Once an Eagle (70 page)

“No, of course not—they didn't dare!”

“Possibly you're right.” His smile was devastating; she had never in all her life met such a compelling man—she'd never known such a man existed. “I'll bet I can learn to make a sauce Hollandaise before you learn how to drive an automobile.” His face seemed incredibly, dangerously close to hers. “You see?” he murmured. “And you said any woman is as good as any man …”

She was seized with a twinge of vertigo. The backs of her hands, her eyelids were tingling, and she laughed to conceal it—a laugh that was like a catch of breath. “Oh,” she cried softly, “but you're not
any
man! …”

Her parents had been rather constrained when she'd told them. A hesitant conference in the long, silent room, somber with the tasseled cloth lamp shades and the curved interior shutters drawn; the birch fire hissed and snapped behind the grate.

“We don't know an awful lot about him, dear.”

“Momma, he comes from a very good family, the Camberlins know them …”

“It's not that.” Her mother's face, usually so square and placid, looked troubled. “You're rather young for this, Emmy.”

“I'm twenty.”

“You're sure you're not getting carried away?” her father asked. He was smiling but his eyes were quick and piercing over his bifocals. “The war's over, you know.”

“Gracious goodness, I know
that!
”

“It'll mean long stretches in out-of-the-way places. Army posts aren't the most festive abodes on earth.”

“Yes, but there'll be …” She faltered, but not for long; this was something she wanted very much. “I mean there'll be money, won't there? I'll have some of my own …?”

Her parents exchanged a glance, and her father nodded and said, “Yes. Of course. I've told you that. But that isn't everything, you know.”

“Anyway, that won't be forever,” she said proudly. “It'll be different with Courtney. He's no run-of-the-mill Army product, you know—he's a permanent captain, at twenty-four.” Their massed reluctance distressed her; this was her chance, the chance of her life, and she wasn't going to fluff it: she couldn't! “He's been picked by General Pershing to serve on his personal staff. You'll see—Courtney's going to be a military attaché, and a general before anyone else in his class.”

“Maybe so.” Her father smiled at her again, fondly. “Just try to be sure about it, Emmy, that's all.”

“It's been such a short time,” her mother persisted. “Are you sure it's what you really want?”

“Oh yes,” she said, “it is, I know it is! …”

She knew she was right: she knew it. Courtney would accomplish great deeds. He was going out into the world where things were happening—away from Boston, the tortuous little streets and Sunday afternoons, the dances at Mr. Papanti's, the parochial encounters in bookshops, at Symphony, in the swept dirt walks of the Public Garden. He was getting away from all this! and so was she …

The tune—a dreamy ballad called “Deep Purple”—was over. She reached for her glass and saw it was empty; restrained the movement of her hand. The atmosphere in the club seemed warmer, caught in a humming rhythm. Out of it came the French marshal, his sideburns luxuriant and full, his collar adorned with golden acanthus leaves; a sleeve of the hussar's jacket swung gently. With care she rose to her feet, bound in that slow surge of excitement and despair she'd known for years.

“May I have the pleasure?” he was saying.

“Certainly, noble sir.—Why me?” she protested as they moved over the ruddy mirror of the floor.

“Why not?”

“But—then everyone'll know …”

“That's just my strategy. To throw them off. Not a single man has danced with his wife tonight, to my knowledge.”

“How can you tell?”

“Oh, it's easier than you think. I've made a little game of it—I've identified every man here but two or three.”

“And the women?”

“Ah, that's even easier!” She missed a step, lurched a little; his hand at the small of her back stiffened. In the guarded tone she hated he asked: “How are you feeling?”

“All right. A little tired.”

“I wish you'd go over and see this new man, Dowe. He was trained at Johns Hopkins.”

“Perhaps I will.”

“I wish you would. Have you danced with old Pilchard yet? or Fahrquahrson?”

“Good grief, Courtney,” she exclaimed, “I don't even know who they
are
…”

“I'll point them out for you, then.” His voice was flat with sarcasm. While they danced he went on talking, about the importance of the dinner party they were giving Thursday, something she must remember to say to Colonel Swayzee; every now and then she murmured, but she had stopped listening. The band was playing “Yesterdays,” a tune that could stir her to tears, and her mind drifted away, thinking of the apartment in Paris overlooking the lovely little Parc Monceau, the still, green tidelands of Chesapeake Bay, San Francisco with its brisk white salt cubes of houses running down the hills in the smoky dawn light, and beyond them the vast blue sweep of the Pacific. Yesterdays. So many lovely places; so little hope, so little joy.

She had been excited by it all at first: the new quarters, the receptions, the new acquaintances, the courtly formalities—like Boston graced with a southern warmth—the paternal affection of the senior officers. He did not make love to her for several evenings, and this disturbed her vaguely; when he did she was shocked by the tempestuous force of it, the mounting flood of words, hoarse cries, the frenzy that frightened even as it inflamed, the pressure of this alien flesh that burned her own, the two hands that gripped her throat, squeezing and squeezing at her life until she thought her heart would burst. What was wrong? Had he gone mad? His hands had left her throat. He was weeping now, a dry, husky groaning. Was this what men did? It couldn't be—! What was wrong?

“What's the matter?” she whispered, caught in dread. “What is it, darling?” For a time he made no reply, merely went on sobbing like a weary, frightened child, while she absently stroked his head.

“… It's been this way,” he murmured after a long silence. “I don't know why …”

“But what
is
it, dear? Are you in pain?” She was trembling badly herself now; she had assumed he would lead in this, as he had in everything else, and the growing silence frightened her more than the abortive lovemaking. “Are you in pain?”

“No”—he gave a tight, exasperated laugh that was like a sob—“I'm not in pain …”

“What is it, then? Is there anything—” she hesitated—“…I can do?”

He shook his head wildly. “No. Nothing …”

Ejaculatio praecox.
She had looked it up—later, much, much later—in a medical journal. A hateful, ugly phrase. She did her best; she tried to help him all she could, lent herself to all kinds of schemes—pathetic, shocking, bizarre: she forced herself to do them. For she did love him, with all her heart. She let him dress her in wild, provocative ways: she was an Indian princess, an Arab dancing girl, a Chinese courtesan. Occasionally they would succeed—such as the night he dressed her as a prostitute—but such moments were rare; she could never know. It went on and on, after the teas, the dinners, the pleasant, proper etiquette of receptions: a tense, humiliating ritual that left her whirling, drymouthed, quivering with a frustration that sapped her strength. Finally, one night, when she had given herself to a desperate expedient that revolted her utterly—still another occasion for failure, lying bound in mortification, strained beyond all endurance, listening to his taut, harsh sobbing, she cried: “God—think about
me! Me!
Can't you—?”

He raised his head and gazed at her with cold, implacable reproach; got up and left the room. Weeping she ran to his study. The door was shut. She asked him if she could come in. There was no answer. She tried the door; he had locked it. Softly she called to him that she was sorry, she hadn't meant it—only couldn't he see, couldn't he see what this did to
her—?
Waiting she shivered. There was only silence, an automobile horn bleating over on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the brisk, martial ticking of the clock in the living room.

After that there was much less between them. He read late, he busied himself with his work until all hours; often he didn't come in until two or three. He never needed much sleep. He was considered the best-informed junior officer on Pershing's staff, a man to watch. They entertained with lavish care—there was plenty of money for it: her money. Courtney took over more and more of the culinary specialties—he became renowned in Army circles for his salads and sauces; though he deprecated praise.

She thought: if we had a child, that would heal the breach; some of it. At first Courtney resisted the idea, then gradually relented. Early in the third year of their marriage Jinny was born—the issue of numerous patterns of revulsion, acts of coupling in which she scarcely participated. But Courtney seemed to be delighted with the baby, who was beautiful. Jinny was always a beautiful child. People never stopped remarking over it—that bright, intense, pear-shaped face with its deep amber eyes, which had so early manifested such willfulness. Where had she got it?

“No,” she'd said to Jinny one day when she was three, “we don't say things like that.”

The lovely little mouth had set. “I will.”

“No. You won't. You are not to say it again, or I'll punish you.”

Jinny had looked up at her, then, her eyes dark with that merry, defiant glare. “But I will
think
it,” she said. And watching her Emily had felt a slow, cold thrill of fear. She was afraid: afraid of her own child. Inevitably she thought of
The Scarlet Letter
and Hester Prynne's daughter Pearl—also extraordinarily beautiful—whose mischievous, wanton sensuality reflected the circumstances of her birth. Was it a punishment, then? the sins of the fathers? But she, Emily, lacked the Salem woman's indomitable fortitude …

Gradually it was borne in on her, beyond a doubt: Courtney did not love her. He had married her for her money, her position, the Boston tradition he admired. He did not love her; he did not love anyone. Watching him with the child she saw he was incapable of love: what he offered in its place was only a voracious absorption of the object, a manipulation of responses, the involvement of the other in the circle of his own concerns. What he sought had nothing to do with love, the baring of hearts or the sharing of a particular, fragile view of this discordant world. She saw it, and despair sank inside her like a weighted corpse consigned to burial at sea.

But she could not leave him: her pride alone would not let her. To go back to Boston, the tyranny of those Sunday afternoons, the silent, musty rooms where the motes turned slowly; to pace out the frozen sarabande of Symphony, church, bookshops, the Esplanade and feel the weight of pity on every hand—no: she could not do it. And she was a Yankee: she had chosen this life and she would stick it out; to the bitter end. Only once did she revolt—during the Battle Monuments Commission tour in Paris; a dinner party. Not a particularly important one. She didn't know why she'd forsaken it—only that the weather was so beautiful, the chestnut trees were all in blossom, the couples leaning toward each other over the café tables seemed to promise something very rare; she walked on and on, through lordly squares and gloomy battered tenements and fragrant parks until she reached a great bustling outdoor market where there were stalls filled with goblets, suits of armor, trays of medals, buttons, and old coins … Later she had an apéritif at a sidewalk café, watched a painter blocking in the Pont du Carrousel and a corner of the Louvre; and then for a time she just sat, footsore and still, watching the lights tremble and dance in the impenetrable slick of the river.

Courtney was waiting for her in a stark rage. “What happened? What
happened
to you—?”

“Nothing,” she replied. “Nothing happened to me.”

“You mean you—there was no
reason?
…”

“No. None.”

He had seized her by the shoulder. “Don't ever do that again. Do you hear? Ever!”

She looked up at him dully. “Oh, it's not as serious as all that, is it?”

“—Listen.” He was holding her against the wall with one hand; his face was white and very hard. She began to feel alarmed. “I'm going to tell you something. For your own good. Do you understand? For your own good.” He was panting; the words came in short, sharp exhalations, as though he were out of wind. “When I was twelve I had a pet squirrel. I caught him in a box trap and kept him in the cellar. He was the only real friend I ever had. I taught him to come and perch on my shoulder—right here—and take a walnut out of my hand. He even let me stroke his fur. I loved that squirrel like nothing else in this world … And then one day he bit me. Do you understand? This squirrel—my real friend—bit me! In the hand … I couldn't believe it, I cried and cried—and he just looked back at me, snapping his tail … ” His eyes narrowed until she could barely see the pupils; he gripped her coat at the throat and shook it with slow emphasis. “I'll tell you what I did. I'll tell you. I put his head in the vise on my workbench and I filed his front teeth down to the gums. And every day after school I went down to the cellar—and I watched that squirrel starve to death, surrounded by walnuts … Now do you understand?
Do you—?
”

She didn't know whether she did or not. She didn't know what she felt. She shut her eyes, opened them again.

“Now I want you to promise me,” he was saying very slowly between his teeth. “Here and now. Right here and now. I want you to promise me—on your word of honor—that you will never do a thing like that again.”