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The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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eBook - ePub
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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About This Book
One of the great American writers whose works enjoy popular appeal as well as critical acclaim, F. Scott Lyric, highly readable novel traces the meteoric rise and fall of glittering young socialites Anthony and Gloria Patch. Building their marriage on the shaky foundation of an expected inheritance, they devote their youth and happiness on hedonistic pursuits that plunge them into moral and financial bankruptcy. Transparently based on the lives of Fitzgerald and his beautiful wife, Zelda, the novel eerily foreshadows the real-life's couple's rapid descent into ruin.
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BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
The Radiant Hour
After a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in āpractical discussions,ā as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.
āNot as much as I do you,ā the critic of belles-lettres would insist. āIf you really loved me youād want every one to know it.ā
āI do,ā she protested; āI want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by.ā
āThen tell me all the reasons why youāre going to marry me in June.ā
āWell, because youāre so clean. Youāre sort of blowy clean, like I am. Thereās two sorts, you know. Oneās like Dick: heās clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is.ā
āWeāre twins.ā
Ecstatic thought!
āMother saysāāshe hesitated uncertaintyāāmother says that two souls are sometimes created together andāand in love before theyāre born.ā
Bilphism gained its easiest convert. . . . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.
āWhy did you laugh?ā she cried, āyouāve done that twice before. Thereās nothing funny about our relation to each other. I donāt mind playing the fool, and I donāt mind having you do it, but I canāt stand it when weāre together.ā
āIām sorry.ā
āOh, donāt say youāre sorry! If you canāt think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!ā
āI love you.ā
āI donāt care.ā
There was a pause. Anthony was depressed. . . . At length Gloria murmured:
āIām sorry I was mean.ā
āYou werenāt. I was the one.ā
Peace was restoredāthe ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expressionāyet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.
Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known itāfor three weeks Gloria had seen no one elseāand she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughterās attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warmāā
āYet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabsāquaint deviceāand the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled āyou know I do,ā pushing it over for the other to see.
But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.
āNow, Gloria,ā he would cry, āplease let me explain!ā
āDonāt explain. Kiss me.ā
āI donāt think thatās right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I donāt like this kiss-and-forget.ā
āBut I donāt want to argue. I think itās wonderful that we can kiss and forget, and when we canāt itāll be time to argue.ā
At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony arose and punched himself into his overcoatāfor a moment it appeared that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a frightened little girlās.
Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious reactions and evasions; by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to no avail. She possessed him nowānor did she desire the dead years.
āOh, Anthony,ā she would say, āalways when Iām mean to you Iām sorry afterward. Iād give my right hand to save you one little momentās pain.ā
And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposelyātaking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous reticences to some physical discomfortāof these she never complained until they were overāor to some carelessness or presumption in him, or to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of unwavering pride.
āWhy do you like Muriel?ā he demanded one day.
āI donātāvery much.ā
āThen why do you go with her?ā
āJust for some one to go with. Theyāre no exertion, those girls. They sort of believe everything I tell āemābut I rather like Rachael. I think sheās cuteāand so clean and slick, donāt you? I used to have other friendsāin Kansas City and at schoolācasual, all of them, girls who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than that boys took us places together. They didnāt interest me after environment stopped throwing us together. Now theyāre mostly married. What does it matterāthey were all just people.ā
āYou like men better, donāt you?ā
āOh, much better, Iāve got a manās mind.ā
āYouāve got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way.ā
Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with Bloeckman. One day in Delmonicoās, Gloria and Rachael had come upon Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her to make it a party of four. She had liked himārather. He was a relief from younger men, satisfied as he was with so little. He humored her and he laughed, whether he understood her or not. She met him several times, despite the open disapproval of her parents, and within a month he had asked her to marry him, tendering her everything from a villa in Italy to a brilliant career on the screen. She had laughed in his faceāand he had laughed too.
But he had not given up. To the time of Anthonyās arrival in the arena he had been making steady progress. She treated him rather wellāexcept that she had called him always by an invidious nicknameāperceiving, meanwhile, that he was figuratively following along beside her as she walked the fence, ready to catch her if she should fall.
The night before the engagement was announced she told Bloeckman. It was a heavy blow. She did not enlighten Anthony as to the details, but she implied that he had not hesitated to argue with her. Anthony gathered that the interview had terminated on a stormy note, with Gloria very cool and unmoved lying in her corner of the sofa and Joseph Bloeckman of āFilms Par Excellenceā pacing the carpet with eyes narrowed and head bowed. Gloria had been sorry for him but she had judged it best not to show it. In a final burst of kindness she had tried to make him hate her, there at the last. But Anthony, understanding that Gloriaās indifference was her strongest appeal, judged how futile this must have been. He wondered, often but quite casually, about Bloeckmanāfinally he forgot him entirely.
HEYDAY
One afternoon they found front seats on the sunny roof of a bus and rode for hours from the fading Square up along the sullied river, and then, as the stray beams fled the westward streets, sailed down the turgid Avenue, darkening with ominous bees from the department stores. The traffic was clotted and gripped in a patternless jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the crowd as they waited for the moan of the traffic whistle.
āIsnāt it good!ā cried Gloria. āLook!ā
A millerās wagon, stark white with flour, driven by a powdery clown, passed in front of them behind a white horse and his black team-mate.
āWhat a pity!ā she complained; ātheyād look so beautiful in the dusk, if only both horses were white. Iām mighty happy just this minute, in this city.ā
Anthony shook his head in disagreement.
āI think the cityās a mountebank. Always struggling to approach the tremendous and impressive urbanity ascribed to it. Trying to be romantically metropolitan.ā
āI donāt. I think it is impressive.ā
āMomentarily. But itās really a transparent, artificial sort of spectacle. Itās got its press-agented stars and its flimsy, unenduring stage settings and, Iāll admit, the greatest army of supers ever assembledāā He paused, laughed shortly, and added: āTechnically excellent, perhaps, but not convincing.ā
āIāll bet policemen think people are fools,ā said Gloria thoughtfully, as she watched a large but cowardly lady being helped across the street. āHe always sees them frightened and inefficient and oldāthey are,ā she added. And then: āWeād better get off. I told mother Iād have an early supper and go to bed. She says I look tired, damn it.ā
āI wish we were married,ā he muttered soberly; āthereāll be no good night then and we can do just as we want.ā
āWonāt it be good! I think we ought to travel a lot. I want to go to the Mediterranean and Italy. And Iād like to go on the stage some timeāsay for about a year.ā
āYou bet. Iāll write a play for you.ā
āWonāt that be good! And Iāll act in it. And then some time when we have more moneyāāold Adamās death was always thus tactfully alluded toāāweāll build a magnificent estate, wonāt we?ā
āOh, yes, with private swimming pools.ā
āDozens of them. And private rivers. Oh, I wish it were now.ā
Odd coincidenceāhe had just been wishing that very thing. They plunged like divers into the dark eddying crowd and emerging in the cool fifties sauntered indolently homeward, infinitely romantic to each other. . . both were walking alone in a dispassionate garden with a ghost found in a dream.
Halcyon days like boats drifting along slow-moving rivers; spring evenings full of a plaintive melancholy that made the past beautiful and bitter, bidding them look back and see that the loves of other summers long gone were dead with the forgotten waltzes of their years. Always the most poignant moments were when some artificial barrier kept them apart: in the theater their hands would steal together, join, give and return gentle pressures through the long dark; in crowded rooms they would form words with their lips for each otherās eyesānot knowing that they were but following in the footsteps of dusty generations but comprehending dimly that if truth is the end of life happiness is a mode of it, to be cherished in its brief and tremulous moment. And then, one fairy night, May became June. Sixteen days nowāfifteenāfourteenāā
THREE DIGRESSIONS
Just before the engagement was announced Anthony had gone up to Tarrytown to see his grandfather, who, a little more wizened and grizzly as time played its ultimate chuckling tricks, greeted the news with profound cynicism.
āOh, youāre going to get married, are you?ā He said this with such a dubious mildness and shook his head up and down so many times that Anthony was not a little depressed. While he was unaware of his grandfatherās intentions he presumed that a large part of the money would come to him. A good deal would go in charities, of course; a good deal to carry on the business of reform.
āAre you going to work?ā
āWhyāā temporized Anthony, somewhat disconcerted. āI am working. You knowāāā
āAh, I mean work,ā said Adam Patch dispassionately.
āIām not quite sure yet what Iāll do. Iām not exactly a beggar, grampa,ā he asserted with some spirit.
The old man considered this with eyes half closed. Then almost apologetically he asked:
āHow much do you save a year?ā
āNothing so farāāā
āAnd so after just managing to get along on your money youāve decided that by some miracle two of you can get along on it.ā
āGloria has some money of her own. Enough to buy clothes.ā
āHow much?ā
Without considering this question impertinent, Anthony answered it.
āAbout a hundred a month.ā
āThatās altogether about seventy-five hundred a year.ā Then he added softly: āIt ought to be plenty. If you have any sense it ought to be plenty. But the question is whether you have any or not.ā
āI suppose it is.ā It was shameful. to be compelled to endure this pious browbeating from the old man, and his next words were stiffened with vanity. āI can manage very well. You seem convinced that Iām utterly worthless. At any rate I came up here simply to tell you that Iām getting married in June. Good-by, sir.ā With this he turned away and headed for the door, unaware that in that instant his grandfather, for the first time, rather liked him.
āWait!ā called Adam Patch, āI want to talk to you.ā
Anthony faced about.
āWell, sir?ā
āSit down. Stay all night.ā
Somewhat mollified, Anthony resumed his seat.
āIām sorry, sir, but Iām going to see Gloria to-night.ā
āWhatās her name?ā
āGloria Gilbert.ā
āNew York girl? Some one you know?ā
āSheās from the Middle West.ā
āWhat business her father in?ā
āIn a celluloid corporation or trust or something. Theyāre from Kansas City.ā
āYou going to be married out there?ā
āWhy, no, sir. We thought weād be married in New Yorkārather quietly.ā
āLike to have the wedding out here?ā
Anthony hesitated. The sug...