Read Online Manhattan Monologues by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online

could always outvote him if necessary and perfectly willing that he should get the commissions that I would gladly renounce.
    Was there hidden envy of or hostility to Harry in my making up for his depredations? Was it intensified by our parents' stubborn refusal to see in what I did for them anything more than my duty, while the smallest favor conveyed by Harry was greeted with hugs? At any rate I must have been sorely tried.
    Harry's last venture was the waxwork museum, with which he hoped to rival Madame Tussaud's in London. But it was from the beginning a small and somewhat tawdry affair, based on one floor of a loft building in Chelsea with dioramas of scenes from New York City history, financed insufficiently by a rich army friend. (His pre-war pals were disillusioned, at least with his businesses.) I had put up a small sum and vowed that was all.
    World War II was in its closing weeks, and Harry, who had served as lieutenant colonel on MacArthur's staff in Australia but had been released from duty after a mild heart attack, had had a year to develop his new project. I found Mother, who had welcomed old age as an overdue admirer, gaunt, bent over and beshawled before the big pasteboard on which she had affixed the newspaper clippings of the gallant war doings of younger friends and relations around a large central photograph of Harry receiving his honorable discharge from the hands of the great liberator of the Philippines. The contrast between the pictured uniforms and my habitual black made me feel like a minor minister of state having a wartime conference with his august sovereign. I almost wondered whether I should take a seat before I was bidden.
    "Will Harry have a waxwork of General MacArthur in his museum?" I asked, as little sarcastically as I could.
    "Why not?" Mother demanded indignantly, picking up at once such sarcasm as appeared. "There might be a wonderful one of his wading ashore on the beach of Leyte. It ill becomes those who have stayed at home to sneer, Charles."
    "Nor had I any intention of doing so, Mother. But I suppose it wasn't to discuss subjects for Harry's dioramas that you sent for me."
    "Not at all. I am afraid that Harry is going to need a substantial sum of money to save his museum from bankruptcy."
    "And how can he expect to raise that? No bank will look at him, as we know, and even this latest of his army friends must have seen the writing on the wall."
    "You're very harsh on the subject of your brother's finances, Charles. Not everyone has had the good fortune that has favored you. And I wonder that it doesn't occur to you that those men who were exempted from military duty in two world wars may have incurred the obligation to come to the aid of those who served their country in the battlefield."
    I could almost admire my intrepid parent for scorning to be anything but undiplomatic. "It was not my fault that the army rejected me. And I have always been ready to assist Harry in his personal needs, though not in his business enterprises, except for a token contribution. If Harry needs money to pay his household bills, he knows he can send them to me. I never give him cash, because I know what he'll do with it."
    "But that's so insulting, Charles!"
    "It's based on painful experience. Anyway, to anticipate your request, I am not prepared to give him a cent for his waxworks."
    "I am not asking you to do that," Mother retorted with considerable hauteur. "I know you too well, Charles. What I am suggesting—or rather what I am requesting—is that you advance Harry the hundred thousand dollars that he needs from my trust."
    I bit my lip in surprise. Such a sum was a small fortune in 1945. "It can't be done. It's out of the question."
    "What do you mean, it can't be done?"
    "Correction. I mean it won't be done."
    "Does the trust deed not give the trustees the power to invade principal?"
    "For your benefit. Not for Harry's."
    "But you wouldn't be giving the money to Harry! You'd be giving it