“You couldn’t march any better,” Muriel said.
He looked at her pityingly from the ivory tower of his experience.
“They haven’t even any pickets out,” he said.
“What are pickets?” Muriel asked.
“What are pickets?” he repeated. “They are lookouts for the enemy.”
He spoke wearily and condescendingly, and his tone put Muriel in her place.
“What are they going to do now?” she asked.
His irritation evaporated beneath her wide-eyed ignorance, and he felt kindly and protective.
“They’re going to pitch their tents for the night,” he said. “I guess it will be all right to watch them.”
He was not wholly sure of this. Though he walked with her unhesitatingly to the fairgrounds, he was afraid they might be ordered off at any minute until he saw that the militia was too occupied to notice the presence of civilians. Occasional groups of those uniformed citizens were slumping down, pulling off their shoes and feeling of their feet. Tolstoy, drawing on his memories for War and Peace, could never have seen anything as disorganized as that militia. Yet slowly, painfully, with groans and oaths, the company streets were taking shape. The headquarters tents were up. The wagon train was rumbling to a suitable location, and fires were being lighted near the cook tents. There were always some able individuals in any organization, and this regiment had its quota. Arms were being stacked after a fashion, and a small army city was rising. If the execution was clumsy, Melville did not know it then. No one alive, he thought, could have helped being stirred by that smell of wood smoke and of cooking, by the scurrying of the water and kitchen details and the guard, and by the strings of draft horses being led to drink. Both he and Muriel must have forgotten about the time, until the bugles blew assembly and the ranks began forming for retreat—not that he understood the formality then. Muriel had stayed beside him quietly and uncomplaining as they wandered here and there, but now her voice was plaintive.
“It’s getting awfully late,” she said. “I don’t know what Mother’s going to say.”
“Oh,” he said, “in the Ford we can get back in no time.”
Nevertheless he knew they had stayed too long. It was six o’clock, and he could feel a faint evening chill in the air already. They hurried through the old fair gates. They were almost running when they reached the Hallowell road, but when they reached it, he could see no sign of the car, although he remembered exactly where he had left it. His father’s Ford was gone.
At one time or another, Melville Goodwin had been exposed to all the components of surprise and disaster. Now they were like old acquaintances; yet his personal reactions had not changed greatly since that moment at Blair when he stared at the track left by the Ford’s wheels. There would always be the same grip at his throat, the same taut dryness in his mouth, the same hideous, hollow tension in his stomach that he felt that day. The main remedy was always quick, decisive action. His reactions were slower at Blair than they were later, but he did not behave badly. There was, of course, a nauseous second of indecision, combined with sickening thoughts of consequences, and then Muriel’s presence beside him began to exert the same stimulus that the presence of troops did later.
“Melville,” he heard her wail, “it’s gone. Why didn’t you leave it in a safe place? What are we going to do?”
With her words and his own thoughts buzzing savagely through his head, he examined the tracks of the vanished Ford, and already common sense was returning to him. While Muriel was still speaking, he began tracing the tire marks through the long grass to the dust of the road. He only had to follow them for a few yards to discover that the Ford had been driven into the fairgrounds.
“It’s all right,” he said to Muriel, “it’s around here somewhere.”
Then he grabbed her by the hand, not to console her but because he was in a hurry. Whoever had taken the car, he was thinking, had not seriously intended to steal it, and it would not be on the company streets or near the officers’ tents, but rather in the neighborhood of the wagons. It was the first estimate he had ever made of a serious situation, and it had been correct. Not more than three minutes could have elapsed before he saw the Ford down by the wagon park. It stood beside a confused heap of packs and harness, with its engine running, and four militia men were examining it, making obvious and humorous remarks. He was out of breath as he drew near them. One private, he remembered, was drinking from a whisky bottle and another was trying to pull it away.
“That’s my automobile,” Melville said.
He was ashamed that his voice quavered in his first experience with troops.
“Say,” one of the men said, “look at the two little sweethearts.”
Melville found himself blushing. He had forgotten that he was holding Muriel’s hand, and he dropped it like a hot potato. He could still remember the red hair of the man who had spoken and the exact tilt of his mouth. The two top buttons of his shirt were open and he had one gold tooth.
“That’s my automobile,” Melville said again.
“Why, you little snotty-nosed bastard,” the redheaded private said. “You’re too young to own a car.”
“It’s my father’s automobile,” he said.
The soldier moved closer to him.
“Fresh, aren’t you?” the soldier said. “How do I know it’s your daddy’s automobile?”
“Because I told you so,” Melville said, and he was glad that his voice was firmer.
“So you told me so, did you?” the redheaded soldier said. “And what are you going to do about it?”
It was a sensible question, and it looked as though there was nothing he could do about it, but he did not want Muriel to know it. He swallowed and he felt his heart beating in his throat.
“I’m going to drive it home,” Melville said.
“Now listen, bub,” the redheaded soldier said, “you drag your little ass out of here before I slap your ears back.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Jake,” someone said, “he’s only a kid.”
“You heard me,” the redhead said, waving an open palm at him, “drag ass out of here.”
Melville knew that he could not walk away. It would be better to have his teeth knocked out or be killed than walk away. Probably, on thinking it over, nothing would have happened. Someone not as drunk as the redhead would have moved between them, but at just that moment Muriel tugged his arm.
“Here, Mel,” she whispered to him, “take this.”
Muriel was holding out a bayonet to him. She must have found it in the heap of equipment near the Ford, and she must have drawn it from its scabbard herself because he saw its ugly blade in the dusk. He had never held a bayonet before, and subsequently it was never part of an officer’s equipment, but at that moment it seemed completely natural to be holding it.
“Keep away from me,” Melville said.
“Why, you murdering little son of a bitch!” the redhead shouted. “You ought to go to jail.”
The others around the car were laughing, but it was not all a joke.
Melville backed away carefully and climbed behind the wheel of the Ford, put the bayonet on the seat beside him and accelerated the motor. He felt as though he were moving and talking in a dream after he had told Muriel to get in beside him. That was all there was to it. No one spoke. No one shouted after them as he drove the car toward the fairgrounds gates. The only sound that he could remember was Muriel’s convulsive sobbing.
“Don’t cry, Muriel,” he said. “There’s nothing to cry about,” and he threw the bayonet out of the car when they reached the Hallowell road.
He was never embarrassed after that when anyone in Hallowell said that Muriel Reece was his best girl.
The truths in the old book of Field Service Regulations had once been as much a part of his fixed beliefs as paragraphs on guard duty and the school of the soldier. Action, correct or not, was preferable to immobility. Muriel had never read the Field Service Regula
tions, but what she had done was in keeping with their essence. She had estimated the situation and had taken action when she handed him that bayonet. Most of his life having been made up of fighting or considering the problems of fighting, it was his habit to review the actions in which he had participated, and the action at Blair fell into a classic pattern. It could readily be incorporated in a textbook. Essentially, it had been fought by Muriel Reece, who had brought the weight of reinforcement to bear at the critical point.
XII
“If You Can Dream and Not Make Dreams Your Master …”
Melville Goodwin’s words came to a standstill—for no artistic reason. His attempts to describe his life and his family had been prolix, humorless and dull; yet when he stopped speaking, I could feel not only the stark outlines of Hallowell but something of its depths and lights and shades. At any rate, his personality, or perhaps his utter lack of narrative skill, made Hallowell and young Mel Goodwin much more real to me at the moment than anything at Savin Hill. He was standing on firmer ground than all the rest of us.
Perhaps the others were thinking as I was—that compared to Melville Goodwin we were febrile and superficial, driven easily by light motivations and ambitions. Phil Bentley wore the rapt expression of someone who loves music listening to the last notes of a symphony. Miss Fineholt sat motionless behind the desk gazing at the General in a way that made me wonder for a second whether she could be thinking of herself as another Muriel Reece. Colonel Flax’s expression was slightly different. He had obviously prepared himself as a good officer should for an interminable military lecture that had turned out to be something else, and he was plainly puzzled by the result.
We were still right there with Melville Goodwin when he moved his arm and looked at his wrist watch.
“Only nine-fifty-five,” he said. “I thought it was later than that.” Somehow, like Dr. Einstein, he had proved that time was variable. “Well, I guess it was that summer that I went to a Sunday school picnic. I guess I remember it because it was the last one of those functions I ever attended. All our crowd was getting a little old for Sunday school picnics. There was a grove and a lake halfway to Nashua. We went there in the trolley car—but maybe it isn’t important. Maybe everybody would like to get up and stretch.”
“Oh, no,” Phil Bentley said, “let’s hear about the picnic.”
“Well,” the General said, “there always was one of those things every summer.”
A gentle knock on the library door cut the General’s sentence short. It was Oscar in his fawn-colored alpaca coat. He did not belong in Hallowell or on the Hallowell trolley. His presence was a jarring note and created a guilty sort of silence.
“Pardon my interrupting,” Oscar said, “but Mr. Frary wanted to know if he could speak to Mr. Skelton for a few minutes. He’s upstairs in his room.”
I had completely forgotten that Gilbert Frary was still with us.
“Go ahead, Sid,” the General said, “it’s all right, I can get along.”
“Well, I hate not to hear this,” I began, “but I imagine Mr. Frary’s going to town.”
“Come back when you’re finished,” Phil Bentley said. “Now what about the picnic, sir?”
“Well,” the General said, “there was a lake and a pine grove on the trolley line about five miles outside of Nashua, called Rodney’s Grove. It was owned by the trolley company, I guess. There were a few rowboats and some swings and tables and benches.…”
Then as I closed the library door behind me, I heard him say, “But none of this has any real bearing on anything.”
When I saw Helen in the upstairs hall, she was carrying a pad of paper and a pencil, which indicated that she was on her way to the kitchen to plan meals and her intent look showed that she was dealing with some complicated problem.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
When I told her that Gilbert Frary had sent for me, she nodded toward the door of our dressing room.
“Come in here for a minute first,” she said, “and tell me what we’re going to do for the rest of the day.”
I followed her, not with any great alacrity, because I never could seem to see domestic problems through Helen’s eyes.
“I woke up this morning,” she said when she closed the door, “to realize we’re running a sort of hotel. At least, I know now how people must feel who take in paying guests at a dude ranch or somewhere. Everyone is so—so extraneous.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “The only difference is, ours aren’t paying.”
“Well, don’t be so aloof from it,” Helen said. “You asked them here.”
“You know I had to ask them here or at least I thought I did,” I told her.
We were speaking fixed lines, going through a routine of dialogue that other husbands and other wives had spoken a million times before, and neither of us, if we had tried, could have avoided a single line.
“I wish you weren’t always so indefinite, dear,” Helen said. “You mean Gilbert Frary made you ask them?… Oh, Gilbert and his publicity!”
“Well, maybe he did partly,” I said, “but I don’t see how I could be more definite.”
“You could have put your foot down,” Helen said.
“I didn’t want to put my foot down,” I told her. “There was nothing to put it on—that is, nothing in particular.”
“Well, I don’t mind especially,” Helen said, “and I know this is the first time you’ve ever had your friends here, except they’re not strictly your friends.”
“That isn’t exactly so,” I told her. “Mel Goodwin’s a sort of a friend of mine.”
“I know,” Helen said. “General Goodwin’s awfully sweet. He couldn’t be sweeter.”
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“He couldn’t be sweeter,” Helen said again. “Gilbert is in his room using the telephone so I can’t use it, and Mrs. Goodwin is in the living room crocheting a washcloth.”
“Is she really crocheting a washcloth?” I asked.
“She’s making a whole set of them,” Helen said. “She finished one last night after dinner, and now she’s on another. How long do you think this is going to last?”
“I don’t exactly know,” I said, “but it won’t be so long.”
“I can’t seem to make any plans,” Helen said. “Please try to say something definite, Sid. Will they be here for another day, or for two days and two nights? How far is the General in his life?”
“When I left him he was just fifteen,” I said. “He was taking Muriel to a Sunday school picnic. They were high school sweethearts.”
“Do you mean to say,” Helen asked, “that after all this he’s only fifteen?”
I could think of the General unrolling himself like a film against a fixed time limit.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “at the rate he’s going, he’ll be much older by evening. Who knows—he may be twenty-five or thirty.”
“All right,” Helen said, “how old is he now?”
“He’s fifteen—I told you.”
“No, no,” Helen said. “I mean how old is he really?”
“Oh,” I said, “somewhere around fifty.”
“And you mean he’ll only be twenty-five or thirty by evening?” Helen said. “Sidney, can’t we get this straight?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t know how we can. It’s going to take him time to get older.”
“Well, if he only gets to be thirty by evening,” Helen said, “perhaps he’ll only be forty tomorrow. Darling, what am I going to do with Mrs. Goodwin until he gets to be fifty?”
“Listen, Helen,” I said, and I really wanted to be helpful, “the best thing to do is to relax—and besides, just remember that everyone’s busy.”
“Mrs. Goodwin isn’t busy,” Helen said.
“Well, take her for a drive,” I said, “take her to do the marketing. She’d be interested in that.”
“Williams is driving Gilbert back to town in the Cadillac,” Helen
said.
Somehow most of our recent conversations ended with the problem of transportation.
“Well, take her in the station wagon,” I answered.
“Miss Otts will need the station wagon later to bring Camilla home from school,” Helen said.
“Well, all right,” I said, “there’s still the Packard runabout.”
“That’s true,” Helen said, “I’d forgotten about the Packard.”
We looked at each other for a moment and then we both began to laugh.
“Darling,” Helen said, “we do have a good time, don’t we?”
“Yes,” I said, “always, Mrs. Winlock.”
Somehow the whole situation was eased simply because Helen had forgotten about the Packard.
At intervals during the last few weeks Gilbert Frary had been suggesting that he and I should get away somewhere and have a good long talk, or, as he liked to call it, “an exchange of ideas.” He had been vague, I remembered, when I had asked him what sort of ideas he wanted to exchange. He had said they were not ideas, essentially, but merely a few thoughts that he had been storing in the back of his mind, none of which had any immediacy. He did not mean that we were to hold a conference. All he wanted was to think aloud with me along a few lines, to get my frank reaction to a few thoughts that were still nebulous. He could not tell me what these thoughts were until he thought them aloud with me.
I wondered again where these thoughts might lead as I made my way to Gilbert’s room. As he liked to say himself, he was a very clever negotiator, and at the end of a long talk, if you were not careful, you were apt to find that you had been moved through unexpected mazes, like a ball in one of those glass-covered puzzles, until you found yourself in some unanticipated position. It was necessary not only to follow the eloquent, even flow of Gilbert’s words but to search for implications, without being confused by the clichés of the moment with which Gilbert always adorned his comments. With some people perhaps he was devious, but not with me, he always said. With me it was like talking to his own brother Cedric, except that my mind was more incisive than Cedric’s and utterly devoid of ambiguity. He sometimes thought, just between us both, that his brother Cedric, whom he had set up personally in the producing business, was lacking in a species of integrity, and I always had integrity, and there was nothing that he valued more than integrity. He and I could talk without make-believe because we were devoted to each other and devoted to the same objective. There was nothing he enjoyed more than sitting with me and having a good exchange of ideas. I was relieved by Helen’s news that Gilbert wished to return to town in the Cadillac during the morning, since this would mean that the thought exchange would not be as complicated as it might have been otherwise.
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