: Francis Scott Fitzgerald
: The Beautiful and the Damned
: eKitap Projesi
: 9786059654906
: 1
: CHF 2.70
:
: Erzählende Literatur
: English
: 320
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

   In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual 'There!'-yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well ad-justed to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows. 
 
This was his healthy state and it made him cheerful, pleasant, and very attractive to intelligent men and to all women. In this state he considered that he would one day accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality.  
 
Until the time came for this effort he would be Anthony Patch-not a portrait of a man but a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward-a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave. 
 
A WORTHY MAN AND HIS GIFTED SON 
 
   Anthony drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders. This is inevitable; Virginians and Bostonians to the contrary notwithstanding, an aristocracy founded sheerly on money postulates wealth in the particular. 
Now Adam J. Patch, more familiarly known as 'Cross Patch,' left his father's farm in Tarrytown early in sixty-one to join a New York cavalry regiment.  
 
He came home from the war a major, charged into Wall Street, and amid much fuss, fume, applause, and ill will he gathered to himself some seventy-five million dollars.


Part 2



Chapter 1-THE RADIANT HOUR


After a fortnight Anthony and Gloria began to indulge in"practical discussions," as they called those sessions when under the guise of severe realism they walked in an eternal moonlight.

"Not as much as I do you," the critic of belles-lettres would insist."If you really loved me you'd want every one to know it."

"I do," she protested;"I want to stand on the street corner like a sandwich man, informing all the passers-by."

"Then tell me all the reasons why you're going to marry me in June."

"Well, because you're so clean. You're sort of blowy clean, like I am. There's two sorts, you know. One's like Dick: he's clean like polished pans. You and I are clean like streams and winds. I can tell whenever I see a person whether he is clean, and if so, which kind of clean he is."

"We're twins."

Ecstatic thought!

"Mother says"—she hesitated uncertainly—"mother says that two souls are sometimes created together and—and in love before they're born."

Bilphism gained its easiest convert… . After a while he lifted up his head and laughed soundlessly toward the ceiling. When his eyes came back to her he saw that she was angry.

"Why did you laugh?" she cried,"you've done that twice before. There's nothing funny about our relation to each other. I don't mind playing the fool, and I don't mind having you do it, but I can't stand it when we're together."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't say you're sorry! If you can't think of anything better than that, just keep quiet!"

"I love you."

"I don't care."

There was a pause. Anthony was depressed… . At length Gloria murmured:

"I'm sorry I was mean."

"You weren't. I was the one."

Peace was restored—the ensuing moments were so much more sweet and sharp and poignant. They were stars on this stage, each playing to an audience of two: the passion of their pretense created the actuality. Here, finally, was the quintessence of self-expression—yet it was probable that for the most part their love expressed Gloria rather than Anthony. He felt often like a scarcely tolerated guest at a party she was giving.

Telling Mrs. Gilbert had been an embarrassed matter. She sat stuffed into a small chair and listened with an intense and very blinky sort of concentration. She must have known it—for three weeks Gloria had seen no one else—and she must have noticed that this time there was an authentic difference in her daughter's attitude. She had been given special deliveries to post; she had heeded, as all mothers seem to heed, the hither end of telephone conversations, disguised but still rather warm—

—Yet she had delicately professed surprise and declared herself immensely pleased; she doubtless was; so were the geranium plants blossoming in the window-boxes, and so were the cabbies when the lovers sought the romantic privacy of hansom cabs—quaint device—and the staid bill of fares on which they scribbled"you know I do," pushing it over for the other to see.

But between kisses Anthony and this golden girl quarrelled incessantly.

"Now, Gloria," he would cry,"please let me explain!"

"Don't explain. Kiss me."

"I don't think that's right. If I hurt your feelings we ought to discuss it. I don't like this kiss-and-forget."

"But I don't want to argue. I think it's wonderful that wecankiss and forget, and when we can't it'll be time to argue."

At one time some gossamer difference attained such bulk that