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

trying to scare me off? You needn’t tell me Donald asked you to get him out of it: it will be a lie.”

“But I’m not: I don’t intend to. I’m trying to help you both.”

“Oh, you are against me. Everybody’s against me, except Donald. And you keep him shut up like a⁠—a prisoner.” She turned quickly and leaned her head against the window.

Mrs. Powers sat quietly examining her, her frail revealed body under the silly garment she wore⁠—a webby cloying thing worse than nothing and a fit complement to the single belaced garment it revealed above the long hushed gleams of her stockings.⁠ ⁠… If Cellini had been a hermit-priest he might have imagined her, Mrs. Powers thought, wishing mildly she could see the other naked. At last she rose from the bed and crossed to the window. Cecily kept her head stubbornly averted, and expecting tears, she touched the girl’s shoulder. “Cecily,” she said, quietly.

Cecily’s green eyes were dry, stony, and she moved swiftly across the room with her delicate narrow stride. She stood holding the door open. Mrs. Powers, at the window, did not accept. Did she ever, ever forget herself? she wondered, observing the studied grace of the girl’s body turned on the laxed ball of a thigh. Cecily met her gaze with one of haughty commanding scorn.

“Won’t you even leave the room when you are asked?” she said, making her swift, coarse voice sound measured and cold.

Mrs. Powers thinking O hell, what’s the use? moved so as to lean her thigh against the bed. Cecily, without changing her position, moved the door for emphasis. Standing quietly, watching her studied fragility (her legs are rather sweet, she admitted, but why all this posing for me? I’m not a man) Mrs. Powers ran her palm slowly along the smooth wood of the bed. Suddenly the other slammed the door and returned to the window. Mrs. Powers followed.

“Cecily, why can’t we talk about it sensibly?” The girl made no reply, ignoring her, crumpling the curtain in her fingers. “Miss Saunders?”

“Why can’t you let me alone?” Cecily flared suddenly, flaming out at her. “I don’t want to talk to you about it. Why do you come to me?” Her eyes darkened: they were no longer hard. “If you want him, take him, then. You have every chance you could want, keeping him shut up there so that even I can’t see him!”

“But I don’t want him. I am trying to straighten things out for him. Don’t you know that if I had wanted him I would have married him before I brought him home?”

“You tried it, and couldn’t. That’s why you didn’t. Oh, don’t say it wasn’t,” she rushed on as the other would have spoken. “I saw it that first day. That you were after him. And if you aren’t, why do you keep on staying here?”

“You know that’s a lie,” Mrs. Powers replied, calmly.

“Then what makes you so interested in him, if you aren’t in love with him?”

(This is hopeless.) She put her hand on the other’s arm. Cecily shrank quickly away and she returned to lean again against the bed. She said:

“Your mother is against this, and Donald’s father expects it. But what chance will you have against your mother?” (Against yourself?)

“I certainly don’t need any advice from you,” Cecily turned her head, her haughtiness, her anger, were gone and in their place was a thin hopeless despair. Even her voice, her whole attitude, had changed. “Don’t you see how miserable I am?” she said, pitifully. “I didn’t mean to be rude to you, but I don’t know what to do, I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I am in such trouble: something terrible has happened to me. Please!”

Mrs. Powers, seeing her face, went to her quickly, putting her arm about the girl’s narrow shoulders. Cecily avoided her. “Please, please go.”

“Tell me what it is.”

“No, no, I can’t. Please⁠—”

They paused, listening. Footsteps approaching, stopped beyond the door: a knock, and her father’s voice called her name.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Mahon is downstairs. Can you come down?”

The two women stared at each other.

“Come,” Mrs. Powers said.

Cecily’s eyes went dark again and she whispered. “No, no, no!” trembling.

“Sis,” her father repeated.

“Say yes,” Mrs. Powers whispered.

“Yes, daddy. I’m coming.”

“All right.” The footsteps retreated and Mrs. Powers drew Cecily toward the door. The girl resisted.

“I can’t go like this,” she said, hysterically.

“Yes, you can. It’s all right. Come.”

Mrs. Saunders, sitting militant, formal and erect upon her chair, was saying as they entered:

“May I ask what this⁠—this woman has to do with it?”

Her husband chewed a cigar. Light falling upon the rector’s face held it like a gray bitten mask. Cecily ran to him. “Uncle Joe!” she cried.

“Cecily!” her mother said, sharply. “What do you mean, coming down like that?”

The rector rose, huge and black, embracing her. “Uncle Joe!” she repeated, clinging to him.

“Now, Robert,” Mrs. Saunders began. But the rector interrupted her.

“Cecily,” he said, raising her face. She twisted her chin and hid her face against his coat.

“Robert,” said Mrs. Saunders.

The rector spoke grayly. “Cecily, we have talked it over together, and we think⁠—your mother and father⁠—”

She moved in her silly, revealing garment, “Daddy?” she exclaimed, staring at her father. He would not meet her gaze but sat slowly twisting his cigar. The rector continued:

“We think that you will only⁠—that you⁠—They say that Donald is going to die, Cecily,” he finished.

Lithe as a sapling she thrust herself backward against his arm, bending, to see his face, staring at him. “Oh, Uncle Joe! Have you gone back on me, too?” she cried, passionately.

IX

George Farr had been quite drunk for a week. His friend, the drug-clerk, thought that he was going crazy. He had become a local landmark, a tradition: even the town soaks began to look upon him with respect, calling him by his given name, swearing undying devotion to him.

In the intervals of belligerent or rollicking or maudlin inebriation he knew periods of devastating despair like a monstrous bliss, like that of a caged animal, of a man being slowly tortured to death: a minor monotony of pain. As