ANTHONY: Heavens, no! He probably came up to get me to wheedle some money out of grandfather for his flock.
(GLORIA
turns away from a very depressed
ANTHONY
and returns to her guests.
By nine o’clock these can be divided into two classes
—
those who have been drinking consistently and those who have taken little or nothing. In the second group are the
BARNESES, MURIEL, and FREDERICK E. PARAMORE.)
MURIEL: I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.
DICK: As Goliath said, he understood how David felt, but he couldn’t express himself. The remark was immediately adopted for a motto by the Philistines.
MURIEL: I don’t get you. I must be getting stupid in my old age.
GLORIA:
(Weaving unsteadily among the company like an exhilarated angel)
If any one’s hungry there’s some French pastry on the dining-room table.
MAURY: Can’t tolerate those Victorian designs it comes in.
MURIEL:
(Violently amused)
I’ll say you’re tight, Maury.
(Her bosom is still a pavement that she offers to the hoofs of many passing stallions, hoping that their iron shoes may strike even a spark of romance in the darkness....
Messrs.
BARNES
and
PARAMORE
have been engaged in conversation upon some wholesome subject, a subject so wholesome that
MR. BARNES
has been trying for several moments to creep into the more tainted air around the central lounge. Whether
PARAMORE
is lingering in the gray
house out
of politeness or curiosity, or in order at some future time to make a sociological report on the decadence of American life, is problematical. )
MAURY: Fred, I imagined you were very broad-minded.
PARAMORE: I am.
MURIEL: Me, too. I believe one religion’s as good as another and everything.
PARAMORE: There’s some good in all religions.
MURIEL: I’m a Catholic but, as I always say, I’m not working at it.
PARAMORE:
(With a tremendous burst of tolerance)
The Catholic religion is a very—a very powerful religion.
MAURY: Well, such a broad-minded man should consider the raised plane of sensation and the stimulated optimism contained in this cocktail.
PARAMORE:
(Taking the drink, rather defiantly)
Thanks, I’ll try—one.
MAURY: One? Outrageous! Here we have a class of ’nineteen ten reunion, and you refuse to be even a little pickled. Come on!
“Here’s a health to King Charles,
Here’s a health to King Charles,
Bring the bowl that you boast—
”
(PARAMORE
joins in with a hearty voice.)
MAURY: Fill the cup, Frederick. You know everything’s subordinated to nature’s purposes with us, and her purpose with you is to make you a rip-roaring tippler.
PARAMORE: If a fellow can drink like a gentleman—
MAURY: What is a gentleman, anyway?
ANTHONY: A man who never has pins under his coat lapel.
MAURY: Nonsense! A man’s social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich.
DICK: He’s a man who prefers the first edition of a book to the last edition of a newspaper.
RACHAEL: A man who never gives an impersonation of a dope-fiend.
MAURY: An American who can fool an English butler into thinking he’s one.
MURIEL: A man who comes from a good family and went to Yale or Harvard or Princeton, and has money and dances well, and all that.
MAURY: At last—the perfect definition! Cardinal Newman’s is now a back number.
PARAMORE: I think we ought to look on the question more broad-mindedly. Was it Abraham Lincoln who said that a gentleman is one who never inflicts pain?
MAURY: It’s attributed, I believe, to General Ludendorff.
PARAMORE: Surely you’re joking.
MAURY: Have another drink.
PARAMORE: I oughtn’t to.
(Lowering his voice for
MAURY’S
ears alone)
What if I were to tell you this is the third drink I’ve ever taken in my life?
(DICK
starts the phonograph, which provokes
MURIEL
to rise and sway from side to side, her elbows against her ribs, her forearms perpendicular to her body aud out like fins.)
MURIEL: Oh, let’s take up the rugs and dance!
(This suggestion is received by
ANTHONY
and
GLORIA
with interior groans and sickly smiles of acquiescence.)
MURIEL: Come on, you lazy-bones. Get up and move the furniture back.
DICK: Wait till I finish my drink.
MAURY:
(Intent on his purpose toward
PARAMORE) I’ll tell you what. Let’s each fill one glass, drink it off—and then we’ll dance.
(A wave of protest which breaks against the rock of
MAURY’S
insistence.
)
MURIEL: My head is simply going
round
now.
RACHAEL:
(In an undertone to
ANTHONY) Did Gloria tell you to stay away from me?
ANTHONY:
(Confused)
Why, certainly not. Of course not.
(RACHAEL
smiles at him inscrutably. Two years have given her a sort of hard, well-groomed beauty.)
MAURY:
(Holding up his glass)
Here’s to the defeat of democracy and the fall of Christianity.
MURIEL: Now really!
(She flashes a mock-reproachful glance at
MAURY
and then drinks.
They all drink, with varying degrees of difficulty.)
MURIEL: Clear the floor!
(It seems inevitable that this process is to be gone through, so
ANTHONY
and
GLORIA
join in the great moving of tables, piling of chairs, rolling of carpets, and breaking of lamps. When the furniture has been stacked in ugly masses at the sides, there appears a space about eight feet square.)
MURIEL: Oh, let’s have music!
MAURY: Tana will render the love-song of an eye, ear, nose, and throat specialist.
(Amid some confusion due to the fact that
TANA
has retired for the night, preparations are made for the performance. The pajamaed Japanese, flute in hand, is wrapped in a comforter and placed in a chair atop one of the tables, where he makes a ludicrous and grotesque spectacle.
PARAMORE
is perceptibly drunk and so enraptured with the notion that he increases the effect by simulating funny-paper staggers and even venturing on an occasional hiccough.)
PARAMORE: (To GLORIA) Want to dance with me?
GLORIA: No, sir! Want to do the swan dance. Can you do it?
PARAMORE: Sure. Do them all.
GLORIA: All right. You start from that side of the room and I’ll start from this.
MURIEL: Let’s go!
(Then Bedlam creeps screaming out of the bottles:
TANA
plunges into the recondite mazes of the train song, the plaintive “tootle toot-toot” blending its melancholy cadences with the
“Poor Butter-fly (tink-atink), by the blossoms wait-ing”
of the phonograph.
MURIEL
is too weak with laughter to do more than cling desperately to
BARNES,
who, dancing with the ominous rigidity of an army officer, tramps without humor around the small space.
ANTHONY
is trying to hear
RACHAEL’S
whisper
—
without attracting
GLORIA’S
attention....
But the grotesque, the unbelievable, the histrionic incident
is
about to occur, one of those incidents in which life seems
set
upon the passionate imitation of the lowest forms of literature.
PARAMORE
has been trying to emulate
GLORIA,
and as the commotion reaches its height he begins to spin round and round, more and more dizzily—he staggers, recovers, staggers again and then falls in the direction of the hall... almost into the arms of old
ADAM PATCH,
whose approach has been rendered inaudible by the pandemonium in the room.
ADAM PATCH
is very white. He leans upon a stick. The man with him is
EDWARD SHUTTLEWORTH,
and it is he who seizes
PARAMORE
by the shoulder and deflects the course of his fall away from the venerable philanthropist.
The time required for quiet to descend upon the room like a monstrous pall may be estimated at two minutes, though for a short period after that the phonograph gags and the notes of the Japanese train song dribble from the end of
TANA’S
flute. Of the nine people only
BARNES, PARAMORE,
and
TANA
are unaware of the late-comer’s identity. Of the nine not one is aware that
ADAM PATCH
has that morning made a contribution of fifty thousand dollars to the cause of national prohibition.
It is given to
PARAMORE
to break the gathering silence; the high tide of his life’s depravity is reached in his incredible remark.)
PARAMORE:
(Crawling rapidly toward the kitchen on his hands and knees)
I’m not a guest here—I work here.
(Again silence falls—so deep now, so weighted with intolerably contagious apprehension, that
RACHAEL
gives a nervous little giggle, and
DICK
finds himself telling over and over a line from Swinburne, grotesquely appropriate to the scene:
“One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.”
r
... Out of the hush the voice of
ANTHONY,
sober and strained, saying something to
ADAM PATCH;
then this, too, dies away.
)
SHUTTLEWORTH:
(Passionately)
Your grandfather thought he would motor over to see your house. I phoned from Rye and left a message.
(A series of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause.
ANTHONY
is the color of chalk.
GLORIA’S
lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does
CROSS PATCH’S
drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He speaks
—
five mild and simple words.)
ADAM PATCH: We’ll go back now, Shuttleworth‾
(And that is all. He turns, and assisted by his cane goes out through the hall, through the front door, and with hellish portentousness his uncertain footsteps crunch on the gravel path under the August moon.)
In this extremity they were like two goldfish in a bowl from which all the water had been drawn; they could not even swim across to each other.
Gloria would be twenty-six in May. There was nothing, she had said, that she wanted, except to be young and beautiful for a long time, to be gay and happy, and to have money and love. She wanted what most women want, but she wanted it much more fiercely and passionately. She had been married over two years. At first there had been days of serene understanding, rising to ecstasies of proprietorship and pride. Alternating with these periods had occurred sporadic hates, enduring a short hour, and forgetfulnesses lasting no longer than an afternoon. That had been for half a year.
Then the serenity, the content, had become less jubilant, had become gray—very rarely, with the spur of jealousy or forced separation, the ancient ecstasies returned, the apparent communion of soul and soul, the emotional excitement. It was possible for her to hate Anthony for as much as a full day, to be carelessly incensed at him for as long as a week. Recrimination had displaced affection as an indulgence, almost as an entertainment, and there were nights when they would go to sleep trying to remember who was angry and who should be reserved next morning. And as the second year waned there had entered two new elements. Gloria realized that Anthony had become capable of utter indifference toward her, a temporary indifference, more than half lethargic, but one from which she could no longer stir him by a whispered word, or a certain intimate smile. There were days when her caresses affected him as a sort of suffocation. She was conscious of these things; she never entirely admitted them to herself.
It was only recently that she perceived that in spite of her adoration of him, her jealousy, her servitude, her pride, she fundamentally despised him—and her contempt blended indistinguishably with her other emotions.... All this was her love—the vital and feminine illusion that had directed itself toward him one April night, many months before.
On Anthony’s part she was, in spite of these qualifications, his sole preoccupation. Had he lost her he would have been a broken man, wretchedly and sentimentally absorbed in her memory for the remainder of life. He seldom took pleasure in an entire day spent alone with her—except on occasions he preferred to have a third person with them. There were times when he felt that if he were not left absolutely alone he would go mad—there were a few times when he definitely hated her. In his cups he was capable of short attractions toward other women, the hitherto-suppressed outcrop-pings of an experimental temperament.
That spring, that summer, they had speculated upon future happiness—how they were to travel from summer land to summer land, returning eventually to a gorgeous estate and possible idyllic children, then entering diplomacy or politics, to accomplish, for a while, beautiful and important things, until finally as a white-haired (beautifully, silkily, white-haired) couple they were to loll about in serene glory, worshipped by the bourgeoisie of the land.... These times were to begin “when we get our money”; it was on such dreams rather than on any satisfaction with their increasingly irregular, increasingly dissipated life that their hope rested. On gray mornings when the jests of the night before had shrunk to ribaldries without wit or dignity, they could, after a fashion, bring out this batch of common hopes and count them over, then smile at each other and repeat, by way of clinching the matter, the terse yet sincere Nietzscheanism of Gloria’s defiant “I don’t care!”