The Unvanquished (21 page)

But she was beaten, like as soon as she let them put the dress on her she was whipped; like in the dress she could neither fight back nor run away. And so she didn’t come down to the log-yard anymore, and now that Father and I slept in the cabin with Joby and Ringo, I didn’t even see Drusilla except at mealtime. And we
were busy getting the timber out, and now everybody was talking about the election and how Father had told the two Burdens before all the men in town that the election would never be held with Cash Benbow or any other nigger in it and how the Burdens had dared him to stop it. And besides, the other cabin would be full of Jefferson ladies all day; you would have thought that Drusilla was Mrs Habersham’s daughter and not Aunt Louisa’s. They would begin to arrive right after breakfast and stay all day, so that at supper Aunt Louisa would sit in her black mourning except for the bonnet and umbrella, with a wad of some kind of black knitting she carried around with her and that never got finished and the folded handkerchief handy in her belt (only she ate fine; she ate more than Father even because the election was just a week off and I reckon he was thinking about the Burdens) and refusing to speak to anybody except Denny; and Drusilla trying to eat, with her face strained and thin and her eyes like somebody’s that had been whipped a long time now and is going just on nerve.

Then Drusilla broke; they beat her. Because she was strong; she wasn’t much older than I was, but she had let Aunt Louisa and Mrs Habersham choose the game and she had beat them both until that night when Aunt Louisa went behind her back and chose a game she couldn’t beat. I was coming up to supper; I heard them inside the cabin before I could stop: “Cant you believe me?” Drusilla said. “Cant you understand that in the
troop I was just another man and not much of one at that, and since we came home here I am just another mouth for John to feed, just a cousin of John’s wife and not much older than his own son?” And I could almost see Aunt Louisa sitting there with that knitting that never progressed:

“You wish to tell me that you, a young woman, associated with him, a still young man, day and night for a year, running about the country with no guard nor check of any sort upon—— Do you take me for a complete fool?” So that night Aunt Louisa beat her; we had just sat down to supper when Aunt Louisa looked at me like she had been waiting for the noise of the bench to stop: “Bayard, I do not ask your forgiveness for this because it is your burden too; you are an innocent victim as well as Dennison and I——” Then she looked at Father, thrust back in Granny’s chair (the only chair we had) in her black dress, the black wad of knitting beside her plate. “Colonel Sartoris,” she said, “I am a woman; I must request what the husband whom I have lost and the man son which I have not would demand, perhaps at the point of a pistol— Will you marry my daughter?”

I got out. I moved fast; I heard the light sharp sound when Drusilla’s head went down between her flungout arms on the table, and the sound the bench made when Father got up too; I passed him standing beside Drusilla with his hand on her head. “They have beat you, Drusilla,” he said.

Mrs Habersham got there before we had finished breakfast the next morning. I dont know how Aunt Louisa got word in to her so quick. But there she was, and she and Aunt Louisa set the wedding for the day after tomorrow. I dont reckon they even knew that that was the day Father had told the Burdens Cash Benbow would never be elected Marshal in Jefferson. I dont reckon they paid any more attention to it than if all the men had decided that day after tomorrow all the clocks in Jefferson were to be set back or up an hour. Maybe they didn’t even know there was to be an election, that all the men in the county would be riding toward Jefferson tomorrow with pistols in their pockets, and that the Burdens already had their nigger voters camped in a cotton gin on the edge of town under guard. I dont reckon they even cared. Because like Father said, women cannot believe that anything can be right or wrong or even be very important that can be decided by a lot of little scraps of scribbled paper dropped into a box.

It was to be a big wedding; all Jefferson was to be invited and Mrs Habersham planning to bring the three bottles of Madeira she had been saving for five years now when Aunt Louisa began to cry again. But they caught on quick now; now all of them were patting Aunt Louisa’s hands and giving her vinegar to smell and Mrs Habersham saying, “Of course. You poor thing. A public wedding now, after a year, would be a
public notice of the.…” So they decided it would be a reception, because Mrs Habersham said how a reception could be held for a bridal couple at any time, even ten years later. So Drusilla was to ride into town, meet Father and be married as quick and quiet as possible, with just me and one other for witnesses to make it legal; none of the ladies themselves would even be present. Then they would come back home and we would have the reception.

So they began to arrive early the next morning, with baskets of food and tablecloths and silver like for a church supper. Mrs Habersham brought a veil and a wreath and they all helped Drusilla to dress, only Aunt Louisa made Drusilla put on Father’s big riding cloak over the veil and wreath too, and Ringo brought the horses up, all curried and brushed, and I helped Drusilla on with Aunt Louisa and the others all watching from the porch. But I didn’t know that Ringo was missing when we started, not even when I heard Aunt Louisa hollering for Denny while we rode down the drive. It was Louvinia that told about it, about how after we left the ladies set and decorated the table and spread the wedding breakfast and how they were all watching the gate and Aunt Louisa still hollering for Denny now and then when they saw Ringo and Denny come up the drive riding double on one of the mules at a gallop, with Denny’s eyes round as doorknobs and already hollering, “They kilt um! They kilt um!”

“Who?” Aunt Louisa hollered. “Where have you been?”

“To town!” Denny hollered. “Them two Burdens! They kilt um!”

“Who killed them?” Aunt Louisa hollered.

“Drusilla and Cousin John!” Denny hollered. Then Louvinia said how Aunt Louisa hollered sure enough.

“Do you mean to tell me that Drusilla and that man are not married yet?”

Because we didn’t have time. Maybe Drusilla and Father would have, but when we came into the square we saw the crowd of niggers kind of huddled beyond the hotel door with six or eight strange white men herding them, and then all of a sudden I saw the Jefferson men, the men that I knew, that Father knew, running across the square toward the hotel with each one holding his hip like a man runs with a pistol in his pocket. And then I saw the men who were Father’s troop lined up before the hotel door, blocking it off. And then I was sliding off my horse too and watching Drusilla struggling with George Wyatt. But he didn’t have hold of her, he just had hold of the cloak, and then she was through the line of them and running toward the hotel with her wreath on one side of her head and the veil streaming behind. But George held me. He threw the cloak down and held me. “Let go,” I said. “Father.”

“Steady, now,” George said, holding me. “John’s just gone in to vote.”

“But there are two of them!” I said. “Let me go!”

“John’s got two shots in the derringer,” George said. “Steady, now.”

But they held me. And then we heard the three
shots and we all turned and looked at the door. I dont know how long it was. “The last two was that derringer,” George said. I dont know how long it was. The old nigger that was Mrs Holston’s porter, that was too old even to be free, stuck his head out once and said “Gret Gawd” and ducked back. Then Drusilla came out, carrying the ballot box, the wreath on one side of her head and the veil twisted about her arm, and then Father came out behind her, brushing his new beaver hat on his sleeve. And then it was loud; I could hear them when they drew in their breath like when the Yankees used to hear it begin:

“Yaaaaa—” But Father raised his hand and they stopped. Then you couldn’t hear anything.

“We heard a pistol too,” George said. “Did they touch you?”

“No,” Father said. “I let them fire first. You all heard. You boys can swear to my derringer.”

“Yes,” George said. “We all heard.” Now Father looked at all of them, at all the faces in sight, slow.

“Does any man here want a word with me about this?” he said. But you could not hear anything, not even moving. The herd of niggers stood like they had when I first saw them, with the Northern white men herding them together. Father put his hat on and took the ballot box from Drusilla and helped her back onto her horse and handed the ballot box up to her. Then he looked around again, at all of them. “This election will be held out at my home,” he said. “I hereby appoint Drusilla Hawk voting commissioner until the votes are
cast and counted. Does any man here object?” But he stopped them again with his hand before it had begun good. “Not now, boys,” he said. He turned to Drusilla. “Go home. I will go to the sheriff, and then I will follow you.”

“Like hell you will,” George Wyatt said. “Some of the boys will ride out with Drusilla. The rest of us will come with you.”

But Father would not let them. “Dont you see we are working for peace through law and order?” he said. “I will make bond and then follow you. You do as I say.” So we went on; we turned in the gates with Drusilla in front, the ballot box on her pommel—us and Father’s men and about a hundred more, and rode on up to the cabin where the buggies and surreys were standing, and Drusilla passed the ballot box to me and got down and took the box again and was walking toward the cabin when she stopped dead still. I reckon she and I both remembered at the same time and I reckon that even the others, the men, knew all of a sudden that something was wrong. Because like Father said, I reckon women dont ever surrender: not only victory, but not even defeat. Because that’s how we were stopped when Aunt Louisa and the other ladies came out on the porch, and then Father shoved past me and jumped down beside Drusilla. But Aunt Louisa never even looked at him.

“So you are not married,” she said.

“I forgot,” Drusilla said.

“You forgot? You
forgot
?”

“I.……” Drusilla said. “We.……”

Now Aunt Louisa looked at us; she looked along the line of us sitting there in our saddles; she looked at me too just like she did at the others, like she had never seen me before. “And who are these, pray? Your wedding train of forgetters? Your bridesmaids of murder and robbery?”

“They came to vote,” Drusilla said.

“To vote,” Aunt Louisa said. “Ah. To vote. Since you have forced your mother and brother to live under a roof of license and adultery you think you can also force them to live in a polling booth refuge from violence and bloodshed, do you? Bring me that box.” But Drusilla didn’t move, standing there in her torn dress and the ruined veil and the twisted wreath hanging from her hair by a few pins. Aunt Louisa came down the steps; we didn’t know what she was going to do: we just sat there and watched her snatch the polling box from Drusilla and fling it across the yard. “Come into the house,” she said.

“No,” Drusilla said.

“Come into the house. I will send for a minister myself.”

“No,” Drusilla said. “This is an election. Dont you understand? I am voting commissioner.”

“So you refuse?”

“I have to. I must.” She sounded like a little girl that has been caught playing in the mud. “John said that I——”

Then Aunt Louisa began to cry. She stood there in
the black dress, without the knitting and for the first time that I ever saw it, without even the handkerchief, crying, until Mrs Habersham came and led her back into the cabin. Then they voted. That didn’t take long either. They set the box on the sawchunk where Louvinia washed, and Ringo got the pokeberry juice and an old piece of window shade, and they cut it into ballots. “Let all who want the Honorable Cassius Q. Benbow to be Marshal of Jefferson write Yes on his ballot; opposed, No,” Father said.

“And I’ll do the writing and save some more time,” George Wyatt said. So he made a pack of the ballots and wrote them against his saddle and fast as he would write them the men would take them and drop them into the box and Drusilla would call their names out. We could hear Aunt Louisa still crying inside the cabin and we could see the other ladies watching us through the window. It didn’t take long. “You needn’t bother to count them,” George said. “They all voted No.”

And that’s all. They rode back to town then, carrying the box, with Father and Drusilla in the torn wedding dress and the crooked wreath and veil standing beside the sawchunk, watching them. Only this time even Father could not have stopped them. It came back high and thin and ragged and fierce, like when the Yankees used to hear it out of the smoke and the galloping:

“Yaaaaay, Drusilla!” they hollered. “Yaaaaaay, John Sartoris! Yaaaaaaay!”