FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
by
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
To Zelda
Contents
| The Offshore Pirate |
| The Ice Palace |
| Head and Shoulders |
| The Cut-Glass Bowl |
| Bernice Bobs Her Hair |
| Benediction |
| Dalyrimple Goes Wrong |
| The Four Fists |
FLAPPERS AND PHILOSOPHERS
The Offshore Pirate
I
This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, ascolorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as theirises of children's eyes. From the western half of the sky thesun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazedintently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tipuntil they joined a broad collar of golden coin that wascollecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzlingsunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the goldencollar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was ridingat anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-hairedgirl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of theAngels, by Anatole France.
She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiledalluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity.Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad inblue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, wereperched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied.And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faintapplication to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in herhand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet androcked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motionof the tide.
The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the goldencollar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsysilence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound ofheavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hairand clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of thecompanionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes becameaccustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awninghe uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.
If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he wasdoomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages,turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tastingdistance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.
"Ardita!" said the gray-haired man sternly.
Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.
"Ardita!" he repeated. "Ardita!"
Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slipout before it reached her tongue.
"Oh, shut up."
"Ardita!"
"What?"
"Will you listen to me—or will I have to get a servant to holdyou while I talk to you?"
The lemon descended very slowly and scornfully.
"Put it in writing."
"Will you h