F. Scott Fitzgerald: Complete Works

I

I

This story has no moral value. It is about a man who had fought for two years and how he came back to England for two days, and then how he went away again. It is unfortunately one of those stories which must start at the beginning, and the beginning consists merely of a few details. There were two brothers (two sons of Lord Blachford) who sailed to Europe with the first hundred thousand. Lieutenant Richard Harrington Syneforth, the elder, was killed in some forgotten raid; the younger, Lieutenant Clayton Harrington Syneforth, is the hero of this story. He was now a Captain in the Seventeenth Sussex and the immoral thing in the story happens to him. The important part to remember is that when his father met him at Paddington Station and drove him uptown in his motor, he hadn’t been in England for two years—and this was in the early spring of 1917. Various circumstances had brought this about, wounds, advancement, meeting his family in Paris, and mostly being twenty-two and anxious to show his company an example of indefatigable energy. Besides, most of his friends were dead and he had rather a horror of seeing the gaps they’d leave in his England. And here is the story.

He sat at dinner and thought himself rather stupid and unnecessarily moody as his sister’s light chatter amused the table. Lord and Lady Blachford, himself and two unsullied aunts. In the first place he was rather doubtful about his sister’s new manner. She seemed, well, perhaps a bit loud and theatrical; and she was certainly pretty enough not to need so much paint. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, and paint—it seemed so useless. Of course he was used to it in his mother, would have been shocked had she appeared in her unrouged furrowedness, but on Clara it merely accentuated her youth. Altogether he had never seen such obvious paint, and, as they had always been a shockingly frank family, he told her so.

“You’ve got too much stuff on your face.” He tried to speak casually and his sister, nothing wroth, jumped up and ran to a mirror.

“No, I haven’t,” she said, calmly returning.

“I thought,” he continued, rather annoyed, “that the criterion of how much paint to put on was whether men were sure you’d used any or not.”

His sister and mother exchanged glances and both spoke at once.

“Not now, Clay, you know—” began Clara.

“Really, Clay,” interrupted his mother, “you don’t know exactly what the standards are, so you can’t quite criticize. It happens to be a fad to paint a little more.”

Clayton was now rather angry.

“Will all the women at Mrs. Severance’s dance tonight be striped like this?”

Clara’s eyes flashed.

“Yes!”

“Then I don’t believe I care to go.”

Clara, about to flare up, caught her mother’s eye and was silent.

“Clay, I want you to go,” said Lady Blachford hastily. “People want to see you before they forget what you look like. And for tonight let’s not talk about war or paint.”

In the end Clay went. A navy subaltern called for his sister at ten and he followed in lonesome state at half-past. After half an hour he had had all he wanted. Frankly, the dance seemed all wrong. He remembered Mrs. Severance’s ante-bellum affairs—staid, correct occasions they were, with only a mere scattering from the faster set, just those people who couldn’t possibly be left out. Now it all was blent, somehow, in one set. His sister had not exaggerated, practically every girl there was painted, over-painted; girls whom he remembered as curate-hunters, holders of long conversations with earnest young men on incense and the validity of orders, girls who had been terrifyingly masculine and had talked about dances as if they were the amusement of the feeble-minded—all were there, trotting through the most extreme steps from over the water. He danced stiffly with many who had delighted his youth, and he found that he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. He found that he had come to picture England as a land of sorrow and asceticism, and while there was little extravagance displayed tonight, he thought that the atmosphere had fallen to that of artificial gaiety rather than risen to a stern calmness. Even under the carved, gilt ceiling of the Severances there was strangely an impression of dance-hall rather than dance. People arrived and departed most informally and, oddly enough, there was a dearth of older people rather than of younger. But there was something in the very faces of the girls, something which was half enthusiasm and half recklessness, that depressed him more than any concrete thing.

When he had decided this and had about made up his mind to go, Eleanor Marbrooke came in. He looked at her keenly. She had not lost, not a bit. He fancied that she had not quite so much paint on as the others, and when he and she talked he felt a social refuge in her cool beauty. Even then he felt that the difference between her and the others was in degree rather than in kind. He stayed, of course, and one o’clock found them sitting apart, watching. There had been a drifting away and now there seemed to be nothing but officers and girls; the Severances themselves seemed out of place as they chattered volubly in a corner to a young couple who looked as if they would rather be left alone.

“Eleanor,” he demanded, “why is it that everyone looks so—well, so loose—so socially slovenly?”

“It’s terribly obvious, isn’t it?” she agreed, following his eyes around the room.

“And no one seems to care,” he continued.

“No one does,” she responded, “but, my dear man, we can’t sit here and criticize our hosts. What about me? How do I look?”

He regarded her critically.

“I’d say on the whole that you’ve kept your looks.”

“Well, I like that.” She raised her brows at him in reproof. “You talk as if I were some shelved, old play-about, just over some domestic catastrophe.”

There was a pause; then he asked her directly.

“How about d**k?”

She grew serious at once.

“Poor d**k—I suppose we were engaged.”

“Suppose!” he said, astonished. “Why it was understood by everyone. Both our families knew. I know I used to lie awake and envy my lucky brother.”

She laughed.

“Well, we certainly thought ourselves engaged. If war hadn’t come we’d be comfortably married now, but if he were still alive under these circumstances, I doubt if we’d be even engaged.”

“You weren’t in love with him?”

“Well, you see, perhaps that wouldn’t be the question, perhaps he wouldn’t marry me and perhaps I couldn’t marry him.”

He jumped to his feet, astounded, and her warning hush just prevented him from exclaiming aloud. Before he could control his voice enough to speak she had whisked off with a staff officer. What could she mean?—except that in some moment of emotional excitement she had—but he couldn’t bear to think of Eleanor in that light. He must have misunderstood—he must talk more with her. No, surely—if it had been true she wouldn’t have said it so casually. He watched her—how close she danced. Her bright brown hair lay against the staff officer’s shoulder, and her vivacious face was only two or three inches from his when she talked. All things considered Clay was becoming more angry every minute with things in general.

Next time he danced with her she seized his arm, and before he knew her intention, they had said good-byes to the Severances and were speeding away in Eleanor’s limousine.

“It’s a nineteen-thirteen car—imagine having a four-year-old limousine before the war.”

“Terrific privation,” he said ironically. “Eleanor, I want to speak to you—”

“And I to you. That’s why I took you away. Where are you living?”

“At home.”

“Well then we’ll go to your old rooms in Grove Street. You’ve still got them, haven’t you?”

Before he could answer she had spoken to the chauffeur and was leaning back in the corner smiling at him.

“Why Eleanor, we can’t do that—talk there—”

“Are the rooms cleaned?” she interrupted.

“About once a month I think, but—”

“That’s all that’s necessary. In fact it’ll be wonderfully proper, won’t be clothes lying around the room as there usually are at bachelor teas. At Colonel Hotesane’s farewell party, Gertrude Evarts and I saw—in the middle of the floor, well, my dear, a series of garments and—as we were the first to arrive we—”

“Eleanor,” said Clay firmly. “I don’t like this.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s why we’re going to your rooms to talk it over. Good heavens, do you think people worry these days about where conversations take place, unless they’re in wireless towers, or shoreways in coast towns?”

The machine had stopped and before he could bring further argument to bear she had stepped out and scurried up the steps, where she announced that she would wait until he came and opened the door. He had no alternative. He followed, and as they mounted the stairs inside he could hear her laughing softly at him in the darkness.

He threw open the door and groped for the electric light, and in the glow that followed both stood without moving. There on the table sat a picture of d**k. d**k almost as they had last seen him, worldly wise and sophisticated, in his civilian clothes. Eleanor was the first to move. She crossed swiftly over, the dust rising with the swish of her silk, and elbows on the table said softly:

“Poor old handsome, with your beautiful self all smashed.” She turned to Clay: “d**k didn’t have much of a soul, such a small soul. He never bothered about eternity and I doubt if he knows any—but he had a way with him, and oh, that magnificent body of his, red gold hair, brown eyes—” her voice trailed off and she sank lazily onto the sofa in front of the hearth.

“Build a fire and then come and put your arm around me and we’ll talk.” Obediently he searched for wood while she sat and chatted. “I won’t pretend to busybody around and try to help—I’m far too tired. I’m sure I can give the impression of home much better by just sitting here and talking, can’t I?”

He looked up from where he knelt at her feet, manipulating the kerosene can, and realized that his voice was husky as he spoke.

“Just talk about England—about the country a little and about Scotland and tell me things that have happened, amusing provincial things and things with women in them—Put yourself in,” he finished rather abruptly.

Eleanor smiled and kneeling down beside him lit the match and ran it along the edge of the paper that undermined the logs. She twisted her head to read it as it curled up in black at the corners. “August 14th, 1915. Zeppelin raid in—there it goes,” as it disappeared in little licking flames. “My little sister—you remember Katherine: Kitty, the one with the yellow hair and the little lisp—she was killed by one of those things—she and a governess, that summer.”

“Little Kitty,” he said sadly. “A lot of children were killed I know, a lot. I didn’t know she was gone.” He was far away now and a set look had come into his eyes. She hastened to change the subject.

“Lots—but we’re not on death tonight. We’re going to pretend we’re happy. Do you see?” She patted his knee reprovingly. “We are happy. We are ! Why you were almost whimsical a while ago. I believe you’re a sentimentalist. Are you?”

He was still gazing absently at the fire but he looked up at this.

“Tonight, I am—almost—for the first time in my life. Are you, Eleanor?”

“No. I’m romantic. There’s a huge difference. A sentimental person thinks things will last; a romantic person hopes they won’t.”

He was in a reverie again and she knew that he had hardly heard her.

“Excuse please,” she pleaded, slipping close to him. “Do be a nice boy and put your arm around me.” He put his arm gingerly about her until she began to laugh quietly. Then he hastily withdrew it and, bending forward, talked quickly at the fire.

“Will you tell me why in the name of this mad world we’re here tonight? Do you realize that this is—was a bachelor apartment before the bachelors all married the red widow over the channel—and you’ll be compromised?”

She seized the straps of his shoulder belt and tugged at him until his grey eyes looked into hers.

“Clay, Clay, don’t—you musn’t use small petty words like that at this time. Compromise! What’s that to words like Life and Love and Death and England. Compromise! Clay I don’t believe anyone uses that word except servants.” She laughed. “Clay, you and our butler are the only men in England who use the word compromise. My maid and I have been warned within a week—How odd—Clay, look at me.”

He looked at her and saw what she intended, beauty heightened by enthusiasm. Her lips were half parted in a smile, her hair just so slightly disarranged.

“Damned witch,” he muttered. “You used to read Tolstoy, and believe him.”

“Did I?” Her gaze wandered to the fire. “So I did, so I did.” Then her eyes came back to him and the present. “Really, Clay, we must stop gazing at the fire. It puts our minds on the past and tonight there’s got to be no past or future, no time, just tonight, you and I sitting here and I most tired for a military shoulder to rest my head upon.” But he was off on an old tack, thinking of d**k, and he spoke his thoughts aloud.

“You used to talk Tolstoy to d**k and I thought it was scandalous for such a good-looking girl to be intellectual.”

“I wasn’t, really,” she admitted. “It was to impress Dick.”

“I was shocked, too, when I read something of Tolstoy’s. I struck the something Sonata.”

“‘Kreutzer Sonata,’” she suggested.

“That’s it. I thought it was immoral for young girls to read Tolstoy and told d**k so. He used to nag me about that. I was nineteen.”

“Yes, we thought you quite the young prig. We considered ourselves advanced.”

“You’re only twenty, aren’t you?” asked Clay suddenly.

She nodded.

“Don’t you believe in Tolstoy anymore?” he asked, almost fiercely.

She shook her head and then looked up at him almost wistfully.

“Won’t you let me lean against your shoulder just the smallest bit?”

He put his arm around her, never once taking his eyes from her face, and suddenly the whole strength of her appeal burst upon him. Clay was no saint, but he had always been rather decent about women. Perhaps that’s why he felt so helpless now. His emotions were not complex. He knew what was wrong, but he knew also that he wanted this woman, this warm creature of silk and life who crept so close to him. There were reasons why he oughtn’t to have her, but he had suddenly seen how love was a big word like Life and Death, and she knew that he realized and was glad. Still they sat without moving for a long while and watched the fire.