Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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In his own crowd Amory saw men kept out for wearing green hats, for being “a damn tailor’s dummy,” for having “too much pull in heaven,” for getting drunk one night “not like a gentleman, by God,” or for unfathomable secret reasons known to no one but the wielders of the black balls.

This orgy of sociability culminated in a gigantic party at the Nassau Inn, where punch was dispensed from immense bowls, and the whole down-stairs became a delirious, circulating, shouting pattern of faces and voices.

“Hi, Dibby—’gratulations!”

“Goo’ boy, Tom, you got a good bunch in Cap.”

“Say, Kerry——”

“Oh, Kerry—I hear you went Tiger with all the weight-lifters!”

“Well, I didn’t go Cottage—the parlor-snakes’ delight.”

“They say Overton fainted when he got his Ivy bid—Did he sign up the first day?—oh, no. Tore over to Murray-Dodge on a bicycle—afraid it was a mistake.”

“How’d you get into Cap—you old roué?”

“’Gratulations!”

“’Gratulations yourself. Hear you got a good crowd.”

When the bar closed, the party broke up into groups and streamed, singing, over the snow-clad campus, in a weird delusion that snobbishness and strain were over at last, and that they could do what they pleased for the next two years.