“You can’t come in here!” she cried, hardly louder than a whisper. “Don’t you know they ...”
Her voice was panting, fainting, and desperate.
He did not answer.
She tried to halt and hold the slow inward crawling of the door.
“Let me get some clothes on, and I’ll come out there.
Will you do that?”
She spoke in that fainting whisper, her tone light, inconsequential, like that of one speaking to an unpredictable child or a maniac: soothing, cajoling:
“You wait, now.
Do you hear?
Will you wait, now?”
He did not answer.
The slow and irresistible crawling of the door did not cease.
Leaning against it, wearing nothing save her undergarment, she was like a puppet in some burlesque of rapine and despair.
Leaning, downlooking, immobile, she appeared to be in deepest thought, as if the puppet in the midst of the scene had gone astray within itself.
Then she turned, releasing the door, and sprang back to the bed, whipping up without looking at it a garment and whirling to face the door, clutching the garment at her breast, huddling.
He had already entered; apparently he had been watching her and waiting during the whole blind interval of fumbling and interminable haste.
He still wore the overalls and he now wore his hat.
He did not remove it.
Again his cold mad gray eyes did not seem to see her, to look at her at all.
“If the Lord Himself come into the room of one of you,” he said, “you would believe He come in bitchery.”
He said, “Have you told her ?”
The woman sat on the bed.
She seemed to sink slowly back upon it, clutching the garment, watching him, her face blanched.
“Told her?”
“What will she do with him?”
“Do?” She watched him: those bright, still eyes that seemed not to look at her so much as to envelop her.
Her mouth hung open like the mouth of an idiot.
“Where will they send him to?” She didn’t answer. “Don’t lie to me, to the Lord God.
They’ll send him to the one for niggers.” Her mouth closed; it was as if she had discovered at last what he was talking about. “Ay, I’ve thought it out.
They’ll send him to the one for nigger children.” She didn’t answer, but she was watching him now, her eyes still a little fearful but secret too, calculating.
Now he was looking at her.; his eyes seemed to contract upon her shape and being. “Answer me, Jezebel!” he shouted.
“Shhhhhhhhh!” she said. “Yes.
They’ll have to.
When they find ...”
“Ah,” he said.
His gaze faded; the eyes released her and enveloped her again.
Looking at them, she seemed to see herself as less than nothing in them, trivial as a twig floating upon a pool.
Then his eyes became almost human.
He began to look about the womanroom as if he had never seen one before: the close room, warm, littered, womanpinksmelling.
“Womanfilth,” he said. “Before the face of God.” He turned and went out.
After a while the woman rose.
She stood for a time, clutching the garment, motionless, idiotic, staring at the empty door as if she could not think what to tell herself to do.
Then she ran.
She sprang to the door, flinging herself upon it, crashing it to and locking it, leaning against it, panting, clutching the turned key in both hands.
At breakfast time the next morning the janitor and the child were missing.
No trace of them could be found.
The police were notified at once.
A side door was found to be unlocked, to which the janitor had a key.
“It’s because he knows,” the dietitian told the matron.
“Knows what?”