Jenny moved again, turning against the other’s side, breathing ineffably across the niece’s face. The niece lay with Jenny’s passive nakedness against her arm, and moving her arm outward from the elbow she slowly stroked the back of her hand along the swell of Jenny’s flank. Slowly, back and forth, while Jenny lay supine and receptive as a cat. Slowly, back and forth and back . . . “I like flesh,” the niece murmured. “Warm and smooth. Wish I’d lived in Rome . . . oiled gladiators. . . . Jenny,” she said abruptly, “are you a virgin?”
“Of course I am,” Jenny answered immediately in a startled tone. She lay for a moment in lax astonishment. “I mean,” she said, “I—yes. I mean, yes, of course I am.” She brooded in passive , surprise, then her body lost its laxness. “Say—”
“Well,” the niece agreed judicially, “I guess that’s about what I’d have said, myself.”
“Say,” demanded Jenny, thoroughly aroused, “what did you ask me that for?”
“Just to see what you’d say. It doesn’t make any difference, you know, whether you are or not. I know lots of girls that say they’re not. I don’t think all of ’em are lying, either.”
“Maybe it don’t to some folks,” Jenny rejoined primly, “but I don’t approve of it. I think a girl loses a man’s respect by pom—prom—I don’t approve of it, that’s all. And I don’t think you had any right to ask me.”
“Good Lord, you sound like a Girl Scout or something. Don’t Pete ever try to persuade you otherwise?”
“Say, what’re you asking me questions like that for?”
“I just wanted to see what you’d say. I don’t think it’s anything to tear your shirt over. You’re too easily shocked, Jenny,” the niece informed her.
“Well, who wouldn’t be? If you want to know what folks say when you ask ’em things like that, why don’t you ask ’em to yourself? Did anybody ever ask you if you were one?”
“Not that I know of. But I wou—”
“Well, are you?”
The niece lay perfectly still a moment. “Am I what?”
“Are you a virgin?”
“Why, of course I am,” she answered sharply. She raised herself on her elbow. “I mean—Say, look here—”
“Well, that’s what I’d ’a’ said, myself,” Jenny responded with placid malice from the darkness.
The niece poised on her tense elbow above Jenny’s sweet regular breathing. “Anyway, what bus—I mean—You asked me so quick,” she rushed on, “I wasn’t even thinking about being asked something like that.”
“Neither was I. You asked me quicker than I asked you.”
“But that was different. We were talking about you being one. We were not even thinking about me being one. You asked it so quick I had to say that. It wasn’t fair.”
“So did I have to say what I said. It was as fair for you as it was for me.”
“No, it was different. I had to say I wasn’t: quick, like that.”
“Well, I’ll ask it when you’re not surprised, then. Are you?”
The niece lay quiet for a time. “You mean, sure enough?”
“Yes.” Jenny breathed her warm intent breath across the other’s face.
The niece lay silent again. After a time she said, “Hell,” and then: “Yes, I am. It’s not worth lying about.”
“That’s what I think,” Jenny agreed smugly. She became placidly silent in the darkness. The other waited a moment, then said sharply:
“Well? Are you one?”
“Sure I am.”
“I mean, sure enough. You said sure enough, didn’t you?”
“Sure, I am,” Jenny repeated.
“You’re not playing fair,” the niece accused, “I told you.”
“Well, I told you, too.”
“Honest? You swear?”
“Sure, I am,” Jenny said again with her glib and devastating placidity.
The niece said, “Hell.” She snorted thinly.
They lay quiet, side by side. They were quiet on deck, too, but it seemed as though there still lingered in the darkness a thin stubborn ghost of syncopation and thudding tireless feet. Jenny wiggled her free toes with pleasure. Presently she said:
“You’re mad, ain’t you?” No reply. “You’ve got a good figure, too,” Jenny, offered, conciliatory. “I think you’ve got a right sweet, little shape.”
But the other refused to be cajoled. Jenny sighed again ineffably, her milk-and-honey breath. She said, “Your brother’s a college boy, ain’t he? I know some college boys. Tulane. I think college boys are cute. They don’t dress as well as Pete . . . sloppy.” She mused for a time. “I wore a frat pin once, for a couple of days. I guess your brother belongs to it, don’t he?”
“Gus? Belong to one of these jerkwater clubs? I guess not. He’s a Yale man—he will be next month, that is. I’m going with him. They don’t take every Tom, Dick, and Harry that shows up in up there. You have to wait until sophomore year. But Gus is going to work for a senior society, anyhow. He don’t think much of fraternities. Gee, you’d sure give him a laugh if he could hear you.”
“Well, I didn’t know. It seems to me one thing you join is about like another. What’s he going to get by joining the one he’s going to join?”
“You don’t get anything, stupid. You just join it.”
Jenny pondered this a while. “And you have to work to join it?”
“Three years. And only a few make it, then.”
“And if you do make it, you don’t get anything except a little button or something? Good Lord . . . Say, you know what I’m going to tell him tomorrow? I’m going to tell him he better hold up the sheet: he’s—he’s—What’s the rest of it?”
“Oh, shut up and get over on your side,” the niece said sharply, turning her back. “You don’t understand anything about it.”
“I sure don’t,” Jenny agreed, rolling away and onto her other side, and they lay with their backs to each other and their behinds just touching, as children do. . . . “Three years . . . Good Lord.”
* * *
Fairchild had not returned. But she had known they would not: she was not even surprised, and so once more her party had evolved into interminable cards. Mrs. Wiseman, herself, Mr. Talliaferro and Mark. By craning her neck she could see Dorothy Jameson’s frail humorless intentness and the tawdry sophistication of Jenny’s young man where they swung their legs from the roof of the wheelhouse. The moon was getting up and Pete’s straw hat was a dull implacable gleam slanted above the red eye of his eternal cigarette. And, yes, there was that queer, shy, shabby Mr. Gordon, mooning alone, as usual; and again she felt a stab of reproof for having neglected him. At least the others seemed to be enjoying the voyage, however trying they might be to one another. But what could she do for him? He was so difficult, so ill at ease whenever she extended herself for him. . . . Mrs. Maurier rose.
“For a while,” she explained; “Mr. Gordon . . . the trials of a hostess, you know. You might play dummy until I—no: wait.” She called Dorothy with saccharine insistence and presently Miss Jameson responded. “Won’t you take my hand for a short time? I’m sure the young gentleman will excuse you.”
“I’m sorry,” Miss Jameson called back. “I have a headache. Please excuse me.”
“Go on, Mrs. Maurier,” Mrs. Wiseman said, “we can pass till; time until you come back: we’ve got used to sitting around.”
“Yes, do,” Mr. Talliaferro added, “we understand.”
Mrs. Maurier looked over to where Gordon still leaned his tall body upon the rail. “I really must,” she explained again. “It’s such a comfort to have a few on whom I can depend.”
“Yes, do,” Mr. Talliaferro repeated.
When she had gone Mrs. Wiseman said, “Let’s play red dog for pennies. I’ve got a few dollars left.”
* * *
She joined him quietly. He glanced his gaunt face at her, glanced away. “How quiet, how peaceful it is,” she began, undeterred, leaning beside him and gazing also out across the restless slumber of water upon which the worn moon spread her ceaseless peacock’s tail like a train of silver sequins. In the yet level rays of the moon the man’s face was spare and cavernous, haughty and inhuman almost. He doesn’t get enough to eat, she knew suddenly and infallibly. It’s like a silver faun’s face, she thought. But he is so difficult, so shy. . . . “So few of us take time to look inward and contemplate ourselves, don’t you think? It’s the life we lead, I suppose. Only he who creates has not lost the art of this: of making his life complete by living within himself. Don’t you think so, Mr. Gordon?”
“Yes,” he answered shortly. Beyond the dimensionless curve of the deck on which he stood he could see, forward and downward, the stem of the yacht: a pure triangle of sheer white with small waves lapping at its horizontal leg, breaking and flashing each with its particle of shattered moonlight, making a ceaseless small whispering. Mrs. Maurier moved her hands in a gesture: moonlight smoldered greenly amid her rings.
“To live within yourself, to be sufficient unto yourself. There is so much unhappiness in the world,” she sighed again with astonishment. “To go through life, keeping yourself from becoming involved in it, to gather inspiration for your Work—ah, Mr. Gordon, how lucky you who create are. As for we others, the best we can hope is that sometime, somewhere, somehow we may be fortunate enough to furnish that inspiration, or the setting for it, at least. But, after all, that would be an end in itself, I think. To know that one had given her mite to Art; no matter how humble the mite or the giver. . . . The humble laborer, Mr. Gordon: she, too, has her place in the scheme of things; she, too, has given something to the world, has walked where gods have trod. And I do so hope that you will find on this voyage something to compensate you for having been taken away from your Work.”
“Yes,” said Gordon again, staring at her with his arrogant uncomfortable stare. The man looks positively uncanny, she thought with a queer cold feeling within her. Like an animal, a beast of some sort. Her own gaze fluttered away and despite’ herself she glanced quickly over her shoulder to the’ reassuring group at the card table. Dorothy’s and Jenny’s young man’s legs swung innocent and rhythmic from the top of the wheelhouse, and as she looked Pete snapped his cigarette outward and into the dark water, twinkling.
“But to be a world in oneself, to regard the antics of man as one would a puppet show—ah, Mr. Gordon, how happy you must be.”
“Yes,” he repeated. Sufficient unto himself in the city of his arrogance, in the marble tower of his loneliness and pride, and . . . She coming into the dark sky of his life like a star, like a flame . . . O bitter and new . . . Somewhere within him was a far dreadful laughter, unheard; his whole life was become toothed with jeering laughter, and he faced the old woman again, putting his hand on her and turning her face upward into the moonlight. Mrs. Maurier knew utter fear. Not fright, fear: a passive and tragic condition like a dream. She whispered, Mr. Gordon, but made no sound.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said harshly, staring at her face as a surgeon might. “Tell me about her,” he commanded. “Why aren’t you her mother, so you could tell me how conceiving her must have been, how carrying her in your loins must have been?”
Mr. Gordon! she implored through her dry lips, without making a sound. His hand moved over her face, learning the bones of her forehead and eyesockets and nose through her flesh.
“There’s something in your face, something behind all this silliness,” he went on in his cold level voice while an interval of frozen time refused to pass. His hand pinched the loose sag of flesh around her mouth, slid along the fading line of her cheek and jaw. “I suppose you’ve had what you call your sorrows, too, haven’t you?”
“Mr. Gordon!” she said at last, finding her voice. He released her as abruptly and stood over her, gaunt and ill nourished and arrogant in the moonlight while she believed she was going to faint, hoping vaguely that he would make some effort to catch her when she did, knowing that he would not do so. But she didn’t faint, and the moon spread her silver and boneless’ hand on the water, and the water lapped and lapped at the pure dreaming hull of Nausikaa with a faint whispering sound.
ELEVEN O’CLOCK
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Wiseman rising and speaking across her chair, “what I’m going to do if this lasts another night? I’m going to ask Julius to exchange with me and let me get drunk with Dawson and Major Ayers in his place. And so, to one and all: Good night.”
“Aren’t you going to wait for Dorothy?” Mark Frost asked. She glanced toward the wheelhouse.
“No. I guess Pete can look out for himself,” she replied, and left them. The moon cast a deep shadow on the western side of the deck, and near the companionway someone lay in a chair. She slowed, passing. “Mrs. Maurier?” she said. “We wondered what had become of you. Been asleep?”
Mrs. Maurier sat up slowly, as a very old person moves. The younger woman bent down to her, quickly solicitous. “You don’t feel well, do you?”
“Is it time to go below?” Mrs. Maurier asked, raising herself more briskly. “Our bridge game—”
“You all had beat us too badly. But can’t I—”
“No, no,” Mrs. Maurier objected quickly, a trifle testily. “It’s nothing: I was just sitting here enjoying the moonlight.”
“We thought Mr. Gordon was with you.” Mrs. Maurier shuddered.
“These terrible men,” she said with an attempt at lightness. “These artists!”
“Gordon, too? I thought he had escaped Dawson and Julius.”
“Gordon, too,” Mrs. Maurier replied. She rose. “Come, I think we’d better go to bed.” She shuddered again, as with cold: her flesh seemed to shake despite her, and she took the younger woman’s arm, clinging to it. “I do feel a little tired,” she confessed. “The first few days are always trying, don’t you think? But we have a very nice party, don’t you think so?”
“An awfully nice party,” the other agreed without irony. “But we are all tired: we’ll all feel better tomorrow, I know.”
Mrs. Maurier descended the stairs slowly, heavily. The other steadied her with her strong hand, and opening Mrs. Maurier’s door she reached in and found the light button. “There. Would you like anything before you go to bed?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Maurier answered, entering and averting her face quickly. She crossed the room and busied herself at the dressing table, keeping her back to the other. “Thank you, nothing. I shall go to sleep at once, I think. I always sleep well on the water. Good night.”
Mrs. Wiseman closed the door. I wonder what it is, she thought, I wonder what happened to her? She went on along the passage to her own door. Something did, something happened to her, she repeated, putting her hand on the door and turning the knob.
TWELVE O’CLOCK
The moon had got higher, that worn and bloodless one, old and a little weary and shedding her tired silver on yacht and water and shore; and the yacht, the deck and its fixtures, was passionless as a dream upon the shifting silvered wings of water when she appeared in her bathing suit. She stood for a moment in the doorway until she saw movement and his white shirt where he half turned on the coil of rope where he sat. Her lifted hand blanched slimly in the hushed treachery of the moon: a gesture, and her bare feet made no sound on the deck.
“Hello, David. I’m on time, like I said. Where’s your bathing suit?”
“I didn’t think you would come,” he said, looking up at her, “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Good Lord, what’d I want to tell you I was for, if I wasn’t?”
“I don’t know. I just thought—You sure are brown, seeing it in the moonlight.”
“You were going to get one for me, you said.”
She stared at his face in consternation. “That’s right: I sure was. I forgot it. Wait, maybe I can wake Josh up and get it. It won’t take long. You wait here.”
He stopped her. “It’ll be all right. Don’t bother about it tonight. I’ll get it some other time.”
“No, I’ll get it. I want somebody to go in with me. You wait.”
Mosquitoes Page 15
