Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 51

Isabelle and Amory were distinctly not innocent, nor were they particularly brazen. Moreover, amateur standing had very little value in the game they were playing, a game that would presumably be her principal study for years to come. She had begun as he had, with good looks and an excitable temperament, and the rest was the result of accessible popular novels and dressing-room conversation culled from a slightly older set. Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nine and a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenue most, Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blasé sophistication. She had lived in a larger city and had slightly an advantage in range. But she accepted his pose—it was one of the dozen little conventions of this kind of affair. He was aware that he was getting this particular favor now because she had been coached; he knew that he stood for merely the best game in sight, and that he would have to improve his opportunity before he lost his advantage. So they proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents.

After the dinner the dance began … smoothly. Smoothly?—boys cut in on Isabelle every few feet and then squabbled in the corners with: “You might let me get more than an inch!” and “She didn’t like it either—she told me so next time I cut in.” It was true—she told every one so, and gave every hand a parting pressure that said: “You know that your dances are making my evening.”

But time passed, two nours [hours] of it, and the less subtle beaux had better learned to focus their pseudo-passionate glances elsewhere, for eleven o’clock found Isabelle and Amory sitting on the couch in the little den off the reading-room up-stairs. She was conscious that they were a handsome pair, and seemed to belong distinctively in this seclusion, while lesser lights fluttered and chattered down-stairs.

Boys who passed the door looked in enviously—girls who passed only laughed and frowned and grew wise within themselves.

They had now reached a very definite stage. They had traded accounts of their progress since they had met last, and she had listened to much she had heard before. He was a sophomore, was on the Princetonian board, hoped to be chairman in senior year. He learned that some of the boys she went with in Baltimore were “terrible speeds” and came to dances in states of artificial stimulation; most of them were twenty or so, and drove alluring red Stutzes. A good half seemed to have already flunked out of various schools and colleges, but some of them bore athletic names that made him look at her admiringly. As a matter of fact, Isabelle’s closer acquaintance with the universities was just commencing. She had bowing acquaintance with a lot of young men who thought she was a “pretty kid—worth keeping an eye on.” But Isabelle strung the names into a fabrication of gayety that would have dazzled a Viennese nobleman. Such is the power of young contralto voices on sink-down sofas.

He asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there was a difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adored self-confidence in men.

“Is Froggy a good friend of yours?” she asked.

“Rather—why?”

“He’s a bum dancer.”

Amory laughed.

“He dances as if the girl were on his back instead of in his arms.”

She appreciated this.

“You’re awfully good at sizing people up.”

Amory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people for her. Then they talked about hands.

“You’ve got awfully nice hands,” she said. “They look as if you played the piano. Do you?”

I have said they had reached a very definite stage—nay, more, a very critical stage. Amory had stayed over a day to see her, and his train left at twelve-eighteen that night. His trunk and suitcase awaited him at the station; his watch was beginning to hang heavy in his pocket.

“Isabelle,” he said suddenly, “I want to tell you something.” They had been talking lightly about “that funny look in her eyes,” and Isabelle knew from the change in his manner what was coming—indeed, she had been wondering how soon it would come. Amory reached above their heads and turned out the electric light, so that they were in the dark, except for the red glow that fell through the door from the reading-room lamps. Then he began:

“I don’t know whether or not you know what you—what I’m going to say. Lordy, Isabelle—this sounds like a line, but it isn’t.”

“I know,” said Isabelle softly.

“Maybe we’ll never meet again like this—I have darned hard luck sometimes.” He was leaning away from her on the other arm of the lounge, but she could see his eyes plainly in the dark.

“You’ll meet me again—silly.” There was just the slightest emphasis on the last word—so that it became almost a term of endearment. He continued a bit huskily:

“I’ve fallen for a lot of people—girls—and I guess you have, too—boys, I mean, but, honestly, you—” he broke off suddenly and leaned forward, chin on his hands: “Oh, what’s the use—you’ll go your way and I suppose I’ll go mine.”

Silence for a moment. Isabelle was quite stirred; she wound her handkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that streamed over her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their hands touched for an instant, but neither spoke. Silences were becoming more frequent and more delicious. Outside another stray couple had come up and were experimenting on the piano in the next room. After the usual preliminary of “chopsticks,” one of them started “Babes in the Woods” and a light tenor carried the words into the den:

“Give me your hand—

I’ll understand

We’re off to slumberland.”

Isabelle hummed it softly and trembled as she felt Amory’s hand close over hers.

“Isabelle,” he whispered. “You know I’m mad about you. You do give a darn about me.”

“Yes.”

“How much do you care—do you like any one better?”

“No.” He could scarcely hear her, although he bent so near that he felt her breath against his cheek.

“Isabelle, I’m going back to college for six long months, and why shouldn’t we—if I could only just have one thing to remember you by——”

“Close the door….” Her voice had just stirred so that he half wondered whether she had spoken at all. As he swung the door softly shut, the music seemed quivering just outside.

“Moonlight is bright,

Kiss me good night.”

What a wonderful song, she thought—everything was wonderful to-night, most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosey roadsters stopped under sheltering trees—only the boy might change, and this one was so nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden movement he turned it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm.

“Isabelle!” His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed to float nearer together. Her breath came faster. “Can’t I kiss you, Isabelle—Isabelle?” Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in the dark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surged toward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light, and when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-craving Froggy among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on the table, while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even greeted them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly, and she felt somehow as if she had been deprived.

It was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was a glance that passed between them—on his side despair, on hers regret, and then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux and the eternal cutting in.

At quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the midst of a small crowd assembled to wish him good-speed. For an instant he lost his poise, and she felt a bit rattled when a satirical voice from a concealed wit cried:

“Take her outside, Amory!” As he took her hand he pressed it a little, and she returned the pressure as she had done to twenty hands that evening—that was all.

At two o’clock back at the Weatherbys’ Sally asked her if she and Amory had had a “time” in the den. Isabelle turned to her quietly. In her eyes was the light of the idealist, the inviolate dreamer of Joan-like dreams.

“No,” she answered. “I don’t do that sort of thing any more; he asked me to, but I said no.”

As she crept in bed she wondered what he’d say in his special delivery to-morrow. He had such a good-looking mouth—would she ever——?

“Fourteen angels were watching o’er them,” sang Sally sleepily from the next room.

“Damn!” muttered Isabelle, punching the pillow into a luxurious lump and exploring the cold sheets cautiously. “Damn!”