A Snobbish Story, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

It is difficult for young people to live things down. We will tolerate vice, grand larceny and the quieter forms of murder in our contemporaries, because we are so strong and incorruptible ourselves, but our children’s friends must show a blank service record. When young Josephine Perry was “removed” by her father from the Brereton School, where she had accidentally embraced a young man in the chapel, some of the best people in Chicago would have liked to have seen her drawn and quartered. But the Perrys were rich and powerful, so that friends rallied to their daughter’s reputation—and Josephine’s lovely face with its expression of just having led the children from a burning orphan asylum did the rest.

Certainly there was no consciousness of disgrace in it when she entered the grand stand at Lake Forest on the first day of the tennis tournament. Same old crowd, she seemed to say, turning, without any curiosity, half left, half right—not that I object, but you can’t expect me to get excited.

It was a bright day, with the sun glittering on the crowd; the white figures on the courts threw no shadow. Over in Europe the bloody terror of the Somme was just beginning, but the war had become second-page news and the question agitating the crowd was who would win the tournament. Dresses were long and hats were small and tight, and America, shut in on itself, was bored beyond belief.

Josephine, representing in her own person the future, was not bored; she was merely impatient for a change. She gazed about until she found friends; they waved and she joined them. Only as she sat down did she realize that she was also next to a lady whose lips, in continual process of masking buck teeth, gave her a deceptively pleasant expression. Mrs. McRae belonged to the drawing-and-quartering party. She hated young people, and by some perverse instinct was drawn into contact with them, as organizer of the midsummer vaudeville at Lake Forest and of dancing classes in Chicago during the winter. She chose rich, plain girls and brought them along, bullying boys into dancing with them and comparing them to their advantage with the more popular black sheep—the most prominent representative of this flock being Josephine.

But Josephine was stiffened this afternoon by what her father had said the night before: “If Jenny McRae raises a finger against you, heaven help Jim.” This was because of a rumor that Mrs. McRae, as an example for the public weal, was going to omit Josephine’s usual dance with Travis de Coppet from the vaudeville that summer.

As a matter of fact, Mrs. McRae had, upon her husband’s urgent appeal, reconsidered; she was one large, unconvincing smile. After a short but obvious conference behind her own eyes, she said:

“Do you see that young man on the second court, with the head-band?” And as Josephine gazed apathetically, “That’s my nephew from Minneapolis. They say he has a fine chance to win here. I wonder if you’d be a sweet girl and be nice to him and introduce him to the young people.”

Again she hesitated. “And I want to see you about the vaudeville soon. We expect you and Travis to do that marvelous, marvelous maxixe for us.”

Josephine’s inner response was the monosyllable “Huh!”

She realized that she didn’t want to be in the vaudeville, but only to be invited. And another look at Mrs. McRae’s nephew decided her that the price was too high.

“The maxixe is stale now,” she answered, but her attention had already wandered. Someone was staring at her from near by, someone whose eyes burned disturbingly, like an uncharted light.

Turning to speak to Travis de Coppet, she could see the pale lower half of a face two rows behind, and during the burst of clapping at the end of a game she turned and made a cerebral photograph of the entire individual as her eyes wandered casually down the row.

He was a tall, even a high young man, with a rather small head set on enormous round shoulders. His face was pale; his eyes were nearly black, with an intense, passionate light in them; his mouth was sensitive and strongly set. He was poorly dressed—green shine on his suit, a shabby string of a necktie and a bum cap. When she turned he looked at her with rigid hunger, and kept looking at her after she had turned away, as if his eyes could burn loopholes through the thin straw of her hat.

Suddenly Josephine realized what a pleasant scene it was, and, relaxing, she listened to the almost regular pat-smack, smack-pat-pat of the balls, the thud of a jump and the overtone of the umpire’s “Fault»; “Out»; “Game and set, 6-2, Mr. Oberwalter.” The sun moved slowly westward off the games and gossip. The day’s matches ended.

Rising, Mrs. McRae said to Josephine: “Then shall I bring Donald to you when he’s dressed? He doesn’t know a soul. I count on you. Where will you be?”

Josephine accepted the burden patiently: “I’ll wait right here.”

Already there was music on the outdoor platform beside the club, and there was a sound of clinking waiters as the crowd swayed out of the grand stand. Josephine refused to go and dance, and presently the three young men, each of whom had loved and lost her, moved on to other prospects, and Josephine picked them out presently below a fringe by their well-known feet—Travis de Coppet’s deft, dramatic feet; Ed Bement’s stern and uncompromising feet; Elsie Kerr’s warped ankles; Lillian’s new shoes; the high, button shoes of some impossible girl. There were more feet; the stands were almost empty now, and canvas was being spread over the lonely courts. She heard someone coming clumsily down the plank behind her and landing with a plunk upon the board on which she sat, lifting her an abrupt inch into the air.

“D’ I jar you?”

It was the man she had noticed and forgotten. He was still very tall.

“Don’t you go in for dancing?” he asked, lingering. “I picked you out for the belle of the ball.”

“You’re rather fresh, aren’t you?”

“My error,” he said. “I should have known you were too swell to be spoken to.”

“I never saw you before.”

“I never saw you either, but you looked so nice in your hat, and I saw you smiling to your friends, so I thought I’d take a chance.”

“Like you do downstate, hey, Si?” retorted Josephine insolently.

“What’s the matter with downstate? I come from Abe Lincoln’s town, where the boys are big and brilliant.”

“What are you—a dance-hall masher?”

He was extraordinarily handsome, and she liked his imperviousness to insult.

“Thanks. I’m a reporter—not sports, or society either. I came to do the atmosphere—you know, a fine day with the sun sizzling on high and all the sporting world as well as the fashionable world of Lake Forest out in force.”

“Hadn’t you better go along and write it then?”

“Finished; another fellow took it. Can I sit down for a minute, or do you soil easily? A mere breath of wind and poof! Listen, Miss Potterfield-Swiftcormick, or whatever your name is. I come from good people and I’m going to be a great writer some day.” He sat down. “If anybody comes you can say I was interviewing you for the paper. What’s your name?”

“Perry.”

“Herbert T. Perry?”

She nodded and he looked at her hard for a moment.

“Well, well,” he sighed, “most attractive girl I’ve met for months turns out to be Herbert T. Perry’s daughter. As a rule, you society nuts aren’t much to look at. I mean, you pass more pretty girls in the Loop in one hour than I’ve seen here this afternoon, and the ones here have the advantage of dressing and all that. What’s your first name?

She started to say “Miss,” but suddenly it seemed pointless, and she answered “Josephine.”

“My name’s John Boynton Bailey.” He handed her his card with CHICAGO TRIBUNE printed in the corner. “Let me inform you I’m the best reporter in this city. I’ve written a play that ought to be produced this fall. I’m telling you that to prove I’m not just some bum, as you may judge from my old clothes. I’ve got some better clothes home, but I didn’t think I was going to meet you.”

“I just thought you were sort of fresh to speak to me without being introduced.”

“I take what I can get,” he admitted moodily.

At the sudden droop of his mouth, thoughtful and unhappy, Josephine knew that she liked him. For a moment she did not want Mrs. McRae and her nephew to see her with him; then, abruptly, she did not care.

“It must be wonderful to write.”

“I’m just getting started, but you’ll be proud to know me sometime.” He changed the subject. “You’ve got wonderful features—you know it? You know what features are—the eyes and the mouth together, not separately—the triangle they make. That’s how people decide in a flash whether they like other people. A person’s nose and shape of the face are just things he’s born with and can’t change. They don’t matter, Miss Gotrocks.”

“Please cut out the Stone Age slang.”

“All right; but you’ve got nice features. Is your father good-looking?”

“Very,” she answered, appreciating the compliment.

The music started again. Under the trees the wooden floor was red in the sun. Josephine sang softly:

“Lisibeth Ann-n,
I’m wild a-bow-ow-out you, a-bow-ow-out you—”

“Nice here,” he murmured. “Just this time of day and that music under the trees… It’s hot in Chicago!”

She was singing to him; the remarked triangle of her eyes and mouth was turned on him, faintly and sadly smiling, her