Point of No Return (23 page)

“Charley,” his Aunt Jane said, when they reached the corner of Spruce and Johnson Street, “remember not to touch anything.”

She reminded him not to touch anything again as they crossed Fanning Street, where the iron horse fountain used to stand; and when they passed the Episcopal Church, with its carefully tended graveyard, Aunt Jane said she was glad she was a Unitarian.

“I hope your mother didn't eat much lunch, Dorothea,” she said. “Your grandfather never liked to go to court on a full stomach.”

“You mean she might vomit?” Charles asked.

“That'll be about enough from you, Charley,” Aunt Jane said.

“My,” Dorothea said, and she adjusted her butterfly bow, “isn't there an awful crowd. Poor Mother.”

There was, indeed, an unusual number of people about the old Gow house, and it seemed that the history of Clyde's brave old days must have had a peculiar appeal for women, generally beyond the first bloom of youth. Only an occasional reluctant male was visible, except for three ministers, whose presence gave the gathering the appearance of a childless Sunday School picnic. As Charles, his aunt and Dorothea neared the tar path leading to the front door, these three members of the clergy were standing outside on the lawn, each surrounded by the loyal members of his congregation. Dr. Morton Berry, from the Smith Square Baptist Church, stood in the shade of a catalpa tree, fanning himself with his straw hat. The Episcopal clergyman, the Reverend Gerald Pond, looked better fed and more professional in his lightweight black suit and reversed collar. In fact, Charles had heard Aunt Jane say that if he wanted to look like an Irish priest, he would do better to be a Catholic. The group around him also exuded an air of prosperity. Miss Lovell stood near him with her niece Jessica, a thin little girl in a white party dress, white socks and patent leather shoes. Mrs. Stanley was there, too, and old Miss Sarah Hewitt in purple crackling silk, and Mrs. Thomas. Dr. Pond bowed and smiled placatingly and cordially when he saw Aunt Jane, but Aunt Jane only nodded curtly. Dr. Pond had made the mistake that spring of stopping Charles on his way to school and asking him whether he would not like to be a choir boy, and his Aunt Jane had not forgotten. Standing nearer the doorway, still lingering before entering and looking more like Puritans who had crossed the sea for faith, were the ladies of the Unitarian Women's Alliance, supporting their pastor, Mr. Henry Crewe, whose hair was not carefully trimmed and who looked like a pale ascetic compared to Dr. Pond.

“Well, this is a real occasion for you, Miss Gray,” Mr. Crewe said to Aunt Jane. “Alice Ruskin Lyte. What a tempting subject for Mrs. Gray, and one I am sure she will handle beautifully.”

“Well, we won't know till it's over,” Aunt Jane said. “Charley, aren't you going to shake hands with Mr. Crewe?”

For some reason, some member of the family was always worrying for fear he would not shake hands with Mr. Crewe. He did not know why, because he always found himself trying to do it before he was told.

“How Charley's growing,” someone said. “He has his mother's hair.”

“And Charley won the fifty-yard dash at the picnic, didn't you, Charley?” Mr. Crewe said. “What did you do with the prize?”

“I ate it,” Charles said. He was stricken, because his answer made everyone laugh, and he edged furtively away from the little group, while Aunt Jane began talking to Mr. Crewe about a candlelight service on the Isles of Shoals. Then, while no one was looking, he walked alone into the Historical Society.

The rooms were so crowded that he was allowed to wander unmolested from room to room and to encounter their confusion undisturbed. He did not realize until much later that it was a typical New England historical society, housing an odd assortment of things from garrets that combined to make an unscientific hodge-podge of the past. Yet its very disorder made so deep an impression on him that the unrelated, partially recognized objects in the hall and in the square rooms on either side occasionally appeared later in his dreams.

In the hall were two antique settles, three flintlock muskets, some powder horns and fire buckets, a blunderbuss, and a canvas done by a journeyman painter of an old gentleman in a wig. To the left was the room dedicated to the Captains' Club and the Poseidon Society and their collections from forgotten voyages. When he read
Java Head
some time later, he was strongly reminded of that room. Its walls were covered with paintings of ships, all bowling along under full sail, past lighthouses and Chinese pagodas, and between these pictures hung strange, rusted, rippling swords, and spears and clubs, a harpoon, and a few half models of the hulls of ships. He had seen most of those things before, in Mr. Burch's antique shop at the foot of Dock Street on Dock Square, but he had never seen so many of them at once. On a table in the center of the room, enclosed by a glass case, was an exquisite model of a ship, all carved in bone, with her standing rigging all intact. In another corner, on a black and gold lacquer table, was a miniature pagoda, with wind bells hanging from its eaves, and on still another table was a row of sextants.

Strangely enough, though the other rooms were becoming crowded, he was not conscious of people or of voices. The things there seemed to Charles to be wanting to return into the past, where they belonged. A soldier should have been wearing the moth-eaten Continental uniform that hung upon a clothing dummy. In another case, a bride should have worn the eighteenth-century wedding dress, and the Indian hatchet heads and gouges should have been back in a plowed field. They were all mixed together in those rooms—aboriginal arrowheads, muskets, candle molds, foot warmers, pine dressers, Chippendale sideboards, Lowestoft, pewter, and whales' teeth and four-poster beds. The elderly ladies of the Historical Society were drifting past them.

“That is a tooth extractor,” one of them was saying.

“We have a better Chinese sewing box at home.”

“We have some of that pink luster.” It seemed that they all had something better or the same, and this made a visit to the Historical Society an occasion for personal triumph.

His Aunt Jane found him on the second floor, looking intently at a suit of Japanese samurai armor.

“Charley, where have you been?” she whispered, just as though they were in church. “We'll lose our place if we don't hurry.” They moved downstairs, past more ship pictures, into the auditorium in the new brick wing. There was a buzz of voices in the auditorium and the slapping sound of folding wooden chairs, and the warm air smelt of cologne and talcum powder.

“We're sitting in front,” Aunt Jane whispered. “There's your father. Move in beside your father.”

John Gray was dressed in a gray flannel suit, and he raised his eyebrows slightly and patted the chair beside him.

“How would you like an ice cream soda—if you could get it, Charles?” he asked. He spoke in a needlessly loud tone and Charles was embarrassed. “Look at your mother.” Then Charles saw that his mother was seated on a platform between Dr. Pond and Mr. Lovell. To Charles's way of thinking, Mr. Lovell was peculiarly dressed, in a blue coat and white flannel trousers and a soft shirt, and he especially noticed the mourning band on Mr. Lovell's sleeve—a sign, Charles knew, that Mrs. Lovell was dead. White flannels were still a novelty in Clyde, but they must have been correct if they were worn by Mr. Lovell. They made him look cool and aloof. His clean-shaven face was bronzed from the sun. He was smiling in a faint, embarrassed way and looking at his watch. Finally he put away his watch, rose, and walked over to a podium at the edge of the platform and glanced indecisively at a pitcher of ice water and two glasses on an antique candlestand. As Mr. Lovell stood up, the voices in the room died down, and he looked at the company in a tentative, agreeable way.

“If we are all here,” he said, in a somewhat high but agreeable voice, “will the meeting come to order—not that this is one of our regular meetings but, rather, a delightful afternoon, or better still, an occasion.” Mr. Lovell fumbled in the side pocket of his coat, drew out a small card, and stared at it. “We will begin, as is eminently fitting in this place, with a prayer from Dr. Pond.”

As the clergyman rose, Mr. Lovell backed hastily from the podium as though he were afraid that he might be caught out of his chair before the prayer began, and Charles put his hand over his eyes.

“Oh, Heavenly Father,” Dr. Pond began, “as we gather here among the relics of our forefathers and as our thoughts go back to the past of our town, we pray that our present may be as glorious as its past. We supplicate Thee to give us the courage of our fathers, who sailed the seven seas, and may our bread, too, return to us when it is cast upon Thy waters.”

Charles heard his father cough gently. The prayer was long and Charles had lost the thread of it. There was a creaking of chairs and Mr. Lovell stepped forward again, groping in his pocket for the card.

“This, I think,” Mr. Lovell said—“no, I don't think, I know—this is the twenty-seventh of our historical afternoons, and judging by the number present they are becoming increasingly successful. The other day”—he glanced at his card again—“I heard it said that New Englanders live too much in the past. It may be a bad habit, but whenever I come here, and I'm sure I wish we might all come here more often, I find it a rewarding habit. I think we are all better for realizing, as one must in a town like Clyde, that the present is a projection of the past, and I hope we will all grow increasingly to understand that this society is very much a part of Clyde, a piece of property to be shared equally by everyone who lives here. That is why I, and the other officers of this society, hope that you will all stay after our lecture for our tea party, supplied by our fellow member”—a frown creased his narrow, high forehead, and he glanced hastily at his card—“our fellow member Mrs. Jacob Plumm, so that we may all talk informally about Clyde as we have known it—and our future plans.”

Charles heard his father cough again and he looked at his mother, who sat motionless in her armchair.

“Our speaker this afternoon”—Mr. Lovell paused and smiled—“is not an imported speaker. She is what we might call local talent”—he paused and smiled again—“not that I do not mean local talent is not very good talent. This building springs from local talent, from its fine cornices, carved by our shipwrights, down to the stone arrowheads, made by our first inhabitants. Now”—he cleared his throat gently—“I imagine that all of us here know the Grays. For generations a Gray has always appeared when he or she was needed. On the little monument by the First Landing Place, you will see the name of a Gray. A Gray was in the Civil War, and most of us here remember our late friend, Judge Vernon Gray. Now we have another Gray with us, Mrs. John Gray, whose aunt was a friend of Miss Alice Ruskin Lyte. She, too, answers our call in our time of need, and she will speak to us on”—he glanced again at his card—“‘The Clyde of Alice Ruskin Lyte.' Mrs.… Gray.”

His mother stood up, and Charles felt his heart beat faster.

“Every one of us here,” she began, “I am sure, has seen a certain gray stone house with a mansard roof …”

Charles saw his father draw a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mop his forehead. She was reading it more quickly than she had at home and her words seemed breathless and frightened by the discreet silence they encountered. They seemed to flutter one after the other about the room, lighting in corners, hiding behind pictures. The pictures, like the motionless rows of people, seemed very used to words. The portraits, by journeyman painters, of men who looked uncomfortable in stiff coats and of women sitting in startled erectness, seemed to be following the discourse as carefully as the living people on the chairs, but the pictures of the square-rigged ships, with their owners' flags flying in long streamers, kept on sailing, involved in their own navigational problems, bending before their artistic breezes, their bows cutting furrows through even regiments of waves.

She was getting near the end of it now. She was coming to the part that had a poem in it … “As Longfellow, Miss Lyte's old friend, expressed it so beautifully once—‘the beauty and mystery of the ships, and the magic of the sea.'” The ships in the Clyde Historical Society looked desiccated, devoid of mystery. There was nothing but a dry-as-dust accuracy in their realistic rigging and there was no magic in their painted seas—but now his mother's voice had stopped.

“Thank you,” she said, and her voice sounded more natural. “Thank you very much for listening.”

Then he heard the applause around him.

“Clap, Charley,” his father said. “It's over.”

“And I'm sure we are all most grateful to Mrs. Gray for a charming paper and a delightful afternoon.” Mr. Lovell was calling above the rattling of the folding chairs, “And now shall we all adjourn to the Council Room for tea?”

Charles and his father walked to the edge of the platform.

“That was magnificent, Esther,” John Gray said, “perfectly magnificent.”

“It was,” Mr. Lovell said. “It was a most interesting paper. Any time I want a good paper, I know where to go, John.”

“And the introduction was even better,” John Gray said. “It was superb. I ate up every word of it, Laurence. I don't believe you know my son Charles, do you?”

“Well, well,” Mr. Lovell said, “I don't believe I do. And now we'd better get some tea.”

“Let's go out on the lawn,” his father said to Charles and his mother, “instead of getting in the crowd. Someone will bring us tea.”

When they were standing on the lawn, just before the ladies came to tell his mother what a lovely paper it was, Charles heard her say to his father:

“You shouldn't have been so sarcastic, John.”

“To you or to Laurence?” his father asked.