And then the reasoning part of my brain took charge. I had seen her only once. I had met her at a moment when mental and physical tension had been high and were yet to unwind themselves. She had unwound them, true, but I should not try to infer too much from that. As far as I was concerned, she belonged to Jim. Sternly I concentrated on that salient fact.
During the following months I came to see more and more of Laura. She came to New London nearly every week end when Jim and she could be together. The hectic training schedule and the fact that the 16-boat had only three watch- standing officers did not allow them much time.
I had to admit that I welcomed every opportunity chance threw my way to see her or dance with her. Though there were no further moments of strain comparable to the one which she had banished on our first meeting, the heightened awareness remained with me, and she reciprocated with a generousness and basic good will which warmed me every time we met and I resolved that if Jim ever dated another girl that would be my chance. But he never did.
Jim and Laura made a handsome couple, and little by little, as the months drifted by, it came to be accepted that some sort of understanding had been arrived at between them.
It was on December 7, a cold, rainy Sunday in New London, that I, for one, knew it must be so."
I had gone to the Club for lunch, and finding Laura and Jim there, accepted their promptly wigwagged invitation to join them. Afterward we settled on one of the deep-cushioned divans in the sitting room. It was about 2 P.m., there was a crackling fire in the fireplace, and someone at the bar had turned on a radio. We could hear music playing and occasionally the strident voice of an announcer touting something or other. And then we sensed an electric change in the pro- gram. A new voice was talking on the radio; the excitement he conveyed was real, altogether different from the synthetic sales talk of a moment before.
There was a sudden tenseness in n Laura as she looked quickly from Jim to me, and a studied casualness as her hand sought his. I stood up.
"Guess I'd better go find out who robbed what bank," I said, and marched into the next room feeling a little heroic and a little foolish.
I'll never forget the look on Laura's face, and the round horror in her eyes, when I came back. "I'll have to go right back to the ship," I said. "Jim, there's really not much either of us can do, but you know what the regulations say. You'd better take Laura back to her hotel and help her get the next train."
Jim nodded without speaking, but Laura interposed quickly, taking his arm in an unconsciously revealing gesture as she did so. "I'd appreciate help finding the nearest bus from the submarine base, but I can certainly catch a train in town by myself. The place for Jim is right back on the S-16 with you, Rich, and the quicker he gets there the better. Why, you might get orders to go to sea right away, — and-never come back!"
For all her brave words, Laura's chin trembled as she finished, and the last words were uttered in a sob. She hid her face on Jim's shoulder. Awkwardly he patted her, put his arm around her, and suddenly her shoulders shook with deep, uncontrolled sobs, as she clung to him.
"Stow it, Laury," Jim gently whispered. "It's a bad break for a lot of people, a lot of them must have been killed this morning. It just can't be helped what it does to us." He pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket, handed it to her.
Controlling herself, Laura pushed herself away from Jim, sat upright. "I'm all right. I'm sorry, Jim, — it's just, — just-so horrible. Everything's so terribly mixed up, — nothing will ever be right again!"
They had completely forgotten my presence, and somehow I felt myself an intruder. "Excuse me a minute," I mumbled.
"I'll be right back."
At the bar old Homer was talking into a telephone. "Yes- sir! Right away, sir!" he was saying as I arrived. Then he picked up a microphone beside it.
"There will be a bus leaving the front of the Club for New London in ten minutes," he announced. "All visitors are requested please to leave the base, by order of the Base, Commander." Homer had a melodious Negro voice just suited to the announcing system speakers, and I could hear it resounding through the building. In a few minutes there was a small exodus taking place.
Laura was completely herself again as Jim put her on the bus. It was a sober crowd, and sober good-byes were said. I shook hands quickly so as to get out of their way, waited quietly a few feet distant. When Jim approached he said nothing, but his mouth showed a trace of lipstick, and his face was grim and downcast.
Tom was waiting for us on deck near the gangway as we approached the S-16. He wore a heavy overcoat against the frigid wind sweeping the river, had buckled a service forty- five automatic around his ample middle, and the gangway watch was similarly armed. I noticed with approval, also, that he had stationed two additional men on watch, one on the bow and another on the stern, likewise wearing pistols.
"Are those guns loaded?" I asked him.
"Yes, sir!" said Tom. "A full clip in each gun but none in the chamber. I've instructed the sentries they have to pull the slide back before the first shot. Besides that, each man has two loaded clips in his belt."
I nodded approval. "What instructions have you given them?"
"Remain on their feet and alert for sabotage or other unusual incidents in the river or on the beach," he answered.
"Be particularly alert for any unusual movement in the water at night. Challenge anything suspicious immediately in. a loud voice. If no answer, or not satisfactory, draw gun and fire one shot in the air. If still not satisfactory, shoot to hit.
By that time the rest of us will be up here."
"Good man!" I said. "Where did you pick up all these ideas so quickly?"
Tom looked pleased. "I was in the old S-31 in China when the Japs's sunk the Panay," he said. "The place was swarming with bumboats, and we expected any minute that a whole gang of Japs would come jumping out of one of them."
I looked up and down the river, and at the other submarines peacefully tied up to their docks. It was hard to imagine that, for all we knew, at that very moment sabotage attempts were being planned against them, perhaps actually being carried out.
My watch said two-thirty when Captain Blunt showed up.
His manner was incisive and to the point. What additional, security measures had we taken? What percentage of our crew was aboard? How much fuel and provisions did we have on hand, and how many warshots were there in the torpedo rooms? He made notes quickly in a battered note- book and departed as abruptly as he had come, en route to the next boat of his squadron.
I was grateful to Tom for having enabled S-16 to come through from the inquisition with credit. Some of the other submarines, I could see, were still getting men topside, and I was morally certain that some of them had few, if any, officers on board in addition to the duty officer. Not that we would have been much better off ourselves, had Jim and I not happened to sit within earshot of a radio after lunch.
I looked at my watch again. Two-forty. It had taken us just forty minutes to go to war.
But neither the Japanese nor the Germans attacked us, and after a few days, with the imposition of additional security patrols on the base and in the river, and more men on watch at a time in the submarines, life was permitted to resume much of its former habits. Except that the frenetic pace of our under-way operations had virtually doubled.
So far as Jim and Laura were concerned, it had not been good-by after all. We received no orders to leave New Lon- don, continued doing exactly what we had been doing, with less time off than ever. And next week Laura resumed her weekly visits to New London.
By Christmas time, when the matter of Jim's qualification for command came up, I should not have been surprised at learning that as a contingent plan, he and Laura would very shortly thereafter be married. Before the beginning of the war a more leisurely and considered approach, with announce- ments, parties, and the like, would naturally have been in order. But now all such plans had to go into the discard.