Sanctuary

they breathed, and I could tell Popeye by the smell of that stuff on his

hair. Tommy was following him. He came in the door behind Popeye and looked

at me and I could see his eyes, like a cat. Then his eyes went away and I

could feel him sort of squatting against me, and we could hear Popeye over

where the bed was and that fellow snoring and snoring.

"I could just hear little faint sounds, from the shucks. so I knew it was

all right yet, and in a minute Popeye carne on back, and Tommy followed him

out, creeping along behind him, and I stood there until I heard them go

down to the truck. Then I went to bed. When I touched her she be-an to

fight. I was trying to put my hand over her mouth so she couldn't make a

noise, but she didn*t, anyway. She just lay there, thrashing about, rolling

her head from one side to the other, holding to the coat.

"'You foolF I says 'It's me-the woman."'

"But that ,irl," Horace said. "She was all right. When you were coming back

to the house the next morning after the baby's bottle, you saw her and knew

she was all right " The room gave onto the square. Through the window he

Could see the young men pitching dollars in the courthouse yard, and the

wagons passing or tethered about the hitching chains, and he could hear the

footsteps and voices of people on the slow and unhurried pavement below the

window. The peo;-,Ie buying comfortable things to take home and eat at

quiet tables. "You know she was all right."

That night Horace went out to his sister's, in a hired car; he did not

telephone. He found Miss Jenny in her room. "Well," she said. "Narcissa

will-,,

"I don't want to see her," Horace said. "Her nice, wellbred young man. Her

Virginia gentleman. I know why he didn't come back."

"Who? Gowan?"

'Yes; Gowan. And, by the Lord, he'd better not come back. By God, when I

think that I had the opportunity-"

"What? What did he do?"

"He carried a little fool girl out there with him that day and got drunk

and ran off and left her. That's what he did. If it hadn't been for that

woman-And when I think of `-, c o -ple like that walking the earth with

impunity just bec-iuse he had a balloon-tailed suit and went through the

astoni-jong experiencc of having attended Virginia . . . On any train or in

any hotel, on the street, anywhere, mind you-"

94 WILLIAM FAULKNER

"Oh," Miss Jenny said. "I didn't understand at first who you meant.

Well," she said. "You remember that last time he was here, just after you

came? the day he wouldn't stay for supper and went to Oxford?"

"Yes. And when I think I could have-"

"He asked Narcissa to marry him. She told him that one child was enough

for her."

"I said she has no heart. She cannot be satisfied with less than insult."

"So he got mad and said he would go to Oxford, where there was a woman

he was reasonably confident he would not appear ridiculous to: something

like that. Well." She looked at him, her neck bowed to see across her

spectacles. "I'll declare, a male parent is a funny thing, but just let

a man have a hand in the affairs of a female that's no kin to him . . .

What is it that makes a man think that the female flesh he marries or

begets might misbehave, but all he didn't marry or get is bound to?"

"Yes," Horace said, "and thank God she isn't my flesh and blood. I can

reconcile myself to her having to be exposed to a scoundrel now and then,

but to think that at any moment she may become involved with a fool."

"Well, what are you going to do about it? Start some kind of roach

campaign?"

"I'm going to do what she said; I'm going to have a law passed making it

obligatory upon everyone to shoot any man less than fifty years old that

makes, buys, sells or thinks whiskey . . . scoundrel I can face, but to

think of her being exposed to any fool . . . ...

He returned to town. The night was warm, the darkness filled with the

sound of new-fledged cicadas. He was using a bed, one chair, a bureau on

which he had spread a towel and upon which lay his brushes, his watch,

his pipe and tobacco pouch, and, propped against a book, a photograph of

his step-daughter, Little Belle. Upon the glazed surface a highlight lay.

He shifted the photograph until the face came clear. He stood before it,

looking at the sweet, inscrutable face which looked in turn at something

just beyond his shoulder, out of the dead cardboard. He was thinking of

the grape arbor in Kinston, of summer twilight and the murmur of voices

darkening into silence as he approached, who meant them, her, no harm;

who meant her less than harm, good God; darkening into the pale whisper

of her white dress, of the delicate and urgent mammalian whisper of that

curious small flesh which he had not begot and in which appeared to be

vatted delicately some seething sympathy with the blossoming grape.

He moved, suddenly. As of its own accord the photograph

SANCTUARY 95

had shifted, slipping a little from its precarious balancing ag,-inst the

book. The image blurred into the highlight, like something familiar seen