Beautiful and Damned (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (29 page)

“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 she would cease to love him—this, of course, was unthinkable—it was yet problematical whether Gloria without her arrogance, her independence, her virginal confidence and courage, would be the girl of his glory, the radiant woman who was precious and charming because she was ineffably, triumphantly herself

He was very drunk even then, so drunk as not to realize his own drunkenness. When they reached the gray house he went to his own room and, his mind still wrestling helplessly and sombrely with what he had done, fell into a deep stupor on his bed.

 

It was after one o’clock and the hall seemed extraordinarily quiet when Gloria, wide-eyed and sleepless, traversed it and pushed open the door of his room. He had been too befuddled to open the windows and the air was stale and thick with whiskey. She stood for a moment by his bed, a slender, exquisitely graceful figure in her boyish silk pajamas—then with abandon she flung herself upon him, half waking him in the frantic emotion of her embrace, dropping her warm tears upon his throat.

“Oh, Anthony!” she cried passionately, “oh, my darling, you don’t know what you did!”

Yet in the morning, coming early into her room, he knelt down by her bed and cried like a little boy, as though it was his heart that had been broken.

“It seemed, last night,” she said gravely, her fingers playing in his hair, “that all the part of me you loved, the part that was worth knowing, all the pride and fire, was gone. I knew that what was left of me would always love you, but never in quite the same way.”

Nevertheless, she was aware even then that she would forget in time and that it is the manner of life seldom to strike but always to wear away. After that morning the incident was never mentioned and its deep wound healed with Anthony’s hand—and if there was triumph some darker force than theirs possessed it, possessed the knowledge and the victory.

Gloria’s independence, like all sincere and profound qualities, had begun unconsciously, but, once brought to her attention by Anthony’s fascinated discovery of it, it assumed more nearly the proportions of a formal code. From her conversation it might be assumed that all her energy and vitality went into a violent affirmation of the negative principle “Never give a damn.”

“Not for anything or anybody,” she said, “except myself and, by implication, for Anthony. That’s the rule of all life and if it weren’t I’d be that way anyhow. Nobody’d do anything for me if it didn’t gratify them to, and I’d do as little for them.”

She was on the front porch of the nicest lady in Marietta when she said this, and as she finished she gave a curious little cry and sank in a dead faint to the porch floor.

The lady brought her to and drove her home in her car. It had occurred to the estimable Gloria that she was probably with child.

 

She lay upon the long lounge down-stairs. Day was slipping warmly out the window, touching the late roses on the porch pillars.

“All I think of ever is that I love you,” she wailed. “I value my body because you think it’s beautiful. And this body of mine—of yours—to have it grow ugly and shapeless? It’s simply intolerable. Oh, Anthony, I’m not afraid of the pain.”

He consoled her desperately—but in vain. She continued:

“And then afterward I might have wide hips and be pale, with all my freshness gone and no radiance in my hair.”

He paced the floor with his hands in his pockets, asking:

“Is it certain?”

“I
don’t know anything. I’ve always hated obstrics, or whatever you call them. I thought I’d have a child some time. But not now.”

“Well, for God’s sake don’t lie there and go to pieces.”

Her sobs lapsed. She drew down a merciful silence from the twilight which filled the room. “Turn on the lights,” she pleaded. “These days seem so short—June seemed—to—have—longer days when I was a little girl.”

The lights snapped on and it was as though blue drapes of softest silk had been dropped behind the windows and the door. Her pallor, her immobility, without grief now, or joy, awoke his sympathy.

“Do you want me to have it?” she asked listlessly.

“I’m indifferent. That is, I’m neutral. If you have if I’ll probably be glad. If you don’t—well, that’s all right too.”

“I wish you’d make up your mind one way or the other!”

“Suppose you make up
your
mind.”

She looked at him contemptuously, scorning to answer.

“You’d think you’d been singled out of all the women in the world for this crowning indignity.”

“What if I do!” she cried angrily. “It isn’t an indignity for them. It’s their one excuse for living. It’s the one thing they’re good for. It is an indignity for
me.”

“See here, Gloria, I’m with you whatever you do, but for God’s sake be a sport about it.”

“Oh, don’t
fuss
at me!” she wailed.

They exchanged a mute look of no particular significance but of much stress. Then Anthony took a book from the shelf and dropped into a chair.

Half an hour later her voice came out of the intense stillness that pervaded the room and hung like incense on the air.

“I’ll drive over and see Constance Merriam to-morrow.”

“All right. And I’ll go to Tarrytown and see Grampa.”

“—You see,” she added, “it isn’t that I’m afraid—of this or anything else. I’m being true to me, you know.”

“I know,” he agreed.

Adam Patch, in a pious rage against the Germans, subsisted on the war news. Pin maps plastered his walls; atlases were piled deep on tables convenient to his hand together with “Photographic Histories of the World War,” official Explain-alls, and the “Personal Impressions” of war correspondents and of Privates X, Y, and Z. Several times during Anthony’s visit his grandfather’s secretary, Edward Shuttleworth, the one-time “Accomplished Gin-physician” of “Pat’s Place” in Hoboken, now shod with righteous indignation, would appear with an extra. The old man attacked each paper with untiring fury, tearing out those columns which appeared to him of sufficient pregnancy for preservation and thrusting them into one of his already bulging files.

“Well, what have you been doing?” he asked Anthony blandly. “Nothing? Well, I thought so. I’ve been intending to drive over and see you, all summer.”

“I’ve been writing. Don’t you remember the essay I sent you—the one I sold to The Florentine last winter?”

“Essay? You never sent
me
any essay.”

“Oh, yes, I did. We talked about it.”

Adam Patch shook his head mildly.

“Oh, no. You never sent
me
any essay. You may have thought you sent it but it never reached me.”

“Why, you read it, Grampa,” insisted Anthony, somewhat exasperated, “you read it and disagreed with it.”

The old man suddenly remembered, but this was made apparent only by a partial falling open of his mouth, displaying rows of gray gums. Eying Anthony with a green and ancient stare he hesitated between confessing his error and covering it up.

“So you’re writing,” he said quickly. “Well, why don’t you go over and write about these Germans? Write something real, something about what’s going on, something people can read.”

“Anybody can’t be a war correspondent,” objected Anthony. “You have to have some newspaper willing to buy your stuff. And I can’t spare the money to go over as a free-lance.”

“I’ll send you over,” suggested his grandfather surprisingly. “I’ll get you over as an authorized correspondent of any newspaper you pick out.”

Anthony recoiled from the idea—almost simultaneously he bounded toward it.

“I—don’t—know—”

He would have to leave Gloria, whose whole life yearned toward him and enfolded him. Gloria was in trouble. Oh, the thing wasn’t feasible—yet—he saw himself in khaki, leaning, as all war correspondents lean, upon a heavy stick, portfolio at shoulder—trying to look like an Englishman. “I’d like to think it over,” he confessed. “It’s certainly very kind of you. I’ll think it over and I’ll let you know.”

Thinking it over absorbed him on the journey to New York. He had had one of those sudden flashes of illumination vouchsafed to all men who are dominated by a strong and beloved woman, which show them a world of harder men, more fiercely trained and grappling with the abstractions of thought and war. In that world the arms of Gloria would exist only as the hot embrace of a chance mistress, coolly sought and quickly forgotten....

These unfamiliar phantoms were crowding closely about him when he boarded his train for Marietta, in the Grand Central Station. The car was crowded; he secured the last vacant seat and it was only after several minutes that he gave even a casual glance to the man beside him. When he did he saw a heavy lay of jaw and nose, a curved chin and small, puffed-under eyes. In a moment he recognized Joseph Bloeckman.

Simultaneously they both half rose, were half embarrassed, and exchanged what amounted to a half handshake. Then, as though to complete the matter, they both half laughed.

“Well,” remarked Anthony without inspiration, “I haven’t seen you for a long time.” Immediately he regretted his words and started to add: “I didn’t know you lived out this way.” But Bloeckman anticipated him by asking pleasantly:

“How’s your wife? ...”

“She’s very well. How’ve you been?”

“Excellent.” His tone amplified the grandeur of the word.

It seemed to Anthony that during the last year Bloeckman had grown tremendously in dignity. The boiled look was gone, he seemed “done” at last. In addition he was no longer overdressed. The inappropriate facetiousness he had affected in ties had given way to a sturdy dark pattern, and his right hand, which had formerly displayed two heavy rings, was now innocent of ornament and even without the raw glow of a manicure.

This dignity appeared also in his personality. The last aura of the successful travelling-man had faded from him, that deliberate ingratiation of which the lowest form is the bawdy joke in the Pullman smoker. One imagined that, having been fawned upon financially, he had attained aloofness; having been snubbed socially, he had acquired reticence. But whatever had given him weight instead of bulk, Anthony no longer felt a correct superiority in his presence.

“D’you remember Caramel, Richard Caramel? I believe you met him one night.”

“I remember. He was writing a book.”

“Well, he sold it to the movies. Then they had some scenario man named Jordan work on it. Well, Dick subscribes to a clipping bureau and he’s furious because about half the movie reviewers speak of the ‘power and strength of William Jordan’s ”Demon Lover.“’ Didn’t mention old Dick at all. You’d think this fellow Jordan had actually conceived and developed the thing.”

Bloeckman nodded comprehensively.

“Most of the contracts state that the original writer’s name goes into all the paid publicity. Is Caramel still writing?”

“Oh, yes. Writing hard. Short stories.”

“Well, that’s fine, that’s fine.... You on this train often?”

“About once a week. We live in Marietta.”

“Is that so? Well, well! I live near Cos Cob myself. Bought a place there only recently. We’re only five miles apart.”

“You’ll have to come and see us.” Anthony was surprised at his own courtesy. “I’m sure Gloria’d be delighted to see an old friend. Anybody’ll tell you where the house is—it’s our second season there.”

“Thank you.” Then, as though returning a complementary politeness: “How is your grandfather?”

“He’s been well. I had lunch with him to-day.”

“A great character,” said Bloeckman severely. “A fine example of an American.”

Anthony found his wife deep in the porch hammock voluptuously engaged with a lemonade and a tomato sandwich and carrying on an apparently cheery conversation with Tana upon one of Tana’s complicated themes.

“In my countree,” Anthony recognized his invariable preface, “all time—peoples—eat rice—because haven’t got. Cannot eat what no have got.” Had his nationality not been desperately apparent one would have thought he had acquired his knowledge of his native land from American primary-school geographies.

When the Oriental had been squelched and dismissed to the kitchen, Anthony turned questioningly to Gloria:

“It’s all right,” she announced, smiling broadly. “And it surprised me more than it does you.”

“There’s no doubt?”

“None! Couldn’t be!”

They rejoiced happily, gay again with reborn irresponsibility. Then he told her of his opportunity to go abroad, and that he was almost ashamed to reject it.

“What do
you
think? Just tell me frankly.”

“Why, Anthony!” Her eyes were startled. “Do you want to go? Without me?”

His face fell—yet he knew, with his wife’s question, that it was too late. Her arms, sweet and strangling, were around him, for he had made all such choices back in that room in the Plaza the year before. This was an anachronism from an age of such dreams.

“Gloria,” he lied, in a great burst of comprehension, “of course I don’t. I was thinking you might go as a nurse or something.” He wondered dully if his grandfather would consider this.

As she smiled he realized again how beautiful she was, a gorgeous girl of miraculous freshness and sheerly honorable eyes. She embraced his suggestion with luxurious intensity, holding it aloft like a sun of her own making and basking in its beams. She strung together an amazing synopsis for an extravaganza of martial adventure.

After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned. She wanted not to talk but only to read “Penrod,” stretched upon the lounge until at midnight she fell asleep. But Anthony, after he had carried her romantically up the stairs, stayed awake to brood upon the day, vaguely angry with her, vaguely dissatisfied.