Her Infinite Variety by Louis Auchincloss, Louis S. Auchincloss Page B

are you talking about?"
    "I'm joking, mother."
    "Well, please don't. I take it, anyway, there's no idea now of your accepting that job on his journal?"
    "There
was
such an idea. Very much so. But I guess there isn't now. And largely, no doubt, because of the things you've just said. Which were, of course, already in my mind. That Rory is using me. Or at least was planning to. I guess I have a lot more learning to do before I make any drastic changes in my life. And I think in the meanwhile I'm going right back to my old job on
Style!
"

5
    C LARA WENT BACK to work on
Style,
and her life refitted itself into the old pattern. There were, however, two significant differences. The first was that she had told Trevor very firmly that she didn't want another baby for at least two years—the period, she insisted, that she would need to learn what sort of an editor she was or wanted to be—and he had grumblingly but not too petulantly agreed to prolong the necessary preventative measures. He obviously thought she exaggerated the importance of what to him was the idle fantasy of a women's magazine, but she gave him credit for not saying so. His mother had taught him at least the manners of a greater respect for women than that harbored by many of his friends, and, besides, he and Clara were young, and there was plenty of time for the larger family that he liked to envision. So many of his contemporaries planned for a brood of two, a boy and a girl, and maybe, if the husband prospered, a darling little "afterthought" of either sex. Trevor, as was his wont, thought in larger terms: he wanted three boys and three girls!

    The second difference was by far the greater. History had begun to break into all their lives. As the war in Europe intensified and Britain seemed in danger of crumbling, Americans began to gird themselves for what now seemed an inevitable engagement in the conflict. Trevor moved across town to the USS
Prairie State,
moored in the Hudson, to become that "ninety-day wonder," an ensign in the naval reserve. At the same time his father was called to Washington to become an assistant secretary of the army, and the senior Hoyts moved to a splendid colonial mansion in Georgetown. To a skeptical Clara it seemed that the clock of social progress had been turned back and that her family-in-law, and indeed Wall Street itself, were clad in the shining armor of a militant prestige. And surely her husband in his new blue uniform was a comely John Paul Jones.
    The very day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Trevor was placed on active duty. In only a week's time he was dispatched to the Pacific to serve on a destroyer, and Clara had to adapt herself to a single life of indefinite duration. Her mother-in-law, now high in the administration of the Red Cross, was full of suggestions about war work, including one that might involve her moving with little Sandra to the Hoyts' house in Washington, but Clara, to the consternation of her in-laws, rejected them all.
    "No, I have decided to stick to my job," she announced in a tone that Mrs. Hoyt was soon to recognize as final. "People are saying this war involves everyone—civilians as well as soldiers—but that's not so in America. Not yet, anyway. This is a war for the military and the munitions factories. And I daresay they can win it. But my job is to see that my magazine survives. If we all walk out on what we're doing to make a surplus of bandages, there won't be anything for the boys to come home to."
    "It's nice to think they'll still have
Style
when it's all over," Mrs. Hoyt retorted.
    Clara shrugged off the crack. She was experiencing a novel exhilaration at the prospect of her new freedom with its myriad opportunities. In the year that followed she initiated a series of articles dealing with the problems of women on the home front: how to make a tasty meal under rationing without resorting to the black market; what to tell your children about why their daddy is