Sanctuary

four weeks ago. While he was sitting there he began to smell coffee from

somewhere. "I'll finish this business and then I'll go to Europe. I am

sick. I am too old for this. I was born too old for it, and I am sick to

death for quiet."

He shaved and made coffee and drank a cup and ate some bread. When he

passed the hotel, the bus which met the morning train was at the curb,

with the drummers getting into it. Clarence Snopes was one of them,

carrying a tan suit case.

"Going down to Jackson for a couple of days on a little business," he

said. "Too bad I missed you last night. I come on

148 WILLIAM FAULKNER

back in a car. I reckon you was settled for the night, maybe?" He looked

down at Horace, vast, pasty, his intentions unmistakable. "I could have

took you to a place most folks dont know about. Where a man can do just

whatever he is big enough to do. But there'll be another time, since I

done got to know you better." He lowered his voice a little, moving a lit-

tle aside. "Dont you be uneasy. I aint a talker. When I'm here, in

Jefferson, I'm one fellow; what I am up in town with a bunch of good

sports aint nobody's business but mine and their'n. Aint that right?"

Later in the morning, from a distance he saw his sister on the street

ahead of him turn and disappear into a door. He tried to find her by

looking into all the stores within the radius of where she must have

turned, and asking the clerks. She was in none of them. The only place

he did not investigate was a stairway that mounted between two stores,

to a corridor of offices on the first floor, one of which was that of the

District Attorney Eustace Graham.

Graham had a club foot, which had elected him to the office he now held.

He worked his way into and through the State University; as a youth the

town remembered him as driving wagons and trucks for grocery stores,

During his first year at the University he made a name for himself by his

industry, He waited on table in the commons and he had the government

contract for carrying the mail to and from the local postoffice at the

arrival of each train, hobbling along with the sack over his shoulder:

a pleasant open-faced young man with a word for everyone and a certain

alert rapacity about his eyes. During his second year he let his mail

contract lapse and he resigned from his job in the commons; he also had

a new suit. People were glad that he had saved through his industry to

where he could give all his time to his studies. He was in the law school

then, and the law professors groomed him like a race-horse. He graduated

well, though without distinction. "Because he was handicapped at the

start," the professors said. "If he had had the same start that the

others had . . . He will go far," they said.

It was not until he had left school that they learned that he had been

playing poker for three years in the office of a livery stable, behind

drawn shades. When, two years out of school, he got elected to the State

legislature, they began to tell an anecdote of his school days.

It was in the poker game in the livery stable office. The bet came to

Graham. He looked across the table at the owner of the stable, who was

his only remaining opponent.

"How much have you got there, Mr. Harris?" he said.

"Forty-two dollars, Eustace," the proprietor said. Eustace

SANCTUARY 149

shoved some chips into the pot. "How much is that?" the proprietor said.

"Forty-two dollars, Mr. Harris."

"Hmmm," the proprietor said. He examined his hand. "How many cards did

you draw, Eustace?"

"Three, Mr. Harris."

"Hmmm. Who dealt the cards, Eustace?"

"I did, Mr. Harris."

"I pass, Eustace."

He had been District Attorney but a short time, yet already he had let

it be known that he would announce for Congress on his record of

convictions, so when he found himself facing Narcissa across the desk in

his dingy office, his expression was like that when he had put the

forty-two dollars into the pot.

"I only wish it weren't your brother," he said. "I hate to see a

brother-in-arms, you might say, with a bad case." She was watching him

with a blank, enveloping look. "After all, we've got to protect society,

even when it does seem that society does not need protection."

"Are you sure he cant win?" she said.

"Well, the first principle of law is, God alone knows what the jury will

do. Of course, you cant expect-"

"But you don't think he will."

"Naturally, I-"

"You have good reason to think he cant. I suppose you know things about

it that he doesn't."

He looked at her briefly. Then he picked up a pen from his desk and began

to scrape at the point with a paper cutter. "This is purely confidential.

I am violating my oath of office. I wont have to tell you that. But it

may save you worry to know that he hasn't a chance in the world. I know

what the disappointment will be to him, but that cant be helped. We

happen to know that the man is guilty. So if there's any way you know of

to get your brother out of the case, I'd advise you to do it. A losing

lawyer is like a losing anything else, ballplayer or merchant or doctor: