“It was something your father found out,” Mrs. Bailey said, at last. “We never mentioned it. We felt that part was up to Mr. Meade, if anyone. We were only glad that we did find out. We had both been dubious, naturally. The man is a clarinetist. He does have some talent, apparently. And his family is extremely well-to-do. However, what your father learned—”
He was not grinning. “Skeleton in the closet, eh? Was the cluck already married or something?”
She apparently felt that his mood of worry was the best one in which to reveal a matter that would undoubtedly be uncovered sooner or later. Jimmie had a persistence which came, she often said proudly, from her side of the family. She knitted a few stitches as a prologue. “Jimmie, this Mr. Harry Meade is—non-Aryan.”
“Huh!”
“He is one quarter Jewish. Your father found it out on a trip to New York. His family is well known in New York. But his grandmother was a Jewess.”
Jimmie did not say anything for a while. At last, in a quiet, thin voice, he began:
“I dimly remember, Mother, that when Elsie Mac-something—of this town—married Leonard Zimm you helped engineer the whole business. You were fond of Len—”
“The Zimms,” his mother answered, “have lived in this country for five generations. They came with the pioneers. We accepted them, in time, naturally. In those days.”
“What do you mean, “in those days’? Aren’t the Zimms still around?”
“No, James. They moved, more than a year ago. To Chicago.”
Jimmie hopped to his feet. “So that’s it! Sarah didn’t tell me, the louse! She gave him up—when she found out the truth!”
Mrs. Bailey looked at her tall son with eyes that gleamed oddly. “Sarah gave him up. Naturally.”
He slapped his book together. “Fine business! I think I’ll go down to the lab for the night. I don’t want to hear, Mother, about how the Jews, a little minority of them in every nation, have succeeded—although they are an admittedly inferior people!—in stealing all the money and the power from us big, bold, better gentiles, and making suckers out of us in business, and finally in so befuddling our mighty minds that they have destroyed the ninety-five per cent of us, sacked our civilization, and thrust us into war. Phooie, on you! I knew you and Dad were pretty nuts, Mother! This is the first intimation I’ve had, though, that you were feasting on the bloody knuckles of people who can’t protest, even, without causing a fresh hundred of their relatives to hang by their thumbs and their breasts. God damn it! I can’t stand it!” He went out.
Hard on the heels of that episode, came another—and then another. The first was minor, but it distressed Jimmie. The second was more bitter.
On the day after he had stalked away from his mother’s intolerance, with the hot belief that Sarah had been a traitor to her man, he called on Biff. He was beginning to like Biff, to feel that his brother had a soul. It was a young soul, wounded and arrogant, but susceptible of maturation. It needed care. Jimmie believed that Biff was caring for it, as he lay on his monotonous bed, thinking slow thoughts about his life, and reading long books about the realities around him.
Jimmie had formed the habit of cutting over to the hospital on his walk to work or his return from work, of rapping on his brother’s door and sitting in the easy chair for a few minutes. This time, remembering that Biff’s room was bare, like the rooms of most slow-healing invalids whose friends and relatives have grown inattentive, he stopped at a florist’s and bought a bunch of chrysanthemums. Because his arms were filled with the flowers Jimmie kicked open the door of the room.
He found Biff locked in an embrace with a nurse. The same pretty nurse who had been kidding with Dr. Heiffler on the night Jimmie had conferred with him. They broke apart. The nurse flushed—but not much; it was a defiant flush, a tantalizing flush, rather than the swift reddening one might have expected. She looked boldly at Jimmie, patted Biff’s cheek, and went out of the room.
Biff chuckled. “You’re the darnedest guy! Always popping into things!”
“Not that I want to! You people are always doing things. What’s the idea? She’s a poor working gal, Biff. You’re too irresistible to take advantage of her. Too much dough.
Too much family.”
Biff laughed harder. “Take advantage of Genevieve? Look. How many times does a girl have to be taken advantage of before she’s out of the minor league?”
Jimmie unwrapped the flowers. He was still fairly unruffled. “Not a nice thing to say.”
“All my pals have had dates with Genevieve. Can’t imagine how I overlooked her, myself. She’s pretty, eh?”
“Sure.” Jimmie sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re pretty, too, Biff. Nice eyes—State football hero—whatnot. I suppose the gals in your gang won’t come in and neck with a pair of plaster casts. Still—a nurse! Tchk-tchk!”
“You take her out, Jimmie. She’s a nice dish. Do you good. You look like a cold baked potato—more every day. Too much work. And Genevieve knows all the answers.
Lives on the wrong side of the tracks, but with a face and a chassis like that a dame can cross ’em—”
“Aren’t you being just a shade-hard-boiled, Biff?”
“You sore?”
Jimmie walked over to the window. “Not exactly.”
Biff laughed sharply. “You know, sometimes the family is right about you. You’re a meddlesome cluck. And too darned high-and-mighty. If you’re trying to lecture me on personal behavior—quit! And the next time you come over here—knock.”
“All right.”
“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You aren’t hurting ’em.” Jimmie smiled—but he was aware that his feelings were hurt.
“Y ou get your legs broken,” Biff said, with a tinge of self-pity. “Y ou try lying around in a hospital, week in and out. You see what you’d do if a sophisticated babe came in and offered to make the time go a lot faster.”
“All right, wise guy,” Jimmie said. “All right. I’ll go quietly.” He did go. He supposed that he had been meddlesome and toplofty. It wasn’t any of his business. Still, it wasn’t right, either. And Jimmie felt that not-right behavior was everybody’s business. So, he decided, maybe he was priggish. Maybe he was a blithering fool. He strode along the cold street toward the paint works and he thought of Audrey and his temples swelled. The world was cock-eyed—and doing itself no good by being that way.
Two days later, his father threw him out.
It was his fault.
After he had moved his things over to the country club, which was nearer the factory, anyway—after he had settled in a chintz-draped room that overlooked the golf course, he began to see that he had almost consciously precipitated the banishment, in the same righteous way in which he’d got himself into so many other fights….
A few days after his irritated criticism of Biff he had set up a slow distillation in his lab, left it in charge of one of the men, and gone home at four o’clock. Because he seldom reached home until seven—and because, in any case, his presence would have been egregious—nobody had told him about the meeting.
He saw a number of cars parked on the street and in the drive. He thought that his mother was having a female party. He planned to wave at her from the hall, go up to his room, and hide. In fact, he got up momentum to make the trip through the hall a fast one.
However, when he opened the door he smelled cigar smoke and he heard the mumble of men’s voices. That stopped him. Somebody in the living room caught sight of him and waved. Heads turned.