Reflections in a Golden Eye (9 page)

She turned her face to the window and looked into the night. A wind had come up, and
downstairs a loose shutter was banging against the side of the house. She turned off the
light so that she could see out of the window. Orion was wonderfully clear and bright
tonight. In the forest the tops of the trees moved in the wind like dark waves. It was
then that she glanced down toward the Pendertons' house and saw a man standing again by
the edge of the woods. The man himself was hidden by the trees, but his shadow defined
itself clearly on the grass of the lawn. She could not distinguish the features of this
person, but she was certain now that a man was lurking there. She watched him ten minutes,
twenty minutes, half an hour. He did not move. It gave her such an eerie shock that it
occurred to her that perhaps she was really going out of her mind. She closed her eyes and
counted by sevens to two hundred and eighty. Then when she looked out again the shadow was
gone.

Her husband knocked on the door. Receiving no answer, he turned the knob cautiously and
peered inside. 'My dear, are you asleep?' he asked in a voice loud enough to wake anyone.

'Yes,' she said bitterly. 'Dead asleep.'

The Major, puzzled, did not know whether to shut the door or to come inside. All the way
across the room she could sense the fact that he had made frequent visits to Leonora's
sideboard.

'Tomorrow I am going to tell you something,' she said. 'You ought to have an inkling of
what it's about. So prepare yourself.'

'I haven't any idea,' the Major said helplessly. 'Have I done something wrong?' He
bethought himself for a few moments. 'But if it's money for anything peculiar, I don't
have it, Alison. Lost a bet on a football game and board for my horse ' The door closed
warily.

It was past midnight and she was alone again. These hours, from twelve o'clock until
dawn, were always dreadful. If ever she told Morris that she had not slept at all, he, of
course, did not believe her. Neither did he believe that she was ill. Four years ago, when
her health first broke down, he had been alarmed by her condition. But when one calamity
followed another empyema, kidney trouble, and now this heart disease he became
exasperated and ended finally by not believing her. He thought it all a hypochondriacal
fake that she used in order to shirk her duties that is, the routine of sports and
parties which he thought suitable. In the same way it is wise to give an insistent hostess
a single, firm excuse, for if one declines with a number of reasons, no matter how sound
they may be, the hostess will not believe you. She heard her husband walking about in his
room across the hall and carrying on a long didactic conversation with himself. She
switched on her bed light and began reading.

At two o'clock in the morning it came to her suddenly, without warning, that she was
going to die that night. She sat propped up with pillows in the bed, a young woman with a
face already sharp and aged, looking restlessly from one corner of the wall to another.
She moved her head in a curious little gesture, Biting her chin upward and sideways, as
though something were choking her. The silent room seemed to her full of jarring sounds.
Water dripped into the bowl of the lavatory in the bathroom. The clock on the mantelpiece,
an old pendulum clock with white and gilt swans painted on the glass of the case, ticked
with a rusty sound. But the third of these sounds, the loudest and the one which bothered
her most, was the beating of her own heart. A great turmoil was going on inside her. Her
heart seemed to be vaulting it would beat rapidly like the footsteps of someone running,
leap up, and then thud with a violence that shocked her all over. With slow, cautious
movements she opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out her knitting. 'I must
think of something pleasant,' she told herself reasonably.

She thought back to the happiest time of her life. She was twenty one and for nine months
had been trying to work a little Cicero and Virgil into the heads of boarding school
girls. Then when vacation came she was in New York with two hundred dollars in her
pocketbook. She had got on a bus and headed north with no idea where she was going. And
somewhere in Vermont she came to a village she liked the looks of, got off, and within a
few days found and rented a little shack out in the woods. She had brought her cat,
Petronius, with her and before the summer was over she was obliged to put a feminine
ending onto his name because he suddenly had a litter of kittens. Several stray hounds
took up with them and once a week she would go into the village to buy cans of groceries
for the cats, the dogs, and herself. Morning and night, every day of that fine summer, she
had her favorite foods chili con carne, zwieback, and tea. In the afternoons she chopped
firewood and at night she sat in the kitchen with her feet on the stove and read or sang
aloud to herself.

Alison's pale, flaky lips shaped whispering words and she stared with concentration at
the footboard of the bed. Then all at once she dropped the knitting and held her breath.
Her heart had stopped beating. The room was silent as a sepulcher and she waited with her
mouth open and her head twisted sideways on the pillow. She was terrified, but when she
tried to call out and break this silence, no sound would come.

There was a light tapping on the door, but she did not hear this. Neither for a few
moments did she realize that Anacleto had come into the room and was holding her hand in
his. After the long, terrible silence (and surely it had lasted more than a minute), her
heart was beating again; the folds of her nightgown fluttered lightly over her chest.

'A bad time?' Anacleto asked in a cheerful, encouraging little voice. But his face, as he
looked down at her, wore the same sickly grimace as her own with the upper lip drawn
back sharply over the teeth.

'I was so frightened,' she said. 'Has something happened?'

'Nothing has happened. But don't look like that' He took his handkerchief from the pocket
of his blouse and dipped it in a glass of water to bathe her forehead. 'I'll go down and
get my paraphernalia and stay with you until you can sleep.'

Along with his water colors he brought a tray of malted milk. He built a fire and put up
a card table before the hearth. His presence was such a comfort that she wanted to sob
with relief. After he had given her the tray, he settled himself cozily at the table and
drank his hot malted milk with slow, appreciative little sips. This was one of the things
she loved the very most about Anacleto; he had a genius for making some sort of festival
out of almost any occasion. He acted, not as though out of kindness he had left his bed in
the dead of the night to sit up with a sick woman, but as though of their own free will
they had chosen this particular hour for a very special party. Whenever they had anything
disagreeable to go through with, he always managed to follow it up with some little treat.
And now he sat with a white napkin over his crossed knees drinking the mixture with as
much ceremony as if the cup had been filled with choice wine although he disliked the
taste of the stuff quite as much as she did, and only bought it because he was attracted
by the glowing promises on the label of the can.

'Are you sleepy?' she asked.

'Not at all.' But at the very mention of sleep he was so tired that he could not keep
from yawning. Loyally he turned away and tried to pretend that he had opened his mouth in
order to feel one of his new wisdom teeth with his forefinger. I had a nap this afternoon
and then I slept awhile tonight. I dreamed about Catherine.'

Alison could never think about her baby without experiencing an emotion so loaded with
love and grief that it was like an insupportable weight on her chest It was not true that
time could muffle the keenness of this loss. Now she had more control over herself, but
that was all. For a while, after those eleven months of joy, suspense, and suffering, she
was quite unchanged. Catherine had been buried in the cemetery on the post where they were
stationed. And for a long time she had been obsessed by the sharp, morbid image of the
little body in the grave. Her horrified broodings on decay and on that tiny lonely
skeleton had brought her to such a state that at last, after considerable red tape, she
had had the coffin disinterred. She had taken what was left of the body to the crematorium
in Chicago and had scattered the ashes in the snow. And now all that was left of Catherine
were the memories that she and Anacleto shared together.

Alison waited until her voice should be steady and then she asked: 'What was it you
dreamed?'

'It was troubling,' he said quietly. 'Rather like holding a butterfly in my hands. I was
nursing her on my lap then sudden convulsions and you were trying to get the hot water
to run.' Anacleto opened his paint box and arranged his paper, brushes, and water colors
before him. The fire brightened his pale face and put a glow in his dark eyes. 'Then the
dream changed, and instead of Catherine I had on my knees one of the Major's boots that I
had to clean twice today. The boot was full of squirming slithery new born mice and I was
trying to hold them in and keep them from crawling up all over me. Whoo! It was like '

'Hush, Anacleto!' she said, with a shiver. 'Please!'

He began to paint and she watched him. He dipped his brush into the glass and a lavender
cloud showed in the water. His face was thoughtful as he bent over the paper and once he
paused to make a few rapid measurements with a ruler on the table. As a painter Anacleto
had great talent of that she was sure. In his other accomplishments he had a certain
knack, but at bottom he was imitative almost, as Morris said, a little monkey. In his
little water colors, and drawings, however, he was quite himself. When they were stationed
near New York, he had gone into the city in the afternoons to the Art Students' League,
and she had been very proud, but not at all surprised, to observe how many people at the
school exhibition came back to look at his pictures more than once.

His work was at once primitive and over sophisticated, and it laid a queer spell on the
beholder. But she could not get him to take his gift with proper seriousness and to work
hard enough.

'The quality of dreams,' he was saying softly. 'That is a strange thing to think about.
On afternoons in the Philippines, when the pillow is damp and the sun shines in the room,
the dream is of one sort. And then in the North at night when it is snowing '

But already Alison had got back into her rut of worry, and she was not listening to him.
'Tell me,' she interrupted suddenly. 'When you had the sulks this morning and said you
were going to open a linen shop in Quebec, did you have anything particular in mind?'

'Why, certainly,' he said. 'You know I have always wanted to see the city of Quebec. And
I think there is nothing so pleasant as handling beautiful linen.'

'And that's all you had in mind ' she said. Her voice lacked the inflections of a
question and he did not reply to this. 'How much money do you have in the bank?'

He thought a moment with his brush poised above the water glass. 'Four hundred dollars
and six cents...Do you want me to draw it out?'

'Not now. But we might need it later.'

'For Heaven's sake,' he said, 'don't worry. It does not a particle of good.'

The room was filled with the rose glow of the fire and gray flickering shadows. The clock
made a little whirring sound and then struck three.

'Look!' Anacleto said suddenly. He crumpled up the paper he had been painting on and
threw it aside. Then he sat in a meditative gesture with his chin in his hands, staring at
the embers of the fire. 'A peacock of a sort of ghastly green. With one immense golden
eye. And in it these reflections of something tiny and '

In his effort to find just the right word he held up his hand with the thumb and
forefinger touched together. His hand made a great shadow on the wall behind him. Tiny and
' 'Grotesque,' she finished for him. He nodded shortly. 'Exactly.'

But after he had already begun working, some sound in the silent room, or perhaps the
memory of the last tone of her voice, made him turn suddenly around. 'Oh, don't!' he said.
And as he rushed from the table he overturned the water glass so that it shattered on the
hearth.

Private Williams had been in the room where the Captain's wife lay sleeping for only an
hour that night. He waited near the outskirts of the woods during the party. Then, when
most of the guests were gone, he watched through the sitting room window until the
Captain's wife went upstairs to bed. Later he came into the house as he had done before.
Again that night the moonlight was clear and silver in the room. The Lady lay on her side
with her warm oval face cupped between her rather grubby hands. She wore a satin nightgown
and the cover was pushed down to her waist. The young soldier crouched silent by the
bedside. Once he reached out warily and felt the slippery cloth of her nightgown with his
thumb and forefinger. He had looked about him on coming into the room. For a time he stood
before the bureau and contemplated the bottles, powder puffs, and toilet articles. One
object, an atomizer, had aroused his interest, and he had taken it to the window and
examined it with a puzzled face. On the table there was a saucer holding a half eaten
chicken leg. The soldier touched it, smelled, and took a bite.

Now he squatted in the moonlight, his eyes half closed and a wet smile on his lips. Once
the Captain's wife turned in her sleep, sighed, and stretched herself. With curious
fingers the soldier touched a brown strand of hair which lay loose on the pillow.

It was past three o'clock when Private Williams stiffened suddenly. He looked about him
and seemed to listen to some sound. He did not realize all at once what caused this
change, this uneasiness to come in him. Then he saw that the lights in the house next door
had been turned on. In the still night he could hear the voice of a woman crying. Later he
heard an automobile stop before the lighted house. Private Williams walked noiselessly
into the dark hall. The door of the Captain's room was closed. Within a few moments he was
walking slowly along the outskirts of the woods.