Sanctuary

then another in a slightly different key. Across a shrill rush of a

woman's voice a door banged. Two people mounted the stairs and passed the

door; she heard Miss Reba's voice booming from somewhere and listened to

her toiling slowly up the stairs. Temple watched the door until it opened

and Miss Reba stood in it, the tankard in her hand. She now wore a

bulging house dress and a widow's bonnet with a veil. She entered on the

flowered felt slippers. Beneath the bed the two dogs made a stifled

concerted sound of utter despair.

The dress, unfastened in the back, hung lumpily about Miss Reba's

shoulders. One ringed hand lay on her breast, the other held the tankard

high. Her open mouth, studded with goldfillings gaped upon the harsh

labor of her breathing.

"Oh God oh God," she said. The dogs surged out from beneath the bed and

hurled themselves toward the door in a mad scrabble. As they rushed past

her she turned and flung the tankard at them. It struck the door jamb,

splashing up the wall, and rebounded with a forlorn clatter. She drew her

breath whistling, clutching her breast. She came to the bed and looked

down at Temple through the veil. "We was happy as two doves," she wailed,

choking, her rings smoldering in hot glints within her billowing breast.

"Then he had to go and die on me." She drew her breath whistling, her

mouth gaped, shaping the hidden agony of her thwarted lungs, her eyes

pale and round with striken bafflement, protuberant. "As two doves," she

roared in a harsh, choking voice.

Again time had overtaken the dead gesture behind the clock crystal:

Temple's watch on the table beside the bed said half-past-ten. For two

hours she had lain undisturbed, listening. She could distinguish voices

now from below stairs. She had been hearing them for some time, lying in

the room's musty isolation. Later a mechanical piano began to play. Now

and then she heard automobile brakes in the street beneath the window;

once two voices quarreling bitterly came up and beneath the shade.

90 WILLIAM FAULKNER

She heard two people-a man and a woman-mount the stairs and enter the

room next hers. Then she heard Miss Reba toil up the stairs and pass her

door, and lying in the bed, her eyes wide and still, she heard Miss Reba

hammering at the next door with the metal tankard and shouting into the

wood. Beyond the door the man and woman were utterly quiet, so quiet that

Temple thought of the dogs again, thought of them crouching against the

wall under the bed in that rigid fury of terror and despair. She listened

to Miss Reba's voice shouting hoarsely into the blank wood. It died away

into terrific gasping, then it rose again in the gross and virile cursing

of a man. Beyond the wall the man and woman made no sound. Temple lay

staring at the wall beyond which Miss Reba's voice rose again as she

hammered at the door with the tankard.

Temple neither saw nor heard her door when it opened. She just happened

to look toward it after how long she did not know, and saw Popeye

standing there, his hat slanted across his face. Still without making any

sound he entered and shut the door and shot the bolt and came toward the

bed. As slowly she began to shrink into the bed, drawing the covers up

to her chin, watching him across the covers. He came and looked down at

her. She writhed slowly in a cringing movement, cringing upon herself in

as complete an isolation as though she were bound to a church steeple.

She grinned at him, her mouth warped over the rigid, placative porcelain

of her grimace.

When he put his hand on her she began to whimper. "No, no," she

whispered, "he said I cant now he said . . ." He jerked the covers back

and flung them aside. She lay motionless, her palms lifted, her flesh

beneath the envelope of her loins cringing rearward in furious

disintegration like frightened people in a crowd. When he advanced his

hand again she thought he was going to strike her. Watching his face, she

saw it beginning to twitch and jerk like that of a child about to cry,

and she heard him begin to make a whimpering sound. He gripped the top

of the gown. She caught his wrists and began to toss from side to side,

opening her mouth to scream. His hand clapped over her mouth, and

gripping his wrist, the saliva drooling between his fingers, her body

thrashing furiously from thigh to thigh, she saw him crouching beside the

bed, his face wrung above his absent chin, his bluish lips protruding as

though he were blowing upon hot soup, making a high whinnying sound like

a horse. Beyond the wall Miss Reba filled the hall, the house, with a

harsh choking uproar of obscene cursing.

x1x

"BUT THAT GIRL," HORACE SAID. "SHE WAS ALL RIGHT. YOU know she was all

right when you left the house. When you saw her in the car with him. He

was just giving her a lift to town. She was all right. You know she was

all right."

The woman sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at the child. It lay

beneath the faded, clean blanket, its hands upflung beside its head, as

though it had died in the presence of an unbearable agony which had not