Point of No Return (58 page)

20

No Time for Jubilation

—
MR
.
LAURENCE LOVELL

Later, during long evenings in New York in which he used reading as a means of self-forgetfulness, Charles read a book on the Orinoco which he had borrowed from the public library but there was nothing in its pages resembling what he had hoped to find. Later still, he had seen a part of that country from the window of a C-54 on his way to Cairo, where he had been ordered during the war for no reason he could ever discover. From the height of eight or nine thousand feet he had looked down on the closely packed, tufted tops of trees, silvery gray like the olive, or angry green like a squally ocean, depending on how the clouds and the rainstorms happened to be passing over them. In the midst of this endless, regularly billowing carpet of treetops, he had seen winding stretches of muddy water, tributaries to the Orinoco or the Amazon, no one had told him which.

Malcolm Bryant had asked him, though perhaps he had not been serious, to go away from Clyde up a tropical river. He was young enough to be stirred by this invitation, but he knew the idea was preposterous. At that time in his life, he had no real desire to escape from what lay around him. If one wished to put it obviously, Clyde and E. P. Rush & Company made his Orinoco, and what lay between him and Jessica Lovell was as new and fascinating a country as any on a map. There was no premonition of failure, no sense of doubt. Everything grew consistently better as the days grew longer. There were no Cadillacs in the Orinoco, no Boston theaters, no walks like that one across the pasture, no spring sunsets above the river, and no savage chiefs more difficult to placate with beads and bangles than Mr. Laurence Lovell. There was no need to go to the Orinoco.

All the elements of his life were moving as they should that spring and he did not have the sense to pray that eventual compensation should be light. He knew that luck had entered into it, but also his own perspective and a maturing, instinctive judgment had achieved a result which he knew was above the average. He had wanted something and he had set out as intelligently as he could to get it and he was ending by getting it.

First there had been that raise at E. P. Rush & Company, which was something due entirely to his own efforts and there was no luck about that; then there was his brokerage account, starting with the five thousand dollars he had received from his aunt. Like other members of the team, he had done his trading through E. P. Rush, since it would have been disloyal and deceitful to have placed his business elsewhere. Also, he had had the good sense to speak to Mr. Rush about it personally. Mr. Rush told Charles he would probably lose it all, but if he did it would be a lesson to him. It was not his business what Charles might do with his money, but it was his business when employees used office time worrying about their own affairs and standing around the ticker and looking at the board. Charles was careful never to use the office time. He only watched the quotations during the lunch hour. It was his own judgment that put him into Radio and a few other equities that were being purchased without any regard to earnings but because of future prospects. The future was boundless that spring, in the light of mass hysteria.

Charles did not believe in this future. He was sure that buying power would not continue with inflated credit and he sold out in May, during one lunch hour, just as he had told Jessica he would, in the midst of a rising market. His account with E. P. Rush, less commissions, showed a balance of fifty thousand dollars. He had started on a shoestring, he had pyramided, he had been cognizant of every risk, and he had increased his money tenfold. He had not believed in what he was doing and he had hated every minute of it, but at least he had known when to stop.

He felt almost weak with relief that noon in May. In his way he had beaten the system, as he had told Jessica he would. Ever afterwards when he saw Radio among the stock quotations he always winced and saw himself standing on an unsubstantial pyramid already beginning to topple. Now that the profit was no longer on paper, he wanted it absolutely safe. He did not even like the risk of five per cent—it was ironical to think they used to call it five per cent and safety then. He bought Government 4's, and when they were delivered he rented a box for them in the State Street Trust Company and then he did something he had never done while he was in Rush & Company. Though he had always disliked the way certain members of the team chatted indiscriminately over the telephone, he had called Jessica from his extension during the noon hour and had told her.

He could walk now with Jessica anywhere in Clyde without pretending that they had just happened to meet. When he called on her he would no longer imply that he just happened to call because he had nothing else to do. They would not have to talk furtively about meetings in Boston, nor would they have to think that they were seeing too much of each other in public, considering everything. There was no reason for any of this any longer.

There was no reason, either, why he should have felt grim in his triumph, except that he instinctively never wanted to be too happy when things were going right. He went straight upstairs before supper and put on his blue suit, though it was heavy and though it was a warm May day. When he saw his face in the mirror, as he brushed his hair very carefully with the military brushes that Jessica had given him, he was surprised that his face did not look older after everything he had been through; instead it still looked young and there was the cowlick in his hair which Jessica always spoke about and there were the usual freckles on his nose.

“Charley,” his mother said at supper, “has anything gone wrong in Boston?”

“No,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“You look so stern and efficient, dear,” his mother said.

His father, at the head of the table, asked Axel for a bottle of Moselle wine that he had just brought home.

“Look at Charley,” Dorothea said. “Why are you all dressed up?”

“Are you going to see Jessica tonight, dear?” his mother asked.

“Yes,” Charles said, “I've been thinking of it.”

Then he noticed that his father was looking at his new blue suit with a sudden, lively interest.

“Would you like the car?” he asked. “You could go to Rowell's and get it. We won't need it tonight.”

When he met Jessica that evening, he was Jason back with the Golden Fleece, and at one and the same time, he was the small-town boy who had made good and the embarrassed young man who would have to speak to Her father. He was also the gilded youth of the Jazz Age, in his high-powered car, and Jessica, bareheaded, in her print dress, was a part of the age too, and so was the spring evening.

“Charley,” she said, “don't drive so fast,” but he knew that she did not really mind it.

They drove down Johnson Street to the main road and then over the causeway to the beach, because she said she would like to see the ocean, and they stopped where the road ended, just between the sand dunes. It was still too early for the small houses along the beach to be occupied so they were all alone, looking at the sea that grew continually darker in the twilight. When they were not speaking, there was no sound except the somnolent pounding of the surf and the bell on the buoy at the mouth of the river, tolling with the rhythm of the waves.

He could not help thinking that it was a queer place to be mixing love with bookkeeping, to be so conscious of the sea and of Jessica in his arms and at the same time to be talking about the Radio Corporation of America. He remembered that he told her that he was tired of hiding in corners with her, and she had said that she had liked it in the corners.

“But then, you know,” he said, “everybody knows we're hiding.”

“But I like to pretend,” she said. “I like to think it's all just our secret. I don't know what it will be like when it isn't.”

“It will be better,” he told her, “much better.”

“We've been so awfully happy the way it was,” she said. “It's all going to be ‘Is it wise? And how much will everything cost?' We never had to think about any of that before.”

“But you don't mind thinking about it, do you?” he asked her. “I hope you don't mind, Jessica.”

“Oh, darling, of course I don't really,” she said, “it's just—”

“Just what?” he asked.

She was silent for a moment, looking at the dark sea.

“I know the way you feel,” he said. “Everything seems to be happening all at once but you mustn't let it worry you, as long as you still love me. You do still love me, don't you?” It was only a rhetorical question.

“Oh, darling,” she said, “of course I do. It's only—only that I used to think we couldn't be married for years and years and now it's so queer to have it happen. I don't mean I don't like the idea,” and she laughed. “I'm crazy about it, really, darling, but so much else goes with it.”

“Jessica.” He stopped. He wished he did not sound so portentous. “I suppose I ought to speak to your father. We can't go on like this.”

It had not occurred to him until then how necessary this was or how unendurable any further waiting would be.

“Oh, Charley.” He heard her draw a sharp, quick breath. “We don't have to tell him just yet.”

“We'll have to do it sometime,” he said. “We'd better do it now.”

“Oh, darling,” Jessica said. “Suppose he—” Her voice trailed off into a wretched silence but it was too dark to see her face. “Charley, why are you starting the car?”

“Because I'm going to take you back,” he said.

“Charley, you're not going to speak to him tonight?”

“I'm going to get it over with.”

“Oh, Charley, I wish you'd let me talk to him first. It's—it's going to hurt him,” she said.

He was thinking of himself, of course, and not of her, and for some reason the idea that it might hurt Mr. Lovell came close to making him angry. At any rate, it eliminated all feelings of diffidence.

“I don't know what you think is the matter with me,” he told her. “I'm not as bad as all that. You must have known I'd have to see him sometime.”

Of course he was really telling her without saying it that he lived on Spruce Street and not Johnson Street and that there had been ample opportunity for her to have faced those facts. It was something he could not say, but though Jessica was crying it was not a quarrel.

“It's not what's the matter with you, dear,” she sobbed. “It's what's the matter with me.”

“There's nothing the matter with you,” he said. “It's going to be all right, Jessica.”

It was not a quarrel, and he was stronger than she was once his mind was made up. It was one of those rare moments when he was not impressed by Jessica, and at least she had stopped crying.

“I wish you'd let me talk to him first,” she said. “You don't understand him, Charley.”

“No, I'll have to do it, Jessica,” he said.

“Well, at least I've got to be there with you, and if he says anything don't be cross or I won't be able to bear it.”

She did not seem to be beside him in the car. He was planning what he would say to Mr. Lovell and it did not do much good to plan. Experience was seldom present when you needed it, and it was always too late when you had gained experience.

“Back so early?” Miss Lovell called to them from the wallpaper room when they entered the front hall, and Mr. Lovell in the library said the same thing.

“Back so early?”

Mr. Lovell folded his newspaper carefully.

“Why are you closing the door, Jessica? I like the draft. It's a warm evening.”

Mr. Lovell was sitting in one of the heavy leather armchairs, leaning backward comfortably, but he had dropped his newspaper when the door closed. Somehow Charles was not able to introduce the subject gracefully. Standing in front of the empty fireplace, he did not see the books or the ship pictures, but only Mr. Lovell's thin and rather handsome face and Mr. Lovell's hands gripping the arms of his chair.

“Mr. Lovell,” he said, “I want to marry Jessica.”

After all, it could not have been news to Mr. Lovell that he wanted to marry Jessica, yet suddenly Mr. Lovell looked deathly ill and raised a trembling hand to his forehead.

“Jessie,” he said, “would you mind getting me a glass of water, please?”

“Oh, Father,” Jessica began, and she ran to him across the room.

“It's all right, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said, and he smiled at her. “Just a glass of water.”

Charles heard the door close as Jessica left the room and for a second neither he nor Mr. Lovell spoke.

“I'm sorry you feel this way about it, sir,” Charles said, “but I thought I ought to tell you.”

Mr. Lovell pushed himself forward and spoke in a steadier voice, as though he were rallying from the shock.

“Of course you should tell me, Charles, but someday, perhaps, if you have an only daughter who is everything in the world to you, perhaps you'll know a little of how I feel. I have to apologize, Charles. It's no reflection on you at all.” He sighed, but before he could go on Jessica was back with a tumbler of water.

“Thank you, Jessie dear,” Mr. Lovell said. “Sit down, Jessie. Sit down, Charles. We'll have to talk this over, won't we?” He took a sip of water and placed the glass carefully on the candlestand beside his chair. “I've just told Charles I'm very glad he told me.”

“Father,” Jessica said, “are you sure you feel all right? We don't have to talk about it any more.”

“I feel splendidly now,” Mr. Lovell said. “It had nothing to do with Charles, who did absolutely the right thing.” Mr. Lovell smiled wearily. “Now don't interrupt Charles and me, Jessie. If there ever is a time to be frank, I suppose this is it. I hope you won't mind, Charles,” and Mr. Lovell smiled again.