The Incredible Charlie Carewe

by Mary Astor

  Jane had walked back to the bed to look at him in a kind of horror.

  “And I—loved you.” She was talking about someone else, someone she didn’t understand. “Why, I’ve been the most unbelievable, ridiculous fool. I thought that you were ‘sensitive,’ that you had a kind of deep, undiscovered beauty of mind—and that I could help you discover yourself by my love——” The ache for her injured being overcame her, and she sank back into the chair. Grasping his hand, she pressed it to her mouth, moaning:

  “Charlie, Charlie, what have you done to me—didn’t it mean anything—I can’t bear it that you didn’t love me——” The words ran together, became mere little animal sounds of pain. As she raised her streaming eyes she saw that Charlie was looking over her shoulder, a pleasant smile on his face.

  Startled, she whipped around to see Brian standing in the doorway, his face like chalk. He walked over to his distraught wife, gently taking her by the elbows and raising her to her feet. “Come on, Jane,” he said behind tight lips, “let’s get out of here.”

  From the bed, Charlie’s laughing voice reached them, carrying them out of the door.

  “Thanks very much, Mr. Dexter—take good care of her—she’s a good screw!”

  All over the country people read newspapers, listened to radios, shook their heads at the reports of crime and impending war, and publicly lamented the plight of the struggling human race, but in the privacy of their own thoughts each was more seriously concerned with personal struggles quite different from those that enveloped the world.

  On the States side of the Canadian border, where a river tumbled noisily beyond the open door of a small lodge, a girl in a white apron hung a pewter mug on a peg and contemplated the newly cleaned room. It would be peaceful and clean and sweet-smelling for a few hours. She looked at the whiteness of the stone doorsill, drying now in the sunshine from her vigorous scrubbing. She put her elbows on the polished surface of the bar, listening to the throb of a donkey engine deep in the woods. The pines spread their fingers in front of the face of the falls, beckoning her to come and dream with them, to forget for a while the heavy voices, the heavy jokes, the sweating men who would at the signal of the setting sun be consumed with thirst.

  In an upper Manhattan hole in the wall, red and white checked tablecloths, multicolored candle wax dripping from a chianti bottle, and the odor of garlic attested to the fact that the management provided an Italian cuisine. Spaghetti and meat balls were sixty cents; it was near a public library and an employment office. These were the added attractions for two young men who enjoyed their own conversation and their daily lunch together in that order.

  “Like a cat falling into the cream, that’s what it is,” said Herb Jenner, snapping a bread stick in two.

  “If I get it. Let’s not be hasty—the qualifications are very stiff.”

  “Eliminates a lot of others—look at it that way.”

  Gregg Nicholson smiled. “You overestimate me, my friend.”

  “I have a lot of respect for a man who gets a quiet chuckle out of a page of Greek—even though I think I’ll get along better in the world.”

  “Herb, you’re an inverted snob—you generalize too much—you hate the rich, you hate people who like to sit and think——”

  “I don’t ‘hate.’ I’m just self-sufficient—I don’t need someone else’s money, and I feel I’ve wasted precious years with a college education. I don’t need anything but my own two hands and my common sense.”

  “You may think you are contradicting me—but you’re not! Let’s go—can you leave the tip?”

  At the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, where her father’s fortune had brought forth the best food, the best music, and a magnificent figure “21” formed of Cecil Brunner roses hung from the beak of a carved-in-ice swan, Miss Zoë Appleby was celebrating her birthday. There were beaming parents on the side lines, keeping discreetly out of the young people’s fun.

  “He sure made up for it, didn’t he?” whispered a best girl friend to Zoë, after examining the pear-shaped diamond pendant on her friend’s throat.

  “Of course, it’s fabulous,” said Zoë, “and I love it, I really do—but it’s really just a bribe. Dad just hated Maurice—said he didn’t believe he was a baron at all. I tried to tell him I didn’t care —that I loved Maurice, that I couldn’t live without him——” Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Come on, darling,” said the best friend, “let’s go over and have some champagne—make you feel better.”

  In an old-fashioned hospital laboratory Dr. Lawrence Payne was wishing there were thirty-six hours in a day, so that once in a while he could get eight hours sleep. He would have liked to chuck practice and do nothing but research. But that was the desire of most inquiring men, and the riddle was always, “Where’s the money coming from?” A case had been referred to him that had stumped the experts. He was not quite sure whether to be flattered or not. He had had a few modest successes in his specialty of diagnosing brain injuries and diseases, but he strongly felt that it was a combination of circumstances that had brought Roger Thorne to him. And one of them was the fact that the Thornes were running out of money.

  His colleagues said he was unscientific; that he was riding a hobby by continually inquiring as to whether the symptoms of brain damage might not be psychogenic in origin. Especially when any damn fool could see there was an actual history of brain damage. But he was never satisfied, he tried to explain that it might simply be a precipitating factor for the behavior symptoms which followed. The trouble was it took time, time to investigate, to analyze clinically thousands of cases—to dig into reading matter, to keep patients hospitalized and not have to kick them out because the turnover was so great. It needed buildings, and nurses and men and money—and time. But mostly money. Payne wished he had a fairy godmother.

  Beatrice Carewe was putting unlovely lines in her face by asking herself unanswerable questions: “Is it because I have been a bad mother in some way?” “Why couldn’t Charlie be like his father?” “What am I going to do if—when—in case——” The only answers she could get had to come out of thin air, and thin air is poor comfort. So she increased her consumption of aspirin and made several phone calls to prevent the possibility of someone asking those same unanswerable questions or, worse, offering the kind of sympathy that concealed disapproval.

  “Edie, I’m just not going to have time to act for the committee on our drive, I’m afraid you’ll have to get someone else—maybe Margaret. . . . I know, I know, I promised, but something has come up—Walter’s business—we might have to go to London——”

  “Of course, dear, I understand, I’m sure Margaret can handle it.”

  And how well did she “understand”? Did she know? Probably. Edie had an aunt in Boston who worked as a receptionist for a doctor in the Eastern Seaboard Bank building and most probably lunched with the vice-president of the bank’s secretary, and the vice-president was Barbara Fraser’s father. She picked up the phone again.

  “Darling, my house is in an absolute turmoil . I’m breaking in a new cook, my Agnes has to take a month’s leave—somebody in her family is sick. Anyway I’m canceling the luncheon for Thursday—I don’t think I would be happy serving patties and peas, which is all most of these part-time girls know about. . . .”

  Patties and peas, secretaries and girls named Barbara—it ran all jumbled in her mind. If only Walter would talk to her, help her. Just answer her one simple question—“What is going to happen now?” But he couldn’t of course. He was preoccupied these days. His face was grim and set. He stayed at the office for longer hours and when he came home he made long, violent phone calls, spent hours at the typewriter—giving her a vague, unseeing look if she looked in on him. At night he simply held her close in his arms, saying, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, don’t you worry about a thing, Bea.”

  Maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn’t worry. She had successfully disposed of all social commitments, and others i
n the future would be equally easy to dispose of—now, what had become of those napkins she was initialing for Virginia’s trousseau? Of course, in the bottom drawer, all lovely and smelling of the potpourri bags she had put in with them. Carefully she got together her work materials, pulled the curtains a little against the too brilliant sunshine. She picked up the ivory house phone on the tabouret beside her.

  “Agnes, will you please fix me a tray for dinner, I’m not feeling too well, and ask Mr. Walter to come up when he returns. . . . That’ll be fine. . . . No. No biscuits . . . a little salad, maybe.”

  She pulled a robe from the closet, slipped out of her shoes, girdle, and stockings, and wriggled her toes into some soft slippers.

  With a contented sigh she sat back in the big chair, examining the fine details of the initials on the napkin. The gleaming needle caught the sun as it began to dip in and out of the linen. Humming softly, Beatrice smiled to herself. “It will be nice to have Charlie bring in my breakfast again, like he used to.” Nothing, nothing was going to change any more.

  Christmas would have to be a quiet one this year. Walter grabbed onto the circumstances of Beatrice’s poor health as an excuse to avoid the fraud of gaiety. Occasionally he felt guilty at the seriousness he made of it, but he simply could not have the usual celebrations with friends and friends of friends dropping in, the usual dinner parties. The strain would be too much, especially with Charlie around, maddeningly indifferent to the whole nasty business.

  Gregg Nicholson had slipped by gradual steps into being an acceptable member of the family. He had been engaged as a private tutor for Charlie to complete his final year of college. He had won Walter’s confidence almost immediately in an early interview, by a happy choice of words, saying that Charlie had “undeveloped brilliance,” when Walter was very much in need of reassurance. Walter had refrained from any explanations when he had engaged Gregg, but it was not long before Charlie had startled the young man with some lurid details of his escapades, from which he sorted out some of the truth.

  There had been an arrangement in which Gregg was to come over in the afternoons from the Inn, for a work period of three hours, four days a week, assigning Charlie study material to complete in his own time. It was excellent pay, and the kind of work that left Gregg happily free to do his own reading and studying, which to him was life itself. However, after three weeks with Charlie he was almost desperate. No work had been completed, and the hours with Charlie were spent almost solely in talk, with Charlie spinning yarns, making jokes, thoroughly enjoying himself.

  On the way out of the house one afternoon he met Walter just as he was pulling up to the front entrance. Walter hailed him.

  “Evening, Nicholson, can I give you a lift to the Inn?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Carewe, but I’d like the walk—been sitting all afternoon, you know.”

  His irritation with Charlie had made him a little flushed and tense. Walter caught it, as always these days sensitive to Charlie’s effect on people. “What’s wrong, Gregg? How’s your pupil?”

  Gregg groped for his collar to loosen it, but it was wrapped solidly in a scarf and overlaid with his overcoat, so he abandoned the gesture. “Would it be all right if I came back this evening and had a talk with you, sir? It wouldn’t take too long——”

  Walter covered a sigh with a hospitable voice. “Better than that, stay for dinner, and we can talk afterward.”

  After dinner Beatrice retired early, saying she wanted to get a hot pad on her shoulder, which had been paining her for several days.

  The men retired to Walter’s study, Charlie chattering about his preferences in brandy, helping himself to one of Walter’s cigars.

  Walter said, “I think Gregg has——” but was stopped by the slightest shake of the head from Nicholson, who interrupted.

  “What do you think of the new addition to the penal code, Mr. Carewe, or does your specialty take you out of the realm of interest in such matters?”

  Walter smiled, thinking, “Bright young man.” They were to exclude Charlie, and thus get rid of him. “Not at all,” he replied, “I am interested in justice in all its forms, not only legally, but philosophically——”

  Into the verbal ball game Charlie occasionally threw a name or so. “As Dunbrick says——”

  The two men looked at him blankly.

  “Never heard of him,” said Nicholson flatly.

  “Never heard of him!” Charlie echoed vehemently.

  “Neither have I,” said his father, equally flatly, and turned back to Gregg. He went on, “Of course, you are probably one of those people who think that the thirteenth century was the time in which to be alive.”

  “I think too much has gone out the window, just because it is ‘old’—we are frightened of tradition——”

  After half an hour Charlie set his glass down and yawned. “I hope you won’t think me rude, but I’ve got some studying to do,” with a rueful wink at Gregg.

  As Walter closed the door after his son he turned to the quiet young man. He liked him. His clothes were a bit seedy, he had the kind of thinness that goes with grabbing meals at odd times, or forgetting them altogether. His face was quite expressionless, his head usually cocked in a listening attitude. His hair was thin and mousy. The prominent beaklike nose was the only feature of his face that saved it from being undistinguished. He began without preamble.

  “Mr. Carewe, I don’t want to lose my job.”

  “Well now, Gregg, what’s troubling you?”

  “I’m a very selfish man. I have the most profound laziness about becoming a schoolmaster. I am a spectator, an absorber, rather than one who does things or gives of himself, and I am not a ‘go-getter.’ I think the whole psychology of our competitive culture is an anachronism dating back to the pioneer days of the country, when an enormous amount of energy was launched in pushing out the frontiers. It’s like a billiard ball that strikes another into action—but,” he smiled a little, “I am supposed to talk about my job.”

  Walter gave the fire a few pokes and sent up a shower of sparks. “How are you making out with Charlie?” he said. “He seems to like you. I noticed all through dinner he was trying to impress you—a sure sign!” He shook his head, wearily.

  “Yes, I was aware of that—he works very hard at something he has no need for. My only wish is that he would work more at his studies—then I would be much more impressed.”

  “You’ve seen his scholastic records——” Walter began defensively.

  “Yes, I have.” Gregg came to a full stop. He wanted to say that never had he seen such a hodgepodge, such a history of brilliant failure.

  “Let me put it this way,” Gregg continued. “I don’t feel that Charlie realizes the value you put on his graduating from college; I feel that it means less than nothing to him—but of course that’s not uncommon. But away from—isolated from competition, I’m afraid he’s going to dog it, take advantage of the informality between us.”

  Walter bit at the groove worn into the stem of his pipe.

  “I won’t get down on my knees again,” he said softly, bitterly. “I won’t beg another school to give the boy another chance. I think you must know that he has embarrassed me, shamed me beyond endurance. I have faith in him, however. I fully believe he will outgrow his shenanigans, and when he does—it will be worth the time and effort and money to me for him to have a college degree. As you know, it means everything nowadays, in business, in the professions—everything.”

  “Or nothing,” murmured Gregg. He was thinking of his friend Herb Jenner, who had thrown his final year out of the window as a waste of time, simply cramming all the chemistry into his head that he could, pawing at the earth in impatience to wrest from its materials the secrets of the new and exciting developments in plastics.

  “I’m afraid I don’t agree—that it is ‘nothing’—ever,” said Walter. “I realize that many work for a degree simply as a kind of social accomplishment—a blue ribbon—a bit of parchmen
t to hang on the wall. But our family have been doctors, lawyers, for generations. We haven’t been the ‘idle rich,’ we’ve been the grateful rich, grateful to those before us who built up fortunes from lumber and coal—not sitting on our behinds, but being productive—oh, hell, I’m making a speech——” and he went for the poker again.

  “Well”—Gregg rose, crushing out his cigarette—“it’s too soon to tell, but I think it’s going to take a great deal of patience, both mine and yours. I’ll get him his degree, but I’ll not let him goldbrick it. Neither can I turn him into a scholar. I am going to have to ask for more time—and later on, if I gain your confidence, I may have a suggestion to make.”

  Walter offered to drive him to the Inn as it had begun to snow, but Gregg had refused, saying, “Thanks, I’d still like that walk.”

  When he reached the Inn the snow had begun to take on blizzard force, and he ran up the drive, clutching his hatbrim with both hands, At the desk there was a post card from Herb Jenner saying cryptically, “Hope the pitcher is full. How’s the skiing?”

  There was a fire of cannel coal burning brightly in his small room, its flames reflected and dancing on the backs of a pile of books which he had uncrated that morning. After undressing he poured himself a tot of dark rum and, squatting cross-legged before the pile of books, began to sort them, lovingly. Suddenly it came to him what Herb had meant in his post card—a month ago he had said “like a cat falling into the cream.” Well, it was, damn it, and he liked it. Was that the reason he had told the old man that he “needed more time” with Charlie? Be honest now, he told himself. By standing over the boy, holding his nose to the grindstone, he could cram out a degree for him, in the specified time. Was he interested in the sociological problem of the boy himself? Was he really interested in helping him? Carewe had put it mildly, calling his activities shenanigans. In spite of himself, he felt a challenge in Charlie. If he, Gregg, could somehow find the answer, direct this boy’s obvious brilliance into some channel that he would be interested in—the feeling gave him warmth, but skeptically he glanced at the rum.