“Do I need to answer you? What has become of the old barriers that kept out undesirables? Once there was a society in New York. Is there to-day? No, Barry;—only a fragment here and there.
“Only a few houses left where we rally. This house, thank God, is one of them. And while I live and retain my faculties, I shall continue to dictate my visiting list, here and in Newport, and shall properly censor it, despite the unbecoming mockery of my own flesh and blood——”
“Nonsense, Aunt Cornelia, it’s only in fun, not ill-natured. I can’t take such matters solemnly. Who the devil cares who you are to-day? It’s what you do. You’re no longer a rarity in an uncouth town. There are too many like you—quite as wealthy, cultivated, experienced—plenty of people who can give the denizens inhabiting any of the social puddles a perfectly good time.
“There isn’t any society. There never has been a real one since Washington was President. What passed for it you helped boss very cleverly. But it gradually swelled and burst—like one of those wobbly stars—scattered into a lot of brilliant little fragments, each a perfectly good star in itself——”
“What you say is utterly absurd,” interrupted his aunt, wrathfully. “By tradition there is and can be only one society in America. Its accepted rendezvous is in New York; its arbiters are so by birth. Theirs is an inherited trust. They are its censors. I shall never violate what I was born to respect and uphold.”
“Well,” he said, smiling, “I suppose you really consider me a renegade and a low fellow because I entertain the public with my stories.”
“A public entertainer has his proper place, Barry.”
“Sure. On the door-step. That’s where we once were told to sit—authors, players, painters—the whole job-lot of us. Now we prefer it, although since your youth society welcomes anybody that can amuse it. We go in, now and then. But it’s better fun outside. So I’m going to sit there and tell my stories to the hoi-polloi as they pass along. If what you consider society wishes to listen it can stick its head out of the window.”
“It is amazing to me,” she said, staring at him out of watery eyes, “how utterly common my brother’s son can be. I can not understand it, Barry. And you are not alone in this demoralization. Young people everywhere are infected. Only a week or two ago I met Elizabeth Blythe in California. She was painted a perfectly ghastly colour in broad daylight. Elizabeth Blythe—the daughter of Courtlandt Blythe, a painted, motion-picture actress!”
It was impossible for him to control his laughter.