Point of No Return (78 page)

It was not far from the dining room to the smaller room where men customarily gathered. They both walked across that gloomy hall without speaking and space had lost its significance. He was actually walking also over the road of his career, a feeble little human track like the progress of a sea creature in sand. It stretched all the way from the day on the stage at the City Hall to the accounting department in Wright-Sherwin, to Johnson Street, to Rush & Company, to the day his father died, to New York, to the day he met Nancy downtown, and now the track was ending in that walk across the hall. There would never be the same hay in the bundle again. The ass would never have to walk after it so assiduously. He might still be useful, but in a business way his career was as good as over. He had gone as far as he would go.

It was amazing that his thoughts could move so far afield in such a short space of time. He was like a defeated general withdrawing to a prepared position. He could sell the house at Sycamore Park. Suburban real estate was still high. They could move to a smaller place. There would be funds enough to educate Bill, and there was that trust fund of his mother's which would revert to him eventually. He would never have his present reputation but he would have the commercial value of an educated wheel horse, if he knew his place. He would never have to try so hard again.

“It's over,” he said to himself as he walked across the hall. “Thank God, it's over.” It was the first time he had felt really free since the moment he had met Jessica at the firemen's muster.

Tony Burton's room had always reminded him of the corner of a men's club. It was filled with the mementos of the travels of Tony Burton, gathered on that trip to Bagdad and on two world cruises. There was a gilded Chinese Buddha on the mantel above the arched fireplace, and a Chinese ancestral portrait and other things, but Charles was no longer obliged to be interested in them. He seated himself in a comfortable armchair without waiting to see if it was Mr. Burton's chair or not. He no longer had to bother.

“Sugar and cream, sir?” Mr. Burton's butler asked.

“Just coffee, thank you,” Charles said.

“And brandy, sir?”

“No, thanks,” Charles said. “No brandy.”

“Try it, Charley,” Tony Burton said. “It's some of my father's brandy. There isn't much like it left.”

Tony Burton was still standing up. He should have waited until Tony sat down but he no longer had to try so hard.

“Nancy always says I shouldn't drink after dinner,” he said, “but all right if you're going to have some, Tony.”

“Why not break down all the way and have a cigar?” Tony Burton said.

“Why, thanks,” he answered. “I'd like one.”

“Now that I think of it, I've never seen you smoke a cigar, Charley.”

“I don't often,” Charles said, “but I'd rather like one tonight.”

Tony Burton was still standing and again he wore the look he customarily assumed when he prepared to say a few graceful yet pointed words.

“Close the door, please, Jeffreys, when you go out,” Tony Burton said.

It was like a meeting in the bank directors' room when someone who came in with papers was told to close the door when he left. Charles leaned back comfortably in his chair. It was up to Tony Burton and he did not have to try. He was thinking of other talks in other libraries, the Judge's library at Gow Street and that hypocritical library of Mr. Lovell's and his own library at Sycamore Park. Thank God, it was all over, but he still had a detached, academic sort of curiosity. He was waiting to see how Tony would handle the situation. Tony was sometimes slow and fumbling with decisions but when he made up his mind he carried them through cleanly.

“This friendship in business—” Tony Burton said. “It's always bothered me. They shouldn't be mixed together.” He must still have been thinking of that speech in the dining room.

“They don't mix together,” Charles said. “Don't try to make them, Tony.” It was the first time he had ever spoken to Tony Burton exactly as an equal and it was a great relief. He flicked off the ash of his cigar and picked up his brandy glass and waited.

“And yet they must mix,” Tony Burton said. “None of us can help it, Charley. If you see somebody every day, if you have any human instincts at all, you get interested in him. You're bound to like him, or things about him. I like everybody at the bank. They're like members of my family. Now take Blakesley. What do you think of Blakesley, Charley?”

It was not a fair question and there was no reason to give a fair answer and besides it did not matter what he thought of Roger Blakesley.

“What do you want me to think?” he asked, and he was glad to see that Tony did not like the answer.

“It isn't what I want.” Tony Burton gave his head an exasperated shake. “You and I are alone here, and you don't have to be so damned careful. There's no necessity for it any more. I want your opinion of him. Do you like him or don't you?”

“All right,” Charles said, “as long as it doesn't matter any more, Tony. He's conscientious, energetic, and well-trained, but I don't like him much. Why should I?”

“I rather like him,” Tony Burton said. “He's been on my conscience lately. He's been so damned anxious, so damned much on his toes. He's always in there trying.”

“I don't know what else you could expect,” Charles said, and he was almost amused, now that there was nothing to gain or lose. “I've been trying pretty hard myself.”

He had never realized that it could be such a delightful moment, to sit sipping Tony Burton's brandy, entirely free, entirely without thought control.

“Not in the same way, Charley.” Tony Burton shook his head again. “You're subtler. You've developed, you've matured. You don't fidget mentally—not in the same way, Charley.”

“Thanks,” Charles said, “but I wouldn't say that I've been very subtle, Tony.”

Tony Burton shook his head impatiently as though he were being diverted from his train of thought.

“Of course I'm out of touch with things, being where I am,” he said, “but I've been getting an idea lately … and maybe I'm entirely wrong. I wish you'd tell me, Charley. You're more in touch with the office than I am and you're in a position to know Blakesley.… It seems to me that he has some idea that we're considering him for Arthur Slade's place. Do you know anything about this, Charley?”

“My God,” Charles said. “My God”; and he had a hysterical desire to laugh and then he found that he was laughing. “What did you think that Roger was considering?”

“I didn't give it much thought until about ten days ago,” Tony Burton said. “I'm glad if it amuses you. It doesn't amuse me. When anyone gets ideas like that it's a problem what to do with him later. You never thought that any of us were considering Blakesley seriously, did you? He was useful while you were away but he is not the right material. Of course, there had to be a decent interval after Arthur died but it never occurred to me that you'd have any doubts about it. Your name's coming up before the directors on Monday. Now what do you think we'd better do about Blakesley?”

Suddenly Charles felt dull and very tired.

“You'd better tell him something, Tony,” he said, “instead of teasing him to death.”

“I suppose I'll have to on Monday. I don't suppose I can put it off on anyone else,” Tony Burton said. “I should have discouraged him long ago. I'm sorry about the whole thing but perhaps he had better resign.”

It was like the time at Dartmouth when he had won the half mile at freshman track. He felt dull and very tired.

“That was all I meant in the dining room.” Tony Burton shook his head again. “Now that we'll be working together more closely, Charley, I hope that we'll always be friends.”

Tony's voice seemed to come from a long way off. There was a weight on Charles again, the same old weight, and it was heavier after that brief moment of freedom. In spite of all those years, in spite of all his striving, it was remarkable how little pleasure he took in final fulfillment. He was a vice-president of the Stuyvesant Bank. It was what he had dreamed of long ago and yet it was not the true texture of early dreams. The whole thing was contrived, as he had said to Nancy, an inevitable result, a strangely hollow climax. It had obviously been written in the stars, bound to happen, and he could not have changed a line of it, being what he was, and Nancy would be pleased, but it was not what he had dreamed.

“Well, Tony,” he said, “I guess that means I can send Junior to Exeter,” and Tony Burton was asking why Exeter? He would not send any boy of his to Exeter.

They were on a different basis already, now that he was a vice-president. Automatically, his thoughts were running along new lines, well-trained, mechanically perfect thoughts, estimating a new situation. There would be no trouble with the directors. There were only five vice-presidents at the Stuyvesant, all of the others older than he, most of them close to the retirement age, like Tony Burton himself. For a moment he thought of Mr. Laurence Lovell on Johnson Street but Mr. Lovell would not have understood, or Jessica either, how far he had gone or what it meant to be a vice-president of the Stuyvesant Bank. Nancy would understand. Nancy had more ambition for him than he had for himself. Nancy would be very proud. They would sell the house at Sycamore Park and get a larger place. They would resign from the Oak Knoll Club. And then there was the sailboat. It had its compensations but it was not what he had dreamed.

“A week from Saturday there'll be a little dinner. It's customary,” Tony Burton said. “You'd better be ready to make a few remarks.”

“All right,” Charles said, “if it's customary.”

“And now we'd better go back and see what the girls are doing, unless you have something else on your mind.”

“Oh, no, Tony,” he answered, “I don't think there's anything else.”

They would have to turn in the old Buick as soon as he could get a new one. There were a great many things to think about but they could wait till morning.

Nancy and Mrs. Burton were sitting together on a sofa in the living room and he thought they both looked relieved to see the men come back.

“Well,” Mrs. Burton said, “I hope you two have settled the affairs of the world. You look as though you have, and poor Mr. Gray looks tired.”

He saw Nancy look at him and Nancy looked tired too. He wanted very much to tell her the news but it would have sounded blatant. Then Tony Burton must have noticed that there was a sense of strain.

“I don't see why you keep on calling Charley Mr. Gray,” he said, “when Charley's in the family—or at least he will be on Monday,” and then he must have felt that he should explain the situation further because he turned to Nancy. “I don't suppose this comes as any great surprise. Why should it? It's hardly talking out of school. Charley's name is going before the directors on Monday, but I've spoken to them already. There won't be any trouble.”

If it meant more to Nancy than it did to him, it made everything all the better, and he was very much impressed at the way she took it. She looked as though she had known all the time that he would be the new vice-president, that nothing else could possibly have happened. She was fitting into her new position more than adequately.

“I can't say I'm surprised,” she said, “but it's nice to know definitely … Tony.”

A minute before she would never have dreamed of calling him Tony, but it sounded very well.

“As long as we're all in the family,” Tony Burton went on, “I was just telling Charley that I've been worried about Blakesley lately. Do you suppose he really may have thought that he was being considered?”

“Now that you mention it,” Nancy said, “I think perhaps he did—a little.”

About the Author

John P. Marquand (1893–1960) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, proclaimed “the most successful novelist in the United States” by
Life
magazine in 1944. A descendant of governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, shipping magnates Daniel Marquand and Samuel Curzon, and famed nineteenth-century writer Margaret Fuller, Marquand always had one foot inside the blue-blooded New England establishment, the focus of his social satire. But he grew up on the outside, sent to live with maiden aunts in Newburyport, Massachusetts, the setting of many of his novels, after his father lost the once-considerable family fortune in the crash of 1907. From this dual perspective, Marquand crafted stories and novels that were applauded for their keen observation of cultural detail and social mores.

By the 1930s, Marquand was a regular contributor to the
Saturday Evening Post
, where he debuted the character of Mr. Moto, a Japanese secret agent.
No Hero
, the first in a series of bestselling spy novels featuring Mr. Moto, was published in 1935. Three years later, Marquand won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for
The Late George Apley
, a subtle lampoon of Boston's upper classes. The novels that followed, including
H.M. Pulham
,
Esquire
(1941),
So Little Time
(1943),
B.F.'s Daughter
(1946),
Point of No Return
(1949),
Melvin Goodwin, USA
(1952),
Sincerely, Willis Wayde
(1955), and
Women and Thomas Harrow
(1959), cemented his reputation as the preeminent chronicler of contemporary New England society and one of America's finest writers.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.