The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner [75]
“You dont know,” Mother says. “To have my own daughter cast off by her husband. Poor little innocent baby,” she says, looking at Quentin. “You will never know the suffering you’ve caused.”
“Hush, Caroline,” Father says.
“What you want to go on like that fo Jason fer?” Dilsey says.
“I’ve tried to protect him,” Mother says. “I’ve always tried to protect him from it. At least I can do my best to shield her.”
“How sleepin in dis room gwine hurt her, I like to know,” Dilsey says.
“I cant help it,” Mother says. “I know I’m just a troublesome old woman. But I know that people cannot flout God’s laws with impunity.”
“Nonsense,” Father says. “Fix it in Miss Caroline’s room then, Dilsey.”
“You can say nonsense,” Mother says. “But she must never know. She must never even learn that name. Dilsey, I forbid you ever to speak that name in her hearing. If she could grow up never to know that she had a mother, I would thank God.”
“Dont be a fool,” Father says.
“I have never interfered with the way you brought them up,” Mother says. “But now I cannot stand anymore. We must decide this now, tonight. Either that name is never to be spoken in her hearing, or she must go, or I will go. Take your choice.”
“Hush,” Father says. “You’re just upset. Fix it in here, Dilsey.”
“En you’s about sick too,” Dilsey says. “You looks like a hant. You git in bed and I’ll fix you a toddy and see kin you sleep. I bet you aint had a full night’s sleep since you lef.”
“No,” Mother says. “Dont you know what the doctor says? Why must you encourage him to drink? That’s what’s the matter with him now. Look at me, I suffer too, but I’m not so weak that I must kill myself with whiskey.”
“Fiddlesticks,” Father says. “What do doctors know? They make their livings advising people to do whatever they are not doing at the time, which is the extent of anyone’s knowledge of the degenerate ape. You’ll have a minister in to hold my hand next.” Then Mother cried, and he went out. Went down stairs, and then I heard the sideboard. I woke up and heard him going down again. Mother had gone to sleep or something, because the house was quiet at last. He was trying to be quiet too, because I couldn’t hear him, only the bottom of his nightshirt and his bare legs in front of the sideboard.
Dilsey fixed the cradle and undressed her and put her in it. She never had waked up since he brought her in the house.
“She pretty near too big fer hit,” Dilsey says. “Dar now. I gwine spread me a pallet right acrost de hall, so you wont need to git up in de night.”
“I wont sleep,” Mother says. “You go on home. I wont mind. I’ll be happy to give the rest of my life to her, if I can just prevent——”
“Hush, now,” Dilsey says. “We gwine take keer of her. En you go on to bed too,” she says to me. “You got to go to school tomorrow.”
So I went out, then Mother called me back and cried on me a while.
“You are my only hope,” she says. “Every night I thank God for you.” While we were waiting there for them to start she says Thank God if he had to be taken too, it is you left me and not Quentin. Thank God you are not a Compson, because all I have left now is you and Maury and I says, Well I could spare Uncle Maury myself. Well, he kept on patting her hand with his black glove, talking away from her. He took them off when his turn with the shovel came. He got up near the first, where they were holding the umbrellas over them, stamping every now and then and trying to kick the mud off their feet and sticking to the shovels so they’d have to knock it off, making a hollow sound when it fell on it, and when I stepped back around the hack I could see him behind a tombstone, taking another one out of a bottle. I thought he never was going to stop because I had on my new suit too, but it happened that there wasn’t much mud on the wheels yet, only Mother saw it and says I dont know when you’ll ever have another one and Uncle Maury says, “Now, now. Dont you worry at all. You have me to depend on, always.”
And we have. Always. The fourth letter was from him. But there wasn’t any need to open it. I could