I
WHEN
Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a
sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of
curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old
man-servant--a combined gardener and cook--had seen in at least ten years.
It
was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with
cupolas and spires and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the
seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But garages and
cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that
neighborhood; only Miss Emily's house was left, lifting its stubborn and
coquettish decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore
among eyesores. And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of
those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery among the
ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate soldiers who fell at the
battle of Jefferson.
Alive,
Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary
obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris,
the mayor--he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the
streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the
death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would have accepted
charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss
Emily's father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of
business, preferred this way of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris'
generation and thought could have invented it, and only a woman could have
believed it.
When
the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen,
this arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year
they mailed her a tax notice. February came, and there was no reply. They wrote
her a formal letter, asking her to call at the sheriff's office at her
convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to
send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic
shape, in a thin, flowing calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no
longer went out at all. The tax notice was also enclosed, without comment.
They
called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon
her, knocked at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased
giving china-painting lessons eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by
the old Negro into a dim hall from which a stairway mounted into still more
shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse--a close, dank smell. The Negro led them
into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the
Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was
cracked; and when they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their
thighs, spinning with slow motes in the single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt
easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss Emily's father.
They
rose when she entered--a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain
descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane
with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was
why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She
looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that
pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two
small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face
to another while the visitors stated their errand.
She
did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until
the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible
watch ticking at the end of the gold chain.
Her
voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris
explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and
satisfy yourselves."
"But
we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a notice from
the sheriff, signed by him?"
"I
received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers
himself the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But
there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the--"
"See
Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But,
Miss Emily--"
"See
Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.)
"I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show
these gentlemen out."
II
So
SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers
thirty years before about the smell.
That
was two years after her father's death and a short time after her
sweetheart--the one we believed would marry her --had deserted her. After her
father's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people
hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were
not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man--a
young man then--going in and out with a market basket.
"Just
as if a man--any man--could keep a kitchen properly, "the ladies said; so
they were not surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between
the gross, teeming world and the high and mighty Griersons.
A
neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
"But
what will you have me do about it, madam?" he said.
"Why,
send her word to stop it," the woman said. "Isn't there a law? "
"I'm
sure that won't be necessary," Judge Stevens said. "It's probably
just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. I'll speak to him
about it."
The
next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident
deprecation. "We really must do something about it, Judge. I'd be the last
one in the world to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something."
That night the Board of Aldermen met--three graybeards and one younger man, a
member of the rising generation.
"It's
simple enough," he said. "Send her word to have her place cleaned up.
Give her a certain time to do it in, and if she don't. .."
"Dammit,
sir," Judge Stevens said, "will you accuse a lady to her face of
smelling bad?"
So
the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily's lawn and slunk about
the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the
cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his
hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They broke open the cellar door and
sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed the lawn,
a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light
behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept
quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the
street. After a week or two the smell went away.
That
was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town,
remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at
last, believed that the Griersons held themselves a little too high for what
they really were. None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily
and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure
in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the
foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed
by the back-flung front door. So when she got to be thirty and was still
single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the
family she wouldn't have turned down all of her chances if they had really
materialized.
When
her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and
in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left
alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old
thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
The
day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer
condolence and aid, as is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed
as usual and with no trace of grief on her face. She told them that her father
was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her,
and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just
as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried
her father quickly.
We
did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered
all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing
left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will.
III
SHE
WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making
her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored
church windows--sort of tragic and serene.
The
town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer
after her father's death they began the work. The construction company came
with niggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a
Yankee--a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face.
The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the niggers, and the
niggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew
everybody in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the
square, Homer Barron would be in the center of the group. Presently we began to
see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy
and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.
At
first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies
all said, "Of course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner,
a day laborer." But there were still others, older people, who said that
even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -
without
calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, "Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk
should come to her." She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father
had fallen out with them over the estate of old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman,
and there was no communication between the two families. They had not even been
represented at the funeral.
And
as soon as the old people said, "Poor Emily," the whispering began.
"Do you suppose it's really so?" they said to one another. "Of
course it is. What else could . . ." This behind their hands; rustling of
craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon
as the thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: "Poor
Emily."
She
carried her head high enough--even when we believed that she was fallen. It was
as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last
Grierson; as if it had wanted that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her
imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the arsenic. That was over
a year after they had begun to say "Poor Emily," and while the two
female cousins were visiting her.
"I
want some poison," she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then,
still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes
in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the
eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper's face ought to look. "I
want some poison," she said.
"Yes,
Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I'd recom--"
"I
want the best you have. I don't care what kind."
The
druggist named several. "They'll kill anything up to an elephant. But what
you want is--"
"Arsenic,"
Miss Emily said. "Is that a good one?"
"Is
. . . arsenic? Yes, ma'am. But what you want--"
"I
want arsenic."
The
druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a
strained flag. "Why, of course," the druggist said. "If that's
what you want. But the law requires you to tell what you are going to use it
for."
Miss
Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye,
until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro
delivery boy brought her the package; the druggist didn't come back. When she
opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and
bones: "For rats."
IV
So
THE NEXT day we all said, "She will kill herself"; and we said it
would be the best thing. When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron,
we had said, "She will marry him." Then we said, "She will
persuade him yet," because Homer himself had remarked--he liked men, and
it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks' Club--that he was
not a marrying man. Later we said, "Poor Emily" behind the jalousies
as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her
head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a cigar in his teeth, reins
and whip in a yellow glove.
Then
some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad
example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the
ladies forced the Baptist minister--Miss Emily's people were Episcopal-- to
call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but
he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the
streets, and the following day the minister's wife wrote to Miss Emily's
relations in Alabama.
So
she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments.
At first nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We
learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler's and ordered a man's toilet
set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned
that she had bought a complete outfit of men's clothing, including a
nightshirt, and we said, "They are married." We were really glad. We
were glad because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss
Emily had ever been.
So
we were not surprised when Homer Barron--the streets had been finished some
time since--was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public
blowing-off, but we believed that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily's
coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the cousins. (By that time it was
a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily's allies to help circumvent the cousins.)
Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along,
within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man
admit him at the kitchen door at dusk one evening.
And
that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The
Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained
closed. Now and then we would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did
that night when they sprinkled the lime, but for almost six months she did not
appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be expected too; as if
that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman's life so many times
had been too virulent and too furious to die.
When
we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During
the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even
pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. Up to the day of her death
at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an
active man.
From
that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven
years, when she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in
china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one of the downstairs rooms, where
the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris' contemporaries were sent
to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent to
church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate.
Meanwhile her taxes had been remitted.
Then
the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the
painting pupils grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her
with boxes of color and tedious brushes and pictures cut from the ladies'
magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and remained closed for
good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let
them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She
would not listen to them.
Daily,
monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and
out with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would
be returned by the post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would
see her in one of the downstairs windows--she had evidently shut up the top
floor of the house--like the carven torso of an idol in a niche, looking or not
looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to
generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And
so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a
doddering Negro man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had
long since given up trying to get any information from the Negro
He
talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and
rusty, as if from disuse.
She
died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her
gray head propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
V
THE
NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their
hushed, sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he
disappeared. He walked right through the house and out the back and was not
seen again.
The
two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with
the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with
the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies
sibilant and macabre; and the very old men --some in their brushed Confederate
uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a
contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her
perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to
whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which
no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck
of the most recent decade of years.
Already
we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had
seen in forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss
Emily was decently in the ground before they opened it.
The
violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading
dust. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room
decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose
color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate
array of crystal and the man's toilet things backed with tarnished silver,
silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and
tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a
pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded;
beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The
man himself lay in the bed.
For
a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless
grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now
the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had
cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the
nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him
and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding
dust.
Then
we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us
lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust
dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.