Beyond, William Faulkner
Beyond
THE HARD ROUND ear of the stethoscope was cold and unpleasant upon his naked chest; the room, big and square, furnished with clumsy walnut — the bed where he had first slept alone, which had been his marriage bed, in which his son had been conceived and been born and lain dressed for the coffin — the room familiar for sixty-five years, by ordinary peaceful and lonely and so peculiarly his own as to have the same odor which he had, seemed to be cluttered with people, though there were but three of them and all of them he knew: Lucius Peabody who should have been down town attending to his medical practice, and the two Negroes, the one who should be in the kitchen and the other with the lawn mower on the lawn, making some pretence toward earning the money which on Saturday night they would expect.
But worst of all was the hard cold little ear of the stethoscope, worse even than the outrage of his bared chest with its fine delicate matting of gray hair. In fact, about the whole business there was just one alleviating circumstance.
“At least,” he thought with fretted and sardonic humor, “I am spared that uproar of female connections which might have been my lot, which is the ordinary concomitant of occasions of marriage or divorcement. And if he will just move his damned little toy telephone and let my niggers go back to work—”
And then, before he had finished the thought, Peabody did remove the stethoscope. And then, just as he was settling himself back into the pillow with a sigh of fretted relief, one of the Negroes, the woman, set up such a pandemonium of wailing as to fetch him bolt upright in the bed, his hands to his ears.
The Negress stood at the foot of the bed, her long limber black hands motionless on the footboard, her eyes whitely backrolled into her skull and her mouth wide open, while from it rolled slow billows of soprano sound as mellow as high-register organ tones and wall-shattering as a steamer siren.
“Chlory!” he shouted. “Stop that!” She didn’t stop. Apparently she could neither see nor hear. “You, Jake!” he shouted to the Negro man who stood beside her, his hands too on the footboard, his face brooding upon the bed with an expression darkly and profoundly enigmatic; “get her out of here!
At once!” But Jake too did not move, and he then turned to Peabody in angry outrage. “Here! Loosh! Get these damn niggers out of here!” But Peabody also did not seem to hear him. The Judge watched him methodically folding the stethoscope into its case; glared at him for a moment longer while the woman’s shattering noise billowed through the room. Then he flung the covers back and rose from the bed and hurried furiously from the room and from the house.
At once he realized that he was still in his pajamas, so he buttoned his overcoat. It was of broadcloth, black, brushed, of an outmoded elegance, with a sable collar. “At least they didn’t have time to hide this from me,” he thought in fretted rage. “Now, if I just had my. . . .” He looked down at his feet. “Ah. I seem to have. . . .”
He looked at his shoes. “That’s fortunate, too.” Then the momentary surprise faded too, now that outrage had space in which to disseminate itself. He touched his hat, then he put his hand to his lapel. The jasmine was there. Say what he would, curse Jake as he often had to do, the Negro never forgot whatever flower in its season.
Always it would be there, fresh and recent and unblemished, on the morning coffee tray. The flower and the. . . . He clasped his ebony stick beneath his arm and opened the briefcase. The two fresh handkerchiefs were there, beside the book. He thrust one of them into his breast pocket and went on. After a while the noise of Chlory’s wailing died away.
Then for a little while it was definitely unpleasant. He detested crowds: the milling and aimless and patient stupidity; the concussion of life-quick flesh with his own. But presently, if not soon, he was free, and standing so, still a little ruffled, a little annoyed, he looked back with fading outrage and distaste at the throng as it clotted quietly through the entrance.
With fading distaste until the distaste was gone, leaving his face quiet and quite intelligent, with a faint and long constant overtone of quizzical bemusement not yet tinctured with surprised speculation, not yet puzzled, not yet wary. That was to come later. Hence it did not show in his voice, which was now merely light, quizzical, contained, “There seems to be quite a crowd of them.”
“Yes,” the other said. The Judge looked at him and saw a young man in conventional morning dress with some subtle effluvium of weddings, watching the entrance with a strained, patient air.
“You are expecting someone?” the Judge said.
Now the other looked at him. “Yes. You didn’t see — But you don’t know her.”
“Know whom?”
“My wife. That is, she is not my wife yet. But the wedding was to be at noon.”
“Something happened, did it?”
“I had to do it.” The young man looked at him, strained, anxious. “I was late. That’s why I was driving fast. A child ran into the road. I was going too fast to stop. So I had to turn.”
“But you missed the child?”
“Yes.” The other looked at him. “You don’t know her?”
“And are you waiting here to. . . .” The judge stared at the other. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze was piercing, hard. He said suddenly, sharply, “Nonsense.”
“What? What did you say?” the other asked with his vague, strained, almost beseeching air. The Judge looked away.
His frowning concentration, his reflex of angry astonishment, was gone. He seemed to have wiped it from his face by a sudden deliberate action. He was like a man who, not a swordsman, has practiced with a blade a little against a certain improbable crisis, and who suddenly finds himself, blade in hand, face to face with the event. He looked at the entrance, his face alert, musing swiftly: he seemed to muse upon the entering faces with a still and furious concentration, and quietly; quietly he looked about, then at the other again. The young man still watched him.
“You’re looking for your wife too, I suppose,” he said. “I hope you find her. I hope you do.” He spoke with a sort of quiet despair. “I suppose she is old, as you are. It must be hell on the one who has to watch and wait for the other one he or she has grown old in marriage with, because it is so terrible to wait and watch like me, for a girl who is a maiden to you.
Of course I think mine is the most unbearable. You see if it had only been the next day — anything. But then if it had, I guess I could not have turned out for that kid. I guess I just think mine is so terrible. It can’t be as bad as I think it is. It just can’t be. I hope you find her.”
The Judge’s lip lifted. “I came here to escape someone; not to find anyone.” He looked at the other. His face was still broken with that grimace which might have been smiling. But his eyes were not smiling. “If I were looking for anybody, it would probably be my son.”
“Oh. A son. I see.”
“Yes. He would be about your age. He was ten when he died.”
“Look for him here.”
Now the Judge laughed outright, save for his eyes. The other watched him with that grave anxiety leavened now with quiet interested curiosity. “You mean you don’t believe?” The Judge laughed aloud. Still laughing, he produced a cloth sack of tobacco and rolled a slender cigarette.
When he looked up, the other was watching the entrance again. The Judge ceased to laugh.
“Have you a match?” he said. The other looked at him. The Judge raised the cigarette. “A match.”
The other sought in his pockets. “No.” He looked at the Judge. “Look for him here,” he said.
“Thank you,” the Judge answered. “I may avail myself of your advice later.” He turned away. Then he paused and looked back. The young man was watching the entrance. The Judge watched him, bemused, his lip lifted. He turned on, then he stopped still. His face was now completely shocked, into complete immobility like a mask; the sensitive, worn mouth, the delicate nostrils, the eyes all pupil or pupilless.
He could not seem to move at all. Then Mothershed turned and saw him. For an instant Mothershed’s pale eyes flickered, his truncated jaw, collapsing steadily with a savage, toothless motion, ceased.
“Well?” Mothershed said.
“Yes,” the Judge said; “it’s me.” Now it was that, as the mesmerism left him, the shadow bewildered and wary and complete, touched his face. Even to himself his words sounded idiotic. “I thought that you were dea. . . .” Then he made a supreme and gallant effort, his voice light, quizzical, contained again, “Well?”
Mothershed looked at him — a squat man in a soiled and mismatched suit stained with grease and dirt, his soiled collar innocent of tie — with a pale, lightly slumbering glare filled with savage outrage. “So they got you here, too, did they?”
“That depends on who you mean by ‘they’ and what you mean by ‘here.’”
Mothershed made a
