This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) đ
- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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âListen,â she leaned close again, âI like clever men and good-looking men, and, of course, no one cares more for personality than I do. Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is. Iâm hipped on Freud and all that, but itâs rotten that every bit of real love in the world is ninety-nine percent passion and one little soupçon of jealousy.â She finished as suddenly as she began.
âOf course, youâre right,â Amory agreed. âItâs a rather unpleasant overpowering force thatâs part of the machinery under everything. Itâs like an actor that lets you see his mechanics! Wait a minute till I think this out.â ââ âŠâ
He paused and tried to get a metaphor. They had turned the cliff and were riding along the road about fifty feet to the left.
âYou see everyoneâs got to have some cloak to throw around it. The mediocre intellects, Platoâs second class, use the remnants of romantic chivalry diluted with Victorian sentimentâ âand we who consider ourselves the intellectuals cover it up by pretending that itâs another side of us, has nothing to do with our shining brains; we pretend that the fact that we realize it is really absolving us from being a prey to it. But the truth is that sex is right in the middle of our purest abstractions, so close that it obscures vision.â ââ ⊠I can kiss you now and will.â ââ âŠâ He leaned toward her in his saddle, but she drew away.
âI canâtâ âI canât kiss you nowâ âIâm more sensitive.â
âYouâre more stupid then,â he declared rather impatiently. âIntellect is no protection from sex any more than convention isâ ââ âŠâ
âWhat is?â she fired up. âThe Catholic Church or the maxims of Confucius?â
Amory looked up, rather taken aback.
âThatâs your panacea, isnât it?â she cried. âOh, youâre just an old hypocrite, too. Thousands of scowling priests keeping the degenerate Italians and illiterate Irish repentant with gabble-gabble about the sixth and ninth commandments. Itâs just all cloaks, sentiment and spiritual rouge and panaceas. Iâll tell you there is no God, not even a definite abstract goodness; so itâs all got to be worked out for the individual by the individual here in high white foreheads like mine, and youâre too much the prig to admit it.â She let go her reins and shook her little fists at the stars.
âIf thereâs a God let him strike meâ âstrike me!â
âTalking about God again after the manner of atheists,â Amory said sharply. His materialism, always a thin cloak, was torn to shreds by Eleanorâs blasphemy.â ââ ⊠She knew it and it angered him that she knew it.
âAnd like most intellectuals who donât find faith convenient,â he continued coldly, âlike Napoleon and Oscar Wilde and the rest of your type, youâll yell loudly for a priest on your deathbed.â
Eleanor drew her horse up sharply and he reined in beside her.
âWill I?â she said in a queer voice that scared him. âWill I? Watch! Iâm going over the cliff!â And before he could interfere she had turned and was riding breakneck for the end of the plateau.
He wheeled and started after her, his body like ice, his nerves in a vast clangor. There was no chance of stopping her. The moon was under a cloud and her horse would step blindly over. Then some ten feet from the edge of the cliff she gave a sudden shriek and flung herself sidewaysâ âplunged from her horse and, rolling over twice, landed in a pile of brush five feet from the edge. The horse went over with a frantic whinny. In a minute he was by Eleanorâs side and saw that her eyes were open.
âEleanor!â he cried.
She did not answer, but her lips moved and her eyes filled with sudden tears.
âEleanor, are you hurt?â
âNo; I donât think so,â she said faintly, and then began weeping.
âMy horse dead?â
âGood Godâ âYes!â
âOh!â she wailed. âI thought I was going over. I didnât knowâ ââ
He helped her gently to her feet and boosted her onto his saddle. So they started homeward; Amory walking and she bent forward on the pommel, sobbing bitterly.
âIâve got a crazy streak,â she faltered, âtwice before Iâve done things like that. When I was eleven mother wentâ âwent madâ âstark raving crazy. We were in Viennaâ ââ
All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amoryâs love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences betweenâ ââ ⊠but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homeward and let new lights come in with the sun.
A Poem That Eleanor Sent Amory Several Years Later
âHere, Earthborn, over the lilt of the water,
Lisping its music and bearing a burden of light,
Bosoming day as a laughing and radiant daughterâ ââ âŠ
Here we may whisper unheard, unafraid of the night.
Walking aloneâ ââ ⊠was it splendor, or what, we were bound with,
Deep in the time when summer lets down her hair?
Shadows we loved and
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