The Beautiful and Damned Part 39

"Maybe it is! It's a perfectly natural craving, isn't it?"

"Well, I'll tell you one thing. If you go to the movies I'm going to Europe."

"Well, go on then! _I'm_ not stopping you!"

To show she was not stopping him she melted into melancholy tears.

Together they marshalled the armies of sentiment--words, kisses, endearments, self-reproaches. They attained nothing. Inevitably they attained nothing. Finally, in a burst of gargantuan emotion each of them sat down and wrote a letter. Anthony's was to his grandfather; Gloria's was to Joseph Bloeckman. It was a triumph of lethargy.

One day early in July Anthony, returned from an afternoon in New York, called up-stairs to Gloria. Receiving no answer he guessed she was asleep and so went into the pantry for one of the little sandwiches that were always prepared for them. He found Tana seated at the kitchen table before a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of odds and ends--cigar-boxes, knives, pencils, the tops of cans, and some sc.r.a.ps of paper covered with elaborate figures and diagrams.

"What the devil you doing?" demanded Anthony curiously.

Tana politely grinned.

"I show you," he exclaimed enthusiastically. "I tell--"

"You making a dog-house?"

"No, sa." Tana grinned again. "Make typewutta."

"Typewriter?"

"Yes, sa. I think, oh all time I think, lie in bed think 'bout typewutta."

"So you thought you'd make one, eh?"

"Wait. I tell."

Anthony, munching a sandwich, leaned leisurely against the sink. Tana opened and closed his mouth several times as though testing its capacity for action. Then with a rush he began:

"I been think--typewutta--has, oh, many many many many _thing_. Oh many many many many." "Many keys. I see."

"No-o? _Yes_-key! Many many many many lettah. Like so a-b-c."

"Yes, you're right."

"Wait. I tell." He screwed his face up in a tremendous effort to express himself: "I been think--many words--end same. Like i-n-g."

"You bet. A whole raft of them."

"So--I make--typewutta--quick. Not so many lettah--"

"That's a great idea, Tana. Save time. You'll make a fortune. Press one key and there's 'ing.' Hope you work it out."

Tana laughed disparagingly. "Wait. I tell--" "Where's Mrs. Patch?"

"She out. Wait, I tell--" Again he screwed up his face for action. "_My_ typewutta----"

"Where is she?"

"Here--I make." He pointed to the miscellany of junk on the table.

"I mean Mrs. Patch."

"She out." Tana rea.s.sured him. "She be back five o'clock, she say."

"Down in the village?"

"No. Went off before lunch. She go Mr. Bloeckman."

Anthony started.

"Went out with Mr. Bloeckman?"

"She be back five."

Without a word Anthony left the kitchen with Tana's disconsolate "I tell" trailing after him. So this was Gloria's idea of excitement, by G.o.d! His fists were clenched; within a moment he had worked himself up to a tremendous pitch of indignation. He went to the door and looked out; there was no car in sight and his watch stood at four minutes of five. With furious energy he dashed down to the end of the path--as far as the bend of the road a mile off he could see no car--except--but it was a farmer's flivver. Then, in an undignified pursuit of dignity, he rushed back to the shelter of the house as quickly as he had rushed out.

Pacing up and down the living room he began an angry rehearsal of the speech he would make to her when she came in--

"So this is love!" he would begin--or no, it sounded too much like the popular phrase "So this is Paris!" He must be dignified, hurt, grieved.

Anyhow--"So this is what _you_ do when I have to go up and trot all day around the hot city on business. No wonder I can't write! No wonder I don't dare let you out of my sight!" He was expanding now, warming to his subject. "I'll tell you," he continued, "I'll tell you--" He paused, catching a familiar ring in the words--then he realized--it was Tana's "I tell."

Yet Anthony neither laughed nor seemed absurd to himself. To his frantic imagination it was already six--seven--eight, and she was never coming!

Bloeckman finding her bored and unhappy had persuaded her to go to California with him....

--There was a great to-do out in front, a joyous "Yoho, Anthony!" and he rose trembling, weakly happy to see her fluttering up the path.

Bloeckman was following, cap in hand.

"Dearest!" she cried.

"We've been for the best jaunt--all over New York State."

"I'll have to be starting home," said Bloeckman, almost immediately.

"Wish you'd both been here when I came."

"I'm sorry I wasn't," answered Anthony dryly. When he had departed Anthony hesitated. The fear was gone from his heart, yet he felt that some protest was ethically apropos. Gloria resolved his uncertainty.

"I knew you wouldn't mind. He came just before lunch and said he had to go to Garrison on business and wouldn't I go with him. He looked so lonesome, Anthony. And I drove his car all the way."

Listlessly Anthony dropped into a chair, his mind tired--tired with nothing, tired with everything, with the world's weight he had never chosen to bear. He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure--that, and the sense of death.

"I suppose I don't care," he answered.

One must be broad about these things, and Gloria being young, being beautiful, must have reasonable privileges. Yet it wearied him that he failed to understand.

WINTER