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County. It was a step down from the expensive simplicity of his
father's idea, and, while he sympathized with the revolt, it also
annoyed him; during his mother's lifetime he had gone up there at
least every other week-end - even in the gayest summers.
Yet he himself was part of this change, and his strong instinct
for life had turned him in his twenties from the hollow obsequies of
that abortive leisure class. He did not see this clearly – he still felt that
there was a norm, a standard of society. But there was no norm, it was
doubtful if there ever had been a true norm in New York. The few
who still paid and fought to enter a particular set succeeded only to
find that as a society it scarcely functioned – or, what was more
alarming, that the Bohemia from which they fled sat above them at
table.
At twenty-nine Anson's chief concern was his own growing
loneliness. He was sure now that he would never marry. The number
of weddings at which he had officiated as best man or usher was past
all counting – there was a drawer at home that bulged with the
official neckties of this or that wedding-party, neckties standing for
romances that had not endured a year, for couples who had passed
completely from his life. Scarf-pins, gold pencils, cuff-buttons,
presents from a generation of grooms had passed through his jewel-
box and been lost – and with every ceremony he was less and less
able to imagine himself in the groom's place. Under his hearty good-
will toward all those marriages there was despair about his own.
And as he neared thirty he became not a little depressed at the
inroads that marriage, especially lately, had made upon his
friendships. Groups of people had a disconcerting tendency to
dissolve and disappear. The men from his own college - and it was
upon them he had expended the most time and affection – were the
most elusive of all. Most of them were drawn deep into domesticity,
two were dead, one lived abroad, one was in Hollywood writing
continuities for pictures that Anson went faithfully to see.
Most of them, however, were permanent commuters with an
intricate family life centring around some suburban country club, and
it was from these that he felt his estrangement most keenly.
In the early days of their married life they had all needed him;
he gave them advice about their slim finances, he exercised their
doubts about the advisability of bringing a baby into two rooms and a
bath, especially he stood for the great world outside. But now their