Someone said, loudly, but behind his hand, “Siddown!”
“Let me finish,” Jimmie answered. “I know, the most savage and scientific military machine of all time has got its eye, and its hate, glued on you and me. But that isn’t why I want to fight. I know we all love things, and have a lot of ’em; and I know we might lose ’em all, in a year—or two—or five. You sit here and think you know. But I do know! I’ve seen the other guys’ show. You haven’t.” Jimmie pulled up his pant-leg and raised his knee. From his kneecap to his sock ran a corded, scarlet scar. “I’ve even felt it a little. But that isn’t why I want to fight, either: not my own, personal hatred. It takes two to make a quarrel, gentlemen. But only one to launch a conquest. That’s what’s going on! My enemy isn’t an idea, or a nation, or an economic system. It’s the rottenest thing in man-in you-in me. It’s greed. Greed that reaches out with no mercy, no humanity, no law-for the purpose of feeding itself. Stuffing itself. I fight thai, wherever, whenever, and however I see it. I fight it in Hitler. I fight it in you.”
He lowered his voice. “You say, America should defend itself. Show me where there is a defense on earth left—except attack! You say, we should mind our own business. I say, we never did and never will! When the American people built up this continent from edge to edge, and even before, Americans went to every cockeyed end of the earth—Timbuktu and Samarkand—and sold the natives sewing machines and phonographs, built oil refineries for ’em, taught ’em to play baseball! And still more Americans were sent—by you—and still are—to teach the heathen to wear breeches and sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ Hundreds of thousands of Americans! Millions, over the decades—meddling with every man and woman and child on earth! Not meddling them into some bloody empire. Just meddling for trade and the right to teach. Isolation?
We’re the most interventionist damn’ people in the history of time! Only thing is—have we still got the guts to intervene in Hell?”
That was when his father rose, sweaty, shaking, and cleared his throat three times before he could speak, and said, “Son, you can leave my house, now. I won’t stand for any of that sort of corrupt talk any more. Nor your mother. She said so the other night.
Get going!”
Most of the men applauded Jimmie’s father. Not all—but most.
So Jimmie walked out of the living room, through the hall, out the front door, and down the street.
He rented a guest room at the club—and he sent for his things.
CHAPTER X
HE WAS SITTING, one evening, in the library of the club, when Mr. Wilson entered. Jimmie was certain that Audrey’s father saw and recognized him, but Mr. Wilson did not stamp out of the room, as some of the members had. Instead, he leaned on one of the periodical tables, his long arms stretched crutch-stiff, and he seemed to glance, covertly, at Jimmie in the corner with his book. To Jimmie—who could not help watching, because he believed he was being watched—it seemed as if the old man’s lantern jaw wobbled a little, as if his skin was whiter, as if his falcon eyes were only pretending to read the headlines scattered along the table. Because such behavior was surely foreign to Mr. Wilson, and because Jimmie himself was blue and lonely in this exile, he tried to look accessible. He lighted a cigarette and crossed his legs casually and nodded when the old man glanced at him again. Mr. Wilson immediately came over to the corner and sat down. He said, not too truculently, “Hi, there, Jimmie.”
“Good evening, Mr. Wilson.”
“Your dad was pretty rough on you the other day.”
Jimmie remembered that Audrey had said she lived under the same duress, that she, too, might be thrown out of her home—for an even smaller cause. For merely being seen alone with him. He looked at the other man with ironic eyes. “I’m surprised to hear you say so!”
Mr. Wilson did not, of course, appreciate the innuendo. He thought that the younger man merely referred to the argument about war which had split apart so many close ties in the town. “You made quite a ringing speech,” he answered. “Mind if I smoke with you?”
“Not a bit. Have a cigarette?”
“Thanks. No.” Mr. Wilson took from his pocket a cigar in a metal container. He uncapped it, bit the cigar, and struck a match. By its light, bright in the gloomy recess, Jimmie could see that he was trembling. “I mean—” he puffed—“I agree with a lot you said. I’m a practical man, though. I don’t believe you can ever sell your bill of goods to the American people. If I did I’d be on your side of this. Whip Hitler—and then take over the world’s business! Nice project!”
“It isn’t exactly—”
Mr. Wilson waved. “I know. You have a more idealistic notion. It would amount to that practically, though, if it came to be. Which it won’t. And I liked what you said about courage. One thing I admire. That’s the only disadvantage of some of my friends on the America Forever Committee. They’re there because they’re scared. I hate that.”
“It’s a point.” A silence fell. “Jimmie, how’d you get that scar?” The younger man fidgeted. “I didn’t mean to be theatrical.”
“Darned effective, anyway. How’d it happen?”
Jimmie peered out over the night-hung golf course. “Hunk of flying glass. Bomb.”
Mr. Wilson grunted. He seemed eager for the whole story. He leaned forward, to ask again. But his pride or some other factor restrained him. He sat back and smoked for a long time. Once, he looked directly at Jimmie and smiled, amiably, unsurely.
“You underrate your father,” he said suddenly.
“Do I?” Jimmie was not displeased.
“He’s a good banker.”
“Everybody says so.”
“I mean good, Jimmie. Not just technically. Good—inside. Shrewd, but not a widow-and-orphan squeezer. Tough, maybe, on people who can stand it. Not on the rest.
When they had that bank holiday your dad got his bank open before I did mine-and I was racing the old son-of-a-gun. Smart. I suppose in his personal safe he’s got a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of paper he’s taken over in the last thirty years. Loans people made that they couldn’t pay. He’s proud of the condition of that bank. And I wonder—I wonder if you ever heard that there were maybe a couple of hundred men in business in this town who would be out of business if your old man hadn’t taken some pretty wildcat chances on them—especially in the depression? Did you know that?”
“No,” said Jimmie. “Probably never thought a man could have loyalty to a bank.”
“I never thought much about his bank at all. I was never interested in it.”
“A man can get to a bank the way he can to an idea—or a woman. Or a religion, even. Then, if something crosses up his bank, he thinks whatever crossed it up is criminal, depraved, and illegal.”
Jimmie sighed. “I wish he’d loosened up more, then! He never showed me any sentimental side. I heard he had one—from Biff—once. But I never saw it.”
“You just said you weren’t interested.”
Jimmie grinned sadly. “That’s right. I did.”
There was another stillness. A man in a distant corner rattled a newspaper.
Billiard balls clicked in the next room. Jimmie looked with curiosity at the big, gaunt man. Mr. Corinth had said, once, that he ought to meet Mr. Wilson. But the picture of her father Audrey had painted was one of absolutist bigotry. Nothing like this. The man in the opposite chair seemed mellow; he was striking a chord in Jimmie’s nature that Jimmie would not have believed him able to comprehend.