Inside the House, F. Scott Fitzgerald

I

When Bryan Bowers came home in the late afternoon, three boys were helping Gwen to decorate the tree. He was glad, for she had bought too big a tree to climb around herself, and he had not relished the prospect of crawling over the ceiling.

The boys stood up as he came in, and Gwen introduced them:

“Jim Bennett, daddy, and Satterly Brown you know, and Jason Crawford you know.”

He was glad she had said the names. So many boys had been there throughout the holidays that it had become somewhat confusing.

He sat down for a moment.

“Don’t let me interrupt. I’ll be leaving you shortly.”

It struck him that the three boys looked old, or certainly large, beside Gwen, though none was over sixteen. She was fourteen, almost beautiful, he thought—would be beautiful, if she had looked a little more like her mother. But she had such a pleasant profile and so much animation that she had become rather too popular at too early an age.

“Are you at school here in the city?” he asked the new young man.

“No, sir. I’m at S’n Regis; just home for the holidays.”

Jason Crawford, the boy with the wavy yellow pompadour and horn-rimmed glasses, said, with an easy laugh:

“He couldn’t take it here, Mr. Bowers.”

Bryan continued to address the new boy:

“Those little lights you’re working at are the biggest nuisance about a Christmas tree. One bulb always misses and then it takes forever to find which one it is.”

“That’s just what happened now.”

“You said it, Mr. Bowers,” said Jason.

Bryan looked up at his daughter, balanced on a stepladder.

“Aren’t you glad I told you to put these men to work?” he asked. “Think of old daddy having to do this.”

Gwen agreed from her precarious perch: “It would have been hard on you, daddy. But wait till I get this tinsel thing on.”

“You aren’t old, Mr. Bowers,” Jason offered.

“I feel old.”

Jason laughed, as if Bryan had said something witty.

Bryan addressed Satterly:

“How do things go with you, Satterly? Make the first hockey team?”

“No, sir. Never really expected to.”

“He gets in all the games,” Jason supplied.

Bryan got up.

“Gwen, why don’t you hang these boys on the tree?” he suggested. “Don’t you think a Christmas tree covered with boys would be original?”

“I think——” began Jason, but Bryan continued:

“I’m sure none of them would be missed at home. You could call up their families and explain that they were only being used as ornaments till after the holidays.”

He was tired, and that was his best effort. With a general wave, he went toward his study.

Jason’s voice followed him:

“You’d get tired seeing us hanging around, Mr. Bowers. Better change your mind about letting Gwen have dates.”

Bryan turned around sharply. “What do you mean about ‘dates’?”

Gwen peeked over the top of the Christmas tree. “He just means about dates, daddy. Don’t you know what a date is?”

“Well now, will one of you tell me just exactly what a date is?”

All the boys seemed to begin to talk at once.

“Why, a date is——”

“Why, Mr. Bowers——”

“A date——”

He cut through their remarks:

“Is a ‘date’ anything like what we used to call an engagement?”

Again the cacophony commenced.

“——No, a date is——”

“——An engagement is——”

“——It’s sort of more——”

Bryan looked up at the Christmas tree from which Gwen’s face stared out from the tinsel somewhat like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland.

“Heaven’s sakes, don’t fall out of the tree about it,” he said.

“Daddy, you don’t mean to say that you don’t know what a date is?”

“A date is something you can have at home,” said Bryan. He started to go to his study but Jason supplied: “Mr. Bowers, I can explain to you why Gwen won’t fall out of the tree——”

Bryan closed his door on the remark and stood near it.

“That young man is extremely fresh,” he thought.

Stretched out on his divan for half an hour, he let the worries of the day slip from his shoulders. At the end of that time there was a knock, and he sat up, saying:

“Come in… Oh, hello, Gwen.” He stretched and yawned.

“How’s your metabolism?”

“What’s metabolism? You asked me that one other afternoon.”

“I think it’s something everybody has. Like a liver.”

She had a question to ask him and did not pursue the subject further:

“Daddy, did you like them? Those boys?”

“Sure.”

“How do you like Jason?”

He pretended to be obtuse.

“Which one was he?”

“You know very well. Once you said he was fresh. But he wasn’t this afternoon, did you think?”

“The boy with all the yellow fuzz?”

“Daddy, you know very well which one he was.”

“I wasn’t sure. Because you told me if I didn’t let you go out alone at night, Jason wouldn’t come to see you again. So I thought this must be some boy who looked like him.”

She shook off his teasing.

“I do know this, daddy: That if I’m not allowed to have dates, nobody’s going to invite me to the dance.”

“What do you call this but a date? Three boys. If you think I’m going to let you race around town at night with some kid, you’re fooling yourself. He can come here any night except a school night.”

“It isn’t the same,” she said mournfully.

“Let’s not go over that. You told me that all the girls you knew had these dates, but when I asked you to name even one——”

“All right, daddy. The way you talk you’d think it was something awful we were going to do. We just want to go to the movies.”

“To see Peppy Velance again.”

She admitted that was their destination.

“I’ve heard nothing but Peppy Velance for two months. Dinner’s one long movie magazine. If that girl is your ideal, why don’t you be practical about it and learn to tap like her? If you just want to be a belle——”

“What’s a belle?”

“A belle?” Bryan was momentarily unable to understand that the term needed definition. “A belle? Why, it’s what your mother was. Very popular—that sort of thing.”

“Oh. You mean the nerts.”

“What?”

“Being the nerts—having everybody nerts about you.”

“What?” he repeated incredulously.

“Oh, now, don’t get angry, daddy. Call it a belle then.”

He laughed, but as she stood beside his couch, silent and a little resentful, a wave of contrition went over him as he remembered that she was motherless. Before he could speak, Gwen said in a tight little voice:

“I don’t think your friends are so interesting! What am I supposed to do—get excited about some lawyers and doctors?”

“We won’t discuss that. You have the day with your friends. When you’re home in the evening, you’ve got to be a little grown up. There’s a lawyer coming here tonight to dinner, and I’d like you to make a good impression on him.”

“Then I can’t go to the movies?”

“No.”

Silent and expressionless, save for the faint lift of her chin, Gwen stood a moment. Then she turned abruptly and left the room.

II

Mr. Edward Harrison was pleased to find his friend’s little girl so polite and so pleasant to look at. Bryan, wanting to atone for his harshness of the afternoon, introduced him as the author of “The Music Goes Round and Round.”

For a moment, Gwen looked at Mr. Harrison, startled. Then they laughed together.

During dinner, the lawyer tried to draw her out:

“Do you plan to marry? Or to take up a career?”

“I think that I’d like to be a debutante.” She looked at her father reproachfully, “And maybe have dates on the side. I haven’t got any talents for a career that I know about.”

Her father interrupted her:

“She has though. She ought to make a good biologist—or else she could be a chemist making funny artificial fingernails.” He changed his tone: “Gwen and I had a little run-in on the subject of careers this afternoon. She’s stage-struck, and I’d rather have her do something about it than just talk.”

Mr. Harrison turned to Gwen. “Why don’t you?” he asked. “I can give you some tips. I do a lot of theatrical business. Probably know some of your favorites.”

“Do you know Peppy Velance?”

“She’s a client of mine.”

Gwen was thrilled.

“Is she nice?”

“Yes. But I’m more interested in you. Why not go in for a career if your father thinks you have the necessary stuff?”

How could Gwen tell him it was because she was happy the way things were? How could she explain to him what she hardly knew herself—that her feeling for Peppy Velance only stood for loveliness—enchanted gardens, ballrooms through which to walk with enchanted lovers? Starlight and tunes.

The stage! The very word frightened her. That was work, like school. But somewhere there must exist a world of which Peppy Velance’s pictures were only an echo, and this world seemed to lie just ahead—proms and parties of people at gay resorts. She could not cry out to Mr. Harrison, “I don’t want a career, because I’m a romantic little snob. Because I want to be a belle, a belle, a belle”—the word ringing like a carillon inside her.

So she only said:

“Please tell me about Peppy Velance.”

“Peppy Velance? Let’s see.”

He thought for a moment. “She’s a kid from New Mexico. Her name’s really Schwartze. Sweet. About as much brains as the silver peacock on your buffet. Has to be coached before every scene, so she can talk English. And she’s having a wonderful time with her success. Is that satisfactory?”.

It was far from being satisfactory to Gwen. But she didn’t believe him.

He was an old man, about forty, like her father, and Peppy Velance had probably never looked at him romantically.

The important thing was that Jason would arrive presently, and maybe two other boys and a girl. They would have some sort of time—in spite of the fact that a sortie into the