The Beautiful and Damned Part 25

"You going to be married out there?"

"Why, no, sir. We thought we'd be married in New York--rather quietly."

"Like to have the wedding out here?"

Anthony hesitated. The suggestion made no appeal to him, but it was certainly the part of wisdom to give the old man, if possible, a proprietary interest in his married life. In addition Anthony was a little touched.

"That's very kind of you, grampa, but wouldn't it be a lot of trouble?"

"Everything's a lot of trouble. Your father was married here--but in the old house."

"Why--I thought he was married in Boston."

Adam Patch considered.

"That's true. He _was_ married in Boston."

Anthony felt a moment's embarra.s.sment at having made the correction, and he covered it up with words.

"Well, I'll speak to Gloria about it. Personally I'd like to, but of course it's up to the Gilberts, you see."

His grandfather drew a long sigh, half closed his eyes, and sank back in his chair.

"In a hurry?" he asked in a different tone.

"Not especially."

"I wonder," began Adam Patch, looking out with a mild, kindly glance at the lilac bushes that rustled against the windows, "I wonder if you ever think about the after-life."

"Why--sometimes."

"I think a great deal about the after-life." His eyes were dim but his voice was confident and clear. "I was sitting here to-day thinking about what's lying in wait for us, and somehow I began to remember an afternoon nearly sixty-five years ago, when I was playing with my little sister Annie, down where that summer-house is now." He pointed out into the long flower-garden, his eyes trembling of tears, his voice shaking.

"I began thinking--and it seemed to me that _you_ ought to think a little more about the after-life. You ought to be--steadier"--he paused and seemed to grope about for the right word--"more industrious--why--"

Then his expression altered, his entire personality seemed to snap together like a trap, and when he continued the softness had gone from his voice.

"--Why, when I was just two years older than you," he rasped with a cunning chuckle, "I sent three members of the firm of Wrenn and Hunt to the poorhouse."

Anthony started with embarra.s.sment.

"Well, good-by," added his grandfather suddenly, "you'll miss your train."

Anthony left the house unusually elated, and strangely sorry for the old man; not because his wealth could buy him "neither youth nor digestion"

but because he had asked Anthony to be married there, and because he had forgotten something about his son's wedding that he should have remembered.

Richard Caramel, who was one of the ushers, caused Anthony and Gloria much distress in the last few weeks by continually stealing the rays of their spot-light. "The Demon Lover" had been published in April, and it interrupted the love affair as it may be said to have interrupted everything its author came in contact with. It was a highly original, rather overwritten piece of sustained description concerned with a Don Juan of the New York slums. As Maury and Anthony had said before, as the more hospitable critics were saying then, there was no writer in America with such power to describe the atavistic and unsubtle reactions of that section of society.

The book hesitated and then suddenly "went." Editions, small at first, then larger, crowded each other week by week. A spokesman of the Salvation Army denounced it as a cynical misrepresentation of all the uplift taking place in the underworld. Clever press-agenting spread the unfounded rumor that "Gypsy" Smith was beginning a libel suit because one of the princ.i.p.al characters was a burlesque of himself. It was barred from the public library of Burlington, Iowa, and a Mid-Western columnist announced by innuendo that Richard Caramel was in a sanitarium with delirium tremens.

The author, indeed, spent his days in a state of pleasant madness. The book was in his conversation three-fourths of the time--he wanted to know if one had heard "the latest"; he would go into a store and in a loud voice order books to be charged to him, in order to catch a chance morsel of recognition from clerk or customer. He knew to a town in what sections of the country it was selling best; he knew exactly what he cleared on each edition, and when he met any one who had not read it, or, as it happened only too often, had not heard of it, he succ.u.mbed to moody depression.

So it was natural for Anthony and Gloria to decide, in their jealousy, that he was so swollen with conceit as to be a bore. To d.i.c.k's great annoyance Gloria publicly boasted that she had never read "The Demon Lover," and didn't intend to until every one stopped talking about it.

As a matter of fact, she had no time to read now, for the presents were pouring in--first a scattering, then an avalanche, varying from the bric-a-brac of forgotten family friends to the photographs of forgotten poor relations.

Maury gave them an elaborate "drinking set," which included silver goblets, c.o.c.ktail shaker, and bottle-openers. The extortion from d.i.c.k was more conventional--a tea set from Tiffany's. From Joseph Bloeckman came a simple and exquisite travelling clock, with his card. There was even a cigarette-holder from Bounds; this touched Anthony and made him want to weep--indeed, any emotion short of hysteria seemed natural in the half-dozen people who were swept up by this tremendous sacrifice to convention. The room set aside in the Plaza bulged with offerings sent by Harvard friends and by a.s.sociates of his grandfather, with remembrances of Gloria's Farmover days, and with rather pathetic trophies from her former beaux, which last arrived with esoteric, melancholy messages, written on cards tucked carefully inside, beginning "I little thought when--" or "I'm sure I wish you all the happiness--"

or even "When you get this I shall be on my way to--"

The most munificent gift was simultaneously the most disappointing. It was a concession of Adam Patch's--a check for five thousand dollars.

To most of the presents Anthony was cold. It seemed to him that they would necessitate keeping a chart of the marital status of all their acquaintances during the next half-century. But Gloria exulted in each one, tearing at the tissue-paper and excelsior with the rapaciousness of a dog digging for a bone, breathlessly seizing a ribbon or an edge of metal and finally bringing to light the whole article and holding it up critically, no emotion except rapt interest in her unsmiling face.

"Look, Anthony!"

"Darn nice, isn't it!"

No answer until an hour later when she would give him a careful account of her precise reaction to the gift, whether it would have been improved by being smaller or larger, whether she was surprised at getting it, and, if so, just how much surprised.

Mrs. Gilbert arranged and rearranged a hypothetical house, distributing the gifts among the different rooms, tabulating articles as "second-best clock" or "silver to use _every_ day," and embarra.s.sing Anthony and Gloria by semi-facetious references to a room she called the nursery.

She was pleased by old Adam's gift and thereafter had it that he was a very ancient soul, "as much as anything else." As Adam Patch never quite decided whether she referred to the advancing senility of his mind or to some private and psychic schema of her own, it cannot be said to have pleased him. Indeed he always spoke of her to Anthony as "that old woman, the mother," as though she were a character in a comedy he had seen staged many times before. Concerning Gloria he was unable to make up his mind. She attracted him but, as she herself told Anthony, he had decided that she was frivolous and was afraid to approve of her.

Five days!--A dancing platform was being erected on the lawn at Tarrytown. Four days!--A special train was chartered to convey the guests to and from New York. Three days!----

THE DIARY

She was dressed in blue silk pajamas and standing by her bed with her hand on the light to put the room in darkness, when she changed her mind and opening a table drawer brought out a little black book--a "Line-a-day" diary. This she had kept for seven years. Many of the pencil entries were almost illegible and there were notes and references to nights and afternoons long since forgotten, for it was not an intimate diary, even though it began with the immemorial "I am going to keep a diary for my children." Yet as she thumbed over the pages the eyes of many men seemed to look out at her from their half-obliterated names. With one she had gone to New Haven for the first time--in 1908, when she was sixteen and padded shoulders were fas.h.i.+onable at Yale--she had been flattered because "Touch down" Michaud had "rushed" her all evening. She sighed, remembering the grown-up satin dress she had been so proud of and the orchestra playing "Yama-yama, My Yama Man" and "Jungle-Town." So long ago!--the names: Eltynge Reardon, Jim Parsons, "Curly" McGregor, Kenneth Cowan, "Fish-eye" Fry (whom she had liked for being so ugly), Carter Kirby--he had sent her a present; so had Tudor Baird;--Marty Reffer, the first man she had been in love with for more than a day, and Stuart Holcome, who had run away with her in his automobile and tried to make her marry him by force. And Larry Fenwick, whom she had always admired because he had told her one night that if she wouldn't kiss him she could get out of his car and walk home. What a list!

... And, after all, an obsolete list. She was in love now, set for the eternal romance that was to be the synthesis of all romance, yet sad for these men and these moonlights and for the "thrills" she had had--and the kisses. The past--her past, oh, what a joy! She had been exuberantly happy.

Turning over the pages her eyes rested idly on the scattered entries of the past four months. She read the last few carefully.

"_April 1st_.--I know Bill Carstairs hates me because I was so disagreeable, but I hate to be sentimentalized over sometimes. We drove out to the Rockyear Country Club and the most wonderful moon kept s.h.i.+ning through the trees. My silver dress is getting tarnished. Funny how one forgets the other nights at Rockyear--with Kenneth Cowan when I loved him so!

"_April 3rd_.--After two hours of Schroeder who, they inform me, has millions, I've decided that this matter of sticking to things wears one out, particularly when the things concerned are men. There's nothing so often overdone and from to-day I swear to be amused. We talked about 'love'--how ba.n.a.l! With how many men have I talked about love?

"_April 11th_.--Patch actually called up to-day! and when he forswore me about a month ago he fairly raged out the door. I'm gradually losing faith in any man being susceptible to fatal injuries.

"_April 20th_.--Spent the day with Anthony. Maybe I'll marry him some time. I kind of like his ideas--he stimulates all the originality in me.

Blockhead came around about ten in his new car and took me out Riverside Drive. I liked him to-night: he's so considerate. He knew I didn't want to talk so he was quiet all during the ride.

"_April 21st_.--Woke up thinking of Anthony and sure enough he called and sounded sweet on the phone--so I broke a date for him. To-day I feel I'd break anything for him, including the ten commandments and my neck.

He's coming at eight and I shall wear pink and look very fresh and starched----"

She paused here, remembering that after he had gone that night she had undressed with the s.h.i.+vering April air streaming in the windows. Yet it seemed she had not felt the cold, warmed by the profound ba.n.a.lities burning in her heart.

The next entry occurred a few days later:

"_April 24th_.--I want to marry Anthony, because husbands are so often 'husbands' and I must marry a lover.