Sartoris Read online

  “You did not answer mine of 25th. I did not expect you answer it yet. You will answer soon I can wait. I will not harm you I am square and honest you will lern when our ways come to gether. I do not expect you answer yet but you know where you make a sign.”

  Miss Jenny refolded the paper with a gesture of fine and delicate distaste. “I’d burn this thing, if it wasn’t the only thing we have to catch him with. I’ll give it to Bayard tonight.”

  “No, no,” the other protested quickly, extending her hand, “please don’t. Let me have it and tear it up.”

  “It’s the only evidence, child—this and the other one. We’ll get a detective.”

  “No, no; please! I don’t want anybody else to know about it. Please, Miss Jenny.” She reached her hand again.

  “You want to keep it,” Miss Jenny accused coldly. “Just like a young fool woman, to be flattered by a thing like this.”

  “I’ll tear it up,” the other repeated. “I would have sooner, but I wanted to tell somebody. It—it—I thought I wouldn’t feel so filthy, after I had shown it to somebody else. Let me have it, please.”

  “Fiddlesticks. Why should you feel filthy? You haven’t encouraged it, have you?”

  “Please, Miss Jenny.”

  But Miss Jenny still held on to it. “Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “How can this thing make you feel filthy? Any young woman is liable to get an anonymous letter. And a lot of ’em like it. We are all convinced that men feel that way about us, and we can’t help but admire the one that’s got the courage to tell us, no matter who he is.”

  “If he’d just signed his name. I wouldn’t mind who it was. But like this . . . Please, Miss Jenny.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Miss Jenny repeated. “How can we find who it is if you destroy the evidence?”

  “I don’t want to know.” Miss Jenny released the paper and Narcissa tore it to bits and cast them over the rail and rubbed her hands on her dress. “I don’t want to know. I want to forget all about it.”

  “Nonsense. You’re dying to know, right now. I bet you look at every man you pass and wonder if it’s him. And as long as you don’t do something about it, it’ll go on. Get worse, probably. You better let me tell Bayard.”

  “No, no. I’d hate for him to know, to think that I would might have . . . It’s all right: I’ll just burn them up after this, without opening them. . . . I really must go.”

  “Of course: you’ll throw ’em right into the stove,” Miss Jenny agreed with cold irony. Narcissa descended the steps and Miss Jenny came forward into the sunlight again, letting her glasses whip back into the case. “It’s your business, of course. But I’d not stand for it, if ’twas me. But then, I ain’t twenty-six years old. . . . Well, come out again when you get another one, or you want some more flowers.”

  “Yes, I will Thank you for these.”

  “And let me know what you hear from Horace. Thank the Lord, it’s just a glass-blowing machine and not a war widow.”

  “Yes, I will. Good-bye.” She went on through the dappled shade in her straight white dress and her basket of flowers stippled upon it, and got in her car. The top was back and she put her hat on and started the engine. She looked back again and waved her hand. “Good-bye.”

  The negro had moved down the road; slowly, and stopped again, and he was watching her covertly as she approached. As she passed he looked full at her and she knew he was about to hail her. She opened the throttle and passed him with increasing speed and drove swiftly on to town, where she lived in a brick house among cedars on a hill.

  She was arranging the larkspur in a dull lemon urn on the piano. Aunt Sally Wyatt rocked steadily in her chair beside the window, clapping her feet flatly on the floor at each stroke. Her work basket sat on the window ledge between the gentle billowing of the curtains, her ebony walking stick leaned beside it.

  “And you were out there two hours,” she said, “and never saw him at all?”

  “He wasn’t there,” Narcissa answered, “He’s gone to Memphis.”

  Aunt Sally rocked steadily. “If I was them, I’d make him stay there. I wouldn’t have that boy around me, blood or no blood. . . . What did he go to Memphis for? I thought that aeroplane what-do-you-call-it was broke up.”

  “He went on business, I suppose.”

  “What business has he got in Memphis? Bayard Sartoris has got more sense than to turn over any business to that harebrained fool.”

  “I don’t know,” Narcissa answered, arranging the larkspur. “He’ll be back soon, I suppose. You can ask him then.”

  “Me ask him? I never said two words to him in his life. And I don’t intend to. I been used to associating with gentlefolks.”

  Narcissa broke some of the stems, arranging the blooms in a pattern. “What’s he done that a gentleman doesn’t do, Aunt Sally?”

  “Why, jumping off water tanks and going up in balloons just to scare folks. You think I’d have that boy around me? I’d have him locked up in the insane asylum, if I was Bayard and Jenny.”

  “He didn’t jump off the tank. He just swung off of it on a rope and dived into the swimming-pool. And it was John that went up in the balloon.”

  “That wasn’t what I heard. I heard he jumped off that tank, across a whole row of freight cars and lumber piles, and didn’t miss the edge of the pool an inch.”

  “No, he didn’t. He swung on a rope from the top of a house and then dived into the pool. The rope was tied to the tank.”

  “Well, didn’t he have to jump over a lot of lumber and freight cars? And couldn’t he have broken his neck just as easy that way as jumping off the tank?”

  “Yes,” Narcissa answered.

  “There! What’d I tell you? And what was the use of it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t. That was the reason he did it.” Aunt Sally rocked triumphantly for a while Narcissa put the last touches to the blue pattern of the larkspur. A tortoiseshell cat bunched suddenly and silently on the window beside the work basket, with an effect as of sleight-of-hand. Still crouching, it blinked into the room for a moment, then it sank to its belly and with arched neck fell to grooming its shoulder with a narrow pink tongue. Narcissa moved to the window and laid her hand on the creature’s sleek back.

  “And then, going up in that balloon, when—”

  “That wasn’t Bayard,” Narcissa repeated. “That was John.”

  “That wasn’t what I heard. I heard it was the other one and that Bayard and Jenny were both begging him with tears in their eyes not to do it. I heard—”

  “Neither of them were there. Bayard wasn’t even there. It was John did it. He did it because the man that came with the balloon got sick. John went up in it so the country people wouldn’t be disappointed. I was there.”

  “Stood there and let him do it, did you, when you could ’a’ telephoned Jenny or walked across the square to the bank and got Bayard? You stood there and never opened your mouth, did you?”

  “Yes,” Narcissa answered. Stood there beside Horace in the slow, intent ring of country people, watching the globe swelling and tugging at its ropes, watched John Sartoris in a faded flannel shirt and corduroy breeches while the carnival man explained the rip cord and the parachute to him; stood there feeling her breath going out faster than she could draw it in again, and watched the thing lurch into the air with John sitting on a frail trapeze bar swinging beneath it, with eyes she could not close; saw the balloon and people and all swirl slowly upward and then found herself clinging to Horace behind the shelter of a wagon, trying to get her breath.

  He landed three miles away in a brier thicket and disengaged the parachute and regained the road and hailed a passing negro in a wagon. A mile from town they met old Bayard driving furiously in the carriage, and the two vehicles stopped side by side in the road while old Bayard in the one exhaus
ted the accumulated fury of his rage and in the other his grandson sat in his shredded clothes, and on his scratched face that look of one who had gamed for an instant a desire so fine that its escape was a purification, not a loss.

  The next day, as she was passing a store, he emerged with that abrupt violence which he had in common with his brother, pulling short up to avoid a collision with her.

  “Oh, ex—Why, hello,” he said. Beneath the criss-crosses of tape his face was merry and bold and wild, and he wore no hat. For a moment she gazed at him with wide, hopeless eyes, then she clapped her hand to her mouth and went swiftly on, almost running.

  Then he was gone, with his brother, shut away by the war as two noisy dogs are penned in a kennel far away. Miss Jenny gave her news of them, of the dull, dutiful letters they sent home at sparse intervals; then he was dead—but away beyond the seas, and there was no body to be returned clumsily to earth, and so to her he seemed still to be laughing at that word as he had laughed at all the other mouth-sounds that stood for repose, who had not waited for Time and its furniture to teach him that the end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

  Aunt Sally rocked steadily in her chair.

  “Well, it don’t matter which one it was. One’s bad as the other. But I reckon it ain’t their fault, raised like they were. Rotten spoiled, both of ’em. Lucy Sartoris wouldn’t let anybody control ’em while she lived. If they’d been mine, now . . .” She rocked on. “Beat it out of ’em, I would. Raising two wild Indians like that. But those folks, thinking there wasn’t anybody quite as good as a Sartoris. Even Lucy Cranston, come of as good people as there are in the state, acting like it was divine providence that let her marry one Sartoris and be the mother of two more. Pride, false pride.”

  She rocked steadily in her chair. Beneath Narcissa’s hand the cat purred with lazy arrogance.

  “It was a judgment on ’em, taking John instead of that other one. John at least tipped his hat to a lady on the street hut that other boy . . .” She rocked monotonously, clapping her feet flatly against the floor. “You better stay away from that boy. He’ll be killing you same as he did that poor little wife of his.”

  “At least, give me benefit of clergy first, Aunt Sally,” Narcissa said. Beneath her hand, beneath the cat’s sleek hide, muscles flowed suddenly into tight knots, like wire, and the animal’s body seemed to elongate like rubber as it whipped from beneath her hand and flashed out of sight across the veranda.

  “Oh!” Narcissa cried. Then she whirled and caught up Aunt Sally’s stick and ran from the room.

  “What—” Aunt Sally said. “You bring my stick back here,” she said. She sat staring at the door, hearing the swift clatter of the other’s heels in the hall and then on the veranda. She rose and leaned in the window. “You bring my stick back here,” she shouted.

  Narcissa sped on across the porch and to the ground. In the canna bed beside the veranda the cat, crouching, jerked its head around and its yellow unwinking eyes. Narcissa rushed at it, the stick raised.

  “Put it down!” she cried. “Drop it!” For another second the yellow eyes glared at her, then the animal ducked its head and leaped away in a long fluid bound, the bird between its jaws.

  “Oh-h-h, damn you!” she cried. “Damn you! You—you Sartoris!” And she hurled the stick after the final tortoise flash as the cat flicked around the corner of the house.

  “You get my stick and bring it right back this minute!” Aunt Sally shouted from the window.

  She and Miss Jenny were sitting in the dim parlor. The doors were ajar as usual, and young Bayard appeared suddenly between them and stood looking at her.

  “It’s Bayard,” Miss Jenny said. “Come in here and speak to Narcissa, sonny.”

  He said “Hello” vaguely and she turned on the piano bench and shrank a little against the instrument.

  “Who is it?” he said. He came in, bringing with him that leashed cold violence which she remembered.

  “It’s Narcissa,” Miss Jenny said testily. “Go on and speak to her and stop acting like you don’t know who she is.”

  Narcissa gave him her hand and he stood holding it loosely, but he was not looking at her. She withdrew her hand. He looked at her again, then away, and he loomed above them and stood rubbing his hand through his hair.

  “I want a drink,” he said. “I can’t find the key to the desk.”

  “Stop and talk to us a few minutes and you can have one.”

  He stood for a moment above them, then he moved abruptly and before Miss Jenny could speak he had dragged the envelope from another chair.

  “Let that alone, you Indian!” Miss Jenny exclaimed. She rose. “Here, take my chair, if you’re too weak to stand up. I’ll be back in a minute,” she added to Narcissa; “I’ll have to get my keys.”

  He sat laxly in the chair, rubbing his hand over his head, his gaze brooding somewhere about his booted feet. Narcissa sat utterly quiet, shrunk back against the piano. She spoke at last.

  “I am so sorry about your wife . . . John. I asked Miss Jenny to tell you when she . . .”

  He sat rubbing his head slowly, in the brooding violence of his temporary repose.

  “You aren’t married yourself, are you?” he asked. She sat perfectly still, “Ought to try it,” he added. “Everybody ought to get married once, like everybody ought to go to one war.”

  Miss Jenny returned with the keys, and he got his long abrupt body erect and left them.

  “You can go on, now,” she said. “He won’t bother us again.”

  “No, I must go.” Narcissa rose quickly and took her hat from the top of the piano.

  “Why, you haven’t been here any time, yet.”

  “I must go,” Narcissa repeated. Miss Jenny rose.

  “Well, if you must. I’ll cut you some flowers. Won’t take a minute.”

  “No, some other time; I—I have—I’ll come out soon and get some. Good-bye.” At the door she glanced swiftly down the hall; then she went on. Miss Jenny followed to the veranda. The other had descended the steps and she, now went swiftly on toward her car.

  “Come back again soon,” Miss Jenny called.

  “Yes. Soon,” Narcissa answered. “Good-bye.”

  2

  Young Bayard came back from Memphis in his car. Memphis was seventy-five miles away and the trip had taken an hour and forty minutes because some of the road was clay country road. The car was long and low and gray.

  The four-cylinder engine had sixteen valves and eight spark plugs, and the people had guaranteed that it would run eighty miles an hour, although there was a strip of paper pasted to the windshield, to which he paid no attention whatever, asking him in red letters not to do so for the first five hundred miles.

  He came up the drive and stopped before the house, where his grandfather sat with his feet on the veranda railing and Miss Jenny stood trim in her black dress beside a post. She descended the steps and examined it, and opened the door and got in to try the seat. Simon came to the door and gave it a brief, derogatory look and retired, and Isom appeared around the corner and circled the car quietly with an utter and yearning admiration. But old Bayard just looked down at the long, dusty thing, his cigar in his fingers, and grunted.

  “Why, it’s as comfortable as a rocking chair,” Miss Jenny said. “Come here and try it,” she called to him. But he grunted again, and sat with his feet on the rail and watched young Bayard slide in under the wheel. The engine raced experimentally, ceased. Isom stood like a leashed hound beside it. Young Bayard glanced at him.

  “You can go next time,” he said.

  “Why can’t he go now?” Miss Jenny said. “Jump in, Isom.”

  Isom jumped in, and old Bayard watched them move soundlessly down the drive and watched the car pass from sight down the valley. Presently above the trees a cloud of dust rose in
to the azure afternoon and hung rosily fading in the sun, and a sound as of remote thunder died muttering behind it. Old Bayard puffed his cigar again. Simon appeared again in the door and stood there.

  “Now whar you reckon dey gwine right here at suppertime?” he said. Bayard grunted, and Simon stood in the door, mumbling to himself.

  Twenty minutes later the car slid up the drive and came to a halt almost in its former tracks. In the backseat Isom’s face was like an open piano. Miss Jenny had worn no hat, and she held her hair with both hands, and when the car stopped she sat for a moment so. Then she drew a long breath.

  “I wish I smoked cigarettes,” she said, and then: “Is that as fast as it’ll go?”

  Isom got out and opened the door for her. She descended a little stiffly, but her eyes were shining and her dry old cheeks were flushed.

  “How fer y’all been?” Simon asked from the door. “We’ve been to town,” she answered proudly, and her voice was clear as a girl’s. Town was four miles away.

  One day a week later old man Falls came in to town and found old Bayard in his office. The office was also the directors’ room. It was a large room containing a long table lined with chairs, and a tall cabinet where blank banking forms were kept, and old Bayard’s roll top desk and swivel chair and a sofa on which he napped for an hour each noon.

  The desk, like the one at home, was cluttered with a variety of objects which bore no relation whatever to the banking business, and the mantel above the fireplace bore still more objects of an agricultural nature, as well as a dusty assortment of pipes and three or four jars of tobacco which furnished solace for the entire banking force from president to janitor and for a respectable portion of the bank’s clientele. Weather permitting, old Bayard spent most of the day in a tilted chair in the street door, and when these patrons found him there, they went on back to the office and filled their pipes from the jars. It was a sort of unspoken convention not to take more than a pipeful at a time. Here old man Falls and old Bayard retired on the old man’s monthly visits and shouted at one another (they were both deaf) for a half hour or so. You could hear them plainly from the street and in the adjoining store on either side.