East Side Story by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page B

to his shrunken and cold nether parts, confident that she could translate his awkwardly spilled seed into a rosy little Benson. But the money would be there forever and ever!
    "You are silent, Mr. Carnochan. Are you thinking of something?"
    "Yes." But his duplicity simply amused him now. "I was thinking there's more goodness in our poor old world than the cynics allow."
    "Perhaps. But not much more, I'm afraid."
    He repressed a start. Had she read his mind? But what a mad idea! "Are you a cynic, Miss Benson?"
    "I hope not. But there are moments when it's hard not to be."
    Had she already had the bitterness of suspecting that some professed and even preferred suitor was only after a dowry? Very likely. She was not only observant but a friend of Kitty's. She would not be naive.
    After dinner he was allowed to sit by Kitty in the long parlor. Across from them hung a huge splendid portrait, unmistakably a Sargent, of Mrs. Benson. Unlike her offspring she was tall and angular, with raven black hair and a long oval face that was barred from beauty by a nose too large and a chin too square. The painter had tried to remedy this by making her regal, clad in striking scarlet and seated in a fauteuil with gilded golden arms, erect, proud, almost disdainful. Bruce commented that it was still a remarkable work of art.
    "Yes," Kitty admitted, "but it's not really at all Mrs. Benson, who's basically a simple, home-loving woman."
    "I suppose he painted what he thought she wanted to look like. And he took for granted that was what the society he painted wanted. He's like Hoppner and Reynolds and Lawrence, and just as good as they were, too. Only they painted an era more than they did their models. The ladies had to be showy and blowy and grand to look at."
    "And that's why none of those painters were of the first rank," Kitty pointed out, almost eagerly. "The very first, I mean. Like Holbein and Velazquez and Goya, where you get both the era
and
the model. The tenseness of the Tudor court, where men were willing to risk their heads for a few years of power. Or the decadence of the royal house in Madrid."
    "And what would a greater painter than Sargent have shown?"
    "The tinsel. The phony glitter. Fifth Avenue in fancy dress as dukes and duchesses under the urban rule of Irish bosses. And the Stars and Stripes fluttering faintly in the ill wind."
    "Of course, we have some real dukes and duchesses now. Perhaps you would say they're the phoniest of all!"
    "Thanks for saying it for me!" she exclaimed, with a little snort of laughter. "You know, Bruce, when we first met, I was afraid I was going to find you a bit on the stuffy side. But you're not. And now I feel I can talk to you. And, oh, my friend, do I need someone to talk to! There's dear Ada, of course, but she's inclined to be literal, and I can't say to her the things about her family and their friends that I'm thinking. Certainly not while I'm her houseguest! And my other girlfriends are all such terrible gossips and not to be trusted with anything remotely like a secret. There's Mama, naturally, but the poor darling hasn't a spark of imagination, and she finds everything on Fifth Avenue too, too divine."
    "What do you want to talk about?"
    "Bless you for coming right to the point. Myself, of course. What else does anyone really want to talk about?"
    "Then talk. Please talk. You do, and I won't."
    She hesitated, like one at the end of a diving board on a cold day. "Oh well, why not? Ada told me this morning that her brother Ezra is engaged. To the daughter of one of her father's partners. Ellie Jennings. Isn't it obscene? Shouldn't this new Sherman law, or whatever it is, be invoked to prevent it?"
    "Is this a blow to your heart?" He ventured this because he was suddenly and exuberantly convinced that it wasn't. "Or to your pride?"
    She laughed. "Well put. But to neither, really. There has been nothing between Ezra and me but the kind of tomfoolery young men feel socially obliged to engage