The Incredible Charlie Carewe

by Mary Astor

  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 arriv
ed 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.”

  “What’s the name of the other sister—Elsie, you said?”

  “Yeah—Elsie—and there’s a girl who shows none of the effects of overprotection. Of all the things that the word ‘wholesome’ means—she is it. I mean, a ‘whole’ person, not necessarily the clean-scrubbed milk-fed gal that usually comes to mind with the word. She’s about eighteen, I think, no great looker, except for the expression in her eyes.” He paused a moment. “Feel like a bit of rum, Herb—help you digest that meal?”

  Herb accepted and then pounced on his previous words: “What ‘expression’ and just how brief is your acquaintance with this young lady?”

  Gregg looked at him blankly for a moment, and then, “Oh, my God, are you at that again! I’m an old man in her book—it’s just that in a young girl—well, she’s so interested in life, and I’m sure she looks at everyone else the same way, as though they were fascinating—it seems flirtatious, but I’m sure nothing could be further from her mind.”

  Herb started to speak, but Gregg stopped him with an upraised hand. “To sum up,” he said loudly to drown any possible speech from Herb, “my point is that I am wondering why a fine family—nice people, good people, really special people—should produce an inexplicable, unpredictable, egocentric, shallow bit of manhood like Charles Carewe.”

  “Well—let me ask this.” Herb caught an emotional note to his friend’s words. “Is this an academic question or does it matter to you? And why should you give a damn?”

  “I am not sure about how much I care. I don’t know yet what I want to do about it—if anything. I know I want to stick around, first of all because I’m fascinated, but I get that mixed up a little with the fact that I’ve walked into a good thing financially.”

  “So?” said Herb. “You don’t know whether to cast yourself as a parasite or a do-gooder, is that it?”

  “Not quite——” Gregg bristled a little, because Herb was hitting close. “I’d be no pilot fish to a shark——”

  “But that has a sinister sound—if your Charlie’s the shark.”

  Gregg was pacing the small area from the front window back to the fireplace. “It’s a funny thing.” He paused and straightened a book which had fallen on its side on the mantelpiece. “You’re not far off. I think the guy’s a man-eater, without the hunger.”

  “Well, where in hell have you found evidence to come to that conclusion! It’s not like you to get dramatic, old boy.”

  “I’ve practically lived with him, daily—for a couple of months now. Look——” He sat down saddle-wise across the seat of a straight chair, his arms on the back. “This boy is no dope, neither is he insane, by any of the standards that I have heard of, at least. He is poised, he has an appearance of physical well-being. He seems immune from anxiety or worry—too immune, and that’s part of what I mean. Sometimes I think he’s simply a psychopathic liar, but he even falls short in that classification, because that kind of person will fight for his lies. Charlie doesn’t seem to give a damn, if it’s pointed out to him that he’s just shooting the breeze. He gives you that big grin and flatters the hell out of you by saying, ‘Of course it’s not the truth—aren’t you clever to see that!’ I don’t think he has the capacity to love—or to hate. And that’s dangerous.”

  “What does he want to be—if anything?” asked Herb.

  Gregg threw up his hands. “You name it—as long as it’s something big. Right now he’s going after a career as a criminal lawyer—I think his father put that bee in his bonnet—two weeks ago he wanted to be an explorer in the Amazon. But it’s all hot air. I’m trying to instill some enthusiasm for something he could do right now without half trying—pass his college exams with a very high rating, and make his old man happy for all the trouble he’s had to go through with him.” He stood up suddenly, impatiently, knocking the little chair over. Bending over to pick it up, he said, with more composure, “I don’t know why I should care. I should pick up my monthly check and then, come June, walk away and say, ‘Thanks, it’s been a pleasure!’ But I just have a feeling, and maybe it’s stupid and egotistic, that I’d like to get between him and the people who will cross his path and warn them off. He’s a killer—without a weapon. The only weapon he’ll use is himself. And, if you ask me, he’s already begun.” He swallowed the remains in his glass with one gulp, gagging a little.

  Herb watched him, concerned. “Maybe you’re imagining things, Gregg. I must say I want to meet this creature, you’ve got my curiosity aroused. I hope you’re not letting yourself in for something. I think you ought to keep the problem at arm’s length, if it’s that bad. Maybe somebody ought to warn you! It’s that old thing about being ‘my brother’s keeper’—I’m all for it, but mix well with prudence.”

  Herb had been up at the crack of dawn the next morning, and gone out with a group on a bus to the ski run, which proved to be for children and duffers. It was short, crowded, and therefore dangerous, and he hitched a ride back into town about noon. Perhaps it was the fact that he had the luncheon date with Gregg and Charlie on his mind. Perhaps it was because he was preoccupied that everything seemed to irritate him that morning a
t the run. He had taken a clumsy fall at the top of the runway and the hoots of laughter and some corny advice, “Get a sled, mister!” had nettled him. He decided the snow was too soft, that everything was lousy. He felt like a professional golfer who’d muffed a putt at a Tom Thumb golf course. He had looked for some fun, and so far the weekend had been anything but exhilarating. In the light of day Gregg’s reluctant schoolboy sounded like an utter bore, and he found himself divided by annoyance and a comradely desire to share his friend’s interests.

  It further irritated him when later he found himself in complete disagreement with Gregg’s description and analysis of Charlie.

  They had their meal at a big window at the rear of the dining room overlooking a tableau of white birch robed in torn ermine cloaks. In the clear reflected light, listening to Charlie’s voice, Herb saw a young man who was perhaps handicapped by looks and money, at least in his opinion, and he wondered if Gregg wasn’t a little jealous. Truthfully he felt a twinge of that emotion himself. His own lack of distinctive good looks had never particularly bothered him—he saw to it that the face he called his was shaved and clean, and was quite unaware that to others it was a “good” face, reflecting his zest for life, his tempered aggressiveness.

  With a slight shock he realized he was dominating the conversation at the table, talking about his passion for New York. “It’s greedy for ideas, new thinking—it not only appreciates talent in any form, it stimulates you and asks for more, more!”

  Charlie was listening intently, eagerly. “It sounds wonderful the way you put it,” he said. “Sometimes I feel I’ve hardly lived at all—I’m so impatient to do something.”

  He drew some fine lines on the tablecloth with the edge of a fruit knife. “I guess my keeper here”—he flipped the knife toward Gregg—“has told you about my difficulties with our educational system.” So far they had avoided personalities successfully, and both Herb and Gregg, though they kept their masks on straight, felt the sudden alertness against betraying to the third party that he had been under discussion.