Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  Mr. Burton’s desk, which had the best light, was opened already and so was that of Mr. Stephen Merry, the oldest vice-president, and so were all the others except one. This was the desk of Arthur Slade, the youngest vicepresident of the Stuyvesant, who had died in a plane accident when returning from the West Coast six months before. The closed desk still gave Charles a curious feeling of incompleteness and a mixed sense of personal gain and loss because he had been more friendly with Arthur Slade than with anyone else in the Stuyvesant—but then you had to die sometime. Once Arthur Slade had sat at Charles’s own place but that was before Mr. Walter Harry, who had been president when Charles had first come to the bank, had died of an embolism and everyone had moved like players on bases—Burton to Harry, Merry to Burton, Slade to the vacant roll-top—and so on down to Charles himself. The Stuyvesant was decorously accustomed to accident and death and now it was moving time again and it was so plain where one of two persons might be moving next that it was embarrassing. Any observing depositor and certainly everyone employed in the bank, right up to the third floor, must have known that either Mr. Blakesley or Mr. Gray would move to Arthur Slade’s desk by the window. Undoubtedly they were making side bets out in back as Charles used to himself when he had first come there from Boston. Undoubtedly the clerks and the secretaries and the watchmen had started some sort of pool.

  Charles pulled back his mahogany chair and sat down, glancing coolly at all the desks in front of him. Miss Marble, his secretary, had already arranged his engagement pad and now she was standing beside him with his morning mail. She reminded him of Nancy as Nancy had looked when he had first known her—a front-office girl, an executive’s private secretary, as neat as a trained nurse, whose private life, like his own, was temporarily erased. In spite of that crowded room, for a few hours he and Miss Marble would be almost alone, dependent on each other in a strange, impersonal, but also an intimate relationship. As soon as he said good morning to Miss Marble, his whole mind set itself into a brisk, efficient pattern.

  “There’s nothing on your calendar,” Miss Marble said, “before the meeting, but Mrs. Whitaker has just called you.”

  “You mean she’s called this morning already?” Charles asked.

  “Well, not Mrs. Whitaker,” Miss Marble said, and she smiled sympathetically. “Her companion called. Mrs. Whitaker’s very anxious to speak with you.”

  “All right,” Charles said. “Get her for me in five minutes,” and he picked up the letters.

  Then Roger Blakesley and Anthony Burton came in from the coatroom and Charles nodded at them and smiled. Roger walked to his own desk at once and Miss Fallon, his secretary, was there, but Anthony Burton stopped for a moment. As he did so, it seemed to Charles that the whole bank was watching them and Mr. Burton must have been aware of this too, but he was more used than Charles to being watched. He stood straight, white-headed and smiling, dressed in a pearl-gray double-breasted suit with an expansive, heavy, gray checked necktie. He had that air of measured deliberation which eventually always covered the features and the postures of bank officers and corporation lawyers. He was slender and athletic, almost young-looking considering that he was close to sixty-five, though Charles could never think of him as having been a young man. Charles always thought of him as unchanging, a measured, deliberate, constant quantity, like a Greek letter in a mathematical formula.

  “I didn’t see you on the train,” Mr. Burton said.

  Charles glanced at Roger Blakesley’s desk. It was an opportunity but it was also a time to be careful.

  “I didn’t see you either,” Charles said. “Mrs. Whitaker is after me.”

  It was better to do it that way. It did no harm to have him know about Mrs. Whitaker.

  “Well, as long as she’s after you and not me,” Mr. Burton said. “We’ll see you at dinner Friday, won’t we?”

  “You can count on it,” Charles said. “Absolutely,” and he laughed and Anthony Burton laughed.

  “Yes,” Mr. Burton said, “I suppose we can, Charley. How are Nancy and the children?”

  “They’re wonderful,” Charles said. “They keep me out of trouble.”

  “Nancy’s a great girl,” Mr. Burton said. “You boys are getting together at eleven, aren’t you? I’ll be there.”

  He smiled and nodded and walked over to his desk in the corner.

  Charles could not help but wonder whether Mr. Burton had weighed every word of that conversation as carefully as he had. For a second he wondered whether there might be some implication between the lines, but he could not think of any. It had simply been a bland routine conversation, friendly and nothing more. It could not very well have been anything else with Roger’s desk right beside his own.

  “Mrs. Whitaker’s on the telephone now,” Miss Marble said, and Charles picked up the desk telephone, speaking softly as one always did in the bank.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Whitaker. This is Mr. Gray.”

  He could recognize a particular tone in her voice. It was the gracious, informal tone that she was in the habit of using when she wanted to make a pleasant impression on people who handled her affairs. It kept one at arm’s length, though at the same time giving a pretty little picture of her capacities for universal understanding, democracy, and kindliness.

  “Oh, Mr. Gray,” he heard her say, “it’s so nice to hear your voice.”

  It was difficult for Charles to respond properly to this remark because he was not at all glad to hear Mrs. Whitaker’s and he had heard it a great deal lately, yet he had learned long ago never to be brief with a large depositor, particularly when the Chase, the Guaranty, and the National City were all making overtures for the Whitaker account.

  “You sound well and happy, Mrs. Whitaker,” Charles said.

  Occasionally he was astonished at his own adaptability. He never sounded like himself when he spoke in those hushed tones at his desk. He sounded instead like a doctor or a diplomat, and now he was also a loyal friend of the Whitaker family, who could allow himself the least bit of jovial familiarity.

  “Hewett and I are so dreadfully worried, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “That’s why it’s so nice to hear your voice.”

  He could not tell whether it was a further act of graciousness or a lapse of memory that made her refer to Mr. Whitaker as Hewett and he could not recall that she had ever done such a thing before.

  “Why, I’m sorry,” Charles said. “What have you to be worried about?”

  That was it. What did she have to be worried about?

  “We have to sell something, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “We have to sell something right away. We literally haven’t got a cent of money.”

  At least he was able to smile since Mrs. Whitaker was not there and the strange thing about it was that her tone of desperation was completely genuine, as genuine as though she had to sell some piece of furniture to pay the grocer. One part of him could smile but another part was honestly sympathetic. This was one of the things that the bank had taught him.

  “Oh,” Charles said, and he was about to add that he was sorry, but he checked himself because he had learned that it made depositors angry if you became too actively sorry.

  “And we simply don’t know what to sell,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “We’ve been going over it and over it.”

  “I know,” Charles said. “It’s always difficult to make up one’s mind.”

  “We would like to sell something that has a loss to it,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “but there literally isn’t anything. Everything shows a profit. Why don’t you ever leave us anything with losses?”

  Charles drummed his fingers softly on the desk and raised his eyes to the baroque ceiling with its new indirect lighting. It was a wonderful conversation and he wished he could tell Nancy about it but he knew enough not to gossip about clients, particularly large clients.

  “Well,” he said, “I see what you mean, but the object usually is to show a profit. Most of our friends like it better that way. Ther
e are still advantages to having a profit rather than a loss.”

  “Are there?” asked Mrs. Whitaker. “I know it’s so if you say so, but you’ve simply got to help us, Mr. Gray—anything you decide on—you will help us, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will,” Charles said, and his voice was gently reassuring. “That’s what I’m here for. Let me see, you have a number of short-term governments.”

  “I know. Mr. Whitaker doesn’t want to sell those,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He refuses, absolutely.”

  “Oh,” Charles said. “Why does he?”

  “Because his father always said that you mustn’t be a bear on the United States,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “He says that we must back up the government no matter what it does. If we don’t back up the government, where will we be? I believe that, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t say it would be disloyal,” Charles said. “Short-term governments are about the same as cash. That’s the way they’re generally used.”

  “Suppose we try to think of something else,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “There must be something else.”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’d better get a picture of the whole situation. If you’re not well enough to come in yourself, I could send Mr. Joyce over to see you.”

  “I don’t think Mr. Joyce has the experience, do you?” Mrs. Whitaker said. “I know he’s a charming young man, but he is still rather immature and he’s always so, well, so indefinite. And Mr. Thingamajig, what’s his name? The one Mr. Burton turned me over to the last time I came in, when you were out. He was indefinite too, and besides I thought he was a little chétif.”

  “Whom do you mean?” Charles asked. “I can’t exactly place him from your description.”

  “That round-faced, pussycat man with glasses,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “The furtive, pussycat one.”

  “You don’t mean Mr. Blakesley, do you?” Charles asked.

  “That’s it,” said Mrs. Whitaker. “Mr. Blakesley.”

  Charles glanced across at Roger Blakesley, who was busy dictating.

  “I know him pretty well,” Charles said. “I wouldn’t say he was a pussycat.”

  “It’s a compliment to you, Mr. Gray,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “that Hewett and I both want you to help us, and we simply have to find a hundred thousand dollars somewhere. It isn’t asking too much for you to come over, is it?”

  “No,” Charles said. “It’s rather hard for me to get away but I think I can arrange it.”

  “You see, we’ve decided after all to buy that ranch,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “Albert’s fallen in love with it, and I think Mr. Whitaker has too, a little. You’ll come at five, won’t you, when we can all be quiet at teatime, and tell us how unwise it is?”

  “I suppose it depends on the ranch,” Charles said. “Why, yes, I think I could arrange to come at five.”

  “But don’t say it’s too unwise,” Mrs. Whitaker said. “You’re so New England sometimes, Mr. Gray. Don’t be too uncompromising, will you? Just say it’s a little bit unwise.”

  “All right,” Charles said. “At five. I’ll remember. A little bit unwise.”

  “And Mr. Gray.”

  “Yes,” Charles said.

  “I adore New Englanders. Father came from Maine.”

  “Maine’s chief export is character,” Charles said.

  “Do you know,” Mrs. Whitaker said, “your voice sounds just like Father’s when he was in a disapproving mood. You won’t be too Olympian, too disapproving, will you?”

  “Oh no,” Charles said. “Only a little disapproving. I’ll see you at five, Mrs. Whitaker.”

  Charles put down the telephone and rang for Miss Marble. He would have to call up Nancy and tell her he could not take the five-thirty train, but it was already ten-fifteen and Nancy would be at the chain store. Before he forgot, it would be well to tell Miss Marble.

  Down there on the floor of the Stuyvesant you worked with the privacy of a goldfish. There might be certain sheltered corners in the neighborhood of the officers’ desks, but there was no shelter at the edge of the green carpet where Charles and Roger Blakesley were stationed. They sat there in a kind of advanced bastion, barring the way to the higher executives, like a knight and a bishop on a chessboard, Charles sometimes thought, pieces expendable in a pinch, who had to pay for their own errors and for others’ but who always must protect the rooks and the king and queen. Of course there was an outer ring of pawns in front. Individuals like Tom Joyce, his assistant, at his smaller desk well off the carpet, or Holland just behind him, or Miss Marble, were all protecting pawns. There was no physical railing to guard any of them from the customers.

  Old Joe, who stood just inside the door, in a neat business suit instead of a uniform, was in the most exposed position, with duties roughly like those of a floorwalker in a department store. He was the one who helped with the counter checks and the deposit slips, who directed traffic and estimated the preliminary situation. It was he who decided that our Mr. Joyce or our Mr. Holland or, if it seemed justifiable, our Mr. Gray or Mr. Blakesley would be glad to help you.

  Charles often wondered why this system of everyone’s working in the open should exist. It might have been a part of the great tradition, stemming from the medieval days of the goldsmiths and the moneylenders, that all the workings of a bank should be as visible as the wheels and mainspring of a glass-enclosed French clock. It was perhaps a tradition that was deeply rooted in human suspicion regarding money and those who handled it. There must be positively no deception, everything open and aboveboard and nothing up the sleeve. If anyone had money in a bank, it seemed that he had an inalienable right to see the bankers sweating over it. Then, too, it established confidence to see a roomful of well-dressed, capable individuals sitting behind desks, reading, answering telephones, or moving in fixed orbits, according to their rank. You grew used to being an exhibit, of course, through time and training, and it was surprising how through sheer self-discipline you could avoid making mistakes of fact or even of judgment. You learned a lot about a certain kind of person there and certain facets of human nature. Granted that the clientele of the Stuyvesant was well above the average and that a high balance must be maintained for a checking account, you still met fools and rascals, and you encountered fear and hopelessness and avarice. Sometimes it seemed to Charles that all human behaviorism was mixed in some way with money.

  “That’s all now, Miss Marble,” he said, and he saw that Tom Joyce was coming over to his desk. It was his habit to come over in the morning to see if there was anything Charles wanted.

  Charles must have looked much like Tom Joyce when he was twenty-six or -seven. Tom Joyce had come there fresh out of the Harvard Business School but had only worked at the Stuyvesant for about a year before he was drafted. He had returned there from Europe in 1946 as a captain of artillery to take his old place in the trust department about the time that Charles himself had returned, and now he was one of the bright young men, as Charles had been when he was twenty-six. New York had given Tom Joyce the same veneer and the bank had given him the same watchful manner. He made mental notes for future reference, he was careful, he was steady, he was giving his full attention to the business. He had so much promise that Charles would have liked to give him his place if he should be moved up. The only thing that interfered was age and lack of maturity. Tom Joyce was still too eager and impatient, as he had been once himself, too anxiously, openly competitive, without as yet the finished capacity for concealing his likes and dislikes. That was one trouble with being young and one that Charles was planning to point out when an opportunity arose.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” Tom Joyce said. It was a little joke between them that was wearing rather thin, and besides military experience did not help at the Stuyvesant.

  That will do, Captain,” Charles said. “Never mind the war.”

  “Don’t you ever mind it?” Tom Joyce asked.

  “I’m too busy to mind it this mor
ning,” Charles said, “but I’ll tell you what. We’ll talk about it if you’ll come out some Sunday.”

  “That’d be swell,” Tom said.

  That was his trouble, overeagerness, but it was very pleasant to have anyone look at him as Tom Joyce did, pleasant and at the same time a little sad.

  “It won’t be as swell as all that,” Charles said. “How do you like it here downstairs?”

  “It’s swell,” Tom said.

  It was a reflection of his own early enthusiasm, his own desire to sacrifice to get ahead, staring back at him over a gap of fifteen years.

  “Banks are filled with nice boys, particularly up in front,” Charles said. “We’re all delightful fellows.”

  “There are quite a lot of bastards, too,” Tom said.

  Charles thought, before answering, that this was indiscreet as well as over-eager.

  “There are everywhere,” he answered, “and sometimes it pays to be one.”

  “You’re not one,” Tom said.

  “Thanks,” Charles answered. It was not the conventional way to talk near the front desks of the Stuyvesant. “I’ll tell you what I want right now, Tom. I want the Whitaker security list and I want everything on Smith Chemical. Tell them I’ll be upstairs this afternoon to look things over.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tom Joyce said. “I’ll get them right away.”

  Nevertheless, he still lingered by the desk and his slowness made Charles look up at him sharply. Charles was about to ask what else he wanted but stopped when he saw the other’s face and the guileless admiration in it. It was exactly the way he had looked at Arthur Slade in the old days.