Soldiers Pay Part 8

"I'm going to cry in a minute. You'd better let me go."

"Oh, d.a.m.n! Why, sugar, I didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to see you. We've got to see each other if it's going to be all off with us. Come on, I've been good to you."

She relaxed. "Well, but just around the block then. I've got to get back to them." She raised a foot to the running board. "Promise?" she insisted.

"Sure. Round the block it is. I won't run off with you if you say not."

She got in, and as they drove off she looked quickly to the house. There was a face in the window, a round face.

IV.

George turned from the street and drove down a quiet lane bordered by trees, between walls covered with honeysuckle. He stopped the car, and she said swiftly: "No, no, George! Drive on."

But he cut the switch. "Please," she repeated. He turned in his seat.

"Cecily, you are kidding me, aren't you?"

She turned the switch and tried to reach the starter with her foot. He caught her hands, holding her. "Look at me."

Her eyes grew blue again with foreboding.

"I don't know. Oh, George, it all happened so suddenly! I don't know what to think. When we were in there talking about him it all seemed so grand for Donald to be coming back, in spite of that woman with him; and to be engaged to a man who will be famous when he gets here-oh, it seemed then that I did love him: it was exactly the thing to do. But now . . . I'm just not ready to be married yet. And he's been gone so long, and to take up with another woman on his way to me-I don't know what to do. I-I'm going to cry," she ended suddenly, putting her crooked arm on the seatback and burying her face in her elbow. He put his arm around her shoulders and tried to draw her to him. She raised her hands between them, straightening her arms.

"No, no, take me back."

"But Cecily-"

"You mustn't! Don't you know I'm engaged to be married? He'll probably want to be married tomorrow, and, I'll have to do it."

"But you can't do that. You aren't in love with him."

"But I've got to, I tell you!"

"Are you in love with him?"

"Take me back to Uncle Joe's. Please!"

He was the stronger and at last he held her close, feeling her small bones, her frail taut body beneath her dress. "Are you in love with him?" he repeated.

She burrowed her face into his coat.

"Look at me." She refused to lift her face and he slipped his hand under her chin, raising it. "Are you?"

"Yes, yes," she said wildly, staring at him. "Take me back!"

"You are lying. You aren't going to marry him."

She was weeping. "Yes, I am. I've got to. He expects it and Uncle Joe expects it. I must, I tell you."

"Darling, you can't. Don't you love me? You know you do. You can't marry him." She stopped struggling and lay against him, crying. "Come on, say you won't marry him."

"George, I can't," she said hopelessly. "Don't you see I have got to marry him?"

Young and miserable they clung to each other. The slumbrous afternoon lay about them in the empty lane. Even the sparrows seemed drowsy and from the spire of the church pigeons were remote and monotonous, unemphatic as sleep. She raised her face.

"Kiss me, George."

He tasted tears: their faces were coolly touching. She drew her head back, searching his face. "That was the last time, George."

"No, no," he objected, tightening his arms. She resisted a moment, then kissed him pa.s.sionately. "Darling!"

"Darling!"

She straightened up, dabbing at her eyes with his handkerchief . "There! I feel better now. Take me home, kind sir."

"But, Cecily," he protested, trying to embrace her again. She put him aside coolly.

"Not anymore, ever. Take me home, like a nice boy."

"But, Cecily--"

"Do you want me to get out and walk? I can, you know: it isn't far."

He started the engine and drove on in a dull youthful sorrow. She patted at her hair, her fingers bloomed slimly in it, and they turned on to the street again. As she descended at the gate he made a last despairing attempt.

"Cecily, for G.o.d's sake!"

She looked over her shoulder at his stricken face. "Don't be silly. George. Of course I'll see you again. I'm not married-yet. "

Her white dress in the sun was an unbearable shimmer sloping to her body's motion and she pa.s.sed from sunlight to shadow, mounting the steps. At the door she turned, flashed him a smile and waved her hand. Then her white dress faded beyond a fanlight of muted colour dim with age and lovely with lack of washing, leaving George to stare at the empty maw of the house in hope and despair and baffled youthful l.u.s.t.

V.

Jones at the window saw them drive away. His round face was enigmatic as a G.o.d's, his clear obscene eyes showed no emotion. You are good, you are, he thought in grudging, unillusioned admiration. I hand it to you. He was still musing upon her when the mean-looking black-haired woman, interrupting the rector's endless reminiscences of his son's boyhood and youth, suggested that it was time to go to the station.

The divine became aware of the absence of Cecily, who was at that moment sitting in a stationary motorcar in an obscure lane, crying on the shoulder of a man whose name was not Donald. Jones, the only one who had remarked the manner of her going, was for some reason he could not have named safely non-committal. The rector stated fretfully that Cecily, who was at that moment kissing a man whose name was not Donald, should not have gone away at that time, But the other woman (I bet she's mean as h.e.l.l, thought Jones) interrupted again, saying that it was better so.

"But she should have gone to the station to meet him," the rector stated with displeasure.

"No, no. Remember, he is sick. The less excitement the better for him. Besides, it is better for them to meet privately."

"Ah, yes, quite right, quite right. Trust a woman in these things, Mr. Jones. And for that reason perhaps you had better wait also, don't you think?"

"By all means, sir. I will wait and tell Miss Saunders why you went without her. She will doubtless be anxious to know."

After the cab had called for them and gone, Jones, still standing, stuffed his pipe with moody viciousness. He wandered aimlessly about the room, staring out the windows in turn, puffing his pipe; then pausing to push a dead match beneath a rug with his toe he crossed deliberately to the rector's desk. He drew and closed two drawers before finding the right one.

The bottle was squat and black and tilted took the light pleasantly. He replaced it, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. And just in time, too, for her rapid brittle steps crossed the veranda and he heard a motorcar retreating.

The door framed her fragile surprise. She remarked, "Oh! Where are the others?"

"What's the matter? Have a puncture?" Jones countered nastily. Her eyes flew like birds and he continued: "The others? They went to the station, the railroad station. You know: where the trains come in. The parson's son or something is coming home this afternoon. Fine news, isn't it? But won't you come in?"

She entered hesitant, watching him.

"Oh, come on in, sister, I won't hurt you."

"But why didn't they wait for me?"

"They thought you didn't want to go, I suppose. Hadn't you left that impression?"

In the silence of the house was a clock like a measured respiration, and Emmy was faintly audible somewhere. These sounds rea.s.sured her and she entered a few steps. "You saw me go. Didn't you tell them where I was?"

"Told them you went to the bathroom."

She looked at him curiously, knowing in some way that he was not lying. "Why did you do that?"

"It was your business where you were going, not mine. If you wanted them to know you should have told them yourself."

She sat alertly. "You're a funny sort of a man, aren't you?"

Jones moved casually, in no particular direction. "How funny?"

She rose. "Oh, I don't know exactly . . . you don't like me and yet you told a lie for me."

"h.e.l.l, you don't think I mind telling a lie, do you?"

She said with speculation: "I wouldn't put anything past you-if you thought you could get any fun out of it." Watching his eyes she moved toward the door.

The trousers hampered him, but despite them his agility was amazing. But she was alert and her studied grace lent her muscular control and swiftness, and so it was a bland rubbed panel of wood that he touched. Her dress whipped from sight, he heard a key and her m.u.f.fled laugh, derisive.

"d.a.m.n your soul," he spoke in a quiet, toneless emotion, "open the door."

The wood was bland and inscrutable: baffling, holding up to him in its polished depths the fat white blur of his own face. Holding his breath he heard nothing beyond it save a clock somewhere.

"Open the door," he repeated, but there was no sound. Has she gone away, or not? he wondered, straining his ears, bending to the bulky tweeded Narcissus of himself in the polished wood. He thought of the windows and walking quietly he crossed the room, finding immovable gauze wire. He returned to the centre of the room without trying to m.u.f.fle his steps and stood in a mounting anger, cursing her slowly. Then he saw the door handle move.

He sprang to it. "Open the door, you little s.l.u.t, or I'll kick your screens out."

The lock clicked and he jerked the door open upon Emmy, his trousers over her arm, meeting him with her frightened antagonistic eyes.

"Where-" began Jones, and Cecily stepped from the shadows, curtsying like a derisive flower.

"Checkmate, Mr. Jones." Jones paraphrased the rector in a reedy falsetto. "Do you know--"

"Yes," said Cecily quickly, taking Emmy's arm. "But tell us on the veranda." She led the way and Jones followed in reluctant admiration. She and the baleful speechless Emmy preceding him sat arm in arm in a porch swing while afternoon sought interstices in soon-to-be lilac wistaria: afternoon flowed and ebbed upon them as they swung and their respective silk and cotton shins took and released sunlight in running planes.

"Sit down, Mr. Jones," she continued, gushing. "Do tell us about yourself! We are so interested, aren't we, Emmy dear?" Emmy was watchful and inarticulate, like an animal. "Emmy, dear Mr. Jones, has missed all of your conversation and admiring you as we all do-we simply cannot help it, Mr. Jones-she is naturally anxious to make up for it."

Jones cupped a match in his palms and there were two little flames in his eyes, leaping and sinking to pin points.

"You are silent, Mr. Jones? Emmy and I both would like to hear some more of what you have learned about us from your extensive amatory career. Don't we, Emmy darling?"

"No, I won't spoil it for you," Jones replied heavily. "You are on the verge of getting some first-hand information of your own. As for Miss Emmy, I'll teach her sometime later, in private."

Emmy continued to watch him with fierce dumb distrust. Cecily said: "At first hand?"

"Aren't you being married tomorrow? You can learn from Oswald. He should certainly be able to tell you, travelling as he seems to with a sparring partner. Got caught, at last, didn't you?"

She shivered. She looked so delicate, so needing to be cared for that Jones, becoming masculine and sentimental, felt again like a cloddish brute. He lit his pipe again and Emmy, convicting herself of the power of speech, said: "Yonder they come."

A cab had drawn up to the gate and Cecily sprang to her feet and ran along the porch to the steps. Jones and Emmy rose and Emmy vanished somewhere as four people descended from the cab. So that's him, thought Jones ungrammatically, following Cecily, watching her as she stood poised on the top step like a bird, her hand to her breast. Trust her!

He looked again at the party coming through the gate, the rector looming above them all. There was something changed about the divine: age seemed to have suddenly overtaken him, unresisted, coming upon him like a highwayman. He's sure sick, Jones told himself. The woman, that Mrs. Something-or-other, left the party and hastened ahead. She mounted the steps to Cecily.

"Come darling," she said, taking the girl's arm, "come inside. He is not well and the light hurts his eyes. Come in and meet him there, hadn't you rather?"

"No, no: here. I have waited so long for him."

The other woman was kind but obdurate. And she led the girl into the house. Cecily reluctant, with reverted head cried: "Uncle Joe! his face! is he sick?"

The divine's face was grey and slack as dirty snow. At the steps he stumbled slightly and Jones sprang forward, taking his arm. "Thanks, buddy," said the third man, in a private's uniform, whose hand was beneath Mahon's elbow. They mounted the steps and crossing the porch pa.s.sed under the fanlight, into the dark hall.

"Take your cap, Loot," murmured the enlisted man. The other removed it and handed it to him. They heard swift tapping feet crossing a room and the study door opened leting a flood of light fall upon them, and Cecily cried: "Donald! Donald! She says your face is hur-oooooh!" she ended, screaming as she saw him.

The light pa.s.sing through her fine hair gave her a halo and lent her frail dress a fainting nimbus about her crumpling body like a stricken poplar. Mrs. Powers moving quickly caught her, but not before her head had struck the door jamb.

Chapter III.

Mrs. Saunders said: "You come away now, let your sister alone."

Young Robert Saunders fretted but optimistic, joining again that old battle between parent and child, hopeful in the face of invariable past defeat: "But can't I ask her a civil question? I just want to know what his scar l--"

"Come now, come with mamma."

"But I just want to know what his sc--"

"Robert. "

"But mamma," he essayed again, despairing. His mother pushed him firmly doorward.