Melville Goodwin, USA

by John P. Marquand

  Lieutenant Goodwin was with the Army of Occupation for a while at Coblenz but he was detached and sent home as a casual officer from Brest in June 1919, and it was only later that it struck him that his experience in France had suffered certain limitations. Often in the years between the wars, when he heard officers discussing their leaves in Paris and the wine and the women and the sights of France, he was surprised at how little he could contribute to this sort of conversation. He had hardly looked at a cathedral or a French château except through field glasses. While others had enjoyed themselves, he had either been at the front or in base hospitals. He had never learned the difference between Burgundy and Vouvray. All his pay went home. Even when he was convalescing at that swell hotel in Cannes, he did not have the money to go on parties with the Red Cross girls and the nurses—and besides, there was always Muriel.

  He still remembered clearly one illustrative incident. Late one afternoon in November, after the armistice, he had gone on a walk by himself through Cannes to exercise his leg, which was still stiff, though he no longer needed a cane. He was trying not to limp and though he looked somewhat shabby compared to the aviators, a French girl spoke to him, a pale, hungry-looking girl. She spoke loudly and slowly as the French sometimes did to a foreigner.

  “Vous êtes tres chic, mon lieutenant,” she said.

  He had to turn the words over painfully in his mind, and his answer was like a tough recitation at the Point.

  “Non,” he said, “je ne suis pas chic.”

  “Le lieutenant est blessé,” she said.

  “Oui,” he said, “je suis blessé.”

  “Mais pas malade,” she said.

  “Non,” he said, “bonne santé.”

  It was like walking in a labyrinth, trying to pick up the words, and he was pleased that he remembered the phrase for “good health.”

  “Voulez-vous venir avec moi?” she asked.

  The implication of the question escaped him entirely because of his mental efforts at translation, so she patted his arm playfully.

  “Vous et moi,” she said, and raised two fingers in front of him, “ma chambre, cognac, pas loin d’ici.”

  He still did not know what it was all about until she spoke again more loudly.

  “L’amour,” she said, “couchez avec moi.”

  He never forgot his feeling of embarrassed confusion. In many ways it was worse than being under shellfire, and to make it still worse, there was the problem of answering in French.

  “Mais je ne veux pas, mademoiselle,” he said.

  It was funny as he looked back on it but it was not humorous at the time because he had sense enough to know that he was not handling the situation correctly.

  “La-la,” she said, “monsieur est serieux.”

  He liked to remember that she had been neither angry nor contemptuous. On the contrary, she was very nice about it and he never forgot what she said before she left him.

  “It is a pity always to be serious when one is young.”

  Perhaps she had been right. Perhaps she had known more about life than he. Sometimes he wished that he had relaxed a little more in a civilian way when he was young. Perhaps he should have thought more of picture galleries and architecture. Perhaps he should have listened to music, but the only music he liked then was band music and the notes of the bugle at retreat.

  He was glad that he was a part of the real army. The others who had swelled the ranks were like water in a sponge, which was being squeezed as hard and as fast as the management could arrange it. He returned to the States on an antiquated passenger ship filled exclusively with other unattached officers from every branch of the service, most of whom hoped to leave the service as soon as they got across, particularly the junior officers. The war was over and to hell with the army.

  In many ways Melville Goodwin learned more about personnel from those ten days at sea than he had in the front lines. The ship was so crowded that only officers of field rank were in first-class quarters, and the juniors were in the steerage. He would stand on the forward deck in good weather and watch those higher officers on the promenade, while below in the steerage he was in a mass of totally undisciplined young college graduates from every state in the union, all of whom were fed to the teeth. He was the only West Pointer in that crowd, and he was shocked at the things those others said about the army.

  There was a second lieutenant near him in the steerage, he remembered, whose name was John J. Weather—a graduate of Yale, who lived in Westbury, Long Island. This Weather had come aboard with a dozen bottles of cognac in his bedding roll. He had a gold cigarette case and gold-backed hair brushes, and he and his crowd were always playing poker. One night Melville remembered seeing seven hundred dollars in the pot—on a blanket in the steerage—and when he spoke to Weather about the size of that pot later, Weather was frankly amused.

  “Listen, baby,” Weather said, “where have you been all your life?”

  It was an interesting question, because although they had talked for hours, neither of them could make his life exactly clear to the other. They had the same rank and that was all. Weather had not been in combat, but still he had called him “baby,” and once Weather said that he ought to show him around.

  “You ought to learn about things, baby,” Weather said, but of course as soon as they reached New York he forgot about showing him around. Weather and all his crowd disappeared in a golden haze. Melville never saw any of them again, but he remembered some of their strange codes. When he refused to get drunk and disorderly with Weather and his crowd, they all understood when he explained that he had to stay in the army, but they could not understand why he wanted to stay.

  “All you have to do,” Weather said, “is to get out, and my old man will get you a job, baby.”

  He did not know who the old man was and he never knew. He was only glad that he could not resign from the service, for he had a feeling that he was not equipped for that wild world outside. He remembered a single taste he had of it early on the morning that the ship steamed into New York Harbor.

  That morning a major general, the senior officer on board, ordered the lieutenants to assemble on the bow and addressed them from the promenade deck. He had a fine resonant voice and he needed it.

  “I have a word to say to you young officers,” he shouted. “We are now coming into New York Harbor, and I know that you will all be anxious to see the Statue of Liberty.”

  As the General paused a faint chorus of catcalls arose from the crowded deck. The officers had not enjoyed the steerage, but even so, Melville could not believe his ears, and perhaps the General could not either because he went right on.

  “You will all want to see the Statue of Liberty. This will mean that you will run simultaneously to the port side, and this may endanger the ship.”

  The young men around Melville Goodwin broke into a cheer, but the General’s voice rose above it.

  “So all of you will stay below,” the General shouted, “until we’re docked.”

  It was not a sound or well-considered order. Still it was an order, and the reaction was amazing. It was as though a lid had been lifted from all suppression. Hundreds of voices were shouting back to the promenade deck telling a two-star general of the army to go to hell and what he could do with the Statue of Liberty. It was an interesting example of a complete breakdown of command.

  “That will do,” the General shouted, “you are all under arrest.”

  The General must have known that he could not court-martial several hundred officers now that the war was over. If you could not back up an order it was better not to give it. You had to be careful not to stick your neck out in the army, and the General’s neck was out a mile.

  Major General Goodwin paused. Personally I was delighted by the anecdote and so was Philip Bentley. Both of us had identified ourselves completely with that crowd on board, and so had Miss Fineholt, but Colonel Flax looked grave, and the General was not smiling.

  “That
must have been quite a scene,” Phil Bentley said.

  Melville Goodwin nodded slowly.

  “Yes,” the General said, “I suppose it’s funny to civilians.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s pretty funny.”

  “I suppose it is,” the General said. “I have never looked at it in quite that way. I have often tried to figure what I’d have done if I had been the senior officer on that ship.”

  “What would you have done?” Phil Bentley asked.

  The General still looked very grave.

  “Insubordination is not a joke,” he said. “If I had been that officer I’d have got to know those kids personally in the first place. I’d have been down there in the steerage with them twice a day. Maybe I’d have played a little poker with them, I don’t know, but there wouldn’t have been that type of trouble.” Suddenly the General smiled. “In a citizen army you’ve got to learn to compromise with civilians. We always try to do the best we can for you when you get into the army—but I wish there weren’t so damn many of you!”

  We all smiled dutifully.

  Come to think of it, he said, there were a hell of a lot of civilians in New York. You wouldn’t think there had been a war, in New York, and getting back was like landing on the moon.

  “What did you do when you landed?” Philip Bentley asked.

  “Why,” the General said, “as soon as I could get to a telephone I called up Muriel, of course, and she said she’d come down to New York. I needed someone to lead me around who knew the ropes. I am still sort of confused alone in New York.”

  “What did you do after you telephoned?” Phil Bentley asked.

  “After I telephoned,” General Goodwin repeated, “I took a taxicab and went to the Waldorf and got a room and took a bath, and do you know what I did that night?”

  “No,” Phil Bentley said.

  “Well, son,” the General said, “I didn’t do any of the things you might think I would. I strolled down to that shooting gallery on Sixth Avenue and knocked off all the God-damned pipes. It made me think of Muriel.”

  The General rose from his armchair. It was late in the afternoon.

  “Let’s break this up,” he said. “Come on, Flax, let’s go for a walk.”

  Phil Bentley looked at me and took off his glasses and polished them. School had let out when the officers had left the library.

  “Do you feel the way I do?” Phil Bentley asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I told him. “How do you feel?”

  “Exactly as though I were in the God-damned army,” Phil Bentley said. “I wish he didn’t confuse me. Sometimes he sounds like the Rover Boys in Camp. He can’t be as simple as he sounds.”

  “I wouldn’t say he was exactly a Rover Boy,” I said. “He’s a specialist.”

  “I know,” Phil Bentley said, “and he’s damn near perfect.”

  “How do you mean ‘perfect’?” I asked.

  “I suppose I mean the military mind,” Phil Bentley said. “I wish I didn’t anticipate every one of his reactions.” Phil Bentley was still groping for something human or individual, and the General’s life was not conducive to individuality. “I wish I could get it straight in my mind why in hell I should begin to like him.”

  Miss Fineholt closed her notebook.

  “He’s sort of cute,” she said. “He’s so clean-cut. It makes him sort of cute. I wish I had been there when he was shooting those pipes in New York.”

  XX

  Just a Little Dutch Girl—with Her Finger in the Dike

  Helen was reading upstairs in our dressing room and when I came in she asked me how everything was going.

  “Well,” I said, “he’s through World War I and he’s back in New York.”

  “Oh dear,” Helen said, “maybe they’ll still be here when we’re fighting World War III.”

  Helen’s problem as a hostess seemed to me utterly unimportant. I was still thinking of the Horatio Alger success story I had been following—young Mel Goodwin, the hundred-per-cent American boy. The fresh-faced shavetail who had prematurely left West Point, young Goodwin at the front, knocking out those machine guns, the serious Goodwin at Cannes, recovering from his wound—all combined to make a juvenile hero; but there was something more. There was character behind those exploits, but then again was it character or simply a lack of imagination, or had he done these things simply because he was not familiar with other choices? No outsider could ever understand the drives of the armed services, any more than he could comprehend those of a dedicated monastic priest.

  “Sid,” Helen said, “just how long are they going to stay?”

  Her question, of course, pulled me from my reverie.

  “It can’t be much longer,” I said. “Phil Bentley will cut this short. The trouble is, he’s interested. You can’t help being interested.”

  “Oh dear,” Helen said, “I hoped we could be alone over the week end.”

  “You won’t have to bother about anything,” I told her. “Mrs. Goodwin’s leaving for Washington tomorrow. I’ll take her into town myself, and you can leave the rest of them alone.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” Helen said. “Why do you have to go to town?”

  I had forgotten. I had been so involved with Melville Goodwin that I had not told her of my telephone conversation with Dottie Peale.

  “If I don’t have lunch with her,” I told Helen, “she’ll drop out here at any minute. You know Dottie. We can’t let Bentley see her with the General.”

  I did not mention my own concern about Gilbert Frary, because there was no immediate need to worry her.

  “What do you suppose she really wants to do about him?” Helen asked.

  This was something I could not possibly have answered.

  “Well, anyway,” she said, “… as long as she doesn’t do anything about you.”

  Women were always competitive. There was no reason at all why Dottie Peale and Helen should have liked each other, but Helen had always been very nice about her. All through that time she was nice about Dottie Peale, and the General, and me, and everything, and it must have demanded a lot of self-control.

  I was thinking next morning when Williams was putting Mrs. Goodwin’s suitcase into the Cadillac, just before we left for New York, that the Goodwin’s had learned all the techniques of farewell. They had been saying good-by to each other through two wars and in the interim between, and they had learned how to do this officially before an audience—half playfully, half seriously.

  “Good-by, Melly,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “Now don’t tell that Mr. Bentley anything you shouldn’t, and call me up tonight.”

  Melville Goodwin smiled at Helen and then at Mrs. Goodwin.

  “Don’t you worry any,” he said. “I’m only going to tell him how the CO caught us skin-swimming at Moultrie. I never told you about that one, did I, Sid?”

  “Oh, Melly,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “don’t be so silly. Anyway it was almost dark.”

  “Well, good-by, Muriel,” the General said, “and don’t seduce any of the Joint Chiefs before I get down. Remember, they’ve got a lot of private rooms in the Pentagon.”

  “What about you?” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I don’t know whether we ought to leave him alone here with Helen. Do you think we ought to, Sid?”

  It was all good clean fun and it showed that the Goodwins felt at home. When Mrs. Goodwin kissed Helen, she said she had never thought we could all get to be such friends so soon, and she said we must come to visit them just as soon as they found out where they were going to be.

  “You know, I can’t wait,” Mrs. Goodwin said when we started off together for the city, “for Mel and me to have a little place of our own somewhere after Mel retires. I can’t wait to be settled somewhere instead of always moving from one post to another. Army houses are all alike, you know, even the furniture.”

  I told her that somehow I could not think of the General settled in a little house on retired pay and puttering about in a garden.
r />   “But everybody does, you know,” she said. “Almost as soon as you get started in the service you begin to make retirement plans. That’s why I bought my Chinese things in Tientsin, as part of a sort of hope chest, and Melville bought a beautiful writing table once in Charleston, not that he ever writes much. Then there are all his books. It’s about time they stayed in one place, even though books don’t count against the freight allowance when you move—and I wish you could see the lace napkins we bought in the Philippines and the Meissen china Melville found in Germany.”

  Mrs. Goodwin was familiar with motor transport as well as with the art of making conversation. She took another washcloth from her handbag and began working on it. You never could tell, she said, what sort of car might be assigned to a general, and you would laugh, she said, about the way service wives went on about service cars. They were as watchful of quality in rolling stock as they were of their husbands’ rank, but personally she made it a point never to bicker over transportation. There was enough bickering without this on an army post. The only time she ever complained was when by some mistake Melville was given an old Chevrolet and a major on the post was assigned a Buick. Melville had been a major himself then, but Melville had the seniority. Mrs. Goodwin’s hook moved smoothly.