Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.
"And another thing," continued Roscoe, "when visitors are in the houseI want you to call me 'Uncle'--not 'Roscoe,' but 'Uncle,' do youunderstand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by myfirst 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....
10
At the termination of this interview, Benjamin wandered dismallyupstairs and stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved forthree months, but he could find nothing on his face but a faint whitedown with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had firstcome home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the propositionthat he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to hischeeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his earlyyears was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made himashamed. He wept and Roscoe had reluctantly relented.
Benjamin opened a book of boys' stories, _The Boy Scouts in BiminiBay_, and began to read. But he found himself thinking persistentlyabout the war. America had joined the Allied cause during thepreceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen wasthe minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which wasfifty-seven, would have disqualified him, anyway.
There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a letterbearing a large official legend in the corner and addressed to Mr.Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open eagerly, and read the enclosurewith delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who hadserved in the Spanish-American War were being called back into servicewith a higher rank, and it enclosed his commission as brigadier-generalin the United States army with orders to report immediately.
Benjamin jumped to his feet fairly quivering with enthusiasm. This waswhat he had wanted. He seized his cap, and ten minutes later he hadentered a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and askedin 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 goodfor it."
"Well," admitted the clerk hesitantly, "if you're not, I guess yourdaddy is, all right."
Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed. Hehad difficulty in obtaining the proper general's insignia because thedealer kept insisting to Benjamin that a nice V.W.C.A. badge wouldlook just as well and be much more fun to play with.
Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and proceeded bytrain to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he was to command aninfantry brigade. On a sultry April day he approached the entrance tothe 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 yougoin' with the general's duds, sonny?"
Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish-American War, whirled upon him withfire in his eye, but with, alas, a changing treble voice.
"Come to attention!" he tried to thunder; he paused for breath--thensuddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels together and bring his rifleto the present. Benjamin concealed a smile of gratification, but whenhe glanced around his smile faded. It was not he who had inspiredobedience, but an imposing artillery colonel who was approaching onhorseback.
"Colonel!" called Benjamin shrilly.
The colonel came up, drew rein, and looked coolly down at him with atwinkle in his eyes. "Whose little boy are you?" he demanded kindly.
"I'll soon darn well show you whose little boy I am!" retortedBenjamin 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 hiscommission toward the colonel. The colonel read it, his eyes poppingfrom their sockets. "Where'd you get this?" he demanded, slipping thedocument into his own pocket. "I got it from the Government, as you'llsoon find out!" "You come along with me," said the colonel with apeculiar look. "We'll go up to headquarters and talk this over. Comealong." The colonel turned and began walking his horse in thedirection of headquarters. There was nothing for Benjamin to do butfollow with as much dignity as possible--meanwhile promising himself astern revenge. But this revenge did not materialise. Two days later,however, his son Roscoe materialised from Baltimore, hot and crossfrom a hasty trip, and escorted the weeping general, _sans_uniform, back to his home.
II
In 1920 Roscoe Button's first child was born. During the attendantfestivities, however, no one thought it "the thing" to mention, thatthe little grubby boy, apparently about ten years of age who playedaround the house with lead soldiers and a miniature circus, was thenew baby's own grandfather.
No one disliked the little boy whose fresh, cheerful face was crossedwith just a hint of sadness, but to Roscoe Button his presence was asource of torment. In the idiom of his generation Roscoe did notconsider the matter "efficient." It seemed to him that his father, inrefusing to look sixty, had not behaved like a "red-bloodedhe-man"--this was Roscoe's favourite expression--but in a curious andperverse manner. Indeed, to think about the matter for as much as ahalf an hour drove him to the edge of insanity. Roscoe believed that"live wires" should keep young, but carrying it out on such a scalewas--was--was inefficient. And there Roscoe rested.
Five years later Roscoe's little boy had grown old enough to playchildish games with little Benjamin under the supervision of the samenurse. Roscoe took them both to kindergarten on the same day, andBenjamin found that playing with little strips of coloured paper,making mats and chains and curious and beautiful designs, was the mostfascinating game in the world. Once he was bad and had to stand in thecorner--then he cried--but for the most part there were gay hours inthe cheerful room, with the sunlight coming in the windows and MissBailey's kind hand resting for a moment now and then in his tousledhair.
Roscoe's son moved up into the first grade after a year, but Benjaminstayed on in the kindergarten. He was very happy. Sometimes when othertots talked about what they would do when they grew up a shadow wouldcross his little face as if in a dim, childish way he realised thatthose were things in which he was never to share.
The days flowed on in monotonous content. He went back a third year tothe kindergarten, but he was too little now to understand what thebright shining strips of paper were for. He cried because the otherboys were bigger than he, and he was afraid of them. The teachertalked to him, but though he tried to understand he could notunderstand at all.
He was taken from the kindergarten. His nurse, Nana, in her starchedgingham dress, became the centre of his tiny world. On bright daysthey walked in the park; Nana would point at a great gray monster andsay "elephant," and Benjamin would say it after her, and when he wasbeing undressed for bed that night he would say it over and over aloudto her: "Elyphant, elyphant, elyphant." Sometimes Nana let him jump onthe bed, which was fun, because if you sat down exactly right it wouldbounce you up on your feet again, and if you said "Ah" for a long timewhile you jumped you got a very pleasing broken vocal effect.
He loved to take a big cane from the hat-rack and go around hittingchairs and tables with it and saying: "Fight, fight, fight." Whenthere were people there the old ladies would cluck at him, whichinterested him, and the young ladies would try to kiss him, which hesubmitted to with mild boredom. And when the long day was done at fiveo'clock he would go upstairs with Nana and be fed on oatmeal and nicesoft mushy foods with a spoon.
There were no troublesome memories in his childish sleep; no tokencame to him of his brave days at college, of the glittering years whenhe flustered the hearts of many girls. There were only the white, safewalls 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 histwilight bed hour and called "sun." When the sun went his eyes weresleepy--there were no dreams, no dreams to haunt him.
The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; thefirst years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer duskdown in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the daysbefore that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy oldButton house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had fadedlike 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 hislast feeding or how the days passed--there was only his crib andNana's familiar presence. And then he remembered nothing. When he washungry he cried--that was all. Through the noons and nights hebreathed and over him there were soft mumblings and murmurings that hescarcely heard, and faintly differentiated smells, and light anddarkness.
Then it was all dark, and his white crib and the dim faces that movedabove him, and the warm sweet aroma of the milk, faded out altogetherfrom his mind.
_________-THE END-Fitzgerald's short story: Curious Case of Benjamin Button
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