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.
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.»
Part Two
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 n—— 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.
Part Three
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 n——s 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 n——s, and the n——s 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.»
Part Four
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.
Part Five
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.
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