Snopes: The Hamlet, the Town, the Mansion

by William Faulkner

  It was a will; Eula of course told Lawyer. Flem his-self could a suh-jested the idea to Linda; it wouldn’t a been difficult. Which I don’t believe neither. He didn’t need to; he knowed her well enough to presume on that, jest like she knowed him enough to presume too. It was Linda herself that evolved the idea when she realised that as long as he lived and drawed breath as Flem Snopes, he wasn’t never going to give her permission to leave Jefferson for any reason. And her asking herself, impotent and desperate: But why? why? until finally she answered it—a answer that maybe wouldn’t a helt much water but she was jest sixteen and seventeen then, during which sixteen and seventeen years she had found out that the only thing he loved was money. Because she must a knowed something anyway about Manfred de Spain. Jefferson wasn’t that big, if in fact any place is. Not to mention them two or three weeks of summer holiday at the seashore or mountains or wherever, when here all of a sudden who should turn up but a old Jefferson neighbor happening by accident to take his vacation too from the bank at the same time and place. So what else would she say? It’s grandfather’s money, that his one and only chance to keep any holt on it is through mama and me so he believes that once I get away from him his holt on both of us will be broken and mama will leave too and marry Manfred and any hope of grandfather’s money will be gone forever.

  Yet here was this man that had had sixteen or seventeen years to learn her he didn’t love nothing but money and would do anything you could suh-jest to get another dollar of it, coming to her his-self, without no pressure from nobody and not asking for nothing back, saying, You can go away to school if you still want to; only, this first time anyhow stay at least as close to home as Oxford; saying in effect: I was wrong. I wont no longer stand between you and your life, even though I am convinced I will be throwing away all hope of your grandpaw’s money.

  So what else could she do but what she done, saying in effect back at him: If you jest realised now that grandfather’s money aint as important as my life, I could a told you that all the time; if you had jest told me two years ago that all you was was jest skeered, I would a eased you then—going (Lawyer his-self told me this) to a Oxford lawyer as soon as she was settled in the University and drawing up a will leaving whatever share she might ever have in her grandpaw’s or her maw’s estate to her father Flem Snopes. Sho, that wouldn’t a held no water neither but she was jest eighteen and that was all she had to give that she thought anybody wanted or needed from her; and besides, all the water it would need to hold would be what old Will Varner would sweat out when Flem showed it to him.

  So jest after ten that morning I stopped not at the store where Will would be at this hour but at his front gate jest exactly long enough for Flem to get out and walk into the house until he coincided with Miz Varner I reckon it was and turn around and come back out and get back into the pickup and presumably at their two oclock a.m. morning family breakfast it occurred to Miz Varner or anyway she decided to or anyhow did hand Will the paper his son-in-law left yestiddy for him to look at. And by sunup Will had tse couhole Snopes street woke up hollering inside Flem’s house until Eula got him shut up. And by our normal ee-feet Jefferson breakfast time Manfred de Spain was there too. And that done it. Will Varner, that Flem had done already tricked outen that Old Frenchman place, then turned right around and used him again to get his-self and Manfred de Spain vice-president and president respectively of Colonel Sartoris’s bank, and now Flem had done turned back around the third time and somehow tricked his granddaughter into giving him a quit-claim to half of his active cash money that so far even Flem hadn’t found no way to touch. And Flem, that all he wanted was for Manfred de Spain to resign from the bank so he could be president of it and would jest as lief done it quiet and discreet and all private in the family you might say by a simple friendly suh-jestion from Will Varner to Manfred to resign from the bank, as a even swap for that paper of Linda’s, which should a worked with anybody and would with anybody else except Manfred. He was the trouble; likely Eula could a handled them all except for him. Maybe he got that-ere scar on his face by actively toting a flag up a hill in Cuba and running over a cannon or a fort with it, and maybe it come from the axe in that crap game that old mayor’s-race rumor claimed. But leastways it was on his front and not on his back and so maybe a feller could knock him out with a piece of lead pipe and pick his pocket while he was laying there, but couldn’t no Snopes nor nobody else pick it jest by pointing at him what the other feller thought was a pistol.

  And Eula in the middle of them, that likely could a handled it all except for Manfred, that had even made Will shut up but she couldn’t make Manfred hush. That had done already spent lacking jest a week of nineteen years holding together a home for Linda to grow up and live in so she wouldn’t never need to say, Other children have got what I never had; there was Eula having to decide right there right now, If I was a eighteen-year-old gal, which would I rather have: my mother publicly notarised as a suicide, or publicly condemned as a whore? and by noon the next day all Jefferson knowed how the afternoon before she come to town and went to the beauty parlor that hadn’t never been in one before because she never needed to, and had her hair waved and her fingernails shined and went back home and presumably et supper or anyhow was present at it since it wasn’t until about eleven oclock that she seemed to taken up the pistol and throwed the safety off.

  And the next morning Lawyer and his sister drove over to Oxford and brought Linda home; a pure misfortunate coincidence that all this had to happen jest a week before her nineteenth birthday. But as soon as Flem received that will from her, naturally he figgered Will Varner would want to see it as soon as possible, being a interested party; it was Will that never had no reason a-tall to pick out that special day to come bellering in to town two hours after he first seen it. He could a jest as well waited two weeks or even a month to come in, since wasn’t nobody hurrying him; Flem would certainly a waited on his convenience.

  And Lawyer that tended to the rest of it too: arranged for the funeral and sent out to Frenchman’s Bend for Miz Varner and the old Methodist preacher that had baptised Eula, and then seen to the grave. Because naturally the bereaved husband couldn’t be expected to break into his grief jest to do chores. Not to mention having to be ready to take over the bank after a decent interval, being as Manfred de Spain his-self had packed up and departed from Jefferson right after the burying. And then, after another decorious interval, a little longer this time beg as a bank aint like jest a house because a bank deals with active cash money and cant wait, getting ready to move into De Spain’s house too since De Spain had give ever evident intention of not aiming to return to Jefferson from this last what you might still call Varner trip and there wasn’t no use in letting a good sound well-situated house stand vacant and empty. Which—De Spain’s house—was likely a part of that same swapping and trading between Flem and Will Varner that included Varner’s bank-stock votes and that-ere financial Midsummer Night’s Dream masque or rondeau that Linda and that Oxford lawyer composed betwixt them that had Linda’s signature on it. Not to mention Lawyer being appointed by old man Will to be trustee of Linda’s money since it was now finally safe from Flem until he thought up something that Lawyer would believe too this time, Will appointing Lawyer for the reason that likely he couldn’t pass by Lawyer to get to no one else, Lawyer being not only in the middle of that entire monetary and sepulchrial crisis but all around ever part of it too, like one of them frantic water bugs skating and rushing immune and unwettable on top of a stagnant pond.

  I mean, Lawyer was now busy over the headstone Flem had decided on. Because it would have to be made in Italy, which would take time, and so would demand ever effort on Lawyer’s part before Linda could pack up and leave Jefferson too, being as Flem felt that that same filial decorum demanded that Linda wait until her maw’s headstone was up and finished before leaving. Only I dont mean jest headstone: I mean monument: Lawyer combing and currying not jest Jefferson and Frenchman�
�s Bend but most of the rest of Yoknapatawpha County too, hunting out ever photograph of Eula he could locate to send to Italy so they could carve Eula’s face in stone to put on it. Which is when I noticed again how there aint nobody quite as temerious as a otherwise timid feller that finds out that his moral standards and principles is now demanding him to do something that, if all he had to depend on was jest his own satisfaction and curiosity, he wouldn’t a had the brass to do, penetrating into ever house that not only might a knowed Eula but that jest had a Brownie Kodak, thumbing through albums and intimate photographic family records, courteous and polite of course but jest a man obviously not in no condition to be said No to, let alone merely Please dont.

  He could keep busy now. Because he was contented and happy now, you see. He never had nothing to worry him now. Eula was safely gone now and now he could be safe forevermore from ever again having to chew his bitter poetic thumbs over the constant anticipation of who would turn up next named McCarron or De Spain. And now Linda was not only safe for good from Flem, he, Lawyer, even had the full charge and control of her money from her maw and grandpaw, so that now she could go anywhere she wanted—providing of course he could nag and harry them folks across the water to finish carving that face before the millennium or judgment day come, gathering up all the pictures of Eula he could find and sending them to Italy and then waiting until a drawing or a photograph of how the work was coming along would get back for him to see jest how wrong it was, and he would send me word to be at his office at a certain hour for the conference, with the newest fresh Italian sketch or photograph laid out on the desk with a special light on it and him saying, “It’s the ear, or the line of the jaw, or the mouth—right here: see what I mean?” and I would say,

  “It looks all right to me. It looks beautiful to me.” And he would say,

  “No. It’s wrong right here. Hand me a pencil.” Except he would already have a pencil, and he couldn’t draw neither so he would have to rub that out and try again. Except that time was passing so he would have to send it back; and Flem and Linda living in De Spain’s house now and now Flem had done bought a automobile that he couldn’t drive but anyhow he had a daughter that could, leastways now and then; until at last even that was over. It was October and Lawyer sent me word the unveiling at the graveyard would be that afternoon. Except I had done already got word to Chick, since from the state of peace and contentment Lawyer had got his-self into by this time, it might take both of us. So Chick stayed outen school that afternoon so all three of us went out to the cemetery together in Lawyer’s car. And there was Linda and Flem too, in Flem’s car with the Negro driver that was going to drive her on to Memphis to take the New York train with her packed grips already in the car, and Flem leaning back in the seat with that black hat on that even after five years still didn’t look like it actively belonged to him, chewing, and Linda beside him in her dark going-away dress and hat with her head bent a little and them little white gloves shut into fists on her lap. And there it was: that-ere white monument with on the front of it that face that even if it was carved outen dead stone, was still the same face that ever young man no matter how old he got would still never give up hope and belief that some day before he died he would finally be worthy to be wrecked and ruined and maybe even destroyed by it, above the motto that Flem his-self had picked:

  A VIRTUOUS WIFE IS A CROWN TO HER HUSBAND

  HER CHILDREN RISE AND CALL HER BLESSED

  Until at last Flem leaned out the window and spit and then set back in the car and tells her: “All right. You can go now.”

  Yes sir, Lawyer was free now. He never had nothing to worry him now: him and Chick and me driving back to the office and him talking about how the game of football could be brought up to date in keeping with the progress of the times by giving ever body a football too so ever body would be in the game; or maybe better still, keep jest one football but abolish the boundaries so that a smart feller for instance could hide the ball under his shirttail and slip off into the bushes and circle around town and come in through a back alley and cross the goal before anybody even missed he was gone; right on into the office where he set down behind the desk and taken up one of the cob pipes and struck three matches to it until Chick taken it away from him and filled it from the tobacco jar and handed it back and Lawyer says, “Much obliged,” and dropped the filled pipe into the wastebasket and folded his hands on the desk, still talking, and I says to Chick:

  “Watch him. I won’t be long,” and went around into the alley; I never had much time so what was in the pint bottle was pretty bad but leastways it had something in it that for a moment anyhow would feel like alcohol. And I got the sugar bowl and glass and spoon from the cabinet and made the toddy and set it on the desk by him and he says,

  “Much obliged,” not even touching it, jest setting there with his hands folded in front of him, blinking quick and steady like he had sand in his eyes, saying: “All us civilised people date our civilisation from the discovery of the principle of distillation. And even though the rest of the world, at least that part of it in the United States, rates us folks in Mississippi at the lowest rung of culture, what man can deny that, even if this is as bad as I think it’s going to be, we too grope toward the stars? Why did she do it, V.K.? That—all that—that she walked in, lived in, breathed in—it was only loaned to her; it wasn’t hers to destroy and throw away. It belonged to too many. It belonged to all of us. Why, V.K.?” he says. “Why?”

  “Maybe she was bored,” I says, and he says:

  “Bored. Yes, bored.” And that was when he begun to cry. “She loved, had the capacity to love, to give and to take it. Only she tried twice and failed twice not jest to find somebody strong enough to deserve it but even brave enough to accept it. Yes,” he says, setting there bolt upright with jest the tears running down his face, at peace now, with nothing nowhere in the world any more to anguish or grieve him. “Of course she was bored.”

  SEVEN

  V. K. RATLIFF

  So he was free. He had not only got shut of his sireen, he had even got shut of the ward he found out she had heired to him. Because I says, “Grinnich Village?” and he says,

  “Yes. A little place without physical boundaries located as far as she is concerned in New York City, where young people of all ages below ninety go in search of dreams.” Except I says,

  “Except she never had to leave Missippi to locate that place.” And then I said it, what Eula herself must have, had to have, said to him that day: “

  Why didn’t you marry her?”

  “Because she wasn’t but nineteen,” he says.

  “And you are all of thirty-five aint you,” I says. “When the papers are full of gals still carrying a doll in one hand marrying folks of sixty and seventy, providing of course they got a little extra money.”

  “I mean, she’s got too much time left to run into something where she might need me. How many papers are full of people that got married because someday they might need the other one?”

  “Oh,” I says. “So all you got to do now is jest stay around close where you can hear the long-distance telephone or the telegram boy can find you. Because naturally you wont be waiting for her to ever come back to Missippi. Or maybe you are?”

  “Naturally not,” he says. “Why should she?”

  “Thank God?” I says. He didn’t answer. “Because who knows,” I says, “she may d-disready found that dream even in jest these … two days, aint it? three? Maybe he was already settled there when she arrived. That’s possible in Grinnich Village, aint it?”

  Then he said it too. “Yes,” he says, “thank God.” So he was free. And in fact, when you had time to look around a little, he never had nothing no more to do but jest rest in peace and quiet and content ment. Because not only him but all Jefferson was free of Snopeses; for the first time in going on twenty years, Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County too was in what you might call a kind of Snopes doldrum. Because at last even Flem seemed
to be satisfied: setting now at last in the same chair the presidents of the Merchants and Farmers Bank had been setting in ever since the first one, Colonel Sartoris, started it twenty-odd years ago, and actively living in the very house the second one of it was born in, so that all he needed to do too after he had done locked up the money and went home was to live in solitary peace and quiet and contentment too, not only shut of the daughter that had kept him on steady and constant tenterhooks for years whether she might not escape at any moment to where he couldn’t watch her and the first male feller that come along would marry her and he would lose her share of Will Varner’s money, but shut of the wife that at any time her and Manfred de Spain would get publicly caught up with and cost him all the rest of Varner’s money and bank voting stock too.

  In fact, for the moment Flem was the only true Snopes actively left in Jefferson. Old man Ab never had come no closer than that hill two miles out where you could jest barely see the water tank, where he taken the studs that day back about 1910 and hadn’t moved since. And four years ago Flem had ci-devanted I.O. back to Frenchman’s Bend for good. And even before that Flem had eliminated Montgomery Ward into the penitentiary at Parchman where Mink already was (Mink hadn’t really resided in Jefferson nohow except jest them few months in the jail waiting for his life sentence to be awarded). And last month them four half-Snopes Indians that Byron Snopes, Colonel Sartoris’s bank clerk that resigned by the simple practical expedient of picking up as much of the loose money he could tote and striking for the nearest U.S. border, sent back collect from Mexico until somebody could get close enough to fasten the return prepaid tags on them before whichever one had it at the moment could get out that switch-blade knife. And as for Eck’s boys, Wallstreet Panic and Admiral Dewey, they hadn’t never been Snopeses to begin with, since all Wallstreet evidently wanted to do was run a wholesale grocery business by the outrageous un-Snope-sish method of jest selling ever body exactly what they thought they was buying, for exactly what they thought they was going to pay for it.