The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📗

“Oh, no!” objected Anthony, “oh, no, Geraldine. You mustn’t play the alienist upon the Chevalier. If you feel yourself unable to understand him I won’t bring him in. Besides, I should feel a certain uneasiness because of his regrettable reputation.”

“I guess I can understand anything that’s got any sense to it,” answered Geraldine a bit testily.

“In that case there are various episodes in the life of the Chevalier which might prove diverting.”

“Well?”

“It was his untimely end that caused me to think of him and made him apropos in the conversation. I hate to introduce him end foremost, but it seems inevitable that the Chevalier must back into your life.”

“Well, what about him? Did he die?”

“He did! In this manner. He was an Irishman, Geraldine, a semi-fictional Irishman⁠—the wild sort with a genteel brogue and ‘reddish hair.’ He was exiled from Erin in the late days of chivalry and, of course, crossed over to France. Now the Chevalier O’Keefe, Geraldine, had, like me, one weakness. He was enormously susceptible to all sorts and conditions of women. Besides being a sentimentalist he was a romantic, a vain fellow, a man of wild passions, a little blind in one eye and almost stone-blind in the other. Now a male roaming the world in this condition is as helpless as a lion without teeth, and in consequence the Chevalier was made utterly miserable for twenty years by a series of women who hated him, used him, bored him, aggravated him, sickened him, spent his money, made a fool of him⁠—in brief, as the world has it, loved him.

“This was bad, Geraldine, and as the Chevalier, save for this one weakness, this exceeding susceptibility, was a man of penetration, he decided that he would rescue himself once and for all from these drains upon him. With this purpose he went to a very famous monastery in Champagne called⁠—well, anachronistically known as St. Voltaire’s. It was the rule at St. Voltaire’s that no monk could descend to the ground story of the monastery so long as he lived, but should exist engaged in prayer and contemplation in one of the four towers, which were called after the four commandments of the monastery rule: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and Silence.

“When the day came that was to witness the Chevalier’s farewell to the world he was utterly happy. He gave all his Greek books to his landlady, and his sword he sent in a golden sheath to the King of France, and all his mementos of Ireland he gave to the young Huguenot who sold fish in the street where he lived.

“Then he rode out to St. Voltaire’s, slew his horse at the door, and presented the carcass to the monastery cook.

“At five o’clock that night he felt, for the first time, free⁠—forever free from sex. No woman could enter the monastery; no monk could descend below the second story. So as he climbed the winding stair that led to his cell at the very top of the Tower of Chastity he paused for a moment by an open window which looked down fifty feet on to a road below. It was all so beautiful, he thought, this world that he was leaving, the golden shower of sun beating down upon the long fields, the spray of trees in the distance, the vineyards, quiet and green, freshening wide miles before him. He leaned his elbows on the window casement and gazed at the winding road.

“Now, as it happened, Thérèse, a peasant girl of sixteen from a neighboring village, was at that moment passing along this same road that ran in front of the monastery. Five minutes before, the little piece of ribbon which held up the stocking on her pretty left leg had worn through and broken. Being a girl of rare modesty she had thought to wait until she arrived home before repairing it, but it had bothered her to such an extent that she felt she could endure it no longer. So, as she passed the Tower of Chastity, she stopped and with a pretty gesture lifted her skirt⁠—as little as possible, be it said to her credit⁠—to adjust her garter.

“Up in the tower the newest arrival in the ancient monastery of St. Voltaire, as though pulled forward by a gigantic and irresistible hand, leaned from the window. Further he leaned and further until suddenly one of the stones loosened under his weight, broke from its cement with a soft powdery sound⁠—and, first headlong, then head over heels, finally in a vast and impressive revolution tumbled the Chevalier O’Keefe, bound for the hard earth and eternal damnation.

“Thérèse was so much upset by the occurrence that she ran all the way home and for ten years spent an hour a day in secret prayer for the soul of the monk whose neck and vows were simultaneously broken on that unfortunate Sunday afternoon.

“And the Chevalier O’Keefe, being suspected of suicide, was not buried in consecrated ground, but tumbled into a field near by, where he doubtless improved the quality of the soil for many years afterward. Such was the untimely end of a very brave and gallant gentleman. What do you think, Geraldine?”

But Geraldine, lost long before, could only smile roguishly, wave her first finger at him, and repeat her bridge-all, her explain-all:

“Crazy!” she said, “you cra‑a‑azy!”

His thin face was kindly, she thought, and his eyes quite gentle. She liked him because he was arrogant without being conceited, and because, unlike the men she met about the theatre, he had a horror of being conspicuous. What an odd, pointless story! But she had enjoyed the part about the stocking!

After the fifth cocktail he kissed her, and between laughter and bantering caresses and a half-stifled flare of passion they passed an hour. At four-thirty she claimed an engagement, and going into the bathroom she rearranged her hair. Refusing to let him order her a taxi she stood for a moment in the doorway.

“You will get married,” she was insisting,