Free Love & Mrs. Sargent by Patrick Dennis

twenty years ago. Ali ce’s mother, Queenie, hadn’t even been born then. Alice had divorced him for mental cruelty and a hundred-thousand-dollar settlement and then married Mr. Livingston that very afternoon. Malvern wondered if he shouldn’t explain all this to Johnson. But he’d probably just make things look worse. Poor old Duke!
    For a while conversation had been sparse at best, but by the time they had reached Wilmette, Johnson had brought up the subject of the late Richard Sargent. He had seemed truly respect ful, well informed and curious to know more. Here was a topic where Malvern was considered something of an authority. He had even been cited as a prime source of information on the acknowledgments page of The Dick Sargent Story by the grateful biographer, for it was Malvern who had given Sargent his first job as a boy out of Yale. And for quite a time Malvern had spoken of Sargent warmly and naturally—until, that is, he had said, “I was best man at Sheila’s and Dick’s wedding.”
    At that he clammed up in an agony of embarrassment. Now he had given this Johnson a chance to think that he was a social climber. True, Malvern had been older than Sargent. True, he had been Sargent’s employer with the power to hire or fire him, make or break him. But Malvern had begun life as a poor boy from Berwyn, gone straight from high school to the lowliest of jobs at Famous Features, Whereas the Sargent family— well, anybody who was anybody in Chicago could tell you who the Sargents were. Mr. Malvern’s marriage to the daughter of a podiatrist in Oak Park, had seemed to him a dizzying ascent on the social ladder. But when Dick Sargent had asked him to be best man at a genuine Society wedding, Mr. Malvern had been too stunned even to answer. Subsequent honors such asdinners for famous people at Sheila’s famous table, weekend invitations to Lake Forest, standing godfather at Allison’s christening, serving as honorary pall bearer, as executor of Sargent’s estate and—over the past fifteen years—indulging himself in a pleasant and profitable business relationship with Sargent’s widow, had more or less put Mr. Malvern at his ease with the Sargent family. More at ease than he was, say, in some of his clubs, at the smarter Chicago restaurants and private parties. But he was still very conscious of the differences between the West Side and the North Shore. The conversation stopped dead.
    Peter Johnson squirmed in the deafening silence that followed Mr. Malvern’s announcement that he had been Dick Sargent’s best man. “I was best man at Sheila’s and Dick’s wedding.” He had said it just like that and then stopped. Not another mumbling word. Nothing about the weather that day, the wedding cake, the quality of the champagne. Just a flat statement and that was that. God-damned society snob, Peter fumed, probably considers the sacrament too exquisite and exclusive to confide to a rube reporter like me. Peter had met these fine old society types before. They were all alike. All charm and courtly manners, ask you right into the vestibule and then slam the door in your face and send you around to the service entrance with a simple statement of fact. “Chauncey and I were roommates at Groton.” “Nicky was on our polo team.” “I got crabs from Schuyler’s great aunt.” And when you got right down to it, American society men were even bitchier than the women. They stuck together like dikes in the WACs—affable up to a point but then all firm-jawed and silent and noble about experiences that were too beautiful to be shared with anyone else.
    In a vicious fantasy Peter pictured J. Howard Malvern—J. Howard indeed!—as a sniveling little boy with sausage curls and Lord Fauntleroy suit kissing Mrs. Potter Palmer’s diamond encrusted hand. He could see him as a Yank at Eton with Colonel McCormick. He pictured him as a young Arrow Collar ad saying, “No, Governor, I don’t want to go into the family