“No, no; I just wanted to——”
The woman watched him across the lamp. “ ’Taint no need botherin her, then. You kin come around in the mawnin and git her a boa’din-place. ’Taint no hurry.”
On the next afternoon Horace went out to his sister’s, again in a hired car. He told her what had happened. “I’ll have to take her home now.”
“Not into my house,” Narcissa said.
He looked at her. Then he began to fill his pipe slowly and carefully. “It’s not a matter of choice, my dear. You must see that.”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said. “I thought we settled that.”
He struck the match and lit the pipe and put the match carefully into the fireplace. “Do you realise that she has been practically turned into the streets? That—”
“That shouldn’t be a hardship. She ought to be used to that.”
He looked at her. He put the pipe in his mouth and smoked it to a careful coal, watching his hand tremble upon the stem. “Listen. By tomorrow they will probably ask her to leave town. Just because she happens not to be married to the man whose child she carries about these sanctified streets. But who told them? That’s what I want to know. I know that nobody in Jefferson knew it except—”
“You were the first I heard tell it,” Miss Jenny said. “But, Narcissa, why—”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said.
“Well,” Horace said. He drew the pipe to an even coal. “That settles it, of course,” he said, in a dry, light voice.
She rose. “Will you stay here tonight?”
“What? No. No. I’ll—I told her I’d come for her at the jail and.……” He sucked at his pipe. “Well, I dont suppose it matters. I hope it doesn’t.”
She was still paused, turning. “Will you stay or not?”
“I could even tell her I had a puncture,” Horace said. “Time’s not such a bad thing after all. Use it right, and you can stretch anything out, like a rubber band, until it busts somewhere, and there you are, with all tragedy and despair in two little knots between thumb and finger of each hand.”
“Will you stay, or wont you stay, Horace?” Narcissa said.
“I think I’ll stay,” Horace said.
He was in bed. He had been lying in the dark for about an hour, when the door of the room opened, felt rather than seen or heard. It was his sister. He rose to his elbow. She took shape vaguely, approaching the bed. She came and looked down at him. “How much longer are you going to keep this up?” she said.
“Just until morning,” he said. “I’m going back to town. You need not see me again.”
She stood beside the bed, motionless. After a moment her cold unbending voice came down to him: “You know what I mean.”
“I promise not to bring her into your house again. You can send Isom in to hide in the canna bed.” She said nothing. “Surely you dont object to my living there, do you?”
“I dont care where you live. The question is, where I live. I live here, in this town. I’ll have to stay here. But you’re a man. It doesn’t matter to you. You can go away.”
“Oh,” he said. He lay quite still. She stood above him, motionless. They spoke quietly, as though they were discussing wall-paper, food.
“Dont you see, this is my home, where I must spend the rest of my life. Where I was born. I dont care where else you go nor what you do. I dont care how many women you have nor who they are. But I cannot have my brother mixed up with a woman people are talking about. I dont expect you to have consideration for me; I ask you to have consideration for our father and mother. Take her to Memphis. They say you refused to let the man have bond to get out of jail; take her on to Memphis. You can think of a lie to tell him about that, too.”
“Oh. So you think that, do you?”
“I dont think anything about it. I dont care. That’s what people in town think. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. What I do mind is, everyday you force me to have to tell lies for you. Go away from here, Horace. Anybody but you would realise it’s a case of cold-blooded murder.”
“And over her, of course. I suppose they say that too, out of their odorous and omnipotent sanctity. Do they say yet that it was I killed him?”
“I dont see that it makes any difference who did it. The question is, are you going to stay mixed up with it? When people already believe you and she are slipping into my house at night.” Her cold, unbending voice shaped the words in the darkness above him. Through the window, upon the blowing darkness, came the drowsy dissonance of cicada and cricket.
“Do you believe that?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. Go on away, Horace. I ask it.”
“And leave her—them, flat?”
“Hire a lawyer, if he still insists he’s innocent. I’ll pay for it. You can get a better criminal lawyer than you are. She wont know it. She wont even care. Cant you see that she is just leading you on to get him out of jail for nothing? Dont you know that woman has got money hidden away somewhere? You’re going back into town
