III
I
Mrs. Saunders said: “You come away now, let your sister alone.”
Young Robert Saunders fretted but optimistic, joining again that old battle between parent and child, hopeful in the face of invariable past defeat:
“But can’t I ask her a civil question? I just want to know what his scar l—”
“Come now, come with mamma.”
“But I just want to know what his sc—”
“Robert.”
“But mamma,” he essayed again, despairing. His mother pushed him firmly doorward.
“Run down to the garden and tell your father to come here. Run, now.”
He left the room in exasperation. His mamma would have been shocked could she have read his thoughts. It wasn’t her especially. They’re all alike, he guessed largely, as has many a man before him and as many will after him. He wasn’t going to hurt the old ’fraid cat.
Cecily freed of her clothing lay crushed and pathetic between cool linen, surrounded by a mingled scent of cologne and ammonia, her fragile face coiffed in a towel. Her mother drew a chair to the side of the bed and examined her daughter’s pretty shallow face, the sweep of her lashes upon her white cheek, her arms paralleling the shape of her body beneath the covers, her delicate blue-veined wrists and her long slender hands relaxed and palm-upward beside her. Then young Robert Saunders, without knowing it, had his revenge.
“Darling, what did his face look like?”
Cecily shuddered, turning her head on the pillow. “Ooooh, don’t, don’t, mamma! I c-can’t bear to think of it.”
(But I just want to ask you a civil question.) “There, there. We won’t talk about it until you feel better.”
“Not ever, not ever. If I have to see him again I’ll—I’ll just die. I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it.”
She was crying again frankly like a child, not even concealing her face. Her mother rose and leaned over her. “There, there. Don’t cry any more. You’ll be ill.” She gently brushed the girl’s hair from her temples, rearranging the towel. She bent down and kissed her daughter’s pale cheek. “Mamma’s sorry, baby. Suppose you try to sleep. Shall I bring you a tray at supper time?”
“No, I couldn’t eat. Just let me lie here alone and I’ll feel better.”
The older woman lingered, still curious. (I just want to ask her a civil question.) The telephone rang and with a last ineffectual pat at the pillow she withdrew.
Lifting the receiver she remarked her husband closing the garden gate behind him.
“Yes? … Mrs. Saunders. … Oh, George? … Quite well, thank you. How are you … no, I am afraid not. … What? … yes, but she is not feeling well … later, perhaps. … Not tonight. Call her tomorrow … yes, yes, quite well, thank you. Goodbye.”
She passed through the cool darkened hall and onto the veranda letting her tightly corseted figure sink creaking into a rocking chair as her husband carrying a sprig of mint and his hat mounted the steps. Here was Cecily in the masculine and gone to flesh: the same slightly shallow good looks and somewhere an indicated laxness of moral fiber. He had once been precise and dapper but now he was clad slovenly in careless uncreased gray and earthy shoes. His hair still curled youthfully upon his head and he had Cecily’s eyes. He was a Catholic, which was almost as sinful as being a republican; his fellow townsmen, while envying his social and financial position in the community, yet looked askance at him because he and his family made periodical trips to Atlanta to attend church.
“Tobe!” he bellowed, taking a chair near his wife.
“Well, Robert,” she began with zest, “Donald Mahon came home today.”
“Government sent his body back, did they?”
“No, he came back himself. He got off the train this afternoon.”
“Eh? Why, he’s dead.”
“But he isn’t dead. Cecily was there and saw him. A strange fat young man brought her home in a cab—completely collapsed. She said something about a scar on him. She fainted, poor child. I made her go to bed at once. I never did find who that strange young man was,” she ended fretfully.
Tobe in a white jacket appeared with a bowl of ice, sugar, water and a decanter. Mr. Saunders sat staring at his wife. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said at last. And again, “I’ll be damned.”
His wife rocked complacent over her news. After a while Mr. Saunders breaking his trance, stirred. He crushed his mint sprig between his fingers and taking a cube of ice he rubbed the mint over it, then dropped both into a tall glass. Then he spooned sugar into the glass and dribbled whisky from the decanter slowly, and slowly stirring it he stared at his wife. “I’ll be damned,” he said for the third time.
Tobe filled the glass from a water-bottle and withdrew.
“So he come home. Well, well. I’m glad on the parson’s account. Pretty decent feller.”
“You must have forgotten what it means.”
“Eh?”
“To us.”
“To us?”
“Cecily was engaged to him, you know.”
Mr. Saunders sipped and setting his glass on the floor beside him he lit a cigar. “Well, we’ve given our consent, haven’t we? I ain’t going to back out now.” A thought occurred to him. “Does Sis still want to?”
“I don’t know. It was such a shock to her, poor child, his coming home and the scar and all. But do you think it is a good thing?”
“I never did think it was a good thing. I never wanted it.”
“Are you putting it off on me? Do you think I insisted on it?”
Mr. Saunders from long experience said mildly: “She ain’t old enough to marry yet.”
“Nonsense. How old was I when we married?”
He raised his glass again. “Seems to me you are the one insisting on it.” Mrs. Saunders rocking, stared at him: he was made aware of his stupidity. “Why do you think it ain’t a good thing, then?”
“I declare, Robert. Sometimes …” she sighed and then as one explains to a child in fond exasperation at its stupidity: “Well, an engagement in war time and an engagement in peace time are two different things. Really, I don’t see how he can expect to hold her to it.”
“Now look here, Minnie. If he went to war expecting her to wait for him and come back expecting her to take him, there’s nothing else for them to do. And if she still wants to don’t you go persuading her out of it, you hear?”
“Are you going to force your daughter into marriage? You just said yourself she is too young.”
“Remember, I said if she still wants to. By the way, he ain’t lame or badly hurt, is he?” he asked quickly.
“I don’t know. Cecily cried when I tried to find out.”
“Sis is a fool, sometimes. But don’t you go monkeying with them, now.” He raised his glass and took a long draught, then he puffed his cigar furiously, righteously.
“I declare, Robert, I don’t understand you sometimes. The idea of driving your own daughter into marriage with a man who has nothing and who may be half dead, and who probably won’t work anyway. You know yourself how these ex-soldiers are.”
“You are the one wants her to get married. I ain’t. Who do you want her to take, then?”
“Well, there’s Dr. Gary. He likes her, and Harrison Maurier from Atlanta. Cecily likes him, I think.”
Mr. Saunders inelegantly snorted. “Who? That Maurier feller? I wouldn’t have that damn feller around here at all. Slick hair and cigarettes all over the place. You better pick out another one.”
“I’m not picking out anybody. I just don’t want you to drive her into marrying that Mahon boy.”
“I ain’t driving her, I tell you. You have already taught me better than to try to drive a woman to do anything. But I don’t intend to interfere if she does want to marry Mahon.”
She sat rocking and he finished his julep. The oaks on the lawn became still with dusk, and the branches of trees were as motionless as coral fathoms deep under seas. A tree frog took up his monotonous trilling and the west was a vast green lake, still as eternity. Tobe appeared silently.
“Supper served, Miss Minnie.”
The cigar arced redly into a canna bed and they rose.
“Where is Bob, Tobe?”
“I don’t know’m. I seed him gwine to’ds de garden a while back, but I ain’t seed him since.”
“See if you can find him. And tell him to wash his face and hands.”
“Yessum.” He held the door for them and they passed into the house, leaving the twilight behind them filled with Tobe’s mellow voice calling across the dusk.
II
But young Robert Saunders could not hear him. He was at that moment climbing a high board fence which severed the dusk above his head. He conquered it at last and sliding downward his trousers evinced reluctance, then accepting the gambit accompanied him with a ripping sound. He sprawled in damp grass feeling a thin shallow fire across his young behind, and said Damn, regaining his feet and disjointing his hip trying to see down his back.
Ain’t that hell, he remarked to the twilight. I have rotten luck. It’s all your fault, too, for not telling me, he thought, gaining a vicarious revenge on all sisters. He picked up the object he had dropped in falling and crossed the rectory lawn through dew, toward the house. There was a light in a heretofore unused upper room and his heart sank. Had he gone to bed this early? Then he saw silhouetted feet on the balustrade of the porch and the red eye of a cigarette. He sighed with relief. That must be him.
He mounted the steps, saying: “Hi, Donald.”
“Hi, Colonel,” answered the one sitting there. Approaching, he discerned soldier clothes. That’s him. Now I’ll see, he thought exultantly, snapping on a flash light and throwing its beam full on the man’s face. Aw, shucks. He was becoming thoroughly discouraged. Did anyone ever have such luck? There must be a cabal against him.
“You ain’t got no scar,” he stated with dejection. “You ain’t even Donald, are you?”
“You guessed it, bub. I ain’t even Donald. But say, how about turning that searchlight some other way?”
He snapped off the light in weary disillusion. He burst out: “They won’t tell me nothing. I just want to know what his scar looks like but they won’t tell me nothing about it. Say, has he gone to bed?”
“Yes, he’s gone to bed. This ain’t a good time to see his scar.”
“How about tomorrow morning?” hopefully. “Could I see it then?”
“I dunno. Better wait till then.”
“Listen,” he suggested with inspiration, “I tell you what: tomorrow about eight when I am going to school you kind of get him to look out of the window and I’ll be passing and I’ll see it. I asked Sis, but she wouldn’t tell me nothing.”
“Who is Sis, bub?”
“She’s just my sister. Gosh, she’s mean. If I’d seen his scar I’d a told her now, wouldn’t I?”
“You bet. What’s your sister’s name?”
“Name’s Cecily Saunders, like mine only mine’s Robert Saunders. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
“Oh … Cecily. … Sure, you leave it to me, Colonel.”
He sighed with relief, yet still lingered. “Say, how many soldiers has he got here?”
“About one and a half, bub.”
“One and a half? Are they live ones?”
“Well, practically.”
“How can you have one and a half soldiers if they are live ones?”
“Ask the war department. They know how to do it.”
He pondered briefly. “Gee, I wish we could get some soldiers at our house. Do you reckon we could?”
“Why, I expect you could.”
“Could? How?” he asked eagerly.
“Ask your sister. She can tell you.”
“Aw, she won’t tell me.”
“Sure she will. You ask her.”
“Well, I’ll try,” he agreed without hope, yet still optimistic. “Well, I guess I better be going. They might be kind of anxious about me,” he explained, descending the steps. “Goodbye, mister,” he added politely.
“So long, Colonel.”
I’ll see his scar tomorrow, he thought with elation. I wonder if Sis does know how to get us a soldier? She don’t know much but maybe she does know that. But girls don’t never know nothing, so I ain’t going to count on it. Anyway I’ll see his scar tomorrow.
Tobe’s white jacket looming around the corner of the house gleamed dully in the young night and as young Robert mounted the steps toward the yellow rectangle of the front door Tobe’s voice said:
“Whyn’t you come on to yo’ supper? Yo’ mommer gwine tear yo’ hair and my hair bofe out if you late like this. She say fer you to clean up befo’ you goes to de dinin’ room: I done drawed you some nice water in de baff room. Run ’long now. I tell ’em you here.”
He paused only to call through his sister’s door: “I’m going to see it tomorrow. Yaaaah!” Then soaped and hungry he clattered into the dining room, accomplishing an intricate field maneuver lest his damaged rear be exposed. He ignored his mother’s cold stare.
“Robert Saunders, where have you been?”
“Mamma, there’s a soldier there says we can get one too.”
“One what?” asked his father through his cigar smoke.
“A soldier.”
“Soldier?”
“Yes, sir. That one says so.”
“That one what?”
“That soldier where Donald is. He says we can get a soldier, too.”
“How get one?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. But he says that Sis knows how to get us one.”
Mr. and Mrs. Saunders looked at each other above young Robert’s oblivious head as he bent over his plate spooning food into himself.
III
On board the Frisco Limited,
Missouri, .Dear Margaret—
I wonder if you miss me like I miss you. Well I never had much fun in St. Louis. I was there only a half a day. This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. It’s too bad I had to leave you so soon after. I will see my mother and attend to a few business matters and I will come back pretty soon. I will work like hell for you Margaret. This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. This dam train rocks so I cannot write anyway. Well, give my reguards to Giligan tell him not to break his arm crooking it until I get back. I will love you all ways.
“What is that child’s name, Joe?”
Mrs. Powers in one of her straight dark dresses stood on the porch in the sun. The morning breeze was in her hair, beneath her clothing like water, carrying sun with it: pigeons about the church spire leaned upon it like silver and slanting splashes of soft paint. The lawn sloping fenceward was gray with dew, and a negro informal in undershirt and overalls passed a lawn mower over the grass, leaving behind his machine a darker green stripe like an unrolling carpet. Grass sprang from the whirling blades and clung wetly to his legs.
“What child?” Gilligan, uncomfortable in new hard serge and a linen collar, sat on the balustrade moodily smoking. For reply she handed him the letter and with his cigarette tilted in the corner of his mouth he squinted through the smoke, reading.
“Oh, the ace. Name’s Lowe.”
“Of course: Lowe. I tried several times after he left us but I never could recall it.”
Gilligan returned the letter to her. “Funny kid, ain’t he? So you scorned my affections and taken his, huh?”
Her windy dress molded her longly. “Let’s go to the garden so I can have a cigarette.”
“You could have it here. The padre wouldn’t mind, I bet.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t. I am considering his parishioners. What would they think to see a dark strange woman smoking a cigarette on the rectory porch at eight o’clock in the morning?”
“They’ll think you are one of them French what-do-you-call-’ems the Loot brought back with him. Your good name won’t be worth nothing after these folks get through with it.”
“My good name is your trouble, not mine, Joe.”
“My trouble? How you mean?”
“Men are the ones who worry about our good names, because they gave them to us. But we have other things to bother about, ourselves. What you mean by a good name is like a dress that’s too flimsy to wear comfortably. Come on, let’s go to the garden.”
“You know you don’t mean that,” Gilligan told her. She smiled faintly, not turning her face to him.
“Come on,” she repeated, descending the steps.
They left a delirium of sparrows and the sweet smell of fresh grass behind them and were in a graveled path between rose bushes. The path ran on beneath two formal arching oaks; lesser roses rambling upon a wall paralleled them and Gilligan following her long stride trod brittle and careful. Whenever he was among flowers he always felt as if he had entered a room full of women: he was always conscious of his body, of his walk, feeling as though he trod in sand. So he believed that he really did not like flowers.
Mrs. Powers paused at intervals, sniffing, tasting dew upon buds and blooms, then the path passed between violet beds to where against a privet hedge there would soon be lilies. Beside a green iron bench beneath a magnolia she paused again, staring up into the tree. A mocking bird flew out and she said:
“There’s one, Joe. See?”
“One what? Bird nest?”
“No, a bloom. Not quite, but in a week or so. Do you know magnolia blooms?”
“Sure: not good for anything if you pick ’em. Touch it, and it turns brown on you. Fades.”
“That’s true of almost everything, isn’t it?”
“Yeh, but how many folks believe it? Reckon the Loot does?”
“I don’t know. … I wonder if he’ll have a chance to touch that one?”
“Why should he want to? He’s already got one that’s turning brown on him.”
She looked at him, not comprehending at once. Her black eyes, her red mouth like a pomegranate blossom. She said then: “Oh! Magnolia. … I’d thought of her as a—something like an orchid. So you think she’s a magnolia?”
“Not an orchid, anyways. Find orchids anywhere but you wouldn’t find her in Illinoy or Denver, hardly.”
“I guess you are right. I wonder if there are any more like her anywhere?”
“I dunno. But if there ain’t there’s already one too many.”
“Let’s sit down a while. Where’s my cigarette?” She sat on the bench and he offered her his paper pack and struck a match for her. “So you think she won’t marry him, Joe?”
“I ain’t so sure any more. I think I am changing my mind about it. She won’t miss a chance to marry what she calls a hero—if only to keep somebody else from getting him.” (Meaning you, he thought.)
(Meaning me, she thought.) She said: “Not if she knows he’s going to die?”
“What does she know about dying? She can’t even imagine herself getting old, let alone imagining anybody she is interested in dying. I bet she believes they can even patch him up so it won’t show.”
“Joe, you are an incurable sentimentalist. You mean you think she’ll marry him because she is letting him think she will and because she is a ‘good’ woman. You are quite a gentle person, Joe.”
“I ain’t!” he retorted with warmth. “I am as hard as they make ’em: I got to be.” He saw she was laughing at him and he grinned ruefully. “Well, you got me that time, didn’t you?” He became suddenly serious. “But it ain’t her I’m worrying about. It’s his old man. Why didn’t you tell him how bad off he was?”
She quite feminine and Napoleonic:
“Why did you send me on ahead instead of coming yourself? I told you I’d spoil it.” She flipped her cigarette away and put her hand on his arm. “I didn’t have the heart to, Joe. If you could have seen his face! and heard him! He was like a child, Joe. He showed me all of Donald’s things. You know: pictures, and a slingshot, and a girl’s undie and a hyacinth bulb he carried with him in France. And there was that girl and everything. I just couldn’t. Do you blame me?”
“Well, it’s all right now. It was a kind of rotten trick, though, to let him find it all out before them people at the station. We done the best we could, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did the best we could. I wish we could do more.” Her gaze brooded across the garden where in the sun beyond the trees, bees were already at work. Across the garden, beyond a street and another wall you could see the top of a pear tree like a branching candelabra, closely bloomed, white, white. … She stirred, crossing her knees. “That girl fainting, though. What do you—”
“Oh, I expected that. But here comes Othello, like he was looking for us.”
They watched the late conductor of the lawn mower as he shuffled his shapeless shoes along the gravel. He saw them and halted.
“Mr. Gillmum, Rev’un say fer you to come to de house.”
“Me?”
“You Mist’ Gillmum, ain’t you?”
“Oh, sure.” He rose. “Excuse me, ma’am. You coming, too?”
“You go and see what he wants. I’ll come along after a while.”
The negro had turned shuffling on ahead of him and the lawn mower had resumed its chattering song as Gilligan mounted the steps. The rector stood on the veranda. His face was calm but it was evident he had not slept.
“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Gilligan, but Donald is awake, and I am not familiar with his clothing as you are. I gave away his civilian things when he—when he—”
“Sure, sir,” Gilligan answered in sharp pity for the gray-faced man. He don’t know him yet! “I’ll help him.”
The divine, ineffectual, would have followed, but Gilligan leaped away from him up the stairs. He saw Mrs. Powers coming from the garden and he descended to the lawn, meeting her.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she responded to his greeting. “I have been looking at your flowers. I hope you don’t mind?”
“Not at all, not at all, my dear madam. An old man is always flattered when his flowers are admired. The young are so beautifully convinced that their emotions are admirable: young girls wear the clothes of their older sisters who require clothes, principally because they do not need them themselves, just for fun, or perhaps to pander to an illusion of the male; but as we grow older what we are loses importance, giving place to what we do. And I have never been able to do anything well save to raise flowers. And that is, I think, an obscure emotional housewifery in me: I had thought to grow old with my books among my roses: until my eyes became too poor to read longer I would read, after that I would sit in the sun. Now, of course, with my son at home again, I must put that by. I am anxious for you to see Donald this morning. You will notice a marked improvement.”
“Oh, I’m sure I shall,” she answered, wanting to put her arms around him. But he was so big and so confident. At the corner of the house was a tree covered with tiny white-bellied leaves like a mist, like a swirl of arrested silver water. The rector offered his arm with heavy gallantry.
“Shall we go in to breakfast?”
Emmy had been before them with narcissi, and red roses in a vase repeated the red of strawberries in flat blue bowls. The rector drew her chair. “When we are alone Emmy sits here, but she has a strange reluctance to dining with strangers, or when guests are present.”
Mrs. Powers sat and Emmy appeared briefly and disappeared, for no apparent reason. At last there came slow feet on the staircase slanting across the open door. She saw their legs, then their bodies crossed her vision and the rector rose as they appeared in the door. “Good morning, Donald,” he said.
(That my father? Sure, Loot. That’s him.) “Good morning, sir.”
The divine stood huge and tense and powerless as Gilligan helped Mahon into his seat.
“Here’s Mrs. Powers, too, Loot.”
He turned his faltering puzzled gaze upon her. “Good morning,” he said, but her eyes were on his father’s face. She lowered her gaze to her plate feeling hot moisture against her lids. What have I done? she thought, what have I done?
She tried to eat but could not, watching Mahon, awkward with his left hand, peering into his plate, eating scarcely anything, and Gilligan’s healthy employment of knife and fork, and the rector tasting nothing, watching his son’s every move with gray despair.
Emmy appeared again with fresh dishes. Averting her face she set the dishes down awkwardly and was about to flee precipitately when the rector looking up stopped her. She turned in stiff self-conscious fright, hanging her head.
“Here’s Emmy, Donald,” his father said.
Mahon raised his head and looked at his father. Then his puzzled gaze touched Gilligan’s face and returned to his plate, and his hand rose slowly to his mouth. Emmy stood for a space and her black eyes became wide and the blood drained from her face slowly. Then she put the back of one red hand against her mouth and fled, blundering into the door.
I can’t stand this. Mrs. Powers rose unnoticed save by Gilligan and followed Emmy. Upon a table in the kitchen Emmy leaned bent almost double, her head cradled in her red arms. What a terrible position to cry in, Mrs. Powers thought, putting her arms around Emmy. The girl jerked herself erect, staring at the other. Her face was wrung with weeping, ugly.
“He didn’t speak to me!” she gasped.
“He didn’t know his father, Emmy. Don’t be silly.” She held Emmy’s elbows, smelling harsh soap. Emmy clung to her.
“But me, me! He didn’t even look at me!” she repeated.
It was on her tongue to say Why should he? but Emmy’s blurred sobbing and her awkward wrung body; the very kinship of tears to tears, something to cling to after having been for so long a prop to others. …
Outside the window was a trellised morning-glory vine with a sparrow in it, and clinging to Emmy, holding each other in a recurrent mutual sorrow she tasted warm salt in her throat.
Damn, damn, damn, she said amid her own racking infrequent tears.
IV
In front of the post office the rector was the center of an interested circle when Mr. Saunders saw him. The gathering was representative, embracing the professions with a liberal leavening of those inevitable casuals, cravatless, overalled or unoveralled, who seem to suffer no compulsions whatever, which anything from a captured still to a negro with an epileptic fit or a mouth organ attracts to itself like atoms to a magnet, in any small southern town—or northern town or western town, probably.
“Yes, yes, quite a surprise,” the rector was saying. “I had no intimation of it, none whatever, until a friend with whom he was traveling—he is not yet fully recovered, you see—preceded him in order to inform me.”
(One of them airy-plane fellers.)
(S’what I say: if the Lord had intended folks to fly around in the air He’d ’a’ give ’em wings.)
(Well, he’s been closter to the Lord’n you’ll ever git.)
This outer kindly curious fringe made way for Mr. Saunders.
(Closter’n that feller’ll ever git, anyway. Guffaws.) This speaker was probably a Baptist.
Mr. Saunders extended his hand.
“Well, Doctor, we are mighty glad to hear the good news.”
“Ah, good morning, good morning.” The rector took the proffered hand in his huge paw. “Yes, quite a surprise. I was hoping to see you. How is Cecily this morning?” he asked in a lower tone. But there was no need, no lack of privacy. There was a general movement into the post office. The mail was in and the window had opened and even those who expected no mail, who had received no mail in months must need answer one of the most enduring compulsions of the American nation. The rector’s news had become stale in the face of the possibility of a stamped personal communication of some kind, of any kind.
Charlestown, like numberless other towns throughout the south, had been built around a circle of tethered horses and mules. In the middle of the square was the courthouse—a simple utilitarian edifice of brick and sixteen beautiful Ionic columns stained with generations of casual tobacco. Elms surrounded the courthouse and beneath these trees, on scarred and carved wood benches and chairs the city fathers, progenitors of solid laws and solid citizens who believed in Tom Watson and feared only God and drouth, in black string ties or the faded brushed gray and bronze meaningless medals of the Confederate States of America, no longer having to make any pretense toward labor, slept or whittled away the long drowsy days while their juniors of all ages, not yet old enough to frankly slumber in public, played checkers or chewed tobacco and talked. A lawyer, a drug clerk and two nondescripts tossed iron discs back and forth between two holes in the ground. And above all brooded early April sweetly pregnant with noon.
Yet all of them had a pleasant word for the rector as he and Mr. Saunders passed. Even the slumberers waked from the light sleep of the aged to ask about Donald. The divine’s progress was almost triumphal.
Mr. Saunders walked beside him, returning greetings, preoccupied. Damn these womenfolks, he fretted. They passed beneath a stone shaft bearing a Confederate soldier shading his marble eyes forever in eternal rigid vigilance and the rector repeated his question.
“She is feeling better this morning. It is too bad she fainted yesterday, but she isn’t strong, you know.”
“That was to be expected; his unannounced arrival rather startled us all. Even Donald acknowledges that, I am sure. Their attachment also, you see.”
Trees arching greenly over the street made a green tunnel of quiet, the sidewalk was checkered with shade. Mr. Saunders felt the need of mopping his neck. He took two cigars from his pocket, but the rector waved them away. Damn these women! Minnie should have done this.
The rector said: “We have a beautiful town, Mr. Saunders. These streets, these trees. … This quiet is just the thing for Donald.”
“Yes, yes, just the thing for him, Doctor—”
“You and Mrs. Saunders must come in to see him this afternoon. I had expected you last night, but remembering that Cecily had been quite overcome—It is as well you did not, though. Donald was fatigued and Mrs. P—I thought it better to have a doctor (just as a precaution, you see), and he advised Donald to go to bed.”
“Yes, yes. We had intended to come, but, as you say, his condition, first night at home; and Cecily’s condition, too—” He could feel his moral fiber disintegrating. Yet his course had seemed so logical last night after his wife had taken him to task, taking him, as a clinching argument, in to see his daughter weeping in bed. Damn these women! he repeated for the third time. He puffed his cigar and flung it away, mentally girding himself.
“About this engagement, Doctor—”
“Ah, yes, I was thinking of it myself. Do you know, I believe Cecily is the best medicine he can have? Wait,” as the other would have interrupted, “it will naturally take her some time to become accustomed to his—to him—” he faced his companion confidentially, “he has a scar, you see. But I am confident this can be removed, even though Cecily does become accustomed to it. In fact, I am depending on her to make a new man of him in a short time.”
Mr. Saunders gave it up. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow I will do it.
“He is naturally a bit confused now,” the divine continued, “but care and attention, and above all, Cecily, will remedy that. Do you know,” he turned his kind gaze on Mr. Saunders again, “do you know, he didn’t even know me at first when I went into his room this morning? Merely a temporary condition, though, I assure you. Quite to be expected,” he added quickly. “Don’t you think it was to be expected?”
“I should think so, yes. But what happened to him? How did he manage to turn up like this?”
“He won’t talk about it. A friend who came home with him assures me that he doesn’t know, cannot remember. But this happens quite often, the young man—a soldier himself—tells me, and that it will all come back to him some day. Donald seems to have lost all his papers save a certificate of discharge from a British hospital. But pardon me: you were saying something about the engagement.”
“No, no. It was nothing.” The sun was overhead: it was almost noon. Around the horizon were a few thick clouds fat as whipped cream. Rain this afternoon. Suddenly he spoke: “By the way, Doctor, I wonder if I might stop in and speak to Donald?”
“By all means. Certainly. He will be glad to see an old friend. Stop in, by all means.”
The clouds were steadily piling higher. They passed beneath the church spire and crossed the lawn. Mounting the steps of the rectory, they saw Mrs. Powers sitting with a book. She raised her eyes, seeing the resemblance immediately; the rector’s “Mr. Saunders is an old friend of Donald’s” was unnecessary. She rose, shutting her book on her forefinger.
“Donald is lying down. Mr. Gilligan is with him, I think. Let me call.”
“No, no,” Mr. Saunders objected quickly, “don’t disturb him. I will call later.”
“After you have come out of your way to speak to him? He will be disappointed if you don’t go up. You are an old friend, you know. You said Mr. Saunders is an old friend of Donald’s, didn’t you, Doctor?”
“Yes, indeed. He is Cecily’s father.”
“Then you must come up by all means.” She put her hand on his elbow.
“No, no, ma’am. Don’t you think it would be better not to disturb him now, Doctor?” he appealed to the rector.
“Well, perhaps so. You and Mrs. Saunders are coming this afternoon, then?”
But she was obdurate. “Hush, Doctor. Surely Donald can see Miss Saunders’ father at any time.” She firmly compelled him through the door, and he and the divine followed her up the stairs. To her knock, Gilligan’s voice replied and she opened the door.
“Here is Cecily’s father to see Donald, Joe,” she said, standing aside. The door opened and flooded the narrow passage with light, closing, it reft the passage of light again, and moving through a walled twilight, she descended the stairs again slowly. The lawn mower was long since stilled and beneath a tree she could see the recumbent form and one propped knee of its languid conductor lapped in slumber. Along the street passed slowly the hourly quota of negro children who, seeming to have no arbitrary hours, seemingly free of all compulsions of time or higher learning, went to and from school at any hour of a possible lighted eight, carrying lunch pails of ex-molasses and -lard tins. Some of them also carried books. The lunch was usually eaten on the way to school, which was conducted by a fattish negro in a lawn tie and an alpaca coat who could take a given line from any book from the telephone directory down and soon have the entire present personnel chanting it after him, like Vachel Lindsay. Then they were off for the day.
The clouds had piled higher and thicker, taking a lavender tinge, making bits of sky laked among them more blue. The air was becoming sultry, oppressive; and the church spire had lost perspective until now it seemed but two dimensions of metal and cardboard.
The leaves hung lifeless and sad, as if life were being recalled from them before it was fully given, leaving only the ghosts of young leaves. As she lingered near the door, she could hear Emmy clashing dishes in the dining-room and at last she heard that for which she waited.
“—expect you and Mrs. Saunders this afternoon, then,” the rector was saying as they appeared.
“Yes, yes,” the caller answered with detachment. His eyes met Mrs. Powers’. How like her he is! she thought, and her heart sank. Have I blundered again? She examined his face fleetingly and sighed with relief.
“How do you think he looks, Mr. Saunders?” she asked.
“Fine, considering his long trip, fine.”
The rector said happily: “I had noticed it myself this morning. Didn’t you also, Mrs. Powers?” His eyes implored her and she said yes. “You should have seen him yesterday, to discern the amazing improvement in him. Eh, Mrs. Powers?”
“Yes, indeed, sir. We all commented on it this morning.”
Mr. Saunders, carrying his limp panama hat, moved toward the steps. “Well, Doctor, it’s fine having the boy home again. We are all glad for our own sakes as well as yours. If there is anything we can do—” he added with neighborly sincerity.
“Thank you, thank you. I will not hesitate. But Donald is in a position to help himself now, provided he gets his medicine often enough. We depend on you for this, you know,” the rector answered with jovial innuendo.
Mr. Saunders added a complement of expected laughter. “As soon as she is herself again we, her mother and I, expect it to be the other way: we expect to be asking you to lend us Cecily occasionally.”
“Well, that might be arranged, I imagine—especially with a friend.” The rector laughed in turn and Mrs. Powers, listening, exulted. Then she knew a brief misgiving. They are so much alike! Will they change his mind for him, those women? She said:
“I think I’ll walk as far as the gate with Mr. Saunders, if he doesn’t mind.”
“Not at all, ma’am. I’ll be delighted.”
The rector stood in the door and beamed upon them as they descended the steps. “Sorry you cannot remain to dinner,” he said.
“Some other time, Doctor. My missus is waiting for me today.”
“Yes, some other time,” the rector agreed. He entered the house again, and they crossed grass beneath the imminent heavens. Mr. Saunders looked at her sharply. “I don’t like this,” he stated. “Why doesn’t someone tell him the truth about that boy?”
“Neither do I,” she answered. “But if they did, would he believe it? Did anyone have to tell you about him?”
“My God, no! Anybody could look at him. It made me sick. But, then, I’m chicken-livered, anyway,” he added with mirthless apology. “What did the doctor say about him?”
“Nothing definite, except that he remembers nothing that happened before he was hurt. The man that was wounded is dead and this is another person, a grown child. It’s his apathy, his detachment, that’s so terrible. He doesn’t seem to care where he is nor what he does. He must have been passed from hand to hand, like a child.”
“I mean, about his recovery.”
She shrugged. “Who can tell? There is nothing physically wrong with him that surgeons can remedy, if that’s what you mean.”
He walked on in silence. “His father should be told, though,” he said at last.
“I know, but who is to do it? Besides, he is bound to know some day, so why not let him believe as he wishes as long as he can? The shock will be no greater at one time than at another. And he is old, and so big and happy now. And Donald may recover, you know,” she lied.
“Yes, that’s right. But do you think he will?”
“Why not? He can’t remain forever as he is now.” They had reached the gate. The iron was rough and hot with sun under her hand, but there was no blue anywhere in the sky.
Mr. Saunders, fumbling with his hat, said: “But suppose he—he does not recover?”
She gave him a direct look. “Dies, you mean?” she asked brutally.
“Well, yes. Since you put it that way.”
“Now that’s what I want to discuss with you. It is a question of strengthening his morale, of giving him some reason to—well, buck up. And who could do that better than Miss Saunders?”
“But, ma’am, ain’t you asking a lot, asking me to risk my daughter’s happiness on such a poor bet as that?”
“You don’t understand. I am not asking that the engagement be insisted upon. I mean, why not let Cecily—Miss Saunders—see him as often as she will, let her be sweethearts with him if necessary until he gets to know her again and will make an effort for himself. Time enough then to talk of engagements. Think, Mr. Saunders: suppose he were your son. That wouldn’t be very much to ask of a friend, would it?”
He looked at her again in admiration, keenly, “You’ve got a level head on your shoulders, young lady. So what I’m to do is to prevail on her to come and see him, is it?”
“You must do more than that: you must see that she does come, that she acts just as she acted toward him before.” She gripped his arm. “You must not let her mother dissuade her. You must not. Remember, he might have been your son.”
“What makes you think her mother might object?” he asked in amazement.
She smiled faintly. “You forget I’m a woman, too,” she said. Then her face became serious, imminent. “But you mustn’t let that happen, do you hear?” Her eyes compelled him. “Is that a promise?”
“Yes,” he agreed, meeting her level glance. He took her firm, proffered hand and felt her clean, muscular clasp.
“A promise, then,” she said as warm great drops of rain dissolving from the fat, dull sky splashed heavily. She said goodbye and fled, running across the lawn toward the house before assaulting gray battalions of rain. Her long legs swept her up and onto the veranda as the pursuing rain, foiled, whirled like cavalry with silver lances across the lawn.
V
Mr. Saunders, casting an uneasy look at the dissolving sky, let himself out the gate and here, returning from school, was his son, saying: “Did you see his scar, daddy? Did you see his scar?”
The man stared at this troublesome small miniature of himself, and then he knelt suddenly, taking his son into his arms, holding him close.
“You seen his scar,” young Robert Saunders accused, trying to release himself as the rain galloped over them, through the trees.
VI
Emmy’s eyes were black and shallow as a toy animal’s and her hair was a sunburned shock of no particular color. There was something wild in Emmy’s face: you knew that she outran, outfought, outclimbed her brothers: you could imagine her developing like a small but sturdy greenness on a dunghill. Not a flower. But not dung, either.
Her father was a house painter, with the house painter’s inevitable penchant for alcohol, and he used to beat his wife. She, fortunately, failed to survive the birth of Emmy’s fourth brother, whereupon her father desisted from the bottle long enough to woo and wed an angular shrew who, serving as an instrument of retribution, beat him soundly with stove wood in her lighter moments.
“Don’t never marry a woman, Emmy,” her father, maudlin and affectionate, advised her. “If I had it to do all over again I’d take a man every time.”
“I won’t never marry nobody,” Emmy had promised herself passionately, especially after Donald had gone to war and her laboriously worded letters to him had gone unanswered. (And now he don’t even know me, she thought dully.)
“I won’t never marry nobody,” she repeated, putting dinner on the table. “I think I’ll just die,” she said, staring through a streaming window into the rain, watching the gusty rain surge by like a gray yet silver ship crossing her vision, nursing a final plate between her hands. She broke her revery, and putting the plate on the table she went and stood without the study door where they were sitting watching the streaming window panes, hearing the gray rain like a million little feet across the roof and in the trees.
“All right, Uncle Joe,” she said, fleeing kitchenward.
Before they were halfway through lunch the downpour had ceased, the ships of rain had surged onward, drawing before the wind, leaving only a whisper in the wet green waves of leaves, with an occasional gust running in long white lines like elves holding hands across the grass. But Emmy did not appear with dessert.
“Emmy!” called the rector again.
Mrs. Powers rose. “I’ll go see,” she said.
The kitchen was empty. “Emmy?” she called quietly. There was no reply, and she was on the point of leaving when an impulse bade her look behind the open door. She swung it away from the wall and Emmy stared at her dumbly.
“Emmy, what is it?” she asked.
But Emmy marched wordless from her hiding place, and taking a tray she placed the prepared dessert on it and handed it to Mrs. Powers.
“This is silly, Emmy, acting this way. You must give him time to get used to us again.”
But Emmy only looked at her from beyond the frontiers of her inarticulate despair, and the other woman carried the tray in to the table. “Emmy’s not feeling well,” she explained.
“I am afraid Emmy works too hard,” the rector said. “She was always a hard worker, don’t you remember, Donald?”
Mahon raised his puzzled gaze to his father’s face. “Emmy?” he repeated.
“Don’t you remember Emmy?”
“Yes, sir,” he repeated tonelessly.
VII
The window panes had cleared, though it yet rained. She sat after the men had left the table and at last Emmy peered through the door, then entered. She rose and together the two of them cleared the table, over Emmy’s mild protest, and carried the broken meal to the kitchen. Mrs. Powers turned back her sleeves briskly.
“No, no, lemme do it,” Emmy objected. “You’ll spoil your dress.”
“It’s an old one: no matter if I do.”
“It don’t look old to me. I think it’s right pretty. But this is my work. You go on and lemme do it.”
“I know, but I’ve got to do something or I’ll go wild. Don’t you worry about this dress: I don’t.”
“You are rich, you don’t have to, I guess,” Emmy answered coldly, examining the dress.
“Do you like it?” Emmy made no reply. “I think clothes of this sort suit people of your and my type, don’t you?”
“I dunno. I never thought about it,” splashing water in the sink.
“I tell you what,” said Mrs. Powers, watching Emmy’s firm, sturdy back, “I have a new dress up in my trunk that doesn’t suit me, for some reason. When we get through, suppose you come up with me and we’ll try it on you. I can sew a little, and we can make it fit you exactly. What about it?”
Emmy thawed imperceptibly. “What use would I have for it? I don’t go anywhere, and I got clothes good enough to wash and sweep and cook in.”
“I know, but it’s always well to have some dress-up things. I will lend you stockings and things to go with it, and a hat, too.”
Emmy slid dishes into hot water and steam rose about her reddened arms. “Where’s your husband?” she asked irrelevantly.
“He was killed in the war, Emmy.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, after a while: “And you so young, too.” She gave Mrs. Powers a quick, kind glance: sisters in sorrow. (My Donald was killed, too.)
Mrs. Powers rose quickly. “Where’s a cup towel? Let’s get done so we can try that dress.”
Emmy drew her hands from the water and dried them on her apron. “Wait, lemme get an apron for you, too.”
A bedraggled sparrow eyed her from the limp, glistening morning-glory vine, and Emmy dropped the apron over her head and knotted the cords at the back. Steam rose again about Emmy’s forearms, wreathing her head, and the china was warm and smooth and sensuous to the touch; glass gleamed under Mrs. Powers’ toweling and a dull parade of silver took the light mutely, hushing it as like two priestesses they repeated the orisons of Clothes.
As they passed the study door they saw the rector and his son gazing quietly into a rain-perplexed tree, and Gilligan sprawled on his back upon a battered divan, smoking and reading.
VIII
Emmy, outfitted from head to heel, thanked her awkwardly.
“How good the rain smells!” Mrs. Powers interrupted her. “Sit down a while, won’t you?”
Emmy, admiring her finery, came suddenly from out her Cinderella dream. “I can’t. I got some mending to do. I nearly clean forgot it.”
“Bring your mending in here, then, so we can talk. I haven’t had a woman to talk to in months, it seems like. Bring it in here and let me help you.”
Emmy said, flattered: “Why do you want to do my work?”
“I told you if I don’t have something to do I’ll be a crazy woman in two days. Please, Emmy, as a favor. Won’t you?”
“All right. Lemme get it.” She gathered up her garments and leaving the room she returned with a heaped basket. They sat on either side of it.
“His poor huge socks,” Mrs. Powers raised her encased hand. “Like chair covers, aren’t they?”
Emmy laughed happily above her needle, and beneath swooning gusts of rain across the roof the pile of neatly folded and mended garments grew steadily.
“Emmy,” Mrs. Powers said after a time, “what was Donald like before? You knew him a long time, didn’t you?”
Emmy’s needle continued its mute, tiny flashing, and after a while Mrs. Powers leaned across the basket and putting her hand under Emmy’s chin, raised her bent face. Emmy twisted her head aside and bent again over her needle. Mrs. Powers rose and drew the shades, darkening the room against the rain-combed afternoon. Emmy continued to peer blindly at her darning until the other woman took it from her hand, then she raised her head and stared at her new friend with beast-like, unresisting hopelessness.
Mrs. Powers took Emmy’s arms and drew her erect. “Come, Emmy,” she said, feeling the bones in Emmy’s hard, muscular arms. Mrs. Powers knew that lacking a bed any reclining intimacy was conducive to confidence, so she drew Emmy down beside her in an ancient obese armchair. And with heedless rain filling the room with hushed monotonous sound, Emmy told her brief story.
“We was in school together—when he was there at all. He never came, mostly. They couldn’t make him. He’d just go off into the country by himself, and not come back for two or three days. And nights, too. It was one night when he—when he—”
Her voice died away and Mrs. Powers said: “When he what, Emmy? Aren’t you going too fast?”
“Sometimes he used to walk home from school with me. He wouldn’t never have a hat or a coat, and his face was like—it was like he ought to live in the woods. You know: not like he ought to went to school or had to dress up. And so you never did know when you’d see him. He’d come in school at almost any time and folks would see him way out in the country at night. Sometimes he’d sleep in folks’ houses in the country and sometimes niggers would find him asleep in sand ditches. Everybody knew him. And then one night—”
“How old were you then?”
“I was sixteen and he was nineteen. And then one night—”
“But you are going too fast. Tell me about you and him before that. Did you like him?”
“I liked him better than anybody. When we was both younger we dammed up a place in a creek and built a swimming hole and we used to go in every day. And then we’d lie in a old blanket we had and sleep until time to get up and go home. And in summer we was together nearly all the time. Then one day he’d just disappear and nobody wouldn’t know where he was. And then he’d be outside our house some morning, calling me.
“The trouble was that I always lied to pappy where I had been and I hated that. Donald always told his father: he never lied about nothing he ever did. But he was braver than me, I reckon.
“And then when I was fourteen pappy found out about how I like Donald, and so he took me out of school and kept me at home all the time. So I didn’t hardly ever get to see Donald. Pappy made me promise I wouldn’t go around with him any more. He had come for me once or twice and I told him I couldn’t go, and then one day he came and pappy was at home.
“Pappy ran out to the gate and told him not to come fooling around there no more, but Donald stood right up to him. Not acting bad, but just like pappy was a fly or something. And so pappy come in the house mad and said he wasn’t going to have any such goings-on with his girls, and he hit me and then he was sorry and cried (he was drunk, you see), and made me swear I wouldn’t never see Donald again. And I had to. But I thought of how much fun we used to have, and I wanted to die.
“And so I didn’t see Donald for a long time. Then folks said he was going to marry that—that—her. I knew Donald didn’t care much about me: he never cared about anybody. But when I heard that he was going to marry her—
“Anyway, I didn’t sleep much at night, and so I’d sit on the porch after I’d undressed lots of times, thinking about him and watching the moon getting bigger every night. And then one night, when the moon was almost full and you could see like day almost, I saw somebody walk up to our gate and stop there. And I knew it was Donald, and he knew I was there because he said:
“ ‘Come here, Emmy.’
“And I went to him. And it was like old times because I forgot all about him marrying her, because he still liked me, to come for me after so long. And he took my hand and we walked down the road, not talking at all. After a while we came to the place where you turn off the road to go to our swimming hole, and when we crawled through the fence my nightie got hung and he said, ‘Take it off.’ And I did and we put it in a plum bush and went on.
“The water looked so soft in the moonlight you couldn’t tell where the water was hardly, and we swam a while and then Donald hid his clothes, too, and we went on up on top of a hill. Everything was so kind of pretty and the grass felt so good to your feet, and all of a sudden Donald ran on ahead of me. I can keep up with Donald when I want to, but for some reason I didn’t want to tonight, and so I sat down. I could see him running along the top of the hill, all shiny in the moonlight, then he ran back down the hill toward the creek.
“And so I laid down. I couldn’t see anything except the sky, and I don’t know how long it was when all of a sudden there was his head against the sky, over me, and he was wet again and I could see the moonlight kind of running on his wet shoulders and arms, and he looked at me. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel them somehow like things touching me. When he looks at you—you feel like a bird, kind of: like you was going swooping right away from the ground or something. But now there was something different, too. I could hear him panting from running, and I could feel something inside me panting, too. I was afraid and I wasn’t afraid. It was like everything was dead except us. And then he said:
“ ‘Emmy, Emmy.’
“Kind of like that. And then—and then—”
“Yes. And then he made love to you.”
Emmy turned suddenly, and the other held her close. “And now he don’t even know me, he don’t even know me!” she wailed.
Mrs. Powers held her and at last Emmy raised her hand and pushed her hair from her face. “And then?” Mrs. Powers prompted.
“And afterwards we laid there and held each other, and I felt so quiet, so good, and some cows came up and looked at us and went away. And I could feel his hand going right slow from my shoulder along my side so far as he could reach and then back again, slow, slow. We didn’t talk at all, just his hand going up and down my side, so smooth and quiet. And after a while I was asleep.
“Then I waked up. It was getting dawn and I was cramped and wet and cold, and he was gone. But I knew he would come back. And so he did, with some blackberries. We ate ’em and watched it getting light in the east. Then when the blackberries were gone I could feel the cold, wet grass under me again and see the sky all yellow and chilly behind his head.
“After a while we went back by the swimming hole and he put on his clothes and we got my nightie and I put it on. It was getting light fast and he wanted to go all the way home with me, only I wouldn’t let him: I didn’t care what happened to me now. And when I went through the gate there was pappy standing on the porch.”
She was silent. Her story seemed to be finished. She breathed regularly as a child against the other’s shoulder.
“And what then, Emmy?” Mrs. Powers prompted again.
“Well, when I came to the porch I stopped and he said, ‘Where have you been?’ and I said, ‘None of your business,’ and he said, ‘You whore, I’ll beat you to death,’ and I said, ‘Touch me.’ But he didn’t. I think I would have killed him if he had. He went into the house and I went in and dressed and bundled up my clothes and left. And I haven’t been back since, either.”
“What did you do then?”
“I got a job sewing for a dressmaker named Mrs. Miller, and she let me sleep in her shop until I could earn some money. I hadn’t been there but three days when one day Mr. Mahon walked in. He said that Donald had told him about us and that Donald had gone to the war, and that he had come for me. So I have been here ever since. So I didn’t see Donald any more, and now he don’t know me at all.”
“You poor child,” Mrs. Powers said. She raised Emmy’s face: it was calm, purged. She no longer felt superior to the girl. Suddenly Emmy sprang to her feet and gathered up the mended clothes. “Wait, Emmy,” she called. But Emmy was gone.
She lit a cigarette and sat smoking slowly in her great, dim room with its heterogeneous collection of furniture. After a while she rose to draw the curtains; the rain had ceased and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.
She crushed out her cigarette, and descending the stairs she saw a strange retreating back, and the rector, turning from the door, said hopelessly, staring at her:
“He doesn’t give us much hope for Donald’s sight.”
“But he’s only a general practitioner. We’ll get a specialist from Atlanta,” she encouraged him, touching his sleeve.
And here was Miss Cecily Saunders tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying path, between the fresh-sparkled grass.
IX
Cecily sat in her room in pale satin knickers and a thin orange-colored sweater, with her slim legs elevated to the arm of another chair, reading a book. Her father, opening the door without knocking, stared at her in silent disapproval. She met his gaze for a time, then lowered her legs.
“Do nice girls sit around half-naked like this?” he asked coldly. She laid her book aside and rose.
“Maybe I’m not a nice girl,” she answered flippantly. He watched her as she enveloped her narrow body in a flimsy diaphanous robe.
“I suppose you consider that an improvement, do you?”
“You shouldn’t come in my room without knocking, daddy,” she told him fretfully.
“No more I will, if that’s the way you sit in it.” He knew he was creating an unfortunate atmosphere in which to say what he wished, but he felt compelled to continue. “Can you imagine your mother sitting in her room half undressed like this?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” She leaned against the mantel combatively respectful. “But I can if she wanted to.”
He sat down. “I want to talk to you, Sis.” His tone was changed and she sank on to the foot of the bed, curling her legs under her, regarding him hostilely. How clumsy I am, he thought, clearing his throat. “It’s about young Mahon.”
She looked at him.
“I saw him this noon, you know.”
She was forcing him to do all the talking. Dammit, what an amazing ability children have for making parental admonition hard to achieve. Even Bob was developing it.
Cecily’s eyes were green and fathomless. She extended her arm, taking a nail file from her dressing-table. The downpour had ceased and the rain was only a whisper in the wet leaves. Cecily bent her face above the graceful slender gesturing of her hands.
“I say, I saw young Mahon today,” her father repeated with rising choler.
“You did? How did he look, daddy?” Her tone was so soft, so innocent that he sighed with relief. He glanced at her sharply, but her face was lowered sweetly and demurely: he could see only her hair filled with warm reddish lights and the shallow plane of her cheek and her soft, unemphatic chin.
“That boy’s in bad shape, Sis.”
“His poor father,” she commiserated above her busy hands. “It is so hard on him, isn’t it?”
“His father doesn’t know.”
She looked quickly up and her eyes became gray and dark, darker still. He saw that she didn’t know, either.
“Doesn’t know?” she repeated, “How can he help seeing that scar?” Her face blanched and her hand touched her breast delicately. “Do you mean—”
“No, no,” he said hastily. “I mean his father thinks—that he—his father doesn’t think—I mean his father forgets that his journey has tired him, you see,” he finished awkwardly. He continued swiftly: “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“About being engaged to him? How can I, with that scar? How can I?”
“No, no, not engaged to him, if you don’t want to be. We won’t think about the engagement at all now. But just keep on seeing him until he gets well, you see.”
“But, daddy, I can’t. I just can’t.”
“Why, Sis?”
“Oh, his face. I can’t bear it any more.” Her own face was wrung with the recollection of a passed anguish. “Don’t you see I can’t? I would if I could.”
“But you’ll get used to it. And I expect a good doctor can patch him up and hide it. Doctors can do anything these days. Why, Sis, you are the one who can do more for him right now than any doctor.”
She lowered her head to her arms folded upon the foot-rail of the bed and her father stood beside her, putting his arm about her slim, nervous body.
“Can’t you do that much, Sis? Just drop in and see him occasionally?”
“I just can’t,” she moaned, “I just can’t.”
“Well, then, I guess you can’t see that Farr boy any more, either.”
She raised her head quickly and her body became taut beneath his arm. “Who says I can’t?”
“I say so, Sis,” he replied gently and firmly.
Her eyes became blue with anger, almost black.
“You can’t prevent it. You know you can’t.” She thrust herself back against his arm, trying to evade it. He held her and she twisted her head aside, straining from him.
“Look at me,” he said quietly, putting his other hand under her cheek. She resisted, he felt her warm breath on his hand, but he forced her face around. Her eyes blazed at him. “If you can’t occasionally see the man you are engaged to, and a sick man to boot, I’m damned if I’ll have you running around with anybody else.”
There were red prints of his fingers on her cheek, and her eyes slowly filled. “You are hurting me,” she said, and feeling her soft, vague chin in his palm and her fragile body against his arm, he knew a sudden access of contrition. He picked her up bodily and sat again in a chair, holding her on his lap.
“Now, then,” he whispered, rocking, holding her face against his shoulder, “I didn’t mean to be so rough about it.”
She lay against him limply, weeping, and the rain filled the interval, whispering across the roof, among the leaves of trees. After a long space in which they could hear dripping eaves and the happy sound of gutters and a small ivory clock in the room, she moved and still holding her face against his coat, she clasped her father about the neck.
“We won’t think about it any more,” he told her, kissing her cheek. She clasped him again tightly, then slipping from his lap, she stood at the dressing-table, dabbing powder upon her face. He rose, and in the mirror across her shoulder he saw her blurred face and the deft nervousness of her hands. “We won’t think of it anymore,” he repeated, opening the door. The orange sweater was a hushed incandescence under the formal illusion of her robe, molding her narrow back, as he closed the door after him.
As he passed his wife’s room she called to him.
“What were you scolding Cecily for, Robert?” she asked.
But he stumped on down the stairs, ignoring her and soon she heard him cursing Tobe from the back porch.
Mrs. Saunders entered her daughter’s room and found her swiftly dressing. The sun broke suddenly through the rain and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.
“Where are you going, Cecily?” she asked.
“To see Donald,” she replied, drawing on her stockings, twisting them skilfully and deftly at the knees.
X
Januarius Jones, lounging through the wet grass, circled the house and peering through the kitchen window saw Emmy’s back and one angled arm sawing across her body. He mounted the steps quietly and entered. Emmy’s stare above her poised iron was impersonally combative. Jones’ yellow eyes, unabashed, took her and the ironing board and the otherwise empty kitchen boldly. Jones said:
“Well, Cinderella.”
“My name is Emmy,” she told him icily.
“That’s right,” he agreed equably, “so it is. Emmy, Emmeline, Emmylune, Lune—‘La lune en grade aucune rancune.’ But does it? Or perhaps you prefer ‘Noir sur la lune?’ Or do you make finer or less fine distinctions than this? It might be jazzed a bit, you know. Aelia thought so, quite successfully, but then she had a casement in which to lean at dusk and harp her sorrow on her golden hair. You don’t seem to have any golden hair, but, then, you might jazz your hair up a little, too. Ah, this restless young generation! Wanting to jazz up everything, not only their complexes, but the shapes of their behinds as well.”
She turned her back on him indifferently, and again her arm sawed the iron steadily along a stretched fabric. He became so still that after a while she turned to see what had become of him. He was so close behind her that her hair brushed his face. Clutching her iron, she shrieked.
“Hah, my proud beauty!” hissed Jones in accepted style, putting his arms around her.
“Let me go!” she said, glaring at him.
“Your speech is wrong,” Jones informed her helpfully. “ ‘Release me, villain, or it will be the worse for you,’ is what you should say.”
“Let me go,” she repeated.
“Not till you divulge them papers,” he answered, fat and solemn, his yellow eyes expressionless as a dead man’s.
“Lemme go, or I’ll burn you,” she cried hotly, brandishing the iron. They stared at one another. Emmy’s eyes were fiercely implacable and Jones said at last:
“Dam’f I don’t believe you would.”
“See if I don’t,” she said with anger. But releasing her, he sprang away in time. Her red hand brushed her hair from her hot face and her eyes blazed at him. “Get out, now,” she ordered, and Jones, sauntering easily toward the door, remarked plaintively:
“What’s the matter with you women here, anyway? Wildcats. Wildcats. By the way, how is the dying hero today?”
“Go on now,” she repeated, gesturing with the iron. He passed through the door and closed it behind him. Then he opened it again and making her a deep fattish bow from the threshold he withdrew.
In the dark hallway he halted, listening. Light from the front door fell directly in his face: he could see only the edged indication of sparse furniture. He paused, listening. No, she isn’t here, he decided. Not enough talk going on for her to be here. That femme hates silence like a cat does water. Cecily and silence: oil and water. And she’ll be on top of it, too. Little bitch, wonder what she meant by that yesterday. And Georgie, too. She’s such a fast worker I guess it takes a whole string to keep her busy. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow. Especially when today ain’t over yet. Go in and pull the Great Dane’s leg a while.
At the study door he met Gilligan. He didn’t recognize him at first.
“Bless my soul,” he said at last. “Has the army disbanded already? What will Pershing do now, without any soldiers to salute him? We had scarcely enough men to fight a war with, but with a long peace ahead of us—man, we are helpless.”
Gilligan said coldly: “Whatcher want?”
“Why, nothing, thank you. Thank you so much. I merely came to call upon our young friend in the kitchen and to incidentally inquire after Mercury’s brother.”
“Whose brother?”
“Young Mr. Mahon, in a manner of speaking, then.”
“Doctor’s with him,” Gilligan replied curtly. “You can’t go in now.” He turned on his heel.
“Not at all,” murmured Jones, after the other’s departing back. “Not at all, my dear fellow.” Yawning, he strolled up the hall. He stood in the entrance, speculative, filling his pipe. He yawned again openly. At his right was an open door and he entered a stuffily formal room. Here was a convenient window ledge on which to put spent matches, and sitting beside it he elevated his feet to another chair.
The room was depressingly hung with glum portraits of someone’s forebears, between which the principal strain of kinship appeared to be some sort of stomach trouble. Or perhaps they were portraits of the Ancient Mariner at different ages before he wore out his albatross. (Not even a dead fish could make a man look like that, thought Jones, refusing the dyspeptic gambit of their fretful painted eyes. No wonder the parson believes in hell.) A piano had not been opened in years, and opened would probably sound like the faces looked. Jones rose and from a bookcase he got a copy of Paradise Lost (cheerful thing to face a sinner with, he thought), and returned to his chair. The chair was hard, but Jones was not. He elevated his feet again.
The rector and a stranger came into his vision, pausing at the front door in conversation. The stranger departed and that black woman appeared. She and the rector exchanged a few words. Jones remarked with slow, lustful approval her firm, free carriage, and—
And here came Miss Cecily Saunders in pale lilac with a green ribbon at her waist, tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying gravel path between the fresh-sparkled grass.
“Uncle Joe!” she called, but the rector had already withdrawn to his study. Mrs. Powers met her and she said: “Oh. How do you do? May I see Donald?”
She entered the hall beneath the dim lovely fanlight, and her roving glance remarked one sitting with his back to a window. She said Donald! and sailed into the room like a bird. One hand covered her eyes and the other was outstretched as she ran with quick tapping steps and sank before him at his feet, burying her face in his lap.
“Donald, Donald! I will try to get used to it, I will try! Oh, Donald, Donald! Your poor face! But I will, I will,” she repeated hysterically. Her fumbling hand touched his sleeve and slipping down his arm she drew his hand under her cheek, clasping it. “I didn’t mean to, yesterday. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, Donald. I couldn’t help it, but I love you, Donald, my precious, my own.” She burrowed deeper into his lap.
“Put your arms around me, Donald,” she said, “until I get used to you again.”
He complied, drawing her upward. Suddenly, struck with something familiar about the coat, she raised her head. It was Januarius Jones.
She sprang to her feet. “You beast, why didn’t you tell me?”
“My dear ma’am, who am I to refuse what the gods send?”
But she did not wait to hear him. At the door Mrs. Powers stood watching with interest. Now she’s laughing at me! Cecily thought furiously. Her glance was a blue dagger and her voice was like dripped honey.
“How silly of me, not to have looked,” she said sweetly. “Seeing you, I thought at once that Donald would be near by. I am sure if I were a man I’d always be as near you as possible. But I didn’t know you and Mr.—Mr. Smith were such good friends. Though they say that fat men are awfully attractive. May I see Donald—do you mind?”
Her anger lent her fortitude. When she entered the study she looked at Mahon without a qualm, scar and all. She greeted the rector, kissing him, then she turned swift and graceful to Mahon, averting her eyes from his brow. He watched her quietly, without emotion.
You have caused me to look foolish, she told him with whispered smooth fury, sweetly kissing his mouth.
Jones, ignored, followed down the hall and stood without the closed door to the study, listening, hearing her throaty, rapid speech beyond the bland panel. Then, stooping, he peered through the keyhole. But he could see nothing and feeling his creased waistline constricting his breathing, feeling his braces cutting into his stooped fleshy shoulders, he rose under Gilligan’s detached, contemplative stare. Jones’ own yellow eyes became quietly empty and he walked around Gilligan’s immovable belligerence and on toward the front door, whistling casually.
XI
Cecily Saunders returned home nursing the yet uncooled embers of her anger. From beyond the turning angle of the veranda her mother called her name and she found her parents sitting together.
“How is Donald?” her mother asked, and not waiting for a reply, she said: “George Farr phoned again after you left. I wish you’d leave a message for him. It keeps Tobe forever stopping whatever he is doing to answer the phone.”
Cecily, making no reply, would have passed on to a French window opening upon the porch, but her father caught her hand, stopping her.
“How is Donald looking today?” he asked, repeating his wife.
Her unrelaxed hand tried to withdraw from his. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said harshly.
“Why, didn’t you go there?” Her mother’s voice was faintly laced with surprise. “I thought you were going there.”
“Let me go, daddy.” She wrenched her hand nervously. “I want to change my dress.” He could feel her rigid, delicate bones. “Please,” she implored and he said:
“Come here, Sis.”
“Now, Robert,” his wife interposed. “You promised to let her alone.”
“Come here, Sis,” he repeated, and her hand becoming lax, she allowed herself to be drawn to the arm of his chair. She sat nervously, impatiently, and he put his arm around her. “Why didn’t you go there?”
“Now, Robert, you promised,” his wife parroted futilely.
“Let me go, daddy.” She was rigid beneath her thin, pale dress. He held her and she said: “I did go there.”
“Did you see Donald?”
“Oh, yes. That black, ugly woman finally condescended to let me see him a few minutes. In her presence, of course.”
“What black, ugly woman, darling?” asked Mrs. Saunders, with interest.
“Black woman? Oh, you mean Mrs. What’s-her-name. Why, Sis, I thought you and she would like each other. She has a good, level head, I thought.”
“I don’t doubt it. Only—”
“What black woman, Cecily?”
“—only you’d better not let Donald see that you are smitten with her.”
“Now, now, Sis. What are you talking about?”
“Oh, it’s well enough to talk that way,” she said, taut and passionate, “but haven’t I eyes of my own? Haven’t I seen? Why did she come all the way from Chicago or wherever it was with him? And yet you expect me—”
“Who came from where? What woman, Cecily? What woman, Robert?” They ignored her.
“Now, Sis, you ain’t just to her. You’re just excited.”
His arm held her fragile rigidity.
“I tell you, it isn’t that—just her. I had forgiven that, because he is sick and because of how he used to be about—about girls. You know, before the war. But he has humiliated me in public: this afternoon he—he—Let me go, daddy,” she repeated, imploring, trying to thrust herself away from him.
“But what woman, Cecily? What is all this about a woman?” Her mother’s voice was fretted.
“Sis, honey, remember he is sick. And I know more about Mrs.—er—Mrs. Powers than you do.” He removed his arm, yet held her by the wrist. “Now, you—”
“Robert, who is this woman?”
“—think about it tonight and we’ll talk it over in the morning.”
“No, I am through with him, I tell you. He has humiliated me before her.” Her hand came free and she sprang toward the window.
“Cecily?” her mother called after the slim whirl of her vanishing dress, “are you going to call George Farr?”
“No! Not if he was the last man in the world. I hate men.” The swift staccato of her feet died away upon the stairs, and then a door slammed. Mrs. Saunders sank creaking into her chair.
“Now, Robert.”
So he told her.
XII
Cecily did not appear at breakfast. Her father mounted to her room, and knocked this time.
“Yes?” her voice penetrated the wood, muffled thinly.
“It’s me, Sis. Can I come in?”
There was no reply, so he entered. She had not even bathed her face, and upon the pillow she was flushed and childish with sleep. The room was permeated with her body’s intimate repose; it was in his nostrils like an odor and he felt ill at ease, cumbersome and awkward. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her surrendered hand diffidently. It was unresponsive.
“How do you feel this morning?”
She made no reply, lazily feeling her ascendency and he continued with assumed lightness: “Do you feel better about poor young Mahon this morning?”
“I’ve put him out of my mind. He doesn’t need me any more.”
“Course he does,” heartily, “we expect you to be his best medicine.”
“How can I?”
“How? What do you mean?”
“He brought his own medicine with him.”
Her calmness, her exasperating calmness. He must flog himself into yesterday’s rage. That was the only way to do anything with ’em, damn ’em.
“Did it ever occur to you that I, in my limited way, may know more about this than you?”
She withdrew her hand and slid it beneath the covers, making no reply, not even looking at him.
He continued: “You are acting like a fool, Cecily. What did the man do to you yesterday?”
“He simply insulted me before another woman. But I don’t care to discuss it.”
“But listen, Sis. Are you refusing to even see him when seeing him means whether or not he will get well again?”
“He’s got that black woman. If she can’t cure him with all her experience, I certainly can’t.”
Her father’s face slowly suffused. She glanced at him impersonally then turned her head on the pillow, staring out the window.
“So you refuse to see him any more?”
“What else can I do? He very evidently does not want me to bother him any longer. Do you want me to go where I am not wanted?”
He swallowed his anger, trying to speak calmly, trying to match her calm. “Don’t you see that I’m not trying to make you do anything? that I am only trying to help that boy get on his feet again? Suppose he was Bob, suppose Bob was lying there like he is.”
“Then you’d better get engaged to him yourself. I’m not.”
“Look at me,” he said with such quiet, such repression that she lay motionless, holding her breath. He put a rough hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to manhandle me,” she told him calmly, turning her head.
“Listen to me. You are not to see that Farr boy, any more. Understand?”
Her eyes were unfathomable as sea water.
“Do you understand me?” he repeated.
“Yes, I hear you.”
He rose. They were amazingly alike. He turned at the door meeting her stubborn, impersonal gaze. “I meant it, Sis.”
Her eyes clouded suddenly. “I am sick and tired of men. Do you think I care?”
The door closed behind him and she lay staring at its inscrutable, painted surface, running her fingers lightly over her breasts, across her belly, drawing concentric circles upon her body beneath the covers, wondering how it would feel to have a baby, hating that inevitable time when she’d have to have one, blurring her slim epicenity, blurring her body with pain. …
XIII
Miss Cecily Saunders, in pale blue linen, entered a neighbor’s house, gushing, paying a morning call. Women did not like her, and she knew it. Yet she had a way with them, a way of charming them temporarily with her conventional perfection, insincere though she might be. Her tact and her graceful deference were such that they discussed her disparagingly only behind her back. None of them could long resist her. She always seemed to enjoy other people’s gossip. It was not until later you found that she had gossiped none herself. And this, indeed, requires tact.
She chattered briefly while her hostess pottered among tubbed flowers, then asking and receiving permission, she entered the house to use the telephone.
XIV
Mr. George Farr, lurking casually within the courthouse portals, saw her unmistakable approaching figure far down the shady street, remarking her quick, nervous stride. He gloated, fondling her in his eyes with a slow sensuality. That’s the way to treat ’em: make ’em come to you. Forgetting that he had phoned her vainly five times in thirty hours. But her surprise was so perfect, her greeting so impersonal, that he began to doubt his own ears.
“My God,” he said, “I thought I’d never get you on the phone.”
“Yes?” She paused, creating an unpleasant illusion of arrested haste.
“Been sick?”
“Yes, sort of. Well,” moving on, “I’m awfully glad to have seen you. Call me again sometime, when I’m in, won’t you?”
“But say, Cecily—”
She paused again and looked at him over her shoulder with courteous patience. “Yes?”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, I’m running errands today. Buying some things for mamma. Goodbye.” She moved again, her blue linen shaping delicate and crisp to her stride. A negro driving a wagon passed between them, interminable as Time: he thought the wagon would never pass, so he darted around it to overtake her.
“Be careful,” she said quickly, “Daddy’s downtown today. I am not supposed to see you any more. My folks are down on you.”
“Why?” he asked in startled vacuity.
“I don’t know. Perhaps they have heard of your running around with women, and they think you will ruin me. That’s it, probably.”
Flattered, he said: “Aw, come on.”
They walked beneath awnings. Wagons tethered to slumbering mules and horses were motionless in the square. They were lapped, surrounded, submerged by the frank odor of unwashed negroes, most of whom wore at least one ex-garment of the army O.D.; and their slow, unemphatic voices and careless, ready laughter which has also somehow beneath it something elemental and sorrowful and unresisting, lay drowsily upon the noon.
At the corner was a drug store in each window of which was an identical globe, containing liquids, once red and green, respectively, but faded now to a weak similar brown by the suns of many summers. She stayed him with her hand.
“You mustn’t come any further, George, please.”
“Oh, come on, Cecily.”
“No, no. Goodbye.” Her slim hand stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Come in and have a coca-cola.”
“No, I can’t. I have so many things to do. I’m sorry.”
“Well, after you get through, then,” he suggested as a last resort.
“I can’t tell. But if you want to, you can wait here for me and I’ll come back if I have time. If you want to, you know.”
“All right, I’ll wait here for you. Please come, Cecily.”
“I can’t promise. Goodbye.”
He was forced to watch her retreating from him, mincing and graceful, diminishing. Hell, she won’t come, he told himself. But he daren’t leave for fear she might. He watched her as long as he could see her, watching her head among other heads, sometimes seeing her whole body, delicate and unmistakable. He lit a cigarette and lounged into the drug store.
After a while the clock on the courthouse struck twelve and he threw away his fifth cigarette. God damn her, she won’t have another chance to stand me up, he swore. Cursing her he felt better and pushed open the screen door.
He sprang suddenly back into the store and stepped swiftly out of sight and the soda clerk, glassy-haired and white-jacketed, said: “Whatcher dodging?” with interest. She passed, walking and talking gaily with a young married man who clerked in a department store. She looked in as they passed, without seeing him.
He waited, wrung and bitter with anger and jealousy, until he knew she had turned the corner. Then he swung the door outward furiously. He cursed her again, blindly, and someone behind him saying, “Mist’ George, Mist’ George,” monotonously drew up beside him. He whirled upon a negro boy.
“What in hell you want?” he snapped.
“Letter fer you,” replied the negro equably, shaming him with better breeding. He took it and gave the boy a coin. It was written on a scrap of wrapping paper and it read: “Come tonight after they have gone to bed. I may not get out. But come—if you want to.”
He read and reread it, he stared at her spidery, nervous script until the words themselves ceased to mean anything to his mind. He was sick with relief. Everything, the ancient, slumbering courthouse, the elms, the hitched somnolent horses and mules, the stolid coagulation of negroes and the slow unemphasis of their talk and laughter, all seemed some way different, lovely and beautiful under the indolent noon.
He drew a long breath.