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

His host took the photograph and gazed at it. “There is always death in the faces of the young in spirit, the eternally young. Death for themselves or for others. And dishonor. But death, surely. And why not? why should death desire only those things which life no longer has use for? Who gathers the withered rose?” The rector dreamed darkly in space for a while. After a time he added: “A companion sent back a few of his things.” He propped the photograph upright on the desk and from a drawer he took a tin box. His great hand fumbled at the catch.

“Let me, sir,” offered Jones, knowing that it was useless to volunteer, that the rector probably did this every day. But the lid yielded as he spoke and the divine spread on the desk the sorry contents: a woman’s chemise, a cheap paper-covered “Shropshire Lad,” a mummied hyacinth bulb. The rector picked up the bulb and it crumbled to dust in his hand.

“Tut, tut! How careless of me!” he ejaculated, sweeping the dust carefully into an envelope. “I have often deplored the size of my hands. They should have been given to someone who could use them for something other than thumbing books or grubbing in flower beds. Donald’s hands, on the contrary, were quite small, like his mother’s: he was quite deft with his hands. What a surgeon he would have made.”

He placed the things upon the desk, before the propped photograph like a ritual, and propping his face in his earthy hands he took his ruined dream of his son into himself as one inhales tobacco smoke.

“Truly, there is life and death and dishonor in his face. Had you noticed Emmy? Years ago, about the time this picture was made.⁠ ⁠… But that is an old story. Even Emmy has probably forgotten it.⁠ ⁠… You will notice that he has neither coat nor cravat. How often has he appeared after his mother had seen him decently arrayed, on the street, in church, at formal gatherings, carrying hat, coat and collar in his hands. How often have I heard him say ‘Because it is too hot.’ Education in the bookish sense he had not: the schooling he got was because he wanted to go, the reading he did was because he wanted to read. Least of all did I teach him fortitude. What is fortitude? Emotional atrophy, gangrene.⁠ ⁠…” He raised his face and looked at Jones. “What do you think? was I right? Or should I have made my son conform to a type?”

“Conform that face to a type? (So Emmy has already been dishonored, once, anyway.) How could you? (I owe that dishonored one a grudge, too.) Could you put a faun into formal clothes?”

The rector sighed. “Ah, Mr. Jones, who can say?” He slowly replaced the things in the tin box and sat clasping the box between his hands. “As I grow older, Mr. Jones, I become more firmly convinced that we learn scarcely anything as we go through this world, and that we learn nothing whatever which can ever help us or be of any particular benefit to us, even. However!⁠ ⁠…” He sighed again, heavily.

Emmy, the dishonored virgin, appeared, saying: “What do you want for dinner, Uncle Joe? Ice cream or strawberry shortcake?” Blushing, she avoided Jones’ eye.

The rector looked at his guest, yearning. “What would you like, Mr. Jones? But I know how young people are about ice cream. Would you prefer ice cream?”

But Jones was a tactful man in his generation and knowing about food himself he had an uncanny skill in anticipating other people’s reactions to food. “If it is the same to you, Doctor, let it be shortcake.”

“Shortcake, Emmy,” the rector instructed with passion. Emmy withdrew. “Do you know,” he continued with apologetic gratitude, “do you know, when a man becomes old, when instead of using his stomach, his stomach uses him, as his other physical compulsions become weaker and decline, his predilections toward the food he likes obtrude themselves.”

“Not at all, sir.” Jones assured him. “I personally prefer a warm dessert to an ice.”

“Then you must return when there are peaches. I will give you a peach cobbler, with butter and cream.⁠ ⁠… But ah, my stomach has attained a sad ascendency over me.”

“Why shouldn’t it, sir? Years reave us of sexual compulsions: why shouldn’t they fill the interval with compulsions of food?”

The rector regarded him kindly and piercingly. “You are becoming specious. Man’s life need not be always filled with compulsions of either sex or food, need it?”

But here came quick tapping feet down the uncarpeted hall and she entered, saying: “Good morning, Uncle Joe,” in her throaty voice, crossing the room with graceful effusion, not seeing Jones at once. Then she remarked him and paused like a bird in midflight, briefly. Jones rose and under his eyes she walked mincing and graceful, theatrical with body-consciousness to the desk. She bent sweetly as a young tree and the divine kissed her cheek. Jones’ goat’s eyes immersed her in yellow contemplation.

“Good morning, Cecily.” The rector rose. “I had expected you earlier, on such a day as this. But young girls must have their beauty sleep regardless of weather,” he ended with elephantine joviality. “This is Mr. Jones, Cecily. Miss Saunders, Mr. Jones.”

Jones bowed with obese incipient grace as she faced him, but at her expression of hushed delicate amazement he knew panic. Then he remembered the rector’s cursed trousers and he felt his neck and ears slowly burn, knowing that not only was he ridiculous looking but that she supposed he wore such things habitually. She was speechless and Jones damned the hearty oblivious rector slowly and completely. Curse the man: one moment it was Emmy and no trousers at all, next moment an attractive stranger and nether coverings like a tired balloon. The rector was saying bland as Fate:

“I had expected you earlier. I had decided to let you take some hyacinths.”

“Uncle Joe! How won⁠—derful!” Her voice was rough,