"Why, I merely imagined that some one in this part of the world might have the same idea," I suggested. "Now, take Duggie, for instance. Don't you think that Duggie wants to get out and try to do something?"
"Oh, Duggie!" said Berri, with a shrug. "He thinks he does now, but he really doesn't. Of course Duggie is simply slopping over with strenuousness and that sort of thing. But he gets most of it out of books,—Fleetwood's books at that. And after all, as I say, he slops over; it 'll just run into the sand without making even a silly little hole. After a while, when he gets tired of reading, and thinking how unworthy everybody else is, it won't do even that. Duggie in college is stunning and a leader of men; but Duggie at forty will be leading nothing but a beautiful purple life down there at his country-place,—unless, of course, he gets fat; if he gets fat, he 'll be a stockbroker."
"Say, Berri, how old are you, anyhow?" I asked. I know he is older than I am, but he never will tell me how much,—he didn't this time,—he just laughs, and says his early education was grossly neglected over there in Europe, or he would have been classes and classes ahead of me. I did n't like what he said about Duggie, and told him so. He answered that I 'd brought it on myself, and I suppose I had.
"Maybe we'd better talk about Bertie Stockbridge," he added. "He's my third cousin, you know—but, dear me, if people begin to be loyal to third cousins, Boston would turn into a sort of gigantic asylum for deaf mutes. I don't mind what you say about Bertie. Besides, he 's a more perfect specimen than Duggie, because Duggie is passing through a phase. Even Bostonians sometimes pass through phases when they 're very young. It doesn't happen often, though. The truth is, Duggie can't decide whether to be a Greek god or a college settlement. He'd really rather be a Greek god, only it's so immoral. He 'll probably end, you know, by coming out of his trance some June morning and finding himself married. Then it will be too late to be either one or the other. But what was it we were talking about? Oh, yes—Bertie. Now, Bertie isn't passing through a phase. Not on your life. Bertie just rose Venus-like in a state of hopeless completion from the crystal waters of the Back Bay. He never disappoints."
"But I like Bertie," I protested; "not as much as I do Duggie, of course. But I do like him; he's so—so—sensible."
"Sensible!" Berri screamed. "Why, child, the Stockbridge family is all sense. With trousers bagging at the knee and Adam's apples rising and falling above their abashed collars, Bertie's ancestors came into a lovely foolish world and created sense. That's all they ever do now,—just create one another and sense. So, the next time you hear some old thing groaning about the scarcity of common-sense, you 'll know that it's because the Stockbridges have it all,—they and a few friends who live in the same street during the winter and share several thousand front feet of the Atlantic Ocean from May to November. But you mustn't think I don't like Bertie and his family,—perhaps I should simply say 'Bertie,' for Bertie is his family,—because I do, you know. I admire him very much," Berri added after a moment. "He radiates a sort of atmosphere of modest infallibility that makes me feel exactly as I should feel if I suddenly went into Appleton Chapel and found the Pope there reading the Boston Transcript. Calmly and without the slightest tinge of bitterness, I admit that Bertie is always right.
"You heard what he said to Bobbie Colburn, didn't you? It was after the hour exam in English 68, and we were all in Bobbie's room comparing notes. Now, Bertie had passed, of course, because he 'll always pass in everything, whether he has any talent for it or not; but he had n't passed particularly well. It takes a person of some imagination to get a good mark in that course. Bobbie Colburn, on the other hand, who apparently hadn't studied at all and who'd been having a fierce time the night before the exam, just sailed into the examination-room with a dress-suit on under his overcoat, and got through brilliantly, which worried Bertie to death. We 'd all made some comment on the matter, and finally Colburn, as if to end it, said in his breezy way, 'Well, you know the old proverb,—He laughs best who drinks most!' Whereupon Bertie fixed him with his fine gray eyes and remarked, 'That is n't the way it goes, Colburn; you 've got it mixed.' Then he repeated the words correctly,—not with triumph exactly, but with the cold joy of one whose life is spent in righting unimportant wrongs.
"And yet I can't help confessing," Berri mused, "that I 'm exceedingly glad to acknowledge my relationship to Bertie and his tribe. They madden me at times; they have such clear, narrow, unelastic, admirable intellects. Their attitude toward all questions, public or private, is so definite and uncompromising; they 're so dog-gonned right. Why, American history is just one glad, sweet testimonial to the fact that they 're never wrong. They 're not always on the popular side, or the successful; they 're merely right. Any other human beings would keep on trying to make use of such a splendid faculty. Years and years ago they did make use of it; but nowadays it's enough just to know that they have it, and pretty much all to themselves.
"But, as I was saying, I 'm secretly darned glad that Bertie and I belong to each other, so to speak. Is n't it funny—I'm not a bit loyal to Bertie, but he 's perfectly loyal to me. He does n't in the least understand me. I don't think he even likes me, although that disturbing thought probably has n't occurred to him yet; but there's no getting around the fact that I 'm one of his relatives, and he accepts me,—accepts me in a way he never will accept you, no matter how well he gets to know you and like you. There's something rather fine in that, don't you think? Of course, it might be a good deal of a bore if he took a fancy to me; but as he won't, it's really a great comfort. The fact that that plain, but healthy-looking, silent person in the very badly made dark gray suit accepts me and will always accept me, is equivalent to an illuminated address of welcome and the freedom of the city.
"You really can't imagine how it simplifies things," Berri continued. "It's such a relief, such an absolution! It leaves me, as some one says, 'with nothing on my mind but my hair and my hat;' and even they don't have to be brushed as long as people consider me a Stockbridge at heart. Why, if I didn't feel like it, I shouldn't have to be even polite. Of course I am polite. But it's a mere habit with me; I dare say I 'll get out of it. You've noticed, haven't you, how brusque and sort of primitive Bertie's manner is as a rule? Well, they 're all more or less like that. People who like them say it arises from shyness and simplicity, and people who don't like them declare that it's just common or domestic rudeness; but it really is n't one or the other, and I think I ought to know. The family manner comes from a curious conviction that politeness, grace, tact—the practice of making oneself agreeable free of charge, so to speak—has to do with the emotions; which is perfectly absurd. The habit of politeness is about as emotional as the habit of brushing one's teeth. But Bertie's tribe does n't think so; and emotion with them is simply another word for effeminacy. You see, they 're so sure of coming up to the scratch in the big things that they let the little ones slide. I think they always vaguely associate politeness with French waiters and Neapolitan cripples. So, in a way, they 'll rather expect it of you; they like all foreigners to seem foreign."