The Beautiful and Damned Part 27

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!

SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?

SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?

d.i.c.k: (_Maliciously_) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?

SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (_Facetiously_) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.

(THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN _looks nervously at his watch. Laughter._)

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an a.s.s I am!

SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding.

Name's Haines or Hampton.

d.i.c.k: (_Hurriedly spurring his imagination_) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.

SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my gla.s.s, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.

MAURY: Who? Old Adam?

SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.

d.i.c.k: He's my uncle, Otis.

OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (_Laughter._)

SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?

d.i.c.k: Yes, Cable, she is.

CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, d.i.c.ky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.

MAURY: Why are all grooms given the t.i.tle of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.

d.i.c.k: Maury, the professional cynic.

MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!

FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.

d.i.c.k: Faker yourself! What do _you_ know?

MAURY: What do _you_ know?

LICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.

MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?

d.i.c.k: You don't know yourself.

MAURY: Don't hedge!

d.i.c.k: Well, natural selection?

MAURY: Wrong.

d.i.c.k: I give it up.

MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.

FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!

MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop?

(_Laughter._)

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?

MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There _is_ a connection.

d.i.c.k: What is it then?

MAURY: (_Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion_) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!

MAURY: (_Frowning_) Let me just think a minute.

d.i.c.k: (_Sitting up suddenly_) Listen!

(_A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties._)

d.i.c.k: (_Weightily_) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.

OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.

FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to G.o.d I'd sent that present.

MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.

OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and----

(_They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture issues in long pious groans from ADAM PATCH'S organ_.)