This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald [best novels for teenagers TXT] 📗

can’t do anything without it. This is our last year in this house⁠—and unless things change Cecelia won’t have the advantages you’ve had. Rosalind

Impatiently. Well⁠—what is it?

Mrs. Connage

So I ask you to please mind me in several things I’ve put down in my notebook. The first one is: don’t disappear with young men. There may be a time when it’s valuable, but at present I want you on the dance floor where I can find you. There are certain men I want to have you meet and I don’t like finding you in some corner of the conservatory exchanging silliness with anyone⁠—or listening to it.

Rosalind

Sarcastically. Yes, listening to it is better.

Mrs. Connage

And don’t waste a lot of time with the college set⁠—little boys nineteen and twenty years old. I don’t mind a prom or a football game, but staying away from advantageous parties to eat in little cafés downtown with Tom, Dick, and Harry⁠—

Rosalind

Offering her code, which is, in its way, quite as high as her mother’s. Mother, it’s done⁠—you can’t run everything now the way you did in the early nineties.

Mrs. Connage

Paying no attention. There are several bachelor friends of your father’s that I want you to meet tonight⁠—youngish men.

Rosalind

Nodding wisely. About forty-five?

Mrs. Connage

Sharply. Why not?

Rosalind

Oh, quite all right⁠—they know life and are so adorably tired looking shakes her head.⁠—but they will dance.

Mrs. Connage

I haven’t met Mr. Blaine⁠—but I don’t think you’ll care for him. He doesn’t sound like a moneymaker.

Rosalind

Mother, I never think about money.

Mrs. Connage

You never keep it long enough to think about it.

Rosalind

Sighs. Yes, I suppose some day I’ll marry a ton of it⁠—out of sheer boredom.

Mrs. Connage

Referring to notebook. I had a wire from Hartford. Dawson Ryder is coming up. Now there’s a young man I like, and he’s floating in money. It seems to me that since you seem tired of Howard Gillespie you might give Mr. Ryder some encouragement. This is the third time he’s been up in a month.

Rosalind

How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?

Mrs. Connage

The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes.

Rosalind

That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They’re all wrong.

Mrs. Connage

Her say said. At any rate, make us proud of you tonight.

Rosalind

Don’t you think I’m beautiful?

Mrs. Connage

You know you are.

From downstairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll of a drum. Mrs. Connage turns quickly to her daughter.

Mrs. Connage

Come!

Rosalind

One minute!

Her mother leaves. Rosalind goes to the glass where she gazes at herself with great satisfaction. She kisses her hand and touches her mirrored mouth with it. Then she turns out the lights and leaves the room. Silence for a moment. A few chords from the piano, the discreet patter of faint drums, the rustle of new silk, all blend on the staircase outside and drift in through the partly opened door. Bundled figures pass in the lighted hall. The laughter heard below becomes doubled and multiplied. Then someone comes in, closes the door, and switches on the lights. It is Cecelia. She goes to the chiffonier, looks in the drawers, hesitates⁠—then to the desk whence she takes the cigarette-case and extracts one. She lights it and then, puffing and blowing, walks toward the mirror.

Cecelia

In tremendously sophisticated accents. Oh, yes, coming out is such a farce nowadays, you know. One really plays around so much before one is seventeen, that it’s positively anticlimax. Shaking hands with a visionary middle-aged nobleman. Yes, your grace⁠—I b’lieve I’ve heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff⁠—they’re very good. They’re⁠—they’re Coronas. You don’t smoke? What a pity! The king doesn’t allow it, I suppose. Yes, I’ll dance.

So she dances around the room to a tune from downstairs, her arms outstretched to an imaginary partner, the cigarette waving in her hand.

Several Hours Later

The corner of a den downstairs, filled by a very comfortable leather lounge. A small light is on each side above, and in the middle, over the couch hangs a painting of a very old, very dignified gentleman, period 1860. Outside the music is heard in a foxtrot.

Rosalind is seated on the lounge and on her left is Howard Gillespie, a vapid youth of about twenty-four. He is obviously very unhappy, and she is quite bored.

Gillespie

Feebly. What do you mean I’ve changed. I feel the same toward you.

Rosalind

But you don’t look the same to me.

Gillespie

Three weeks ago you used to say that you liked me because I was so blasé, so indifferent⁠—I still am.

Rosalind

But not about me. I used to like you because you had brown eyes and thin legs.

Gillespie

Helplessly. They’re still thin and brown. You’re a vampire, that’s all.

Rosalind

The only thing I know about vamping is what’s on the piano score. What confuses men is that I’m perfectly natural. I used to think you were never jealous. Now you follow me with your eyes wherever I go.

Gillespie

I love you.

Rosalind

Coldly. I know it.

Gillespie

And you haven’t kissed me for two weeks. I had an idea that after a girl was kissed she was⁠—was⁠—won.

Rosalind

Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every time you see me.

Gillespie

Are you serious?

Rosalind

About as usual. There used to be two kinds of kisses: First when girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Now there’s a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he’d kissed a girl, everyone knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same everyone knows it’s because he can’t kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl can beat a man nowadays.

Gillespie

Then why do you play with men?

Rosalind

Leaning forward confidentially. For that first moment, when he’s interested. There is a moment⁠—Oh, just before the