Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“Put it that I’m not too old so much as simply discrepant; that having been her husband once, I would never relinquish even her widowhood to another. Put it that way then.”

“Marry her, Gavin,” she said. And now I stopped, she sitting beyond the desk, the cigarette burning on the tray, balancing its muted narrow windless feather where she had not touched it once since she lit it and put it down, the hand still quiet on the bag and the face now turned to look at me out of the half-shadow above the rim of light from the lamp—the big broad simple still unpainted beautiful mouth, the eyes not the hard and dusty blue of fall but the blue of spring blooms, all one inextricable mixture of wistaria cornflowers larkspur bluebells weeds and all, all the lost girls’ weather and boys’ luck and too late the grief, too late.

“Then this way. After you’re gone, if or when I become convinced that conditions are going to become such that something will have to be done, and nothing else but marrying me can help her, and she will have me, but have me, take me. Not just give up, surrender.”

“Swear it then,” she said.

“I promise. I have promised. I promise again.”

“No,” she said. “Swear.”

“I swear,” I said.

“And even if she wont have you. E after that. Even if she w—you cant marry her.”

“How can she need me then?” I said. “Flem—unless your father really does get shut of the whole damned boiling of you, runs Flem out of Jefferson too—will have his bank and wont need to swap, sell, trade her any more; maybe he will even prefer to have her in a New England school or even further than that if he can manage it.”

“Swear,” she said.

“All right,” I said. “At any time. Anywhere. No matter what happens.”

“Swear,” she said.

“I swear,” I said.

“I’m going now,” she said and rose and picked up the burning cigarette and crushed it carefully out into the tray and I rose too.

“Of course,” I said. “You have some packing to do even for an elopement, dont you? I’ll drive you home.”

“You dont need to,” she said.

“A lady, walking home alone at—it’s after midnight. What will Otis Harker say? You see, I’ve got to be a man too; I cant face Otis Harker otherwise since you wont stop being a lady to him until after tomorrow’s southbound train; I believe you did say Texas, didn’t you?” Though Otis was not in sight this time, though with pencil, paper and a watch I could have calculated about where he would be now. Though the figures could have been wrong and only Otis was not in sight, not we, crossing the shadow-bitten Square behind the flat rapid sabre-sweep of the headlights across the plate-glass storefronts, then into the true spring darkness where the sparse street lights were less than stars. And we could have talked if there had been more to talk about or maybe there had been more to talk about if we had talked. Then the small gate before the short walk to the small dark house not rented now of course and of course not vacant yet with a little space yet for decent decorum, and I wondered, thought Will Manfred sell him his house along with his hank or just abandon both to him—provided of course old Will Varner leaves him time to collect either one? and stopped.

“Dont get out,” she said and got out and shut the door and said, stooping a little to look at me beneath the top: “Swear again.”

“I swear,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Good night,” and turned and I watched her, through the gate and up the walk, losing dimension now, onto or rather into the shadow of the little gallery and losing even substance now. And then I heard the door and it was as if she had not been. No, not that; not not been, but rather no more is, since was remains always and forever, inexplicable and immune, which is its grief. That’s what I mean: a dimension less, then a substance less, then the sound of a door and then, not never been but simply no more is since always and forever that was remains, as if what is going to happen to one tomorrow already gleams faintly visible now if the watcher were only wise enough to discern it or maybe just brave enoughsion height='0em'>

The spring night, cooler now, as if for a little while, until tomorrow’s dusk and the new beginning, somewhere had suspired into sleep at last the amazed hushed burning of hope and dream two-and-two engendered. It would even be quite cold by dawn, daybreak. But even then not cold enough to chill, make hush for sleep the damned mockingbird for three nights now keeping his constant racket in Maggie’s pink dogwood just under my bedroom window. So the trick of course would be to divide, not him but his racket, the having to listen to him: one Gavin Stevens to cross his dark gallery too and into the house and up the stairs to cover his head in the bedclothes, losing in his turn a dimension of Gavin Stevens, an ectoplasm of Gavin Stevens impervious to cold and hearing too to bear its half of both, bear its half or all of any other burdens anyone wanted to shed and shuck, having only this moment assumed that one of a young abandoned girl’s responsibility.

Because who would miss a dimension? Who indeed but would be better off for having lost it, who had nothing in the first place to offer but just devotion, eighteen years of devotion, the ectoplasm of devotion too thin to be crowned by scorn, warned by hatred, annealed by grief. That’s it: unpin, shed, cast off the last clumsy and anguished dimension, and so be free. Unpin: that’s the trick, remembering Vladimir Kyrilytch’s “He aint unpinned it yet”—the twenty-dollar gold piece pinned to the undershirt of the country boy on his first trip to Memphis, who even if he has never been there before, has as much right as any to hope he can be, may be, will be tricked or trapped into a whorehouse before he has to go back home again. He has unpinned it now I thought.

TWENTY-ONE

CHARLES MALLISON

You know how it is, you wake in the morning and you know at once that it has already happened and you are already too late. You didn’t know what it was going to be, which was why you had to watch so hard for it, trying to watch in all directions at once. Then you let go for a second, closed your eyes for just one second, and bang! it happened and it was too late, not even time to wake up and still hold off a minute, just to stretch and think What is it that makes today such a good one? then to let it come in, flow in: Oh yes, there’s not any school today. More: Thursday and in April and still there’s not any school today.