Soldiers Pay (15 page)

Her anger lent her fortitude. When she entered the study she looked at Mahon without a qualm, scar and all. She greeted the rector, kissing him, then she turned swift and graceful to Mahon, averting her eyes from his brow. He watched her quietly, without emotion.

You have caused me to look foolish, she told him with whispered smooth fury, sweetly kissing his mouth.

Jones, ignored, followed down the hall and stood without the closed door to the study, listening, hearing her throaty, rapid speech beyond the bland panel. Then, stooping, he peered through the keyhole. But he could see nothing and feeling his creased waistline constricting his breathing, feeling his braces cutting into his stooped fleshy shoulders, he rose under Gilligan's detached, contemplative stare. Jones's own yellow eyes became quietly empty and he walked around Gilligan's immovable belligerence and on toward the front door, whistling casually.

XI

Cecily Saunders returned home nursing the yet uncooled embers of her anger. From beyond the turning angle of the veranda her mother called her name and she found her parents sitting together.

“How is Donald?” her mother asked, and not waiting for a reply, she said: “George Farr 'phoned again after you left. I wish you'd leave a message for him. It keeps Tobe forever stopping whatever he is doing to answer the 'phone.”

Cecily, making no reply, would have passed on to a French window opening upon the porch, but her father caught her hand, stopping her.

“How is Donald looking today?” he asked, repeating his wife.

Her unrelaxed hand tried to withdraw from his. “I don't know and I don't care,” she said harshly.

“Why, didn't you go there?” Her mother's voice was faintly laced with surprise. “I thought you were going there.”

“Let me go, daddy.” She wrenched her hand nervously. “I want to change my dress.” He could feel her rigid, delicate bones. “Please,” she implored and he said:

“Come here, Sis.”

“Now, Robert,” his wife interposed. “You promised to let her alone.”

“Come here, Sis,” he repeated, and her hand becoming lax, she allowed herself to be drawn to the arm of his chair. She sat nervously, impatiently, and he put his arm around her. “Why didn't you go there?”

“Now, Robert, you promised,” his wife parroted futilely.

“Let me go daddy.” She was rigid beneath her thin, pale dress. He held her and she said: “I did go there.”

“Did you see Donald?”

“Oh, yes. That black, ugly woman finally condescended to let me see him a few minutes. In her presence, of course.”

“What black, ugly woman, darling?” asked Mrs. Saunders, with interest.

“Black woman? Oh, you mean Mrs. What's-her-name. Why, Sis, I thought you and she would like each other. She has a good, level head, I thought.”

“I don't doubt it. Only—”

“What black woman, Cecily?”

“—only you'd better not let Donald see that you are smitten with her.”

“Now, now, Sis. What are you talking about?”

“Oh, it's well enough to talk that way,” she said, taut and passionate, “but haven't I eyes of my own? Haven't I seen? Why did she come all the way from Chicago or wherever it was with him? And yet you expect me—”

“Who came from where? What woman, Cecily? What woman, Robert?” They ignored her.

“Now, Sis, you ain't just to her. You're just excited.”

His arm held her fragile rigidity.

“I tell you, it isn't that—just her. I had forgiven that, because he is sick and because of how he used to be about—about girls. You know, before the war. But he has humiliated me in public: this afternoon he—he—Let me go daddy,” she repeated, imploring, trying to thrust herself away from him.

“But what woman, Cecily? What is all this about a woman?” Her mother's voice was fretted.

“Sis, honey, remember he is sick. And I know more about Mrs.—er—Mrs. Powers than you do,” he removed his arm, yet held her by the wrist. “Now, you——”

“Robert, who is this woman?”

“—think about it tonight and we'll talk it over in the morning.”

“No, I am through with him, I tell you. He has humiliated me before her.” Her hand came free and she sprang toward the window.

“Cecily?” her mother called after the slim whirl of her vanishing dress, “are you going to call George Farr?”

“No! Not if he was the last man in the world. I hate men.” The swift staccato of her feet died away upon the stairs, and then a door slammed. Mrs. Saunders sank creaking into her chair.

“Now, Robert.”

So he told her.

XII

Cecily did not appear at breakfast. Her father mounted to her room, and knocked this time.

“Yes?” her voice penetrated the wood, muffled thinly.

“It's me, Sis. Can I come in?”

There was no reply, so he entered. She had not even bathed her face, and upon the pillow she was flushed and childish with sleep. The room was permeated with her body's intimate repose; it was in his nostrils like an odour and he felt ill at ease, cumbersome and awkward. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her surrendered hand diffidently. It was unresponsive.

“How do you feel this morning?”

She made no reply, lazily feeling her ascendency and he continued with assumed lightness: “Do you feel better about poor young Mahon this morning?”

“I've put him out of my mind. He doesn't need me anymore.”

“Course he does,” heartily, “we expect you to be his best medicine. “

“How can I?”

“How? What do you mean?”

“He brought his own medicine with him.”

Her calmness, her exasperating calmness. He must flog himself into yesterday's rage. That was the only way to do anything with 'em, damn 'em.

“Did it ever occur to you that I, in my limited way, may know more about this than you?”

She withdrew her hand and slid it beneath the covers, making no reply, not even looking at him.

He continued: “You are acting like a fool, Cecily. What did the man do to you yesterday?”

“He simply insulted me before another woman. But I don't care to discuss it.”

“But listen, Sis. Are you refusing to even see him when seeing him means whether or not he will get well again?”

“He's got that black woman. If she can't cure him with all her experience, I certainly can't.”

Her father's face slowly suffused. She glanced at him impersonally then turned her head on the pillow, staring out the window.

“So you refuse to see him anymore?”

“What else can I do? He very evidently does not want me to bother him any longer. Do you want me to go where I am not wanted?”

He swallowed his anger, trying to speak calmly, trying to match her calm. “Don't you see that I'm not trying to make you do anything? that I am only trying to help that boy get on his feet again? Suppose he was Bob, suppose Bob was lying there like he is.”

“Then you'd better get engaged to him yourself. I'm not.”

“Look at me,” he said with such quiet, such repression that she lay motionless, holding her breath. He put a rough hand on her shoulder.

“You don't have to manhandle me,” she told him calmly, turning her head.

“Listen to me. You are not to see that Farr boy, anymore. Understand?”

Her eyes were unfathomable as sea water.

“Do you understand me?” he repeated.

“Yes, I hear you.”

He rose. They were amazingly alike. He turned at the door meeting her stubborn, impersonal gaze. “I meant it, Sis.”

Her eyes clouded suddenly. “I am sick and tired of men. Do you think I care?”

The door closed behind him and she lay staring at its inscrutable, painted surface, running her fingers lightly over her breasts, across her belly, drawing concentric circles upon her body beneath the covers, wondering how it would feel to have a baby, hating the inevitable time when she'd have to have one, blurring her slim epicenity, blurring her body with pain. . . .

XIII

Miss Cecily Saunders, in pale blue linen, entered a neighbour's house, gushing, paying a morning call. Women did not like her, and she knew it. Yet she had a way with them, a way of charming them temporarily with her conventional perfection, insincere though she might be. Her tact and her graceful deference were such that they discussed her disparagingly only behind her back. None of them could resist her. She always seemed to enjoy other people's gossip. It was not until later you found that she had gossiped none herself. And this, indeed, requires tact.

She chattered briefly while her hostess pottered among tubbed flowers, then asking and receiving permission, she entered the house to use the telephone.

XlV

Mr. George Farr, lurking casually within the courthouse portals, saw her unmistakable approaching figure far down the shady street, remarking her quick, nervous stride. He gloated, fondling her in his eyes with a slow sensuality. That's the way to treat 'em: make 'em come to you. Forgetting that he had phoned her vainly five times in thirty hours. But her surprise was so perfect, her greeting so impersonal, that he began to doubt his own ears.

“My God,” he said, “I thought I'd never get you on the 'phone.”

“Yes?” She paused, creating an unpleasant illusion of arrested haste.

“Been sick?”

“Yes, sort of. Well,” moving on, “I'm awfully glad to have seen you. Call me again sometime, when I'm in, won't you?”

“But say, Cecily——”

She paused again and looked at him over her shoulder with courteous patience. “Yes?”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I'm running errands today. Buying some things for mamma. Good-bye.” She moved again, her blue linen shaping delicate and crisp to her stride. A negro driving a wagon passed between them, interminable as Time: he thought the wagon would never pass, so he darted around it to overtake her.

“Be careful,” she said quickly, “ Daddy's downtown today I am not supposed to see you anymore. My folks are down on you.”

“Why?” he asked in startled vacuity.

“I don't know. Perhaps they have heard of your running around with women, and they think you will ruin me. That's it, probably.”

Flattered, he said: “Aw, come on.”

They walked beneath awnings. Wagons tethered to slumbering mules and horses were motionless in the square. They were lapped, surrounded, submerged by the frank odour of unwashed negroes, most of whom wore at least one ex-garment of the army O.D.; and their slow, unemphatic voices and careless, ready laughter which has also somehow beneath it something elemental and sorrowful and unresisting, lay drowsily upon the noon.

At the corner was a drug store in each window of which was an identical globe, containing liquids, once red and green, respectively, but faded now to a weak similar brown by the suns of many summers. She stayed him with her hand.

“You musn't come any further, George, please.”

“Oh, come on, Cecily.”

“No, no, Good-bye.” Her slim hand stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Come in and have a coca-cola.”

“No, I can't. I have so many things to do. I'm sorry.”

“Well, after you get through, then,” he suggested as a last resort.

“I can't tell. But if you want to, you can wait here for me and I'll come back if I have time. If you want to, you know.”

“All right. I'll wait here for you. Please come, Cecily.”

“I can't promise. Good-bye.”

He was forced to watch her retreating from him, mincing and graceful, diminishing. Hell, she won't come, he told himself. But he daren't leave for fear she might. He watched her as long as he could see her, watching her head among other heads, sometimes seeing her whole body delicate and unmistakable. He lit a cigarette and lounged into the drug store.

After a while the clock on the courthouse struck twelve and he threw away his fifth cigarette. God damn her, she won't have another chance to stand me up, he swore. Cursing her he felt better and pushed open the screen door.

He sprang suddenly back into the store and stepped swiftly out of sight and the soda clerk, glassy-haired and white-jacketed, said “Whatcher dodging?” with interest. She passed, walking and talking gaily with a young married man who clerked in a department store. She looked in as they passed, without seeing him.

He waited, wrung and bitter with anger and jealousy, until he knew she had turned the corner. Then he swung the door outward furiously. He cursed her again, blindly, and someone behind him saying, “Mist' George, Mist' George,” monotonously drew up beside him. He whirled upon a negro boy.

“What in hell you want?” he snapped.

“Letter fer you,” replied the negro equably, shaming him with better breeding. He took it and gave the boy a coin. It was written on a scrap of wrapping paper and it read: “Come tonight after they have gone to bed. I may not get out. But come—if you want to.”

He read and re-read it, he stared at her spidery, nervous script until the words themselves ceased to mean anything to his mind. He was sick with relief. Everything, the ancient, slumbering courthouse, the elms, the hitched somnolent horses and mules, the stolid coagulation of negroes and the slow unemphasis of their talk and laughter, all seemed some way different, lovely and beautiful under the indolent moon.

He drew a long breath.

Mr. George Farr considered
himself quite a man. I wonder if it shows in my face? he thought, keenly examining the faces of men whom he passed, trying to fancy that he did see something in some faces that other faces had not. But he had to admit that he could see nothing, and he knew a slight depression, a disappointment. Strange. If that didn't show in your face what could you do for things to show in your face? It would be fine if (George Farr was a gentleman), if without talking men who had women could somehow know each other on sight—some sort of involuntary sign: an automatic masonry. Of course women were no new thing to him. But not like this. Then the pleasing thought occurred to him that he was unique in the world, that nothing like this had happened to any other man that no one else had ever thought of such a thing. Anyway I know it. He gloated over a secret thought like a pleasant taste in the mouth.

When he remembered (remember? had he thought of anything else?) how she had run into the dark house in her nightgown, weeping, he felt quite masculine and superior and gentle. She's all right now though, I guess they all do that.

His Jove-like calm was slightly shaken, however, after he had tried twice unsuccessfully to get her over the 'phone and it was completely shattered when late in the afternoon she drove serenely by him in a car with a girl friend, utterly ignoring him. She didn't see me. (You know she did.) She didn't see me! (You know damn well she did.)

By nightfall he was on the verge of his possible, mild unemphatic insanity. Then this cooled away as the sun cooled from the sky. He felt nothing, yet like an unattached ghost he felt compelled to linger around the corner which she would pass if she did come downtown. Suddenly he knew terror. What if I were to see her with another man? It would be worse than death he knew, trying to make himself leave, to hide somewhere like a wounded beast. But his body would not go.

He saw her time after time and when it turned out to be someone else he did not know what he felt. And so when she did turn the corner he did not believe his eyes at first. It was her brother that he first recognized, then he saw her and all his life went into his eyes leaving his body but an awkward, ugly gesture in unquicked clay. He could not have said how long it was that he was unconscious of the stone base of the monument on which he sat while she and her brother moved slowly and implacably across his vision, then his life flowed completely, emptying his eyes and filling his body again, giving him dominion over his arms and legs, and temporarily sightless he sprang after her.

“Hi, George,” young Robert greeted him casually, as an equal. “Goin' to the show?”

She looked at him swiftly, delicately, with terror and something like loathing.

“Cecily——” he said.

Her eyes were dark, black, and she averted her head and hurried on.

“Cecily,” he implored, touching her arm.

At his touch she shuddered, shrinking from him. “Don't, don't touch me,” she said piteously. Her face was blanched, colourless, and he stood watching her frail dress flowing to the fragile articulation of her body as she and her brother passed on, leaving him. And he, too, partook of her pain and terror, not knowing what it was.

II

Donald Mahon's homecoming, poor fellow, was hardly a nine days' wonder even. Curious, kindly neighbours came in—men who stood or sat jovially respectable, cheerful: solid business men interested in the war only as a by-product of the rise and fall of Mr. Wilson, and interested in that only as a matter of dollars and cents, while their wives chatted about clothes to each other across Mahon's scarred, oblivious brow; a few of the rector's more casual acquaintances democratically uncravated, hushing their tobacco into a bulged cheek, diffidently but firmly refusing to surrender their hats; girls that he had known, had danced with or courted of summer nights, come now to look once upon his face, and then quickly aside in hushed nausea, not coming anymore unless his face happened to be hidden on the first visit (upon which they finally found opportunity to see it); boys come to go away fretted because he wouldn't tell any war stories—all this going on about him while Gilligan, his glum major-domo, handled them all with impartial discouraging efficiency.

“Beat it, now,” he repeated to young Robert Saunders, who with sundry contemporaries to whom he had promised something good in the way of damaged soldiers, had called.

“He's going to marry my sister. I'd like to know why I can't see him,” young Robert protested. He was in the uncomfortable position of one who has inveigled his friends into a gold mine and then cannot produce the mine. They jeered at him and he justified his position hotly, appealing to Gilligan.

“G'wan now, beat it. Show's over. G'wan now.” Gilligan shut the door on him. Mrs. Powers, descending the stairs said:

“What is it, Joe?”

“That damn Saunders hellion brought his whole gang around to see his scar. We got to stop this,” he stated with exasperation, “can't have these damn folks in and out of here all day long, staring at him.”

“Well, it is about over,” she told him, “they have all called by now. Even their funny little paper has appeared. ‘War Hero Returns,' you know—that sort of thing.”

“I hope so,” he answered without hope. “God knows they've all been here once. Do you know, while I was living and eating and sleeping with men all the time I never thought much of them, but since I got civilized again and seen all these women around here saying, Ain't his face terrible, poor boy, and Will she marry him? and Did you see her downtown yesterday almost nekkid? why, I think a little better of men after all. You'll notice them soldiers don't bother him, specially the ones that was overseas. They just kind of call the whole thing off. He just had hard luck and whatcher going to do about it? is the way they figure. Some didn't and some did, the way they think of it.”

They stood together looking out of the window upon the sleepy street. Women, quite palpably “dressed,” went steadily beneath parasols in one direction. “Ladies' Aid,” murmured Gilligan. “W.C.T.U. maybe.”

“I think you are becoming misanthropic, Joe.”

Gilligan glanced at her smooth contemplative profile almost on a level with his own.

“About women? When I say soldiers I don't mean me. I wasn't no soldier anymore than a man that fixes watches is a watchmaker. And when I say women I don't mean you.”

She put her arm over his shoulder. It was firm, latent in strength, comforting. He knew that he could embrace her in the same way, that if he wished she would kiss him, frankly and firmly, that her eyelids would never veil her eyes at the touch of his mouth. What man is for her? he wondered, knowing that after all no man was for her, knowing that she would go through with all physical intimacies, that she would undress to a lover (?) with this same impersonal efficiency. (He should be a—a—he should be a gladiator or a statesman or a victorious general: someone hard and ruthless who would expect nothing from her, of whom she would expect nothing. Like two gods exchanging golden baubles. And I, I am no gladiator nor statesman nor general: I am nothing. Perhaps that's why I want so much from her.) He put his arm over her shoulders.

Niggers and mules. Afternoon lay in a coma in the street, like a woman recently loved. Quiet and warm: nothing now that the lover has gone away. Leaves were like a green liquid arrested in mid-flow, flattened and spread; leaves were as though cut with scissors from green paper and pasted flat on the afternoon: someone dreamed them and then forgot his dream. Niggers and mules.

Monotonous wagons drawn by long-eared beasts crawled past. Negroes humped with sleep, portentous upon each wagon and in the wagon bed itself sat other negroes upon chairs: a pagan catafalque under the afternoon. Rigid, as though carved in Egypt ten thousand years ago. Slow dust rising veiled their passing, like Time; the necks of mules limber as rubber hose swayed their heads from side to side, looking behind them always. But the mules were asleep also. “Ketch me sleep, he kill me. But I got mule blood in me: when he sleep, I sleep; when he wake, I wake.”

In the study where Donald sat, his father wrote steadily on tomorrow's sermon. The afternoon slept without.

The Town:

War Hero Returns. . . .

His face . . . the way that girl goes on with that Farr boy. . . .

Young Robert Saunders:

I just want to see his scar. . . .

Cecily:

And now I'm not a good woman anymore. Oh, well, it had to be sometime, I guess. . . .

George Farr:

Yes! Yes! She was a virgin! But if she won't see me. it means somebody else. Her body in another's arms. . . . Why must you? Why must you? What do you want? Tell me: I will do anything, anything. . . .

Margaret Powers:

Can nothing at all move me again? Nothing to desire? Nothing to stir me, to move me, save pity? . . .

Gilligan:

Margaret, tell me what you want. I will do it. Tell me, Margaret. . . .

The rector wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.”

Donald Mahon knowing Time as only something which was taking from him a world he did not particularly mind losing, stared out a window into green and motionless leaves: a motionless blur.

The afternoon dreamed on toward sunset. Niggers and mules. . . . At last Gilligan broke the silence.

“That old fat one is going to send her car to take him riding.”

Mrs. Powers made no reply.

III

San Francisco, Cal.

April 5, 1919.

Dear Margaret—

Well I am at home again I got here this afternoon. As soon as I got away from mother I am sitting down to write to you. Home seems pretty good after you have been doing a pretty risky thing like lots of them cracked up at. It's boreing all these girls how they go on over a flying man if you ever experienced it isn't it. There was a couple of janes on the train I met. Well anyway they saw my hat band and they gave me the eye they were society girls they said but I am not so dumb any way they were nice kids and they might of been society girls. Anyway I got there phone numbers and I am going to give them a call. Just kidding them see there is only one woman for me Margaret you know it. Well we rode on into San Francisco talking and laughing in there stateroom so I am going to take the best looking of them out this week I made a date with her except she wants me to bring a fellow for her friend so I guess I will poor kids they probably haven't had much fun dureing the war like a man can have dureing the war. But I am just kidding them Margaret you mustn't be jealous like I am not jealous over Lieut Mahon. Well mother is dragging me out to tea I had rather I had to be shot than go except she insists. Give my reguards to Joe.

With love

julian.

Mrs. Powers and Gilligan met the specialist from Atlanta at the station. In the cab he listened to her attentively.

“But, my dear madam,” he objected when she had finished, “you are asking me to commit an ethical violation.”

“But, surely, Doctor, it isn't a violation of professional ethics to let his father believe as he wishes to believe, is it?”

“No, it is a violation of my personal ethics.”

“Then, you tell me and let me tell his father.”

“Yes, I will do that. But pardon me, may I ask what exactly is your relation to him?”

“We are to be married,” she answered, looking at him steadily.

“Oho. Then that is quite all right. I will promise not to say anything before his father that can disturb him.”

He kept his promise. After lunch he joined her where she sat on the shaded quiet veranda. She put aside her embroidery frame and he took a chair, puffing furiously at his cigar until it burned evenly.

“What is he waiting for?” he asked suddenly.

“Waiting for?” she repeated.

He flashed her a keen grey glance. “There is no ultimate hope for him, you know.”

“For his sight, you mean?”

“That's practically gone now. I mean for him.”

“I know. That's what Mr. Gilligan said two weeks ago.”

“M'm. Is Mr. Gilligan a doctor?”

“No. But it doesn't take a doctor to see that, does it?”

“Not necessarily. But I think Mr. Gilligan rather overshot himself, making a public statement like that.”

She rocked gently. He veiled his head in smoke, watching the evenly burning ash at the cigar tip. She said:

“You think that there is no hope for him, then?”

“Frankly, I do.” He tilted the ash carefully over the balustrade. “He is practically a dead man now. More than that, he should have been dead these three months were it not for the fact that he seems to be waiting for something. Something he has begun, but has not completed, something he has carried from his former life that he does not remember consciously. That is his only hold on life that I can see.” He gave her another keen glance. “How does he regard you now? He remembers nothing of his life before he was injured.”

She met his sharp, kind gaze a moment, then she suddenly decided to tell him the truth. He watched her intently until she had finished.

“So you are meddling with Providence, are you?”

“Wouldn't you have done the same?” she defended herself.

“I never speculate on what I would have done,” he answered shortly. “There can be no If in my profession. I work in tissue and bone, not in circumstance.”

“Well, it's done now. I am in it too far to withdraw. So you think he may go at any time?”

“You are asking me to speculate again. What I said was that he will go whenever that final spark somewhere in him is no longer fed. His body is already dead. Further than that I cannot say.”

“An operation?” she suggested.

“He would not survive it. And in the second place, the human machine can only be patched and parts replaced up to a certain point. And all that has been done for him, or he would have never been released from any hospital.”