So Little Time (35 page)

“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 brown 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.”

Minot had met him in a gray Cadillac phaeton with red leather seats, and Jeffrey even remembered the smell of the leather. He wished that it all had not reminded him of
David Copperfield
for he had never admired either the novel or the style of Charles Dickens. Once long afterwards Madge had spoken of it, when he tried to tell her about that week end.

“Why, darling,” Madge had said, “it must have been like David Copperfield and Steerforth.”

This had annoyed Jeffrey more than he had ever told her, though Madge had been annoyed when she said it. For one thing, he did not want Madge to think, or anyone else, that he had ever been like David Copperfield, whom he had always looked upon as an impossible, sniveling and conceited little fellow; besides he was always sure that Dickens had never known any people like the Steerforths, and had drawn them very badly.

They drove through the main street and out along the Post Road. The houses standing on their lawns behind their shrubbery kept growing larger, but Jeffrey had no definite impression of them, until the car turned between two granite gateposts and moved up a blue gravel drive toward a granite house with a large stable and greenhouses.

“Here it is,” Minot said.

“You mean you live here?” Jeffrey asked—“God almighty,” and somehow it made him laugh.

Jeffrey was always glad that he took it that way, and he never forgot that Minot took it that way, but then, there was no other way in which they could have taken it. When the car stopped, a man came running down the steps and took the bag.

“Up by my room, Burns,” Minot said. “Come on, Jeff, Mother wants to meet you.”

Mrs. Roberts was in the morning room, writing a letter at a high secretary desk. When they came in, a small griffon in a basket began to bark, and Minot picked the dog up and tucked it beneath his arm.

“Shut your ugly little face,” he said. “Mother, here's Jeff Wilson.”

Mrs. Roberts must have been beautiful when she was young. She was dressed in black. Her brown hair was growing gray, and she was smiling.

“I've been wondering what you'd look like,” she said.

Jeffrey never understood why he was not afraid of her. He remembered the roses in the bowl on the table and the way the blinds were drawn so that shafts of light made a ladder across the carpet.

“It's very kind of you to have me here,” he said.