Reflections in a Golden Eye Read Online Free Page B

obliquely, and the light did not fall on his face. Nothing of much consequence
     happened inside. Often they spent the evening away from home and did not return until
     after midnight. Once they entertained six guests at dinner. Most evenings, however, they
     spent with Major Langdon, who came either alone or with his wife. They would drink, play
     cards, and talk in the sitting room. The soldier kept his eyes on the Captain's wife.
    During this time a change was noticed in Private Williams. His new habit of suddenly
     stopping and looking for a long time into space was still with him. He would be cleaning
     out a stall or saddling a mule when all at once he seemed to withdraw into a trance. He
     would stand immovable and sometimes he did not even realize when his name was called. The
     Sergeant at the stables noticed and was uneasy. He had occasionally seen this same queer
     habit in young soldiers who have grown homesick for the farm and womenfolk, and who plan
     to 'go over the hill.' But when the Sergeant questioned Private Williams, he answered that
     he was thinking about nothing at all.
    The young soldier spoke the truth. Although his face wore an expression of still
     concentration, there were in his mind no plans or thoughts of which he was aware. In him
     was a deep reflection of the sight he had seen that night when passing before the
     Captain's lighted vestibule. But he did not think actively of The Lady or of anything else.
    However, it was necessary for him to pause and wait in this trancelike attitude, for far
     down in his mind there had begun a dark, slow germination.
    Four times in his twenty years of life the soldier had acted of his own accord and
     without the pressure of immediate circumstance. Each of these four actions had been
     preceded by these same odd trances. The first of these actions was the sudden,
     inexplicable purchase of a cow. By the time he was a boy of seventeen, he had accumulated
     a hundred dollars by plowing and picking cotton. With this money he had bought this cow,
     and he named her Ruby Jewel. There was no need on his father's one mule farm for a cow. It
     was unlawful for them to sell the milk, for their makeshift stable would not pass
     government inspection, and the milk that she yielded was far more than their small
     household could use. On winter mornings the boy would get up before daylight and go out
     with a lantern to his cow's stall. He would press his forehead against her warm flank as
     he milked and talk to her in soft, urgent whispers. He put his cupped hands down into the
     pail of frothy milk and drank with lingering swallows.
    The second of these actions was a sudden, violent declaration of his faith in the Lord.
     He always had sat quietly on one of the back benches of the church where his father
     preached on Sunday. But one night during a revival he suddenly leaped up onto the
     platform. He called to God with strange wild sounds and rolled in convulsions on the
     floor. Afterward he had been very languid for a week and he never again found the spirit
     in this way.
    The third of these actions was a crime which he committed and successfully concealed. And
     the fourth was his enlistment in the army.
    Each of these happenings had come about very suddenly and without any conscious planning
     on his part. Still in a curious way, he had prepared for them. For instance, just before
     the purchase of his cow he had stood gazing into space for a long while and then he
     cleaned out a lean to by the barn that had been used for storing junk; when he brought
     home the cow there was a place ready for her. In the same manner he had got his small
     affairs in order before his enlistment. But he did not actually know that he was going to
     buy a cow until he counted out his money and put his hand on the halter. And it was only
     as he stepped over the threshold of the enlistment office that the vaporish impressions
     within him