Cecily stared at her mother and her face flamed. ‘You think — you said that to — Oh, you’re not my mother: you are somebody else.’ Suddenly she cried like a child, wide-mouthed, not even hiding her face. She whirled running. ‘Don’t ever speak to me again,’ she gasped and fled wailing up the stairs. And a door slammed.
Mrs Saunders sat thinking, tapping her teeth monotonously with a finger-nail. After a while she rose, and going to the telephone, she called her husband downtown.
7
Voices
The Town:
I wonder what that woman that came home with him thinks about it, now he’s taken another one. If I were that Saunders girl I wouldn’t take a man that brought another woman right up to my door, you might say. And that new one, what’ll she do now? Go away and get another man, I guess. Hope she’ll learn enough to get a well one this time. . . . Funny goings-on in that house. And a preacher of the gospel, too. Even if he is Episcopal. If he wasn’t such a nice man. . . .
George Farr:
It isn’t true, Cecily, darling, sweetheart. You can’t, you can’t. After your body prone and narrow as a pool dividing. . . .
The Town:
I hear that boy of Mahon’s, that hurt fellow, and that girl of Saunders’s are going to get married. My wife said they never would, but I said all the time . . .
Mrs Burney:
Men don’t know. They should of looked out for him better. Saying he never wanted for nothing. . . .
George Farr:
Cecily, Cecily. . . . Is this death?
The Town:
There’s that soldier that came with Mahon. I guess that woman will take him now. But maybe she don’t have to. He might have been saving time himself.
Well, wouldn’t you, if you was him?
Sergeant Madden:
Powers. Powers. . . . A man’s face spitted like a moth on a lance of flame. Powers. . . . Rotten luck for her.
Mrs Burney:
Dewey, my boy. . . .
Sergeant Madden:
No, ma’am. He was all right. We did all we could. . . .
Cecily Saunders:
Yes, yes, Donald. I will. I will! I will get used to your poor face, Donald! George, my dear love, take me away, George!
Sergeant Madden:
Yes, yes, he was all right. . . . A man on a fire-step, screaming with fear.
George Farr:
Cecily, how could you? How could you?
The Town:
That girl . . . time she was took in hand by somebody. Running around town nearly nekkid. Good thing he’s blind, ain’t it?
Guess she hopes he’ll stay blind, too. . . .
Margaret Powers:
No, no, good-bye, dear dead Dick, ugly dead Dick. . . .
Joe Gilligan:
He is dying, he gets the women he doesn’t want even, while I am not dying. . . . Margaret, what shall I do? What can I say?
Emmy:
Come here, Emmy? Ah, come to me, Donald. But he is dead.
Cecily Saunders:
George, my lover, my poor dear. . . . What have we done?
Mrs Burney:
Dewey, Dewey, so brave, so young. . . .
(This was Donald, my son. He is dead.)
8
Mrs Powers mounted the stairs under Mrs Saunders’s curious eyes. The older woman had been cold, almost rude, but Mrs Powers had won her point, and choosing Cecily’s door from her mother’s directions she knocked.
After a while she knocked again and called: ‘Miss Saunders.’
Silence was again a hushed tense interval, then Cecily’s muffled voice came through the door:
‘Go away.’
‘Please,’ she insisted. ‘I want to see you a moment.’
‘No, no. Go away.’
‘But I must see you.’ There was no reply and she added: ‘I have just talked to your mother, and to Dr Mahon. Let me come in, won’t you?’
She heard movement, a bed, then another interval. Fool, taking time to powder her face. But you would, too, she told herself. The door opened under her hand.
Powder only made the traces of tears more visible, and Cecily turned her back as Mrs Powers entered the room. She could see the indentation of a body on the bed, and a crumpled pillow. Mrs Powers, not being offered a chair, sat on the foot of the bed, and Cecily, across the room, leaning in a window and staring out, said ungraciously: ‘What do you want?’
How like her this room is! thought the caller, observing pale maple and a triple mirrored dressing-table bearing a collection of fragile crystal, and delicate clothing carelessly about on chairs, on the floor. On a chest of drawers was a small camera picture, framed.
‘May I look?’ she asked, knowing instinctively who it was. Cecily, stubbornly presenting her back in a thin formless garment through which light from the window passed revealing her narrow torso, made no reply. Mrs Powers approached and saw Donald Mahon, bareheaded, in a shabby unbuttoned tunic, standing before a corrugated iron wall, carrying a small resigned dog casually by the scruff of the neck, like a handbag.
‘That’s so typical of him, isn’t it?’ she commented. Cecily said rudely:
‘What do you want with me?’
‘That’s exactly what your mother asked me, you know. She seemed to think I was interfering also.’
‘Well, aren’t you? Nobody asked you to come here.’ Cecily turned, leaning her hip against the window ledge.
‘I don’t think it’s interference when it’s warranted though. Do you?’
‘Warranted? Who asked you to interfere? Did Donald do it, or are you trying to scare me off? You needn’t tell me Donald asked you to get him out of it: it will be a lie.’
‘But I’m not: I don’t intend to. I’m trying to help you both.’
‘Oh, you are against me. Everybody’s against me, except Donald. And you keep him shut up like a — prisoner.’ She turned quickly and leaned her head against the window.
Mrs Powers sat quietly examining her, her frail revealed body under the silly garment she wore — a webby cloying thing worse than nothing and a fit complement to the single belaced garment it revealed above the long hushed gleams of her stockings . . .
If Cellini had been a hermit-priest he might have imagined her, Mrs Powers thought, wishing mildly she could see the other naked. At last she rose from the bed and crossed to the window.
Cecily kept her head stubbornly averted, and expecting tears, she touched the girl’s shoulder. ‘Cecily,’ she said, quietly.
Cecily’s green eyes were dry, stony, and she moved swiftly across the room with her delicate narrow stride. She stood holding the door open. Mrs Powers, at the window, did not accept. Did she ever, ever forget herself? she wondered, observing the studied grace of the girl’s body turned on the laxed ball of a thigh.
Cecily met her gaze with one of haughty commanding scorn.
‘Won’t you even leave the room when you are asked?’ she said, making her swift, coarse voice sound measured and cold.
Mrs Powers thinking O hell, what’s the use? moved so as to lean her thigh against the bed. Cecily, without changing her position, moved the door for emphasis. Standing quietly, watching her studied fragility (her legs are rather sweet, she admitted, but why all this posing for me? I’m not a man) Mrs Powers ran her palm slowly along the smooth wood of the bed. Suddenly the other slammed the door and returned to the window. Mrs Powers followed.
‘Cecily, why can’t we talk about it sensibly?’ The girl made no reply, ignoring her, crumpling the curtain in her fingers. ‘Miss Saunders?’
‘Why can’t you let me alone?’ Cecily flared suddenly, flaming out at her. ‘I don’t want to talk to you about it. Why do you come to me?’ Her eyes darkened: they were no longer hard. ‘If you want him, take him, then. You have every chance you could want, keeping him shut up there so that even I can’t see him!’
‘But I don’t want him. I am trying to straighten things out for him. Don’t you know that if I had wanted him I would have married him before I brought him home?’
‘You tried it, and couldn’t. That’s why you didn’t. Oh, don’t say it wasn’t,’ she rushed on as the other would have spoken. ‘I saw it that first day. That you were after him. And if you aren’t, why do you keep on staying here?’
‘You know that’s a lie,’ Mrs Powers replied, calmly.
‘Then what makes you so interested in him, if you aren’t in love with him?’
(This is hopeless.) She put her hand on the other’s arm. Cecily shrank quickly away and she returned to lean again against the bed. She said:
‘Your mother is against this, and Donald’s father expects it. But what chance will you have against your mother?’ (Against yourself?)
‘I certainly don’t need any advice from you,’ Cecily turned her head, her haughtiness, her anger, were gone and in their place was a thin hopeless despair. Even her voice, her whole attitude, had changed. ‘Don’t you see how miserable I am?’ she said, pitifully. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude to you, but I know what to do. I don’t know. . . . I am in such trouble: something terrible has happened to me. Please!’
Mrs Powers, seeing her face, went to her quickly, putting her arm about the girl’s narrow shoulders. Cecily avoided her. ‘Please, please go.’
‘Tell me what it is.’
‘No, no, I can’t. Please—’
They paused, listening. Footsteps approaching, stopped beyond the door: a knock, and her father’s voice called her name.
‘Yes?’
‘Dr Mahon is downstairs. Can you come down?’
The
