The Colonel's Lady (10 page)

A few of the junior officers—Gorgan, Halan—came around and shook hands and congratulated me, but the others left me pretty well alone. Some of them had come up through the ranks too, but they hadn't done it as fast and easily as I had, and they resented it. The enlisted troopers—Skiborsky, Morgan, and all the others—I could imagine what they were saying.

The only time I saw Colonel Weyland was at officers' call in the mornings. But he never looked at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking or what he was planning for me. I didn't see Caroline either until one night at a dance that the regimental officers were holding in the sutler's store.

My new dress jacket still had its original creases, my new London leather boots seemed indecently glossy with their first shine. The regimental bandsmen, already beginning to get a little drunk, played the “Blue Danube” with great vigor as the couples dipped and glided around and around the rough plank floor. I stood around the outer edge of the gathering, feeling uncomfortable and out of place.

“Hello, Reardon.”

“Why, hello, Gorgan.” With a great deal of difficulty I had taught myself not to say “sir” every time when speaking to another junior officer.

“What do you think of our little set-to here?”

“It's fine, I suppose. It's a little new to me, though.”

The E Company lieutenant smiled vaguely, wearily. “What do you say we go over and sample the punch bowl before the bandsmen get it all?”

We went up to the front of the store, where the officers' wives had set up a long table covered with stiff white linen, loaded heavily with cakes and cookies and sandwiches. The sandwiches were mostly salmon and sardine, the only canned delicacies to be found in a place like Larrymoor. In the center of the table there was a large glass bowl filled with a sickening sweetish mixture of canned fruit and raw whisky.

“It's almost enough to make a man stop drinking,” Gorgan said dryly, “but not quite.” He poured two cups and handed me one.

I saw Halan dancing with her then, and for a moment an unreasoning hatred almost choked me, seeing another man holding her, smiling at her. Halan saw me and grinned. They swung up laughing.

Caroline smiled at Gorgan and me. The smile didn't mean a thing.

“We have a new officer at Larrymoor, Mrs. Weyland,” Halan was saying. “Are you enjoying yourself, Reardon?”

I said something. I don't know what. Then Halan made the introductions and we all smiled and they danced away again.

“She's a pretty piece, all right, isn't she?” Gorgan said.

“Who?”

“Mrs. Weyland, of course. Don't tell me you didn't notice.”

I was still hating Halan for the way he was holding her. He didn't have to hold her so damn close just to dance a waltz.

I said, “Yes, I suppose she is. Wonder where the Colonel is.”

“Working, probably, on some plan to outgeneral Kohi, but he'll be around before long. If he's smart.”

I shot a glance at Gorgan. “What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing much. Only if she were my wife, I'd be careful about leaving her in a group of young officers.” Then he must have seen something in my face. “Don't pay any attention to what I say, Reardon,” he said with a grin. “I think out loud sometimes—that's probably the reason I'm still a lieutenant. You haven't met my family, have you?”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, there's not much sense in putting it off.” We waited until the music stopped and then Gorgan walked into the mill of dancers and came out with a graying woman on one arm and a young girl on the other. Mrs. Gorgan, I guessed, was somewhat younger than her husband, but the harshness of the frontier had not been kind to her. The everlasting heat had withered her, the wind had dried her and wrinkled her, but there was still a great deal of life in her faded eyes. There was charm in her smile, especially when Gorgan looked at her or spoke to her, and a man did not have to be psychic to know that they were still very much in love.

The girl was young, and that was all I noticed then. Twenty, perhaps, or twenty-one, but no more than that. Neither pretty nor plain, she must have looked very much as her mother had looked twenty years before. Her name was Sarah, which was perfect for her. A soft-sounding, comfortable name, but without fire.

“Remember, Mary,” Gorgan said to his wife after the introductions were over, “I told you about Mr. Reardon's part in our brush with Kohi.”

She nodded. “My husband tells me you are a good soldier, Mr. Reardon.”

“I have a great deal to learn. He must have told you that, too.”

“As a matter of fact,” she laughed, “he did. Mr. Gorgan always says what he thinks, but I suppose you have learned that by now.”

We all smiled. It was pleasant enough, and it was a side of Gorgan that I hadn't known existed. He was no longer a bitter, overaged lieutenant who would be stationed for the rest of his career on this God-forgotten edge of nowhere. When he looked at his wife he seemed at peace with himself and all the bitterness was gone. I had known that women—certain women—could do things to a man, but I hadn't known about things like this.

The bandsmen, after refreshing themselves at the punch bowl, took up their horns and began to play.

“My dance?” Gorgan asked.

His wife smiled and Gorgan whirled her onto the dance floor, completely oblivious of all the other couples whirling around them.

“You mustn't mind my father's bad manners, Mr. Reardon,” Sarah Gorgan said. “Sometimes I think he and Mother will never grow up.”

I was searching again among the dancing figures for Caroline and had forgotten that the girl was still standing beside me. I glanced at her and she was smiling hesitantly. I forced myself to smile. “I'm afraid my own manners are not so good, Miss Gorgan. All this is rather new for me.” I offered my arm and she took it and we stepped out onto the floor and began circling woodenly in time to the music.

The bandsmen, sad and solemn, with puffed cheeks and bulging eyes, discorded in tough brass the almost unrecognizable Vienna waltzes. The colored paper lanterns hanging from the naked rafters swayed and shook, casting long and distorted shadows among the dancers.

“You dance very well, Mr. Reardon.”

Sarah Gorgan's voice shook me. “Dance? Yes, we used to dance a lot. But that was long ago....”

In the great crystal and candlelighted ballroom at Sweetbriar, and to the music of Captain Fitzhugh Dunham's orchestra from Birmingham, not the drunken slobberings of what passed for a regimental band. And with Caroline, not Sarah Gorgan. But that was long ago.

We danced for what seemed an endless time, the bandsmen breaking off briefly and then beginning again, and there was no chance of escape. I had a chance once and didn't take it.

“Really, Mr. Reardon, don't feel that... I mean, my father is so absent-minded at times, and I would be perfectly all right if you would escort me over to the serving table.”

“I'll do nothing of the kind, Miss Gorgan. It's my honor.”

And all the time I was watching Caroline, gracefully slipping from one pair of arms to another, smiling, laughing. Goddamn Gorgan, couldn't he see that I didn't want to dance with his daughter all night? We whirled and dipped and glided to the monotonous beat of brass in three-quarter time, and our smiles became frozen and words would not come. I wished that I had taken her over to the table and left her, the way she had wanted, for by now she was as miserable as I was. And all the time Gorgan danced around and around with his wife, smiling like an overfed cat. And what young lieutenant would be innocent enough to waste his time on Gorgan's daughter, when there were daughters of captains and majors? And, of course, Caroline.

At last—at long last—Gorgan appeared and tapped me on the shoulder, grinning. Happily he swung his daughter onto the floor with the same unnatural vigor that he had displayed while dancing with his wife, and there was not much time for the usual strained and embarrassed exchange of pleasantries. I walked toward the center of the group of dancers as soon as the music stopped.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Reardon.” Caroline smiled at me, hanging onto Captain Halan's arm. “The Captain has already asked me for the next dance. The one after this, perhaps?”

“It would be an honor, ma'am.” I forced myself to smile and bow.

“You seem to be taken with Gorgan, Reardon,” Halan said pleasantly.

“Gorgan? Yes, I like him.”

The Captain grinned widely—a little too widely, it seemed to me. “He has a very attractive daughter, too. Didn't I see you dancing with Sarah?”

The music began again and there was no need to answer. But what had Halan meant? I wondered. Was he trying to tell me to stay in my place? To dance with the lieutenant's daughters, if I had to dance, and leave the post commander's wife alone?

I wasn't sure, and it didn't make any difference anyway. I didn't care then what anybody thought. As soon as the set was finished I went to claim my dance with Caroline.

“Matt,” she said softly, as we moved into the noisy mill on the floor, “Matt, we must be careful.”

“I'm an officer now. Isn't it only common courtesy for the post officers to dance with the commander's wife?”

“Once an evening, for a second lieutenant, yes.” She smiled. “But no more than that, Matt.”

“But you can dance with Halan as much as you like, is that it?”

“Matt, don't get angry. People are watching.”

We danced in tense silence for a while. Caroline's face was completely beautiful and completely empty.

“Caroline, I've got to see you. Not like this, but alone.”

She smiled placidly. “That's impossible, Matt.”

“It wasn't impossible when I was a common trooper; you arranged it then. Besides, there are things I want to know. Things I have to know.”

“Matt, don't hold me so tight. I think Captain Halan is watching us.”

“To hell with Halan.”

“Matt!”

“All right.... But I get a little crazy every time I see somebody else holding you. Halan or anybody else. You'd think five years would be plenty of time to forget a woman, wouldn't you?”

She didn't say anything.

“Will you meet me somewhere?”

“Matt, I can't!”

“You will, or I'll come to your house. I tell you I've got to talk to you.”

Her eyes widened for just a moment, and behind her smile I could see fear. “All right, Matt. I'll manage it somehow.”

“Tonight? Tomorrow?”

“I'll try, Matt.”

The set was over and Captain Stockholm from C Company took Caroline away for the next dance. I fidgeted near the serving table for a while, drinking the poisonous punch to keep an unreasoning anger under control. Caroline. Beautiful Caroline! I fished for a cigar, bit off the dry end, and spat it on the floor.

Before long there was a subtle change in the room, a subdued rustle of excitement, and I knew that Colonel Weyland had at last made his appearance at the dance. His face looked drawn and somehow pale beneath his desert tan. He looked tired as he shook hands with his staff, smiled at the ladies. He looked completely harmless, completely ordinary, until he turned his vague colorless eyes on me.

“Good evening, Mr. Reardon.” I thought his thin mouth smiled beneath the shaggy line of his mustache. But I couldn't be sure about that.

“Good evening, sir.”

He passed on, greeting the other members of the command, leaving me to wonder what was going on in that ironbound military mind of his. Gorgan and his wife stopped by briefly, after paying their respects to the Colonel.

“We've had enough of this,” the Lieutenant said. “We're going home as soon as we locate Sarah.”

“I think she's dancing with a C Company lieutenant,” Mrs. Gorgan said.

“Well, I guess we'll have to wait, then, until this set's over. Come with us, Reardon, and maybe Mary can scare up something decent to drink.”

I knew I should tell them to go on and I would see Sarah home myself, but I wasn't going to let myself in for anything. Gorgan was all right, but he wasn't going to saddle me with his daughter, if that's what he had in mind. I waited by the table until they had gone. Several of the older officers and their wives were going now. I went up to the front of the store and got my cap and went out too.

I walked without paying any attention to where I was going. The night air was cool and the desert was quiet, with only the stirring of the horses down at the stables and the pacing of the sentries along the runaround to break the stillness. And the music, of course, as sweet and syrupy as the punch. I walked automatically toward A Company's barracks and then realized that there was no longer a place there for me. It would be good to go inside and talk to Morgan, or Steuber, or even Skiborsky, but things were different now since the Colonel had put the two gold bars on my shoulders.

Why had he put them there?