en Benjy. Whut you let him go on dat way fer, Miss Cahline?'
'You'd better do as he says,' Mrs Compson said. 'He's head of the house now. It's his right to require us to respect his wishes. I try to do it, and if I can, you can too.'
''Taint no sense in him bein so bad tempered he got to make Quentin git up jes to suit him,' Dilsey said. 'Maybe you think she broke dat window.'
'She would, if she happened to think of it,' Jason said. 'You go and do what I told you.'
'En I wouldn't blame her none ef she did,' Dilsey said, going toward the stairs. 'Wid you naggin at her all de blessed time you in de house.'
'Hush, Dilsey,' Mrs Compson said. 'It's neither your place nor mine to tell Jason what to do. Sometimes I think he is wrong, but I try to obey his wishes for you all's sakes. If I'm strong enough to come to the table, Quentin can too.'
Dilsey went out. They heard her mounting the stairs. They heard her a long while on the stairs.
'You've got a prize set of servants,' Jason said. He helped his mother and himself to food. 'Did you ever have one that was worth killing? You must have had some before I was big enough to remember.'
'I have to humor them,' Mrs Compson said. 'I have to depend on them so completely. It's not as if I were strong. I wish I were. I wish I could do all the house work myself. I could at least take that much off your shoulders.'
'And a fine pigsty we'd live in, too,' Jason said. 'Hurry up, Dilsey,' he shouted.
'I know you blame me,' Mrs Compson said, 'for letting them off to go to church today.'
'Go where?' Jason said. 'Hasn't that damn show left yet?'
'To church,' Mrs Compson said. 'The darkies are having a special Easter service. I promised Dilsey two weeks ago that they could get off.'
'Which means we'll eat cold dinner,' Jason said, 'or none at all.'
'I know it's my fault,' Mrs Compson said. 'I know you blame me.'
'For what?' Jason said. 'You never resurrected Christ, did you?'
They heard Dilsey mount the final stair, then her slow feet overhead.
'Quentin,' she said. When she called the first time Jason laid his knife and fork down and he and his mother appeared to wait across the table from one another in identical attitudes; the one cold and shrewd, with close- thatched brown hair curled into two stubborn hooks, one on either side of his forehead like a bartender in caricature, and hazel eyes with black-ringed irises like marbles, the other cold and querulous, with perfectly white hair and eyes pouched and baffled and so dark as to appear to be all pupil or all iris.
'Quentin,' Dilsey said. 'Get up, honey. Dey waitin breakfast on you.'
'I cant understand how that window got broken,' Mrs Compson said. 'Are you sure it was done yesterday? It could have been like that a long time, with the warm weather. The upper sash, behind the shade like that.'
'I've told you for the last time that it happened yesterday,' Jason said. 'Dont you reckon I know the room I live in? Do you reckon I could have lived in it a week with a hole in the window you could stick your hand….' his voice ceased, ebbed, left him staring at his mother with eyes that for an instant were quite empty of anything. It was as though his eyes were holding their breath, while his mother looked at him, her face flaccid and querulous, interminable, clairvoyant yet obtuse. As they sat so Dilsey said,
'Quentin. Dont play wid me, honey. Come on to breakfast, honey. Dey waitin fer you.'
'I cant understand it,' Mrs Compson said. 'It's just as if somebody had tried to break into the house--' Jason sprang up. His chair crashed over backward. 'What--' Mrs Compson said, staring at him as he ran past her and went jumping up the stairs, where he met Dilsey. His face was now in shadow, and Dilsey said,
'She sullin. Yo maw aint unlocked--' But Jason ran on past her and along the corridor to a door. He didn't call. He grasped the knob and tried it, then he stood with the knob in his hand and his head bent a little, as if he were listening to something much further away than the dimensioned room beyond the door, and which he already heard. His attitude was that of one who goes through the motions of listening in order to deceive himself as to what he already hears. Behind him Mrs Compson mounted the stairs, calling his name. Then she saw Dilsey and she quit calling him and began to call Dilsey instead.
'I told you she aint unlocked dat do yit,' Dilsey said.
When she spoke he turned and ran toward her, but his voice was quiet, matter of fact. 'She carry the key with her?' he said. 'Has she got it now, I mean, or will she have--'
'Dilsey,' Mrs Compson said on the stairs.
'Is which?' Dilsey said. 'Whyn't you let--'
'The key,' Jason said. 'To that room. Does she carry it with her all the time. Mother.' Then he saw Mrs Compson and he went down the stairs and met her. 'Give me the key,' he said. He fell to pawing at the pockets of the rusty black dressing sacque she wore. She resisted.
'Jason,' she said. 'Jason! Are you and Dilsey trying to put me to bed again?' she said, trying to fend him off. 'Cant you even let me have Sunday in peace?'
'The key,' Jason said, pawing at her. 'Give it here.' He looked back at the door, as if he expected it to fly open before he could get back to it with the key he did not yet have.
'You, Dilsey!' Mrs Compson said, clutching her sacque about her.
'Give me the key, you old fool!' Jason cried suddenly. From her pocket he tugged a huge bunch of rusted keys on an iron ring like a mediaeval jailer's and ran back up the hall with the two women behind him.
'You, Jason!' Mrs Compson said. 'He will never find the right one,' she said. 'You know I never let anyone take my keys, Dilsey,' she said. She began to wail.
'Hush,' Dilsey said. 'He aint gwine do nothin to her. I aint gwine let him.'
'But on Sunday morning, in my own house,' Mrs Compson said. 'When I've tried so hard to raise them christians. Let me find the right key, Jason,' she said. She put her hand on his arm. Then she began to struggle with him, but he flung her aside with a motion of his elbow and looked around at her for a moment, his eyes cold and harried, then he turned to the door again and the unwieldy keys.
'Hush,' Dilsey said. 'You, Jason!'
'Something terrible has happened,' Mrs Compson said, wailing again. 'I know it has. You, Jason,' she said, grasping at him again. 'He wont even let me find the key to a room in my own house!'
'Now, now,' Dilsey said. 'Whut kin happen? I right here. I aint gwine let him hurt her. Quentin,' she said, raising her voice, 'dont you be skeered, honey, I'se right here.'
The door opened, swung inward. He stood in it for a moment, hiding the room, then he stepped aside. 'Go in,' he said in a thick, light voice. They went in. It was not a girl's room. It was not anybody's room, and the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminise it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses. The bed had not been disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink, from a half open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking. The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house. It was in bloom and the branches scraped and rasped against the house and the myriad air, driving in the window, brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.
'Dar now,' Dilsey said. 'Didn't I told you she all right?'
'All right?' Mrs Compson said. Dilsey followed her into the room and touched her.
'You come on and lay down, now,' she said. 'I find her in ten minutes.'
Mrs Compson shook her off. 'Find the note,' she said. 'Quentin left a note when he did it.'
'All right,' Dilsey said. 'I'll find hit. You come on to yo room, now.'
'I knew the minute they named her Quentin this would happen,' Mrs Compson said. She went to the bureau and began to turn over the scattered objects there--scent bottles, a box of powder, a chewed pencil, a pair of scissors with one broken blade lying upon a darned scarf dusted with powder and stained with rouge. 'Find the note,' she said.
'I is,' Dilsey said. 'You come on, now. Me and Jason'll find hit. You come on to yo room.'
'Jason,' Mrs Compson said. 'Where is he?' She went to the door. Dilsey followed her on down the hall, to another door. It was closed. 'Jason,' she called through the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob, then she called him again. But there was still no answer, for he was hurling things backward out of the closet, garments, shoes, a suitcase. Then he emerged carrying a sawn section of tongue-and-groove planking and laid it down and entered the closet again and emerged with a metal box. He set it on the bed and stood looking at the
