“Bless my soul,” he said at last. “Has the army disbanded already? What will Pershing do now, without any soldiers to salute him? We had scarcely enough men to fight a war with, but with a long peace ahead of us—man, we are helpless.”
Gilligan said coldly: “Whatcher want?”
“Why, nothing, thank you. Thank you so much. I merely came to call upon our young friend in the kitchen and to incidentally inquire after Mercury’s brother.”
“Whose brother?”
“Young Mr. Mahon, in a manner of speaking, then.”
“Doctor’s with him,” Gilligan replied curtly. “You can’t go in now.” He turned on his heel.
“Not at all,” murmured Jones, after the other’s departing back. “Not at all, my dear fellow.” Yawning, he strolled up the hall. He stood in the entrance, speculative, filling his pipe. He yawned again openly. At his right was an open door and he entered a stuffily formal room. Here was a convenient window ledge on which to put spent matches, and sitting beside it he elevated his feet to another chair.
The room was depressingly hung with glum portraits of someone’s forbears, between which the principal strain of kinship appeared to be some sort of stomach trouble. Or perhaps they were portraits of the Ancient Mariner at different ages before he wore out his albatross. (Not even a dead fish could make a man look like that, thought Jones, refusing the dyspeptic gambit of their fretful painted eyes. No wonder the parson believes in hell.) A piano had not been opened in years, and opened would probably sound like the faces looked. Jones rose and from a bookcase he got a copy of Paradise Lost (cheerful thing to face a sinner with, he thought), and returned to his chair. The chair was hard, but Jones was not. He elevated his feet again.
The rector and a stranger came into his vision, pausing at the front door in conversation. The stranger departed and that black woman appeared. She and the rector exchanged a few words. Jones remarked with slow, lustful approval her firm, free carriage, and——
And here came Miss Cecily Saunders in pale lilac with a green ribbon at her waist, tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying gravel path between the fresh-sparkled grass.
“Uncle Joe!” she called, but the rector had already withdrawn to his study. Mrs. Powers met her and she said: “Oh, how do you do? May I see Donald?”
She entered the hall beneath the dim lovely fanlight, and her roving glance remarked one sitting with his back to a window. She said Donald! and sailed into the room like a bird. One hand covered her eyes and the other was outstretched as she ran with quick tapping steps and sank before him at his feet, burying her face in his lap.
“Donald, Donald! I will try to get used to it, I will try! Oh, Donald, Donald! Your poor face! But I will, I will,” she repeated hysterically. Her fumbling hand touched his sleeve and slipping down his arm she drew his hand under her cheek, clasping it. “I didn’t mean to, yesterday. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, Donald. I couldn’t help it, but I love you, Donald, my precious, my own.” She burrowed deeper into his lap.
“Put your arms around me, Donald,” she said, “until I get used to you again.”
He complied, drawing her upward. Suddenly, struck with something familiar about the coat, she raised her head. It was Januarius Jones.
She sprang to her feet. “You beast, why didn’t you tell me?”
“My dear ma’am, who am I to refuse what the gods send?”
But she did not wait to hear him. At the door Mrs. Powers stood watching with interest. Now she’s laughing at me! Cecily thought furiously. Her glance was a blue dagger and her voice was like dripped honey.
“How silly of me, not to have looked,” she said sweetly. “Seeing you, I thought at once that Donald would be nearby. I am sure if I were a man I’d always be as near you as possible. But I didn’t know you and Mr.—Mr. Smith were such good friends. Though they say that fat men are awfully attractive. May I see Donald—do you mind?”
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?” He
r 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.”
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“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.
Chapter IV
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.