The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner [62]
“Oh,” Spoade said, “the champion of dames. Bud, you excite not only admiration, but horror.” He looked at me, cold and quizzical. “Good God,” he said.
“I’m sorry I hit him,” I said. “Do I look too bad to go back and get it over with?”
“Apologies, hell,” Shreve said. “Let them go to hell. We’re going to town.”
“He ought to go back so they’ll know he fights like a gentleman,” Spoade said. “Gets licked like one, I mean.”
“Like this?” Shreve said. “With his clothes all over blood?”
“Why, all right,” Spoade said. “You know best.”
“He cant go around in his undershirt,” Shreve said. “He’s not a senior yet. Come on, let’s go to town.”
“You needn’t come,” I said. “You go on back to the picnic.”
“Hell with them,” Shreve said. “Come on here.”
“What’ll I tell them?” Spoade said. “Tell them you and Quentin had a fight too?”
“Tell them nothing,” Shreve said. “Tell her her option expired at sunset. Come on, Quentin. I’ll ask that woman where the nearest interurban——”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going back to town.”
Shreve stopped, looking at me. Turning his glasses looked like small yellow moons.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not going back to town yet. You go on back to the picnic. Tell them I wouldn’t come back because my clothes were spoiled.”
“Look here,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I’m all right. You and Spoade go on back. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I went on across the yard, toward the road.
“Do you know where the station is?” Shreve said.
“I’ll find it. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Tell Mrs Bland I’m sorry I spoiled her party.” They stood watching me. I went around the house. A rock path went down to the road. Roses grew on both sides of the path. I went through the gate, onto the road. It dropped downhill, toward the woods, and I could make out the auto beside the road. I went up the hill. The light increased as I mounted, and before I reached the top I heard a car. It sounded far away across the twilight and I stopped and listened to it. I couldn’t make out the auto any longer, but Shreve was standing in the road before the house, looking up the hill. Behind him the yellow light lay like a wash of paint on the roof of the house. I lifted my hand and went on over the hill, listening to the car. Then the house was gone and I stopped in the green and yellow light and heard the car growing louder and louder, until just as it began to die away it ceased all together. I waited until I heard it start again. Then I went on.
As I descended the light dwindled slowly, yet at the same time without altering its quality, as if I and not light were changing, decreasing, though even when the road ran into trees you could have read a newspaper. Pretty soon I came to a lane. I turned into it. It was closer and darker than the road, but when it came out at the trolley stop—another wooden marquee—the light was still unchanged. After the lane it seemed brighter, as though I had walked through night in the lane and come out into morning again. Pretty soon the car came. I got on it, they turning to look at my eye, and found a seat on the left side.
The lights were on in the car, so while we ran between trees I couldn’t see anything except my own face and a woman across the aisle with a hat sitting right on top of her head, with a broken feather in it, but when we ran out of the trees I could see the twilight again, that quality of light as if time really had stopped for a while, with the sun hanging just under the horizon, and then we passed the marquee where the old man had been eating out of the sack, and the road going on under the twilight, into twilight and the sense of water peaceful and swift beyond.