‘Come,’ Mrs Powers said.
Cecily’s eyes went dark again and she whispered. ‘No, no, no!’ trembling.
‘Sis,’ her father repeated.
‘Say yes,’ Mrs Powers whispered.
‘Yes, daddy. I’m coming.’
‘All right.’ The footsteps retreated and Mrs Powers drew Cecily towards the door. The girl resisted.
‘I can’t go like this,’ she said, hysterically.
‘Yes, you can. It’s all right. Come.’
Mrs Saunders, sitting militant, formal, and erect upon her chair, was saying as they entered:
‘May I ask what this — this woman has to do with it?’
Her husband chewed a cigar. Light falling upon the rector’s face held it like a grey bitten mask. Cecily ran to him. ‘Uncle Joe!’ she cried.
‘Cecily!’ her mother said, sharply. ‘What do you mean, coming down like that?’
The rector rose, huge and black, embracing her. ‘Uncle Joe!’ she repeated, clinging to him.
‘Now, Robert,’ Mrs Saunders began. But the rector interrupted her.
‘Cecily,’ he said, raising her face. She twisted her chin and hid her face against his coat.
‘Robert,’ said Mrs Saunders.
The rector spoke greyly. ‘Cecily, we have talked it over together, and we think — your mother and father—’
She moved in her silly, revealing garment, ‘Daddy?’ she exclaimed, staring at her father. He would not meet her gaze but sat slowly twisting his cigar. The rector continued:
‘We think that you will only — that you — They say that Donald is going to die, Cecily,’ he finished.
Lithe as a sapling she thrust herself backward against his arm, bending, to see his face, staring at him. ‘Oh, Uncle Joe! Have you gone back on me, too?’ she cried, passionately.
9
George Farr had been quite drunk for a week. His friend, the drug clerk, thought that he was going crazy. He had become a local landmark, a tradition: even the town soaks began to look upon him with respect, calling him by his given name, swearing undying devotion to him.
In the intervals of belligerent or rollicking or maudlin inebriation he knew periods of devastating despair like a monstrous bliss, like that of a caged animal, of a man being slowly tortured to death: a minor monotony of pain. As a rule, though, he managed to stay fairly drunk. Her narrow body sweetly dividing naked . . . have another drink. . . . I’ll kill you if you keep on fooling around her . . . my girl, my girl . . . her narrow . . . ‘nother drink . . . oh, God, oh, God . . . sweetly dividing for another . . . have drink, what hell I care, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. . . .
Though ‘nice’ people no longer spoke to him on the streets he was, after a fashion, cared for and protected by casual acquaintances and friends both black and white, as in the way of small towns particularly and of the ‘inferior’ classes anywhere.
He sat glassy-eyed among fried smells, among noises, at an oilcloth-covered table.
‘Clu — hoverrrrrr blarrrr — sums, clo — ver blarrrr — summmzzzz,’ sang a nasal voice terribly, the melody ticked off at spaced intervals by a small monotonous sound, like a clock-bomb going off. Like this:
Clo (tick) ver (tick) rrr (tick) (tick) bl (tick) rrs (tick) sss (tick) umm (tick) zzz.
Beside him sat two of his new companions, quarrelling, spitting, holding hands, and weeping over the cracked interminability of the phonograph record. ‘Clo — verrrr blar — sums,’ it repeated with saccharine passion; when it ran down they repaired to a filthy alley behind the filthier kitchen to drink of George Farr’s whisky. Then they returned and played the record through again, clutching hands while frank tears slid down their otherwise unwashed cheeks. ‘Cloooooooover blaaaaaarsummmssss. . . .’
Truly vice is a dull and decorous thing: no life in the world is as hard, requiring so much sheer physical and moral strength as the so-called ‘primrose path’. Being ‘good’ is much less trouble.
‘Clo — ver blar — sums. . . .’
. . . After a while his attention was called to the fact that someone had been annoying him for some time. Focusing his eyes he at last recognized the proprietor in an apron on which he must have dried his dishes for weeks. ‘What’n ‘ell y’ want?’ he asked, with feeble liquid belligerence, and the man finally explained to him that he was wanted on the telephone in a neighbouring drugstore. He rose, pulling himself together.
‘Clu — hoooooooover blar — sums. . . .’
After a few years he languished from a telephone mouthpiece holding himself erect, watching without interest a light globe over the prescription desk describing slow concentric circles.
‘George?’ There was something in the unknown voice speaking his name, such anguish, as to almost shock him sober. ‘George.’
‘This George . . . hello. . . .
‘George, it’s Cecily. Cecily. . . .’
Drunkenness left him like a retreating wave. He could feel his heart stop, then surge, deafening him, blinding him with his own blood.
‘George. . . . Do you hear me?’ (Ah, George, to have been drunk now!) (Cecily, oh, Cecily!) ‘Yes! Yes!’ gripping the instrument as though this would keep her against escape. ‘Yes, Cecily?
Cecily! It’s George. . . .’
‘Come to me, now. At once.’
‘Yes, yes. Now?’
‘Come, George, darling. Hurry, hurry. . . .’
‘Yes!’ he cried again. ‘Hello, hello!’ The line made no response. He waited but it was dead. His heart pounded and pounded, hotly; he could taste his own hot bitter blood in his throat. (Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
He plunged down the length of the store and, while a middle-aged clerk filling a prescription poised his bottle to watch in dull amazement, George Farr tore his shirt open at the throat and thrust his whole head beneath a gushing water tap in a frenzy of activity.
(Cecily, oh, Cecily!)
10
He seemed so old, so tired, as he sat at the head of the table toying with his food, as if the very fibre of him had lost all resilience. Gilligan ate with his usual informal appetite and Donald and Emmy sat side by side so that Emmy could help him.
Emmy enjoyed mothering him, now that she could never have him again for a lover; she objected with passionate ardour when Mrs Powers offered to relieve her. The Donald she had known was dead; this one was but a sorry substitute, but Emmy was going to make the best of it, as women will. She had even got accustomed to taking her food after it had cooled.
Mrs Powers sat watching them. Emmy’s shock of no-particular-colour hair was near his worn head in intent devotion, her labour-worried hand seemed to have an eye of its own, so quick, so tender, it was to anticipate him and guide his hand with the food she had prepared for him. Mrs Powers wondered which Donald Emmy loved the more, wondering if she had not perhaps forgotten the former one completely save as a symbol of sorrow. Then the amazing logical thought occurred to her that here was the woman for Donald to marry.
Of course it was. Why had no one thought of that before? Then she told herself that no one had done very much thinking during the whole affair, that it had got on without any particular drain on any intelligence. Why did we take it for granted that he must marry Cecily, and no other? Yet we all accepted it as an arbitrary fact and off we went with our eyes closed and our mouths open, like hounds in full cry.
But would Emmy take him? Wouldn’t she be so frightened at the prospect that she’d be too selfconscious with him afterward to care for him as skilfully as she does now; wouldn’t it cause her to confuse in her mind to his detriment two separate Donalds — a lover and an invalid? I wonder what Joe will think about it.
She looked at Emmy impersonal as Omnipotence, helping Donald with effacing skill, seeming to envelop him, yet never touching him. Anyway, I’ll ask her, she thought, sipping her tea.
Night was come.
Tree-frogs, remembering last night’s rain, resumed their monotonous moulding of liquid beads of sound; grass blades and leaves losing shapes of solidity gained shapes of sound: the still suspire of earth, of the ground preparing for slumber; flowers by day, spikes of bloom, became, with night, spikes of scent; the silver tree at the corner of the house hushed its never-still never-escaping ecstasy. Already toads hopped along concrete pavements drinking prisoned heat through their dragging bellies.
Suddenly the rector started from his dream. ‘Tut, tut. We are making mountains from mole hills, as usual. If she wants to marry Donald I am sure her people will not withhold their consent always. Why should they object to their daughter marrying him? Do you know—’
‘Hush!’ she said. He looked up at her startled, then, seeing her warning glance touch Mahon’s oblivious head, he understood. She saw Emmy’s wide shocked eyes on her and she rose at her place. ‘You are through, aren’t you?’ she said to the rector. ‘Suppose we go to the study.’
Mahon sat quiet, chewing. She could not tell whether or not he heard. She passed behind Emmy and leaning to her whispered ‘I want to speak to you. Don’t say anything to Donald.’
The rector, preceding her, fumbled the light on in the study. ‘You must be careful,’ she told him, ‘how you talk before him, how you tell him.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed apologetically. ‘I was so deep in thought.’
‘I know you were. I don’t think it is necessary to tell him at all, until he asks.’
‘And that will never be. She loves Donald: she will not let her people
