The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (best time to read books txt) 📕

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 ear 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 and 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 lazybones. 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 hiccup. 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 latecomer’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