And her asking herself, impotent and desperate: But why? why? until finally she answered it — a answer that maybe wouldn’t a helt much water but she was jest sixteen and seventeen then, during which sixteen and seventeen years she had found out that the only thing he loved was money. Because she must a knowed something anyway about Manfred de Spain. Jefferson wasn’t that big, if in fact any place is.
Not to mention them two or three weeks of summer holiday at the seashore or mountains or wherever, when here all of a sudden who should turn up but a old Jefferson neighbour happening by accident to take his vacation too from the bank at the same time and place. So what else would she say? It’s grandfather’s money, that his one and only chance to keep any holt on it is through mama and me so he believes that once I get away from him his holt on both of us will be broken and mama will leave too and marry Manfred and any hope of grandfather’s money will be gone forever.
Yet here was this man that had had sixteen or seventeen years to learn her he didn’t love nothing but money and would do anything you could suh-jest to get another dollar of it, coming to her his-self, without no pressure from nobody and not asking for nothing back, saying, You can go away to school if you still want to; only, this first time anyhow stay at least as close to home as Oxford; saying in effect: I was wrong. I won’t no longer stand between you and your life, even though I am convinced I will be throwing away all hope of your grandpaw’s money.
So what else could she do but what she done, saying in effect back at him: If you jest realised now that grandfather’s money ain’t as important as my life, I could a told you that all the time; if you had jest told me two years ago that all you was was jest skeered, I would a eased you then — going (Lawyer his-self told me this) to a Oxford lawyer as soon as she was settled in the University and drawing up a will leaving whatever share she might ever have in her grandpaw’s or her maw’s estate to her father Flem Snopes. Sho, that wouldn’t a held no water neither, but she was jest eighteen and that was all she had to give that she thought anybody wanted or needed from her; and besides, all the water it would need to hold would be what old Will Varner would sweat out when Flem showed it to him.
So jest after ten that morning I stopped not at the store where Will would be at this hour but at his front gate jest exactly long enough for Flem to get out and walk into the house until he coincided with Miz Varner I reckon it was and turn around and come back out and get back into the pickup and presumably at their two o’clock a.m. morning family breakfast it occurred to Miz Varner or anyway she decided to or anyhow did hand Will the paper his son-in-law left yestiddy for him to look at.
And by sunup Will had that whole Snopes street woke up hollering inside Flem’s house until Eula got him shut up. And by our normal ee-feet Jefferson breakfast time Manfred de Spain was there too. And that done it.
Will Varner, that Flem had done already tricked outen that Old Frenchman place, then turned right around and used him again to get his-self and Manfred de Spain vice-president and president respectively of Colonel Sartoris’s bank, and now Flem had done turned back around the third time and somehow tricked his granddaughter into giving him a quit-claim to half of his active cash money that so far even Flem hadn’t found no way to touch.
And Flem, that all he wanted was for Manfred de Spain to resign from the bank so he could be president of it and would jest as lief done it quiet and discreet and all private in the family you might say by a simple friendly suh-jestion from Will Varner to Manfred to resign from the bank, as a even swap for that paper of Linda’s, which should a worked with anybody and would with anybody else except Manfred. He was the trouble; likely Eula could a handled them all except for him.
Maybe he got that-ere scar on his face by actively toting a flag up a hill in Cuba and running over a cannon or a fort with it, and maybe it come from the axe in that crap game that old mayor’s-race rumour claimed. But leastways it was on his front and not on his back and so maybe a feller could knock him out with a piece of lead pipe and pick his pocket while he was laying there, but couldn’t no Snopes nor nobody else pick it jest by pointing at him what the other feller thought was a pistol.
And Eula in the middle of them, that likely could a handled it all except for Manfred, that had even made Will shut up but she couldn’t make Manfred hush.
That had done already spent lacking jest a week of nineteen years holding together a home for Linda to grow up and live in so she wouldn’t never need to say, Other children have got what I never had; there was Eula having to decide right there right now, If I was a eighteen-year-old gal, which would I rather have: my mother publicly notarised as a suicide, or publicly condemned as a whore? and by noon the next day all Jefferson knowed how the afternoon before she come to town and went to the beauty parlour that hadn’t never been in one before because she never needed to, and had her hair waved and her fingernails shined and went back home and presumably et supper or anyhow was present at it since it wasn’t until about eleven o’clock that she seemed to taken up the pistol and throwed the safety off.
And the next morning Lawyer and his sister drove over to Oxford and brought Linda home; a pure misfortune coincidence that all this had to happen jest a week before her nineteenth birthday. But as soon as Flem received that will from her, naturally he figgered Will Varner would want to see it as soon as possible, being a interested party; it was Will that never had no reason a-tall to pick out that special day to come bellering in to town two hours after he first seen it. He could a jest as well waited two weeks or even a month to come in, since wasn’t nobody hurrying him; Flem would certainly a waited on his convenience.
And Lawyer that tended to the rest of it too: arranged for the funeral and sent out to Frenchman’s Bend for Miz Varner and the old Methodist preacher that had baptised Eula, and then seen to the grave. Because naturally the bereaved husband couldn’t be expected to break into his grief jest to do chores. Not to mention having to be ready to take over the bank after a decent interval, being as Manfred de Spain his-self had packed up and departed from Jefferson right after the burying.
And then, after another decorious interval, a little longer this time being as a bank ain’t like jest a house because a bank deals with active cash money and can’t wait, getting ready to move into De Spain’s house too since De Spain had give ever evident intention of not aiming to return to Jefferson from his last what you might still call Varner trip and there wasn’t no use in letting a good sound well-situated house stand vacant and empty.
Which — De Spain’s house — was likely a part of that same swapping and trading between Flem and Will Varner that included Varner’s bank-stock votes and that-ere financial Midsummer Night’s Dream masque or rondeau that Linda and that Oxford lawyer composed betwixt them that had Linda’s signature on it.
Not to mention Lawyer being appointed by old man Will to be trustee of Linda’s money since it was now finally safe from Flem until he thought up something that Lawyer would believe too this time.
Will appointing Lawyer for the reason that likely he couldn’t pass by Lawyer to get to no one else, Lawyer being not only in the middle of that entire monetary and sepulchrial crisis but all around ever part of it too, like one of them frantic water bugs skating and rushing immune and unwettable on top of a stagnant pond.
I mean, Lawyer was now busy over the headstone Flem had decided on. Because it would have to be made in Italy, which would take time, and so would demand ever effort on Lawyer’s part before Linda could pack up and leave Jefferson too, being as Flem felt that that same filial decorum demanded that Linda wait until her maw’s headstone was up and finished before leaving.
Only I don’t mean jest headstone: I mean monument: Lawyer combing and currying not jest Jefferson and Frenchman’s Bend but most of
