The Incredible Charlie Carewe (11 page)

Walter bit at the groove worn into the stem of his pipe.

“I won’t get down on my knees again,” he said softly, bitterly. “I won’t beg another school to give the boy another chance. I think you must know that he has embarrassed me, shamed me beyond endurance. I have faith in him, however. I fully believe he will outgrow his shenanigans, and when he does—it will be worth the time and effort and money to me for him to have a college degree. As you know, it means everything nowadays, in business, in the professions—everything.”

“Or nothing,” murmured Gregg. He was thinking of his friend Herb Jenner, who had thrown his final year out of the window as a waste of time, simply cramming all the chemistry into his head that he could, pawing at the earth in impatience to wrest from its materials the secrets of the new and exciting developments in plastics.

“I’m afraid I don’t agree—that it is ‘nothing’—ever,” said Walter. “I realize that many work for a degree simply as a kind of social accomplishment—a blue ribbon—a bit of parchment to hang on the wall. But our family have been doctors, lawyers, for generations. We haven’t been the ‘idle rich,’ we’ve been the grateful rich, grateful to those before us who built up fortunes from lumber and coal—not sitting on our behinds, but being productive—oh, hell, I’m making a speech——” and he went for the poker again.

“Well”—Gregg rose, crushing out his cigarette—“it’s too soon to tell, but I think it’s going to take a great deal of patience, both mine and yours. I’ll get him his degree, but I’ll not let him goldbrick it. Neither can I turn him into a scholar. I am going to have to ask for more time—and later on, if I gain your confidence, I may have a suggestion to make.”

Walter offered to drive him to the Inn as it had begun to snow, but Gregg had refused, saying, “Thanks, I’d still like that walk.”

When he reached the Inn the snow had begun to take on blizzard force, and he ran up the drive, clutching his hatbrim with both hands, At the desk there was a post card from Herb Jenner saying cryptically, “Hope the pitcher is full. How’s the skiing?”

There was a fire of cannel coal burning brightly in his small room, its flames reflected and dancing on the backs of a pile of books which he had uncrated that morning. After undressing he poured himself a tot of dark rum and, squatting cross-legged before the pile of books, began to sort them, lovingly. Suddenly it came to him what Herb had meant in his post card—a month ago he had said “like a cat falling into the cream.” Well, it was, damn it, and he liked it. Was that the reason he had told the old man that he “needed more time” with Charlie? Be honest now, he told himself. By standing over the boy, holding his nose to the grindstone, he could cram out a degree for him, in the specified time. Was he interested in the sociological problem of the boy himself? Was he really interested in helping him? Carewe had put it mildly, calling his activities shenanigans. In spite of himself, he felt a challenge in Charlie. If he, Gregg, could somehow find the answer, direct this boy’s obvious brilliance into some channel that he would be interested in—the feeling gave him warmth, but skeptically he glanced at the rum.

In bed, finally, the light out, and the little flickering shadows from the dying coals on the ceiling, he listened to the wind moan in the eaves of the old building. He felt content, knowing that for a while there would be no job hunting to find food and shelter, plenty of time for reading and studying, the perfect life. Perhaps the old man would like somebody to be a mental nursemaid for his son—yes, possibilities along that line—and maybe he
could
help—but again, his mind balked at the rationalization. At the end of a loud yawn he said, “You’re right, Herb. The pitcher is full.” And fell asleep.

Beatrice woke suddenly, her heart pounding. There was something she had to do, something very unpleasant. She lay quite still until full consciousness, which was slow in coming, would help her to locate the still submerged anxiety. Carefully she turned her head toward Walter’s bed. He was gone. It must be morning. The curtains were still drawn, but there was a small space where they met through which a bright shaft of light directed itself upward to the ceiling. It was the familiar “winter look” of the room, and meant that outside the sun was reflecting itself on a sparkling expanse of snow. Beatrice began to breathe more slowly, consoling herself. “Everything’s all right, if I can just sleep a little more, it must have been a nightmare.” For a moment or two she slipped back into unconsciousness, but her dreams took over, bringing back the anxiety, translating her feeling into images of people rushing about, talking about something she couldn’t understand—she was holding an enormous decorated cake, saying, “Please, please,” to someone who looked back over his shoulder and kept on running. She couldn’t hold the cake any longer and it slipped from her hands, and as it fell there was the sound of an explosion. She awoke with a gasp of fright and sat up, forcing herself to become fully conscious. “There’s something I must do—what is today—that’s it, it’s nearly Christmas, and there is so much—oh, wait awhile, wait till I’ve showered and had something to eat—I’ll think about it then.” She rang for Doreen, the new upstairs maid, and stumbled to the bathroom.

The shower and applying lotions and lipstick and a quick combing of her hair only seemed to fatigue her. She slipped on a bed jacket as Doreen appeared with fruit and coffee and toast. Beatrice sank gratefully back into the bed which the girl had already smoothed and straightened. Plumping up the pillows, Doreen said her polite good mornings and inquired as to Mrs. Carewe’s neuralgia, was it any better?

Beatrice made herself speak pleasantly, “Better, thank you, Doreen. Please pull the curtains back together a little—that’s an awful glare.” And as she did so, “Where is Mr. Charles this morning?”

“He’s gone off for a walk in the woods with Mr. Nicholson, ma’am. They took snowshoes, there was such a fall last night. But he asked me to give you this note.”

Beatrice seized it as though it were a billet-doux, as indeed it might have been, from its contents:

Mamma-love——

You
are
a sleepyhead! I shall bring you some pine cones from the woods for your fireplace, and then I insist upon your dear presence for a short drive in this glorious weather. Bundle up good, because I’m going to put the top down, and blow some roses into your cheeks. About two?

Love, love,
C.C.

Doreen had vanished with “Please ring for anything else” and Beatrice held the note to a cheek which had already lost its ivory pallor. For a while she played with the image of the adoring son that the note had evoked. In a little while she would see him bursting into her room, full of vitality, with his enchanting grin, asking how she felt, holding her hand to his cheek, and bossily but lovingly demanding that she put on something warm, that he would be waiting for her impatiently in the car. She could hear her own laughter as she got into the convertible, wrapped in her furs, with a bright woolen scarf around her hair. She could feel the crisp wind on her face as he cried, “Off we go!” and he roared the car out of the driveway and down the hill.

Although she knew it, she could not face the painful fact that he had forgotten all about the note, even by now. It would be absurd to prepare for him—to wait for him. Recrimination when he failed to appear was a waste of energy, for he would seem to be abjectly astonished at his having forgotten; and then he would look down at her with a little-boy pursed lip and say, “I’m so stupid—do you forgive me?”

In a multitude of little ways he disappointed her, and the little ways were simply the ditto marks of her disappointment in him as a person. That burden had been too heavy and she no longer faced it, and now all she had to do was to go to the small effort of erasing the ditto marks. It was a simple technique. She simply tossed the note into a wastebasket, then painfully sat erect in bed with her hands on the dull ache in the small of her back. “Silly child,” she said to herself. “He knows I can’t bear to be jounced around in a car with this back.”

After she had rung for Doreen to remove the tray she dreamed awhile of the warmth of the times when Christmases were full of a sense of security and unity—the sound of children and their rushing about with new toys—babies put to sleep in one of the upstairs rooms. And the wonderful odors! Pine and wool and spices, cookies and puddings and turkeys, food for an army—the fresh feel of kissed cheeks, cold from the snow, the stomping of shoes, the unwrapping of scarves; the whole, lovely sentimental picture changing gradually into merely present giving, and people dropping in for a hot buttered rum or cocktails. Now Christmas was simply an increased tempo of party giving and attending, with the young people flying in and out between parties.

Parties! Even the thought of them made her feel weak. She was glad that Walter had decreed that there were to be no parties this year, because of her poor health. That they would have a quiet Christmas, no outsiders, just Virginia and Elsie and Charlie—of course Virginia’s boy Jeff—how dull he was compared to Charlie, she thought—but, as her mother would have said, “an excellent match.” Somber Virginia and dull Jeff! With the fortunes of two families to keep them from financial worries for their entire life. They would go on grinding away at their studies, even after they were married, she supposed. Both of them were after postgraduate honors, Jeff in engineering and architecture and Virginia in journalism. All very fine indeed, but not conducive to being very interesting socially. Her mind veered back to Charlie, and the thought of his great charm made her smile a little. What a catch he would be in a few years! As a single man, a bachelor, he would be on the “most wanted” list of hostesses, then when he “settled down” a bit he would marry some lovely girl, perhaps buying the Shephard property at the end of Dorfelt Lane and building a lovely Tudor house. If only Charlie would . . . Turning, she buried her face into her pillow, sobbing and weeping.

The main street of the town looked like an old-fashioned Christmas card, glittering, unreal. The state highway half a mile to the west had been efficiently swept by snowplows and was open to traffic, but Oak Street was in no hurry. Like many another main street in the land, it had been by-passed by the point-to-point directness of the highways, and so remained, sulking by itself, lazy and unchanged. There were a few parked cars along the curb, apparently sleeping comfortably under their humped-up, glistening eiderdowns. Occasionally a delivery wagon with loose chains cloak-clonked along briefly, and then the street again was quiet. St. Mark’s white steeple bore a violet shadow, holding its gilded cross against the icy blueness of the sky. People walked down the center of the street, where the snow had packed down. Children in bright red and green, purple and plaid, threw snowballs, shouting, their voices muted just as the sharpness of the angles of the buildings were softened by the thickness of the snow.

Gregg was puffing a little as he and Charlie mounted the wide, freshly swept steps of the Inn. “City feller, huh?” laughed Charlie.

“You set a fancy pace, Charles,” replied Gregg. “Makes me feel I should cut out cigarettes or something.”

They had timed their jaunt to reach the Inn at lunchtime, as Gregg wanted to meet Herb Jenner. It was the weekend and Herb had arrived by train the day before, partially to see Gregg and to combine the meeting with some skiing, as Gregg had assured him that the townspeople were very proud of their nearby run.

After the weeks at the Carewe house, coping with Charlie’s restlessness, the feeling of restraint and anxiety in the household, the hush-hush comings and goings of Dr. Hagedorn visiting Beatrice, Gregg had welcomed Jenner and his whole healthy personality with a warm relief.

They caught up on their news of Mends and Herb’s fund of new “stories,” his progress in his new job with a geological and chemical research plant. Herb had thrown a few rough grayish green pebbles onto the bed and waxed poetic: “Like the wings of a dove, my boy,” he had declaimed, “fabrics, strong, soft—last a thousand years—there’s no end to it and we’ve hardly begun a development that in twenty years will be a commonplace. And none of your dedicated scientist stuff. There’s plenty of dough in it—but plenty.”

After a heavy beef ribs and noodles dinner, a deep apple pie for dessert, they had returned to Gregg’s room, lighted cigars, and sprawled in front of the little fireplace while Gregg talked about his impressions of the Carewe ménage. After listening closely for a while Herb said, “Doesn’t seem very complicated to me, Gregg, the way you tell it—more like a plain case of a spoiled rotten rich man’s son, probably.”

“Overprotection, you mean? There’s no doubt of it. But the girls don’t show any sign of it, and that’s what makes it so inconsistent. Of course I’ve only met them briefly. They came flying up one weekend when Mrs. C. had some kind of asthmatic attack, and then one Saturday Virginia and Jeff Shelley—the guy she’s going to marry—stopped by the Inn and asked me to go to the movies with them. We had a drink downstairs here at the new hotel bar, and they seemed like great kids, full of each other of course.” He smiled. “Virginia’s got the better mind of the two, but she’s a nice enough person to conceal it from Jeff. Actually I don’t think she realizes it—the superiority is only slight, but she’s not the type that is trying to prove something all the time.

“What I’m trying to say without oversimplifying is that Virginia is a beautiful woman, rich, and with a good education and brains, but because she is so thoroughly all of those things she is under no pressure to prove anything.”

“But according to what you said about Carewe, Sr., there’s a lot of crap about Family with a capital F.”

“Herb, it’s a weakness—or rather a delicacy, if you can say that of a man.”

“Weakness is probably right. Ancestor worship, blood lines, who gives a damn who your great-great-grandfather was?”

“Usually the people who
know
who he was—but that’s not the point. Carewe is eaten up with pride, and his only male heir is driving him slowly nuts. And my guess is that, outside of normal involutionary troubles, that is all that’s the matter with Mrs. Carewe.”