Light in August - William Faulkner [102]
But she did not. She was sitting quite still on the bed, her hands on her lap, her still New England face (it was still the face of a spinster: prominently boned, long, a little thin, almost manlike: in contrast to it her plump body was more richly and softly animal than ever) lowered. She said, in a tone musing, detached, impersonal: “A full measure. Even to a bastard negro child. I would like to see father’s and Calvin’s faces. This will be a good time for you to run, if that’s what you want to do.” But it was as though she were not listening to her own voice, did not intend for the words to have any actual meaning: that final upflare of stubborn and dying summer upon which autumn, the dawning of halfdeath, had come unawares. ‘It’s over now,’ she thought quietly; ‘finished.’ Except the waiting, for one month more to pass, to be sure; she had learned that from the negro women, that you could not always tell until after two months. She would have to wait another month, watching the calendar. She made a mark on the calendar to be sure, so there would be no mistake; through the bedroom window she watched that month accomplish. A frost had come, and some of the leaves were beginning to turn. The marked day on the calendar came and passed; she gave herself another week, to be doubly sure. She was not elated, since she was not surprised. “I am with child,” she said, quietly, aloud.
‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ he told himself, that same day. ‘I’ll go Sunday,’ he thought. ‘I’ll wait and get this week’s pay, and then I am gone: He began to look forward to Saturday, planning where he would go. He did not see her all that week. He expected her to send for him. When he entered or left the cabin he would find himself avoiding looking toward the house, as he had during the first week he was there. He did not see her at all: Now and then he would see the negro women, in nondescript garments against the autumn chill, coming or going along the worn paths, entering or leaving the house. But that was all. When Saturday came, he did not go. ‘Might as well have all the jack I can get,’ he thought. ‘If she ain’t anxious for me to clear out, no reason why I should be. I’ll go next Saturday.’
He stayed on. The weather remained cold, bright and cold. When he went to bed now in his cotton blanket, in the draughty cabin, he would think of the bedroom in the house, with its fire, its ample, quilted, lintpadded covers. He was nearer to selfpity than he had ever been. ‘She might at least send me another blanket,’ he thought. So might he have bought one. But he did not. Neither did she. He waited. He waited what he thought was a long time. Then one evening in February he returned home and found a note from her on his cot. It was brief; it was an order almost, directing him to come to the house that night. He was not surprised. He had never yet known a woman who, without another man available, would not come around in time. And he knew now that tomorrow he would go. ‘This must be what I have been waiting for,’ he thought; ‘I have Just been waiting to be vindicated.’ When he changed his clothes, he shaved also. He prepared himself like a bridegroom, unaware of it. He found the table set for him in the kitchen, as usual; during all the time that he had not seen her, that had never failed. He ate and went upstairs. He did not hurry. ‘We got all night,’ he thought. ‘It’ll be something for her to think about tomorrow night and the next one, when she finds that cabin empty. She was sitting before the fire. She did not even turn her head when he entered. “Bring that chair up with you,” she said.
This was how the third phase began. It puzzled him for a while, even more than the other two. He had expected eagerness, a kind of tacit apology; or lacking that, an acquiescence that wanted only to be wooed. He was prepared to go that length, even. What he found was a stranger who put aside with the calm firmness of a man his hand when at last and in a kind of