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The Rich Boy
by
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, humorous, 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 investigate 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 weaknesses 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 before. Once, by some mutual instinct, several children got up from the front row and moved to the last. He told this story frequently, and it was usually greeted with hilarious laughter.
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 centers 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 superiority failed to take a horsey form. He backed him for a city club which was the most difficult 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 brokerage 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 afternoon, 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 herself, even with him.
“Life,” he would explain sometimes, “has made a cynic of me.”
By life he meant Paula. Sometimes, especially when he was drinking, 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.