This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) 📖

the shelter of the little house marked by a light far down the valley. It was only half past five, but he could see scarcely ten steps before him, except when the lightning made everything vivid and grotesque for great sweeps around.

Suddenly a strange sound fell on his ears. It was a song, in a low, husky voice, a girl’s voice, and whoever was singing was very close to him. A year before he might have laughed, or trembled; but in his restless mood he only stood and listened while the words sank into his consciousness:

“Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon cœur
D’une langueur
Monotone.”

The lightning split the sky, but the song went on without a quaver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed to come vaguely from a haystack about twenty feet in front of him.

Then it ceased: ceased and began again in a weird chant that soared and hung and fell and blended with the rain:

“Tout suffocant
Et blême quand
Sonne l’heure
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure.⁠ ⁠…”

“Who the devil is there in Ramilly County,” muttered Amory aloud, “who would deliver Verlaine in an extemporaneous tune to a soaking haystack?”

“Somebody’s there!” cried the voice unalarmed. “Who are you?⁠—Manfred, St. Christopher, or Queen Victoria?”

“I’m Don Juan!” Amory shouted on impulse, raising his voice above the noise of the rain and the wind.

A delighted shriek came from the haystack.

“I know who you are⁠—you’re the blond boy that likes ‘Ulalume’⁠—I recognize your voice.”

“How do I get up?” he cried from the foot of the haystack, whither he had arrived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the edge⁠—it was so dark that Amory could just make out a patch of damp hair and two eyes that gleamed like a cat’s.

“Run back!” came the voice, “and jump and I’ll catch your hand⁠—no, not there⁠—on the other side.”

He followed directions and as he sprawled up the side, knee-deep in hay, a small, white hand reached out, gripped his, and helped him onto the top.

“Here you are, Juan,” cried she of the damp hair. “Do you mind if I drop the Don?”

“You’ve got a thumb like mine!” he exclaimed.

“And you’re holding my hand, which is dangerous without seeing my face.” He dropped it quickly.

As if in answer to his prayers came a flash of lightning and he looked eagerly at her who stood beside him on the soggy haystack, ten feet above the ground. But she had covered her face and he saw nothing but a slender figure, dark, damp, bobbed hair, and the small white hands with the thumbs that bent back like his.

“Sit down,” she suggested politely, as the dark closed in on them. “If you’ll sit opposite me in this hollow you can have half of the raincoat, which I was using as a waterproof tent until you so rudely interrupted me.”

“I was asked,” Amory said joyfully; “you asked me⁠—you know you did.”

“Don Juan always manages that,” she said, laughing, “but I shan’t call you that any more, because you’ve got reddish hair. Instead you can recite ‘Ulalume’ and I’ll be Psyche, your soul.”

Amory flushed, happily invisible under the curtain of wind and rain. They were sitting opposite each other in a slight hollow in the hay with the raincoat spread over most of them, and the rain doing for the rest. Amory was trying desperately to see Psyche, but the lightning refused to flash again, and he waited impatiently. Good Lord! supposing she wasn’t beautiful⁠—supposing she was forty and pedantic⁠—heavens! Suppose, only suppose, she was mad. But he knew the last was unworthy. Here had Providence sent a girl to amuse him just as it sent Benvenuto Cellini men to murder, and he was wondering if she was mad, just because she exactly filled his mood.

“I’m not,” she said.

“Not what?”

“Not mad. I didn’t think you were mad when I first saw you, so it isn’t fair that you should think so of me.”

“How on earth⁠—”

As long as they knew each other Eleanor and Amory could be “on a subject” and stop talking with the definite thought of it in their heads, yet ten minutes later speak aloud and find that their minds had followed the same channels and led them each to a parallel idea, an idea that others would have found absolutely unconnected with the first.

“Tell me,” he demanded, leaning forward eagerly, “how do you know about ‘Ulalume’⁠—how did you know the color of my hair? What’s your name? What were you doing here? Tell me all at once!”

Suddenly the lightning flashed in with a leap of overreaching light and he saw Eleanor, and looked for the first time into those eyes of hers. Oh, she was magnificent⁠—pale skin, the color of marble in starlight, slender brows, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds in the blinding glare. She was a witch, of perhaps nineteen, he judged, alert and dreamy and with the telltale white line over her upper lip that was a weakness and a delight. He sank back with a gasp against the wall of hay.

“Now you’ve seen me,” she said calmly, “and I suppose you’re about to say that my green eyes are burning into your brain.”

“What color is your hair?” he asked intently. “It’s bobbed, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s bobbed. I don’t know what color it is,” she answered, musing, “so many men have asked me. It’s medium, I suppose⁠—No one ever looks long at my hair. I’ve got beautiful eyes, though, haven’t I. I don’t care what you say, I have beautiful eyes.”

“Answer my question, Madeline.”

“Don’t remember them all⁠—besides my name isn’t Madeline, it’s Eleanor.”

“I might have guessed it. You look like Eleanor⁠—you have that Eleanor look. You know what I mean.”

There was a silence as they listened to the rain.

“It’s going down my neck, fellow lunatic,” she offered finally.

“Answer my questions.”

“Well⁠—name of Savage, Eleanor; live in big old house mile down road; nearest living relation to be notified, grandfather⁠—Ramilly Savage; height, five feet four inches; number