'Look, Madame Alison!' he said suddenly. 'Do you feel well enough to discuss a certain matter with me?'
She put down her cup and took off her glasses. 'Why, what is it?'
'This!' Anacleto brought a footstool to the side of the bed and eagerly drew from his pocket some little scraps of cloth. 'These samples I ordered for us to look over. And now think back to the time two years ago when we passed by the window of Peck and Peck in New York City and I pointed out a certain little suit to you.' He selected one of the samples and handed it to her. 'This material made exactly in that way.'
'But I don't need a suit, Anacleto,' she said.
'Oh, but you do! You have not bought a garment in more than a year. And the green frock is bien usee at the elbows and ready for the Salvation Army.'
When Anacleto brought out his French phrase he gave the Major a glance of the merriest malice. It always made the Major feel rather eerie to listen to them talking together in the quiet room. Their voices and enunciation were so precisely alike that they seemed to be softly echoing each other. The only difference was that Anacleto spoke in a chattering, breathless manner, while Alison's voice was measured and composed.
'How much is it?' she asked.
'It is costly. But one could not expect to get such a quality for anything less. And think of the years of service.'
Alison turned back to her book again. 'We'll see about it.'
'For God's sake, go ahead and buy the dress,' the Major said. It bothered him to hear Alison haggle.
'And while we're about it we might order an extra yard so that I can have a jacket,' Anacleto said.
'All right If I decide to get it.'
Anacleto poured Alison's medicine and made a face for her as she drank it. Then he put an electric pad behind her back and brushed her hair. But as he started out of the room, he could not quite get past the full length mirror on the closet door. He stopped and looked at himself, pointed his toe and cocked his head.
Then he turned back to Alison and began to whistle again. 'What is that? You and Lieutenant Weincheck were playing it last Thursday afternoon.'
'The opening bar of the Franck A Major Sonata.'
'Look!' said Anacleto excitedly. 'It has just this minute made me compose a ballet. Black velvet curtains and a glow like winter twilight. Very slowly, with the whole cast Then a spotlight for the solo like a flame very dashing, and with the waltz Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff played. Then the finish goes back to the Franck, only this time ' He looked at Alison with his strange, bright eyes. 'Drunk!'
And with that he began to dance. He had been taken to the Russian ballet a year before and he had never got over it. Not a trick, not a gesture had escaped him. On the gray rug he moved about in a languid pantomime that slowed down until he stood quite still with his feet in their sandals crossed and his fingertips touched together in a meditative attitude. Then without warning he whirled lightly and began a furious little solo. It was apparent from his bright face that in his own mind he was out on an immense stage, the cynosure in a dazzling spectacle. Alison, also, was plainly enjoying herself. The Major looked from one to the other in disgusted disbelief. The last of the dance was a drunken satire of the first. Anacleto finished with an odd little pose, his elbow held in one hand and his fist to his with an expression of wry puzzlement
Alison burst out laughing. 'Bravo! Bravo! Anacleto!'
They laughed together and the little Filipino leaned against the door, happy and a bit dazed. At last he caught his breath and exclaimed in a marveling voice, 'Have you ever noticed how well “Bravo” and “Anacleto” go together?'
Alison stopped laughing and nodded thoughtfully. 'Indeed, Anacleto, I have noticed it many times.'
The little Filipino hesitated in the doorway. He glanced around the room to make sure that nothing was wanting. Then he looked into her face and his eyes were suddenly shrewd and very sad. 'Call me if you need me,' he said shortly.
They heard him start down the stairs slowly, then quicken to a skip. On the last steps he must have tried something altogether too ambitious, for there was a sudden thud. When the Major reached the head of the stairs, Anacleto was picking himself up with brave dignity.
'Did he hurt himself?' Alison asked tensely.
Anacleto looked up at the Major with angry tears in his eyes. 'I'm all right, Madame Alison,' he called.
The Major leaned forward and said slowly and soundlessly, working his mouth so that Anacleto could read the words, 'I wish you had bro ken your neck.'
Anacleto smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and limped into the dining room. When the Major went back to his wife, he found her reading. She did not look up at him, so he crossed the hall to his own room and slammed the door. His room was small, rather untidy, and the only ornaments in it were the cups he had won at horse shows. On the Major's bedside table there was an open book a very recondite and literary book. The place was marked with a matchstick. The Major turned over forty pages or so, a reasonable evening's reading, and marked the new place with the match again. Then from under a pile of shirts in his bureau drawer he took a pulp magazine called Scientification. He settled himself comfortably in the bed and began reading of a wild, interplanetary superwar.
Across the hall from him, his wife had put down her book and was lying in a half sitting position. Her face was stiff with pain and her dark, glittering eyes looked restlessly around the walls of the room. She was trying to make plans. She would divorce Morris, certainly. But how would she go about it? And above all how could she and Anacleto manage to make a living? She always had been contemptuous of women without children who accepted alimony, and her last shred of pride depended on the fact that she would not, could not, live on his money after she had left him. But what would they do she and Anacleto? She had taught Latin in a girls' school the year before she married, but with her health as it was that would now be out of the question. A bookshop somewhere? It would have to be something that Anacleto could keep going when she was ill. Could the two of them possibly manage a prawn boat? Once she had talked to some shrimp fishermen on the coast. It had been a blue and gold seaside day and they had told her many things. She and Anacleto would stay out at sea all day with their nets lowered and there would be only the cold salt air, the ocean and the sun Alison turned her head restlessly on the pillow. But what frippery!
It had been a shock, eight months ago, when she had learned about her husband. She and Lieutenant Weincheck and Anacleto had made a trip to the city with the intention of staying two days and nights for a concert and a play. But on the second day she was feverish and they decided to go back home. Late in the afternoon Anacleto had let her out at the front door and driven the car back to the garage. She had stopped on the front walk to look at some bulbs. It was almost dark and there was a light in her husband's room. The front door was locked and as she was standing there she saw Leonora's coat on the chest in the hall. And she had thought to herself how strange it was that if the Pendertons were there the front door should be locked. Then it occurred to her that they were mixing drinks in the kitchen while Morris had his bath. And she went around to the back. But then before she entered the house Anacleto rushed down the steps with such a horrified little face! He had whispered that they must go into town ten miles away as they had forgotten something. And when, rather dazed, she started up the steps he had caught her by the arm and said in a flat, frightened voice: 'You must not go in there now, Madame Alison.'
With what a shock it had come to her. She and Anacleto had got back into the car and driven off again. The insult of it happening in her own house that was what she could not swallow. And then, of all times in the world, when they slowed down at the outpost there was a new soldier on duty who did not know them, and he had stopped the car. He looked into the little coupe as though they might be concealing a machine gun and then stood staring at Anacleto who, dressed in his jaunty burnt orange jacket, was ready to burst into tears. He asked for the name in a tone of voice which suggested th
at he did not believe they could possibly screw up one between them.
Never would she forget that soldier's face. At the moment she did not have it in her to speak her husband's name. The young soldier waited, stared, and said not a word. Later she had seen this same soldier at the stables when she went to fetch Morris in the car. He had the strange, rapt face of a Gauguin primitive. They looked at each other for perhaps a minute and at last an officer came up.
She and Anacleto had driven for three hours in the cold without speaking. And after that the plans she had made at night when she was sick and restless, schemes that as soon as the sun came up would seem so foolish. And the evening she had run home from the Pendertons' and done that ghastly thing. She had seen the garden shears on the wall and, beside herself with anger and despair, she had tried to stab and kill herself. But the shears were too blunt. And then for a few moments she must have been quite out of her head, for she herself did not know just how it had happened. Alison shuddered and hid her face in her hands. She heard her husband open his door and put his boots out in the hall. Quickly she turned off her light.
The Major had finished his magazine and hidden it again in the drawer. He took a last drink and then lay comfortably in the bed, looking up into the dark. What was it that meeting Leonora for the first time reminded him of? It had happened the year after the baby died, when for twelve solid months Alison had either been in the hospital or prowling around the house like a ghost Then he had met Leonora down at the stables the first week he had come to this post, and she had offered to show him around. They left the bridle path and had a dandy gallop. When they had tied the horses for a rest, Leonora had seen some blackberry bushes near by and said she might as well pick enough to make a cobbler for dinner. And Lord! when they were scrambling around those bushes together filling his hat with berries, it had first happened. At nine in the morning and two hours after they met! Even now he could hardly believe it. But what had it seemed like to him at the time? Oh, yes it was like being out on maneuvers, shivering all through a cold rainy night in a tent that leaked. And then to get up at dawn and see that the rain was over and the sun was out again. And to watch the fine looking soldiers making coffee over camp fires and see the sparks rise up into a clear white sky. A wonderful feeling the best in the world!
The Major giggled guiltily, hid his head underneath the sheet, and began to snore immediately.
At twelve thirty Captain Penderton fretted alone in his study. He was working on a monograph and had made little progress that night. He had drunk a good deal of wine and tea and had smoked dozens of cigarettes. At last he had given up work altogether and now he was walking restlessly up and down the room. There are times when a man's greatest need is to have someone to love, some focal point for his diffused emotions. Also there are times when the irritations, disappointments, and fears of life, restless as spermatozoids, must be released in hate. The unhappy Captain had no one to hate and for the past months he had been miserable.
Alison Langdon, that big nosed female Job, together with her loathsome Filipino those two he abhorred. But he could not hate Alison, as she did not give him the opportunity. It chafed him no end to be under obligation to her. She was the only person in the world who knew of a certain woeful shortcoming in his nature; Captain Penderton was inclined to be a thief. He was continually resisting an urge to take things he saw in other people's houses. However, only twice had this weakness got the best of him. When he was a child of seven he had become so infatuated with the school yard bully who had once beaten him that he stole from his aunt's dressing table an old fashioned hair receiver as a love offering. And here on the post, twenty seven years later, the Captain had once again succumbed.
At a dinner party given by a young bride he had been so fascinated by a certain piece of silver that he had carried it home in his pocket. It was an unusual and beautiful little dessert spoon, delicately chased and very old. The Captain had been miserably enchanted with it (the rest of the silver at his place was quite ordinary) and in the end he could not resist. When after some skillful manipulation he had his booty safe in his pocket, he realized that Alison, who was next to him, had seen the theft. She looked him full in the face with the most amazed expression. Even now he could not think of it without a shudder. And after a horribly long stare Alison had burst out laughing yes, laughing. She laughed so hard that she choked herself and someone had to beat her on the back. Finally she excused herself from the table. And all through that tormenting evening whenever he looked at her she gave him such a mocking smile. Since then she was careful to keep a sharp watch on him when he was a guest at her table. The spoon was now hidden in his closet, wrapped carefully in a silk handkerchief and concealed in the box that his truss had come in.
But in spite of this he could not hate Alison. Nor could he truly hate his wife. Leonora maddened him to insanity, but even in the wildest fits of jealousy he could not hate her any more than he could hate a cat, or a horse, or a tiger cub. The Captain walked around in his study and once he gave the closed door a fretful kick. If that Alison finally made up her mind to divorce Morris, then how would it go? He could not bear to contemplate this possibility, so distressed was he at the thought of being left alone.
It seemed to the Captain that he heard a sound and he stopped short. The house was still. It has been mentioned before that the Captain was a coward. Sometimes when he was by himself he was overcome by a rootless terror. And now, as he stood in the silent room, it seemed that his nervousness and distress were not caused by forces within himself and others, things that in some measure he could control but by some menacing outward circumstance which he could only sense from a distance. Fearfully the Captain looked all about the room. Then he straightened his desk and opened the door.
Leonora had fallen asleep on the rug before the fire in the sitting room. The Captain looked down at her and laughed to himself. She was turned over on her side and he gave her a sharp little kick on the buttocks. She grumbled something about the stuffing for a turkey, but did not awake. The Captain bent down, shook her, talked into her face, and finally got her on her feet. But like a child who has to be aroused and taken to the toilet the last thing at night, Leonora bad the gift of being able to remain asleep even while standing up. As the Captain led her ponderously to the stairs, her eyes were closed and she still grumbled about the turkey.
'I'll be damned if I'll undress you,' the Captain said.
But Leonora sat where he had left her on the bed, and after watching her for several minutes he laughed again and took off her clothes. He did not put a nightgown on her, for the bureau drawers were in such a mess he could not find one. Besides, Leonora always liked sleeping 'in the raw,' as she called it. When she was in bed, the Captain went up to a picture on the wall that had amused him for years. It was a photograph of a girl of about seventeen, and at the bottom there was written the touching inscription: 'To Leonora with Oodles of Love from Bootsie.' This masterpiece had adorned the walls of Leonora's bedrooms for more than a decade, and had been carried halfway around the globe. But when questioned about Bootsie, who for a time had been her roommate in a boarding school, Leonora said vaguely that it seemed to her that she had once heard Bootsie had drowned some years ago. Indeed, after pressing her about this matter, he found she did not even remember this Bootsie's lawful name. And yet, simply because of habit, the picture had hung on her wall for eleven years. The Captain looked once again at his wife as she lay sleeping. She was hot natured and already the cover had been pushed down below her naked breasts. She smiled in her sleep, and it occurred to the Captain that she was now eating the turkey she had prepared in her dream.
The Captain used Seconal, and his habit was of such long standing that one capsule had no effect on him. He considered that with his hard work at the Infantry School it was a great imposition for him to have to lie awake at night and get up jaded the next morning. Without sufficient Seconal his slumber was light and wrought with dreams. Tonight he decided t
o treat himself to a triple dose, and he knew that then he would drop immediately into a blunt, sodden sleep that would last six or seven hours. The Captain swallowed his capsules and lay down in the dark with pleasant anticipation. This quantity of the drug gave him a unique and voluptuous sensation; it was as though a great dark bird alighted on his chest, looked at him once with fierce, golden eyes, and stealthily enfolded him in his dark wings.
Private Williams waited outside the house until the lights had been out for almost two hours. The stars were faded a little and the blackness of the night sky had changed to a deep violet. Still, however, Orion was brilliant and the Big Dipper shone with a wonderful radiance. The soldier walked around to the back of the house and quietly tried the screen door. It was fastened from the inside, as he knew it would be. However, the door was slightly loose and when the soldier inserted the blade of his knife in the crack he was able to raise the hook latch. The back door itself was not locked.
Once inside the house the soldier waited for a moment. All was dark and there was not a sound. He stared about him with his wide, vague eyes until he was accustomed to the darkness. The plan of the house was already familiar to him. The long front hall and the stairs divided the house, leaving on one side the large sitting room and, farther back, the servant's room. On the other side were the dining room, the Captain's study, and the kitchen. Upstairs to the right there was a double bedroom and a small cubicle. To the left were two bedrooms of medium size. The Captain used the large room and his wife slept across the hall from him. The soldier walked carefully up the stairs, which were carpeted. He moved with deliberate composure. The door of The Lady's room was open, and when he reached it the soldier did not hesitate. With the lithe silence of a cat he stepped inside.