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

of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.

Maury gave them an elaborate “drinking set,” which included silver goblets, cocktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from Dick was more conventional⁠—a tea set from Tiffany’s. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep⁠—indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by associates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria’s Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning “I little thought when⁠—” or “I’m sure I wish you all the happiness⁠—” or even “When you get this I shall be on my way to⁠—”

The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch’s⁠—a check for five thousand dollars.

To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.

“Look, Anthony!”

“Darn nice, isn’t it!”

No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.

Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as “second-best clock” or “silver to use every day,” and embarrassing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery. She was pleased by old Adam’s gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, “as much as anything else.” As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as “that old woman, the mother,” as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.

Five days!⁠—A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!⁠—A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!⁠—

The Diary

She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book⁠—a “Line-a-day” diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial “I am going to keep a diary for my children.” Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time⁠—in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fashionable at Yale⁠—she had been flattered because “Touch down” Michaud had “rushed” her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grownup satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing “Yama-yama, My Yama Man” and “Jungle-Town.” So long ago!⁠—the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, “Curly” McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, “Fisheye” Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby⁠—he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;⁠—Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn’t kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!

… And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the “thrills” she had had⁠—and the kisses. The past⁠—her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.

Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.

“April 1st.⁠—I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept shining through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear⁠—with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!

“April 3rd.⁠—After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I’ve decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There’s nothing so often overdone and from today I swear to be amused. We talked about ‘love’⁠—how banal! With how many men have I talked about love?

“April 11th.⁠—Patch actually called up today! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I’m gradually losing faith in