CHAPTER 2. Spires and Gargoyles 3 page

search-light of Isabelle's mind flashed on two ideas: she was glad she

had high color to-night, and she wondered if he danced well.

Down-stairs, in the club's great room, she was surrounded for a moment

by the girls she had met in the afternoon, then she heard Sally's voice

repeating a cycle of names, and found herself bowing to a sextet of

black and white, terribly stiff, vaguely familiar figures. The name

Blaine figured somewhere, but at first she could not place him. A

very confused, very juvenile moment of awkward backings and bumpings

followed, and every one found himself talking to the person he least

desired to. Isabelle manoeuvred herself and Froggy Parker, freshman

at Harvard, with whom she had once played hop-scotch, to a seat on the

stairs. A humorous reference to the past was all she needed. The things

Isabelle could do socially with one idea were remarkable. First, she

repeated it rapturously in an enthusiastic contralto with a soupcon

of Southern accent; then she held it off at a distance and smiled at

it--her wonderful smile; then she delivered it in variations and

played a sort of mental catch with it, all this in the nominal form

of dialogue. Froggy was fascinated and quite unconscious that this was

being done, not for him, but for the green eyes that glistened under the

shining carefully watered hair, a little to her left, for Isabelle had

discovered Amory. As an actress even in the fullest flush of her own

conscious magnetism gets a deep impression of most of the people in the

front row, so Isabelle sized up her antagonist. First, he had auburn

hair, and from her feeling of disappointment she knew that she had

expected him to be dark and of garter-advertisement slenderness.... For

the rest, a faint flush and a straight, romantic profile; the effect set

off by a close-fitting dress suit and a silk ruffled shirt of the kind

that women still delight to see men wear, but men were just beginning to

get tired of.

During this inspection Amory was quietly watching.

"Don't _you_ think so?" she said suddenly, turning to him,

innocent-eyed.

There was a stir, and Sally led the way over to their table. Amory

struggled to Isabelle's side, and whispered:

"You're my dinner partner, you know. We're all coached for each other."

Isabelle gasped--this was rather right in line. But really she felt

as if a good speech had been taken from the star and given to a minor

character.... She mustn't lose the leadership a bit. The dinner-table

glittered with laughter at the confusion of getting places and then

curious eyes were turned on her, sitting near the head. She was enjoying

this immensely, and Froggy Parker was so engrossed with the added

sparkle of her rising color that he forgot to pull out Sally's chair,

and fell into a dim confusion. Amory was on the other side, full of

confidence and vanity, gazing at her in open admiration. He began

directly, and so did Froggy:

"I've heard a lot about you since you wore braids--"

"Wasn't it funny this afternoon--"

Both stopped. Isabelle turned to Amory shyly. Her face was always enough

answer for any one, but she decided to speak.

"How--from whom?"

"From everybody--for all the years since you've been away." She blushed

appropriately. On her right Froggy was _hors de combat_ already,

although he hadn't quite realized it.

"I'll tell you what I remembered about you all these years," Amory

continued. She leaned slightly toward him and looked modestly at the

celery before her. Froggy sighed--he knew Amory, and the situations that

Amory seemed born to handle. He turned to Sally and asked her if she was

going away to school next year. Amory opened with grape-shot.

"I've got an adjective that just fits you." This was one of his favorite

starts--he seldom had a word in mind, but it was a curiosity provoker,

and he could always produce something complimentary if he got in a tight

corner.

"Oh--what?" Isabelle's face was a study in enraptured curiosity.

Amory shook his head.

"I don't know you very well yet."

"Will you tell me--afterward?" she half whispered.

He nodded.

"We'll sit out."

Isabelle nodded.

"Did any one ever tell you, you have keen eyes?" she said.

Amory attempted to make them look even keener. He fancied, but he was

not sure, that her foot had just touched his under the table. But it

might possibly have been only the table leg. It was so hard to tell.

Still it thrilled him. He wondered quickly if there would be any

difficulty in securing the little den up-stairs.

*****

BABES IN THE WOODS

Isabelle and Amory were distinctly not innocent, nor were they

particularly brazen. Moreover, amateur standing had very little value

in the game they were playing, a game that would presumably be her

principal study for years to come. She had begun as he had, with good

looks and an excitable temperament, and the rest was the result of

accessible popular novels and dressing-room conversation culled from a

slightly older set. Isabelle had walked with an artificial gait at nine

and a half, and when her eyes, wide and starry, proclaimed the ingenue

most. Amory was proportionately less deceived. He waited for the mask to

drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear

it. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blasй

sophistication. She had lived in a larger city and had slightly an

advantage in range. But she accepted his pose--it was one of the dozen

little conventions of this kind of affair. He was aware that he was

getting this particular favor now because she had been coached; he knew

that he stood for merely the best game in sight, and that he would

have to improve his opportunity before he lost his advantage. So they

proceeded with an infinite guile that would have horrified her parents.

After the dinner the dance began... smoothly. Smoothly?--boys cut in

on Isabelle every few feet and then squabbled in the corners with: "You

might let me get more than an inch!" and "She didn't like it either--she

told me so next time I cut in." It was true--she told every one so, and

gave every hand a parting pressure that said: "You know that your dances

are _making_ my evening."

But time passed, two hours of it, and the less subtle beaux had better

learned to focus their pseudo-passionate glances elsewhere, for eleven

o'clock found Isabelle and Amory sitting on the couch in the little

den off the reading-room up-stairs. She was conscious that they were

a handsome pair, and seemed to belong distinctively in this seclusion,

while lesser lights fluttered and chattered down-stairs.

Boys who passed the door looked in enviously--girls who passed only

laughed and frowned and grew wise within themselves.

They had now reached a very definite stage. They had traded accounts of

their progress since they had met last, and she had listened to much

she had heard before. He was a sophomore, was on the Princetonian board,

hoped to be chairman in senior year. He learned that some of the boys

she went with in Baltimore were "terrible speeds" and came to dances in

states of artificial stimulation; most of them were twenty or so, and

drove alluring red Stutzes. A good half seemed to have already flunked

out of various schools and colleges, but some of them bore athletic

names that made him look at her admiringly. As a matter of fact,

Isabelle's closer acquaintance with the universities was just

commencing. She had bowing acquaintance with a lot of young men who

thought she was a "pretty kid--worth keeping an eye on." But Isabelle

strung the names into a fabrication of gayety that would have dazzled

a Viennese nobleman. Such is the power of young contralto voices on

sink-down sofas.

He asked her if she thought he was conceited. She said there was

a difference between conceit and self-confidence. She adored

self-confidence in men.

"Is Froggy a good friend of yours?" she asked.

"Rather--why?"

"He's a bum dancer."

Amory laughed.

"He dances as if the girl were on his back instead of in his arms."

She appreciated this.

"You're awfully good at sizing people up."

Amory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people for

her. Then they talked about hands.

"You've got awfully nice hands," she said. "They look as if you played

the piano. Do you?"

I have said they had reached a very definite stage--nay, more, a very

critical stage. Amory had stayed over a day to see her, and his train

left at twelve-eighteen that night. His trunk and suitcase awaited him

at the station; his watch was beginning to hang heavy in his pocket.

"Isabelle," he said suddenly, "I want to tell you something." They had

been talking lightly about "that funny look in her eyes," and Isabelle

knew from the change in his manner what was coming--indeed, she had been

wondering how soon it would come. Amory reached above their heads and

turned out the electric light, so that they were in the dark, except

for the red glow that fell through the door from the reading-room lamps.

Then he began:

"I don't know whether or not you know what you--what I'm going to say.

Lordy, Isabelle--this _sounds_ like a line, but it isn't."

"I know," said Isabelle softly.

"Maybe we'll never meet again like this--I have darned hard luck

sometimes." He was leaning away from her on the other arm of the lounge,

but she could see his eyes plainly in the dark.

"You'll meet me again--silly." There was just the slightest emphasis

on the last word--so that it became almost a term of endearment. He

continued a bit huskily:

"I've fallen for a lot of people--girls--and I guess you have,

too--boys, I mean, but, honestly, you--" he broke off suddenly and

leaned forward, chin on his hands: "Oh, what's the use--you'll go your

way and I suppose I'll go mine."

Silence for a moment. Isabelle was quite stirred; she wound her

handkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that streamed

over her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their hands touched for

an instant, but neither spoke. Silences were becoming more frequent

and more delicious. Outside another stray couple had come up and were

experimenting on the piano in the next room. After the usual preliminary

of "chopsticks," one of them started "Babes in the Woods" and a light

tenor carried the words into the den:

"Give me your hand

I'll understand

We're off to slumberland."

Isabelle hummed it softly and trembled as she felt Amory's hand close

over hers.

"Isabelle," he whispered. "You know I'm mad about you. You _do_ give a

darn about me."

"Yes."

"How much do you care--do you like any one better?"

"No." He could scarcely hear her, although he bent so near that he felt

her breath against his cheek.

"Isabelle, I'm going back to college for six long months, and why

shouldn't we--if I could only just have one thing to remember you by--"

"Close the door...." Her voice had just stirred so that he half wondered

whether she had spoken at all. As he swung the door softly shut, the

music seemed quivering just outside.

"Moonlight is bright,

Kiss me good night."

What a wonderful song, she thought--everything was wonderful to-night,

most of all this romantic scene in the den, with their hands clinging

and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her

life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight

and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low, cosy

roadsters stopped under sheltering trees--only the boy might change, and

this one was so nice. He took her hand softly. With a sudden movement he

turned it and, holding it to his lips, kissed the palm.

"Isabelle!" His whisper blended in the music, and they seemed to

float nearer together. Her breath came faster. "Can't I kiss you,

Isabelle--Isabelle?" Lips half parted, she turned her head to him in the

dark. Suddenly the ring of voices, the sound of running footsteps surged

toward them. Quick as a flash Amory reached up and turned on the light,

and when the door opened and three boys, the wrathy and dance-craving

Froggy among them, rushed in, he was turning over the magazines on the

table, while she sat without moving, serene and unembarrassed, and even

greeted them with a welcoming smile. But her heart was beating wildly,

and she felt somehow as if she had been deprived.

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!"

*****

CARNIVAL

Amory, by way of the Princetonian, 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, 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 roue?"

"'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.

"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.

"Oh, winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the seasons of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover,

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

"The full streams feed on flower of--"

"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 lunch-room, 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

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 598