The key she did not recognize, but she knew at once that he was a Jew, and when he spoke to her her outrage became fury and she jerked back in the chair like a striking snake, the motion strong enough to thrust the chair back from the table. “Narcissa,” she said, “what is this Yankee doing here?”
There they were, about the candle-lit table, the three rigid people. Then the man spoke: “Madam,” he said, “there’d be no Yankees left if your sex had ever taken the field against us.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, young man,” she said. “You can thank your stars it was just men your grandfather fought.”
Then she had called Isom and had herself wheeled from the table, taking no supper. And even in her bedroom she would not let them turn on the light, and she refused the tray which Narcissa sent up. She sat beside her dark window until the stranger was gone.
Then three days later Narcissa made her sudden and mysterious trip to Memphis and stayed two nights, who had never before been separated overnight from her son since he was born. She had gone without explanation and returned without explanation, and now the old woman had just watched her and the boy cross the garden, their garments still damp upon them, as though they had been in the creek.
It was the boy who told her. He came into the room in fresh clothes, his hair still damp, though neatly combed now. She said no word as he entered and came to her chair. “We been in the creek,” he said. “Not swimming, though. Just sitting in the water. She wanted me to show her the swimming hole. But we didn’t swim. I don’t reckon she can. We just sat in the water with our clothes on. All evening. She wanted to do it.”
“Ah,” the old woman said. “Oh. Well. That must have been fun. Is she coming down soon?”
“Yessum. When she gets dressed.”
“Well. . . . You’ll have time to go outdoors a while before supper, if you want to.”
“I just as soon stay in here with you, if you want me to.”
“No. You go outdoors. I’ll be all right until Saddie comes.”
“All right.” He left the room.
The window faded slowly as the sunset died. The old woman’s silver head faded too, like something motionless on a sideboard. The sparse colored panes which framed the window dreamed, rich and hushed. She sat there and presently she heard her nephew’s wife descending the stairs. She sat quietly, watching the door, until the young woman entered.
She wore white: a large woman in her thirties, within the twilight something about her of that heroic quality of statuary. “Do you want the light?” she said.
“No,” the old woman said. “No. Not yet.” She sat erect in the wheel chair, motionless, watching the young woman cross the room, her white dress flowing slowly, heroic, like a caryatid from a temple façade come to life. She sat down.
“It was those let—” she said.
“Wait,” the old woman said. “Before you begin. The jasmine. Do you smell it?”
“Yes. It was those—”
“Wait. Always about this time of day it begins. It has begun about this time of day in June for fifty-seven years this summer. I brought them from Carolina, in a basket. I remember how that first March I sat up all one night, burning newspapers about the roots. Do you smell it?”
“Yes.”
“If it’s marriage, I told you. I told you five years ago that I wouldn’t blame you. A young woman, a widow. Even though you have a child, I told you that a child would not be enough. I told you I would not blame you for not doing as I had done. Didn’t I?”
“Yes. But it’s not that bad.”
“Not? Not how bad?” The old woman sat erect, her head back a little, her thin face fading into the twilight with a profound quality. “I won’t blame you. I told you that. You are not to consider me. My life is done; I need little; nothing the Negroes can’t do. Don’t you mind me, do you hear?”
The other said nothing, motionless too, serene; their voices seemed to materialize in the dusk between them, unsourced of either mouth, either still and fading face. “You’ll have to tell me, then,” the old woman said.
“It was those letters. Thirteen years ago: don’t you remember? Before Bayard came back from France, before you even knew that we were engaged. I showed you one of them and you wanted to give it to Colonel Sartoris and let him find out who sent it and I wouldn’t do it and you said that no lady would permit herself to receive anonymous love letters, no matter how badly she wanted to.”
“Yes. I said it was better for the world to know that a lady had received a letter like that, than to have one man in secret thinking such things about her, unpunished. You told me you burned it.”
“I lied. I kept it. And I got ten more of them. I didn’t tell you because of what you said about a lady.”
“Ah,” the old woman said.
“Yes. I kept them all. I thought I had them hidden where nobody could ever find them.”
“And you read them again. You would take them out now and then and read them again.”
“I thought I had them hidden. Then you remember that night after Bayard and I were married when somebody broke into our house in town; the same night that book-keeper in Colonel Sartoris’ bank stole that money and ran away? The next morning the letters were gone, and then I knew who had sent them.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. She had not moved, her fading head like something inanimate in silver.
“So they were out in the world. They were somewhere. I was crazy for a while. I thought of people, men, reading them, seeing not only my name on them, but the marks of my eyes where I had read them again and again. I was wild. When Bayard and I were on our honeymoon, I was wild. I couldn’t even think about him alone. It was like I was having to sleep with all the men in the world at the same time.
“Then it was almost twelve years ago, and I had Bory, and I supposed I had got over it. Got used to having them out in the world. Maybe I had begun to think that they were gone, destroyed, and I was safe. Now and then I would remember them, but it was like somehow that Bory was protecting me, that they couldn’t pass him to reach me. As though if I just stayed out here and was good to Bory and you — And then, one afternoon, after twelve years, that man came out to see me, that Jew. The one who stayed to supper that night.”
“Ah,” the old woman said. “Yes.”
“He was a Federal agent. They were still trying to catch the man who had robbed the bank, and the agent had got hold of my letters. Found them where the book-keeper had lost them or thrown them away that night while he was running away, and the agent had had them twelve years, working on the case.
At last he came out to see me, trying to find out where the man had gone, thinking I must know, since the man had written me letters like that. You remember him: how you looked at him and you said, ‘Narcissa, who is this Yankee?’”
“Yes. I remember.”
“That man had my letters. He had had them for twelve years. He—”
“Had had?” the old woman said. “Had had?”
“Yes. I have them now. He hadn’t sent them to Washington yet, so nobody had read them except him. And now nobody will ever read them.” She ceased; she breathed quietly, tranquil. “You don’t understand yet, do you?
He had all the information the letters could give him, but he would have to turn them in to the Department anyway and I asked him for them but he said he would have to turn them in and I asked him if he would make his final decision in Memphis and he said why Memphis and I told him why.
I knew I couldn’t buy them from him with money, you see. That’s why I had to go to Memphis. I had that much regard for Bory and you, to go somewhere else. And that’s all.
Men are all about the same, with their ideas of good and bad. Fools.” She breathed quietly. Then she yawned, deep, with utter relaxation. Then she stopped yawning. She looked again at the rigid, fading silver head opposite her. “Don’t you understand yet?” she said. “I had to do it.
They were mine; I had to get them back. That was the only way I could do it. But I would have done more than that. So I got them. And now they are burned up. Nobody will ever see them. Because he can’t tell, you see. It would ruin him to ever tell that they even existed. They might even put him in the penitentiary. And now they are burned up.”
“Yes,” the old woman said. “And so you came back home and you took Johnny so you and he could sit together in the creek, the running water.
