“So don’t you go around feeling superior to Talliaferro. I think his present illusion and its object are rather charming, almost as charming as the consummation of it would be — which is more than you can say for yours.” He held a match to his cigar. His sucking, intent face came abruptly out of the darkness, and as abruptly vanished again. He flipped the match toward the rail. “And so do you, you poor emotional eunuch; so do you, despite that bastard of a surgeon and a stenographer which you call your soul, so do you remember with regret kissing in the dark and all the tender and sweet stupidity of young flesh.”
“Hell,” said Fairchild, “let’s have another drink.”
His friend was too kind, too tactful to say I told you so.
Mrs. Maurier captured them as they reached the stairs. “Here you are,” she exclaimed brightly, prisoning their arms; “come: let’s all dance a while. We need men. Eva has taken Mark away from Dorothy, and she has no partner. Come, Mr. Fairchild; Julius.”
“We’re coming back,” Fairchild answered, “we’re going now to hunt up Gordon and the Major, and we’ll all come right back.”
“No, no,” she said soothingly, “we’ll send the steward for them. Come, now.”
“I think we better go,” Fairchild objected quickly. “The steward has been working hard all day: he’s tired out, I expect. And Gordon’s kind of timid; he might not come if you send a servant for him.” She released them doubtfully, staring at them with her round, astonished face.
“You will...? Do come back, Mr. Fairchild.”
“Sure, sure,” Fairchild replied, descending hastily.
“Julius,” Mrs. Maurier called after them helplessly.
“I’ll bring them up in ten minutes,” the Semitic man promised, following. Mrs. Maurier watched them until they had passed from view, then she turned away. Jenny and Mr. Talliaferro were still dancing, as were Mrs. Wiseman and the ghostly poet. Miss Jameson, partnerless, sat at the card table playing solitaire. Mrs. Maurier looked on until the record played itself through. Then she said firmly:
“I think we’d better change partners among ourselves until the men come up.”
Mr. Talliaferro released Jenny obediently, and Jenny, released, stood around for a while, then she drifted away and down the deck, passing that tall ugly man leaning alone at the rail, and further along the niece spoke from the shadow:
“Going to bed?”
Jenny paused and turning her head toward the voice she saw the faint glint of Pete’s hat. She went on. “Uhuh,” she replied. The moon was getting up, rising out of the dark water: a tarnished, implacable Venus.
Her aunt came along soon, prowling, peering fretfully into shadowy chairs and obscure corners, implacable and tactless as a minor disease.
“My Lord, what’ve we got to do now?” the niece moaned. She sighed. “She sure makes life real and earnest for everybody, that woman does.”
“Dance, I guess,” Pete answered. The vicious serrated rim of his hat, where the moon fell upon it, glinted dully like a row of filed teeth, like a gaping lithograph of a charging shark.
“Guess so. Say, I’m going to fade out. Stall her off some way, or run yourself would be better.” The niece rose hurriedly, “So long. See you to-m — Oh, you coming too?”
They stepped behind the companionway housing and flattened themselves against It, listening to Mrs. Maurier’s fretful prowling, and clutching Pete’s hand for caution the niece craned her head around the corner. “There’s Dorothy, too,” she whispered and she withdrew her head and they flattened themselves closer yet, clutching hands, while the two searchers passed, pausing to peer into every obscurity.
But they went on, finally, passing from sight, and the niece wriggled her fingers free and moved, and moving found that she had turned into Pete’s arm and against his dark shape and the reckless angle of his hat topping it.
An interval like that between two fencers ere they engage, then Pete’s arm moved with confidence and his other arm came about her shoulders with a technique that was forcing her face upward. She was so still that he stopped again in a momentary flagging of confidence, and out of this lull a hard elbow came without force but steadily under his chin. “Try it on your saxophone, Pete,” she told him without alarm.
His hand moved again and caught her wrist, but she held her elbow jammed against his windpipe, increasing the pressure as he tried to remove her arm, their bodies taut against each other and without motion. Some one approached again and he released her, but before they could dodge again around the corner Miss Jameson saw them.
“Who is that?” she said in her high humorless voice. She drew nearer, peering. “Oh, I recognize Pete’s hat. Mrs. Maurier wants you.” She peered at them suspiciously. “What are you folks doing here?”
“Hiding from Aunt Pat,” the niece answered. “What’s she going to make us do, now?”
“Why... nothing. She — we ought to be more sociable. Don’t you think so? We never are all together, you know. Anyway, she wants to see Pete. Aren’t you coming too?”
“I’m going to bed. Pete can go if he wants to risk it, though.” She turned away. Miss Jameson put her hand on Pete’s sleeve.
“You don’t mind if I take Pete, then?” she persisted intensely.
“I don’t if he don’t,” the niece replied. She went on. “Good night.”
“That child ought to be spanked,” Miss Jameson said viciously. She slid her hand through Pete’s elbow. “Come on, Pete.”
* * * * *
The niece stood and rubbed one bare sole against the other shin, hearing their footsteps retreating toward the lights and the fatuous reiteration of the victrola. She rubbed her foot rhythmically up and down her shin, gazing out upon the water where the moon had begun to spread her pallid and boneless hand.... Her foot ceased its motion and she remained motionless for a space. Then she stood on one leg and raised the other one. Under her fingers was a small, hard bump, slightly feverish. Gabriel’s pants, she whispered, they’ve found us again. But there was nothing for it except to wait until the tug came. “And finds a lot of picked bones,” she added aloud. She went on across the deck; at the stairs she stopped again.
It was David, standing there at the rail, his shirt blanching in the level moonlight, against the dark shoreline. She went over beside him, silent on her bare feet.
“Hello, David,” she said quietly, putting her elbows on the rail beside his and hunching her shoulders and crossing her legs as his were. “This would be a good night to be on our mountain, looking down at the lake and the little boats all lighted up, wouldn’t it? I guess this time next summer well be there, won’t we? And lots of other places, where you went to. You know nice things, don’t you? When we come back, I’ll know nice things, too.” She gazed downward upon the dark, ceaseless water. It was never still, never the same, and on it moonlight was broken into little fleeting silver wings rising and falling and changing.
“Wish I were in it,” she said, “swimming around in the moonlight.... You won’t forget about in the morning, will you?” No, he told her watching her crossed thin arms and the cropped crown of her head. “Say,” she looked up at him, “I tell you what: let’s go in to-night.”
“Now?”
“When the moon gets up more. Aunt Pat wouldn’t let me go now, anyway. But about twelve, when they’ve gone to bed. What do you say?” He looked at her, looked at her in such a strange fashion that she said sharply: “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he answered at last.
“Well, I’ll meet you about twelve o’clock, then. I’ll get Gus’ bathing suit for you. Don’t forget, now.”
“No,” he repeated. And when she reached the stairs and looked back at him he was still watching her in that strange manner. But she didn’t puzzle over it long.
TEN O’CLOCK
Jenny had the cabin to herself. Mrs. — , that one whose name she always forgot, was still on deck. She could hear them talking, and Mr. Fairchild’s jolly laugh ca
me from somewhere, though he hadn’t been upstairs when she left; and the muted nasal sound of the victrola and thumping feet just over her head. Still dancing. Should she go back? She sat holding a handglass, staring into it, but the handglass was bland, reminding her that after all this was one night she didn’t have to dance any more. And you have to dance so many nights. To-morrow night, perhaps, it said. But I don’t have to dance to-morrow night, she thought... staring into the glass and sitting utterly motionless.... Its thin whine rose keening to an ecstatic point and in the glass she saw it mar her throat with a small gray speck. She slapped savagely. It eluded her with a weary, practised skill, hanging fuzzily between her and the unshaded light.
My Lord, why do you want to go to Mandeville? she thought. Her palms flashed, smacking cleanly, and Jenny examined her hand with distaste. Where do they carry so much blood she wondered, rubbing her palm on the back of her stocking. And so young, too. I hope that’s the last one. It must have been, for there was no sound save a small lapping whisper of water and a troubling faraway suggestion of brass broken by a monotonous thumping of feet over her head. Dancing still. You really don’t have to dance at all, thought Jenny, yawning into the glass, examining with interest the pink and seemingly endless curve of her gullet, when the door opened and the girl, Patricia, entered the room. She wore a raincoat over her pajamas and Jenny saw her reflected face in the mirror.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” the niece replied, “I thought you’d have stayed up there prancing around with ’em.”
“Lord,” Jenny said, “you don’t have to dance all your life, do you? You don’t seem to be there.”
The niece thrust her hands into the raincoat pockets and stared about the small room. “Don’t you close that window when you undress?” she asked. “Standing wide open like that....”
Jenny put the mirror down. “That window? I don’t guess there’s anybody out there this time of night.”
The niece went to the port and saw a pale sky bisected laterally by a dark rigidity of water. The moon spread her silver hand on it; a broadening path of silver, and in the path the water came alive ceaselessly, no longer rigid. “I guess not,” she murmured. “The only man who could walk on water is dead.... Which one is yours?” She threw off the raincoat and turned toward the two berths. The lower garment of her pajamas was tied about her waist with a man’s frayed necktie.
“Is he?” Jenny murmured with detachment. “That one,” she answered vaguely, twisting her body to examine the back of one reverted leg. After a while she looked up. “That ain’t mine. That’s Mrs. What’s-her-name’s you are in.”
“Well, it don’t make any difference.” The niece lay flat, spreading her arms and legs luxuriously. “Gimme a cigarette. Have you got any?”
“I haven’t got any. I don’t smoke.” Jenny’s leg was satisfactory, so she unwrithed herself-
“You don’t smoke? Why don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Jenny replied, “I just don’t.”
“Look around and see if Eva’s got some somewhere.” The niece raised her head. “Go on: look in her things, she won’t mind.”
Jenny hunted for cigarettes in a soft blonde futility. “Pete’s got some,” she remarked after a time. “He bought twenty packages just before we left town, to bring on the boat.”
“Twenty packages? Good Lord, where’d he think we were going? He must have been scared of shipwreck or something.”
“I guess so.”
“Gabriel’s pants,” the niece said. “That’s all he brought, was it? Just cigarettes? What did you bring?”
“I brought a comb,” Jenny dragged her little soiled dress over her head. Her voice was muffled, “and some rouge.” She shook out her drowsy gold hair and let the dress fall to the floor. “Pete’s got some, though,” she repeated, thrusting the dress beneath the dressing table with her foot.
“I know,” the niece rejoined, “and so has Mr. Fairchild. And so has the steward, if Mark Frost hasn’t borrowed ’em all. And I saw the captain smoking one, too. But that’s not doing me any good.”
“No,” agreed Jenny placidly. Her undergarment was quite pink, enveloping her from shoulder to knee with ribbons and furbelows. She loosened a few of these and stepped sweetly and rosily out of it, casting it also under the table.
“You aren’t going to leave ’em there, are you?” the niece asked. “Why don’t you put ’em on the chair?”
“Mrs. — Mrs. Wiseman puts hers on the chair.”
“Well, you got here first: why don’t you take it? Or hang ’em on those hooks behind the door?”
“Hooks?” Jenny looked at the door. “Oh.... They’ll be all right there, I guess.” She stripped off her stockings and laid them on the dressing table. Then she turned to the mirror again and picked up her comb. The comb passed through her fair, soft hair with a faint sound, as of silk, and her hair lent to Jenny’s divine body a halo like an angel’s. The remote victrola, measured feet, a lapping of water, came into the room.
“You’ve got a funny figure,” the niece remarked after a while, calmly, watching her.
“Funny?” repeated Jenny, looking up with soft belligerence. “It’s no funnier than yours. At least my legs don’t look like birds’ legs.”
“Neither do mine,” the other replied with complacence, flat on her back. “Your legs are all right. I mean, you are kind of thick through the middle for your legs; kind of big behind for them.”
“Well, why not? I didn’t make it like that, did I?”
“Oh, sure. I guess it’s all right if you like it to be that way.”
Without apparent effort Jenny dislocated her hip and stared downward over her shoulder. Then she turned sideways and accepted the mute proffering of the mirror. Reassured, she said: “Sure, it’s all right. I expect to be bigger than that, in front, some day.”
“So do I... when I have to. Rut what do you want one for?”
“Lord,” said Jenny, “I guess I’ll have a whole litter of ’em. Besides, I think they’re kind of cute, don’t you?”
The sound of the victrola came down, melodious and nasal, and measured feet marked away the lapping of waves. The light was small and inadequate, sunk into the ceiling, and Jenny and the niece agreed that they were kind of cute and pink. Jenny was quite palpably on the point of coming to bed and the other said:
“Don’t you wear any nightclothes?”
“I can’t wear that thing Mrs. What’s-her-name lent me,” Jenny replied. “You said you were going to lend me something, only you didn’t. If I’d depended on you on this trip, I guess I’d be back yonder about ten miles, trying to swim home.”
“That’s right. But it doesn’t make any difference what you sleep in, does it?... Turn off the light.” Light followed Jenny rosily as she crossed the room, it slid rosily upon her as she turned obediently toward the switch beside the door. The niece lay flat on her back gazing at the unshaded globe. Jenny’s angelic nakedness went beyond her vision and suddenly she stared at nothing with a vague orifice vaguely in the center of it, and beyond the orifice a pale moonfilled sky.
Jenny’s bare feet hissed just a little on the uncarpeted floor and she came breathing softly in the dark, and her hand came out of the dark. The niece moved over against the wall. The round orifice in the center of the dark was obscured, then it reappeared, and breathing with a soft blonde intentness Jenny climbed gingerly into the berth. But she bumped her head anyway, lightly, and she exclaimed “ow” with placid surprise. The bunk heaved monstrously, creaking; the porthole vanished again, then the berth became still and Jenny sighed with a soft explosive sound.
Then she changed her position again and the other said: “Be still, can’t you?” thrusting at Jenny’s boneless, naked abandon with her elbow.
“I’m not fixed yet,” Jenny replied without rancor.
“Well, get in then, and quit flopping around.”
Jenny became lax. “I’m fixed now,” she said at las
t. She sighed again, a frank yawning sound.
Those slightly dulled feet thudthudded monotonously overhead. Outside, in the pale darkness, water lapped at the hull of the yacht. The close cabin emptied slowly of heat; heat ebbed steadily away now that the light was off, and in it was no sound save that of their breathing. No other sound at all. “I hope that was the last one, the one I killed,” Jenny murmured.
“God, yes,” the niece agreed. “This party is wearing enough with just people on it.... Say, how’d you like to be on a party with a boatful of Mr. Talliaferros?”
“Which one is he?”
“Why, don’t you remember him? You sure ought to. He’s that funny talking little man that puts his hands on you — that dreadful polite one. I dont see how you could forget a man as polite as him.”
“Oh, yes,” said Jenny, remembering, and the other said:
“Say, Jenny, hew about Pete?”, Jenny became utterly still for a moment. Then she said innocently: “What about him?”
“Hes mad at you about Mr. Talliaferro, isnt he?”
“Pete’s all right, I guess.”
“You keep yourself all cluttered up with men, don’t you?” the other asked curiously.
“Well, you got to do something,” Jenny defended herself.
“Bunk,” the niece said roughly, “bunk. You like petting. That’s the reason. Don’t you?”
“Well, I don’t mind,” Jenny answered. “I’ve kind of got used to it,” she explained. The niece expelled her breath in a thin snorting sound and Jenny repeated: “You’ve got to do something, haven’t you?”
“Oh, sweet attar of bunk,” the niece said. In the darkness she made a gesture of disgust. “You women! That’s the way Dorothy Jameson thinks about it too, I bet. You better look out: I think she’s trying to take Peter away from you.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 41
