Edith Wharton

“ It was owing to this accidental change that there gradually grew up between Hayley Delane and myself a sentiment almost filial on my part, elder-brotherly on his—for paternal one could hardly call him, even with his children.
My job need not have thrown me in his way, for his business duties sat lightly on him, and his hours at the bank were neither long nor regular. But he appeared to take a liking to me, and soon began to call on me for the many small services which, in the world of affairs, a young man can render his elders. ”

“ I turned my head away quickly, to avoid seeing Hayley Delane’s face; though why I wished to avoid it I could not have told you, much less why I should have imagined (if I did) that a man of his age and importance would notice what was happening to the wholly negligible features of a youth like myself. ”

“ The funeral was attended by the whole of New York, and Leila’s crape veil was of exactly the right length—a matter of great importance in those days.
Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins. In less time than seemed possible in so slow-moving a society, the Delane’s family crisis had been smothered and forgotten. ”

“ He came in, and dropping a pale smile on him she drifted away, calling to her children.
I thought to myself: “She’s getting on, and something has told her so at Newport. Poor thing!”
Delane looked as preoccupied as she did; but he said nothing till after she had left us that evening. Then he suddenly turned to me.
“Look here. You’re a good friend of ours. Will you help me to think out a rather bothersome question?”
“Me, sir?” I said, surprised by the “ours,” and overcome by so solemn an appeal from my elder. ”

“ Almost any man can take a stand on a principle his fellow-citizens are already occupying; but Hayley Delane held out for things his friends could not comprehend, and did it for reasons he could not explain. ”

“ No, Hayley Delane had felt the war, had been made different by it; how different I saw only when I compared him to the other “veterans” who, from being regarded by me as the dullest of my father’s dinner-guests, were now become figures of absorbing interest. Time was when, at my mother’s announcement that General Scole or Major Detrancy was coming to dine, I had invariably found a pretext for absenting myself; now, when I knew they were expected, my chief object was to persuade her to invite Delane.{57}
“But he’s so much younger—he cares only for the sporting set. ”

“ Alstrop gave an impatient shrug. “Oh, for God’s sake don’t reopen the cursèd question,” it seemed to say. Aloud he echoed: “For what? Why, after all, a man’s got a right to thrash his own poney, hasn’t he? It was beastly unsportsmanlike, of course—but it’s nobody’s business if Byrne chooses to be that kind of a cad. That’s what Hayley saw—when he cooled down.” ”

“ Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation. ”

“ And the familiars, touched by such magnanimity, would pledge Hayley in the champagne provided by his last remittance.
Delane, as I still remained silent, began to explain. “You see, somebody’s got to look after him—who else is there?”
“But—” I stammered.
“You’ll say he’s always needed looking after? Well, I’ve done my best; short of having him here. For a long time that seemed impossible; I quite agreed with Leila—” (So it was Leila who had banished her father!) “But now,” Delane continued, “it’s different. The poor old chap’s getting on: he’s been breaking up very fast this last year. ”

“ I never played myself, and I had no money on: for me the principal interest of the scene lay in the May weather, the ripple of spring dresses over the turf, the sense of youth, fun, gaiety, of young manhood and womanhood weaving their eternal pattern under the{20} conniving sky. ”

“ He won’t be flattered at being asked with old gentlemen.” And my mother, with a slight smile, would add: “If Hayley has a weakness, it’s the wish to be thought younger than he is—on his wife’s account, I suppose.”
Once, however, she did invite him, and he accepted; and we got over having to ask Mrs. Delane (who undoubtedly would have been bored) by leaving out Mrs. Scole and Mrs. Ruscott, and making it a “man’s dinner” of the old-fashioned sort, with canvas-backs, a bowl of punch, and my mother the only lady present—the kind of evening my father still liked best. ”

“ He takes up room, Gracy does; it’s not going to be pleasant. She thinks we ought to consider the children first. But I don’t agree. The world’s too ugly a place; why should anyone grow up thinking it’s a flower-garden? ”

“ Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins. ”

“ Over there—with the heaps of hair?”—“Oh, Leila Gracy? Why, she’s not really pretty....” “Well, I’m going to marry her—” “Marry her? But her father’s that old scoundrel Bill Gracy ... the one....” “I’m going to marry her....” “The one who’s had to resign from all his clubs....” “I’m going to marry her....” And he did; and it was she, if you please, who kept him dangling, and who would and who wouldn’t, until some whipper-snapper of a youth, who was meanwhile making up his mind about her, had finally decided in the negative.
Such had been Hayley Delane’s marriage ”

“ Yet what is deeper in a man than his tastes?
In another age, then, he would probably have been doing the equivalent of what{9} he was doing now: idling, taking much violent exercise, eating more than was good for him, laughing at the same kind of nonsense, and worshipping, with the same kind of dull routine-worship, the same kind of woman, whether dressed in a crinoline, a farthingale, a peplum or the skins of beasts—it didn’t much matter under what sumptuary dispensation one placed her. ”

“ Why a New York banker of excessive weight and more than middle age, jogging on a poney across a Long Island polo field, should have reminded me of a{23} martial figure on an armoured war-horse, I find it hard to explain. As far as I knew there were no turreted fortresses in Delane’s background; and his too juvenile polo cap and gaudy shirt were a poor substitute for Guidoriccio’s coat of mail. But it was the kind of trick the man was always playing ”

“ We were brought up on the best books—Scott and{53} Washington Irving, old what’s-his-name who wrote the Spectator, and Gibbon and so forth; and though I’m not a literary man, and never set up to be, I can’t forget my early training, and when I see the children reading a newspaper-fellow like Kipling I want to tear the rubbish out of their hands. Cheap journalism—that’s what most modern books are. ”

“ After all, the war had all happened long ago; it had been over ten years when I was born. And nobody ever talked about it nowadays. Still, one did, of course, as one grew up, meet older men of whom it was said: “Yes, so-and-so was in the war.” Many of them even continued to be known by the military titles with which they had left the{48} service: Colonel Ruscott, Major Detrancy, old General Scole. People smiled a little, but admitted that, if it pleased them to keep their army rank, it was a right they had earned. Hayley Delane, it appeared, thought differently. ”

“ Hayley? Why, I was just saying—”
“Yes, I know. But the only people who are never put out are the people who don’t care; and not caring is about the saddest occupation there is. I’d like to see him in a rage just once.”
My host gave a faint whistle, and remarked: “By Jove, I believe the wind’s hauling round to the north. If it does—” He moistened his finger and held it up.
I knew there was no use in theorizing with Alstrop; but I tried another tack. “What on earth has Delane done with{15} himself all these years?” I asked. ”

“ V DELANE was right; having Bill Gracy under one’s roof was not like harbouring a nice old lady. I looked on at the sequence of our talk and marvelled.
New York—the Delanes’ New York—sided unhesitatingly with Leila. Society’s attitude toward drink and dishonesty was still inflexible: a man who had had to resign from his clubs went down into a pit presumably bottomless. The two or three people who thought Delane’s action “rather fine” made haste to add: “But he ought to have taken a house for the old man in some quiet place in the country.” Bill Gracy cabined in a quiet place in the{85} country! ”

“ But just then Byrne’s poney, unequal to the pace, stumbled, faltered, and came down. His rider dropped from the saddle, hauled the animal to his feet, and stood for a minute half-dazed before he scrambled up again. That minute made the difference. It gave the other side their chance. The knot of men and horses tightened, wavered, grew loose, broke up in arrowing flights; and suddenly a ball—Delane’s—sped through the enemy’s goal, victorious. A roar of delight went up; “Good for old Hayley!” voices shouted. Mrs. Delane gave a little sour laugh.{27} “That—that beastly poney ”

“ I remember, at that dinner, how attentively I studied the contrasts, and tried to detect the points of resemblance, be{58}tween General Scole, old Detrancy and Delane. Allusions to the war—anecdotes of Bull Run and Andersonville, of Lincoln, Seward and MacClellan, were often on Major Detrancy’s lips, especially after the punch had gone round. “When a fellow’s been through the war,” he used to say as a preface to almost everything, from expressing his opinion of last Sunday’s sermon to praising the roasting of a canvas-back. ”

“ All New York knew what Delane thought of his suave father-in-law. He had married Leila in spite of her antecedents; but Bill Gracy, at the outset, had been given to understand that he would not be received under the Delane roof. Mollified by the regular payment of a handsome allowance, the old gentleman, with tears in his eyes, was wont to tell his familiars that personally he didn’t blame his son-in-law. “Our tastes differ: that’s all. Hayley’s not a bad chap{76} at heart ”

“ Gracy’s flushed counte{93}nance and unreverend auburn locks appeared between us.
“Look here, Hayley; what about our little game? If I’m to be packed off to bed at ten like a naughty boy you might at least give me my hand of poker first.” He winked faintly at me as we passed into the library, and added, in a hoarse aside: “If he thinks he’s going to boss me like Leila he’s mistaken. Flesh and blood’s one thing ”