I knew that someone—I didn’t believe that—”
“I reckon I kin always find a bed fer a woman and child,” the woman said.
“I dont keer whut Ed says.
Was you wantin her special?
She’s sleepin now.”
“No, no; I just wanted to——”
The woman watched him across the lamp. “ ’Taint no need botherin her, then.
You kin come around in the mawnin and git her a boa’din-place. ’Taint no hurry.”
On the next afternoon Horace went out to his sister’s, again in a hired car. He told her what had happened.
“I’ll have to take her home now.”
“Not into my house,” Narcissa said.
He looked at her.
Then he began to fill his pipe slowly and carefully.
“It’s not a matter of choice, my dear.
You must see that.”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said.
“I thought we settled that.”
He struck the match and lit the pipe and put the match carefully into the fireplace.
“Do you realise that she has been practically turned into the streets?
That—”
“That shouldn’t be a hardship.
She ought to be used to that.”
He looked at her.
He put the pipe in his mouth and smoked it to a careful coal, watching his hand tremble upon the stem.
“Listen.
By tomorrow they will probably ask her to leave town.
Just because she happens not to be married to the man whose child she carries about these sanctified streets.
But who told them?
That’s what I want to know.
I know that nobody in Jefferson knew it except—”
“You were the first I heard tell it,” Miss Jenny said.
“But, Narcissa, why—”
“Not in my house,” Narcissa said.
“Well,” Horace said. He drew the pipe to an even coal.
“That settles it, of course,” he said, in a dry, light voice.
She rose.
“Will you stay here tonight?”
“What?
No. No.
I’ll—I told her I’d come for her at the jail and.……” He sucked at his pipe.
“Well, I dont suppose it matters.
I hope it doesn’t.”
She was still paused, turning.
“Will you stay or not?”
“I could even tell her I had a puncture,” Horace said.
“Time’s not such a bad thing after all.
Use it right, and you can stretch anything out, like a rubber band, until it busts somewhere, and there you are, with all tragedy and despair in two little knots between thumb and finger of each hand.”
“Will you stay, or wont you stay, Horace?” Narcissa said.
“I think I’ll stay,” Horace said.
He was in bed. He had been lying in the dark for about an hour, when the door of the room opened, felt rather than seen or heard.