The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald [sites to read books for free .txt] 📗

“I think so,” corrected Dick gravely. “She’s the first girl I’ve ever seen him with, so much.”

“Well, of course,” said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness, “Gloria never makes me her confidante. She’s very secretive. Between you and me”⁠—she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only Heaven and her nephew should share her confession⁠—“between you and me, I’d like to see her settle down.”

Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.

“I’m not claiming I’m right, mind you,” he assured the infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back at him. “I’m saying nothing that I’d want Gloria to know. But I think Mad Anthony is interested⁠—tremendously so. He talks about her constantly. In anyone else that’d be a bad sign.”

“Gloria is a very young soul⁠—” began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:

“Gloria’d be a very young nut not to marry him.” He stopped and faced her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and strained to its ultimate show of intensity⁠—this as if to make up by his sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. “Gloria’s a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She’s uncontrollable. How she’s done it I don’t know, but lately she’s picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn’t seem to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were⁠—” He paused for breath.

“Yes-yes-yes,” interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anaemic attempt to hide the immense interest with which she listened.

“Well,” continued Richard Caramel gravely, “there it is. I mean that the men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate. Now they aren’t.”

Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast⁠—her bosom trembled, inflated, remained so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in a torrent.

She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? He knew Gloria. He’d seen enough of Gloria to know how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so spoiled⁠—in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed sticks. Perhaps⁠—one never knew⁠—it was this that had given that health and hardiness to her whole personality. And then ever since she was twelve years old she’d had boys about her so thick⁠—oh, so thick one couldn’t move. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to single them out.

She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college⁠—they lasted on an average of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came⁠—a new one⁠—

The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his father. The others had been⁠—wretched. They never seemed to know when she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind. They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her, making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they would never get over Gloria⁠ ⁠… at least two of them had since married, though.⁠ ⁠… But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill⁠—to this day Mr. Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no longer bothered to refuse.

Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as a private engagement⁠—with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena. She was sure it had, because⁠—this must go no further⁠—she had come in unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed. She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a new man came.

Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers! Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in desperation! Young men threatening South America!⁠ ⁠… Young men writing the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick fancied that Mrs. Gilbert’s eyes had seen some of these letters.)

… And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents, substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths and beginning again⁠—with the next.

That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was absolutely going to no more college dances.

This had begun the change⁠—not so much in her actual habits, for she danced, and had as many “dates” as ever⁠—but they were dates in a different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City! She had fed on it ruthlessly⁠—enjoying the crowds around her, the