Reflections in a Golden Eye (2 page)

As to his relations with the other two fundaments, his position was simple enough. In his
balance between the two great instincts, toward life and toward death, the scale was
heavily weighted to one side to death. Because of this the Captain was a coward.

Captain Penderton was also something of a savant. During the years when he was a young
Lieutenant and a bachelor he had had much opportunity to read, as his fellow officers
tended to avoid his room in the bachelors' quarters or else to visit him in pairs or
groups. His head was filled with statistics and information of scholarly exactitude. For
instance, he could describe in detail the curious digestive apparatus of a lobster or the
life history of a Trilobite. He spoke and wrote three languages gracefully. He knew
something of astronomy and had read much poetry. But in spite of his knowledge of many
separate facts, the Captain never in his life had had an idea in his head. For the
formation of an idea involves the fusion of two or more known facts. And this the Captain
had not the courage to do.

As he sat alone at his desk this evening, unable to work, he did not question himself as
to his feelings. He thought again of the face of Private Williams. Then he recollected
that the Langdons next door were dining with them that evening. Major Morris Langdon was
his wife's lover, but the Captain did not dwell on this. Instead he suddenly remembered an
evening long ago, soon after he had married. On that evening he had felt this same unhappy
restlessness and had seen fit to relieve himself in a curious manner. He had driven into a
town near the post where he was then stationed, had parked his car, and had walked for a
long time in the streets. It was a late winter night. In the course of this walk the
Captain came upon a tiny kitten hovered in a doorway. The kitten had found shelter and
made itself warm; when the Captain leaned down he found that it was purring. He picked up
the kitten and felt it vibrate in his palm. For a long time he looked into the soft,
gentle little face and stroked the warm fur. The kitten was at the age when it was first
able to open wide its clear green eyes. At last the Captain had taken the kitten with him
down the street. On the corner there was a mailbox and after one quick glance around him
he had opened the freezing letter slot and squeezed the kitten inside. Then he had
continued on his way.

The Captain heard the back door slam and he left his desk. In the kitchen his wife sat on
a table while Susie, the colored servant, pulled off her boots. Mrs. Penderton was not a
pure bred Southerner. She had been born and brought up in the army, and her father, who a
year before his retirement had reached the rank of Brigadier General, was originally from
the West coast. Her mother, however, had been a South Carolinian. And in her ways the
Captain's wife was Southern enough. Their gas stove was not crusted with generations of
dirt as her grandmother's had been, but then it was by no means clean. Mrs. Penderton also
held to many other old Southern notions, such as the belief that pastry or bread is not
fit to eat unless it is rolled on a marble topped table. For this reason they had Once,
when the Captain was detailed to Schofield Barracks, hauled the table on which she was now
sitting all the way to Hawaii and back. If the Captain's wife chanced to find a black,
crooked hair in her food, she wiped it calmly on her napkin and went right on with the
enjoyment of her dinner without the bat of an eye.

'Susie,' said Mrs. Penderton, 'do people have gizzards like chickens do?'

The Captain stood in the doorway and was noticed neither by his wife nor his servant When
she had been relieved of her boots, Mrs. Penderton moved about the kitchen bare footed.
She took a ham from the oven and sprinkled the top with brown sugar and bread crumbs. She
poured herself another drink, only half a jigger this time, and in a sudden excess of
vigor she performed a little shag dance. The Captain was intensely irritated with his
wife, and she knew it.

'For God's sake, Leonora, go up and put on some shoes.'

For an answer Mrs. Penderton hummed a queer little tune to herself and went past the
Captain and into the living room.

Her husband followed close behind her. 'You look like a slattern going around the house
like this.'

A fire was laid in the grate and Mrs. Penderton bent down to light it. Her smooth sweet
face was very rosy and there were little glistening sweat beads on her upper lip.

'The Langdons are coming any minute now and you will sit down to dinner like this, I
suppose?'

'Sure,' she said. 'And why not, you old prissy?'

The Captain said in a cold, taut voice: 'You disgust me.'

Mrs. Penderton's answer was a sudden laugh, a laugh both soft and savage, as though she
had received some long expected piece of scandalous news or had thought of some sly joke.
She pulled off her jersey, crushed it into a ball, and threw it into the corner of the
room. Then deliberately she unbuttoned her breeches and stepped out of them. In a moment
she was standing naked by the hearth. Before the bright gold and orange light of the fire
her body was magnificent. The shoulders were straight so that the collar bone made a sharp
pure line. Between her round breasts there were delicate blue veins. In a few years her
body would be fullblown like a rose with loosened petals, but now the soft roundness was
controlled and disciplined by sport. Although she stood quite still and placid, there was
about her body a subtle quality of vibration, as though on touching her flesh one would
feel the slow live coursing of the bright blood beneath. While the Captain looked at her
with the stunned indignation of a man who has suffered a slap in the face, she walked
serenely to the vestibule on her way to the stairs. The front door was open and from the
dark night outside a breeze blew in and lifted a loose strand of her bronze hair.

She was halfway up the steps before the Captain recovered from his shock. Then he ran
trembling after her. 'I will kill you!' he said in a strangled voice. 'I will do it! I
will do it!' He crouched with his hand to the banister and one foot on the second step of
the stairway as though ready to spring up after her.

She turned slowly and looked down at him with unconcern for a moment before she spoke.
'Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out in the street and thrashed by a naked
woman?'

The Captain stood as she had left him. Then he put his head down on his outstretched arm
and rested his weight against the banister. From his throat came a rasping sound like a
sob, but there were no tears on his face. After a time he stood up and wiped his neck with
his handkerchief. Only then did he notice that the front door was open, the house brightly
lighted, and all the shades raised. He felt himself sicken strangely. Anyone might have
passed along the dark street before the house. He thought of the soldier whom he had left
a short while ago on the edge of the woods. Even he might have seen what had occurred. The
Captain looked all about him with frightened eyes. Then he went into his study where he
kept a decanter of old, strong brandy.

Leonora Penderton feared neither man, beast, nor the devil; God she had never known. At
the very mention of the Lord's name she thought only of her old father who had sometimes
read the Bible on a Sunday afternoon. Of that book she remembered two things clearly: one,
that Jesus had been crucified at a place called Cavalry Hill the other, that once He had
ridden somewhere on a jackass, and what sort of person would want to ride a jackass?

Within five minutes Leonora Penderton had forgotten the scene with her husband. She ran
the water for her bath and laid out her clothes for the evening. Leonora Penderton was the
subject of much lively gossip among the ladies of the post.

According to them her past and present affairs were a rich medley of amorous exploits.
But most of what these ladies told was hearsay and conjecture for Leonora Penderton was
a person who liked to settle herself and was adverse to complications. When she married
the Captain she had been a virgin. Four nights after her wedding she was still a virgin,
and on the fifth night her status was changed only enough to leave her somewhat puzzled.
As for the rest it would be hard to say. She herself would probably have reckoned her
affairs according to a system of her own giving the old Colonel at Leavenworth only half
a count and the young Lieutenant in Hawaii several units in her calculations. But now for
the past two years there had been only Major Morris Langdon and no one else. With him she
was content.

On the post Leonora Penderton enjoyed a reputation as a good hostess, an excellent
sportswoman, and even as a great lady. However, there was something about her that puzzled
her friends and acquaintances. They sensed an element in her personality that they could
not quite put their fingers on. The truth of the matter was that she was a little
feebleminded.

This sad fact did not reveal itself at parties, or in the stables, or at her dinner
table. There were only three persons who understood this: her old father, the General, who
had worried no little about it until she was safely married; her husband, who looked on it
as a condition natural to all women under forty; and Major Morris Langdon, who loved her
for it all the more. She could not have multiplied twelve by thirteen under threat of the
rack. If ever it was strictly necessary that she write a letter, such as a note to thank
her uncle for a birthday check or a letter ordering a new bridle, it was a weighty
enterprise for her. She and Susie shut themselves in the kitchen with scholarly seclusion.
They sat down to a table furnished with an abundance of paper and several nicely sharpened
pencils. Then, when the final draft was finished and copied, they were both exhausted and
in great need of a quiet, restoring drink.

Leonora Penderton enjoyed her warm bath that evening. She dressed herself slowly in the
clothes she had already laid out on the bed. She wore a simple gray skirt, a blue Angora
sweater, and pearl earrings. She was downstairs again at seven o'clock and their guests
were waiting.

She and the Major found the dinner first rate. To begin with there was a clear soup. Then
with the ham they had rich oily turnip greens, and candied sweet potatoes that were a
transparent amber beneath the light and richly glazed with sweet sauce. There were rolls
and hot spoon bread. Susie passed the vegetables only once and left the serving dishes on
the table between the Major and Leonora, for those two were great eaters. The Major sat
with one elbow on the table and was altogether very much at home. His red brown face had a
blunt, jovial, and friendly expression; among both officers and men he was very popular.
Except for the mention of Firebird's accident there was almost no table talk. Mrs. Langdon
hardly touched her dinner. She was a small, dark, fragile woman with a large nose and a
sensitive mouth. She was very ill and she looked it. Not only was this illness physical,
but she had been tortured to the bone by grief and anxiety so that now she was on the
verge of actual lunacy. Captain Penderton sat very straight with his elbows held close to
his sides. Once he cordially congratulated the Major on a medal he had received. Several
times during the course of the meal he flicked the rim of his water goblet and listened to
the clear, resonant ring. The dinner ended with a dessert of hot mince pie. Then the four
of them went into the sitting room to finish out the evening with cards and conversation.

'My dear, you are a damn fine cook,' the Major said comfortably.

The four people at the table had not been alone. In the autumn darkness outside the
window there stood a man who watched them in silence. The night was cold and the clean
scent of pine trees sharpened the air. A wind sang in the forest near by. The sky
glittered with icy stars. The man who watched them stood so close to the window that his
breath showed on the cold glass pane.

Private Williams had indeed seen Mrs. Penderton as she left the hearth and walked
upstairs to her bath. And never before in his life had this young soldier seen a naked
woman. He had been brought up in a household exclusively male. From his father, who ran a
one mule farm and preached on Sunday at a Holiness church, he had learned that women
carried in them a deadly and catching disease which made men blind, crippled, and doomed
to hell. In the army he also heard much talk of this bad sickness and was even himself
examined once a month by the doctor to see if he had touched a woman. Private Williams had
never willingly touched, or looked at, or spoken to a female since he was eight years old.

He had been late in gathering the armfuls of damp, rank autumn leaves back in the woods.
When at last his duty was done, he had crossed the Captain's lawn on his way to evening
mess. By chance he glanced into the sharply lighted vestibule. And since then he had not
found it in him to go away. He stood motionless in the silent night with his arms hanging
loose at his sides. When at dinner the ham was carved, he had swallowed painfully. But he
kept his grave, deep gaze on the Captain's wife. The expression of his mute face had not
been changed by his experience, but now and then he narrowed his gold brown eyes as though
he were forming within himself some subtle scheme. When the Captains wife had left the
dining room, he still stood there for a time. Then very slowly he turned away. The light
behind him laid a great dim shadow of himself on the smooth grass of the lawn. The soldier
walked like a man weighted by a dark dream and his footsteps were soundless.

Very early the next morning Private Williams went to the stables. The sun had not yet
risen and the air was colorless and cold. Milky ribbons of mist clung to the damp earth
and the sky was silver gray. The path leading to the stables passed a bluff which
commanded a sweeping view of the reservation. The woods were in full autumn color, and
scattered among the blackish green of the pine trees there were blunt splashes of crimson
and yellow. Private Williams walked slowly along the leafy path. Now and then he stopped
altogether and stood perfectly still, in the attitude of one who listens to a call from a
long distance. His sun browned skin was flushed in the morning air and on his lips there
were still the white traces of the milk he had drunk for breakfast. Loitering and stopping
in this way he reached the stables just as the sun came up in the sky.