6

There’s Everything in New York

When the elevator stopped, Jeffrey felt in his pocket for his key. Inside, he put his hat on the table beneath the mirror. Then he took off his overcoat and tossed it on one of the chairs in the hall that you never sat on, and then he saw that there was another overcoat and another hat. As he looked at it, he heard voices from the kitchen beyond the dining room. It was the new couple, Albert and Effie, arguing. You could ask that man until you were blue in the face, and still he would never close the pantry door, and when you rang the bell or called, he would never hear because he was either scolding Effie or Effie was scolding him.… There was always something wrong with couples, but as Madge had said, these two were willing to go to the country.

The hat and coat were familiar, but he could not place them. It was obviously someone waiting to see him, because he knew that Madge was out. It would be someone who wanted to sell something or talk seriously about something or else he wouldn’t have waited. Then a voice called:—

“Hello, Pops, is that you?”

It was the voice of his eldest boy, Jim. Jeffrey hurried past the staircase and into the living room. The armchairs and the sofas had on their chintz slipcovers and there were daffodils in the bowl on the table by the wall, but in spite of those signs of spring the living room still looked very much as it had in winter. There were the same ornaments on the mantelpiece above the fireplace and the same birch logs behind the brass andirons and the same low coffee table in front of the sofa, and the piano, with its piece of damask, and the silver cigarette boxes and the eighteenth-century armchairs which Madge had bought at the Anderson Galleries. The walls and the window curtains, in fact the room itself, seemed temporary, but the furniture was different because it had been in so many other of their rooms that every piece of it was a sort of accepted fact. They had bought the piano when they had lived on Eighteenth Street. The dark refectory table, which stood between the windows, they had bought in an antique shop on the Left Bank in Paris once. It was a fake but they did not know it at the time. The Jacobean chair on one side of it had come from Madge’s family’s house, and so had the sofa. The second time he had ever kissed Madge was when they had been sitting on that sofa, but since then it had adjusted itself to the other furniture. The drum table near it had belonged to his mother, one of the few things he owned that had come from the house on Lime Street, and the two pink Staffordshire dogs on the mantelpiece had come from Lime Street also.

He remembered the occasions when all that furniture had stood in the street, suddenly naked and insignificant on its passage in and out of moving vans, but when it was arranged in some new place, it all came alive again, expanding like those Japanese sticks which swelled up and turned into flowers when you dropped them into water. Jim had crawled on that sofa when he was a baby and once he had soiled it so that the whole thing had to be reupholstered. Once Jim had pulled the drum table on top of himself and there was still a slight scar on his forehead where it had struck him. Jim had also smashed one of the pink dogs and you could still see the marks where it had been mended, but there was no danger of Jim’s being destructive any longer. You did not have to watch him and tell him not to pull the cigarettes off the table, and not to tip over the flowers because the flowers were meant to be looked at and not to be torn to pieces. You did not need any longer to tell him to go upstairs for a minute and then he could come right down after he had been upstairs for a minute, because Jim was entirely grown-up, although the chairs and tables were just the same. Jim was standing in front of the fireplace between the two pink dogs, looking almost like a stranger, not even adolescent. He had his mother’s brown eyes, but his nose and hands and the set of his shoulders were like the pictures which Jeffrey remembered of himself, and something like Jeffrey’s mental image of his own father.

Jim stood there, a combination of complex circumstances dressed in a tweed suit made by J. Press, that ubiquitous school and college tailor. His brown hair, which used to be rumpled, was now held in place by some sort of lotion which Jim always spilled all over the bathroom. His soft collar was held in place by a clip and his trousers were held in place by a belt with a monogram buckle, but nothing held up his blue wool socks, which cascaded toward the uppers of his crepe-soled low shoes, one of which was untied.

“Hello, Pops,” Jim said. “Where’s everybody?”

“What’s the matter?” Jeffrey asked. “What’s the trouble, Jim?”

“Why is it,” Jim asked him, “when I drop in you always ask me that? I just came down on the one o’clock. I’m going back tomorrow.”

“You just came down on the one o’clock,” Jeffrey said. “What are you doing, commuting?”

“Listen,” Jim answered, “don’t be sarcastic, Pops.”

“Don’t call me ‘Pops,’” Jeffrey said.

“What else can I call you?” Jim asked him. “I always think of you as ‘Pops.’”

“Well, think of something else,” Jeffrey said, and he stood and looked at Jim. If it wasn’t Jim at college it was Charley at school, and if it wasn’t Charley it was Gwen.

“It’s all right,” Jim said, “relax, Pops. I’m not here for anything you think. I just came down on the one o’clock. Didn’t you ever come down on the one o’clock?”

“No,” Jeffrey answered, “I never used to have money to travel on Pullmans. I used to stay there and like it.” But he was not sure that this was true.

Jim shifted his weight from one foot to the other while Jeffrey watched him. He could not understand what boys did with their time at college now. He could remember vaguely what he had done, but everything had been different then.

“Jim,” he asked, “what good is a day in New York?”

Jim’s eyes grew wide. His whole face was incredulous.

“That’s a hot question,” Jim said. “‘What good is a day in New York?’ Why, a day in New York is everything.”

When Jeffrey considered his own day he could sympathize with Jim, though only academically. It was like reading a book of travel about some distant country where one had been once and which one would never see again. Talking with Jim was becoming very much like that. Jeffrey was always striving to remember what things had been like when he had been Jim’s age. They must have been as new as they were to Jim; the values and the impulses and the wishes must have been essentially the same. Yet, though they used the same language and the same words, for each of them the words had a different meaning and a different value.

“How do you mean ‘everything’?” Jeffrey asked.

“What I say,” Jim answered: “New York has everything. Everything’s in New York.”

“‘New York has everything,’” Jeffrey repeated. “‘Everything’s in New York.’” He spoke the words with a cadence that made them sound like a song. They sounded as tinny and at the same time as poignant. They sounded like “The Red Mill” and all the others … “In old New York, in old New York”… “Me and Mamie Rorke, tripped the light fantastic on the Sidewalks of New York.”

“What are you laughing at?” Jim asked him. “What’s so funny about it?”

“I’m laughing,” Jeffrey said, “but it isn’t very funny …”

Out of the window he could see the East River. The sky above Queens was hazy and the buildings along the waterfront were fading into dusk. The tide was ebbing and three sand barges were being pulled against the current and the cars on the bridge upstream looked like little drugstore toys. Even with the windows closed, he heard the sound of a plane and the faint droning of the motors made him turn again and look at Jim.

“Just try to remember,” Jim said, “just remember you were young once yourself.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Jeffrey said, “but when you’re my age, don’t be your age. Suppose you remember that.”

“Okay,” Jim answered, “but I’m not your age. What’s so funny now?”

“Nothing,” Jeffrey said. “Have you told Albert you’re here? Are you going to be in to dinner?”

Jim moved from one foot to the other.

“Stay in here to dinner?” he said. “When I have only one day in New York? I don’t mean I don’t want to see the family, but I called up Sally and we’re going out some place.”

“Sally,” Jeffrey repeated the name, “Sally who?”

Jim’s face assumed a patient, pained expression.

“She says her father knows you,” Jim said. “He knew you back in the war or somewhere. Sally Sales.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “well, that was a pretty big war and there were a lot of people in it.”

“Well, he remembers you,” Jim said. “Listen, just remember you were in love once yourself.”

“What?” Jeffrey said.

“Just remember you were in love once yourself.”

Jeffrey sat down on the sofa and opened the cigarette box on the coffee table.

“Yes,” he said, “it happens sometimes.”

“Then don’t be so hard-boiled,” Jim said.

“I’m not hard-boiled,” Jeffrey answered, “I’m just trying to adjust myself. This spring you’re in love with a girl named Sally Sales. All right. I didn’t know.”

“In love with her?” Jim’s voice made him look up. “Why, I’m practically engaged to her.”

It was nice of Jim to tell him. It made Jeffrey feel that they were friends in spite of all the difficulties that stood in the way of friendship between a father and a son, but he should probably have reminded Jim that he was in his second year of college and that he would have to earn his living.

“I mean,” Jim said, “we’re not really engaged. You know the way it is, I’m just telling you because it’s different this time and I know you’ll keep it under your hat. There are a lot of things I want to talk to you about sometime, you know—you were young once yourself.”

There were a lot of things Jeffrey knew he should have said, but instead he felt proud and grateful because Jim had told him and had not told anyone else.

“I’d like to meet her sometime,” he said.

“You’d like her,” Jim said, “she’s swell.” And Jeffrey found it hard to think of anything further to say.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to get dressed. I’m going out. Ring the bell for Albert.”

He was smiling when Jim turned back to him.

“What’s so funny now?” Jim asked. “Don’t you believe me?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I believe you. New York has everything, there’s everything in New York.”

He watched Jim searching for the bell and it afforded him a moment’s amusement because he always had a hard time remembering about the bell himself.

“It’s behind that thing on the wall,” he said. “It’s a bell pull, only don’t pull it.”

The antique belt of petit point from England which Madge had bought at the Anderson Galleries was, like so many decorative ideas, self-conscious and only remotely functional.

“No, no, no,” Jeffrey said, “don’t pull it.” He became nervous just as though Jim were in the destructive age of childhood. “There’s an electric button just behind it. Push the button.”

“Say,” Jim said, “pretty trick, isn’t it?”

“All right,” Jeffrey said, “ring it.”

After all, he paid the bills and he might as well get something out of Albert, but Albert was like Jim, something with which Jeffrey was not entirely familiar. Albert appeared, wearing a black alpaca housecoat which was too short in the sleeves and a trifle tight around the shoulders, since it had been purchased for Ferdinand, the male half of the previous couple. Ferdinand had left with six bottles of Scotch and half a dozen neckties, but he had left the coat. Albert’s wrists dangled from the sleeves when he stood up straight.

“Did you ring, sir?” Albert asked.

Everything that Albert said was vaguely annoying. It was all correct, but it did not seem to belong to Albert.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “would you put out my evening clothes, please, Albert?” And somehow Jeffrey himself did not sound exactly natural. It was a little as though he and Albert were both playing a game which neither of them particularly liked.

“White tie or black tie, sir?” Albert asked. At any rate, Albert did not use the expression “Formal or informal, sir?” which Ferdinand had used.

“Black tie.”

“Thank you, sir, anything further, sir?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “nothing further, Albert,” and he and Jim were silent while Albert walked away.

“Pretty trick, isn’t he?” Jim said.

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered, “he’s trick.”

“Where did you get him?” Jim asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeffrey answered, “they come and go.”

“Where are you going?” Jim asked.

Jeffrey sat looking at the ancient bell pull with the electric wiring behind it.

“We have a dinner once a year,” he said. “The Contact Club—the old Air Squadron I was with in France.”

He spoke self-consciously, because it made him sound unnatural, like a retired army officer, and somehow it did not fit in with Jim or with anything that he and Jim had known together.

“Say,” Jim said, “does that racket still go on?”

Jeffrey’s common sense told him that it was ridiculous to be annoyed. He could even see what the boy meant, but it did not help.

“I mean,” Jim said quickly, “I should think you would want to forget about it. I wouldn’t want to remember.”

Jeffrey was trying to do the impossible and put himself in the position of his son.

“I mean,” Jim said, “I’m not blaming you, or any of your generation. It was a matter of mass hysteria wasn’t it, and the old British propaganda? It just doesn’t work with my generation. Personally, my generation thinks that war stinks.”

“You mean,” Jeffrey said slowly, “that we all made a big mistake—is that your point of view?”

“Sure,” Jim said, “it’s obvious isn’t it? The best minds of your generation have been saying it. You’re not sore, are you? I mean, you’re not so dumb—I mean, it’s perfectly obvious.”

Then the apartment door was opening and Jeffrey stood up.

“Here’s your mother and Gwen,” he said.

“You’re not sore, are you?” Jim asked again. He looked anxious, almost hurt.

Jeffrey stood looking at him, and he had to answer something.

“You see, some of us were killed,” he said, “not so many, but quite a lot.”

Jim looked surprised, as though he had never thought of it in that way.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way to die,” Jeffrey went on, but it sounded old and dusty, and he seemed to be speaking from a great distance. He was sorry that he had brought it up.

“Well,” he said again, “here’s your mother and Gwen.”

Madge and Gwen came into the room together and Jeffrey found himself trying to remember what it was they had said they were going to do together that afternoon. It always left him confused because it was never clear to him exactly what it was that women did do in New York. They were always out somewhere on meaningless errands of their own. They filled the busses and Schrafft’s and all the teashops and the Museum of Modern Art and the Plaza and all the department stores. Madge was dressed in her light brown broadcloth suit with her hat that looked too small and her gloves that always fitted her without a wrinkle and with a little sable scarf tight about her neck. She was one of those timeless people who sometimes looked younger as they grew older. When she saw Jim her face lighted up and she might have been a girl whom he had asked to a college dance.

“Why, Jim!” she cried and she ran to him and threw her arms around him and Jim bent down and kissed her forehead.

“Hello, Mom,” Jim said, “you’ve got a new hair-do, haven’t you?”

Jeffrey wished that he had not read the works of Sigmund Freud, for they made even the most normal family relationship, when you stopped to think of it, seem slightly clinical.

“Daddy,” Gwen said, “Daddy, darling.”

Jeffrey had noticed lately that Gwen’s whole manner toward him had changed. Gwen was now making him into a romantic character, a quaint old lovable gaffer who bumbled about, making mistakes because of growing senility.

“Where do you think we’ve been, Daddy darling?” Gwen asked. “We’ve been out shopping.”

She seemed to expect him to express incredulity that such a slip of a girl could ever have been shopping. In spite of himself, Jeffrey discovered that he was doing what Gwen wanted, speaking just like a dear old gentleman.

“Well,” he said, “shopping, eh?” If he had let himself go, he would have pinched her cheek playfully. It was the subconscious again, for the time had passed when he could be natural with Gwen. He would never spank Gwen again, and he would never wash her face.

“And what do you think we bought, Daddy?” Gwen asked. Jeffrey pulled himself together.

“My God, Gwen,” he said, “I don’t know.” But Gwen’s mind had already leapt to something else.

“Why, Daddy,” she said, “oh, Daddy.” Her voice was reproachful, and her eyes were wide. “Hasn’t anyone brought you your pipe and your tobacco?” And then she turned on Jim before Jeffrey had time to answer.

“Jim,” she said, “at least you might see that Daddy has his pipe when he comes home tired.”

Jim gazed at her critically.

“We all see you,” he said; “we’re right in there with you, Gwen. Where did you buy the lipstick?”

But she was living a life of her own and no brother of hers was going to spoil it.

“Well, Daddy likes it,” she said, “don’t you, Daddy dear? It’s Orange-Tan.”

“All right,” Jim said, “if you want to look like a hostess, that’s all right with me.”

“Jim,” Madge cried, “what a thing to say to Gwen. What do you mean by a hostess, dear?”

Jeffrey pulled himself together. The atmosphere was heavy with a new sort of emotional tumult.

“I’ve got to get dressed,” he said. “I know I’m missing a lot, but you’ll excuse Daddy dear, won’t you?”

“Why, Jeff,” Madge said, “are you going out? Jeff, you never told me.”

“Madge,” Jeffrey said, “I told you yesterday. It’s the Air Squadron dinner. Minot’s coming here to pick me up at seven.”

“You never told me,” Madge said again. “Have you ordered cocktails? Minot always likes one. Jim, ask Albert to get the cocktail things.”

Jeffrey was tying his tie when Madge came upstairs. He was sure he had told her that he was going out. He could remember it distinctly.

“Jeff,” she said, “I’m awfully glad you’re going to have a good time. You always do at the Contact Club dinner, don’t you?”

Jeffrey examined his tie in the mirror.

“What’s the matter with Gwen?” he asked. “Where did she get that ‘Daddy darling’ stuff?”

“Darling,” Madge told him, “it’s just a phase. I used to be that way with Father. Don’t you remember?”

Jeffrey shook his head. He did not remember.

“Jeff, what were you and Jim talking about when we came in?”

“Oh, this and that,” Jeffrey told her. “About the war.”

“Jeff,” she said, “he’s going out somewhere. Do you know where he’s going?”

“Oh, out with a girl, I guess,” Jeffrey answered.

“What girl?”

“It doesn’t matter much what girl at his time of life,” Jeffrey said. “Just a girl. Her name is Sally Sales.”

“Oh, dear,” Madge said, “Sally Sales.”

Jeffrey had picked up his coat, and now he held it by the collar.

“Do you know her?” he asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” Madge answered, “I’ve only heard Beckie speak about her. She just isn’t the type of girl for Jim. She’s—Oh, I don’t know, I just wish it weren’t Sally Sales.”

“Madge,” Jeffrey told her, “you can’t have Jim to yourself all the time. You mustn’t be jealous of his girls.”

“Of course I’m jealous,” Madge said, “and I’m not ashamed of it. Darling, any mother is.”

Jeffrey put on his dinner coat. If it was not one thing, it was another. When you were in love you had a feeling that all problems would be automatically settled once you had married the girl you loved. When the children were born and the house became filled with screams and diapers, you were certain that the problem would solve itself when the children were able to walk and button themselves. The future kept holding a bundle of hay in front of you, and you plodded after it, but you never got the hay. Now that Jim was grown up, there was a new kind of emotion, and a whole new tangle of jealousies and values, far more complicated than any that had gone before. Motherhood was more intense than fatherhood, a force with which it was impossible to argue.

“Well,” Jeffrey said, “there must be some girl who is almost good enough for Jim.”

“I wish you wouldn’t joke about it,” Madge said. “I was thinking the other day, whenever I come to you with a problem, you try to pass it over. It doesn’t help when I’m worried, Jeffrey.”

“Everybody’s worried,” Jeffrey said. “You are, I am, everybody is.”

“Jeff,” she said, “you don’t know what boys and girls are like now. He might marry her.”

“Who?” Jeffrey asked. “Who might?”

“Sally Sales. Aren’t you listening, Jeffrey?”

It had a sort of universal value. When he answered he could almost hear the same thing being said by a million other people.

“Every time Jim speaks to a girl, you think he’s going to marry her,” Jeffrey said. “Why don’t you put your mind on Gwen? Now almost any minute Gwen might marry—one of the elevator boys or the man who fixes the telephone or someone.”

“Oh, Gwen,” Madge said, and she laughed. “I don’t see how you can help noticing—Gwen isn’t the type that attracts men at all.”

“There’s the bell,” Jeffrey said. “That must be Minot, now.”

There was one good thing about middle age. There might be new worries, but a lot of old ones were gone. There were a lot of things which you finally knew you could not do, so that it was logical to give up trying to do them. Jeffrey knew that he would never read all the books in the library, for example—that it was impossible, simply because of the cold mathematics of time. He knew that he would never succeed completely in doing much that he had wished. There was a pack trip, for instance, which he had always wanted to take in the Rockies. He could think about it still, but he would never have the time. Among other things that he would never do or be, he knew finally that he would never be the sort of person that Minot Roberts was. He was not even sure that he cared much now for those attributes in his friend which he had admired for so long. His manner and his composure would never be like Minot’s and he would never have Minot’s sportsmanship or his code of honor or his generosity. Now, he was not sure that he wanted to be as far removed from the world as Minot.

Yet, when he saw Minot, he felt a great warmth of friendship for him and a certain wonder at how much that friendship had changed his life. If he had not met Minot Roberts years before in France, he would not have been where he was at all, but there was no use trying to be like Minot any longer.

Minot’s hair was gray, but his figure looked extraordinarily lithe. He looked as though he could ride as well as he ever could, and his gray eyes were just as keen and the set of his jaw was just as firm as in the past. The trouble was that he looked too young. Time should have changed him in some way, and he seemed impervious to change. As Minot stood near the cocktail shaker and the glasses, he reminded Jeffrey of one of those portraits that you see in advertisements of some rare old blended whisky. You could almost make up a caption to put beneath him as you saw him standing there. You might have called it “The Portrait of a Gentleman Meeting His Old Friend,” the old friend being a bottle. You might have called it “Aristocrats, Both” or “Fifty Years in the Wood, but as Sound as Ever.” It was not right to think of Minot in that way. It was not loyal, but there it was.

“Minot,” Madge said, “it’s been ages.”

“Madge, dear,” Minot said.

That was all. It was uncomplicated, but if Jeffrey had said it, he knew he would have sounded like a fool. Minot and Madge were speaking a language which he would never speak, but he felt no resentment. Madge had had her chance once and she had wanted him, not Minot. There had been times when Jeffrey had been amazed at that effort of Madge’s at natural selection, and times when he was certain that Madge had made a mistake in not marrying a man with a background like her own, but now he was not so sure. It may have been that Madge had been endowed with a flash of intuition, an instinct for survival in that desire she once had possessed for change. There was something about Minot which was static, a little like the face of a clock which no longer ticked. It did not change Jeffrey’s affection for him, but there it was. He had never thought before of Minot as a type, but that was what he was; and now—it may have been because the world was shaking with the new war—the type was a little outmoded, a little dry and sterile: beautiful, but of no present use. It was so exactly like the portrait beside the whisky bottle of distinction that Jeffrey wished he had not thought of it. It was not right. It was disturbing to think that the world might no longer have time for what Minot Roberts represented, and it was not because Minot was old. It was because he looked so young.

Minot looked at him as he always did whenever they met.

“Hi, boy,” Minot said.

“Hi,” Jeffrey answered.

It meant that they were very old friends, but Jeffrey could never convey in that monosyllable all that Minot could.

Jeffrey poured three of gin and one of vermouth into the cocktail shaker and stirred it carefully because Minot was always particular about Martinis.

“It’s better to have one here before we go,” Jeffrey said; “they always have bad cocktails at the dinner.”

Minot smiled at him and the little wrinkles narrowed about the corners of his eyes. “Boy,” he said, “that’s a good idea. We’ll have one with Madge.”

Jeffrey looked up from the shaker.

“Here, you’d better do it.”

“It’s all in the lemon,” Minot said. “Just the outside peel—That batman cuts the peel too thick, Jeff, but don’t let it bother you, here we are.”

None of it ever spilled when Minot poured Martinis. His lean bronzed hand was as steady as a surgeon’s.

“Here you are, darling,” he said to Madge, as he handed her a glass. “Down the hatch and happy days.”

That speech was not trite when Minot spoke it; it glowed with kindly hospitality, and it made Madge laugh.

“Minot,” she said, “why is it you always give me a sense of security?”

“That isn’t kind,” Minot said. “Whenever I show up, dear, the Romans always hide their wives. You know, I’ve just thought of something.”

“Don’t keep it to yourself,” Jeffrey said, “be sure to tell us, Minot.” But he said it affectionately as one would to one’s best friend.

“It’s a poem,” Minot said, “it’s been running through my head all day. It goes something like this: ‘Four things greater than all things are, Women and horses and power and war.’ We’ve got them all now, haven’t we?”

It was exactly what Minot should have said, being what he was.

“Maybe we’d better be pushing on,” Jeffrey said.

“Why, Jeffrey,” Madge said, “don’t be so rude. Minot’s only just come.”

“He knows what I mean,” Jeffrey answered. “We’ve got to be going, to the war, at the Contact Club.”

“That’s right,” Minot said. “It’s time we were up and over the lines. I’ve got the car downstairs, but I’ll tell you what we’ll do first.”

“We’ll have another drink,” Jeffrey said.

“Naturally,” Minot answered, “we’ll have another drink, but first let’s give Madge the old song, shall we?”

“What old song?” Jeffrey asked.

“Come on,” Minot said, “one, two, three—”

“Oh, I’m looking for a happy land where everything is bright, Where the hangouts grow on bushes and we stay out every night …”

While they were singing it Jeffrey forgot about the strange, chaotic day—Waldo Berg and the Bulldog Club and Walter Newcombe and Madge and Gwen and Jim and the apartment—and he forgot what he had been thinking about Minot because Minot gave him too that sense of security of which Madge had been speaking.

“You’ll take care of him, won’t you, Minot?” Madge asked. “And Jeff, dear, you’d better sleep in the study in case you fall over things.… Oh, Jim, here’s Uncle Minot, dear.”

Jim came into the living room, ready to go out, too. His dinner coat made him stand up straighter.

“How about a lift,” he asked, “if you’re going as far as Park Avenue and 52d Street?”

“We’re going to a happy land where everything is bright,” Minot said, “and 52d Street is on the way. Well, well, look at him.”

“What about him?” Jeffrey asked.

Minot Roberts was smiling at Jim, and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deeper.

“Jeff,” Minot said, “he looks about ready to take a crack at the Boches.”

Somehow the term put them back to where they really were, two old men looking at a boy. It gave Jeffrey a curious twinge of something that was almost anger. Jim was his son, not Minot Roberts’, and what had bothered him all day came nearer until it gripped him with cold fingers.

“We’re not in this show,” he said, but Minot only laughed. His reactions were definite and undeviating, never changed by doubt.

“That’s what they said in ’16,” he answered. “Remember, Wilson kept us out of war? It’s always an open season on the Boches. If I were Jim’s age, I’d be over there right now. Let’s go, Jeff.”

The doorman scurried out to the sidewalk and blew his whistle. “Mr. Roberts’ car, Mr. Roberts’ car, coming up.”

Minot’s black town car rolled out of the dusk and stopped at the curb by the apartment awning. It was an addition to the picture that Jeffrey’s mind was making—Minot Roberts, sportsman and man about town, master of hounds, member of the stock exchange, clubman, World War ace. It was everything that the writers of light fiction were always looking for. It was a paragraph in a gossip column or a bit of a true confession. It was not Henry James, but it was Robert W. Chambers, and Richard Harding Davis’ Van Bibber, and Mr. Gray’s Gallops I and Gallops II. The frustrations of the doorman vanished and his job achieved a dignity and a sublimation when Minot’s car stopped at the curb.

Minot’s chauffeur, trig and lean, with iron-gray hair, had sprung to the sidewalk. He was smiling because Pierre was an old friend of the family who knew all of Mr. Minot’s friends and who understood their values. Pierre, too, fitted into the picture. He might have been the confidential servant who had grown gray as a rat in the service of the Robertses, who had been with his master through many a scrape, who had doubtless followed just behind him when he went over the top in the Great War. Actually, Pierre was none of those things. He was just a good chauffeur with good references, but he looked them, and perhaps he thought them, too.

“Good evening, sir,” he said to Jeffrey. “Good evening, Mr. Jim.”

The instant that the door was opened, the interior of the car glowed with a soft, warm light, showing the fawn-colored upholstery and the mirror and the ash tray and the neatly folded rug.

“I’m looking for a happy land,” Minot was humming, “where everything is bright.”

Jeffrey wished that Minot would stop humming that tune. It was one of Minot’s worst habits; and now that he was started, that tune would keep on with him all the evening. When they had walked across the fields near Bar-le-Duc to the planes waiting on the line, Minot had always been humming. It may have been what was the matter with all of them—looking for a happy land where everything was bright. Jeffrey could imagine Minot looking for it in the sky when he dove at Richthofen’s Circus, looking for it later when he rode point to point and when he got his Kodiak bear. That happy land must be somewhere, and you must search for it until you died, and the larger the gesture of the search, the better. Madge was looking for the happy land and now Jim was starting.

Jeffrey leaned back in the seat.

“I never get used to town cars,” he said.

He thought a slight shadow crossed Minot’s face, and he realized that his remark had the quality of a small boy’s derisive whistle.

“It’s a temporary luxury,” Minot answered. “I won’t have it long, come the Revolution.”

That was what they always said, “come the Revolution,” and you were meant to laugh, come the Revolution. But come hell or high water, Minot must have believed that he would always have his car.

“Not that I’m conservative,” Minot said. “It’s been a great show. This is a great time to live. Jim here’s the boy who’s going to see the fun.” Minot picked up a mechanism that looked like a miniature broadcasting instrument, which came out of a little pocket on the side of the seat. “Pierre, stop on the corner of Park and 52d. Mr. Jim is leaving us.”

Then Minot thought of something else. He pulled a wallet from his pocket.

“How’s the money situation, Jim?” he asked. “Jeff, you’ll let me do this, won’t you?” He pulled a bill from his wallet. “Take this, and go to Twenty-One, Jim. Tell Jack or Charlie that I sent you, and spend it all tonight. Don’t save it. Spend it all tonight.”

Jeffrey glanced at the bill. It was fifty dollars.

“Jim,” Jeffrey said, “say thank you to the nice gentleman.”

“Gosh,” Jim said, “well, gosh, Uncle Minot, thanks a lot.”

Minot laughed. The car was stopping at the corner of 52d and Park.

“I’m your godfather, you know,” he said. “Have a good time while you can, and spend it all tonight.”

“Gosh, Uncle Minot,” Jim said again. “Well, gosh, thanks a lot.”

Then the door closed and Jim was gone.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Jeffrey said. “Fifty dollars is a lot of money.” And Minot laughed again.

“That’s what money’s for.” And he slapped Jeffrey’s knee. “It’s great to see you, boy. You’re looking fine.”

“It’s great to see you, Minot,” Jeffrey said. “You’re always looking fine.” Then they did not speak for a minute, and the lights of Park Avenue moved past them.

It was inconceivable to Jeffrey to think of Minot Roberts in a patronizing way, but now all at once it came over him that Minot had been everywhere, but he had never been around. As he sat beside him, Jeffrey felt older and wearier than Minot Roberts. He had seen too many worlds; he had been around too much.

“Jeff,” Minot said, “have you heard about the solicitor for the Crown from Bermuda who met the little streetwalker in the London blackout? Stop me if you’ve heard it.”

Jeffrey did not stop him. There was Minot Roberts in the London blackout just like Walter Newcombe.

“Well it seems,” Minot said, “as his Majesty’s solicitor was crossing Piccadilly—” There it was, the blackout stories were always in Piccadilly—“he was accosted by a little streetwalker. ‘My dear girl, you don’t know who I am,’ he said. ‘I’m a solicitor for the Crown.’ And what do you think the little girl said?”

“What?” Jeffrey asked.

“She said, ‘Then you must come along with me, sir, for we ’ave a great deal in common, though I only solicit for ’alf a crown.’”

Jeffrey laughed—he wanted to do his best to make Minot think he hadn’t heard it.

“Jeff,” Minot said, “you didn’t think that I was too impulsive giving Jim that cash—that I stepped on your toes, or anything?”

“No,” Jeffrey answered. “I was thinking of what I’d have done if anybody had given me fifty dollars when I was Jim’s age.”

“It just came over me,” Minot said. “It’s just possible that Jim won’t have much time.”

“What?” Jeffrey asked him. “What do you mean, ‘much time’?”

“You know what I mean,” Minot answered. His accent was clipped and precise, but his tone was gentle and casual. “Now there was Stan—he always knew his number was up. He didn’t have much time.”

Jeffrey looked out of the window. He did not want to answer, and when he did, every word hurt him.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s so.”

“Jeff,” Minot went on. “You know how a moment strikes you, sometimes, as being more valuable than another moment. Now up there in the apartment when I saw you and Madge and then when Jim came in, I thought it was particularly swell. You all looked so darned happy. There isn’t any trouble any more. Madge has everything she wants.”

Jeffrey did not answer. He saw that Minot was watching him through the dark of the car.

“Jeff,” Minot asked him, “you’ve got what you want, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered, “yes, I guess so.” And Minot Roberts laughed.

“Well, that’s swell,” he said. “Well, here we are.” And he began to sing that tune again.

“We’re looking for a happy land, where everything is bright.”

“Minot,” Jeffrey told him, “if it’s all the same to you, would you get your mind on something else?”

“Why, Jeff, you old sourpuss,” Minot said.

His own waspishness gave Jeffrey a twinge of shame. He could not explain that he had seen too many people in too many happy lands.

“Besides,” Jeffrey said, “you haven’t got the words right. We’re not ‘looking for’ it—you’re ‘going to’ it.”

Minot put a firm hand on his shoulder. Pierre had opened the door and the little overhead light was glowing so that Jeffrey could see every line of Minot’s face. His lips were curved and his eyes were hard and merry.

“Boy,” Minot answered, “we’re both of us right. We’ve been looking for it and now we’ve found it. Here we are, let’s go.”

That was what Jeffrey used to hear them call.

“All right, let’s go,” a second lieutenant was calling.

“Come on, you,” he could hear a sergeant calling, “take a reef in your pants. Let’s go.”

“All right, fellows.” It was what Captain Strike used to say when he pushed back his chair before they went to the line, when everything was cold in the dusk of early morning. “Let’s go.”