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

that I⁠—ah⁠—took advantage of the situation without any ulterior motive whatever.”

“I understand that, dear boy. My rebuke was tendered in the same spirit. There are certain conventions which we must observe in this world; one of them being an outward deference to that cloth which I unworthily, perhaps, wear. And I have found this particularly incumbent upon us of the⁠—what shall I say⁠—?”

“Integer vitae scelerisque purus
non eget Mauris iaculis neque arcu
nec venenatis sagittas,
Fusce, pharetra⁠—”

began Jones. The rector chimed in:

“⁠—sive per Syrtis iter aestuosas
sive facturus per inhospitalem
Causasum vel quae loac fabulosas
lambit Hydaspes,”

they concluded in galloping duet and stood in the ensuing silence regarding each other with genial enthusiasm.

“But come, come,” cried the rector. His eyes were pleasant. “Shall I let the stranger languish without my gates?” The grilled iron swung open and his earthy hand was heavy on Jones’ shoulder. “Come, let us try the spire.”

The grass was good. A myriad bees vacillated between clover and apple bloom, apple bloom and clover, and from the Gothic mass of the church the spire rose, a prayer imperishable in bronze, immaculate in its illusion of slow ruin across motionless young clouds.

“My one sincere parishioner,” murmured the divine. Sunlight was a windy golden plume about his bald head, and Januarius Jones’ face was a round mirror before which fauns and nymphs might have wantoned when the world was young.

“Parishioner, did I say? It is more than that: it is by such as this that man may approach nearest to God. And how few will believe this! How few, how few!” He stared unblinking into the sun-filled sky: drowned in his eyes was a despair long since grown cool and quiet.

“That is very true, sir. But we of this age believe that he who may be approached informally, without the intercession of an office-boy of some sort, is not worth the approaching. We purchase our salvation as we do our real estate. Our God,” continued Jones, “need not be compassionate, he need not be very intelligent. But he must have dignity.”

The rector raised his great dirty hand. “No, no. You do them injustice. But who has ever found justice in youth, or any of those tiresome virtues with which we coddle and cradle our hardening arteries and souls? Only the ageing need conventions and laws to aggregate to themselves some of the beauty of this world. Without laws the young would reave us of it as corsairs of old combed the blue seas.”

The rector was silent a while. The intermittent shadows of young leaves were bird cries made visible and sparrows in ivy were flecks of sunlight become vocal. The rector continued:

“Had I the arranging of this world I should establish a certain point, say at about the age of thirty, upon reaching which a man would be automatically relegated to a plane where his mind would no longer be troubled with the futile recollection of temptations he had resisted and of beauty he had failed to garner to himself. It is jealousy, I think, which makes us wish to prevent young people doing the things we had not the courage or the opportunity ourselves to accomplish once, and have not the power to do now.”

Jones, wondering what temptations he had ever resisted and then recalling the women he might have seduced and hadn’t, said: “And then what? What would the people who have been unlucky enough to reach thirty do?”

“On this plane there would be no troubling physical things such as sunlight and space and birds in the trees⁠—but only unimportant things such as physical comfort: eating and sleeping and procreation.”

What more could you want? thought Jones. Here was a swell place. A man could very well spend all his time eating and sleeping and procreating, Jones believed. He rather wished the rector (or anyone who could imagine a world consisting solely of food and sleep and women) had had the creating of things and that he, Jones, could be forever thirty-one years of age. The rector, though, seemed to hold different opinions.

“What would they do to pass the time?” asked Jones for the sake of argument, wondering what the others would do to pass the time, what with eating and sleeping and fornication taken from them.

“Half of them would manufacture objects and another portion would coin gold and silver with which to purchase these objects. Of course, there would be storage places for the coins and objects, thus providing employment for some of the people. Others naturally would have to till the soil.”

“But how would you finally dispose of the coins and objects? After a while you would have a single vast museum and a bank, both filled with useless and unnecessary things. And that is already the curse of our civilization⁠—Things, Possessions, to which we are slaves, which require us to either labor honestly at least eight hours a day or do something illegal so as to keep them painted or dressed in the latest mode or filled with whisky or gasoline.”

“Quite true. And this would remind us too sorely of the world as it is. Needless to say, I have provided for both of these contingencies. The coins might be reduced again to bullion and coined over, and”⁠—the reverend man looked at Jones in ecstasy⁠—“the housewives could use the objects for fuel with which to cook food.”

Old fool, thought Jones, saying: “Marvellous, magnificent! You are a man after my own heart, Doctor.”

The rector regarded Jones kindly. “Ah, boy, there is nothing after youth’s own heart: youth has no heart.”

“But, Doctor. This borders on lese-majesty. I thought we had declared a truce regarding each other’s cloth.”

Shadows moved as the sun moved, a branch dappled the rector’s brow: a laureled Jove.

“What is your cloth?”

“Why⁠—” began Jones.

“It is the diaper still, dear boy. But forgive me,” he added quickly on seeing Jones’ face. His arm was heavy and solid as an oak branch across Jones’ shoulder. “Tell me, what do you consider the most admirable of