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 depressed 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 sensation

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 of 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 married 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 irregularities--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--nothing 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 without 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 sincerity, 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 Cary

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 feeling

that was more than personal, a reversion toward that family solidarity

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 Cary 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 taking

advantage of some silly gossip to try and break up the only interesting

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 handkerchief, 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 Cary

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, Cary," 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," interrupted

Anson. "That's all that concerns you, Cary."

"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 Tom 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 justification 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 helplessly 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

continued--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 drinking

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 façade 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 which 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.

Cary 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.