The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
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- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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She laid her hand tentatively on the telephone-receiver.
âWhatâs the name, please?â
âHe wouldnâtâahâknow me. He wouldnât know my name.â
âWhatâs your business with him? You an insurance agent?â
âOh, no, nothing like that!â denied Anthony hurriedly. âOh, no. Itâs aâitâs a personal matter.â He wondered if he should have said this. It had all sounded so simple when Mr. Carleton had enjoined his flock:
âDonât allow yourself to be kept out! Show them youâve made up your mind to talk to them, and theyâll listen.â
The girl succumbed to Anthonyâs pleasant, melancholy face, and in a moment the door to the inner room opened and admitted a tall, splay-footed man with slicked hair. He approached Anthony with ill-concealed impatience.
âYou wanted to see me on a personal matter?â
Anthony quailed.
âI wanted to talk to you,â he said defiantly.
âAbout what?â
âItâll take some time to explain.â
âWell, whatâs it about?â Mr. Weatherbeeâs voice indicated rising irritation.
Then Anthony, straining at each word, each syllable, began:
âI donât know whether or not youâve ever heard of a series of pamphlets called âHeart Talksâââ
âGood grief!â cried Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, âare you trying to touch my heart?â
âNo, itâs business. âHeart Talksâ have been incorporated and weâre putting some shares on the marketââ
His voice faded slowly off, harassed by a fixed and contemptuous stare from his unwilling prey. For another minute he struggled on, increasingly sensitive, entangled in his own words. His confidence oozed from him in great retching emanations that seemed to be sections of his own body. Almost mercifully Percy B. Weatherbee, Architect, terminated the interview:
âGood grief!â he exploded in disgust, âand you call that a personal matter!â He whipped about and strode into his private office, banging the door behind him. Not daring to look at the stenographer, Anthony in some shameful and mysterious way got himself from the room. Perspiring profusely he stood in the hall wondering why they didnât come and arrest him; in every hurried look he discerned infallibly a glance of scorn.
After an hour and with the help of two strong whiskies he brought himself up to another attempt. He walked into a plumberâs shop, but when he mentioned his business the plumber began pulling on his coat in a great hurry, gruffly announcing that he had to go to lunch. Anthony remarked politely that it was futile to try to sell a man anything when he was hungry, and the plumber heartily agreed.
This episode encouraged Anthony; he tried to think that had the plumber not been bound for lunch he would at least have listened.
Passing by a few glittering and formidable bazaars he entered a grocery store. A talkative proprietor told him that before buying any stocks he was going to see how the armistice affected the market. To Anthony this seemed almost unfair. In Mr. Carletonâs salesmanâs Utopia the only reason prospective buyers ever gave for not purchasing stock was that they doubted it to be a promising investment. Obviously a man in that state was almost ludicrously easy game, to be brought down merely by the judicious application of the correct selling points. But these menâwhy, actually they werenât considering buying anything at all.
Anthony took several more drinks before he approached his fourth man, a real-estate agent; nevertheless, he was floored with a coup as decisive as a syllogism. The real-estate agent said that he had three brothers in the investment business. Viewing himself as a breaker-up of homes Anthony apologized and went out.
After another drink he conceived the brilliant plan of selling the stock to the bartenders along Lexington Avenue. This occupied several hours, for it was necessary to take a few drinks in each place in order to get the proprietor in the proper frame of mind to talk business. But the bartenders one and all contended that if they had any money to buy bonds they would not be bartenders. It was as though they had all convened and decided upon that rejoinder. As he approached a dark and soggy five oâclock he found that they were developing a still more annoying tendency to turn him off with a jest.
At five, then, with a tremendous effort at concentration he decided that he must put more variety into his canvassing. He selected a medium-sized delicatessen store, and went in. He felt, illuminatingly, that the thing to do was to cast a spell not only over the storekeeper but over all the customers as wellâand perhaps through the psychology of the herd instinct they would buy as an astounded and immediately convinced whole.
âAfâernoon,â he began in a loud thick voice. âGa lâil propâsition.â
If he had wanted silence he obtained it. A sort of awe descended upon the half-dozen women marketing and upon the gray-haired ancient who in cap and apron was slicing chicken.
Anthony pulled a batch of papers from his flapping briefcase and waved them cheerfully.
âBuy a bonâ,â he suggested, âgood as liberty bonâ!â The phrase pleased him and he elaborated upon it. âBetterân liberty bonâ. Every one these bonâs worth two liberty bonâs.â His mind made a hiatus and skipped to his peroration, which he delivered with appropriate gestures, these being somewhat marred by the necessity of clinging to the counter with one or both hands.
âNow see here. You taken up my time. I donât want know why you wonât buy. I just want you say why. Want you say how many!â
At this point they should have approached him with check-books and fountain pens in hand. Realizing that they must have missed a cue Anthony, with the instincts of an actor, went back and repeated his finale.
âNow see here! You taken up my time. You followed propâsition. You agreed âth reasoninâ? Now, all I want from you is, how many libâty bonâs?â
âSee here!â broke in a new voice. A portly man whose face was adorned with symmetrical scrolls of yellow hair had come out of a glass cage in the rear of the store and was bearing down upon Anthony. âSee here, you!â
âHow many?â repeated the salesman sternly. âYou taken up my timeââ
âHey, you!â cried the proprietor, âIâll have you taken up by the police.â
âYou mosâ certânly wonât!â returned Anthony with fine defiance. âAll I want know is how many.â
From here and there in the store went up little clouds of comment and expostulation.
âHow terrible!â
âHeâs a raving maniac.â
âHeâs disgracefully drunk.â
The proprietor grasped Anthonyâs arm sharply.
âGet out, or Iâll call a policeman.â
Some relics of rationality moved Anthony to nod and replace his bonds clumsily in the case.
âHow many?â he reiterated doubtfully.
âThe whole force if necessary!â thundered his adversary, his yellow mustache trembling fiercely.
âSell âem all a bonâ.â
With this Anthony turned, bowed gravely to his late auditors, and wabbled from the store. He found a taxicab at the corner and rode home to the apartment. There he fell sound asleep on the sofa, and so Gloria found him, his breath filling the air with an unpleasant pungency, his hand still clutching his open brief case.
Except when Anthony was drinking, his range of sensation had become less than that of a healthy old man and when prohibition came in July he found that, among those who could afford it, there was more drinking than ever before. Oneâs host now brought out a bottle upon the slightest pretext. The tendency to display liquor was a manifestation of the same instinct that led a man to deck his wife with jewels. To have liquor was a boast, almost a badge of respectability.
In the mornings Anthony awoke tired, nervous, and worried. Halcyon summer twilights and the purple chill of morning alike left him unresponsive. Only for a brief moment every day in the warmth and renewed life of a first high-ball did his mind turn to those opalescent dreams of future pleasureâthe mutual heritage of the happy and the damned. But this was only for a little while. As he grew drunker the dreams faded and he became a confused spectre, moving in odd crannies of his own mind, full of unexpected devices, harshly contemptuous at best and reaching sodden and dispirited depths. One night in June he had quarrelled violently with Maury over a matter of the utmost triviality. He remembered dimly next morning that it had been about a broken pint bottle of champagne. Maury had told him to sober up and Anthonyâs feelings had been hurt, so with an attempted gesture of dignity he had risen from the table and seizing Gloriaâs arm half led, half shamed her into a taxicab outside, leaving Maury with three dinners ordered and tickets for the opera.
This sort of semi-tragic fiasco had become so usual that when they occurred he was no longer stirred into making amends. If Gloria protestedâand of late she was more likely to sink into contemptuous silenceâhe would either engage in a bitter defense of himself or else stalk dismally from the apartment. Never since the incident on the station platform at Redgate had he laid his hands on her in angerâthough he was withheld often only by some instinct that itself made him tremble with rage. Just as he still cared more for her than for any other creature, so did he more intensely and frequently hate her.
So far, the judges of the Appellate Division had failed to hand down a decision, but after another postponement they finally affirmed the decree of the lower courtâtwo justices dissenting. A notice of appeal was served upon Edward Shuttleworth. The case was going to the court of last resort, and they were in for another interminable wait. Six months, perhaps a year. It had grown enormously unreal to them, remote and uncertain as heaven.
Throughout the previous winter one small matter had been a subtle and omnipresent irritantâthe question of Gloriaâs gray fur coat. At that time women enveloped in long squirrel wraps could be seen every few yards along Fifth Avenue. The women were converted to the shape of tops. They seemed porcine and obscene; they resembled kept women in the concealing richness, the feminine animality of the garment. YetâGloria wanted a gray squirrel coat.
Discussing the matterâor, rather, arguing it, for even more than in the first year of their marriage did every discussion take the form of bitter debate full of such phrases as âmost certainly,â âutterly outrageous,â âitâs so, nevertheless,â and the ultra-emphatic âregardlessââthey concluded that they could not afford it. And so gradually it began to stand as a symbol of their growing financial anxiety.
To Gloria the shrinkage of their income was a remarkable phenomenon, without explanation or precedentâthat it could happen at all within the space of five years seemed almost an intended cruelty, conceived and executed by a sardonic God. When they were married seventy-five hundred a year had seemed ample for a young couple, especially when augmented by the expectation of many millions. Gloria had failed to realize that it was decreasing not only in amount but in purchasing power until the payment of Mr. Haightâs retaining fee of fifteen thousand dollars made the fact suddenly and startlingly obvious. When Anthony was drafted they had calculated their income at over four hundred a month, with the dollar even then decreasing in value, but on his return to New York they discovered an even more alarming condition of affairs. They were receiving only forty-five hundred a year from their investments. And though the suit over the will moved ahead of them like a persistent mirage and the financial danger-mark loomed up in the near distance they found, nevertheless, that living within their income was impossible.
So Gloria went without the squirrel coat and every day upon Fifth Avenue she was a little conscious of her well-worn, half-length leopard skin, now hopelessly old-fashioned. Every
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