“Yes,” Major Ayers agreed. He mused in turn. “But this chap that got rich—” The niece squealed again. She sat beside Fairchild and regarded him with admiration.
“Go on, go on,” she said, “about the one that stole the money, you know.”
Fairchild looked at her kindly. Into the silence there came a thin saccharine strain. “There’s the victrola,” he said. “Let’s go up and start a dance.”
“The one who stole the money,” she insisted. “Please.” She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Some other time,” he promised, rising. “Let’s go up and dance now.” The Semitic man yet slumped in his chair, and Fairchild shook him. “Wake up, Julius. I’m safe now.”
The Semitic man opened his eyes and Major Ayers said: “How much did they gain with their fish ranching?”
“Not as much as they would have with a patent nicetasting laxative. All Americans don’t eat fish, you know. Come on, let’s go up and hold that dance they’ve been worrying us about every night.”
NINE O’CLOCK
“Say,” the niece said as she and Jenny mounted to the deck, “remember that thing we traded for the other night? the one you let me use for the one I let you use?”
“I guess so,” Jenny answered. “I remember trading.”
“Have you used it yet?”
“I never can think of it,” Jenny confessed. “I never can remember what it was you told me.... Besides, I’ve got another one, now.”
“You have? Who told it to you?”
“The popeyed man. That Englishman.”
“Major Ayers?”
“Uhuh. Last night we was talking and he kept on saying for us to go to Mandeville to-day. He kept on saying it. And so this morning he acted like he thought I meant we was going. He acted like he was mad.”
“What was it he said?” Jenny told her — a mixture of pidgin English and Hindustani that Major Ayers must have picked up along the Singapore water front, or mayhap at some devious and doubtful place in the Straits, but after Jenny had repeated it, it didn’t sound like anything at all.
“What?” the niece asked. Jenny said it again.
“It don’t sound like anything, to me,” the niece said. “Is that the way he said it?”
“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Jenny replied.
The niece said curiously: “Men sure do swear at you a lot. They’re always cursing you. What do you do to them, anyway?”
“I don’t do anything to them,” Jenny answered. “I’m just talking to them.”
“Well, they sure do.... Say, you can have that one back you loaned me.”
“Have you used it on anybody?” Jenny asked with interest. “I tried it on that redheaded Gordon.”
“That drownded man? What’d he say?”
“He beat me.” The niece rubbed herself with a tanned retrospective hand. “He just beat hell out of me,” she said. “Gee,” said Jenny.
TEN O’CLOCK
Fairchild gathered his watch, nourished it, and brought it on deck again. The ladies hailed its appearance with doubtful pleasure. Mr. Talliaferro and Jenny were dancing, and the niece and Pete with his damaged hat, were performing together with a skilful and sexless abandon that was almost professional, while the rest of the party watched them.
“Whee,” Fairchild squealed, watching the niece and Pete with growing childish admiration. At the moment they faced each other at a short distance, their bodies rigid as far as the waist. But below this they were as amazing jointless toys, and their legs seemed to fly in every direction at once until their knees seemed to touch the floor. Then they caught hands and whirled sharply together, without a break in that dizzy staccato of heels. “Say, Major, look there! Look there, Julius! Come on, I believe I can do that.”
He led his men to the assault. The victrola ran down at the moment; he directed the Semitic man to attend to it, and went at once to where Pete and the niece stood. “Say, you folks are regular professionals. Pete, let me have her this time, will you? I want her to show me how you do that. Will you show me? Pete won’t mind.”
“All right,” the niece agreed, “I’ll show you. I owe you something for that yarn at dinner to-night.” She put her hand on Pete’s arm. “Don’t go off, Pete. I’ll show him and then he can practise on the others. Don’t you go off; you are all right. You might take Jenny for a while. She must be tired: he’s been leaning on her for a half an hour. Come on, Dawson. Watch me now.” She had no bones at all.
Major Ayers and the Semitic man had partners, though more sedately. Major Ayers galloped around in a heavy dragoonish manner: when that record was over Miss Jameson was panting. She offered to sit out the next one, but Fairchild overruled her. He believed he had the knack of it. “We’ll put the old girl’s dance over in style,” he told them.
Major Ayers, inflamed by Fairchild’s example, offered for the niece himself. Mr. Talliaferro, reft of Jenny, acquired Mrs. Wiseman; the Semitic man was cajoling the hostess. “We’ll put her dance over for her,” Fairchild chanted. They were off.
Gordon had come up from somewhere and he stood in shadow, watching. “Come on, Gordon,” Fairchild shouted to him. “Grab one!” When the music ceased Gordon cut in on Major Ayers. The niece looked up in surprise, and Major Ayers departed in Jenny’s direction.
“I didn’t know you danced,” she said.
“Why not?” Gordon asked.
“You just don’t look like you did. And you told Aunt Pat you couldn’t dance.”
“I can’t,” he answered, staring down at her. “Bitter,” he said slowly. “That’s what you are. New. Like bark when the sap is rising.”
“Will you give it to me?” He was silent. She couldn’t see his face distinctly: only the bearded shape of his tall head. “Why won’t you give it to me?” Still no answer, and his head was ugly as bronze against the sky. Fairchild started the victrola again: a saxophone was a wailing obscenity, and she raised her arms, “Come on.”
When that one was finished Fairchild’s watch rushed below again, and presently Mr. Talliaferro saw his chance and followed surreptitiously. Fairchild and Major Ayers were ecstatically voluble: the small room fairly moiled with sound. Then they rushed back on deck.
“Watch your step, Talliaferro,” Fairchild cautioned him as they ascended. “She’s got her eye on you. Have you danced with her yet?” Mr. Talliaferro had not. “Better kind of breathe away from her when you do.”
He led his men to the assault. The ladies demurred, but Fairchild was everywhere, cajoling, threatening, keeping life in the party. Putting the old girl’s dance over. Mrs. Maurier was trying to catch Mr. Talliaferro’s eye. The niece had peremptorily commandeered Pete again, and again Gordon stood in his shadow, haughty and aloof. They were off.
ELEVEN O’CLOCK
“I say,” said Mr. Talliaferro, popping briskly and cautiously into the room, accepting his glass, “we’d better slow up a bit, hadn’t we?”
“What for?” asked the Semitic man, and Fairchild said:
“Ah, it’s all right. She expects it of us. Somebody’s got to be the hoi polloi, you know. Besides, we want to make this cruise memorable in the annals of deep water. Hey, Major? Talliaferro’d better go easy, though.”
“Oh, we’ll look out for Talliaferro,” the Semitic man said.
“No damned fear,” Major Ayers assured him. “Have a go eh?” They all had a go. Then they rushed back on deck.
“What do you do in New Orleans, Pete?” Miss Jameson asked intensely.
“One thing and another,” Pete answered cautiously. “I’m in business with my brother,” he added.
“You have lots of friends, I imagine? Girls would all like to dance with you. You are one of the best dancers I ever saw — almost a professional. I like dancing.”
“Yeh,” Pete agreed. He was restive. “I guess—”
“I wonder if you and I couldn’t get together some evening and dance again? I don’t go to night clubs much, because none of the men I know dance v
ery well. But I’d enjoy it, with you.”
“I guess so,” Pete answered. “Well, I—”
“I’ll give you my phone number and address, and you call me soon, will you? You might come out to dinner, and we’ll go out afterward, you know.”
“Sure,” Pete answered uncomfortably. He removed his hat and examined the crown. Then he slanted it once more across his dark reckless head. Miss Jameson said:
“Do you ever make dates ahead of time, Pete?”
“Naw,” he answered quickly. “I wouldn’t have a date over a day old. I just call ’em up and take ’em out and bring ’em back in time to go to work next day. I wouldn’t have one I had to wait until to-morrow on.”
“Neither do I. So I tell you what: let’s break the rule one time, and make a date for the first night we are ashore — what do you say? You come out to dinner at my house, and well go out later to dance. I’ve got a car.”
“I — Well, you see—”
“We’ll just do that,” Miss Jameson continued remorselessly. “We won’t forget that; it’s a promise, isn’t it?”
Pete rose. “I guess we — I guess I better not promise. Something might turn up so I — we couldn’t make it. I guess..
She sat quietly, looking at him. “Maybe it’ll be better to wait and fix it up when we get back. I might have to be out of town or something that day, see? Maybe we better wait and see how things shape up.” Still she said nothing, and presently she removed her patient humorless eyes and looked out across the darkling water, and Pete stood uncomfortably with his goading urge to keep on saying something. “I guess we better wait and see later, see?”
Her head was turned away, so he departed unostentatiously. He paused again and looked back at her. She gazed still out over the water: an uncomplaining abjectness of passivity, quiet in her shadowed chair.
As he embraced her, Jenny removed his hat slanted viciously upon his reckless head, and examined the broken crown with a recurrence of soft astonishment; and still holding the hat in her hand she came to him in a flowing enveloping movement, without seeming to move at all. Their faces merged and Jenny was immediately utterly boneless, seeming to suspend her merging rifeness by her soft mouth, then she opened her mouth against his... after a while Pete raised his head, Jenny’s face was a passive drowsing blur rich, ineffably rich, in the dark; and Pete got out his unfresh handkerchief and wiped her mouth, quite gently.
“Got over it without leaving a scar, didn’t you?” he said. Without volition they swung in a world unseen and warm as water, unseen and rife and beautiful, strange and hushed and grave beneath that waning moon of decay and death.... “Give your old man a kiss, kid...
* * * * * * *
The niece entered her aunt’s room, without knocking, Mrs. Maurier raised her astonished, shrieking face and dragged a garment shapelessly across her recently uncorseted breast, as women do. When she had partially recovered from the shock she ran heavily to the door and locked it.
“It’s just me,” the niece said. “Say, Aunt Pat—”
Her aunt gasped: her breast and chins billowed unconfined. “Why don’t you knock? You should never enter a room like that. Doesn’t Henry ever—”
“Sure he does,” the niece interrupted, “all the time. Say, Aunt Pat, Pete thinks you ought to pay him for his hat. For stepping on it, you know.”
Her aunt stared at her. “What?”
“You stepped through Pete’s hat. He and Jenny think you ought to pay for it. Or offer to, anyway. I expect if you’d offer to, he wouldn’t take it.”
“Thinks I ought to p—” Mrs. Maurier’s voice faded into a shocked, soundless amazement.
“Yes, they think so.... I mentioned it because I promised them I would. You don’t have to unless you want to, you know.”
“Thinks I ought to p—” Again Mrs. Maurier’s voice failed her, and her amazement became a chaotic thing that filled her round face interestingly. Then it froze into something definite: a coldly determined displeasure, and she recovered her voice.
“I have lodged and fed these people for a week,” she said without humor. “I do not feel that I am called upon to clothe them also.”
“Well, I just mentioned it because I promised,” the niece repeated soothingly.
* * * * * *
Mrs. Maurier, Jenny and the niece had disappeared, to Mr. Talliaferro’s mixed relief. They still had two left, however. They took turn about with them.
Major Ayers, Fairchild and the Semitic man rushed below again. Mr. Talliaferro following openly this time, and a trifle erratically.
“How’s it coming along?” Fairchild asked, poising the bottle. Mr. Talliaferro made a wet deprecating sound, glancing at the other two. They regarded him with kindly interest. “Oh, they’re all right,” Fairchild reassured him. “They are as anxious to see you put it over as I am.” He set the bottle down well within reach, and gulped at his glass. “I tell you what, it’s boldness that does the trick with women, ain’t it, Major?”
“Right you are. Boldness: dash in; take ’em by storm.”
“Sure. That’s what you want to do. Have another drink.” He filled Mr. Talliaferro’s glass.
“That’s my plan, exactly. Boldness. Boldness. Boldness.” Mr. Talliaferro stared at the other glassily. He tried to wink. “Didn’t you see me dancing with her?”
“Yes, but that ain’t bold enough. If I were you, if I were doing it, I’d turn the trick to-night, now. Say, Julius, you know what I’d do? I’d go right to her room: walk right in. He’s been dancing with her and talking to her: ground already broken, you see. I bet she’s in there right now, waiting for him, hoping he is bold enough to come in to her. He’ll feel pretty cheap to-morrow when he finds he missed his chance, won’t he? You never have but one chance with a woman, you know. If you fail her then, she’s done with you — the next man that comes along gets her without a struggle. It ain’t the man a woman cares for that reaps the harvest of passion, you know: it’s the next man that comes along after she’s lost the other one. I’d sure hate to think I’d been doing work for somebody else to get the benefit of. Wouldn’t you?”
Mr. Talliaferro stared at him. He swallowed twice. “But suppose, just suppose, that she isn’t expecting me.”
“Oh, sure. Of course, you’ve got to take that risk. It would take a bold man, anyway, to walk right in her room, walk right in without knocking and go straight to the bed. But how many women would resist? I wouldn’t, if I were a woman. If you were her, Talliaferro, would you resist? I’ve found,” he went on, “that boldness gets pretty near anything, in this world, especially women. But it takes a bold man.... Say, I bet Major Ayers would do it.”
“Right you are. I’d walk right in, by Jove.... I say, I think I shall, anyway. Which one is it? Not the old one?”
“All right. That is, if Talliaferro don’t want to do it. He has first shot, you know: he’s done all the heavy preparatory work. But it takes a bold man.”
“Oh, Talliaferro’s bold as any man,” the Semitic man said.
“But, really,” Mr. Talliaferro repeated, “suppose she isn’t expecting me. Suppose she were to call out — No, no.”
“Yes, Talliaferro ain’t bold enough. We better let Major Ayers go, after all. No necessity for disappointing the girl, at least.”
“Besides,” Mr. Talliaferro added quickly, “she is in a room with some one else.”
“No, she ain’t. She’s in a room to herself, now; that one at the end of the hall.”
“That’s Mrs. Maurier’s room,” Mr. Talliaferro said, staring at him.
“No, no; she changed. That room has a broken screen, so she changed. Julius and I were helping her move this afternoon. Weren’t we, Julius? That’s how I happen to know Jenny’s in there now.”
“But, really—” Mr. Talliaferro swallowed again. “Are you sure that’s her room? This is a serious matter, you know.”
“Have another drink,” Fairchild said.
TWELVE O’CLOCK
The deck was deserted. Fairchild and Major Ayers halted and gazed about in pained astonishment. The victrola was hooded and mute, smugly inscrutable. They held a hurried council, then they set forth to beat up stragglers. There were no stragglers.
“Put on a record,” Fairchild suggested at last. “Maybe that’ll get ’em up here. They must have thought we’d gone to bed.”
The Semitic man started the victrola again, and again Major Ayers and Fairchild combed the deck in vain. The moon had risen, its bony erstwhile disc was thumbed into the sky like a coin after too much handling.
Mrs. Maurier routed out the captain and together they repaired to Fairchild’s room. “Find it all,” she directed, “every single one.” The captain found it all. “Now, open that window.”
She gave the captain further directions, when they had finished, and she returned to her room and sat again on the edge of her bed. Moonlight came into the room level as a lance through the port, like a marble pencil shattering and filling the room with a thin silver dust, as of marble. “It has come, at last,” she whispered, aware of her body, heavy and soft with years. I should feel happy, I should feel happy, she told herself, but her limbs felt chill and strange to her and within her a terrible thing was swelling, a thing terrible and poisonous and released, like water that has been dammed too long: it was as though there were waking within her comfortable, long familiar body a thing that abode there dormant and which she had harbored unaware.
She sat on the edge of her bed, feeling her strange chill limbs, while that swelling thing within her unfolded like an intricate poisonous flower, an intricate slow convolvulse of petals that grew and faded, died and were replaced by other petals huger and more implacable. Her limbs were strange and cold: they were trembling. That dark flower of laughter, that secret hideous flower grew and grew until that entire world which was herself was become a slow implacable swirling of hysteria that rose in her throat and shook it as though with a myriad small hands while from overhead there came a thin saccharine strain spaced off by a heavy thumping of feet, where Fairchild was teaching Major Ayers the Charleston.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 55
