Winter Dreams PDF by F. Scott Fitzgerald

WINTER DREAMS "I decided I was too old." by Dexter handed in his "A Class" badge, collected what money F. Scott Fitzgerald was due him from the caddy...

WINTER DREAMS "I decided I was too old." by Dexter handed in his "A Class" badge, collected what money F. Scott Fitzgerald was due him from the caddy master, and walked home to Black Bear Village. SOME OF THE CADDIES were poor as sin and lived in one- "The best----caddy I ever saw," shouted Mr. Mortimer Jones room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but over a drink that afternoon. "Never lost a ball! Willing! Dexter Green's father owned the second best grocery-store in Intelligent! Quiet! Honest! Grateful!" Black Bear--the best one was "The Hub," patronized by the wealthy people from Sherry Island--and Dexter caddied only The little girl who had done this was eleven--beautifully ugly as for pocket-money. 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 In the fall when the days became crisp and gray, and the long number of men. The spark, however, was perceptible. There Minnesota winter shut down like the white lid of a box, Dexter's was a general ungodliness in the way her lips twisted ,down at skis moved over the snow that hid the fairways of the golf the corners when she smiled, and in the--Heaven help us!--in course. At these times the country gave him a feeling of the almost passionate quality of her eyes. Vitality is born early profound melancholy--it offended him that the links should lie in in such women. It was utterly in evidence now, shining through enforced fallowness, haunted by ragged sparrows for the long her thin frame in a sort of glow. season. It was dreary, too, that on the tees where the gay colors fluttered in summer there were now only the desolate She had come eagerly out on to the course at nine o'clock with sand-boxes knee-deep in crusted ice. When he crossed the a white linen nurse and five small new golf-clubs in a white hills the wind blew cold as misery, and if the sun was out he canvas bag which the nurse was carrying. When Dexter first tramped with his eyes squinted up against the hard saw her she was standing by the caddy house, rather ill at dimensionless glare. ease and trying to conceal the fact by engaging her nurse in an obviously unnatural conversation graced by startling and In April the winter ceased abruptly. The snow ran down into irrelevant grimaces from herself. Black Bear Lake scarcely tarrying for the early golfers to brave the season with red and black balls. Without elation, without an "Well, it's certainly a nice day, Hilda," Dexter heard her say. interval of moist glory, the cold was gone. She drew down the corners of her mouth, smiled, and glanced furtively around, her eyes in transit falling for an instant on Dexter knew that there was something dismal about this Dexter. Northern spring, just as he knew there was something gorgeous about the fall. Fall made him clinch his hands and Then to the nurse: 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 "Well, I guess there aren't very many people out here this a sort of ecstatic triumph, and in this mood the fleeting brilliant morning, are there?" impressions of the summer at Sherry Island were ready grist to his mill. He became a golf champion and defeated Mr. T. A. The smile again--radiant, blatantly artificial--convincing. Hedrick in a marvellous match played a hundred times over the fairways of his imagination, a match each detail of which he "I don't know what we're supposed to do now," said the nurse, changed about untiringly--sometimes he won with almost looking nowhere in particular. 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 "Oh, that's all right. I'll fix it up. Sherry Island Golf Club-- or perhaps, surrounded by an admiring crowd, he gave an exhibition of fancy diving from the Dexter stood perfectly still, his mouth slightly ajar. He knew spring-board of the club raft.... Among those who watched that if he moved forward a step his stare would be in her line of him in open-mouthed wonder was Mr. Mortimer Jones. 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. And one day it came to pass that Mr. Jones--himself and not Now he remembered having seen her several times the year his ghost-- came up to Dexter with tears in his eyes and said before in bloomers. 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 Suddenly, involuntarily, he laughed, a short abrupt laugh-- every other caddy in the club lost one ball a hole for him-- then, startled by himself, he turned and began to walk quickly regularly---- away. "No, sir," said Dexter decisively, "I don't want to caddy any "Boy!" more." Then, after a pause: "I'm too old." Dexter stopped. "You're not more than fourteen. Why the devil did you decide just this morning that you wanted to quit? You promised that "Boy----" next week you'd go over to the State tournament with me." 1 Beyond question he was addressed. Not only that, but he was "I don't think I'll go out to-day," said Dexter. treated to that absurd smile, that preposterous smile--the memory of which at least a dozen men were to carry into "You don't----" middle age. "I think I'll quit." "Boy, do you know where the golf teacher is?" The enormity of his decision frightened him. He was a favorite "He's giving a lesson." caddy, and the thirty dollars a month he earned through the summer were not to be made elsewhere around the lake. But "Well, do you know where the caddy-master is?" he had received a strong emotional shock, and his perturbation required a violent and immediate outlet. "He isn't here yet this morning." It is not so simple as that, either. As so frequently would be the "Oh." For a moment this baffled her. She stood alternately on case in the future, Dexter was unconsciously dictated to by his her right and left foot. winter dreams. "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." II Here she was stopped by an ominous glance from Miss Jones, NOW, OF COURSE, the quality and the seasonability of these followed immediately by the smile. winter dreams varied, but the stuff of them remained. They persuaded Dexter several years later to pass up a business "There aren't any caddies here except me," said Dexter to the course at the State university--his father, prospering now, nurse, "and I got to stay here in charge until the caddy-master would have paid his way--for the precarious advantage of gets here." 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 "Oh." concerned at first with musings on the rich, that there was anything merely snobbish in the boy. He wanted not Miss Jones and her retinue now withdrew, and at a proper association with glittering things and glittering people--he distance from Dexter became involved in a heated wanted the glittering things themselves. Often he reached out conversation, which was concluded by Miss Jones taking one for the best without knowing why he wanted it--and sometimes of the clubs and hitting it on the ground with violence. For he ran up against the mysterious denials and prohibitions in further emphasis she raised it again and was about to bring it which life indulges. It is with one of those denials and not with down smartly upon the nurse's bosom, when the nurse seized his career as a whole that this story deals. the club and twisted it from her hands. He made money. It was rather amazing. After college he went "You damn little mean old thing!" cried Miss Jones wildly. to the city from which Black Bear Lake draws its wealthy patrons. When he was only twenty-three and had been there Another argument ensued. Realizing that the elements of the not quite two years, there were already people who liked to comedy were implied in the scene, Dexter several times began say: "Now there's a boy--" All about him rich men's sons were to laugh, but each time restrained the laugh before it reached peddling bonds precariously, or investing patrimonies audibility. He could not resist the monstrous conviction that the precariously, or plodding through the two dozen volumes of the little girl was justified in beating the nurse. "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. The situation was resolved by the fortuitous appearance of the caddymaster, who was appealed to immediately by the nurse. It was a small laundry when he went into it but Dexter made a specialty of learning how the English washed fine woollen golf- "Miss Jones is to have a little caddy, and this one says he can't stockings without shrinking them, and within a year he was go." catering to the trade that wore knickerbockers. Men were insisting that their Shetland hose and sweaters go to his "Mr. McKenna said I was to wait here till you came," said laundry just as they had insisted on a caddy who could find Dexter quickly. 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 "Well, he's here now." Miss Jones smiled cheerfully at the in his section of the country. It was then that he sold out and caddy-master. Then she dropped her bag and set off at a went to New York. But the part of his story that concerns us haughty mince toward the first tee. goes back to the days when he was making his first big success. "Well?" The caddy-master turned to Dexter. "What you standing there like a dummy for? Go pick up the young lady's When he was twenty-three Mr. Hart--one of the gray-haired clubs." 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 She swung her mashie impatiently and without interest, signed his name one day on the register, and that afternoon pitching the ball into a sand-pit on the other side of the green. played golf in a foursome with Mr. Hart and Mr. Sandwood and With a quick, insincere smile and a careless "Thank you!" she Mr. T. A. Hedrick. He did not consider it necessary to remark went on after it. 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 "That Judy Jones!" remarked Mr. Hedrick on the next tee, as he found himself glancing at the four caddies who trailed them, they waited--some moments--for her to play on ahead. "All she trying to catch a gleam or gesture that would remind him of needs is to be turned up and spanked for six months and then himself, that would lessen the gap which lay between his to be married off to an oldfashioned cavalry captain." present and his past. "My God, she's good-looking!" said Mr. Sandwood, who was It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar just over thirty. 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 "Good-looking!" cried Mr. Hedrick contemptuously, "she always and not even a good golfer any more. looks as if she wanted to be kissed! Turning those big cow- eyes on every calf in town!" Then, because of a ball Mr. Hart lost near the fifteenth green, an enormous thing happened. While they were searching the It was doubtful if Mr. Hedrick intended a reference to the stiff grasses of the rough there was a clear call of "Fore!" from maternal instinct. 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 "She'd play pretty good golf if she'd try," said Mr. Sandwood. caught Mr. T. A. Hedrick in the abdomen. "She has no form," said Mr. Hedrick solemnly. "By Gad!" cried Mr. T. A. Hedrick, "they ought to put some of these crazy women off the course. It's getting to be "She has a nice figure," said Mr. Sandwood. outrageous." "Better thank the Lord she doesn't drive a swifter ball," said Mr. A head and a voice came up together over the hill: Hart, winking at Dexter. "Do you mind if we go through?" Later in the afternoon the sun went down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dry, rustling "You hit me in the stomach!" declared Mr. Hedrick wildly. night of Western summer. Dexter watched from the veranda of the Golf Club, watched the even overlap of the waters in the "Did I?" The girl approached the group of men. "I'm sorry. I little wind, silver molasses under the harvest-moon. Then the yelled 'Fore !'" 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 Her glance fell casually on each of the men--then scanned the canvas of the springboard. fairway for her ball. There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights "Did I bounce into the rough?" around the lake were gleaming. Over on a dark peninsula a piano was playing the songs of last summer and of summers It was impossible to determine whether this question was before that-- songs from "Chin-Chin" and "The Count of ingenuous or malicious. In a moment, however, she left no Luxemburg" and "The Chocolate Soldier"--and because the doubt, for as her partner came up over the hill she called sound of a piano over a stretch of water had always seemed cheerfully: beautiful to Dexter he lay perfectly quiet and listened. "Here I am! I'd have gone on the green except that I hit The tune the piano was playing at that moment had been gay something." and new five years before when Dexter was a sophomore at college. They had played it at a prom once when he could not As she took her stance for a short mashie shot, Dexter looked afford the luxury of proms, and he had stood outside the at her closely. She wore a blue gingham dress, rimmed at gymnasium and listened. The sound of the tune precipitated in throat and shoulders with a white edging that accentuated her him a sort of ecstasy and it was with that ecstasy he viewed tan. The quality of exaggeration, of thinness, which had made what happened to him now. It was a mood of intense her passionate eyes and down-turning mouth absurd at eleven, appreciation, a sense that, for once, he was magnificently was gone now. She was arrestingly beautiful. The color in her attune to life and that everything about him was radiating a cheeks was centered like the color in a picture--it was not a brightness and a glamour he might never know again. "high" color, but a sort of fluctuating and feverish warmth, so shaded that it seemed at any moment it would recede and A low, pale oblong detached itself suddenly from the darkness disappear. This color and the mobility of her mouth gave a of the Island, spitting forth the reverberate sound of a racing continual impression of flux, of intense life, of passionate motor-boat. Two white streamers of cleft water rolled vitality--balanced only partially by the sad luxury of her eyes. 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 NEXT EVENING while he waited for her to come down-stairs, regarding him over the lengthening space of water--then the Dexter peopled the soft deep summer room and the sun-porch boat had gone by and was sweeping in an immense and that opened from it with the men who had already loved Judy purposeless circle of spray round and round in the middle of Jones. He knew the sort of men they were--the men who when the lake. With equal eccentricity one of the circles flattened out he first went to college had entered from the great prep and headed back toward the raft. schools with graceful clothes and the deep tan of healthy summers. He had seen that, in one sense, he was better than "Who's that?" she called, shutting off her motor. She was so these men. He was newer and stronger. Yet in acknowledging near now that Dexter could see her bathing-suit, which to himself that he wished his children to be like them he was consisted apparently of pink rompers. admitting that he was but the rough, strong stuff from which they eternally sprang. The nose of the boat bumped the raft, and as the latter tilted rakishly he was precipitated toward her. With different degrees When the time had come for him to wear good clothes, he had of interest they recognized each other. 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 "Aren't you one of those men we played through this university, that set it off from other universities. He recognized afternoon?" she demanded. the value to him of such a mannerism and he had adopted it; he knew that to be careless in dress and manner required He was. more confidence than to be careful. But carelessness was for his children. His mother's name had been Krimslich. She was a "Well, do you know how to drive a motor-boat? Because if you Bohemian of the peasant class and she had talked broken do I wish you'd drive this one so I can ride on the surf-board English to the end of her days. Her son must keep to the set behind. My name is Judy Jones"--she favored him with an patterns. absurd smirk--rather, what tried to be a smirk, for, twist her mouth as she might, it was not grotesque, it was merely At a little after seven Judy Jones came down-stairs. She wore beautiful--"and I live in a house over there on the Island, and in a blue silk afternoon dress, and he was disappointed at first that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at that she had not put on something more elaborate. This feeling the door I drove out of the dock because he says I'm his ideal." was accentuated when, after a brief greeting, she went to the door of a butler's pantry and pushing it open called: "You can There was a fish jumping and a star shining and the lights serve dinner, Martha." He had rather expected that a butler around the lake were gleaming. Dexter sat beside Judy Jones would announce dinner, that there would be a cocktail. Then and she explained how her boat was driven. Then she was in he put these thoughts behind him as they sat down side by the water, swimming to the floating surfboard with a sinuous side on a lounge and looked at each other. crawl. Watching her was without effort to the eye, watching a branch waving or a sea-gull flying. Her arms, burned to "Father and mother won't be here," she said thoughtfully. butternut, moved sinuously among the dull platinum ripples, elbow appearing first, casting the forearm back with a cadence He remembered the last time he had seen her father, and he of falling water, then reaching out and down, stabbing a path was glad the parents were not to be here to-night--they might ahead. wonder who he was. He had been born in Keeble, a Minnesota village fifty miles farther north, and he always gave Keeble as They moved out into the lake; turning, Dexter saw that she was his home instead of Black Bear Village. Country towns were kneeling on the low rear of the now uptilted surf-board. well enough to come from if they weren't inconveniently in sight and used as footstools by fashionable lakes. "Go faster," she called, "fast as it'll go." They talked of his university, which she had visited frequently Obediently he jammed the lever forward and the white spray during the past two years, and of the near-by city which mounted at the bow. When he looked around again the girl supplied Sherry Island with its patrons, and whither Dexter was standing up on the rushing board, her arms spread wide, would return next day to his prospering laundries. her eyes lifted toward the moon. During dinner she slipped into a moody depression which gave "It's awful cold," she shouted. "What's your name?" 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 He told her. 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 "Well, why don't you come to dinner to-morrow night?" smile than an invitation to a kiss. His heart turned over like the fly-wheel of the boat, and, for the Then, after dinner, she led him out on the dark sun-porch and second time, her casual whim gave a new direction to his life. deliberately changed the atmosphere. "Do you mind if I weep a little?" she said. III "I'm afraid I'm boring you," he responded quickly. 4 "You're not. I like you. But I've just had a terrible afternoon. When, as Judy's head lay against his shoulder that first night, There was a man I cared about, and this afternoon he told me she whispered, "I don't know what's the matter with me. Last out of a clear sky that he was poor as a church-mouse. He'd night I thought I was in love with a man and to-night I think I'm never even hinted it before. Does this sound horribly in love with you----"--it seemed to him a beautiful and romantic mundane?" thing to say. It was the exquisite excitability that for the moment he controlled and owned. But a week later he was "Perhaps he was afraid to tell you." 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. "Suppose he was," she answered. "He didn't start right. You Dexter became enormously upset and was scarcely able to be see, if I'd thought of him as poor--well, I've been mad about decently civil to the other people present. When she assured loads of poor men, and fully intended to marry them all. But in him that she had not kissed the other man, he knew she was this case, I hadn't thought of him that way, and my interest in lying--yet he was glad that she had taken the trouble to lie to him wasn't strong enough to survive the shock. As if a girl him. calmly informed her fianc_ that she was a widow. He might not object to widows, but---- He was, as he found before the summer ended, one of a varying dozen who circulated about her. Each of them had at "Let's start right," she interrupted herself suddenly. "Who are one time been favored above all others--about half of them still you, anyhow?" basked in the solace of occasional sentimental revivals. Whenever one showed signs of dropping out through long For a moment Dexter hesitated. Then: neglect, she granted him a brief honeyed hour, which encouraged him to tag along for a year or so longer. Judy "I'm nobody," he announced. "My career is largely a matter of made these forays upon the helpless and defeated without futures." malice, indeed half unconscious that there was anything mischievous in what she did. "Are you poor?" When a new man came to town every one dropped out--dates were automatically cancelled. "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." 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 There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her proof against charm; if any of these assailed her too strongly mouth drooped and an almost imperceptible sway brought her she would immediately resolve the affair to a physical basis, closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in Dexter's and under the magic of her physical splendor the strong as throat, and he waited breathless for the experiment, facing the well as the brilliant played her game and not their own. She unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the was entertained only by the gratification of her desires and by elements of their lips. Then he saw--she communicated her the direct exercise of her own charm. Perhaps from so much excitement to him, lavishly, deeply, with kisses that were not a youthful love, so many youthful lovers, she had come, in self- promise but a fulfillment. They aroused in him not hunger defense, to nourish herself wholly from within. demanding renewal but surfeit that would demand more surfeit... kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back nothing at all. 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 It did not take him many hours to decide that he had wanted during the winter that those moments of ecstasy came Judy Jones ever since he was a proud, desirous little boy. 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 IV 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 IT BEGAN like that--and continued, with varying shades of day. There was all the ecstasy of an engagement about it, intensity, on such a note right up to the d_nouement. Dexter sharpened by his realization that there was no engagement. It surrendered a part of himself to the most direct and was during those three days that, for the first time, he had unprincipled personality with which he had ever come in asked her to marry him. She said "maybe some day," she said contact. Whatever Judy wanted, she went after with the full "kiss me," she said "I'd like to marry you," she said "I love you"- pressure of her charm. There was no divergence of method, no -she said-- nothing. jockeying for position or premeditation of effects--there was a very little mental side to any of her affairs. She simply made The three days were interrupted by the arrival of a New York men conscious to the highest degree of her physical man who visited at her house for half September. To Dexter's loveliness. Dexter had no desire to change her. Her agony, rumor engaged them. The man was the son of the deficiencies were knit up with a passionate energy that president of a great trust company. But at the end of a month it transcended and justified them. 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 He stayed late at the dance. He sat for an hour with Irene left. She was seen with him at the station, and it was reported Scheerer and talked about books and about music. He knew that he looked very mournful indeed. 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-- On this note the summer ended. Dexter was twenty-four, and the young and already fabulously successful Dexter Green-- he found himself increasingly in a position to do as he wished. should know more about such things. 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 That was in October, when he was twenty-five. In January, at these clubs, he managed to be on hand at dances where Dexter and Irene became engaged. It was to be announced in Judy Jones was likely to appear. He could have gone out June, and they were to be married three months later. socially as much as he liked--he was an eligible young man, now, and popular with down-town fathers. His confessed The Minnesota winter prolonged itself interminably, and it was devotion to Judy Jones had rather solidified his position. But he almost May when the winds came soft and the snow ran down had no social aspirations and rather despised the dancing men into Black Bear Lake at last. For the first time in over a year who were always on tap for the Thursday or Saturday parties Dexter was enjoying a certain tranquility of spirit. Judy Jones and who filled in at dinners with the younger married set. had been in Florida, and afterward in Hot Springs, and Already he was playing with the idea of going East to New somewhere she had been engaged, and somewhere she had York. He wanted to take Judy Jones with him. No disillusion as broken it off. At first, when Dexter had definitely given her up, it to the world in which she had grown up could cure his illusion had made him sad that people still linked them together and as to her desirability. 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 Remember that--for only in the light of it can what he did for any more--they told him about her. He ceased to be an her be understood. authority on her. Eighteen months after he first met Judy Jones he became May at last. Dexter walked the streets at night when the engaged to another girl. Her name was Irene Scheerer, and darkness was damp as rain, wondering that so soon, with so her father was one of the men who had always believed in little done, so much of ecstasy had gone from him. May one Dexter. Irene was light-haired and sweet and honorable, and a year back had been marked by Judy's poignant, unforgivable, little stout, and she had two suitors whom she pleasantly yet forgiven turbulence--it had been one of those rare times relinquished when Dexter formally asked her to marry him. when he fancied she had grown to care for him. That old penny's worth of happiness he had spent for this bushel of Summer, fall, winter, spring, another summer, another fall-- so content. He knew that Irene would be no more than a curtain much he had given of his active life to the incorrigible lips of spread behind him, a hand moving among gleaming tea-cups, Judy Jones. She had treated him with interest, with a voice calling to children... fire and loveliness were gone, encouragement, with malice, with indifference, with contempt. the magic of nights and the wonder of the varying hours and She had inflicted on him the innumerable little slights and seasons... slender lips, down-turning, dropping to his lips and indignities possible in such a case--as if in revenge for having bearing him up into a heaven of eyes.... The thing was deep ever cared for him at all. She had beckoned him and yawned in him. He was too strong and alive for it to die lightly. at him and beckoned him again and he had responded often with bitterness and narrowed eyes. She had brought him In the middle of May when the weather balanced for a few ecstatic happiness and intolerable agony of spirit. She had days on the thin bridge that led to deep summer he turned in caused him untold inconvenience and not a little trouble. She one night at Irene's house. Their engagement was to be had insulted him, and she had ridden over him, and she had announced in a week now--no one would be surprised at it. played his interest in her against his interest in his work--for And to-night they would sit together on the lounge at the fun. She had done everything to him except to criticise him-- University Club and look on for an hour at the dancers. It gave this she had not done-- it seemed to him only because it might him a sense of solidity to go with her--she was so sturdily have sullied the utter indifference she manifested and sincerely popular, so intensely "great." felt toward him. He mounted the steps of the brownstone house and stepped When autumn had come and gone again it occurred to him that inside. 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 "Irene," he called. 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 Mrs. Scheerer came out of the living-room to meet him. her, and after a while he fell asleep. For a week, lest he imagined her husky voice over the telephone or her eyes "Dexter," she said, "Irene's gone up-stairs with a splitting opposite him at lunch, he worked hard and late, and at night he headache. She wanted to go with you but I made her go to went to his office and plotted out his years. bed." At the end of a week he went to a dance and cut in on her "Nothing serious, I----" 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 "Oh, no. She's going to play golf with you in the morning. You him that she did not miss these things--that was all. He was not can spare her for just one night, can't you, Dexter?" jealous when he saw that there was a new man to-night. He had been hardened against jealousy long before. 6 Her smile was kind. She and Dexter liked each other. In the "Everybody missed you." living-room he talked for a moment before he said good-night. He wondered if she knew of Irene Scheerer. She had been Returning to the University Club, where he had rooms, he back only a day--her absence had been almost stood in the doorway for a moment and watched the dancers. contemporaneous with his engagement. He leaned against the door-post, nodded at a man or two-- yawned. "What a remark!" Judy laughed sadly--without sadness. She looked at him searchingly. He became absorbed in the "Hello, darling." dashboard. The familiar voice at his elbow startled him. Judy Jones had "You're handsomer than you used to be," she said thoughtfully. left a man and crossed the room to him--Judy Jones, a slender "Dexter, you have the most rememberable eyes." 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 He could have laughed at this, but he did not laugh. It was the face seemed to blossom as she smiled at him. A breeze of sort of thing that was said to sophomores. Yet it stabbed at warmth and light blew through the room. His hands in the him. pockets of his dinner-jacket tightened spasmodically. He was filled with a sudden excitement. "I'm awfully tired of everything, darling." She called every one darling, endowing the endearment with careless, individual "When did you get back?" he asked casually. comraderie. "I wish you'd marry me." "Come here and I'll tell you about it." The directness of this confused him. He should have told her now that he was going to marry another girl, but he could not She turned and he followed her. She had been away--he could tell her. He could as easily have sworn that he had never loved have wept at the wonder of her return. She had passed her. through enchanted streets, doing things that were like provocative music. All mysterious happenings, all fresh and "I think we'd get along," she continued, on the same note, quickening hopes, had gone away with her, come back with "unless probably you've forgotten me and fallen in love with her now. another girl." She turned in the doorway. Her confidence was obviously enormous. She had said, in effect, that she found such a thing impossible to believe, that if "Have you a car here? If you haven't, I have." it were true he had merely committed a childish indiscretion-- and probably to show off. She would forgive him, because it "I have a coup_." was not a matter of any moment but rather something to be brushed aside lightly. In then, with a rustle of golden cloth. He slammed the door. Into so many cars she had stepped--like this--like that-- her "Of course you could never love anybody but me," she back against the leather, so--her elbow resting on the door-- continued. "I like the way you love me. Oh, Dexter, have you waiting. She would have been soiled long since had there been forgotten last year?" anything to soil her--except herself--but this was her own self outpouring. "No, I haven't forgotten." With an effort he forced himself to start the car and back into "Neither have I! " the street. This was nothing, he must remember. She had done this before, and he had put her behind him, as he would have Was she sincerely moved--or was she carried along by the crossed a bad account from his books. wave of her own acting? He drove slowly down-town and, affecting abstraction, "I wish we could be like that again," she said, and he forced traversed the deserted streets of the business section, peopled himself to answer: 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 "I don't think we can." issued from saloons, cloisters of glazed glass and dirty yellow light. "I suppose not.... I hear you're giving Irene Scheerer a violent rush." She was watching him closely and the silence was embarrassing, yet in this crisis he could find no casual word There was not the faintest emphasis on the name, yet Dexter with which to profane the hour. At a convenient turning he was suddenly ashamed. began to zigzag back toward the University Club. "Oh, take me home," cried Judy suddenly; "I don't want to go "Have you missed me?" she asked suddenly. back to that idiotic dance--with those children." 7 Then, as he turned up the street that led to the residence away" from Irene--Judy, who had wanted nothing else--did not district, Judy began to cry quietly to herself. He had never seen revolt him. He was beyond any revulsion or any amusement. her cry before. He went East in February with the intention of selling out his The dark street lightened, the dwellings of the rich loomed up laundries and settling in New York--but the war came to around them, he stopped his coup_ in front of the great white America in March and changed his plans. He returned to the bulk of the Mortimer Joneses house, somnolent, gorgeous, West, handed over the management of the business to his drenched with the splendor of the damp moonlight. Its solidity partner, and went into the first officers' training-camp in late startled him. The strong walls, the steel of the girders, the April. He was one of those young thousands who greeted the breadth and beam and pomp of it were there only to bring out war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation the contrast with the young beauty beside him. It was sturdy to from webs of tangled emotion. 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 VI he moved he would find her irresistibly in his arms. Two tears had rolled down her wet face and trembled on her upper lip. THIS STORY is not his biography, remember, although things creep into it which have nothing to do with those dreams he "I'm more beautiful than anybody else," she said brokenly, had when he was young. We are almost done with them and "why can't I be happy?" Her moist eyes tore at his stability--her with him now. There is only one more incident to be related mouth turned slowly downward with an exquisite sadness: "I'd here, and it happens seven years farther on. 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." 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 A million phrases of anger, pride, passion, hatred, tenderness old, and, except for one flying trip immediately after the war, he fought on his lips. Then a perfect wave of emotion washed had not been West in seven years. A man named Devlin from over him, carrying off with it a sediment of wisdom, of Detroit came into his office to see him in a business way, and convention, of doubt, of honor. This was his girl who was then and there this incident occurred, and closed out, so to speaking, his own, his beautiful, his pride. speak, this particular side of his life. "Won't you come in?" He heard her draw in her breath sharply. "So you're from the Middle West," said the man Devlin with careless curiosity. "That's funny--I thought men like you were Waiting. 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 "All right," his voice was trembling, "I'll come in. usher at the wedding." Dexter waited with no apprehension of what was coming. V "Judy Simms," said Devlin with no particular interest; "Judy Jones she was once." IT WAS STRANGE that neither when it was over nor a long time afterward did he regret that night. Looking at it from the "Yes, I knew her." A dull impatience spread over him. He had perspective of ten years, the fact that Judy's flare for him heard, of course, that she was married--perhaps deliberately endured just one month seemed of little importance. Nor did it he had heard no more. matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Irene Scheerer and "Awfully nice girl," brooded Devlin meaninglessly, "I'm sort of to Irene's parents, who had befriended him. There was nothing sorry for her." sufficiently pictorial about Irene's grief to stamp itself on his mind. "Why?" Something in Dexter was alert, receptive, at once. Dexter was at bottom hard-minded. The attitude of the city on "Oh, Lud Simms has gone to pieces in a way. I don't mean he his action was of no importance to him, not because he was ill-uses her, but he drinks and runs around " 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, "Doesn't she run around?" that he did not possess in himself the power to move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any malice "No. Stays at home with her kids." 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 "Oh." tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness. "She's a little too old for him," said Devlin. Even the ultimate falsity of the grounds upon which Judy terminated the engagement that she did not want to "take him "Too old!" cried Dexter. "Why, man, she's only twenty-seven." 8 He was possessed with a wild notion of rushing out into the He had thought that having nothing else to lose he was streets and taking a train to Detroit. He rose to his feet invulnerable at last--but he knew that he had just lost spasmodically. something more, as surely as if he had married Judy Jones and seen her fade away before his eyes. "I guess you're busy," Devlin apologized quickly. "I didn't realize----" 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 "No, I'm not busy," said Dexter, steadying his voice. "I'm not and tried to bring up a picture of the waters lapping on Sherry busy at all. Not busy at all. Did you say she was-- twenty- Island and the moonlit veranda, and gingham on the golf-links seven? No, I said she was twenty-seven." 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 "Yes, you did," agreed Devlin dryly. morning. Why, these things were no longer in the world! They had existed and they existed no longer. "Go on, then. Go on." For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his "What do you mean?" face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he "About Judy Jones." 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 Devlin looked at him helplessly. that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the "Well, that's, I told you all there is to it. He treats her like the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished. devil. Oh, they're not going to get divorced or anything. When he's particularly outrageous she forgives him. In fact, I'm "Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but inclined to think she loves him. She was a pretty girl when she now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is first came to Detroit." gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more." A pretty girl! The phrase struck Dexter as ludicrous "Isn't she--a pretty girl, any more?" "Oh, she's all right." Copyright 1998, the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina. URL http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/winter/winter.html "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. 9