The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories Read online

  'Ever take an actress out to supper before?'

  'No,' said Horace miserably, 'and I never will again. I don't know why I came to-night. Here under all these lights and with all these people laughing and chattering I feel completely out of my sphere. I don't know what to talk to you about.'

  'We'll talk about me. We talked about you last time.'

  'Very well.'

  'Well, my name really is Meadow, but my first name isn't Marcia - it's Veronica. I'm nineteen. Question - how did the girl make her leap to the footlights? Answer - she was born in Passaic, New Jersey, and up to a year ago she got the right to breathe by pushing Nabiscoes in Marcel's tea-room in Trenton. She started going with a guy named Robbins, a singer in the Trent House cabaret, and he got her to try a song and dance with him one evening. In a month we were filling the supper-room every night. Then we went to New York with meet-my-friend letters thick as a pile of napkins.

  'In two days we'd landed a job at Divinerries', and I learned to shimmy from a kid at the Palais Royal. We stayed at Divinerries' six months until one night Peter Boyce Wendell, the columnist, ate his milk-toast there. Next morning a poem about Marvellous Marcia came out in his newspaper, and within two days I had three vaudeville offers and a chance at the Midnight Frolic. I wrote Wendell a thank-you letter, and he printed it in his column - said that the style was like Carlyle's, only more rugged, and that I ought to quit dancing and do North American literature. This got me a coupla more vaudeville offers and a chance as an ingenue in a regular show. I took it - and here I am, Omar.'

  When she finished they sat for a moment in silence, she draping the last skeins of a Welsh rabbit on her fork and waiting for him to speak.

  'Let's get out of here,' he said suddenly.

  Marcia's eyes hardened.

  'What's the idea? Am I making you sick?'

  'No, but I don't like it here. I don't like to be sitting here with you.'

  Without another word Marcia signalled for the waiter.

  'What's the check?' she demanded briskly. 'My part - the rabbit and the ginger ale.'

  Horace watched blankly as the waiter figured it.

  'See here,' he began, 'I intended to pay for yours too. You're my guest.'

  With a half-sigh Marcia rose from the table and walked from the room. Horace, his face a document in bewilderment, laid a bill down and followed her out, up the stairs and into the lobby. He overtook her in front of the elevator and they faced each other.

  'See here,' he repeated, 'you're my guest. Have I said something to offend you?'

  After an instant of wonder Marcia's eyes softened.

  'You're a rude fella,' she said slowly. 'Don't you know you're rude?'

  'I can't help it,' said Horace with a directness she found quite disarming. 'You know I like you.'

  'You said you didn't like being with me.'

  'I didn't like it.'

  'Why not?'

  Fire blazed suddenly from the gray forests of his eyes.

  'Because I didn't. I've formed the habit of liking you. I've been thinking of nothing much else for two days.'

  'Well, if you--'

  'Wait a minute,' he interrupted. 'I've got something to say. It's this: in six weeks I'll be eighteen years old. When I'm eighteen years old I'm coming up to New York to see you. Is there some place in New York where we can go and not have a lot of people in the room?'

  'Sure!' smiled Marcia. 'You can come up to my 'partment. Sleep on the couch, if you want to.'

  'I can't sleep on couches,' he said shortly. 'But I want to talk to you.'

  'Why, sure,' repeated Marcia - 'in my 'partment.'

  In his excitement Horace put his hands in his pockets.

  'All right - just so I can see you alone. I want to talk to you as we talked up in my room.'

  'Honey boy,' cried Marcia, laughing, 'is it that you want to kiss me?'

  'Yes,' Horace almost shouted. 'I'll kiss you if you want me to.'

  The elevator man was looking at them reproachfully. Marcia edged toward the grated door.

  'I'll drop you a post-card,' she said.

  Horace's eyes were quite wild.

  'Send me a post-card! I'll come up any time after January first. I'll be eighteen then.'

  And as she stepped into the elevator he coughed enigmatically, yet with a vague challenge, at the ceiling, and walked quickly away.

  III

  He was there again. She saw him when she took her first glance at the restless Manhattan audience - down in the front row with his head bent a bit forward and his gray eyes fixed on her. And she knew that to him they were alone together in a world where the high-rouged row of ballet faces and the massed whines of the violins were as imperceivable as powder on a marble Venus. An instinctive defiance rose within her.

  'Silly boy!' she said to herself hurriedly, and she didn't take her encore.

  'What do they expect for a hundred a week - perpetual motion?' she grumbled to herself in the wings.

  'What's the trouble, Marcia?'

  'Guy I don't like down in front.'

  During the last act as she waited for her specialty she had an odd attack of stage fright. She had never sent Horace the promised post-card. Last night she had pretended not to see him - had hurried from the theatre immediately after her dance to pass a sleepless night in her apartment, thinking - as she had so often in the last month - of his pale, rather intent face, his slim, boyish figure, the merciless, unworldly abstraction that made him charming to her.

  And now that he had come she felt vaguely sorry - as though an unwonted responsibility was being forced on her.

  'Infant prodigy!' she said aloud.

  'What?' demanded the negro comedian standing beside her.

  'Nothing - just talking about myself.'

  On the stage she felt better. This was her dance - and she always felt that the way she did it wasn't suggestive any more than to some men every pretty girl is suggestive. She made it a stunt.

  'Uptown, downtown, jelly on a spoon,

  After sundown shiver by the moon.'

  He was not watching her now. She saw that clearly. He was looking very deliberately at a castle on the back drop, wearing that expression he had worn in the Taft Grill. A wave of exasperation swept over her - he was criticising her.

  'That's the vibration that thr-ills me,

  Funny how affection fi-lls me,

  Uptown, downtown--'

  Unconquerable revulsion seized her. She was suddenly and horribly conscious of her audience as she had never been since her first appearance. Was that a leer on a pallid face in the front row, a droop of disgust on one young girl's mouth? These shoulders of hers - these shoulders shaking - were they hers? Were they real? Surely shoulders weren't made for this!

  'Then - you'll see at a glance

  I'll need some funeral ushers with St. Vitus dance

  At the end of the world I'll--'

  The bassoon and two cellos crashed into a final chord. She paused and poised a moment on her toes with every muscle tense, her young face looking out dully at the audience in what one young girl afterward called 'such a curious, puzzled look,' and then without bowing rushed from the stage. Into the dressing-room she sped, kicked out of one dress and into another, and caught a taxi outside.

  Her apartment was very warm - small, it was, with a row of professional pictures and sets of Kipling and O. Henry which she had bought once from a blue-eyed agent and read occasionally. And there were several chairs which matched, but were none of them comfortable, and a pink-shaded lamp with blackbirds painted on it and an atmosphere of rather stifled pink throughout. There were nice things in it - nice things unrelentingly hostile to each other, offsprings of a vicarious, impatient taste acting in stray moments. The worst was typified by a great picture framed in oak bark of Passaic as seen from the Erie Railroad - altogether a frantic, oddly extravagant, oddly penurious attempt to make a cheerful room. Marcia knew it was a failure.

  Into this room came th
e prodigy and took her two hands awkwardly.

  'I followed you this time,' he said.

  'Oh!'

  'I want you to marry me,' he said.

  Her arms went out to him. She kissed his mouth with a sort of passionate wholesomeness.

  'There!'

  'I love you,' he said.

  She kissed him again and then with a little sigh flung herself into an armchair and half lay there, shaken with absurd laughter.

  'Why, you infant prodigy!' she cried.

  'Very well, call me that if you want to. I once told you that I was ten thousand years older than you - I am.'

  She laughed again.

  'I don't like to be disapproved of.'

  'No one's ever going to disapprove of you again.'

  'Omar,' she asked, 'why do you want to marry me?'

  The prodigy rose and put his hands in his pockets.

  'Because I love you, Marcia Meadow.'

  And then she stopped calling him Omar.

  'Dear boy,' she said, 'you know I sort of love you. There's something about you - I can't tell what - that just puts my heart through the wringer every time I'm round you. But, honey--' She paused.

  'But what?'

  'But lots of things. But you're only just eighteen, and I'm nearly twenty.'

  'Nonsense!' he interrupted. 'Put it this way - that I'm in my nineteenth year and you're nineteen. That makes us pretty close - without counting that other ten thousand years I mentioned.'

  Marcia laughed.

  'But there are some more "buts." Your people--'

  'My people!' exclaimed the prodigy ferociously. 'My people tried to make a monstrosity out of me.' His face grew quite crimson at the enormity of what he was going to say. 'My people can go way back and sit down!'

  'My heavens!' cried Marcia in alarm. 'All that? On tacks, I suppose.'

  'Tacks - yes,' he agreed wildly - 'on anything. The more I think of how they allowed me to become a little dried-up mummy--'

  'What makes you think you're that?' asked Marcia quietly - 'me?'

  'Yes. Every person I've met on the streets since I met you has made me jealous because they knew what love was before I did. I used to call it the "sex impulse." Heavens!'

  'There's more "buts," ' said Marcia.

  'What are they?'

  'How could we live?'

  'I'll make a living.'

  'You're in college.'

  'Do you think I care anything about taking a Master of Arts degree?'

  'You want to be Master of Me, hey?'

  'Yes! What? I mean, no!'

  Marcia laughed, and crossing swiftly over sat in his lap. He put his arm round her wildly and implanted the vestige of a kiss somewhere near her neck.

  'There's something white about you,' mused Marcia, 'but it doesn't sound very logical.'

  'Oh, don't be so darned reasonable!'

  'I can't help it,' said Marcia.

  'I hate these slot-machine people!'

  'But we--'

  'Oh, shut up!'

  And as Marcia couldn't talk through her ears she had to.

  IV

  Horace and Marcia were married early in February. The sensation in academic circles both at Yale and Princeton was tremendous. Horace Tarbox, who at fourteen had been played up in the Sunday magazines sections of metropolitan newspapers, was throwing over his career, his chance of being a world authority on American philosophy, by marrying a chorus girl - they made Marcia a chorus girl. But like all modern stories it was a four-and-a-half-day wonder.

  They took a flat in Harlem. After two weeks' search, during which his idea of the value of academic knowledge faded unmercifully, Horace took a position as clerk with a South American export company - some one had told him that exporting was the coming thing. Marcia was to stay in her show for a few months - anyway until he got on his feet. He was getting a hundred and twenty-five to start with, and though of course they told him it was only a question of months until he would be earning double that, Marcia refused even to consider giving up the hundred and fifty a week that she was getting at the time.

  'We'll call ourselves Head and Shoulders, dear,' she said softly, 'and the shoulders'll have to keep shaking a little longer until the old head gets started.'

  'I hate it,' he objected gloomily.

  'Well,' she replied emphatically, 'your salary wouldn't keep us in a tenement. Don't think I want to be public - I don't. I want to be yours. But I'd be a half-wit to sit in one room and count the sunflowers on the wall-paper while I waited for you. When you pull down three hundred a month I'll quit.'

  And much as it hurt his pride, Horace had to admit that hers was the wiser course.

  March mellowed into April. May read a gorgeous riot act to the parks and waters of Manhattan, and they were very happy. Horace, who had no habits whatsoever - he had never had time to form any - proved the most adaptable of husbands, and as Marcia entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there were very few joltings and bumpings. Their minds moved in different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a continual source of astonishment to him - the freshness and originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and her unfailing good humor.

  And Marcia's co-workers in the nine-o'clock show, whither she had transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous pride in her husband's mental powers. Horace they knew only as a very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who waited every night to take her home.

  'Horace,' said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at eleven, 'you looked like a ghost standing there against the street lights. You losing weight?'

  He shook his head vaguely.

  'I don't know. They raised me to a hundred and thirty-five dollars to-day, and--'

  'I don't care,' said Marcia severely. 'You're killing yourself working at night. You read those big books on economy--'

  'Economics,' corrected Horace.

  'Well, you read 'em every night long after I'm asleep. And you're getting all stooped over like you were before we were married.'

  'But, Marcia, I've got to--'

  'No, you haven't, dear. I guess I'm running this shop for the present, and I won't let my fella ruin his health and eyes. You got to get some exercise.'

  'I do. Every morning I--'

  'Oh, I know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn't give a consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You've got to join a gymnasium. 'Member you told me you were such a trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in college and they couldn't because you had a standing date with Herb Spencer?'

  'I used to enjoy it,' mused Horace, 'but it would take up too much time now.'

  'All right,' said Marcia. 'I'll make a bargain with you. You join a gym and I'll read one of those books from the brown row of 'em.'

  '"Pepys' Diary"? Why, that ought to be enjoyable. He's very light.'

  'Not for me - he isn't. It'll be like digesting plate glass. But you been telling me how much it'd broaden my lookout. Well, you go to a gym three nights a week and I'll take one big dose of Sammy.'

  Horace hesitated.

  'Well--'

  'Come on, now! You do some giant swings for me and I'll chase some culture for you.'

  So Horace finally consented, and all through a baking summer he spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on the trapeze in Skipper's Gymnasium. And in August he admitted to Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the day.

  'Mens sana in corpore sano,' he said.

  'Don't believe in it,' replied Marcia. 'I tried one of those patent medicines once and they're all bunk. You stick to gymnastics.'

  One night in early September while he was going through one of his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was addressed by a meditative fat man whom he had noticed watching him
for several nights.

  'Say, lad, do that stunt you were doin' last night.'

  Horace grinned at him from his perch.

  'I invented it,' he said. 'I got the idea from the fourth proposition of Euclid.'

  'What circus he with?'

  'He's dead.'

  'Well, he must of broke his neck doin' that stunt. I set here last night thinkin' sure you was goin' to break yours.'

  'Like this!' said Horace, and swinging onto the trapeze he did his stunt.

  'Don't it kill your neck an' shoulder muscles?'

  'It did at first, but inside of a week I wrote the quod erat demonstrandum on it.'

  'Hm!'

  Horace swung idly on the trapeze.

  'Ever think of takin' it up professionally?' asked the fat man.

  'Not I.'

  'Good money in it if you're willin' to do stunts like 'at an' can get away with it.'

  'Here's another,' chirped Horace eagerly, and the fat man's mouth dropped suddenly agape as he watched this pink-jerseyed Prometheus again defy the gods and Isaac Newton.

  The night following this encounter Horace got home from work to find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for him.

  'I fainted twice to-day,' she began without preliminaries.

  'What?'

  'Yep. You see baby's due in four months now. Doctor says I ought to have quit dancing two weeks ago.'

  Horace sat down and thought it over.

  'I'm glad, of course,' he said pensively - 'I mean glad that we're going to have a baby. But this means a lot of expense.'

  'I've got two hundred and fifty in the bank,' said Marcia hopefully, 'and two weeks' pay coming.'

  Horace computed quickly.

  'Including my salary, that'll give us nearly fourteen hundred for the next six months.'

  Marcia looked blue.

  'That all? Course I can get a job singing somewhere this month. And I can go to work again in March.'

  'Of course nothing!' said Horace gruffly. 'You'll stay right here. Let's see now - there'll be doctor's bills and a nurse, besides the maid: We've got to have some more money.'

  'Well,' said Marcia wearily, 'I don't know where it's coming from. It's up to the old head now. Shoulders is out of business.'

  Horace rose and pulled on his coat.

  'Where are you going?'

  'I've got an idea,' he answered. 'I'll be right back.'

  Ten minutes later as he headed down the street toward Skipper's Gymnasium he felt a placid wonder, quite unmixed with humor, at what he was going to do. How he would have gaped at himself a year before! How every one would have gaped! But when you opened your door at the rap of life you let in many things.