Reflections in a Golden Eye (13 page)

Major Langdon closed this particular evening's conversation with one of his favorite
aphorisms: 'Only two things matter to me now to be a good animal and to serve my
country. A healthy body and patriotism.'

At this time Captain Penderton's home was not an ideal place for a person undergoing an
acute psychic crisis. Formerly the Captain would have found the laments of Morris Langdon
ridiculous. But now there was the atmosphere of death in the house. To him it seemed that
not only had Alison died, but that in some mysterious way the lives of all three of them
had come to a close. The old fear that Leonora might divorce him and go away with Morris
Langdon did not trouble him any more. Any inclination he had once had toward the Major
seemed now a mere velleity compared to his feelings for the soldier.

The house itself irritated the Captain exceedingly these days. Their quarters were
furnished in haphazard fashion. In the sitting room there was the conventional sofa
covered with flower patterned chintz, a couple of easy chairs, a rug of garish red, and an
antique secretary. The room had an air of flossiness that the Captain abhorred. The lace
curtains looked cheap and rather dingy, and on the mantelpiece there was a heterogeneous
collection of ornaments and gewgaws a procession of sham ivory elephants, a pair of
beautiful wrought iron candlesticks, a painted statuette of a pickaninny grinning over a
red slice of watermelon, and a blue glass Mexican bowl into which Leonora had dumped old
visiting cards. All of the furniture was slightly rickety from too much moving, and the
feminine, cluttered impression made by the room as a whole so exasperated the Captain that
he stayed out of it as much as possible. With deep secret longing he thought of the
barracks, seeing in his mind the neat cots placed in a row, the bare floors, and stark
curtainless windows. Against one of the walls of this imaginary room, ascetic and austere,
there was for some reason an ancient carved chest with brass bindings.

Captain Penderton on his long walks, during the late afternoon was in a state of
sharpened sensitivity close to delirium. He felt himself adrift, cut off from all human
influence, and he carried with him the brooding image of the young soldier much as a witch
would hug to her bosom some cunning charm. He experienced during this time a peculiar
vulnerability. Although he felt himself isolated from all other persons, the things which
he saw on his walks took on an abnormal importance in his eyes. Everything with which he
came in contact, even the most commonplace objects, seemed to have some mysterious bearing
on his own destiny.

If, for instance, he chanced to notice a sparrow in the gutter, he could stand for whole
minutes, completely absorbed in this ordinary sight. For the time being he had lost the
primitive faculty that instinctively classifies the various sensory impressions according
to their relative values. One afternoon he saw a transport truck run into an automobile.
But this bloody accident impressed him no more vividly than the sight, a few minutes
later, of a scrap of newspaper fluttering in the wind.

For a long time now he had ceased to attribute his feelings for Private Williams to hate.
Also he no longer tried to find justification for the emotion that had so taken possession
of him. He thought of the soldier in terms neither of love nor hate; he was conscious only
of the irresistible yearning to break down the barrier between them. When from a distance
he saw the soldier resting before the barracks, he wanted to shout to him, or to strike
him with his fist, to make him respond in some way to violence. It was almost two years
now since he had first seen the soldier. More than a month had gone by since he had been
sent on special fatigue to clear the woods. And in all this time they had hardly spoken to
each other more than a few dozen words.

On the afternoon of the twelfth of November, Captain Penderton went out as usual. He had
had a trying day. That morning in the classroom, while standing before the blackboard in
the process of illustrating a tactical problem, he had had an unexplainable attack of
amnesia. In the middle of a sentence his mind went blank. Not only did he totally forget
every word of the remainder of his lecture, even the faces of the student officers in the
room seemed unfamiliar to him. In his mind he could see Private Williams very clearly
that was all. For some moments he stood dumbly with the chalk still in his hand. Then he
found presence of mind to dismiss the class. Fortunately the lecture was almost ended when
his lapse had occurred.

The Captain walked very stiffly along one of the sidewalks leading toward the quadrangle.
The weather on this afternoon was extraordinary. There were dour storm clouds in the sky,
but down near the horizon the heavens were still clear and the sun shone with gentle
radiance. The Captain swung his arms as though they would not bend at the elbow and kept
his eyes on the bottoms of his army slacks and his highly polished narrow shoes. He looked
up just as he reached the bench where Private Williams sat, and after staring at him for a
few seconds he went up to him Sluggishly the soldier rose to attention.

'Private Williams,' the Captain said.

The soldier waited, but Captain Penderton did not continue. He had meant to reprimand the
soldier for a violation of the regulations concerning the uniform. As he approached, it
had seemed to him that Private Williams had buttoned his coat improperly. At first glance
the soldier always looked as though he were only in partial uniform, or had neglected some
necessary part of his attire. But when they were face to face, Captain Penderton saw that
there was nothing for him to criticize. The impression of civilian carelessness was due to
the very body of the soldier himself and to no particular infringement of army rules.
Again the Captain stood mute and suffocated before the young man. In his heart there
coursed a wild tirade of curses, words of love, supplications, and abuse. But in the end
he turned away, still silent.

The rain that had been threatening held off until Captain Penderton was almost home. This
was not a slow, drizzling winter rain it came down with the roaring vehemence of a
summer thunderstorm. The Captain was within twenty yards of his house when the first drops
fell on him. With a short sprint he could have easily reached shelter. But his dragging
footsteps did not quicken, even when the icy, pouring torrent soaked into him. When he
opened his front door he was bright eyed and shivering.

Private Williams went into the barracks when he scented in the atmosphere the coming
rain. He sat in the day room until supper time and then, amid the rowdy exuberance of the
mess hall, he ate a copious, leisurely meal. Afterward he took from his locker a sack of
mixed penny candies.

While still chewing a marshmallow, he paid a visit to the latrine and there he picked a
fight At the time of his entrance all of the commodes except one were in use, and there
was a soldier ahead of him in the act of unbuttoning his trousers. But just as the man
started to sit down, Private Williams gave him a rough push and tried to oust him from his
place. A little crowd gathered about the fight which followed. From the first Private
Williams had the best of it, as he was both quick and strong. While fighting, his face
expressed neither effort nor anger; his features still were impassive and only the sweat
on his forehead, the look of blindness in his eyes, showed the results of his struggle.
Private Williams had his opponent in a helpless condition and the fight was already won
when all at once he himself suddenly gave up. He seemed completely to lose interest in the
fight and did not even bother to defend himself. He was soundly beaten and his head was
banged viciously against the cement floor. When it was over, he stood up groggily and left
the latrine without even using the commode after all.

This was not the first fight that Private Williams had provoked. During the past two
weeks he had stayed in the barracks every night, and had stirred up much trouble. This was
a new side of his personality that his barrack mates had not suspected. For hours he would
sit in torpid silence and then all at once he would perpetrate some inexcusable offense.
He no longer walked in the woods in his spare time, and at night he slept badly,
disturbing the room with nightmare mutters. No one, however, gave any thought to his
oddities. There was much behavior in the barracks far queerer than this. One old Corporal
wrote a letter every night to Shirley Temple making it a sort of diary of all that he had
done during the day, and mailing it before breakfast the next morning. Another man, who
had ten years' service behind him, jumped out of a three story window because a friend
would not lend him fifty cents for beer. A cook in the same battery was haunted by the
fixed idea that he had cancer of the tongue, an illusion that no medical denials could
dispel. He brooded before a mirror with his tongue out so far that he could see the taste
buds, and he starved himself to the point of emaciation.

After the fight Private Williams went to the sleeping room and lay down on his cot. He
put the sack of candy beneath his pillow and stared up at the ceiling. Outside the rain
had slackened and it was now night. A number of lazy reveries colored the mind of Private
Williams. He thought of the Captain, but he only saw a series of mental pictures that had
no meaning. To this young Southern soldier the officers were in the same vague category as
Negroes they had a place in his life, but he did not look on them as being human. He
accepted the Captain as fatalistically as though he were the weather or some natural
phenomenon. The Captain's behavior might seem unexpected, but he did not identify it with
himself. And it did not occur to him to question it, any more than he would question a
thunderstorm or the fading of a flower.

He had not been near the quarters of Captain Penderton since the night the lamp had been
switched on and he saw the dark woman looking at him from the doorway. At that time a
great fright had come in him but this terror had been more physical than mental, more
unconscious than understood. After he had heard the front door shut, he had looked out
cautiously and seen the way clear. Once safe again in the woods he had run desperately,
silently, although he did not realize exactly what it was he feared.

But the memory of the Captain's wife had not left him. He dreamed of The Lady every
night. Once, soon after his enlistment, he had got ptomaine poisoning and had been sent
into hospital. The thought of the bad sickness in women had made him shudder beneath the
cover whenever the nurses came near him, and he had lain for hours in misery rather than
ask of them some service. But he had touched The Lady and he was afraid of this sickness
no more. Every day he groomed and saddled her horse and watched her ride away. In the
early morning there was a wintry bitterness in the air and the Captain's wife was rosy and
high spirited. She always had a joke or a friendly word for Private Williams, but he never
looked at her directly or answered her pleasantries.

He never thought of her in connection with the stables or the open air. To him she was
always in the room where he had watched her in the night with such absorption. His memory
of these times was wholly sensual. There was the thick rug beneath his feet, the silk
spread, the faint scent of perfume. There was the soft luxurious warmth of woman flesh,
the quiet darkness the alien sweetness in his heart and the tense power in his body as
he crouched there near to her. Once having known this he could not let it go; in him was
engendered a dark, drugged craving as certain of fulfillment as death.

The rain stopped at midnight. Long ago the lights in the barracks had been turned off.
Private Williams had not undressed himself, and when the rain was over he put on his
tennis shoes and went outside. On his way to the Captain's quarters he took his usual
route, skirting the woods surrounding the post. But tonight there was no moon and the
soldier was walking much faster than usual. Once he lost himself, and when at last he
reached the Captain's house he had an accident. In the darkness he stumbled into what
seemed to him at first to be a deep pit. In order to get his bearings he struck a few
matches and saw that he had fallen into a recently dug hole. The house was dark, and the
soldier, who was now scratched, muddy, and breathless, waited a few moments before going
inside. In all he had come six times before, and this was the seventh and would be the
last.

Captain Penderton was standing at the back window of his bedroom. He had taken three
capsules, but still he could not sleep. He was slightly drunk with brandy, and a little
drugged but that was all. The Captain, who was keenly sensitive to luxury and a finicky
dresser, wore only the coarsest sleeping garments. He had on now a wrapper of rough black
wool that might have been bought for a recently widowed matron of a jail. His pajamas were
of some unbleached material as stiff as canvas. He was barefooted, although the floor was
now cold.

The Captain was listening to the sough of the wind in the pine trees when he saw out in
the night a tiny flicker of flame. The light was blown out by the wind in only a moment,
but during that instant the Captain had seen a face. And that face, brightened by the
flame and set in darkness, made the Captain stop his breath. He watched and could vaguely
make out the figure that crossed the lawn. The Captain clutched the front of his wrapper
and pressed his hand against his breast. He closed his eyes and waited.

At first no sound came to him. Then he could feel rather than hear the cautious footsteps
on the stairs. The Captain's door was ajar and through the crack he saw a dark silhouette.
He whispered something, but his voice was so sibilant and low that it sounded like the
wind outside.

Captain Penderton waited. With his eyes closed again, he stood there for moments of
anguished suspense. Then he went out into the hall and saw outlined against the pale gray
window of his wife's room the one for whom he sought. Afterward the Captain was to tell
himself that in this one instant he knew everything. Actually, in a moment when a great
but unknown shock is expected, the mind instinctively prepares itself by abandoning
momentarily the faculty of surprise. In that vulnerable instant a kaleidoscope of half
guessed possibilities project themselves, and when the disaster has defined itself there
is the feeling of having understood beforehand in some supernatural way. The Captain took
his pistol from the drawer of his bed table, crossed the hall, and switched on the light
in his wife's room. As he did this, certain dormant fragments of memory a shadow at the
window, a sound in the night came to him. He said to himself that he knew all. But what
it was he knew he could not have expressed. He was only certain that this was the end.