The Beautiful and Damned
clerk of the Appellate Division. She had called up the apartment and had
been told that Anthony was out by a woman to whom she had refused to
give her name.
In a living room he stood by the door regarding her with a sort of
stupefied horror as she rattled on.... His predominant sensation was
that all the civilization and convention around him was curiously
unreal.... She was in a milliner's shop on Sixth Avenue, she said. It
was a lonesome life. She had been sick for a long while after he left
for Camp Mills; her mother had come down and taken her home again to
Carolina.... She had come to New York with the idea of finding Anthony.
She was appallingly in earnest. Her violet eyes were red with tears; her
soft intonation was ragged with little gasping sobs.
That was all. She had never changed. She wanted him now, and if she
couldn't have him she must die....
"You'll have to get out," he said at length, speaking with tortuous
intensity. "Haven't I enough to worry me now without you coming here? My
_God_! You'll have to get _out!"_
Sobbing, she sat down in a chair.
"I love you," she cried; "I don't care what you say to me! I love you."
"I don't care!" he almost shrieked; "get out--oh, get out! Haven't you
done me harm enough? Haven't--you--done--_enough_?"
"Hit me!" she implored him--wildly, stupidly. "Oh, hit me, and I'll kiss
the hand you hit me with!"
His voice rose until it was pitched almost at a scream. "I'll kill you!"
he cried. "If you don't get out I'll kill you, I'll kill you!"
There was madness in his eyes now, but, unintimidated, Dot rose and took
a step toward him.
"Anthony! Anthony!--"
He made a little clicking sound with his teeth and drew back as though
to spring at her--then, changing his purpose, he looked wildly about him
on the floor and wall.
"I'll kill you!" he was muttering in short, broken gasps. "I'll _kill_
you!" He seemed to bite at the word as though to force it into
materialization. Alarmed at last she made no further movement forward,
but meeting his frantic eyes took a step back toward the door. Anthony
began to race here and there on his side of the room, still giving out
his single cursing cry. Then he found what he had been seeking--a stiff
oaken chair that stood beside the table. Uttering a harsh, broken shout,
he seized it, swung it above his head and let it go with all his raging
strength straight at the white, frightened face across the room ... then
a thick, impenetrable darkness came down upon him and blotted out
thought, rage, and madness together--with almost a tangible snapping
sound the face of the world changed before his eyes....
Gloria and Dick came in at five and called his name. There was no
answer--they went into the living room and found a chair with its back
smashed lying in the doorway, and they noticed that all about the room
there was a sort of disorder--the rugs had slid, the pictures and
bric-à-brac were upset upon the centre table. The air was sickly sweet
with cheap perfume.
They found Anthony sitting in a patch of sunshine on the floor of his
bedroom. Before him, open, were spread his three big stamp-books, and
when they entered he was running his hands through a great pile of
stamps that he had dumped from the back of one of them. Looking up and
seeing Dick and Gloria he put his head critically on one side and
motioned them back.
"Anthony!" cried Gloria tensely, "we've won! They reversed the
decision!"
"Don't come in," he murmured wanly, "you'll muss them. I'm sorting, and
I know you'll step in them. Everything always gets mussed."
"What are you doing?" demanded Dick in astonishment. "Going back to
childhood? Don't you realize you've won the suit? They've reversed the
decision of the lower courts. You're worth thirty millions!"
Anthony only looked at him reproachfully.
"Shut the door when you go out." He spoke like a pert child.
With a faint horror dawning in her eyes, Gloria gazed at him--
"Anthony!" she cried, "what is it? What's the matter? Why didn't you
come--why, what _is_ it?"
"See here," said Anthony softly, "you two get out--now, both of you. Or
else I'll tell my grandfather."
He held up a handful of stamps and let them come drifting down about him
like leaves, varicolored and bright, turning and fluttering gaudily upon
the sunny air: stamps of England and Ecuador, Venezuela and
Spain--Italy....
TOGETHER WITH THE SPARROWS
That exquisite heavenly irony which has tabulated the demise of so many
generations of sparrows doubtless records the subtlest verbal
inflections of the passengers of such ships as _The Berengaria_. And
doubtless it was listening when the young man in the plaid cap crossed
the deck quickly and spoke to the pretty girl in yellow.
"That's him," he said, pointing to a bundled figure seated in a wheel
chair near the rail. "That's Anthony Patch. First time he's been
on deck."
"Oh--that's him?"
"Yes. He's been a little crazy, they say, ever since he got his money,
four or five months ago. You see, the other fellow, Shuttleworth, the
religious fellow, the one that didn't get the money, he locked himself
up in a room in a hotel and shot himself--
"Oh, he did--"
"But I guess Anthony Patch don't care much. He got his thirty million.
And he's got his private physician along in case he doesn't feel just
right about it. Has _she_ been on deck?" he asked.
The pretty girl in yellow looked around cautiously.
"She was here a minute ago. She had on a Russian-sable coat that must
have cost a small fortune." She frowned and then added decisively: "I
can't stand her, you know. She seems sort of--sort of dyed and
_unclean_, if you know what I mean. Some people just have that look
about them whether they are or not."
"Sure, I know," agreed the man with the plaid cap. "She's not
bad-looking, though." He paused. "Wonder what he's thinking about--his
money, I guess, or maybe he's got remorse about that fellow
Shuttleworth."
"Probably...."
But the man in the plaid cap was quite wrong. Anthony Patch, sitting
near the rail and looking out at the sea, was not thinking of his money,
for he had seldom in his life been really preoccupied with material
vainglory, nor of Edward Shuttleworth, for it is best to look on the
sunny side of these things. No--he was concerned with a series of
reminiscences, much as a general might look back upon a successful
campaign and analyze his victories. He was thinking of the hardships,
the insufferable tribulations he had gone through. They had tried to
penalize him for the mistakes of his youth. He had been exposed to
ruthless misery, his very craving for romance had been punished, his
friends had deserted him--even Gloria had turned against him. He had
been alone, alone--facing it all.
Only a few months before people had been urging him to give in, to
submit to mediocrity, to go to work. But he had known that he was
justified in his way of life--and he had stuck it out stanchly. Why, the
very friends who had been most unkind had come to respect him, to know
he had been right all along. Had not the Lacys and the Merediths and the
Cartwright-Smiths called on Gloria and him at the Ritz-Carlton just a
week before they sailed?
Great tears stood in his eyes, and his voice was tremulous as he
whispered to himself.
"I showed them," he was saying. "It was a hard fight, but I didn't give
up and I came through!"