by Philip Wylie
Jimmie stood and stretched. He paced his new laboratory for several moments.
"They make me so mad! Last night the whole crowd at the club said that an American declaration of war on Germany amounted to 'pointing an empty gun'! Where do they get that kind of garbage? Is a world war the same thing as a stick-up? Is the biggest navy in the world--an empty gun? And what about declaring in the greatest economic plant on earth? Then my old man said that if England lost the whole of Europe would be Communist overnight. Does he believe that? Can't he read? Hitler has never kept a promise. But hasn't he carried out every threat he ever made--so far?
"Dad says Fascism is the same thing as Communism. Even if it was--exactly the same thing--what would we do with the whole world like that? I asked him, and he smiled like a sap and said, 'What we've always done, son. Mind our own business.' I asked him what business we'd have left to mind, and he said I didn't understand world trade. Imagine! I understand world trade on Hitler's terms, all right! But Dad doesn't--and yet he runs a bank! He says, 'Leave it up to the common people, and you'll get the right answer every time.' I say--a lot of things are too damned complicated for the common people! Even at that, I say, the polls of American sentiment show the majority feels a hell of a lot different from Father! So he says the polls are rigged. Are they?"
The old chemist shook his head. "No. They're honest--and reliable. Only--time enters in, again. That's why these polls drive people crazy. People overlook the fact that polls are always history. They represent what the nation thought yesterday, or last week, or even last month. Which, with the radio knocking time down to zero, means that the polls are not news, but reminiscence. They have no positive value in deciding what to do now. They only show what should have been done last month, when the poll was taken.
We're able to live in the present everywhere, now. People ought to think what that means.
One reason the isolationists always talk about this war in historical terms is to try—
subconsciously--to push it back into a less uncompromising focus. The kind of focus they grew up with. The focus in which the dying, and t he killing, are always over when you learn about them. That's comfortable--because it does not make you an accessory. The radio does."
Jimmie raised his foot onto the top of a stool. He relaxed his weight against his knee. His gray eyes were blazingly alive; his reddish brown hair was uncombed, so that it jostled when he spoke. "The bunch that Father and Mother work with is sure baffling!
They take the word of a pilot as gospelon all things military and aerodynamic. They sit on platforms with a prominent Socialist--and you ought to hear what Dad thinks about Socialism! They listen to anybody on their side, no matter how obvious. No matter if he's a manifest crackpot, or publicity-crazed, or an ax-grinder, or a professional Irishman, or a long-established baiter of Britain, or a discredited politician trying to make headlines--
just anybody! No rhyme, no reason, no order--just rant! And big applause."
"Sure. I'll introduce you to a few 'interventionists,' though, Jimmie--to keep you sane. You'll find that they've pretty much thought their way through all the changes of black and white--to the real answer. It's funny. The interventionist attitude toward the isolationist is one of worry. Worry about how to convert him. Worry about the factors that made him the way he is. An earnest attempt to reason with him. But the isolationist's attitude toward his interventionist friend is just--rage. Instead of reason the isolationist has been using slogans. 'Don't plow under our boys.' Frantic, hysterical swill like that.
Malicious stuff." The old man sighed. "The difference in their attitudes toward each other is just about a definition of who's doing the calm thinking and who's doing the terrified yelling. Well, Jimmie, there's a lot wrong with America--"
"You tell me," Jimmie said. "I'm liking this. At home, they shut me up. At home, their slogans are truth. My facts are propaganda. Even Audrey Wilson called me Duff Cooper at one point last night."
Mr. Corinth's eyebrows lifted. "So you've met our Audrey?"
"Yeah. Mother's idea--at the beginning."
"Mmmm." The old man slid from his stool. "I'll tell you what's wrong with America--and the world--some other time, Jimmie. Did you like her?"
"Who? Audrey? She's attractive."
"A mild phrase. Too mild. It protests too much--in converse. Audrey is to attractiveness what a flying fortress is to a box kite. I know Audrey pretty well. She tried to get a job here, once. Tried hard."
"Audrey did? Doing what?"
"Learning chemistry. She'd polished off finishing school and she had an idea she'd become another Eve Curie."
"Why didn't you let her learn?"
"Oh, I dunno. Maybe I was wrong. I looked at Audrey and I decided women already knew too darn' much, anyhow. Teaching women the things men know hasn't done one doggoned visible thing to improve human life yet. I half suspect it's made the women skimp their natural business, besides. So I thought Audrey ought to have a chance to grow mellow by just being female."
"Mellow. She's hardly that."
"No. I suppose not. She might be closer to it, though, than you think. You're no wood-aged paragon of mellowness yourself, yet." He reached out, rather impulsively, and put his hand on Jimmie's shoulder. "You're thinking, this morning--if I may be so clairvoyant as to say so--of taking a room, hunh?"
The younger man grinned again. "I was."
"Don't. Stick around your family. You aren't anywhere near in the mood to work.
The mood I talked about when I butted in here. You won't find out anything, anyway.
You might as well get over your mad--or push through it--or whatever you do when you see red. I can run the paint works--government orders and all. You just stay at home and mess around here when you want."
"I'm used to working in any mood," Jimmie answered seriously. "I've had some damned good practice!"
The venerable face was seamed with amusement and at the same time with a transcendent sympathy. "Yes, Jimmie. I can imagine. I can imagine a little. Twenty-three years ago--for a month--when I was in Chemical Warfare I had charge of a big ammunition dump--high explosive and gas. They shelled and bombed the thing constantly. I can make a stab at knowing what you mean. It's not that mood I'm talking about. I have a sneaking idea you aren't yellow--or a quitter. It's the other mood." He hesitated. "You'll be seeing Audrey again soon, I suppose?"
"I don't know. Her family canceled a party they'd set for me--when they found out I was a British agent, practically."
"Well, when you see her do me a favor. Keep trying to think what she'd be like if she didn't have those looks."
Jimmie laughed. "Why?"
"I always wondered myself--that's all. And another chore. Try it. Make believe you've been sold on every single item your mother and your father subscribe to. Empty gun--not our war--America can’t be invaded--Roosevelt is a Communist and a hysteric.
Believe all that, on purpose. Then see how you feel about life!" Mr. Corinth walked to the table where Jimmie had been working. He picked up the pages of equations and read through them rapidly. His white eyebrows waggled and he blinked at Jimmie once or twice.
"Solve your personal equations first," he said, as he walked from the room.
Jimmie went back to work. In a vehement, though unappraised, determination to refute the opinion of the philosophical old man, he worked through the lunch hour and the afternoon. No satisfying thought came out of his labors. At five, a whistle blew. The shifts changed. Jimmie shook himself; he was stiff from concentration. He put on his overshoes and his hat and locked the door of his laboratory.
Outside, the air was warmer. The snow had gone and the damp ground smelled pungently of sun-cured vegetation spread on it by autumn. Men and women were walking toward exits in the high fence. Some turned at the corner and started home on foot; others crossed a muddy street to the big parking lot and started their cars. The low-slanting sunlight throbbed with revving engines. Jimmie had a hunch that a second
, belated, Indian summer would follow the freak cold spell which had bound Muskogewan in snow.
Such a warm spell was typical of the climate of the region. It would be followed by the crisp weather that led into Thanksgiving. His hunch exhilarated Jimmie. English weather was tedious and small-scale. The changes in this part of northern United States were dramatic, stimulating.
A horn blew as Jimmie checked out at the gatehouse. He looked up. Audrey was sitting in a coupe parked in the space alongside a fireplug. Jimmie put his pass in his wallet and took off his hat and walked over to her car. "Up to now," he said, "I've refused all offers of chaufferage. I'll take yours, though."
CHAPTER V
AUDREY LOOKED like the afternoon. Her suit was greenish gray, the color of fall-faded vegetation. Her blouse and hat were brassy, like sunshine on yellow leaves--
like her hair. Her hat swept up proudly from her face, framed it, insisted upon it. But she kept her head down, her face half averted, and she said impatiently, "Hop in!"
She drove away. When she reached one of the minor highways outside the town she slowed. "I was just going to bribe one of those guards to phone you. I waited quite a while. And I didn't want to be caught."
Jimmie laughed. "You won't lose caste in this district. Not if you're calling for me.
I assure you, I've been accepted by the very best upper sets--"
It's not that. It's my family. You knew they were giving you a big costume party tonight?"
"I knew it was a surpriser, but not a costumer."
"Mother planned it for weeks. Of course, she had to keep open dates, because nobody knew till recently just when you would be here. You were late, as it was. I don't know why everybody was so stupid, but we all thought you'd probably be on the other side. I mean--against war. You've never met Mother?"
He shook his head. "The Wilson immigration was after my time. I examined into that, to discover why I didn't remember you. Even at seventeen--six years ago--you must have been definitely noticeable."
"Mother has a pretty grim sense of humor. The party she planned was going to be a bomb party. With a lot of money-snatching side shows for the benefit of the America Forever Committee."
"What's a bomb party?"
Audrey bit her lip. "If you'd come up to our house now, you'd get the idea. It took a lot of carpenters and some scenery designers about a week to fix things for it. Mother's idea was to make every room look—inside--as if it had been bombed. It's her theory that if people only stopped to think what they were doing they'd stop doing it. She thought you'd be an admirable backer-upper of that theory--having just been on the grounds, so to speak. She was going to have you give a little talk."
Jimmie stared at the girl with incredulity. "What were the costumes going to be?
Bandages?"
"Something like it. You could come as any sort of a victim. Oh, it's very breath-taking and all that--our house. There's a big sign between the dining room and the living room that says, 'It Must Never Happen Here.'" Audrey sighed . . . It's all being removed--
today. Of course, somebody or other did suggest that you might take the opposite viewpoint about things. But Mother isn't the sort of person who admits there is an opposite viewpoint. She said, at the time, 'If James Bailey turns out a traitor and advocates any more American hysteria, we will wither him!' She'd have withered you, too, Jimmie."
"My God." He said it flatly, and thought for a while. "She couldn't wither me, Audrey. I wish she'd tried. I wish she'd given the party. I'd have been happy to make a little talk. I would have arranged the guests in the artificial ruins in some dramatic postures--common to the London streets--and I would have keyed my address in a moderate tone--"
"I told her you would dump her applecart. I told her last night, when I came in.
She was mad enough--from the rumors about you she'd already heard. She didn't go to the dinner last night because she was putting on the finishing touches at home."
"Painting on bloodstains, I trust," Jimmie said.
"Something of the sort. Jimmie. The reason I came over to the factory and waited for you was this. Could you possibly swallow your pride and practice a little tact around here? I mean, could you pretend a little--just to make peace? It might be good strategy.
You have no idea how Muskogewan is torn apart by the war! How furious people get at each other! What mean things they do! After all, the people on my side of the argument aren't altogether crazy. A lot of them are smart and nice and earnest and sincere, I can understand how you feel. I don't agree with you a bit just because I understand. I think the warmongers are mistaken. I think they have come to believe that Hitler is a boogieman, invincible and superhuman. I think, if he ever did plan an attack on America, he'd give ample evidence beforehand--and I think that would be the time to train soldiers and make arms. I mean, for ourselves. It's all right to help England, probably. Dangerous-
-but idealistic, and all that. But if you'd just even pretend to accept some such a view it would make everything--so much more convenient."
"Everything?" His voice was a rejection.
"Don't you know what a girl means when she says, 'everything' in that way? She means--herself. Her life."
"Enough Americans," Jimmie mused, "had enough foresight and guts to pass the Lease-Lend Bill. That was Hitler's first defeat. It'll take dozens more--as big, as costly--to whip Hitler. But there are sure an awful lot of you people still doing Hitler's work--
sincere or not--just as advertised, predicted, and counted upon, by handsome Adolf and his general staff."
She flushed brightly. "We're not pro-German. You can't say that." "No. And Pilate wasn't procrucifixion. He just washed his hands."
"You're going to make me sore!"
"What about me? I came here only yesterday--bursting with love. With memories.
With anticipations. I was never as happy in my life. And I was so darned proud of America. I knew my country had been laggard and doubtful and not wholly united. But I knew America had saved the sum of things twice--already. Once after Dunkirk. Once again in the battle of the Atlantic. And then, we drove up on the hill and we went into my house--and I found myself in a swarm of Benedict Arnolds. Not conscious ones. Not willful ones. Frightened ones, who were trying to betray all humanity just to save something that existed once, and still exists for the moment as a sort of echo here, but will not and cannot endure anywhere--much longer."
"You're so sure about the future!"
He nodded. "Sure it'll be difficult. Dad wants to set the clock back. Spin the whole damned planet back. Nail it at a place in space and time known to him as 1929. The big year. The banner year. I remember it. I was sixteen, then. World trade, protective taxes, prohibition, stock market graphs like geysers! The great engineers were in the saddle.
Business was king. I remember the bust. But it isn't that, Audrey. Not that--which is coming to all of us. It's something much worse. The world out of which we drew trade and profit and in which we invested in 1929 is gone. The plant is gone. The property is wrecked. The people are killed or scattered. The governments are smashed. Those who are still alive are weakened by hunger, misled by propaganda, full of dread and hate.
Peace--any peace--is going to liberate a whole new set of revenges. Merciful God, can't they see that? The industry of the earth has been rebuilt to make arms. How are we Americans going to thrive in that shambles? What's your dad and my dad going to do to pay the national debt, and change back the factories here, and keep wages high enough so we can still have decent standards--and not a black 1932 raised to the hundredth power?
The worst peace would mean slavery. The best peace will mean that the whole earth faces the most terrifying mess in the history of mankind."
"Don't you think we'll be better off at that time if we, too, aren't wholly devoted to making arms?"
"I, personally, don't think we'll exist at all if we aren't wholly devoted to making arms--right now."
"But your attitude doesn't
give us any alternative whatever! Rather, it just gives us two perfectly ghastly alternatives."
"Yeah."
"That doesn't make sense!"
"Why? Must Americans forever go on thinking that there have to be two paths in life--one that leads to the gravy, and one that leads to hunger? Is there a cosmic rule that you always have to have a happy out? Can't it be that, sometimes, you only have a choice between a whipping and a hanging? It not only can be--it is!"
"I can't believe it."
"We could have prevented it. So could England. We--and England--could have stopped the invasion of Manchuria. Ethiopia. The reoccupation of the Rhine. Anything like that. We didn't. They didn't. So--we're going to payoff."
"But the price is so out of scale with the mistake!"
Jimmie smiled at her. "You sound like my father. He wants to administer fate, too. He can tell you, to an inch and a penny, what is fair and what is unfair in the way life treats him. The dope! If you happen to drink a glass of water that you suspect isn't very pure but that you figure won't hurt you, and there was a cholera germ in the water and you die, that's a hell of a price to pay for drinking a glass of bad water. But the 'unfair'
scale of the disaster doesn't make you live a day longer."
Audrey drove off the road and under some pine trees. She stopped at a place where the trees opened on a bend in the river. At the bend, ice was breaking up and floating away on a fast-running central current. Across the river was a farm with a big, white barn and a lot of small, white outbuildings. Guernsey cows moved slowly against the browns of a hillside. A light wind came from the farm, smelling sweetly of it.
Audrey turned off the motor with a gloved hand, swung in her seat, drew up one foot, stabbed the lighter into the dashboard, fumbled in her yellow handbag for a cigarette, and reached for the lighter just as it popped out.
"I fell in love with you," she said suddenly, startlingly.