"I'll find it.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
Tell Mrs Bland I'm sorry I spoiled her party." They stood watching me.
I went around the house.
A rock path went down to the road.
Roses grew on both sides of the path.
I went through the gate, onto the road.
It dropped downhill, toward the woods, and I could make out the auto beside the road.
I went up the hill.
The light increased as I mounted, and before I reached the top I heard a car.
It sounded far away across the twilight and I stopped and listened to it.
I couldn't make out the auto any longer, but Shreve was standing in the road before the house, looking up the hill.
Behind him the yellow light lay like a wash of paint on the roof of the house.
I lifted my hand and went on over the hill, listening to the car.
Then the house was gone and I stopped in the green and yellow light and heard the car growing louder and louder, until just as it began to die away it ceased all together.
I waited until I heard it start again.
Then I went on.
As I descended the light dwindled slowly, yet at the same time without altering its quality, as if I and not light were changing, decreasing, though even when the road ran into trees you could have read a newspaper.
Pretty soon I came to a lane. I turned into it.
It was closer and darker than the road, but when it came out at the trolley stop--another wooden marquee--the light was still unchanged.
After the lane it seemed brighter, as though I had walked through night in the lane and come out into morning again.
Pretty soon the car came.
I got on it, they turning to look at my eye, and found a seat on the left side.
The lights were on in the car, so while we ran between trees I couldn't see anything except my own face and a woman across the aisle with a hat sitting right on top of her head, with a broken feather in it, but when we ran out of the trees I could see the twilight again, that quality of light as if time really had stopped for a while, with the sun hanging just under the horizon, and then we passed the marquee where the old man had been eating out of the sack, and the road going on under the twilight, into twilight and the sense of water peaceful and swift beyond.
Then the car went on, the draft building steadily up in the open door until it was drawing steadily through the car with the odor of summer and darkness except honeysuckle.
Honeysuckle was the saddest odor of all, I think.
I remember lots of them.
Wistaria was one.
On the rainy days when Mother wasn't feeling quite bad enough to stay away from the windows we used to play under it.
When Mother stayed in bed Dilsey would put old clothes on us and let us go out in the rain because she said rain never hurt young folks.
But if Mother was up we always began by playing on the porch until she said we were making too much noise, then we went out and played under the wisteria frame.
This was where I saw the river for the last time this morning, about here.
I could feel water beyond the twilight, smell.
When it bloomed in the spring and it rained the smell was everywhere you didn't notice it so much at other times but when it rained the smell began to come into the house at twilight either it would rain more at twilight or there was something in the light itself but it always smelled strongest then until I would lie in bed thinking when will it stop when will it stop. The draft in the door smelled of water, a damp steady breath.
Sometimes I could put myself to sleep saying that over and over until after the honeysuckle got all mixed up in it the whole thing came to symbolis night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray halflight where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.
I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tideflats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off.
Benjamin the child of.
How he used to sit before that mirror.
Refuge unfailing in which conflict tempered silenced reconciled.
Benjamin the child of mine old age held hostage into Egypt.
O Benjamin.
Dilsey said it was because Mother was too proud for him.
They come into white people's lives like that in sudden sharp black trickles that isolate white facts for an instant in unarguable truth like under a microscope; the rest of the time just voices that laugh when you see nothing to laugh at, tears when no reason for tears.
They will bet on the odd or even number of mourners at a funeral.
A brothel full of them in Memphis went into a religious trance ran naked into the street.
It took three policemen to subdue one of them.
Yes Jesus O good man Jesus O that good man.
The car stopped.
I got out, with them looking at my eye.
When the trolley came it was full.