Washington Square

“I don’t dislike him in the least as a friend, as a companion.  He seems to me a charming fellow, and I should think he would be excellent company.  I dislike him, exclusively, as a son-in-law.  If the only office of a son-in-law were to dine at the paternal table, I should set a high value upon your brother.  He dines capitally.  But that is a small part of his function, which, in general, is to be a protector and caretaker of my child, who is singularly ill-adapted to take care of herself.  It is there that he doesn’t satisfy me.  I confess I have nothing but my impression to go by; but I am in the habit of trusting my impression.  Of course you are at liberty to contradict it flat.  He strikes me as selfish and shallow.”

Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes expanded a little, and the Doctor fancied he saw the light of admiration in them.  “I wonder you have discovered he is selfish!” she exclaimed.

“Do you think he hides it so well?”

“Very well indeed,” said Mrs. Montgomery.  “And I think we are all rather selfish,” she added quickly.

“I think so too; but I have seen people hide it better than he.  You see I am helped by a habit I have of dividing people into classes, into types.  I may easily be mistaken about your brother as an individual, but his type is written on his whole person.”

“He is very good-looking,” said Mrs. Montgomery.

The Doctor eyed her a moment.  “You women are all the same!  But the type to which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and you were made to be its handmaids and victims.  The sign of the type in question is the determination—sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity—to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex.  Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going.  These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.  What our young friends chiefly insist upon is that some one else shall suffer for them; and women do that sort of thing, as you must know, wonderfully well.”  The Doctor paused a moment, and then he added abruptly, “You have suffered immensely for your brother!”

This exclamation was abrupt, as I say, but it was also perfectly calculated.  The Doctor had been rather disappointed at not finding his compact and comfortable little hostess surrounded in a more visible degree by the ravages of Morris Townsend’s immorality; but he had said to himself that this was not because the young man had spared her, but because she had contrived to plaster up her wounds.  They were aching there, behind the varnished stove, the festooned engravings, beneath her own neat little poplin bosom; and if he could only touch the tender spot, she would make a movement that would betray her.  The words I have just quoted were an attempt to put his finger suddenly upon the place; and they had some of the success that he looked for.  The tears sprang for a moment to Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes, and she indulged in a proud little jerk of the head.

“I don’t know how you have found that out!” she exclaimed.

“By a philosophic trick—by what they call induction.  You know you have always your option of contradicting me.  But kindly answer me a question.  Don’t you give your brother money?  I think you ought to answer that.”

“Yes, I have given him money,” said Mrs. Montgomery.

“And you have not had much to give him?”

She was silent a moment.  “If you ask me for a confession of poverty, that is easily made.  I am very poor.”

“One would never suppose it from your—your charming house,” said the Doctor.  “I learned from my sister that your income was moderate, and your family numerous.”

“I have five children,” Mrs. Montgomery observed; “but I am happy to say I can bring them up decently.”

“Of course you can—accomplished and devoted as you are!  But your brother has counted them over, I suppose?”

“Counted them over?”

“He knows there are five, I mean.  He tells me it is he that brings them up.”

Mrs. Montgomery stared a moment, and then quickly—“Oh yes; he teaches them Spanish.”

The Doctor laughed out.  “That must take a great deal off your hands!  Your brother also knows, of course, that you have very little money.”

“I have often told him so!” Mrs. Montgomery exclaimed, more unreservedly than she had yet spoken.  She was apparently taking some comfort in the Doctor’s clairvoyancy.

“Which means that you have often occasion to, and that he often sponges on you.  Excuse the crudity of my language; I simply express a fact.  I don’t ask you how much of your money he has had, it is none of my business.  I have ascertained what I suspected—what I wished.”  And the Doctor got up, gently smoothing his hat.  “Your brother lives on you,” he said as he stood there.