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

“What in the world⁠—” began Mrs. Mahon, then they saw Jones, like a fat satyr, leaping after her, hopelessly distanced. When he saw them he slowed immediately and lounged up to them slovenly as ever. His yellow eyes were calmly opaque but she could see the heave of his breathing. Convulsed with laughter she at last found her voice.

“Good evening, Mr. Jones.”

“Say,” said Gilligan with interest, “what was you⁠—”

“Hush, Joe,” Mrs. Mahon told him. Jones’ eyes, clear and yellow, obscene and old in sin as a goat’s, roved between them.

“Good evening, Mr. Jones.” The rector became abruptly aware of his presence. “Walking again, eh?”

“Running,” Gilligan corrected, and the rector repeated Eh? looking from Jones to Gilligan.

Mrs. Mahon indicated a chair. “Sit down, Mr. Jones. You must be rather fatigued, I imagine.”

Jones stared toward the house, tore his eyes away and sat down. The canvas sagged under him and he rose and spun his chair so as to face the dreaming façade of the rectory. He sat again.

“Say,” Gilligan asked him, “what was you doing, anyway?”

Jones eyed him briefly, heavily. “Running,” he snapped, turning his eyes again to the dark house.

“Running?” the divine repeated.

“I know: I seen that much from here. What was you running for, I asked.”

“Reducing, perhaps,” Mrs. Mahon remarked, with quiet malice.

Jones turned his yellow stare upon her. Twilight was gathering swiftly. He was a fat and shapeless mass palely tweeded. “Reducing, yes. But not to marriage.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you,” she told him. “A courtship like that will soon reduce you to anything, almost.”

“Yeh,” Gilligan amended, “if that’s the only way you got to get a wife you’d better pick out another one besides Emmy. You’ll be a shadow time you catch her. That is,” he added, “if you aim to do your courting on foot.”

“What’s this?” the rector asked.

“Perhaps Mr. Jones was merely preparing to write a poem. Living it first, you know,” Mrs. Mahon offered. Jones looked at her sharply. “Atalanta,” she suggested in the dusk.

“Atlanta?” repeated Gilligan, “what⁠—”

“Try an apple next time, Mr. Jones,” she advised.

“Or a handful of salt, Mr. Jones,” added Gilligan in a thin falsetto. Then in his natural voice. “But what’s Atlanta got to⁠—”

“Or a cherry, Mr. Gilligan,” said Jones viciously. “But then, I am not God, you know.”

“Shut your mouth, fellow,” Gilligan told him roughly.

“What’s this?” the rector repeated. Jones turned to him heavily explanatory:

“It means, sir, that Mr. Gilligan is under the impression that his wit is of as much importance to me as my actions are to him.”

“Not me,” denied Gilligan with warmth. “You and me don’t have the same thoughts about anything, fellow.”

“Why shouldn’t they be?” the rector asked. “It is but natural to believe that one’s actions and thoughts are as important to others as they are to oneself, is it not?”

Gilligan gave this his entire attention. It was getting above his head, beyond his depth. But Jones was something tangible, and he had already chosen Jones for his own.

“Naturally,” agreed Jones with patronage. “There is a kinship between the human instruments of all action and thought and emotion. Napoleon thought that his actions were important, Swift thought his emotions were important, Savonarola thought his beliefs were important. And they were. But we are discussing Mr. Gilligan.”

“Say⁠—” began Gilligan.

“Very apt, Mr. Jones,” murmured Mrs. Mahon above the suggested triangle of her cuffs and collar. “A soldier, a priest and a dyspeptic.”

“Say,” Gilligan repeated, “who’s swift, anyway? I kind of got bogged up back there.”

“Mr. Jones is, according to his own statement. You are Napoleon, Joe.”

“Him? Not quite swift enough to get himself a girl, though. The way he was gaining on Emmy⁠—You ought to have a bicycle,” he suggested.

“There’s your answer, Mr. Jones,” the rector told him. Jones looked toward Gilligan’s fading figure in disgust, like that of a swordsman who has been disarmed by a peasant with a pitchfork.

“That’s what association with the clergy does for you,” he said crassly.

“What is it?” Gilligan asked. “What did I say wrong?”

Mrs. Mahon leaned over and squeezed his arm. “You didn’t say anything wrong, Joe. You were grand.”

Jones glowered sullenly in the dusk. “By the way,” he said, suddenly, “how is your husband today?”

“Just the same, thank you.”

“Stands wedded life as well as can be expected, does he?” She ignored this. Gilligan watched him in leashed anticipation. He continued: “That’s too bad. You had expected great things from marriage, hadn’t you? Sort of a miraculous rejuvenation?”

“Shut up, fellow,” Gilligan told him. “Whatcher mean, anyway?”

“Nothing, Mr. Galahad, nothing at all. I merely made a civil inquiry.⁠ ⁠… Shows that when a man marries, his troubles continue, doesn’t it?”

“Then you oughtn’t to have no worries about your troubles,” Gilligan told him savagely.

“What?”

“I mean, if you don’t have no better luck than you have twice that I know of⁠—”

“He has a good excuse for one failure, Joe,” Mrs. Mahon said.

They both looked toward her voice. The sky was bowled with a still disseminated light that cast no shadow and branches of trees were rigid as coral in a mellow tideless sea. “Mr. Jones says that to make love to Miss Saunders would be epicene.”

“Epicene? What’s that?”

“Shall I tell him, Mr. Jones? or will you?”

“Certainly. You intend to, anyway, don’t you?”

“Epicene is something you want and can’t get, Joe.”

Jones rose viciously. “If you will allow me, I’ll retire, I think,” he said savagely. “Good evening.”

“Sure,” agreed Gilligan with alacrity, rising also. “I’ll see Mr. Jones to the gate. He might get mixed up and head for the kitchen by mistake. Emmy might be one of them epicenes, too.”

Without seeming to hurry Jones faded briskly away. Gilligan sprang after him. Jones, sensing him, whirled in the dusk and Gilligan leaped upon him.

“For the good of your soul,” Gilligan told him joyously. “You might say that’s what running with preachers does for you, mightn’t you?” he panted as they went down.

They rolled in dew and an elbow struck him smartly under the chin. Jones was up immediately and Gilligan, tasting his bitten tongue, sprang in pursuit. But Jones retained his lead. “He has sure learned to run from somebody,” Gilligan grunted. “Practicing