She stopped again at the expression in her father’s face when what she was saying dawned on him.
“Call Jason right away and tell him not to come,” he said. He shook his head from side to side: “Good Lord! Whose little girl are you?”
III
Six days later Gwen came home, propelling herself as if she were about to dive into a ditch just ahead. She wore a sort of hat that evidently heaven had sent down upon her. It had lit as an ornament on her left temple, and when she raised her hand to her head, it slid — the impression being that it was held by an invisible elastic, which might snap at any moment and send it, with a zip, back into space.
“Where did you get it?” the cook asked enviously as she came in through the pantry entrance.
“Get what?”
“Where did you get it?” her father asked as she came into his study.
“This?” Gwen asked incredulously.
“It’s all right with me.”
The maid had followed her in, and he said, in answer to her question:
“We’ll have the same diet ordered for Mr. Harrison. Wait a minute — if Gwen’s hat floats out the window, take a shotgun out of the closet — and see if you can bring it down, like a duck.”
In her room, Gwen removed the article of discussion, putting it delicately on her dresser for present admiration. Then she went to pay her daily visit to Mr. Harrison.
He was so much better that he was on the point of getting up. When Gwen came in, he sent, the nurse for some water and lay back momentarily. To Gwen he looked more formidable as he got better. His hair, from lack of cutting, wasn’t like the smooth coiffures of her friends. She wished her father knew handsomer people.
“I’m about to get up and make my arrangements to go back to New York to work. Before I go, though, I want to tell you something.”
“All right, Mr. Harrison. I’m listening.”
“It’s seldom you find beauty and intelligence in the same person. When you do they have to spend the first part of their life terribly afraid of a flame that they will have to put out someday — — “
“Yes, Mr. Harrison — — “
“ — — and sometimes they spend the rest of their life trying to wake up that same flame. Then it’s like a kid trying to make a bonfire out of two sticks, only this time one of the sticks is the beauty they have lost and the other stick is the intelligence they haven’t cultivated — and the two sticks won’t make a bonfire — and they just think that life has done them a dirty trick, when the truth is these two sticks would never set fire to each other. And now go call the nurse for me, Gwen.” As she left the room he called after her, “Don’t be too hard on your father.”
She turned around from the door — “What do you mean, don’t be hard on father?”
“He loved somebody who was beautiful, like you.”
“You mean mummy?”
“You do look like her. Nobody could ever actually be like her.” He broke off to write a check for the nurse, and as if he was impelled by something outside himself he added, “So did many other men.” He brought himself up sharply and asked the nurse, “Do I owe anything more to the night nurse?” Then once again to Gwen:
“I want to tell you about your father,” he said. “He never got over your mother’s death, never will. If he is hard on you, it is because he loves you.”
“He’s never hard on me,” she lied.
“Yes, he is. He is unjust sometimes, but your mother — — “ He broke off and said to the nurse, “Where’s my tie?”
“Here it is, Mr. Harrison.”
After he had left the house in a flurry of telephoning, Gwen took her bath, weighted her fresh, damp hair with curlers, and drew herself a mouth with the last remnant from a set of varicolored lipsticks that had belonged to her mother. Encountering her father in the hall she looked at him closely in the light of what Mr. Harrison had said, but she only saw the father she had always known.
“Daddy, I want to ask you once more. Jason has invited me to go to the movies with him tonight. I thought you wouldn’t mind — if there were four of us. I’m not absolutely sure Dizzy can come, but I think so. Since Mr. Harrison’s been here I haven’t been able to have any company.”
“Don’t do anything about it until you’ve had your dinner,” Bryan said. “What’s the use of having an admirer if you can’t dangle him a little?”
“Dangle how, what do you mean?”
“Well, I just meant make him wait.”
“But, daddy, how could I make him wait when he’s the most important boy in town?”
“What is this all about?” he demanded. “Seems to be a question of whether this prep-school hero has his wicked way with you or whether I have mine. And anyhow, it’s just possible that something more amusing will turn up.”
Gwen seemed to have no luck that night — on the phone Dizzy said:
“I’m almost sure I can go, but I don’t know absolutely.”
“You call me back whatever happens.”
“You call me. Mother thinks I can go, but she doesn’t think she can do anything now, ‘cause there’s something under the sink and father hasn’t come home.”
“The sink!”
“We don’t know exactly what it is; it may be a water main or something. That’s why everybody’s afraid to go downstairs. I can’t tell you anything definite until father comes home.”
“Dizzy! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We’re so upset out here too. I’ll explain when I see you. Anyhow, mother’s telling me to put the phone down” — there was a momentary interruption — “so they can get to the plumber.”
Then the phone hung up with an impact that suggested that all the plumbers in the world were arriving in gross.
Immediately the phone rang again. It was Jason.
“Well, how about it, can we go to the movies?”
“I don’t know. I just finished talking to Dizzy. The water main’s busted and she has to have a plumber.”
“Can’t you go to the picture whether she can or not? I’ve got the car and our chauffeur.”
“No, I can’t go alone and Dizzy’s got this thing.”
The impression in Gwen’s voice was that plague was raging in the suburbs.
“What?”
“Never mind, never mind. I don’t understand it myself. If you want to know more about it call up Dizzy.”
“But Peppy Velance is in Night Train at the Eleanora Duse Theater — you know, the little place just about two blocks from where you live.”
There was a long pause. Then Gwen’s voice said: “A-l-1 right. I’ll go whether Dizzy can go or not.”
She met her father presently with a guilty feeling, but before she could speak he said:
“Put on your hat — and your rubbers; feels stormy outside; plans are changed and we’re dining out.”
“Daddy, I don’t want to go out. I’ve got homework to do.”
He was disappointed.
“I’d rather stay here,” Gwen continued. “I’m expecting company.”
At the false impression she was giving she felt something go out of her. With an attempt at self-justification she added, “Daddy, I get good marks at school, and just because I happen to like some boys — — “
Bryan tied his muffler again and bent over to pull on his overshoes. “Good-by,” he said.
“What do you mean?” inquired Gwen uncertainly.
“I merely said good-by, darling.”
“But you kind of scared me, daddy, you talk as if you were going away forever.”
“I won’t be late. I just thought you might come along, because someone amusing might be there.”
“I don’t want to go, daddy.”
IV
But after her father had gone it was no fun sitting beside the phone waiting for Jason to call. When he did phone, she started downstairs to meet him — she was still in a bad humor — a fact that she displayed to one of the seri
es of trained nurses that had been taking care of Mr. Harrison. This one had just come in and she wore blue glasses, and Gwen said with unfamiliar briskness:
“I don’t know where Mr. Harrison is; I think he was going to meet daddy at some party and I guess they will be back sometime.”
On her way down in the elevator she thought: “But I do know where daddy is.”
“Stop!” she said to the elevator man. “Take me upstairs again.”
He brought the car to rest.
But a great stubbornness seemed to have come over Gwen with her decision to be disobedient.
“No, go on down,” she said.
It haunted her though when she met Jason and they trudged their way through the gathering snowstorm to the car.
They had scarcely started off before there was a short struggle.
“No, I won’t kiss you,” Gwen said. “I did that once and the boy that kissed me told about it. Why should I? Nobody does that any more — at my age anyhow.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“Well, wait till I’m fifteen then. Maybe it’ll be the thing to do by that time.”
They sank back in opposite corners of the car. “Then I guess you won’t like this picture,” said Jason, “because I understand it’s pretty hot stuff. When Peppy Velance gets together with this man in the dive in Shanghai I understand — — “
“Oh, skip it,” Gwen exploded.
She scarcely knew why she had liked him so much an hour before.
The snow had gathered heavily on the portico of the theater with the swirl of a Chesapeake Bay blizzard, and she was glad of the warmth within. Momentarily, as the newsreel unwound, she forgot her ill-humor, forgot her unblessed excursion into the night — forgot everything except that she had not told the nurse where her father could be found.
At the end of the newsreel she said to Jason:
“Isn’t there a drugstore where I could phone home, where we could go out to for just a minute?”
“But the feature’s going on in just a minute,” he objected, “and it’s snowing so hard.”
All through the shorts, though, it worried her, so much that in a scene where Mickey Mouse skated valiantly over the ice she seemed to see snow falling into the theater too. Suddenly she grabbed Jason’s arm and shook him as if to shake herself awake — though she didn’t feel asleep — because the snow was falling. It was falling in front of the screen in drips and then in larger pebblelike pieces and then in a scatter of what looked like snowballs. Other people must have noticed the same phenomenon at the same time, for the projecting machine went off with a click and left the house dark; the dim house lights went on and the four ushers on duty in the little picture house ran down the aisles with confused expressions to see what the trouble was.
Gwen heard a quick twitter of alarm behind her; a stout man who had stumbled over them coming in said in an authoritative voice, “Say, I think the ceiling is caving in.” And immediately several people rose around them.
“Hold on,” the man cried. “Don’t anybody lose their heads.”
It was one of those uncertain moments in a panic where tragedy might intervene by an accidental word, and as if realizing this a temporary hush came over the crowd. The ushers stopped in their tracks. The first man to see and direct the situation was the projector operator who came out from his booth and leaned over the balcony, crying down:
“The snow has broken through the roof. Everybody go out the side exits marked with the little red lights. No, I said the side exits — the little red lights.” Trouble was developing at the main entrance too, but he didn’t want them to know about it. “Don’t rush; you’re just risking your own lives. You men down there crack anybody that even looks as if they were going to run.”
After an uncertain desperate moment the crowd decided to act together.
They filed slowly out through the emergency exits, some of them half afraid even to look toward the screen now only a white blank almost imperceptible through the interior snowstorm that screened it in turn. They all behaved well, as American crowds do, and they were out in the adjoining street and alley before the roof gave way altogether.
Gwen went out calmly.
What she felt most strongly in the street with the others was that the durn snow might have waited a little longer because Peppy Velance’s picture was about to start.
V
The manager had been the last to leave and he was now telling the anxious crowd that everyone had left the theater before the roof fell in. It was only then that Gwen thought of Jason and realized that he was no longer with her — —
That, in fact, from the moment of the near calamity he had not been beside her at all — but just might have been snowed under by the general collapse. Then — as she joined the throng of those who had lost each other and were finding each other again in the confusion — her eye fell upon him on the outskirts of the crowd and she started toward him.
She ran against policemen coming up and small boys rushing toward the accident and she was held up by the huge drift of snow that still gathered about the fallen portico.
When she was clear of the crowd, Jason was somehow out of sight. But she had a dollar in her pocket, and she hesitated between trying to get a taxi or walking the few blocks home. She decided on the latter.
The snow that had brought down the movie house continued. She had meant to be home surely before her father and had calculated on only one hour of time that she would never be able to account for to herself — but time she knew that sooner or later she would account for to her father.
As she walked along she thought that she had made the nurse wait, too, but now she was almost home and she could straighten that out. As she passed the second block she thought of Jason with contempt, and thought:
“If he couldn’t wait for me why should I wait for him?”
She reached the apartment prepared to face her father with the truth and what necessary result would evolve.
VI
There was a coat of snow on her shoulders as she came into the apartment.
Her father in the sitting room heard her key in the lock and came to the door before she opened it. “I have been worried,” he said. “You’ve never gone out before against my orders. What happened?”
“We went to see Peppy Velance at the small theater just over a couple of blocks from here and, daddy, the roof fell in.”
“What roof?”
“The roof of the theater.”
“What!”
“Yes, daddy, the roof fell in.”
“Was anybody killed?”
“No, they got us all out first. Jason didn’t bring me home, but I saw him afterward and I know that he’s all right, and the man said nobody was hurt.”
“I’m glad I didn’t think of all that.”
“It was the snow,” said Gwen. “I know you’re pretty sore, but it’s been so dull this whole week, with Mr. Harrison sick and this is the last Peppy Velance was going to be at the Eleanora Duse — — “
“Peppy Velance was here. She left ten minutes ago. She was waiting to see you.”
“What?”
“You saw her tonight, even if you didn’t know it. She flew down from New York to see Mr. Harrison about some business, but you seemed to be in an awful hurry. Mr. Harrison didn’t expect her so soon. We brought her back here because I knew that you might like to meet her properly.”
“Daddy!”
“I suppose you didn’t recognize her because she had on blue glasses, but she took them off, and when she’s got them off she looks just as human as anyone else.”
Stricken, Gwen sat down and repeated, “Was she here, daddy?”
“Well, Mr. Harrison seems to think so and he ought to know.”
“Where is Peppy Velance now?”
“She and Mr. Harrison had plans to catch the midnight train to New York. He left you his regards. Say, you haven’t caught cold, have you?”
Gwen brushed at her eyes, �
��No, these are only snowflakes. Daddy, do you mean that she was honestly here all that time while I was out?”
“Yes, daughter, but don’t cry about it. She left you a little box of lipstick with her name on it and it’s on the table.”
“I never thought of her like that,” Gwen said slowly. “I thought there were always a lot of — you know — a lot of attractive men hanging around her. I guess why I didn’t recognize her was because there weren’t any men hanging around her. Go on, daddy; tell me — at least, was she attractive — like mummy was?”
“She wasn’t like mummy, but she was very nice — I hope you didn’t catch cold.”
“I don’t think so.” She sniffed experimentally, “No, I’m sure I didn’t. Isn’t it funny I went out and the blizzard came? I wish I’d stayed here where it was safe and warm — — “ On her way to her room she ruminated aloud:
“I guess most important things happen inside the house, don’t they, daddy?”
“You go to bed.”
“All right, daddy.”
Her door closed gently. What went on behind it he would never know. He wrote her a short note saying:
“Peppy Velance and Mr. Harrison are coming to dinner tomorrow night.” He stood it up against the English-history book on the table. Then he moved it to rest against the little tin satchel that the maid would fill with sandwiches for school in the morning.
LO, THE POOR PEACOCK!
Miss McCrary put the leather cover over the typewriter. Since it was the last time, Jason came over and helped her into her coat, rather to her embarrassment.
“Mr. Davis, remember if anything comes up that I didn’t cover on the memorandum, just you telephone. The letters are off; the files are straight. They’ll call for the typewriter on Monday.”
“You’ve been very nice.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. It’s been a pleasure. I’m only sorry — “
Jason murmured the current shibboleth: “If times pick up — “
A moment after her departure her face reappeared in the doorway.
“Give my love to the little girl. And I hope Mrs. Davis is better.”
Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald UK (Illustrated) Page 340