TALES FROM THE JAZZ AGE
BY
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
1922
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.
This story was inspired by a remark of Mark
Twain's to the effect that
it was a pity that the best part of life came
at the beginning and the
worst part at the end.
By trying the experiment upon only one man
in a
perfectly normal world I have scarcely given
his idea a fair trial.
Several weeks after completing it, I discovered
an almost identical
plot in Samuel Butler's "Note-books."
The story was published in "Collier's" last
summer and provoked this
startling letter from an anonymous admirer
in Cincinnati:
"Sir--
I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers
and I wish to say
that as a short story writer you would make
a good lunatic I have seen
many peices of cheese in my life but of all
the peices of cheese I
have ever seen you are the biggest peice.
I hate to waste a peice of
stationary on you but I will."
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
I
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 anaesthetic 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 whether the darkness
of the night had borne in
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-bye!"
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 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.
"Upstairs.
Right upstairs.
Go--_up!_"
She pointed the direction, and Mr. Button,
bathed in cool
perspiration, turned falteringly, and began
to mount to the second
floor.
In the upper hall he addressed another nurse
who approached
him, basin in 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 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 a state it's
put us all in this
morning!
It's perfectly outrageous!
The hospital will never have
a 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.
"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
partly 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-coloured 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 a fine place to
keep a youngster of quiet tastes.
With 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....
2
"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.
Exceptionally--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 no suits to
fit the new-born Button.
He blamed 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 gaiety 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."
3
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
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
conceal this, nor did the clipping and dyeing
of his eyebrows disguise
the fact that the eyes under--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 amusements 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 oft the pink duck if
the baby put it in his mouth."
But, despite all his father's efforts,
Benjamin refused to be interested.
He would steal down the back stairs
and return to the nursery with a volume of
the Encyclopedia
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 cronies, discuss with tireless monotony
the slow events 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 initiated into
the art of pasting green paper on orange paper,
of weaving coloured
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 winter colour?
He could not tell.
He knew that
he no 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....
4
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 Yale College.
Benjamin passed his
examination and became 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 door-way, 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....
5
In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old,
and he signalised 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
colour 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 aesthetic
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 rigour 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-coloured 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 curtsied 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
faces.
How obnoxious they seemed to Benjamin; how
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 mellow 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 many a
man of thirty and take care
of _him_."
For Benjamin the rest of the evening was bathed
in a honey-coloured
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...
6
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....
7
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 him the money to bring
out his _History of the
Civil 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 vigour
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.
But, as the years passed, her
honey-coloured hair became 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
anaemic in her excitements, and too sober
in her taste.
As a bride it
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
array 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.
8
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 mirror--he went
closer and examined his own face 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 downstairs 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 how it would be if every one
else looked at things
as 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 gaiety 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
debutantes, 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 "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 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 other.
This
pleased Benjamin--he soon forgot the insidious
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....
9
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
on the team
chiefly in hope that his enormous reputation
would bring terror and
disorganisation 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's,
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's, 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.
Roscoe 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
done, except for the
companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old
boys in the
neighbourhood.
His idea of going to St. Midas's 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....
10
At the termination of this interview, Benjamin
wandered dismally
upstairs 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 itched and made him
ashamed.
He wept and Roscoe 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 to Benjamin that a nice
V.W.C.A. badge 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 materialise.
Two days later,
however, his son Roscoe materialised from
Baltimore, hot and cross
from 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 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 favourite 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 such a scale
was--was--was inefficient.
And there 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 coloured 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 realised 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, elyphant, elyphant."
Sometimes Nana let him jump 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 hat-rack
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 upstairs with Nana and
be fed on 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.
When he was
hungry he cried--that was all.
Through 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.
