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 theentrance and looked at his wrist-watch; he wanted particularly to knowthe time, for something in his mind that catalogued and classified likedto chip things off cleanly. Later it would satisfy him in a vague way tobe able to think "that thing ended at exactly twenty minutes after eighton Thursday, June 10, 1919." This was allowing for the walk fromher house--a walk concerning which he had afterward not the faintestrecollection.
He was in rather grotesque condition: two days of worry and nervousness,of sleepless nights, of untouched meals, culminating in the emotionalcrisis and Rosalind's abrupt decision--the strain of it had drugged theforeground of his mind into a merciful coma. As he fumbled clumsily withthe 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.
"Hello, 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 onepass, 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 theback.
"You've had plenty, old boy."
Amory eyed him dumbly until Wilson grew embarrassed under the scrutiny.
"Plenty, hell!" 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, class of '15. Amory, hishead spinning gorgeously, layer upon layer of soft satisfaction settingover the bruised spots of his spirit, was discoursing volubly on thewar.
"'S a mental was'e," he insisted with owl-like wisdom. "Two years mylife spent inalleshual vacuity. Los' idealism, got be physcal anmal,"he shook his fist expressively at Old King Cole, "got be Prussian 'boutev'thing, women 'specially. Use' be straight 'bout women college. Nowdon'givadam." He expressed his lack of principle by sweeping a seltzerbottle with a broad gesture to noisy extinction on the floor, but thisdid not interrupt his speech. "Seek pleasure where find it for to-morrowdie. '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'yatt'tude on life. Now don' wonder, don' wonder--" He became so emphaticin impressing on Carling the fact that he didn't wonder that he lost thethread of his discourse and concluded by announcing to the bar at largethat 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 'boutit--"
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 aghost."
Amory considered the question. He tried to look at himself in the mirrorbut even by squinting up one eye could only see as far as the row ofbottles 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 ofthe 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 assistance Amory managed to get his legs in motion enough topropel him across Forty-second Street.
Shanley's was very dim. He was conscious that he was talking in a loudvoice, very succinctly and convincingly, he thought, about a desireto 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 lipsforming her name over and over. Next he was sleepy, and he had a hazy,listless sense of people in dress suits, probably waiters, gatheringaround the table....
... He was in a room and Carling was saying something about a knot inhis shoe-lace.
"Nemmine," he managed to articulate drowsily. "Sleep in 'em...."
*****
STILL ALCOHOLIC
He awoke laughing and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidentlya bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and pictureafter picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, butbeyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. Hereached for the 'phone beside his bed.
"Hello--what hotel is this--?
"Knickerbocker? All right, send up two rye high-balls--"
He lay for a moment and wondered idly whether they'd send up a bottleor just two of those little glass containers. Then, with an effort, hestruggled out of bed and ambled into the bathroom.
When he emerged, rubbing himself lazily with a towel, he found the barboy with the drinks and had a sudden desire to kid him. On reflection hedecided that this would be undignified, so he waved him away.
As the new alcohol tumbled into his stomach and warmed him, the isolatedpictures began slowly to form a cinema reel of the day before. Again hesaw Rosalind curled weeping among the pillows, again he felt her tearsagainst his cheek. Her words began ringing in his ears: "Don't everforget me, Amory--don't ever forget me--"
"Hell!" he faltered aloud, and then he choked and collapsed on thebed in a shaken spasm of grief. After a minute he opened his eyes andregarded the ceiling.
"Damned fool!" he exclaimed in disgust, and with a voluminous sigh roseand approached the bottle. After another glass he gave way looselyto the luxury of tears. Purposely he called up into his mind littleincidents of the vanished spring, phrased to himself emotions that wouldmake him react even more strongly to sorrow.
"We were so happy," he intoned dramatically, "so very happy." Then hegave way again and knelt beside the bed, his head half-buried in thepillow.
"My own girl--my own--Oh--"
He clinched his teeth so that the tears streamed in a flood from hiseyes.
"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 webrought 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 ofsentiment, and then lay exhausted while he realized slowly that he hadbeen very drunk the night before, and that his head was spinning againwildly. He laughed, rose, and crossed again to Lethe....
At noon he ran into a crowd in the Biltmore bar, and the riot beganagain. He had a vague recollection afterward of discussing French poetrywith a British officer who was introduced to him as "Captain Corn, ofhis Majesty's Foot," and he remembered attempting to recite "Clair deLune" at luncheon; then he slept in a big, soft chair until almostfive o'clock when another crowd found and woke him; there followed analcoholic dressing of several temperaments for the ordeal of dinner.They selected theatre tickets at Tyson's for a play that had afour-drink programme--a play with two monotonous voices, with turbid,gloomy scenes, and lighting effects that were hard to follow when hiseyes behaved so amazingly. He imagined afterward that it must have been"The Jest."...
... Then the Cocoanut Gro
ve, where Amory slept again on a little balconyoutside. Out in Shanley's, Yonkers, he became almost logical, and by acareful control of the number of high-balls he drank, grew quite lucidand garrulous. He found that the party consisted of five men, two ofwhom he knew slightly; he became righteous about paying his share of theexpense and insisted in a loud voice on arranging everything then andthere to the amusement of the tables around him....
Some one mentioned that a famous cabaret star was at the next table,so Amory rose and, approaching gallantly, introduced himself... thisinvolved him in an argument, first with her escort and then with theheadwaiter--Amory's attitude being a lofty and exaggerated courtesy...he consented, after being confronted with irrefutable logic, to beingled back to his own table.
"Decided to commit suicide," he announced suddenly.
"When? Next year?"
"Now. To-morrow morning. Going to take a room at the Commodore, get intoa hot bath and open a vein."
"He's getting morbid!"
"You need another rye, old boy!"
"We'll all talk it over to-morrow."
But Amory was not to be dissuaded, from argument at least.
"Did you ever get that way?" he demanded confidentially fortaccio.
"Sure!"
"Often?"
"My chronic state."
This provoked discussion. One man said that he got so depressedsometimes that he seriously considered it. Another agreed that there wasnothing to live for. "Captain Corn," who had somehow rejoined the party,said that in his opinion it was when one's health was bad that one feltthat way most. Amory's suggestion was that they should each order aBronx, mix broken glass in it, and drink it off. To his relief no oneapplauded the idea, so having finished his high-ball, he balanced hischin in his hand and his elbow on the table--a most delicate, scarcelynoticeable sleeping position, he assured himself--and went into a deepstupor....
He was awakened by a woman clinging to him, a pretty woman, with brown,disarranged hair and dark blue eyes.
"Take me home!" she cried.
"Hello!" said Amory, blinking.
"I like you," she announced tenderly.
"I like you too."
He noticed that there was a noisy man in the background and that one ofhis party was arguing with him.
"Fella I was with's a damn fool," confided the blue-eyed woman. "I hatehim. I want to go home with you."
"You drunk?" queried Amory with intense wisdom.
She nodded coyly.
"Go home with him," he advised gravely. "He brought you."
At this point the noisy man in the background broke away from hisdetainers and approached.
"Say!" he said fiercely. "I brought this girl out here and you'rebutting in!"
Amory regarded him coldly, while the girl clung to him closer.
"You let go that girl!" cried the noisy man.
Amory tried to make his eyes threatening.
"You go to hell!" he directed finally, and turned his attention to thegirl.
"Love first sight," he suggested.
"I love you," she breathed and nestled close to him. She _did_ havebeautiful eyes.
Some one leaned over and spoke in Amory's ear.
"That's just Margaret Diamond. She's drunk and this fellow here broughther. Better let her go."
"Let him take care of her, then!" shouted Amory furiously. "I'm no W. Y.C. A. worker, am I?--am I?"
"Let her go!"
"It's _her_ hanging on, damn it! Let her hang!"
The crowd around the table thickened. For an instant a brawl threatened,but a sleek waiter bent back Margaret Diamond's fingers until shereleased her hold on Amory, whereupon she slapped the waiter furiouslyin the face and flung her arms about her raging original escort.
"Oh, Lord!" cried Amory.
"Let's go!"
"Come on, the taxis are getting scarce!"
"Check, waiter."
"C'mon, Amory. Your romance is over."
Amory laughed.
"You don't know how true you spoke. No idea. 'At's the whole trouble."
*****
AMORY ON THE LABOR QUESTION
Two mornings later he knocked at the president's door at Bascome andBarlow's advertising agency.
"Come in!"
Amory entered unsteadily.
"'Morning, Mr. Barlow."
Mr. Barlow brought his glasses to the inspection and set his mouthslightly ajar that he might better listen.
"Well, Mr. Blaine. We haven't seen you for several days."
"No," said Amory. "I'm quitting."
"Well--well--this is--"
"I don't like it here."
"I'm sorry. I thought our relations had been quite--ah--pleasant. Youseemed to be a hard worker--a little inclined perhaps to write fancycopy--"
"I just got tired of it," interrupted Amory rudely. "It didn't matter adamn to me whether Harebell's flour was any better than any one else's.In fact, I never ate any of it. So I got tired of telling people aboutit--oh, I know I've been drinking--"
Mr. Barlow's face steeled by several ingots of expression.
"You asked for a position--"
Amory waved him to silence.
"And I think I was rottenly underpaid. Thirty-five dollars a week--lessthan a good carpenter."
"You had just started. You'd never worked before," said Mr. Barlowcoolly.
"But it took about ten thousand dollars to educate me where I couldwrite your darned stuff for you. Anyway, as far as length of servicegoes, you've got stenographers here you've paid fifteen a week for fiveyears."
"I'm not going to argue with you, sir," said Mr. Barlow rising.
"Neither am I. I just wanted to tell you I'm quitting."
They stood for a moment looking at each other impassively and then Amoryturned and left the office.
*****
A LITTLE LULL
Four days after that he returned at last to the apartment. Tom wasengaged on a book review for The New Democracy on the staff of which hewas employed. They regarded each other for a moment in silence.
"Well?"
"Well?"
"Good Lord, Amory, where'd you get the black eye--and the jaw?"
Amory laughed.
"That's a mere nothing."
He peeled off his coat and bared his shoulders.
"Look here!"
Tom emitted a low whistle.
"What hit you?"
Amory laughed again.
"Oh, a lot of people. I got beaten up. Fact." He slowly replaced hisshirt. "It was bound to come sooner or later and I wouldn't have missedit for anything."
"Who was it?"
"Well, there were some waiters and a couple of sailors and a few straypedestrians, I guess. It's the strangest feeling. You ought to getbeaten up just for the experience of it. You fall down after a while andeverybody sort of slashes in at you before you hit the ground--then theykick you."
Tom lighted a cigarette.
"I spent a day chasing you all over town, Amory. But you always kept alittle ahead of me. I'd say you've been on some party."
Amory tumbled into a chair and asked for a cigarette.
"You sober now?" asked Tom quizzically.
"Pretty sober. Why?"
"Well, Alec has left. His family had been after him to go home and live,so he--"
A spasm of pain shook Amory.
"Too bad."
"Yes, it is too bad. We'll have to get some one else if we're going tostay here. The rent's going up."
"Sure. Get anybody. I'll leave it to you, Tom."
Amory walked into his bedroom. The first thing that met his glance wasa photograph of Rosalind that he had intended to have framed, proppedup against a mirror on his dresser. He looked at it unmoved. Afterthe vivid mental pictures of her that were his portion at present, theportrait was curiously unreal. He went back into the study.
"Got a cardboard box?"
"No," answered Tom, puzzled. "Why should I have? Oh, yes
--there may beone in Alec's room."
Eventually Amory found what he was looking for and, returning to hisdresser, opened a drawer full of letters, notes, part of a chain,two little handkerchiefs, and some snap-shots. As he transferred themcarefully to the box his mind wandered to some place in a book wherethe hero, after preserving for a year a cake of his lost love's soap,finally washed his hands with it. He laughed and began to hum "Afteryou've gone" ... ceased abruptly...
The string broke twice, and then he managed to secure it, droppedthe package into the bottom of his trunk, and having slammed the lidreturned to the study.
"Going out?" Tom's voice held an undertone of anxiety.
"Uh-huh."
"Where?"
"Couldn't say, old keed."
"Let's have dinner together."
"Sorry. I told Sukey Brett I'd eat with him."
"Oh."
"By-by."
Amory crossed the street and had a high-ball; then he walked toWashington Square and found a top seat on a bus. He disembarked atForty-third Street and strolled to the Biltmore bar.
"Hi, Amory!"
"What'll you have?"
"Yo-ho! Waiter!"
*****
TEMPERATURE NORMAL
The advent of prohibition with the "thirsty-first" put a sudden stop tothe submerging of Amory's sorrows, and when he awoke one morning to findthat the old bar-to-bar days were over, he had neither remorse for thepast three weeks nor regret that their repetition was impossible. He hadtaken the most violent, if the weakest, method to shield himselffrom the stabs of memory, and while it was not a course he wouldhave prescribed for others, he found in the end that it had done itsbusiness: he was over the first flush of pain.
Don't misunderstand! Amory had loved Rosalind as he would never loveanother living person. She had taken the first flush of his youth andbrought from his unplumbed depths tenderness that had surprisedhim, gentleness and unselfishness that he had never given to anothercreature. He had later love-affairs, but of a different sort: in thosehe went back to that, perhaps, more typical frame of mind, in which thegirl became the mirror of a mood in him. Rosalind had drawn out what wasmore than passionate admiration; he had a deep, undying affection forRosalind.
But there had been, near the end, so much dramatic tragedy, culminatingin the arabesque nightmare of his three weeks' spree, that he wasemotionally worn out. The people and surroundings that he remembered asbeing cool or delicately artificial, seemed to promise him a refuge. Hewrote a cynical story which featured his father's funeral and despatchedit to a magazine, receiving in return a check for sixty dollars and arequest for more of the same tone. This tickled his vanity, but inspiredhim to no further effort.
He read enormously. He was puzzled and depressed by "A Portrait of theArtist as a Young Man"; intensely interested by "Joan and Peter" and"The Undying Fire," and rather surprised by his discovery through acritic named Mencken of several excellent American novels: "Vandoverand the Brute," "The Damnation of Theron Ware," and "Jennie Gerhardt."Mackenzie, Chesterton, Galsworthy, Bennett, had sunk in hisappreciation from sagacious, life-saturated geniuses to merely divertingcontemporaries. Shaw's aloof clarity and brilliant consistency and thegloriously intoxicated efforts of H. G. Wells to fit the key of romanticsymmetry into the elusive lock of truth, alone won his rapt attention.
He wanted to see Monsignor Darcy, to whom he had written when he landed,but he had not heard from him; besides he knew that a visit to Monsignorwould entail the story of Rosalind, and the thought of repeating itturned him cold with horror.
In his search for cool people he remembered Mrs. Lawrence, a veryintelligent, very dignified lady, a convert to the church, and a greatdevotee of Monsignor's.
He called her on the 'phone one day. Yes, she remembered him perfectly;no, Monsignor wasn't in town, was in Boston she thought; he'd promisedto come to dinner when he returned. Couldn't Amory take luncheon withher?
"I thought I'd better catch up, Mrs. Lawrence," he said ratherambiguously when he arrived.
"Monsignor was here just last week," said Mrs. Lawrence regretfully. "Hewas very anxious to see you, but he'd left your address at home."
"Did he think I'd plunged into Bolshevism?" asked Amory, interested.
"Oh, he's having a frightful time."
"Why?"
"About the Irish Republic. He thinks it lacks dignity."
"So?"
"He went to Boston when the Irish President arrived and he was greatlydistressed because the receiving committee, when they rode in anautomobile, _would_ put their arms around the President."
"I don't blame him."
"Well, what impressed you more than anything while you were in the army?You look a great deal older."
"That's from another, more disastrous battle," he answered, smiling inspite of himself. "But the army--let me see--well, I discovered thatphysical courage depends to a great extent on the physical shape a manis in. I found that I was as brave as the next man--it used to worry mebefore."
"What else?"
"Well, the idea that men can stand anything if they get used to it, andthe fact that I got a high mark in the psychological examination."
Mrs. Lawrence laughed. Amory was finding it a great relief to be in thiscool house on Riverside Drive, away from more condensed New York andthe sense of people expelling great quantities of breath into alittle space. Mrs. Lawrence reminded him vaguely of Beatrice, notin temperament, but in her perfect grace and dignity. The house, itsfurnishings, the manner in which dinner was served, were in immensecontrast to what he had met in the great places on Long Island, wherethe servants were so obtrusive that they had positively to be bumpedout of the way, or even in the houses of more conservative "Union Club"families. He wondered if this air of symmetrical restraint, this grace,which he felt was continental, was distilled through Mrs. Lawrence's NewEngland ancestry or acquired in long residence in Italy and Spain.
Two glasses of sauterne at luncheon loosened his tongue, and he talked,with what he felt was something of his old charm, of religion andliterature and the menacing phenomena of the social order. Mrs. Lawrencewas ostensibly pleased with him, and her interest was especially in hismind; he wanted people to like his mind again--after a while it might besuch a nice place in which to live.
"Monsignor Darcy still thinks that you're his reincarnation, that yourfaith will eventually clarify."
"Perhaps," he assented. "I'm rather pagan at present. It's just thatreligion doesn't seem to have the slightest bearing on life at my age."
When he left her house he walked down Riverside Drive with a feelingof satisfaction. It was amusing to discuss again such subjects as thisyoung poet, Stephen Vincent Benet, or the Irish Republic. Betweenthe rancid accusations of Edward Carson and Justice Cohalan he hadcompletely tired of the Irish question; yet there had been a time whenhis own Celtic traits were pillars of his personal philosophy.
There seemed suddenly to be much left in life, if only this revivalof old interests did not mean that he was backing away from itagain--backing away from life itself.
*****
RESTLESSNESS
"I'm tres old and tres bored, Tom," said Amory one day, stretchinghimself at ease in the comfortable window-seat. He always felt mostnatural in a recumbent position.
"You used to be entertaining before you started to write," he continued."Now you save any idea that you think would do to print."
Existence had settled back to an ambitionless normality. They haddecided that with economy they could still afford the apartment, whichTom, with the domesticity of an elderly cat, had grown fond of. The oldEnglish hunting prints on the wall were Tom's, and the large tapestry bycourtesy, a relic of decadent days in college, and the great profusionof orphaned candlesticks and the carved Louis XV chair in which no onecould sit more than a minute without acute spinal disorders--Tomclaimed that this was because one was sitting in the lap of Montespan'swraith--at any rate, it was Tom's furniture that decide
d them to stay.
They went out very little: to an occasional play, or to dinner at theRitz or the Princeton Club. With prohibition the great rendezvous hadreceived their death wounds; no longer could one wander to the Biltmorebar at twelve or five and find congenial spirits, and both Tom and Amoryhad outgrown the passion for dancing with mid-Western or New Jerseydebbies at the Club-de-Vingt (surnamed the "Club de Gink") or the PlazaRose Room--besides even that required several cocktails "to come down tothe intellectual level of the women present," as Amory had once put itto a horrified matron.
Amory had lately received several alarming letters from Mr. Barton--theLake Geneva house was too large to be easily rented; the best rentobtainable at present would serve this year to little more than pay forthe taxes and necessary improvements; in fact, the lawyer suggestedthat the whole property was simply a white elephant on Amory's hands.Nevertheless, even though it might not yield a cent for the next threeyears, Amory decided with a vague sentimentality that for the present,at any rate, he would not sell the house.
This particular day on which he announced his ennui to Tom had beenquite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, andthen ridden abstractedly homeward atop one of his beloved buses.
"Why shouldn't you be bored," yawned Tom. "Isn't that the conventionalframe of mind for the young man of your age and condition?"
"Yes," said Amory speculatively, "but I'm more than bored; I amrestless."
"Love and war did for you."
"Well," Amory considered, "I'm not sure that the war itself had anygreat effect on either you or me--but it certainly ruined the oldbackgrounds, sort of killed individualism out of our generation."
Tom looked up in surprise.
"Yes it did," insisted Amory. "I'm not sure it didn't kill it out of thewhole world. Oh, Lord, what a pleasure it used to be to dream I might bea really great dictator or writer or religious or political leader--andnow even a Leonardo da Vinci or Lorenzo de Medici couldn't be a realold-fashioned bolt in the world. Life is too huge and complex. The worldis so overgrown that it can't lift its own fingers, and I was planningto be such an important finger--"
"I don't agree with you," Tom interrupted. "There never were men placedin such egotistic positions since--oh, since the French Revolution."
Amory disagreed violently.
"You're mistaking this period when every nut is an individualist fora period of individualism. Wilson has only been powerful when he hasrepresented; he's had to compromise over and over again. Just as soonas Trotsky and Lenin take a definite, consistent stand they'll becomemerely two-minute figures like Kerensky. Even Foch hasn't halfthe significance of Stonewall Jackson. War used to be the mostindividualistic pursuit of man, and yet the popular heroes of the warhad neither authority nor responsibility: Guynemer and Sergeant York.How could a schoolboy make a hero of Pershing? A big man has no timereally to do anything but just sit and be big."
"Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?"
"Yes--in history--not in life. Carlyle would have difficulty gettingmaterial for a new chapter on 'The Hero as a Big Man.'"
"Go on. I'm a good listener to-day."
"People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But weno sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer orphilosopher--a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, thanthe cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can standprominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People getsick of hearing the same name over and over."
"Then you blame it on the press?"
"Absolutely. Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered themost brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things andall that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting,and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book,or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, themore spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money theypay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, ablighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, representthe critical consciousness of the race--Oh, don't protest, I know thestuff. I used to write book reviews in college; I considered it raresport to refer to the latest honest, conscientious effort to propound atheory or a remedy as a 'welcome addition to our light summer reading.'Come on now, admit it."
Tom laughed, and Amory continued triumphantly.
"We _want_ to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors,constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try tobelieve in their statesmen, but they _can't_. Too many voices, too muchscattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the caseof newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularlygrasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius canown a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands oftired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living toswallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buyshis politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a newpolitical ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: moreconfusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, theirtempering, their distillation, the reaction against them--"
He paused only to get his breath.
"And that is why I have sworn not to put pen to paper until my ideaseither clarify or depart entirely; I have quite enough sins on my soulwithout putting dangerous, shallow epigrams into people's heads; I mightcause a poor, inoffensive capitalist to have a vulgar liaison witha bomb, or get some innocent little Bolshevik tangled up with amachine-gun bullet--"
Tom was growing restless under this lampooning of his connection withThe New Democracy.
"What's all this got to do with your being bored?"
Amory considered that it had much to do with it.
"How'll I fit in?" he demanded. "What am I for? To propagate the race?According to the American novels we are led to believe that the 'healthyAmerican boy' from nineteen to twenty-five is an entirely sexlessanimal. As a matter of fact, the healthier he is the less that's true.The only alternative to letting it get you is some violent interest.Well, the war is over; I believe too much in the responsibilities ofauthorship to write just now; and business, well, business speaks foritself. It has no connection with anything in the world that I'veever been interested in, except a slim, utilitarian connection witheconomics. What I'd see of it, lost in a clerkship, for the next andbest ten years of my life would have the intellectual content of anindustrial movie."
"Try fiction," suggested Tom.
"Trouble is I get distracted when I start to write stories--get afraidI'm doing it instead of living--get thinking maybe life is waiting forme in the Japanese gardens at the Ritz or at Atlantic City or on thelower East Side.
"Anyway," he continued, "I haven't the vital urge. I wanted to be aregular human being but the girl couldn't see it that way."
"You'll find another."
"God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl hadbeen worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl reallyworth having won't wait for anybody. If I thought there'd be another I'dlose my remaining faith in human nature. Maybe I'll play--but Rosalindwas the only girl in the wide world that could have held me."
"Well," yawned Tom, "I've played confidant a good hour by the clock.Still, I'm glad to see you're beginning to have violent views again onsomething."
"I am," agreed Amory reluctantly. "Yet when I see a happy family itmakes me sick at my stomach--"
"Happy families try to make people feel that way," said Tom cynically.
*****
TOM THE CENSOR
There were days when Amory listened. These were when Tom, wreathed insmoke, indulged in the slaughter of American literature. Words failedhim.
"Fifty thousand dollars a year," he would cry. "My God! Look at them,look at them--Edna Ferber, Gouverneur Morris, Fanny Hurst, Mary RobertsRinehart--not producing amo
ng 'em one story or novel that will last tenyears. This man Cobb--I don't tink he's either clever or amusing--andwhat's more, I don't think very many people do, except the editors. He'sjust groggy with advertising. And--oh Harold Bell Wright oh Zane Grey--"
"They try."
"No, they don't even try. Some of them _can_ write, but they won't sitdown and do one honest novel. Most of them _can't_ write, I'll admit.I believe Rupert Hughes tries to give a real, comprehensive picture ofAmerican life, but his style and perspective are barbarous. Ernest Pooleand Dorothy Canfield try but they're hindered by their absolute lackof any sense of humor; but at least they crowd their work instead ofspreading it thin. Every author ought to write every book as if he weregoing to be beheaded the day he finished it."
"Is that double entente?"
"Don't slow me up! Now there's a few of 'em that seem to have somecultural background, some intelligence and a good deal of literaryfelicity but they just simply won't write honestly; they'd all claimthere was no public for good stuff. Then why the devil is it that Wells,Conrad, Galsworthy, Shaw, Bennett, and the rest depend on America forover half their sales?"
"How does little Tommy like the poets?"
Tom was overcome. He dropped his arms until they swung loosely besidethe chair and emitted faint grunts.
"I'm writing a satire on 'em now, calling it 'Boston Bards and HearstReviewers.'"
"Let's hear it," said Amory eagerly.
"I've only got the last few lines done."
"That's very modern. Let's hear 'em, if they're funny."
Tom produced a folded paper from his pocket and read aloud, pausing atintervals so that Amory could see that it was free verse:
"So Walter Arensberg, Alfred Kreymborg, Carl Sandburg, Louis Untermeyer, Eunice Tietjens, Clara Shanafelt, James Oppenheim, Maxwell Bodenheim, Richard Glaenzer, Scharmel Iris, Conrad Aiken, I place your names here So that you may live If only as names, Sinuous, mauve-colored names, In the Juvenalia Of my collected editions."
Amory roared.
"You win the iron pansy. I'll buy you a meal on the arrogance of thelast two lines."
Amory did not entirely agree with Tom's sweeping damnation ofAmerican novelists and poets. He enjoyed both Vachel Lindsay and BoothTarkington, and admired the conscientious, if slender, artistry of EdgarLee Masters.
"What I hate is this idiotic drivel about 'I am God--I am man--I ridethe winds--I look through the smoke--I am the life sense.'"
"It's ghastly!"
"And I wish American novelists would give up trying to make businessromantically interesting. Nobody wants to read about it, unless it'scrooked business. If it was an entertaining subject they'd buy the lifeof James J. Hill and not one of these long office tragedies that harpalong on the significance of smoke--"
"And gloom," said Tom. "That's another favorite, though I'll admit theRussians have the monopoly. Our specialty is stories about little girlswho break their spines and get adopted by grouchy old men because theysmile so much. You'd think we were a race of cheerful cripples and thatthe common end of the Russian peasant was suicide--"
"Six o'clock," said Amory, glancing at his wrist-watch. "I'll buy youa grea' big dinner on the strength of the Juvenalia of your collectededitions."
*****
LOOKING BACKWARD
July sweltered out with a last hot week, and Amory in another surge ofunrest realized that it was just five months since he and Rosalind hadmet. Yet it was already hard for him to visualize the heart-whole boywho had stepped off the transport, passionately desiring the adventureof life. One night while the heat, overpowering and enervating, pouredinto the windows of his room he struggled for several hours in a vagueeffort to immortalize the poignancy of that time.
The February streets, wind-washed by night, blow full of strange half-intermittent damps, bearing on wasted walks in shining sight wet snow plashed into gleams under the lamps, like golden oil from some divine machine, in an hour of thaw and stars.
Strange damps--full of the eyes of many men, crowded with life borne in upon a lull.... Oh, I was young, for I could turn again to you, most finite and most beautiful, and taste the stuff of half-remembered dreams, sweet and new on your mouth.
... There was a tanging in the midnight air--silence was dead and sound not yet awoken--Life cracked like ice!--one brilliant note and there, radiant and pale, you stood... and spring had broken. (The icicles were short upon the roofs and the changeling city swooned.)
Our thoughts were frosty mist along the eaves; our two ghosts kissed, high on the long, mazed wires--eerie half-laughter echoes here and leaves only a fatuous sigh for young desires; regret has followed after things she loved, leaving the great husk.
*****
ANOTHER ENDING
In mid-August came a letter from Monsignor Darcy, who had evidently juststumbled on his address:
MY DEAR BOY:--
Your last letter was quite enough to make me worry about you. It wasnot a bit like yourself. Reading between the lines I should imagine thatyour engagement to this girl is making you rather unhappy, and I see youhave lost all the feeling of romance that you had before the war. Youmake a great mistake if you think you can be romantic without religion.Sometimes I think that with both of us the secret of success, when wefind it, is the mystical element in us: something flows into us thatenlarges our personalities, and when it ebbs out our personalitiesshrink; I should call your last two letters rather shrivelled. Beware oflosing yourself in the personality of another being, man or woman.
His Eminence Cardinal O'Neill and the Bishop of Boston are staying withme at present, so it is hard for me to get a moment to write, but I wishyou would come up here later if only for a week-end. I go to Washingtonthis week.
What I shall do in the future is hanging in the balance. Absolutelybetween ourselves I should not be surprised to see the red hat of acardinal descend upon my unworthy head within the next eight months. Inany event, I should like to have a house in New York or Washington whereyou could drop in for week-ends.
Amory, I'm very glad we're both alive; this war could easily have beenthe end of a brilliant family. But in regard to matrimony, you are nowat the most dangerous period of your life. You might marry in haste andrepent at leisure, but I think you won't. From what you write meabout the present calamitous state of your finances, what you want isnaturally impossible. However, if I judge you by the means I usuallychoose, I should say that there will be something of an emotional crisiswithin the next year.
Do write me. I feel annoyingly out of date on you.
With greatest affection,
THAYER DARCY.
Within a week after the receipt of this letter their little householdfell precipitously to pieces. The immediate cause was the serious andprobably chronic illness of Tom's mother. So they stored the furniture,gave instructions to sublet and shook hands gloomily in the PennsylvaniaStation. Amory and Tom seemed always to be saying good-by.
Feeling very much alone, Amory yielded to an impulse and set offsouthward, intending to join Monsignor in Washington. They missedconnections by two hours, and, deciding to spend a few days with anancient, remembered uncle, Amory journeyed up through the luxuriantfields of Maryland into Ramilly County. But instead of two days his staylasted from mid-August nearly through September, for in Maryland he metEleanor.
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