Chapter IX

CHAPTER IX IT was going to be a lucky day; nothing would go wrong, not even the weather. Marta put her hat in the luggage net and tied her hair with a green silk scarf. "They're beginning to cut the wheat," she said. "Those are oats," Russ corrected her kindly. lCAnd you raised on a farm!" "A ranch," said Marta; the word didn't mean what she meant, but there wasn't any . other; it was factitiously romantic, implying stage cow boys with sixshooters, wearing idiotic neckerchiefs like bibs.... What she meant existed only in her mind, two pictures, two aspects of the same landscape, a level stretch of time and space divided into short summers and interminable winters. She saw the winter scene through the chill square of a window, bleak with snow under a grey sky, month after month. But summer had the quality of a single day; she saw the prairie flushed with June, and herself in the midst of it, in significant and safe, a child alone, going barefoot through the grass, which sprang again and retained no trace of her passing, no more than of a gopher whisk ing into its burrow, a mother duck leading her brood N EVE R ASK THE END 107 to covert. The sloughs were shallow bowls; they had no banks, and in a rainy season the water overlapped the grass, and the striped yellow ducklings hid among the tall bents. The sky was of a fathomless soft blue, and ·the clouds white as cotton wool, with rounded outlines, came down so close that it seemed one might touch them by standing on a hill-top. Once only, in her solitary wanderings, she saw a wolf, not a coyote, those she often saw, but a wolf. Neither of them was afraid; the wolf knew that only a man with a gun was dangerous; it stopped a moment to make sure, and then padded on, taking an oblique course and watching over its shoulder till it was beyond the nearest rise. She picked a sprig of yellow lupin for its scent of warm honey, and went her own way home.•.•Nothing of this remained, they had plowed it under, fenced it away..••Beauty 'Vanishes, beauty passes, however rare, rare it be •••But the winters had been so long, she had been so miserable, waiting to grow up, to get away; those years had left a mark on her, a grey curtained corner of her mind, in which melancholy lurked; that was why she couldn't endure being bored, she was rude to bores. Because they went on and on ... This came back to her, complete, between one word and the next: "But I meant the wheatfield back yonder) those stooks."

"Oats," said Russ. "Weren't they oats, Pauline?" ('Certainly they were oats," Pauline supported him. "Unless she means rye or barley." "No, you didn't notice," Marta began, and broke off: "By the mass, and l08 N EVE R ASK THE END 'tis like a camel indeed. It was oats, rye and barley.') Russ and Pauline regarded her with concern: "What do you suppose ails herr She was never known to agree with anyone before." Marta was the od4 one now, a tacit relationship established on the basis of possession. Pauline needed someone to hold to, literally. "By nature," Marta assured them, "I have a: lovely disposition. With enough money, I'd be perfectly angelic. So would you, Russ; in fact, you are. Ernest eats out of your hand, and stray tourists follow' you for miles, purring and shedding fox-fur on your best suit. You can hardly believe it yourself~" . "1 can't," said Russ. It was too good to be true.

Twenty thousand a year, and his stock in the com pany worth a hundred thousand at the market. He told them. He was telling himself. "And eight years ago, as you said, 1 hadn't a cent-" "Good heavens," Marta protested, "1 never-I wouldn't I didn't know, for that matter-we were all rather hard up. I said you were only a poor boy." She thought, whatever you say, the other person hears something else. "Anyhow, I'm glad; nice people like us ought to have money-I'm not sure about Pauline. She'd get into society, and be unable to escape; years later, she'd be found petrified at a party, entirely sur roundtd by Ernest." "Mrs. Owen wanted to give a party for you this N EVE R ASK THE END 109 afternoon," Russ was reminded. "At the golf club. .Maybe you'd rather-" "We'd rather be here," Pauline brushed his sleeve conscientiously; it was her fox-fur .. "Do they have amusing parties?" Marta asked. Russ shrugged. Mostly cocktails and bridge. He seldom went. On his arrival, Caroline had given a party for him; the guests were blindfolded, and required to pin a tail to a drawing of a donkey on a numbered chart.

At supper, you got what your number called for. "Mine was a bottle of lemon soda and a banana." Baffled by the extreme improbability of plain fact, Pauline and Marta remained expectant: was that all? That was all; it was supposed to be great fun. And . Russ hoping they'd choke, Marta thought. . • . Oh, well) he said, that wasn't so bad as the next time . . . "When I was locked in the maid's room for three hours." "What," they naturally demanded, "were you doing in the maid's room?" "Nothing," said Russ, in that sulky tone which was nevertheless engaging, as if he wouldn't have answered anyone else at all, and yielded to personal charm. "The powerful Katinka," Marta suggested. "Did the maid lock you in and threaten you with a fate worse than death?" "I don't believe it's really. worse, do you?" he mut tered, adding reluctantly: '(The maid was out." "Statistics show that the average term of life has 110 N EVE R ASK THE 'E N D increased in our time," Marta said, assuming a disin terested air; she couldn't maintain it, and the three of them broke down at once. "I am the last person in the world to pry into anyone's private affairs," Marta re sumed, "the very last, I keep right on when the rest have given up exhausted; so you'd better explain." ...

By degrees they extorted the story. Simply he had tried to leave the party early and unobserved, through the back hall, and opened the wrong door. Before he could retreat, Ernest barred the exit with a coat-rack. "Couldn't you-" "No," said Russ. "It would have been allover the place next day." "Why, it's a transplanted small town, from the Middle West," Marta exclaimed. And Ernest per sonified it. That was why they froze or fled at his ap proach. They had spent their lives trying to get away· from Ernest •••The American colony was just small enough, just large enough, to intensify its character, stew in its own juice, doubly turned in upon itself be cause it was a foreign garrison, and because most of the men were employed by two or three international cor porations. Unavoidably they were informed of one another's incomes, domestic affairs, habits and expec tations. "You're just like one big family," said Marta, aghast. Or like a court. People, and parties, are the same everywhere, allowing for the scale. If it had been a state dinner, and one of the guests had worn his Order of the Sacred Cow half an inch out of line, the NEVER ASK THE END 111 king would have noticed, and all the equerries and gold sticks would have been in a dither.

"That's what Caroline said," Russ admitted. "She hoped I'd fed at home. She said Ernest was easy to work for. You see, Goodwin, the president) wanted me to make a survey of the different offices before I took charge. So he sent me around on special assign ments first. I'm afraid it was a jolt to Caroline when she found Ernest would be working for me." Marta enquired idly if Ernest was an engineer. Russ said no, Ernest was in the purchasing and cost accounting department, but the two branches, technical and finan cial, were closely interlocked. He let it go at that. It was the sort of arrangement that imposed itself, and could only be understood from the inside. Of course there were jealousies, conflicts of authority. . • • He thought he could trust Aleck Owen to pull with him; Aleck wanted his step up, to the Paris office. There wasn't any head office yet, in a formal sense; Willis Goodwin carried it under his hat, with a directorate scattered about Europe. Well, there was himself, Russ, since his promotion. That was more .than a step up, more than the money. He had made the grade. Earned his farm. And bought it, six months ago .•. Goodwin was interesting. Ten years ago he had begun, just after the war, buying up and building up companies here and there, tying them together in a holding cor poration, a eat's cradle covering Europe, with a thread running to New York. Twenty years ago Goodwin 112 NEVER ASK THE END had come out of Kansas City. How he had done the distance nobody knew but himself. Maybe he didn't.

Some men have the gift of making things go. Good win said it was mostly luck, was cynical toward his own success. Said he got his start robbing the baby's bank. The Chinese do that, Russ th9ught, to fool the gods, or devils; whatever they own is worthless, insignifi cant, beneath notice. Joss talk ...• Goodwin said) if you're out to convince a man, let him argue himself around. If you're out to get something done, let someone do it who wants to. You want to swing this Rome job, he'said to Russ; go ahead. What you've got to deal with is men. Goodwin permitted himself moments of startling candor, especially when he had what he called the visiting firemen on his hands, officials or bankers with all expenses paid for a junket to Paris from Berlin or Budapest or Rome. "We've got to t~ke these W ops down the line tonight; business is business." Russ suspectedthat Goodwin's indiscretions were calculated; nobody could be more solemn on full-dress occasions; all the same, he gets you.

"Ernest, the poor goop, imagines he is making him self solid with you," Marta surmised. ((] shouldn't wonder," Russ said. UHe doesn't want to be shifted to the factory." Business is business• • . Business, thought Russ, is shepherding the visiting firemen to the Folies Bergeres, making allowances for Aleck's domestic infelicities, finding Ernest in your N.EVER ASK THE END 113 spare room when you come home. Business is pinning the tail to the donkey blindfolded. Marta suppressed an impulse of pity for Ernest. Whenever she laid plans, tried to direct events, that was where she landed herself. In Dutch. It serves Ernest right, she thought darkly, for the mosquito net, my mosquito net. God meant it for me; but even God can't do anything with the Ernests. "wouldn't I be the perfect wife for a rising corporation man?" she said. "So tactful and thoughtful--don't you hate thoughtful people? The things they think of! Like Caroline."

"1 guess fOU could if you tried," said Russ. He hadn't a doubt of it. So could Harriet. She wouldn't, and that was that. After all, would it have made any difference? "George," said Pauline, "always asked my advice. And I said yes, I was sure he was right. He would talk for hours about sales territories and contracts and commissions; and every once in a while he would ask politely, am I boring you? He said he had the great est confidence in my judgment. His stenographer told me, with tears in her eyes, that she had never seen such a devoted husband. She used to hear him telephoning to me. Usually that he might be late for dinner. He called me Little One." The stenographer used to telephone her, too, when George had been twenty-four hours late for dinner, vanished on a spree. Then, after a reasonable time, Pauline would take a cab to his favorll4 N EVE R ASK THE END ite speakeasy, and bring him home, and get the doctor to help her through with it; and the office staff would tell innumerable elaborate lies to postpone appoint ments. They were devoted to him. We were all de \rated to one another. With tears in our eyes. Or if it wasn't devotion, what was it? ... When George died, she sold the business. She knew it would go to pieces without him. And it did. His partner was a sober and upright citizen, but those virtues would not keep a business going and growing. George held it to gether. While she and the doctor and the stenographer held George together. He could manage anything but himself ..••And I was, thought Pauline with dismay, a good wife. The fact was obscurely appalling • . .

Marta thought, but could I? Could she have made any kind of a wife, if she had tried, if she had had a chance? .••A kind dependable husband to ~upport her, and a cozy suburban house, afternoon bridge and golf on Sunday . . • The notion would come to her when she was worried about money, and provision for old age; when her work went stale on her, or she was ill and afraid of being disabled, helpless, with no one in the world she could lean upon ... And she knew it wasn't any use. She would scream and jump out of the window. When she had met Wint Shelby again, and he was free-. his two daughters were grown and married, his only son killed in the war; he told her frankly he wanted another son-and Marta could have had a divorce for the asking, she ran away again. From NEVER ASK THE END 115 Wint's house, once she had seen it, full of massive Grand Rapids mahogany dressers and brass bedsteads and actually a Turkish cozy corner on the stair land ing, papier-mache battle-axes against red drapery sewn with bits of mirrors. Wint doted on every varnished inch of it from garret to cellar, wouldn't have changed a thread of the heavy filet lace curtains...• Marta exclaimedout of the middle of her thoughts, because the three of them at that moment were en closed in a fragile sphere of sympathy, so exquisitely perfect that it didn't matter whether they understood or not: "Words cannot express the sheer horror that overcomes me when I find myself in a good home. A happy family, and a radio, and a concrete garage .•.."

But why? What was the matter with her? Her own life ,vas toilsome, solitary, insecure. She had made a wilderness and called it peace. Russ thought, Harriet was the same .•. He asked Albert, was anything wrong with the car? No, sir, Albert replied anxiously, drawing up at a farmyard lane, but I'm not sure •••The farmer leaned over a gate, and Albert interrogated him in Cockney French, with gestures. The blue-bloused farmer shrugged sev eral times and waved his hand in a half circle. Under his breath Russ said: He'll never get his direction from one of these birds. They're born and live and die without ever going ten miles from their own land. The nearest market town is their limit. Pauline said dreamily: "Isn't the country lovely?"

116 NEVE R ASK THE END and ended unexpectedly on a high note of laughter. Her rapt gaze was fixed upon a litter of black and white spotted pigs rooting in a patch of turnips. "I really thought so-lovely-those pigs!" she gurgled. "Consider to yourself, regard them I" Marta said: "But yes, 1 comprehend you perfectly. In effect, they are pigs of character; they possess that I don't know what. It's the heat," she turned to Russ. "We're not dangero\ls." "I wouldn't bet on that." Russ extracted a road-map from the car door-Hap. Unfolding it, he felt in his breast pocket, and said absently: "Oh, I forgot. I left them at the hotel desk." "Left what?') Marta enquired. "My glasses. I was afraid they'd get broken." Russ heard himself too late, as Pauline had. , "You checked your glasses at our hotel, before you went out with the wild women?" Marta demanded categorically. "Do I blame you? Oh, Pauline!" They had different ways of laughing; it submerged Marta like a .wave, dropped her against the cushions, while she struggled for decorum, her face crinkled and her mouth pursed; if she let go she knew she did look like a rowdy. Pauline lifted her chin, and her eyelashes flickered; she grew pink, and held to Russ's arm. Russ drew down his head, his funny chuckle coming from deep in "his chest. • • . But he had broken his glasses, the night he left Shanghai.

Saying goodbye to Louise James. In an otherwise NEVER ASK THE END 117 empty stateroom, not his, while his friends, including Wally James, her husband, searched for him around the decks, in the flurry of the hour before sailing. What would have happened, if his transfer had been delayed for a month or two) he was not yet sure. It would have been bad, a grand smash. He liked Wally, too. He thought of that, while Louise was crying against his shoulder. .So did she. The last time, and the first. We couldn't, she said. But you won't forget me? ... Her soft fair hair dipped in two peaks on the back of her neck .••They heard Wally's voice in the cor ridor .••So he had finished the night in the ship's bar. And he went through New York without letting anyone know.. Because he hadn't forgotten Nonie either. I'll always be like that, he thought. Nothing for a woman to tie to. . .. .. He owed Louise a letter .. . .

Returning to the car, Albert touched his cap. Under the vizor his eyes were blank and bewildered, as if he had forgotten the meaning of laughter, perhaps even of tears. (CAlbert probably thinks we are mad," Marta said. "Is that map any use?" "None whatever," said Russ. "It happens to be a French map. Do you mind not knowing where you are?" "Not a bit, as long as no one else knows either,)) Marta said truthfully. "Your left retreats, your right is giving way, the situation is excellent, you advance. You and Foch, Russ. All Pauline asks is a few pigs."