Soldiers’ Pay - William Faulkner (people reading books TXT) 📗

not.” She raised his head to see his face. “I would tell you if I were. Don’t you believe me?” her eyes were compelling: he believed her.

“Then, if you aren’t, can’t you promise to wait for me? I will be older soon and I’ll work like hell and make money.”

“What will your mother say?”

“Hell, I don’t have to mind her like a kid forever. I am nineteen, as old as you are, and if she don’t like it, she can go to hell.”

“Lowe!” she reproved him, not telling him she was twenty-four, “the idea! You go home and tell your mother⁠—I will give you a note to her⁠—and you can write what she says.”

“But I had rather go with you.”

“But, dear heart, what good will that do? We are going to take him home, and he is sick. Don’t you see, darling, we can’t do anything until we get him settled, and that you would only be in the way?”

“In the way?” he repeated with sharp pain.

“You know what I mean. We can’t have anything to think about until we get him home, don’t you see?”

“But you aren’t in love with him?”

“I swear I’m not. Does that satisfy you?”

“Then, are you in love with me?”

She drew his face against her knees again. “You sweet child,” she said; “of course I won’t tell you⁠—yet.”

And he had to be satisfied with this. They held each other in silence for a time. “How good you smell,” remarked Cadet Lowe at last.

She moved. “Come up here by me,” she commanded, and when he was beside her she took his face in her hands and kissed him. He put his arms around her, and she drew his head between her breasts. After a while she stroked his hair and spoke.

“Now, are you going home at once?”

“Must I?” he asked vacuously.

“You must,” she answered. “Today. Wire her at once. And I will give you a note to her.”

“Oh, hell, you know what she’ll say.”

“Of course I do. You haven’t any sisters and brothers, have you?”

“No,” he said in surprise. She moved and he sensed the fact that she desired to be released. He sat up. “How did you know?” he asked in surprise.

“I just guessed. But you will go, won’t you? Promise.”

“Well, I will, then. But I will come back to you.”

“Of course you will. I will expect you. Kiss me.”

She offered her face coolly and he kissed her as she wished: coldly, remotely. She put her hands on his cheeks. “Dear boy,” she said, kissing him again, as his mother kissed him.

“Say, that’s no way for engaged people to kiss,” he objected.

“How do engaged people kiss?” she asked. He put his arms around her, feeling her shoulder-blades, and drew her mouth against his with the technique he had learned. She suffered his kiss a moment, then thrust him away.

“Is that how engaged people kiss?” she asked, laughing. “I like this better.” She took his face in her palms and touched his mouth briefly and coolly. “Now swear you’ll wire your mother at once.”

“But will you write to me?”

“Surely. But swear you will go today, in spite of what Gilligan may tell you.”

“I swear,” he answered, looking at her mouth. “Can’t I kiss you again?”

“When we are married,” she said, and he knew he was being dismissed. Thinking, knowing that she was watching him, he crossed the room with an air, not looking back.

Here were yet Gilligan and the officer. Mahon said:

“Morning, old chap.”

Gilligan looked at Lowe’s belligerent front from a quizzical reserve of sardonic amusement.

“Made a conquest, hey, ace?”

“Go to hell,” replied Lowe. “Where’s that bottle? I’m going home today.”

“Here she is, General. Drink deep. Going home?” he repeated. “So are we, hey, Loot?”

II I

Jones, Januarius Jones, born of whom he knew and cared not, becoming Jones alphabetically, January through a conjunction of calendar and biology, Januarius through the perverse conjunction of his own star and the compulsion of food and clothing⁠—Januarius Jones baggy in gray tweed, being lately a fellow of Latin in a small college, leaned upon a gate of iron grillwork breaking a levee of green and embryonically starred honeysuckle, watching April busy in a hyacinth bed. Dew was on the grass and bees broke apple bloom in the morning sun while swallows were like plucked strings against a pale windy sky. A face regarded him across a suspended trowel and the metal clasps of crossed suspenders made a cheerful glittering.

The rector said: “Good morning, young man.” His shining dome was friendly against an ivy-covered wall above which the consummate grace of a spire and a gilded cross seemed to arc across motionless young clouds.

Januarius Jones, caught in the spire’s illusion of slow ruin, murmured: “Watch it fall, sir.” The sun was full on his young round face.

The horticulturist regarded him with benevolent curiosity. “Fall? Ah, you see an aeroplane,” he stated. “My son was in that service during the war.” He became gigantic in black trousers and broken shoes. “A beautiful day for flying,” he said from beneath his cupped hand. “Where do you see it?”

“No, sir,” replied Jones, “no aeroplane, sir. I referred in a fit of unpardonable detachment to your spire. It was ever my childish delight to stand beneath a spire while clouds are moving overhead. The illusion of slow falling is perfect. Have you ever experienced this, sir?”

“To be sure I have, though it has been⁠—let me see⁠—more years than I care to remember. But one of my cloth is prone to allow his own soul to atrophy in his zeal for the welfare of other souls that⁠—”

“⁠—that not only do not deserve salvation, but that do not particularly desire it,” finished Jones.

The rector promptly rebuked him. Sparrows were delirious in ivy and the rambling façade of the rectory was a dream in jonquils and clipped sward. There should be children here, thought Jones. He said:

“I most humbly beg your pardon for my flippancy, Doctor. I assure you