The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories Read online

  “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-monde2 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, 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,

  Pigs in the seas,

  Lucky fellows!

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  With your bellows.”

  Ardita’s brow wrinkled in astonishment. Sitting very still she listened eagerly as the chorus took up a second verse.

  “Onions and beans,

  Marshalls and Deans,

  Goldbergs and Greens

  And Costellos.

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  Blow us a breeze,

  ˇWith your bellows.”

  With an exclamation she tossed her book to the desk, where it sprawled at a straddle, and hurried to the rail. Fifty feet away a large rowboat was approaching containing seven men, six of them rowing and one standing up in the stern keeping time to their song with an orchestra leader’s baton.

  “Oysters and rocks,

  Sawdust and socks,

  Who could make clocks

  Out of cellos?—”

  The leader’s eyes suddenly rested on Ardita, who was leaning over the rail spellbound with curiosity. He made a quick movement with his baton and the singing instantly ceased. She saw that he was the only white man in the boat—the six rowers were negroes.

  “Narcissus ahoy!”3 he called politely.

  “What’s the idea of all the discord?” demanded Ardita cheerfully. “Is this the varsity crew from the county nut farm?”

  By this time the boat was scraping the side of the yacht and a great hulking negro in the bow turned round and grasped the ladder. Thereupon the leader left his position in the stern and before Ardita had realized his intention he ran up the ladder and stood breathless before her on the deck.

  “The women and children will be spared!” he said briskly. “All crying babies will be immediately drowned and all males put in double irons!”

  Digging her hands excitedly down into the pockets of her dress Ardita stared at him, speechless with astonishment.

  He was a young man with a scornful mouth and the bright blue eyes of a healthy baby set in a dark sensitive face. His hair was pitch black, damp and curly—the hair of a Grecian statue gone brunette. He was trimly built, trimly dressed, and graceful as an agile quarterback.

  “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun!” she said dazedly.

  They eyed each other coolly.

  “Do you surrender the ship?”

  “Is this an outburst of wit?” demanded Ardita. “Are you an idiot—or just being initiated to some fraternity?”

  “I asked you if you surrendered the ship.”

  “I thought the country was dry,”4 said Ardita disdainfully. “Have you been drinking finger-nail enamel? You better get off this yacht!”

  “What?” The young man’s voice expressed incredulity.

  “Get off the yacht! You heard me!”
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  He looked at her for a moment as if considering what she had said.

  “No,” said his scornful mouth slowly; “no, I won’t get off the yacht. You can get off if you wish.”

  Going to the rail he gave a curt command and immediately the crew of the rowboat scrambled up the ladder and ranged themselves in line before him, a coal-black and burly darky at one end and a miniature mulatto of four feet nine at the other. They seemed to be uniformly dressed in some sort of blue costume ornamented with dust, mud, and tatters; over the shoulder of each was slung a small, heavy-looking white sack, and under their arms they carried large black cases apparently containing musical instruments.

  “ ’Ten-shun!” commanded the young man, snapping his own heels together crisply. “Right driss! Front! Step out here, Babe!”

  The smallest negro took a quick step forward and saluted.

  “Yas-suh!”

  “Take command, go down below, catch the crew and tie ’em up—all except the engineer. Bring him up to me. Oh, and pile those bags by the rail there.”

  “Yas-suh!”

  Babe saluted again and wheeling about motioned for the five others to gather about him. Then after a short whispered consultation they all filed noiselessly down the companionway.

  “Now,” said the young man cheerfully to Ardita, who had witnessed this last scene in withering silence, “if you will swear on your honor as a flapper—which probably isn’t worth much—that you’ll keep that spoiled little mouth of yours tight shut for forty-eight hours, you can row yourself ashore in our rowboat.”

  “Otherwise what?”

  “Otherwise you’re going to sea in a ship.”

  With a little sigh as for a crisis well passed, the young man sank into the settee Ardita had lately vacated and stretched his arms lazily. The corners of his mouth relaxed appreciatively as he looked round at the rich striped awning, the polished brass, and the luxurious fittings of the deck. His eye fell on the book, and then on the exhausted lemon.

  “Hm,” he said, “Stonewall Jackson5 claimed that lemon-juice cleared his head. Your head feel pretty clear?”

  Ardita disdained to answer.

  “Because inside of five minutes you’ll have to make a clear decision whether it’s go or stay.”

  He picked up the book and opened it curiously.

  “The Revolt of the Angels. Sounds pretty good. French, eh?” He stared at her with new interest. “You French?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Farnam.”

  “Farnam what?”

  “Ardita Farnam.”

  “Well, Ardita, no use standing up there and chewing out the insides of your mouth. You ought to break those nervous habits while you’re young. Come over here and sit down.”

  Ardita took a carved jade case from her pocket, extracted a cigarette and lit it with a conscious coolness, though she knew her hand was trembling a little; then she crossed over with her supple, swinging walk, and sitting down in the other settee blew a mouthful of smoke at the awning.

  “You can’t get me off this yacht,” she said steadily; “and you haven’t got very much sense if you think you’ll get far with it. My uncle’ll have wirelesses zigzagging all over this ocean by half past six.”

  “Hm.”

  She looked quickly at his face, caught anxiety stamped there plainly in the faintest depression of the mouth’s corners.

  “It’s all the same to me,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “ ’Tisn’t my yacht. I don’t mind going for a coupla hours’ cruise. I’ll even lend you that book so you’ll have something to read on the revenue boat that takes you up to Sing Sing.”6

  He laughed scornfully.

  “If that’s advice you needn’t bother. This is part of a plan arranged before I ever knew this yacht existed. If it hadn’t been this one it’d have been the next one we passed anchored along the coast.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Ardita suddenly. “And what are you?”

  “You’ve decided not to go shore?”

  “I never even faintly considered it.”

  “We’re generally known,” he said, “all seven of us, as Curtis Carlyle and his Six Black Buddies, late of the Winter Garden and the Midnight Frolic7.”

  “You’re singers?”

  “We were until today. At present, due to those white bags you see there, we’re fugitives from justice, and if the reward offered for our capture hasn’t by this time reached twenty thousand dollars I miss my guess.”

  “What’s in the bags?” asked Ardita curiously.

  “Well,” he said, “for the present we’ll call it—mud—Florida mud.”

  III

  Within ten minutes after Curtis Carlyle’s interview with a very frightened engineer the yacht Narcissus was under way, steaming south through a balmy tropical twilight. The little mulatto, Babe, who seemed to have Carlyle’s implicit confidence, took full command of the situation. Mr. Farnam’s valet and the chef, the only members of the crew on board except the engineer, having shown fight, were now reconsidering, strapped securely to their bunks below. Trombone Mose, the biggest negro, was set busy with a can of paint obliterating the name Narcissus from the bow, and substituting the name Hula Hula, and the others congregated aft and became intently involved in a game of craps.

  Having given orders for a meal to be prepared and served on deck at seven-thirty, Carlyle rejoined Ardita, and, sinking back into his settee, half closed his eyes and fell into a state of profound abstraction.

  Ardita scrutinized him carefully—and classed him immediately as a romantic figure. He gave the effect of towering self-confidence erected on a slight foundation—just under the surface of each of his decisions she discerned a hesitancy that was in decided contrast to the arrogant curl of his lips.

  “He’s not like me,” she thought. “There’s a difference somewhere.”

  Being a supreme egotist Ardita frequently thought about herself; never having had her egotism disputed she did it entirely naturally and with no detraction from her unquestioned charm. Though she was nineteen she gave the effect of a high-spirited precocious child, and in the present glow of her youth and beauty all the men and women she had known were but driftwood on the ripples of her temperament. She had met other egotists—in fact she found that selfish people bored her rather less than unselfish people—but as yet there had not been one she had not eventually defeated and brought to her feet.

  But though she recognized an egotist in the settee next to her, she felt none of that usual shutting of doors in her mind which meant clearing ship for action; on the contrary her instinct told her that this man was somehow completely pregnable and quite defenseless. When Ardita defied convention—and of late it had been her chief amusement—it was from an intense desire to be herself, and she felt that this man, on the contrary, was preoccupied with his own defiance.

  She was much more interested in him than she was in her own situation, which affected her as the prospect of a matinée might affect a ten-year-old child. She had implicit confidence in her ability to take care of herself under any and all circumstances.

  The night deepened. A pale new moon smiled misty-eyed upon the sea, and as the shore faded dimly out and dark clouds were blown like leaves along the far horizon a great haze of moonshine suddenly bathed the yacht and spread an avenue of glittering mail in her swift path. From time to time there was the bright flare of a match as one of them lighted a cigarette, but except for the low undertone of the throbbing engines and the even wash of the waves about the stern the yacht was quiet as a dream boat star-bound through the heavens. Round them flowed the smell of the night sea, bringing with it an infinite languor.

  Carlyle broke the silence at last.

  “Lucky girl,” he sighed, “I’ve always wanted to be rich—and buy all this beauty.”

  Ardita yawned.

  “I’d rather be you,” she said frankly.

  “You would—for about a day. But you
do seem to possess a lot of nerve for a flapper.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  “Beg your pardon.”

  “As to nerve,” she continued slowly, “it’s my one redeeming feature. I’m not afraid of anything in heaven or earth.”

  “Hm, I am.”

  “To be afraid,” said Ardita, “a person has either to be very great and strong—or else a coward. I’m neither.” She paused for a moment, and eagerness crept into her tone. “But I want to talk about you. What on earth have you done—and how did you do it?”

  “Why?” he demanded cynically. “Going to write a movie about me?”

  “Go on,” she urged. “Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”

  A negro appeared, switched on a string of small lights under the awning, and began setting the wicker table for supper. And while they ate cold sliced chicken, salad, artichokes, and strawberry jam from the plentiful larder below, Carlyle began to talk, hesitatingly at first, but eagerly as he saw she was interested. Ardita scarcely touched her food as she watched his dark young face—handsome, ironic, faintly ineffectual.

  He began life as a poor kid in a Tennessee town, he said, so poor that his people were the only white family in their street. He never remembered any white children—but there were inevitably a dozen pickaninnies streaming in his trail, passionate admirers whom he kept in tow by the vividness of his imagination and the amount of trouble he was always getting them in and out of. And it seemed that this association diverted a rather unusual musical gift into a strange channel.

  There had been a colored woman named Belle Pope Calhoun who played the piano at parties given for white children—nice white children that would have passed Curtis Carlyle with a sniff. But the ragged little “poh white” used to sit beside her piano by the hour and try to get in an alto with one of those kazoos that boys hum through. Before he was thirteen he was picking up a living teasing ragtime out of a battered violin in little cafés round Nashville. Eight years later the ragtime craze hit the country, and he took six darkies on the Orpheum circuit. Five of them were boys he had grown up with; the other was the little mulatto, Babe Divine, who was a wharf nigger round New York, and long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an eight-inch stiletto in his master’s back. Almost before Carlyle realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever dreamed of.