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

I couldn’t have.⁠ ⁠…” Her voice died away and she clutched his hand convulsively, releasing it. She rose. “I must go.”

He caught her hand. It was unresponsive. “May I see you this afternoon?”

“Oh, no. I can’t come back this afternoon. I have some sewing to do.”

“Oh, come on, put it off. Don’t treat me again like you did. I nearly went crazy. I swear I did.”

“Sweetheart, I can’t, I simply can’t. Don’t you know I want to see you as badly as you want to see me; that I would come if I could?”

“Let me come down there, then.”

“I believe you are crazy,” she told him, with contemplation. “Don’t you know I’m not supposed to see you at all?”

“Then I’m coming tonight.”

“Hush!” she whispered, quickly, descending the steps.

“But I am,” he repeated stubbornly. She looked hurriedly about the store, and her heart turned to water. Here, sitting at a table in the alcove made by the ascending stairs, was that fat man, with a half-empty glass before him.

She knew dreadful terror, and as she stared at his round, bent head, all her blood drained from her icy heart. She put her hand on the railing, lest she fall. Then this gave way to anger. The man was a nemesis: every time she had seen him since that first day at luncheon with Uncle Joe, he had flouted her, had injured her with diabolic ingenuity. And now, if he had heard⁠—

George had risen, following her, but at her frantic gesture, her terror-stricken face, he retreated again. Then she changed her expression as readily as you would a hat. She descended the steps.

“Good morning, Mr. Jones.”

Jones looked up with his customary phlegmatic calm, then he rose, lazily courteous. She watched him narrowly with the terror-sharpened cunning of an animal, but his face and manner told nothing.

“Good morning, Miss Saunders.”

“You have the morning coca-cola habit, too, I see. Why didn’t you come up and join me?”

“I am still cursing myself for missing that pleasure. You see, I didn’t know you were alone.” His yellow bodyless stare was as impersonal as the jars of yellowish liquid in the windows and her heart sank.

“I didn’t see nor hear you come in, or I would have called to you.”

He was noncommittal. “Thank you. The misfortune is mine, however.”

She said suddenly: “I wonder if you will do me a favor? I have a thousand million things to do this morning. Will you go with me and help me remember them⁠—do you mind?” Her eyes held a desperate coquetry.

Jones’ eyes were fathomless, slowly yellow. “I’ll be delighted.”

“Finish your drink, then.”

George Farr’s good-looking face, wrung and jealous, peered down at them. She made no sign, yet there was such pitiful terror in her whole attitude that even George’s dull and jealous intelligence took her meaning. His face sank again from view. Jones said:

“Let the drink go. I don’t know why I keep on trying the things. Make myself think I have a highball, perhaps.”

She laughed in three notes. “You can’t expect to satisfy tastes like that in this town. In Atlanta now⁠—”

“Yes, you can do lots of things in Atlanta you can’t do here.”

She laughed again, flatteringly, and they moved up the antiseptic tunnel of the drug store, toward the entrance. She would laugh in such a way as to lend the most innocent remark a double entendre: you immediately accepted the fact that you had said something clever, without recalling what it was at all. Jones’ yellow idol’s stare remarked her body’s articulation, her pretty, nervous face, while George Farr, in a sick, dull rage, watched them in silhouette, flatly. Then they reassumed depth and she, fragile as a Tanagra, and he, slouching and shapeless and tweeded, disappeared.

II

“Say,” said young Robert Saunders, “are you a soldier, too?”

Jones, lunching to a slow completion, heavily courteous, deferentially conversational, had already won Mrs. Saunders. Of Mr. Saunders he was not so sure, nor did he care. Finding that the guest knew practically nothing about money or crops or politics, Mr. Saunders soon let him be to gossip trivially with Mrs. Saunders. Cecily was perfect: pleasantly tactful, letting him talk. Young Robert though was bent on a seduction of his own.

“Say,” he repeated, for the third time, watching Jones’ every move with admiration⁠—“was you a soldier, too?”

“Were, Robert,” corrected his mother.

“Yessum. Was you a soldier in the war?”

“Robert. Let Mr. Jones alone, now.”

“Sure, old fellow,” Jones answered. “I fought some.”

“Oh, did you?” asked Mrs. Saunders. “How interesting,” she commented without interest. Then: “I suppose you never happened to run across Donald Mahon in France, did you?”

“No. I had very little time in which to meet people, you see,” replied Jones with gravity, who had never seen the Statue of Liberty⁠—even from behind.

“What did you do?” asked young Robert indefatigable.

“I suppose so.” Mrs. Saunders sighed with repletion and rang a bell. “The war was so big. Shall we go?”

Jones drew her chair and young Robert repeated tirelessly: “What did you do in the war? Did you kill folks?”

The older people passed on to the veranda. Cecily, with a gesture of her head, indicated a door and Jones entered, followed by young Robert, still importunate. The scent of Mr. Saunders’ cigar wafted down the hall and into the room where they sat and young Robert, refraining his litany, caught Jones’ yellow, fathomless eye like a snake’s, and young Robert’s spine knew an abrupt, faint chill. Watching Jones cautiously he moved nearer his sister.

“Run along, Bobby. Don’t you see that real soldiers never like to talk about themselves?”

He was nothing loath. He suddenly desired to be in the warm sun. This room had got cold. Still watching Jones he sidled past him to the door. “Well,” he remarked, “I guess I’ll be going.”

“What did you do to him?” she asked, when he had gone.

“I? Nothing. Why?”

“You scared him, some way. Didn’t you see how he watched you?”

“No, I didn’t notice it.” He filled his pipe, slowly.

“I suppose not. But then you frighten lots of people, don’t you?”

“Not as many as you’d