Fable, A - William Faulkner [108]
The patrol-it was a mounted provost marshal's party-met them at the first corner. The crowd broke, burst, because this was a charge. The yelling rose a whole octave without transition like flipping over a playing card, as motionless again the three women watched the crowd stream back upon them; they stood in a rushing vacuum while the mass divided and swept past on either hand, in front of and beneath and behind the running horses, the cobble-clashing fire-ringing hooves and the screams dying away into the single vast murmur of the whole city's tumult, leaving the alley empty save for the three women when the N. C. O. leader Wednesday Night of the patrol reined his horse and held it, short-bitted, ammoniac and reek-spreading and bouncing a little against the snaffle, while he glared down at them. 'Where do you live?' he said. They didn't answer, staring up at him-the wan girl, the tall calm woman, the quicking and serene approval of the sister. The N. C. O. listened for an instant to the distant tumult. Then he looked at them again. 'All right,' he said harshly. 'Get out of town while you can. Come on now. Get started.'
'We belong here too,' Marthe said. For a second he glared down at them, he and the horse in high sharp fading silhouette against the sky itself filled with anguish and fury.
'Is the whole damned world crowding here to crucify a bastard the army's going to fix anyway?' he said in thin furious exasperation.
'Yes,' Marthe said. Then he was gone. He slacked the horse; its iron feet clashed and sparked on the cobbles; the hot reek sucked after it, pungent for a fading instant; then even the galloping had faded into the sound of the city. 'Come,' Marthe said. They went on. At first she seemed to be leading them away from the sound. But presently she seemed to be leading them straight back to it. She turned into an alley, then into another not smaller but emptier, deserted, with an air about it of back premises. But she seemed to know where she was going or at least what she was looking for. She was almost carrying the girl now until the sister moved up unbidden and exchanged the empty basket to the other arm and took half the girl's weight and then they went quite rapidly, on to the end of the alley and turned the wall and there was what Marthe had gone as directly to as if she had not only known it was there but had been to it before-an empty stone stall, a byre or stable niched into the city's night-fading flank. There was even a thin litter of dry straw on the stone floor and once inside although the sound was still audible it was as though they had established armistice with the tumult and the fury, not that it should evacuate the city in their favor but at least it should approach no nearer. Marthe didn't speak; she just stood supporting the girl while the sister set down the empty basket and knelt and with quick deft darting motions like a little girl readying a doll's house she spread the straw evenly and then removed her shawl and spread it over the straw and still kneeling helped Marthe lower the girl onto the shawl and took the other shawl which Marthe removed from her shoulders and spread it over the girl. Then they lowered themselves onto the straw on either side of the girl and as Marthe drew the girl to her for warmth the sister reached and got the basket, and not even triumphant, with another of those clumsy darting childlike motions which at the same time were deft or at least efficient or anyway successful, she took from the basket which everyone had seen empty itself when the woman