This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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âAnd me,â Amory interrupted, âwhere did you see me?â
âOh, youâre one of those men,â she answered haughtily, âmust lug old self into conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunning myself one day last week, and along comes a man saying in a pleasant, conceited way of talking:
âââAnd now when the night was senescentâ
(says he)
âAnd the star dials pointed to morn
At the end of the path a liquescentâ
(says he)
âAnd nebulous lustre was born.â
âSo I poked my eyes up over the hedge, but you had started to run, for some unknown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head. âOh!â says I, âthereâs a man for whom many of us might sigh,â and I continued in my best Irishâ ââ
âAll right,â Amory interrupted. âNow go back to yourself.â
âWell, I will. Iâm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not the energy; I havenât the patience to write books; and I never met a man Iâd marry. However, Iâm only eighteen.â
The storm was dying down softly and only the wind kept up its ghostly surge and made the stack lean and gravely settle from side to side. Amory was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had never met a girl like this beforeâ âshe would never seem quite the same again. He didnât at all feel like a character in a play, the appropriate feeling in an unconventional situationâ âinstead, he had a sense of coming home.
âI have just made a great decision,â said Eleanor after another pause, âand that is why Iâm here, to answer another of your questions. I have just decided that I donât believe in immortality.â
âReally! how banal!â
âFrightfully so,â she answered, âbut depressing with a stale, sickly depression, nevertheless. I came out here to get wetâ âlike a wet hen; wet hens always have great clarity of mind,â she concluded.
âGo on,â Amory said politely.
âWellâ âIâm not afraid of the dark, so I put on my slicker and rubber boots and came out. You see I was always afraid, before, to say I didnât believe in Godâ âbecause the lightning might strike meâ âbut here I am and it hasnât, of course, but the main point is that this time I wasnât any more afraid of it than I had been when I was a Christian Scientist, like I was last year. So now I know Iâm a materialist and I was fraternizing with the hay when you came out and stood by the woods, scared to death.â
âWhy, you little wretchâ ââ cried Amory indignantly. âScared of what?â
âYourself!â she shouted, and he jumped. She clapped her hands and laughed. âSeeâ âsee! Conscienceâ âkill it like me! Eleanor Savage, materiologistâ âno jumping, no starting, come earlyâ ââ
âBut I have to have a soul,â he objected. âI canât be rationalâ âand I wonât be molecular.â
She leaned toward him, her burning eyes never leaving his own and whispered with a sort of romantic finality:
âI thought so, Juan, I feared soâ âyouâre sentimental. Youâre not like me. Iâm a romantic little materialist.â
âIâm not sentimentalâ âIâm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will lastâ âthe romantic person has a desperate confidence that they wonât.â (This was an ancient distinction of Amoryâs.)
âEpigrams. Iâm going home,â she said sadly. âLetâs get off the haystack and walk to the crossroads.â
They slowly descended from their perch. She would not let him help her down and motioning him away arrived in a graceful lump in the soft mud where she sat for an instant, laughing at herself. Then she jumped to her feet and slipped her hand into his, and they tiptoed across the fields, jumping and swinging from dry spot to dry spot. A transcendent delight seemed to sparkle in every pool of water, for the moon had risen and the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanorâs arm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest he should lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was painting wonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever he did when he walked with herâ âshe was a feast and a folly and he wished it had been his destiny to sit forever on a haystack and see life through her green eyes. His paganism soared that night and when she faded out like a gray ghost down the road, a deep singing came out of the fields and filled his way homeward. All night the summer moths flitted in and out of Amoryâs window; all night large looming sounds swayed in mystic revery through the silver grainâ âand he lay awake in the clear darkness.
September
Amory selected a blade of grass and nibbled at it scientifically.
âI never fall in love in August or September,â he proffered.
âWhen then?â
âChristmas or Easter. Iâm a liturgist.â
âEaster!â She turned up her nose. âHuh! Spring in corsets!â
âEaster would bore spring, wouldnât she? Easter has her hair braided, wears a tailored suit.â
âBind on thy sandals, oh, thou most fleet.
Over the splendor and speed of thy feetâ ââ
quoted Eleanor softly, and then added: âI suppose Halloweâen is a better day for autumn than Thanksgiving.â
âMuch betterâ âand Christmas eve does very well for winter, but summerâ ââ âŠâ
âSummer has no day,â she said. âWe canât possibly have a summer love. So many people have tried that the nameâs become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. Itâs a sad season of life without growth.â ââ ⊠It has no day.â
âFourth of July,â Amory suggested facetiously.
âDonât be funny!â she said, raking him with her eyes.
âWell, what could fulfil the promise of spring?â
She thought a moment.
âOh, I suppose heaven would, if there was one,â she said finally, âa
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