East Side Story

by Louis Auchincloss

  “Yes,” Kitty admitted, “but it’s not really at all Mrs. Benson, who’s basically a simple, home-loving woman.”

  “I suppose he painted what he thought she wanted to look like. And he took for granted that was what the society he painted wanted. He’s like Hoppner and Reynolds and Lawrence, and just as good as they were, too. Only they painted an era more than they did their models. The ladies had to be showy and blowy and grand to look at.”

  “And that’s why none of those painters were of the first rank,” Kitty pointed out, almost eagerly. “The very first, I mean. Like Holbein and Velazquez and Goya, where you get both the era and the model. The tenseness of the Tudor court, where men were willing to risk their heads for a few years of power. Or the decadence of the royal house in Madrid.”

  “And what would a greater painter than Sargent have shown?”

  “The tinsel. The phony glitter. Fifth Avenue in fancy dress as dukes and duchesses under the urban rule of Irish bosses. And the Stars and Stripes fluttering faintly in the ill wind.”

  “Of course, we have some real dukes and duchesses now. Perhaps you would say they’re the phoniest of all!”

  “Thanks for saying it for me!” she exclaimed, with a little snort of laughter. “You know, Bruce, when we first met, I was afraid I was going to find you a bit on the stuffy side. But you’re not. And now I feel I can talk to you. And, oh, my friend, do I need someone to talk to! There’s dear Ada, of course, but she’s inclined to be literal, and I can’t say to her the things about her family and their friends that I’m thinking. Certainly not while I’m her houseguest! And my other girlfriends are all such terrible gossips and not to be trusted with anything remotely like a secret. There’s Mama, naturally, but the poor darling hasn’t a spark of imagination, and she finds everything on Fifth Avenue too, too divine.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Bless you for coming right to the point. Myself, of course. What else does anyone really want to talk about?”

  “Then talk. Please talk. You do, and I won’t.”

  She hesitated, like one at the end of a diving board on a cold day. “Oh well, why not? Ada told me this morning that her brother Ezra is engaged. To the daughter of one of her father’s partners. Ellie Jennings. Isn’t it obscene? Shouldn’t this new Sherman law, or whatever it is, be invoked to prevent it?”

  “Is this a blow to your heart?” He ventured this because he was suddenly and exuberantly convinced that it wasn’t. “Or to your pride?”

  She laughed. “Well put. But to neither, really. There has been nothing between Ezra and me but the kind of tomfoolery young men feel socially obliged to engage in. But to be fully candid—and what else is the point of my talking?—yes, pride does have a part in it. For why else should it so irritate me to think of all the people who will be saying: ‘Poor Kitty. She’s missed out on another goldbug. Perhaps she’d better learn to play her cards more subtly.’”

  “I’ve never heard anyone say anything like that about you,” he averred stoutly.

  “Thank you, my friend, but your nose is just a mite longer. The trouble with the reputation I’m developing is not that it’s deserved but that it can come to be. Living among the rich and seeing how badly they do it, it’s impossible not to speculate on how much better one would do it oneself, given half the chance. And that kind of speculation can lead to your beginning to pick and choose a mate, at least in your imagination, among the young male goldbugs. The mate who might most adequately fund your mental experiments. Add to that a desperate desire to get out of your rut and the first thing you know, you’ve become a gold digger!”

  “But you’re not that.”

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Keep an eye on me, then.”

  He smiled as he gave her a long look. But she didn’t smile back. Nor was there even a faint hint of flirtatiousness in her drawn expression. They had to drop the subject as Ezra Jr. and Miss Jennings came over to join them, and Kitty became at once as cheerful and welcoming as if she had made the match.

  SOME WEEKS LATER, on a Sunday evening, he was sitting with his mother in the library, he with an opened but unread novel of Marion Crawford in his lap, and she with her eternal needlework. With the black satin that she had consistently worn since her husband’s death and her white widow’s cap, she might have seemed a milder Queen Victoria whose benevolent blue eyes occasionally took in the silent figure of her youngest child.

  “If Saracinesca doesn’t amuse you, my dear, you must have something on your mind. Didn’t you tell me it was something of a thriller?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s that. It’s just that I’m not in much of a reading mood tonight.”

  “You should have something more attractive to come home to than an old mother bent over her needlework and a sister who’s gone to her Bible class.”

  “Oh, Ma, not that wedding theme again! Do you really want to be all alone in this house?”

  “I have Annie. She’s rarely away, as you know. She goes out all too little, poor dear. And one child is surely enough for any old parent to keep at home. Not that I wouldn’t welcome some nice young man who might take a shine to Annie, but she doesn’t seem very much that way inclined. But you, on the contrary, have a whole world of young lovelies to pick from. You have only to choose.”

  “Ma, you exaggerate as always my attractions. I’m a very small butterfly in the world I flutter about in. Not many of your ‘lovelies,’ as you call them, are seeking to add me to their collection with a pin through my abdomen.”

  “That’s because you won’t see, my dear.”

  “Whom won’t I see? Name one.”

  His mother was prompt and definite in her reply. “Kitty Atwater.”

  Startled, he let his book fall to the floor. “Mother! What makes you think there’s anything between me and Kitty Atwater?”

  “The fact that you never mention her. And that I know you’ve been seeing her. Annie told me.”

  “Annie’s a gossip. An old maid gossip.”

  “She’s no such thing. Why shouldn’t she mention that you’ve been seeing a bright, pretty girl like Kitty? Of course, I’ve only met her a couple of times, but she strikes me as perfectly charming, and I hear good things about her. I know she has a fool of a mother, but the poor girl can’t help that, and no one’s suggesting that you marry Mrs. Atwater.”

  “You’re only suggesting that I marry her daughter. And what makes you think there’s the slightest likelihood of my being accepted by a young lady surrounded by the richest young bloods in town?”

  “If she’s so surrounded, why hasn’t she married one?”

  “That’s a fair question, I admit. But, Mother, the fact that she hasn’t landed a rich one doesn’t mean she’ll accept a poor one.”

  “You’re far from poor, my lad.”

  “But it’s a question of degree. You know that, Ma. You couldn’t compare this house, for example, with the Vanderbilt pile at the corner.”

  “Why should I want to? This is a very fine house. And we were around town when the Vanderbilts were nothing. And that was not so long ago, either. Your father used to say that people were always a good deal richer or a good deal poorer than one thought. That one never got it just right. Well, in the same way we may get their goals wrong. We’re only too apt to suppose that a poor girl living in a rich society is looking for a cash box. But it may not be the only thing she’s looking for. Miss Atwater, I’m told, is a very smart young woman. If that’s so, she’s plenty smart enough to know there’s such a thing as happiness in the world. And such a thing as love!”

  “But Kitty’s not in love with me, Ma!”

  “Have you ever asked her?”

  “Why, of course not. What a question!”

  “Ask her, then. After first telling her, of course, what your feelings are.”

  “Oh, Ma!”

  “Well, there you are. Think about it!”

  And think about it he certainly did. Indeed
, he thought of little else in the next days and nights. And the more he dwelt on the idea, on the mere possibility of what she had said, the more his whole being was suffused with a kind of creeping joy. The curtains of his future, which he likened in his mind to the great golden ones of the new opera house, were slowly rising, not on a social setting where he was only a timid bystander hoping to pass muster artfully dressed up as an attendant lord, but on the interior of a happily snug home where a man, an impossibly real man, was actually loving and being loved by a beautiful woman with raven black hair and adoring eyes. Did his wise old mother actually know the world better than he did, for all his social gadding? It could be so!

  He began to calculate how he and Kitty could live on his income. Wouldn’t he have as much as his brother Wallace? And hadn’t Wallace constructed a large shingle summer villa in Newport? Of course, Julie had some money, but not all that much. They would certainly sell him a patch of their land there to build on, perhaps even give it to him. They would welcome him and Kitty as neighbors. Everyone would!

  His fantasies took a suddenly concrete turn on a Sunday afternoon “at home” in the Benson mansion, when he and Kitty were sitting in a far corner of the parlor while the other guests were grouped around their hostess’s tea table. This unusual chasm between them and the rest of their world gave him a sudden airy sense of independence.

  “Would you ever consider marrying a man with only twenty thousand a year?” he heard himself put to her.

  She was at once attentive, oh, very attentive! “Would that be all he had to offer?”

  “Oh, no. He would be young, passably attractive, and very much in love.”

  Her attention was not mitigated by any relaxing smile. “Is this a proposal, Bruce?”

  “It certainly would be if there were the slightest chance of its being accepted.” In the silence that followed he reached to put a hand on hers. She glanced at the group down the room as she pulled her hand away. But she pulled it; she did not snatch it.

  “You must have guessed that I love you,” he added, perhaps a touch lamely.

  “I’ve guessed that you think you do” was her guarded reply.

  “Doesn’t that come to the same thing?”

  “I daresay it could.”

  “Could you possibly imagine your loving me?”

  “I could imagine it, yes.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “There’s no way I’m going to answer that now. There’s no way I’m going to commit myself now. I’ll be quite frank with you, Bruce. I’m not totally surprised by your offer. I could see you were leading up to it. And I deeply appreciate the honor of it. Truly. But it will need some very careful thought on my part.”

  “But that sounds so cool!”

  “But that’s the way it is, my friend. Do you withdraw? You’re quite free to do so, and I promise you we’ll remain as good friends as ever. I am the way I am. You must take it or leave it. All I can assure you is that I will be a very good and faithful wife to any man I decide to marry.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” he said stoudy. “My offer stands. You are free, but I am not.”

  “Though, in fact, you are,” she assured him, smiling at last. “And now we’ll leave it at that. Let us join the others.”

  The only reason Bruce found sleep that night was in his repeating to himself her assurance that he really was still free. For he had begun already to question his rashness. To love and marry a girl with love and no money was one thing, a perfectly feasible and even desirable thing. To love and marry a girl with no love and no money was quite another. But in any event, the morrow brought him catastrophe.

  When he went to his office, he found Wallace waiting for him there, with an ashen countenance and a cable in his hand, which he silently handed over to his startled brother. It was from Sir John Muir, and it read: “You say you must choose your own partners. So be it. And, similarly, I must choose my own American agents. Please hand over all my business matters to Isaac Fletcher & Co. Our family relationships, I trust, will remain unaffected.”

  Sir John had recently proposed that his new American son-in-law, Frederick Ames, be taken in as a full partner in Carnochan Brothers, and Wallace and Bruce had, somewhat stiffly, declined.

  “Could we backtrack?” Bruce gasped. “Do you think we could still get hold of Fred?”

  Wallace shook his head gravely. “Not a chance. I heard yesterday that Fred had accepted a partnership in Fletcher. It’s all sewed up. And you know Muir. He never changes his mind. I had no idea he’d take our refusal so hard. I thought he might understand that you and I would be reluctant to share a business that we’ve built up from nothing with a young and inexperienced fellow who’s just had the luck to marry into the family. But I guess nothing that we can do can reduce the size of the swelled head that John’s brand-new baronetcy has given him.”

  “But Muir Thread is three quarters of our business,” Bruce moaned.

  “Well, we must look for a substitute, that’s all.”

  “It’s all very well for you, Wally. You have Julie’s money.”

  “And what do you need money for? You live free at Mother’s, and you dine out every night at other people’s houses. Buck up, old man! It’s not the end of the world.”

  “It’s the end of part of one. There are things you don’t know, Wally!”

  Bruce lost no time in doing what he now knew he had to do. He wanted to get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. He called at the Bensons’ that very afternoon, asked to see Miss Atwater, and was received by her in a small antechamber next to the great hall.

  “Could you even think of marrying a man with only five thousand a year?” he blurted out.

  “Oh, my poor Bruce, what’s happened?”

  She listened attentively while he poured out the sad financial tale. But she took it in more as a friend whose sympathy and advice were to be sought than as a potential partner in woe. At last she said: “Of course, I see that this puts a definite hold on the discussion we had yesterday.”

  “A hold or a veto?”

  “Don’t you have to wait and see if your brother-in-law may change his mind?”

  “But he never does.”

  “Well then, you must wait and see what new business opportunities show up.”

  Bruce shook his head firmly. “I’m afraid Muir was the chance of a lifetime. It was a great boon for me. The long and short of it, Kitty, is that I’m afraid I may never be an adequate earner. But I’ll always have something, and when Mother goes, a bit more. You and I could make do on it.”

  Kitty’s smile seemed meant to confirm the depth of her worldly knowledge. “I don’t think we would ever be a happy couple just making do, Bruce. We might be pretty enough flowers in the sunshine, but I’m afraid we’d droop sadly in the shadows. I know myself too well, and I think I know you. We’re both spoiled brats, in a way. We might be hard to live with on a beer income dreaming of champagne.”

  “Unless we were in love.”

  “Yes. Unless we were very much in love. More in love, in fact, than either of us is apt to become.”

  “Oh, Kitty, you can be cold!”

  “Or realistic. Choose your word.”

  He rose. “Goodbye, Kitty.”

  She rose as well and held out a friendly hand. “You make it sound as if it were forever. Won’t you come back?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, why not for Ada? She thinks the world of you. And the sun will always shine for Ada.”

  IN THE MONTHS that followed, Wallace Carnochan engaged his not inconsiderable financial talents in promoting various commercial enterprises, including a phosphate mine in Georgia, and he invited his brother Bruce to take an interest in each, but Bruce would always shake his head and mutter: “It’s too soon, Wally. Pardon me, and give me another chance in a month or so. I just don’t feel up to any new business as yet.” Wallace hoped that while he was engaged with minor successes in risky venture
s, his younger brother would at least mind the old shop and take care of such little thread business as remained after the defection of Muir, but this soon melted away under Bruce’s inertia, and the latter took to spending his days moping about the family house or walking his mother’s poodles in Central Park. Eliza was at first silently sympathetic, then admonitory, and at last briskly critical.

  “You must take hold of yourself, my boy, or you’ll end up in a sorry state. You’re not the only young man who’s been crossed in love or failed in a business. When you’re down, the only sensible thing to do is to get up.”

  But Bruce seemed unable to do this. He felt himself sliding into what threatened to become a chronic state of depression. He had had his first dazzling glimpse of what it might be like to have a “real life,” founded on his own character and not on what he had tended to see as the image of a character devised to conceal the smallness and weakness of Bruce Carnochan from a critical but fortunately still gullible world. It was hard now to live with that glimpse snuffed out. A “real girl,” by which he meant a girl whom he could really love, and not one he just made up to, and a “real business,” like the one John Muir had offered to him and to Wallace and not just to Wallace, had now escaped him, and there was something about the sad finality of Kitty’s parting smile that persuaded him it would never return. He was driven back to the status of calling-card dandy he had once not been ashamed to be, but which now seemed to deserve the scorn he had been so silly as to deem envy.

  He was frankly recognized as a family problem. His brothers called to buck him up, to joke -with him, finally to subject him to stern lectures. His sister Annie wept over him, which was even worse. The pastor of the Fifth Avenue Church came to remind him that the deity’s patience might be exhausted by his behavior—or at least by his lack of behavior. Bruce, to give them some reassurance, or at least to keep them at bay, took pains with his clothes and appearance, so as to present an immaculate exterior over his inner troubled self, and spent his mornings in the library on the excuse that he was writing a novel. This fooled nobody but himself, and he was actually surprised to find that six weeks of plotting had produced only six pages. It was then that, with the avowed purpose of seeking material, he started going about in society again. And with the dinner parties something like a cure began to creep over his blue spirits.