Point of No Return (77 page)

“It's always some man's fault, isn't it, Charley?” Tony Burton said.

“That's one of the truest things you ever said, sweetheart,” Mrs. Burton said. “Everything that happens to a woman is always some man's fault.”

“Jeffreys can bring us almost anything,” Tony Burton said, “from sherry and a biscuit to Scotch on the rocks, but Charley and I will stick to dry Martinis, won't we, Charley? What will you have, Nancy my dear?”

“A Martini,” Nancy said, “and if I don't like it I can blame it on the men.”

“But not on Tony,” Mrs. Burton said. “Blame it on Jeffreys. Tony mixes terrible Martinis. Don't you think so, Mr. Gray, or have you ever tried one of his Martinis?”

It was characteristic of that relationship and perfectly suitable that Mrs. Burton should call him Mr. Gray. It meant that he was a business friend of Tony Burton's, or associate might have been a better word, who had come to supper on business with his little wife. She knew how to put Tony's business friends and associates at their ease, but there were certain limits and certain degrees of rank. They were not on a first-name basis yet and he was just as glad of it. It would have embarrassed him acutely, it would have seemed like a breach of etiquette, if he were to call Mrs. Burton Althea. He knew his place and they could meet on common ground by his calling Mr. Burton Tony and by Mrs. Burton's referring to Nancy as “my dear.”

“I'm not in a position to say what I think of Tony's cocktails,” Charles said, “except that Tony is always right.”

“You all lick his boots so,” Mrs. Burton said. “That's why he's so impossible when he comes home. Sherry, please, Jeffreys. Is Mr. Gray impossible when he comes home, my dear?”

“Usually,” Nancy said. “Normally impossible.”

“I wonder what they do at the bank,” Mrs. Burton said. “I have a few vague ideas. That blond secretary of Tony's … we can compare notes after dinner.” The oil of small talk soothed the troubled waters, if there were troubled waters. Mrs. Tony Burton was putting Nancy at her ease. It was necessary business entertaining, household duty, and one of these suppers that must have helped in some vague way.

Everything moved so smoothly that when Charles tried to discover anything revealing in Mrs. Burton's voice or attitude, he could hit upon absolutely nothing. He could discover no new flicker of interest or no new warmth. She was simply being as nice as she could possibly be to one of the younger men whom Tony had to have around sometimes and to the little thing the younger man had married. She had even dressed thoughtfully for the occasion in an oldish gown, with no jewelry except a simple strand of pearls, yet you could not say that she was dressing down to Nancy. Charles remembered Arthur Slade's saying that she was a good ten years younger than Tony, that she was one of the Philadelphia Brines, and Charles knew from the size of the Brine estate, which the bank was handling, that, like Tony Burton, she had always been free from want. He could tell it from the tilt of her head, from her confident happy mouth, and even from the tint of her hair. There was a single lock of gray in it and perhaps all of it should have been gray but he could not be quite sure.

“I love that little house of yours, my dear,” she was saying, and he could see Nancy smiling at her with elaborate enthusiasm. “That whitewashed brick, and everything so compactly arranged. It must be a comfort to live in it instead of in a great barn, but Tony insists on the ancestral mansion.”

“The only good thing about a small house,” Nancy said, “is when the maid leaves.”

“We've been marvelously lucky,” Mrs. Burton said. “Ours keep staying on with us, I'm sure I don't know why.”

Jeffreys, the butler, was passing round pieces of toast with cream cheese and recumbent anchovies on them, and a maid followed Jeffreys carrying an icy bowl of celery, raw carrots and olives.

“I hear that raw carrots are good for the eyesight,” Charles said to Tony Burton.

“That's one of those new ideas,” Tony said. He looked bright and alert as he always did before dinner. “It's on a par with the one about alcohol being good for hardening of the arteries. Have you heard the new one about Truman?”

Tony Burton always enjoyed those stories. Formerly it had been Franklin D. Roosevelt, though Tony was hardly what you would call a Roosevelt-hater, and now it was Truman.

“I don't know,” Charles said. “I've heard a good many new ones lately.” He had almost called Tony Burton sir but he had checked himself in time.

“I know just what you mean, my dear,” he heard Mrs. Burton saying. “These country day schools are never quite right. Now when the girls were growing up—”

“Always remember it might have been Wallace,” he said to Tony Burton. Everything considered, Tony was surprisingly tolerant about politics and politicians. To him politics was like the weather. You could make occasional forecasts but you could not control it.

“I'd like to know what those playboys are going to try next,” he said. “And that's a good name for them, playboys. Did you ever read the Van Bibber stories by Richard Harding Davis?”

“The Van Bibber stories?” Charles repeated. “I'm afraid I must have missed them.”

“Well,” Tony Burton said, “they belonged to my flight more than your flight, Charley.” This must once have been a shooting term, Charles thought, used when one foregathered in a gunroom after a hard day on the moors. “They typified a certain era—the period when I was a playboy myself. There used to be a fashionable character, believe it or not—the gay blade about town, the white tie, the silk hat, we won't get home until morning. He's an extinct type now, of course, a product of a different social scene. Dick Davis hit him off rather well in the Van Bibber stories. Dick Davis was quite a playboy himself. I used to try to model my conduct after his, in a small way. Here comes Jeffreys. How about another cocktail?”

“Oh, no, I don't think so, thanks,” Charles said. He did not want to refuse too quickly or too eagerly, and of course Tony Burton must have known that when urged he would take another.

“It won't hurt you to relax and tomorrow's Saturday and I'm going to have another.”

“Well, thanks,” Charles said, “if you are. They're very good cocktails.”

He wished that he could relax as Tony Burton suggested, instead of trying to read a meaning into every simple action. Tony Burton would never have taken a second Martini if they were going to talk of anything seriously after dinner. It meant that everything was settled in one way or another.

“Now, Henry Wallace,” Tony Burton was saying, “and all the rest of the New Deal crowd are the playboy type. They have the same power and the same privileges expressed in different terms. They're all Van Bibbers.”

Tony smiled at him triumphantly but it was hard for Charles to discuss the subject intelligently, not being familiar with the works of Richard Harding Davis.

“It's an interesting thought,” he said, “but it might be that you're oversimplifying.”

Tony Burton looked at him in a fixed, cool way that made Charles think that perhaps he had said too much. It was necessary not to forget just who he was and what he was. It was necessary to assume a convivial attitude and yet not too convivial, to be familiar and yet not overfamiliar.

“Sometimes you have a cryptic quality, Charley,” Tony Burton said. “I never seem to know lately whether you're laughing at me or not. Sometimes you're an enigma.”

“Well,” Charles answered, “sometimes you're an enigma to me.”

When he heard Tony Burton laugh he knew that he had been familiar but not too familiar.

“Oh, Jeffreys,” Tony Burton said. “How about another one, Charley?”

“No, thanks,” Charles said.

“Definitely not?”

“Definitely,” Charles said. “You might start talking about books and authors again and I want to understand everything you say tonight.”

It might have been too familiar but at least he had made a point. He waited smiling, watching Tony Burton, and he put his glass back on Tony Burton's butler's tray. He was thinking of what he had said to young Mrs. Whitaker in the apartment on Park Avenue when she had offered him a drink. He had told her that he did not think she would take one if she were in his place and she had said they were both very good for what they were. He watched Tony Burton and smiled an innocent friendly smile. He and Tony Burton were both very good for what they were. They had both been trained in the Stuyvesant Bank and they had the same veneer and discipline. He had come a long way from Clyde.

“Tony,” Mrs. Burton called, “if you can stop talking business with poor Mr. Gray we might all go in to dinner.”

“Now, Althea,” Tony Burton said, “Charley and I have a lot of other things to talk about. I wish you would get it out of your head that I always talk business with the boys.”

The dining room with its heavy oak chairs, and an English leather screen placed before the pantry door, and its ornate Tiffany silver upon the massive sideboard, was also a long way from Clyde. The table, set for four, beneath another Waterford chandelier, looked too small for the room but imposingly beautiful with its Venetian tablecloth, its water and wine glasses and its bowl of tulips. He was glad there were only four of them because the conversation would be general and he would not have to talk to Mrs. Burton. He saw Nancy glance at him quickly as he sat down and he smiled at her. It was better to let the Burtons start the conversation. It was better not to say what a beautiful tablecloth it was or to speak about the tulips. It was better to make no remark about the surroundings that would show how little one was used to them, but there was no reason to worry, because Mrs. Burton was already speaking.

It was so nice, she was saying, to have them drop in like this instead of coming to a large dinner. Eight was the limit for general conversation and four was better than eight, and she was thinking, just the other day, about the first time she had ever heard about Mr. Gray—from poor Arthur Slade. She did not think she had seen Mr. Gray since that accident. It was tragic and so unnecessary. They had both been so fond of poor Arthur, but then she knew that Mr. Gray knew all about flying. The conversation was moving very pleasantly. It was not necessary to think carefully of what he was saying, now that they all were talking. Tony Burton was asking Nancy about the children, as though he knew them very well, and while they talked the plates were changing. There were soup and guinea hen and then a salad and then dessert. He was glad that it was not a long or complicated dinner. There was no obvious sense of strain but all the while he felt that Tony Burton was watching him.

“I wish,” Tony Burton said, “there weren't so many words, or it may be because I'm getting old that they confuse me more than they used to. Somehow they keep having more shades of meaning. Now even with Charles and me it's difficult. I say a word and he says a word and we can look it up in the dictionary, but it doesn't mean the same thing to either of us and it would mean something a little different to Nancy and it would be a little different even to Althea. I don't suppose this is a very new thought of mine, but it's a thought.”

“I can't imagine what you're talking about, Tony,” Mrs. Burton said.

“But Charley knows,” Tony Burton said, “don't you, Charley? We all may be worrying about the same thing but we worry about it in different ways.”

It was startling to find that Tony Burton was thinking during dinner exactly what he had been thinking earlier.

“Yes,” he said, “I know just what you mean.”

He saw that Nancy looked startled too and he saw Tony Burton glance at her and then look back at him triumphantly.

“I wish we could all get together,” Tony Burton said, “and we might do something with the world, but of course we never can get together. That's the exasperating thing about it.”

“Really,” Mrs. Burton said, “I don't know what you're talking about, Tony.”

Charles himself could not gather what this was leading up to, but as he watched Tony Burton he could see that Tony's face was set in the expression he always wore when he was about to say a few graceful words before a group of people.

“Perhaps I'm being cryptic now,” he said, “but all I'm saying is that I wish we might all be friends. I really hope we can be, in spite of anything that may happen in the future, and the future isn't as clear as it used to be. That's all I'm trying to say. And now if you girls will excuse us, I'm going to take Charley into the library. Charley and I want to have a little talk tonight but we'll be back as soon as we can.”

Mrs. Burton stood up and as Charles rose he felt a slight wave of nausea. He could only put one interpretation on that hope for friendship. He guessed the final answer to their little talk already. He felt the back of his chair biting into the palm of his hand but he still had to say the right thing.

“Why, of course,” he said, “we'll always be friends, Tony.” He said it automatically but he knew that they never had been and they never would be friends. They might wish it but it would never work for either of them, no matter what might happen.

“Don't stay too long and get too interested,” Mrs. Burton said. “I don't see why Tony can't ever get through his business in New York.”

Charles was no longer thinking clearly as he walked with Tony Burton from the dining room. What he desired most was to behave in such a way that no one would have the satisfaction of seeing how deeply he was hurt. That desire was partly discipline and partly human instinct for concealment. His own reaction was what shocked him most because he had believed that he was prepared for bad news and that he would not consider bad news as complete a disaster as was indicated by the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Yet after that first moment the shock was giving way to relief. He suddenly felt free and a weight was lifted from him. There was no reason for him to try any longer, not the slightest reason. He did not know what he would say or do in that final interview but there was nothing more that he could expect from Tony Burton. He would never have to be obsequious and careful again. He would never have to go through anything like that dinner. If Tony wished that they could still be friends, this meant at least that Tony liked him personally, but that was inconsequential. There was no room for personal likes in a corporation.