The Beautiful and Damned
"Oh!" she cried, "I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out
in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there's ever
been any winter."
"Don't you, though!"
"I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of
like birds."
"All women _are_ birds," he ventured.
"What kind am I?"--quick and eager.
"A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are
sparrows, of course--see that row of nurse-maids over there? They're
sparrows--or are they magpies? And of course you've met canary
girls--and robin girls."
"And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or
owls."
"What am I--a buzzard?"
She laughed and shook her head.
"Oh, no, you're not a bird at all, do you think? You're a Russian
wolfhound."
Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally
hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and
princesses, so he was properly flattered.
"Dick's a fox terrier, a trick fox terrier," she continued.
"And Maury's a cat." Simultaneously it occurred to him how like
Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a
discreet silence.
Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.
"Don't you ever make long engagements?" he pleaded, "even if it's a week
ahead, I think it'd be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and
afternoon both."
"It would be, wouldn't it?" She thought for a moment. "Let's do it next
Sunday."
"All right. I'll map out a programme that'll take up every minute."
He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours
when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would
have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze--but a fire going also
lest there be chill in the air--and how there would be clusters of
flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They
would sit on the lounge.
And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while
Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found
sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been
away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains
brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul
thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and
waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore--for he was young now as he
would never be again, and more triumphant than death.
Six o'clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St.
Anne's chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to
the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with
elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses
were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft
things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that
seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his
supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old
women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won
a hundred-yard dash!
In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with
moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day
like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted
Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss,
that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured,
"I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her
attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a
strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his
hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to
her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that
he loved her.
He phoned next morning--no hesitation now, no uncertainty--instead a
delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:
"Good morning--Gloria."
"Good morning."
"That's all I called you up to say-dear."
"I'm glad you did."
"I wish I could see you."
"You will, to-morrow night."
"That's a long time, isn't it?"
"Yes--" Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.
"Couldn't I come to-night?" He dared anything in the glory and
revelation of that almost whispered "yes."
"I have a date."
"Oh--"
"But I might--I might be able to break it."
"Oh!"--a sheer cry, a rhapsody. "Gloria?"
"What?"
"I love you."
Another pause and then:
"I--I'm glad."
Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after
the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony's
face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night!
His dark eyes were gleaming--around his mouth were lines it was a
kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of
those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered
light is enough to see by for years.
He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink,
starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very
still, and looking at him wide-eyed.
As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly
over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she
came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one
triumphant and enduring embrace.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
THE RADIANT HOUR
After a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in "practical
discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of
severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.
"Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist.
"If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."
"I do," she protested; "I want to stand on the street corner like a
sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."
"Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."
"Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am.
There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished
pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I
see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."
"We're twins."
Ecstatic thought!
"Mother says"--she hesitated uncertainly--"mother says that two souls
are sometimes created together and--and in love before they're born."
Bilphism gained its easiest convert.... After a while he lifted up his
head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back
to her he saw that she was angry.
"Why did you laugh?" she cried, "you've done that twice before. There's
nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the
fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're
together."
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than
that, just keep quiet!"
"I love you."
"I don't care."
There was a pause. Anthony was depressed.... At length Gloria murmured:
"I'm sorry I was mean."
"You weren't. I was the one."
Peace was restored--the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and
sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an
audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality.
Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression--yet it was
probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than
Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she
was giving.
Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed
into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of
concentration. She must have known it--for three weeks Gloria had seen
no one else--and she must have noticed that this time there was an
authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given
special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed,
the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still
rather warm--
--Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself
immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants
blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers
sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs--quaint device--and the staid
bill of fares on which they scribbled "you know I do," pushing it over
for the other to see.
But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.
"Now, Gloria," he would cry, "please let me explain!"
"Don't explain. Kiss me."
"I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss
it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."
"But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that we _can_ kiss
and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."
At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that Anthony
arose and punched himself into his overcoat--for a moment it appeared
that the scene of the preceding February was to be repeated, but knowing
how deeply she was moved he retained his dignity with his pride, and in
a moment Gloria was sobbing in his arms, her lovely face miserable as a
frightened little girl's.
Meanwhile they kept unfolding to each other, unwillingly, by curious
reactions and evasions, by distastes and prejudices and unintended hints
of the past. The girl was proudly incapable of jealousy and, because he
was extremely jealous, this virtue piqued him. He told her recondite
incidents of his own life on purpose to arouse some spark of it, but to
no avail. She possessed him now--nor did she desire the dead years.
"Oh, Anthony," she would say, "always when I'm mean to you I'm sorry
afterward. I'd give my right hand to save you one little moment's pain."
And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that
she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when
they hurt each other purposely--taking almost a delight in the thrust.
Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving
desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent
and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or
anything he could say. Often he would eventually trace these portentous
reticences to some physical discomfort--of these she never complained
until they were over--or to some carelessness or presumption in him, or
to an unsatisfactory dish at dinner, but even then the means by which
she created the infinite distances she spread about herself were a
mystery, buried somewhere back in those twenty-two years of
unwavering pride.
"Why do you like Muriel?" he demanded one day.
"I don't very much."
"Then why do you go with her?"
"Just for some one to go with. They're no exertion, those girls. They
sort of believe everything I tell them--but I rather like Rachael. I
think she's cute--and so clean and slick, don't you? I used to have
other friends--in Kansas City and at school--casual, all of them, girls
who just flitted into my range and out of it for no more reason than
that boys took us places together. They didn't interest me after
environment stopped throwing us together. Now they're mostly married.
What does it matter--they were all just people."
"You like men better, don't you?"
"Oh, much better. I've got a man's mind."
"You've got a mind like mine. Not strongly gendered either way."
Later she told him about the beginnings of her friendship with
Bloeckman. One day in Delmonico's, Gloria and Rachael had come upon
Bloeckman and Mr. Gilbert having luncheon and curiosity had impelled her
to make it a party of four. She had liked him--rather. He was a relief