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

Gilligan replied. “We brought him over to hear the music a while.”

“Brought him?”

“Got his in the head. Don’t remember much,” Madden informed the other. “Did you say Mrs. Powers is with him?” he asked Gilligan.

“Yeh, she came. Why not come out and speak to her?”

Madden looked at his companion. Dough shifted his cork leg. “I think not,” he said. “I’ll wait for you.”

Madden rose. “Come on,” Gilligan said, “she’ll be glad to see you. She ain’t a bad sort, as Madden can tell you.”

“No, I’ll wait here, thanks. But come back, will you?”

Madden read his unexpressed thought. “She’s dancing now. I’ll be back before then.”

They left him lighting a cigarette. The negro cornetist had restrained his men and removed them temporarily and the porch was deserted save for the group sitting on the balustrade. These, the hostess, with a renaissance of optimism, had run to earth and captured.

Gilligan and Madden crossed grass, leaving lights behind. “Mrs. Powers, you remember Mr. Madden,” Gilligan informed her formally. He was not big, yet there was something big and calm about him, a sense of competent inertia after activity. Madden saw her colorless face against the canopied darkness of the car, her black eyes and her mouth like a scar. Beside her Mahon sat motionless and remote, waiting for music which you could not tell whether or not he heard.

“Good evening, ma’am,” Madden said enveloping her firm, slow hand, remembering a figure sharp against the sky screaming, You got us killed and firing point-blank into another man’s face red and bitter in a relief of transient flame against a sorrowful dawn.

XI

Jones, challenging the competition, danced with her twice, once for six feet and then for nine feet. She could not dance with the muscular facility of some of the other girls. Perhaps this was the reason she was in such demand. Dancing with the more skilled ones was too much like dancing with agile boys. Anyway, men all seemed to want to dance with her, to touch her.

Jones, foiled for the second time, became yellowly speculative: tactical; then, watching his chance, he cut in upon glued hair and a dinner coat. The man raised his empty ironed face fretfully, but Jones skilfully cut her out of the prancing herd and into the angle made by the corner of the balustrade. Here only his back could be assailed.

He knew his advantage was but temporary, so he spoke quickly.

“Friend of yours here tonight.”

Her feather fan drew softly across his neck. He sought her knee with his and she eluded him with efficiency, trying vainly to maneuver from the corner. One desiring to cut in importuned him from behind and she said with exasperation: “Do you dance, Mr. Jones? They have a good floor here. Suppose we try it.”

“Your friend Donald dances. Ask him for one,” he told her, feeling her shallow breast and her nervous efforts to evade him. One importuned him from behind and she raised her pretty unpretty face. Her hair was soft and fine, carelessly caught about her head and her painted mouth was purple in this light.

“Here? Dancing?”

“With his two Niobes. I saw the female one and I imagine the male one is here also.”

“Niobes?”

“That Mrs. Powers, or whatever her name is.”

She held her head back so as to see his face. “You are lying.”

“No, I’m not. They are here.”

She stared at him. He could feel her fan drooping from her arched wrist on his cheek softly and one importuned him from behind. “Sitting out now, in a car,” he added.

“With Mrs. Powers?”

“Watch your step, sister, or she’ll have him.”

She slipped from him suddenly. “If you aren’t going to dance⁠—”

One importuning him from behind repeated tirelessly, “May I cut in,” and she evaded Jones’ arm.

“Oh, Lee. Mr. Jones doesn’t dance.”

“M’I’ve this dance,” mumbled the conventional one conventionally, already encircling her. Jones stood baggy and yellow, yellowly watching her fan upon her partner’s coat, like a hushed splash of water, her arching neck and her arm crossing a black shoulder with luminous warmth, the indicated silver evasion of her limbs anticipating her partner’s like a broken dream.

“Got a match?” Jones, pausing, asked abruptly of a man sitting alone in a swing. He lit his pipe and lounged in slow and fat belligerence among a group sitting upon the balustrade near the steps, like birds. The negro cornetist spurred his men to fiercer endeavor, the brass died and a plaintive minor of hushed voices carried the rhythm until the brass, suspiring again, took it. Jones sucked his pipe, thrusting his hands in his jacket and a slim arm slid suddenly beneath his tweed sleeve.

“Wait for me, Lee.” Jones, looking around, remarked her fan and the glass-like fragility of her dress. “I must see some people in a car.”

The boy’s ironed face was a fretted fatuity above his immaculate linen. “Let me go with you.”

“No, no. You wait for me. Mr. Jones will take me: you don’t even know them. You dance until I come back. Promise?”

“But say⁠—”

Her hand flashed slimly staying him. “No, no. Please. Promise?”

He promised and stood to stare at them as they descended the steps passing beneath the two magnolias and so on into darkness, where her dress became a substanceless articulation beside the man’s shapeless tweed.⁠ ⁠… After a while he turned and walked down the emptying veranda. Where’d that slob come from? he wondered, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation. Do they let anybody in here?

As he hesitated, the hostess appeared talking interminably, but he circumvented her with skill of long practice. Beyond a shadowed corner in the half-darkness of a swing a man sat alone. He approached and before he could make his request the man extended a box of matches.

“Thanks,” he murmured, without surprise, lighting a cigarette. He strolled away, and the owner of the matches fingered the small, crisp wood box, wondering mildly who the third one would be.

XII

“No, no, let’s go to them first.”

She arrested their progress and after a time succeeded in releasing