“But I didn’t marry Al then,” she said. “It wasn’t till two years later when he got a job as superintendent. There was a Harvard man I used to go around with that I almost married. He knew you. His name was Abbot — Ham Abbot.”
“Ham Abbot — you saw him again?”
“We went around for almost a year. I remember Al was wild. He said if I had any more Harvard men around he’d shoot them. But there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Ham was just cuckoo about me and I used to let him rave.”
Bill had read somewhere that every seven years a change is completed in the individual that makes him different from his self of seven years ago. He clung to the idea desperately. Dimly he saw this person pouring him an enormous glass of applejack, dimly he gulped it down and, through a description of the house, fought his way to the front door.
“Notice the original beams. The beams were what we liked best — — “ She broke off suddenly. “I remember now about the boat.
You were in a launch and you got on board with Ham Abbot that night.”
The applejack was strong. Evidently it was fragrant also, for as they started off, the taxi driver volunteered to show him where the gentleman could get some more. He would give him a personal introduction in a place down by the wharf.
Bill sat at a dingy table behind swinging doors and, while the sun went down behind the Thames, disposed of four more applejacks. Then he remembered that he was keeping the taxi waiting. Outside a boy told him that the driver had gone home to supper and would be back in half an hour.
He sauntered over to a bale of goods and sat down, watching the mild activity of the docks. It was dusk presently. Stevedores appeared momentarily against the lighted hold of a barge and jerked quickly out of sight down an invisible incline. Next to the barge lay a steamer and people were going aboard; first a few people and then an increasing crowd. There was a breeze in the air and the moon came up rosy gold with a haze around.
Someone ran into him precipitately in the darkness, tripped, swore and staggered to his feet.
“I’m sorry,” said Bill cheerfully. “Hurt yourself?”
“Pardon me,” stuttered the young man. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not at all. Here, have a light.”
They touched cigarettes.
“Where’s the boat going?”
“Just down the river. It’s the high-school picnic tonight.”
“What?”
“The Wheatly High School picnic. The boat goes down to Groton, then it turns around and comes back.”
Bill thought quickly. “Who’s the principal of the high school?”
“Mr. McVitty.” The young man fidgeted impatiently. “So long, bud. I got to go aboard.”
“Me too,” whispered Bill to himself. “Me too.”
Still he sat there lazily for a moment, listening to the sounds clear and distinct now from the open deck: the high echolalia of the girls, the boys calling significant but obscure jokes to one another across the night. He was feeling fine. The air seemed to have distributed the applejack to all the rusty and unused corners of his body. He bought another pint, stowed it in his hip pocket and walked on board with all the satisfaction, the insouciance of a trans-atlantic traveler.
A girl standing in a group near the gangplank raised her eyes to him as he went past. She was slight and fair. Her mouth curved down and then broke upward as she smiled, half at him, half at the man beside her. Someone made a remark and the group laughed. Once again her glance slipped sideways and met his for an instant as he passed by.
Mr. McVitty was on the top deck with half a dozen other teachers, who moved aside at Bill’s breezy approach.
“Good evening, Mr. McVitty. You don’t remember me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, sir.” The principal regarded him with tentative noncommittal eyes.
“Yet I took a trip with you on this same boat, exactly eleven years ago tonight.”
“This boat, sir, was only built last year.”
“Well, a boat like it,” said Bill. “I wouldn’t have known the difference myself.”
Mr. McVitty made no reply. After a moment Bill continued confidently, “We found that night that we were both sons of John Harvard.”
“Yes?”
“In fact on that very day I had been pulling an oar against what I might refer to as dear old Yale.”
Mr. McVitty’s eyes narrowed. He came closer to Bill and his nose wrinkled slightly.
“Old Eli,” said Bill; “in fact, Eli Yale.”
“I see,” said Mr. McVitty dryly. “And what can I do for you tonight?”
Someone came up with a question and in the enforced silence it occurred to Bill that he was present on the slightest of all pretexts — a previous and unacknowledged acquaintance. He was relieved when a dull rumble and a quiver of the deck indicated that they had left the shore.
Mr. McVitty, disengaged, turned toward him with a slight frown. “I seem to remember you now,” he said. “We took three of you aboard from a motor boat and we let you dance. Unfortunately the evening ended in a fight.”
Bill hesitated. In eleven years his relation to Mr. McVitty had somehow changed. He recalled Mr. McVitty as a more negligible, more easily dealt with person. There had been no such painful difficulties before.
“Perhaps you wonder how I happen to be here?” he suggested mildly.
“To be frank, I do, Mr — — -”
“Frothington,” supplied Bill, and he added brazenly, “It’s rather a sentimental excursion for me. My greatest romance began on the evening you speak of. That was when I first met — my wife.”
Mr. McVitty’s attention was caught at last. “You married one of our girls?”
Bill nodded. “That’s why I wanted to take this trip tonight.”
“Your wife’s with you?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand — — -” He broke off, and suggested gently,
“Or maybe I do. Your wife is dead?”
After a moment Bill nodded. Somewhat to his surprise two great tears rolled suddenly down his face.
Mr. McVitty put his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I understand your feeling, Mr. Frothington, and I respect it. Please make yourself at home.”
After a nibble at his bottle Bill stood in the door of the salon watching the dance. It might have been eleven years ago. There were the high-school characters that he and Ham and Ellie had laughed at afterward — the fat boy who surely played center on the football team and the adolescent hero with the pompadour and the blatant good manners, president of his class. The pretty girl who had looked at him by the gangplank danced past him, and with a quick lift of his heart he placed her, too; her confidence and the wide but careful distribution of her favors — she was the popular girl, as Mae had been eleven years before.
Next time she went past he touched the shoulder of the boy she was dancing with. “May I have some of this?” he said.
“What?” her partner gasped.
“May I have some of this dance?”
The boy stared at him without relinquishing his hold.
“Oh, it’s all right, Red,” she said impatiently. “That’s the way they do now.”
Red stepped sulkily aside. Bill bent his arm as nearly as he could into the tortuous clasp that they were all using, and started.
“I saw you talking to Mr. McVitty,” said the girl, looking up into his face with a bright smile. “I don’t know you, but I guess it’s all right.”
“I saw you before that.”
“When?”
“Getting on the boat.”
“I don’t remember.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“May Schaffer. What’s the matter?”
“Do you spell it with an e?”
“No; why?”
A quartet of boys had edged toward them. One of its members suddenly shot out as if propelled from inside the group and bumped awkwardly against Bill.
“Can I have part of this dance?” asked the boy with a sort of giggle.
Without enthusiasm Bill let go. When the next dance began he cut in again. She was lovely. Her happiness in herself, in the evening would have transfigured a less pretty girl. He wanted to talk to her alone and was about to suggest that they go outside when there was a repetition of what had happened before — a young man was apparently shot by force from a group to Bill’s side.
“Can I have part of this dance?”
Bill joined Mr. McVitty by the rail. “Pleasant evening,” he remarked. “Don’t you dance?”
“I enjoy dancing,” said Mr. McVitty; and he added pointedly, “In my position it doesn’t seem quite the thing to dance with young girls.”
“That’s nonsense,” said Bill pleasantly. “Have a drink?”
Mr. McVitty walked suddenly away.
When he danced with May again he was cut in on almost immediately. People were cutting in all over the floor now — evidently he had started something. He cut back, and again he started to suggest that they go outside, but he saw that her attention was held by some horseplay going on across the room.
“I got a swell love nest up in the Bronx,” somebody was saying.
“Won’t you come outside?” said Bill. “There’s the most wonderful moon.”
“I’d rather dance.”
“We could dance out there.”
She leaned away from him and looked up with innocent scorn into his eyes.
“Where’d you get it?” she said.
“Get what?”
“All the happiness.”
Before he could answer, someone cut in. For a moment he imagined that the boy had said, “Part of this dance, daddy?” but his annoyance at May’s indifference drove the idea from his mind. Next time he went to the point at once.
“I live near here,” he said. “I’d be awfully pleased if I could call and drive you over for a week-end sometime.”
“What?” she asked vaguely. Again she was listening to a miniature farce being staged in the corner.
“My wife would like so much to have you,” went on Bill. Great dreams of what he could do for this girl for old times’ sake rose in his mind.
Her head swung toward him curiously. “Why, Mr. McVitty told somebody your wife was dead.”
“She isn’t,” said Bill.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the inevitable catapult coming and danced quickly away from it.
A voice rang out: “Just look at old daddy step.”
“Ask him if I can have some of this dance.”
Afterward Bill only remembered the evening up to that point. A crowd swirled around him and someone kept demanding persistently who was a young boiler maker.
He decided, naturally enough, to teach them a lesson, as he had done before, and he told them so. Then there was a long discussion as to whether he could swim. After that the confusion deepened; there were blows and a short sharp struggle. He picked up the story himself in what must have been several minutes later, when his head emerged from the cool waters of the Thames River.
The river was white with the moon, which had changed from rosy gold to a wafer of shining cheese on high. It was some time before he could locate the direction of the shore, but he moved around unworried in the water. The boat was a mere speck now, far down the river, and he laughed to think how little it all mattered, how little anything mattered. Then, feeling sure that he had his wind and wondering if the taxi was still waiting at Wheatly Village, he struck out for the dark shore.
IV
He was worried as he drew near home next afternoon, possessed of a dark, unfounded fear. It was based, of course, on his own silly transgression. Stella would somehow hear of it. In his reaction from the debonair confidence of last night, it seemed inevitable that Stella would hear of it.
“Who’s here?” he asked the butler immediately.
“No one, sir. The Ameses came about an hour ago, but there was no word, so they went on. They said — — -”
“Isn’t my wife here?”
“Mrs. Frothington left yesterday just after you.”
The whips of panic descended upon him.
“How long after me?”
“Almost immediately, sir. The telephone rang and she answered it, and almost immediately she had her bag packed and left the house.”
“Mr. Ad Haughton didn’t come?”
“I haven’t seen Mr. Haughton.”
It had happened. The spirit of adventure had seized Stella too. He knew that her life had been not without a certain pressure from sentimental men, but that she would ever go anywhere without telling him — — -
He threw himself face downward on a couch. What had happened? He had never meant things to happen. Was that what she had meant when she had looked at him in that peculiar way the other night?
He went upstairs. Almost as soon as he entered the big bedroom he saw the note, written on blue stationery lest he miss it against the white pillow. In his misery an old counsel of his mother’s came back to him: “The more terrible things seem the more you’ve got to keep yourself in shape.”
Trembling, he divested himself of his clothes, turned on a bath and lathered his face. Then he poured himself a drink and shaved. It was like a dream, this change in his life. She was no longer his; even if she came back she was no longer his. Everything was different — this room, himself, everything that had existed yesterday. Suddenly he wanted it back. He got out of the bathtub and knelt down on the bath mat beside it and prayed. He prayed for Stella and himself and Ad Haughton; he prayed crazily for the restoration of his life — the life that he had just as crazily cut in two. When he came out of the bathroom with a towel around him, Ad Haughton was sitting on the bed.
“Hello, Bill. Where’s your wife?”
“Just a minute,” Bill answered. He went back into the bathroom and swallowed a draught of rubbing alcohol guaranteed to produce violent gastric disturbances. Then he stuck his head out the door casually.
“Mouthful of gargle,” he explained. “How are you, Ad? Open that envelope on the pillow and we’ll see where she is.”
“She’s gone to Europe with a dentist. Or rather her dentist is going to Europe, so she had to dash to New York — — “
He hardly heard. His mind, released from worry, had drifted off again. There would be a full moon tonight, or almost a full moon. Something had happened under a full moon once. What it was he was unable for the moment to remember.
His long, lanky body, his little lost soul in the universe, sat there on the bathroom window seat.
“I’m probably the world’s worst guy,” he said, shaking his head at himself in the mirror — “probably the world’s worst guy. But I can’t help it. At my age you can’t fight against what you know you are.”
Trying his best to be better, he sat there faithfully for an hour. Then it was twilight and there were voices downstairs, and suddenly there it was, in the sky over his lawn, all the restless longing after fleeing youth in all the world — the bright uncapturable moon.
ON YOUR OWN
The third time he walked around the deck Evelyn stared at him. She stood leaning against the bulwark and when she heard his footsteps again she turned frankly and held his eyes for a moment until his turned away, as a woman can when she has the protection of other men’s company, Barlotto, playing ping-pong with Eddie O’Sullivan, noticed the encounter. “Aha!” he said, before the stroller was out of hearing, and when the rally was finished: “Then you’re still interested even if it’s not the German Prince.”
“How do you know it’s not the German Prince?” Evelyn demanded.
“Because the German Prince is the horse-faced man with white eyes. This one” — he took a passenger list from his pocket — “is either Mr George Ives, Mr Jubal Early Robbins and valet, or Mr Joseph Widdle with Mrs Widdle and six children.”
It was a medium-sized German boat, five days westbound from Cherbourg. The mon
th was February and the sea was dingy grey and swept with rain. Canvas sheltered all the open portions of the promenade deck, even the ping-pong table was wet.
K’tap K’tap K’tap K’tap. Barlotto looked like Valentino — since he got fresh in the rumba number she had disliked playing opposite him. But Eddie O’Sullivan had been one of her best friends in the company.
Subconsciously she was waiting for the solitary promenader to round the deck again but he didn’t. She faced about and looked at the sea through the glass windows; instantly her throat closed and she held herself dose to the wooden rail to keep her shoulders from shaking. Her thoughts rang aloud in her ears: “My father is dead — when I was little we would walk to town on Sunday morning, I in my starched dress, and he would buy the Washington paper and a cigar and he was so proud of his pretty little girl. He was always so proud of me — he came to New York to see me when I opened with the Marx Brothers and he told everybody in the hotel he was my father, even the elevator boys. I’m glad he did, it was so much pleasure for him, perhaps the best time he ever had since he was young. He would like it if he knew I was coming all the way from London.”
“Game and set,” said Eddie.
She turned around. “We’ll go down and wake up the Barneys and have some bridge, eh?” suggested Barlotto.
Evelyn led the way, pirouetting once and again on the moist deck, then breaking into an “Off to Buffalo” against a sudden breath of wet wind. At the door she slipped and fell inward down the stair, saved herself by a perilous one-arm swing — and was brought up against the solitary promenader. Her mouth fell open comically — she balanced for a moment Then the man said, “I beg your pardon,” in an unmistakably southern voice. She met his eyes again as the three of them passed on. The man picked up Eddie O’Sullivan in the smoking room the next afternoon.
“Aren’t you the London cast of Chronic Affection?”
“We were until three days ago. We were going to run another two weeks but Miss Lovejoy was called to America so we closed.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 327