She (Clytie) lay on the bare floor of the scaling and empty hall like a small shapeless bundle of quiet clean rags. When he reached her he saw that she was quite conscious, her eyes wide open and calm; he stood above her, thinking, "Yes. She is the one who owns the terror."
When he raised her it was like picking up a handful of sticks concealed in a rag bundle, so light she was.
She could not stand; he had to hold her up, aware of some feeble movement or intention in her limbs until he realized that she was trying to sit on the bottom step. He lowered her to it. 'Who are you?" she said. 'I'm Quentin Compson,' he answered.
'Yes. I remember your grandpaw. You go up there and make her come down.
Make her go away from here. Whatever he done, me and Judith and him have paid it out.
You go and get her. Take her away from here." So he mounted the stairs, the worn bare treads, the cracked and scaling wall on one side, the balustrade with its intermittent missing spindles on the other. He remembered how he looked back and she was still sitting as he had left her, and that now (and he had not heard him enter) there stood in the hall below a hulking young lightcolored Negro man in clean faded overalls and shirt, his arms dangling, no surprise, no nothing in the saddle‐colored and slack‐mouthed idiot face. He remembered how he thought, "The scion, the heir, the apparent (though not obvious)" and how he heard Miss Coldfield's feet and saw the light of the torch approaching along the upper hall and how she came and passed him, how she stumbled a little and caught herself and looked full at him as if she had never seen him before ‐ the eyes wide and unseeing like a sleepwalker's, the face which had always been tallow‐hued now possessing some still profounder, some almost unbearable, quality of bloodlessness and he thought, "What? What is it now? It's not shock. And it never has been fear.
Can it be triumph?" and how she passed him and went on. He heard Clytie say to the man,
"Take her to the gate, the buggy" and he stood there thinking, "I should go with her" and then, "But I must see too now. I will have to. Maybe I shall be sorry tomorrow, but I must see." So when he came back down the stairs (and he remembered how he thought, "Maybe my face looks like hers did, but it's not triumph") there was only Clytie in the hall, sitting still on the bottom step, sitting still in the attitude in which he had left her. She did not even look at him when he passed her. Nor did he overtake Miss Coldfield and the Negro. It was too dark to go fast, thought he could presently hear them ahead of him. She was not using the flashlight now; he remembered how he thought, "Surely she cant be afraid to show a light now." But she was not using it and he wondered if she were holding to the Negro's arm now; he wondered that until he heard the Negro's voice, flat, without emphasis or interest: "Wawkin better over here" and no answer from her, though he was close enough now to hear (or believe he did) her whimpering panting breath.
Then he heard the other sound and he knew that she had stumbled and fallen; he could almost see the hulking slack‐faced Negro stopped in his tracks, looking toward the sound of the fall, waiting, without interest or curiosity, as he (Quentin) hurried forward, hurried toward the voices:
'You, nigger! What's your name?" 'Calls me Jim Bond."
'Help me up! You aint any Sutpen! You don't have to leave me lying in the dirt!"
When he stopped the buggy at her gate she did not offer to get out alone this time. She sat there until he got down and came round to her side; she still sat there, clutching the umbrella in one hand and the hatchet in the other, until he spoke her name. Then she stirred; he helped, lifted her down; she was almost as light as Clytie had been; when she moved it was like a mechanical doll, so that he supported and led her through the gate and up the short walk and into the dollsized house and turned on the light for her and looked at the fixed sleep‐walking face, the wide dark eyes as she stood there, still clutching the umbrella and the hatchet, the shawl and the black dress both stained with dirt where she had fallen, the black bonnet jerked forward and awry by the shock of the fall.
'Are you all right now?" he said.
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes. I'm all right. Goodnight." ‐ "Not thank you," he thought: "Just goodnight,"
outside the house now, breathing deep and fast now as he returned to the buggy, finding that he was about to begin to run, thinking quietly, "Jesus. Jesus. Jesus," breathing fast and hard of the dark dead furnace‐breath of air, of night where the fierce aloof stars hung. His own home was dark; he was still using the whip when he turned into the lane and then into the stable lot. He sprang out and took the mare from the buggy, stripping the harness from her and tumbling it into the harness room without stopping to hang it up, sweating, breathing fast and hard; when he turned at last toward the house he did begin to run. He could not help it. He was twenty years old; he was not afraid, because what he had seen out there could not harm him, yet he ran; even inside the dark familiar house, his shoes in his hand, he still ran, up the stairs and into his room and began to undress, fast, sweating, breathing fast. "I ought to bathe," he thought: then he was lying on the bed, naked, swabbing his body steadily with the discarded shirt, sweating still, panting: so that when, his eye‐muscles aching and straining into the darkness and the almost dried shirt still clutched in his hand, he said "I have been asleep" it was all the same, there was no difference: waking or sleeping he walked down that upper hall between the scaling walls and beneath the cracked ceiling, toward the faint light which fell outward from the last door and paused there, saying "No. No" and then "Only I must. I have to" and went in, entered the bare, stale room whose shutters were closed too, where a second lamp burned dimly on a crude table; waking or sleeping it was the same; the bed, the yellow sheets and pillow, the wasted yellow face with closed, almost transparent eyes on the pillow, the wasted hands, crossed on the breast as if he were already a corpse; waking or sleeping it was the same and would be the same forever as long as he lived: And you are ‐? Henry Sutpen. And you have been here ‐? Four years. And you came home ‐? To die. Yes.
To die‐? Yes. To die. And you have been here ‐? Four years. And you are ‐? Henry Sutpen.
It was quite cold in the room now; the chimes would ring for one any time now; the chill had a compounded, a gathered quality, as though preparing for the dead moment before dawn. 'And she waited three months before she went back to get him,' Shreve said. 'Why did she do that?" Quentin didn't answer. He lay still and rigid on his back with the cold New England night on his face and the blood running warm in his rigid body and limbs, breathing hard but slow, his eyes wide open upon the window, thinking "Nevermore of peace. Nevermore of peace.
Nevermore Nevermore Nevermore." 'Do you suppose it was because she knew what was going to happen when she told it, took any steps, that it would be over then, finished, and that hating is like drink or drugs and she had used it so long that she did not dare risk cutting off the supply, destroying the source, the very poppy's root and seed?" Still Quentin didn't answer. ' But at last she did reconcile herself to it, for his sake, to save him, to bring him into town where the doctors could save him, and so she told it then, got the ambulance and the men and went out there. And old Clytie maybe watching for just that out of the upstairs window for three months now: and maybe even your old man was right this time and when she saw the ambulance turn into the gate she believed it was that same black wagon for which she probably had had that nigger boy watching for three months now, coming to carry Henry into town for the white folks to hang him for shooting Charles Bon. And I guess it had been him who had kept that closet under the stairs full of tinder and trash all that time too, like she told him to, maybe he not getting it then either but keeping it full just like she told him, the kerosene and all, for three months now, until the hour when he could begin to howl ‐' Now the chimes began, ringing for one o'clock. Shreve ceased, as if he were waiting for them to cease or perhaps were even listening to them. Quentin lay still too, as if he were listening too, though he was not; he just heard them without listening as he heard Shreve without listening or answering, until they ceased, died away into the icy air delicate and faint and musical as struck glass.