Soldiers’ Pay by William Faulkner (digital e reader txt) 📕

Jones was placated. “Sincere arrogance,” he returned promptly. The rector’s great laugh boomed like bells in the sunlight, sent the sparrows like gusty leaves whirling.

“Shall we be friends once more, then? Come, I will make a concession: I will show you my flowers. You are young enough to appreciate them without feeling called upon to comment.”

The garden was worth seeing. An avenue of roses bordered a graveled path which passed from sunlight beneath two overarching oaks. Beyond the oaks, against a wall of poplars in a restless formal row were columns of a Greek temple, yet the poplars themselves in slim, vague green were poised and vain as girls in a frieze. Against a privet hedge would soon be lilies like nuns in a cloister and blue hyacinths swung soundless bells, dreaming of Lesbos. Upon a lattice wall wistaria would soon burn in slow inverted lilac flame, and following it they came lastly upon a single rose bush. The branches were huge and knotted with age, heavy and dark as a bronze pedestal, crowned with pale impermanent gold. The divine’s hands lingered upon it with soft passion.

“Now, this,” he said, “is my son and my daughter, the wife of my bosom and the bread of my belly: it is my right hand and my left hand. Many is the night I have stood beside it here after having moved the wrappings too soon, burning newspapers to keep the frost out. Once I recall I was in a neighboring town attending a conference. The weather⁠—it was March⁠—had been most auspicious and I had removed the covering.

“The tips were already swelling. Ah, my boy, no young man ever awaited the coming of his mistress with more impatience than do I await the first bloom on this bush. (Who was the old pagan who kept his Byzantine goblet at his bedside and slowly wore away the rim kissing it? there is an analogy.)⁠ ⁠… But what was I saying?⁠—ah, yes. So I left the bush uncovered against my better judgment and repaired to the conference. The weather continued perfect until the last day, then the weather reports predicted a change. The bishop was to be present; I ascertained that I could not reach home by rail and return in time. At last I engaged a livery man to drive me home.

“The sky was becoming overcast, it was already turning colder. And then, three miles from home, we came upon a stream and found the bridge gone. After some shouting we attracted the attention of a man plowing across the stream and he came over to us in a skiff. I engaged my driver to await me, was ferried across, walked home and covered my rose, walked back to the stream and returned in time. And that night”⁠—the rector beamed upon Januarius Jones⁠—“snow fell!”

Jones fatly supine on gracious grass, his eyes closed against the sun, stuffing his pipe: “This rose has almost made history. You have had the bush for some time, have you not? One does become attached to things one has long known.” Januarius Jones was not particularly interested in flowers.

“I have a better reason than that. In this bush is imprisoned a part of my youth, as wine is imprisoned in a wine jar. But with this difference: my wine jar always renews itself.”

“Oh,” remarked Jones, despairing, “there is a story here, then.”

“Yes, dear boy. Rather a long story. But you are not comfortable lying there.”

“Who ever is completely comfortable,” Jones rushed into the breach, “unless he be asleep? It is the fatigue caused by man’s inevitable contact with the earth which bears him, be he sitting, standing or lying, which keeps his mind in a continual fret over futilities. If a man, if a single man, could be freed for a moment from the forces of gravity, concentrating his weight upon that point of his body which touches the earth, what would he not do? He would be a god, the lord of life, causing the high gods to tremble on their thrones: he would thunder at the very gates of infinity like a mailed knight. As it is, he must ever have behind his mind a dull wonder how anything composed of fire and air and water and omnipotence in equal parts can be so damn hard.”

“That is true. Man cannot remain in one position long enough to really think. But about the rose bush⁠—”

“Regard the buzzard,” interrupted Jones with enthusiasm, fighting for time, “supported by air alone: what dignity, what singleness of purpose! What cares he whether or not Smith is governor? What cares he that the sovereign people annually commission comparative strangers about whom nothing is known save that they have no inclination toward perspiration, to meddle with impunity in the affairs of the sovereign people?”

“But, my dear boy, this borders on anarchism.”

“Anarchism? Surely. The hand of Providence with money-changing blisters. That is anarchism.”

“At least you admit the hand of Providence.”

“I don’t know. Do I?” Jones, his hat over his eyes and his pipe projecting beneath, heaved a box of matches from his jacket. He extracted one and scraped it on the box. It failed and he threw it weakly into a clump of violets. He tried another. He tried another. “Turn it around,” murmured the rector. He did so and the match flared.

“How do you find the hand of Providence here?” he puffed around his pipe stem.

The rector gathered the dead matches from the clump of violets. “In this way: it enables man to rise and till the soil, so that he might eat. Would he, do you think, rise and labor if he could remain comfortably supine over long? Even that part of the body which the Creator designed for sitting on serves him only a short time, then it rebels, then it, too, gets his sullen bones up and hales them along. And there is no help for him save in sleep.”

“But he cannot sleep for more than a possible third of his time,” Jones