Beautiful and Damned (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (20 page)

When half the interval was up two incidents occurred on successive days that upset his increasing calm and caused a temporary relapse.

The first was—he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding a single sentence.

One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its leash—the effect being given of a tug bringing in an ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching Anthony’s eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world of their own building. They inspired the same sensations in him as did those strange and monstrous fish who inhabit the esoteric world of green in the aquarium.

Two more strollers caught his eye casually, a man and a girl—then in a horrified instant the girl resolved herself into Gloria. He stood here powerless; they came nearer and Gloria glancing in, saw him. Her eyes widened and she smiled politely. Her lips moved. She was less than five feet away.

“How do you do?” he muttered inanely.

Gloria, happy, beautiful, and young—with a man he had never seen before!

It was then that the barber’s chair was vacated and he read down the newspaper column three times in succession.

 

The second incident took place the next day. Going into the Manhattan bar about seven he was confronted with Bloeckman. As it happened, the room was nearly deserted, and before the mutual recognition he had stationed himself within a foot of the older man and ordered his drink, so it was inevitable that they should converse.

“Hello, Mr. Patch,” said Bloeckman amiably enough.

Anthony took the proffered hand and exchanged a few aphorisms on the fluctuations of the mercury.

“Do you come in here much?” inquired Bloeckman.

“No, very seldom.” He omitted to add that the Plaza bar had, until lately, been his favorite.

“Nice bar. One of the best bars in town.”

Anthony nodded. Bloeckman emptied his glass and picked up his cane. He was in evening dress.

“Well, I’ll be hurrying on. I’m going to dinner with Miss Gilbert.”

Death looked suddenly out at him from two blue eyes. Had he announced himself as his vis-à-vis’s prospective murderer he could not have struck a more vital blow at Anthony. The younger man must have reddened visibly, for his every nerve was in instant clamor. With tremendous effort he mustered a rigid—oh, so rigid—smile, and said a conventional good-by. But that night he lay awake until after four, half wild with grief and fear and abominable imaginings.

And one day in the fifth week he called her up. He had been sitting in his apartment trying to read “L’Éducation Sentimental,”
^l
and something in the book had sent his thoughts racing in the direction that, set free, they always took, like horses racing for a home stable. With suddenly quickened breath he walked to the telephone. When he gave the number it seemed to him that his voice faltered and broke like a schoolboy’s. The Central must have heard the pounding of his heart. The sound of the receiver being taken up at the other end was a crack of doom, and Mrs. Gilbert’s voice, soft as maple-syrup running into a glass container, had for him a quality of horror in its single “Hello-o-ah?”

“Miss Gloria’s not feeling well. She’s lying down, asleep. Who shall I say called?”

“Nobody!” he shouted.

In a wild panic he slammed down the receiver; collapsed into his armchair in the cold sweat of breathless relief.

The first thing he said to her was: “Why, you’ve bobbed your hair!” and she answered: “Yes, isn’t it gorgeous?”

It was not fashionable then. It was to be fashionable in five or six years. At that time it was considered extremely daring.

“It’s all sunshine outdoors,” he said gravely. “Don’t you want to take a walk?”

She put on a light coat and a quaintly piquant Napoleon hat of Alice Blue, and they walked along the Avenue and into the Zoo, where they properly admired the grandeur of the elephant and the collar-height of the giraffe, but did not visit the monkey-house because Gloria said that monkeys smelt so bad.

Then they returned toward the Plaza, talking about nothing, but glad for the spring singing in the air and for the warm balm that lay upon the suddenly golden city. To their right was the Park, while at the left a great bulk of granite and marble muttered dully a millionaire’s chaotic message to whosoever would listen: something about “I worked and I saved and I was sharper than all Adam and here I sit, by golly, by golly!”

All the newest and most beautiful designs in automobiles were out on Fifth Avenue, and ahead of them the Plaza loomed up rather unusually white and attractive. The supple, indolent Gloria walked a short shadow’s length ahead of him, pouring out lazy casual comments that floated a moment on the dazzling air before they reached his ear.

“Oh!” she cried, “I want to go south to Hot Springs! I want to get out in the air and just roll around on the new grass and forget there’s ever been any winter.”

“Don’t you, though!”

“I want to hear a million robins making a frightful racket. I sort of like birds.”

“All women
are
birds,” he ventured.

“What kind am I?”—quick and eager.

“A swallow, I think, and sometimes a bird of paradise. Most girls are sparrows, of course—see that row of nurse-maids over there? They’re sparrows—or are they magpies? And of course you’ve met canary girls—and robin girls.”

“And swan girls and parrot girls. All grown women are hawks, I think, or owls.”

“What am I—a buzzard?”

She laughed and shook her head.

“Oh, no, you’re not a bird at all, do you think? You’re a Russian wolfhound.”

Anthony remembered that they were white and always looked unnaturally hungry. But then they were usually photographed with dukes and princesses, so he was properly flattered.

“Dick’s a fox-terrier, a trick fox-terrier,” she continued.

“And Maury’s a cat.” Simultaneously it occurred to him how like Bloeckman was to a robust and offensive hog. But he preserved a discreet silence.

Later, as they parted, Anthony asked when he might see her again.

“Don’t you ever make long engagements?” he pleaded, “even if it’s a week ahead, I think it’d be fun to spend a whole day together, morning and afternoon both.”

“It would be, wouldn’t it?” She thought for a moment. “Let’s do it next Sunday.”

“All right. I’ll map out a programme that’ll take up every minute.”

He did. He even figured to a nicety what would happen in the two hours when she would come to his apartment for tea: how the good Bounds would have the windows wide to let in the fresh breeze—but a fire going also lest there be chill in the air—and how there would be clusters of flowers about in big cool bowls that he would buy for the occasion. They would sit on the lounge.

And when the day came they did sit upon the lounge. After a while Anthony kissed her because it came about quite naturally; he found sweetness sleeping still upon her lips, and felt that he had never been away. The fire was bright and the breeze sighing in through the curtains brought a mellow damp, promising May and world of summer. His soul thrilled to remote harmonies; he heard the strum of far guitars and waters lapping on a warm Mediterranean shore—for he was young now as he would never be again, and more triumphant than death.

Six o’clock stole down too soon and rang the querulous melody of St. Anne’s chimes on the corner. Through the gathering dusk they strolled to the Avenue, where the crowds, like prisoners released, were walking with elastic step at last after the long winter, and the tops of the busses were thronged with congenial kings and the shops full of fine soft things for the summer, the rare summer, the gay promising summer that seemed for love what the winter was for money. Life was singing for his supper on the corner! Life was handing round cocktails in the street! Old women there were in that crowd who felt that they could have run and won a hundred-yard dash!

In bed that night with the lights out and the cool room swimming with moonlight, Anthony lay awake and played with every minute of the day like a child playing in turn with each one of a pile of long-wanted Christmas toys. He had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, “I’m glad,” looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that he loved her.

He phoned next morning—no hesitation now, no uncertainty—instead a delirious excitement that doubled and trebled when he heard her voice:

“Good morning—Gloria.”

“Good morning.”

“That’s all I called you up to say—dear.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I wish I could see you.”

“You will, to-morrow night.”

“That’s a long time, isn’t it?”

“Yes—” Her voice was reluctant. His hand tightened on the receiver.

“Couldn’t I come to-night?” He dared anything in the glory and revelation of that almost whispered “yes.”

“I have a date.”

“Oh—”

“But I might—I might be able to break it.”

“Oh!”—a sheer cry, a rhapsody. “Gloria?”

“What?”

“I love you. ”

Another pause and then:

“I—I’m glad.”

Happiness, remarked Maury Noble one day, is only the first hour after the alleviation of some especially intense misery. But oh, Anthony’s face as he walked down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza that night! His dark eyes were gleaming—around his mouth were lines it was a kindness to see. He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.

He knocked and, at a word, entered. Gloria, dressed in simple pink, starched and fresh as a flower, was across the room, standing very still, and looking at him wide-eyed.

As he closed the door behind him she gave a little cry and moved swiftly over the intervening space, her arms rising in a premature caress as she came near. Together they crushed out the stiff folds of her dress in one triumphant and enduring embrace.

AFTER A FORTNIGHT ANTHONY and Gloria began to indulge in “practical discussions,” as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.

“Not as much, as I do you,” the critic of belles-lettres would insist. “If you really loved me you’d want every one to know it.”

“I do,” she protested; “I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich-man, informing all the passers-by.”

“Then tell me all the reasons why you’re going to marry me in June.”

“Well, because you’re so clean. You’re sort of blowy clean, like I am. There’s two sorts, you know. One’s like Dick: he’s clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is.”

“We’re twins.”

Ecstatic thought!

“Mother says”—she hesitated uncertainly—“mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they’re born.”
¹

Bilphism gained its easiest convert.... After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.

“Why did you laugh?” she cried, “you’ve done that twice before. There’s nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don’t mind playing the fool, and I don’t mind having you do it, but I can’t stand it when we’re together.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t say you’re sorry! If you can’t think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!”

“I love you.”

“I don’t care.”

There was a pause. Anthony was depressed.... At length Gloria murmured:

“I’m sorry I was mean.”

“You weren’t. I was the one.”

Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter’s attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm—