Gargoyles

by Ben Hecht

"I think such ideas foolish and dangerous," George explained politely.

"Why?" his mother inquired.

Basine shook his head. He had given the subject no thought. But a militant defense of the status quo inspired him always with a comfortable feeling of rectitude.

"I see no reason," pursued Mrs. Basine, "why women shouldn't vote as well as men. I remember your father was very much interested in the issue of women's suffrage. He said the day would come when women voted shoulder to shoulder with men and that the country would be improved by it."

Basine stared at his mother. He had grown to realize that she had discovered the trick of lending weight and irrefutable wisdoms to her own notions by surrounding them with the sanctity of death. For it was almost impossible to fly in the face of a quotation from his father. The fact that the man was dead seemed to make contradiction of any ideas or prophecies attributed to him a sacrilege. There was also the fact becoming daily more obvious that his mother was turning into an unscrupulous administrator of the dead man's opinions.

"I never heard father say anything of the kind," he exclaimed suddenly. And then feeling that a loss of temper was the only way in which he could cover the affront he had offered his mother, he added with indignation, "You keep backing up your arguments by dragging dad's corpse into them all the time."

Mrs. Basine looked at him in amazement, and he reddened. He apologized quickly. Mrs. Basine, shocked by her son's unexpected penetration, bit her lip and became silent. She let the argument pass, not without observing that her friends present appeared for a moment to rally around her son's exposè—as if he had given words to their own attitude. She decided when she was alone again to be more careful. She loved her son and felt a dread of sacrificing his respect. There was a dread also of sacrificing the respect of these others who had looked at her for a moment with an accusing understanding.

There had been present a Mrs. Gilchrist, an old creature of oracular senilities whom she had grown secretly to detest. But the detestation she felt was accompanied by a vivid desire to keep in with the woman. Mrs. Gilchrist was a person of position, decided position. Her son Aubrey was a novelist. This alone endowed the Gilchrist tribe with an aura of culture. They lived in Evanston and were active, mother and son, in the social life of the town.

Mrs. Basine was unable as yet to determine the reasons that made her dislike her. In her secret mind she called Mrs. Gilchrist a domineering old fool. But she stopped with that. There was the Gilchrist social position.

Society had always interested Mrs. Basine. But since her widowhood this interest had become active. She had read the society columns of the newspapers regularly and through the twenty-six years of her married life retained the singular idea that the people whose names appeared in these columns belonged to a closely knit organization similar to the Masons—only of course, infinitely superior.