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

seems to with a sparring partner. Got caught, at last, didn’t you?”

She shivered. She looked so delicate, so needing to be cared for that Jones, becoming masculine and sentimental, felt again like a cloddish brute. He lit his pipe again and Emmy, convicting herself of the power of speech, said:

“Yonder they come.”

A cab had drawn up to the gate and Cecily sprang to her feet and ran along the porch to the steps. Jones and Emmy rose and Emmy vanished somewhere as four people descended from the cab. So that’s him, thought Jones ungrammatically, following Cecily, watching her as she stood poised on the top step like a bird, her hand to her breast. Trust her!

He looked again at the party coming through the gate, the rector looming above them all. There was something changed about the divine: age seemed to have suddenly overtaken him, unresisted, coming upon him like a highwayman. He’s sure sick, Jones told himself. The woman, that Mrs. Something-or-other, left the party and hastened ahead. She mounted the steps to Cecily.

“Come darling,” she said, taking the girl’s arm, “come inside. He is not well and the light hurts his eyes. Come in and meet him there, hadn’t you rather?”

“No, no: here. I have waited so long for him.”

The other woman was kind but obdurate. And she led the girl into the house. Cecily reluctant, with reverted head cried: “Uncle Joe! his face! is he sick?”

The divine’s face was gray and slack as dirty snow. At the steps he stumbled slightly and Jones sprang forward, taking his arm. “Thanks, buddy,” said the third man, in a private’s uniform, whose hand was beneath Mahon’s elbow. They mounted the steps and crossing the porch passed under the fanlight, into the dark hall.

“Take your cap, Loot,” murmured the enlisted man. The other removed it and handed it to him. They heard swift tapping feet crossing a room and the study door opened letting a flood of light fall upon them, and Cecily cried:

“Donald! Donald! She says your face is hur⁠—oooooh!” she ended, screaming as she saw him.

The light passing through her fine hair gave her a halo and lent her frail dress a fainting nimbus about her crumpling body like a stricken poplar. Mrs. Powers moving quickly caught her, but not before her head had struck the door jamb.

III I

Mrs. Saunders said: “You come away now, let your sister alone.”

Young Robert Saunders fretted but optimistic, joining again that old battle between parent and child, hopeful in the face of invariable past defeat:

“But can’t I ask her a civil question? I just want to know what his scar l⁠—”

“Come now, come with mamma.”

“But I just want to know what his sc⁠—”

“Robert.”

“But mamma,” he essayed again, despairing. His mother pushed him firmly doorward.

“Run down to the garden and tell your father to come here. Run, now.”

He left the room in exasperation. His mamma would have been shocked could she have read his thoughts. It wasn’t her especially. They’re all alike, he guessed largely, as has many a man before him and as many will after him. He wasn’t going to hurt the old ’fraid cat.

Cecily freed of her clothing lay crushed and pathetic between cool linen, surrounded by a mingled scent of cologne and ammonia, her fragile face coiffed in a towel. Her mother drew a chair to the side of the bed and examined her daughter’s pretty shallow face, the sweep of her lashes upon her white cheek, her arms paralleling the shape of her body beneath the covers, her delicate blue-veined wrists and her long slender hands relaxed and palm-upward beside her. Then young Robert Saunders, without knowing it, had his revenge.

“Darling, what did his face look like?”

Cecily shuddered, turning her head on the pillow. “Ooooh, don’t, don’t, mamma! I c-can’t bear to think of it.”

(But I just want to ask you a civil question.) “There, there. We won’t talk about it until you feel better.”

“Not ever, not ever. If I have to see him again I’ll⁠—I’ll just die. I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it.”

She was crying again frankly like a child, not even concealing her face. Her mother rose and leaned over her. “There, there. Don’t cry any more. You’ll be ill.” She gently brushed the girl’s hair from her temples, rearranging the towel. She bent down and kissed her daughter’s pale cheek. “Mamma’s sorry, baby. Suppose you try to sleep. Shall I bring you a tray at supper time?”

“No, I couldn’t eat. Just let me lie here alone and I’ll feel better.”

The older woman lingered, still curious. (I just want to ask her a civil question.) The telephone rang and with a last ineffectual pat at the pillow she withdrew.

Lifting the receiver she remarked her husband closing the garden gate behind him.

“Yes?⁠ ⁠… Mrs. Saunders.⁠ ⁠… Oh, George?⁠ ⁠… Quite well, thank you. How are you⁠ ⁠… no, I am afraid not.⁠ ⁠… What?⁠ ⁠… yes, but she is not feeling well⁠ ⁠… later, perhaps.⁠ ⁠… Not tonight. Call her tomorrow⁠ ⁠… yes, yes, quite well, thank you. Goodbye.”

She passed through the cool darkened hall and onto the veranda letting her tightly corseted figure sink creaking into a rocking chair as her husband carrying a sprig of mint and his hat mounted the steps. Here was Cecily in the masculine and gone to flesh: the same slightly shallow good looks and somewhere an indicated laxness of moral fiber. He had once been precise and dapper but now he was clad slovenly in careless uncreased gray and earthy shoes. His hair still curled youthfully upon his head and he had Cecily’s eyes. He was a Catholic, which was almost as sinful as being a republican; his fellow townsmen, while envying his social and financial position in the community, yet looked askance at him because he and his family made periodical trips to Atlanta to attend church.

“Tobe!” he bellowed, taking a chair near his wife.

“Well, Robert,” she began with zest, “Donald Mahon came home today.”

“Government sent his body back, did they?”

“No, he