Flags in the Dust (32 page)

Bayard lay as she had left him. He was smoking a cigarette now, between puffs he dabbed it casually at a saucer on the bed beside him. “Well?” he said.

“You’re going to set the house on fire that way,” she told
him, removing the saucer. “You know Miss Jenny wouldn’t let you do that.”

“I know it,” he agreed, a little sheepishly, and she dragged the table up and set the saucer on it.

“Can you reach it now?”

“Yes, thanks. Did they give you enough to eat?”

“Oh, yes. Simon’s very insistent, you know. Shall I read some more, or had you rather sleep?”

“Read, if you dont mind. I think I’ll stay awake, this time.”

“Is that a threat?” He looked at her quickly as she seated herself and picked up the book.

“Say, what happened to you?” he demanded. “You acted like you were all in before dinner. Simon give you a drink, or what?”

“No, not that bad.” And she laughed, a little wildly, and opened the book. “I forgot to mark the place,” she said, turning the leaves swiftly. “Do you remember——No, you were asleep, weren’t you? Shall I go back to where you stopped listening?”

“No, just read anywhere. It’s all about alike, I guess. If you’ll move a little nearer, I believe I can stay awake.”

“Sleep, if you want to. I dont mind.”

“Meaning you wont come any nearer?” he asked, watching her with his bleak gaze. She moved her chair nearer and opened the book again and turned the pages on.

“I think it was about here,” she said, with indecision. “Yes.”

She read to herself for a line or two, then she began aloud, read to the end of the page, where her voice trailed off in grave consternation. She turned the next page then flipped it back. “I read this once; I remember it now.” She turned the leaves on, her serene brow puckered a little. “I must have been asleep too,” she said, and she glanced at him with friendly bewilderment. “I seem to have read pages and pages.……”

“Oh, begin anywhere,” he repeated.

“No: wait; here it is.” She read again and picked up the thread of the story. Once or twice she raised her eyes swiftly and found him watching her, bleakly but quietly. After a while he was no longer watching her, and at last, finding that his eyes were closed, she thought he slept. She finished the chapter and stopped.

“No,” he said drowsily. “Not yet.” Then, when she failed to resume, he opened his eyes and asked for a cigarette. She laid the book aside and struck the match for him, and picked up the book again.

The afternoon wore away. The negroes had gone, and there was no sound about the house save her voice, and the clock at quarter hour intervals; outside the shadows slanted more and more, peaceful harbingers of evening. He was asleep now, despite his contrary conviction, and after a while she stopped and laid the book away. The long shape of him lay stiffly in its cast beneath the sheet, and she sat and looked at his bold still face and the broken travesty of him and her tranquil sorrow overflowed in pity for him. He was so utterly without any affection for any thing at all; so——so.…… hard (no, that’s not the word—but cold eluded her; she could comprehend hardness, but not coldness.…)

Afternoon drew on; evening was finding itself. She sat musing and still and quiet, gazing out of the window where no wind yet stirred the leaves, as though she were waiting for someone to tell her what to do next, and she had lost all account of time other than as a dark unhurrying stream into which she gazed until the mesmerism of water conjured the water itself away.

He made an indescribable sound, and she turned her head quickly and saw his body straining terrifically in its cast, and his clenched hands and his teeth beneath his lifted lip, and as she sat blanched and incapable of further movement he made the
sound again. His breath hissed between his teeth and he screamed, a wordless sound that merged into a rush of profanity; and when she rose at last and stood over him with her hands against her mouth, his body relaxed and from beneath his sweating brow he watched her with wide intent eyes in which terror lurked, and mad, cold fury, and despair.

“He damn near got me, then,” he said in a dry, light voice, still watching her from beyond the fading agony in his wide eyes. “There was a sort of loop of ’em around my chest, and every time he fired, he twisted the loop a little tighter.……” He fumbled at the sheet and tried to draw it up to his face. “Can you get me a handkerchief? Some in that top drawer there.”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes,” and she went to the chest of drawers and held her shaking body upright by clinging to it, and found a handkerchief and brought it to him. She tried to dry his brow and face, but at last he took the handkerchief from her and did it himself. “You scared me,” she moaned. “You scared me so bad. I thought.……”

“Sorry,” he answered shortly. “I dont do that on purpose. I want a cigarette.”

She gave it to him and struck the match, and again he had to grasp her hand to hold the flame steady, and still holding her wrist he drew deeply several times. She tried to free her wrist, but his fingers were like steel, and her trembling body betrayed her and she sank into her chair again, staring at him with terror and dread. He consumed the cigarette in deep, swift draughts, and still holding her wrist, he began talking of his dead brother, without preamble, brutally. It was a brutal tale, without beginning, and crassly and uselessly violent and at times profane and gross, though its very wildness robbed it of offensiveness just as its grossness kept it from obscenity. And beneath it all, the bitter struggling of his false and stubborn
pride; and she sitting with her arm taut in his grasp and her other hand pressed against her mouth, watching him with terrified fascination.

“He was zigzagging: that was why I couldn’t get on the hun. Every time I got my sights on him, John’d barge in between us again, and then I’d have to hoick away before one of the others got on me. Then he quit zigzagging. Soon as I saw him sideslip I knew it was all over. Then I saw the fire streaking out along his wing, and he was looking back. He wasn’t looking at the hun at all; he was looking at me. The hun stopped shooting then, and all of us sort of just sat there for a while. I couldn’t tell what John was up to until I saw him swing his feet out. Then he thumbed his nose at me like he was always doing and flipped his hand at the hun and kicked his machine out of the way and jumped. He jumped feet first. You cant fall far feet first, you know, and pretty soon he sprawled out flat. There was a bunch of cloud right under us and he smacked on it right on his belly, like what we used to call gut-busters in swimming. But I never could pick him up below the cloud. I know I got down before he could have come out, because after I was down there his machine came diving out right at me, burning good. I pulled away from it, but the damn thing zoomed past and did a split-turn and came at me again, and I had to dodge. And so I never could pick him up when he came out of the cloud. I went down fast, until I knew I was below him, and looked again. But I couldn’t find him and then I thought that maybe I hadn’t gone far enough, so I dived again. I saw the machine crash about three miles away, but I never could pick John up again. And then they started shooting at me from the ground—”

He talked on and her hand came away from her mouth and slid down her other arm and tugged at his fingers. “Please,” she whispered. “Please!” He ceased and looked at her
and his fingers shifted, and just as she thought she was free they clamped again, and now both of her wrists were prisoners. She struggled, staring at him dreadfully, but he grinned his white cruel teeth at her and pressed her crossed arms down upon the bed beside him. “Please, please,” she implored, struggling; she could feel the flesh of her wrists, feel the bones turn in it like a loose garment; could see his bleak eyes and the fixed derision of his teeth, and suddenly she swayed forward in her chair and her head dropped between her prisoned arms and she wept with hopeless and dreadful hysteria.

After a while there was no sound in the room again, and he moved his head and looked at the dark crown of her head. He lifted his hand and saw the bruised discolorations where he had gripped her wrists. But she did not stir even then, and he dropped his hand upon her wrists again and lay quietly, and after a while even her shuddering and trembling had ceased. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wont do it again.” He could see only the top of her dark head, and her hands lay passive beneath his. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I wont do it anymore.”

“You wont drive that car fast anymore?” she asked, without moving; her voice was muffled.

“What?”

She made no answer, and with infinite small pains and slowly he turned himself, cast and all, by degrees onto his side, chewing his lip and swearing under his breath, and laid his other hand on her hair.

“What are you doing?” she asked, still without raising her head. “You’ll break your ribs again.”

“Yes,” he agreed, stroking her hair awkwardly.

“That’s the trouble, right there,” she said. “That’s the way you act: doing things that—that—You do things to hurt yourself just to worry people. You dont get any fun out of doing them.”

“No,” he agreed, and he lay with his chest full of hot needles, stroking her dark head with his hard, awkward hand. Far above him now the peak among the black and savage stars, and about him the valleys of tranquillity and of peace. It was later still; already shadows were growing in the room and losing themselves in shadow, and beyond the window sunlight was a diffused radiance, sourceless yet palpable; from somewhere cows lowed one to another, moody and mournful. At last she sat up, touching her face and her hair.

“You’re all twisted. You’ll never get well, if you dont behave yourself. Turn on your back, now.” He obeyed, slowly and painfully, his lip between his teeth and faint beads on his forehead, while she watched him with grave anxiety. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” he answered, and his hand shut again on her wrists that made no effort to withdraw. The sun was gone, and twilight, foster-dam of quietude and peace, filled the fading room and evening had found itself.

“And you wont drive that car fast anymore?” she persisted from the dusk.

“No,” he answered.

Meanwhile she had received another letter from her anonymous correspondent. Horace when he came in one night, had brought it in to her as she lay in bed with a book; tapped at her door and opened it and stood for a moment diffidently, and for a while they looked at one another across the barrier of their estrangement and their stubborn pride.

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” he said stiffly. She lay beneath the shaded light, with the dark splash of her hair upon
the pillow, and only her eyes moved as he crossed the room and stood above her where she lay with her lowered book, watching him with sober interrogation.

“What are you reading?” he asked. For reply she shut the book on her finger, with the jacket and its colored legend upward. But he did not look at it. His shirt was open beneath his silk dressing gown and his thin hand moved among the objects on the table beside the bed; picked up another book. “I never knew you to read so much.”

“I have more time for reading, now,” she answered.

“Yes.” His hand still moved about the table, touching things here and there. She lay waiting for him to speak. But he did not, and she said:

“What is it, Horace?”

He came and sat on the edge of the bed. But still her eyes were antagonistic and interrogatory and the shadow of her mouth was stubbornly cold. “Narcy?” he said. She lowered her eyes to the book, and he added: “First, I want to apologise for leaving you alone so often at night.”

“Yes?”

He laid his hand on her knee. “Look at me.” She raised her face, and the antagonism of her eyes. “I want to apologise for leaving you alone at night,” he repeated.

“Does that mean you aren’t going to do it anymore, or that you’re not coming in at all?”

For a time he sat, brooding upon the wild repose of his hand lying on her covered knee. Then he rose and stood beside the table again, touching the objects there, then he returned and sat on the bed. She was reading again, and he tried to take the book from her hand. She resisted.

“What do you want, Horace?” she asked impatiently.

He mused again while she watched his face. He looked up. “Belle and I are going to be married,” he blurted.

“Why tell me? Harry is the one to tell. Unless you and Belle are going to dispense with the formality of divorce.”

“Yes,” he said. “He knows it.” He laid his hand on her knee again, stroking it through the covers. “You aren’t even surprised, are you?”

“I’m surprised at you, but not at Belle. Belle has a backstairs nature.”

“Yes,” he agreed; then: “Who said that to you? You didn’t think of that yourself.” She lay with her book half raised, watching him. He took her hand roughly; she tried to free it, but vainly. “Who was it?” he demanded.

“Nobody told me. Dont, Horace.”

He released her hand. “I know who it was. It was Mrs Du Pre.”

“It wasn’t anybody,” she repeated. “Go away and leave me alone, Horace.” And behind the antagonism her eyes were hopeless and desperate. “Don’t you see that talking doesn’t help any?”

“Yes,” he said wearily, but he sat for a while yet, stroking her knee. Then he rose and thrust his hands into his gown, but turning, he paused again and drew forth an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s a letter for you. I forgot it this afternoon. Sorry.”

She was reading again. “Put it on the table,” she said, without raising her eyes. He laid the letter on the table and quitted the room. At the door he looked back, but her head was bent over her book.

As he removed his clothes it did seem that that heavy fading odor of Belle’s body clung to them, and to his hands even after he was in bed; and clinging, shaped in the darkness beside him Belle’s rich voluption, until within that warm, not-yet-sleeping region where dwells the mother of dreams, Belle grew palpable in ratio as his own body slipped away from him. And Harry too, with his dogged inarticulateness and his hurt
groping which was partly damaged vanity and shock, yet mostly a boy’s sincere bewilderment, that freed itself terrifically in the form of movie subtitles. Just before he slept his mind, with the mind’s uncanny attribute of irrelevant recapitulation, reproduced with the startling ghostliness of a dictaphone, an incident which at the time he had considered trivial. Belle had freed her mouth, and for a moment, her body still against his, she held his face in her two hands and stared at him with intent questioning eyes. “Have you plenty of money, Horace?” And “Yes,” he had answered immediately. “Of course I have.” And then Belle again, enveloping him like a rich and fatal drug, like a motionless and cloying sea in which he watched himself drown.