The Lockwood Concern (35 page)

Boston a great deal, Friday afternoon to Sunday evening or sometimes Monday morning. Someone left a cigarette burning in my flat, and I lost a lot of personal stuff. My St. Bartholomew's and Harvard College diplomas. A couple of tennis trophies, and all my Spy pictures. An original Beerbohm, that I got the old boy to sign. God damn careless person." "She must have been." "I didn't say she, Mr. Lockwood." "You didn't have to," said George. "Well, I gave myself away, although I don't know how." "If it had been a man you'd have said so, but you said 'God damn careless person.' "I'll watch that," said Hibbard. "This bag contains a lot of data that I compiled that I think has the answer to any questions that I may be asked. For instance, starting with what we intend to do with the money after it's invested. What we'll do with the income from one million, if we get it. What we'll do with the income from a million and a half, if we get that. What we'll do with the income from two million, and so on, up to five million. If we raise six million, we'll be slightly embarrassed, but only slightly and only temporarily, I assure you. None of the money, by the way, is going into physical plant. It is all earmarked for salary and pension and various and sundry insurance programs covering life and accident and disability. Would you care to have a look?" "No thank you. My small donation doesn't entitle me to a look." "Of course it does, but these things can be a bore. However, I brought along some snapshots that I don't think will be a bore. Have a look at these." He handed George an envelope. "All taken with a Brownie Number 2, and don't worry. No views of the Grand Canyon." George examined the snapshots, two dozen pictures taken at Bing's ranch. Bing. His wife. The children. The ranch house. The Rolls-Royce. Oil derricks. The men were silent as George studied the photographs, put them back in the envelope and held it out to Hibbard. "They're for you," said Hibbard. "Oh - thank you. You really know your business, don't you, Mr. Hibbard?" "That isn't why I took them." "Then why did you take them?" "Because in some ways I'm a Christer," said Hibbard. "Explain that, please," said George. "I have a brother who never sees my father. He's artistic, as they say in Boston. Henry won't have anything to do with the rest of us. I can't talk about him without making him sound like a wet smack, and in some ways he is. But he isn't, really. He quit Harvard, went to Paris, and is now living in Mexico. He apparently paints pretty well. He was given a show in Boston last year and he came back for it, but he never got in touch with my father or mother, never sent them an invitation to the show, and he borrowed my flat. He had a woman with him he said was Mexican, but she was no more Mexican than Jack Johnson, and they left the place like a pigsty." "I would say that your father was well off," said George. "He doesn't think so. Henry was his favorite of all of us, and I never knew why. Got away with stuff we could never get away with. A spoiled brat, and to this day goes out of his way to make my parents unhappy. Wrote a letter to the Transcript over this Sacco and Vanzetti business, and signed his name. Oh, all sorts of things. My father's had one stroke, and I know the one thing he'd like best is to have Henry come home and behave like a decent human being. None of this resembles the falling-out that you and Bing have had, and yet it does." "How?" said George. "Well, I know that Henry would make it up with my father if he knew how. And from the way Bing spoke of you, there are no hard feelings on his part." "It's possible there may be some on mine." "Yes, but I didn't think so after seeing you look at those pictures. Actually of course I don't know what the bone of contention was between you." "The bone of contention?" said George. "There was no bone of contention. A bone of contention is something two dogs fight over, and that wasn't the sort of thing we quarreled over. We had a difference of opinion that was irreconcilable at the time, and it seems to have turned out to my son's advantage. Very well. If he had ever needed my help, he only had to ask for it. But he hasn't needed it, and now he never will." "More and more like the situation between my brother and my father." "No doubt. Those things are inclined to fall into the same categories, you might say. Father and son dissensions. In our case, my son's success in California makes it very unlikely that we will ever be reconciled. None of your business," said George. "None of my business unless I make it my business." "It's still none of your business, and why should you make it your business?" "Because, as I said before, I have a little of the Christer in me." "I'm not familiar with that term. Does it mean what I think it means? A, uh, missionary? I've had some experience with a disappointed missionary. That's a career with very little future in it, Mr. Hibbard." "My career isn't headed in that direction, Mr. Lockwood. My plans are all made. I have a pretty good idea where I'll be and what I'll be doing twenty years from now." "That's good." "Or even forty years from now." "You arouse my curiosity," said George. "I'll satisfy it. Do you know anything about my family? I wouldn't assume you did if it weren't for the fact that you've been to St. Bartholomew's and you're a business man." "I know your family are extremely well-to-do, if that's what you mean." "They are filthy rich, that's what they are. The family fortunes are well up in eight figures, to the left-hand side of the decimal point. And it gets bigger all the time. That embarrasses my brother, but not me. He got some Socialistic ideas at Harvard, and he doesn't want to be known as a rich dilettante. I'm not an artist, and I don't believe that the possession of good common stocks and so on is a sin. I like money, and I'm not a bit ashamed of it." "Very sensible," said George. "On the other hand, I have no desire to make more for myself. I don't want to live anywhere but Boston, or live in style. I pay sixty-three dollars for my suits, off the rack at Brooks Brothers, and I have five of them. Blue serge and grey worsted for winter, blue flannel and grey flannel for summer. And a tan gabardine for sporting events. Baseball games and such. I have a Dodge coupe that's good for another fifteen thousand miles. I don't spend ten thousand a year on myself, and that's taking care of club dues and my bootlegger, and thus and so. My only extravagance is tennis balls. I refuse to play with balls that the life's gone out of. I use at least a dozen a week, sometimes more when I'm playing on grass, during summer vacation. We still have clay courts at school. Well, I have one other extravagance. My pipe tobacco is my own mixture, costs me about seventy dollars a year. Blue Boar used to cost me about fifteen dollars a year, so that is an extravagance." "Alarming," said George. Hibbard smiled. "Well, it is, you know. It represented a drastic change in my ways, switching from Blue Boar to Mr. Preston Hibbard Special. I bought a pouch, so my friends wouldn't notice that I'd gone high-hat on them. My mother almost spilled the beans. She noticed the aroma and commented on it, so I had to take her into my confidence. By the way, why am I suddenly so lacking in reticence? I don't as a rule run off at the mouth this way." "I said more to you about my son than I've said to anyone since he left here," said George. "Whatever the reason, I like it. I like hearing what you have to say. You started to tell me about your plans." "Yes. Well, I expect to serve on a lot of boards. Boards of trustees, boards of visitors, et cetera. My father and both grandfathers did, and so will I. Some men, or most men, haven't got the time to devote to that work. They accept the directorates, and attend the regular stated meetings, but they have other work to do. There are a few men in a position to make that kind of work their career, and I'm one of them. The only job I've ever had is my present one, acting bursar. It's a lot of detail work and very good training. My next step will be to take over some of my father's trusteeships. Harvard. Two hospitals, and four or five corporations, two banks. I expect to have a very busy life, in work that I like, with the kind of men I like to be with. It's by no means all drudgery. A lot of pleasant social activity goes along with it. Luncheons. Dinners. Junkets. And the feeling that you're doing something worthwhile." "Now that's very interesting," said George. "It corresponds to certain plans my father had for me, and I had for my son till he stormed out of here - not this house, but the one we used to live in. My plans, and my father's before me, were localized, and not so much confined to trusteeships and so on. I still have to go on making money, and I've just recently gone into a business venture that may be every bit as risky as oil speculations and won't offer the same fantastic returns. I'm into a lot of things because they interest me, and stay out of others because they don't. When you don't have to actually earn your living, I see no point in engaging in business unless you get some other satisfaction out of it besides the making of money. That seems to be the way you feel about it too." "Very much so." "However, I'm afraid charity and welfare work doesn't appeal to me as it does to you. Perhaps because we haven't had our money that long, or as much of it. If my plan had worked out, perhaps this towheaded young grandson of mine eventually would have reached the stage where you are now. I would have been delighted with that." He paused. "The news you brought me today, about my son and his finances, means the end to my plan and my father's plan, and it's going to be hard to get used to." "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings," said Hibbard. "I'd rather hear it from you, this way, than less directly, from total strangers. You see, Mr. Hibbard, my plan required the presence here of my son and his family. It meant their living in Swedish Haven. My son knew nothing about business or money when he left here, and I was sure that in time he'd have to come back. Now he never will." "Frankly, I don't think he will. He as much as said so. I don't think he has much use for the East, at least as a place to live. And neither has Rita. They love California, and I doubt if there's anything in the world that will move them out of there. I was about to say, short of an earthquake, but as a matter of fact they've even had minor ones of those. No, he's dug in." "All the expense of St. Bartholomew's and Princeton to produce a Californian." "My brother's background was St. Bartholomew's and Harvard, and Eastern Massachusetts since the Seventeenth Century, but now he considers himself a Mexican! I suppose the parents of the first American Hibbard said pretty much the same thing." "They came here because of religious persecution," said George. "Not the first John Hibbard. He wasn't one of the Pilgrims. He came later, to seek his fortune in hides and tallow. Actually, a great-uncle of mine was in the shoe business when he died, and that more or less ended the family connection with hides. No one left to carry on the business, and his widow sold out just in time to miss out on supplying shoes to the Union army. Someone else made a fortune. In fact, a classmate of yours. Allan Ames." "Is that where his money came from?" Hibbard nodded. "That particular Ames money doesn't go back as far as some Ames money." "I never knew that." "Well, there are a lot of Adamses in Massachusetts, too. A lot of Warrens and Bradfords. Hibbards, too, for that matter. Not all the Lowells in the Boston phone book are related to Larry. In fact, not all the Lowells are Lowells, especially around Newton." "That's true," said George. "A George Lockwood answered one time when I was being paged. He was quite insistent that he was as much George Lockwood as I. 'All right,' I said, 'but I happen to know it's my brother that's paging me. Does your brother call himself Lockwood too, or did he take something fancier?' Another time I traveled from Philadelphia to Boston, on the sleeper, with George Lockwood as my porter. Not a very unusual name, I've found. Not quite Smith or Brown, but not Saltonstall, either." "There are quite a few of them where I come from," said Hibbard. "But around here, you see, the only Lockwoods are my Lockwoods, our Lockwoods." He stopped abruptly, on the verge of confiding in this young man the full details of his plans for his family, now suddenly abandoned. The young man exuded no warmth; it was not the warmth of sympathy that seemed to invite such candor as they had allowed themselves and each other in this interview. Nevertheless George Lockwood, a cerebrating man always, was busily wondering why he was attracted to Hibbard and why Hibbard was attracted to him. George Lockwood theorized, and postponed for later consideration, as to the possibility that Hibbard recognized in him a new but authentic member of the class to which Hibbard belonged. "It seems a pity that future generations of Lockwoods aren't going to occupy this house," said Hibbard. "Although perhaps they will. Who know? Bing's son may want to live in the East. It's of course much too early to tell, one way or the other." "I'm not very hopeful of that," said George. "You've given me a very convincing picture of a permanent California family. I'll have to think about what to do with this place. My brother wouldn't take it. He's a New Yorker now, and who else is there?" "Yes, I see how you could be discouraged. It's a fine piece of property, built to stay. It'll be here two hundred years from now. Anyone with half an eye can see that a great deal of careful planning went into it, and no expense spared, inside or out." He stood up. "Would you care to have a look around?" said George. "I should have been on my way before this, but yes, I would like to snoop a bit," said Hibbard. He smiled. "Those gargoyles, on the mantelpiece, evil-looking little rascals, aren't they? But amusing." "I wonder if I could trust you with a secret. I believe I can. You belong to the Porcellian Club, don't you?" "I do." "And I suppose other organizations that don't tell everything that goes on." "Oh, yes." "Would you be interested in acquiring a secret that only two people would know - you and I?" "If you're sure it'd be safe with me. I'm very good at keeping secrets, but you have no way of knowing that." "Except my instinct," said George Lockwood. He went to the study door and turned the key in the lock. "Now, if you'll put your hand on the second gargoyle from the right." "Second from the right," said Hibbard. "Turn it as though you were opening a door by the knob." "Yes, it turns very easily," said Hibbard. "Now what happens?" "Nothing, unless you push the gargoyle." "Is that what you want me to do? Push it?" "Yes,"