The Beautiful and the Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald [great novels TXT] 📗

we’re already attracting much attention.

MAURY: (_Rudely_) As your secretary might say, if you stuff paper into a grate it’ll burn brightly for a moment.

(_At this point_ GLORIA, freshly tinted and lustful of admiration and entertainment, rejoins the party, followed by her two friends. For several moments the conversation becomes entirely fragmentary. GLORIA calls ANTHONY aside.)

GLORIA: Please don’t drink much, Anthony.

ANTHONY: Why?

GLORIA: Because you’re so simple when you’re drunk.

ANTHONY: Good Lord! What’s the matter now?

GLORIA: (_After a pause during which her eyes gaze coolly into his_) Several things. In the first place, why do you insist on paying for everything? Both those men have more money than you!

ANTHONY: Why, Gloria! They’re my guests!

GLORIA: That’s no reason why you should pay for a bottle of champagne Rachael Barnes smashed. Dick tried to fix that second taxi bill, and you wouldn’t let him.

ANTHONY: Why, Gloria—

GLORIA: When we have to keep selling bonds to even pay our bills, it’s time to cut down on excess generosities. Moreover, I wouldn’t be quite so attentive to Rachael Barnes. Her husband doesn’t like it any more than I do!

ANTHONY: Why, Gloria—

GLORIA: (_Mimicking him sharply_) “Why, Gloria!” But that’s happened a little too often this summer—with every pretty woman you meet. It’s grown to be a sort of habit, and I’m not going to stand it! If you can play around, I can, too. (_Then, as an afterthought_) By the way, this Fred person isn’t a second Joe Hull, is he?

ANTHONY: Heavens, no! He probably came up to get me to wheedle some money out of grandfather for his flock.

(GLORIA turns away from a very depressed ANTHONY and returns to her guests.

By nine o’clock these can be divided into two classes—those who have been drinking consistently and those who have taken little or nothing. In the second group are the BARNESES, MURIEL, and FREDERICK E. PARAMORE.)

MURIEL: I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

DICK: As Goliath said, he understood how David felt, but he couldn’t express himself. The remark was immediately adopted for a motto by the Philistines.

MURIEL: I don’t get you. I must be getting stupid in my old age.

GLORIA: (_Weaving unsteadily among the company like an exhilarated angel_) If any one’s hungry there’s some French pastry on the dining room table.

MAURY: Can’t tolerate those Victorian designs it comes in.

MURIEL: (_Violently amused_) I’ll say you’re tight, Maury.

(_Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness …_

Messrs. BARNES and PARAMORE have been engaged in conversation upon some wholesome subject, a subject so wholesome that MR. BARNES has been trying for several moments to creep into the more tainted air around the central lounge. Whether PARAMORE is lingering in the gray house out of politeness or curiosity, or in order at some future time to make a sociological report on the decadence of American life, is problematical.)

MAURY: Fred, I imagined you were very broad-minded.

PARAMORE: I am.

MURIEL: Me, too. I believe one religion’s as good as another and everything.

PARAMORE: There’s some good in all religions.

MURIEL: I’m a Catholic but, as I always say, I’m not working at it.

PARAMORE: (_With a tremendous burst of tolerance_) The Catholic religion is a very—a very powerful religion.

MAURY: Well, such a broad-minded man should consider the raised plane of sensation and the stimulated optimism contained in this cocktail.

PARAMORE: (_Taking the drink, rather defiantly_) Thanks, I’ll try—one.

MAURY: One? Outrageous! Here we have a class of ‘nineteen ten reunion, and you refuse to be even a little pickled. Come on!

“Here’s a health to King Charles, Here’s a health to King Charles, Bring the bowl that you boast–-”

(PARAMORE joins in with a hearty voice.)

MAURY: Fill the cup, Frederick. You know everything’s subordinated to nature’s purposes with us, and her purpose with you is to make you a rip-roaring tippler.

PARAMORE: If a fellow can drink like a gentleman—

MAURY: What is a gentleman, anyway?

ANTHONY: A man who never has pins under his coat lapel.

MAURY: Nonsense! A man’s social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich.

DICK: He’s a man who prefers the first edition of a book to the last edition of a newspaper.

RACHAEL: A man who never gives an impersonation of a dope-fiend.

MAURY: An American who can fool an English butler into thinking he’s one.

MURIEL: A man who comes from a good family and went to Yale or Harvard or Princeton, and has money and dances well, and all that.

MAURY: At last—the perfect definition! Cardinal Newman’s is now a back number.

PARAMORE: I think we ought to look on the question more broad-mindedly. Was it Abraham Lincoln who said that a gentleman is one who never inflicts pain?

MAURY: It’s attributed, I believe, to General Ludendorff.

PARAMORE: Surely you’re joking.

MAURY: Have another drink.

PARAMORE: I oughtn’t to. (_Lowering his voice for_ MAURY’S ear alone) What if I were to tell you this is the third drink I’ve ever taken in my life?

(DICK starts the phonograph, which provokes MURIEL to rise and sway from side to side, her elbows against her ribs, her forearms perpendicular to her body and out like fins.)

MURIEL: Oh, let’s take up the rugs and dance!

(_This suggestion is received by_ ANTHONY and GLORIA with interior groans and sickly smiles of acquiescence.)

MURIEL: Come on, you lazy-bones. Get up and move the furniture back.

DICK: Wait till I finish my drink.

MAURY: (_Intent on his purpose toward_ PARAMORE) I’ll tell you what. Let’s each fill one glass, drink it off and then we’ll dance.

(_A wave of protest which breaks against the rock of_ MAURY’S insistence.)

MURIEL: My head is simply going round now.

RACHAEL: (_In an undertone to_ ANTHONY) Did Gloria tell you to stay away from me?

ANTHONY: (_Confused_) Why, certainly not. Of course not.

(RACHAEL smiles at him inscrutably. Two years have given her a sort of hard, well-groomed beauty.)

MAURY: (_Holding up his glass_) Here’s to the defeat of democracy and the fall of Christianity.

MURIEL: Now really!

(_She flashes a mock-reproachful glance at MAURY and then drinks._

They all drink, with varying degrees of difficulty.)

MURIEL: Clear the floor!

(_It seems inevitable that this process is to be gone through, so_ ANTHONY and GLORIA join in the great moving of tables, piling of chairs, rolling of carpets, and breaking of lamps. When the furniture has been stacked in ugly masses at the sides, there appears a space about eight feet square.)

MURIEL: Oh, let’s have music!

MAURY: Tana will render the love song of an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist.

(_Amid some confusion due to the fact that_ TANA has retired for the night, preparations are made for the performance. The pajamaed Japanese, flute in hand, is wrapped in a comforter and placed in a chair atop one of the tables, where he makes a ludicrous and grotesque spectacle. PARAMORE is perceptibly drunk and so enraptured with the notion that he increases the effect by simulating funny-paper staggers and even venturing on an occasional hiccough.)

PARAMORE: (_To_ GLORIA) Want to dance with me?

GLORIA: No, sir! Want to do the swan dance. Can you do it?

PARAMORE: Sure. Do them all.

GLORIA: All right. You start from that side of the room and I’ll start from this.

MURIEL: Let’s go!

(_Then Bedlam creeps screaming out of the bottles:_ TANA plunges into the recondite mazes of the train song, the plaintive “tootle toot-toot” blending its melancholy cadences with the “Poor Butter-fly (tink-atink), by the blossoms waiting” of the phonograph. MURIEL is too weak with laughter to do more than cling desperately to BARNES, who, dancing with the ominous rigidity of an army officer, tramps without humor around the small space. ANTHONY is trying to hear RACHAEL’S whisper—without attracting GLORIA’s attention….

But the grotesque, the unbelievable, the histrionic incident is about to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems set upon the passionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature. PARAMORE has been trying to emulate GLORIA, and as the commotion reaches its height he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily—he staggers, recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall … almost into the arms of old ADAM PATCH, whose approach has been rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in the room.

ADAM PATCH is very white. He leans upon a stick. The man with him is EDWARD SHUTTLEWORTH, and it is he who seizes PARAMORE by the shoulder and deflects the course of his fall away from the venerable philanthropist.

The time required for quiet to descend upon the room like a monstrous pall may be estimated at two minutes, though for a short period after that the phonograph gags and the notes of the Japanese train song dribble from the end of TANA’S flute. Of the nine people only BARNES, PARAMORE, and TANA are unaware of the late-comer’s identity. Of the nine not one is aware that ADAM PATCH has that morning made a contribution of fifty thousand dollars to the cause of national prohibition.

It is given to PARAMORE to break the gathering silence; the high tide of his life’s depravity is reached in his incredible remark.)

PARAMORE: (_Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen on his hands and knees_) I’m not a guest here—I work here.

(_Again silence falls—so deep now, so weighted with intolerably contagious apprehension, that_ RACHAEL gives a nervous little giggle, and DICK finds himself telling over and over a line from Swinburne, grotesquely appropriate to the scene:

“One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.”

… Out of the hush the voice of ANTHONY, sober and strained, saying something to ADAM PATCH; then this, too, dies away.)

SHUTTLEWORTH: (_Passionately_) Your grandfather thought he would motor over to see your house. I phoned from Rye and left a message.

(_A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause._ ANTHONY is the color of chalk. GLORIA’S lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does CROSS PATCH’S drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He speaks—five mild and simple words.)

ADAM PATCH: We’ll go back now, Shuttleworth—(_And that is all. He turns, and assisted by his cane goes out through the hall, through the front door, and with hellish portentousness his uncertain footsteps crunch on the gravel path under the August moon._)

RETROSPECT

In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across to each other.

Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted what most women want, but she wanted it much more fiercely and passionately. She had been married over two years. At first there had been days of serene understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietorship and pride. Alternating with these periods had occurred sporadic hates, enduring a short hour, and forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon. That had been for