"You catch the fellow that done it, and you"ll get the reward," the sheriff said. So they took Brown to the jail for safekeeping. "Only I reckon it ain"t no actual need of that," the sheriff said. "I reckon as long as that thousand dollars is where he can smell it, you couldn"t run him away from here." When Brown was taken away, still hoa.r.s.e, still gesticulant and outraged, the sheriff telephoned to a neighboring town, where there was a pair of bloodhounds. The dogs would arrive on the early morning train.
About the bleak platform, in the sad dawn of that Sunday morning, thirty or forty men were waiting when the train came in, the lighted windows fleeing and jarring to a momentary stop. It was a fast train and it did not always stop at Jefferson. It halted only long enough to disgorge the two dogs: a thousand costly tons of intricate and curious metal glaring and crashing up and into an almost shocking silence filled with the puny sounds of men, to vomit two gaunt and cringing phantoms whose droopeared and mild faces gazed with sad abjectness about at the weary, pale faces of men who had not slept very much since night before last, ringing them about with something terrible and eager and impotent. It was as if the very initial outrage of the murder carried in its wake and made of all subsequent actions something monstrous and paradoxical and wrong, in themselves against both reason and nature.
It was just sunrise when the posse reached the cabin behind the charred and now cold embers of the house. The dogs, either gaining courage from the light and warmth of the sun or catching the strained and tense excitement from the men, began to surge and yap about the cabin. Snuffing loudly and as one beast they took a course, dragging the man who held the leashes. They ran side by side for a hundred yards, where they stopped and began to dig furiously into the earth and exposed a pit where someone had buried recently emptied food tins. They dragged the dogs away by main strength. They dragged them some distance from the cabin and made another cast. For a short time the dogs moiled, whimpering, then they set off again, fulltongued, drooling, and dragged and carried the running and cursing men at top speed back to the cabin, where, feet planted and with backflung heads and backrolled eyeb.a.l.l.s, they bayed the empty doorway with the pa.s.sionate abandon of two baritones singing Italian opera. The men took the dogs back to town, in cars, and fed them. When they crossed the square the church bells were ringing, slow and peaceful, and along the streets the decorous people moved sedately beneath parasols, carrying Bibles and prayerbooks.
That night a youth, a countryboy, and his father came in to see the sheriff. The boy told of having been on the way home in a car late Friday night, and of a man who stopped him a mile or two beyond the scene of the murder, with a pistol. The boy believed that he was about to be robbed and even killed, and he told how he was about to trick the man into permitting him to drive right up into his own front yard, where he intended to stop the car and spring out and shout for help, but that the man suspected something and forced him to stop the car and let him out. The father wanted to know how much of the thousand dollars would become theirs.
"You catch him and we"ll see," the sheriff said. So they waked the dogs and put them into another car and the youth showed them where the man had got out, and they cast the dogs, who charged immediately into the woods and with their apparent infallibility for metal in any form, found the old pistol with its two loaded chambers almost at once.
"It"s one of them old Civil War, cap-and-ball pistols," the deputy said. "One of the caps has been snapped, but it never went off. What do you reckon he was doing with that?"
"Turn them dogs loose," the sheriff said. "Maybe them leashes worry them." They did so. The dogs were free now; thirty minutes later they were lost. Not the men lost the dogs; the dogs lost the men. They were just across a small creek and a ridge, and the men could hear them plainly. They were not baying now, with pride and a.s.surance and perhaps pleasure. The sound which they now made was a longdrawn and hopeless wailing, while steadily the men shouted at them. But apparently the animals could not hear either. Both voices were distinguishable, yet the belllike and abject wailing seemed to come from a single throat, as though the two beasts crouched flank to flank. After a while the men found them so, crouched in a ditch. By that time their voices sounded almost like the voices of children. The men squatted there until it was light enough to find their way back to the cars. Then it was Monday morning.
the temperature began to rise monday. on tuesday, the night, the darkness after the hot day, is close, still, oppressive; as soon as Byron enters the house he feels the corners of his nostrils whiten and tauten with the thick smell of the stale, mankept house. And when Hightower approaches, the smell of plump unwashed flesh and unfresh clothing-that odor of unfastidious sedentation, of static overflesh not often enough bathed-is well nigh overpowering. Entering, Byron thinks as he has thought before: "That is his right. It may not be my way, but it is his way and his right." And he remembers how once he had seemed to find the answer, as though by inspiration, divination: "It is the odor of goodness. Of course it would smell bad to us that are bad and sinful."
They sit again opposite one another in the study, the desk, the lighted lamp, between. Byron sits again on the hard chair, his face lowered, still. His voice is sober, stubborn: the voice of a man saying something which will be not only unpleasing, but will not be believed. "I am going to find another place for her. A place where it will be more private. Where she can ..."
Hightower watches his lowered face. "Why must she move? When she is comfortable there, with a woman at hand if she should need one?" Byron does not answer. He sits motionless, downlooking; his face is stubborn, still; looking at it, Hightower thinks, "It is because so much happens. Too much happens. That"s it. Man performs, engenders, so much more than he can or should have to bear. That"s how he finds that he can bear anything. That"s it. That"s what is so terrible. That he can bear anything, anything." He watches Byron. "Is Mrs. Beard the only reason why she is going to move?"
Still Byron does not look up, speaking in that still, stubborn voice: "She needs a place where it will be kind of home to her. She ain"t got a whole lot more time, and in a boarding house, where it"s mostly just men ... A room where it will be quiet when her time comes, and not every durn horsetrader or courtjury that pa.s.ses through the hallway ..."
"I see," Hightower says. He watches Byron"s face. "And you want me to take her in here." Byron makes to speak, but the other goes on: his tone too is cold, level: "It won"t do, Byron. If there were another woman here, living in the house. It"s a shame too, with all the room here, the quiet. I"m thinking of her, you see. Not myself. I would not care what was said, thought."
"I am not asking that." Byron does not look up. He can feel the other watching him. He thinks He knows that is not what I meant, too. He knows. He just said that. I know what he is thinking. I reckon I expected it. I reckon it is not any reason for him to think different from other folks, even about me "I reckon you ought to know that." Perhaps he does know it. But Byron does not look up to see. He talks on, in that dull, flat voice, downlooking, while beyond the desk Hightower, sitting a little more than erect, looks at the thin, weatherhardened, laborpurged face of the man opposite him. "I ain"t going to get you mixed up in it when it ain"t none of your trouble. You haven"t even seen her, and I don"t reckon you ever will. I reckon likely you have never seen him to know it either. It"s just that I thought maybe ..." His voice ceases. Across the desk the unbending minister looks at him, waiting, not offering to help him. "When it"s a matter of not-do, I reckon a man can trust himself for advice. But when it comes to a matter of doing, I reckon a fellow had better listen to all the advice he can get. But I ain"t going to mix you up in it. I don"t want you to worry about that."
"I think I know that," Hightower says. He watches the other"s downlooking face. "I am not in life anymore," he thinks. "That"s why there is no use in even trying to meddle, interfere. He could hear me no more than that man and that woman (ay, and that child) would hear or heed me if I tried to come back into life." "But you told me she knows that he is here."
"Yes," Byron says, brooding. "Out there where I thought the chance to harm ere a man or woman or child could not have found me. And she hadn"t hardly got there before I had to go and blab the whole thing."
"I don"t mean that. You didn"t know yourself, then. I mean, the rest of it. About him and the-that ... It has been three days. She must know, whether you told her or not. She must have heard by now."
"Christmas." Byron does not look up. "I never said any more, after she asked about that little white scar by his mouth. All the time we were coming to town that evening I was afraid she would ask. I would try to think up things to talk to her about so she would not have a chance to ask me any more. And all the time I thought I was keeping her from finding out that he had not only run off and left her in trouble, he had changed his name to keep her from finding him, and that now when she found him at last, what she had found was a bootlegger, she already knew it. Already knew that he was a nogood." He says now, with a kind of musing astonishment: "I never even had any need to keep it from her, to lie it smooth. It was like she knew beforehand what I would say, that I was going to lie to her. Like she had already thought of that herself, and that she already didn"t believe it before I even said it, and that was all right too. But the part of her that knew the truth, that I could not have fooled anyway ..." He fumbles, gropes, the unbending man beyond the desk watching him, not offering to help. "It"s like she was in two parts, and one of them knows that he is a scoundrel. But the other part believes that when a man and a woman are going to have a child, that the Lord will see that they are all together when the right time comes. Like it was G.o.d that looks after women, to protect them from men. And if the Lord don"t see fit to let them two parts meet and kind of compare, then I ain"t going to do it either."
"Nonsense," Hightower says. He looks across the desk at the other"s still, stubborn, ascetic face: the face of a hermit who has lived for a long time in an empty place where sand blows. "The thing, the only thing, for her to do is to go back to Alabama. To her people."
"I reckon not," Byron says. He says it immediately, with immediate finality, as if he has been waiting all the while for this to be said. "She won"t need to do that. I reckon she won"t need to do that." But he does not look up. He can feel the other looking at him.
"Does Bu-Brown know that she is in Jefferson?"
For an instant Byron almost smiles. His lip lifts: a thin movement almost shadow, without mirth. "He"s been too busy. After that thousand dollars. It"s right funny to watch him. Like a man that can"t play a tune, blowing a horn right loud, hoping that in a minute it will begin to make music. Being drug across the square on a handcuff every twelve or fifteen hours, when likely they couldn"t run him away if they was to sick them bloodhounds on him. He spent Sat.u.r.day night in jail, still talking about how they were trying to beat him out of his thousand dollars by trying to make out that he helped Christmas do the killing, until at last Buck Conner went up to his cell and told him he would put a gag in his mouth if he didn"t shut up and let the other prisoners sleep. And he shut up, and Sunday night they went out with the dogs and he raised so much racket that they had to take him out of jail and let him go too. But the dogs never got started. And him hollering and cussing the dogs and wanting to beat them because they never struck a trail, telling everybody again how it was him that reported Christmas first and that all he wanted was fair justice, until the sheriff took him aside and talked to him. They didn"t know what the sheriff said to him. Maybe he threatened to lock him back up in jail and not let him go with them next time. Anyway, he calmed down some, and they went on. They never got back to town until late Monday night. He was still quiet. Maybe he was wore out. He hadn"t slept none in some time, and they said how he was trying to outrun the dogs so that the sheriff finally threatened to handcuff him to a deputy to keep him back so the dogs could smell something beside him. He needed a shave already when they locked him up Sat.u.r.day night, and he needed one bad by now. I reckon he must have looked more like a murderer than even Christmas. And he was cussing Christmas now, like Christmas had done hid out just for meanness, to spite him and keep him from getting that thousand dollars. And they brought him back to jail and locked him up that night. And this morning they went and took him out again and they all went off with the dogs, on a new scent. Folks said they could hear him hollering and talking until they were clean out of town."
"And she doesn"t know that, you say. You say you have kept that from her. You had rather that she knew him to be a scoundrel than a fool: is that it?"
Byron"s face is still again, not smiling now; it is quite sober. "I don"t know. It was last Sunday night, after I came out to talk to you and went back home. I thought she would be asleep in bed, but she was still sitting up in the parlor, and she said, "What is it? What has happened here?" And I didn"t look at her and I could feel her looking at me. I told her it was a n.i.g.g.e.r killed a white woman. I didn"t lie then. I reckon I was so glad I never had to lie then. Because before I thought, I had done said "and set the house afire." And then it was too late. I had pointed out the smoke, and I had told her about the two fellows named Brown and Christmas that lived out there. And I could feel her watching me the same as I can you now, and she said, "What was the n.i.g.g.e.r"s name?" It"s like G.o.d sees that they find out what they need to know out of men"s lying, without needing to ask. And that they don"t find out what they don"t need to know, without even knowing they have not found it out. And so I don"t know for sure what she knows and what she don"t know. Except that I have kept it from her that it was the man she is hunting for that told on the murderer and that he is in jail now except when he is out running with dogs the man that took him up and befriended him. I have kept that from her."
"And what are you going to do now? Where does she want to move?"
"She wants to go out there and wait for him. I told her that he is away on business for the sheriff. So I didn"t lie altogether. She had already asked me where he lived and I had already told her. And she said that was the place where she belonged until he came back, because that is his house. She said that"s what he would want her to do. And I couldn"t tell her different, that that cabin is the last place in the world he would want her to ever see. She wanted to go out there, as soon as I got home from the mill this evening. She had her bundle all tied up and her bonnet on, waiting for me to get home. "I started once to go on by myself," she said. "But I wasn"t sho I knowed the way." And I said "Yes; only it was too late today and we would go out there tomorrow," and she said, "It"s a hour till dark yet. It ain"t but two miles, is it?" and I said to let"s wait because I would have to ask first, and she said, "Ask who? Ain"t it Lucas"s house?" and I could feel her watching me and she said, "I thought you said that that was where Lucas lived," and she was watching me and she said, "Who is this preacher you keep on going to talk to about me?" "
"And you are going to let her go out there to live?"
"It might be best. She would be private out there, and she would be away from all the talking until this business is over."
"You mean, she has got her mind set on it, and you won"t stop her. You don"t want to stop her.,"
Byron does not look up. "In a way, it is his house. The nighest thing to a home of his own he will ever own, I reckon. And he is her ..."
"Out there alone, with a child coming. The nearest house a few negro cabins a half mile away." He watches Byron"s face.
"I have thought of that. There are ways, things that can be done ..."
"What things? What can you do to protect her out there?"
Byron does not answer at once; he does not look up. When he speaks his voice is dogged. "There are secret things a man can do without being evil, Reverend. No matter how they might look to folks."
"I don"t think that you could do anything that would be very evil, Byron, no matter how it looked to folks. But are you going to undertake to say just how far evil extends into the appearance of evil? just where between doing and appearing evil stops?"
"No," Byron says. Then he moves slightly; he speaks as if he too were waking: "I hope not. I reckon I am trying to do the right thing by my lights."-"And that," Hightower thinks, "is the firt lie he ever told me. Ever told anyone, man or woman, perhaps including himself." He looks across the desk at the stubborn, dogged, sober face that has not yet looked at him. "Or maybe it is not lie yet because he does not know himself that it is so." He says: "Well." He speaks now with a kind of spurious brusqueness which, flabbyjowled and darkcaverneyed, his face belies. "That is settled, then. You"ll take her out there, to his house, and you"ll see that she is comfortable and you"ll see that she is not disturbed until this is over. And then you"ll tell that man-Bunch, Brown-that she is here."
"And he"ll run," Byron says. He does not look up, yet through him there seems to go a wave of exultation, of triumph, before he can curb and hide it, when it is too late to try. For the moment he does not attempt to curb it; backthrust too in his hard chair, looking for the first time at the minister, with a face confident and bold and suffused. The other meets his gaze steadily.
"Is that what you want him to do?" Hightower says. They sit so in the lamplight. Through the open window comes the hot, myriad silence of the breathless night. "Think what you are doing. You are attempting to come between man and wife."
Byron has caught himself. His face is no longer triumphant. But he looks steadily at the older man. Perhaps he tried to catch his voice too. But he cannot yet. "They aint man and wife yet," he says.
"Does she think that? Do you believe that she will say that?" They look at one another. "Ah, Byron, Byron. What are a few mumbled words before G.o.d, before the steadfastness of a woman"s nature? Before that child?"
"Well, he may not run. If he gets that reward, that money. Like enough he will be drunk enough on a thousand dollars to do anything, even marry."
"Ah, Byron, Byron."
"Then what do you think we-I ought to do? What do you advise?"
"Go away. Leave Jefferson." They look at one another. "No," Hightower says. "You don"t need my help. You are already being helped by someone stronger than I am."
For a moment Byron does not speak. They look at one another, steadily. "Helped by who?"
"By the devil," Hightower says.
"And the devil is looking after him, too," Hightower thinks. He is in midstride, halfway home, his laden small market basket on his arm. "Him, too. Him, too," he thinks, walking. It is hot. He is in his shirt sleeves, tall, with thin blackclad legs and spare, gaunt arms and shoulders, and with that flabby and obese stomach like some monstrous pregnancy. The shirt is white, but it is not fresh; his collar is toiled, as is the white lawn cravat carelessly knotted, and he has not shaved for two or three days. His panama hat is soiled, and beneath it, between hat and skull against the heat, the edge and corners of a soiled handkerchief protrude. He has been to town to do his semiweekly marketing, where, gaunt, misshapen, with his gray stubble and his dark spectacleblurred eyes and his blackrimmed hands and the rank manodor of his sedentary and unwashed flesh, he entered the one odorous and cluttered store which he patronised and paid with cash for what he bought.
"Well, they found that n.i.g.g.e.r"s trail at last," the proprietor said.
"Negro?" Hightower said. He became utterly still, in the act of putting into his pocket the change from his purchases.
"That bah-fellow; the murderer. I said all the time that he wasn"t right. Wasn"t a white man. That there was something funny about him. But you can"t tell folks nothing until-"
"Found him?" Hightower said.
"You durn right they did. Why, the fool never even had sense enough to get out of the county. Here the sheriff has been telephoning all over the country for him, and the black son-uh was right here under his durn nose all the time."
"And they have ..." He leaned forward against the counter, above his laden basket. He could feel the counter edge against his stomach. It felt solid, stable enough; it was more like the earth itself were rocking faintly, preparing to move. Then it seemed to move, like something released slowly and without haste, in an augmenting swoop, and cleverly, since the eye was tricked into believing that the dingy shelves ranked with flyspecked tins, and the merchant himself behind the counter, had not moved; outraging, tricking sense. And he thinking, "I wont! I wont! I have bought immunity. I have paid. I have paid."
"They ain"t caught him yet," the proprietor said. "But they will. The sheriff taken the dogs out to the church before daylight this morning. They ain"t six hours behind him. To think that the durn fool never had no better sense ... show he is a n.i.g.g.e.r, even if nothing else. ..." Then the proprietor was saying, "Was that all today?"
"What?" Hightower said. "What?"
"Was that all you wanted?"
"Yes. Yes. That was ..." He began to fumble in his pocket, the proprietor watching him. His hand came forth, still fumbling. It blundered upon the counter, shedding coins. The proprietor stopped two or three of them as they were about to roll off the counter.
"What"s this for?" the proprietor said.
"For the ..." Hightower"s hand fumbled at the laden basket. "For-"
"You already paid." The proprietor was watching him, curious. "That"s your change here, that I just gave you. For the dollar bill."
"Oh," Hightower said. "Yes. I ... I just-" The merchant was gathering up the coins. He handed them back. When the customer"s hand touched his it felt like ice.
"It"s this hot weather," the proprietor said. "It does wear a man out. Do you want to set down a spell before you start home?" But Hightower apparently did not hear him. He was moving now, toward the door, while the merchant watched him. He pa.s.sed through the door and into the street, the basket on his arm, walking stiffly and carefully, like a man on ice. It was hot; heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality, a quality of living and palpitant chiaroscuro. Someone spoke to him in pa.s.sing; he did not even know it. He went on, thinking And him too. And him too walking fast now, so that when he turned the corner at last and entered that dead and empty little street where his dead and empty small house waited, he was almost panting. "It"s the heat," the top of his mind was saying to him, reiterant, explanatory. But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: "I wont. I wont. I have bought immunity. It is like words spoken aloud now: reiterative, patient, justificative: "I paid for it. I didn"t quibble about the price. No man can say that. I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling." The street shimmers and swims; he has been sweating, but now even the air of noon feels cool upon him. Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rushes fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I will not! I will not!
When, sitting in the study window in the first dark, he saw Byron pa.s.s into and then out of the street lamp, he sat suddenly forward in his chair. It was not that he was surprised to see Byron there, at that hour. At first, when he first recognised the figure, he thought Ah. I had an idea he would come tonight. It is not in him to support even the semblance of evil It was while he was thinking that that he started, sat forward: for an instant after recognizing the approaching figure in the full glare of the light he believed that he was mistaken, knowing all the while that he could not be, that it could be no one except Byron, since he was already turning into the gate.
Tonight Byron is completely changed. It shows in his walk, his carriage; leaning forward Hightower says to himself As though he has learned pride, or defiance Byron"s head is erect, he walks fast and erect; suddenly Hightower says, almost aloud: "He has done something. He has taken a step." He makes a clicking sound with his tongue, leaning in the dark window, watching the figure pa.s.s swiftly from sight beyond the window and in the direction of the porch, the entrance, and where in the next moment Hightower hears his feet and then his knock. "And he didn"t offer to tell me," he thinks. "I would have listened, let him think aloud to me." He is already crossing the room, pausing at the desk to turn on the light. He goes to the front door.
"It"s me, Reverend," Byron says.
"I recognised you," Hightower says. "Even though you didn"t stumble on the bottom step this time. You have entered this house on Sunday night, but until tonight you have never entered it without stumbling on the bottom step, Byron." This was the note upon which Byron"s calls usually opened: this faintly overbearing note of levity and warmth to put the other at his ease, and on the part of the caller that slow and countrybred diffidence which is courtesy. Sometimes it would seem to Hightower that he would actually hale Byron into the house by a judicious application of pure breath, as though Byron wore a sail.
But this time Byron is already entering, before Hightower has finished his sentence. He enters immediately, with that new air born somewhere between a.s.surance and defiance. "And I reckon you are going to find that you hate it worse when I don"t stumble than when I do," Byron says.
"Is that a hope, or is it a threat, Byron?"
"Well, I don"t mean it to be a threat," Byron says.
"Ah," Hightower says. "In other words, you can offer no hope. Well, I am forewarned, at least. I was forewarned as soon as I saw you in the street light. But at least you are going to tell me about it. What you have already done, even if you didn"t see fit to talk about it beforehand." They are moving toward the study door. Byron stops; he looks back and up at the taller face.
"Then you know," he says. "You have already heard." Then, though his head has not moved, he is no longer looking at the other. "Well," he says. He says: "Well, any man has got a free tongue. Woman too. But I would like to know who told you. Not that I am ashamed. Not that I aimed to keep it from you. I come to tell you myself, when I could."
They stand just without the door to the lighted room. Hightower sees now that Byron"s arms are laden with bundles, parcels that look like they might contain groceries. "What?" Hightower says. "What have you come to tell me?-But come in. Maybe I do know what it is already. But I want to see your face when you tell me. I forewarn you too, Byron." They enter the lighted room. The bundles are groceries: he has bought and carried too many like them himself not to know. "Sit down," he says.
"No," Byron says. "I ain"t going to stay that long." He stands, sober, contained, with that air compa.s.sionate still, but decisive without being a.s.sured, confident without being a.s.sertive: that air of a man about to do something which someone dear to him will not understand and approve, yet which he himself knows to be right just as he knows that the friend will never see it so. He says: "You ain"t going to like it. But there ain"t anything else to do. I wish you could see it so. But I reckon you can"t. And I reckon that"s all there is to it."
Across the desk, seated again, Hightower watches him gravely. "What have you done, Byron?"
Byron speaks in that new voice: that voice brief, terse, each word definite of meaning, not fumbling. "I took her out there this evening. I had already fixed up the cabin, cleaned it good. She is settled now. She wanted it so. It was the nearest thing to a home he ever had and ever will have, so I reckon she is ent.i.tled to use it, especially as the owner ain"t using it now. Being detained elsewhere, you might say. I know you ain"t going to like it. You can name lots of reasons, good ones. You"ll say it ain"t his cabin to give to her. All right. Maybe it ain"t. But it ain"t any living man or woman in this country or state to say she can"t use it. You"ll say that in her shape she ought to have a woman with her. All right. There is a n.i.g.g.e.r woman, one old enough to be sensible, that don"t live over two hundred yards away. She can call to her without getting up from the chair or the bed. You"ll say, but that ain"t a white woman. And I"ll ask you what will she be getting from the white women in Jefferson about the time that baby is due, when here she ain"t been in Jefferson but a week and already she can"t talk to a woman ten minutes before that woman knows she ain"t married yet, and as long as that durn scoundrel stays above ground where she can hear of him now and then, she ain"t going to be married. How much help will she be getting from the white ladies about that time? They"ll see that she has a bed to lay on and walls to hide her from the street all right. I don"t mean that. And I reckon a man would be justified in saying she dont deserve no more than that, being as it wasn"t behind no walls that she got in the shape she is in. But that baby never done the choosing. And even if it had, I be durn if any poor little tyke, having to face what it will have to face in this world, deserves-deserves more than-better than-But I reckon you know what I mean. I reckon you can even say it." Beyond the desk Hightower watches him while he talks in that level, restrained tone, not once at a loss for words until he came to something still too new and nebulous for him to more than feel. "And for the third reason. A white woman out there alone. You ain"t going to like that. You will like that least of all."
"Ah, Byron, Byron."
Byron"s voice is now dogged. Yet he holds his head up still. "I ain"t in the house with her. I got a tent. It ain"t close, neither. Just where I can hear her at need. And I fixed a bolt on the door. Any of them can come out, at any time, and see me in the tent."
"Ah, Byron, Byron."
"I know you ain"t thinking what most of them think. Are thinking. I know you would know better, even if she wasn"t-if it wasn"t for-I know you said that because of what you know that the others will think."
Hightower sits again in the att.i.tude of the eastern idol, between his parallel arms on the armrests of the chair. "Go away, Byron. Go away. Now. At once. Leave this place forever, this terrible place, this terrible, terrible place. I can read you. You will tell me that you have just learned love; I will tell you that you have just learned hope. That"s all; hope. The object does not matter, not to the hope, not even to you. There is but one end to this, to the road that you are taking: sin or marriage. And you would refuse the sin. That"s it, G.o.d forgive me. It will, must be, marriage or nothing with you. And you will insist that it be marriage. You will convince her; perhaps you already have, if she but knew it, would admit it: else, why is she content to stay here and yet make no effort to see the man whom she has come to find? I cannot say to you, Choose the sin, because you would not only hate me: you would carry that hatred straight to her. So I say, Go away. Now. At once. Turn your face now, and don"t look back. But not this, Byron."
They look at one another. "I knew you would not like it," Byron says. "I reckon I done right not to make myself a guest by sitting down. But I did not expect this. That you too would turn against a woman wronged and betrayed-"
"No woman who has a child is ever betrayed; the husband of a mother, whether he be the father or not, is already a cuckold. Give yourself at least the one chance in ten, Byron. If you must marry, there are single women, girls, virgins. It"s not fair that you should sacrifice yourself to a woman who has chosen once and now wishes to renege that choice. It"s not right. It"s not just. G.o.d didn"t intend it so when He made marriage. Made it? Women made marriage."
"Sacrifice? Me the sacrifice? It seems to me the sacrifice-"
Not to her. For the Lena Groves there are always two men in the world and their number is legion: Lucas Burches and Byron Bunches. But no Lena, no woman, deserves more than one of them. No woman. There have been good women who were martyrs to brutes, in their cups and such. But what woman, good or bad, has ever suffered from any brute as men have suffered from good women? Tell me that, Byron."
They speak quietly, without heat, giving pause to weigh one another"s words, as two men already impregnable, each in his own conviction will. "I reckon you are right," Byron says. "Anyway, it ain"t for me to say that you are wrong. And I don"t reckon it"s for you to say that I am wrong, even if I am."
"No," Hightower says.
"Even if I am," Byron says. "So I reckon I"ll say good night." He says, quietly: "It"s a good long walk out there."
"Yes," Hightower says. "I used to walk it myself, now and then. It must be about three miles."
"Two miles," Byron says. "Well." He turns. Hightower does not move. Byron shifts the parcels which he has not put down. "I"ll say good night," he says, moving toward the door. "I reckon I"ll see you, sometime soon."
"Yes," Hightower says. "Is there anything I can do? Anything you need? bedclothes and such?"
"I"m obliged. I reckon she has a plenty. There was some already there. I"m obliged."
"And you will let me know? If anything comes up. If the child Have you arranged for a doctor?"
"I"ll get that attended to."
"But have you seen one yet? Have you engaged one?"
"I aim to see to all that. And I"ll let you know."
Then he is gone. From the window again Hightower watches him pa.s.s and go on up the street, toward the edge of town and his two mile walk, carrying his paperwrapped packages of food. He pa.s.sed from sight walking erect and at a good gait; such a gait as an old man already gone to flesh and short wind, an old man who has already spent too much time sitting down, could not have kept up with. And Hightower leans there in the window, in the August heat, oblivious of the odor in which he lives-that smell of people who no longer live in life: that odor of overplump desiccation and stale linen as though a precursor of the tomb-listening to the feet which he seems to hear still long after he knows that he cannot, thinking, "G.o.d bless him, G.o.d help him"; thinking To be young. To be young. There is nothing else like it: there is nothing else in the world He is thinking quietly: "I should not have got out of the habit of prayer." Then he hears the feet no longer. He hears now only the myriad and interminable insects, leaning in the window, breathing the hot still rich maculate smell of the earth, thinking of how when he was young, a youth, he had loved darkness, of walking or sitting alone among trees at night. Then the ground, the bark of trees, became actual, savage, filled with, evocative of, strange and baleful half delights and half terrors. He was afraid of it. He feared; he loved in being afraid. Then one day while at the seminary he realised that he was no longer afraid. It was as though a door had shut somewhere. He was no longer afraid of darkness. He just hated it; he would flee from it, to walls, to artificial light. "Yes," he thinks. "I should never have let myself get out of the habit of prayer." He turns from the window. One wall of the study is lined with books. He pauses before them, seeking, until he finds the one which he wants. It is Tennyson. It is dogeared. He has had it ever since the seminary. He sits beneath the lamp and opens it. It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated l.u.s.ts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand.
Chapter 14.
"There"s somebody out there in that cabin," the deputy told the sheriff. "Not hiding: living in it."