* * *
After the women had hovered Jenny’s draggled helplessness below decks Fairchild removed his hat and mopped his face, looking about upon his fatuous Frankenstein with a sort of childlike astonishment. Then his gaze came to rest on Mr. Talliaferro’s haggard damp despair and he laughed and laughed.
“Laugh you may,” the Semitic man told him, “but much more of this sort of humor and you’ll be doing your laughing ashore. I think now, if Talliaferro’d start an active protest with you as its immediate object, that we’d all be inclined to support him.” Mr. Talliaferro dripped forlornly: an utter and hopeless dejection. The Semitic man looked at him, then he too looked about at the others and upon the now peaceful scene of their recent activities. “One certainly pays a price for art,” he murmured, “one really does.”
“Talliaferro’s the only one who has suffered any actual damage,” Fairchild protested. “And I’m just going to buy him off now. Come on, Talliaferro, we can fix you up.”
“That won’t be sufficient,” the Semitic man said, still ominous. “The rest of us have been assailed enough in our vanities to rise from principle.”
“Well, then, if I have to, I’ll buy you all off,” Fairchild answered. He led the way toward the stairs. But he halted again and looked back at them. “Where’s Gordon?” he asked. Nobody knew. “Well, no matter. He knows where to come.” He went on. “After all,” he said, “there are compensations for art, ain’t there?”
The Semitic man admitted that there were. “Though,” he added, “it’s a high price to pay for whisky.” He descended in his turn. “Yes, we really must get something out of it. We spend enough time on it and suffer enough moral and mental turmoil because of it.”
“Sure,” Fairchild agreed. “The ones that produce it get a lot from it. They get the boon of keeping their time pretty well filled. And that’s a whole lot to expect in this world,” he said profoundly, fumbling at his door. It opened at last and he said, “Oh, here you are. Say, you just missed it.”
Major Ayers, his neglected tumbler beside him and clutching a book, came up for air when they entered, festooned yet with a kind of affable bewilderment. “Missed what?” he repeated.
They all began to tell him about it at once, producing Mr. Talliaferro as evidence from where he lurked unhappily in their midst, for Major Ayers’s inspection and commiseration; and still telling him about it they found seats while Fairchild again assumed the ritual of his hidden suitcase. Major Ayers already had the chair, but the Semitic man attempted the book anyway. “What have you got there?” he asked.
Major Ayers’s hearty bewilderment descended upon him again. “I was passing the time,” he explained quickly. He stared at the book. “It’s quite strange,” he said. Then he added, “I mean, the way—the way they get their books up nowadays. I like the way they get their books up. Jolly, with colors, y’know. But I—” He considered a moment. “I rather lost the habit of reading at Sandhurst,” he explained in a burst of confidence. “And then, on active service constantly . . .”
“War is bad,” the Semitic man agreed. “What were you reading?”
“I rather lost the habit of reading at Sandhurst,” Major Ayers explained again. He raised the book again.
Fairchild opened a fresh bottle. “Somebody’ll have to dig up some more glasses. Mark, see if you can slip back to the kitchen and get one or two more. Let’s see the book,” he said reaching his hand. The Semitic man forestalled him.
“You go ahead and give us some whisky. I’d rather forget my grief that way, just now.”
“But look,” Fairchild insisted. The other fended him off.
“Give us some whisky, I tell you,” he repeated. “Here’s Mark with the glasses. What we need in this country is protection from artists. They even want to annoy us with each other’s stuff.”
“Go ahead,” Fairchild replied equably, “have your joke. You know my opinion of smartness,” He passed glasses among them.
“He can’t mean that,” the Semitic man said. “Just because the New Republic gives him hell—”
“But the Dial once bought a story of him,” Mark Frost said with hollow envy.
“And what a fate for a man in all the lusty pride of his Ohio valley masculinity: immolation in a home for old young ladies of either sex. . . . That atmopshere was too rare for him. Eh, Dawson?”
Fairchild laughed. “Well, I ain’t much of an Alpinist. What do you want to be in there for, Mark?”
“It would suit Mark exactly,” the Semitic man said, “that vague polite fury of the intellect in which they function. What I can’t see is how Mark has managed to stay out of it. . . . But then, if you’ll look close enough, you’ll find an occasional grain of truth in these remarks which Mark and I make and which you consider merely smart. But you utter things not quite clever enough to be untrue, and while we are marveling at your profundity, you lose courage and flatly contradict yourself the next moment. Why, only that tactless and well-meaning God of yours alone knows. Why anyone should worry enough about the temporary meaning or construction of words to contradict himself consciously or to feel annoyed when he has done it unconsciously, is beyond me.”
“Well, it is a kind of sterility—Words,” Fairchild admitted. “You begin to substitute words for things and deeds, like the withered cuckold husband that took the Decameron to bed with him every night, and pretty soon the thing or the deed becomes just a kind of shadow of a certain sound you make by shaping your mouth a certain way. But you have a confusion, too. I don’t claim that words have life in themselves. But words brought into a happy conjunction produce something that lives, just as soil and climate and an acorn in proper conjunction will produce a tree. Words are like acorns, you know. Everyone of ’em won’t make a tree, but if you just have enough of ’em, you’re bound to get a tree sooner or later.”
“If you just talk long enough, you’re bound to say the right thing some day. Is that what you mean?” the Semitic man asked.
“Let me show you what I mean,” Fairchild reached again for the book.
“For heaven’s sake,” the other exclaimed, “let us have this one drink in peace. We’ll admit your contention, if that’s what you want. Isn’t that what you say, Major?”
“No, really,” Major Ayers protested, “I enjoyed the book. Though I rather lost the habit of reading at Sa—”
“I like the book myself,” Mark Frost said. “My only criticism is that it got published.”
“You can’t avoid that,” Fairchild told him. “It’s inevitable; it happens to everyone who will take the risk of writing down a thousand coherent consecutive words.”
“And sooner than that,” the Semitic man added, “if you’ve murdered your husband or won a golf championship.”
“Yes,” Fairchild agreed. “Cold print. Your stuff looks so different in cold print. It lends a kind of impersonal authority even to stupidity.”
“That’s backward,” the other said. “Stupidity lends a kind of impersonal authority even to cold print.”
Fairchild stared at him. “Say, what did you just tell me about contradicting myself?”
“I can afford to,” the other answered. “I never authenticate mine.” He drained his glass. “But as for art and artists, I prefer artists: I don’t even object to paying my pro rata to feed them, so long as I am not compelled to listen to them.”
“It seems to me,” Fairchild rejoined, “that you spend a lot of time listening to them, for a man who professes to dislike it and who don’t have to.”
“That’s because I’d have to listen to somebody—artist or shoe clerk. And the artist is more entertaining because he knows less about what he is trying to do. . . . And besides, I talk a little, myself. I wonder what became of Gordon?”
FIVE O’CLOCK
Evening came sad as horns among the trees. The road had drop
ped downward again into the swamp where amid rank, impenetrable jungle dark streams wallowed aimless and obscene, and against the hidden flame of the west huge trees brooded bearded and ancient as prophets out of Genesis. David lay at full length at the roadside. He had lain there a long time, but at last he sat up and looked about for her.
She stood beside a cypress, up to her knees in thick water, her arms crossed against the tree trunk and her face hidden in her arms, utterly motionless. About them, a moist green twilight filled with unseen fire.
“David.” Her voice was muffled by her arms, and after it, there was no sound in this fecund, timeless twilight of trees. He sat beside the road, and presently she spoke again. “It’s a mess, David. I didn’t know it was going to be like this.” He made a harsh, awkward sound, as though it were someone else’s voice he was trying to speak with. “Hush,” she said. “It’s my fault: I got you into this. I’m sorry, David.”
These trees were thicker, huger, more ancient than any yet, amid the brooding twilight of their beards. “What must we do now, David?” After a while she raised her head and looked at him and repeated the question.
He answered slowly, “Whatever you want to do.”
She said, “Come here, David.” And he got slowly to his feet and stepped into the black, thick water and went to her, and for a while she looked at him soberly, without moving. Then she turned from the tree and came nearer and they stood in the foul, black water, embracing. Suddenly she clasped him fiercely. “Can’t you do something about it? Can’t you make it different? Must it be like this?”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked slowly in that voice which was not his. She loosed her arms, and he repeated as though prompted, “You do whatever you want to.”
“I’m damn sorry, David, for getting you into this. Josh is right: I’m just a fool.” She writhed her body beneath her dress, whimpering again. “They hurt me so damn bad,” she moaned.
“We must get out of this,” he said. “You tell me what you want to do.”
“It will be all right, if I do what I think is best?” she asked quickly, staring at him with her grave opaque eyes. “You swear it will?”
“Yes,” he answered with utter weariness. “You do whatever you want to.”
She became at once passive, a submissive docility in his embrace. But he stood holding her loosely, not even looking at her. As abruptly her passiveness faded and she said, “You’re all right, David. I’d like to do something for you. Pay you back, some way.” She looked at him again and found that he was looking at her. “David! why, David! Don’t feel that way about it!” But he continued to look at her with his quiet utter yearning. “David, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. What can I do about it? Tell me: I’ll do it. Anything, just anything.”
“It’s all right,” he said.
“But it isn’t. I want to make it up to you, some way, for getting you into this.” His head was averted: he seemed to be listening. Then the sound came again across the afternoon, among the patriarchal trees—a faint, fretful sound.
“There’s a boat,” he said. “We are close to the lake.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I heard it a while ago. I think it’s coming in near here.” She moved, and he released her. She listened again, touch his shoulder lightly. “Yes, it’s coming this way. You’d better take your shirt again. Turn your back, please, David.”
SIX O’CLOCK
“Sure, I know where your boat is, seen her hove to when I come along. In mighty shaller water, too. Ain’t more’n three miles down the lake,” the man told them, setting a galvanized pail of water on the edge of the veranda. His house stood on piles driven into the moist earth at the edge of the jungle. Before it a dark broad stream was seemingly without any movement at all between rigid palisades of trees.
The man stood on the veranda and watched her while she poured dippersful of heavenly water on her head. The water ran through her hair and dripped down her face, sopping her dress, while the man stood and watched her. His blue collarless shirt was fastened at the throat by a brass collar, button, his sweat-stained suspenders drew his faded cotton trousers snugly over his paunch. His loose jowls moved rhythmically and he spat brownly upon the earth at their feet, barely averting his head:
“You folks been wandering around in the swamp all day?” he asked staring at her with his pale, heavy eyes, roving his gaze slowly up her muddy stockings and her stained dress. “What you want to go back fer, now? Feller got enough, huh?” He spat again, and made a heavy sound of disparagement and disgust. “Ain’t no such thing as enough. Git a real man, next time.” He looked at David and asked him a question, using an unprintable verb.
Anger, automatic and despite his weariness, fired him slowly, but she forestalled him. “Let’s get back to the boat, first,” she said , to him. She looked at the man again, meeting his pale heavy stare. “How much?” she asked briskly.
“Five dollars.” He glanced at David again. “In advance.”
David put his hand to his waist. “With my money,” she said quickly, watching him as he dug into his watch pocket and extracted a single bill, neatly folded. “No, no: with mine,” she insisted peremptorily, staying his, hand. “Where’s mine?” she asked, and he drew from his trousers her crumpled mass of notes, and she took it.
The man accepted the bill and spat again. He descended heavily from the porch and led the way down to the water where his launch was moored. They got in and he cast off and thrust the boat away from the shore and bent heavily over the engine. “Yes, sir, that’s the way with these town fellers. No guts. Next time, come over to this side and git you a real man. I kin git off most any day. And I won’t be honing to git home by sundown, neither,” he added, looking back over his shoulder.
“Shut your mouth,” she told him sharply. “Make him shut up, David.” The man paused, staring at her with his pale sleepy eyes.
“Now, look-a-here,” he began heavily.
“Shut up and start your flivver,” she repeated. “You’ve got your money, so let’s go if we are going.”
“Well, that’s all right, too. I like ’em to have a little git-up-and-git to ’em.” He stared at her with his lazy drooping eyes, chewing rhythmically, then he called her a name.
David rose from his seat, but she restrained him with one hand and she cursed the man fluently ‘and glibly. “Now get started,” she finished. “If he opens his head again, David, just knock him right out of the boat.”
The man snarled his yellow teeth at them, then he bent again over the engine. Its fretful clamor rose soon and the boat slid away circling, cutting the black motionless water. Ahead, soon, there was a glint of space beyond the trees, a glint of water; and soon they had passed froni the bronze nave of the river onto the lake beneath the rushing soundless wings of sunset and a dying glory of day under the cooling brass bowl of the sky.
* * *
The Nausikaa was more like a rosy gull than ever in the sunset, squatting sedately upon the darkening indigo of the water, against the black metallic trees. The man shut off his fussy engine and the launch slid up alongside and the man caught the rail and held his boat stationary, watching her muddy legs as she climbed aboard the yacht.
No one was in sight. They stood at the rail and looked downward upon his thick backside while he spun the flywheel again. The engine caught at last and the launch circled away from the yacht and headed again into the sunset while the fussy engine desecrated the calm of water and sky and trees. Soon the boat was only a speck in the fading path of the sunset.
“David?” she said, when it had gone. She turned and put her firm tanned hand on his breast, and he turned his head also and looked at her with his beastlike longing.
“It’s all right,” he said after a time. She put her arms around him again, sexless and hard, drawing his cheek down to her sober moist kiss. This time he didn’t move his head. r />
“I’m sorry, David.”
“It’s all right,” he repeated. She laid her hands flat on his chest and he released her. For a time they gazed at each other. Then she left him and crossed the deck and descended the companionway without looking back, and so left him and the evening from which the sun had gone suddenly and into which night was as suddenly come, and across which the fretful thin sound of the launch came yet faintly along the dreaming water, beneath the tarnished sky where stars were already pricking Iike a hushed magical blooming of flowers.