This Side of Paradise

ode up the slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the power of regretting

ach other. But Eleanor-did Amory dream her? Afterward their ghosts played, yet both of them hoped from their souls never to meet. Was it the infinite sadness of her eyes

have no other ad

gh, any more th

d to put it

g things w

ave for

aw

t melted wi

eams b

to-

awns we laug

see, that non

dawns... a

ll not

e tear will ri

le whi

reg

for a reme

ven s

we've

d ghosts a w

surface of

es drift ben

ll not

nd see couldn't possibly be used as a rhyme. And then Eleanor h

om passes...

s wisdom...

to th

ll ou

ll not

of Ramilly County and lived in a big, gloomy house with her grandfather. She had b

y. A passing storm decided to break out, and to his great impatience the sky grew black as pitch and the rain began to splatter down through the trees, become suddenly furtive and ghostly. Thunder rolled with menacing crashes up the valley and scattered through the woods in intermittent batteries. He stumbled blindly on, hunting for a way out, and finally, through webs of twisted branches, caught sight of

and whoever was singing was very close to him. A year before he might have laughed, or trembled

anglot

vi

'aut

nt mon

e la

oto

ver. The girl was evidently in the field and the voice seemed t

n in a weird chant that soared and hu

suff

leme

e l'

e so

ours

pleu

tered Amory aloud, "who would deliver Verlaine

unalarmed. "Who are you?-Manfred,

impulse, raising his voice above

riek came from

he blond boy that likes 'Ula

ived, dripping wet. A head appeared over the edge-it was so dark that Amory c

jump and I'll catch your hand-n

side, knee-deep in hay, a small, white hand reach

she of the damp hair. "Do

humb like mine!

ich is dangerous without seeing

on the soggy haystack, ten feet above the ground. But she had covered her face and he saw nothing but a s

u'll sit opposite me in this hollow you can have half of the raincoat, wh

aid joyfully; "you ask

n't call you that any more, because you've got reddish hair. I

was trying desperately to see Psyche, but the lightning refused to flash again, and he waited impatiently. Good Lord! supposing she wasn't beautiful-supposing she was forty and pedantic-heavens! Suppose, only suppose,

ot," s

t w

d when I first saw you, so it isn't

on ea

ht of it in their heads, yet ten minutes later speak aloud and find that their minds had followed the same channel

now about 'Ulalume'-how did you know the color of my hair? Wha

t-pale skin, the color of marble in starlight, slender brows, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds in the blinding glare. She was a witch, of perhaps nineteen,

and I suppose you're about to say that m

r?" he asked intently.

n have asked me. It's medium, I suppose-No one ever looks long at my hair. I've got

question,

l-besides my name isn't

ok like Eleanor-you have that El

nce as they list

eck, fellow lunatic,"

my que

ng relation to be notified, grandfather-Ramilly Savage; height, five feet four in

nterrupted, "wher

o conversation. Well, my boy, I was behind a hedge sunning myself one day las

n the night w

ys

ar dials po

f the path a

ys

ous lustre

nown reason, and so I saw but the back of your beautiful head. 'Oh!' says I, 't

interrupted. "Now g

elf except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not

was in a trance. He felt that every moment was precious. He had never met a girl like this before-she would never seem quite the same again. H

pause, "and that is why I'm here, to answer another of your ques

y! how

kly depression, nevertheless. I came out here to get wet-like a w

Amory sai

lightning might strike me-but here I am and it hasn't, of course, but the main point is that this time I wasn't any more afraid of it than I had been when I was a Chr

h-" cried Amory indign

s and laughed. "See-see! Conscience-kill it like me! Eleanor

he objected. "I can't be rati

yes never leaving his own and whispe

're sentimental. You're not like me.

he sentimental person thinks things will last-the romantic person has a desper

aid sadly. "Let's get off the hay

for the moon had risen and the storm had scurried away into western Maryland. When Eleanor's arm touched his he felt his hands grow cold with deadly fear lest he should lose the shadow brush with which his imagination was painting wonders of her. He watched her from the corners of his eyes as ever he did when he walked with her-she was a feast and a folly and he wished it had been his destiny to

TEM

e of grass and nibble

e in August or Septe

n th

Easter. I'm

d up her nose. "Huh

dn't she? Easter has her hair b

andals, oh, th

ndor and spee

ed: "I suppose Hallowe'en is a bett

as eve does very well fo

he name's become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of

," Amory sugges

she said, raking

d fulfil the pro

ught a

he said finally, "a sort of pagan heaven-you ough

hy

od deal like the pictu

passionate in Eleanor's reading aloud. They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically, when they read, than when she was in his arms, and this was often, for they fell half into love almost from the first. Yet was Amory capable of love now? He could, as always, run through the emotions in a half hour, but even while they revelled in their imaginations, he knew that ne

m nights when he saw the fireflies among dusky tree trunks and heard the low drone of many frogs. Then Eleanor seemed to

a tear, is it

hings that ar

husk and fu

gone and the d

at the age of seventeen. She had a wild winter and arrived in the country in March, having quarrelled frantically with all her Baltimore relatives, and shocked them into fiery protest. A rather fast crowd had come out, who drank cocktails in limousines and were promiscuously condescending and patronizing toward older people, and Eleanor with an esprit that hinted strongly of the boulevards, led many innocents still

h wind-drunk trees. How could any one possibly think or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll there on the edge of time while the flower months

rs of sweat and blood, that sudden absurd instinct for paternity that Rosalind had stirred; the half-sensual, half-neurotic quality of this autumn with Eleanor. He felt that it would take all time, more than he

ad alternated between being borne along a stream of love or fascination, or left in an eddy, and in

how well they harmonize!" said Eleanor sadl

mer of our hear

id finally, "was

ig

re beautifu

ow," said A

Amory and Eleanor, dim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty in curious elfin love moods. Then they turned out of t

she whispered. "I

ch! F

Eleanor, shadowy and unreal, seemed somehow oddly familiar. Amory thought how it

lack as

rmured Eleanor, "little lon

s my las

caught her

twisted in through the vines and listened... the fireflies hung upon

ND OF

n and so inters the golden token in its icy mass," chanted Eleanor to the trees that skeletoned the body of the night

he objected, "and I don't know enough abou

g over, she patted him lazily with her riding-crop. "You can lea

ve me to the station with th

a tendency toward wavering that prevents

ose beside, and, leaning t

ll pull you over and m

smiled and shook h

ike fighting and exploring and ski-ing in Canada? By the way, we're going to r

ke me stay up all night and sleep in the train like an

t probably gave the belated traveller a series of shivers, she turned her horse into

Manfred, build herself intellectual and imaginative pyramids while she revelled in th

Vanity, a hundred

eathlessly, and, tha

her eyes with

ave my love!" he

ath, and, with her lo

t her eyes, ever his

k in rhyme, be wise

all my words, howe

June, and no one eve

or an af

at Shakespeare must have desired, to have been able to write with such divine despair, was that the lady should live... and now we have no real interest in her.... The irony

d-perhaps the last time in her life that she could be rational (she meant pose with comfort). So they had turned into the woods and rode for half an hour with scarcely a word, e

" whispered Eleanor; "much m

kind of foliage or underbrush at night. Out

slope of a

oon rolling moo

me, last and m

in, silver-gray in the rock-ribbed moonlight, broke the long line of bare ground; behind lay the black edge of the woods like a dark frosting on

all noises divide into 'tump-tump-tump' until you could swear eternity was divisible into so many tumps? That's the way I feel-old horses go t

Eleanor pulled her cape

ry cold?" a

e real one, with the fundamental honesty that keeps me from

here the fall met the ground a hundred feet below, a black str

ng involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified-and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me-I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm

do. Oh, just one person in fifty has any glimmer of what sex is. I'm hipped on Freud and all that, but it's rotten that every bit

ring force that's part of the machinery under everything. It's like an acto

ey had turned the cliff and were riding a

lves the intellectuals cover it up by pretending that it's another side of us, has nothing to do with our shining brains; we pretend that the fact that we realize it is really absolving us from being a prey

kiss you now-I'

her impatiently. "Intellect is no protecti

"The Catholic Church or

up, rather

about the sixth and ninth commandments. It's just all cloaks, sentiment and spiritual rouge and panaceas. I'll tell you there is no God, not even a definite abstract goodness; so it's all got to

od let him stri

arply. His materialism, always a thin cloak, was torn to shreds by El

e continued coldly, "like Napoleon and Oscar Wilde and the rest

se up sharply and he

tch! I'm going over the cliff!" And before he could interfere sh

d step blindly over. Then some ten feet from the edge of the cliff she gave a sudden shriek and flung herself sideways-plunged from her horse and, rolling over twice

or!" h

er lips moved and her eye

, are yo

," she said faintly,

orse

God-

thought I was going

his saddle. So they started homeward; Amory walking

e I've done things like that. When I was eleven mothe

s in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like br

NOR SENT AMORY S

rn, over the li

c and bearing a

a laughing and r

er unheard, unafr

it splendor, or wha

when summer let

the patterns they c

ical, faint in t

.. and the night

and shadowed wit

rs came by who ha

of peace in the

ead faiths that th

that bought deli

at we knew and the l

t that we paid t

dreams, by the wa

the past that w

but sun and the lit

it seems... I hav

night hold, with

to the home in t

ghostly clover? God!... till you st

aid

ed... we are chronic

om meteors that

ss is stretched by th

nderstandable cha

we traced to Sec

and voices... a

love over the li

that bought deli

ELEANOR AND WHICH HE

a song fading an

d far away a fa

over the fields a

cloud scurries

n and flutters t

. The shad

, the trees are f

alley through

e darker storm

ir the breath

r tenuous

I wa

ists and for t

that stir th

ds that pil

g

teach me, stre

ds that I kn

ummer every r

ason every win

ss me in the m

you, damp lips

irony, that

old when we ha

drift on out b

, blown with the

pes, dead leaves

m and wan wit

creep into the

l die over

ni

etted breast the

wn the dreaming h

her hair the

... Love for the

to their last

d far away a fa