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
“All I can think of doing is maybe take to drink,” he confessed. “I come from a little town, and when they say leisure they mean hanging round the corner store.” He shook his head. “I don’t want any leisure. This is the first chance I ever had, and I want to make good.”
“Listen, Rip,” said Lola on a sudden impulse. “After you finish up at the office this afternoon you meet me and we’ll fix up something together.”
He met her, as she suggested, at five o’clock, but the melancholy had deepened in his dark eyes.
“They wouldn’t let me in,” he said. “I met your father in there, and he told me I had to find some way to amuse myself or I’d be just a bored old man like him.”
“Never mind. We’ll go to a show,” she said consolingly; “and after that we’ll run up on some roof and dance.”
It was the first of a week of evenings they spent together. Sometimes they went to the theater, sometimes to a cabaret; once they spent most of an afternoon strolling in Central Park. But she saw that from having been the most light-hearted and gay of the three young men, he was now the most moody and depressed. Everything whispered to him of the work he was missing.
Even when they danced at teatime, the click of bracelets on a hundred women’s arms only reminded him of the busy office sound on Monday morning. He seemed incapable of inaction.
“This is mighty sweet of you,” he said to her one afternoon, “and if it was after business hours I can’t tell you how I’d enjoy it. But my mind is on all the things I ought to be doing. I’m—I’m right sad.” He saw then that he had hurt her, that by his frankness he had rejected all she was trying to do for him. But he was incapable of feeling differently.
“Lola, I’m mighty sorry,” he said softly, “and maybe some day it’ll be after hours again, and I can come to you——”
“I won’t be interested,” she said coldly. “And I see I was foolish ever to be interested at all.”
He was standing beside her car when this conversation took place, and before he could reply she had thrown it into gear and started away.
He stood there looking after her sadly, thinking that perhaps he would never see her any more and that she would remember him always as ungrateful and unkind. But there was nothing he could have said. Something dynamic in him was incapable of any except a well-earned rest.
“If it was only after hours,” he muttered to himself as he walked slowly away. “If it was only after hours.”
III.
At ten o’clock on the morning of August first a tall, bronzed young man presented himself at the office of Cyrus Girard, Inc., and sent in his card to the president. Less than five minutes later another young man arrived, less blatantly healthy, perhaps, but with the light of triumphant achievement blazing in his eyes. Word came out through the palpitating inner door that they were both to wait.
“Well, Parrish,” said Van Buren condescendingly, “how did you like Niagara Falls?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” answered Parrish haughtily. “You can determine that on your honeymoon.”
“My honeymoon!” Van Buren started. “How—what made you think I was contemplating a honeymoon?”
“I merely meant that when you do contemplate it you will probably choose Niagara Falls.”
They sat for a few minutes in stony silence.
“I suppose,” remarked Parrish coolly, “that you’ve been making a serious study of the deserving poor.”
“On the contrary, I have done nothing of the kind.” Van Buren looked at his watch. “I’m afraid that our competitor with the rakish name is going to be late. The time set was 10:30; it now lacks three minutes of the half hour.”
The private door opened, and at a command from the frantic secretary they both arose eagerly and went inside. Cyrus Girard was standing behind his desk waiting for them, watch in hand.
“Hello!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Where’s Jones?”
Parrish and Van Buren exchanged a smile. If Jones were snagged somewhere so much the better.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” spoke up the secretary, who had been lingering near the door; “Mr. Jones is in Chicago.”
“What’s he doing there?” demanded Cyrus Girard in astonishment.
“He went out to handle the matter of those silver shipments. There wasn’t anyone else who knew much about it, and Mr. Galt thought——”
“Never mind what Mr. Galt thought,” broke in Girard impatiently. “Mr. Jones is no longer employed by this concern. When he gets back from Chicago pay him off and let him go.” He nodded curtly. “That’s all.”
The secretary bowed and went out. Girard turned to Parrish and Van Buren with an angry light in his eyes.
“Well, that finishes him,” he said determinedly. “Any young man who won’t even attempt to obey my orders doesn’t deserve a good chance.” He sat down and began drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“All right, Parrish, let’s hear what you’ve been doing with your leisure hours.”
Parrish smiled ingratiatingly.
“Mr. Girard,” he began, “I’ve had a bully time. I’ve been traveling.”
“Traveling where? The Adirondacks? Canada?”
“No, sir. I’ve been to Europe.”
Cyrus Girard sat up.
“I spent five days going over and five days coming back. That left me two days in London and a run over to Paris by aeroplane to spend the night. I saw Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and the Louvre, and spent an afternoon at Versailles. On the boat I kept in wonderful condition—swam, played deck tennis, walked five miles every day, met some interesting people and found time to read. I came back after the greatest two weeks of my life, feeling fine and knowing more about my own country since I had something to compare it with. That, sir, is how I spent my leisure time and that’s how I intend to spend my leisure time after I’m retired.”
Girard leaned back thoughtfully in his chair.
“Well, Parrish, that isn’t half bad,” he said. “I don’t know but what the idea appeals to me—take a run over there for the sea voyage and a glimpse of the London Stock Ex——I mean the Tower of London. Yes, sir, you’ve put an idea in my head.” He turned to the other young man, who during this recital had been shifting uneasily in his chair. “Now, Van Buren, let’s hear how you took your ease.”
“I thought over the travel idea,” burst out Van Buren excitedly, “and I decided against it. A man of sixty doesn’t want to spend his time running back and forth between the capitals of Europe. It might fill up a year or so, but that’s all. No, sir, the main thing is to have some strong interest—and especially one that’ll be for the public good, because when a man gets along in years he wants to feel that he’s leaving the world better for having lived in it. So I worked out a plan—it’s for a historical and archaeological endowment center, a thing that’d change the whole face of public education, a thing that any man would be interested in giving his time and money to. I’ve spent my whole two weeks working out the plan in detail, and let me tell you it’d be nothing but play work—just suited to the last years of an active man’s life. It’s been fascinating, Mr. Girard. I’ve learned more from doing it than I ever knew before—and I don’t think I ever had a happier two weeks in my life.”
When he had finished, Cyrus Girard nodded his head up and down many times in an approving and yet somehow dissatisfied way.