第 28 页

'A month from today.'

'Good. I look forward to seeing you then, Abel!'

Abel rose from the hotel chair; he felt happier standing. He shook hands with Mr. Davis Leroy, the man from table seventeen - the one that was strictly for unknowns.

Leaving New York and the Plaza Hotel, his first real home since the castle near Slonim, turned out to be more of a wrench than Abel had anticipated.

Goodbyes to George, Monika, and his few Columbia friends were unexpectedly hard. Sammy and the waiters threw a farewell party for him.

'We haven't heard the last of you, Abel Rosnovski," Sammy said, and they all agreed.

The Richmond Continental in Chicago was well-placed on Michigan Avenue, in the heart of the fastest growing city in America. That pleased Abel, who was only too familiar with Ellsworth Statler's maxim that just three things about a hotel really mattered : position, position and position. Abel soon discovered that position was about the only good thing that the Richmond had. Davis Leroy had understated the case when he had said that the hotel was a little run down. Desmond Pacey, the manager, wasn't slow and gentle as Davis Leroy had described him; he was plain lazy and didn't endear himself to Abel by allocating him a tiny room in the staff annex across the road and leaving him out of the main hotel. A quick check on the Richmond's books revealed that the daily occupancy rate was running at less than forty per cent, and that the restaurant was never more than half full, not least of all because the food was so appalling. The staff spoke three or four languages among them., none of which seemed to be English, and there were certainly not any signs of welcome for the stupid Polack from New York. It was not hard to see why the last assistant manager had left in such a hurry.

If the Richmond was Davis Leroy's favourite hotel, Abel feared for the other ten in the group, even though his new employer seemed to have a bottomless pot of gold at the end of his Texas rainbow.

The best news that Abel learned during his first days in Chicago was that Melanie Leroy was an only child,

14

William and Matthew started their freshmen year at Harvard in the fall of 1924. Despite his grandmothers' disapproval William accepted the Hamilton Memorial Scholarship and at a cost of two hundred and ninety dollars, treated himself to 'Daisy', the latest Model T Ford, and first real love of his life. He painted Daisy bright yellow, which halved her value and doubled the number of his girlfriends. Calvin Coolidge won a landslide election to return to the White House and the volume on the New York Stock Exchange reached a five-year record of two million, three hundred and thirty-six thousand, one hundred and sixty shares.

Both young men (we can no longer refer to them as children, pronounced Grandmother Cabot) had been looking forward to college. After an energetic summer of tennis and golf, they were ready to get down to more serious pursuits, William started work on the day he arrived in their new room on the 'Gold Coast', a considerable improvement on their small study at St. Paul's, while Matthew went in search of the university rowing club. Matthew was elected to captain the freshmen crew, and William left his books every Sunday afternoon to watch his friend from the banks of the Charles River. He covertly enjoyed Matthew's success but was outwardly scathing.

'Life is not about eight big men pulling unwieldy pieces of misshapen wood through choppy water while one smaller man shouts at them,' declared William haughtily.

'Tell Yale that,' said Matthew.

William, meanwhile, quickly demonstrated to his mathematics professors that he was in his studies what Matthew was in sport - a mile ahead of the field. He also became chairman of the Freshmen Debating Society and talked his great-uncle, President Lowell, into the first university insurance plan, whereby students leaving Harvard would take out a life policy for one thousand dollars each, naming the university as the beneficiary. William estimated that the cost to each participant would be less than a dollar per week and that if forty per cent of the alumni joined the scheme, Harvard would have a guaranteed income of about three million dollars a year from 1950 onwards. The president was impressed and gave the scheme his full support, and a year later he invited William to join the board of the University Fund Raising Committee. William accepted with pride without realising the appointment was for life. President Lowell informed Grandmother Kane that he had captured one of the best financial brains of his generation, free of charge. Grandmother Kane testily replied to her cousin that, 'everything has its purpose and this will teach William to read the fine print.'

Almost as soon as the sophomore year began, it became time to choose (or to be chosen for) one of the Finals Clubs that dominated the social landscape of the well-to-do at Harvard. William was 'punched' for the Porcellian, the oldest, richest, most exclusive and least ostentatious of such clubs. In the clubhouse on Massachusetts Avenue, which was incongruously situated over a cheap Hayes-Bickford cafeteria, he would sit in a comfortable armchair, considering the four-colour map problem, discussing the reperr-ussions of the Loeb-Leopald trial, and idly watching the street below through the conveniently angled mirror while listening to the large new-fangled radio.

During the Christmas holidays, he was persuaded to ski with Matthew in Vermont, and spent a week panting uphill in the footsteps of his fitter friend.

'Tell me, Matthew, what is the point of spending one hour climbing up a hill only to come back down the same hill in a few seconds at considerable risk to life and limb?'

Matthew grunted. 'Sure gives me a bigger kick than graph theory, William. Why don't you admit you're not very good either at the going up or the coming down?

They both did enough work in their sophomore year to get by, although their interpretations of 'getting by' were wildly different. For the first two months of the summer holidays, they worked as junior management assistants in Charles Lester's bank in New York, Matthew's father having long since given up the battle of trying to keep William away. When the dog days of August arrived, they spent most of their time dashing about the New England countryside in 'Daisy' sailing on the Charles River with as many different girls as possible and attending any house party to which they could get themselves invited. In no time, they were among the accredited personalities of the university, known to the cognoscenti as the Scholar and the Sweat. It was perfectly understood in Boston society that the girl who married William Kane or Matthew Lester would have no fears for her future, but as fast as hopeful mothers appeared with their fresh-faced daughters, Grandmother Kane and Grandmother Cabot despatched them unceremoniously.

On April 18, 1927, William celebrated his twenty-first birthday by attending the final meeting of the trustees to his estate. Alan Lloyd and Tony Simmons had prepared an the documents for signature.

'Well, William dear,' said Milly Preston as if a great responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders, 'I'm sure you'll be able to do every bit as well as we did.'

'I hope so, Mrs. Preston, but if ever I need to lose half a million overnight, I'll know just whom to call.'

Milly Preston went bright red but made no attempt to reply.

The trust now stood at over twenty-eight million dollars, and William had definite plans for the nurture of that money, but he had also set himself the task of making a million dollars in his own right before he left Harvard. It was not a large stun compared with the amount in his trust, but his inherited wealth meant far less to him than the balance in his account at Lesters.

That summer, the grandmothers, fearing a fresh outbreak of predatory girls, despatched William and Matthew on the grand tour of Europe, which turned out to be a great success for both of them. Matthew, surmounting all language barriers, found a beautiful girl in every major European capital - love, he assured William, was an international commodity.

William secured introductions to a director of most of the major European banks - money, he assured Matthew, was also an international commodity.

From London to Berlin to Rome, the two young men left a trail of broken hearts and suitably impressed bankers. When they returned to Harvard in September, they were both ready to hit the books for their final year.

In the bitter winter of 1927, Grandmother Kane died, aged eighty-five, and William wept for the first time since his mother's death.

'Come on,' said Matthew, after bearing with William's depression for several days. 'She had a good run and waited a long time to find out whether God was a Cabot or a Lowell.'

William missed the shrewd words he had so little appreciated in his grandmother's lifetime, and he arranged a funeral which she would have been proud to attend. Although the great lady arrived at the cemetery in a black Packard hearse ('One of those new-fangled contraptions -over my dead body', but, as it turned out, under it), this unsound mode of transport would have been her only criticism of William's orchestration of her departure. Her death drove William to work with ever more purpose during that final year at Harvard. He dedicated himself to winning the tx)p mathematics prize in her memory, Grandmother Cabot died some six months later, probably, said William, because there was no one left for her to talk to.

In February 1928, William received a visit from the captain of the Debating Team. There was to be a full-dress debate the following month on the motion 'Socialism or Capitalism for America's Future', and William was naturally asked to represent capitalism.

'And what if I told you I was only willing to speak on behalf of the downtrodden masses?' William inquired of the surprised captain, slightly nettled by the thought that his intellectual views were simply assumed by outsiders because he had inherited a famous name and a prosperous bank.

'Well, I must say, William, we did imagine your own preference would be for, er . . .'

'It is, I accept your invitation. I take it that I am at liberty to select my partner?'

'Naturally.'

'Good, then I choose Matthew Lester. May I know who our opponents will be?'

'You will not be informed until the day before, when the posters go up in the Yard.'

For the next month Matthew and William turned their breakfast critiques of the newspapers of the left and right, and their nightly discussions about the meaning of life, into strategy sessions for what the campus was beginning to call 'The Great Debate'. William decided that Matthew should lead off.

As the fateful day approached, it became clear that most of the politically aware students, professors, and even some Boston and Cambridge notables would be attending. On the morning before the debate they walked over to the Yard to discover who their opposition would be.

Teland Crosby and Thaddeus Cohen, Either name ring a bell with you, William? Crosby must be one of the Philadelphia Crosby's, I suppose!

course he is. "The Red Maniac of Rittenhouse Square" as his own aunt once described him so accurately.. He's the most convincing revolutionary on campus. He's loaded, and he spends all his money on the popular radical causes. I can hear his opening now!

William parodied Crosby's grating tone. 'I know at first hand the rapacity and the utter lack of social conscience of the American monied class.' If everyone in the audience hasn't heard that fifty times already, I'd say he'll make a formidable opponent!

'And Thaddeus Cohen?'

'Never heard of him.'

The following evening, refusing to admit to stage fright, they made their way through the snow and cold wind, heavy overcoats flapping behind them, past the gleaming columns of the recently completed Widener Library - like William's father, the donor's son had gone down on the Titanic - to Boylston Hall.

'With weather like this, at least if we take a beating there won't be many to tell the tale,' said Matthew hopefully.

But as they rounded the side of the library, they could see a steady strewn of stamping, huffing figures ascending the stairs and filing into the hall. Inside, they were shown to chairs on the podium. William sat still but his eyes picked out the people he knew in the audience: President Lowell, sitting discreetly in the middle row; ancient old Newbury St. John, Professor of Botany; a pair of Brattle Street blue-stockings he recognised from Red House parties; and to his right, a group of Bohemian-looking young men and women, some not even wearing ties, who turned and started to clap as their spokesmen - Crosby and Cohen - walked on to the stage, Crosby was the more striking of the two, tall and thin almost to the point of caricature, dressed absent-mindedly -or very carefully - in a shaggy tweed suit, but with a stiffly pressed shirt, and dangling a pipe with no apparent connection to his body except at his lower lip. Thaddeus Cohen was shorter and wore rimless glasses and an almost too perfectly-cut, dark worsted suit

The four speakers shook hands cautiously as the last minute arrangements were made. The bells of Memorial Church only a hundred feet away, sounded vague and distant as they rang out seven times.

'Mr. Leland Crosby, junior,' said the captain.

Crosby's speech gave William cause for self-congratulation. He had anticipated everything, the strident tone Crosby would take, the overstressed, nearly hysterical points he would make. He recited the incantations of American radicalism - Haymarket, Money Trust, Standard Oil, even Cross of Gold. William didn't think he had made more than an exhibition of himself although he gathered the expected applause from his claque on William's right. When Crosby sat down, he had clearly won no new supporters, and it looked as though he might have lost a few old ones. The comparison with William and Matthew - equally rich, equally socially distinguished, but selfishly refusing martyrdom for the cause of the advancement of social justice - just might be devastating.

Mathew spoke well and to the point, soothing his listeners, the incarnation of liberal toleration. William pumped his friend's hand warmly when he returned to his chair to loud applause.

'It's all over bar the shouting, I think,' he whispered.

But Thaddeus Cohen surprised virtually everyone. He had a pleasant, diffident manner and a sympathetic style. His references and quotations were catholic, pointed and illuminating. Without conveying to the audience the feeling that it was being deliberately impressed, he exuded a moral earnestness which made anything less seem a failure to a rational human being. He was willing to admit the excesses of his own side and the inadequacy of its leaders, but he left the impression that, in spite of its dangers, there was no alternative to socialism if the lot of mankind mere ever to be improved.