Then she had two months to ponder what had happened, to see how she had wrought the ugly small ruin. She cried in the nights.
She need not brood over it any more. She had her lesson; she could forget how she had learned it. This new leave would be the one to remember, the one he and she would have, to keep forever. She was to have a second chance, another twenty-four hours with him. After all, that is no short while, you know; that is, if you do not think of it as a thin little row of hours dropping off like beads from a broken string. Think of it as a whole long day and a whole long night, shining and sweet, and you will be all but awed by your fortune. For how many people are there who have the memory of a whole long day and a whole long night, shining and sweet, to carry with them in their hearts until they die?
To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier.
She knew those rules. She would have said that she would rather die, and she would have meant something very near the words, than send a letter of complaint or sadness or cold anger to her husband, a soldier far away, strained and weary from his work, giving all he had for the mighty cause. If in her letters she could be all he wanted her to be, how much easier to be it when they were together. Letters were difficult; every word had to be considered and chosen. When they were together again, when they could see and hear and touch each other, there would be no stiltedness. They would talk and laugh together. They would have tenderness and excitement. It would be as if they had never been separated. Perhaps they never had been. Perhaps a strange new life and strange empty miles and strange gay voices had no existence for two who were really one.
She had thought it out. She had learned the laws of what not to do. Now she could give herself up to the ecstasy of waiting his coming.
It was a fine week. She counted the time again, but now it was sweet to see it go. Two days after tomorrow, day after tomorrow, tomorrow. She lay awake in the dark, but it was a thrilling wakefulness. She went tall and straight by day, in pride in her warrior. On the street, she looked with amused pity at women who walked with men in civilian suits.
She bought a new dress; black—he liked black dresses—simple—he liked plain dresses—and so expensive that she would not think of its price. She charged it, and realized that for months to come she would tear up the bill without removing it from its envelope. All right—this was no time to think of months to come.
The day of the leave was a Saturday. She flushed with gratitude to the army for this coincidence, for after one o’clock, Saturday was her own. She went from her office without stopping for lunch, and bought perfume and toilet water and bath oil. She had a bit of each remaining in bottles on her dressing table and in her bathroom, but it made her feel desired and secure to have rich new stores of them. She bought a nightgown, a delightful thing of soft chiffon patterned with little bouquets, with innocent puffs of sleeves and a Romney neck and a blue sash. It could never withstand laundering, a French cleaner must care for it—all right. She hurried home with it, to fold it in a satin sachet.
Then she went out again and bought the materials for cocktails and whiskies-and-sodas, shuddering at their cost. She went a dozen blocks to buy the kind of salted biscuits he liked with drinks. On the way back she passed a florist’s shop in the window of which were displayed potted fuchsia. She made no attempt to resist them. They were too charming, with their delicate parchment-colored inverted cups and their graceful magenta bells. She bought six pots of them. Suppose she did without lunches the next week—all right.
When she was done with the little living-room, it looked gracious and gay. She ranged the pots of fuchsia along the window sill, she drew out a table and set it with glasses and bottles, she plumped the pillows and laid bright-covered magazines about invitingly. It was a place where someone entering eagerly would find delighted welcome.
Before she changed her dress, she telephoned downstairs to the man who tended both the switchboard and the elevator.
“Oh,” she said, when he eventually answered. “Oh, I just want to say, when my husband, Lieutenant McVicker, comes, please send him right up.”
There was no necessity for the call. The wearied attendant would have brought up anyone to any flat without the additional stress of a telephoned announcement. But she wanted to say the words. She wanted to say “my husband” and she wanted to say “lieutenant.”
She sang, when she went into the bedroom to dress. She had a sweet, uncertain little voice that made the lusty song ludicrous.
“Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun, sun, sun, sun.
Here they come: zooming to meet our thunder—
At ’em boys, give ’er the gun!”
She kept singing, in a preoccupied way, while she gave close attention to her lips and her eyelashes. Then she was silent and held her breath as she drew on the new dress. It was good to her. There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses. She stood looking at herself in the mirror with deep interest, as if she watched a chic unknown, the details of whose costume she sought to memorize.
As she stood there, the bell rang. It rang three times, loud and quick. He had come.
She gasped, and her hands fluttered over the dressing table. She seized the perfume atomizer and sprayed scent violently all about her head and shoulders, some of it reaching them. She had already perfumed herself, but she wanted another minute, another moment, anything. For it had taken her again—the outrageous shyness. She could not bring herself to go to the door and open it. She stood, shaking, and squirted perfume.
The bell rang three times loud and quick again, and then an endless peal.
“Oh, wait, can’t you?” she cried. She threw down the atomizer, looked wildly around the room as if for a hiding-place, then sternly made herself tall and sought to control the shaking of her body. The shrill noise of the bell seemed to fill the flat and crowd the air out of it.
She started for the door. Before she reached it, she stopped, held her hands over her face, and prayed, “Oh, please let it be all right,” she whispered. “Please keep me from doing wrong things. Please let it be lovely.”
Then she opened the door. The noise of the bell stopped. There he stood in the brightly lighted little hall. All the long sad nights, and all the strong and sensible vows. And now he had come. And there she stood.
“Well, for heaven’s sake!” she said. “I had no idea there was anybody out here. Why, you were just as quiet as a little mouse.”
“Well! Don’t you ever open the door?” he said.
“Can’t a woman have time to put on her shoes?” she said.
He came in and closed the doors behind him. “Ah, darling,” he said. He put his arms around her. She slid her cheek along his lips, touched her forehead to his shoulder, and broke away from him.
“Well!” she said. “Nice to see you, Lieutenant. How’s the war?”
“How are you?” he said. “You look wonderful.”
“Me?” she said. “Look at you.”
He was well worth looking at. His fine clothes complemented his fine body. The precision of his appointments was absolute, yet he seemed to have no consciousness of it. He stood straight, and he moved with grace and assurance. His face was browned. It was thin, so thin that the bones showed under the cheeks and down the
jaws; but there was no look of strain in it. It was smooth and serene and confident. He was the American officer, and there was no finer sight than he.
“Well!” she said. She made herself raise her eyes to his and found suddenly that it was no longer difficult. “Well, we can’t just stand here saying ‘well’ at each other. Come on in and sit down. We’ve got a long time ahead of us—oh, Steve, isn’t it wonderful! Hey. Didn’t you bring a bag?”
“Why, you see,” he said, and stopped. He slung his cap over onto the table among the bottles and glasses. “I left the bag at the station. I’m afraid I’ve got sort of rotten news, darling.”
She kept her hands from flying to her breast.
“You—you’re going overseas right away?” she said.
“Oh, Lord, no,” he said. “Oh, no, no, no. I said this was rotten news. No. They’ve changed the orders, baby. They’ve taken back all leaves. We’re to go right on to the new field. I’ve got to get a train at six-ten.”
She sat down on the sofa. She wanted to cry; not silently with slow crystal tears, but with wide mouth and smeared face. She wanted to throw herself stomach-down on the floor, and kick and scream, and go limp if anyone tried to lift her.
“I think that’s awful,” she said. “I think that’s just filthy.”
“I know,” he said. “But there’s nothing to do about it. This is the army, Mrs. Jones.”
“Couldn’t you have said something?” she said. “Couldn’t you have told them you’ve had only one leave in six months? Couldn’t you have said all the chance your wife had to see you again was just this poor little twenty-four hours? Couldn’t you have explained what it meant to her? Couldn’t you?”
“Come on, now, Mimi,” he said. “There’s a war on.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was sorry as soon as I’d said it. I was sorry while I was saying it. But—oh, it’s so hard!”
“It’s not easy for anybody,” he said. “You don’t know how the boys were looking forward to their leaves.”
“Oh, I don’t give a damn about the boys!” she said.
“That’s the spirit that’ll win for our side,” he said. He sat down in the biggest chair, stretched his legs and crossed his ankles.
“You don’t care about anything but those pilots,” she said.
“Look, Mimi,” he said. “We haven’t got time to do this. We haven’t got time to get into a fight and say a lot of things we don’t mean. Everything’s all—all speeded up, now. There’s no time left for this.”
“Oh, I know,” she said. “Oh, Steve, don’t I know!”
She went over and sat on the arm of his chair and buried her face in his shoulder.
“This is more like it,” he said. “I’ve kept thinking about this.” She nodded against his blouse.
“If you knew what it was to sit in a decent chair again,” he said.
She sat up. “Oh,” she said. “It’s the chair. I’m so glad you like it.”
“They’ve got the worst chairs you ever saw, in the pilots’ room,” he said. “A lot of busted-down old rockers—honestly, rockers—that big-hearted patriots contributed, to get them out of the attic. If they haven’t better furniture at the new field, I’m going to do something about it, even if I have to buy the stuff myself.”
“I certainly would, if I were you,” she said. “I’d go without food and clothing and laundry, so the boys would be happy sitting down. I wouldn’t even save out enough for air mail stamps, to write to my wife once in a while.”
She rose and moved about the room.
“Mimi, what’s the matter with you?” he said. “Are you—are you jealous of the pilots?”
She counted as far as eight, to herself. Then she turned and smiled at him.
“Why—I guess I am—” she said. “I guess that’s just what I must be. Not only of the pilots. Of the whole air corps. Of the whole Army of the United States.”
“You’re wonderful,” he said.
“You see,” she said with care, “you have a whole new life—I have half an old one. Your life is so far away from mine, I don’t see how they’re ever going to come back together.”
“That’s nonsense,” he said.
“No, please wait,” she said. “I get strained and—and frightened, I guess, and I say things I could cut my throat for saying. But you know what I really feel about you. I’m so proud of you I can’t find words for it. I know you’re doing the most important thing in the world, maybe the only important thing in the world. Only—oh, Steve, I wish to heaven you didn’t love doing it so much!”
“Listen,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You mustn’t interrupt a lady. It’s unbecoming an officer, like carrying packages in the street. I’m just trying to tell you a little about how I feel. I can’t get used to being so completely left out. You don’t wonder what I do, you don’t want to find out what’s in my head—why, you never even ask me how I am!”
“I do so!” he said. “I asked you how you were the minute I came in.”
“That was white of you,” she said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he said. “I didn’t have to ask you. I could see how you look. You look wonderful. I told you that.”
She smiled at him. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?” she said. “And you sounded as if you meant it. Do you really like my dress?”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I always liked that dress on you.”
It was as if she turned to wood. “This dress,” she said, enunciating with insulting distinctness, “is brand-new. I have never had it on before in my life. In case you are interested, I bought it especially for this occasion.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said. “Oh, sure, now I see it’s not the other one at all. I think it’s great. I like you in black.”
“At moments like this,” she said, “I almost wish I were in it for another reason.”
“Stop it,” he said. “Sit down and tell me about yourself. What have you been doing?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said.
“How’s the office?” he said.
“Dull,” she said. “Dull as mud.”
“Who have you seen?” he said.
“Oh, nobody,” she said.
“Well, what do you do?” he said.
“In the evenings?” she said. “Oh, I sit here and knit and read detective stories that it turns out I’ve read before.”
“I think that’s all wrong of you,” he said. “I think it’s asinine to sit here alone, moping. That doesn’t do any good to anybody. Why don’t you go out more?”
“I hate to go out with just women,” she said.
“Well, why do you have to?” he said. “Ralph’s in town, isn’t he? And John and Bill and Gerald. Why don’t you go out with them? You’re silly not to.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me,” she said, “that it was silly to keep faithful to one’s husband.”
“Isn’t that taking rather a jump?” he said. “It’s possible to go to dinner with a man and stay this side adultery. And don’t use words like ‘one’s.’ You’re awful when you’re elegant.”
“I know,” she said. “I never have any luck when I try. No. You’re the one that’s awful, Steve. You really are. I’m trying to show you a glimpse of my heart, to tell you how it feels when you’re gone, how I don’t want to be with anyone if I can’t be with you. And all you say is, I’m not doing any good to anybody. That’ll be nice to think of when you go. You don’t know what it’s like for me here alone. You just don’t know.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I know, Mimi.” He reached for a cigarette on the little table beside him, and the bright magazine by the cigarette-box caught his eye. “Hey, is this this week’s? I haven’t seen it yet.” He glanced through the early pages.
“Go ahead and read if you want to,” she said. “Don’t let me disturb you.”
“I’m not reading,” he said. He put down the magazine. “You see, I don’t know what to say, when you start talk
ing about showing me glimpses of your heart, and all that. I know. I know you must be having a rotten time. But aren’t you feeling fairly sorry for yourself?”
“If I’m not,” she said, “who would be?”
“What do you want anyone to be sorry for you for?” he said. “You’d be all right if you’d stop sitting around alone. I’d like to think of you having a good time while I’m away.”
She went over to him and kissed him on the forehead.
“Lieutenant,” she said, “you are a far nobler character than I am. Either that,” she said, “or there is something else back of this.”
“Oh, shut up,” he said. He pulled her down to him and held her there. She seemed to melt against him, and stayed there, still.
Then she felt him take his left arm from around her and felt his head raised from its place against hers. She looked up at him. He was craning over her shoulder, endeavoring to see his wrist watch.
“Oh, now, really!” she said. She put her hands against his chest and pushed herself vigorously away from him.
“It goes so quickly,” he said softly, with his eyes on his watch. “We’ve—we’ve only a little while, darling.”
She melted again. “Oh, Steve,” she whispered. “Oh, dearest.”
“I do want to take a bath,” he said. “Get up, will you, baby?”
She got right up. “You’re going to take a bath?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Oh, not in the least,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s one of the pleasantest ways of killing time, I always think.”
“You know how you feel after a long ride on a train,” he said.
“Oh, surely,” she said.
He rose and went into the bedroom. “I’ll hurry up,” he called back to her.
“Why?” she said.
Then she had a moment to consider herself. She went into the bedroom after him, sweet with renewed resolve. He had hung his blouse and necktie neatly over a chair and he was unbuttoning his shirt. As she came in, he took it off. She looked at the beautiful brown triangle of his back. She would do anything for him, anything in the world.
Complete Stories Page 38