THE RICH BOY
BEGIN WITH an individual, and
before you know it you find that
you have created a type ; begin
with a type, and you find that you
have created nothing. That is
because we are all queer fish, queerer
behind our faces and voices than
we want any one to know or than
we know ourselves. When I hear a
man proclaiming himself an
"average, honest, open
fellow," I feel pretty sure that he has some
definite and perhaps terrible
abnormality which he has agreed to con-
ceal and his protestation of
being average and honest and open is
his way of reminding himself of
his misprision.
There are no types, no plurals.
There is a rich boy, and this is his
and not his brothers' story. All
my life I have lived among his
brothers but this one has been my
friend. Besides, if I wrote about
his brothers I should have to
begin by attacking all the lies that the
poor have told about the rich and
the rich have told about them-
selves such a wild structure they
have erected that when we pick
up a book about the rich, some
instinct prepares us for unreality.
Even the intelligent and
impassioned reporters of life have made the
country of the rich as unreal as
fairy-land.
Let me tell you about the very
rich. They are different from you
and me. They possess and enjoy
early, and it does something to them,
makes them soft where we are
hard, and cynical where we are trust-
ful, in a way that, unless you
were born rich, it is very difficult to
understand. They think, deep in
their hearts, that they are better
than we are because we had to
discover the compensations and
refuges of life for ourselves.
Even when they enter deep into our
world or sink below us, they
still think that they are better than we
are. They are different. The only
way I can describe young Anson
Hunter is to approach him as if
he were a foreigner and cling stub-
bornly to my point of view. If I
accept his for a moment I am lost
I have nothing to show but a
preposterous movie.
II
Anson was the eldest of six
children who would some day divide
a fortune of fifteen million
dollars, and he reached the age of reason
is it seven? at the beginning of
the century when daring young
women were already gliding along
Fifth Avenue in electric "mobiles."
In those days he and his brother
had an English governess who spoke
the language very clearly and
crisply and well, so that the two boys
grew to speak as she did their
words and sentences were all crisp
and clear and not run together as
ours are. They didn't talk exactl}
like English children but
acquired an accent that is peculiar tc
fashionable people in the city of
New York.
In the summer the six children
were moved from the house on
7ist Street to a big estate in
northern Connecticut. It was not 2
fashionable locality Anson's
father wanted to delay as long as pos-
sible his children's knowledge of
that side of life. He was a man
somewhat superior to his class,
which composed New York society,
and to his period, which was the
snobbish and formalized vulgarity
of the Gilded Age, and he wanted
his sons to learn habits of con-
centration and have sound
constitutions and grow up into right-liv-
ing and successful men. He and his
wife kept an eye on them as well
as they were able until the two
older boys went away to school, but
in huge establishments this is
difficult it was much simpler in the
series of small and medium-sized
houses in which my own youth was
spent I was never far out of the
reach of my mother's voice, of the
sense of her presence, her
approval or disapproval.
Anson's first sense of his
superiority came to him when he realized
the half-grudging American
deference that was paid to him in the
Connecticut village. The parents
of the boys he played with always
inquired after his father and
mother, and were vaguely excited when
their own children were asked to
the Hunters' house. He accepted
this as the natural state of things,
and a sort of impatience with all
groups of which he was not the
centre in money, in position, in
authority remained with him for
the rest of his life. He disdained
to struggle with other boys for
precedence he expected it to be
given him freely, and when it
wasn't he withdrew into his family.
His family was sufficient, for in
the East money is still a somewhat
feudal thing, a clan-forming
thing. In the snobbish West, money sepa
rates families to form
"sets."
At eighteen, when he went to New
Haven, Anson was tall and
thick-set, with a clear
complexion and a healthy color from the
ordered life he had led in
school. His hair was yellow and grew in a
funny way on his head, his nose
was beaked these two things kept
him from being handsome but he
had a confident charm and a cer-
tain brusque style, and the
upper-class men who passed him on the
street knew without being told
that he was a rich boy and had gone
to one of the best schools.
Nevertheless, his very superiority kept
him from being a success in
college the independence was mistaken
for egotism, and the refusal to
accept Yale standards with the proper
ated, he began to shift the
centre of his life to New York.
He was at home in New York there
was his own house with "the
kind of servants you can't get
any more" and his own family, of
which, because of his good humor
and a certain ability to make
things go, he was rapidly
becoming the centre, and the debutante
parties, and the correct manly
world of the men's clubs, and the occa-
sional wild spree with the
gallant girls whom New Haven only knew
from the fifth row. His
aspirations were conventional enough they
included even the irreproachable
shadow he would some day marry,
but they differed from the
aspirations of the majority of young men
in that there was no mist over
them, none of that quality which is
variously known as
"idealism" or "illusion." Anson accepted with-
out reservation the world of high
finance and high extravagance, of
divorce and dissipation, of
snobbery and of privilege. Most of our
lives end as a compromise it was
as a compromise that his life
began.
He and I first met in the late
summer of 1917 when he was just out
of Yale, and, like the rest of
us, was swept up into the systematized
hysteria of the war. In the
blue-green uniform of the naval aviation
he came down to Pensacola, where
the hotel orchestras played "I'm
sorry, dear," and we young
officers danced with the girls. Every one
liked him, and though he ran with
the drinkers and wasn't an espe-
cially good pilot, even the
instructors treated him with a certain
respect. He was always having
long talks with them in his confident,
logical voice talks which ended
by his getting himself, or, more
frequently, another officer, out
of some impending trouble. He was
convivial, bawdy, robustly avid
for pleasure, and we were all sur-
prised when he fell in love with
a conservative and rather proper
girl.
Her name was Paula Legendre, a
dark, serious beauty from some-
where in California. Her family
kept a winter residence just outside
of town, and in spite of her
primness she was enormously popular ;
there is a large class of men
whose egotism can't endure humor in a
woman. But Anson wasn't that
sort, and I couldn't understand the
attraction of her
"sincerity" that was the thing to say about her
for his keen and somewhat
sardonic mind.
Nevertheless, they fell in love
and on her terms. He no longer
joined the twilight gathering at
the De Soto bar, and whenever they
were seen together they were
engaged in a long, serious dialogue,
which must have gone on several
weeks. Long afterward he told me
that it was not about anything in
particular but was composed on
both sides of immature and even
meaningless statements the emo-
tional content that gradually
came to fill it grew up not out of the
words but out of its enormous
seriousness. It was a sort of hypnosis.
Often it was interrupted, giving
way to that emasculated humor we
call fun ; when they were alone
it was resumed again, solemn, low-
keyed, and pitched so as to give
each other a sense of unity in feeling
and thought. They came to resent
any interruptions of it, to be un-
responsive to facetiousness about
life, even to the mild cynicism of
their contemporaries. They were
only happy when the dialogue was
going on, and its seriousness
bathed them like the amber glow of an
open fire. Toward the end there
came an interruption they did not
resent it began to be interrupted
by passion.
Oddly enough, Anson was as
engrossed in the dialogue as she was
and as profoundly affected by it,
yet at the same time aware that on
his side much was insincere, and
on hers much was merely simple.
At first, too, he despised her
emotional simplicity as well, but with
his love her nature deepened and
blossomed, and he could despise it
no longer. He felt that if he
could enter into Paula's warm safe life
he would be happy. The long preparation
of the dialogue removed
any constraint he taught her some
of what he had learned from
more adventurous women, and she
responded with a rapt holy inten-
sity. One evening after a dance
they agreed to marry, and he wrote
a long letter about her to his
mother. The next day Paula told him
that she was rich, that she had a
personal fortune of nearly a million
dollars.
Ill
It was exactly as if they could
say "Neither of us has anything : we
shall be poor together" just
as delightful that they should be rich
instead. It gave them the same
communion of adventure. Yet when
Anson got leave in April, and
Paula and her mother accompanied
him North, she was impressed with
the standing of his family in
New York and with the scale on
which they lived. Alone with Anson
for the first time in the rooms
where he had played as a boy, she was
filled with a comfortable
emotion, as though she were pre-eminently
safe and taken care of. The
pictures of Anson in a skull cap at his
first school, of Anson on horseback
with the sweetheart of a mysteri-
ous forgotten summer, of Anson in
a gay group of ushers and brides-
maid at a wedding, made her
jealous of his life apart from her in the
pst ? and so completely did his
authoritative person seem to sum up
and typify these possessions of
his that she was inspired with the
idea of being married immediately
and returning to Pensacola as
his wife. But an immediate
marriage wasn't discussed even the engage-
ment was to be secret until after
the war. When she realized that
only two days of his leave
remained, her dissatisfaction crystallized
in the intention of making him as
unwilling to wait as she was. They
were driving to the country for
dinner and she determined to force
the issue that night.
Now a cousin of Paula's was
staying with them at the Ritz, a
severe, bitter girl who loved
Paula but was somewhat jealous of her
impressive engagement, and as
Paula was late in dressing, the cousin,
who wasn't going to the party,
received Anson in the parlor of the
suite.
Anson had met friends at five
o'clock and drunk freely and in-
discreetly with them for an hour.
He left the Yale Club at a proper
time, and his mother's chauffeur
drove him to the Ritz, but his usual
capacity was not in evidence, and
the impact of the steam-heated
sitting-room made him suddenly
dizzy. He knew it, and he was both
amused and sorry.
Paula's cousin was twenty-five,
but she was exceptionally nai've,
and at first failed to realize
what was up. She had never met Anson
before, and she was surprised
when he mumbled strange information
and nearly fell off his chair,
but until Paula appeared it didn't occur
to her that what she had taken
for the odor of a dry-cleaned uni-*
form was really whiskey. But Paula
understood as soon as she ap-
peared ; her only thought was to
get Anson away before her mother
saw him, and at the look in her
eyes the cousin understood too.
When Paula and Anson descended to
the limousine they found two
men inside, both asleep ; they
were the men with whom he had been
drinking at the Yale Club, and
they were also going to the party. He
had entirely forgotten their
presence in the car. On the way to Hemp-
stead they awoke and sang. Some
of the songs were rough, and
though Paula tried to reconcile
herself to the fact that Anson had
few verbal inhibitions, her lips
tightened with shame and distaste.
Back at the hotel the cousin,
confused and agitated, considered
the incident, and then walked
into Mrs. Legendre's bedroom, saying :
"Isn't he funny?"
"Who is funny?"
"Why Mr. Hunter. He seemed
so funny."
Mrs. Legendre looked at her
sharply.
"How is he funny?"
"Why, he said he was French.
I didn't know he was French."
"That's absurd. You must
have misunderstood." She smiled: "It
was a joke."
The cousin shook her head
stubbornly.
"No. He said he was brought
up in France. He said he couldn't
speak any English, and that's why
he couldn't talk to me. And he
couldn't "
Mrs. Legendre looked away with
impatience just as the cousin
added thoughtfully, "Perhaps
it was because he was so drunk/' and
walked out of the room.
This curious report was true.
Anson, finding his voice thick and
uncontrollable, had taken the
unusual refuge of announcing that he
spoke no English. Years
afterwards he used to tell that part of the
story, and he invariably
communicated the uproarious laughter which
the memory aroused in him.
Five times in the next hour Mrs.
Legendre tried to get Hempstead
on the phone. When she succeeded,
there was a ten-minute delay
before she heard Paula's voice on
the wire.
"Cousin Jo told me Anson was
intoxicated."
"Oh, no. . . ."
"Oh, yes. Cousin Jo says he
was intoxicated. He told her he was
French, and fell off his chair and
behaved as if he was very intoxi-
cated. I don't want you to come
home with him."
"Mother, he's all right !
Please don't worry about "
"But I do worry. I think
it's dreadful. I want you to promise me
not to come home with him."
"I'll take care of it,
mother. . . ."
"I don't want you to come
home with him."
"All right, mother.
Good-by."
"Be sure now, Paula. Ask
some one to bring you."
Deliberately Paula took the
receiver from her ear and hung it up.
Her face was flushed with
helpless annoyance. Anson was stretched
asleep out in a bedroom
up-stairs, while the dinner-party below was
proceeding lamely toward
conclusion.
The hour's drive had sobered him
somewhat his arrival was
merely hilarious and Paula hoped
that the evening was not spoiled,
after all, but two imprudent
cocktails before dinner completed the
disaster. He talked boisterously
and somewhat offensively to the
party at large for fifteen
minutes, and then slid silently under the
table ; like a man in an old
print but, unlike an old print, it was
rather horrible without being at
all quaint. None of the young girls
present remarked upon the
incident it seemed to merit only silence.
His uncle and two other men
carried him up-stairs, and it was just
after this that Paula was called
to the phone.
An hour later Anson awoke in a
fog of nervous agony, through
which he perceived after a moment
the figure of his uncle Robert
standing by the door.
". . . I said are you
better?"
"What?"
"Do you feel better, old
man?"
"Terrible," said Anson.
"I'm going to try you on
another bromo-seltzer. If you can hold
it down, it'll do you good to
sleep."
With an effort Anson slid his
legs from the bed and stood up.
"I'm all right," he
said dully.
"Take it easy."
"I thin' if you gave me a
glassbrandy I could go down-stairs."
"Oh, no "
"Yes, that's the only thin'.
I'm all right now. ... I suppose I'm
in Dutch dow' there."
"They know you're a little
under the weather," said his uncle
deprecatingly. "But don't
worry about it. Schuyler didn't even get
here. He passed away in the
locker-room over at the Links."
Indifferent to any opinion,
except Paula's, Anson was nevertheless
determined to save the d6bris of
the evening, but when after a cold
bath he made his appearance most
of the party had already left.
Paula got up immediately to go
home.
In the limousine the old serious
dialogue began. She had known
that he drank, she admitted, but
she had never expected anything
like this it seemed to her that
perhaps they were not suited to each
other, after all. Their ideas
about life were too different, and so forth.
When she finished speaking, Anson
spoke in turn, very soberly. Then
Paula said she'd have to think it
over ; she wouldn't decide to-night ;
she was not angry but she was
terribly sorry. Nor would she let him
come into the hotel with her, but
just before she got out of the car
she leaned and kissed him
unhappily on the cheek.
The next afternoon Anson had a
long talk with Mrs. Legendre
while Paula sat listening in
silence. It was agreed that Paula was
to brood over the incident for a
proper period and then, if mother
and daughter thought it best,
they would follow Anson to Pensacola.
On his part he apologized with
sincerity and dignity that was all ;
with every card in her hand Mrs.
Legendre was unable to establish
any advantage over him. He made
no promises, showed no humility,
only delivered a few serious
comments on life which brought him off
with rather a moral superiority
at the end. When they came South
three weeks later, neither Anson
in his satisfaction nor Paula in her
relief at the reunion realized
that the psychological moment had
passed forever.
IV
He dominated and attracted her,
and at the same time filled her
with anxiety. Confused by his
mixture of solidity and self-indulgence,
of sentiment and cynicism
incongruities which her gentle mind was
unable to resolve Paula grew to
think of him as two alternating
personalities. When she saw him
alone, or at a formal party, or with
his casual inferiors, she felt a
tremendous pride in his strong, attrac-
tive presence, the paternal,
understanding stature of his mind. In
other company she became uneasy
when what had been a fine im-
perviousness to mere gentility
showed its other face. The other face
was gross, humorous, reckless of
everything but pleasure. It startled
her mind temporarily away from
him, even led her into a short covert
experiment with an old beau, but
it was no use after four months of
Anson's enveloping vitality there
was an anaemic pallor in all other
men.
In July he was ordered abroad,
and their tenderness and desire
reached a crescendo. Paula
considered a last-minute marriage de-
cided against it only because
there were always cocktails on his
breath now, but the parting
itself made her physically ill with grief.
After his departure she wrote him
long letters of regret for the days
of love they had missed by
waiting. In August Anson's plane slipped
down into the North Sea. He was
pulled onto a destroyer after a
night in the water and sent to
hospital with pneumonia ; the armistice
was signed before he was finally
sent home.
Then, with every opportunity
given back to them, with no material
obstacle to overcome, the secret
weavings of their temperaments
came between them, drying up
their kisses and their tears, making
their voices less loud to one
another, muffling the intimate chatter of
their hearts until the old
communication was only possible by letters,
from far away. One afternoon a
society reporter waited for two
hours in the Hunters' house for a
confirmation of their engagement.
Anson denied it ; nevertheless an
early issue carried the report as a
leading paragraph they were
"constantly seen together at South-
hampton, Hot Springs, and Tuxedo
Park." But the serious dialogue
had turned a corner into a
long-sustained quarrel, and the affair was
almost played out. Anson got
drunk flagrantly and missed an engage-
ment with her, whereupon Paula
made certain behavioristic demands.
His despair was helpless before
his pride and his knowledge of him-
self : the engagement was
definitely broken.
"Dearest," said their
letters now, "Dearest, Dearest, when I wake
up in the middle of the night and
realize that after all it was not to
be, I feel that I want to die. I
can't go on living any more. Perhaps
when we meet this summer we may
talk things over and decide dif-
ferently we were so excited and
sad that day, and I don't feel that
I can live all my life without
you. You speak of other people. Don't
you know there are no other
people for me, but only you. . . ."
But as Paula drifted here and
there around the East she would
sometimes mention her gaieties to
make him wonder. Anson was too
acute to wonder. When he saw a
man's name in her letters he felt
more sure of her and a little
disdainful he was always superior to
such things. But he still hoped
that they would some day marry.
Meanwhile he plunged vigorously
into all the movement and glitter
of post-bellum New York, entering
a brokerage house, joining half
a dozen clubs, dancing late, and
moving in three worlds his own
world, the world of young Yale
graduates, and that section of the
half-world which rests one end on
Broadway. But there was always
a thorough and infractible eight
hours devoted to his work in Wall
Street, where the combination of
his influential family connection,
his sharp intelligence, and his
abundance of sheer physical energy
brought him almost immediately
forward. He had one of those in-
valuable minds with partitions in
it ; sometimes he appeared at his
office refreshed by less than an
hour's sleep, but such occurrences
were rare. So early as 1920 his
income in salary and commissions ex-
ceeded twelve thousand dollars.
As the Yale tradition slipped
into the past he became more and
more of a popular figure among
his classmates in New York, more
popular than he had ever been in
college. He lived in a great house,
and had the means of introducing
young men into other great houses.
Moreover, his life already seemed
secure, while theirs, for the most
part, had arrived again at
precarious beginnings. They commenced
to turn to him for amusement and
escape, and Anson responded
readily, taking pleasure in
helping people and arranging their affairs.
There were no men in Paula 's
letters now, but a note of tenderness
ran through them that had not
been there before. From several
sources he heard that she had
"a heavy beau," Lowell Thayer, a
Bostonian of wealth and position,
and though he was sure she still
loved him, it made him uneasy to
think that he might lose her, after
all. Save for one unsatisfactory
day she had not been in New York
for almost five months, and as
the rumors multiplied he became in-
creasingly anxious to see her. In
February he took his vacation and
went down to Florida.
Palm Beach sprawled plump and
opulent between the sparkling
sapphire of Lake Worth, flawed
here and there by house-boats at
anchor, and the great turquoise
bar of the Atlantic Ocean. The huge
bulks of the Breakers and the
Royal Poinciana rose as twin paunches
from the bright level of the
sand, and around them clustered the
Dancing Glade, Bradley's House of
Chance, and a dozen modistes
and milliners with goods at
triple prices from New York. Upon the
trellised veranda of the Breakers
two hundred women stepped right,
stepped left, wheeled, and slid
in that then celebrated calisthenic
known as the double-shuffle,
while in half-time to the music two
thousand bracelets clicked up and
down on two hundred arms.
At the Everglades Club after dark
Paula and Lowell Thayer and
Anson and a casual fourth played
bridge with hot cards. It seemed to
Anson that her kind, serious face
was wan and tired she had been
around now for four, five, years.
He had known her for three.
"Two spades."
"Cigarette? . . . Oh, I beg
your pardon. By me."
"By."
"I'll double three
spades."
There were a dozen tables of
bridge in the room, which was filling
up with smoke. Anson's eyes met
Paula's, held them persistently
even when Thayer's glance fell
between them. . . .
"What was bid?" he asked
abstractedly.
"Rose of Washington
Square"
sang the young people in the
corners :
"Im withering there
In basement air "
The smoke banked like fog, and
the opening of a door filled the
room with blown swirls of
ectoplasm. Little Bright Eyes streaked
past the tables seeking Mr. Conan
Doyle among the Englishmen
who were posing as Englishmen about
the lobby.
"You could cut it with a
knife."
". . . cut it with a
knife."
"... a knife."
At the end of the rubber Paula
suddenly got up and spoke to Anson
in a tense, low voice. With
scarcely a glance at Lowell Thayer, they
walked out the door and descended
a long flight of stone steps in
a moment they were walking hand
in hand along the moonlit beach.
"Darling, darling. . .
." They embraced recklessly, passionately,
in a shadow. . . . Then Paula
drew back her face to let his lips say
what she wanted to hear she could
feel the words forming as they
kissed again. . . . Again she
broke away, listening, but as he pulled
her close once more she realized
that he had said nothing only
"Darling! Darling!" in
that deep, sad whisper that always made her
cry. Humbly, obediently, her
emotions yielded to him and the tears
streamed down her face, but her
heart kept on crying : "Ask me oh,
Anson, dearest, ask me ! "
"Paula. . . . Paula!"
The words wrung her heart like
hands, and Anson, feeling her
tremble, knew that emotion was
enough. He need say no more, com-
mit their destinies to no
practical enigma. Why should he, when he
might hold her so, biding his own
time, for another year forever?
He was considering them both, her
more than himself. For a moment,
when she said suddenly that she
must go back to her hotel, he hesi
tated, thinking, first,
"This is the moment, after all," and then : "No,
let it wait she is mine. . .
"
He had forgotten that Paula too
was worn away inside with the
strain of three, years. Her mood
passed forever in the night.
He went back to New York next
morning filled with a certain
restless dissatisfaction. Late in
April, without warning, he received
a telegram from Bar Harbor in
which Paula told him that she was
engaged to Lowell Thayer, and
that they would be married immedi-
ately in Boston. What he never
really believed could happen had
happened at last.
Anson filled himself with whiskey
that morning, and going to the
office, carried on his work
without a break rather with a fear of
what would happen if he stopped.
In the evening he went out as
usual, saying nothing of what had
occurred ; he was cordial, humor-
ous, unabstracted. But one thing
he could not help for three days,
in any place, in any company, he
would suddenly bend his head into
his hands and cry like a child.
V
In 1922 when Anson went abroad
with the junior partner to investi-
gate some London loans, the
journey intimated that he was to be
taken into the firm. He was
twenty-seven now, a little heavy without
being definitely stout, and with
a manner older than his years. Old
people and young people liked him
and trusted him, and mothers felt
safe when their daughters were in
his charge, for he had a way, when
he came into a room, of putting
himself on a footing with the oldest
and most conservative people
there. "You and I," he seemed to say,
"we're solid. We
understand."
He had an instinctive and rather
charitable knowledge of the weak-
nesses of men and women, and,
like a priest, it made him the more
concerned for the maintenance of
outward forms. It was typical of
him that every Sunday morning he
taught in a fashionable Episcopal
Sunday-school even though a cold
shower and a quick change into
a cutaway coat were all that
separated him from the wild night be-
fore.
After his father's death he was
the practical head of his family,
and, in effect, guided the
destinies of the younger children. Through
a complication his authority did
not extend to his father's estate,
which was administrated by his
Uncle Robert, who was the horsey
member of the family, a
good-natured, hard-drinking member of that
set which centres about Wheatley
Hills.
Uncle Robert and his wife, Edna,
had been great friends of Anson's
youth, and the former was
disappointed when his nephew's superior-
ity failed to take a horsey form.
He backed him for a city club
which was the mostMifficult in
America to enter one could only join
if one's family had "helped
to build up New York" (or, in other
words, were rich before 1880) and
when Anson, after his election,
neglected it for the Yale Club,
Uncle Robert gave him a little talk
on the subject. But when on top
of that Anson declined to enter
Robert Hunter's own conservative
and somewhat neglected broker-
age house, his manner grew
cooler. Like a primary teacher who has
taught all he knew, he slipped
out of Anson's life.
There were so many friends in
Anson's life scarcely one for
whom he had not done some unusual
kindness and scarcely one whom
he did not occasionally embarrass
by his bursts of rough conversation
or his habit of getting drunk
whenever and however he liked. It
annoyed him when any one else
blundered in that regard about his
own lapses he was always humorous.
Odd things happened to him
and he told them with infectious
laughter.
I was working in New York that
spring, and I used to lunch with
him at the Yale Club, which my
university was sharing until the
completion of our own. I had read
of Paula's marriage, and one after-
noon, when I asked him about her,
something moved him to tell me
the story. After that he
frequently invited me to family dinners at
his house and behaved as though
there was a special relation between
us, as though with his confidence
a little of that consuming memory
had passed into me.
I found that despite the trusting
mothers, his attitude toward girls
was not indiscriminately
protective. It was up to the girl if she
showed an inclination toward looseness,
she must take care of her-
self, even with him.
"Life," he would
explain sometimes, "has made a cynic of me."
By life he meant Paula.
Sometimes, especially when he was drink-
ing, it became a little twisted
in his mind, and he thought that she
had callously thrown him over.
This "cynicism," or
rather his realization that naturally fast girls
were not worth sparing, led to
his affair with Dolly Karger, It wasn't
his only affair in those years,
but it came nearest to touching him
deeply, and it had a profound
effect upon his attitude toward life.
Dolly was the daughter of a
notorious "publicist" who had married
into society. She herself grew up
into the Junior League, came out
at the Plaza, and went to the
Assembly ; and only a few old families
like the Hunters could question
whether or not she "belonged," for
her picture was often in the
papers, and she had more enviable atten-
tion than many girls who
undoubtedly did. She was dark-haired, with
carmine lips and a high, lovely
color, which she concealed under
pinkish-gray powder all through
the first year out, because high color
was unfashionable Victorian-pale
was the thing to be. She wore
black, severe suits and stood
with her hands in her pockets leaning
a little forward, with a humorous
restraint on her face. She danced
exquisitely better than anything
she liked to dance better than
anything except making love.
Since she was ten she had always been
, and, usually, with some boy who
didn't respond to her. Those
there were many bored her after a
brief encounter,
but for her failures she reserved
the warmest spot in her heart.
When she met them she would
always try once more sometimes she
succeeded, more often she failed.
It never occurred to this gypsy
of the unattainable that there was
a certain resemblance in those
who refused to love her they shared
a hard intuition that saw through
to her weakness, not a weakness
of emotion but a weakness of
rudder. Anson perceived this when he
first met her, less than a month
after Paula's marriage. He was drink-
ing rather heavily, and he
pretended for a week that he was falling
in love with her. Then he dropped
her abruptly and forgot imme-
diately he took up the commanding
position in her heart.
Like so many girls of that day
Dolly was slackly and indiscreetly
wild. The unconventionality of a
slightly older generation had been
simply one facet of a post-war
movement to discredit obsolete man-
ners Dolly's was both older and
shabbier, and she saw in Anson the
two extremes which the
emotionally shiftless woman seeks, an
abandon to indulgence alternating
with a protective strength. In
his character she felt both the
sybarite and the solid rock, and these
two satisfied every need of her
nature.
She felt that it was going to be
difficult, but she mistook the reason
she thought that Anson and his
family expected a more spectacu-
lar marriage, but she guessed
immediately that her advantage lay in
his tendency to drink.
They met at the large debutante
dances, but as her infatuation
increased they managed to be more
and more together. Like most
mothers, Mrs. Karger believed
that Anson was exceptionally reliable,
so she allowed Dolly to go with
him to distant country clubs and
suburban houses without inquiring
closely into their activities or
questioning her explanations when
they came in late. At first these
explanations might have been
accurate, but Dolly's worldly ideas
of capturing Anson were soon
engulfed in the rising sweep of her
emotion. Kisses in the back of
taxis and motor-cars were no longer
enough ; they did a curious thing
:
They dropped out of their world
for a while and made another
world just beneath it where
Anson's tippling and Dolly's irregular
hours would be less noticed and
commented on. It was composed,
this world, of varying elements
several of Anson's Yale friends and
their wives, two or three young
brokers and bond salesmen and a
handful of unattached men, fresh
from college, with money and a
propensity to dissipation. What
this world lacked in spaciousness
and scale it made up for by
allowing them a liberty that it scarcely
permitted itself. Moreover, it
centred around them and permitted
Dolly the pleasure of a faint
condescension a pleasure which Anson,
whose whole life was a
condescension from the certitudes of his
childhood, was unable to share.
He was not in love with her, and
in the long feverish winter of
their affair he frequently told
her so. In the spring he was weary
he wanted to renew his life at
some other source moreover, he saw
that either he must break with
her now or accept the responsibility
of a definite seduction. Her
family's encouraging attitude precipitated
his decision one evening when Mr.
Karger knocked discreetly at
the library door to announce that
he had left a bottle of old brandy
in the dining-room, Anson felt
that life was hemming him in. That
night he wrote her a short letter
in which he told her that he was
going on his vacation, and that
in view of all the circumstances they
had better meet no more.
It was June. His family had
closed up the house and gone to the
country, so he was living
temporarily at the Yale Club. I had heard
about his affair with Dolly as it
developed accounts salted with
humor, for he despised unstable
women, and granted them no place
in the social edifice in which he
believed and when he told me that
night that he was definitely
breaking with her I was glad. I had seen
Dolly here and there, and each
time with a feeling of pity at the
hopelessness of her struggle, and
of shame at knowing so much about
her that I had no right to know.
She was what is known as "a pretty
little thing," but there was
a certain recklessness which rather fas-
cinated me. Her dedication to the
goddess of waste would have been
less obvious had she been less
spirited she would most certainly
throw herself away, but I was
glad when I heard that the sacrifice
would not be consummated in my
sight.
Anson was going to leave the
letter of farewell at her house next
morning. It was one of the few
houses left open in the Fifth Avenue
district, and he knew that the
Kargers, acting upon erroneous in-
formation from Dolly, had
foregone a trip abroad to give their daugh-
ter her chance. As he stepped out
the door of the Yale Club into
Madison Avenue the postman passed
him, and he followed back
inside. The first letter that
caught his eye was in Dolly's hand.
He knew what it would be a lonely
and tragic monologue, full
of the reproaches he knew, the
invoked memories, the "I wonder
if's" all the immemorial
intimacies that he had communicated to
Paula Legendre in what seemed
another age. Thumbing over some
bills, he brought it on top again
and opened it. To his surprise it was
a short, somewhat formal note,
which said that Dolly would be un-
able to go to the country with him
for the week-end, because Perry
Hull from Chicago had
unexpectedly come to town. It added that
Anson had brought this on himself
: " if I felt that you loved me
as I love you I would go with you
at any time, any place, but Perry
is so nice, and he so much wants
me to marry him "
Anson smiled contemptuously he
had had experience with such
decoy epistles. Moreover, he knew
how Dolly had labored over this
plan, probably sent for the
faithful Perry and calculated the time of
his arrival even labored over the
note so that it would make him
jealous without driving him away.
Like most compromises, it had
neither force nor vitality but
only a timorous despair.
Suddenly he was angry. He sat
down in the lobby and read it
again. Then he went to the phone,
called Dolly and told her in his
clear, compelling voice that he
had received her note and would call
for her at five o'clock as they
had previously planned. Scarcely wait-
ing for the pretended uncertainty
of her "Perhaps I can see you for
an hour," he hung up the
receiver and went down to his office. On
the way he tore his own letter
into bits and dropped it in the street.
He was not jealous she meant
nothing to him but at her pa-
thetic ruse everything stubborn
and self-indulgent in him came to
the surface. It was a presumption
from a mental inferior and it could
not be overlooked. If she wanted
to know to whom she belonged she
would see.
He was on the door-step at
quarter past five. Dolly was dressed
for the street, and he listened
in silence to the paragraph of "I can
only see you for an hour/' which
she had begun on the phone.
"Put on your hat,
Dolly," he said, "we'll take a walk."
They strolled up Madison Avenue
and over to Fifth while Anson's
shirt dampened upon his portly
body in the deep heat. He talked
little, scolding her, making no
love to her, but before they had walked
six blocks she was his again,
apologizing for the note, offering not to
see Perry at all as an atonement,
offering anything. She thought that
he had come because he was
beginning to love her.
"I'm hot," he said when
they reached yist Street. "This is a winter
suit. If I stop by the house and
change, would you mind waiting for
me down-stairs? I'll only be a
minute."
She was happy ; the intimacy of
his being hot, of any physical fact
about him, thrilled her. When
they came to the iron-grated door and
Anson took out his key she
experienced a sort of delight.
Down-stairs it was dark, and
after he ascended in the lift Dolly
raised a curtain and looked out
through opaque lace at the houses
over the way. She heard the lift
machinery stop, and with the notion
of teasing him pressed the button
that brought it down. Then on
what was more than an impulse she
got into it and sent it up to what
she guessed was his floor.
"Anson," she called,
laughing a little.
"Just a minute," he
answered from his bedroom . . . then after a
brief delay : "Now you can
come in."
He had changed and was buttoning
his vest.
"This is my room," he
said lightly. "How do you like it?"
She caught sight of Paula's
picture on the wall and stared at it in
fascination, just as Paula had
stared at the pictures of Anson's child-
ish sweethearts five years
before. She knew something about Paula
sometimes she tortured herself
with fragments of the story.
Suddenly she came close to Anson,
raising her arms. They em-
braced. Outside the area window a
soft artificial twilight already hov-
ered, though the sun was still
bright on a back roof across the way.
In half an hour the room would be
quite dark. The uncalculated op-
portunity overwhelmed them, made
them both breathless, and they
,clung more closely. It was
imminent, inevitable. Still holding one
another, they raised their heads
their eyes fell together upon
Paula's picture, staring down at
them from the wall.
Suddenly Anson dropped his arms,
and sitting down at his desk
tried the drawer with a bunch of
keys.
"Like a drink?" he
asked in a gruff voice.
"No, Anson."
He poured himself half a tumbler
of whiskey, swallowed it, and
then opened the door into the
hall.
"Come on," he said.
Dolly hesitated.
"Anson I'm going to the
country with you tonight, after all. You
understand that, don't you?"
"Of course," he
answered brusquely.
In Dolly's car they rode on to
Long Island, closer in their emo-
tions than they had ever been
before. They knew what would hap-
pen not with Paula's face to
remind them that something was lack-
ing, but when they were alone in
the still, hot Long Island night
they did not care.
The estate in Port Washington
where they were to spend the week-
end belonged to a cousin of
Anson's who had married a Montana
copper operator. An interminable
drive began at the lodge and
twisted under imported poplar
saplings toward a huge, pink Spanish
house. Anson had often visited there
before.
After dinner they danced at the
Linx Club. About midnight Anson
assured himself that his cousins
would not leave before two then
he explained that Dolly was tired
; he would take her home and re-
turn to the dance later.
Trembling a little with excitement, they got
into a borrowed car together and
drove to Port Washington. As they
reached the lodge he stopped and
spoke to the night-watchman.
"When are you making a
round, Carl ?"
"Right away."
"Then you'll be here till
everybody's in?"
"Yes, sir."
"All right. Listen : if any
automobile, no matter whose it is, turns
in at this gate, I want you to
phone the house immediately." He put
a five-dollar bill into Carl's
hand. "Is that clear?"
"Yes, Mr. Anson." Being
of the Old World, he neither winked nor
smiled. Yet Dolly sat with her
face turned slightly away.
Anson had a key. Once inside he
poured a drink for both of them
Dolly left hers untouched then he
ascertained definitely the loca-
tion of the phone, and found that
it was within easy hearing distance
of their rooms, both of which were
on the first floor.
Five minutes later he knocked at
the door of Dolly's room.
"Anson?" He went in,
closing the door behind him. She was in
bed, leaning up anxiously with
elbows on the pillow ; sitting beside
her he took her in his arms.
"Anson, darling."
He didn't answer.
"Anson. . . . Anson! I love
you. . . . Say you love me. Say it
now can't you say it now? Even if
you don't mean it?"
He did not listen. Over her head
he perceived that the picture of
Paula was hanging here upon this
wall.
He got up and went close to it.
The frame gleamed faintly with
thrice-reflected moonlight within
was a blurred shadow of a face
that he saw he did not know.
Almost sobbing, he turned around and
stared with abomination at the
little figure on the bed.
"This is all
foolishness," he said thickly. "I don't know what I was
thinking about. I don't love you
and you'd better wait for somebody
that loves you. I don't love you
a bit, can't you understand?"
His voice broke, and he went
hurriedly out. Back in the salon he
was pouring himself a drink with
uneasy fingers, when the front door
opened suddenly, and his cousin
came in.
"Why, Anson, I hear Dolly's
sick," she began solicitously. "I hear
she's sick. . . ."
"It was nothing," he
interrupted, raising his voice so that it would
carry into Dolly's room.
"She was a little tired. She went to bed."
For a long time afterward Anson
believed that a protective God
sometimes interfered in human
affairs. But Dolly Karger, lying
awake and staring at the ceiling,
never again believed in anything
again.
VI
When Dolly married during the
following autumn, Anson was in
London on business. Like Paula's
marriage, it was sudden, but it
affected him in a different way.
At first he felt that it was funny,
and had an inclination to laugh
when he thought of it. Later it de-
pressed him it made him feel old.
There was something repetitive
about it why, Paula and Dolly
had belonged to different
generations. He had a foretaste of the sen-
sation of a man of forty who
hears that the daughter of an old
flame has married. He wired
congratulations and, as was not the
case with Paula, they were
sincere he had never really hoped that
Paula would be happy.
When he returned to New York, he
was made a partner in the
firm, and, as his
responsibilities increased, he had less time on his
hands. The refusal of a
life-insurance company to issue him a policy
made such an impression on him
that he stopped drinking for a year,
and claimed that he felt better
physically, though I think he missed
the convivial recounting of those
Celliniesque adventures which, in
his early twenties, had played
such a part in his life. But he never
abandoned the Yale Club. He was a
figure there, a personality, and
the tendency of his class, who
were now seven years out of college,,
to drift away to more sober
haunts was checked by his presence.
His day was never too full nor
his mind too weary to give any sort
of aid to any one who asked it.
What had been done at first through
pride and superiority had become
a habit and a passion. And there
was always something a younger
brother in trouble at New Haven,
a quarrel to be patched up
between a friend and his wife, a position
to be found for this man, an investment
for that. But his specialty
was the solving of problems for
young married people. Young mar-
ried people fascinated him and
their apartments were almost sacred
to him he knew the story of their
love-affair, advised them where
to live and how, and remembered
their babies' names. Toward young
wives his attitude was circumspect
: he never abused the trust which
their husbands strangely enough
in view of his unconcealed irregu-
larities invariably reposed in
him.
He came to take a vicarious pleasure
in happy marriages, and to
be inspired to an almost equally
pleasant melancholy by those that
went astray. Not a season passed
that he did not witness the collapse
of an affair that perhaps he
himself had fathered. When Paula was
divorced and almost immediately
remarried to another Bostonian,
he talked about her to me all one
afternoon. He would never love any
one as he had loved Paula, but he
insisted that he no longer cared.
"I'll never marry," he
came to say; "I've seen too much of it,
and I know a happy marriage is a
very rare thing. Besides, I'm too
old."
But he did believe in marriage.
Like all men who spring from a
happy and successful marriage, he
believed in it passionately noth-
ing he had seen would change his
belief, his cynicism dissolved upon
it like air. But he did really
believe he was too old. At twenty-eight
he began to accept with
equanimity the prospect of marrying with-
out romantic love ; he resolutely
chose a New York girl of his own
class, pretty, intelligent,
congenial, above reproach and set about
falling in love with her. The
things he had said to Paula with sin-
cerity, to other girls with
grace, he could no longer say at all without
smiling, or with the force
necessary to convince.
"When I'm forty," he
told his friends, "I'll be ripe. I'll fall for
some chorus girl like the
rest."
Nevertheless, he persisted in his
attempt. His mother wanted to see
him married, and he could now
well afford it he had a seat on the
Stock Exchange, and his earned
income came to twenty-five thousand
a year. The idea was agreeable :
when his friends he spent most of
his time with the set he and
Dolly had evolved closed themselves in
behind domestic doors at night,
he no longer rejoiced in his freedom.
He even wondered if he should
have married Dolly. Not even Paula
had loved him more, and he was
learning the rarity, in a single life,
of encountering true emotion.
Just as this mood began to creep
over him a disquieting story
reached his ear. His Aunt Edna, a
woman just this side of forty, was
carrying on an open intrigue with
a dissolute, hard-drinking young
man named Gary Sloane. Every one
knew of it except Anson's Uncle
Robert, who for fifteen years had
talked long in clubs and taken his
wife for granted.
Anson heard the story again and
again with increasing annoyance.
Something of his old feeling for
his uncle came back to him, a feel-
ing that was more than personal,
a reversion toward that family soli-
darity on which he had based his
pride. His intuition singled out the
essential point of the affair,
which was that his uncle shouldn't be
hurt. It was his first experiment
in unsolicited meddling, but with
his knowledge of Edna's character
he felt that he could handle the
matter better than a district
judge or his uncle.
His uncle was in Hot Springs.
Anson traced down the sources of
the scandal so that there should
be no possibility of mistake and
then he called Edna and asked her
to lunch with him at the Plaza
next day. Something in his tone
must have frightened her, for she
was reluctant, but he insisted,
putting off the date until she had no
excuse for refusing.
She met him at the appointed time
in the Plaza lobby, a lovely,
faded, gray-eyed blonde in a coat
of Russian sable. Five great rings,
cold with diamonds and emeralds,
sparkled on her slender hands. It
occurred to Anson that it was his
father's intelligence and not his
uncle's that had earned the fur
and the stones, the rich brilliance
that buoyed up her passing
beauty.
Though Edna scented his
hostility, she was unprepared for the
directness of his approach.
"Edna, I'm astonished at the
way you've been acting," he said in
a strong, frank voice. "At
first I couldn't believe it."
"Believe what?" she
demanded sharply.
"You needn't pretend with
me, Edna. I'm talking about Gary
Sloane. Aside from any other
consideration, I didn't think you could
treat Uncle Robert "
"Now look here, Anson "
she began angrily, but his peremptory
voice broke through hers :
" and your children in such
a way. You've been married eighteen
years, and you're old enough to
know better."
"You can't talk to me like
that ! You "
"Yes, I can. Uncle Robert
has always been my best friend." He
was tremendously moved. He felt a
real distress about his uncle,
about his three young cousins.
Edna stood up, leaving her
crab-flake cocktail untasted.
"This is the silliest thing
"
"Very well, if you won't
listen to me I'll go to Uncle Robert and
tell him the whole story he's
bound to hear it sooner or later. And
afterward I'll go to old Moses
Sloane."
Edna faltered back into her
chair.
"Don't talk so loud,"
she begged him. Her eyes blurred with
tears. "You have no idea how
your voice carries. You might have
chosen a less public place to
make all these crazy accusations."
He didn't answer.
"Oh, you never liked me, I
know," she went on. "You're just tak-
ing advantage of some silly
gossip to try and break up the only in-
teresting friendship I've ever
had. What did I ever do to make you
hate me so?"
Still Anson waited. There would
be the appeal to his chivalry, then
to his pity, finally to his
superior sophistication when he had
shouldered his way through all
these there would be admissions, and
he could come to grips with her.
By being silent, by being impervious,
by returning constantly to his
main weapon, which was his own true
emotion, he bullied her into
frantic despair as the luncheon hour
slipped away. At two o'clock she
took out a mirror and a handker-
chief, shined away the marks of
her tears and powdered the slight
hollows where they had lain. She
had agreed to meet him at her own
house at five.
When he arrived she was stretched
on a chaise-longue which was
covered with cretonne for the
summer, and the tears he had called up
at luncheon seemed still to be
standing in her eyes. Then he was
aware of Gary Sloane's dark
anxious presence upon the cold hearth.
"What's this idea of
yours?" broke out Sloane immediately. "I
understand you invited Edna to
lunch and then threatened her on
the basis of some cheap
scandal."
Anson sat down.
"I have no reason to think
it's only scandal."
"I hear you're going to take
it to Robert Hunter, and to my
father."
Anson nodded.
"Either you break it off or
I will," he said.
"What God damned business is
it of yours, Hunter ?"
"Don't lose your temper,
Gary," said Edna nervously. "It's only
a question of showing him how
absurd "
"For one thing, it's my name
that's being handed around," inter-
rupted Anson. "That's all
that concerns you, Gary."
"Edna isn't a member of your
family."
"She most certainly is !
" His anger mounted. "Why she owes this
house and the rings on her
fingers to my father's brains. When Uncle
Robert married her she didn't
have a penny."
They all looked at the rings as
if they had a significant bearing on
the situation. Edna made a
gesture to take them from her hand.
"I guess they're not the
only rings in the world," said Sloane.
"Oh, this is absurd,"
cried Edna. "Anson, will you listen to me?
I've found out how the silly
story started. It was a maid I discharged
who went right to the Chilicheffs
all these Russians pump things
out of their servants and then
put a false meaning on them." She
brought down her fist angrily on
the table : "And after Robert lent
them the limousine for a whole
month when we were South last
winter "
"Do you see ?" demanded
Sloane eagerly. "This maid got hold of
the wrong end of the thing. She
knew that Edna and I were friends,
and she carried it to the
Chilicheffs. In Russia they assume that if a
man and a woman "
He enlarged the theme to a disquisition
upon social relations in
the Caucasus.
"If that's the case it
better be explained to Uncle Robert," said
Anson dryly, "so that when
the rumors do reach him he'll know
they're not true."
Adopting the method he had
followed with Edna at luncheon he
let them explain it all away. He
knew that they were guilty and that
presently they would cross the
line from explanation into justifica-
tion and convict themselves more
definitely than he could ever do.
By seven they had taken the
desperate step of telling him the truth
Robert Hunter's neglect, Edna's
empty life, the casual dalliance
that had flamed up into passion
but like so many true stories it
had the misfortune of being old,
and its enfeebled body beat help-
lessly against the armor of
Anson's will. The threat to go to Sloane's
father sealed their helplessness,
for the latter, a retired cotton broker
out of Alabama, was a notorious
fundamentalist who controlled his
son by a rigid allowance and the
promise that at his next vagary the
allowance would stop forever.
They dined at a small French
restaurant, and the discussion con-
tinued at one time Sloane
resorted to physical threats, a little later
they were both imploring him to
give them time. But Anson was
obdurate. He saw that Edna was
breaking up, and that her spirit
must not be refreshed by any
renewal of their passion.
At two o'clock in a small
night-club on 53d Street, Edna's nerves
suddenly collapsed, and she cried
to go home. Sloane had been drink-
ing heavily all evening, and he
was faintly maudlin, leaning on the
table and weeping a little with his
face in his hands. Quickly
Anson gave them his terms. Sloane
was to leave town for six months,
and he must be gone within
forty-eight hours. When he returned
there was to be no resumption of
the affair, but at the end of a year
Edna might, if she wished, tell
Robert Hunter that she wanted a
divorce and go about it in the
usual way.
He paused, gaining confidence
from their faces for his final word.
"Or there's another thing
you can do," he said slowly, "if Edna
wants to leave her children,
there's nothing I can do to prevent your
running off together."
"I want to go home!"
cried Edna again. "Oh, haven't you done
enough to us for one day?"
Outside it was dark, save for a
blurred glow from Sixth Avenue
down the street. In that light
those two who had been lovers looked
for the last time into each
other's tragic faces, realizing that between
them there was not enough youth
and strength to avert their eternal
parting. Sloane walked suddenly
off down the street and Anson
tapped a dozing taxi-driver on
the arm.
It was almost four; there was a
patient flow of cleaning water
along the ghostly pavement of
Fifth Avenue, and the shadows of
two night women flitted over the
dark facade of St. Thomas's church.
Then the desolate shrubbery of
Central Park where Anson had
often played as a child, and the
mounting numbers, significant as
names, of the marching streets. This
was his city, he thought, where
his name had flourished through
five generations. No change could
alter the permanence of its place
here, for change itself was the
essential substratum by wliich he
and those of his name identified
themselves with the spirit of New
York^ Resourcefulness and a
powerful will for his threats in
weaker hands would have been
less than nothing had beaten the
gathering dust from his uncle's
name, from the name of his
family, from even this shivering figure
that sat beside him in the car.
Gary Sloane's body was found next
morning on the lower shelf of
a pillar of Queensboro Bridge. In
the darkness and in his excitement
he had thought that it was the
water flowing black beneath him, but
in less than a second it made no
possible difference unless he had
planned to think one last thought
of Edna, and call out her name
as he struggled feebly in the
water.
VII
Anson never blamed himself for
his part in this affair the situa-
tion which brought it about had
not been of his making. But the
just suffer with the unjust, and
he found that his oldest and some-
how his most precious friendship
was over. He never knew what
distorted story Edna told, but he
was welcome in his uncle's house
no longer.
Just before Christmas Mrs. Hunter
retired to a select Episcopal
heaven, and Anson became the
responsible head of his family. An
unmarried aunt who had lived with
them for years ran the house,
and attempted with helpless
inefficiency to chaperone the younger
girls. All the children were less
self-reliant than Anson, more con-
ventional both in their virtues
and in their shortcomings. Mrs.
Hunter's death had postponed the
debut of one daughter and the
wedding of another. Also it had
taken something deeply material
from all of them, for with her
passing the quiet, expensive superi-
ority of the Hunters came to an
end.
For one thing, the estate,
considerably diminished by two inherit-
ance taxes and soon to be divided
among six children, was not a
notable fortune any more. Anson
saw a tendency in his youngest
sisters to speak rather
respectfully of families that hadn't "existed"
twenty years ago. His own feeling
of precedence was not echoed in
them sometimes they were
conventionally snobbish, that was all.
For another thing, this was the
last summer they would spend on
the Connecticut estate ; the
clamor against it was too loud : "Who
wants to waste the best months of
the year shut up in that dead old
town ?" Reluctantly he
yielded the house would go into the market
in the fall, and next summer they
would rent a smaller place in
Westchester County. It was a step
down from the expensive sim-
plicity of his father's idea,
and, while he sympathized with the
revolt, it also annoyed him;
during his mother's lifetime he had
gone up there at least every
other week-end even in the gayest
summers.
Yet he himself was part of this
change, and his strong instinct
for life had turned him in his
twenties from the hollow obsequies
of that abortive leisure class.
He did not see this clearly he still
felt that there was a norm, a
standard of society. But there was no
norm, it was doubtful if there
ever had been a true norm in New
York. The few who still paid and
fought to enter a particular set
succeeded only to find that as a
society it scarcely functioned or,
what was more alarming, that the
Bohemia from which they fled sat
above them at table.
At twenty-nine Anson's chief
concern was his own growing loneli-
ness. He was sure now that he would
never marry. The number of
weddings at which he had
officiated as best man or usher was past
all counting there was a drawer
at home that bulged with the
official neckties of this or that
wedding-party, neckties standing
for romances that had not endured
a year, for couples who had passed
completely from his life.
Scarf-pins, gold pencils, cuff-buttons, pres-
ents from a generation of grooms
had passed through his jewel-box
and been lost and with every
ceremony he was less and less able
to imagine himself in the groom's
place. Under his hearty good-will
toward all those marriages there
was despair about his own.
And as he neared thirty he became
not a little depressed at the
inroads that marriage, especially
lately, had made upon his friend-
ships. Groups of people had a
disconcerting tendency to dissolve
and disappear. The men from his
own college and it was upon
them he had expended the most
time and affection were the most
elusive of all. Most of them were
drawn deep into domesticity, two
were dead, one lived abroad, one
was in Hollywood writing con-
tinuities for pictures that Anson
went faithfully to see.
Most of them, however, were
permanent commuters with an
intricate family life centring
around some suburban country
club, and it was from these that
he felt his estrangement most
keenly.
In the early days of their
married life they had all needed him ;
he gave them advice about their
slim finances, he exorcised their
doubts about the advisability of
bringing a baby into two rooms
and a bath, especially he stood
for the great world outside. But now
their financial troubles were in the
past and the fearfully expected
child had evolved into an
absorbing family. They were always glad
to see old Anson, but they
dressed up for him and tried to impress
him with their present
importance, and kept their troubles to them-
selves. They needed him no
longer.
A few weeks before his thirtieth
birthday the last of his early
and intimate friends was married.
Anson acted in his usual role of
best man, gave his usual silver
tea-service, and went down to the
usual Homeric to say good-by. It was
a hot Friday afternoon in
May, and as he walked from the
pier he realized that Saturday
closing had begun and he was free
until Monday morning.
"Go where?" he asked
himself.
The Yale Club, of course; bridge
until dinner, then four or five
raw cocktails in somebody's room
and a pleasant confused evening.
He regretted that this
afternoon's groom wouldn't be along they
had always been able to cram so
much into such nights : they knew
how to attach women and how to
get rid of them, how much con-
sideration any girl deserved from
their intelligent hedonism. A party
was an adjusted thing you took
certain girls to certain places and
spent just so much on their
amusement; you drank a little, not
much, more than you ought to drink,
and at a certain time in the
morning you stood up and said you
were going home. You avoided
college boys, sponges, future
engagements, fights, sentiment, and
indiscretions. That was the way
it was done. All the rest was dissi-
pation.
In the morning you were never
violently sorry you made no
resolutions, but if you had
overdone it and your heart was slightly
out of order, you went on the wagon
for a few days without saying
anything about it, and waited
until an accumulation of nervous
boredom projected you into
another party.
The lobby of the Yale Club was
unpopulated. In the bar three
very young alumni looked up at
him, momentarily and without
curiosity.
"Hello, there, Oscar,"
he said to the bartender. "Mr. Cahill been
around this afternoon?"
"Mr. Cahiirs gone to New
Haven."
"Oh . . . that so?"
"Gone to the ball game. Lot
of men gone up."
Anson looked once again into the
lobby, considered for a moment,
and then walked out and over to
Fifth Avenue. From the broad win-
dow of one of his clubs one that
he had scarcely visited in five
years a gray man with watery eyes
stared down at him. Anson
looked quickly away that figure
sitting in vacant resignation, in
supercilious solitude, depressed
him. He stopped and, retracing his
steps, started over 47th Street
toward Teak Warden's apartment.
Teak and his wife had once been
his most familiar friends it was
a household where he and Dolly
Karger had been used to go in
the days of their affair. But
Teak had taken to drink, and his wife
had remarked publicly that Anson
was a bad influence on him. The
remark reached Anson in an
exaggerated form when it was finally
cleared up, the delicate spell of
intimacy was broken, never to be
renewed.
"Is Mr. Warden at home
?" he inquired.
"They Ve gone to the
country."
The fact unexpectedly cut at him.
They were gone to the country
and he hadn't known. Two years
before he would have known the
date, the hour, come up at the
last moment for a final drink,
and planned his first visit to
them. Now they had gone without
a word.
Anson looked at his watch and
considered a week-end with his
family, but the only train was a
local that would jolt through the
aggressive heat for three hours.
And to-morrow in the country, and
Sunday he was in no mood for
porch-bridge with polite under-
graduates, and dancing after
dinner at a rural roadhouse, a diminu-
tive of gaiety which his father
had estimated too well.
"Oh, no," he said to
himself. . . . "No."
He was a dignified, impressive
young man, rather stout now, but
otherwise unmarked by
dissipation. He could have been cast for a
pillar of something at times you
were sure it was not society, at
others nothing else for the law,
for the church. He stood for a few
minutes motionless on the
sidewalk in front of a 47th Street apart-
ment-house; for almost the first
time in his life he had nothing
whatever to do.
Then he began to walk briskly up
Fifth Avenue, as if he had just
been reminded of an important engagement
there. The necessity of
dissimulation is one of the few
characteristics that we share with
dogs, and I think of Anson on
that day as some well-bred specimen
who had been disappointed at a
familiar back door. He was going
to see Nick, once a fashionable
bartender in demand at all private
dances, and now employed in
cooling non-alcoholic champagne
among the labyrinthine cellars of
the Plaza Hotel.
"Nick," he said,
"what's happened to everything?"
"Dead," Nick said.
"Make me a whiskey
sour." Anson handed a pint bottle over the
counter. "Nick, the girls
are different ; I had a little girl in Brook-
lyn and she got married last week
without letting me know."
"That a fact ?
Ha-ha-ha," responded Nick diplomatically. "Slipped
it over on you."
"Absolutely," said
Anson. "And I was out with her the night
before."
"Ha-ha-ha," said Nick,
"ha-ha-ha!"
"Do you remember the wedding,
Nick, in Hot Springs where I
had the waiters and the musicians
singing 'God save the King'?"
"Now where was that, Mr.
Hunter?" Nick concentrated doubt-
fully. "Seems to me that was
"
"Next time they were back
for more, and I began to wonder how
much I'd paid them,"
continued Anson.
" seems to me that was at
Mr. Trenholm's wedding."
"Don't know him," said
Anson decisively. He was offended that
a strange name should intrude
upon his reminiscences; Nick per-
ceived this.
"Na aw " he admitted,
"I ought to know that. It was one of
your crowd Brakins . . . Baker
"
"Bicker Baker," said
Anson responsively. "They put me in a
hearse after it was over and
covered me up with flowers and drove
me away."
"Ha-ha-ha," said Nick.
"Ha-ha-ha."
Nick's simulation of the old
family servant paled presently and
Anson went up-stairs to the
lobby. He looked around his eyes met
the glance of an unfamiliar clerk
at the desk, then fell upon a flower
from the morning's marriage
hesitating in the mouth of a brass cus-
pidor. He went out and walked
slowly toward the blood-red sun
over Columbus Circle. Suddenly he
turned around and, retracing his
steps to the Plaza, immured
himself in a telephone-booth.
Later he said that he tried to
get me three times that afternoon,
that he tried every one who might
be in New York men and girls
he had not seen for years, an artist's
model of his college days whose
faded number was still in his
address book Central told him that
even the exchange existed no
longer. At length his quest roved into
the country, and he held brief
disappointing conversations with
emphatic butlers and maids.
So-and-so was out, riding, swimming,
playing golf, sailed to Europe
last week. Who shall I say phoned?
It was intolerable that he should
pass the evening alone the
private reckonings which one
plans for a moment of leisure lose
every charm when the solitude is
enforced. There were always women
of a sort, but the ones he knew
had temporarily vanished, and to pass
a New York evening in the hired
company of a stranger never
occurred to him he would have
considered that that was something
shameful and secret, the
diversion of a travelling salesman in a
strange town.
Anson paid the telephone bill the
girl tried unsuccessfully to joke
with him about its size and for
the second time that afternoon
started to leave the Plaza and go
he knew not where. Near the revolv-
ing door the figure of a woman,
obviously with child, stood side-
ways to the light a sheer beige
cape fluttered at her shoulders when
the door turned and, each time,
she looked impatiently toward it as
if she were weary of waiting. At
the first sight of her a strong
nervous thrill of familiarity
went over him, but not until he was
within five feet of her did he
realize that it was Paula.
"Why, Anson Hunter!"
His heart turned over.
"Why, Paula "
"Why, this is wonderful. I
can't believe it, Anson ! "
She took both his hands, and he
saw in the freedom of the gesture
that the memory of him had lost
poignancy to her. But not to him
he felt that old mood that she
evoked in him stealing over his brain,
that gentleness with which he had
always met her optimism as if
afraid to mar its surface.
"We're at Rye for the
summer. Pete had to come East on business
you know of course I'm Mrs. Peter
Hagerty now so we brought
the children and took a house.
You've got to come out and see us."
"Can I?" he asked
directly. "When?"
"When you like. Here's
Pete." The revolving door functioned,
giving up a fine tall man of
thirty with a tanned face and a trirn
mustache. His immaculate fitness
made a sharp contrast with
Anson 's increasing bulk, which
was obvious under the faintly tight
cut-away coat.
"You oughtn't to be
standing," said Hagerty to his wife. "Let's
sit down here." He indicated
lobby chairs, but Paula hesitated.
"I've got to go right home,"
she said. "Anson, why don't you
why don't you come out and have
dinner with us to-night? We're
just getting settled, but if you
can stand that "
Hagerty confirmed the invitation
cordially.
"Come out for the
night."
Their car waited in front of the
hotel, and Paula with a tired
gesture sank back against silk
cushions in the corner.
"There's so much I want to
talk to you about," she said, "it
seems hopeless."
"I want to hear about
you."
"Well" she smiled at
Hagerty "that would take a long time
too. I have three children by my
first marriage. The oldest is five,
then four, then three." She
smiled again. "I didn't waste much time
having them, did I ?"
"Boys?"
"A boy and two girls. Then
oh, a lot of things happened, and I
got a divorce in Paris a year ago
and married Pete. That's all
except that I'm awfully
happy."
In Rye they drove up to a large
house near the Beach Club, from
which there issued presently
three dark, slim children who broke
from an English governess and
approached them with an esoteric
cry. Abstractedly and with
difficulty Paula took each one into her
arms, a caress which they
accepted stiffly, as they had evidently been
told not to bump into Mummy. Even
against their fresh faces
Paula's skin showed scarcely any
weariness for all her physical
languor she seemed younger than
when he had last seen her at Palm
Beach seven years ago.
At dinner she was preoccupied,
and afterward, during the homage
to the radio, she lay with closed
eyes on the sofa, until Anson won-
dered if his presence at this
time were not an intrusion. But at nine
o'clock, when Hagerty rose and
said pleasantly that he was going
to leave them by themselves for a
while, she began to talk slowly
about herself and the past.
"My first baby," she
said "the one we call Darling, the biggest
little girl I wanted to die when
I knew I was going to have her,
because Lowell was like a
stranger to me. It didn't seem as though
she could be my own. I wrote you
a letter and tore it up. Oh, you
were so bad to me, Anson."
It was the dialogue again, rising
and falling. Anson felt a sudden
quickening of memory.
"Weren't you engaged
once?" she asked "a girl named Dolly
something?"
"I wasn't ever engaged. I
tried to be engaged, but I never loved
anybody but you, Paula."
"Oh," she said. Then
after a moment : "This baby is the first one
I ever really wanted. You see,
I'm in love now at last."
He didn't answer, shocked at the
treachery of her remembrance.
She must have seen that the
"at last" bruised him, for she continued :
"I was infatuated with you,
Anson you could make me do any-
thing you liked. But we wouldn't
have been happy. I'm not smart
enough for you. I don't like
things to be complicated like you do."
She paused. "You'll never
settle down," she said.
The phrase struck at him from
behind it was an accusation that
of all accusations he had never
merited.
"I could settle down if
women were different," he said. "If I
didn't understand so much about
them, if women didn't spoil you for
other women, if they had only a
little pride. If I could go to sleep
for a while and wake up into a
home that was really mine why,
that's what I'm made for, Paula,
that's what women have seen in
me and liked in me. It's only that
I can't get through the prelimi-
naries any more."
Hagerty came in a little before
eleven; after a whiskey Paula
stood up and announced that she
was going to bed. She went over
and stood by her husband.
"Where did you go, dearest?"
she demanded.
"I had a drink with Ed
Saunders."
"I was worried. I thought
maybe you'd run away."
She rested her head against his
coat.
"He's sweet, isn't he,
Anson?" she demanded.
"Absolutely," said
Anson, laughing.
She raised her face to her
husband.
"Well, I'm ready," she
said. She turned to Anson: "Do you want
to see our family gymnastic
stunt?"
"Yes," he said in an
interested voice.
"All right. Here we
go!"
Hagerty picked her up easily in
his arms.
"This is called the family
acrobatic stunt," said Paula. "He can
ries me up-stiars. Isn't it sweet
of him?"
"Yes," said Anson.
Hagerty bent his head slightly
until his face touched Paula's.
"And I love him," she
said. "I've just been telling you, haven't
I, Anson?"
"Yes," he said.
"He's the dearest thing that
ever lived in this world ; aren't you,
darling? . . . Well, good night.
Here we go. Isn't he strong?"
"Yes," Anson said.
"You'll find a pair of
Pete's pajamas laid out for you. Sweet
dreams see you at breakfast."
"Yes," Anson said.
VIII
The older members of the firm
insisted that Anson should go
abroad for the summer. He had
scarcely had a vacation in seven
years, they said. He was stale
and needed a change. Anson resisted.
"If I go," he declared,
"I won't come back any more."
"That's absurd, old man.
You'll be back in three months with all
this depression gone. Fit as
ever."
"No." He shook his head
stubbornly. "If I stop, I won't go back
to work. If 1 stop, that means I've
given up I'm through."
"We'll take a chance on
that. Stay six months if you like we're
not afraid you'll leave us. Why,
you'd be miserable if you didn't
work."
They arranged his passage for
him. They liked Anson every one
liked Anson and the change that
had been coming over him cast
a sort of pall over the office.
The enthusiasm that had invariably
signalled up business, the
consideration toward his equals and his
inferiors, the lift of his vital
presence within the past four months
his intense nervousness had
melted down these qualities into the
fussy pessimism of a man of
forty. On every transaction in which
he was involved he acted as a
drag and a strain.
"If I go I'll never come
back," he said.
Three days before he sailed Paula
Legendre Hagerty died in
childbirth. I was with him a
great deal then, for we were crossing
together, but for the first time
in our friendship he told me not a
word of how he felt, nor did I
see the slightest sign of emotion. His
chief preoccupation was with the
fact that he was thirty years old
he would turn the conversation to
the point where he could remind
you of it and then fall silent,
as if he assumed that the statement
would start a chain of thought
sufficient to itself. Like his partners,
I was amazed at the change in
him, and I was glad when the Paris
moved off into the wet space
between the worlds, leaving his princi-
pality behind.
"How about a drink?" he
suggested.
We walked into the bar with that
defiant feeling that characterizes
the day of departure and ordered
four Martinis. After one cocktail
a change came over him he
suddenly reached across and slapped
my knee with the first joviality
I had seen him exhibit for months.
"Did you see that girl in
the red tarn?" he demanded, "the one
with the high color who had the
two police dogs down to bid
her good-by."
"She's pretty," I
agreed.
"I looked her up in the
purser's office and found out that she's
alone. I'm going down to see the
steward in a few minutes. We'll
have dinner with her
to-night."
After a while he left me, and
within an hour he was walking up
and down the deck with her,
talking to her in his strong, clear voice.
Her red tarn was a bright spot of
color against the steel-green sea,
and from time to time she looked
up with a flashing bob of her head,
and smiled with amusement and
interest, and anticipation. At dinner
we had champagne, and were very
joyous afterward Anson ran the
pool with infectious gusto, and
several people who had seen me
with him asked me his name. He
and the girl were talking and
laughing together on a lounge in
the bar when I went to bed.
I saw less of him on the trip
than I had hoped. He wanted to
arrange a foursome, but there was
no one available, so I saw him only
at meals. Sometimes, though, he
would have a cocktail in the bar,
and he told me about the girl in
the red tarn, and his adventures
with her, making them all bizarre
and amusing, as he had a way of
doing, and I was glad that he was
himself again, or at least the self
that I knew, and with which I
felt at home. I don't think he was
ever happy unless some one was in
love with him, responding to
him like filings to a magnet,
helping him to explain himself, promis-
ing him something. What it was I
do not know. Perhaps they prom-
ised that there would always be
women in the world who would
spend their brightest, freshest,
rarest hours to nurse and protect
that superiority he cherished in
his heart.
