From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [489]
“I thought it was already settled.”
“Well, its not. You havent hardly said anything.”
“What is there for me to say?”
“I’m willing to forgive you,” Holmes said. “Tell me where you were, and who you were with. Make a clean breast of it. I’ll forgive you.”
“I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I’m afraid thats something you’ll never know.”
“You’ll have to tell me someday.”
“Why?”
“Well, you just will. After all, I’m your husband. You cant hide things from me forever.”
“My God,” Karen said, grinning, “if you surely dont sound like a page out of Hemingway. I’m not going to hide anything from you. I’m just not going to tell you.
“I will tell you something else, though. I’ve deceived you before. Once. You never knew about it. And it is very likely I’ll deceive you again someday. One never knows. But I think you ought to know that before you decide anything. We’re going to have to change the terms of our agreement, you see.
“Now you just sit right there,” she said maternally, “and take it easy, and decide what you want to do. If you want to divorce me, all right. And if you dont thats all right, too. Whatever you decide is just fine.
“But Junior will be coming home from school for lunch in a few minutes now, and we dont want him to see us having a big scene, do we?”
“I’m hungry,” Holmes said dismally.
“Theres plenty of cold meat and stuff in the refrigerator,” Karen said. “And I’ll be back before dinner.”
“But what about Junior’s lunch?”
“Bella always fixes it right after breakfast and puts it in the refrigerator, remember?” she explained patiently. “Its all right in there on the plate. He knows where it is.”
“Well, do you care if I go up to the Club with you?” Holmes asked humbly.
“I’d rather go by myself. Its a lovely day out, and I want to enjoy it. Without having to talk over problems.”
“But we cant both go up to the Club and eat at separate tables,” Holmes protested.
“Then you can go over to the PX,” Karen said gently, but firmly. “If you dont want to fix yourself something here. I’ll tell you something,” she said from the door. “If you wont let the coffee boil in the pot, but just let it barely start to come to a boil, it wont be so bitter.”
“I’ll use the Silex,” Holmes said.
“All right,” Karen said solicitously. “I’ll see you later on then.”
She went on out the back door and down and out from under the big old trees into the summer-bright sunlight on Waianae Avenue. It was really a remarkably lovely day, and its lazy summery loveliness tingled all through her. She walked on along Waianae Avenue. Schofield Barracks was really a very lovely Post. There were anti-aircraft guns set up on the ball diamonds in sandbagged emplacements, and there was a lot of raw dirt around from the bomb shelters they were digging. But even all that was lovely. Everything was lovely. Everything was so lovely, in fact, that Karen felt with the right amount of balance and proportion and the proper timing of everything from now on, the proper savoring of every morsel, and no greediness, she actually believed she might keep it that way almost indefinitely.
Last night, when Milt came, she had been reading about Stendhal’s philosophy of happiness. It was not a moral philosophy; it was a very materialistic philosophy. Many people probably would not approve of it. Its only purpose was to deduce and plan ahead of time rationally, how to make life completely interesting and fully happy. The good thing about that Stendhal, he understood the very important place that misery and tragedy played in the making of a full happiness. She had never thought of that, any more than she had never thought of a philosophy constructed for the sole purpose of making life happy.
She felt she would never love another man. But if love was over, life need not be.
Suddenly, walking along Waianae Avenue, she began to cry, over the lovely anti-aircraft guns and the beautiful piles of raw dirt.
Major Holmes, staff G-3 of the —rd Brigade, sat on heavily at his kitchen table after his wife