III
It had rained the night before but this morning was soft as a breeze. Birds across the lawn parabolic from tree to tree mocked him as he passed lounging and slovenly in his careless unpressed tweeds, and a tree near the corner of the veranda, turning upward its ceaseless white-bellied leaves, was a swirling silver veil stood on end, a fountain arrested forever: carven water.
He saw that black woman in the garden among roses, blowing smoke upon them from her pursed mouth, bending and sniffing above them, and he joined her with slow anticipated malice mentally stripping her straight dark unemphatic dress downward from her straight back over her firm quiet thighs. Hearing his feet on the gravel, she looked over her shoulder without surprise. Her poised cigarette balanced on its tip a wavering plume of vapor, and Jones said:
“I have come to weep with you.”
She met his stare, saying nothing. Her other hand blanched upon a solid mosaic of red and green, her repose absorbed all motion from her immediate atmosphere so that the plume of her cigarette became rigid as a pencil, flowering its tip into nothingness.
“I mean your hard luck, losing your intended,” he explained.
She raised her cigarette and expelled smoke. He lounged nearer, his expensive jacket, which had evidently had no attention since he bought it, sagging to the thrust of his heavy hands, shaping his fat thighs. His eyes were bold and lazy, clear as a goat’s. She got of him an impression of aped intelligence imposed on an innate viciousness; the cat that walks by himself.
“Who are your people, Mr. Jones?” she asked after a while.
“I am the world’s little brother. I probably have a bar sinister in my ’scutcheon. In spite of me, my libido seems to be a complex regarding decency.”
What does that mean? she wondered. “What is your escutcheon, then?”
“One newspaper-wrapped bundle couchant and rampant, one doorstep stone, on a field noir and damned froid. Device: Quand mangerai-je?”
“Oh. A foundling.” She smoked again.
“I believe that is the term. It is too bad we are contemporary: you might have found the thing yourself. I would not have thrown you down.”
“Thrown me down?”
“You can never tell just exactly how dead these soldiers are, can you? You think you have him and then the devil reveals as much idiocy as a normal sane person, doesn’t he?”
She skilfully pinched the coal from her cigarette end and flipped the stub in a white twinkling arc, grinding the coal under her toe. “If that was an implied compliment—”
“Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism—unless the criticized is not within earshot.”
“It seems to me that is a rather precarious doctrine for one who is—if you will pardon me—not exactly a combative sort.”
“Combative?”
“Well, a fighting man, then. I can’t imagine you lasting very long in an encounter with—say Mr. Gilligan.”
“Does that imply that you have taken Mr. Gilligan as a—protector?”
“No more than it implies that I expect compliments from you. For all your intelligence, you seem to have acquired next to no skill with women.”
Jones, remote and yellowly unfathomable, stared at her mouth. “For instance?”
“For instance, Miss Saunders,” she said, wickedly. “You seem to have let her get away from you, don’t you?”
“Miss Saunders,” repeated Jones, counterfeiting surprise, admiring the way she had turned the tables on him without reverting to sex, “my dear lady, can you imagine anyone making love to her? Epicene. Of course it is different with a man practically dead,” he added, “he probably doesn’t care much whom he marries, nor whether or not he marries at all.”
“No? I understood from your conduct the day I arrived that you had your eye on her. But perhaps I was mistaken after all.”
“Granted I had: you and I seem to be in the same fix now, don’t we?”
She pinched through the stem of a rose, feeling him quite near her. Without looking at him she said:
“You have already forgotten what I told you, haven’t you?”
He did not reply. She released her rose and moved slightly away from him. “That you have no skill in seduction. Don’t you know I can see what you are leading up to—that you and I should console one another? That’s too childish, even for you. I have had to play at too many of these sexual acrostics with poor boys whom I respected even if I didn’t like them.” The rose splashed redly against the front of her dark dress. She secured it with a pin. “Let me give you some advice,” she continued sharply, “the next time you try to seduce anyone, don’t do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.”
Jones removed his yellow stare. His next move was quite feminine: he turned and lounged away without a word. For he had seen Emmy beyond the garden hanging washed clothes upon a line. Mrs. Powers, looking after his slouching figure, said Oh. She had just remarked Emmy raising garments to a line with formal gestures, like a Greek masque.
She watched Jones approach Emmy, saw Emmy, when she heard his step, poise a half-raised cloth in a formal arrested gesture, turning her head across her reverted body. Damn the beast, Mrs. Powers thought, wondering whether or not to follow and interfere. But what good would it do? He’ll only come back later. And playing Cerberus to Emmy. … She removed her gaze and saw Gilligan approaching. He blurted:
“Damn that girl. Do you know what I think? I think she—”
“What girl?”
“What’s her name, Saunders. I think she’s scared of something. She acts like she might have got herself into a jam of some kind and is trying to get out of it by taking the loot right quick. Scared. Flopping around like a fish.”
“Why don’t you like her, Joe? You don’t want her to marry him.”
“No, it ain’t that. It just frets me to see her change her mind every twenty minutes.” He offered her a cigarette which she refused and lit one himself. “I’m jealous, I guess,” he said, after a time, “seeing the loot getting married when neither of ’em want to ’specially, while I can’t get my girl at all. …”
“What, Joe? You married?”
He looked at her steadily. “Don’t talk like that. You know what I mean.”
“Oh, Lord. Twice in one hour.” His gaze was so steady, so serious, that she looked quickly away.
“What’s that?” she asked. She took the rose from her dress and slipped it into his lapel.
“Joe, what is that beast hanging around here for?”
“Who? What beast?” He followed her eyes. “Oh. That damn feller. I’m going to beat hell out of him on principle, some day. I don’t like him.”
“Neither do I. Hope I’m there to see you do it.”
“Has he been bothering you?” he asked quickly. She gave him her steady gaze.
“Do you think he could?”
“That’s right,” he admitted. He looked at Jones and Emmy again. “That’s another thing. That Saunders girl lets him fool around her. I don’t like anybody that will stand for him.”
“Don’t be silly, Joe. She’s just young and more or less of a fool about men.”
“If that’s your polite way of putting it, I agree with you.” His eyes touched her smooth cheek blackly winged by her hair. “If you had let a man think you was going to marry him you wouldn’t blow hot and cold like that.”
She stared away across the garden and he repeated: “Would you, Margaret?”
“You are a fool yourself, Joe. Only you are a nice fool.” She met his intent gaze and he said Margaret? She put her swift strong hand on his arm. “Don’t Joe. Please.”
He rammed his hands in his pockets, turning away. They walked on in silence.