Sanctuary

Temple's head. Temple clutched the covers to her throat. Miss Reba held

the glass to her lips. She gulped it, writhed down again, clutching the

covers about her, her eyes wide and black above the covers. "I bet you

got that towel disarranged," Miss Reba said, putting her hand on the

covers.

"No," Temple whispered. "It's all right. It's still there." She shrank,

cringing: they could see the cringing of her legs beneath the covers.

"Did you get Dr. Quinn, Minnie?" Miss Reba said.

"Yessum." Minnie was filling the tankard from the bottle, a dull frosting

pacing the rise of liquor within the metal. I 'He say he dont make no

Sunday afternoon calls."

"Did you tell him who wanted him? Did you tell him Miss Reba wanted him?"

"Yessum. He say he dont-"

"You go back and tell that suh- You tell him I'll- No; wait." She rose

heavily. "Sending a message like that back to me, that can put him in

jail three times over." She waddled toward the door, the dogs crowding

about the felt slippers. The maid followed and closed the door. Temple

could hear Miss Reba cursing the dogs as she descended the stairs with

terrific slowness. The sounds died away.

84 WILLIAM FAULKNER

The shades blew steadily in the windows with faint rasping sounds. Temple

began to hear a clock. It sat on the mantle above a grate filled with

fluted green paper. The clock was of flowered china, supported by four

china nymphs. It had only one hand, scrolled and gilded, halfway between

ten and eleven, lending to the otherwise blank face a quality of

unequivocal assertion, as though it had nothing whatever to do with time.

Temple rose from the bed. Holding the towel about her she stole toward

the door, her ears acute, her eyes a little bl;nd with the strain of

listening. It was twilight; in a dim mirror, a pellucid oblong of dusk

set on end, she had a .1i:-npse of herself like a thin ghost, a pale

shadow moving in the uttermost profundity of shadow. She reached the

door. At once she began to hear a hundred conflicting sounds in a single

converging threat and she clawed furiously at the door until she found

the bolt, dropping the towel to drive it home. Then she caught up the

towel, her face averted-ran back and sprang into the bed and clawed the

covers to her chin and lay there, listening t6 the secret whisper of her

blood.

They knocked at the door for some time before she made any sound. "It's

the doctor, honey," Miss Reba panted harshly. "Come on, now. Be a good

girl."

"I cant." Temple said, her voice faint and small. "I'm in bed."

"Come on, now. He wants to fix you up." She panted harshly. "My God, if

I could just get one full breath again. I aint had a full breath since

. . ." Low down beyond the door Temple could hear the dogs. "Honey."

She rose from the bed, holding the towel about her. She went to the door,

silently.

"Honey," Miss Reba said.

"Wait," Temple said, "Let me get back to the bed."

"There's a good girl," Miss Reba said. "I knowed she was going to be

good."

"Count ten, now," Temple said. "Will you count ten, now?" she said

against the wood. She slipped the bolt soundlessly, then she turned and

sped back to the bed, her naked feet in pattering diminuendo.

The doctor was a fattish man with thin, curly hair. He wore horn-rimmed

glasses which lent to his eyes no distortion at all, as though they were

of clear glass and worn for decorum's sake. Temple watched him across the

covers, holding them to her throat. "Make them go out," she whispered;

"if they'll just go out."

"Now, now," Miss Reba said, "he's going to fix you up."

Temple clung to t.,.e covers.

"If the little lady will just letthe doctor said. His

SANCTUARY 85

hair evaporated finely from his brow. His mouth nipped in at the corners,

his lips full and wet and red. Behind the glasses his eyes looked like

little bicycle wheels at dizzy speed; a metallic hazel. He put out a

thick, white hand bearing a masonic ring, haired over with fine reddish

fuzz to the second knuckle-joints. Cold air slipped down her body, below

her thighs; her eyes were closed. Lying on her back, her legs close

together, she began to cry, hopelessly and passively, like a child in a

dentist's waiting room.

"Now, now," Miss Reba said, "take another sup of gin, honey. It'll make

you feel better."

In the window the cracked shade, yawning now and then with a faint rasp

against the frame, let twilight into the room in fainting surges. From

beneath the shade the smoke-colored twilight emerged in slow puffs like

signal smoke from a blanket, thickening in the room. The china figures

which supported the clock gleamed in hushed smooth flexions: knee, elbow,

flank, arm and breast in attitudes of voluptuous lassitude. The glass

face, become mirror-like, appeared to hold all reluctant light, holding

in its tranquil depths a quiet gesture of moribund time, one-armed like

a veteran from the wars. Half past ten o'clock. Temple lay in the bed,

looking at the clock, thinking about half-past-ten-o'clock.

She wore a too-large gown of cerise crepe, black against the linen. Her