Tomorrow Is Forever (8 page)

She could not say that because they were not inhuman, and they were not wretches; they were young and well-bred and intelligent, and they would hear her with a pained bewilderment, and answer with the cool logic of their years, “Aren't you ashamed that you did, when you look at the world we're living in?”

And her son—who was seventeen and who did not look at all like Arthur, since he bore no more relationship to Arthur than to the policeman on the corner—her son would ask her, with the same cool logic, “Do you want me to believe it this time?”

How strange it would be if she should try to tell them anything about Arthur. With what incomprehension they would hear her. Her children knew—that is, if anybody had asked them, they could have answered after a moment's reflection—that their father was their mother's second husband. She was not sure they had ever been told their mother's first husband had lost his life in that war they were laughing at. If they had ever heard this, evidently they had forgotten about it. How fantastic it would seem to them if she broke now into their jolly chatter to say, “I know all about that war you find so absurd, and that sentimental nonsense that sent men out to die. I loved a man who died for it.”

They would be shocked into uncomfortable silence. Or they might, as they had a right to do, stare at her and ask, “For what?”

This she could answer, for they had told her themselves. He had died for the generation of her own children, to give them the right not to believe in anything. They had told her, as clearly as they could tell her, the futility of his sacrifice. She remembered what he had said to her. “If we win this war, you'll have your children. If we don't, you won't want them.” Her children could answer her now, but as she stood within sound of their healthy, laughter-laden voices, Elizabeth knew that she could not answer them.

Indoors the children came across some new monstrosity and broke into laughter again. Cherry finally gasped, “I tell you, my ribs hurt. I haven't had so much fun for ages.”

“Oh boy,” exclaimed Pudge, “here's another of these things. ‘Today, filled with hope and trust, we proudly look upon our great army and our noble allies. Through their sacrifices we are moving toward the victory that will bring triumphant peace to all the world. Bring this glorious day nearer! Work for victory as you never worked before! America is destined to be—'”

“—the prize sucker of all time,” Dick finished the sentence for him, with sudden disgust. “Did you ever hear such tripe? Couldn't you throw up?”

“Well—we really ought not to laugh,” Julia admitted. “The poor things, they took it so seriously.”

“If we don't laugh,” said Dick, “we'll all sit down and cry.
We've
got the mess they made.”

“Oh Dick,” Julia admonished him, “but really, this war is different!”

“Different? Tell that to the Marines. Sure, the Marines who got stuck on Wake Island with a lot of popguns because the Japs were such good customers and they might have got their feelings hurt if we'd fortified it.”

“We're a swell bunch of suckers, aren't we?” said Cherry. “To get ourselves born in these times!”

“Well, we couldn't help it,” Dick remarked. “But I guess nobody who had anything to say about it would have picked out the twentieth century, any of it.”

Cherry gave a low ironic chuckle. “They'll have an easy time remembering the twentieth century when they study it in the history books. A pre-war period, a war, an inter-war period, another war, a post-war period—”

“Don't say post-war too soon, you wishful thinker,” Pudge admonished her lazily. “How do you know it won't be just the second inter-war period?”

There was a shuffling sound as they began to restack the magazines, evidently concluding that these had provided as much amusement as they could afford. “This is a fine way for two fellows to be talking,” advised Julia, “who'll probably be in the army this time next year.”

“No, you don't get it, Julia,” said Dick. “I'm not as pessimistic as Pudge, I think the next inter-war period is going to be a lot longer than this last one, why it's got to; by the time this war is over everything will be blown to powder and there'll be nothing left to fight with. But we're a lot better off than those moony-faced laddies who went marching off full of molasses about the brotherhood of man and all that. We won't be disillusioned when it's over because we haven't got any illusions. We know it's all a bloody mess and we're in it because our elders didn't have sense enough to keep us out of it. Well go into the army and they'll train us to be killers whose business it is to shoot other killers before they have a chance to shoot us first. And that's that.”

“But my Lord, Dick!” Julia exclaimed in a shocked voice. “We've got to fight! Don't you hate the Japs?”

“Of course I hate them. I'd like to wipe every one of their monkey faces off the earth. Oh, that's okay by me, I'll shoot 'em and be glad to do it. But that's not the idea. I meant the difference between this war and the last one is that this time we know what we're doing. We're fighting to stay alive, period. We don't expect any brand-new world.”

“Lucky we don't expect it,” observed Pudge, “because it's a cinch we're not going to get one.”

“Mr. Wallace,” Cherry said wisely, “thinks we're fighting to provide milk for the Chinese coolies.”

Pudge chuckled at her. “Without even asking the coolies if they want any milk.”

“You know,” said Cherry, “it's really pathetic the way some of the propaganda leaders are trying to sell us on that idea of a brand-new world. Just get this over with, and the Russians will love the Chinese and the Chinese will love the British and the British will love the Italians—”

Pudge interrupted, still chuckling, “Just picture anybody actually loving the Italians.”

“Oh, but they will,” Cherry assured him cynically. “Haven't you read some of these post-war planners? Everybody is going to get along with everybody else, even the Spaniards.”

“The State Department,” Dick reminded her, “gets along beautifully with the Spaniards.”

“Now that Chamberlain is dead,” said Cherry, “somebody really ought to send the State Department a lot of umbrellas for Christmas. Oh, it really does make you tired, doesn't it? Ever since I can remember, people have been talking about the next war, and nobody did anything about it except to go on selling the Japs and Germans things to blow us up with. And now that we're in it they're trying to hand us that same old fluff.”

“I guess you're right,” Julia admitted. “It's—shivery, isn't it?”

“It would be,” said Dick, “if anybody believed it.”

“Some people do believe it, Dick,” Pudge told him seriously. “Nobody our age, of course, but a lot of older people do.”

“I don't see how they can. They fell for it once, it doesn't make sense for anybody to fall for it twice.”

“Well, does any of it make sense, I ask you?”

Dick retorted, “It doesn't make sense except the way I said it the first time. The Japs and Germans say, ‘We're going to kill you and take what you've got.' We say, ‘Like hell you are.' So we get up and bang it out. We keep banging till they're so slugnutty they have to let us alone.”

“That's not the way it turned out last time,” Julia reminded him.

“No it didn't,” Dick agreed, “because last time everybody was so full of phony ideals and doubletalk. Why, to read this stuff we've been reading, you'd think the army was a lot of social workers sent out to uplift the community. Those fellows didn't know what they were fighting for. No wonder they left everything in such a muddle. Nobody ever fought a war for any ideals.”

“Why Dick, there
are
some ideals in this war!” Julia protested. “You know, the Four Freedoms and all that.”

Dick was too polite to contradict her at once, but Cherry was not. “Oh Julia,” she said, “don't be so sentimental. You don't really believe anybody in the United States cares whether the Croatians and people like that have any Four Freedoms, any more than they care about us. Nobody fights for anything like that. They just pretend they do while it's going on.”

“She's right, Julia,” Dick argued. “What they really fight about is property and power. They always talk pretty while it's going on, and then when it's over they get realistic. But as soon as a new war starts they say, ‘Oh yes, we know, all the
other
wars were fought for crass reasons, but this one's different, boys, this one's different.'” He became vehement. “Well, this one's not different and I'm thankful we know it. I'm plenty tired of everybody pretending to believe what everybody knows isn't true.”

“I wonder what your mother and father would say,” Julia suggested, “if they could hear you talk like that.”

“Oh, they wouldn't mind,” said Cherry. “They're very intelligent people, really.”

“They've got some old-fashioned ideas,” said Dick, “like everybody their age, but generally speaking they're very liberal for older people. They don't go around being always shocked about things.”

Outside, on the balcony, Elizabeth stood with her hands gripping the rail. She was thinking, “Every word they are saying is my fault, mine and Spratt's. They're our children and we taught them to think this way. Or at least, if we didn't teach them to be cynics, we didn't do anything to stop it. We ran away from the last war as fast as we could. In what Spratt called the world's hangover, we didn't say anything but ‘never again.' And now there's another war, and Dick will have to fight it—and listen to him! Is that how they all feel? If it is, their children will have to do it again. Oh my God, what have I told him? What can I tell him now?”

Little as she liked to admit it, she knew she had been a coward and that she was still a coward. She had refused to face what was there, and she still lacked the courage to face it. Could she go into the house right now and say to Dick, “This war is a glorious crusade, and you must get into it now. Why wait till next year? They will take you at seventeen. Oh yes, I know, thousands of men have already been killed, but go ahead. What are you waiting for? It's worth it.”

No, she could not say it. If she believed this war was worth winning, that was what she ought to say, but the truth was that she simply did not believe it that much. That was what had held them all back during the accumulating horrors of the past twenty years. They knew what war was like, they could let anything happen in the world if only they could keep out of another. She need not blame herself, Elizabeth thought, as though she was the only one. She stood there on the balcony, epitomizing her country.

Turning around, she walked into the house, entering through a hall so as to avoid meeting the children in the den. With the disappearance of the sun the air had grown chilly. A fire might be welcome. She stood by a window in the living room, looking at the darkness as it gathered swiftly over the lawn. A maid came in to turn on the lights.

“Don't you want me to draw those curtains too, Mrs. Herlong?” she asked.

Elizabeth turned. “Why yes, I'd forgotten them. I'll do this window.” She pulled the cord that drew the curtains together, and as the maid went out she turned from the window. How well-ordered everything looked, and was. Nothing had happened this afternoon. Nothing had happened except within herself. Everything that had made her feel so strong and happy as she drove home through the canyon was still there. A voice in the doorway startled her.

“Say, mother, we're getting famished. Isn't the boss home yet?”

“Not yet, Dick. He's very busy these days, you know, on the new picture.”

“I know, but I'm starving.”

“If the boss isn't here by seven-thirty, we'll sit down without him,” she promised. “It's getting cold, Dick, will you light the fire?”

“Sure will.” Dick knelt down and applied a match to the gas rod under the logs. He glanced at the cocktail tray. “Want me to mix the Martinis?”

“I wish you would.”

“Okay.” He went first to the door and called the others. “Want to come in here? Fire going.”

“In a minute,” Cherry called back. “Got to wash our hands first—those magazines were so awfully dusty. Is the boss in?”

“Not yet, but mother says we can have dinner at seven-thirty anyway. So hurry up.”

The gas flame sparkled up to ignite the logs piled in the grate. Dick swished the gin and vermouth. Though he was not allowed to drink cocktails himself, he enjoyed the feeling of adulthood it gave him to play bartender. What a nice boy he was, Elizabeth thought as she watched him. Dick asked,

“Like a drink now?”

“I believe I would. I'm a bit tired.”

He poured it out for her, and watched while she tasted it. “How's that?”

“Very good. You could get a job.”

“I'll be needing one if that physics guy gets much tougher. —Oh hello there,” he said as Cherry and the two others came in. They greeted Elizabeth, and Julia said,

“That fire looks wonderful. I wish we had those gas lighters at our house, they start the fire with no trouble at all. You have just everything here, Mrs. Herlong.”

“Why thank you, Julia.”

“This is the most
comfortable
house I was ever in. We've been having such fun all afternoon.”

“I'm getting weak in the middle,” said Dick. “I wish you'd ordered some crackers or something.”

“I'll have hors d'oeuvres tomorrow night. We're having a guest for dinner—I mean an older guest, from the studio.”

“We were all going to ride down to the beach tomorrow night,” said Dick. “It'll be all right if Cherry and I leave right after dinner, won't it?”