Soldiers Pay Read Online Free PDF Page B

With us, anyway. Let him be whatever he wants.”
    The girl said: “I am sure he is.”
    The porter appeared. “Cap’m’s all right?” he whispered, remarking her without surprise as is the custom of his race.
    â€œYes,” she told him, “he’s all right.”
    Cadet Lowe thought I bet she can dance and she added: “He couldn’t be in better hands than these gentlemen.” How keen she is! thought Gilligan. She has known disappointment. “I wonder if I could have a drink on your car?”
    The porter examined her and then he said: “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get some fresh ginger ale. You going to look after him?”
    â€œYes, for a while.”
    He leaned down to her. “I’m from Gawgia, too. Long time ago.”
    â€œYou are? I’m from Alabama.”
    â€œThat’s right. We got to look out for our own folks, ain’t we? I’ll get you a glass right away.”
    The officer still slept and the porter returning hushed and anxious, they sat drinking and talking with muted voices. New York was Ohio, and Ohio became a series of identical cheap houses with the same man entering gate after gate, smoking and spitting. Here was Cincinnati and under the blanched flash of her hand he waked easily.
    â€œAre we in?” he asked. On her hand was a plain gold band. No engagement ring. (pawned it, maybe, thought Gilligan. But she did not look poor.)
    â€œGeneral, get the Lootenant’s hat.”
    Lowe climbed over Gilligan’s knees and Gilligan said:
    â€œHere’s an old friend of ours. Loot, meet Mrs. Powers.”
    She took his hand helping him to his feet, and the porter appeared.
    â€œDonald Mahon,” he said, like a parrot. Cadet Lowe assisted by the porter returned with a cap and stick and a coat and two kit bags. The porter helped him into the coat.
    â€œI’ll get yours, ma’am,” said Gilligan, but the porter circumvented him. Her coat was rough and heavy and light of colour. She wore it carelessly and Gilligan and Cadet Lowe gathered up their “issued” impedimenta. The porter handed the officer his cap and stick, then he vanished with the luggage belonging to them. She glanced again down the length of the car.
    â€œWhere are my——”
    â€œYessum,” the porter called from the door, across the coated shoulders of passengers, “I got your things, ma’am.”
    He had gotten them and his dark gentle hand lowered the officer carefully to the platform.
    â€œHelp the lootenant there,” said the conductor officiously, but he bad already got the officer to the floor.
    â€œYou’ll look after him, ma’am?”
    â€œYes. I’ll look after him.”
    They moved down the shed and Cadet Lowe looked back. But the negro was, efficient and skilful, busy with other passengers. He seemed to have forgotten them. And Cadet Lowe looked from the porter occupied with bags and the garnering of quarters and half dollars, to the officer in his coat and stick, remarking the set of his cap slanting backward bonelessly from his scarred brow, and he marvelled briefly upon his own kind.
    But this was soon lost in the mellow death of evening in a street between stone buildings, among lights, and Gilligan in his awkward khaki and the girl in her rough coat, holding each an arm of Donald Mahon, silhouetted against it in the doorway.
    III
    Mrs. Powers lay in her bed aware of her long body beneath strange sheets, hearing the hushed night sounds of a hotel—muffled footfalls along mute carpeted corridors, discreet opening and shutting of doors, somewhere a murmurous pulse of machinery—all with that strange propensity which sounds, anywhere else soothing, have, when heard in a hotel, for keeping you awake. Her mind and body warming to the old familiarity of sleep became empty, then as she settled her body to the bed, shaping it for slumber, it filled with a remembered troubling