50

Old Soldiers Never Die

Once in 1917 Jeffrey had passed through Washington, and now in December 1941, the city was much the same. It was a bleak morning with a stormy chill in the air and the station was crowded, just as it had been back in 1917, with swiftly moving people; and their faces looked as they had then, wholly concentrated on their own thoughts. It was hard to get a taxicab, and early as it was you had to wait to get a table in the hotel dining room.

While Jeffrey waited for his breakfast and waited for a reasonable time to call on Bill Swinburne, he tried again to recall what Bill Swinburne was like, now that Bill Swinburne had suddenly become more important to him than anyone in the world. Jeffrey wanted to say the right thing and do the right thing.

He kept looking at all the officers he saw, and a good many of them had the ribbons of the last war. If he were in uniform he could show up as well as a lot of them and perhaps better. He could wear two gold V’s on his left sleeve for his twelve months overseas. He could wear the World War ribbon with three stars on it for three offensives, which was more than a lot of men in uniform could; and besides he could wear the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre if that were regulation still—not that the Croix de Guerre meant much because the French had always been passing them out to pilots, but still it was a ribbon that you got for fighting.

Jeffrey tried to remember about Bill Swinburne; he did not want solely to think of him as being always tight at the Squadron Reunion Dinners. Minot had mentioned Bill Swinburne now and then, since Minot was always loyal to everyone in the Squadron. There had been something about trying to get Bill Swinburne a job, and then another job, and that was all that Jeffrey could remember. But now he was going to the Munitions Building to see his old friend Bill Swinburne, who must have been a first-rate fellow.

The Navy Building and the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue of course had never belonged there. They had been built as a result of an old emergency and here they were again in the midst of a new one. Officers and civilians were passing in and out and it seemed to Jeffrey that if he wore the uniform again, even the new coat that looked so British, he would not have forgotten how to hold himself. He had been reasonably careful about his figure. With a coat properly tailored about the shoulders he would not look badly and he would know what to do with his hands. Many of the officers seemed to be his age, majors or lieutenant colonels, and he supposed you had to have that rank if you reached his age, but they wore their uniforms like civilian clothes.

There were guards at the doors examining the passes and Jeffrey had no pass. He was taken to the long reception desk just below the stairs where a thin, tired-looking girl looked up at him from her memorandum pad.

“I wanted to see Colonel Swinburne,” Jeffrey said.

“Have you an appointment with him?” she asked.

Jeffrey said he had an appointment, because he thought it would be better to say so, though it was not entirely true.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Where is he?” Jeffrey repeated and he listened to the footsteps and voices in the corridors. “I don’t know. He’s in here somewhere.”

“Swinburne?” the girl said. “How do you spell it?” Jeffrey spelt it and the girl picked up a mimeographed list and then she wrote down the number of a room.

“What do you want to see Colonel Swinburne for?” she asked, and Jeffrey smiled at her.

“I thought maybe I could get back in,” he said. “If you could get him on the telephone and tell him I was here—”

She still looked tired. Her eyes looked older than his although she was much younger.

“You want to get back?” she said. “You mean in the army?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “There seems to be a lot of army here.”

But she was in a hurry and other people were waiting. She asked his name and if he could identify himself.

“If you’ll ask him to come down,” he said, “he knows me. He’ll come down.”

She used the telephone and she said yes, he was coming down if Jeffrey would wait right by the desk, and Jeffrey stood there for fifteen minutes waiting. As he saw the people move back and forth his interest did not flag. They were mostly older officers but some of them were younger. The lieutenants were the best. He could see their pilots’ wings and he stood staring at the sheer beauty of their youth. It made him remember that you had to be nearly physically and mentally perfect to get your wings. The features of those boys were completely familiar to him—the same eyes and the same set of the lips and the same arrogance that flying officers always had. They reminded Jeffrey of all the faces in the Squadron and it gave him a strange aesthetic pleasure to see them. Then he saw an officer, a lieutenant colonel, coming down the stairs and striding toward the desk. His hair was gray and close-cropped, his face looked sodden and heavy. He had a mustache that was streaked with gray.

“Where’s that man?” he was asking the girl, and then Jeffrey spoke to him.

“Bill,” he said. “Hello, Bill.”

Bill Swinburne looked at him in the way in which acquaintances of their age always regarded each other, and his face broke into a quick mechanical smile.

“Why, Jeff!” he said. “Why, Jeffie!” And Jeffrey was sure he had never called him Jeffie back there in the Squadron. “Jeffie, you look just the same.”

“So do you, Bill,” Jeffrey said and he knew both were lying.

“Give him a badge,” Bill Swinburne said, and the girl at the desk handed him a badge with a number on it.

“Come on, Jeffie,” Bill Swinburne said. “Come up to the room. I’m sorry to keep you waiting but this is quite a war—quite a war.”

They climbed a flight of stairs and began walking down a corridor.

“Keep on walking,” Bill Swinburne said, and it seemed to Jeffrey that they walked for a long way before they came to Bill Swinburne’s office. It was a small room with two desks, neither of which was occupied. Bill Swinburne sat down behind one of them and Jeffrey drew a chair up beside it.

“Well,” Bill Swinburne said, “it’s great to see you, Jeffie.”

“It’s great to see you, Bill,” Jeffrey said.

Then for a second they sat looking at each other.

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Bill,” Jeffrey said, and then he was telling about himself as though he were a clerk applying for a job, and somehow his enthusiasm was dying.

“I know,” he heard Bill Swinburne say, “I looked you up, Jeffie. You’re in Who’s Who. I think we can work something. You’ve done a lot of scribbling, haven’t you?”

Jeffrey looked at the bare office. It occurred to him that he was a better man than Bill Swinburne ever was, but Bill Swinburne ranked him now.

“Yes, quite a lot,” Jeffrey answered.

“And the movies,” Bill Swinburne said, “that puts you in a real category. The Chief’s been interested in the movies.”

“What have the movies got to do with it?” Jeffrey asked.

“Public relations, boy,” Bill Swinburne said. “Of course, I can’t promise you, but I think there’s a spot for you in there. The Chief was talking about the movies yesterday. Wait a minute, Jeffie.”

“What about Intelligence?” Jeffrey asked. “Isn’t there something else?”

Bill Swinburne shook his head.

“Wait a minute, Jeffie,” he said. “We can’t all be in there batting, but maybe I’ve got a spot for you. Stay right there. Don’t move.”

Colonel Swinburne had opened an adjoining office door and closed it and Jeffrey sat there waiting. He could see what was coming—Public Relations, and the movies—and then Bill Swinburne opened the door again.

“Come on,” he said. “Come on, Jeffie.”

They crossed a room with a green carpet where two officers sat behind desks and Bill Swinburne opened another door. Then he was in a third room, larger than any of the others, with a map of the world on the wall, and there was a general behind another desk. Jeffrey could see the stars and the ribbons.

“This is a friend of mine, sir,” Bill Swinburne said. “Mr. Wilson. He was a pilot in the old Squadron.”

The General looked up at him and he was an old man too.

“Oh,” he said, “the old Squadron? The one that was always bombing Conflans. Captain Strike—did you know Strike?”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said. “He was my captain.”

“And you want to get back, do you?” the General asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said. “If I could get into the field.”

He saw he had not said the right thing because the General’s face hardened.

“You all want to get overseas, don’t you?” the General said. “Well, so do I want to, but some of us have got to stay right here and we’ve got to build up public relations. The Colonel here says you’re familiar with the movies.”

“Yes, sir,” Jeffrey said.

He stood—the General did not ask him to sit down—he simply stood there listening to the General talking. It would take time, the General was saying. If he would come in tomorrow and fill out an application and meet Colonel So-and-so, there was room in the Public Relations particularly for someone who had been overseas and who knew the spirit of the Air Corps.

Jeffrey knew there was no use talking back to a General. He could see that they were being kind to him—very kind. He could be in uniform again, but he could not get anywhere at all. Finally he and Bill Swinburne were passing through the room with the green carpet and back into the third room, and Bill Swinburne slapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s in the bag,” Bill said. “Come back again tomorrow.”

But Jeffrey knew that he would not be back again tomorrow. He thought of the young officers he had seen downstairs and he knew that he was out of it. He might go back tomorrow, and like Bill Swinburne, pretend that he was in it, but somehow it was not his war any longer.

“Thanks, Bill,” he said. “It’s been swell seeing you.”

“Yes,” Bill answered, “it’s been like old times, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered, “like old times.”

The only consolation that stayed with him as he walked out to the street was that he had tried, but what he had expected had been too much to ask.

He had a chair on the four o’clock to New York and time lay ahead of him. He would have to tell Madge in the evening and he did not like to face it, because he suddenly suspected that Madge had known it all along. There was nothing he could do but go to the hotel.

It was too early in the morning for a drink. He did not believe in drinking before noon, and in rare times when he had done so, he had never done it by himself; but now he knew he was going to do it.

The bar was just off the main entrance of the hotel and it had a welcome name emblazoned near its door: “Men’s Bar”—and that in itself was funny. If you lived long enough a great many things were funny. Back in the last war it would have been obvious that any bar was a men’s bar, and now well-conducted hotels had to label their barrooms as carefully as they labeled their retiring rooms—Gentlemen’s Bars, and then that middle ground, the Cocktail Lounge, where the sexes could mingle. He had never been to a bar so early in the morning and he found himself moving toward it furtively. He even glanced around to be sure that no one noticed him particularly. There was a step leading up to the Men’s Bar with an illuminated green sign thoughtfully placed upon it marked “Step up,” and Jeffrey was about to step up when he saw that the bell captain was beside him.

“The bar doesn’t open till twelve, sir,” the bell captain said.

“What?” Jeffrey answered, and he tried to look incredulous and amused at such a regulation. “Not till twelve?”

He had an idea that everyone was watching him and he moved quickly away to buy a newspaper. Now that he was deprived of the solace he had been seeking, he could not remember ever having been so anxious for a drink. Nevertheless, although he knew he must wait till twelve, he was determined now that he would not be the first one in that barroom. He read the Washington Post, page after page, deliberately, until five minutes after twelve; then he waited five more minutes before he arose and returned to the Men’s Bar. The doors were open now, and his foot was on the step again when he heard his name called. His first instinct was to leap away from the place, but it was too late to pretend that he was going anywhere else. He knew that that would make him look ridiculous. At any rate there was no time for anything. It was Beckie’s husband, Fred, and he was the last person Jeffrey wanted to see because he knew that Madge would hear about it eventually.

Fred and Jeffrey maintained that odd relationship of being husbands of best friends, an accident which neither of them could help. Jeffrey had always put up with it and he supposed that Fred had too. Fred still had that handsome band-leader look that went with his particular time in Yale, and it still seemed to Jeffrey that Fred was trying to live in the pages of This Side of Paradise, and The Beautiful and Damned, and The Great Gatsby, when all the boys and girls were gay, oh so gay.

As Fred stood there in the Mayflower he looked a little gray and tired to Jeffrey, but very gay, as if he should be carrying a box of orchids with a gay white ribbon around it, on his way upstairs to someone’s room, but Fred was not carrying anything.

“Hello, Jeff,” Fred said. “Where are you going?”

It did not seem to Jeffrey that it was kind of Fred to ask, because it was quite obvious where he was going.

“I thought you and I were going to have a cocktail,” Jeffrey said, “in New York.”

“Oh, yes,” Fred said, “the girls.” He waved his hand airily like a bandleader when he said it. “I couldn’t make it, Jeff, but then I heard you couldn’t either.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “were they on the telephone again?”

“My God,” Fred said. “All through the night one or the other of them was on it. They were still on it at half-past seven when I left for the plane.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “it’s like a party line.”

“That’s right,” Fred said. “Any time you lift up the receiver, they’re on it.”

Then the subject was exhausted, exactly the way subjects were through all the years when Jeffrey and Fred had been left alone together; you could not keep going on about the telephone. They were still at the entrance to the bar.

“I was just going in to have a drink,” Jeffrey said. “Do you want a drink?”

Fred’s expression was peculiar. He did not disapprove exactly because he could not and be a character in The Beautiful and Damned—and yet it was obvious that he did not want a drink.

“Well, not this morning, Jeff,” Fred said, and it sounded as if he had often said it in just that way and that it was never just this morning, but any other morning. “You see, I’ve got a little business, but don’t mind me. I’ll watch you. Don’t let me keep you. I’ll watch you.”

When Jeffrey entered the Men’s Bar he was surprised to see how many of the patrons, like himself, must have been waiting for a drink. It was one of those modern bars with dim reddish lights, so dim that it was impossible to read a paper, so dim that it required almost a conscious effort to distinguish the potato chips from the cheese-encrusted popcorn. At high noon this faint religious glow gave everything, even the cold-sober bar boys, a dissipated aspect.

They sat down together on a bench before a small round table.

“A Scotch-and-soda,” Jeffrey said to the bar boy, and then he thought again. “A double Scotch-and-soda.”

“White Rock for me,” Fred said, “just White Rock,” and he smiled at Jeffrey apologetically. Their voices were low and furtive because of the lights.

“God damn it,” Jeffrey said as he looked around, “it’s a little like going to church, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Fred said, “if you’re mixing metaphors, I see what you mean. You know if I didn’t have an appointment—” He hesitated. “You see, I heard the girls talking … I mean, you can’t help overhearing when they get going. Well, I guess I’m down here for what you’re down here for. That’s all.”

It sounded pleasant. It sounded honest.

“I’ll tell you, Fred,” Jeffrey said, “the woods are full of us.”

But Fred was not listening to him. He was listening to his own ideas.

“I couldn’t sit there,” he said. “I’ve kept thinking, Jeff. I’ve always had a pretty damned good time, a pretty easy time. Well, I’ve got to pay it back somehow.”

Fred’s statement had an honest dignity even in the bar.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said; “you’re not the only one, Fred.”

But Fred was not listening to him. Fred was going on.

“Of course, I haven’t had the experience you’ve had, Jeff, but I was in the R.O.T.C. at Yale. I was pretty good. I was a sergeant in the R.O.T.C.”

“I know,” Jeffrey said. “A whole lot didn’t get over, Fred.”

It was another war and Jeffrey was not in it, but still he could feel a smug and completely superfluous sense of superiority. He could think of Fred going down to that bureau and telling someone of his experiences in the R.O.T.C., but Fred was going on.

“Of course,” Fred said, “I don’t want to be swell-headed, Jeffrey. I suppose anyone can get a desk job here, but I don’t want that. I don’t care about rank. I just want to get in there and take a sock at somebody. I’m not in a wheel-chair yet, and I don’t give a damn if Beckie thinks so.”

“Oh,” Jeffrey said, “does Beckie think so?”

“My God, Jeff,” Fred said, “what do women know about this sort of thing anyway? She didn’t say so, but I sort of think she thinks so. Frankly, well, Beckie and I had a sort of a row all night. She’s got the damnedest idea.”

“What idea?” Jeffrey asked.

“She’s got the damnedest idea,” Fred said, “that I’m doing this for some sort of personal satisfaction—that it’s just a sort of excuse to get away from her and home and the kids. I don’t know what put it into her head, and it doesn’t do any good to tell her that I’m not in a wheel-chair yet.”

The idea was firmly in Fred’s mind that he was not in a wheel-chair yet.

“Well, I know a man down there,” Fred said. “I’ve never seen much of him, but he’s quite a friend of mine—and I called him up and he asked me to come down. Did you ever hear of him? His name is Swinburne—Bill Swinburne.”

Jeffrey set down his glass. He was thinking that they would walk out on you if you were to put an inartistic coincidence like that in a play.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “I know him. I’ve been down there myself, just now.”

It was pathetic to see Fred’s face light up.

“And now you’re celebrating,” Fred said. “Gosh that’s swell, Jeff!” and he held out his hand across the table.

“Not exactly,” Jeffrey said. “You see, I’m going back home. But go ahead and try it,” he said, “maybe you’ll do better. You see—well, perhaps I’m silly—I used to be shot at, once. I know it’s too much to ask—Well, I’m going back home.”

It was dusk, almost dark, when the train passed through Wilmington and sped along the Delaware to Philadelphia. As Jeffrey sat staring out of the black window the sky was aglow with light. He could see the glare over factories in the distance and the floodlights of the shipyards and the rolling mills. He was thinking of the young men he had seen, and, God, they were beautiful, and they were the ones who would see the show. It was not fair, because he could have died more easily, having lived—but they would see the show. He was reminded of the older men during the last war—they had seemed very old, but they must have been about his own age. They were always saying the same thing and always selecting the most inopportune occasions on which to say it. They were always saying that if they were twenty years younger, why they would be there too, and how much they envied the boys their chance. Jeffrey could remember how often he had brushed those remarks aside as insincere and hypocritical. There was one thing he would not do. He would not say the same thing to anyone now. It was their war, not his war.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilson,” the doorman said. “It’s been kind of a mean day, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “It has been a kind of a mean day.”

He was in the hall of his apartment just as though he had not been anywhere in particular, and when he was taking off his overcoat, he heard Madge calling from the living room.

“Oo-hoo?” Madge was calling. “Is that you, Jeff?”

She smiled at him and she kissed him, but she was waiting to hear his news. He knew he had to tell her, although he knew from her voice that she had guessed already.

“How was it,” she asked, “down in Washington?” But he did not want to go into it then.

“I’m glad I went,” he said, “but there wasn’t much down there, Madge.”

There was one thing about it. He could see she had been thinking that, in spite of everything, they might have taken him and sent him somewhere. Her face was alight with sheer relief that he was not going, and it made him feel better.

“Oh,” she said, “poor darling!” And she kissed him again. He wished that she might have said something else.

“Dinner’s waiting,” she said. “Do you want a cocktail? You look tired, dear.”

“No thanks,” Jeffrey answered. “I’ve had quite a few already.”

She held his hand.

“Oh,” Madge said, “poor darling.”

“For God’s sake,” Jeffrey said, “don’t call me ‘poor darling,’” and then he was sorry about it and he held her hand tighter. “I didn’t mean exactly that,” he told her. “You see when I saw the boys down there, I mean the young officers, there didn’t seem to be much I could do right now. Madge, I’ll tell you what—”

“What?” she asked.

“We’ll call up Jim tonight. Somebody ought to see him, Madge. I ought to get out there for Christmas.”

“Jeff,” Madge said, “can’t you do it later? You’re running everywhere, lately.”

“I can take a plane,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not in a wheel-chair yet.”

It was a question of mathematics again. If he were to call Jim at eight it would only be five out there. A young officer would not be in his quarters by five, particularly in wartime. It would be near the time for Retreat and though he had never seen the camp where Jim was, it would be like all those other camps, or forts, or whatever they called them now. There would be the same monotonous rows of barracks with their Battery streets and the Company streets. There would be the same dull hum of voices and the stamping of feet on the wooden floors, and the Companies, and the Batteries, coming out to form their ranks, in the evening light. The officers who would take Retreat would be moving out to their places, and there would be the commands and the Batteries would be present or accounted for, and the senior officer would take over. There would be parade rest and the bugles would be blowing, and their thin notes would fill the silence. Retreat, he had often thought, was the closest thing to prayer in war; and Jim would be at Retreat, but he might be in his quarters later, say at eight o’clock his time.

It was after eleven in the East when the operator said that the party was ready. Jeffrey and Madge were sitting in the upstairs study. He first thought he could get it all into three minutes but of course Madge would speak to him too. After all Jim was her son as much as his son. He had to say it all very quickly, and there was too much to say, for the time in which to say it. He always seemed to be talking to Jim across vast spaces, both of distance and of time. He was always trying to bridge those unbridgeable gaps, and as long as he lived, or Jim lived, he would always be trying. Jim would not care so much because he would never perceive those distances. He was too young. He was so young that he would think, no matter what might happen, that it would not be he—it could not be he—that he would live forever; and Jeffrey had thought that once.

“Hello,” Jim was saying, and he sounded impatient, as though he had been on the line for a long while.

Usually the sound of Jim’s voice brought Jim back as though he were right there, but it was different this time. In spite of the clearness of the connection, Jim was very far away.

“Hello,” Jeffrey said, “Jim.” He had to speak fast because there was not much time. “How’s everything out there?”

“Fine.” Jim’s voice was louder. “Everything’s fine. We’re—” Jim seemed to hesitate. “We’re pretty busy now. How’s everything back home?”

“Fine,” Jeffrey said. “Your mother’s right here. She’s going to speak to you in a minute. Jim, I’m calling about Christmas. I think I can make it. I’ve got reservations …”

There was a slight pause and Jeffrey was very conscious of the pause.

“I wouldn’t try that,” he heard Jim say. “It—Well, put it this way. Sally will be back East by Christmas.”

It seemed to Jeffrey that his heart had stopped, that everything had stopped, but his own voice was measured. He knew there were things you could not say.

“Suppose I put it this way,” he said slowly, “suppose I come tomorrow.”

There was another pause and he knew that Jim was thinking.

“I don’t think so,” Jim said. Jim was being careful, but he knew exactly what Jim meant. “It wouldn’t be worth your while.”

It hurt Jeffrey at the moment and he could not hide his hurt.

“I think you might have told me, Jim,” he said.

“There are some things you don’t know until just about the last minute. You ought to know.”

The time was running short and he was sitting there. There was nothing he could do—nothing he could say. He felt that his voice was choked and hoarse and he cleared his throat.

“If you get the chance—” he was speaking very slowly—“call me again, Jim. Will you do that, please?”

“Yes,” Jim said, “if I get the chance. You know how it is, but it’s fine out here. I wish to God that you were here.”

Jeffrey cleared his throat again.

“Well, keep your shirt on,” Jeffrey said, “and don’t take any wooden money. Your mother wants to speak to you.”

He handed Madge the receiver and nodded. He noticed the mark on it from the perspiration on his hand.

“Hello, darling,” Madge was saying, but Jeffrey was not listening. He knew that Jim would not tell her and there was no need of telling Madge—no need to worry her because Jim was going overseas. Out there on the Pacific Coast, it would be the East Indies, or Australia, or Hawaii—he hoped to heaven it might only be Hawaii, but there was no way of telling.

“Darling,” Madge was saying, “are you warm enough? Is it raining all the time?”

But Jeffrey was only half listening. Jim was going and he knew that feeling because he had gone out once. He had left from old Camp Merritt just across the river, with perhaps two hundred other casual officers; and that was a queer word when you thought of it—“casual.” You never knew when it was coming. You were only told to have everything ready, not to leave, to be there waiting. They had been awakened at four in the morning, he remembered, and by daylight they walked in columns of twos along the road to Fort Lee where an old ferryboat was waiting. They were going and there was no way of going back. He had seen the buildings of New York, but they were not going there. They were as good as gone already. They were on the pier and he remembered the sound of the donkey engines. He remembered the lines of troops waiting with their duffel bags to go aboard and to take their places below. He remembered the side of the transport painted crazily in the camouflage that they did not use any more. He remembered the voices of the troops. They were on the pier but they were as good as gone already. Good-by Broadway, hello France. You were as good as gone already and no one ever knew. That was the way you went to war.

Then he was thinking about Madge. He must think of some excuse as to why he was not going out to the Coast after all. There was no need to tell her yet that Jim was going. It was something you did not shout all over town.

“Jeff,” Madge was saying, “do you want to speak to him again?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, “that’s all right. There’s no use talking to him any more.”

“Well, dear,” Madge was saying, “give my love to Sally, dear. I didn’t say I was worried. I mean we miss you dreadfully.”

Then Madge turned to Jeffrey and sighed.

“Jeff,” she said, “he sounded awfully happy. He sounded as if he were really interested and having a good time.”

“What?” Jeffrey said.

“He sounded as if he were having a good time,” Madge said. “Didn’t he sound that way to you?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, “he did. He’s having a swell time, Madge.”