Point of No Return (57 page)

Another year, when things were quieter, they could take a longer trip—the Riviera, Monte Carlo. Even though he did not gamble himself, he had always wanted to watch those improvidents at Monte Carlo and there was no reason why he shouldn't. Egypt, up the Nile, India, the Taj, Japan, China, islands of the Pacific, Hawaii—they could do it, another year. In fact, there was no reason why they should stay in Clyde in the winter at all. Eventually they could get a house at Pinehurst or Sea Island or Palm Beach. Palm Beach might be best, because he could drop in at Bradley's and watch other people lose their money.

There were other dots and dashes that winter—a dot for the New Year's dance at the Shore Club—it was Jessica who suggested the New Year's dance—another dash for a call at Johnson Street when Mr. Lovell was away and when Miss Georgianna went up to bed and left them alone; but one of the longest dashes of all, of course, was his triumph at Rush & Company.

In England there was the New Year's Honors List and that custom of granting favors and distinctions applied also to American business. First, at E. P. Rush, there were the Christmas bonuses, a carefully prorated largesse expected of financial houses at the end of a good year and primarily intended for the clerical force, the boys and girls behind the grating, and not for the team. The raises at New Year's, however, had a different, more permanent value, not to be discussed as openly as bonus money.

Charles was not surprised when Mr. Rush sent for him on the afternoon of January second. First they talked about the weather, and then Mr. Rush shifted the papers on his desk and looked embarrassed. He always had a hard time with personnel relationships. The partners, he said, had all been having a talk about everybody, a routine, end-of-the-year talk, and they had all agreed that Charles was getting to be part of the family, and he hoped that Charles liked the family. He did not want to encourage Charles too much, Mr. Rush said, but it was beginning to be plain that there was an eventual future for him in E. P. Rush and he wanted Charles to feel happy and contented so that the good work could go on, particularly the investment advisory work. Of course, he said, Rush & Company was not noted for paying large salaries, but Rush & Company looked after its own. It was a two-way loyalty. Employees were loyal to the firm, and the firm to the employees. He had not been with them long, but Mr. Rush was willing to forget length of service. As of the first of the year—Mr. Rush looked wretchedly embarrassed and drew circles on his memorandum pad—Charles's salary would be sixty dollars a week, a pretty large salary considering his age and experience, and Mr. Rush hoped that Charles would be happy about it.

There was never again in his life anything else exactly like that moment. He had been vaguely thinking of a possible fifty dollars and secretly he had felt it was a presumptuous hope although Mr. Stanley had offered him as much. For a second he struggled with a dizzy sort of incredulity and then instinctively he knew that he should not show it.

“Thank you very much, sir,” he said. “I'm very much obliged.”

“That's all right,” Mr. Rush said. “Well, that's all now.”

At the moment, he would gladly have died for Mr. Rush, that simple man who always wore a last year's hat and had his suits turned by his tailor to avoid buying new ones. As of that moment he was making three thousand dollars a year. It was possible, barely possible, that he could marry Jessica Lovell on three thousand dollars a year.

He must have still been riding on the wave of that elation when he met Malcolm Bryant in a snowstorm one night after a call on Jessica. It was another of the dots and dashes of that winter, extraneous, because Malcolm was already like a shore line that he was leaving far behind. Yet the memory of Malcolm always formed a part of the design of that winter, a reminder of the things he had missed and of the way things might have been if he had done this or that.

Jessica had told him that she really thought her father was getting used to it. He had recently fallen into the habit of sitting in the library with the door open when Charles came to call instead of sitting in the wallpaper room and joining in the conversation, and this may have proved that he was getting used to it. It even was possible to sit together on the sofa, though it was better always to talk brightly, without any gaps of silence, or Mr. Lovell would grow restless. Charles had said good night to her at ten and they had not lingered in the hall except long enough for him to buckle his overshoes, but it did not matter because she would be with her aunt in Boston over the week end and they were going to spend Saturday afternoon together and go to the theater on Saturday night.

It had started snowing at eight o'clock and now the wind was rising and the small, hard snowflakes eddied and swirled with it and beat against his face. Since it was early he decided to walk down Dock Street before he went home, just to see the storm. The snow made a hissing sound, gentle but very persistent as the wind drove it against the brick walls of the public library. He was just passing beneath the light by the Dock Street Bank and by the blank, dark windows of the notions store when he saw a figure coming toward him, head down, moving noiselessly against the wind. He slowed his steps to see who it was, as one always did in Clyde, and it was Malcolm Bryant.

“Hello, Charley,” Malcolm said. “Come on back with me. I haven't seen you for a long while.” Malcolm had not been to call at Spruce Street for months. “I've been up in Cambridge,” he went on, “getting all the material whipped into shape. We ought to be cleaned up here by March or April. God, this is a hell of a town.”

“You always used to like it,” Charles said.

“I know … I must have been crazy,” Malcolm said. “At least it's warm where you get anopheles mosquitoes. Well, how has everything been going with you, Charley?” There was a vague note in Malcolm's voice. “Are you still with that stock-and-bond job in Boston?” He had once been a collected specimen of Malcolm's and perhaps he was somewhere in a card file now but obviously Malcolm's interests had moved on and so had his. “I'm damned if I know why you do it,” Malcolm went on. “Where have you been? Calling on Jessica?”

“Yes,” Charles said.

“My God,” Malcolm said. “I suppose I have a mercurial disposition. When I first see a thing, I love it, and then when I get it worked out I'm ready to move on—but I've done quite a job here, if I do say so, and it ought to get me an honorary degree somewhere if anyone has any sense. God, the prejudices you run into, the small minds, but I'm not a prima donna. Thank God, I'm not a prima donna.” Charles never felt at home with Malcolm Bryant's weakness for frank personal revelation, but obviously something had happened. Obviously Malcolm was disturbed. “And I'm not a politician, either, and I'm not interested in publication. After all, my job is field work. I don't know what ever put it in my mind to ask for the G. Price Fellowship.”

“What's the G. Price Fellowship?” Charles asked.

“It's one of those stupid lecture fellowships.” Malcolm laughed airily. “Well, if they don't want me, they don't have to have me. Frankly, Harvard's a damn provincial place and I should have known it. Thank God, I'm not a time server or a prima donna.”

When they reached his rooms at Mrs. Mooney's, Malcolm switched on the light above his drawing board. The room had a crowded, restive appearance. His locker trunk and bedding roll, always closed before in neat readiness for departure from Clyde, were both opened. A rubber poncho and a mosquito net were draped across the couch and a collapsible rubber basin, a desert water bag and a pair of binoculars lay on top of them. All sorts of things had emerged from the tray of the locker trunk, small articles distributed in neat rows and piles on the floor like lead soldiers taken from a box—flashlights, medicines, camera film, and a great many other things that experience had taught the traveler were essential for a long journey.

“I'm just checking up on everything.” Malcolm waved at the locker and bedding roll as he wriggled out of his snowy overcoat and dropped it on the floor. “There won't be many stores along the Orinoco.”

He reached under the couch and drew out a whiskey bottle and told Charles to wait while he got a pitcher of water from the bathroom. As Charles stood there alone, he felt his own restiveness growing. In some ways Malcolm Bryant must have had a wonderful life and its design was right there in front of him, drawn with sheath knives, fishhooks, and mosquito netting. There was no need for careful, long-term planning in that life, because someone else did all the planning for him. Someone else supplied the money and the steamship tickets. If he did not like it where he was, Malcolm could move on, always supported by some learned foundation. He could go and he could return to tell his tales in his own strange, scientific jargon. He was returning now with the florid hot-water pitcher from a Victorian chamber set.

“There isn't any ice,” Malcolm said, “but if you want it cold just open the window and scoop in some snow.”

He leaned over the drawing board, poured a tumbler a third full of whiskey, and pushed it toward Charles. It was much more than Charles would have thought of consuming, yet Malcolm Bryant was escaping from Clyde and from whatever else it was that bothered him, and Charles felt, with the aid of that glass of whiskey, that he too could escape vicariously. He did not know from exactly what he wished to escape, but curious uncontrolled desires were pulling at him.

“I'm sorry you're going away, Malcolm,” Charles said.

“Are you?” Malcolm's deep-set eyes had a kindly look. “That's nice of you to say so, Charley. You're a nice kid, Charley.” Malcolm had tossed off his glass and was pouring himself another drink. “This whole thing is going to have repercussions, it's going to make a noise.”

“What whole thing?” Charles asked.

“This whole survey and its ultimate conclusion.” Malcolm waved his arm vaguely. “You see, I've been able to prove something.”

“What have you proved?” Charles asked.

Malcolm pulled a pipe and a tobacco pouch from his pocket. He reminded Charles, as he filled his pipe, of a detective, explaining to an appreciative audience, in the last chapter of a mystery story, just how he caught the criminal.

“It's a little hard to clarify for a layman,” Malcolm said, “but it can't help but get recognition when I get time to get it into print. Not that I want recognition. I'm against the whole theory of honorary degrees—but let me put it in one-syllable words. Man is essentially the same, whether he's in G-strings or plus fours, and I ought to know. After all, what is man?”

There was no need to answer the question. Malcolm Bryant was standing up. He was on the lecture platform, preparing to address a wider audience, fortifying himself first with a few swallows from his glass.

“What is man? Nothing but a very recent evolutionary form of mammal with a surprisingly adaptive brain. He tries to cloak himself with dignity. He's a self-conscious, worrying mammal, but he is only a small link in the chain of life. And what is life?”

Charles found himself groping cautiously through the maze of Malcolm's verbiage and he was thinking that Malcolm in his way sounded like a market letter, which also endeavored to prove something.

“What is our planetary system? Only a insignificant unit in a galaxy among other galaxies. There must be other planets, millions of them, billions of them, supporting life. What is man? To hell with him. Why should I worry?”

“But you are worrying,” Charles said.

“Now when I get to the Orinoco—” He had dismissed the planetary system. His gaze had traveled to the mosquito netting and the bedding roll. “Charley, how would you like to get away from all this and come with me to the Orinoco?”

“That would be fine,” Charles told him, “but I don't see quite how I can work it now.” He was using that placating tone one customarily employed in dealing with a drunk, and perhaps Malcolm recognized it.

“What are you going to do if you don't, Charley?” he asked.

“I guess I'll just have to try to get along,” Charles said, “in my planetary system.”

He did not like the way he sounded. He sounded like an old man or like a schoolbook, smug and reasonable. He was thinking of Jessica Lovell and Rush & Company, of a house and children of his own, of Jessica meeting him when he came home. If one could go beyond those thoughts at least those wishes were universal, but their ultimate purpose evaded him just then.

“The biological urge,” Malcolm was saying. “I suppose you realize you're a victim of the urge.”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I suppose so.”

“Oh, my God,” Malcolm said. “Excuse me, Charley.”

His meaning was perfectly clear. Malcolm was asking what a pedestrian life amounted to, a material plodding through the years—but then there was always Jessica Lovell, and there was nothing plodding about Charles's life. Then he thought of Malcolm's life—as much as he knew of it. It seemed to be spread out on the floor, between the foot locker and the bedding roll.

“Malcolm,” he asked, “what will you do when you're through with the Orinoco?”

“Oh, hell,” Malcolm said, and he stared at the floor for a moment and then he rubbed the back of his head. “You sound like the Saturday Evening Post, Charley. Don't bother me any longer. I'm not conditioned to environment. I'm not societal and I can't take punishment. I'm drunk and I guess I'd better go to bed, but there's one thing I'll say for you. You're a damned good type and you've got a lot of guts.”

Charles was shaking hands with him. It was one of those aimless conversations, questions and no answers, but he had always liked Malcolm Bryant and somehow he felt that this might very well be his last talk with him.

He knew when he was outside in the storm again that he had been drinking too much whiskey and that he would have a headache in the morning, and yet it had been worth it. With every step he took on Fanning Street, he seemed to be leaving something further and further behind, some possibility, but something of what he was leaving must have been with him always or he would not have dropped everything years later, he would not have left Nancy and the children and the Stuyvesant Bank and have gone to the war when he was overage—and not the type.