Cast a Cold Eye by Mary McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

manifestations, it seemed quite plain that design was at the bottom of it, that love had been gladly foregone for the sound of the telephone bell. He would hint at a disastrous passion or a vice to each of his married friends when the intimacy reached a certain stage, like a stranger on a train who after a given amount of conversation produces a calling card, but these confessions had a faint air of fraudulence or at least of frivolity: how could anyone take very seriously a passion or a morbid inclination which left its victim free every day from five until midnight and all day Sundays and holidays? Nevertheless, his confessions were accepted often with a kind of gratitude. They served to “explain” him to new acquaintances, who might have thought him peculiar if they had not been assured that he kept a truly horrible vice in his closet.
    In other cases, there appeared to have been no calculation. He thought sporadically of marriage but kept looking for “the right person,” who was assumed to exist somewhere just beyond the social horizon, like a soul waiting to be born. Yet whenever a living being materialized who wore the features of the right person, she was found to be already married or indifferent or tied to an aged mother or in some other way impossible. So the vigil continued, until time made it an absurdity, and at fifty Francis Cleary ceased to yearn, ascribed his fate to a geographical accident (everybody has his double and everybody has his complement, but not necessarily in New York or even in America), to an over-romantic temperament, or simply to the bad habit, contracted in adolescence and never overcome, of falling in love with married women, which made him regard every woman who lacked a husband as essentially incomplete. Putting love behind him, Francis Cleary would throw himself more actively than ever into the occupation of friendship, the life of visits, small gifts and favors exchanged, mild gossip, concern over illnesses, outings for the children, and would, quite often, experience a kind of late blooming which would inspire all his friends to hope that he was at last on the verge of marriage, while in reality it was the abandonment of the idea of marriage that had permitted his nature, finally, to express itself. In this aspect—the aspect of innocence—Francis Cleary was almost lovable. Certainly he commanded the affection if not the active preference of his friends, and those husbands and wives who had accepted him as the lesser evil grew to like him for himself. It is significant, nevertheless, that he was liked for goodness of heart, which does not provoke envy, rather than for talent, charm, or beauty, which do. And goodness of heart notwithstanding, it was still a chore to dine or take a walk with him alone, and if by chance in these t ê te-à-t ê tes a muted happiness was achieved, his companion could never quite get over it, referred to the occasion repeatedly in conversation (“You know, I had quite a good time with Francis Cleary the other day”), as though a miracle had been witnessed and virtue been its own reward.
    Yet here perhaps there has been a confusion of identity. It is likely that the Francis Cleary we have just been speaking of, the good, bewildered, yearning Francis Cleary, was never the true Francis Cleary at all, but an uncle for whom the real one, the modern one, was named. Whenever they met the good Francis Cleary, his friends were struck by a certain anachronism in his character; they would say that he reminded them of their childhood, of a maiden aunt who did the mending, or a bachelor great-uncle who gave them a gold piece every Christmas morning and left his watch to them in his will when he died. The true Francis Cleary had no such overtones. He was as much a product of the age as nylon or plywood, and he could be distinguished from the others, those uncles and aunts of his who lingered on in a later period, by the fact that one did not pity him. One could