by Matthew Head
“I wonder why Henri didn’t tell me about it,” I said.
“He won’t ever mention her,” Gabrielle said. “It changed him an awful lot. When he first came here he was laughing all the time, and working hard. Papa used to say that Henri would make the station amount to something. I don’t feel like talking about Henri.”
“I want the rest of it. How did it change him?” I asked.
“First he was quiet all the time,” she said. “He stuck in that horrid little house for months. Then he started making those collections of birds and orchids and things, and all those old tubes of germs all over the laboratory. Every time he sees a sick native he can’t wait to get a test tube at him. And the time he’s spent nursing that little antelope! André was always telling him that if he didn’t get to work he was going to report him to the company in Brussels. But Henri just laughed because André was always drunk and never did anything either and they both knew Papa would back up Henri if it came to a showdown. So things kept getting worse and worse around here with nobody doing anything except Papa and he can’t do it all alone.”
She was talking fast and intensely now. “And then Gérôme came down to check things over, and brought that Jacqueline—I hate Jacqueline!—and now—they got caught here by the war and all, and—oh, it’s all such a mess!” she cried. “I hate being part of it!”
“You at least got to school in Léopoldville last year,” I said.
“That didn’t amount to anything,” she said. “I didn’t see anybody but girls. Even the girls who live in Léopoldville and have a dowry and everything can’t get married. All the boys are in the war or else they go to South Africa or somewhere.” She sighed and put her head back and gave her hair a push, letting the air get in under it. Then she gave something almost like a laugh and said, “Well, this isn’t a very good way to be entertaining on your first date. I’ll take that cigarette now if I can still have it.”
I lit it for her and noticed that her face was calm again in the flare of the match. She blew the match out and then lay back on the grass. She looked pretty there, her hair so soft and her eyes and mouth softened and enlarged in the faint cool light. She took a few long puffs on her cigarette, the smoke catching what light there was so that it looked faintly luminous itself. Gabrielle reached up with her hand and took hold of mine. There was no mistaking the invitation when she pressed it, but I was so taken by surprise that I went on and asked the question that was already half formed and ready to come out.
“You never answered my question about you and Henri,” I said.
She kept hold of my hand and answered slowly, almost indifferently, as if she could say the words without listening to them herself, so they wouldn’t break into something she didn’t want to lose: “Henri won’t have anything to do with anything that reminds him of Jeannette, and I guess I do. If I hadn’t been their little stray dog, maybe it would be different. That’s all.” Her tenseness was gone completely, or else she was doing an awfully good job of controlling herself again, because her voice was low and perfectly even, and the steady warm pressure of her hand began to get under the skin of mine.
She lowered our hands onto her cheek for a minute and then let mine go. I lay back and she threw her cigarette away and we moved together, with my arm under her. After the first kiss she took my hand and laid it across her breast. Before long I knew I had to stop, and I tried, but she kept her arms tight over my shoulders. “Don’t go away,” she murmured.
“I’ve got to,” I said, “I’ve got to stop now or not at all.” “Don’t worry,” she said. Her voice was only a whisper, and I could feel her lips moving against my cheek. “Don’t worry. It’s happened before, lots of times before.” And by the time I discovered she had lied to me, it was too late.
Afterward we lay there a long time, smelling the smoke of the grass fires, I remember. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was cursing myself for a damn fool.
I walked a little way off and watched the bright lines of the grass fires creeping and changing pattern. When I came back she had moved a little way down the hill and was half-lying there propped up on her elbow, looking out over the valley. I sat down nearby and said, “It hadn’t happened before.”
“No.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m all right.”
That seemed to be all there was to say for a while, until she said she wanted another cigarette. She began smoking it slowly, always looking out across the valley instead of at me. “It’s late,” I said. “You’d better be getting home.”
“I guess so.” But she didn’t move.
I waited, and then finally I said, “You shouldn’t have told me that.”
“I wanted it to happen.”
“There’s no use being sorry now,” I said.
She turned toward me then and said, “Oh, I’m not sorry! What makes you sorry?”
“You know what makes me sorry,” I said.
“That’s so silly,” said Gabrielle. “I wanted it to happen. I’m sorry if you—was I disappointing?”
“Don’t talk like that,” I said. I began feeling angry because everything I said sounded prudish.
“Maybe I’d better go home.” She held up a hand and I helped her to her feet.
“How are you going to get in without your folks knowing?” I asked. My watch said two in the morning.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll manage.”
We started walking back, Gabrielle going first because she knew the paths. We went into the thick wall of bush and it seemed to open up before her as she went through. She walked along the path without hesitating, making hardly a sound, although as I followed the glimmer of her white dress, things cracked and swished around my feet. When we came to the edge of the bush I could see the laboratory not far off, so I knew where I was.
We stopped just inside the edge, standing close together but not touching, and she said to me, “I’ll go alone from here. Don’t worry, I can get in.” She reached out and took my hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she said.
“At Gérôme’s, for breakfast,” I said. Everybody was coming to see me off.
“Yes. But I mean after that.”
“But I’m leaving. You know that.”
She recoiled and clutched my hand tighter. “You mean you’re going to leave anyhow? After this?”
“I’ve got to,” I said.
“Please stay.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I have my plane reservation.”
“You’ve got priorities,” she said. “You know you can get on the next one. You can’t go!”
“I’ve got to.”
She gave a short suppressed cry and jerked her hand away spasmodically so that I thought for a moment she was going to slap me. But she didn’t, and I saw she was crying at last. “Oh, Lord!” I said. I felt rotten and desperate. “Don’t, Gabrielle. I can’t stay. Even if I could, we couldn’t meet like this again.”
She got her voice under control.
“Supposing I have a baby,” she said.
“Oh, Lord!” I said again. “Oh, sweet, loving, Je—”
“Stop it!” said Gabrielle, and I knew I was acting like an ass.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You’ll stay for a little while, won’t you?” she asked.
I said, “No.”
Gabrielle was silent for the space of several breaths.
“All right,” she said. “If that’s how you feel. Good night, ’Oop.”
“Good night, Gabrielle. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m all right. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I wanted to say something else or do something else but I couldn’t, so I turned away and left her standing there, and walked on back to the guest house and packed and set my alarm clock, and went to bed. I thought I would stay awake, but I didn’t. I lay there thinking things over for a little while and then went to sleep.
&nbs
p; CHAPTER FOUR
Mary Finney
EVERYBODY WAS THERE at breakfast to see me off except Gabrielle and Miss Finney. Madame Boutegourde said Gabrielle had a little headache and had decided to stay in bed. Miss Collins said she had a note for me from Miss Finney, and she presented it to me with a faint cough of apology and backed off giving the impression, somehow, of wringing her hands.
The note said:
H. T.—
Going with you.
Don’t leave without me.
Forgot serum.
Yrs. M. F.
“She forgot the serum,” coughed Miss Collins gently. “She’s got all these natives to inoculate the next two weeks and here she goes and forgets to bring the serum. I never knew Mary to be so careless before.” She looked rather satisfied at the discovery of this defection on Miss Finney’s part, then she appeared to suffer remorse for her unChristian reaction. “Dear Mary,” she added.
“How’s she going to get back?” I asked.
“She’ll come back on the poste,” said Miss Collins.
“There’s plenty of serum in Costermansville but if we wait to send for it by the poste that’s three days from now, and then it wouldn’t make the return poste until next time, and this way Mary can get it here on the first trip, and anyhow we’ll save gas, and wear and tear on our station wagon, and—oh, for goodness sake, Mr. Taliaferro, Mary wants a ride with you and that’s that.”
Madame Boutegourde had brought a big box of lunch to take along in the truck, and Henri had brought me the little black ivory fetish of a figure holding its belly. “Albert raised hell,” he said. “He’s sure he’s going to die of bellyache if this thing goes out of the house.” Papa Boutegourde was as jovial and friendly as ever but it seemed to me that Madame Boutegourde was having to put on, just a little bit, to be pleasant to me. But when your conscience is hurting you the way mine was, even if you keep telling yourself that there’s no reason for it, you can imagine all kinds of things. So I put Madame Boutegourde’s coolness down to my imagination. Miss Finney didn’t take long in throwing a few things into a bag, and she showed up in time for us to get a good start, with her black doctor’s bag along too. Everybody waved us off and I said good-by to the Congo-Ruzi with feelings so mixed that I didn’t know how I felt.
The truck wasn’t very comfortable but Miss Finney said she liked it. She was just right for a traveling companion, just the opposite of Father Justinien. She enjoyed watching the country but all she ever said about it was “Nice over there,” or something like that. About ten o’clock she brought out a can of lemon drops and it was pleasant to suck at them as we rode along.
By eleven o’clock we were both hungry so Miss Finney decided to break into the lunch box.
“Want to stop, or can you eat while you drive?” Miss Finney asked me.
“I can eat while I drive,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Stop a minute anyhow. Pick out a good place. You know.”
I drew up by the side of the road where the bush wasn’t too thick and Miss Finney climbed out of the truck. She turned back to me and said, “You’d better take advantage of this stop yourself, young man. For crying out loud, you needn’t act so funny about it. Anybody can see you haven’t been out here very long. You’re as bad as Emily.” She went crashing off into the bushes.
After we got going again we didn’t talk much, just rode along enjoying the ride and Madame Boutegourde’s sandwiches. “Nice of Angélique to fix this up for us,” said Miss Finney, and then I just about ran the truck into the ditch, because she said, “Think she knows about you and Gaby?” Before I could get an answer together Miss Finney raised a palm at me and said, “Don’t ask me what do I mean. You know what I mean. You didn’t fall for that serum gag, did you? I don’t forget things. I wanted a chance to talk to you, that’s all. Listen, Hoop, I haven’t got any time to fool around with the delicate approach. I never was any good at it and after half a lifetime of the kind of doctoring I’ve been doing I don’t see any point in it. What the hell, Hoop. I like watching people and figuring them out and trying to figure why they do what they do. Do you think I haven’t been watching you and Gabrielle?”
“All right then,” I said, “so you’ve been watching me and Gabrielle.”
“I’ve even been helping you out, God forgive me,” she said.
“You remember yesterday when Gabrielle gave you the map of the place to meet her? I didn’t give a hoot about that culture of Henri’s, I just wanted to keep him out of the room. Remember I was in there with Gabrielle when all of you first came in? What do you think I was telling her to do, anyhow, avoid you? And I was going to find some way to get rid of Henri last night too, except that Father Justinien left.”
“Any chance of meeting him on the road?” I asked.
“He went the other direction, heaven be praised,” said Miss Finney. “Don’t try to get me off the track, I’m on it to stay. Remember last night how I said I was so sleepy, right after dinner? Well, I never felt fresher in my life, but I had to go toss around in bed so I could get that party broken up for you and Gaby.”
“Well for crying out loud,” I said.
Miss Finney laughed. Then she looked more serious than usual and said, “I’m beyond being shocked by what happened, even if I am awfully fond of Gaby. I delivered her, with nobody to help me but Emily, and I’ve taken care of her, more or less, ever since. I guess I sort of sic’d her onto you. I don’t guess there’s any chance of getting you to marry her, is there?” All I did was swallow hard, but it was enough of an answer. Miss Finney sighed. “I’m really disappointed,” she said. “The way you ogled her in that white dress at the funeral and at dinner that night, I was sure we had the right approach. I guess I’m not much of a matchmaker.”
“Matchmaker!” I said. “Miss Finney, if you’re talking about what I’m afraid you’re talking about, you’ve got the most brutal direct approach to matchmaking I’ve ever seen.” Miss Finney looked as nearly embarrassed as I ever saw her look.
“I see what you mean,” she said. “Maybe I did bring it right down to fundamentals. To tell you the truth, though,” she admitted, “I didn’t know things would go as far as they did.” She looked at me with a sort of exaggerated respect that was about ninety per cent mocking. “You’re more of a ripsnortin’ young buck than you look,” she said. “The academic atmosphere must have changed a lot since I went to college.” I concentrated on the road. I could feel my lips pressed tight together and my brows scowling, and I couldn’t say anything at all. Miss Finney kept silent for a long few minutes, and I could feel her looking at me as if she were sizing me up. Finally she gave a cross between a laugh and a snort and I glanced over at her. She smiled and shook her head from side to side as if to say, “My, my, my,” while she kept looking at me and smiling. I couldn’t help it, I felt one side of my mouth going up and finally I had to break down and smile at her too, but I felt like an awful fool.
“Attaboy!” Mary Finney said. “For goodness sake, Hoopie, let’s not spar around with each other. I haven’t even started to talk, yet. Gaby told me all about it this morning. She wanted me to make sure she was all right and she wanted to know if she was likely to have a baby. I told her no, what with the first time and all. Maybe you’ll be lucky, though.”
“What do you mean, lucky though?” I said.
“I mean maybe you’ll be lucky enough for it to take,” Miss Finney said calmly. “If Gabrielle’s pregnant I’m going to see that you marry her. Understand? And I’ll be doing you a favor. Why don’t you marry her anyway?”
“It’s not the way I want to get married,” I said. “I’m not in love with her.”
Miss Finney looked ready to hit me. An indescribable sound came out of her which had probably been uttered many times before, but only by enraged cow elephants. “Love!” she fairly yelled. “Oh, piffle! Piffle, piffle, PIFFLE! Honest to God, men are the damnedest fools! The Europeans don’t think about anything but dowries and
the Americans don’t think about anything but a lot of romantic twaddle. Not in love with Gabrielle! My God, what do you think marriage is? You couldn’t find a better wife than Gabrielle no matter how far you looked.”
“Miss Finney,” I said, “there’s no use talking about it.”
“Why do you go on calling me Miss Finney?” she asked. “You could call me by my first name.”
“It wouldn’t sound right to me,” I said. “Maybe I could call you Miss Mary, though.”
“That’s the dirtiest, meanest, low-downest remark anybody ever made to me,” said Miss Finney, and began to sulk.
Even if Miss Finney had stopped talking, she had got me to worrying about things again. Not about marrying Gabrielle, because I had never had any idea of that, but just about the whole cockeyed situation. In spite of the way Gabrielle had made things happen, I couldn’t get over the silly idea that I owed her something and I oughtn’t to be going off like this. But there wasn’t anything I could do by going back. There wasn’t anything I could do at all, except marry her, which I didn’t owe her and which I just couldn’t see myself doing, romantic twaddle or no romantic twaddle. Damn Miss Finney anyhow, I thought.
“Go ahead,” said Miss Finney out of a clear sky, “cuss me.”
“Don’t think I couldn’t,” I told her.
“Don’t take it so hard,” she said. “That’s the trouble with people like you and Emily. You get the body and soul all mixed up until you don’t know where you’re at.”
“Stop comparing me to Emily,” I said.