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

smooth steel blade and Mrs. Powers said brutally: “Not at all. I’d have done the same for anyone sick as he is, nigger or white. And you would, too,” she added with satisfying malice.

“Yes, it was so sweet of you,” Cecily repeated, coolly noncommittal, exposing a slim leg from the arm of the caller’s chair. Jones, statically remote, watched the comedy.

“Nonsense,” the rector interposed. “Mrs. Powers merely saw him fatigued with traveling. I am sure he will be a different man tomorrow.”

“I hope so,” Mrs. Powers answered with sudden weariness, recalling his devastated face and that dreadful brow, his whole relaxed inertia of constant dull pain and ebbing morale. It’s too late, she thought with instinctive perspicuity. Shall I tell them about the scar? she pondered. Prevent a scene when this⁠—this creature (feeling the girl’s body against her shoulder) sees it. But no, I won’t, she decided, watching the tramping rector leonine in his temporary happiness. What a coward I am. Joe should have come: he might have known I’d bungle it some way.

The rector fetched his photograph. She took it: thin faced, with the serenity of a wild thing, the passionate serene alertness of a faun; and that girl leaning against the oaken branch of the rector’s arm, believing that she is in love with the boy, or his illusion⁠—pretending she is, anyway. No, no, I won’t be catty. Perhaps she is⁠—as much as she is capable of being in love with anyone. It’s quite romantic, being reft of your love and then having him returned unexpectedly to your arms. And an aviator, too. What luck that girl has playing her parts. Even God helps her.⁠ ⁠… You cat! she’s pretty and you are jealous. That’s what’s the matter with you, she thought in her bitter weariness. What makes me furious is her thinking that I am after him, am in love with him! Oh, yes, I’m in love with him! I’d like to hold his poor ruined head against my breast and not let him wake again ever.⁠ ⁠… Oh, hell, what a mess it all is! And that dull fat one yonder in somebody else’s trousers, watching her with his yellow unwinking eyes⁠—like a goat’s. I suppose she’s been passing the time with him.

“⁠—he was eighteen then,” the rector was saying. “He would never wear hat nor tie: his mother could never make him. She saw him correctly dressed, but it mattered not how formal the occasion, he invariably appeared without them.”

Cecily rubbing herself like a cat on the rector’s arm: “Oh, Uncle Joe, I love him so!”

And Jones like another round and arrogant cat, blinking his yellow eyes, muttered a shocking phrase. The rector was oblivious in speech and Cecily in her own graceful immersion, but Mrs. Powers half heard, half saw, and Jones looking up met her black stare. He tried to look her down but her gaze was impersonal as a dissection so he averted his and fumbled for his pipe.

There came a prolonged honking of a motor horn from without and Cecily sprang to her feet.

“Oh, there’s⁠—there’s a friend of ours. I’ll send him away and come straight back. Will you excuse me a moment, Uncle Joe?”

“Eh?” The rector broke his speech. “Oh, yes.”

“And you, Mrs. Powers?” She moved toward the door and her glance swept Jones again. “And you, Mr. Jones?”

“George got a car, has he?” Jones asked as she passed him. “Bet you don’t come back.”

She gave him her cool stare and from beyond the study door she heard the rector’s voice resume the story again⁠—of Donald, of course. And now I’m engaged again, she thought complacently, enjoying George’s face in anticipation when she would tell him. And that long black woman has been making love to him⁠—or he to her. I guess it’s that, from what I know of Donald. Oh, well, that’s how men are, I guess. Perhaps he’ll want to take us both.⁠ ⁠… She tripped down the steps into the sunlight: the sunlight caressed her with joy, as though she were a daughter of sunlight. How would I like to have a husband and wife, too, I wonder? Or two husbands? I wonder if I want one even, want to get married at all.⁠ ⁠… I guess it’s worth trying, once. I’d like to see that horrible fat one’s face if he could hear me say that, she thought. Wonder why I let him kiss me? Ugh!

George leaned from his car watching her restricted swaying stride with faint lust. “Come on, come on,” he called.

She did not increase her gait at all. He swung the door open, not bothering to dismount himself. “My God, what took you so long?” he asked plaintively. “Dam’f I thought you were coming at all.”

“I’m not,” she told him, laying her hand on the door. Her white dress in the nooning sun was unbearable to the eye, sloped to her pliant fragility. Beyond her, across the lawn, was another pliant gesture though this was only a tree, a poplar.

“Huh?”

“Not coming. My fiancé is arriving today.”

“Aw hell, get in.”

“Donald’s coming today,” she repeated, watching him. His face was ludicrous: blank as a plate, then shocked to slow amazement.

“Why, he’s dead,” he said vacuously.

“But he isn’t dead,” she told him sweetly. “A lady friend he’s traveling with came on ahead and told us. Uncle Joe’s like a balloon.”

“Ah, come on, Cecily. You’re kidding me.”

“I swear I’m not. I’m telling you the God’s truth.”

His smooth empty face hung before her like a handsome moon, empty as a promise. Then it filled with an expression of a sort.

“Hell, you got a date with me tonight. Whatcher going to do about that?”

“What can I do? Donald will be here by then.”

“Then it’s all off with us?”

She gazed at him, then looked quickly away. Funny how only an outsider had been able to bring home to her the significance of Donald’s imminence, his return. She nodded dumbly, beginning to feel miserable and lost.

He leaned from the car and caught her hand. “Get in here,” he commanded.

“No, no, I