The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Knowledge house
Lois blushed—he did have personality.
“I want you to tell me all about yourself,” he said after a pause. “Of course I have a general idea what you and mother did in Europe those fourteen years, and then we were all so worried, Lois, when you had pneumonia and couldn’t come down with mother—let’s see, that was two years ago—and then, well, I’ve seen your name in the papers, but it’s all been so unsatisfactory. I haven’t known you, Lois.”
She found herself analyzing his personality as she analyzed the personality of every man she met. She wondered if the effect of—of intimacy that he gave was bred by his constant repetition of her name. He said it as if he loved the word, as if it had an inherent meaning to him.
“Then you were at school,” he continued.
“Yes, at Farmington. Mother wanted me to go to a convent—but I didn’t want to.”
She cast a side glance at him to see if he would resent this.
But he only nodded slowly.
“Had enough convents abroad, eh?”
“Yes—and Kieth, convents are different there anyway. Here even in the nicest ones there are so many common girls.”
He nodded again.
“Yes,” he agreed, “I suppose there are, and I know how you feel about it. It grated on me here, at first, Lois, though I wouldn’t say that to any one but you; we’re rather sensitive, you and I, to things like this.”
“You mean the men here?”
“Yes, some of them of course were fine, the sort of men I’d always been thrown with, but there were others; a man named Regan, for instance—I hated the fellow, and now he’s about the best friend I have. A wonderful character, Lois; you’ll meet him later. Sort of man you’d like to have with you in a fight.”
Lois was thinking that Kieth was the sort of man she’d like to have with her in a fight.
“How did you—how did you first happen to do it?” she asked, rather shyly, “to come here, I mean. Of course mother told me the story about the Pullman car.”
“Oh, that—” He looked rather annoyed.
“Tell me that. I’d like to hear you tell it.”
“Oh, it’s nothing, except what you probably know. It was evening and I’d been riding all day and thinking about—about a hundred things, Lois, and then suddenly I had a sense that some one was sitting across from me, felt that he’d been there for some time, and had a vague idea that he was another traveller. All at once he leaned over toward me and I heard a voice say: ‘I want you to be a priest, that’s what I want.’ Well, I jumped up and cried out, ‘Oh, my God, not that!’—made an idiot of myself before about twenty people; you see there wasn’t any one sitting there at all. A week after that I went to the Jesuit College in Philadelphia and crawled up the last flight of stairs to the rector’s office on my hands and knees.”
There was another silence and Lois saw that her brother’s eyes wore a far-away look, that he was staring unseeingly out over the sunny fields. She was stirred by the modulations of his voice and the sudden silence that seemed to flow about him when he finished speaking.
She noticed now that his eyes were of the same fibre as hers, with the green left out, and that his mouth was much gentler, really, than in the picture—or was it that the face had grown up to it lately? He was getting a little bald just on top of his head. She wondered if that was from wearing a hat so much. It seemed awful for a man to grow bald and no one to care about it.
“Were you—pious when you were young, Kieth?” she asked. “You know what I mean. Were you religious? If you don’t mind these personal questions.”
“Yes,” he said with his eyes still far away—and she felt that his intense abstraction was as much a part of his personality as his attention. “Yes, I suppose I was, when I was—sober.”
Lois thrilled slightly.
“Did you drink?”
He nodded.
“I was on the way to making a bad hash of things.” He smiled and, turning his gray eyes on her, changed the subject.
“Child, tell me about mother. I know it’s been awfully hard for you there, lately. I know you’ve had to sacrifice a lot and put up with a great deal, and I want you to know how fine of you I think it is. I feel, Lois, that you’re sort of taking the place of both of us there.”
Lois thought quickly how little she had sacrificed; how lately she had constantly avoided her nervous, half-invalid mother.
“Youth shouldn’t be sacrificed to age, Kieth,” she said steadily.
“I know,” he sighed, “and you oughtn’t to have the weight on your shoulders, child. I wish I were there to help you.”
She saw how quickly he had turned her remark and instantly she knew what this quality was that he gave off. He was sweet. Her thoughts went off on a side-track and then she broke the silence with an odd remark.
“Sweetness is hard,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she denied in confusion. “I didn’t mean to speak aloud. I was thinking of something—of a conversation with a man named Freddy Kebble.”
“Maury Kebble’s brother?”
“Yes,” she said, rather surprised to think of him having known Maury Kebble. Still there was nothing strange about it. “Well, he and I were talking about sweetness a few weeks ago. Oh, I don’t know—I said that a man named Howard—that a man I knew was sweet, and he didn’t agree with me, and we began talking about what sweetness in a man was. He kept telling me I meant a sort of soppy softness, but I knew I didn’t—yet I didn’t know exactly how to put it. I see now. I meant just the opposite. I suppose real sweetness is a sort of hardness—and strength.”
Kieth nodded.
“I see what you mean. I’ve known old priests who had it.”
“I’m talking about young men,” she said, rather defiantly.
“Oh!”
They had reached the now deserted baseball diamond and, pointing her to a wooden bench, he sprawled full length on the grass.
“Are these young men happy here, Kieth?”
“Don’t they look happy, Lois?”
“I suppose so, but those young ones, those two we just passed—have they—are they——”
“Are they signed up?” he laughed. “No, but they will be next month.”
“Permanently?”
“Yes—unless they break down mentally or physically. Of course in a discipline like ours a lot drop out.”
“But those boys. Are they giving up fine chances outside—like you did?”
He nodded.
“Some of them.”
“But, Kieth, they don’t know what they’re doing. They haven’t had any experience of what they’re missing.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“It doesn’t seem fair. Life has just sort of scared them at first. Do they all come in so young?”
“No, some of them have knocked around, led pretty wild lives—Regan, for instance.”
“I should think that sort would be better,” she said meditatively, “men that had seen life.”