Bayard lay as she had left him. He was smoking a cigarette now. Between puffs he dabbed It casually at a saucer on the bed beside him. “Well?” he said.
“You’re going to set the house on fire, that way,” she told him, removing the saucer. “You know Miss Jenny wouldn’t let you do that.”
“I know it,” he agreed, a little sheepishly, and she dragged the table up and set the saucer upon it.
“Can you reach it now?”
“Yes, thanks. Did they give you enough to eat?”
“Oh, yes. Simon’s very insistent, you know. Shall I read some more, or had you rather sleep?”
“Read, if you don’t mind. I think I’ll stay awake, this time.”
“Is that a threat?”
He looked at her quickly as she seated herself and picked up the book. “Say, what happened to you?” he demanded. “You acted like you were all in, before dinner. Simon give you a drink, or what?”
“No, not that bad.” And she laughed, a little wildly, and opened the book. “I forgot to mark the place,” she said, turning the leaves swiftly. “Do you remember—No, you were asleep, weren’t you? Shall I go back to where you stopped listening?”
“No. Just read anywhere. It’s all about alike, I guess. If you’ll move a little nearer, I believe I can stay awake.”
“Sleep if you want to. I don’t mind.”
“Meaning you won’t come any nearer?” he asked, watching her with his bleak gaze. She moved her chair nearer and opened the book again and turned the pages on.
“I think it was about here,” she said, with indecision. “Yes.” She read to herself for a line or two, then she began aloud, read to the end of the page, where her voice trailed off in grave consternation. She turned the next page, then flipped it back. “I read this once; I remember it now.” She turned the leaves on, her serene brow puckered a little. “I must have been asleep too,” she said, and she glanced at him with friendly bewilderment. “I seem to have read pages and pages . . .”
“Oh, begin anywhere,” he repeated.
“No: wait; here it is.” She read again and picked up the thread of the story. Once or twice she raised her eyes swiftly and found him watching her, bleakly but quietly. After a time he was no longer watching her, and at last, finding that his eyes were closed, she thought he slept. She finished the chapter and stopped.
“No,” he said drowsily, “not yet,” Then, when she failed to resume, he opened his eyes and asked for a cigarette. She laid the book aside and struck the match for him, and picked up the book again.
The afternoon wore away. The negroes had gone, and there was no sound about the house save her voice, and the clock at quarter-hour intervals; outside the shadows slanted more and more, peaceful harbingers of evening. He was asleep now, despite his contrary conviction, and after a while she stopped and laid the book away.
The long shape of him lay stiffly in its cast beneath the sheet, and she sat and looked at his bold, still face and the broken travesty of him and her tranquil sorrow overflowed in pity for him. He was so utterly without any affection for anything at all; so—so . . . hard . . . No, that’s not the word. But “cold” eluded her; she could comprehend hardness, but not coldness. . . .
Afternoon drew on; evening was finding itself. She sat musing and still and quiet, gazing out of the window where no wind yet stirred the leaves, as though she were waiting for someone to tell her what to do next, and she had lost all account of time other than as a dark unhurrying stream into which she gazed until the mesmerism of water conjured the water itself away.
He made an indescribable sound, and she turned her head quickly and saw his body straining terrifically in its cast and his clenched hands and his teeth beneath his lifted lips, and as she sat blanched and incapable of further movement he made the sound again.
His breath hissed between his teeth and he screamed, a wordless sound that merged into a rush of profanity, and when she rose at last and stood over him with her hands against her mouth, his body relaxed and from beneath his sweating brow he watched her with wide intent eyes in which terror lurked, and mad, cold fury, and despair.
“He damn near got me, then,” he said in a dry, light voice, still watching her from beyond the fading agony in his wide eyes. “There was a sort of loop of ’em around my chest, and every time he fired, he twisted the loop a little tighter. . . .” He fumbled at the sheet and tried to draw it up to his face. “Can you get me a handkerchief?
Some in that top drawer there.”
“Yes,” she said, “yes,” and she went to the chest of drawers and held her shaking body upright by clinging to it, and found a handkerchief and brought it to him. She tried to dry his brow and face, but at last he took the handkerchief from her and did it himself. “You scared me,” she moaned. “You scared me so bad. I thought . . .”
“Sorry,” he answered shortly. “I don’t do that on purpose. I want a cigarette.”
She gave it to him and struck the match, and again he had to grasp her hand to hold the flame steady, and still holding her wrist, he drew deeply several times. She tried to free her wrist, but his fingers were like steel, and her trembling body betrayed her and she sank in to her chair again, staring at him with terror and dread.
He consumed the cigarette in deep swift draughts, and still holding her wrist he began to talk of his dead brother, without preamble, brutally. It was a brutal tale, without beginning, and crassly and uselessly violent and at times profane and gross, though its very wildness robbed it of offensiveness, just as its grossness kept it from obscenity. And beneath it all, the bitter struggling of his false and stubborn pride and she sitting with her arm taut in his grasp and her other hand pressed against her mouth, watching him with terrified fascination.
“He was zigzagging: that was why I couldn’t get on the Hun. Every time I got my sights on the Hun, John’d barge in between us again, and then I’d have to hoick away before one of the others got on me. Then he quit zigzagging. Soon as I saw him sideslip I knew it was all over.
Then I saw the fire streaking out along his wing, and he was looking back. He wasn’t looking at the Hun at all; he was looking at me. The Hun stopped shooting then, and all of us sort of just sat there for a while. I couldn’t tell what John was up to until I saw him swing his feet out.
Then he thumbed his nose at me like he was always doing and flipped his hand at the Hun and kicked his machine out of the way and jumped. He jumped feet first. You can’t fall far feet first, you know, and pretty soon he sprawled out flat. There was a bunch of cloud right under us and he smacked on it right on his belly, like what we used to call gut-bursters in swimming.
But I never could pick him up below the cloud. I know I got down before he could have come out, because after I was down there his machine came diving out right at me, burning good. I pulled away from it, but the damn thing zoomed past and did a split-turn and came at me again, and I had to dodge.
And so I never could pick him up when he came out of the cloud. I went down fast, until I knew I was below him, and looked again. But I couldn’t find him and then I thought that maybe I hadn’t gone far enough, so I dived again. I saw the machine crash about three miles away, but I never could pick John up again. And then they started shooting at me horn the ground—”
He talked on and her hand came away from her mouth and slid down her other arm and tugged at his fingers.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please!” He ceased then and looked at her and his fingers shifted, and just as she thought she was free they clamped again, and now both of her wrists were prisoners. She struggled, staring at him dreadfully, but he grinned his teeth at her and pressed her crossed arms down upon the bed beside him.
“Please, please,” she implored, struggling; she could feel the flesh of her wrists, feel the bones turn in it as in a loose garment, could see his bleak eyes and the fixed derision of his teeth, and suddenly she swayed forward in her chair and her head dropped between her prisoned arms and she wept with hopeless and dreadful hysteria.
After a while there was
