“Mister Stuart fought his way out and got back home without losing but two men. He always spoke well of Bayard. He said he was a good officer and a fine cavalryman, but that he was too reckless.”
They sat quietly tor a time in the firelight. The flames leaped and popped on the hearth and sparks soared in wild swirling plumes up the chimney, and Bayard Sartoris’ brief career swept like a shooting star across the dark plain of their mutual remembering and suffering, lighting it with a transient glare like a soundless thunderclap, leaving a sort of radiance when it died. The guest, the Scottish engineer, had sat quietly, listening. After a time he spoke.
“When he rode back, he was no actually certain there were anchovies, was he?”
“The Yankee major said there were,” Aunt Jenny replied.
“Ay.” The Scotsman pondered again. “And, did Muster Stuart return next day, as he said in’s note?”
“He went back that afternoon,” Aunt Jenny answered, “looking for Bayard.” Ashes soft as rosy feathers shaled glowing on to the hearth and faded to the softest gray. John Sartoris leaned forward into the firelight and punched at the blazing logs with the Yankee musket barrel.
“That was the goddamnedest army the world ever saw, I reckon,” he said.
“Yes,” Aunt Jenny agreed. “And Bayard was the god-damnedest man in it.”
“Yes,” John Sartoris admitted soberly, “Bayard was wild.”
The Scotsman spoke again. “This Muster Stuart, who said your brother was reckless—who was he?”
“He was the cavalry general Jeb Stuart,” Aunt Jenny answered. She brooded for a while upon the fire; her pale indomitable face held for a moment a tranquil tenderness. “He had a strange sense of humor,” she said. “Nothing ever seemed quite so diverting to him as General Pope in his nightshirt.” She dreamed once more on some far-away place beyond the rosy battlements of the embers. “Poor man,” she said; then she said quietly, “I danced a valse with him in Baltimore in ’58,” and her voice was proud and still as banners in the dust.
But the door was closed now, and what light passed through the colored panes was richly solemn. To Bayard’s left was his grandson’s room, the room in which his grandson’s wife and her child had died last October. He stood beside this door for a moment, then he opened it quietly. The blinds were closed and the room had that breathless tranquillity of unoccupation, and he closed the door and tramped on with that heavy-footed obliviousness of the deaf and entered his own bedroom and crashed the door behind him, as was his way of shutting a door.
He sat down and removed his shoes, the shoes that were made to his measure twice a year by a St. Louis house, and in his—stockings he went to the window and looked down upon his saddled mare tethered to a mulberry tree in the back yard and a negro lad lean as a hound, richly static beside it. From the kitchen, invisible from this window, Elnora’s endless minor ebbed and flowed, unheard by Bayard, upon the lazy scene.
He crossed to the closet and drew out a pair of scarred riding boots and stamped into them and took a cigar from the humidor on his night table, and he stood for a time with the cold cigar between his teeth. Through the cloth of his pocket his hand had touched the pipe there, and he took it out and looked at it again, and it seemed to him that he could still hear old man Fall’s voice in roaring recapitulation: “Cunnel was settin’ thar in a cheer, his sock feet propped on the po’ch railin’, smokin’ this hyer very pipe.
Old Louvinia was settin’ on the steps, shellin’ a bowl of peas fer supper. And a feller was glad to git even peas sometimes, in them days. And you was settin’ back again’ the post. They wa’n’t nobody else thar ’cep’ you’ aunt, the one ’fo’ Miss Jenny come. Cunnel had sont them two gals to Memphis to yo’ gran’pappy when he fust went to Virginny with that ’ere regiment that turnt right around and voted him outen the colonel-cy. Voted ’im out because he wouldn’t be Tom, Dick and Harry with ever’ skulkin’ camp robber that come along with a salvaged muskit and claimed to be a sojer. You was about half-grown then, I reckon. How old was you then, Bayard?”
“Fourteen.”
“Hey?”
“Fourteen. Do I have to tell you that every time you tell me this damn story?”
“And thar you was a-settin’ when they turned in at the gate and come trottin’ up the carriage drive.
“Old Louvinia drapped the bowl of peas and let out one squawk, but Cunnel shet her up and told her to run and git his boots and pistols and have ’em ready at the back do’, and you lit out fer the barn to saddle that stallion. And when them Yankees rid up and stopped—they stopped right whar that flowerbed is now—they wa’n’t nobody in sight but Cunnel, a-settin’ thar like he never even heerd tell of no Yankees.
“The Yankees they sot thar on the hosses, talkin’ ’mongst theyselves if this was the right house or not, and Cunnel settin thar with his sock feet on the railin’, gawkin’ at ’em like a hill-billy. The Yankee officer he tole one man to ride back to the barn and look fer that ’ere stallion, then he says to Cunnel:
“‘Say, Johnny, whar do the rebel John Sartoris live?’
“‘Lives down the road a piece,’ Cunnel says, not battin’ a eye even. ‘’Bout two mile,’ he says. ‘But you won’t find ’im now. He’s away fightin’ the Yanks agin.’
“‘Well, I reckon you better come and show us the way, anyhow,’ the Yankee officer says.
“So Cunnel he got up slow and tole ’em to let ’im git his shoes and walkin’-stick, and limped into the house, leavin’ ’em settin’ thar waitin’.
“Soon’s he was out of sight he run. Old Louvinia was waitin’ at the back do’ with his coat and boots and pistols and a snack of cawn bread. That ’ere other Yankee had rid into the barn, and Cunnel taken the things from Louvinia and wrapped ’em up in the coat and started acrost the back yard like he was jest takin’ a walk. ’Bout that time the Yankee come to the barn do’.
“‘They ain’t no stock hyer a-tall,’ the Yank says.
“‘I reckon not,’ Cunnel says. ‘Cap’m says fer you to come on back,’ he says, gain’ on. He could feel that ’ere Yank a-watchin’ him, lookin’ right ’twixt his shoulder blades whar the bullet would hit. Cunnel says that was the hardest thing he ever done in his life, walkin’ on thar acrost that lot with his back to’a’ds that Yankee without breakin’ into a run.
He was aimin’ to’a’ds the corner of the barn, where he could put the house between ’em, and Cunnel says hit seemed like he’d been walkin’ a year without gittin’ no closer and not darin’ to look back. Cunnel says he wa’n’t even thinkin’ of nothin’ ’cep’ he was glad the gals wa’n’t at home. He says he never give a thought to you’ aunt back thar in the house, because he says she was a fullblood Sartoris and she was a match fer any jest a dozen Yankees.
“Then the Yank hollered at him, but Cunnel kep’ right on, not lookin’ back nor nothin’. Then the Yank hollered agin and Cunnel says he could hyear the hoss movin’ and he decided hit was time to stir his shanks. He made the corner of the barn jest as the Yank shot the fust time, and by the time the Yank got to the corner, he was in the hawg-lot, tearin’ through the jimson weeds to’a’ds the creek whar you was waitin’ with the stallion hid in the willers.
“And thar you was a-standin’, holdin’ the hoss, and that ’ere Yankee patrol yellin’ up behind, until Cunnel got his boots on. And then he tole you to tell you’ aunt he wouldn’t be home fer supper.”
“But what are you giving it to me for, after all this time?” he had asked, fingering the pipe, and old man Falls had said a poorhouse was no fit place for it.
“A thing he toted jn his pocket and got enjoyment outen, in them days. Hit ’ud be different, I reckon, while we was a-buildin’ the railroad. He said often enough in them days we was all goin’ to be in the po’house by Sat’d’y night. Only I beat him, thar. I got thar fo’ he did. Or the cemetery he meant mo’ likely, him ridin’ up and down the survey with a saddlebag of money night and day, keepin’ jest one cross tie ahead of the po’house, like he said.
That ’us when hit changed. When he had to start killin’ folks. Them two cyarpet-baggers stirrin’ up niggers, that he walked right into the room whar they was a-settin’ behind a table with they pistols layin’ on the table, and that robber and that other feller he kilt, all with that same dang der’nger. When a feller has to start killin’ folks, he ’most always has to keep on killin’ ’em. And when he does, he’s already dead hisself.”
It showed on John Sartoris’ brow, the dark shadow of fatality
