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

within the courthouse portals, saw her unmistakable approaching figure far down the shady street, remarking her quick, nervous stride. He gloated, fondling her in his eyes with a slow sensuality. That’s the way to treat ’em: make ’em come to you. Forgetting that he had phoned her vainly five times in thirty hours. But her surprise was so perfect, her greeting so impersonal, that he began to doubt his own ears.

“My God,” he said, “I thought I’d never get you on the phone.”

“Yes?” She paused, creating an unpleasant illusion of arrested haste.

“Been sick?”

“Yes, sort of. Well,” moving on, “I’m awfully glad to have seen you. Call me again sometime, when I’m in, won’t you?”

“But say, Cecily⁠—”

She paused again and looked at him over her shoulder with courteous patience. “Yes?”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I’m running errands today. Buying some things for mamma. Goodbye.” She moved again, her blue linen shaping delicate and crisp to her stride. A negro driving a wagon passed between them, interminable as Time: he thought the wagon would never pass, so he darted around it to overtake her.

“Be careful,” she said quickly, “Daddy’s downtown today. I am not supposed to see you any more. My folks are down on you.”

“Why?” he asked in startled vacuity.

“I don’t know. Perhaps they have heard of your running around with women, and they think you will ruin me. That’s it, probably.”

Flattered, he said: “Aw, come on.”

They walked beneath awnings. Wagons tethered to slumbering mules and horses were motionless in the square. They were lapped, surrounded, submerged by the frank odor of unwashed negroes, most of whom wore at least one ex-garment of the army O.D.; and their slow, unemphatic voices and careless, ready laughter which has also somehow beneath it something elemental and sorrowful and unresisting, lay drowsily upon the noon.

At the corner was a drug store in each window of which was an identical globe, containing liquids, once red and green, respectively, but faded now to a weak similar brown by the suns of many summers. She stayed him with her hand.

“You mustn’t come any further, George, please.”

“Oh, come on, Cecily.”

“No, no. Goodbye.” Her slim hand stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Come in and have a coca-cola.”

“No, I can’t. I have so many things to do. I’m sorry.”

“Well, after you get through, then,” he suggested as a last resort.

“I can’t tell. But if you want to, you can wait here for me and I’ll come back if I have time. If you want to, you know.”

“All right, I’ll wait here for you. Please come, Cecily.”

“I can’t promise. Goodbye.”

He was forced to watch her retreating from him, mincing and graceful, diminishing. Hell, she won’t come, he told himself. But he daren’t leave for fear she might. He watched her as long as he could see her, watching her head among other heads, sometimes seeing her whole body, delicate and unmistakable. He lit a cigarette and lounged into the drug store.

After a while the clock on the courthouse struck twelve and he threw away his fifth cigarette. God damn her, she won’t have another chance to stand me up, he swore. Cursing her he felt better and pushed open the screen door.

He sprang suddenly back into the store and stepped swiftly out of sight and the soda clerk, glassy-haired and white-jacketed, said: “Whatcher dodging?” with interest. She passed, walking and talking gaily with a young married man who clerked in a department store. She looked in as they passed, without seeing him.

He waited, wrung and bitter with anger and jealousy, until he knew she had turned the corner. Then he swung the door outward furiously. He cursed her again, blindly, and someone behind him saying, “Mist’ George, Mist’ George,” monotonously drew up beside him. He whirled upon a negro boy.

“What in hell you want?” he snapped.

“Letter fer you,” replied the negro equably, shaming him with better breeding. He took it and gave the boy a coin. It was written on a scrap of wrapping paper and it read: “Come tonight after they have gone to bed. I may not get out. But come⁠—if you want to.”

He read and reread it, he stared at her spidery, nervous script until the words themselves ceased to mean anything to his mind. He was sick with relief. Everything, the ancient, slumbering courthouse, the elms, the hitched somnolent horses and mules, the stolid coagulation of negroes and the slow unemphasis of their talk and laughter, all seemed some way different, lovely and beautiful under the indolent noon.

He drew a long breath.

IV I

Mr. George Farr considered himself quite a man. I wonder if it shows in my face? he thought, keenly examining the faces of men whom he passed, trying to fancy that he did see something in some faces that other faces had not. But he had to admit that he could see nothing, and he knew a slight depression, a disappointment. Strange. If that didn’t show in your face what could you do for things to show in your face? It would be fine if (George Farr was a gentleman), if without talking men who had women could somehow know each other on sight⁠—some sort of involuntary sign: an automatic masonry. Of course women were no new thing to him. But not like this. Then the pleasing thought occurred to him that he was unique in the world, that nothing like this had happened to any other man, that no one else had ever thought of such a thing. Anyway I know it. He gloated over a secret thought like a pleasant taste in the mouth.

When he remembered (remember? had he thought of anything else?) how she had run into the dark house in her nightgown, weeping, he felt quite masculine and superior and gentle. She’s all right now though, I guess they all do that.

His Jove-like calm was slightly shaken, however, after he had tried twice unsuccessfully to get her over the phone and it was