Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald - Страница 181

New Jersey was warm, all except that part that was underwater, and that mattered only to the fishes. All the tourists who rode through the long green miles stopped their cars in front of a spreading old-fashioned country house and looked at the red swing on the lawn and the wide, shady porch, and sighed and drove on—swerving a little to avoid a jet-black body-servant in the road. The body-servant was applying a hammer and nails to a decayed flivver which flaunted from its rear the legend, “Tarleton, Ga.”

A girl with yellow hair and a warm color to her face was lying in the hammock looking as though she could fall asleep any moment. Near her sat a gentleman in an extraordinarily tight suit. They had come down together the day before from the fashionable resort at Southampton.

“When you first appeared,” she was explaining, “I never thought I’d see you again so I made that up about the barber and all. As a matter of fact, I’ve been around quite a bit—with or without brassknuckles. I’m coming out this autumn.”

“I reckon I had a lot to learn,” said Jim.

“And you see,” went on Amanthis, looking at him rather anxiously, “I’d been invited up to Southampton to visit my cousins—and when you said you were going, I wanted to see what you’d do. I always slept at the Harlans’ but I kept a room at the boarding house so you wouldn’t know. The reason I didn’t get there on the right train was because I had to come early and warn a lot of people to pretend not to know me.”

Jim got up, nodding his head in comprehension.

“I reckon I and Hugo had better be movin’ along. We got to make Baltimore by night.”

“That’s a long way.”

“I want to sleep south tonight,” he said.

Together they walked down the path and past the idiotic statue of Diana on the lawn.

“You see,” added Amanthis gently, “you don’t have to be rich up here in order to go around, any more than you do in Georgia——” She broke off abruptly. “Won’t you come back next year and start another academy?”

“No mamm, not me. That Mr. Harlan told me I could go on with the one I had but I told him no.”

“Haven’t you——didn’t you make money?”

“No mamm,” he answered. “I got enough of my own income to just get me home. One time I was ahead but I was livin’ high and there was my rent an’ apparatus and those musicians.”

He didn’t consider it necessary to mention that Mr. Harlan had tried to present him with a check.

They reached the automobile just as Hugo drove in his last nail. Jim opened a pocket of the door and took from it an unlabeled bottle containing a whitish-yellow liquid.

“I intended to get you a present,” he told her awkwardly, “but my money got away before I could, so I thought I’d send you something from Georgia. This here’s just a personal remembrance. It won’t do for you to drink but maybe after you come out into society you might want to show some of those young fellas what good old corn tastes like.”

She took the bottle.

“Thank you, Jim.”

“That’s all right.” He turned to Hugo. “I reckon we’ll go along now. Give the lady the hammer.”

“Oh, you can have the hammer,” said Amanthis tearfully. “Won’t you promise to come back?”

“Someday—maybe.”

He looked for a moment at her yellow hair and her blue eyes misty with sleep and tears. Then he got into his car and as his foot found the clutch his whole manner underwent a change.

“I’ll say good-bye mamm,” he announced with impressive dignity. “We’re goin’ south for the winter.”

The gesture of his straw hat indicated Palm Beach, St. Augustine, Miami. His body-servant spun the crank, gained his seat and became part of the intense vibration into which the automobile was thrown.

“South for the winter,” repeated Jim. And then he added softly, “You’re the prettiest girl I ever knew. You go back up there and lie down in that hammock, and sleep—sle-eep——”

It was almost a lullaby, as he said it. He bowed to her, magnificently, profoundly, including the whole North in the splendor of his obeisance——

Then they were gone down the road in quite a preposterous cloud of dust. Just before they reached the first bend Amanthis saw them come to a full stop, dismount and shove the top part of the car onto the bottom part. They took their seats again without looking around. Then the bend—and they were out of sight, leaving only a faint brown mist to show that they had passed.

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