Her son George was proud of his mother but inclined to be dubious about the change that had come over her. He was irritated particularly one evening to hear his mother advocate equal suffrage rights for women to a group of surprised friends gathered at their home.
"I think such ideas foolish and dangerous," George explained politely.
"Why?" his mother inquired.
Basine shook his head. He had given the subject no thought. But a militant defense of the status quo inspired him always with a comfortable feeling of rectitude.
"I see no reason," pursued Mrs. Basine, "why women shouldn't vote as well as men. I remember your father was very much interested in the issue of women's suffrage. He said the day would come when women voted shoulder to shoulder with men and that the country would be improved by it."
Basine stared at his mother. He had grown to realize that she had discovered the trick of lending weight and irrefutable wisdoms to her own notions by surrounding them with the sanctity of death. For it was almost impossible to fly in the face of a quotation from his father. The fact that the man was dead seemed to make contradiction of any ideas or prophecies attributed to him a sacrilege. There was also the fact becoming daily more obvious that his mother was turning into an unscrupulous administrator of the dead man's opinions.
"I never heard father say anything of the kind," he exclaimed suddenly.
And then feeling that a loss of temper was the only way in which he could cover the affront he had offered his mother, he added with indignation, "You keep backing up your arguments by dragging dad's corpse into them all the time."
Mrs. Basine looked at him in amazement, and he reddened. He apologized quickly. Mrs. Basine, shocked by her son's unexpected penetration, bit her lip and became silent. She let the argument pass, not without observing that her friends present appeared for a moment to rally around her son's expose--as if he had given words to their own attitude. She decided when she was alone again to be more careful. She loved her son and felt a dread of sacrificing his respect. There was a dread also of sacrificing the respect of these others who had looked at her for a moment with an accusing understanding.
There had been present a Mrs. Gilchrist, an old creature of oracular senilities whom she had grown secretly to detest. But the detestation she felt was accompanied by a vivid desire to keep in with the woman.
Mrs. Gilchrist was a person of position, decided position. Her son Aubrey was a novelist. This alone endowed the Gilchrist tribe with an aura of culture. They lived in Evanston and were active, mother and son, in the social life of the town.
Mrs. Basine was unable as yet to determine the reasons that made her dislike her. In her secret mind she called Mrs. Gilchrist a domineering old fool. But she stopped with that. There was the Gilchrist social position.
Society had always interested Mrs. Basine. But since her widowhood this interest had become active. She had read the society columns of the newspapers regularly and through the twenty-six years of her married life retained the singular idea that the people whose names appeared in these columns belonged to a closely knit organization similar to the Masons--only of course, infinitely superior.
The appearance of a new name among the list of socially known always stirred an indignation in her. She was not a bounder herself. The closely knit organization whose members poured tea, gave bazaars, occupied boxes at the theater had been, in her mind, a fixed and invulnerable institution neither to be taken by storm nor won by strategy. Thus she had excused her lack of social ambition and success by investing Society with an almost magical aloofness, a sort of superhuman cotorie of tea pourers and benefit givers that kept itself intact and beyond intrusion by the exercise of incredible diligence.
Among her day dreams during these years had been those of magnificent social successes, of long newspaper articles describing with awe her splendor and prestige. But in reality she would as soon have thought of breaking into society as of attacking twelve policemen with a carving knife. She resented therefore the appearance of new names in the society columns.
"Bounders," she would murmur to herself, half expecting that the Organization into which they had bounded would issue some outraged and withering excommunication upon the new tea pourer. But the name would appear again and again and after such innumerable appearances Mrs.
Basine would automatically accept its presence within the Organization and rally quixotically to its defense against the other bounders struggling to invade the sanctity it had achieved.
And although during this period of her life Mrs. Basine had felt none of the low instincts which inspired the bounders to bound, she had endeavored to the best of her abilities to mimic as much as a humble outsider could the spiritual elegancies which distinguished the Organization. She succeeded in creating a formal atmosphere about her home, a dignity about her table of which she was modestly proud. She had felt in secret that any member of the Organization entering her house--an event of which she dreamed as a waveringly sophisticated child might dream of a fairy's visit--would have experienced no dismay.
Now this attitude which had characterized her married life was changing.
Society was no longer an impregnable Organization. Mrs. Basine was, in fact, engaged determinedly upon its conquest and her attitude toward the detestable Mrs. Gilchrist was colored by that fact. An acquaintanceship with the Gilchrists had been achieved through manoeuverings of her daughters as workers in charity bazaars managed by the woman.
Until the death of her husband Mrs. Basine had ignored her two daughters. A proprietory feeling in them which exhausted itself in dictating the surface details of their lives had been the extent of her interest. She had presumed during their childhood and adolescence that they were Basines--and nothing else. This had guided her parenthood.
Being Basines, they must conform to Basinism which meant that they must be like their mother or their father and she struggled carelessly to see that their youth did not assert itself in ways inimical to her own characterization. Doris the younger was inclined to be beautiful. Fanny, however, had always seemed to her a more substantial person.
But her widowhood had brought a belated curiosity concerning these young women. She wondered at times what their dreams were. She understood that they were strangers and this began to interest her. She was proud of them and although undemonstrative would sometimes put her arms around both of them as they walked to a neighbor's after dinner.
They did not inspire the pride in her, however, that her son did. George had finished his law and she felt as she listened to him talk or watched his face at the table that he was somebody. There was an assurance and health about him. His keen-featured face, the straight black hair parted in the center, the movements of his lithe body, always quick and definite--and particularly his hands--these made her think of him vaguely as an artist, somebody different. She knew in her heart that although he seemed to differ in his ideas from none of their friends, he was not like other young men.
3
It was Sunday morning. Mrs Basine and her two daughters were sitting down to breakfast. Hugh Keegan followed Basine embarrassedly into the dining room. The two young men had been renovating themselves for an hour in the bathroom.
The meal started casually. Fanny Basine studied their guest with what was meant to be a provoking carelessness. She was a facile virgin who wooed men persistently and slapped their faces for misunderstanding her.
"You've been quite a stranger, Mr. Keegan," she said. Her eyes smiled.
Keegan felt wretched. He was conscious of being unclean. The fresh, virginal face of the girl smiling at him filled him with rage. He accepted a waffle from Mrs. Basine with exaggerated formality.
He was not enraged with himself. This was too difficult. It was easier, simpler to be repentant. His repentance did not accuse him as a man who had sinned but denounced the things which had caused him to sin and made him unclean. To himself he was essentially perfect. There were forces, however, which infringed upon his perfection, which soiled his fine qualities.
Eating his waffle, he thought of the creature with whom he had spent the night, of the dismal bedroom, the frowsy smelling hallway, the coarse talk and viciousness of the entire business. And he began to feel a rage against them. He would like to wipe such things out of the world.
He managed to answer Miss Basine politely.
"I've been out of town a great deal," he said.
"George always said you were a gadfly," Fanny replied.
Mrs. Basine spoke.
"You look rather tired, George." She gazed pensively at her son. "I don't like you to stay out all night like that."
Basine frowned. What did his mother mean by that? Did she suppose he had spent the night in debauchery? It sounded that way from the way she looked and talked. Basine grew angry. He did not want his mother to accuse him.
"You don't expect a man to remain cooped up night and day, do you?"
"Oh, I don't mind your going out. But not the way you did last night."
She looked at him and then, as if realizing for the first time the presence of her daughters, changed her manner.
"Won't you have some syrup, Mr. Keegan."
Keegan thanked her and lowered his eyes. He had understood her accusation and accepted it as authentic. He had no mother of his own and this inspired in him a curious sense of obedience toward all mothers he encountered. Mrs. Basine's accusation embarrassed him. The embarrassment increased his disgust for the memory of the night. He would like to wipe out such obscene and vulgar things. He would like to burn them up, forbid them. Someday he would.
Basine, however regarded his mother with a sense of outrage. The fact that her surmise of what he had done during the night was correct was a matter of minor importance. She didn't know what he had done and therefore she had no right to guess. He answered her angrily.
"I did nothing at all last night that I wouldn't have my sisters do."
His mother looked at him in surprise. Keegan blushed.
"You're always hinting around, mother, about things and you're absolutely wrong. Absolutely," he added for a clincher. His eyes remained unflinchingly on his mother.
There was a convincing air of virtue about him and a doubt entered her mind. Perhaps she had suspected him unjustly. But he had been away all night. She had heard him come in around six. Where could he have been if not--in such places? Yet she felt like apologizing.
Basine fiddled with his food. He was acting out the part of injured innocence. He was an unprotesting martyr to the low suspicions of his family. The fact that he was guilty in no way interfered with the sincerity of his injured feelings. His mother's accusation had sincerely hurt him, even more than it would had he been actually innocent of wrong doing. He transferred whatever emotional guilt he had into indignation toward his accuser.
This was an old trick of his, developed early in childhood--a faculty of committing crimes without becoming a criminal. More than Keegan, he was above self-accusation. But unlike Keegan the doing of a thing he knew to be wrong did not inspire him with the adroit remorse which took the form of hating the thing he had done instead of himself.
The crimes Basine committed--usually no greater than normal violations of the ethical code to which he subscribed--were things that had nothing to do with the real Basine. The real Basine was the Basine whom people knew. The real Basine was a characterization he maintained for the benefit of others. The crimes were his own secret. People didn't know them. Therefor they did not exist. They remained locked away. He did not say to himself, "Hypocrite! Liar!"
When he denied his mother's accusation he did not of course forget the things he had done during the night. In fact even while he spoke there came to him a vivid memory of the prostitute.