People Like That: A Novel

by Kate Langley Bosher

Selwyn has been reared in a school honest in its belief that a woman is too fine and fair a thing to face life frankly; that personal knowledge and understanding on her part of certain verities, certain actualities, did the world no good and woman harm. But the woman of whom he thought was the sheltered, cultured, cared-for woman of his world. Protection of her was a man's privilege and obligation. Of the woman who has to do her own protecting, fight her way through, meet the demands of those dependent on her, he personally knew little. It was what he needed much to know.

But because his handsome, haughty mother had lived in high-bred, self-congratulatory ignorance of what she believed did not concern her, and because he has for a sister, who's a step-sister, a silly, snobby person, he is not justified in withholding from me what he naturally withheld from them. One can be a human being as well as a lady. It's this that is difficult to make him understand.

For a half-moment longer I looked at him, then away. Apparently he had not heard what I said.

"I should not trouble you. I have no right, but I don't know what to do. I've so long come to you—" He turned to me uncertainly.

"What is it?" I got up from the footstool and took my seat in the corner of the sofa. "Why shouldn't you come to me?"

"You have enough on you now." He bit his lip. "It's about Harrie—the boy must be crazy. For the past few weeks he has kept me close to hell. I never imagined the time would come when I would thank God my father was dead. It's come now."

"What is it, Selwyn? There is nothing you cannot tell me." I leaned forward, my hands twisting in my lap. I knew more of Harrie than Selwyn knew I knew, but because he was the one person I did know with whom I had no measure of patience, I rarely mentioned his name. Harrie is Selwyn's weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it. "What is it?" I repeated. "What has he been doing?"

"Everything he shouldn't." Selwyn leaned forward and looked in the fire. "I was wrong, I suppose, but something had to be done. For some time he's been drinking and gambling, and I told him it had to stop. I stood it as long as I could, but when I found he would frequently come home too drunk to get in bed, and would have to be put there by Wingfield, who would be listening for him, I had a talk with him which it isn't pleasant to remember. I'd had a good many before. God knows I've tried—"

Selwyn got up, went over to the window and stood for a moment at it with his back to me. Presently he left it and began to walk up and down the room, hands in his pockets.

"I've doubtless made a mess of looking after him, but I did the best I knew how. Because of the eleven years' difference in our ages I've shut my eyes to much I should have seen, and refused to hear what I should have listened to, perhaps, but I was afraid of being too severe, too lacking in sympathy with his youth, with the differences in our natures, and, chiefly, because I knew he was largely the product of his rearing. He was only fourteen when father died, and to the day of her death mother allowed no one to correct him. She indulged him beyond sense or reason; let him grow up with the idea that whatever he wanted he could have. Restraint and discipline were never taught him. As for direction, guidance, training—" Selwyn's shoulders shrugged. "If I said anything to mother, cautioned her of the mistake she was making, she thought me hard and cruel, and ended by weeping. After her death it was too late."