Soldiers Pay Part 19

"M'I've this dance," mumbled the conventional one conventionally, already encircling her. Jones stood baggy and yellow, yellowly watching her fan upon her partner's coat, like a hushed splash of water, her arching neck and her arm crossing a black shoulder with luminous warmth, the indicated silver evasion of her limbs antic.i.p.ating her partner's like a broken dream.

"Got a match?" Jones, pausing, asked abruptly of a man sitting alone in a swing. He lit his pipe and lounged in slow and fat belligerence among a group sitting upon the bal.u.s.trade near the steps, like birds. The negro cornetist spurred his men to fiercer endeavour, the bra.s.s died and a plaintive minor of hushed voices carried the rhythm until the bra.s.s, suspiring again, took it. Jones sucked his pipe, thrusting his hands in his jacket and a slim arm slid suddenly beneath his tweed sleeve.

"Wait for me, Lee." Jones, looking around, remarked her fan and gla.s.s-like fragility of her dress. "I must see some people in a car."

The boy's ironed face was a fretted fatuity above his immaculate linen. "Let me go with you."

"No, no. You wait for me. Mr. Jones will take me: you don't even know them. You dance until I come back. Promise?"

"But say--"

Her hand flashed slimly staying him. "No, no. Please. Promise?"

He promised and stood to stare at them as they descended the steps pa.s.sing beneath the two magnolias and so on into darkness, where her dress became a substanceless articulation beside the man's shapeless tweed. . . . After a while he turned and walked down the emptying veranda. Where'd that slob come from? he wondered, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation. Do they let anybody in here?

As he hesitated, the hostess appeared talking interminably, but he circ.u.mvented her with skill of long practice. Beyond a shadowed corner in the half-darkness of a swing a man sat alone. He approached and before he could make his request the man extended a box of matches.

"Thanks," he murmured, without surprise, lighting a cigarette. He strolled away, and the owner of the matches fingered the small, crisp wood box, wondering mildly who the third one would be.

XII.

"No, no, let's go to them first."

She arrested their progress and after a time succeeded in releasing her arm. As they stood, a couple pa.s.sed them, and the girl, leaning to her, whispered: "See right through you. Stay out of the light."

They pa.s.sed on and she looked after them, watching the other girl. Cat! What a queer dress she is wearing. Funny ankles. Funny. Poor girl.

But she had little time for impersonal speculation, being attached temporarily to Jones. "No, no," she repeated, twisting the hand he held, drawing him in the direction of the car. Mrs. Powers, looking over Madden's head, saw them.

Jones released the fragile writhing of her fingers, and she sped delicately over the damp gra.s.s. He followed flatly and she put her hands on the door of the car, her narrow nervous hands, between which the green fan splashed graciously.

"Oh, how do you do? I didn't have any idea you were coming! If I had I would have arranged partners for you. I'm sure you dance awfully well. But then, as soon as the men see you here you won't lack for partners, I know."

(What does she want with him now? Watching me: doesn't trust me with him.) "Awfully nice dance. And Mr. Gilligan!" (What's she wanta come worrying him for now for? She bothers d.a.m.n little while he's sitting at home there.) "Of course, one simply does not see Donald without Mr. Gilligan. It must be nice to have Mr. Gilligan fond of you like that. Don't you think so, Mrs. Powers?" Her braced straightening arms supported a pliant slow backward curve from her hips. "And Rufus. (Yes, she is pretty. And silly. But-but pretty.) You deserted me for another woman! Don't say you didn't. I tried to make him dance with me, Mrs. Powers, but he wouldn't do it. Perhaps you had better luck?" A dropped knee moulded the gla.s.s-like fragility of her silver dress. "Ah, you needn't say anything: we know how attractive Mrs. Powers is, don't we, Mr. Jones?" (See your behind, the shape of it. And your whole leg, when you stand like that. Knows it, too.) Her eyes became hard, black. "You told me they were dancing," she accused.

"He can't dance, you know," Mrs. Powers said. "We brought him so he could hear the music."

"Mr. Jones told me you and he were dancing. And I believed him: I seem to know so much less than other people about him. But, of course, he is sick, he does not-remember his old friends, now that he has made new ones."

(Is she going to cry? It would be just like her. The fool, the little fool.) "I think you are not fair to him. But won't you get in and sit down? Mr. Madden, will you-?"

Madden had already opened the door.

"No, no: if he likes the music I'd only disturb him. He had much rather sit with Mrs. Powers, I know."

(Yes, she's going to make a scene.) "Please. Just a moment. He hasn't seen you today, you know."

She hesitated, then Jones regarded the dividing soft curves of her thighs and the fleeting exposure of a stocking, and borrowed a match from Gilligan. The music had ceased and through the two identical magnolias the porch was like an empty stage. The negro driver's head was round as a capped cannonball: perhaps he slept. She mounted and sank into the dark seat beside Mahon, sitting still and resigned. Mrs. Powers suddenly spoke: "Do you dance, Mr. Madden?"

"Yes, a little," he admitted. She descended from the car and turning, met Cecily's startled shallow face.

"I'll leave you to visit with Donald while I have a dance or two with Mr. Madden, shall I?" She took Madden's arm. "Don't you want to come in, too, Joe?"

"I guess not," Gilligan answered. "Compet.i.tion'll be too strong for me. I'll get you to learn me private, some time, so I can be a credit to you."

Cecily, in exasperation, saw the other woman stealing part of her audience. But here were still Jones and Gilligan. Jones climbed heavily into the vacated seat, uninvited. Cecily gave him a fierce glance and turned her back upon him, feeling his arm against her side.

"Donald, sweetheart," she said, putting her arm about Mahon. From here she could not see the scar so she drew his face to hers with her hand, laying her cheek against his. Feeling her touch, hearing voices, he stirred. "It's Cecily, Donald," she said sweetly.

"Cecily," he parroted.

"Yes. Put your arm around me like you used to, Donald, dear heart," She moved nervously, but the length of Jones's arm remained against her closely as though it were attached by suction, like an octopus's tentacle. Trying to avoid him, her clasp about Mahon tightened convulsively, and he raised his hand, touching her face, fumbling at his gla.s.ses. "Easy there, Loot," Gilligan warned quickly, and he lowered his hand.

Cecily kissed his cheek swiftly and sat up, releasing him. "Oh, there goes the music again, and I have this dance." She stood up in the car, looking about. One lounging immaculately, smoking, strolled past. "Oh, Lee," she called, in happy relief, "here I am."

She opened the door and sprang out as the conventional one approached. Jones descended fatly, baggily, and stood dragging his jacket across his thick, heavy hips, staring yellowly at Mr. Rivers. Her body poised again, turning, and she said to Gilligan: "You aren't dancing tonight?"

"Not like that," he replied, "no, ma'am. Where I come from you'd have to have a licence to dance that way."

Her laugh was in three notes and she was like a swept tree. Her eyes, beneath lowered lids, her teeth, between her purple lips, glittered briefly.

"I think that's awfully clever. And Mr. Jones doesn't dance either, so all I have left is Lee."

Lee-Mr. Rivers-stood waiting, and Jones said heavily: "This is my dance."

"I'm sorry. I promised Lee," she answered swiftly . "But you cut in, won't you?" Her hand was briefly on his sleeve and Jones, contemplating Mr. Rivers, yellowly repeated: "This is my dance."

Mr. Rivers looked at him and then looked quickly away.

"Oh, beg pardon. Your dance?"

"Lee!" she said sharply, reaching her hand again. Mr. Rivers met Jones's stare once more.

"Beg pardon," he muttered, "I'll cut in." He lounged onward. Cecily let her glance follow him, then she shrugged and turned to Jones. Her neck, her arm, took faint light warmly, smoothly. She took Jones's tweed sleeve.

"Say," Gilligan murmured, watching their retreat, "you can see right through her."

"Dat's de war," explained the negro driver, sleeping again immediately.

XIII.

Jones dragged her resisting among shadows. A crepe-myrtle bush obscured them.

"Let me go!" she said, struggling.

"What's the matter with you? You kissed me once, didn't you?"

"Let me go," she repeated.

"What for? For that G.o.ddam dead man? What does he care about you?" He held her until her nervous energy, deserting her, left her fragile as a captured bird. He stared at the white blur which was her face and she was aware of the shapeless looming bulk of his body in the darkness, smelling wool and tobacco.

"Let me go," she repeated piteously, and finding herself suddenly free, she fled across gra.s.s, knowing dew on her shoes, seeing gratefully a row of men sitting like birds on the bal.u.s.trade. Mr. Rivers's ironed face, above his immaculate linen, met her and she grasped his arm.

"Let's dance, Lee," she said thinly, striking her body sharply against him, taking the broken suggestion of saxophones.

XIV.

Mrs. Powers had a small triumph: the rail birds had given her a "rush."

"Say," they had nudged each other, "look who Rufe's got."

And while the hostess stood in effusive volubility beside her straight, dark dress, two of them, whispering together, beckoned Madden aside.

"Powers?" they asked, when he joined them. But he hushed them.

"Yes, that was him. But that's not for talk, you know. Don't tell them, see." His glance swept the group along the rail. "Won't do any good, you know."

"h.e.l.l, no," they a.s.sured him. Powers!

And so they danced with her, one or two at first, then having watched her firm, capable performance, all of them that danced at all were soon involved in a jolly compet.i.tion, following her while she danced with another of their number, importuning her between dances: some of them even went so far as to seek out other partners whom they knew.

Madden after a time merely looked on, but his two friends were a.s.siduous, tireless; seeing that she did not dance too long with the poor dancers, fetching her cups of insipid punch; kind and a little tactless.

Her popularity brought the expected harvest of feminine speculation. Her clothes were criticized, her "nerve" in coming to a dance in a street dress, in coming at all. Living in a house with two young men, one of them a stranger. No other woman there . . . except a servant. And there had been something funny about that girl, years ago. Mrs. Wardle spoke to her, however. But she speaks to everyone who can't avoid her. And Cecily Saunders stopped between dances, holding her arm, chatting in her coa.r.s.e, nervous, rushing speech, rolling her eyes about at all the inevitable men, talking all the time. . . . The negro cornetist unleashed his indefatigable pack anew and the veranda broke again into clasped couples.

Mrs. Powers, catching Madden's eye, signalled him. "I must go," she said. "If I have to drink another cup of that punch--"

They threaded their way among dancers, followed by her protesting train. But she was firm and they told her good night with regret and grat.i.tude, shaking her hand.

"It was like old times," one of them diffidently phrased it, and her slow, friendly, unsmiling glance took them all.

"Wasn't it? Again soon, I hope. Good-bye, good-bye." They watched her until her dark dress merged with shadow beyond the zone of light. The music swept on, the bra.s.s swooned away and the rhythm was carried by a hushed plaintive minor of voices until the bra.s.s recovered.

"Say, you could see right through her," Gilligan remarked with interest as they came up. Madden opened the door and helped her in, needlessly.

"I'm tired, Joe. Let's go."

The negro driver's head was round as a capped cannonball and he was not asleep. Madden stood aside, hearing the spitting engine merge into a meshed whine of gears, watching them roll smoothly down the drive.

Powers . . . a man jumping along a trench of demoralised troops caught in a pointless hysteria. Powers. A face briefly spitted on the flame of a rifle: a white moth beneath a reluctant and sorrowful dawn.

XV.

George Farr and his friend the soda clerk walked beneath trees that in reverse motion seemed to swim backward above them, and houses were huge and dark or else faintly luminous shapes of flattened lesser dark where no trees were. People were asleep in them, people lapped in slumber, temporarily freed of the flesh. Other people elsewhere dancing under the spring sky: girls dancing with boys while other boys whose bodies had known all intimacies with the bodies of girls, walked dark streets alone, alone. . . .

"Well," his friend remarked, "we got two more good drinks left."

He drank fiercely, feeling the fire in his throat become an inner grateful fire, pleasuring in it like a pa.s.sionate muscular ecstasy. (Her body p.r.o.ne and naked as a narrow pool, flowing away like two silver streams from a single source.) Dr. Gary would dance with her, would put his arm around her, anyone could touch her. (Except you: she doesn't even speak of you who have seen her p.r.o.ne and silver . . . moonlight on her like sweetly dividing water, marbled and slender and un-blemished by any shadow, the sweet pa.s.sion of her constricting arms that constricting hid her body beyond the obscuring prehensileness of her mouth-) Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d!

"Say, whatcher say we go back to the store and mix another bottle?"

He did not answer and his friend repeated the suggestion.

"Let me alone," he said suddenly, savagely.

"G.o.ddam you, I'm not hurting you!" the other answered with justifiable heat.

They stopped at a corner, where another street stretched away beneath trees into obscurity, in uncomfortable intimacy. (I'm sorry: I'm a fool. I'm sorry I flew out at you, who are not at all to blame.) He turned heavily.

"Well, I guess I'll go in. Don't feel so good tonight. See you in the morning."

His friend accepted the unspoken apology. "Sure. See you tomorrow."

The other's coatless figure faded and after a while his footsteps died away. And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumour beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d!)

Chapter VI.

At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had 'phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed, to dream of her brokenly.

When her note came at last, he knew relief, sharp and bitter as the pain had been. When he took the square white paper from the post office, when he saw her nervous spidery script sprawled thinly across it, he felt something like a shocking silent concussion at the base of his brain. I won't go, he told himself, knowing that he would, and he re-read it, wondering if he could bear to see her, if he could speak to her, touch her again.

He was ahead of the appointed time, sitting hidden from view at a turn of the stairs ascending to the balcony. The stairs were enclosed by a solid wood bal.u.s.trade and from the foot of the steps the long tunnel of the drug store swept toward light and the entrance, a tunnel filled with the mingled scents of carbolic and sweet syrups: a medicated, a synthetic purity.

He saw her as she entered the door and, rising, he saw her pause on seeing him, then, as in a dream, silhouetted against the door, with light toying with her white dress, giving it a shallow nimbus, she came tap-tapping on her high heels toward him. He sat back trembling and heard her mount the steps. He saw her dress, and feeling his breath catch, he raised his eyes to her face as without pausing she sank into his arms like a settling bird.

"Cecily, oh, Cecily," he said brokenly, taking her kiss. He withdrew his mouth. "You d.a.m.n near killed me."

She drew his face quickly back to hers, murmuring against his cheek. He held her close and they sat so for a long time. At last he whispered: "You'll ruin your dress sitting here." But she only shook her head, clinging to him. Finally she sat up.

"Is this my drink?" she asked, picking up one of the gla.s.sed, sweetish liquids beside him. She put the other gla.s.s in his hand, and he closed his fingers about it, still looking at her.

"Now, we'll have to get married," he said, fatuously.

"Yes?" sipping her drink.

"Well, won't we?" he asked, in surprise.

"You've got it backward. Now we don't have to get married." She gave him a quick glance, and seeing his face, she laughed. Her occasional coa.r.s.eness so out of keeping with her innate and utter delicacy always shocked him. But then George Farr, like most men, was by nature a prude. He eyed her with disapproval, silent. She set her gla.s.s down and leaned her breast against him. "George?"

He thawed, putting his arm about her, but she refused her mouth. She thrust herself away from him and he, feeling that he had conquered, released her.