There was no way of glossing it over, although Helen was always saying that men always stuck together. I could only try to make her think kindly of Melville Goodwin, when there was little reason why she should.
“How much has he told you,” I asked, “about all this?”
“Why, he’s never told me anything,” she said. “Poor Mel, he’s only getting ready to tell me, and if you want to know, I’m pretty tired of waiting.”
I was relieved to see that Helen was standing up.
“I think I ought to leave you alone here,” Helen said. “Don’t you really think so?”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I’m the only one who doesn’t know all about Mel. Please don’t go.”
I watched Helen sit down again, and once again, as they put it in Muriel Goodwin’s service, I was carrying the ball.
“Of course,” I began, “in a place like the ETO …” but Muriel Goodwin stopped me.
“Oh, Sidney,” she said, “of course I know what men do in a war theater. Of course I know he met her in Paris, and of course I know that her name is Mrs. Peale, and that she’s living on Seventy-second Street in New York, and of course I know she’s pretty. Mel left her picture in his suitcase—Mel, who always talks about security!”
She laughed in a kindly way that included me in the little joke, but I did not feel like laughing.
“Don’t you think it would be easier,” I asked her, “if you told me everything else you know, and then we could start from there?”
She nodded, and I could think of her again as young Mrs. Melville Goodwin.
“I knew you’d be loyal to him,” she said, “but please don’t be like the rest of them and tell me it’s a passing phase. I haven’t lived all my life with plaster saints”—when I heard that expression, it made me think of Goochy—“in case you haven’t noticed, Sidney, there is quite a little sex in the army. There are unattached officers who are feeling lonely, and there are all the marriages that don’t seem to work.… When I was in Manila and Mel was out on maneuvers, there was someone who wanted me to leave Mel.… I can understand what Mel’s been going through. I’m only mentioning it to show that I know a few things, Sidney. Men are simple when they fall in love and lose their sense of proportion, and Mel isn’t built for it. There’s the telephone bill with the New York calls and those trips to New York, and everyone covering up—even Enid.… He’s like a little boy in some ways.… He’s even talked to me about her.”
“I thought you said he hadn’t,” I told her.
“Oh, not in that way,” she answered, “only subtly—a Mrs. Peale in New York, whom he had met in Paris, and I must meet her, because he would like to know what I thought of her. We ought to meet more outside people—it sounds like Mel, doesn’t it? It sounds like any man.” There was hardly any bitterness, and she was smiling. “Any woman can tell when her man’s infatuated, but what I want to know is … does Mel really love her, Sidney?… Because if he does … he’d better have her. If he wants her, I don’t want him.” She tossed the washcloth down, and perhaps General Goodwin was crocheted out.
I felt as though I had been thrown hard against the wall of her composure, and I was very glad I was not Melville Goodwin. I was also glad that I did not make my living at the bar, but it was my turn now to do what I could for Mel. I tried to sound measured and confident, and as wise as Foghorn Grimshaw, but it was a very sour attempt.
“Before you make up your mind,” I began, “you’d better let me tell you what I can about Mel and Dottie Peale.” I cleared my throat as if I were about to deliver a formal address. “I met him in Normandy when I was a PRO. I had never thought much of the brass, but I wish you could have seen him there. If you had, you might not be thinking of him along the lines you are thinking now.” I could hear my sincerest radio voice, but I was not satisfied with it. “Well, I was a PRO …”
Next I was on the plane again with all those VIPs and Dottie Peale. Then we were in Paris listening to that confidential lecture on the Battle of the Bulge, with the unnecessary guards outside the door.
“Oh dear, they always say that, don’t they?” Mrs. Goodwin was saying. “‘Git thar fustest with the mostest men.’”
We were in the Ritz again in that alien sitting room, with the pressed duck and the champagne; and Melville Goodwin, warmed by his environment, was the great captain who understood the fog of battle. I was trying to explain Dottie Peale again, as I had often endeavored to explain her to Helen. Dottie always knew how to make men comfortable in the same degree that she made women uncomfortable. There was wistful appeal to her restiveness and her discontent, especially in the neighborhood of a war, where no one could be content. It was inevitable that Melville Goodwin should have been attracted by her. Plenty of other people had sought for a love object in a war zone.
I was doing my best for Melville Goodwin, but neither Helen nor Muriel showed sympathy or enthusiasm. I was only saying that Paris was a long way from home, and behavior was not to be measured according to peacetime standards.
“And besides,” I said, “without any reflection on him—as you said yourself—he’s a pretty simple guy along those lines.”
It was merely, I was saying, what one might call an off moment of infatuation. Dottie would never have given him further thought if it had not been for that incident with the Russian soldier in Berlin. Muriel Goodwin frowned, but she picked up her work again, which gave me a note of hope.
“I thought everything would be the way it always was, when I saw him at the airport,” she said.
“It would have been,” I told her, “if she hadn’t called him up. You can’t blame it all on him. She’s a very persistent girl.”
She was rolling up the washcloth, and I braced myself. She put it in her bag and jerked the mouth of the bag together.
“I know,” she said quietly. “… Well, that’s all there is, isn’t it?… Helen, I wonder if you have a sleeping pill? I hate small women who think they’re perfect, but it’s a little hard to take, after all this time. I don’t want to be alone with this all night.”
I wished I were back in the ETO again, in a world without women, and I wished that Melville Goodwin had died, as he very well might have and should have, in North Africa or Salerno or somewhere along the Rhine.
“You may have a right to be hard on him,” I said, “but I don’t think he meant this to go so far. He only went overboard after he was assigned to Plans. He wanted to get away from the whole thing.”
“Of course I knew he wouldn’t like Plans,” she went on. “He never knows what’s good for him.”
“He thinks you had something to do with it,” I said.
That technical reference to the army appeared to disturb her more than anything else I had said. She seemed to be more emotionally involved with Plans than she was with Melville Goodwin.
“Of course I had something to do with it,” she said. “I’ve always had to do that sort of thinking for him. He has to be in Plans.”
Again I began to feel sympathetic for Melville Goodwin, and suddenly I shared some of his exasperation. If I had not, I would never have spoken so bluntly.
“Well,” I said, “men like to lead lives of their own sometimes, or they like to be allowed to think they do. Now take me. I don’t always like what’s arranged for me either—but I haven’t Goodwin’s guts.” I wished that Helen were not there, and I spoke more rapidly. “You can’t always blame men when something gets to be too much.”
She did not answer, and I went on right down the line. “Besides, Muriel, there’s something you ought to know.… Whenever Dottie gets something, she wants something else. She and Mel haven’t much in common, you know, and I’ve an idea she’s losing interest in him already.”
I felt in my pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but I could not find one, so I got up and walked across the room looking for one.
“In fact, she’s told me so,” I added.
Dottie Peale was a very clever
girl. She could usually get her way in anything. I had given her message to Muriel.
“There are cigarettes on the table beside you, Sidney,” Helen said, “not over there, and Mrs. Goodwin—I mean Muriel—might like a cigarette.”
“Thank you,” Muriel Goodwin said, and she took a white jade holder from her workbag. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Melville gave it to me when we were in Manila.… So she’s losing interest.… Why should she?”
All at once I thought of the time she had handed Melville Goodwin the bayonet at the fairgrounds, and I could almost hear the militia colonel shouting Hooray for Company C.
“That’s almost too much, isn’t it? That really makes me angry.”
She reached in her workbag and pulled out the washcloth. “I know sometimes Mel is—well, heavy, and sometimes he’s terribly intense, and if you hear his stories again and again—but she can’t have heard them so often. Poor Mel, he’s always a problem whenever he’s on a staff.”
Muriel Goodwin dropped her crocheting abruptly and stood up. “What time is it?” she asked.
It was after eleven o’clock. We had been working for quite a while on Melville Goodwin.
“If I could use the telephone,” she said, “I’d better call up Washington. Ellen Grimshaw might still be up, and I can fly down in the morning.”
I went with her to the library to turn on the lights.
“I want to speak to Washington, D. C.,” she was saying when I left her. “The number is Decatur …” and then she was spelling it, “D-e-c-a-t-u-r …”
It occurred to me that it was a pity that the late Admiral Decatur was navy and not army.
Helen was standing by the dying embers of the fireplace. Her dark hair, her profile and her velvet housecoat gave her the sentimental look of a Burne-Jones or a Rossetti, and I was sure that her whole pose was planned.
“Helen,” I said, “please don’t start striking attitudes.”
“Sidney,” Helen said, “why did you say that in front of her?”
“Say what in front of her?” I asked.
“About your wanting to lead your own life sometimes—right in front of her.”
“I said men like to be allowed to think they do,” I told her, “and you allow me to think I do—usually. You even make me want to do what you want—usually.”
“You didn’t say that last part,” Helen said. “Sidney, if you want, we can move. You know I’m always willing to do anything you want.”
“You know damned well I don’t want to move,” I said.
At least the air was clearer, and she did not look so aggressively like a Rossetti.
“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “You’re not Mrs. Goodwin, and I’m not Melville Goodwin. Let’s just be Mr. and Mrs. Winlock. I’m happier being Winlocks.”
“I wish you’d forget about the Winlocks,” she said.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll forget about them.”
We stood there waiting. Whether we wanted or not, we were in that constrained position of a host and hostess waiting for their guest to finish her call.
“Sidney?” Helen said.
“Yes?” I said.
“Did you notice? She dropped her washcloth on the floor. Please pick it up and put it on the sofa beside her bag.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she wouldn’t like us to know she forgot it.” I picked up the washcloth guiltily and quickly. “She’s been trying so hard to be a brave little woman.”
“She’s the wife of a soldier,” I said.
“Don’t make fun of her,” Helen said. “You know it’s been terrible, because nothing ever broke.”
“Maybe nothing in her ever has broken,” I said. “Maybe nothing in her ever will.”
“Sidney,” she asked, “do you think she cares about him?”
“Yes,” I said, “she cares for what he is.”
“You know that isn’t what I mean,” she said. “If you really love someone, it doesn’t matter what he is.”
“Of course she loves him,” I said, “but love isn’t a constant quality. It has its ups and downs like anything else, and it varies all the time.”
Helen shook her head.
“It doesn’t with a woman,” she answered. “It never does.”
“Well, it does with a man,” I said.
“Well, I love you,” Helen said, “and I don’t care what you are.”
I cared very much, but no one else should have heard us discuss it, especially Muriel Goodwin, and there she was, in the doorway, and I could not tell how long she had been standing there or how much she might have heard—but I knew as soon as she spoke.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I love him, and it is something that doesn’t change, even if you think it does.”
She had assumed her best reviewing-stand attitude. I remember her blue-gray hair and her black broadcloth suit and even her plump stocky figure, but again I was not conscious of age. There was absolutely nothing to say.
“I wish it weren’t so late,” she said. Her voice was perfectly steady, but her shoulders began to shake. “I ought to be back in Washington. Please don’t say that I don’t love him,” and then she sobbed, “… She must be a damn fool.”
It was no place for a man. Muriel Goodwin must have hated to have me see her with all defenses down, and she pulled herself together. “Sidney,” she said, “will you give me my bag please? It’s where I left it on the sofa.”
I was glad that Helen had told me to pick up the washcloth. Muriel Goodwin was looking for a handkerchief, of course, but instead she found the washcloth.
“I never thought I’d cry into this,” she said. “I’m sorry, I always hate crying women. Good night, Sidney.”
“Let me go up with you,” Helen said. “Don’t worry about anything now. We can fix everything in the morning.”
“Good night, Muriel,” I said. “If you need anything, ask Helen, won’t you?”
But she did not need anything any longer. She was the General’s wife again and I was the young officer on the post, with all the proper loyalties.
“Of course Mel will have to be sent somewhere,” she said. “I’m glad I reached Ellen Grimshaw. Mel mustn’t ever know. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And, Sidney …”
“Yes?” I said.
“Will you call about a plane reservation, please … and it would be nice if I had an alarm clock.”
When I was alone, I went into the pantry and poured myself a drink and brought it back into the living room. The women had gone upstairs—my wife and Melville Goodwin’s—and in spite of the silence that surrounded me, I did not seem to be entirely by myself. Melville Goodwin seemed to be there with me, and it was not an unpleasant illusion either. I could almost think of myself saying respectfully:
“Sir, won’t you have one, too?”
Wherever he was, I was sure that he needed one. His shadow was there with me, but his course had been set. We had been through a lot together, but now it was over. I never liked to drink alone, but I certainly needed a drink.
“Well,” I said aloud in that quiet room, “here’s looking at you, Mel.”
We had been through a lot together, although it was hard to define exactly where our lives had touched. It all was a sort of coincidence to which one grew accustomed in the war. In those unnatural days, the duty, as the navy put it, was forever throwing you into contact with some stranger with whom you were obliged to face some uncertainty and whose character you came to know from every angle. Then there would be new orders. You would pack up and say good-by and move, and in spite of all the closeness and enforced congeniality, you knew that you would never see George, or whoever it was, again. You would never see the sergeant again who took you up to the lines or the pilot who flew you over the ocean and with whom you spent an evening drinking bourbon at Prestwick. You would never see that fresh-faced young lieutenant who had come from the University
of Iowa. You would never again, so help you, see that Regular Army bastard, Colonel So-and-so, who made things hot for you in Paris, and you would never see the British major on liaison who was on the trip with you to Cairo. It was always good-by to all that, for none of those people belonged in a peacetime setup, and it was the same with Melville Goodwin. He, too, was a throwback from the war, and he had already become a shadow. He was someone who would never be real again unless there was another war.
This was what I thought, but I had forgotten about the photographs, those signed documents that sealed friendships in the service, and I had forgotten, too, that service friendships were less casual than friendships in an ordinary life. For in the service, friendship took the place of material possession, and I had forgotten service loyalty. I should have known that Melville Goodwin was someone who would never say good-by.
When Muriel Goodwin left at six-thirty the next morning, after kissing Helen, she kissed me also, hastily but efficiently. It was a gesture of affection, but she was also obeying a warmhearted convention of service life. She was indicating that I was in the circle of the close friends of the General. It was the formal embrace used by women in America, as it was used by Latin males in other regions, and she would have kissed Goochy in an identical manner, if he were leaving for parts unknown. There was also a sense of finality to her kiss—like an honorable discharge from the service, accompanied by one of those gallant letters of commendation that were so freely passed around in Washington after V-J Day.
I had asked her, I remember, whether she did not want me to go with her and see her aboard her plane, but she would not hear of this. It would have made her, she said, feel too much like a dear old lady, and Helen and I had done too much for her already, more than we would ever know, and besides, she only had a light overnight bag, if she could not find a porter.
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