The Beautiful and Damned Part 50

PARAMORE: Sure. Do them all.

GLORIA: All right. You start from that side of the room and I'll start from this.

MURIEL: Let's go!

(_Then Bedlam creeps screaming out of the bottles:_ TANA _plunges into the recondite mazes of the train song, the plaintive "tootle toot-toot"

blending its melancholy cadences with the_ "Poor b.u.t.ter-fly (tink-atink), by the blossoms wait-ing" _of the phonograph._ MURIEL _is too weak with laughter to do more than cling desperately to_ BARNES, _who, dancing with the ominous rigidity of an army officer, tramps without humor around the small s.p.a.ce._ ANTHONY _is trying to hear_ RACHAEL'S _whisper--without attracting_ GLORIA's _attention...._

_But the grotesque, the unbelievable, the histrionic incident is about to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems set upon the pa.s.sionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature._ PARAMORE _has been trying to emulate_ GLORIA, _and as the commotion reaches its height he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily--he staggers, recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall ...

almost into the arms of old_ ADAM PATCH, _whose approach has been rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in the room._

ADAM PATCH _is very white. He leans upon a stick. The man with him is_ EDWARD SHUTTLEWORTH, _and it is he who seizes_ PARAMORE _by the shoulder and deflects the course of his fall away from the venerable philanthropist._

_The time required for quiet to descend upon the room like a monstrous pall may be estimated at two minutes, though for a short period after that the phonograph gags and the notes of the j.a.panese train song dribble from the end of_ TANA'S _flute. Of the nine people only_ BARNES, PARAMORE, _and_ TANA _are unaware of the late-comer's ident.i.ty. Of the nine not one is aware that_ ADAM PATCH _has that morning made a contribution of fifty thousand dollars to the cause of national prohibition._

_It is given to_ PARAMORE _to break the gathering silence; the high tide of his life's depravity is reached in his incredible remark._)

PARAMORE: (_Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen on his hands and knees_) I'm not a guest here--I work here.

(_Again silence falls--so deep now, so weighted with intolerably contagious apprehension, that_ RACHAEL _gives a nervous little giggle, and_ d.i.c.k _finds himself telling over and over a line from Swinburne, grotesquely appropriate to the scene:_

"One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath."

... _Out of the hush the voice of_ ANTHONY, _sober and strained, saying something to_ ADAM PATCH; _then this, too, dies away._)

SHUTTLEWORTH: (_Pa.s.sionately_) Your grandfather thought he would motor over to see your house. I phoned from Rye and left a message.

(_A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause._ ANTHONY _is the color of chalk._ GLORIA'S _lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does_ CROSS PATCH'S _drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He speaks--five mild and simple words._)

ADAM PATCH: We'll go back now, Shuttleworth--(_And that is all. He turns, and a.s.sisted by his cane goes out through the hall, through the front door, and with h.e.l.lish portentousness his uncertain footsteps crunch on the gravel path under the August moon._)

RETROSPECT

In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across to each other.

Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted what most women want, but she wanted it much more fiercely and pa.s.sionately. She had been married over two years. At first there had been days of serene understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietors.h.i.+p and pride.

Alternating with these periods had occurred sporadic hates, enduring a short hour, and forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon.

That had been for half a year.

Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant, had become, gray--very rarely, with the spur of jealousy or forced separation, the ancient ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul and soul, the emotional excitement. It was possible for her to hate Anthony for as much as a full day, to be carelessly incensed at him for as long as a week. Recrimination had displaced affection as an indulgence, almost as an entertainment, and there were nights when they would go to sleep trying to remember who was angry and who should be reserved next morning. And as the second year waned there had entered two new elements. Gloria realized that Anthony had become capable of utter indifference toward her, a temporary indifference, more than half lethargic, but one from which she could no longer stir him by a whispered word, or a certain intimate smile. There were days when her caresses affected him as a sort of suffocation. She was conscious of these things; she never entirely admitted them to herself.

It was only recently that she perceived that in spite of her adoration of him, her jealousy, her servitude, her pride, she fundamentally despised him--and her contempt blended indistinguishably with her other emotions.... All this was her love--the vital and feminine illusion that had directed itself toward him one April night, many months before.

On Anthony's part she was, in spite of these qualifications, his sole preoccupation. Had he lost her he would have been a broken man, wretchedly and sentimentally absorbed in her memory for the remainder of life. He seldom took pleasure in an entire day spent alone with her--except on occasions he preferred to have a third person with them.

There were times when he felt that if he were not left absolutely alone he would go mad--there were a few times when he definitely hated her. In his cups he was capable of short attractions toward other women, the hitherto-suppressed outcroppings of an experimental temperament.

That spring, that summer, they had speculated upon future happiness--how they were to travel from summer land to summer land, returning eventually to a gorgeous estate and possible idyllic children, then entering diplomacy or politics, to accomplish, for a while, beautiful and important things, until finally as a white-haired (beautifully, silkily, white-haired) couple they were to loll about in serene glory, wors.h.i.+pped by the bourgeoisie of the land.... These times were to begin "when we get our money"; it was on such dreams rather than on any satisfaction with their increasingly irregular, increasingly dissipated life that their hope rested. On gray mornings when the jests of the night before had shrunk to ribaldries without wit or dignity, they could, after a fas.h.i.+on, bring out this batch of common hopes and count them over, then smile at each other and repeat, by way of clinching the matter, the terse yet sincere Nietzscheanism of Gloria's defiant "I don't care!"

Things had been slipping perceptibly. There was the money question, increasingly annoying, increasingly ominous; there was the realization that liquor had become a practical necessity to their amus.e.m.e.nt--not an uncommon phenomenon in the British aristocracy of a hundred years ago, but a somewhat alarming one in a civilization steadily becoming more temperate and more circ.u.mspect. Moreover, both of them seemed vaguely weaker in fibre, not so much in what they did as in their subtle reactions to the civilization about them. In Gloria had been born something that she had hitherto never needed--the skeleton, incomplete but nevertheless unmistakable, of her ancient abhorrence, a conscience.

This admission to herself was coincidental with the slow decline of her physical courage.

Then, on the August morning after Adam Patch's unexpected call, they awoke, nauseated and tired, dispirited with life, capable only of one pervasive emotion--fear.

PANIC

"Well?" Anthony sat up in bed and looked down at her. The corners of his lips were drooping with depression, his voice was strained and hollow.

Her reply was to raise her hand to her mouth and begin a slow, precise nibbling at her finger.

"We've done it," he said after a pause; then, as she was still silent, he became exasperated. "Why don't you say something?"

"What on earth do you want me to say?"

"What are you thinking?"

"Nothing."

"Then stop biting your finger!"

Ensued a short confused discussion of whether or not she had been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech--the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger like a nervous child.

"I've got to fix up this d.a.m.n mess with my grandfather," he said with uneasy conviction. A faint newborn respect was indicated by his use of "my grandfather" instead of "grampa."

"You can't," she affirmed abruptly. "You can't--_ever_. He'll never forgive you as long as he lives."

"Perhaps not," agreed Anthony miserably. "Still--I might possibly square myself by some sort of reformation and all that sort of thing--"

"He looked sick," she interrupted, "pale as flour."

"He _is_ sick. I told you that three months ago."

"I wish he'd died last week!" she said petulantly. "Inconsiderate old fool!"

Neither of them laughed.

"But just let me say," she added quietly, "the next time I see you acting with any woman like you did with Rachael Barnes last night, I'll leave you--_just--like--that!_ I'm simply _not_ going to stand it!"

Anthony quailed.

"Oh, don't be absurd," he protested. "You know there's no woman in the world for me except you--none, dearest."

His attempt at a tender note failed miserably--the more imminent danger stalked back into the foreground.

"If I went to him," suggested Anthony, "and said with appropriate biblical quotations that I'd walked too long in the way of unrighteousness and at last seen the light--" He broke off and glanced with a whimsical expression at his wife. "I wonder what he'd do?"

"I don't know."