Reflections in a Golden Eye

CHAPTER 3

Alison Langdon had lived through a night of torment. She did not sleep until the sun came up and the bugle sounded reveille. During those long hours many eerie thoughts had troubled her. Once just at dawn she even fancied, she was almost sure, that she saw someone come out of the Pendertons' house and walk off into the woods. Then, soon after she finally got to sleep, a great racket awakened her. Hurriedly she put on her bathrobe, went downstairs, and found herself confronting a shocking and ridiculous spectacle. Her husband was chasing Anacleto round and round the dining room table with a boot in his hand. He was in his sock feet, but otherwise completely uniformed for Saturday morning inspection. His sword banged against his thigh as he ran. They both stopped short when they saw her. Then Anacleto hastened to take refuge behind her back.

'He did it on purpose!' the Major said in an outraged voice. 'I'm already late. Six hundred men are waiting for me. And look, just please take a glance, at what he brings me!'

The boots indeed were a sorry sight. It looked as though they had been rubbed over with flour and water. She scolded Anacleto and stood over him as he cleaned them properly. He wept piteously, but she found the strength of mind not to console him. When he had finished, Anacleto mentioned something about running away from home and opening a linen shop in Quebec. She carried the polished boots up to her husband and handed them to him without a word, but with a look that took care of him also. Then, as her heart bothered her, she went back to bed with her book.

Anacleto brought her up her coffee and then drove over to the Post Exchange to do the marketing for Sunday. Later in the morning, when she had finished her book and was looking out the window at the sunny autumn day, he came to her room again. He was blithe, and had quite forgotten the scolding about the boots. He built up a roaring fire and then quietly opened the top bureau drawer to do a bit of meddling. He took out a little crystal cigarette lighter which she had had made from an old fashioned vinaigrette. This trinket so fascinated him that she had given it to him years ago. He still kept it with her things, however, so that he would have a legitimate reason for opening the drawer whenever he wished. He asked for the loan of her glasses and peered for a long time at the linen scarf on the chest of drawers. Then with his thumb and forefinger he picked up something invisible and carefully carried this speck over to the wastebasket. He was talking away to himself, but she paid no attention to his chatter.

What would become of Anacleto when she was dead? That was a question that worried her constantly. Morris, of course, had promised her never to let him be in want but what would such a promise be worth when Morris married again, as he would be sure to do? She remembered the time seven years ago in the Philippines when Anacleto first came to her household. What a sad, strange little creature he had been! He was so tormented by the other houseboys that he dogged her footsteps all day long. If anyone so much as looked at him he would burst into tears and wring his hands. He was seventeen years old, but his sickly, clever, frightened face had the innocent expression of a child of ten. When they were making preparations to return to the States, he had begged her to take him with her, and she had done so. The two of them, she and Anacleto, could perhaps find a way to get along in the world together but what would he do when she was gone?

'Anacleto, are you happy?' she asked him suddenly.

The little Filipino was not one to be disturbed by any unexpected, intimate question. 'Why, certainly,' he said, without a moment's consideration. 'When you are well.'

The sun and firelight were bright in the room. There was a dancing spectrum on one of the walls and she watched this, half listening to Anacleto's soft conversation. 'What I find it so difficult to realize is that they know,' he was saying. Often he would begin a discussion with such a vague and mysterious remark, and she waited to catch the drift of it later. 'It was not until after I had been in your service for a long time that I really believed that you knew. Now I can believe it about everybody else except Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff.'

She turned her face toward him. 'What are you talking about?'

'Madame Alison,' he said, 'do you yourself really believe that Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff knows that a chair is something to be sat on and that a clock shows one the time? And if I should take off my shoe and hold it up to his face and say, “What is this, Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff?” then he would answer, like anyone else, “Why, Anacleto, that is a shoe.” I myself find it hard to realize.'

The Rachmaninoff recital had been the last concert they had heard, and consequently from Anacleto's point of view it was the best. She herself did not care for crowded concert halls and would have preferred to spend the money on phonograph records but it was good to get away from the post occasionally, and these trips were the joy of Anacleto's life. For one thing they stayed the night in a hotel, which was an enormous delight to him.

'Do you think if I beat your pillows you would be more comfortable?' Anacleto asked.

And the dinner the night of that last concert! Anacleto sailed proudly after her into the hotel dining room wearing his orange velvet jacket When it was his turn to order, he held the menu up to his face and then completely closed his eyes. To the astonishment of the colored waiter he ordered in French. And although she had wanted to burst out laughing, she controlled herself and translated after him with the best gravity she could assume as though she were a sort of duenna or lady in waiting to him. Because of his limited French this dinner of his was rather peculiar. He had got it out of the lesson in his book called 'Le Jardin Potager,' and his order consisted only of cabbage, string beans, and carrots. So when on her own she had added an order of chicken for him, Anacleto had opened his eyes just long enough to give her a deep, grateful little look. The white coated waiters clustered about this phenomenon like flies, and Anacleto was much too exalted to touch a crumb.

'Suppose we have some music,' she said. 'Let's hear the Brahms G Minor Quartet.'

'Fameux,' said Anacleto.

He put on the first record and settled down to listen on his footstool by the fire. But the opening passage, the lovely dialogue between the piano and the strings, was hardly completed when there was a knock on the door. Anacleto spoke to someone in the hall, closed the door again, and turned off the phonograph.

'Mrs. Penderton,' he whispered, lifting his eyebrows.

'I knew I could knock on the door downstairs till doomsday and you all would never hear me with this music going on,' Leonora said when she came into the room. She sat down on the foot of the bed so hard that it felt as though she had broken a spring. Then, remembering that Alison was not well, Leonora tried to look sickly also, as that was her notion of the proper behavior in a sickroom. 'Do you think you can make it tonight?'

'Make what?'

'Why, my God, Alison! My party! I've been working like a nigger for the past three days getting everything ready. I don't give a party like this but twice a year.'

'Of course,' said Alison. 'It just slipped my mind for a moment.'

'Listen!' said Leonora, and her fresh rosy face flamed suddenly with anticipation. 'I just wish you could see my kitchen now. Here's the way it will go. I'm putting in all the leaves in the dining room table and everybody will just mill around and help themselves. I'm having a couple of Virginia hams, a huge turkey, fried chicken, sliced cold pork, plenty of barbecued spareribs, and all sorts of little knickknacks like pickled onions and olives and radishes. And hot rolls and little cheese biscuits passed around. The punchbowl is in the corner, and for people who like their liquor straight I'm having on the sideboard eight quarts of Kentucky Bourbon, five of rye, and five of Scotch. And an entertainer from town is coming out to play the accordion '

'But who on earth is going to eat all that food?' Alison asked, with a little swallow of nausea.

'The whole shebang,' said Leonora enthusiastically. 'I've telephoned everybody from Old Sugar's wife on down.'

'Old Sugar' was Leonora's name for the Commanding General of the post, and she called him by it to his face. With the General, as with all men, she had a flip and affectionate manner, and the General, like most of the officers on the post, fairly ate out of her hand. The General's wife was very fat, slow, gushed over, and completely out of things.

'One thing I came over about this morning,' said Leonora, 'is to find out if Anacleto will serve the punch for me.'

'He will be glad to help you out,' Alison answered for him.

Anacleto, who was standing in the doorway, did not look so glad about it. He glanced reproachfully at Alison and went downstairs to see about luncheon.

'Susie's two brothers are helping in the kitchen and, my God, how that crowd can eat! I never saw anything to equal it. We '

'By the way,' said Alison, 'is Susie married?'

'Heavens, no! She won't have anything to do with men. She got caught when she was fourteen years old and has never forgotten it. But why?'

'I just wondered because I was almost sure that I saw someone go into your house by the back way late last night and come out again before dawn.'

'You just imagined it,' said Leonora soothingly. She considered Alison to be quite off her head, and did not believe even the simplest remark that she made.

'Perhaps so.'

Leonora was bored and ready to go home. Still, she thought that a neighborly visit should last at least an hour, so she stuck it out dutifully. She sighed and tried again to look somewhat ill. It was her idea, when she was not too carried away with thoughts of food and sport, that the tactful topic of conversation in a sickroom was an account of other illnesses. Like all very stupid people she had a predilection for the gruesome, which she could indulge in or throw off at will. Her repertoire of tragedies was limited for the most part to violent sporting accidents.

'Did I tell you about the thirteen year old girl who came along with us on a fox hunt as a whipper in and broke her neck?'

'Yes, Leonora,' said Alison in a voice of controlled exasperation. 'You have told me of every terrible detail five times.'

'Does it make you nervous?'

'Extremely.'

'Hmmm ' said Leonora. She was not at all troubled by this rebuff. Calmly she lighted a cigarette. 'Don't ever let anybody tell you that's the way to fox hunt. I know. I've hunted both ways. Listen, Alison!' She worked her mouth exaggeratedly and spoke in a deliberately encouraging voice as though addressing a small child. 'Do you know how to hunt 'possums?'

Alison nodded shortly and straightened the counterpane. 'You tree them.'

'On foot,' said Leonora. 'That's the way to hunt a fox. Now this uncle of mine has a cabin in the mountains and my brothers and I used to visit him. About six of us would start out with our dogs on a cold evening when the sun had set. A colored boy would run along behind with a jug of good mellow corn on his back. Sometimes we'd be after a fox all night long in the mountains. Gosh, I can't tell you about it. Somehow ' The feeling was in Leonora, but she had not the words to express it.

Then to have one last drink at six o'clock and sit down to breakfast. And, God! everybody said this uncle of mine was peculiar, but he sure set a good table. After a hunt we'd come in to a table just loaded with fish roe, broiled ham, fried chicken, biscuits the size of your hand '

When Leonora was gone at last, Alison did not know whether to laugh or cry; she did a little of both, rather hysterically. Anacleto came up to her and carefully beat out the big dent at the foot of the bed where Leonora had been sitting.

'I am going to divorce the Major, Anacleto,' she said suddenly when she had stopped laughing. 'I will inform him of it tonight.'

From Anacleto's expression she could not tell whether or not this was a surprise to him. He waited for a time and then asked: 'Then where shall we go after that, Madame Alison?'

Through her mind passed a long panorama of plans which she had made dining sleepless nights tutoring Latin in some college town, shrimp fishing, hiring Anacleto out to drudge while she sat in a boarding house and took in sewing

But she only said: 'That I have not yet decided.'

'I wonder,' Anacleto said meditatively, 'what the Pendertons will do about it.'

'You needn't wonder because that is not our affair.'

Anacleto's little face was dark and thoughtful. He stood with his hands resting on the footpiece of the bed. She felt that he had some further question to put to her, and she looked up at him and waited. Finally he asked hopefully, 'Do you think we might live in a hotel?'

In the afternoon Captain Penderton went down to the stables for his usual ride. Private Williams was still on duty, although he was to be free that day at four o'clock. When the Captain spoke, he did not look at the young soldier and his voice was high pitched and arrogant.

'Saddle Mrs. Penderton's horse, Firebird.'

Private Williams stood motionless, staring into the Captain's white, strained face, 'The Captain said?'

'Firebird,' the Captain repeated. 'Mrs. Penderton's horse.'

This order was unusual; Captain Penderton had ridden Firebird only three times before, and on each of these occasions his wife had been with him. The Captain himself did not own a horse, and used the mounts belonging to the stable. As he waited out in the open court, the Captain nervously jerked the fingertips of his glove. Then, when Firebird was led out, he was not satisfied; Private Williams had put on Mrs. Penderton's flat, English type saddle, while the Captain preferred an army McClellan. As this change was being made, the Captain looked into the horse's round, purple eyes and saw there a liquid image of his own frightened face. Private Williams held the bridle as he mounted. The Captain sat tense, his jaws hard, and his knees gripping the saddle desperately. The soldier still stood impassive with his hand on the bridle.

After a moment the Captain said:

'Well, Private, you can see that I am seated. Let go!'

Private Williams stepped back a few paces. The Captain held tight to the reins and hardened his thighs. Nothing happened. The horse did not plunge and strain at the bit as he did each morning with Mrs. Penderton, but waited quietly for the signal to start. When the Captain realized this, he quickened with a sudden vicious joy. 'Ah,' he thought. 'She has broken his spirit as I knew she would.' The Captain dug in his heels and struck the horse with his short, plaited crop. They started on the bridle path at a gallop.

The afternoon was fine and sunny. The air was bracing, bitter sweet with the odor of pines and rotting leaves. Not a cloud could be seen in all the wide blue sky. The horse, which had not been exercised that day, seemed to go a little mad from the pleasure of galloping with unchecked freedom. Firebird, like most horses, was apt to be hard to manage if given free rein immediately after being led out from the pasture. The Captain knew this; therefore his next action was a very curious one. They had galloped rhythmically for perhaps three quarters of a mile when suddenly, with no preliminary tightening of the reins, the Captain jerked the horse up short. He pulled the reins with such unexpected sharpness that Firebird lost his balance, sidestepped awkwardly and reared. Then he stood quite still, surprised but tractable. The Captain was exceedingly satisfied.

This procedure was repeated twice. The Captain gave Firebird his head just long enough for the joy of freedom to be aroused and then checked him without warning. This sort of behavior was not new to the Captain. Often in his life he had exacted many strange and secret little penances on himself which he would have found difficult to explain to others.

The third time the horse stopped as usual, but at this point something happened which disturbed the Captain so that all of his satisfaction instantly vanished. As they were standing still, alone on the path, the horse slowly turned his head and looked into the Captain's face. Then deliberately he lowered his head to the ground with his ears flattened back.

The Captain felt suddenly that he was to be thrown, and not only thrown but killed. The Captain always had been afraid of horses: he only rode because it was the thing to do, and because this was another one of his ways of tormenting himself. He had had his wife's comfortable saddle exchanged for the clumsy McClellan for the reason that the raised saddlebow gave him something to grasp in case of an emergency. Now he sat rigid, trying to hold to the saddle and the reins at the same time. Then, so great was his sudden apprehension, he gave up completely in advance, slipped his feet from the stirrups, lifted his hands to his face, and looked about him to see where he would fall. This weakness lasted only a few moments, however. When the Captain realized that he was not to be thrown after all, a great feeling of triumph came in him. They started at a gallop once more.

The path had been leading steadily upward with the woods on either side. Now they approached the bluff from which could be seen miles of the reservation. Far in the distance the green pine forest made a dark line against the bright autumn sky. Struck by the wonder of the view, the Captain had it in his mind to pause for a moment and he drew in his reins. But here a totally unexpected happening occurred, an incident that might have cost the Captain his life. They were still riding hard when they reached the top of the ridge. At this point, without warning and with the speed of a demon, the horse swerved to the left and plunged down the side of the embankment.

The Captain was so stunned that he lost his seat.

He was hurled forward on the horse's neck and his feet dangled stirrupless. Somehow he managed to hold on. With one hand grasping the mane and the other feebly holding to the reins, he was able to slide himself back into the saddle. But that was all he could do. They were riding with such dizzying speed that his head swam when he opened his eyes. He could not find his seat firmly enough to control the reins. And he knew in one fateful instant that even so it would be of no use; there was not the power in him to stop this horse. Every muscle, every nerve in his body was intent on only one purpose to hold on. With the speed of Firebird's great racing sire they were flying over the wide open space of sward that separated the bluff from the woods. The grass was glinted with bronze and red beneath the sun. Then suddenly the Captain felt a green dimness fall over them and he knew that they had entered the forest by way of some narrow footpath. Even when the horse had left the open space, he seemed hardly to slacken his speed. The dazed Captain was in half crouching position. A thorn from a tree ripped open his left cheek. The Captain felt no pain, but he saw vividly the hot scarlet blood that dripped on his arm. He crouched down so that the right side of his face rubbed against the short stiff hair of Firebird's neck. Clinging desperately to the mane, the reins, and the saddlebow, he dared not raise his head for fear it would be broken by the branch of a tree.

Three words were in the Captain's heart. He shaped them soundlessly with his trembling lips, as he had not breath to spare for a whisper: 'I am lost'

And having given up life, the Captain suddenly began to live. A great mad joy surged through him. This emotion, coming as unexpectedly as the plunge of the horse when he had broken away, was one that the Captain had never experienced. His eyes were glassy and half open, as in delirium, but he saw suddenly as he had never seen before. The world was a kaleidoscope, and each of the multiple visions which he saw impressed itself on his mind with burning vividness. On the ground half buried in the leaves there was a little flower, dazzling white and beautifully wrought. A thorny pine cone, the flight of a bird in the blue windy sky, a fiery shaft of sunshine in the green gloom these the Captain saw as though for the first time in his life. He was conscious of the pure keen air and he felt the marvel of his own tense body, his laboring heart, and the miracle of blood, muscle, nerves, and bone. The Captain knew no terror now; he had soared to that rare level of consciousness where the mystic feels that the earth is he and that he is the earth. Clinging crabwise to the runaway horse, there was a grin of rapture on his bloody mouth.

How long this mad ride lasted the Captain would never know. Toward the end he knew that they had come out from the woods and were galloping through an open plain. It seemed to him that from the corner of his eye he saw a man lying on a rock in the sun and a horse grazing. This did not surprise him and in an instant was forgotten. The only thing which concerned the Captain now was the fact that when they entered the forest again the horse was giving out. In an agony of dread the Captain thought: 'When this ends, all will be over for me.'

The horse slowed to an exhausted trot and at last stopped altogether. The Captain raised himself in the saddle and looked about him. When he struck the horse in the face with the reins, they stumbled on a few paces farther. Then the Captain could make him go no farther. Trembling, he dismounted. Slowly and methodically he tied the horse to a tree. He broke off a long switch, and with the last of his spent strength he began to beat the horse savagely. Breathing in great gasps, his coat dark and curled with sweat, the horse at first moved restively about the tree. The Captain kept on beating him. Then at last the horse stood motionless and gave a broken sigh. A pool of sweat darkened the pine straw beneath him and his head hung down. The Captain threw the whip away. He was smeared with blood, and a rash caused by rubbing against the horse's bristly hair had come out on his face and neck. His anger was unappeased and he could hardly stand from exhaustion. He sank down on the ground and lay in a curious position with his head in his arms. Out in the forest there, the Captain looked like a broken doll that has been thrown away. He was sobbing aloud.

For a brief time the Captain lost consciousness. Then, as he came out of his faint, he had a vision of the past. He looked back at the years behind him as one stares at a shaking image at the bottom of a well. He remembered his boyhood. He had been brought up by five old maid aunts. His aunts were not bitter except when alone; they laughed a great deal and were constantly arranging picnics, fussy excursions, and Sunday dinners to which they invited other old maids. Nevertheless, they had used the little boy as a sort of fulcrum to lift the weight of their own heavy crosses. The Captain had never known real love. His aunts gushed over him with sentimental effulgence and knowing no better he repaid them with the same counterfeit coin. In addition, the Captain was a Southerner and was never allowed by his aunts to forget it On his mother's side he was descended from Huguenots who left France in the seventeenth century, lived in Haiti until the great uprising, and then were planters in Georgia before the Civil War. Behind him was a history of barbarous splendor, ruined poverty, and family hauteur. But the present generation had not come to much; the Captain's only male first cousin was a policeman in the city of Nashville. Being a great snob, and with no real pride in him, the Captain set exaggerated store by the lost past.

The Captain lacked his feet on the pine straw and sobbed with a high wail that echoed thinly in the woods. Then abruptly he lay still and quiet. A strange feeling that had lingered in him for some time took sudden shape. He was sure that there was someone near him. Painfully he turned himself over on his back.

At first the Captain did not believe what he saw. Two yards from him, leaning against an oak tree, the young soldier whose face the Captain hated looked down at him. He was completely naked. His slim body glistened in the late sun. He stared at the Captain with vague, impersonal eyes as though looking at some insect he had never seen before. The Captain was too paralyzed by surprise to move. He tried to speak, but only a dry rattle came from his throat. As he watched him, the soldier turned his gaze to the horse. Firebird was still soaked with sweat and there were welts on his rump. In one afternoon the horse seemed to have changed from a thoroughbred to a plug fit for the plow.

The Captain lay between the soldier and the horse. The naked man did not bother to walk around his outstretched body. He left his place by the tree and lightly stepped over the officer. The Captain had a close swift view of the young soldier's bare foot; it was slim and delicately built, with a high instep marked by blue veins. The soldier untied the horse and put his hand to his muzzle in a caressing gesture. Then, without a glance at the Captain, he led the horse off into the dense woods.

It had happened so quickly that the Captain had not found a chance to sit up or to utter a word. At first he could feel only astonishment. He dwelt on the pure cut lines of the young man's body. He called out something inarticulate and received no reply. A rage came in him. He felt a rush of hatred for the soldier that was as exorbitant as the joy he had experienced on runaway Firebird. All the humiliations, the envies, and the fears of his life found vent in this great anger. The Captain stumbled to his feet and started blindly through the darkening woods.

He did not know where he was, or how far he had come from the post His mind swarmed with a dozen cunning schemes by which he could make the soldier suffer. In his heart the Captain knew that this hatred, passionate as love, would be with him all the remaining days of his life.

After walking for a long time, when it was almost night, he found himself on a path familiar to him.

The Pendertons' party began at seven, and half an hour later the front rooms were crowded. Leonora, stately in a gown of cream colored velvet, received her guests alone. When replying to inquiries about the absence of the host, she said that, devil take him, she didn't know he might have run away from home. Everyone laughed and repeated this they pictured the Captain trudging off with a stick over his shoulder and his notebooks wrapped in a red bandanna. He had planned to drive into town after his ride and perhaps he was having car trouble.

The long table in the dining room was more than lavishly laid and replenished. The air was so thick with the odors of ham, spareribs, and whiskey that it seemed one might almost eat it with a spoon. From the sitting room came the sound of the accordion, augmented from time to time by bits of spurious part singing. The sideboard was perhaps the gayest spot. Anacleto, with an imposed on expression, ladled stingy half cups of punch and took his time about it After he spotted Lieutenant Weincheck, standing alone near the front door, he was engaged for fifteen minutes in fishing out every cherry and piece of pineapple, then he left a dozen officers waiting in order to present this choice cup to the old Lieutenant There was so much lively conversation that it was impossible to follow any one line of thought There was talk of the new army appropriation by the Government and gossip about a recent suicide. Below the general hubbub, and with cautious glances to ascertain the whereabouts of Major Langdon, a joke sneaked its way through the party a story to the effect that the little Filipino thoughtfully scented Alison Langdon's specimen of wee wee with perfume before taking it to the hospital for a urinalysis. The congestion was beginning to be disastrous. Already a tart had fallen from a plate and, unnoticed, had been tracked halfway up the stairs.

Leonora was in the highest spirits. She had a gay cliche for everyone, and she patted the Quartermaster Colonel, an old favorite of hers, on top of his bald head. Once she left the hall personally to carry a drink to the young entertainer from town who played the accordion. 'My God! the talent this boy has!' she said. 'Why, he can play anything at all you hum to him! “Oh Pretty Red Wing” anything!'

'Really wonderful,' Major Langdon agreed, and looked at the group clustered around. 'Now my wife goes in for classical stuff Bach, you know all that But to me it's like swallowing a bunch of angleworms. Now take “The Merry Widows' Waltz” that's the sort of thing I love. Tuneful music!'

The gliding waltz, together with the arrival of the General, quieted some of the racket Leonora was enjoying her party so much that it was not until after eight o'clock that she began to be concerned about her husband. Already most of the guests were bewildered by the protracted absence of their host. There was even the lively feeling that some accident might have occurred, or that an unexpected scandal was afoot. Consequently, even the earliest arrivals tended to stay on long past the customary time for such a coming and going affair; the house was so crowded that it took a keen sense of strategy to get from one room to the next.

Meanwhile, Captain Penderton waited at the entrance of the bridle path with a hurricane lamp and the Sergeant in charge of the stables. He had reached the post well after dark and his story was that the horse had thrown him and run away. They were hopping that Firebird would find his way back. The Captain had bathed his wounded, rash red face, and then had driven to the hospital and had three stitches put in his cheek. But he could not go home. Not only did he lack the daring to face Leonora until the horse was in his stall the real reason was that he was in wait for the man he hated. The night was mild, bright, and the moon was in its third quarter.

At nine o'clock they heard in the distance the sound of horses' hoofs, coming in very slowly. Soon the weary, shadowy figures of Private Williams and the two horses could be seen. The soldier led them both by the bridle. Blinking a little, he came up to the hurricane lamp. He looked into the Captain's face with such a long strange stare that the Sergeant felt a sudden shock. He did not know what to make of this, and he left it with the Captain to deal with the situation. The Captain was silent, but his eyelids twitched and his hard mouth trembled.

The Captain followed Private Williams into the stable. The young soldier fed the horses mash and gave them a rubdown. He did not speak, and the Captain stood outside the stall and watched him. He looked at the fine, skillful hands and the tender roundness of the soldier's neck. The Captain was overcome by a feeling that both repelled and fascinated him it was as though he and the young soldier were wrestling together naked, body to body, in a fight to death. The Captain's strained loin muscles were so weak that he could hardly stand. His eyes, beneath his twitching eyelids, were like blue burning flames. The soldier quietly finished his work and left the stable. The Captain followed and stood watching as he walked off into the night. They had not spoken a word.

It was only when he got into his automobile that the Captain remembered the party at his house.

Anacleto did not come home until late in the evening. He stood in the doorway of Alison's room looking rather green and jaded, as crowds exhausted him. 'Ah,' he said philosophically, 'the world is choked up with too many people.'

Alison saw, however, from a swift little snap of his eyes, that something had happened. He went into her bathroom and rolled up the sleeves of his yellow linen shirt to wash his hands. 'Did Lieutenant Weincheck come over to see you?'

'Yes, he visited with me quite a while.'

The Lieutenant had been depressed. She sent him downstairs for a bottle of sherry. Then after they had drunk the wine he sat by the bed with the chessboard on his knees and they played a game of Russian bank. She had not realized until too late that it was very tactless of her to suggest the game, as the Lieutenant could hardly make out the cards and tried to hide this failing from her.

'He has just heard that the medical board did not pass him,' she said. 'He will get his retirement papers shortly.'

'Tssk! What a pity!' Then Anacleto added, 'At the same time I should be glad about it if I were he.'

The doctor had left her a new prescription that afternoon and from the bathroom mirror she saw Anacleto examine the bottle carefully and then take a taste of it before measuring it out for her. Judging by the look on his face, he did not much like the flavor. But he smiled brightly when he came back into the room.

'You have never been to such a party,' he said. 'What a great constellation!'

'Consternation, Anacleto.'

'At any rate, havoc. Captain Penderton was two hours late to his own party. Then, when he came in, I thought he had been half eaten by a lion. The horse threw him in a blackberry bush and ran away. You have never seen such a face.'

'Did he break any bones?'

'He looked to me as though he had broken his back,' said Anacleto, with some satisfaction. 'But he carried it off fairly well went upstairs and put on his evening clothes and tried to pretend that he wasn't upset. Now everybody has left except the Major and the Colonel with the red hair whose wife looks like a woery woman.'

'Anacleto,' she warned him softly. Anacleto had used the term 'woery woman' several times before she caught on to the meaning. At first she had thought it might be a native term, and then it had come to her finally that he meant 'whore.'

Anacleto shrugged his shoulders and then turned suddenly to her, his face flushed. 'I hate people!' he said vehemently. 'At the party someone told this joke, not knowing that I was near. And it was vulgar and insulting and not true!'

'What do you mean?'

'I wouldn't repeat it to you.'

'Well, forget it,' she said, 'Go on to bed and have a good night's sleep.'

Alison was troubled over Anacleto's outburst. It seemed to her that she also loathed people. Everyone she had known in the past five years was somehow wrong that is, everyone except Weincheck and of course Anacleto and little Catherine. Morris Langdon in his blunt way was as stupid and heartless as a man could be. Leonora was nothing but an animal And thieving Weldon Penderton was at bottom hopelessly corrupt. What a gang! Even she herself she loathed. If it were not for sordid procrastination and if she had a rag of pride, she and Anacleto would not be in this house tonight.

She turned her face to the window and looked into the night. A wind had come up, and downstairs a loose shutter was banging against the side of the house. She turned off the light so that she could see out of the window. Orion was wonderfully clear and bright tonight. In the forest the tops of the trees moved in the wind like dark waves. It was then that she glanced down toward the Pendertons' house and saw a man standing again by the edge of the woods. The man himself was hidden by the trees, but his shadow defined itself clearly on the grass of the lawn. She could not distinguish the features of this person, but she was certain now that a man was lurking there. She watched him ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. He did not move. It gave her such an eerie shock that it occurred to her that perhaps she was really going out of her mind. She closed her eyes and counted by sevens to two hundred and eighty. Then when she looked out again the shadow was gone.

Her husband knocked on the door. Receiving no answer, he turned the knob cautiously and peered inside. 'My dear, are you asleep?' he asked in a voice loud enough to wake anyone.

'Yes,' she said bitterly. 'Dead asleep.'

The Major, puzzled, did not know whether to shut the door or to come inside. All the way across the room she could sense the fact that he had made frequent visits to Leonora's sideboard.

'Tomorrow I am going to tell you something,' she said. 'You ought to have an inkling of what it's about. So prepare yourself.'

'I haven't any idea,' the Major said helplessly. 'Have I done something wrong?' He bethought himself for a few moments. 'But if it's money for anything peculiar, I don't have it, Alison. Lost a bet on a football game and board for my horse ' The door closed warily.

It was past midnight and she was alone again. These hours, from twelve o'clock until dawn, were always dreadful. If ever she told Morris that she had not slept at all, he, of course, did not believe her. Neither did he believe that she was ill. Four years ago, when her health first broke down, he had been alarmed by her condition. But when one calamity followed another empyema, kidney trouble, and now this heart disease he became exasperated and ended finally by not believing her. He thought it all a hypochondriacal fake that she used in order to shirk her duties that is, the routine of sports and parties which he thought suitable. In the same way it is wise to give an insistent hostess a single, firm excuse, for if one declines with a number of reasons, no matter how sound they may be, the hostess will not believe you. She heard her husband walking about in his room across the hall and carrying on a long didactic conversation with himself. She switched on her bed light and began reading.

At two o'clock in the morning it came to her suddenly, without warning, that she was going to die that night. She sat propped up with pillows in the bed, a young woman with a face already sharp and aged, looking restlessly from one corner of the wall to another. She moved her head in a curious little gesture, Biting her chin upward and sideways, as though something were choking her. The silent room seemed to her full of jarring sounds. Water dripped into the bowl of the lavatory in the bathroom. The clock on the mantelpiece, an old pendulum clock with white and gilt swans painted on the glass of the case, ticked with a rusty sound. But the third of these sounds, the loudest and the one which bothered her most, was the beating of her own heart. A great turmoil was going on inside her. Her heart seemed to be vaulting it would beat rapidly like the footsteps of someone running, leap up, and then thud with a violence that shocked her all over. With slow, cautious movements she opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out her knitting. 'I must think of something pleasant,' she told herself reasonably.

She thought back to the happiest time of her life. She was twenty one and for nine months had been trying to work a little Cicero and Virgil into the heads of boarding school girls. Then when vacation came she was in New York with two hundred dollars in her pocketbook. She had got on a bus and headed north with no idea where she was going. And somewhere in Vermont she came to a village she liked the looks of, got off, and within a few days found and rented a little shack out in the woods. She had brought her cat, Petronius, with her and before the summer was over she was obliged to put a feminine ending onto his name because he suddenly had a litter of kittens. Several stray hounds took up with them and once a week she would go into the village to buy cans of groceries for the cats, the dogs, and herself. Morning and night, every day of that fine summer, she had her favorite foods chili con carne, zwieback, and tea. In the afternoons she chopped firewood and at night she sat in the kitchen with her feet on the stove and read or sang aloud to herself.

Alison's pale, flaky lips shaped whispering words and she stared with concentration at the footboard of the bed. Then all at once she dropped the knitting and held her breath. Her heart had stopped beating. The room was silent as a sepulcher and she waited with her mouth open and her head twisted sideways on the pillow. She was terrified, but when she tried to call out and break this silence, no sound would come.

There was a light tapping on the door, but she did not hear this. Neither for a few moments did she realize that Anacleto had come into the room and was holding her hand in his. After the long, terrible silence (and surely it had lasted more than a minute), her heart was beating again; the folds of her nightgown fluttered lightly over her chest.

'A bad time?' Anacleto asked in a cheerful, encouraging little voice. But his face, as he looked down at her, wore the same sickly grimace as her own with the upper lip drawn back sharply over the teeth.

'I was so frightened,' she said. 'Has something happened?'

'Nothing has happened. But don't look like that' He took his handkerchief from the pocket of his blouse and dipped it in a glass of water to bathe her forehead. 'I'll go down and get my paraphernalia and stay with you until you can sleep.'

Along with his water colors he brought a tray of malted milk. He built a fire and put up a card table before the hearth. His presence was such a comfort that she wanted to sob with relief. After he had given her the tray, he settled himself cozily at the table and drank his hot malted milk with slow, appreciative little sips. This was one of the things she loved the very most about Anacleto; he had a genius for making some sort of festival out of almost any occasion. He acted, not as though out of kindness he had left his bed in the dead of the night to sit up with a sick woman, but as though of their own free will they had chosen this particular hour for a very special party. Whenever they had anything disagreeable to go through with, he always managed to follow it up with some little treat. And now he sat with a white napkin over his crossed knees drinking the mixture with as much ceremony as if the cup had been filled with choice wine although he disliked the taste of the stuff quite as much as she did, and only bought it because he was attracted by the glowing promises on the label of the can.

'Are you sleepy?' she asked.

'Not at all.' But at the very mention of sleep he was so tired that he could not keep from yawning. Loyally he turned away and tried to pretend that he had opened his mouth in order to feel one of his new wisdom teeth with his forefinger. I had a nap this afternoon and then I slept awhile tonight. I dreamed about Catherine.'

Alison could never think about her baby without experiencing an emotion so loaded with love and grief that it was like an insupportable weight on her chest It was not true that time could muffle the keenness of this loss. Now she had more control over herself, but that was all. For a while, after those eleven months of joy, suspense, and suffering, she was quite unchanged. Catherine had been buried in the cemetery on the post where they were stationed. And for a long time she had been obsessed by the sharp, morbid image of the little body in the grave. Her horrified broodings on decay and on that tiny lonely skeleton had brought her to such a state that at last, after considerable red tape, she had had the coffin disinterred. She had taken what was left of the body to the crematorium in Chicago and had scattered the ashes in the snow. And now all that was left of Catherine were the memories that she and Anacleto shared together.

Alison waited until her voice should be steady and then she asked: 'What was it you dreamed?'

'It was troubling,' he said quietly. 'Rather like holding a butterfly in my hands. I was nursing her on my lap then sudden convulsions and you were trying to get the hot water to run.' Anacleto opened his paint box and arranged his paper, brushes, and water colors before him. The fire brightened his pale face and put a glow in his dark eyes. 'Then the dream changed, and instead of Catherine I had on my knees one of the Major's boots that I had to clean twice today. The boot was full of squirming slithery new born mice and I was trying to hold them in and keep them from crawling up all over me. Whoo! It was like '

'Hush, Anacleto!' she said, with a shiver. 'Please!'

He began to paint and she watched him. He dipped his brush into the glass and a lavender cloud showed in the water. His face was thoughtful as he bent over the paper and once he paused to make a few rapid measurements with a ruler on the table. As a painter Anacleto had great talent of that she was sure. In his other accomplishments he had a certain knack, but at bottom he was imitative almost, as Morris said, a little monkey. In his little water colors, and drawings, however, he was quite himself. When they were stationed near New York, he had gone into the city in the afternoons to the Art Students' League, and she had been very proud, but not at all surprised, to observe how many people at the school exhibition came back to look at his pictures more than once.

His work was at once primitive and over sophisticated, and it laid a queer spell on the beholder. But she could not get him to take his gift with proper seriousness and to work hard enough.

'The quality of dreams,' he was saying softly. 'That is a strange thing to think about. On afternoons in the Philippines, when the pillow is damp and the sun shines in the room, the dream is of one sort. And then in the North at night when it is snowing '

But already Alison had got back into her rut of worry, and she was not listening to him. 'Tell me,' she interrupted suddenly. 'When you had the sulks this morning and said you were going to open a linen shop in Quebec, did you have anything particular in mind?'

'Why, certainly,' he said. 'You know I have always wanted to see the city of Quebec. And I think there is nothing so pleasant as handling beautiful linen.'

'And that's all you had in mind ' she said. Her voice lacked the inflections of a question and he did not reply to this. 'How much money do you have in the bank?'

He thought a moment with his brush poised above the water glass. 'Four hundred dollars and six cents…Do you want me to draw it out?'

'Not now. But we might need it later.'

'For Heaven's sake,' he said, 'don't worry. It does not a particle of good.'

The room was filled with the rose glow of the fire and gray flickering shadows. The clock made a little whirring sound and then struck three.

'Look!' Anacleto said suddenly. He crumpled up the paper he had been painting on and threw it aside. Then he sat in a meditative gesture with his chin in his hands, staring at the embers of the fire. 'A peacock of a sort of ghastly green. With one immense golden eye. And in it these reflections of something tiny and '

In his effort to find just the right word he held up his hand with the thumb and forefinger touched together. His hand made a great shadow on the wall behind him. Tiny and ' 'Grotesque,' she finished for him. He nodded shortly. 'Exactly.'

But after he had already begun working, some sound in the silent room, or perhaps the memory of the last tone of her voice, made him turn suddenly around. 'Oh, don't!' he said. And as he rushed from the table he overturned the water glass so that it shattered on the hearth.

Private Williams had been in the room where the Captain's wife lay sleeping for only an hour that night. He waited near the outskirts of the woods during the party. Then, when most of the guests were gone, he watched through the sitting room window until the Captain's wife went upstairs to bed. Later he came into the house as he had done before. Again that night the moonlight was clear and silver in the room. The Lady lay on her side with her warm oval face cupped between her rather grubby hands. She wore a satin nightgown and the cover was pushed down to her waist. The young soldier crouched silent by the bedside. Once he reached out warily and felt the slippery cloth of her nightgown with his thumb and forefinger. He had looked about him on coming into the room. For a time he stood before the bureau and contemplated the bottles, powder puffs, and toilet articles. One object, an atomizer, had aroused his interest, and he had taken it to the window and examined it with a puzzled face. On the table there was a saucer holding a half eaten chicken leg. The soldier touched it, smelled, and took a bite.

Now he squatted in the moonlight, his eyes half closed and a wet smile on his lips. Once the Captain's wife turned in her sleep, sighed, and stretched herself. With curious fingers the soldier touched a brown strand of hair which lay loose on the pillow.

It was past three o'clock when Private Williams stiffened suddenly. He looked about him and seemed to listen to some sound. He did not realize all at once what caused this change, this uneasiness to come in him. Then he saw that the lights in the house next door had been turned on. In the still night he could hear the voice of a woman crying. Later he heard an automobile stop before the lighted house. Private Williams walked noiselessly into the dark hall. The door of the Captain's room was closed. Within a few moments he was walking slowly along the outskirts of the woods.

The soldier had slept very little during the past two days and nights and his eyes were swollen with fatigue. He made a half circle around the post until he reached the shortest cut to the barracks. In this way he did not meet the sentry. Once in his cot he fell into a heavy sleep. But at dawn, for the first time in years, he had a dream and called out in his sleep. A soldier across the room awakened and threw a shoe at him.

As Private Williams had no friends among his barrack mates, his absence on these nights was of little interest to anyone. It was guessed that the soldier had found himself a woman. Many of the enlisted men were secretly married and sometimes stayed the night in town with their wives. Lights were out in the long crowded sleeping room at ten o'clock, but not all of the men were in bed at this hour. Sometimes, especially around the first of the month, there were poker games in the latrine that lasted the whole night through. Once at three o'clock Private Williams had encountered the sentry on his way to the barracks, but as the soldier had been in the army for two years and was familiar to the guard on duty, he was not questioned.

During the next few nights Private Williams rested and slept normally. In the late afternoons he sat alone on a bench before the barracks and at night he sometimes frequented the places of amusement on the post. He went to the movie and to the gymnasium. In the evening the gymnasium was converted into a roller skating rink. There was music and a corner set aside where the men could rest at tables and drink cool, frothy beer. Private Williams ordered a glass and for the first time tasted alcohol. With a great rolling clatter the men skated around in a circle and the air smelled sharply of sweat and floor wax. Three men, all old timers, were surprised when Private Williams left his table to sit with them for a while. The young soldier looked into their faces and seemed to be on the point of asking some question of them.

But in the end he did not speak, and after a time he went away.

Private Williams always had been so unsociable that hardly half of his sleeping mates even knew his name. Actually the name he used in the army was not his own. On his enlistment a tough old Sergeant had glared down at his signature L. G. Williams and then bawled out at him: 'Write your name, you snotty little hayseed, your full name!' The soldier had waited a long time before revealing the fact that those initials were his name, and the only name he had. 'Well, you can't go into the U.S. Army with a goddam name like that,' the Sergeant said. 'I'll change it to E l l g e e. O.K.?' Private Williams nodded and in the face of such indifference the Sergeant burst into a loud raw laugh. 'The half wits they do send us now,' he had said as he turned back to his papers.

It was now November and for two days a high wind had blown. Overnight the young maples along the sidewalks were stripped of their leaves. The leaves lay in a bright gold blanket beneath the trees and the sky was filled with white changing clouds. The next day there was a cold rain, The leaves were left sodden and dun colored, trampled on the wet streets, and finally raked away. The weather had cleared again and the bare branches of the trees made a sharp filigree against the winter sky. In the early morning there was frost on the dead grass.

After four nights of rest Private Williams returned to the Captain's house. This time, as he knew the habits of the house, he did not wait until the Captain had gone to bed. At midnight while the officer worked in his study he went up to The Lady's room and stayed an hour there. Then he stood by the study window and watched curiously until at two o'clock the Captain went upstairs. For something was happening at this time that the soldier did not understand.

In these reconnoiterings, and during the dark vigils in The Lady's room, the soldier had no fear. He felt, but did not think; he experienced without making any mental resume of his present or past actions. Five years before L. G. Williams had killed a man. In an argument over a wheelbarrow of manure he had stabbed a negro to death and hidden the body in an abandoned quarry. He had struck out in a fit of fury, and he could remember the violent color of blood and the weight of the limp body as he dragged it through the woods. He could remember the hot sun of that July afternoon, the smell of dust and death. He had felt a certain wondering, numb distress, but there was no fear in him, and not once since that time had the thought shaped definitely in his mind that he was a murderer. The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect The mind of Private Williams was imbued with various colors of strange tones, but it was without delineation, void of form.

Through these first winter days only one realization came to Private Williams, and it was this: he began to perceive that the Captain was following him. Twice a day, his face bandaged and still raw with rash, the Captain went out for short rides. And then when he had checked in the horse he lingered for a while before the stables. Three times on his way to mess Private Williams had looked behind him to see the Captain only about ten yards away. Far more often than chance could account for the officer passed him on the sidewalk. Once after one of these encounters the soldier stopped and looked behind him. After a short distance the Captain paused also and turned halfway around. It was late afternoon and the winter dusk had in it a pale violet tint. The Captain's eyes were steady, cruel, and bright Almost a minute passed before, with one accord, they turned to continue on their ways.