The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The griffin classics

• Publisher: The griffin classics
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9782380373738
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Contains Active Table of Contents (HTML)The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Stories 1926–34.

STORIES 1926–34

— ◇ —

Presumption.

The Adolescent Marriage.

The Dance.

Your Way and Mine.

Jacob’s Ladder.

The Love Boat.

The Bowl.

Magnetism.

A Night at the Fair.

Outside the Cabinet-Maker’s.

Forging Ahead.

Basil and Cleopatra.

The Rough Crossing.

At Your Age.

The Swimmers.

The Bridal Party.

One Trip Abroad.

A Snobbish Story.

The Hotel Child.

Indecision.

A New Leaf.

Emotional Bankruptcy.

Between Three and Four.

A Change of Class.

A Freeze-Out.

Six of One—.

Diagnosis.

Flight and Pursuit.

The Rubber Check.

On Schedule.

What a Handsome Pair!

More than just a House.

I Got Shoes.

The Family Bus.

No Flowers.

New Types.

In the Darkest Hour.

Her Last Case.

Presumption.

The Saturday Evening Post (9 January 1926)

Sitting by the window and staring out into the early autumn dusk, San Juan Chandler remembered only that Noel was coming tomorrow; but when, with a romantic sound that was half gasp, half sigh, he turned from the window, snapped on the light and looked at himself in the mirror, his expression became more materially complicated. He leaned closer. Delicacy balked at the abominable word “pimple”, but some such blemish had undoubtedly appeared on his cheek within the last hour, and now formed, with a pair from last week, a distressing constellation of three. Going into the bathroom adjoining his room—Juan had never possessed a bathroom to himself before—he opened a medicine closet, and, after peering about, carefully extracted a promising-looking jar of black ointment and covered each slight protuberance with a black gluey mound. Then, strangely dotted, he returned to the bedroom, put out the light and resumed his vigil over the shadowy garden.

He waited. That roof among the trees on the hill belonged to Noel Garneau’s house. She was coming back to it tomorrow; he would see her there … A loud clock on the staircase inside struck seven. Juan went to the glass and removed the ointment with a handkerchief. To his chagrin the spots were still there, even slightly irritated from the chemical sting of the remedy. That settled it—no more chocolate malted milks or eating between meals during his visit to Culpepper Bay. Taking the lid from the jar of talcum he had observed on the dressing table, he touched the laden puff to his cheek. Immediately his brows and lashes bloomed with snow and he coughed chokingly, observing that the triangle of humiliation was still observable upon his otherwise handsome face.

“Disgusting,” he muttered to himself. “I never saw anything so disgusting.” At twenty, such childish phenomena should be behind him.

Downstairs three gongs, melodious and metallic, hummed and sang. He listened for a moment, fascinated. Then he wiped the powder from his face, ran a comb through his yellow hair and went down to dinner.

Dinner at Cousin Cora’s he had found embarrassing. She was so stiff and formal about things like that, and so familiar about Juan’s private affairs. The first night of his visit he had tried politely to pull out her chair and bumped into the maid; the second night he remembered the experience—but so did the maid, and Cousin Cora seated herself unassisted. At home Juan was accustomed to behave as he liked; like all children of deferent and indulgent mothers, he lacked both confidence and good manners. Tonight there were guests. “This is San Juan Chandler, my cousin’s son—Mrs Holyoke—and Mr. Holyoke.”

The phrase “my cousin’s son” seemed to explain him away, seemed to account for his being in Miss Chandler’s house: “You understand—we must have our poor relations with us occasionally.” But a tone which implied that would be rude—and certainly Cousin Cora, with all her social position, couldn’t be rude.

Mr and Mrs Holyoke acknowledged the introduction politely and coolly and dinner was served. The conversation, dictated by Cousin Cora, bored Juan. It was about the garden and about her father, for whom she lived and who was dying slowly and unwillingly upstairs. Towards the salad Juan was wedged into the conversation by a question from Mr Holyoke and a quick look from his cousin.

“I’m just staying for a week,” he answered politely; “then I’ve got to go home because college opens pretty soon.”

“Where are you at college?”

Juan named his college, adding almost apologetically, “You see, my father went there.”

He wished that he could have answered that he was at Yale or Princeton, where he wanted to go. He was prominent at Henderson and belonged to a good fraternity, but it annoyed him when people occasionally failed to recognize his alma mater’s name.

“I suppose you’ve met all the young people here,” supposed Mrs Holyoke “—my daughter?”

“Oh, yes”—her daughter was the dumpy, ugly girl with the thick spectacles—“oh, yes.” And he added, “I knew some people who lived here before I came.”

“The little Garneau girl,” explained Cousin Cora.

“Oh, yes. Noel Garneau,” agreed Mrs Holyoke. “Her mother’s a great beauty. How old is Noel now? She must be——”

“Seventeen,” supplied Juan; “but she’s old for her age.”

“Juan met her on a ranch last summer. They were on a ranch together. What is it that they call those ranches, Juan?”

“Dude ranches.”

“Dude ranches. Juan and another boy worked for their board.” Juan saw no reason why Cousin Cora should have supplied this information; she continued on an even more annoying note: “Noel’s mother sent her out there to keep her out of mischief, but Juan says the ranch was pretty gay itself.”

Mr Holyoke supplied a welcome change of subject.

“Your name is——” he inquired, smiling and curious.

“San Juan Chandler. My father was wounded in the battle of San Juan Hill and so they called me after it—like Kenesaw Mountain Landis.”

He had explained this so many times that the sentences rolled off automatically—in school he had been called Santy, in college he was Don.

“You must come to dinner while you’re here,” said Mrs Holyoke vaguely.

The conversation slipped away from him as he realized freshly, strongly, that Noel would arrive tomorrow. And she was coming because he was here. She had cut short a visit in the Adirondacks on receipt of his letter. Would she like him now—in this place that was so different from Montana? There was a spaciousness, an air of money and pleasure about Culpepper for which San Juan Chandler—a shy, handsome, spoiled, brilliant, Penniless boy from a small Ohio city—was unprepared. At home, where father was a retired clergyman, Juan went with the nice people. He didn’t realize until this visit to a fashionable New England resort that where there are enough rich families to form a self-sufficient and exclusive group, such a group is invariably formed. On the dude ranch they had all dressed alike; here his ready-made Prince of Wales suit seemed exaggerated in style, his hat correct only in theory—an imitation hat—his very ties only projections of the ineffable Platonic ties which were worn here at Culpepper Bay. Yet all the differences were so small that he was unable quite to discern them.

But from the morning three days ago when he had stepped off the train into a group of young people who were waiting at the station for some friend of their own, he had been uneasy; and Cousin Cora’s introductions, which seemed to foist him horribly upon whomever he was introduced to, did not lessen his discomfort. He thought mechanically that she was being kind, and considered himself lucky that her invitation had coincided with his wild desire to see Noel Garneau again. He did not realize that in three days he had come to hate Cousin Cora’s cold and snobbish patronage.

Noel’s fresh, adventurous voice on the telephone next morning made his own voice quiver with nervous happiness. She would call for him at two and they would spend the afternoon together. All morning he lay in the garden, trying unsuccessfully to renew his summer tan in the mild lemon light of the September sun, sitting up quickly whenever he heard the sound of Cousin Cora’s garden shears at the end of a neighbouring border. He was back in his room, still meddling desperately with the white powder puff, when Noel’s roadster stopped outside and she came up the front walk. Noel’s eyes were dark blue, almost violet, and her lips, Juan had often thought, were like very small, very soft, red cushions—only cushions sounded all wrong, for they were really the most delicate lips in the world. When she talked they parted to the shape of “Oo!” and her eyes opened wide as though she was torn between tears and laughter at the poignancy of what she was saying. Already, at seventeen, she knew that men hung on her words in a way that frightened her. To Juan her most indifferent remarks assumed a highly ponderable significance and begot an intensity in him—a fact which Noel had several times found somewhat of a strain. He ran downstairs, down the gravel path towards her. “Noel, my dear,” he wanted so much to say, “you are the loveliest thing—the loveliest thing. My heart turns over when I see your beautiful face and smell that sweet fresh smell you have around you.” That would have been the precious, the irreplaceable truth. Instead he faltered, “Why, hello, Noel! How are you?… Well, I certainly am glad. Well, is this your car? What kind is it? Well, you certainly look fine.”

And he couldn’t look at her, because when he did his face seemed to him to be working idiotically—like someone else’s face. He got in, they drove off and he made a mighty effort to compose himself; but as her hand left the steering wheel to fall lightly on his, a perverse instinct made him jerk his hand away. Noel perceived the embarrassment and was puzzled and—sorry.

They went to the tennis tournament at the Culpepper Club. He was so little aware of anything except Noel that later he told Cousin Cora they hadn’t seen the tennis, and believed it himself.

Afterwards they loitered about the grounds, stopped by innumerable people who welcomed Noel home. Two men made him uneasy—one a small handsome youth of his own age with shining brown eyes that were bright as the glass eyes of a stuffed owl; the other a tall, languid dandy of twenty-five who was introduced to her, Juan rightly deduced, at his own request.

When they were in a group of girls he was more comfortable. He was able to talk, because being with Noel gave him confidence before these others, and his confidence before the others made him more confident with Noel. The situation improved.

There was one girl, a sharp, pretty blonde named Holly Morgan, with . whom he had spent some facetiously sentimental hours the day before, and in order to show Noel that he had been able to take care of himself before her return he made a point of talking aside to Holly Morgan. Holly was not responsive. Juan was Noel’s property, and though Holly liked him, she did not like him nearly well enough to annoy Noel.

“What time do you want me for dinner, Noel?” she asked.

“Eight o’clock,” said Noel. “Billy Harper’ll call for you.”

Juan felt a twinge of disappointment. He had thought that he and Noel were to be alone for dinner; that afterwards they would have a long talk on the dark veranda and he would kiss her lips as he had upon that never-to-be-forgotten Montana night, and give her his DKE pin to wear. Perhaps the others would leave early—he had told Holly Morgan of his love for Noel; she should have sense enough to know.

At twilight Noel dropped him at Miss Chandler’s gate, lingered for a moment with the engine cut off. The promise of the evening—the first lights in the houses along the bay, the sound of a remote piano, the little coolness in the wind—swung them both up suddenly into that paradise which Juan, drunk with ecstasy and terror, had been unable to evoke.

“Are you glad to see me?” she whispered.

“Am I glad?” The words trembled on his tongue. Miserably he struggled to bend his emotion into a phrase, a look, a gesture, but his mind chilled at the thought that nothing, nothing, nothing could express what he felt in his heart.

“You embarrass me,” he said wretchedly. “I don’t know what to say.” Noel waited, attuned to what she expected, sympathetic, but too young quite to see that behind the mask of egotism, of moody childishness, which the intensity of Juan’s devotion compelled him to wear, there was a tremendous emotion.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Noel said. She was listening to the music now a tune they had danced to in the Adirondacks. The wings of a trance folded about her and the inscrutable someone who waited always in the middle distance loomed down over her with passionate words and dark romantic eyes. Almost mechanically, she started the engine and slipped the gear into first.

“At eight o’clock,” she said, almost abstractedly. “Good-bye, Juan.” The car moved off down the road. At the corner she turned and waved her hand and Juan waved back, happier than he had ever been in his life, his soul dissolved to a sweet gas that buoyed up his body like a balloon. Then the roadster was out of sight and, all unaware, he had lost her.

II.

Cousin Cora’s chauffeur took him to Noel’s door. The other male guest, Billy Harper, was, he discovered, the young man with the bright brown eyes whom he had met that afternoon. Juan was afraid of him; he was on such familiar, facetious terms with the two girls—towards Noel his attitude seemed almost irreverent—that Juan was slighted during the conversation at dinner. They talked of the Adirondacks and they all seemed to know the group who had been there. Noel and Holly spoke of boys at Cambridge and New Haven and of how wonderful it was that they were going to school in New York this whiter. Juan meant to invite Noel to the autumn dance at his college, but he thought that he had better wait and do it in a letter, later on. He was glad when dinner was over.

The girls went upstairs. Juan and Billy Harper smoked.

“She certainly is attractive,” broke out Juan suddenly, his repression bursting into words.

“Who? Noel?”

“Yes.”

“She’s a nice girl,” agreed Harper gravely.

Juan fingered the DKE pin in his pocket.

“She’s wonderful,” he said. “I like Holly Morgan pretty well—I was handing her a sort of line yesterday afternoon—but Noel’s really the most attractive girl I ever knew.”

Harper looked at him curiously, but Juan, released from the enforced and artificial smile of dinner, continued enthusiastically: “Of course it’s silly to fool with two girls. I mean, you’ve got to be careful not to get in too deep.”

Billy Harper didn’t answer. Noel and Holly came downstairs. Holly suggested bridge, but Juan didn’t play bridge, so they sat talkin...

Table of contents

• Stories 1909–17.
• This Side of Paradise.
• Flappers and Philosophers.
• Stories 1920–25.
• The Beautiful and Damned.
• Tales of the Jazz Age.
• The Vegetable.
• The Great Gatsby.
• All the Sad Young Men.
• Stories 1926–34.
• Tender is the Night.
• Taps at Reveille.
• Stories 1935–40.
• The Love of the Last Tycoon.
• Stories 1941–.
• The Pat Hobby Stories.
• Miscellaneous Writings.