“Miss Thorne’s,” said his broker, Villay, “She’ll really be taught something there.... Miss Thorne was my wife’s governess. I’ll see if I can manage....”
“Manage what?”
The broker clicked his cigarette case open, shut it and laughed, “You know what I mean, Walling.”
“No, I don’t.”
“It was one thing getting Gurdy into Saint Andrew’s. The Headmaster’s a broad minded man.... My dear boy, you’re Walling—Walling, of Carlson and Walling and you used to be a matinée idol.... I don’t like hurting your feelings.”
“You mean you’ll have to go down on your knees to this Miss Thorne to get her to take Margot?”
The broker said, “Not exactly down on my knees, Walling. I’ll have it managed. The school’s a corporation and my wife owns some stock.” Mark groaned and was driven uptown thinking sourly of New York. Things like this made Socialists, he fancied, and looked with sympathy at an orator on a box in Union Square. But Gurdy was arriving by the five o’clock train at the Grand Central Station and the lush swirl of the crowd on Fifth Avenue cured Mark’s spleen. Snow fluttered in planes of brief opal from the depth of assorted cornices above the exciting lights. A scarlet car crossed his at Thirty Fourth Street and bore a rigid, revealed woman in emerald velvet, like a figure of pride in a luminous shell. Her machine moved with his up the slope. Mark examined her happily. She chewed gum with the least movement of her white and vermilion cheeks. He despised her and felt strong against the pyramidal society in which Walling, of Carlson and Walling, was disdained. A cocktail in the Manhattan bar helped. The yellow place was full of undergraduates bustling away from Harvard and Yale. The consciousness of dull trim boots and the black, perpetual decency of his dress raised Mark high out of this herd. At least he knew better than to smoke cigarettes with gold tips and the oblique, racy colours of neckties had no meaning for him beyond gaudiness. He strolled to the clapboards and icy labyrinthine bewilderment of the station, found the right gate and beheld uncountable ladies gathered together with children in leather gaiters, chauffeurs at attention smoking furtively. Here, he knew, was good breeding collected to take charge of its sons. The cocktail struggled for a moment with cold air. Mark retired to the rough wooden wall and watched this crowd. The mingling voices never reached plangency. The small girls and boys stirred like low flowers in a field of dark, human stalks. Colours, this winter, were sombre. The women walked with restraint, with tiny gestures that revealed nothing, with smiles to each other that meant nothing. He had a feeling of deft performance and a young fellow at the wall beside Mark chuckled, lighting a cigarette.
“A lot of rich dames waitin’ for their kids from some goddam school up in Boston, see?”
Mark nodded. The young fellow gave the grouped women another stare and crossed the tight knees of his sailor’s breeches. The nostrils of his shapely, short nose shook a trifle. He tilted his flat cap further over an ear and winked comradely at Mark, “Wonder who the kids’ fathers are, huh? A lot of rich dames....” He spat and added, “Well, you can’t blame ’em so much. Their husban’s are all keepin’ these chorus girls. But it’s too much money, that’s what. If they’d got to work some and cook an’ all they wouldn’t have time for this society stuff. It’s too much money. If they’d got to cook their meals they wouldn’t have time for carryin’ on with all these artists an’ actors an’ things—” He broke off to snap at a girl who came hurrying from a telephone booth, “Say, what in hell? Makin’ another date?”
“Honest, I was just phonin’ mamma,” the girl said.