“Sure. I’ll introduce you to a few ‘interventionists,’ though, Jimmie—to keep you sane. You’ll find that they’ve pretty much thought their way through all the changes of black and white—to the real answer. It’s funny. The interventionist attitude toward the isolationist is one of worry. Worry about how to convert him. Worry about the factors that made him the way he is. An earnest attempt to reason with him. But the isolationist’s attitude toward his interventionist friend is just—rage. Instead of reason the isolationist has been using slogans. ‘Don’t plow under our boys.’ Frantic, hysterical swill like that. Malicious stuff.” The old man sighed. “The difference in their attitudes toward each other is just about a definition of who’s doing the calm thinking and who’s doing the terrified yelling. Well, Jimmie, there’s a lot wrong with America—”
“You tell me,” Jimmie said. “I’m liking this. At home, they shut me up. At home, their slogans are truth. My facts are propaganda. Even Audrey Wilson called me Duff Cooper at one point last night.”
Mr. Corinth’s eyebrows lifted. “So you’ve met our Audrey?”
“Yeah. Mother’s idea—at the beginning.”
“Mmmm.” The old man slid from his stool. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with America—and the world—some other time, Jimmie. Did you like her?”
“Who? Audrey? She’s attractive.”
“A mild phrase. Too mild. It protests too much—in converse. Audrey is to attractiveness what a flying fortress is to a box kite. I know Audrey pretty well. She tried to get a job here, once. Tried hard.”
“Audrey did? Doing what?”
“Learning chemistry. She’d polished off finishing school and she had an idea she’d become another Eve Curie.”
“Why didn’t you let her learn?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe I was wrong. I looked at Audrey and I decided women already knew too darn’ much, anyhow. Teaching women the things men know hasn’t done one doggoned visible thing to improve human life yet. I half suspect it’s made the women skimp their natural business, besides. So I thought Audrey ought to have a chance to grow mellow by just being female.”
“Mellow. She’s hardly that.”
“No. I suppose not. She might be closer to it, though, than you think. You’re no wood-aged paragon of mellowness yourself, yet.” He reached out, rather impulsively, and put his hand on Jimmie’s shoulder. “You’re thinking, this morning—if I may be so clairvoyant as to say so—of taking a room, hunh?”
The younger man grinned again. “I was.”
“Don’t. Stick around your family. You aren’t anywhere near in the mood to work.
The mood I talked about when I butted in here. You won’t find out anything, anyway.
You might as well get over your mad—or push through it—or whatever you do when you see red. I can run the paint works—government orders and all. You just stay at home and mess around here when you want.”
“I’m used to working in any mood,” Jimmie answered seriously. “I’ve had some damned good practice!”
The venerable face was seamed with amusement and at the same time with a transcendent sympathy. “Yes, Jimmie. I can imagine. I can imagine a little. Twenty-three years ago—for a month—when I was in Chemical Warfare I had charge of a big ammunition dump—high explosive and gas. They shelled and bombed the thing constantly. I can make a stab at knowing what you mean. It’s not that mood I’m talking about. I have a sneaking idea you aren’t yellow—or a quitter. It’s the other mood.” He hesitated. “You’ll be seeing Audrey again soon, I suppose?”
“I don’t know. Her family canceled a party they’d set for me—when they found out I was a British agent, practically.”
“Well, when you see her do me a favor. Keep trying to think what she’d be like if she didn’t have those looks.”
Jimmie laughed. “Why?”
“I always wondered myself—that’s all. And another chore. Try it. Make believe you’ve been sold on every single item your mother and your father subscribe to. Empty gun—not our war—America can’t be invaded—Roosevelt is a Communist and a hysteric.
Believe all that, on purpose. Then see how you feel about life!” Mr. Corinth walked to the table where Jimmie had been working. He picked up the pages of equations and read through them rapidly. His white eyebrows waggled and he blinked at Jimmie once or twice.
“Solve your personal equations first,” he said, as he walked from the room.
Jimmie went back to work. In a vehement, though unappraised, determination to refute the opinion of the philosophical old man, he worked through the lunch hour and the afternoon. No satisfying thought came out of his labors. At five, a whistle blew. The shifts changed. Jimmie shook himself; he was stiff from concentration. He put on his overshoes and his hat and locked the door of his laboratory.
Outside, the air was warmer. The snow had gone and the damp ground smelled pungently of sun-cured vegetation spread on it by autumn. Men and women were walking toward exits in the high fence. Some turned at the corner and started home on foot; others crossed a muddy street to the big parking lot and started their cars. The low-slanting sunlight throbbed with revving engines. Jimmie had a hunch that a second, belated, Indian summer would follow the freak cold spell which had bound Muskogewan in snow.
Such a warm spell was typical of the climate of the region. It would be followed by the crisp weather that led into Thanksgiving. His hunch exhilarated Jimmie. English weather was tedious and small-scale. The changes in this part of northern United States were dramatic, stimulating.
A horn blew as Jimmie checked out at the gatehouse. He looked up. Audrey was sitting in a coupe parked in the space alongside a fireplug. Jimmie put his pass in his wallet and took off his hat and walked over to her car. “Up to now,” he said, “I’ve refused all offers of chaufferage. I’ll take yours, though.”
CHAPTER V
AUDREY LOOKED like the afternoon. Her suit was greenish gray, the color of fall-faded vegetation. Her blouse and hat were brassy, like sunshine on yellow leaves—like her hair. Her hat swept up proudly from her face, framed it, insisted upon it. But she kept her head down, her face half averted, and she said impatiently, “Hop in!”
She drove away. When she reached one of the minor highways outside the town she slowed. “I was just going to bribe one of those guards to phone you. I waited quite a while. And I didn’t want to be caught.”
Jimmie laughed. “You won’t lose caste in this district. Not if you’re calling for me.
I assure you, I’ve been accepted by the very best upper sets—”
It’s not that. It’s my family. You knew they were giving you a big costume party tonight?”
“I knew it was a surpriser, but not a costumer.”
“Mother planned it for weeks. Of course, she had to keep open dates, because nobody knew till recently just when you would be here. You were late, as it was. I don’t know why everybody was so stupid, but we all thought you’d probably be on the other side. I mean—against war. You’ve never met Mother?”
He shook his head. “The Wilson immigration was after my time. I examined into that, to discover why I didn’t remember you. Even at seventeen—six years ago—you must have been definitely noticeable.”
“Mother has a pretty grim sense of humor. The party she planned was going to be a bomb party. With a lot of money-snatching side shows for the benefit of the America Forever Committee.”
“What’s a bomb party?”