Chapter XII

Irving was a lawyer now. He had a nice office in one of the newer buildings devoted to professional men, but not much practice. His father found it just as convenient to give him some of the smaller business of the firm as to increase his allowance. When anything important came up Mr. Ross agreed with his partners that it was best to let a better-established lawyer handle the case.

Irving—who became Irwin about this time—could have joined a large firm as a junior member, but he preferred independence. He didn’t like to work hard or long and he had heard of the tasks performed by the younger members of big firms. He liked to waste time, browsing around book-stores, walking through the lobbies of hotels, calling on friends. He had a large acquaintance with women and had as many dinner invitations as he could accept. Wasn’t he a great catch, a young lawyer with a rich father? And good company.

At twenty-five, Irwin still loved an argument. Although never a great reader, he liked to pose as one, quoting well-known authorities, reading and talking about authors unknown to his hearers. His hair was always immaculately sleeked, though it had just a perceptible wave. He had his favourite manicurist at one of the larger hotels. He smoked an expensive brand of cigarettes, carrying them in an elaborate silver and gold case and fitting each one carefully into an extremely long amber cigarette holder before smoking it. He used affected gestures, pounding on a table to emphasize a point he was making. He still wore nose-glasses, now large lensed and tortoise rimmed, and from habit he held his head too high.

Irwin was proud of his acquaintance with half a dozen actresses of minor importance. These he took to teas, dinners and suppers, talking later as if the engagement had had special significance. He was careful about his acquaintance with other women, choosing those that were, to him, of social importance. He had the same distrust his parents had for those outside of his own race. He never attended services at a synagogue, but to him religion and race were intermingled and he did not attempt to differentiate between them. Since boyhood he had suffered from prejudice far more than his sisters. He was proud to associate with “outsiders,” liked to think he looked and spoke and acted like one of them. But he would never have married a Gentile.

Carolyn was now the liveliest member of the Riverside Drive household. She didn’t think much of race and creed. She envied other women in some things, but she thought herself all that was desirable and attractive. She liked best the people of her own race, but she preferred them with American or English accents, appearance and accomplishments. She liked to associate only with people of great wealth. Always gowned a bit ahead of fashion, perfectly groomed, silky, smooth, crisp, she went to the theatre, evenings and matinées, to luncheons and to parties, giggling and laughing, quite moderately, of course, and had a gay time. She loved musical comedy and after-theatre suppers. She didn’t care for the opera, but even the most serious drama could give her something to giggle about afterwards. Her hair and eyes were dark with something of the Orient about them, but her skin was fairer and clearer than her mother’s or Yvette’s, her round little nose was always white with powder and her eyebrows narrow and smooth, her lips and cheeks pinkly attractive.

You could see Carolyn almost any fair afternoon on the Avenue with Eloise or Helen or Mary Louise, stopping in at one little shop for a bit of lingerie, at another for flowers. They spent money with no thought of its value. Most of them could not remember poverty. Those who could found spending the best method of forgetting. Occasionally they met several of “the boys” for tea. When they didn’t they bought tea for themselves at Maillard’s, usually, or the Plaza. There was always a car waiting and they wore low pumps or slippers and the thinnest of stockings even when the snow was on the ground.

Carolyn “went with” Jack Morton, Eloise’s brother. She had met Eloise at the Riverside Drive School. Jack was at Harvard, then, but he was graduated a year later and was “catching on” nicely in his father’s box factory. The Mortons thought the Rosses a step below them socially, for the Mortons were a little farther removed from “the old country.” Outside of that, they liked Carolyn. So no one was surprised, when, in 1914, when Carolyn was twenty-three, she announced her engagement to Jack. The Rosses thought Carolyn had “done well,” as indeed she had, for Jack Morton was a likeable fellow, full of practical jokes and fond of poker playing, but on the whole quite a desirable husband.

Ross gave his daughter a diamond lavalliere for an engagement present, and as Carolyn picked it out herself it was quite glittering. He promised her the furniture for her new apartment as a wedding present. The Mortons gave Carolyn a small car, green, with cushions to match, which she pronounced “a young wonder.” They had an engagement “at home” and were married a few months later at one of the newer hotels. Carolyn hoped that it was quite evident to the friends of both families that they were both very wealthy.

The young couple took a three weeks’ trip to Florida—Jack couldn’t stay away from the business longer than that. Then they went to the Astor, but Carolyn wanted to entertain her friends and a hotel does keep you cooped up so. She and Jack finally decided on a small apartment in a high-priced new building in Park Avenue. They had only one maid to start with for they both preferred eating at restaurants. With the car you could eat at a different place and go to a show or some place every night.

Without Carolyn the Riverside Drive apartment seemed quiet. Manning went to Harvard for a year, dissatisfied with the unexclusiveness of Columbia.

Dorothea liked school, too, and was now taking a few harmless courses which gave her something to do, though they didn’t satisfy her. Nothing quite pleased Dorothea. She hadn’t been satisfied with Carolyn’s school—girls of only one creed went there, so narrow. Dorothea said that school was a joke. She had chosen a more expensive school, patronized by daughters of rich men generally. Her new study courses were at Columbia and with private teachers. Mr. Ross didn’t like them.

“It isn’t as if she had to be a teacher,” he said. “A girl can have too much book-learning.”

But Dorothea went. She had always been different. Her clothes, for one thing. Couldn’t she have had anything she wanted? Look at Carolyn—always dressed like a picture—the family had to admit that, themselves. Even Yvette, though she liked bright colours, was a good dresser. It wasn’t as if Dorothea was economical. She spent as much as Carolyn did. Carolyn wore things that “looked expensive,” rich broadcloth, elaborate furs—Dorothea preferred rough tweeds. She paid extraordinary sums for little suits that Mrs. Ross thought looked as if she’d got them for twenty dollars in Third Avenue. They were of mixed weaves, in grey or tan, and she wore big tailored collars over her coats, not mannish looking or freakish, just plain. She paid fifty dollars for her little round velour hats. She wore heavy gloves and shoes, even when she went out with Carolyn, sleek in white gloves, thin pumps and furs. Dorothea paid huge prices for plain little evening frocks which she bought at exclusive little places. Even then she was not satisfied.

Dorothea wore a perpetual little pout—something had always just gone wrong. She spent her time wondering what to do, dipping in “courses” on a variety of subjects, at settlement work, “going with people she didn’t have to associate with,” her mother thought. Clad in a trim-fitting habit she rode whole mornings in Central Park. She exhibited funny little Belgian Griffins at shows. She went to benefits and tournaments. Yet she was always a trifle “put out,” a bit bored. Things weren’t ever good enough, or quite what she had expected.

For her twentieth birthday Dorothea asked for and received a new car, a good-looking foreign-made roadster. About time the family had more than one car! She didn’t want a chauffeur. Hadn’t she been driving as long as she could remember, learning on the old red one? She liked driving the car best of all.

The family, the family’s friends, what any one said or did—all displeased Dorothea. She made sport of Irwin’s pet affectations to his face, to her mother’s horror. She called Yvette’s things “impossible” and made fun of Carolyn’s diamonds. She treated her mother as a person of no consequence, never asking her opinion about things. Although she had nothing in common with her father, she made a great fuss over him and he grew to like her better than any other member of his family. She took him out in her car, though he didn’t quite enjoy the rides, expecting to be tipped over at every corner. Dorothea drove perfectly, with the recklessness of a racer.

Dorothea went with “outsiders.” She seemed as much at home with members of other races as with her own. She’d bring in unexpected guests, making the family feel ill at ease. While guests were there she’d bring up bits of family history the rest were trying their hardest to keep out of sight.

“Dad,” she’d say, “here’s some one that wants to meet you. He’s heard a lot about you.... Can you believe that less than twenty-five years ago Dad came to America with no money at all?” then, with a little gesture and a smile, “and now look at him.” She’d throw an arm around her father, who, ill at ease, would greet the stranger.

If Mr. Ross had been unsuccessful, he would have looked like any of a thousand of his race whom you can see leaving the shops any evening at the closing hour. But his wealth haloed him. It was impossible to separate him from his money. Thin, stoop-shouldered, solemn, quiet and accented of speech, he stood for success. To Dorothea her father was immensely important. She was the first who had ever made much of him. It embarrassed him—he was a simple old fellow in many ways—but he liked it.

Mrs. Ross thought Dorothea didn’t appreciate her.

“It’s always her Dad, her Dad,” she’d say, “never a word about how I worked when she was small or all I do for her—just Dad this, Dad that—and Irwin don’t like it—that you’re always bringing up old times, about Papa being a cutter. The other night when that fine Miss Tannenheim was here, you said it, when you was talking to that big blond fellow you brought in....”

“You’re a dear, Mother,” Dorothea would give her mother the tiniest touch of a kiss on her broad cheek, “but Irv’s a mess and he knows it. The Tannenheim person is a cheap old thing with a mean eye and she’ll marry him some day, if he isn’t watching.”

“Dad,” said Dorothea, one day, “let’s move. You can’t guess how sick I am of Riverside Drive.”

“What’s the matter? Haven’t you got things nice here?”

“Nice—on the Drive?”

“We’re always moving, it seems. Only four years ago....”

“I know, Dad. That’s just it. A man of your position ought to have a home. Apartments are nothing. This one is simply awful. Riverside Drive is fearfully ordinary, vulgar—don’t you think so? Such a cheap collection of the newly rich. Dad, you ought to have your own home in town, anyhow, and something permanent in the country.”