This Side of Paradise F. Scott Fitzgerald (mini ebook reader .txt) 📖

and, as he never knew he was dying, it showed no pain or fear. It was Amory’s dear old friend, his and the others’⁠—for the church was full of people with daft, staring faces, the most exalted seeming the most stricken.

The cardinal, like an archangel in cope and mitre, sprinkled the holy water; the organ broke into sound; the choir began to sing the “Requiem Eternam.”

All these people grieved because they had to some extent depended upon Monsignor. Their grief was more than sentiment for the “crack in his voice or a certain break in his walk,” as Wells put it. These people had leaned on Monsignor’s faith, his way of finding cheer, of making religion a thing of lights and shadows, making all light and shadow merely aspects of God. People felt safe when he was near.

Of Amory’s attempted sacrifice had been born merely the full realization of his disillusion, but of Monsignor’s funeral was born the romantic elf who was to enter the labyrinth with him. He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want⁠—not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable; he remembered the sense of security he had found in Burne.

Life opened up in one of its amazing bursts of radiance and Amory suddenly and permanently rejected an old epigram that had been playing listlessly in his mind: “Very few things matter and nothing matters very much.”

On the contrary, Amory felt an immense desire to give people a sense of security.

The Big Man with Goggles

On the day that Amory started on his walk to Princeton the sky was a colorless vault, cool, high and barren of the threat of rain. It was a gray day, that least fleshly of all weathers; a day of dreams and far hopes and clear visions. It was a day easily associated with those abstract truths and purities that dissolve in the sunshine or fade out in mocking laughter by the light of the moon. The trees and clouds were carved in classical severity; the sounds of the countryside had harmonized to a monotone, metallic as a trumpet, breathless as the Grecian urn.

The day had put Amory in such a contemplative mood that he caused much annoyance to several motorists who were forced to slow up considerably or else run him down. So engrossed in his thoughts was he that he was scarcely surprised at that strange phenomenon⁠—cordiality manifested within fifty miles of Manhattan⁠—when a passing car slowed down beside him and a voice hailed him. He looked up and saw a magnificent Locomobile in which sat two middle-aged men, one of them small and anxious looking, apparently an artificial growth on the other who was large and begoggled and imposing.

“Do you want a lift?” asked the apparently artificial growth, glancing from the corner of his eye at the imposing man as if for some habitual, silent corroboration.

“You bet I do. Thanks.”

The chauffeur swung open the door, and, climbing in, Amory settled himself in the middle of the back seat. He took in his companions curiously. The chief characteristic of the big man seemed to be a great confidence in himself set off against a tremendous boredom with everything around him. That part of his face which protruded under the goggles was what is generally termed “strong”; rolls of not undignified fat had collected near his chin; somewhere above was a wide thin mouth and the rough model for a Roman nose, and, below, his shoulders collapsed without a struggle into the powerful bulk of his chest and belly. He was excellently and quietly dressed. Amory noticed that he was inclined to stare straight at the back of the chauffeur’s head as if speculating steadily but hopelessly some baffling hirsute problem.

The smaller man was remarkable only for his complete submersion in the personality of the other. He was of that lower secretarial type who at forty have engraved upon their business cards: “Assistant to the President,” and without a sigh consecrate the rest of their lives to secondhand mannerisms.

“Going far?” asked the smaller man in a pleasant disinterested way.

“Quite a stretch.”

“Hiking for exercise?”

“No,” responded Amory succinctly, “I’m walking because I can’t afford to ride.”

“Oh.”

Then again:

“Are you looking for work? Because there’s lots of work,” he continued rather testily. “All this talk of lack of work. The West is especially short of labor.” He expressed the West with a sweeping, lateral gesture. Amory nodded politely.

“Have you a trade?”

No⁠—Amory had no trade.

“Clerk, eh?”

No⁠—Amory was not a clerk.

“Whatever your line is,” said the little man, seeming to agree wisely with something Amory had said, “now is the time of opportunity and business openings.” He glanced again toward the big man, as a lawyer grilling a witness glances involuntarily at the jury.

Amory decided that he must say something and for the life of him could think of only one thing to say.

“Of course I want a great lot of money⁠—”

The little man laughed mirthlessly but conscientiously.

“That’s what everyone wants nowadays, but they don’t want to work for it.”

“A very natural, healthy desire. Almost all normal people want to be rich without great effort⁠—except the financiers in problem plays, who want to ‘crash their way through.’ Don’t you want easy money?”

“Of course not,” said the secretary indignantly.

“But,” continued Amory disregarding him, “being very poor at present I am contemplating socialism as possibly my forte.”

Both men glanced at him curiously.

“These bomb throwers⁠—” The little man ceased as words lurched ponderously from the big man’s chest.

“If I thought you were a bomb thrower I’d run you over to the Newark jail. That’s what I think of Socialists.”

Amory laughed.

“What are you,” asked the big man, “one of these parlor Bolsheviks, one of these idealists? I must say I fail to see the difference. The idealists loaf around and write the stuff that stirs up the poor immigrants.”

“Well,” said Amory, “if being an idealist is