Soldiers Pay (14 page)

“He doesn't give us much hope for Donald's sight.”

“But he's only a general practitioner. We'll get a specialist from Atlanta,” she encouraged him, touching his sleeve.

And here was Miss Cecily Saunders tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying path, between the fresh-sparkled grass.

IX

Cecily sat in her room in pale satin knickers and a thin orange-coloured sweater, with her slim legs elevated to the arm of another chair, reading a book. Her father, opening the door without knocking, stared at her in silent disapproval. She met his gaze for a time, then lowered her legs.

“Do nice girls sit around half-naked like this?” he asked coldly. She laid her book aside and rose.

“Maybe I'm not a nice girl,” she answered flippantly. He watched her as she enveloped her narrow body in a flimsy diaphanous robe.

“I suppose you consider that an improvement, do you?”

“You shouldn't come in my room without knocking, daddy,” she told him fretfully.

“No more I will, if that's the way you sit in it.” He knew he was creating an unfortunate atmosphere in which to say what he wished, but he felt compelled to continue. “Can you imagine your mother sitting in her room half undressed like this?”

“I hadn't thought about it.” She leaned against the mantel combatively respectful. “But I can if she wanted to.”

He sat down. “I want to talk to you, Sis.” His tone was changed and she sank on to the foot of the bed, curling her legs under her, regarding him hostilely. How clumsy I am, he thought, clearing his throat. “It's about young Mahon.”

She looked at him.

“I saw him this noon, you know.”

She was forcing him to do all the talking. Dammit, what an amazing ability children have for making parental admonition hard to achieve. Even Bob was developing it.

Cecily's eyes were green and fathomless. She extended her arm, taking a nail file from her dressing table. The downpour had ceased and the rain was only a whisper in the wet leaves. Cecily bent her face above the graceful slender gesturing of her hands.

“I say, I saw young Mahon today,” her father repeated with rising choler.

“You did? How did he look, daddy?” Her tone was so soft, so innocent that he sighed with relief. He glanced at her sharply, but her face was lowered sweetly and demurely: he could see only her hair filled with warm reddish lights and the shallow plane of her cheek and her soft, unemphatic chin.

“That boy's in bad shape, Sis.”

“His poor father,” she commiserated above her busy hands. “It is so hard on him, isn't it?”

“His father doesn't know.”

She looked quickly up and her eyes and dark, darker still. He saw that she didn't know either.

“Doesn't know?” she repeated. “How can he help seeing that scar?” Her face blanched and her hand touched her breast delicately. “Do you mean——”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “I mean his father thinks—that he—his father doesn't think—I mean his father forgets that his journey has tired him, you see,” he finished awkwardly. He continued swiftly: “That's what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“About being engaged to him? How can I, with that scar? How can I?”

“No, no, not engaged to him, if you don't want to be. We won't think about the engagement at all now. But just keep on seeing him until he gets well, you see.”

“But, daddy, I can't. I just can't.”

“Why, Sis?”

“Oh, his face. I can't bear it anymore.” Her own face was wrung with the recollection of a passed anguish. “Don't you see I can't? I would if I could.”

“But you'll get used to it. And I expect a good doctor can patch him up and hide it. Doctors can do anything these days. Why, Sis, you are the one who can do more for him right now than any doctor.”

She lowered her head to her arms folded upon the foot-rail of the bed and her father stood beside her, putting his arm about her slim, nervous body.

“Can't you do that much, Sis? Just drop in and see him occasionally?”

“I just can't,” she moaned, “I just can't.”

“Well, then, I guess you can't see that Farr boy anymore, either.”

She raised her head quickly and her body became taut beneath his arm. “Who says I can't?”

“I say so, Sis,” he replied gently and firmly.

Her eyes became blue with anger, almost black.

“You can't prevent it. You know you can't.” She thrust herself back against his arm, trying to evade it. He held her and she twisted her head aside, straining from him.

“Look at me,” he said quietly, putting his other hand under her cheek. She resisted, he felt her warm breath on his hand, but he forced her face around. Her eyes blazed at him, “If you can't occasionally see the man you are engaged to, and a sick man to boot, I'm damned if I'll have you running around with anybody else.”

There were red prints of his fingers on her cheek, and her eyes slowly filled. “You are hurting me,” she said, and feeling her soft, vague chin in his palm and her fragile body against his arm, he knew a sudden access of contrition. He picked her up bodily and sat again in a chair, holding her on his lap.

“Now, then,” he whispered, rocking, holding her face against his shoulder, “I didn't mean to be so rough about it. “

She lay against him limply, weeping, and the rain filled the interval, whispering across the roof, among the leaves of trees, After a long space in which they could hear dripping eaves and the happy Sound of gutters and a small ivory clock in the room, she moved and still holding her face against his coat, she clasped her father about the neck.

“We won't think about it anymore,” he told her, kissing her cheek. She clasped him again tightly, then slipping from his lap, she stood at the dressing table, dabbing powder upon her face. He rose, and in the mirror across her shoulder he saw her blurred face and the deft nervousness of her hands. “We won't think of it anymore,” he repeated, opening the door. The orange Sweater was a hushed incandescence under the formal illusion of her robe, moulding her narrow back, as he closed the door after him.

As he passed his wife's room she called to him.

“What were you scolding Cecily for, Robert?” she asked.

But he stumped on down the and soon she heard him cursing Tobe porch.

Mrs. Saunders entered her daughter's room and found her swiftly dressing. The sun broke suddenly through the rain and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.

“Where are you going, Cecily?” she asked.

“To see Donald,” she replied, drawing on her stockings, twisting them skilfully and deftly at the knees.

X

Januarius Jones, lounging through the wet grass, circled the house and peering through the kitchen window saw Emmy's back and one angled arm sawing across her body. He mounted the steps quietly and entered. Emmy's stare above her poised iron was impersonally combative. Jones's yellow eyes, unabashed, took her and the ironing board and the otherwise empty kitchen boldly. Jones said:

“Well, Cinderella.”

“My name is Emmy,” she told him icily.

“That's right,” he agreed equably, “so it is. Emmy, Emmeline, Emmylune, Lune—La lune en grade aucune rancune. But does it? Or perhaps you prefer ‘Noir sur a lune?' Or do you make finer or less fine distinctions than this? It might be jazzed a bit, you know. Aelia thought so, quite successfully, but then she had a casement in which to lean at dusk and harp her sorrow on her golden hair. You don't seem to have any golden hair, but, then you might jazz your hair up a little too. Ah, this restless young generation! Wanting to jazz up everything, not only their complexes, but the shapes of their behinds as well.”

She turned her back on him indifferently, and again her arm sawed the iron steadily along a stretched fabric. He became so still that after a while she turned to see what had become of him. He was so close behind her that her hair brushed his face. Clutching her iron, she shrieked.

“Hah, my proud beauty!” hissed Jones in accepted style, putting his arms around her.

“Let me go!” she said, glaring at him.

“Your speech is wrong,” Jones informed her helpfully. “‘Release me, villain, or it will be the worse for you,' is what I you should say.”

“Let me go,” she repeated.

“Not till you divulge them papers,” he answered, fat and solemn, his yellow eyes expressionless as a dead man's.

“Lemme go, or I'll burn you,” she cried hotly, brandishing the iron. They stared at one another. Emmy's eyes were fiercely implacable and Jones said at last:

“Dam'f I don't believe you would.”

“See if I don't,” she said with anger. But releasing her, he sprang away in time. Her red hand brushed her hair from her hot face and her eyes blazed at him. “Get out, now,” she I ordered, and Jones, sauntering easily toward the door, remarked , plaintively:

“What's the matter with you women here, anyway? Wildcats. Wildcats. By the way, how is the dying hero today?”

“Go on now,” she repeated, gesturing with the iron. He passed through the door and closed it behind him. Then he opened it again and making her a deep fattish bow from the threshold he withdrew.

In the dark hallway he halted, listening. Light from the front door fell directly in his face: he could see only the edged indication of sparse furniture. He paused, listening. No, she isn't here, he decided. Not enough talk going on for her to be here. That femme hates silence like a cat does water. Cecily and silence: oil and water. And she'll be on top of it too. Little bitch, wonder what she meant by that yesterday. And Georgie, too. She's such a fast worker I guess it takes a whole string to keep her busy. Oh, well, there's always tomorrow. Especially when today ain't over yet. Go in and pull the Great Dane's leg a while.

At the study door he met Gilligan. He didn't recognize him at first.

“Bless my soul,” he said at last. “Has the army disbanded already? What will Pershing do now, without any soldiers to salute him? We had scarcely enough men to fight a war with, but with a long peace ahead of us—man, we are helpless.”

Gilligan said coldly: “Whatcher want?”

“Why, nothing, thank you. Thank you so much. I merely came to call upon our young friend in the kitchen and to incidentally inquire after Mercury's brother.”

“Whose brother?”

“Young Mr. Mahon, in a manner of speaking, then.”

“Doctor's with him,” Gilligan replied curtly. “You can't go in now.” He turned on his heel.

“Not at all,” murmured Jones, after the other's departing back. “Not at all, my dear fellow.” Yawning, he strolled up the hall. He stood in the entrance, speculative, filling his pipe. He yawned again openly. At his right was an open door and he entered a stuffily formal room. Here was a convenient window ledge on which to put spent matches, and sitting beside it he elevated his feet to another chair.

The room was depressingly hung with glum portraits of someone's forbears, between which the principal strain of kinship appeared to be some sort of stomach trouble. Or perhaps they were portraits of the Ancient Mariner at different ages before he wore out his albatross. (Not even a dead fish could make a man look like that, thought Jones, refusing the dyspeptic gambit of their fretful painted eyes. No wonder the parson believes in hell.) A piano had not been opened in years, and opened would probably sound like the faces looked. Jones rose and from a bookcase he got a copy of Paradise Lost (cheerful thing to face a sinner with, he thought), and returned to his chair. The chair was hard, but Jones was not. He elevated his feet again.

The rector and a stranger came into his vision, pausing at the front door in conversation. The stranger departed and that black woman appeared. She and the rector exchanged a few words. Jones remarked with slow, lustful approval her firm, free carriage, and——

And here came Miss Cecily Saunders in pale lilac with a green ribbon at her waist, tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying gravel path between the fresh-sparkled grass.

“Uncle Joe!” she called, but the rector had already withdrawn to his study. Mrs. Powers met her and she said: “Oh, how do you do? May I see Donald?”

She entered the hall beneath the dim lovely fanlight, and her roving glance remarked one sitting with his back to a window. She said Donald! and sailed into the room like a bird. One hand covered her eyes and the other was outstretched as she ran with quick tapping steps and sank before him at his feet, burying her face in his lap.

“Donald, Donald! I will try to get used to it, I will try! Oh, Donald, Donald! Your poor face! But I will, I will,” she repeated hysterically. Her fumbling hand touched his sleeve and slipping down his arm she drew his hand under her cheek, clasping it. “I didn't mean to, yesterday. I wouldn't hurt you for anything, Donald. I couldn't help it, but I love you, Donald, my precious, my own.” She burrowed deeper into his lap.

“Put your arms around me, Donald,” she said, “until I get used to you again.”

He complied, drawing her upward. Suddenly, struck with something familiar about the coat, she raised her head. It was Januarius Jones.

She sprang to her feet. “You beast, why didn't you tell me?”

“My dear ma'am, who am I to refuse what the gods send?”

But she did not wait to hear him. At the door Mrs. Powers stood watching with interest. Now she's laughing at me! Cecily thought furiously. Her glance was a blue dagger and her voice was like dripped honey.

“How silly of me, not to have looked,” she said sweetly. “Seeing you, I thought at once that Donald would be nearby. I am sure if I were a man I'd always be as near you as possible. But I didn't know you and Mr.—Mr. Smith were such good friends. Though they say that fat men are awfully attractive. May I see Donald—do you mind?”