The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner.mobi [86]
“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 children’s 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