Francis Fitzgerald: The Beautiful and Damned / Прекрасные и обреченные. Уровень 4

“Let’s go to something!” she proposed. “I want to see a show, don’t you? Oh, let’s go somewhere!”

“We’ll go to a good cabaret.”

“I’ve seen every one in town.”

“Well, we’ll find a new one.”

“Well, come on, then.”

A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony’s eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign “Marathon” in glorious yellow script.

“Shall we try it?”

With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this palace of pleasure.

There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks – clerks of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank.

Anthony and Gloria sat down.

“How do you like it?” inquired Anthony.

“I love it,” she said frankly. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing on each group, passing to the next. They two, it seemed to him, were alone quiet.

“I’m like these people,” she murmured. “I’m like they are – like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra. I am like them. You don’t know me.” She hesitated. “These people could appreciate me, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I’m this because of this or that because of that.”

From his undergraduate days Richard Caramel had desired to write.

“I’m absorbed, Aunt Catherine,” he told his aunt, “I really am. All my friends are joshing me – but I don’t care.”

“You’re an ancient soul, I always say.”

“Maybe I am. But where is my cousin Gloria? I think my friend Anthony Patch is in love with her.”

Mrs. Gilbert started,

“Really?”

“I think so,” said Dick gravely. “She’s the first girl I’ve ever seen him with.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gilbert “Gloria is very secretive. Between you and me,” she bent forward, “between you and me, I’d like to see her settle down.”

“I’m not claiming I’m right,” Dick said. “But I think Anthony is interested. He talks about her constantly.”

“Gloria is a very young soul,” began Mrs. Gilbert eagerly, but her nephew interrupted with a hurried sentence:

“Gloria would be very young and silly not to marry him.” He stopped. “Gloria’s a wild one, Aunt Catherine. She’s uncontrollable.”

She knew; oh, yes, mothers see these things. But what could she do? At sixteen Gloria began going to dances at schools, and then came the colleges; and everywhere she went, boys, boys, boys. Sometimes the men were undergraduates, sometimes just out of college – they lasted on an average of several months each. Once or twice her mother had hoped she would be engaged, but always a new one came.

It was Monday and Anthony took Geraldine Burke to luncheon, afterward they went up to his apartment.

Geraldine Burke had been an amusement of several months. She demanded so little that he liked her.

“You drink all the time, don’t you?” she said suddenly.

“Why, I suppose so,” replied Anthony in some surprise. “Don’t you?”

“No. I go on parties sometimes – you know, about once a week, but I only take two or three drinks. You and your friends keep on drinking all the time. I should think you’d ruin your health.”

Anthony was somewhat touched.

“You worry about me!”

“Well, I do.”

“I don’t drink so very much,” he declared. “Last month I didn’t touch a drop for three weeks. And I’m really drunk only once a week.”

“But you drink every day and you’re only twenty-five. Haven’t you any ambition? Think what you’ll be at forty?”

“I sincerely trust that I won’t live that long.”

“You cra-azy!” she said – and then: “Are you any relation to Adam Patch?”

“Yes, he’s my grandfather.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s funny. My daddy used to work for him. Tell me about him.”

“Why,” Anthony considered, “he’s very moral.”

“He’s done a lot of good,” said Geraldine with intense gravity. “Why don’t you live with him?”

“Why should I live with a pastor?”

“You cra-azy!”

Anthony thought how moral was this little waif at heart.

“Do you hate him?”

“I don’t know. I never liked him. You never like people who do things for you.”

“Does he hate you?”

“My dear Geraldine,” protested Anthony, frowning humorously, “do have another cocktail. I annoy him. He’s a prig, a bore, and something of a hypocrite.”

“Why do you call him a hypocrite?”

“Well,” said Anthony impatiently, “maybe he’s not. But he doesn’t like the things that I like.”

“Hm.” Her curiosity seemed satisfied. She sank back into the sofa and sipped her cocktail.

“You’re a funny one,” she commented thoughtfully. “Does everybody want to marry you because your grandfather is rich?”

“They don’t – but I shouldn’t blame them if they did. Still, you see, I never intend to marry.”

“You’ll fall in love someday. Oh, you will – I know.” She nodded wisely. “You will get married, just wait and see.”

“You’re a little idiot, Geraldine.”

She smiled provokingly.

“Oh, I am, am I? Want to bet?”

“That’d be silly too.”

“Oh, it would, would it? Well, I’ll just bet you’ll marry somebody inside of a year.”

“Geraldine,” he said, “in the first place I have no one I want to marry. In the second place I haven’t enough money to support two people. In the third place I am entirely opposed to marriage for people of my type. In the fourth place I have a strong distaste for even the consideration of it.”

Geraldine said she must be going. It was late.

“Call me up soon,” she reminded him as he kissed her goodbye, “you haven’t for three weeks, you know.”

“I will,” he promised fervently.

Anthony was convinced that no woman he had ever met compared in any way with Gloria. She was deeply herself; she was immeasurably sincere – of these things he was certain. Beside her the two dozen schoolgirls, young married women and waifs and strays whom he had known were just females, nothing more.

He went to the phone and called up the Plaza Hotel. Gloria was out. Her mother knew neither where she had gone nor when she would return.

One o’clock. Four o’clock. He sprang excitedly to his feet. How inappropriate that she should be out! He had realized what he wanted – to kiss her. She was the end of all restlessness, all malcontent.

Anthony dressed and went out to Richard Caramel’s room to hear the last revision of the last chapter of “The Demon Lover.” He did not call Gloria again until six. He did not find her in until eight and she could give him no engagement until Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday was freezing cold.

“I called you four times on Sunday,” he told her.

“Did you?”

There was surprise in her voice and interest in her expression.

“I was anxious to see you,” he said simply. “I want to talk to you – I mean really talk, somewhere where we can be alone. May I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, not at a tea table,” he said.

“Well, all right, but not today. Let’s walk!”

It was bitter and raw. All the evil of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind. It was almost impossible to talk, and discomfort made him distracted. He turned at Sixty-first Street and found she was no longer beside him. He looked around. She was forty feet in the rear standing motionless, her face showed anger or laughter – he could not determine which.