Soldiers Pay (8 page)

“So Mr. Jones is married,” she remarked. She did something to her eyes and it seemed to Jones that she had touched him with her hands. I've got your number, he thought vulgarly. He replied:

“No, what makes you think so?” The rector filling his pipe regarded them kindly.

“Oh, I misunderstood, then.”

“That isn't why you thought so.”

“No?”

“It's because you like married men,” he told her boldly.

“Do I?” without interest. It seemed to Jones that he could see her interest ebb away from him, could feel it cool.

“Don't you?”

“You ought to know.”

“I?” asked Jones. “How should I know?”

“Aren't you an authority on women?” she replied with sweet ingenuousness. Speechless, he could have strangled her. The divine applauded.

“Checkmate, Mr. Jones?”

Just let me catch her eye again, he vowed, but she would not look at him. He sat silent and under his seething gaze she took the photograph from the desk and held it quietly for a time. Then she replaced it and reaching across the desk top she laid her hand on the rector's.

“Miss Saunders was engaged to my son,” the divine explained to Jones.

“Yes?” said Jones, watching her profile, waiting for her to look at him again. Emmy, that unfortunate virgin, appeared at the door.

“All right, Uncle Joe,” she said, vanishing immediately.

“Ah, lunch,” the rector announced, starting up. They rose.

“I can't stay,” she demurred, yielding to the divine's hand upon her back. Jones fell in behind. “I really shouldn't stay,” she amended.

They moved down the dark hall and Jones watching her white dress flow indistinctly to her stride, imagining her kiss, cursed her. At a door she paused and stood aside courteously, as a man would. The rector stopped also as perforce did Jones, and here was a French comedy regarding precedence. Jones with counterfeit awkwardness felt her soft uncorseted thigh against the back of his hand and her sharp stare was like ice water. They entered the room. “Made you look at me then,” he muttered.

The rector remarking nothing said:

“Sit here, Mr. Jones,” and the virgin Emmy gave him a haughty antagonistic stare. He returned her a remote yellow one. I'll see about you later, he promised her mentally, sitting to immaculate linen. The rector drew the other guest's chair and set himself at the head of the table.

“Cecily doesn't eat very much,” he said, carving a fowl, “so the burden will fall upon you and me. But I think we can be relied upon, eh, Mr. Jones?”

She propped her elbows opposite him. And I'll attend to you, too, Jones promised her darkly. She still ignored his yellow gaze and he said: “Certainly, sir,” employing upon her the old thought process which he had used in school when he was prepared upon a certain passage, but she ignored him with such thorough perfection that he knew a sudden qualm of unease, a faint doubt. I wonder if I am wrong? he pondered. I'll find out, he decided suddenly.

“You were saying, sir”—still watching her oblivious shallow face—“as Miss Saunders so charmingly came in, that I am too specious. But one must always generalize: about fornication. Only after—”

“Mr. Jones!” the rector exclaimed heavily.

“—the fornication is committed should one talk about it at all, and then only to generalize, to become—in your words—specious. He who kisses and tells is not very much of a fellow, is he?”

“Mr. Jones,” the rector remonstrated.

“Mr. Jones!” she echoed. “What a terrible man you are! Really, Uncle Joe——”

Jones interrupted viciously. “As far as the kiss itself goes, women do not particularly care who does the kissing. All they are interested in is the kiss itself.”

“Mr. Jones!” she repeated, staring at him, then looking quickly away. She shuddered.

“Come, come, sir. There are ladies present.” The rector achieved his aphorism.

Jones pushed his plate from him, Emmy's raw and formless hand removed it and here was a warm golden brow crowned with strawberries. Dam'f I look at her, he swore, and so he did. Her gaze was remote and impersonal, green and cool as sea water and Jones turned his eyes first. She turned to the rector, talking smoothly about flowers. He was politely ignored and he moodily engaged his spoon as Emmy appeared again.

Emmy emanated a thin hostility and staring from Jones to the girl, she said:

“Lady to see you, Uncle Joe.”

The rector poised his spoon. “Who is it, Emmy?”

“I dunno. I never saw her before. She's waiting in the study.”

“Has she had lunch? Ask her in here.”

(She knows I am watching her. Jones knew exasperation and a puerile lust.)

“She won't want anything to eat. She said not to disturb you until you had finished dinner. You be re go in and see what she wants.” Emmy retreated.

The rector wiped his mouth and rose. “I suppose I must. You young people sit here until I return. Call Emmy if you want anything.”

Jones sat in sullen silence, turning a glass in his fingers. At last she looked at his bent ugly face.

“So you are unmarried, as well as famous,” she remarked.

“Famous because I'm unmarried,” he replied darkly.

“And courteous because of which?”

“Either one you like.”

“Well, frankly, I prefer courtesy.”

“Do you often get it?”

“Always . . . eventually.” He made no reply and she continued: “Don't you believe in marriage?”

“Yes, as long as there are no women in it.” She shrugged indifferently. Jones could not bear seeming a fool to any {me as shallow as he considered her and he blurted, wanting to kick himself: “You don't like me, do you?”

“Oh, I like anyone who believes there may be something he doesn't know,” she replied without interest.

“What do you mean by that?” (are they green or grey?) Jones was a disciple of the cult of boldness with women. He rose and the table wheeled smoothly as he circled it: he wished faintly that he were more graceful. Those thrice unhappy trousers! You can't blame her, he thought with fairness. What would I think had she appeared in one of her grandma's mother hubbards? He remarked her reddish dark hair and the delicate slope of her shoulder. (I'll put my hand there and let it slip down her arm as she turns.)

Without looking up, she said suddenly: “Did Uncle Joe tell you about Donald?” (Oh hell, thought Jones.) “Isn't it funny,” her chair scraped to her straightening knees, “we both thought of moving at the same time?” She rose, her chair intervened woodenly and Jones stood ludicrous and foiled. “You take mine and I'll take yours,” she added, moving around the table.

“You bitch,” said Jones evenly and her green-blue eyes took him as sweetly as water.

“What made you say that?” she asked quietly. Jones, having to an extent eased his feelings, thought he saw a recurring interest in her expression. (I was right, he gloated.)

“You know why I said that.”

“It's funny how few men know that women like to be talked to that way,” she remarked irrelevantly.

I wonder if she loves someone? I guess not—like a tiger loves meat. “I am not like other men,” he told her .

He thought he saw derision in her brief glance, but she merely yawned delicately. At last he had her classified in the animal kingdom. Hamadryad, a slim jewelled one.

“Why doesn't George come for me!” she said as if in answer to his unspoken speculation, patting her mouth with the tips of petulant, delicate fingers. “Isn't it boring, waiting for someone?”

“ Yes. Who is George, may I ask?”

“Certainly, you may ask.”

“Well, who is he?” (I don't like her type, anyway.) “I had gathered that you were pining for the late lamented.”

“The late lamented?”

“That fox-faced Henry or Oswald or something.”

“Oh, Donald. Do you mean Donald?”

“Surely. Let him be Donald, then.”

She regarded him impersonally. (I can't even make her angry, he thought fretfully.) “Do you know, you are impossible.”

“All right. So I am,” he answered with anger. “But then I wasn't engaged to Donald. And George is not calling for me.”

“What makes you so angry? Because I won't let you put your hands on me?”

“My dear woman, if I had wanted to put my hands on you I would have done it.”

“Yes?” Her rising inflection was a polite maddening derision.

“Certainly. Don't you believe it?” his own voice gave him courage.

“I don't know . . . but what good would it do to you?”

“No good at all. That's the reason I don't want to.”

Her green eyes took him again. Sparse old silver on a buffet shadowed heavily under a high fanlight of coloured glass identical with the one above the entrance, her fragile white dress across the table from him: he could imagine her long subtle legs, like Atalanta's reft of running.

“Why do you tell yourself lies?” she asked with interest.

“Same reason you do.”

“I?”

“Surely. You intend to kiss me and yet you are going to all this damn trouble about it.”

“Do you know,” she remarked with speculation, “I believe I hate you.”

“I don't doubt it. I know I damn well hate you.”

She moved in her chair, sloping the light now across her shoulders, releasing him and becoming completely another person. “Let's go to the study. Shall we?”

“All right. Uncle Joe should be done with his caller by now.” He rose and they faced each other across the broken meal. She did not rise.

“Well?” she said.

“After you, ma'am,” he replied with mock deference.

“I have changed my mind. I think I'll wait here and talk to Emmy, if you don't object.”

“Why Emmy?”

“Why not Emmy?”

“Ah, I see. You feel fairly safe with Emmy: she probably won't want to put her hands on you. That's it, isn't it?” She glanced briefly at him. “What you really mean is, that you will stay if I am going out of the room, don't you?”

“Suit yourself.” She became oblivious of him, breaking a biscuit upon a plate and dripping water upon it from a glass. Jones moved fatly in his borrowed trousers, circling the table again. As he approached she turned slightly in her chair, extending her hand. He felt its slim bones in his fat moist palm, its nervous ineffectual flesh. Not good for anything. Useless. But beautiful with lack of character. Beautiful hand. Its very fragility stopped him like a stone barrier.

“Oh, Emmy,” she called sweetly, “come here, darling. I have something to show you.”

Emmy regarded them balefully from the door and Jones said quickly: “Will you fetch my trousers, Miss Emmy?”

Emmy glanced from one to the other ignoring the girl's mute plea. (Oho, Emmy has fish of her own to fry, thought Jones.) Emmy vanished and he put his hands on the girl's shoulders.

“Now what will you do? Call the reverend?”

She looked at him across her shoulder from beyond an inaccessible barrier. His anger grew and his hands wantonly crushed her dress.

“Don't ruin my clothes, please,” she said icily. “Here, if you must.” She raised her face and Jones felt shame, but his boyish vanity would not let him stop now. Her face a prettiness of shallow characterless planes blurred into his, her mouth was motionless and impersonal, unresisting and cool. Her face from a blur became again a prettiness of characterless shallowness icy and remote, and Jones, ashamed of himself and angry with her therefore, said with heavy irony: “Thanks.”

“Not at all. If you got any pleasure from it you are quite welcome.” She rose. “Let me pass, please.”

He stood awkwardly aside. Her frigid polite indifference was unbearable. What a fool he had been! He had ruined everything.

“Miss Saunders,” he blurted, “I—forgive me: I don't usually act that way, I swear I don't.”

She spoke over her shoulder. “You don't have to, I suppose? I imagine you are usually quite successful with us?”

“I am very sorry. But I don't blame you. . . . One hates to convict oneself of stupidity.”

After a while hearing no further sound of movement he looked up. She was like a flower stalk or a young tree relaxed against the table: there was something so fragile, so impermanent since robustness and strength were unnecessary, yet strong withal as a poplar is strong through very absence of strength, about her; you knew that she lived, that her clear delicate being was nourished by sunlight and honey until even digestion was a beautiful function . . . as he watched something like a shadow came over her, somewhere between her eyes and her pretty mouth, in the very clear relaxation of her body, that caused him to go quickly to her. She stared into his unblinking goat's eyes as his hands sliding across her arms met at the small of her back, and Jones did not know the door had opened until she jerked her mouth from his and twisted slimly from his clasp.

The rector loomed in the door, staring into the room as if he did not recognize it. He has never seen us at all, Jones knew, then seeing the divine's face he said: “He's ill.”

The rector spoke. “Cecily——”

“What is it, Uncle Joe?” she replied in sharp terror, going to him. “Aren't you well?”

The divine balanced his huge body with a hand on either side of the doorway.

“Cecily, Donald's coming home,” he said.

III

There was that subtle effluvia of antagonism found inevitably in a room where two young “pretty” women are, and they sat examining each other with narrow care. Mrs. Powers temporarily engaged in an unselfconscious accomplishment and being among strangers as well, was rather oblivious of it; but Cecily never having been engaged in an unselfconscious action of any kind and being among people whom she knew, examined the other closely with that attribute women have for gaining correct instinctive impressions of another's character, clothes, morals, etc. Jones's yellow stare took the newcomer at intervals, returning, however, always to Cecily, who ignored him.