From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [470]
After he had kissed her, he went to the door. Before he closed it, he looked back and waved once.
Karen smiled at him from the bed and waved.
Then, as the door closed, she lay back and relaxed the hard knot. With the relaxing of it everything else seemed to all come apart, too. Her mind drifted. She listened for the closing of the outer door that would mean that he was gone and when she heard it she turned over and lay on her belly with her cheek on the pillow, exhausted. It had taken everything out of her. But she was glad and happy she had been able to protect him. He needed protecting so very badly. It was hard on him. He looked so completely lost. She could not stand it, to see him look so lost. Men were so much softer than women were. She was glad she could make it easier for him. And it wasnt a lie. Maybe they would meet again someday. It didnt hurt anything to believe it. She went to sleep.
Warden, picking his way back down the side street to the highway, was thinking of the White Russian girl during his hitch in China. There had been her, and then before that the old Chinese merchant’s young wife in Manila, and before that the college girl from Chicago U when he was at Sheridan. (He was younger then), and still working backward the Protestant girl back home in Connecticut that was the reason he first enlisted.
Four.
Five, counting Karen Holmes.
Five real ones. Five that counted. Out of how many years? Out of sixteen years.
Maybe if he was lucky, if he was very lucky, there would be time enough left him for two more, three more perhaps, before he got too old. Men got old much quicker in the Army. Pete Karelsen wasnt fifty yet.
He had that much to look forward to. Maybe.
And he had that much to look back on. For sure.
Three more, to look forward to, if he was very lucky.
But he suspected, somehow, none of them would ever measure up to this one, that had come in his early 30s. He suspected; he was afraid; that this one was going to turn out to have been the top of the hill.
Warden, working his way back toward the CP along the highway, did not think she had seen through his lie. There was no use making a thing harder on someone than it already was. Besides, someday maybe they really would meet again. So it didn’t hurt anything, if it made it easier for her, to believe it. And he was sure she hadnt seen through it.
Then, still thinking about it, he realized with a shock why she hadnt seen through it. She had been too busy concentrating on making her own convincing to him, to notice his.
He hoped she didnt have any trouble with Holmes.
Chapter 55
MAJOR HOLMES WAS WAITING for his wife when she got home the next morning.
Karen did not get there till almost eleven. The beautiful almost-unearthly-lovely Chinese-Hawaiian girl had thoughtfully been very quiet for her in the house, and she had slept till after nine. Then, when she did get up, the lovely girl cooked breakfast for them, and the two of them sat for another hour in the little dinette, over their eggs and canned ham and coffee, with the sun streaming summer-bright through the windows, two happily adulterous wives, discussing with each other in a warm friendly intimacy the fine traits of character in their lovers. The sun, the air, the whole day had the feel of a summer holiday. It was an experience Karen had never had, and would not have missed if Holmes had had to wait till four o’clock. The feeling of holiday stayed with her all the way home.
Holmes was sitting stubbornly doggedly at the kitchen table with a cup of his own coffee.
Being a Major had not changed Capt Holmes greatly. He had put off the breeches and boots and Cavalryman’s hat, in exchange for the staff officer’s slacks and low-quarters and regular Infantry hat. And now, like the rest of the staff officers in Brigade, he wore the regulation wartime uniform of OD woolen shirt and CKC slacks stuffed into leggins over field shoes. But basically, it had not changed him much. Of course, it had only been a few months.
“I want to know where you’ve been,” h