“He started in at Doctor Cary’s last week. They’ve got him learning Latin and French, right off.”
“What’s Doctor Cary’s?”
“It’s a school in Sixtieth Street.”
“Hump,” said Carlson, “Private School? Well, you’re right. Public schools teach hogwash. They got to. They teach hogs. But why didn’t you send him to one these schools out of town while you were at it? Get him out of New York.”
“My G—glory,” Mark cried, “He’s only nine!”
Margot corrected, “Ten, papa. He was ten in May.” Then she told Carlson, “Papa’d just die if Gurdy went away to school. He told Miss Converse.” She slid from his knee and curtsied to Carlson with, “I must take my French lesson, now. So, good afternoon.” She was gone out of the room before Mark could kiss her again. She was always within reach of kisses and her warmth, curled on his lap was something consolatory when he did send Gurdy away to Saint Andrew’s School in September 1910. Villay, his broker, and his lawyer advised the step. Olive Ilden wrote to him: “I am glad you have done the right thing. God knows I am no cryer up of the Public School System. But a Public School (I forget what you call private kennels for rich cubs in the States) is the only thing for the boy, in your situation. Ian Gail tells me that Gurdy is rather clever. I can imagine nothing worse than to be the son by adoption of a theatrical manager and a day scholar at a small New York school. But I know how miserable you are. Every one has sentimental accretions. I dislike seeing old women run down by motors, myself. No, I know how badly you feel, just now. But these be the fair rewards of them that love, you know? My own son is, of course, as the archangels. I hear through his Housemaster at Harrow that he smokes cigarettes and bets on all the races.”
Mark tried to take Gurdy’s absence with a fine philosophy. His broker and his lawyer assured him that Saint Andrew’s was the best school in the country. But the red, Georgian buildings spread on the New England meadow and the impersonal stateliness of the lean Headmaster seemed a cold nest for Gurdy. He missed the boy with a dry and aching pain that wasn’t curable by work on five new plays, Margot’s plump warmth on his knee or contrived, brief intoxication. All his usual enchantments failed. He wore out the phonograph plates of the Danse Macabre and the Peer Gynt “Sunrise.” He worried wretchedly and the disasters of October and November hardly balanced his interior trouble. Two, the more expensive two of the five Carlson and Walling productions failed. Carlson cheerfully indicated the shrinkage of applicants for jobs, hopeful playwrights and performers in the office above the 45th Street Theatre. Mark regretted twenty thousand dollars spent for shares in the Terriss Pictograph Company. Yet young Terriss was a keen fellow and Carlson thought something might come of motion pictures after a while. His friends sighed about Mark that the “show business was a gamble” and on visits to the farm Mark tried to be gay. A Military Academy had been built in Fayettesville on a stony field owned by Eddie Bernamer, the only heritage from Bernamer’s Norwegian father. Gurdy’s brothers were transferred to this polished school and Mark was soothed, in thinking that he’d made his own people grandees. He wished that he could ape the composure of the Bernamers and said so on a visit near Christmas time.
“But, great Cæsar,” Bernamer blinked, kicking balled snow from a boot-heel, “this Saint Andrew’s is a good school ain’t it, even if it is up by Boston? The buildin’s are fire proof, ain’t they? Gurdy can’t git out at night and raise Ned? Then what’s got into you?”
“Oh, but—my God, Eddie!... I miss him.”
“You’re a fool,” said his brother-in-law, staring at Mark, “You’re doin’ the right thing by the boy. You always do the right thing—like you done it by us. Sadie and me’ve got seven kids and I love ’em all.... They got to grow up. Stop bein’ a fool.... You don’t look well. Thin’s a rail. Business bad?”