“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.”
“Why?”
“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 go 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 tow-headed 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.”