“We’ve been reading Jane Eyre,” Miss Lovell said. “That is, I’ve been reading it. Do you like Jane Eyre, Charles?”
“How do you do, Charles?” Mr. Lovell said, getting up from the sofa.
“Please don’t get up, sir,” Charles said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“It’s just as well you did,” Mr. Lovell said. “Jane Eyre is the most improbable book I know and, at the same time, the truest.”
Charles wished he could remember more about the Bronte sisters.
“How’s your Aunt Jane, Charles?” Miss Lovell asked.
“I’m afraid she hasn’t been so well lately,” Charles answered.
“Let me see”—Mr. Lovell was speaking—“I don’t think I’ve set eyes on you, Charles, since the Players were finished. How is everything going at Wright-Sherwin?”
“I’m leaving there at the end of next week, sir.” Charles tried to speak as though he were speaking about the Bronte sisters.
“Oh,” Mr. Lovell said, “I’m sorry. Was anything the matter?”
“No, nothing was the matter,” Charles answered. “Next week I’m starting work in Boston at E. P. Rush & Company.”
A change had come over Mr. Lovell. He was looking at Charles for the first time as though he were not a Clyde boy who had come to call.
“Why, Charles,” he said, “how did you ever get into E. P. Rush?”
“Father knows Mr. Rush,” Charles said.
“I didn’t know John knew Mr. Rush.”
“Yes,” Charles said, “he knows him.”
Mr. Lovell still looked at Charles as though he had heard something incredible.
“Why, that’s splendid,” he said. “Well, well. Congratulations.”
Charles wanted to look again at Jessica but he restrained himself, and then Miss Lovell spoke quickly.
“Charley, I’m awfully glad for you,” she said. He always liked Miss Lovell after that.
“E. P. Rush & Company.” Mr. Lovell was speaking again. “Well, well, well. If you hear of anything interesting in the way of securities, Charles, be sure you let me know.”
“Jessica,” Miss Lovell said, “why don’t you show Charles the tulips in the garden? It’s still light enough.”
“It’s getting damp tonight,” Mr. Lovell said. “Jessica’s the only girl I have and I don’t want her catching cold. Well, just walk around the garden, Jessica, and then come back.”
When they were opening the door at the end of the hall, Charles could still hear Miss Lovell’s voice.
“Laurence,” he heard her say, “try not to be so ridiculous.”
The tulips made a beautiful show in the beds on the lower terrace and above them on the second terrace the peonies were just ready to bloom. Though there was no strong scent of flowers, the air was filled with that strange repressed vigor of a New England spring.
“I can’t stay out long,” Jessica said. “You understand, don’t you, dear?” She was walking quickly up the gravel path, climbing up the steps to the third terrace. “Father hates seeing me grow up. He always has.” She sounded as though she were talking to an imaginary person, much as Charles in his thoughts had often spoken to her. “I wish I weren’t the only thing he had.”
Her coat was over her shoulders with its sleeves hanging loose, for she had not bothered to put her arms through it before she left the house. Her bare head and the loose sleeves and the way she talked made him think of Jane Eyre, hurrying away from something in the house, afraid that it might follow her or afraid that it might call her back.
The third terrace, a level, close-cropped lawn called the bowling green, was shut off from all the rest of the garden by a high, carefully clipped spruce hedge and she seemed uncertain that he was beside her until they were in that dusky green enclosure.
“Oh, darling,” she whispered, “I’ve missed you so,” and her coat slipped off her shoulders. She said she had missed him until she could not believe any of it.
“I’ve missed you, too,” he said. “We’ve got to see each other, Jessica.” It did not seem possible that they could be making love in that formal garden.
“Yes,” she said, “we’ve got to. Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”
“Of course,” he said. “Everything’s all right.”
“Darling,” she said, “I love you so that everything goes to pieces.”
He kissed her without answering.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “You’re so honest and you never are afraid, are you?”
“What’s there to be afraid of?” Charles asked.
“Oh,” she said, and she turned her head away, “of something happening to spoil it all. I keep waking up in the night and thinking something’s happened.” She shook her head very quickly. “Darling, wasn’t Aunt Georgianna sweet? She wanted us to see the tulips.”
“Have you told her anything?” Charles asked. She shook her head quickly.
“Not exactly. I’ve talked about you. I have to talk about you, dear, and there’s no one else.”
“Have you told your father anything?”
“Of course not,” she said. “That’s a silly question. Darling, you can see, can’t you? It’s got to come over him by degrees. We’d better be going back now.”
“Yes,” Charles said, “I suppose we had,” and he wrapped her coat around her.
“And now you’re in Boston we can see each other there sometimes, too. Darling, everything’s so wonderful. I’ve got to forget it’s so wonderful.” She seemed to be forgetting already as they walked back. “Look how black the box border looks. None of it was winterkilled.”
She only said one thing more before they reached the house. She said it just as she put her hand on the heavy brass latch of the outside door.
“We’ve got to keep believing.”
Nothing else mattered if you could keep believing, and nothing was left if you stopped.
Charles never considered that his or Jessica’s manner, aside from all appearances, might indicate the probability of what had happened in the garden because they took great pains to walk into the room decorously, far apart and entirely unconcerned with each other.
“Hello,” Mr. Lovell said. “So you’re back.”
“You were right,” Jessica said, and she bent down and kissed his high forehead. “It was very cold out there. You’re always right.”
“Charles,” Miss Lovell said, “would you mind getting my knitting? It’s on the table.”
“Patrick’s doing pretty well with the garden,” Mr. Lovell said. “None of the box border was winterkilled.”
“I suppose it’s pretty far north for box, sir,” Charles said, and Mr. Lovell gave him a searching look.
“Virginia’s the place for box, Virginia and England. Were you ever in Virginia, Charles?”
“No, sir,” Charles said.
“You must go someday … Jessie”—Mr. Lovell smiled at her—“I’ve just been thinking you and I might go abroad again this summer.”
“This summer?” Jessica repeated.
“I was just speaking of it to Aunt Georgianna,” Mr. Lovell said. “Why, don’t you like the idea, Jessica?”
There was nothing for Charles to do but to listen. Jessica sat with her hands carefully folded.
“I thought you wanted me to get used to Clyde,” she said, “and now I’m getting used to it you want to go away.”
“Now, Jessie”—Mr. Lovell laughed—“Clyde’s always an easy place to come back to and don’t look so upset. We couldn’t possibly leave till toward the end of June. I’ll want to go to Class Day and there are all sorts of odds and ends I have to attend to. I think it would do us a lot of good to get a change.”
“But you were just saying yesterday—” Jessica began, and she stopped.
“When we get back, Charles may be a partner at E. P. Rush, but I’m afraid it’s dull for you, Charles, our talking over plans,” Mr. Lovell said.
It was clearly
time to be leaving, but he did not want it to look as though he were hurrying away.
“I hope you have a good trip, sir,” he said.
“Don’t go, Charles.” Mr. Lovell smiled at him, but Charles knew when it was time to go. He said good night to Miss Lovell and shook Mr. Lovell’s hand.
“Good night, Jessica,” he said.
“Oh, Charley,” she said, quite loudly, when his hand touched hers, “don’t forget tomorrow night,” and she turned away from him before she dropped his hand. “Charles is going to take me to the movies tomorrow night.”
He certainly had not asked her, but she said it so convincingly that he almost thought he had.
“Why,” Mr. Lovell said, “that’s very nice of Charles to take you,” and his words rang with complete conviction. “Good night, Charles, and come in any time.”
“Yes,” Miss Lovell said, “any time. Good night.”
He must have been thinking more of the way he had behaved than of anything else in the first few minutes after he left. He hoped he had shown no surprise or resentment; he even found himself admiring the way in which Mr. Lovell, with his flat, agreeably modulated voice, had contrived to show him that he had stepped into a region where he did not belong, gently, delicately, and yet in a way you could not possibly mistake. What lay between him and Jessica was now an incontrovertible fact or it would not have occurred to Mr. Lovell that it might be nice to take her abroad that summer.
He had never asked her to the moving pictures and perhaps everyone had known it. Nothing had been as wonderful as the moment when Jessica had said, still holding his hand, “Don’t forget tomorrow night,” for she might as well have said that she cared for him no matter what anyone thought. She might as well have stood beside him and have said that she would see him any time she pleased and that no one could prevent it. Perhaps Jessica actually did say so, after she had brushed her lips against his cheek in the dark front hall and had closed the door behind him.
When he returned to Spruce Street, his father was sitting alone downstairs openly reading the financial page of the Boston Transcript.
“How was it at the Lovells’, Charles?” he asked.
“It was all right,” Charles said.
“I suppose they were all sitting in that room with the wallpaper,” John Gray said. “How did Jessica look?”
“She had on a grayish-green dress,” Charles said, and he went on because he had to tell someone. “Miss Lovell was reading Jane Eyre aloud.”
“Oh dear me,” John Gray said, “the Brontes. Did you all read aloud?”
“No,” Charles said. “Miss Lovell asked whether Jessica and I wouldn’t like to go out into the garden and see the tulips.”
“Oh my,” John Gray said, “what did Laurence say?”
“He said it was getting cold outside.”
“Well, well. How long were you in the garden?”
“Not long. Jessica thought we ought to get back.”
“Well, well,” John Gray said. “What happened when you got back?”
“Mr. Lovell said it had just come into his mind that he and Jessica might go abroad this summer.”
John Gray smiled and passed his hand over the back of his head.
“There’s nothing like a small town, Charley. Of course, everyone is going to guess why the Lovells went abroad.”
Charles felt his face grow deep red, and his father leaned forward and put his hand gently on his knee before he could answer.
“I never did like Laurence Lovell, Charley.” The intensity of his dislike must have had its roots deep in some past of which Charles knew nothing.
“Charley,” John Gray continued, “this is a very small town, smaller than a smaller town, and someday you’ll see what I mean.”
15
Laugh, Clown, Laugh
“You’re always on time, aren’t you,” Jessica said when he called for her the next evening in time for the late show. “Do I look all right for the movies?”
Naturally he told her that she did though it was obvious that she would not have been wearing a semi-evening dress and a short, dark velvet cloak if she had gone often to the movies in Clyde.
“I suppose you know that everyone will see us there,” he said.
She moved closer to him before she answered and put her arm through his.
“I want everyone to see us,” she said, and her hand was trembling. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Of course, he said, he did not mind who saw them.
“It’s been a dreadful day,” she said. “It isn’t anything Father says. It’s the way he looks. You might think I was going to run away with you because you’re taking me to the movies—but he’s really trying to be sweet. It isn’t you, you know, it’s me. Do you know what he said at supper?”
Charles wished that he did not have the helpless feeling of an innocent bystander.
“No,” he answered, “what did he say?”
“He said to be sure to ask you in when you took me home. He didn’t want me to catch cold walking around outside. Oh, darling.” He heard her catch her breath. “It has to be all right. As long as he sees there’s nothing he can do.”
They had turned down Dock Street and they were passing the Dock Street Bank.
“Do you remember the bank?” he asked her. “You had on your red hat.” It had only been that spring.
Two years before, the only moving picture house in Clyde had been called the Acme Theater. It had been built in the days when there had been vaudeville acts and illustrated songs between the pictures. It had been renovated at about the same time the new soda fountain and the uncomfortable little booths had been installed in Walters’s Drugstore, around the corner from it on Dock Street. The Acme Theater was called the Savoy now and was equipped with new soft seats and Romanesque decorations and an electrically lit marquee which cast a harsh halo of bright light on the sidewalk. Lon Chaney in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, was on that night, and the customers for the late show were already entering, while the new manager, Mr. Dupree, who was soon to sell it to a theater chain, stood by the ticket booth watching an out-of-town blonde making change.
Though it was now the Savoy and not the Acme, and though its lights were brighter, the whole scene reminded Charles of high school days when he used to take Doris Wormser to the same late show. The faces were different but there were the same crowds of adolescent boys and girls. They must all have been in grammar school when Charles had taken Doris there. There were all sorts of familiar faces, too, faces of older people and old schoolmates. First he saw Earl Wilkins, who had been tackle when he had been left end on the high school team, and Earl was with Lizzie Jenkins, one of the Wright-Sherwin girls.
“Hi, Earl,” he said.
“Hi, Charley,” Earl answered, and looked at him as if he had not seen him for a long while.
Then he saw Doris Wormser with Willie Woodbury, who was working in the Clyde Grain and Implement Company. Both Charles and Doris must have looked startled, but they called out to each other, and then he saw Melville Meader and Jackie Mason and Priscilla Meader.
“There’s Jackie Mason,” Jessica said.
He did not want it to seem unusual for him to be there with Jessica Lovell. He told himself that it was perfectly natural for him to be taking Jessica to Laugh, Clown, Laugh, and that it was only his imagination that made him feel that everyone was staring at them. At the same time, there was no reason why they should not have stared, because he would have been equally surprised to see a friend of his with Jessica in her velvet cape. It was a relief when he was in the dark theater, holding Jessica’s hand, until he saw that Priscilla Meader was beside him and then he dropped her hand hastily.
“I thought you never went to the movies any more, Charley,” Priscilla said.
“I don’t often,” Charles answered. “You know Jessica Lovell, don’t you Priscilla?” It would have been much better if he had not asked, since it indicated that perhaps Priscilla did not know her.
&
nbsp; “Oh, yes,” Priscilla said, and there was no need for Jessica’s having been quite so cordial. There was a cloying effort at politeness as they both leaned across him to talk during the short comedy.
“I haven’t seen you for a long while,” Jessica said.
“It was when the gardens were open, wasn’t it?” Priscilla said. “I don’t see how you ever got Charley to the movies.”
“I had to ask him. He wouldn’t have thought of it,” Jessica said.
Tomorrow everyone would know that he had taken her to the movies and that she had asked him.
“How about going to Walters’s after the show?” Charles asked. “How about it, Jack?” If he was going around with Jessica Lovell, they might as well go around to Walters’s.
Everyone always went around to Walters’s for ice cream after the pictures but Jessica looked foreign there in her velvet cape. They had divided decorously, like changing partners at a dance, so Charles looked across one of the little booths at Jessica sitting beside Jackie Mason. They were all speaking above the giggles and whistles of the high school crowd.
“This place is dreadfully crowded, isn’t it?” Priscilla said. “But at the same time, I can’t count how often I’ve been here. Can you, Charley? Do you remember Saturday nights at high school?” She beamed across the table. “You ought to have been with our crowd at high school, Jessica. You don’t mind my calling you Jessica, do you?”
“I don’t see what else you could call me,” Jessica answered.
Jackie Mason was looking at his ice cream. It was a strawberry nut sundae and Priscilla was speaking again.
“We’ve seen each other around enough to be on a first-name basis, I guess. You honestly ought to have been with us at high school, Jessica. We used to have more fun. Gosh, it seems like a long time ago. Jackie, didn’t we have fun?”
Jackie Mason looked up hastily from his plate.
“It was quite a long while ago, wasn’t it?” Jackie said, and he smiled feebly.
“Everybody sort of drifts apart, don’t they?” Priscilla said. “It doesn’t seem like we could ever have been like all those kids over by the fountain. I don’t think we ever behaved like those kids.”
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