This Side of Paradise, Page 9

  CHAPTER 4. The Supercilious Sacrifice

  Atlantic City. Amory paced the board walk at day's end, lulled by theeverlasting surge of changing waves, smelling the half-mournful odor ofthe salt breeze. The sea, he thought, had treasured its memories deeperthan the faithless land. It seemed still to whisper of Norse galleysploughing the water world under raven-figured flags, of the Britishdreadnoughts, gray bulwarks of civilization steaming up through the fogof one dark July into the North Sea.

  "Well--Amory Blaine!"

  Amory looked down into the street below. A low racing car had drawn to astop and a familiar cheerful face protruded from the driver's seat.

  "Come on down, goopher!" cried Alec.

  Amory called a greeting and descending a flight of wooden stepsapproached the car. He and Alec had been meeting intermittently, but thebarrier of Rosalind lay always between them. He was sorry for this; hehated to lose Alec.

  "Mr. Blaine, this is Miss Waterson, Miss Wayne, and Mr. Tully."

  "How d'y do?"

  "Amory," said Alec exuberantly, "if you'll jump in we'll take you tosome secluded nook and give you a wee jolt of Bourbon."

  Amory considered.

  "That's an idea."

  "Step in--move over, Jill, and Amory will smile very handsomely at you."

  Amory squeezed into the back seat beside a gaudy, vermilion-lippedblonde.

  "Hello, Doug Fairbanks," she said flippantly. "Walking for exercise orhunting for company?"

  "I was counting the waves," replied Amory gravely. "I'm going in forstatistics."

  "Don't kid me, Doug."

  When they reached an unfrequented side street Alec stopped the car amongdeep shadows.

  "What you doing down here these cold days, Amory?" he demanded, as heproduced a quart of Bourbon from under the fur rug.

  Amory avoided the question. Indeed, he had had no definite reason forcoming to the coast.

  "Do you remember that party of ours, sophomore year?" he asked instead.

  "Do I? When we slept in the pavilions up in Asbury Park--"

  "Lord, Alec! It's hard to think that Jesse and Dick and Kerry are allthree dead."

  Alec shivered.

  "Don't talk about it. These dreary fall days depress me enough."

  Jill seemed to agree.

  "Doug here is sorta gloomy anyways," she commented. "Tell him to drinkdeep--it's good and scarce these days."

  "What I really want to ask you, Amory, is where you are--"

  "Why, New York, I suppose--"

  "I mean to-night, because if you haven't got a room yet you'd betterhelp me out."

  "Glad to."

  "You see, Tully and I have two rooms with bath between at the Ranier,and he's got to go back to New York. I don't want to have to move.Question is, will you occupy one of the rooms?"

  Amory was willing, if he could get in right away.

  "You'll find the key in the office; the rooms are in my name."

  Declining further locomotion or further stimulation, Amory left the carand sauntered back along the board walk to the hotel.

  He was in an eddy again, a deep, lethargic gulf, without desire to workor write, love or dissipate. For the first time in his life he ratherlonged for death to roll over his generation, obliterating their pettyfevers and struggles and exultations. His youth seemed never so vanishedas now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit andthat riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had beenthe merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense ofbeauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they leftwere filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.

  "To hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst in him." This sentencewas the thesis of most of his bad nights, of which he felt this was tobe one. His mind had already started to play variations on the subject.Tireless passion, fierce jealousy, longing to possess and crush--thesealone were left of all his love for Rosalind; these remained to him aspayment for the loss of his youth--bitter calomel under the thin sugarof love's exaltation.

  In his room he undressed and wrapping himself in blankets to keep outthe chill October air drowsed in an armchair by the open window.

  He remembered a poem he had read months before:

  "Oh staunch old heart who toiled so long for me, I waste my years sailing along the sea--"

  Yet he had no sense of waste, no sense of the present hope that wasteimplied. He felt that life had rejected him.

  "Rosalind! Rosalind!" He poured the words softly into the half-darknessuntil she seemed to permeate the room; the wet salt breeze filledhis hair with moisture, the rim of a moon seared the sky and made thecurtains dim and ghostly. He fell asleep.

  When he awoke it was very late and quiet. The blanket had slipped partlyoff his shoulders and he touched his skin to find it damp and cold.

  Then he became aware of a tense whispering not ten feet away.

  He became rigid.

  "Don't make a sound!" It was Alec's voice. "Jill--do you hear me?"

  "Yes--" breathed very low, very frightened. They were in the bathroom.

  Then his ears caught a louder sound from somewhere along the corridoroutside. It was a mumbling of men's voices and a repeated muffledrapping. Amory threw off the blankets and moved close to the bathroomdoor.

  "My God!" came the girl's voice again. "You'll have to let them in."

  "Sh!"

  Suddenly a steady, insistent knocking began at Amory's hall doorand simultaneously out of the bathroom came Alec, followed by thevermilion-lipped girl. They were both clad in pajamas.

  "Amory!" an anxious whisper.

  "What's the trouble?"

  "It's house detectives. My God, Amory--they're just looking for atest-case--"

  "Well, better let them in."

  "You don't understand. They can get me under the Mann Act."

  The girl followed him slowly, a rather miserable, pathetic figure in thedarkness.

  Amory tried to plan quickly.

  "You make a racket and let them in your room," he suggested anxiously,"and I'll get her out by this door."

  "They're here too, though. They'll watch this door."

  "Can't you give a wrong name?"

  "No chance. I registered under my own name; besides, they'd trail theauto license number."

  "Say you're married."

  "Jill says one of the house detectives knows her."

  The girl had stolen to the bed and tumbled upon it; lay there listeningwretchedly to the knocking which had grown gradually to a pounding. Thencame a man's voice, angry and imperative:

  "Open up or we'll break the door in!"

  In the silence when this voice ceased Amory realized that there wereother things in the room besides people... over and around the figurecrouched on the bed there hung an aura, gossamer as a moonbeam, taintedas stale, weak wine, yet a horror, diffusively brooding already overthe three of them... and over by the window among the stirring curtainsstood something else, featureless and indistinguishable, yet strangelyfamiliar.... Simultaneously two great cases presented themselves side byside to Amory; all that took place in his mind, then, occupied in actualtime less than ten seconds.

  The first fact that flashed radiantly on his comprehension was the greatimpersonality of sacrifice--he perceived that what we call love andhate, reward and punishment, had no more to do with it than the dateof the month. He quickly recapitulated the story of a sacrifice he hadheard of in college: a man had cheated in an examination; his roommatein a gust of sentiment had taken the entire blame--due to the shameof it the innocent one's entire future seemed shrouded in regret andfailure, capped by the ingratitude of the real culprit. He had finallytaken his own life--years afterward the facts had come out. At the timethe story had both puzzled and worried Amory. Now he realized the truth;that sacrifice was no purchase of freedom. It was like a great electiveoffice, it was like an inheritance of power--to certain people atcertain times an essential luxury, carrying with it
not a guarantee buta responsibility, not a security but an infinite risk. Its very momentummight drag him down to ruin--the passing of the emotional wave that madeit possible might leave the one who made it high and dry forever on anisland of despair.

  ... Amory knew that afterward Alec would secretly hate him for havingdone so much for him....

  ... All this was flung before Amory like an opened scroll, whileulterior to him and speculating upon him were those two breathless,listening forces: the gossamer aura that hung over and about the girland that familiar thing by the window.

  Sacrifice by its very nature was arrogant and impersonal; sacrificeshould be eternally supercilious.

  _Weep not for me but for thy children._

  That--thought Amory--would be somehow the way God would talk to me.

  Amory felt a sudden surge of joy and then like a face in amotion-picture the aura over the bed faded out; the dynamic shadowby the window, that was as near as he could name it, remained for thefraction of a moment and then the breeze seemed to lift it swiftly outof the room. He clinched his hands in quick ecstatic excitement... theten seconds were up....

  "Do what I say, Alec--do what I say. Do you understand?"

  Alec looked at him dumbly--his face a tableau of anguish.

  "You have a family," continued Amory slowly. "You have a family and it'simportant that you should get out of this. Do you hear me?" He repeatedclearly what he had said. "Do you hear me?"

  "I hear you." The voice was curiously strained, the eyes never for asecond left Amory's.

  "Alec, you're going to lie down here. If any one comes in you act drunk.You do what I say--if you don't I'll probably kill you."

  There was another moment while they stared at each other. Then Amorywent briskly to the bureau and, taking his pocket-book, beckonedperemptorily to the girl. He heard one word from Alec that sounded like"penitentiary," then he and Jill were in the bathroom with the doorbolted behind them.

  "You're here with me," he said sternly. "You've been with me allevening."

  She nodded, gave a little half cry.

  In a second he had the door of the other room open and three menentered. There was an immediate flood of electric light and he stoodthere blinking.

  "You've been playing a little too dangerous a game, young man!"

  Amory laughed.

  "Well?"

  The leader of the trio nodded authoritatively at a burly man in a checksuit.

  "All right, Olson."

  "I got you, Mr. O'May," said Olson, nodding. The other two took acurious glance at their quarry and then withdrew, closing the doorangrily behind them.

  The burly man regarded Amory contemptuously.

  "Didn't you ever hear of the Mann Act? Coming down here with her," heindicated the girl with his thumb, "with a New York license on yourcar--to a hotel like _this_." He shook his head implying that he hadstruggled over Amory but now gave him up.

  "Well," said Amory rather impatiently, "what do you want us to do?"

  "Get dressed, quick--and tell your friend not to make such a racket."Jill was sobbing noisily on the bed, but at these words she subsidedsulkily and, gathering up her clothes, retired to the bathroom. As Amoryslipped into Alec's B. V. D.'s he found that his attitude toward thesituation was agreeably humorous. The aggrieved virtue of the burly manmade him want to laugh.

  "Anybody else here?" demanded Olson, trying to look keen andferret-like.

  "Fellow who had the rooms," said Amory carelessly. "He's drunk as anowl, though. Been in there asleep since six o'clock."

  "I'll take a look at him presently."

  "How did you find out?" asked Amory curiously.

  "Night clerk saw you go up-stairs with this woman."

  Amory nodded; Jill reappeared from the bathroom, completely if ratheruntidily arrayed.

  "Now then," began Olson, producing a note-book, "I want your realnames--no damn John Smith or Mary Brown."

  "Wait a minute," said Amory quietly. "Just drop that big-bully stuff. Wemerely got caught, that's all."

  Olson glared at him.

  "Name?" he snapped.

  Amory gave his name and New York address.

  "And the lady?"

  "Miss Jill--"

  "Say," cried Olson indignantly, "just ease up on the nursery rhymes.What's your name? Sarah Murphy? Minnie Jackson?"

  "Oh, my God!" cried the girl cupping her tear-stained face in her hands."I don't want my mother to know. I don't want my mother to know."

  "Come on now!"

  "Shut up!" cried Amory at Olson.

  An instant's pause.

  "Stella Robbins," she faltered finally. "General Delivery, Rugway, NewHampshire."

  Olson snapped his note-book shut and looked at them very ponderously.

  "By rights the hotel could turn the evidence over to the police andyou'd go to penitentiary, you would, for bringin' a girl from one Stateto 'nother f'r immoral purp'ses--" He paused to let the majesty of hiswords sink in. "But--the hotel is going to let you off."

  "It doesn't want to get in the papers," cried Jill fiercely. "Let usoff! Huh!"

  A great lightness surrounded Amory. He realized that he was safe andonly then did he appreciate the full enormity of what he might haveincurred.

  "However," continued Olson, "there's a protective association among thehotels. There's been too much of this stuff, and we got a 'rangementwith the newspapers so that you get a little free publicity. Not thename of the hotel, but just a line sayin' that you had a little troublein 'lantic City. See?"

  "I see."

  "You're gettin' off light--damn light--but--"

  "Come on," said Amory briskly. "Let's get out of here. We don't need avaledictory."

  Olson walked through the bathroom and took a cursory glance at Alec'sstill form. Then he extinguished the lights and motioned them to followhim. As they walked into the elevator Amory considered a piece ofbravado--yielded finally. He reached out and tapped Olson on the arm.

  "Would you mind taking off your hat? There's a lady in the elevator."

  Olson's hat came off slowly. There was a rather embarrassing two minutesunder the lights of the lobby while the night clerk and a few belatedguests stared at them curiously; the loudly dressed girl with bent head,the handsome young man with his chin several points aloft; the inferencewas quite obvious. Then the chill outdoors--where the salt air wasfresher and keener still with the first hints of morning.

  "You can get one of those taxis and beat it," said Olson, pointing tothe blurred outline of two machines whose drivers were presumably asleepinside.

  "Good-by," said Olson. He reached in his pocket suggestively, but Amorysnorted, and, taking the girl's arm, turned away.

  "Where did you tell the driver to go?" she asked as they whirled alongthe dim street.

  "The station."

  "If that guy writes my mother--"

  "He won't. Nobody'll ever know about this--except our friends andenemies."

  Dawn was breaking over the sea.

  "It's getting blue," she said.

  "It does very well," agreed Amory critically, and then as anafter-thought: "It's almost breakfast-time--do you want something toeat?"

  "Food--" she said with a cheerful laugh. "Food is what queered theparty. We ordered a big supper to be sent up to the room about twoo'clock. Alec didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the littlebastard snitched."

  Jill's low spirits seemed to have gone faster than the scattering night."Let me tell you," she said emphatically, "when you want to stage thatsorta party stay away from liquor, and when you want to get tight stayaway from bedrooms."

  "I'll remember."

  He tapped suddenly at the glass and they drew up at the door of anall-night restaurant.

  "Is Alec a great friend of yours?" asked Jill as they perched themselveson high stools inside, and set their elbows on the dingy counter.

  "He used to be. He probably won't want to be any more--and neverunderstand why."

  "It was sorta c
razy you takin' all that blame. Is he pretty important?Kinda more important than you are?"

  Amory laughed.

  "That remains to be seen," he answered. "That's the question."

  *****

  THE COLLAPSE OF SEVERAL PILLARS

  Two days later back in New York Amory found in a newspaper what hehad been searching for--a dozen lines which announced to whom it mightconcern that Mr. Amory Blaine, who "gave his address" as, etc., had beenrequested to leave his hotel in Atlantic City because of entertaining inhis room a lady _not_ his wife.

  Then he started, and his fingers trembled, for directly above was alonger paragraph of which the first words were:

  "Mr. and Mrs. Leland R. Connage are announcing the engagement of theirdaughter, Rosalind, to Mr. J. Dawson Ryder, of Hartford, Connecticut--"

  He dropped the paper and lay down on his bed with a frightened, sinkingsensation in the pit of his stomach. She was gone, definitely, finallygone. Until now he had half unconsciously cherished the hope deep in hisheart that some day she would need him and send for him, cry that it hadbeen a mistake, that her heart ached only for the pain she had causedhim. Never again could he find even the sombre luxury of wantingher--not this Rosalind, harder, older--nor any beaten, broken woman thathis imagination brought to the door of his forties--Amory had wanted heryouth, the fresh radiance of her mind and body, the stuff that she wasselling now once and for all. So far as he was concerned, young Rosalindwas dead.

  A day later came a crisp, terse letter from Mr. Barton in Chicago, whichinformed him that as three more street-car companies had gone intothe hands of receivers he could expect for the present no furtherremittances. Last of all, on a dazed Sunday night, a telegram told himof Monsignor Darcy's sudden death in Philadelphia five days before.

  He knew then what it was that he had perceived among the curtains of theroom in Atlantic City.