Soldiers Pay (27 page)

Powder only made the traces of tears more visible and Cecily turned her back as Mrs. Powers entered the room. She could see the indentation of a body on the bed, and a crumpled pillow. Mrs. Powers, not being offered a chair, sat on the foot of the bed, and Cecily, across the room, leaning in a window and staring out, said ungraciously: “What do you want?”

How like her this room is! thought the caller, observing pale maple and a triple mirrored dressing table bearing a collection of fragile crystal, and delicate clothing carelessly about on chairs, on the floor. On a chest of drawers was a small camera picture, framed.

“May I look?” she asked, knowing instinctively who it was. Cecily, stubbornly presenting her back in a thin, formless garment through which light from the window passed revealing her narrow torso, made no reply. Mrs. Powers approached and saw Donald Mahon bareheaded in a shabby unbuttoned tunic standing before a corrugated iron wall, carrying a small resigned dog casually by the scruff of the neck, like a handbag.

“That's so typical of him, isn't it?” she commented. Cecily said rudely:

“What do you want with me?”

“That's exactly what your mother asked me, you know. She seemed to think I was interfering also.”

“Well, aren't you? Nobody asked you to come here.” Cecily turned, leaning her hip against the window ledge.

“I don't think it's interference when its warranted though. Do you?”

“Warranted? Who asked you to interfere? Did Donald do it, or are you trying to scare me off? You needn't tell me Donald asked you to get him out of it: it will be a lie.”

“But I'm not: I don't intend to. I'm trying to help you both.”

“Oh, you are against me. Everybody's against me, except Donald. And you keep him shut up like a—prisoner.” She turned quickly and leaned her head against the window.

Mrs Powers sat quietly examining her, her frail revealed body under the silly garment she wore—a webby cloying thing worse than nothing and a fit complement to the single belaced garment it revealed above the long hushed gleams of her stockings. . . . If Cellini had been a hermit-priest he might have imagined her, Mrs. Powers thought, wishing mildly she could see the other naked. At last she rose from the bed and crossed to the window. Cecily kept her head stubbornly averted, and expecting tears, she touched the girl's shoulder. “Cecily,” she said, quietly.

Cecily's green eyes were dry, stony, and she moved swiftly i across the room with her delicate narrow stride. She stood holding the door open. Mrs. Powers, at the window, did not accept. Did she ever, ever forget herself? she wondered, observing the studied grace of the girl's body turned on the laxed ball of a thigh. Cecily met her gaze with one of haughty commanding scorn.

“Won't you even leave the room when you are asked?” she said, making her swift, coarse voice sound measured and cold.

Mrs. Powers thinking O hell, what's the use? moved so as to lean her thigh against the bed. Cecily, without changing her position, moved the door for emphasis. Standing quietly, watching her studied fragility (her legs are rather sweet, she admitted, but why all this posing for me? I'm not a man) Mrs. Powers ran her palm slowly along the smooth wood of the bed. Suddenly the other slammed the door and returned to the window. Mrs. Powers followed.

“Cecily, why can't we talk about it sensibly?” The girl made no reply, ingoring her, crumpling the curtain in her fingers. “Miss Saunders?”

“Why can't you let me alone?” Cecily flared suddenly, flaming out at her. “I don't want to talk to you about it. Why do you come to me?” Her eyes darkened: they were no longer hard. “If you want him, take him, then. You have every chance you could want, keeping him shut up there so that even I can't see him!”

“But I don't want him. I am trying to straighten things out for him. Don't you know that if I had wanted him I would have married him before I brought him home?”

“You tried it, and couldn't. That's why you didn't. Oh, don't say it wasn't,” she rushed on as the other would have spoken. “I saw it that first day. That you were after him. And if you aren't, why do you keep on staying here?”

“You know that's a lie,” Mrs. Powers replied, calmly.

“Then what makes you so interested in him, if you aren't in love with him?”

(This is hopeless.) She put her hand on the other's arm. Cecily shrank quickly away and she returned to lean again against the bed. She said:

“Your mother is against this, and Donald's father expects it. But what chance will you have against your mother?” (Against yourself? )

“I certainly don't need any advice from you,” Cecily turned her head, her haughtiness, her anger, were gone and in their place was a thin hopeless despair. Even her voice, her whole attitude, had changed. “Don't you see how miserable I am?” she said pitifully. “I didn't mean to be rude to you, but I don't know what to do, I don't know. . . . I am in such trouble: something terrible has happened to me. Please!”

Mrs. Powers, seeing her face, went to her quickly, putting her arm about the girl's narrow shoulders. Cecily avoided her. “Please, please go.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“No, no, I can't. Please——”

They paused, listening. Footsteps approaching, stopped beyond the door: a knock, and her father's voice called her name.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Mahon is downstairs. Can you come down?”

The two women stared at each other.

“Come,” Mrs. Powers said.

Cecily's eyes went dark again and she whispered. “No, no, no!” trembling.

“Sis,” her father repeated.

“Say yes,” Mrs. Powers whispered.

“Yes, daddy. I'm coming.”

“All right.” The footsteps retreated and Mrs. Powers drew Cecily towards the door. The girl resisted.

“I can't go like this,” she said, hysterically.

“Yes, you can. It's all right. Come.”

Mrs. Saunders, sitting militant, formal and erect upon her chair, was saying as they entered:

“May I ask what this—this woman has to do with it?” Her husband chewed a cigar. Light falling upon the rector's face held it like a grey bitten mask. Cecily ran to him. “Uncle Joe!” she cried.

“Cecily!” her mother said, sharply. “What do you mean, coming down like that?”

The rector rose, huge and black, embracing her. “Uncle Joe!” she repeated, clinging to him.

“Now Robert,” Mrs. Saunders began. But the rector interrupted her.

“Cecily,” he said, raising her face. She twisted her chin and hid her face against his coat.

“Robert,” said Mrs. Saunders.

The rector spoke greyly. “Cecily, we have talked it over together, and we think—your mother and father——”

She moved in her silly, revealing garment, “Daddy?” she exclaimed, staring at her father. He would not meet her gaze but sat slowly twisting his cigar. The rector continued

“We think that you will only—that you—They say that Donald is going to die, Cecily,” he finished.

Lithe as a sapling she thrust herself backward against his arm, bending, to see his face, staring at him. “Oh, Uncle Joe! Have you gone back on me, too?” she cried, passionately.

IX

George Farr had been. quite drunk for a week. His friend. the drug clerk, thought that he was going crazy. He had become a local landmark, a tradition: even the town soaks began to look upon him with respect, calling him by his name, swearing undying devotion to him.

In the intervals of belligerent or rollicking or maudlin inebriation he knew periods of devastating despair like a monstrous bliss, like that of a caged animal, of a man being slowly tortured to death: a minor monotony of pain. As a rule, though, he managed to stay fairly drunk. Her narrow body sweetly dividing naked . . . have another drink. . . . I'll kill you if you keep on fooling around her . . . my girl, my girl . . . her narrow . . . 'nother drink . . . oh, God, oh, God . . . sweetly dividing for another . . . have drink, what hell I care, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.

Though “nice” people no longer spoke to him on the streets he was, after a fashion, cared for and protected by casual acquaintances and friends both black and white, as in the way of small towns particularly and of the “inferior” classes anywhere.

He sat glassy-eyed among fried smells, among noises, at an oilcloth-covered table.

“Clu—hoverrrrrr blarrrr—sums, clo—ver blarrrr—summmzzzz,” sang a nasal voice terribly, the melody ticked off at spaced intervals by a small monotonous sound, like a clock-bomb going off. Like this:

Clo(tick) ver (tick) rrr (tick) (tick) bl (tick) rrs (tick) sss (tick) umm (tick) zzz.

Beside him sat two of his new companions, quarrelling, spitting, holding hands and weeping over the cracked interminability of the phonograph record. “Clo—verrrr blar—sums.” it repeated with saccharine passion; when it ran down they repaired to a filthy alley behind the filthier kitchen to drink of George Farr's whisky. Then they returned and played the record through again, clutching hands while frank tears slid down their otherwise unwashed cheeks. “Cloooooooover blaaaaaarsummmssss. . . .”

Truly vice is a dull and decorous thing: no life in the world is as hard, requiring so much sheer physical and moral strength, as the so-called “primrose path.” Being “good” is much less trouble.

“Clo—ver blar—sums. . . .”

. . . After a while his attention was called to the fact that someone had been annoying him for some time. Focusing his eyes he at last recognized the proprietor in an apron on which he must have dried dishes for weeks. “What'n 'ell y' want?” he asked, with feeble liquid belligerence, and the man finally explained to him that he was wanted on the telephone in a neighbouring drug-store. He rose, pulling himself together.

“Clu—hoooooooover bla—ums.

After a few years he languished from a telephone mouthpiece holding himself erect, watching without interest a light globe over the prescription desk describing slow concentric circles.

“George?” There was something in the unknown voice speaking his name, such anguish, as to almost shock him sober. “George.”

“This George . . . hello. . . .

“George, its Cecily. Cecily . . .”

Drunkenness left him like a retreating wave. He could feel his heart stop, then surge, deafening him, blinding him with his own blood.

“George. . . . Do you hear me?” (Ah, George, to have been drunk now!) (Cecily, oh, Cecily!) “Yes! Yes!” gripping the instrument as though this would keep her against escape. “Yes, Cecily? Cecily? It's George . . . .”

“Come to me now. At once.”

“Yes, yes. Now?”

“Come, George, darling. Hurry, hurry. . . .”

“Yes!” he cried again. “Hello, hello!” The line made no response. He waited, but it was dead. His heart pounded and pounded, hotly; he could taste his own hot bitter blood in his throat. (Cecily, oh, Cecily!)

He plunged down the length of the store and while a middle-aged clerk filling a prescription poised his bottle to watch in dull amazement, George Farr tore his shirt open at the throat and thrust his whole head beneath a gushing water tap in a frenzy of activity.

(Cecily, oh, Cecily!)

X

He seemed so old, so tired as he sat at the head of the table toying with his food, as if the very fibre of him had lost all resilience. Gilligan ate with his usual informal appetite and Donald and Emmy sat side by side so that Emmy could help him. Emmy enjoyed mothering him, now that she could never have him again for a lover; she objected with passionate ardour when Mrs. Powers offered to relieve her. The Donald she had known was dead; this one was but a sorry substitute, but Emmy was going to make the best of it, as women will. She had even got accustomed to taking her food after it had cooled.

Mrs. Powers sat watching them. Emmy's shock of no-particular-colour hair was near his worn head in intent devotion, her labour-worried hand seemed to have an eye of its own, so quick, so tender it was to anticipate him and guide his hand with the food she had prepared for him. Mrs. Powers wondered which Donald Emmy loved the more, wondering if she had not perhaps forgotten the former one completely save as a symbol of sorrow. Then the amazing logical thought occurred to her that here was the woman for Donald to marry.

Of course it was. Why had no one thought of that before? Then she told herself that no one had done very much thinking during the whole affair, that it had got on without any particular drain on any intelligence. Why did we take it for granted that he must marry Cecily and no other? Yet we all accepted it as an arbitrary fact and off we went with our eyes closed and our mouths open, like hounds in full cry.

But would Emmy take him? Wouldn't she be so frightened at the prospect that she'd be too self-conscious with him afterwards to care for him as skilfully as she does now; wouldn't it cause her to confuse in her mind to his detriment two separate Donalds—a lover and an invalid? I wonder what Joe will think about it.

She looked at Emmy impersonal as Omnipotence, helping Donald with effacing skill, seeming to envelop him, yet never touching him. Anyway, I'll ask her, she thought, sipping her tea.

Night was come. Tree frogs, remembering last night's rain, resumed their monotonous moulding of liquid beads of sound; grass blades and leaves losing shapes of solidity gained shapes of sound: the still suspire of earth, of the ground preparing for slumber; flowers by day, spikes of bloom, became with night spikes of scent; the silver tree at the corner of the house hushed its never-still never-escaping ecstasy. Already toads hopped along concrete pavements drinking prisoned heat through their dragging bellies.

Suddenly the rector started from his dream. “Tut, tut. We are making mountains from mole hills, as usual. If she wants to marry Donald I am sure her people will not withhold their consent always. Why should they object to their daughter marrying him? Do you know——”