by Philip Wylie
"If it was an advantage."
"I assure you, it is. I haven't the faintest idea of what you're like. And the more I see of you the murkier that idea gets."
She smiled a little. "'I'm just a woman--like all women-and I am in love with you."
"But how in God's name do you know?"
"I'm a woman. I don't like to listen to the gnash and clank of your moral nature, Jimmie. You come some other time." She gave him his hat. He found himself at the door.
He stammered when he said good night.
But she was calm. "Good night, Jimmie."
His feet recited his departure; their sound moved slowly from the white clapboard house, gathered speed and assurance, covered a block, and slowed to a laggard rhythm. A toe dragged; the sound stopped altogether. It was replaced by the thresh and whisper of a hedge as Jimmie angrily yanked at a branch. Soon, his footsteps turned around, started uncertainly back, and presently slapped on the sidewalk in rapid succession: Jimmie was running.
He jumped the white gate in front of the house as cleanly as a deer. He landed in the grass, lightly. Then he stopped. The house was dark. Surprised, uncomprehending, he tiptoed up on its porch. The wisteria vine that had been silhouetted by lamplight was now moon-etched whitely against the blinds. He raised his hand to knock, and lowered it.
From the inside of the unlighted house came a sound--a vague ululation, which might have been weeping or a delicately ominous laughter.
It was the latter thought, scalding and unshakable, which held the man there for a long time, listening, considering. It was possible that Audrey was peering at him from the invisible room and that she could not wholly repress a wanton impulse to chuckle over his return. Or, perhaps, she had not observed him and was amused by his callow departure.
More likely, she was crying. He came to that conclusion. But, in the meanwhile, his impulse withered. He became afraid that he had been trapped by her resemblance to Ellen, by her audacity, by the interested esteem in which Mr. Corinth held her. Those dissensions quickly undid the blind violence of his back-running steps. He slunk diagonally from the house and vaulted the fence. His feet went along the pavement in a dirge-slow, authentic. Jimmie said nothing about that adventure to Mr. Corinth.
He hoped Audrey would recount it. In that event his boss would probably discuss the affair. But the chemist--busy with research, busy with problems of production--did not mention it; so Jimmie assumed, after a few days, that Audrey had kept it secret. Mr.
Corinth, indeed, seemed hourly to be aging; his white hair yellowed; his face shrank; the willowware blue of his eyes washed out; it was as if the fearsome chemicals with which he worked had entered his body and attacked it at every point except the one where his energy originated. Age had done nothing to his brain and nothing to the vigor that energized his long, restless routines. Jimmie threw himself into the job of helping the old man.
Such understanding had sprung up between them that they worked in a manner which suggested their activities had been ordained, or rehearsed elsewhere. They were like backfield men in a ferocious game--Corinth carrying the ball--Jimmie throwing passes, blocking, tackling, running interference. He became familiar with the main outlines of the plant operation, with the war orders and their filling, with the holdovers from what the old man called "peacetime" business.
Often they worked among the low buildings till late at night. Occasionally they slept there, on two cots, in the room the factory employees used by day for smoking.
When they talked it was always about chemistry or business. Jimmie knew this absolution of endeavor was, on his part, honest in one sense alone: he was willing to give every minute he could to the war. But the spare moments, afternoons off, evenings at home, he filled with work merely as an escape, an anesthetic.
He felt impelled to get away from the obsessive quality of his thoughts about Audrey. What she had done to him was bad enough; what she could do was so much worse that he persuaded himself he should avoid it at all costs. He decided that she must be, intrinsically, a destructive person; otherwise she would not have been so quick to attempt his conquest. That decision gave him no peace, however, so he fell back on the doubtful anodyne of overwork. He had other motives, little ones, that kept adding themselves to the constant factor in his work-mania.
One day he spoke to his mother about Sarah's blighted love affair. He waited until what he thought was the right moment, a rainy afternoon, when his father was at the club-
-country or athletic, Jimmie did not ask which--and his sister had gone to the movies.
There was no comfort between mother and son, tolerance only, but, with the fire going, the radio playing decent music, and Jimmie ensconced in the living room, in a deep chair, with a book, the time seemed fit enough. Mrs. Bailey was knitting. She, and most of the other women, had taken to knitting this or that for refugees, soldiers, whatnot--in spite of their convictions--out of a habit entrenched by the first world conflict: war, whatever its ideology, meant knitting, and, probably, no sugar. Those two, mainly.
"Mother?"
"Yes, dear?" She said it absently.
Jimmie was encouraged. "I want to ask you about something."
"Go ahead."
"I trust you won't be disturbed."
She looked at him with sudden rigidity. Her face, an older image of Sarah's, seemed strong. Its strength came, however, from the adjustments she had forced upon her character, and it was, therefore, the mere strength of compulsion, not the strength of wisdom. "I do hope it's nothing about the war!"
"No. It's about Sarah."
"What about Sarah?" She became querulous, defensive.
"About--some egg named Harry."
That precipitated a long silence. The fingers stopped knitting, gripped the needles harder, and went on, digging their points. "That--I'd rather not discuss."
He ignored her preference. "What was the matter with the guy?"
"The whole thing was utterly impossible! Sarah is a mere child. She was even younger when this--this slippery impostor swept her off her feet."
Jimmie scratched his cheek. "You might as well come clean. I probed Willie Corinth on the subject, and he tapped his wife, Susie, and she didn't have much. Just that you clipped off Harry like a flower. Pretty nearly everybody in the village liked the lug, at first."
"I will not discuss it."
Jimmie grinned. ""Sarah's still in the doghouse with herself about it. She evidently had the big torch in her hand. You know, in some ways, Sarah is pretty mature. And girls have been known to get married-successfully, even-at the age of nineteen, which my nonbenevolent sister is approaching."
"It was something your father found out," Mrs. Bailey said, at last. "We never mentioned it. We felt that part was up to Mr. Meade, if anyone. We were only glad that we did find out. We had both been dubious, naturally. The man is a clarinetist. He does have some talent, apparently. And his family is extremely well-to-do. However, what your father learned--"
He was not grinning. "Skeleton in the closet, eh? Was the cluck already married or something?"
She apparently felt that his mood of worry was the best one in which to reveal a matter that would undoubtedly be uncovered sooner or later. Jimmie had a persistence which came, she often said proudly, from her side of the family. She knitted a few stitches as a prologue. "Jimmie, this Mr. Harry Meade is--non-Aryan."
"Huh!"
"He is one quarter Jewish. Your father found it out on a trip to New York. His family is well known in New York. But his grandmother was a Jewess."
Jimmie did not say anything for a while. At last, in a quiet, thin voice, he began:
"I dimly remember, Mother, that when Elsie Mac-something--of this town--married Leonard Zimm you helped engineer the whole business. You were fond of Len--"
"The Zimms," his mother answered, "have lived in this country for five generations. They came with the pioneers. We accepted them, in time, naturally. In those days."
"What do you
mean, "in those days'? Aren't the Zimms still around?"
"No, James. They moved, more than a year ago. To Chicago."
Jimmie hopped to his feet. "So that's it! Sarah didn't tell me, the louse! She gave him up--when she found out the truth!"
Mrs. Bailey looked at her tall son with eyes that gleamed oddly. "Sarah gave him up. Naturally."
He slapped his book together. "Fine business! I think I'll go down to the lab for the night. I don't want to hear, Mother, about how the Jews, a little minority of them in every nation, have succeeded--although they are an admittedly inferior people!--in stealing all the money and the power from us big, bold, better gentiles, and making suckers out of us in business, and finally in so befuddling our mighty minds that they have destroyed the ninety-five per cent of us, sacked our civilization, and thrust us into war. Phooie, on you! I knew you and Dad were pretty nuts, Mother! This is the first intimation I've had, though, that you were feasting on the bloody knuckles of people who can't protest, even, without causing a fresh hundred of their relatives to hang by their thumbs and their breasts. God damn it! I can't stand it!" He went out.
Hard on the heels of that episode, came another--and then another. The first was minor, but it distressed Jimmie. The second was more bitter.
On the day after he had stalked away from his mother's intolerance, with the hot belief that Sarah had been a traitor to her man, he called on Biff. He was beginning to like Biff, to feel that his brother had a soul. It was a young soul, wounded and arrogant, but susceptible of maturation. It needed care. Jimmie believed that Biff was caring for it, as he lay on his monotonous bed, thinking slow thoughts about his life, and reading long books about the realities around him.
Jimmie had formed the habit of cutting over to the hospital on his walk to work or his return from work, of rapping on his brother's door and sitting in the easy chair for a few minutes. This time, remembering that Biff's room was bare, like the rooms of most slow-healing invalids whose friends and relatives have grown inattentive, he stopped at a florist's and bought a bunch of chrysanthemums. Because his arms were filled with the flowers Jimmie kicked open the door of the room.
He found Biff locked in an embrace with a nurse. The same pretty nurse who had been kidding with Dr. Heiffler on the night Jimmie had conferred with him. They broke apart. The nurse flushed--but not much; it was a defiant flush, a tantalizing flush, rather than the swift reddening one might have expected. She looked boldly at Jimmie, patted Biff's cheek, and went out of the room.
Biff chuckled. "You're the darnedest guy! Always popping into things!"
"Not that I want to! You people are always doing things. What's the idea? She's a poor working gal, Biff. You're too irresistible to take advantage of her. Too much dough.
Too much family."
Biff laughed harder. "Take advantage of Genevieve? Look. How many times does a girl have to be taken advantage of before she's out of the minor league?"
Jimmie unwrapped the flowers. He was still fairly unruffled. "Not a nice thing to say."
"All my pals have had dates with Genevieve. Can't imagine how I overlooked her, myself. She's pretty, eh?"
"Sure." Jimmie sat down on the edge of the bed. "You're pretty, too, Biff. Nice eyes--State football hero--whatnot. I suppose the gals in your gang won't come in and neck with a pair of plaster casts. Still--a nurse! Tchk-tchk!"
"You take her out, Jimmie. She's a nice dish. Do you good. You look like a cold baked potato--more every day. Too much work. And Genevieve knows all the answers.
Lives on the wrong side of the tracks, but with a face and a chassis like that a dame can cross 'em--"
"Aren't you being just a shade-hard-boiled, Biff?"
"You sore?"
Jimmie walked over to the window. "Not exactly."
Biff laughed sharply. "You know, sometimes the family is right about you. You're a meddlesome cluck. And too darned high-and-mighty. If you're trying to lecture me on personal behavior--quit! And the next time you come over here--knock."
"All right."
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings."
"You aren't hurting 'em." Jimmie smiled--but he was aware that his feelings were hurt.
"Y ou get your legs broken," Biff said, with a tinge of self-pity. "Y ou try lying around in a hospital, week in and out. You see what you'd do if a sophisticated babe came in and offered to make the time go a lot faster."
"All right, wise guy," Jimmie said. "All right. I'll go quietly." He did go. He supposed that he had been meddlesome and toplofty. It wasn't any of his business. Still, it wasn't right, either. And Jimmie felt that not-right behavior was everybody's business. So, he decided, maybe he was priggish. Maybe he was a blithering fool. He strode along the cold street toward the paint works and he thought of Audrey and his temples swelled. The world was cock-eyed--and doing itself no good by being that way.
Two days later, his father threw him out.
It was his fault.
After he had moved his things over to the country club, which was nearer the factory, anyway--after he had settled in a chintz-draped room that overlooked the golf course, he began to see that he had almost consciously precipitated the banishment, in the same righteous way in which he'd got himself into so many other fights. . . .
A few days after his irritated criticism of Biff he had set up a slow distillation in his lab, left it in charge of one of the men, and gone home at four o'clock. Because he seldom reached home until seven--and because, in any case, his presence would have been egregious--nobody had told him about the meeting.
He saw a number of cars parked on the street and in the drive. He thought that his mother was having a female party. He planned to wave at her from the hall, go up to his room, and hide. In fact, he got up momentum to make the trip through the hall a fast one.
However, when he opened the door he smelled cigar smoke and he heard the mumble of men's voices. That stopped him. Somebody in the living room caught sight of him and waved. Heads turned.
Someone else said, "There's Jimmie!"
Several men laughed.
Still another man called, "Hello, Jimmie! Come on in and see how the last little band of Americans is clinging to the Faith!"
So Jimmie went in. He went, because he was interested. This was some subcommittee from the America Forever Committee. Jimmie looked at his father, who sat behind the big table, as chairman, evidently, and Jimmie's eyes were bright with satire.
His father put on a stuffy expression and said, "Join us, James. That is, if you want, sincerely, to see the opposition at work. And if you can remember that opposition is one of the honest functions of democracy."
Jimmie nodded meekly and sprawled in a leather chair. For a while the meeting amused him. An American ship had been fired on by a submarine, and it appeared that the Muskogewan members of America Forever had passed a resolution "suggesting" that the submarine had been English. Then the Germans had admitted it was their submarine.
The incident was two months old, but due to it, the America Forever Committee in Muskogewan had been grossly lampooned in a new issue of a monthly magazine. Their first agendum was to draw up a resolution informing the magazine that England had perfidiously drawn America into the war. They next framed a resolution to stay out of war.
After that a long telegram was read. It came from a gentleman of national importance. Its purport was that, even with a congressional declaration of war, the work of America Forever would go forward. Such a declaration, the message said, could only be regarded as the act of a body of rubberstamps who no longer represented the people, or held the power originally vested in them by the Constitution but now assumed by a band of thieves. In view of the fact that no act of Congress could be considered responsible, the wire said, the members of America Forever were urged to disregard all such acts. And so on.
Jimmie reflected that the "members" were, in effect, being urged to consider the future possibility of treason. The men did not seem to see it in that li
ght. Jimmie grinned inwardly.
Money was voted for an advertisement in the local paper which would proclaim that American boys were about to die for the ideology of Red Russia. There were other matters, all heatedly executed and all steadfastly aimed at making it as hard as possible for the existing government to maintain its thesis that the United States was in terrible danger, not of its own making, but inescapable, nonetheless.
Jimmie was planning to slip out of the room, when his name was called. It was called after a whispered conversation at the long table.
A man with horn-rimmed glasses and a small, yellowish mustache said,
"Jimmie!" overloudly. "Jimmie," he repeated, "would you mind a couple of questions?"
Surprised, Jimmie rose awkwardly and said, "Why, no. Certainly not. Shoot!" He sat down again.
The man went on: "We--er--in this subcommittee--we keep an eye on things happening in this town. Feel it's our duty. My name, incidentally, is Murton." Jimmie ducked his head. Mr. Murton continued, "I don't mean spying. Just--watching things."
Jimmie bowed again. If they wanted to play spy, let them. The next words, however, alarmed Jimmie. "Things like your factory."
Jimmie stood. "I'm afraid I can't tell you much about that, Mr. Murton. We're under secret orders--as you doubtless know."
Everyone pivoted to look at the young man. Chairs creaked. Mr. Murton said,
"Exactly. Nevertheless, we happen to know that you are manufacturing large quantities of poison gas in your factory."
"Oh? You do?"
"Naturally, we don't ask you to admit this. We know it. We also know that some of this--er--material goes to England. Via the Great Lakes and Canada. We have traced it."
"Very enterprising," Jimmie said unsympathetically.
Mr. Murton cleared his throat. "Mr. Bailey!" He was addressing the son. "We do not like the manufacture of poison gas anywhere." There was a loud babble of agreement.
"And we will not tolerate it--in Muskogewan!"
Jimmie sucked in his cheeks and thought a moment. "Look," he said presently.