The Beautiful and Damned
day an infelicitous incident peremptorily closed his newspaper career.
On a February afternoon he was assigned to report a parade of Squadron
A. Snow threatening, he went to sleep instead before a hot fire, and
when he woke up did a smooth column about the muffled beats of the
horses' hoofs in the snow... This he handed in. Next morning a marked
copy of the paper was sent down to the City Editor with a scrawled note:
"Fire the man who wrote this." It seemed that Squadron A had also seen
the snow threatening--had postponed the parade until another day.
A week later he had begun "The Demon Lover."...
In January, the Monday of the months, Richard Caramel's nose was blue
constantly, a sardonic blue, vaguely suggestive of the flames licking
around a sinner. His book was nearly ready, and as it grew in
completeness it seemed to grow also in its demands, sapping him,
overpowering him, until he walked haggard and conquered in its shadow.
Not only to Anthony and Maury did he pour out his hopes and boasts and
indecisions, but to any one who could be prevailed upon to listen. He
called on polite but bewildered publishers, he discussed it with his
casual vis-à-vis at the Harvard Club; it was even claimed by Anthony
that he had been discovered, one Sunday night, debating the
transposition of Chapter Two with a literary ticket-collector in the
chill and dismal recesses of a Harlem subway station. And latest among
his confidantes was Mrs. Gilbert, who sat with him by the hour and
alternated between Bilphism and literature in an intense cross-fire.
"Shakespeare was a Bilphist," she assured him through a fixed smile.
"Oh, yes! He was a Bilphist. It's been proved."
At this Dick would look a bit blank.
"If you've read 'Hamlet' you can't help but see."
"Well, he--he lived in a more credulous age--a more religious age."
But she demanded the whole loaf:
"Oh, yes, but you see Bilphism isn't a religion. It's the science of all
religions." She smiled defiantly at him. This was the _bon mot_ of her
belief. There was something in the arrangement of words which grasped
her mind so definitely that the statement became superior to any
obligation to define itself. It is not unlikely that she would have
accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula--which was perhaps not
a formula; it was the _reductio ad absurdum_ of all formulas.
Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.
"You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot
of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot
of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to
start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."
"I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm _sure_ it will. I went to
Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's _mad_
about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she
knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be _extraordinary_. But
she'd never seen you or known anything about you--not even your _name_."
Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this
astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an
arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his
own traffic.
"I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my
friends are joshing me--oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care. I
think a person ought to be able to take joshing. But I've got a sort of
conviction," he concluded gloomily.
"You're an ancient soul, I always say."
"Maybe I am." Dick had reached the stage where he no longer fought, but
submitted. He _must_ be an ancient soul, he fancied grotesquely; so old
as to be absolutely rotten. However, the reiteration of the phrase still
somewhat embarrassed him and sent uncomfortable shivers up his back. He
changed the subject.
"Where is my distinguished cousin Gloria?"
"She's on the go somewhere, with some one."
Dick paused, considered, and then, screwing up his face into what was
evidently begun as a smile but ended as a terrifying frown, delivered
a comment.
"I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her."
Mrs. Gilbert started, beamed half a second too late, and breathed her
"Really?" in the tone of a detective play-whisper.
"I _think_ so," corrected Dick gravely. "She's the first girl I've ever
seen him with, so much."
"Well, of course," said Mrs. Gilbert with meticulous carelessness,
"Gloria never makes me her confidante. She's very secretive. Between you
and me"--she bent forward cautiously, obviously determined that only
Heaven and her nephew should share her confession--"between you and me,
I'd like to see her settle down."
Dick arose and paced the floor earnestly, a small, active, already
rotund young man, his hands thrust unnaturally into his bulging pockets.
"I'm not claiming I'm right, mind you," he assured the
infinitely-of-the-hotel steel-engraving which smirked respectably back
at him. "I'm saying nothing that I'd want Gloria to know. But I think
Mad Anthony is interested--tremendously so. He talks about her
constantly. In any one else that'd be a bad sign."
"Gloria is a very young soul--" began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her
nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:
"Gloria'd be a very young nut not to marry him." He stopped and faced
her, his expression a battle map of lines and dimples, squeezed and
strained to its ultimate show of intensity--this as if to make up by his
sincerity for any indiscretion in his words. "Gloria's a wild one, Aunt
Catherine. She's uncontrollable. How she's done it I don't know, but
lately she's picked up a lot of the funniest friends. She doesn't seem
to care. And the men she used to go with around New York were--" He
paused for breath.
"Yes-yes-yes," interjected Mrs. Gilbert, with an anaemic attempt to hide
the immense interest with which she listened.
"Well," continued Richard Caramel gravely, "there it is. I mean that the
men she went with and the people she went with used to be first rate.
Now they aren't."
Mrs. Gilbert blinked very fast--her bosom trembled, inflated, remained
so for an instant, and with the exhalation her words flowed out in
a torrent.
She knew, she cried in a whisper; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But
what could she do? He knew Gloria. He'd seen enough of Gloria to know
how hopeless it was to try to deal with her. Gloria had been so
spoiled--in a rather complete and unusual way. She had been suckled
until she was three, for instance, when she could probably have chewed
sticks. Perhaps--one never knew--it was this that had given that health
and _hardiness_ to her whole personality. And then ever since she was
twelve years old she'd had boys about her so thick--oh, so thick one
couldn't _move_. At sixteen she began going to dances at preparatory
schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys,
boys, boys. At first, oh, until she was eighteen there had been so many
that it never seemed one any more than the others, but then she began to
single them out.
She knew there had been a string of affairs spread over about three
years, perhaps a dozen of them altogether. Sometimes the men were
undergraduates, sometimes just out of college--they lasted on an average
of several months each, with short attractions in between. Once or twice
they had endured longer and her mother had hoped she would be engaged,
but always a new one came--a new one--
The men? Oh, she made them miserable, literally! There was only one who
had kept any sort of dignity, and he had been a mere child, young Carter
Kirby, of Kansas City, who was so conceited anyway that he just sailed
out on his vanity one afternoon and left for Europe next day with his
father. The others had been--wretched. They never seemed to know when
she was tired of them, and Gloria had seldom been deliberately unkind.
They would keep phoning, writing letters to her, trying to see her,
making long trips after her around the country. Some of them had
confided in Mrs. Gilbert, told her with tears in their eyes that they
would never get over Gloria ... at least two of them had since married,
though.... But Gloria, it seemed, struck to kill--to this day Mr.
Carstairs called up once a week, and sent her flowers which she no
longer bothered to refuse.
Several times, twice, at least, Mrs. Gilbert knew it had gone as far as
a private engagement--with Tudor Baird and that Holcome boy at Pasadena.
She was sure it had, because--this must go no further--she had come in
unexpectedly and found Gloria acting, well, very much engaged indeed.
She had not spoken to her daughter, of course. She had had a certain
sense of delicacy and, besides, each time she had expected an
announcement in a few weeks. But the announcement never came; instead, a
new man came.
Scenes! Young men walking up and down the library like caged tigers!
Young men glaring at each other in the hall as one came and the other
left! Young men calling up on the telephone and being hung up upon in
desperation! Young men threatening South America! ... Young men writing
the most pathetic letters! (She said nothing to this effect, but Dick
fancied that Mrs. Gilbert's eyes had seen some of these letters.)
... And Gloria, between tears and laughter, sorry, glad, out of love and
in love, miserable, nervous, cool, amidst a great returning of presents,
substitution of pictures in immemorial frames, and taking of hot baths
and beginning again--with the next.
That state of things continued, assumed an air of permanency. Nothing
harmed Gloria or changed her or moved her. And then out of a clear sky
one day she informed her mother that undergraduates wearied her. She was
absolutely going to no more college dances.
This had begun the change--not so much in her actual habits, for she
danced, and had as many "dates" as ever--but they were dates in a
different spirit. Previously it had been a sort of pride, a matter of
her own vainglory. She had been, probably, the most celebrated and
sought-after young beauty in the country. Gloria Gilbert of Kansas City!
She had fed on it ruthlessly--enjoying the crowds around her, the manner
in which the most desirable men singled her out; enjoying the fierce
jealousy of other girls; enjoying the fabulous, not to say scandalous,
and, her mother was glad to say, entirely unfounded rumors about
her--for instance, that she had gone in the Yale swimming-pool one night
in a chiffon evening dress.
And from loving it with a vanity that was almost masculine--it had been
in the nature of a triumphant and dazzling career--she became suddenly
anaesthetic to it. She retired. She who had dominated countless parties,
who had blown fragrantly through many ballrooms to the tender tribute of
many eyes, seemed to care no longer. He who fell in love with her now
was dismissed utterly, almost angrily. She went listlessly with the most
indifferent men. She continually broke engagements, not as in the past
from a cool assurance that she was irreproachable, that the man she
insulted would return like a domestic animal--but indifferently, without
contempt or pride. She rarely stormed at men any more--she yawned at
them. She seemed--and it was so strange--she seemed to her mother to be
growing cold.
Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his
aunt's discourse waxed in content--it stands here pruned by half, of all
side references to the youth of Gloria's soul and to Mrs. Gilbert's own
mental distresses--he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she
floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story
of Gloria's life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of
the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked