The Beautiful and Damned
list of what they "ought" to do, and where they "ought" to live.
"I'd like to take Gloria abroad," he complained, "except for this damn
war--and next to that I'd sort of like to have a place in the country,
somewhere near New York, of course, where I could write--or whatever I
decide to do."
Gloria laughed.
"Isn't he cute?" she required of Maury. "'Whatever he decides to do!'
But what am _I_ going to do if he works? Maury, will you take me around
if Anthony works?"
"Anyway, I'm not going to work yet," said Anthony quickly.
It was vaguely understood between them that on some misty day he would
enter a sort of glorified diplomatic service and be envied by princes
and prime ministers for his beautiful wife.
"Well," said Gloria helplessly, "I'm sure I don't know. We talk and talk
and never get anywhere, and we ask all our friends and they just answer
the way we want 'em to. I wish somebody'd take care of us."
"Why don't you go out to--out to Greenwich or something?" suggested
Richard Caramel.
"I'd like that," said Gloria, brightening. "Do you think we could get a
house there?"
Dick shrugged his shoulders and Maury laughed.
"You two amuse me," he said. "Of all the unpractical people! As soon as
a place is mentioned you expect us to pull great piles of photographs
out of our pockets showing the different styles of architecture
available in bungalows."
"That's just what I don't want," wailed Gloria, "a hot stuffy bungalow,
with a lot of babies next door and their father cutting the grass in his
shirt sleeves--"
"For Heaven's sake, Gloria," interrupted Maury, "nobody wants to lock
you up in a bungalow. Who in God's name brought bungalows into the
conversation? But you'll never get a place anywhere unless you go out
and hunt for it."
"Go where? You say 'go out and hunt for it,' but where?"
With dignity Maury waved his hand paw-like about the room.
"Out anywhere. Out in the country. There're lots of places."
"Thanks."
"Look here!" Richard Caramel brought his yellow eye rakishly into play.
"The trouble with you two is that you're all disorganized. Do you know
anything about New York State? Shut up, Anthony, I'm talking to Gloria."
"Well," she admitted finally, "I've been to two or three house parties
in Portchester and around in Connecticut--but, of course, that isn't in
New York State, is it? And neither is Morristown," she finished with
drowsy irrelevance.
There was a shout of laughter.
"Oh, Lord!" cried Dick, "neither is Morristown!' No, and neither is
Santa Barbara, Gloria. Now listen. To begin with, unless you have a
fortune there's no use considering any place like Newport or
Southhampton or Tuxedo. They're out of the question."
They all agreed to this solemnly.
"And personally I hate New Jersey. Then, of course, there's upper New
York, above Tuxedo."
"Too cold," said Gloria briefly. "I was there once in an automobile."
"Well, it seems to me there're a lot of towns like Rye between New York
and Greenwich where you could buy a little gray house of some--"
Gloria leaped at the phrase triumphantly. For the first time since their
return East she knew what she wanted.
"Oh, _yes_!" she cried. "Oh, _yes_! that's it: a little gray house with
sort of white around and a whole lot of swamp maples just as brown and
gold as an October picture in a gallery. Where can we find one?"
"Unfortunately, I've mislaid my list of little gray houses with swamp
maples around them--but I'll try to find it. Meanwhile you take a piece
of paper and write down the names of seven possible towns. And every day
this week you take a trip to one of those towns."
"Oh, gosh!" protested Gloria, collapsing mentally, "why won't you do it
for us? I hate trains."
"Well, hire a car, and--"
Gloria yawned.
"I'm tired of discussing it. Seems to me all we do is talk about where
to live."
"My exquisite wife wearies of thought," remarked Anthony ironically.
"She must have a tomato sandwich to stimulate her jaded nerves. Let's go
out to tea."
As the unfortunate upshot of this conversation, they took Dick's advice
literally, and two days later went out to Rye, where they wandered
around with an irritated real estate agent, like bewildered babes in the
wood. They were shown houses at a hundred a month which closely adjoined
other houses at a hundred a month; they were shown isolated houses to
which they invariably took violent dislikes, though they submitted
weakly to the agent's desire that they "look at that stove--some stove!"
and to a great shaking of doorposts and tapping of walls, intended
evidently to show that the house would not immediately collapse, no
matter how convincingly it gave that impression. They gazed through
windows into interiors furnished either "commercially" with slab-like
chairs and unyielding settees, or "home-like" with the melancholy
bric-à-brac of other summers--crossed tennis rackets, fit-form couches,
and depressing Gibson girls. With a feeling of guilt they looked at a
few really nice houses, aloof, dignified, and cool--at three hundred a
month. They went away from Rye thanking the real estate agent very
much indeed.
On the crowded train back to New York the seat behind was occupied by a
super-respirating Latin whose last few meals had obviously been composed
entirely of garlic. They reached the apartment gratefully, almost
hysterically, and Gloria rushed for a hot bath in the reproachless
bathroom. So far as the question of a future abode was concerned both of
them were incapacitated for a week.
The matter eventually worked itself out with unhoped-for romance.
Anthony ran into the living room one afternoon fairly radiating
"the idea."
"I've got it," he was exclaiming as though he had just caught a mouse.
"We'll get a car."
"Gee whiz! Haven't we got troubles enough taking care of ourselves?"
"Give me a second to explain, can't you? just let's leave our stuff with
Dick and just pile a couple of suitcases in our car, the one we're going
to buy--we'll have to have one in the country anyway--and just start out
in the direction of New Haven. You see, as we get out of commuting
distance from New York, the rents'll get cheaper, and as soon as we find
a house we want we'll just settle down."
By his frequent and soothing interpolation of the word "just" he aroused
her lethargic enthusiasm. Strutting violently about the room, he
simulated a dynamic and irresistible efficiency. "We'll buy a car
to-morrow."
Life, limping after imagination's ten-league boots, saw them out of town
a week later in a cheap but sparkling new roadster, saw them through the
chaotic unintelligible Bronx, then over a wide murky district which
alternated cheerless blue-green wastes with suburbs of tremendous and
sordid activity. They left New York at eleven and it was well past a hot
and beatific noon when they moved rakishly through Pelham.
"These aren't towns," said Gloria scornfully, "these are just city
blocks plumped down coldly into waste acres. I imagine all the men here
have their mustaches stained from drinking their coffee too quickly in
the morning."
"And play pinochle on the commuting trains."
"What's pinochle?"
"Don't be so literal. How should I know? But it sounds as though they
ought to play it."
"I like it. It sounds as if it were something where you sort of cracked
your knuckles or something.... Let me drive."
Anthony looked at her suspiciously.
"You swear you're a good driver?"
"Since I was fourteen."
He stopped the car cautiously at the side of the road and they changed
seats. Then with a horrible grinding noise the car was put in gear,
Gloria adding an accompaniment of laughter which seemed to Anthony
disquieting and in the worst possible taste.
"Here we go!" she yelled. "Whoo-oop!"
Their heads snapped back like marionettes on a single wire as the car
leaped ahead and curved retchingly about a standing milk-wagon, whose
driver stood up on his seat and bellowed after them. In the immemorial
tradition of the road Anthony retorted with a few brief epigrams as to
the grossness of the milk-delivering profession. He cut his remarks
short, however, and turned to Gloria with the growing conviction that he
had made a grave mistake in relinquishing control and that Gloria was a
driver of many eccentricities and of infinite carelessness.
"Remember now!" he warned her nervously, "the man said we oughtn't to go
over twenty miles an hour for the first five thousand miles."
She nodded briefly, but evidently intending to accomplish the
prohibitive distance as quickly as possible, slightly increased her
speed. A moment later he made another attempt.
"See that sign? Do you want to get us pinched?"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake," cried Gloria in exasperation, "you _always_
exaggerate things so!"
"Well, I don't want to get arrested."
"Who's arresting you? You're so persistent--just like you were about my
cough medicine last night."
"It was for your own good."
"Ha! I might as well be living with mama."
"What a thing to say to me!"
A standing policeman swerved into view, was hastily passed.
"See him?" demanded Anthony.
"Oh, you drive me crazy! He didn't arrest us, did he?"
"When he does it'll be too late," countered Anthony brilliantly.
Her reply was scornful, almost injured.
"Why, this old thing won't _go_ over thirty-five."
"It isn't old."
"It is in spirit."
That afternoon the car joined the laundry-bags and Gloria's appetite as
one of the trinity of contention. He warned her of railroad tracks; he
pointed out approaching automobiles; finally he insisted on taking the
wheel and a furious, insulted Gloria sat silently beside him between the
towns of Larchmont and Rye.
But it was due to this furious silence of hers that the gray house
materialized from its abstraction, for just beyond Rye he surrendered
gloomily to it and re-relinquished the wheel. Mutely he beseeched her
and Gloria, instantly cheered, vowed to be more careful. But because a
discourteous street-car persisted callously in remaining upon its track
Gloria ducked down a side-street--and thereafter that afternoon was
never able to find her way back to the Post Road. The street they
finally mistook for it lost its Post-Road aspect when it had gone five
miles from Cos Cob. Its macadam became gravel, then dirt--moreover, it
narrowed and developed a border of maple trees, through which filtered
the weltering sun, making its endless experiments with shadow designs
upon the long grass.
"We're lost now," complained Anthony.
"Read that sign!"
"Marietta--Five Miles. What's Marietta?"
"Never heard of it, but let's go on. We can't turn here and there's
probably a detour back to the Post Road."
The way became scarred with deepening ruts and insidious shoulders of
stone. Three farmhouses faced them momentarily, slid by. A town sprang
up in a cluster of dull roofs around a white tall steeple.
Then Gloria, hesitating between two approaches, and making her choice
too late, drove over a fire-hydrant and ripped the transmission
violently from the car.
It was dark when the real-estate agent of Marietta showed them the gray
house. They came upon it just west of the village, where it rested
against a sky that was a warm blue cloak buttoned with tiny stars. The
gray house had been there when women who kept cats were probably
witches, when Paul Revere made false teeth in Boston preparatory to
arousing the great commercial people, when our ancestors were gloriously
deserting Washington in droves. Since those days the house had been
bolstered up in a feeble corner, considerably repartitioned and newly
plastered inside, amplified by a kitchen and added to by a
side-porch--but, save for where some jovial oaf had roofed the new