Complete Works of William Faulkner

by William Faulkner

  “Sure, sure; I think it’s airtight; that she might just as well make up her mind to the inevitable.”

  “No; really, I want your candid opinion. I have more faith in your judgment of people than any one I know.”

  “Sure, sure,” Fairchild repeated solemnly. “She can’t resist you. No chance, no chance at all. To tell the truth, I kind of hate to think of women and young girls going around exposed to a man like you,”

  Mr, Talliaferro glanced over his shoulder at Fairchild, quickly, doubtfully. But the other’s face was solemn, without guile. Mr. Talliaferro went on again. “Well, wish me luck, he said.

  “Sure. The admiral expects every man to do his duty, you know,” Fairchild replied solemnly, following Mr. Talliaferro’s dapper figure up the stairs.

  * * * * * * *

  Major Ayers and the Semitic man awaited them. There were no ladies. Nobody at all, in fact. The deck was deserted.

  “Are you sure?” Fairchild insisted. “Have you looked good? I kind of wanted to dance some. Come on, let’s look again.”

  At the door of the wheelhouse they came upon the helmsman. He wore only an undershirt above his trousers and he was gazing into the sky. “Fine night,” Fairchild greeted him.

  “Fine now,” the helmsman agreed. “Bad weather off there, though.” He extended his arm toward the southwest. “Lake may be running pretty high by morning. We’re on a lee shore, too.” He stared again into the sky.

  “Ah, I guess not,” Fairchild replied with large optimism. “Hardly on a clear night like this, do you reckon?”

  The helmsman stared into the sky, making no answer. They passed on. “I forgot to tell you the ladies had retired, Mr. Talliaferro remarked.

  “That’s funny,” Fairchild said. “I wonder if they thought we were not coming back?”

  “Perhaps they were afraid we were,” the Semitic man suggested.

  “Huh,” said Fairchild.... “What time is it, anyway?”

  It was twelve o’clock, and the sky toward the zenith was hazed over, obscuring the stars. But the moon was still undimmed, bland and chill, affable and bloodless as a successful procuress, bathing the yacht in quiet silver; and across the southern sky went a procession of small clouds, like silver dolphins on a rigid ultramarine wave, like an ancient geographical woodcut.

  THE SECOND DAY

  BY THREE O’CLOCK the storm had blown itself out across the lake and by dawn, when the helmsman waked the captain, the lake, as he had predicted, was running pretty high. The trend was directly inshore; waves came up in endless battalions under a cloudless sky, curling and creaming along the hull, fading and dying as the water shoaled astern of the yacht to a thin white smother against a dark impenetrable band of trees. The Nausikaa rose and fell, bows on, dragging at her taut cables. The helmsman roused the captain and returned swiftly to the wheelhouse.

  The deckhand got the anchors up and the helmsman rang the telegraph. The Nausikaa shivered awake, coming to life again, and pausing for a moment between two waves like a swimmer, she surged ahead. She paid off a little and the helmsman spun the wheel. But she didn’t respond, falling off steadily and gaining speed, and as the helmsman put the wheel down hard the Nausikaa fell broadside on into the trough of the waves. The helmsman rang the telegraph again and shouted to the deckhand to let go the anchors.

  By seven o’clock the Nausikaa, dragging her anchors, had touched bottom with a faint jar. She considered a moment, then freed herself and crawling a bit further up the shoaling sand she turned herself a little, and with a barely perceptible list she sat down like a plump bather waist deep in the water, taking the waves on her beam.

  * * * * *

  Dorothy Jameson had a bold, humorless style. She preferred portraits, though she occasionally painted still life — harsh, implacable fruit and flowers in dimensionless bowls upon tables without depth. Her teeth were large and white in the pale revelation of her gums, and her gray eyes were coldly effective. Her body was long, loosely articulated and frail, and while spending in Greenwich Village the two years she had considered necessary for the assimilation of American tendencies in painting, she had taken a lover although she was still a virgin.

  She took the lover principally because he owed her money which he had borrowed of her in order to pay a debt to another woman. The lover ultimately eloped to Paris with a wealthy Pittsburgh lady, pawning her — Dorothy’s — fur coat on the way to the dock and mailing the ticket back to her from shipboard. The lover himself was a musician. He was quite advanced, what is known as a radical; and in the intervals of experimenting with the conventional tonal scale he served as part of an orchestra in an uptown dancing place. It was here that he met the Pittsburgh lady.

  But this episode was complete, almost out of her memory even. She had had a year abroad and had returned to New Orleans where she settled down to a moderate allowance which permitted her a studio in the vieux carré and her name several times on the police docket for reckless driving and a humorless and reasonably pleasant cultivation of her individuality, with no more than a mild occasional nagging at the hands of her family, like a sound of rain heard beyond a closed window.

  She had always had trouble with her men. Principally through habit since that almost forgotten episode she had always tried for artists, but sooner or later they inevitably ran out on her. With the exception of Mark Frost, that is. And in his case, she realized, it was sheer inertia more than anything else. And she admitted with remote perspicuity, who cared one way or the other whether they kept Mark Frost? No one ever cared long for an artist who did nothing save create art, and very little of that.

  But other men, men she recognized as having potentialities, all passed through a violent but temporary period of interest which ceased as abruptly as it began, without leaving even the lingering threads of mutually remembered incidence, like those brief thunderstorms of August that threaten and dissolve for no apparent reason, without producing any rain.

  At times she speculated with almost masculine detachment on the reason for this. She always tried to keep their relations on the plane which the men themselves seemed to prefer — certainly no woman would, and few women could, demand less of their men than she did. She never made arbitrary demands on their time, never caused them to wait for her nor to see her home at inconvenient hours, never made them fetch and carry for her; she fed them and she flattered herself that she was a good listener. And yet... She thought of the women she knew: how all of them had at least one obviously entranced male; she thought of the women she had observed: how they seemed to acquire a man at will, and if he failed to stay acquired, how readily they replaced him.

  She thought of the women on board, briefly reviewing them. Eva Wiseman. She had had one husband, practically discarded him. Men liked her. Fairchild, for instance: a man of undisputed ability and accomplishment. Yet this might be due to his friendship with her brother. But no, Fairchild was not that sort: social obligations rested too lightly upon him. It was because he was attracted to her. Because of kindred tastes? But I create, too, she reminded herself.

  Then she thought of the two young girls. Of the niece Patricia, with her frank curiosity in things, her childish delight in strenuous physical motion, of her hard unsentimentality and no interest whatever in the function of creating art (I’ll bet she doesn’t even read) and Gordon aloof and insufferably arrogant, yet intrigued. And Fairchild also interested in his impersonal way. Even Pete, probably.

  Pete, and Jenny. Jenny with her soft placidity, her sheer passive appeal to the senses, and Mr. Talliaferro, braving Mrs. Maurier’s displeasure to dangle about her, fawning almost. Even she felt Jenny’s appeal — an utterly mindless rifeness of young, pink flesh, a supine potential fecundity lovely to look upon: a doll awaiting a quickening and challenging it with neither joy nor sorrow. She had brought one man with her.... No, not even brought: he had followed in her blonde troubling orbit as a tide follows the moon, without volition, against his inclination, perhaps. Two women
who had no interest whatever in the arts, yet who without effort drew to themselves men, artistic men. Opposites, antitheses... perhaps, she thought, I have been trying for the wrong kind of men, perhaps the artistic man is not my type.

  SEVEN O’CLOCK

  “No, ma’am,” the nephew replied courteously, “It’s a pipe.”

  “Oh,” she murmured, “a pipe,”

  He bent over his wooden cylinder, paring at it with a knife, delicately, with care. It was much cooler to-day. The sun had risen from out a serrated miniature sea, into a cloudless sky. For a while the yacht had had a perceptible motion — It was this motion which had roused her — but now it had ceased, although sizable waves yet came in from the lake, creaming whitely along the hull, and spent themselves shoaling up the beach toward a dark cliff of trees. She’d had no idea last night that they were so dose to land, either. But distances always confused her by night.

  She wished she’d brought a coat: had she anticipated such a cool spell in August... She stood huddling her scarf about her shoulders, watching his brown intent forearms and his coarse, cropped head exactly like his sister’s, mildly desiring breakfast. I wonder if he’s hungry? she thought. She remarked:

  “Aren’t you rather chilly this morning without a coat?” He carved at his object with a rapt maternal absorption, and after a while she said, louder:

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler to buy one?”

  “I hope so,” he murmured... then he raised his head and the sun shone full into his opaque yellow-flecked eyes. “What’d you say?”

  “I should think you’d wait until we got ashore and buy one instead of trying to make one.”

  “You can’t buy one like this. They don’t make ’em.” The cylinder came in two sections, carved and fitted cunningly. He raised one piece, squinting at it, and carved an infinitesimal sliver from it. Then he returned it to its husband. Then he broke them apart again and carved an infinitesimal sliver from the other piece, fitted them together again. Miss Jameson watched him.

  “Do you carry the design in your head?” she asked.

  He raised his head again. “Huh?” he said in a dazed tone. “The design you’re carving. Are you just carving from memory, or what?”

  “Design?” he repeated. “What design?”

  It was much cooler to-day.

  * * * * *

  There was in Pete’s face a kind of active alarm not quite yet dispersed, and clutching his sheet of newspaper he rose with belated politeness, but she said, “No, no: I’ll get it. Keep your seat.” So he stood acutely, clutching his paper, while she fetched a chair and drew it up beside his. “It’s quite chilly this morning isn’t it?”

  “Sure is,” he agreed. “When I woke up this morning and felt all that cold wind and the boat going up and down, I didn’t know what we were into. I didn’t feel so good this morning, anyway, and with the boat going up and down like it was... it’s still now, though. Looks like they went in closer to the bank and parked it this time.”

  “‘Yes, it seems to me we’re closer than we were last night.” When she was settled he sat also, and presently he forgot and put his feet back on the rail. Then he remembered and removed them.

  “Why, how did you manage to get a paper this morning? Did we put in shore somewhere last night?” she asked, raising her feet to the rail.

  For some reason he felt uncomfortable about his paper. “It’s just an old piece,” he explained lamely. “I found it downstairs somewhere. It kind of kept my mind off of how bad I felt.” He made a gesture repudiating it.

  “Don’t throw it away,” she said quickly, “go on — don’t let me interrupt if you found something interesting in it. I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. Perhaps you’ll feel better after breakfast.”

  “Maybe so,” he agreed, without conviction. “I don’t feel much like breakfast, waking up like I did and feeling kind of bad, and the boat going up and down too.”

  “You’ll get over that, I’m sure.” She leaned nearer to see the paper. It was a single sheet of a Sunday magazine section: a depressing looking article in small print about Romanesque architecture, interspersed with blurred indistinguishable photographs. “Are you interested in architecture?” she asked intensely.

  “I guess not,” he replied. “I was just looking it over until they get up.” He slanted his hat anew: under cover of this movement he raised his feet to the rail, settling down on his spine. She said:

  “So many people waste their time over things like architecture and such. It’s much better to be a part of life, don’t you think? Much better to be in it yourself and make your own mistakes and enjoy making them and suffering for them, than to make your life barren through dedicating it to an improbable and ungrateful posterity. Don’t you think so?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” Pete said cautiously. He lit a cigarette. “Breakfast is late to-day.”

  “Of course you hadn’t. That’s what I admire about a man like you. You know life so well that you aren’t afraid of what it might do to you. You don’t spend your time thinking about life, do you?”

  “Not much,” he agreed. “A man don’t want to be a fish, though.”

  “You’ll never be a fish, Pete (every one calls you Pete, don’t they? — do you mind?) I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness — people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.... May I have a cigarette? Thanks. You smoke this brand, too, I see. A in — Thanks. I like your hat: it just suits the shape of your face. You have an extremely interesting face — do you know it? And your eyes. I never saw eyes exactly the color of yours. But I suppose lots of women have told you that, haven’t they?”

  “I guess so,” Pete answered. “They’ll tell you anything.”

  “Is that what love has meant to you, Pete — deception?” she leaned to the match, staring at him with the humorless invitation of her eyes, “Is that your opinion of us?”

  “Aw, they don’t mean anything by it,” Pete said in something like alarm. “What time do they have breakfast on this line?” He rose. “I guess I better run downstairs a minute before it’s ready. It oughtn’t to be long,” he added. Miss Jameson was gazing quietly out across the water. She wore a thin scarf about her shoulders: a webbed brilliant thing that lent her a bloodless fragility, as did the faint bridge of freckles (relict of a single afternoon of sunlight) across her nose. She now sat suddenly quiet, poising the cigarette in her long, delicate fingers; and Pete stood beside her, acutely uncomfortable — why, he knew not. “I guess I’ll go downstairs before breakfast,” he repeated. “Say” — he extended his newspaper— “why don’t you look it over while I’m gone?”

  Then she looked at him again, and took the paper. “Ah, Pete, you don’t know much about us — for all your experience.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “I’ll see you again, see?” and he went away. I’m glad I had a clean collar yesterday, he thought, turning into the companionway. This trip sure ought to be over in a couple of years.... Just as he began the descent he looked back at her. The newspaper lay across her lap but she wasn’t looking at it. And she had thrown the cigarette away, too. My God, Pete said to himself. Then he was struck by a thought. Pete, my boy, he told himself, it’s going to be a hard trip. He descended into the narrow passage. It swept forward on either hand, broken smugly by spaced mute doors with brass knobs. He slowed momentarily, counting doors to find his own, and while he paused the door at his hand opened suddenly and the niece appeared clutching a raincoat about her.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Pete replied, raising his hat slightly. “Jenny up, too?”

  “Say, I dreamed you lost that thing,” the niece told him. “Yes, shell be out soon, I guess.”

  “That’s good. I was afraid she was going to lay there and starve to death.”

  “No,
shell be out pretty soon.” They stood facing each other in the narrow passage, blocking it completely, and the niece said: “Get on, Pete. I feel too tired to climb over you this morning.”

  He stood aside for her, and watching her retreat he called after her: “Losing your pants.”

  She stopped and dragged at her hips as a shapeless fabric descended from beneath the raincoat and wadded slow and lethargic about her feet. She stood on one leg and kicked at the mass, then stooping she picked from amid its folds a man’s frayed and shapeless necktie. “Damn that string,” she said, kicking out of the garment and picking it up.

  Pete turned in the narrow corridor, counting discrete identical doors. He smelled coffee and he added to himself: A hard trip, and, with unction: I’ll tell the world it is.

  EIGHT O’CLOCK

  “It’s the steering gear,” Mrs. Maurier explained at the breakfast table. “Some—”

  “I know,” Mrs. Wiseman exclaimed immediately above the grapefruit, “German spies!”

  Mrs. Maurier stared at her with patient astonishment. She said, How cute. “It worked perfectly yesterday. The captain said it worked perfectly yesterday. But this morning, when the storm came up... anyway, we’re aground, and they are sending some one to get a tug to pull us off. They are trying to find the trouble this morning, but I don’t know..

  Mrs. Wiseman leaned toward her and patted her fumbling ringed hand. “There, there, don’t you feel badly about it: it wasn’t your fault. They’ll get us off soon, and we can have just as much fun here as we would sailing around. More, perhaps motion seems to have had a bad effect on the party. I wonder.,.” Fairchild and his people had not yet arrived: before each vacant place its grapefruit, innocent and profound. Surely just the prospect of more grapefruit couldn’t have driven them... Mrs. Maurier followed her gaze.

  “Perhaps it’s just as well,” she murmured.

  “Anyway, I’ve always wanted to be shipwrecked,” Mrs. Wiseman went on. “What do they call it? scuttled the ship, isn’t it? But surely Dawson and Julius couldn’t have thought of this, though” Mrs. Maurier, brooding above her plate, raised her eyes, cringing. “No, no,” the other answered herself hastily, “of course not: that’s silly. It just happened, as things do. But let this be a lesson to you children, never to lay yourselves open to suspicion,” she added looking from the niece to the nephew. The steward appeared with coffee and Mrs. Maurier directed him to leave the gentlemen’s grapefruit until it suited their pleasure to come for it.