The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald Page 13

  Outside a passer-by stopped and stared; a couple joined him; half a dozen small boys’ noses sprang into life, flattened against the glass; and snatches of conversation borne on the summer breeze drifted in through the screen-door.

  “Lookada long hair on a kid!”

  “Where’d yuh get ’at stuff? ’At’s a bearded lady he just finished shavin’.”

  But Bernice saw nothing, heard nothing. Her only living sense told her that this man in the white coat had removed one tortoise-shell comb and then another; that his fingers were fumbling clumsily with unfamiliar hairpins; that this hair, this wonderful hair of hers, was going—she would never again feel its long voluptuous pull as it hung in a dark-brown glory down her back. For a second she was near breaking down, and then the picture before her swam mechanically into her vision—Marjorie’s mouth curling in a faint ironic smile as if to say:

  “Give up and get down! You tried to buck me and I called your bluff. You see you haven’t got a prayer.”

  And some last energy rose up in Bernice, for she clinched her hands under the white cloth, and there was a curious narrowing of her eyes that Marjorie remarked on to some one long afterward.

  Twenty minutes later the barber swung her round to face the mirror, and she flinched at the full extent of the damage that had been wrought. Her hair was not curly, and now it lay in lank lifeless blocks on both sides of her suddenly pale face. It was ugly as sin—she had known it would be ugly as sin. Her face’s chief charm had been a Madonna-like simplicity. Now that was gone and she was—well, frightfully mediocre—not stagy; only ridiculous, like a Greenwich Villager who had left her spectacles at home.

  As she climbed down from the chair she tried to smile—failed miserably. She saw two of the girls exchange glances; noticed Marjorie’s mouth curved in attenuated mockery—and that Warren’s eyes were suddenly very cold.

  “You see”—her words fell into an awkward pause—“I’ve done it.”

  “Yes, you’ve—done it,” admitted Warren.

  “Do you like it?”

  There was a half-hearted “Sure” from two or three voices, another awkward pause, and then Marjorie turned swiftly and with serpentlike intensity to Warren.

  “Would you mind running me down to the cleaners?” she asked. “I’ve simply got to get a dress there before supper. Roberta’s driving right home and she can take the others.”

  Warren stared abstractedly at some infinite speck out the window. Then for an instant his eyes rested coldly on Bernice before they turned to Marjorie.

  “Be glad to,” he said slowly.

  VI

  Bernice did not fully realize the outrageous trap that had been set for her until she met her aunt’s amazed glance just before dinner.

  “Why, Bernice!”

  “I’ve bobbed it, Aunt Josephine.”

  “Why, child!”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Why, Ber-nice!”

  “I suppose I’ve shocked you.”

  “No, but what’ll Mrs. Deyo think to-morrow night? Bernice, you should have waited until after the Deyos’ dance—you should have waited if you wanted to do that.”

  “It was sudden, Aunt Josephine. Anyway, why does it matter to Mrs. Deyo particularly?”

  “Why, child,” cried Mrs. Harvey, “in her paper on ‘The Foibles of the Younger Generation’ that she read at the last meeting of the Thursday Club she devoted fifteen minutes to bobbed hair. It’s her pet abomination. And the dance is for you and Marjorie!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Bernice, what’ll your mother say? She’ll think I let you do it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dinner was an agony. She had made a hasty attempt with a curling-iron, and burned her finger and much hair. She could see that her aunt was both worried and grieved, and her uncle kept saying, “Well, I’ll be darned!” over and over in a hurt and faintly hostile tone. And Marjorie sat very quietly, intrenched behind a faint smile, a faintly mocking smile.

  Somehow she got through the evening. Three boys called; Marjorie disappeared with one of them, and Bernice made a listless unsuccessful attempt to entertain the two others—sighed thankfully as she climbed the stairs to her room at half past ten. What a day!

  When she had undressed for the night the door opened and Marjorie came in.

  “Bernice,” she said, “I’m awfully sorry about the Deyo dance. I’ll give you my word of honor I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “ ’Sall right,” said Bernice shortly. Standing before the mirror she passed her comb slowly through her short hair.

  “I’ll take you down-town to-morrow,” continued Marjorie, “and the hairdresser’ll fix it so you’ll look slick. I didn’t imagine you’d go through with it. I’m really mighty sorry.”

  “Oh, ’sall right!”

  “Still it’s your last night, so I suppose it won’t matter much.”

  Then Bernice winced as Marjorie tossed her own hair over her shoulders and began to twist it slowly into two long blond braids until in her cream-colored negligée she looked like a delicate painting of some Saxon princess. Fascinated, Bernice watched the braids grow. Heavy and luxurious they were, moving under the supple fingers like restive snakes—and to Bernice remained this relic and the curling-iron and a to-morrow full of eyes. She could see G. Reece Stoddard, who liked her, assuming his Harvard manner and telling his dinner partner that Bernice shouldn’t have been allowed to go to the movies so much; she could see Draycott Deyo exchanging glances with his mother and then being conscientiously charitable to her. But then perhaps by to-morrow Mrs. Deyo would have heard the news; would send round an icy little note requesting that she fail to appear—and behind her back they would all laugh and know that Marjorie had made a fool of her; that her chance at beauty had been sacrificed to the jealous whim of a selfish girl. She sat down suddenly before the mirror, biting the inside of her cheek.

  “I like it,” she said with an effort. “I think it’ll be becoming.”

  Marjorie smiled.

  “It looks all right. For heaven’s sake, don’t let it worry you!”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good night, Bernice.”

  But as the door closed something snapped within Bernice. She sprang dynamically to her feet, clinching her hands, then swiftly and noiselessly crossed over to her bed and from underneath it dragged out her suitcase. Into it she tossed toilet articles and a change of clothing. Then she turned to her trunk and quickly dumped in two drawerfuls of lingerie and summer dresses. She moved quietly, but with deadly efficiency, and in three-quarters of an hour her trunk was locked and strapped and she was fully dressed in a becoming new travelling suit that Marjorie had helped her pick out.

  Sitting down at her desk she wrote a short note to Mrs. Harvey, in which she briefly outlined her reasons for going. She sealed it, addressed it, and laid it on her pillow. She glanced at her watch. The train left at one, and she knew that if she walked down to the Marborough Hotel two blocks away she could easily get a taxicab.

  Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply and an expression flashed into her eyes that a practised character reader might have connected vaguely with the set look she had worn in the barber’s chair— somehow a development of it. It was quite a new look for Bernice— and it carried consequences.

  She went stealthily to the bureau, picked up an article that lay there, and turning out all the lights stood quietly until her eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Softly she pushed open the door to Marjorie’s room. She heard the quiet, even breathing of an untroubled conscience asleep.

  She was by the bedside now, very deliberate and calm. She acted swiftly. Bending over she found one of the braids of Marjorie’s hair, followed it up with her hand to the point nearest the head, and then holding it a little slack so that the sleeper would feel no pull, she reached down with the shears and severed it. With the pigtail in her hand she held her breath. Marjorie had muttered something in her sleep. Ber
nice deftly amputated the other braid, paused for an instant, and then flitted swiftly and silently back to her own room.

  Down-stairs she opened the big front door, closed it carefully behind her, and feeling oddly happy and exuberant stepped off the porch into the moonlight, swinging her heavy grip like a shopping-bag. After a minute’s brisk walk she discovered that her left hand still held the two blond braids. She laughed unexpectedly—had to shut her mouth hard to keep from emitting an absolute peal. She was passing Warren’s house now, and on the impulse she set down her baggage, and swinging the braids like pieces of rope flung them at the wooden porch, where they landed with a slight thud. She laughed again, no longer restraining herself.

  “Huh!” she giggled wildly. “Scalp the selfish thing!”

  Then picking up her suitcase she set off at a half-run down the moonlit street.

  THE OFFSHORE PIRATE

  This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France.1

  She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide.

  The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a whiteflannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.

  If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.

  “Ardita!” said the gray-haired man sternly.

  Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.

  “Ardita!” he repeated. “Ardita!”

  Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Ardita!”

  “What?”

  “Will you listen to me—or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?”

  The lemon descended slowly and scornfully.

  “Put it in writing.”

  “Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and discard that damn lemon for two minutes?”

  “Oh, can’t you lemme alone for a second?”

  “Ardita, I have just received a telephone message from the shore——”

  “Telephone?” She showed for the first time a faint interest.

  “Yes, it was——”

  “Do you mean to say,” she interrupted wonderingly, “ ’at they let you run a wire out here?”

  “Yes, and just now——”

  “Won’t other boats bump into it?”

  “No. It’s run along the bottom. Five min——”

  “Well, I’ll be darned! Gosh! Science is golden or something—isn’t it?”

  “Will you let me say what I started to?”

  “Shoot!”

  “Well, it seems—well, I am up here—” He paused and swallowed several times distractedly. “Oh, yes. Young woman, Colonel Moreland has called up again to ask me to be sure to bring you in to dinner. His son Toby has come all the way from New York to meet you and he’s invited several other young people. For the last time, will you——”

  “No,” said Ardita shortly, “I won’t. I came along on this darn cruise with the one idea of going to Palm Beach, and you knew it, and I absolutely refuse to meet any darn old colonel or any darn young Toby or any darn old young people or to set foot in any other darn old town in this crazy state. So you either take me to Palm Beach or else shut up and go away.”

  “Very well. This is the last straw. In your infatuation for this man— a man who is notorious for his excesses, a man your father would not have allowed to so much as mention your name—you have reflected the demi-monde rather than the circles in which you have presumably grown up. From now on——”

  “I know,” interrupted Ardita ironically, “from now on you go your way and I go mine. I’ve heard that story before. You know I’d like nothing better.”

  “From now on,” he announced grandiloquently, “you are no niece of mine. I——”

  “O-o-o-oh!” The cry was wrung from Ardita with the agony of a lost soul. “Will you stop boring me! Will you go ’way! Will you jump overboard and drown! Do you want me to throw this book at you!”

  “If you dare do any——”

  Smack! The Revolt of the Angels sailed through the air, missed its target by the length of a short nose, and bumped cheerfully down the companionway.

  The gray-haired man made an instinctive step backward and then two cautious steps forward. Ardita jumped to her five feet four and stared at him defiantly, her gray eyes blazing.

  “Keep off!”

  “How dare you!” he cried.

  “Because I darn please!”

  “You’ve grown unbearable! Your disposition——”

  “You’ve made me that way! No child ever has a bad disposition unless it’s her family’s fault! Whatever I am, you did it.”

  Muttering something under his breath her uncle turned and, walking forward, called in a loud voice for the launch. Then he returned to the awning, where Ardita had again seated herself and resumed her attention to the lemon.

  “I am going ashore,” he said slowly. “I will be out again at nine o’clock to-night. When I return we will start back to New York, where I shall turn you over to your aunt for the rest of your natural, or rather unnatural, life.”

  He paused and looked at her, and then all at once something in the utter childishness of her beauty seemed to puncture his anger like an inflated tire, and render him helpless, uncertain, utterly fatuous.

  “Ardita,” he said not unkindly, “I’m no fool. I’ve been round. I know men. And, child, confirmed libertines don’t reform until they’re tired—and then they’re not themselves—they’re husks of themselves.” He looked at her as if expecting agreement, but receiving no sight or sound of it he continued. “Perhaps the man loves you—that’s possible. He’s loved many women and he’ll love many more. Less than a month ago, one month, Ardita, he was involved in a notorious affair with that red-haired woman, Mimi Merril; promised to give her the diamond bracelet that the Czar of Russia gave his mother. You know—you read the papers.”

  “Thrilling scandals by an anxious uncle,” yawned Ardita. “Have it filmed. Wicked clubman making eyes at virtuous flapper. Virtuous flapper conclusively vamped by his lurid past. Plans to meet him at Palm Beach. Foiled by anxious uncle.”

  “Will you tell me why the devil you want to marry him?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say,” said Ardita shortly. “Maybe because he’s the only man I know, good or bad, who has an imagination and the courage of his convictions. Maybe it’s to get away from
the young fools that spend their vacuous hours pursuing me around the country. But as for the famous Russian bracelet, you can set your mind at rest on that score. He’s going to give it to me at Palm Beach—if you’ll show a little intelligence.”

  “How about the—red-haired woman?”

  “He hasn’t seen her for six months,” she said angrily. “Don’t you suppose I have enough pride to see to that? Don’t you know by this time that I can do any darn thing with any darn man I want to?”

  She put her chin in the air like the statue of France Aroused, 2 and then spoiled the pose somewhat by raising the lemon for action.

  “Is it the Russian bracelet that fascinates you?”

  “No, I’m merely trying to give you the sort of argument that would appeal to your intelligence. And I wish you’d go ’way,” she said, her temper rising again. “You know I never change my mind. You’ve been boring me for three days until I’m about to go crazy. I won’t go ashore! Won’t! Do you hear? Won’t!”

  “Very well,” he said, “and you won’t go to Palm Beach either. Of all the selfish, spoiled, uncontrolled, disagreeable, impossible girls I have——”

  Splush! The half-lemon caught him in the neck. Simultaneously came a hail from over the side.

  “The launch is ready, Mr. Farnam.”

  Too full of words and rage to speak, Mr. Farnam cast one utterly condemning glance at his niece and, turning, ran swiftly down the ladder.

  II

  Five o’clock rolled down from the sun and plumped soundlessly into the sea. The golden collar widened into a glittering island; and a faint breeze that had been playing with the edges of the awning and swaying one of the dangling blue slippers became suddenly freighted with song. It was a chorus of men in close harmony and in perfect rhythm to an accompanying sound of oars cleaving the blue waters. Ardita lifted her head and listened.

  “Carrots and peas,

  Beans on their knees,