The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, This Side of Paradise, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon and many more stories…. Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд
in front of the heavy Georgian beauty of the Madison Harlan house whence the windows cast their gaiety in bright patches on the lawn. There was laughter inside and the plaintive wind of fashionable horns, and now and again the slow, mysterious shuffle of dancing feet.
“Let’s go up close,” whispered Amanthis in an ecstatic trance, “I want to hear.”
They walked toward the house, keeping in the shadow of the great trees. Jim proceeded with awe—suddenly he stopped and seized Amanthis’s arm.
“Man!” he cried in an excited whisper. “Do you know what that is?”
“A night watchman?” Amanthis cast a startled look around.
“It’s Rastus Muldoon’s Band from Savannah! I heard ‘em once, and I know. It’s Rastus Muldoon’s Band!”
They moved closer till they could see first pompadours, then slicked male heads, and high coiffures and finally even bobbed hair pressed under black ties. They could distinguish chatter below the ceaseless laughter. Two figures appeared on the porch, gulped something quickly from flasks and returned inside. But the music had bewitched Jim Powell. His eyes were fixed and he moved his feet like a blind man.
Pressed in close behind some dark bushes they listened. The number ended. A breeze from the ocean blew over them and Jim shivered slightly. Then, in a wistful whisper:
“I’ve always wanted to lead that band. Just once.” His voice grew listless. “Come on. Let’s go. I reckon I don’t belong around here.”
He held out his arm to her but instead of taking it she stepped suddenly out of the bushes and into a bright patch of light.
“Come on, Jim,” she said startlingly. “Let’s go inside.”
“What—?”
She seized his arm and though he drew back in a sort of stupefied horror at her boldness she urged him persistently toward the great front door.
“Watch out!” he gasped. “Somebody’s coming out of that house and see us.”
“No, Jim,” she said firmly. “Nobody’s coming out of that house—but two people are going in.”
“Why?” he demanded wildly, standing in full glare of the porte-cochere lamps. “Why?”
“Why?” she mocked him. “Why, just because this dance happens to be given for me.”
He thought she was mad.
“Come home before they see us,” he begged her.
The great doors swung open and a gentleman stepped out on the porch. In horror Jim recognized Mr. Madison Harlan. He made a movement as though to break away and run. But the man walked down the steps holding out both hands to Amanthis.
“Hello at last,” he cried. “Where on earth have you two been? Cousin Amanthis—” He kissed her, and turned cordially to Jim. “And for you, Mr. Powell,” he went on, “to make up for being late you’ve got to promise that for just one number you’re going to lead that band.”
New Jersey was warm, all except the part that was under water, and that mattered only to the fishes. All the tourists who rode through the long green miles stopped their cars in front of a spreading old-fashioned country house and looked at the red swing on the lawn and the wide, shady porch, and sighed and drove on—swerving a little to avoid a jet-black body-servant in the road. The body-servant was applying a hammer and nails to a decayed flivver which flaunted from its rear the legend, “Tarleton, Ga.”
A girl with yellow hair and a warm color to her face was lying in the hammock looking as though she could fall asleep any moment. Near her sat a gentleman in an extraordinarily tight suit. They had come down together the day before from the fashionable resort at Southampton.
“When you first appeared,” she was explaining, “I never thought I’d see you again so I made that up about the barber and all. As a matter of fact, I’ve been around quite a bit—with or without brassknuckles. I’m coming out this autumn.”
“I reckon I had a lot to learn,” said Jim.
“And you see,” went on Amanthis, looking at him rather anxiously, “I’d been invited up to Southampton to visit my cousins—and when you said you were going, I wanted to see what you’d do. I always slept at the Harlans’ but I kept a room at the boarding-house so you wouldn’t know. The reason I didn’t get there on the right train was because I had to come early and warn a lot of people to pretend not to know me.”
Jim got up, nodding his head in comprehension.
“I reckon I and Hugo had better be movin’ along. We got to make Baltimore by night.”
“That’s a long way.”
“I want to sleep south tonight,” he said simply.
Together they walked down the path and past the idiotic statue of Diana on the lawn.
“You see,” added Amanthis gently, “you don’t have to be rich up here in order to—to go around, any more than you do in Georgia—” She broke off abruptly, “Won’t you come back next year and start another Academy?”
“No mamm, not me. That Mr. Harlan told me I could go on with the one I had but I told him no.”
“Haven’t you—didn’t you make money?”
“No mamm,” he answered. “I got enough of my own income to just get me home. I didn’t have my principal along. One time I was way ahead but I was livin’ high and there was my rent an’ apparatus and those musicians. Besides, there at the end I had to pay what they’d advanced me for their lessons.”
“You shouldn’t have done that!” cried Amanthis indignantly.
“They didn’t want me to, but I told ‘em they’d have to take it.”
He didn’t consider it necessary to mention that Mr. Harlan had tried to present him with a check.
They reached the automobile just as Hugo drove in his last nail. Jim opened a pocket of the door and took from it an unlabeled bottle containing a whitish-yellow liquid.
“I intended to get you a present,” he told her awkwardly, “but my money got away before I could, so I thought I’d send you something from Georgia. This here’s just a personal remembrance. It won’t do for you to drink but maybe after you come out into society you might want to show some of those young fellas what good old corn tastes like.”
She took the bottle.
“Thank you, Jim.”
“That’s all right.” He turned to Hugo. “I reckon we’ll go along now. Give the lady the hammer.”
“Oh, you can have the hammer,” said Amanthis tearfully. “Oh, won’t you promise to come back?”
“Someday—maybe.”
He looked for a moment at her yellow hair and her blue eyes misty with sleep and tears. Then he got into his car and as his foot found the clutch his whole manner underwent a change.
“I’ll say good-by mamm,” he announced with impressive dignity, “we’re goin’ south for the winter.”
The gesture of his straw hat indicated Palm Beach, St. Augustine, Miami. His body-servant spun the crank, gained his seat and became part of the intense vibration into which the automobile was thrown.
“South for the winter,” repeated Jim, and then he added softly, “You’re the prettiest girl I ever knew. You go back up there and lie down in that hammock, and sleep—sle-eep—”
It was almost a lullaby, as he said it. He bowed to her, magnificently, profoundly, including the whole North in the splendor of his obeisance—
Then