The Beautiful and Damned
"_Here's a health to King Charles, Here's a health to King Charles,
Bring the bowl that you boast_----"
(PARAMORE _joins in with a hearty voice_.)
MAURY: Fill the cup, Frederick. You know everything's subordinated to
nature's purposes with us, and her purpose with you is to make you a
rip-roaring tippler.
PARAMORE: If a fellow can drink like a gentleman--
MAURY: What is a gentleman, anyway?
ANTHONY: A man who never has pins under his coat lapel.
MAURY: Nonsense! A man's social rank is determined by the amount of
bread he eats in a sandwich.
DICK: He's a man who prefers the first edition of a book to the last
edition of a newspaper.
RACHAEL: A man who never gives an impersonation of a dope-fiend.
MAURY: An American who can fool an English butler into thinking he's
one.
MURIEL: A man who comes from a good family and went to Yale or Harvard
or Princeton, and has money and dances well, and all that.
MAURY: At last--the perfect definition! Cardinal Newman's is now a back
number.
PARAMORE: I think we ought to look on the question more broad-mindedly.
Was it Abraham Lincoln who said that a gentleman is one who never
inflicts pain?
MAURY: It's attributed, I believe, to General Ludendorff.
PARAMORE: Surely you're joking.
MAURY: Have another drink.
PARAMORE: I oughtn't to. (_Lowering his voice for_ MAURY'S _ear alone_)
What if I were to tell you this is the third drink I've ever taken in
my life?
(DICK _starts the phonograph, which provokes_ MURIEL _to rise and sway
from side to side, her elbows against her ribs, her forearms
perpendicular to her body and out like fins._)
MURIEL: Oh, let's take up the rugs and dance!
(_This suggestion is received by_ ANTHONY _and_ GLORIA _with interior
groans and sickly smiles of acquiescence._)
MURIEL: Come on, you lazy-bones. Get up and move the furniture back.
DICK: Wait till I finish my drink.
MAURY: (_Intent on his purpose toward_ PARAMORE) I'll tell you what.
Let's each fill one glass, drink it off and then we'll dance.
(_A wave of protest which breaks against the rock of_ MAURY'S
_insistence._)
MURIEL: My head is simply going _round_ now.
RACHAEL: (_In an undertone to_ ANTHONY) Did Gloria tell you to stay away
from me?
ANTHONY: (_Confused_) Why, certainly not. Of course not.
(RACHAEL _smiles at him inscrutably. Two years have given her a sort of
hard, well-groomed beauty._)
MAURY: (_Holding up his glass_) Here's to the defeat of democracy and
the fall of Christianity.
MURIEL: Now really!
(_She flashes a mock-reproachful glance at_ MAURY _and then drinks._
_They all drink, with varying degrees of difficulty._)
MURIEL: Clear the floor!
(_It seems inevitable that this process is to be gone through, so_
ANTHONY _and_ GLORIA _join in the great moving of tables, piling of
chairs, rolling of carpets, and breaking of lamps. When the furniture
has been stacked in ugly masses at the sides, there appears a space
about eight feet square._)
MURIEL: Oh, let's have music!
MAURY: Tana will render the love song of an eye, ear, nose, and throat
specialist.
(_Amid some confusion due to the fact that_ TANA _has retired for the
night, preparations are made for the performance. The pajamaed Japanese,
flute in hand, is wrapped in a comforter and placed in a chair atop one
of the tables, where he makes a ludicrous and grotesque spectacle._
PARAMORE _is perceptibly drunk and so enraptured with the notion that he
increases the effect by simulating funny-paper staggers and even
venturing on an occasional hiccough._)
PARAMORE: (_To_ GLORIA) Want to dance with me?
GLORIA: No, sir! Want to do the swan dance. Can you do it?
PARAMORE: Sure. Do them all.
GLORIA: All right. You start from that side of the room and I'll start
from this.
MURIEL: Let's go!
(_Then Bedlam creeps screaming out of the bottles:_ TANA _plunges into
the recondite mazes of the train song, the plaintive "tootle toot-toot"
blending its melancholy cadences with the_ "Poor Butter-fly
(tink-atink), by the blossoms wait-ing" _of the phonograph._ MURIEL _is
too weak with laughter to do more than cling desperately to_ BARNES,
_who, dancing with the ominous rigidity of an army officer, tramps
without humor around the small space._ ANTHONY _is trying to hear_
RACHAEL'S _whisper--without attracting_ GLORIA's _attention...._
_But the grotesque, the unbelievable, the histrionic incident is about
to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems set upon the
passionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature._ PARAMORE _has
been trying to emulate_ GLORIA, _and as the commotion reaches its height
he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily--he staggers,
recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall ...
almost into the arms of old_ ADAM PATCH, _whose approach has been
rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in the room._
ADAM PATCH _is very white. He leans upon a stick. The man with him is_
EDWARD SHUTTLEWORTH, _and it is he who seizes_ PARAMORE _by the shoulder
and deflects the course of his fall away from the venerable
philanthropist._
_The time required for quiet to descend upon the room like a monstrous
pall may be estimated at two minutes, though for a short period after
that the phonograph gags and the notes of the Japanese train song
dribble from the end of_ TANA'S _flute. Of the nine people only_ BARNES,
PARAMORE, _and_ TANA _are unaware of the late-comer's identity. Of the
nine not one is aware that_ ADAM PATCH _has that morning made a
contribution of fifty thousand dollars to the cause of national
prohibition._
_It is given to_ PARAMORE _to break the gathering silence; the high tide
of his life's depravity is reached in his incredible remark._)
PARAMORE: (_Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen on his hands and knees_)
I'm not a guest here--I work here.
(_Again silence falls--so deep now, so weighted with intolerably
contagious apprehension, that_ RACHAEL _gives a nervous little giggle,
and_ DICK _finds himself telling over and over a line from Swinburne,
grotesquely appropriate to the scene:_
"One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath."
... _Out of the hush the voice of_ ANTHONY, _sober and strained, saying
something to_ ADAM PATCH; _then this, too, dies away._)
SHUTTLEWORTH: (_Passionately_) Your grandfather thought he would motor
over to see your house. I phoned from Rye and left a message.
(_A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no
one, fall into the next pause._ ANTHONY _is the color of chalk._
GLORIA'S _lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and
frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does_ CROSS
PATCH'S _drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of
his thin teeth? He speaks--five mild and simple words._)
ADAM PATCH: We'll go back now, Shuttleworth--(_And that is all. He
turns, and assisted by his cane goes out through the hall, through the
front door, and with hellish portentousness his uncertain footsteps
crunch on the gravel path under the August moon._)
RETROSPECT
In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all
the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across to each other.
Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that
she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay
and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted what most women want,
but she wanted it much more fiercely and passionately. She had been
married over two years. At first there had been days of serene
understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietorship and pride.
Alternating with these periods had occurred sporadic hates, enduring a
short hour, and forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon.
That had been for half a year.
Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant, had become,
gray--very rarely, with the spur of jealousy or forced separation, the
ancient ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul and soul, the
emotional excitement. It was possible for her to hate Anthony for as
much as a full day, to be carelessly incensed at him for as long as a
week. Recrimination had displaced affection as an indulgence, almost as
an entertainment, and there were nights when they would go to sleep
trying to remember who was angry and who should be reserved next
morning. And as the second year waned there had entered two new
elements. Gloria realized that Anthony had become capable of utter
indifference toward her, a temporary indifference, more than half
lethargic, but one from which she could no longer stir him by a
whispered word, or a certain intimate smile. There were days when her
caresses affected him as a sort of suffocation. She was conscious of
these things; she never entirely admitted them to herself.
It was only recently that she perceived that in spite of her adoration
of him, her jealousy, her servitude, her pride, she fundamentally
despised him--and her contempt blended indistinguishably with her other
emotions.... All this was her love--the vital and feminine illusion that
had directed itself toward him one April night, many months before.
On Anthony's part she was, in spite of these qualifications, his sole
preoccupation. Had he lost her he would have been a broken man,
wretchedly and sentimentally absorbed in her memory for the remainder of
life. He seldom took pleasure in an entire day spent alone with
her--except on occasions he preferred to have a third person with them.
There were times when he felt that if he were not left absolutely alone
he would go mad--there were a few times when he definitely hated her. In
his cups he was capable of short attractions toward other women, the
hitherto-suppressed outcroppings of an experimental temperament.
That spring, that summer, they had speculated upon future happiness--how
they were to travel from summer land to summer land, returning
eventually to a gorgeous estate and possible idyllic children, then
entering diplomacy or politics, to accomplish, for a while, beautiful
and important things, until finally as a white-haired (beautifully,
silkily, white-haired) couple they were to loll about in serene glory,
worshipped by the bourgeoisie of the land.... These times were to begin
"when we get our money"; it was on such dreams rather than on any
satisfaction with their increasingly irregular, increasingly dissipated
life that their hope rested. On gray mornings when the jests of the
night before had shrunk to ribaldries without wit or dignity, they
could, after a fashion, bring out this batch of common hopes and count
them over, then smile at each other and repeat, by way of clinching the
matter, the terse yet sincere Nietzscheanism of Gloria's defiant "I
don't care!"
Things had been slipping perceptibly. There was the money question,
increasingly annoying, increasingly ominous; there was the realization
that liquor had become a practical necessity to their amusement--not an
uncommon phenomenon in the British aristocracy of a hundred years ago,
but a somewhat alarming one in a civilization steadily becoming more
temperate and more circumspect. Moreover, both of them seemed vaguely
weaker in fibre, not so much in what they did as in their subtle
reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born
something that she had hitherto never needed--the skeleton, incomplete
but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience.
This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow decline of her
physical courage.
Then, on the August morning after Adam Patch's unexpected call, they
awoke, nauseated and tired, dispirited with life, capable only of one
pervasive emotion--fear.
PANIC