Soldiers Pay Part 7

"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 h.e.l.l, thought Jones.) "Isn't it funny," her chair sc.r.a.ped 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 b.i.t.c.h," 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 cla.s.sified 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. Spa.r.s.e old silver on a buffet shadowed heavily under a high fanlight of coloured gla.s.s 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 d.a.m.n trouble about it."

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

"I don't doubt it. I know I d.a.m.n 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 gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.s, 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.

The rector tramped heavily back and forth. "Sick?" he boomed. "Sick? But we'll cure him. Get him home here with good food and rest and attention and we'll have him well in a week. Eh, Cecily?"

"Oh, Uncle Joe! I can't believe it yet. That he is really safe." She rose as the rector pa.s.sed her chair and sort of undulated into his arms, like a slim wave. It was beautiful.

"Here's the medicine for him, Mrs. Powers," he said with heavy gallantry, embracing Cecily, speaking over her head toward the contemplative pallor of the other woman's quiet watching face. "There, there, don't cry," he added, kissing her. The audience watched this, Mrs. Powers with speculative detached interest and Jones with morose speculation.

"It's because I am so happy-for you, dear Uncle Joe," she answered. She turned graceful as a flower stalk against the rector's black bulk. "And we owe it all to, Mrs.-Mrs. Powers," she continued in her slightly rough voice, like a tangle of golden wires, "she was so kind to bring him back to us." Her glance swept past Jones and flickered like a knife toward the other woman. (d.a.m.n little fool thinks I have tried to vamp him, Mrs. Powers thought.) Cecily moved toward her with studied impulse. "May I kiss you? do you mind?"

It was like kissing a silken smooth steel blade and Mrs. Powers said brutally: "Not at all. I'd have done the same for anyone sick as he is, n.i.g.g.e.r or white. And you would, too," she added with satisfying malice.

"Yes, it was sweet of you," Cecily repeated, coolly non-committal, exposing a slim leg from the arm of the caller's chair. Jones, statically remote, watched the comedy.

"Nonsense," the rector interposed. "Mrs. Powers merely saw him fatigued with travelling. I am sure he will be a different man tomorrow."

"I hope so," Mrs. Powers answered with sudden weariness, recalling his devastated face and that dreadful brow, his whole relaxed inertia of constant dull pain and ebbing morale. It's too late, she thought with instinctive perspicuity. Shall I tell them about the scar? she pondered. Prevent a scene when this-this creature (feeling the girl's body against her shoulder) sees it. But no, I won't, she decided, watching the tramping rector leonine in his temporary happiness. What a coward I am. Joe should have come: he might have known I'd bungle it some way.

The rector fetched his photograph. She took it: thin faced, with the serenity of a wild thing, the pa.s.sionate serene alertness of a faun; and that girl leaning against the oaken branch of the rector's arm, believing that she is in love with the boy, or his illusion-pretending she is, anyway. No, no, I won't be catty. Perhaps she is-as much as she is capable of being in love with anyone. It's quite romantic, being reft of your love and then having him returned unexpectedly to your arms. And an aviator, too. What luck that girl has playing her parts. Even G.o.d helps her. . . . You cat! she's pretty and you are jealous. That's what's the matter with you she thought in her bitter weariness. What makes me furious is her thinking that I am after him, am in love with him! Oh, yes, I'm in love with him! I'd like to hold his poor ruined head against my breast and not let him wake again ever. . . . Oh, h.e.l.l, what a mess it all is! And that dull fat one yonder in somebody else's trousers, watching her with his yellow unwinking eyes-like a goat's. I suppose she's been pa.s.sing the time with him.

"-he was eighteen then," the rector was saying. "He would never wear hat nor tie: his mother could never make him. She saw him correctly dressed, but it mattered not how formal the occasion, he invariably appeared without them."

Cecily rubbing herself like a cat on the rector's arm: "Oh, Uncle Joe, I love him so!"

And Jones like another round and arrogant cat, blinking his yellow eyes, muttered a shocking phrase. The rector was oblivious in speech and Cecily in her own graceful immersion, but Mrs. Powers half heard, half saw, and Jones looking up met her black stare. He tried to look her down but her gaze was impersonal as a dissection so he averted his and fumbled for his pipe.

There came a prolonged honking of a motor horn from without and Cecily sprang to her feet.

"Oh, there's-there's a friend of ours. I'll send him away and come straight back. Will you excuse me a moment, Uncle Joe?"

"Eh?" The rector broke his speech. "Oh, yes."

"And you, Mrs. Powers?" She moved toward the door and her glance swept Jones again. "And you, Mr. Jones?"

"George got a car, has he?" Jones asked as she pa.s.sed him. "Bet you don't come back."

She gave him her cool stare and from beyond the study door she heard the rector's voice resume the story again-of Donald, of course. And now I'm engaged again, she thought complacently, enjoying George's face in antic.i.p.ation when she would tell him. And that long black woman has been making love to him-or he to her. I guess it's that, from what I know of Donald. Oh, well that's how men are, I guess. Perhaps he'll want to take us both. . . . She tripped down the steps into the sunlight: the sunlight caressed her with joy, as though she were a daughter of sunlight. How would I like to have a husband and wife, too, I wonder? Or two husbands? I wonder if I want one even, want to get married at all. . . . I guess it's worth trying, once. I'd like to see that horrible fat one's face if he could hear me say that, she thought. Wonder why I let him kiss me? Ugh!

George leaned from his car watching her restricted swaying stride with faint l.u.s.t. "Come on, come on," he called.

She did not increase her gait at all. He swung the door open, not bothering to dismount himself, "My G.o.d, what took you so long?" he asked plaintively. "Dam'f I thought you were coming at all."

"I'm not," she told him, laying her hand on the door. Her white dress in the nooning sun was unbearable to the eye, sloped to her pliant fragility. Beyond her, across the lawn, was another pliant gesture though this was only a tree, a poplar.

"Huh?"

"Not coming. My fiance is arriving today."

"Aw h.e.l.l, get in."

"Donald's coming today," she repeated, watching him. His face was ludicrous; blank as a plate, then shocked to slow amazement.

"Why, he's dead," he said vacuously.

"But he isn't dead," she told him sweetly. "A lady friend he's travelling with came on ahead and told us. Uncle Joe's like a balloon."

"Ah, come on, Cecily, you're kidding me."

"I swear I'm not. I'm telling you the G.o.d's truth."

His smooth empty face hung before her like a handsome moon, empty as a promise. Then it filled with an expression of a sort.

"h.e.l.l, you got a date with me tonight. Whatcher going to do about that?"

"What can I do? Donald will be here by then."

"Then it's all off with us?"

She gazed at him, then looked quickly away. Funny how only an outsider had been able to bring home to her the significance of Donald's imminence, his return. She nodded dumbly, beginning to feel miserable and lost.

He leaned from the car and caught her hand. "Get in here," he commanded.

"No, no, I can't," she protested, trying to draw back. He held her wrist. "No, no, let me go. You are hurting me."

"I know it," he answered grimly. "Get in."

"Don't, George, don't! I must go back."

"Well, when can I see you?"

Her mouth trembled. "Oh, I don't know. Please, George. Don't you see how miserable I am?" Her eyes became blue, dark; the sunlight made bold the wrenched thrust of her body, her thin taut arm. "Please, George."

"Are you going to get in or do you want me to pick you up and put you in?"