The Greatest Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald - 45 Titles in One Edition. F. Scott Fitzgerald

door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between… but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homeward and let new lights come in with the sun.

      A POEM THAT ELEANOR SENT AMORY SEVERAL YEARS LATER

      “Here, Earth-born, over the lilt of the water,

      Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light,

      Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughter…

      Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night.

      Walking alone… was it splendor, or what, we were bound with,

      Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?

      Shadows we loved and the patterns they covered the ground with

      Tapestries, mystical, faint in the breathless air.

      That was the day… and the night for another story,

      Pale as a dream and shadowed with pencilled trees—

      Ghosts of the stars came by who had sought for glory,

      Whispered to us of peace in the plaintive breeze,

      Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered,

      Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon;

      That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered

      That was the debt that we paid to the usurer June.

      Here, deepest of dreams, by the waters that bring not

      Anything back of the past that we need not know,

      What if the light is but sun and the little streams sing not,

      We are together, it seems… I have loved you so…

      What did the last night hold, with the summer over,

      Drawing us back to the home in the changing glade?

      What leered out of the dark in the ghostly clover?

      God!… till you stirred in your sleep… and were wild

      afraid…

      Well… we have passed… we are chronicle now to the eerie.

      Curious metal from meteors that failed in the sky;

      Earth-born the tireless is stretched by the water, quite weary,

      Close to this ununderstandable changeling that’s I…

      Fear is an echo we traced to Security’s daughter;

      Now we are faces and voices… and less, too soon,

      Whispering half-love over the lilt of the water…

      Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon.”

      A POEM AMORY SENT TO ELEANOR AND WHICH HE CALLED “SUMMER STORM”

      “Faint winds, and a song fading and leaves falling,

      Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter…

      And the rain and over the fields a voice calling…

      Our gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above,

      Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her

      Sisters on. The shadow of a dove

      Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;

      And down the valley through the crying trees

      The body of the darker storm flies; brings

      With its new air the breath of sunken seas

      And slender tenuous thunder…

      But I wait…

      Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain—

      Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,

      Happier winds that pile her hair;

      Again

      They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air

      Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.

      There was a summer every rain was rare;

      There was a season every wind was warm….

      And now you pass me in the mist… your hair

      Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more

      In that wild irony, that gay despair

      That made you old when we have met before;

      Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain,

      Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers,

      With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again—

      Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours

      (Whispers will creep into the growing dark…

      Tumult will die over the trees)

      Now night

      Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse

      Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright,

      To cover with her hair the eerie green…

      Love for the dusk… Love for the glistening after;

      Quiet the trees to their last tops… serene…

      Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter…”

      Chapter IV: The Supercilious Sacrifice

      Atlantic City. Amory paced the board walk at day’s end, lulled by the everlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the half-mournful odor of the salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had treasured its memories deeper than the faithless land. It seemed still to whisper of Norse galleys ploughing the water world under raven-figured flags, of the British dreadnoughts, gray bulwarks of civilization steaming up through the fog of one dark July into the North Sea.

      “Well—Amory Blaine!”

      Amory looked down into the street below. A low racing car had drawn to a stop and a familiar cheerful face protruded from the driver’s seat.

      “Come on down, goopher!” cried Alec.

      Amory called a greeting and descending a flight of wooden steps approached the car. He and Alec had been meeting intermittently, but the barrier of Rosalind lay always between them. He was sorry for this; he hated to lose Alec.

      “Mr. Blaine, this is Miss Waterson, Miss Wayne, and Mr. Tully.”

      “How d’y do?”

      “Amory,” said Alec exuberantly, “if you’ll jump in we’ll take you to some secluded nook and give you a wee jolt of Bourbon.”

      Amory considered.

      “That’s an idea.”

      “Step in—move over, Jill, and Amory will smile very handsomely at you.”

      Amory squeezed into the back seat beside a gaudy, vermilion-lipped blonde.

      “Hello, Doug Fairbanks,” she said flippantly. “Walking for exercise or hunting for company?”

      “I was counting