Boston a novel
boyhood playmates, and as “Si” to the members of “Porcellian” and of
“Alpha Delta Phi.” Alice allowed for him, because he was a man, and
that was the way men did, apparently; they got over it in time, and
settled down. But nowadays the girls were doing it, too, and how would
there be any esthetic standards, if the women did not maintain them?
That was what shocked Alice in the episode of Betty and Joe--it was so
unesthetic, to come to the apartment where Betty’s grandmother lived!
To which Cornelia answered that she had never been to a roadhouse,
and could not judge, but it might be, of course, that some of them
were fixed up esthetically. Look out for the cat’s claws of this
gentle-seeming old woman!
Alice went away, and Josiah Thornwell Winters called up, and made an
appointment to dine with his grandmother, and tell her what he had
learned and accomplished as a Harvard senior. But when he came, he did
not mention the subject--because meantime the current of his thoughts
had been diverted. The grandson and namesake of the stern old governor
had fallen the newest victim to the calamities which were raining upon
his conspicuous family.
Cornelia happened to drop in at the office of the defense committee,
and Lee Swenson gave her the first news of the event. “I don’t like to
repeat gossip, Nonna, but my guess is, your latest family trouble is a
result of what you and Betty are doing, so you need to know about it.”
“What do you mean, Lee?”
“There’s a story all over town--last night the political gangs were
roaring drunk in their bootleg-joints, and when they had a round of
drinks, they would say, ‘Have one on Young Josiah!’”
“What has he done?”
“Well, they caught him in a hotel room with a woman. Undoubtedly
she lured him there--it’s a regular system they have. They took a
flashlight photograph of him, and Henry Cabot Winters paid seventy-five
thousand dollars to kill the story.”
Cornelia, the “Red,” was supposed to be lacking in shame; but now she
looked down, instead of at her friend. “Can it really be true, Lee?”
“It is what is being told. You can find out, of course.”
“They can do that kind of thing in Boston, and not be punished?”
“It’s the punishers who are doing it, Nonna. It’s a blackmail ring,
and the district attorneys get a share of the loot. There is an aged
millionaire in this town--perhaps you know him--old man Barbour?”
“I have met him.”
“Well, they got him in the same kind of jam, and soaked him to the
tune of three hundred and eighty-six thousand. You can hardly believe
that, but I got the amount from one of his lawyers. And then young
Searles--he inherited a fortune from his uncle, I think it was, and
the gang got him in an apartment with a couple of girls and cleaned
him out. Over in Woburn they got a bunch of moving-picture people in a
roadhouse for a wild party, and it cost those celebrities a hundred and
five thousand.”
“One might expect it of people like that,” said Cornelia. “But it is
something new for the Thornwells, unless I am mistaken. I’m glad that
my Josiah is not here to see what has become of his name.”
XI
So it was that when Josiah Thornwell Winters came to dinner two or
three days afterwards, his grandmother did not chat about the polite
nothings of the Harvard curriculum and of “Porcellian” and “Alpha
Delta Phi.” Throwing aside those reticences which are supposed to be
the crown of womanhood, she talked in plain language about unspeakable
things--“man to man,” as she put it. And “Young Josiah,” who had never
dreamed of such a thing from an old lady, turned pink to the roots
of his hair and looked as if he wanted to grab his hat and run; but
after a while he got used to it, and found it a relief to talk about
realities. He had come very close to shooting his head off, and neither
the horrified grief of his pure mother, nor the withering scorn of his
successful father had been of the slightest use to him.
He was twenty-two years old, and at the age of seventeen he had sprung
up to the Thornwell height of six feet and more, but had never filled
out his lean figure. His shoulders were stooped and his complexion
pale, and his fingers yellow with nicotine; but he had the most elegant
Harvard drawl, and a complete equipment of skepticism and boredom,
applied to matters about which he knew nothing, as well as to those
about which Harvard had taught him everything. His manner was “right,”
his clothing had the proper shade of carelessness, and his apartment on
the “Gold Coast” contained shelves of exquisite smut, beginning with
Petronius and ending with James Branch Cabell, in numbered editions at
from fifteen to fifty dollars a volume.
But now all that solemn pose of maturity had fallen like a cheap
actor’s cloak, and Cornelia confronted a raw, weedy youth with vicious
habits and a sick sense of shame. “I’m a rotter,” he said, “but I could
tell you things to show you it wasn’t entirely my fault. The Pater gave
me the razz--he all but told me I’d oblige him if I’d eat a chunk of
cyanide--and I said nothing. But you must know, Grandmother, he hasn’t
been any saint.”
“I know he keeps a woman,” said Cornelia, grimly.
“More than that. There’s a tradition on the crew--you know, after he
was graduated, the Pater coached the crew for a couple of years--and
he told the fellows they would have to go with prostitutes, or they’d
lose their virility. That made the church crowd hot, and they got rid
of him, but the story stayed on, and a lot of the fellows think he was
right. Now, of course, the Pater says I’ve gone too far, but then, who
is to do the measuring? It was my hard luck that I knew too much about
both my father and my mother. Do you want me to talk about Mother?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.”
“Well, Mother has wonderful emotions, but she’s a little short on
brains, and I rarely got anything useful from her. When I was about
fifteen, I heard a terrible quarrel between her and the Pater, they
told each other all the dirt they knew. I was behind a curtain, and had
to stay there, because I was ashamed to let them know I’d heard the
beginning. You know Mother’s way, she has platonic thrills, but she
doesn’t go the limit, so that makes it all right. The Pater had got a
story on her--her friends were talking about how she had traveled to
New York with one of her poets, and had lain in his arms all night in
the sleeping-car berth, but not parted with her virtue; that was her
remarkable spirituality, and the fellow was supposed to enjoy it, too.
The Pater called her some rotten names, and then she told what she knew
about him, and that was my introduction to the subject of love. It
wasn’t exactly helpful, was it?”
Cornelia accepted the plea.
“Well, when I was sixteen, I was visiting a fellow from St. Mark’s.
It was a place on the North Shore, and he had an aunt--one of these
up-to-date ladies who had divorced one husband and was getting rid of
another, and her lover was in Europe, and she was bored. She came from
New York, and they are ahead of us--but not more than a year or two, I
have found--perhaps because they get the new shows a season earlier.
Anyhow, this was good family, a country club crowd, no end of money,
and it seemed all right. She came to my room at night--all fixed up,
very beautiful and sweet-smelling, and what chance did a kid stand
against a proposition like that? She stayed around a while, and taught
me a lot--until her lover came back from Europe, and then we said
good-by. But it was only a week before a young widow took me on. You
can’t imagine how it is, Grandmother--I know it wasn’t that way in your
time. The women know what they want, and they just go to it.”
“Are they trying to marry you?”
“Not often. Some have husbands, but they’ve been reading Freud, and
have got the idea that all their troubles are repressions. And the
young girls are worse.”
“All of them, Josiah?”
“No, of course not--there are plenty of girls like Priscilla and
Betty--I suppose they are straight. What happened to me was, I got
a reputation, so I drew the wild ones. I was supposed to be a
lady-killer. I don’t imagine I’m abnormally attractive, but family
counts for a lot, and Harvard, of course--the high-hat stuff. Anyhow,
I assure you I never had to do any seducing, and I never made any
promises I didn’t keep. I’ve spent a lot of money, but always in
respectable ways, I mean entertainments and presents and so on. I never
got stuck for blackmail but this once.”
Cornelia smiled. “You remember Æsop’s fable,” she said, “about the
lioness who had only one cub, but that one was a lion.”
XII
Young Josiah skirted around the cage of this “lion” for quite a while.
It didn’t seem really decent to tell such “dirt” to one’s grandmother.
But Cornelia pinned him down. “I have other grandchildren coming along,
and I need to know about my city.”
“Well, it’s a rotten hole,” said the youth. “I think this blackmail
business is a result of the fact that Bostonians have to pretend to be
so much better than they can be. Or maybe it’s the Irish, bringing us
Yankees off our high horses.”
“Who was the woman?”
“She belongs to what is known as ‘Larry Shay’s stable’--not a very
elegant name, but you say you want to know Boston. She looked like a
society girl, and I really thought she was.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“I had seen her around Harvard Square for a week or two, and I thought
she lived in the neighborhood--a neglected young wife or something. She
can’t be over nineteen; she was dressed up to the minute, and looked
like springtime. I suppose she was watching me, finding out about my
habits. Anyhow, she passed me now and then, and always looked willing,
but not too eager. This time I was sitting in my car, waiting for a
fellow, and she came along smiling, and naturally I was smiling, and
she walked up and said, ‘You are Josiah Winters, aren’t you?’ She
said, ‘I know your cousin, Betty Alvin, but I’m not a “Red” like her,
so don’t be afraid of me.’ She had got posted about Betty, and of
course I thought Betty knew lots of people that the rest of the family
wouldn’t know. I laughed, and asked her if she’d like to ride, and she
got in, and we rode all over, and I kissed her a few times, and she
said she had never done anything like this before, and paid me a lot
of compliments, but she wouldn’t go to a roadhouse, and when we came
back to town we had supper, and a little champagne, and--the upshot of
it was, she knew a hotel where a girl-friend of hers lived, and she
wouldn’t be afraid to go there. So we went to a room; and about ten
minutes after we got in, somebody put his shoulder to the door, and
there were half a dozen men, and one of them held a camera, and another
set off a flashlight, and they said they were county detectives, and I
was under arrest, and the picture would be in the Boston ‘Telegram’ the
next afternoon. The girl went into hysterics--she was a good actress,
I must say--or maybe she liked me and was sorry--I’m fool enough to
wonder, because she was so young. But there it was, and the Pater
pungled up seventy-five thousand bucks, and took it out by telling me
what he really thought of me. It took quite a while, and went into
details.”
Cornelia was moved to say, “You must allow for the financial strain.”
“No, it is what he really thinks; he’s been cherishing it up for a long
time. He is disappointed in me, I’m a weakling, and he needs a strong
man for his successor. He might stop and think, what has there been
in my life to develop strength--assuming I had the possibility? When
the Pater got through Harvard he had to pitch in and fight his own
way; but I never had to, it was no good trying to fool myself with the
idea that I was anything but a millionaire’s son. Of course Mother’s