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

like a tangle of golden wires. She dragged her fascinated gaze from Jones and hating them both Jones felt perspiration under his hair. “Why didn’t I come sooner? But I am always doing the wrong thing, as Mr.⁠—Mr. Jones will know from my not coming in time to get hyacinths.”

She looked at him again, as she might at a strange beast. Jones’ confusion became anger and he found his tongue.

“Yes, it is too bad you didn’t come earlier. You would have seen me more interestingly gotten up than this even. Emmy seemed to think so, at least.”

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

The rector regarded him with puzzled affability. Then he understood. “Ah, yes, Mr. Jones suffered a slight accident and was forced to don a garment of mine.”

“Thanks for saying ‘was forced,’ ” Jones said viciously. “Yes, I stumbled over that pail of water the doctor keeps just inside the front door, doubtless for the purpose of making his parishioners be sure they really require help from heaven, on their second visit,” he explained, Greek-like, giving his dignity its death-stroke with his own hand. “You, I suppose, are accustomed to it and can avoid it.”

She looked from Jones’ suffused angry face to the rector’s kind, puzzled one and screamed with laughter.

“Forgive me,” she pleaded, sobering as quickly. “I simply couldn’t help it, Mr. Jones. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

“Certainly. Even Emmy enjoyed it. Doctor, Emmy cannot have been so badly outraged after all, to suffer such shock from seeing a man’s bare⁠—”

She covered up this gaucherie, losing most of the speech in her own words. “So you showed Mr. Jones your flowers? Mr. Jones should be quite flattered: that is quite a concession for Uncle Joe to make,” she said smoothly, turning to the divine, graceful and insincere as a French sonnet. “Is Mr. Jones famous, then? You haven’t told me you knew famous men.”

The rector boomed his laugh. “Well, Mr. Jones, you seem to have concealed something from me.” (Not as much as I would have liked to, Jones thought.) “I didn’t know I was entertaining a celebrity.”

Jones’ essential laziness of temper regained its ascendency and he answered civilly: “Neither did I, sir.”

“Ah, don’t try to hide your light, Mr. Jones. Women know these things. They see through us at once.”

“Uncle Joe,” she cautioned swiftly at this unfortunate remark, watching Jones. But Jones was safe now.

“No, I don’t agree with you. If they saw through us they would never marry us.”

She was grateful and her glance showed a faint interest (what color are her eyes?).

“Oh, that’s what Mr. Jones is! an authority on women.”

Jones’ vanity swelled and the rector saying, “Pardon me,” fetched a chair from the hall. She leaned her thigh against the desk and her eyes (are they gray or blue or green?) met his yellow unabashed stare. She lowered her gaze and he remarked her pretty self-conscious mouth. This is going to be easy, he thought. The rector placed the chair for her and she sat and when the rector had taken his desk chair again, Jones resumed his own seat. How long her legs are, he thought, seeing her frail white dress shape to her short torso. She felt his bold examination and looked up.

“So Mr. Jones is married,” she remarked. She did something to her eyes and it seemed to Jones that she had touched him with her hands. I’ve got your number, he thought vulgarly. He replied:

“No, what makes you think so?” The rector filling his pipe regarded them kindly.

“Oh, I misunderstood, then.”

“That isn’t why you thought so.”

“No?”

“It’s because you like married men,” he told her boldly.

“Do I?” without interest. It seemed to Jones that he could see her interest ebb away from him, could feel it cool.

“Don’t you?”

“You ought to know.”

“I?” asked Jones. “How should I know?”

“Aren’t you an authority on women?” she replied with sweet ingenuousness. Speechless he could have strangled her. The divine applauded:

“Checkmate, Mr. Jones?”

Just let me catch her eye again, he vowed, but she would not look at him. He sat silent and under his seething gaze she took the photograph from the desk and held it quietly for a time. Then she replaced it and reaching across the desktop she laid her hand on the rector’s.

“Miss Saunders was engaged to my son,” the divine explained to Jones.

“Yes?” said Jones, watching her profile, waiting for her to look at him again. Emmy, that unfortunate virgin, appeared at the door.

“All right, Uncle Joe,” she said, vanishing immediately.

“Ah, lunch,” the rector announced, starting up. They rose.

“I can’t stay,” she demurred, yielding to the divine’s hand upon her back. Jones fell in behind. “I really shouldn’t stay,” she amended.

They moved down the dark hall and Jones watching her white dress flow indistinctly to her stride, imagining her kiss, cursed her. At a door she paused and stood aside courteously, as a man would. The rector stopped also as perforce did Jones and here was a French comedy regarding precedence. Jones with counterfeit awkwardness felt her soft uncorseted thigh against the back of his hand and her sharp stare was like ice water. They entered the room. “Made you look at me then,” he muttered.

The rector remarking nothing said:

“Sit here, Mr. Jones,” and the virgin Emmy gave him a haughty antagonistic stare. He returned her a remote yellow one. I’ll see about you later, he promised her mentally, sitting to immaculate linen. The rector drew the other guest’s chair and sat himself at the head of the table.

“Cecily doesn’t eat very much,” he said, carving a fowl, “so the burden will fall upon you and me. But I think we can be relied upon, eh, Mr. Jones?”

She propped her elbows opposite him. And I’ll attend to you, too, Jones promised her darkly. She still ignored his yellow gaze and he said: “Certainly, sir,” employing upon her the old thought process which he had used in school when he was prepared upon a certain passage, but she ignored him with such thorough perfection that he knew a sudden qualm of unease, a faint doubt. I wonder if