Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 176

Friday. She had scarcely slept. There were dark rings under her eyes, and even a hot bath followed by a cold one failed to arouse her from a despairing lethargy. She had never fully realized what it would mean to be without money in New York; her determination and vitality seemed to have vanished at last with her fifty-dollar bill. There was no help for it now—she must attain her desire today or never.

She was to meet Scott at the Plaza for tea. She wondered—was it her imagination, or had his manner been consciously cool the afternoon before? For the first time in several days she had needed to make no effort to keep the conversation from growing sentimental. Suppose he had decided that it must come to nothing—that she was too extravagant, too frivolous. A hundred eventualities presented themselves to her during the morning—a dreary morning, broken only by her purchase of a ten-cent bun at a grocery store.

It was her first food in twenty hours, but she self-consciously pretended to the grocer to be having an amusing and facetious time in buying one bun. She even asked to see his grapes, but told him, after looking at them appraisingly—and hungrily—that she didn’t think she’d buy any. They didn’t look ripe to her, she said. The store was full of prosperous women who, with thumb and first finger joined and held high in front of them, were inspecting food. Yanci would have liked to ask one of them for a bunch of grapes. Instead she went up to her room in the hotel and ate her bun.

When four o’clock came she found that she was thinking more about the sandwiches she would have for tea than of what else must occur there, and as she walked slowly up Fifth Avenue toward the Plaza she felt a sudden faintness which she took several deep breaths of air to overcome. She wondered vaguely where the bread line was. That was where people in her condition should go—but where was it? How did one find out? She imagined fantastically that it was in the phone book under B, or perhaps under N, for New York Bread Line.

She reached the Plaza. Scott’s figure, as he stood waiting for her in the crowded lobby, was a personification of solidity and hope.

“Let’s hurry!” she cried with a tortured smile. “I feel rather punk and I want some tea.”

She ate a club sandwich, some chocolate ice cream and six tea biscuits. She could have eaten much more, but she dared not. The eventuality of her hunger having been disposed of, she must turn at bay now and face this business of life, represented by the handsome young man who sat opposite watching her with some emotion whose import she could not determine just behind his level eyes.

But the words, the glance, subtle, pervasive and sweet, that she had planned, failed somehow to come.

“Oh, Scott,” she said in a low voice, “I’m so tired.”

“Tired of what?” he asked coolly.

“Of—everything.”

There was a silence.

“I’m afraid,” she said uncertainly—“I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep that date with you tomorrow.”

There was no pretense in her voice now. The emotion was apparent in the waver of each word, without intention or control.

“I’m going away.”

“Are you? Where?”

His tone showed a strong interest, but she winced as she saw that that was all.

“My aunt’s come back. She wants me to join her in Florida right away.”

“Isn’t this rather unexpected?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be coming back soon?” he said after a moment.

“I don’t think so. I think we’ll go to Europe from—from New Orleans.”

“Oh!”

Again there was a pause. It lengthened. In the shadow of a moment it would become awkward, she knew. She had lost—well? Yet, she would go on to the end.

“Will you miss me?”

“Yes.”

One word. She caught his eyes, wondered for a moment if she saw more there than that kindly interest; then she dropped her own again.

“I like it—here at the Plaza,” she heard herself saying.

They spoke of things like that. Afterwards she could never remember what they said. They spoke—even of the tea, of the thaw that was ended and the cold coming down outside. She was sick at heart and she seemed to herself very old. She rose at last.

“I’ve got to tear,” she said. “I’m going out to dinner.”

To the last she would keep on—the illusion, that was the important thing. To hold her proud lies inviolate—there was only a moment now. They walked toward the door.

“Put me in a taxi,” she said quietly. “I don’t feel equal to walking.”

He helped her in. They shook hands.

“Good-bye, Scott,” she said.

“Good-bye, Yanci,” he answered slowly.

“You’ve been awfully nice to me. I’ll always remember what a good time you helped to give me this two weeks.”

“The pleasure was mine. Shall I tell the driver the Ritz?”

“No. Just tell him to drive out Fifth. I’ll tap on the glass when I want him to stop.”

Out Fifth! He would think, perhaps, that she was dining on Fifth. What an appropriate finish that would be! She wondered if he were impressed. She could not see his face clearly, because the air was dark with the snow and her own eyes were blurred by tears.

“Good-bye,” he said simply.

He seemed to realize that any pretense of sorrow on his part would be transparent. She knew that he did not want her.

The door slammed, the car started, skidding in the snowy street.

Yanci leaned back dismally in the corner. Try as she might, she could not see where she had failed or what it was that had changed his attitude toward her. For the first time in her life she had ostensibly offered herself to a man—and he had not wanted her. The precariousness of her position paled beside the tragedy of her defeat.

She let the car go on—the cold air was what she needed, of course. Ten minutes had slipped away drearily before she realized that she had not a penny with which to pay the driver.

“It doesn’t matter,” she thought. “They’ll just send me to jail, and that’s a place to sleep.”

She began thinking of the taxi driver.

“He’ll be mad when he finds out, poor man. Maybe he’s very poor, and he’ll have to pay the fare himself.” With a vague sentimentality she began to cry.

“Poor taxi man,” she was saying half aloud. “Oh, people have such a hard time—such a hard time!”

She rapped on the window and when the car drew up at a curb she got out. She was at the end of Fifth Avenue and it was dark and cold.

“Send for the police!” she cried in a quick low voice. “I haven’t any money!”

The taxi man scowled down at her.

“Then what’d you get in for?”

She had not noticed that another car had stopped about twenty-five feet behind them. She heard running footsteps in the snow and then a voice at her elbow.

“It’s all right,” someone was saying to the taxi man. “I’ve got it right here.”

A bill was passed up. Yanci slumped sideways against Scott’s overcoat.

Scott knew—he knew because he had gone to Princeton to surprise her, because the stranger she had spoken to in the Ritz had been his best friend, because the check of her father’s for three hundred dollars had been returned to him marked “No funds.” Scott knew—he had known for days.

But he said nothing; only stood there holding her with one arm as her taxi drove away.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Yanci faintly. “Lucky you came along. I left my purse back at the Ritz, like an awful fool. I do such ridiculous things——”

Scott laughed with some enjoyment. There was a light snow falling, and lest she should slip in the damp he picked her up and carried her back toward his waiting taxi.

“Such ridiculous things,” she repeated.

“Go to the Ritz first,” he said to the driver. “I want to get a trunk.”

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