by Philip Wylie
"It's your life, Virginia. You've made up your mind." I had to clear my throat and I was still not able to face her. "I'm pretty proud of you. You've spent--seven months and more--as well as a long time abroad--thinking over-all this. I imagine you're worrying about John. And John still is in a pretty bad state of mind because of Connie. But I think he understands you better than he ever did her. And I'll--I'll take care of John."
She didn't answer.
I had a vision of John and myself alone now in Fort Sheffield--holding our outpost on that Roman road through the rest of a long and bitter Winter. Ivan would be away, and so would Larry. By one of Fate's experiments, I, who was not a Sheffield, would be left to represent a whole generation of Sheffields. Then, strangely enough, I thought of Nora. Would I, also, gradually desert the great house by the Sound? Was this only a cross section of all human life--and was all human life--thus subscribed to imperfection, compromise and dissolution? Perhaps.
When I turned around she was crying quietly. "I guess I'd better go to bed," she said.
"You'd better finish your sandwich and your milk."
I took a handkerchief from my breast pocket and wiped her eyes and held her nose while she blew it. Then we laughed and didn't say much more. Just before we started upstairs she took my arm. "Thank God for one thing, anyway," she said.
"What?"
' That somewhere in my life I'll always have you, Frankie."
She kissed me after that and ran upstairs.
An hour later, affairs in our family took a new and, to me, incredible course.
CHAPTER XVII
I had not gone to bed. I had lain half-undressed upon the settee in my room, smoking cigarettes, and not quite as sad as I had always expected I would be when finally Virginia reached those ultimate, positive words about herself and Bill.
Two things consoled me--that she'd thanked God I would always be in her life--
and, in a whimsical way, Nora.
After all, I'd long ago abandoned a hope I'd never really entertained about Virginia. We loved Bill, and I think we felt that there might be some rules for their particular code different from those limited regulations which most human beings are compelled to formulate. She'd shown that night--a certain depth of feeling for me about which I had a right to be proud. That feeling in some ways transcended what she felt towards Bill. It was enough--more than enough. It was so much that I could no longer view the months ahead with a gnawing at my viscera--with a future prospect of wretchedness and disenchantment.
What Nora had contributed to my mood was much more difficult to define. It might have worried me except that by some chance of insight I had understood it. My conscience did not make me think less of myself. It had been, after all, a gentle and a gingerly fervor. I had kissed the girl not to take revenge on Virginia, but because I had wanted to be kissed, and the desire had not represented fickleness of my inner devotion, but, rather, an announcement by some living part of my psyche that I was a man--that life must go on--that I was made of such stuff as would not wholly vanish because I had lost my true love.
That still seems inadequate as a definition. And I am sure that any member of the orthodox school of morals would have regarded my attitude at best as rationalizing and probably as sin. But I knew it was no sin. We are not made to be forever mournful, and the stern exigencies of nature contain warmth, as well as coldness and inexorableness. I did not need to carry my gesture with Nora any further. She had unintentionally reminded be of a neglected fragment of my manhood--and then, immediately afterward, Virginia had restored my soul.
I was ready afresh to face the winds, however they might blow.
I sprawled there thinking of that and the telephone rang downstairs. We'd got into the habit of shutting off our bedroom extensions. I thought at first that Larry or Ivan might be calling, and--like an anxious mother's--my mind leapt to automobile accidents.
But I remembered that their overcoats were in the hall. So they were both in bed.
I put on my dressing gown and hurried down the front stairway, tipping up switches that lighted my route in advance. And just before I picked up the phone I knew who was calling.
I said, "Hello."
Connie answered: "Hello. Frankie!"
Her voice was strangled and hysterical. I felt an iciness begin to creep over me but at the same time I remembered all I had just been thinking, and remembering thawed out that frigidity. In its place came a wave of compassion. "Hello, Connie. Where are you?"
"I'm in Palm Springs," she answered. "Can you hear me all right?"
"I can hear you as if you were across the street in Reedy Cove. How are you?"
"I'm not any good at all, Frankie." She stopped evidently to swallow. "Who's at home now? What time is it there?"
"It's about two o'clock. Everybody's home. Everybody was asleep but me."
There was a pause. "I'm glad I got you first. Look, Frankie. I don't need to tell you that I'm desperate. You can guess that by my voice. In a minute, I want you to go up and get John and put him on the wire. But I'll tell you first why. I'm going to ask him to take me back, Frankie. He'll probably say no. After he hangs up, maybe you can persuade him. Will you--will you try?"
Somehow I could answer her immediately and easily. It seemed all at once as if I'd expected this. "You bet I'll try, Connie! And I think maybe I'll succeed."
"Do you!" She drew in a long shuddering breath. "Then please hurry! Because I won't be able to hold myself together at all much longer! Barney's in Los Angeles. He's going to start on one of his expeditions pretty soon, and I'm supposed to sit for six months in Batavia, waiting for him. Now, get John, Frankie. Please!"
I turned on John's phone. I left the receiver down in the living room. I went up the front stairs three at a time--and I had seldom done that before. I burst into his room and he woke up quickly. He was very startled and thought I suppose--as I had--of bad roads and night and his three children.
I spoke as quietly as I could. "Look, John. There's nothing wrong. Wake yourself up. It's Connie, calling from California. She wants you to take her back, John. She's in dreadful distress. Don't say anything decisive to her now. At least, nothing that will upset her more. Be nice to her."
He gazed at me. "She wants me to take her back?"
I nodded.
He rubbed his face with his hands. He turned on the reading light.
"Your phone's connected."
He reached for it and his hand was shaking like the hand of an old man. When he put the instrument to his lips, he tried three times before he managed a gentle uneven,
"Hello, Connie." I sat down at the foot of his bed. I took a package of cigarettes from the pocket of my dressing gown. I had a hell of a time getting one lighted. This is what I heard John say:
"I'm in fine health, Connie. We all are . . . He what? . . . Batavia? . . . Oh, I see . . .
Well, yes. After you'd gone, I understood it. It was probably as much my fault as your own . . . I know." His voice was growing more tender and also steadier. Its pitch rose. He talked like a man on the verge of some unbelievable ecstasy. "You don't have to explain that . . . Barney was always just the opposite of me--he had all there is in a man that I didn't have . . . I know, darling . . . You mustn't cry so much--I can't hear what you're saying . . . I think I could tell you right now." His eyes met mine. I knew what he was about to say. He was on the point of telling her to come home at once. I tried passionately to add my will to his intention by just looking at him, but, as our gaze locked and I sat there breathlessly, I saw a doubt, a postponement gradually reduce the sublimity of his expression. He was listening to whatever Connie said in that little while and he waited for her to finish. Then he spoke again. "Of course, I'll call you back tomorrow. But I think I can give you all my part of the answer now, because it's just dawned on me, Connie, that only part of it is up to me. If I were alone in the world--darling, you must have known this all the time--I'd say, 'Charter a plane tonight!' I'd say 'Come
home.' I'd say, I’ve always wanted you and I want you just as much now. Nothing matters. There's nothing to forgive. I love you.' But you see it isn't all just me. It's Virginia and Larry and Ivan, and Frankie, too. You've hurt them pretty badly. So I can't have what my own heart wishes until I've talked to them. I'll do that in the morning, and I'll let you know as soon as I know myself." That was about all he could say. There was a long pause again, and he finished simply. "Yes, as early as I can. Goodnight, Connie."
We did not sleep any more that night, of course. John hung up the phone and cried like a baby. I sat there on the bed and let him--not moving, not saying anything. When the last sob shook him for the last time and he was quiet, I kept on waiting.
Finally he said composedly, "I never knew I had an act like that in me. Did you?"
"Yeah," I answered. "You've got one for each kid in the family and one for Connie. All of us have."
"Give me a cigarette." We smoked a while and once I chuckled, just out of feeling relieved and dizzy with happiness. He didn't ask me why I was chuckling, because he didn't need to.
In fact, he didn't say anything at all until he had put out the cigarette. Then he looked at me for a time. "I sort of feel like waking up all the kids and putting it to them now--but I don't believe I will."
"No. Let 'em sleep."
He nodded and sighed. "What do you think?"
"About the kids?"
"Yes."
I paused to think about the kids. Because I didn't answer at once, he said my piece: "Either they'll say 'yes' right away, or they won't say anything." An anxious expression came slowly on his face. "What'll I do if they don't say anything, Frankie?"
I guess I shrugged. I went over to his closet and took out his dressing gown. I helped him into it. He was sitting up in his pajamas and his room was cold. "If that's their reaction--or the reaction of anyone of them--you'll just have to wait and give them a chance to think it over."
"Yes," he replied absent-mindedly. Then he grinned at me. "What do you say we go downstairs, build up a big fire, and maybe see if we can pick up some music on the short wave set? Or do you want to go to bed now?"
I put my arm around his shoulder and hugged him a little. "No, John. I don't want to go to bed. I want to listen to that music and watch you being happy for the first time in a long, long while, and feel what it's like to be happy myself."
"Yeah. That was my idea."
We went downstairs and made the fire roar in the chimney. We turned on the Christmas tree again. The night was clear and fine and one of Larry's hobbies had been radio. We picked up the Paris station that broadcasts all night long for the benefit of its colonies around the world, and we listened to news, jokes and music in French. Then we had Moscow for a while. And after that, half the stations in Europe, as they got busy with morning activity. By and by the sun, which had been on its way across the Atlantic, paled the perimeter of land and sea around Fort Sheffield, and it was dawn. We had enjoyed the music--it fitted somehow into our mood, which was cosmic.
I went upstairs--later--and brought down all of Connie's letters, together with those from Larry, and John read them--with what thoughts, what suffering, what delight, I could only imagine. But I shan't forget how he looked at me after he had folded the last one--looked and smiled and remembered.
I kept back the biggest surprise of all--my trip to Palm Springs. I told him about that completely and ended up by giving my ideas of what I thought were Connie's reasons for running away from the Fort. I said that Connie had always been youthful and glamorous to such a degree that she had found any other state impossible to accept. I said that life--had started inexorably to show her that she was approaching middle-age, and she had blamed the exhibition not on life but on Reedy Cove. John understood that, and I presume he always had. I hadn't finished talking when we began to hear noise upstairs, and we looked at our watches and saw that it was morning.
The Sheffields had always been pretty early risers, but on winter mornings darkness lingers late; I suppose it was between seven and eight when the sun actually touched the snow and the icicles and the water, making them all too bright to be endured.
Anne came down to discover us still sitting there in our bathrobes. We had decided to wait until everybody was on hand for breakfast before telling them--so we went upstairs and dressed.
Bill was the last one to appear, and no better evidence of the place he had taken in our family could possibly be shown than by the fact that John waited for him also. I tried to evaluate everybody's mood ahead of time. Virginia had given me a secret, telling smile-and started her prunes in a preoccupied manner. She was thinking about her decision--about Bill and about Washington. Larry came roaring in with a lot of vocal anticipation about bobsledding on Yankee Knob Hill. Ivan came down with a book on anatomy under his arm, but I could see that he was more interested in Larry's project than in the Latin names of nerves. Bill was just the same: his emotions always rose and fell more gradually than those of the Sheffields; they were consequently more stable, and they were just as deep.
That's the way they felt--when John cleared his throat two times and with such manifest tension that they looked at him. I had been wondering how he would put it.
He said, "Virginia--Larry--Ivan--I've got something that is more than just important to say this morning. I haven't any idea what effect it will have on you, and I want to know that effect more than anything else in the world. I want you to tell me the exact truth. For that reason I'm going to tell you what I think about it myself."
"It's something about Connie." I turned and saw that Virginia was taut, sure of her guess, and shaken by it." John nodded. "It's something about Connie. She telephoned last night after you were all in bed."
There was deathly silence. I should have known that John would state his case that way--impartially and without sentiment. It was like him to assume that justice depended upon bending backwards. I should have known it-and I should have advised him--but I hadn't.
"She wants to come back," John said. "I told her that I would put it up to you--
since all of you are as much affected by her wish as I am. I want to know your answer, so that I can tell her what it is."
I opened my mouth to speak. I wanted to say something about John's own feelings when Connie had called. Something about my feelings. But as I looked from Ivan to Larry and then to Virginia, I was frightened. Each in a separate way had recoiled at the announcement. Each face was creased by memories of the pain Connie had caused. So I said nothing then--for, since there was in each of them this powerful antagonistic element, it was better to know about it than to have it submerged--to creep out later, when and if Connie came home.
Virginia interrupted the voiceless interlude. "May I ask a question?"
I didn't like the way her words sounded.
John said, "Anybody may. Any questions."
"What's your wish?"
John smiled slightly. He wanted to tell them, but was determined neither to tell nor to reveal his wish. "Except that. I don't want any of you youngsters to be prejudiced by me."
Larry said, "Has she left that damn cowboy yet?"
His voice had broken into falsetto when he said "cowboy." The air burned with his repressed violence.
I decided I had to do something then. I said, "I answered the phone when Connie called last night." John shot an imploring glance at me. And I went on. I had already determined to be loyal to his way of presenting the problem. "I really think we should consider Connie's side of this, too. She knows what she's done to your pride and your feelings about her. She knows exactly the sort of mistake she's made. As far as her being alone is concerned, Barney has gone to Los Angeles and is about to start out on one of his expeditions. She was supposed to go along as far as Batavia with Barney--"
Larry interrupted me then. "I wish you'd keep Colby's name out of this, at least. It makes me sick at my stomach to hear you call him Barney, too, if you don't mind."
Larry's e
yes were like wounds from which his soul was bleeding. I said as quietly as I could, "I'm sorry."
Again the long tick of frozen seconds. John swallowed audibly and moved in his chair. "Ivan?" It was almost a whisper.
Ivan ran his fingers through his dark hair a couple of times. He turned his more classic version of John's profile toward his father. He straightened his lips. "I don't know," he began heavily and sullenly. "I don't know. Some kind of rotten spot turned up in Connie. It doesn't seem right that she should be allowed to get away with all the pain she's caused--to humiliate everybody. To make our insides crawl for months. And then pop blithely back and be accepted without a murmur. It isn't right!" When he said that, he banged his fist down on the table and the dishes rang.
John shook his head a fraction of an inch. These slings and arrows had come upon him unprepared. All during the joyous night before, he had been opening the doors of his citadel. He had expected a rush of welcome and delight--but he still understood this. Inch by inch, he was nerving himself to bear it. He didn't speak when he looked toward Virginia.
She was watching Bill--watching him frantically--as if she expected some sign, some instruction in his demeanor. The implications of that searching stare, the knowledge of what she was asking, yanked at the very roots of my being. But Bill gave her no token of his thoughts. And, after all, that was right. If she was to live by her decisions, they must be her own. Bill kept his face flinty, his eyes fixed and far away.
Then she tried me and I could not hold myself against the supplication in her eyes.
I, too, looked away. So Virginia spoke. "John--what can any of us say? Do you believe we'd ever feel the same way about Connie again? Do you believe she'd mean the things we used to think she meant?" Deep-dwelling, fragile parts of Virginia were crashing and shattering as she went on. "We've all got to choose how we'll live these lives of ours. She chose. Can you renege, John? Can you go back? I'd hate to think of myself doing it."
