The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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There he was! The room closed about Anthony, warmed him. The glow of that strong persuasive mind, that temperament almost Oriental in its outward impassivity, warmed Anthonyâs restless soul and brought him a peace that could be likened only to the peace a stupid woman gives. One must understand allâelse one must take all for granted. Maury filled the room, tigerlike, godlike. The winds outside were stilled; the brass candlesticks on the mantel glowed like tapers before an altar.
âWhat keeps you here to-day?â Anthony spread himself over a yielding sofa and made an elbow-rest among the pillows.
âJust been here an hour. Tea danceâand I stayed so late I missed my train to Philadelphia.â
âStrange to stay so long,â commented Anthony curiously.
âRather. Whatâd you do?â
âGeraldine. Little usher at Keithâs. I told you about her.â
âOh!â
âPaid me a call about three and stayed till five. Peculiar little soulâshe gets me. Sheâs so utterly stupid.â
Maury was silent.
âStrange as it may seem,â continued Anthony, âso far as Iâm concerned, and even so far as I know, Geraldine is a paragon of virtue.â
He had known her a month, a girl of nondescript and nomadic habits. Someone had casually passed her on to Anthony, who considered her amusing and rather liked the chaste and fairylike kisses she had given him on the third night of their acquaintance, when they had driven in a taxi through the Park. She had a vague familyâa shadowy aunt and uncle who shared with her an apartment in the labyrinthine hundreds. She was company, familiar and faintly intimate and restful. Further than that he did not care to experimentânot from any moral compunction, but from a dread of allowing any entanglement to disturb what he felt was the growing serenity of his life.
âShe has two stunts,â he informed Maury; âone of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say âYou cra-a-azy!â when some one makes a remark thatâs over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in my imagination.â
Maury stirred in his chair and spoke.
âRemarkable that a person can comprehend so little and yet live in such a complex civilization. A woman like that actually takes the whole universe in the most matter-of-fact way. From the influence of Rousseau to the bearing of the tariff rates on her dinner, the whole phenomenon is utterly strange to her. Sheâs just been carried along from an age of spearheads and plunked down here with the equipment of an archer for going into a pistol duel. You could sweep away the entire crust of history and sheâd never know the difference.â
âI wish our Richard would write about her.â
âAnthony, surely you donât think sheâs worth writing about.â
âAs much as anybody,â he answered, yawning. âYou know I was thinking to-day that I have a great confidence in Dick. So long as he sticks to people and not to ideas, and as long as his inspirations come from life and not from art, and always granting a normal growth, I believe heâll be a big man.â
âI should think the appearance of the black note-book would prove that heâs going to life.â
Anthony raised himself on his elbow and answered eagerly:
âHe tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on predigested food. The incident or character may be from life, but the writer usually interprets it in terms of the last book he read. For instance, suppose he meets a sea captain and thinks heâs an original character. The truth is that he sees the resemblance between the sea captain and the last sea captain Dana created, or who-ever creates sea captains, and therefore he knows how to set this sea captain on paper. Dick, of course, can set down any consciously picturesque, character-like character, but could he accurately transcribe his own sister?â
Then they were off for half an hour on literature.
âA classic,â suggested Anthony, âis a successful book that has survived the reaction of the next period or generation. Then itâs safe, like a style in architecture or furniture. Itâs acquired a picturesque dignity to take the place of its fashionâŠ.â
After a time the subject temporarily lost its tang. The interest of the two young men was not particularly technical. They were in love with generalities. Anthony had recently discovered Samuel Butler and the brisk aphorisms in the note-book seemed to him the quintessence of criticism. Maury, his whole mind so thoroughly mellowed by the very hardness of his scheme of life, seemed inevitably the wiser of the two, yet in the actual stuff of their intelligences they were not, it seemed, fundamentally different.
They drifted from letters to the curiosities of each otherâs day.
âWhose tea was it?â
âPeople named Abercrombie.â
âWhyâd you stay late? Meet a luscious dïżœbutante?â
âYes.â
âDid you really?â Anthonyâs voice lifted in surprise.
âNot a dïżœbutante exactly. Said she came out two winters ago in Kansas City.â
âSort of left-over?â
âNo,â answered Maury with some amusement, âI think thatâs the last thing Iâd say about her. She seemedâwell, somehow the youngest person there.â
âNot too young to make you miss a train.â
âYoung enough. Beautiful child.â
Anthony chuckled in his one-syllable snort.
âOh, Maury, youâre in your second childhood. What do you mean by beautiful?â
Maury gazed helplessly into space.
âWell, I canât describe her exactlyâexcept to say that she was beautiful. She wasâtremendously alive. She was eating gum-drops.â
âWhat!â
âIt was a sort of attenuated vice. Sheâs a nervous kindâsaid she always ate gum-drops at teas because she had to stand around so long in one place.â
âWhatâd you talk aboutâBergson? Bilphism? Whether the one-step is immoral?â
Maury was unruffled; his fur seemed to run all ways.
âAs a matter of fact we did talk on Bilphism. Seems her motherâs a Bilphist. Mostly, though, we talked about legs.â
Anthony rocked in glee.
âMy God! Whose legs?â
âHers. She talked a lot about hers. As though they were a sort of choice bric-ïżœ-brac. She aroused a great desire to see them.â
âWhat is sheâa dancer?â
âNo, I found she was a cousin of Dickâs.â
Anthony sat upright so suddenly that the pillow he released stood on end like a live thing and dove to the floor.
âNameâs Gloria Gilbert?â he cried.
âYes. Isnât she remarkable?â
âIâm sure I donât knowâbut for sheer dulness her fatherââ
âWell,â interrupted Maury with implacable conviction, âher family may be as sad as professional mourners but Iâm inclined to think that sheâs a quite authentic and original character. The outer signs of the cut-and-dried Yale prom girl and all thatâbut different, very emphatically different.â
âGo on, go on!â urged Anthony. âSoon as Dick told me she didnât have a brain in her head I knew she must be pretty good.â
âDid he say that?â
âSwore to it,â said Anthony with another snorting laugh.
âWell, what he means by brains in a woman isââ
âI know,â interrupted Anthony eagerly, âhe means a smattering of literary misinformation.â
âThatâs it. The kind who believes that the annual moral let-down of the country is a very good thing or the kind who believes itâs a very ominous thing. Either pince-nez or postures. Well, this girl talked about legs. She talked about skin tooâher own skin. Always her own. She told me the sort of tan sheâd like to get in the summer and how closely she usually approximated it.â
âYou sat enraptured by her low alto?â
âBy her low alto! No, by tan! I began thinking about tan. I began to think what color I turned when I made my last exposure about two years ago. I did use to get a pretty good tan. I used to get a sort of bronze, if I remember rightly.â
Anthony retired into the cushions, shaken with laughter.
âSheâs got you goingâoh, Maury! Maury the Connecticut life-saver. The human nutmeg. Extra! Heiress elopes with coast-guard because of his luscious pigmentation! Afterward found to be Tasmanian strain in his family!â
Maury sighed; rising he walked to the window and raised the shade.
âSnowing hard.â
Anthony, still laughing quietly to himself, made no answer.
âAnother winter.â Mauryâs voice from the window was almost a whisper. âWeâre growing old, Anthony. Iâm twenty-seven, by God! Three years to thirty, and then Iâm what an undergraduate calls a middle-aged man.â
Anthony was silent for a moment.
âYou are old, Maury,â he agreed at length. âThe first signs of a very dissolute and wabbly senescenceâyou have spent the afternoon talking about tan and a ladyâs legs.â
Maury pulled down the shade with a sudden harsh snap.
âIdiot!â he cried, âthat from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as Iâll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbert go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will comeâoh, for a Caramel to take notesâand another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after youâve all gone Iâll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonysâyes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come.â
The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.
âAfter all, Anthony, itâs you who are very romantic and young. Itâs you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. Itâs me who tries again and again to be movedâlet myself go a thousand times and Iâm always me. Nothingâquiteâstirs me.
âYet,â he murmured after another long pause, âthere was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally oldâlike me.â
TURBULENCEAnthony turned over sleepily in his bed, greeting a patch of cold sun on his counterpane, crisscrossed with the shadows of the leaded window. The room was full of morning. The carved chest in the corner, the ancient and inscrutable wardrobe, stood about the room like dark symbols of the obliviousness of matter; only the rug was beckoning and perishable to his perishable feet, and Bounds, horribly inappropriate in his soft collar, was of stuff as fading as the gauze of frozen breath he uttered. He was close to the bed, his hand still lowered where he had been jerking at the upper blanket, his dark-brown eyes fixed imperturbably upon his master.
âBows!â muttered the drowsy god. âThachew, Bows?â
âItâs I, sir.â
Anthony moved his head, forced his eyes wide, and blinked triumphantly.
âBounds.â
âYes, sir?â
âCan you get offâyeow-ow-oh-oh-oh God!ââ Anthony yawned insufferably and the contents of his brain seemed to fall together in a dense hash. He made a fresh start.
âCan you come around about four and serve some tea and sandwiches or something?â
âYes, sir.â
Anthony considered with chilling lack of inspiration. âSome sandwiches,â he repeated helplessly, âoh, some cheese sandwiches and jelly ones and chicken and olive, I guess. Never mind breakfast.â
The strain of invention was too much. He shut his eyes wearily, let his head roll to rest inertly, and quickly relaxed what he had regained of muscular control. Out of a crevice of his mind crept the vague but inevitable spectre of the night beforeâbut it proved in this case to
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