Until I saw the evidence, the transientness of his life was something that I had accepted without understanding its significance. That shared house in Alexandria was as permanent to him as any other home, because he had never lived anywhere for long since he had left Hallowell. Melville Goodwin’s sense of home was as mobile as an army column. His home was where his orders took him, and he was perfectly content camping out with the Joyces.
“There certainly is a crowd downstairs,” he said, and he set down the suitcase. “You never can tell who’s coming when Muriel throws a party. Let’s go.”
“Just a minute first,” I said.
He seemed to have forgotten everything we had been through.
“Oh,” he said, “excuse me, Sid. I should have asked you. The bathroom’s down the hall, the second door on the right.”
“No, no,” I said, “never mind about the bathroom.” I could treat him almost brusquely now that he was in that tweed coat.
“Well, what the hell do you want then?” he asked.
“I know it isn’t any of my business, Mel,” I said, “but I can’t help being curious about what happened to you this afternoon.”
“Oh,” he said, “oh, that.”
“Yes,” I answered. “Are you going to take that job or aren’t you?”
He gave me his blankest, dullest stare.
“Listen, boy,” he said, “in the army when the boss puts you in a good spot, you don’t argue. I did tell him I was disappointed, for personal reasons, just a little disappointed.”
The anticlimax fitted perfectly with Melville Goodwin’s tweeds and slacks, but it also was a relief.
“So you’re not retiring?” I said.
Melville Goodwin still looked at me blankly.
“Listen, son,” he answered, “you don’t do things that way. You don’t show any immediate superior when you’re browned off. You pull the lines together first and get organized and do a little quiet cerebration. I’m waiting and thinking for the moment, son, and, you know, I’ve got quite a lot to think about.”
“Well, that’s fine,” I said. “I’ve been worrying about you.”
He glanced down at his crepe-soled oxfords and clasped his hands behind him.
“There’s one thing I always tell the boys,” he said. “Worrying never makes decisions. You have to wait and then everything comes to you all at once.”
“I don’t suppose it’s any of my business,” I said again, “but maybe I’d better not get wires crossed. Have you explained your reactions to Muriel?”
He rubbed his hand over the back of his head.
“God damn it,” he said, “I suppose you’ll think this is funny. I started to, but she’s so damned happy that I couldn’t. This whole party’s by way of turning into a celebration. Maybe I haven’t any guts when it comes to Muriel. She’s been through a lot and I don’t like to spoil it for her—at the moment. I can’t seem to do it this evening, Sid. God damn it, this is what always happens when you get mixed up with women. Let’s go downstairs and get a drink.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward the stairs, and his thoughts were off on another tangent. “I’ve got a case of the smoothest Scotch you ever tasted, and I bet you could never guess who gave it to me. Lieutenant General Merriwell.”
“You mean the son of a bitch?” I said.
He first looked shocked and then amused.
“That’s right,” he said. “I never knew that guy could loosen up like that. He’s downstairs drinking some of it now. Muriel asked him over.”
It should have been the end of a perfect day, but no one could ever evaluate the reasons for another’s discontent. He belonged with that crowd downstairs. He would have been a fish out of water anywhere else, and I had to tell him so—no matter what the repercussion. The time had come when it was impossible to evade things by polite deferment and intentional blindness, but I had never foreseen that I would tell Melville Goodwin off on the second floor of a jerry-built house in Alexandria.
“Wait a minute,” I said, “wait a minute, Mel,” and his hand dropped from my shoulder.
“What the hell’s the matter now?” he asked.
“Mel,” I said, “don’t you know you belong right here, you Goddamned fool? If you try to fit anywhere else, you’ll have two strikes against you just as you have right now in those clothes.”
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “What’s the matter with my clothes?”
“They’re grotesque,” I said.
“Now, Sid,” he said, “let’s get this straight. What’s wrong with you tonight?”
He was reaching for the center of the situation, and perhaps there was more wrong with me than there was with him, because I did not have his capacity for adjustment.
“What do you think you’ll look like,” I asked, “if you leave this for Dottie Peale?”
“Sid,” he said, “what makes you think I’m going to?”
“Because I’ve been watching you,” I said. “You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, think some more,” I said. “Think what you have and what you’ll lose.”
The moment that followed was one of those uncertain beats of time. Neither of us took his eyes from the other.
“You see a hell of a lot more than you ought to, boy,” he said.
“You’re pretty obvious sometimes,” I answered.
Melville Goodwin drew a deep breath.
“Boy, it’s funny,” he said. “I ought to be mad as hell at you.” Suddenly he clenched his fist, moved his hand upward slowly and tapped me gently on the chest. “There’s just one thing I want straight from now on out. I don’t need any more advice, son. You understand?”
“You won’t get any more,” I said, and we stood facing each other for another moment.
“Everyone has to run things for himself, boy, in the final analysis. You understand?”
“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”
“It’s funny I don’t get mad at you,” he said. “I would, except you mean well.”
“That’s right,” I said, “I mean well.”
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go downstairs and get a drink.”
At least we knew where we were, and there was no further need for double talk. General Gooch undoubtedly knew, too, that it was Dottie Peale who had tipped the scales. The word had gone around already about that little skirt in New York. Melville Goodwin must certainly have realized that the shadow of scandal was right behind him. I was pleased with myself that I had again had the intestinal fortitude to bring up the subject of Dottie Peale.
“Just one thing more,” I said, and I paused at the head of the stairs.
“Sid,” he said, “I’m pretty well browned off right now.”
“Use your imagination,” I said. “Try to think how you’d look with Dottie Peale in New York.”
“I could find a good civilian job,” he said.
“Yes,” I told him, “Dottie can find you one all right.”
“We could get a ranch somewhere,” he said. “We could travel.”
“Yes,” I said, “and how would you look carrying the bags?”
Then I knew I had gone too far. I had trampled on the edges of his dream. I had desecrated something that he had to keep inviolate. His face had grown brick-red and his voice shook.
“Come on,” he said, “get going before I kick you in the pants downstairs.”
“Just see you don’t kick yourself downstairs,” I said.
Someone was beginning to play the piano, and he grasped my arm just above the elbow.
“Wait a minute,” he said. He had controlled his face and voice, and he shook his head slowly. “I told you”—and his voice was very restrained—“I told you to stop riding me. Don’t do it again, son.… Don’t you see there are some things I can’t help?”
“Yes,” I said, “I see.”
“Then sha
ke hands,” he said. “Damn it, you and I didn’t make this world.… Come on.”
As General Gooch had said that afternoon, when Goodwin started going, he always kept on going.
“Bud,” he called as we were going downstairs, “come here, I want you to meet Sid Skelton, and call to Joe to fix him up a steak—rare.” We were back at the party, back from our rough trip together, and it was quite a party—almost a celebration.
As you grew in experience, and grew to understand people and their motives, you also developed a sense of discrimination and a comprehension of your own tastes and limitations. A few years previously I might have been happy with all that group, because I would not have known any better. Now I had lived too long, and I had become too specialized. I was like a child at a strange party. They were all as polite to me as they would have been to a strange child, but I was not in the service and I possessed none of the drives and worries connected with it. I knew none of its gossip and only a few of its anecdotes and I could not draw on my days at the Point or any gallery of mutual acquaintance. A few years before after a few drinks my separateness would not have disturbed me, but that evening I was an insoluble element.
This did not mean for an instant that I did not like the crowd. I knew enough about them to understand that they were more valuable by far to the world than people like Art Hertz or Gilbert Frary or most of the newspaper crowd and the writers I played around with. I both admired and envied them. I envied their security, their own specialized sort of freedom, and the firm bonds of their companionship. I might have been one of them if I had shared their years of apprenticeship and indoctrination, but now it was too late. They were all polite to me and cordial because I was a friend of the Goodwins, but I floundered there like a fish out of water.
“Bud,” Mel Goodwin was saying again, “I want you to meet Sid Skelton. Get him a Scotch, Bud, will you? Where’s Mrs. Merriwell? I’d better skip around and see if she’s taken care of. Take Sid to find Enid and Muriel, will you, Bud? Or else we’ll both catch hell. Hasn’t Goochy set up those bridge tables on the sun porch?”
Colonel Joyce shook hands with me warmly, and obviously he had heard all about Paris and Savin Hill. He, too, was in civilian clothes. He was one of those round, jolly officers who had put on weight because of desk work, and he had a quick smile that could be wiped off promptly. He was saying it was certainly a pleasure to meet me. Any friend of Mel Goodwin’s was a friend of his, right by regulations. The Goodwins were his and Enid’s oldest, closest friends, and no one was as good as the Goodwins, and wasn’t it fine about Mel, because I’d heard the news of course. No one deserved the recognition as much as Mel, and it was about time, just between us both, that somebody recognized Mel and his record. There was only one aspect of the situation that made him sad. Now that Mel was all set in Washington, the Goodwins would have to move away into a bigger place. He really didn’t know what he and Enid would do without them, and Enid and Muriel were just like sisters, and Charley was just like a kid of his own.
“Well,” he said, “we’d better find the girls. They’ll either be in the kitchen or outside at the grill.”
We found Enid Joyce first, on our way across the sun porch. There were streaks of gray in her dark hair, but there was no age at all in her eyes. Once she must have been as pretty as Muriel had been, and she was still the life of the party.
“Why, Sid Skelton,” she said. “Excuse me, I have to think of you as Sid, Mr. Skelton. Muriel still talks about how sweet you were to her and Mel in Connecticut.… Bud, dear, see if you can’t get some ice, and see if you can’t round up a detail to get dishes into the kitchen before people begin stepping on them.… There’s too much rank here tonight. Muriel and I should have asked more young officers and their wives. The kids can always be so useful.… Mel says you were in the service, so I guess you don’t mind service parties.”
“No,” I said, “I always like them very much.”
“You see us all being very informal,” she said, “and very natural. We’re all old friends here, at least almost everybody. Muriel wanted to ask some of the navy, because of the Joint Chiefs, but I said let’s leave the navy out of it for once and avoid the strain. Isn’t it wonderful about Mel?”
“It sounds fine,” I said.
“Dear Muriel,” she said. “I was so afraid Muriel would have to go to Texas or somewhere, and now she can settle down and uncrate some of that lovely furniture of hers that’s been in the warehouse, and make a home for Mel and the boys. Dear Muriel. Mel never tells about anything until after it’s happened. Thank goodness Bud has never been that way, except about all the Intelligence things he does, of course. Bud called up as soon as he heard. Mel was too busy, I suppose, and I don’t believe he ever knew how anxious Muriel was. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.”
To Melville Goodwin, Plans meant the end of the good life, and to Muriel, it was the ultimate triumph. Perhaps always there was a cleavage between men and women. No woman could ever know the lure of a command. She could only know academically the beauty of well-executed maneuver.
The steps from the sun porch descended onto a small lawn bright under a floodlight that might have been borrowed from some nearby installation. It was not unpleasantly cool outside, and some of the women in evening cloaks, and some of the men without them stood around the dying embers of the charcoal grill.
“Do you remember the Rossiters’ parties at Shafter?” someone was saying. Everybody except me seemed to remember, but this did not matter, because I saw Muriel Goodwin coming toward me, completely in command and with a look of fulfillment.
“Sid,” she said, “this makes everything perfect.”
There were so many people she wanted me to meet, she said, and she was so sorry that Helen was not with me, but there would be another time—and before I met anyone, she was going to be selfish and talk to me for just a minute. She drew me away to the edge of the light so that we stood apart from the guests on the lawn.
“Have you seen Mel?” she asked. “It’s the first time in years that Mel’s got anything he deserves. I’ve been afraid for weeks that they were just going to shove us away somewhere and forget us, and I can’t tell you how many people were after this place in Plans.… Well, I’m the one who ought to know.” She laughed very happily. “A wife can be useful sometimes, and Mel never will put himself forward.… I’ve hardly had a chance to say a word to him. It’s queer the way he acts.”
“How does he act?” I asked.
“He’s been going around all evening like someone at a surprise party. I don’t think he’s really had time to think what this is going to mean to us. He doesn’t seem to understand that at last we’re really going to be able to settle down.” She lowered her voice. “He’s right on his way to almost anything there is and he doesn’t know it.”
I nodded but I did not answer. I could not say anything to spoil it for her.
“He’s been so restless,” she said, “and he’s been so repressed lately. He’s never let himself unwind since he got back from Germany. It’s been so hard wondering how I could help him.”
It was difficult to be loyal.
“He still seems pretty restless.” That was all I was able to say and the only way I could put it.
“I know,” she said. “They all are at loose ends when they come back from overseas. It takes a little while to get settled.… I’m going to start house-hunting, and then Mel will have time to work on his golf. All he needs is to get back into a routine.”
She sounded very much like Helen on the subject of Connecticut. “It’s pretty hard to settle down,” I said.
“It will be all right—now things are fixed,” she answered. “He never can believe that he has a future. I won’t have to sit and wait any more and wonder where he is. You don’t know what waiting and watching means, because you’re a man.”
He was the hunter home from the hill with all his field service behind him, absolutely safe.
“And now y
ou’ll have to meet everyone,” she said. “Do you really have to leave tonight? You could sleep in Mel’s dressing room just as well as not.”
Hardly anyone in the house was below the rank of colonel. I saw a general doing card tricks, and two other generals, surrounded by officers’ wives, exhibiting Roman wrestling.
“That’s ‘Skid’ Gabriel playing the piano,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “It’s just as though we were back at Schofield.”
Again I thought of Muriel’s theory about music and the army. The officer was only a major.
Melville Goodwin had already gathered a group in the living room and they had been singing “Smiles” and “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl” and other songs of World War I. Melville was standing beside the piano, and General Gooch in a pepper-and-salt suit stood on one side of him, and General Snip Lewis in a dinner coat was on the other side. Suddenly, I heard his voice, entirely off key, but booming with deep fervor, “Bless ’em all, great and small.” One of the beauties of that song of the Pacific was a secret meaning you could put into it, which acted as a balm to lacerated feelings.
“And now I want you to meet General Merriwell,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “He’s Mel’s new chief, you know.”
General Merriwell was the only three-star general present and he, also, wore a dinner coat. He stood alone, three paces behind the crowd at the piano, not singing but listening tolerantly, like someone who had no ear for music or too few drinks.
“Muriel, my dear,” he said, “this is a delightful party. Do you remember the night years ago when Gertrude and I dined with you? Where was it?”
“Wasn’t it at that little place of ours at Kahala?” Muriel Goodwin asked.
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