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

shifted his artificial leg, nursing his festering arm between the bones of which a tracer bullet had passed. “If they want to have another one.”

“Yes.” She yearned toward the agile, prancing youth. His body was young in years, his hair was glued smoothly to his skull. His face, under a layer of powder, was shaved and pallid, sophisticated, and he and his blonde and briefly-skirted partner slid and poised and drifted like a dream. The negro cornetist stayed his sweating crew and the assault arrested withdrew, leaving the walls of silence peopled by the unconquered defenders of talk. Boys of both sexes swayed arm in arm, taking sliding tripping steps, waiting for the music and the agile youth, lounging immaculately, said: “Have this dance?”

She said “Hel⁠—lo,” sweetly drawling. “Have you met Mr. Dough? Mr. Rivers, Mr. Dough. Mr. Dough is a visitor in town.”

Mr. Rivers patronized Mr. Dough easily and repeated: “Dance the next?” Mr. Rivers had had a year at Princeton.

“I’m sorry. Mr. Dough doesn’t dance,” answered Miss Cecily Saunders faultlessly. Mr. Rivers, well bred, with all the benefits of a year at a cultural center, mooned his blank face at her.

“Aw, come on. You aren’t going to sit out all evening, are you? What did you come here for?”

“No, no: later, perhaps. I want to talk to Mr. Dough. You hadn’t thought of that, had you?”

He stared at her quietly and emptily. At last he mumbled “Sorry,” and lounged away.

“Really,” began Mr. Dough, “not on my account, you know. If you want to dance⁠—”

“Oh, I have to see those⁠—those infants all the time. Really, it is quite a relief to meet someone who knows more than dancing and⁠—and⁠—dancing. But tell me about yourself. Do you like Charlestown? I can see that you are accustomed to larger cities, but don’t you find something charming about these small towns?”

Mr. Rivers roved his eye, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation, but he moved on toward a group of men standing and sitting near the steps, managing in some way to create the illusion of being both participants and spectators at the same time. They were all of a kind: there was a kinship like an odor among them, a belligerent self-effacement. Wallflowers. Wallflowers. Good to talk to the hostess and dance with the duds. But even the talkative hostess had given them up now. One or two of them, bolder than the rest, but disseminating that same faint identical odor stood beside girls, waiting for the music to start again, but the majority of them herded near the steps, touching each other as if for mutual protection. Mr. Rivers heard phrases in bad French and he joined them, aware of his own fitted dinner jacket revealing his matchless linen.

“May I see you a minute, Madden?”

The man quietly smoking detached himself from the group. He was not big, yet there was something big and calm about him: a sense of competent inertia after activity.

“Yes?” he said.

“Do me a favor, will you?”

“Yes?” the man repeated courteously noncommittal.

“There’s a man here who can’t dance, that nephew of Mrs. Wardle’s, that was hurt in the war. Cecily⁠—I mean Miss Saunders⁠—has been with him all evening. She wants to dance.”

The other watched him with calm intentness and Mr. Rivers suddenly lost his superior air.

“To tell the truth, I want to dance with her. Would you mind sitting with him a while? I’d be awfully obliged to you if you would.”

“Does Miss Saunders want to dance?”

“Sure she does. She said so.” The other’s gaze was so penetrating that he felt moisture and drew his handkerchief, wiping his powdered brow lightly, not to disarrange his hair. “God damn it,” he burst out, “you soldiers think you own things, don’t you?”

Columns, imitation Doric, supported a remote small balcony, high and obscure, couples strolled in, awaiting the music, talk and laughter and movement distorted by a lax transparency of curtains inside the house. Along the balustrade of the veranda red eyes of cigarettes glowed; a girl stooping ostrich-like drew up her stocking and light from a window found her young shapeless leg. The negro cornetist, having learned in his thirty years a century of the white man’s lust, blinked his dispassionate eye, leading his crew in a fresh assault. Couples erupted in, clasped and danced; vague blurs locked together on the lawn beyond the light.

“… Uncle Joe, Sister Kate, all shimmy like jelly on a plate.⁠ ⁠…”

Mr. Rivers felt like a chip in a current: he knew a sharp puerile anger. Then as they turned the angle of the porch he saw Cecily clothed delicately in a silver frock, fragile as spun glass. She carried a green feather fan and her slim, animated turned body, her nervous prettiness, filled him with speculation. The light falling diffidently on her, felt her arm, her short body, suavely indicated her long, virginal legs.

“… Uncle Bud, ninety-two, shook his cane and shimmied too.⁠ ⁠…”

Dr. Gary danced by without his glass of water: they avoided him and Cecily looked up, breaking her speech.

“Oh, Mr. Madden! How do you do?” She gave him her hand and presented him to Mr. Dough. “I’m awfully flattered that you decided to speak to me⁠—or did Lee have to drag you over? Ah, that’s how it was. You were going to ignore me, I know you were. Of course we can’t hope to compete with French women⁠—”

Madden protested conventionally and she made room for him beside her.

“Sit down. Mr. Dough was a soldier, too, you know.”

Mr. Rivers said heavily: “Mr. Dough will excuse you. How about a dance? Time to go home soon.”

She civilly ignored him and James Dough shifted his leg. “Really, Miss Saunders, please dance, I wouldn’t spoil your evening for anything.”

“Do you hear that, Mr. Madden? The man is driving me away. Would you do that?” she tilted her eyes at him effectively. Then she turned to Dough with restrained graceful impulsiveness. “I still call him Mr. Madden, though we have known each other all our lives. But then he was in the war, and I wasn’t. He is so⁠—so experienced, you see. And I am only a girl. If I had been