Honorable Men Read Free Page B

them the more for making a feature of her daughter. After all, a good deal of the glory redounded on herself. People were constantly telling her what they had read about me, and she almost purred. Daddy’s reaction was less enthusiastic but still accepting. The male company that he so largely kept did not read the social columns, and my new fame was not so frequently flung in his face, but when his attention was called to a news item about me, his complete literalness and lack of imagination made him champion me against the shrieks of Granny Struthers and her old maid daughter, Aunt Fanny. For if I was described as “brilliant” or “beautiful” in print, Daddy assumed I must be. He tended to see the world in the same colors as did such reporters. Besides, he was delighted that it all
cost
him so little.
    The one expense that could not be avoided was a coming-out party. I did not have to have a big one, but I had to have one, and my parents were far too broke even to think of it. Grandma Struthers was the only hope, and Gus had pledged himself to bring her round.
    Granny and Aunt Fanny occupied a brownstone on East Thirty-third Street stuffed to bursting with the eclectic collection of the crooked judge, who had had a rather florid taste for huge German porcelains, academic historical scenes and Turkish bazaars, hung one over the other on dark walls. Yet if one looked carefully one could spot a fine medieval reliquary glinting in a Turkish corner, or a “right” Corot above the door, or even a Roman scene by Alma-Tadema. Had we only waited until now before selling the collection, we would have made a fortune. But, alas, Daddy let it all go for a song when Granny died in 1940.
    She belonged to a generation that did nothing to resist age or hide the double chin and gnarled neck. She wore a pince-nez that made her look severe, a black choker and large yellow diamonds. She said “poyel” for pearl and “goyel” for girl, in the manner of old Manhattan, and would ask young people who had been to a ball if they had seen many attractive “toilets,” so that ignorant people thought her vulgar. She affected to be spunky about her ailments and afflictions, but she was in fact an utterly self-centered valetudinarian. Aunt Fanny, endowed with a decayed, sexless prettiness, fluttered about her, fussed over her, asked people constantly whether they did not agree that she was “marvelous” and hated her. When Granny died, she left Aunt Fanny almost penniless.
    But we didn’t realize then that Granny was romping through her capital. We assumed that she was still rich and had to be cultivated for favors. Gus, however, did know it—how he discovered such things I never knew—and he used this useful piece of intelligence to crowbar the cost of my coming-out party out of her. It helped a good deal that he had known her since his childhood, his mother having been a flower girl at her wedding.
    Much later he told me how he had done it. He called on Granny on an afternoon when he knew that Aunt Fanny was at her exercise class, and the conversation went something like this:
    G US : I hope you will forgive me, Mrs. Struthers, if I talk rather personally about your granddaughter. You might say it’s none of my business, but didn’t the ghost of Jacob Marley learn too late that mankind was his business?
    G RANNY : Is womankind yours, Augustus? Are you a candidate for Alida’s hand? If so, it’s her father you should be addressing yourself to. Not that I mean to discourage you, dear boy.
    G US : Boy of almost forty! You needn’t be that anxious to get rid of her. The poor child’s going to do a lot better than a jaded old creature like me.
    G RANNY : She’s not a
parti,
you know.
    G US : How could she be, in these dark days, when we’re all put to it to make ends meet? I sometimes think you must be a bit of a genius to maintain the style of living that