“It’s all right now.” Jenny craned her neck, peering downward along her flank. “It’s a little long, ain’t it?”
“Yours will dry soon.” She raised Jenny’s face and kissed her on the mouth. “Slip it on, and we’ll hang your things in the sun.”
FOUR O’CLOCK
He strode on in the dust, along the endless shimmering road between pines like fixed explosions on the afternoon. The afternoon was an endless unbearable brightness. Their shapeless, merged shadow moved on: two steps more and he would tread upon it and through it as he did the sparse shadows of pines, but it moved on just ahead of him between the faded forgotten ruts, keeping its distance effortlessly in the uneven dust. The dust was fine as powder and unbroken; only an occasional hoofprint, a fading ghost of a forgotten passage. Above, the metallic implacable sky resting upon his bowed neck and her lax, damp weight upon his back and her cheek against his neck, rubbing monotonously against it. Thin fire darted upon him constantly. He strode on.
The dusty road swam into his vision, passed beneath his feet and so behind like an endless ribbon. He found that his mouth was open, drooling, though no moisture came, and his gums took a thin dry texture like cigarette paper. He closed his mouth, trying to moisten his gums.
Trees without tops passed him, marched up abreast of him, topless, and fell behind; the rank roadside grass approached and became monstrous and separate, blade by blade: lizards hissed in it sibilantly ere it faded behind him. Thin unseen fire darted upon him but he didn’t even feel it, for in his shoulders and arms there was no longer any sensation at all save that of her lax weight upon his back and the brass sky resting against his neck and her moist cheek rubbing against his neck monotonously. He found that his mouth was open again, and he closed it.
“That’s far enough,” she said, presently rousing. “Let me down.” Their merged shadow blended at intervals with the shadows of the tall topless trees, but beyond the shadow of the trees their blended shadow appeared again, two paces ahead of him. And the road went on ahead of him shimmering and blistered and whiter than salt. “Put me down, David,” she repeated.
“No,” he said between his dry, rough teeth, above the remote, imperturbable tramping of his heart, “not tired.” His heart made a remote sound. Each beat seemed to be somewhere in his head, just behind his eyes; each beat was a red tide that temporarily obscured his vision. But it always ended, then another dull surge blinded him for a moment. But remote, like a tramping of soldiers in red uniforms stepping endlessly across the door of a room where he was, where he crouched trying to look out the door. It was a dull, heavy sound, like a steamer’s engines, and he found that he was thinking of water, of a blue monotony of seas. It was a red sound, just back of his eyes.
The road came on, an endless blistering ribbon between worn ruts where nothing had passed for a long time. The sea makes a swishing sound in your ears. Regular. Swish. Swish. Not against your eyes, though. Not against the backs of your eyes. The shadow came out of a blotch of larger shadows cast by trees that had no tops. Two steps more. No, three steps now. Three steps. Getting to be afternoon, getting to be later than it was once. Three steps, then. All right. Man walks on his hind legs; a man can take three steps, a monkey can take three steps, but there is water in a monkey’s cage, in a pan. Three steps. All right. One. Two. Three. Gone. Gone. Gone. It’s a red sound. Not behind your eyes. Sea. See. Sea. See. You’re in a cave, you’re in a cave of dark sound, the sound of the sea is outside the cave. Sea. See. See. See. Not when they keep stepping in front of the door.
There was another sound in his ears now, a faint annoying sound, and the weight on his back was shifting of its own volition, thrusting him downward toward the blistering, blanched dust in which he walked, took three steps a man can take three steps and he staggered, trying to shift his numb arms and get a new grip. His mouth was open again and when he tried to shut it, it made a dry, hissing sound. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three.
“Let me down, I tell you,” she repeated, thrusting herself backward. “Look, there’s a signboard. Let me down, I tell you. I can walk now.”
She thrust herself away from him, twisting her legs from his grasp and forcing him down, and he stumbled and went to his knees. Her feet touched the ground and still astride of his body she braced herself and held him partially up by his shoulders. He stopped at last, on all fours like a beast, his head hanging between his shoulders; and kneeling beside him in the dust she slid her hand under his forehead to lessen the tension on his neck and raised her eyes to the signboard. Mandeville. Fourteen miles, and a crude finger pointing in the direction from which they had come. The front of her dress was damp, blotched darkly with his sweat.
* * *
After the women had hovered Jenny’s draggled helplessness below decks Fairchild removed his hat and mopped his face, looking about upon his fatuous Frankenstein with a sort of childlike astonishment. Then his gaze came to rest on Mr. Talliaferro’s haggard damp despair and he laughed and laughed.
“Laugh you may,” the Semitic man told him, “but much more of this sort of humor and you’ll be doing your laughing ashore. I think now, if Talliaferro’d start an active protest with you as its immediate object, that we’d all be inclined to support him.” Mr. Talliaferro dripped forlornly: an utter and hopeless dejection. The Semitic man looked at him, then he too looked about at the others and upon the now peaceful scene of their recent activities. “One certainly pays a price for art,” he murmured, “one really does.”
“Talliaferro’s the only one who has suffered any actual damage,” Fairchild protested. “And I’m just going to buy him off now. Come on, Talliaferro, we can fix you up.”
“That won’t be sufficient,” the Semitic man said, still ominous. “The rest of us have been assailed enough in our vanities to rise from principle.”
“Well, then, if I have to, I’ll buy you all off,” Fairchild answered. He led the way toward the stairs. But he halted again and looked back at them. “Where’s Gordon?” he asked. Nobody knew. “Well, no matter. He knows where to come.” He went on. “After all,” he said, “there are compensations for art, ain’t there?”
The Semitic man admitted that there were. “Though,” he added, “it’s a high price to pay for whisky.” He descended in his turn. “Yes, we really must get something out of it. We spend enough time on it and suffer enough moral and mental turmoil because of it.”
“Sure,” Fairchild agreed. “The ones that produce it get a lot from it. They get the boon of keeping their time pretty well filled. And that’s a whole lot to expect in this world,” he said profoundly, fumbling at his door. It opened at last and he said, “Oh, here you are. Say, you just missed it.”
Major Ayers, his neglected tumbler beside him and clutching a book, came up for air when they entered, festooned yet with a kind of affable bewilderment. “Missed what?” he repeated.
They all began to tell him about it at once, producing Mr. Talliaferro as evidence from where he lurked unhappily in their midst, for Major Ayers’s inspection and commiseration; and still telling him about it they found seats while Fairchild again assumed the ritual of his hidden suitcase. Major Ayers already had the chair, but the Semitic man attempted the book anyway. “What have you got there?” he asked.
Major Ayers’s hearty bewilderment descended upon him again. “I was passing the time,” he explained quickly. He stared at the book. “It’s quite strange,” he said. Then he added, “I mean, the way — the way they get their books up nowadays. I like the way they get their books up. Jolly, with colors, y’know. But I—” He considered a moment. “I rather lost the habit of reading at Sandhurst,” he explained in a burst of confidence. “And then, on active service constantly. .”