It was she who found the fallen tree, who first essayed its oozy treacherous bark and first stood in the empty road stretching monotonously in either direction between battalioned patriarchs of trees. She was panting a little, whipping a broken green branch about her body, watching him as he inched his way across the fallen trunk.
“Come on, David,” she called impatiently. “Here’s the road: we’re all right now.” He was across the ditch and he now struggled up the rank reluctant levee bank. She leaned down and reached her hand to him. But he would not take it, so she leaned further and clutched his shirt. “Now, which way is Mandeville?”
“That way,” he answered immediately, pointing.
“You said you never were over here before,” she accused.
“No. But we were west of Mandeville when we went aground, and the lake is back yonder. So Mandeville must be that way.”
“I don’t think so. It’s this way: see, the swamp isn’t so thick this way. Besides, I just know it’s this way.”
He looked at her a moment. “All right,” he agreed. “I guess you are right.”
“But don’t you know which way it is? Isn’t there any way you could tell?” She bent and whipped her legs with the broken branch.
“Well, the lake is over yonder, and we were west of Mandeville last night—”
“You’re just guessing,” she interrupted harshly.
“Yes,” he answered. “I guess you are right.”
“Well, we’ve got to go somewhere. We can’t stand here.” She twitched her shoulders, writhing her body beneath her dress. “Which way, then?”
“Well, we w—”
She turned abruptly in the direction she had chosen. “Come on, I’ll die here.” She strode on ahead.
TEN O’CLOCK
She was trying to explain it to Pete. The sun had risen sinister and hot, climbing into a drowsy haze, and up from a low vague region neither water nor sky clouds like fat little girls in starched frocks marched solemnly.
“It’s a thing they join at that place he’s going to. Only they have to work to join it, and sometimes you don’t even get to join it then. And the ones that do join it don’t get anything except a little button or something.”
“Pipe down and try it again,” Pete told her, leaning with his elbows and one heel hooked backward on the rail, his hat slanted across his reckless dark face, squinting his eyes against the smoke of his cigarette. “What’re you talking about?”
“There’s something in the water,” Jenny remarked with placid astonishment, creasing her belly over the rail and staring downward into the faintly rippled water while the land breeze molded her little green dress. “It must of fell off the boat..... Oh, I’m talking about that college he’s going to. You work to join things there. You work three years, she says. And then maybe you—”
“What college?”
“I forgot. It’s the one where they have big football games in the papers every year. He’s—”
“Yale and Harvard?”
“Uhuh, that’s the one she said. He’s—”
“Which one? Yale, or Harvard?”
“Uhuh. And so he—”
“Come on, baby. You’re talking about two colleges. Was it Yale she said, or Harvard? or Sing Sing or what?”
“Oh,” Jenny said. “It was Yale. Yes, that’s the one she said. And he’ll have to work three years to join it. And even then maybe he won’t.”
“Well, what about it? Suppose he does work three years: what about it?”
“Why, if he does, he won’t get anything except a little button or something, even if he does join it, I mean.” Jenny brooded softly, creasing herself upon the rail. “He’s going to have to work for it,” she recurred again in a dull soft amazement. “He’ll have to work three years for it, and even then he may not—”
“Don’t be dumb all your life, kid,” Pete told her.
Wind and sun were in Jenny’s drowsing hair. The deck swept trimly forward, deserted. The others were gathered on the deck above. Occasionally they could hear voices, and a pair of masculine feet were crossed innocently upon the rail directly over Pete’s head. A half-smoked cigarette spun in a small twinkling arc astern. Jenny watched it drop lightly onto the water, where it floated amid the other rubbish that had caught her attention. Pete spun his own cigarette backward over his shoulder, but this one sank immediately, to her placid surprise.
“Let the boy join his club, if he wants,” Pete added. “What kind of a club is it? What do they do?”
“I don’t know. They just join it. You work for it three years, she said. Three years.... Gee, by that time you’d be too old to do anything if you got to join it.... Three years. My Lord.”
“Sit down and give your wooden leg a rest,” Pete said. “Don’t be a dumbbell forever.” He examined the deck a moment, then without changing his position against the rail he turned his head toward Jenny. “Give papa a kiss.”
Jenny also glanced briefly up the deck. Then she came with a sort of wary docility, raising her ineffable face... presently Pete withdrew his face. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
“The matter with what?” said Jenny innocently.
Pete unhooked his heel and he put his arm around Jenny. Their faces merged again and Jenny became an impersonal softness against his mouth and a single blue eye and a drowsing aura of hair.
ELEVEN O’CLOCK
The swamp did not seem to end, ever. On either side of the road it brooded, fetid and timeless, somber and hushed and dreadful. The road went on and on through a bearded tunnel, beneath the sinister brass sky. The dew was long departed and dust puffed listlessly to her fierce striding. David tramped behind her, watching two splotches of dead blood on her stockings. Abruptly there were three of them and he drew abreast of her. She looked over her shoulder, showing him her wrung face.
“Don’t come near me!” she cried. “Don’t you see you make ’em worse?”
He dropped behind again and she stopped suddenly, dropping the broken branch and extending her arms. “David,” she said. He went to her awkwardly, and she clung to him, whimpering. She raised her face, staring at him. “Can’t you do something? They hurt me, David.” But he only looked at her with his unutterable dumb longing.
She tightened her arms, released him quickly. “We’ll be out soon.” She picked up the branch again. “It’ll be different then. Look! There’s another big butterfly!” Her squeal of delight became again a thin whimpering sound. She strode on.
* * * * * * *
Jenny found Mrs. Wiseman in their room, changing her dress.
“Mr. Ta — Talliaferro,” Jenny began. Then she said: “He’s an awful refined man, I guess. Don’t you think so?”
“Refined?” the other repeated. “Exactly that. Ernest invented that word.”
“He did?” Jenny went to the mirror and looked at herself a while. “Her brother’s refined, too, ain’t he?”
“Whose brother, honey?” Mrs. Wiseman paused and watched Jenny curiously.
“The one with that saw.”
“Oh. Yes, fairly so. He seems to be too busy to be anything else. Why?”
“And that popeyed man. All English men are refined, though. There was one in a movie I saw. He was awful refined.” Jenny looked at her reflected face, tunelessly and completely entertained. Mrs. Wiseman gazed at Jenny’s fine minted hair, at her sleazy little dress revealing the divine inevitability of her soft body.
“Come here, Jenny,” she said.
TWELVE O’CLOCK
When he reached her she sat huddled in the road, crouching bonelessly upon herself, huddling her head in her crossed thin arms. He stood beside her, and presently he spoke her name. She rocked back and forth, then wrung her body in an ecstasy. “They hurt me, they hurt me,” she wailed, crouching again in that impossible spasm of agony. David knelt beside her and spoke her name again, and she sat up.
“Look,” she said wildly, “on my legs — look, look,” staring with a sor
t of fascination at a score of great gray specks hovering about her blood-flecked stockings, making no effort to brush them away. She raised her wild face again. “Do you see them? They are everywhere on me — my back, my back, where I can’t reach.” She lay suddenly flat, writhing her back in the dust, clutching his hand. Then she sat up again and against his knees she turned wringing her body from the hips, trying to draw her bloody legs beneath her brief skirt. He held her while she writhed in his grasp, staring her wild bloodless face up at him. “I must get in water,” she panted. “I must get in water. Mud, anything. I’m dying, I tell you.”
“Yes, yes: I’ll get you some water. You wait here Will you wait here?”
“You’ll get me some water? You will? You promise?”
“Yes, yes,” he repeated. “I’ll get you some. You wait here. You wait here, see?” he repeated idiotically. She bent again inward upon herself, moaning and writhing in the dust, and he plunged down the bank, stripping his shirt off and dipped it into the foul warm ditch. She had dragged her dress up about her shoulders, revealing her startling white bathing suit between her knickers and the satin band binding her breasts. “On my back,” she moaned, bending forward again, “quick! quick!”
He laid the wet shirt on her back and she caught the ends of it and drew it around her, and presently she leaned back against his knees with a long shuddering sigh. “I want a drink. Can’t I have a drink of water, David?”
“Soon,” he promised with despair. “You can have one soon as we get out of the swamp.”
She moaned again, a long whimpering sound, lowering her head between her arms. They crouched together in the dusty road. The road went on shimmering before them, endless beneath bearded watching trees, crossing the implacable swamp with a puerile bravado like a thin voice cursing in a cathedral. Needles of fire darted about them, about his bare shoulders and arms. After a while she said:
“Wet it again, please, David.”
He did so, and returned, scrambling up the steep rank levee side.
“Now, bathe my face, David.” She raised her face and closed her eyes and he bathed her face and throat and brushed her damp coarse hair back from her brow.
“Let’s put the shirt on you,” he suggested.
“No,” she demurred against his arm, without opening her eyes, drowsily. “They’ll eat you alive without it.”
“They don’t bother me like they do you. Come on, put it on.” She demurred again and he tried awkwardly to draw the shirt over her head. “I don’t need it,” he repeated.
“No.... Keep it, David.... You ought to keep it. Besides, I’d rather have it underneath.... Oooo, it feels so good. You’re sure you don’t need it?” She opened her eyes, watching him with that sober gravity of hers. He insisted and she sat up and slipped her dress over her head. He helped her to don the shirt, then she slipped her dress on again.
“I wouldn’t take it, only they hurt me so damn bad. I’ll do something for you some day, David. I swear I will.”
“Sure,” he repeated. “I don’t need it.”
He rose, and she came to her feet in a single motion, before he could offer to help her. “I swear I wouldn’t take it if they didn’t hurt me so much, David,” she persisted, putting her hand on his shoulder and raising her tanned serious face.
“Sure, I know.”
“I’ll pay you back somehow. Come on: let’s get out of here.”
ONE O’CLOCK
Mrs. Wiseman and Miss Jameson drove Mrs. Maurier moaning and wringing her hands, from the galley and prepared lunch — grapefruit again, disguised thinly.
“We have so many of them,” the hostess apologized helplessly. “And the steward gone.... We are aground, too, you see,” she explained.
“Oh, we can stand a little hardship, I guess,” Fairchild reassured her jovially. “The race hasn’t degenerated that far. In a book, now, it would be kind of terrible; if you forced characters in a book to eat as much grapefruit as we do, both the art boys and the humanitarians would stand on their hind legs and howl. But in real life — In life, anything might happen; in actual life people will do anything. It’s only in books that people must function according to arbitrary rules of conduct and probability; it’s only in books that events must never flout credulity.”
“That’s true,” Mrs. Wiseman agreed. “People’s characters, when writers delineate them by revealing their likings and dislikings, always appear so perfect, so inevitably consistent, but in li—”
“That’s why literature is art and biology isn’t,” her brother interrupted. “A character in a book must be consistent in all things, while man is consistent in one thing only: he is consistently vain. It’s his vanity alone which keeps his particles damp and adhering one to another, instead of like any other handful of dust which any wind that passes can disseminate.”
“In other words, he is consistently inconsistent,” Mark Frost recapitulated.
“I guess so,” the Semitic man replied. “Whatever that means.... But what were you saying, Eva?”
“I was thinking of how book people, when you find them in real life, have such a perverse and disconcerting way of liking and disliking the wrong things. For instance, Dorothy here. Suppose you were drawing Dorothy’s character in a novel, Dawson. Any writer would give her a liking for blue jewelry: white gold, and platinum, and sapphires in dull silver — you know. Wouldn’t you do that?”
“Why, yes, so I would,” Fairchild agreed with interest. “She would like blue things, sure enough.”
“And then,” the other continued, “music. You’d say she would like Grieg, and those other cold mad northern people with icewater in their veins, wouldst you?”
“Yes,” Fairchild agreed again, thinking immediately of Ibsen and the Peer Gynt legend and remembering a sonnet of Siegfried Sassoon’s about Sibelius that he had once read in a magazine. “That’s what she would like.”
“Should like,” Mrs. Wiseman corrected. “For the sake of esthetic consistency. But I bet you are wrong. Isn’t he, Dorothy?”
“Why, yes,” Miss Jameson replied. “I always liked Chopin.” Mrs. Wiseman shrugged: a graceful dark gesture. “And there you are. That’s what makes art so discouraging. You come to expect anything associated with and dependent on the actions of man to be discouraging. But it always shocks me to learn that art also depends on population, on the herd instinct just as much as manufacturing automobiles or stockings does—”
“Only they can’t advertise art by means of women’s legs yet,” Mark Frost interrupted.
“Don’t be silly, Mark,” Mrs. Wiseman said sharply. “That’s exactly how art came to the attention of the ninety-nine who don’t produce it and so have any possible reason for buying it — postcards and lithographs barely esoteric enough to escape police persecution. Ask any man on the street what he understands by the word art: he’ll tell you it means a picture. Won’t he?” she appealed to Fairchild.
“That’s so,” he agreed. “And it’s a wrong impression. Art means anything consciously done well, to my notion. Living, or building a good lawn mower, or playing poker. I don’t like this modern idea of restricting the word to painting, at all.”
“The art of Life, of a beautiful and complete existence of the Soul,” Mrs. Maurier put in. “Don’t you think that is Art’s greatest function, Mr. Gordon?”
“Of course you don’t, child,” Mrs. Wiseman told Fairchild, ignoring Mrs. Maurier. “As rabidly American as you are, you can’t stand that, can you? And there’s the seat of your bewilderment, Dawson — your belief that the function of creating art depends on geography.”
“It does. You can’t grow corn without something to plant it in.”
“But you don’t plant com in geography: you plant it in soil. It not only does not matter where that soil is, you can even move the soil from one place to another — around the world, if you like — and it will still grow corn.”
“You’d have a different kind of corn, though — Russian corn, or La
tin or Anglo-Saxon corn.”
“All corn is the same to the belly,” the Semitic man said.
“Julius!” exclaimed Mrs. Manner. “The Soul’s hunger: that is the true purpose of Art. There are so many things to satisfy the grosser appetites. Don’t you think so, Mr. Talliaferro?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Wiseman took her brother up. “Dawson clings to his conviction for the old reason: it’s good enough to live with and comfortable to die with — like a belief in immortality. Insurance against doubt or alarm.”
“And laziness,” her brother added. Mrs. Maurier exclaimed “Julius” again. “Clinging spiritually to one little spot of the earth’s surface, so much of his labor is performed for him. Details of dress and habit and speech which entail no hardship in the assimilation and which, piled one on another, become quite as imposing as any single startling stroke of originality, as trivialities in quantities will. Don’t you agree? But then, I suppose that all poets in their hearts consider prosewriters shirkers, don’t they?”
“Yes,” his sister agreed. “We do think they are lazy — just a little. Not mentally, but that their... not hearts—”
“Souls?” her brother suggested. “I hate that word, but it’s the nearest thing....” She met her brother’s sad quizzical eyes and exclaimed: “Oh, Julius! I could kill you, at times. He’s laughing at me, Dawson.”
“He’s laughing at us both,” Fairchild said. “But let him have his fun, poor fellow.” He chuckled, and lit a cigarette. ‘“Let him laugh. I always did want to be one of those old time eunuchs, for one night. They must have just laughed themselves to death when those sultans and things would come visiting.”
“Mister Fairchild! Whatever in the world!” exclaimed Mrs. Maurier.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 45
