This Side of Paradise
education ought not to be intrusted to a school or college.”
But for the next four years the best of Amory’s intellect was
concentrated on matters of popularity, the intricacies of a
university social system and American Society as represented by
Biltmore Teas and Hot Springs golf-links.
... In all, a wonderful week, that saw Amory’s mind turned inside
out, a hundred of his theories confirmed, and his joy of life
crystallized to a thousand ambitions. Not that the conversation
was scholastic—heaven forbid! Amory had only the vaguest idea as
to what Bernard Shaw was—but Monsignor made quite as much out of
“The Beloved Vagabond” and “Sir Nigel,” taking good care that
Amory never once felt out of his depth.
But the trumpets were sounding for Amory’s preliminary skirmish
with his own generation.
“You’re not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home
is where we are not,” said Monsignor.
“I _am_ sorry—”
“No, you’re not. No one person in the world is necessary to you
or to me.”
“Well—”
“Good-by.”
THE EGOTIST DOWN
Amory’s two years at St. Regis’, though in turn painful and
triumphant, had as little real significance in his own life as
the American “prep” school, crushed as it is under the heel of
the universities, has to American life in general. We have no
Eton to create the self-consciousness of a governing class; we
have, instead, clean, flaccid and innocuous preparatory schools.
He went all wrong at the start, was generally considered both
conceited and arrogant, and universally detested. He played
football intensely, alternating a reckless brilliancy with a
tendency to keep himself as safe from hazard as decency would
permit. In a wild panic he backed out of a fight with a boy his
own size, to a chorus of scorn, and a week later, in desperation,
picked a battle with another boy very much bigger, from which he
emerged badly beaten, but rather proud of himself.
He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and
this, combined with a lazy indifference toward his work,
exasperated every master in school. He grew discouraged and
imagined himself a pariah; took to sulking in corners and reading
after lights. With a dread of being alone he attached a few
friends, but since they were not among the elite of the school,
he used them simply as mirrors of himself, audiences before which
he might do that posing absolutely essential to him. He was
unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy.
There were some few grains of comfort. Whenever Amory was
submerged, his vanity was the last part to go below the surface,
so he could still enjoy a comfortable glow when “Wookey-wookey,”
the deaf old housekeeper, told him that he was the best-looking
boy she had ever seen. It had pleased him to be the lightest and
youngest man on the first football squad; it pleased him when
Doctor Dougall told him at the end of a heated conference that he
could, if he wished, get the best marks in school. But Doctor
Dougall was wrong. It was temperamentally impossible for Amory to
get the best marks in school.
Miserable, confined to bounds, unpopular with both faculty and
students—that was Amory’s first term. But at Christmas he had
returned to Minneapolis, tight-lipped and strangely jubilant.
“Oh, I was sort of fresh at first,” he told Frog Parker
patronizingly, “but I got along fine—lightest man on the squad.
You ought to go away to school, Froggy. It’s great stuff.”
INCIDENT OF THE WELL-MEANING PROFESSOR
On the last night of his first term, Mr. Margotson, the senior
master, sent word to study hall that Amory was to come to his
room at nine. Amory suspected that advice was forthcoming, but he
determined to be courteous, because this Mr. Margotson had been
kindly disposed toward him.
His summoner received him gravely, and motioned him to a chair.
He hemmed several times and looked consciously kind, as a man
will when he knows he’s on delicate ground.
“Amory,” he began. “I’ve sent for you on a personal matter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ve noticed you this year and I—I like you. I think you have in
you the makings of a—a very good man.”
“Yes, sir,” Amory managed to articulate. He hated having people
talk as if he were an admitted failure.
“But I’ve noticed,” continued the older man blindly, “that you’re
not very popular with the boys.”
“No, sir.” Amory licked his lips.
“Ah—I thought you might not understand exactly what it was
they—ah—objected to. I’m going to tell you, because I
believe—ah—that when a boy knows his difficulties he’s better
able to cope with them—to conform to what others expect of him.”
He a-hemmed again with delicate reticence, and continued: “They
seem to think that you’re—ah—rather too fresh—”
Amory could stand no more. He rose from his chair, scarcely
controlling his voice when he spoke.
“I know—oh, _don’t_ you s’pose I know.” His voice rose. “I know
what they think; do you s’pose you have to _tell_ me!” He paused.
“I’m—I’ve got to go back now—hope I’m not rude—”
He left the room hurriedly. In the cool air outside, as he walked
to his house, he exulted in his refusal to be helped.
“That _damn_ old fool!” he cried wildly. “As if I didn’t _know!_”
He decided, however, that this was a good excuse not to go back
to study hall that night, so, comfortably couched up in his room,
he munched Nabiscos and finished “The White Company.”
INCIDENT OF THE WONDERFUL GIRL
There was a bright star in February. New York burst upon him on
Washington’s Birthday with the brilliance of a long-anticipated
event. His glimpse of it as a vivid whiteness against a deep-blue
sky had left a picture of splendor that rivalled the dream cities
in the Arabian Nights; but this time he saw it by electric light,
and romance gleamed from the chariot-race sign on Broadway and
from the women’s eyes at the Astor, where he and young Paskert
from St. Regis’ had dinner. When they walked down the aisle of
the theatre, greeted by the nervous twanging and discord of
untuned violins and the sensuous, heavy fragrance of paint and
powder, he moved in a sphere of epicurean delight. Everything
enchanted him. The play was “The Little Millionaire,” with George
M. Cohan, and there was one stunning young brunette who made him
sit with brimming eyes in the ecstasy of watching her dance.
“Oh—you—wonderful girl, What a wonderful girl you are—”
sang the tenor, and Amory agreed silently, but passionately.
“All—your—wonderful words Thrill me through—”
The violins swelled and quavered on the last notes, the girl sank
to a crumpled butterfly on the stage, a great burst of clapping
filled the house. Oh, to fall in love like that, to the
languorous magic melody of such a tune!
The last scene was laid on a roof-garden, and the cellos sighed
to the musical moon, while light adventure and facile froth-like
comedy flitted back and forth in the calcium. Amory was on fire
to be an habitui of roof-gardens, to meet a girl who should look
like that—better, that very girl; whose hair would be drenched
with golden moonlight, while at his elbow sparkling wine was
poured by an unintelligible waiter. When the curtain fell for the
last time he gave such a long sigh that the people in front of
him twisted around and stared and said loud enough for him to
hear:
“What a _remarkable_-looking boy!”
This took his mind off the play, and he wondered if he really did
seem handsome to the population of New York.
Paskert and he walked in silence toward their hotel. The former
was the first to speak. His uncertain fifteen-year-old voice
broke in in a melancholy strain on Amory’s musings:
“I’d marry that girl to-night.”
There was no need to ask what girl he referred to.
“I’d be proud to take her home and introduce her to my people,”
continued Paskert.
Amory was distinctly impressed. He wished he had said it instead
of Paskert. It sounded so mature.
“I wonder about actresses; are they all pretty bad?”
“No, _sir_, not by a darn sight,” said the worldly youth with
emphasis, “and I know that girl’s as good as gold. I can tell.”
They wandered on, mixing in the Broadway crowd, dreaming on the
music that eddied out of the cafes. New faces flashed on and off
like myriad lights, pale or rouged faces, tired, yet sustained by
a weary excitement. Amory watched them in fascination. He was
planning his life. He was going to live in New York, and be known
at every restaurant and cafe, wearing a dress-suit from early
evening to early morning, sleeping away the dull hours of the
forenoon.
“Yes, _sir_, I’d marry that girl to-night!”
HEROIC IN GENERAL TONE
October of his second and last year at St. Regis’ was a high
point in Amory’s memory. The game with Groton was played from
three of a snappy, exhilarating afternoon far into the crisp
autumnal twilight, and Amory at quarter-back, exhorting in wild
despair, making impossible tackles, calling signals in a voice
that had diminished to a hoarse, furious whisper, yet found time
to revel in the blood-stained bandage around his head, and the
straining, glorious heroism of plunging, crashing bodies and
aching limbs. For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of
the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the
sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and
Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim
and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the
tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers... finally bruised
and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing
pace, straight-arming... falling behind the Groton goal with two
men on his legs, in the only touchdown of the game.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SLICKER
From the scoffing superiority of sixth-form year and success
Amory looked back with cynical wonder on his status of the year
before. He was changed as completely as Amory Blaine could ever
be changed. Amory plus Beatrice plus two years in
Minneapolis—these had been his ingredients when he entered St.
Regis’. But the Minneapolis years were not a thick enough overlay
to conceal the “Amory plus Beatrice” from the ferreting eyes of a
boarding-school, so St. Regis’ had very painfully drilled
Beatrice out of him, and begun to lay down new and more
conventional planking on the fundamental Amory. But both St.
Regis’ and Amory were unconscious of the fact that this
fundamental Amory had not in himself changed. Those qualities for
which he had suffered, his moodiness, his tendency to pose, his
laziness, and his love of playing the fool, were now taken as a
matter of course, recognized eccentricities in a star
quarter-back, a clever actor, and the editor of the St. Regis