The Beautiful and Damned
yearning. He had lost her. It was true--no denying it, no softening it.
But a new idea had seared his sky--what of Bloeckman! What would happen
now? There was a wealthy man, middle-aged enough to be tolerant with a
beautiful wife, to baby her whims and indulge her unreason, to wear her
as she perhaps wished to be worn--a bright flower in his button-hole,
safe and secure from the things she feared. He felt that she had been
playing with the idea of marrying Bloeckman, and it was well possible
that this disappointment in Anthony might throw her on sudden impulse
into Bloeckman's arms.
The idea drove him childishly frantic. He wanted to kill Bloeckman and
make him suffer for his hideous presumption. He was saying this over and
over to himself with his teeth tight shut, and a perfect orgy of hate
and fright in his eyes.
But, behind this obscene jealousy, Anthony was in love at last,
profoundly and truly in love, as the word goes between man and woman.
His coffee appeared at his elbow and gave off for a certain time a
gradually diminishing wisp of steam. The night manager, seated at his
desk, glanced at the motionless figure alone at the last table, and then
with a sigh moved down upon him just as the hour hand crossed the figure
three on the big clock.
WISDOM
After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a
measure of reason. He was in love--he cried it passionately to himself.
The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles,
his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had
in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his
infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody
on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the
constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was
necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and
tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be
sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope
mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and
sinew to his self-respect.
Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own
from out the effortless past.
"Memory is short," he thought.
So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand,
a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by
the upright for leagues around. Let him be acquitted--and in a year all
is forgotten. "Yes, he did have some trouble once, just a technicality,
I believe." Oh, memory is very short!
Anthony had seen Gloria altogether about a dozen times, say two dozen
hours. Supposing he left her alone for a month, made no attempt to see
her or speak to her, and avoided every place where she might possibly
be. Wasn't it possible, the more possible because she had never loved
him, that at the end of that time the rush of events would efface his
personality from her conscious mind, and with his personality his
offense and humiliation? She would forget, for there would be other men.
He winced. The implication struck out at him--other men. Two
months--God! Better three weeks, two weeks----
He thought this the second evening after the catastrophe when he was
undressing, and at this point he threw himself down on the bed and lay
there, trembling very slightly and looking at the top of the canopy.
Two weeks--that was worse than no time at all. In two weeks he would
approach her much as he would have to now, without personality or
confidence--remaining still the man who had gone too far and then for a
period that in time was but a moment but in fact an eternity, whined.
No, two weeks was too short a time. Whatever poignancy there had been
for her in that afternoon must have time to dull. He must give her a
period when the incident should fade, and then a new period when she
should gradually begin to think of him, no matter how dimly, with a true
perspective that would remember his pleasantness as well as his
humiliation.
He fixed, finally, on six weeks as approximately the interval best
suited to his purpose, and on a desk calendar he marked the days off,
finding that it would fall on the ninth of April. Very well, on that day
he would phone and ask her if he might call. Until then--silence.
After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at
least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized
that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give
the desired impression when they met.
In another hour he fell into a deep sleep.
THE INTERVAL
Nevertheless, though, as the days passed, the glory of her hair dimmed
perceptibly for him and in a year of separation might have departed
completely, the six weeks held many abominable days. He dreaded the
sight of Dick and Maury, imagining wildly that they knew all--but when
the three met it was Richard Caramel and not Anthony who was the centre
of attention; "The Demon Lover" had been accepted for immediate
publication. Anthony felt that from now on he moved apart. He no longer
craved the warmth and security of Maury's society which had cheered him
no further back than November. Only Gloria could give that now and no
one else ever again. So Dick's success rejoiced him only casually and
worried him not a little. It meant that the world was going
ahead--writing and reading and publishing--and living. And he wanted the
world to wait motionless and breathless for six weeks--while
Gloria forgot.
TWO ENCOUNTERS
His greatest satisfaction was in Geraldine's company. He took her once
to dinner and the theatre and entertained her several times in his
apartment. When he was with her she absorbed him, not as Gloria had, but
quieting those erotic sensibilities in him that worried over Gloria. It
didn't matter how he kissed Geraldine. A kiss was a kiss--to be enjoyed
to the utmost for its short moment. To Geraldine things belonged in
definite pigeonholes: a kiss was one thing, anything further was quite
another; a kiss was all right; the other things were "bad."
When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days
that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.
The first was--he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both
spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read
down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding
a single sentence.
One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his
barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved,
and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft
collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an
oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a
population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in
velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle
straining at its leash--the effect being given of a tug bringing in an
ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking
slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching
Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown
immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and
absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world
of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did
those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green
in the aquarium.
Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl--then in a
horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here
powerless; they came nearer and Gloria, glancing in, saw him. Her eyes
widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five
feet away.
"How do you do?" he muttered inanely.
Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young--with a man he had never seen
before!
It was then that the barber's chair was vacated and he read down the
newspaper column three times in succession.
The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan
bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the
room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had
stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink,
so it was inevitable that they should converse.
"Hello, Mr. Patch," said Bloeckman amiably enough.
Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the
fluctuations of the mercury.
"Do you come in here much?" inquired Bloeckman.
"No, very seldom." He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until
lately, been his favorite.
"Nice bar. One of the best bars in town."
Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He
was in evening dress.
"Well, I'll be hurrying on. I'm going to dinner with Miss Gilbert."
Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced
himself as his vis-à-vis's prospective murderer he could not have struck
a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened
visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous
effort he mustered a rigid--oh, so rigid--smile, and said a conventional
good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with
grief and fear and abominable imaginings.
WEAKNESS
And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in
his apartment trying to read "L'Education Sentimental," and something in
the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free,
they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly
quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it
seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy's. The
Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the
receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs.
Gilbert's voice, soft as maple syrup running into a glass container, had
for him a quality of horror in its single "Hello-o-ah?"
"Miss Gloria's not feeling well. She's lying down, asleep. Who shall I
say called?"
"Nobody!" he shouted.
In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his
armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.
SERENADE
The first thing he said to her was: "Why, you've bobbed your hair!" and
she answered: "Yes, isn't it gorgeous?"
It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six
years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.
"It's all sunshine outdoors," he said gravely. "Don't you want to take a
walk?"
She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice
Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they
properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of
the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey house because Gloria said that
monkeys smelt so bad.
Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for
the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the
suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a
great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire's chaotic
message to whosoever would listen: something about "I worked and I saved
and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!"
All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on
Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually
white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short
shadow's length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that
floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.