“Malta. Shall I see Gurdy? The nicest child!”
“Ain’t he? I’ve got him reading plays.” Mark soared into eulogies, came down to state, “This is Broadway,” as the car plunged over the tracks between two drays.
“If that’s Broadway,” Olive considered, “I quite understand why half of New York lives in Paris. I do want to see Fifth Avenue. The sky-scrapers disappointed me but Arnold Bennett says Fifth Avenue’s really dynamic.” A moment after when the car faced the greasy slope of asphalt she said, “Bennett’s mad.”
Mark sighed, “It’s an ugly town. But this street’s nice at sunset, in winter. It turns a kind of purple.... It was bully when the women wore violets. They don’t wear real flowers any more.—You used to smell violets everywhere. Violets and furs and cigar smoke. I used to like it.” His eyes sparkled on the revocation. He smiled at the foul asphalt and the drooping flags of shops where the windows gave out a torturing gleam.
“You great boy,” said Olive.
“Boy? Be forty-one the second of November.—Oh, awful sorry about your brother, Olive.”
“I’m not. Gerald was null and void. I never even discovered where he found the energy to marry and beget daughters. Margot’s lived more at the age of eighteen than Gerald had at fifty. I don’t suppose that you can understand how I can slang my own family.”
“Oh, sure. Because my folks are all nice it don’t follow I think every one ought to be crazy about theirs. Did he have a son?”
“No. The land goes to our cousin—Shelmardine of Potterhanworth—that idiot his wife pushed into Peerage. She was one of the managing Colthursts. Loathsome woman. Her son’s a V.C. though.—Oh, this improves!” The car passed Forty Fifth Street. Olive gazed ahead, cheered by the statelier tone of the white avenue. Mark wondered how a woman who had lost both children could yet smile at the dignity of Saint Patrick’s and again at the homesick bewilderment of her maid getting down before his house.
Old Carlson bobbed his head to this lady, abandoning his ancient fancy that she had been Mark’s mistress. He studied her grey hair and the worn, sharp line of her face. Then he cackled that she was to blame for turning Margot into a “sassy turnip.”