Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 188

Five minutes later two maiden ladies were making their way across the sand toward a couple who stood close together on the shore, sharply outlined against the bright afternoon sky. As they came closer Fifi and Mr. Hopkins, absorbed in the contemplation of each other, perceived them and drew lingeringly apart. Aunt Cal began to speak when they were still thirty yards away.

“Go into the house, Fifi!” she cried.

Fifi looked at Mr. Hopkins, who touched her hand reassuringly and nodded. As if under the influence of a charm, Fifi turned away from him, and with her head lowered walked with slender grace toward the house.

“Now, my man,” said Aunt Cal, folding her arms, “what are your intentions?”

Mr. Hopkins returned her glare rudely. Then he gave a low hoarse laugh.

“What’s that to you?” he demanded.

“It’s everything to us. Miss Marsden is our niece, and your attentions are unwelcome—not to say obnoxious.”

Mr. Hopkins turned half away.

“Aw, go on and blab your mouth out!” he advised her.

Aunt Cal tried a new approach.

“What if I were to tell you that Miss Marsden were mentally deranged?”

“What’s that?”

“She’s—she’s a little crazy.”

He smiled contemptuously.

“What’s the idea? Crazy ’cause she likes me?”

“That merely indicates it,” answered Aunt Cal bravely. “She’s had an unfortunate love affair and it’s affected her mind. Look here!” She opened the purse that swung at her waist. “If I give you fifty—a hundred dollars right now in cash, will you promise to move yourself ten miles up the beach?”

“Ah-h-h-h!” he exclaimed, so venomously that the two ladies swayed together.

“Two hundred!” cried Aunt Cal, with a catch in her voice.

He shook his finger at them.

“You can’t buy me!” he growled. “I’m as good as anybody. There’s chauffeurs and such that marry millionaires’ daughters every day in the week. This is Umerica, a free country, see?”

“You won’t give her up?” Aunt Cal swallowed hard on the words. “You won’t stop bothering her and go away?”

He bent over suddenly and scooped up a large double handful of sand, which he threw in a high parabola so that it scattered down upon the horrified ladies, enveloping them for a moment in a thick mist. Then laughing once again in his hoarse, boorish way, he turned and set off at a loping run along the sand.

In a daze the two women brushed the casual sand from their shoulders and walked stiffly toward the house.

“I’m younger than you are,” said Aunt Jo firmly when they reached the living room. “I want a chance now to see what I can do.”

She went to the telephone and called a New York number.

“Doctor Roswell Gallup’s office? Is Doctor Gallup there?” Aunt Cal sat down on the sofa and gazed tragically at the ceiling. “Doctor Gallup? This is Miss Josephine Marsden, of Montauk Point…. Doctor Gallup, a very curious state of affairs has arisen concerning my niece. She has become entangled with a—a—an unspeakable egg.” She gasped as she said this, and went on to explain in a few words the uncanny nature of the situation.

“And I think that perhaps psychoanalysis might clear up what my sister and I have been unable to handle.”

Doctor Gallup was interested. It appeared to be exactly his sort of a case.

“There’s a train in half an hour that will get you here at nine o’clock,” said Aunt Jo. “We can give you dinner and accommodate you overnight.”

She hung up the receiver.

“There! Except for our change from bridge to mah-jongg, this will be the first really modern step we’ve ever taken in our lives.”

The hours passed slowly. At seven Fifi came down to dinner, as unperturbed as though nothing had happened; and her aunts played up bravely to her calmness, determined to say nothing until the doctor had actually arrived. After dinner Aunt Jo suggested mah-jongg, but Fifi declared that she would rather read, and settled on the sofa with a volume of the encyclopedia. Looking over her shoulder, Aunt Cal noted with alarm that she had turned to the article on the Australian bush.

It was very quiet in the room. Several times Fifi raised her head as if listening, and once she got up and went to the door and stared out for a long time into the night. Her aunts were both poised in their chairs to rush after her if she showed signs of bolting, but after a moment she closed the door with a sigh and returned to her chair. It was with relief that a little after nine they heard the sound of automobile wheels on the shell drive and knew that Doctor Gallup had arrived at last.

He was a short, stoutish man, with alert black eyes and an intense manner. He came in, glancing eagerly about him, and his eye brightened as it fell on Fifi like the eye of a hungry man when he sees prospective food. Fifi returned his gaze curiously, evidently unaware that his arrival had anything to do with herself.

“Is this the lady?” he cried, dismissing her aunts with a perfunctory handshake and approaching Fifi at a lively hop.

“This gentleman is Doctor Gallup, dear,” beamed Aunt Jo, expectant and reassured. “He’s an old friend of mine who’s going to help you.”

“Of course I am!” insisted Doctor Gallup, jumping around her cordially. “I’m going to fix her up just fine.”

“He understands everything about the human mind,” said Aunt Jo.

“Not everything,” admitted Doctor Gallup, smiling modestly. “But we often make the regular doctors wonder.” He turned roguishly to Fifi. “Yes, young lady, we often make the regular doctors wonder.”

Clapping his hands together decisively, he drew up a chair in front of Fifi.

“Come,” he cried, “let us see what can be the matter. We’ll start by having you tell me the whole story in your own way. Begin.”

“The story,” remarked Fifi, with a slight yawn, “happens to be none of your business.”

“None of my business!” he exclaimed incredulously. “Why, my girl, I’m trying to help you! Come now, tell old Doctor Gallup the whole story.”

“Let my aunts tell you,” said Fifi coldly. “They seem to know more about it than I do.”

Doctor Gallup frowned.

“They’ve already outlined the situation. Perhaps I’d better begin by asking you questions.”

“You’ll answer the doctor’s questions, won’t you, dear?” coaxed Aunt Jo. “Doctor Gallup is one of the most modern doctors in New York.”

“I’m an old-fashioned girl,” objected Fifi maliciously. “And I think it’s immoral to pry into people’s affairs. But go ahead and I’ll try to think up a comeback for everything you say.”

Doctor Gallup overlooked the unnecessary rudeness of this remark and mustered a professional smile.

“Now, Miss Marsden, I understand that about a month ago you came out here for a rest.”

Fifi shook her head.

“No, I came out to hide my face.”

“You were ashamed because you had broken your engagement?”

“Terribly. If you desert a man at the altar you brand him for the rest of his life.”

“Why?” he demanded sharply.

“Why not?”

“You’re not asking me. I’m asking you…. However, let that pass. Now, when you arrived here, how did you pass your time?”

“I walked mostly—walked along the beach.”

“It was on one of these walks that you met the—ah—person your aunt told me of over the telephone?”

Fifi pinkened slightly.

“Yes.”

“What was he doing when you first saw him?”

“He was looking down at me out of a tree.”

There was a general exclamation from her aunts, in which the word “monkey” figured.

“Did he attract you immediately?” demanded Doctor Gallup.

“Why, not especially. At first I only laughed.”

“I see. Now, as I understand, this man was very—ah—very originally clad.”

“Yes,” agreed Fifi.

“He was unshaven?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” Doctor Gallup seemed to go through a sort of convolution like a medium coming out of a trance. “Miss Fifi,” he cried out triumphantly, “did you ever read ‘The Sheik’?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Did you ever read any book in which a girl was wooed by a so-called sheik or cave man?”

“Not that I remember.”

“What, then, was your favorite book when you were a girl?”

“‘Little Lord Fauntleroy.’”

Doctor Gallup was considerably disappointed. He decided to approach the case from a new angle.

“Miss Fifi, won’t you admit that there’s nothing behind this but some fancy in your head?”

“On the contrary,” said Fifi startlingly, “there’s a great deal more behind it than any of you suspect. He’s changed my entire attitude on life.”

“What do you mean?”

She seemed on the point of making some declaration, but after a moment her lovely eyes narrowed obstinately and she remained silent.

“Miss Fifi”—Doctor Gallup raised his voice sharply—“the daughter of C. T. J. Calhoun, the biscuit man, ran away with a taxi-driver. Do you know what she’s doing now?”

“No.”

“She’s working in a laundry on the East Side, trying to keep her child’s body and soul together.”

He looked at her keenly; there were signs of agitation in her face.

“Estelle Holliday ran away in 1920 with her father’s second man!” he cried. “Shall I tell you where I heard of her last? She stumbled into a charity hospital, bruised from head to foot, because her drunken husband had beaten her to within an inch of her life!”

Fifi was breathing hard. Her aunts leaned forward. Doctor Gallup sprang suddenly to his feet.

“But they were playing safe compared to you!” he shouted. “They didn’t woo an ex-convict with blood on his hands.”

And now Fifi was on her feet, too, her eyes flashing fire.

“Be careful!” she cried. “Don’t go too far!”

“I can’t go too far!” He reached in his pocket, plucked out a folded evening paper and slapped it down on the table.

“Read that, Miss Fifi!” he shouted. “It’ll tell you how four man-killers entered a bank in West Crampton three weeks ago. It’ll tell you how they shot down the cashier in cold blood, and how one of them, the most brutal, the most ferocious, the most inhuman, got away. And it will tell you that that human gorilla is now supposed to be hiding in the neighborhood of Montauk Point!”

There was a short stifled sound as Aunt Jo and Aunt Cal, who had always done everything in complete unison, fainted away together. At the same moment there was loud, violent knocking, like the knocking of a heavy club, upon the barred front door.