Sartoris Read online

  He laid it aside. Next came a heavy cavalry saber, and a rosewood case containing two dueling pistols with silver mountings and the lean, deceptive delicacy of racehorses, and what old man Falls had called “that ’ere dang der’nger.” It was a stubby, evil-looking thing with its three barrels, viciously and coldly utilitarian, and between the other two weapons it lay like a cold and deadly insect between two flowers.

  He removed next the blue army forage cap of the ’forties and a small pottery vessel and a Mexican machete, and a long-necked oil can such as locomotive drivers use. It was of silver, and engraved upon it was the picture of a locomotive with a huge bell-shaped funnel and surrounded by an ornate wreath. Beneath it, the name “Virginia” and the date “August 9, 1873.”

  He put these aside and with sudden purposefulness he removed the other objects—a frogged and braided coat of Confederate gray and a gown of sprigged muslin scented faintly of lavender and evocative of old formal minuets and drifting honeysuckle among steady candle flames—and came upon a conglomeration of yellowed papers neatly bound in packets, and at last upon a huge, brass-bound Bible. He lifted this to the edge of the chest and opened it. The paper was brown and mellow with years, and it had a texture like that of slightly moist wood ashes, as though each page were held intact by its archaic and fading print. He turned the pages carefully back to the flyleaves. Beginning near the bottom of the final blank page a column of names and dates rose in stark and fading simplicity, growing fainter and fainter where time had lain upon them. At the top they were still legible, as they were at the foot of the preceding page. But halfway up this page they ceased, and from there on the sheet was blank save for the faint, soft mottlings of time and an occasional brownish pen stroke.

  Old Bayard sat for a long time, regarding the stark dissolving apotheosis of his name. Sartorises had derided Time, but Time was not vindictive, being longer than Sartorises. And probably unaware of them. But it was a good gesture, anyway.

  “In the nineteenth century,” John Sartoris said, “genealogy is poppycock. Particularly in America, where only what a man takes and keeps has any significance and where all of us have a common ancestry and the only house from which we can claim descent with any assurance is the Old Bailey. Yet the man who professes to care nothing about his forbears is only a little less vain than the man who bases all his actions on blood precedent. And I reckon a Sartoris can have a little vanity and poppycock, if he wants it.”

  Yes, it was a good gesture, and old Bayard sat and mused quietly on the tense he had unwittingly used. Was. Fatality; the augury of a man’s destiny peeping out at him from the roadside hedge, if he but recognize it, and again he ran panting through undergrowth while the fading thunder of the smoke-colored stallion swept on in the dusk and the Yankee patrol crashed behind him, crashed fainter and fainter until he crouched with spent, laboring lungs in a brier thicket and heard the pursuit rush on. Then he crawled forth and went to a spring he knew that flowed from the roots of a beech and as he leaned down to it the final light of day was reflected on to his face, bringing into sharp relief forehead and nose above the cavernous sockets of his eyes and the panting snarl of his teeth, and from the still water there stared back at him, for a sudden moment, a skull.

  The unturned corners of man’s destiny. Well, heaven, that crowded place, lay just beyond one of them, they claimed; heaven filled with every man’s illusion of himself and with the conflicting illusions of him that parade through the minds of other illusions. . . . He stirred and sighed quietly, and took out his fountain pen. At the foot of the column he wrote:

  “John Sartoris. July 5, 1918.”

  and beneath that:

  “Caroline White Sartoris and son. October 27, 1918.”

  When the ink was dry he closed the book and replaced it and took the pipe from his pocket and put it in the rosewood case with the dueling pistols and the derringer and replaced the other things and closed the chest and locked it.

  Miss Jenny found old Bayard in his tilted chair in the bank door. He looked up at her with a fine assumption of surprise and his deafness seemed more pronounced than usual. But she got him up with cold implacability and led him, still grumbling, down the street where merchants and others spoke to her as to a martial queen, old Bayard stalking along beside her with sullen reluctance.

  They turned presently and mounted a narrow stairway debouching between two stores, beneath an array of dingy professional signs. At the top was a dark corridor with doors, the nearest of pine, its gray paint scarred at the bottom as though it had been kicked repeatedly at the same height and with the same force. In the door itself two holes an inch apart bore mute witness to the missing hasp, and from a staple in the jamb depended the hasp itself, fixed there by a huge, rusty lock of an ancient pattern. Bayard offered to stop here, but Miss Jenny led him firmly on to a door across the hall.

  This door was freshly painted and grained to represent walnut. Into the top half of it was let a pane of thick, opaque glass bearing a name in raised gilt letters, and two embracing office hours. Miss Jenny opened this door and Bayard followed her into a small cubbyhole of a room of Spartan but suave asepsis. The walls were an immaculate new gray, with a reproduction of a Corot and two spidery drypoints in narrow frames, and it contained a new rug in warm buff tones and a bare table and four chairs in fumed oak—all impersonal and clean and inexpensive, but revealing at a glance the proprietor’s soul; a soul hampered now by material strictures, but destined and determined someday to function amid Persian rugs and mahogany or teak, and a single irreproachable print on the chaste walls. A young woman in a starched white dress rose from a smaller table on which a telephone sat, and patted her hair.

  “Good morning, Myrtle,” Miss Jenny said. “Tell Dr. Alford we’d like to see him, please.”

  “You have an appointment?” the girl asked in a voice without any inflection at all.

  “We’ll make one now, then,” Miss Jenny replied. “You don’t mean to say Dr. Alford don’t come to work before ten o’clock, do you?”

  “Dr. Alford don’t—doesn’t see anyone without an appointment,” the girl parroted, gazing at a point above Miss Jenny’s head. “If you have no appointment, you’ll have to have an ap—”

  “Tut, tut,” Miss Jenny interrupted briskly. “You run and tell Dr. Alford Colonel Sartoris wants to see him, there’s a good girl.”

  “Yessum, Miss Jenny,” the girl said obediently and she crossed the room, but at the other door she paused again, and again her voice became parrot-like. “Won’t you sit down? I’ll see if the doctor is engaged.”

  “You go and tell Dr. Alford we’re here,” Miss Jenny repeated affably. “Tell him I’ve got some shopping to do this morning and I haven’t got time to wait.”

  “Yessum, Miss Jenny,” the girl agreed, and disappeared, and after a dignified interval she returned, once more clothed faultlessly in her professional manner. “The doctor will see you now. Come in, please.” She held the door open and stood aside.

  “Thank you, honey,” Miss Jenny replied. “Is your mamma still in bed?”

  “No’rn, she’s sitting up now, thank you.”

  “That’s good,” Miss Jenny agreed. “Come on, Bayard.” This room was smaller than the other, and brutally carbolized. There was a white enameled cabinet filled with vicious nickel gleams, and a metal operating table and an array of electric furnaces and ovens and sterilizers. The doctor in a white linen jacket bent over a small desk, and for a while he proffered them his sleek oblivious head. Then he glanced up, and rose.

  He was in the youthful indeterminate thirties, a newcomer to the town and nephew of an old resident. He had made a fine record in medical school and was of a personable exterior, but there was a sort of preoccupied dignity, a sort of erudite and cold unillusion regarding mankind, about him that precluded the easy intimacy of the small town and caused even those who remembered him as a visiting boy to address
him as Doctor or Mister. He had a small mustache and a face like a mask—a comforting face, but cold; and while old Bayard sat restively the doctor probed delicately with dry, scrubbed fingers at the wen on his face. Miss Jenny asked him a question, but he continued his exploration raptly, as though he had not heard, as though she had not even spoken; inserting a small electric bulb, which he first sterilized, into Bayard’s mouth and snapping its ruby glow on and off within his cheek. Then he removed it and sterilized it again and returned it to the cabinet.

  “Well?” Miss Jenny said impatiently. The doctor shut the cabinet carefully and washed and dried his hands and carne and stood above them, and with his thumbs hooked in his jacket pockets he became solemnly and unctuously technical, rolling the harsh words upon his tongue with epicurean deliberation.

  “It should be removed at once,” he concluded. “It should be removed while in its early stage; that is why I advise an immediate operation.”

  “You mean, it might develop into cancer?” Miss Jenny asked.

  “No question about it at all, madam. Course of time. Neglect it, and I can promise you nothing; have it out now, and he need never worry about it again.” He looked at old Bayard again with lingering and chill contemplation. “It will be very simple. I’ll remove it as easily as that.” And he made a short gesture with his hand.

  “What’s that?” Bayard demanded.

  “I say, I can take that growth off so easily you won’t know it, Colonel Sartoris.”

  “I’ll be damned if you do!” Bayard rose with one of his characteristic plunging movements.

  “Sit down, Bayard,” Miss Jenny ordered. “Nobody’s going to cut on you without your knowing it.—Should it be done right away?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. I wouldn’t have that thing on my face overnight. Otherwise, it is only fair to warn you that no doctor can assume responsibility for what might ensue. . . . I could remove it in two minutes,” he added, looking at Bayard’s face again with cold speculation. Then he half turned his head and stood in a listening attitude, and beyond the thin walls a voice in the other room boomed in rich, rolling waves.

  “Mawnin’, sister,” it said. “Didn’t I hear Bayard Sartoris cussin’ in here?” The doctor and Miss Jenny held their arrested attitudes; then the door opened and the fattest man in the whole county filled it. He wore a shiny alpaca coat over waistcoat and trousers of baggy black broadcloth; above a plaited shirt the fatty rolls of his dewlap practically hid his low collar and a black string tie. His Roman senator’s head was thatched with a vigorous curling of silvery hair. “What the devil’s the matter with you?” he boomed; then he sidled into the room, filling it completely, dwarfing its occupants and its furnishings.

  This was Doctor Lucius Quintus Peabody, eighty-seven years old and weighing three hundred and ten pounds and possessing a digestive tract like a horse. He had practiced medicine in the county when a doctor’s equipment consisted of a saw and a gallon of whisky and a satchel of calomel; he had been John Sartoris’ regimental surgeon, and up to the day of the automobile he would start out at any hour of the twenty-four in any weather and for any distance, over practically impassable roads in a lopsided buckboard, to visit anyone, white or black, who sent for him, accepting for fee usually a meal of corn pone and coffee, or perhaps a small measure of corn or fruit, or a few flower bulbs or graftings.

  When he was young and hasty he had kept a daybook, kept it meticulously until these hypothetical assets totaled $10,000. But that was forty years ago, and since then he hadn’t bothered with a record at all; and now from time to time a countryman enters his shabby office and discharges an obligation, commemorating sometimes the prayer’s entry into the world, incurred by his father or grandfather, which Doctor Peabody himself had long since forgotten about. Everyone in the county knew him and sent him hams and wild game at Christmas, and it was said that he could spend the balance of his days driving about the county in the buckboard he still used, with never a thought for board and lodging and without the expenditure of a penny for either. He filled the room with his bluff and homely humanity, and as he crossed the floor and patted Miss Jenny’s back with one flail-like hand, the whole building trembled to his tread.

  “Mawnin’, Jenny,” he said. “Havin’ Bayard measured for insurance?”

  “This damn butcher wants to cut on me,” old Bayard said querulously. “You come on and make ’em let me alone, Loosh.”

  “Ten A.M.’s mighty early in the day to start carvin’ white folks,” Dr. Peabody boomed. “Nigger’s different. Chop up a nigger any time after midnight. What’s the matter with him, son?” he asked Dr. Alford.

  “I don’t believe it’s anything but a wart,” Miss Jenny said, “but I’m tired of looking at it.”

  “It’s no wart,” Dr. Alford corrected stiffly. He recapitulated his diagnosis in technical terms while Dr. Peabody enveloped them all in the rubicund benevolence of his presence.

  “Sounds pretty bad, don’t it?” he agreed, and he shook the floor again and pushed Bayard firmly into his chair with one huge hand, and with the other he dragged his face up to the light. Then he dug a pair of iron-bowed spectacles from the pocket of his coat and examined Bayard’s face. “Think it ought to come off, do you?”

  “I do,” Dr. Alford answered coldly. “I think it is imperative that it be removed. Unnecessary there. Cancer.”

  “Folks got along with cancer a long time befo’ they invented knives,” Dr. Peabody said drily. “Hold still, Bayard.”

  And people like you, are one of the reasons, was on the tip of the younger man’s tongue. But he forebore and said instead, “I can remove that growth in two minutes, Colonel Sartoris.”

  “Damned if you do,” Bayard rejoined violently, trying to rise. “Get away, Loosh.”

  “Sit still,” Dr. Peabody said equably, holding him down while he probed at the wen. “Does it hurt any?”

  “No. I never said it did. And I’ll be damned—”

  “You’ll probably be damned anyway,” Dr. Peabody told him. “You’d be about as well off dead, anyhow. I don’t know anybody that gets less fun out of living than you do.”

  “You told the truth for once,” Miss Jenny agreed. “He’s the oldest person I ever knew in my life.”

  “And so,” Dr. Peabody continued blandly, “I wouldn’t worry about it. Let it stay there. Nobody cares what your face looks like. If you were a young fellow, now, out sparkin’ the gals every night—”

  “If Dr. Peabody is permitted to interfere with impunity—” Dr. Alford began.

  “Will Falls says he can cure it.” Bayard said.

  “With that salve of his?” Dr. Peabody asked quickly. “Salve?” Dr. Alford repeated. “Colonel Sartoris, if you permit any quack that comes along to treat that growth with homemade or patent remedies, you’ll be dead in six months. Dr. Peabody even will bear me out,” he added with fine irony.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Peabody replied slowly. “Will has done some curious things with that salve of his.”

  “I must protest against this,” Dr. Alford said. “Mrs. Du Pre, I protest against a member of my profession sanctioning, even negatively, such a procedure.”

  “Pshaw, boy,” Dr. Peabody answered, “we ain’t goin’ to let Will put his dope on Bayard’s wart. It’s all right for niggers and livestock, but Bayard don’t need it. We’ll just let this thing alone, long as it don’t hurt him.”

  “If that growth is not removed immediately, I wash my hands of all responsibility,” Dr. Alford stated. “To neglect it will be as fatal as Mr. Falls’ salve. Mrs. Du Pre, I ask you to witness that this consultation has taken this unethical turn through no fault of mine and over my protest.”

  “Pshaw, boy,” Dr. Peabody said again, “this ain’t hardly worth the trouble of cuttin’ out. We’ll save you an arm or a leg as soon as that fool grandson of his turns that automobile over with ’em.
Come on with me, Bayard.”

  “Mrs. Du Pre—” Dr. Alford essayed.

  “Bayard can come back, if he wants to,” Dr. Peabody patted the younger man’s shoulder with his heavy hand. “I’m going to take him to my office and talk to him a while. Jenny can bring him back, if she wants to. Come on, Bayard.” And he led old Bayard from the room. Miss Jenny rose also.

  “That Loosh Peabody is as big a fogy as old Will Falls,” she said. “Old people just fret me to death. You wait: I’ll bring him right back here, and we’ll finish this business.” Dr. Alford held the door open for her and she sailed in a stiff, silk-clad rage from the room and followed her nephew across the corridor and through the scarred door with its rusty lock, and into a room resembling a miniature cyclonic devastation mellowed peacefully over with dust ancient and undisturbed.

  “You, Loosh Peabody,” Miss Jenny said.

  “Sit down, Jenny,” Dr. Peabody told her. “And be quiet. Unfasten your shirt, Bayard.”

  “What?” old Bayard said belligerently. The other thrust him into a chair.

  “Want to see your chest,” he explained. He crossed to an ancient roll-top desk and rummaged through the dusty litter upon it. There was litter and dust everywhere in the huge room. Its four windows gave upon the square, but the elms and sycamores ranged along the sides of the square shaded these first floor offices, so that light entered them, but tempered, like light beneath water. In the corners of the ceiling were spider webs thick and heavy as Spanish moss and dingy as old lace, and the once-white walls were an even and unemphatic drab save for a paler rectangle here and there where an outdated calendar had hung and been removed. Besides the desk, the room contained three or four miscellaneous chairs in various stages of decrepitude, a rusty stove in a sawdust-filled box, and a leather sofa holding mutely amid its broken springs the outline of Dr. Peabody’s recumbent shape; beside it and slowly gathering successive layers of dust, was a stack of lurid, paper-covered nickel novels. This was Dr. Peabody’s library, and on this sofa he passed his office hours, reading them over and over. Other books there were none.