MR. CORINTH HAD fallen into the habit of “barging over to the club” occasionally in the evenings, when he and Jimmie were not staying late at the laboratory.
He liked to sit in a wicker chair on the glassed—in sun porch—surrounded by Jimmie, and anybody else who cared to listen—and expound topics of the day, or the ages. He said that his resumption of “social life” was inevitable and a sign of senescence. Jimmie knew the real cause. Mr. Corinth came because he was worried about his colleague—about Jimmie.
And Jimmie was worried about himself. All the locks in all the doors of his life had been turned—if the one door of hard work could be excepted.
He did riot see his father and mother at all. They had sent word that his presence at the club prevented them from coming there, and they had made sure that the bearer of the news also conveyed their resentment. But Jimmie felt too numb to budge. He had not seen Audrey, nor talked to Mr. Corinth about her. In spite of their intimacy Audrey’s name had become mysteriously taboo. His criticism of Biff’s behavior with the pretty nurse had led to a rapid deterioration of their burgeoning relationship. He did not see his sister either, because he now regarded her with contempt. She had abandoned her beloved Harry when she had learned that he was a quarter “non-Aryan,” and yet she had gone on mourning him in a revolting indulgence of self-pity. Mr. Wilson’s friendship, if it had ever been proffered, had been withdrawn. He nodded to Jimmie when they encountered each other, or waved a finger, in a way that looked amiable enough but did not invite further intimacy.
He had at first taken a considerable lift from their talk. Mr. Wilson was, no doubt, all that Audrey had said-bigoted, cruel, a tyrant at home, a fanatic about the behavior of his son and daughter. But Mr. Wilson was more. He was very subtle in his dealings with human beings. He had brought Jimmie around to satisfying a hunger for knowledge about the RAF by flattery, and by a still better trick: by granting to Jimmie the recognition due a valorous antagonist. Jimmie had talked—it must have been brutal to some part of the old man; he’d fumbled his cigar once, but, as soon as Mr. Wilson’s curiosity had been satisfied, he had cast Jimmie aside. Because he was Audrey’s father, Jimmie thought that by understanding Mr. Wilson he might learn about Audrey. So, in spite of a disillusionment, Jimmie had hoped to see more of the father of the night fighter and of the audacious woman.
Since Mr. Wilson had immediately dissolved the connection, Jimmie could only conclude that he was parasitical, that he deftly extracted from other human beings the nutriment for his own concealed emotions and discarded the people as soon as they had no further usefulness. That opinion of the father blindly transferred itself to the daughter.
Because she was bored, Jimmie decided, because she was fed up with Muskogewan, and no doubt justly annoyed at her family, she had invented an emotional stage—set, with all the props of a wicked father and a little white cottage for night rendezvous; and she had stepped out in front of that scenery to sing her siren song—her torch song—or whatever it was.
An act.
So Jimmie had nobody for company.
He could have had the pick of many people.
Mr. Corinth had “made him acquainted” with numerous citizens who did not agree with the ruling caste on the matter of war. Their shades of opinion, however, were very complex, and Jimmie tired of arguing over trifles. Besides, when a person cannot have the friendship of those with whom he wishes to be friends, alternatives are seldom acceptable. The same principle held in the matter of female companionship. As Sarah had said, there were countless girls who would have rescued Jimmie from any doldrum at the slightest sign of a chance, girls, even, who were the daughters of isolationists but who considered matrimony more important than war, girls who were, as Audrey had said, “dashing daughters,” easily relished.
To them, he was polite and no more.
The glassed-in porch, one windy night, was occupied by a dozen people who had ranged themselves haphazardly around Mr. Corinth. Conversation flowed from him, sparked occasionally by a question or a phrase of disagreement. Jimmie listened, with the rest. His attention stiffened when Mr. Wilson idly sat down on the fringe of the group.
“I know it isn’t fashionable,” said Mr. Corinth, “but a woman is a man’s opposite.
Women are the opposite of men. Everything has an opposite that’s as real as it is. The very fashion itself—the fashion of thinking men and women are alike—will change too.
Because fashions are attitudes, and every social attitude that doesn’t take into consideration the law of opposites is bound to get turned upside down, sooner or later.”
“I don’t understand that,” said a Mrs. Clevebright.
Mr. Corinth turned amiably. “The people of this country understand the reconciliation of opposites better than most people. That’s because we recognize so many oppositions. We have a certain constitutional tolerance for them. The beginnings of wisdom. I mean this: oppositeness is a concept that is a lot broader than what we usually imply by it. It means more than left and right, up and down, day and night, zero and infinity, freedom and slavery. No activity follows from anything but opposition. You can’t get anywhere, fanning air. A bulge of steam has to have a resisting piston. Life itself is a struggle of opposites. And opposition means—complementariness. It means black and white—but also blue and orange. It’s the source of power—and it’s the way to learning how to regulate the flow and direction of power. The one abiding discovery, in the democratic theory, was the recognition of the validity of opposites. Without an opposition a government is a one-way job. Going one way only is always—going nowhere. You’ve got always to recognize both opposing truths. Take freedom and slavery, for instance—”
“Yeah,” said a voice. “Justify that!”
“I’m not justifying anything! I’m explaining it! Most of you people know by instinct anyway. That’s why we fight so hard for freedom of speech here—to maintain the necessary operation of opposing forces. All right. Take slavery and freedom. Every slave is freed of a vast responsibility. Every free man has to assume great duties. There go those opposites—working together. A lot of free Americans, these days, want to have also the slave’s irresponsibility. Can’t be. If they do abandon their obligations they’ll enslave themselves automatically to whatever they got in trade for the abdication: money—power—position—an absolute government—whatever.”
“He’s right, you know,” someone else said.
The old man grinned. “Not me. Us! We all know it. Take a thing like Hitler. He is an opposite. The world around him was trying to struggle toward ideals of liberty, individualism, morality, restraint of force, decency, democracy, and so on. Hitler attacked with all the opposites to those ideals. He was able to, because the people under him had not yet understood the ideals; and also because they were willing to exchange freedom for the irresponsibility of slaves; and still more, because their circumstances did not seem suitable to their egos. But—they didn’t want to do a lot of hard, moral work. They’re still, so to speak, social infants. Or social ignoramuses. All right. Hitler took every single opposite. Force, torture, suppression of individual rights, conquest, amorality, autocracy.
He got going in a big way for the main and simple reason that we—on the other side—instead of recognizing the valid power of Hitler’s theorems assumed we had legislated ’em out of existence. Believing that, we ignored the contrary evidence. Hitler pushed ahead. We kept saying he’d collapse, because we believed we’d predisqualified him. As long as we felt that way our own feelings gave his opposite practices the power they proved to have.”
Even Mr. Wilson cocked an eyebrow. “Never thought of that,” he said slowly.
Jimmie’s boss turned. “Take you, Wilson. You and your crowd. You’ve been against war and in favor of peace. I’ve been on the opposite side of the fence. In my opinion, you’ve shut your eyes to my side of the picture. You won’t believe that this awful, negative pole of human energy can ever roll across U.S. and Muskogewan, and swamp the works. Not believing that you think I’m a wanton ass. I don’t think that about you though. Your love of peace and prosperity is also a love of mine. I don’t happen to believe it’s possible at the moment. But I do believe it holds the seeds of the future. I do believe it is the one powerful opposite we Americans mustn’t lose sight of, even if we eventually bomb the damned Rhine dry and march up it clear to Switzerland. It is a well-known fact that Satan gives the Lord his due, in a constant, respectful fear. But I see mighty few Christians around these days who understand how to give the devil his due!”
Mr. Wilson cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“To go back to women,” said the old man, grinning archly, as everyone—and especially the women—listened harder, “she’s the opposite of man and the complement of man, the inspiring flame and the devouring mother, the object out of which his awareness is born and the object that gives him his first intimations of mortality. In still another sense, she is his immortality. Insofar as the present attempt of women to look and be like men represents an honest effort to integrate and to reconcile oppositeness—it’s sound and it’s honest. That is—it’s truth. But insofar as it represents an attempt by women to become men, it obeys the law I’m discussing.”
“Meaning what?” Mr. Wilson asked.
“Meaning,” Mr. Corinth replied blandly, “the young men act like hysterical girls.”
He looked at Jimmie. “Won’t help, refuse to serve, duck the draft, rage and yell around about their rights. And the old men”—his eyes wandered to Mr. Wilson—“are just—old women.”
Audrey’s father, spare and towering, looked down at the rumpled chemist. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“Nope. You’re thinking nonsense. You and all who think like you. Looka here, Wilson. You wouldn’t do business the way you conduct your politics and nationalism. I mean to say, when a business proposition came up you’d be hell-bent for facts—existing and long-range. You wouldn’t close a deal until you were mortally sure nothing could rise out of the present that would ruin future chances to make money. To ascertain that, you’d be what you call ‘hard-headed,’ ‘factual,’ ‘forward-looking,’ ‘skeptical,’ and ‘strictly from Missouri.’ If there was a spot on the proposition, a little threat that might grow into a ruinous cloud, you wouldn’t proceed till you’d eliminated the spot, or arranged a bulwark against the cloud. You’re a good business man.”
“Thanks.”
“No compliment. You’re a stinking thinker—outside the field of return on invested capital. There’s a spot on America’s future called Hitler. People like Jimmie and I won’t rest until we’ve done all we can to eliminate it—or get ready for it—and we mean all. I repeat. We interventionists can easily understand you isolationists. But you can’t understand us—you get into a holy purple froth over us—because you won’t stop to examine the single, solitary belief we warmongers have in common. We believe Hitler might lick America. By bombers already talked about and soon to be in the air. By economic strangulation. By propaganda and internal division. By other methods we may not be smart enough to guess. Grant that one belief, and everything we do and say makes sense. Aiding Britain, aiding Russia, aiding any bloody damned raging rascals who will fight Hitler. Lending money, breaking the nation, if necessary, to manufacture arms, conscripting the boys, teaching the people of Muskogewan how to wear gas masks and put out fire bombs, giving our lives, arming ships, declaring war, seizing the Azores—
anything! We’re all-out guys—because we are absolutely certain in our heads and in our hearts that no American can sleep a safe night until the Nazis have been wiped off the slate and stamped into the grave of time. I won’t repeat the names of the nations Hitler has. I won’t talk about how a few armed terrorists with Wilhelmstrasse training can hold whole nations in slavery. I don’t need to go through the many flagrant reasons for our opinion—”
“Then don’t!” said Mr. Wilson.
“—but I will say this. You and your crowd have had two years—two long and terrible years—in which to prove that the thing we are getting ready for is a myth. You’ve had more than eighteen months since the blitz to convince us Hitler isn’t coming. You have money and brains, orators and a free press. You have congressmen and senators and leaders. You have radio time and you can print books. You’ve done all of it. And, day by day, more and more Americans have come over to our way of thinking—because, by God, you can’t make a case for your side! Not a convincing case! You can’t offer a guarantee that Germany won’t attack America someday. You can’t offer a guarantee that America can lick a Germany that may have licked everybody else on earth. All you’ve got to offer is your scorn, your negative hopes, and your fear of what preparedness and aid will cost.
None of those is worth a concrete damn! And as long as your crowd can’t prove—prove absolutely and beyond cavil—that we Americans are safe going along as we were, you might as well not try to talk. Because as long as there is a threat, a possibility, a chance, that the Huns are damn’ well after us—or will be—every man, woman, and child in America would be a sap if he was not exerting his utmost effort to whip them. Right?”
“There’s another position,” Mr. Wilson said hotly. “The position that Germany will exhaust herself before she gets to America.”
“Sure. And can you prove that she will? Mr. Wilson, what you can prove is that the Germans are bending every effort to make us Americans think they will be exhausted.
They want us to believe that the Russian campaign destroyed divisions, and hordes of tanks, and whatnot. It did, no doubt. But it also has left them with a couple of hundred or more divisions of the best-trained big-country invasion troops in history! The Germans wouldn’t like us to dwell on that angle! Our own army has a number of strategists who claim you can’t defend America—once an enemy has established bases inside the nation, and good supply lines. And if the German troops who trained in Russia landed here, they might blitz from Atlanta to Seattle!”
“But the general staff—” said one of the women.
Mr. Corinth looked at her.
“Unfortunately, the brass heads in the army and the navy think the way Wilson does. With their wishes. It’s natural. We brought them up in a ‘tradition.’ We thought that officers should have imagination beaten out of them; we sacrificed it for discipline, automatonism, excellence in as-is operation. Being patriotic, and being the victims of an ironclad environment, they—for the most part—can do nothing original to win our wars.
They don’t understand how the wars will be fought—only how they were fought. So that they must use up their energies wishing that the Germans were coming in ’43 just as they came in ’14 because that is the only way they learned to use their energies. That’s why an American admiral can strut smugly about on the deck of a battleship that has inadequate anti-air defenses. That’s why a general can conduct war games, and keep ‘score,’ without taking the possibility of air power into consideration at all. He does what he can do because he is a patriot—and he doesn’t do what he can’t do. That’s impossible.”
“But our boys have the spirit to whip anybody. We’re training ’em right now,” retorted Mr. Wilson.
“We may get enough new officers in time,” Mr. Corinth replied. “But whenever I hear an army man saying, ‘Give me the boys, and give the boys Springfield rifles, and I’ll show the old Boche what for!’ I get sick at the pit of my stomach. Because that poor devil will someday possibly be facing Boche —who are destroying himself and his men and the terrain and towns around them, from a point beyond Springfield range. Or from behind armor plate a Springfield and a Garand and a .37 millimeter gun can’t pierce! I get quite sore at veterans and old soldiers and the reminiscing legionnaires, sometimes. All they have is the right spirit. What they lack is the basic realization that, in twenty-odd years, one military machine—the German—has figured out how to make the World War lessons meaningless.
“Last fall, Mr. Wilson, the British were almost ready to quit. If the air blitz had gone on another ten days they probably would have quit. The government even had appointed the officials to treat with the Germans after the surrender. Whole towns, whole cities, counties, were so shell-shocked that they were unmanageable. Millions of people were stunned, numb, out of their heads. The end was at hand. The British knew it. And then—the Germans gave up the effort. That’s twice they’ve quit too soon. The third time—they may not quit. It’s all different, and it would be better for us if we didn’t have so many old soldiers around the land—good men—who are trying to get us ready to fight the war of 1914.
“The military wiseacres will tell you that there’s a defense discovered for every new weapon of offense. And so there is! I used to be more or less lulled by that theory.
Then I skimmed through the history of war to investigate it. And the sad truth is, that most of the great new steps forward in new weapons for offensive war—or new ways of using old weapons—have been immediately followed by the disastrous defeat of nations and whole continents! You can follow the story, from the phalanx and the catapult, through the Swiss bowmen and the use of gunpowder, right down to the tank and the bomber! There’s always a time lag before defense catches up with offense. It may be that an adequate defense will someday be invented against air bombing—as the old truism says it must be—but history leads me to suspect that the invention may very well come after the whole damned world has been subjugated, and the defense will be useful only in wars that lie centuries away from us now.”
Mr. Corinth stopped. Jimmie, who had been watching the faces, saw anxiety on many—anxiety that changed slowly to a hard, resentful determination. It was if a bigotry froze on the people, froze in stolid rejection of anything so adamantine as the old man’s words implied. They sat on the porch, uniting their wills anew to ward off bombs and torpedoes, rape and blood.
One woman, however, who had listened with a sorrowful expression, now said, “If you’re right, Willie, what’s to become of us all? I’ve always thought that war was shameful and sinful and a waste. I’ve believed that you should turn the other cheek. I’m a pacifist—a real one, I trust.”
“I know you are, Mollie,” Mr. Corinth replied. “And if everyone were like you, there wouldn’t be war. But—everyone isn’t. War is still a collective expression of individual irresponsibility, as I’ve said, and of individual greed and avarice. Comes out of a natural instinct. War is nature, Mollie. It’s only man—in the last few thousand years—who has begun to see that he can someday evolve his nature up to a high enough plane to quit making war. All the carnivorous animals kill the little, weaker ones for food. They kill each other when pressures get unbearable. And even the grasseaters kill grass, which no doubt feels it has a right to live also. The instinct of self-preservation embraces the will to preserve yourself in an environment most advantageous to you. As a human being, whatever you may happen to think of as an advantage—money, power, a bigger nation, raw materials, anything—can consequently become a motive for going to war. Living is a struggle; that is the very meaning of the word. It’s a struggle for individuals, and consequently a struggle for groups.
“When groups translate their instinct to struggle into a fight, they’re doing a natural thing. Not necessarily a useful or a necessary one—but a normal one. It’s much more abnormal for you, Mollie, to believe that people—as dishonest and prejudiced and ill-willed as you know they are—can institute a permanent peace, than it is abnormal for them to start killing each other. Being a ‘pacifist’—in the face of human nature as of this date—is about as sensible as insisting that all men ought to be immediately made millionaires, or that every ditchdigger should become a scholar. We just aren’t good enough for peace, yet. We’ve got to make ourselves that good, someday—but the day isn’t here! We still think we can make other people behave, without first establishing an integrity of our own—and we still think that will bring peace. It won’t. Peace isn’t a legislative, an economic, a legal, or a political accomplishment. It’s strictly a matter of total human nature—and human nature is still in the slums, mostly. Every human woe stems back to the individual’s unwillingness to face truth, understand and accept it, and to be responsible for his acts in the light of that acceptance. We’re in kindergarten at that sort of behavior—as I was explaining to Jimmie on the business of morals the other day.”
Mollie sighed. “I know what you mean, Willie. Sometimes I get resigned. Like Anne Lindbergh. I just think this Nazi horror is the future—ugly and inescapable. ”
“What about that?” someone else said.
Mr. Corinth smiled. “The wave of future? It’s medieval! Barbaric! Every Nazi concept is one that has already been found wanting—and discarded. For instance, the ancient Hebrews tried conquest, city-smashing, salt-sowing, race snobbery, and race purity. The rest of the world never forgave them for it. The Nazis ape the old Jews in many ways. And the Germans will probably pay the same price for their egomania.
“Waves of the past keep rolling back, to threaten the precarious progress of mankind; the belief that such waves represent an inescapable future is the purest form of superstition. Superstition’s strong stuff. But it does not understand progress, and so, will not accept it. Nazism isn’t the wave of the future, Mollie. It’s that old black superstitious curse rolled up again. It may, indeed, roll over you and me. If it does, then men will have to emerge again from it and start all over. As they have had to do before. You see, we’re all superstitious.”
“ I’m not,” Mollie said. “Not a bit.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’re not superstitious about cats and ladders, maybe. You know that water is hydrogen and oxygen, and whatnot. But you’re superstitious about—well, say, sex and love. Being a spinster. Mr. Wilson is superstitious about the New Deal.
Jimmie, here, a very enlightened guy, is superstitious about his personal, private behavior. You see, our ideals, as we call them, are apt to be prejudices, or mere notions.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Mollie said.
“Well, take an ideal. Take decency—since I’ve been haranguing Jimmie about it recently. We all want to be decent. Try to be. Well, for one thing, decency changes. What was decent in Elizabeth’s court is indecent now. What we print in advertisements would have been shameful in that court. Decency is a human notion that isn’t even stable. And truth pays no attention to it—ever. If you think a particular truth is indecent, and examine it, you will find either that your own attitude is inconsistent with fact, or else that a human fault was at the bottom of the indecent truth. So, you can change your attitude—if that was the error—or go to work on the fault—if that’s your inclination. But in the latter case you have to know it was a fault—which is a big order. Because what’s right for one person is wrong for another, and what’s decent in one situation is indecent in another.
“ Every fact, every truth, depends upon some broader truth beneath it; and you can chase back the whole concept of decency to the point where you see that its existence in our heads is a matter of expediency, entirely. Every ideal is an expedient, at bottom. The man with the noblest expedients has the noblest life. Even mathematics is an expedient system. Beneath each system is a truer math. Under the geometry of Euclid lies that of Einstein. Under that, still another, broader, truer system, which Einstein himself is trying to discover. The life of the human animal is a conflict. The life of the human soul is a search. For truth. That’s all evolution is—figures growing more aware, fighting forever toward still further awareness, with every means at their disposal. Are you really so surprised that the fight breaks out on the low levels of war, when so many people these days are so distracted from their fundamental purposes?”
Mr. Wilson said scornfully, “You preach a good sermon, Corinth.”
“And you’re a heretic,” the old man laughed. “I believe in people.”
“So do I. And if men like you would quit perplexing and inflaming them, we could get somewhere with America.”
The old man’s lips twitched a little. “Mmmm. You’re getting us well along toward the slave status of a second-rate nation governed by the Nazi supermen. They really intend to do it, you know. That—or ruin us. I just happen to prefer ruin. You can rebuild where the plant is wrecked. Getting the people out of chains is harder. After all, only those who have no self-respect are afraid to die.”
Mr. Wilson scowled. “Haven’t you got it backwards! Isn’t it easier to be an alarmist when there’s no grave danger than it is to keep your feet on the ground?”
“That’s an error all you plantigrade chaps make! It’s a hell of a lot easier to keep your feet on the ground and do nothing risky, Wilson, than it is to pull ’em out of the mud and start doing a job that involves—or may involve—blood and toil and tears and a God-awful sea of sweat.”
“You sound like Willkie,” Mr. Wilson said bitterly.
“What’s the matter with Willkie?”
“What was the matter with Benedict Arnold?”
“He was a traitor to his country,” Mr. Corinth said amiably.
“In my opinion, Willkie betrayed his party, his country, himself, and the dignity of being a man!”
“Because he was loyal to the truth?”
“Because he sold himself out to Roosevelt.”
Mr. Corinth scratched his head. “I don’t get it. I do remember, though, Wilson, the last election. I recall you out haranguing the state with your customary cold eloquence. I remember you in the parade—and I remember when Willkie stopped here. You were damned near as hoarse as he was, at the time! I must confess, I didn’t think much then of the frog-voiced prophet of your party. I believed he was going to undo the things that Roosevelt did for his countrymen because they had to be done. The expedient things.
There’s nothing wrong with expediency, as I was saying, as long as the underlying motive for it is okay. I thought Willkie lacked it. Anyway, Wilson, he wasn’t deceiving you about foreign policy at that time, was he? He said he was for aiding England, didn’t he? He told you he was against Hitler, didn’t he? And he hasn’t changed, has he? He went over there and saw for himself, in spite of the bombings, didn’t he? Have you been in England lately? Do you pretend to talk with authority about England? Well, Willkie does pretend to—and he has the right. He still disagrees with the New Deal, and says so with brilliance and violence, doesn’t he? Just what the devil has he betrayed?”
“He was supposed,” said Mr. Wilson acidly, “to be a Republican. The Republican party is the opposition party. Willkie’s thrown in with everything the Democrats are doing—every main thing.”
“The main thing they’re trying to do is beat Hitler. You think he should be against it?”
“I am sure of it.”
“F or Hitler?”
“Certainly not!”
“For what, then?”
“For America! A well-defended, independent, standing-alone America.”
“There you go!” Mr. Corinth shook his head. “Wendell Willkie decided—and Roosevelt decided, and about two thirds of the people of America have decided—that there’s no such thing. That there will be no such thing, until the last Nazi has been written off. We aren’t to blame for the Nazis, you say. I say we are, indirectly—but even that doesn’t matter. We aren’t to blame for microbes, but we fight ’em with the lives of our doctors and laboratory technicians. We aren’t to blame for hurricanes, but we get ready for ’em. We aren’t to blame for fires started by lightning, but we spend a lot on fire departments. If a gorilla was disemboweling the man next door and had his eye on me, I’d worry. I’d call the cops and get a hatchet, anyhow. I’d even set fire to my garage, if I thought it would drive the gorilla off. I think that Mr. Willkie is worried about the gorilla next door. As a matter of fact, from being very dubious about Mr. Willkie—due to some of the gentlemen in your political party, and not wishing to start here an argument about the gentlemen in my own—I have become a great admirer of Mr. Willkie. I like him. He warms me. I trust him. I believe he is bright. I doubt if Franklin Roosevelt runs for a fourth term, in spite of your little jokes, and I would like the opportunity to elect this Willkie fellow.”
“Politically,” said Mr. Wilson, “he has committed suicide.”
“Politically,” Mr. Corinth answered sharply, “ you have. You—and the professional ironheads you’ve carried around. The Republican party in these United Sates is a chain-jangling ghost, a crusty anachronism, a mold-worshiping luster after the grave. Willkie may find a new body for it. Me, I’m sick of inexpert management of business. I have as big a business as you have and I know what I’m talking about. I’m sick of loud-mouthed amateurs trying to regulate affairs they don’t understand. I don’t like the administration attitude toward labor. I don’t think the laboring men like it themselves. I don’t like John Lewis and I never did think Greene was worth the powder it would take to blow him away. I don’t believe great undemocratic organizations should be allowed to flourish within democratic countries. I think labor unions ought to have to turn in the same reports corporations do. I think churches should, too, for that matter. I think that the leaders of labor are mostly self-appointed, because the laws governing unions aren’t like the laws governing the rest of the affairs of the nation. I don’t like self-appointed leaders anywhere. As a matter of fact, I don’t even like men with too-bushy eyebrows. But I do like Willkie.”
“When this war is over,” Mr. Wilson answered, “you’ll see! You’ll see America turn once more against war and against Europe—”
“Damn it! There you are! Postulating the course of future events on the last World War! Can’t you numbskulls ever realize that this isn’t a repetition of the last war? It may be, in a sense, a continuation of that war. I think it is. But, as such, it’s continuing simply because it never was finished the last time. Roosevelt isn’t Wilson. You Republicans can’t count on this war ending in an armistice and an economically nude Germany and a virtually untouched, unharmed American public that is anxious to forget trouble and have fun. It won’t end that way. It can’t. You won’t be able to get up a national reaction that’ll slap a Harding into the White House and put the pork and the spoils in the hands of you, or anybody else. After Roosevelt’s third term there may be another war president. Willkie would be my reformed idea of a good one. After that president there might be still another war president. Might go on ten, fifteen years. Why don’t you fellows think of what might happen for once—instead of what you wish would happen? Instead of forcing yourself to believe that what’s coming will be a replica of events a quarter of a century ago? What’s going on, Wilson, is a world-wide attempt to shift those old events. The Germans are trying to go on to the win they barely missed then. The English are trying to lick a menace that came back stronger, after being knocked down once. The Americans are about to get into the same fracas. And it’s going to continue, this time, until somebody—us or them—gets whipped to zero. Zero. None of your business deal armistices. None of your negotiated truces. None of your international diplomatic maneuvers. You guys aren’t in the saddle any more—and you don’t know it. Wall Street isn’t running things. Money isn’t running things. The people are. Willkie’s got a lot of people for him—millions on millions—and, my friend, any man who has the millions he has is still in politics!”
“Suppose,” said Mr. Wilson, “you’re wrong? Suppose the war does peter out.
Suppose it has to end in a deal? I think it will.”
“No. As long as it was about money, living space, raw materials, empire-envy—things, in other words—it could end in a deal. It’s not, now. It’s about something you can’t make deals over. Something that’s a lot more forceful than political boundaries or money.”
“What?”
“It’s about—hate. Just hate, Wilson. The hate of millions upon millions for the eighty million who have undertaken to betray, kill, and enslave them. Every Pole who lost his woman, every Czech with a tortured relative or friend, every Italian whose Mussolini has brought him to shame and hunger, every red Russian, every tormented Dutchman, every bleeding Belgian, every indignant citizen inside the sickly failure that is France—every one of these millions hates, night and day, with a hatred that we in America don’t yet know anything about.
There are men by the million who have sworn on their lives that, when the time comes, they will take knives and firebrands and avenge the butchery they know with a butchery so appalling that the memory of it will instill centuries of dread for conquest in those who are left. These men mean this. They will not forget. They are living for this alone.
“The people of Germany can feel, burning all around them, the circle of fire which—if they lose—will close in upon them and scald even their children without mercy.
That is why they will carry on to inhuman length. Not to do so would be to face inhumanity. And the gravest part of this thing—this thing that had to come alive in men when the monster notion of force was expanded to its uttermost size—the most dire index of this cauterizing horror against horror is the hatred of the English.
“You can’t make deals with that thing, Wilson. It has to run its course, like an incurable disease. It isn’t good for mankind, but the thing that gave rise to it was worse, because it was wholly wanton. Hate is the natural reaction to wantonness, the ultimate distillation of the passions of responsible people for those who will be responsible for nothing. Now, lighting up in the world—in China for the mutilating laps, the yellow rapists, the sackers of Nanking, and elsewhere for the mud-faced Huns—like the yellow glow of a sun too hot to bear, is this hatred.
“The Germans under Hitler have done a frightful thing; they are Frankensteins and their monster grows against them, day by day. In ten years—or, if they succeed, in even a thousand—it will be big enough to consume all of them. You can’t buy hatred, Wilson. When it exists, you can’t buy it off, either. Real hatred—the elemental force these Nazis have created—is as sacred to the hater as love. It is the same thing as love, Wilson.”
The banker said nothing.
Mr. Corinth cleared his throat. “All over America, beginning many years ago, were the small, brave voices of alarm. We called them ‘militarists’ in the early days. ‘Jingoes.’ Get ready, they said. Stop the Japs in Manchuria. Stop Ethiopia. Don’t let the Germans reoccupy the Rhineland. On and on the voices went, repeating the warning—to a nation that was dedicated to peace, prosperity, and an undefined asinine thing they called ‘normalcy.’ The voices rose as the crimes increased. Bigger navy, they said. Put the boondoggle money in rearmament. They were right. We were wrong.
“We filled our magazines with wishful advertisements for peace. War, we said, was murder. War, we told ourselves, was a money game. An economic matter. And, while we insisted all war could be prevented by negotiation, we also refused to sit at a table for any negotiation—thereby exhibiting the essential flaw in our own lulling argument. On went the voices. Nations fell. At Munich, America relaxed, as did Britain, with an eloquent sigh. Peace was assured. Hitler was a barrier against Communism—and no more. In the sigh was a note of humiliation—a decent people had been ‘sold,’ but the price was worth the gain. Anyway—it cost America nothing. The Paul Reveres kept riding, though. Poland next, they said. The Balkans. And then France.”
Mr. Corinth looked around at the faces. A few conversations had started at the other end of the room. Jimmie was sitting with his eyes shut, frowning. Mr. Wilson lay back in his chair, staring scornfully down his nose. The others kept making little motions, as if they wished to interrupt the old man. But his voice plunged ahead of them before their arguments could crystallize; he spoke with such assurance that many of his listeners—even those who stopped a while and went away—were evidently persuaded of his point for the time they listened. They would go back, for the most part, to their convenient views, when the memory of what they had heard became dimmer. The old man paused as if he were trying to summon some sort of idea, some point or topic, which would rivet his attitude irrevocably onto their brains.
“When France fell—fell so fast—a lot of Americans were frightened. By a lot, I merely mean a relatively large number. Most Americans think France is a dirty, remote, semi-civilized country where a second-rate people converses mainly about sexual perversions in an incomprehensible language. Even the majority of veterans who have been there think that. So its fall didn’t impress the national opinion much. The common people still thought one marine could lick a panzer division.
“But history, if future history is to be written in English, will talk about the Paul Reveres of this recent age. At the head of them will be Roosevelt—who saw and understood. Next will come Willkie. And, after that, a few hundred men and women. A few hundred —if America survives the coming years-will be responsible! Maybe it’s always a few hundred—who save things. They were all sorts of people, these few.
Reporters who had watched the sinister crusade set fire to the sullen Germans. A statesman here and there—a very few statesmen—who, like Churchill, had seen the misshapen things to come. Some scientists and refugees, a handful of college presidents, a few Jews, a few editors and publishers, by God’s grace, and a number of writers. If you think I mean Walter Winchell among ’em—I mean Walter Winchell. His rabid memoranda may have a bigger place in history than you think. The realist often looks shabby to the reactionary—and always survives his social superior in the annals. William Allen White, and Pierre van Paassen, Van Loon, Sinclair Lewis, John Gunther, William Bullitt, Henry Luce, and so on. You could name ’em all, if you’ve read anything except the propaganda of your own crowd. Different sorts of people. Dorothy Thompson and Thomas Mann and his kids. Pearson and Allen and Clapper and Alsop and Kintner. They wrote. They published. They formed committees.
“Do you think that’s all they did, Wilson? Do you know what has opened the eyes of your fellow Americans? These people. They met in New York and Washington and Chicago and Miami and every big city. They formed, not two or three, but thousands of groups. And they were not interested in trying to sell the American people a notion—as you are. They were interested, very simply, in trying to put before their fellow citizens the facts of what was happening. They talked till dawn. They lectured; they begged the microphones. They beat their typewriters when they could barely sit up straight enough. They made their living somehow, ran up bills, raced across the nation at their own expense-and they did not preach, like you. They said to all the people that they could reach: Here’s what’s going on; make up your own mind.
“They had faith in the Americans. They believed that if the Americans understood what was roaring and clanking toward them out of Europe, the Americans could be trusted to act. Unlike you, Wilson, they didn’t try to skid over, and ignore, the hideous implications of thing. They didn’t advise that a comfortable course could lead to a comfortable future. They advised that the facts were such and such, and the future, whatever it was, would certainly be uncomfortable. These Minute Men of Truth—whose every fact you called an unholy lie and a trick to lead us into war—these unpopular people who yelled, ‘To Arms!’ received no compensation, got no orders, had no millionaires to back ’em, no political big shots in their pockets—nothing!
“The bill of goods they felt impelled to offer was most unpalatable. Their sales talk had no appeal for people who just wanted to be left alone. They fought their Lexingtons and Concords, and when, for instance, by a single vote in Congress, America kept its army, these were the men who passed out cold on their desks with relief. A spontaneous little army—without leaders—because every man jack in it was a leader. An army that Hitler’s wizards in the Munich geopolitik bureau had not foreseen. Volunteers who could not give their blood, because there was no tangible attack, but who lent to the psychological attack such fury that the ruinous Hun policy of division and destruction, which was already swinging through America, began to backfire.
“I think someday a psychological history of this war will be written. And when that is done, the early heroes, the first strategical geniuses, the original guarantors of ultimate victory, will be these writers, these editors, these statesmen—who licked Mein Kampf with its own weapon: the pen. One angry person, one Hitler, one John Brown, one Christ, one Joan of Arc, can change human history. A few hundred angry men and women have changed America right under your nose, Wilson! America can be grateful in the future—that these people rose up like the embattled farmers and did as brave a job on a subtler front.”
“America in what future?” Mr. Wilson asked sarcastically. “America with two or three hundred billions of debts? America in the middle of a wrecked world? America without trade, because no one has the wherewithal to buy? America with—if your private panic is right—a million dead sons and cities in ruins? America bankrupt in a depression that makes the last one look like a boom? America geared for war in a world that has at last quit fighting? That America, you mean?”
Mr. Corinth said, “Yes, I mean that America. That America—and you can multiply your picture by five, ten if you want. Because I don’t believe the heart and the guts and the brains of America are as destructible as you seem to. I don’t believe an American—a bricklayer, a doctor, a motorman, a factory worker, a farmer, or even a banker—is soft inside. We’ve started something here—barely started it. I don’t think we’ll quit. We’re not the type. I do not believe that my American, standing outside his house, which has burned down, in the presence of his dead brother, with no bank account, and his kids needing food, will simply fold up and say, ‘I’m through. What’s the use!’ I don’t see the end of things as they used to be as being the end of everything, the way you do.
“Maybe the age of big business exploitation of natural resources is ended. Maybe the age of titanic private fortunes is gone. Who did the exploiting? Who had the fortunes? All the Americans? No. A hundredth of one per cent. You probably have a million, Wilson. I have. You take it away—and I’ll make another. Stop me from collecting that much—and I’ll still make plenty, while I have my plant. Destroy the plant—and I’ll borrow money from you to build another. Take away my domestic market and I’ll sell my damned paint in Timbuktu. Take the money from the Timbuks and I’ll trade paint for ivory and sell the ivory for piano keys or beads. Make the beads and keys out of plastic and I’ll teach the natives how to crochet—and sell that.
“You know what I mean. When everything that science and ingenuity can discover and invent has been applied to human welfare and living in every nook and cranny of the earth, when the astronomers have proved that there isn’t a potential buying population on Mars, then I’ll be content to fold up and say that business is due for a collapse, that business thenceforward will consist of nothing but repair and replacement. Until then, I’ll be in business—or guys like me. Great God! We were born out of England, and England is old and growing tired. Asking her eldest son to take over the world trade and the family control. Talking about union. Begging the prodigal to care for her old age.
“The Americans are not listening yet. Americans are still worrying because there are no more empty places on the U. S. map to find gold in. No more frontiers. Americans are trying to sell themselves on a premature senescence. Why, we haven’t started our adolescence! The next frontier is the planet. We’ve somehow got to thinking that the national bank balance is the sum total of available money for all future time. How the hell did we build up that balance from zero when the Pilgrims landed? Work. Invention. Trade. More products to sell. Higher wages. Has that got to stop? We’re at the beginning of our time, Wilson. We can spread our culture, our ideals, and our business interests, after this shambles, clean across the globe! You make a few loans in the Dakotas. You buy into a business in Pennsylvania. After the war, Wilson, unless you lose your head, you’ll have bonds printed in Chinese—good bonds—and you’ll own a piece of a railroad in Tibet. You’ll be in on a good thing in the coal fields in the Antarctic and you’ll have a hunk of a toll bridge in Afghanistan. You and a British corporation will be making a mint with electric refrigeration in India, and I will be selling a cold-proofing material not yet invented to the mining and lumbering cities in Siberia.
“Money isn’t money, Wilson. Money is just a crystallized form of human energy. And human energy springs into existence from ideas. A depression isn’t a disappearance of wealth—it’s a mental and spiritual funk. If money is real, then there’s no such thing today as the Hitler war machine—because the Germans didn’t have a dime. Brother, we aren’t started! And I tell you, this fight—the last one, maybe, for aeons—is to clear away the old ego-national debris for the coming of a world working together. The Germans want to accomplish exactly that—by enslaving the world. We’ll do it, though, by paying good wages, putting in voting machines, and teaching ’em to drink sodas and root for the Dodgers. So help me Christ, Wilson, every time I get to thinking about you isolationist bastards in this particular sense, I get mad enough to spit!”
At that point in the discourse Jimmie noticed a figure in the foyer. His nerves lunged. He rose unostentatiously and slipped from the room.
Audrey was closing a wet umbrella, under which she had run from the parking yard to the club entrance. The doorman took the umbrella and helped her remove a transparent raincoat. She shook droplets from her hair, saw Jimmie, and smiled. “I came here looking for you!”
“Let’s go in the trophy room. Nobody there, as a rule. And your dad is on the porch.”
“Is he? All right.”
He followed her into the place. Cases of silver cups gleamed dully there. A sailfish on the wall forever held at sword’s point the august head of a moose. Jimmie pulled the two most comfortable chairs into the least conspicuous corner, and brought an ash stand, and they sat down. He was trembling unashamedly. For a minute they looked at each other.
Audrey spoke. “I got tired of waiting—again.”
She sounded genuine. She seemed thinner and paler, as if waiting had caused her severe strain. That was the trouble with her act. She believed it; consequently, its effects upon her were real. The fact that it was an act now seemed to Jimmie a very great tragedy. Tragic, because the sight of her made him realize how extraordinary she would be if only she were sincere and unselfish.
Jimmie ignored her words about waiting. “I got to know your dad—a little—hanging around here.”
“You did? You mean, he talked to you?” She thought for a moment. “What did he want? It must have been something.”
“Wanted to know about life—and death—in the RAF.”
He had expected that she would understand. Instead, she frowned. “He did? That’s odd! Indulging the more carnivorous side of his nature, I guess. Some people have no scruples!”
“He wasn’t carnivorous. He was charming.”
“Oh, he can be charming. He has a hideous facility for reading people. And, once read, he analyzes them—and uses their vanities and their avarices to manipulate them.
People usually mistake that process for charm.”
“Mmmm. He was upset though. On account of your brother.”
She drew a violent breath. “My—brother!”
Then Jimmie was startled. “You didn’t know?”
“What about my brother? Has Larry turned up? Have they—?”
Jimmie told her.
When he finished, she was crying. “I’m so glad,” she said. “So glad! Even if he—well, even if we don’t ever see him again. We’ll at least know. He would be a pilot! He would be a night fighter, too. The very most formidable thing he could find to do. He was a great kid, Jimmie. He was capricious and vain, in a way, and ferocious. But he had a will like the current in a magnet. Once he switched it on it never stopped or weakened and it snapped up everything that came near. That was why he—left—so young. I suppose he went on in school. He’d do that, too! I never thought he would—because he was young, and because my family assumed so automatically that he would go to hell. You know. It poisons you. And some people—most people—believe that everyone who turns from their chosen course is rotten and crazy. Father believes that, especially. Jimmie! You can imagine how glad I am!”
He could see how glad she was. False and theatrical though she might be about herself and about him, she was undeniably honest about her brother.
“I can see, Audrey. What I can’t understand is, why your father didn’t tell you what he had found out.”
“Jimmie. Go get me that magazine! I can’t bear not to know right now how he looks!”
He brought the magazine from the library. Audrey had removed the traces of her tears and moved their chairs arm to arm. For a long time she stared at the photograph of
“Lawrence Wilton.” It was not large, but the features were quite clear. “It is Larry, all right,” she said slowly. “Only—he’s changed. He looks—softer. Not in character, but in his feelings.”
“Why,” Jimmie repeated, “didn’t your father tell you? He was tremendously moved that night.”
“No doubt. One decent hour with his conscience—alone. Oh, he didn’t tell Mother, I suppose, because he can get a certain revenge on her that way. Revenge for her endless nagging and irritability. And, I suppose, he didn’t like his mental picture of the swoon she’d go into. Mother would probably try to get the governor to get the State Department to get Larry right straight out of the RAF.”
“I don’t know your mother.”
“She’s been ill. Not faking, I believe.” Audrey shrugged. “How is it with you, Jimmie?”
He told her. Told her about his father, and Biff, and Sarah. He found that telling her was like putting down a painfully heavy load and resting. She listened with such concentration, such changes of expression, and yet with such complete and uninterrupting attention, that Jimmie described his inward life, explored it, complained about it, for almost half an hour in a single stretch.
At the end she said, “No wonder you’re low!” She smiled. “I heard about the great toss-out-the night it happened. A man who was there came over to Dan and Adele’s—”
“It wasn’t on a Wednesday! Or a Friday, either!”
Audrey’s eyes shone briefly. “No. I’m over there a lot—now. Anyhow, this man repeated most of your eloquence. I didn’t know, Jimmie, that you’d been—wounded.”
“Let’s skip that part.”
“Can’t I even see?”
That was like the more familiar Audrey. “No.”
“All right.” She performed an exorbitant pout, and dissolved it. “You’ve made me very happy anyhow—about Larry. Very happy. It was worth all the weeks I’ve been through. Just that, alone. Let’s talk about something different. Biff, for example. He is a cad, you know.”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
Audrey nodded, slowly, up and down. “Yep. Cad. The very kind the lady novelists write about. A hero—also. The novelists seldom stop to think that, in the case of superheroism—” she barely glanced at him—“there is a compensatory caddishness.
Generated, at times, by doting women. At other times, by too much adrenaline in the pride.”
“Damn it, you sound like Willie!”
“Oh,” she responded equably. “Willie said that first.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“Frequently. I’d about die if I didn’t. He’s my second love—next to you.”
“He hasn’t said anything to me about seeing you.”
“Of course not, you thickhead! I forbade him.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause. Audrey ended it. “I hear your dad has squabbled with your mother. Things are messy at your house. Biff’ll be home in a day or two—in good condition. Sarah’s in the dumps again. Quite a little party. It shows, according to Willie, that your family regrets pushing you off the threshold.”
“I didn’t want to go—entirely. I was just beginning to hope that they were still human. Then—whammo!”
“I know. Biff’s a cad about women, but someday he’ll give his time to some noble, if flashy, cause. Your father is really a good egg. Bank-struck. It’s like being stage-struck—only, with different boards.”
“So your father said.”
She assented with a grim nod. “Oh, he can recognize homely virtue. Just—never achieve it. Too complex. Sarah—I dunno. She’s a gorgeous, miserable creature. She must have been terrific the day she read my diaries—”
Jimmie started. “Willie told you that! ”
“We have no secrets. He told me also you threatened the—the”—she was mocking—“extreme penalty to shut her up. Very chivalrous. Never had the male of my species offer to kill for me, before. I was positively touched. And greatly relieved, believe me!”
“I was out of my head with rage—”
“—and acted very—what we call ‘British,’ no doubt. I recall Sarah’s Harry. A merry-eyed, curly-haired youth with a fine figure, if a girl may say so, and a talent for staying violently alive all night long. What did Sarah have to say on the angle that he was part Jewish? News, incidentally, to me.”
“Sarah didn’t have anything to say. Never mentioned it. Mother told me.”
Audrey nodded again. “I remember, too, your mother, in the period when she was pouring ice water on that romance. Buckets of it. I thought, then, that she was going to unscrupulous lengths. She practically locked Sarah in the house, and she tore around Muskogewan grafting little abscesses on the reputation of the boy. At the time I presumed the tales were true. Musicians have a way of getting around—too much. Maybe they weren’t, though. He didn’t have that roving look. Or the sultry one, like Biff. Just—gay. I—” She broke off.
“You what?” Her manner changed, stepped up its intensity.
“Jimmie! Do you suppose it’s possible that—that Sarah never knew her passion was part non-Aryan? I mean to say—”
“Good God!” Jimmie studied the idea. “ He’d tell her.”
The girl shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe he thought she knew. After all, in New York, where he lives, it’s no secret. His middle name’s Jewish, and the family he’s related to helped finance the Revolutionary War. I remember reading that in a publicity story about the band he plays in. Suppose your mother got hold of the fact—”
“She did. She said so. Dad went to New York and came back with the information.”
“—and never told Sarah. Just sabotaged the thing on other grounds. The evidence would support the theory. Damn it, Jimmie, that would be a dirty trick!”
“Still—Sarah gave him up.”
Audrey was sitting straight in her chair. Her eyes flashed. “Wait! Let’s think! Your mother finds out your sister’s boy friend is partly Jewish. Your sister doesn’t know. Your mother is positive that it would make no difference whatever to your sister. So—she improvises. She turns the town against the lad. She makes Sarah fear that, if she married Harry, everybody would hate her and that Harry would probably desert her. That sort of stuff. Besides which, your mother works personally on the poor gal, day and night, to make her sign off. The pressure gets unbearable and Sarah, who is not an iron woman, finally does sign off—against her will, nature, desire, hope, wish, et cetera.”
“It could be,” Jimmie said slowly. “Shall we phone her up?”
Audrey smiled. “Efficient business man! ‘Do it now!’ It’s a delicate topic, Jimmie. Lemme think. Maybe we ought to phone up Harry, first. See if he’s still carrying the torch, too. After all, he may have gone the way of all flesh.”
“A point.”
Fifteen minutes later, excited, feeling at the same time a benighted fool, Jimmie was in a phone booth waiting for Mr. Meade to be summoned. He could hear a dance band playing faintly in the Chicago hotel he had called. Not faint was the pressure of Audrey’s chin on his shoulder. She had crowded into the booth with him—and unscrewed the bulb there, for “privacy.”
In a moment Jimmie heard a man’s voice, young, worried, suspicious. “Yes? This is Harry Meade. Is Muskogewan calling me?”
Jimmie swallowed. “Yeah. Hello, Harry. Look. This is going to seem like a cockeyed call to you. My name is Jimmie Bailey. Sarah’s brother. I just got back from England—”
The voice rose in pitch. Audrey could hear the words and the alarm in them. “Is something the matter with Sarah?”
Jimmie laughed. “No!”
“Then—!”
“Listen, mug! I’m her brother and I’ve just found out she’s nuts about you.”
“So what,” said Harry bitterly.
“So your family sicks dogs on me.”
“I’m trying to call back the dogs, if you’ll give me a chance. Listen. I’m a right guy. Are you?”
“I try to be. Go on.”
“You sound like it. Harry, did you ever tell Sarah that you were partly Jewish?”
There was a long pause. Very long. A voice incredibly strained. “Didn’t she know that—all the time?”
“I dunno, Harry. I’m going to find out. Only I wanted to be sure first that you were still—interested in her.”
“Interested!” The youth yelled the word. “Look! I’m mixed up, now! If you mean what I think you do—I believe I get it! I never did have one of those long talks about what went wrong—with Sarah. I don’t like scenes, and she was so darn mean and icy the last time I saw her, I got hurt about it—and walked out. You think it would make any difference if she didn’t know—and then did?” Jimmie could hear him swallow on the end of that.
“I’ll see.”
“Will you call me back, then? Hell! How can a fellow go and toot a clarinet, wondering about a thing like that—after he’s tried to quit wondering for a whole, long lot of months!”
“I’ll call you, Harry.”
Jimmie hung up. “Now—Sarah,” he said to Audrey. “I like the way this Harry talks.”
“Jimmie! I—look. Can I call Sarah?”
“Why, sure!” He smiled quietly. “The woman’s gentler technique?”
“Not that. But I thought—if we’ve guessed right about this—then telling Sarah will be doing her a big favor.”
“What do you want to do her a favor for?”
“So she’ll know I’m not mad that she read my diaries.”
Audrey was dialing. Jimmie slid behind her, and for a moment weltered in the thought that this was the essence of generosity. Then there came another thought—another possible face to put on Audrey’s deed: this was also the essence of a smart tactic. If Sarah were overcome with the news, overcome with joy—then, all the secrets in Audrey’s diaries would be forever secure.
Audrey’s father worked people that way, apparently.
Jimmie tried to shake off the suspicion—and he could not; although Audrey’s words, and her behavior, seemed to deny the truth of such a construction.
“Hello? Miss Bailey, please… a friend… personal… Hello? Sarah?… This is Audrey Wilson… Hey! I know you don’t want to talk to me… But I want to talk to you
… No, not about Jimmie… about Harry.”
Then, in a clear and gentle tone, Audrey told all about Harry—and the notion she and Jimmie had discussed. After that Sarah talked for several minutes. Jimmie could not hear a word. He heard, only, the low, intense pitch of his sister’s voice. But he did see that Audrey began nodding. And she sniffled once.
At last she spoke again: “No, Sarah… I wouldn’t do it tonight… no train and you couldn’t pack… Just phone him at the hotel… Yes… He certainly is expecting a call! Good night, darling… I’m glad—you feel like that!”
Audrey hung up. She buried her face in her hands for a moment. “That,” she said presently, with a sigh, “is probably a new high of some sort in marriage proposals. Sarah didn’t know. Said she might have heard once—and forgotten. But I think she just didn’t know. She was going to start for Chicago tonight. I advised her not to. But I bet Harry will start, tonight, for Muskogewan! And there will be merry hell to pay around town tomorrow! Wow!” Audrey laughed delightedly. She turned in the booth, hugged Jimmie, and she kissed him, lightly. “We’ve done a good deed that’ll last quite a while. Two lifetimes, maybe.”
“You’re a nice woman, Audrey.”
“Yeah. In a peculiar way—I am. Glad you found it out.”
“I—I—went back—that night—to Dan’s house. Did you hear me?”
Silence. “Went—back?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Oh, Jimmie! But you didn’t knock!”
“No. The house was dark and I could hear you—either crying or laughing—I couldn’t be sure—”
“Laughing!”
“I couldn’t tell—”
“Jimmie Bailey, did you even think, for one second I was laughing? Is that what you thought? And you sneaked away again! Laughing!! Does a girl who yanks out the lights and throws herself on a divan and practically chokes to death on tears for two hours sound like she was laughing! No kidding, Jimmie! I’m disappointed in you—terribly. And a telephone booth is no place to have our first quarrel! What does a girl have to do to convince you she’s mad about you, anyhow?”
Audrey pushed the door open. Jimmie stepped out, shakily. She followed, disheveled and damp from the warmth of the booth, and the anxiety of the calls, and the intense if vicarious emotion. Several people turned to look at them. The conclave on the porch had come to an end. Among those people was Audrey’s father. He nodded to Jimmie. He deliberately cut his daughter.
“I want to leave,” Audrey said. “I’ve got Dan’s car. Oh, Jimmie, I wish you had knocked! I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for thinking I might have been—laughing.”
“You going to Dan’s still? It’s late.”
“I live there.”
“ Live there!”
She walked across the foyer. The doorman produced her raincoat and umbrella.
“Certainly. We’ve kept it quiet, but it’s bound to spread around, sometime. Didn’t you see the affectionate regard with which Dad greeted me? Didn’t I tell you he’d throw me out for seeing you? Well, I told him I was going to—and he did throw me out. So Dan and Adele have given me sanctuary. And Mother, I understand, has taken to her bed.”
Jimmie said, “Hey! Wait! You can’t leave now!”
She smiled and whispered, “Night, Jimmie.” The man opened the big front door.
Wind skirled like bagpipes. Her skirts rippled. A sheet of rain splashed across the porch.
The door closed with a solemn bang.