This Side of Paradise | Page 5

to her country there had been a pagan,
Swinburnian young man in Asheville, for whose passionate kisses and
unsentimental conversations she had taken a decided penchant-they had
discussed the matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite
devoid of sappiness. Eventually she had decided to marry for
background, and the young pagan from Asheville had gone through a
spiritual crisis, joined the Catholic Church, and was now-Monsignor
Darcy.
"Indeed, Mrs. Blaine, he is still delightful company quite the cardinal's
right-hand man."
"Amory will go to him one day, I know," breathed the beautiful lady,
"and Monsignor Dark will understand him as he understood me."
Amory became thirteen, rather tall and slender, and more than ever on
to his Celtic mother. He had tutored occasionally-the idea being that he
was to "keep up," at each place "taking up the work where he left off,"
yet as no tutor ever found the place he left off, his mind was still in
very good shape. What a few more years of this life would have made
of him is problematical. However, four hours out from land, Italy
bound, with Beatrice, his appendix burst, probably from too many
meals in bed, and after a series of frantic telegrams to Europe and
America, to the amazement of the passengers the great ship slowly
wheeled around and returned to New York to deposit Amory at the pier.
You will admit that if it was not life it was magnificent.
After the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore a

suspicious resemblance to delirium tremens, and Amory was left in
Minneapolis, destined to spend the ensuing two years with his aunt and
uncle. There the crude, vulgar air of Western civilization first catches
him-in his underwear, so to speak.
A KISS FOR AMORY
His lip curled when he read it.
"I am going to have a bobbing party," it said, "on Thursday, December
the seventeenth, at five o'clock, and I would like it very much if you
could come.
Yours truly,
R.S.V.P. Myra St. Claire.
He had been two months in Minneapolis, and his chief struggle had
been the concealing from "the other guys at school" how particularly
superior he felt himself to be, yet this conviction was built upon
shifting sands. He had shown off one day in French class (he was in
senior French class) to the utter confusion of Mr. Reardon, whose
accent Amory damned contemptuously, and to the delight of the class.
Mr. Reardon, who had spent several weeks in Paris ten years before,
took his revenge on the verbs, whenever he had his book open. But
another time Amory showed off in history class, with quite disastrous
results, for the boys there were his own age, and they shrilled
innuendoes at each other all the following week:
"Aw-I b'lieve, doncherknow, the Umuricun revolution was lawgely an
affair of the middul clawses," or
"Washington came of very good bloodaw, quite goodI b'lieve." Amory
ingeniously tried to retrieve himself by blundering on purpose. Two
years before he had commenced a history of the United States which,
though it only got as far as the Colonial Wars, had been pronounced by
his mother completely enchanting. His chief disadvantage lay in
athletics, but as soon as he discovered that it was the touchstone of

power and popularity at school, he began to make furious, persistent
efforts to excel in the winter sports, and with his ankles aching and
bending in spite of his efforts, he skated valiantly around the Lorelie
rink every afternoon, wondering how soon he would be able to carry a
hockey-stick without getting it inexplicably tangled in his skates.
The invitation to Miss Myra St. Claire's bobbing party spent the
morning in his coat pocket, where it had an intense physical affair with
a dusty piece of peanut brittle. During the afternoon he brought it to
light with a sigh, and after some consideration and a preliminary draft
in the back of Collar and Daniel's "First-Year Latin," composed an
answer:
My dear Miss St. Claire: Your truly charming envitation for the
evening of next Thursday evening was truly delightful to recieve this
morning. I will be charm and inchanted indeed to present my
compliments on next Thursday evening.
Faithfully,
Amory Blaine.
On Thursday, therefore, he walked pensively along the slippery,
shovel-scraped sidewalks, and came in sight of Myra's house, on the
half-hour after five, a lateness which he fancied his mother would have
favored. He waited on the door-step with his eyes nonchalantly
half-closed, and planned his entrance with precision. He would cross
the floor, not too hastily, to Mrs. St. Claire, and say with exactly the
correct modulation:
"My dear Mrs. St. Claire, I'm frightfully sorry to be late, but my
maid"he paused there and realized he would be quoting"but my uncle