So Little Time (72 page)

“He can marry her if he wants to,” Jeffrey said, and he wanted her to understand. He reached toward her and tried to take her hand but she drew away.

“Madge,” he said, “I wish you'd look at it this way. We haven't any right to interfere with Jim. He hasn't got much time.”

“What do you mean by that?” Madge asked. “Much time for what?”

Jeffrey put his hands in his pockets and leaned his shoulders against the wall.

“Much time to live,” he said, “perhaps.”

It gave him a profound sense of relief to be sharing that secret with her. He saw the anger die out of her eyes and she looked surprised. That was all—very much surprised.

“Why, Jeff,” she began, “why darling, you don't really think—”

There was no way of her seeing. She had never been as he had been once, without much time.

“It might be, very well, you know,” he said.

At any rate it was better. Simply saying it aloud and having her listen made it better.

“Darling,” Madge said, “there's no need to be so upset and impulsive. You know he isn't old enough to know the sort of girl he wants and they have nothing to live on. Darling, I won't help them out.”

It was amazing that she could not understand that nothing you said mattered, if you did not have much time. And even if you lived, the time afterwards was not time.

“Well, she's coming, isn't she?” Jeffrey said.

“Yes,” Madge said, “of course she's coming.”

“Then you mustn't act as though you were opposed to it, Madge,” he was saying, “that would only make it worse. Just remember Jim only has ten days' leave. Be nice to her, Madge. Please be nice to her.”

He heard Madge sigh.

“Of course I'll be nice to her,” she said.

“Maybe you'll like her,” Jeffrey said. “You've never seen her, have you?”

But he knew that Madge would never like her.

45

Well, Here We Are

Jeffrey was standing in front of the beach wagon which was parked beside other beach wagons and all the gay cars that were always at that drab, yellowish station beyond Danbury. He was conscious of looking down the track and listening for a whistle or for a humming sound on the rails which might indicate that the train from New York was coming. He was even looking at his watch and thinking that the 7:02 was nearly always late, but his mind was not on it. In his thoughts he was back there in Bragg in the last war.

He had been commissioned from the flying school in Texas and he himself had come home for a ten-day leave before he reported to New York for his orders. The memory was very vivid. His uniform was new, made by the post tailor in Texas so hastily that the tunic wrinkled at the shoulders, but still he was pleased with his uniform. He had not yet broken himself of occasionally touching the insignia which showed he was an aviator, or of glancing sideways at his shoulders to see that his gold bars were pinned on firmly—diaper pins they used to call them in the last war. The post tailor had made his breeches bulge in all the wrong places, as he found out later, but he did not know it then. He was wearing riding boots and spurs, and God alone knew why it was regulation for aviators to wear spurs, but there it was. He was wearing a garrison cap which was a little too tight and he must have looked so thin and gangling in that uniform that anybody could have seen what he was, a shave-tail just commissioned in the Officers' Reserve, but he had not been aware of any of this then. He thought he was like those pictures of officers he had seen in advertisements and he was coming home on leave. He was walking down the steps of the car a little carefully so that he would not trip on his spurs. He had had trouble with them once in New York and once in Boston, when he had found his heels locked together in an unexpected moment and had nearly lost his balance. He was not going to let anything like that happen when he got off the train at Bragg. He was carrying a canvas kit bag which the post tailor had sold him down in Texas. He was a commissioned officer and a gentleman who in ten days would be going to war. He was learning how to take salutes from enlisted men. On the way from New York a colonel in the dining car had referred to him as Mister and had asked him very nicely to take the chair opposite. He was in the army now and the President of the United States was placing special trust in his integrity and ability.

The season of the year and the time of day were the same. He remembered the way the shadows had fallen near the station in Bragg. He remembered the faces turned up toward him as he got off the train. Louella Barnes was waiting for him and he had taken off his garrison cap with his left hand, and he was still holding his kit bag with his right so that he could not touch her; and when he stepped forward there were those spurs again catching somehow together. He had stumbled slightly, but only very slightly.

“You have to wear spurs with riding boots,” he had said. “It's regulation.”

All that old emotion was back with Jeffrey, that sense of his own position and the callow pride he had taken in it, but he could excuse that pride. Not everyone had got his wings. He could remember his feeling of remoteness as he looked at Louella and at everything. He was back at home, but much of him was away from home already. When the train came in, it was all so vivid that it seemed to be he getting off that train, not Jim. Jeffrey did not move toward him. He simply stood there.

The uniform was different now, easier to wear. If it had been the last war he would have thought Jim was a British officer. The tunic was no longer choked about the neck. He saw the lapels with the crossed cannons, the black tie and the glistening belt, but when he saw the gold bars it seemed to be his uniform again. It was bulging also in the wrong places just as his own had once. The garrison cap was not at the right angle. Jim's hands projected a little too far from the sleeves. Jim's face looked thinner and harder. It made a lump rise in Jeffrey's throat. It was just as though he himself were getting off the train at Bragg. Jim had not seen him yet, and Jeffrey did not want him to for just a moment. Jim was turning and holding out his hand. He was helping a girl down very carefully because he was an officer and a gentleman. Jeffrey recognized Sally Sales but she might as well have been Louella Barnes.

There was no exact resemblance between her and that memory of Louella except the common awkward resemblance of youth. Louella must have thought for hours and hours about what she was going to wear and what she was going to say that day when he had come back home; and it was just as though it were happening again when he saw Sally Sales. Madge was right—Jim and Sally were too young to know about anything. Sally Sales, too, must have thought and thought about what she was going to wear, because she was too young to realize that Jim would never notice. She was dressed in a beige gabardine tailored suit and an organdy blouse and shoes with heels that were higher than any she had worn before. He could tell it from the careful way she stepped; and that whole costume was brand new, as new and guileless as Jim's uniform. Somehow it made Jeffrey smile and made his eyes smart when he saw them and he wondered whether he and Louella could have looked like that. As sure as fate they must have, long ago. Louella had worn a hat, of course, and Sally's head was bare, but when the sun was on Sally's smooth pageboy bob her hair was just the color of Louella's.

Sally saw him first, and when she did, the illusion was gone and he knew that he was old. She had that look that all young girls wore when they met him, but she was frightened too. He knew she had worried for hours and hours about that moment; she had wondered what she might say so that he would like her; and he knew that all those little rehearsals would not help her because they never helped anyone. He could see her now in her right perspective, a little girl somewhat too carefully dressed with too much powder on her nose and her lipstick too meticulously even. He knew that she must have applied it in those last leaden moments before the train came in. Now that he was speaking to her he felt shy and old.

“Well,” he said, “hello, Sally.”

Then he thought it would have been nicer if he had called her my dear or something a little warmer.

“Hello, Mr. Wilson,” Sally said. “It's wonderful that you came to meet us.”

He was sure it was not what she had meant to say and that she wished she had said something different.

“Well,” Jeffrey said, “I'm awfully glad you're here, dear.”

That was more than he had meant to say and he hoped that it did not sound too familiar. When he shook hands with Jim, his eyes kept smarting and for a moment he thought he was going to make a fool of himself right there in front of everyone.

“Hi, Pops,” Jim said and Jim's voice was gay and careless and oblivious to so very much, just as his own voice had been once. “Hello, Mr. Gorman,” Jim was saying. “How's it going, Mr. Gorman?”

“Busy as a one-armed paperhanger,” Mr. Gorman said.

“Let's all three sit in back,” Jim said. “Get in, Toots.”

That was what he called her, Toots. Jeffrey sat between them in the station wagon and they drove past the liquor package shop and the stationery shop and the chain store and the drugstore and the bank, past the church and out into the country. He was very conscious of Jim and Sally Sales sitting close beside him.

“How have you been, Pops?” Jim asked. “Are you slap-happy?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “slap-happy,” and he laughed, but the colloquialism disturbed him. He was suddenly tired of all the new words—“streamlined,” “blitz,” “three-point program,” “blueprint.” He would never have thought of calling a girl he loved “Toots.”

“Where did you get that coat?” he asked.

“At Sill,” Jim said. “Those tailors were buzzing around like flies when they gave out commissions.”

“It doesn't fit you right,” Jeffrey said, “not around the shoulders and chest.”

“I know,” Jim said. “Sally's noticed it too. There's something the matter with it.”

“It gathers up too much in front,” Sally said, “doesn't it, Mr. Wilson?”

He wished there were something else that she might call him.

“Those tailors make everything too fast,” Jeffrey said. “I want you to go in town and get one custom-made. Sally can come with us. We might drive in tomorrow.”

He saw Jim glance at him. Jim still took his word for things and still valued his advice. He always could get on with Jim.

“That would be swell,” Jim said.

“If you get a coat that fits right,” Jeffrey said, “you won't have to keep worrying about yourself. He keeps looking in mirrors, doesn't he, Sally?”

“Yes,” Sally said, and she laughed, “he's always sneaking up to mirrors.”

“I know,” Jeffrey said. “You should have seen the first uniform I bought.…”

He looked at the road and at the neat shaved curve of Mr. Gorman's neck. It was growing dusk and the rolling country was filled with shadow. The fields were still green, but the swamp maples were already turning red.

“Jim,” Jeffrey asked, “how does it all look?”

“It looks fine,” Jim said. “It is like seeing it after you've got out from somewhere.”

“I wish you were staying longer,” Jeffrey said. “I hope there's enough for you to do—you and Sally.”

“Don't worry,” Jim said. “There are lots of things to do.”

There were all sorts of things that Jeffrey wanted to ask him but he could not ask them then.

“As long as you enjoy yourself,” Jeffrey said, “as long as you have a good time.” And he smiled at Sally Sales.

“Here's the house,” Jim said.

“Oh,” Sally said, “I love old houses.”

The car stopped at the front door.

“Well,” Jeffrey heard himself saying, “here we are!”

That was what you always said no matter where you were. The lights were burning in the windows. The front door had opened because of course they had heard the car and Jeffrey saw Charley with his white trousers and his school tie and Gwen in a short skirt and a canary-yellow sweater and Madge in a tea gown. He could not understand why Madge should have changed into a tea gown. He was wondering how much Jim might be aware of, as they all three walked up the steps, but then, perhaps Jim was not aware of anything. You felt that everybody liked you when you were Jim's age, and Jim was coming home.

“Hello, Mother,” Jim called, and kissed his mother, and Madge clung to him for a moment.

“Dear,” Madge said, ‘let me look at you.” And she put her hands on Jim's shoulders and looked at him. “It's so funny, dear.”

“What's so funny?” Jim asked.

“So funny,” Madge said, and there was a catch in her voice, “and so perfect!”

“Jim,” Charley said, “you've got your right-hand cannons upside down.”

“Well, well,” Jim said, “there's the wise little apple.” And he smiled at Sally Sales. Jim must have told her about Charley and about the rest of them.

“Oh, Jim,” Gwen called, “oh, Jim dear.” And she threw her arms around him.

“Break,” Jim said. “Come out of it, lovely.” And he looked at Sally over Gwen's shoulder.

Sally was standing there alone as she had to while Jim was speaking to everyone. She was standing up straight, smiling nicely, and her lipstick was on very straight.

“Well,” Jeffrey said again, “here we are, dear.” He called her dear because he wanted her to feel at home. After all there was no reason why he should not have, but he knew that Madge had heard him.

“Mother,” Jim said, “wait a minute. This is Sally-Sally Sales.”

“Oh,” Madge said, and she turned toward Sally. “Dear, I've heard so much about you.”

Sally was still smiling. Her lipstick looked very straight.

“It's sweet of you to have me, Mrs. Wilson,” she said, and then she stopped. Jeffrey knew that she had been thinking and planning and thinking what to say. “It's sweet of you when I came so suddenly.”