The Beautiful and Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald [58]
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Hear you got out a book, Dicky. 'Gratulations!
DICK: (Stiffly) Thanks.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (Innocently) What is it? College stories?
DICK: (More stiffly) No. Not college stories.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: Pity! Hasn't been a good book about Harvard for years.
DICK: (Touchily) Why don't you supply the lack?
THIRD YOUNG MAN: I think I saw a squad of guests turn the drive in a Packard just now.
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Might open a couple more bottles on the strength of that.
THIRD YOUNG MAN: It was the shock of my life when I heard the old man was going to have a wet wedding. Rabid prohibitionist, you know.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: (Snapping his fingers excitedly) By gad! I knew I'd forgotten something. Kept thinking it was my vest.
DICK: What was it?
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! By gad!
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Here! Here! Why the tragedy?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: What'd you forget? The way home?
DICK: (Maliciously) He forgot the plot for his book of Harvard stories.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: No, sir, I forgot the present, by George! I forgot to buy old Anthony a present. I kept putting it off and putting it off, and by gad I've forgotten it! What'll they think?
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: (Facetiously) That's probably what's been holding up the wedding.
(THE FOURTH YOUNG MAN looks nervously at his watch. Laughter.)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: By gad! What an ass I am!
SECOND YOUNG MAN: What d'you make of the bridesmaid who thinks she's Nora Bayes? Kept telling me she wished this was a ragtime wedding. Name's Haines or Hampton.
DICK: (Hurriedly spurring his imagination) Kane, you mean, Muriel Kane. She's a sort of debt of honor, I believe. Once saved Gloria from drowning, or something of the sort.
SECOND YOUNG MAN: I didn't think she could stop that perpetual swaying long enough to swim. Fill up my glass, will you? Old man and I had a long talk about the weather just now.
MAURY: Who? Old Adam?
SECOND YOUNG MAN: No, the bride's father. He must be with a weather bureau.
DICK: He's my uncle, Otis.
OTIS: Well, it's an honorable profession. (Laughter.)
SIXTH YOUNG MAN: Bride your cousin, isn't she?
DICK: Yes, Cable, she is.
CABLE: She certainly is a beauty. Not like you, Dicky. Bet she brings old Anthony to terms.
MAURY: Why are all grooms given the title of "old"? I think marriage is an error of youth.
DICK: Maury, the professional cynic.
MAURY: Why, you intellectual faker!
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Battle of the highbrows here, Otis. Pick up what crumbs you can.
DICK: Faker yourself! What do you know?
MAURY: What do you know?
LICK: Ask me anything. Any branch of knowledge.
MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?
DICK: You don't know yourself.
MAURY: Don't hedge!
DICK: Well, natural selection?
MAURY: Wrong.
DICK: I give it up.
MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!
MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (Laughter.)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?
MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There is a connection.
DICK: What is it then?
MAURY: (Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!
MAURY: (Frowning) Let me just think a minute.
DICK: (Sitting up suddenly) Listen!
(A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.)
DICK: (Weightily) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.
OTIS: Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: I wish to God I'd sent that present.
MAURY: If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.
OTIS: I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and—
(They move slowly toward the door as the chatter becomes a babel and the practising preliminary to the overture