“Patricia,” Mrs. Maurier said. She said, chokingly: “Mr. Gordon, didn’t he come back with you?”
“He wasn’t with me. What would I want to take him along for? I already had one man.”
Mrs. Maurier’s face became dreadful, and as the blood died swooning in her heart she had again that brief vision of floating inert buttocks, later to wash ashore with that inopportune and terrible implacability of the drowned. “Patricia,” she said dreadfully.
“Oh, haul in your sheet,” the niece interrupted wearily. “You’re jibbing. Gosh, I’m hungry.” She sat down and met her brother’s cold gaze. “And you too, Josh,” she added, taking a piece of bread.
The nephew glanced briefly at his aunt’s wrung face. “You ought to beat hell out of her,” he said calmly, going on with his dinner.
NINE O’CLOCK
“But I saw him about four o’clock,” Fairchild argued. “He was in the boat with us. Didn’t you see him, Major? but that’s so: you were not with us. You saw him, Mark, didn’t you?”
“He was in the boat when we started. I remember that. But I don’t remember seeing him after Ernest fell out.”
“Well, I do. I know I saw him on deck right after we got back. But I can’t remember seeing him in the boat after Jenny and Talliaferro... Ah, he’s all right, though. He’ll show up soon. He ain’t the sort to get drowned.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Major Ayers said. “There are no women missing, you know.”
Fairchild laughed his burly appreciative laugh. Then he met Major Ayers’ glassy solemn stare, and ceased. Then he laughed once more, somewhat after the manner of one feeling his way into a dark room, and ceased again, turning on Major Ayers his trustful baffled expression. Major Ayers said:
“This place to which these young people went to-day—”
“Mandeville,” the Semitic man supplied. “ — what sort of a place is it?” They told him. “Ah, yes. They have facilities for that sort of thing, eh?”
“Well, not more than usual,” the Semitic man answered, and Fairchild said, still watching Major Ayers with a sort of cautious bafflement:
“Not any more than you can carry along with you. We Americans always carry our own facilities with us. It’s living high tension go-getting lives like we do in this country, you see.”
Major Ayers glared at him politely. “Somewhat like the Continent,” he suggested after a time.
“Not exactly,” the Semitic man said. “In America you often find an H in caste.” Fairchild and Major Ayers stared at the Semitic man.
“As well as a cast in chaste,” Mark Frost put in. Fairchild and Major Ayers now stared at him, watching him while he lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of his present one, and left his chair and went to lie at full length on the deck.
“Why not?” the Semitic man took him up. “Love itself is stone blind.”
“It has to be,” Mark Frost answered. Major Ayers stared one to the other for a while. He said:
“This Mandeville, now. It is a convention, eh? A local convention?”
“Convention?” Fairchild repeated.
“I mean, like our Gretna Green. You ask a lady there, and immediately there is an understanding: saves unnecessary explanations and all that.”
“I thought Gretna Green was a place where they used to go to get marriage licenses in a hurry,” Fairchild said suspiciously.
“It was, once,” Major Ayers agreed. “But during the Great Fire all the registrars’ and parsons’ homes were destroyed. And in those days communication was so poor that word didn’t get about until a fortnight or so later. In the meantime quite a few young people had gone there in all sincerity, you know, and were forced to return the next day without benefit of clergy. Of course the young ladies durst not tell until matters were remedied, which, during those unsettled times, might be any time up to a month or so. But by that time, of course, the police had heard of it — London police always hear of things in time, you know.”
“And so, when you go to Gretna Green now, you get a policeman,” the Semitic man said.
“You’ve Yokohama in mind,” Major Ayers answered as gravely. “Of course, they are native policemen,” he added.
“Like whitebait,” the Semitic man suggested.
“Or sardines,” Mark Frost corrected.
“Or sardines,” Major Ayers agreed suavely. He sucked violently at his cold pipe while Fairchild stared at him with intrigued bewilderment.
“But this young lady, the one who popped off with the steward. And came back the same day.... Is this customary with your young girls? I ask for information,” he added quickly. “Our young girls don’t do that, you know; with us, only decayed countesses do that — cut off to Italy with chauffeurs and second footmen. And they never return before nightfall. But our young girls..
“Art,” the Semitic man explained succinctly. Mark Frost elaborated:
“In Europe, being an artist is a form of behavior; in America, it’s an excuse for a form of behavior.”
“Yes. But, I say—” Major Ayers mused again, sucking violently at his cold pipe. Then: “She’s not the one who did that tweaky little book, is she? The syphilis book?”
“No. That was Julius’ sister; the one named Eva,” Fairchild said. “This one that eloped and then came back ain’t an artist at all. It’s just the artistic atmosphere of the boat, I guess.”
“Oh,” said Major Ayers. “Strange,” he remarked. He rose and thumped his pipe against his palm. Then he blew through the stem and put it in his pocket. “I think I shall go below and have a whisky. Who’ll come along?”
“I guess I won’t, right now,” Fairchild decided. The Semitic man said later on. Major Ayers turned to the prone poet.
“And you, old thing?”
“Bring it up to us,” Mark Frost suggested. But Fairchild vetoed this. The Semitic man supported him and Major Ayers departed.
“I wish I had a drink,” Mark Frost said.
“Go down and have one, then,” Fairchild told him. The poet groaned.
The Semitic man lighted his cigar again and Fairchild spoke from his tentative bewilderment. “That was interesting, about Gretna Green, wasn’t it? I didn’t know about that. Never read it anywhere, I mean. But I guess there’s lots of grand things in the annals of all people that never get into the history books.” The Semitic man chuckled. Fairchild tried to see his face in the obscurity. Then he said:
“Englishmen are funny folks: always kidding you at the wrong time. Things just on the verge of probability, and just when you have made up your mind to take it one way, you find they meant it the other.” He mused a while in the darkness.
“It was kind of nice, wasn’t it? Young people, young men and girls caught in that strange hushed magic of sex and the mystery of intimate clothing and functions and all, and of lying side by side in the darkness, telling each other things... that’s the charm of virginity: telling each other things. Virginity don’t make any difference as far as the body’s concerned. Young people running away together in a flurry of secrecy and caution and desire, and getting there to find”... again he turned his kind, baffled face toward his friend. He continued after a while.
“Of course the girls would be persuaded, after they’d come that far, wouldn’t they? You know — strange surroundings, a strange room like an island in an uncharted sea full of monsters like landlords and strangers and such; the sheer business of getting their bodies from place to place and feeding ’em and caring for ’em; and your young man thwarted and lustful and probably fearful that you’d change your mind and back out altogether, and a strange room all secret and locked and far away from familiar things and you young and soft and nice to look at and knowing it, too.... Of course they’d be persuaded.
“And, of course, when they got back home they wouldn’t tell, not until another parson turned up and everything was all regular again. And maybe not then. Maybe they’d whisper it to a friend some day, after they’d been married long en
ough to prefer talking to other women to talking to their husbands, while they were discussing the things women talk about. But they wouldn’t tell the young unmarried ones, though. And if they, even a year later, ever got wind of another one being seen going there or coming away... They are such practical creatures, you know: only men hold to conventions for moral reasons.”
“Or from habit,” the Semitic man added.
“Yes,” Fairchild agreed.... “I wonder what became of Gordon.”
* * * *
Jenny remarked his legs, tweeded. How can he stand them heavy clothes in this weather, she thought with placid wonder, calling him soundlessly as he passed. His purposeful stride faltered and he came over beside her.
“Enjoying the evening, eh?” he suggested affably, glaring down at her in the darkness. Inside her borrowed clothes she was rife as whipped cream, blonde and perishable as an expensive pastry.
“Kind of,” she admitted. Major Ayers leaned his elbows on the rail.
“I was on my way below,” he told her.
“Yes, sir,” Jenny agreed, passive in the darkness, like an erotic lightning bug projecting that sense of himself surrounded, enclosed by the sweet, cloudy fire of her thighs, as young girls will. Major Ayers looked down at her vague, soft head. Then he jerked his head sharply, glaring about.
“Enjoying the evening, eh?” he asked again.
“Yes, sir,” Jenny repeated. She bloomed like a cloying heavy flower. Major Ayers moved restively. Again he jerked his head as if he had heard his name spoken. Then he looked at Jenny again.
“Are you a native of New Orleans?”
“Yes, sir. Esplanade.”
“I beg pardon?”
“Esplanade. Where I live in New Orleans,” she explained. “It’s a street,” she added after a while.
“Oh,” Major Ayers murmured.... “Do you like living there?”
“I don’t know. I always lived there.” After a time she added: “It’s not far.”
“Not far, eh?”
“No, sir.” She stood motionless beside him and for the third time Major Ayers jerked his head quickly, as though some one were trying to attract his attention.
“I was on my way below,” he repeated. Jenny waited a while. Then she murmured:
“It’s a fine night for courting.”
“Courting?” Major Ayers repeated.
“With dates.” Major Ayers stared down upon her hushed, soft hair. “When boys come to see you,” she explained. “When you go out with the boys.”
“Go out with boys,” Major Ayers repeated. “To Mandeville, perhaps?”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. “I’ve been there.”
“Do you go often?”
“Why... sometimes,” she repeated.
“With boys, eh? With men, too, hey?”
“Yes, sir,” Jenny answered with mild surprise. “I don’t guess anybody would just go there by herself.”
Major Ayers calculated heavily. Jenny stood docile and rife, projecting her little enticing aura, doing her best. “I say,” he said presently, “suppose we pop down there tomorrow — you and I?”
“To-morrow?” Jenny repeated with soft astonishment. “To-night, then,” he amended. “What d’ye say?”
“To-night? Can we get there to-night? It’s kind of late, ain’t it? How’ll we get there?”
“Like those people who went this morning did. There’s a tram or a bus, isn’t there? Or a train at the nearest village?”
“I don’t know. They come back in a boat.”
“Oh, a boat.” Major Ayers considered a moment. “Well, no matter: we’ll wait until to-morrow, then. We’ll go to-morrow, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” Jenny repeated tirelessly, passive and rife, projecting her emanation. Once more Major Ayers looked about him. Then he moved his hand from the rail and as Jenny, seeing the movement, turned to him with a slow unreluctance, he chucked her under the chin.
“Right, then,” he said briskly, moving away. “To-morrow it is.” Jenny gazed after him in passive astonishment and he turned and came back to her, and giving her an intimate inviting glare he chucked her again under her soft surprised chin. Then he departed permanently.
Jenny gazed after his tweedclad dissolving shape, watching him out of sight. He sure is a foreigner, she told herself. She sighed.
* * * * *
The water lapped at the hull of the yacht with little sounds, little hushed sounds like boneless hands might make, and she leaned again over the rail, gazing downward into the dark water.
He would be refined as anybody, she mused to herself. Being her brother... more refined, because she had been away all day with that waiter in the dining room.... But maybe the waiter was refined, too. Except I never found many boys that... I guess her aunt must have jumped on her. I wonder what she’d ‘a’ done when they come back, if we’d got the boat started and went away... and now that redheaded man and She says he’s drowned....
Jenny gazed into the dark water, thinking of death, of being helpless in that terrible suffocating resilience of water, feeling again that utter and dreadful helpfulness of terror and fear. So when Mr. Talliaferro was suddenly and silently beside her, touching her, she recognized him by instinct. And feeling again her world become unstable and shifting beneath her, feeling all familiar solid things fall away from under her and seeing familiar faces and objects arc swooping away from her as she plunged from glaring sunlight through a timeless interval into Fear like a green lambence straying to receive her, she was stark and tranced. But at last she could move again, screaming.
“You scared me so bad,” she gasped piteously, shrinking from ‘him. She turned and ran, ran toward light, toward the security of walls.
* * * *
The room was dark: no sound within it, and after the dim spaciousness of the deck it seemed close and hot. But here “were comfortable walls and Jenny snapped on the light and entered, entered into an atmosphere of familiarity. Here was a vague ghost of the scent she liked and with which she had happily been impregnated when she came aboard and which had not yet completely died away, and the thin sharp odor of lilacs which she had come to associate with Mrs. Wiseman and which lingered also in the room, and the other’s clothing, and her own comb on the dressing table and the bright metal cylinder of her lipstick beside it.
Jenny looked at her face in the mirror for a while. Then she removed a garment and returned to gaze at her stainless pink-and-whiteness, ineffable, unmarred by any thought at all. Then she removed the rest of her clothes, and again before the glass she passed her comb through the drowsing miniature Golconda of her hair, then she got her naked body placidly into bed, as was her habit since three nights.
But she didn’t turn out the light. She lay in her berth, gazing up at the smug glare of light upon the painted unbroken sweep of the ceiling. Time passed while she lay rosy and motionless, measured away by the small boneless hands of water lapping against the hull beyond the port; and she could hear feet also, and people moving about and making sounds.
She didn’t know what it was she wanted, except it was something. So she lay on her back rosy and quiet beneath the unshaded glare of the inadequate light, and after a while she thought that maybe she was going to cry. Maybe that was it, so she lay naked and rosy and passive on her back, waiting to begin.
She could still hear people moving about: voices and feet, and she kept waiting for that first taste of crying that comes into your throat before you really get started — that feeling that there are two little salty canals just under your ears when you feel sorry for yourself, and that other kind of feeling you have at the base of your nose. Only my nose don’t get red when I cry, she thought, in a placid imminent misery of sadness and meaningless despair, waiting passive and still and without dread for it to begin. But before it began, Mrs. Wiseman entered the room.
She came over to Jenny and Jenny looked up and saw the other’s dark small head, like a deer’s head, against the light, and that dark in
tent way the other had of looking at her; and presently Mrs. Wiseman said:
“What is it, Jenny? What’s the matter?”
But she had forgotten what it was, almost: all she could remember was that there had been something; but now that the other had come Jenny could hardly remember that she had forgotten anything even, and so she just lay and looked up at the other’s dark slender head against the unshaded light.
“Poor child, you have had a hard day, haven’t you?” She put her hand on Jenny’s brow, smoothing back the fine hushed gold of Jenny’s hair, stroking her hand along Jenny’s cheek. Jenny lay quiet under the hand, drowsing her eyes like a stroked kitten, and then she knew she could cry all right, whenever she wanted to. Only it was almost as much fun just lying here and knowing you could cry whenever you got ready to, as the crying itself would be. She opened her blue ineffable eyes.
“Do you suppose he’s really drownded?” she asked. Mrs. Wiseman’s hand stroked Jenny’s cheek, pushing her hair upward and away from her brow.
“I don’t know, darling,” she answered soberly. “He’s a luckless man And anything may happen to a luckless man. But don’t you think about that any more Do you hear?” She leaned her face down to Jenny’s. “Do you hear?” she said again.
“No,” Fairchild said, “he ain’t the sort to get drowned. Some people just ain’t that sort.... I wonder,” he broke off suddenly and gazed at his companions. “Say, do you suppose he went off because he thought that girl was gone for good?”
“Drowned himself for love?” Mark Frost said. “Not in this day and time. People suicide because of money and disease; not for love.”
“I don’t know about that,” Fairchild objected. “They used to die because of love. And human nature don’t change. Its actions achieve different results under different conditions, but human nature don’t change.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 49