Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

by Faulkner, William

  So there they was. That gal of thirteen and fourteen and fifteen that wasn’t trying to do nothing but jest get shut of having to go to school by getting there on time and knowing the lesson to make the rise next year, that likely wouldn’t barely ever looked at him long enough to know him again except that she found out on a sudden that for some reason he was trying to adopt some of her daily life into hisn, or adopt a considerable chunk of his daily life into hern, whichever way you want to put it. And that bachelor lawyer twice her age, that was already more or less in the public eye from being county attorney, not to mention in a little town like Jefferson where ever time you had your hair cut your constituency knowed about it by suppertime. So that the best they knowed to do was to spend fifteen minutes after school one or two afternoons a week at a table in the window of Uncle Willy Christian’s drugstore while she et a icecream sody or a banana split and the ice melted into the unteched Coca-Cola in front of him. Not jest the best but the only thing, not jest for the sake of her good name but also for them votes that two years from now might not consider buying ice cream for fourteen-year-old gals a fitting qualification for a county attorney.

  About twice a week meeting her by that kind of purely coincidental accident that looked jest exactly as accidental as you would expect: Lawyer ambushed behind his upstairs office window across the street until the first of the let-out school would begin to pass, which would be the kindergarden and the first grade, then by that same accidental coincidence happening to be on the corner at the exact time to cut her outen the seventh or eighth or ninth grade, her looking a little startled and surprised the first time or two; not alarmed: jest startled a little, wondering jest a little at first maybe what he wanted. But not for long; that passed too and pretty soon Lawyer was even drinking maybe a inch of the Coca-Cola before it got too lukewarm to swallow. Until one day I says to him: “I envy you,” and he looked at me and I says, “Your luck,” and he says,

  “My which luck?” and I says,

  “You are completely immersed twenty-four hours a day in being busy. Most folks aint. Almost nobody aint. But you are. Doing the one thing you not only got to do, but the one thing in the world you want most to do. And if that wasn’t already enough, it’s got as many or maybe even more interesting technical complications in it than if you had invented it yourself instead of jest being discovered by it. For the sake of her good name, you got to do it right out in that very same open public eye that would ruin her good if it ever found a chance, but maybe wouldn’t never even suspect you and she knowed one another’s name if you jest kept it hidden in secret. Dont you call that keeping busy?”

  Because he was unenchanted now, you see, done freed at last of that fallen seraphim. It was Eula herself had give him a salve, a ointment, for that bitter thumb the poets say ever man once in his life has got to gnaw at: that gal thirteen then fourteen then fifteen setting opposite him in Christian’s drugstore maybe two afternoons a week in the intervals of them coincidental two or three weeks ever year while Miz Flem Snopes and her daughter would be on a holiday somewhere at the same coincidental time Manfred de Spain would be absent on hisn—not Mayor de Spain now but Banker de Spain since Colonel Sartoris finally vacated the presidency of the bank him and De Spain’s paw and Will Varner had established, by letting his grandson run the automobile off into a ditch on the way to town one morning, and now Manfred de Spain was president of the bank, moving outen the mayor’s office into the president’s office at about the same more or less coincidental moment that Flem Snopes moved outen being the ex-superintendent of the power plant, into being vice-president of the bank, vacating simultaneously outen that little cloth cap he come to Jefferson in (jest vacated, not abandoned it, the legend being he sold it to a Negro boy for ten cents. Which wouldn’t be a bad price, since who knows if maybe some of that-ere financial acumen might not a sweated off onto it.) into a black felt planter’s hat suitable to his new position and avocation.

  Oh yes, Lawyer was unenchanted now, even setting alone now and then in Christian’s window while the ice melted into the Coca-Cola until they would get back home, maybe to be ready and in practice when them two simultaneous coincidences was over and school would open again on a whole fresh year of two afternoons a week—providing of course that sixteen-and seventeen-year-old gal never run into a Hoake McCarron or a Manfred de Spain of her own between two of them and Lawyer could say to you like the man in the book: What you see aint tears. You jest think that’s what you’re looking at.

  Sixteen and seventeen and going on eighteen now and Lawyer still lending her books to read and keeping her stall-fed twice a week on icecream sundaes and banana splits, so anyhow Jefferson figgered it knowed what Lawyer was up to whether he admitted it out or not. And naturally Eula had already knowed for five or six years what she was after. Like there’s a dog, maybe not no extra dog but leastways a good sound what you might call a dog’s dog, that dont seem to belong to nobody else, that seems to show a preference for your vicinity, that even after the five or six years you aint completely convinced there wont never be no other dog available, and that even them five or six years back and even with another five or six years added onto now, you never needed and you aint going to need that dog personally, there aint any use in simply throwing away and wasting its benefits and accomplishments, even if they aint nothing but fidelity and devotion, by letting somebody else get a-holt of it. Or say you got a gal child coming along, that the older and bigger she gets, the more of a nuisance she’s bound to be on your time and private occupations: in which case not only wont that fidelity and devotion maybe come into handy use, but even the dog itself might that could still be capable of them long after even hit had give up all expectation of even one bone.

  Which is what Jefferson figgered. But not me. Maybe even though she got rid of Hoake McCarron, even after she knowed she was pregnant, there is still moments when even female physical phenomenons is female first whether they want to be or not. So I believe that women aint so different from men: that if it aint no trouble nor shock neither for a man to father onto hisself the first child of the woman he loved and lost and still cant rid outen his mind, no matter how many other men holp to get it, it aint no trouble neither for that woman to father a dozen different men’s chillen onto that man that lost her and still never expected nothing of her except to accept his devotion.

  And since she was a female too, likely by the time Linda was thirteen or fourteen or even maybe as soon as she got over that first startle, which would a been at the second or third icecream sody, she taken for granted she knowed what he was aiming at too. And she would a been wrong. That wasn’t Lawyer. Jest to train her up and marry her wasn’t it. She wouldn’t a been necessary for that—I mean, the simple natural normal following lifetime up to the divorce of steady uxorious hymeneal conflict that any female he could a picked outen that school crowd or from Christian’s sody counter would been fully competent for. Jest that wouldn’t a been worth his effort. He had to be the sole one masculine feller within her entire possible circumambience, not jest to recognise she had a soul still capable of being saved from what he called Snopesism: a force and power that stout and evil as to jeopardise it jest from her believing for twelve or thirteen years she was blood kin when she actively wasn’t no kin a-tall, but that couldn’t nobody else in range and reach but him save it—that-ere bubble-glass thing somewhere inside her like one of them shimmer-colored balls balanced on the seal’s nose, fragile yet immune too jest that one constant fragile inch above the smutch and dirt of Snopes as long as the seal dont trip or stumble or let her attention wander.

  So all he aimed to do was jest to get her outen Jefferson or, better, safer still, completely outen Missippi, starting off with the nine months of the school year, until somebody would find her and marry her and she would be gone for good—a optimist pure and simple and undefiled if there ever was one since ever body knowed that the reason Flem Snopes was vice-president of De Spain’s bank was the same reas
on he was ex-superintendent of the power plant: in the one case folks wanting to smile at Eula Varner had to at least be able to pronounce Flem Snopes, and in the other De Spain had to take Flem along with him to get the use of Will Varner’s voting stock to get hisself president. And the only reason why Will Varner never used this chance to get back at Flem about that Old Frenchman homesite that Will thought wasn’t worth nothing until Flem sold it to me and Odum Bookwright and Henry Armstid for my half of mine and Grover Winbush’s café and Odum Bookwright’s cash and the two-hundred-dollar mortgage on Henry’s farm less them five or six dollars or whatever they was where Henry’s wife tried to keep them buried from him behind the outhouse, was the same reason why Eula didn’t quit Flem and marry De Spain: that staying married to Flem kept up a establishment and a name for that gal that otherwise wouldn’t a had either. So once that gal was married herself or leastways settled for good away from Jefferson so she wouldn’t need Flem’s name and establishment no more, and in consequence Flem wouldn’t have no holt over her any more, Flem hisself would be on the outside trying to look back in and Flem knowed it.

  Only Lawyer didn’t know it. He believed right up to the last that Flem was going to let him get Linda away from Jefferson to where the first strange young man that happened by would marry her and then Eula could quit him and he would be finished. He—I mean Lawyer—had been giving her books to read ever since she was fourteen and then kind of holding examinations on them while the Coca-Cola ice melted. Then she was going on seventeen, next spring she would graduate from the high school and now he was ordering off for the catalogues from the extra-select girls’ schools up there close to Harvard.

  Now the part comes that dont nobody know except Lawyer, who naturally never told it. So as he hisself would say, you got to surmise from the facts in evidence: not jest the mind-improving books and the school catalogues accumulating into a dusty stack in his office, but the icecream sessions a thing of the past too. Because now she was going to and from school the back way, up alleys. Until finally in about a week maybe Lawyer realised that she was dodging him. And she was going to graduate from high school in less than two months now and there wasn’t no time to waste. So that morning Lawyer went hisself to talk to her maw and he never told that neither so now we got to presume on a little more than jest evidence. Because my childhood too come out of that same similar Frenchman’s Bend background and mill-yew that Flem Snopes had lifted hisself out of by his own unaided bootstraps, if you dont count Hoake McCarron. So all I had to do was jest to imagine my name was Flem Snopes and that the only holt I had on Will Varner’s money was through his daughter, and if I ever lost what light holt I had on the granddaughter, the daughter would be gone. Yet here was a durn meddling outsider with a complete set of plans that would remove that granddaughter to where I wouldn’t never see her again, if she had any sense a-tall. And since the daughter had evidently put up with me for going on eighteen years now for the sake of that granddaughter, the answer was simple: all I needed to do was go to my wife and say, “If you give that gal permission to go away to school, I’ll blow up this-here entire Manfred de Spain business to where she wont have no home to have to get away from, let alone one to come back to for Christmas and holidays.”

  And for her first eighteen years Eula breathed that same Frenchman’s Bend mill-yew atmosphere too so maybe all I got to do is imagine my name is Eula Varner to know what she said back to Lawyer: “No, she cant go off to school but you can marry her. That will solve ever thing.” You see? Because the kind of fidelity and devotion that could keep faithful and devoted that long without even wanting no bone any more, was not only too valuable to let get away, it even deserved to be rewarded. Because maybe the full rounded satisfaction and completeness of being Helen was bigger than a thousand Parises and McCarrons and De Spains could satisfy. I don’t mean jest the inexhaustible capacity for passion, but of power: the power not jest to draw and enchant and consume, but the power and capacity to give away and reward; the power to draw to you, not more than you can handle because the words “cant-handle” and “Helen” aint even in the same language, but to draw to you so much more than you can possibly need that you could even afford to give the surplus away, be that prodigal—except that you are Helen and you cant give nothing away that was ever yourn: all you can do is share it and reward its fidelity and maybe even, for a moment, soothe and assuage its grief. And cruel too, prodigal in that too, because you are Helen and can afford it; you got to be Helen to be that cruel, that prodigal in cruelty, and still be yourself unscathed and immune, likely calling him by his first name for the first time too: “Marry her, Gavin.”

  And saw in his face not jest startlement and a little surprise like he seen in Linda’s that time, but terror, fright, not at having to answer “No” that quick nor even at being asked it because he believed he had done already asked and decided that suh-jestion forever a long while back. It was at having it suh-jested to him by her. Like, since he hadn’t been able to have no hope since that moment when he realised Manfred de Spain had already looked at her too, he had found out how to live at peace with hoping since he was the only one alive that knowed he never had none. But now, when she said that right out loud to his face, it was like she had said right out in public that he wouldn’t a had no hope even if Manfred de Spain hadn’t never laid eyes on her. And if he could jest get that “No” out quick enough, it would be like maybe she hadn’t actively said what she said, and he would still not be destroyed.

  At least wasn’t nobody, no outsider, there to hear it so maybe even before next January he was able to believe hadn’t none of it even been said, like miracle: what aint believed aint seen. Miracle, pure miracle anyhow, how little a man needs to outlast jest about anything. Which—miracle—is about what looked like had happened next January: Linda graduated that spring from high school and next fall she entered the Seminary where she would be home ever night and all day Saturday and Sunday the same as before so Flem could keep his hand on her. Then jest after Christmas we heard how she had withdrawed from the Seminary and was going over to Oxford and enter the University. Yes sir, over there fifty miles from Flem day and night both right in the middle of a nest of five or six hundred bachelors under twenty-five years old any one of which could marry her that had two dollars for a license. A pure miracle, especially after I run into Eula on the street and says,

  “How did you manage it?” and she says,

  “Manage what?” and I says,

  “Persuade Flem to let her go to the University,” and she says,

  “I didn’t. It was his idea. He gave the permission without even consulting me. I didn’t know he was going to do it either.” Only the Frenchman’s Bend background should have been enough, without even needing the sixteen or seventeen years of Jefferson environment, to reveal even to blind folks that Flem Snopes didn’t deal in miracles: that he preferred spot cash or at least a signed paper with a X on it. So when it was all over and finished, Eula dead and De Spain gone from Jefferson for good too and Flem was now president of the bank and even living in De Spain’s rejuvenated ancestral home and Linda gone with her New York husband to fight in the Spanish war, when Lawyer finally told me what little he actively knowed, it was jest evidence I had already presumed on. Because of course all Helen’s children would have to inherit something of generosity even if they couldn’t inherit more than about one millionth of their maw’s bounty to be generous with. Not to mention that McCarron boy, that even if he wasn’t durable enough to stand more than that-ere first creek bridge, was at least brave enough or rash enough to try to. So likely Flem already knowed in advance that he wouldn’t have to bargain, swap, with her. That all he needed was jest to do what he probably done: ketching her after she had give up and then had had them three months to settle down into having give up, then saying to her: “Let’s compromise. If you will give up them eastern schools, maybe you can go to the University over at Oxford.” You see? Offering to give something that, in a
ll the fourteen or fifteen years she could remember knowing him in, she had never dreamed he would do.

  Then that day in the next April; she had been at the University over at Oxford since right after New Year’s. I was jest leaving for Rockyford to deliver Miz Ledbetter’s new sewing machine when Flem stopped me on the Square and offered me four bits extra to carry him by Varner’s store a minute. Urgent enough to pay me four bits when the mail carrier would have took him for nothing; secret enough that he couldn’t risk either public conveyance: the mail carrier that would a took him out and back free but would a needed all day, or a hired automobile that would had him at Varner’s front gate in not much over a hour.

  Secret enough and urgent enough to have Will Varner storming into his daughter’s and son-in-law’s house in Jefferson before daylight the next morning loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood until somebody (Eula naturally) stopped him. So we got to presume on a few known facts again: that Old Frenchman place that Will deeded to Flem because he thought it was worthless until Flem sold it to me and Odum Bookwright and Henry Armstid (less of course the active silver dollars Flem had had to invest into that old rose garden with a shovel where we—or any other Ratliffs and Bookwrights and Armstids that was handy—would find them). And that president’s chair in the bank that we knowed now Flem had had his eye on ever since Manfred de Spain taken it over after Colonel Sartoris. And that gal that had done already inherited generosity from her maw and then was suddenly give another gob of it that she not only never in the world expected but that she probably never knowed how bad she wanted it until it was suddenly give to her free.