This Side of Paradise
month and a half to go.”
“Throw him out!”
“It’s a long walk back.”
“Amory, you’re running it out, if I may coin a new phrase.”
“Hadn’t you better get some dope on yourself, Amory?”
Amory subsided resignedly and drooped into a contemplation of the
scenery. Swinburne seemed to fit in somehow.
“Oh, winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the seasons of snows
and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses,
the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And
frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and
cover, Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
“The full streams feed on flower of—”
“What’s the matter, Amory? Amory’s thinking about poetry, about
the pretty birds and flowers. I can see it in his eye.”
“No, I’m not,” he lied. “I’m thinking about the Princetonian. I
ought to make up to-night; but I can telephone back, I suppose.”
“Oh,” said Kerry respectfully, “these important men—”
Amory flushed and it seemed to him that Ferrenby, a defeated
competitor, winced a little. Of course, Kerry was only kidding,
but he really mustn’t mention the Princetonian.
It was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt
breezes scurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long,
level stretches of sand and red roofs over blue sea. Then they
hurried through the little town and it all flashed upon his
consciousness to a mighty paean of emotion....
“Oh, good Lord! _Look_ at it!” he cried.
“What?”
“Let me out, quick—I haven’t seen it for eight years! Oh,
gentlefolk, stop the car!”
“What an odd child!” remarked Alec.
“I do believe he’s a bit eccentric.”
The car was obligingly drawn up at a curb, and Amory ran for the
boardwalk. First, he realized that the sea was blue and that
there was an enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and
roared—really all the banalities about the ocean that one could
realize, but if any one had told him then that these things were
banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.
“Now we’ll get lunch,” ordered Kerry, wandering up with the
crowd. “Come on, Amory, tear yourself away and get practical.”
“We’ll try the best hotel first,” he went on, “and thence and so
forth.”
They strolled along the boardwalk to the most imposing hostelry
in sight, and, entering the dining-room, scattered about a table.
“Eight Bronxes,” commanded Alec, “and a club sandwich and
Juliennes. The food for one. Hand the rest around.”
Amory ate little, having seized a chair where he could watch the
sea and feel the rock of it. When luncheon was over they sat and
smoked quietly.
“What’s the bill?”
Some one scanned it.
“Eight twenty-five.”
“Rotten overcharge. We’ll give them two dollars and one for the
waiter. Kerry, collect the small change.”
The waiter approached, and Kerry gravely handed him a dollar,
tossed two dollars on the check, and turned away. They sauntered
leisurely toward the door, pursued in a moment by the suspicious
Ganymede.
“Some mistake, sir.”
Kerry took the bill and examined it critically.
“No mistake!” he said, shaking his head gravely, and, tearing it
into four pieces, he handed the scraps to the waiter, who was so
dumfounded that he stood motionless and expressionless while they
walked out.
“Won’t he send after us?”
“No,” said Kerry; “for a minute he’ll think we’re the
proprietor’s sons or something; then he’ll look at the check
again and call the manager, and in the meantime—”
They left the car at Asbury and street-car’d to Allenhurst, where
they investigated the crowded pavilions for beauty. At four there
were refreshments in a lunch-room, and this time they paid an
even smaller per cent on the total cost; something about the
appearance and savoir-faire of the crowd made the thing go, and
they were not pursued.
“You see, Amory, we’re Marxian Socialists,” explained Kerry. “We
don’t believe in property and we’re putting it to the great
test.”
“Night will descend,” Amory suggested.
“Watch, and put your trust in Holiday.”
They became jovial about five-thirty and, linking arms, strolled
up and down the boardwalk in a row, chanting a monotonous ditty
about the sad sea waves. Then Kerry saw a face in the crowd that
attracted him and, rushing off, reappeared in a moment with one
of the homeliest girls Amory had ever set eyes on. Her pale mouth
extended from ear to ear, her teeth projected in a solid wedge,
and she had little, squinty eyes that peeped ingratiatingly over
the side sweep of her nose. Kerry presented them formally.
“Name of Kaluka, Hawaiian queen! Let me present Messrs. Connage,
Sloane, Humbird, Ferrenby, and Blaine.”
The girl bobbed courtesies all around. Poor creature; Amory
supposed she had never before been noticed in her life—possibly
she was half-witted. While she accompanied them (Kerry had
invited her to supper) she said nothing which could
discountenance such a belief.
“She prefers her native dishes,” said Alec gravely to the waiter,
“but any coarse food will do.”
All through supper he addressed her in the most respectful
language, while Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side,
and she giggled and grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch
the by-play, thinking what a light touch Kerry had, and how he
could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and
contour. They all seemed to have the spirit of it more or less,
and it was a relaxation to be with them. Amory usually liked men
individually, yet feared them in crowds unless the crowd was
around him. He wondered how much each one contributed to the
party, for there was somewhat of a spiritual tax levied. Alec and
Kerry were the life of it, but not quite the centre. Somehow the
quiet Humbird, and Sloane, with his impatient superciliousness,
were the centre.
Dick Humbird had, ever since freshman year, seemed to Amory a
perfect type of aristocrat. He was slender but well-built—black
curly hair, straight features, and rather a dark skin. Everything
he said sounded intangibly appropriate. He possessed infinite
courage, an averagely good mind, and a sense of honor with a
clear charm and _noblesse oblige_ that varied it from
righteousness. He could dissipate without going to pieces, and
even his most bohemian adventures never seemed “running it out.”
People dressed like him, tried to talk as he did.... Amory
decided that he probably held the world back, but he wouldn’t
have changed him. ...
He differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle
class—he never seemed to perspire. Some people couldn’t be
familiar with a chauffeur without having it returned; Humbird
could have lunched at Sherry’s with a colored man, yet people
would have somehow known that it was all right. He was not a
snob, though he knew only half his class. His friends ranged from
the highest to the lowest, but it was impossible to “cultivate”
him. Servants worshipped him, and treated him like a god. He
seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries to be.
“He’s like those pictures in the Illustrated London News of the
English officers who have been killed,” Amory had said to Alec.
“Well,” Alec had answered, “if you want to know the shocking
truth, his father was a grocery clerk who made a fortune in
Tacoma real estate and came to New York ten years ago.”
Amory had felt a curious sinking sensation.
This present type of party was made possible by the surging
together of the class after club elections—as if to make a last
desperate attempt to know itself, to keep together, to fight off
the tightening spirit of the clubs. It was a let-down from the
conventional heights they had all walked so rigidly.
After supper they saw Kaluka to the boardwalk, and then strolled
back along the beach to Asbury. The evening sea was a new
sensation, for all its color and mellow age was gone, and it
seemed the bleak waste that made the Norse sagas sad; Amory
thought of Kipling’s
“Beaches of Lukanon before the sealers came.”
It was still a music, though, infinitely sorrowful.
Ten o’clock found them penniless. They had suppered greatly on
their last eleven cents and, singing, strolled up through the
casinos and lighted arches on the boardwalk, stopping to listen
approvingly to all band concerts. In one place Kerry took up a
collection for the French War Orphans which netted a dollar and
twenty cents, and with this they bought some brandy in case they
caught cold in the night. They finished the day in a
moving-picture show and went into solemn systematic roars of
laughter at an ancient comedy, to the startled annoyance of the
rest of the audience. Their entrance was distinctly strategic,
for each man as he entered pointed reproachfully at the one just
behind him. Sloane, bringing up the rear, disclaimed all
knowledge and responsibility as soon as the others were scattered
inside; then as the irate ticket-taker rushed in he followed
nonchalantly.
They reassembled later by the Casino and made arrangements for
the night. Kerry wormed permission from the watchman to sleep on
the platform and, having collected a huge pile of rugs from the
booths to serve as mattresses and blankets, they talked until
midnight, and then fell into a dreamless sleep, though Amory
tried hard to stay awake and watch that marvellous moon settle on
the sea.
So they progressed for two happy days, up and down the shore by
street-car or machine, or by shoe-leather on the crowded
boardwalk; sometimes eating with the wealthy, more frequently
dining frugally at the expense of an unsuspecting restaurateur.
They had their photos taken, eight poses, in a quick-development
store. Kerry insisted on grouping them as a “varsity” football
team, and then as a tough gang from the East Side, with their
coats inside out, and himself sitting in the middle on a
cardboard moon. The photographer probably has them yet—at least,
they never called for them. The weather was perfect, and again
they slept outside, and again Amory fell unwillingly asleep.
Sunday broke stolid and respectable, and even the sea seemed to
mumble and complain, so they returned to Princeton via the Fords
of transient farmers, and broke up with colds in their heads, but
otherwise none the worse for wandering.
Even more than in the year before, Amory neglected his work, not
deliberately but lazily and through a multitude of other
interests. Co-ordinate geometry and the melancholy hexameters of
Corneille and Racine held forth small allurements, and even
psychology, which he had eagerly awaited, proved to be a dull
subject full of muscular reactions and biological phrases rather
than the study of personality and influence. That was a noon