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

Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily a dull and sullen hate.

“I won’t go in the train,” he said, his voice trembling a little with anger. “We’re going to the Barneses.”

“I’m not!” she cried. “If you go I’m going home alone.”

“Go on, then.”

Without a word she turned toward the ticket office; simultaneously he remembered that she had some money with her and that this was not the sort of victory he wanted, the sort he must have. He took a step after her and seized her arm.

“See here!” he muttered, “you’re not going alone!”

“I certainly am⁠—why, Anthony!” This exclamation as she tried to pull away from him and he only tightened his grasp.

He looked at her with narrowed and malicious eyes.

“Let go!” Her cry had a quality of fierceness. “If you have any decency you’ll let go.”

“Why?” He knew why. But he took a confused and not quite confident pride in holding her there.

“I’m going home, do you understand? And you’re going to let me go!”

“No, I’m not.”

Her eyes were burning now.

“Are you going to make a scene here?”

“I say you’re not going! I’m tired of your eternal selfishness!”

“I only want to go home.” Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.

“This time you’re going to do what I say.”

Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.

“I hate you!” Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. “Oh, let me go! Oh, I hate you!” She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. “I hate you! I hate you!”

At Gloria’s fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.

The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips.

“Oh, you brute!” she sobbed. “Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh⁠—”

On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria’s efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.

Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice:

“Oh, if there was one man here you couldn’t do this! You couldn’t do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!”

Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smokestacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct⁠—until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.

Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.

“We’ll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta,” he said with fine reserve.

For answer Gloria seized his hand with both of hers and raising it to her mouth bit deeply into his thumb. He scarcely noticed the pain; seeing the blood spurt he absentmindedly drew out his handkerchief and wrapped the wound. That too was part of the triumph he supposed⁠—it was inevitable that defeat should thus be resented⁠—and as such was beneath notice.

She was sobbing, almost without tears, profoundly and bitterly.

“I won’t go! I won’t go! You⁠—can’t⁠—make⁠—me⁠—go! You’ve⁠—you’ve killed any love I ever had for you, and any respect. But all that’s left in me would die before I’d move from this place. Oh, if I’d thought you’d lay your hands on me⁠—”

“You’re going with me,” he said brutally, “if I have to carry you.”

He turned, beckoned to a taxicab, told the driver to go to Marietta. The man dismounted and swung the door open. Anthony faced his wife and said between his clenched teeth:

“Will you get in?⁠—or will I put you in?”

With a subdued cry of infinite pain and despair she yielded herself up and got into the car.

All the long ride, through the increasing dark of twilight, she sat huddled in her side of the car, her silence broken by an occasional dry and solitary sob. Anthony stared out the window, his mind working dully on the slowly changing significance of what had occurred. Something was wrong⁠—that last cry of Gloria’s had struck a chord which echoed posthumously and with incongruous disquiet in his heart. He must be right⁠—yet, she seemed such a pathetic little thing now, broken and dispirited, humiliated beyond the measure of her lot to bear. The sleeves of her dress were torn; her parasol was gone, forgotten on the platform. It was a new costume, he remembered, and she had been so proud of it that very morning when they had left the house.⁠ ⁠… He began wondering if anyone they knew had seen the incident. And persistently there recurred to him her cry:

“All that’s left in me would die⁠—”

This gave him a confused and increasing worry. It fitted so well with the Gloria who lay in the corner⁠—no longer a proud Gloria, nor any Gloria he had known. He asked himself if it were possible. While he did not believe