The Colonel's Lady Read online

  “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?

  That was the thing that kept running around in my mind. That was the thing I had to know.

  I walked for a long while alone in the darkness, to the ammunition magazine, to the stables, back toward headquarters, and finally to the bachelor officers' section of Officers' Row. The dance was beginning to break up and there were sounds of officers and their wives walking in the darkness. Laughter here and there. And the metallic rattle always associated with the cavalry—this time the rattle of dress swords. My adobe hut stood quiet and uninviting at the end of the row, but there was nowhere else to go. I kicked the plank door open and walked in.

  “Matt?”

  I was just about to strike a match to light the coal-oil lamp. I very carefully put the match back in my pocket and closed the door. The voice was Caroline's.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here, Matt.” I heard the rustle of her crinoline, smelled the cleanness of her sachet, and she was standing beside me. I didn't think of anything just then. I reached out and brought her against me and kissed her.

  “I came as soon as I could, Matt,” she said.

  “Not too soon for me. How did you manage it?”

  “The Colonel is working again up at headquarters. On a plan of some kind.”

  “A battle plan?”

  “I think so. Does it matter?”

  “No, I guess it doesn't. Come here, closer.”

  Time passed. I don't know how much. At last we moved over to the window and looked out from our own black darkness to the paler darkness of the parade. “I'm glad I came,” she said.

  “Is there any danger of his— Well, how long will he be at headquarters?”

  “For a long time yet. Maybe until dawn. He's been working that way every night for more than a week.” I could feel her shudder as I held her. “He frightens me, Matt. I don't know what goes on in his mind. I thought I did at first, but now he's different.” After a moment of silence she said, “I love you, Matt.”

  “You didn't act like it tonight, the way you were dancing with Halan.”

  She laughed softly. “You don't need to be jealous of Captain Halan.”

  “I'm not jealous.” But I was. And she knew it. Her arms went around my neck and pulled my face down to her.

  “You were very handsome tonight, Matt, in your new uniform. I told you that you wouldn't remain a common trooper. Remember?”

  “Did you have anything to say about my getting a commission?”

  “No, but that doesn't matter. You got it, and that's the important thing. Someday you'll be a general, Matt. I know that too.”

  I thought I could see the way Caroline's mind was working. But she was forgetting about her husband. If it wasn't for Weyland, I might be a general someday, at that, with Caroline directing my career for me. Hadn't she made a general out of Weyland? Only he was demoted after the war and sent to the frontier, away from civilization, away from all the things Caroline wanted from life. And Weyland had reached his peak, with no way to go but down. But a younger man...

  She was as clear as glass. I could look into her mind and see that she loved me, but that wouldn't stop her from dropping me again if someone else came along with a brighter-looking future. She was a beautiful, spoiled child, and she would never be anything else. I knew it, but it didn't make any difference when I had my arms around her.

  “Matt...

  “Yes?”

  “You said you had to talk to me. What did you want to talk about?”

  “It can wait. I want to hold you. That's all I want to do right now.”

  “But what was it, Matt?”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I guess that's what I wanted to talk about. I tried to hate you, Caroline, but it wasn't any good. On the desert the other day, when we had the brush with Kohi, do you know what I thought about? I thought about you. You're all I ever think about, it seems.”

  Her arms tightened. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. “I'm glad, Matt.”

  “But it's no good like this. God knows what your husband's got planned for me, but it's something, and it won't be pretty. I shouldn't have taken this commission, but I did it, and now I don't know why.”

  “Because you knew I wanted you to, Matt?”

  That was the reason and I had known it all along. I had even got to lying to myself. “Yes,” I said, “I guess that's why. But it won't do us any good. I've got to get out of the Army, Caroline. We'll go somewhere, just the two of us. To Mexico, maybe.”

  I could feel her stiffen. “Matt, we couldn't do that.”

  “We can't stay here. We can't go on like this.”

  We stood there, and the night was very quiet. It had been in the back of my mind ever since I saw her in Tucson, I suppose. I had come to Larrymoor for one reason, to take her away. The Colonel knew it now. And he would fight, even kill, to keep her. That was what he was trained for, fighting, killing.

  She lay against me, very quiet for a long while. And then she said, “If we went to Mexico, what would happen, Matt? We would have no money, no country, no friends. What would we do, Matt?”

  She was right, of course, and what was there to say?

  “Give me time, Matt. Have faith in me and believe in me.”

  “Do you propose to make me a general, the way you made Weyland a general?” I said bitterly. “That would be a pretty long wait, even with you working it, Caroline, because the war is over and promotions don't come that fast any more.”

  It was a waste of words and I should have known better.

  She spoke patiently, the way she would speak to an unreasonable child. “Of course we wouldn't wait until you're a general, Matt. But you'll be one someday.”

  “And what about your husband? We've forgotten all about the Colonel, haven't we? Is he going to just sit by and do nothing while you're taking care of my military career? He was the one who ha
nded me my commission— we've forgotten that, too. And he had a reason. A deadly reason, more than likely. What are you going to do about that?”

  But nothing was impossible for Caroline. She was Cinderella now and the clock always stopped a minute short of midnight. With her lips against my cheek I could feel her smiling. “Have faith in me, Matt.” She pressed something into my hand—a small, velvet-covered oblong—and closed my fingers around it. “This is what I believe, Matt,” she said softly. “I believe in you, and I believe in myself, and nothing else matters.”

  I stood there for a long while after Caroline had gone, still feeling her in the room. Still smelling the scent of her sachet, hearing the crisp rustle of crinoline. Finally I took out a match and lighted the coal-oil lamp and looked at the box in my hand. It was small and flat and covered in black velvet. I opened it and the inside was lined in black velvet, and against the black material, as black as the night, lay two glittering silver stars.

  The full meaning of Caroline's gift didn't hit me at first. I reached for a bottle of raw clear whisky—I had credit at the sutler's now, being an officer—poured some into a cup, and drank it down. It dawned on me finally that they were more than mere trinkets, those bright, shimmering, five-pointed pieces of silver. They were the stars of a general officer.

  I don't know when I started laughing. There was nothing funny about it. It was insane, if anything, and frightening. But I laughed. I lay face-down on my bunk and pounded the straw-stuffed mattress and howled, and I didn't give a damn who heard me. Yesterday a common trooper, today a second lieutenant, tomorrow a general. Caroline had ambition, anyway, I had to say that for her. It was boundless. And not only for herself, but for me. I rolled and brayed like a jackass. Then suddenly I thought of Colonel Weyland and the things I had seen in those pale eyes of his. I stopped laughing.

  I got up and filled a tin mess cup brimful with the sutler's whisky. I drank it.

  Chapter Eight

  AT LARRYMOOR, officers' call was directly after breakfast. We reported in a group to the Colonel at headquarters, where the details for the day were handed out, the patrols made up, the march routes planned. The morning after the dance was when I learned at last where I stood.