Ernest, who was no snob, and despised “gentlemen,” if they were fools, equally with paupers, if they were fools, at first objected to sending Godfrey to Mr. Glendenning’s school. He called at the school, upon May’s insistence, and interviewed the exquisite former schoolmaster. When he returned, he told May that the man was only “shabby genteel” (using his half-forgotten English vocabulary) and that it would not surprise him if he turned out to be a former barber, footman, butler or valet. “His Oxford accent doesn’t ring true to my English ears,” he said. But May insisted; the only other private school was filled by very vulgar people, she protested. So Ernest, who had been privately considering sending Godfrey to a military academy in Washington, relented temporarily, for May’s sake. But he was never satisfied, and was waiting until the boy was twelve to separate May from her darling.
As he went over a sheaf of bills one night in his library, he thought of this. May was keeping him company, reading by the fire. He glanced over at her, frowning.
“Must Frey learn Greek, my love?” he asked.
“Why, of course, Ernest! All gentlemen learn Greek! I thought you knew that.”
“Who said I wanted ‘gentlemen’ to take my place, when I’ve pegged out, ma’am? I can’t see how Greek is going to help Frey run our expanding businesses. By the time he is twenty-one, I expect we’ll have a finger in every pie in the country. How is Greek going to help Frey get the better of his competitors?”
“I don’t think he will ever get the better of any one, my sweet lamb,” thought May sadly. She answered her husband evasively: “Knowledge never hurt any man, Ernest. You can’t know too much. Besides, as I said, all gentlemen know Greek.”
“Now, May, I’m not going to get ‘bluff and hearty,’ and swear that I want no puny gentlemen about me! I’m not that big a fool. I’ve never pretended to be a gentleman, and by God, I’ll knock the man down who calls me one! And that’s not democratic bravado, either. But I’ve no objection to Frey being a gentleman, if he is more solid and practical things besides. But look here, ma’am: Glendenning reports that he’s actually an imbecile when it comes to plain figuring, and that the simplest mathematical problem is impossible for him to grasp! And he will handle millions some day!” He paused, and bit his lip. “May, you’re making a mollycoddle, a milksop, out of your son.”
“That isn’t fair, Ernest. Have you ever considered that some men aren’t made to grasp business problems? Just as some men will never be musicians or artists of any kind.” In her agitation, she dropped her book and went over to him, and leaned against his desk. “Ernest, I’ve wanted to talk to you. We have three other sons, and from all signs, Reggie, at least, is going to be what you want. Guy will probably be it, too, the cheerful imp! even though he is hardly four, and little Joey looks like a little business man even in his cradle! Why can’t you spare Godfrey, Ernest? Why can’t you let him do what he wants to do?”
Ernest’s face darkened. “And what is it that the lad wants to do, ma’am?”
“Please don’t take that heavily sarcastic tone, Ernest. Please listen to me.” She pulled a chair beside him, laid her white plump hand on his knee, and looked at him imploringly. “You know, I’ve taught Frey all the musical knowledge I possess. But now he needs professional teachers. Wait, Ernest, please! He needs professional teachers, the best we can get, the best schools of music. You see, Ernest, our boy is a genius. A composer. Only the other day, he played a little composition of his own, and I declare that I thought it was something of Beethoven’s. He is a genius! He must have his opportunity—”
Ernest pushed her hand off his knee with suppressed violence.
“What nonsense! ‘Genius’! Out of the clear sky, too! Genius doesn’t fall from the air, ma’am. I’ve heard nothing from him but a lot of idle strumming, and moon-gazing. Now, I don’t pretend to understand music, or care for it. I think I would have known, however, if Frey had had something worth while. But you can’t persuade me that a girlish, puling lad like that, with no more gumption than a whining cat, is a genius!”
“But you never pay him any attention, so how could you know? But I do know—”
“Just what do you know about music?”
“Not a terrible lot, Ernest, I admit. I never liked it. But I have heard enough of it, even if you haven’t, to distinguish good music from bad. I am familiar with all the better operas, and I’ve heard most of the symphonies. I don’t need to remind you that I can play the piano and the harp, also, and sing rather creditably. I have known musicians, too—”
“And just how many real composers have you known, ma’am?”
May smiled, a little triumphantly. “I met Richard Wagner in Munich, my pet. Did you ever hear of Richard Wagner? I thought not! But he has composed some rather nice operas, at least they are thought well of by discriminating people. And I met a number of others, too, at Paris soirees and in salons, but I won’t embarrass you by mentioning their names.” Ernest grinned unpleasantly for a moment. May went on: “So, I think I am a little qualified to pass on the merits of a musician. Frey, right now, plays better than I ever did; he loves music passionately. And now he is composing it. So—”
“I see. You now expect me to play the crass boor, and shout down music and ridicule it, don’t you? I am the new rich, so can’t be expected to know anything of the finer things of life. The burly, checker-vested business man, who crushes delicate things in his big beefy fist. But you can’t pin that caricature on me pet. It won’t fit. I admit there are many things I don’t understand, and I’m not going to be a fool and shout that they really can’t amount to anything or I’d know about them. I’m not even going to say that because they are not rewarded by lots of money they must be, at bottom, valueless. I’ll go a step further, and admit that there are probably a lot of things that are really more valuable, in the long run, than commerce and business and industry and government. I expect that a great picture or book or poem or opera will live longer and be remembered with more pleasure than men of my kind and the things we build. But after all, this is a practical world, and if a man can’t live by bread alone, he damn well can’t live without it! And you can live without pictures or books or poems or operas. They are just—just decorations on a sturdy house, and in a pinch we can get along without the decorations, providing we have the house.
“Now, in my case, I’ve built up something I’m proud of, crass and materialistic though that may sound to your delicate ears, ma’am. I’ve trebled, quadrupled, your original fortune, if not more. I’m not quite forty, and I started from scratch, and I’m now a millionaire several times over, and I’ve made others millionaires too. I’ve created industry; I’ve trebled the population of this town. I’m the friend of Governors and Senators. I’ve built immense factories and given thousands employment I’ve pushed inventions and exploited them. I’m part of a stronger America that has no time as yet for decorations. America would be poorer without me.
“And the time is coming when I will have to put all this into the hands of others. My sons. And you want to take my eldest, and make a damned long-haired, cravat-flowing musician out of him!”
“Don’t be tiresome, Ernest. I grant you everything you say. I’m proud of you, and I love you. But you’ve heard that before. But now we are talking about Frey. I am willing to compromise with you: I will take him to the Bouillon School of Music in New York; Monsieur Bouillon is a great composer in his own name, and lives only for music. Tyros, pretenders, poseurs, mediocrities, are his abomination. I will have Frey play for him, play his own little composition, and I will abide by his decision. If he says that Frey is a mediocrity, then we come home and nothing more need be said about it. We will all forget this. Frey will be persuaded to study more practical things. But if Monsieur says that Frey is a genius, and will some day be a great composer if he has proper instruction, I will leave Frey at his school.”
Ernest regarded her sullenly, his large head bent forward like a bull’s.
“N
onsense,” he said, after a moment, returning to his desk. “I don’t want to hear any more about it, ma’am. And now, will you kindly explain this bill—”
May had paled, but her lips had hardened, grown thin with her desperate determination.
“I know, Ernest,” she said in a low, trembling voice, “it is because you hate Frey. You don’t want to help him, to encourage him to develop his potentialities. And it isn’t because you are so interested in training him for a business that you know, yourself, he will eventually despise, and for which he is absolutely unfitted by nature. You just want to thwart him, make him suffer.”
“What a fool you are, May!” He had flushed heavily, and was staring at her with baleful hostility. “I admit that your coddling of the lad, your turning him against me, has made me a little cold to him at times. You would probably say, unsympathetic. But hate him! My own flesh and blood. I’m not sentimental, really, about flesh and blood, as you damn well know, but he’s my son, my first born, and if he weren’t such a damned little ass I would be proud of him. But I have you to thank for making him an ass. And now, leave me alone! I’ve work to do, and I’ll listen to no more folly.” He picked up his pen and wrote furiously. “My God, why couldn’t I have had children like Amy’s!”
May had grown still paler at the mention of her cousin’s name, and something bitter and glittering came into her round dark eyes. “Like Amy’s,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, I can see why and how you would prefer children like hers. I have nothing against Paul and Elsa, except that they are brutal little savages; not very intellectual, either. I can see, too, why you might like Lucy, who falls all over you and hugs you and kisses you in her cunning little childish way—for the small silver you give her! And John Charles might appeal to you, too. He’s only a baby, but I saw him enjoying pulling a butterfly apart a few days ago. But you’re not going to pull apart my butterfly, Ernest.”
He pushed back his chair savagely and stood up, glowering, red-faced, at her.
“Will you be quiet? I never heard such a pack of drivel in my life! I won’t have this quarrelling over a puny brat, who hasn’t even the courage to double his fists. I’m tired of it. Put him in skirts, and be damned to both of you!” He had never talked so to her before, and something became still and very cold in her resolute heart. I’ll never feel the same about him, again, she thought. But she faced him silently, waiting for him to have done. He had clenched his hand upon his pen, and in his rage he was breaking it, snapping it, as though he would have liked to do the same to his wife. “You’ve made him a milksop, a whiner, a hider behind petticoats. And I’ll have no more of it, by God! Next week he goes to General Smith’s Military Academy in Washington, and let’s see if they can kick and punch a little guts into him there, and make a man of him. Or kill him, trying.”
He stopped, panting, all the veins in his face congested and swollen. But in spite of his rage and resentment, he was more than a little sobered by May’s waiting silence, her white cheeks and steadfast eyes. Something in those eyes, fearless and uncowed, reminded him forcibly of Amy’s eyes, recalled to him the kinship of the two women. He had never noticed any resemblance between them before, but now he was quite shaken by the sudden likeness. She showed nothing of the real shock and despair she had experienced at the mention of the military academy, except for the convulsive and involuntary wringing of her hands.
“No, you won’t send him to that school,” she said quietly, wondering dimly about the sick pang in her chest. “I won’t have it. Not if I have to take him away from here, myself, and leave you. They’d really kill him there—kill him, inside. I won’t have that; I won’t have you murder him. Ernest, I’ve asked you for very little, and I’ve given you a great deal, all my love and faithfulness and devotion. But I’ve come to realize that you owe me something.” She took a step toward him, forced him to look at her because of the strange white significance of her manner. “Yes, you owe me a great deal. And because of that, I’m insisting that Godfrey shall have his chance to live, without your hand on him. Yes, I’m insisting on that. You see, you owe me a great deal.”
Ernest, disturbed and startled, tried to bluster. “What do I—” Then stopped. What does she mean? How much does she know? he thought rapidly. He fixed his eyes piercingly on her face, so close to his, so pale and unwavering, so oddly sad. And then, for one of the few times in his life, he felt pity. He pitied his wife, felt a mysterious sorrow for her, a sinking regret. It went all through him, seeming to weaken and dissolve all his flesh, relaxing his harsh expression, making him turn aside, finally, as though he could not look at her any longer. He played with the articles on his desk for a long moment, lifting and setting down his brass inkwell, rubbing his thumb along his paper knife, carefully and mechanically pushing together into their proper places the fragments of his destroyed pen.
It was some minutes before he spoke, and when he did, his tone was milder, attempting to be indulgent. “Yes, perhaps I do owe you something, May. You’ve been a good wife, not a gadder or gossip or fool, like most men’s wives. Perhaps I’ve been a little hasty. I’m willing to meet you half way about the lad.”
May sighed, so loudly, so deeply, that the sigh was almost a sob. Ernest heard it, and again the weak, dissolving pang of pity went through him. But he could not look at her, yet. “All right, May. Take him to your French jig-dancer, and see what he says. But mind: if he says music is a waste of time for Frey, there’s to be no more nonsense.” He sat down, pulled papers toward him and began to write upon them rapidly. He waited for May’s bubbling little laugh, with which she always ended small altercations between them; he waited for the warm whiteness of her arms about his neck, the warm pressure of her cheek against his. Strangely, he suddenly wanted this more than he had wanted anything for a long time. But he heard nothing, felt nothing. After awhile, he heard the clock chime ten in the hall, heard the distant throbbing of bullfrogs in the pond. Though he tried to prevent it, he turned almost involuntarily, smiling.
But May was not there. The place where she had stood was empty.
CHAPTER LX
May’s firm belief in the idealism of M. Henri Bouillon, his imperviousness to money when accompanied by vain stupidity and mediocrity, was a little naïve. In his really very fine school of some two hundred pupils, there was a high and rigid standard of excellence, unceasing demand and inflexible discipline, for the gifted students, and an ease, a suave flattery, an indulgence and humoring of the mediocrities, which formed about one-third only of the student body. Considering that M. Henri Bouillon had the French lack of aversion for cash, this spoke astonishingly well for his possession of ideals and reverence for music. He had discovered that seventy-five per cent of the mediocrities were extraordinarily rich, and fifty per cent of the talented pupils extraordinarily poor. It also spoke exceedingly well for him that one-half of the poverty-stricken youths received free tuition and board at his school, offerings laid at the feet of an art he profoundly worshipped. His wife, who was an idealist, often protested at his admittance of some young fool who wanted even more adulation than his father’s money to gorge his conceit, but Monsieur Henri said wryly that if he did not admit wealthy fools he would also not be able to admit poor geniuses. “Art is a glorious mistress,” said this practical Frenchman and artist and composer, “but like all mistresses she demands sustenance.” When his wife pointed out that geniuses have died in garrets, and thus glorified forever these fetid dens under eaves, he replied: “But how uncomfortable! Nothing is worth dying for, not even art. And I cannot see that a comfortable bed and a delicious ragout, just touched with red wine and garlic, would be deleterious to inspiration. To me there is something just a little precious, a little affected, in self-immolation to anything.”
May brought little Godfrey to him, was admitted to the great man’s untidy study; she was soon thereafter ordered out, and she retired with some apprehension, leaving her little son with Monsieur Henri and a vast and dusty piano. She sat in t
he musty and disordered ante-room, listened to the faint notes which Godfrey produced. He was playing his own composition, and May, listening, suddenly decided with humiliation, that she had been mistaken, that Ernest had been right. She was about to enter the study again and retrieve her offspring, when Monsieur Henri bounced out of the room, slammed the door behind him, and confronted May. She stood before him, her gloved hands clasped unknowingly together, her wounded eyes upon him: a plump and pretty woman in her dark red velvet and plumes.
“Madam,” said Monsieur Henri, “your son is almost a genius.” And he touched his eyes elaborately with his handkerchief.
For a moment cynicism twisted in May. “Is he, truly? Monsieur Bouillon, we are very rich, as you probably know. We could afford to indulge Godfrey, even if he had only a little talent. But we do not want that. I have made a bargain with my husband that if the boy is not really talented, I will bring him home.”
Monsieur Henri, a huge and shapeless man with a spade-shaped beard, glowered at her terribly. “If he were a street urchin, I would snatch him from you and teach him myself!” he shouted, assaulting her with his lightnings and his rage. “Madam, you are a fool!” He flung himself with such solid violence into a chair that it teetered precariously, and groaned. “It is not what he played, nor whether he had composed it or not, nor even his technique, which is vile, Madam. How I would like to lay my hands on his villain of a teacher! And what a crime to subject a child like that to female monsters who have a faint knowledge of the difference between flats and sharps! No, Madam, it is not all these that tell me the truth. It is your son, his face, his eyes, his soul!”
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