The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (35 page)

 

 

Marge had known her audience. Sensing that if she showed any concern
over the incident, it could have easily caused an histrionic display
from her mother and Liz Marratt . . . to the delight of the other female
guests . . . Marge, by being delightfully gay and chuckling as she repeated
details of what had happened, forced the guests to treat the incident
as something they almost wished had happened to them.

 

 

Liz had found a summer cotton of Barbara's that fitted Marge perfectly.
Yale had put on white flannels and a sport shirt. In a few minutes they
were on their way back to the wedding tent, followed by Liz and Marge's
mother who shook their heads in wonder at the "crazy younger generation."

 

 

"Just get that cat-that-just-swallowed-the-canary look off your face.
Act unconcerned," Marge warned him. "My father is ready to blow his top.
Your father looks none too pleased. There will be hell to pay tomorrow,
but if we keep it funny we've got it licked."

 

 

"Was it funny, Marge?" Yale had asked, wondering if their brief passion
had touched her.

 

 

He remembered Marge had looked at him intently for a minute before she
said, "Yeah, it was funny. Considering I wouldn't have minded being the
one you really wanted to be with, it was real funny." She grinned at his
sad look. "Come on, you dog. That's no way to look. I can name a half
dozen fellows who would have been delighted to change places with you."

 

 

The next night at dinner Pat had only been briefly angry. "I'm sick of
having you make a damned fool of yourself. If Marge Latham hadn't been
a lady, last night could have been a real mess. I suspect that there was
more to the story than she told. I know about the champagne. I know you
were pretty damned drunk. To act that way at your only sister's wedding
was inexcusable. I hope you appreciate that if Al Latham and I hadn't
acted pretty swiftly, pictures of you and Marge, stark naked, would be
circulated in half the newspaper offices in the state." Pat lighted his
after dinner cigar. "It's all right to have fun, boy. This time thank
God you picked one of our kind. I like Marge Latham. Al Latham is one
of the best. It's just damned poor judgment for people with money to
get caught off base like that. If this story gets around Midhaven,
as it probably will, it will put me in a difficult position with my
employees. The same with Al Latham. The man in the street loves that
kind of crap. It lowers you down to his level; even below it. When he
starts sneering at your morals, he thinks he is your equal. You weaken
your position of leadership. A few years from now when you're in a
responsible position with the company, you'll understand what I mean."

 

 

It was useless to disagree with Pat, although several times during the
summer Pat's easy assumption that Harvard Business School and the Marratt
Corporation should be ultimate goals for his son brought Yale to a pitch
of anger he could scarcely restrain.

 

 

 

 

As he thought about it, holding Kathie in his arms, Yale realized that
his real problem had been that he never had any clean cut plans for
himself. For a time his love for Cynthia had helped focus his ideas
and give him perspective. With Cynthia gone it simply hadn't mattered
what he did. So, in a sense, Pat had won by default. If he could have
said, "I want to teach," or "I want to write," if he had insisted with
assurance that he really wanted to do these things, he might have escaped.
But Cynthia, somehow, had constituted the mainspring of his existence.
Over and over again during that summer he had gone over their college
life together, trying to find the key that would give him the answer
to Cynthia's crazy behavior. He had written letters to New Jersey. He
had called her father. But his letters were returned unopened and Dave
Carnell had sounded very constrained and distant. Finally, in a one-sided
telephone conversation he admitted to Yale that he thought it really
was for the best.

 

 

Yale knew that "for the best" meant the same thing Pat Marratt had implied
when he called Marge Latham "one of our kind." The stupidity of it recalled
to Yale the famous phrase about "the east and west." Man certainly had
a wealth of jingoistic expressions to hide his ignorance behind.

 

 

During that summer he dated Marge Latham and worked in the advertising
department of the Marratt Corporation under Bert Walsh. He knew that
Pat and Liz were pleased as they never had been before with him. He
remembered Liz telling Pat that she hoped "this was it." Pat had said,
"When he finishes Harvard Business, I couldn't pick a better girl for him.
A fine family."

 

 

Yale knew that if he had married Marge Latham, the wedding would have
been a small scale merger of monarchies. The powers behind the scenes
in Midhaven would have exchanged their blood, and the Marratts would at
last be linked to a tradition that was several generations secure. But
it hadn't worked out. The numerous times he took Marge out that summer
they usually ended up at the bar at Midhaven Yacht Club or the bar of the
Country Club, or in some "dive" that was popular, for the moment, with her
friends. Marge seemed to have hundreds of friends in the "going steady"
or "just married" category whose prime interest in life was sitting at
bars, or spending the evenings in dimly lighted cocktail lounges where
they drank and smoked and were admired by their male consorts. The
conversation was carried on by innuendoes and gossip that presupposed
a knowledge of the wealthier Midhaven younger group and their latest
escapades; or it dwelt, usually unpleasantly, on the sexual behavior of
some absent friend. Beyond the latest dirty joke, the newest hit song,
the hot dance band, or the grimy newspaper scandal, these "friends"
had little to bind them. Yale found the evenings so dull and sterile
that he could keep himself interested only by getting progressively drunk.

 

 

Yale made no attempt to explain to Pat and Liz why, after a month of dates,
he no longer saw Marge Latham. He knew they wondered . . . that they
considered his lonely behavior odd, but since he spent most of his
evenings in the house, reading, they had nothing they could really
complain about. Liz asked him several times why he didn't go to the Club
or why he didn't call up Bee Middleton or Marge Latham or invite some girl
. . . any girl . . . to some special summer affair at the Club. He told
her that he had lost all interest in girls, and smiled as she looked at
him, bewildered. She said, "Well, I'm sure neither Pat nor I want you
to end up a bachelor, dear."

 

 

She didn't answer when he replied sourly, "Just so long as I don't marry
a Jew, a Chinaman or a Negro, you mean. With those alternatives to choose
from you would probably prefer that I remain a bachelor."

 

 

 

 

Yale gently pulled his arm out from under Kathie. He looked at her sleeping.
Naked . . . her body from ankle to head made a graceful arch. One arm
under her pillow, her mouth open slightly, she breathed heavily, dreaming,
no doubt, of a time and world lost to her forever. He knew he couldn't
sleep tonight. The surprise of seeing Cindar again after nearly five
years was still too close to the surface of his mind. Just five or six
miles from this room she was sleeping in a trailer with Mat Chilling.
If he went back tomorrow might he talk to her alone for a few minutes?
Would be dare? Would the words, "I still love you, Cindar . . ." be so
close to his lips as to make normal conversation impossible? Why couldn't
he, in all this time, have found another woman?

 

 

At Harvard Business School there had been no lack of dates. Girls from
Radcliffe, girls from Wellesley. Saturday evenings with his roommate,
Sam Higgins, at the Latin Quarter or the Cocoanut Grove or out in
South Boston at Blinstrubs, and always, each week -- like a man gone
mad, searching for something impossible to discover -- he would date a
different girl, calling this girl or that girl blindly on recommendations
from Sam or some other student. And when the evening was over he knew
that it was no fault of the particular girl; it was simply that he was
looking for Cynthia again. He was looking for the easy companionship
and love that they had enjoyed. A companionship which had become such
a thorough blending of personalities that it would take years of effort
to achieve it with someone else.

 

 

Yale stood on the tiny balcony window of the hotel room. He waved
good-naturedly to a woman leaning out a hotel window on the other side
of Collins Avenue. The street below was busy with traffic. A continual
flow of tourists, soldiers and people in automobiles in search of
excitement. The balustrade was high enough to conceal his nudity. The warm
night air felt cool and strangely exciting. He wondered at his virility;
restored so quickly. He thought of waking Kathie and then decided against
it. With the two continent years at Harvard Business School followed
by two years as an enlisted man and officer with no sexual experience,
it was little wonder that he was so ready. But not again. Even during the
few moments he had been with Kathie, brief and uninteresting as they were,
he felt that he was somehow separating himself still further from Cynthia.

 

 

 

 

What a sterile four years they had been, he thought grimly. He remembered
the week before he had left Midhaven for Harvard. Pat had called him into
his office, and motioned to a chair beside his desk.

 

 

"I want you to know that this summer, all in all, I have been pleased
with you. You've done a good job working with Bett Walsh. I think you
might have got out and played a little golf instead of hanging around the
house all the time -- but that will come." Pat offered him a cigar which
Yale refused. "I've been thinking about the question of finances. Up to
now, you've earned some money in the summer, not a hell of a lot; for
the rest -- your clothes, your school, I've doled it out when you needed
it. That's all over now. You are twenty-two. I had started this business
when I was twenty-one." Pat picked up a check and slid it across his
mahogany desk. "There you are. That's it. I'm through coddling you.
The next money you get from me will be from my estate. Since I feel damned
healthy I wouldn't sit around waiting, if I were you."

 

 

Yale remembered looking at the check, astonished. It was made out to him
for ten thousand dollars.

 

 

"I've talked with one of the Deans. You can pay all your expenses and live
comfortably at the Business School for twenty-five hundred a year. Many
get through with considerably less. You must have saved at least five
hundred this summer. You can work next summer. When you graduate you'll
have at least five thousand left. Not a fortune, but five thousand more
than I had, when I was your age, and no father to offer me a damned
good job."

 

 

It was so typical of Pat that Yale could only smile. "I thank you for
deciding that you can't own me, forever," he had said. "What bothers
me, though, is now that I have money, what makes you think I'll stay at
Harvard? I could just take off. Have some fun before the war catches up
with the United States. Or I could join the R.A.F. I know a couple of
fellows who have."

 

 

Pat had chuckled. "You know why I think you'll go through Harvard?
Because you know I think that you haven't got the guts. I've got three
H.B.S. graduates right here in the plant. They tell me it's a pretty
tough course. Seventy hours a week. You may be a Phi Beta Kappa. You
may be smart as hell in English and Philosophy but when it comes to
business, you don't know which side is up. You're like those damned
'brain trusters' in Washington. Never earned an honest dime in their
lives, yet they think they can run the country. Someday Roosevelt and his
gang will take the incentive right out of the whole system, and it'll
collapse on their thick heads." Pat smoked his cigar. "You think I'm a
tough bastard, don't you? Well, I've learned that some men you drive by
making them love you; some by making them hate you. Go ahead, it wouldn't
surprise me at all if you flew the coop. But you won't fly very far on
ten thousand. Keep it in mind." The discussion was over. Yale knew that
he was being dismissed as casually as any other Marratt employee.

 

 

"I just want to ask you one thing," Yale remembered saying. "If I were
engaged to Cynthia, would you have given me this check?"

 

 

Pat looked at him coolly and said, "I would never give you carte blanche
to marry a Jew. It's obvious the girl had more sense than you have."

 

 

Yale remembered the day he arrived at Soldiers Field, and met his roommate
Sam Higgins. Sam, the only son of a wealthy New York stockbroker, had
listened in dismay to the introductory lecture given by Dean Donham in
the Baker Library.

 

 

"I don't know," Sam told Yale, as they walked to their room in Gallatin
Hall, "I'm not hot on this idea of slaving seventy hours a week. Only
damned reason I came here was to please my old man. The way he figures
it, I'm only twenty-two. There's absolutely no reason according to him
why I should get into the brokerage racket so young. Learn business. Get
that M.B.A. degree. That's prestige, he says. I told him, bull! Most
of the men who have made a fortune on the street, including him, never
went to college, let alone have a master's degree. In the market it's
horse sense that counts. They can't teach you that." Sam flopped on the
window seat in their room. He stared across the quadrangle at the Charles
River. "Don't expect to find me cooling my ass around here every night.
I'm going to enjoy a little of this Boston 'poontang.'"