 | Tales of the jazz age |  |
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. . . .
| Tales of the jazz age | |