XI

John Grandin idled at Dune House as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He was only too conscious of the distress Ethel was probably going through at home, but he purposely put it from his mind: it was the last thing he wished to think of. All he wanted to do, in his new acceptance of his fate, was to daydream about Cliff Hauman—dwell sensually on the improbability which could never come to pass.

Fortunately, the Howards were preoccupied with themselves and their tours of the island and had little time for him; now when they met, briefly, Bill Howard was cordial and sympathetic though somewhat strained, and Sarah was aloof. This was understandable enough in view of the fact that they had formerly been two married couples together; but his status now was the equivalent of a bachelor. The Haumans were busy with their bicycle riding or spent long hours on the beach—where, for some reason, John Grandin did not care to go now. One evening during their usual awkward session at the dinner table, Cliff suddenly announced—with an ecstasy of happiness that made John Grandin’s heart turn over: “I got my wire, Johnnie. I report in Brooklyn Monday morning bright and early for my physical! We’ll be leaving tomorrow. This is it, Johnnie!”

Billie ostentatiously paid no attention. She had brought to the table a package of considerable size—her wedding pictures, she explained happily. She spread the large photographs on the tablecloth and John Grandin examined them one by one, while Billie commented on each group or pose. The pictures showed the bridesmaids in their long frocks, arranged on either side of Billie and Cliff on the lawn; the modest, smiling, rather stout parents, wearing glasses, looking curiously alike, and a little nonplused by so much grandeur occasioned by their offspring. There were several poses of Billie alone—cutting the enormous cake, waving at the camera with a grin, descending the staircase with her white-­gloved hand resting with self-­conscious grace on the banister and her left foot on the step above, standing against a bower of smilax with her arm upraised in the act of tossing her beribboned bouquet; and one of Cliff. He was buttoned to the chin in his resplendent white tunic and looked so worried that John Grandin almost laughed with pleasure at the awkward charm of the picture.

Nevertheless, a strange depression fell upon their table as Cliff drew the telegram from his pocket and opened it—a depression shared even by Cliff, though on his part there was a new and happy tension, a restlessness and eagerness to be off.

Afterward they went out onto the porch in the evening air—constrained, all of them—to say their farewells. Sarah and Bill Howard came out and went down the steps as if they knew no one on the veranda, and disappeared, arm in arm, in the direction of Tom Nevershead. Billie and Cliff Hauman were to go to bed early, they explained. A taxi was to call at six in the morning in order to get them to Nantucket in time for the seven-o’clock boat to Woods Hole. They would arrive in New York late that afternoon; and on Monday morning—the examination that would decide everything. Cliff’s eyes shone as he said this, but he was not himself; he was not thinking of them or of anyone else. The farewells meant nothing; he would much sooner have left at once without a word.

Now that it was the end, John Grandin stood about awkwardly on the veranda, facing the Haumans somewhat formally. Cliff was not so much self-­conscious as preoccupied; he was very quiet, and said little during the few moments they had left. Billie, remembering her manners, smiled dreamily.

“And what are your plans, Mr. Grandin?” she asked politely. “Maybe we’ll be seeing you and your wife in New York sometime,” she added, with listless indifference.

“I have to be in New York for the opening of summer school, a week from now, but Ethel is staying at her mother’s in Maine where the children are. I may be alone a month or so—it does them so much good to be in the country . . .”

With a sudden concern, Billie said: “You mean you and Mrs. Grandin won’t be seeing each other for a whole month?”

He smiled. “When you’ve been married as long as we have—” He gave a small laugh. “I suppose it sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? But it’s one of the facts of marriage.”

Billie wasn’t listening. Absorbed in some troubling thought of her own, she took Cliff’s arm in an abstracted fashion almost as if she were unaware of what she was doing. Instinctively she moved close to him, holding his thick arm with both hands, and gazed fixedly at Grandin. In a small worried voice as if she were thinking aloud, addressing no one in particular, she said: “Oh dear, I couldn’t be away from Cliff that long. . . .”

They went upstairs together. At the top of the first landing they parted, the Haumans to go one way down the long corridor to their room, Grandin the other.

Cliff, he wanted to say (and the tears came into his eyes at the thought): I’ve grown very fond of you. Cliff; good luck—all the best. . . . But it was something he would never be able to put into words. He stood there a moment longer, watching Cliff go down the long hall, walking with a self-­conscious toughness because he knew he was being observed.

It was ended. He had done his best, his willful dangerous best, and nothing had come of it. The thing was over, he was free again (they were both free—free to love and ignore one another, as one does even with the best of friends), and his inexpressible relief that both he and Cliff had escaped danger was so all-­embracing that he began to love Cliff Hauman all over again, as he should be loved. Watching him for the last time going off on his destructive natural way—so out of place in the colorless hotel corridor when his proper setting was the company platoon, the LST, or the beachhead—he could not but wish him well from the depths of his heart. . . . Good luck, Cliff; God bless you; so long! . . . They wouldn’t be meeting again, no, not tomorrow or ever. Too bad, too, for in spite of his frustration, there would be more point in it now than there ever had been before. But he had his work to do and Cliff had his, and their paths were not likely to cross again, no matter what the future might bring. He wondered whether Cliff would remember or think of him. He doubted if he would very often think of Cliff, though he knew he would never forget him. . . .

In his room at last, his lonely room now, he took up a pencil and a sheet and envelope of the fancy hotel stationery, and did what he knew to be either a very futile or a very reckless thing. He wrote:

My dear Cliff:

I am confident that you will pass your examination in Brooklyn like, as you say, a breeze. Anyone whose heart is so set on a thing as yours is on this, deserves to get it. I wish you well with everything I’ve got.

But now that our relationship is over, I can’t help but feel a little sad, foolish though it may be of me, and still more foolish though it may be to say it. In this connection, it has occurred to me that you might or might not be interested to know that I will be home, alone, on the Monday following your trip to Brooklyn. I say alone because, as you know, Ethel is to stay on in Maine for a while and I will be most awfully in need of company. I think you know how happy it would make me to see you again. The address is 532 West 116th Street, the telephone number is Cathedral 6-­4324.

Affectionately,

“Johnnie”

I might as well admit that I’ve always felt somewhat silly when you called me Johnnie. No one but you has called me that since I was a child. And yet, to be absolutely honest with myself—and to you—I can’t help feeling a little flattered, too.

J.G.

He descended the stairs to the lobby, left the letter in the Haumans’ box and went back up to his room again, to spend a sleepless night.