"I like men of your age," Hildegarde told him. "Young boys are soidiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, andhow much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how toappreciate women."
Benjamin felt himself on the verge of a proposal--with an effort hechoked back the impulse. "You're just the romantic age," shecontinued--"fifty. Twenty-five is too wordly-wise; thirty is apt to bepale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a wholecigar to tell; sixty is--oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty isthe mellow age. I love fifty."
Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He longed passionately to befifty.
"I've always said," went on Hildegarde, "that I'd rather marry a manof fifty and be taken care of than many a man of thirty and take careof _him_."
For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed in a honey-colouredmist. Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered thatthey were marvellously in accord on all the questions of the day. Shewas to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then theywould discuss all these questions further.
Going home in the phaeton just before the crack of dawn, when thefirst bees were humming and the fading moon glimmered in the cool dew,Benjamin knew vaguely that his father was discussing wholesalehardware.
".... And what do you think should merit our biggest attention afterhammers and nails?" the elder Button was saying.
"Love," replied Benjamin absent-mindedly.
"Lugs?" exclaimed Roger Button, "Why, I've just covered the questionof lugs."
Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes just as the eastern sky wassuddenly cracked with light, and an oriole yawned piercingly in thequickening trees...
6
When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Moncrief toMr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say "made known," for GeneralMoncrief declared he would rather fall upon his sword than announceit), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. Thealmost forgotten story of Benjamin's birth was remembered and sent outupon the winds of scandal in picaresque and incredible forms. It wassaid that Benjamin was really the father of Roger Button, that he washis brother who had been in prison for forty years, that he was JohnWilkes Booth in disguise--and, finally, that he had two small conicalhorns sprouting from his head.
The Sunday supplements of the New York papers played up the case withfascinating sketches which showed the head of Benjamin Button attachedto a fish, to a snake, and, finally, to a body of solid brass. Hebecame known, journalistically, as the Mystery Man of Maryland. Butthe 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 tothrow herself into the arms of a man who was assuredly fifty. In vainMr. Roger Button published Us son's birth certificate in large type inthe Baltimore _Blaze_. No one believed it. You had only to lookat Benjamin and see.
On the part of the two people most concerned there was no wavering. Somany of the stories about her fiance were false that Hildegarderefused stubbornly to believe even the true one. In vain GeneralMoncrief 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 theinstability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosento marry for mellowness, and marry she did....
7
In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief weremistaken. The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly. In thefifteen years between Benjamin Button's marriage in 1880 and hisfather's retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled--and thiswas due largely to the younger member of the firm.
Needless to say, Baltimore eventually received the couple to itsbosom. Even old General Moncrief became reconciled to his son-in-lawwhen Benjamin gave him the money to bring out his _History of theCivil War_ in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nineprominent publishers.
In Benjamin himself fifteen years had wrought many changes. It seemedto him that the blood flowed with new vigour through his veins. Itbegan to be a pleasure to rise in the morning, to walk with an activestep along the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with hisshipments of hammers and his cargoes of nails. It was in 1890 that heexecuted his famous business coup: he brought up the suggestion that_all nails used in nailing up the boxes in which nails are shippedare the property of the shippee_, a proposal which became astatute, was approved by Chief Justice Fossile, and saved Roger Buttonand Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than _six hundred nails everyyear_.
In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and moreattracted by the gay side of life. It was typical of his growingenthusiasm for pleasure that he was the first man in the city ofBaltimore to own and run an automobile. Meeting him on the street, hiscontemporaries would stare enviously at the picture he made of healthand vitality.
"He seems to grow younger every year," they would remark. And if oldRoger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give aproper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him whatamounted to adulation.
And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well topass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing thatworried 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 marriageBenjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, herhoney-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of hereyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery--moreover, and, most of all,she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, tooanaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride itbeen she who had "dragged" Benjamin to dances and dinners--nowconditions were reversed. She went out socially with him, but withoutenthusiasm, devoured already by that eternal inertia which comes tolive with each of us one day and stays with us to the end.
Benjamin's discontent waxed stronger. At the outbreak of theSpanish-American War in 1898 his home had for him so little charm thathe decided to join the army. With his business influence he obtained acommission as captain, and proved so adaptable to the work that he wasmade a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel just in time toparticipate in the celebrated charge up San Juan Hill. He was slightlywounded, and received a medal.
Benjamin had become so attached to the activity and excitement ofarray life that he regretted to give it up, but his business requiredattention, so he resigned his commission and came home. He was met atthe station by a brass band and escorted to his house.
8
Hildegarde, waving a large silk flag, greeted him on the porch, andeven as he kissed her he felt with a sinking of the heart that thesethree years had taken their toll. She was a woman of forty now, with afaint skirmish line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressedhim.
Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror--he wentcloser and examined his own face with anxiety, comparing it after amoment with a photograph of himself in uniform taken just before thewar.
"Good Lord!" he said aloud. The process was continuing. There was nodoubt of it--he looked now like a man of thirty. Instead of beingdelighted, he was uneasy--he was growing younger. He had hithertohoped that once he reached a bodily age equivalent to his age inyears, the grotesque phenomenon which had marked his birth would ceaseto function. He shuddered. His destiny seemed to him awful,incredible.
When he came downstairs Hildegarde was waiting for him. She appearedannoyed, and he wondered if she had at last discovered that there wassomething amiss. It was with an effort to relieve the tension betweenthem that he broached the matter at dinner in what he considered adelicate way.
"Well," he remarked lightly, "everybody says I look younger thanever."
Hildegarde regarded him with scorn. She sniffed. "Do you think it'sanything to boast about?"
"I'm not boasting," he asserted uncomfortably. She sniffed again. "Theidea," she said, and after a moment: "I should think you'd have enoughpride to stop it."
"How can I?" he demanded.
"I'm not going to argue with you," she retorted. "But there's a rightway of doing things and a wrong way. If you've made up your mind to bedifferent from everybody else, I don't suppose I can stop you, but Ireally 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 belike any one else. You always have been that way, and you always willbe. But just think how it would be if every one else looked at thingsas 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 wonderedwhat 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 gaiety grew stronger. Never a party of any kind inthe city of Baltimore but he was there, dancing with the prettiest ofthe young married women, chatting with the most popular of thedebutantes, and finding their company charming, while his wife, adowager of evil omen, sat among the chaperons, now in haughtydisapproval, and now following him with solemn, puzzled, andreproachful eyes.
"Look!" people would remark. "What a pity! A young fellow that agetied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger thanhis wife." They had forgotten--as people inevitably forget--that backin 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this sameill-matched pair.
Benjamin's growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his manynew interests. He took up golf and made a great success of it. He wentin for dancing: in 1906 he was an expert at "The Boston," and in 1908he was considered proficient at the "Maxine," 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 hisbusiness, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware fortwenty-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 other. Thispleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious fear which had comeover him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to takea naive pleasure in his appearance. There was only one fly in thedelicious ointment--he hated to appear in public with his wife.Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feelabsurd....
9
One September day in 1910--a few years after Roger Button & Co.,Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button--aman, apparently about twenty years old, entered himself as a freshmanat Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not make the mistake ofannouncing that he would never see fifty again, nor did he mention thefact that his son had been graduated from the same institution tenyears before.
He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a prominent positionin the class, partly because he seemed a little older than the otherfreshmen, whose average age was about eighteen.
But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football gamewith Yale he played so brilliantly, with so much dash and with such acold, remorseless anger that he scored seven touchdowns and fourteenfield goals for Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men tobe carried singly from the field, unconscious. He was the mostcelebrated 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 itseemed to the more observant among them that he was not quite as tallas before. He made no touchdowns--indeed, he was retained on the teamchiefly in hope that his enormous reputation would bring terror anddisorganisation to the Yale team.
In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown soslight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for afreshman, an incident which humiliated him terribly. He became knownas something of a prodigy--a senior who was surely no more thansixteen--and he was often shocked at the worldliness of some of hisclassmates. His studies seemed harder to him--he felt that they weretoo advanced. He had heard his classmates speak of St. Midas's, thefamous preparatory school, at which so many of them had prepared forcollege, and he determined after his graduation to enter himself atSt. Midas's, where the sheltered life among boys his own size would bemore congenial to him.
Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his Harvarddiploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now residing in Italy, soBenjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomedin a general way there was obviously no heartiness in Roscoe's feelingtoward him--there was even perceptible a tendency on his son's part tothink that Benjamin, as he moped about the house in adolescentmooniness, was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now andprominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal to creep out inconnection with his family.
Benjamin, no longer _persona grata_ with the debutantes andyounger college set, found himself left much done, except for thecompanionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in theneighbourhood. His idea of going to St. Midas's school recurred tohim.
"Say," he said to Roscoe one day, "I've told you over and over that Iwant to go to prep, school."
"Well, go, then," replied Roscoe shortly. The matter was distastefulto him, and he wished to avoid a discussion.
"I can't go alone," said Benjamin helplessly. "You'll have to enter meand take me up there."
"I haven't got time," declared Roscoe abruptly. His eyes narrowed andhe looked uneasily at his father. "As a matter of fact," he added,"you'd better not go on with this business much longer. You betterpull up short. You better--you better"--he paused and his facecrimsoned as he sought for words--"you better turn right around andstart back the other way. This has gone too far to be a joke. It isn'tfunny any longer. You--you behave yourself!"
