The Beautiful and Damned
"Wednesday's fine. Just phone me and I'll go around with you--"
He was on his feet, shaking hands briskly--then his car was a wraith of
dust down the road. Anthony turned to his wife in bewilderment.
"Why, Gloria!"
"You don't mind if I have a trial, Anthony. Just a trial? I've got to go
to town Wednesday, _any_how."
"But it's so silly! You don't want to go into the movies--moon around a
studio all day with a lot of cheap chorus people."
"Lot of mooning around Mary Pickford does!"
"Everybody isn't a Mary Pickford."
"Well, I can't see how you'd object to my _try_ing."
"I do, though. I hate actors."
"Oh, you make me tired. Do you imagine I have a very thrilling time
dozing on this damn porch?"
"You wouldn't mind if you loved me."
"Of course I love you," she said impatiently, making out a quick case
for herself. "It's just because I do that I hate to see you go to pieces
by just lying around and saying you ought to work. Perhaps if I _did_ go
into this for a while it'd stir you up so you'd do something."
"It's just your craving for excitement, that's all it is."
"Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"
"Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to
Europe."
"Well, go on then! _I'm_ not stopping you!"
To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears.
Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment--words, kisses,
endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they
attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them
sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's
was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.
One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York,
called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was
asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that
were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table
before a miscellaneous assortment of odds and ends--cigar-boxes, knives,
pencils, the tops of cans, and some scraps of paper covered with
elaborate figures and diagrams.
"What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.
Tana politely grinned.
"I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell--"
"You making a dog-house?"
"No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."
"Typewriter?"
"Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout
typewutta."
"So you thought you'd make one, eh?"
"Wait. I tell."
Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana
opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity
for action. Then with a rush he began:
"I been think--typewutta--has, oh, many many many many _thing_. Oh many
many many many." "Many keys. I see."
"No-o? _Yes_-key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."
"Yes, you're right."
"Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express
himself: "I been think--many words--end same. Like i-n-g."
"You bet. A whole raft of them."
"So--I make--typewutta--quick. Not so many lettah--"
"That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one
key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."
Tana laughed disparagingly. "Wait. I tell--" "Where's Mrs. Patch?"
"She out. Wait, I tell--" Again he screwed up his face for action. "_My_
typewutta----"
"Where is she?"
"Here--I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.
"I mean Mrs. Patch."
"She out." Tana reassured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."
"Down in the village?"
"No. Went off before lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."
Anthony started.
"Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"
"She be back five."
Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I
tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by
God! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up
to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked
out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of
five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path--as far
as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car--except--but it
was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he
rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.
Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the
speech he would make to her when she came in--
"So this is love!" he would begin--or no, it sounded too much like the
popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved.
Anyhow--"So this is what _you_ do when I have to go up and trot all day
around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I
don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to
his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you--" He paused,
catching a familiar ring in the words--then he realized--it was
Tana's "I tell."
Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic
imagination it was already six--seven--eight, and she was never coming!
Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to
California with him....
--There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he
rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path.
Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.
"Dearest!" she cried.
"We've been for the best jaunt--all over New York State."
"I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately.
"Wish you'd both been here when I came."
"I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. When he had departed
Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that
some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.
"I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to
go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so
lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."
Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired--tired with
nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never
chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had
always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their
words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast
tradition of human failure--that, and the sense of death.
"I suppose I don't care," he answered.
One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being
beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he
failed to understand.
WINTER
She rolled over on her back and lay still for a moment in the great bed
watching the February sun suffer one last attenuated refinement in its
passage through the leaded panes into the room. For a time she had no
accurate sense of her whereabouts or of the events of the day before, or
the day before that; then, like a suspended pendulum, memory began to
beat out its story, releasing with each swing a burdened quota of time
until her life was given back to her.
She could hear, now, Anthony's troubled breathing beside her; she could
smell whiskey and cigarette smoke. She noticed that she lacked complete
muscular control; when she moved it was not a sinuous motion with the
resultant strain distributed easily over her body--it was a tremendous
effort of her nervous system as though each time she were hypnotizing
herself into performing an impossible action....
She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth to get rid of that
intolerable taste; then back by the bedside listening to the rattle of
Bounds's key in the outer door.
"Wake up, Anthony!" she said sharply.
She climbed into bed beside him and closed her eyes. Almost the last
thing she remembered was a conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Lacy. Mrs.
Lacy had said, "Sure you don't want us to get you a taxi?" and Anthony
had replied that he guessed they could walk over to Fifth all right.
Then they had both attempted, imprudently, to bow--and collapsed
absurdly into a battalion of empty milk bottles just outside the door.
There must have been two dozen milk bottles standing open-mouthed in the
dark. She could conceive of no plausible explanation of those milk
bottles. Perhaps they had been attracted by the singing in the Lacy
house and had hurried over agape with wonder to see the fun. Well,
they'd had the worst of it--though it seemed that she and Anthony never
would get up, the perverse things rolled so....
Still, they had found a taxi. "My meter's broken and it'll cost you a
dollar and a half to get home," said the taxi driver. "Well," said
Anthony, "I'm young Packy McFarland and if you'll come down here I'll
beat you till you can't stand up." ...At that point the man had driven
off without them. They must have found another taxi, for they were in
the apartment....
"What time is it?" Anthony was sitting up in bed, staring at her with
owlish precision.
This was obviously a rhetorical question. Gloria could think of no
reason why she should be expected to know the time.
"Golly, I feel like the devil!" muttered Anthony dispassionately.
Relaxing, he tumbled back upon his pillow. "Bring on your grim reaper!"
"Anthony, how'd we finally get home last night?"
"Taxi."
"Oh!" Then, after a pause: "Did you put me to bed?"
"I don't know. Seems to me you put _me_ to bed. What day is it?"
"Tuesday."
"Tuesday? I hope so. If it's Wednesday, I've got to start work at that
idiotic place. Supposed to be down at nine or some such ungodly hour."
"Ask Bounds," suggested Gloria feebly.
"Bounds!" he called.
Sprightly, sober--a voice from a world that it seemed in the past two
days they had left forever, Bounds sprang in short steps down the hall
and appeared in the half darkness of the door.
"What day, Bounds?"
"February the twenty-second, I think, sir."
"I mean day of the week."
"Tuesday, sir." "Thanks." After a pause: "Are you ready for breakfast,
sir?"
"Yes, and Bounds, before you get it, will you make a pitcher of water,
and set it here beside the bed? I'm a little thirsty."
"Yes, sir."
Bounds retreated in sober dignity down the hallway.
"Lincoln's birthday," affirmed Anthony without enthusiasm, "or St.
Valentine's or somebody's. When did we start on this insane party?"
"Sunday night."
"After prayers?" he suggested sardonically.
"We raced all over town in those hansoms and Maury sat up with his
driver, don't you remember? Then we came home and he tried to cook some
bacon--came out of the pantry with a few blackened remains, insisting it
was 'fried to the proverbial crisp.'"
Both of them laughed, spontaneously but with some difficulty, and lying
there side by side reviewed the chain of events that had ended in this
rusty and chaotic dawn.
They had been in New York for almost four months, since the country had
grown too cool in late October. They had given up California this year,
partly because of lack of funds, partly with the idea of going abroad
should this interminable war, persisting now into its second year, end
during the winter. Of late their income had lost elasticity; no longer
did it stretch to cover gay whims and pleasant extravagances, and
Anthony had spent many puzzled and unsatisfactory hours over a densely
figured pad, making remarkable budgets that left huge margins for
"amusements, trips, etc.," and trying to apportion, even approximately,
their past expenditures.
He remembered a time when in going on a "party" with his two best
friends, he and Maury had invariably paid more than their share of the
expenses. They would buy the tickets for the theatre or squabble between
themselves for the dinner check. It had seemed fitting; Dick, with his