Now, Voyager

by Higgins Prouty, Olive

  Charlotte took one, struck a match, lit Deb’s cigarette, then her own, flicked out the match, tossed it in the wastebasket, as nonchalantly as she’d ever seen it done on the stage. Deb settled herself on the folded blanket at the foot of the turned-down bed. Charlotte stretched out her feet, and leaned back in the low armchair. “I’ve seen Isobel’s picture,” she said. “He had a snapshot of his whole family, and seemed to be very proud of them too.”

  “I never saw such a good sport! Honestly, when I see what a woman like Isobel can do to a man like J.D., it makes me boil. Most men wouldn’t stand it.”

  “Why does he?”

  “Because J.D. has been cursed, from the first day he found himself engaged to Isobel, by a ruling passion not to hurt her. Also he doesn’t like getting hurt himself, I guess.”

  “How did they happen to be engaged?”

  “Propinquity. And propriety. Isobel was one of those pure, high-minded girls who believed a kiss required a proposal of marriage. Isobel came to New York to study the ‘piano forte,’ as her mother called it. She had memorized three or four pieces in Syracuse. That’s where she lived. And apparently wanted to acquire a few more pieces with which to attack the forte. That was just what her playing was like. She met J.D. at our house on her very first afternoon in the big wicked city, and from that day to this he’s had her hung around his neck.”

  “Was she a friend of yours?”

  “Scarcely! Or I wouldn’t be talking like this about her. No! Her mother knew mine slightly in college and wrote and asked if Isobel, who was coming to New York to study the piano forte, could spend the first few nights with us, and did Mother know of a nice place where she would be safe in the big city? There was usually a crowd at our house, and Isobel arrived one Saturday afternoon when we were having tea and drinks. Mother greeted her with great effusion, as she does everybody she doesn’t know very well and wants to make feel welcome. Any outsider would have concluded that Isobel was one of our most intimate friends. I know J.D. got that impression. Isobel was quite a pretty little thing in those days. After tea Mother asked her to play for us. When she sat down at the piano, she put on all the airs of a professional. Later, when the question came up as to rooms, J.D. spoke up and said that at the place where he was rooming there were several girls studying music and art. Well, to make it short, Isobel went there. Inside of three months they were engaged.”

  “What was J.D. doing in New York?”

  “Just starting in on his first job in one of the big architects’ offices there, and boiling over with enthusiasm. He had nothing but his salary to marry on and they were engaged for three or four years. Isobel, instead of getting a job to add her earnings to J.D.’s, went back to Syracuse ‘to wait for him.’ But it’s getting late. I must go. Say you’ll come with us tomorrow.”

  “Don’t go. Have another cigarette. Tell me what happened to make J.D. give up architecture.”

  “Tell me first what happened to you. You’re an absolutely different person from the one I saw last.”

  “It’s all Lisa’s doings.” And she explained briefly but vividly the orgy of her transformation, to the accompaniment of frequent chortles from Deb.

  “Imagine the sensation you’ll make when you go home! What will your mother say?”

  “I’m trying not to think.”

  “And all your friends?”

  “Oh, I haven’t any friends.”

  “You’re simply marvelous! It’s your absolute honesty I like so. Tell me about Lisa and that man who has been in love with her for so long. Barry Firth. That’s his name!”

  “Who told you Barry Firth was in love with Lisa?”

  “I saw it with my own two eyes when I spent that weekend with her. But I never mentioned it to anyone, and I wouldn’t to you now if you hadn’t just told me she is a widow. I just wondered if Barry had run to cover, as old admirers have a way of doing when all obstacles are removed.”

  “No. Barry hasn’t run to cover.”

  “Are they married?”

  “Scarcely. Lisa has been a widow only a few months.”

  “How long will they wait?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with her. But as long as Mother is living, I don’t think Lisa will do anything to shock her. Mother’s heart is far from strong. We all have to be careful.”

  “Lisa told me a lot about your mother. Said she was one of the last of the old Victorian matriarchs in existence, still ruling her family with a rod of iron. And she said you were one of the last members of the Holy Order of Devoted Daughters in existence.”

  “My presence on this pleasure cruise certainly looks like it!”

  “Well, it’s none of my business, but it seems to me as if you deserve this break as much as J.D. Make the most of it, my dear. Gosh! Look at the time! One thirty! I’ll tell you about the architecture tragedy tomorrow if you’ll come with us. I must go now, and let J.D. go to bed. He’s waiting. Oh, darn it, I’m no good at diplomacy. Listen, I’m just a messenger sent here by J.D. He is going to start for Paris tomorrow if you don’t come with us. I’m to take him your answer before I turn in.”

  Charlotte and Deb lay stretched out in the sand in one of the sheltered coves of the Cape of Antibe, Charlotte on her side, her head propped up in the palm of her hand, Deb flat on her back, weathered face and browned throat exposed to the full blast of the sun’s rays. It was one of the Mediterranean’s brightest of blue days. Twenty feet away breaking waves made a ragged edge of white against a pale yellow beach. Thousands of feet away the snowcapped mountains of the Italian Alps made another ragged edge of white against a pale sky. The two men had started out on foot to inspect the town, and to satisfy J.D.’s eager curiosity to have a closer look at the two old square watch-towers.

  “His enthusiasm for architecture seems to have persisted,” commented Charlotte.

  “I know, his other enthusiasms too! You simply wouldn’t recognize him for the same man he is at home. We’ll get him to tell some of his Scotch and Irish stories tonight at dinner. He can be screaming. He’ll never tell them when Isobel’s around. She says it’s making a buffoon of himself for others’ amusement. She stepped on his butterfly collecting, too. Called it a waste of time.”

  “Why did J.D. give up architecture?”

  “For about the same reason he gave up about everything else he liked to do. Isobel seemed to look on his architecture as a sort of hobby. She told me once that she had had to give up being a pianist when she married and had one baby right after another, and she saw no reason why Duveaux should keep on indulging his youthful dreams after he had taken on the responsibility of a wife and children. Isobel has always considered that she has very delicate health as compared to other women. It was a horrible shock to her nervous system when she found she was pregnant two months after she was married. She’d planned not to have a child till J.D. could afford it, if then, because of her health. It was a worse shock still when the same thing happened two years later. She considered herself a great martyr. And then proceeded to consider the children great martyrs to have to go to a public school and live in a neighborhood that was all run down. Oh, how she used to run on to me! Both the older girls ought to be earning their own living by this time, but Isobel was bound they should go to college, though neither is a brilliant student. She told me once, with tears in her eyes, that if Duveaux didn’t do something more practical, she’d have to pay for their daughters’ college education with her money.”

  “Has she money?”

  “No. It was just a nasty threat. Her father left her a few thousand dollars when he died. But whether it’s much or little it isn’t very pleasant for a man to have his wife keep saying, ‘Well, if you can’t afford this or that, I’ll get it with my money.’”

  “Do you live near each other at home?”

  “Not now. Mack and I have moved out to Darien. But when we were first married we rented a house in Bronxville. Mother was always at me to be nice to Isobel. I tried to be, but she didn�
��t fit into our crowd. She didn’t approve of Mack in the least. Thought he was a bad influence. She disapproves of most of J.D.’s college friends. She used to claim the old crowd met chiefly for the purpose of becoming intoxicated. ‘Even,’ she told me once in her most injured tone, ‘when there are only two of them, and the meeting place the home of one of the men whose wife and innocent little six-month-old daughter are upstairs in bed!’ Buck Mortimer—the surgeon, you know—dropped in on J.D. in Mount Vernon one Saturday while he was interning in a New York hospital and spent the night. Isobel never forgot that he sent her husband upstairs to her in a state of intoxication at three o’clock in the morning, at which hour, unable to endure it any longer, she called down to J.D. Buck never forgot it either. He never dropped in on J.D. in Mount Vernon again! J.D. told Mack about it, and how dreadfully he felt about Buck. J.D. wasn’t drunk, he said, but fool enough to talk too much to Isobel when he finally went upstairs, and tell her one of Buck’s shady stories. And then on top of that the poor boy had the rotten luck to stumble over a chair. Isobel told me Buck’s story was so awful that when Duveaux began bumping into the furniture, she decided to sleep in the room with the baby. For weeks she assumed the tragic role of a woman who has discovered her husband is likely to become an alcoholic.”

  “I suppose,” said Charlotte, “she has principles about alcohol. I know the type. There are a few of them still left in Boston.”

  “Well, it’s no type for J.D., or for any normal man, these days. It’s perfectly all right not to touch a drop herself. Lots of good sports don’t. But Isobel was always in a dither for fear J.D. would touch too much. And she is terribly jealous, too.”

  “Is there a reason to be jealous?”

  “If you mean does J.D. have affairs with other women, no, he doesn’t. Not that I know of. But Isobel is jealous of his even talking to another woman. At a party, if J.D. appeared to be engrossed in conversation with a woman, Isobel would worm herself across the room somehow, appear at his elbow, and ask roguishly what in the world they were finding so interesting. Of course J.D. does like people and people like him. He has a very strong instinct of gregariousness, but Isobel doesn’t do a thing about it.”

  “What should she do about it?”

  “What any sensible woman does with a man, once she finds out what his strong instinct is. Satisfy it, if it isn’t downright bad, and I’ve heard none of our instincts are bad. It’s up to a woman with a gregarious husband to provide a few people for him, I think. J.D. loves parties, but Isobel is one of those women who feels she is excused from all social debts and duties because she has three children and only one general-housework girl (and such a poor one) and her church work besides. Isobel’s terribly religious. And she’s such a devoted mother, to hear her tell it. Oh, I hate a hypocrite!”

  “Isn’t she really a devoted mother?”

  “Oh, perhaps, perhaps, to the two older girls. I’m probably horribly unfair to her. Partly envy, I guess,” Deb paused. “I never had a baby. We’ve got three kids, but they’re adopted,” she tucked in gruffly. “I suppose it’s because I know Isobel didn’t want any one of those girls before they were born that her sanctimonious maternal attitude gets my goat so. Before Tina was born she tried to get a doctor to say it would be bad for her health to have another child.”

  “Tell me about Tina.”

  “I don’t know much. She was born after we’d moved out to Darien. But I’ve seen her. She had awful eczema for the first year, poor kid, and is a terribly plain child now, and a misfit at school, I guess. She doesn’t get along with Isobel, and simply worships J.D. The result is Isobel is jealous of the child she never wanted. So you can see J.D.’s home life isn’t any spring song. Do give him a good time. He deserves it.”

  “What sort of architect was he?”

  “J.D. did dwelling houses mostly. But he was just on the edge of bigger things—churches, libraries, public buildings. Mack says he just barely missed out on several instances he knew about. Perhaps he was inclined to be a little visionary. One of his pet schemes was to transport the heart of a Vermont village down to Central Park, and set it up. J.D. was born in some little town up in the northern part of Vermont. His father was a country doctor, and he knew just where he could get all the things he wanted for his ‘Early American Village,’ as he called it. But neither the Art Museum, nor the city, was willing to appropriate anything for the project of ‘the fanciful Mr. Durrance’! That’s what he was called in a certain editorial. It wasn’t long after that editorial that J.D. came to Mack and told him ‘the fanciful Mr. Durrance’ was getting out of architecture, and could Mack spare any money to buy a few shares in a new electrical supply business? Of course Mack bought some shares. He adores J.D. But the business has never done well. Still J.D. managed to send Isobel and the two older girls to Europe twice! They just love to travel! Gosh!”

  Deb stood up. Charlotte glanced at her. She was gazing at the white-tipped Italian Alps far away, a deep scowl between her eyes.

  “If there’s anything that makes my blood boil,” she said, in a tone to match her frown, “it’s to see one of our American dogs harnessed and made to draw a cart, even though a child may be driving him. Same with a man. Dogs and men aren’t meant to be harnessed in our country. Come on, we’d better be getting back to the car if we are to meet those two boys at three o’clock.”

  10

  THE TWO CRUSOES

  Four days later Charlotte and J.D. stood on a dock in Naples waving goodbye to Mack and Deb as their ocean liner slowly nosed her way out of the crowded harbor, music playing, tugboats snorting, seagulls swarming.

  Charlotte’s cruise boat was to set sail for Alexandria at 12:00 that night.

  “There will only be fourteen hours left after Mack and Deb sail at ten for us to do all the things we didn’t do in Majorca!” J.D. said to Charlotte the night before, leaning on the deck railing beside her. The cruise boat had just left Genoa. Mack and Deb had gone below to their room, and Charlotte and J.D. had gone above to the highest spot on the boat to gaze upon the little island of Elba, shrouded in darkness.

  All the things they hadn’t done in Majorca? What did he mean by that, Charlotte had wondered. But she hadn’t asked. Nor had she taken the inflection of his voice as anything more than playful masquerading. It no longer embarrassed her.

  Three days in the good graces and constant society of Mack and Deb had given her self-confidence. But not to be relied upon, she discovered, when, while still gazing at Elba, the same touch that had steadied her a few days before now unsteadied her. Without warning or provocation, J.D.’s hand had found its way along the rail and clasped her wrist!

  Panic-stricken at first, she had not drawn away. She hadn’t made a sound or moved a muscle. His fingers had tightened on her wrist, and his grazing shoulder had pressed closer against hers. Thus they had stood for at least three minutes, J.D. as mute, as motionless, as Charlotte. Finally he loosened his fingers, and abruptly moved away.

  “Italian spring fever, I guess. Let’s walk.”

  Side by side they tramped several times around the deck, their hands shoved deep in their topcoat pockets, saying little. No reference whatsoever was made to the three poignant minutes by the deck railing.

  That night Charlotte dreamed about Leslie. At first she was standing with him on the freight deck, leaning on its scarred railing, with his arm around her, when Isobel Durrance appeared at his elbow, and inquired roguishly, “What in the world are you two finding so interesting?” Almost at the same moment her mother loomed up on Charlotte’s empty side, and said, in a low voice, “I saved you once. Remember ‘Rockledge’!” And instantly the scene shifted to that pathetic little house on the outskirts of Liverpool.

  She was inside the house. Leslie had just returned from a sea voyage. They stood in the little front room in a long embrace. Suddenly Leslie stiffened and pointed out the window. There was a woman seated just outside the iron gate, shoulders stooped and head bent. At first C
harlotte thought it was the New York girl, but as she gazed she recognized Isobel Durrance, knitting, and beside her sitting cross-legged on the ground was a child. Tina, of course. Looking back at Leslie, she discovered that he was no longer young. There were unfamiliar hollows in his face, his sky-blue eyes were midnight-blue-black, and his corn-colored eyebrows were dark sienna brown. It wasn’t Leslie in whose arms she was standing! It was J.D.! The shock woke her up instantly.

  Freud would have explained the jumbled events in terms of desires and repressions, but there was no time for Charlotte to reflect upon its significance. The thrill of participation in the day that lay before her, and the unfamiliar joy she felt in reality, were enough to lay the ghosts of any dream. The sun was shining brightly. The Bay of Naples was holding out both her arms in warm welcome, offering her various attractions with the generosity of an abundant supply, while in the background Vesuvius comfortably smoked, like a spent old man on the sidelines.

  The quartette had selected the Capri trip. Whatever constraint J.D. felt with Charlotte as the walked on the deck last night had disappeared completely. He seemed even more unrestrained, Charlotte thought, whenever occasion arose to offer her a helping hand up and down unsteady gangplanks, hanging escalators, donkeys’ backs, bobbing rowboats, or pitching steamers. He was in such a gay, bantering mood that Deb said she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see him stop and turn a handspring at any moment.

  “The old dub’s winnings have probably gone to his head,” Mack had drawled.

  Two nights before at Monte Carlo, J.D. had had one of those phenomenal experiences of beginner’s luck. Whether he played red or black, odd or even, the little ivory ball seemed possessed to fall in his favor. He had been conservative at first, but as the evening progressed and his luck held, he took bigger risks and played higher stakes. When the quartette left the casino at midnight, they had all lost except J.D., but to no such extent as he had won. The $500 which the bank presented to J.D. was like a windfall from heaven to him. He insisted on giving a farewell dinner for Mack and Deb, followed by the opera—none other than Traviata, triumphantly J.D. had announced after he had secured the tickets. Wasn’t it marvelous of the opera company to honor Camille’s presence by producing Verdi’s version of the character whose name she bore?