Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Inviolacy—between client and lawyer. He said she came to him, it must have been right after she reached Oxford—Wait,” she said. “I asked him that too: why she came to him, and he said—He said she was a delightful young lady who would go far in life even after she ran out of—of—”

“Contingencies,” I said.

“—contingencies to bequeath people—she said that she had just asked someone who was the nicest lawyer for her to go to and they told her him. So she told him what she wanted and he wrote it that way; oh yes, I saw it: ‘my share of whatever I might inherit from my mother, Eula Varner Snopes, as distinct and separate from whatever her husband shall share in her property, to my father Flem Snopes.’ Oh yes, all regular and legal though he said he tried to explain to her that she was not bequeathing a quantity but merely devising a—what was it? contingency, and that nobody would take it very seriously probably since she might die before she had any inheritance or get married or even change her mind without a husband to help her or her mother might not have any inheritance beyond the one specified or might spend it or her father might die and she would inherit half of his inheritance from herself plus the other half which her mother would inherit as her father’s relict, which she would heir in turn back to her father’s estate to pass to her mother as his relict to be inherited once more by her; but she was eighteen years old and competent and he, Mr Stone, was a competent lawyer or at least he had a license saying so, and so it was at least in legal language and on the right kind of paper. He—Mr Stone—even asked her why she felt she must make the will and she told him: Because my father has been good to me and I love and admire and respect him—do you hear that? Love and admire and respect him. Oh yes, legal. As if that mattered, legal or illegal, contingency or incontingency—”

Nor did she need to tell me that either: that old man seething out there in his country store for eighteen years now over the way his son-in-law had tricked him out of that old ruined plantation and then made a profit out of it, now wild with rage and frustration at the same man who had not only out-briganded him in brigandage but since then had even out-usury-ed him in sedentary usury, and who now had wed the innocence of a young girl, his own granddaughter, who could repay what she thought was love with gratitude and generosity at least, to disarm him of the one remaining weapon which he still held over his enemy. Oh yes, of course it was worth nothing except its paper but what did that matter, legal or valid either. It didn’t even matter now if he destroyed it (which of course was why Flem ever let it out of his hand in the first place); only that he saw it, read it, comprehended it: took one outraged incredulous glance at it, then came storming into town—

“I couldn’t make him hush,” she said. “I couldn’t make him stop, be quiet. He didn’t even want to wait until daylight to get hold of Manfred.”

“De Spain?” I said. “Then? At four in the morning?”

“Didn’t I tell you I couldn’t stop him, make him stop or hush? Oh yes, he got Manfred there right away. And Manfred attended to everything. It was quite simple to him. That is, when I finally made him and Papa both believe that in another minute they would wake up, rouse the whole neighborhood and before that happened I would take Papa’s—-Tody’s car and drive to Oxford and get Linda and none of them would ever see us again. So he and Papa hushed then—”

“But Flem,” I said.

“He was there for a little while, long enough—”

“But what was he doing?” I said.

‘Nothing,” she said. “What was he supposed to do? What did he need to do now?”

“Oh,” I said. “ ‘long enough’ to—”

“—enough for Manfred to settle everything: we would simply leave, go away together, he and I, which was what we should have done eighteen years ago—”

“What?” I said, cried. “Leave—elope?”

“Oh yes, it was all fixed; he stopped right there with Papa still standing over him and cursing him—cursing him or cursing Flem; you couldn’t tell now which one he was talking to or about or at—and wrote out the bill of sale. Papa was—what’s that word?—neutral. He wanted both of them out of the bank, intended to have both of them out of it, came all the way in from home at four oclock in the morning to fling both of them out of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County and Mississippi all three—Manfred for having been my lover for eighteen years, and Flem for waiting eighteen years to do anything about it. Papa didn’t know about Manfred until this morning. That is, he acted like he didn’t. I think Mamma knew. I think she has known all the time. But maybe she didn’t. Because people are really kind, you know. All the people in Yoknapatawpha County that might have made sure Mamma knew about us, for her own good, so she could tell Papa for his own good. For everybody’s own good. But I dont think Papa knew. He’s like you. I mean, you can do that too.”

“Do what?” I said.