Edith Wharton - "His Father’s Son" - 1910

🎨 Edith Wharton - "His Father’s Son" (1910) 🖼️✨

A poignant tale of generational conflict, self-discovery, and the price of individuality! 🌌💼 Young Lewis Raycie, born into a wealthy and traditional family, dreams of escaping the suffocating expectations of his domineering father, Mr. Raycie, who demands loyalty to the family’s legacy. 🏛️⚖️When Lewis is sent to Europe to refine his taste and invest in art, he is captivated by the bold, revolutionary works of modernist painters. 🎨🌟 Inspired by their daring vision, he invests his father’s money in these vibrant and unconventional pieces, believing he’s securing both artistic and personal freedom. 🖌️🔥But upon his return, the elder Raycie is furious. To him, the art is worthless trash—an affront to tradition and decency. Lewis is disowned, exiled from his family, and left to grapple with the consequences of his passion. 🕯️❌ Years later, the same paintings are hailed as masterpieces, worth fortunes, but the triumph is bittersweet, as it comes too late to bridge the divide between father and son. ⏳🖼️Edith Wharton masterfully explores the timeless struggle between old and new, conformity and rebellion, and the delicate bonds that hold families together. 💭💔"His Father’s Son" asks: What is the cost of defying tradition to forge your own path? Can art and beauty ever bridge the chasm between generations? 🎩🖤 A deeply moving reflection on ambition, legacy, and the sacrifices made in pursuit of authenticity. 🌟🌒

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Edith Wharton, his father's son, from the book Tales of
Men and Ghosts, published in nineteen ten, Part one. After
his wife's death, Mason Grew took the momentous step of
selling out his business and moving from Wingfield, Connecticut, to Brooklyn.
For years, he had secretly nursed the hope of such

(00:22):
a change, but had never dared to suggest it to
missus Grew, a woman of immutable habits. Mister Grew himself
was attached to Wingfield, where he had grown up, prospered,
and become what the local press described as prominent. He
was attached to his ugly brick house, with sandstone trimmings
and a cast iron area railing neatly sanded to match

(00:44):
to the similar row of houses across the street, the
trolley wires forming a kind of aerial pathway between, and
the sprawling vista closed by the steeple of the church
which he and his wife had always attended and where
their only child had been baptized. It was hard to
snap all these threads of association, visual and sentimental, yet
still harder now that he was alone to live so

(01:06):
far from his boy. Ronald Grew was practicing law in
New York, and there was no more chance of returning
to live at Wingfield than of a river's flowing inland
from the sea. Therefore, to be near him, his father
must move. And it was characteristic of mister Grew, and
of the situation generally, that the translation when it took
place was to Brooklyn and not to New York. Why

(01:29):
you bury yourself in that hole? I can't think had
been Ronald's comment, and mister Grew simply replied that rents
were lower in Brooklyn, and that he had heard of
a house that would suit him. In reality, he had
said to himself, being the only recipient of his own confidences,
that if he went to New York, he might be
on the boy's mind, whereas if he lived in Brooklyn,
Ronald would always have a good excuse for not popping

(01:51):
over to see him every other day. The sociological isolation
of Brooklyn, combined with its geographical nearness, presented in fact
the precise can additions for mister Gruse case he wanted
to be near enough to New York to go there
often to feel under his feet the same pavement that
Ronald trod to sit now and then in the same
theaters and find on his breakfast table the journals, which,

(02:14):
with increasing frequency inserted Ronald's name in the sacred bounds
of the society column. It had always been a trial
to mister Grew to have to wait twenty four hours
to read that among those present was mister Ronald Grew.
Now he had it with his coffee and left it
on the breakfast table to the perusal of a hired girl,

(02:34):
cosmopolitan enough to do it justice. In such ways, Brooklyn
attested the advantages of its propinquity to New York, while remaining,
as regards Ronald's duty to his father, as remote and
inaccessible as Wingfield. It was not that Ronald shirked his
filial obligations, but rather because of his heavy sense of them,
that mister Grew so persistently sought to minimize and lighten them.

(02:58):
It was he who insisted to Ronald on the immense
difficulty of getting from New York to Brooklyn. Anyway you
look at it, it makes a big hole in the day,
and there's not much use in the ragged rim left.
You say you're dining out next Sunday, then I forbid
you to come over here for lunch. Do you understand me, sir,

(03:18):
you disobey at the risk of your father's malediction. Where
did you say you were dining with the Waltham Bankshires again?
Why that's the second time in three weeks? Ain't it
big blowout? I suppose gold plate and orchids opera singers
in afterward. Well, you'd be in a nice box. If
there was a fog on the river and you got

(03:40):
hung up halfway over, that'd be a handsome return for
the attention. Missus Bankshire has shown you singling out a
whipper snapper like you twice in three weeks. What's the
daughter's name, Daisy? No, sir, don't you come fooling round
here next Sunday or I'll set the dogs on you
and you wouldn't find me in anyhow, Come to think

(04:00):
of it, I'm lunching out myself, as it happens, Yes, sir,
lunching out? Is there anything especially comic in my lunching out?
I don't often do it? You say, well, that's no
reason why I never should. Who with? Why with with
old doctor Bleaker, doctor Eliphelet Bleeker. No, you wouldn't know
about him. He's only an old friend of your mother's

(04:22):
and mine. Gradually, Ronald's insistence became less difficult to overcome
with his customary sweetness and tact. As mister Grew put it,
he began to take the hint to give in to
the old gentleman's growing desire for solitude. I'm said, in
my ways, Ronnie, that's about the size of it. I

(04:43):
like to go tick ticking along like a clock. I
always did. And when you come bouncing in, I never
feel sure there's enough for dinner, or that I haven't
sent Maria out for the evening. And I don't want
the neighbors to see me opening my own door to
my son. That's the kind of cringing snob I am.
Don't give me away, will you. I want him to

(05:04):
think I keep four or five powdered flunkies in the
hall day and night, same as the lobby of one
of those Fifth Avenue hotels. And if you pop over
when you're not expected, how am I going to keep
up the bluff? Ronald yielded after the proper amount of resistance.
His intuitive sense in every social transaction of the proper
amount of force to be expended was one of the

(05:26):
qualities his father most admired in him. Mister grouse perceptions
in this line were probably more acute than his son suspected.
The souls of short, thick set men with chubby features,
mutton chop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of
fat like almond kernels and half split shells. Souls, thus,
in case, do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny

(05:48):
as delicate emotional instruments. But in spite of the dense
disguise in which he walked, mister Grew vibrated exquisitely in
response to every imaginative appeal, and his son Ronald was
perpetually stimulating and feeding his imagination. Ronald, in fact, constituted
his father's one escape from the impenetrable element of mediocrity

(06:09):
which had always hemmed him in. To a man so
enamored of beauty and so little qualified to add to
it some total, it was a wonderful privilege to have
bestowed on the world such a being. Ronald's resemblance to
mister Gruce's early conception of what he himself would have
liked to look, might have put new life into the
discredited theory of pre natal influences. At any rate, if

(06:31):
the young man owed his beauty, his distinction, and his
winning manner to the dreams of one of his parents,
it was certainly to those of mister Grew, who, while
outwardly devoting his life to the manufacture and dissemination of
gruce secure suspender buckle, moved in an enchanted inward world
peopled with all the figures of Romance. In this high company,
mister Grew cut as brilliant a figure as any of

(06:53):
its noble phantoms, And to see his vision of himself
suddenly projected on the outer world in the shape of
a brilliant, popular, conquering scone on seemed in retrospect to
give to that image a belated objective reality. There were
even moments when, forgetting his physiognomy, mister grewce said to
himself that if he'd had half a chan, he might

(07:13):
have done as well as Ronald. But this only fortified
his resolve that Ronald should do infinitely better. Ronald's ability
to do well almost equalled his gift of looking well.
Mister Grew constantly affirmed to himself that the boy was
not a genius. But barring this slight deficiency. He was
almost everything that a parent could wish. Even at Harvard,

(07:35):
he had managed to be several desirable things at once,
writing poetry in the college magazine, playing delightfully by ear
acquitting himself honorably in his studies, and yet holding his
own in the fashionable sporting set that formed, as it were,
the gateway of the temple of society. Mister gruse idealism
did not preclude the frank desire that his son should

(07:55):
pass through that gateway. But the wish was not prompted
by material considerations. It was mister gruce notion that, in
the rough and hurrying current of a new civilization, the
little pools of leisure and enjoyment must nurture delicate growths,
material graces, as well as moral refinements, likely to be
uprooted and swept away by the rush of the main torrent.

(08:17):
He based his theory on the fact that he had
liked the Fube Society people he had met, had found
their manner simpler, their voices more agreeable, their views more
consonant with his own than those of the leading citizens
of Wingfield. But then he had met very few. Ronald's
sympathies needed no urging in the same direction. He took naturally,

(08:39):
dauntlessly to all the high and exceptional things about which
his father's imagination had so long, sheepishly and ineffectually hovered.
From the start. He was what mister Grew had dreamed
of being. And so precise so detailed was mister Gruce's
vision of his own imaginary career, that, as Ronald grew
up and began to travel in a widening orbit, his

(09:00):
father had an almost uncanny sense of the extent to
which that career was enacting itself before him. At Harvard,
Ronald had done exactly what the hypothetical Mason Grew would
have done had not his actual self, at the same age,
been working his way up in Old Slagden's button factory,
the institution which was later to acquire fame and even
notoriety as the birthplace of grew secure suspender buckle. Afterward,

(09:22):
at a period when the actual Grew had passed from
the factory to the bookkeeper's desk, his invisible double had
been reading law at Columbia, precisely again what Ronald did.
But it was when the young man left the paths
laid out for him by the parental hand and cast
himself boldly on the world that his adventures began to
bear the most astonishing resemblance to those of the unrealized

(09:45):
Mason Grew. It was in New York that the scene
of this hypothetical being's first exploits had always been laid,
and it was in New York that Ronald was to
achieve his first triumph. There was nothing small or timid
about mister gruse imagination. It had never stup at anything
between Wingfield and the Metropolis, and the real Ronald had
the same cosmic vision as his parent. He brushed aside

(10:09):
with a contemptuous laugh, his mother's tearful entreaty that he
should stay at Wingfield and continue the dynasty of the
Grew suspender buckle. Mister Grew knew that in reality, Ronald
winced at the buckle, loathed it, blushed for his connection
with it. Yet it was the buckle that had seen
him through Groton, Harvard, and the law school, and had
permitted him to enter the office of a distinguished corporation

(10:32):
lawyer instead of being enslaved to some sordid business with
quick returns. The buckle had been Ronald's fairy godmother, Yet
his father did not blame him for abhorring and disowning it.
Mister Grew himself often bitterly regretted having bestowed his own
name on the instrument of his material success, though at
the time his doing so had been the natural expression

(10:54):
of his romanticism. When he invented the buckle and took
out his patent, he and his wife both felt that
to besas stow their name on it was like naming
a battleship or a peak of the andes. Missus Grew
had never learned to know better. But mister Grew had
discovered his error before Ronald was out of school. He
read it first in a black eye of his boys.

(11:15):
Ronald's symmetry had been marred by the insolent fist of
a fourth former, whom he had chastised for alluding to
his father as old buckles, and when mister Grew heard
the epithet, he understood in a flash that the buckle
was a thing to blush for. It was too late
then to dissociate his name from it, or to efface
from the hoardings of the entire continent. The picture of
two gentlemen, one contorting himself in the abject effort to

(11:38):
repair a broken brace, while the careless ease of the
other's attitude proclaimed his trust in the secure suspender buckle.
These records were indelible, but Ronald could at least be
spared all direct connection with them, and from that day
mister Grew resolved that the boy should not return to Wingfield.
You'll see, he had said to Missus Grew, He'll take

(11:59):
right hold in New York. Ronald's got my knack for
taking hold, he added, throwing out his chest. But the
way you took hold was in business, objected Missus Groo,
who was large and literal. Mister Grouse's chest collapsed, and
he became suddenly conscious of his comic face in its
rim of sandy whiskers. That's not the only way, he said,

(12:23):
with a touch of wistfulness, which escaped his wife's analysis. Well,
of course you could have written beautifully, she rejoined, with
admiring eyes, written me. Mister Grew became sardonic. Why those
letters weren't they beautiful? I'd like to know. The couple
exchanged a glance, innocently elusive and amused on the wife's part,

(12:47):
and charged with a sudden tragic significance on the husband's well,
I've got to be going along to the office now,
he merely said, dragging himself out of his rocking chair.
This had happened while Ronald was still at school, and
now missus Gruse slept in the Wingfield Cemetery under a
life sized theological virtue of her own choosing, and mister

(13:08):
gruce prognostications as to Ronald's ability to take right hold
in New York were being more and more brilliantly fulfilled.
Part two. Ronald obeyed his father's injunction not to come
to luncheon on the day of the Bankshire's dinner, but
in the middle of the following week mister Grew was
surprised by a telegram from his son. Want to see

(13:30):
you important matter. Expect me tomorrow afternoon. Mister Grew received
the telegram after breakfast to peruse it. He had lifted
his eye from a paragraph of the morning paper describing
a fancy dress dinner which had taken place the night
before at the Hamilton Gliddens for the house warming of
their new Fifth Avenue palace. Among the couples who afterward

(13:53):
danced in the poet's quadrille were Miss Daisy Bankshire looking
more than usually lovely as Laura, and mister Ronald Grew
as the young Peatrarch, Petrarch and Laura. Well, if anything
meant anything, mister Grew supposed he knew what that meant.
For weeks past he had noticed how constantly the names
of the young people appeared together in the society notes

(14:14):
he so insatiably devoured. Even the soulless reporter was getting
into the habit of coupling them in his lists. And
this Laura and Petrarch business was almost an announcement. Mister
Grew dropped the telegram, wiped his eyeglasses, and re read
the paragraph, Miss Daisy Bankshire more than usually lovely, Yes,

(14:37):
she was lovely. He had often seen her photograph in
the papers, seen her represented in every conceivable attitude of
the mundane game, fondling her prize bold dog, taking a
fence on her thoroughbred, dancing a gavat all patches and plumes,
or fingering a guitar, all tool and lily's. And once
he had caught a glimpse of her at the theater,

(14:58):
hearing that Ronald was going to affec vashable first night
with the Bankshires, mister Grew had for once overcome his
repugnance to following his son's movements, and had secured for himself,
under the shadow of the balcony a stall, whence he
could observe the Bankshire box without fear of detection. Ronald
had never known of his father's presence at the play,
and for three blessed hours mister Grew had watched his

(15:19):
boy's handsome dark head bent above the dense fair hair
and white averted shoulder that were all he could catch
of Miss Bankshire's beauties. He recalled the vision now, and
with it came, as usual, its ghostly double, the vision
of his young self bending above such a white shoulder
and such shining hair. Needless to say that the real
Mason Grew had never found himself in so enviable a situation.

(15:44):
The late Missus Grew had no more resembled Miss Daisy
Bankshire than he had looked like the happy, victorious Ronald.
And the mystery was that from their dull faces, their
dull endearments, the miracle of Ronald should have sprung. It
was almost fantastic, as if the boy had been a
changeling child of a Lapman knight, whom the divine companion

(16:05):
of mister Gruse's early reveries, had secretly laid in the
cradle of the Wingfield bedroom while mister and missus Grew
slept the deep sleep of conjugal indifference. The young Mason
Grew had not at first accepted this astral episode as
the complete canceling of his claims on romance. He too
had grasped at the high hung glory, and, with his

(16:25):
fatal tendency to reach too far when he reached it,
all had singled out the prettiest girl in Wingfield. When
he recalled his stammered confession of love, his face still
tingled under her cool, bright stare. The wonder of his
audacity had struck her dumb, and when she recovered her voice,
it was to fling a taunt at him. Don't be

(16:45):
too discouraged, you know, have you ever thought of trying
Addie Wicks? All Wingfield would have understood the gibe. Attie
Wicks was the dullest girl in town, and a year
later he had married Attie Wicks. He looked up from
the perusal of Ronald's telegram with this memory in his mind.
Now at last his dream was coming true. His boy

(17:08):
would taste of the joys that had mocked his thwarted
youth and his dull, gray middle age, and it was
fitting that they should be realized. In Ronald's destiny. Ronald
was made to take happiness boldly by the hand and
lead it home like a bridegroom. He had the carriage,
the confidence, the high faith in his fortune that compel
the wilful stars, and thanks to the buckle, he would

(17:32):
have the exceptional setting, the background of material elegance that
became his conquering person. Since mister Grew had retired from business,
his investments had prospered, and he had been saving up
his income for just such a contingency. His own wants
were few. He had transferred the Wingfield furniture to Brooklyn,
and his sitting room was a replica of that in

(17:54):
which the long years of his married life had been spent.
Even the florid carpet on which Ronald's tottering footsteps had
been taken was carefully matched when it became too threadbare,
and on the marble center at the table, with its
chineel fringed cover and bunch of dyed pampas grass lay
the illustrated Longfellow and the copy of Ingersoll's Lectures, which

(18:14):
represented literature to mister Grew. When he had led home
his bride. In the light of Ronald's romance, mister Grew
found himself re living with a strange tremor of mingled
pain and tenderness. All the poor, prosaic incidents of his
own personal history. Curiously enough, with this new splendor on them,
they began to emit a small faint ray of their own.

(18:37):
His wife's arm chair, in its usual place by the fire,
recalled her placid, unperceiving presence seated opposite to him during
the long drowsy years, and he felt her kindness, her equanimity,
where formerly he had only ached at her obtuseness. And
from the chair he glanced up at the large discolored
photograph on the wall above, with a brittle brown wreath

(18:59):
suspended on a corner of the frame. The photograph represented
a young man with a poetic necktie and untrammeled hair,
leaning negligently against a gothic chair of back, a roll
of music in his hand, and beneath was scrawled a
bar of Chopin with the words Adieu adele. The portrait
was that of the great pianist Fortune Dolbrowski, and its

(19:21):
presence on the wall of mister Gruse's sitting room commemorated
the only exquisite hour of his life, save that of
Ronald's birth. It was some time before the latter memorable event,
a few months only after mister Grouse's marriage, that he
had taken his wife to New York to hear the
great Dolbrowski. Their evening had been magically beautiful, and even Addie,

(19:43):
roused from her habitual inexpressiveness, had quivered into a momentary
semblance of life. I never, I never, She gasped out
helplessly when they had regained their hotel bedroom and sat
staring back, entranced at the evening's evocations, her large immovable
face pink and tremulous, and she sat with her hands

(20:03):
on her knees, forgetting to roll up her bonnet strings
and prepare her curl papers. I'd like to write him
just how I felt. I wished I knew how. She
burst out suddenly in a final effervescence of emotion. Her
husband lifted his head and looked at her. Would you
I feel that way too, he said, with a sheepish laugh,

(20:25):
and they continued to stare at each other shyly. Through
a transfiguring mist of sound, mister Grew recalled the scene
as he gazed up at the pianist's faded photograph. Well
I owe her that, anyhow, poor addie, he said, with
a smile at the inconsequences of fate. With Ronald's telegram
in his hand, he was in a mood to count

(20:47):
his mercies. Part three. A clear twenty five thousand a year.
That's what you can tell em with my compliments, said
mister Grew, glancing complacently across the center table at his
boy's charming face. It struck him that Ronald's gift for
looking his part in life had never so romantically expressed itself.

(21:10):
Other young men at such a moment would have been
red damp tight about the collar, but Ronald's cheek was
only a shade paler, and the contrast made his dark
eyes more expressive. A clear twenty five thousand, yes, sir,
that's what I always meant you to have. Mister Grew
leaned back, his hands thrust carelessly in his pockets, as

(21:34):
though to divert attention from the agitation of his features.
He had often pictured himself rolling out that phrase to Ronald,
and now that it was actually on his lips, he
could not control their tremor. Ronald listened in silence, lifting
a nervous hand to his slight, dark mustache, as though
he too wished to hide some involuntary betrayal of emotion.

(21:56):
At first, mister Grew took his silence for an expression
of gratified surprise, but as it prolonged itself, it became
less easy to interpret. I see here, my boy. Did
you expect more? Isn't it enough? Mister Grew cleared his throat.
Do they expect more? He asked nervously. He was hardly

(22:17):
able to face the pain of inflicting a disappointment on
Ronald at the very moment when he had counted on
putting the final touch to his felicity. Ronald moved uneasily
in his chair, and his eyes wandered upward to the
laurel wreathed photograph of the pianist above his father's head.
Is it that, Ronald? Speak out? My boy? We'll see,

(22:38):
We'll look round, I'll manage somehow. No, no, the young
man interrupted, abruptly, raising his hand as though to silence
his father. Mister Grew recovered his cheerfulness. Well, what's the
matter then, if she's willing, Ronald shifted his position again
and finally rose from his seat. Father, I there's something

(23:02):
I've got to tell you. I can't take your money.
Mister Grew sat speechless a moment, staring blankly at his son.
Then he emitted a puzzled laugh. My money, what are
you talking about? What's this about my money? Why? It
ain't mine, Ronnie, It's all yours, every cent of it,

(23:22):
he cried. The young man met his tender look with
a gaze of tragic rejection. No, no, it's not mine,
not even in the sense you mean, not in any sense.
Can't you understand my feeling? So feeling so? I don't
know how you're feeling. I don't know what you're talking about.
Are you too proud to touch any money you haven't earned?

(23:45):
Is that what you're trying to tell me? No, it's
not that you must know, mister Grew flushed to the
rim of his bristling whiskers. No, no, what can't you speak? Ronald? Hesitated,
and the two men faced each other for a long,
strained moment, during which mister Grouse's congested countenance grew gradually

(24:08):
pale again. What's the meaning of this? Is it because
you've done something? Something you're ashamed of? Ashamed to tell me?
He suddenly gasped out, and walking around the table, he
laid his hand on his son's shoulder. There's nothing you
can't tell me, my boy, It's not that. Why do

(24:29):
you make it so hard for me? Ronald broke out
with passion. You must have known this was sure to happen,
sooner or later. Happen what was sure to happen? Mister
Grouse question wavered on his lip and passed into a
tremulous laugh. Is it something I've done that you don't
approve of? Is it the buckle you're ashamed of? Ronald grew?

(24:52):
Ronald laughed too impatiently. The buckle. No, I'm not ashamed
of the buckle, not any more than you are, He
returned with a sudden, bright flush. But I'm ashamed of
all I owe to it, all I owe to you.
When when he broke off and took a few distracted
steps across the room, you might make this easier for me,

(25:13):
he protested, turning back to his father. Make what easier?
I know less and less what you're driving at. Mister
Grew groaned. Ronald's walk had once more brought him beneath
the photograph on the wall. He lifted his head for
a moment and looked at it. Then he looked again
at mister Grew. Do you suppose I haven't always known? Known,

(25:38):
even before you gave me those letters after my mother's death.
Even before that I suspected I don't know how it began,
perhaps from little things you let drop, you and she,
and resemblances that I couldn't help seeing in myself. How
on earth could you suppose I shouldn't guess? I always
thought you gave me the letters as a way of

(26:00):
telling me. Mister Grew rose slowly from his chair the
letters Dolbrowski's letters, Ronald nodded, with white lips. You must
remember giving them to me the day after the funeral,
Mister Grew nodded back, of course I wanted you to
have everything your mother valued. Well, how could I help

(26:23):
knowing after that? Knowing what? Mister Grew stood staring helplessly
at his son. Suddenly, his look caught at a clue
that seemed to confront it with a deeper bewilderment. You
thought you thought those letters, Dolbrowski's letters, you thought they meant. Oh,
it wasn't only the letters. There were so many other signs,

(26:46):
my love of music, my all, my feelings about life
and art. And when you gave me the letters, I
thought you must mean me to know. Mister Grew had
grown quiet, his lips were firm, and his small eyes
looked out steadily from their creased lids. To know that
you were fortune Dolbrowski's son, Ronald made a mute sign

(27:09):
of assent. I see, And what did you mean to do?
I meant to wait till I could earn my living
and then repay you as far as I can ever
repay you. But now that there's a chance of my
marrying and your generosity overwhelms me, I'm obliged to speak.
I see, said mister Grew again. He let himself down

(27:33):
into his chair, looking steadily and not unkindly, at the
young man. Sit down. Ronald, let's talk. Ronald made a
protesting movement. Is anything to be gained by it? You
can't change me, change what I feel. The reading of
those letters transformed my whole life. I was a boy
till then they made a man of me. From that moment,

(27:56):
I understood myself. He paused, and then looked up at
mister Gruse's face. Don't imagine I don't appreciate your kindness,
your extraordinary generosity. But I can't go through life in disguise,
and I want you to know that I have not
one daisy under false pretenses. Mister Grew started up with

(28:18):
the first exploit of Ronald had ever heard on his lips.
You damned young fool, you you haven't told her. Ronald
raised his head quickly. Oh you don't know her, sir.
She thinks no worse of me for knowing my secret.
She is above and beyond all such conventional prejudices. She's

(28:38):
proud of my parentage. He straightened his slim, young shoulders.
As I'm proud of it, Yes, sir, proud of it.
Mister Grew sank back into his seat with a dry laugh.
Well you ought to be. You come of good stock
and your father's son. Every inch of you. He laughed again,

(28:59):
as though the humor of the situation grew on him
with its closer contemplation. Yes, I've always felt that, Ronald murmured, flushing,
your father's son, and no mistake. Mister Grew leaned forward.
You're the son of as big a fool as yourself,
and here he sits. Ronald grew. The young man's flush

(29:22):
deep into Crimson. But mister Grew checked his reply with
a decisive gesture. Here he sits, with all your young
nonsense still alive in him. Don't you see the likeness?
If you don't, I'll tell you the story of those letters,
Ronald stared, What do you mean don't they tell their
own story? I suppose they did when I gave them

(29:44):
to you, but you've given it a twist that needs
straightening out. Mister Grew squared his elbows on the table
and looked at the young man across the gift books
and the dyed pampa's grass. I wrote all the letters
that Dolbrowski answered. Ronald gave back his look in frowning perplexity.
You wrote them. I don't understand. His letters are all

(30:07):
addressed to my mother. Yes, and he thought he was
corresponding with her. But my mother, what did she think?
Mister Grew hesitated, puckering his thick lids. Well, I guess
she kinder thought it was a joke. Your mother didn't
think about things much. Ronald continued to bend a puzzled

(30:29):
frown on the question. I don't understand, he reiterated. Mister
Grew cleared his throat with a nervous laugh. Well, I
don't know as you ever will quite, but this is
the way it came about. I had a toughish time
of it when I was young. Oh, I don't mean
so much the fight I had to put up to
make my way. There was always plenty of fight in me,

(30:50):
but inside of myself it was kinder lonesome, and the
outside didn't attract callers. He laughed again, with an apologetic
gesture toward his broad blinking face. When I went round
with the other young fellows, I was always the forlorn hope,
the one that had to eat the drumsticks and dance
with the left overs. As sure as there was a

(31:11):
blighter at a picnic, I had to swing her and
feed her and drive her home. And all the time
I was mad. After all the things you've got poetry
and music and all the joy forever business. So there
were the pair of us, my face and my imagination,
chained together and fighting and hating each other like poison.

(31:33):
Then your mother came along and took pity on me.
It sets up a gawky fellow to find a girl
who ain't ashamed to be seen walking with him Sundays.
And I was grateful to your mother, and we got
a long first rate. Only I couldn't say things to her,
and she couldn't answer well. One day, a few months
after we were married, Dolbrowski came to New York, and

(31:54):
the whole place went wild about him. I'd never heard
any good music, but I'd always had an inkling of
what it must be like, though I couldn't tell you
to this day how I knew well. Your mother read
about him in the papers, too, and she thought it'd
be the swagger thing to go to New York and
hear him play. So we went. I'll never forget that evening.

(32:15):
Your mother wasn't easily stirred up. She never seemed to
need to let off steam. But that night she seemed
to understand the way I felt. And when we got
back to the hotel, she said, suddenly, I'd like to
tell him how I feel. I'd like to sit right
down and write to him, would you? I said, so
would I. There was paper and pens there before us,

(32:38):
and I pulled a sheet toward me and began to write.
Is this what you'd like to say to him? I
asked her when the letter was done, and she got
pink and said, I don't understand it, but it's lovely,
and she copied it out and signed her name to it,
and send it. Mister grow paused, and Ronald sat silent

(32:59):
with lowered eyes. That's how it began, and that's where
I thought it would end. But it didn't, because Dolbrowski answered.
His first letter was dated January tenth, eighteen seventy two.
I guess you'll find I'm correct. Well, I went back
to hear him again, and I wrote him after the
performance and he answered again, and after that we kept

(33:19):
it up for six months. Your mother always copied the
letters and signed them. She seemed to think it was
a kinder joke, and she was proud of his answering
my letters, but she never went back to New York
to hear him, though I saved up enough to give
her the treat again. She was too lazy, and she
let me go without her. I heard him three times

(33:41):
in New York, and in the spring he came to
Wingfield and played once at the Academy. Your mother was
sick and couldn't go, so I went alone after the performance.
I meant to get one of the directors to take
me in to see him, but when the time came,
I just went back home and wrote to him instead.
And the month after, before he went back to Europe,

(34:01):
he sent your mother a last little note and that
picture hanging up there. Mister Grew paused again, and both
men lifted their eyes to the photograph. Is that all?
Ronald slowly asked. That's all, every bit of it, said,
mister Grew. And my mother. My mother never even spoke

(34:23):
to Dolbrowski, never, she never even saw him, but that
once in New York at his concert. The blood crept
again to Ronald's face. Are you sure of that, sir,
he asked in a trembling voice, sure as I am
that I'm sitting here. Why she was too lazy to
look at his letters after the first novelty wore off,

(34:45):
she copied the answers just to humor me. But she
always said she couldn't understand what we wrote. But how
could you go on with such a correspondence? It's incredible?
Mister Grew looked at his son thoughtfully. I suppose it
is to you. You've only had to put out your
hand and get the things. I was starving for music

(35:07):
and good talk and ideas. Those letters gave me all that.
You've read them, and you know that Dolbrowski was not
only a great musician, but a great man. There was
nothing beautiful, he didn't see, nothing fine, he didn't feel.
For six months, I breathed his air, and I've lived
on it ever since. Do you begin to understand a

(35:28):
little now, yes, a little? But why write in my
mother's name? Why make it a sentimental correspondence? Mister grow
reddened to his bald temples. Why I tell you it
began that way as a kinder joke. And when I
saw that the first letter pleased and interested him, I
was afraid to tell him. I couldn't tell him. Do

(35:50):
you suppose he'd gone on writing if he'd ever seen me?
Ronnie Ronald suddenly looked at him with new eyes. But
he must have thought your letters very beautiful to go
on as he did. He broke out, Well, I did
my best, said mister Grew modestly. Ronald pursued his idea,

(36:12):
where are all your letters? I wonder weren't they returned
to you at his death? Mister Grew laughed, Lord, no,
I guess he had trunks and trunks full of better ones.
I guess queen's and empresses wrote to him. I should
have liked to see your letters, The young man insisted. Well,
they weren't bad, said mister Grew. Drilly, but I'll tell

(36:35):
you one thing, Ronnie, he added. Suddenly, Ronald raised his
head with a quick glance, and mister Grew continued, I'll
tell you where the best of those letters is. It's
in you. If it hadn't been for that one look
at life, I couldn't have made you what you are. Oh.
I know you've done a good deal of your own making.
But I've been there behind you all the time, and

(36:57):
you'll never know the work I've spared you and the
time I've saved you fortune. Dolbrowski helped me do that.
I never saw things in little again after I'd looked
at m with him, and I tried to give you
the big view from the stars. So that's what became
of my letters. Mister Grew paused, and for a long
time Ronald sat motionless, his elbows on the table, his

(37:21):
face dropped on his hands. Suddenly, mister groose touch fell
on his shoulder. Look at here, Ronald Grew. Do you
want me to tell you how you're feeling at this minute?
Just a mite let down after all, at the idea
that you ain't the romantic figure you'd got to think yourself. Well,
that's natural enough too. But I'll tell you what it proves.

(37:42):
It proves you're my son, right enough, if any more
proof was needed, for it's just the kind of fool
nonsense I used to feel at your age. And if
there's anybody here to laugh at it, myself and not you,
And you can laugh at me just as much as
you like.