As they were getting into the taxi Ellen suddenly said in a little child’s voice: “I forgot we were going down to see the murder cottage. … Let’s make him wait. I’d like to walk up and down in the air for a minute.” There was a smell of saltmarshes. The night was marbled with clouds and moonlight. The toads in the ditches sounded like sleighbells.
“Is it far?” she asked.
“No it’s right down at the corner.”
Their feet crackled on gravel then ground softly on macadam. A headlight blinded them, they stopped to let the car whir by; the exhaust filled their nostrils, faded into the smell of saltmarshes again.
It was a peaked gray house with a small porch facing the road screened with broken lattice. A big locust shaded it from behind. A policeman walked to and fro in front of it whistling gently to himself. A mildewed scrap of moon came out from behind the clouds for a minute, made tinfoil of a bit of broken glass in a gaping window, picked out the little rounded leaves of the locust and rolled like a lost dime into a crack in the clouds.
Neither of them said anything. They walked back towards the roadhouse.
“Honestly Herf havent you seen Stan?”
“No I havent an idea where he could be hiding himself.”
“If you see him tell him I want him to call me up at once. … Herf what were those women called who followed the armies in the French Revolution?”
“Let’s think. Was it cantonnières?”
“Something like that … I’d like to do that.”
An electric train whistled far to the right of them, rattled nearer and faded into whining distance.
Dripping with a tango the roadhouse melted pink like a block of icecream. Jimmy was following her into the taxicab.
“No I want to be alone, Herf.”
“But I’d like very much to take you home. … I dont like the idea of letting you go all alone.”
“Please as a friend I ask you.”
They didnt shake hands. The taxi kicked dust and a rasp of burnt gasoline in his face. He stood on the steps reluctant to go back into the noise and fume.
Nellie McNiel was alone at the table. In front of her was the chair pushed back with his napkin on the back of it where her husband had sat. She was staring straight ahead of her; the dancers passed like shadows across her eyes. At the other end of the room she saw George Baldwin, pale and lean, walk slowly like a sick man to his table. He stood beside the table examining his check carefully, paid it and stood looking distractedly round the room. He was going to look at her. The waiter brought the change on a plate and bowed low. Baldwin swept the faces of the dancers with a black glance, turned his back square and walked out. Remembering the insupportable sweetness of Chinese lilies, she felt her eyes filling with tears. She took her engagement book out of her silver mesh bag and went through it hurriedly, marking carets with a silver pencil. She looked up after a little while, the tired skin of her face in a pucker of spite, and beckoned to a waiter. “Will you please tell Mr. McNiel that Mrs. McNiel wants to speak to him? He’s in the bar.”
“Sarajevo, Sarajevo; that’s the place that set the wires on fire,” Bullock was shouting at the frieze of faces and glasses along the bar.
“Say bo,” said Joe O’Keefe confidentially to no one in particular, “a guy works in a telegraph office told me there’d been a big seabattle off St. John’s, Newfoundland and the Britishers had sunk the German fleet of forty battleships.”
“Jiminy that’d stop the war right there.”
“But they aint declared war yet.”
“How do you know? The cables are so choked up you cant get any news through.”
“Did you see there were four more failures on Wall Street?”
“Tell me Chicago wheat pit’s gone crazy.”
“They ought to close all the exchanges till this blows over.”
“Well maybe when the Germans have licked the pants off her England’ll give Ireland her freedom.”
“But they are. … Stock market wont be open tomorrow.”
“If a man’s got the capital to cover and could keep his head this here would be the time to clean up.”
“Well Bullock old man I’m going home,” said Jimmy. “This is my night of rest and I ought to be getting after it.”
Bullock winked one eye and waved a drunken hand. The voices in Jimmy’s ears were throbbing elastic roar, near, far, near, far. Dies like a dog, march on he said. He’d spent all his money but a quarter. Shot at sunrise. Declaration of war. Commencement of hostilities. And they left him alone in his glory. Leipzig, the Wilderness, Waterloo, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round … Cant take a taxi, want to walk anyway. Ultimatum. Trooptrains singing to the shambles with flowers on their ears. And shame on the false Etruscan who lingers in his home when. …
As he was walking down the gravel drive to the road an arm hooked in his.
“Do you mind if I come along? I dont want to stay here.”
“Sure come ahead Tony I’m going to walk.”
Herf walked with a long stride, looking straight ahead of him. Clouds had darkened the sky where remained the faintest milkiness of moonlight. To the right and left there was outside of the violetgray cones of occasional arclights black pricked by few lights, ahead the glare of streets rose in blurred cliffs yellow and ruddy.
“You dont like me do you?” said Tony Hunter breathlessly after a few minutes.
Herf slowed his pace.
