Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  Charles could gather that the Grays did not have the past glories of certain other families in Clyde. They had only been country people, on the farm upriver, before the embargo of 1811, but they did have the Gray heart and it carried you off quickly when you had it. Gerald Marchby had told her so. Gerald’s deafness was growing but he could hear her heart. It was because of the Gray heart and because he was deeply fond of her that Charles stopped to call on his aunt nearly every afternoon after leaving the office at Wright-Sherwin. Dr. Marchby had prescribed sherry for her, the only way you could get sherry in prohibition days, and she had arranged to obtain two quarts a week, one for her and one for Charles, because Charley ought to have something in return for coming to see her and the Judge had always liked sherry.

  Those calls at the Judge’s house on Gow Street were difficult to distinguish one from another, except for one on an afternoon not long after that talk with his father. There was a chill in the air in spite of the sunlight and the yellow elm leaves were beginning to drop on the sidewalks. When Charles opened the front door, his aunt was seated in her favorite bannister-back armchair in the Judge’s study. Mary Callahan had already brought in the tea and the sherry decanter and had lighted a lump of cannel coal in the grate. His Aunt Jane had on her spectacles and was reading from a piece of foolscap written in the Spencerian penmanship which she had learned long ago at the female academy. Charles knew at once it was one of those lists of personal effects she was always making. For the last two years she had been arranging for their distribution but the arrangements were never final. She wanted everyone to have something and she did not want any friend of hers to be out of sorts when she was dead.

  “I told Mary to light the fire to take the chill off,” Aunt Jane said. “Charley, I’m going to give Mary the Sheffield teapot and a thousand dollars.”

  There was no use trying to deflect her from this subject because she liked it, and he had learned it was best to fall in with her mood.

  “I thought you were going to let her have the tray,” Charles told her.

  “I know,” she answered, “but I asked her this morning. She thinks Dorothea ought to have the tray.”

  Of course, she had asked Mary Callahan. Mary had told him only the other day that she was going simply crazy being asked about every stick and plate in the house and being told about the Gray heart. In Mary’s opinion, it was stuff and nonsense. Miss Jane, in Mary’s opinion, was just as spry as ever she was, up and down stairs and all over the place, emptying out trunks and bureaus, her heart and all. In Mary’s opinion Miss Jane was only being contrary to draw attention to herself, and Miss Jane had always been contrary.

  Though his aunt’s demise was a grim subject, Charles had grown used to it and somehow it was not as grim as it sounded in the Judge’s study. He had never seen his grandfather but Charles could feel his presence in the room his grandfather had remodeled in the most unfortunate decorative period of the eighties. He could feel the Judge’s precision and his love of order in the golden-oak bookcases and the shining brass about the black marble fireplace. He could feel that nothing was entirely gone, least of all his aunt, sitting as straight as she ever had, in the room’s most uncomfortable chair.

  Her mood usually changed for the better when she took her sherry. She always drank it in delicate sips and she always coughed.

  “It’s just as well I never touched it until now,” she said. “Charley, I hear you’re doing very well.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Charles asked.

  “At the Women’s Alliance.”

  “Where?”

  “You heard me,” Aunt Jane said, “and it’s about time that someone in the family was successful. I think John would have got on if he had gone to Dartmouth instead of Harvard. Charley, do you think Dorothea’s going to marry that factory man she brought in here, the one who squints?”

  “Who?” Charles asked. “Elbridge Sterne?”

  “Yes. He knows all about brass. He kept looking at the andirons. Is Dorothea going to marry him or isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said. “She’s never taken it up with me. She’ll probably get discouraged with him. You know—after a certain time she always gets discouraged.”

  “She’s only particular like me,” Aunt Jane said. “Esther thinks she’s going to marry him.”

  “Mother always thinks she’s going to marry someone,” Charles told her.

  “If she does,” Aunt Jane said, “she can have the tea tray and the dining room chairs besides the five thousand dollars.”

  The cannel coal snapped viciously and a piece of it fell on the carpet. Charles rose hastily and kicked it back on the hearth.

  “Charley,” Aunt Jane said, “you look exactly like the Judge. Did I tell you I’m leaving you five thousand dollars?”

  “Yes,” Charles said, “you did tell me.”

  “Well, you might at least say thank you,” Aunt Jane said.

  “But I have thanked you,” Charles told her, “and I’ve told you you ought not to do it after sending me through college.”

  “Well, I’m going to,” Aunt Jane said, “and Esther’s going to have ten thousand and the Queen Anne mirror and my bureau. It’s time Esther had something. That’s twenty thousand, isn’t it? Charley, how do you think your father seems?”

  “Why, Father’s all right, I guess,” Charles said.

  The door opened and Mary Callahan came in with a glass and a bottle of pills. It was six o’clock.

  “Thank you, Mary,” Aunt Jane said, and she looked hard at her back and did not speak until the door closed softly. “Do you think she stands outside and listens, Charley?”

  “No, Aunt Jane,” he said, “I don’t really think she does.”

  “Well, I don’t want her to hear this,” Aunt Jane said. “Charley, I’ve been thinking about your father. You don’t know him as well as I do. I’m worried about his self-respect.”

  “His self-respect?” Charles repeated.

  “Yes,” Aunt Jane said, “and I’m not going to leave the rest to him in trust. It will hurt his self-respect.”

  The cannel coal snapped again with a sound that was like a punctuation mark. Charles had heard about the furniture and the silver and the rugs and about a bequest to the Unitarian Church, but she had never told him this before.

  “I think it’s a mistake, Aunt Jane,” Charles said.

  “I’m not asking your opinion,” she answered, but of course she was asking his opinion. “I don’t want to have anyone unhappy after I’m gone.”

  He felt sorry for her because he knew that she only half believed what she was saying, but it did not seem possible to discuss the subject, when he was still so young that his loyalties were confused.

  “Charley,” she asked, “aren’t you going to say something?”

  “No,” Charles said. “There isn’t any more to say if that’s the way you want it.”

  She reached toward him and put her hand over his. “We have to trust him. He’s your father, Charley,” and then there was a quaver in her voice. “Charley, I’m so proud of you. Now turn on the lights. Isn’t it nice to have electric lights?”

  Until he pressed the switch by the door, he had almost thought that his aunt was dead already, but when the ceiling light was on in the old gas chandelier the brillance of the room erased all that talk of death.

  “Well,” she said, “that’s settled. Charley, I wish you saw more girls.”

  “Why, you’re my only girl,” Charles said, and he laughed.

  “I wish you saw some nice girls,” his Aunt Jane said again. “Why don’t you ever see Jessica Lovell?”

  “Jessica Lovell?” Charles repeated. “Why, I hardly know her.”

  His aunt should have known he belonged in a different group from Jessica Lovell and that groups hardly ever mingled in Clyde.

  When Charles arrived home after his talk with Aunt Jane on death and testaments, Dorothea was playing the phonograph. The family were si
tting in the second-best parlor and Elbridge Sterne was with them, in an inconspicuous pepper-and-salt suit and a stiff collar. He had asked Dorothea if she would go to the movies that evening and if he could take her somewhere to supper, and Dorothea had asked him to come home to supper because there was no place to eat in Clyde, unless you wanted a sandwich and a soda at the Sweet Shoppe or a meal in a booth that smelled of fried clams in that restaurant of Nicky Demetrios’s on Dock Street. A log fire was burning, which showed that Elbridge must have lugged the wood in from the shed outdoors, because Charles had not brought any in and his father disliked doing it. His father, he saw, was reading a newspaper by the big table lamp, not the Clyde Herald but the Boston Evening Transcript, and his mother was darning a sock. She had thrust her darning egg well up into the toe and she was bending over her work with an intent and puzzled look. She always said that she hated sewing.

  “Hello, Charley,” Elbridge said. “You weren’t in my part of the shop today, were you?”

  Elbridge was exhibiting the classic desire, shared by all Dorothea’s other callers, to be agreeable to the younger brother. When Charles shook hands with Elbridge he had the younger brother’s conventional feeling of amusement and slight contempt for anyone so weak as to put himself in the situation of calling on Dorothea, and Dorothea was looking at him suspiciously, as though she were still afraid he would blurt out some crude remark or play some practical joke on her and Elbridge Sterne. Elbridge in many ways looked like a shipwrecked sailor among strange natives. His voice was heavy and Midwestern, and he had not lost the hopeful breeziness of more open spaces.

  “That’s right,” Charles said, “I was in the office all day.”

  “Well, come out into the plant sometime and meet some of the fellows,” Elbridge said. “That’s a fine crowd of fellows in Shed Two.”

  “Elbridge could show you a lot about the plant,” Dorothea said, “if you’d only let him.”

  “Who said I don’t want to let him?” Charles asked. “But I’m not supposed to leave the office and be wandering around.”

  “Well, as long as you know everything about everything,” Dorothea said.

  His mother looked up from her darning.

  “I wish you two would stop arguing for just a minute,” she said. “It can’t be very interesting for Elbridge. How do you think Aunt Jane seemed, dear?”—and Charles said he thought she seemed very well.

  “Was she still talking about the furniture?” Dorothea asked.

  “Yes,” Charles answered, “most of the time.”

  “That reminds me,” Elbridge said, “I dropped into Burch’s antique shop and I saw a desk there. It’s got a sort of a curved front. I was thinking of buying it for a Christmas present for Mother. I wish you’d look at it, Dorothea, and tell me if it’s any good.”

  There was a pleasant rustling sound and Charles saw that his father had lowered his newspaper.

  “From my experience, Elbridge,” he said, “I conclude that most attractive fronts should curve.”

  Then they all saw that the Boston Evening Transcript was open at the page of transactions on the New York Stock Exchange.

  “The market’s still going up, isn’t it, Mr. Gray?” Elbridge said.

  John Gray smiled faintly and his glance met Charles’s for a moment and then he looked away.

  “I suppose it is,” he answered, “but I only buy the Transcript for the Notes and Queries. Do you ever read them, Elbridge?”

  “Why, no, Mr. Gray,” Elbridge said.

  “You really ought to,” John Gray said. “Sometimes you encounter the most unworldly queries—and then there’s the genealogical column, and the department called the Churchman Afield. That’s a fine active name, isn’t it? It always makes me think of clergymen running about in riding boots blowing horns. Esther, dear, is supper nearly ready?”

  Yes, supper was nearly ready, but his father had not been reading the Notes and Queries. Charles knew it when he continued speaking.

  “That phonograph,” he said. Dorothea had risen to put on another record. “It’s about time, isn’t it, that we changed it for a radio? I know what you’re going to say, Dorothea. I know the house isn’t wired for electricity but it ought to be. We ought to keep in touch with the times. Your Aunt Jane has had her house wired. Esther, we ought to get a radio for Jane.”

  Charles saw his mother close her sewing basket and she also must have known what John Gray had been reading.

  “John,” she asked, “have you been to see Gerald?”

  “Gerald?” John Gray’s forehead wrinkled. “Oh, yes. I had a nice talk with Gerald.”

  “What did he say about Jane?”

  She must have forgotten that Elbridge Sterne was there.

  “He said Jane’s heart is doing very well,” John Gray said. “He says we’re all worrying too much about Jane.” He stopped and began folding the paper carefully, as though he hoped the noise might distract everyone.

  Charles saw Dorothea glance up quickly and uncertainly and his own eyes met Dorothea’s for an instant. Dorothea also knew what John Gray had been reading. In spite of what had been said at Gow Street that afternoon about trusting, Charles knew that nothing could change.

  “What do you think of this holding company Electric Bond and Share, Mr. Gray?” Elbridge asked. “The way the market’s going, I don’t see any use in keeping money in the bank.”

  John Gray had rolled the paper into a neat and careful cylinder.

  “Elbridge, I really wouldn’t monkey with anything like that,” he said. His speech sounded elaborate and self-conscious and he went on with an unnatural haste. “Oh, by the way, Charley.”

  “Yes, Father?” Charles said quickly.

  “There’s going to be a muster tomorrow afternoon,” and he must have noticed the blank look on Charles’s face. “A muster, a firemen’s muster. The Pine Trees will be there and there will be eight hand tubs and two hundred dollars in cash prizes. Why don’t you watch me make a spectacle of myself, Charley? It’s Saturday.” The tension in the room had eased. His father had tossed the paper on the floor. “They don’t have firemen’s musters in Kansas City, do they, Elbridge?”

  “Exactly what is the purpose of a firemen’s muster, Mr. Gray?” Elbridge asked him.

  It often seemed to Charles that Elbridge knew nothing about anything except the composition of brass, but John Gray was very patient.

  “The purpose of a muster, Elbridge,” he said, “aside from social relaxation, is to see which of these antiquated fire engines can squirt the longest stream of water from its tank—an athletic contest, Elbridge. You should come with Dorothea and see us, and, Charley, I want you particularly.”

  “I don’t know whether I can get away in time, Father,” Charles said.

  “Charley,” his mother said, “if your father wants you to, of course you can.”

  Charles could not understand why that homely conversation should have depressed him or why its humdrum quality should have made it so indelible. It had been as dull and quiet as everything in Clyde, and yet, when he was in his room that night, the words kept running back and forth in his mind and details kept cropping up with the words. He was again shaking hands with Elbridge Sterne, listening to Elbridge’s anxious conversation, and again his mother was darning the sock and again he saw her half-startled look. He saw his father folding and rolling the Boston Evening Transcript—oh, no, he was not following the transactions of the financial page—he was only searching for Notes and Queries.

  The door of Charles’s bedroom was closed but it could not shut out those thoughts and every object in the room helped to give them emphasis. The framed picture of Sam in his uniform, standing on his bureau, was a part of them, and so was the silver cup he had won at freshman track in college and so were the books he had purchased, standing in the mission bookcase that he had brought from Hanover. The casual volumes from Everyman’s Library, his copy of Lord Jim, his books on economics, his Channing’s History of the United
States, his Shakespeare, his Oxford Book of English Verse, and even the volumes of accounting and salesmanship—all of them were a part of what he was thinking.

  At least everything in his room was neat, not like his father’s room. When he hung his coat on the hanger in the narrow closet beside his extra suit and his evening clothes, it was a relief to see that his black pumps and his other shoes were in a straight and even row and that his blue suit of pajamas and his dressing gown were hanging tidily above them covering the illustrated list of morning physical exercises tacked inside the closet door. The Bible his mother had given him and a volume of Emerson’s Essays lay on the candlestand beside his narrow spool bed. He could see all those objects suddenly as belonging to someone else and he could read the character of the person who owned them almost as though it had nothing to do with himself. It was a small, cold, narrow room, but at least it was not like his father’s. When he thought of it afterwards, he knew it was a priggish room, an accurate reflection of early attitudes, but still it had shown something of which he was never ashamed. No bedroom of his was ever quite like it afterwards, never as simple, never as serene.

  He had yet to buy T. S. Eliot’s poems, and Adam from the Sistine Chapel was not yet hanging on the wall, and Pliny’s doves in white marble sitting on the edge of their little yellow fountain were not yet on his bureau in front of Sam’s picture, between two wood-backed military brushes. Jessica Lovell had not given them to him yet. There was no trace of Jessica in that room, no hint of lightness or humor, no sign at all of love.

  7

  When We Ran with the Old Machine

  “Charley,” Jessica said to him once, “it was all so funny, wasn’t it? You being there, and me, when we neither of us wanted to be there at all”—they were talking, of course, about the firemen’s muster and it always seemed curious that neither of them had wanted to go there at all—“and if it had been anywhere else we’d have both been different. Do you remember the fife-and-drum corps?”