'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 Langdon said, 'And let me tell you one thing it's not worth it. Your health comes first because where would you be if you lost it? Leonora, do you want another card?'
As Captain Penderton poured Mrs. Langdon's drink, he avoided her eyes. He loathed her so much that he could scarcely bear to look at her. She sat very quiet and stiff before the fire and she was knitting. Her face was deadly pale and her lips were rather swollen and chapped. She had soft, black eyes of feverish brilliance. She was twenty nine years old, two years younger than Leonora. It was said that she once had had a beautiful voice, but no one on this post had ever heard her sing. As the Captain looked at her hands, he felt a quiver of nausea. Her hands were slender to the point of emaciation, with long fragile fingers and delicate branchings of greenish veins from the knuckles to the wrist. They were sickly pale against the crimson wool of the sweater she was knitting. Frequently, in many mean and subtle ways, the Captain tried to hurt this woman. He disliked her first of all because of her total indifference to himself. The Captain despised her also for the fact that she had done him a service she knew, and kept secret, a matter which if gossiped about could cause him the most distressing embarrassment.
'Another sweater for your husband?'
'No,' she said quietly. 'I haven't decided just what I mean to do with this.'
Alison Langdon wanted terribly to cry. She had been thinking of her baby, Catherine, who had died three years before. She knew that she should go home and let her houseboy, Anacleto, help her get to bed. She was in pain and nervous. Even the fact that she did not know for whom she was knitting this sweater was a source of irritation to her. She had taken to knitting only when she had learned about her husband. At first she had done a number of sweaters for him. Then she had knitted a suit for Leonora. During the first months she could not quite believe that he could be so faithless to her. When at last she had scornfully given up her husband, she had turned desperately to Leonora. There began one of those peculiar friendships between the wife who has been betrayed and the object of her husband's love. This morbid, emotional attachment, bastard of shock and jealousy, she knew was unworthy of her. Of its own accord it had soon ended. Now she felt the tears come to her eyes and she drank a little whiskey to brace herself, although liquor was forbidden her because of her heart She herself did not even like the taste of it. She much preferred a tiny glass of some syrupy liqueur, or a little sherry, or even a cup of coffee if it came to that. But now she drank the whiskey because it was there, and the others were drinking, and there was nothing else to do.
'Weldon!' called out the Major suddenly, 'your wife is cheating! She peeked under the card to find if she wanted it.'
'No, I didn't. You caught me before I had a chance to see it. What have you got there?'
'I'm surprised at you, Moms,' said Captain Penderton. 'Don't you know you can never trust a woman at cards?'
Mrs. Langdon watched this friendly badinage with an on the defensive expression that is often seen in the eyes of persons who have been ill for a long time and dependent upon the thoughtfulness, or negligence, of others. Since the night she had rushed home and hurt herself, she had felt in her a constant, nauseous shame. She was sure that everyone who looked at her must be thinking of what she had done. But as a matter of fact the scandal had been kept quite secret; besides those in the room only the doctor and the nurse knew what had happened and the young Filipino servant who had been with Mrs. Langdon since he was seventeen years old and who adored her. Now she stopped knitting and put the tips of her fingers to her cheekbones. She knew that she should get up and leave the room, and break with her husband altogether. But lately she had been overcome by a terrible helplessness. And where on earth would she go? When she tried to think ahead, weird fancies crept into her mind and she was beset by a number of nervous compulsions. It had come to the point where she feared her own self as much as she feared others. And all the time, unable to break away, she had the feeling that some great disaster was in wait for her.
'What's the matter, Alison?' Leonora asked. 'Are you hungry? There's some sliced chicken in the icebox.' For the past few months Leonora often addressed Mrs. Langdon in a curious manner. She worked her mouth exaggeratedly to form the words and spoke in the careful and reasonable voice that one would use when addressing an abject idiot. 'Both white meat and dark. Very good. Mmmmh?'
'No, thank you.'
'Are you sure, darling?' the Major asked. 'You don't want anything?'
'I'm quite all right. But would you mind ? Don't tap your heel like that on the floor. It bothers me.'
'I beg your pardon.'
The Major took his legs from under the table and crossed them sideways in his chair. On the surface the Major naively believed that his wife knew nothing about his affair. However, this soothing thought had become increasingly more difficult for him to hold on to; the strain of not realizing the truth had given him hemorrhoids and had almost upset his good digestion. He tried, and succeeded, in looking on her obvious unhappiness as something morbid and female, altogether outside his control. He remembered an incident that had happened soon after they were married. He had taken Alison out quail shooting and, although she had done target practice, she had never been hunting before. They had flushed a covey and he remembered still the pattern of the flying birds against the winter sunset. As he was watching Alison, he had only brought down one quail, and that one he insisted gallantly was hers. But when she took the bird from the dog's mouth, her face had changed. The bird was still living, so he brained it carelessly and then gave it back to her. She held the little warm, ruffled body that had somehow become degraded in its fall, and looked into the dead little glassy black eyes. Then she had burst into tears. That was the sort of thing the Major meant by 'female' and 'morbid'; and it did a man no good to try to figure it all out. Also, when the Major was troubled about his wife these days he thought instinctively, as a means of self defense, of a certain Lieutenant Weincheck, who was a company commander in the Major's own battalion and a close friend of Alison's. So now as her face troubled his conscience he said, to soothe himself:
'Did you say you spent the afternoon with Weincheck?'
'Yes, I was there,' she said.
'That's good. How did you find him?'
'Fairly well.' She decided suddenly to give the sweater to Lieutenant Weincheck, as he could put it to good use, and she hoped it was not too broad across the shoulders.