by Philip Wylie
"Nobody can fall in love in a night."
Audrey laughed. "Can't they? I'd like to know what you call what's going on inside me! I didn't sleep all night! I shook! I have a feeling like being on fire! I've done ages of, not thinking, but knowing about you since last night. Since you were so decent about--Ellen. I know all about you, everything--what you'd say if you were really making love to me--how you'd act if you drank too much--how you'll look when you're an old man--what you dream about when you sleep--what you want and what you hate, and what you believe in your heart! I know all that, and I know I will never get over this!
Never, never, never."
Jimmie was aghast. He wanted not to look at her--but he looked. She made no pretense of being composed. She was, indeed, shaking. She still resembled Ellen a great deal; but Ellen had been tranquil and self-possessed. Ellen would never have made such a statement. Not even in years of intimacy. Audrey was like a wild Ellen, an Ellen mixed with violent forces, a berserker, pagan Ellen. A cannibal Ellen, he decided.
He pushed in the lighter, preparatory to smoking a cigarette of his own. "I've been in England a long time." It was lame, and he knew it. "I'm not accustomed to--"
Audrey interrupted him. "Have I asked you for anything? I will--but I haven't! I'm not a kid, Jimmie. I've been living in this town a good while, and going to Chicago and other places, in a big, social way. I have been very much excited about a great many men.
Don't mistake that. You show me a beautiful woman and I'll show you one that's had a lot of men in her life, in one sense or another. I know about my looks, my pale-brown eyes--
they aren't blue, people just think they are--and my bucketful of gold hair, and my figure.
I intend to use them on you for all they're worth. I dressed three times this afternoon before I started over here. I have good taste--which most people out here do not have. I'm not in the least virtuous--but I am a swell prospect for virtue. I'm not frigid--but I could be, if I were disappointed someday."
Jimmie said, "Hey!"
She smiled, briefly, almost gently. "You can read my diaries, if you want. I'll mail them to you. You must know all about me, personally. Right a way. Then we won't get into any farcical scenes later on."
He put his fingers between his lips and whistled. It made an ear-splitting sound in the coupe. Then he grinned.
Audrey laughed happily. "All right! I'll shut up. I just want you to know."
"Like Hitler! Where the blow will be struck--when and how."
"Yes. Exactly. And you'll be paralyzed into submission by the very fact that you do know. At first you'll love me because I'm a nice dish. After all, hard work, long winter evenings, the need for relaxation, Muskogewan morals, coupled with the fact that the boys are all away and the town is loaded with dashing daughters who will bar no holds even to monopolize you for an evening. I mean, there's bound to be somebody so it might as well be me--"
He raised his hands to whistle again.
"Don't stop me. I am too concentrated to be jealous. You will find the daughters are delightful. I have only one problem."
"I'm glad there's just one. I suppose it's--my acquiescence ?"
"No. That isn't a problem. That's a pleasant prospect. The thing is, my family has absolutely forbidden me to see you--ever. Except, of course, in public, when it's unavoidable. And there is nothing whatever in the way I feel that will make seeing you in public of any use to me at all!"
He exhaled slowly. "Look, Audrey. I don't know what you're really trying to say to me. I don't know how much of this is a game and how much is genuine. Or seems genuine to you now. I doubt if many guys have sat through a session like this--unless they've sat through it with you. If it's a line--believe me, it is nonpareil! If you think you mean all this, then for heaven's sake think some more! I kissed you last night. I enjoyed it. Any man who didn't enjoy it should be exiled from human society! I have come here to work. Nothing about me matters except that work. Every hour I spend in Muskogewan makes my job harder to do. You're hell-bent to add more than your share of difficulty--"
" I'm not. I'm hell-bent to see to it that you do your job--whatever that really is--to see that you realize yourself."
"I'm a chemist. I am working on several secret formulas and ideas--all of which are calculated to get the United States deeper in the war, in an indirect sense, and to make America that much more formidable when she fights."
"I know that. Everybody knows that." She was half abstracted. "You go right ahead. I'm sure you must be very inventive. What do you think is the best way for me to cheat?"
"Cheat?"
"Cheat my family, you ape. About seeing you. We've got to have a system."
"Do we?"
"I think--well, I think my best plan is to 'take up' something. I thought painting, at first. But that needs daylight. So I guess it'll be music. We've got a pretty marvelous pianist over at the High School, and I can take two hours from him, evenings.
Wednesdays and Fridays. Starting at nine. He's quite a love. He was very fond of me--the way a high school teacher can be of the banker's daughter, which is a kind of distant and worrying way. I introduced him to Adele--because I knew Adele was just made for him--
and they've been married for two years. Mother won't think that's especially odd, because I've been talking for ages about going on with my music. And Dan's busy all day. That gives us two dates a week--not many, but we can stretch it from nine to midnight, or after. So you meet me at Dan and Adele's next Wednesday. I'll send the address along with the diaries--"
"What shall I wear?" he asked with irony.
"Gray slacks, and a reddish brown tweed coat--very woolly. You'll look nicest in that. Brown shoes, and a greenish tie--maybe about the color of my skirt."
"I see."
"Then it's a date? Wednesday?"
"You couldn't just tell your family that you were going to see me, willy-nilly? I mean, granting that I give you permission to see me, which I have not yet done?"
"I could," Audrey said. "Yes."
"But you don't want to?"
"I don't want to have my allowance stopped, my housekey taken away, my car impounded, my bank account closed, my clothes locked up, and maybe my face slapped, besides. Father's old-fashioned."
Jimmie was startled. "He wouldn't turn you out--just for going around with me?"
"Wouldn't he?"
"But that's--why, that's so damned Victorian!"
"Dad is a Victorian--the worst kind. He is a deacon too. He knows all the definitions of right and wrong--has them down pat, like your father. He's a sadist besides, because his marriage was always such a nagging bore to him. And he could never figure out how to put a stop to it. Not only that--I refused to marry the man he picked out for me. He won't say so--and people don't realize he's like that--but he believes a daughter is a chattel. My brother ran away long ago. When he was fifteen. We're one of those families that 'hasn't heard since.' Dad thinks, of course, that Larry's a gangster by now.
Probably dead. Or in prison. Dad forced an apple-cheeked ass on me--a blond boy from the top drawer of some Chicago bank--and I spit in his eye. He's got that against me. And he's got the war and Roosevelt. He has to spoon the foam out of his mouth every morning when he wakes up. He's nuts. He hasn't enough employees, and servants, and relatives, for whipping boys. And yet the good people of Muskogewan still go around believing that he is a very solid citizen."
Audrey began to cry.
Jimmie said, "God almighty!"
Bluish shadows had been moving up the brown hill, hiding the half-camouflaged Guernsey cows and evaporating the sharp relief of the white barn and the little outbuildings. The wind still fanned the cold river sweetly and it brought the voices of the invisible cattle. The girl wept quietly. Jimmie sat still. In that pastoral, his mental pictures were a shocking contrast. Under the bland luxury of Audrey's home--luxury displayed for the world to envy--was the harsh substance of human inhumanity. All over the earth inhumanity crept, lunged, flew screa
ming, with its assorted cargoes of malice--of malice crystallized in laboratories like his own, killing malice, flesh-ripping malice, malice that hurt worse than death. Surely, man had somehow perverted the laws of nature in the search for his selfish ends; surely nature was exacting an appalling payment--in homes where nature was scorned, and in lands where nature was denied its freedom.
The little tragedy of being an Audrey seemed great, in the coupe by the river, in that hour of beatitude. The great tragedy of being English, or German, or Czech, seemed faraway and small by that same criterion. Perhaps, where the little one was rooted, the big ones bloomed in poisoned proliferation. Perhaps, when men as individuals absconded from responsibility and insisted upon advantage, men as groups paid back the debt in bloody struggles of nihilism enforced, and nihilism rejected by force. There was a Hitler in Audrey's home--and in his own. But Hitler was, after all, just a symbol of the mad determination of mankind to have its willful way. Only that--and absolutely nothing more.
He did not even notice that Audrey had stopped crying. He turned when she said,
"What are you thinking about?"
"Audrey?"
"Yes, Jimmie."
"I don't want to start this crazy business of seeing you."
"Neither do I. In a way. I just must."
"But I mustn't."
"I haven't asked for a thing--except for you to see me."
"That's all. Just that I make myself responsible for whatever might happen to you.
If, as you planned, I get tired and discouraged and perplexed and cannot resist your blandishments--then I'll owe a debt to that. And if your family finds out you are seeing me and really puts in effect any such fantastic business as you describe--I'll owe for that.
You will have suffered on account of me and I will have been a party to it. I don't belong to myself. I belong to a fight for a hope. So--I've nothing to offer you. Nothing."
"What hope? You didn't say anything about your hopes."
"No. And I won't. They're vague, so far. I fight because I am too proud to surrender without fighting. Any hope I have can express itself after the fight is won--if it ever is."
"Why not begin hoping now, specifically? That will be something to help you fight, won't it?"
"Pride's enough. It's all we had left--and there wasn't much of that. I don't mean vanity. I mean, I was proud to be a free man, proud that my ancestors and I wouldn't accept any Hiders. Hiders are the easy way out, the expedient way, the lazy solution. But they never do lead out."
"If you were just a bunch of ideas I wouldn't have driven you here. You've got feelings, besides."
"Yeah. I'm thinking of that."
Audrey took a lipstick from her handbag. She was not shaking any more. She redid her lips--or started to--and laughed. "I didn't think I'd got in the habit of repairing my lips whenever I parked with a boy." She frowned. "And I haven't! I just hoped--that I'd have to, with you. That was my hope! I can see what you mean, Jimmie. I wouldn't want you to owe me anything. I'm sure of that. Maybe you were right. Maybe I was crazy. You've got a lot of glamour."
"Glamour's a commodity, now. That spoilt it."
"Didn't it!"
"Besides, glamour requires backgrounds. There aren't any good ones left--much.
Except in United States."
Audrey backed the car expertly, and turned into t he road. It was dusk. "I certainly tried hard to blitzkrieg you, Jimmie!"
He smiled in the murk. "I was nearly licked."
"I'll drop you a block from your house. I don't want your family to tell my family that it took me about three hours to break the new commandment."
"No. Neither do I. And they would."
The car hummed under arc lights at corners. The houses grew in size and the distance between them increased. Lights were on in all of them and they glowed with the very essence of warm good will. "So far," he said, at one point, "the American blackout's still inside the people."
She didn't answer. A block from his home, she stopped. He stepped out. "You may be right," she said softly. "I may be. Anyhow, Jimmie, I'm going to start my music.
Wednesdays and Fridays. At nine." Her coupe budged forward, gathered speed, and swept down the luminous street, its gears shifting automatically. Jimmie walked along the cement sidewalk. Presently, he looked up. The same stars, in the same patterns, shone across the new evening. The unchangeability of those patterns was like a great scorn.
He entered his house with a sense of heavy fatigue. There was an aura of disturbance in the living room. Cocktails left half tasted. Chairs out of place. Something wrong. "Hey, people!" he called, trying to make his voice amiable and positive.
Westcott came from the dining room. "They're all at the hospital, Mr. Bailey.
Your brother's been hurt. Smashed his car up."
"The devil he has! Bad?"
"I couldn't say. They don't know yet."
Jimmie sat down slowly.
The slacker, he thought. The coward!
CHAPTER VI
BIFF--HIS given name was Bedford--was darker than Jimmie. His hair was straight, a few shades from black, and he had large brownish eyes. The irises were not all brown but part greenish and part yellowish. His mother called them hazel. He was a huge, husky youngster with an overlarge head. He looked as if his basic design had been a pile of various-sized boxes. He was the archetype of a fullback--although he had played end for three years on the team of State University.
He lay on the table in the emergency room of the hospital, smoking a cigarette.
When Jimmie came in he was looking at the ceiling, blinking his eyes. The pupils of his eyes were contracted--he'd been given morphine--and his mouth had relaxed into an unaware, shadowy smile, as if he were immersed in a fantasy that had nothing to do with what was happening around him. Around him, in fact, there was no activity whatever. An intern stood against a glass cabinet with an expression of patient expectancy. Biff's family was draped here and there in positions of anguish. Sarah and her mother, in the proper mien of horror, kept glancing down at the pool of blood on the tile floor. Mr.
Bailey was looking out the window at a wall, his shoulders high, with an admission of grief, and a proud proclamation of courage.
It was Biff's smile, Jimmie knew, that corroborated his inner assurance. Jimmie didn't like that smile--slick, catlike, pleased. They didn't see Jimmie, at first. They didn't see him because he wore soft-shod heels, and because they were not yet in the habit of expecting to see him, and because they had other things to hold their attention.
Biff's eyes became conscious of something at their peripheral range, and the smile on Biff's lips vanished even before he turned his head: Biff wiped it out. He substituted a small twist of pain. He said, weakly, "Hello, there, Jim."
His older brother spoke quietly, too, but strongly. "Hello, Biff! How'd it happen?"
The other Baileys chimed in.
"It's about time you arrived!"
"Where on earth have you been?"
"We called the plant! Twice!"
Jimmie ignored them. He bent over his brother. "What you got there?"
Biff breathed a little--to show breathing was difficult. "Oh, nothing much."
"Nothing much!" his mother shrilled.
Mr. Bailey said sternly, "He's broken some ribs, Jimmie. Both legs. Maybe hurt internally. The surgeon's taking forever to get here! We arrived"--he looked at his watch--
"twenty minutes ago!"
"Who'd you hit?" Jimmie asked.
"Another car. Hit me. Rolled me--twice, I think. I was going across Stetson.
Didn't see it coming. His lights must have been off. The guy was doing about eighty. I didn't have a chance! I'd already stopped, for the sign. It was my fault, partly, in a way. I should have seen him even if he had no lights, I suppose--"
"How's the other guy?" Jimmie asked.
Biff looked startled.
Mr. Bailey said, "It was clearly a piece of reckless driving on the other m
an's part.
Biff crept out of the side street--and was smashed into!"
Jimmie nodded. In his mind's eye he could see his brother, at the end of a day of helpless rage at having to be in the army, driving along the dusky side street, slowing at some distance from the stop-line, and hearing the high whine of an approaching car. A car coming illegally fast. Jimmie could imagine his brother's face. It would go slack and sullen--and then convulse with purpose. His brother's car would not turn, cautiously, in the path of the oncoming car. It would shoot out, in high, the motor racing, and scarcely turn at all--making an unavoidable obstacle on the road. The other car-brakes grinding, wheels sliding--would strike at an angle. It wasn't an attempt at suicide, exactly. It wasn't, even, a conscious effort at self-mutilation. But some such thing, in a more shadowy form, had motivated Biff. He had entertained for one paroxysmal instant the thought, I'll get hurt--and then they can't take me! In the next instant he had been getting hurt.
Jimmie knew that such "accidents" were shockingly common. But deliberateness could not be proven. No jury would recognize escapism as a punishable motive.
Sometimes the author of such an accident would confess the impulse--long afterward.
Sometimes a psychiatrist would uncover such an impulse in a patient. Mostly, however, smashups like Biff's were attributed to related factors, such as high speed, or to "pure accident"--a phrase which, excepting for coincidences in time, is a pure lie.
Such things had been in Jimmie's mind as he had walked to the hospital. To review them, to confirm them by Biff's appearance and behavior, took seconds only.
Jimmie let himself smile as if with a sudden thought.
"Anyway, Biff, you're out of the army!"
The younger man's eyes moved slowly toward Jimmie and held with faint surprise. "So I am. Funny. I hadn't thought of that."
"For a few weeks, anyhow," Jimmie said, watching the eyes. They did what he had expected. They dilated with alarm and widened further with rage--for the time between fingers naps. Then they were blank again. They moved toward Mrs. Bailey.
Biff had said he "hadn't thought" about being out of the army. That--and his eyes-