“Why cant you tell him?” I said.
“Because he wouldn’t believe me. This here is the kind of a thing you — a man has got to know his — himself. He has got to learn it out of his own hard dread and skeer. Because what somebody else jest tells you, you jest half believe, unless it was something you already wanted to hear. And in that case, you dont even listen to it because you had done already agreed, and so all it does is make you think what a sensible feller it was that told you.
But something you dont want to hear is something you had done already made up your mind against, whether you knowed — knew it or not; and now you can even insulate against having to believe it by resisting or maybe even getting even with that-ere scoundrel that meddled in and told you.”
“So he wouldn’t hear you because he wouldn’t believe it because it is something he dont want to be true. Is that it?”
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “So I got to wait. I got to wait for him to learn it his — himself, the hard way, the sure way, the only sure way. Then he will believe it, enough anyhow to be afraid.”
“He is afraid,” I said. “He’s been afraid a long time.”
“That’s good,” Ratliff said. “Because he had purely better be. All of us better be. Because a feller that jest wants money for the sake of money, or even for power, there’s a few things right at the last that he wont do, will stop at.
But a feller that come — came up from where he did, that soon as he got big enough to count it he thought he discovered that money would buy anything he could or would ever want, and shaped all the rest of his life and actions on that, trompling when and where he had to but without no — any hard feelings because he knowed — knew that he wouldn’t ask nor expect no — any quarter his — himself if it had been him; — to do all this and then find out at last, when he was a man growed — grown and it was maybe already too late, that the one thing he would have to have if there was to be any meaning to his life or even peace in it, was not only something that jest money couldn’t buy, it was something that not having money to begin with or even getting a holt of all he could count or imagine or even dream about and then losing it, couldn’t even hurt or harm or grieve or change or alter; — to find out when it was almost too late that what he had to have was something that any child was born having for free until one day he growed — grew up and found out when it was maybe too late that he had throwed — thrown it away.”
“What?” I said. “What is it he’s got to have?”
“Respectability,” Ratliff said.
“Respectability?”
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “When it’s jest money and power a man wants, there is usually some place where he will stop; there’s always one thing at least that ever — every man wont do for jest money.
But when it’s respectability he finds out he wants and has got to have, there aint nothing he wont do to get it and then keep it. And when it’s almost too late when he finds out that’s what he’s got to have, and that even after he gets it he cant jest lock it up and set — sit down on top of it and quit, but instead he has got to keep on working with ever — every breath to keep it, there aint nothing he will stop at, aint nobody or nothing within his scope and reach that may not anguish and grieve and suffer.”
“Respectability,” I said.
“That’s right,” Ratliff said. “Vice president of that bank aint enough anymore. He’s got to be president of it.”
“Got to be?” I said.
“I mean soon, that he dont dare risk waiting, putting it off. That girl of Miz Snopes’s — Linda. She’s going on—”
“She’ll be nineteen the twelfth of April,” I said.
“ — nineteen now, over there —— How do you know it’s the twelfth?”
“That’s what Uncle Gavin says,” I said.
“Sho, now,” Ratliff said. Then he was talking again. “ — at the University at Oxford where there’s a thousand extry young fellers all new and strange and interesting and male and nobody a-tall to watch her except a hired dormitory matron that aint got no wife expecting to heir half of one half of Uncle Billy Varner’s money, when it was risky enough at the Academy right here in Jefferson last year before your uncle or her maw or whichever it was or maybe both of them together, finally persuaded Flem to let her quit at the Academy and go to the University after Christmas where he couldn’t his — himself supervise her masculine acquaintance down to the same boys she had growed — grown up with all her life so at least their folks might have kinfolks that owed him money to help handle them; not to mention having her home ever — every night where he could reach out and put his hand on her ever — every time the clock struck you might say.
So he cant, he dassent, risk it; any time now the telegram or the telephone might come saying she had jest finished running off to the next nearest town with a j.p. in it that never give a hoot who Flem Snopes was, and got married. And even if he located them ten minutes later and dragged her — —”
“Drug,” I said.
“ — back, the — What?” he said.
“Drug,” I said. “You said ‘dragged’.”
Ratliff looked at me a while. “For ten years now, whenever he would stop talking his-self long enough that is, and for five of them I been listening to you too, trying to learn — teach myself to say words right. And, jest when I call myself about to learn and I begin to feel a little good over it, here you come, of all people, correcting me back to what I been trying for ten years to forget.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s because I like the way you say it. When you say it, ‘taken’ sounds a heap more took than just ‘took’, just like ‘drug’ sounds a heap more dragged than just ‘dragged’.”
“And not jest you neither,” Ratliff said. “Your uncle too: me saying ‘dragged’ and him saying ‘drug’ and me saying ‘dragged’ and him saying ‘drug’ again, until at last he would say, ‘In a free country like this, why aint I got as much right to use your drug for my dragged as you got to use my dragged for your drug?’”
“All right,” I said. “ ‘Even if he drug her back’.”
“ — even if he drug — dragged — drug — You see?” he said. “Now you done got me so mixed up until even I dont know which one I dont want to say?”
“ ‘ — it would be too late and the damage’—” I said.
“Yes,” Ratliff said. “And at least even your Uncle Gavin knows this; even a feller as high- and delicate-minded as him must know that the damage would be done then and Miz Snopes would quit Flem too and he could kiss goodbye not jest to her share of Uncle Billy’s money but even to the voting weight of his bank stock too. So Flem’s got to strike now, and quick. He’s not only got to be president of that bank to at least keep that much of a holt on that Varner money by at least being president of where Uncle Billy keeps it at, he’s got to make his lick before the message comes that Linda’s done got married or he’ll lose the weight of Uncle Billy’s voting stock.”
SEVENTEEN
Gavin Stevens
AT LAST WE knew why he had moved his money. It was as a bait. Not putting it into the other bank, the old Bank of Jefferson, as the bait, but for the people of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County to find out that he had withdrawn his own money from the bank of which he himself was vice president, and put it somewhere else.
But that wasn’t first. At first he was simply trying to save it. Because he knew no better then. His association with banks had been too brief and humble for the idea even to have occurred to him that there was a morality to banking, an inevictable ethics in it, else not only the individual bank but banking as an institution, a form of social behavior, could not endure.
His idea and concept of a bank was that of the Elizabethan tavern or a frontier inn in the time of the opening of the American wilderness: you stopped there before dark for shelter from the wilderness; you were offered food and lodging for yourself and horse, and a bed (of sorts) to sleep in; if you waked the next morning with your purse rifled or your horse stolen or even your throat cut, you had none to blame but yourself since nobody had compelled you to pass that way nor insisted on you stopping.
So when he realised that the
