XXXIV

And She Never Dropped a Stitch

It was cold and windy on Monday night. The house looked even larger than it had when I had first seen it, now that the trees were bare. Its size engulfed me suddenly, almost like a return to consciousness, as I heard Williams asking me what the orders would be for tomorrow. The wind was whistling past the house. This business of trying to spread myself between New York and Connecticut would be too much, I was afraid, in winter.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” I said. “Ask Mrs. Skelton tomorrow morning what the plans are.”

I wanted to get inside out of the cold, and when I was in the hall, Oscar took my hat and coat.

“I’ve had my dinner,” I told him. “Where’s Mrs. Skelton?”

“She’s in the living room, sir,” Oscar said.

I could not understand why Helen had not come into the hall to meet me as she usually did after my trip from the city. I felt a little neglected, seeing that the house had been Helen’s idea. If I had really had my choice, we all would have still been in New York, and I would be entering an apartment just a few blocks away from the office. By the time I reached the living room I was thinking longingly of the place in the Fifties where we had lived.

“Hello, dear,” Helen said. “I didn’t know you’d be so late. Here’s Muriel Goodwin.”

Helen spoke as though I were Camilla being prepared for company, and I had certainly not expected any. Not until Helen had mentioned her, did I see that Mrs. Melville Goodwin was seated on the sofa, working on another washcloth, finishing some border stitches quickly so she could leave it and greet me. It was the washcloth as much as the apparition of Muriel Goodwin that confused me. My first thought was that it was utterly inappropriate, under the circumstances, for her to be crocheting another of those things, and then I remembered that the threads of Melville Goodwin were being removed from Dottie Peale’s tapestry.

“Don’t get up. You might drop a stitch,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I never drop them,” and she held out her hand graciously, as though Helen and I were young people on the post on whom she was making an informal call which she should have made some time before.

“I just called up rather on the spur of the moment,” she said. “Helen was most hospitable and sweet and asked me to come out for the night. I had run up to New York to see Pamela Hardee—that’s an old army family, really old army, who were stationed with us at Colon—and then I thought of you and Helen, and I thought it might be better for Melville if he were by himself a day longer.”

It was an effort for me not to look questioningly at Helen, but the situation was obviously under control, and Muriel Goodwin was the chairman of the board conducting the meeting.

“We’ve been having such a nice time,” she was saying, “talking about everything under the sun all through supper, especially about children and husbands. I told Helen not to call you up. I didn’t want you to be worried about my being here.”

I wanted very much to know whether Helen had told her anything about Dottie Peale, but there was no way of finding out.

“I’m awfully glad to see you,” I said.

“I’m glad, too,” Mrs. Goodwin answered. “I only had such a short glimpse of you in Washington, Sidney. I was just telling Helen I wished you were both in the service, too—but it’s funny, I still keep on feeling as though you were.”

At last I felt it might be polite to look at Helen, but she only smiled at me unhelpfully.

“We’ve only been talking in a very general way,” Mrs. Goodwin said again, “about children and husbands, but not about anything in particular.”

She seemed anxious for me to know that I had missed nothing, but I knew, as she looked up at me from her work, that she was no longer going to talk about nothing in particular. She was going to talk about everything. It was not a pleasant prospect for the end of any evening.

“Sidney,” Helen said, “I think I’d better go upstairs and leave you both together.”

“Don’t run away, dear,” Muriel Goodwin said. “Of course I’m here to talk about the General—but there’s nothing you shouldn’t hear.”

“Sidney,” Helen said, “I wish you’d please sit down,” and she sounded almost like Dottie Peale. “I don’t know why I can’t ever stop Sidney from prowling around the room.”

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Goodwin said, and her smile was sympathetically gracious. “Let him if he wants to. Mel often does, when I’m talking things over with him.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I found a chair and pulled it near the sofa where Mrs. Goodwin sat. She waited for me, giving me time to settle myself, and I found myself doing this hastily and guiltily, like a young officer called suddenly into conference. She was patient. She even waited a moment longer than was necessary, and then she spoke again.

“I know you’re both fond of Melville,” she said. “He has a gift for making friends. I’ve been very touched by how many people are concerned about him at present. Now General Grimshaw … Did Melville ever mention him—Foghorn Grimshaw?”

She smiled again, this time at Helen, and the army had taken over. She was no longer the General’s wife dropping in to call. She was closer now to being the spokesman at an army conference, giving a thumbnail sketch of background material.

“You know, dear,” she said to Helen, “Sidney made a very favorable impression on General Grimshaw. He went out of his way to speak of Sidney, and Goochy likes Sidney—he was Melville’s old chief of staff in France—and Robert liked him so much, too. That’s why I can’t help feeling that you’re all in the family.” And she smiled at me again.

Muriel was taking over, and she was running things very well. She was not even being a brave little woman. It was not fair, perhaps, but in a way I could sympathize with Melville Goodwin. He had been away a long time and had become used to running things for himself.

“I admit that General Grimshaw and General Gooch, too, know the General very well,” Muriel Goodwin was saying. The only sign of repression that I could detect was her impersonal reference to General Goodwin as “the General.” She had raised the barrier of rank and had deliberately made him a symbol, just as Victorian wives had once referred to their husbands as “Mister,” even in the bedroom. “But I know the General rather well myself, and I’ve known him longer than anyone else. I’ve seen him grow. Now they are talking to me of waiting, and of time curing everything. Of course I know all about waiting. You see, you have to, if you’re married in the service … but I would really like to know something definite, and no one will tell me.”

She had woven a large part of the General’s life, and now at last she was getting somewhere. I was forgetting where we were. I was following again in the parade after Melville Goodwin.

“Of course a part of me thinks of Mel as a person and as my husband,” she said, “but I realize too that ever since I was a girl in Hallowell, another part of me has always thought of what he means to other people, and what he stands for. I suppose this happens more in the service than anywhere else. If an officer dies, his wife can always remember what he has meant, not only to her, but to the service. Now I’ve had a good deal to do with making the General what he is.”

I was afraid she would speak of self-sacrifice, and it would have disappointed me if she had, but she went straight ahead marshaling her facts.

“Melville has his record, and no one can take that impersonal part of him away from me. He’s something more than my Melville Goodwin. Do you see what I mean when I say I don’t think of him entirely as a person?”

She paused and turned her head toward me abruptly, and her gray-blue eyes repeated the question. I had often thought how pretty she must have been when she was a girl, and I had no impression of faded beauty now. Although her bluish-gray hair and her plump figure made her look older than Melville Goodwin, she also looked wiser. The motion of her hands stopped. She laid the washcloth gently on her knees, and waited patiently to be sure I understood.

“You mean,” I said, “that you think of him as government property?”

She nodded to me quickly and pulled a long loop of thread through with her hook. I noticed that Helen was looking at me in a proud, complacent way that made me hope that I was not becoming a symbol myself.

“I hoped you’d say that,” she said. “I’m so glad you understand, and I do hope Helen will. I suppose I’m talking from the point of view of other service wives, and it’s hard for people on the outside sometimes to see it. There’s been so little ever written about service wives, hasn’t there?”

I turned my thoughts dutifully to literature, but I could only recall a few brief sketches of army women in the short stories of Kipling and a few lines in Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads. There were also pages from Lever, but then there was Thackeray.

“Well, there are the Newcomes,” I said.

Her whole face brightened. Somehow I had never thought of her as reading Thackeray.

“Oh,” she said, “the Old Campaigner. I hope you don’t think I’m like her. I’ve always been afraid you might.”

“No,” I said, “I thought you were at first, but I don’t think so now.”

She laughed, and when she did, she was almost like a girl who had been paid a compliment.

“Thackeray was so unfair,” she said. “He did nicely with the colonel, but when he came to her, he only made a caricature. It’s unfair, because army wives really have as much to do with the service as the men. Now take my General. I don’t think Melville would ever have made general if I hadn’t prodded him sometimes.… I wish Melville didn’t know this, too.… We might have been happier if I hadn’t been so ambitious—but at least I’ve done something for the service, and the service is more important than Mel or me.”

Muriel Goodwin stopped again, and memories of the Goodwins in Tientsin, Schofield, Panama, Benning and Bailey crowded uninvited into the living room. These and certain others had become as vivid to me as the footage of a documentary film. There was little Mel Goodwin fighting that Stickney boy at school, Mel Goodwin studying algebra with Muriel Reece, the first kiss at the Sunday school picnic, Goodwin at the Point, and Goodwin, captain of Company A. I was with him near Château-Thierry when the machine guns opened up. I encountered him walking back wounded in North Africa, and I could hear the enlisted man saying that he was a Goddamned fighting bastard, those words that he wanted on his tombstone. Melville Goodwin had been an officer who earned every cent of money that the taxpayers had paid out on him.

“You know”—and the voice of Muriel Goodwin took over again, like that of a lecturer in a darkened room—“Melville is difficult sometimes. I’ve sometimes thought he never wanted rank. I don’t mean that he’s afraid of it, but he’s like an absent-minded professor sometimes. Of course we both knew that Melville would be a general one day, when his orders came for the War College, but all Melville really cares about is the practical side of war. I’ve often thought he’d rather be a colonel, because he would be nearer to the front. Well … now he’s a general, and I’m very proud.… He can’t help being a general now … and perhaps I’ve done all I can for him, but I can’t bear to think of his not keeping on and being a lieutenant general.… Dear me, I’ve talked a lot, but I’ve had a reason for it.” She laid down her crocheting again and gave me all her attention. “There’s not much reason to discuss the personal side of Mel and me,” she said. “The boys are all grown up, and besides, I’m old enough to know that certain things do happen some times, but, Sidney … I’ve got to know what to do next … and I have to come to you, because he met … her through you, Sidney.”

There was no way of glossing it over, although Helen was always saying that men always stuck together. I could only try to make her think kindly of Melville Goodwin, when there was little reason why she should.

“How much has he told you,” I asked, “about all this?”

“Why, he’s never told me anything,” she said. “Poor Mel, he’s only getting ready to tell me, and if you want to know, I’m pretty tired of waiting.”

I was relieved to see that Helen was standing up.

“I think I ought to leave you alone here,” Helen said. “Don’t you really think so?”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” Mrs. Goodwin said. “I’m the only one who doesn’t know all about Mel. Please don’t go.”

I watched Helen sit down again, and once again, as they put it in Muriel Goodwin’s service, I was carrying the ball.

“Of course,” I began, “in a place like the ETO …” but Muriel Goodwin stopped me.

“Oh, Sidney,” she said, “of course I know what men do in a war theater. Of course I know he met her in Paris, and of course I know that her name is Mrs. Peale, and that she’s living on Seventy-second Street in New York, and of course I know she’s pretty. Mel left her picture in his suitcase—Mel, who always talks about security!”

She laughed in a kindly way that included me in the little joke, but I did not feel like laughing.

“Don’t you think it would be easier,” I asked her, “if you told me everything else you know, and then we could start from there?”

She nodded, and I could think of her again as young Mrs. Melville Goodwin.

“I knew you’d be loyal to him,” she said, “but please don’t be like the rest of them and tell me it’s a passing phase. I haven’t lived all my life with plaster saints”—when I heard that expression, it made me think of Goochy—“in case you haven’t noticed, Sidney, there is quite a little sex in the army. There are unattached officers who are feeling lonely, and there are all the marriages that don’t seem to work.… When I was in Manila and Mel was out on maneuvers, there was someone who wanted me to leave Mel.… I can understand what Mel’s been going through. I’m only mentioning it to show that I know a few things, Sidney. Men are simple when they fall in love and lose their sense of proportion, and Mel isn’t built for it. There’s the telephone bill with the New York calls and those trips to New York, and everyone covering up—even Enid.… He’s like a little boy in some ways.… He’s even talked to me about her.”

“I thought you said he hadn’t,” I told her.

“Oh, not in that way,” she answered, “only subtly—a Mrs. Peale in New York, whom he had met in Paris, and I must meet her, because he would like to know what I thought of her. We ought to meet more outside people—it sounds like Mel, doesn’t it? It sounds like any man.” There was hardly any bitterness, and she was smiling. “Any woman can tell when her man’s infatuated, but what I want to know is … does Mel really love her, Sidney?… Because if he does … he’d better have her. If he wants her, I don’t want him.” She tossed the washcloth down, and perhaps General Goodwin was crocheted out.

I felt as though I had been thrown hard against the wall of her composure, and I was very glad I was not Melville Goodwin. I was also glad that I did not make my living at the bar, but it was my turn now to do what I could for Mel. I tried to sound measured and confident, and as wise as Foghorn Grimshaw, but it was a very sour attempt.

“Before you make up your mind,” I began, “you’d better let me tell you what I can about Mel and Dottie Peale.” I cleared my throat as if I were about to deliver a formal address. “I met him in Normandy when I was a PRO. I had never thought much of the brass, but I wish you could have seen him there. If you had, you might not be thinking of him along the lines you are thinking now.” I could hear my sincerest radio voice, but I was not satisfied with it. “Well, I was a PRO …”

Next I was on the plane again with all those VIPs and Dottie Peale. Then we were in Paris listening to that confidential lecture on the Battle of the Bulge, with the unnecessary guards outside the door.

“Oh dear, they always say that, don’t they?” Mrs. Goodwin was saying. “‘Git thar fustest with the mostest men.’”

We were in the Ritz again in that alien sitting room, with the pressed duck and the champagne; and Melville Goodwin, warmed by his environment, was the great captain who understood the fog of battle. I was trying to explain Dottie Peale again, as I had often endeavored to explain her to Helen. Dottie always knew how to make men comfortable in the same degree that she made women uncomfortable. There was wistful appeal to her restiveness and her discontent, especially in the neighborhood of a war, where no one could be content. It was inevitable that Melville Goodwin should have been attracted by her. Plenty of other people had sought for a love object in a war zone.

I was doing my best for Melville Goodwin, but neither Helen nor Muriel showed sympathy or enthusiasm. I was only saying that Paris was a long way from home, and behavior was not to be measured according to peacetime standards.

“And besides,” I said, “without any reflection on him—as you said yourself—he’s a pretty simple guy along those lines.”

It was merely, I was saying, what one might call an off moment of infatuation. Dottie would never have given him further thought if it had not been for that incident with the Russian soldier in Berlin. Muriel Goodwin frowned, but she picked up her work again, which gave me a note of hope.

“I thought everything would be the way it always was, when I saw him at the airport,” she said.

“It would have been,” I told her, “if she hadn’t called him up. You can’t blame it all on him. She’s a very persistent girl.”

She was rolling up the washcloth, and I braced myself. She put it in her bag and jerked the mouth of the bag together.

“I know,” she said quietly. “… Well, that’s all there is, isn’t it?… Helen, I wonder if you have a sleeping pill? I hate small women who think they’re perfect, but it’s a little hard to take, after all this time. I don’t want to be alone with this all night.”

I wished I were back in the ETO again, in a world without women, and I wished that Melville Goodwin had died, as he very well might have and should have, in North Africa or Salerno or somewhere along the Rhine.

“You may have a right to be hard on him,” I said, “but I don’t think he meant this to go so far. He only went overboard after he was assigned to Plans. He wanted to get away from the whole thing.”

“Of course I knew he wouldn’t like Plans,” she went on. “He never knows what’s good for him.”

“He thinks you had something to do with it,” I said.

That technical reference to the army appeared to disturb her more than anything else I had said. She seemed to be more emotionally involved with Plans than she was with Melville Goodwin.

“Of course I had something to do with it,” she said. “I’ve always had to do that sort of thinking for him. He has to be in Plans.”

Again I began to feel sympathetic for Melville Goodwin, and suddenly I shared some of his exasperation. If I had not, I would never have spoken so bluntly.

“Well,” I said, “men like to lead lives of their own sometimes, or they like to be allowed to think they do. Now take me. I don’t always like what’s arranged for me either—but I haven’t Goodwin’s guts.” I wished that Helen were not there, and I spoke more rapidly. “You can’t always blame men when something gets to be too much.”

She did not answer, and I went on right down the line. “Besides, Muriel, there’s something you ought to know.… Whenever Dottie gets something, she wants something else. She and Mel haven’t much in common, you know, and I’ve an idea she’s losing interest in him already.”

I felt in my pockets for a pack of cigarettes, but I could not find one, so I got up and walked across the room looking for one.

“In fact, she’s told me so,” I added.

Dottie Peale was a very clever girl. She could usually get her way in anything. I had given her message to Muriel.

“There are cigarettes on the table beside you, Sidney,” Helen said, “not over there, and Mrs. Goodwin—I mean Muriel—might like a cigarette.”

“Thank you,” Muriel Goodwin said, and she took a white jade holder from her workbag. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? Melville gave it to me when we were in Manila.… So she’s losing interest.… Why should she?”

All at once I thought of the time she had handed Melville Goodwin the bayonet at the fairgrounds, and I could almost hear the militia colonel shouting Hooray for Company C.

“That’s almost too much, isn’t it? That really makes me angry.”

She reached in her workbag and pulled out the washcloth. “I know sometimes Mel is—well, heavy, and sometimes he’s terribly intense, and if you hear his stories again and again—but she can’t have heard them so often. Poor Mel, he’s always a problem whenever he’s on a staff.”

Muriel Goodwin dropped her crocheting abruptly and stood up. “What time is it?” she asked.

It was after eleven o’clock. We had been working for quite a while on Melville Goodwin.

“If I could use the telephone,” she said, “I’d better call up Washington. Ellen Grimshaw might still be up, and I can fly down in the morning.”

I went with her to the library to turn on the lights.

“I want to speak to Washington, D. C.,” she was saying when I left her. “The number is Decatur …” and then she was spelling it, “D-e-c-a-t-u-r …”

It occurred to me that it was a pity that the late Admiral Decatur was navy and not army.

Helen was standing by the dying embers of the fireplace. Her dark hair, her profile and her velvet housecoat gave her the sentimental look of a Burne-Jones or a Rossetti, and I was sure that her whole pose was planned.

“Helen,” I said, “please don’t start striking attitudes.”

“Sidney,” Helen said, “why did you say that in front of her?”

“Say what in front of her?” I asked.

“About your wanting to lead your own life sometimes—right in front of her.”

“I said men like to be allowed to think they do,” I told her, “and you allow me to think I do—usually. You even make me want to do what you want—usually.”

“You didn’t say that last part,” Helen said. “Sidney, if you want, we can move. You know I’m always willing to do anything you want.”

“You know damned well I don’t want to move,” I said.

At least the air was clearer, and she did not look so aggressively like a Rossetti.

“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “You’re not Mrs. Goodwin, and I’m not Melville Goodwin. Let’s just be Mr. and Mrs. Winlock. I’m happier being Winlocks.”

“I wish you’d forget about the Winlocks,” she said.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll forget about them.”

We stood there waiting. Whether we wanted or not, we were in that constrained position of a host and hostess waiting for their guest to finish her call.

“Sidney?” Helen said.

“Yes?” I said.

“Did you notice? She dropped her washcloth on the floor. Please pick it up and put it on the sofa beside her bag.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she wouldn’t like us to know she forgot it.” I picked up the washcloth guiltily and quickly. “She’s been trying so hard to be a brave little woman.”

“She’s the wife of a soldier,” I said.

“Don’t make fun of her,” Helen said. “You know it’s been terrible, because nothing ever broke.”

“Maybe nothing in her ever has broken,” I said. “Maybe nothing in her ever will.”

“Sidney,” she asked, “do you think she cares about him?”

“Yes,” I said, “she cares for what he is.”

“You know that isn’t what I mean,” she said. “If you really love someone, it doesn’t matter what he is.”

“Of course she loves him,” I said, “but love isn’t a constant quality. It has its ups and downs like anything else, and it varies all the time.”

Helen shook her head.

“It doesn’t with a woman,” she answered. “It never does.”

“Well, it does with a man,” I said.

“Well, I love you,” Helen said, “and I don’t care what you are.”

I cared very much, but no one else should have heard us discuss it, especially Muriel Goodwin, and there she was, in the doorway, and I could not tell how long she had been standing there or how much she might have heard—but I knew as soon as she spoke.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I love him, and it is something that doesn’t change, even if you think it does.”

She had assumed her best reviewing-stand attitude. I remember her blue-gray hair and her black broadcloth suit and even her plump stocky figure, but again I was not conscious of age. There was absolutely nothing to say.

“I wish it weren’t so late,” she said. Her voice was perfectly steady, but her shoulders began to shake. “I ought to be back in Washington. Please don’t say that I don’t love him,” and then she sobbed, “… She must be a damn fool.”

It was no place for a man. Muriel Goodwin must have hated to have me see her with all defenses down, and she pulled herself together. “Sidney,” she said, “will you give me my bag please? It’s where I left it on the sofa.”

I was glad that Helen had told me to pick up the washcloth. Muriel Goodwin was looking for a handkerchief, of course, but instead she found the washcloth.

“I never thought I’d cry into this,” she said. “I’m sorry, I always hate crying women. Good night, Sidney.”

“Let me go up with you,” Helen said. “Don’t worry about anything now. We can fix everything in the morning.”

“Good night, Muriel,” I said. “If you need anything, ask Helen, won’t you?”

But she did not need anything any longer. She was the General’s wife again and I was the young officer on the post, with all the proper loyalties.

“Of course Mel will have to be sent somewhere,” she said. “I’m glad I reached Ellen Grimshaw. Mel mustn’t ever know. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And, Sidney …”

“Yes?” I said.

“Will you call about a plane reservation, please … and it would be nice if I had an alarm clock.”

When I was alone, I went into the pantry and poured myself a drink and brought it back into the living room. The women had gone upstairs—my wife and Melville Goodwin’s—and in spite of the silence that surrounded me, I did not seem to be entirely by myself. Melville Goodwin seemed to be there with me, and it was not an unpleasant illusion either. I could almost think of myself saying respectfully:

“Sir, won’t you have one, too?”

Wherever he was, I was sure that he needed one. His shadow was there with me, but his course had been set. We had been through a lot together, but now it was over. I never liked to drink alone, but I certainly needed a drink.

“Well,” I said aloud in that quiet room, “here’s looking at you, Mel.”

We had been through a lot together, although it was hard to define exactly where our lives had touched. It all was a sort of coincidence to which one grew accustomed in the war. In those unnatural days, the duty, as the navy put it, was forever throwing you into contact with some stranger with whom you were obliged to face some uncertainty and whose character you came to know from every angle. Then there would be new orders. You would pack up and say good-by and move, and in spite of all the closeness and enforced congeniality, you knew that you would never see George, or whoever it was, again. You would never see the sergeant again who took you up to the lines or the pilot who flew you over the ocean and with whom you spent an evening drinking bourbon at Prestwick. You would never see that fresh-faced young lieutenant who had come from the University of Iowa. You would never again, so help you, see that Regular Army bastard, Colonel So-and-so, who made things hot for you in Paris, and you would never see the British major on liaison who was on the trip with you to Cairo. It was always good-by to all that, for none of those people belonged in a peacetime setup, and it was the same with Melville Goodwin. He, too, was a throwback from the war, and he had already become a shadow. He was someone who would never be real again unless there was another war.

This was what I thought, but I had forgotten about the photographs, those signed documents that sealed friendships in the service, and I had forgotten, too, that service friendships were less casual than friendships in an ordinary life. For in the service, friendship took the place of material possession, and I had forgotten service loyalty. I should have known that Melville Goodwin was someone who would never say good-by.

When Muriel Goodwin left at six-thirty the next morning, after kissing Helen, she kissed me also, hastily but efficiently. It was a gesture of affection, but she was also obeying a warmhearted convention of service life. She was indicating that I was in the circle of the close friends of the General. It was the formal embrace used by women in America, as it was used by Latin males in other regions, and she would have kissed Goochy in an identical manner, if he were leaving for parts unknown. There was also a sense of finality to her kiss—like an honorable discharge from the service, accompanied by one of those gallant letters of commendation that were so freely passed around in Washington after V-J Day.

I had asked her, I remember, whether she did not want me to go with her and see her aboard her plane, but she would not hear of this. It would have made her, she said, feel too much like a dear old lady, and Helen and I had done too much for her already, more than we would ever know, and besides, she only had a light overnight bag, if she could not find a porter.

“And, Helen dear,” she said, “I have a long piece of Chinese embroidery with a blue border and purple dragons with gold tongues that I couldn’t resist buying once from a little man in Baguio. I want to send it to you, because I think it might cheer up the front hall. It would be perfect for that empty space under the stairs. I wish you’d hang it there to remember us by.”

I had a quick mental picture, not helped by the unseemly hour, of ornate purple silk stitching against the tropical green wallpaper. She had no taste, in the accepted sense, any more than Mel Goodwin, but, by God, if she did send it, we would hang it there, just to remember them by. It was like the Luger automatic and Adolf Hitler’s tea cloth and the kiss—another letter of commendation.

“No,” she was saying to Helen, “it isn’t too much at all, and besides, I don’t think we’ll have any place to hang it for quite a while, and we may be where we can pick out something else like it—at least if things work out.”

We were standing by the open door watching Williams drive away, and Helen was waving. It was bitter cold and raw at half past six in the morning, and I remember saying to Helen that I was out of the army now, and I remember her answer—that it was just about time.