BOOK ONE -- The Romantic Egotist CHAPTER 1 .
Amory , Son of Beatrice Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait , except the stray inexpressible few , that made him worth while .
His father , an ineffectual , inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica , grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers , successful Chicago brokers , and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his , went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara .
In consequence , Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments , these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory .
For many years he hovered in the background of his family 's life , an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless , silky hair , continually occupied in “ taking care ” of his wife , continually harassed by the idea that he did n't and could n't understand her .
But Beatrice Blaine !
There was a woman !
Early pictures taken on her father 's estate at Lake Geneva , Wisconsin , or in Rome at the Sacred Heart Convent -- an educational extravagance that in her youth was only for the daughters of the exceptionally wealthy -- showed the exquisite delicacy of her features , the consummate art and simplicity of her clothes .
A brilliant education she had -- her youth passed in renaissance glory , she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families ; known by name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some culture even to have heard of .
She learned in England to prefer whiskey and soda to wine , and her small talk was broadened in two senses during a winter in Vienna .
All in all Beatrice O'Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again ; a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about ; a culture rich in all arts and traditions , barren of all ideas , in the last of those days when the great gardener clipped the inferior roses to produce one perfect bud .
In her less important moments she returned to America , met Stephen Blaine and married him -- this almost entirely because she was a little bit weary , a little bit sad .
Her only child was carried through a tiresome season and brought into the world on a spring day in ninety-six .
When Amory was five he was already a delightful companion for her .
He was an auburn-haired boy , with great , handsome eyes which he would grow up to in time , a facile imaginative mind and a taste for fancy dress .
From his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his mother in her father 's private car , from Coronado , where his mother became so bored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel , down to Mexico City , where she took a mild , almost epidemic consumption .
This trouble pleased her , and later she made use of it as an intrinsic part of her atmosphere -- especially after several astounding bracers .
So , while more or less fortunate little rich boys were defying governesses on the beach at Newport , or being spanked or tutored or read to from “ Do and Dare , ” or “ Frank on the Mississippi , ” Amory was biting acquiescent bell-boys in the Waldorf , outgrowing a natural repugnance to chamber music and symphonies , and deriving a highly specialized education from his mother .
“ Amory . ”
“ Yes , Beatrice . ”
( Such a quaint name for his mother ; she encouraged it . )
“ Dear , do n't _ think _ of getting out of bed yet .
I 've always suspected that early rising in early life makes one nervous .
Clothilde is having your breakfast brought up . ”
“ All right . ”
“ I am feeling very old to-day , Amory , ” she would sigh , her face a rare cameo of pathos , her voice exquisitely modulated , her hands as facile as Bernhardt 's .
“ My nerves are on edge -- on edge .
We must leave this terrifying place to-morrow and go searching for sunshine . ”
Amory 's penetrating green eyes would look out through tangled hair at his mother .
Even at this age he had no illusions about her .
“ Amory . ”
“ Oh , _ yes _ . ”
“ I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it , and just relax your nerves .
You can read in the tub if you wish . ”
She fed him sections of the “ Fetes Galantes ” before he was ten ; at eleven he could talk glibly , if rather reminiscently , of Brahms and Mozart and Beethoven .
One afternoon , when left alone in the hotel at Hot Springs , he sampled his mother 's apricot cordial , and as the taste pleased him , he became quite tipsy .
This was fun for a while , but he essayed a cigarette in his exaltation , and succumbed to a vulgar , plebeian reaction .
Though this incident horrified Beatrice , it also secretly amused her and became part of what in a later generation would have been termed her “ line . ”
“ This son of mine , ” he heard her tell a room full of awestruck , admiring women one day , “ is entirely sophisticated and quite charming -- but delicate -- we 're all delicate ; _ here _ , you know . ”
Her hand was radiantly outlined against her beautiful bosom ; then sinking her voice to a whisper , she told them of the apricot cordial .
They rejoiced , for she was a brave raconteuse , but many were the keys turned in sideboard locks that night against the possible defection of little Bobby or Barbara ... .
These domestic pilgrimages were invariably in state ; two maids , the private car , or Mr. Blaine when available , and very often a physician .
When Amory had the whooping-cough four disgusted specialists glared at each other hunched around his bed ; when he took scarlet fever the number of attendants , including physicians and nurses , totalled fourteen .
However , blood being thicker than broth , he was pulled through .
The Blaines were attached to no city .
They were the Blaines of Lake Geneva ; they had quite enough relatives to serve in place of friends , and an enviable standing from Pasadena to Cape Cod .
But Beatrice grew more and more prone to like only new acquaintances , as there were certain stories , such as the history of her constitution and its many amendments , memories of her years abroad , that it was necessary for her to repeat at regular intervals .
Like Freudian dreams , they must be thrown off , else they would sweep in and lay siege to her nerves .
But Beatrice was critical about American women , especially the floating population of ex-Westerners .
“ They have accents , my dear , ” she told Amory , “ not Southern accents or Boston accents , not an accent attached to any locality , just an accent ” -- she became dreamy .
“ They pick up old , moth-eaten London accents that are down on their luck and have to be used by some one .
They talk as an English butler might after several years in a Chicago grand-opera company . ”
She became almost incoherent -- “ Suppose -- time in every Western woman 's life -- she feels her husband is prosperous enough for her to have -- accent -- they try to impress _ me _ , my dear -- ” Though she thought of her body as a mass of frailties , she considered her soul quite as ill , and therefore important in her life .
She had once been a Catholic , but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church , she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude .
Often she deplored the bourgeois quality of the American Catholic clergy , and was quite sure that had she lived in the shadow of the great Continental cathedrals her soul would still be a thin flame on the mighty altar of Rome .
Still , next to doctors , priests were her favorite sport .
“ Ah , Bishop Wiston , ” she would declare , “ I do not want to talk of myself .
I can imagine the stream of hysterical women fluttering at your doors , beseeching you to be simpatico ” -- then after an interlude filled by the clergyman -- “ but my mood -- is -- oddly dissimilar . ”
Only to bishops and above did she divulge her clerical romance .
When she had first returned to her country there had been a pagan , Swinburnian young man in Asheville , for whose passionate kisses and unsentimental conversations she had taken a decided penchant -- they had discussed the matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite devoid of sappiness .
Eventually she had decided to marry for background , and the young pagan from Asheville had gone through a spiritual crisis , joined the Catholic Church , and was now -- Monsignor Darcy .
“ Indeed , Mrs. Blaine , he is still delightful company -- quite the cardinal 's right-hand man . ”
“ Amory will go to him one day , I know , ” breathed the beautiful lady , “ and Monsignor Darcy will understand him as he understood me . ”
Amory became thirteen , rather tall and slender , and more than ever on to his Celtic mother .
He had tutored occasionally -- the idea being that he was to “ keep up , ” at each place “ taking up the work where he left off , ” yet as no tutor ever found the place he left off , his mind was still in very good shape .
What a few more years of this life would have made of him is problematical .
However , four hours out from land , Italy bound , with Beatrice , his appendix burst , probably from too many meals in bed , and after a series of frantic telegrams to Europe and America , to the amazement of the passengers the great ship slowly wheeled around and returned to New York to deposit Amory at the pier .
You will admit that if it was not life it was magnificent .
After the operation Beatrice had a nervous breakdown that bore a suspicious resemblance to delirium tremens , and Amory was left in Minneapolis , destined to spend the ensuing two years with his aunt and uncle .
There the crude , vulgar air of Western civilization first catches him -- in his underwear , so to speak .
***** A KISS FOR AMORY His lip curled when he read it .
“ I am going to have a bobbing party , ” it said , “ on Thursday , December the seventeenth , at five o'clock , and I would like it very much if you could come .
Yours truly ,