Presumption, F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Presumption” was written in Paris in November 1925. The Post paid $2500—a raise of $500—and printed it as a lead piece. The Great Gatsby had been published in April 1925, but its disappointing sale (23,000 copies) compelled Fitzgerald to resume writing stories instead of concentrating on a new novel. This story has obvious connections with Gatsby in its treatment of the poor boy who falls in love with a rich girl and sets out to win her by becoming financially worthy of her. Because “Presumption” was written for the Post it has a happy ending through one of the reversals of fortune that frequently occur in Fitzgerald’s commercial fiction. “Rich girls can’t live on air.” Neither Fitzgerald nor their suitors expected them to.
I
Sitting by the window and staring out into the early autumn dusk, San Juan Chandler remembered only that Noel was coming tomorrow; but when, with a romantic sound that was half gasp, half sigh, he turned from the window, snapped on the light and looked at himself in the mirror, his expression became more materially complicated. He leaned closer. Delicacy balked at the abominable word “pimple”, but some such blemish had undoubtedly appeared on his cheek within the last hour, and now formed, with a pair from last week, a distressing constellation of three. Going into the bathroom adjoining his room—Juan had never possessed a bathroom to himself before—he opened a medicine closet, and, after peering about, carefully extracted a promising-looking jar of black ointment and covered each slight protuberance with a black gluey mound. Then, strangely dotted, he returned to the bedroom, put out the light and resumed his vigil over the shadowy garden.
He waited. That roof among the trees on the hill belonged to Noel Garneau’s house. She was coming back to it tomorrow; he would see her there… A loud clock on the staircase inside struck seven. Juan went to the glass and removed the ointment with a handkerchief. To his chagrin the spots were still there, even slightly irritated from the chemical sting of the remedy. That settled it—no more chocolate malted milks or eating between meals during his visit to Culpepper Bay. Taking the lid from the jar of talcum he had observed on the dressing table, he touched the laden puff to his cheek. Immediately his brows and lashes bloomed with snow and he coughed chokingly, observing that the triangle of humiliation was still observable upon his otherwise handsome face.
“Disgusting,” he muttered to himself. “I never saw anything so disgusting.” At twenty, such childish phenomena should be behind him.
Downstairs three gongs, melodious and metallic, hummed and sang. He listened for a moment, fascinated. Then he wiped the powder from his face, ran a comb through his yellow hair and went down to dinner.
Dinner at Cousin Cora’s he had found embarrassing. She was so stiff and formal about things like that, and so familiar about Juan’s private affairs. The first night of his visit he had tried politely to pull out her chair and bumped into the maid; the second night he remembered the experience—but so did the maid, and Cousin Cora seated herself unassisted. At home Juan was accustomed to behave as he liked; like all children of deferent and indulgent mothers, he lacked both confidence and good manners. Tonight there were guests. “This is San Juan Chandler, my cousin’s son—Mrs Holyoke—and Mr. Holyoke.”
The phrase “my cousin’s son” seemed to explain him away, seemed to account for his being in Miss Chandler’s house: “You understand—we must have our poor relations with us occasionally.” But a tone which implied that would be rude—and certainly Cousin Cora, with all her social position, couldn’t be rude.
Mr and Mrs Holyoke acknowledged the introduction politely and coolly and dinner was served. The conversation, dictated by Cousin Cora, bored Juan. It was about the garden and about her father, for whom she lived and who was dying slowly and unwillingly upstairs. Towards the salad Juan was wedged into the conversation by a question from Mr Holyoke and a quick look from his cousin.
“I’m just staying for a week,” he answered politely; “then I’ve got to go home because college opens pretty soon.”
“Where are you at college?”
Juan named his college, adding almost apologetically, “You see, my father went there.”
He wished that he could have answered that he was at Yale or Princeton, where he wanted to go. He was prominent at Henderson and belonged to a good fraternity, but it annoyed him when people occasionally failed to recognize his alma mater’s name.
“I suppose you’ve met all the young people here,” supposed Mrs Holyoke “—my daughter?”
“Oh, yes”—her daughter was the dumpy, ugly girl with the thick spectacles—“oh, yes.” And he added, “I knew some people who lived here before I came.”
“The little Garneau girl,” explained Cousin Cora.
“Oh, yes. Noel Garneau,” agreed Mrs Holyoke. “Her mother’s a great beauty. How old is Noel now? She must be—— ”
“Seventeen,” supplied Juan; “but she’s old for her age.”
“Juan met her on a ranch last summer. They were on a ranch together. What is it that they call those ranches, Juan?”
“Dude ranches.”
“Dude ranches. Juan and another boy worked for their board.” Juan saw no reason why Cousin Cora should have supplied this information; she continued on an even more annoying note: “Noel’s mother sent her out there to keep her out of mischief, but Juan says the ranch was pretty gay itself.”
Mr Holyoke supplied a welcome change of subject.
“Your name is—— ” he inquired, smiling and curious.
“San Juan Chandler. My father was wounded in the battle of San Juan Hill and so they called me after it—like Kenesaw Mountain Landis.”
He had explained this so many times that the sentences rolled off automatically—in school he had been called Santy, in college he was Don.
“You must come to dinner while you’re here,” said Mrs Holyoke vaguely.
The conversation slipped away from him as he realized freshly, strongly, that Noel would arrive tomorrow. And she was coming because he was here. She had cut short a visit in the Adirondacks on receipt of his letter. Would she like him now—in this place that was so different from Montana? There was a spaciousness, an air of money and pleasure about Culpepper for which San Juan Chandler—a shy, handsome, spoiled, brilliant, Penniless boy from a small Ohio city—was unprepared. At home, where father was a retired clergyman, Juan went with the nice people. He didn’t realize until this visit to a fashionable New England resort that where there are enough rich families to form a self-sufficient and exclusive group, such a group is invariably formed. On the dude ranch they had all dressed alike; here his ready-made Prince of Wales suit seemed exaggerated in style, his hat correct only in theory—an imitation hat—his very ties only projections of the ineffable Platonic ties which were worn here at Culpepper Bay. Yet all the differences were so small that he was unable quite to discern them.
But from the morning three days ago when he had stepped off the train into a group of young people who were waiting at the station for some friend of their own, he had been uneasy; and Cousin Cora’s introductions, which seemed to foist him horribly upon whomever he was introduced to, did not lessen his discomfort. He thought mechanically that she was being kind, and considered himself lucky that her invitation had coincided with his wild desire to see Noel Garneau again. He did not realize that in three days he had come to hate Cousin Cora’s cold and snobbish patronage.
Noel’s fresh, adventurous voice on the telephone next morning made his own voice quiver with nervous happiness. She would call for him at two and they would spend the afternoon together. All morning he lay in the garden, trying unsuccessfully to renew his summer tan in the mild lemon light of the September sun, sitting up quickly whenever he heard the sound of Cousin Cora’s garden shears at the end of a neighbouring border. He was back in his room, still meddling desperately with the white powder puff, when Noel’s roadster stopped outside and she came up the front walk. Noel’s eyes were dark blue, almost violet, and her lips, Juan had often thought, were like very small, very soft, red cushions—only cushions sounded all wrong, for they were really the most delicate lips in the world. When she talked they parted to the shape of “Oo!” and her eyes opened wide as though she was torn between tears and laughter at the poignancy of what she was saying. Already, at seventeen, she knew that men hung on her words in a way that frightened her. To Juan her most indifferent remarks assumed a highly ponderable significance and begot an intensity in him—a fact which Noel had several times found somewhat of a strain. He ran downstairs, down the gravel path towards her. “Noel, my dear,” he wanted so much to say, “you are the loveliest thing—the loveliest thing. My heart turns over when I see your beautiful face and smell that sweet fresh smell you have around you.” That would have been the precious, the irreplaceable truth. Instead he faltered, “Why, hello, Noel! How are you?… Well, I certainly am glad. Well, is this your car? What kind is it? Well, you certainly look fine.”
And he couldn’t look at her, because when he did his face seemed to him to be working idiotically—like someone else’s face. He got in, they drove off and he made a mighty effort to compose himself; but as her hand left the steering wheel to fall lightly
