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

measure in town, and she would be able to see Anthony for only a few hours each day. But in his heart he feared that it was because he was attracted to Dorothy. As a matter of fact he lived in terror that Gloria should learn by some chance or intention of the relation he had formed. By the end of a fortnight the entanglement began to give him moments of misery at his own faithlessness. Nevertheless, as each day ended he was unable to withstand the lure that would draw him irresistibly out of his tent and over to the telephone at the Y.M.C.A.

“Dot.”

“Yes?”

“I may be able to get in tonight.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Do you want to listen to my splendid eloquence for a few starry hours?”

“Oh, you funny⁠—” For an instant he had a memory of five years before⁠—of Geraldine. Then⁠—

“I’ll arrive about eight.”

At seven he would be in a jitney bound for the city, where hundreds of little Southern girls were waiting on moonlit porches for their lovers. He would be excited already for her warm retarded kisses, for the amazed quietude of the glances she gave him⁠—glances nearer to worship than any he had ever inspired. Gloria and he had been equals, giving without thought of thanks or obligation. To this girl his very caresses were an inestimable boon. Crying quietly she had confessed to him that he was not the first man in her life; there had been one other⁠—he gathered that the affair had no sooner commenced than it had been over.

Indeed, so far as she was concerned, she spoke the truth. She had forgotten the clerk, the naval officer, the clothier’s son, forgotten her vividness of emotion, which is true forgetting. She knew that in some opaque and shadowy existence someone had taken her⁠—it was as though it had occurred in sleep.

Almost every night Anthony came to town. It was too cool now for the porch, so her mother surrendered to them the tiny sitting room, with its dozens of cheaply framed chromos, its yard upon yard of decorative fringe, and its thick atmosphere of several decades in the proximity of the kitchen. They would build a fire⁠—then, happily, inexhaustibly, she would go about the business of love. Each evening at ten she would walk with him to the door, her black hair in disarray, her face pale without cosmetics, paler still under the whiteness of the moon. As a rule it would be bright and silver outside; now and then there was a slow warm rain, too indolent, almost, to reach the ground.

“Say you love me,” she would whisper.

“Why, of course, you sweet baby.”

“Am I a baby?” This almost wistfully.

“Just a little baby.”

She knew vaguely of Gloria. It gave her pain to think of it, so she imagined her to be haughty and proud and cold. She had decided that Gloria must be older than Anthony, and that there was no love between husband and wife. Sometimes she let herself dream that after the war Anthony would get a divorce and they would be married⁠—but she never mentioned this to Anthony, she scarcely knew why. She shared his company’s idea that he was a sort of bank clerk⁠—she thought that he was respectable and poor. She would say:

“If I had some money, darlin’, I’d give ev’y bit of it to you.⁠ ⁠… I’d like to have about fifty thousand dollars.”

“I suppose that’d be plenty,” agreed Anthony.

—In her letter that day Gloria had written: “I suppose if we could settle for a million it would be better to tell Mr. Haight to go ahead and settle. But it’d seem a pity.⁠ ⁠…”

… “We could have an automobile,” exclaimed Dot, in a final burst of triumph.

An Impressive Occasion

Captain Dunning prided himself on being a great reader of character. Half an hour after meeting a man he was accustomed to place him in one of a number of astonishing categories⁠—fine man, good man, smart fellow, theorizer, poet, and “worthless.” One day early in February he caused Anthony to be summoned to his presence in the orderly tent.

“Patch,” he said sententiously, “I’ve had my eye on you for several weeks.”

Anthony stood erect and motionless.

“And I think you’ve got the makings of a good soldier.”

He waited for the warm glow, which this would naturally arouse, to cool⁠—and then continued:

“This is no child’s play,” he said, narrowing his brows.

Anthony agreed with a melancholy “No, sir.”

“It’s a man’s game⁠—and we need leaders.” Then the climax, swift, sure, and electric: “Patch, I’m going to make you a corporal.”

At this point Anthony should have staggered slightly backward, overwhelmed. He was to be one of the quarter million selected for that consummate trust. He was going to be able to shout the technical phrase, “Follow me!” to seven other frightened men.

“You seem to be a man of some education,” said Captain Dunning.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s good, that’s good. Education’s a great thing, but don’t let it go to your head. Keep on the way you’re doing and you’ll be a good soldier.”

With these parting words lingering in his ears, Corporal Patch saluted, executed a right about face, and left the tent.

Though the conversation amused Anthony, it did generate the idea that life would be more amusing as a sergeant or, should he find a less exacting medical examiner, as an officer. He was little interested in the work, which seemed to belie the army’s boasted gallantry. At the inspections one did not dress up to look well, one dressed up to keep from looking badly.

But as winter wore away⁠—the short, snowless winter marked by damp nights and cool, rainy days⁠—he marvelled at how quickly the system had grasped him. He was a soldier⁠—all who were not soldiers were civilians. The world was divided primarily into those two classifications.

It occurred to him that all strongly accentuated classes, such as the military, divided men into two kinds: their own kind⁠—and those without. To the clergyman there were clergy and laity, to the Catholic there were Catholics