How would you like to take your mother and go to New York?’ And he had her; she was already beat; she said, ‘Wont that cost a lot of money?’ and he said, ‘That doesn’t matter. When would you like to go?’ and she said, ‘No. It will cost too much money. Why dont we just stay here?’ Because he had her, he had beat her.
And the … terrible thing was, she didn’t know it, didn’t even know there had been a battle and she had surrendered. Before, she had defied him and at least she knew she was defying him even if she didn’t know what to do with it, how to use it, what to do next. Now she had come over to his side and she didn’t even know it.
“And that’s all. Then it was fall, last October, she was at the Academy again and this time we had finished supper, we were in the living room before the fire and she was reading, sitting on one of her feet I remember and I remember the book too, the John Donne you gave her — I mean, the new one, the second one, to replace the one that boy — what was his name? the garage mechanic, Matt Something, Levitt — tore up that day in your office — when he said, ‘Linda,’ and she looked up, still holding the book (that’s when I remember seeing what it was) and he said, ‘I was wrong. I thought the Academy ought to be good enough, because I never went to school and didn’t know any better. But I know better now, and the Academy’s not good enough anymore. Will you give up the Yankee schools and take the University at Oxford?’
“And she still sat there, letting the book come down slow onto her lap, just looking at him. Then she said, ‘What?’
“ ‘Will you forget about Virginia and the northern schools for this year, and enter the University after Christmas?’ She threw the book, she didn’t put it down at all: she just threw it, flung it as she stood up out of the chair and said:
“ ‘Daddy.’ I had never seen her touch him. He was her father, she never refused to speak to him or to speak any way except respectfully. But he was her enemy; she had to keep him reminded always that although he had beaten her about the schools, she still hadn’t surrendered. But I had never seen her touch him until now, sprawled, flung across his lap, clutching him around the shoulders, her face against his collar, crying, saying, ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’”
“Go on,” I said.
“That’s all. Oh, that was enough; what more did he need to do than that? have that thing — that piece of paper — drawn up himself and then twist her arm until she signed her name to it?
He didn’t have to mention any paper. He probably didn’t even need to see her again and even if he did, all he would have needed — she already knew about the will, I mean Papa’s will leaving my share to just Eula Varner without even mentioning the word Snopes — all he would need would be just to say something like ‘Oh yes, your grandfather’s a fine old gentleman but he just never did like me.
But that’s all right; your mother will be taken care of no matter what happens to me myself; he just fixed things so I nor nobody else can take her money away from her before you inherit it’ — something like that.
Or maybe he didn’t even need to do that much, knew he didn’t have to. Not with her. He was her father, and if he wouldn’t let her go off to school it was because he loved her since that was the reason all parents seemed to have for the things they wont let their children do; then for him to suddenly turn completely around and almost order her to do the thing she wanted, which he had forbidden her for almost two years to do, what reason could that be except that he loved her still more: loved her enough to let her do the one thing in her life he had ever forbidden her?
“Or I dont know. He may have suggested it, even told her how to word it; what does it matter now? It’s done, there: Papa storming into the house at four this morning and flinging it down on my bed before I was even awake — Wait,” she said, “I know all that too; I’ve already done all that myself. It was legal, all regular — What do they call it?”
“Drawn up,” I said.
“ — drawn up by a lawyer in Oxford, Mr Stone — not the old one: the young one. I telephoned him this morning. He was very nice. He—”
“I know him,” I said. “Even if he did go to New Haven.”
“ — said he had wanted to talk to me about it, but there was the …”
“Inviolacy,” I said.
“Inviolacy. — between client and lawyer. He said she came to him, it must have been right after she reached Oxford — Wait,” she said. “I asked him that too: why she came to him and he said — He said she was a delightful young lady who would go far in life even after she ran out of — of—”
“Contingencies,” I said.
“ — contingencies to bequeath people — she said that she had just asked someone who was the nicest lawyer for her to go to and they told her him. So she told him what she wanted and he wrote it that way; oh yes, I saw it: ‘my share of whatever I might inherit from my mother, Eula Varner Snopes, as distinct and separate from whatever her husband shall share in her property, to my father Flem Snopes’.
Oh yes, all regular and legal though he said he tried to explain to her that she was not bequeathing a quantity but merely devising a — what was it? contingency, and that nobody would take it very seriously probably since she might die before she had any inheritance or get married or even change her mind without a husband to help her or her mother might not have any inheritance beyond the one specified or might spend it or her father might die and she would inherit half of his inheritance from herself plus the other half which her mother would inherit as her father’s relict, which she would heir in turn back to her father’s estate to pass to her mother as his relict to be inherited once more by her; but she was eighteen years old and competent and he, Mr Stone, was a competent lawyer or at least he had a license saying so, and so it was at least in legal language and on the right kind of paper.
He — Mr Stone — even asked her why she felt she must make the will and she told him: Because my father has been good to me and I love and admire and respect him — do you hear that? Love and admire and respect him. Oh yes, legal. As if that mattered, legal or illegal, contingency or incontingency—”
Nor did she need to tell me that either: that old man seething out there in his country store for eighteen years now over the way his son-in-law had tricked him out of that old ruined plantation and then made a profit out of it, now wild with rage and frustration at the same man who had not only out-briganded him in brigandage but since then had even out-usury-ed him in sedentary usury, and who now had used the innocence of a young girl, his own grand-daughter, who could repay what she thought was love with gratitude and generosity at least, to disarm him of the one remaining weapon which he still held over his enemy.
Oh yes, of course it was worth nothing except its paper but what did that matter, legal or valid either. It didn’t even matter now if he destroyed it (which of course was why Flem ever let it out of his hand in the first place); only that he saw it, read it, comprehended it: took one outraged incredulous glance at it, then came storming into town —
“I couldn’t make him hush,” she said. “I couldn’t make him stop, be quiet. He didn’t even want to wait until daylight to get hold of Manfred.”
“De Spain?” I said. “Then? At four in the morning?”
“Didn’t I tell you I couldn’t stop him, make him stop or hush? Oh yes, he got Manfred there right away. And Manfred attended to everything. It was quite simple to him. That is, when I finally made him and Papa both believe that in another minute they would wake up, rouse the whole neighborhood and before that happened I would take Papa’s — Jody’s — car and drive to Oxford and get Linda and none of them would ever see us again. So he and Papa hushed then—”
“But Flem,” I said.
“He was there. — for a little while, long enough—”
“But what was he doing?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “What was he supposed to do? What did he need to do now?”
“Oh,” I said. “ ‘long enough to—’”
“ — enough for Manfred to settle everything: we
