‘Conform that face to a type? (So Emmy has already been dishonoured, once, anyway.) How could you? (I owe that dishonoured one a grudge, too.) Could you put a faun into formal clothes?’
The rector sighed. ‘Ah, Mr Jones, who can say?’ He slowly replaced the things in the tin box and sat clasping the box between his hands. ‘As I grow older, Mr Jones, I become more firmly convinced that we learn scarcely anything as we go through this world, and that we learn nothing whatever which can ever help us or be of any particular benefit to us, even. However! . . .’ He sighed again, heavily.
2
Emmy, the dishonoured virgin, appeared, saying: ‘What do you want for dinner, Uncle Joe? Ice-cream or strawberry shortcake?’ Blushing, she avoided Jones’s eye.
The rector looked at his guest, yearning. ‘What would you like, Mr Jones? But I know how young people are about ice-cream. Would you prefer ice-cream?’
But Jones was a tactful man in his generation and knowing about food himself he had an uncanny skill in anticipating other people’s reactions to food. ‘If it is the same to you, Doctor, let it be shortcake.’
‘Shortcake, Emmy,’ the rector instructed with passion. Emmy withdrew. ‘Do you know,’ he continued with apologetic gratitude, ‘do you know, when a man becomes old, when instead of using his stomach, his stomach uses him, as his other physical compulsions become weaker and decline, his predilections towards the food he likes obtrude themselves.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ Jones assured him. ‘I personally prefer a warm dessert to an ice.’
‘Then you must return when there are peaches. I will give you a peach cobbler, with butter and cream. . . . But ah, my stomach has attained a sad ascendency over me.’
‘Why shouldn’t it, sir? Years reave us of sexual compulsions: why shouldn’t they fill the interval with compulsions of food?’
The rector regarded him kindly and piercingly. ‘You are becoming specious. Man’s life need not be always filled with compulsions of either sex or food, need it?’
But here came quick tapping feet down the uncarpeted hall and she entered, saying: ‘Good morning, Uncle Joe,’ in her throaty voice, crossing the room with graceful effusion, not seeing Jones at once. Then she remarked him and paused like a bird in mid flight, briefly. Jones rose and under his eyes she walked mincing and graceful, theatrical with body-consciousness to the desk. She bent sweetly as a young tree and the divine kissed her cheek. Jones’s goat’s eyes immersed her in yellow contemplation.
‘Good morning, Cecily.’ The rector rose. ‘I had expected you earlier, on such a day as this. But young girls must have their beauty sleep regardless of weather,’ he ended with elephantine joviality. ‘This is Mr Jones, Cecily. Miss Saunders, Mr Jones.’
Jones bowed with obese incipient grace as she faced him, but at her expression of hushed delicate amazement he knew panic. Then he remembered the rector’s cursed trousers and he felt his neck and ears slowly burn, knowing that not only was he ridiculous looking but that she supposed he wore such things habitually. She was speechless and Jones damned the hearty oblivious rector slowly and completely. Curse the man: one moment it was Emmy and no trousers at all, next moment an attractive stranger and nether coverings like a tired balloon. The rector was saying bland as Fate:
‘I had expected you earlier. I had decided to let you take some hyacinths.’
‘Uncle Joe! How won — derful!’ Her voice was rough, 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’s 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 the 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’s 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’s 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 colour are her eyes?).
‘Oh, that’s what Mr Jones is! an authority on women.’
Jones’s 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 grey or blue or green?) met his yellow unabashed stare. She lowered her gaze and he remarked her pretty selfconscious 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 desk-top 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 a
t 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 I am wrong? he pondered. I’ll find out, he decided suddenly.
‘You were saying, sir,’ — still watching her oblivious shallow face— ‘as Miss Saunders so charmingly came in, that I am too specious. But one must always generalize about fornication. Only after—’
‘Mr Jones!’ the rector exclaimed heavily.
‘ — the fornication is committed should one talk about it at all, and then only to generalize, to become — in your words — specious. He who kisses and tells is not very much of a fellow, is he?’
‘Mr Jones,’ the rector remonstrated.
‘Mr Jones!’ she echoed. ‘What a terrible man you are! Really, Uncle Joe—’
Jones interrupted viciously. ‘As far as the kiss itself goes, women do not particularly care who does the kissing. All they are interested in is the kiss itself.’
‘Mr Jones!’ she repeated, staring at him, then looking quickly away. She shuddered.
‘Come, come, sir. There are ladies present.’ The rector achieved his aphorism.
Jones pushed his plate from him, Emmy’s raw and formless hand removed it and here was a warm golden brow crowned with strawberries. Dam’f I look at her, he swore, and so he did. Her gaze was remote and impersonal, green and cool as sea water, and Jones turned his eyes first. She turned to the rector, talking smoothly about flowers. He was politely ignored and he moodily engaged his spoon as Emmy appeared again.
Emmy emanated a thin hostility and staring from Jones to the girl she said:
‘Lady to see you, Uncle Joe.’
The rector poised his spoon. ‘Who is it, Emmy?’
‘I dunno. I never saw her before. She’s waiting in the study.’
‘Has she had lunch? Ask her in here.’
(She knows I am watching her. Jones knew exasperation and a puerile lust.)
‘She don’t want anything to eat. She said not to disturb you until you had finished dinner. You better go in and see what she wants.’ Emmy retreated.
The rector wiped his mouth and rose. ‘I suppose I must. You young people sit here until I return. Call Emmy if you want anything.’
Jones sat in sullen silence, turning a glass in his fingers. At last she looked at his bent ugly face.
‘So you are unmarried, as well as famous,’ she remarked.
‘Famous because I’m unmarried,’ he replied darkly.
‘And courteous because of which?’
‘Either one you like.’
‘Well, frankly, I prefer courtesy.’
‘Do you often get it?’
‘Always . . . eventually.’ He made no reply and she continued: ‘Don’t you believe in marriage?’
‘Yes, as long as there are no women in it.’ She shrugged indifferently. Jones could not bear seeming a fool to anyone as shallow as he considered her and he blurted, wanting to kick himself: ‘You don’t like me, do you?’
‘Oh, I like anyone who believes there may be something he doesn’t know,’ she replied without interest.
‘What do you mean by that?’ (are they green or grey?) Jones was a disciple of the cult of boldness with women. He rose and the table wheeled smoothly as he circled it: he wished faintly that he were more graceful. Those thrice unhappy trousers! You can’t blame her, he thought with fairness. What would I think had she appeared in one of her grandma’s mother hubbards? He remarked her reddish dark hair and the delicate slope of her shoulder. (I’ll put my hand there and let it slip down her arm as she turns.)
Without looking up, she said suddenly: ‘Did Uncle Joe tell you about Donald?’ (Oh, hell, thought Jones.) ‘Isn’t it funny,’ her chair scraped to her straightening knees, ‘we both thought of moving at the same time?’ She rose, her chair intervened woodenly, and Jones stood ludicrous and foiled. ‘You take mine and I’ll take yours,’ she added, moving around the table.
‘You bitch,’ said Jones evenly and her green-blue eyes took him sweetly as water.
‘What made you say that?’ she asked quietly. Jones, having to an extent eased his feelings, thought he saw a recurring interest in her expression. (I was right, he gloated.)
‘You know why I said that.’
‘It’s funny how few men know that women like to be talked to that way,’ she remarked irrelevantly.
I wonder if she loves someone? I guess not — like a tiger loves meat. ‘I am not like other men,’ he told her.
He thought he saw derision in her brief glance, but she merely yawned delicately. At last he had her classified in the animal kingdom. Hamadryad, a slim jewelled one.
‘Why doesn’t George come for me!’ she said as if in answer to his unspoken speculation, patting her mouth with the tips of petulant, delicate fingers. ‘Isn’t it boring, waiting for someone?’
‘Yes. Who is George, may I ask?’
‘Certainly, you may ask.’
‘Well, who is he?’ (I don’t like her type, anyway.) ‘I had gathered that you were pining for the late lamented.’
‘The late lamented?’
‘That fox-faced Henry or Oswald or something.’
‘Oh, Donald. Do you mean Donald?’
‘Surely. Let him be Donald, then.’
She regarded him impersonally. (I can’t even make her angry, he thought fretfully.) ‘Do you know, you are impossible.’
‘All right. So I am,’ he answered with anger. ‘But then I wasn’t engaged to Donald. And George is not calling for me.’
‘What makes you so angry? Because I won’t let you put your hands on me?’
‘My dear woman, if I had wanted to put my hands on you I would have done it.’
‘Yes?’ Her rising inflection was a polite maddening derision.
‘Certainly. Don’t you believe it?’ his own voice gave him courage.
‘I don’t know . . . but what good would it do to you?’
‘No good at all. That’s the reason I don’t want to.’
Her green eyes took him again. Sparse old silver on a buffet shadowed heavily under a high fanlight of coloured glass identical with the one above the entrance, her fragile white dress across the table from him: he could imagine her long subtle legs, like Atalanta’s reft of running.
‘Why do you tell yourself lies?’ she asked with interest.
‘Same reason you do.’
‘I?’
‘Surely. You intend to kiss me and yet you are going to all this damn trouble a
bout it.’
‘Do you know,’ she remarked with speculation, ‘I believe I hate you.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I know damn well I hate you.’
She moved in her chair, sloping the light now across her shoulders, releasing him and becoming completely another person. ‘Let’s go to the study. Shall we?’
‘All right. Uncle Joe should be done with his caller by now.’ He rose and they faced each other across the broken meal. She did not rise.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘After you, ma’am,’ he replied with mock deference.
‘I have changed my mind. I think I’ll wait here and talk to Emmy, if you don’t object.’
‘Why Emmy?’
‘Why not Emmy?’
‘Ah, I see. You can feel fairly safe with Emmy: she probably won’t want to put her hands on you. That’s it, isn’t it?’ She glanced briefly at him. ‘What you really mean is, that you will stay if I am going out of the room, don’t you?’
‘Suit yourself.’ She became oblivious of him, breaking a biscuit upon a plate and dripping water upon it from a glass. Jones moved fatly in his borrowed trousers, circling the table again. As he approached she turned slightly in her chair, extending her hand. He felt its slim bones in his fat moist palm, its nervous ineffectual flesh. Not good for anything. Useless. But beautiful with lack of character. Beautiful hand. Its very fragility stopped him like a stone barrier.
‘Oh, Emmy,’ she called sweetly, ‘come here, darling. I have something to show you.’
Emmy regarded them balefully from the door and Jones said quickly: ‘Will you fetch me my trousers, Miss Emmy?’
Emmy glanced from one to the other ignoring the girl’s mute plea. (Oho, Emmy has fish of her own to fry, thought Jones.) Emmy vanished and he put his hands on the girl’s shoulders.
‘Now what will you do? Call the reverend?’
She looked at him across her shoulder from beyond an inaccessible barrier. His anger grew and his hands wantonly crushed her dress.
‘Don’t ruin my clothes, please,’ she said icily. ‘Here, if you must.’ She raised her face and Jones felt the shame, but his boyish vanity would not let him stop now. Her face a prettiness of shallow characterless planes blurred into his, her mouth was motionless and impersonal, unresisting and cool. Her face from a blur became again a prettiness of characterless shallowness icy and remote, and Jones, ashamed of himself and angry with her therefore, said with heavy irony: ‘Thanks.’
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 7
