A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner Read Free Book Online Page A

pride.

    "Won't you come in?" He heard her draw in her breath sharply.

    Waiting.
    "All right," his voice was trembling, "I'll come in.

V
    IT WAS STRANGE that neither when it was over nor a long time afterward did he regret that night. Looking at it from the perspective of ten years, the fact that Judy's flare for him endured just one month seemed of little importance. Nor did it matter that by his yielding he subjected himself to a deeper agony in the end and gave serious hurt to Irene Scheerer and to Irene's parents, who had befriended him. There was nothing sufficiently pictorial about Irene's grief to stamp itself on his mind.

    Dexter was at bottom hard-minded. The attitude of the city on his action was of no importance to him, not because he was going to leave the city, but because any outside attitude on the situation seemed superficial. He was completely indifferent to popular opinion. Nor, when he had seen that it was no use, that he did not possess in himself the power to move fundamentally or to hold Judy Jones, did he bear any malice toward her.
    He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving--but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

    Even the ultimate falsity of the grounds upon which Judy terminated the engagement that she did not want to "take him away" from Irene--Judy, who had wanted nothing else--did not revolt him. He was beyond any revulsion or any amusement.

    He went East in February with the intention of selling out his laundries and settling in New York--but the war came to America in March and changed his plans. He returned to the West, handed over the management of the business to his partner, and went into the first officers' training-camp in late April. He was one of those young thousands who greeted the war with a certain amount of relief, welcoming the liberation from webs of tangled emotion.

VI
    THIS STORY is not his biography, remember, although things creep into it which have nothing to do with those dreams he had when he was young.
    We are almost done with them and with him now. There is only one more incident to be related here, and it happens seven years farther on.

    It took place in New York, where he had done well--so well that there were no barriers too high for him. He was thirty-two years old, and, except for one flying trip immediately after the war, he had not been West in seven years. A man named Devlin from Detroit came into his office to see him in a business way, and then and there this incident occurred, and closed out, so to speak, this particular side of his life.

    "So you're from the Middle West," said the man Devlin with careless curiosity. "That's funny--I thought men like you were probably born and raised on Wall Street. You know--wife of one of my best friends in Detroit came from your city. I was an usher at the wedding."

    Dexter waited with no apprehension of what was coming.

    "Judy Simms," said Devlin with no particular interest; "Judy Jones she was once."

    "Yes, I knew her." A dull impatience spread over him. He had heard, of course, that she was married--perhaps deliberately he had heard no more.

    "Awfully nice girl," brooded Devlin meaninglessly, "I'm sort of sorry for her."

    "Why?" Something in Dexter was alert, receptive, at once.

    "Oh, Lud Simms has gone to pieces in a way. I don't mean he ill-uses her, but he drinks and runs around "
    "Doesn't she run around?"

    "No. Stays at home with her kids."

    "Oh."

    "She's a little too old for him," said Devlin.
    "Too old!" cried Dexter. "Why, man, she's only twenty-seven."

    He was possessed with a wild notion of rushing out into the streets and taking a train to Detroit. He rose to his feet spasmodically.

    "I guess you're busy," Devlin apologized quickly. "I didn't realize----"

    "No, I'm not busy," said Dexter, steadying his voice. "I'm not busy at all.
    Not busy at