The Beauty and the Bolshevist

								

“No, I mean having Dave do it. It would kill the paper; it would
endanger your whole position; and as for leadership, you could never
hope—”

“Now, look here, Leo. You don’t think I can stop my brother’s marrying
because it might be a poor connection for me? The point is that it
wouldn’t be good for Dave—to be a poorly tolerated hanger-on. That’s
why I’m going hot-foot to Newport. And while I’m away do try to do
something about the book page. Get me a culture-hound—get one of these
Pater specialists from Harvard. Or,” he added, with sudden inspiration
when his hand was already on the door, “get a woman—she’d have a sense
of beauty and would know how to jolly Green into agreeing with her.”
And with this the editor was gone.
It was the end of one of those burning weeks in August that New York
often knows. The sun went down as red as blood every evening behind the
Palisades, and before the streets and roofs had ceased to radiate heat
the sun was up again above Long Island Sound, as hot and red as ever.
As Ben went uptown in the Sixth Avenue Elevated he could see pale
children hanging over the railings of fire escapes, and behind them
catch glimpses of dark, crowded rooms which had all the disadvantages
of caves without the coolness. But to-day he was too concentrated on
his own problem to notice.
Since Ben’s sixteenth year his brother David had been dependent on him.
Their father had been professor of economics in a college in that part
of the United States which Easterners describe as the “Middle West.” In
the gay days when muck-raking was at its height Professor Moreton had
lost his chair because he had denounced in his lecture room financial
operations which to-day would be against the law. At that time they
were well thought of, and even practiced by the eminent philanthropist
who had endowed the very chair which Moreton occupied. The trustees
felt that it was unkind and unnecessary to complicate their already
difficult duties by such tactlessness, and their hearts began to turn
against Moreton, as most of our hearts turn against those who make life
too hard for us. Before long they asked him to resign on account of his
age—he was just sixty and extremely vigorous; but immediately
afterward, having been deeply surprised and hurt, he did what Goldsmith
recommends to lovely woman under not dissimilar circumstances—he died.
He left his two young sons—he had married late in life—absolutely
unprovided for. Ben, the elder of the two, was sixteen, and just ready
for college; but he could not give four precious years to an academic
degree. He went to work. With the background of an educated environment
and a very sound knowledge of economic questions, breathed in from his
earliest days, he found a place at once on a new paper—or, rather, on
an old paper just being converted into a new organ of