IV
I
Mr. George Farr considered himself quite a man. I wonder if it shows in my face? he thought, keenly examining the faces of men whom he passed, trying to fancy that he did see something in some faces that other faces had not. But he had to admit that he could see nothing, and he knew a slight depression, a disappointment. Strange. If that didn’t show in your face what could you do for things to show in your face? It would be fine if (George Farr was a gentleman), if without talking men who had women could somehow know each other on sight—some sort of involuntary sign: an automatic masonry. Of course women were no new thing to him. But not like this. Then the pleasing thought occurred to him that he was unique in the world, that nothing like this had happened to any other man, that no one else had ever thought of such a thing. Anyway I know it. He gloated over a secret thought like a pleasant taste in the mouth.
When he remembered (remember? had he thought of anything else?) how she had run into the dark house in her nightgown, weeping, he felt quite masculine and superior and gentle. She’s all right now though, I guess they all do that.
His Jove-like calm was slightly shaken, however, after he had tried twice unsuccessfully to get her over the phone and it was completely shattered when late in the afternoon she drove serenely by him in a car with a girl friend, utterly ignoring him. She didn’t see me. (You know she did.) She didn’t see me! (You know damn well she did.)
By nightfall he was on the verge of his possible, mild unemphatic insanity. Then this cooled away as the sun cooled from the sky. He felt nothing, yet like an unattached ghost he felt compelled to linger around the corner which she would pass if she did come downtown. Suddenly he knew terror. What if I were to see her with another man? It would be worse than death he knew, trying to make himself leave, to hide somewhere like a wounded beast. But his body would not go.
He saw her time after time and when it turned out to be someone else he did not know what he felt. And so when she did turn the corner he did not believe his eyes at first. It was her brother that he first recognized, then he saw her and all his life went into his eyes leaving his body but an awkward, ugly gesture in unquicked clay. He could not have said how long it was that he was unconscious of the stone base of the monument on which he sat while she and her brother moved slowly and implacably across his vision, then his life flowed completely, emptying his eyes and filling his body again, giving him dominion over his arms and legs, and temporarily sightless he sprang after her.
“Hi, George,” young Robert greeted him casually, as an equal. “Goin’ to the show?”
She looked at him swiftly, delicately, with terror and something like loathing.
“Cecily—” he said.
Her eyes were dark, black, and she averted her head and hurried on.
“Cecily,” he implored, touching her arm.
At his touch she shuddered, shrinking from him. “Don’t, don’t touch me,” she said piteously. Her face was blanched, colorless, and he stood watching her frail dress flowing to the fragile articulation of her body as she and her brother passed on, leaving him. And he, too, partook of her pain and terror, not knowing what it was.
II
Donald Mahon’s homecoming, poor fellow, was hardly a nine days’ wonder even. Curious, kindly neighbors came in—men who stood or sat jovially respectable, cheerful: solid business men interested in the war only as a byproduct of the rise and fall of Mr. Wilson, and interested in that only as a matter of dollars and cents, while their wives chatted about clothes to each other across Mahon’s scarred, oblivious brow; a few of the rector’s more casual acquaintances democratically uncravated, hushing their tobacco into a bulged cheek, diffidently but firmly refusing to surrender their hats; girls that he had known, had danced with or courted of summer nights, come now to look once upon his face, and then quickly aside in hushed nausea, not coming any more unless his face happened to be hidden on the first visit (upon which they finally found opportunity to see it); boys come to go away fretted because he wouldn’t tell any war stories—all this going on about him while Gilligan, his glum majordomo, handled them all with impartial discouraging efficiency.
“Beat it, now,” he repeated to young Robert Saunders, who with sundry contemporaries to whom he had promised something good in the way of damaged soldiers, had called.
“He’s going to marry my sister. I’d like to know why I can’t see him,” young Robert protested. He was in the uncomfortable position of one who has inveigled his friends into a gold mine and then cannot produce the mine. They jeered at him and he justified his position hotly, appealing to Gilligan.
“G’wan now, beat it. Show’s over. G’wan now.” Gilligan shut the door on him. Mrs. Powers, descending the stairs said:
“What is it, Joe?”
“That damn Saunders hellion brought his whole gang around to see his scar. We got to stop this,” he stated with exasperation, “can’t have these damn folks in and out of here all day long, staring at him.”
“Well, it is about over,” she told him, “they have all called by now. Even their funny little paper has appeared. ‘War Hero Returns,’ you know—that sort of thing.”
“I hope so,” he answered without hope. “God knows they’ve all been here once. Do you know, while I was living and eating and sleeping with men all the time I never thought much of them, but since I got civilized again and seen all these women around here saying, Ain’t his face terrible, poor boy, and Will she marry him? and Did you see her downtown yesterday almost nekkid? why, I think a little better of men after all. You’ll notice them soldiers don’t bother him, specially the ones that was overseas. They just kind of call the whole thing off. He just had hard luck and whatcher going to do about it? is the way they figure. Some didn’t and some did, the way they think of it.”
They stood together looking out of the window upon the sleepy street. Women, quite palpably “dressed,” went steadily beneath parasols in one direction. “Ladies’ Aid,” murmured Gilligan. “W.C.T.U. maybe.”
“I think you are becoming misanthropic, Joe.”
Gilligan glanced at her smooth contemplative profile almost on a level with his own.
“About women? When I say soldiers I don’t mean me. I wasn’t no soldier any more than a man that fixes watches is a watchmaker. And when I say women I don’t mean you.”
She put her arm over his shoulder. It was firm, latent in strength, comforting. He knew that he could embrace her in the same way, that if he wished she would kiss him, frankly and firmly, that her eyelids would never veil her eyes at the touch of his mouth. What man is for her? he wondered, knowing that after all no man was for her, knowing that she would go through with all physical intimacies, that she would undress to a lover (?) with this same impersonal efficiency. (He should be a—a—he should be a gladiator or a statesman or a victorious general: someone hard and ruthless who would expect nothing from her, of whom she would expect nothing. Like two gods exchanging golden baubles. And I, I am no gladiator nor statesman nor general: I am nothing. Perhaps that’s why I want so much from her.) He put his arm over her shoulders.
Niggers and mules. Afternoon lay in a coma in the street, like a woman recently loved. Quiet and warm: nothing now that the lover has gone away. Leaves were like a green liquid arrested in mid-flow, flattened and spread; leaves were as though cut with scissors from green paper and pasted flat on the afternoon: someone dreamed them and then forgot his dream. Niggers and mules.
Monotonous wagons drawn by long-eared beasts crawled past. Negroes humped with sleep, portentous upon each wagon and in the wagon bed itself sat other negroes upon chairs: a pagan catafalque under the afternoon. Rigid, as though carved in Egypt ten thousand years ago. Slow dust rising veiled their passing, like Time; the necks of mules limber as rubber hose swayed their heads from side to side, looking behind them always. But the mules were asleep also. “Ketch me sleep, he kill me. But I got mule blood in me: when he sleep, I sleep; when he wake, I wake.”
In the study where Donald sat, his father wrote steadily on tomorrow’s sermon. The afternoon slept without.
The Town:
War Hero Returns. …
His face … the way that girl goes on with that Farr boy. …
Young Robert Saunders:
I just want to see his scar. …
Cecily:
And now I’m not a good woman any more. Oh, well, it had to be sometime, I guess. …
George Farr:
Yes! Yes! She was a virgin! But if she won’t see me, it means somebody else. Her body in another’s arms. … Why must you? Why must you? What do you want? Tell me: I will do anything, anything. …
Margaret Powers:
Can nothing at all move me again? Nothing to desire? Nothing to stir me, to move me, save pity? …
Gilligan:
Margaret, tell me what you want. I will do it. Tell me, Margaret. …
The rector wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.”
Donald Mahon knowing Time as only something which was taking from him a world he did not particularly mind losing, stared out a window into green and motionless leaves: a motionless blur.
The afternoon dreamed on toward sunset. Niggers and mules. … At last Gilligan broke the silence.
“That old fat one is going to send her car to take him riding.”
Mrs. Powers made no reply.
III
San Francisco, Cal.
.Dear Margaret—
Well I am at home again I got here this afternoon. As soon as I got away from mother I am sitting down to write to you. Home seems pretty good after you have been doing a pretty risky thing like lots of them cracked up at. Its boreing all these girls how they go on over a flying man if you ever experienced it isn’t it. There was a couple of janes on the train I met. Well anyway they saw my hat band and they gave me the eye they were society girls they said but I am not so dumb anyway they were nice kids and they might of been society girls. Anyway I got there phone numbers and I am going to give them a call. Just kidding them see there is only one woman for me Margaret you know it. Well we rode on into San Francisco talking and laughing in there stateroom so I am going to take the best looking of them out this week I made a date with her except she wants me to bring a fellow for her friend so I guess I will poor kids they probably havent had much fun dureing the war like a man can have dureing the war. But I am just kidding them Margaret you mustnt be jealous like I am not jealous over Lieut. Mahon. Well mother is dragging me out to tea I had rather I had be shot than go except she insists. Give my reguards to Joe.
Mrs. Powers and Gilligan met the specialist from Atlanta at the station. In the cab he listened to her attentively.
“But, my dear madam,” he objected when she had finished, “you are asking me to commit an ethical violation.”
“But, surely, Doctor, it isn’t a violation of professional ethics to let his father believe as he wishes to believe, is it?”
“No, it is a violation of my personal ethics.”
“Then, you tell me and let me tell his father.”
“Yes, I will do that. But pardon me, may I ask what exactly is your relation to him?”
“We are to be married,” she answered, looking at him steadily.
“Oho. Then that is quite all right. I will promise not to say anything before his father that can disturb him.”
He kept his promise. After lunch he joined her where she sat on the shaded quiet veranda. She put aside her embroidery frame and he took a chair, puffing furiously at his cigar until it burned evenly.
“What is he waiting for?” he asked suddenly.
“Waiting for?” she repeated.
He flashed her a keen gray glance. “There is no ultimate hope for him, you know.”
“For his sight, you mean?”
“That’s practically gone now. I mean for him.”
“I know. That’s what Mr. Gilligan said two weeks ago.”
“H’m. Is Mr. Gilligan a doctor?”
“No. But it doesn’t take a doctor to see that, does it?”
“Not necessarily. But I think Mr. Gilligan rather overshot himself, making a public statement like that.”
She rocked gently. He veiled his head in smoke, watching the evenly burning ash at the cigar tip. She said:
“You think that there is no hope for him, then?”
“Frankly, I do not.” He tilted the ash carefully over the balustrade. “He is practically a dead man now. More than that, he should have been dead these three months were it not for the fact that he seems to be waiting for something. Something he has begun, but has not completed, something he has carried from his former life that he does not remember consciously. That is his only hold on life that I can see.” He gave her another keen glance. “How does he regard you now? He remembers nothing of his life before he was injured.”
She met his sharp, kind gaze a moment, then she suddenly decided to tell him the truth. He watched her intently until she had finished.
“So you are meddling with Providence, are you?”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” she defended herself.
“I never speculate on what I would have done,” he answered shortly. “There can be no If in my profession. I work in tissue and bone, not in circumstance.”
“Well, it’s done now. I am in it too far to withdraw. So you think he may go at any time?”
“You are asking me to speculate again. What I said was that he will go whenever that final spark somewhere in him is no longer fed. His body is already dead. Further than that I cannot say.”
“An operation?” she suggested.
“He would not survive it. And in the second place, the human machine can only be patched and parts replaced up to a certain point. And all that has been done for him, or he would have never been released from any hospital.”
Afternoon drew on. They sat quietly talking while sunlight becoming lateral, broke through the screening leaves and sprinkled the porch with flecks of yellow, like mica in a stream. The same negro in the same undershirt droned up and down the lawn with his mower, an occasional vehicle passed slumbrous and creaking behind twitching mules, or moving more swiftly, leaving a fretful odor of gasoline to die beneath the afternoon.
The rector joined them after a while.
“Then there’s nothing to do except let him build himself up, eh, Doctor?” he asked.
“Yes, that is my advice. Attention, rest and quiet, let him resume old habits. About his sight, though—”
The rector looked up slowly. “Yes, I realize his sight must go. But there are compensations. He is engaged to be married to a very charming lady. Don’t you think that will give him incentive to help himself?”
“Yes, that should, if anything can.”
“What do you think? Shall we hurry the marriage along?”
“We—ll—” the doctor hesitated: he was not exactly accustomed to giving advice on this subject.
Mrs. Powers came to his rescue. “I think we had better not hurry him at all,” she said quickly. “Let him accustom himself leisurely, you see. Don’t you think so, Doctor Baird?”
“Yes, Reverend, you let Mrs. Powers here advise you about that. I have every confidence in her judgment. You let her take charge of this thing. Women are always more capable than we are, you know.”
“That’s quite true. We are already under measureless obligations to Mrs. Powers.”
“Nonsense. I have almost adopted Donald myself.”
The cab came at last and Gilligan appeared with the doctor’s things. They rose and Mrs. Powers slipped her arm through the rector’s. She squeezed his arm and released him. As she and Gilligan, flanking the doctor, descended the steps the rector said again, timidly:
“You are sure, Doctor, that there is nothing to be done immediately? We are naturally anxious, you know,” he ended apologetically.
“No, no,” the doctor replied testily, “he can help himself more than we can help him.”
The rector stood watching until the cab turned the corner. Looking back, she could see him in the door staring after them. Then they turned a corner.
As the train drew into the station the doctor said, taking her hand:
“You’ve let yourself in for something that is going to be unpleasant, young lady.”
She gave him a straight glance in return.
“I’ll take the risk,” she said, shaking his hand firmly.
“Well, goodbye, then, and good luck.”
“Goodbye, sir,” she answered, “and thank you.”
He turned to Gilligan, offering his hand.
“And the same to you, Doctor Gilligan,” he said with faint sarcasm. They saw his neat gray back disappear and Gilligan, turning to her, asked:
“What’d he call me Doctor for?”
“Come on, Joe,” she said, not replying to his question, “let’s walk back. I want to walk through the woods again.”
IV
The air was sweet with fresh-sawed lumber and they walked through a pale yellow city of symmetrical stacked planks. A continuous line of negroes carried boards up a cleated incline like a chicken run into a freight car and flung them clashing to the floor, under the eye of an informally clad white man who reclined easily upon a lumber pile, chewing indolent tobacco. He watched them with interest as they passed, following the faint wagon road.
They crossed grass-grown steel rails, and trees obscured the lumber yard, but until they reached the bottom of the hill the voices of the negroes raised in bursts of meaningless laughter or snatches of song in a sorrowful minor came to them, and the slow reverberations of the cast boards smote at measured intervals. Quietly under the spell of the still late afternoon woods they descended a loamy hill, following the faint downward winding of the road. At the foot of the hill a dogwood tree spread flat palm-like branches in invocation among dense green, like a white nun.
“Niggers cut them for firewood because they are easy to chop,” she said, breaking the silence. “Shame, isn’t it?”
“Do they?” he murmured without interest. With the soft, sandy soil giving easily under their feet they came upon water. It ran sombrely from out massed honeysuckle vines and crossed the dim road into another impenetrable thicket, murmuring. She stopped, and bending slightly, they could see their heads and their two foreshortened bodies repeating themselves.
“Do we look that funny to people, I wonder?” she said. Then she stepped quickly across. “Come on, Joe.”
The road passed from the dim greenness into sunlight again. It was still sandy and the going was harder, exasperating.
“You’ll have to pull me, Joe.” She took his arm, feeling her heels sink and slip treacherously at each step. Her unevenly distributed weight made his own progress more difficult, and he disengaged his arm and put his hand against her back.
“That’s better,” she said, leaning against his firm hand. The road circled the foot of a hill and trees descending the hill were halted by the curving road’s green canyon as though waiting to step across when they had passed. Sun was in the trees like an arrested lateral rain and ahead where circling, the green track of the stream approached the road again, they heard young voices and a sound of water.
They walked slowly through the shifting sand, and the voices beyond a screen of thick leaves became louder. She squeezed his arm for silence and they left the road and parted leaves cautiously upon glinted disturbed water, taking and giving the sun in a flashing barter of gold for gold, dazzling the eyes. Two wet matted heads spread opening fans of water like muskrats and on a limb, balanced precariously to dive, stood a third swimmer. His body was the color of old paper, beautiful as a young animal’s.
They stepped into view and Gilligan said:
“Hi, Colonel.”
The diver took one quick, terrified look and releasing his hold he fell like a stone into the water. The other two, shocked and motionless, stared at the intruders, then when the diver reappeared above the surface they whooped at him in merciless derision. He swam like an eel across the pool and took refuge beneath the overhanging bank, out of sight. His companions still squalled at him in inarticulate mirth. She raised her voice above the din.
“Come on, Joe. We’ve spoiled their fun.”
They left the noise behind and again in the road, she remarked:
“We shouldn’t have done that. Poor boy, they’ll tease him to death now. What makes men so silly, Joe?”
“Dam’f I know. But they sure are. Do you know who that was?”
“No. Who was it?”
“Her brother.”
“Her—”
“Young Saunders.”
“Oh, was it? Poor boy, I’m sorry I shocked him.”
And well she might have been, could she have seen his malevolent face watching her retreating figure as he swiftly donned his clothes. I’ll fix you! he swore, almost crying.
The road wound through a depression between two small ridges. The sun was yet in the tops of trees and here were cedars unsunned and solemn, a green quiet nave. A thrush sang and they stopped as one, listening to its four notes, watching the fading patches of sun on the top of the ridge.
“Let’s sit down and have a cigarette,” she suggested.
She lowered herself easily and he sat beside her as young Robert Saunders, panting up the hill behind them, saw them and fell flat, creeping as near as he dared. Gilligan, reclining on his elbow, watched her pallid face. Her head was lowered and she dug in the earth with a stick. Her unconscious profile was in relief against a dark cedar and she said, feeling his eyes on her:
“Joe, we have got to do something about that girl. We can’t expect Dr. Mahon to take sickness as an excuse much longer. I hoped her father would make her come, but they are so much alike. …”
“Whatcher want to do? Want me to go and drag her up by the hair?”
“I expect that would be the best way, after all.” Her twig broke and casting it aside she searched for another one.
“Sure it would—if you got to fool with her kind at all.”
“Unluckily, though, this is a civilized age and you can’t do that.”
“So called,” muttered Gilligan. He sucked at his cigarette, then watched the spun white arc of its flight. The thrush sang again, filling the interval liquidly and young Robert, thinking, is it Sis they’re talking about? felt fire on his leg and brushed from it an ant almost half an inch long. Drag her by the hair, huh? he muttered. I’d like to see ’em. Ow, but he stings! rubbing his leg, which did not help it any.
“What are we going to do, Joe? Tell me. You know about people.”
Gilligan shifted his weight and his corrugated elbow tingled under his other hand.
“We’ve been thinking of them ever since we met. Let’s think about you and me for a while,” he said roughly.
She looked at him quickly. Her black hair and her mouth like a pomegranate blossom. Her eyes were black and they became quite gentle as she said:
“Please, Joe.”
“Oh, I ain’t going to propose. I just want you to talk to me about yourself for a while.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Nothing you don’t want to. Just quit thinking about the loot for a while. Just talk to me.”
“So you are surprised to find a woman doing something without some obvious material end in view. Aren’t you?” He was silent, nursing his knees, staring between them at the ground. “Joe, you think I’m in love with him, don’t you?” (Uhuh! Stealing Sis’ feller. Young Robert Saunders squirming nearer, taking sand into his bosom.) “Don’t you, Joe?”
“I don’t know,” he replied sullenly and she asked:
“What kind of women have you known, Joe?”
“The wrong kind, I guess. Leastways none of ’em ever made me lose a night’s sleep until I saw you.”
“It isn’t me that made you lose a night’s sleep. I just happened to be the first woman you ever knew doing something you thought only a man would do. You had nice fixed ideas about women and I upset them. Wasn’t that it?”
She looked at his averted face, at his reliable homely face. (Are they going to talk all night? thought young Robert Saunders. Hunger was in his belly and he was gritty and uncomfortable with sand.)
The sun was almost down. Only the tips of trees were yet dipped in fading light and where they sat the shadow became a violet substance in which the thrush sang and then fell still.
“Margaret,” said Gilligan at last, “were you in love with your husband?”
Her face in the dusk was a smooth pallor, and after a while:
“I don’t know, Joe. I don’t think I was. You see, I lived in a small town and I had got kind of sick lazing around home all morning and dressing up just to walk downtown in the afternoon and spending the evenings messing around with men, so after we got in the war I persuaded some friends of my mother’s to get me a position in New York. Then I got into the Red Cross—you know, helping in canteens, dancing with those poor country boys on leave, lost as sheep, trying to have a good time. And nothing in the world is harder to do in New York.
“And one night Dick (my husband) came in. I didn’t notice him at first, but after we had danced together and I saw he was—well—impressed, I asked him about himself. He was in an officers’ training camp.
“Then I started getting letters from him and at last he wrote that he would be in New York until he sailed. I had got in the habit of Dick by that time and when I saw him again, all spic and span, and soldiers saluting him, I thought he was grand. You remember how it was then—everybody excited and hysterical, like a big circus.
“So every night we went out to dinner and to dance, and after we would sit in my room and smoke and talk until all hours, till daylight. You know how it was: all soldiers talking of dying gloriously in battle without really believing it or knowing very much about it, and how women kind of got the same idea, like the flu—that what you did today would not matter tomorrow, that there really wasn’t a tomorrow at all.
“You see, I think we both had agreed that we were not in love with each other for always, but we were both young, and so we might as well get all the fun we could. And then, three days before he sailed, he suggested that we get married. I had had proposals from nearly every soldier I had been at all kind to, just as all the other girls did, and so I wasn’t surprised much. I told him I had other men friends and I knew that he knew other women, but neither of us bothered about that. He told me he expected to know women in France and that he didn’t expect me to be a hermit while he was gone. And so we met the next morning and got married and I went to work.
“He called for me at the canteen while I was dancing with some boys on leave, and the other girls all congratulated us (lots of them had done the same thing), only some of them teased me about being a highbrow and marrying an officer. You see, we all got so many proposals we hardly listened to them. And I don’t think they listened to us, either.
“He called for me and we went to his hotel. You see, Joe, it was like when you are a child in the dark and you keep on saying, It isn’t dark, it isn’t dark. We were together for three days and then his boat sailed. I missed him like the devil at first. I moped around without anybody to feel sorry for me: so many of my friends were in the same fix, with no sympathy to waste. Then I got dreadfully afraid I might be going to have a baby and I almost hated Dick. But when I was sure I wasn’t I went back to the canteen, and after a while I hardly thought of Dick at all.
“I got more proposals, of course, and I didn’t have such a bad time. Sometimes at night I’d wake up, wanting Dick, but after a time he got to be a shadowy sort of person, like George Washington. And at last I didn’t even miss him any more.
“Then I began to get letters from him, addressed to his dear little wife, and telling me how he missed me and so forth. Well, that brought it all back again and I’d write him every day for a time. And then I found that writing bored me, that I no longer looked forward to getting one of those dreadful flimsy envelopes, that had already been opened by a censor.
“I didn’t write any more. And one day I got a letter saying that he didn’t know when he’d be able to write again, but it would be as soon as he could. That was when he was going up to the front, I guess. I thought about it for a day or two and then I made up my mind that the best thing for both of us was just to call the whole thing off. So I sat down and wrote him, wishing him luck and asking him to wish me the same.
“And then, before my letter reached him, I received an official notice that he had been killed in action. He never got my letter at all. He died believing that everything was the same between us.”
She brooded in the imminent twilight. “You see, I feel some way that I wasn’t square with him. And so I guess I am trying to make it up to him in some way.”
Gilligan felt impersonal, weary. He took her hand and rubbed his cheek against it. Her hand turned in his and patted his cheek, withdrawing. (Holding hands! gloated young Robert Saunders.) She leaned down, peering into Gilligan’s face. He sat motionless, taut. Take her in my arms, he debated, overcome her with my own passion. Feeling this, she withdrew from him, though her body had not moved.
“That wouldn’t do any good, Joe. Don’t you know it wouldn’t?” she asked.
“Yes, I know it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“I’m sorry, Joe,” she told him in a low voice, rising. He rose and helped her to her feet. She brushed her skirt and walked on beside him. The sun was completely gone and they walked through a violet silence soft as milk. “I wish I could, Joe,” she added.
He made no reply and she said: “Don’t you believe me?”
He strode on and she grasped his arm, stopping. He faced her and in her firm sexless embrace he stood staring at the blur of her face almost on a level with his own, in longing and despair. (Uhuh, kissing! crowed young Robert Saunders, releasing his cramped limbs, trailing them like an Indian.)
They then turned and walked on, out of his sight. Night was almost come: only the footprint of day, only the odor of day, only a rumor, a ghost of light among the trees.
V
He burst into his sister’s room. She was fixing her hair and she saw him in the mirror, panting and regrettably soiled.
“Get out, you little beast,” she said.
Undaunted, he gave his news: “Say, she’s in love with Donald, that other one says, and I seen them kissing.”
Her arrested hands bloomed delicately in her hair.
“Who is?”
“That other lady at Donald’s house.”
“Saw her kissing Donald?”
“Naw, kissing that soldier feller that ain’t got no scar.”
“Did she say she was in love with Donald?” she turned, trying to grasp her brother’s arm.
“Naw, but that soldier said she is and she never said nothing. So I guess she is, don’t you?”
“The cat! I’ll fix her.”
“That’s right,” he commended. “That’s what I told her when she sneaked up on me nekkid. I knowed you wouldn’t let no woman beat you out of Donald.”
VI
Emmy put supper on the table. The house was quiet and dark. No lights yet. She went to the study door. Mahon and his father sat in the dusk, quietly watching the darkness come slow and soundless as a measured respiration. Donald’s head was in silhouette against a fading window and Emmy saw it and felt her heart contract as she remembered that head above her against the sky, on a night long, long ago.
But now the back of it was toward her and he no longer remembered her. She entered that room silently as the twilight itself and standing beside his chair, looking down upon his thin worn hair that had once been so wild, so soft, she drew his unresisting head against her hard little hip. His face was quiet under her slow hand, and as she gazed out into the twilight upon which they two gazed she tasted the bitter ashes of an old sorrow and she bent suddenly over his devastated head, moaning against it, making no sound.
The rector stirred heavily in the dusk. “That you, Emmy?”
“Supper’s ready,” she said quietly. Mrs. Powers and Gilligan mounted the steps on to the veranda.
VII
Doctor Gary could waltz with a level glass of water on his head, without spilling a drop. He did not care for the more modern dances, the nervous ones. “All jumping around—like monkeys. Why try to do something a beast can do so much better?” he was wont to say. “But a waltz, now. Can a dog waltz, or a cow?” He was a smallish man, bald and dapper, and women liked him. Such a nice bedside manner. Doctor Gary was much in demand, both professionally and socially. He had also served in a French hospital in ’14, ’15, and ’16. “Like hell,” he described it. “Long alleys of excrement and red paint.”
Doctor Gary, followed by Gilligan, descended nattily from Donald’s room, smoothing the set of his coat, dusting his hands with a silk handkerchief. The rector appeared hugely from his study, saying: “Well, Doctor?”
Doctor Gary rolled a slender cigarette from a cloth sack, returning the sack to its lair in his cuff. When carried in his pocket it made a bulge in the cloth. He struck a match.
“Who feeds him at table?”
The rector, surprised, answered: “Emmy has been giving him his meals—helping him, that is,” he qualified.
“Put it in his mouth for him?”
“No, no. She merely guides his hand. Why do you ask?”
“Who dresses and undresses him?”
“Mr. Gilligan here assists him. But why—”
“Have to dress and undress him like a baby, don’t you?” he turned sharply to Gilligan.
“Kind of,” Gilligan admitted. Mrs. Powers came out of the study and Doctor Gary nodded briefly to her. The rector said:
“But why do you ask, Doctor?”
The doctor looked at him sharply. “Why? Why?” he turned to Gilligan. “Tell him,” he snapped.
The rector gazed at Gilligan. Don’t say it, his eyes seemed to plead. Gilligan’s glance fell. He stood dumbly gazing at his feet and the doctor said abruptly: “Boy’s blind. Been blind three or four days. How you didn’t know it I can’t see.” He settled his coat and took his derby hat. “Why didn’t you tell?” he asked Gilligan. “You knew, didn’t you? Well, no matter. I’ll look in again tomorrow. Good day, madam. Good day.”
Mrs. Powers took the rector’s arm. “I hate that man,” she said. “Damn little snob. But don’t you mind, Uncle Joe. Remember, that Atlanta doctor told us he would lose his sight. But doctors don’t know everything: who knows, perhaps when he gets strong and well he can have his sight restored.”
“Yes, yes,” the rector agreed, clinging to straws. “Let’s get him well and then we can see.”
He turned heavily and reentered his study. She and Gilligan looked at one another a long moment.
“I could weep for him, Joe.”
“So could I—if it would do any good,” he answered sombrely. “But for God’s sake, keep people out today.”
“I intend to. But it’s hard to refuse them: they mean so well, so kind and neighborly.”
“Kind, hell. They are just like that Saunders brat: come to see his scar. Come in and mill around and ask him how he got it and if it hurt. As if he knowed or cared.”
“Yes. But they shan’t come in and stare at his poor head any more. We won’t let them in, Joe. Tell them he is not well, tell them anything.”
She entered the study. The rector sat in his desk, a pen poised above an immaculate sheet, but he was not writing. His face was propped on one great fist and his gaze brooded darkly upon the opposite wall.
She stood beside him, then she touched him. He started like a goaded beast before he recognized her.
“This had to come, you know,” she told him quietly.
“Yes, yes. I have expected it. We all have, have we not?”
“Yes, we all have,” she agreed.
“Poor Cecily. I was just thinking of her. It will be a blow to her, I am afraid. But she really cares for Donald, thank God. Her affection for him is quite pretty. You have noticed it, haven’t you?”
“Yes, yes.”
“It’s too bad she is not strong enough to come every day. But she is quite delicate, as you know, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure she will come when she can.”
“So am I. Thank God, there is one thing which has not failed him.”
His hands were clasped loosely upon the paper before him.
“Oh, you are writing a sermon and I have interrupted you. I didn’t know,” she apologized, withdrawing.
“Not at all. Don’t go, I can do this later.”
“No, you do it now. I will go and sit with Donald. Mr. Gilligan is going to fix a chair for him on the lawn today, it is so nice out.”
“Yes, yes. I will finish my sermon and join you.”
From the door she looked back. But he was not writing. His face was propped on one great fist and his gaze brooded darkly upon the opposite wall.
Mahon sat in a deck chair. He wore blue glasses and a soft, limp hat concealed his brow. He liked to be read to, though no one could tell whether or not the words meant anything to him. Perhaps it was the sound of the voice that he liked. This time it was Gibbons’ History of Rome, and Gilligan wallowed atrociously among polysyllabic words when Mrs. Powers joined them. He had brought a chair for her, and she sat, neither hearing nor not hearing, letting Gilligan’s droning voice sooth her as it did Mahon. The leaves above her head stirred faintly, agitated upon the ineffable sky, dappling her dress with shadow. Clover was again thrusting above the recently mown grass and bees broke it; bees were humming golden arrows tipped or untipped with honey and from the church spire pigeons were remote and unemphatic as sleep.
A noise aroused her and Gilligan ceased reading. Mahon sat motionless, hopeless as Time, as across the grass came an old negro woman, followed by a strapping young negro in a private’s uniform. They came straight toward the sitting group and the woman’s voice rose upon the slumbrous afternoon.
“Hush yo’ mouf, Loosh,” she was saying, “it’ll be a po’ day in de mawnin’ when my baby don’t wanter see his ole Cal’line. Donald, Mist’ Donald honey, here Callie come ter you, honey; here yo’ mammy come ter you.” She completed the last steps in a shuffling lope. Gilligan rose, intercepting her.
“Hold up, Aunty. He’s asleep. Don’t bother him.”
“Naw, suh! He don’t wanter sleep when his own folks comes ter see him.” Her voice rose again and Donald moved in his chair. “Whut I tell you? he wake: look at ’im. Mist’ Donald, honey!”
Gilligan held her withered arm while she strained like a leashed hound.
“Bless de Lawd, done sont you back ter yo’ mammy. Yes, Jesus! Ev’y day I prayed, and de Lawd heard me.” She turned to Gilligan. “Lemme go, please, suh.”
“Let her go, Joe,” Mrs. Powers seconded, and Gilligan released her. She knelt beside Donald’s chair, putting her hands on his face. Loosh stood diffidently in the background.
“Donald, baby, look at me. Don’t you know who dis is? Dis yo’ Callie whut use ter put you ter bed, honey. Look here at me. Lawd, de white folks done ruint you, but nummine, yo’ mammy gwine look after her baby. You, Loosh!” still kneeling, she turned and called to her grandson. “Come up here and speak ter Mist’ Donald. Here whar he kin see you. Donald, honey, here dis triflin’ nigger talking ter you. Look at him, in dem soldier clothes.”
Loosh took two paces and came smartly to attention, saluting. “If de lootenant please, Co’pul Nelson glad to see—Co’pul Nelson glad to see de lootenant looking so well.”
“Don’t you stand dar wavin’ yo’ arm at yo’ Mist’ Donald, nigger boy. Come up here and speak ter him like you been raised to.”
Loosh lost his military bearing and he became again that same boy who had known Mahon long ago, before the world went crazy. He came up diffidently and took Mahon’s hand in his kind, rough black one. “Mist’ Donald?” he said.
“Dat’s it,” his grandmother commended. “Mist’ Donald, dat Loosh talkin’ ter you. Mist’ Donald?”
Mahon stirred in his chair and Gilligan forcibly lifted the old woman to her feet. “Now, Aunty. That’s enough for one time. You come back tomorrow.”
“Lawd! ter hear de day when white man tell me Mist’ Donald don’t wanter see me!”
“He’s sick, Aunty,” Mrs. Powers explained. “Of course, he wants to see you. When he is better you and Loosh must come every day.”
“Yes, ma’am! Dey ain’t enough water in de sevum seas to keep me from my baby. I’m coming back, honey. I gwine to look after you.”
“Get her away, Loosh,” Mrs. Powers whispered to the negro. “He’s sick, you know.”
“Yessum. He one sick man in dis world. Ef you wants me fer anything, any black man kin tell you whar I’m at, ma’am.” He took his grandmother’s arm. “Come on here, mammy. Us got to be goin’.”
“I’m a-comin’ back, Donald, honey. I ain’t gwine to leave you.” They retreated and her voice died away. Mahon said:
“Joe.”
“Whatcher say, Loot?”
“When am I going to get out?”
“Out of what, Loot?”
But he was silent, and Gilligan and Mrs. Powers stared at each other tensely. At last he spoke again:
“I’ve got to go home, Joe.” He raised his hand, fumbling, striking his glasses and they fell from his face. Gilligan replaced them.
“Whatcher wanta go home for, Loot?”
But he had lost his thought. Then:
“Who was that talking, Joe?”
Gilligan told him and he sat slowly plaiting the corner of his jacket (the suit Gilligan had got for him) in his fingers. Then he said: “Carry on, Joe.”
Gilligan picked up the book again and soon his voice resumed its soporific drone. Mahon became still in his chair. After a while Gilligan ceased, Mahon did not move, and he rose and peered over the blue glasses.
“You never can tell when he’s asleep and when he ain’t,” he said fretfully.