The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald [174]
Gloria and Dick came in at five and called his name. There was no answer—they went into the living room and found a chair with its back smashed lying in the doorway, and they noticed that all about the room there was a sort of disorder—the rugs had slid, the pictures and bric-à-brac were upset upon the centre table. The air was sickly sweet with cheap perfume.
They found Anthony sitting in a patch of sunshine on the floor of his bedroom. Before him, open, were spread his three big stamp-books, and when they entered he was running his hands through a great pile of stamps that he had dumped from the back of one of them. Looking up and seeing Dick and Gloria he put his head critically on one side and motioned them back.
"Anthony!" cried Gloria tensely, "we've won! They reversed the decision!"
"Don't come in," he murmured wanly, "you'll muss them. I'm sorting, and I know you'll step in them. Everything always gets mussed."
"What are you doing?" demanded Dick in astonishment. "Going back to childhood? Don't you realize you've won the suit? They've reversed the decision of the lower courts. You're worth thirty millions!"
Anthony only looked at him reproachfully.
"Shut the door when you go out." He spoke like a pert child.
With a faint horror dawning in her eyes, Gloria gazed at him—
"Anthony!" she cried, "what is it? What's the matter? Why didn't you come—why, what is it?"
"See here," said Anthony softly, "you two get out—now, both of you. Or else I'll tell my grandfather."
He held up a handful of stamps and let them come drifting down about him like leaves, varicolored and bright, turning and fluttering gaudily upon the sunny air: stamps of England and Ecuador, Venezuela and Spain—Italy....
TOGETHER WITH THE SPARROWS
That exquisite heavenly irony which has tabulated the demise of so many generations of sparrows doubtless records the subtlest verbal inflections of the passengers of such ships as The Berengaria. And doubtless it was listening when the young man in the plaid cap crossed the deck quickly and spoke to the pretty girl in yellow.
"That's him," he said, pointing to a bundled figure seated in a wheel chair near the rail. "That's Anthony Patch. First time he's been on deck."
"Oh—that's him?"
"Yes. He's been a little crazy, they say, ever since he got his money, four or five months ago. You see, the other fellow, Shuttleworth, the religious fellow, the one that didn't get the money, he locked himself up in a room in a hotel and shot himself—
"Oh, he did—"
"But I guess Anthony Patch don't care much. He got his thirty million. And he's got his private physician along in case he doesn't feel just right about it. Has she been on deck?" he asked.
The pretty girl in yellow looked around cautiously.
"She was here a minute ago. She had on a Russian-sable coat that must have cost a small fortune." She frowned and then added decisively: "I can't stand her, you know. She seems sort of—sort of dyed and unclean, if you know what I mean. Some people just have that look about them whether they are or not."
"Sure, I know," agreed the man with the plaid cap. "She's not bad-looking, though." He paused. "Wonder what he's thinking about—his money, I guess, or maybe he's got remorse about that fellow Shuttleworth."
"Probably...."
But the man in the plaid cap was quite wrong. Anthony Patch, sitting near the rail and looking out at the sea, was not thinking of his money, for he had seldom in his life been really preoccupied with material vainglory, nor of Edward Shuttleworth, for it is best to look on the sunny side of these