VII
I
“Joe.”
“Whatcher say, Loot?”
“I’m going to get married, Joe.”
“Sure you are, Loot. Some day—” tapping himself on the chest.
“What’s that, Joe?”
“I say, good luck. You got a fine girl.”
“Cecily … Joe?”
“Hello.”
“She’ll get used to my face.”
“You’re damn right. Your face is all right. But easy there, don’t knock ’em off. Attaboy,” as the other lowered his fumbling hand.
“What do I have to wear ’em for, Joe? Get married as well without ’em, can’t I?”
“I’ll be damned if I know why they make you wear ’em. I’ll ask Margaret. Here, lemme have ’em,” he said suddenly removing the glasses. “Damn shame, making you keep ’em on. How’s that? Better?”
“Carry on, Joe.”
II
San Francisco, Cal.,
.Margaret Dearest—
I miss you so much. If I could only see each other and talk to each other. I sit in my room and I think you are the only woman for me. Girls are not like you they are so young and dumb you cant trust them. I hope you are lonely for me like I am just to know you are sweetheart. When I kissed you that day I know you are the only woman for me Margaret. You cannot trust them. I told her hes just kidding her he wont get her a job in the movies. So I sit in my room and outside life goes on just the same though we are thousand miles apart wanting to see you like hell I think of how happy we will be. I havent told my mother yet because we have been waiting we ought to tell her I think if you think so. And she will invite you out here and we can be together all day riding and swimming and dancing and talking to each other. If I can arrange busness affairs I will come for you soon as I can. It is hell without you I miss you and I love you like hell.
III
It had rained the night before but this morning was soft as a breeze. Birds across the lawn parabolic from tree to tree mocked him as he passed lounging and slovenly in his careless unpressed tweeds, and a tree near the corner of the veranda, turning upward its ceaseless white-bellied leaves, was a swirling silver veil stood on end, a fountain arrested forever: carven water.
He saw that black woman in the garden among roses, blowing smoke upon them from her pursed mouth, bending and sniffing above them, and he joined her with slow anticipated malice mentally stripping her straight dark unemphatic dress downward from her straight back over her firm quiet thighs. Hearing his feet on the gravel, she looked over her shoulder without surprise. Her poised cigarette balanced on its tip a wavering plume of vapor, and Jones said:
“I have come to weep with you.”
She met his stare, saying nothing. Her other hand blanched upon a solid mosaic of red and green, her repose absorbed all motion from her immediate atmosphere so that the plume of her cigarette became rigid as a pencil, flowering its tip into nothingness.
“I mean your hard luck, losing your intended,” he explained.
She raised her cigarette and expelled smoke. He lounged nearer, his expensive jacket, which had evidently had no attention since he bought it, sagging to the thrust of his heavy hands, shaping his fat thighs. His eyes were bold and lazy, clear as a goat’s. She got of him an impression of aped intelligence imposed on an innate viciousness; the cat that walks by himself.
“Who are your people, Mr. Jones?” she asked after a while.
“I am the world’s little brother. I probably have a bar sinister in my ’scutcheon. In spite of me, my libido seems to be a complex regarding decency.”
What does that mean? she wondered. “What is your escutcheon, then?”
“One newspaper-wrapped bundle couchant and rampant, one doorstep stone, on a field noir and damned froid. Device: Quand mangerai-je?”
“Oh. A foundling.” She smoked again.
“I believe that is the term. It is too bad we are contemporary: you might have found the thing yourself. I would not have thrown you down.”
“Thrown me down?”
“You can never tell just exactly how dead these soldiers are, can you? You think you have him and then the devil reveals as much idiocy as a normal sane person, doesn’t he?”
She skilfully pinched the coal from her cigarette end and flipped the stub in a white twinkling arc, grinding the coal under her toe. “If that was an implied compliment—”
“Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism—unless the criticized is not within earshot.”
“It seems to me that is a rather precarious doctrine for one who is—if you will pardon me—not exactly a combative sort.”
“Combative?”
“Well, a fighting man, then. I can’t imagine you lasting very long in an encounter with—say Mr. Gilligan.”
“Does that imply that you have taken Mr. Gilligan as a—protector?”
“No more than it implies that I expect compliments from you. For all your intelligence, you seem to have acquired next to no skill with women.”
Jones, remote and yellowly unfathomable, stared at her mouth. “For instance?”
“For instance, Miss Saunders,” she said, wickedly. “You seem to have let her get away from you, don’t you?”
“Miss Saunders,” repeated Jones, counterfeiting surprise, admiring the way she had turned the tables on him without reverting to sex, “my dear lady, can you imagine anyone making love to her? Epicene. Of course it is different with a man practically dead,” he added, “he probably doesn’t care much whom he marries, nor whether or not he marries at all.”
“No? I understood from your conduct the day I arrived that you had your eye on her. But perhaps I was mistaken after all.”
“Granted I had: you and I seem to be in the same fix now, don’t we?”
She pinched through the stem of a rose, feeling him quite near her. Without looking at him she said:
“You have already forgotten what I told you, haven’t you?”
He did not reply. She released her rose and moved slightly away from him. “That you have no skill in seduction. Don’t you know I can see what you are leading up to—that you and I should console one another? That’s too childish, even for you. I have had to play at too many of these sexual acrostics with poor boys whom I respected even if I didn’t like them.” The rose splashed redly against the front of her dark dress. She secured it with a pin. “Let me give you some advice,” she continued sharply, “the next time you try to seduce anyone, don’t do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.”
Jones removed his yellow stare. His next move was quite feminine: he turned and lounged away without a word. For he had seen Emmy beyond the garden hanging washed clothes upon a line. Mrs. Powers, looking after his slouching figure, said Oh. She had just remarked Emmy raising garments to a line with formal gestures, like a Greek masque.
She watched Jones approach Emmy, saw Emmy, when she heard his step, poise a half-raised cloth in a formal arrested gesture, turning her head across her reverted body. Damn the beast, Mrs. Powers thought, wondering whether or not to follow and interfere. But what good would it do? He’ll only come back later. And playing Cerberus to Emmy. … She removed her gaze and saw Gilligan approaching. He blurted:
“Damn that girl. Do you know what I think? I think she—”
“What girl?”
“What’s her name, Saunders. I think she’s scared of something. She acts like she might have got herself into a jam of some kind and is trying to get out of it by taking the loot right quick. Scared. Flopping around like a fish.”
“Why don’t you like her, Joe? You don’t want her to marry him.”
“No, it ain’t that. It just frets me to see her change her mind every twenty minutes.” He offered her a cigarette which she refused and lit one himself. “I’m jealous, I guess,” he said, after a time, “seeing the loot getting married when neither of ’em want to ’specially, while I can’t get my girl at all. …”
“What, Joe? You married?”
He looked at her steadily. “Don’t talk like that. You know what I mean.”
“Oh, Lord. Twice in one hour.” His gaze was so steady, so serious, that she looked quickly away.
“What’s that?” she asked. She took the rose from her dress and slipped it into his lapel.
“Joe, what is that beast hanging around here for?”
“Who? What beast?” He followed her eyes. “Oh. That damn feller. I’m going to beat hell out of him on principle, some day. I don’t like him.”
“Neither do I. Hope I’m there to see you do it.”
“Has he been bothering you?” he asked quickly. She gave him her steady gaze.
“Do you think he could?”
“That’s right,” he admitted. He looked at Jones and Emmy again. “That’s another thing. That Saunders girl lets him fool around her. I don’t like anybody that will stand for him.”
“Don’t be silly, Joe. She’s just young and more or less of a fool about men.”
“If that’s your polite way of putting it, I agree with you.” His eyes touched her smooth cheek blackly winged by her hair. “If you had let a man think you was going to marry him you wouldn’t blow hot and cold like that.”
She stared away across the garden and he repeated: “Would you, Margaret?”
“You are a fool yourself, Joe. Only you are a nice fool.” She met his intent gaze and he said Margaret? She put her swift strong hand on his arm. “Don’t Joe. Please.”
He rammed his hands in his pockets, turning away. They walked on in silence.
IV
Spring, like a soft breeze, was in the rector’s fringe of hair as with upflung head he tramped the porch like an old warhorse who hears again a trumpet after he had long thought all wars were done. Birds in a wind across the lawn, parabolic from tree to tree, and a tree at the corner of the house turning upward its white-bellied leaves in a passionate arrested rush: it and the rector faced each other in ecstasy. A friend came morosely along the path from the kitchen door.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” the rector boomed, scattering sparrows from the screening vine. The tree to his voice took a more unbearable ecstasy, its twinkling leaves swirled in a never-escaping silver skyward rush.
Jones, nursing his hand, replied Good morning in a slow obese anger. He mounted the steps and the rector bathed him in a hearty exuberance.
“Come ’round to congratulate us on the good news, eh? Fine, my boy, fine, fine. Yes, everything is arranged at last. Come in, come in.”
Emmy flopped on to the veranda belligerently. “Uncle Joe,” she said, shooting at Jones a hot exulting glance. Jones, nursing his hand, glowered at her. (God damn you, you’ll suffer for this.)
“Eh? What is it, Emmy?”
“Mr. Saunders is on the phone: he wants to know if you’ll see him this morning.” (I showed you! Teach you to fool with me.)
“Ah, yes. Mr. Saunders coming to discuss plans for the marriage, Mr. Jones.”
“Yes, sir.” (I’ll fix you.)
“What’ll I tell him?” (Do it, if you think you can. You have never come off very well yet. You fat worm.)
“Tell him, by all means, that I had intended calling upon him myself. Yes, indeed. Ah, Mr. Jones, we are all to be congratulated this morning.”
“Yes, sir.” (You little slut.)
“Tell him, by all means, Emmy.”
“All right.” (I told you I’d do it! I told you you can’t fool with me. Didn’t I, now?)
“And, Emmy, Mr. Jones will be with us for lunch. A celebration is in order, eh, Mr. Jones?”
“Without doubt. We all have something to celebrate.” (That’s what makes me so damn mad: you said you would and I let you do it. Slam a door on my hand! Damn you to hell.)
“All right. He can stay if he wants to.” (Damn you to hell.) Emmy arrowed him another hot exulting glance and slammed the door as a parting shot.
The rector tramped heavily, happily, like a boy. “Ah, Mr. Jones, to be as young as he is, to have your life circumscribed, moved hither and yonder at the vacillations of such delightful pests. Women, women! How charming never to know exactly what you want! While we men are always so sure we do. Dullness, dullness, Mr. Jones. Perhaps that’s why we like them, yet cannot stand very much of them. What do you think?”
Jones, glumly silent, nursing his hand, said after a while: “I don’t know. But it seemed to me your son has had extraordinarily good luck with his women.”
“Yes?” the rector said, with interest. “How so?”
“Well (I think you told me that he was once involved with Emmy?), well, he no longer remembers Emmy (damn her soul: slam a door on me) and now he is about to become involved with another whom he will not even have to look at. What more could one ask than that?”
The rector looked at him keenly and kindly a moment. “You have retained several of your youthful characteristics, Mr. Jones.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jones, with defensive belligerence. A car drew up to the gate, and after Mr. Saunders had descended, drove away.
“One in particular: that of being unnecessarily and pettily brutal about rather insignificant things. Ah,” he added, looking up, “here is Mr. Saunders. Excuse me, will you? You will probably find Mrs. Powers and Mr. Gilligan in the garden,” he said, over his shoulder, greeting his caller.
Jones, in a vindictive rage, saw them shake hands. They ignored him and he lounged viciously past them seeking his pipe. It eluded him and he cursed it slowly, beating at his various pockets.
“I had intended calling upon you today.” The rector took his caller affectionately by the elbow. “Come in, come in.”
Mr. Saunders allowed himself to be propelled across the veranda. Murmuring a conventional response the rector herded him heartily beneath the fanlight, down the dark hall and into the study, without noticing the caller’s air of uncomfortable reserve. He moved a chair for the guest and took his own seat at the desk. Through the window he could see a shallow section of the tree that, unseen but suggested, swirled upward in an ecstasy of never-escaping silver-bellied leaves.
The rector’s swivel chair protested, tilting. “Ah, yes, you smoke cigars, I recall. Matches at your elbow.”
Mr. Saunders rolled his cigar slowly in his fingers. At last he made up his mind and lit it.
“Well, the young people have taken things out of our hands, eh?” the rector spoke around his pipe stem. “I will say now that I have long desired it and, frankly, I have expected it. Though I would not have insisted, knowing Donald’s condition. But as Cecily herself desires it—”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Mr. Saunders, slowly. The rector did not notice.
“You, I know, have been a staunch advocate of it all along. Mrs. Powers repeated your conversation to me.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And do you know, I look for this marriage to be better than a medicine for him. Not my own idea,” he added, in swift explanation. “Frankly, I was skeptical but Mrs. Powers and Joe—Mr. Gilligan—advanced it first, and the surgeon from Atlanta convinced us all. He assured us that Cecily could do as much if not more for him than anyone. These were his very words, if I recall correctly. And now, since she desires it so much, since you and her mother support her. … Do you know,” he slapped his caller upon the shoulder, “do you know, were I a betting man I would wager that we will not know the boy in a year’s time!”
Mr. Saunders had trouble getting his cigar to burn properly. He bit the end from it savagely, then wreathing his head in smoke he blurted: “Mrs. Saunders seems to have a few doubts yet.” He fanned the smoke away and saw the rector’s huge face gone gray and quiet. “Not objections, exactly, you understand,” he added, hurriedly, apologetically. Damn the woman, why couldn’t she have come herself instead of sending him?
The divine made a clicking sound. “This is bad. I had not expected this.”
“Oh, I am sure we can convince her, you and I. Especially with Sis on our side.” He had forgotten his own scruples, forgotten that he did not want his daughter to marry anyone.
“This is bad,” the rector repeated, hopelessly.
“She will not refuse her consent,” Mr. Saunders lied hastily. “It is only that she is not convinced as to its soundness, considering Do—Cecily’s—Cecily’s youth, you see,” he finished with inspiration. “On the contrary, in fact. I only brought it up so that we could have a clear understanding. Don’t you think it is best to know all the facts?”
“Yes, yes.” The rector was having trouble with his own tobacco. He put his pipe aside, pushing it away. He rose and tramped heavily along the worn path in the rug.
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Saunders.
(This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
“But come, come. We are making a mountain out of a molehill,” the rector exclaimed at last without conviction. “As you say, if the girl wants to marry Donald I am sure her mother will not refuse her consent. What do you think? Shall we call on her? Perhaps she does not understand the situation, that—that they care for each other so much. She has not seen Donald since he returned, and you know how rumors get about. …” (This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
He paused mountainous and shapeless in his casual black, yearning upon the other. Mr. Saunders rose from his chair and the rector took his arm, lest he escape.
“Yes, that is best. We will see her together and talk it over thoroughly before we make a definite decision. Yes, yes,” the rector repeated, flogging his own failing conviction, spurring it. “This afternoon, then?”
“This afternoon,” Mr. Saunders agreed.
“Yes, that is our proper course. I’m sure she does not understand. You don’t think she fully understands?” (This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Saunders agreed in his turn.
Jones found his pipe at last and nursing his bruised hand he filled and lit it.
V
She had just met Mrs. Worthington in a store and they had discussed putting up plums. Then Mrs. Worthington, saying goodbye, waddled away slowly to her car. The negro driver helped her in with efficient detachment and shut the door.
I’m spryer than her, thought Mrs. Burney exultantly, watching the other’s gouty painful movement. Spite of she’s rich and got a car, she added, feeling better through malice, suppressing her own bone-aches, walking spryer than the rich one. Spite of she’s got money. And here approaching was that strange woman staying at Parson Mahon’s, the one that come here with him and that other man, getting herself talked about, and right. The one everybody expected to marry him and that he had throwed down for that boy-chasing Saunders girl.
“Well,” she remarked with comfortable curiosity, peering up into the white calm face of the tall dark woman in her dark dress with its immaculate cuffs and collar, “I hear you are going to have a marriage up at your house. That’s so nice for Donald. He’s quite sweet on her, ain’t he?”
“Yes. They were engaged for a long time, you know.”
“Yes, they was. But folks never thought she’d wait for him, let alone take him sick and scratched up like he is. She’s had lots of chances since.”
“Folks think lots of things that aren’t true,” Mrs. Powers reminded her. But Mrs. Burney was intent on her own words.
“Yes, she’s had lots of chances. But then Donald has too, ain’t he?” she asked cunningly.
“I don’t know. You see, I haven’t known him very long.”
“Oh, you ain’t? Folks all thought you and him was old friends, like.”
Mrs. Powers looked down at her neat cramped figure in its airproof black without replying.
Mrs. Burney sighed. “Well, marriages is nice. My boy never married. Like’s not he would by now: girls was all crazy about him, only he went to war so young.” Her peering, salacious curiosity suddenly left her. “You heard about my boy?” she asked with yearning.
“Yes, they told me, Dr. Mahon did. He was a good soldier, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. And them folks got him killed with just a lot of men around: nobody to do nothing for him. Seems like they might of took him into a house where womenfolks could have eased him. Them others come back spry and bragging much as you please. Trust them officers and things not to get hurt!” Her washed blue eyes brooded across the quiet square. After a time she said: “You never lost no one you loved in the war, did you?”
“No,” Mrs. Powers answered, gently.
“I never thought so,” the other stated fretfully. “You don’t look like it, so tall and pretty. But then, most didn’t. He was so young,” she explained, “so brave. …” She fumbled with her umbrella. Then she said briskly:
“Mahon’s boy come back, anyway. That’s something. ’Specially as he’s taking a bride.” She became curious again, obscene: “He’s all right, ain’t he?”
“All right?”
“I mean for marriage. He ain’t—it’s just—I mean a man ain’t no right to palm himself off on a woman if he ain’t—”
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Powers curtly, leaving her cramped and neat in her meticulous airproof black, holding her cotton umbrella like a flag, stubborn, refusing to surrender.
VI
“You fool, you idiot, marrying a blind man, a man with nothing, practically dead.”
“He is not! He is not!”
“What do you call him then? Aunt Callie Nelson was here the other day saying that the white folks had killed him.”
“You know nigger talk doesn’t mean anything. They probably wouldn’t let her worry him, so she says he—”
“Nonsense. Aunt Callie has raised more children than I can count. If she says he is sick, he is sick.”
“I don’t care. I am going to marry him.”
Mrs. Saunders sighed creakingly. Cecily stood before her, flushed and obstinate. “Listen, honey. If you marry him you are throwing yourself away, all your chances, all your youth and prettiness, all the men that like you: men who are good matches.”
“I don’t care,” she repeated, stubbornly.
“Think. There are so many you can have for the taking, so much you can have: a big wedding in Atlanta with all your friends for bridesmaids, clothes, a wedding trip. … And then to throw yourself away. After your father and I have done so much for you.”
“I don’t care. I am going to marry him.”
“But, why? Do you love him?”
“Yes, yes!”
“That scar, too?”
Cecily’s face blanched as she stared at her mother. Her eyes became dark and she raised her hand delicately. Mrs. Saunders took her hand and drew her resisting on to her lap. Cecily protested tautly but her mother held her, drawing her head down to her shoulder, smoothing her hair. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to say that. But tell me what it is.”
Her mother would not fight fair. She knew this with anger, but the older woman’s tactics scattered her defenses of anger: she knew she was about to cry. Then it would be all up. “Let me go,” she said, struggling, hating her mother’s unfairness.
“Hush, hush. There now, lie here and tell me what it is. You must have some reason.”
She ceased to struggle and became completely lax. “I haven’t. I just want to marry him. Let me go. Please, mamma.”
“Cecily, did your father put this idea in your head?”
She shook her head and her mother turned her face up. “Look at me.” They stared at each other and Mrs. Saunders repeated: “Tell me what your reason is.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t?”
“I can’t tell you.” She slipped suddenly from her mother’s lap but Mrs. Saunders held her kneeling against her knee. “I won’t,” she cried, struggling. The other held her tightly. “You are hurting me!”
“Tell me.”
Cecily wrenched herself free and stood. “I can’t tell you. I have just got to marry him.”
“Got to marry him? What do you mean?” She stared at her daughter, gradually remembering old rumors about Mahon, gossip she had forgot. “Got to marry him? Do you mean that you—that a daughter of mine—with a blind man, a man who has nothing, a pauper—?”
Cecily stared at her mother and her face flamed. “You think—you said that to—Oh, you’re not my mother: you are somebody else.” Suddenly she cried like a child, wide-mouthed, not even hiding her face. She whirled running. “Don’t ever speak to me again,” she gasped and fled wailing up the stairs. And a door slammed.
Mrs. Saunders sat thinking, tapping her teeth monotonously with a fingernail. After a while she rose, and going to the telephone, she called her husband downtown.
VII
Voices
The Town:
I wonder what that woman that came home with him thinks about it, now he’s taken another one. If I were that Saunders girl I wouldn’t take a man that brought another woman right up to my door, you might say. And that new one, what’ll she do now? Go away and get another man, I guess. Hope she’ll learn enough to get a well one this time. … Funny goings-on in that house. And a preacher of the gospel, too. Even if he is Episcopal. If he wasn’t such a nice man. …
George Farr:
It isn’t true, Cecily, darling, sweetheart. You can’t, you can’t. After your body prone and narrow as a pool dividing. …
The Town:
I hear that boy of Mahon’s, that hurt fellow, and that girl of Saunders’ are going to get married. My wife said they never would, but I said all the time …
Mrs. Burney:
Men don’t know. They should of looked out for him better. Saying he never wanted for nothing. …
George Farr:
Cecily, Cecily. … Is this death?
The Town:
There’s that soldier that came with Mahon. I guess that woman will take him now. But maybe she don’t have to. He might have been saving time himself.
Well, wouldn’t you, if you was him?
Sergeant Madden:
Powers. Powers. … A man’s face spitted like a moth on a lance of flame. Powers. … Rotten luck for her.
Mrs. Burney:
Dewey, my boy. …
Sergeant Madden:
No, ma’am. He was all right. We did all we could. …
Cecily Saunders:
Yes, yes, Donald. I will, I will! I will get used to your poor face, Donald! George, my dear love, take me away, George!
Sergeant Madden:
Yes, yes, he was all right. … A man on a fire-step, screaming with fear.
George Farr:
Cecily, how could you? How could you?
The Town:
That girl … time she was took in hand by somebody. Running around town nearly nekkid. Good thing he’s blind, ain’t it?
Guess she hopes he’ll stay blind, too. …
Margaret Powers:
No, no, goodbye, dear dead Dick, ugly dead Dick. …
Joe Gilligan:
He is dying, he gets the woman he doesn’t want even, while I am not dying. … Margaret, what shall I do? What can I say?
Emmy:
Come here, Emmy? Ah, come to me, Donald. But he is dead.
Cecily Saunders:
George, my lover, my poor dear. … What have we done?
Mrs. Burney:
Dewey, Dewey, so brave, so young. …
(This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
VIII
Mrs. Powers mounted the stairs under Mrs. Saunders’ curious eyes. The older woman had been cold, almost rude, but Mrs. Powers had won her point, and choosing Cecily’s door from her mother’s directions she knocked.
After a while she knocked again and called: “Miss Saunders.”
Silence was again a hushed tense interval, then Cecily’s muffled voice came through the door:
“Go away.”
“Please,” she insisted. “I want to see you a moment.”
“No, no. Go away.”
“But I must see you.” There was no reply and she added: “I have just talked to your mother, and to Dr. Mahon. Let me come in, won’t you?”
She heard movement, a bed, then another interval. Fool, taking time to powder her face. But you would, too, she told herself. The door opened under her hand.
Powder only made the traces of tears more visible and Cecily turned her back as Mrs. Powers entered the room. She could see the indentation of a body on the bed, and a crumpled pillow. Mrs. Powers, not being offered a chair, sat on the foot of the bed, and Cecily, across the room, leaning in a window and staring out, said ungraciously: “What do you want?”
How like her this room is! thought the caller, observing pale maple and a triple mirrored dressing-table bearing a collection of fragile crystal, and delicate clothing carelessly about on chairs, on the floor. On a chest of drawers was a small camera picture, framed.
“May I look?” she asked, knowing instinctively who it was. Cecily, stubbornly presenting her back in a thin, formless garment through which light from the window passed revealing her narrow torso, made no reply. Mrs. Powers approached and saw Donald Mahon bareheaded in a shabby unbuttoned tunic standing before a corrugated iron wall, carrying a small resigned dog casually by the scruff of the neck, like a handbag.
“That’s so typical of him, isn’t it?” she commented. Cecily said rudely:
“What do you want with me?”
“That’s exactly what your mother asked me, you know. She seemed to think I was interfering also.”
“Well, aren’t you? Nobody asked you to come here.” Cecily turned, leaning her hip against the window ledge.
“I don’t think it’s interference when it’s warranted though. Do you?”
“Warranted? Who asked you to interfere? Did Donald do it, or are you trying to scare me off? You needn’t tell me Donald asked you to get him out of it: it will be a lie.”
“But I’m not: I don’t intend to. I’m trying to help you both.”
“Oh, you are against me. Everybody’s against me, except Donald. And you keep him shut up like a—a prisoner.” She turned quickly and leaned her head against the window.
Mrs. Powers sat quietly examining her, her frail revealed body under the silly garment she wore—a webby cloying thing worse than nothing and a fit complement to the single belaced garment it revealed above the long hushed gleams of her stockings. … If Cellini had been a hermit-priest he might have imagined her, Mrs. Powers thought, wishing mildly she could see the other naked. At last she rose from the bed and crossed to the window. Cecily kept her head stubbornly averted, and expecting tears, she touched the girl’s shoulder. “Cecily,” she said, quietly.
Cecily’s green eyes were dry, stony, and she moved swiftly across the room with her delicate narrow stride. She stood holding the door open. Mrs. Powers, at the window, did not accept. Did she ever, ever forget herself? she wondered, observing the studied grace of the girl’s body turned on the laxed ball of a thigh. Cecily met her gaze with one of haughty commanding scorn.
“Won’t you even leave the room when you are asked?” she said, making her swift, coarse voice sound measured and cold.
Mrs. Powers thinking O hell, what’s the use? moved so as to lean her thigh against the bed. Cecily, without changing her position, moved the door for emphasis. Standing quietly, watching her studied fragility (her legs are rather sweet, she admitted, but why all this posing for me? I’m not a man) Mrs. Powers ran her palm slowly along the smooth wood of the bed. Suddenly the other slammed the door and returned to the window. Mrs. Powers followed.
“Cecily, why can’t we talk about it sensibly?” The girl made no reply, ignoring her, crumpling the curtain in her fingers. “Miss Saunders?”
“Why can’t you let me alone?” Cecily flared suddenly, flaming out at her. “I don’t want to talk to you about it. Why do you come to me?” Her eyes darkened: they were no longer hard. “If you want him, take him, then. You have every chance you could want, keeping him shut up there so that even I can’t see him!”
“But I don’t want him. I am trying to straighten things out for him. Don’t you know that if I had wanted him I would have married him before I brought him home?”
“You tried it, and couldn’t. That’s why you didn’t. Oh, don’t say it wasn’t,” she rushed on as the other would have spoken. “I saw it that first day. That you were after him. And if you aren’t, why do you keep on staying here?”
“You know that’s a lie,” Mrs. Powers replied, calmly.
“Then what makes you so interested in him, if you aren’t in love with him?”
(This is hopeless.) She put her hand on the other’s arm. Cecily shrank quickly away and she returned to lean again against the bed. She said:
“Your mother is against this, and Donald’s father expects it. But what chance will you have against your mother?” (Against yourself?)
“I certainly don’t need any advice from you,” Cecily turned her head, her haughtiness, her anger, were gone and in their place was a thin hopeless despair. Even her voice, her whole attitude, had changed. “Don’t you see how miserable I am?” she said, pitifully. “I didn’t mean to be rude to you, but I don’t know what to do, I don’t know. … I am in such trouble: something terrible has happened to me. Please!”
Mrs. Powers, seeing her face, went to her quickly, putting her arm about the girl’s narrow shoulders. Cecily avoided her. “Please, please go.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“No, no, I can’t. Please—”
They paused, listening. Footsteps approaching, stopped beyond the door: a knock, and her father’s voice called her name.
“Yes?”
“Dr. Mahon is downstairs. Can you come down?”
The two women stared at each other.
“Come,” Mrs. Powers said.
Cecily’s eyes went dark again and she whispered. “No, no, no!” trembling.
“Sis,” her father repeated.
“Say yes,” Mrs. Powers whispered.
“Yes, daddy. I’m coming.”
“All right.” The footsteps retreated and Mrs. Powers drew Cecily toward the door. The girl resisted.
“I can’t go like this,” she said, hysterically.
“Yes, you can. It’s all right. Come.”
Mrs. Saunders, sitting militant, formal and erect upon her chair, was saying as they entered:
“May I ask what this—this woman has to do with it?”
Her husband chewed a cigar. Light falling upon the rector’s face held it like a gray bitten mask. Cecily ran to him. “Uncle Joe!” she cried.
“Cecily!” her mother said, sharply. “What do you mean, coming down like that?”
The rector rose, huge and black, embracing her. “Uncle Joe!” she repeated, clinging to him.
“Now, Robert,” Mrs. Saunders began. But the rector interrupted her.
“Cecily,” he said, raising her face. She twisted her chin and hid her face against his coat.
“Robert,” said Mrs. Saunders.
The rector spoke grayly. “Cecily, we have talked it over together, and we think—your mother and father—”
She moved in her silly, revealing garment, “Daddy?” she exclaimed, staring at her father. He would not meet her gaze but sat slowly twisting his cigar. The rector continued:
“We think that you will only—that you—They say that Donald is going to die, Cecily,” he finished.
Lithe as a sapling she thrust herself backward against his arm, bending, to see his face, staring at him. “Oh, Uncle Joe! Have you gone back on me, too?” she cried, passionately.
IX
George Farr had been quite drunk for a week. His friend, the drug-clerk, thought that he was going crazy. He had become a local landmark, a tradition: even the town soaks began to look upon him with respect, calling him by his given name, swearing undying devotion to him.
In the intervals of belligerent or rollicking or maudlin inebriation he knew periods of devastating despair like a monstrous bliss, like that of a caged animal, of a man being slowly tortured to death: a minor monotony of pain. As a rule, though, he managed to stay fairly drunk. Her narrow body sweetly dividing naked … have another drink. … I’ll kill you if you keep on fooling around her … my girl, my girl … her narrow … ’nother drink … oh, God, oh, God … sweetly dividing for another … have drink, what hell I care, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. …
Though “nice” people no longer spoke to him on the streets he was, after a fashion, cared for and protected by casual acquaintances and friends both black and white, as in the way of small towns particularly and of the “inferior” classes anywhere.
He sat glassy-eyed among fried smells, among noises, at an oilcloth-covered table.
“Clu—hoverrrrrr blarrrr—sums, clo—ver blarrrr—summmzzzz,” sang a nasal voice terribly, the melody ticked off at spaced intervals by a small monotonous sound, like a clock-bomb going off. Like this:
Clo (tick) ver (tick) rrr (tick) (tick) bl (tick) rrs (tick) sss (tick) umm (tick) zzz.
Beside him sat two of his new companions, quarreling, spitting, holding hands and weeping over the cracked interminability of the phonograph record. “Clo—verrrr blar—sums,” it repeated with saccharine passion; when it ran down they repaired to a filthy alley behind the filthier kitchen to drink of George Farr’s whisky. Then they returned and played the record through again, clutching hands while frank tears slid down their otherwise unwashed cheeks. “Cloooooooover blaaaaaarsummmssss. …”
Truly vice is a dull and decorous thing: no life in the world is as hard, requiring so much sheer physical and moral strength as the so-called “primrose path.” Being “good” is much less trouble.
“Clo—ver blar—sums. …”
… After a while his attention was called to the fact that someone had been annoying him for some time. Focusing his eyes he at last recognized the proprietor in an apron on which he must have dried his dishes for weeks. “What’n ’ell y’ want?” he asked, with feeble liquid belligerence, and the man finally explained to him that he was wanted on the telephone in a neighboring drugstore. He rose, pulling himself together.
“Clu—hoooooooover blar—sums. …”
After a few years he languished from a telephone mouthpiece holding himself erect, watching without interest a light globe over the prescription desk describing slow concentric circles.
“George?” There was something in the unknown voice speaking his name, such anguish, as to almost shock him sober. “George.”
“This George … hello. …
“George, it’s Cecily. Cecily. …”
Drunkenness left him like a retreating wave. He could feel his heart stop, then surge, deafening him, blinding him with his own blood.
“George. … Do you hear me?” (Ah, George, to have been drunk now!) (Cecily, oh, Cecily!) “Yes! Yes!” gripping the instrument as though this would keep her against escape. “Yes, Cecily? Cecily! It’s George. …”
“Come to me, now. At once.”
“Yes, yes. Now?”
“Come, George, darling. Hurry, hurry. …”
“Yes!” he cried again. “Hello, hello!” The line made no response. He waited but it was dead. His heart pounded and pounded, hotly; he could taste his own hot bitter blood in his throat. (Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
He plunged down the length of the store and while a middle-aged clerk filling a prescription poised his bottle to watch in dull amazement, George Farr tore his shirt open at the throat and thrust his whole head beneath a gushing water tap in a frenzy of activity.
(Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
X
He seemed so old, so tired as he sat at the head of the table toying with his food, as if the very fiber of him had lost all resilience. Gilligan ate with his usual informal appetite and Donald and Emmy sat side by side so that Emmy could help him. Emmy enjoyed mothering him, now that she could never have him again for a lover; she objected with passionate ardor when Mrs. Powers offered to relieve her. The Donald she had known was dead; this one was but a sorry substitute, but Emmy was going to make the best of it, as women will. She had even got accustomed to taking her food after it had cooled.
Mrs. Powers sat watching them. Emmy’s shock of no particular color hair was near his worn head in intent devotion, her labor-worried hand seemed to have an eye of its own, so quick, so tender it was to anticipate him and guide his hand with the food she had prepared for him. Mrs. Powers wondered which Donald Emmy loved the more, wondering if she had not perhaps forgotten the former one completely save as a symbol of sorrow. Then the amazing logical thought occurred to her that here was the woman for Donald to marry.
Of course it was. Why had no one thought of that before? Then she told herself that no one had done very much thinking during the whole affair, that it had got on without any particular drain on any intelligence. Why did we take it for granted that he must marry Cecily and no other? Yet we all accepted it as an arbitrary fact and off we went with our eyes closed and our mouths open, like hounds in full cry.
But would Emmy take him? Wouldn’t she be so frightened at the prospect that she’d be too self-conscious with him afterward to care for him as skilfully as she does now; wouldn’t it cause her to confuse in her mind to his detriment two separate Donalds—a lover and an invalid? I wonder what Joe will think about it.
She looked at Emmy impersonal as Omnipotence, helping Donald with effacing skill, seeming to envelop him, yet never touching him. Anyway, I’ll ask her, she thought, sipping her tea.
Night was come. Tree-frogs, remembering last night’s rain, resumed their monotonous molding of liquid beads of sound; grass blades and leaves losing shapes of solidity gained shapes of sound: the still suspire of earth, of the ground preparing for slumber; flowers by day, spikes of bloom, became with night spikes of scent; the silver tree at the corner of the house hushed its never-still never-escaping ecstasy. Already toads hopped along concrete pavements drinking prisoned heat through their dragging bellies.
Suddenly the rector started from his dream. “Tut, tut. We are making mountains from mole hills, as usual. If she wants to marry Donald I am sure her people will not withhold their consent always. Why should they object to their daughter marrying him? Do you know—”
“Hush!” she said. He looked up at her startled, then seeing her warning glance touch Mahon’s oblivious head, he understood. She saw Emmy’s wide shocked eyes on her and she rose at her place. “You are through, aren’t you?” she said to the rector. “Suppose we go to the study.”
Mahon sat quiet, chewing. She could not tell whether or not he heard. She passed behind Emmy and leaning to her whispered: “I want to speak to you. Don’t say anything to Donald.”
The rector, preceding her, fumbled the light on in the study. “You must be careful,” she told him, “how you talk before him, how you tell him.”
“Yes,” he agreed apologetically. “I was so deep in thought.”
“I know you were. I don’t think it is necessary to tell him at all, until he asks.”
“And that will never be. She loves Donald: she will not let her people prevent her marrying him. I am not customarily in favor of such a procedure as instigating a young woman to marry against her parents’ wishes, but in this case. … You do not think that I am inconsistent, that I am partial because my son is involved?”
“No, no. Of course not.”
“Don’t you agree with me, that Cecily will insist on the wedding?”
“Yes, indeed.” What else could she say?
Gilligan and Mahon had gone and Emmy was clearing the table when she returned. Emmy whirled upon her.
“She ain’t going to take him? What was Uncle Joe saying?”
“Her people don’t like the idea. That’s all. She hasn’t refused. But I think we had better stop it now, Emmy. She has changed her mind so often nobody can tell what she’ll do.”
Emmy turned back to the table, lowering her head, scraping a plate. Mrs. Powers watched her busy elbow, hearing the little clashing noises of china and silver. A bowl of white roses shattered slowly upon the center of the table.
“What do you think, Emmy?”
“I don’t know,” Emmy replied, sullenly. “She ain’t my kind. I don’t know nothing about it.”
Mrs. Powers approached the table. “Emmy,” she said. The other did not raise her head, made no reply. She turned the girl gently by the shoulder. “Would you marry him, Emmy?”
Emmy straightened hotly, clutching a plate and a fork. “Me? Me marry him? Me take another’s leavings? (Donald, Donald.) And her leavings, at that, her that’s run after every boy in town, dressed up in her silk clothes?”
Mrs. Powers moved back to the door and Emmy scraped dishes fiercely. This plate became blurred, she blinked and saw something splash on it. She shan’t see me cry! she whispered passionately, bending her head lower, waiting for Mrs. Powers to ask her again. (Donald, Donald. …)
When she was young, going to school in the spring, having to wear coarse dresses and shoes while other girls wore silk and thin leather; being not pretty at all while other girls were pretty—
Walking home to where work awaited her while other girls were riding in cars or having ice cream or talking to boys and dancing with them, with boys that had no use for her; sometimes he would step out beside her, so still, so quick, all of a sudden—and she didn’t mind not having silk.
And when they swam and fished and roamed the woods together she forgot she wasn’t pretty, even. Because he was beautiful, with his body all brown and quick, so still … making her feel beautiful, too.
And when he said Come here, Emmy, she went to him, and wet grass and dew under her and over her his head with the whole sky for a crown, and the moon running on them like water that wasn’t wet and that you couldn’t feel. …
Marry him? Yes! Yes! Let him be sick: she would cure him; let him be a Donald that had forgotten her—she had not forgotten: she could remember enough for both of them. Yes! Yes! she cried, soundlessly, stacking dishes, waiting for Mrs. Powers to ask her again. Her red hands were blind, tears splashed fatly on her wrists. Yes! Yes! trying to think it so loudly that the other must hear. She shan’t see me cry! she whispered again. But the other woman only stood in the door watching her busy back. So she gathered up the dishes slowly, there being no reason to linger any longer. Keeping her head averted she carried the dishes to the pantry door, slowly, waiting for the other to speak again. But the other woman said nothing and Emmy left the room, her pride forbidding her to let the other see her tears.
XI
The study was dark when she passed, but she could see the rector’s head in dim silhouette against the more spacious darkness outside the window. She passed slowly onto the veranda. Leaning her quiet tall body against a column in the darkness beyond the fan of light from the door she listened to the hushed myriad life of night things, to the slow voices of people passing unseen along an unseen street, watching the hurried staring twin eyes of motorcars like restless insects. A car slowing, drew up to the corner, and after a while a dark figure came along the pale gravel of the path, hurried yet diffident. It paused and screamed delicately in midpath, then it sped on toward the steps, where it stopped again and Mrs. Powers stepped forward from beside her post.
“Oh,” gasped Miss Cecily Saunders, starting, lifting her hand slimly against her dark dress. “Mrs. Powers?”
“Yes. Come in, won’t you?”
Cecily ran with nervous grace up the steps. “It was a f-frog,” she explained between her quick respirations. “I nearly stepped—ugh!” She shuddered, a slim muted flame hushed darkly in dark clothing. “Is Uncle Joe here? May I—” her voice died away diffidently.
“He is in the study,” Mrs. Powers answered. What has happened to her? she thought. Cecily stood so that the light from the hall fell full on her. There was in her face a thin nervous despair, a hopeless recklessness, and she stared at the other woman’s shadowed face for a long moment. Then she said Thank you, thank you, suddenly, hysterically, and ran quickly into the house. Mrs. Powers looked after her, then following, saw her dark dress. She is going away, Mrs. Powers thought, with conviction.
Cecily flew on ahead like a slim dark bird, into the unlighted study. “Uncle Joe?” she said, poised, touching either side of the doorframe. The rector’s chair creaked suddenly.
“Eh?” he said, and the girl sailed across the room like a bat, dark in the darkness, sinking at his feet, clutching his knees. He tried to raise her but she clung to his legs the tighter, burrowing her head into his lap.
“Uncle Joe, forgive me, forgive me!”
“Yes, yes. I knew you would come to us. I told them—”
“No, no. I—I—You have always been so good, so sweet to me, that I couldn’t. …” She clutched him again fiercely.
“Cecily, what is it? Now, now, you mustn’t cry about it. Come now, what is it?” Knowing a sharp premonition he raised her face, trying to see it. But it was only a formless soft blur warmly in his hands.
“Say you forgive me first, dear Uncle Joe. Won’t you? Say it, say it. If you won’t forgive me, I don’t know what’ll become of me.” His hands slipping downward felt her delicate tense shoulders and he said:
“Of course, I forgive you.”
“Thank you. Oh, thank you. You are so kind—” she caught his hand, holding it against her mouth.
“What is it, Cecily?” he asked, quietly, trying to soothe her.
She raised her head. “I am going away.”
“Then you aren’t going to marry Donald?”
She lowered her head to his knees again, clutching his hand in her long nervous fingers, holding it against her face. “I cannot, I cannot. I am a—I am not a good woman any more, dear Uncle Joe. Forgive me, forgive me. …”
He withdrew his hand and she let herself be raised to her feet, feeling his arms, his huge kind body. “There, there,” patting her back with his gentle heavy hand. “Don’t cry.”
“I must go,” she said at last, moving slimly and darkly against his bulk. He released her. She clutched his hand again sharply, letting it go. “Goodbye,” she whispered, and fled swift and dark as a bird, gracefully to a delicate tapping of heels, as she had come.
She passed Mrs. Powers on the porch without seeing her and sped down the steps. The other woman watched her slim dark figure until it disappeared … after an interval the car that had stopped at the corner of the garden flashed on its lights and drove away. …
Mrs. Powers, pressing the light switch, entered the study. The rector stared at her as she approached the desk, quiet and hopeless.
“Cecily has broken the engagement, Margaret. So the wedding is off.”
“Nonsense,” she told him sharply, touching him with her firm hand. “I’m going to marry him myself. I intended to all the time. Didn’t you suspect?”
XII
San Francisco, Cal.,
.Darling Margaret—
I told mother last night and of coarse she thinks we are too young. But I explained to her how times have changed since the war how the war makes you older than they used to. I see fellows my age that did not serve specially flying which is an education in itself and they seem like kids to me because at last I have found the woman I want and my kid days are over. After knowing so many women to found you so far away when I did not expect it. Mother says for me to go in business and make money if I expect a woman to marry me so I am going to start in tomorrow I have got the place already. So it will not be long till I see you and take you in my arms at last and always. How can I tell you how much I love you you are so different from them. Loving you has already made me a serious man realizing responsabilities. They are all so silly compared with you talking of jazz and going some place where all the time I have been invited on parties but I refuse because I rather sit in my room thinking of you putting my thoughts down on paper let them have their silly fun. I think of you all ways and if it did not make you so unhappy I want you to think of me always. But don’t I would not make you unhappy at all my own dearest. So think of me and remember I love you only and will love you only will love you all ways.
XIII
The Baptist minister, a young dervish in a white lawn tie, being most available, came and did his duty and went away. He was young and fearfully conscientious and kindhearted; upright and passionately desirous of doing good: so much so that he was a bore. But he had soldiered after a fashion and he liked and respected Dr. Mahon, refusing to believe that simply because Dr. Mahon was Episcopal he was going to hell as soon as he died.
He wished them luck and fled busily away, answering his own obscure compulsions. They watched his busy energetic backside until he was out of sight, then Gilligan silently helped Mahon down the steps and across the lawn to his favorite seat beneath the tree. The new Mrs. Mahon walked silently beside them. Silence was her wont, but not Gilligan’s. Yet he had spoken no word to her. Walking near him she put out her hand and touched his arm: he turned to her a face so bleak, so reft that she knew a sharp revulsion, a sickness with everything. (Dick, Dick. How well you got out of this mess!) She looked quickly away, across the garden, beyond the spire where pigeons crooned the afternoon away, unemphatic as sleep, biting her lips. Married, and she had never felt so alone.
Gilligan settled Mahon in his chair with his impersonal half-reckless care. Mahon said:
“Well, Joe, I’m married at last.”
“Yes,” answered Gilligan. His careless spontaneity was gone. Even Mahon noticed it in his dim oblivious way. “I say, Joe.”
“What is it, Loot?”
Mahon was silent and his wife took her customary chair, leaning back and staring up into the tree. He said at last: “Carry on, Joe.”
“Not now, Loot. I don’t feel so many. Think I’ll take a walk,” he answered, feeling Mrs. Mahon’s eyes on him. He met her gaze harshly, combatively.
“Joe,” she said quietly, bitterly.
Gilligan saw her pallid face, her dark unhappy eyes, her mouth like a tired scar and he knew shame. His own bleak face softened.
“All right, Loot,” he said, quietly matching her tone, with a trace of his old ambiguous unseriousness. “What’ll it be? Bust up a few more minor empires, huh?”
Just a trace, but it was there. Mrs. Mahon looked at him again with gratitude and that old grave happiness which he knew so well, unsmiling but content, which had been missing for so long, so long; and it was as though she had laid her firm strong hand on him. He looked quickly away from her face, sad and happy, not bitter any more.
“Carry on, Joe.”