VIII
This, the spring of 1919, was the day of the Boy, of him who had been too young for soldiering. For two years he had had a dry time of it. Of course, girls had used him during the scarcity of men, but always in such a detached impersonal manner. Like committing fornication with a beautiful woman who chews gum steadily all the while. O Uniform, O Vanity. They had used him but when a uniform showed up he got the air.
Up to that time uniforms could all walk: they were not only fashionable and romantic, but they were also quite keen on spending what money they had and they were also going too far away and too immediately to tell on you. Of course it was silly that some uniforms had to salute others, but it was nice, too. Especially, if the uniform you had caught happened to be a salutee. And heaven only knows how much damage among feminine hearts a set of pilot’s wings was capable of.
And the shows:
Beautiful, pure girls (American) in afternoon or evening gowns (doubtless under Brigade Orders) caught in deserted fire trenches by Prussian Hussars (on passes signed by Belasco) in parade uniform; courtesans in Paris frocks demoralizing Brigade staffs, having subalterns with arrow collar profiles and creased breech, whom the generals all think may be German spies, and handsome old generals, whom the subalterns all think may be German spies, glaring at each other across her languid body while corporal comedians entertain the beautiful-limbed and otherwise idle Red Cross nurses (American). The French women present are either marquises or whores or German spies, sometimes both, sometimes all three. The marquises may be told immediately because they all wear sabots, having given their shoes with the rest of their clothing to the French army, retaining only a pair of forty carat diamond earrings. Their sons are all aviators who have been out on a patrol since the previous Tuesday, causing the marquises to be a trifle distrait. The regular whores patronize them, while the German spies make love to the generals.
A courtesan (doubtless also under Brigade Orders) later saves the sector by sex appeal after gunpowder had failed, and the whole thing is wound up with a sort of garden party near a papier-mâché dugout in which the army sits in sixty-pound packs, all three smoking cigarettes, while the Prussian Guard gnashes its teeth at them from an adjacent cardboard trench.
A chaplain appears who, to indicate that the soldiers love him because he is one of them, achieves innuendoes about home and mother and fornication. A large new flag is flown and the enemy fires at it vainly with .22 rifles. The men on our side cheer, led by the padre.
“What,” said a beautiful, painted girl, not listening, to James Dough who had been for two years a corporal-pilot in a French chasse escadrille, “is the difference between an American Ace and a French or British aviator?”
“About six reels,” answered James Dough glumly (such a dull man! Where did Mrs. Wardle get him?) who had shot down thirteen enemy craft and had himself been crashed twice, giving him eleven points without allowing for evaporation.
“How nice. Is that so, really? You had movies in France, too, then?”
“Yes. Gave us something to do in our spare time.”
“Yes,” she agreed, offering him her oblivious profile. “You must have had an awfully good time while we poor women were slaving here rolling bandages and knitting things. I hope women can fight in the next war: I had much rather march and shoot guns than knit. Do you think they will let women fight in the next war?” she asked, watching a young man dancing, limber as a worm.
“I expect they’ll have to.” James Dough shifted his artificial leg, nursing his festering arm between the bones of which a tracer bullet had passed. “If they want to have another one.”
“Yes.” She yearned toward the agile, prancing youth. His body was young in years, his hair was glued smoothly to his skull. His face, under a layer of powder, was shaved and pallid, sophisticated, and he and his blonde and briefly-skirted partner slid and poised and drifted like a dream. The negro cornetist stayed his sweating crew and the assault arrested withdrew, leaving the walls of silence peopled by the unconquered defenders of talk. Boys of both sexes swayed arm in arm, taking sliding tripping steps, waiting for the music and the agile youth, lounging immaculately, said: “Have this dance?”
She said “Hel—lo,” sweetly drawling. “Have you met Mr. Dough? Mr. Rivers, Mr. Dough. Mr. Dough is a visitor in town.”
Mr. Rivers patronized Mr. Dough easily and repeated: “Dance the next?” Mr. Rivers had had a year at Princeton.
“I’m sorry. Mr. Dough doesn’t dance,” answered Miss Cecily Saunders faultlessly. Mr. Rivers, well bred, with all the benefits of a year at a cultural center, mooned his blank face at her.
“Aw, come on. You aren’t going to sit out all evening, are you? What did you come here for?”
“No, no: later, perhaps. I want to talk to Mr. Dough. You hadn’t thought of that, had you?”
He stared at her quietly and emptily. At last he mumbled “Sorry,” and lounged away.
“Really,” began Mr. Dough, “not on my account, you know. If you want to dance—”
“Oh, I have to see those—those infants all the time. Really, it is quite a relief to meet someone who knows more than dancing and—and—dancing. But tell me about yourself. Do you like Charlestown? I can see that you are accustomed to larger cities, but don’t you find something charming about these small towns?”
Mr. Rivers roved his eye, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation, but he moved on toward a group of men standing and sitting near the steps, managing in some way to create the illusion of being both participants and spectators at the same time. They were all of a kind: there was a kinship like an odor among them, a belligerent self-effacement. Wallflowers. Wallflowers. Good to talk to the hostess and dance with the duds. But even the talkative hostess had given them up now. One or two of them, bolder than the rest, but disseminating that same faint identical odor stood beside girls, waiting for the music to start again, but the majority of them herded near the steps, touching each other as if for mutual protection. Mr. Rivers heard phrases in bad French and he joined them, aware of his own fitted dinner jacket revealing his matchless linen.
“May I see you a minute, Madden?”
The man quietly smoking detached himself from the group. He was not big, yet there was something big and calm about him: a sense of competent inertia after activity.
“Yes?” he said.
“Do me a favor, will you?”
“Yes?” the man repeated courteously noncommittal.
“There’s a man here who can’t dance, that nephew of Mrs. Wardle’s, that was hurt in the war. Cecily—I mean Miss Saunders—has been with him all evening. She wants to dance.”
The other watched him with calm intentness and Mr. Rivers suddenly lost his superior air.
“To tell the truth, I want to dance with her. Would you mind sitting with him a while? I’d be awfully obliged to you if you would.”
“Does Miss Saunders want to dance?”
“Sure she does. She said so.” The other’s gaze was so penetrating that he felt moisture and drew his handkerchief, wiping his powdered brow lightly, not to disarrange his hair. “God damn it,” he burst out, “you soldiers think you own things, don’t you?”
Columns, imitation Doric, supported a remote small balcony, high and obscure, couples strolled in, awaiting the music, talk and laughter and movement distorted by a lax transparency of curtains inside the house. Along the balustrade of the veranda red eyes of cigarettes glowed; a girl stooping ostrich-like drew up her stocking and light from a window found her young shapeless leg. The negro cornetist, having learned in his thirty years a century of the white man’s lust, blinked his dispassionate eye, leading his crew in a fresh assault. Couples erupted in, clasped and danced; vague blurs locked together on the lawn beyond the light.
“… Uncle Joe, Sister Kate, all shimmy like jelly on a plate. …”
Mr. Rivers felt like a chip in a current: he knew a sharp puerile anger. Then as they turned the angle of the porch he saw Cecily clothed delicately in a silver frock, fragile as spun glass. She carried a green feather fan and her slim, animated turned body, her nervous prettiness, filled him with speculation. The light falling diffidently on her, felt her arm, her short body, suavely indicated her long, virginal legs.
“… Uncle Bud, ninety-two, shook his cane and shimmied too. …”
Dr. Gary danced by without his glass of water: they avoided him and Cecily looked up, breaking her speech.
“Oh, Mr. Madden! How do you do?” She gave him her hand and presented him to Mr. Dough. “I’m awfully flattered that you decided to speak to me—or did Lee have to drag you over? Ah, that’s how it was. You were going to ignore me, I know you were. Of course we can’t hope to compete with French women—”
Madden protested conventionally and she made room for him beside her.
“Sit down. Mr. Dough was a soldier, too, you know.”
Mr. Rivers said heavily: “Mr. Dough will excuse you. How about a dance? Time to go home soon.”
She civilly ignored him and James Dough shifted his leg. “Really, Miss Saunders, please dance, I wouldn’t spoil your evening for anything.”
“Do you hear that, Mr. Madden? The man is driving me away. Would you do that?” she tilted her eyes at him effectively. Then she turned to Dough with restrained graceful impulsiveness. “I still call him Mr. Madden, though we have known each other all our lives. But then he was in the war, and I wasn’t. He is so—so experienced, you see. And I am only a girl. If I had been a boy like Lee I’d have gone and been a lieutenant in shiny boots or a general or something by now. Wouldn’t I?” Her turning body was graceful, impulsive: a fragile spontaneity. “I cannot call you mister any more. Do you mind?”
“Let’s dance.” Mr. Rivers, tapping his foot to the music, watched this with sophisticated boredom. He yawned openly. “Let’s dance.”
“Rufus, ma’am,” said Madden.
“Rufus. And you mustn’t say ma’am to me any longer. You won’t, will you?”
“No ma—I mean, no.”
“Oh, you nearly forgot then—”
“Let’s dance,” repeated Mr. Rivers.
“—but you won’t forget any more. You won’t, will you?”
“No, no.”
“Don’t let him forget, Mr. Dough. I am depending on you.”
“Good, good. But you go and dance with Mr. Smith here.”
She rose. “He is sending me away,” she stated with mock humility. Then she shrugged narrowly, nervously. “I know we aren’t as attractive as French women, but you must make the best of us. Poor Lee, here, doesn’t know any French women so we can please him. But you soldiers don’t like us any more, I’m afraid.”
“Not at all: we give you up to Mr. Lee only on condition that you come back to us.”
“Now that’s better. But you are saying that just to be polite,” she accused.
“No, no, if you don’t dance with Mr. Lee, here, you will be impolite. He has asked you several times.”
She shrugged again nervously. “So I guess I must dance, Lee. Unless you have changed your mind, too, and don’t want me?”
He took her hand. “Hell, come on.”
Restraining him, she turned to the other two, who had risen also. “You will wait for me?”
They assured her, and she released them. Dough’s creaking, artificial knee was drowned by the music and she gave herself to Mr. Rivers’ embrace. They took the syncopation, he felt her shallow breast and her knees briefly, and said: “What you doing to him?” slipping his arm further around her, feeling the swell of her hip under his hand.
“Doing to him?”
“Ah, let’s dance.”
Locked together they poised and slid and poised, feeling the beat of the music, toying with it, eluding it, seeking it again, drifting like a broken dream.