It loomed, bulked, square and enormous, with jagged half-toppled chimneys, its roofline sagging a little; for an instant as they moved, hurried, toward it Quentin saw completely through it a ragged segment of sky with three hot stars in it as if the house were of one dimension, painted on a canvas curtain in which there was a tear; now, almost beneath it, the dead furnace-breath of air in which they moved seemed to reek in slow and protracted violence with a smell of desolation and decay as if the wood of which it was built were flesh. She was trotting beside him now, her hand trembling on his arm yet gripping it still with that lifeless and rigid strength; not talking, not saying words, yet producing a steady whimpering, almost a moaning, sound.
Apparently she could not see at all now, so that he had to guide her toward where he knew the steps would be and then restrain her, whispering, hissing, aping without knowing it her own tense fainting haste: ‘ Wait. This way. Be careful, now. They’re rotten.” He almost lifted, carried, her up the steps, supporting her from behind by both elbows as you lift a child; he could feel something fierce and implacable and dynamic driving down the thin rigid arms and into his palms and up his own arms; lying in the Massachusetts bed he remembered how he thought, knew, said suddenly to himself, “Why, she’s not afraid at all. It’s something. But she’s not afraid,” feeling her flee out of his hands, hearing her feet cross the gallery, overtaking her where she now stood beside the invisible front door, panting.
‘Now what?” he whispered.
‘Break it,’ she whispered. ‘It will be locked, nailed. You have the hatchet. Break it.”
‘But—’ he began.
‘Break it!” she hissed, ‘It belonged to Ellen. I am her sister, her only living heir. Break it.
Hurry.” He pushed against the door.
It did not move.
She panted beside him. ‘Hurry,’ she said. ‘ Break it.”
‘Listen, Miss Rosa,’ he said. ‘Listen.”
‘Give me the hatchet.”
‘Wait,’ he said.
‘Do you really want to go inside?”
‘I’m going inside,’ she whimpered.
‘Give me the hatchet.”
‘Wait,’ he said. He moved along the gallery, guiding himself by the wall, moving carefully since he did not know just where the floor planks might be rotten or even missing, until he came to a window. The shutters were closed and apparently locked, yet they gave almost at once to the blade of the hatchet, making not very much sound—a flimsy and sloven barricading done either by an old feeble person—woman—or by a shiftless man; he had already inserted the hatchet blade beneath the sash before he discovered that there was no glass in it, that all he had to do now was to step through the vacant frame. Then he stood there for a moment, telling himself to go on in, telling himself that he was not afraid, he just didn’t want to know what might be inside. ‘Well?” Miss Coldfield whispered from the door. ‘Have you opened it?”
‘Yes,’ he said. He did not whisper, though he did not speak overloud; the dark room which he faced repeated his voice with hollow profundity, as an unfurnished room will. ‘You wait there. I’ll see if I can open the door.”—”So now I shall have to go in,” he thought, climbing over the sill. He knew that the room was empty; the echo of his voice had told him that, yet he moved as slowly and carefully here as he had along the gallery, feeling along the wall with his hand, following the wall when it turned, and found the door and passed through it. He would be in the hall now; he almost believed that he could hear Miss Coldfield breathing just beyond the wall beside him.
It was pitch dark; he could not see, he knew that he could not see, yet he found that his eyelids and muscles were aching with strain while merging and dissolving red spots wheeled and vanished across the retinae. He went on; he felt the door under his hand at last and now he could hear Miss Coldfield’s whimpering breathing beyond it as he fumbled for the lock. Then behind him the sound of the scraped match was like an explosion, a pistol; even before the puny following light appeared all his organs lifted sickeningly; he could not even move for a moment even though something of sanity roared silently inside his skull: “It’s all right! If it were danger, he would not have struck the match!” Then he could move, and turned to see the tiny gnomelike creature in headrag and voluminous skirts, the worn coffee-colored face staring at him, the match held in one coffee-colored and doll-like hand above her head.
Then he was not watching her but watching the match as it burned down toward her fingers; he watched quietly as she moved at last and lit a second match from the first and turned; he saw then the square-ended saw chunk beside the wall and the lamp sitting upon it as she lifted the chimney and held the match to the wick. He remembered it, lying here in the Massachusetts bed and breathing fast now, now that peace and quiet had fled again.
He remembered how she did not say one word to him, not Who are you? or What do you want here? but merely came with a bunch of enormous old-fashioned iron keys, as if she had known all the time that this hour must come and that it could not be resisted, and opened the door and stepped back a little as Miss Coldfield entered.
And how she (Clytie) and Miss Coldfield said no word to one another, as if Clytie had looked once at the other woman and knew that that would do no good; that it was to him, Quentin, that she turned, putting her hand on his arm and saying, ‘Dont let her go up there, young marster.” And how maybe she looked at him and knew that would do no good either, because she turned and overtook Miss Coldfield and caught her arm and said, ‘Dont you go up there, Rosie’ and Miss Coldfield struck the hand away and went on toward the stairs (and now he saw that she had a flashlight; he remembered how he thought, “It must have been in tie umbrella too along with the axe”) and Clytie said; ‘Rosie’ and ran after the other again, whereupon Miss Coldfield turned on the step and struck Clytie to the floor with a full-armed blow like a man would have, and turned and went on up the stairs.
She (Clytie) lay on the bare floor of the scaling and empty hall like a small shapeless bundle of quiet clean rags. When he reached her he saw that she was quite conscious, her eyes wide open and calm; he stood above her, thinking, “Yes. She is the one who owns the terror.”
When he raised her it was like picking up a handful of sticks concealed in a rag bundle, so light she was.
She could not stand; he had to hold her up, aware of some feeble movement or intention in her limbs until he realized that she was trying to sit on the bottom step. He lowered her to it. ‘Who are you?” she said. ‘I’m Quentin Compson,’ he answered.
‘Yes. I remember your grandpaw. You go up there and make her come down.
Make her go away from here. Whatever he done, me and Judith and him have paid it out. You go and get her. Take her away from here.” So he mounted the stairs, the worn bare treads, the cracked and scaling wall on one side, the balustrade with its intermittent missing spindles on the other. He remembered how he looked back and she was still sitting as he had left her, and that now (and he had not heard him enter) there stood in the hall below a hulking young lightcolored Negro man in clean faded overalls and shirt, his arms dangling, no surprise, no nothing in the saddle-colored and slack-mouthed idiot face.
He remembered how he thought, “The scion, the heir, the apparent (though not obvious)” and how he heard Miss Coldfield’s feet and saw the light of the torch approaching along the upper hall and how she came and passed him, how she stumbled a little and caught herself and looked full at him as if she had never seen him before—the eyes wide and unseeing like a sleepwalker’s, the face which had always been tallow-hued now possessing some still profounder, some almost unbearable, quality of bloodlessness and he thought, “What? What is it now? It’s not shock. And it never has been fear.
Can it be triumph?” and how she passed him and went on. He heard Clytie say to the man, “Take her to the gate, the buggy” and he stood there thinking, “I should go with her” and then, “But I must see too now. I will have to. Maybe I shall be sorry tomorrow, but I must see.” So when he came back down the stairs (and he remembered how he thought, “Maybe my face looks like hers did, but it’s not triumph”) there was only Clytie in the hall, sitting still on the bottom step, sitting still in the attitude in which he had left her.
She did not even look at him when he
