Soldiers Pay Part 22

"Cecily?"

"Where is daddy, mamma?"

"Why, he's gone to town. What is it, baby?" She asked, quickly, "what's the matter?"

Cecily clung to her mother. The other was like a rock, a panting rock: something imperishable, impervious to pa.s.sion and fear. And heartless.

"I must see him," she anwered. "I have just got to see him."

The other said: "There, there. Go to your room and lie down a while." She sighed heavily. "No wonder you don't feel well. Those new potatoes at dinner! When will I learn to stop eating? But if it isn't one thing, it's another, isn't it? Darling, would you mind coming in and unlacing me? I think I'll lie down a while before I dress to go to Mrs. Coleman's."

"Yes, mamma. Of course," she answered, wanting her father, George, anyone to help her.

III.

George Farr, lurking along a street, climbed a fence swiftly when the exodus from the picture show came along. Despite himself, he simply could not act as though he were out for casual stroll, but must drift aimlessly and noticeably back and forth along the street with a sort of skulking frankness. He was too nervous to go somewhere else and time his return; he was too nervous to conceal himself and stay there. So he gave up and became frankly skulking, climbing a fence smartly when the exodus from the picture show began.

Nine-thirty People sat on porches rocking and talking in low tones, enjoying the warmth of April, people pa.s.sing beneath dark trees along the street, old and young, men and women, making comfortable, unintelligible sounds, like cattle going to barn and bed. Tiny red eyes pa.s.sed along at mouth-height and burning tobacco lingered behind sweet and pungent. Spitting arc lights, at street corners, revealed the pa.s.sers-by, temporarily d.o.g.g.i.ng them with elastic shadows. Cars pa.s.sed under the lights and he recognized friends: young men and the inevitable girls with whom they were "going"-coiffed or bobbed hair and slim young hands fluttering forever about it, keeping it in place. . . . The cars pa.s.sed on into darkness, into another light, into darkness again.

Ten o'clock Dew on the gra.s.s, dew on small unpickable roses, making them sweeter, giving them an odour. Otherwise, they had no odour, except that of youth and growth, as young girls have no particular attributes, save the kins.h.i.+p of youth and growth. Dew on the gra.s.s, the gra.s.s a.s.sumed a faint luminousness as if it had stolen light from day and the moisture of night were releasing it, giving it back to the world again. Tree frogs shrilled in the trees, insects droned in the gra.s.s. Tree frogs are poison, negroes had told him. If they spit on you, youall die. When he moved they fell silent (getting ready to spit, perhaps), when he became still again, they released the liquid flute-like monotony swelling in their throats, filling the night with the imminence of summer. Spring, like a girl loosing , her girdle. . . . People pa.s.sed in belated ones and twos. Words reached him in meaningless s.n.a.t.c.hes. Fireflies had not yet come.

Ten-thirty Rocking blurs on the verandas of houses rose and went indoors, entering rooms, and lights went off here and there, beyond smoothly descending shades. George Farr stole across a deserted lawn to a magnolia tree. Beneath it, fumbling in a darkness so inky that the rest of the world seemed quite visible in comparison, he found a water tap. Water gushed, filling his incautious shoe, and a mockingbird flew darkly and suddenly out. He drank, wetting his dry hot mouth, and returned to his post. When he was still again, the frogs and insects teased at silence gently, not to break it completely. As the small odourless roses unfolded under the dew their scent grew as though they, too, were growing, doubling in size.

Eleven o'clock Solemnly the clock on the courthouse, staring its four bland faces across the town, like a kind and sleepless G.o.d, dropped eleven measured golden bells of sound. Silence carried them away, silence and dark that pa.s.sing along the street like a watchman, s.n.a.t.c.hed sc.r.a.ps of light from windows, palming them as a pickpocket palms s.n.a.t.c.hed handkerchiefs. A belated car pa.s.sed swiftly. Nice girls must be home by eleven. The street, the town, the world, was empty for him.

He lay on his back in a slow consciousness of relaxing muscles, feeling his back and thighs and legs luxuriously. It became so quiet that he dared to smoke, though being careful not to expose the match unduly. Then he lay down again, stretching, feeling the gracious earth through his clothing. After a while his cigarette burned down and he spun it from two fingers and sickled his knee until he could reach his ankle, scratching. Life of some sort was also down his back, or it felt like it, which was the same thing. He writhed his back against the earth and the irritation ceased. . . . It must be eleven-thirty by now. He waited for what he judged to be five minutes, then he held his watch this way and that, trying to read it. But it only tantalized him: he could have. sworn to almost any hour or minute you could name. So he cupped another cautious match. It was eleven-fourteen. h.e.l.l.

He lay back again cradling his head in his clasped arms. From this position the sky became a flat plane, flat as the bra.s.s-studded lid of a dark-blue box. Then, as he watched, it a.s.sumed depth again, it was as if he lay on the bottom of the sea while seaweed, clotting blackly, lifted surfaceward unshaken by any current, motionless; it was as if he lay on his stomach, staring downward into water into which his gorgonas hair, clotting blackly, hung motionless. Eleven-thirty.

He had lost his body. He could not feel it at all. It was as though vision were a bodiless Eye suspended in dark-blue s.p.a.ce, an Eye without Thought, regarding without surprise an antic world where wanton stars galloped neighing like unicorns in blue meadows. . . . After a while, the Eye, having nothing in or by which to close itself, ceased to see, and he waked, thinking that he was being tortured, that his arms were being crushed and wrung from his body. He dreamed that he had screamed, and finding that to move his arms was an agony equalled only by that of letting them stay where they were, he rolled writhing, chewing his lip. His whole blood took fire: the pain became a swooning ecstasy that swooned away. Yet they still felt like somebody else's arms, even after the pain had gone. He could not even take out his watch, he was afraid he would not be able to climb the fence.

But he achieved this, knowing it was midnight, because the street lamps had been turned off, and in the personal imminent desertion of the street he slunk, feeling, though there was none to see him, more like a criminal than ever, now that his enterprise was really under way. He walked on trying to bolster his moral courage, trying not to look like a sneaking n.i.g.g.e.r, but, in spite of him, it seemed that every dark quiet house stared at him, watching him with blank and lightless eyes, making his back itch after he had pa.s.sed. But what if they do see me? What am I doing, that anyone should not do? Walking along a deserted street after midnight. That's all. But this did not stop the p.r.i.c.kling of hair on the back of his neck.

His gait faltered, not quite stopping altogether: near the trunk of a tree, he discerned movement, a thicker darkness. His first impulse was to turn back, then he cursed himself for an excitable fool. Suppose it were someone. He had as much right to the street as the other had-more, if the other were concealing himself. He strode on no longer skulking, feeling on the contrary quite righteous. As he pa.s.sed the tree, the thicker darkness s.h.i.+fted slowly. Whoever it was did not wish to be seen. The other evidently feared him more than he did the other, so he pa.s.sed on boldly. He looked back once or twice, but saw nothing.

Her house was dark, but remembering the shadow behind the tree, and for the sake of general precaution, he pa.s.sed steadily on. After a block or so he halted, straining his ears. Nothing save the peaceful, unemphatic sounds of night. He crossed the street and stopped again, listening. Nothing. Frogs and crickets, and that was all. He walked in the gra.s.s beside the pavement, stealing quiet as a shadow to the corner of her lawn. He climbed the fence and, crouching, stole along beside a hedge until he was opposite the house, where he stopped again. The house was still, unlighted, bulking huge and square in slumber and he sped swiftly from the shadow of the hedge to the shadow of the veranda at the place where a french window gave upon it. He sat down in a flower bed, leaning his back against the wall.

The turned flower bed filled the darkness with the smell of fresh earth, something friendly and personal in a world of enormous vague formless shapes of greater and lesser darkness. The night, the silence, was complete and profound: a formless region filled with the smell of fresh earth and the measured ticking of the watch in his pocket. After a time, he felt soft damp earth through his trousers upon his thighs and he sat in a slow physical content, a oneness with the earth, waiting a sound from the dark house at his back. He heard a sound after a while but it was from the street. He sat still and calm. With the inconsistency of his kind, he felt safer here, where he had no business being, than on the street to which he had every right. The sound, approaching, became two vague figures, and Lobe and the cook pa.s.sed along the drive toward their quarters, murmuring softly to each other . . . Soon the night was again vague and vast and empty.

Again he became one with the earth, with dark and silence, with his own body . . . with her body, like a little silver water sweetly dividing . . . turned earth and hyacinths along a veranda, swinging soundless bells . . . How can b.r.e.a.s.t.s be as small as yours, and yet be b.r.e.a.s.t.s . . . the dull gleam of her eyes beneath lowered lids, of her teeth beneath her lip, her arms rising like two sweet wings of a dream. . . . Her body like.

He took breath into himself, holding it. Something came slow and shapeless across the lawn toward him, pausing opposite. He breathed again, held his breath again. The thing moved and came directly toward him and he sat motionless until it had almost reached the flower bed in which he sat. Then he sprang to his feet and before the other could raise a hand he fell upon the intruder, raging silently. The man accepted battle and they fell clawing and panting, making no outcry. They were at such close quarters, it was so dark, that they could not damage each other, and intent on battle, they were oblivious of their surroundings, until Jones hissed suddenly beneath George Parr's armpit: "Look out! Somebody's coming!"

They paused mutually and sat clasping each other like the first position of a sedentary dance. A light had appeared suddenly in a lower window and with one accord they rose and hurled themselves into the shadow of the porch: plunging into the flower bed as Mr. Saunders stepped through the window. Crus.h.i.+ng themselves against the brick wall, they lay in a mutual pa.s.sion for concealment, hearing Mr. Saunders's feet on the floor above their heads. They held their breath, closing their eyes like ostriches and the man came to the edge of the veranda, and standing directly over them, he shook cigar ashes upon them and spat across their p.r.o.ne bodies . . . after years had pa.s.sed, he turned and went away.

After a while Jones heaved and George Farr released his cramped body. The light was off again and the house bulked huge and square, sleeping among the trees. They rose and stole across the lawn and after they had pa.s.sed the frogs arid crickets resumed their mild monotonies.

"What--" began George Farr, once they were on the street again.

"Shut up," Jones interrupted. "Wait until we are farther away."

They walked side by side, and George Farr, seething, decided upon what he considered a safe distance. Stopping, he faced the other.

"What in h.e.l.l were you doing there?" he burst out.

Jones had dirt on his face and his collar had burst. George Farr's tie was like a hangman's noose under his ear and he wiped his face with his handkerchief.

"What were you doing there?" Jones countered.

"None of your d.a.m.n business," he answered hotly. "What I ask is, what in h.e.l.l do you mean, hanging around that house?"

"Maybe she asked me to. What do you think of that?"

"You lie," said George Farr, springing upon him. They fought again in the darkness, beneath the arching silence of elms. Jones was like a bear and George Farr, feeling his soft enveloping hug, kicked Jones's legs from under him. They fell, Jones uppermost, and George lay gasping, with breath driven from his lungs, while Jones held him upon his back.

"How about it?" Jones asked, thinking of his s.h.i.+n. "Got enough?"

For reply, George Farr heaved and struggled, but the other held him down, thumping his head rhythmically upon the hard earth. "Come on, come on. Don't act like a child. What do we want to fight for?"

"Take back what you said about her, then," he panted. Then he lay still and cursed Jones. Jones, unmoved, repeated: "Got enough? Promise?"

George Farr arched his back, writhing, trying vainly to cast off Jones's fat enveloping bulk. At last he promised in weak rage, almost weeping, and Jones removed his soft weight. George sat up.

"You better go home," Jones advised him, rising to his feet. "Come on, get up." He took George's arm and tugged at it.

"Let go, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Funny how things get , around," remarked Jones mildly, releasing him. George got slowly to his feet and Jones continued: "Run along, now. You have been out late enough. Had a fight and everything."

George Farr, panting, rearranged his clothes. Jones bulked vaguely beside him. "Good night," said Jones, at last.

"Good night."

They faced each other and after a time Jones repeated: "Good night, I said."

"I heard you."

"What's the matter? Not going in now?"

"h.e.l.l, no."

"Well, I am." He turned away. "See you again." George Farr followed him, doggedly. Jones, slow and fat, shapeless, in the darkness, remarked: "Do you live down this way now? You've moved recently, haven't you?"

"I live wherever you do tonight," George told him, stubbornly.

"Thanks, awfully. But I have only one bed and I don't like to sleep double. So I can't ask you in. Some other time."

They walked slowly beneath dark trees, in dogged intimacy. The clock on the courthouse struck one and the stroke died away into silence. After a while Jones stopped again. "Look here, what are you following me for?"

"She didn't ask you to come there tonight."

"How do you know. If she asked you, she would ask someone else."

"Listen," said George Farr, "if you don't let her alone, I'll kill you. I swear I will."

"Salut," murmured Jones. "Ave Caesar. . . . Why don't you tell her father that? Perhaps he'll let you set up a tent on the lawn to protect her. Now, you go on and let me alone, do you hear?" George held his ground stubbornly. "You want me to beat h.e.l.l out of you again?" Jones suggested.

"Try it," George whispered with dry pa.s.sion. Jones said: "Well, we've both wasted this night, anyway. It's too late, now--"

"I'll kill you! She never told you to come at all. You just followed me. I saw you behind that tree. You let her alone, do you hear?"

"In G.o.d's name, man! Don't you see that all I want now is sleep? Let's go home, for heaven's sake."

"You swear you are going home?"

"Yes, yes. I swear. Good night."

George Farr watched the other's shapeless fading figure, soon it became but a thicker shadow among shadows. Then he turned homeward himself in cooled anger and bitter disappointment and desire. That blundering idiot had interfered this time, perhaps he would interfere every time. Or perhaps she would change her mind, perhaps, since he had failed her tonight. . . . Even Fate envied him this happiness, this unbearable happiness, he thought bitterly. Beneath trees arching the quiet sky, spring loosing her girdle languorous . . . her body, like a narrow pool, sweetly . . . I thought I had lost you, I found you again, and now he . . . He paused, sharply struck by a thought, an intuition. He turned and sped swiftly back.

He stood near a tree at the corner of the lawn and after a short time he saw something moving shapeless and slow across the faint gra.s.s, along a hedge. He strode out boldly and the other saw him and paused, then that one, too, stood erect and came boldly to meet him. Jones joined him, murmuring, "Oh, h.e.l.l," and they stood in static dejection, side by side.

"Well?" challenged George Farr, at last.

Jones sat down heavily on the sidewalk. "Let's smoke a while," he suggested, in that impersonal tone which people sitting up with corpses use.

George Farr sat beside him and Jones held a match to his cigarette, then lit his own pipe. He sighed, clouding his head with an unseen pungency of tobacco. George Farr sighed also, resting his back against a tree. The stars swam on like the mast head lights of squadrons and squadrons on a dark river, going on and on. Darkness and silence and a world turning through darkness toward another day. . . . The bark of the tree was rough, the ground was hard. He wished vaguely that he were fat like Jones, temporarily. . . .

. . . Then, waking, it was about to be dawn. He no longer felt the earth and the tree save when he moved. It seemed to him that his thighs must be flattened like a table top and that his back had a.s.sumed depressions into which the projections of the tree trunk fitted like the locked rims of wheels.

There was a rumour of light eastward, somewhere beyond her house and the room where she lay in the soft familiar intimacy of sleep, like a faintly blown trumpet; soon perspective returned to a mysterious world, and instead of being a huge portentous shadow among lesser shadows, Jones was only a fat young man in baggy tweed, white and pathetic and snoring on his back.

George Farr, waking, saw him so, saw earth stains on him and a faint incandescence of dew. George Farr bore earth stains himself and his tie was a hangman's knot beneath his ear. The wheel of the world, slowing through the hours of darkness, pa.s.sed the dead centre point and gained momentum. After a while Jones opened his eyes, groaning. He rose stiffly, stretching and spitting, yawning.

"Good time to go in, I think," he said. George Farr, tasting his own sour mouth, moved and felt little pains, like tiny red ants, running over him. He, too, rose and they stood side by side. They yawned again.

Jones turned fatly, limping a little. "Good night," he said.

"Good night."

The east grew yellow, then red, and day had really come into the world, breaking the slumber of sparrows.

IV.

But Cecily Saunders was not asleep. Lying on her back in her bed, in her dark room she, too, heard the hushed sounds of night, smelled the sweet scents of spring and dark and growing things: the earth, watching the wheel of the world, the terrible calm, inevitability oflife, turning through the hours of darkness, pa.s.sing its dead centre point and turning faster, drawing the waters of dawn up from the hushed cistern of the east, breaking the slumber of sparrows.

V.

"May I see him," she pleaded hysterically, "may I? Oh, may I, please?"

Mrs. Powers, seeing her face, said: "Why, child! What is it? What is it, darling?"

"Alone, alone. Please. May I? May I?"

"Of course. What--"

"Thank you, thank you." She sped down the hall and rrossed the study like a bird.

"Donald, Donald! It's Cecily, sweetheart. Cecily. Don't you know Cecily?"

"Cecily," he repeated mildly. Then she stopped his mouth with hers, clinging to him.

"I will marry you, I will, I will. Donald, look at me. But you cannot, you cannot see me, can you? But I will marry you, today, any time: Cecily will marry you, Donald. You cannot see me, can you, Donald? Cecily. Cecily."

"Cecily?" he repeated.

"Oh, your poor, poor face, your blind, scarred face! But I will marry you. They said I wouldn't, that I mustn't, but yes, yes, Donald my dear love!"

Mrs. Powers, following her, raised her to her feet, removing her arms. "You might hurt him, you know," she said.

Chapter VII.

"Joe."

"Whatcher say, Loot?"

"I'm going to get married, Joe."

"Sure you are, Loot. Some day--" tapping himself on the chest.

"What's that, Joe?"

"I say, good luck. You got a fine girl."

"Cecily . . . Joe?"

"Hallo."

"She'll get used to my face."

"You're d.a.m.n right. Your face is all right. But easy there, don't knock 'em off. Attaboy," as the other lowered his fumbling hand.