Gretchen’s Forty Winks, F. Scott Fitzgerald
GRETCHEN’S FORTY WINKS
The sidewalks were scratched with brittle leaves, and the bad little boy next door froze his tongue to the iron mail-box. Snow before night, sure. Autumn was over. This, of course, raised the coal question and the Christmas question; but Roger Halsey, standing on his own front porch, assured the dead suburban sky that he hadn’t time for worrying about the weather. Then he let himself hurriedly into the house, and shut the subject out into the cold twilight.
The hall was dark, but from above he heard the voices of his wife and the nursemaid and the baby in one of their interminable conversations, which consisted chiefly of «Don’t!» and «Look out, Maxy!» and «Oh, there he goes!» punctuated by wild threats and vague bumpings and the recurrent sound of small, venturing feet.
Roger turned on the hall-light and walked into the living-room and turned on the red silk lamp. He put his bulging portfolio on the table, and sitting down rested his intense young face in his hand for a few minutes, shading his eyes carefully from the light. Then he lit a cigarette, squashed it out, and going to the foot of the stairs called for his wife.
«Gretchen!»
«Hello, dear.» Her voice was full of laughter. «Come see baby.»
He swore softly.
«I can’t see baby now,» he said aloud. «How long ‘fore you’ll be down?»
There was a mysterious pause, and then a succession of «Don’ts» and «Look outs, Maxy» evidently meant to avert some threatened catastrophe.
«How long ‘fore you’ll be down?» repeated Roger, slightly irritated.
«Oh, I’ll be right down.»
«How soon?» he shouted.
He had trouble every day at this hour in adapting his voice from the urgent key of the city to the proper casualness for a model home. But to-night he was deliberately impatient. It almost disappointed him when Gretchen came running down the stairs, three at a time, crying «What is it?» in a rather surprised voice.
They kissed—lingered over it some moments. They had been married three years, and they were much more in love than that implies. It was seldom that they hated each other with that violent hate of which only young couples are capable, for Roger was still actively sensitive to her beauty.
«Come in here,» he said abruptly. «I want to talk to you.»
His wife, a bright-colored, Titian-haired girl, vivid as a French rag doll, followed him into the living-room.
«Listen, Gretchen»—he sat down at the end of the sofa—»beginning with to-night I’m going to—What’s the matter?»
«Nothing. I’m just looking for a cigarette. Go on.»
She tiptoed breathlessly back to the sofa and settled at the other end.
«Gretchen—» Again he broke off. Her hand, palm upward, was extended toward him. «Well, what is it?» he asked wildly.
«Matches.»
«What?»
In his impatience it seemed incredible that she should ask for matches, but he fumbled automatically in his pocket.
«Thank you,» she whispered. «I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go on.»
«Gretch——»
Scratch! The match flared. They exchanged a tense look.
Her fawn’s eyes apologized mutely this time, and he laughed. After all, she had done no more than light a cigarette; but when he was in this mood her slightest positive action irritated him beyond measure.
«When you’ve got time to listen,» he said crossly, «you might be interested in discussing the poorhouse question with me.»
«What poorhouse?» Her eyes were wide, startled; she sat quiet as a mouse.
«That was just to get your attention. But, beginning to-night, I start on what’ll probably be the most important six weeks of my life—the six weeks that’ll decide whether we’re going on forever in this rotten little house in this rotten little suburban town.»
Boredom replaced alarm in Gretchen’s black eyes. She was a Southern girl, and any question that had to do with getting ahead in the world always tended to give her a headache.
«Six months ago I left the New York Lithographic Company,» announced Roger, «and went in the advertising business for myself.»
«I know,» interrupted Gretchen resentfully; «and now instead of getting six hundred a month sure, we’re living on a risky five hundred.»
«Gretchen,» said Roger sharply, «if you’ll just believe in me as hard as you can for six weeks more we’ll be rich. I’ve got a chance now to get some of the biggest accounts in the country.» He hesitated. «And for these six weeks we won’t go out at all, and we won’t have any one here. I’m going to bring home work every night, and we’ll pull down all the blinds and if any one rings the door-bell we won’t answer.»
He smiled airily as if it were a new game they were going to play. Then, as Gretchen was silent, his smile faded, and he looked at her uncertainly.
«Well, what’s the matter?» she broke out finally. «Do you expect me to jump up and sing? You do enough work as it is. If you try to do any more you’ll end up with a nervous breakdown. I read about a——»
«Don’t worry about me,» he interrupted; «I’m all right. But you’re going to be bored to death sitting here every evening.»
«No, I won’t,» she said without conviction—»except to-night.»
«What about to-night?»
«George Tompkins asked us to dinner.»
«Did you accept?»
«Of course I did,» she said impatiently. «Why not? You’re always talking about what a terrible neighborhood this is, and I thought maybe you’d like to go to a nicer one for a change.»
«When I go to a nicer neighborhood I want to go for good,» he said grimly.
«Well, can we go?»
«I suppose we’ll have to if you’ve accepted.»
Somewhat to his annoyance the conversation abruptly ended. Gretchen jumped up and kissed him sketchily and rushed into the kitchen to light the hot water for a bath. With a sigh he carefully deposited his portfolio behind the bookcase—it contained only sketches and layouts for display advertising, but it seemed to him the first thing a burglar would look for. Then he went abstractedly up-stairs, dropped into the baby’s room for a casual moist kiss, and began dressing for dinner.
They had no automobile, so George Tompkins called for them at 6.30. Tompkins was a successful interior decorator, a broad, rosy man with a handsome mustache and a strong odor of jasmine. He and Roger had once roomed side by side in a boarding-house in New York, but they had met only intermittently in the past five years.
«We ought to see each other more,» he told Roger to-night. «You ought to go out more often, old boy. Cocktail?»
«No, thanks.»
«No? Well, your fair wife will—won’t you, Gretchen?»
«I love this house,» she exclaimed, taking the glass and looking admiringly at ship models, Colonial whiskey bottles, and other fashionable débris of 1925.
«I like it,» said Tompkins with satisfaction. «I did it to please myself, and I succeeded.»
Roger stared moodily around the stiff, plain room, wondering if they could have blundered into the kitchen by mistake.
«You look like the devil, Roger,» said his host. «Have a cocktail and cheer up.»
«Have one,» urged Gretchen.
«What?» Roger turned around absently. «Oh, no, thanks. I’ve got to work after I get home.»
«Work!» Tompkins smiled. «Listen, Roger, you’ll kill yourself with work. Why don’t you bring a little balance into your life—work a little, then play a little?»
«That’s what I tell him,» said Gretchen.
«Do you know an average business man’s day?» demanded Tompkins as they went in to dinner. «Coffee in the morning, eight hours’ work interrupted by a bolted luncheon, and then home again with dyspepsia and a bad temper to give the wife a pleasant evening.»
Roger laughed shortly.
«You’ve been going to the movies too much,» he said dryly.
«What?» Tompkins looked at him with some irritation. «Movies? I’ve hardly ever been to the movies in my life. I think the movies are atrocious. My opinions on life are drawn from my own observations. I believe in a balanced life.»
«What’s that?» demanded Roger.
«Well»—he hesitated—»probably the best way to tell you would be to describe my own day. Would that seem horribly egotistic?»
«Oh, no!» Gretchen looked at him with interest. «I’d love to hear about it.»
«Well, in the morning I get up and go through a series of exercises. I’ve got one room fitted up as a little gymnasium, and I punch the bag and do shadow-boxing and weight-pulling for an hour. Then after a cold bath— There’s a thing now! Do you take a daily cold bath?»
«No,» admitted Roger, «I take a hot bath in the evening three or four times a week.»
A horrified silence fell. Tompkins and Gretchen exchanged a glance as if something obscene had been said.
«What’s the matter?» broke out Roger, glancing from one to the other in some irritation. «You know I don’t take a bath every day—I haven’t got the time.»
Tompkins gave a prolonged sigh.
«After my bath,» he continued, drawing a merciful veil of silence over the matter, «I have breakfast and drive to my office in New York, where I work until four. Then I lay off, and if it’s summer I hurry out here for nine holes of golf, or if it’s winter I play squash for an hour at my club. Then a good snappy game of bridge until dinner. Dinner is liable to have something to do with business, but in a pleasant way. Perhaps I’ve just finished a house for some customer, and he wants me to be on hand for his first party to see that the lighting is soft enough and all that sort of thing. Or maybe I sit down with a good book of poetry and spend the evening alone. At any rate, I do something every night to get me out of myself.»
«It must be wonderful,» said Gretchen enthusiastically. «I
