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

the other servants because they were not honest. They had a great time over the word “honest,” and in fact became rather irritated with each other, because Anthony persisted stubbornly that Tana was trying to say “hornets,” and even went to the extent of buzzing in the manner of a bee and flapping his arms to imitate wings.

After three-quarters of an hour Anthony was released with the warm assurance that they would have other nice chats in which Tana would tell “how we do in my countree.”

Such was Tana’s garrulous première in the gray house⁠—and he fulfilled its promise. Though he was conscientious and honorable, he was unquestionably a terrific bore. He seemed unable to control his tongue, sometimes continuing from paragraph to paragraph with a look akin to pain in his small brown eyes.

Sunday and Monday afternoons he read the comic sections of the newspapers. One cartoon which contained a facetious Japanese butler diverted him enormously, though he claimed that the protagonist, who to Anthony appeared clearly Oriental, had really an American face. The difficulty with the funny paper was that when, aided by Anthony, he had spelled out the last three pictures and assimilated their context with a concentration surely adequate for Kant’s Critique, he had entirely forgotten what the first pictures were about.

In the middle of June Anthony and Gloria celebrated their first anniversary by having a “date.” Anthony knocked at the door and she ran to let him in. Then they sat together on the couch calling over those names they had made for each other, new combinations of endearments ages old. Yet to this “date” was appended no attenuated good night with its ecstasy of regret.

Later in June horror leered out at Gloria, struck at her and frightened her bright soul back half a generation. Then slowly it faded out, faded back into that impenetrable darkness whence it had come⁠—taking relentlessly its modicum of youth.

With an infallible sense of the dramatic it chose a little railroad station in a wretched village near Portchester. The station platform lay all day bare as a prairie, exposed to the dusty yellow sun and to the glance of that most obnoxious type of countryman who lives near a metropolis and has attained its cheap smartness without its urbanity. A dozen of these yokels, red-eyed, cheerless as scarecrows, saw the incident. Dimly it passed across their confused and uncomprehending minds, taken at its broadest for a coarse joke, at its subtlest for a “shame.” Meanwhile there upon the platform a measure of brightness faded from the world.

With Eric Merriam, Anthony had been sitting over a decanter of Scotch all the hot summer afternoon, while Gloria and Constance Merriam swam and sunned themselves at the Beach Club, the latter under a striped parasol-awning, Gloria stretched sensuously upon the soft hot sand, tanning her inevitable legs. Later they had all four played with inconsequential sandwiches; then Gloria had risen, tapping Anthony’s knee with her parasol to get his attention.

“We’ve got to go, dear.”

“Now?” He looked at her unwillingly. At that moment nothing seemed of more importance than to idle on that shady porch drinking mellowed Scotch, while his host reminisced interminably on the byplay of some forgotten political campaign.

“We’ve really got to go,” repeated Gloria. “We can get a taxi to the station.⁠ ⁠… Come on, Anthony!” she commanded a bit more imperiously.

“Now see here⁠—” Merriam, his yarn cut off, made conventional objections, meanwhile provocatively filling his guest’s glass with a highball that should have been sipped through ten minutes. But at Gloria’s annoyed “We really must!” Anthony drank it off, got to his feet and made an elaborate bow to his hostess.

“It seems we ‘must,’ ” he said, with little grace.

In a minute he was following Gloria down a garden-walk between tall rosebushes, her parasol brushing gently the June-blooming leaves. Most inconsiderate, he thought, as they reached the road. He felt with injured naivete that Gloria should not have interrupted such innocent and harmless enjoyment. The whiskey had both soothed and clarified the restless things in his mind. It occurred to him that she had taken this same attitude several times before. Was he always to retreat from pleasant episodes at a touch of her parasol or a flicker of her eye? His unwillingness blurred to ill will, which rose within him like a resistless bubble. He kept silent, perversely inhibiting a desire to reproach her. They found a taxi in front of the Inn; rode silently to the little station.⁠ ⁠…

Then Anthony knew what he wanted⁠—to assert his will against this cool and impervious girl, to obtain with one magnificent effort a mastery that seemed infinitely desirable.

“Let’s go over to see the Barneses,” he said without looking at her. “I don’t feel like going home.”

—Mrs. Barnes, née Rachael Jerryl, had a summer place several miles from Redgate.

“We went there day before yesterday,” she answered shortly.

“I’m sure they’d be glad to see us.” He felt that that was not a strong enough note, braced himself stubbornly, and added: “I want to see the Barneses. I haven’t any desire to go home.”

“Well, I haven’t any desire to go to the Barneses.”

Suddenly they stared at each other.

“Why, Anthony,” she said with annoyance, “this is Sunday night and they probably have guests for supper. Why we should go in at this hour⁠—”

“Then why couldn’t we have stayed at the Merriams’?” he burst out. “Why go home when we were having a perfectly decent time? They asked us to supper.”

“They had to. Give me the money and I’ll get the railroad tickets.”

“I certainly will not! I’m in no humour for a ride in that damn hot train.”

Gloria stamped her foot on the platform.

“Anthony, you act as if you’re tight!”

“On the contrary, I’m perfectly sober.”

But his voice had slipped into a husky key and she knew with certainty that this was untrue.

“If you’re sober you’ll give me the money for the tickets.”

But it was too late to talk to him that way. In his mind was but one idea⁠—that