The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald [108]
Then, on the August morning after Adam Patch's unexpected call, they awoke, nauseated and tired, dispirited with life, capable only of one pervasive emotion—fear.
PANIC
"Well?" Anthony sat up in bed and looked down at her. The corners of his lips were drooping with depression, his voice was strained and hollow.
Her reply was to raise her hand to her mouth and begin a slow, precise nibbling at her finger.
"We've done it," he said after a pause; then, as she was still silent, he became exasperated. "Why don't you say something?"
"What on earth do you want me to say?"
"What are you thinking?"
"Nothing."
"Then stop biting your finger!"
Ensued a short confused discussion of whether or not she had been thinking. It seemed essential to Anthony that she should muse aloud upon last night's disaster. Her silence was a method of settling the responsibility on him. For her part she saw no necessity for speech—the moment required that she should gnaw at her finger like a nervous child.
"I've got to fix up this damn mess with my grandfather," he said with uneasy conviction. A faint newborn respect was indicated by his use of "my grandfather" instead of "grampa."
"You can't," she affirmed abruptly. "You can't—ever. He'll never forgive you as long as he lives."
"Perhaps not," agreed Anthony miserably. "Still—I might possibly square myself by some sort of reformation and all that sort of thing—"
"He looked sick," she interrupted, "pale as flour."
"He is sick. I told you that three months ago."
"I wish he'd died last week!" she said petulantly. "Inconsiderate old fool!"
Neither of them laughed.
"But just let me say," she added quietly, "the next time I see you acting with any woman like you did with Rachael Barnes last night, I'll leave you—just—like—that! I'm simply not going to stand it!"
Anthony quailed.
"Oh, don't be absurd," he protested. "You know there's no woman in the world for me except you—none, dearest."
His attempt at a tender note failed miserably—the more imminent danger stalked back into the foreground.
"If I went to him," suggested Anthony, "and said with appropriate biblical quotations that I'd walked too long in the way of unrighteousness and at last seen the light—" He broke off and glanced with a whimsical expression at his wife. "I wonder what he'd do?"
"I don't know."
She was speculating as to whether or not their guests would have the acumen to leave directly after breakfast.
Not for a week did Anthony muster the courage to go to Tarrytown. The prospect was revolting and left alone he would have been incapable of making the trip—but if his will had deteriorated in these past three years, so had his power to resist urging. Gloria compelled him to go. It was all very well to wait a week, she said, for that would give his grandfather's violent animosity time to cool—but to wait longer would be an error—it would give it a chance to harden.
He went, in trepidation ... and vainly. Adam Patch was not well, said Shuttleworth indignantly. Positive instructions had been given that no one was to see him. Before the ex-"gin-physician's" vindictive eye Anthony's front wilted. He walked out to his taxicab with what was almost a slink—recovering only a little of his self-respect as he boarded the train; glad to escape, boylike, to the wonder palaces of consolation that still rose and glittered in his own mind.
Gloria was scornful when he returned to Marietta. Why had he not forced his way in? That was what she would have done!
Between them they drafted a letter to the old man, and after considerable revision sent it off. It was half an apology, half a manufactured explanation. The letter was not answered.
Came a day in September, a day slashed with alternate sun and rain, sun without warmth, rain without freshness. On that day they left the gray house, which had seen the flower of their love. Four trunks and three monstrous crates were piled in the dismantled room where, two years before, they had sprawled lazily, thinking in terms of dreams, remote, languorous, content. The room