Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 159

Just before dawn Myra drowsed into a jumbled dream that seemed to act on through interminable hours. She awoke about seven and lay listlessly with one blue-veined arm hanging over the side of the bed. She who had danced in the dawn at many proms was very tired.

A clock outside her door struck the hour, and with her nervous start something seemed to collapse within her—she turned over and began to weep furiously into her pillow, her tangled hair spreading like a dark aura round her head. To her, Myra Harper, had been done this cheap vulgar trick by a man she had thought shy and kind.

Lacking the courage to come to her and tell her the truth he had gone into the highways and hired men to frighten her.

Between her fevered broken sobs she tried in vain to comprehend the workings of a mind which could have conceived this in all its subtlety. Her pride refused to let her think of it as a deliberate plan of Knowleton’s. It was probably an idea fostered by this little actor Appleton or by the fat Kelly with his horrible poodles. But it was all unspeakable—unthinkable. It gave her an intense sense of shame.

But when she emerged from her room at eight o’clock and, disdaining breakfast, walked into the garden she was a very self-possessed young beauty, with dry cool eyes only faintly shadowed. The ground was firm and frosty with the promise of winter, and she found grey sky and dull air vaguely comforting and one with her mood. It was a day for thinking and she needed to think.

And then turning a corner suddenly she saw Knowleton seated on a stone bench, his head in his hands, in an attitude of profound dejection. He wore his clothes of the night before and it was quite evident that he had not been to bed.

He did not hear her until she was quite close to him, and then as a dry twig snapped under her heel he looked up wearily. She saw that the night had played havoc with him—his face was deathly pale and his eyes were pink and puffed and tired. He jumped up with a look that was very like dread.

“Good morning,” said Myra quietly.

“Sit down,” he began nervously. “Sit down; I want to talk to you! I’ve got to talk to you.”

Myra nodded and taking a seat beside him on the bench clasped her knees with her hands and half closed her eyes.

“Myra, for heaven’s sake have pity on me!”

She turned wondering eyes on him.

“What do you mean?”

He groaned.

“Myra, I’ve done a ghastly thing—to you, to me, to us. I haven’t a word to say in favor of myself—I’ve been just rotten. I think it was a sort of madness that came over me.”

“You’ll have to give me a clue to what you’re talking about.”

“Myra—Myra”—like all large bodies his confession seemed difficult to imbue with momentum—“Myra—Mr. Whitney is not my father.”

“You mean you were adopted?”

“No; I mean—Ludlow Whitney is my father, but this man you’ve met isn’t Ludlow Whitney.”

“I know,” said Myra coolly. “He’s Warren Appleton, the actor.”

Knowleton leaped to his feet.

“How on earth——”

“Oh,” lied Myra easily, “I recognized him the first night. I saw him five years ago in ‘The Swiss Grapefruit.’”

At this Knowleton seemed to collapse utterly. He sank down limply onto the bench.

“You knew?”

“Of course! How could I help it? It simply made me wonder what it was all about.”

With a great effort he tried to pull himself together.

“I’m going to tell you the whole story, Myra.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well, it starts with my mother—my real one, not the woman with those idiotic dogs; she’s an invalid and I’m her only child. Her one idea in life has always been for me to make a fitting match, and her idea of a fitting match centers round social position in England. Her greatest disappointment was that I wasn’t a girl so I could marry a title; instead she wanted to drag me to England—marry me off to the sister of an earl or the daughter of a duke. Why, before she’d let me stay up here alone this fall she made me promise I wouldn’t go to see any girl more than twice. And then I met you.”

He paused for a second and continued earnestly: “You were the first girl in my life whom I ever thought of marrying. You intoxicated me, Myra. It was just as though you were making me love you by some invisible force.”

“I was,” murmured Myra.

“Well, that first intoxication lasted a week, and then one day a letter came from mother saying she was bringing home some wonderful English girl, Lady Helena Something-or-Other. And the same day a man told me that he’d heard I’d been caught by the most famous husband hunter in New York. Well, between these two things I went half-crazy. I came into town to see you and call it off—got as far as the Biltmore entrance and didn’t dare. I started wandering down Fifth Avenue like a wild man, and then I met Kelly. I told him the whole story—and within an hour we’d hatched up this ghastly plan. It was his plan—all the details. His histrionic instinct got the better of him and he had me thinking it was the kindest way out.”

“Finish,” commanded Myra crisply.

“Well, it went splendidly, we thought. Everything—the station meeting, the dinner scene, the scream in the night, the vaudeville—though I thought that was a little too much until—until—— Oh, Myra, when you fainted under that picture and I held you there in my arms, helpless as a baby, I knew I loved you. I was sorry then, Myra.”

There was a long pause while she sat motionless, her hands still clasping her knees—then he burst out with a wild plea of passionate sincerity.

“Myra!” he cried. “If by any possible chance you can bring yourself to forgive and forget I’ll marry you when you say, let my family go to the devil, and love you all my life.”

For a long while she considered, and Knowleton rose and began pacing nervously up and down the aisle of bare bushes, his hands in his pockets, his tired eyes pathetic now, and full of dull appeal. And then she came to a decision.

“You’re perfectly sure?” she asked calmly.

“Yes.”

“Very well, I’ll marry you today.”

With her words the atmosphere cleared and his troubles seemed to fall from him like a ragged cloak. An Indian summer sun drifted out from behind the grey clouds and the dry bushes rustled gently in the breeze.

“It was a bad mistake,” she continued, “but if you’re sure you love me now, that’s the main thing. We’ll go to town this morning, get a license, and I’ll call up my cousin, who’s a minister in the First Presbyterian Church. We can go West tonight.”

“Myra!” he cried jubilantly. “You’re a marvel and I’m not fit to tie your shoe strings. I’m going to make up to you for this, darling girl.”

And taking her supple body in his arms he covered her face with kisses.

The next two hours passed in a whirl. Myra went to the telephone and called her cousin, and then rushed upstairs to pack. When she came down a shining roadster was waiting miraculously in the drive and by ten o’clock they were bowling happily toward the city.

They stopped for a few minutes at the City Hall and again at the jeweler’s, and then they were in the house of the Reverend Walter Gregory on 69th Street, where a sanctimonious gentleman with twinkling eyes and a slight stutter received them cordially and urged them to a breakfast of bacon and eggs before the ceremony.

On the way to the station they stopped only long enough to wire Knowleton’s father, and then they were sitting in their compartment on the Broadway Limited.

“Darn!” exclaimed Myra. “I forgot my bag. Left it at Cousin Walter’s in the excitement.”

“Never mind. We can get a whole new outfit in Chicago.”

She glanced at her wrist watch.

“I’ve got time to telephone him to send it on.”

She rose.

“Don’t be long, dear.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead.

“You know I couldn’t. Two minutes, honey.”

Outside Myra ran swiftly along the platform and up the steel stairs to the great waiting room, where a man met her—a twinkly-eyed man with a slight stutter.

“How d-did it go, M-myra?”

“Fine! Oh, Walter, you were splendid! I almost wish you’d join the ministry so you could officiate when I do get married.”

“Well—I r-rehearsed for half an hour after I g-got your telephone call.”

“Wish we’d had more time. I’d have had him lease an apartment and buy furniture.”

“H’m,” chuckled Walter. “Wonder how far he’ll go on his honeymoon.”

“Oh, he’ll think I’m on the train till he gets to Elizabeth.” She shook her little fist at the great contour of the marble dome. “Oh, he’s getting off too easy—far too easy!”

“I haven’t f-figured out what the f-fellow did to you, M-myra.”

“You never will, I hope.”

They had reached the side drive and he hailed her a taxi-cab.

“You’re an angel!” beamed Myra. “And I can’t thank you enough.”

“Well, anytime I can be of use t-to you—— By the way, what are you going to do with all the rings?”

Myra looked laughingly at her hand.

“That’s the question,” she said. “I may send them to Lady Helena Something-or-Other—and—well, I’ve always had a strong penchant for souvenirs. Tell the driver ‘Biltmore,’ Walter.”

— ◆ —