Reflections in a Golden Eye (11 page)

'What in the hell are you thinking about?' Leonora asked.

'Nothing.'

'Well, you look awfully peculiar to me.'

They had arranged to pick up Morris Langdon, and just as they were ready to leave he
called for them to come over for a drink. Alison was resting, so they did not go upstairs.
They had their drinks hurriedly at the dining room table, as they were already late. When
they were finished, Anacleto brought to the Major, who was in uniform, his military
evening cape. The little Filipino followed them to the door and said very sweetly: 'I hope
you have a pleasant evening.'

'Thank you,' said Leonora. 'Same to you.'

The Major, however, was not so guileless. He looked at Anacleto with suspicion.

When Anacleto had closed the door, he hurried into the sitting room and drew back the
curtain an inch to peek outside. The three of them, each of whom Anacleto hated with all
his heart, had paused on the steps to light cigarettes. Anacleto watched with great
impatience. While they had been in the kitchen a fine scheme had come to him. He had moved
three bricks from the rose garden and placed them at the end of the dark front sidewalk.
In his mind he saw all three of them tumbling like ninepins. When at last they strolled
across the lawn toward the car parked before the Pendertons' house, Anacleto was so vexed
that he gave his thumb a mean little bite. Then he hurried out to remove the obstruction,
as he did not wish to catch anyone else in his snare.

The evening of that night was like any other evening. The Pendertons and Major Langdon
went to a dance at the Polo Club and enjoyed themselves. Leonora had her usual rush from
the young Lieutenants and Captain Penderton found the opportunity, over a quiet highball
out on the veranda, to entrust his new story to a certain artillery officer who had a
reputation as a wit The Major stuck in the lounge with a cluster of his cronies, talking
of fishing, politics, and ponies. There was to be a drag hunt the next morning and the
Pendertons left with Major Langdon at about eleven o'clock. By that hour Anacleto, who had
stayed with his mistress for a time and given her an injection, was in bed. He always lay
propped up with pillows, just as did Madame Alison, although this position was so
uncomfortable that he could hardly ever get a good night's rest. Alison, herself, was
dozing. The Major and Leonora were in their rooms and sleeping soundly by midnight.
Captain Penderton had settled down for a quiet period of work in his study. It was a warm
night for the month of November and the scent of the pines was balmy in the air. There was
no wind and shadows lay still and dark on the lawns.

At about this time Alison Langdon felt herself awaking from a half sleep. She had had a
series of curious and vivid dreams that went back to the time of her childhood, and she
struggled against returning consciousness. But such a struggle was useless, and soon she
was lying wide awake with her eyes open to the dark. She began to cry, and the sound of
her soft nervous sobbing seemed not to come from herself, but from some mysterious
sufferer out somewhere in the night. She had had a very bad two weeks and she cried often.
To begin with, she was supposed to keep strictly to the bed, as the doctor had told her
that the next attack would finish her. However, she had no high opinion of her doctor and
privately she thought of him as an old army saw bones and a first class jackass to boot
He drank, although he was a surgeon, and once in an argument with her he had insisted that
Mozambique was on the west instead of the east coast of Africa and would not admit his
error until she got out an atlas; altogether she set little store by his opinions and
advice. She was restless, and two days before she had suddenly felt such a longing to play
the piano that she had got up, dressed, and gone downstairs when Anacleto and her husband
were away. She played for a while and enjoyed herself. On the way back to her room she
took the stairs very slowly and although she was very tired there were no ill effects.

The feeling of being trapped because now she would certainly have to wait until she was
better before going on with her plans made her difficult to care for. At first they had
had a hospital nurse, but the nurse and Anacleto did not get on well together and after a
week she had left. Alison was continually imagining things. That afternoon a child
somewhere in the neighborhood had screamed, as children often scream in play, and she had
had the unreasonable fear that the child was hit by an automobile. She sent Anacleto
rushing out into the street, and even after he had assured her that the children were only
playing I spy, she could not get over her anxiety. Then the day before she had smelled
smoke and was certain the house was on fire. Anacleto went over every inch of the premises
and still she was not reassured. Any sudden noise or trivial mishap would make her cry.
Anacleto had bitten his fingernails to the quick and the Major stayed away from home as
much as possible.

Now at midnight as she lay crying in the dark room another delusion came to her. She
looked out of the window and saw again the shadow of a man on the Pendertons' back lawn.
He was standing quite still, leaning against a pine tree. Then, as she watched him, he
crossed the grass and went in by the back door. It came to her then with a fearful shock
that this man, this skulker, was her own husband. He was sneaking in to Weldon Pendertons
wife, even though Weldon himself was at home and working in his study. So great was her
feeling of outrage that she did not stop to reason. Sick with anger she got out of bed and
vomited in the bathroom. Then she put on a coat over her nightgown and stepped into a pair
of shoes.

She did not hesitate on her way over the Pendertons'. Nor did she once ask herself what
she, who hated scenes above all things, would do in the situation which she was about to
precipitate. She went in by the front way and closed the door behind her noisily. The hall
was half dark, as only a lamp was lighted in the sitting room. Breathing painfully she
climbed the stairs. Leonora's door was open and she saw the silhouette of a man squatting
by the bedside. She stepped inside the room and switched on the lamp in the corner.

The soldier blinked in the light. He put his hand to the window sill and half rose from
his crouching position. Leonora stirred in her sleep, murmured, and turned over toward the
wall. Alison stood in the doorway, her face white and twisted with amazement. Then without
a word she backed out of the room.

In the meantime Captain Penderton had heard the front door open and close. He felt that
something was amiss, but an instinct cautioned him to remain at his desk. He nibbled the
eraser of his pencil and waited tensely. He had not known what to expect, but he was
surprised when there was a knock on the door, and before he could reply Alison had come
into the study.

'Why, whatever brings you here this time of the night?' the Captain asked with a nervous
laugh.

She did not answer at once. She gathered the collar of her coat up close around her neck.
When at last she spoke, her voice had a wooden tone, as if shock had deadened the
vibrations. 'I think you had better go up to your wife's room,' she said.

This announcement, together with the strangeness of her appearance, startled the Captain
greatly. But even stronger than his inward tumult was the thought that he must not lose
his composure. In a flash a number of conflicting assumptions came to the Captain's mind.
Her words could mean only one thing that Morris Langdon was in Leonora's room. But
surely not, for they would hardly be so willy nilly as that! And if so what a position it
would put him in! The Captain's smile was sugary and controlled. He did not reveal in any
way his feelings of anger, doubt, and intense annoyance.

'Come, my dear,' he said in a motherly voice, 'you shouldn't be roaming around like this.
I'll take you home.'

Alison gave the Captain a long piercing look. She seemed to be fitting together some
mental puzzle. After a time she said slowly: 'You don't mean to sit there and tell me you
know this and do nothing about it?'

Stubbornly the Captain retained his poise. 'I'll take you home,' he said. 'You're not
yourself and you don't know what you're talking about.'

He got up hurriedly and took Alison by the arm. The feel of her frail, brittle elbow
beneath the cloth of her coat repelled him. He hurried her down the steps and across the
lawn. The front door of her house was open, but the Captain gave the doorbell a long ring.
After a few moments Anacleto came into the hall, and before the Captain could make his
departure he also saw Morris come out of his room at the top of the stairs. With mixed
feelings of confusion and relief, he went back home, leaving Alison to explain herself as
she chose.

The next morning Captain Penderton was not greatly surprised to learn that Alison Langdon
had altogether lost her mind. By noon the whole post knew of this. (Her condition was
referred to as a “nervous breakdown,” but no one was misled by this.) When the Captain and
Leonora went over to offer their services, they found the Major standing outside the
closed door of his wife's room, holding a towel over his arm. He had been standing there
patiently almost all the day. His light colored eyes were wide with surprise and he kept
twisting and mashing the flap of his ear. When he came down to see the Pendertons, he
shook hands with them in a strangely formal fashion and blushed painfully.

With the exception of the doctor, Major Langdon kept the details of this tragedy a secret
in his own shocked heart Alison did not tear up the sheets or foam at the mouth as he had
imagined the insane to do. On coming into the house in her nightgown at one o'clock in the
morning, she had simply said that not only did Leonora deceive her husband but that she
deceived the Major as well, and with an enlisted man. Then Alison said that furthermore,
she herself was going to get a divorce, and she added that as she had no money she would
appreciate it if he, the Major, would lend her the sum of five hundred dollars at four per
cent interest with Anacleto and Lieutenant Weincheck as guarantors. In answer to his
startled questions, she said that she and Anacleto were going into some business together
or would buy a prawn boat Anacleto had hauled her trunk into the room and all night he was
busy packing under her supervision. They stopped off now and then to drink hot tea and
study a map to decide where they would go. Sometime before dawn they settled on
Moultrieville, South Carolina.

Major Langdon was greatly shaken. He stood in the corner of Alison's room for a long time
and watched them pack. He dared not open his mouth. After a long time, when all that she
had said had soaked into his mind and he was forced to acknowledge to himself that she was
crazy, he took her nail scissors and the fire tongs out of the room. Then he went
downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with a bottle of whiskey. He cried and sucked the
salty tears from his wet mustache. Not only did he grieve for Alison's sake, but he felt
ashamed, as though this were a reflection on his own respectability. The more he drank the
more his misfortune seemed to him incomprehensible. Once he rolled his eyes up toward the
ceiling and called out in the silent kitchen with a questioning roar of supplication:

'God? O God ?'

Again he banged his head on the table until a knot came out on his forehead. By six
thirty in the morning he had finished more than a quart of whiskey. He took a shower,
dressed, and telephoned Alison's doctor, who was a Colonel in the medical corps and the
Major's own friend. Later another doctor was called in and they struck matches in front of
Alison's nose and asked her various questions. It was during this examination that the
Major had picked up the towel from the rack in her bathroom and put it over his arm. It
gave him the look of being prepared for any emergency and was somehow a comfort to him.
Before leaving, the Colonel talked for a long while, using the word 'psychology' many
times, and the Major nodded dumbly at the end of every sentence. The doctor finished by
advising that she be sent to a sanatorium as soon as possible.

'But look here,' the Major said helplessly. 'No strait jacket or any place like that. You
understand where she can play the phonograph comfortable. You know what I mean.'

Within two days a place in Virginia had been chosen. Due to hurry the institution had
been selected more because of the price (it was astonishingly expensive) than for the
therapeutic reputation. Alison only listened bitterly when the plans were told to her.
Anacleto, of course, was going also. A few days later the three of them left on the train.

This establishment in Virginia catered to patients who were both physically and mentally
ill. And the diseases that attack the body and the brain simultaneously are of a special
land. There were a number of old gentlemen who floundered about in a state of total
confusion and had to keep a close watch on their unwieldy legs. There were a few lady
morphinists and any number of rich young liquor heads. But the place had a pretty terrace
where tea was served in the afternoon, the gardens were well kept, and the rooms furnished
luxuriously; the Major was satisfied and rather proud that he could afford it.

Alison, however, made no comment just at first. Indeed she did not speak at all to her
husband until they sat down to dinner that night. As an exception, on the evening of her
arrival she was to dine downstairs, but beginning with the next morning she was to rest in
bed until the condition of her heart improved. At their table there were candles and
hothouse roses. The service and the table linen were of the best quality.

Alison, however, seemed not to observe these niceties. On sitting down to the table she
took in the room with one long, wandering gaze. Her eyes, dark and shrewd as always,
examined the occupants at all the other tables. Then finally she spoke quietly and with
bitter relish: