Honorable Men Read Online Free

you do maintain.
    G RANNY : Well, of course, it’s not easy. One has to keep a sharp lookout.
    G US : Just that? I know so many people who nibble on their capital.
    G RANNY : But we were brought up not to do that!
    G US : We’re not all saints, are we? Oh, come, Mrs. Struthers, don’t tell me you’ve never sneaked a bond out of the tin box and sold it when no one was looking? Have you never been naughty? Never once?
    G RANNY : Well, maybe just once in a blue moon. Things are so very dear!
    G US : Exactly! And I’m sure your son and daughter-in-law have, too.
    G RANNY : Oh, them—for sure!
    G US : And between you all, I wonder whether poor Alida won’t have to learn a trade.
    G RANNY : I don’t think I quite follow that, Augustus.
    G US : It’s simple. How is a young woman brought up to believe that meals and bathrooms cook and clean themselves supposed to support herself when her immediate progenitors have gone to their reward—if reward, indeed, it be?
    G RANNY : That’s her progenitors’ lookout.
    G US : But if they don’t look? Isn’t a grandmother a kind of surety on the bond?
    G RANNY : What are you driving at? Why can’t Alida marry some sensible young fellow and be a good wife to him?
    G US : Because she’s been brought up to be perfectly useless. And to fall in love with youths who will either be after the money she hasn’t got or afraid she’s after theirs!
    G RANNY : Am I responsible for the low moral tone of my daughter-in-law’s house?
    G US : No! But you’re responsible for not saving Alida if you can.
    G RANNY : Can I? How?
    Gus proceeded to tell her. And he actually got the party out of the old girl. She did the bare minimum, but that proved enough. We rented the Aquamarine Room at the Hotel Stafford, not the best place by a good deal but adequate, and Gus secured a number of concessions in the way of music and liquor when the merchants discovered what the press coverage was to be. It was an April party, late in the season, and it constituted its climax. Alida Struthers the next week was on the cover of
Life\
    When Gus came to our house one morning with an advance copy, he kissed me and murmured, “Now I can chant my Nunc Dimittis.”
    â€œWell, you’ve had
your
fun.” I gazed at the large photograph almost with incredulity. “When does
mine
start?”
    I did not mean to be ungrateful. But in sober truth, what had I really got out of the whole thing? I had learned nothing that had not confirmed my low opinion of the games played by New York society; I had exhausted my body with late hours, smoking and drinking; I had made mincemeat of my self-respect; I had added nothing to my knowledge of the arts and literature; and I had not even fallen in love! When I looked back over those months of futile activity, I had only a sense of hundreds of bland young faces, of lips forming inane compliments or feeble jokes, and of laughs, smiles, giggles, an endless bray of pointless jocosity. Where was the heart of fools? Of course, in the House of Mirth!
    Once, after a long lunch at the Chenonceaux with Gus, reluctant to go out to the rainy street, I gazed glumly over the emptying tables and sipped a second cognac.
    â€œWhat are you doing it for, Augustus? Are you like the guardian in
The School for Wives
rearing an innocent ward to be the perfect spouse? If so, you’re taking rather a new tack, aren’t you? For instead of walling me up to preserve my purity, you’ve exposed me to every contamination on earth! But maybe that’s just your perversity. Maybe you’re the ultimate decadent. To want a spouse like Salome, a virgin who is totally corrupt!”
    â€œNo, I don’t fly so high.” Gus always took in his stride one’s extremest flights of fancy. Did I attract him at all? It was hard to tell what lurked behind those dark, damp eyes, sometimes so scornful, sometimes so sad, sometimes