HE: I thought you’d be sort of—sort of—sexless, you know, swim and play golf.
SHE: Oh, I do—but not in business hours.
HE: Business?
SHE: Six to two—strictly.
HE: I’d like to have some stock in the corporation.
SHE: Oh, it’s not a corporation—it’s just “Rosalind, Unlimited.” Fifty-one shares, name, good-will, and everything goes at $25,000 a year.
HE: (Disapprovingly) Sort of a chilly proposition.
SHE: Well, Amory, you don’t mind—do you? When I meet a man that doesn’t bore me to death after two weeks, perhaps it’ll be different.
HE: Odd, you have the same point of view on men that I have on women.
SHE: I’m not really feminine, you know—in my mind.
HE: (Interested) Go on.
SHE: No, you—you go on—you’ve made me talk about myself. That’s against the rules.
HE: Rules?
SHE: My own rules—but you—Oh, Amory, I hear you’re brilliant. The family expects so much of you.
HE: How encouraging!
SHE: Alec said you’d taught him to think. Did you? I didn’t believe any one could.
HE: No. I’m really quite dull.
(He evidently doesn’t intend this to be taken seriously.)
SHE: Liar.
HE: I‘m—I’m religious—I’m literary. I’ve—I’ve even written poems.
SHE: Vers libre—splendid! (She declaims.)
“The trees are green,
The birds are singing in the trees,
The girl sips her poison
The bird flies away the girl dies.”
HE: (Laughing) No, not that kind.
SHE: (Suddenly) I like you.
HE: Don’t.
SHE: Modest too—
HE: I’m afraid of you. I’m always afraid of a girl—until I’ve kissed her.
SHE: (Emphatically) My dear boy, the war is over.
HE: So I’ll always be afraid of you.
SHE: (Rather sadly) I suppose you will.
(A slight hesitation on both their parts)
HE: (After due consideration) Listen. This is a frightful thing to ask.
SHE: (Knowing what’s coming) After five minutes.
HE: But will you—kiss me? Or are you afraid?
SHE: I’m never afraid—but your reasons are so poor.
HE: Rosalind, I really want to kiss you.
SHE: So do I.
(They kiss—definitely and thoroughly.)
HE: (After a breathless second) Well, is your curiosity satisfied?
SHE: Is yours?
HE: No, it’s only aroused.
(He looks it.)
SHE: (Dreamily) I’ve kissed dozens of men. I suppose I’ll kiss dozens more.
HE: (Abstractedly) Yes, I suppose you could—like that.
SHE: Most people like the way I kiss.
HE: (Remembering himself) Good Lord, yes. Kiss me once more, Rosalind.
SHE: No—my curiosity is generally satisfied at one.
HE: (Discouraged) Is that a rule?
SHE: I make rules to fit the cases.
HE: You and I are somewhat alike—except that I’m years older in experience.
SHE: How old are you?
HE: Almost twenty-three. You?
SHE: Nineteen—just.
HE: I suppose you’re the product of a fashionable school.
SHE: No—I’m fairly raw material. I was expelled from Spenceag—I’ve forgotten why.
HE: What’s your general trend?
SHE: Oh, I’m bright, quite selfish, emotional when aroused, fond of admiration—
HE: (Suddenly) I don’t want to fall in love with you—
SHE: (Raising her eyebrows) Nobody asked you to.
HE: (Continuing coldly) But I probably will. I love your mouth.
SHE: Hush! Please don’t fall in love with my mouth—hair, eyes, shoulders, slippers—but not my mouth. Everybody falls in love with my mouth.
HE: It’s quite beautiful.
SHE: It’s too small.
HE: No it isn’t—lets see.
(He kisses her again with the same thoroughness.)
SHE: (Rather moved) Say something sweet.
HE: (Frightened) Lord help me.
SHE: (Drawing away) Well, don’t—if it’s so hard.
HE: Shall we pretend? So soon?
SHE: We haven’t the same standards of time as other people.
HE: Already it’s—other people.
SHE: Let’s pretend.
HE: No—I can’t—it’s sentiment.
SHE: You’re not sentimental?
HE: No, I’m romantic—a sentimental person thinks things will last—a romantic person hopes against hope that they won’t. Sentiment is emotional.
SHE: And you’re not? (With her eyes half-closed) You probably flatter yourself that that’s a superior attitude.
HE: Well—Rosalind, Rosalind, don’t argue—kiss me again.
SHE: (Quite chilly now) No—I have no desire to kiss you.
HE: (Openly taken aback) You wanted to kiss me a minute ago.
SHE: This is now.
HE: I’d better go.
SHE: I suppose so.
(He goes toward the door.)
SHE: Oh!
(He turns.)
SHE: (Laughing) Score—Home Team: One hundred—Opponents: Zero.
(He starts back.)
SHE: (Quickly) Rain—no game.
(He goes out.)
(She goes quietly to the chiffonier, takes out a cigarette-case and hides it in the side drawer of a desk. Her mother enters, note-book in hand.)
MRS. CONNAGE: Good—I’ve been wanting to speak to you alone before we go down-stairs.
ROSALIND: Heavens! you frighten me!
MRS. CONNAGE: Rosalind, you’ve been a very expensive proposition.
ROSALIND: (Resignedly) Yes.
MRS. CONNAGE: And you know your father hasn’t what he once had.
ROSALIND: (Making a wry face) Oh, please don’t talk about money.
MRS. CONNAGE: You can’t do anything without it. This is our last year in this house—and unless things change Cecelia won’t have the advantages you’ve had.
ROSALIND: (Impatiently) Well—what is it?
MRS. CONNAGE: So I ask you to please mind me in several things I’ve put down in my note-book. The first one is: don’t disappear with young men. There may be a time when it’s valuable, but at present I want you on the dance-floor where I can find you. There are certain men I want to have you meet and I don’t like finding you in some corner of the conservatory exchanging silliness with any one—or listening to it.
ROSALIND: (Sarcastically) Yes, listening to it is better.
MRS. CONNAGE: And don’t waste a lot of time with the college set—little boys nineteen and twenty years old. I don’t mind a prom or a football game, but staying away from advantageous parties to eat in little cafés down-town with Tom, Dick, and Harry—
ROSALIND: (Offering her code, which is, in its way, quite as high as her mother’s) Mother, it’s done—you can’t run everything now the way you did in the early nineties.
MRS. CONNAGE: (Paying no attention) There are several bachelor friends of your father’s that I want you to meet to-night—youngish men.
ROSALIND: (Nodding wisely) About forty-five?
MRS. CONNAGE: (Sharply) Why not?
ROSALIND: Oh, quite all right—they know life and are so adorably tired looking (shakes her head)—but they will dance.
MRS. CONNAGE: I haven’t met Mr. Blaine—but I don’t think you’ll care for him. He doesn’t sound like a money-maker.
ROSALIND: Mother, I never think about money.
MRS. CONNAGE: You never keep it long enough to think about it.
ROSALIND: (Sighs) Yes, I suppose some day I’ll marry a ton of it—out of sheer boredom.
MRS. CONNAGE: (Referring to note-book) I had a wire from Hartford. Dawson Ryder is coming up. Now
there’s a young man I like, and he’s floating in money. It seems to me that since you seem tired of Howard Gillespie you might give Mr. Ryder some encouragement. This is the third time he’s been up in a month.
ROSALIND: How did you know I was tired of Howard Gillespie?
MRS. CONNAGE: The poor boy looks so miserable every time he comes.
ROSALIND: That was one of those romantic, pre-battle affairs. They’re all wrong.
MRS. CONNAGE: (Her say said) At any rate, make us proud of you tonight.
ROSALIND: Don’t you think I’m beautiful?
MRS. CONNAGE: You know you are.
(From down-stairs is heard the moan of a violin being tuned, the roll of a drum. MRS. CONNAGE turns quickly to her daughter.)
MRS. CONNAGE: Come!
ROSALIND: One minute!
(Her mother leaves. ROSALIND goes to the glass where she gazes at herself with great satisfaction. She kisses her hand and touches her mirrored mouth with it. Then she turns out the lights and leaves the room. Silence for a moment. A few chords from the piano, the discreet patter of faint drums, the rustle of new silk, all blend on the staircase outside and drift in through the partly opened door. Bundled figures pass in the lighted hall. The laughter heard below becomes doubled and multiplied. Then some one comes in, closes the door, and switches on the lights. It is CECELIA. She goes to the chiffonier, looks in the drawers, hesitates—then to the desk whence she takes the cigarette-case and extracts one. She lights it and then, puffing and blowing, walks toward the mirror.)
CECELIA: (In tremendously sophisticated accents) Oh, yes, coming out is such a farce nowadays, you know. One really plays around so much before one is seventeen, that it’s positively anticlimax. (Shaking hands with a visionary middle-aged nobleman.) Yes, your grace—I b‘lieve I’ve heard my sister speak of you. Have a puff—they’re very good. They’re—they’re Coronas. You don’t smoke? What a pity! The king doesn’t allow it, I suppose. Yes, I’ll dance.
(So she dances around the room to a tune from down-stairs, her arms outstretched to an imaginary partner, the cigarette waving in her hand.)
Several Hours Later
The corner of a den down-stairs, filled by a very comfortable leather lounge. A small light is on each side above, and in the middle, over the couch hangs a painting of a very old, very dignified gentleman, period 1860. Outside the music is heard in a fox-trot.
ROSALIND is seated on the lounge and on her left is HOWARD GILLESPIE, a vapid youth of about twenty-four. He is obviously very unhappy, and she is quite bored.
GILLESPIE: (Feebly) What do you mean I’ve changed. I feel the same toward you.
ROSALIND: But you don’t look the same to me.
GILLESPIE: Three weeks ago you used to say that you liked me because I was so blase, so indifferent—I still am.
ROSALIND: But not about me. I used to like you because you had brown eyes and thin legs.
GILLESPIE: (Helplessly) They’re still thin and brown. You’re a vampire, that’s all.
ROSALIND: The only thing I know about vamping is what’s on the piano score. What confuses men is that I’m perfectly natural. I used to think you were never jealous. Now you follow me with your eyes wherever I go.
GILLESPIE: I love you.
ROSALIND: (Coldly) I know it.
GILLESPIE: And you haven’t kissed me for two weeks. I had an idea that after a girl was kissed she was—was—won.
ROSALIND: Those days are over. I have to be won all over again every time you see me.
GILLESPIE: Are you serious?
ROSALIND: About as usual. There used to be two kinds of kisses: First when girls were kissed and deserted; second, when they were engaged. Now there’s a third kind, where the man is kissed and deserted. If Mr. Jones of the nineties bragged he’d kissed a girl, every one knew he was through with her. If Mr. Jones of 1919 brags the same every one knows it’s because he can’t kiss her any more. Given a decent start any girl can beat a man nowadays.
GILLESPIE: Then why do you play with men?
ROSALIND: (Leaning forward confidentially) For that first moment, when he’s interested. There is a moment—Oh, just before the first kiss, a whispered word—something that makes it worth while.
GILLESPIE: And then?
ROSALIND: Then after that you make him talk about himself. Pretty soon he thinks of nothing but being alone with you—he sulks, he won’t fight, he doesn’t want to play—Victory!
(Enter DAWSON RYDER, twenty-six, handsome, wealthy, faithful to his own, a bore perhaps, but steady and sure of success.)
RYDER: I believe this is my dance, Rosalind.
ROSALIND: Well, Dawson, so you recognize me. Now I know I haven’t got too much paint on. Mr. Ryder, this is Mr. Gillespie.
(They shake hands and GILLESPIE leaves, tremendously downcast.)
RYDER: Your party is certainly a success.
ROSALIND: Is it—I haven’t seen it lately. I’m weary—Do you mind sitting out a minute?
RYDER: Mind—I’m delighted. You know I loathe this “rushing” idea. See a girl yesterday, to-day, to-morrow
ROSALIND: Dawson!
RYDER: What?
ROSALIND: I wonder if you know you love me.
RYDER: (Startled) What—Oh—you know you’re remarkable!
ROSALIND: Because you know I’m an awful proposition. Any one who marries me will have his hands full. I’m mean—mighty mean.
RYDER: Oh, I wouldn’t say that.
ROSALIND: Oh, yes, I am—especially to the people nearest to me. (She rises.) Come, let’s go. I’ve changed my mind and I want to dance. Mother is probably having a fit.
(Exeunt. Enter ALEC and CECELIA.)
CECELIA: Just my luck to get my own brother for an intermission.
ALEC: (Gloomily) I’ll go if you want me to.
CECELIA: Good heavens, no—with whom would I begin the next dance? (Sighs.) There’s no color in a dance since the French officers went back.
ALEC: (Thoughtfully) I don’t want Amory to fall in love with Rosalind.
CECELIA: Why, I had an idea that that was just what you did want.
ALEC: I did, but since seeing these girls—I don’t know. I’m awfully attached to Amory. He’s sensitive and I don’t want him to break his heart over somebody who doesn’t care about him.
CECELIA: He’s very good looking.
ALEC: (Still thoughtfully) She won’t marry him, but a girl doesn’t have to marry a man to break his heart.
CECELIA: What does it? I wish I knew the secret.
ALEC: Why, you cold-blooded little kitty. It’s lucky for some that the Lord gave you a pug nose.
(Enter MRS. CONNAGE.)
MRS. CONNAGE: Where on earth is Rosalind?
ALEC: (Brilliantly) Of course you’ve come to the best people to find out. She’d naturally be with us.
MRS. CONNAGE: Her father has marshalled eight bachelor millionaires to meet her.
ALEC: You might form a squad and march through the halls.
MRS. CONNAGE: I’m perfectly serious—for all I know she may be at the Cocoanut Grove with some football player on the night of her début. You look left and I’ll—
ALEC: (Flippantly) Hadn’t you better send the butler through the cellar?
MRS. CONNAGE: (Perfectly serious) Oh, you don’t think she’d be there?
CECELIA: He’s only joking, mother.
ALEC: Mother had a picture of her tapping a keg of beer with some high hurdler.
MRS. CONNAGE: Let’s look right away.
(They go out. ROSALIND comes in with GILLESPIE.)
GILLESPIE: Rosalind—Once more I ask you. Don’t you care a blessed thing about me?
(AMORY walks in briskly.)
AMORY: My dance.
ROSALIND: Mr. Gillespie, this is Mr. Blaine.
GILLESPIE: I’ve met Mr. Blaine. From Lake Geneva, aren’t you?
AMORY: Yes.
GILLESPIE: (Desperately) I’ve been there. It’s in the—the Middle West, i
sn’t it?
AMORY: (Spicily) Approximately. But I always felt that I’d rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.
GILLESPIE: What!
AMORY: Oh, no offense.
(GILLESPIE bows and leaves.)
ROSALIND: He’s too much people.
AMORY: I was in love with a people once.
ROSALIND: So?
AMORY: Oh, yes—her name was Isabelle—nothing at all to her except what I read into her.
ROSALIND: What happened?
AMORY: Finally I convinced her that she was smarter than I was—then she threw me over. Said I was critical and impractical, you know.
ROSALIND: What do you mean impractical?
AMORY: Oh—drive a car, but can’t change a tire.
ROSALIND: What are you going to do?
AMORY: Can’t say—run for President, write—
ROSALIND: Greenwich Village?
AMORY: Good heavens, no—I said write—not drink.
ROSALIND: I like business men. Clever men are usually so homely.
AMORY: I feel as if I’d known you for ages.
ROSALIND: Oh, are you going to commence the “pyramid” story?
AMORY: No—I was going to make it French. I was Louis XIV and you were one of my—my—(Changing his tone) Suppose—we fell in love.
ROSALIND: I’ve suggested pretending.
AMORY: If we did it would be very big.
ROSALIND: Why?
AMORY: Because selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great loves.
ROSALIND: (Turning her lips up) Pretend.
(Very deliberately they kiss.)
AMORY: I can’t say sweet things. But you are beautiful.
ROSALIND: Not that.
AMORY: What then?
ROSALIND: (Sadly) Oh, nothing—only I want sentiment, real sentiment—and I never find it.
AMORY: I never find anything else in the world—and I loathe it.
ROSALIND: It’s so hard to find a male to gratify one’s artistic taste.
(Some one has opened a door and the music of a waltz surges into the room. ROSALIND rises.)
This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 21