This Side of Paradise. Francis Scott Fitzgerald
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barn for the rent we pay.”
Amory had to agree that it was.
“I thought of the campus,” he said, “but they say there’s so few freshmen that they’re lost. Have to sit around and study for something to do.”
The gray-eyed man decided to introduce himself.
“My name’s Holiday.”
“Blaine’s my name.”
They shook hands with the fashionable low swoop. Amory grinned.
“Where’d you prep?”
“Andover – where did you?”
“St. Regis’s.”
“Oh, did you? I had a cousin there.”
They discussed the cousin thoroughly, and then Holiday announced that he was to meet his brother for dinner at six.
“Come along and have a bite with us.”
“All right.”
At the Kenilworth Amory met Burne Holiday – he of the gray eyes was Kerry – and during a limpid meal of thin soup and anaemic vegetables they stared at the other freshmen, who sat either in small groups looking very ill at ease, or in large groups seeming very much at home.
“I hear Commons is pretty bad,” said Amory.
“That’s the rumor. But you’ve got to eat there – or pay anyways.”
“Crime!”
“Imposition!”
“Oh, at Princeton you’ve got to swallow everything the first year. It’s like a damned prep school.”
Amory agreed.
“Lot of pep, though,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t have gone to Yale for a million.”
“Me either.”
“You going out for anything?” inquired Amory of the elder brother.
“Not me – Burne here is going out for the Prince – the Daily Princetonian, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You going out for anything?”
“Why – yes. I’m going to take a whack at freshman football.”
“Play at St. Regis’s?”
“Some,” admitted Amory depreciatingly, “but I’m getting so damned thin.”
“You’re not thin.”
“Well, I used to be stocky last fall.”
“Oh!”
After supper they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by the glib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by the wild yelling and shouting.
“Yoho!”
“Oh, honey-baby – you’re so big and strong, but oh, so gentle!”
“Clinch!”
“Oh, Clinch!”
“Kiss her, kiss ‘at lady, quick!”
“Oh-h-h – !”
A group began whistling “By the Sea,” and the audience took it up noisily. This was followed by an indistinguishable song that included much stamping and then by an endless, incoherent dirge.
“Oh-h-h-h-h
She works in a Jam Factoree
And – that-may-be-all-right
But you can’t-fool-me
For I know – DAMN – WELL
That she DON’T-make-jam-all-night!
Oh-h-h-h!”
As they pushed out, giving and receiving curious impersonal glances, Amory decided that he liked the movies, wanted to enjoy them as the row of upper classmen in front had enjoyed them, with their arms along the backs of the seats, their comments Gaelic and caustic, their attitude a mixture of critical wit and tolerant amusement.
“Want a sundae – I mean a jigger?” asked Kerry.
“Sure.”
They suppered heavily and then, still sauntering, eased back to 12.
“Wonderful night.”
“It’s a whiz.”
“You men going to unpack?”
“Guess so. Come on, Burne.”
Amory decided to sit for a while on the front steps, so he bade them good night.
The great tapestries of trees had darkened to ghosts back at the last edge of twilight. The early moon had drenched the arches with pale blue, and, weaving over the night, in and out of the gossamer rifts of moon, swept a song, a song with more than a hint of sadness, infinitely transient, infinitely regretful.
He remembered that an alumnus of the nineties had told him of one of Booth Tarkington’s amusements: standing in mid-campus in the small hours and singing tenor songs to the stars, arousing mingled emotions in the couched undergraduates according to the sentiment of their moods.
Now, far down the shadowy line of University Place a white-clad phalanx broke the gloom, and marching figures, white-shirted, white-trousered, swung rhythmically up the street, with linked arms and heads thrown back:
“Going back – going back,
Going – back – to – Nas-sau – Hall,
Going back – going back —
To the – Best – Old – Place – of – All.
Going back – going back,
From all – this – earth-ly – ball,
We’ll – clear – the – track – as – we – go – back —
Going – back – to – Nas-sau – Hall!”
Amory closed his eyes as the ghostly procession drew near. The song soared so high that all dropped out except the tenors, who bore the melody triumphantly past the danger-point and relinquished it to the fantastic chorus. Then Amory opened his eyes, half afraid that sight would spoil the rich illusion of harmony.
He sighed eagerly. There at the head of the white platoon marched Allenby, the football captain, slim and defiant, as if aware that this year the hopes of the college rested on him, that his hundred-and-sixty pounds were expected to dodge to victory through the heavy blue and crimson lines.
Fascinated, Amory watched each rank of linked arms as it came abreast, the faces indistinct above the polo shirts, the voices blent in a paean of triumph – and then the procession passed through shadowy Campbell Arch, and the voices grew fainter as it wound eastward over the campus.
The minutes passed and Amory sat there very quietly. He regretted the rule that would forbid freshmen to be outdoors after curfew, for he wanted to ramble through the shadowy scented lanes, where Witherspoon brooded like a dark mother over Whig and Clio, her Attic children, where the black Gothic snake of Little curled down to Cuyler and Patton, these in turn flinging the mystery out over the placid slope rolling to the lake.
Princeton of the daytime filtered slowly into his consciousness – West and Reunion, redolent of the sixties, Seventy-nine Hall, brick-red and arrogant, Upper and Lower Pyne, aristocratic Elizabethan ladies not quite content to live among shopkeepers, and, topping all, climbing with clear blue aspiration, the great dreaming spires of Holder and Cleveland towers.
From the first he loved Princeton – its lazy beauty, its half-grasped significance, the wild moonlight revel of the rushes, the handsome, prosperous big-game crowds, and under it all the air of struggle that pervaded his class. From the day when, wild-eyed and exhausted, the jerseyed freshmen sat in the gymnasium and elected some