The Headmaster's Dilemma (7 page)

Howard Spencer, a charming, kindly man who seemed to apologize to the world for being so wealthy, suffered from the peculiar obsession that his destined role in life was to be the needed link between his tycoon father and his future tycoon oldest son. For this, by efforts almost heroic, he had turned himself away from the publishing career of which he had dreamed and become instead the competent if not brilliant chairman of the great bank his father had founded with the duty to pass it on intact to his son. But if he had supplemented whatever he lacked as a banker with his fine selection of able officers, he had shown less judgment in his indulgence of every quirk of his chosen heir. It can be argued in his favor that he spotted early the remarkable talents of the boy whom he took with him on all his business trips to check on companies his bank underwrote: the boy's aptitude for accounting, his quick grasp of administrative problems, his imaginative concept of the industrial field. But less can be said for his theory that a natural genius should be left undisturbed to develop as it would.

Donald was the constant companion of a father who bought him everything he wanted and applauded his every idea. Not only was he taken on the business trips, but on cruises on the family yacht he shared the huge paternal cabin (his mother suffered from sea sickness and remained happily ashore) and relayed to the captain his father's orders, which he sometimes changed to suit himself. Even after the younger brothers had developed the muscle to oppose him physically, the habit of obedience and their father's unfailing support of him quelled any but silent retaliation. And at day school in the city Donald was spared any violence that his arrogance aroused in his classmates by the fact that they were at all times in a closely supervised classroom or playground.

Adelaide was always aware that her eldest son needed disciplining, but she found her usually compliant husband as steel in this area, and she finally renounced interference and concentrated her love and care on the younger boys, whom she adored and whose poor performance in school she sought to improve by her own tutoring at home. The contrast of Donald's high grades was painful to her, and there began to develop between mother and son a kind of mute hostility of which only the two of them were aware. Donald knew that the household contained one critic whom he could never impress, and he resented it, and Adelaide, ashamed of a dislike that seemed unnatural to the mother in her, tried to convince herself that she would love the boy as soon as he was straightened out by a boarding school and that her recommendation of his being sent to one was for his good and not her own.

Indeed it took some persuasion, for Howard balked at the idea of separating himself from his favored child. What brought him around in the end was the argument offered by friends in the Downtown Association, where he regularly lunched, that a boy who hadn't been to an acceptable prep school would be socially handicapped at an Ivy League college.

Thrown to the lions in the arena of Averhill, as Donald would later describe it, he found himself subject to the jeers and fisticuffs of boys who were not in the least impressed by his family's wealth. The ones who themselves came from rich backgrounds saw it as no reason for boasting, and the ones who didn't saw it as something to be resented. All agreed that it was no excuse for clumsiness at sports or oddity of appearance, and Donald was hazed more than the other new kids, and as he had not learned the art of making friends he was isolated indeed. Worst of all was the bitter humiliation of the nickname "Peewee," attributed by the boys' discovery in the shower room that his private parts had been slower than normal in their development. At this his will was almost broken, and he was on the verge of appealing to his father to bring him home.

What intervened to prevent this was the sudden and totally unexpected support that he derived from Michael Sayre, the handsomest and most popular member of his form. Hearing another boy spitting the hated epithet at poor Donald, he grabbed him roughly and shook him hard. "That's a filthy thing to call him for something that's not his fault!" he exclaimed, and for a few days afterward he showed his endorsement of Donald, walking beside him on the way to chapel, sitting next to him in the dining hall, and giving him pointers in football practice. The horrid epithet was heard no more. Michael had made it unfashionable, and boys follow fashion as docilely as men.

Donald for the first time in his life was overwhelmed with affection for someone other than himself. Michael now represented to him everything that he would like to be and wasn't. He tried to fancy himself as a kind of partner in a glorious friendship: together they would dominate the form and ultimately the whole school. But Michael, like a doctor whose patient is cured, moved quietly out of Donald's life. He had his own circle of friends, the inner crowd of the form, and though they treated Donald civilly, he would never be really one of them. It was hard but it had to be faced. He would have to make do with what he could find outside the sacred circumference.

At any rate Donald would remain at Averhill. There was no further question of appealing to his father. Averhill was clearly a test of manhood, and this was a test that Donald was determined to pass. He scanned the school, the students, the faculty, the curriculum to determine just where and how the institution could be "had." Sports were the most obvious path to popularity and esteem, but in them he was barely adequate. If one could excel in just one, it would help, and he concentrated on fencing, where there was very little competition and in which he could enjoy the fantasy of actually killing his opponent. There was a school weekly to which he could become a regular contributor, reporting on games and other events, and a debating society in which he was sure he could ultimately star. Finally there was the dramatic society in which, without the looks for a hero, he could train himself to play villains and even buffoons. Oh, yes, there were opportunities for one who cared.

Over the years before his graduation, Donald achieved a considerable status in the student body. He adopted the role of a mordant critic whose bite was always qualified by wit and just a hint of concealed benevolence. As the boys grew older and began to take account of the outside world, he made himself something of an expert in politics, reading newspapers and periodicals, and found that he was at his best with the students of rich parents and with his always watching father by taking a conservative view and posing as the weary and well-documented realist who saw through the hypocrisy of the idealist and the reformer while flattering his listener with the assumption that he was too smart not to agree. It became almost a mark of superior sophistication to be included in Donald Spencer's set. At the end of his fifth-form year he nursed hopes of being elected by the fifth and sixth forms (the latter was the graduating class) as one of the seven prefects who assisted the faculty in the administration of the school in their final year.

He had no chance, he recognized, of being chosen as the senior prefect. That was apt to go to the captain of one of the athletic teams and one not so weak academically as to incur the veto which the headmaster held over the election outcome. Of the three or four likely candidates Michael Sayre seemed the most favored, but it was by no means a sure thing, any more than was Donald's chance of being chosen one of the lesser prefects. Canvassing was frowned upon but it surreptitiously existed, and Donald decided to make full use of it even with a student of such reputed rectitude as his former champion, Michael. Had not Michael helped him once, and when it had been unpopular to do so?

He fell in with Michael one afternoon when he spied the latter walking down the path to the river for crew practice.

"I thought you were a shoo-in for senior, Mike, but some guys tell me that Ted Ives is running you close," he began.

"Are people discussing that?" Michael demanded curtly. "They shouldn't and they know they shouldn't."

"Well, do you want to have a dope like Ives our boss? Do we have to lie down and let his snotty clique run over us?"

"If Ives is chosen, that's okay with me." Saying which Michael broke into a jog as if to terminate an unwelcome discussion. But Donald kept up with him.

"Ives is seeking votes right and left. Of course he shouldn't. But isn't he forcing us to do the same thing?"

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

"Mike, for Pete's sake listen to me! I can swing six votes for you which should put you over the top. And if you in turn will back me up, you'll have a damn good and loyal executive officer!"

Michael stopped at this and faced him.

"Look, Spencer. I take for granted that any prefect elected will be a loyal aide to any senior elected. And I'm not going to discuss with anyone whom I'm going to vote for. All I'll tell you is that I don't give a rat's ass if you're elected or not. And now, if you'll forgive me, I want to jog on to the river."

This was delivered in a flat dry tone that expressed even more forcefully the contempt in which the speaker held the person addressed. When Michael resumed his jog, Donald did not follow him.

Michael
was
elected senior prefect, and Donald as one of the lesser ones, but Donald in their final year did not show himself the supporter of his superior that he had offered. His enthusiasm for the champion of his early years was now replaced by envy and resentment that intensified by having to be hid if he did not wish to appear irrationally hostile to a universally popular figure. He had to content himself with minor sniping to other prefects over any slip in the conduct of the admired senior, which was so little noticed that the object of the sniping was the only one to know he had a real enemy. And when, seventeen years later, the board of Averhill, of which Donald was then a member though not yet chairman, was presented by its search committee with the name of Michael Sayre as the successor chosen to the retiring headmaster, Donald had bitterly to recognize that any opposition to so popular a candidate, lacking specific grounds for complaint, might seriously diminish his influence on trustees hitherto awed by his large grants. The vote for Michael was unanimous, and when, shortly after his appointment, Donald himself was raised to the chairmanship, he established a working relationship with the new headmaster that both men knew was a practical necessity and that both men knew was simply a form.

Donald, with the total backing of a father powerful even in his retirement and with a great bank virtually at his disposal, had used his own financial ability to enormous advantage, and while still in his thirties had, like a number of his contemporaries, accumulated a fortune of many millions. He had been less happy in his marriage, though not from the cause of his hated nickname at school, which maturity had taken care of. At twenty-nine he had decided, with very little previous experience with women in his busy life, that Caroline Kip, quiet, reserved, pretty, conventional, the devoted and submissive daughter of a drearily respectable couple of Knickerbocker descent, was just the wife he needed to give him children to inherit his fortune without interfering in the hectic schedule of his many deals and trips. He was enough of a realist to recognize that he was looking for docility, and not afraid to call it just that, but not perspective enough to know that it was a quality that women of an earlier time merely feigned. He did not see, either, that Caroline, anxious to escape a dull home and not presented with many eligible admirers, understood just what he was after and was only too ready to supply the appearance of it. But our motivations are rarely simple: she wanted the money, yes, but she also wanted love, and she had almost succeeded in persuading herself that Donald was the prince of her dreams—perhaps in disguise—and he did at times look something like a frog. At any rate, they married.

Trouble was not long in coming. Donald was accustomed on Saturday afternoons to playing squash at the Racket Club, after which he would have drinks with his friends at the bar, and if there happened to be a group dining there, join them. Caroline went along happily with his business trips—she never objected to anything connected with his work—but if he was home she certainly did not expect to spend her Saturday nights alone. She objected in vain; she made scenes in vain. He would retire to his study and lock the door. He was like a heavy barge that would cease its barely perceptible moving the moment one stopped pushing: it was impossible to get any way on.

She hoped things might improve with the birth of their twins, a boy and a girl, but Donald, who was one who took no interest in children before they reached their teens and not much then, was always too busy to push their perambulator in the park, even on a weekend. She appealed at last to her mother-in-law, who was more than willing to give her oldest son a piece of her mind.

"You have a lot to learn about women, my dear," she told him. "Caroline is not as hard to please as you like to make out. She's not asking for much, simply that you give her more of your company. If you give her that, you'll soon find out, as many husbands have, that she doesn't need that much, and you'll have your sacred freedom back. Maybe even too much of it."

"It seems to me that I've already given her all a reasonable woman could want," Donald retorted, angered as always by the maternal jabs. "How many wives have a car and chauffeur at their disposal, a penthouse in town, a villa in the country, servants galore and a princely allowance?"

"Silly boy, silly boy. Don't you realize that she wants you to give her something that it
hurts
you to give? She wants a concession on your part. Something that shows you love her."

"Well, I'm afraid she's going to have to learn to take me as I am."

"Oh, she'll never learn that."

"Didn't she agree to take me for better or for worse?"

"Women knocked out the 'worse' when they got the vote. You're out of date, dear."

"Then it's a pity they ever got it!"

"Don't be a fool, Donald. You'll wreck everything. You know how to run a business. Learn to run a home."