Not long after that, two or three days I guess, anyway during the holidays, he brought me in the study again, and for the first time opened up, in a fair and square way so we could talk, on the subject of my money. “To begin with, I want to explain what I did, to tell you the reason I had for doing it, of going to court without telling you, and plastering papers all over your accounts.”
“Well, what was the reason?”
“I was afraid to tell you what I intended doing.”
“I don’t know why.”
“You were under a certain influence.”
“I hadn’t seen Miss Eleanor in weeks.”
“Be that as it may, my risk, if I dallied with it, was that it would be out of my hands before a court could act at all. All you had to do was withdraw the cash, as you had a perfect right to do, and once you handed it over to somebody else, or hid it, or got it out of the state, that would end any chance I might have of taking it over for you.”
“I never even thought of anything like that.”
“So I now realize.”
“But why have you got to take it over?”
“It’s my responsibility.”
“I made the money.”
“... I’ve been over that, in my mind, a thousand times. However, the fact that by some freak chance you briefly had a singing voice, an overwhelming thing to me, I may say, if I never said it before, does not change the basic fact: It is my duty to see that you get the full benefit of this money, to make sure it is not dissipated by some youthful impulse, or extravagance, or at the suggestion of well-intending friends. I can’t evade that, and I’ll have you know, at the outset, I haven’t evaded it, regardless of how you feel about it, and I won’t. In a friendly, wholly affectionate way, it that clear?”
“I get it, if that’s what you mean.”
“But you don’t accept it?”
“It’s gone and done.”
“I want you to understand the right of it.”
“If you’re satisfied, then O.K.”
“It’s for your sake, not my own, that I did what I did. Don’t you understand that at your age you face a temptation to squander this money?”
“Sure.”
“I’m protecting you from that.”
“But if it’s my money?”
“You nevertheless should have the benefit of my guardianship, to save you from something which is not for your own good.”
“Everybody squanders money. You do.”
“That is true.”
“Why not me?”
“You assume no responsibility... As you say, the whole world squanders money, and indeed whole industries rest on the assumption that mankind will indulge any luxury it can pay for. But mankind assumes its own responsibility. You, as a minor, are unable to assume such responsibility. Who sees that you eat is not you, but I. And so long as I have responsibility, I demand authority.”
“Well, you’ve got it.”
“I want you to think this thing over.”
“Don’t worry, I have.”
“It’s all in the bank, Jack, I’d like you to know that, with every cent of interest, as compounded.”
“Well, I never thought you’d steal it.”
“Now what shall I do with it?”
“It’s your responsibility. Suppose you say.”
“Do you know what an investment is?”
“We had it in school. Six per cent? Like that?”
“Something like that.”
He went over it, one thing at a time, one word at a time, and explained the different kinds of investments. Then he showed me how he’d worked the thing out: We’d buy so and so much stock, so I’d get regular dividends; so and so much bonds, so I’d cut coupons the months I didn’t get checks from stock, and so and so much savings, so I’d always have cash. All in all, it meant I’d have about twenty dollars a month coming in, which seemed to make sense, I had to admit. “Well, Dad, I guess that’s all right.”
“Then it’s agreeable to you I go ahead?”
“Just what do you do?”
“First, I’ll see Sam Shreve, who handles my brokerage account, and have him buy in this list, at favorable times. For some time there’s been a bull market, but it goes off now and then, and you’ll have to give him time to buy on off days. Then, we’ll put the stock away, in my box. The dividend checks will come to you direct, and I’ll take off the court orders from your account so you can spend your income as you please. On a boy’s current expenditures I don’t believe parents should be too inquisitive. Your clothes, subsistence, school expenses, and so on, will be paid for by myself — a light burden, and I welcome it. Your dividends will be yours as spending money.”
“That sounds all right.”
“It’s the best I could work out—”
“I’ve got the idea, and from now on I’ll shut up.”
“Now I think we’re progressing.”
6
One of the main things in my life, from then on, was the new car I had. Up to then I’d been a guy, fourteen going on fifteen, overgrown maybe, with now and then a pal that I went around with like Denny, or a friend that really meant something like Miss Eleanor. But as soon as I got this thing I was the most popular guy on earth. Girls in school that I’d never paid any attention to, to say nothing of their brothers, all acted like they were my long-lost relations, and like I wanted nothing better than to haul them wherever they were going, and then turn around and haul them back. And they had the funniest idea it was their car too. They just took it for granted if they wanted to use it, maybe overnight, I’d just hand the key right over. I give you one guess how I fell for that. Then Nancy and Sheila, that had never taken any interest in where I was going, all of a sudden found a million things I ought to be doing with the car, and people I ought to be taking somewhere, specially them. On that, I’ve got to say for him, the Old Man put his foot down. He said if they wanted a taxi they could call one. And then, right there beside me so often I didn’t know how it happened, was Margaret.
I guess she was fairly good-looking, though her looks never did anything to me. She was dark-haired, with white skin, pink cheeks, and a stocky little shape, that got better as she got older and taller and slimmer. She had shiny black eyes that hardly ever looked right at you, though that wasn’t because she was shifty-eyed or anything like that. It was because she was always looking at something imaginary, like some new sofa she’d be telling you about, with a little set smile on her face, like she’d be nice about it till you got in a suitably admiring frame of mind. I guess that maybe was the key to her, and why I died around her so easy. Her people, I think I said, had the Cartaret Hotel, and it wasn’t enough for them they’d sign in a guest, quote him four dollars for a room with bath, and tell him the main dining room opened at six, until then tea in the Peggy Stewart Room. They had to let him know they were doing him up pretty nice to let him stay there at all, because Washington and Hamilton and Burr and God knows who-all had stayed there, and if he was good they’d let him look in the Dolly Madison Room, where all the old furniture was, and the Cartaret Gallery, with the portraits, and the Colonial Hearth, with its copper. And Margaret, she had that in her, too. She’d let you hear her play. I don’t think, up to the time she was booked out with me, that it had ever occurred to her that letting somebody hear her play wasn’t the biggest favor in the world she could do them, or that letting people look at the sofas and the paintings and the pots wasn’t the biggest favor the family could do. They were all born smug, her father, with the cutaway coat he always wore, and her mother, who was more of a manager type, awful cold. That is, all except little Helen. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen, and at Margaret’s parties, that seemed to come oftener than tests in school, I’d get off with her, and feed her ice cream.