By F. Scott Fitzgerald

SOME OF THE CADDIES were poor as sin and lived in one
room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but
Dexter Green’s father owned the second best grocery-store in
Black Bear–the best one was “The Hub,” patronized by the
wealthy people from Sherry Island–and Dexter caddied only
for pocket-money.
In the fall when the days became crisp and gray, and the long
Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter’s
skis moved over the snow that hid the fairways of the golf
course. At these times the country gave him a feeling of
profound melancholy–it offended him that the links should lie in
enforced fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long
season. It was dreary, too, that on the tees where the gay
colors fluttered in summer there were now only the desolate
sand-boxes knee-deep in crusted ice. When he crossed the
hills the wind blew cold as misery, and if the sun was out he
tramped with his eyes squinted up against the hard
dimensionless glare.
In April the winter ceased abruptly. The snow ran down into
Black Bear Lake scarcely tarrying for the early golfers to brave
the season with red and black balls. Without elation, without an
interval of moist glory, the cold was gone.
Dexter knew that there was something dismal about this
Northern spring, just as he knew there was something
gorgeous about the fall. Fall made him clinch his hands and
tremble and repeat idiotic sentences to himself, and make brisk
abrupt gestures of command to imaginary audiences and
armies. October filled him with hope which November raised to
a sort of ecstatic triumph, and in this mood the fleeting brilliant
impressions of the summer at Sherry Island were ready grist to
his mill. He became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T. A.
Hedrick in a marvellous match played a hundred times over the
fairways of his imagination, a match each detail of which he
changed about untiringly–sometimes he won with almost
laughable ease, sometimes he came up magnificently from
behind. Again, stepping from a Pierce-Arrow automobile, like
Mr. Mortimer Jones, he strolled frigidly into the lounge of the
Sherry Island Golf Club– or perhaps, surrounded by an
admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving from the
spring-board of the club raft. . . . Among those who watched
him in open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones.
And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones–himself and not
his ghost– came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said
that Dexter was the—-best caddy in the club, and wouldn’t he
decide not to quit if Mr. Jones made it worth his while, because
every other caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him–
regularly—-
“No, sir,” said Dexter decisively, “I don’t want to caddy any
more.” Then, after a pause: “I’m too old.”
“You’re not more than fourteen. Why the devil did you decide
just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that
next week you’d go over to the State tournament with me.”
Dexter handed in his “A Class” badge, collected what money
was due him from the caddy master, and walked home to
Black Bear Village.
“The best—-caddy I ever saw,” shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones
over a drink that afternoon. “Never lost a ball! Willing!
Intelligent! Quiet! Honest! Grateful!”
The little girl who had done this was eleven–beautifully ugly as
little girls are apt to be who are destined after a few years to be
inexpressibly lovely and bring no end of misery to a great
number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There
was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted ,down at
the corners when she smiled, and in the–Heaven help us!–in
the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early
in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through
her thin frame in a sort of glow.
She had come eagerly out on to the course at nine o’clock with
a white linen nurse and five small new golf-clubs in a white
canvas bag which the nurse was carrying. When Dexter first
saw her she was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at
ease and trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an
obviously unnatural conversation graced by startling and
irrelevant grimaces from herself.
“Well, it’s certainly a nice day, Hilda,” Dexter heard her say.
She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced
furtively around, her eyes in transit falling for an instant on
Dexter.
Then to the nurse:
“Well, I guess there aren’t very many people out here this
morning, are there?”
The smile again–radiant, blatantly artificial–convincing.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now,” said the nurse,
looking nowhere in particular.
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll fix it up.
Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew
that if he moved forward a step his stare would be in her line of
vision–if he moved backward he would lose his full view of her
face. For a moment he had not realized how young she was.
Now he remembered having seen her several times the year
before in bloomers.
Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed, a short abrupt laugh–
then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk quickly
away.
“Boy!”
Dexter stopped.
“Boy—-”
1
“I don’t think I’ll go out to-day,” said Dexter.
Beyond question he was addressed. Not only that, but he was
treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile–the
memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into
middle age.
“Boy, do you know where the golf teacher is?”
“He’s giving a lesson.”
“Well, do you know where the caddy-master is?”
“He isn’t here yet this morning.”
“Oh.” For a moment this baffled her. She stood alternately on
her right and left foot.
“We’d like to get a caddy,” said the nurse. “Mrs. Mortimer
Jones sent us out to play golf, and we don’t know how without
we get a caddy.”
Here she was stopped by an ominous glance from Miss Jones,
followed immediately by the smile.
“There aren’t any caddies here except me,” said Dexter to the
nurse, “and I got to stay here in charge until the caddy-master
gets here.”
“Oh.”
Miss Jones and her retinue now withdrew, and at a proper
distance from Dexter became involved in a heated
conversation, which was concluded by Miss Jones taking one
of the clubs and hitting it on the ground with violence. For
further emphasis she raised it again and was about to bring it
down smartly upon the nurse’s bosom, when the nurse seized
the club and twisted it from her hands.
“You damn little mean old thing!” cried Miss Jones wildly.
Another argument ensued. Realizing that the elements of the
comedy were implied in the scene, Dexter several times began
to laugh, but each time restrained the laugh before it reached
audibility. He could not resist the monstrous conviction that the
little girl was justified in beating the nurse.
The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the
caddymaster, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse.
“Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can’t
go.”
“Mr. McKenna said I was to wait here till you came,” said
Dexter quickly.
“Well, he’s here now.” Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the
caddy-master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a
haughty mince toward the first tee.
“Well?” The caddy-master turned to Dexter. “What you
standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady’s
clubs.”
“You don’t—-”
“I think I’ll quit.”
The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite
caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the
summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But
he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation
required a violent and immediate outlet.
It is not so simple as that, either. As so frequently would be the
case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his
winter dreams.
II
NOW, OF COURSE, the quality and the seasonability of these
winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained. They
persuaded Dexter several years later to pass up a business
course at the State university–his father, prospering now,
would have paid his way–for the precarious advantage of
attending an older and more famous university in the East,
where he was bothered by his scanty funds. But do not get the
impression, because his winter dreams happened to be
concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was
anything merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not
association with glittering things and glittering people–he
wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out
for the best without knowing why he wanted it–and sometimes
he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in
which life indulges. It is with one of those denials and not with
his career as a whole that this story deals.
He made money. It was rather amazing. After college he went
to the city from which Black Bear Lake draws its wealthy
patrons. When he was only twenty-three and had been there
not quite two years, there were already people who liked to
say: “Now there’s a boy–” All about him rich men’s sons were
peddling bonds precariously, or investing patrimonies
precariously, or plodding through the two dozen volumes of the
“George Washington Commercial Course,” but Dexter
borrowed a thousand dollars on his college degree and his
confident mouth, and bought a partnership in a laundry.
It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a
specialty of learning how the English washed fine woollen golf
stockings without shrinking them, and within a year he was
catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were
insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his
laundry just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find
golfballs. A little later he was doing their wives’ lingerie as well–and running five branches in different parts of the city. Before
he was twenty-seven he owned the largest string of laundries
in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and
went to New York. But the part of his story that concerns us
goes back to the days when he was making his first big
success.
When he was twenty-three Mr. Hart–one of the gray-haired
men who like to say “Now there’s a boy”–gave him a guest
2
card to the Sherry Island Golf Club for a week-end. So he
signed his name one day on the register, and that afternoon
played golf in a foursome with Mr. Hart and Mr. Sandwood and
Mr. T. A. Hedrick. He did not consider it necessary to remark
that he had once carried Mr. Hart’s bag over this same links,
and that he knew every trap and gully with his eyes shut–but
he found himself glancing at the four caddies who trailed them,
trying to catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of
himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his
present and his past.
It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar
impressions. One minute he had the sense of being a
trespasser–in the next he was impressed by the tremendous
superiority he felt toward Mr. T. A. Hedrick, who was a bore
and not even a good golfer any more.
Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the fifteenth green,
an enormous thing happened. While they were searching the
stiff grasses of the rough there was a clear call of “Fore!” from
behind a hill in their rear. And as they all turned abruptly from
their search a bright new ball sliced abruptly over the hill and
caught Mr. T. A. Hedrick in the abdomen.
“By Gad!” cried Mr. T. A. Hedrick, “they ought to put some of
these crazy women off the course. It’s getting to be
outrageous.”
A head and a voice came up together over the hill:
“Do you mind if we go through?”
“You hit me in the stomach!” declared Mr. Hedrick wildly.
“Did I?” The girl approached the group of men. “I’m sorry. I
yelled ‘Fore !'”
Her glance fell casually on each of the men–then scanned the
fairway for her ball.
“Did I bounce into the rough?”
It was impossible to determine whether this question was
ingenuous or malicious. In a moment, however, she left no
doubt, for as her partner came up over the hill she called
cheerfully:
“Here I am! I’d have gone on the green except that I hit
something.”
As she took her stance for a short mashie shot, Dexter looked
at her closely. She wore a blue gingham dress, rimmed at
throat and shoulders with a white edging that accentuated her
tan. The quality of exaggeration, of thinness, which had made
her passionate eyes and down-turning mouth absurd at eleven,
was gone now. She was arrestingly beautiful. The color in her
cheeks was centered like the color in a picture–it was not a
“high” color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth, so
shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and
disappear. This color and the mobility of her mouth gave a
continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate
vitality–balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes.
She swung her mashie impatiently and without interest,
pitching the ball into a sand-pit on the other side of the green.
With a quick, insincere smile and a careless “Thank you!” she
went on after it.
“That Judy Jones!” remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as
they waited–some moments–for her to play on ahead. “All she
needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then
to be married off to an oldfashioned cavalry captain.”
“My God, she’s good-looking!” said Mr. Sandwood, who was
just over thirty.
“Good-looking!” cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, “she always
looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow
eyes on every calf in town!”
It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the
maternal instinct.
“She’d play pretty good golf if she’d try,” said Mr. Sandwood.
“She has no form,” said Mr. Hedrick solemnly.
“She has a nice figure,” said Mr. Sandwood.
“Better thank the Lord she doesn’t drive a swifter ball,” said Mr.
Hart, winking at Dexter.
Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of
gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling
night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of
the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the
little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the
moon held a finger to her lips and the lake became a clear
pool, pale and quiet. Dexter put on his bathing-suit and swam
out to the farthest raft, where he stretched dripping on the wet
canvas of the springboard.
There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights
around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a
piano was playing the songs of last summer and of summers
before that– songs from “Chin-Chin” and “The Count of
Luxemburg” and “The Chocolate Soldier”–and because the
sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed
beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened.
The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay
and new five years before when Dexter was a sophomore at
college. They had played it at a prom once when he could not
afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the
gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in
him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed
what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense
appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently
attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a
brightness and a glamour he might never know again.
A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness
of the Island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing
motor-boat. Two white streamers of cleft water rolled
themselves out behind it and almost immediately the boat was
beside him, drowning out the hot tinkle of the piano in the
drone of its spray. Dexter raising himself on his arms was
3
aware of a figure standing at the wheel, of two dark eyes
regarding him over the lengthening space of water–then the
boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense and
purposeless circle of spray round and round in the middle of
the lake. With equal eccentricity one of the circles flattened out
and headed back toward the raft.
“Who’s that?” she called, shutting off her motor. She was so
near now that Dexter could see her bathing-suit, which
consisted apparently of pink rompers.
The nose of the boat bumped the raft, and as the latter tilted
rakishly he was precipitated toward her. With different degrees
of interest they recognized each other.
“Aren’t you one of those men we played through this
afternoon?” she demanded.
He was.
“Well, do you know how to drive a motor-boat? Because if you
do I wish you’d drive this one so I can ride on the surf-board
behind. My name is Judy Jones”–she favored him with an
absurd smirk–rather, what tried to be a smirk, for, twist her
mouth as she might, it was not grotesque, it was merely
beautiful–“and I live in a house over there on the Island, and in
that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at
the door I drove out of the dock because he says I’m his ideal.”
There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights
around the lake were gleaming. Dexter sat beside Judy Jones
and she explained how her boat was driven. Then she was in
the water, swimming to the floating surfboard with a sinuous
crawl. Watching her was without effort to the eye, watching a
branch waving or a sea-gull flying. Her arms, burned to
butternut, moved sinuously among the dull platinum ripples,
elbow appearing first, casting the forearm back with a cadence
of falling water, then reaching out and down, stabbing a path
ahead.
They moved out into the lake; turning, Dexter saw that she was
kneeling on the low rear of the now uptilted surf-board.
“Go faster,” she called, “fast as it’ll go.”
Obediently he jammed the lever forward and the white spray
mounted at the bow. When he looked around again the girl
was standing up on the rushing board, her arms spread wide,
her eyes lifted toward the moon.
“It’s awful cold,” she shouted. “What’s your name?”
He told her.
“Well, why don’t you come to dinner to-morrow night?”
His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the
second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life.
NEXT EVENING while he waited for her to come down-stairs,
Dexter peopled the soft deep summer room and the sun-porch
that opened from it with the men who had already loved Judy
Jones. He knew the sort of men they were–the men who when
he first went to college had entered from the great prep
schools with graceful clothes and the deep tan of healthy
summers. He had seen that, in one sense, he was better than
these men. He was newer and stronger. Yet in acknowledging
to himself that he wished his children to be like them he was
admitting that he was but the rough, strong stuff from which
they eternally sprang.
When the time had come for him to wear good clothes, he had
known who were the best tailors in America, and the best
tailors in America had made him the suit he wore this evening.
He had acquired that particular reserve peculiar to his
university, that set it off from other universities. He recognized
the value to him of such a mannerism and he had adopted it;
he knew that to be careless in dress and manner required
more confidence than to be careful. But carelessness was for
his children. His mother’s name had been Krimslich. She was a
Bohemian of the peasant class and she had talked broken
English to the end of her days. Her son must keep to the set
patterns.
At a little after seven Judy Jones came down-stairs. She wore
a blue silk afternoon dress, and he was disappointed at first
that she had not put on something more elaborate. This feeling
was accentuated when, after a brief greeting, she went to the
door of a butler’s pantry and pushing it open called: “You can
serve dinner, Martha.” He had rather expected that a butler
would announce dinner, that there would be a cocktail. Then
he put these thoughts behind him as they sat down side by
side on a lounge and looked at each other.
“Father and mother won’t be here,” she said thoughtfully.
He remembered the last time he had seen her father, and he
was glad the parents were not to be here to-night–they might
wonder who he was. He had been born in Keeble, a Minnesota
village fifty miles farther north, and he always gave Keeble as
his home instead of Black Bear Village. Country towns were
well enough to come from if they weren’t inconveniently in sight
and used as footstools by fashionable lakes.
They talked of his university, which she had visited frequently
during the past two years, and of the near-by city which
supplied Sherry Island with its patrons, and whither Dexter
would return next day to his prospering laundries.
During dinner she slipped into a moody depression which gave
Dexter a feeling of uneasiness. Whatever petulance she
uttered in her throaty voice worried him. Whatever she smiled
at–at him, at a chicken liver, at nothing–it disturbed him that
her smile could have no root in mirth, or even in amusement.
When the scarlet corners of her lips curved down, it was less a
smile than an invitation to a kiss.
Then, after dinner, she led him out on the dark sun-porch and
deliberately changed the atmosphere.
“Do you mind if I weep a little?” she said.
“I’m afraid I’m boring you,” he responded quickly.
III
4
“You’re not. I like you. But I’ve just had a terrible afternoon.
There was a man I cared about, and this afternoon he told me
out of a clear sky that he was poor as a church-mouse. He’d
never even hinted it before. Does this sound horribly
mundane?”
“Perhaps he was afraid to tell you.”
“Suppose he was,” she answered. “He didn’t start right. You
see, if I’d thought of him as poor–well, I’ve been mad about
loads of poor men, and fully intended to marry them all. But in
this case, I hadn’t thought of him that way, and my interest in
him wasn’t strong enough to survive the shock. As if a girl
calmly informed her fianc_ that she was a widow. He might not
object to widows, but—-
“Let’s start right,” she interrupted herself suddenly. “Who are
you, anyhow?”
For a moment Dexter hesitated. Then:
“I’m nobody,” he announced. “My career is largely a matter of
futures.”
“Are you poor?”
“No,” he said frankly, “I’m probably making more money than
any man my age in the Northwest. I know that’s an obnoxious
remark, but you advised me to start right.”
There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her
mouth drooped and an almost imperceptible sway brought her
closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in Dexter’s
throat, and he waited breathless for the experiment, facing the
unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the
elements of their lips. Then he saw–she communicated her
excitement to him, lavishly, deeply, with kisses that were not a
promise but a fulfillment. They aroused in him not hunger
demanding renewal but surfeit that would demand more surfeit
. . . kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back
nothing at all.
It did not take him many hours to decide that he had wanted
Judy Jones ever since he was a proud, desirous little boy.
IV
IT BEGAN like that–and continued, with varying shades of
intensity, on such a note right up to the d_nouement. Dexter
surrendered a part of himself to the most direct and
unprincipled personality with which he had ever come in
contact. Whatever Judy wanted, she went after with the full
pressure of her charm. There was no divergence of method, no
jockeying for position or premeditation of effects–there was a
very little mental side to any of her affairs. She simply made
men conscious to the highest degree of her physical
loveliness. Dexter had no desire to change her. Her
deficiencies were knit up with a passionate energy that
transcended and justified them.
When, as Judy’s head lay against his shoulder that first night,
she whispered, “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Last
night I thought I was in love with a man and to-night I think I’m
in love with you—-“–it seemed to him a beautiful and romantic
thing to say. It was the exquisite excitability that for the
moment he controlled and owned. But a week later he was
compelled to view this same quality in a different light. She
took him in her roadster to a picnic supper, and after supper
she disappeared, likewise in her roadster, with another man.
Dexter became enormously upset and was scarcely able to be
decently civil to the other people present. When she assured
him that she had not kissed the other man, he knew she was
lying–yet he was glad that she had taken the trouble to lie to
him.
He was, as he found before the summer ended, one of a
varying dozen who circulated about her. Each of them had at
one time been favored above all others–about half of them still
basked in the solace of occasional sentimental revivals.
Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long
neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which
encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer. Judy
made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without
malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything
mischievous in what she did.
When a new man came to town every one dropped out–dates
were automatically cancelled.
The helpless part of trying to do anything about it was that she
did it all herself. She was not a girl who could be “won” in the
kinetic sense–she was proof against cleverness, she was
proof against charm; if any of these assailed her too strongly
she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis,
and under the magic of her physical splendor the strong as
well as the brilliant played her game and not their own. She
was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by
the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much
youthful love, so many youthful lovers, she had come, in self
defense, to nourish herself wholly from within.
Succeeding Dexter’s first exhilaration came restlessness and
dissatisfaction. The helpless ecstasy of losing himself in her
was opiate rather than tonic. It was fortunate for his work
during the winter that those moments of ecstasy came
infrequently. Early in their acquaintance it had seemed for a
while that there was a deep and spontaneous mutual attraction
that first August, for example–three days of long evenings on
her dusky veranda, of strange wan kisses through the late
afternoon, in shadowy alcoves or behind the protecting trellises
of the garden arbors, of mornings when she was fresh as a
dream and almost shy at meeting him in the clarity of the rising
day. There was all the ecstasy of an engagement about it,
sharpened by his realization that there was no engagement. It
was during those three days that, for the first time, he had
asked her to marry him. She said “maybe some day,” she said
“kiss me,” she said “I’d like to marry you,” she said “I love you”–she said– nothing.
The three days were interrupted by the arrival of a New York
man who visited at her house for half September. To Dexter’s
agony, rumor engaged them. The man was the son of the
president of a great trust company. But at the end of a month it
was reported that Judy was yawning. At a dance one night she
sat all evening in a motor-boat with a local beau, while the New
Yorker searched the club for her frantically. She told the local
5
beau that she was bored with her visitor, and two days later he
left. She was seen with him at the station, and it was reported
that he looked very mournful indeed.
On this note the summer ended. Dexter was twenty-four, and
he found himself increasingly in a position to do as he wished.
He joined two clubs in the city and lived at one of them.
Though he was by no means an integral part of the stag-lines
at these clubs, he managed to be on hand at dances where
Judy Jones was likely to appear. He could have gone out
socially as much as he liked–he was an eligible young man,
now, and popular with down-town fathers. His confessed
devotion to Judy Jones had rather solidified his position. But he
had no social aspirations and rather despised the dancing men
who were always on tap for the Thursday or Saturday parties
and who filled in at dinners with the younger married set.
Already he was playing with the idea of going East to New
York. He wanted to take Judy Jones with him. No disillusion as
to the world in which she had grown up could cure his illusion
as to her desirability.
Remember that–for only in the light of it can what he did for
her be understood.
Eighteen months after he first met Judy Jones he became
engaged to another girl. Her name was Irene Scheerer, and
her father was one of the men who had always believed in
Dexter. Irene was light-haired and sweet and honorable, and a
little stout, and she had two suitors whom she pleasantly
relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry him.
Summer, fall, winter, spring, another summer, another fall– so
much he had given of his active life to the incorrigible lips of
Judy Jones. She had treated him with interest, with
encouragement, with malice, with indifference, with contempt.
She had inflicted on him the innumerable little slights and
indignities possible in such a case–as if in revenge for having
ever cared for him at all. She had beckoned him and yawned
at him and beckoned him again and he had responded often
with bitterness and narrowed eyes. She had brought him
ecstatic happiness and intolerable agony of spirit. She had
caused him untold inconvenience and not a little trouble. She
had insulted him, and she had ridden over him, and she had
played his interest in her against his interest in his work–for
fun. She had done everything to him except to criticise him-
this she had not done– it seemed to him only because it might
have sullied the utter indifference she manifested and sincerely
felt toward him.
When autumn had come and gone again it occurred to him that
he could not have Judy Jones. He had to beat this into his
mind but he convinced himself at last. He lay awake at night for
a while and argued it over. He told himself the trouble and the
pain she had caused him, he enumerated her glaring
deficiencies as a wife. Then he said to himself that he loved
her, and after a while he fell asleep. For a week, lest he
imagined her husky voice over the telephone or her eyes
opposite him at lunch, he worked hard and late, and at night he
went to his office and plotted out his years.
At the end of a week he went to a dance and cut in on her
once. For almost the first time since they had met he did not
ask her to sit out with him or tell her that she was lovely. It hurt
him that she did not miss these things–that was all. He was not
jealous when he saw that there was a new man to-night. He
had been hardened against jealousy long before.
He stayed late at the dance. He sat for an hour with Irene
Scheerer and talked about books and about music. He knew
very little about either. But he was beginning to be master of
his own time now, and he had a rather priggish notion that he-
the young and already fabulously successful Dexter Green-
should know more about such things.
That was in October, when he was twenty-five. In January,
Dexter and Irene became engaged. It was to be announced in
June, and they were to be married three months later.
The Minnesota winter prolonged itself interminably, and it was
almost May when the winds came soft and the snow ran down
into Black Bear Lake at last. For the first time in over a year
Dexter was enjoying a certain tranquility of spirit. Judy Jones
had been in Florida, and afterward in Hot Springs, and
somewhere she had been engaged, and somewhere she had
broken it off. At first, when Dexter had definitely given her up, it
had made him sad that people still linked them together and
asked for news of her, but when he began to be placed at
dinner next to Irene Scheerer people didn’t ask him about her
any more–they told him about her. He ceased to be an
authority on her.
May at last. Dexter walked the streets at night when the
darkness was damp as rain, wondering that so soon, with so
little done, so much of ecstasy had gone from him. May one
year back had been marked by Judy’s poignant, unforgivable,
yet forgiven turbulence–it had been one of those rare times
when he fancied she had grown to care for him. That old
penny’s worth of happiness he had spent for this bushel of
content. He knew that Irene would be no more than a curtain
spread behind him, a hand moving among gleaming tea-cups,
a voice calling to children . . . fire and loveliness were gone,
the magic of nights and the wonder of the varying hours and
seasons . . . slender lips, down-turning, dropping to his lips and
bearing him up into a heaven of eyes. . . . The thing was deep
in him. He was too strong and alive for it to die lightly.
In the middle of May when the weather balanced for a few
days on the thin bridge that led to deep summer he turned in
one night at Irene’s house. Their engagement was to be
announced in a week now–no one would be surprised at it.
And to-night they would sit together on the lounge at the
University Club and look on for an hour at the dancers. It gave
him a sense of solidity to go with her–she was so sturdily
popular, so intensely “great.”
He mounted the steps of the brownstone house and stepped
inside.
“Irene,” he called.
Mrs. Scheerer came out of the living-room to meet him.
“Dexter,” she said, “Irene’s gone up-stairs with a splitting
headache. She wanted to go with you but I made her go to
bed.”
“Nothing serious, I—-”
“Oh, no. She’s going to play golf with you in the morning. You
can spare her for just one night, can’t you, Dexter?”
6
“Everybody missed you.”
Her smile was kind. She and Dexter liked each other. In the
living-room he talked for a moment before he said good-night.
Returning to the University Club, where he had rooms, he
stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the dancers.
He leaned against the door-post, nodded at a man or two-
yawned.
“Hello, darling.”
The familiar voice at his elbow startled him. Judy Jones had
left a man and crossed the room to him–Judy Jones, a slender
enamelled doll in cloth of gold: gold in a band at her head, gold
in two slipper points at her dress’s hem. The fragile glow of her
face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him. A breeze of
warmth and light blew through the room. His hands in the
pockets of his dinner-jacket tightened spasmodically. He was
filled with a sudden excitement.
“When did you get back?” he asked casually.
“Come here and I’ll tell you about it.”
She turned and he followed her. She had been away–he could
have wept at the wonder of her return. She had passed
through enchanted streets, doing things that were like
provocative music. All mysterious happenings, all fresh and
quickening hopes, had gone away with her, come back with
her now.
She turned in the doorway.
“Have you a car here? If you haven’t, I have.”
“I have a coup_.”
In then, with a rustle of golden cloth. He slammed the door.
Into so many cars she had stepped–like this–like that– her
back against the leather, so–her elbow resting on the door–
waiting. She would have been soiled long since had there been
anything to soil her–except herself–but this was her own self
outpouring.
With an effort he forced himself to start the car and back into
the street. This was nothing, he must remember. She had done
this before, and he had put her behind him, as he would have
crossed a bad account from his books.
He drove slowly down-town and, affecting abstraction,
traversed the deserted streets of the business section, peopled
here and there where a movie was giving out its crowd or
where consumptive or pugilistic youth lounged in front of pool
halls. The clink of glasses and the slap of hands on the bars
issued from saloons, cloisters of glazed glass and dirty yellow
light.
She was watching him closely and the silence was
embarrassing, yet in this crisis he could find no casual word
with which to profane the hour. At a convenient turning he
began to zigzag back toward the University Club.
“Have you missed me?” she asked suddenly.
He wondered if she knew of Irene Scheerer. She had been
back only a day–her absence had been almost
contemporaneous with his engagement.
“What a remark!” Judy laughed sadly–without sadness. She
looked at him searchingly. He became absorbed in the
dashboard.
“You’re handsomer than you used to be,” she said thoughtfully.
“Dexter, you have the most rememberable eyes.”
He could have laughed at this, but he did not laugh. It was the
sort of thing that was said to sophomores. Yet it stabbed at
him.
“I’m awfully tired of everything, darling.” She called every one
darling, endowing the endearment with careless, individual
comraderie. “I wish you’d marry me.”
The directness of this confused him. He should have told her
now that he was going to marry another girl, but he could not
tell her. He could as easily have sworn that he had never loved
her.
“I think we’d get along,” she continued, on the same note,
“unless probably you’ve forgotten me and fallen in love with
another girl.”
Her confidence was obviously enormous. She had said, in
effect, that she found such a thing impossible to believe, that if
it were true he had merely committed a childish indiscretion–
and probably to show off. She would forgive him, because it
was not a matter of any moment but rather something to be
brushed aside lightly.
“Of course you could never love anybody but me,” she
continued. “I like the way you love me. Oh, Dexter, have you
forgotten last year?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten.”
“Neither have I! ”
Was she sincerely moved–or was she carried along by the
wave of her own acting?
“I wish we could be like that again,” she said, and he forced
himself to answer:
“I don’t think we can.”
“I suppose not. . . . I hear you’re giving Irene Scheerer a violent
rush.”
There was not the faintest emphasis on the name, yet Dexter
was suddenly ashamed.
“Oh, take me home,” cried Judy suddenly; “I don’t want to go
back to that idiotic dance–with those children.”
7
Then, as he turned up the street that led to the residence
district, Judy began to cry quietly to herself. He had never seen
her cry before.
The dark street lightened, the dwellings of the rich loomed up
around them, he stopped his coup_ in front of the great white
bulk of the Mortimer Joneses house, somnolent, gorgeous,
drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight. Its solidity
startled him. The strong walls, the steel of the girders, the
breadth and beam and pomp of it were there only to bring out
the contrast with the young beauty beside him. It was sturdy to
accentuate her slightness–as if to show what a breeze could
be generated by a butterfly’s wing.
He sat perfectly quiet, his nerves in wild clamor, afraid that if
he moved he would find her irresistibly in his arms. Two tears
had rolled down her wet face and trembled on her upper lip.
“I’m more beautiful than anybody else,” she said brokenly,
“why can’t I be happy?” Her moist eyes tore at his stability–her
mouth turned slowly downward with an exquisite sadness: “I’d
like to marry you if you’ll have me, Dexter. I suppose you think
I’m not worth having, but I’ll be so beautiful for you, Dexter.”
A million phrases of anger, pride, passion, hatred, tenderness
fought on his lips. Then a perfect wave of emotion washed
over him, carrying off with it a sediment of wisdom, of
convention, of doubt, of honor. This was his girl who was
speaking, his own, his beautiful, his pride.
“Won’t you come in?” He heard her draw in her breath sharply.
Waiting.
“All right,” his voice was trembling, “I’ll come in.
V
IT WAS STRANGE that neither when it was over nor a long
time afterward did he regret that night. Looking at it from the
perspective of ten years, the fact that Judy’s flare for him
endured just one month seemed of little importance. Nor did it
matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper
agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Irene Scheerer and
to Irene’s parents, who had befriended him. There was nothing
sufficiently pictorial about Irene’s grief to stamp itself on his
mind.
Dexter was at bottom hard-minded. The attitude of the city on
his action was of no importance to him, not because he was
going to leave the city, but because any outside attitude on the
situation seemed superficial. He was completely indifferent to
popular opinion. Nor, when he had seen that it was no use,
that he did not possess in himself the power to move
fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any malice
toward her. He loved her, and he would love her until the day
he was too old for loving–but he could not have her. So he
tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as
he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.
Even the ultimate falsity of the grounds upon which Judy
terminated the engagement that she did not want to “take him
away” from Irene–Judy, who had wanted nothing else–did not
revolt him. He was beyond any revulsion or any amusement.
He went East in February with the intention of selling out his
laundries and settling in New York–but the war came to
America in March and changed his plans. He returned to the
West, handed over the management of the business to his
partner, and went into the first officers’ training-camp in late
April. He was one of those young thousands who greeted the
war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation
from webs of tangled emotion.
VI
THIS STORY is not his biography, remember, although things
creep into it which have nothing to do with those dreams he
had when he was young. We are almost done with them and
with him now. There is only one more incident to be related
here, and it happens seven years farther on.
It took place in New York, where he had done well–so well that
there were no barriers too high for him. He was thirty-two years
old, and, except for one flying trip immediately after the war, he
had not been West in seven years. A man named Devlin from
Detroit came into his office to see him in a business way, and
then and there this incident occurred, and closed out, so to
speak, this particular side of his life.
“So you’re from the Middle West,” said the man Devlin with
careless curiosity. “That’s funny–I thought men like you were
probably born and raised on Wall Street. You know–wife of
one of my best friends in Detroit came from your city. I was an
usher at the wedding.”
Dexter waited with no apprehension of what was coming.
“Judy Simms,” said Devlin with no particular interest; “Judy
Jones she was once.”
“Yes, I knew her.” A dull impatience spread over him. He had
heard, of course, that she was married–perhaps deliberately
he had heard no more.
“Awfully nice girl,” brooded Devlin meaninglessly, “I’m sort of
sorry for her.”
“Why?” Something in Dexter was alert, receptive, at once.
“Oh, Lud Simms has gone to pieces in a way. I don’t mean he
ill-uses her, but he drinks and runs around ”
“Doesn’t she run around?”
“No. Stays at home with her kids.”
“Oh.”
“She’s a little too old for him,” said Devlin.
“Too old!” cried Dexter. “Why, man, she’s only twenty-seven.”
8
He was possessed with a wild notion of rushing out into the
streets and taking a train to Detroit. He rose to his feet
spasmodically.
“I guess you’re busy,” Devlin apologized quickly. “I didn’t
realize—-”
“No, I’m not busy,” said Dexter, steadying his voice. “I’m not
busy at all. Not busy at all. Did you say she was– twenty
seven? No, I said she was twenty-seven.”
“Yes, you did,” agreed Devlin dryly.
“Go on, then. Go on.”
“What do you mean?”
“About Judy Jones.”
Devlin looked at him helplessly.
“Well, that’s, I told you all there is to it. He treats her like the
devil. Oh, they’re not going to get divorced or anything. When
he’s particularly outrageous she forgives him. In fact, I’m
inclined to think she loves him. She was a pretty girl when she
first came to Detroit.”
A pretty girl! The phrase struck Dexter as ludicrous
“Isn’t she–a pretty girl, any more?”
“Oh, she’s all right.”
“Look here,” said Dexter, sitting down suddenly, “I don’t
understand. You say she was a ‘pretty girl’ and now you say
she’s ‘all right.’ I don’t understand what you mean–Judy Jones
wasn’t a pretty girl, at all. She was a great beauty. Why, I knew
her, I knew her. She was—-”
Devlin laughed pleasantly.
“I’m not trying to start a row,” he said. “I think Judy’s a nice girl
and I like her. I can’t understand how a man like Lud Simms
could fall madly in love with her, but he did.” Then he added:
“Most of the women like her.”
Dexter looked closely at Devlin, thinking wildly that there must
be a reason for this, some insensitivity in the man or some
private malice.
“Lots of women fade just like that,” Devlin snapped his fingers.
“You must have seen it happen. Perhaps I’ve forgotten how
pretty she was at her wedding. I’ve seen her so much since
then, you see. She has nice eyes.”
A sort of dulness settled down upon Dexter. For the first time in
his life he felt like getting very drunk. He knew that he was
laughing loudly at something Devlin had said, but he did not
know what it was or why it was funny. When, in a few minutes,
Devlin went he lay down on his lounge and looked out the
window at the New York sky-line into which the sun was
sinking in dull lovely shades of pink and gold.
He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was
invulnerable at last–but he knew that he had just lost
something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones
and seen her fade away before his eyes.
The dream was gone. Something had been taken from him. In
a sort of panic he pushed the palms of his hands into his eyes
and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry
Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links
and the dry sun and the gold color of her neck’s soft down. And
her mouth damp to his kisses and her eyes plaintive with
melancholy and her freshness like new fine linen in the
morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They
had existed and they existed no longer.
For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his
face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about
mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he
could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go
back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone
down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel
that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne
was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the
richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.
“Long ago,” he said, “long ago, there was something in me, but
now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is
gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no
more.”