“Jeff,” she said, “you’ll be going out to the Coast this spring, won’t you?” And they seemed to have reached some sort of understanding without his knowing it or even being sure he wanted it.
“Yes,” he said, “sometime around April.”
“Well,” she said, “I’ll be there too.”
She said it as though it settled everything and it made him more unsure of himself than he had been for a long while. He stood without speaking, and she sighed.
“I suppose we’d better go back now,” she said.
He could hear the voice again: “This—is London.” If it hadn’t been for that, none of it would have happened.
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose we’d better.”
13
You Can’t Blame Those Little People
The cool night air striking on the lower ground was causing a mist to rise, a mist that was solid and white and palpable in the moonlight, stretching like a high tide across the road, already partially concealing the walls and fences. Higgins Farm appeared even more unsubstantial than it had before. It gave Jeffrey the same sort of feeling that he sometimes experienced when he awoke at night in a strange room—that he might have been carried there without knowing it.
When they closed the front door behind them, he could see the naked exposure of the dark hand-hewn beams in the living room and the floral decoration on the oval hooked rug and the embers in the fire shining through the glasses on the cobbler’s bench. Everyone was sitting silent in a circle around the fireplace, and at the sound of the front door everyone whispered “Hush.”
He thought it was some sort of parlor game, until Beckie hurried toward them.
“Hush,” Beckie whispered, “Buchanan is just in the middle of a poem.”
“Oh,” Jeffrey whispered back, “sorry.”
Buchanan had evidently paused, disturbed by the interruption, and now he was looking at them with courteous reproach. He had no paper in his hand. He had been reciting from memory, because he was a poet. Jeffrey saw Madge frowning at him. Her eyes were asking him where on earth he had been, and why he had slammed the door. It reminded him of a Sunday, long ago, at home, when he had come running into the dining room because he was late for Sunday dinner only to find that the minister was there and was in the midst of saying grace.
“Sorry, Buchanan,” Jeffrey whispered, “don’t mind me,” and everyone said “Hush,” again.
“It’s quite all right,” Buchanan said. “It’s my poem called ‘The Cry of the Little People.’” And Buchanan laughed good-naturedly. “Don’t listen to me pontificate, if you don’t want to. Go romp on the lawn with Marianna.”
“Go on,” Jeffrey said. “I’m sorry, Buchanan.” And he sat down on the floor. He felt his knees creak, but somehow you always sat on the floor when a poet was delivering a poem.
“Let me see,” Buchanan said, “where was I?”
“We swink for you, naïvely, behind your grimy factory windows,” Beckie said.
There was a pause. A cramp was seizing Jeffrey’s right foot around the instep, but he did not venture to move. Buchanan had half-closed his eyes, and his voice was firm and clear, and actually his words were smooth and able, almost moving. The poem was about the little people whose small voices rose to reproach the privileged few who were living wrongly in the present. They were reproachful because they, the little people, and not their drivers, made this, our country. Through the lines of Buchanan Greene, the voices of fishermen and dirt farmers and lumberjacks and fallen women from the mining camps and a great many other people from other categories, including refugees, were rising in a reproaching, unanswerable chorus, principally in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Everyone else appeared to be listening to those bitter voices, but Jeffrey’s mind strayed from the subject. He was thinking that everyone now wrote and talked about the Little People, and that the Little People were a new discovery in creative literature, and no doubt a wholesome one, but he wished that their discoverers would not invariably refer to them as Little People. It seemed to him that the Little People themselves would have every right to resent it, for the phrase, if you stopped to think of it, implied an intolerable sort of patronage. It was the way Beckie referred to the little grocer and the little cabinetmaker and the little village. It tacitly implied that you yourself were not quite as little, and actually no one, if you got to know him, was a little person. The phrase was snobbish and undemocratic, and yet it was used most frequently by mouthpieces of democracy.
“We have died for you,” said Buchanan, “in the jade-green waters off the Georges Banks …”
It sounded well, but granting the necessity for poetic license it did not sound like the voice of a fisherman.
The lines revealed to Jeffrey that Buchanan Greene’s acquaintance with the Little People, although he lived now by interpreting them, was purely academic. Buchanan Greene would not have known what to say to the Little People, and neither would most of the others who listened to him. All they knew, and all they would ever know, about Little People was what Buchanan Greene was telling them. It made Jeffrey wonder how he had ever got there on the floor, struggling with a cramp in his foot and listening. There was no doubt that Buchanan Greene was right—the Little People were correct in being very, very angry.
“And so, for this, too, we denounce you …”
There was no appreciable change in Buchanan’s voice, no crescendo to indicate that his poem was ended. His voice simply faded into silence, though he still sat with half-closed eyes while everyone waited to hear some more strictures from the Little People, but none came. Someone moved uneasily, and now it was necessary to express one’s feelings intelligently and appropriately because Buchanan Greene had given very freely of himself. It was necessary to convey the impression, not only to him, but to everyone, that his effort had meant something to you in particular, which you understood and were the better for. It was necessary not to speak for a moment. It would have been vulgar to hurry over to the shoemaker’s bench and help yourself to a Scotch-and-soda or even to a little charged water. Even the resorting to that common sign of approbation, clapping of hands, would not have been quite in order. That must have been why everyone was silent. Someone sighed, and then Beckie sighed too, and shifted her position slightly on the fireside settle.
“Oh,” she said, “oh, it’s over.” Her voice indicated incredulity that it could be over so quickly and at the same time she made you feel that she wanted it to go on forever, and that everyone else did, and now she was striving to get back into a workaday world through the magic that those words had wrought.
Jeffrey struggled to his feet and stamped softly upon the hooked rug. He could see Beckie looking at Fred meaningly. It was obvious that Fred had to say something.
“Buchanan,” Fred said, “I think that’s one of the best ones of yours I’ve ever heard. It’s time we got more socially conscious. How about a drink?”
“Just a drop of Scotch,” Buchanan said, “and plain water, please.”
Then Walter Newcombe was speaking, in his capacity of man-of-letters.
“That was a swell job, Mr. Greene,” he said. “I enjoyed every minute of it.” Mrs. Newcombe pulled his sleeve.
“Don’t stop me, sweet,” Walter said. “Mr. Greene knows what I mean. It was a swell job, Mr. Greene.”
“Did you like it,” Buchanan asked, “really?”
He asked it as though he were appealing to a superior judgment, but before Walter had time to speak again, they were all telling Buchanan how much they liked it and just what it had meant to each one of them and how much better it was than anything that MacLeish had done—not that it was in any way reminiscent of MacLeish.
Upstairs in Uncle Joel’s room, Jeffrey removed his coat and hung it carefully over the back of one of the ladder-back chairs, but the chair was not made for such a purpose, and it tipped over. He picked up both the chair and the coat carefully, and found a hanger in the closet. Madge was sitting in front of the dr
essing table combing out her dark brown hair.
“Well?” Madge said.
It always ended up with him and Madge. After all those other people, they would always end up irrevocably alone.
“Well, what?” Jeffrey said.
Madge turned around on the little stool in front of the dressing table.
“Don’t say you didn’t like it,” Madge said.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Jeffrey said. “What’s happened to the luminal? I meant to bring some luminal.”
“It’s wherever they put it.” Madge lowered her voice carefully. “Don’t talk so loud. I can’t ever tell when you’re going to have a good time, not ever.”
Jeffrey stood looking at the colored pictures of the tombstones.
“Neither can I,” he said.
“Well, you must have had a good time when you ran off with your Miss Miller.”
“I didn’t run off with her,” Jeffrey said. “I just met her out there.”
“What did you talk about?”
“About you,” Jeffrey said, “you—and London.”
“I don’t suppose she likes me.” Madge picked up her comb again.
“No,” Jeffrey said, “I don’t suppose she does.”
“Well, I’m glad she doesn’t,” Madge said, “as long as you like me better.” Her eyes grew wider, and the vertical line on her forehead deepened. “You do like me, don’t you Jeff?”
“Yes,” he said, “I like you better.”
“I suppose she thinks I cramp your style.”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I suppose so.”
“And you know I don’t, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I know you don’t.”
“You know we want the same things, basically.”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “basically.”
“And if I try to live in any different way, if I try to simplify things, you’re the first one to complain, you know you are.”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Do you suppose they put that luminal in the bathroom, Madge?”
“Why,” Madge asked, “didn’t you ever tell me more about Walter Newcombe?”
Then she was talking about all the other people. She always loved parties and she was wondering what they were going to do tomorrow, and she was hoping that she could have a long talk with Beckie, and then she thought of something else.
“Jeff, did you think Dorothy Sales was intelligent?”
“She was all right,” Jeff said.
“Jeff, you don’t think it’s serious about Jim, do you? She acted as though it were. Jeff, I do wish you’d listen to me. No one’s ever heard of them. He’s just someone that Fred met in some bank.”
He knew that expression was elastic.
“Don’t keep thinking Jim’s going to get married,” he said.
“But, Jeff, it’s true. Beckie says no one knows them.”
He stood looking at the pictures of the tombstones and at the wax flowers on the mantel.
“Jeff,” she said, “I wish you’d ever talk to me. What are you thinking about?”
He did not answer.
“Jeff,” she said, “you’re worried about something. What is it? You’ve been worried all evening.”
“Not worried, particularly,” he answered, “but I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking we’re pretty close to the end of the world.”
“The end of the world?” she repeated, and that line on her forehead grew deeper.
“The Post Road was the end of one world,” he said, “and now we’re at the end of another. You won’t know this place when the war is over.”
“I know,” she answered, “that’s what everybody says.” But he knew she did not believe it, and again he was wondering how he had ever got there. It was the way it always had been when he passed from something he knew into something unfamiliar. The actual passage was always imperceptible. If there should be such a thing as survival after death, it might be like that—you would be somewhere else and wondering how you got there.
“Jeff,” she asked him, “what are you thinking about?”
“Darling,” he told her, “never mind.” And then she was saying what she was always saying, that he never told her anything.
Jeffrey began pacing slowly back and forth across the room, first stepping upon a hooked rug that depicted a dog in front of a kennel, beneath which had been worked OUR FRIEND TRAY, and next upon a rug showing a cat playing with a ball, beneath which had been worked I LOVE LITTLE PUSSY, and next upon a rug with flowers and the single word WELCOME. He stepped carefully from one to another.
“Listen, Madge,” he said, “don’t keep asking me that. I’m thinking about the war.”
He was thinking of those war novels. They had a sort of a pattern, even the best of them. A novel about the Civil War always started in the old plantation house, called Mary’s Pride or Holly Bush. Someone was always playing a polka because little Mary Washington Archibault was going to marry one of the young Pringles, and Mary Washington’s old mammy was leaning over the stairs, ivory teeth sparkling in polished ebony, and old Pompey (you might as well call him Pompey), who had started as Mary Archibault’s grandfather’s house nigger, was passing the juleps and perhaps a fruit cup for the ladies, when a door opened from somewhere and there was Mary Archibault’s father, “Wild” Jim Archibault. His face was unusually grave. He had to announce that those damn Yankee shopkeepers were firing back from Sumter, and now the war was on.
Or take the World War, which people like Walter Newcombe were already calling World War I. The scene always opened at Chelmhurst Manor in Hants. They were out on the terrace with the fine Perpendicular Gothic façade of the old country house behind them, watching Reggie, the Oxford blue, play mixed doubles with the curate’s second daughter against someone else, while the air and the sunlight were filled with young laughter. Then the door from the old priest’s hole which now connected old Colonel Castlewood’s study with the out-of-doors would open, and there was old Colonel Castlewood, his face unnaturally grave. The laughter stopped and the tennis stopped when they saw him. Hugh the footman put down his sandwiches. It had come at last, the old Colonel told them, and Hugh the footman said good-by to my lady, and went off to take his place in the Territorials.
Even Tolstoy could not get away from it. War and Peace began in a salon with a lot of trilingual Russians lapsing carelessly from Russian to French to English over their champagne. But then, you had to start somewhere. You had to pick a setting which showed the spirit of the time. If you wanted a setting for World War II, as Walter Newcombe was already calling it, perhaps Higgins Farm was as good a place as any. Perhaps it all meant something.
“Jeff,” Madge was saying, “we’re not in it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
There was nothing you could do about it, absolutely nothing, except to walk from the rug that had the dog on it to the one that had the cat to the one that had the flowers, and to wonder how you, or anyone else, had ever got where you were.
14
Those Ways We Took from Old Bragg High
Often when Jeffrey wondered how he had got where he was, his mind would go back to a morning at the square house on Lime Street in Bragg, Massachusetts. He was up in his room on the third story looking at himself in the wavy glass of the washstand mirror. He had borrowed his brother Alf’s new safety razor and was shaving himself for the third time in his life. Jeffrey was distressed because the distortions of the mirror did his features an injustice. The top of his skull was cramped and he was certain that his nose and mouth appeared too large. When he had gone to the kitchen for some hot water, Tilly had asked him what he needed to be shaving for when he didn’t have so much as a hair on him, and why was he wearing those white flannel pants—they looked like underdrawers! He was inclined to agree with Tilly that they were conspicuous, but Mr. Oakley, the High School superintendent, had suggested to Summers Harris, the president of the Class, that whit
e flannel trousers, white shoes—not sneakers—a blue serge coat with a white handkerchief jutting from the breast pocket, and a high stiff Arrow collar, would be a suitable costume for the boys. The girls naturally would be dressed in white, and Mr. Judd, the proprietor of the Bon Marché Store, had given each girl a big bow hair-ribbon in the High School colors.
The door to Alf’s room, next to his, was open and he could hear Alf singing. Alf always knew the latest song hits.
“‘I know a little chicken,’” Alf was singing. “‘She’s the kind of a chicken for me.’”
It was a fine June morning. The sky and the elm trees and the spire of the Congregational Church with its rooster weathervane all seemed to have been washed clean by the shower the night before. He had seen that view often enough from his window, but now it looked brand-new, as new as he himself looked.
“‘Yes sir,’” Alf was singing, “‘she’s the chicken for me.’”
Jeffrey had just finished washing his face with his knitted washcloth when Alf came in. Alf was in his shirt sleeves and suspenders. Alf was whistling, and then he stopped.
“Well,” Alf asked, “how did the razor go?”
It was very kind of Alf to ask. His tone was clean and new like the morning. It implied they were both men, discussing a subject which concerned men only. Alf looked wonderful, even in his shirt sleeves: snappy, with a dimpled cleft in his chin.
“It’s got real balance to it,” Alf told him. “No one can fool me on razors.”
“That’s right, it has got a mighty fine balance to it,” Jeffrey said.
He was putting on his stiff collar. It was one of those high collars scarcely divided in front, and as he wrestled with the front stud, it gripped him about the larynx.
“Wait a minute,” Alf asked, “where’s your talcum powder?”
“Powder?” Jeffrey asked. “What for?” Alf was very kind that morning.
“You put it on after shaving,” Alf said. “I’ll get you some of mine.”
“Gee, Alf,” Jeffrey said, “it stinks. It stinks of violets.”
So Little Time Page 16
