The Essential Fitzgerald - 45 Short Stories & Novels in One Edition. F. Scott Fitzgerald

could be “on a subject” and stop talking with the definite thought of it in their heads, yet ten minutes later speak aloud and find that their minds had followed the same channels and led them each to a parallel idea, an idea that others would have found absolutely unconnected with the first.

      “Tell me,” he demanded, leaning forward eagerly, “how do you know about ‘Ulalume’—how did you know the color of my hair? What’s your name? What were you doing here? Tell me all at once!”

      Suddenly the lightning flashed in with a leap of overreaching light and he saw Eleanor, and looked for the first time into those eyes of hers. Oh, she was magnificent—pale skin, the color of marble in starlight, slender brows, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds in the blinding glare. She was a witch, of perhaps nineteen, he judged, alert and dreamy and with the tell-tale white line over her upper lip that was a weakness and a delight. He sank back with a gasp against the wall of hay.

      “Now you’ve seen me,” she said calmly, “and I suppose you’re about to say that my green eyes are burning into your brain.”

      “What color is your hair?” he asked intently. “It’s bobbed, isn’t it?”

      “Yes, it’s bobbed. I don’t know what color it is,” she answered, musing, “so many men have asked me. It’s medium, I suppose—No one ever looks long at my hair. I’ve got beautiful eyes, though, haven’t I. I don’t care what you say, I have beautiful eyes.”

      “Answer my question, Madeline.”

      “Don’t remember them all—besides my name isn’t Madeline, it’s Eleanor.”

      “I might have guessed it. You look like Eleanor—you have that Eleanor look. You know what I mean.”

      There was a silence as they listened to the rain.

      “It’s going down my neck, fellow lunatic,” she offered finally.

      “Answer my questions.”

      “Well—name of Savage, Eleanor; live in big old house mile down road; nearest living relation to be notified, grandfather—Ramilly Savage; height, five feet four inches; number on watch-case, 3077 W; nose, delicate aquiline; temperament, uncanny—”

      “And me,” Amory interrupted, “where did you see me?”

      “Oh, you’re one of those men,” she answered haughtily, “must lug old self into conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunning myself one day last week, and along comes a man saying in a pleasant, conceited way of talking:

      “‘And now when the night was senescent’

      (says he)

      ‘And the star dials pointed to morn

      At the end of the path a liquescent’

      (says he)

      ‘And nebulous lustre was born.’

      “So I poked my eyes up over the hedge, but you had started to run, for some unknown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head. ‘Oh!’ says I, ‘there’s a man for whom many of us might sigh,’ and I continued in my best Irish—”

      “All right,” Amory interrupted. “Now go back to yourself.”

      “Well, I will. I’m one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not the energy; I haven’t the patience to write books; and I never met a man I’d marry. However, I’m only eighteen.”

      The storm was dying down softly and only the wind kept up its ghostly surge and made the stack lean and gravely settle from side to side. Amory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had never met a girl like this before—she would never seem quite the same again. He didn’t at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriate feeling in an unconventional situation—instead, he had a sense of coming home.

      “I have just made a great decision,” said Eleanor after another pause, “and that is why I’m here, to answer another of your questions. I have just decided that I don’t believe in immortality.”

      “Really! how banal!”

      “Frightfully so,” she answered, “but depressing with a stale, sickly depression, nevertheless. I came out here to get wet—like a wet hen; wet hens always have great clarity of mind,” she concluded.

      “Go on,” Amory said politely.

      “Well—I’m not afraid of the dark, so I put on my slicker and rubber boots and came out. You see I was always afraid, before, to say I didn’t believe in God—because the lightning might strike me—but here I am and it hasn’t, of course, but the main point is that this time I wasn’t any more afraid of it than I had been when I was a Christian Scientist, like I was last year. So now I know I’m a materialist and I was fraternizing with the hay when you came out and stood by the woods, scared to death.”

      “Why, you little wretch—” cried Amory indignantly. “Scared of what?”

      “Yourself!” she shouted, and he jumped. She clapped her hands and laughed. “See—see! Conscience—kill it like me! Eleanor Savage, materiologist—no jumping, no starting, come early—”

      “But I have to have a soul,” he objected. “I can’t be rational—and I won’t be molecular.”

      She leaned toward him, her burning eyes never leaving his own and whispered with a sort of romantic finality:

      “I thought so, Juan, I feared so—you’re sentimental. You’re not like me. I’m a romantic little materialist.”

      “I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.” (This was an ancient distinction of Amory’s.)

      “Epigrams. I’m going home,” she said sadly. “Let’s get off the haystack and walk to the cross-roads.”

      They slowly descended from their perch. She would not let him help her down and motioning him away arrived in a graceful lump in the soft mud where she sat for an instant, laughing at herself. Then she jumped to her feet and slipped her hand into his, and they tiptoed across the fields, jumping and swinging from dry spot to dry spot. A transcendent delight seemed to sparkle in every pool of water, for the moon had risen and the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanor’s arm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest he should lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was painting wonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever he did when he walked with her—she was a feast and a folly and he wished it had been his destiny to sit forever on a haystack and see life through her green eyes. His paganism soared that night and when she faded out like a gray ghost down the road, a deep singing came out of the fields and filled his way homeward. All night the summer moths flitted in and out of Amory’s window; all night large looming sounds swayed in mystic revery through the silver grain—and he lay awake in the clear darkness.

      SEPTEMBER

      Amory selected a blade of grass and nibbled at it scientifically.

      “I never fall in love in August or September,” he proffered.

      “When then?”

      “Christmas or Easter. I’m a liturgist.”

      “Easter!” She turned up her nose. “Huh! Spring in corsets!”

      “Easter would bore spring, wouldn’t she? Easter has her hair braided, wears a tailored suit.”

      “Bind on thy sandals, oh, thou most fleet.

      Over the splendor