From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [198]
“Listen,” he said. “Wont you please listen?”
“All right, I’m listening.”
Warden nodded. “You have to listen,” he said urgently.
She looked at him and took the bottle out of his hand. “I believe I will have a drink, before I go. Why, Milt,” she said, “you’re crying.”
“No I’m not,” Warden nodded. “Listen. Listen to me.”
“You have a drink,” Karen said and gave him back the bottle.
Warden nodded. “I dont want you to go, see?” he said. “I’m asking you please not to go.”
“I dont want to go,” Karen said. “I want to stay. Oh, Milt, I do want to stay, Milt.”
“Thats it,” he said. “Listen,” he said. “Oh, that son of a bitch. That miserable lousy son of a bitch.”
“I dont have to be back until tomorrow evening,” she said vaguely. “He’s going to one of Col Delbert’s stags tonight, you see.”
“I love you,” Warden said. “Oh that son of a bitch.”
Chapter 23
CAPT HOLMES MAY OR may not have been a son of a bitch, it all depended on your point of view, but Capt Holmes was not a stupid man. He knew his wife was having an affair. When you live with another human for twelve years you get so you sense those things. Tonight his wife had refused to cook his dinner for him. His wife never refused to cook his dinner for him. Breakfast, yes; luncheon, always; but not dinner. Cooking dinner was part of the agreement. Agreement? Capt Holmes thought. Treaty. Or perhaps armed truce would be better. This was not a typical marriage. Or was it?
Rather than eat the gook maid’s cooking Capt Holmes had dined, and dined well, in the Bachelor Officers’ Mess with the other married officers whose wives did not cook dinner for them, and now with a comfortably full bowel he was sitting unhappily at the Payday-deserted bar of the Club Taproom watching the enlisted barman solicitously polishing glasses, while waiting for his Colonel to show up.
Capt Holmes had not been on the best of terms with his Colonel lately, since the loss of the championship. In fact, when he thought about it, he had not been on the best of terms with much of anybody lately. First his Colonel, then his wife; but then, there was always his wife. Neither his 1st/Sgt nor his Mess/Sgt seemed to like him very well. Half the men in his company hated his guts. The other half, whom he knew he had done things for, did not even seem to realize it. At times, he suspected they disliked him more than the first half. He did not know why all this was. Apparently, he had not yet located his proper place in life. Logically, he ought to be on the best of terms with everybody because, logically, he had chosen this place in life as the only one he wanted, and he wanted to be on the best of terms with everybody.
Where had it all gone? he wondered, feeling a yawning bottomlessness that always frightened him opening up beneath his feet. Where were the ideals of the leader of men who had marched forth from the Point? Where was the gay and happy marriage, the good living, the conscientious leadership? Where was the dashing, hell-for-leather young cavalryman? He could not remember having lost them anywhere, and he knew he had not laid them down. What then had happened to it?
It will be a civilian man, he thought. She is too discreet to pick an officer, and she has too much breeding and good taste to take an EM. Ergo, a civilian man, preferably a rich one. Capt Holmes had always been a believer in the efficacy of syllogistic logic.
He ought to be feeling good, he told himself. Now he did not have to go home at all tonight, or any night, unless he felt like it. He was freed of the necessity of keeping up appearances with his wife in name only. Thats good, that: Wife In Name Only, I remember a book called that. It was one of those I used to hide from mother in the haymow. Who was it now? Clay. Bertha M Clay. Dear Bertha. Well, it was good to know your wife possessed sexual instincts, just like any other human. Now he had something on her. It was a sound basis for a fruitful union. Logically, he really ought to be feeling fine. He had always believed in logic, hadnt