“What’s the trouble?” she inquired. “Did something go wrong at the beach this morning?”
“Why, no,” he exclaimed in simulated astonishment. “What made you think that?”
“You have such a funny look. I thought perhaps you’d had some trouble with the little Garneau girl.”
He hated her.
“No, not at all.”
“You don’t want to get any idea in your head about her,” said Cousin Cora.
“What do you mean?” He knew with a start what she meant.
“Any ideas about Noel Garneau. You’ve got your own way to make.” Juan’s face burned. He was unable to answer. “I say that in all kindness. You’re not in any position to think anything serious about Noel Garneau.”
Her implications cut deeper than her words. Oh, he had seen well enough that he was not essentially of Noel’s sort, that being nice in Akron wasn’t enough at Culpepper Bay. He had that realization that comes to all boys in his position that for every advantage — that was what his mother called this visit to Cousin Cora’s — he paid a harrowing price in self-esteem. But a world so hard as to admit such an intolerable state of affairs was beyond his comprehension. His mind rejected it all completely, as it had rejected the dictionary name for the three spots on his face. He wanted to let go, to vanish, to be home. He determined to go home tomorrow, but after this heart-rending conversation he decided to put off the announcement until tonight.
That afternoon he took a detective story from the library and retired upstairs to read on his bed. He finished the book by four o’clock and came down to change it for another. Cousin Cora was on the veranda arranging three tables for tea.
“I thought you were at the club,” she exclaimed in surprise. “I thought you’d gone up to the club.”
“I’m tired,” he said. “I thought I’d read.”
“Tired!” she exclaimed. “A boy your age! You ought to be out in the open air playing golf — that’s why you have that spot on your cheek” — Juan winced; his experiments with the black salve had irritated it to a sharp redness — “instead of lying around reading on a day like this.”
“I haven’t any clubs,” said Juan hurriedly.
“Mr Holyoke told you you could use his brother’s clubs. He spoke to the caddie master. Run on now. You’ll find lots of young people up there who want to play. I’ll begin to think you’re not having a good time.”
In agony Juan saw himself dubbing about the course alone — seeing Noel coming under his eye. He never wanted to see Noel again except out in Montana — some bright day, when she would come saying, “Juan, I never knew — never understood what your love was.”
Suddenly he remembered that Noel had gone into Boston for the afternoon. She would not be there. The horror of playing alone suddenly vanished.
The caddie master looked at him disapprovingly as he displayed his guest card, and Juan nervously bought a half-dozen balls at a dollar each in an effort to neutralize the imagined hostility. On the first tee he glanced around. It was after four and there was no one in sight except two old men practising drives from the top of a little hill. As he addressed his ball he heard someone come up on the tee behind him and he breathed easier at the sharp crack that sent his ball a hundred and fifty yards down the fairway.
“Playing alone?”
He looked around. A stout man of fifty, with a huge face, high forehead, long wide upper lip and great undershot jaw, was taking a driver from a bulging bag. “Why — yes.”
“Mind if I go round with you?”
“Not at all.”
Juan greeted the suggestion with a certain gloomy relief. They were evenly matched, the older man’s steady short shots keeping pace with Juan’s occasional brilliancy. Not until the seventh hole did the conversation rise above the fragmentary boasting and formalized praise which forms the small talk of golf.
“Haven’t seen you around before.”
“I’m just visiting here,” Juan explained, “staying with my cousin, Miss Chandler.”
“Oh yes — know Miss Chandler very well. Nice old snob.”
“What?” inquired Juan.
“Nice old snob, I said. No offence… Your honour, I think.” Not for several holes did Juan venture to comment on his partner’s remark.
“What do you mean when you say she’s a nice old snob?” he inquired with interest.
“Oh, it’s an old quarrel between Miss Chandler and me,” answered the older man brusquely. “She’s an old friend of my wife’s. When we were married and came out to Culpepper Bay for the summer, she tried to freeze us out. Said my wife had no business marrying me. I was an outsider.”
“What did you do?”
“We just let her alone. She came round, but naturally I never had much love for her. She even tried to put her oar in before we were married.” He laughed. “Cora Chandler of Boston — how she used to boss the girls around in those days! At twenty-five she had the sharpest tongue in Back Bay. They were old people there, you know — Emerson and Whittier to dinner and all that. My wife belonged to that crowd too. I was from the Middle West… Oh, too bad. I should have stopped talking. That makes me two up again.”
Suddenly Juan wanted to present his case to this man — not quite as it was, but a
dorned with a dignity and significance it did not so far possess. It began to round out in his mind as the sempiternal struggle of the poor young man against a snobbish, purse-proud world. This new aspect was comforting, and he put out of his mind the less pleasant realization that, superficially at least, money hadn’t entered into it. He knew in his heart that it was his unfortunate egotism that had repelled Noel, his embarrassment, his absurd attempt to make her jealous with Holly. Only indirectly was his poverty concerned; under different circumstances it might have given a touch of romance.
“I know exactly how you must have felt,” he broke out suddenly as they walked toward the tenth tee. “I haven’t any money and I’m in love with a girl who has — and it seems as if every busybody in the world is determined to keep us apart.”
For a moment Juan believed this. His companion looked at him sharply.
“Does the girl care about you?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“Well, go after her, young man. All the money in this world hasn’t been made by a long shot.”
“I’m still in college,” said Juan, suddenly taken aback.
“Won’t she wait for you?”
“I don’t know. You see, the pressure’s pretty strong. Her family want her to many a rich man” — his mind visualized the tall well-dressed stranger of this morning and invention soared — “an easterner that’s visiting here, and I’m afraid they’ll all sweep her off her feet. If it’s not this man, it’s the next.”
His friend considered.
“You can’t have everything, you know,” he said presently. “I’m the last man to advise a young man to leave college, especially when I don’t know anything about him or his abilities; but if it’s going to break you up not to get her, you better think about getting to work.”
“I’ve been considering that,” said Juan frowning. The idea was ten seconds old in his mind.
“All girls are crazy now, anyhow,” broke out the older man. “They begin to think of men at fifteen, and by the time they’re seventeen they run off with the chauffeur next door.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 317