Point of No Return (46 page)

“Hello,” he said. “Where did you drop from?”

“Don't let me interrupt your train of thought, Moulton,” John Gray answered. “This is my son Charles.”

“He looks the way you used to,” Mr. Rush said.

“But he isn't like me,” John Gray said. “Charley wants to get on.”

“What class were you in?” Mr. Rush asked Charles.

John Gray sighed and spoke before Charles could answer.

“My sister Jane wanted him to go to Dartmouth. Don't hold it against him, Moulton. It's a small place but we love it.”

“Does he want a job?” Mr. Rush said.

“Why, Moulton,” John Gray answered, “why do you think we're here?”

Mr. Rush pulled a thick gold watch from his waistcoat pocket.

“It's five minutes after ten,” he said. “Why don't you go out and see the opening, Johnny?”

After John Gray had left, Mr. Rush looked at Charles for a moment without speaking.

“Your father is a remarkable man,” Mr. Rush said.

“Yes, sir,” Charles said, “I suppose he is.”

Mr. Rush stood up.

“Well, I suppose I'd better introduce you to Mr. Stoker. He runs our bond department.”

They walked down the partners' row to Mr. Stoker's office. Mr. Stoker was younger, a barrel-chested man who looked like a football coach. In fact Charles learned later that Lawrence Stoker had once been a line coach for Harvard.

“Lawrence,” Mr. Rush said, “this is Charles Gray. He comes from Dartmouth but I'd like you to find something for him to do.”

It astonished Charles that Mr. Rush had not asked him a single question, but later when he knew the office better he approved of that method. Mr. Rush had known who he was and had passed on his personal appearance and this was about all that was necessary. As in Victorian England younger sons once rushed to join the Church and the army, so in those days on America's eastern seaboard they crowded into reputable investment houses. There were so many nice young men in those days that they were expendable material. Their energy and resilience could be used to the limit until almost inevitable disillusion made it evaporate. Not one in twenty of these young men, Charles heard Mr. Rush say later, ever developed a permanent value. They entered the Boston offices, in the late twenties, only to disappear eventually no one knew where. It was not the policy of Rush & Company to expend much time on their education. It was a matter of sink or swim, and there were always lots more waiting.

That was how he started with E. P. Rush & Company and though he sometimes wondered what would have happened to him if he had gone to sea or into publishing or if a little later he had gone with Malcolm Bryant to the Orinoco, he found the order and the relentless flow of forces at E. P. Rush & Company satisfying and congenial. Besides, as his father had said, he wanted to get on. He wanted to wear the right clothes and do the right things. He wanted to do well as quickly as he could, because he was in love with Jessica Lovell.

He had been a very nice boy, that day when he went up to Boston, devoid of disillusion, indoctrinated in all the right creeds. He had believed everything that Mr. Stoker told him. He was entering the finest investment house in Boston, a firm whose backing meant that any issue in which it participated was as sound as a nut. Everybody who worked for E. P. Rush was hand-picked. It was like being in a club to be in Mr. Stoker's crowd. Everyone had a chance to earn his letter. E. P. Rush & Company was a gentlemen's firm, with gentlemen's ethics. There was money enough in the firm to build an office that would look like an Italian palace, but E. P. Rush did not want the type of customer who was attracted by upholstery. Its partners were broad-gauge public-spirited men who were there not for window dressing but because they understood the investment business and were personally interested in most of the companies whose securities they handled. In fact it was all one big happy family and now Charles was in the family. Charles already realized that it might be just as well if he did not talk much about Dartmouth.

When Charles returned to Clyde at six o'clock, his manner was already changing. He was in the old-line house of E. P. Rush & Company and someday he would be a partner. The prospect was a long way off but already its charm was working. If he had not been in E. P. Rush he would not have called up Jessica Lovell that evening after supper. As a matter of fact, he might not have telephoned her if the family had not been so pleased.

“The funny thing about it was,” his father said, “that I've never known Moulton Rush very well, Esther. It was Charles who did it. Moulton just took one look at him.”

Charles saw his mother take one look at him too, a proud, possessive look.

“I don't see how Charles ever got in it,” Dorothea said.

“Through accident, Dorothea,” Charles told her. “They weren't thinking what they were doing.”

“Well, see you stay in it,” Dorothea said. “At least they must think he's honest, Mother,” but she said it kindly. She even said it as though she were proud of him.

“I think I'll go over to see Jessica,” he said. He was fully aware, from the pause at the supper table, that this was the same as announcing to the family, as it was said in Clyde, that he was attentive to Jessica Lovell.

“Why, Charley,” his mother said, “I think that would be very nice, but don't stay too late.”

Of course they were all listening when he went into the hall to telephone—but then he was in E. P. Rush & Company.

“Why, Charley,” Jessica said over the telephone. “Of course I'm not doing anything. We'd love to see you.” He was disturbed by the coolness of her voice until he remembered that the Lovells' telephone, too, was in the hall.

It was eight o'clock though it was still light and all of Johnson Street was bathed in a misty, mysterious afterglow that gave the Lovells' house a remote look, but a sense of never having been there before vanished when Jessica opened the front door herself. Her silk afternoon dress was a grayish-green color very much like the color of the new leaves in the fading light. The hall in back of her was dark and the light from the open door of the wallpaper room made it hard to see her face. She clasped his hand very tightly, and her own hand felt cold.

“I've been wondering where you've been,” she said. “We're all in the wallpaper room.” He walked slowly in behind her and shook hands with Miss Lovell and Mr. Lovell.

“We've been reading
Jane Eyre,
” Miss Lovell said. “That is, I've been reading it. Do you like
Jane Eyre,
Charles?”

“How do you do, Charles?” Mr. Lovell said, getting up from the sofa.

“Please don't get up, sir,” Charles said. “I didn't mean to interrupt you.”

“It's just as well you did,” Mr. Lovell said. “
Jane Eyre
is the most improbable book I know and, at the same time, the truest.”

Charles wished he could remember more about the Bronte sisters.

“How's your Aunt Jane, Charles?” Miss Lovell asked.

“I'm afraid she hasn't been so well lately,” Charles answered.

“Let me see”—Mr. Lovell was speaking—“I don't think I've set eyes on you, Charles, since the Players were finished. How is everything going at Wright-Sherwin?”

“I'm leaving there at the end of next week, sir.” Charles tried to speak as though he were speaking about the Bronte sisters.

“Oh,” Mr. Lovell said, “I'm sorry. Was anything the matter?”

“No, nothing was the matter,” Charles answered. “Next week I'm starting work in Boston at E. P. Rush & Company.”

A change had come over Mr. Lovell. He was looking at Charles for the first time as though he were not a Clyde boy who had come to call.

“Why, Charles,” he said, “how did you ever get into E. P. Rush?”

“Father knows Mr. Rush,” Charles said.

“I didn't know John knew Mr. Rush.”

“Yes,” Charles said, “he knows him.”

Mr. Lovell still looked at Charles as though he had heard something incredible.

“Why, that's splendid,” he said. “Well, well. Congratulations.”

Charles wanted to look again at Jessica but he restrained himself, and then Miss Lovell spoke quickly.

“Charley, I'm awfully glad for you,” she said. He always liked Miss Lovell after that.

“E. P. Rush & Company.” Mr. Lovell was speaking again. “Well, well, well. If you hear of anything interesting in the way of securities, Charles, be sure you let me know.”

“Jessica,” Miss Lovell said, “why don't you show Charles the tulips in the garden? It's still light enough.”

“It's getting damp tonight,” Mr. Lovell said. “Jessica's the only girl I have and I don't want her catching cold. Well, just walk around the garden, Jessica, and then come back.”

When they were opening the door at the end of the hall, Charles could still hear Miss Lovell's voice.

“Laurence,” he heard her say, “try not to be so ridiculous.”

The tulips made a beautiful show in the beds on the lower terrace and above them on the second terrace the peonies were just ready to bloom. Though there was no strong scent of flowers, the air was filled with that strange repressed vigor of a New England spring.

“I can't stay out long,” Jessica said. “You understand, don't you, dear?” She was walking quickly up the gravel path, climbing up the steps to the third terrace. “Father hates seeing me grow up. He always has.” She sounded as though she were talking to an imaginary person, much as Charles in his thoughts had often spoken to her. “I wish I weren't the only thing he had.”

Her coat was over her shoulders with its sleeves hanging loose, for she had not bothered to put her arms through it before she left the house. Her bare head and the loose sleeves and the way she talked made him think of Jane Eyre, hurrying away from something in the house, afraid that it might follow her or afraid that it might call her back.

The third terrace, a level, close-cropped lawn called the bowling green, was shut off from all the rest of the garden by a high, carefully clipped spruce hedge and she seemed uncertain that he was beside her until they were in that dusky green enclosure.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered, “I've missed you so,” and her coat slipped off her shoulders. She said she had missed him until she could not believe any of it.

“I've missed you, too,” he said. “We've got to see each other, Jessica.” It did not seem possible that they could be making love in that formal garden.

“Yes,” she said, “we've got to. Everything's going to be all right, isn't it?”

“Of course,” he said. “Everything's all right.”

“Darling,” she said, “I love you so that everything goes to pieces.”

He kissed her without answering.

“I'm so proud of you,” she said. “You're so honest and you never are afraid, are you?”

“What's there to be afraid of?” Charles asked.

“Oh,” she said, and she turned her head away, “of something happening to spoil it all. I keep waking up in the night and thinking something's happened.” She shook her head very quickly. “Darling, wasn't Aunt Georgianna sweet? She wanted us to see the tulips.”

“Have you told her anything?” Charles asked. She shook her head quickly.

“Not exactly. I've talked about you. I have to talk about you, dear, and there's no one else.”

“Have you told your father anything?”

“Of course not,” she said. “That's a silly question. Darling, you can see, can't you? It's got to come over him by degrees. We'd better be going back now.”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I suppose we had,” and he wrapped her coat around her.

“And now you're in Boston we can see each other there sometimes, too. Darling, everything's so wonderful. I've got to forget it's so wonderful.” She seemed to be forgetting already as they walked back. “Look how black the box border looks. None of it was winterkilled.”

She only said one thing more before they reached the house. She said it just as she put her hand on the heavy brass latch of the outside door.

“We've got to keep believing.”

Nothing else mattered if you could keep believing, and nothing was left if you stopped.

Charles never considered that his or Jessica's manner, aside from all appearances, might indicate the probability of what had happened in the garden because they took great pains to walk into the room decorously, far apart and entirely unconcerned with each other.

“Hello,” Mr. Lovell said. “So you're back.”

“You were right,” Jessica said, and she bent down and kissed his high forehead. “It was very cold out there. You're always right.”

“Charles,” Miss Lovell said, “would you mind getting my knitting? It's on the table.”

“Patrick's doing pretty well with the garden,” Mr. Lovell said. “None of the box border was winterkilled.”

“I suppose it's pretty far north for box, sir,” Charles said, and Mr. Lovell gave him a searching look.

“Virginia's the place for box, Virginia and England. Were you ever in Virginia, Charles?”

“No, sir,” Charles said.

“You must go someday … Jessie”—Mr. Lovell smiled at her—“I've just been thinking you and I might go abroad again this summer.”

“This summer?” Jessica repeated.

“I was just speaking of it to Aunt Georgianna,” Mr. Lovell said. “Why, don't you like the idea, Jessica?”

There was nothing for Charles to do but to listen. Jessica sat with her hands carefully folded.

“I thought you wanted me to get used to Clyde,” she said, “and now I'm getting used to it you want to go away.”

“Now, Jessie”—Mr. Lovell laughed—“Clyde's always an easy place to come back to and don't look so upset. We couldn't possibly leave till toward the end of June. I'll want to go to Class Day and there are all sorts of odds and ends I have to attend to. I think it would do us a lot of good to get a change.”