Knight’s Gambit, William Faulkner

Knight’s Gambit

ONE OF THEM knocked. But the door opened in the middle of it, swinging right out from under the rapping knuckles, so that the two callers were already in the room when he and his uncle looked up from the chessboard. Then his uncle recognised them too.

Their name was Harriss. They were brother and sister. At first glance they might have been twins, not just to strangers but to most of Jefferson too. Because there were probably not half a dozen people in Yoknapatawpha County who actually knew which one was the oldest.

They lived six miles from town on what twenty years ago had been just another plantation raising cotton for the market and com and hay to feed the mules which made the cotton. But now it was a county (or for that matter, a north Mississippi) landmark: a mile square of white panel and rail paddock-and pasture-fences and electric-lit stables and a once-simple country house transmogrified now into something a little smaller than a Before-the-War Hollywood set.

They came in and stood, rosy, young, delicate and expensive-looking, flushed from the December night. His uncle rose. ‘Miss Harriss, Mr. Harriss,’ he said. ‘But you are already in, so I cant—’

But the boy didn’t wait for that either. Then he saw that the boy held his sister, not by the arm or elbow, but by the forearm above the wrist like in the old lithographs of the policeman with his cringing captive or the victory-flushed soldier with his shrinking Sabine prey. And that was when he saw the girl’s face.

‘You’re Stevens,’ the boy said. He didn’t even demand it. He stated it.
‘That’s partly correct,’ his uncle said. ‘But let it pass. What can I’

Nor did the boy wait for that. He turned to the girl. ‘That’s Stevens,’ he said. ‘Tell him.’

But she didn’t speak. She just stood there, in the evening dress and a fur coat which had cost a good deal more than any other girl (or woman either) in Jefferson or Yoknapatawpha County had to spend for such, staring at his uncle with drat frozen sickness of dread or terror or whatever it was on her face, while the knuckles of the boy’s hand grew whiter and whiter on her wrist. Tell him,’ the boy said.

Then she spoke. You could hardly hear her. ‘Captain Gualdres. At our house—’

His uncle had taken a few steps toward them. Now he stopped too, standing in the middle of the floor, looking at her. ‘Yes,’ his uncle said. Tell me.’

But it seemed as if that one expiring rush was all of it. She just stood there, trying to tell his uncle something, whatever it was, with her eyes; trying to tell both of them for that matter, since he was there too. But they found out quickly enough what it was, or at least what it was the boy wanted her to say, had dragged her in to town by the arm to say. Or at least what he thought it was she wanted to say. Because he should have known then that his uncle probably knew already more than the boy or the girl either intended to say yet; perhaps, even then, all of it. But it would be a little while yet before he would realise that last. And the reason he was so slow about it was his uncle himself.

‘Yes,’ the boy said, in exactly the same tone and voice which had declined to address the older man by any title of courtesy or deference to age; he — Charles — watched the boy staring at his uncle too — the same delicate face which the sister had, but with nothing delicate about the eyes. They — the eyes — stared at his uncle without even bothering to he hard: they just waited. ‘Captain Gualdres, our so-called house-guest. We want him out of our house and out of Jefferson too.’

‘I see,’ his uncle said. He said, ‘I’m on the draft board here. I don’t remember your name in the registration.’
But the boy’s stare didn’t change at all. It was not even contemptuous. It just waited.

Then his uncle was looking at the sister; his voice was quite different now. ‘Is that what it is?’ his uncle said.

But she didn’t answer. She just stared at his uncle with that urgent desperation, her arm hanging at her side and her brother’s knuckles white around her wrist. Now his uncle was speaking to the boy too though he still watched the girl and his voice was even still gentle too or at least quiet:
‘Why did you come to me? What makes you think I can help you? That I should?’

‘You’re the Law here, aren’t you?’ the boy said.

His uncle still watched the sister. ‘I’m the County Attorney.’ He was still talking to her too. ‘But even if I could help you, why should I?’
But again it was the boy: ‘Because I don’t intend that a fortune-hunting Spick shall marry my mother.’

Now it seemed to him that his uncle really looked at the boy for the first time. ‘I see,’ his uncle said. Now his uncle’s voice was different. It was no louder, there was just no more gentleness in it, as though for the first time his uncle could (or anyway had) stop speaking to the sister: That’s your affair and your right.

I ask you again: why should I do anything about it, even if I could?’ And now the two of them — his uncle and the boy — spoke crisply and rapidly; it was almost as though they stood toe to toe, slapping each other: ‘He was engaged to marry my sister. When he found out that the money would still be our mother’s as long as she lived, he ratted.’

‘I see. You wish to employ the deportation laws of the Federal government to avenge your sister on her jilter.’

This time even the boy didn’t answer. He just stared at the older man with such cold, controlled, mature malevolence that he — Charles — watched his uncle actually pause for a moment before turning back to the girl, speaking — his uncle — again in the gentle voice, though even then his uncle had to repeat the question before she answered:
‘Is this true?’

‘Not engaged,’ she whispered.
‘But you love him?’

But the boy didn’t even give her time, didn’t give anybody time. ‘What does she know about love?’ he said. ‘Will you take the case, or do I report you to your superiors too?’
‘Can you risk being away from home that long?’ his uncle said in the mild voice which he — Charles — knew anyway and, if it had been addressed to him, would have leaped at once to hold his hat. But the boy didn’t even pause.

‘Say it in English if you can,’ he said.
‘I wont take your case,’ his uncle said.

For a moment still the boy stared at his uncle, holding the girl by the wrist. Then he — Charles — thought the boy was going to jerk, fling her bodily through the door ahead of him. But he even released her, himself (not the host, the owner of the door which he had already passed through once without even waiting for permission, let alone invitation) opening the door, then standing aside for the girl to precede him through it — a gesture, a pantomime of courtesy and deference even when automatic from habit and early training, as his was: automatic: and from long habit and the best of training under the best masters and tutors and preceptors in what the ladies of Yoknapatawpha County anyway would call the best of company.

But there was no difference in it now: only arrogance: swaggering, insulting not just to whom offered but to everyone watching it too, not even looking at the sister for whom he held the door but still staring at the man twice his age whose domicile he had now violated twice.

‘All right,’ the boy said. ‘Don’t say you were not warned.’

Then they were gone. His uncle closed the door. But for a second his uncle didn’t move. It was a pause, a check, an almost infinitesimal instant of immobility so quick and infinitesimal that probably nobody but he, Charles, would have remarked it.

And he noticed it only because he had never before seen his uncle, that quick and nervous man garrulous in speech and movement both, falter or check in either once he had begun them.

Then his uncle turned and came back toward where he, Charles, still sat at his side of the chessboard, not even realising yet, so rapid and staccato the whole thing had been, that he not only hadn’t risen himself, he would hardly have had time to even if he had thought about it.

And maybe his mouth was open a little too (he was not quite eighteen yet and even at eighteen there were still a few situations which even a man of his uncle’s capacity for alarms would have to admit you might not be able to assimilate at the drop of a hat or the slam of a door, or at least hadn’t needed to yet), sitting at his side of the half-played game watching his uncle come back to his chair and begin to sit back down and reach for the overturned cob pipe on the smoking stand all in the same motion.

‘Warned?’ he said.

‘So he called it,’ his uncle said, finishing the sitting down and approaching the bitt of the pipe to his mouth and already taking a match from