The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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âJune 8th.âAnd to-day Iâve promised not to chew my mouth. Well, I wonât, I supposeâbut if heâd only asked me not to eat!
âBlowing bubblesâthatâs what weâre doing, Anthony and me. And we blew such beautiful ones to-day, and theyâll explode and then weâll blow more and more, I guessâbubbles just as big and just as beautiful, until all the soap and water is used up.â
On this note the diary ended. Her eyes wandered up the page, over the June 8thâs of 1912, 1910, 1907. The earliest entry was scrawled in the plump, bulbous hand of a sixteen-year-old girlâit was the name, Bob Lamar, and a word she could not decipher. Then she knew what it wasâand, knowing, she found her eyes misty with tears. There in a graying blur was the record of her first kiss, faded as its intimate afternoon, on a rainy veranda seven years before. She seemed to remember something one of them had said that day and yet she could not remember. Her tears came faster, until she could scarcely see the page. She was crying, she told herself, because she could remember only the rain and the wet flowers in the yard and the smell of the damp grass.
⊠After a moment she found a pencil and holding it unsteadily drew three parallel lines beneath the last entry. Then she printed FINIS in large capitals, put the book back in the drawer, and crept into bed.
BREATH OF THE CAVEBack in his apartment after the bridal dinner, Anthony snapped out his lights and, feeling impersonal and fragile as a piece of china waiting on a serving table, got into bed. It was a warm nightâa sheet was enough for comfortâand through his wide-open windows came sound, evanescent and summery, alive with remote anticipation. He was thinking that the young years behind him, hollow and colorful, had been lived in facile and vacillating cynicism upon the recorded emotions of men long dust. And there was something beyond that; he knew now. There was the union of his soul with Gloriaâs, whose radiant fire and freshness was the living material of which the dead beauty of books was made.
From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving soundâsomething the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happinessâand by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.
It was then that a new note separated itself jarringly from the soft crying of the night. It was a noise from an areaway within a hundred feet from his rear window, the noise of a womanâs laughter. It began low, incessant and whiningâsome servant-maid with her fellow, he thoughtâand then it grew in volume and became hysterical, until it reminded him of a girl he had seen overcome with nervous laughter at a vaudeville performance. Then it sank, receded, only to rise again and include wordsâa coarse joke, some bit of obscure horseplay he could not distinguish. It would break off for a moment and he would just catch the low rumble of a manâs voice, then begin againâinterminably; at first annoying, then strangely terrible. He shivered, and getting up out of bed went to the window. It had reached a high point, tensed and stifled, almost the quality of a screamâthen it ceased and left behind it a silence empty and menacing as the greater silence overhead. Anthony stood by the window a moment longer before he returned to his bed. He found himself upset and shaken. Try as he might to strangle his reaction, some animal quality in that unrestrained laughter had grasped at his imagination, and for the first time in four months aroused his old aversion and horror toward all the business of life. The room had grown smothery. He wanted to be out in some cool and bitter breeze, miles above the cities, and to live serene and detached back in the corners of his mind. Life was that sound out there, that ghastly reiterated female sound.
âOh, my God!â he cried, drawing in his breath sharply.
Burying his face in the pillows he tried in vain to concentrate upon the details of the next day.
MORNINGIn the gray light he found that it was only five oâclock. He regretted nervously that he had awakened so earlyâhe would appear fagged at the wedding. He envied Gloria who could hide her fatigue with careful pigmentation.
In his bathroom he contemplated himself in the mirror and saw that he was unusually whiteâhalf a dozen small imperfections stood out against the morning pallor of his complexion, and overnight he had grown the faint stubble of a beardâthe general effect, he fancied, was unprepossessing, haggard, half unwell.
On his dressing table were spread a number of articles which he told over carefully with suddenly fumbling fingersâtheir tickets to California, the book of travellerâs checks, his watch, set to the half minute, the key to his apartment, which he must not forget to give to Maury, and, most important of all, the ring. It was of platinum set around with small emeralds; Gloria had insisted on this; she had always wanted an emerald wedding ring, she said.
It was the third present he had given her; first had come the engagement ring, and then a little gold cigarette-case. He would be giving her many things nowâclothes and jewels and friends and excitement. It seemed absurd that from now on he would pay for all her meals. It was going to cost: he wondered if he had not underestimated for this trip, and if he had not better cash a larger check. The question worried him.
Then the breathless impendency of the event swept his mind clear of details. This was the dayâunsought, unsuspected six months before, but now breaking in yellow light through his east window, dancing along the carpet as though the sun were smiling at some ancient and reiterated gag of his own.
Anthony laughed in a nervous one-syllable snort.
âBy God!â he muttered to himself, âIâm as good as married!â
THE USHERSSix young men in CROSS PATCHâS library growing more and more cheery under the influence of Mummâs Extra Dry, set surreptitiously in cold pails by the bookcases.
THE FIRST YOUNG MAN: By golly! Believe me, in my next book Iâm going to do a wedding scene thatâll knock âem cold!
THE SECOND YOUNG MAN: Met a dïżœbutante thâother day said she thought your book was powerful. As a rule young girls cry for this primitive business.
THE THIRD YOUNG MAN: Whereâs Anthony?
THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Walking up and down outside talking to himself.
SECOND YOUNG MAN: Lord! Did you see the minister? Most peculiar looking teeth.
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Think theyâre natural. Funny thing people having gold teeth.
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: They say they love âem. My dentist told me once a woman came to him and insisted on having two of her teeth covered with gold. No reason at all. All right the way they were.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. âGratulations!
DICK: (_Stiffly_) Thanks.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (_Innocently_) What is it? College stories?
DICK: (_More stiffly_) No. Not college stories.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasnât been a good book about Harvard for years.
DICK: (_Touchily_) Why donât you supply the lack?
THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.
THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (_Snapping his fingers excitedly_) By gad! I knew Iâd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.
DICK: What was it?
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: Whatâd you forget? The way home?
DICK: (_Maliciously_) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad Iâve forgotten it! Whatâll they think?
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (_Facetiously_) Thatâs probably whatâs been holding up the wedding.
(THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!
SECOND YOUNG MAN: What dâyou make of the bridesmaid who thinks sheâs Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Nameâs Haines or Hampton.
DICK: (_Hurriedly spurring his imagination_) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. Sheâs a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.
SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didnât think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.
MAURY: Who? Old Adam?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the brideâs father. He must be with a weather bureau.
DICK: Heâs my uncle, Otis.
OTIS: Well, itâs an honorable profession. (_Laughter._)
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isnât she?
DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.
CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.
MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of âoldâ? I think marriage is an error of youth.
DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.
MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.
DICK: Faker yourself! What do you know?
MAURY: What do you know?
LICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.
MAURY: All right. Whatâs the fundamental principle of biology?
DICK: You donât know yourself.
MAURY: Donât hedge!
DICK: Well, natural selection?
MAURY: Wrong.
DICK: I give it up.
MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!
MAURY: Ask you another. Whatâs the influence of mice on the clover crop? (_Laughter._)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Whatâs the influence of rats on the Decalogue?
MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There is a connection.
DICK: What is it then?
MAURY: (_Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion_) Why, letâs see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!
MAURY: (_Frowning_) Let me just think a minute.
DICK: (_Sitting up suddenly_) Listen!
(_A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties._)
DICK: (_Weightily_) Weâd better join the firing squad. Theyâre going to take the picture, I guess. No, thatâs afterward.
OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God Iâd sent that present.
MAURY: If youâll give me another minute Iâll think of that about the mice.
OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre andâ-
(_They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCHâS organ_.)
ANTHONYThere were five hundred eyes boring through the back of his cutaway and the sun
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