 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN
BUTTON
As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born
at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of
medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young
shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital,
preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs.
Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they
decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first
baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this
anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing
history I am about to set down will never be known.
I shall tell you what occurred, and let you judge for
yourself.
The Roger Buttons held an enviable position, both
social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They
were related to the This Family and the That Family,
which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership
in that enormous peerage which largely populated
the Confederacy. This was their first experience
with the charming old custom of having babies—Mr.
Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be
a boy so that he could be sent to Yale College in Connecticut,
at which institution Mr. Button himself had
been known for four years by the somewhat obvious
nickname of "Cuff."
On the September morning consecrated to the enormous
event he arose nervously at six o'clock, dressed
himself, adjusted an impeccable stock, and hurried forth
through the streets of Baltimore to the hospital, to determine
new life upon its bosom.
When he was approximately a hundred yards from
the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen
he saw Doctor Keene, the family physician, descending
the front steps, rubbing his hands together
with a washing movement—as all doctors are required
to do by the unwritten ethics of their profession.
Mr. Roger Button, the president of Roger Button &
Co., Wholesale Hardware, began to run toward Doctor
Keene with much less dignity than was expected from
a Southern gentleman of that picturesque period.
"Doctor Keene!" he called. "Oh, Doctor Keene!"
The doctor heard him, faced around, and stood waiting,
a curious expression settling on his harsh, medicinal
face as Mr. Button drew near.
"What happened?" demanded Mr. Button, as he
came up in a gasping rush. "What was it? How is
she? A boy? Who is it? What—"
"Talk sense!" said Doctor Keene sharply. He appeared
somewhat irritated.
"Is the child born?" begged Mr. Button.
Doctor Keene frowned. "Why, yes, I suppose so—
after a fashion." Again he threw a curious glance at
Mr. Button.
"Is my wife all right?"
"Yes."
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
"Here now!" cried Doctor Keene in a perfect passion
of irritation, "I'll ask you to go and see for yourself.
Outrageous!" He snapped the last word out in
almost one syllable, then he turned away muttering:
"Do you imagine a case like this will help my professional
reputation? One more would ruin me—ruin
anybody."
"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Button, appalled.
"Triplets?"
"No, not triplets!" answered the doctor cuttingly.
"What's more, you can go and see for yourself. And
get another doctor. I brought you into the world, young
man, and I've been physician to your family for forty
years, but I'm through with you! I don't want to see
you or any of your relatives ever again! Good-by!"
Then he turned sharply, and without another word
climbed into his phaeton, which was waiting at the curbstone,
and drove severely away.
Mr. Button stood there upon the sidewalk, stupefied
and trembling from head to foot. What horrible mishap
had occurred? He had suddenly lost all desire to go
into the Maryland Private Hospital for Ladies and Gentlemen—it
was with the greatest difficulty that, a moment
later, he forced himself to mount the steps and
enter the front door.
A nurse was sitting behind a desk in the opaque
gloom of the hall. Swallowing his shame, Mr. Button
approached her.
"Good-morning," she remarked, looking up at him
pleasantly.
"Good-morning. I—I am Mr. Button."
At this a look of utter terror spread itself over the
girl's face. She rose to her feet and seemed about to
fly from the hall, restraining herself only with the most
apparent difficulty.
"I want to see my child," said Mr. Button.
The nurse gave a little scream. "Oh—of course!"
she cried hysterically. "Up-stairs. Right up-stairs. Go
—up!"
She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button, bathed in
a cool perspiration, turned falteringly, and began to
mount to the second floor. In the upper hall he addressed
hand. "I'm Mr. Button," he managed to articulate.
"I want to see my—"
Clank! The basin clattered to the floor and rolled
in the direction of the stairs. Clank! Clank! It began
a methodical descent as if sharing in the general
terror which this gentleman provoked.
"I want to see my child!" Mr. Button almost
shrieked. He was on the verge of collapse.
Clank! The basin had reached the first floor. The
nurse regained control of herself, and threw Mr. Button
a look of hearty contempt.
"All right, Mr. Button," she agreed in a hushed voice.
"Very well! But if you knew what state it's put us all
in this morning! It's perfectly outrageous! The hospital
will never have the ghost of a reputation after—"
"Hurry!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't stand this!"
"Come this way, then, Mr. Button."
He dragged himself after her. At the end of a long
hall they reached a room from which proceeded a variety
of howls—indeed, a room which, in later parlance, would
have been known as the "crying-room." They entered.
Ranged around the walls were half a dozen white-enameled
rolling cribs, each with a tag tied at the head.
"Well," gasped Mr. Button, "which is mine?"
"There!" said the nurse.
Mr. Button's eyes followed her pointing finger, and
this is what he saw. Wrapped in a voluminous white
blanket, and partially crammed into one of the cribs,
there sat an old man apparently about seventy years of
age. His sparse hair was almost white, and from his
chin dripped a long smoke-colored beard, which waved
absurdly back and forth, fanned by the breeze coming
in at the window. He looked up at Mr. Button with
dim, faded eyes in which lurked a puzzled question.
"Am I mad?" thundered Mr. Button, his terror resolving
into rage. "Is this some ghastly hospital joke?"
"It doesn't seem like a joke to us," replied the nurse
severely. "And I don't know whether you're mad or
not—but that is most certainly your child."
The cool perspiration redoubled on Mr. Button's
forehead. He closed his eyes, and then, opening them,
looked again. There was no mistake—he was gazing at
a man of threescore and ten—a baby of threescore and
ten, a baby whose feet hung over the sides of the crib
in which it was reposing.
The old man looked placidly from one to the other
for a moment, and then suddenly spoke in a cracked and
ancient voice. "Are you my father?" he demanded.
Mr. Button and the nurse started violently.
"Because if you are," went on the old man querulously,
"I wish you'd get me out of this place—or, at
least, get them to put a comfortable rocker in here."
"Where in God's name did you come from? Who are
you?" burst out Mr. Button frantically.
"I can't tell you exactly who I am," replied the querulous
whine, "because I've only been born a few hours—
but my last name is certainly Button."
"You lie! You're an impostor!"
The old man turned wearily to the nurse. "Nice
way to welcome a new-born child," he complained in a
weak voice. "Tell him he's wrong, why don't you?"
"You're wrong, Mr. Button," said the nurse severely.
"This is your child, and you'll have to make the best of
it. We're going to ask you to take him home with you
as soon as possible—some time to-day."
"Home?" repeated Mr. Button incredulously.
"Yes, we can't have him here. We really can't,
you know?"
"I'm right glad of it," whined the old man. "This is
all this yelling and howling, I haven't been able to get a
wink of sleep. I asked for something to eat"—here his
voice rose to a shrill note of protest—"and they brought
me a bottle of milk!"
Mr. Button sank down upon a chair near his son and
concealed his face in his hands. "My heavens!" he
murmured, in an ecstasy of horror. "What will people
say? What must I do?"
"You'll have to take him home," insisted the nurse—
"immediately!"
A grotesque picture formed itself with dreadful
clarity before the eyes of the tortured man—a picture of
himself walking through the crowded streets of the city
with this appalling apparition stalking by his side. "I
can't. I can't," he moaned.
People would stop to speak to him, and what was he
going to say? He would have to introduce this—this
septuagenarian: "This is my son, born early this
morning." And then the old man would gather his
blanket around him and they would plod on, past the
bustling stores, the slave market—for a dark instant
Mr. Button wished passionately that his son was black
—past the luxurious houses of the residential district,
past the home for the aged. . . .
"Come! Pull yourself together," commanded the
nurse.
"See here," the old man announced suddenly, "if
you think I'm going to walk home in this blanket, you're
entirely mistaken."
"Babies always have blankets."
With a malicious crackle the old man held up a small
white swaddling garment. "Look!" he quavered.
"This is what they had ready for me."
"Babies always wear those," said the nurse primly.
"Well," said the old man, "this baby's not going to
wear anything in about two minutes. This blanket
itches. They might at least have given me a sheet."
"Keep it on! Keep it on!" said Mr. Button hurriedly.
He turned to the nurse. "What'll I do?"
"Go down town and buy your son some clothes."
Mr. Button's son's voice followed him down into the
hall: "And a cane, father. I want to have a cane."
Mr. Button banged the outer door savagely. . . .
II
"Good-morning," Mr. Button said, nervously, to the
clerk in the Chesapeake Dry Goods Company. "I want
to buy some clothes for my child."
"How old is your child, sir?"
"About six hours," answered Mr. Button, without
due consideration.
"Babies' supply department in the rear."
"Why, I don't think—I'm not sure that's what I
want. It's—he's an unusually large-size child. Ecceptionally—ah—large."
"They have the largest child's sizes."
"Where is the boys' department?" inquired Mr.
Button, shifting his ground desperately. He felt that
the clerk must surely scent his shameful secret.
"Right here."
"Well—" He hesitated. The notion of dressing his
son in men's clothes was repugnant to him. If, say,
he could only find a very large boy's suit, he might cut
off that long and awful beard, dye the white hair brown,
and thus manage to conceal the worst, and to retain
something of his own self-respect—not to mention his
position in Baltimore society.
But a frantic inspection of the boys' department revealed
the store, of course—in such cases it is the thing to blame
the store.
"How old did you say that boy of yours was?" demanded
the clerk curiously.
"He's—sixteen."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you said six hours.
You'll find the youths' department in the next aisle."
Mr. Button turned miserably away. Then he stopped,
brightened, and pointed his finger toward a dressed
dummy in the window display. "There!" he exclaimed.
"I'll take that suit, out there on the dummy."
The clerk stared. "Why," he protested, "that's not
a child's suit. At least it is, but it's for fancy dress.
You could wear it yourself!"
"Wrap it up," insisted his customer nervously.
"That's what I want."
The astonished clerk obeyed.
Back at the hospital Mr. Button entered the nursery
and almost threw the package at his son. "Here's your
clothes," he snapped out.
The old man untied the package and viewed the contents
with a quizzical eye.
"They look sort of funny to me," he complained.
"I don't want to be made a monkey of—"
"You've made a monkey of me!" retorted Mr. Button
fiercely. "Never you mind how funny you look.
Put them on—or I'll—or I'll spank you." He swallowed
uneasily at the penultimate word, feeling nevertheless
that it was the proper thing to say.
"All right, father"—this with a grotesque simulation
of filial respect—"you've lived longer; you know
best. Just as you say."
As before, the sound of the word "father" caused
Mr. Button to start violently.
"And hurry."
"I'm hurrying, father."
When his son was dressed Mr. Button regarded him
with depression. The costume consisted of dotted socks,
pink pants, and a belted blouse with a wide white collar.
Over the latter waved the long whitish beard, drooping
almost to the waist. The effect was not good.
"Wait!"
Mr. Button seized a hospital shears and with three
quick snaps amputated a large section of the beard. But
even with this improvement the ensemble fell far short
of perfection. The remaining brush of scraggly hair,
the watery eyes, the ancient teeth, seemed oddly out of
tone with the gayety of the costume. Mr. Button,
however, was obdurate—he held out his hand. "Come
along!" he said sternly.
His son took the hand trustingly. "What are you
going to call me, dad?" he quavered as they walked from
the nursery—"just `baby' for a while? till you think of
a better name?"
Mr. Button grunted. "I don't know," he answered
harshly. "I think we'll call you Methuselah."
III
Even after the new addition to the Button family
had had his hair cut short and then dyed to a sparse unnatural
black, had had his face shaved so close that it
glistened, and had been attired in small-boy clothes made
to order by a flabbergasted tailor, it was impossible for
Mr. Button to ignore the fact that his son was a poor
excuse for a first family baby. Despite his aged stoop,
Benjamin Button—for it was by this name they called
him instead of by the appropriate but invidious Methuselah—was
five feet eight inches tall. His clothes did not
eyebrows disguise the fact that the eyes underneath
were faded and watery and tired. In fact, the baby-nurse
who had been engaged in advance left the house
after one look, in a state of considerable indignation.
But Mr. Button persisted in his unwavering purpose.
Benjamin was a baby, and a baby he should remain.
At first he declared that if Benjamin didn't like warm
milk he could go without food altogether, but he was
finally prevailed upon to allow his son bread and butter,
and even oatmeal by way of a compromise. One day
he brought home a rattle and, giving it to Benjamin,
insisted in no uncertain terms that he should "play
with it," whereupon the old man took it with a weary
expression and could be heard jingling it obediently at
intervals throughout the day.
There can be no doubt, though, that the rattle bored
him, and that he found other and more soothing amousements
when he was left alone. For instance, Mr. Button
discovered one day that during the preceding week
he had smoked more cigars than ever before—a phenomenon
which was explained a few days later when,
entering the nursery unexpectedly, he found the room
full of faint blue haze and Benjamin, with a guilty expression
on his face, trying to conceal the butt of a dark
Havana. This, of course, called for a severe spanking,
but Mr. Button found that he could not bring himself
to administer it. He merely warned his son that he
would "stunt his growth."
Nevertheless he persisted in his attitude. He brought
home lead soldiers, he brought toy trains, he brought
large pleasant animals made of cotton, and, to perfect
the illusion which he was creating—for himself at least—
he passionately demanded of the clerk in the toy-store
whether "the paint would come off the pink duck if the
efforts, Benjamin refused to be interested. He would
steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery
with a volume of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," over
which he would pore through an afternoon, while his
cotton cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on
the floor. Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's
efforts were of little avail.
The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first,
prodigious. What the mishap would have cost the Buttons
and their kinsfolk socially cannot be determined,
for the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention
to other things. A few people who were unfailingly
polite racked their brains for compliments to give to the
parents—and finally hit upon the ingenious device of
declaring that the baby resembled his grandfather, a
fact which, due to the standard state of decay common
to all men of seventy, could not be denied. Mr. and
Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's
grandfather was furiously insulted.
Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he
found it. Several small boys were brought to see him,
and he spent a stiff-jointed afternoon trying to work up
an interest in tops and marbles—he even managed, quite
accidentally, to break a kitchen window with a stone
from a sling shot, a feat which secretly delighted his
father.
Thereafter Benjamin contrived to break something
every day, but he did these things only because they
were expected of him, and because he was by nature
obliging.
When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off,
Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in
one another's company. They would sit for hours, these
two so far apart in age and experience, and, like old
of the day. Benjamin felt more at ease in his grandfather's
presence than in his parents'—they seemed always
somewhat in awe of him and, despite the dictatorial
authority they exercised over him, frequently
addressed him as "Mr."
He was as puzzled as any one else at the apparently
advanced age of his mind and body at birth. He read
up on it in the medical journal, but found that no such
case had been previously recorded. At his father's
urging he made an honest attempt to play with other
boys, and frequently he joined in the milder games—
football shook him up too much, and he feared that in
case of a fracture his ancient bones would refuse to knit.
When he was five he was sent to kindergarten, where
he was initiated into the art of pasting green paper on
orange paper, of weaving colored maps and manufacturing
eternal cardboard necklaces. He was inclined
to drowse off to sleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit
which both irritated and frightened his young teacher.
To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was
removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told
their friends that they felt he was too young.
By the time he was twelve years old his parents had
grown used to him. Indeed, so strong is the force of
custom that they no longer felt that he was different
from any other child—except when some curious anomaly
reminded them of the fact. But one day a few weeks
after his twelfth birthday, while looking in the mirror,
Benjamin made, or thought he made, an astonishing discovery.
Did his eyes deceive him, or had his hair
turned in the dozen years of his life from white to iron-gray
under its concealing dye? Was the network of
wrinkles on his face becoming less pronounced? Was
his skin healthier and firmer, with even a touch of ruddy
longer stooped and that his physical condition had improved
since the early days of his life.
"Can it be—?" he thought to himself, or, rather,
scarcely dared to think.
He went to his father. "I am grown," he announced
determinedly. "I want to put on long trousers."
His father hesitated. "Well," he said finally, "I
don't know. Fourteen is the age for putting on long
trousers—and you are only twelve."
"But you'll have to admit," protested Benjamin,
"that I'm big for my age."
His father looked at him with illusory speculation.
"Oh, I'm not so sure of that," he said. "I was as big
as you when I was twelve."
This was not true—it was all part of Roger Button's
silent agreement with himself to believe in his son's
normality.
Finally a compromise was reached. Benjamin was to
continue to dye his hair. He was to make a better
attempt to play with boys of his own age. He was not
to wear his spectacles or carry a cane in the street. In
return for these concessions he was allowed his first
suit of long trousers. . . .
IV
Of the life of Benjamin Button between his twelfth
and twenty-first year I intend to say little. Suffice to
record that they were years of normal ungrowth. When
Benjamin was eighteen he was erect as a man of fifty;
he had more hair and it was of a dark gray; his step
was firm, his voice had lost its cracked quaver and descended
to a healthy baritone. So his father sent him up
to Connecticut to take examinations for entrance to
a member of the freshman class.
On the third day following his matriculation he received
a notification from Mr. Hart, the college registrar,
to call at his office and arrange his schedule. Benjamin,
glancing in the mirror, decided that his hair needed
a new application of its brown dye, but an anxious inspection
of his bureau drawer disclosed that the dye
bottle was not there. Then he remembered—he had
emptied it the day before and thrown it away.
He was in a dilemma. He was due at the registrar's
in five minutes. There seemed to be no help for it—he
must go as he was. He did.
"Good-morning," said the registrar politely. "You've
come to inquire about your son."
"Why, as a matter of fact, my name's Button—" began
Benjamin, but Mr. Hart cut him off.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Button. I'm expecting
your son here any minute."
"That's me!" burst out Benjamin. "I'm a freshman."
"What!"
"I'm a freshman."
"Surely you're joking."
"Not at all."
The registrar frowned and glanced at a card before
him. "Why, I have Mr. Benjamin Button's age down
here as eighteen."
"That's my age," asserted Benjamin, flushing slightly.
The registrar eyed him wearily. "Now surely, Mr.
Button, you don't expect me to believe that."
Benjamin smiled wearily. "I am eighteen," he repeated.
The registrar pointed sternly to the door. "Get out,"
he said. "Get out of college and get out of town. You
are a dangerous lunatic."
"I am eighteen."
Mr. Hart opened the door. "The idea!" he shouted.
"A man of your age trying to enter here as a freshman.
Eighteen years old, are you? Well, I'll give you eighteen
minutes to get out of town."
Benjamin Button walked with dignity from the room,
and half a dozen undergraduates, who were waiting in
the hall, followed him curiously with their eyes. When
he had gone a little way he turned around, faced the infuriated
registrar, who was still standing in the doorway,
and repeated in a firm voice: "I am eighteen years old."
To a chorus of titters which went up from the group of
undergraduates, Benjamin walked away.
But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his
melancholy walk to the railroad station he found that
he was being followed by a group, then by a swarm,
and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The
word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance
examinations for Yale and attempted to palm
himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever of excitement
permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of
classes, the football team abandoned its practice and
joined the mob, professors' wives with bonnets awry
and bustles out of position, ran shouting after the procession,
from which proceeded a continual succession of
remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of Benjamin
Button.
"He must be the Wandering Jew!"
"He ought to go to prep school at his age!"
"Look at the infant prodigy!"
"He thought this was the old men's home."
"Go up to Harvard!"
Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running.
He would show them! He would go to Harvard, and
then they would regret these ill-considered taunts!
Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his
head from the window. "You'll regret this!" he
shouted.
"Ha-ha!" the undergraduates laughed. "Ha-ha-ha!"
It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had
ever made. . . .
V
In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and
he signalized his birthday by going to work for his father
in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was
in that same year that he began "going out socially"—
that is, his father insisted on taking him to several
fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and
he and his son were more and more companionable—in
fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which
was still grayish) they appeared about the same age,
and could have passed for brothers.
One night in August they got into the phaeton attired
in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the
Shevlins' country house, situated just outside of Baltimore.
It was a gorgeous evening. A full moon drenched
the road to the lustreless color of platinum, and late-blooming
harvest flowers breathed into the motionless
air aromas that were like low, half-heard laughter. The
open country, carpeted for rods around with bright
wheat, was translucent as in the day. It was almost
impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty of
the sky—almost.
"There's a great future in the dry-goods business,"
Roger Button was saying. He was not a spiritual
man—his esthetic sense was rudimentary.
"Old fellows like me can't learn new tricks," he observed
profoundly. "It's you youngsters with energy
and vitality that have the great future before you."
Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins' country
house drifted into view, and presently there was a sighing
sound that crept persistently toward them—it
might have been the fine plaint of violins or the rustle
of the silver wheat under the moon.
They pulled up behind a handsome brougham whose
passengers were disembarking at the door. A lady got
out, then an elderly gentleman, then another young
lady, beautiful as sin. Benjamin started; an almost
chemical change seemed to dissolve and recompose the
very elements of his body. A rigor passed over him,
blood rose into his cheeks, his forehead, and there was a
steady thumping in his ears. It was first love.
The girl was slender and frail, with hair that was ashen
under the moon and honey-colored under the sputtering
gas-lamps of the porch. Over her shoulders was thrown
a Spanish mantilla of softest yellow, butterflied in black;
her feet were glittering buttons at the hem of her bustled
dress.
Roger Button leaned over to his son. "That," he
said, "is young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of
General Moncrief."
Benjamin nodded coldly. "Pretty little thing," he
said indifferently. But when the negro boy had led
the buggy away, he added: "Dad, you might introduce
me to her."
They approached a group of which Miss Moncrief
was the centre. Reared in the old tradition, she courtesied
low before Benjamin. Yes, he might have a dance.
He thanked her and walked away—staggered away.
The interval until the time for his turn should arrive
dragged itself out interminably. He stood close to the
wall, silent, inscrutable, watching with murderous eyes
the young bloods of Baltimore as they eddied around
Hildegarde Moncrief, passionate admiration in their
intolerably rosy! Their curling brown whiskers aroused
in him a feeling equivalent to indigestion.
But when his own time came, and he drifted with her
out upon the changing floor to the music of the latest
waltz from Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted
from him like a mantle of snow. Blind with enchantment,
he felt that life was just beginning.
"You and your brother got here just as we did, didn't
you?" asked Hildegarde, looking up at him with eyes
that were like bright blue enamel.
Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father's
brother, would it be best to enlighten her? He remembered
his experience at Yale, so he decided against it.
It would be rude to contradict a lady; it would be criminal
to mar this exquisite occasion with the grotesque
story of his origin. Later, perhaps. So he nodded,
smiled, listened, was happy.
"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him.
"Young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much
champagne they drink at college, and how much money
they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to
appreciate women."
Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal—
with an effort he choked back the impulse.
"You're just the romantic age," she continued—
"fifty. Twenty-five is too worldly-wise; thirty is apt to
be pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories
that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is—oh, sixty is too
near seventy; but fifty is the mcllow age. I love fifty."
Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed
passionately to be fifty.
"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd
rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than
marry a man of thirty and take care of him."
For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a
honey-colored mist. Hildegarde gave him two more
dances, and they discovered that they were marvellously
in accord on all the questions of the day. She was to
go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then
they would discuss all these questions further.
Going home in the phaeton just before the crack of
dawn, when the first bees were humming and the fading
moon glimmered in the cool dew, Benjamin knew vaguely
that his father was discussing wholesale hardware.
". . . . And what do you think should merit our
biggest attention after hammers and nails?" the elder
Button was saying.
"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.
"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button. "Why, I've just
covered the question of lugs."
Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the
eastern sky was suddenly cracked with light, and an
oriole yawned piercingly in the quickening trees. . . .
VI
When, six months later, the engagement of Miss
Hildegarde Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made
known (I say "made known," for General Moncrief declared
he would rather fall upon his sword than announce
it), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish
pitch. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin's
birth was remembered and sent out upon the winds of
scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It was said
that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button,
that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty
years, that he was John Wilkes Booth in disguise—and,
finally, that he had two small conical horns sprouting
from his head.
The Sunday supplements of the New York papers
played up the case with fascinating sketches which
showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish,
to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. He became
known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of
Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case,
had a very small circulation.
However, every one agreed with General Moncrief
that it was "criminal" for a lovely girl who could have
married any beau in Baltimore to throw herself into the
arms of a man who was assuredly fifty. In vain Mr.
Roger Button published his son's birth certificate in
large type in the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it.
You had only to look at Benjamin and see.
On the part of the two people most concerned there
was no wavering. So many of the stories about her
fiancé were false that Hildegarde refused stubbornly to
believe even the true one. In vain General Moncrief
pointed out to her the high mortality among men of
fifty—or, at least, among men who looked fifty; in vain
he told her of the instability of the wholesale hardware
business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry for mellowness—and
marry she did. . . .
VII
In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde
Moncrief were mistaken. The wholesale hardware business
prospered amazingly. In the fifteen years between
Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and his father's retirement
in 1895, the family fortune was doubled—and
this was due largely to the younger member of the firm.
Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the
couple to its bosom. Even old General Moncrief became
reconciled to his son-in-law when Benjamin gave
War" in twenty volumes, which had been refused by
nine prominent publishers.
In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many
changes. It seemed to him that the blood flowed with
new vigor through his veins. It began to be a pleasure
to rise in the morning, to walk with an active step along
the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with his shipments
of hammers and his cargoes of nails. It was in
1890 that he executed his famous business coup: he
brought up the suggestion that all nails used in nailing
up the boxes in which nails are shipped are the property of
the shippee, a proposal which became a statute, was approved
by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Button
and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than six hundred
nails every year.
In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming
more and more attracted by the gay side of life. It
was typical of his growing enthusiasm for pleasure that
he was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and
run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, his contemporaries
would stare enviously at the picture he made
of health and vitality.
"He seems to grow younger every year," they would
remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years
old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his
son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what
amounted to adulation.
And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it
will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There
was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button: his
wife had ceased to attract him.
At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five,
with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early
days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her.
an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed
the aspect of cheap crockery—moreover, and most of
all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid,
too content, too anemic in her excitements, and too
sober in her taste. As a bride it had been she who had
"dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners—now conditions
were reversed. She went out socially with him,
but without enthusiasm, devoured already by that
eternal inertia which comes to live with each of us one
day and stays with us to the end.
Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak
of the Spanish-American War in 1898 his home had
for him so little charm that he decided to join the army.
With his business influence he obtained a commission as
captain, and proved so adaptable to the work that he
was made a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel just
in time to participate in the celebrated charge up San
Juan Hill. He was slightly wounded, and received a
medal.
Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and
excitement of army life that he regretted to give it up,
but his business required attention, so he resigned his
commission and came home. He was met at the station
by a brass band and escorted to his house.
VIII
Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on
the porch, and even as he kissed her he felt with a sinking
of the heart that these three years had taken their
toll. She was a woman of forty now, with a faint
skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed
him.
Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar
with anxiety, comparing it after a moment with a photograph
of himself in uniform taken just before the war.
"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing.
There was no doubt of it—he looked now like
a man of thirty. Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy—he
was growing younger. He had hitherto hoped
that once he reached a bodily age equivalent to his age
in years, the grotesque phenomenon which had marked
his birth would cease to function. He shuddered. His
destiny seemed to him awful, incredible.
When he came down-stairs Hildegarde was waiting
for him. She appeared annoyed, and he wondered if
she had at last discovered that there was something
amiss. It was with an effort to relieve the tension between
them that he broached the matter at dinner in
what he considered a delicate way.
"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I
look younger than ever."
Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed.
"Do you think it's anything to boast about?"
"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably.
She sniffed again. "The idea," she said, and after a
moment: "I should think you'd have enough pride to
stop it."
"How can I?" he demanded.
"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted.
"But there's a right way of doing things and a wrong
way. If you've made up your mind to be different
from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you,
but I really don't think it's very considerate."
"But, Hildegarde, I can't help it."
"You can too. You're simply stubborn. You think
you don't want to be like any one else. You always have
been that way, and you always will be. But just think
you do—what would the world be like?"
As this was an inane and unanswerable argument
Benjamin made no reply, and from that time on a chasm
began to widen between them. He wondered what possible
fascination she had ever exercised over him.
To add to the breach, he found, as the new century
gathered headway, that his thirst for gayety grew
stronger. Never a party of any kind in the city of
Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest
of the young married women, chatting with the most
popular of the débutantes, and finding their company
charming, while his wife, a dowager of evil omen, sat
among the chaperons, now in haughty disapproval, and
now following him with solemn, puzzled, and reproachful
eyes.
"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A
young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He
must be twenty years younger than his wife." They had
forgotten—as people inevitably forget—that back in
1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about
this same ill-matched pair.
Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated
for by his many new interests. He took up
golf and made a great success of it. He went in for
dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and
in 1908 he was considered proficient at the "Maxixe,"
while in 1909 his "Castle Walk" was the envy of every
young man in town.
His social activities, of course, interfered to some extent
with his business, but then he had worked hard at
wholesale hardware for twenty-five years and felt that
he could soon hand it on to his son, Roscoe, who had
recently graduated from Harvard.
He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each
fear which had come over him on his return
from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take a
naïve pleasure in his appearance. There was only one
fly in the delicious ointment—he hated to appear in
public with his wife. Hildegarde was almost fifty,
and the sight of her made him feel absurd. . . .
IX
One September day in 1910—a few years after Roger
Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, had been handed
over to young Roscoe Button—a man, apparently about
twenty years old, entered himself as a freshman at
Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not make
the mistake of announcing that he would never see
fifty again nor did he mention the fact that his son had
been graduated from the same institution ten years before.
He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a
prominent position in the class, partly because he seemed
a little older than the other freshmen, whose average
age was about eighteen.
But his success was largely due to the fact that in the
football game with Yale he played so brilliantly, with so
much dash and with such a cold, remorseless anger that
he scored seven touchdowns and fourteen field goals for
Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men to
be carried singly from the field, unconscious. He was
the most celebrated man in college.
Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was
scarcely able to "make" the team. The coaches said
that he had lost weight, and it seemed to the more observant
among them that he was not quite as tall as
before. He made no touchdowns—indeed, he was retained
reputation would bring terror and disorganization to
the Yale team.
In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He
had grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken
by some sophomores for a freshman, an incident which
humiliated him terribly. He became known as something
of a prodigy—a senior who was surely no more
than sixteen—and he was often shocked at the worldliness
of some of his classmates. His studies seemed
harder to him—he felt that they were too advanced. He
had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas', the famous
preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared
for college, and he determined after his graduation
to enter himself at St. Midas', where the sheltered
life among boys his own size would be more congenial
to him.
Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore
with his Harvard diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde
was now residing in Italy, so Benjamin went to
live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomed
in a general way, there was obviously no heartiness in
Roscoe's feeling toward him—there was even perceptible
a tendency on his son's part to think that Benjamin,
as he moped about the house in adolescent mooniness,
was somewhat in the way. Roscie was married now and
prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal
to creep out in connection with his family.
Benjamin, no longer persona grata with the débutantes
and younger college set, found himself left much
alone, except for the companionship of three or four
fifteen-year-old boys in the neighborhood. His idea of
going to St. Midas' school recurred to him.
"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over
and over that I want to go to prep school."
"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter
was distasteful to him, and he wished to avoid a
discussion.
"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll
have to enter me and take me up there."
"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His
eyes narrowed and he looked uneasily at his father.
"As a matter of fact," he added, "you'd better not go
on with this business much longer. You better pull up
short. You better—you better"—he paused and his
face crimsoned as he sought for words—"you better
turn right around and start back the other way. This
has gone too far to be a joke. It isn't funny any longer.
You—you behave yourself!"
Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.
"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors
are in the house I want you to call me `Uncle'—not
`Roscoe,' but `Uncle,' do you understand? It looks
absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name.
Perhaps you'd better call me `Uncle' all the time, so
you'll get used to it."
With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned
away. . . .
X
At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered
dismally up-stairs and stared at himself in the
mirror. He had not shaved for three months, but he
could find nothing on his face but a faint white down
with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he
had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached
him with the proposition that he should wear
eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks,
and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his
early years was to be repeated. But whiskers had
had reluctantly relented.
Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, "The Boy
Scouts in Bimini Bay," and began to read. But he
found himself thinking persistently about the war.
America had joined the Allied cause during the preceding
month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas,
sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not look that
old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have
disqualified him, anyway.
There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared
with a letter bearing a large official legend in
the corner and addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button.
Benjamin tore it open eagerly, and read the enclosure
with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers
who had served in the Spanish-American War were
being called back into service with a higher rank, and it
enclosed his commission as brigadier-general in the United
States army with orders to report immediately.
Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with
enthusiasm. This was what he had wanted. He seized
his cap and ten minutes later he had entered a large
tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and asked in
his uncertain treble to be measured for a uniform.
"Want to play soldier, sonny?" demanded a clerk,
casually.
Benjamin flushed. "Say! Never mind what I
want!" he retorted angrily. "My name's Button and
I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I'm good for
it."
"Well," admitted the clerk, hesitantly, "if you're
not, I guess your daddy is, all right."
Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform
was completed. He had difficulty in obtaining the
proper general's insignia because the dealer kept insisting
would look just as well and be much more fun to play
with.
Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night
and proceeded by train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina,
where he was to command an infantry brigade.
On a sultry April day he approached the entrance to
the camp, paid off the taxicab which had brought him
from the station, and turned to the sentry on guard.
"Get some one to handle my luggage!" he said briskly.
The sentry eyed him reproachfully. "Say," he remarked,
"where you goin' with the general's duds,
sonny?"
Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War,
whirled upon him with fire in his eye, but with, alas,
a changing treble voice.
"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused
for breath—then suddenly he saw the sentry snap his
heels together and bring his rifle to the present. Benjamin
concealed a smile of gratification, but when he
glanced around his smile faded. It was not he who had
inspired obedience, but an imposing artillery colonel who
was approaching on horseback.
"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.
The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly
down at him with a twinkle in his eyes. "Whose little
boy are you?" he demanded kindly.
"I'll soon darn well show you whose little boy I
am!" retorted Benjamin in a ferocious voice. "Get
down off that horse!"
The colonel roared with laughter.
"You want him, eh, general?"
"Here!" cried Benjamin desperately. "Read this."
And he thrust his commission toward the colonel.
The colonel read it, his eyes popping from their sockets.
"Where'd you get this?" he demanded, slipping the
document into his own pocket.
"I got it from the Government, as you'll soon find
out!"
"You come along with me," said the colonel with a
peculiar look. "We'll go up to headquarters and talk
this over. Come along."
The colonel turned and began walking his horse in
the direction of headquarters. There was nothing for
Benjamin to do but follow with as much dignity as possible—meanwhile
promising himself a stern revenge.
But this revenge did not materialize. Two days
later, however, his son Roscoe materialized from Baltimore,
hot and cross from a hasty trip, and escorted the
weeping general, sans uniform, back to his home.
XI
In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During
the attendant festivities, however, no one thought
it "the thing" to mention that the little grubby boy,
apparently about ten years of age who played around
the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was
the new baby's own grandfather.
No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful
face was crossed with just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe
Button his presence was a source of torment. In the
idiom of his generation Roscoe did not consider the
matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father,
in refusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-blooded
he-man"—this was Roscoe's favorite expression—but
in a curious and perverse manner. Indeed,
to think about the matter for as much as a half an hour
drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that
"live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on
Roscoe rested.
Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old
enough to play childish games with little Benjamin
under the supervision of the same nurse. Roscoe took
them both to kindergarten on the same day and Benjamin
found that playing with little strips of colored
paper, making mats and chains and curious and beautiful
designs, was the most fascinating game in the world.
Once he was bad and had to stand in the corner—then
he cried—but for the most part there were gay hours in
the cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows
and Miss Bailey's kind hand resting for a moment
now and then in his tousled hair.
Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a
year, but Benjamin stayed on in the kindergarten. He
was very happy. Sometimes when other tots talked
about what they would do when they grew up a shadow
would cross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he
realized that those were things in which he was never to
share.
The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went
back a third year to the kindergarten, but he was too
little now to understand what the bright shining strips
of paper were for. He cried because the other boys
were bigger than he and he was afraid of them. The
teacher talked to him, but though he tried to understand
he could not understand at all.
He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse,
Nana, in her starched gingham dress, became the centre
of his tiny world. On bright days they walked in the
park; Nana would point at a great gray monster and
say "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her,
and when he was being undressed for bed that night he
would say it over and over aloud to her: "Elyphant,
on the bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly
right it would bounce you up on your feet again,
and if you said "Ah" for a long time while you jumped
you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.
He loved to take a big cane from the hatrack and go
around hitting chairs and tables with it and saying:
"Fight, fight, fight." When there were people there
the old ladies would cluck at him, which interested him,
and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which he
submitted to with mild boredom. And when the long
day was done at five o'clock he would go up-stairs with
Nana and be fed oatmeal and nice soft mushy foods with
a spoon.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish
sleep; no token came to him of his brave days at college,
of the glittering years when he flustered the hearts
of many girls. There were only the white, safe walls
of his crib and Nana and a man who came to see him
sometimes, and a great big orange ball that Nana pointed
at just before his twilight bed hour and called "sun."
When the sun went his eyes were sleepy—there were no
dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past—the wild charge at the head of his men up
San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he
worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy
city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before
that when he sat smoking far into the night in the
gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his
grandfather—all these had faded like unsubstantial
dreams from his mind as though they had never been.
He did not remember. He did not remember clearly
whether the milk was warm or cool at his last feeding or
how the days passed—there was only his crib and Nana's
familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing.
the noons and nights he breathed and over him there
were soft mumblings and murmurings that he scarcely
heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light and
darkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim
faces that moved above him, and the warm sweet aroma
of the milk, faded out altogether from his mind.
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