The clock rang again, and she moved. I’ve been crying, she thought. “I’ve been crying,” she said in a sad whisper that savored its own loneliness arid its sorrow. At the tall mirror beside the parlor door she stood and peered at her dim reflection, touching her eyes with her fingertips. Then she went on, but paused again at the stairs, listening, then she mounted briskly and entered Miss Jenny’s room and went on to her bathroom and bathed her face.
Bayard lay as she had left him. He was smoking a cigarette now. Between puffs he dabbed it casually at a saucer on the bed beside him. “Well?” he said.
“You’re going to set the house on fire that way,” she told him, removing the saucer. “You know Miss Jenny wouldn’t let you do that.”
“I know it,” he agreed, a little sheepishly, and she dragged the table over and set the saucer on it.
“Can you reach it now?”
“Yes, thanks. Did they give you enough to eat?”
“Oh, yes. Simon’s very insistent, you know. Shall I read some more, or had you rather sleep?”
“Read, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay awake, this time.”
“Is that a threat?” He looked at her quickly as she seated herself and took up the book.
“Say, what happened to you?” he demanded. “You acted like you were all in before dinner. Simon give you a drink, or what?”
“No, not that bad.” And she laughed, a little wildly, and opened the book. “I forgot to mark the place,” she said, turning the pages swiftly. “Do you remember—No, you were asleep. Shall I go back to where you stopped listening?”
“No, just read anywhere. It’s all about alike, I guess. If you’ll move a little nearer, I believe I can stay awake.”
“Sleep, if you want to. I don’t mind,” she answered.
“Meaning you won’t come any nearer?” he asked, watching her with his bleak gaze. She moved her chair nearer and opened the book again and turned the pages on, slowing and scanning them.
“I think it was about here,” she said, with indecision. “Yes.” She read to herself for a line or two, then she began aloud, read to the end of the page, where her voice trailed off and she creased her brow; turned the nest page then flipped it back. “I read this once; I remember it now.” And she turned onward again, with frowning indecision. “I must have been asleep too,” she said, and she glanced at him with ludicrous and friendly bewilderment. “I seem to have read pages and pages...”
“Oh, begin anywhere,” he repeated.
“No: wait; here it is.” She read again, and he lay watching her. At times she raised her eyes swiftly and found his eyes upon her face, bleakly but quietly. After a while he was no longer watching her, and at last, finding that his eyes were closed, she thought he slept. She finished the chapter and stopped
“No,” he said drowsily. “Not yet.” Then, when she failed to resume, he opened his eyes and asked for a cigarette. She laid the book aside and struck a match for him, then picked up the book again.
So the afternoon wore away. The negroes had gone, and no sound was in the house save that of her voice, arid the clock at quarter hour intervals; outside the shadows slanted more and more, peaceful harbingers of evening. Bayard was asleep now, despite his contrary conviction, and after a while she ceased and laid the book away. The long shape of him lay stiffly in its cast beneath the sheet, and she examined his bold immobile face with a little shrinking and yet with fascination, and her own patient and hopeless sorrow overflowed (there was enough of it to anneal the world) in pity for him. He was so utterly without any affection for any place or person or thing at all; too—too...hard (no, that’s not the word—but cold eluded her; she could comprehend hardness, but not coldness) to find relief by crying, even. Better to have lost it^ than never to have had it at all, at all.
The afternoon drew on; evening was finding itself. She sat musing and still and quiet, gazing out of the window where no wind yet stirred the leaves, as though she were waiting for someone to tell her what to do next, and she lost all account of time other than as a dark unhurrying stream into which she gazed until the mesmerism of water conjured the water itself away. Lost, lost; yet never to have had it stall...
He made an indescribable sound, and she turned her head quickly and saw his body straining terrifically in its cast, and his clenched hands and the snarl of his teeth beneath his lifted lip, and as she sat blanched and incapable of further movement he made the sound again. His breath hissed between his teeth and he screamed, a wordless sound that sank into a steady violence of profanity; and when she rose at last and stood over him with her hands against her mouth, his body relaxed and from beneath his sweating brow he watched her with wide intent eyes in which terror lurked, and mad, cold fury, and questioning despair.
“He damn near got me, then,” he said in a dry, light voice, still watching her from beyond the facing agony in his widely opened eyes. “There was a sort of loop of ‘em around my chest, and every time he fired, he twisted the loop a little tighter...” He fumbled at the sheet and tried to draw it up to his face. “Can you get me a handkerchief? Some in that top drawer there.”
“Yes,” she said, “yes? and she crossed to the chest Df drawers and held her trembling body upright by clinging to it, and found a handkerchief and returned. She tried to dry his brow and face, but finally he took the handkerchief from her and did it himself. “You scared me,” she moaned. “You scared me so bad. I thought...” .
“Sorry,” he said shortly. “I don’t do that on purpose. I want a cigarette.”
She gave it to him and struck the match, and he had to grasp her hand to hold the flame steady, and still holding her wrist he drew deeply several times, She tried to free her wrist, but he held it in his hard fingers, and her trembling body betrayed her and she sank into her chair again, staring at him with ebbing terror and dread. He consumed the cigarette in deep, troubled draughts, and still holding her wrist, he began talking of his dead brother, without preamble, brutally. It was a brutal tale, without beginning, and crassly and uselessly violent and at times profane and gross, though its Very wildness robbed it of offensiveness just as its grossness kept it from obscenity. And beneath it all, the bitter struggling of his stubborn heart; and she sitting with her arm taut in his grasp and tier other hand pressed against hei mouth, watching him with terrified fascination.
“He was zig-zagging: that was the reason I couldn’t get on the Hun. Every time I got my sights on him, John’d barge in the way again. Then he quit zig-zagging. Soon as I saw him side-slip I knew it was all over. Then I saw the flame streaming out along his wing, and he was looking back at me. The Hun stopped shooting then, and all of us just lay there for a while. I couldn’t tell What John was up to until 1 saw him swing his legs outside. Then he thumbed his nose at me like he always was doing and flipped his hand at the Hun and kicked his machine out of the way and jumped. He jumped feet first. You can’t fall far feet first, you know, and so pretty soon he sprawled out flat. There was a bunch of cloud right under us by that time, and he smacked on it right on his belly, Eke what we used to call gut-busters; in swimming. But I never could pick him up below the cloud. I know I was below it before he could have come out, because after I was down there his machine came diving out right at me, burning good. I pulled away from it, but the damn thing did a split-turn and rushed at me again, and I had to dodge. And so I never could pick him “up when he came out of the cloud. I went down fast, until I knew I was below him, then I looked again. But I couldn’t find him, and I thought maybe I hadn’t gone low enough, so I dived again. But I couldn’t pick him up. Then they started shooting at me from the ground—”
He talked on and her hand came away from her mouth and slid down her other arm and tugged at his fingers. “Please,” she whispered. “Please!” He ceased and looked at her and his fingers shifted, and just as she thought she was free they clamped again, and now both of her wrists were prisoners. She struggled, staring at him dreadfully, but he grinned his
white cruel teeth at her and pressed her crossed arms down upon the bed beside him, “Please, please,’1 she implored, struggling; she could feel the flesh of her wrists, feel the bones turn in it like a loose garment; could see his bleak eyes and the cruel derision of his teeth, and suddenly she swayed forward in her chair and her head dropped between, her prisoned arms and she wept with hopeless and dreadful hysteria.
After a while there was no sound in the room again, and he looked at the dark crown of her head, and he lifted his hand and saw the braised discolorations where his hands had gripped her. But she did not move even then, and he dropped his hand upon her wrists again and lay quietly, and after a while even her trembling had ceased. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t do it again.” He could see only the top of her dark head, and her hands lay quietly beneath his. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t do that anymore.”
“You won’t drive that car fast again?” she asked. With infinite small pains and slowly he turned himself, cast and all, by degrees onto his side, chewing his lip and swearing under his breath, and laid his other hand on her hair.
“What are you doing?” she said, but without moving. “You’ll break your ribs again.”
“Yes,” he agreed, stroking her hair awkwardly.
“That’s the trouble, right there,” she said. “That’s the way you act: doing things that—that—You do things to hurt yourself just to worry people* You don’t get any fun out of doing them.”
“No,” he agreed, and he lay with his chest full of hot needles, stroking her dark head with his hard, awkward hand. Far above him now the peak among the black and savage stars, and about him the valleys of tranquility and of peace. It was later still; already shadows were growing in the room, and beyond the window sunlight was a diffused radiance, sourceless yet palpable; from somewhere cows loved one to an-other* placidly and mournfully. At last she sat up.
“You’re all twisted. You’ll never get well, if you don’t behave yourself. Turn on your back, now.” He obeyed, slowly and painfully, his lip between his teeth and faint beads on his forehead, while she watched him with grave anxiety. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” he answered, and his hand shut again on her wrists that made no effort to withdraw. Then the sun was gone, and twilight, foster-dam of quietude and peace, filled the fading room and evening had found itself.
“And you won’t drive that car fast anymore?” she persisted from the dusk.
“No,” he answered.
9
Meanwhile she had received another letter from her anonymous correspondent. Horace when he came in one night, had brought it in to her as she lay in bed with a book; tapped at her door and opened it and stood for a moment diffidently, and for a while they looked at one another across the barrier of their estrangement and their stubborn pride.
“Excuse me for disturbing you,” he said stiffly. She lay beneath the shaded light, with the dark splash of her hair upon the pillow, and only her eyes moved as he crossed the room and stood above her where she lay with her lowered book, watching him with sober interrogation.
“What are you reading?” he asked. For reply she shut the book on her finger, with the jacket and its colored legend upward. But he did not look at it. IBs shirt was open beneath his silk dressing gown and jus thin hand moved among the objects on the table beside the bed; picked up another book. “1 never knew you to read so much.”
“It have more time for reading, now,” she answered.
“Yes.” His hand still moved about the table, touching things here and there. She lay waiting for him to speak. But he did not, and she said:
“What is it, Horry?”
Then he ceased, and he came and sat on the edge of the bed. But still her eyes were gravely interrogatory and the shadow of her mouth was stubbornly cold. “Narcy?” he said. She lowered her eyes to the book, and he added: “First, I want to apologize for leaving you alone so often at night.”
“Yes?”
He laid his hand on her knee. “Look at me.” She raised her face, and the antagonism of her eyes. “I want to apologize for leaving you alone at night,” he repeated.
“Does that mean you aren’t going to do it anymore, or that you’re not coming in at all?”
For a time he sat, brooding upon the wild repose of his hand upon her covered knee. Then he rose and stood beside the table again, touching the objects there, then he returned and sat on the bed. She was reading again, and he tried to take the book from her hand. She resisted.
“What do you want, Horace?” she asked impatiently.
He mused again while she watched him. Then he looked up. “Belle and I are going to be married,” he blurted.
“Why tell me? Harry is the one to tell. Unless you all are going to dispense with the formality of divorce.”
“Yes,” he said. “He knows it.” He laid his hand on her knee again, stroking it through the covers. “You aren’t even surprised, are you?”
“I’m surprised at you, but not at Belle. Belle has a backstairs nature.”
“Yes,” he agreed; then: “Who said that to you? You didn’t think of that.” She lay with her book half raised, watching him. He took her hand roughly; she tried to free it; but he held on. “Who was it?” he demanded.
“Nobody told me. Don’t Horace.”
He released her hand. “I know who it was. It was Mrs. Du Pre.”
“It wasn’t anybody,” she repeated. “Go away and leave me alone, Horace.” And behind the antagonism her eyes were hopeless and desperate. “Don’t you see that talking doesn’t help any?”
“Yes,” he said wearily, but he sat for a while yet, stroking her knee. Then he rose, but turning, he paused again. “Here’s a letter for you. I forgot it this afternoon. Sorry.”
But she was reading again. “Put it on the table,” she said, without raising her eyes. He laid it on the table and went out. At the door he looked back, but her head was bent over her book.
As he removed his clothes it did seem that that heavy fading odor of Belle’s body clung to them, and to his hands even after he was in bed; and clinging, shaped in the darkness beside him Belle’s rich voluption, until within that warm, not-yet-sleeping region where dwells the mother of dreams, Belle grew palpable in ratio as his own body slipped away from him. And Harry top, with his dogged inarticulateness and his hurt groping which was partly damaged vanity and shock, yet mostly a boy’s sincere bewilderment; that freed itself terrifically in the form of movie subtitles. Just before he slept his mind, with the mind’s uncanny attribute of irrelevant recapitulation, reproduced with the startling ghostliness of a Dictaphone, an incident which at the time he had considered trivial Belle had freed her mouth, and for a moment, with her body still against his, she held his face in her two hands and stared at him with intent questioning eyes. “Have you plenty of money, Horace?” And “Yes,” he had answered immediately. “Of course I have.” And then Belle again, enveloping him like a rich and fatal drug, like a motionless and cloying sea in which he watched himself drown.
The letter lay on the table that night, forgotten; it was not until the next morning that she discovered it and opened it.
“I am trying to forget you. I cannot forget you. Your big eyes, your black hair, how white your black hair will make you look. And how you walk I am watching you and a smell you give off like a flower. Your eyes shine with mystery and how you walk makes me sick like a fever all night thinking how you walk. I could touch you, you would not know it. Every day. But I can not I must pore out on paper must talk. You do not know who. Your lips like cupids bow when the day comes when I will press them to mine like I dreamed like a fever from heaven to hell. I know what you do I know more than you think I see men visiting you with bitter twangs. Be careful I am a desperate man. Nothing is any more to me now. If you unholy love a man I will kill him.
“You do not answer. I know you got it. I saw one in your hand. You better answer soon I am a desperate man eat up with fever. I can not sleep
for. I will not hurt you but I am desperate. Do not forget I will not hurt you but I am a desperate man.”
Meanwhile the days accumulated. Not sad days nor lonely: they were too feverish to be sorrowful, what with the violated serenity of her nature torn in two directions, and the walls of her garden cast down, and she herself like a night animal or bird caught in a beam of light and trying vainly to escape. Horace had definitely gone his way; they could no longer hear one another’s feet on the dark road; and, like two strangers they followed the routine of their days, in an unbending estrangement of long affection and similar pride beneath a shallow veneer of polite trivialities. She sat with Bayard almost every day now, but at a discreet distance of two yards. At first he tried to override her with bluster, then with cajolery. But she was firm and at last he desisted and lay gazing quietly out the window or sleeping while she read. From time to time Miss Jenny would come to the door and look in at them and go away. Her shrinking, her sense of dread and unease while with him, was gone now, and at times instead of reading they talked, quietly and impersonally, with that ghost of that other afternoon between them, though neither referred to it. Miss Jenny had been a little curious about that day, but Narcissa was gravely and demurely noncommittal about it; nor had Bayard ever talked about it, and so there was another bond between them, but unirksome. Miss Jenny had heard gossip about Horace and Belle, but on this subject also Narcissa would not talk.
“Have it your own way,? Miss Jenny said tardy; “I can draw my own conclusions. I imagine Belle and Horace can produce quite a mess together. And I’m glad of it. That man is making an old maid out of you. It isn’t too late now, but if he’d waited five years later to play the fool, there wouldn’t be anything left for you except to give music lessons. But you can get married, now.”