The Beauty and the Bolshevist
Page 2
wouldendanger your whole position; and as for leadership, you could neverhope--"
"Now, look here, Leo. You don't think I can stop my brother's marryingbecause it might be a poor connection for me? The point is that itwouldn't be good for Dave--to be a poorly tolerated hanger-on. That'swhy I'm going hot-foot to Newport. And while I'm away do try to dosomething about the book page. Get me a culture-hound--get one ofthese Pater specialists from Harvard. Or," he added, with suddeninspiration when his hand was already on the door, "get a woman--she'dhave a sense of beauty and would know how to jolly Green into agreeingwith her." And with this the editor was gone.
It was the end of one of those burning weeks in August that New Yorkoften knows. The sun went down as red as blood every evening behindthe Palisades, and before the streets and roofs had ceased to radiateheat the sun was up again above Long Island Sound, as hot and red asever. As Ben went uptown in the Sixth Avenue Elevated he could seepale children hanging over the railings of fire escapes, andbehind them catch glimpses of dark, crowded rooms which had all thedisadvantages of caves without the coolness. But to-day he was tooconcentrated on his own problem to notice.
Since Ben's sixteenth year his brother David had been dependent onhim. Their father had been professor of economics in a college in thatpart of the United States which Easterners describe as the "MiddleWest." In the gay days when muck-raking was at its height ProfessorMoreton had lost his chair because he had denounced in his lectureroom financial operations which to-day would be against the law. Atthat time they were well thought of, and even practiced by the eminentphilanthropist who had endowed the very chair which Moreton occupied.The trustees felt that it was unkind and unnecessary to complicatetheir already difficult duties by such tactlessness, and their heartsbegan to turn against Moreton, as most of our hearts turn againstthose who make life too hard for us. Before long they asked himto resign on account of his age--he was just sixty and extremelyvigorous; but immediately afterward, having been deeply surprisedand hurt, he did what Goldsmith recommends to lovely woman under notdissimilar circumstances--he died. He left his two young sons--he hadmarried late in life--absolutely unprovided for. Ben, the elder of thetwo, was sixteen, and just ready for college; but he could not givefour precious years to an academic degree. He went to work. With thebackground of an educated environment and a very sound knowledge ofeconomic questions, breathed in from his earliest days, he found aplace at once on a new paper--or, rather, on an old paper justbeing converted into a new organ of liberalism--_Liberty_. It wasindependent in politics, and was supposed to be independent ineconomic questions, but by the time Ben worked up to the editorship itwas well recognized to be an anticapitalist sheet. The salary of itseditor, though not large, was sufficient to enable him to send hisyounger brother through college, with the result that David, a littleweak, a little self-indulgent, a little--partly through physicalcauses--disinclined to effort, was now a poet, a classicist and aninstructor in a fresh-water college. Ben made him an allowance toenable him to live--the college not thinking this necessary for itsinstructors. But during the war Ben had not been able to manage theallowance, because, to the surprise of many of his friends, Ben hadvolunteered early.
Although the reasons for doing this seemed absurdly simple to him, thedecision had been a difficult one. He was a pacifist--saw no virtuein war whatsoever. He wished to convert others to his opinion--unlikemany reformers who prefer to discuss questions only with those whoalready agree with them. He argued that the speeches of a man who hadbeen through war, or, better still, the posthumous writings of one whohas been killed in war, would have more weight with the public thanthe best logic of one who had held aloof. But his radical friends feltthat he was using this argument merely as an excuse for choosingthe easy path of conformity, while the few ultraconservatives whomentioned the matter at all assumed that he had been drafted againsthis will. Afterward, when the war was over and his terrible book,_War_, appeared, no one was pleased, for the excellent reason that itwas published at a moment when the whole world wanted to forgetwar entirely. The pay of a private, however, had not allowed him tocontinue David's allowance, and so David, displaying unusual energy,had found a job for himself as tutor for the summer to William Cord'sson. Ben had not quite approved of a life that seemed to him slightlyparasitical, but it was healthy and quiet and, above everything, Davidhad found it for himself, and initiative was so rare in the youngerman that Ben could not bear to crush it with disapproval.
Increasingly, during the two years he was in France, Ben wasdispleased by David's letters. The Cords were described as kindly,well-educated people, fond one of another, considerate of the tutor,with old-fashioned traditions of American liberties. Ben asked himselfif he would have been better pleased if David's employers hadbeen cruel, vulgar, and blatant, and found the answer was in theaffirmative. It would, he thought, have been a good deal safer forDavid's integrity if he had not been so comfortable.
For two summers Ben had made no protest, but the third summer, whenthe war was over and the allowance again possible, he urged David notto go back to Newport. David flatly refused to yield. He said he sawno reason why he should go on taking Ben's money when this simple wayof earning a full living was open to him. Wasn't Ben's whole theorythat everyone should be self-supporting? Why not be consistent?
Ignorant people might imagine that two affectionate brothers couldnot quarrel over an issue purely affectionate. But the Moretons didquarrel--more bitterly than ever before, and that is saying a greatdeal. With the extraordinary tenacity of memory that developsunder strong emotion, they each contrived to recall and to mentioneverything which the other had done that was wrong, ridiculous, orhumiliating since their earliest days. They parted with the impressionon David's part that Ben thought him a self-indulgent grafter, andon Ben's side that David thought him a bully solely interested inimposing his will on those unfortunate enough to be dependent on him.
It was after half past four when, having walked up five flights ofstairs, he let himself into his modest flat on the top floor of anold-fashioned brownstone house. As he opened the door, he called,
"Nora!"
No beautiful partner of a free-love affair appeared, but an elderlywoman in spectacles who had once been Professor Moreton's cook,and now, doing all the housework for Ben, contrived to make him socomfortable that the editor of a more radical paper than his own haddescribed the flat as "a bourgeois interior."
"Nora," said Ben, "put something in my bag for the night--I'm going toNewport in a few minutes."
He had expected a flood of questions, for Nora was no looker-on atlife, and he was surprised by her merely observing that she was gladhe was getting away from the heat. The truth was that she knew farmore about David than he did. She had consistently coddled David sincehis infancy, and he told her a great deal. Besides, she took careof his things when he was at Ben's. She had known of sachets,photographs, and an engraved locket that he wore on his watch-chain.She was no radical. She had seen disaster come upon the old professorand attributed it, not to the narrowness of the trustees, but to thefolly of the professor. She disapproved of most of Ben's friends, andwould have despised his paper if she ever read it. The only goodthing about it in her estimation was, he seemed to be able "to knocka living out of it"--a process which Nora regarded with a sort of gaycasualness. She did not blame him for making so little money andthus keeping her housekeeping cramped, but she never in her own minddoubted that it would be far better if he had more. The idea thatDavid was about to marry money seemed to her simply the reward ofvirtue--her own virtue in bringing David up so well. She knew that Mr.Cord opposed the marriage, but she supposed that Ben would arrange allthat. She had great confidence in Ben. Still he was very young, veryyoung, so she gave him a word of advice as she put his bag into hishand.
"Don't take any nonsense. Remember you're every bit as good as they.Only don't, for goodness' sake, Mr. Ben, talk any of your ideas tothem. A rich man like Mr. Cord wouldn't like that."
Ben laugh
ed. "How would you like me to bring you home a lovely heiressof my own?" he said.
She took a thread off his coat. "Only don't let her come interferingin my kitchen," she said, and hurried him away. He had a good deal ofcourage, but he had not enough to tell Nora he was going to Newport tostop her darling's marriage.
The Newport boat gets to Newport about two o'clock in the morning, andexperienced travelers, if any such choose this method of approach, goon to Fall River and take a train back to Newport, arriving in timefor a comfortable nine-o'clock breakfast. But Ben was not experienced,and he supposed that when you took a boat for Newport and reachedNewport the thing to do was to get off the boat.
It had been a wonderful night on the Sound, and Ben had not been