Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

Though there were still ten minutes, and it would take Otis Harker at least twenty-five to “round up” the gin and compress and their purlieus and get back to the Square. And I know now that I already smelled tobacco smoke even before I put my hand on what I thought was an unlocked door for the reason that I myself had made a special trip back to leave it unlocked, still smelling the tobacco while I still tried to turn the knob, until the latch clicked back from inside and the door opened, she standing there against the dark interior in what little there was of light. Though it was enough to see her hair, that she had been to the beauty parlor: who according to Maggie had never been to one, the hair not bobbed of course, not waved, but something, I don’t know what it was except that she had been to the beauty parlor that afternoon.

“Good for you for locking it,” I said. “We wont need to risk a light either. Only I think that Otis Harker already—”

“That’s all right,” she said. So I closed the door and locked it again and turned on the desk lamp. “Turn them all on if you want to,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to hide. I just didn’t want to have to talk to somebody.”

“Yes,” I said, and sat behind the desk. She had been in the client’s chair, sitting in the dark, smoking; the cigarette was still burning in the little tray with two other stubs. Now she was sitting again in the client’s chair at the end of the desk where the light fell upon her from the shoulder down but mostly on her hands lying quite still on the bag on her lap. Though I could still see her hair—no makeup, lips or nails either: just her hair that had been to the beauty shop. “You’ve been to the beauty shop,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s where I met Chick.”

“But not inside,” I said, already trying to stop. “Not where water and soap are coeval, conjunctive,” still trying to stop. “Not for a few years yet,” and did. “All right,” I said. “Tell me. What was it he took out there to your mother yesterday that had old Will on the road to town at two oclock this morning?”

“There’s your cob pipe,” she said. They were in the brass bowl beside the tobacco jar. “You’ve got three of them. I’ve never seen you smoke one. When do you smoke them?”

“All right,” I said. “Yes. What was it he took out there?”

“The will,” she said.

“No no,” I said. “I know about the will; Ratliff told me. I mean, what was it Flem t out there to your mother yesterday morning—”

“I told you. The will.”

“Will?” I said.

“Linda’s will. Giving her share of whatever she would inherit from me, to her fa—him.” And I sat there and she too, opposite one another across the desk, the lamp between us low on the desk so that all we could really see of either probably was just the hands: mine on the desk and hers quite still, almost as if two things asleep, on the bag in her lap, her voice almost as if it was asleep too so that there was no anguish, no alarm, no outrage anywhere in the little quiet dingy mausoleum of human passions, high and secure, secure even from any random exigency of what had been impressed on Otis Harker as his duty for which he was paid his salary, since he already knew it would be me in it: “The will. It was her idea. She did it herself. I mean, she believes she thought of it, wanted to do it, did it, herself. Nobody can tell her otherwise. Nobody will. Nobody. That’s why I wrote the note.”

“You’ll have to tell me,” I said. “You’ll have to.”

“It was the … school business. When you told her she wanted to go, get away from here; all the different schools to choose among that she hadn’t even known about before, that it was perfectly natural for a young girl—young people to want to go to them and to go to one of them, that until then she hadn’t even thought about, let alone known that she wanted to go to one of them. Like all she needed to do to go to one of them was just to pick out the one she liked the best and go to it, especially after I said Yes. Then her—he said No.

“As if that was the first time she ever thought of No, ever heard of No. There was a … scene. I dont like scenes. You dont have to have scenes. Nobody needs to have a scene to get what you want. You just get it. But she didn’t know that, you see. She hadn’t had time to learn it maybe, since she was just seventeen then. But then you know that yourself. Or maybe it was more than not knowing better. Maybe she knew too much. Maybe she already knew, felt even then that he had already beat her. She said: ‘I will go! I will! You cant stop me! Damn your money; if Mama wont give it to me, Grandpa will—Mr Stevens’ (oh yes, she said that too) ‘will—’ While he just sat there—we were sitting then, still at the table; only Linda was standing up—just sat there saying, ‘That’s right. I cant stop you.’ Then she said, ‘Please.’ Oh yes, she knew she was beaten as well as he did. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you to stay at home and go to the Academy.’