So Little Time (76 page)

Everyone in the world was in Washington that November—so many people that there were no tables in the restaurants, no rooms in the hotels, no seats in taxicabs. It had turned abruptly into the center of the world.

The lobby of the Shoreham was crowded like every other hotel lobby in Washington, so filled with people day and night that there was hardly time to clean the carpets. The air was heavy with constantly shifting humanity. Suitcases and brief cases were piled in front of the hotel desk. There were business men fighting for priorities and generals and colonels and admirals and midshipmen and members of the British Mission. It was no place to try out a play or to work on one.

When Jeffrey left his key at the desk, the clerk, whom he had known quite well in past years, handed him a letter with an Air Mail stamp and he saw that it was in Sally's handwriting. He opened it and read it by the desk without minding being jostled and without being disturbed by the voices.

I wish you could see the camp here [Sally wrote, and it was still that queer progressive-school printing] and our bungalow. It only has three rooms and when it rains the bedroom leaks. Jim is away at the range and won't be back until late tonight. It's very funny being an officer's wife and seeing regular army officers' wives who have moved around everywhere. Mrs. Sykes, that's Jim's C.O.'s wife you know, has asked me in to tea this afternoon. Yesterday at the hotel the colonel asked me who I was, and when I said I was Jim's wife he said that Jim was a good soldier. That means a lot, in case you don't know it, because those officers are very snotty, just the way you said they would be. When they say someone is a good soldier it means he really might have got by at the Point and that he ought to be wearing one of those rings. I'm awfully busy all the time and I must dash off now with Mrs. Jason—they're the ones who share the bungalow with us, you know. If Jim were here he would send you his love. Don't bother about his not writing. You know how Jim is about letters. He hardly ever wrote any to me. If you are going out to the Coast the way you say you are, the Jasons say they will move out somewhere and you can have their room if you come for Christmas, or else we can get a barracks bed and put it in the living room and we can all sort of be in together. Do come for Christmas. There isn't anything else I can tell you yet, at least I don't think so, but perhaps there will be at Christmas. We're awfully happy and I love you,

S
ALLY

He stood with his overcoat over his arm and his hat on the back of his head still looking at her letter and Jim and Sally were with him as he held it. The letter gave him a sort of vicarious pleasure for a moment and then the illusion faded and he was conscious of the crowds around him.

“Take them up to 717, boy,” he heard someone saying, “and leave the key and keep the change. I'm not going up.”

The voice fell on Jeffrey's ears, suave and familiar, and he looked up and saw Minot Roberts. There was no reason why Minot should not have been there because everyone in the world was in Washington that autumn. Minot was wearing a polo coat and holding a pair of pigskin gloves. Something in the way he held his head made him stand out among all the people in the lobby.

“Well, well,” Minot said. “Are you doing it too?”

“Doing what?” Jeffrey asked.

“Going down to the Munitions Building,” Minot said. “Lining up with all the other boys.”

“Why the Munitions Building?” Jeffrey asked.

Minot put his arm through his.

“Come on,” Minot said, “Air Corps headquarters, boy. The line is forming on the right. Come on. Let's go.”

“Do you mean you're joining up?” Jeffrey asked.

Somehow the old pilots wanted to get into it again more than anybody else. Yet in a certain way it surprised Jeffrey to see Minot so oblivious to time. Minot was not as young as he had been once.

“Swinburne,” Minot said, “you know Bill Swinburne. I've got a date with him at eleven-thirty. Have you been writing to Bill?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “not yet.”

“Then what in hell are you doing here?” Minot said.

“Just a play,” Jeffrey said. “Just the same old thing.”

“Oh hell,” Minot said, “you come down with me. It won't hurt you to see Bill. They're going to want us back.”

“Why?” Jeffrey asked. “Why should they?”

Minot's eyes opened as if he had never asked himself the question.

“Of course they'll want us back,” he said. “My God, look at Bill, and who is Bill? And he's right in there with the General all the time. The General can't leave him alone for a minute.”

“Why can't he?” Jeffrey asked. “I could.”

“Come on,” Minot said. “Bill will fix us up.”

“I'll go downtown with you,” Jeffrey said, “but I'm not going any farther unless there's a war.”

“Look around you,” Minot said. “Isn't this a war already? Come on, let's go!”

“I'll go downtown with you,” Jeffrey said, and he laughed. “I can't drop everything. I'm not in your position.”

“You'll be sorry,” Minot said.

He had not seen Minot so happy for a long while. Minot kept whistling while they waited for a cab outside.

“You'll be sorry, boy,” Minot said. “God, I can't tell you what it does to you when you make up your mind. It may be Iceland; it may be Africa. Bill knows I know Africa.”

“Just why,” Jeffrey asked him, “should anyone be sending you to Africa?”

“Boom-boom,” Minot said. “Boom-boom!” He was making a sound like African drums. “Well, maybe it's Honolulu, Yaaka-hula, Hikki-dula!”

Jeffrey wished that Minot would calm down. He had not seen him so gay in a long while. It gave him an uncomfortable illusion, which he had often felt before with Minot, that the war had never stopped. He did not speak for a while as they drove down Connecticut Avenue. Washington had never been finished, and sometimes he thought it never would be even if the United States lived as a nation for a thousand years. Washington seemed to Jeffrey that November morning like a replica of the nation it represented. There was the same widespread ambition, the pride and the complacency and the squalor all together; and Washington would never be finished. It would never be static like Paris or grimy like London or smug and ugly like Berlin. It would always be spreading out and building and changing as the nation changed. Jeffrey could see what was wrong with it. As they came nearer the Capitol he could see the portentous monstrosity of the Commerce and the Agriculture buildings. He could see the sterile marble imitations of the classic … but taken altogether, Washington made him proud.

“Minot,” he said, “you've got a half hour yet; let's get out and walk.”

“All right,” Minot said. “Let's go.”

There was no other city that gave Jeffrey a sense of ownership like Washington—not even New York where he had lived so long. He felt free to criticize every aspect of Washington because it belonged to him as it did to everyone else. He had been taxed enough to pay for quite a piece of it, particularly in the last few years. He felt perfectly free to think what he thought of all the buildings and of all the parks and circles and fountains.

“Jeff,” Minot asked, “is Marianna Miller here?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “she isn't. I wish you'd get Marianna out of your head, Minot.”

“I was just asking,” Minot said, “that's all. How's Madge?”

“Madge is fine,” Jeffrey said. “I thought of bringing her down but I'm pretty busy now.”

“The hell you did,” Minot said.

“The hell I didn't,” Jeffrey answered.

“How's Jim?” Minot asked. “Have you heard from Jim?”

“I got a letter just now,” Jeffrey answered, “back at the hotel. They're fine. Jim's all right.”

Minot was walking briskly and he did not speak for a moment. They were near the State Department and Jeffrey looked at his watch. He was thinking that Minot would have to get another taxi to get to the Munitions Building.

“I don't understand it about Jim,” Minot said. “I don't see what made him marry her.”

“Well, he did,” Jeffrey said.

“Well, it's tough,” Minot answered. “I'm just telling you. I wouldn't tell anyone else.”

“Maybe it is,” Jeffrey answered. “You and I aren't Jim.”

“That's right,” Minot said. “Stand up for him.”

“Of course I'll stand up for him.”

Minot put his hand on Jeffrey's shoulder and it reminded Jeffrey that Minot was his oldest friend and his irritation died.

“Of course you will,” Minot said. “You say you're not supporting them. They can't live on a lieutenant's pay—”

It was like Madge and it was like Minot. They always thought in terms of money because they had always had it.

“It's all right, Minot,” Jeffrey said. “Sally had a little money.”

“How much?” Minot asked.

“Not much,” Jeffrey answered. “About fifty thousand dollars.”

“Fifty thousand,” Minot said. “That isn't much, but it's something.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said and he laughed. “I know. You mean they literally haven't got a cent.”

“Hello,” Minot said, “something's going on.”

They were near those steps to the State Department, that descended to a little court off the sidewalk. Jeffrey always remembered the gray granite façade and the lighter gray of the sky behind it and the darker gray of rain clouds. A limousine had stopped at the curb and a few pedestrians had stopped; and then Jeffrey saw men with cameras by the steps. When the car door opened, he saw two little men. That was the way he always thought of them—incongruous and small. He was near enough to see their faces as they stepped out of the car and to see the brief case one of them was holding. They wore black coats and high silk hats, uncomfortable costumes which somehow seemed to have a rented look. The cameramen were gathering around them and they paused and took off their hats—two oldish, roundheaded parchment-faced little men, smiling into the flashlights.

“By God,” Jeffrey heard Minot say, “it's the Japs!”

Jeffrey always thought of them all in black with the gray building in front of them. Their coats and hats reminded him for just a minute of undertakers at a country funeral. They were the two Japanese envoys of course, Nomura and Kurusu, on their way to call on the Secretary of State, to continue that interminable discussion the formal announcements of which filled the pages of the press.

“Mike and Ike,” he heard Minot say softly, “they look alike.”

But they did not look alike; the older man, Nomura, had gray hair and a broad face the lines of which were deepened by age. He was the old friend of America who was negotiating patiently to reconcile the interminable differences with Japan. The one with the glasses, whose smile was less weary, was Kurusu, who had flown across the Pacific with all those special messages. Kurusu, Jeffrey remembered, was the one who had even talked to the reporters in football slang, saying that he would try to carry the ball. He was carrying the brief case now. Their silk hats were on again. They were walking side by side across the court and up the State Department steps.

“Funny little bastards, aren't they?” he heard Minot saying. “They walk as if their breeches were full of tacks.”

But Jeffrey did not think they were very funny. They were too small, too patient, and too plodding.

“God,” Minot said, “I'd better take a cab. I've only got five minutes.”

“You know,” Jeffrey said, “I wish I were going with you now.”

“Come on,” Minot said.

“No,” Jeffrey said, “not yet.”

“All right,” Minot said, “you'll be sorry. So long, boy.”

49

The Time for all Good Men

Because he had traveled so much Jeffrey's impressions were apt to grow blurred and to run together into a filmy background of hotels and Pullman cars and theaters, and faces often turned up against the wrong background. In the next few weeks, that November day in Washington began to fall into this quiet confusion, but it was all there waiting, clear and completely defined when he needed it. He imagined later that it would have been practically possible to yield and to call the murder of China an incident of expansion. It might have been expedient to argue that the United States as a nation had no vested interests in East Asia that were worth the shedding of a single drop of blood, and that the acquisition of the Philippines had been a jingoistic mistake and that Japan was a progressive nation and our best customer. It was simply a matter of throwing China overboard. Jeffrey's knowledge of world affairs was not profound, but he could see that. There only remained an element, hard to define, which ended by being simply decency and honor. In the last few weeks he had a growing conviction that all debate was coming down to that, and the final conclusion lay in the combined thought of millions of people which made up the conscience of his country. You could see by November that some clash was inevitable—not war, perhaps, but a break in diplomatic relations, and then something which resembled the situation in the Atlantic, a delay of weeks and months but not quite war.

It was the beginning of a dull Sunday afternoon. Gwen was in her room studying with the radio half on. Jeffrey could hear the sound of it through the upstairs hall, while he read an interview by Secretary Knox which dealt with the strength of the United States Navy. Madge was sitting on the sofa with some sewing, and was interrupting him, as she usually did, when he was reading.

“Jeff,” she said, “have you seen the gas bill?”

“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.