So Little Time

by John P. Marquand

  “Thank you, sir,” Jeffrey said when the old man handed him a glass.

  “Well,” Uncle Judson said, and sipped his sherry, “well—”

  It seemed to Jeffrey that there was nothing much more to say. Through an open window he could hear the metallic ring of a rake on the driveway.

  “The place is looking very well, sir,” Jeffrey said.

  “They’re busy now,” Uncle Judson answered. “Never leave anything to be done in the spring that can possibly be done in the autumn.”

  “It’s always one long fight,” Jeffrey said, “to keep a garden going.”

  “You think so?” Uncle Judson asked. “Not if one is systematic. It’s a matter of routine.”

  “I don’t suppose I’m systematic,” Jeffrey said.

  “No,” Uncle Judson answered, “I suppose you’re not. Let me see, I haven’t seen you for some time.”

  “No,” Jeffrey answered, “not for quite a while.”

  “I hope,” Uncle Judson said, “that everything has been going well with you. Have Madge and the children been well?”

  “Yes, they’ve been all right, thanks,” Jeffrey said.

  “Jim is quite a boy,” Uncle Judson said, “but it always strikes me queer—he looks like you.”

  “Well,” Jeffrey said, “of course he can’t help that.”

  “Let me see,” Uncle Judson said, “you were an aviator in the last war, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jeffrey answered.

  “They seem to be driving the British back,” Uncle Judson said, “in the air, I mean.”

  “That’s true, the forward fields are too hot for the fighters now,” Jeffrey answered.

  “I see that they’ve bombed St. Paul’s,” Uncle Judson said.

  “Yes,” Jeffrey answered, “London’s getting it.”

  “I’m glad that I won’t have to see it later.” The old man waved to the decanter. “Another glass of sherry?”

  “No, thank you, sir,” Jeffrey said.

  The old man clasped his hands behind his back.

  “I wonder what’s keeping Madgie,” he said. “Well, we must always wait as patiently as we can for the ladies. This morning—do you know what I’ve been thinking?”

  “No, sir,” Jeffrey answered.

  “I’ve been thinking that I’m very pleased to be my age with the way the world’s been going.”

  As far as Jeffrey could recall in all their meetings, that was the only remark that old Judson Mapes had ever made to him that was intentionally informal.

  “I think you’re right, sir,” Jeffrey said, “but my age is the worst. Right now I’d rather be old or young.”

  Uncle Judson clasped his hands behind his back. His pale blue eyes met Jeffrey’s squarely.

  “Everything is changing—for the worse,” he said, “for the worse. The lavatory’s right here—are you sure you don’t want to wash your hands?”

  “Thanks, quite sure,” Jeffrey said.

  “Well,” Uncle Judson said, “here comes Madge. Madge is like her mother. She always kept us waiting, but her Aunt Clara was punctual. Madge, will you lead the way?”

  Jeffrey had always heard that one became set in one’s opinions as time went on, but he could never see this working in himself. It seemed to him that his attitude toward people whom he had known for long was always undergoing alterations, so that personal relationships were nearly as impermanent as real estate values and liking kept changing to indifference and dislike merged into tolerance simply because of living. Nevertheless, he had always been sure that his attitude toward Madge’s uncle would never undergo much change. He would always call him “Mr. Mapes” rather than “Uncle Judson,” but now as they entered the dining room, he knew that they shared the experience of observing the passing of time.

  Lizzie, assisted by another maid about her age, was waiting on the table. The ceiling of the room was high. The walls were done in a greenish artificial leather. The curtains which framed the tall windows were heavy blackish-green velvet bordered by tarnished gold tapes. The table was round, made of black fumed oak like the sideboard, and its legs had the same heavy ornate carving. The chairs were black oak too, upholstered in dark green leather that was held in place by elaborate brass-capped tacks. Lizzie was removing the place plates, which were gold-embossed and dark purple, each with a different flower in its center. The silver was a variation of the Crown pattern, a heavy elaborate contortion of motifs such as you saw sold by weight in those strange New York shops that collected bric-a-brac from liquidating estates. Lizzie was bringing in the clear pale consommé, and Mr. Mapes was picking up his spoon. There was nothing in that room that anyone in his right senses would want any more.

  “You never come to see us, Uncle Judson,” he heard Madge saying.

  “I do not like New York now,” he said, “and I am very busy here.”

  There was no way at all of telling what went on behind that pale façade. Jeffrey had never thought of him except as a pompous old stuffed shirt and a snob, but now he felt a faint glow of admiration for him. He was like a ship sinking with its guns still firing.

  “You ought to see more people, Uncle Judson,” Jeffrey heard Madge saying, and he wondered how her Uncle Judson liked it when she tried to run his life.

  “There is no one I wish to see,” Uncle Judson said. “No one lives here any longer.”

  “But you must be lonely, Uncle Judson.”

  “Lonely?” he answered. “No, not lonely.”

  He was running his own show, and perhaps that was all that anyone could do. Jeffrey was wondering what he would be like himself if he reached that age, and he hoped he would not reach it. The hothouse grapes with their silver scissors had scarcely been passed before the old man was pushing back his chair.

  “It is time for my nap,” he said, “if you’ll excuse me. Shall I find you here when I come down?”

  Jeffrey thought that Madge was going to say they would wait, and if she had, he was not sure that he could have stood it.

  “I wish we could wait,” Madge said, “but we can’t. We’re driving to Connecticut.”

  “Then good-by,” Uncle Judson said. “It was kind of you to come. Gregory has put some chrysanthemums in your car.” His pale eyes met Jeffrey’s for a moment. “It was kind of you to come. There are cigars on my desk in the library, and the door to the right—in case you want to wash your hands.”

  The car now had that same clean acrid smell of chrysanthemums.

  “Darling,” Madge said, “thanks for going. I know it was an awful beating for you.”

  “Oh,” Jeffrey said, “it wasn’t bad.”

  “Well, it wasn’t fun,” Madge said.

  “It wasn’t fun,” Jeffrey answered, “but he puts on quite a show.”

  “Jeffrey,” Madge said, “drive a little faster, please let’s hurry.”

  He knew what she wanted, because he wanted the same thing. Now that it was over, she wanted to get away. She wanted to get away from the Sound and the Post Road and memory, and she thought that she could do it by driving faster.

  “Jeffrey,” she said, “it’s such a clear day, isn’t it?” And then he saw that she was crying, but there was nothing that anyone could do about it.

  “I’ll be all right in a minute,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Jeffrey answered, “go ahead and cry.”

  “I’m all right now,” she said, “and Jeff, all week end we’ll have fun.”

  He was not so sure of that. They would be moving up the Merritt Parkway to adjust themselves to something else, and at any rate he had never liked the word. He supposed it was an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable—“fun.”

  9

  And Fred Too, of Course

  “It seems ages since I’ve seen Beckie,” Madge said. “I’ll be awfully glad to see her.”

  Beckie, as Madge always said, was her oldest, dearest friend. Their families had both owned houses on Willow Road, for one thing, a
nd then they had both gone to Farmington for years, and years, and years. Madge always said that Beckie was the most intelligent girl she knew—that was one of Madge’s favorite words, “intelligent,” and it always brought a picture to Jeffrey’s mind of a bright little dog walking on its hind legs and wearing a soldier cap. Madge was always sure that Jeffrey would like to see Beckie because Beckie was so intelligent about books. Each Sunday she saved the New York Times Book Review so that she could read it bit by bit through the week and could form her own judgment as to what was really worth while. She did not want to have books picked out for her beforehand by anyone like Henry Canby and his crowd at the Book-of-the-Month Club. Beckie was not sure, for instance, that she agreed entirely with Dr. Canby’s taste, at least as far as she could gather it from his writings in the Saturday Review of Literature, which she also read carefully every week. At any rate, good or bad, it was not her taste, and she did not want that of someone else imposed upon her. It was all well enough, she said, for someone to publish a book of reading that he liked, but Beckie wanted her mind to be full of reading that she liked. That was why Madge said that Beckie was intelligent about books. They had a fight once when Jeffrey said that he didn’t believe that Beckie had read all the books she talked about—but Beckie always said she never talked about a book she hadn’t read; she never cheated that way.

  “She would be better,” Jeffrey said, “if she cheated in any sort of way.”

  “Jeffrey,” Madge said, “you know Beckie is intelligent.”

  “Nothing she reads does her any good,” Jeffrey said.

  “You’re being mean about her,” Madge told him. “I only wish that we could be as happy as Fred and Beckie.”

  There was no use telling her that he hoped to heaven that he would never have to be happy the way Fred and Beckie were, because it was the sort of happiness that went with charcoal briquettes and grills on wheels and eating steaks outdoors and drinking out of glasses with “Whoops” written on them and using towels marked “His” and “Hers” and cocktail napkins embroidered with “Freddie and Beckie.” There was at least one thing you could do, Madge always said, and that was to be loyal to your friends, even if they did use those napkins.

  “You do like Fred and Beckie,” Madge said as they drove out the Merritt Parkway, “you just pretend you don’t to be contrary. Do you know what Beckie used to do at school?”

  Jeffrey said he did not, but he did know that Beckie and Madge had passed the most glorious years of their lives at Farmington.

  “She used to memorize ten lines of Shakespeare every morning while she brushed her teeth,” Madge said, “and she still does.”

  “If she did it in the evening, too,” Jeffrey said, “she’d memorize it twice as fast.”

  “Well, I wish I could do anything like that,” Madge said.

  “Thank God you can’t, dearie,” Jeffrey told her.

  “No matter how I try,” Madge said, “I can’t ever be such a good wife and such a good mother as Beckie, so there.”

  “Dearie,” Jeffrey told her, “just give up trying. It’s time you settled down.”

  “I like it when you call me ‘dearie,’” Madge said, “it means you’re in a good mood. I wish I knew what gets you into one. I can’t ever seem to tell.”

  Then they began talking about the children, about the boys who were beginning to call on Gwen, and Jeffrey said he could not see what she saw in any of them, and Madge said she liked the little one named Norman Phelps, and Jeffrey could not remember Norman Phelps at all. Then they talked about Charley at school and they both agreed they ought to go sometime to see Charley there, but Jeffrey said a boy Charley’s age was always ashamed of his parents. Charley was always afraid that they would behave abnormally. Then they talked about Jim and what Jim was going to do when he got through College. Madge had wanted him to be a doctor because doctors lived such full, useful lives, or if they didn’t they should, and speaking of doctors, Madge wondered why obstetricians were always so happy, and Jeffrey told her it was because they brought babies into the world and didn’t have to support them. He was in a good mood. Then they talked about Jim and Sally Sales, and Jeffrey told her not to keep worrying about Sally Sales. He admitted that he had never seen the girl and it might very well be that she was gauche and a little ordinary, as Madge had heard her friend Beckie say. But there was no use worrying about Jim or wondering what he was doing because when it came to a boy Jim’s age, maybe what you didn’t know didn’t hurt you. Besides, Jeffrey told her, it was normal for a boy to have a love object that wasn’t his mother and Madge told him not to put it in such a horrid way.

  “When I was Jim’s age I was in love myself,” Jeffrey said.

  “Who?” Madge asked. “You never told me.”

  “Back at home,” Jeffrey said. “You know, I’ve often told you about her—Louella—Louella Barnes.”

  “Oh, yes,” Madge said. “That one. You must have been awfully cunning.”

  “If it’s just the same to you,” Jeffrey told her, “would you find another word for it?”

  “Darling,” Madge said, “you’d be happier if you didn’t worry about words.” Jeffrey was in a good mood that afternoon. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “Jeffrey, are you in love with anyone now?” she asked. “And don’t put it off by saying you’re in love with me. Married people can’t always be in love.”

  “They can be according to sex manuals,” Jeffrey said.

  “Jeffrey,” Madge asked, “are you in love with Marianna Miller?”

  “Marianna?” Jeffrey said. “Good God, no!”

  “Well, when I see her with you—” Madge began.

  “You don’t understand that sort of person,” Jeffrey told her. “She—she’s a great artist and all great artists go on that way.”

  “She’s going to be at Fred’s and Beckie’s.”

  “Dearie,” Jeffrey told her, “it’s beginning to sound like the queer people at the circus at Fred’s and Beckie’s. We’ll lock our bedroom door. We won’t let Marianna in.”

  It was just the way things had been in ’39. He was not thinking about the war news. They were going along the Merritt Parkway at fifty miles an hour and soon they would turn off on Route 7.

  The leaves of the newly planted trees between the concrete lanes were turning like the larger trees on either side. He was always vaguely disturbed by the Merritt Parkway and all the other parkways because once you were on them you had no way of telling that you were getting anywhere. There were no houses, just trees and bridges, trees and bridges, and no grades that were too steep. The whole thing must have cost the taxpayers a great deal more money than was necessary, but no one cared about money any more. The parkway was like a part of the new national thought, and it was all too easy. There were no towns, only shrubs and bushes from some nursery, and you never knew where you were until you got to Route 7.

  “I wish,” Madge said, “we could think of all the things to do to our house that Fred and Beckie think of doing to theirs. This time I’m going to make a list.”

  That was one of the things that always worried him about going to Fred and Beckie’s, because Madge inevitably came back with ideas that she wanted to apply to their own house, and he never wanted any of them. Fred and Beckie were always reading catalogues and going to architects’ sample rooms and getting new ideas such as paddock fences and outdoor fireplaces. He didn’t want any of those things.

  “We can never seem to think of anything,” Madge said. “I wish our place were half so cunning.”

  “Don’t,” Jeffrey said, “please, don’t say ‘cunning.’”

  It annoyed Jeffrey particularly when Madge wanted her life to be more like Fred and Beckie’s, and wanted their children to be more like Fred and Beckie’s. It never did any good to explain to her that nothing was ever like that unless you had a large and regular income derived from inherited securities. Madge always said that they could be more like Fred and Beckie if t
hey would only budget. Beckie had three large account books all ruled off for Laundry, Dentist, Entertainment and Miscellaneous, and she put everything down in those books. She was able to do this because Fred could remember where the money went, and he was always doing little things for Beckie, always. Jeffrey had said something once which Madge had asked him never to repeat again as long as they lived, and if he did, she would walk right out of the house and leave him. Jeffrey had said that Fred and Beckie’s life that Madge liked so much was like playing dolls. He never repeated the remark again, though in his own thoughts, he often elaborated on it.

  After Yale, Fred had gone into his father’s business—which involved chiefly the selling of safe municipal bonds to investors able to afford to live on the low yield of these securities and thus avoid the burden of state and federal income taxes. Thus Fred knew a great deal about tax exempts, though Jeffrey could never see why there was much to know, but Fred once said that it was tax exempts that kept him young.

  It had never seemed to Jeffrey remarkable that Fred should have married Beckie, but to Madge that courtship and its subsequent culmination was invested with a sort of deathless beauty. It seemed that, for some reason which Madge always took for granted, all the girls wanted to marry Fred, but after Fred met Beckie at one of the Met dances—and Madge remembered everything about it because she and Beckie had been there together, just little girls from Farmington, and neither of them had hoped to have a good time—there had been no one else for Fred. Beckie had on a red dress and red slippers and she had that beautiful hair—it looked more like fresh taffy then than it did now—and she was so intelligent. Fred and Beckie had danced five dances and then they had gone away somewhere, and when Madge had asked Beckie afterwards how in the world they had found so much to talk about, Beckie had said they had talked about life and Omar Khayyám. Jeffrey imagined that the scene must have been a little like a page of F. Scott Fitzgerald and once considerably later, Fred had actually met Fitzgerald at the Ivy Club or somewhere, after one of the games with Princeton, and Fred had always had a suspicion, one which Jeffrey himself had heard him mention once, that because of that meeting he could see himself as one of the characters in the Fitzgerald novel, The Beautiful and Damned.