Point of No Return (41 page)

“Good morning, Jessie,” he said. “Are you getting on all right?”

“Oh, yes, thanks, Cousin Ralph,” she said. She was just endorsing a check, and Mr. Thomas nodded pleasantly to Charles and asked if his Aunt Jane were feeling better.

“Tell her not to overdo,” Mr. Thomas said. “We all forget we're growing older.”

Jessica snapped her bag shut and thanked Mr. Gregg and Charles held the door open for her.

“It's like church, isn't it?” she said as they walked together down the steps. “I always want to whisper in there. Where are you going, Charley?”

He told her he was going back to the office.

“But it's Saturday,” Jessica said. “What are you doing this afternoon? Suppose we go for a drive?”

She asked the question as though she were sure he would have nothing else to do and he understood, when she asked him where they would meet, that it would be better to have it seem like an accidental meeting.

“How about the courthouse at half-past two?” she said. “It's so much easier.”

It was much easier than meeting at the Lovells' front door and going through explanations because there would be nothing underlined or portentous about it.

When Charles arrived in front of the courthouse at half-past two and while he stood with the wind whipping at his coat, watching the cars go by, the realization that there was a secret element to the meeting scarcely dawned upon him, because it was all connected with the Dock Street Bank. The bank had become a symbol of the way he felt about Jessica Lovell, a symbol of integrity and of serious intention. When he saw Jessica's black Dodge phaeton glide around the curve of Johnson Street, he actually considered it a delightful sort of accident. It seemed like an accident, too, that Jessica should see him and slow down and wave her hand.

“Why, hello,” Jessica said. “What are you doing here? Can't I give you a lift?”

“I was just walking around,” Charles said.

“Well, get in if you're going my way,” Jessica said.

“Are you sure it won't be too much trouble?” Charles asked.

“Oh, no.” Jessica shook her head slowly. “Not a bit of trouble.”

Neither of them laughed until the Dodge was moving again and then they both laughed at once and though they each must have known most of what the other was thinking, they never explained their thoughts and actions of that afternoon. The sun kept trying to come out from behind the scudding clouds and it was still like winter as they drove through town, but when they were on the edge of town the sun was brighter and the brown fields seemed warmer. Where the roads forked at the small common where the Civil War monument stood, the Union soldier, too, with his visor cap and overcoat, standing on his pedestal flanked by pyramids of cannon balls, looked almost warm. Jessica turned to the right at the common and they crossed the river at the third bridge and drove over the hilly road that led to Walton Spring. There were farms on either side of them, old houses with their outbuildings attached, each with its apple orchard, its pastures and its hayfields. Charles was aware of stone walls and of weathered barns and piles of wood in woodsheds, but he noticed nothing in detail. He and Jessica were talking as though they had not seen each other for a long while and when they were silent they still seemed to be talking.

She was wearing the same gray suit and the same red hat that she had worn at the firemen's muster and though her eyes were on the road she would glance at him now and then in a quick, amused way. She asked what he had been doing since she had seen him last, and she was thankful that the winter was over. It was the longest winter she had ever spent. Granted she had been to New York and she had been in Boston quite often for the symphony, still it had been a long winter. It had been a long winter for Charles, too, though he had been working. He could tell her a good deal about brass and precision instruments, but he was not going to tell her.

“No,” Jessica said, “don't. Let's not talk about anything constructive. I'm tired of being constructive.”

The land around them also seemed tired of being constructive. The frost was seeping out from it, leaving it moist and weary. The further they went, the further they were away from anything that was constructive.

“I'm tired of sitting around and being nice, too,” Jessica said. “I wonder how nice anyone is, really.”

“Everyone has to pretend,” Charles said.

“That's the trouble,” Jessica said, “and so you never know what anyone is really like.”

He never could remember how Malcolm Bryant's name came up but it must have been Jessica who spoke of him first because he never would have. She was saying that Malcolm Bryant was always dropping in and giving travel talks about central African beads and life in beehive huts. She never could keep her mind on what he was saying, and she always felt as though she were sitting in a lecture hall.

“But he's pretty interesting sometimes,” Charles said. “He's been around a lot.”

“Everybody acts as though I ought to like him,” Jessica said. “Charley, did you really think I liked him?”

It was the most beautiful question that anyone had ever asked him. They were crossing a culvert, over a piece of swampy land, and there was a row of old willows on either side of the road.

“Did you really?” she asked again, and then before he could answer she slowed down the car and asked him what that singing noise was.

“It's the peepers,” he said, “the frogs”; and the high notes of the singing frogs rose all around them.

“Sam used to take me out to catch them,” he said, “hut they were pretty hard to catch.”

If you came near where they were they always stopped their singing, but if you stood still long enough you could see them, sometimes. They blew their throats up like balloons. You had to wait a long while, absolutely still, before they began to sing again.

“Sam could make the best willow whistles,” he said.

This was just the time for whistles, now that the sap was running in the willows and the twigs were growing yellow. You could always tell by looking at the willows when spring was coming.

“Can you make a whistle?” she asked—but he was not good at making whistles. He never had been good at doing things with his hands. He never could carve boats or do any of those things in the
American Boy's Handy Book.

Once long ago, she said, one spring in Clyde, she had gone out picking wildflowers in a place called the High Woods. She always remembered them coming through the dead leaves and she had always wanted to go again but somehow there had never been a chance.

“Do you suppose there are any flowers yet?” she asked him.

It was just the time of year when you thought of such things, whether you cared for flowers or not. He told her that the grape hyacinths were out by the front door at Spruce Street and this meant that there might be hepaticas in the woods—not liverwort, he hated the name “liverwort.” It had been a cold, late spring, but still there might be hepaticas on a southeast slope. They would be pushing up through the leaves. He liked hepaticas, he said, better than any other flower, because they were the earliest.

The road was winding up into the hills again. They were not far from Walton Spring and he was thinking that it sounded innocent and artificial, talking so much about frogs and telling her that he liked hepaticas.

“I don't know why it always sounds flat when you talk about flowers,” he said.

“No, it doesn't,” she said. “It sounds all right to me,” and she slowed down the car again. “Do you suppose there are any in those woods?”

She had stopped the car and she pointed to the woods on a hill above a pasture, and when he said there might be, that he didn't know, she said they might walk up and see. There were bars in a gap in the stone wall and he pulled the bars down carefully so that she could step over them. They walked quickly up the rocky, grassy slope and he held up a strand of barbed-wire fence so that she could crawl under. There was a stand of oak and hickory on top of the hill and when their feet rustled through the dead, sodden leaves there was a musty smell, half of winter and half of spring, but there was not a single hepatica.

The buds on the branches above them were as tight as though it were still winter, because oaks were suspicious trees, never coming out until they were sure it was spring. There was not a sign of life in those woods, not even a trace of green, except for some rock ferns growing in a crevice of a granite ledge. Nevertheless, they kept on walking. If she started to climb a hill, she said, she always liked to get to the top and they might as well get there. The hill was higher than it looked and when they reached the crest and turned around they could see a wide expanse of country below them through the bare branches of the trees. They could see the curve of the river and the third bridge in the hazy distance and further off to the left the roofs of Clyde, a long narrow town on its bank. Afterwards whenever he saw journeyman paintings, he always thought of himself and Jessica standing on that hill, looking at the toylike town.

They were both a little out of breath, both looking into the distance down the hill, and they both must have turned toward each other at the same moment. He stared straight at her and she had a grave, startled look and her brown eyes were opened very wide.

“Oh,” she said, in a dry, matter-of-fact sort of voice, and then the next moment they were in each other's arms.

“Oh,” she said again, and he kissed her and they clung to each other, their eyes closed, not speaking. When she turned her head away and let it rest a second on his shoulder he dropped his arms, but suddenly she pulled him close to her again and they stood side by side, looking into the half-defined distance.

“Well,” she said, “there's Clyde.” It was just as though nothing had happened.

“Yes,” he answered, “there it is.”

“I didn't know we could see so much from here.” She was not looking at him.

“It's because the leaves aren't out,” he told her.

The sun had broken through the clouds again, the slanting sun of late afternoon. It was just as though nothing had happened when Jessica and he walked down the hill, as though they had never stood locked in each other's arms and had never kissed, except that she put her arm through his while they were still in the woods.

“It's always harder walking downhill,” she said, but she drew her arm away when they were out in the open pasture.

“I always like juniper in a pasture,” she said. “Listen. You can hear the frogs,” and they stood for a moment listening, with their shadows long on the brown turf. They walked across the pasture without speaking. It was almost as though it had never happened, but not quite.

When they were in the car, she pulled a gold compact from her pocket, opened it, stared at herself intently in its little mirror, put a dab of powder on her nose, and snapped the compact shut. Then she pulled down her hat.

“I wish my hair didn't always blow,” she said.

“I like it when it blows,” he told her. It was almost as though it had never happened, but he never would have said such a thing before they walked up the hill.

“Do you?” she said. “Well, I'm glad somebody does.”

The truth was that so much had happened that it was better not to talk about it. It was better to sit quietly as they were driving home, conscious only that they were near each other.

“Charley,” she asked finally, “have you ever been abroad?”

Once he had thought of working his way abroad on a cattle ship, while he was in college. Some of the boys in his fraternity had talked of it, but he had never done anything more than talk. It was different with her. She had been to England and France with her father last summer and before that she had been with some of the girls from school on a tour arranged by one of the teachers, one of those queer school girl tours when you walked in a small procession through the cathedrals and the galleries. They had gone to Rome and to Florence.

“I brought back Pliny's doves,” she said. “Everyone seems to buy Pliny's doves.”

As soon as you got home it all seemed a long way off in the distance. It was hard to believe that you'd ever been to Florence. It was like coming home after a dance that year her father had made her come out in Boston. She used to come down from Vassar in her coming-out year and stay at her Aunt Rachel's on Marlborough Street. She was always doing things, she told him, that she did not want to do particularly.

“I wish,” she said, “we didn't always have to do things. Charley, tell me what you have to do.”

He told her that he would have to go to Wright-Sherwin on Monday morning. He began to tell her about the office and about Mr. Howell, but when he started he had a desperate feeling of everything closing around him because they were back in Clyde again and Clyde was as orderly as the houses on Johnson Street, everything in its place and a place for everything.

“I might as well get out here,” he said, when they came near the courthouse.

“Well, all right,” she said, “I suppose it's better.”

Everything was in its place and there was a place for everything.

“Thanks ever so much,” Charles said when the car stopped. “I had a wonderful time.”

“So did I,” she said, and then she smiled. “I loved every minute of it.”

“Did you?” Charles asked.

“Yes,” she answered, “every minute of it. If it's a good day, let's do it again next Saturday.”

“Why, that would be fine,” he said.

She waved her hand to him when he took off his hat, and when the Dodge rounded the curve on Johnson Street he wondered what she would tell them at home of how she had spent the afternoon.

12

In the Spring a Livelier Iris
…

—
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON