Point of No Return

by John P. Marquand

  “But Father says I ought to do it,” Jessica said. “I know it’s silly, but things like that make me sick.”

  She was serious about it—the whole idea really frightened her. She was saying that once she had tried to be in a play at school and that she had begun walking in her sleep. She had tried again at Vassar and she had been taken ill.

  “Look at me, Charley,” she said. “I’m all arms and legs and I trip all over myself and it’s such a God-awful play.”

  It was one of those plays that started with a monologue by the engaging British hero. He was in a most frightful fix. His aunt, Lady Ponsonby, had made him her heir but just this morning she said she would cut him off with a shilling if he did not marry a hideous girl whom she deemed a suitable match instead of allowing him to marry lovely Lucy Clive, the curate’s daughter, whom he loved to distraction. He was in a terrible fix.

  “Father’s making such a point of it and look at me, Charley,” Jessica said. “Do I look like lovely Lucy Clive?”

  She was wretchedly unhappy, curled up there on the corner of the sofa, and no consolation, only austere disapproval, came from the wallpaper room.

  “Why don’t you tell him you really don’t want to?” Charles asked.

  “Oh, Charley,” she answered, “I can’t do that. I simply can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?” he asked. “Why not just tell him how you feel?”

  She passed the back of her hand across her forehead and she looked as though she were about to cry.

  “Oh, Charley,” she said, “nobody understands about Father and me. I can’t.”

  Charles could only sit there baffled. He wanted to touch her hair softly and tell her that it was all right. He wanted to put his arm around her and draw her close to him, but the idea still seemed preposterous.

  “Jessica,” he said, “it isn’t going to be as bad as all that.”

  “I don’t know what you’ll think of me,” she said. “I haven’t any right to ask you, but if I have to be in this thing, will you be in it too?”

  He could still view it all aloofly. He had never until that moment thought that Jessica Lovell might need him for anything.

  “All right,” Charles said, “if you want me to, Jessica.”

  Then she smoothed her dress carefully over her knees and her voice had changed. She was Jessica Lovell again, back in the wallpaper room.

  “Thanks ever so much,” she said, and suddenly everything was completely settled, and he was saying that it was about time to be getting back home. He rose and put the paper-covered play back on the table.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go,” Jessica answered.

  When he was in the front hall, getting into his overcoat, he could hear the tall clock ticking on the landing; and when he saw Jessica glance behind her, toward the closed door of Mr. Lovell’s library, his call suddenly became a clandestine meeting. Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper and he was sure that she was very anxious to have him on the other side of the great front door, walking down the path. When he put his hand on the heavy bronze latch and turned to say good night, she pulled his hand away.

  “Let me do it,” she whispered. “Don’t wake up Father,” and she opened the front door very gently. It was clear to him that she did not want Mr. Lovell to know that she had asked him to be in the Clyde Players.

  When he arrived at Gow Street a few nights later for what Mrs. Smythe Leigh called a preliminary get-together of the group, Charles knew by the number of hats and coats in the hall that he was late. He had hardly seen Mrs. Smythe Leigh since his senior class in high school had done Officer 666 and then Charles had only helped take in tickets. Now Mrs. Smythe Leigh squeezed his hand, holding it tight in both of hers. She was wearing a flowing gown of green velvet and on her right wrist was a Navajo bracelet.

  “Why, Charley Gray,” she said. “I hardly dared think that you would join us. Come right into the living room. Everybody’s here.”

  The scene in Mrs. Smythe Leigh’s living room, Charles sometimes thought afterwards, was one which must have repeated itself continuously in other places. Mrs. Smythe Leigh’s living room was an intellectual fortress and it stood for the larger world. As Mrs. Smythe Leigh told him later, there was no reason to get in a rut because one lived in Clyde. Clyde was a dear, poky place, full of dear people, but one could always open one’s windows to the world. One could bring something new to Clyde, and this was what she always tried to do … a few reproductions of modern pictures, a bit of Chinese brocade, a few records of Kreisler and Caruso, and the American Mercury and the New Republic and of course Harper’s and the Atlantic, and the New Statesman and L’Illustration. All one had to do was open one’s windows to the outer world—and the surprising thing was the number of congenial spirits who gathered if you did it. Sometimes, frankly, she had thought of giving up the Clyde Players. There was always the inertia, but the old guard, Dr. Bush and Katie Rowell, always rallied around her and would not let her give up. Once you had the smell of grease paint in your nostrils, you could never get away from it, and there was always that joy of getting out of oneself by interpreting character on the stage. Charles was a newcomer, but someday he might be the old guard, too.

  The newcomers and the old guard were all seated in the living room. There were not enough chairs so some were seated on the floor.

  “This is Charley Gray,” Mrs. Smythe Leigh said, “but then of course everybody knows everybody”—and of course everybody did, in a certain way.

  “And of course,” Mrs. Smythe Leigh said, “you know Jessica Lovell?”

  She obviously asked the question because she was not quite sure. Jessica was sitting on a piano stool and her face had the same strained, self-conscious look of all the other faces, but she smiled at Charles in a friendly, distant way.

  “You’ll have to sit on the floor, Charley Gray,” Mrs. Smythe Leigh said. “It’s your punishment for being late,” and everyone laughed politely. “And now I’m going to begin by giving my usual little talk. It’s an orientation talk. Some of us know it already but perhaps it won’t hurt to hear it again.”

  When the first meeting was over and Charles took Jessica home, this was something everyone understood, including Mr. Lovell. In fact, when Jessica asked him in, Mr. Lovell seemed pleased to see him. As they stood in the front hall, they could hear voices from the library and Jessica put her hand on his arm.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “Let’s see who it is.” Then she recognized the Midwestern voice, that sounded almost foreign at the Lovells’.

  “It’s Malcolm Bryant,” she whispered. “He always keeps dropping in,” and she gave her head an exasperated shake. It occurred to Charles that he had heard other people saying lately that Mr. Bryant kept dropping in on them unexpectedly, and he should have known better since no one ever made sudden descents on anyone in Clyde. By this time, everyone in Clyde knew who Malcolm Bryant was. He was the professor who was writing some sort of book and he had rented two rooms from old Mrs. Mooney in Fanning Street, where he stayed when he wasn’t in Boston and Cambridge, and he had his meals at Mrs. Bronson’s boardinghouse. It was time he knew better than to be dropping in suddenly on people.

  “Oh dear,” Jessica whispered, “Father’s telling him about the family again,” and they stood for a minute side by side listening.

  “I’d like to get this straight, Mr. Lovell,” they could hear Malcolm Bryant saying. “It’s a way of life that has just the continuity I’m looking for. Now when was it that your great-grandfather lived on River Street?”

  “That was before he built the house here,” they could hear Mr. Lovell saying. “Of course, River Street was different then. Johnson Street was hardly opened. My great-great-grandfather, Ezra Lovell, built and improved the house on River Street, before the Revolutionary War. The land ran down to the river, approximately where the gas company is now. There’s nothing left but one of the old warehouses. Webley’s blacksmith shop is in it now, and of course the wharf is g
one.”

  “Oh dear,” Jessica whispered. “Why does he want to know about it?”

  “Ezra Lovell was in the coastal trade,” Mr. Lovell was saying. “It was an old gambrel-roofed house, torn down after my grandfather sold the property. The countinghouse was in the ell, and then there were the slave quarters.”

  “What?” Malcolm Bryant asked. “Did they have slaves?”

  “Only in a small way, I think,” Mr. Lovell answered. “I came across a paper just the other day with Ezra Lovell’s signature liberating a Negro he owned named Pomp, but that was before the Revolution.”

  The Lovell library was a large, paneled room, with mahogany bookshelves all around it, designed by the order of Nathaniel Lovell. The same gold-tooled sets of books must have always been on the shelves, and now, though age was making their backs shaky, Charles could imagine that many of them had never been read. A celestial and a terrestrial globe stood on either side of the fireplace and above the books were more Lovell portraits and two pictures of Lovell ships and also the well-known engraving of the Clyde waterfront. There was a comfortable sofa in the library, as Jessica said, the only comfortable sofa in the house, and there were some reasonably modern leather armchairs. Mr. Lovell was seated in one of these with a stack of papers on the floor beside him, and Malcolm Bryant was seated opposite him with a notebook on his knee.

  “Hello, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said, and he held out both his hands to her and Malcolm Bryant stood up. “Back so soon? Why, hello, Charles.”

  Mr. Lovell gave him a questioning look, as though he could not understand his sudden appearance.

  “Charley took me home,” she said. “Charley’s in the Players.”

  She gave a little exasperated laugh as though she were telling her father that there was no reason for her to explain everything.

  “Why, of course, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said. “I’m delighted Charles is in the Players. I told you you’d find friends there. You know Mr. Malcolm Bryant, don’t you, Charles? Jessie, why don’t you bring us some milk and a little cake, or some crackers and cheese?”

  “Oh, not for me, thanks,” Malcolm Bryant said. “Please don’t bother.”

  “No, please don’t bother,” Charles said. “I’ve got to be going home.”

  It seemed to him that Mr. Lovell looked relieved, although he said that it would be no trouble at all and that Jessica would love to get them something.

  “Then how about a cigar?” Mr. Lovell asked. “Will you smoke a cigar, Charles?”

  “Oh, no, thank you, sir,” Charles said.

  “You know Charles can tell you a good deal about Clyde, Mr. Bryant,” Mr. Lovell said. “Charles is born and brought up a Clyde boy, aren’t you, Charles? More of a Clyde boy than Jessica is a Clyde girl, I’m afraid. How were the Players, Jessica?”

  “They were terrible,” Jessica said. “I told you they would be terrible.”

  “Now let’s see,” Malcolm Bryant said, “I must have missed the Clyde Players. Where do they fit in?”

  “Fit in?” Mr. Lovell repeated.

  “I mean in the general picture.”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of asking questions?” Jessica asked.

  “Now, Jessie,” Mr. Lovell said, “Mr. Bryant is here to ask questions. I should say that the Clyde Players is an ordinary community effort. Jessica is in it, and she should be, and Charles is in it. Why did you join the group, Charles?”

  “Because he must be weak-minded,” Jessica said quickly.

  Malcolm Bryant was leaning back in his comfortable leather chair with his hands laced in back of his head. He was the outsider, enjoying that little scene and evaluating it, while his deep-set eyes kept shifting from Jessica to Charles and back to Mr. Lovell.

  “And then there’s Dr. Bush, the osteopath,” Mr. Lovell said. “I believe he’s very active in it. That shows it’s a cross section—Jessica and then an osteopath. I had a stiff shoulder once and I got Bush in and he fixed it, just by pulling.”

  “Down in Borneo,” Malcolm Bryant said, “I had a stiff neck once and I was treated by a tribal doctor. He killed a bird and put it on my neck, after cutting it open with an obsidian knife. There was an interesting ritual connected with it.”

  “Did it help your neck?” Mr. Lovell asked.

  “I don’t really remember.” Malcolm Bryant was smiling at Jessica. “But I have some pictures of it. I’d love to show them to you sometime. Charley Schwartz, one of my assistants, took the pictures. He’s at Johns Hopkins now. Men are about the same everywhere.” Malcolm Bryant smiled again at Jessica. “Well, I mustn’t keep you up too late. I always have a lot to think about after an evening here.”

  “I wish I knew what you thought,” Jessica said.

  Malcolm Bryant rose and Charles stood up too. It was time to be going.

  “Grateful thoughts,” Malcolm Bryant said. “This has been a really challenging evening.”

  “Good night,” Mr. Lovell said, “and good night, Charles. It’s good news you’re in the play. We all have to take part in things, don’t we, and I’m glad there’s someone to take Jessica home.”

  Charles understood what Mr. Lovell meant—that it was better for him to take her home than for Dr. Bush. As long as they were both in the Players, engaged in a common community effort, there was no reason why he should not be seen with Jessica, no reason at all. In fact Charles could imagine later what Mr. Lovell must have said to Jessica.

  “Jessie,” he must have said, “I think it’s very nice that Charles Gray is in the Players, and it’s very nice if you see something of Charles Gray, as long as you don’t take him too seriously, Jessie. You’ll remember, won’t you, that a young man like Charles Gray has no prospects, or hardly any.”

  Perhaps he spoke differently later, for there was a time, just for a little while, when he may have thought that Charles did have prospects—when John Gray bought a Cadillac car and when the market was going up.

  By the time Charles and Malcolm Bryant left the Lovells’ house that evening, the other houses on Johnson Street were dark except for an occasional light in their upper windows.

  “By God,” Malcolm Bryant said, “this is a wonderful town. It all fits together without a blur in the pattern. By God, I was lucky to discover it. How well do you know the Lovells, Charley?” It was an impertinent question and Charles felt annoyed.

  “Not very well,” he answered.

  “Oh, I thought you did,” Malcolm Bryant said. “You seem to be great friends with Jessica.”

  Charles caught his breath in astonishment, and then he was angry.

  “Suppose you mind your own business,” he said, and he stopped walking and stood facing Malcolm Bryant. Malcolm Bryant had stopped too. They were only two dark shadows standing face to face on Johnson Street, but all at once Malcolm Bryant’s voice was placating and soothing.

  “That’s just the right thing for you to say,” he said. “I had it coming to me. I’m sorry.”

  “All right,” Charles said.

  Charles could not understand why his resentment was ebbing but there was a disarming quality in Malcolm Bryant’s voice.

  “It was rotten investigative technique,” Malcolm Bryant was saying. “If one of my team had done that, I’d have fired him. I just forgot myself. Don’t get mad, Charley. It wasn’t a personal question. I was just thinking about your groups, and the Lovells aren’t quite in your group—are they?”

  “No,” Charles said, “I don’t suppose they are.”

  “Now, Charley.” Malcolm Bryant put a hand on his shoulder. “This is scientific—none of it is personal. Look at me as a father confessor—just an old man you can talk to. It won’t go any further. You’re not mad any more, are you?”

  “No,” Charles said, “that’s all right. Good night.”

  Malcolm Bryant held out his hand and patted his shoulder again.

  “Well, that’s fine,” he said. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, Charley. My God, this is a wonderful town
.”

  Malcolm Bryant walked whistling down the street of the wonderful town and Charles walked home, but Malcolm Bryant’s hasty words were still running through his mind. He had never encountered anyone like Malcolm Bryant and he could not tell whether they were friends or not, but then perhaps a man like Malcolm Bryant never could be friends with anyone. Sometimes he was not sure that Malcolm Bryant had the same capacity for likes or dislikes that other people had. He was always thinking of everyone from a viewpoint which he called mass instinct. It was Charles’s first contact with pedantries.

  10

  The Procedural Pattern

  The Confessional Club, the men’s club to which Charles’s father belonged, met at the Grays’ home that year in January. Annually each member of the Confessional Club entertained all the other members for supper and for the evening. Charles remembered the occasion especially, because Malcolm Bryant had been invited.

  He had not known that his father knew Malcolm Bryant until a week before the meeting and already the house was in a turmoil, because John Gray always wanted to entertain the club properly. Until it was his turn to receive them, he was apt to make fun of the members of the Confessional Club and the club itself, although Charles was sure that he was proud to be in it. He used to say that the Confessional Club was only another of those blatant, self-conscious groups that had always cluttered up Clyde with preposterous, useless discussions. He used to say that those evening clubs were just like boys’ clubs except that they were formed by men and that no one had anything to say in Clyde that was worth listening to for half an hour—yet people in Clyde always had wanted to gather around and listen to dull papers.