Point of No Return (50 page)

“Why, thank you, Hugh,” John Gray answered.

“A good reminiscent paper is a whole lot better than something cribbed from the
Encyclopædia Britannica
,” Mr. Blashfield went on. “I suppose we all have a weakness for reminiscence, especially as we grow older. Now before we start I should like to say, aside from anything professional, how touched I am that Miss Jane wanted me to carry out her wishes. I remember her so well when we were boys, John, though of course we were younger.”

“Yes,” John Gray said, “we were, but I think Jane would like you to get on with it. She would tell you so if she were here.”

Mr. Blashfield smiled in a kindly way to show that he remembered the definiteness of Miss Jane and Charles found himself looking at the empty chair at the other end of the table.

“Well, I suppose she would,” Mr. Blashfield said, and he opened the blue-covered document. “Stop me if there are any questions …”

“I, Jane Gray, of Clyde, Massachusetts, in the County of—” His quiet voice was the only sound in the room. It was like the reading of a Clerk of the Court, which was probably what Mr. Blashfield intended. It was dull, as John Gray said it would be, but anyone could understand it—two thousand dollars to Mary Callahan, ten thousand dollars to Esther Gray, five thousand to Dorothea and five thousand to himself, and the remainder to John Gray.

Charles was thinking of the power of money and the respectful way one always spoke of it when sums above a certain amount were mentioned. It could arouse jealousy and dislike and all sorts of other small unpleasant thoughts. It was only decent to have gratitude, but the will, as Mr. Blashfield read it, had no human quality. It was Mr. Blashfield, not his aunt, who had been speaking. It was only Mr. Blashfield's pedantic interpretation of all her worries, consolidated into rotund legal phrases. Charles straightened himself in his chair and looked across the table at his father. He was disturbed by his father's expression. It was one of deep, almost indecent relief.

“Good old Jane,” he said.

“It's a simple will,” Mr. Blashfield answered. “Now if you have any questions—” Charles saw his father lean forward.

“Just one question, Hugh,” he said. “I am right, am I, in understanding the remainder is left to me without any strings attached?”

Charles found himself gripping the arms of his chair nervously. He saw his mother's head turn sharply, and Mr. Blashfield's pale, rather dull face had a stiffer look as he glanced up from the paper.

“Yes, that's right, John,” he said. “Miss Jane wanted it that way”—he cleared his throat—“though I advised her differently.”

“I suppose you did,” John Gray answered. “Good old Jane. Can you give me some idea of the amount?”

Mr. Blashfield cleared his throat again.

“I called on Mr. Thomas yesterday. After the legacies, debits and taxes, I should say approximately seventy-five thousand dollars, at the present market.” He mentioned the sum diffidently, trying to hedge it around with words.

“Well, well,” John Gray said. “I didn't know Ralph had done as well as that. When can I expect to get any of this, Hugh? Perhaps you know the Gray family is short of cash. The mill, you know.”

“As soon as it goes through probate, John,” Mr. Blashfield answered.

“That may take a year,” John Gray said, “but I suppose I could raise a slight loan?”

Charles felt a faint shiver run up his spine. He hated the sound of his father's voice. It was his first close experience with such a sum of money. It was small compared with sums in customers' accounts at Rush & Company, but it had a peculiar value because they were all involved. It was something to be guarded and not to be spoken of with levity. It was nothing on which one should raise a slight loan.

“Why, yes,” Hugh Blashfield said, “I suppose I can advance you something, John—or the bank can. I'll speak to Ralph Thomas.”

“I shall want a very substantial sum,” John Gray said.

“Oh, John,” his mother said suddenly, “please don't try to borrow anything.”

“Now, Esther,” John Gray began. “Now, Esther,” and Hugh Blashfield cleared his throat again.

“I know I'm not the one to talk, John,” he said, “but don't you think—”

His father shook his head.

“I know, Hugh,” he answered, “but I've done quite a lot of thinking myself, for quite a term of years. If you could arrange for me to have something this afternoon, I should appreciate it very much, and we can discuss then methods of paying me the balance.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Remember, Hugh, I always wanted to sell that mill stock.”

Charles felt himself sitting rigidly, still gripping the arms of his chair. John Gray looked at his watch.

“I think we've covered everything for the moment,” he said. “I'll be in again this afternoon, Hugh. I'm always glad to hear your ideas, and thank you very much.”

He must have forgotten that they should not look like a delegation because they all walked down the stairs of 76 Dock Street in a body and out into the hot summer sunlight.

“It was so sweet of Jane,” Esther Gray was saying to Dorothea. “I'm glad she told me first and I'm glad I thanked her.”

“Well, well,” John Gray said. “These wills. I wish the lawyers could write testaments in verse like François Villon.”

“Father,” Charles said, “there's something I'd like to talk to you about when we get home.”

It was absolutely necessary to take up the subject of that money. The money which had been left them was a product of self-denial and steady planning, something which had been saved and earned, something to be treated with decent respect.

“That is, if you don't mind,” he said.

It was a hot summer's day and through the open windows of his father's room he could hear the drowsy sound of a lawn mower in the Sullivans' yard and the patient plodding of a draft horse and the rattle of one of the Mullins Company ice wagons on Spruce Street. The room, with its untidy collection of books and unrelated objects, was like his father's mind. John Gray was already moving about, searching for something in much the same way he ransacked his memory for an apt and comfortable quotation.

“Now wait a minute,” he said. “Where the devil is it? Oh, here it is.” He had found the case and the decanters of his port wine under a pile of newspapers. It was obviously an occasion for him.

“I know it's early in the day,” he said, “but I think I'll have a glass of port. It's sweet and sticky but I need some sort of mild stimulant to get over Hugh Blashfield. Will you join me, Charley?”

“No, thanks,” Charles answered, “only don't let me stop you,” but John Gray was absorbed in his own ideas.

“All right,” he said, “I don't blame you, Charley. Of course, Hugh Blashfield and all of this”—he waved his hand in a vague, expansive way—“doesn't have the same effect on you as it has on me. Going to a lawyer is like going to a doctor. No matter how well or how long you know them personally, they always put you at a disadvantage because of their specialized knowledge. I'd rather have a good, dry chat with a clergyman. He may know about God and sin, but God and sin are a sort of public domain and no one knows definitely about them. But a lawyer always knows about law and a doctor knows exactly where your spleen is and there's nothing whatsoever that one can do about them except sit respectfully and listen. Now I know all about Hugh Blashfield personally.”

It was obvious that he was annoyed by Hugh Blashfield and that it would be impossible to divert him from the subject.

“I couldn't help thinking as I sat there this morning that Hugh Blashfield was a painfully small-minded man. I must have told him twenty times to sell that mill stock. He's plodding and rudimentary, without a single broad, long thought. I used to help him with his Latin and his algebra, and he always has trouble with women. I know all his frailties, and yet there he was, reading my sister's will. There's something queer about a lawyer in his office, but never mind it,” and then a taste of the sacramental wine distracted his attention. “You know, I think it might be a good idea if we bought some Scotch whiskey. Mel Stevens keeps running it in. I don't know why I shouldn't go around and see Mel this afternoon—we ought to have electric lights, and we really ought to have a car, Charley. I don't know why we shouldn't have a car now.”

He paused and in the silence Charles could hear the lawn mower.

“Father,” he began, and John Gray sighed.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “You wanted to ask me about something, didn't you?”

Charles cleared his throat, but even so his voice was hoarse.

“Father,” he said again, “what are you going to do with Aunt Jane's money? Are you going to play the market with it?”

His father looked watchful. It was bluntly stated, but it was an issue, and his father had always been skillful in avoiding issues.

“How about a cigar, Charley?” he asked. “Let me see. There must be some around somewhere. If there aren't, I'll have to go down to the news store, but they haven't got Havanas.”

“Father,” Charles said, “are you or aren't you?”

John Gray finally faced the issue, and as he did so a film of cloud passed across his sun.

“It's rather like the old question of whether you have stopped beating your wife, isn't it?” he asked. “Everybody who makes an investment plays the market. I suppose I might tell you it's none of your business. I'm tempted to, but I won't.”

There was another silence, a long, unpleasant silence.

“I don't like to talk to you this way,” Charles said, and his father nodded and his voice was warm and kind again.

“I know you don't,” he said. “That's all right.”

“You know it's everybody's business,” Charles began. “I don't care about myself, but what about Mother and Dorothea?”

He saw his father's face flush and then he saw him fold his hands.

“Well, go ahead and tell me why I shouldn't. Do the best you can.”

Charles could only say what anyone would have said. The market was like a wild river, that year, breaking through all the dams of prudence and common sense. Prices of common stocks had already discounted all conceivable earnings in any foreseeable future. The market might still go up, but it was already dangerous. It was time to invest in sound bonds, preferably governments. There was bound to be a break. It was only a question of when.

“You put it very clearly, Charley,” John Gray said. “Do you know what I begin to think? You may be a good investment man someday. You're dead right, but it's all a matter of self-restraint. I know when to stop—but you don't believe that, do you?” He was going to be careful. He was watching the market, and he knew the market. He was going to get in and out.

Charles did not answer. There was no use saying aloud that he did not believe him.

“Let's leave it this way. You can watch me, and I'll be careful, Charley.”

When it came to money, everyone always promised to be careful. In fact, it often seemed to Charles that most of his subsequent life had been spent in a series of timid, hedging precautions, in balancing probable gains and losses in order to keep sums of money intact. The probity, the reliability and the sobriety that such a task demanded were to make his own life dull and careful. Except for a few brief moments, he was to face no danger or uncalculated risk. He was to measure his merriment and hedge on his tragedies. He was to water down elation and mitigate disaster, and to be at the right place at the right time, and to say the right thing with the right emphasis. Yet whenever he thought of himself as a dull, deluded opportunist, compared with other people, he always remembered the intensity of his own feelings when his father had been speaking. There had been a hideous sense of inevitable disaster, and no possible way to stop it.

There was no point in pleading, because his father was growing angry, and Charles could hear their voices, each rising against the other.

“All right, Charley,” his father said. “I understand you perfectly and you needn't shout. How are you going to get anywhere if you never take a chance? What is life but a chance, Charley? After all, what is seventy-five thousand dollars? Do you expect me to live on the income, at four per cent?” He shrugged his shoulders. He opened his hands and closed them. Did Charles really want his mother to live on three thousand dollars a year? And what was it Samuel Johnson said?

“A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.”

That was what he was going to do, both spend and save. As soon as he made a profit, and any fool could make a profit in this bull market, he would put the original sum in a bank, he swore he would, and he would go on with the rest. And what was that quotation in Thomas Fuller's
Gnomologia
about its being better to have a hen tomorrow than an egg today?

“A hen,” John Gray said. “You can't stop me, Charley. It's the first chance I've ever had, the first real chance, to beat the system.”

It was not worth while trying to stop him, now that he was talking about the system.

“When is Jessica coming back, in October? All right, we'll have a Cadillac by October. Don't look as though I were hurting you, Charley. I'm going to spend and save and it's perfectly possible.”

There was no use in being angry, there was no use in being hurt.

“There was always that pony,” Charles said.

“Oh, yes,” John Gray said. “I'd forgotten about the pony. Well, he's growing now, Charley. I've given this a great deal of thought, but it might be just as well if you didn't mention this to your mother.”

“Don't worry, I won't,” Charles said.

“Come to think of it,” John Gray said, “I might as well go up to Boston tomorrow, and, Charley, I wonder whether you would do something for me now, that is if you don't mind? Would you mind going downtown and seeing if the New York Times has come in yet and would you please stop at Southern's and buy me a small account book? I'm the one who's going to do the worrying, Charley.”