promise, Jason?” she says, and me feeling her eyes almost like they were
touching my face, “You promise? Mother—that money—if sometimes she
needs things—If I send checks for her to you, other ones besides those,
you’ll give them to her? You wont tell? You’ll see that she has things
like other girls?”
“Sure,” I says, “As long as you behave and do like I tell you.”
And so when Earl came up front with his hat on he says, “I’m going to
step up to Rogers’ and get a snack. We wont have time to go home to
dinner, I reckon.”
“What’s the matter we wont have time?” I says.
“With this show in town and all,” he says. “They’re going to give an
afternoon performance too, and they’ll all want to get done trading in
time to go to it. So we’d better just run up to Rogers’.”
“All right,” I says, “It’s your stomach. If you want to make a slave of
yourself to your business, it’s all right with me.”
“I reckon you’ll never be a slave to any business,” he says.
“Not unless it’s Jason Compson’s business,” I says.
So when I went back and opened it the only thing that surprised me was
it was a money order not a check. Yes, sir. You cant trust a one of
them. After all the risk I’d taken, risking Mother finding out about her
coming down here once or twice a year sometimes, and me having to tell
Mother lies about it. That’s gratitude for you. And I wouldn’t put it
past her to try to notify the postoffice not to let anyone except her
cash it. Giving a kid like that fifty dollars. Why I never saw fifty
dollars until I was twenty-one years old, with all the other boys with
the afternoon off and all day Saturday and me working in a store. Like I
say, how can they expect anybody to control her, with her giving her
money behind our backs. She has the same home you had I says, and the
same raising. I reckon Mother is a better judge of what she needs than
you are, that haven’t even got a home. “If you want to give her money,”
I says, “You send it to Mother, dont be giving it to her. If I’ve got to
run this risk every few months, you’ll have to do like I say, or it’s
out.”
And just about the time I got ready to begin on it because if Earl
thought I was going to dash up the street and gobble two bits worth of
indigestion on his account he was bad fooled. I may not be sitting with
my feet on a mahogany desk but I am being paid for what I do inside this
building and if I cant manage to live a civilised life outside of it
I’ll go where I can. I can stand on my own feet; I dont need any man’s
mahogany desk to prop me up. So just about the time I got ready to start
I’d have to drop everything and run to sell some redneck a dime’s worth
of nails or something, and Earl up there gobbling a sandwich and half
way back already, like as not, and then I found that all the blanks were
gone. I remembered then that I had aimed to get some more, but it was
too late now, and then I looked up and there Quentin came. In the back
door. I heard her asking old Job if I was there. I just had time to
stick them in the drawer and close it.
She came around to the desk. I looked at my watch.
“You been to dinner already?” I says. “It’s just twelve; I just heard it
strike. You must have flown home and back.”
“I’m not going home to dinner,” she says. “Did I get a letter today?”
“Were you expecting one?” I says. “Have you got a sweetie that can
write?”
“From Mother,” she says. “Did I get a letter from Mother?” she says,
looking at me.
“Mother got one from her,” I says. “I haven’t opened it. You’ll have to
wait until she opens it. She’ll let you see it, I imagine.”
“Please, Jason,” she says, not paying any attention, “Did I get one?”
“What’s the matter?” I says. “I never knew you to be this anxious about
anybody. You must expect some money from her.”
“She said she—” she says. “Please, Jason,” she says, “Did I?”
“You must have been to school today, after all,” I says, “Somewhere
where they taught you to say please. Wait a minute, while I wait on that
customer.”
I went and waited on him. When I turned to come back she was out of
sight behind the desk. I ran. I ran around the desk and caught her as
she jerked her hand out of the drawer. I took the letter away from her,
beating her knuckles on the desk until she let go.
“You would, would you?” I says.
“Give it to me,” she says, “You’ve already opened it. Give it to me.
Please, Jason. It’s mine. I saw the name.”
“I’ll take a hame string to you,” I says. “That’s what I’ll give you.
Going into my papers.”
“Is there some money in it?” she says, reaching for it. “She said she
would send me some money. She promised she would. Give it to me.”
“What do you want with money?” I says.
“She said she would,” she says, “Give it to me. Please, Jason. I wont
ever ask you anything again, if you’ll give it to me this time.”
“I’m going to, if you’ll give me time,” I says. I took the letter and
the money order out and gave her the letter. She reached for the money
order, not hardly glancing at the letter. “You’ll have to sign it
first,” I says.
“How much is it?” she says.
“Read the letter,” I says. “I reckon it’ll say.”
She read it fast, in about two looks.
“It dont say,” she says, looking up. She dropped the letter to the
floor. “How much is it?”
“It’s ten dollars,” I says.
“Ten dollars?” she says, staring at me.
“And you ought to be damn glad to get that,” I says, “A kid like you.
What are you in such a rush for money all of a sudden for?”
“Ten dollars?” she says, like she was talking in her sleep, “Just ten
dollars?” She made a grab at the money order. “You’re lying,” she says.
“Thief!” she says, “Thief!”
“You would, would you?” I says, holding her off.
“Give it to me!” she says, “It’s mine. She sent it to me. I will see it.
I will.”
“You will?” I says, holding her, “How’re you going to do it?”
“Just let me see it, Jason,” she says, “Please. I wont ask you for
anything again.”
“Think I’m lying, do you?” I says. “Just for that you wont see it.”
“But just ten dollars,” she says, “She told me she—she told me—Jason,
please please please. I’ve got to have some money. I’ve just got to.
Give it to me, Jason. I’ll do anything if you will.”
“Tell me what you’ve got to have money for,” I says.
“I’ve got to have it,” she says. She was looking at me. Then all of a
sudden she quit looking at me without moving her eyes at all. I knew she
was going to lie. “It’s some money I owe,” she says. “I’ve got to pay
it. I’ve got to pay it today.”
“Who to?” I says. Her hands were sort of twisting. I could watch her
trying to think of a lie to tell. “Have you been charging things at
stores again?” I says. “You needn’t bother to tell me that. If you can
find anybody in this town that’ll charge anything to you after what I
told them, I’ll eat it.”
“It’s a girl,” she says, “It’s a girl. I borrowed some money from a
girl. I’ve got to pay it back. Jason, give it to me. Please. I’ll do
anything. I’ve got to have it. Mother will pay you. I’ll write to her to
pay you and that I wont ever ask her for anything again. You can see the
letter. Please, Jason. I’ve got to have it.”
“Tell me what you want with it, and I’ll see about it,” I says. “Tell
me.” She just stood there, with her hands working against her dress.
“All right,” I says, “If ten dollars is too little for you, I’ll just
take it home to Mother, and you know what’ll happen to it then. Of
course, if you’re so rich you dont need ten dollars—”
She stood there, looking at the floor, kind of mumbling to herself. “She
said she would send me some money. She said she sends money here and you
say she dont send any. She said she’s sent a lot of money here. She says
it’s for me. That it’s for me to have some of it. And you say we haven’t
got any money.”
“You know as much about that as I do,” I says. “You’ve seen what happens
to those checks.”
“Yes,” she says, looking at the floor. “Ten dollars,” she says, “Ten
dollars.”
“And you’d better thank your stars it’s ten dollars,” I says. “Here,” I
says. I put the money order face down on the desk, holding my hand on
it, “Sign it.”
“Will you let me see it?” she says. “I just want to look at it. Whatever
it says, I wont ask for but ten dollars. You can have the rest. I just
want to see it.”
“Not after the way you’ve acted,” I says. “You’ve got to learn one
thing, and that is that when I tell you to do something, you’ve got it
to do. You sign your name on that line.”
She took the pen, but instead of signing it she just stood there with
her head bent and the pen shaking in her hand. Just like her mother.
“Oh, God,” she says, “oh, God.”
“Yes,” I says, “That’s one thing you’ll have to learn if you never learn
anything else. Sign it now, and get on out of here.”
She signed it. “Where’s the money?” she says. I took the order and
blotted it and put it in my pocket. Then I gave her the ten dollars.
“Now you go on back to school this afternoon, you hear?” I says. She
didn’t answer. She crumpled the bill up in her hand like it was a rag or
something and went on out the front door just as Earl came in. A
customer came in with him and they stopped up front. I gathered up the
things and put on my hat and went up front.
“Been much busy?” Earl says.
“Not much,” I says. He looked out the door.
“That your car over yonder?” he says. “Better not try to go out home to
dinner. We’ll likely have another rush just before the show opens. Get
you a lunch at Rogers’ and put a ticker in the drawer.”
“Much obliged,” I says. “I can still manage to feed myself, I reckon.”
And right there he’d stay, watching that door like a hawk until I came
through it again. Well, he’d just have to watch it for a while; I was
doing the best I could. The time before I says that’s the last one now;
you’ll have to remember to get some more right away. But who can
remember anything in all this hurrah. And now this damn show had to come
here the one day I’d have to hunt all over town for a blank check,
besides all the other things I had to do to keep the house running, and
Earl watching the door like a hawk.
I went to the printing shop and told him I wanted to play a joke on a
fellow, but he didn’t have anything. Then he told me to have a look in
the old opera house, where somebody had stored a lot of papers and junk
out of the old Merchants’ and Farmers’ Bank when it failed, so I dodged
up a few more alleys so Earl couldn’t see me and finally found old man
Simmons and got the key from him and went up there and dug around. At
last I found a pad on a Saint Louis bank. And of course she’d pick this
one time to look at it close. Well, it would have to do. I couldn’t
waste any more time now.
I went back to the store. “Forgot some papers Mother wants to go to the
bank,” I says. I went back to the desk and fixed the check. Trying to
hurry and all, I says to myself it’s a good thing her eyes are giving
out, with that little whore in the house, a Christian forbearing woman
like Mother. I says you know just as well as I do what she’s going to
grow up into but I says that’s your business, if you want to keep her
and raise her in your house just because of Father. Then she would begin
to cry and say it was her own flesh and blood so I just says All right.
Have it your way. I can stand it if you can.
I fixed the letter up again and glued it back and went out.
“Try not to be gone any longer than you can help,” Earl says.
“All right,” I says. I went to the telegraph office. The smart boys were
all there.
“Any of you boys made a million yet?” I says.
“Who can do anything, with a market like that?” Doc says.
“What’s it doing?” I says. I went in and looked. It was three points
under the opening. “You boys are not going to let a little thing like
the cotton market beat you, are you?” I says. “I thought you were too
smart for that.”
“Smart, hell,” Doc says. “It was down twelve points at twelve o’clock.
Cleaned me out.”
“Twelve points?” I says. “Why the hell didn’t somebody let me know? Why
didn’t you let me know?” I says to the operator.
“I take it as it comes in,” he says. “I’m not running a bucket shop.”
“You’re smart, aren’t you?” I says. “Seems to me, with the money I spend
with you, you could take time to call me up. Or maybe your damn
company’s in a conspiracy with those damn eastern sharks.”
He didn’t say anything. He made like he was busy.
“You’re getting a little too big for your pants,” I says. “First thing
you know you’ll be working for a living.”
“What’s the matter with you?” Doc says. “You’re still three points to
the good.”
“Yes,” I says, “If I happened to be selling. I haven’t mentioned that
yet, I think. You boys all cleaned out?”
“I got caught twice,” Doc says. “I switched just in time.”
“Well,” I. O. Snopes says, “I’ve picked hit; I reckon taint no more
than fair fer hit to pick me once in a while.”
So I left them buying and selling among themselves at a nickel a point.
I found a nigger and sent him for my car and stood on the corner and
waited. I couldn’t see Earl looking up and down the street, with one eye
on the clock, because I couldn’t see the door from here. After about a
week he got back with it.
“Where the hell have you been?” I says, “Riding around where the wenches
could see you?”
“I come straight as I could,” he says, “I had to drive clean around the
square, wid all dem wagons.”
I never found a nigger yet that didn’t have an airtight alibi for
whatever he did. But just turn one loose in a car and he’s bound to show
off. I got in and went on around the square. I caught a glimpse of Earl
in the door across the square.
I went straight to the kitchen and told Dilsey to hurry up with dinner.
“Quentin aint come yit,” she says.
“What of that?” I says. “You’ll be telling me next that Luster’s not
quite ready to eat yet. Quentin knows when meals are served in this
house. Hurry up with it, now.”
Mother was in her room. I gave her the letter. She opened it and took
the check out and sat holding it in her hand. I went and got the shovel
from the corner and gave her a match. “Come on,” I says, “Get it over
with. You’ll be crying in a minute.”
She took the match, but she didn’t strike it. She sat there, looking at
the check. Just like I said it would be.
“I hate to do it,” she says, “To increase your burden by adding
Quentin. . . .”
“I guess we’ll get along,” I says. “Come on. Get it over with.”
But she just sat there, holding the check.
“This one is on a different bank,” she says. “They have been on an
Indianapolis bank.”
“Yes,” I says. “Women are allowed to do that too.”
“Do what?” she says.
“Keep money in two different banks,” I says.
“Oh,” she says. She looked at the check a while. “I’m glad to know she’s
so . . . she has so much . . . God sees that I am doing right,” she
says.
“Come on,” I says, “Finish it. Get the fun over.”
“Fun?” she says, “When I think—”
“I thought you were burning this two hundred dollars a month for fun,” I
says. “Come on, now. Want me to strike the match?”
“I could bring myself to accept them,” she says, “For my childrens’
sake. I have no pride.”
“You’d never be satisfied,” I says, “You know you wouldn’t. You’ve
settled that once, let it stay settled. We can get along.”
“I leave everything to you,” she says. “But sometimes I become afraid
that in doing this I am depriving you all of what is rightfully yours.
Perhaps I shall be punished for it. If you want me to, I will smother my
pride and accept them.”
“What would be the good in beginning now, when you’ve been destroying
them for fifteen years?” I says. “If you keep on doing it, you have lost
nothing, but if you’d begin to take them now, you’ll have lost fifty
thousand dollars. We’ve got along so far, haven’t we?” I says. “I
haven’t seen you in the poorhouse yet.”
“Yes,” she says, “We Bascombs need nobody’s charity. Certainly not that
of a fallen woman.”
She struck the match and lit the check and put it in the shovel, and
then the envelope, and watched them burn.
“You dont know what it is,” she says, “Thank God you will never know
what a mother feels.”
“There are lots of women in this world no better than her,” I says.
“But they are not my daughters,” she says. “It’s not myself,” she says,
“I’d gladly take her back, sins and all, because she is my flesh and
blood. It’s for Quentin’s sake.”
Well, I could have said it wasn’t much chance of anybody hurting Quentin
much, but like I say I dont expect much but I do want to eat and sleep
without a couple of women squabbling and crying in the house.
“And yours,” she says. “I know how you feel toward her.”
“Let her come back,” I says, “far as I’m concerned.”
“No,” she says. “I owe that to your father’s memory.”
“When he was trying all the time to persuade you to let her come home
when Herbert threw her out?” I says.
“You dont understand,” she says. “I know you dont intend to make it more
difficult for me. But it’s my place to suffer for my children,” she
says. “I can bear it.”
“Seems to me you go to a lot of unnecessary trouble doing it,” I says.
The paper burned out. I carried it to the grate and put it in. “It just
seems a shame to me to burn up good money,” I says.
“Let me never see the day when my children will have to accept that, the
wages of sin,” she says. “I’d rather see even you dead in your coffin
first.”
“Have it your way,” I says. “Are we going to have dinner soon?” I says,
“Because if we’re not, I’ll have to go on back. We’re pretty busy
today.” She got up. “I’ve told her once,” I says. “It seems she’s
waiting on Quentin or Luster or somebody. Here, I’ll call her. Wait.”
But she went to the head of the stairs and called.
“Quentin aint come yit,” Dilsey says.
“Well, I’ll have to get on back,” I says. “I can get a sandwich
downtown. I dont want to interfere with Dilsey’s arrangements,” I says.
Well, that got her started again, with Dilsey hobbling and mumbling back
and forth, saying,
“All right, all right, Ise puttin hit on fast as I kin.”
“I try to please you all,” Mother says, “I try to make things as easy
for you as I can.”
“I’m not complaining, am I?” I says. “Have I said a word except I had to
go back to work?”
“I know,” she says, “I know you haven’t had the chance the others had,
that you’ve had to bury yourself in a little country store. I wanted you
to get ahead. I knew your father would never realise that you were the
only one who had any business sense, and then when everything else
failed I believed that when she married, and Herbert . . . after his
promise . . .”
“Well, he was probably lying too,” I says. “He may not have even had a
bank. And if he had, I dont reckon he’d have to come all the way to
Mississippi to get a man for it.”
We ate awhile. I could hear Ben in the kitchen, where Luster was feeding
him. Like I say, if we’ve got to feed another mouth and she wont take
that money, why not send him down to Jackson. He’ll be happier there,
with people like him. I says God knows there’s little enough room for
pride in this family, but it dont take much pride to not like to see a
thirty year old man playing around the yard with a nigger boy, running
up and down the fence and lowing like a cow whenever they play golf over
there. I says if they’d sent him to Jackson at first we’d all be better
off today. I says, you’ve done your duty by him; you’ve done all anybody
can expect of you and more than most folks would do, so why not send him
there and get that much benefit out of the taxes we pay. Then she says,
“I’ll be gone soon. I know I’m just a burden to you” and I says “You’ve
been saying that so long that I’m beginning to believe you” only I says
you’d better be sure and not let me know you’re gone because I’ll sure
have him on number seventeen that night and I says I think I know a
place where they’ll take her too and the name of it’s not Milk street
and Honey avenue either. Then she begun to cry and I says All right all
right I have as much pride about my kinfolks as anybody even if I dont
always know where they come from.
We ate for awhile. Mother sent Dilsey to the front to look for Quentin
again.
“I keep telling you she’s not coming to dinner,” I says.
“She knows better than that,” Mother says, “She knows I dont permit her
to run about the streets and not come home at meal time. Did you look
good, Dilsey?”
“Dont let her, then,” I says.
“What can I do,” she says. “You have all of you flouted me. Always.”
“If you wouldn’t come interfering, I’d make her mind,” I says. “It
wouldn’t take me but about one day to straighten her out.”
“You’d be too brutal with her,” she says. “You have your Uncle Maury’s
temper.”
That reminded me of the letter. I took it out and handed it to her. “You
wont have to open it,” I says. “The bank will let you know how much it
is this time.”
“It’s addressed to you,” she says.
“Go on and open it,” I says. She opened it and read it and handed it to
me.
“ ‘My dear young nephew,’ it says,
‘You will be glad to learn that I am now in a position to avail
myself of an opportunity regarding which, for reasons which I
shall make obvious to you, I shall not go into details until I
have an opportunity to divulge it to you in a more secure
manner. My business experience has taught me to be chary of
committing anything of a confidential nature to any more
concrete medium than speech, and my extreme precaution in this
instance should give you some inkling of its value. Needless to
say, I have just completed a most exhaustive examination of all
its phases, and I feel no hesitancy in telling you that it is
that sort of golden chance that comes but once in a lifetime,
and I now see clearly before me that goal toward which I have
long and unflaggingly striven: i.e., the ultimate solidification
of my affairs by which I may restore to its rightful position
that family of which I have the honour to be the sole remaining
male descendant; that family in which I have ever included your
lady mother and her children.
‘As it so happens, I am not quite in a position to avail myself
of this opportunity to the uttermost which it warrants, but
rather than go out of the family to do so, I am today drawing
upon your Mother’s bank for the small sum necessary to
complement my own initial investment, for which I herewith
enclose, as a matter of formality, my note of hand at eight
percent per annum. Needless to say, this is merely a formality,
to secure your Mother in the event of that circumstance of which
man is ever the plaything and sport. For naturally I shall
employ this sum as though it were my own and so permit your
Mother to avail herself of this opportunity which my exhaustive
investigation has shown to be a bonanza—if you will permit the
vulgarism—of the first water and purest ray serene.
‘This is in confidence, you will understand, from one business
man to another; we will harvest our own vineyards, eh? And
knowing your Mother’s delicate health and that timorousness
which such delicately nutured Southern ladies would naturally
feel regarding matters of business, and their charming proneness
to divulge unwittingly such matters in conversation, I would
suggest that you do not mention it to her at all. On second
thought, I advise you not to do so. It might be better to simply
restore this sum to the bank at some future date, say, in a lump
sum with the other small sums for which I am indebted to her,
and say nothing about it at all. It is our duty to shield her
from the crass material world as much as possible.
‘Your affectionate Uncle,
‘Maury L. Bascomb.’ ”
“What do you want to do about it?” I says, flipping it across the table.
“I know you grudge what I give him,” she says.
“It’s your money,” I says. “If you want to throw it to the birds even,
it’s your business.”
“He’s my own brother,” Mother says. “He’s the last Bascomb. When we are
gone there wont be any more of them.”
“That’ll be hard on somebody, I guess,” I says. “All right, all right,”
I says, “It’s your money. Do as you please with it. You want me to tell
the bank to pay it?”
“I know you begrudge him,” she says. “I realise the burden on your
shoulders. When I’m gone it will be easier on you.”
“I could make it easier right now,” I says. “All right, all right, I
wont mention it again. Move all bedlam in here if you want to.”
“He’s your own brother,” she says, “Even if he is afflicted.”
“I’ll take your bank book,” I says. “I’ll draw my check today.”
“He kept you waiting six days,” she says. “Are you sure the business is
sound? It seems strange to me that a solvent business cannot pay its
employees promptly.”
“He’s all right,” I says, “Safe as a bank. I tell him not to bother
about mine until we get done collecting every month. That’s why it’s
late sometimes.”
“I just couldn’t bear to have you lose the little I had to invest for
you,” she says. “I’ve often thought that Earl is not a good business
man. I know he doesn’t take you into his confidence to the extent that
your investment in the business should warrant. I’m going to speak to
him.”
“No, you let him alone,” I says. “It’s his business.”
“You have a thousand dollars in it.”
“You let him alone,” I says, “I’m watching things. I have your power of
attorney. It’ll be all right.”
“You dont know what a comfort you are to me,” she says. “You have always
been my pride and joy, but when you came to me of your own accord and
insisted on banking your salary each month in my name, I thanked God it
was you left me if they had to be taken.”