The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner [102]
She wore a dressing gown of quilted black satin, holding it close under her chin. In the other hand she held a red rubber hot water bottle and she stood at the head of the back stairway, calling “Dilsey” at steady and inflectionless intervals into the quiet stairwell that descended into complete darkness, then opened again where a gray window fell across it. “Dilsey,” she called, without inflection or emphasis or haste, as though she were not listening for a reply at all. “Dilsey.”
Dilsey answered and ceased clattering the stove, but before she could cross the kitchen Mrs Compson called her again, and before she crossed the diningroom and brought her head into relief against the gray splash of the window, still again.
“All right,” Dilsey said. “All right, here I is. I’ll fill hit soon ez I git some hot water.” She gathered up her skirts and mounted the stairs, wholly blotting the gray light. “Put hit down dar en g’awn back to bed.”
“I couldn’t understand what was the matter,” Mrs Compson said. “I’ve been lying awake for an hour at least, without hearing a sound from the kitchen.”
“You put hit down and g’awn back to bed,” Dilsey said. She toiled painfully up the steps, shapeless, breathing heavily. “I’ll have de fire gwine in a minute, en de water hot in two mo.”
“I’ve been lying there for an hour, at least,” Mrs Compson said. “I thought maybe you were waiting for me to come down and start the fire.”
Dilsey reached the top of the stairs and took the water bottle. “I’ll fix hit in a minute,” she said. “Luster overslep dis mawnin, up half de night at dat show. I gwine build de fire myself. Go on now, so you wont wake de others twell I ready.”
“If you permit Luster to do things that interfere with his work, you’ll have to suffer for it yourself,” Mrs Compson said. “Jason wont like this if he hears about it. You know he wont.”
“ ’Twusn’t none of Jason’s money he went on,” Dilsey said. “Dat’s one thing sho.” She went on down the stairs. Mrs Compson returned to her room. As she got into bed again she could hear Dilsey yet descending the stairs with a sort of painful and terrific slowness that would have become maddening had it not presently ceased beyond the flapping diminishment of the pantry door.
She entered the kitchen and built up the fire and began to prepare breakfast. In the midst of this she ceased and went to the window and looked out toward her cabin, then she went to the door and opened it and shouted into the driving weather.
“Luster!” she shouted, standing to listen, tilting her face from the wind. “You, Luster!” She listened, then as she prepared to shout again Luster appeared around the corner of the kitchen.
“Ma’am?” he said innocently, so innocently that Dilsey looked down at him, for a moment motionless, with something more than mere surprise.
“Whar you at?” she said.
“Nowhere,” he said. “Jes in de cellar.”
“Whut you doin in de cellar?” she said. “Dont stand dar in de rain, fool,” she said.
“Aint doin nothin,” he said. He came up the steps.
“Dont you dare come in dis do widout a armful of wood,” she said. “Here I done had to tote yo wood en build yo fire bofe. Didn’t I tole you not to leave dis place last night befo dat woodbox wus full to de top?”
“I did,” Luster said. “I filled hit.”
“Whar hit gone to, den?”
“I dont know’m. I aint teched hit.”
“Well, you git hit full up now,” she said. “And git on up dar en see bout Benjy.”
She shut the door. Luster went to the woodpile. The five jaybirds whirled over the house, screaming, and into the mulberries again. He watched them. He picked up a rock and threw it. “Whoo,” he said. “Git on back to hell, whar you belong at. ’Taint Monday yit.”
He loaded himself mountainously with stove wood. He could not see over it, and he staggered to the steps and up them and blundered crashing against the door, shedding billets. Then Dilsey came and opened the door for him and he blundered across the kitchen. “You, Luster!” she shouted, but he