Point of No Return (66 page)

He was tired of seeing people. They were continually calling at Spruce Street and whenever he was not talking to Mr. Blashfield his mother was sending word for him to come downstairs and meet them. She had never known how many friends they had and how kind they all could be. Everyone had been to call except the Lovells, but then Jessica and Mr. Lovell were out of town.

He was tired of seeing people. They were always seeking a private word with him in the house, and they stopped him on the street whenever he went outdoors. They were very kind but they seemed to be saying something they had learned by rote—and he suspected that they were covertly scrutinizing him, seeking from him an answer to a question they did not care to ask. Yes, it was very sudden, he would reply. Yes, his father had been very well, but the crash had been too great a shock. At any rate there was no sign of financial embarrassment for anyone to see. The bills were being paid and twice he deliberately had Willie Stevens drive him in the Cadillac to Boston, and there was the John Gray Fund at the library. He was glad that his mother had thought of it. By the time the Lovells were back, he had been through so much that Mr. Lovell was only another problem—at least he always hoped that he had given Mr. Lovell that impression.

Charles and his mother and Dorothea and Elbridge were in the parlor discussing everything in an aimless way, saying the same things over and over—it was like a clock running down from lack of winding—when Axel had knocked on the door and had said that Mr. Lovell wished to speak to Mr. Charles on the telephone. Axel, in his black alpaca coat, was a false note in the house. He had never really belonged in it, but he had done very well. No doubt he wanted a good reference and was hoping for a financial present.

“Do you mean Miss Lovell?” Charles asked.

No, it was Mr. Lovell, and the telephone was still in the hall below the stairs.

“Good evening, Charles,” Mr. Lovell said.

“Good evening, Mr. Lovell,” Charles answered. “When did you and Jessica get back?”

“This afternoon,” Mr. Lovell said. “I wonder if you would mind coming over for a little while, Charles—that is if you're not too busy.”

Of course he was not too busy and he had thought that Jessica would surely be at the door to meet him but instead Mr. Lovell opened it himself. The house was very still, but he was used lately to portentous stilted silence.

“Good evening, Charles,” Mr. Lovell said. “Shall we go into the library? There's a fire there.”

“Where's Jessica?” Charles asked.

“Upstairs,” Mr. Lovell said, “but she'll be down in a few minutes. Charles, I haven't had the opportunity to tell you how sorry I am for you and for everything.”

Mr. Lovell seemed relieved as he always did when he reached the reassurance of his library.

“Have a comfortable chair, Charles,” he said. “Take my chair, over by the lamp,”

Charles did not sit down, as Mr. Lovell asked him, because as soon as they were in the library he had some premonition of what Mr. Lovell was about to say and he could feel some force within himself gathering to meet an immediate shock.

“Don't you really want to sit down, Charles?” Mr. Lovell said.

“No, thank you,” he answered. “I've been sitting down all day.”

“I don't exactly know how to begin,” Mr. Lovell said, and it occurred to Charles that Mr. Lovell usually did not know how to begin, “but I think that frankness has been the basis of our”—he paused, groping for a word—“our previous relationship, don't you?”

“You've been frank, sir,” Charles said. “Maybe I should have been franker myself.” He was always glad that he said it in just that way.

“Now, Charles,” Mr. Lovell went on. “Nothing that I have to say, please believe me, reflects on you personally. You have behaved magnificently. Everyone is saying so. Everyone has more than sympathy for you. They have respect.”

It was a handsome speech. He must have been thinking of it and thinking of it, and now he was waiting for some adequate and grateful reaction, and Charles was always satisfied with what he answered.

“Perhaps you'd better tell me what you have on your mind, Mr. Lovell,” he said. He would never have spoken in such a way if it had not been for what he had been through.

“Now, Charles,” Mr. Lovell said, “I want to be kind, but I wish I did not have to be cruel to be kind.” Mr. Lovell sighed. He was having a very unpleasant time, but then this was true of both of them.

“Jessica told me what you have done, Charles, toward settling your father's affairs. It was what a generous and dutiful son should have done, and I respect you for it, but, Charles, there's a change, an unavoidable change, in the whole situation, and I am not referring to its financial aspects. I wish I didn't have to be so frank.” Mr. Lovell cleared his throat. “I don't mean there's anything verging on, well, scandal, but there's a shadow, Charles. In a way, there will always be a shadow of doubt as to whether something was not concealed.”

Charles did not answer. He never would be able to allay that doubt. There was always a shadow but it never would have been as deep if the Lovells had stood behind him.

“I've thought this over carefully, Charles. I've been over it thoroughly with Jessica,” Mr. Lovell was saying. “We've been most unhappy. It's an impossible situation, Charles. We must end it. It can't go on.”

He had been ready for it but he was thinking that Jessica should have been the one to tell him, not Mr. Lovell.

“Jessica,” he began, and his voice was hoarse and he hated to have Mr. Lovell see him so upset. “Does Jessica want it this way?”

“Jessica's very unhappy,” Mr. Lovell said, “but I wouldn't have spoken to you if she did not want it this way. It's only fair for her to tell you so herself, fair for both of us. If you'll wait a moment I'll get Jessica.”

He must have stood alone in the library for a minute or two but he was not conscious of any period of waiting until he saw Jessica in the open doorway with Mr. Lovell just behind her.

“Oh, Charley,” she said. “Charley.” Her voice shook him because she seemed to be crying out to him as though she were hurt.

“Don't cry, Jessie dear—” Mr. Lovell had his arm around her—“it's only fair to tell Charles how you feel yourself.”

He had told her not to cry but she was crying.

“Oh, Charley,” she said, “I'm so ashamed of myself. I'm not fit to marry anyone.”

“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said very gently. “Just control yourself for a minute and tell Charles and then it will be over, Jessie dear.”

He seemed to have been waiting for a very long time before she spoke.

“Charley, darling,” she said, “I can't go on. I can't marry you with both of you feeling the way you do.”

Of course, it was the final truth and it had hung between them all the time. She was almost asking for forgiveness, and she was hurt as much as he was. He wanted to tell her not to cry, he wanted to quiet her with her head on his shoulder. He wanted to tell her not to bother to explain, but she was still speaking through her sobs.

“I'm so, so torn, Charley,” she was saying. Though her father's arm was still around her, she was talking as though he were not there at all. “You see, don't you, that he's given up everything for me. I have to do what he thinks best.” He wished that she would stop and her tears did stop her for a moment.

“Now, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said, “it's all right. It's all over, Jessie dear”; but it was not quite all over.

“Oh, Charley,” Jessica sobbed, “it doesn't mean I don't love you. I do still love you.”

It was long ago, but nothing that had happened since had ever put it in clear perspective. There was too much of him and Jessica in those next few seconds; they were always vibrant and alive with their own peculiar triumph and their pain, and, for just a moment, he believed she always would still love him. It was like that time that spring when they had spoken the words that had made everything different. Nothing else mattered, not Mr. Lovell or Johnson Street or Spruce Street or the shadow of John Gray's death. It was himself and Jessica, and that was all, and never mind the rest.

“Jessica,” he said, “I love you too, and that's all there is to it, isn't it?” Although he did not expect an immediate answer, he waited and he did not go on until he was conscious of the silence. “Jessica … do you remember what you said one night … if I saw this happening to you … you wanted me to tell you?” At least this was what he always thought he said, but words had no great value as they stood there facing each other.

“Charley,” she said. “Oh, Charley.”

She called his name across the space that divided them and he always remembered the happiness and the relief in her voice. She pushed herself away from Mr. Lovell, gently but definitely, and moved toward him. He was always sure that if they had so much as touched each other they would never have left each other, and he was always sure that Mr. Lovell, and Jessica too, knew this as well. As she stretched out her arms to reach him he had a glimpse of Mr. Lovell's face, startled and stricken, and their hands never touched because Mr. Lovell made a gasping, strangled sound and Jessica turned when she heard it.

“Oh,” Mr. Lovell said. “Oh.” His face was alarmingly white. He took two wavering steps and slumped brokenly into a chair and covered his face with his hands. Jessica fell on her knees and put her arms around him.

“Father,” she asked, “oh, Father, what is it?” and Mr. Lovell straightened himself and reached unsteadily for her hand.

“It's nothing, Jessie dear,” he said. “I'll be all right in just a minute, my darling. I'm sorry to make such an undignified exhibition of myself. If you want it this way, my dearest, please forget about me, please.”

Mr. Lovell's voice was gentle and controlled and he looked over Jessica's shoulder at Charles.

“Please forgive me, Charles, and please, my dearest dear,” he said again, “don't think about me if you want it this way.”

Then Jessica, still kneeling by Mr. Lovell's chair, looked up at Charles too and her voice was shaken with tears.

“Oh, Charley, I can't … Don't you see I can't?… I can't bear it any more.”

It was natural and yet it was unnatural. To Charles there was something faintly repellent in that conjugal scene. The memory of it was always mingled with old reflexes of pain. They used to say in Clyde that a cat had nine lives and that a snake would live till sundown, but all at once Charles did not want to go on with that scene. As long as he lived he did not ever want to see Jessica or Mr. Lovell again.

“That's all right, Jessica,” he said. “Please don't cry.” There should have been something more for him to say, some sort of farewell speech, but he could not think of any. “Well, I'd better be going now.”

This was what he had always said in the old days, when he first came to call on Jessica, and now he never even wanted to see the Lovell house again. He knew at last that Jessica could never be separated from it and in some vague way he wanted her to be sorry and to show her how wrong she was. He had no desire to stay in Clyde any longer, and perhaps the main reason why he went to New York was because he wanted Jessica to be sorry.

There were, of course, other reasons, all combining into an urge or drive the force of which he could not combat. The shadow of Clyde must have always lain behind his subsequent actions. He would never have had such a strong desire to get ahead or to make the necessary sacrifices if it had not been for his father and the Lovells. There was a negative force, a combined revelation and above all humiliation that needed to be surmounted. He must have always been seeking to assuage the pain that those few last weeks in Clyde gave him.

“It was all very good for you,” Nancy said once. “It's made you into a very nice guy. Maybe it's made you too nice.”

He told her this was not so. In many ways he was self-centered and perhaps they had both tried too hard to get ahead, though Nancy did not think so.

“You see, I'm like the Old Man,” he said. “I'm just trying to beat the system in a different way.”

“Everybody's trying to beat some sort of system,” Nancy said, “but most people don't know it. It's nice that you and I know it and that we don't fool ourselves. It makes everything all right.”

She had always loved that effort to beat the system because she possessed a quality of combativeness. She liked what they did together, she told him once, because there was no one to help them. It was always the two of them against the world.

“We'll show them,” she used to whisper to him sometimes in the night.

She never had to explain whom she meant by “them” or what it was they were going to show. It was always himself and Nancy against the world and against all the systems in it, against Tony Burton and the Stuyvesant Bank and American Tel & Tel, against the furnace and the doctors and the bills. It was always himself and Nancy striving for security, and they never needed anyone to help. It was always himself and Nancy, striving within the limits of free enterprise if you wanted to put it that way.

“You see, I was looking for a man,” she told him once. “That's what every girl is looking for and don't let anyone tell you differently. I suppose I might have married old Jessup if you hadn't come along.” She was referring, of course, to Mr. Clive Jessup in the firm of Burrell, Jessup and Cockburn where she had been working when Charles went downtown that time on his errand from the bank.

“Well, you'd have beaten the system, Nance,” he said, “and you could have had a box at the opera.”

“Being a kept woman doesn't beat any system,” Nancy told him. She always said what she thought.

Her father ran a real estate and insurance business up there in New York State and it was a relief that Nancy did not like her family much. It meant that they could always speak the same language. She had moved away from there as soon as she could, because she had wanted to go to college. She had gone to Barnard for two years and then to the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school because her family were always telling her about the sacrifice they were making. She was not going to go back home ever if she could help it. When he went up there with her just before they were married, he was reminded of his brother Sam and May Mason.