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

the Loot brought back with him. Your good name won’t be worth nothing after these folks get through with it.”

“My good name is your trouble, not mine, Joe.”

“My trouble? How you mean?”

“Men are the ones who worry about our good names, because they gave them to us. But we have other things to bother about, ourselves. What you mean by a good name is like a dress that’s too flimsy to wear comfortably. Come on, let’s go to the garden.”

“You know you don’t mean that,” Gilligan told her. She smiled faintly, not turning her face to him.

“Come on,” she repeated, descending the steps.

They left a delirium of sparrows and the sweet smell of fresh grass behind them and were in a graveled path between rose bushes. The path ran on beneath two formal arching oaks; lesser roses rambling upon a wall paralleled them and Gilligan following her long stride trod brittle and careful. Whenever he was among flowers he always felt as if he had entered a room full of women: he was always conscious of his body, of his walk, feeling as though he trod in sand. So he believed that he really did not like flowers.

Mrs. Powers paused at intervals, sniffing, tasting dew upon buds and blooms, then the path passed between violet beds to where against a privet hedge there would soon be lilies. Beside a green iron bench beneath a magnolia she paused again, staring up into the tree. A mocking bird flew out and she said:

“There’s one, Joe. See?”

“One what? Bird nest?”

“No, a bloom. Not quite, but in a week or so. Do you know magnolia blooms?”

“Sure: not good for anything if you pick ’em. Touch it, and it turns brown on you. Fades.”

“That’s true of almost everything, isn’t it?”

“Yeh, but how many folks believe it? Reckon the Loot does?”

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I wonder if he’ll have a chance to touch that one?”

“Why should he want to? He’s already got one that’s turning brown on him.”

She looked at him, not comprehending at once. Her black eyes, her red mouth like a pomegranate blossom. She said then: “Oh! Magnolia.⁠ ⁠… I’d thought of her as a⁠—something like an orchid. So you think she’s a magnolia?”

“Not an orchid, anyways. Find orchids anywhere but you wouldn’t find her in Illinoy or Denver, hardly.”

“I guess you are right. I wonder if there are any more like her anywhere?”

“I dunno. But if there ain’t there’s already one too many.”

“Let’s sit down a while. Where’s my cigarette?” She sat on the bench and he offered her his paper pack and struck a match for her. “So you think she won’t marry him, Joe?”

“I ain’t so sure any more. I think I am changing my mind about it. She won’t miss a chance to marry what she calls a hero⁠—if only to keep somebody else from getting him.” (Meaning you, he thought.)

(Meaning me, she thought.) She said: “Not if she knows he’s going to die?”

“What does she know about dying? She can’t even imagine herself getting old, let alone imagining anybody she is interested in dying. I bet she believes they can even patch him up so it won’t show.”

“Joe, you are an incurable sentimentalist. You mean you think she’ll marry him because she is letting him think she will and because she is a ‘good’ woman. You are quite a gentle person, Joe.”

“I ain’t!” he retorted with warmth. “I am as hard as they make ’em: I got to be.” He saw she was laughing at him and he grinned ruefully. “Well, you got me that time, didn’t you?” He became suddenly serious. “But it ain’t her I’m worrying about. It’s his old man. Why didn’t you tell him how bad off he was?”

She quite feminine and Napoleonic:

“Why did you send me on ahead instead of coming yourself? I told you I’d spoil it.” She flipped her cigarette away and put her hand on his arm. “I didn’t have the heart to, Joe. If you could have seen his face! and heard him! He was like a child, Joe. He showed me all of Donald’s things. You know: pictures, and a slingshot, and a girl’s undie and a hyacinth bulb he carried with him in France. And there was that girl and everything. I just couldn’t. Do you blame me?”

“Well, it’s all right now. It was a kind of rotten trick, though, to let him find it all out before them people at the station. We done the best we could, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did the best we could. I wish we could do more.” Her gaze brooded across the garden where in the sun beyond the trees, bees were already at work. Across the garden, beyond a street and another wall you could see the top of a pear tree like a branching candelabra, closely bloomed, white, white.⁠ ⁠… She stirred, crossing her knees. “That girl fainting, though. What do you⁠—”

“Oh, I expected that. But here comes Othello, like he was looking for us.”

They watched the late conductor of the lawn mower as he shuffled his shapeless shoes along the gravel. He saw them and halted.

“Mr. Gillmum, Rev’un say fer you to come to de house.”

“Me?”

“You Mist’ Gillmum, ain’t you?”

“Oh, sure.” He rose. “Excuse me, ma’am. You coming, too?”

“You go and see what he wants. I’ll come along after a while.”

The negro had turned shuffling on ahead of him and the lawn mower had resumed its chattering song as Gilligan mounted the steps. The rector stood on the veranda. His face was calm but it was evident he had not slept.

“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Gilligan, but Donald is awake, and I am not familiar with his clothing as you are. I gave away his civilian things when he⁠—when he⁠—”

“Sure, sir,” Gilligan answered in sharp pity for the gray-faced man. He don’t know him yet! “I’ll help him.”

The divine, ineffectual, would have followed, but Gilligan leaped away from him up the stairs. He saw Mrs. Powers coming from the garden and he descended to the lawn,