“Yes,” he said, “but never mind it now.”
“I wonder whether Hugh and Jessie are going to stay,” Madge said.
“Who?” Jeffrey asked, and then he realized that Madge was referring to the latest couple.
“I think they’re going to wait until they get their Christmas present,” Madge said, “and then they’ll leave. I think it looks that way.”
Jeffrey did not answer.
“Jeff,” Madge said.
“What?” he asked.
“About Christmas?”
Jeffrey put down the paper.
“Do you really think you’ll have to go out there?” Madge asked. “Why can’t they come here?”
“Who?” Jeffrey asked. “Who, Madge?”
“Jim and—Sally,” Madge said, and her voice changed slightly as it always did when she mentioned Sally’s name. “I don’t see why they can’t come here.”
“Madge,” Jeffrey began, and he pulled his thoughts together. They had been over the subject several times, but Madge always came back to it. “If you want to go too, why, come ahead, but I’ve told you—”
And then he heard Gwen running down the stairs.
“Daddy,” Gwen was calling, “Daddy!”
He remembered wishing that Gwen would not always be so intense. For the last two years, Gwen had made a scene out of every trivial incident, and Madge had kept telling him that it was just a phase.
“Sing it,” Jeffrey said, “don’t scream it, Gwen.”
“Daddy,” Gwen said, “the Japanese—” and she stopped to catch her breath, and that was how he heard it. At first, as he stood by the radio, he did not believe what was being said, and then he was filled with a furious anger and he wanted to give everything, everything.
“Well,” he said, “it’s the real show this time.” And he seemed to be a part of it again. He had been a soldier once, and not such a bad soldier, either. He was not physically defective. His eyes and ears were not bad. He had put on some weight but his heart and blood pressure were normal and he knew quite a lot about war. He knew that he could never fly in combat but he knew what it meant from A to Z and he wished to God that he were there. He must have thought of all those things at once and then he thought of Jim. He did not want to talk to Madge or anyone. He wanted to talk to Jim. His idea was purely impulsive but his common sense told him that he could not reach Jim that day, not in an Army Camp, or across the continent. He wanted to do something, and there was nothing he could do, absolutely nothing.
“Madge,” he said, “I think I’d better go.”
It surprised him that she did not understand him.
“Don’t go out now,” Madge said, “stay here, darling.”
“I mean to Washington,” he said, “I mean—”
Jeffrey knew that the Air Corps and every other branch of the army would be swamped with applications, but if someone knew him, this someone might recommend him to someone else. When he tried to reach Minot Roberts, he found that Minot had already gone to Florida. Knowing Minot, he imagined that Minot would already be on some General Staff, and Jeffrey did not want to be on any Staff. He knew that he could not fly, but he thought that he might get on the ground with a combat group, and then he remembered Bill Swinburne, whom Minot had gone to see and whom the General could not leave alone for a single minute. They had been in the same Squadron in the last war, and Bill had been an observer, and not much of an observer either. However, Bill Swinburne had liked the army and had stayed in the Reserve instead of dropping the whole thing as nearly everyone else had after the Armistice. Except at the old Squadron Dinners when Bill was always pretty tight, Jeffrey had not seen Bill for years, but still, if you had been in the Squadron you could not let someone down hard who had been in it too. That was why of all the people Jeffrey knew in Washington he thought that Bill Swinburne would be the best—Colonel Swinburne, as he was now, Lieutenant Colonel Swinburne. That was why Jeffrey sent him a wire to the Munitions Building, Washington, asking if Bill could give him fifteen minutes if he should come down.
After waiting two days for an answer, Jeffrey decided to telephone him, person-to-person, and he sat for two hours, waiting. First the operator said that Colonel Swinburne was in conference and she would try again in twenty minutes. Then the operator said that Colonel Swinburne had left for the Hotel Mayflower, and should she try the Mayflower? And then she said that Colonel Swinburne was in a very important luncheon conference at the Mayflower and could not be disturbed, and should she try Colonel Swinburne’s office in another half an hour? Then, when she tried Colonel Swinburne’s office, the Colonel was talking on another line, but she would get him in fifteen minutes. Then, fifteen minutes later, the Colonel was talking on another line, but she was still trying to get the Colonel. Fifteen minutes later the Colonel had just stepped out of his office, and no one knew where he was or whether or not he would be back, and would Jeffrey like to talk to the man at the Colonel’s desk? But Jeffrey said he wanted to talk to Colonel Swinburne, person-to-person, and the operator said she would keep on trying Colonel Swinburne. The next time the telephone rang the operator was more hopeful.
“We have Colonel Swinburne for you now,” she said. “He’ll be with you in just a minute.” Jeffrey waited for just a minute, and then for just another minute, and then he could hear a conversation which he was not meant to hear. Someone was asking who it was who wanted to talk to Colonel Swinburne and the operator was saying it was Mr. Wilson from New York and then the question came, what did Mr. Wilson want to talk to Colonel Swinburne about?
“They want to know what you want to talk to him about, please,” someone said.
“Tell him I’m Wilson, Jeff Wilson,” Jeffrey said. “He knows who I am. Tell him I used to rank him in the army. Wilson.”
“Yes,” the operator said, “here he is right now,” and then Jeffrey heard Bill Swinburne’s voice.
“Jeff,” he heard Bill Swinburne saying, “why didn’t you say it was you? They told me someone wanted to speak to me named Pilson.”
Jeffrey laughed mechanically.
“That’s all right, Bill,” he said. “I suppose you’re awfully busy down there. I just wanted to know if I came down, could you see me?”
“Sure,” Bill Swinburne said, “any time, Jeff, any time.”
Jeffrey smiled. He had never liked Bill Swinburne as much as he did then.
“Tomorrow?” Jeffrey said. “Could I come tomorrow?”
There was a second’s silence, but Bill Swinburne’s voice was still cordial.
“Any time,” he said, “any time.”
Jeffrey was in his study at half-past three in the afternoon when he put down the telephone. He had never felt as much connected with the room as he did just then. He had felt it was rather ornate, simply Madge’s idea of what a man’s room ought to be. He had never worked hard in it, or experienced in it any sense of deep elation or sorrow. It was a room where he left his clothes at night and where he and Madge had breakfast on the card table and read the papers in the morning.
His feeling toward it was different now that he had finished with the telephone. Through the window he could see the river and the roofs of the brownstone dwelling houses and the outlines of the tall buildings to the south touched with the dim lights and shadows of a December mist. He saw it all differently because he was leaving it, perhaps for good, and he realized it represented, in a way, a combination of his and Madge’s life. It was in a way not what he wanted, but what she wanted, and it was better than he had thought now that he was leaving it.
It made him realize how hard Madge had tried, much harder than he, to maintain certain standards and ideals. It made him see that she had been more honest than he and more definite. It made him sorry for her and at the same time very fond of her, and there was a queer sort of remorse connected with his thoughts, for he could see his faults so very clearly. He could see how much he had taken for granted and how unkind he had often been and how critical in all th
e times when he had been involved in struggles with himself. Her side of it had never been so clear. Yet the worst of it was that he knew he was not deeply sorry to be leaving. He was going into a world again which he had left for years—a world away from women. It might have been what war was for, a solution to unsolvable problems.
Now that he had telephoned, he realized that he had not told Madge what he proposed to do. He had only mentioned his idea a few days ago when the news first came, and he was sure that Madge had discounted it. Even when the air alert had sounded over the city it seemed to Jeffrey that Madge had been totally oblivious to the implication. She kept discussing what they would do next week, and next month, and wondering whether they ought to move to the country early. She had even talked about going out to the Coast with him when he went there again to work on a picture.
He could hear her using the telephone downstairs, and he knew from her tone that she was talking about him with her best friend, Beckie, comparing husbands as she and Beckie had for so many years.
“Darling,” he could hear Madge say, “there isn’t anything queer about that. Jeffrey’s just the same way too. He hasn’t been able to keep his mind on a solitary thing, dear. He keeps walking up and down trying to fight the war. Yes, he acts that way—as though it were his fault. No dear, he says just that too, and it doesn’t help to tell him he can’t do anything about it. It only makes him furious, darling. No … no, I don’t think he’s doing anything like that. He may be thinking about it but he wouldn’t without telling me, with all the children …”
Jeffrey walked to the stairs and looked down into the hall. He could see Madge sitting by the telephone beside the little table with the pad and pencil and the big Manhattan directory and all the suburban directories which no one ever used.
“Madge,” he called, “I wish you’d stop. Could you come up here for a minute?”
But Madge only put her hand over the transmitter and called up to him.
“Yes, dear,” she called, “it’s Beckie. They want us to come over for a cocktail tomorrow afternoon, Fred and Beckie. You can come, can’t you Jeff?”
“No,” Jeffrey said, “I’m going to be away tomorrow.”
Madge still held her hand over the transmitter.
“Jeff,” she said, “please. Just for half an hour. Beckie—” and she shook her head again.
Jeffrey knew why Madge shook her head. She meant that Beckie thought he didn’t like her and Fred. He could show that he did like Beckie and Fred by going over there for a cocktail tomorrow for just half an hour.
“Madge,” he said, “I can’t. If you’ll come up here, I’ll tell you.”
“Yes, dear,” he heard her saying, “that was Jeff. He was sending you his love, dear, and he’s going to try to come if he possibly can. You know the way they are dear … just as cross as bears. Yes, I’ll tell him Fred is too. They can get together in a corner.”
“God damn it, Madge,” Jeffrey called down the stairs. “I can’t go, and I don’t want to get together with Fred in any corner!”
“He’s calling downstairs now,” Madge said over the telephone. “He’s going to come if he possibly can.”
Then it was over and Madge was coming up the stairs.
“Jeff,” Madge was saying, “I wish you wouldn’t shout at me when I’m talking. I can’t hear myself think.”
“I know,” Jeffrey said, “I’m sorry, Madge.”
“You always say you’re sorry,” Madge said, “and then you keep on doing it.”
“I’m sorry, Madge,” Jeffrey said again, “but there’s something I’ve got to tell you—right away.” He saw the line between her eyebrows deepen, and he knew that she was listening. “I’ve just been talking to the Air Corps, the Air Corps in Washington.”
He wished that she did not look as though she did not believe him. Her expression was just as it had been when she was telling Beckie that he was as cross as a bear.
“Oh,” Madge said. “Is Minot back in Washington?”
He wished that he could understand why Madge thought it was perfectly just and right for Minot to be back in the army, and never considered it possible for him to be.
“No,” Jeffrey said, “I’ve been talking to a friend of mine there, Madge. Colonel Swinburne, Bill Swinburne. Maybe you’ve heard me speak of him?”
“No,” Madge said, “I’ve never heard you speak of him. Who is he?”
“He’s very high up in the Air Corps,” Jeffrey said. “He’s asked me to come down to Washington. He wants to talk to me about joining the Air Corps.”
It was not exactly true that Bill Swinburne had asked him to come down to Washington, but somehow it seemed right to put it that way to Madge. It still did not seem to dawn upon her that it could be real.
“Why, darling,” Madge said, “why should they want you in the Air Corps? You’re too old to fly.”
“Listen, Madge,” Jeffrey said. “There are lots of other things to do in the Air Corps besides fly. There are ground jobs. There’s intelligence, liaison, airfield defense. I’m good enough for that.”
“Oh, Jeff,” Madge said, “of course you are, but there are lots of others.”
“There are not lots of others,” he said. “Anyway, if they want me—”
He wished that he did not see so much of his life in scenes from plays or popular fiction. He was going to the war again. He was the old doctor in Gone with the Wind going to war. He was young Prince Andrey in War and Peace, going to the war.
“Darling,” Madge said, “I know just how you feel. It must be awful not to be able to do anything when you were in the war before, but aren’t you doing it because it’s the easiest thing to do? Aren’t you doing it because you’d like to get away? You are—” Her voice broke. “You’d like to get away. It’s just as though you’ve always been waiting for it. It’s just as though you didn’t like any of us, as though—”
“Now that isn’t so, Madge,” Jeffrey said, but he knew it was partly so. “If I can go out there and get one crack at them … I can’t stay here and …”
“And what?” Madge asked him. “And what?”
“If I can get out,” Jeffrey said, “where I can hear a gun go off—” He had hated it once and now it seemed the most desirable thing in the world. He only hoped that Madge would not say the obvious thing—that he might be too old. “I don’t mean to sit in Washington, and I can’t sit here—”
“Sit where?” Madge said.
“In this damned study,” Jeffrey said, “and look out of this damned window.” He had not meant to say it. He had not meant to hurt her. “Madge,” he told her, “I did not mean that exactly. It isn’t that I don’t like it, but God, Madge, don’t you see?”
There was something left of him yet, something that was not gone.
50
Old Soldiers Never Die
Once in 1917 Jeffrey had passed through Washington, and now in December 1941, the city was much the same. It was a bleak morning with a stormy chill in the air and the station was crowded, just as it had been back in 1917, with swiftly moving people; and their faces looked as they had then, wholly concentrated on their own thoughts. It was hard to get a taxicab, and early as it was you had to wait to get a table in the hotel dining room.
While Jeffrey waited for his breakfast and waited for a reasonable time to call on Bill Swinburne, he tried again to recall what Bill Swinburne was like, now that Bill Swinburne had suddenly become more important to him than anyone in the world. Jeffrey wanted to say the right thing and do the right thing.
He kept looking at all the officers he saw, and a good many of them had the ribbons of the last war. If he were in uniform he could show up as well as a lot of them and perhaps better. He could wear two gold V’s on his left sleeve for his twelve months overseas. He could wear the World War ribbon with three stars on it for three offensives, which was more than a lot of men in uniform could; and besides he could wear the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre if that were regulation stil
l—not that the Croix de Guerre meant much because the French had always been passing them out to pilots, but still it was a ribbon that you got for fighting.
Jeffrey tried to remember about Bill Swinburne; he did not want solely to think of him as being always tight at the Squadron Reunion Dinners. Minot had mentioned Bill Swinburne now and then, since Minot was always loyal to everyone in the Squadron. There had been something about trying to get Bill Swinburne a job, and then another job, and that was all that Jeffrey could remember. But now he was going to the Munitions Building to see his old friend Bill Swinburne, who must have been a first-rate fellow.
The Navy Building and the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue of course had never belonged there. They had been built as a result of an old emergency and here they were again in the midst of a new one. Officers and civilians were passing in and out and it seemed to Jeffrey that if he wore the uniform again, even the new coat that looked so British, he would not have forgotten how to hold himself. He had been reasonably careful about his figure. With a coat properly tailored about the shoulders he would not look badly and he would know what to do with his hands. Many of the officers seemed to be his age, majors or lieutenant colonels, and he supposed you had to have that rank if you reached his age, but they wore their uniforms like civilian clothes.
There were guards at the doors examining the passes and Jeffrey had no pass. He was taken to the long reception desk just below the stairs where a thin, tired-looking girl looked up at him from her memorandum pad.
“I wanted to see Colonel Swinburne,” Jeffrey said.
“Have you an appointment with him?” she asked.
Jeffrey said he had an appointment, because he thought it would be better to say so, though it was not entirely true.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Where is he?” Jeffrey repeated and he listened to the footsteps and voices in the corridors. “I don’t know. He’s in here somewhere.”
“Swinburne?” the girl said. “How do you spell it?” Jeffrey spelt it and the girl picked up a mimeographed list and then she wrote down the number of a room.
So Little Time Page 60
