TENDER IS THE NIGHT (The Original 1934 Edition). Фрэнсис Скотт Фицджеральд
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noted with embarrassed enthusiasm the particular yellowness of her yellow hair.
“Does this old place look like it?” she said cheerfully. “No, you perceive in me a daughter of the countryside. Color—one hundred percent spontaneous—in the daytime anyhow. Suitors—promising young barbers from the neighboring village with somebody’s late hair still clinging to their coat-sleeves.”
“Your daddy oughtn’t to let you go with a country barber,” said the tourist disapprovingly. He considered—”You ought to be a New York society girl.”
“No.” Amanthis shook her head sadly. “I’m too good-looking. To be a New York society girl you have to have a long nose and projecting teeth and dress like the actresses did three years ago.”
Jim began to tap his foot rhythmically on the porch and in a moment Amanthis discovered that she was unconsciously doing the same thing.
“Stop!” she commanded, “Don’t make me do that.”
He looked down at his foot.
“Excuse me,” he said humbly. “I don’t know—it’s just something I do.”
This intense discussion was now interrupted by Hugo who appeared on the steps bearing a hammer and a handful of nails.
Mr. Powell arose unwillingly and looked at his watch.
“We got to go, daggone it,” he said, frowning heavily. “See here. Wouldn’t you like to be a New York society girl and go to those dances an’ all, like you read about, where they throw gold pieces away?”
She looked at him with a curious expression.
“Don’t your folks know some society people?” he went on.
“All I’ve got’s my daddy—and, you see, he’s a judge.”
“That’s too bad,” he agreed.
She got herself by some means from the hammock and they went down toward the road, side by side.
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes open for you and let you know,” he persisted. “A pretty girl like you ought to go around in society. We may be kin to each other, you see, and us Powells ought to stick together.”
“What are you going to do in New York?”
They were now almost at the gate and the tourist pointed to the two depressing sectors of his automobile.
“I’m goin’ to drive a taxi. This one right here. Only it’s got so it busts in two all the time.”
“You’re going to drive that in New York?”
Jim looked at her uncertainly. Such a pretty girl should certainly control the habit of shaking all over upon no provocation at all.
“Yes mamm,” he said with dignity.
Amanthis watched while they placed the upper half of the car upon the lower half and nailed it severely into place. Then Mr. Powell took the wheel and his body-servant climbed in beside him.
“I’m cer’nly very much obliged to you indeed for your hospitality. Convey my respects to your father.”
“I will,” she assured him. “Come back and see me, if you don’t mind barbers in the room.”
He dismissed this unpleasant thought with a gesture.
“Your company would always be charming.” He put the car into gear as though to drown out the temerity of his parting speech. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen up north—by far.”
Then with a groan and a rattle Mr. Powell of southern Georgia with his own car and his own body-servant and his own ambitions and his own private cloud of dust continued on north for the summer.
She thought she would never see him again. She lay in her hammock, slim and beautiful, opened her left eye slightly to see June come in and then closed it and retired contentedly back into her dreams.
But one day when the midsummer vines had climbed the precarious sides of the red swing in the lawn, Mr. Jim Powell of Tarleton, Georgia, came vibrating back into her life. They sat on the wide porch as before.
“I’ve got a great scheme,” he told her.
“Did you drive your taxi like you said?”
“Yes mamm, but the business was right bad. I waited around in front of all those hotels and theaters an’ nobody ever got in.”
“Nobody?”
“Well, one night there was some drunk fellas they got in, only just as I was gettin’ started my automobile came apart. And another night it was rainin’ and there wasn’t no other taxis and a lady got in because she said she had to go a long ways. But before we got there she made me stop and she got out. She seemed kinda mad and she went walkin’ off in the rain. Mighty proud lot of people they got up in New York.”
“And so you’re going home?” asked Amanthis sympathetically.
“No mamm. I got an idea.” His blue eyes grew narrow. “Has that barber been around here—with hair on his sleeves?”
“No. He’s—he’s gone away.”
“Well, then, first thing is I want to leave this car of mine here with you, if that’s all right. It ain’t the right color for a taxi. To pay for its keep I’d like to have you drive it just as much as you want. ‘Long as you got a hammer an’ nails with you there ain’t much bad that can happen—”
“I’ll take care of it,” interrupted Amanthis, “but where are you going?”
“Southampton. It’s about the most aristocratic watering trough—watering-place there is around here, so that’s where I’m going.”
She sat up in amazement.
“What are you going to do there?”
“Listen.” He leaned toward her confidentially. “Were you serious about wanting to be a New York society girl?”
“Deadly serious.”
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said inscrutably. “You just wait here on this porch a couple of weeks and—and sleep. And if any barbers come to see you with hair on their sleeves you tell ‘em you’re too sleepy to see ‘em.”
“What then?”
“Then you’ll hear from me. Just tell your old daddy he can do all the judging he wants but you’re goin’ to do some dancin’. Mamm,” he continued decisively, “you talk about society! Before one month I’m goin’ to have you in more society than you ever saw.”
Further than this he would say nothing. His manner conveyed that she was going to be suspended over a perfect pool of gaiety and violently immersed, to an accompaniment of: “Is it gay enough for you, mamm? Shall I let in a little more excitement, mamm?”
“Well,” answered Amanthis, lazily considering, “there are few things for which I’d forego the luxury of sleeping through July and August—but if you’ll write me a letter I’ll—I’ll run up to Southampton.”
Jim snapped his fingers ecstatically.
“More society,” he assured her with all the confidence at his command, “than anybody ever saw.”
Three days later a young man wearing a straw hat that might have been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage rang the doorbell of the enormous and astounding Madison Harlan house at Southampton. He asked the butler if there were any people in the house between the ages of sixteen and twenty. He was informed that Miss Genevieve Harlan and Mr. Ronald Harlan answered that description and thereupon he handed in a most peculiar card and requested in fetching Georgian that it be brought