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Ice Palace (version 3)-F. Scott Fitzgerald · Conquistador

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Speaker 1: The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is a
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Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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Speaker 1: Reading by Matt Perrart The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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Speaker 1: The sunlight dripped over the house like golden paint over
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Speaker 1: an art jar, and the freckling shadows here and there
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Speaker 1: only intensified the rigor of the bath of light. The
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Speaker 1: Butterworth and Larkin houses flanking were entrenched behind great stodgy trees.
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Speaker 1: Only the Happer house took the full sun, and all
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Speaker 1: day long faced the dusty road street with a tolerant,
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Speaker 1: kindly patience. This was the city of Charleton, in southernmost Georgia.
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Speaker 1: September afternoon. Up in her bedroom window, Sally Carrol Happer
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Speaker 1: rested her nineteen year old chin on a fifty two
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Speaker 1: year old sill and watched Clark Darrow's ancient Ford turn
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Speaker 1: the corner. The car was hot, being partly metallic, it
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Speaker 1: retained all the heat it absorbed or evolved, and Clark Darrow,
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Speaker 1: sitting bolt upright at the wheel, wore a pained strained expression,
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Speaker 1: as though he considered himself a spare part, or rather
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Speaker 1: likely to break. He laboriously crossed two dust ruts, the
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Speaker 1: wheels squeaking indignantly at the encounter, and then, with a
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Speaker 1: terrifying expression, he gave the steering gear a final wrench
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Speaker 1: and deposited self and car approximately in front of the
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Speaker 1: happer steps. There was a heaving sound, a death rattle,
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Speaker 1: followed by a short silence, and then the air was
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Speaker 1: rent by a startling whistle. Sally Carrol gazed down sleepily.
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Speaker 1: She started to yawn, but, finding this quite impossible unless
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Speaker 1: she raised her chin from the window, sill changed her
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Speaker 1: mind and continued silently to regard the car, whose owner
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Speaker 1: sat brilliantly, if perfunctorily, at attention as he waited for
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Speaker 1: an answer to his signal. After a moment, the whistle
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Speaker 1: once more split the dusty air. Good moanin With difficulty,
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Speaker 1: Clark twisted his tall body round and bent a distorted
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Speaker 1: glance on the window. Tame moanin, Sally Carrol, isn't it
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Speaker 1: shoenov what she doin eatin an apple? Come on go swimmin',
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Speaker 1: won't you? Rick? And so how about her? Ain? Up Challen.
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Speaker 1: Sally Carrol sighed voluminously and raised herself with a profound
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Speaker 1: inertia from the floor where she had been occupied, and
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Speaker 1: alternately destroyed parts of a green apple and painting paper
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Speaker 1: dolls for her younger sister. She approached a mirror, regarded
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Speaker 1: her expression with a pleased and pleasant languor, dabbed two
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Speaker 1: spots of rouge on her lips and a grain of
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Speaker 1: powder on her nose, and covered her bobbed corn colored
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Speaker 1: hair with a rose littered sunbonnet. Then she kicked over
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Speaker 1: the painting water, said oh damn, but let it lay,
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Speaker 1: and left the room. How you Clark, she inquired a
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Speaker 1: minute later, as she slipped nimbly over the side of
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Speaker 1: the car. Mighty fine, Sally Carrol, Where we go swim
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Speaker 1: in out to Wally's pool, told Marylyn we'd call by
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Speaker 1: and get her and Joe Ewen Clark was dark and lean,
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Speaker 1: and when on foot, was rather inclined to stoop. His
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Speaker 1: eyes were ominous, and his expression somewhat petulant, except when
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Speaker 1: startlingly illuminated by one of his frequent smiles. Clark had
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Speaker 1: a income just enough to keep himself in ease, and
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Speaker 1: his car in Gasolene, and he had spent the two
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Speaker 1: years since he graduated from Georgia Tech In dozing round
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Speaker 1: the lazy streets of his home town, discussing how he
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Speaker 1: could best invest his capital for an immediate fortune. Hanging
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Speaker 1: round he found not at all difficult. A crowd of
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Speaker 1: little girls had grown up beautifully, the amazing Sally Carrol
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Speaker 1: foremost among them, and they enjoyed being swum with and
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Speaker 1: danced with and made love to in the flower filled
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Speaker 1: summery evenings. And they all liked Clark immensely. When Feminine
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Speaker 1: Company Paul, there were half a dozen other youths who
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Speaker 1: were always just about to do something, and meanwhile were
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Speaker 1: quite willing to join him a few holes of golf,
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Speaker 1: or a game of billiards, or the consumption of a
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Speaker 1: quart of hard yellow liquor. Every once in a while
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Speaker 1: one of these contemporaries made a farewell round of calls
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Speaker 1: before going up to New York or Philadelphia or Pittsburgh
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Speaker 1: to go into business. But mostly they just stayed round
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Speaker 1: in this languid paradise of dreamy skies and firefly evenings
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Speaker 1: and noisy niggers street fairs, and especially of gracious soft
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Speaker 1: voiced girls who were brought up on memories instead of money.
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Speaker 1: The Ford having been excited into a sort of restless,
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Speaker 1: resentful life, Clark and Sally Carrol rolled and rattled down
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Speaker 1: Valley Avenue into Jefferson Street, where the dust road became
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Speaker 1: a pavement, along Opiate Millicent Place, where there were half
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Speaker 1: a dozen prosperous, substantial mansions, and on into the downtown section.
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Speaker 1: Driving was perilous here, for it was shopping time. The
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Speaker 1: population idled casually across the streets, and a drove of low,
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Speaker 1: moaning oxen were being urged along in front of a
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Speaker 1: placid street car. Even the shops seemed only yawning at
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Speaker 1: their doors and blinking their windows in the sunshine before
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Speaker 1: retiring into a state of utter and finite coma. Sally
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Speaker 1: Carrol said, Clark, suddenly, it a fact that you're engaged.
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Speaker 1: She looked at him quickly. Where'd you hear that? Sure enough,
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Speaker 1: you engaged. That's a nice question. Girl told me you
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Speaker 1: were engaged to a yankee you met up in Ashville
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Speaker 1: last summer. Sally Carrol sighed, I never never saw such
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Speaker 1: an old town for rumors. Don't marry a yankee, Sally Carrol.
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Speaker 1: We need you round here. Sally Carrol was silent a
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Speaker 1: moment clock she demanded, suddenly, who on earth shall I marry?
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Speaker 1: I offer my services? Honey, you couldn't support a wife,
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Speaker 1: she answered cheerfully. Anyway, I know you too well to
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Speaker 1: fall in love with you. That doesn't mean you ought
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Speaker 1: to marry a yankee, he persisted. S'pose I love him?
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Speaker 1: He shook his head. You couldn't. He'd be a lot
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Speaker 1: different from us every way. He broke off as he
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Speaker 1: held the car in front of a rambling, dilapidated house.
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Speaker 1: Marylyn Wade and Joe Ewing appeared in the doorway. Lo
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Speaker 1: Sally Carrol. Hi, how you are? Sally Carrol demanded Marylyn,
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Speaker 1: as they started off again. You engaged? Lordie? Where'd all
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Speaker 1: this start? Can't I look at a man? Thought every
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Speaker 1: buddy in town engaging me to him? Clark stared straight
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Speaker 1: in front of him at a bolt on the clattering windshield.
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Speaker 1: Sally Carrol, he said, with a curious intensity. Don't you
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Speaker 1: like us? What us down here? Why? Clark? You know
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Speaker 1: I do? I adore all you boys? Then why you're
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Speaker 1: getting engaged to a yankee? Clark? I don't know I'm
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Speaker 1: not sure what I'll do, but well, I want to
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Speaker 1: go places and see people. I want my mind to grow.
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Speaker 1: I want to live where things happen on a big scale.
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Speaker 1: What you mean, oh, Clark? I love you, and I
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Speaker 1: love Joe here and Ben Arrot and you all, but
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Speaker 1: you'll you'll we'll all be failures. Yes, I don't mean
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Speaker 1: only money failures, but just sort of of in aectual
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Speaker 1: and sad and oh, how can I tell you? You
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Speaker 1: mean because we stay here in Tarleton, yes, Clark, And
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Speaker 1: because you like it and never want to change things
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Speaker 1: or think or go ahead. He nodded, and she reached
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Speaker 1: over and pressed his hand. Clark, she said softly, I
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Speaker 1: wouldn't change you for the world. You're sweet, the way
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Speaker 1: you are, the things that'll make you fail. I love always,
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Speaker 1: the living in the past, the lazy days and nights
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Speaker 1: you have, and all your carelessness and generosity. But you're
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Speaker 1: going away, yes, because I couldn't never marry you. You've
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Speaker 1: a place in my heart no one else ever could have.
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Speaker 1: But tied down here, I'd get restless. I feel I
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Speaker 1: was wasting myself. There's two sides to me, you see.
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Speaker 1: There's the sleepy old side you love, and there's a
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Speaker 1: sort of energy, the feeling that makes me do wild things.
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Speaker 1: That's the part of me that may be useful somewhere,
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Speaker 1: that'll last when I'm not beautiful anymore. She broke off
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Speaker 1: with characteristic suddenness and sighed, oh, sweet cocky, as her
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Speaker 1: mood changed, half, closing her eyes and tipping back her
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Speaker 1: head till it rested on the seat back, she let
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Speaker 1: the savory breeze fan her eyes and ripple the fluffy
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Speaker 1: curls of her bobbed hair. They were in the country now,
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Speaker 1: hurrying between tangled growths of bright green coppice and grass,
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Speaker 1: and tall trees that sent sprays of foliage to hang
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Speaker 1: a cool welcome over the road. Here and there they
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Speaker 1: passed a battered Negro cabin, its oldest white haired inhabitant
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Speaker 1: smoking a corn cob pipe beside the door, and a
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Speaker 1: half dozen scantily clothed picamennies parading tattered dolls on the
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Speaker 1: wild grown grass in front. Farther out were lazy cotton fields,
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Speaker 1: where even the work which seemed intangible, shadows blent by
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Speaker 1: the sun to the earth, not for toil, but to
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Speaker 1: while away. Some age old tradition in the golden September
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Speaker 1: fields and round the drowsy Picturesqueness over the trees and
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Speaker 1: shacks and muddy rivers flowed the heat, never hostile, only comforting,
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Speaker 1: like a great, warm, nourishing bosom for the infant earth.
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Speaker 1: Sally Carrol, we're here. Poh child, sound asleep, honey, you
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Speaker 1: dead at last? Out of sheer laziness. Water, Sally Carrol,
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Speaker 1: cool water, waitin for you. Her eyes opened sleepily, Hai,
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Speaker 1: she murmured, smiling. End of Part one of The Ice
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Speaker 1: Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Part two of The Ice
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Speaker 1: Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This LibriVox recording is in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. Reading by Matt Perrard. In November, Harry Bellamy, tall,
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Speaker 1: broad and brisk, came down from his northern city to
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Speaker 1: spend four days. His intention was to settle a matter
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Speaker 1: that had been hanging fire since he and Sally Carrol
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Speaker 1: had met in Asheville, North Carolina, in Midsummer. The settlement
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Speaker 1: took only a quiet afternoon and an evening in front
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Speaker 1: of a glowing open fire. For Harry Bellamy had everything
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Speaker 1: she wanted, and beside she loved him, loved him with
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Speaker 1: that side of her she kept, especially for lovin Sally
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Speaker 1: Carroll had several rather clearly defined sides. On his last afternoon,
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Speaker 1: they walked, and she found their steps tending half unconsciously
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Speaker 1: toward one of her favorite haunts, the cemetery. When it
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Speaker 1: came in sight, gray white and gold and green under
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Speaker 1: the cheerful late sun, she paused, irresolute by the iron gate,
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Speaker 1: Are you mournful by nature? Harry, she asked, with a
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Speaker 1: faint smile, mournful not I? Then let's go in here.
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Speaker 1: It depresses some folks, but I like it. They passed
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Speaker 1: through the gateway and followed a path that led through
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Speaker 1: a wavy valley of graves, dusty gray and moldy for
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Speaker 1: the fifties, quaintly carved with flowers and jars for the seventies,
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Speaker 1: ornate and hideous for the nineties, with fat marble cherubs
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Speaker 1: lying in sodden sleep on stone pillows, and great impossible
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Speaker 1: growths of nameless granite flowers. Occasionally they saw a kneeling
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Speaker 1: figure with tributary flowers, but over most of the graves
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Speaker 1: lay silence and withered leaves, with only the ragrance that
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Speaker 1: their own shadowy memories could waken in living minds. They
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Speaker 1: reached the top of a hill, where they were fronted
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Speaker 1: by a tall, round headstone, freckled with dark spots of
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Speaker 1: damp and half grown over with vines. Marjorie Lee, she read,
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Speaker 1: eighteen forty four to eighteen seventy three. Wasn't she nice?
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Speaker 1: She died when she was twenty nine. Dear Marchyora Lee,
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Speaker 1: she added softly. Can't you see her, Harry, Yes, Sally Carrol.
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Speaker 1: He felt a little hand insert itself into his. She
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Speaker 1: was dark, I think, and she always wore her hair
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Speaker 1: with a ribbon in it, and gorgeous hoopskirts of alice
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Speaker 1: blue and old robes. Yes, Oh, she was sweet, Harry,
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Speaker 1: And she was the sort of girl born to stand
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Speaker 1: on a wide pillared port and welcomed folks in. I
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Speaker 1: think perhaps a lot of men went away to war
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Speaker 1: meaning to come back to her, but maybe none of
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Speaker 1: em ever did. He stooped down close to the stone,
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Speaker 1: hunting for any record of marriage. There's nothing here to show,
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Speaker 1: of course, not how could there be anything there better
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Speaker 1: than just Marjor Lee and that eloquent date. She drew
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Speaker 1: close to him, and an unexpected lump came into his
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Speaker 1: throat as her yellow hair brushed his cheek. You see
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Speaker 1: how she was, don't you, Harry, I see, he agreed gently.
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Speaker 1: I see through your precious eyes. You're beautiful now, so
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Speaker 1: I know she must have been silent and close. They stood,
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Speaker 1: and he could feel her shoulders trembling. A little an
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Speaker 1: ambling breeze swept up the hill and stirred the brim
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Speaker 1: her floppity hat. Let's go down there, she was pointing
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Speaker 1: to a flat stretch on the other side of the hill,
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Speaker 1: where along the green turf were a thousand grayish white
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Speaker 1: crosses stretching an endless ordered rose, like the stocked arms
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Speaker 1: of a battalion. Those are the Confederate dead, said Sally
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Speaker 1: Carrol simply. They walked along and read the inscriptions, always
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Speaker 1: only a name and a date, sometimes quite indecipherable. The
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Speaker 1: last row is the saddest. See way over there, every
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Speaker 1: cross has just a date on it and the word unknown.
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Speaker 1: She looked at him, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
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Speaker 1: I can't tell you how real it is to me, darling.
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Speaker 1: If you don't know how you feel about it, is
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Speaker 1: beautiful to me. No, No, it's not me, it's them.
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Speaker 1: That old time that I've tried to have live in me.
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Speaker 1: These were just men unimportant evidently, or they wouldn't have
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Speaker 1: been unknown. But they died for the most beautiful thing
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Speaker 1: in the world, the dead South, you see, She continued,
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Speaker 1: her voice still husky, her eyes glistening with tears. People
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Speaker 1: have these dreams, they fasten on to things and have
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Speaker 1: always grown up with that dream. It was so easy
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Speaker 1: because it was all dead and there weren't any disillusions
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Speaker 1: coming to me. I've tried, in a way to live
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Speaker 1: up to those past standards of no bless obdige. There's
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Speaker 1: just the last remnants of it, you know, like the
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Speaker 1: roses of an old god dying all round us, streaks
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Speaker 1: of strange courtliness and chivalry in some of these boys
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Speaker 1: and stories I used to hear from a Confederate soldier
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Speaker 1: who lived next door, and a few old darkness. Oh, Harrick,
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Speaker 1: there was something. There was something I couldn't ever make
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Speaker 1: you understand, but it was there, I understand, he assured
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Speaker 1: her again quietly. Sally Carrol smiled and dried her eyes
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Speaker 1: on the tip of a handkerchief protruding from his breast pocket.
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Speaker 1: Ye don't feel depressed, do ye? Love? Her even when
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Speaker 1: I cry. I'm happy here and I get a sort
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Speaker 1: of strength from it. Hand in hand, they turned and
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Speaker 1: walked slowly away, finding soft grass, she drew him down
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Speaker 1: to a seat beside her, with their backs against the
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Speaker 1: remnants of a low broken wall. Wish those three old
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Speaker 1: women would clear out, he complained. I want to kiss you,
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Speaker 1: Sally Carrol, me too. They waited impatiently for the three
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Speaker 1: benfigures to move off, and then she kissed him until
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Speaker 1: the skies seemed to fade out and all her smiles
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Speaker 1: and tears to vanish in an ecstasy of eternal seconds. Afterward,
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Speaker 1: they walked slowly back together, while on the corners twilight
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Speaker 1: played at somnolent black and white checkers. With the end
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Speaker 1: of the day. You'll be up about mid January, he said,
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Speaker 1: and you've got to stay em up. At least it'll
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Speaker 1: be slick. There's a winter carnival on, and if you've
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Speaker 1: never really seen snow, it'll be like fairy land to you.
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Speaker 1: They'll be skating and skiing and tobogganing and sleigh riding
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Speaker 1: and all sorts of torchlight parades on snow shoes. They
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Speaker 1: haven't had one for years, so they're going to make
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Speaker 1: it un knock out. Will it be cold, Harry, she
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Speaker 1: asked suddenly, You certainly won't. You may freeze your nose,
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Speaker 1: but you won't be shivery cold. It's hard and dry,
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Speaker 1: you know. I guess I mustum a child. I don't
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Speaker 1: like any cold I've ever seen. She broke off, and
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Speaker 1: they were both silent for a minute. Sally Carrol, he said,
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Speaker 1: very slowly, what d'ye say to March? I say, I
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Speaker 1: love ye March, March, Harry. End of Part two, Part
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Speaker 1: three of The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This
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Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by mat Perart.
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Speaker 1: All night in the Pullman it was very cold. She
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Speaker 1: rang for the porter to ask for another blanket, and
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Speaker 1: when he couldn't give her one, she tried vainly by
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Speaker 1: squeezing down into the bottom of her berth and doubling
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Speaker 1: back the bedclothes to snatch a few hours sleep. She
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Speaker 1: wanted to look her best in the morning. She rose
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Speaker 1: at six, and, sliding uncomfortably into her clothes, stumbled up
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Speaker 1: to the diner for a cup of coffee. The snow
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Speaker 1: had filtered into the vestibules and covered the door with
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Speaker 1: a slippery coating. It was intriguing, this cold. It crept
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Speaker 1: in everywhere. Her breath was quite visible, and she blew
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Speaker 1: into the air with a naive enjoyment. Seated in the diner,
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Speaker 1: she stared out the window at white hills and valleys
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Speaker 1: and scattered pines, whose every branch was a green platter
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Speaker 1: for a cold feast of snow. Sometimes a solitary farmhouse
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Speaker 1: would fly by, ugly and bleak and lone on the
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Speaker 1: white waist, and with each one she had an instant
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Speaker 1: of chill compassion for the souls shut in there, waiting
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Speaker 1: for spring. As she left the diner and swayed back
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Speaker 1: into the pullman, she experienced a surging rush of energy,
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Speaker 1: and wondered if she was feeling the bracing air of
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Speaker 1: which Harry had spoken. This was the the north her land. Now.
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Speaker 1: Then blow ye winds high, ho a rope, I will go,
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Speaker 1: she chanted exultantly to herself, would say, inquired the porter, politely,
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Speaker 1: I said, brush me off. The long wires of the
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Speaker 1: telegraph poles doubled. Two tracks ran up beside the train.
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Speaker 1: Three four came a succession of white roofed houses, a
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Speaker 1: glimpse of a trolley car with frosted windows. Streets, more streets,
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Speaker 1: the city. She stood for a dazed moment in the
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Speaker 1: frosty station, before she saw three fur bundled figures descending
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Speaker 1: upon her. There she is, Oh, Sally Carrol. Sally Carrol
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Speaker 1: dropped her bag. Ha a faintly familiar, icy cold face
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Speaker 1: kissed her, and then she was in a group of faces,
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Speaker 1: all apparently emitting great clouds of heavy smoke. She was
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Speaker 1: shaking hands. There were Gordon, a short, eager man of
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Speaker 1: thirty who looked like an amateur knocked about model for
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Speaker 1: a harry, and his wife, Myra, a listless lady with
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Speaker 1: flaxen hair under a fur automobile cat. Almost immediately Sally
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Speaker 1: Carrol thought of her as vaguely Scandinavian. A cheerful chauffeur
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Speaker 1: adopted her bag, and, amid ricochets of half phrases, exclamations,
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Speaker 1: and perfunctory listless my DearS from Myra, they swept each
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Speaker 1: other from the station. Then they were in a sedan
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Speaker 1: bound through a crooked succession of snowy streets, where dozens
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Speaker 1: of little boys were hitching sleds behind grocery wagons. And automobiles. Oh,
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Speaker 1: cried Sally Carrol. I want to do that, can we, Harry?
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Speaker 1: That's for kids, But we might It looks like such
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Speaker 1: a circuit, she said regretfully. Home was a rambling frame
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Speaker 1: house set on a white lap of snow, and there
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Speaker 1: she met a big, gray haired man of whom she approved,
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Speaker 1: and a lady who was like an egg and who
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Speaker 1: kissed her. These were Harry's parents. There was a breathless,
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Speaker 1: indescribable hour, crammed full of self sentences, hot water, bacon
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Speaker 1: and aids and confusion. And after that she was alone
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Speaker 1: with Harry in the library, asking him if she dared smoke.
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Speaker 1: It was a large room with a madonna over the fireplace,
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Speaker 1: and rose upon rows of books and covers of light
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Speaker 1: gold and dark gold and shiny red. All the chairs
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Speaker 1: had little lace squares where one's head should rest. The
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Speaker 1: couch was just comfortable. The books looked as if they
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Speaker 1: had been read some and Sally Carroll had an instantaneous
24:55
Speaker 1: vision of the battered old library at home, with her
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Speaker 1: father's huge medical books and the oil paintings of her
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Speaker 1: three great uncles, and the old couch that had been
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Speaker 1: mended up for forty five years and was still luxurious
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Speaker 1: to dream in. This room struck her as being neither
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Speaker 1: attractive nor particularly otherwise. It was simply a room with
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Speaker 1: a lot of fairly expensive things in it that all
25:21
Speaker 1: looked about fifteen years old. What do you think of
25:26
Speaker 1: it up here? Demanded Harry eagerly. Does it surprise you?
25:30
Speaker 1: Is it what you expected? I mean, you are, Harry,
25:35
Speaker 1: she said quietly, and reached out her arms to him,
25:40
Speaker 1: But after a brief kiss, he seemed to extort enthusiasm
25:44
Speaker 1: from her. The town. I mean, do you like it?
25:47
Speaker 1: Can you feel the pep in the air? Oh, Harry,
25:51
Speaker 1: she laughed. You'll have to give me time. You can't
25:55
Speaker 1: just fling questions at me. She popped at her cigarette
26:00
Speaker 1: with a sigh of contentment. One thing I want to
26:04
Speaker 1: ask you, he began, rather apologetically. You Southerners put quite
26:09
Speaker 1: an emphasis on family and all that. Not that it
26:12
Speaker 1: isn't quite all right. But you'll find it a little
26:15
Speaker 1: different here. I mean you'll notice a lot of things
26:19
Speaker 1: that'll seem to you sort of vulgar display at first,
26:23
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol. But just remember that this is a three
26:26
Speaker 1: generation town. Everybody has a father, and about half of
26:30
Speaker 1: us have grandfathers. Back of that, we don't go of course,
26:36
Speaker 1: she murmured. Our grandfathers, you see, founded the place, and
26:41
Speaker 1: a lot of them had to take some pretty queer
26:43
Speaker 1: jobs while they were doing the founding. For instance, there's
26:47
Speaker 1: one woman who at present is about the social model
26:50
Speaker 1: for the town. Well, her father was the first public
26:53
Speaker 1: ash man. Things like that, Why, said Sally Carrol, puzzled,
27:00
Speaker 1: Did you s'pose I was going to make remarks about people?
27:04
Speaker 1: Not at all, interrupted Harry. And I'm not apologizing for
27:08
Speaker 1: any one either. It's just that, well, a southern girl
27:11
Speaker 1: came up here last summer and said some unfortunate things,
27:16
Speaker 1: and oh, I just thought i'd tell you. Sally Carrol
27:21
Speaker 1: felt suddenly indignant, as though she had been unjustly spanked.
27:26
Speaker 1: But Harry evidently considered the subject closed, for he went
27:30
Speaker 1: on with a great surge of enthusiasm. It's carnival time,
27:33
Speaker 1: you know, first and ten years and there's an ice
27:36
Speaker 1: palace their building, new that's the first they've had since
27:40
Speaker 1: eighty five, built out of blocks of the clearest ice
27:44
Speaker 1: they could find on a tremendous scale. She rose, and,
27:50
Speaker 1: walking to the window, pushed aside the heavy Turkish portieres
27:54
Speaker 1: and looked out. Oh, she cried, Suddenly, there's two little
27:59
Speaker 1: boys in a snow man, Harry, do you reckon? I
28:02
Speaker 1: can go out and help him. You dream come here
28:07
Speaker 1: and kiss me. She left the window rather reluctantly. I
28:12
Speaker 1: don't guess this is a very kissable climate, is it.
28:15
Speaker 1: I mean it makes you so you don't want to
28:18
Speaker 1: sit round, doesn't it. We're not going to I've got
28:21
Speaker 1: a vacation for the first week you're here, and there's
28:24
Speaker 1: a dinner dance to night. Oh, Harry, she confessed, subsiding
28:31
Speaker 1: in a heap, half in his lap, half in the pillows.
28:35
Speaker 1: I shall do feel confused. I haven't got an idea
28:39
Speaker 1: whether I'll like it or not, and I don't know
28:41
Speaker 1: what people expect of anything. You'll have to tell me, honey,
28:46
Speaker 1: I'll tell you, he said, softly, if you'll just tell me.
28:50
Speaker 1: You're glad to be here. Glad, just awful glad, she whispered,
28:57
Speaker 1: insinuating herself into his arms in her own peculiar way.
29:03
Speaker 1: Where you are is home for me, Harry. And as
29:06
Speaker 1: she said this, she had the feeling, for almost the
29:09
Speaker 1: first time in her life, that she was acting a
29:12
Speaker 1: part that night, amid the gleaming candles of a dinner
29:16
Speaker 1: party where the men seemed to do most of the
29:19
Speaker 1: talking while the girls sat in a haughty and expensive aloofness.
29:23
Speaker 1: Even Harry's presence on her left failed to make her
29:27
Speaker 1: feel at home. They're a good looking crowd, don't you think,
29:30
Speaker 1: he demanded. Just look round. There's Spud Hubbard tackle at
29:34
Speaker 1: Princeton last year, and Junie Morton. He and the red
29:37
Speaker 1: haired fellow next to him were both Yale hockey captains.
29:41
Speaker 1: Junie was in my class. Why the best athletes in
29:45
Speaker 1: the world come from these states? Around here? This is
29:48
Speaker 1: a man's country, I tell you. Look at John J. Fishburne.
29:54
Speaker 1: Who's he asked Sally Carrol innocently. Don't you know I've
30:00
Speaker 1: heard the name the greatest wheat man in the Northwest
30:05
Speaker 1: and one of the greatest financiers in the country. She
30:09
Speaker 1: turned suddenly to a voice on her right. I guess
30:13
Speaker 1: they've forgot to introduce us. My name's Roger Patten. My
30:17
Speaker 1: name is Sally Carrol Happer, she said, graciously. Yes, I
30:22
Speaker 1: know Harry told me you were coming. You relative, No,
30:28
Speaker 1: I'm a professor. Oh, she laughed at the University. You're
30:34
Speaker 1: from the South, aren't you, Yes, taut and choja. She
30:40
Speaker 1: liked him immediately, a reddish brown mustache, under watery blue
30:43
Speaker 1: eyes that had something in them that these other eyes lacked,
30:48
Speaker 1: some quality of appreciation. They exchanged stray sentences through dinner,
30:53
Speaker 1: and she made up her mind to see him again.
30:57
Speaker 1: After coffee, she was introduced to numerous good looking young
31:00
Speaker 1: men who danced with conscious precision and seemed to take
31:04
Speaker 1: it for granted that she wanted to talk about nothing
31:07
Speaker 1: except Harry. Heavens, she thought, they talk as if my
31:13
Speaker 1: being engaged made me older than they are, as if
31:16
Speaker 1: I tell them mothers on them. In the South, an
31:20
Speaker 1: engaged girl, even a young married woman, expected the same
31:24
Speaker 1: amount of half affectionate badinage and flattery that would be
31:28
Speaker 1: accorded a debutante. But here all that seemed bann One
31:33
Speaker 1: young man, after getting well started on the subject of
31:36
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol's eyes and how they had alerted him ever
31:40
Speaker 1: since she entered the room, went into a violent convulsion
31:44
Speaker 1: when she found she was visiting the Bellamies was Harry's fiancee.
31:49
Speaker 1: He seemed to feel as though he had made some
31:52
Speaker 1: riskuay and inexcusable Blunder became immediately formal and left her
31:57
Speaker 1: at the first opportunity. She was rather glad when Roger
32:02
Speaker 1: Patten cut in on her and suggested that they set
32:06
Speaker 1: out awhile well. He inquired, blinking cheerily, how's Carmen from
32:12
Speaker 1: the South matter find? How's dangerous? Dan mc grew, Sorry,
32:18
Speaker 1: but he's the only Northerner I know much about. You
32:21
Speaker 1: seemed to enjoy that, of course, he confessed, as a
32:26
Speaker 1: professor of literature, I'm not supposed to have read Dangerous,
32:29
Speaker 1: Dan McGrew. Are you a native? No, I'm a Philadelphian
32:35
Speaker 1: imported from Harvard to teach French. But I've been here
32:39
Speaker 1: ten years, nine years, three hundred and sixty four days
32:43
Speaker 1: longer than me. Like it here? Uh, she'll do really well?
32:52
Speaker 1: Why not? Don't I look as if I were havin
32:55
Speaker 1: a good time? I saw you look out the window
32:59
Speaker 1: a minute ago and shiver. Oh, just my imagination, laughed
33:05
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol. I'm used to having everything quiet outside, and
33:09
Speaker 1: sometimes I look out and see a flurious snow an.
33:12
Speaker 1: It's just as if somethin dead was moving, he nodded, appreciatively.
33:18
Speaker 1: Ever been north before? It's been two July as in Ashville,
33:23
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Nice looking crowd, aren't they, suggested Patton, indicating
33:28
Speaker 1: the swirling floor. Sally Carrol started, this had been Harry's
33:34
Speaker 1: remark show on there canine? What she flushed. I'm sorry
33:42
Speaker 1: that sounded worse than I meant it. You see, I
33:45
Speaker 1: always think of people as feline or canine, irrespective of sex.
33:51
Speaker 1: Which are you? I'm feline, so are you? So are
33:56
Speaker 1: most Southern men and most of these girls here. What's Harry?
34:03
Speaker 1: Harry is canine? Distinctly, all the men I've met to
34:06
Speaker 1: night seem to be canine. What does canine imply? A
34:12
Speaker 1: certain conscious masculinity as opposed to subtlety reckoned? So I
34:18
Speaker 1: never analyast it only I just look at people and say, canine, oh,
34:24
Speaker 1: feline right off? It's right absurd, I guess not at all.
34:30
Speaker 1: I'm interested. I used to have a theory about these people.
34:34
Speaker 1: I think they're freezing up. What well, they're growing like
34:40
Speaker 1: Swedes ibsenesque, you know, very gradually getting gloomy and melancholy.
34:46
Speaker 1: It's these long winters. Ever read Ibsen? She shook her head. Well,
34:52
Speaker 1: you find in his character's a certain brooding rigidity. They're righteous,
34:57
Speaker 1: narrow and cheeriless, without infinite possibilities for great sorrow or joy,
35:04
Speaker 1: without smiles or tea. It's exactly that's my theory. You see,
35:10
Speaker 1: there are thousands of Swedes up here. They come, I
35:14
Speaker 1: imagine because the climate is very much like their own,
35:17
Speaker 1: and there's been a gradual mingling. They're probably not half
35:21
Speaker 1: a dozen here tonight, but we've had four Swedish governors.
35:27
Speaker 1: Am I boring you? I'm mighty interested. Your future sister
35:33
Speaker 1: in law is half Swedish. Personally I like her. But
35:37
Speaker 1: my theory is that Swedes react rather badly on us
35:41
Speaker 1: as a whole. Scandinavians, you know, have the largest suicide
35:46
Speaker 1: rate in the world. Why do you live here if
35:50
Speaker 1: it's so depressing. Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm pretty
35:54
Speaker 1: well cloistered, and I suppose books mean more than people
35:58
Speaker 1: to me anyway. But I'll speak about the South being tragic,
36:02
Speaker 1: you know, Spanish Senor readas black hand, daggers and hot
36:07
Speaker 1: and music. He shook his head. No, the northern races
36:13
Speaker 1: are the tragic races. They don't indulge in the cheering
36:16
Speaker 1: luxury of tears. Sally Carrol thought of her graveyard. She
36:21
Speaker 1: supposed that that was vaguely what she had meant when
36:24
Speaker 1: she said it didn't depress her. The Italians are about
36:28
Speaker 1: the gayest people in the world, but it's a dull subject.
36:32
Speaker 1: He broke off. Anyway, I want to tell you you're
36:35
Speaker 1: marrying a pretty fine man. Sally Carrol was moved by
36:39
Speaker 1: an impulse of confidence. I know I'm the sort of
36:44
Speaker 1: person who wants to be taken care of after a
36:47
Speaker 1: certain point, and I feel sure I will be. Shall
36:50
Speaker 1: we dance, you know? He continued as they rose. It's
36:55
Speaker 1: encouraging to find a girl who knows what she's marrying
36:58
Speaker 1: for them. Think of it as sort of walking into
37:02
Speaker 1: a moving picture sunset. She laughed and liked him immensely.
37:09
Speaker 1: Two hours later, on the way home, she nestled near
37:12
Speaker 1: Harry in the back seat. Oh Harry, she whispered, it's
37:17
Speaker 1: so cold, but it's warm and here, darling girl, but
37:23
Speaker 1: outside it's cold, and oh that hound and wind. She
37:29
Speaker 1: buried her face deep in his fur coat and trembled
37:32
Speaker 1: involuntarily as his cold lips kissed the tip of her ear.
37:38
Speaker 1: End of Part three, Part four of The Ice Palace
37:47
Speaker 1: by F. Scott Fitzgerald This LibriVox recording is in the
37:52
Speaker 1: public domain. Chapter four. The first week of her visit
37:56
Speaker 1: passed in a whirl. She had her promise toboggan ride
38:00
Speaker 1: at the back of an automobile through a chill January twilight.
38:03
Speaker 1: Swathed in furs, She put in a morning tobogganing on
38:07
Speaker 1: the country club hill, even tried skiing to sail through
38:11
Speaker 1: the air for a glorious moment and then land in
38:14
Speaker 1: a tangled, laughing bundle on a soft snow drift. She
38:18
Speaker 1: liked all the winter sports except an afternoon spent snowshoeing
38:23
Speaker 1: over a glaring plain under pale yellow sunshine. But she
38:26
Speaker 1: soon realized that these things were for children, that she
38:30
Speaker 1: was being humored, and that the enjoyment round her was
38:33
Speaker 1: only a reflection of her own. At first, the Bellamy
38:35
Speaker 1: family puzzled her. The men were reliable, and she liked them.
38:40
Speaker 1: To mister Bellamy, especially with his iron gray hair and
38:44
Speaker 1: energetic dignity, she took an immediate fancy once she found
38:48
Speaker 1: that he was born in Kentucky. This made of him
38:51
Speaker 1: a link between the old life and the new. But
38:55
Speaker 1: toward the women, she felt a definite hostility. Myra her
38:59
Speaker 1: future sister in law seemed the essence of spiritless conversationality.
39:05
Speaker 1: Her conversation was so utterly devoid of personality that Sally Carroll,
39:09
Speaker 1: who came from a country where a certain amount of
39:12
Speaker 1: charm and assurance could be taken for granted and the women,
39:15
Speaker 1: was inclined to despise her. If those women aren't beautiful,
39:19
Speaker 1: she thought, then nothing. They just fade out when you
39:23
Speaker 1: look at them. They glorified domestics, men of the center
39:27
Speaker 1: of every mixed group. Lastly, there was Missus Bellamy, whom
39:32
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol detested. The first day's impression of an egg
39:37
Speaker 1: had been confirmed, an egg with a cracked, veiny voice
39:41
Speaker 1: and such an ungracious dumpiness of carriage that Sally Carroll
39:45
Speaker 1: felt that if she once fell, she would surely scramble.
39:49
Speaker 1: In addition, Missus Bellamy seemed to typify the town in
39:53
Speaker 1: being innately hostile to strangers. She called Sally Carrol Sally,
39:58
Speaker 1: and could not be that the double name was anything
40:02
Speaker 1: more than a tedious, ridiculous nickname. To Sally Carroll, the
40:06
Speaker 1: shortening of her name was presenting her to the public
40:09
Speaker 1: half clothed. She loved Sally Carrol. She loathed Sally. She
40:15
Speaker 1: knew also that Harry's mother disproved of her bobbed hair,
40:19
Speaker 1: and she had never dared smoke downstairs after that first day,
40:23
Speaker 1: when Missus Bellamy had come into the library sniffing violently.
40:28
Speaker 1: Of all the men she met, she preferred Roger Patten,
40:32
Speaker 1: who was a frequent visitor at the house. He never
40:35
Speaker 1: again alluded to the Ibsenesque tendency of the populace, But
40:40
Speaker 1: when he came in one day and found her curled
40:43
Speaker 1: upon the sofa, bent over peer Ghent, he laughed and
40:46
Speaker 1: told her to forget what he'd said, that it was
40:49
Speaker 1: all wrought. They had been walking homeward between mounds of
40:52
Speaker 1: high piled snow and under a son which Sally Carroll
40:56
Speaker 1: scarcely recognized. They passed a little girl done up in
41:00
Speaker 1: gray wool until she resembled a small teddy bear, and
41:04
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol could not resist to gasp of maternal appreciation. Look, Harry,
41:10
Speaker 1: what that little girl? Did you see her face? Yes?
41:16
Speaker 1: Why it was red as a little strawberry. Oh, she
41:20
Speaker 1: was cute. Why your own face is almost as red
41:24
Speaker 1: as that. Already everybody's healthy here, we're out in the cold.
41:29
Speaker 1: As soon as we're old enough to walk wonderful climate.
41:32
Speaker 1: She looked at him and had to agree. He was
41:34
Speaker 1: mighty healthy looking, so was his brother, and she noticed
41:38
Speaker 1: the new red in her own cheeks that very morning.
41:42
Speaker 1: Suddenly their glances were caught and held, and they stared
41:45
Speaker 1: for a moment at the street corner ahead of them.
41:48
Speaker 1: A man was standing there, his knees bent, his eyes
41:51
Speaker 1: gazing upward with a tense expression, as though he were
41:54
Speaker 1: about to make a leap toward the chilly sky. And
41:57
Speaker 1: then they both exploded into a shout of laughter. For
42:01
Speaker 1: coming closer, they discovered it had been a ludicrous momentary
42:05
Speaker 1: illusion produced by the extreme bagginness of the man's trousers. Reckon,
42:10
Speaker 1: that's one on us, she laughed. He must be a Southerner,
42:14
Speaker 1: judging by those trousers, suggested Harry mischievously. Why Harry, her
42:20
Speaker 1: surprised look must have irritated him, Those damned Southerners, Sally
42:26
Speaker 1: Carrol's eyes flashed. Don't call him that. I'm sorry, dear,
42:32
Speaker 1: said Harry, malignantly apologetic. But you know what I think
42:35
Speaker 1: of them. They're sort of sort of degenerates, not at
42:40
Speaker 1: all like the old Southerners. They've lived so long down
42:43
Speaker 1: there with all the colored people that they've gotten lazy
42:46
Speaker 1: and shiftless. Hush your mouth, Harry, she cried angrily. They
42:51
Speaker 1: are not. They may be lazy, anybody would be in
42:55
Speaker 1: that climate, but they're my best friends. And I don't
42:58
Speaker 1: want to hear him size and Ennis has sweeping way.
43:02
Speaker 1: Some of em are the finest men in the world. Oh,
43:06
Speaker 1: I know they're all right when they come north to college.
43:09
Speaker 1: But of all the hang dog, ill dressed, slovenly lot
43:13
Speaker 1: I ever saw, a bunch of small town Southerners are
43:16
Speaker 1: the worst. Sally Carrol was clenching her gloved hands and
43:21
Speaker 1: biting her lip furiously. Why, continued Harry, If there was
43:27
Speaker 1: one in my class at New Haven, and we all
43:30
Speaker 1: thought at last we'd found the true type of Southern aristocrat.
43:34
Speaker 1: But it turned out that he wasn't an aristocrat at all,
43:38
Speaker 1: just the son, just the son of a northern carpetbagger
43:41
Speaker 1: who owned about all the cotton round mobile. A Southerner
43:46
Speaker 1: wouldn't talk the way you've talking now, she said evenly.
43:50
Speaker 1: They haven't the energy all the somethin else. I'm sorry,
43:55
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol, but I've heard you say yourself that you'd
43:58
Speaker 1: never marry. That's quite different. I told you I wouldn't
44:03
Speaker 1: want to tie my laugh to any of the boys
44:05
Speaker 1: that are round Tarleton now. But I never made any
44:08
Speaker 1: sweeping generalities. They walked along in silence. I probably spread
44:15
Speaker 1: it on a bit thick Sally Carrol, I'm sorry. She nodded,
44:19
Speaker 1: but made no answer. Five minutes later, as they stood
44:23
Speaker 1: in the hallway, she suddenly threw her arms round him. Oh, Harry,
44:28
Speaker 1: she cried, her eyes brimming with tears. Let's get married
44:32
Speaker 1: next week. I'm afraid of having fussons like that. I'm afraid, Harry.
44:37
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be that way if we were married. But Harry,
44:42
Speaker 1: being in the wrong, was still irritated. That'd be idiotic.
44:46
Speaker 1: We decided on March. The tears and Sally Carrol's eyes faded,
44:51
Speaker 1: her expression hardened slightly. Very well, I suppose I shouldn't
44:57
Speaker 1: have said that. Harry melted, dear little nut. He cried,
45:03
Speaker 1: come and kiss me, and let's forget that. Very night,
45:06
Speaker 1: at the end of the vaudeville performance, the orchestra played Dixie,
45:10
Speaker 1: and Sally Carrol felt something stronger and more enduring than
45:14
Speaker 1: her tears and smiles of the day for him up
45:17
Speaker 1: inside her. She leaned forward, gripping the arms of her
45:21
Speaker 1: chair until her face grew Crimson. Sort of get you, dear,
45:25
Speaker 1: whispered Harry, But she did not hear him. To the
45:28
Speaker 1: limited throb of the violins and the inspiring beat of
45:32
Speaker 1: the kettle drums, her own old ghosts were marching by
45:36
Speaker 1: and on into the darkness, and as Wife's whistled and
45:40
Speaker 1: sighed in the low encore, they seemed so nearly out
45:43
Speaker 1: of sight that she could have waved good bye, away,
45:48
Speaker 1: away away, down south, and Dixie, away away, away, down
45:54
Speaker 1: South and Dixie. End of Part four, Part five of
46:09
Speaker 1: The Ice Palace by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This LibriVox recording
46:14
Speaker 1: is in the public domain. It was a particularly cold night.
46:19
Speaker 1: A sudden thaw had nearly cleared the streets the day before,
46:23
Speaker 1: but now they were traversed again with a powdery wraith
46:26
Speaker 1: of loose snow that traveled in wavy lines before the
46:29
Speaker 1: feet of the wind, and filled the lower air with
46:32
Speaker 1: a fine, particled mist. There was no sky, only a dark,
46:37
Speaker 1: ominous tent that draped in the tops of the streets,
46:40
Speaker 1: and was in reality a vast approaching army of snowflakes,
46:45
Speaker 1: while over it all chilling away the comfort from the
46:49
Speaker 1: brown and green glow of lighted windows, and muffling the
46:52
Speaker 1: steady trot of the horse pulling their sleigh interminably washed
46:57
Speaker 1: the north wind. It was a dismal town, after all,
47:00
Speaker 1: she thought, dismal Sometimes at night it had seemed to
47:07
Speaker 1: her as though no one lived here. They had all
47:09
Speaker 1: gone long ago, leaving lighted houses to be covered in
47:13
Speaker 1: time by tombing heaps of sleet. Oh, if there should
47:17
Speaker 1: be snow on her grave, to be beneath great piles
47:21
Speaker 1: of it all winter long, where even her headstone would
47:24
Speaker 1: be a light shadow against the light shadows her grave,
47:28
Speaker 1: a grave that should be flower strewn and washed with
47:31
Speaker 1: sun and rain. She thought again of those isolated country
47:35
Speaker 1: houses that her train had passed, and of the life there,
47:39
Speaker 1: the long winter, through the ceaseless glare through the windows,
47:44
Speaker 1: the crust forming on the soft drifts of snow. Finally,
47:48
Speaker 1: the slow, cheerless melting, and the harsh spring of which
47:52
Speaker 1: Roger Patten had told her, her spring to lose it forever,
47:58
Speaker 1: with its lilacs, in the lazy sweetness it stirred in
48:01
Speaker 1: her heart. She was laying away that spring. Afterward she
48:06
Speaker 1: would lay away that sweetness with a gradual insistence. The
48:10
Speaker 1: storm broke, Sally Carrol felt a film of flakes molt
48:14
Speaker 1: quickly on her eyelashes, and Harry reached over a furry
48:18
Speaker 1: arm and drew down her complicated glannel cap. The small
48:23
Speaker 1: flakes came in skirmish line, and the horse bent his
48:26
Speaker 1: neck patiently as a transparency of white appeared momentarily on
48:31
Speaker 1: his coat. Oh he's cold, Harry, she said quickly, o
48:37
Speaker 1: the horse, Oh no, he isn't. He likes it. After
48:41
Speaker 1: another ten minutes, they turned a corner and came in
48:44
Speaker 1: sight of their destination. On a tall hill, outlined in vivid,
48:49
Speaker 1: glaring green against the wintry sky, stood the Ice Palace.
48:53
Speaker 1: It was three stories in the air, with battlements and
48:57
Speaker 1: embrasures and narrow icicled windows, and the innumerable electric lights
49:02
Speaker 1: inside made a gorgeous transparency of the great central hall.
49:07
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol clutched Harry's hand under the fur robe. It's beautiful,
49:13
Speaker 1: he cried excitedly. My golly, it's beautiful, isn't it. They
49:17
Speaker 1: haven't had one here since eighty five. Somehow the notion
49:22
Speaker 1: of their not having been one since eighty five oppressed her.
49:27
Speaker 1: Ice was a ghost, and this mansion of it was
49:30
Speaker 1: surely peopled by those shades of the eighties, with pale
49:34
Speaker 1: faces and blurred, snow filled hair. Come on, dear, said Harry.
49:40
Speaker 1: She followed him out of the sleigh and waited while
49:43
Speaker 1: he hitched the horse. A party of four Gordon Myra,
49:47
Speaker 1: Roger Patten and another girl drew up beside them with
49:51
Speaker 1: a mighty jingle of bells. There were quite a crowd
49:54
Speaker 1: already bundled in fur or sheepskin, shouting and calling to
49:59
Speaker 1: a each other as they moved through the snow, which
50:02
Speaker 1: was now so thick that people could scarcely be distinguished
50:05
Speaker 1: a few yards away. It's a hundred and seventy feet tall,
50:10
Speaker 1: Harry was saying to a muffled figure beside him. As
50:13
Speaker 1: they trudged toward the entrance covered six thousand square yards,
50:18
Speaker 1: she caught snatches of conversation. One main hall walls twenty
50:23
Speaker 1: to forty inches thick, and the ice cave has almost
50:27
Speaker 1: a mile of this canuck who built it. They found
50:32
Speaker 1: their way inside, and dazed by the magic of the
50:34
Speaker 1: great crystal walls, Sally Carrol found herself repeating over and
50:39
Speaker 1: over two lines from Kubla Khan. It was a miracle
50:43
Speaker 1: of rare device, a sunny pleasure dome with caves of
50:47
Speaker 1: ice in a great glittering cavern, with the dark shut out.
50:52
Speaker 1: She took a seat on a wooded bench, and the
50:55
Speaker 1: evening's oppression lifted. Harry was right, It was beautiful, and
51:00
Speaker 1: her gaze traveled the smooth surface of the walls, the
51:03
Speaker 1: blocks for which had been selected for their purity and
51:06
Speaker 1: dearness to obtain this opalescent, translucent effect. Look here we go,
51:13
Speaker 1: oh boy, cried Harry. A band in a far corner
51:18
Speaker 1: struck up Hail, Hail, the gangs all here, which echoed
51:22
Speaker 1: over to them in wild, muddled acoustics. And then the
51:26
Speaker 1: lights suddenly went out. Silence seemed to flow down the
51:30
Speaker 1: icy sides and sweep over them. Sally Carrol could still
51:33
Speaker 1: see her white breath in the darkness, and a dim
51:36
Speaker 1: row of pale faces over on the other side. The
51:38
Speaker 1: music eased to a sign complaint, and from outside drifted
51:42
Speaker 1: in the full throated, remnant chant of the marching clubs.
51:47
Speaker 1: It grew louder, like some pain of a Viking tribe
51:51
Speaker 1: traversing and ancient wild it swelled. They were coming nearer.
51:56
Speaker 1: Then a row of tortures appeared, and another, and another,
51:59
Speaker 1: and keeping time with their moccasined feet, a long column
52:03
Speaker 1: of gray mackinaw figures swept in snow, shoes slung at
52:07
Speaker 1: their shoulders, torches soaring and flickering as their voice rose
52:11
Speaker 1: along the great walls. The gray column ended, and another followed,
52:16
Speaker 1: the light streaming luridly, this time over red toboggan caps
52:20
Speaker 1: and flaming crimson mackinaws, And as they entered they took
52:24
Speaker 1: up the refrain. Then came a long platoon of blue
52:28
Speaker 1: and white, of green, of white, of brown and yellow.
52:32
Speaker 1: Those white ones are the Wakuta Club, whispered Harry Pepily,
52:37
Speaker 1: Those are the men you met round at dances. The
52:40
Speaker 1: volume of the voices grew. The great cavern was a
52:44
Speaker 1: phantasmagoria of torches waving in great banks, of fire, of colors,
52:49
Speaker 1: and the rhythm of soft leather steps. The leading column
52:53
Speaker 1: turned and halted. Platoon deploys in front of platoon, until
52:57
Speaker 1: the whole procession made a solid flash of flame, and
53:01
Speaker 1: then from thousands of voices burst a mighty shout that
53:04
Speaker 1: filled the air like a crash of thunder, and sent
53:07
Speaker 1: the torches wavering. It was magnificent, It was tremendous. To
53:13
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol. It was the North offering sacrifice on some
53:17
Speaker 1: mighty altar to the gray pagan god of snow. As
53:21
Speaker 1: the shout died, the band struck up again, and there
53:24
Speaker 1: came more singing, and then long reverberating cheers by each club.
53:29
Speaker 1: She sat very quiet, listening while the staccatta cries rent
53:33
Speaker 1: the stillness, And then she started, for there was a
53:37
Speaker 1: volley of explosion, and great clouds of smoke went up
53:41
Speaker 1: here and there through the cavern. The flashlight photographers at work,
53:45
Speaker 1: and the council was over. With the band at their head.
53:50
Speaker 1: The clubs formed in column once more, took up their
53:53
Speaker 1: chant and began to march out. Come on, shouted Harry,
53:58
Speaker 1: we want to see the labyrinths down stair stairs. Before
54:00
Speaker 1: they turned the lights off. They all rose and started
54:03
Speaker 1: toward the chute, Harry and Sally Carrol in the lead,
54:06
Speaker 1: her little mitten buried in his big fur gauntlet. At
54:11
Speaker 1: the bottom of the chute was a long, empty room
54:13
Speaker 1: of ice, with the ceiling so low that they had
54:16
Speaker 1: to stoop, and their hands were parted. Before she realized
54:21
Speaker 1: what he intended, Harry had darted down one of the
54:24
Speaker 1: half dozen glittering passages that opened into the room and
54:29
Speaker 1: was only a vague receiving blot against the green shimmer. Harry,
54:33
Speaker 1: She called, come on, he cried back. She looked round
54:37
Speaker 1: the empty chamber. The rest of the party had evidently
54:40
Speaker 1: decided to go home, were already outside, somewhere in the
54:44
Speaker 1: blundering snow. She hesitated, and then darted in after Harry. Harry,
54:50
Speaker 1: She shouted. She had reached a turning point thirty feet down.
54:54
Speaker 1: She heard a faint, muffled answer far to the left,
54:57
Speaker 1: and with a touch of panic, fled toward it. She
55:00
Speaker 1: passed another turning two, more yawning alleys. Harry, no answer.
55:08
Speaker 1: She started to run straight forward, and then turned like
55:10
Speaker 1: lightning and sped back the way she had come, enveloped
55:14
Speaker 1: in a sudden icy terror. She reached a turn Was
55:18
Speaker 1: it here? Took the left and came to what should
55:21
Speaker 1: have been the outlet into the long low room, but
55:24
Speaker 1: it was only another glittering passage with darkness at the end.
55:28
Speaker 1: She called again, but the walls gave back a flat,
55:31
Speaker 1: lifeless echo, with no reverberations. Retracing her steps, she turned
55:37
Speaker 1: another corner, this time following a wide passage. It was
55:41
Speaker 1: like the green lane between the ported water of the
55:44
Speaker 1: Red Sea, like a damp vault connecting empty tones. She
55:48
Speaker 1: slipped a little now as she walked, for ice had
55:51
Speaker 1: formed on the bottom of her overshoes. She had to
55:54
Speaker 1: run her gloves along the half slippery, half sticky walls
55:58
Speaker 1: to keep her balance. Harry still no answer. The sound
56:04
Speaker 1: she made bounced mockingly down to the end of the passage.
56:08
Speaker 1: Then on an instant, the lights went out and she
56:12
Speaker 1: was in complete darkness. She gave a small, frightened cry
56:16
Speaker 1: and sank down into a cold, little heap on the ice.
56:20
Speaker 1: She felt her lovene do something as she fell, but
56:23
Speaker 1: she scarcely noticed it, as some deep terror, far greater
56:26
Speaker 1: than any fear of being lost, settled upon her. She
56:30
Speaker 1: was alone with this presence that came out of the north,
56:33
Speaker 1: the dreary loneliness that rose from ice bound whalers in
56:37
Speaker 1: the Arctic seas, from smokeless, trackless wastes wherewards strewn the
56:42
Speaker 1: whitened bones of adventure. It was an icy breath of death.
56:47
Speaker 1: It was rolling down low across the land to clutch
56:50
Speaker 1: at her with a furious, despairing energy. She rose again
56:55
Speaker 1: and started blindly down the darkness. She must get out.
56:59
Speaker 1: She might be lost in here for days, freeze to death,
57:02
Speaker 1: and lie embedded in the ice like corpses she had
57:05
Speaker 1: read of, kept perfectly preserved until the melting of a glacier.
57:10
Speaker 1: Harry probably thought she had left with the others. He
57:13
Speaker 1: had gone by now, no one would know until next day.
57:17
Speaker 1: She reached pitifully for the wall forty inches thick, they
57:21
Speaker 1: had said, forty inches thick, on both sides of her.
57:25
Speaker 1: Along the walls, she felt things, creeping, damp souls that
57:30
Speaker 1: haunted this palace, this town, this north. Oh. Since somebody,
57:36
Speaker 1: send somebody, she cried aloud, Clark Darrow, he would understand,
57:41
Speaker 1: or Joe ewing. She couldn't be left here to wander forever,
57:45
Speaker 1: to be frozen heart, body and soul. This her, this,
57:50
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol. Why she was a happy thing. She was
57:53
Speaker 1: a happy little girl. She liked warmth in summer and Dixie.
57:57
Speaker 1: These things were foreign, foreign. You're not crying, something said aloud.
58:04
Speaker 1: You'll never cry any more. Your tears would just freeze,
58:08
Speaker 1: all tears freeze up here. She sprawled full length on
58:11
Speaker 1: the ice. Oh god, she faltered. A long single file
58:17
Speaker 1: of minutes went by, and with a great weariness, she
58:20
Speaker 1: felt her eyes closing. Then some one seemed to sit
58:24
Speaker 1: down near her and take her face in warm, soft hands.
58:28
Speaker 1: She looked up gratefully. Why it's Marjorie Lee, she crooned
58:33
Speaker 1: softly to herself. I knew you'd come. It really was
58:38
Speaker 1: Marjorie Lee, and she was just as Sally Carroll had
58:41
Speaker 1: known she would be, with a young white brow and
58:44
Speaker 1: wide welcoming eyes, and a hoop skirt of some soft
58:47
Speaker 1: material that was quite comforting to rest on. Marjorie Lee.
58:54
Speaker 1: It was getting darker now and darker. All those tombstones
58:58
Speaker 1: ought to be repainted, sure enough, Only that would spoil him.
59:01
Speaker 1: Of course, still you ought to be able to see him. Then,
59:05
Speaker 1: after a succession of moments that went fast and then slow,
59:09
Speaker 1: but seemed to be ultimately resolving themselves into a multitude
59:12
Speaker 1: of blurred rays converging toward a pale yellow sun, she
59:16
Speaker 1: heard a great cracking noise break her new found stillness.
59:21
Speaker 1: It was the sun. It was a light, a torch
59:25
Speaker 1: and a torch beyond that, and another one, and voices
59:29
Speaker 1: and a face took flesh below the torch. Heavy arms
59:33
Speaker 1: raised her, and she felt something on her cheek. It
59:36
Speaker 1: felt wet. Some one had seized her and was rubbing
59:39
Speaker 1: her face with snow. How ridiculous with snow. Sally Carrol,
59:45
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol, It was dangerous, Dan macgrew, and two other faces.
59:49
Speaker 1: She did and know, child, child, We've been looking for
59:53
Speaker 1: you two hours. Harry's half crazy things came rushing back
59:59
Speaker 1: into place, the singing, the torches, the great shout of
1:00:02
Speaker 1: the marching clubs. She squirmed in Patten's arms and gave
1:00:06
Speaker 1: a long, low cry, Oh, I want to get out
1:00:09
Speaker 1: of here. I'm going back home, Take me home. Her
1:00:14
Speaker 1: voice rose to a scream that sent a chill to
1:00:17
Speaker 1: Harry's heart as he came racing down the next passage. Tomorrow,
1:00:22
Speaker 1: she cried, with delirious, unstrained passion. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. End
1:00:30
Speaker 1: of Part five, Part six of The Ice Palace by F.
1:00:40
Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald. This Librivokes recording is in the public domain.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: The wealth of golden sunlight poured a quite enervating, yet
1:00:50
Speaker 1: oddly comforting heat over the house, where day long it
1:00:53
Speaker 1: faced the dusty stretch of road. Two birds were making
1:00:57
Speaker 1: a great to do in a cool spot found among
1:00:59
Speaker 1: the branches of a tree. Next door, and down the street,
1:01:03
Speaker 1: a colored woman was announcing herself melodiously as a purveyor
1:01:07
Speaker 1: of strawberries. It was April afternoon. Sally Carrol Happer, resting
1:01:13
Speaker 1: her chin on her arm and her arm on an
1:01:15
Speaker 1: old window seat, gazed sleepily down over the spangled dust
1:01:20
Speaker 1: whence the heat waves were rising for the first time
1:01:22
Speaker 1: the spring. She was watching a very ancient ford turn
1:01:27
Speaker 1: a perilous corner and rattle and groan to a jolting
1:01:30
Speaker 1: stop at the end of the walk. She made no sound,
1:01:33
Speaker 1: and in a minute a strident, familiar whistle rent the air.
1:01:38
Speaker 1: Sally Carrol smiled and blint good mo'nin. A head appeared
1:01:44
Speaker 1: tortuously from under the car top below. Tain't moanin, Sally Carrol,
1:01:51
Speaker 1: show enough, she said, in affected surprise. I guess maybe
1:01:55
Speaker 1: not what you doin eat in a green peach speck
1:02:00
Speaker 1: to die. In a minute, Clark twisted himself a last
1:02:05
Speaker 1: impossible notch to get a view of her face. Waters
1:02:10
Speaker 1: warm as a catless steam, Sally Carrol wanna go Swimmin'
1:02:15
Speaker 1: hate to move sighed Sally Carrol lazily but I reckon
1:02:19
Speaker 1: so End of Part six. End of the Ice Palace
1:02:26
Speaker 1: by F. Scott Fitzgerald