This Side of Paradise
“You’re awfully good at sizing people up.”
Amory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people
for her. Then they talked about hands.
“You’ve got awfully nice hands,” she said. “They look as if you
played the piano. Do you?”
I have said they had reached a very definite stage—nay, more, a
very critical stage. Amory had stayed over a day to see her, and
his train left at twelve-eighteen that night. His trunk and
suitcase awaited him at the station; his watch was beginning to
hang heavy in his pocket.
“Isabelle,” he said suddenly, “I want to tell you something.”
They had been talking lightly about “that funny look in her
eyes,” and Isabelle knew from the change in his manner what was
coming—indeed, she had been wondering how soon it would come.
Amory reached above their heads and turned out the electric
light, so that they were in the dark, except for the red glow
that fell through the door from the reading-room lamps. Then he
began:
“I don’t know whether or not you know what you—what I’m going to
say. Lordy, Isabelle—this _sounds_ like a line, but it isn’t.”
“I know,” said Isabelle softly.
“Maybe we’ll never meet again like this—I have darned hard luck
sometimes.” He was leaning away from her on the other arm of the
lounge, but she could see his eyes plainly in the dark.
“You’ll meet me again—silly.” There was just the slightest
emphasis on the last word—so that it became almost a term of
endearment. He continued a bit huskily:
“I’ve fallen for a lot of people—girls—and I guess you have,
too—boys, I mean, but, honestly, you—” he broke off suddenly and
leaned forward, chin on his hands: “Oh, what’s the use—you’ll go
your way and I suppose I’ll go mine.”
Silence for a moment. Isabelle was quite stirred; she wound her
handkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that
streamed over her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their
hands touched for an instant, but neither spoke. Silences were
becoming more frequent and more delicious. Outside another stray
couple had come up and were experimenting on the piano in the
next room. After the usual preliminary of “chopsticks,” one of
them started “Babes in the Woods” and a light tenor carried the
words into the den:
“Give me your hand I’ll understand We’re off to slumberland.”
Isabelle hummed it softly and trembled as she felt Amory’s hand
close over hers.
“Isabelle,” he whispered. “You know I’m mad about you. You _do_
give a darn about me.”
“Yes.”
“How much do you care—do you like any one better?”
“No.” He could scarcely hear her, although he bent so near that
he felt her breath against his cheek.
“Isabelle, I’m going back to college for six long months, and why
shouldn’t we—if I could only just have one thing to remember you
by—”
“Close the door....” Her voice had just stirred so that he half
wondered whether she had spoken at all. As he swung the door
softly shut, the music seemed quivering just outside.
“Moonlight is bright, Kiss me good night.”
What a wonderful song, she thought—everything was wonderful
to-night, most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their
hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The
future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes
like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs
of warm limousines and in low, cosy roadsters stopped under
sheltering trees—only the boy might change, and this one was so
nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden movement he turned
it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm.
“Isabelle!” His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed to
float nearer together. Her breath came faster. “Can’t I kiss you,
Isabelle—Isabelle?” Lips half parted, she turned her head to him
in the dark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running
footsteps surged toward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up
and turned on the light, and when the door opened and three boys,
the wrathy and dance-craving Froggy among them, rushed in, he was
turning over the magazines on the table, while she sat without
moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even greeted them with a
welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly, and she felt
somehow as if she had been deprived.
It was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was
a glance that passed between them—on his side despair, on hers
regret, and then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux
and the eternal cutting in.
At quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the
midst of a small crowd assembled to wish him good-speed. For an
instant he lost his poise, and she felt a bit rattled when a
satirical voice from a concealed wit cried:
“Take her outside, Amory!” As he took her hand he pressed it a
little, and she returned the pressure as she had done to twenty
hands that evening—that was all.
At two o’clock back at the Weatherbys’ Sally asked her if she and
Amory had had a “time” in the den. Isabelle turned to her
quietly. In her eyes was the light of the idealist, the inviolate
dreamer of Joan-like dreams.
“No,” she answered. “I don’t do that sort of thing any more; he
asked me to, but I said no.”
As she crept in bed she wondered what he’d say in his special
delivery to-morrow. He had such a good-looking mouth—would she
ever—?
“Fourteen angels were watching o’er them,” sang Sally sleepily
from the next room.
“Damn!” muttered Isabelle, punching the pillow into a luxurious
lump and exploring the cold sheets cautiously. “Damn!”
CARNIVAL
Amory, by way of the Princetonian, had arrived. The minor snobs,
finely balanced thermometers of success, warmed to him as the
club elections grew nigh, and he and Tom were visited by groups
of upper classmen who arrived awkwardly, balanced on the edge of
the furniture and talked of all subjects except the one of
absorbing interest. Amory was amused at the intent eyes upon him,
and, in case the visitors represented some club in which he was
not interested, took great pleasure in shocking them with
unorthodox remarks.
“Oh, let me see—” he said one night to a flabbergasted
delegation, “what club do you represent?”
With visitors from Ivy and Cottage and Tiger Inn he played the
“nice, unspoilt, ingenuous boy” very much at ease and quite
unaware of the object of the call.
When the fatal morning arrived, early in March, and the campus
became a document in hysteria, he slid smoothly into Cottage with
Alec Connage and watched his suddenly neurotic class with much
wonder.
There were fickle groups that jumped from club to club; there
were friends of two or three days who announced tearfully and
wildly that they must join the same club, nothing should separate
them; there were snarling disclosures of long-hidden grudges as
the Suddenly Prominent remembered snubs of freshman year. Unknown
men were elevated into importance when they received certain
coveted bids; others who were considered “all set” found that
they had made unexpected enemies, felt themselves stranded and
deserted, talked wildly of leaving college.
In his own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats,
for being “a damn tailor’s dummy,” for having “too much pull in
heaven,” for getting drunk one night “not like a gentleman, by
God,” or for unfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the
wielders of the black balls.
This orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the
Nassau Inn, where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the
whole down-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting
pattern of faces and voices.
“Hi, Dibby—’gratulations!”
“Goo’ boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap.”
“Say, Kerry—”
“Oh, Kerry—I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!”
“Well, I didn’t go Cottage—the parlor-snakes’ delight.”
“They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid—Did he sign up
the first day?—oh, _no_. Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a
bicycle—afraid it was a mistake.”
“How’d you get into Cap—you old roue?”
“’Gratulations!”
“’Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd.”
When the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed,
singing, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion that
snobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do
what they pleased for the next two years.
Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest
time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found
it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen
new-found friendships through the April afternoons.
Alec Connage came into his room one morning and woke him up into
the sunshine and peculiar glory of Campbell Hall shining in the
window.
“Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together. Be in front
of Renwick’s in half an hour. Somebody’s got a car.” He took the
bureau cover and carefully deposited it, with its load of small
articles, upon the bed.
“Where’d you get the car?” demanded Amory cynically.
“Sacred trust, but don’t be a critical goopher or you can’t go!”
“I think I’ll sleep,” Amory said calmly, resettling himself and
reaching beside the bed for a cigarette.
“Sleep!”
“Why not? I’ve got a class at eleven-thirty.”
“You damned gloom! Of course, if you don’t want to go to the
coast—”
With a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover’s
burden on the floor. The coast... he hadn’t seen it for years,
since he and his mother were on their pilgrimage.
“Who’s going?” he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D.’s.
“Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and—oh
about five or six. Speed it up, kid!”
In ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick’s, and
at nine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the
sands of Deal Beach.
“You see,” said Kerry, “the car belongs down there. In fact, it
was stolen from Asbury Park by persons unknown, who deserted it
in Princeton and left for the West. Heartless Humbird here got
permission from the city council to deliver it.”
“Anybody got any money?” suggested Ferrenby, turning around from
the front seat.
There was an emphatic negative chorus.
“That makes it interesting.”
“Money—what’s money? We can sell the car.”
“Charge him salvage or something.”
“How’re we going to get food?” asked Amory.
“Honestly,” answered Kerry, eying him reprovingly, “do you doubt
Kerry’s ability for three short days? Some people have lived on
nothing for years at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly.”
“Three days,” Amory mused, “and I’ve got classes.”
“One of the days is the Sabbath.”
“Just the same, I can only cut six more classes, with over a