"Hush," Dilsey said. "He aint gwine do nothin to her.
I aint gwine let him."
"But on Sunday morning, in my own house," Mrs Compson said. "When I've tried so hard to raise them christians.
Let me find the right key, Jason," she said. She put her hand on his arm.
Then she began to struggle with him, but he flung her aside with a motion of his elbow and looked around at her for a moment, his eyes cold and harried, then he turned to the door again and the unwieldy keys.
"Hush," Dilsey said. "You, Jason!"
"Something terrible has happened," Mrs Compson said, wailing again. "I know it has. You, Jason," she said, grasping at him again. "He wont even let me find the key to a room in my own house!"
"Now, now," Dilsey said. "Whut kin happen?
I right here.
I aint gwine let him hurt her.
Quentin," she said, raising her voice, "dont you be skeered, honey, I'se right here."
The door opened, swung inward.
He stood in it for a moment, hiding the room, then he stepped aside.
"Go in," he said in a thick, light voice.
They went in.
It was not a girl's room.
It was not anybody's room, and the faint scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminise it but added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped transience of rooms in assignation houses.
The bed had not been disturbed.
On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a little too pink, from a half open bureau drawer dangled a single stocking.
The window was open.
A pear tree grew there, close against the house.
It was in bloom and the branches scraped and rasped against the house and the myriad air, driving in the window, brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.
"Dar now," Dilsey said. "Didn't I told you she all right?"
"All right?" Mrs Compson said.
Dilsey followed her into the room and touched her.
"You come on and lay down, now," she said. "I find her in ten minutes."
Mrs Compson shook her off.
"Find the note," she said. "Quentin left a note when he did it."
"All right," Dilsey said. "I'll find hit.
You come on to yo room, now."
"I knew the minute they named her Quentin this would happen," Mrs Compson said.
She went to the bureau and began to turn over the scattered objects there--scent bottles, a box of powder, a chewed pencil, a pair of scissors with one broken blade lying upon a darned scarf dusted with powder and stained with rouge. "Find the note," she said.
"I is," Dilsey said. "You come on, now.
Me and Jason'll find hit.
You come on to yo room."
"Jason," Mrs Compson said. "Where is he?" She went to the door. Dilsey followed her on down the hall, to another door.
It was closed. "Jason," she called through the door.
There was no answer.
She tried the knob, then she called him again.
But there was still no answer, for he was hurling things backward out of the closet, garments, shoes, a suitcase.
Then he emerged carrying a sawn section of tongue-and-groove planking and laid it down and entered the closet again and emerged with a metal box.
He set it on the bed and stood looking at the broken lock while he dug a keyring from his pocket and selected a key, and for a time longer he stood with the selected key in his hand, looking at the broken lock. Then he put the keys back in his pocket and carefully tilted the contents of the box out upon the bed.
Still carefully he sorted the papers, taking them up one at a time and shaking them.
Then he upended the box and shook it too and slowly replaced the papers and stood again, looking at the broken lock, with the box in his hands and his head bent.
Outside the window he heard some jaybirds swirl shrieking past and away, their cries whipping away along the wind, and an automobile passed somewhere and died away also.
His mother spoke his name again beyond the door, but he didn't move.
He heard Dilsey lead her away up the hall, and then a door closed.
Then he replaced the box in the closet and flung the garments back into it and went down stairs to the telephone.
While he stood there with the receiver to his ear waiting Dilsey came down the stairs.
She looked at him, without stopping, and went on.