Sanctuary

it in her hand. After a moment she went to the bed and hid it beneath the

pillow.

The dressing-table was cluttered with toilet-things-brushes and mirrors,

also new; with flasks and jars of delicate and bizarre shapes, bearing

French labels. One by one she gath. ered them up and hurled them into the

corner in thuds and splintering crashes. Among them lay a platinum bag: a

delicate webbing of metal upon the smug orange gleam of banknotes. This

followed the other things into the corner and she returned to the bed and

lay again on her face in a slow thickening of expensive scent.

127

128 WILLIAM FAULKNER

At noon Minnie tapped at the door. "Here yo dinner." Temple didn't move.

"I ghy leave it here by the door. You can git it when you wants it." Her

feet went away. Temple did not move.

Slowly the bar of sunlight shifted across the floor; the western side of

the window-frame was now in shadow. Temple sat up, her head turned aside

as though she were listening, fingering with deft habitude at her hair.

She rose quietly and went to the door and listened again. Then she opened

it. The' tray sat on the floor. She stepped over it and went to the

stairs and peered over the rail. After a while she made Minnie out,

sitting in a chair in the hall.

"Minnie," she said. Minnie's head jerked up; again her eyes rolled

whitely. "Bring me a drink," Temple said. She returned to her room. She

waited fifteen minutes. She banged the door and was tramping furiously

down the stairs when Minnie appeared in the hall.

"Yessum," Minnie said, "Miss Reba say- We ain't got no -" Miss Reba's

door opened. Without looking up at Temple she spoke to Minnie, Minnie

lifted her voice again. "Yessum; all right. I bring it up in just a

minute."

"You'd better," Temple said. She returned and stood just inside the door

until she heard Minnie mount the stairs. Temple opened the door, holdng

it just ajar.

"Aint you going to eat no dinner?" Minnie said, thrusting at the door

with her knee. Temple held it to.

"Where is it?" she said.

"I aint straightened your room up this mawnin," Minnie said.

"Give it here," Temple said, reaching her hand through the crack. She

took the glass from the tray.

"You better make that un last," Minnie said. "Miss Reba say you aint ghy

git no more. . . . What you want to treat him this-a-way, fer? Way he

spend his money on you, you ought to be ashamed. He a right pretty little

man, even if he aint no John Gilbert, and way he spendin his money-" Tem-

ple shut the door and shot the bolt. She drank the gin and drew a chair

up to the bed and lit a cigarette and sat down with her feet on the bed.

After a while she moved the chair to the window and lifted the shade a

little so she could see the street beneath. She lit another cigarette.

At five o'clock she saw Miss Reba emerge, in the black silk and flowered

hat, and go down the street. She sprang up and dug the hat from the mass

of clothes in the corner and put it on. At the door she turned and went

back to the comer and exhumed the platinum purse and descended the

stairs. Minnie was in the hall.

SANCTUARY 129

"I'll give you ten dollars," Temple said. "I wont be gone ten minutes."

"I caint do it, Miss Temple. Hit be worth my job if Miss Reba find it out,

and my th'oat too, if Mist Popeye do."

"I swear I'll be back in ten minutes. I swear I will. Twenty dollars." She

put the bill in Minnie's hand.

"You better come back," Minnie said, opening the door. "If you aint back

here in ten minutes, I aint going to be, neither."

Temple opened the lattice and peered out. The street was empty save for a

taxi at the curb across the way, and a man in a cap standing in a door

beyond it. She went down the street, walking swiftly. At the corner a cab

overtook her, slowing, the driver looking at her interrogatively. She

turned into the drug store at the corner and went back to the telephone

booth. Then she returned to the house. As she turned the corner she met the

man in the cap who had been leaning in the door. She entered the lattice.

Minnie opened the door.

"Thank goodness," Minnie said. "When that cab over there started up, I got

ready to pack up too. If you aint ghy say nothing about it, I git you a

drink."

When Minnie fetched the gin Temple started to drink it. Her hand was

trembling as she stood again just inside the door, listening, the glass in

her hand. I'll need it later, she said. I'll need more than that. She

covered the glass with a saucer and hid it carefully. Then she dug into the

mass of garments in the corner and found a dancing-frock and shook it out

and hung it back in the closet. She looked at the other things a moment,

but she returned to the bed and lay down again. At once she rose and drew

the chair up and sat down, her feet on the unmade bed. While daylight died

slowly in the room she sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening to

every sound on the stairs.

At half-past six Minnie brought her supper up. On the tray was another

glass of gin. "Miss Reba sent this un," she said. "She say, how you

feelin?"