came in and sent Ben and Luster on to the kitchen and said supper was
ready.
“All right,” I says. She went out. I sat there, reading the paper. After
a while I heard Dilsey looking in at the door.
“Whyn’t you come on and eat?” she says.
“I’m waiting for supper,” I says.
“Hit’s on the table,” she says. “I done told you.”
“Is it?” I says. “Excuse me. I didn’t hear anybody come down.”
“They aint comin,” she says. “You come on and eat, so I can take
something up to them.”
“Are they sick?” I says. “What did the doctor say it was? Not Smallpox,
I hope.”
“Come on here, Jason,” she says, “So I kin git done.”
“All right,” I says, raising the paper again. “I’m waiting for supper
now.”
I could feel her watching me at the door. I read the paper.
“Whut you want to act like this fer?” she says. “When you knows how much
bother I has anyway.”
“If Mother is any sicker than she was when she came down to dinner, all
right,” I says. “But as long as I am buying food for people younger than
I am, they’ll have to come down to the table to eat it. Let me know when
supper’s ready,” I says, reading the paper again. I heard her climbing
the stairs, dragging her feet and grunting and groaning like they were
straight up and three feet apart. I heard her at Mother’s door, then I
heard her calling Quentin, like the door was locked, then she went back
to Mother’s room and then Mother went and talked to Quentin. Then they
came down stairs. I read the paper.
Dilsey came back to the door. “Come on,” she says, “fo you kin think up
some mo devilment. You just tryin yoself tonight.”
I went to the diningroom. Quentin was sitting with her head bent. She
had painted her face again. Her nose looked like a porcelain insulator.
“I’m glad you feel well enough to come down,” I says to Mother.
“It’s little enough I can do for you, to come to the table,” she says.
“No matter how I feel. I realise that when a man works all day he likes
to be surrounded by his family at the supper table. I want to please
you. I only wish you and Quentin got along better. It would be easier
for me.”
“We get along all right,” I says. “I dont mind her staying locked up in
her room all day if she wants to. But I cant have all this whoop-de-do
and sulking at mealtimes. I know that’s a lot to ask her, but I’m that
way in my own house. Your house, I meant to say.”
“It’s yours,” Mother says, “You are the head of it now.”
Quentin hadn’t looked up. I helped the plates and she begun to eat.
“Did you get a good piece of meat?” I says. “If you didn’t, I’ll try to
find you a better one.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I say, did you get a good piece of meat?” I says.
“What?” she says. “Yes. It’s all right.”
“Will you have some more rice?” I says.
“No,” she says.
“Better let me give you some more,” I says.
“I dont want any more,” she says.
“Not at all,” I says, “You’re welcome.”
“Is your headache gone?” Mother says.
“Headache?” I says.
“I was afraid you were developing one,” she says. “When you came in this
afternoon.”
“Oh,” I says. “No, it didn’t show up. We stayed so busy this afternoon I
forgot about it.”
“Was that why you were late?” Mother says. I could see Quentin
listening. I looked at her. Her knife and fork were still going, but I
caught her looking at me, then she looked at her plate again. I says,
“No. I loaned my car to a fellow about three o’clock and I had to wait
until he got back with it.” I ate for a while.
“Who was it?” Mother says.
“It was one of those show men,” I says. “It seems his sister’s husband
was out riding with some town woman, and he was chasing them.”
Quentin sat perfectly still, chewing.
“You ought not to lend your car to people like that,” Mother says. “You
are too generous with it. That’s why I never call on you for it if I can
help it.”
“I was beginning to think that myself, for awhile,” I says. “But he got
back, all right. He says he found what he was looking for.”
“Who was the woman?” Mother says.
“I’ll tell you later,” I says. “I dont like to talk about such things
before Quentin.”
Quentin had quit eating. Every once in a while she’d take a drink of
water, then she’d sit there crumbling a biscuit up, her face bent over
her plate.
“Yes,” Mother says, “I suppose women who stay shut up like I do have no
idea what goes on in this town.”
“Yes,” I says, “They dont.”
“My life has been so different from that,” Mother says. “Thank God I
dont know about such wickedness. I dont even want to know about it. I’m
not like most people.”
I didn’t say any more. Quentin sat there, crumbling the biscuit until I
quit eating, then she says,
“Can I go now?” without looking at anybody.
“What?” I says. “Sure, you can go. Were you waiting on us?”
She looked at me. She had crumbled all the biscuit, but her hands still
went on like they were crumbling it yet and her eyes looked like they
were cornered or something and then she started biting her mouth like it
ought to have poisoned her, with all that red lead.
“Grandmother,” she says, “Grandmother—”
“Did you want something else to eat?” I says.
“Why does he treat me like this, Grandmother?” she says. “I never hurt
him.”
“I want you all to get along with one another,” Mother says, “You are
all that’s left now, and I do want you all to get along better.”
“It’s his fault,” she says, “He wont let me alone, and I have to. If he
doesn’t want me here, why wont he let me go back to—”
“That’s enough,” I says, “Not another word.”
“Then why wont he let me alone?” she says. “He—he just—”
“He is the nearest thing to a father you’ve ever had,” Mother says.
“It’s his bread you and I eat. It’s only right that he should expect
obedience from you.”
“It’s his fault,” she says. She jumped up. “He makes me do it. If he
would just—” she looked at us, her eyes cornered, kind of jerking her
arms against her sides.
“If I would just what?” I says.
“Whatever I do, it’s your fault,” she says. “If I’m bad, it’s because I
had to be. You made me. I wish I was dead. I wish we were all dead.”
Then she ran. We heard her run up the stairs. Then a door slammed.
“That’s the first sensible thing she ever said,” I says.
“She didn’t go to school today,” Mother says.
“How do you know?” I says. “Were you down town?”
“I just know,” she says. “I wish you could be kinder to her.”
“If I did that I’d have to arrange to see her more than once a day,” I
says. “You’ll have to make her come to the table every meal. Then I
could give her an extra piece of meat every time.”
“There are little things you could do,” she says.
“Like not paying any attention when you ask me to see that she goes to
school?” I says.
“She didn’t go to school today,” she says. “I just know she didn’t. She
says she went for a car ride with one of the boys this afternoon and you
followed her.”
“How could I,” I says, “When somebody had my car all afternoon? Whether
or not she was in school today is already past,” I says, “If you’ve got
to worry about it, worry about next Monday.”
“I wanted you and she to get along with one another,” she says. “But she
has inherited all of the headstrong traits. Quentin’s too. I thought at
the time, with the heritage she would already have, to give her that
name, too. Sometimes I think she is the judgment of Caddy and Quentin
upon me.”
“Good Lord,” I says, “You’ve got a fine mind. No wonder you kept
yourself sick all the time.”
“What?” she says. “I dont understand.”
“I hope not,” I says. “A good woman misses a lot she’s better off
without knowing.”
“They were both that way,” she says, “They would make interest with your
father against me when I tried to correct them. He was always saying
they didn’t need controlling, that they already knew what cleanliness
and honesty were, which was all that anyone could hope to be taught. And
now I hope he’s satisfied.”
“You’ve got Ben to depend on,” I says, “Cheer up.”
“They deliberately shut me out of their lives,” she says, “It was always
her and Quentin. They were always conspiring against me. Against you
too, though you were too young to realise it. They always looked on you
and me as outsiders, like they did your Uncle Maury. I always told your
father that they were allowed too much freedom, to be together too much.
When Quentin started to school we had to let her go the next year, so
she could be with him. She couldn’t bear for any of you to do anything
she couldn’t. It was vanity in her, vanity and false pride. And then
when her troubles began I knew that Quentin would feel that he had to do
something just as bad. But I didn’t believe that he would have been so
selfish as to—I didn’t dream that he—”
“Maybe he knew it was going to be a girl,” I says, “And that one more of
them would be more than he could stand.”
“He could have controlled her,” she says. “He seemed to be the only
person she had any consideration for. But that is a part of the judgment
too, I suppose.”
“Yes,” I says, “Too bad it wasn’t me instead of him. You’d be a lot
better off.”
“You say things like that to hurt me,” she says. “I deserve it though.
When they began to sell the land to send Quentin to Harvard I told your
father that he must make an equal provision for you. Then when Herbert
offered to take you into the bank I said, Jason is provided for now, and
when all the expense began to pile up and I was forced to sell our
furniture and the rest of the pasture, I wrote her at once because I
said she will realise that she and Quentin have had their share and part
of Jason’s too and that it depends on her now to compensate him. I said
she will do that out of respect for her father. I believed that, then.
But I’m just a poor old woman; I was raised to believe that people would
deny themselves for their own flesh and blood. It’s my fault. You were
right to reproach me.”
“Do you think I need any man’s help to stand on my feet?” I says, “Let
alone a woman that cant name the father of her own child.”
“Jason,” she says.
“All right,” I says. “I didn’t mean that. Of course not.”
“If I believed that were possible, after all my suffering.”
“Of course it’s not,” I says. “I didn’t mean it.”
“I hope that at least is spared me,” she says.
“Sure it is,” I says, “She’s too much like both of them to doubt that.”
“I couldn’t bear that,” she says.
“Then quit thinking about it,” I says. “Has she been worrying you any
more about getting out at night?”
“No. I made her realise that it was for her own good and that she’d
thank me for it some day. She takes her books with her and studies after
I lock the door. I see the light on as late as eleven oclock some
nights.”
“How do you know she’s studying?” I says.
“I don’t know what else she’d do in there alone,” she says. “She never
did read any.”
“No,” I says, “You wouldn’t know. And you can thank your stars for
that,” I says. Only what would be the use in saying it aloud. It would
just have her crying on me again.
I heard her go up stairs. Then she called Quentin and Quentin says What?
through the door. “Goodnight,” Mother says. Then I heard the key in the
lock, and Mother went back to her room.
When I finished my cigar and went up, the light was still on. I could
see the empty keyhole, but I couldn’t hear a sound. She studied quiet.
Maybe she learned that in school. I told Mother goodnight and went on to
my room and got the box out and counted it again. I could hear the Great
American Gelding snoring away like a planing mill. I read somewhere
they’d fix men that way to give them women’s voices. But maybe he didn’t
know what they’d done to him. I dont reckon he even knew what he had
been trying to do, or why Mr Burgess knocked him out with the fence
picket. And if they’d just sent him on to Jackson while he was under the
ether, he’d never have known the difference. But that would have been
too simple for a Compson to think of. Not half complex enough. Having to
wait to do it at all until he broke out and tried to run a little girl
down on the street with her own father looking at him. Well, like I say
they never started soon enough with their cutting, and they quit too
quick. I know at least two more that needed something like that, and one
of them not over a mile away, either. But then I dont reckon even that
would do any good. Like I say once a bitch always a bitch. And just let
me have twenty-four hours without any damn New York jew to advise me
what it’s going to do. I dont want to make a killing; save that to suck
in the smart gamblers with. I just want an even chance to get my money
back. And once I’ve done that they can bring all Beale Street and all
bedlam in here and two of them can sleep in my bed and another one can
have my place at the table too.
APRIL EIGHTH, 1928
The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of grey light out of the
northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to
disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when
Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into
her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking
of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil. She wore a stiff black
straw hat perched upon her turban, and a maroon velvet cape with a
border of mangy and anonymous fur above a dress of purple silk, and she
stood in the door for awhile with her myriad and sunken face lifted to
the weather, and one gaunt hand flac-soled as the belly of a fish, then
she moved the cape aside and examined the bosom of her gown.
The gown fell gauntly from her shoulders, across her fallen breasts,
then tightened upon her paunch and fell again, ballooning a little above
the nether garments which she would remove layer by layer as the spring
accomplished and the warm days, in colour regal and moribund. She had
been a big woman once but now her skeleton rose, draped loosely in
unpadded skin that tightened again upon a paunch almost dropsical, as
though muscle and tissue had been courage or fortitude which the days or
the years had consumed until only the indomitable skeleton was left
rising like a ruin or a landmark above the somnolent and impervious
guts, and above that the collapsed face that gave the impression of the
bones themselves being outside the flesh, lifted into the driving day
with an expression at once fatalistic and of a child’s astonished
disappointment, until she turned and entered the house again and closed
the door.
The earth immediately about the door was bare. It had a patina, as
though from the soles of bare feet in generations, like old silver or
the walls of Mexican houses which have been plastered by hand. Beside
the house, shading it in summer, stood three mulberry trees, the fledged
leaves that would later be broad and placid as the palms of hands
streaming flatly undulant upon the driving air. A pair of jaybirds came
up from nowhere, whirled up on the blast like gaudy scraps of cloth or
paper and lodged in the mulberries, where they swung in raucous tilt and
recover, screaming into the wind that ripped their harsh cries onward
and away like scraps of paper or of cloth in turn. Then three more
joined them and they swung and tilted in the wrung branches for a time,
screaming. The door of the cabin opened and Dilsey emerged once more,
this time in a man’s felt hat and an army overcoat, beneath the frayed
skirts of which her blue gingham dress fell in uneven balloonings,
streaming too about her as she crossed the yard and mounted the steps to
the kitchen door.
A moment later she emerged, carrying an open umbrella now, which she
slanted ahead into the wind, and crossed to the woodpile and laid the
umbrella down, still open. Immediately she caught at it and arrested it
and held to it for a while, looking about her. Then she closed it and
laid it down and stacked stovewood into her crooked arm, against her
breast, and picked up the umbrella and got it open at last and returned
to the steps and held the wood precariously balanced while she contrived
to close the umbrella, which she propped in the corner just within the
door. She dumped the wood into the box behind the stove. Then she
removed the overcoat and hat and took a soiled apron down from the wall
and put it on and built a fire in the stove. While she was doing so,
rattling the grate bars and clattering the lids, Mrs Compson began to
call her from the head of the stairs.
She wore a dressing gown of quilted black satin, holding it close under
her chin. In the other hand she held a red rubber hot water bottle and
she stood at the head of the back stairway, calling “Dilsey” at steady
and inflectionless intervals into the quiet stairwell that descended
into complete darkness, then opened again where a grey window fell
across it. “Dilsey,” she called, without inflection or emphasis or
haste, as though she were not listening for a reply at all. “Dilsey.”
Dilsey answered and ceased clattering the stove, but before she could
cross the kitchen Mrs Compson called her again, and before she crossed
the diningroom and brought her head into relief against the grey splash
of the window, still again.
“All right,” Dilsey said, “All right, here I is. I’ll fill hit soon ez I
git some hot water.” She gathered up her skirts and mounted the stairs,
wholly blotting the grey light. “Put hit down dar en g’awn back to bed.”
“I couldn’t understand what was the matter,” Mrs Compson said. “I’ve
been lying awake for an hour at least, without hearing a sound from the
kitchen.”
“You put hit down and g’awn back to bed,” Dilsey said. She toiled
painfully up the steps, shapeless, breathing heavily. “I’ll have de fire
gwine in a minute, en de water hot in two mo.”
“I’ve been lying there for an hour, at least,” Mrs Compson said. “I
thought maybe you were waiting for me to come down and start the fire.”
Dilsey reached the top of the stairs and took the water bottle. “I’ll
fix hit in a minute,” she said. “Luster overslep dis mawnin, up half de
night at dat show. I gwine build de fire myself. Go on now, so you wont
wake de others twell I ready.”
“If you permit Luster to do things that interfere with his work, you’ll
have to suffer for it yourself,” Mrs Compson said. “Jason wont like this
if he hears about it. You know he wont.”
“Twusn’t none of Jason’s money he went on,” Dilsey said. “Dat’s one
thing sho.” She went on down the stairs. Mrs Compson returned to her
room. As she got into bed again she could hear Dilsey yet descending the
stairs with a sort of painful and terrific slowness that would have
become maddening had it not presently ceased beyond the flapping
diminishment of the pantry door.
She entered the kitchen and built up the fire and began to prepare
breakfast. In the midst of this she ceased and went to the window and
looked out toward her cabin, then she went to the door and opened it and
shouted into the driving weather.
“Luster!” she shouted, standing to listen, tilting her face from the
wind, “You, Luster?” She listened, then as she prepared to shout again
Luster appeared around the corner of the kitchen.
“Ma’am?” he said innocently, so innocently that Dilsey looked down at
him, for a moment motionless, with something more than mere surprise.
“Whar you at?” she said.
“Nowhere,” he said. “Jes in de cellar.”
“Whut you doin in de cellar?” she said. “Dont stand dar in de rain,
fool,” she said.
“Aint doin nothin,” he said. He came up the steps.
“Dont you dare come in dis do widout a armful of wood,” she said. “Here
I done had to tote yo wood en build yo fire bofe. Didn’t I tole you not
to leave dis place last night befo dat woodbox wus full to de top?”
“I did,” Luster said, “I filled hit.”
“Whar hit gone to, den?”
“I dont know’m. I aint teched hit.”
“Well, you git hit full up now,” she said. “And git on up den en see
bout Benjy.”
She shut the door. Luster went to the woodpile. The five jaybirds
whirled over the house, screaming, and into the mulberries again. He
watched them. He picked up a rock and threw it. “Whoo,” he said, “Git on
back to hell, whar you belong at. ’Taint Monday yit.”
He loaded himself mountainously with stove wood. He could not see over
it, and he staggered to the steps and up them and blundered crashing
against the door, shedding billets. Then Dilsey came and opened the door
for him and he blundered across the kitchen. “You, Luster!” she shouted,
but he had already hurled the wood into the box with a thunderous crash.
“Hah!” he said.
“Is you tryin to wake up de whole house?” Dilsey said. She hit him on
the back of his head with the flat of her hand. “Go on up dar and git
Benjy dressed, now.”
“Yessum,” he said. He went toward the outer door.
“Whar you gwine?” Dilsey said.
“I thought I better go round de house en in by de front, so I wont wake
up Miss Cahline en dem.”
“You go on up dem backstairs like I tole you en git Benjy’s clothes on
him,” Dilsey said. “Go on, now.”
“Yessum,” Luster said. He returned and left by the diningroom door.
After awhile it ceased to flap. Dilsey prepared to make biscuit. As she
ground the sifter steadily above the bread board, she sang, to herself
at first, something without particular tune or words, repetitive,
mournful and plaintive, austere, as she ground a faint, steady snowing
of flour onto the bread board. The stove had begun to heat the room and
to fill it with murmurous minors of the fire, and presently she was
singing louder, as if her voice too had been thawed out by the growing
warmth, and then Mrs Compson called her name again from within the
house. Dilsey raised her face as if her eyes could and did penetrate the
walls and ceiling and saw the old woman in her quilted dressing gown at
the head of the stairs, calling her name with machinelike regularity.
“Oh, Lawd,” Dilsey said. She set the sifter down and swept up the hem of
her apron and wiped her hands and caught up the bottle from the chair on
which she had laid it and gathered her apron about the handle of the
kettle which was now jetting faintly. “Jes a minute,” she called, “De
water jes dis minute got hot.”
It was not the bottle which Mrs Compson wanted, however, and clutching
it by the neck like a dead hen Dilsey went to the foot of the stairs and
looked upward.
“Aint Luster up dar wid him?” she said.
“Luster hasn’t been in the house. I’ve been lying here listening for
him. I knew he would be late, but I did hope he’d come in time to keep
Benjamin from disturbing Jason on Jason’s one day in the week to sleep
in the morning.”
“I dont see how you expect anybody to sleep, wid you standin in de hall,
holl’in at folks fum de crack of dawn,” Dilsey said. She began to mount
the stairs, toiling heavily. “I sont dat boy up dar half hour ago.”
Mrs Compson watched her, holding the dressing gown under her chin. “What
are you going to do?” she said.
“Gwine git Benjy dressed en bring him down to de kitchen, whar he wont
wake Jason en Quentin,” Dilsey said.
“Haven’t you started breakfast yet?”
“I’ll tend to dat too,” Dilsey said. “You better git back in bed twell
Luster make yo fire. Hit cold dis mawnin.”
“I know it,” Mrs Compson said. “My feet are like ice. They were so cold
they waked me up.” She watched Dilsey mount the stairs. It took her a
long while. “You know how it frets Jason when breakfast is late,” Mrs
Compson said.
“I cant do but one thing at a time,” Dilsey said. “You git on back to
bed, fo I has you on my hands dis mawnin too.”
“If you’re going to drop everything to dress Benjamin, I’d better come
down and get breakfast. You know as well as I do how Jason acts when
it’s late.”
“En who gwine eat yo messin?” Dilsey said. “Tell me dat. Go on now,” she
said, toiling upward. Mrs Compson stood watching her as she mounted,
steadying herself against the wall with one hand, holding her skirts up
with the other.
“Are you going to wake him up just to dress him?” she said.
Dilsey stopped. With her foot lifted to the next step she stood there,
her hand against the wall and the grey splash of the window behind her,
motionless and shapeless she loomed.
“He aint awake den?” she said.
“He wasn’t when I looked in,” Mrs Compson said. “But it’s past his time.
He never does sleep after half past seven. You know he doesn’t.”
Dilsey said nothing. She made no further move, but though she could not
see her save as a blobby shape without depth, Mrs Compson knew that she
had lowered her face a little and that she stood now like a cow in the
rain, as she held the empty water bottle by its neck.
“You’re not the one who has to bear it,” Mrs Compson said. “It’s not
your responsibility. You can go away. You dont have to bear the brunt of
it day in and day out. You owe nothing to them, to Mr Compson’s memory.
I know you have never had any tenderness for Jason. You’ve never tried
to conceal it.”