He gave me a sheet of paper and I put it in my pocket.
He seemed to be relieved that I had it and told me to go back where I belonged, but just when I was leaving he called me back.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “what it was made you into such a little twerp. I guess it was how you were brought up. You’ll be all right when you loosen up, Pulham. Shake hands.”
“I guess I know what you mean,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Just remember this isn’t a God-damned university club,” said Captain Rowle.
I got on better after that—I seemed to know more about people. I got to know Major Groves and a lot of the others in the battalion mess in Coblentz pretty well that winter and I found myself thinking once, as I looked around the table at them, that I would have had a hard time coping with most of them a few months before. Major Groves had a hardware business somewhere near Austin, Texas, and he used to talk to me about it when we drank Rhine wine in the evening. He had a quiet, plaintive Southwestern voice.
“Why don’t you ever talk about home, Pulham?” he asked me once.
“I guess I’m not so good at talking,” I told him, “but I think about it a lot.” I was thinking about how I had kissed Louise Mitchell good-by, and now it did not seem possible. I wanted to keep everything at home away from the Major and all the rest of them, not because I was ashamed of it, but because they would not understand. Some of the letters from home had reached me that evening, one from Mother telling about the Red Cross and asking me when I would get back, and one from Father asking the same question. There was also a letter from the Skipper.
I have been writing all the old boys [he wrote], and you are on the list. The worst of it here is the lack of news. I suppose you know that Stephens and Trimble were killed in the Argonne. Their names are now on a temporary plaque in the chapel. I heard from Joe Bingham yesterday. He tells me that Bo-jo Brown is a physical director. Please write soon and tell me about yourself with some details about the war. I try to read the letters at chapel as soon as they come in.
Then there was a letter from Kay Motford answering one I wrote her, thanking her for a sweater which she sent me.
“Dear Harry,” she wrote, “everyone is very busy here. There is a great influenza epidemic, but everything is a good deal the same.” Then she went on, telling how much the same it was and about what everyone was doing. It was strange that none of those letters made me feel homesick. I did not seem to give a particular damn what anyone was doing. “I don’t know whether you heard,” she wrote, “that Louise Mitchell is married.” I had not heard and I did not seem to care about that either.
“I don’t know what it is about home,” I said to the Major. “All they ever taught me was to behave like a damned fool.”
“Well,” the Major said, “the home folks wouldn’t know you now.”
The idea troubled me, because I was afraid that I would not know them either. I was wondering what I was going to do when I got back.
“Now,” the Major said, “they must be right pleased about that medal.”
“I never told them,” I said.
“Now, Harry,” the Major said, “that ain’t fair.”
Once it had not seemed possible that a major could be a good officer if he allowed himself to lapse into bad grammar, but now the war had altered my point of view without my knowing exactly when or why. Actually it was not so much the war itself as those almost forgotten human contacts. I hated nearly every minute of it, and still hate it. I have never been able to understand all the sentimental talk about a week’s leave in Paris, where you used to be chivied by the military police and cheated by fatherly cab drivers and pursued by prostitutes, except when I think of it in terms of human contact. Those shadowy friends, those acquaintances of an evening, taught me more than I ever learned in school. There were farm boys from the Middle-west, Italians from the New York slums, factory workers, ranchers, sons of small town shopkeepers—but we all had a common point of view then, difficult to analyze, which was expressed in bawdy songs and jokes, and incredible as it may seem when I consider certain individuals, a common something which you might call decency. The members of A Company even when they were drunk and disorderly were all nice boys, once you got to know them. It surprised me to realize that most of them were considerably more admirable people than the Y.M.C.A. secretaries, who tried to teach them to be nice. It surprised me that most of them were braver and more generous than I was.
“When they get to shooting at you,” the Major said once, “the boys find out right quick what you are.”
It still made me lonely when I realized that no one else in the officers’ mess was exactly like me. I remember how the Major reacted when I told him once that my family lived largely on their income.
“Listen, boy,” the Major said, “you wouldn’t kid me, would you?”
I have often wondered what happened to the Major. We exchanged a few letters in the beginning and he came to my wedding, but I have not heard from him for years or from any of the others. There was a process after the war of trying to get back to what you had been before, of trying to combine what you had learned with what you had been taught to ignore. I cannot blame myself or a good many of my friends for having made a mess of it, for the two things could not fit together. When you got back it was like the broken plate.
“If I had had the guts—” I sometimes find myself thinking, and a part of the old restlessness comes back.
XIII
Something Basic
After my discharge, which was handed me the day I landed at Hoboken, I went to the old Waldorf on Thirty-fourth Street with four hundred dollars of back pay and with what was left of my belongings tied up in a bedding roll. My two locker trunks and my cot and folding chair, and all those other things which we had been told were a part of every officer’s equipment, had been lost six months before, leaving me with two dirty blankets and a soiled uniform which I was wearing, one clean shirt, some woolen socks and a change of underwear. The clerk at the marble desk looked at me and glanced at my bedding roll.
“I’ll have to ask you to pay in advance,” he said, and I handed him a hundred dollar bill.
“I’ve been thinking for quite a while,” I said, “that I wanted to sleep at the Waldorf.”
The people around me looked sleek and fat and beautiful. There was music in the dining room and no sign of the war.
“Don’t worry,” I told the clerk. “I’ll get some other clothes tomorrow.”
“I suppose you’ve just come in, Lieutenant,” the clerk said. “Well, it was quite a war.”
“Yes, it was quite a war,” I said.
Up on the eighth floor the bellboy put my bedding roll on a stand and opened the window. I could hear all the noises on Fifth Avenue and I could look out and see the lights.
“Is there anything else you want, sir?” he asked.
There was a good deal that I wanted. I was trying to pick up the pieces.
“You can run me a hot bath,” I said. All the appointments in the room seemed inordinately elaborate. I looked at my wrist watch. It was only half past six. “And you can get me a Scotch-and-soda and an order of oatmeal and cream.”
“Oatmeal?” he repeated.
“Go ahead and get it,” I said. “Oatmeal, and half a dozen oysters.”
I do not know why my mind had been dwelling so long on this combination. There had been a good deal of discussion about what we would do when we got out of the Army and I was only doing what I wanted. I kept thinking that I had better make the most of it, that this might be my last chance. The telephone was on the table beside the bed, and I was near enough to my family to reach them. I loved them and it was the right thing to call them at once to tell them that I was finally back, but I did not know where to begin. Then I thought of Bill King. I thought of him when I drank my whisky and ate my oatmeal. I began wondering if he might be back, but the only proper thing to do was to call the family.
; Hugh’s voice was on the wire. I heard it with a blank sort of amazement that Hugh could still be alive.
“Is Father in, Hugh?” I asked. “It’s Mister Harry.” Then I heard Hugh calling at the top of his voice and then Father was speaking.
“Where are you, Harry?” he called. “Are you all right?”
It seemed incredible to me that he could not have understood that I was all right if I was at the Waldorf. I tried to imagine him by the telephone in the library.
“How’s Mother?” I said. “How’s Mary?”
“Now, listen,” Father called. “Are you listening? Get the midnight train.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to get some clothes. I’ll be up tomorrow.”
“Never mind the clothes,” Father shouted. “Get the train.”
“I can’t,” I said. “There’re some things I have to do.”
He would not have understood it if I had told him that I wanted a short time by myself. Until I thought again of Bill King, I did not want anyone to talk to me about the war or anything. I wondered exactly how I should ask for Bill in case anything had happened to him, but he answered the telephone himself; his voice was sharp and impatient.
“Bill,” I said, “it’s Harry.”
“Well, it’s about time you got back,” Bill said. “Where are you?”
I told him that I was just off the boat and just discharged.
“Well, come on out here,” Bill said.
I asked him if he would not come here instead and spend the night in the other bed. I told him there were a lot of things I wanted to talk about, and he came.
It must have been nine o’clock when he arrived. I was curious to see whether he would look as I remembered him. I was worried about our being able to pick up something where we had left it off, because he looked like the people I had seen out on the street, very clean and very prosperous. There was just a moment of constraint. Then I was sure he was glad to see me.
“Well, what are you sitting up here for?” Bill asked. “On your first night back? Let’s go out and see the town.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “I don’t want to see anything just yet.”
He seemed to know the way I felt. He sat down and lighted a cigarette and in a minute everything was simple. First he told me the news of everyone and then we ordered up some drinks.
“To hell with the Army,” Bill said, “and to hell with West Point.”
He made me laugh as he went on. Bill had a lot of stories about generals and about Paris and about the Y.M.C.A.
“And at that point,” he kept saying, “I wished to God you were there. You’d have done the right thing.”
“Oh, shut up, Bill,” I said, just the way I used to.
“So they put you into the Half Moon, did they?”
“It was a good division,” I said.
“Don’t tell me that all the officers and men were fine fellows,” Bill said.
“They were, Bill, really, when you got to know them.”
Bill began to laugh.
“I bet you learned a lot of bad habits,” he said. “Go ahead and tell me how you won the war.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
“All right,” Bill said. “It’s funny how some people act when they get back. You’ll get over it in a week or two.”
I had asked him there to talk to him, but when it came to the point I felt reluctant.
“I suppose so,” I said. “I don’t know how it is, Bill. I don’t seem to want to go home.”
A good many people have said harsh things about Bill King, among them that he was hard-boiled and cynical and always looking out for himself. I can only say that Bill was very kind to me that night.
“I suppose you won’t understand it,” I said. “It’s just that I’m just not used to it any more.”
“You must have had quite a shaking up,” Bill said; “but if you don’t want to go back, why should you?”
“What else can I do?” I asked.
“Now, don’t make me cry,” Bill answered. “You can get a job. Go back home and tell them you’ve got a job. I’ll get you one. I’ll get you one tomorrow.”
I sat for a while considering. It must have seemed simple to him, but it was not simple to me.
“Where can you get me one?” I asked.
“Where I’m working,” Bill said. “The advertising business. I’ll call you up tomorrow after I’ve seen Bullard. I’m in strong with Bullard.”
“But I don’t know anything about it,” I said.
“Harry,” Bill told me, “nobody there knows anything about it either. Look at this.” He pulled a newspaper clipping out of his inside pocket and handed it to me. “It was in the Times this morning.”
“The man for whom we are seeking,” I read, “will preferably not have written advertising copy, but will have had a college education and a background of business experience and will possess besides a serious and pleasing personality, combined with a sense of taste and form. For such a man there is a definite opportunity in a large and growing organization which will take every care of his advancement.”
“Don’t read any more,” said Bill. “Bullard had me write it. You’ll do as well as anybody else.”
“But what does it mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Bill said. “Just remember that nothing much means anything these days. Do you want it or don’t you?”
A year ago it would not have seemed possible.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try it,” but I could not understand myself.
“Bill,” I asked, “do you think that anything’s the matter with me?”
“Hell, no,” Bill said. “Just get yourself off your mind.”
“I can’t,” I said. “There must be something the matter with me not to want to go home.”
“Try to act your age,” said Bill. “This war has taught a lot of people that it isn’t worth while living if you can’t do what you want. How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”
“But I wasn’t down on the farm,” I said. “I had everything.”
Bill waved his hand toward the window.
“You listen to me,” he said. “You don’t know what’s going on outside there—labor trouble, Communism, economic upset, the League of Nations. No one knows what’s going to happen, but you can be damned well sure of just one thing.”
“What?” I asked.
Bill pointed his finger at me.
“You were brought up in a certain tiny, superfluous segment,” he said, “that is going to be nonexistent. You say you were given everything, and what does it amount to? Not to a bucket of slops.”
He made me angry, but he continued speaking before I could stop him.
“Put it this way. Take the insect world.”
“What’s the insect world got to do with it?” I asked.
“Don’t interrupt me,” Bill said. “Take the insect world. Insects possess instincts rather than brains. When their environment changes so that their instincts play them false their species disappear. Now, you’re an insect with thwarted instincts.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Me?” Bill said. “I’m changing my instincts as quick as I can. It’s easier for me, because I’ve never had the intensive instinct course that you’ve had. I’ve not been in your hive of bees.”
“You used to like our beehive,” I said.
“Of course I liked it,” Bill answered. “It was a nice comfortable beehive, but they’re going to smoke it out. I like your father and mother and all the other bees, but you’ve got to get out of there, Harry.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
When I was halfway over to the office building near Forty-second Street next morning I should certainly have turned back, except that I could not let Bill down after he had made all the arrangements. I was still in the uniform of the old Half Moon Division, because the two suits I had
ordered from Brooks would not be ready for another day. The elevator let me out in a large reception room which was not like any other office that I had ever seen. I saw a handsome Persian carpet and some red leather chairs. Behind a girl seated at a Jacobean table was a wall of richly bound books and an artificial fireplace with artificial coals. On top of the bookcase was a bronze plaque which read “REFERENCE LIBRARY, J. T. BULLARD, INC.” Until I saw the girl at the table I had almost forgotten how very pretty American girls were. She looked up at me and smiled. Perhaps I was not so bad-looking myself, even though my uniform was shabby, but then she must have been taught to smile at everyone.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “Mr. King said you were coming. I’ll call him,” and she reached for the telephone.
“Won’t you sit down?” she said, and smiled again, but just at that moment a side door opened and there was Bill.
“Hello, Harry,” Bill said. “Looking at the books?” As a matter of fact, I had been looking at the girl at the table, thinking of something to say to her that was casual, yet merry. I was wishing that I could be like Bill, always with a ready remark.
“What are the books for?” I said.
Bill looked at the girl and back at me.
“It says on top,” he explained. “It’s our reference library—part of the J. T. Bullard service, isn’t it, Miss Ayling?”
“Yes, Mr. King,” the girl said.
“Come on,” said Bill, and he opened the door through which he had entered and took me by the arm. We walked through a large room, full of desks and typewriters, to a partition in back.
“Don’t ever try to be funny in front of that little bitch,” Bill said. I frowned at Bill, but he did not appear to notice. The country had certainly changed since I had left it. “She repeats everything,” Bill went on. “Just an industrial spy. Now for God’s sake be natural. Bullard’s waiting for you.”
At the end of the main office a girl at a typewriter got up when she saw Bill and opened a door a crack.
“You can go right in,” she said softly.
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 13