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

back. “Not at all, my dear fellow.” Yawning, he strolled up the hall. He stood in the entrance, speculative, filling his pipe. He yawned again openly. At his right was an open door and he entered a stuffily formal room. Here was a convenient window ledge on which to put spent matches, and sitting beside it he elevated his feet to another chair.

The room was depressingly hung with glum portraits of someone’s forebears, between which the principal strain of kinship appeared to be some sort of stomach trouble. Or perhaps they were portraits of the Ancient Mariner at different ages before he wore out his albatross. (Not even a dead fish could make a man look like that, thought Jones, refusing the dyspeptic gambit of their fretful painted eyes. No wonder the parson believes in hell.) A piano had not been opened in years, and opened would probably sound like the faces looked. Jones rose and from a bookcase he got a copy of Paradise Lost (cheerful thing to face a sinner with, he thought), and returned to his chair. The chair was hard, but Jones was not. He elevated his feet again.

The rector and a stranger came into his vision, pausing at the front door in conversation. The stranger departed and that black woman appeared. She and the rector exchanged a few words. Jones remarked with slow, lustful approval her firm, free carriage, and⁠—

And here came Miss Cecily Saunders in pale lilac with a green ribbon at her waist, tapping her delicate way up the fast-drying gravel path between the fresh-sparkled grass.

“Uncle Joe!” she called, but the rector had already withdrawn to his study. Mrs. Powers met her and she said: “Oh. How do you do? May I see Donald?”

She entered the hall beneath the dim lovely fanlight, and her roving glance remarked one sitting with his back to a window. She said Donald! and sailed into the room like a bird. One hand covered her eyes and the other was outstretched as she ran with quick tapping steps and sank before him at his feet, burying her face in his lap.

“Donald, Donald! I will try to get used to it, I will try! Oh, Donald, Donald! Your poor face! But I will, I will,” she repeated hysterically. Her fumbling hand touched his sleeve and slipping down his arm she drew his hand under her cheek, clasping it. “I didn’t mean to, yesterday. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything, Donald. I couldn’t help it, but I love you, Donald, my precious, my own.” She burrowed deeper into his lap.

“Put your arms around me, Donald,” she said, “until I get used to you again.”

He complied, drawing her upward. Suddenly, struck with something familiar about the coat, she raised her head. It was Januarius Jones.

She sprang to her feet. “You beast, why didn’t you tell me?”

“My dear ma’am, who am I to refuse what the gods send?”

But she did not wait to hear him. At the door Mrs. Powers stood watching with interest. Now she’s laughing at me! Cecily thought furiously. Her glance was a blue dagger and her voice was like dripped honey.

“How silly of me, not to have looked,” she said sweetly. “Seeing you, I thought at once that Donald would be near by. I am sure if I were a man I’d always be as near you as possible. But I didn’t know you and Mr.⁠—Mr. Smith were such good friends. Though they say that fat men are awfully attractive. May I see Donald⁠—do you mind?”

Her anger lent her fortitude. When she entered the study she looked at Mahon without a qualm, scar and all. She greeted the rector, kissing him, then she turned swift and graceful to Mahon, averting her eyes from his brow. He watched her quietly, without emotion.

You have caused me to look foolish, she told him with whispered smooth fury, sweetly kissing his mouth.

Jones, ignored, followed down the hall and stood without the closed door to the study, listening, hearing her throaty, rapid speech beyond the bland panel. Then, stooping, he peered through the keyhole. But he could see nothing and feeling his creased waistline constricting his breathing, feeling his braces cutting into his stooped fleshy shoulders, he rose under Gilligan’s detached, contemplative stare. Jones’ own yellow eyes became quietly empty and he walked around Gilligan’s immovable belligerence and on toward the front door, whistling casually.

XI

Cecily Saunders returned home nursing the yet uncooled embers of her anger. From beyond the turning angle of the veranda her mother called her name and she found her parents sitting together.

“How is Donald?” her mother asked, and not waiting for a reply, she said: “George Farr phoned again after you left. I wish you’d leave a message for him. It keeps Tobe forever stopping whatever he is doing to answer the phone.”

Cecily, making no reply, would have passed on to a French window opening upon the porch, but her father caught her hand, stopping her.

“How is Donald looking today?” he asked, repeating his wife.

Her unrelaxed hand tried to withdraw from his. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said harshly.

“Why, didn’t you go there?” Her mother’s voice was faintly laced with surprise. “I thought you were going there.”

“Let me go, daddy.” She wrenched her hand nervously. “I want to change my dress.” He could feel her rigid, delicate bones. “Please,” she implored and he said:

“Come here, Sis.”

“Now, Robert,” his wife interposed. “You promised to let her alone.”

“Come here, Sis,” he repeated, and her hand becoming lax, she allowed herself to be drawn to the arm of his chair. She sat nervously, impatiently, and he put his arm around her. “Why didn’t you go there?”

“Now, Robert, you promised,” his wife parroted futilely.

“Let me go, daddy.” She was rigid beneath her thin, pale dress. He held her and she said: “I did go there.”

“Did you see Donald?”

“Oh, yes. That black, ugly woman finally condescended to let me see him a few minutes. In her presence, of course.”

“What