So Little Time (51 page)

It had been a long while since he had been so proud of Jim.

“But what did Jim want to do?” Madge asked him.

He could not see why she was so slow, when she was usually quicker than he to grasp a fact.

“He wanted to leave college and enlist as a private in the Artillery,” he said.

“But Jeffrey,” Madge said, “why a private when you said he was going to be an officer?”

“No—no,” he answered. He was speaking louder than he had thought. “A private with orders to attend the Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill.”

Then he saw that the fact had struck her just as it had struck him—a son of hers in the Army—someone else's son, but not her son.

“Don't worry, Madge,” Jeffrey said, “I told him to stay where he was and to keep his shirt on. He doesn't have to get into this thing yet.”

“Of course he doesn't, Jeffie,” Ethel said.

Ethel could see it through his eyes more clearly than Madge could. Madge was sitting up straight, and the wrinkles around her eyes were deeper.

“You haven't told us,” she said. “Did he want to go?”

“Of course he did,” he answered.

He saw her twist the corner of her napkin between her fingers.

“Then,” she began, “don't you think—”

He had not expected it. He wondered whether it was due to a difference in temperament or whether it was because he had been to war himself. He was pleased that she took it that way, but he did not like it.

“No, Madge,” he said, “I won't stop him if he wants to badly enough. But he's better off where he is now, trying to learn something, and maybe he hasn't got much time.”

That last phrase of his tripped off his tongue and out of his thoughts inadvertently, and brought back to his mind another of those silly glib expressions that people were using then—that we were in the war already and we did not know it. He had been trying to push time away from Jim, and now they were back to where they were before the telephone had started ringing.

Ethel's glance was kindly, her age and her plainness were comforting. All at once he felt much better.

“Let's talk about what Gloria ought to see in New York,” he said. “I remember the first time I saw New York. There's so much to see—you don't know where to start. Gloria, would you like to go behind the scenes in the theater?”

“Oh,” Gloria said, “oh, Uncle Jeff.”

He would not have dreamed of suggesting it, if Jim had not called up, but now he was glad to be kind to someone, and after all, it might be that Gloria and all of them did not have much time. He stood up and leaned over Gloria's chair.

“All right,” he said, “come on, Gloria, and let's see what the town looks like at night—just you and me.”

31

It Was Simpler for the Prince

It was very kind of Minot Roberts to ask Jeffrey to see his new hunter. The obvious truth that it was entirely out of his line made it even kinder. It meant that Minot liked his company, and in a sense depended on it.

“Someday you'll break your God-damn' neck,” Jeffrey said.

Minot laughed. His teeth looked whiter and more even than usual because he was tanned from a fishing trip off the Florida keys.

“Someday,” Minot answered, “maybe. When I do, I'll hold out my hand to you and say ‘Kiss me, Wilson.'”

“What do you do it for?” Jeffrey asked.

He had often asked Minot the same question. He recognized that physical fear had its own consoling reaction, but he never could find the reaction sufficiently compensating. The best way he could explain that proclivity of Minot's was to think of it as a dark psychosis, connected in some way with the same craving for self-destruction which lurks, perhaps, in everyone.

“Because I've always done it,” Minot said. “You used to do it once.”

“I had to do it,” Jeffrey said. He knew that Minot was referring to the Squadron in the war. “I don't like being scared to death.”

Minot rested his hand on Jeffrey's knee.

“I'll tell you something,” Minot said. “There's just a moment in it—it's like flying. You do everything you can. You get the pace, you steady him, and then there's nothing more you can do. You've shot the works, and there it is. That's the part that's worth waiting for. It's—well, it's worth waiting for.”

“You sound like
Death in the Afternoon
,” Jeffrey said.

Minot sat silently for a few seconds, and then he nodded.

“That boy Hemingway knows how to say it exactly right,” he said. “What's the matter with it? Why be afraid of dying?”

“Reflex,” Jeffrey said, “that's all.”

“Well,” Minot said, “there are worse things.”

It was more than Minot usually said. It occurred to Jeffrey that ever since the last war, Minot had spent a good deal of his time and thought and money in not being afraid of dying, but Jeffrey could not develop that point of view. It seemed like a waste of time. Perhaps Jim would have understood Minot's motives better. Jim was at an age when you liked to demonstrate that you were not afraid of dying.

“You'll like him,” Minot said, “when you see him, you'll know what I mean.”

“Who?” Jeffrey asked.

“Who?” Minot repeated. “Bozeybones. He cost plenty. I was bidding against the Whitneys.”

One thing Jeffrey could never understand was the selection of names for horses. “Powder Puff,” or “Binkey,” or “Nighty-night,” or “Carmen.”

“You'll like him,” Minot said again. “He's got what it takes behind. When you're looking at a hunter, look at his rump.”

“Why in God's name,” Jeffrey asked, “do you call him ‘Bozeybones'?”

“I didn't call him that,” Minot answered. “Technically, he's Bozeybones II. He's sired by Bozeybones I.”

“Never mind it, Minot,” Jeffrey said.

“Valsky will be there,” Minot said. “That's really why I wanted you to come. You'll like the Prince.”

“I thought he was a Colonel,” Jeffrey said.

“He's both of them,” Minot said, “Colonel Prince Valsky.”

Minot had often spoken of the Colonel. The Colonel had been in command of a cavalry regiment under the Czar. It was something, Minot often said, to get the Prince a little liquored-up in the evening and hear him tell about medieval life on the family estates on the Don. Then came the Revolution—not “come the Revolution” for the Prince—and the Prince fought with Denikin against the Reds, and somehow it sounded like a technical war game when Minot spoke of it. Then came the bust-up—not come the bust-up, for the Prince—and out he got, through the back door near Urga, with a few gold rubles and some of the Valsky diamond rings, and finally he appeared in that queer closed corporation of exiles, the White Russians, in New York. The Prince was a soldier who had seen a world turn upside down and, as Minot said, knew how to take it like a gentleman. Make no mistake, Minot said, Prince Valsky was a gentleman, and you could always tell one. Prince Valsky knew how to drink, and he could draw diagrams charting the course of a horse clearing an obstacle as accurately as he could chart the curve of a projectile. Prince Valsky was a disciple of the forward seat, a perch, as he put it, such that the rider's weight was right on the withers, allowing the animal's hindquarters necessary free play. Prince Valsky could ride anything, and when Prince Valsky was up, no matter what he was up on, he could make nothing seem like something. And what was more, don't forget it, he was a gentleman, an educated man of family from the Czar's Military Institute. What was more, Prince Valsky was a great teacher, patient and sensible, and he needed patience with the pupils who came to him who wanted to get into the right set by learning to ride. There had been a time when Prince Valsky was held back by his English. Once, when he was watching a middle-aged lady in the ring of his riding establishment, he could not think of the English expression for rising to the trot, and he had been obliged to say, “Soft sit, soft sit.” But Valsky's English was good now. He had that Russian facility with languages, and he could teach anybody to ride. Minot said he ought to teach Jeffrey. If Jeffrey gave the Prince the chance, Jeffrey would love it.

“But I don't want Valsky to teach me,” Jeffrey said.

Nevertheless, he liked to hear about Prince Valsky because the Prince was like a page in foreign literature.

The snow was melting fast, as it did in late March, and there was a faint touch of spring in the afternoon air. Minot's car had stopped uptown on the West Side in front of a building that looked like a storage warehouse. There was a green door in the center of a blank brick wall, with a discreet bronze plaque on which was lettered V
ALSKY
.

Pierre had hopped out and had opened the door and was pulling the rug carefully from their knees.

“When you go out to the Coast,” Minot said, “tell them about Valsky, Jeff. He's thinking of taking a trip out there.”

The reception room had comfortable chairs and cigarette stands and sporting magazines, and a stout woman in black took their coats and hung them up carefully in a little cubbyhole.

“We've got the place to ourselves,” Minot said. “It's a private hour.”

A door opened and a smallish man with dark hair, dark eyes, and delicate, regular features was standing there, dressed like Minot in riding breeches with black shining boots.

“Ermak!” Minot said.

“My dear Minot,” the other said. “Always on time, eh?” And he laughed about nothing, just the way Minot sometimes laughed.

“This is my old friend Jeffrey Wilson,” Minot said, “Colonel Prince Valsky.”

Jeffrey never knew exactly what to say to anyone like Colonel Prince Valsky.

“Minot's told me a lot about you,” he said.

“He must not tell too much,” the Prince said, and he laughed again, heartily, about nothing, “not too much, eh? We'll see him ride now, eh? Shall we go now?”

Minot was pulling on a pair of gloves and the little room that smelled of the stable seemed very still. Jeffrey's reading was always making him place ordinary incidents in fictional categories, and this was like the fencing school in the cloak-and-the-sword story—two gay young bucks from London, Corinthians, perhaps, dropping into the academy of an
émigré
to test their skill with the smallsword. But it was also close to Tolstoy—those stilted phrases of the Prince's, his courtesy, his good nature—and it was odd, coming upon it that winter at just that time.

“Well,” the Prince said, “shall we go? Come with me into the ring. There is no one to bother. We shall see our dear friend fall off, eh?” And the Prince laughed again.

The ring was small and covered with tanbark, built on what might have been once the floor of a warehouse or a garage. It was lighted by dirty barred windows, partially opened, and some sparrows had entered and were flying among the beams and girders which supported the roof. On one side of the ring were some benches, somewhat like a circus box, with steps leading down into the ring itself. On the other side was a dusty mirror, arranged, presumably, so that riders might criticize their posture in the saddle. The ring was vacant except for a jumping standard. They stepped noiselessly down onto the soft tanbark, and when the Prince called out in a sharp staccato tone a door slid open, and with a slithering of hoofs a horse appeared, led by a small Russian with a fat, rosy, inexpressive face. He should have been wearing a blouse and a belt, and Cossack boots instead of overalls.

Jeffrey looked at the animal in the baffled way in which he always looked at horses. Whether it was bay or chestnut, Jeffrey did not know, but the horse looked unhappy, judging from the twitching of its nostrils and the quivering of its forelegs, and the impatient way it threw its head. The animal was bony—big-boned, Jeffrey supposed the technical term would have been, or raw-boned—and he could not understand why under the sun anyone had wanted it, but Minot and the Prince had the look that Jeffrey had seen before on the faces of “horse lovers”—the serious, enigmatic look of connoisseurs regarding a picture. The appearance of the hunter gave them some sort of secret aesthetic pleasure. Minot turned to Jeffrey and Jeffrey knew he was expected to say something.

“He's sort of big for this room, isn't he?” Jeffrey asked, and Minot laughed rudely.

“Did you hear that, Ermak?” Minot said, but the Prince only smiled politely.

“A small ring makes better training,” he said, but his eyes were still on the horse. All his attention was focused on Minot as Minot walked forward and tested the saddle girth and began fussing with the stirrups. There was a slight argument about the bit, which Jeffrey could not understand, and then Minot was hopping in an awkward way, with one foot in a stirrup which was much too short for him, while the horse kept circling, snorting gently, with the man in overalls holding its head. When Minot was up in the saddle the man let go, and the horse began bouncing sideways. Minot's body conformed to all the eccentric motions, and the concentration on Minot's face showed that he was enjoying it, but to Jeffrey it all seemed a waste of everyone's time. He stood there in the center of the ring, beside the Prince, feeling uncomfortable and cold.

“Nice hands,” the Prince said.

“What?” Jeffrey asked him.

For an instant the Prince's clear, dark eyes looked impatient.

“His hands upon the reins,” he said. “The touch is very necessary for a rider. Nice hands.”

“I'm sorry,” Jeffrey said, “I don't know much about this.”

They stood in the center of the ring while Minot walked the horse.

“He is a friend of yours?” the Prince asked.

Jeffrey could see no reason for the question, but then it was always hard to tell what a foreigner was thinking.

“Nice hands,” the Prince said, “nice sit.”