When he turned around there was Gladys beside him. “I thought you’d gone to bed, young lady,” he said.
“Thought you’d gotten rid of me for one night?” She wasn’t smiling.
“Don’t you think it’s a pretty night, Glad?”
He took her hand; it was trembling and icecold. “You don’t want to catch cold, Glad,” he said. She dug her long nails into his hand. “Are you going to marry Anne?”
“Maybe… Why? You’re goin’ to marry Harry, aren’t you?”
“Nothing in this world would make me marry him.”
Charley put his arms round her. “You poor little girl, you’re cold. You ought to be in bed.” She put her head on his chest and began to sob. He could feel the tears warm through his shirt. He didn’t know what to say. He stood there hugging her with the smell of her hair giddy, like the smell of Doris’s hair used to be, in his nostrils.
“I wish we were off this damn boat,” he whispered. Her face was turned up to his, very round and white. When he kissed her lips she kissed him too. He pressed her to him hard. Now it was her little breasts he could feel against his chest. For just a second she let him put his tongue between her lips, then she pushed him away.
“Charley, we oughtn’t to be acting like this, but I suddenly felt so lonely.”
Charley’s voice was gruff in his throat. “I’ll never let you feel like that again… Never, honestly… never…” “Oh, you darling Charley.” She kissed him again very quickly and deliberately and ran away from him down the deck.
He walked up and down alone. He didn’t know what to do. He was crazy for Gladys now. He couldn’t go back and talk to the others. He couldn’t go to bed. He slipped down the forward hatch and through the galley, where Taki sat cool as a cucumber in his white coat reading some thick book, into the cabin where his berth was and changed into his bathingsuit and ran up and dove over the side. The water wasn’t as cold as he’d expected. He swam around for a while in the moonlight. Pulling himself up the ladder aft he felt cold and goosefleshy. Farrell with a cigar in his teeth leaned over, grabbed his hand and hauled him on deck.
“Ha, ha, the iron man,” he shouted. “The girls beat us two rubbers and went to bed with their winnings. Suppose you get into your bathrobe and have a drink and a half an hour of red dog or something silly before we turn in.” “Check,” said Charley, who was jumping up and down on the deck to shake off the water.
While Charley was rubbing himself down with a towel below, he could hear the girls chattering and giggling in their stateroom. He was so embarrassed when he sat down next to Harry who was a little drunk and silly so that he drank off a half a tumbler of rye and lost eighty dollars. He was glad to see that it was Harry who won. “Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,” he kept saying to himself after he’d turned in.
A week later Gladys took Charley to see her parents after they’d had tea together at his flat chaperoned by Taki’s grin and his bobbing black head. Horton B. Wheatley was a power, so Farrell said, in the Security Trust Company, a redfaced man with grizzled hair and a small silvery mustache. Mrs. Wheatley was a droopy woman with a pretty Alabama voice and a face faded and pouchy and withered as a spent toyballoon. Mr. Wheatley started talking before Gladys had finished the introductions: “Well, sir, we’d been expectin’ somethin’ like that to happen. Of course it’s too soon for us all to make up our minds, but I don’t see how I kin help tellin’ you, ma boy, that I’d rather see ma daughter wedded to a boy like you that’s worked his way up in the world, even though we don’t know much about you yet, than to a boy like Harry who’s a nice enough kid in his way, but who’s never done a thing in his life but take the schoolin’ his father provided for him. Ma boy, we are mighty proud, my wife and me, to know you and to have you and our little girl… she’s all we’ve got in this world so she’s mighty precious to us…”
“Your parents are… have been called away, I believe, Mr. Anderson,” put in Mrs. Wheatley. Charley nodded. “Oh, I’m so sorry… They were from St. Paul, Gladys says…”
Mr. Wheatley was talking again. “Mr. Anderson, Mother, was one of our most prominent war aces, he won his spurs fightin’ for the flag, Mother, an’ his whole career seems to me to be an example… now I’m goin’ to make you blush, ma boy… of how American democracy works at its very best pushin’ forward to success the most intelligent and bestfitted and weedin’ out the weaklin’s… Mr. Anderson, there’s one thing I’m goin’ to ask you to do right now. I’m goin’ to ask you to come to church with us next Sunday an’ address ma Sundayschool class. I’m sure you won’t mind sayin’ a few words of inspiration and guidance to the youngsters there.”
Charley blushed and nodded. “Aw, Daddy,” sang Gladys, putting her arms around both their necks, “don’t make him do that. Sunday’s the only day the poor boy gets any golf… You know I always said I never would marry a Sundayschool teacher.”
Mr. Wheatley laughed and Mrs. Wheatley cast down her eyes and sighed. “Once won’t hurt him, will it, Charley?” “Of course not,” Charley found himself saying. “It would be an inspiration.”
Next day Charley and Mr. Wheatley had lunch alone at the University Club. “Well, son, I guess the die is cast,” said Mr. Wheatley when they met in the lobby. “The Wheatley women have made up their minds, there’s nothin’ for us to do but bow to the decision. I certainly wish you children every happiness, son…” As they ate Mr. Wheatley talked about the bank and the Tern interests and the merger with Askew-Merritt that would a little more than double the capitalization of the new Tern Aviation Company. “You’re surprised that I know all about this, Charley… that’s what I’d been thinkin’, that boy’s a mechanical genius but he don’t keep track of the financial end… he don’t realize what his holdin’s in that concern mean to him and the financial world.”
“Well, I know some pretty good guys who give me the lowdown,” said Charley.
“Fair enough, fair enough,” said Mr. Wheatley, “but now that it’s in the family maybe some of ma advice, the result of twenty years of bankin’ experience at home in Birmingham and here in this great new dazzlin’ city of Detroit…”
“Well, I sure will be glad to take it, Mr. Wheatley,” stammered Charley.
Mr. Wheatley went on to talk about a lot on the waterfront with riparian rights at Grosse Pointe he was planning to turn over to the children for a weddingpresent and how they ought to build on it right away if only as an investment in the most restricted residential area in the entire United States of America. “And, son, if you come around to ma office after lunch you’ll see the plans for the prettiest little old English house to set on that lot you ever did see. I’ve been havin’ ’em drawn up as a surprise for Mother and Gladys, by Ordway and Ordway… Halftimbered Tudor they call it. I thought I’d turn the whole thing over to you children, as it’ll be too big for Mother and me now that Gladys is gettin’ married. I’ll chip in the lot and you chip in the house and we’ll settle the whole thing on Gladys for any children.”
They finished their lunch. As they got up Mr. Wheatley took Charley’s hand and shook it. “And I sincerely hope and pray that there’ll be children, son.”
Just after Thanksgiving the society pages of all the Detroit papers were full of a dinnerdance given by Mr. and Mrs. Horton B. Wheatley to announce the approaching marriage of their daughter Gladys to Mr. Charles Anderson inventor war ace and head of the research department at the great Tern Airplane Plant.
Old Bledsoe never spoke to Charley after the day the engagement was announced but Anne came over to Charley and Gladys the night of the Halloween dance at the Country Club and said she thoroughly understood and wished them every happiness.