Melville Goodwin looked as though I had uttered a heresy and he stood up. I noticed that he did not have to use his hands to propel himself upward from the cushions of the sofa.
“Now, Sid,” he said, “now, Sid.” He spoke in the gentle and fatherly voice that he probably used on subordinates whom he really liked. “You’re bothered and tired, son, or you’d never have said a damn-fool thing like that.” Then his voice changed. There was a ring in it of absolute and beautiful certainty. “Just take it easy, son. Of course you’re not sick of what you’re doing, because basically you have guts. You’ve got a fine position and look at that lovely home of yours in Connecticut. When I think of you running around loose in the ETO, only a Public Relations major, and I see you now, it’s a real inspiration. Now listen to me.”
In spite of myself, his voice instilled in me a sense of guilt. I felt like a college football player being addressed by the coach in the locker room at the end of a ragged half.
“I’m going to tell you something, son,” he went on. “Do you remember when that mortar shell rolled you and me into the ditch in Normandy? When we got up and exchanged a few words afterwards, I knew I was talking to a man, even if you were only a ninety-day wonder from the Special Services. I’d have known it if you’d been an entertainer in the USO, and do you know what I said to Goochy afterwards? I don’t think I ever told you what I said to Goochy about Sid, did I, Dot?”
Dottie shook her head; the echo of Mel Goodwin’s voice held her silent.
“I said, ‘Goochy, make a note of that officer’s name and find out about him when we get the time. A lad like that ought to be in the line. It’s too damn bad to think of his crapping around somewhere in back.’”
Melville Goodwin waited, and I cleared my throat.
“It’s kind of you to tell me that, sir,” I said. “It means a lot, coming from you.”
And somehow it did mean a lot.
“The war’s over. Forget it, son,” he said. “You’ve got guts and you’ve got your directive too. Never neglect a directive. You’ve a lovely wife and a beautiful little girl, and you’re not going to let them down. Now go on home and leave this to Dot and me. Good night, son.”
The speech was ended, and Melville Goodwin strode over to the table and the bottles.
“Good night, dear,” Dottie said.
But I said one thing more to Mel Goodwin before I left.
“I thought you sounded rather discontented yourself tonight, sir.”
I should have been taking a general stock of myself, recalling the amount of money I had saved, and striving to remember Clause 28 in my contract instead of feeling a deep concern for Melville Goodwin. A part of that concern was undoubtedly a hang-over from the war. You had to be loyal in the army, and whether I liked it or not, I was loyal to Melville Goodwin, though perhaps I was not as loyal to him as to the idea he represented. Roughly speaking, I suppose I owed a debt to all the Melville Goodwins. They had been useful a short while ago and they might be needed again in an uncertain world. He was both an individual and a symbol and he had to do what I expected of him. He must not be a failure. I was one of the Goodwin crowd and right behind Melville A. Goodwin. I was sure that Mel Goodwin and Dottie Peale could not have anything in common that would last for any length of time. As long as there was some sort of sensible discretion and as long as he did not continue to quote Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and as long as he did not row into the sunset with Dottie Peale, he would get it out of his system. Yet there had been some other sort of understanding between them. I remembered Dottie’s telling him not to speak about it now and his saying that something had to give somewhere.… “That’s right, isn’t it, Dot?… Something’s got to give.…”
XXIX
Time to Meet the Gang
It was after eleven and the wind around Savin Hill was rising, blowing the brown leaves off the beech trees by the front door and sending them scuttling across the tarred drive with a sound not unlike the scampering of mice or squirrels across a deserted attic floor. I could tell that the weather was about to change, a phenomenon which I never noticed in New York. There were no stars and the house, like the weather, had an ominous and foreboding look, even though the bronze lanterns on either side of the front door were lighted, as they always were when I was late. They were old ship lanterns that Helen had bought at an auction, and I had not the least idea on what type of vessel they had belonged or what exact function they had performed at sea, but they never had looked as expatriated as they did that night.
I unlocked the door myself because Oscar usually went off duty, as he called it, at ten o’clock, and Helen always tried to be careful about Oscar’s hours. A single light was burning in the hall on a stand beneath the dim gold Chippendale mirror which Helen had also bought that summer. She had always said that antiques were an investment and something you could always sell if necessary—and it might be necessary. I began to think unpleasantly of the possibilities of a sale in case we should need ready cash, and my imagination was so acute that I could almost hear the footsteps of auctioneers and appraisers. There was no light in the living room or anywhere else downstairs, except in the hall, which made me believe that Helen must have gone to bed. I do not know why this should have made me feel hurt or disappointed except that she customarily waited up for me. When I heard quick footsteps in the upstairs hall, I was sure it must be Helen, but instead it was Miss Otts with Farouche.
As soon as Farouche saw me, he bounded quickly upstairs again without bothering to greet me, and I knew where he was going. He had a one-track mind.
“Oh, is it you, Mr. Skelton?” Miss Otts said.
Of course it was I, and it could not well have been anyone else, but I could not understand why Miss Otts was still dressed in her tweeds because she usually retired early.
“I thought it might be Mrs. Skelton,” she said.
“What?” I said. “Where is Mrs. Skelton?”
“Oh, she went out for the evening,” Miss Otts said, “but she said she would be back early. She left you a note, Mr. Skelton, on the hall table by the lamp.”
“Oh,” I said, “thank you, Miss Otts.”
The whole day had given me a sense of insecurity. When I picked up the envelope from the table, I could not help thinking of the “Dear John” notes in the ETO. I could not imagine where Helen could have possibly gone. The note was hastily scrawled in pencil.
“Darling,” I read, “the Brickleys asked us over for dinner and bridge. You know—the ones two miles down the road who always keep asking us and you never want to go. When I said you were out, they asked me anyway. I thought I ought to go to be polite, and Mr. Brickley is calling for me, so don’t worry, and he will bring me back. Farouche has been aired, but if you are in before I am, please look in on Camilla. The doctor says it’s only grippe, but she has some fever.”
I remembered that these people, the Brickleys, had come to call one Sunday in the summer, and I recalled the difficulties I had encountered in making conversation with them and that later they had asked us to a picnic. This had been kind of the Brickleys, and they had said that we must be neighborly. We had all been very cordial, but I could not remember much more about them—except that Mrs. Brickley raised dogs and that they had an apartment in town for the winter, although they always came to the country for week ends and whenever else they could. Also, I had thought that Mr. Brickley must have worked in town, successfully, judging from appearances. Nevertheless it was no time for the Brickleys to be complicating the picture, and I was very sorry that Helen had not stayed at home.
“How is Camilla?” I asked.
It was a question that other parents in other eras must have asked Miss Otts about other offspring, and she was ready for it.
“She’s doing very nicely,” Miss Otts said, “but she called to me a half an hour ago. She was restless when she found that you and Mrs. Skelton were both out, and she’s still awake. I was about to call Mrs. Skelton when you came in.”
I did not blame Camilla for being restless, alone with Miss Otts, because Miss Otts always made me restless, too. When I opened the door of Camilla’s room, the light on her bedside table was carefully shaded so that the room was dim, and the dollhouse I had given her and her childish books on the shelves and all her other small possessions were vague and shadowy. Camilla was in her blue flannel wrapper, lying with two pillows behind her and with a braid hanging over each shoulder. She looked like a miniature of Helen.
“We’ve been reading,” Miss Otts told me, “and we’ve had aspirin fifteen minutes ago. I think we will go to sleep in a few minutes now that Daddy has come home, won’t we, Camilla?”
“Yes,” Camilla said.
“Hello, dear,” I said, and her cheek felt very hot when I kissed her.
“And Daddy mustn’t stay too long,” Miss Otts said.
It was a general observation rather than a command or a request.
“No,” I said, “Daddy won’t stay too long.”
Camilla stared at me unblinkingly and did not answer until Miss Otts was gone.
“You sounded funny when you said that,” Camilla said.
I could never be sure how much anyone Camilla’s age saw or knew, and I seated myself carefully on the edge of her bed.
“Well, I felt funny,” I said. “Why don’t you close your eyes and try to go to sleep?”
“All right,” Camilla said, and I took away one of her pillows. It was almost the first time I could remember that I had ever done anything physically helpful for Camilla.
It had been quite a day, what with Miss Maynard at the office and Art Hertz and Dottie and Captain Robert Goodwin and General Melville Goodwin. It was difficult as always to move back to Camilla.
“Daddy?” Camilla asked.
“What?” I answered.
“You haven’t got a drink.”
“No,” I said, “that’s right, I haven’t.”
“Well,” she said, “that’s just as well.”
“You’d better go to sleep,” I said.
“Daddy?” she asked. “Where is that man?”
“What man?” I asked.
“That man who was a soldier.” I had not known that the General had made any impression on her. She had not seen much of him, but it must have been the uniform and the ribbons. Besides, perhaps the memory of Mel Goodwin was still around the house and might stay there, as memories of Washington and Lafayette and Lee had persisted in other places. After all, Mel Goodwin had slept here.
“Oh,” I said, “he’s being a soldier somewhere.”
“He was funny, wasn’t he?” Camilla said.
“Yes,” I said, “in some ways.”
“You always laughed when he was being funny,” Camilla said.
“That’s right,” I said, “he told a lot of jokes.”
“Daddy?” she said.
“What?” I answered.
“Let’s talk about something.”
“All right,” I said, “let’s talk.”
“About when you were a little boy.”
Camilla was the only person in the world who was interested in that era. I was glad to see that her eyes were half closed. I did not know whether it was the aspirin that was making her drowsy or security. Then I thought of my balloon again as I had thought of it during the afternoon.
“Well,” I said, “once when I was your age and I was staying with my uncle in Nashua, New Hampshire, he took me to a county fair.”
“What’s a county fair?” Camilla asked.
There were always gaps in experience when one dealt with childhood, and I had to improvise a definition of a county fair.
“There were all sorts of things there,” I told her, “—farm animals and flowers and prize jams and a lady with snakes. There was a man who could walk on a tightrope and another man who could hang by his toes and drink a bottle of ginger ale.”
I thought that this would interest her, but she let the phenomenon pass.
“And all the children there,” I told her, “had whips with whistles on the end of them or windmills on sticks or balloons. My uncle bought me a balloon.”
“What color was it?” Camilla asked.
“Blue,” I told her, and I could see the balloon again as clearly as though I were holding it. Its strange rubberoid smell was in my nostrils, and I could hear the complaining squeaking noise when my fingers gently stroked against it. “It was on a string, and then I forgot it for a moment and I let the string go. It was gone, up in the air, and I could only stand there watching it until it was out of sight or almost out of sight.”
“Where is it now?” Camilla asked, and I saw she was very sleepy.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but it must be somewhere. Everything that happens, everything you do, must be somewhere.”
I had not intended to be metaphysical, but it made no difference because Camilla was asleep, and I left her sleeping by the shaded lamp. Everything seemed in order now that Camilla was asleep.
Farouche was waiting outside Camilla’s door holding his rubber ring but he was not resentful when I paid no attention to him. He followed me downstairs patiently and hopefully, and there was still no sign of Helen. I had been to plenty of places without her in the last few years without feeling as solitary as I felt that night. It was, of course, the house. It had been too large for us in the first place and we should never have purchased it, especially with financial help from the broadcasting company. It was not reassuring to recall that Gilbert Frary had made all these arrangements and that I had paid no particular attention to them. I was not even sure who would own the place in the event of difficulties. Without Helen there, it was only a memorial to my own bad judgment. I did not turn on the lights in the living room because I did not wish to face its impact, but I did go into the library, which Helen had so carefully planned for me as a place in which to write.
It still resembled a nook in a stately home of England and there was no reason why it should not have, since most of the room had come from stately English homes. It was a gentleman’s library, and the trouble must have been that I was not enough of a gentleman for it. The chair in which Melville Goodwin had sat for so long was exactly where it had been. Actually the library had become more his room than mine, and the inflections of his voice still seemed to be in it. He had brought Hallowell to us there, and the woods at Château-Thierry, and North Africa and Bailey and the Philippines and himself. I could almost see that dripping fringe of woods on a July morning long ago and hear the machine guns chattering on the crest of the slope.
It was a quarter before twelve and there was still no sign of Helen. I took a book from one of the shelves without caring what it might be. It was entitled General Sir Cyril Bulwythe, K.C.B., A Memoir, and it had been printed in 1830 by someone on the Strand. I had never heard of General Sir Cyril nor did I particularly wish to know about him, but I did turn to the last chapter, and judging from the crisp resistance of the pages, this was more than anyone else had previously done. The memoir was written in the portentous style of the period connecting the eighteenth century with the Victorian era.
“The inactivity of retirement,” I read, “despite the acclaim that was his, and the doors which were gladly open to him upon his return from India, and the charm and social graces of Lady Bulwythe, ill befitted, alas, the talents of Sir Cyril, who could accept only with reluctance, and indeed frequently with acerbity, the routine of a retired army officer upon half pay. The last years of General Bulwythe, instead of being replete with peace, and adding lustre to the honours bestowed upon him, were, alas, tumultuous, and the bottle, which he had eschewed as a subaltern and had faced later with a moderation amazing in the India service, became, alas, increasingly his companion.…”
The front door opened, and I was very glad of it, although I did want at some future time to learn about the social graces of Lady Bulwythe. Helen had returned, and Mr. Brickley in a dinner coat was with her.
“Now please com
e in for just a minute,” I heard Helen saying in the front hall. “There’s Sidney’s hat and coat, and he’ll miss not seeing you. Sidney’s a dreadful night owl. He’s never in bed at this time.”
“Well,” I heard Mr. Brickley say, “I keep country hours in the country, but I’d love to stay for a minute or two.”
“Oh, Sid,” Helen called. “Where are you, Sid?”
She did not need to call me. I was already out of the library and craving human companionship in any form. Helen was wearing her Fortuny pleated dress, and if I had been Mr. Brickley I would have wanted to stay a few minutes myself, in spite of country hours.
“Darling,” Helen said, “you remember Mr. Brickley, don’t you?”
As I have said, I did not remember Mr. Brickley very well, and certainly not in a dinner coat with pearl studs. The last time I had seen him he had been wearing some sort of a ranching or lumberjack’s costume at his picnic, and the change from the country to the urban Mr. Brickley was dramatic. He was now like someone at the speakers’ table at one of those dinners I used to attend when I was a young reporter—and you always worked hard for such an assignment because of the free food. He was bald, pinkish and good-natured, past fifty, about the General’s age. Melville Goodwin must still have been on my mind, because I was comparing Mr. Brickley’s smooth face with the General’s chiseled features. Mr. Brickley had been leading a different life and one even more an enigma to me than that of Melville Goodwin.
“Of course I remember Mr. Brickley,” I said, “and thanks for having Helen over.”
“I did have a wonderful time,” Helen said. “I wish you could have been there, Sid.”
“It was just the usual crowd,” Mr. Brickley said, “but I will say we have a nice gang around here. You’ve got to take some time off and see the girls and boys.”
Helen had already turned on the lights in the living room.
“I always thought the Winlocks’ room was perfect,” Mr. Brickley said, “but this is even better. Your wife has a real decorative sense.”
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