‘Not to mention dragging his sister along to make her tell the lie.’
His uncle was looking at him, not quizzical now, not even staring: just looking.
‘Why is it,’ his uncle said, ‘that people of seventeen—’
‘Eighteen,’ he said. Or almost.’
‘All right,’ his uncle said. ‘Eighteen or almost — are so convinced that octogenarians like me are incapable of accepting or respecting or even remembering what the young ones consider passion and love?’
‘Maybe it’s because the old ones can no longer tell the difference between that and simple decency, like not dragging your sister six miles at ten oclock on a cold December night to make her tell a lie.’
‘All right,’ his uncle said. ‘TOUCHE then. Will that do? Because I know one octogenarian of fifty who will put nothing past seventeen and eighteen and nineteen — and for that matter, sixteen too — , least of all, passion and love or decency or dragging your sister six or twenty-six miles at night to make her tell a lie or break a safe or commit a murder either — if he had to drag her. She didn’t have to come; at least, I saw no shackles.’
‘But she came,’ he said. ‘And she told the lie. She denied she and Captain Gualdres were ever engaged. But when you asked her right out if she loved him, she said Yes.’
‘And got dismissed from the room for saying it,’ his uncle said. That was when she told the truth — which incidentally I don’t put past seventeen and eighteen and nineteen either when there is a practical reason for it. She came in here, the two of them did, with the lie all rehearsed to tell me. But she lost her nerve. So they were each trying to use the other to accomplish a purpose. Only it’s not the same purpose.’
‘But at least they both quit when they saw it had failed. He quit pretty quick. He quit almost as hard as he started. I thought for a minute he was going to throw her out into the hall like she might have been a rag doll.’
‘Yes,’ his uncle said. Too quick. He quit that plan to try something else as soon as he found out he couldn’t depend on her. And she had already quit before then. She quit as soon as she began to believe, either that he was getting out of hand, or that I was not going to swallow it and so maybe I would get out of hand too. So they have both already decided to try something else, and I don’t like it. Because they are dangerous. Dangerous not because they are stupid; stupidity (your pardon, sir) is to be expected at that age. But because they have never had anybody to tell them they are young and stupid whom they had enough respect for or fear of to believe. — Move.’
And that seemed to be all of it as far as his uncle was concerned; at least on this subject he was going to get no more change from him apparently.
It seemed to be all of it indeed. He moved. He had planned it a long time back too, a longer time back than his uncle, counting as airmen do by contiguous and not elapsed time, because he had not had to make a landing long enough to repel an invading force and then get airborne again, as his uncle had. He checked his uncle’s queen and her castle both with the horse. Then his uncle fed him the pawn which only he, Charles, seemed to have believed that nobody had forgotten about, and he moved and then his uncle moved and then as usual it was all over.
‘Maybe I should have taken the queen twenty minutes ago when I could, and let the castle go,’ he said.
‘Always,’ his uncle said, starting to separate the white and the black pieces as he, Charles, reached for the box on the lower shelf of the smoking stand. ‘You couldn’t have taken them both without two moves. And a knight can move two squares at once and even in two directions at once. But he cant move twice’ — shoving the black pieces across the board toward him. ‘I’ll take the white this time and you can try it.’
‘It’s after ten,’ he said. It’s almost ten thirty.’
‘So it is,’ his uncle said, setting up the black pieces. ‘It often is.’
‘I thought maybe I ought to be going to bed,’ he said.
‘Maybe you ought,’ his uncle said, still absolutely immediate and absolutely bland. ‘You don’t mind if I stay up, do you?’
‘Maybe you would have a better game then,’ he said. ‘Playing against yourself, at least you’d have the novelty of being surprised at your opponent’s blunders.’
‘Αll right, all right,’ his uncle said. ‘Didn’t I say TOUCHE?
At least put the pieces back on the board whether you use them or not.’
That was all he knew then. He didn’t even suspect any more. But he learned fast — or caught on fast. This time they heard the feet first — the light sharp brittle staccato clapping that girls make, coming up the hall. He had already learned, from the time he had spent in his uncle’s quarters, that you really never actually hear the sound of feet in any house or building containing at least two more or less separate establishments.
So he realised in the same moment (which was before she even knocked, even before his uncle said, ‘Now it’s your time to be too late to open it’) that not only had his uncle known all the time that she would come back, but that he must have known it too. Only he thought at first that the boy had sent her back; it wasn’t until afterward that he thought to wonder how she had managed to get away from him that quick.
She looked as if she had been running ever since, anyway, standing in the door for a moment after he opened it, holding the fur coat together at her throat with one hand and the long white dress flowing away from beneath it. And maybe the terror was still in her face, but there wasn’t anything dazed about her eyes. And she even looked at him this time, good, when on the other one, as near as he could tell, she never had seen that he was in the room.
Then she quit looking at him. She came in and crossed the room fast to where his uncle (this time) stood beside the chessboard.
‘I must see you alone,’ she said.
‘You are,’ his uncle said. ‘This is Charles Mallison, my nephew.’ His uncle turned one of the chairs away from the chessboard. ‘Sit down.’
But she didn’t move.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Alone.’
‘If you cant tell me the truth with three here, you probably wont with just two,’ his uncle said. ‘Sit down.’
Still she didn’t move for a space. He, Charles, couldn’t see her face because her back was toward him. But her voice had changed completely.
‘Yes,’ she said. She turned toward the chair. Then she stopped again, already bending to sit down, half-turned and looking at the door as if she not only expected to hear the brother’s feet coming up the hall, but as if she were on the point of running back to the front door to look up and down the street for him.
But it was hardly a pause, because she sat down, collapsing on down into the chair in that rapid swirling of skirts and legs both, as girls do, as if their very joints were hinged differently and at different places from men’s.
‘Can I smoke?’ she said.
But before his uncle could reach for the box of cigarettes which his uncle himself didn’t smoke, she had produced one from somewhere — no platinum-and-jewel case as you expected, but a single cigarette bent and crumpled and already shedding tobacco as if it had lain loose in her pocket for days, holding her wrist in the other hand as though to steady it while she leaned the cigarette to the match his uncle struck. Then she expelled that one puff and laid the cigarette in the ashtray and put her hands in her lap, not clenched, just lying tight and small and still against the dark fur.
‘He’s in danger,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Ah,’ his uncle said. Tour brother is in danger.’
‘No no,’ she said, almost pettishly. ‘Not Max: Sehas — Captain Gualdres.’
‘I see,’ his uncle said. ‘Captain Gualdres is in danger. I’ve heard he rides hard, though I’ve never seen him on a horse myself.’
She took up the cigarette and drew on it twice rapidly and mashed it into the tray and put her hand back into her lap and looked at his uncle again.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I love him. I told you that. But it’s all right. It’s just one of those things. That you cant help. Mother saw him first, or he saw her first. Anyway, they belong to the same generation. Which I don’t, since S — Captain Gualdres is a good eight or ten years older than I am, maybe more. But no matter. Because that’s not it. He’s in danger. And even if he did give me the run-around for Mother, I still don’t want to see him hurt. At least
