Point of No Return (14 page)

“Yes, Ellie,” Mr. Whitaker said.

“Perhaps Mr. Gray would like a Scotch and soda.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Charles said.

“Well, I'd like one,” Albert said. “Come on, Dad. How about it, Dorothy?”

“Well,” Dorothy said, and her voice was coldly sweet, “I might have one if Mother Whitaker doesn't mind.”

“Of course I don't mind, darling,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “Why on earth should I mind? Mr. Gray and I will have some tea when everything is over. Won't we, Mr. Gray?”

“Why, yes,” Charles said. “That would be very nice.” He saw Dorothy glance at him. She was telling him as plainly as though she had spoken for God's sake to get on with it, and he hoped that he was telling her when he glanced back at her that, for God's sake, he wanted to get on with it, that he didn't like sitting there any more than she did, that he was only present as she was because he had to be.

“Now,” said Mrs. Whitaker, “let's begin at the beginning. Let's begin by having you scold us, Mr. Gray, because we all need a good scolding.”

“About what, Mrs. Whitaker?” Charles asked.

“About the ranch,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “I know how it must look with the world the way it is, but it's really for Albert's sinus. Albert and Dorothy are just back from Arizona. You can tell it by looking at them, can't you?”

Charles looked up at Dorothy and their glances met again.

“Albert,” Dorothy said sweetly, “why don't you show him the photographs? That's what you brought them for, wasn't it?”

“Oh yes,” Albert said. “If you have to be out there, you might as well have some sort of place and not stay at a hotel. We saw this one fifty miles out of Tucson. These are just snapshots but they'll give you an idea, and Dorothy's crazy about it. She needs some sort of place.”

Curiously enough he could feel their uncertainty as Albert handed him the photographs and he knew that they were anxious for his approval. The photographs were mountain and desert views with low buildings of the Spanish hacienda type in the foreground, corrals, patios, galleries, a swimming pool. They represented an exotic life pattern which the Whitakers must have known was entirely out of his experience, but still they wanted him to approve.

“If you really want it,” Charles said gently, “I don't know why you shouldn't have it. Is a hundred thousand the asking price? If you really want it, you'd better give me the agent's name.”

“He does really want it,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “If you could call up the agent it would be sweet of you, Mr. Gray. It would sound better than having Albert do it.”

“Of course,” Charles said, “you'll have to use a little capital, but I don't see why you shouldn't.”

He was opening the brief case, taking out the folders and spreading them on the table. There was no earthly reason why they shouldn't, any more than there was any earthly reason why he should not have bought a three-dollar book if he had really wanted it, or an overcoat if he really needed it, but it hardly mattered as much to them as a new overcoat would have mattered to him. It was not a conventional way of looking at the problem and he wondered what they would have thought if he had presented it to them in this light.

“That's all that bothers me,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “Papa always said never to touch capital. It always was his rule.”

That was what clients like the Whitakers were always saying. No matter what capital might grow to, you must never touch your capital.

“Things are a little different now,” Charles said, “with the tax rate the way it is in the higher brackets.”

He saw that Dorothy was watching him. She was bored and telling him wordlessly to get on with it, but at the same time it looked as though she understood what he would have to go through. It would be necessary to discuss the tax structure again.

“But don't you think,” Albert Whitaker was asking, “that there's going to be a twenty per cent reduction across the board?”

“They're talking about it, but I wouldn't count on it,” Charles said.

“If they're going to reduce taxes,” Albert said, “the only sensible, democratic way would be to reduce them across the board.”

“I know,” Charles said, “but I'm afraid that isn't the way a politician's mind works. But there's no reason why you shouldn't sell some of these short-term governments. They scarcely yield any income at all after taxes.”

He was speaking quickly, easily, just as though their problems were his own, dealing in millions just as though they belonged to him. He explained painstakingly item after item on the list.

“You make everything seem so reasonable, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “I really don't know what we'd do without you.”

The Whitakers were as helpless as the soft Manchu descendants of the hardy Mongols who once sat in their moldering Peking palaces, surrounded by Chinese attendants and estate stewards, before they were overtaken by the Boxer rebellion. Somewhere along the way the Whitakers had lost their ability to cope with any present exigency. Their life had taken from them all the ordinary drives of ambition, hope and fear.

“You could always find someone else, Mrs. Whitaker,” Charles said, “and he might be better.”

“No,” said Mr. Whitaker. “You're the only one who's ever seemed to make Mrs. Whitaker understand.”

“I don't know why you say that,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “I've always been taught to supervise my own affairs, and Mr. Gray knows it.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I'm developing a great respect for your general judgment, Mrs. Whitaker.”

“I do hope they appreciate you at the bank as much as we do,” Mrs. Whitaker said.

“I hope they do, too,” Charles answered, and he picked up some of the papers on the little table in front of him as a hint that he had been there for nearly an hour. He wanted very much to catch the six-thirty.

“Well,” Albert said, “if everything's settled perhaps Dorothy and I had better be pushing off.”

Dorothy rose from the edge of her chair, gracefully, without pushing herself from it.

“It stays light so long,” she said, “that I keep forgetting what time it is,” but Mrs. Whitaker had picked up the pad from her knee.

“I thought you told me that you didn't have any engagement until dinner, dear,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “Now that Mr. Gray's here, I did have a few other questions, but if you want to run along—”

“Oh, no,” Dorothy said. “We're really in no hurry.”

She smiled at Charles—a ghost of a smile—and sat down again and folded her hands carefully in her lap. She did it brightly and cheerfully, without a hint of resignation, but Charles was sure he knew what she was thinking. Oh, God, she was thinking, here it goes again, the same damned questions.

Mrs. Whitaker's mind was always filled with unshaped, broad-gauge thoughts that mingled confusingly with little ones. There was still that matter of trying to settle a little more on Albert and of balancing the gift against inheritance taxes. She knew, as Charles had so often said, that these were really legal problems and she had nothing at all against Mr. Stone who handled them, but she did value Mr. Gray's opinion and her father had always said that two minds were better than one.

It seemed to her that the government, which she had always been taught was created to protect people and the things they owned, was making a deliberate effort to discourage people who had a little something. For some reason, no one seemed to appreciate any longer what people in her position were doing. What would charities do without people in her position, what would the government do without the taxes, what would business do without the money of people in her position? She knew that she had said all these things before, but she did wish that Charles would take a copy of Mr. Stone's last letter to read, and, when he had time, consult with Mr. Stone.

Then there was the question of the place on Long Island. With wages rising the way they were, she wondered if Charles would mind sometime looking over the books that Mr. Stone was keeping, because she knew, although it was not in his sphere, that he would have some suggestion for cutting down. Then she wanted to know what Charles really thought of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and besides there were several other questions, but now tea was coming in and perhaps they had better put most of it over until another day, but while they were having tea she would like to look over the security list with Albert. It was high time that someone gave it attention beside herself because she was tired of having everyone expect her to do everything alone.

“Nothing's been changed since last time,” Charles said.

“I know,” she said, “but I would like to look at it with Albert for a minute if you wouldn't mind waiting, Mr. Gray. Why don't you take your tea and talk with Dorothy?”

Charles rose and picked up his teacup. Dorothy had moved to a window with her highball glass in her hand. She stood there straight and beautiful, smelling faintly of Chanel Five, looking out on Park Avenue, and she smiled cordially at Charles.

“I'm sorry it's taken so long,” Charles said.

“Why don't you take a drink?” she said. “I would.”

“Oh, no,” Charles answered. “I don't believe you would.”

“Well, maybe I wouldn't,” she said, and she smiled again and glanced toward the sofa where Mr. Whitaker and Albert stood looking over Mrs. Whitaker's shoulder.

“I didn't know,” he heard Mrs. Whitaker saying, “that we had so many shares in Homestake Mine.”

Dorothy had turned toward him again. Her beautifully molded, made-up face and the wind-blown look to her hair had an impermeable sort of completeness. It made him nervous that there was so little wrong about her. There was nothing wrong about her delicate hands and her pointed red fingernails, nothing wrong about her silk print dress or her diamond clip or her straight, lithe figure or her nylon stockings, but still there was something baffling.

“What do you do,” she asked, “when you aren't doing this?”

“I go home,” Charles said. “It looks as though I'm going to be late tonight.”

“You make me curious,” she said. “You really do.”

“Why?” Charles asked.

“You make me curious because I can't picture you as doing anything but what I see you doing.”

“Well,” Charles answered, “now you mention it, I've been thinking about the same thing about you.”

Her lips curved in that same faint smile.

“That's because we're both doing what we do very well,” she said, “but it takes a lot of trouble, doesn't it?”

“Well,” Charles answered, “sometimes—yes.”

“Do you ever wonder whether it's worth it?” she asked.

“Yes,” Charles said, “occasionally. I suppose everyone does.”

“That's the question,” she said. “Is it worth it? I'm glad you're curious about me. I didn't know you were.”

“I am,” Charles said, “academically.”

“You know,” she said, “we ought to have a long talk sometime.”

Charles squared his shoulders. He could not imagine how he had become involved in such a conversation and nothing would have been more unwise than having a long talk with Dorothy Whitaker sometime.

“I'm very glad you suggested it,” Charles said. “It's an interesting idea.”

“It would be a lot of fun.” Her smile grew broader. “If we could sit in a bar some afternoon and get quietly tight and talk—”

Charles found that he was laughing. The beauty of it was that it was so impossible that there was nothing at all to worry about.

“You see,” she said, “I'd find out what you used to be and how you got the way you are.”

“It wouldn't be worth it,” Charles said. “I've always been about the same.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “nobody ever is. We can't help working on ourselves.”

He had a momentary picture of her working on herself, sitting before her mirror with her lipstick and her powder base, and brushing back her hair.

“Not on ourselves,” he said. “Everyone works on us. Everyone wears us down.”

“If you're tough enough,” she said, “you don't have to be worn down.”

Charles found himself laughing again.

“All right,” he said, “what did you use to be?”

She shook her head slowly and her smile had gone.

“Nicer,” she said, “quite a good deal nicer.”

“Oh, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker was calling, “could you come over here for a minute?”

“Good-by,” she said. “Good luck.”

“I see you have a question mark in pencil after Smith Chemical,” Mrs. Whitaker was saying.

7

Shadows of the Evening

The six-thirty from the upper level of the Grand Central was a good train, express to Port Chester and never crowded. Though it would get him home late for dinner, he welcomed the opportunity of riding on it because he could be reasonably sure of not having to talk to anyone and it gave him an opportunity to go over all the events of the day, the people he had seen, and what he had done well or badly. As the train moved out of the station into the dark beneath Park Avenue, Charles laid his brief case on the vacant seat beside him and took out the book,
Yankee Persepolis,
that Malcolm Bryant had given him. He laid it on top of his brief case and then looked at the headlines on the front page of the
New York World-Telegram.

The headlines had the same disturbing quality as his personal thoughts for it seemed that nothing was in order that day with himself or with anything else. They were still arguing in Moscow over German reparations, which everyone must have known could never be collected. There were terrorist bombings in Palestine and the news was bad in Turkey and there were student riots in Cairo. It often seemed to him that Cairo students never had time to study. All that foreign world kept slopping over its borders like water spilling untidily out of a shaking dish.