'Look, Madame Alison!' he said suddenly. 'Do you feel well enough to discuss a certain matter with me?'
She put down her cup and took off her glasses. 'Why, what is it?'
'This!' Anacleto brought a footstool to the side of the bed and eagerly drew from his pocket some little scraps of cloth. 'These samples I ordered for us to look over. And now think back to the time two years ago when we passed by the window of Peck and Peck in New York City and I pointed out a certain little suit to you.' He selected one of the samples and handed it to her. 'This material made exactly in that way.'
'But I don't need a suit, Anacleto,' she said.
'Oh, but you do! You have not bought a garment in more than a year. And the green frock is bien usee at the elbows and ready for the Salvation Army.'
When Anacleto brought out his French phrase he gave the Major a glance of the merriest malice. It always made the Major feel rather eerie to listen to them talking together in the quiet room. Their voices and enunciation were so precisely alike that they seemed to be softly echoing each other. The only difference was that Anacleto spoke in a chattering, breathless manner, while Alison's voice was measured and composed.
'How much is it?' she asked.
'It is costly. But one could not expect to get such a quality for anything less. And think of the years of service.'
Alison turned back to her book again. 'We'll see about it.'
'For God's sake, go ahead and buy the dress,' the Major said. It bothered him to hear Alison haggle.
'And while we're about it we might order an extra yard so that I can have a jacket,' Anacleto said.
'All right If I decide to get it.'
Anacleto poured Alison's medicine and made a face for her as she drank it. Then he put an electric pad behind her back and brushed her hair. But as he started out of the room, he could not quite get past the full length mirror on the closet door. He stopped and looked at himself, pointed his toe and cocked his head.
Then he turned back to Alison and began to whistle again. 'What is that? You and Lieutenant Weincheck were playing it last Thursday afternoon.'
'The opening bar of the Franck A Major Sonata.'
'Look!' said Anacleto excitedly. 'It has just this minute made me compose a ballet. Black velvet curtains and a glow like winter twilight. Very slowly, with the whole cast Then a spotlight for the solo like a flame very dashing, and with the waltz Mr. Sergei Rachmaninoff played. Then the finish goes back to the Franck, only this time ' He looked at Alison with his strange, bright eyes. 'Drunk!'
And with that he began to dance. He had been taken to the Russian ballet a year before and he had never got over it. Not a trick, not a gesture had escaped him. On the gray rug he moved about in a languid pantomime that slowed down until he stood quite still with his feet in their sandals crossed and his fingertips touched together in a meditative attitude. Then without warning he whirled lightly and began a furious little solo. It was apparent from his bright face that in his own mind he was out on an immense stage, the cynosure in a dazzling spectacle. Alison, also, was plainly enjoying herself. The Major looked from one to the other in disgusted disbelief. The last of the dance was a drunken satire of the first. Anacleto finished with an odd little pose, his elbow held in one hand and his fist to his with an expression of wry puzzlement
Alison burst out laughing. 'Bravo! Bravo! Anacleto!'
They laughed together and the little Filipino leaned against the door, happy and a bit dazed. At last he caught his breath and exclaimed in a marveling voice, 'Have you ever noticed how well “Bravo” and “Anacleto” go together?'
Alison stopped laughing and nodded thoughtfully. 'Indeed, Anacleto, I have noticed it many times.'
The little Filipino hesitated in the doorway. He glanced around the room to make sure that nothing was wanting. Then he looked into her face and his eyes were suddenly shrewd and very sad. 'Call me if you need me,' he said shortly.
They heard him start down the stairs slowly, then quicken to a skip. On the last steps he must have tried something altogether too ambitious, for there was a sudden thud. When the Major reached the head of the stairs, Anacleto was picking himself up with brave dignity.
'Did he hurt himself?' Alison asked tensely.
Anacleto looked up at the Major with angry tears in his eyes. 'I'm all right, Madame Alison,' he called.
The Major leaned forward and said slowly and soundlessly, working his mouth so that Anacleto could read the words, 'I wish you had bro ken your neck.'
Anacleto smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and limped into the dining room. When the Major went back to his wife, he found her reading. She did not look up at him, so he crossed the hall to his own room and slammed the door. His room was small, rather untidy, and the only ornaments in it were the cups he had won at horse shows. On the Major's bedside table there was an open book a very recondite and literary book. The place was marked with a matchstick. The Major turned over forty pages or so, a reasonable evening's reading, and marked the new place with the match again. Then from under a pile of shirts in his bureau drawer he took a pulp magazine called Scientification. He settled himself comfortably in the bed and began reading of a wild, interplanetary superwar.
Across the hall from him, his wife had put down her book and was lying in a half sitting position. Her face was stiff with pain and her dark, glittering eyes looked restlessly around the walls of the room. She was trying to make plans. She would divorce Morris, certainly. But how would she go about it? And above all how could she and Anacleto manage to make a living? She always had been contemptuous of women without children who accepted alimony, and her last shred of pride depended on the fact that she would not, could not, live on his money after she had left him. But what would they do she and Anacleto? She had taught Latin in a girls' school the year before she married, but with her health as it was that would now be out of the question. A bookshop somewhere? It would have to be something that Anacleto could keep going when she was ill. Could the two of them possibly manage a prawn boat? Once she had talked to some shrimp fishermen on the coast. It had been a blue and gold seaside day and they had told her many things. She and Anacleto would stay out at sea all day with their nets lowered and there would be only the cold salt air, the ocean and the sun Alison turned her head restlessly on the pillow. But what frippery!
It had been a shock, eight months ago, when she had learned about her husband. She and Lieutenant Weincheck and Anacleto had made a trip to the city with the intention of staying two days and nights for a concert and a play. But on the second day she was feverish and they decided to go back home. Late in the afternoon Anacleto had let her out at the front door and driven the car back to the garage. She had stopped on the front walk to look at some bulbs. It was almost dark and there was a light in her husband's room. The front door was locked and as she was standing there she saw Leonora's coat on the chest in the hall. And she had thought to herself how strange it was that if the Pendertons were there the front door should be locked. Then it occurred to her that they were mixing drinks in the kitchen while Morris had his bath. And she went around to the back. But then before she entered the house Anacleto rushed down the steps with such a horrified little face! He had whispered that they must go into town ten miles away as they had forgotten something. And when, rather dazed, she started up the steps he had caught her by the arm and said in a flat, frightened voice: 'You must not go in there now, Madame Alison.'
With what a shock it had come to her. She and Anacleto had got back into the car and driven off again. The insult of it happening in her own house that was what she could not swallow. And then, of all times in the world, when they slowed down at the outpost there was a new soldier on duty who did not know them, and he had stopped the car. He looked into the little coupe as though they might be concealing a machine gun and then stood staring at Anacleto who, dressed in his jaunty burnt orange jacket, was ready to burst into tears. He asked for the name in a tone of voice which suggested that he did not believe they could possibly screw up one between them.