Reflections in a Golden Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

condensed to a thought, so that he realized he would be a soldier.
    For almost two weeks Private Williams reconnoitered in this secret manner around the
     Captain's quarters. He learned the habits of the household. The servant was usually in bed
     at ten o'clock. When Mrs. Penderton spent the evening at home, she went upstairs at about
     eleven and the light in her room was turned off. As a rule the Captain worked from about
     ten thirty until two o'clock.
    Then on the twelfth night the soldier walked through the woods even more slowly than
     usual. From a far distance he saw that the house was lighted. In the sky there was a white
     brilliant moon and the night was cold and silvery. The soldier could be plainly seen as he
     left the woods to cross the lawn. In his right hand was a pocket knife and he had changed
     his clumsy boots for tennis shoes. From the sitting room there was the sound of voices.
     The soldier went up to the window.
    'Hit me, Morris,' said Leonora Penderton. 'Give me a big number this time.'
    Major Langdon and the Captain's wife were playing a game of blackjack. The stakes were
     worth while and their system of reckoning very simple. If the Major won all the chips on
     the table, he was to have Firebird for a week if Leonora won them, she would get a
     bottle of her favorite rye. During the last hour the Major had raked in most of the chips.
     The firelight reddened his handsome face and he was drumming a military tattoo with the
     heel of his boot on the floor. His black hair was turning white at the temples; already
     his clipped mustache was a becoming gray. Tonight he was in uniform. His heavy shoulders
     were slouched and he seemed warmly contented except when he glanced over at his wife
     then his light eyes were uneasy and beseeching. Across from him Leonora had a studious,
     serious air, as she was trying to add fourteen and seven on her fingers underneath the
     table. At last she put the cards down.
    'Am I busted?'
    'No, my dear,' said the Major. 'Twenty one exactly. Blackjack.'
    Captain Penderton and Mrs. Langdon sat before the hearth. Neither of them was comfortable
     at all. They were both nervous this evening and had been talking with grim vivacity about
     gardening. There were good reasons for their nervousness. These days the Major was not
     altogether the same easy go lucky man he used to be. And even Leonora vaguely felt the
     general depression. For one reason, a strange and tragic thing had happened among these
     four people a few months ago. They had been sitting like this late one night when suddenly
     Mrs. Langdon, who had a high temperature, left the room and ran over to her own house. The
     Major did not follow her immediately, as he was comfortably stupefied with whiskey. Then
     later Anacleto, the Langdons' Filipino servant, rushed wailing into the room with such a
     wild eyed face that they followed him without a word. They found Mrs. Langdon unconscious
     and she had cut off the tender nipples of her breasts with the garden shears.
    'Does anybody want a drink?' the Captain asked.
    They were all thirsty, and the Captain went back to the kitchen for another bottle of
     soda water. His deep uneasiness of mind was caused by the fact that he knew things could
     not go on much longer as they were. And although the affair between his wife and Major
     Langdon had been a torment to him, he could not think of any likely change without dread.
     Indeed his torment had been a rather special one, as he was just as jealous of his wife as
     he was of her lover. In the last year he had come to feel an emotional regard for the
     Major that was the nearest thing to love that he had ever known. More than anything else
     he longed to distinguish himself in the eyes of this man. He carried his cuckoldry with a
     cynical good grace that was respected on the post. Now as he poured out the Major's drink
     his hand was shaking.
    'You work too hard, Weldon,' Major