This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (15 page)

It was evidently over. There was a clamor for a dance, there was a glance that passed between them—on his side despair, on hers regret, and then the evening went on, with the reassured beaux and the eternal cutting in.

At quarter to twelve Amory shook hands with her gravely, in the midst of a small crowd assembled to wish him good-speed. For an instant he lost his poise, and she felt a bit rattled when a satirical voice from a concealed wit cried:

“Take her outside, Amory!” As he took her hand he pressed it a little, and she returned the pressure as she had done to twenty hands that evening—that was all.

At two o’clock back at the Weatherbys’ Sally asked her if she and Amory had had a “time” in the den. Isabelle turned to her quietly. In her eyes was the light of the idealist, the inviolate dreamer of Joan-like dreams.

“No,” she answered. “I don’t do that sort of thing any more; he asked me to, but I said no.”

As she crept in bed she wondered what he’d say in his special delivery to-morrow. He had such a good-looking mouth—would she ever——?

“Fourteen angels were watching o’er them,” sang Sally sleepily from the next room.

“Damn!” muttered Isabelle, punching the pillow into a luxurious lump and exploring the cold sheets cautiously. “Damn!”

Amory, by way of the
Princetonian,
^p
had arrived. The minor snobs, finely balanced thermometers of success, warmed to him as the club elections grew nigh, and he and Tom were visited by groups of upper classmen who arrived awkwardly, balanced on the edge of the furniture and talked of all subjects except the one of absorbing interest. Amory was amused at the intent eyes upon him, and, in case the visitors represented some club in which he was not interested, took great pleasure in shocking them with unorthodox remarks.

“Oh, let me see—” he said one night to a flabbergasted delegation, “what club do you represent?”

With visitors from Ivy and Cottage and Tiger Inn he played the “nice, unspoilt, ingenuous boy” very much at ease and quite unaware of the object of the call.

When the fatal morning arrived, early in March, and the campus became a document in hysteria, he slid smoothly into Cottage with Alec Connage and watched his suddenly neurotic class with much wonder.

There were fickle groups that jumped from club to club; there were friends of two or three days who announced tearfully and wildly that they must join the same club, nothing should separate them; there were snarling disclosures of long-hidden grudges as the Suddenly Prominent remembered snubs of freshman year. Unknown men were elevated into importance when they received certain coveted bids; others who were considered “all set” found that they had made unexpected enemies, felt themselves stranded and deserted, talked wildly of leaving college.

In his own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats, for being “a damn tailor’s dummy,” for having “too much pull in heaven,” for getting drunk one night “not like a gentleman, by God,” or for unfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the wielders of the black balls.

This orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the Nassau Inn,
^q
where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the whole down-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting pattern of faces and voices.

“Hi, Dibby—’gratulations!”

“Goo’ boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap.”

“Say, Kerry——”

“Oh, Kerry—I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!”

“Well, I didn’t go Cottage—the parlor-snakes’ delight.”

“They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid—Did he sign up the first day?-oh,
no.
Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a bicycle—afraid it was a mistake.”

“How’d you get into Cap—you old roué?”

“ ’Gratulations!”

“ ’Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd.”

When the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed, singing, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion that snobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do what they pleased for the next two years.

Long afterward Amory thought of sophomore spring as the happiest time of his life. His ideas were in tune with life as he found it; he wanted no more than to drift and dream and enjoy a dozen new-found friendships through the April afternoons.

Alec Connage came into his room one morning and woke him up into the sunshine and peculiar glory of Campbell Hall shining in the window.

“Wake up, Original Sin, and scrape yourself together. Be in front of Renwick’s in half an hour. Somebody’s got a car.” He took the bureau cover and carefully deposited it, with its load of small articles, upon the bed.

“Where’d you get the car?” demanded Amory cynically.

“Sacred trust, but don’t be a critical goopher or you can’t go!”

“I think I’ll sleep,” Amory said calmly, resettling himself and reaching beside the bed for a cigarette.

“Sleep!”

“Why not? I’ve got a class at eleven-thirty”

“You damned gloom! Of course, if you don’t want to go to the coast——”

With a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover’s burden on the floor. The coast ... he hadn’t seen it for years, since he and his mother were on their pilgrimage.

“Who’s going?” he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D.’s.

“Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and-oh about five or six. Speed it up, kid!”

In ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick’s, and at nine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the sands of Deal Beach.
^r

“You see,” said Kerry, “the car belongs down there. In fact, it was stolen from Asbury Park by persons unknown, who deserted it in Princeton and left for the West. Heartless Humbird here got permission from the city council to deliver it.”

“Anybody got any money?” suggested Ferrenby, turning around from the front seat.

There was an emphatic negative chorus.

“That makes it interesting.”

“Money—what’s money? We can sell the car.”

“Charge him salvage or something.”

“How’re we going to get food?” asked Amory.

“Honestly,” answered Kerry, eying him reprovingly, “do you doubt Kerry’s ability for three short days? Some people have lived on nothing for years at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly.”

“Three days,” Amory mused, “and I’ve got classes.”

“One of the days is the Sabbath.”

“Just the same, I can only cut six more classes, with over a month and a half to go.”

“Throw him out!”

“It’s a long walk back.”

“Amory, you’re running it out, if I may coin a new phrase.”

“Hadn’t you better get some dope on yourself, Amory?”

Amory subsided resignedly and drooped into a contemplation of the scenery. Swinburne seemed to fit in somehow.

“What’s the matter, Amory? Amory’s thinking about poetry, about the pretty birds and flowers. I can see it in his eye.”

“No, I’m not,” he lied. “I’m thinking about the
Princetonian.
I ought to make up to-night; but I can telephone back, I suppose.”

“Oh,” said Kerry respectfully, “these important men——”

Amory flushed and it seemed to him that Ferrenby, a defeated competitor, winced a little. Of course, Kerry was only kidding, but he really mustn’t mention the
Princetonian.

It was a halcyon day, and as they neared the shore and the salt breezes scurried by, he began to picture the ocean and long, level stretches of sand and red roofs over blue sea. Then they hurried through the little town and it all flashed upon his consciousness to a mighty paean of emotion....

“Oh, good Lord!
Look
at it!” he cried.

“What?”

“Let me out, quick—I haven’t seen it for eight years! Oh, gentlefolk, stop the car!”

“What an odd child!” remarked Alec.

“I do believe he’s a bit eccentric.”

The car was obligingly drawn up at a curb, and Amory ran for the boardwalk. First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was an enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared-really all the banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any one had told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.

“Now we’ll get lunch,” ordered Kerry, wandering up with the crowd. “Come on, Amory, tear yourself away and get practical.”

“We’ll try the best hotel first,” he went on, “and thence and so forth.”

They strolled along the boardwalk to the most imposing hostelry in sight, and, entering the dining-room, scattered about a table.

“Eight Bronxes,” commanded Alec, “and a club sandwich and Juliennes. The food for one. Hand the rest around.”

Amory ate little; having seized a chair where he could watch the sea and feel the rock of it. When luncheon was over they sat and smoked quietly.

“What’s the bill?”

Some one scanned it.

“Eight twenty-five.”

“Rotten overcharge. We’ll give them two dollars and one for the waiter. Kerry, collect the small change.”

The waiter approached, and Kerry gravely handed him a dollar, tossed two dollars on the check, and turned away. They sauntered leisurely toward the door, pursued in a moment by the suspicious Ganymede.

“Some mistake, sir.”

Kerry took the bill and examined it critically.

“No mistake!” he said, shaking his head gravely, and, tearing it into four pieces, he handed the scraps to the waiter, who was so dumfounded that he stood motionless and expressionless while they walked out.

“Won’t he send after us?”

“No,” said Kerry; “for a minute he’ll think we’re the proprietor’s sons or something; then he’ll look at the check again and call the manager, and in the meantime——”

They left the car at Asbury and street-car’d to Allenhurst, where they investigated the crowded pavilions for beauty. At four there were refreshments in a lunchroom, and this time they paid an even smaller per cent on the total cost; something about the appearance and savoir-faire of the crowd made the thing go, and they were not pursued.

“You see, Amory, we’re Marxian Socialists,” explained Kerry. “We don’t believe in property and we’re putting it to the great test.”

“Night will descend,” Amory suggested.

“Watch, and put your trust in Holiday.”

They became jovial about five-thirty and, linking arms, strolled up and down the boardwalk in a row, chanting a monotonous ditty about the sad sea waves. Then Kerry saw a face in the crowd that attracted him and, rushing off, reappeared in a moment with one of the homeliest girls Amory had ever set eyes on. Her pale mouth extended from ear to ear, her teeth projected in a solid wedge, and she had little, squinty eyes that peeped ingratiatingly over the side sweep of her nose. Kerry presented them formally.

“Name of Kaluka, Hawaiian queen! Let me present Messrs. Connage, Sloane, Humbird, Ferrenby, and Blaine.”

The girl bobbed courtesies all around. Poor creature; Amory supposed she had never before been noticed in her life—possibly she was half-witted. While she accompanied them (Kerry had invited her to supper) she said nothing which could discountenance such a belief.

“She prefers her native dishes,” said Alec gravely to the waiter, “but any coarse food will do.”

All through supper he addressed her in the most respectful language, while Kerry made idiotic love to her on the other side, and she giggled and grinned. Amory was content to sit and watch the by-play, thinking what a light touch Kerry had, and how he could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour. They all seemed to have the spirit of it more or less, and it was a relaxation to be with them. Amory usually liked men individually, yet feared them in crowds unless the crowd was around
him.
He wondered how much each one contributed to the party, for there was somewhat of a spiritual tax levied. Alec and Kerry were the life of it, but not quite the centre. Somehow the quiet Humbird, and Sloane, with his impatient superciliousness, were the centre.

Dick Humbird had, ever since freshman year, seemed to Amory a perfect type of aristocrat. He was slender but well-built—black curly hair, straight features, and rather a dark skin. Everything he said sounded intangibly appropriate. He possessed infinite courage, an averagely good mind, and a sense of honor with a clear charm and noblesse oblige that varied it from righteousness. He could dissipate without going to pieces, and even his most bohemian adventures never seemed “running it out.” People dressed like him, tried to talk as he did.... Amory decided that he probably held the world back, but he wouldn’t have changed him....

He differed from the healthy type that was essentially middle-class-he never seemed to perspire. Some people couldn’t be familiar with a chauffeur without having it returned; Humbird could have lunched at Sherry’s
^s
with a colored man, yet people would have somehow known that it was all right. He was not a snob, though he knew only half his class. His friends ranged from the highest to the lowest, but it was impossible to “cultivate” him. Ser-vantsworshipped him, and treated him like a god. He seemed the eternal example of what the upper class tries to be.

“He’s like those pictures in the
Illustrated London News
of the English officers who have been killed,” Amory had said to Alec.

“Well,” Alec had answered, “if you want to know the shocking truth, his father was a grocery clerk who made a fortune in Tacoma real estate and came to New York ten years ago.”