Soldiers Pay (6 page)

“Yes?” Her voice was muffled.

“General Pershing here wants to talk to you. . . . Sure. . . . All right.” He turned about, opening the door. “In you go, ace.”

Lowe, hating him, ignored his wink, entering. She sat in bed with a breakfast tray upon her knees. She was not dressed and Lowe looked delicately away. But she said blandly:

“Cheerio, Cadet! How looks the air today?”

She indicated a chair and he drew it up to the bed, being so careful not to seem to stare that his carriage became noticeable. She looked at him quickly and kindly and offered him coffee. Courageous with whisky on an empty stomach he knew hunger suddenly. He took the cup.

“Good morning,” he said with belated courtesy, trying to be more than nineteen. (Why is nineteen ashamed of its age?) She treats me like a child, he thought, fretted and gaining courage, watching with increasing boldness her indicated shoulders and wondering with interest if she had stockings on.

Why didn't I say something as I came in? Something easy and intimate? Listen, when I first saw you my love for you was like—my love was like—my love for you—God, if I only hadn't drunk so much last night I could say it my love for you my love is love is like . . . and found himself watching her arms as she moved and her loose sleeves fell away from them, saying, yes, he was glad the war was over and telling her that he had forty-seven hours' flying time and would have got wings in two weeks more, and that his mother in San Francisco was expecting him.

She treats me like a child, he thought with exasperation, seeing the slope of her shoulders and the place where her breast was.

“How black your hair is,” he said, and she said:

“Lowe, when are you going home?”

“I don't know. Why should I go home? I think I'll have to look at the country first.”

“But your mother!” She glanced at him.

“Oh, well,” he said largely, “you know what women are—always worrying you.”

“Lowe! How do you know so much about things? Women? You—aren't married, are you?”

“Me married?” repeated Lowe with ungrammatical zest, “me married? Not so's you know it. I have lots of girls, but married?” he brayed with brief unnecessary vigour. What made you think so?” he asked with interest.

“Oh, I don't know. You look so—so mature, you see.”

“Ah, that's flying does that. Look at him in there.”

“Is that it? I had noticed something about you. . . .You would have been an ace, too, if you'd seen any Germans, wouldn't you?”

He glanced at her quickly, like a struck dog. Here was his old dull despair again.

“I'm so sorry,” she said with quick sincerity. “I didn't think: of course you would. Anyway, it wasn't your fault. You did your best, I know.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” he said, hurt, “what do you women want, anyway? I am as good a flyer as any ever was at the front—flying or any other way.” He sat morose under her eyes. He rose suddenly. “Say, what's your name, anyway?”

“Margaret,” she told him. He approached the bed where she sat and she said: “More coffee?” stopping him dead. “You've forgotten your cup. There it is, on the table.”

Before he thought he had returned and fetched his cup, received coffee he did not want. He felt like a fool and being young he resented it. All right for you, he promised her and sat again in a dull rage. To hell with them all.

“I have offended you, haven't I?” she asked. “But, Lowe, I feel so bad, and you were about to make love to me.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked, hurt and dull.

“Oh, I don't know. But women can tell. And I don't want to be made love to. Gilligan has already done that.”

“Gilligan? Why, I'll kill him if he has annoyed you.”

“No, no: he didn't offend me, any more than you did. It was flattering. But why were you going to make love to me? You thought of it before you came in, didn't you?”

Lowe told her youngly: “I thought of it on the train when I first saw you. When I saw you I knew you were the woman for me. Tell me, you don't like him better than me because he has wings and a scar, do you?”

“Why, of course not.” She looked at him a moment, calculating. Then she said: “Mr. Gilligan says he is dying.”

“Dying?” he repeated, and “Dying?” How the man managed to circumvent him at every turn! As if it were not enough to have wings and a scar. But to die.

“Margaret,” he said with such despair that she gazed at I him in swift pity. (He was so young.) “Margaret, are you in love with him?” (Knowing that if he were a woman, he would be.)

“No, certainly not. I am not in love with anybody. My husband was killed on the Aisne, you see,” she told him gently.

“Oh, Margaret,” he said with bitter sincerity, “I would have been killed there if I could, or wounded like him, don't you know it?”

“Of course, darling.” She put the tray aside. “Come here.”

Cadet Lowe rose again and went to her. “I would have been, if I'd had a chance,” he repeated.

She drew him down beside her, and he knew he was acting the child she supposed him to be, but he couldn't help it. His disappointment and despair were more than everything now. Here were her knees sweetly under his face, and he put his arms around her legs.

“I wanted to be,” he confessed more than he had ever believed, “I would take his scar and all.”

“And be dead, like he is going to be?”

But what was death to Cadet Lowe, except something true and grand and sad? He saw a tomb, open, and himself in boots and belt, and pilot's wings on his breast, a wound stripe. . . What more could one ask of Fate?

“Yes, yes,” he answered.

“Why, you have flown, too,” she told him, holding his face against her knees, “you might have been him, but you were lucky. Perhaps you would have flown too well to have been shot down as he was. Had you thought of that?”

“I don't know. I guess I would let them catch me, if I could have been him. You are in love with him.”

“I swear I am not.” She raised his head to see his face. “I would tell you if I were. Don't you believe me?” her eyes were compelling: he believed her.

“Then, if you aren't, can't you promise to wait for me? I will be older soon and I'll work like hell and make money.”

“What will your mother say?”

“Hell, I don't have to mind her like a kid forever. I am nineteen, as old as you are, and if she don't like it, she can go to hell.”

“Lowe!” she reproved him, not telling him she was twenty-four, “the idea! You go home and tell your mother—I will give you a note to her—and you can write what she says.”

“But I had rather go with you.”

“But dear heart, what good will that do? We are going to take him home, and he is sick. Don't you see, darling, we can't do anything until we get him settled, and that you would only be in the way?”

“In the way?” he repeated with sharp pain.

“You know what I mean. We can't have anything to think about until we get him home, don't you see?”

“But you aren't in love with him?”

“I swear I'm not. Does that satisfy you?”

“Then, you are in love with me?”

She drew his face against her knees again. “You sweet child,” she said; “of course I won't tell you—yet.”

And he had to be satisfied with this. They held each other in silence for a time. “How good you smell,” remarked Cadet Lowe at last.

She moved. “Come up here by me,” she commanded, and when he was beside her she took his face in her hands and kissed him. He put his arms around her, and she drew his head between her breasts. After a while she stroked his hair and spoke.

“Now, are you going home at once?”

“Must I?” he asked vacuously.

“You must,” she answered. “Today. Wire her at once. And I will give you a note to her.”

“Oh, hell, you know what she'll say.”

“Of course I do. You haven't any sisters and brothers, have you?”

“No,” he said in surprise. She moved and he sensed the fact that she desired to be released. He sat up. “How did you know?” he asked in surprise .

“I just guessed. But you will go, won't you? Promise.”

“Well, I will, then, But I will come back to you.”

“Of course you will. I will expect you. Kiss me.”

She offered her face coolly and he kissed her as she wished: coldly, remotely. She put her hands on his cheeks. “Dear boy,” she said, kissing him again, as his mother kissed him.

“Say, that's no way for engaged people to kiss,” he objected.

“How do engaged people kiss?” she asked. He put his arms around her, feeling her shoulder-blades, and drew her mouth against his with the technique he had learned. She suffered his kiss a moment, then thrust him away.

“Is that how engaged people kiss?” she asked, laughing. “I like this better.” She took his face in her palms and touched his mouth briefly and coolly. “Now swear you'll wire your mother at once.”

“But will you write to me?”

“Surely. But swear you will go today, in spite of what Gilligan may tell you.”

“I swear,” he answered, looking at her mouth. “Can't I kiss you again?”

“When we are married,” she said, and he knew he was being dismissed. Thinking, knowing that she was watching him, he crossed the room with an air, not looking back.

Here were yet Gilligan and the officer. Mahon said:

“Morning, old chap.”

Gilligan looked at Lowe's belligerent front from a quizzical reserve of sardonic amusement.

“Made a conquest, hey, ace?”

“Go to hell,” replied Lowe. “Where's that bottle? I'm going home today.”

“Here she is, General. Drink deep. Going home?” he repeated. “So are we, hey, Loot?”

Jones, Januarius Jones, born
of whom he knew and cared not, becoming Jones alphabetically, January through a conjunction of calendar and biology, Januarius through the perverse conjunction of his own star and the compulsion of food and clothing—Januarius Jones baggy in grey tweed, being lately a fellow of Latin in a small college, leaned upon a gate of iron grill-work breaking a levee of green and embryonically starred honeysuckle, watching April busy in a hyacinth bed. Dew was on the grass and bees broke apple bloom in the morning sun while swallows were like plucked strings against a pale windy sky. A face regarded him across a suspended trowel and the metal clasps of crossed suspenders made a cheerful glittering.

The rector said: “Good morning, young man.” His shining dome was friendly against an ivy-covered wall above which the consummate grace of a spire and a gilded cross seemed to arc across motionless young clouds.

Januarius Jones, caught in the spire's illusion of slow ruin, murmured: “Watch it fall, sir.” The sun was full on his young round face.

The horticulturist regarded him with benevolent curiosity. “Fall? Ah, you see an aeroplane,” he stated. “My son was in that service during the war.” He became gigantic in black trousers and broken shoes. “A beautiful day for flying,” he said from beneath his cupped hand. “Where do you see it?”

“No, sir,” replied Jones, “no aeroplane, sir. I referred in a fit of unpardonable detachment to your spire. It was ever my childish delight to stand beneath a spire while clouds are moving overhead. The illusion of slow falling is perfect. Have you ever experienced this, sir?”

“To be sure, I have though it has been—let me see—more years than I care to remember. But one of my cloth is prone to allow his own soul to atrophy in his zeal for the welfare of other souls that——”

“—that not only do not deserve salvation, but that do not particularly desire it,” finished Jones.

The rector promptly rebuked him. Sparrows were delirious in ivy and the rambling facade of the rectory was a dream in jonquils and clipped sward. There should be children here, thought Jones. He said:

“I most humbly beg your pardon for my flippancy, Doctor. I assure you that I—ah—took advantage of the situation without any ulterior motive whatever.”

“I understand that, dear boy. My rebuke was tendered in the same spirit. There are certain conventions which we must observe in this world; one of them being an outward deference to that cloth which I unworthily, perhaps, wear. And I have found this particularly incumbent upon us of the—what shall I say—?”

“Integer vitae scelerisque purus

non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu

nec venenatis gravida sagittis,

Fusee, pharetra—” began Jones.

The rector chimed in:

“—sive per Syrtis iter aestuosas

sive facturus per inhospitalem

Causasum vel quae loca fabulosus

lambit Hydaspes,”

they concluded in galloping duet and stood in the ensuing silence regarding each other with genial enthusiasm.

“But, come, come,” cried the rector. His eyes were pleasant. Shall I let the stranger languish without my gates?” The grilled iron swung open and his earthy hand was heavy on Jones's shoulder. “Come, let us try the spire. “

The grass was good. A myriad bees vacillated between clover and apple bloom, apple bloom and clover, and from the Gothic mass of the church the spire rose, a prayer imperishable in bronze. immaculate in its illusion of slow ruin across motionless young clouds.

“My one sincere parishioner,” murmured the divine. Sunlight was a windy golden plume about his bald head, and Januarius Jones's face was a round mirror before which fauns and nymphs might have wantoned when the world was young.

“Parishioner, did I say? It is more than that: it is by such as this that man may approach nearest to God. And how few will believe this! How few, how few!” He stared unblinking unto the sun-filled sky: drowned in his eyes was a despair long since grown cool and quiet.

“That is very true, sir. But we of this age believe that be who may be approached informally, without the intercession of an office-boy of some sort, is not worth the approaching. We purchase our salvation as we do our real estate. Our God,” continued Jones, “need not be compassionate, he need not be very intelligent. But he must have dignity.”

The rector raised his great dirty hand. “No, no. You do them injustice. But who has ever found justice in youth, or any of those tiresome virtues with which we coddle and cradle our hardening arteries and souls? Only the ageing need conventions and laws to aggregate to themselves some of the beauty of this world. Without laws the young would reave us of it as corsairs of old combed the blue seas.”

The rector was silent a while. The intermittent shadows of young leaves were bird cries made visible and sparrows in ivy were flecks of sunlight become vocal. The rector continued:

“Had I the arranging of this world I should establish a certain point, say at about the age of thirty, upon reaching which a man would be automatically relegated to a plane where his mind would no longer be troubled with the futile recollection of temptations he had resisted and of beauty he had failed to garner to himself. It is jealousy, I think, which makes us wish to prevent young people doing the things we had not the courage or the opportunity ourselves to accomplish once, and have not the power to do now.”

Jones, wondering what temptations he had ever resisted and then recalling the women he might have seduced and hadn't, said: “And then what? What would the people who have been unlucky enough to reach thirty do?”

“On this plane there would be no troubling physical things such as sunlight and space and birds in the trees—but only unimportant things such as physical comfort: eating and sleeping and procreation.”

What more could you want? thought Jones. Here was a swell place. A man could very well spend all his time eating and sleeping and procreating, Jones believed. He rather wished the rector (or anyone who could imagine a world consisting solely of food and sleep and women) had had the creating of things and that he, Jones, could be forever thirty-one years of age. The rector, though, seemed to hold different opinions.

“What would they do to pass the time?” asked Jones for the sake of argument, wondering what the others would do to pass the time, what with eating and sleeping and fornication taken from them.

“Half of them would manufacture objects and another portion would coin gold and silver with which to purchase these objects. Of course, there would be storage places for the coins and objects, thus providing employment for some of the people. Others naturally would have to till the soil.”

“But how would you finally dispose of the coins and objects? After a while you would have a single vast museum and a bank, both filled with useless and unnecessary things, And that is already the curse of our civilization—Things, Possessions, to which we are slaves, which require us to either labour honestly at least eight hours a day or do something illegal so as to keep them painted or dressed in the latest mode or filled with whisky or gasoline.”

“Quite true. And this would remind us too sorely of the world as it is. Needless to say, I have provided for both of these contingencies. The coins might be reduced again to bullion and coined over, and”—the reverend man looked at Jones in ecstasy—“the housewives could use the objects for fuel with which to cook food.”

Old fool, thought Jones, saying: “Marvellous, magnificent! You are a man after my own heart, Doctor.”

The rector regarded Jones kindly. “Ah, boy, there is nothing after youth's own heart: youth has no heart.”

“But, Doctor. This borders upon lese-majesty. I thought we had declared a truce regarding each other's cloth.”

Shadows moved as the sun moved, a branch dappled the rector's brow: a laurelled Jove.

“What is your cloth?”

“Why——” began Jones.

“It is the diaper still, dear boy. But forgive me,” he added quickly on seeing Jones's face. His arm was heavy and solid as an oak branch across Jones's shoulder. “Tell me, what do you consider the most admirable of virtues?”

Jones was placated. “Sincere arrogance,” he returned promptly. The rector's great laugh boomed like bells in the. sunlight, sent the sparrows like gusty leaves whirling.

“Shall we be friends once more, then? Come, I will make a concession: I will show you my flowers. You are young enough to appreciate them without feeling called upon to comment.”

The garden was worth seeing. An avenue of roses bordered a gravelled path which passed from sunlight beneath two overarching oaks. Beyond the oaks, against a wall of poplars in a restless formal row were columns of a Greek temple, yet the poplars themselves in slim, vague green were poised and vain as girls in a frieze. Against a privet hedge would soon be lilies like nuns in a cloister and blue hyacinths swung soundless bells, dreaming of Lesbos. Upon a lattice wall wistaria would soon burn in slow inverted lilac flame, and following it they came lastly upon a single rose bush. The branches were huge and knotted with age, heavy and dark as a bronze pedestal, crowned with pale impermanent gold. The divine's hands lingered upon it with soft passion.

“Now, this,” he said, “is my son and my daughter, the wife of my bosom and the bread of my belly: it is my right hand and my left hand. Many is the night I have stood beside it here after having moved the wrappings too soon, burning I newspapers to keep the frost out. Once I recall I was in a neighbouring town attending a conference. The weather—it was March—had been most auspicious and I had removed the covering.

“The tips were already swelling. Ah, my boy, no young man ever awaited the coming of his mistress with more impatience than do I await the first bloom on this bush. (Who was the old pagan who kept his Byzantine goblet at his bedside I and slowly wore away the rim kissing it? there is an analogy.) “But what was I saying?—ah, yes. So I left the bush uncovered against my better judgment and repaired to the conference. The weather continued perfect until the last day, then the weather reports predicted a change. The bishop was to be present; I ascertained that I could not reach home by rail and return in time. At last I engaged a livery man to drive me home.

“The sky was becoming overcast, it was already turning colder. And then, three miles from home, we came upon a stream and found the bridge gone. After some shouting we attracted the attention of a man ploughing across the stream and he came over to us in a skiff. I engaged my driver to await me, was ferried across, walked home and covered my rose, walked back to the stream and returned in time. And that night”—the rector beamed upon Januarius Jones—“snow fell!”

Jones fatly supine on gracious grass, his eyes closed against the sun, stuffing his pipe: “This rose has almost made history. You have had the bush for some time, have you not? One does become attached to things one has long known.” Januarius Jones was not particularly interested in flowers.

“I have a better reason than that. In this bush is imprisoned a part of my youth, as wine is imprisoned in a wine jar. But with this difference: my wine jar always renews itself. “

“Oh,” remarked Jones, despairing, “there is a story here, then.”

“Yes dear boy. Rather a long story. But you are not comfortable lying there.”

“Whoever is completely comfortable,” Jones rushed into the breach, “unless he be asleep? It is the fatigue caused by man's inevitable contact with earth which bears him, be he sitting, standing or lying, which keeps his mind in a continual fret over futilities. If a man, if a single man, could be freed for a moment from the forces of gravity, concentrating his weight upon that point of his body which touches the earth, what would he not do? He would be a god, the lord of life, causing the high gods to tremble on their thrones; he would thunder at the very gates of infinity like a mailed knight.

“As it is, he must ever have behind his mind a dull wonder how anything composed of fire and air and water and omnipotence in equal parts can be so damn hard.”

“That is true. Man cannot remain in one position long enough to really think. But about the rose bush——”

“Regard the buzzard,” interrupted Jones with enthusiasm, fighting for time, “supported by air alone: what dignity, what singleness of purpose! What cares he whether or not Smith is governor? What cares he that the sovereign people annually commission comparative strangers about whom nothing is known save that they have no inclination toward perspiration, to meddle with impunity in the affairs of the sovereign people?”

“But, my dear boy, this borders on anarchism.”

“Anarchism? Surely. The hand of Providence with money-changing blisters. That is anarchism.”

“At least you admit the hand of Providence.”

“I don't know. Do I?” Jones, his hat over his eyes and his pipe projecting beneath. heaved a box of marches from his jacket. He extracted one and scraped it on the box. It failed and he threw it weakly into a Clump of violets. He tried another. He tried another. “Turn it around,” murmured the rector. He did so and the match flared.

“How do you find the hand of Providence here?” he puffed around his pipe stem.

The rector gathered the dead matches from the clump of violets. “In this way: it enables man to rise and till the soil, so that he might eat. Would he, do you think, rise and labour if he could remain comfortably supine over long? Even that part of the body which the Creator designed for sitting on serves him only a short time, then it rebels, then it, too, gets his sullen bones up and hales them along. And there is no help for him save in sleep.”

“But he cannot sleep for more than a possible third of his time,” Jones pointed out. “And soon it will not even be a third of his time. The race is weakening, degenerating: we cannot stand nearly as much sleep as our comparatively recent (geologically speaking of course) forefathers could, not even as much as our more primitive contemporaries can. For we, the self-styled civilized peoples, are now exercised over our minds and our arteries instead of our stomachs and sex, as were our progenitors and some of our uncompelled contemporaries.”