New York - The Novel

Charlie had confessed that two of his friends had been expelled. She lived in terror that any day he might come home and tell her that the same thing had happened to him.
    “I’m sure,” William said cheerfully, “that if Charlie gets in trouble, you’ll be able to smooth things over with Butler. Just ask him to one of your parties.”
    It was true that Rose Master was quite a force to be reckoned with, these days. After the death of old Hetty Master, a good deal of money had flowed down to William’s parents. And when, a couple of years ago, William’s mother had died, and Tom Master had followed her not a year later, the trust funds had left William and Rose in possession of a considerable fortune, to do with as they pleased.
    Recently they’d moved up to a considerably larger townhouse just off Fifth Avenue in the Sixties, only a couple of blocks from the magnificent new palace of Henry Frick. The house had a fine classical facade and a further, special feature, copied from Mr. Scribner the publisher’s house, which stood nearby. Most people with motor cars kept them in converted stables nearby, but in the Masters’ new house, the entrance was through a double gateway, leading into a little courtyard, where the car descended into a basement garage by a private elevator. William had also bought a new Rolls-Royce, the Sedanca de Ville model, which resided there.
    If Rose, over the last decade, had built up a reputation as a hostess who entertained delightfully, but with a well-judged, old-money restraint, she was now able to do the same thing on a considerably grander scale. And through her entertaining, it was perfectly true, she could wield surprising influence.
    But she was well aware of her limitations.
    “If Charlie annoys Nicholas Murray Butler,” she said, “I don’t think I could save him.”
    And now, she very much feared, Charlie was about to commit a dangerous error.

    So it was in no uncertain terms that she told Charlie, one November evening: “No, Charles, I will not have that man in my house.”
    “But, Mother,” he protested, “I already invited him.”
    Why, of all the people lecturing at Columbia University, Charlie had singled out Edmund Keller as a hero she had no idea. As far as Rose was concerned, the relationship between their two families had died with old Hetty. But earlier that fall, when Charlie had met the popular lecturer and Keller had expressed his warm remembrance of the Master family’s role in his own father’s career, Charlie had been delighted.
    “I realized we still have some of his father’s photographs,” he told his mother. “He even asked me if I meant to be a patron of the arts.”
    “He’s trying to flatter you.”
    “It’s not like that,” Charlie said, with a frown. “You don’t understand. Keller’s a pretty important person at Columbia; he doesn’t need us.”
    It was true that, with commendable restraint in her opinion, Butler had allowed Mr. Keller to continue his career as a university teacher, and that Keller had done quite well. But in her mind, two facts remained. Firstly, Edmund Keller had been, and no doubt still was, a socialist. Secondly, her son was far too impressionable.
    And now Charlie, in an act of childish idiocy, had asked the man to one of her select parties. But looking at Charlie’s fair-haired, blue-eyed face, it now occurred to her that it might be wiser if she used a little subtlety. Keller must be dealt with, but in a way that wouldn’t antagonize her son.
    “He really wouldn’t like the party, Charlie,” she said. “But let’s do something even better. Ask him to come to dinner with us, just a family dinner, where we can get to know him better, and talk.”
    A week later, Edmund Keller, suitably attired in a dinner jacket and black tie, came to call at the house. When Charlie had first suggested he come to a party at his parents’ house, he’d been a little uncertain. He remembered that Rose had once referred to his views as socialistic at a luncheon—though it had been said during an argument, and was years ago anyway—so he’d assumed that she didn’t much care for him. But the pressing invitation he now received to a family dinner seemed to indicate that there were no bad feelings at all.
    He wasn’t a fool, but the world in which Edmund lived operated in a slightly different manner from Rose’s. It had not occurred to him that if Rose Master invited him to a family dinner, it was not a