I
Emily? Miss Grilson passed away, and the whole town went to mourn: the men out of admiration, because a monument had fallen: the women, for the most part, out of curiosity, to see the interior of her house. No one had been inside the house for at least ten years, except an old servant who was a florist and cook.
It was a large, square wooden house, painted white, on one of the most elegant streets of its day, and decorated with the rounded roofs, minarets, and swirling balconies of the 1870s, with a strong air of lightness. But the automobile room and the cotton gin and such things had violated the stately names of the neighborhood and painted them over. Only Miss Emily's house stood alone, surrounded by clusters of cotton wagons and gasoline pumps. The house was in a state of disrepair, but it was still obstinate and pretentious, the ugliest of uglies. Now Miss Emily has joined the ranks of those solemnly named representatives who sleep in the cedar-surrounded cemetery, which is lined with the graves of the unknown soldiers of the South and the North who fell at the battle of Jefferson during the Civil War.
Miss Emily, while living, was always the embodiment of a tradition, the symbol of duty and the object of attention. From the time that Colonel Saddoris, the townsman, sometime in 1894 - that is, when he gave an order that no negro woman should go out in the street without an apron - exempted her from all taxes due, for a period beginning on the day of her father's death, and continuing until her death, it was an obligation to her inherited by the whole town. an obligation to her inherited by the whole town. Nor was this to say that Emily was a willing recipient of charity; it turned out that Colonel Chardonnay had invented a great deal of nonsense, saying that Emily's father had made a loan to the township, and that the township, as a matter of trade, would therefore prefer to pay it back in this way. It was a set of words that only a man of Shaddoris's generation and a man with a mind like Shaddoris's could have made up, and that only a womanizer would have believed.
By the time the more enlightened-minded second generation became mayors and senators, the arrangement caused some minor dissatisfaction. On New Year's Day that year, they sent her a tax notice. February came and went, and still no word. They sent an official letter asking her to stop by the Attorney General's office in the middle of the day. A week later, the mayor himself wrote to Emily, offering to pay her a visit, or send a car to meet her, and the reply came in the form of a note, written on antique stationery, with fluent calligraphy and tiny handwriting, but the ink was no longer bright, to the effect that she was no longer going out at all. The tax notice was attached and returned without expressing an opinion.
The senators met in special session and sent a delegation to visit her. They knocked on the door, which no one had entered or left through since she stopped giving china-painting classes eight or ten years ago. The older black manservant received them into the shadowy foyer, and from there up by the stairs, where the light was even dimmer. A dusty odor came to their noses, and the air was damp and airless; the house had not been inhabited for a long time. The negro led them into the parlor, which was furnished with bulky furniture all wrapped in leather covers. The negro opened one of the shutters, when it became more evident that the leather was chapped; and when they sat down, a puff of dust rose on either side of their thighs, and the particles swirled slowly in the rays of the sun. A charcoal portrait of Emily's father sat on top of the easel that had lost its golden sheen in front of the fireplace.
They all stood up as soon as she entered the room. A small-modeled, round-waisted woman, dressed in black, a thin gold watch chain trailing down to her waist and falling into her girdle, was supported by an ebony cane, the inlaid gold of the head of which had lost its luster. Her frame was short, and perhaps because of this, whereas on other women she appeared no more than plump, she gave the impression of fatness. She looked like a dead body that had been long soaked in stagnant water, swollen and white. When the guest explained his purpose, her eyes, which were sunk in a face of bulging fat, looked like two small cinder-balls kneaded in a ball of raw flour, and moved about, sometimes looking at this face, sometimes surveying that face.
She did not ask them to sit down. She simply stood in the doorway and listened quietly until the speaker stammered out, at which point they heard the pendant watch, hidden at the end of a gold chain, tick.
The tone of her voice was cold. "I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson. Colonel Sardoris explained that to me a long time ago. Perhaps one of you could check the township records and clear things up."
"We have checked the files, Miss Emily, and we are the Administration. Have you not received a notice signed by the sheriff himself?"
"A mistake, I have received a notice," said Miss Emily, "and perhaps he has appointed himself the Marshal ...... but I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson."
"But the tax rolls do not so state, you understand. We are to be governed by ......"
"You go to Colonel Sardoris. I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson."
"But Miss Emily--"
"You go to Colonel Shaddoris, (Colonel Shaddoris has been dead nearly ten years,) I have no taxes to pay in Jefferson. Toby!" The negro answered. "Get these gentlemen out of here."
II
She had thus defeated them "man and horse," as she had defeated their fathers thirty years before on account of the odor. It was two years after her father's death, and not long after her sweetheart, whom we all believed would marry her, had deserted her. After her father's death she seldom went out; and after the departure of her sweetheart she was practically invisible. A few women had ventured to visit her, but they had been disappointed. The only sign of life around her place was the negro man who came and went with a basket, when he was a youth.
"As if a man, any kind of man, could have kept the kitchen in order." The women said so. So they were not surprised when that odor grew stronger, another link between the rue world and the noble and powerful Grilson family.
A woman in a neighboring house complained to Mayor Stephens, the eighty-year-old judge.
"But ma'am, what do you ask me to do about it?" He said.
"Heck, inform her to get rid of the odor," the woman said. "Isn't that plainly stated in the law?"
"I don't think that's necessary," Judge Stephens said. "It may be that the nigger she used killed a snake or a mouse in the yard. I'll talk to him about it."
The next day, he received two more complaints, one from a man making comments in a mild tone. "Judge, we can't afford not to ask questions about this. I'm the last person who wants to bother Miss Emily, but we've got to do something." That night the whole Senate-three old men and a younger member of the new generation-had a meeting together.
"This is a simple matter," the younger man said. "Tell her to clean her house and get it right by a deadline, or else ......"
"Sir, how is that going to work?" Judge Stephens said, "Can you say in front of a noblewoman that she has a bad odor there?"
So, after midnight the next day, four men crossed the lawn of Miss Emily's house, and stalked round the house like night burglars, sniffing desperately along the corners of the walls and in the cellar ventilators, while one of them pulled something out of a bag that was slung over his shoulder with his hand, and kept on making motions of sowing. They opened the cellar door and spread lime there and in all the outbuildings. When they turned back and crossed the lawn again, a light came on in one of the windows that had been darkened: there sat Miss Emily, with the lamp behind her, her straight figure moving like an idol. They crept across the lawn and into the shade of the acacia trees that lined the street. After a week or two, the odor was gone.
And that's when people began to really feel sorry for her. The townspeople, remembering that Miss Emily's aunt and grandmother, old Mrs. Wyatt, had finally become completely insane, were convinced that the Grilson family thought too highly of themselves and didn't understand the position they were in. Miss Emily and women like her had no eye for any young man. For a long time we had seen the family as figures in a painting: the slender, white-clad Miss Emily standing behind, her father in profile with his feet crossed in front, his back to Emily, a riding-whip in his hand, and a backward-opening front door just nestling the two of them. So when she was nearly thirty and had not yet married, we really had no joyful feeling, only a feeling that our earlier opinion had been confirmed. That is, her family has the blood of madness, I suppose, and if every opportunity really did lie before her, she would not be able to let it go out of hand.
When her father died, it was rumored that all that was left to her was the house; and people were kind of happy about that. In the end, they could show compassion to Emily. Alone and poor, she has become humane. And now she realizes that it is human to be thrilled at a penny more and bitterly disappointed at a penny less.
The day after her father's death, all the women were ready to call at her house, to express their condolences and willingness to help, as is our custom. Miss Emily received them at the door of her house, dressed as usual, and without a trace of sorrow in her face. She told them that her father was not dead. This she did for three days in succession, whether the minister of the church visited her, or the doctors tried to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they were about to resort to law and force, she collapsed, so they quickly buried her father.
At the time we didn't say she was crazy. We believed she did it because she couldn't control herself. We remembered that her father had driven away all the young men, and we knew that she now had nothing left but to drag to death, as people often do, the man who had robbed her of everything.
III
She was ill for a long time. When I saw her again, her hair had been cut short, and she looked like a girl, not unlike the statue of the angel on the stained-glass window in the church - with a touch of pathos and solemnity.
The administration had contracted to have the sidewalks laid, and the work was begun the summer of her father's death, when the building company came with a crew of negroes, mules, and machinery, and the foreman was a Yankee named Homer? Burrone, a tall, dark, shrewd man with a loud voice and eyes lighter than his face. Groups of children followed him and listened to him scold the Negroes with unpleasant words, while the Negroes hummed rhythmically with the up and down of the picks. It didn't take much time before he knew everyone in town. Whenever one heard the sound of laughter in any part of the square, Homer Burrone was sure to be in the center of the crowd. Bronn was sure to be in the center of the crowd. Soon afterward, on Sunday afternoons, we saw him and Miss Emily traveling together in a moped. The yellow wheelbarrow was a perfect match for the chestnut-colored stallion that had been picked out of the stable.
At first we were all glad to see Miss Emily more or less pinned down, for the women said, "The Grilson's would never really fancy a Yankee, a man on a day-wage." But there were others, some of the older ones, who said that even grief would not make a really noble woman forget "noble manners," though they did not call them "noble manners" in words. They simply say, "Poor Emily, her relatives should have come to her side." She had relatives in Alabama; but years ago her father fell out with them over the title of old Mrs. Wyatt, a crazy old woman, and there has been no intercourse between the two families since. They didn't even send anyone to the funeral.
As soon as the old people spoke of "Emily," they exchanged pleasantries. They said to each other, "Do you really think that's what happened?" "Of course I do. What else could it be? ......" and this they said softly, with their hands over their mouths; and as the brisk hoofs of the horses drove away, shutting the shutters against the blazing sun of the Sunday afternoon, the rustle of satin could be heard: "Poor Emily. "
She held her head high - even when we were convinced that she had fallen, as if she demanded more than ever that her dignity as the last of the Grilson family should be recognized; as if her dignity required contact with the world to reaffirm her unaffected character. Take, for instance, the case of her purchase of rat poison and arsenic. It was more than a year after people had begun to say "poor Emily," and two of her cousins were visiting her at the time.
"I'm going to buy some poison." She told the pharmacist. She was in her early thirties, still a slender-shouldered woman, just thinner than usual, with dark eyes that were cold and haughty, the flesh of her face taut at her temples and eye sockets on either side of her face, and a facial expression you'd expect from a lighthouse keeper. "I'm going to buy some poison." She said.
"Got it, Ms. Emily. Which kind would you like to buy? Is it poison for rats or something? Then I'll refer-"
"I want the most potent poison you have in the store, I don't care about the type."
The apothecary rattled off several kinds in one breath. "They poison anything, even elephants. But foot what you want is--"
"Arsenic," said Miss Emily. "Does arsenic work?"
"Is it ...... arsenic? Got it, miss. But you want ......"
"I want arsenic."
The Medicine and Master looked downward at her. She glanced back at him, her body straight, her face like a drawn-tight flag. "Ohhh, of course I do," said the apothecary. "If that's the kind of poison you want. But the law says you have to specify for what use."
Miss Emily just stared at him, tilting her head back so that her eyes could look him squarely in the eye, until she saw him avert his gaze and go in to get the arsenic packet. The Negro delivery man brought the packet out to her; the pharmacist did not show up again. She went home and opened the packet of medicine, and under the skull-and-crossbones marking on the box was the note: "Medicine for poisonous rats."
IV
So the next day all of us said, "She's going to kill herself"; and all of us said it couldn't be better. The first time we saw her with Homer? Bertram, we all said, "She's going to marry him." Then we said, "She's still got to convince him." For the former Homer himself said that he liked to associate with men, and it was known that he drank with the young men at the Surplus Club, where he himself had said that he had no intention of having a family. Every Sunday afternoon thereafter they galloped past in a pretty moped: Miss Emily with her head held high, and Homer with his hat askew, cigar-smoke in his mouth, and his yellow-gloved hand holding the bridle and whip. We could not help saying behind the shutters, "Poor Amy just."
Then some of the women began to say that it was a disgrace to the whole town and a bad example for the youth. The men did not want to interfere, but the women finally forced the Baptist minister - Miss Emily's family belonged to the Episcopal Church - to visit her. The visit passed he never disclosed, but he never wanted to go a second time. The next Sunday they appeared on the street again in their carriage, whereupon the next day the pastor's wife wrote to inform Emily that she was living at the pro-house in Alabama.
It turned out that there were close relatives in her family, so we sat back and waited to see what would happen. At first there was no movement, and then we got the definite news that they were about to be married. We also heard that Miss Emily had been to the jewelry store and ordered a set of silver men's toiletries, each engraved with the word "Homer". Burr." Two days later we were told that she had bought a full set of men's clothes, including pajamas, so we said, "They are married." We were really happy. We were pleased that the two cousins were more of a Grilson family than Miss Emily.
So when Homer? So when Homer Bertram left town -- the paving of the streets had been completed for some time -- we were not at all surprised. We were rather disappointed at the lack of a goodbye and farewell. We all believed, however, that he had gone to make some preparations for the reception of Miss Emily, or to give her an opportunity of dismissing her two cousins. (A secret clique had formed by this time, and we all sided with Miss Emily in helping her kick out the cousins.) It wasn't bad at all, and a week later they were gone. And, just as we had been expecting, Homer? Burrone is back in town. A neighbor witnessed the black man opening the kitchen door to let him in at dusk one day.
And that was the last we saw of Homer? Burrone. As for Miss Emily, we didn't see her for some time. The negroes went in and out with their shopping baskets, but the front door was always closed. Occasionally her figure could be seen passing by the window, as one used to see it on the night of the scattering of the ashes, but for six whole months she did not appear in the street. We understand that this was not unexpected; "her father's character had thrice added to the ups and downs of her life as a woman, and it seemed as if it were too great a malignity and too violent to disappear.
By the time we saw Miss Emily again, she was fat and her hair was gray. In the years that followed, her hair grew grayer and grayer, and became as iron-gray as pepper-salt, and its color ceased to change. Until the day of her death, at the age of seventy-four, it remained that exuberant iron gray, like the hair of an active man.
Since that time her front door has been closed, except for a period of about six or seven years when she was about forty. During that period, she taught classes in china painting. In a room downstairs she made a temporary studio, and all of Colonel Sardoris's contemporaries sent their daughters and granddaughters to her to learn to paint, with the same punctuality and earnestness as if they had been sent to church on Sunday, and had been given quarter coins to put in the offering-basin. By this time, she was exempt from the tax.
Then the new generation became the backbone and spirit of the town, and the pupils who had been learning to paint grew up and gradually left, without letting their own girls go to Miss Emily's with their color boxes, their tiresome brushes, and their cut-outs from women's magazines to learn to paint. After the last pupil left, the front door closed, and closed forever. Miss Emily was the only one who refused to have a metal door number nailed to her front door with a mail box attached after the town instituted free mail. She ignored them anyhow.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, we watched the Negro's hair turn gray, her back hunch, and she carried her shopping basket in and out as usual. Every December we sent her a tax notice, but it was returned by the post office a week later, unanswered. From time to time we saw her figure in a window at the bottom of the building - she apparently closed off the upstairs - like the sculpted torso of an idol in a shrine, and we couldn't tell if she was watching us or not. And so she passes from generation to generation - regal, serene, inescapable, inaccessible, oddly well-behaved.
And so she passed away. Got sick in a dusty, haunted house, and the only person who waited on her was an aging black man. We did not even know that she was ill; nor had we long wanted to inquire anything from the negro. He spoke to no one, and, I fear, to her; his voice seemed to have become hoarse from long neglect.
She died in a room downstairs, with the drapery still hanging over her bulky walnut bed, and the pillow on which her iron-gray-haired head rested yellowed and moldy from years of use and lack of sunlight.
V
The negro greeted the first women at the front door, and invited them in, their words low and sibilant, and they scanned everything quickly with curious eyes. The black man then disappeared, he walked through the house and out the back door, and has not been seen since.
Two cousins followed, and they held the funeral service the next day, and the whole town came running to see the flower-covered body of Miss Emily. Above the morgue hung a charcoal portrait of her father with a profoundly contemplative expression, and the women chattered about the death, while the older men -- some of them in their well-painted Confederate uniforms -- rushed down the hallways and onto the lawns to talking about Miss Emily's life as if she were their contemporary, and believing that they had danced with her and even courted her, they were upsetting the mathematical progression of time. This is often the case with older people. In their view, the past years are not a narrowing road, but a vast meadow on which even winter has no influence, and it is only in the last ten years that they have been cut off from the past like the mouth of a narrow bottle.
We have learned that there is a room in that part of the upstairs which no one has seen for forty years, and that to get into it one has to pry open the door. They wait until after Miss Emily's burial before trying to open the door.
The door slammed open, shaking the room with dust. The room, which had been furnished as if it were a new house, seemed to have the faintly dismal atmosphere of a crypt about it: the rose-colored curtains, the rose-colored lampshades, the dresser, the rows of fine crystal work and the men's toiletries in silver, but the silver had lost its luster, and even the monograms of the names engraved on it were unrecognizable. Among the clutter was a stiff collar and tie, as if they had just been removed from the body, and when they were picked up they left faint crescent marks in the dust that had accumulated on the countertop. On a chair lay a suit of clothes, well folded; under it were two lonely, silent shoes and a pair of socks thrown away and unwanted.
The man lay on the bed.
We stood there for a long time, looking down at the inscrutable grimace of that fleshless face. The body lay there, showing what was once an embracing posture, but the long eternal sleep that outlasted love, that overcame its torment, had tamed him. The flesh he had left behind had rotted under the tattered nightgown and stuck indissolubly to the wooden bed on which he lay. An even layer of dust that had accumulated over the years covered him and the pillow beside him.
It was only later that we noticed the marks of a human head pressed into the pillow next to him. One of us picked up something from it, and we all looked closer - when a faint dry, stinking odor entered our nostrils - and it turned out to be a long lock of iron-gray hair.