Soldiers Pay Part 2

"What you all doing with him?" he asked.

"Oh, he's just a lost foreigner I found back yonder. Now, Ernest--"

"Lost? He ain't lost. He's from Gawgia. I'm looking after him. Cap'm"-to the officer-"is these folks all right?"

Gilligan and Lowe looked at each other. "Christ, I thought he was a foreigner," Gilligan whispered.

The man raised his eyes to the porter's anxious face. "Yes," he said slowly, "they're all right."

"Does you want to stay here with them, or don't you want me to fix you up in your place?"

"Let him stay here," Gilligan said. "He wants a drink."

"But he ain't got no business drinking. He's sick."

"Loot," Gilligan said, "do you want a drink?"

"Yes, I want a drink. Yes."

"But he oughtn't to have no whisky, sir."

"I won't let him have too much. I am going to look after him. Come on, now, let's have some gla.s.ses, can't we?"

The porter began again. "But he oughtn't--"

"Say, Loot," Gilligan interrupted, "can't you make your friend here get us some gla.s.ses to drink from?"

"Gla.s.ses?"

"Yeh! He don't want to bring us none."

"Does you want gla.s.ses, Cap'm?"

"Yes, bring us some gla.s.ses, will you?"

"All right, Cap'm." He stopped again. "You going to take care of him, ain't you?" he asked Gilligan.

"Sure, sure!"

The porter gone, Gilligan regarded his guest with envy. "You sure got to be from Georgia to get service on this train. I showed him money but it never even shook him. Say, General," to Lowe, "we better keep the lootenant with us, huh? Might come in useful."

"Sure," agreed Lowe. "Say, sir, what kind of ships did you use?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," interrupted Gilligan, "let him be. He's been devastating France, now he needs rest, Hey. Loot?"

Beneath his scarred and tortured brow the man's gaze was puzzled but kindly and the porter reappeared with gla.s.ses and a bottle of ginger ale. He produced a pillow which he placed carefully behind the officer's head, then he got two more pillows for the others, forcing them with ruthless kindness to relax. He was deftly officious, including them impartially in his activities, like Fate. Private Gilligan, unused to this, became restive.

"Hey, ease up, George; lemme do my own pawing a while. I aim to paw this bottle if you'll gimme room."

He desisted saying, "Is this all right, Cap'm?"

"Yes, all right, thanks," the officer answered. Then: "Bring your gla.s.s and get a drink."

Gilligan solved the bottle and filled the gla.s.ses. Ginger ale hissed sweetly and pungently. "Up and at 'em, men."

The officer took his gla.s.s in his left hand and then Lowe noticed his right hand was drawn and withered.

"Cheer-o," he said.

"Nose down," murmured Lowe. The man looked at him with poised gla.s.s. He looked at the hat on Lowe's knee and that groping puzzled thing behind his eyes became clear and sharp as with a mental process, and Lowe thought that his lips had asked a question.

"Yes, sir, Cadet," he replied, feeling warmly grateful, feeling again a youthful clean pride in his corps.

But the effort had been too much and again the officer's gaze was puzzled and distracted.

Gilligan raised his gla.s.s, squinting at it. "Here's to peace," he said. "The first hundred years is the hardest."

Here was the porter again, with his own gla.s.s. "'Nother nose in the trough," Gilligan complained, helping him.

The negro patted and rearranged the pillow beneath the officer's head. "Excuse me, Cap'm, but can't I get you something for your head?"

"No, no, thanks. It's all right."

"But you're sick, sir. Don't you drink too much."

"I'll be careful. "

"Sure," Gilligan amended, "we'll watch him."

"Lemme pull the shade down. Keep the light out of your eyes?"

"No, I don't mind the light. You run along. I'll call if I want anything."

With the instinct of his race the negro knew that his kindness was becoming untactful, yet he ventured again.

"I bet you haven't wired your folks to meet you. Whyn't you lemme wire 'em for you? I can look after you far as I go, but who's going to look after you, then?"

"No, I'm all right, I tell you. You look after me as far as you go. I'll get along."

"All right. But I am going to tell your paw how you are acting someday. You ought to know better than that, Cap'm." He said to Gilligan and Lowe: "You gentlemen call me if he gets sick."

"Yes, go on now, d.a.m.n you. I'll call if I don't feel well." Gilligan looked from his retreating back to the officer in admiration. "Loot, how do you do it?"

But the man only turned on them his puzzled gaze. He finished his drink and while Gilligan renewed them Cadet Lowe, like a trailing hound, repeated: "Say, sir, what kind of ships did you use?"

The man looked at Lowe kindly, not replying, and Gilligan said: "Hush. Let him alone. Don't you see he don't remember himself? Do you reckon you would, with that scar? Let the war be. Hey, Lootenant?"

"I don't know. Another drink is better."

"Sure it is. Buck up, General. He don't mean no harm. He's just got to let her ride as she lays for a while. We all got horrible memories of the war. I lose eighty-nine dollars in a c.r.a.p game once, besides losing, as that wop writer says, that an' which thou knowest at Chatter Teary. So how about a little whisky, men?"

"Cheer-o," said the officer again.

"What do you mean, Chateau Thierry?" said Lowe, boyish in disappointment, feeling that he had been deliberately ignored by one to whom Fate had been kinder than to himself.

"You talking about Chatter Teary?"

"I'm talking about a place you were not at, anyway."

"I was there in spirit, sweetheart. That's what counts."

"You couldn't have been there any other way. There ain't any such place."

"h.e.l.l there ain't! Ask the Loot here if I ain't right. How about it, Loot?"

But he was asleep. They looked at his face, young, yet old as the world, beneath the dreadful scar. Even Gilligan's levity left him. "My G.o.d, it makes you sick at the stomach, don't it? I wonder if he knows how he looks? What do you reckon his folks will say when they see him? or his girl-if he has got one. And I'll bet he has."

New York flew away: it became noon within, by clock, but the grey imminent horizon had not changed. Gilligan said: "If he has got a girl, know what she'll say?"

Cadet Lowe, knowing all the despair of abortive endeavour, asked, "What?"

New York pa.s.sed on and Mahon beneath his martial harness slept. (Would I sleep? thought Lowe; had I wings, boots, would I sleep?) His wings indicated by a graceful sweep pointed sharply down above a ribbon. White, purple, white, over his pocket, over his heart (supposedly), Lowe descried between the pinions of a superimposed crown and three letters, then his gaze mounted to the sleeping scarred face. "What?" he repeated.

"She'll give him the air, buddy."

"Ah, come in. Of course she won't."

"Yes, she will. You don't know women. Once the new has wore off it'll be some bird that stayed at home and made money, or some lad that wore shiny leggings and never got nowheres so he could get hurt, like you and me."

The porter came to hover over the sleeping man.

"He ain't got sick, has he?" he whispered.

They told him no; and the negro eased the position of the sleeping man's head. "You gentlemen look after him and be sure to call me if he wants anything. He's a sick man."

Gilligan and Lowe, looking at the officer, agreed, and the porter lowered the shade. "You want some more ginger ale?"

"Yes," said Gilligan, a.s.suming the porter's hushed tone, and the negro withdrew. The two of them sat in silent comradeship, the comradeship of those whose lives had become pointless through the sheer equivocation of events, of the sorry jade, Circ.u.mstance. The porter brought ginger ale and they sat drinking while New York became Ohio.

Gilligan, that talkative unserious one, entered some dream within himself and Cadet Lowe, young and dreadfully disappointed, knew all the old sorrows of the Jasons of the world who see their vessels sink ere the harbour is left behind. . . . Beneath his scar the officer slept in all the travesty of his wings and leather and bra.s.s, and a terrible old woman paused, saying: "Was he wounded?"

Gilligan waked from his dream. "Look at his face," he said fretfully: "he fell off of a chair on to an old woman he was talking to and done that."

"What insolence," said the woman, glaring at Gilligan. "But can't something be done for him? He looks sick to me."

"Yes, ma'am. Something can be done for him. What we are doing now-letting him alone."

She and Gilligan stared at each other, then she looked at Cadet Lowe, young and belligerent and disappointed. She looked back to Gilligan. She said from the ruthless humanity of money: "I shall report you to the conductor. That man is sick and needs attention."

"All right, ma'am. But you tell the conductor that if he bothers him now, I'll knock his G.o.ddam head off."

The old woman glared at Gilligan from beneath a quiet, modish black hat and a girl's voice said: "Let them alone, Mrs. Henderson. They'll take care of him all right."

She was dark. Had Gilligan and Lowe ever seen an Aubrey Beardsley, they would have known that Beardsley would have sickened for her: he had drawn her so often dressed in peac.o.c.k hues, white and slim and depraved among meretricious trees and impossible marble fountains. Gilligan rose.

"That's right, miss. He is all right sleeping here with us. The porter is looking after him-" wondering why he should have to explain to her-"and we are taking him home. Just leave him be. And thank you for your interest."

"But something ought to be done about it," the old woman repeated futilely. The girl led her away and the train ran swaying in afternoon. (Sure, it was afternoon. Cadet Lowe's wrist watch said so. It might be any state under the sun, but it was afternoon. Afternoon or evening or morning or night, far as the officer was concerned. He slept.) d.a.m.ned old b.i.t.c.h Gilligan muttered, careful not to wake him.

"Look how you've got his arm," the girl said, returning. She moved his withered hand from his thigh. (His hand, too, seeing the scrofulous indication of his bones beneath the blistered skin.) "Oh, his poor terrible face," she said, shifting the pillow under his head.

"Be quiet, ma'am," Gilligan said.

She ignored him. Gilligan, expecting to see him wake, admitted defeat and she continued: "Is he going far?"

"Lives in Georgia," Gilligan said. He and Cadet Lowe seeing that she was not merely pa.s.sing their section, rose.

Lowe remarking her pallid distinction, her black hair, the red scar of her mouth, her slim dark dress, knew an adolescent envy of the sleeper. She ignored Lowe with a brief glance. How impersonal she was, how self-contained. Ignoring them.

"He can't get home alone," she stated with conviction. "Are you all going with him?"

"Sure," Gilligan a.s.sured her. Lowe wished to say something, something that would leave him fixed in her mind: something to reveal himself to her. But she glanced at the gla.s.ses, the bottle that Lowe, feeling a fool, yet clasped.

"You seem to be getting along pretty well, yourselves," she said.

"Snake medicine, miss, But won't you have some?"

Lowe, envying Gilligan's boldness, his presence of mind, watched her mouth. She looked down the car.

"I believe I will, if you have another gla.s.s."

"Why, sure. General, ring the bell." She sat down beside Mabon and Gilligan and Lowe sat again. She seemed . . . she was young; she probably liked dancing, yet at the same time she seemed not young-as if she knew everything. (She is married, and about twenty-five, thought Gilligan.) (She is about nineteen, and she is not in love, Lowe decided.) She looked at Lowe.

"What's your outfit, soldier?"

"Flying Cadet," answered Lowe with slow patronage, "Air Service." She was a kid: she only looked old.

"Oh. Then, of course, you are looking after him. He's an aviator, too, isn't he?"

"Look at his wings," Lowe answered. "British. Royal Air Force. Pretty good boys."

"h.e.l.l," said Gilligan, "he ain't no foreigner."

"You don't have to be a foreigner to be with the British, or French. Look at Lufbery. He was with the French until we come in."

The girl looked at him and Gilligan, who had never heard of Lufbery, said: "Whatever he is, he's all right. With us, anyway. Let him be whatever he wants."

The girl said: "I am sure he is."