Point of No Return (59 page)

“No, sir,” Charles said. “Of course not.”

“I want to say first,” Mr. Lovell began, “that I know what you're going through. I remember when I had to see Jessica's grandfather—even though everyone expected it. Jessica, as long as you're here why don't you get Charles a cigarette?”

“I don't care for one, thanks, sir,” Charles said.

“Well,” Mr. Lovell said, and his voice reminded Charles of that day years ago at the Historical Society. He was marshaling his thoughts, preparing to make a graceful speech. “I've naturally known for some time, Charles, that you and Jessica were interested in each other, but I never believed it would quite come to this. Naturally, I've always known that Jessica would marry someday and I've always hoped—well, of course I'm prejudiced. This is no reflection on you, Charles. I know how well you've done and I can see your romantic side, through Jessica's eyes, and I can see how Jessica must seem to you. At least you and I have that in common. You and I love Jessie, each in our own way.”

He stopped again and took a sip of water, like a speaker on a platform.

“You young fellows, Charles,” Mr. Lovell went on, and his voice was mild and playful, “always think we old dodos don't see things from your point of view, but I do know Jessie, perhaps a little better than you do. Now you say you want to marry Jessie. How long have you wanted to marry her?”

“For quite a while,” Charles said. “I guess for about a year now.”

“And a year is quite a while,” Mr. Lovell said gently, “when one is—how old are you now, Charles?”

“Twenty-five, sir,” Charles said.

“Well, well,” Mr. Lovell said. “You've done very well, and I respect you for it, Charles, but we must both think of Jessie.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles answered.

“Now don't interrupt us, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said. “To me Jessie is one thing, Charles, and to you undoubtedly quite another. You mustn't blame me for wanting Jessie to have everything she's been used to. She wouldn't be the same in another setting. Now we'll have to think what you can do for Jessie, Charles. I know you're doing well at Rush & Company but how much are you earning there? You don't mind my asking, do you?”

“No, sir,” Charles said. “Sixty dollars a week.”

“Well, well,” Mr. Lovell said. “That's splendid, but you can see, Charles, that a girl like Jessie—”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I know.”

Mr. Lovell looked at him triumphantly but kindly.

“Now, Charles,” he said, “you know that wouldn't be enough for Jessie. It's hardly a time to talk about marrying Jessie, really, is it? Let's leave it the way you began. You want to marry Jessica. Let's leave it there.”

“I have fifty thousand dollars besides that,” Charles said, “in government bonds.”

It sounded strangely primitive, as though he were buying Jessica, and Mr. Lovell suddenly looked blank. There was no longer any kindliness in his glance.

“Well,” Mr. Lovell said, “well. Did your father give it to you?”

“No, sir,” Charles said.

“Did you make it on the market, Charles?”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said.

“I can't say I like that,” Mr. Lovell said.

“I don't either,” Charles answered, “but I wanted to marry Jessica.”

“Money is one thing,” Mr. Lovell said, “and stock-market money is another.”

“There may be a difference,” Charles said, “but as long as you don't lose it, it's money.”

“It's not the same,” Mr. Lovell said, “as inherited money.”

Charles did not feel impatient. It was a pathetic intellectual quibble.

“Everybody has to start sometime,” Charles said. “I suppose your family did once, Mr. Lovell.”

“Father,” Jessica said, “it really doesn't make any difference, does it?”

“Jessie”—there was a new edge on Mr. Lovell's voice—“please be quiet.”

“Unless you have some other reason, sir …?” Charles began. Mr. Lovell sat quietly without answering.

“Father,” Jessica said, “we had to tell you, didn't we?”

“Oh, be quiet, Jessica,” Mr. Lovell said. “If I had thought there was any chance of this happening … If things have gone this far, I suppose—” Mr. Lovell pushed himself slowly out of his chair. “I can't say that I like this, Charles. I don't like being presented with an accomplished fact.”

“Oh, Father,” Jessica said, “you sound as if Charley and I—Father, please!”

“I'm sure I don't know how I sound,” Mr. Lovell said, “but I expected a rational discussion and instead it's an accomplished fact. Very well, you can be engaged, but I don't want any public announcement until we get to know each other better. And now I'm feeling very tired. Good night, Charles. Good night, Jessie, dear.”

“Oh, Father,” Jessica said, and she threw her arms around him. “You know you'll get used to it in time.”

It was hard to place events in order after all that time. They kept standing out irrationally by themselves, like sentences removed from the context of a carefully written page, but it was only a short time after this conversation that Jessica had shown him all through the Lovell house. It was a Saturday afternoon and Mr. Lovell must have been away playing golf at the Shore Club, as he usually did on Saturdays, and Miss Lovell had been out paying calls on Johnson Street. It was one of those days in Clyde when you wished the furnace were still going but felt it self-indulgent to have a fire in the cellar because it was after the first of May. The house was a little damp and the dampness brought out those smells one always associated with old Clyde houses, the scent of old leather, old carpets and of dust that could never entirely be swept away.

“It's awfully funny,” Jessica said. “I don't believe you've ever seen the house. I don't believe you've ever been upstairs.”

It struck him as strange, too, knowing Jessica so well, that he had only seen the front hall, with the portraits and the dusky mirror, and the little parlor with the Aubusson carpet which had been made for it in France, and the wallpaper room and the dining room with its highly waxed English table.

“You know all the rest of me,” she said, “and the house is a part of me.”

They walked up the broad staircase hand in hand to the landing and from there, where the stairs divided, to the upper hall, lighted by its two beautiful arched windows. The tall clock, which he had heard tick and strike the hour but which he had never seen, was standing near the landing and its ticking only emphasized the cool silence. The bedrooms were just as they should have been, each with its four-poster and its canopy, each with its bureau or its highboy. Jessica's room was the smallest, next to Mr. Lovell's large front room. She had slept in it as long as she could remember and her father's feelings were always hurt when she wanted to move the furniture because her mother had arranged the room herself, even down to the china dogs on the mantel above the little fireplace. Its windows, each with a window seat, looked over the formal garden where the tulips were already pushing up through the black earth of the box-bordered bed.

It was an enormous house, much too large for the Lovells now. No one occupied the third floor any longer, but all the rooms were still furnished as they had been when there were more Lovells. Finally there was the storeroom, containing generations of trunks and hatboxes. A narrow flight of unpainted pine stairs, redolent of pitch and dried by hundreds of summers, led upwards from the storeroom to the cupola. The cupola, enclosed by arched windows with old, uneven panes of glass, rose above the slate roof and above the elaborate railing of the widow's walk and looked across the town to the river.

As he stood there holding Jessica's hand, a little out of breath because they had hurried up the stairs, it seemed to him that they had traveled a long way together and that together they had reached a height where nothing could touch them. The leaves of the elms were still that soft, yellowish green and the trees rose plumelike above the roofs and the yards of the other houses. It was a dull day, because of the east wind, and the river had a leaden color and the sea was misty.

“There's your house,” she said.

He could see the line of Spruce Street beneath them and he could see a corner of the house through the trees.

“There's the Meaders' yard,” he said, and then they were in each other's arms. They were above everything and all alone.

“I like it here,” he told her. “You and I are all that matter here.”

They did not stay long because it was cold and drafty and they never went there again; yet whenever he thought of that spring and summer when he was engaged to Jessica and ever afterwards when he smelled seasoned pine, he was there in the cupola again, above the new leaves of the elms with Jessica, safe from what Mr. Lovell thought and safe from what other people were thinking and saying. They should have run away and got married, but neither of them could have thought seriously of such a thing. There seemed to be so much time that summer and everything seemed settled, and so it was, until the autumn, and so it should have been and might have been.

Mr. Lovell said that night in the library that it was still a tentative matter and that no one should be told except immediate members of the family. He supposed that Charles should tell his mother, his father, and his sister, but there was no reason to tell the Marchbys yet. He did not want any family jubilation, because there was no immediate reason for it. It was an ordeal for him, because Jessica was his only daughter and all he had in the world. He would face the ordeal, but at least he could expect reasonable consideration. There would be no engagement teas, no rounds of calling, and no other jubilation until matters were more definitely resolved than they were at present. Marriage, in case Charles did not know it, and Jessie too, was a serious matter. When two people were infatuated—he knew it was a graceless word, but one which he really thought described the situation—they could not be said to know each other or the complications of each other's backgrounds. Any engagement was a severe emotional strain and this whole affair's coming so suddenly was more of a strain on him than it was on Charles. He had not asked for it or expected it, but now they must share this period of strain together as best they could. They must bear and forbear and it was no time for jubilation.

Nevertheless, it seemed to Charles that there was an undercurrent of illicit jubilation. When he and Jessica had told Miss Georgianna, after Mr. Lovell had gone to bed that evening, she did not need a glass of water. Instead, she kissed Jessica and then Charles, and she told Charles that he must call her Aunt Georgianna now. She sounded like his own Aunt Jane when she told Jessica that she could have the silver tea set.

“And what did Laurence say when you told him?” she asked.

“It was dreadful,” Jessica said, “but he was awfully sweet. Wasn't he sweet about it, Charley?”

But Miss Lovell said of course he was not sweet about it. That would be more than could be expected of him.

“You'll have to learn to put up with him, Charley. You'll get used to him in time. And now you'd better run along home. Jessica must be tired.”

Jessica did look pale and tired, but she told him in the hall that she was very happy. She never knew that she had loved him so much. It was dreadful knowing what the two people she loved most in the world must have been going through.

“I feel just as though I had been cut in two, darling,” she said, “and now I'm growing together again. Everything will be better now. You wait and see. Father didn't hurt your feelings, did he?”

There was a strange egocentric quality about being in love that created an acute perception but clouded any rational judgment. He was profoundly touched that she had been able to see that he might have been hurt. She was the gentlest, kindest, most understanding person in the world.

“He can't hurt me,” he said, “as long as you understand.”

“Oh, darling,” she whispered, “I do understand. More than you think, so much more than you think.”

It was past the family's bedtime when he left the car at Rowell's Garage, but even so they were all still sitting in the parlor. He knew at once from the quick, alert way they all turned toward him that they had been waiting for him.

“Charley dear,” his mother said, “aren't you going to tell us what happened?”

“Charley,” his father asked, before there was any time to answer, “did you see Laurence Lovell?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I saw him.”

“Charley.” His mother looked hurt. “Aren't you going to tell us what he said?”

All at once he was very glad they were all there waiting, because they were on his side and they would be no matter what.

“All right,” he said. “I'm engaged to Jessica, but I'm only to tell you. It isn't to be announced yet.”

It sounded as dry as dust when he told it but he never forgot how happy they looked. Dorothea hugged him, a very unusual thing for her to do, and his mother began to cry, but it was only, she said, because she was so happy, and his father shook hands with him.

“Oh, dear me,” he said, “I wish I'd seen Laurence Lovell.”

“Charley”—Dorothea hugged him again—“tell us what he said.”

Suddenly he was very glad to tell them everything.

“I don't think he liked it much,” he began. “First he asked Jessica to get him a glass of water.”

“Oh, dear me,” John Gray said. “A glass of water.”

“I don't think he thought it was serious at first,” Charles went on, “until we began talking about money.”

He had never told them about his brokerage account and they were asking him why he had been so secretive and he found it hard to explain. He could only say there were some things he did not like to talk about, but there it was. He and Jessica were engaged, although it was not to be announced.