Maybe that was why he didn’t have to think about her during those three months between that September and that Christmas while Henry talked about her to him, saying every time he breathed: Hers and my lives are to exist within and upon yours; did not need to waste any time over the love after it happened, backfired on him, why he never bothered to write her any letters (except that last one) which she would want to save, why he never actually proposed to her and gave her a ring for Mrs Sutpen to show around.
Because the fate was on her too: the same old Abraham. who was so old and weak now nobody would want him in the flesh on any debt; maybe he didn’t even have to wait for that Christmas to see her to know this; maybe that’s what it was that came out of the three months of Henry’s talking that he heard without listening to: I am not hearing about a young girl, a virgin; I am hearing about a narrow delicate fenced virgin field already furrowed and bedded so that all I shall need to do is drop the seeds in, caress it smooth again, saw her that Christmas and knew it for certain and then forgot it, went back to school and did not even remember that he had forgotten it, because he did not have time then; maybe it was just one day in that spring you told about when he stopped and said, right quiet: All right. I want to go to bed with who might be my sister.
All right and then forgot that too. Because he didn’t have time. That is, he didn’t have anything else but time, because he had to wait.
But not for her. That was all fixed. It was the other. Maybe he thought it would be in the mail bag each time the nigger rode over from Sutpen’s Hundred, and Henry believing it was the letter from her that he was waiting for, when what he was thinking was Maybe he will write it then. He would just have to write “I am your father. Burn this” and I would do it. Or if not that, a sheet, a scrap of paper with the one word “Charles” in his hand, and I would know what he meant and he would not even have to ask me to burn it. Or a lock of his hair or a paring from his fingernail and I would know them because I believe now that I have known what his hair and his fingernails would look like all my life, could choose that lock and that paring out of a thousand. And it did not come, and his letter went to her every two weeks and hers came back to him, and maybe he thought If one of mine to her should come back to me unopened then.
That would be a sign. And that didn’t happen: and then Henry began to talk about his stopping at Sutpen’s Hundred for a day or so on his way home and he said all right to it, said It will be Henry who will get the letter, the letter saying it is inconvenient for me to come at that time; so apparently he does not intend to acknowledge me as his son, but at least I shall have forced him to admit that I am. And that one did not come either and the date was set and the family at Sutpen’s Hundred notified of it and that letter did not come either and he thought It will be then; I wronged him; maybe this is what he has been waiting for and maybe his heart sprang then, maybe he said Yes. Yes. I will renounce her; I will renounce love and all; that will be cheap, cheap, even though he say to me “never look upon my face again; take my love and my acknowledgement in secret, and go” I will do that; I will not even demand to know of him what it was my mother did that justified his action toward her and me.
So the day came and he and Henry rode the forty miles again, into the gates and up the drive to the house. He knew what would be there the woman whom he had seen once and seen through, the girl whom he had seen through without even having to see once, the man whom he had seen daily, watched out of his fearful intensity of need and had never penetrated—the mother who had taken Henry aside before they had been six hours in the house on that Christmas visit and informed him of the engagement almost before the fiance had had time to associate the daughter’s name with the daughter’s face: so that probably before they even reached school again, and without his being aware that he had done so, Henry had already told Bon what was in his mother’s mind, (who had already told Bon what was in his); so that maybe before they even started on Bon’s second visit (It would be June now and what would it be in North Mississippi? what was it you said? the magnolias in bloom and the mockingbirds, and in fifty years more, after they had gone and fought it and lost it and come back home, the Decoration Day and the veterans in the neat brushed handironed gray and the spurious bronze medals that never meant anything to begin with, and the chosen young girls in white dresses bound at the waist with crimson sashes and the band would play Dixie and all the old doddering men would yell that you would not have thought would have had wind enough to get there, walk down town to sit on the rostrum even)—it would be June now, with the magnolias and mockingbirds in the moonlight and the curtains blowing in the June air of Commencement, and the music, fiddles, and triangles, inside among the swirling and dipping hoops: and Henry would be a little tight, that should have been saying “I demand to know your intentions toward my sister” but wasn’t saying it, instead maybe blushing again even in the moonlight, but standing straight and blushing because when you are proud enough to be humble you don’t have to cringe (who every time he breathed over his vocal chords he was saying We belong to you; do as you will with us), saying “I used to think that I would hate the man that I would have to look at every day and whose every move and action and speech would say to me, I have seen and touched parts of your sister’s body that you will never see and touch: and now I know that I shall hate him and that’s why I want that man to be you,” knowing that Bon would know what he meant, was trying to say, tell him, thinking, telling himself (Henry): Not just because he is older than I am and has known more than I shall ever know and has remembered more of it; but because of my own free will, and whether I knew it at the time or not does not matter, I gave my life and Judith’s both to him—’
‘That’s still not love,’ Quentin said.
‘All right,’ Shreve said. ‘Just listen. —They rode the forty miles and into the gates and up to the house. And this time Sutpen wasn’t even there.
And Ellen didn’t even know where he had gone, believing blandly and volubly that he had gone to Memphis or maybe even to Saint Louis on business, and Henry and Judith not even caring that much, and only he, Bon, to know where Sutpen had gone, saying to himself Of course; he wasn’t sure; he had to go there to make sure, telling himself that loud now, loud and fast too so he would not, could not, hear the thinking, the But if he suspected, why not have told me? I would have done that, gone to him first, who have the blood after it was tainted and corrupt by whatever it was in mother; loud and fast now, telling himself That’s what it is; maybe he has gone on ahead to wait for me; he left no message for me here because the others are not to suspect yet and he knows that I will know at once where he is when I find him gone, thinking of the two of them, the somber vengeful woman who was his mother and the grim rocklike man who had looked at him every day for ten days with
