This Side of Paradise Part 19

ROSALIND: I know, but I respect him, and he's a good man and a strong one.

AMORY: (Grudgingly) Yes-he's that.

ROSALIND: Well-here's one little thing. There was a little poor boy we met in Rye Tuesday afternoon-and, oh, Dawson took him on his lap and talked to him and promised him an Indian suit-and next day he remembered and bought it-and, oh, it was so sweet and I couldn't help thinking he'd be so nice to-to our children-take care of them-and I wouldn't have to worry.

AMORY: (In despair) Rosalind! Rosalind!

ROSALIND: (With a faint roguishness) Don't look so consciously suffering.

AMORY: What power we have of hurting each other!

ROSALIND: (Commencing to sob again) It's been so perfect-you and I. So like a dream that I'd longed for and never thought I'd find. The first real unselfishness I've ever felt in my life. And I can't see it fade out in a colorless atmosphere!

AMORY: It won't-it won't!

ROSALIND: I'd rather keep it as a beautiful memory-tucked away in my heart.

AMORY: Yes, women can do that-but not men. I'd remember always, not the beauty of it while it lasted, but just the bitterness, the long bitterness.

ROSALIND: Don't!

AMORY: All the years never to see you, never to kiss you, just a gate shut and barred-you don't dare be my wife.

ROSALIND: No-no-I'm taking the hardest course, the strongest course. Marrying you would be a failure and I never fail-if you don't stop walking up and down I'll scream!

(Again he sinks despairingly onto the lounge.) AMORY: Come over here and kiss me.

ROSALIND: No.

AMORY: Don't you want to kiss me?

ROSALIND: To-night I want you to love me calmly and coolly.

AMORY: The beginning of the end.

ROSALIND: (With a burst of insight) Amory, you're young. I'm young. People excuse us now for our poses and vanities, for treating people like Sancho and yet getting away with it. They excuse us now. But you've got a lot of knocks coming to you- AMORY: And you're afraid to take them with me.

ROSALIND: No, not that. There was a poem I read somewhere-you'll say Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x and laugh-but listen: "For this is wisdom-to love and live, To take what fate or the G.o.ds may give, To ask no question, to make no prayer, To kiss the lips and caress the hair, Speed pa.s.sion's ebb as we greet its flow, To have and to hold, and, in time-let go."

AMORY: But we haven't had.

ROSALIND: Amory, I'm yours-you know it. There have been times in the last month I'd have been completely yours if you'd said so. But I can't marry you and ruin both our lives.

AMORY: We've got to take our chance for happiness.

ROSALIND: Dawson says I'd learn to love him.

(AMORY with his head sunk in his hands does not move. The life seems suddenly gone out of him.) ROSALIND: Lover! Lover! I can't do with you, and I can't imagine life without you.

AMORY: Rosalind, we're on each other's nerves. It's just that we're both high-strung, and this week- (His voice is curiously old. She crosses to him and taking his face in her hands, kisses him.) ROSALIND: I can't, Amory. I can't be shut away from the trees and flowers, cooped up in a little flat, waiting for you. You'd hate me in a narrow atmosphere. I'd make you hate me.

(Again she is blinded by sudden uncontrolled tears.) AMORY: Rosalind- ROSALIND: Oh, darling, go-Don't make it harder! I can't stand it- AMORY: (His face drawn, his voice strained) Do you know what you're saying? Do you mean forever?

(There is a difference somehow in the quality of their suffering.) ROSALIND: Can't you see- AMORY: I'm afraid I can't if you love me. You're afraid of taking two years' knocks with me.

ROSALIND: I wouldn't be the Rosalind you love.

AMORY: (A little hysterically) I can't give you up! I can't, that's all! I've got to have you!

ROSALIND: (A hard note in her voice) You're being a baby now.

AMORY: (Wildly) I don't care! You're spoiling our lives!

ROSALIND: I'm doing the wise thing, the only thing.

AMORY: Are you going to marry Dawson Ryder?

ROSALIND: Oh, don't ask me. You know I'm old in some ways-in others-well, I'm just a little girl. I like suns.h.i.+ne and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility. I don't want to think about pots and kitchens and brooms. I want to worry whether my legs will get slick and brown when I swim in the summer.

AMORY: And you love me.

ROSALIND: That's just why it has to end. Drifting hurts too much. We can't have any more scenes like this.

(She draws his ring from her finger and hands it to him. Their eyes blind again with tears.) AMORY: (His lips against her wet cheek) Don't! Keep it, please-oh, don't break my heart!

(She presses the ring softly into his hand.) ROSALIND: (Brokenly) You'd better go.

AMORY: Good-by- (She looks at him once more, with infinite longing, infinite sadness.) ROSALIND: Don't ever forget me, Amory- AMORY: Good-by- (He goes to the door, fumbles for the k.n.o.b, finds it-she sees him throw back his head-and he is gone. Gone-she half starts from the lounge and then sinks forward on her face into the pillows.) ROSALIND: Oh, G.o.d, I want to die! (After a moment she rises and with her eyes closed feels her way to the door. Then she turns and looks once more at the room. Here they had sat and dreamed: that tray she had so often filled with matches for him; that shade that they had discreetly lowered one long Sunday afternoon. Misty-eyed she stands and remembers; she speaks aloud.) Oh, Amory, what have I done to you?

(And deep under the aching sadness that will pa.s.s in time, Rosalind feels that she has lost something, she knows not what, she knows not why.)

CHAPTER 2. Experiments in Convalescence

The Knickerbocker Bar, beamed upon by Maxfield Parrish's jovial, colorful "Old King Cole," was well crowded. Amory stopped in the entrance and looked at his wrist-watch; he wanted particularly to know the time, for something in his mind that catalogued and cla.s.sified liked to chip things off cleanly. Later it would satisfy him in a vague way to be able to think "that thing ended at exactly twenty minutes after eight on Thursday, June 10, 1919." This was allowing for the walk from her house-a walk concerning which he had afterward not the faintest recollection.

He was in rather grotesque condition: two days of worry and nervousness, of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotional crisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision-the strain of it had drugged the foreground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily with the olives at the free-lunch table, a man approached and spoke to him, and the olives dropped from his nervous hands.

"Well, Amory..."

It was some one he had known at Princeton; he had no idea of the name.

"h.e.l.lo, old boy-" he heard himself saying.

"Name's Jim Wilson-you've forgotten."

"Sure, you bet, Jim. I remember."

"Going to reunion?"

"You know!" Simultaneously he realized that he was not going to reunion.

"Get overseas?"

Amory nodded, his eyes staring oddly. Stepping back to let some one pa.s.s, he knocked the dish of olives to a crash on the floor.

"Too bad," he muttered. "Have a drink?"

Wilson, ponderously diplomatic, reached over and slapped him on the back.

"You've had plenty, old boy."

Amory eyed him dumbly until Wilson grew embarra.s.sed under the scrutiny.

"Plenty, h.e.l.l!" said Amory finally. "I haven't had a drink to-day."

Wilson looked incredulous.

"Have a drink or not?" cried Amory rudely.

Together they sought the bar.

"Rye high."

"I'll just take a Bronx."

Wilson had another; Amory had several more. They decided to sit down. At ten o'clock Wilson was displaced by Carling, cla.s.s of '15. Amory, his head spinning gorgeously, layer upon layer of soft satisfaction setting over the bruised spots of his spirit, was discoursing volubly on the war.

"'S a mental was'e," he insisted with owl-like wisdom. "Two years my life spent inalleshual vacuity. Los' idealism, got be physcal anmal," he shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, "got be Prussian 'bout ev'thing, women 'specially. Use' be straight 'bout women college. Now don'givadam." He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzer bottle with a broad gesture to noisy extinction on the floor, but this did not interrupt his speech. "Seek pleasure where find it for to-morrow die. 'At's philos'phy for me now on."

Carling yawned, but Amory, waxing brilliant, continued: "Use' wonder 'bout things-people satisfied compromise, fif'y-fif'y att'tude on life. Now don' wonder, don' wonder-" He became so emphatic in impressing on Carling the fact that he didn't wonder that he lost the thread of his discourse and concluded by announcing to the bar at large that he was a "physcal anmal."

"What are you celebrating, Amory?"

Amory leaned forward confidentially.

"Cel'brating blowmylife. Great moment blow my life. Can't tell you 'bout it-"

He heard Carling addressing a remark to the bartender: "Give him a bromo-seltzer."

Amory shook his head indignantly.

"None that stuff!"

"But listen, Amory, you're making yourself sick. You're white as a ghost."

Amory considered the question. He tried to look at himself in the mirror but even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row of bottles behind the bar.

"Like som'n solid. We go get some-some salad."

He settled his coat with an attempt at nonchalance, but letting go of the bar was too much for him, and he slumped against a chair.

"We'll go over to Shanley's," suggested Carling, offering an elbow.

With this a.s.sistance Amory managed to get his legs in motion enough to propel him across Forty-second Street.

Shanley's was very dim. He was conscious that he was talking in a loud voice, very succinctly and convincingly, he thought, about a desire to crush people under his heel. He consumed three club sandwiches, devouring each as though it were no larger than a chocolate-drop. Then Rosalind began popping into his mind again, and he found his lips forming her name over and over. Next he was sleepy, and he had a hazy, listless sense of people in dress suits, probably waiters, gathering around the table....

... He was in a room and Carling was saying something about a knot in his shoe-lace.

"Nemmine," he managed to articulate drowsily. "Sleep in 'em...."

STILL ALCOHOLIC He awoke laughing and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidently a bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and picture after picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, but beyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. He reached for the 'phone beside his bed.

"h.e.l.lo-what hotel is this-?

"Knickerbocker? All right, send up two rye high-b.a.l.l.s-"

He lay for a moment and wondered idly whether they'd send up a bottle or just two of those little gla.s.s containers. Then, with an effort, he struggled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom.

When he emerged, rubbing himself lazily with a towel, he found the bar boy with the drinks and had a sudden desire to kid him. On reflection he decided that this would be undignified, so he waved him away.

As the new alcohol tumbled into his stomach and warmed him, the isolated pictures began slowly to form a cinema reel of the day before. Again he saw Rosalind curled weeping among the pillows, again he felt her tears against his cheek. Her words began ringing in his ears: "Don't ever forget me, Amory-don't ever forget me-"

"h.e.l.l!" he faltered aloud, and then he choked and collapsed on the bed in a shaken spasm of grief. After a minute he opened his eyes and regarded the ceiling.

"d.a.m.ned fool!" he exclaimed in disgust, and with a voluminous sigh rose and approached the bottle. After another gla.s.s he gave way loosely to the luxury of tears. Purposely he called up into his mind little incidents of the vanished spring, phrased to himself emotions that would make him react even more strongly to sorrow.

"We were so happy," he intoned dramatically, "so very happy." Then he gave way again and knelt beside the bed, his head half-buried in the pillow.

"My own girl-my own-Oh-"

He clinched his teeth so that the tears streamed in a flood from his eyes.

"Oh... my baby girl, all I had, all I wanted!... Oh, my girl, come back, come back! I need you... need you... we're so pitiful ... just misery we brought each other.... She'll be shut away from me.... I can't see her; I can't be her friend. It's got to be that way-it's got to be-"

And then again: "We've been so happy, so very happy...."

He rose to his feet and threw himself on the bed in an ecstasy of sentiment, and then lay exhausted while he realized slowly that he had been very drunk the night before, and that his head was spinning again wildly. He laughed, rose, and crossed again to Lethe....