Soldiers Pay (21 page)

Most of them Gilligan knew by name and he sat also upon the balustrade. He was offered and accepted a cigarette and he perched among them while they talked loudly, drowning the intimation of dancers they could not emulate, of girls who once waited upon their favours and who now ignored them—the hangover of warfare in a society tired of warfare. Puzzled and lost, poor devils. Once Society drank war, brought them into manhood with a cultivated taste for war; but now Society seemed to have found something else for a beverage, while I they were not yet accustomed to two and seventy-five per cent.

“Look at those kids that grew up while we were away,” one advised him with passion. “The girls don't like it. But what can they do? We can't do them dances. It ain't just going through the motions. You could'learn that, I guess. It's—it's——” he sought vainly for words. He gave it up and continued: “Funny, too. I learned things from French women. . . . Say, the girls don't like it, do they? They haven't changed that much, you know.”

“Naw, they don't like it,” Gilligan answered. “Look at them two.”

“Sure, they don't like it. These are nice girls: they will be the mothers of the next generation. Of course they don't like it.”

“Somebody sure does, though,” Gilligan replied. Dr. Gary passed, dancing smoothly, efficiently, quite decorous, yet enjoying himself, His partner was young and briefly skirted: you could see that she danced with him because it was the thing to dance with Dr. Gary—no one knew exactly why. She was conscious of physical freedom, of her young, uncorseted body, flat as a boy's and, like a boy's, pleasuring in freedom and motion, as though freedom and motion were water, pleasuring her flesh to the intermittent teasing of silk. Her glance followed over Dr. Gary's shoulder (it was masculine because it was drably conventional in black) an arrested seeking for a lost rhythm, lost deliberately. Dr. Gary's partner, skilfully following him, watched the other couple, ignoring the girl. (If there's justice in heaven, I'll get him next time.)

“Dancing with you,” said Dr. Gary, “is like a poem by a minor poet named Swinburne.” Dr. Gary preferred Milton: he had the passages all designated, like a play.

“Swinburne?” She smiled vaguely, watching the other couple, not losing the rhythm, not cracking her paint. Her face was smooth, as skilfully done and as artificial as an orchid. “Did he write poems, too?” (Is he thinking of Ella Wilcox or Irene Castle? He is a grand dancer; takes a good dancer to get along with Cecily.) “I think Kipling is awfully cute, don't you?” (What a funny dress Cecily has on.)

Gilligan, watching the dancers, said: “What?”

The other repeated defensively: “He was in a French base. Sure he was. Two or three years. Good fellow.” He added: “Even if he can dance like they do.”

Light, motion, sound: no solidity. A turgid compulsion, passionate and evanescent. And outside spring, like a young girl left of happiness and incapable of sorrow.”

“ . . . throw it on the wall. Oh, oh, oh, oh . . .” “. . . won't never forget his expression when he said, ‘Jack, mine's got syph. Had her . . . '” “shake it and break it, shake it. . . .” “First night in Paris then the other one. . . . .” “don't let it fall. . . .” “ . . . with a gun . . . twenty dollars in gold pinned to my . . .” “I wonder where my easy, easy rider's . . .”

“Sure,” Gilligan agreed. He wondered where Madden, whom he liked, was, and not expecting an answer he was informed. (There she is again. Her feather fan like a willow at evening, her arm crossing conventional black a slim warm plane. Jove would have said, How virginal her legs are, but Gilligan, not being Jove, said, For Christ's sake, wishing Donald Mahon were her partner or failing this, being glad he couldn't see her.)

The music stopped. The dancers stood waiting its renewal. The hostess talking interminably appeared and as before a plague people scattered before her passage. Gilligan caught, submerged beneath waves of talk, suffered her, watching couples pass from the veranda on to the vague lawn. How soft their bodies look, their little backs and hips, he thought, saying, yes ma'am or no ma'am. At last he walked away and left her talking, and in a swing he saw Madden and a stranger.

“This is Mr. Dough,” Madden said, greeting him. “How's Mahon?”

Gilligan shook hands. “He's outside there, now, with Mrs. Powers.”

“He is? Mahon was with the British,” he explained to his companion. “Aviation.”

He betrayed a faint interest. “R.A.F.?”

“I guess so,” Gilligan replied. “We brought him over to hear the music a while.”

“Brought him?”

“Got his in the head. Don't remember much,” Madden informed the other. “Did you say Mrs. Powers is with him?” he asked Gilligan.

“Yeh, she came. Why not come out and speak to her?”

Madden looked at his companion. Dough shifted his cork leg. “I think not,” he said. “I'll wait for you.”

Madden rose. “Come on,” Gilligan said, “she'll be glad to see you. She ain't a bad sort, as Madden can tell you.”

“No, I'll wait here, thanks. But come back, will you?”

Madden read his unexpressed thought. “She's dancing now. I'll be back before then.”

They left him lighting a cigarette. The negro cornetist had restrained his men and removed them temporarily and the porch was deserted save for the group sitting on the balustrade. These, the hostess, with a renascence of optimism, had run to earth and captured.

Gilligan and Madden crossed grass, leaving lights behind. “Mrs. Powers, you remember Mr. Madden,” Gilligan informed her formally. He was not big, yet there was something big and calm about him, a sense of competent inertia after activity. Madden saw her colourless face against the canopied darkness of the car, her black eyes and her mouth like a scar. Beside her Mahon sat motionless and remote, waiting for music which you could not tell whether or not he heard.

“Good evening, ma'am,” Madden said, enveloping her firm, slow hand, remembering a figure sharp against the sky screaming. You got us killed and firing point-blank into another man's face red and bitter in a relief of transient flame against a sorrowful dawn.

XI

Jones, challenging the competition, danced with her twice, once for six feet and then for nine feet. She could not dance with the muscular facility of some of the other girls. Perhaps this was the reason she was in such demand. Dancing with the more skilled ones was too much like dancing with agile boys. Anyway, men all seemed to want to dance with her, to touch her.

Jones, foiled for the second time, became yellowly speculative: tactical; then, watching his chance, he cut in upon glued hair and a dinner coat. The man raised his empty ironed face fretfully, but Jones skilfully cut her out of the prancing herd and into the angle made by the corner of the balustrade. Here only his back could be assailed.

He knew his advantage was but temporary, so he spoke quickly.

“Friend of yours here tonight.”

Her feather fan drew softly across his neck. He sought her knee with his and she eluded him with efficiency, trying vainly to manoeuvre from the corner. One desiring to cut in importuned him from behind and she said with exasperation: “Do you dance, Mr. Jones? They have a good floor here. Suppose we try it?”

“Your friend Donald dances. Ask him for one,” he told her, feeling her shallow breast and her nervous efforts to evade him. One importuned him from behind and she raised her pretty unpretty face. Her hair was soft and fine, carelessly caught about her head and her painted mouth was purple in this light.

“Here? Dancing?”

“With his two Niobes. I saw the female one and I imagine the male one is here also.”

“Niobes?”

“That Mrs. Powers, or whatever her name is.”

She held her head back so as to see his face. “You are lying.”

“No, I'm not. They are here.”

She stared at him. He could feel her fan drooping from her arched wrist on his cheek softly and one importuned him from behind. “Sitting out now, in a car,” he added.

“With Mrs. Powers?”

“Watch your step, sister, or she'll have him.”

She slipped from him suddenly. “If you aren't going to dance——”

One importuning him from behind repeated tirelessly. “May I cut in,” and she evaded Jones's arm.

“Oh, Lee. Mr. Jones doesn't dance.”

“M'I've this dance,” mumbled the conventional one conventionally, already encircling her. Jones stood baggy and yellow, yellowly watching her fan upon her partner's coat, like a hushed splash of water, her arching neck and her arm crossing a black shoulder with luminous warmth, the indicated silver evasion of her limbs anticipating her partner's like a broken dream.

“Got a match?” Jones, pausing, asked abruptly of a man sitting alone in a swing. He lit his pipe and lounged in slow and fat belligerence among a group sitting upon the balustrade near the steps, like birds. The negro cornetist spurred his men to fiercer endeavour, the brass died and a plaintive minor of hushed voices carried the rhythm until the brass, suspiring again, took it. Jones sucked his pipe, thrusting his hands in his jacket and a slim arm slid suddenly beneath his tweed sleeve.

“Wait for me, Lee.” Jones, looking around, remarked her fan and glass-like fragility of her dress. “I must see some people in a car.”

The boy's ironed face was a fretted fatuity above his immaculate linen. “Let me go with you.”

“No, no. You wait for me. Mr. Jones will take me: you don't even know them. You dance until I come back. Promise?”

“But say——”

Her hand flashed slimly staying him. “No, no. Please. Promise?”

He promised and stood to stare at them as they descended the steps passing beneath the two magnolias and so on into darkness, where her dress became a substanceless articulation beside the man's shapeless tweed. . . . After a while he turned and walked down the emptying veranda. Where'd that slob come from? he wondered, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation. Do they let anybody in here?

As he hesitated, the hostess appeared talking interminably, but he circumvented her with skill of long practice. Beyond a shadowed corner in the half-darkness of a swing a man sat alone. He approached and before he could make his request the man extended a box of matches.

“Thanks,” he murmured, without surprise, lighting a cigarette. He strolled away, and the owner of the matches fingered the small, crisp wood box, wondering mildly who the third one would be.

XII

“No, no, let's go to them first.”

She arrested their progress and after a time succeeded in releasing her arm. As they stood, a couple passed them, and the girl, leaning to her, whispered: “See right through you. Stay out of the light.”

They passed on and she looked after them, watching the other girl. Cat! What a queer dress she is wearing. Funny ankles. Funny. Poor girl.

But she had little time for impersonal speculation, being attached temporarily to Jones. “No, no,” she repeated, twisting the hand he held, drawing him in the direction of the car. Mrs. Powers, looking over Madden's head, saw them.

Jones released the fragile writhing of her fingers, and she sped delicately over the damp grass. He followed flatly and she put her hands on the door of the car, her narrow nervous hands, between which the green fan splashed graciously.

“Oh, how do you do? I didn't have any idea you were coming! If I had I would have arranged partners for you. I'm sure you dance awfully well. But then, as soon as the men see you here you won't lack for partners, I know.”

(What does she want with him now? Watching me: doesn't trust me with him.)

“Awfully nice dance. And Mr. Gilligan!” (What's she wanta come worrying him for now for? She bothers damn little while he's sitting at home there.) “Of course, one simply does not see Donald without Mr. Gilligan. It must be nice to have Mr. Gilligan fond of you like that. Don't you think so, Mrs. Powers?” Her braced straightening arms supported a pliant slow backward curve from her hips. “And Rufus. (Yes, she is pretty. And silly. But—but pretty.) You deserted me for another woman! Don't say you didn't. I tried to make him dance with me, Mrs. Powers, but he wouldn't do it. Perhaps you had better luck?” A dropped knee moulded the glass-like fragility of her silver dress. “Ah, you needn't say anything: we know how attractive Mrs. Powers is, don't we, Mr. Jones?” (See your behind, the shape of it. And your whole leg, when you stand like that. Knows it, too.)

Her eyes became hard, black. “You told me they were dancing,” she accused.

“He can't dance, you know,” Mrs. Powers said. “We brought him so he could hear the music.”

“Mr. Jones told me you and he were dancing. And I believed him: I seem to know so much less than other people about him. But, of course, he is sick, he does not—remember his old friends, now that he has made new ones.”

(Is she going to cry? It would be just like her. The fool, the little fool.) “I think you are not fair to him. But won't you get in and sit down? Mr. Madden, will you—?”

Madden had already opened the door.

“No, no: if he likes the music I'd only disturb him. He had much rather sit with Mrs. Powers, I know.”

(Yes, she's going to make a scene.) “Please. Just a moment. He hasn't seen you today, you know.”

She hesitated, then Jones regarded the dividing soft curves of her thighs and the fleeting exposure of a stocking, and borrowed a match from Gilligan. The music had ceased and through the two identical magnolias the porch was like an empty stage. The negro driver's head was round as a capped cannonball: perhaps he slept. She mounted and sank into the dark seat beside Mahon, sitting still and resigned. Mrs. Powers suddenly spoke:

“Do you dance, Mr. Madden?”