“You know,” Jeffrey said slowly, and he found himself speaking patiently, “I’ve known Marianna for a long while, but you’re wrong in your assumptions, Minot.”
But he knew it would have done no good to explain everything candidly to Minot—to tell him that in spite of the week end he was not seriously contemplating such a thing. Minot would have approved of everything he said, for such an explanation was proper in the book of rules. No gentleman in the book of rules would have been expected to have made an admission. Besides, Marianna Miller was on the stage, and stage people did just one thing according to Minot’s book of rules.
“Let’s have another one,” Minot said. “Oh, George. Front and center, George.”
George entered into the spirit of the thing, not brashly or blatantly but with the kindly smile of one who loved the vagaries of members and who had been through a lot with them. George walked to the table and did a smart right face.
“George was in the old Second,” Minot said. “Continue the exercise, George.”
Jeffrey did not want another drink, but if he had refused one, Minot would have thought he was irritated, since under the circumstances, when friends touched on such a subject, a drink was called for in the book of rules. It meant that everything was over and that you were back to where you were before, that nothing more need be said about it. Yet it made him restless. He had never thought, until Minot mentioned it, that he and Marianna might be talked about.
“I’ll tell you who’s a guest here,” Minot said. “Sir Thomas—Sir Thomas Leslie.”
But Jeffrey had never heard the name.
“British Information Service,” Minot said. “Just fresh from London. We gave him a party Sunday night. Tommy’s quite a boy.”
But Jeffrey was only half listening. They were always giving parties to the British—it was all a part of the British War Relief and Bundles for Britain. They were always making speeches about blood’s being thicker than water. They were always reading letters from some cousin in the R.A.F. He knew why the Sir Thomases were over. They were over here to get everything they could, so that they could carry on, and Jeffrey wished that they would tell the truth instead of beating about the bush. They wanted America in the war, and they were right to want it. He wished they would say so flatly instead of asking for tools, so that they could do the job. They wanted America in the war because their backs were to the wall; he wished that he could be sure that America could save them. He wished that someone would tell him how it could be done instead of selling him enamel lions to attach to his lapel. It was going to take more than an enamel lion, and the British and everyone else were talking double talk. Roosevelt was saying that none of the boys would fight in a foreign war, saying it again and again, and asking if it were clear. It was not clear; but Mr. Willkie was saying it, too—that every possible aid must be given England, but we must not get into the war.
“I wish they’d tell the truth,” Jeffrey heard himself saying.
Minot shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“That’s too much to ask,” he said. “We should have been in it last winter. If we’d been in it—”
It was an impossibility to have been in it, and Minot should have known. It was all like an old record turning again, whose strains he vaguely remembered—that propaganda of gallant rebuke, as though it were all our fault, as though we were slackers letting our blood brothers down while they were fighting the Hun. They should have known that no people went to war for anything like that except a few like Minot who followed the book of rules.
Jeffrey realized suddenly that he was not at home with Minot, or with any of those people. It was the same mood which had overtaken him there at Higgins Farm, when the voice had said, “This—is London.” He was thinking of Marianna Miller, wondering what Minot had heard, and whether Madge could have said anything.
“Minot,” he asked, “have you seen Madge lately?”
“Madge?” Minot said. “Well, let’s see. Why, yes, yesterday. What was it?—something for the British War Relief.”
It all tied up together.
Madge must have discussed Marianna Miller, and it gave Jeffrey a most indignant feeling. Madge might have thought that there was something in it because Madge knew the book of rules. All those people were alike, and no matter how he tried, he could not be like them.
“Jeff,” Minot said, “you’re not mad, are you?”
“No,” Jeffrey said, “of course not. You couldn’t make me mad.”
“You know, I like you better than anyone I know.”
There was nothing awkward in Minot’s statement. Jeffrey could not have said such a thing to Minot or to anyone else, but it was utterly guileless, and natural when Minot said it. It drew them together in the warmth of a friendship which was both very old and extremely valuable. It made no difference to Jeffrey that he felt older and more cynical and more intelligent. All at once the friendship seemed indestructible.
Yet it was hard to keep his mind on what Minot was saying. All sorts of elements seemed to have combined into a sort of chaotic discontent, and even the dining room at the Clinton Club was part of it.
The dining room was Georgian—the chairs and the silver and the soft green paneling all very good, and used by people who understood them. The Sheraton sideboard against the north wall was a fine authentic piece. It was covered with a great mass of non-functional silver—cups, bowls, and urns, such as appear in clubs—but the silver was completely in place, like the few diners at the tables, and like the waiters. There was a watchful dignity in the room and a tacit assurance that there would be no mistake about forks or fingerbowls. It seemed to Jeffrey that he was the only one who was not completely at home, completely a part of it. He had ordered cold guinea hen and lyonnaise potatoes had come with it. When the waiter, whom Minot called Stephen, passed the potatoes, Jeffrey was aware that something was not quite right. When it was too late, Jeffrey saw that he should not have put the lyonnaise potatoes on the cold plate with the guinea hen. There was a warm plate just beside it, and, though Stephen had drawn the silver potato-dish back a hair, maneuvering it nearer the warm plate, Jeffrey had put the hot potatoes with the cold guinea hen. It was a small matter and there was no reason for him to try to convince Stephen, indirectly of course, that he had been aware of the hot plate and that he was simply eccentric and liked hot potatoes with the guinea hen. It showed that he did not belong there.
“How’s Jim doing?” Minot asked.
“Jim?” Jeffrey repeated. He fumbled over the word, just as he had with the potatoes, before he understood that Minot was asking about his son. “Oh, Jim’s all right. He’s up there. Up in Lowell House.”
“He ought to be in Eliot,” Minot said. “Jeff, I wish I had a boy.”
“How are the girls?” Jeffrey asked.
“I’ll have them for Christmas,” Minot said. “That’s the way the agreement goes this year. Maybe we can all do something together. They’re not too young for Jim now. Jeff, Jim’s quite a boy.”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Jim’s all right.”
“He looks the way you used to,” Minot said. “I don’t see Madge in him at all.”
It was what Minot always said whenever he mentioned Jim.
“You and Jim always get on so well,” Minot said.
“Well,” Jeffrey answered, “I suppose I saw more of him than I ever did of the other kids. I always saw a lot of Jim.”
“Is he still taking Military Science?” Minot asked.
Jeffrey found himself sitting up straighter. It was exactly as though someone behind him had tapped him softly on the shoulder.
“He said something about it,” Jeffrey answered. “Something of the sort.”
“You don’t want him drafted as a private,” Minot said.
“Oh, no,” Jeffrey answered. “Not as a private. That would never do.”
Minot put his fork down so gently that it made no sound against the plate.
“Once this election
’s out of the way, they’ll enlarge the Army. Jeff, you know what I mean. It doesn’t look well, waiting to be drafted.”
“Maybe if you had a son,” Jeffrey said, “you wouldn’t be so anxious to get into this war.”
“If I had a son,” Minot answered, “I’d want him in it now.”
“Would you?” Jeffrey asked him. “I wonder if you would. Jim’s just twenty so he won’t be drafted yet. I’d rather go myself.”
Jeffrey knew by the way the wrinkles disappeared from Minot’s forehead that he had said the right thing.
“God,” Minot said, “who wouldn’t?” and then he pushed back his chair. He was looking past Jeffrey toward the entrance of the dining room. “There’s Sir Thomas now,” he said. “Oh, Tommy!”
Jeffrey turned in his chair. Sir Thomas was pink and plumpish, middle-aged and a trifle bald, but his face was one of those which never change much from boyhood. From the way he paused, it was plain that Sir Thomas had met so many Americans lately that he was having difficulty keeping them all in his memory.
“Oh,” Sir Thomas said, “hello there.”
As Sir Thomas walked toward the table he radiated that curious combination of complete good nature mingled with faint surprise which Jeffrey had seen on the faces of other Englishmen.
“Sit down, Tommy,” Minot said. “Won’t you have your lunch here with us?”
Sir Thomas still seemed to be trying to put himself into the proper role, and to recall under what circumstances Minot could ever have called him “Tommy.”
“Splendid,” Sir Thomas said. “But aren’t you nearly through?”
“We started early,” Minot said. “We’ve got lots of time.”
And now it was clear that Sir Thomas finally remembered everything.
“Oh yes, the dinner,” Sir Thomas said. He glanced at Jeffrey and laughed gently. “You ‘spooned’ me—that’s your word for it, isn’t it? You spooned me out of the cab.”
“Sir Thomas,” Minot said. “This is Mr. Jeffrey Wilson. Sir Thomas Leslie.”
“How do you do,” Sir Thomas said. “I do hope I’m not ‘butting in.’”
“Oh, no,” Jeffrey said. “No, of course not.”
“I don’t want to be a ‘table hopper,’” Sir Thomas said. “That’s your word for it, isn’t it?” He glanced at both of them merrily and unfolded his napkin.
Sir Thomas was an Englishman, and no matter how you tried to put it, there was no way of escaping what Sir Thomas thought of Americans. Sir Thomas, sitting there, was like one of those teachers who is the boys’ “best friend,” who can allow the boys to call him by his first name and still be a teacher, and even Minot must have been aware of it.
Sir Thomas was examining the luncheon card. He had taken a pair of spectacles from his pocket and placed them on his nose, while Stephen stood there waiting. Now he took his spectacles off and glanced first at Jeffrey and then at Minot.
“Three choices—” he said. “You chaps are very lucky.”
“Yes,” Minot said, “too damned lucky.”
The talk moved on to London, but Jeffrey was not listening. He was thinking, as they sat there at the table, of their three utterly divergent origins. Sir Thomas had possessed everything that Minot Roberts had possessed, but for a longer time. Jeffrey was the only one of the three who had ever been a had-not.
All at once his life and experience seemed compressed between two wars, like books between two book-ends. He could see himself entering the Clinton Club, and everything that had happened there gave him one of those flashes of insight, so disturbing when one grows older. He was actually wondering if it might not have been better if he had never met Minot Roberts, if he had never gone to visit Minot when he came back from France.
He could see the station platform when he got off the train, early in the afternoon. He could even remember the bag he had carried, known as cowhide, which he found later consisted of a very thin layer of leather glued to cardboard. He could remember his sensation exactly, a deceptive feeling of being in masquerade.
Then he heard Minot call his name.
“Am I right or am I wrong?” he heard Minot say. “What do you think, Jeff?”
There was not even an opportunity to pretend that he had listened.
“I’m awfully sorry,” he began, “I didn’t hear. I’m just a grease-ball, Minot.”
“Oh, God,” Minot said, and he began to laugh.
“What’s more,” Jeffrey said, “I’ve always been a grease-ball.”
It amused him particularly to see Sir Thomas’s face, and the effort that Sir Thomas was making to grasp the context of a phrase with which he was not familiar, debating whether to let it pass and whether, if he did, he might not miss something colloquially significant.
“What are they?” Sir Thomas asked. “What are grease-balls?”
22
Where Everything Was Bright
Although Jeffrey’s most violent ambitions and emotions had been fulfilled or frustrated in the years following the last war, that postwar decade now possessed the same elusive quality which he encountered in the pages of what the book trade termed “Costume fiction.” Somehow it had actually become a historical epoch and sometimes he could think that he and all the rest of his contemporaries might just as well have been wearing satin breeches and cloaks and swords, and taking snuff and saying “Zounds!” It seemed as far removed from the present as that.
Jeffrey had saved six hundred dollars from his officer’s pay and the bulk of the bills in his inside pocket made him feel richer than he had ever felt before. When he tried on the civilian clothes which he had left behind him, they fitted as badly as all the life which they had represented. They were too tight across the shoulders and too short in the sleeves, and so he had bought a new gray flannel suit in Boston. He bought it in a store on Boylston Street which he would not have thought of patronizing before the war. He had entered the store in his uniform, so the clerks had no way of judging him by his clothes. Later, he knew the suit he had purchased was not at all bad. He remembered standing before the mirror so that he could see himself from the front and side while the fitter marked the sleeves and the length of the trousers, and he had as hard a time recognizing himself as anyone else did who had been in uniform for two years. His face was tanned, and his hair was still very short as he had worn it in France. His eyes were grayish like the coat and at first the whole suit had felt loose, too light, and too easy. He stood straight in it, although there was no longer need for standing straight.
“How much does it cost?” he had asked the clerk.
When the man said that the price was fifty-eight dollars, Jeffrey was startled. He could see that he had made a mistake, going to a store on Boylston Street, but now that he was there, he had to buy it, and besides, he had six hundred dollars. What made it more difficult was that they expected him to buy other things. He bought a pair of low tan shoes which cost ten dollars and three pair of socks for a dollar and a half apiece, and three soft shirts at four dollars apiece, and two ties for two dollars each, and a brown felt hat for seven dollars. The total cost was appalling, but somehow he had to buy them, now that he was in the store.
“What about something dark,” the clerk asked, “for afternoon?”
“No, thank you,” Jeffrey said, “not today.”
“How are you fixed for evening clothes?” the clerk asked.
The clerk was wearing rimless spectacles. Jeffrey had never thought about evening clothes.
“No, thanks,” he said, “not today.”
“How about a suitcase?” the clerk asked.
The clerk and the whole store were driving him into a corner, obviously taking him for someone else.
“I guess not, thanks,” Jeffrey said, “not today.”
Jeffrey bought the suitcase in a luggage store near Franklin Street where everything was marked down fifty per cent for the August sale. When he took the ten o’clock train at the South Station, he wore the gray suit and the br
own hat and one of the soft shirts. Inside his suitcase were the other shirts, the socks, one clean suit of underwear and one pair of pajamas. When he stopped at the newsstand to buy a morning paper, a porter asked if he might carry his suitcase. It must have been the fifty-eight dollar suit, for no porter had ever asked him that before. All these details were trivial, but in some way they illustrated his state of mind, and that of his country, now that he was back. Everyone was very prosperous in those days. Everyone was spending too much money. It was hard when he saw the people hurrying past him to the trains to realize where he had been or what he had seen. Everyone was getting back to normalcy, as Mr. Harding was to say a little later. Everyone in America was forgetting about the war.
Jeffrey waited on the platform for a half an hour at Stamford for the local train. He did not mind because everything was still new to him. He watched the automobiles drive up, and the chauffeurs get out and the baggage trucks roll down the platform with the mail. He wondered where the automobiles were going—surely not to any of that part of Stamford which he saw from the platform. There seemed to be more of everything than he had ever remembered and the whole face of his country seemed transformed. When he took the local train and sat looking out of the window, there were no soldiers on the platforms and no Military Police. He pulled his suitcase from the rack above his head when the brakeman called the name of the station, and when he was standing on the platform in the sunlight, looking at the automobiles, he saw Minot Roberts. Minot was in tennis flannels, white buckskin shoes and a tweed coat. Each one must have felt for a moment that the other was a stranger.
“Hello, boy,” Minot said, and then they shook hands. “Give me your bag, and let’s get out of this.”
“Oh, no,” Jeffrey said. “I can carry it.”
“Go to hell,” Minot said. “Give me your bag,” and they both grabbed for the yellow suitcase.
“God almighty,” Minot said. “It’s funny seeing you.”
So Little Time Page 27
