The Beautiful and Damned
especially for Captain Dunning. The captain, on his part, had addressed
them with tears in his eyes as to the pleasure, etc., and the work,
etc., and time not wasted, etc., and duty, etc. It was very dull and
human; having given ear to it Anthony, whose mind was freshened by his
week in New York, renewed his deep loathing for the military profession
and all it connoted. In their childish hearts two out of every three
professional officers considered that wars were made for armies and not
armies for wars. He rejoiced to see general and field-officers riding
desolately about the barren camp deprived of their commands. He rejoiced
to hear the men in his company laugh scornfully at the inducements
tendered them to remain in the army. They were to attend "schools." He
knew what these "schools" were.
Two days later he was with Gloria in New York.
ANOTHER WINTER
Late one February afternoon Anthony came into the apartment and groping
through the little hall, pitch-dark in the winter dusk, found Gloria
sitting by the window. She turned as he came in.
"What did Mr. Haight have to say?" she asked listlessly.
"Nothing," he answered, "usual thing. Next month, perhaps."
She looked at him closely; her ear attuned to his voice caught the
slightest thickness in the dissyllable.
"You've been drinking," she remarked dispassionately.
"Couple glasses."
"Oh."
He yawned in the armchair and there was a moment's silence between them.
Then she demanded suddenly:
"Did you go to Mr. Haight? Tell me the truth."
"No." He smiled weakly. "As a matter of fact I didn't have time."
"I thought you didn't go.... He sent for you."
"I don't give a damn. I'm sick of waiting around his office. You'd think
he was doing _me_ a favor." He glanced at Gloria as though expecting
moral support, but she had turned back to her contemplation of the
dubious and unprepossessing out-of-doors.
"I feel rather weary of life to-day," he offered tentatively. Still she
was silent. "I met a fellow and we talked in the Biltmore bar."
The dusk had suddenly deepened but neither of them made any move to turn
on the lights. Lost in heaven knew what contemplation, they sat there
until a flurry of snow drew a languid sigh from Gloria.
"What've you been doing?" he asked, finding the silence oppressive.
"Reading a magazine--all full of idiotic articles by prosperous authors
about how terrible it is for poor people to buy silk shirts. And while I
was reading it I could think of nothing except how I wanted a gray
squirrel coat--and how we can't afford one."
"Yes, we can."
"Oh, no."
"Oh, yes! If you want a fur coat you can have one."
Her voice coming through the dark held an implication of scorn.
"You mean we can sell another bond?"
"If necessary. I don't want to go without things. We have spent a lot,
though, since I've been back."
"Oh, shut up!" she said in irritation.
"Why?"
"Because I'm sick and tired of hearing you talk about what we've spent
or what we've done. You came back two months ago and we've been on some
sort of a party practically every night since. We've both wanted to go
out, and we've gone. Well, you haven't heard me complain, have you? But
all you do is whine, whine, whine. I don't care any more what we do or
what becomes of us and at least I'm consistent. But I will _not_
tolerate your complaining and calamity-howling----"
"You're not very pleasant yourself sometimes, you know."
"I'm under no obligations to be. You're not making any attempt to make
things different."
"But I am--"
"Huh! Seems to me I've heard that before. This morning you weren't going
to touch another thing to drink until you'd gotten a position. And you
didn't even have the spunk to go to Mr. Haight when he sent for you
about the suit."
Anthony got to his feet and switched on the lights.
"See here!" he cried, blinking, "I'm getting sick of that sharp tongue
of yours."
"Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Do you think _I'm_ particularly happy?" he continued, ignoring her
question. "Do you think I don't know we're not living as we ought to?"
In an instant Gloria stood trembling beside him.
"I won't _stand_ it!" she burst out. "I won't be lectured to. You and
your suffering! You're just a pitiful weakling and you always
have been!"
They faced one another idiotically, each of them unable to impress the
other, each of them tremendously, achingly, bored. Then she went into
the bedroom and shut the door behind her.
His return had brought into the foreground all their pre-bellum
exasperations. Prices had risen alarmingly and in perverse ratio their
income had shrunk to a little over half of its original size. There had
been the large retainer's fee to Mr. Haight; there were stocks bought at
one hundred, now down to thirty and forty and other investments that
were not paying at all. During the previous spring Gloria had been given
the alternative of leaving the apartment or of signing a year's lease at
two hundred and twenty-five a month. She had signed it. Inevitably as
the necessity for economy had increased they found themselves as a pair
quite unable to save. The old policy of prevarication was resorted to.
Weary of their incapabilities they chattered of what they would
do--oh--to-morrow, of how they would "stop going on parties" and of how
Anthony would go to work. But when dark came down Gloria, accustomed to
an engagement every night, would feel the ancient restlessness creeping
over her. She would stand in the doorway of the bedroom, chewing
furiously at her fingers and sometimes meeting Anthony's eyes as he
glanced up from his book. Then the telephone, and her nerves would
relax, she would answer it with ill-concealed eagerness. Some one was
coming up "for just a few minutes"--and oh, the weariness of pretense,
the appearance of the wine table, the revival of their jaded
spirits--and the awakening, like the mid-point of a sleepless night in
which they moved.
As the winter passed with the march of the returning troops along Fifth
Avenue they became more and more aware that since Anthony's return their
relations had entirely changed. After that reflowering of tenderness and
passion each of them had returned into some solitary dream unshared by
the other and what endearments passed between them passed, it seemed,
from empty heart to empty heart, echoing hollowly the departure of what
they knew at last was gone.
Anthony had again made the rounds of the metropolitan newspapers and had
again been refused encouragement by a motley of office boys, telephone
girls, and city editors. The word was: "We're keeping any vacancies open
for our own men who are still in France." Then, late in March, his eye
fell on an advertisement in the morning paper and in consequence he
found at last the semblance of an occupation.
* * * * *
YOU CAN SELL!!!
_Why not earn while you learn?_
_Our salesmen make $50-$200 weekly_.
* * * * *
There followed an address on Madison Avenue, and instructions to appear
at one o'clock that afternoon. Gloria, glancing over his shoulder after
one of their usual late breakfasts, saw him regarding it idly.
"Why don't you try it?" she suggested.
"Oh--it's one of these crazy schemes."
"It might not be. At least it'd be experience."
At her urging he went at one o'clock to the appointed address, where he
found himself one of a dense miscellany of men waiting in front of the
door. They ranged from a messenger-boy evidently misusing his company's
time to an immemorial individual with a gnarled body and a gnarled cane.
Some of the men were seedy, with sunken cheeks and puffy pink
eyes--others were young; possibly still in high school. After a jostled
fifteen minutes during which they all eyed one another with apathetic
suspicion there appeared a smart young shepherd clad in a "waist-line"
suit and wearing the manner of an assistant rector who herded them
up-stairs into a large room, which resembled a school-room and contained
innumerable desks. Here the prospective salesmen sat down--and again
waited. After an interval a platform at the end of the hall was clouded
with half a dozen sober but sprightly men who, with one exception, took
seats in a semicircle facing the audience.
The exception was the man who seemed the soberest, the most sprightly
and the youngest of the lot, and who advanced to the front of the
platform. The audience scrutinized him hopefully. He was rather small
and rather pretty, with the commercial rather than the thespian sort of
prettiness. He had straight blond bushy brows and eyes that were almost
preposterously honest, and as he reached the edge of his rostrum he
seemed to throw these eyes out into the audience, simultaneously
extending his arm with two fingers outstretched. Then while he rocked
himself to a state of balance an expectant silence settled over the
hall. With perfect assurance the young man had taken his listeners in
hand and his words when they came were steady and confident and of the
school of "straight from the shoulder."
"Men!"--he began, and paused. The word died with a prolonged echo at the
end of the hall, the faces regarding him, hopefully, cynically, wearily,
were alike arrested, engrossed. Six hundred eyes were turned slightly
upward. With an even graceless flow that reminded Anthony of the rolling
of bowling balls he launched himself into the sea of exposition.
"This bright and sunny morning you picked up your favorite newspaper and
you found an advertisement which made the plain, unadorned statement
that _you_ could sell. That was all it said--it didn't say 'what,' it
didn't say 'how,' it didn't say 'why.' It just made one single solitary
assertion that _you_ and _you_ and _you_"--business of pointing--"could
sell. Now my job isn't to make a success of you, because every man is
born a success, he makes himself a failure; it's not to teach you how to
talk, because each man is a natural orator and only makes himself a
clam; my business is to tell you one thing in a way that will make you
_know_ it--it's to tell you that _you_ and _you_ and _you_ have the
heritage of money and prosperity waiting for you to come and claim it."
At this point an Irishman of saturnine appearance rose from his desk
near the rear of the hall and went out.
"That man thinks he'll go look for it in the beer parlor around the
corner. (Laughter.) He won't find it there. Once upon a time I looked
for it there myself (laughter), but that was before I did what every one
of you men no matter how young or how old, how poor or how rich (a faint
ripple of satirical laughter), can do. It was before I found--_myself_!
"Now I wonder if any of you men know what a 'Heart Talk' is. A 'Heart
Talk' is a little book in which I started, about five years ago, to
write down what I had discovered were the principal reasons for a man's
failure and the principal reasons for a man's success--from John D.
Rockerfeller back to John D. Napoleon (laughter), and before that, back
in the days when Abel sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. There
are now one hundred of these 'Heart Talks.' Those of you who are
sincere, who are interested in our proposition, above all who are
dissatisfied with the way things are breaking for you at present will be
handed one to take home with you as you go out yonder door this
afternoon.
"Now in my own pocket I have four letters just received concerning
'Heart Talks.' These letters have names signed to them that are familiar
in every house-hold in the U.S.A. Listen to this one from Detroit:
* * * * *
"DEAR MR. CARLETON:
"I want to order three thousand more copies of 'Heart Talks' for