The Four Fists, F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Four Fists

At the present time no one I know has the slightest desire to hit Samuel Meredith; possibly this is because a man over fifty is liable to be rather severely cracked at the impact of a hostile fist, but, for my part, I am inclined to think that all his hitable qualities have quite vanished. But it is certain that at various times in his life hitable qualities were in his face, as surely as kissable qualities have ever lurked in a girl’s lips.

I’m sure every one has met a man like that, been casually introduced, even made a friend of him, yet felt he was the sort who aroused passionate dislike—expressed by some in the involuntary clinching of fists, and in others by mutterings about «takin’ a poke» and «landin’ a swift smash in ee eye.» In the juxtaposition of Samuel Meredith’s features this quality was so strong that it influenced his entire life.

What was it? Not the shape, certainly, for he was a pleasant-looking man from earliest youth: broad-bowed with gray eyes that were frank and friendly. Yet I’ve heard him tell a room full of reporters angling for a «success» story that he’d be ashamed to tell them the truth that they wouldn’t believe it, that it wasn’t one story but four, that the public would not want to read about a man who had been walloped into prominence.

It all started at Phillips Andover Academy when he was fourteen. He had been brought up on a diet of caviar and bell-boys’ legs in half the capitals of Europe, and it was pure luck that his mother had nervous prostration and had to delegate his education to less tender, less biassed hands.

At Andover he was given a roommate named Gilly Hood. Gilly was thirteen, undersized, and rather the school pet. From the September day when Mr. Meredith’s valet stowed Samuel’s clothing in the best bureau and asked, on departing, «hif there was hanything helse, Master Samuel?» Gilly cried out that the faculty had played him false. He felt like an irate frog in whose bowl has been put goldfish.

«Good gosh!» he complained to his sympathetic contemporaries, «he’s a damn stuck-up Willie. He said, ‘Are the crowd here gentlemen?’ and I said, ‘No, they’re boys,’ and he said age didn’t matter, and I said, ‘Who said it did?’ Let him get fresh with me, the ole pieface!»

For three weeks Gilly endured in silence young Samuel’s comments on the clothes and habits of Gilly’s personal friends, endured French phrases in conversation, endured a hundred half-feminine meannesses that show what a nervous mother can do to a boy, if she keeps close enough to him—then a storm broke in the aquarium.

Samuel was out. A crowd had gathered to hear Gilly be wrathful about his roommate’s latest sins.

«He said, ‘Oh, I don’t like the windows open at night,’ he said, ‘except only a little bit,'» complained Gilly.

«Don’t let him boss you.»

«Boss me? You bet he won’t. I open those windows, I guess, but the darn fool won’t take turns shuttin’ ’em in the morning.»

«Make him, Gilly, why don’t you?»

«I’m going to.» Gilly nodded his head in fierce agreement. «Don’t you worry. He needn’t think I’m any ole butler.»

«Le’s see you make him.»

At this point the darn fool entered in person and included the crowd in one of his irritating smiles. Two boys said, «‘Lo, Mer’dith»; the others gave him a chilly glance and went on talking to Gilly. But Samuel seemed unsatisfied.

«Would you mind not sitting on my bed?» he suggested politely to two of Gilly’s particulars who were perched very much at ease.

«Huh?»

«My bed. Can’t you understand English?»

This was adding insult to injury. There were several comments on the bed’s sanitary condition and the evidence within it of animal life.

«S’matter with your old bed?» demanded Gilly truculently.

«The bed’s all right, but——»

Gilly interrupted this sentence by rising and walking up to Samuel. He paused several inches away and eyed him fiercely.

«You an’ your crazy ole bed,» he began. «You an’ your crazy——»

«Go to it, Gilly,» murmured some one.

«Show the darn fool—»

Samuel returned the gaze coolly.

«Well,» he said finally, «it’s my bed—»

He got no further, for Gilly hauled off and hit him succinctly in the nose.

«Yea! Gilly!»

«Show the big bully!»

«Just let him touch you—he’ll see!»

The group closed in on them and for the first time in his life Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller than his roommate, so if he hit back he’d be called a bully and have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five minutes; yet if he didn’t he was a coward. For a moment he stood there facing Gilly’s blazing eyes, and then, with a sudden choking sound, he forced his way through the ring and rushed from the room.

The month following bracketed the thirty most miserable days of his life. Every waking moment he was under the lashing tongues of his contemporaries; his habits and mannerisms became butts for intolerable witticisms and, of course, the sensitiveness of adolescence was a further thorn. He considered that he was a natural pariah; that the unpopularity at school would follow him through life. When he went home for the Christmas holidays he was so despondent that his father sent him to a nerve specialist. When he returned to Andover he arranged to arrive late so that he could be alone in the bus during the drive from station to school.

Of course when he had learned to keep his mouth shut every one promptly forgot all about him. The next autumn, with his realization that consideration for others was the discreet attitude, he made good use of the clean start given him by the shortness of boyhood memory. By the beginning of his senior year Samuel Meredith was one of the best-liked boys of his class—and no one was any stronger for him than his first friend and constant companion, Gilly Hood.
II

Samuel became the sort of college student who in the early nineties drove tandems and coaches and tallyhos between Princeton and Yale and New York City to show that they appreciated the social importance of football games. He believed passionately in good form—his choosing of gloves, his tying of ties, his holding of reins were imitated by impressionable freshmen. Outside of his own set he was considered rather a snob, but as his set was the set, it never worried him. He played football in the autumn, drank high-balls in the winter, and rowed in the spring. Samuel despised all those who were merely sportsmen without being gentlemen or merely gentlemen without being sportsmen.

He lived in New York and often brought home several of his friends for the week-end. Those were the days of the horse-car and in case of a crush it was, of course, the proper thing for any one of Samuel’s set to rise and deliver his seat to a standing lady with a formal bow. One night in Samuel’s junior year he boarded a car with two of his intimates. There were three vacant seats. When Samuel sat down he noticed a heavy-eyed laboring man sitting next to him who smelt objectionably of garlic, sagged slightly against Samuel and, spreading a little as a tired man will, took up quite too much room.

The car had gone several blocks when it stopped for a quartet of young girls, and, of course, the three men of the world sprang to their feet and proffered their seats with due observance of form. Unfortunately, the laborer, being unacquainted with the code of neckties and tallyhos, failed to follow their example, and one young lady was left at an embarrassed stance. Fourteen eyes glared reproachfully at the barbarian; seven lips curled slightly; but the object of scorn stared stolidly into the foreground in sturdy unconsciousness of his despicable conduct. Samuel was the most violently affected. He was humiliated that any male should so conduct himself. He spoke aloud.

«There’s a lady standing,» he said sternly.

That should have been quite enough, but the object of scorn only looked up blankly. The standing girl tittered and exchanged nervous glances with her companions. But Samuel was aroused.

«There’s a lady standing,» he repeated, rather raspingly. The man seemed to comprehend.

«I pay my fare,» he said quietly.

Samuel turned red and his hands clinched, but the conductor was looking their way, so at a warning nod from his friends he subsided into sullen gloom.

They reached their destination and left the car, but so did the laborer, who followed them, swinging his little pail. Seeing his chance, Samuel no longer resisted his aristocratic inclination. He turned around and, launching a full-featured, dime-novel sneer, made a loud remark about the right of the lower animals to ride with human beings.

In a half-second the workman had dropped his pail and let fly at him. Unprepared, Samuel took the blow neatly on the jaw and sprawled full length into the cobblestone gutter.

«Don’t laugh at me!» cried his assailant. «I been workin’ all day. I’m tired as hell!»

As he spoke the sudden anger died out of his eyes and the mask of weariness dropped again over his face. He turned and picked up his pail. Samuel’s friends took a quick step in his direction.

«Wait!» Samuel had risen slowly and was motioning back. Some time, somewhere, he had been struck like that before. Then he remembered—Gilly Hood. In the silence, as he dusted himself off, the whole scene in the room at Andover was before his eyes—