by Philip Wylie
"Which reminds me to note that you don't talk so awfully much like an Englishman, considering how long you lived there. A little. I mean, you'd know you'd been exposed to the accent--"
"Two reasons, Audrey. One, I was always proud of my native vernacular. My pronunciation was the bane of the dons. All Oxford shivered whenever I opened my mouth to speak. Two, it was a long trip home--grimy weather, no diversion on the boat-and I spent the time refreshing my memory of the provincial tongue. Listening to several Americans from Chicago--steel men--who shared the bar with me a good deal of the time."
"We might stop by the bar, on the way back. The floor show's still going on, that M. C. is practically inexhaustible."
He offered his arm, with a mocking ultraelegance. "I'd imagine that it's his audience that gets exhausted. M. C.--master of ceremonies, I presume. A new phrase, since my day." They walked toward the club bar. "Audrey. Tell me something. Why did my handsome and all-pervading mother appoint you to pursue me?"
"You ought to be able to guess."
"Ought I? Lemme see." He helped her hike up on a bar stool. "Pounds, crowns, shillings?"
"On the nose! My father is president of the Second National. The other big bank here."
"It was always the old man who talked about mergers. Habit's catching, evidently."
Audrey ordered a highball. He nodded for the same. She turned toward him. "And now, it's quite out of the question. That's funny. I mean, my mother and yours have been fiddling around with this meeting of you and me for months. I was pretty thrilled, myself.
I, well, do you mind if I say that I still am?"
"Nope. But it's out of the question, is it? What's the matter? Has the fact leaked out that the Baileys come from a long line of lunatics and pirates?"
"My mother," she replied, "is local president of the America Forever Committee.
Dad's treasurer."
"What's that?"
"You'll find out. Your family's on it, too."
They went back to the table, finally. His mother was visibly relieved by his reappearance, and visibly surprised by his evident amiability in the company of Audrey.
Music began--a rhumba. Audrey whispered, "It's the rage now. We'll sit it out."
Jimmie rose with dignity. "London," he replied, "has not been wholly cut off from the rest of the planet! We shall dance."
They began. Audrey looked up at him. "I'll say London hasn't been cut off! Who taught you?"
"Her name," he began throbbingly, "was Conchita. She was a little thing with blue-black hair and eyes like the flames in a burning coal mine. Emotions of a tigress in the body of a child--a sepia child. Lovely! Conchita taught me the rhumba. Eight bob per lesson. That's about a dollar fifty."
Audrey laughed.
He took her home, late, in a taxi. She asked him to. While they rode through the quiet streets they were silent. The night was growing warmer. Roofs dripped, the snow along the sides of the walks was slushy, and there were patches showing in lawns that looked black under the outreaching lavender murk of arc lights. When they stopped in front of her house--a bigger, more imposing house than his family's--Audrey said, "Will you kiss me good night, Jimmie? It would sort of finish erasing the mess I made at the start."
He bent and kissed her perfunctorily.
"Is that all?" she whispered.
He kissed her again--not perfunctorily. And then again, as if to reassure himself about his first impression.
"You'll forgive me--for Ellen?"
He nodded. "Yes. That all happened summer before last." Suddenly he grinned.
"You're not being fair to your mother, Audrey!" He reached past her and opened the cab door.
CHAPTER III
AT EIGHT O'CLOCK the Baileys--short of sleep and showing it--straggled into their dining room for breakfast. Mr. Bailey had to go to the bank. He was a punctual man.
He regarded the late arrival of executives at business offices as a bad example. Mrs.
Bailey joined her husband, out of custom. She had learned early in her marriage that, whenever she slept late, he found several ways to bring it to her attention publicly--ways that had the outward form of humor and the clear stigmata of a wife-husband friction. Mr.
Bailey had not been able to scare or scourge the second generation into early rising.
He was surprised, then, when Sarah showed up. "Have you been in bed? Or are you just going? I saw you leave the club with Francis Webster along about two."
"I have an appointment for a fitting. Nine o'clock. Mrs. Gregg didn't have any other time, worse luck. I'm dead! It's the dress I'm going to wear tonight at the Wilsons'
party for Jimmie."
Mr. Bailey chased a piece of bacon with his fork. "Anybody told Jimmie there's another party for him tonight?" He looked accusingly at his wife.
"I hinted at it rather plainly. And he seems to like--"
Her husband cleared his throat. Biff came into the room, rubbing his eyes and yawning. "Coffee," he said in a hollow tone. The swinging door banged and the butler came through. "Westcott, bring me a gallon of coffee."
Mr. Bailey squinted at his son. "Huh! I should think so! I counted up to seven rum collinses last night. What you trying to do--drink yourself to death?"
Biff's hands were trembling. A light perspiration shone on his face, here and there, in little clusters. "Anybody count yours? I have a hangover you could sell to an amusement park. Make the roller coaster feel like a lawn swing."
"Who told you that crack?" Sarah asked.
Their father swallowed coffee. A big, square man, growing thinner as he came nearer to sixty. A man with a rectangular face and a chin that rode out beyond his necktie formidably. He wore rimless, angle-sided spectacles. The eyes behind them were china blue, but as bright as glass. His face was ruddy, and the almost unwrinkled skin on it was shaved so close it looked peeled. He wore his wavy gray hair long so that it would fall across his toupee-sized bald spot. He had a good voice, deep, resonant, and not loud unless he wanted it to be. He firmly believed that, in every hour of every day of his life, he had done the right thing--his duty--without consideration of his own pleasure or pain.
That such an attitude is psychologically--even physiologically--dangerous, cannot be denied. But it is the commonest attitude among successful men not just in America, but everywhere. Most people thought Kendrick Bailey was a brilliant man and a good man. In many ways, he was both. He looked, now, at his wife, and he said, "I repeat.
Does Jimmie know that there is another big party for him tonight?"
"Don't be so hostile," his wife replied. "I'll ease him into the fact when he comes down--after he's had some breakfast. No doubt he'll sleep late. He must be very tired--
going through submarine zones and all that. He certainly looked it when he got off the train."
"He looked rotten," Biff said comfortably. "The lousy interventionist!"
"Hannah," said Mr. Bailey to his wife, "we made a mistake with that boy. Should never have allowed him to go to Oxford. He got the European taint."
"It was the 'V' on his luggage," Sarah said, "that was so darned corny! The very first thing I saw--even before I saw Jimmie--was that big suitcase Biff and I gave him for a going-away present, and that enormous red, white, and blue 'V.' He might at least have had the decency to find out that the better people in his own home town aren't having any part of things like that!"
"I was kind of proud of that 'V,'" Jimmie said.
Biff dropped his knife. Sarah flinched. Mr. Bailey spun in his chair. Hannah Bailey said, "James! You must quit sneaking up and listening in on what people are saying! That's the second time you've been eavesdropping!"
Jimmie came into the dining room and looked cheerfully at his family and at the bright sun outside; he sat down in the empty place. "Oh, I eavesdrop all the time." He was flushing a little, but his words did not show that he was in any way embarrassed. "It's counterespionage that does it."
"What?" said his mother.
<
br /> Jimmie answered blandly, "Counterspying. In wartime England you get in the habit of slipping up quietly on every conversation. You know. The lovely old man in the walrus mustache taking tea with the beautiful young girl may well be a fifth columnist.
The bobby under Nelson's statue ostensibly giving directions to the cockney errand boy may be Baron Hoffmann, chief of the Gestapo, telling a messenger the location of an AA battery--"
"He's kidding, Mother," Sarah said. The butler came in and looked inquisitively at Jimmie.
"Some bloaters, Westcott, and a bit of cold pork pie--" Jimmie chuckled at the man's expression. "I want anything strictly American in the kitchen! Everything, in fact."
Westcott smiled understandingly and hurried out.
Mr. Bailey scowled. "You know, son, I suppose, that there's another party to be given for you tonight."
"Is there?"
"The Wilsons'."
Mrs. Bailey glanced indignantly at her husband and amiably at her elder son. "It's really a 'must,' dear. I'm dreadfully sorry you got up so early. You must take a good, long nap this afternoon."
"I had to get up," Jimmie said pleasantly. "Work."
"What is there so terrifically important about that work?" Sarah sounded honestly puzzled. "Me--if I were you--I'd take a month off, enjoy the food in a country that still has sense enough to stay out of war, go to the club, pick out a whole harem of women and indulge my more frivolous nature to the limit--"
"Sarah!" said Mr. Bailey.
"Sis is right!" Biff looked at his brother.
"You could, you know," Sarah went on. "Ninety per cent of the gals in Muskogewan would be a pushover for you. Would be, that is, if you quit carrying the torch for the Empire. I could hear 'em panting last night, when you came into the club. I'll arrange it for you. Some nice numbers--"
"Sarah!" said her mother, more loudly.
"Why deceive the man?" Sarah grinned wickedly. "He knows he's sort of the Ronald Colman type--intellectually, and without the mustache--crossed with the Gary Cooper build. Honestly, Jimmie, when you got off the train I passionately wished I were pro-British--and not your sister! In a nice way," she added, aware that her mother was reaching the point of explosion. "No fooling. Why the drudgery? You don't look like a chemist. Last night, you didn't even act like one."
Jimmie said, airily, "Oh, social service. I work for some people that I want to get out of a jam."
"Really--" said his mother.
"He means the English," said Sarah.
"I mean," Jimmie explained, "about a billion or so people. English, French, Poles, Czechs, Chinese, Malays, Russians--"
"We know geography," Biff said irritatedly. "How'd you like Audrey?"
Jimmie's face was expressionless. "She's very attractive."
"She didn't--?" Sarah began.
Mrs. Bailey said, "Shh! It's supposed to be a surprise! "
"You better tell him then, Mother." Mrs. Bailey considered. "Very well. Audrey didn't say anything about the party for you tonight?"
"Not a word."
"Well, it was going to be a surprise party--and you can pretend you're surprised anyway--"
" You'll be surprised, Mother. I'm not going." Mrs. Bailey was triumphant. "Oh, yes, you are! Audrey's folks are giving it!"
"Oh?" Jimmie pondered. "Well, I'm still not going. "
"But, Jimmie!" Mrs. Bailey's voice was tearful. Mr. Bailey looked at her with an I-expected-as-much expression. "Jimmie, dear! This is really by far the most important of all the parties we'd planned for you! And you were so devoted to Audrey last night! I was extremely relieved by it."
He felt, again, the weight of his first disappointment: the fact that his family was angry with him and the deep violence of their disagreement. It was not the shock it had been on the day before, but it still outraged him--as if he had come home to find them gleefully engaged in some lunatical act of arson or assault. "I liked Audrey all right. She has feelings--infantile and hard to reach--but there, anyhow. She reminds me of a much more real woman I knew once, too. And dancing exclusively with her saved me from hordes of those little numbers Sarah just described as pushovers. Lord! Parlor English has deteriorated!"
Mr. Bailey started to say something forceful. His wife gave him an imploring signal--a signal that promised to treat later with the situation.
Westcott came in with the papers on a tray. Mr. Bailey seized the Chicago paper vigorously, and his wife accepted the Muskogewan Times. She turned immediately to the Society page, without seeming to be aware that the Times had a front page at all.
But Mr. Bailey concentrated on the front page of the Chicago journal.
Jimmie, of course, had never watched his father read a newspaper in the latter years of the New Deal. He did so now. It was an extraordinary experience.
Mr. Bailey's eyes ran along the banner headline with rapid interest. He said,
"Huh!" in a moderate tone. He read the first few lines of double-column type. He said,
"So. Two more freighters, eh?"
Sarah and Biff went on eating, scarcely noticing the one-man melodrama fomenting under their noses. But Jimmie watched, repressing a grin.
Presently his father said, "Ha!" bitterly. He pulled the paper closer to his eyes. He whispered between his teeth, "Rat!" There was a moment of absolute quiet. "The dirty rat!"
Mr. Bailey fumbled busily with the stubborn sheets as he tried to follow a news story over to page six. He finally found the continuation. He read. He exclaimed,
"Communists! Communists, everyone!"
He went back to the front page. For some minutes he read quietly again. He said,
"Well, they had another flood in Los Angeles. Killed three."
This observation brought no response. His eye flicked over the type. Suddenly he made a noise. It was an animal noise. He kept reading, and he kept making animal noises.
Moans, growls, whinnies. Like the noises of something caught in a steel trap--past its first hysteria but not yet dulled to resignation. Presently he stared at nothing. "They put him in!" he whispered in a grisly tone. "They put him in again! They put him in for a third term! How could they do it?" He shook his head and bowed it, as if he were in the presence of some fantastic betrayal of himself by a dear friend.
The lowering of his head put his eye in range of still another heading. Instantly, his reverent despair was gone. He read--electrically. "Oh--God!" he whispered, as if it were one word. "They passed it! Forced it through!" He clapped his hand to his head. The newspaper fell from his other hand. Stricken, he nevertheless seized it again. He pored over the words. And a peculiar thing began to happen to him.
His face became empurpled. His body swelled like a frog's. The great arteries in his temples beat rapidly. His breath went in and out, sharply. His fingers stiffened out, and closed, and straightened again. He looked like a boiler that is popping rivets immediately before bursting. He swore fluently, softly, using up the common expressions and repeating them in fresh combinations. With one fist he began to hammer in a steady rhythm on the edge of the table.
Only then did his wife take open cognizance of his condition. "Finish your breakfast, Kendrick," she said pleasantly.
He stared at her glassily. Westcott brought the morning mail on a tray. Mr. Bailey continued to stare while the man distributed it. He said, "Well, Hannah, they passed it!
That means there's a ceiling on everything, now. No room for business to budge in! I'm not a banker any more! I'm just a teller! We're Communist now--all of us! We might as well go out in the street and start saluting with fists! You wouldn't think that one man, one solitary traitor to his class, one egomaniacal idiot, could steal from a hundred and thirty-two million people every right, every power, every privilege, every decent democratic principle--"
Suddenly he stopped. He quivered. He looked at Jimmie. "What's the matter?"
It was some time before Jimmie could get his breath. Quite some time. He was choking--
choking badly
. But when he did recover he loosed the breath again in a tremendous roar of laughter. "Oh, Lord!" said. "Oh, my Lord, Dad! All these years I've thought of you as the most self-controlled, self-disciplined man I ever knew! And now!" He chortled again.
"It took Roosevelt to turn you into a thundering infant! No kidding!" He fought again for air. "No fooling! You'll get apoplexy."
His father came up standing. "Infant!" he bellowed. "Infant!"
Jimmie's mirth was only partially quenched by his attempt to regain composure.
"You looked exactly like one. Ten months old. When you take away his rattle! Ye gods!
Are many grown people going into spins like that, over the morning paper? Do it again, Dad! Do it some more!" A paroxysm of hilarity bent him double.
His father was still standing. He opened his mouth and closed it. His eyes were raging and his face was still violet. "Son--" he began.
Then Biff said, "Go on. Laugh." His voice was so odd that even his father looked at him.
Biff was as white as chalk. Around the corners of his mouth was a slack sullenness. The perspiration that had made small damp areas on his upper lip and forehead was now pouring from his entire face. He had a letter in his hand. He looked, Jimmie thought, like a man who has just been hit. In the vivid vocabulary of Jimmie's memory, that simile meant hit mortally, with a splinter of a bomb or a spear of flying glass. Jimmie seized his brother's arm strongly and said, "Hey, fellow! What's wrong?"
"Laugh some more," Biff replied vacuously, insanely.
Jimmie seized the letter. He frowned perplexedly and looked around the table. His family seemed scared. "It just says," Jimmie reported calmly, "that Biff, my proud young brother, has been drafted."
"Just!" said Biff. "Just says!"
"What's the matter with that?" Jimmie asked.
Mrs. Bailey was rising. A dewy light shone in her eyes and her face was working.
She ran to her son's side. "Oh, Biff, Biff, Biff! I won't let them take you away. My boy, my youngest boy!"
Her husband threw into the scene a tone of reasonableness. "Take it easy, Mother.
This whole thing's preposterous, and you know it. There must be something we can do.