Page:Requiem for a Nun (1919) Faulkner.djvu/22

21

THE COURTHOUSE

little terrifying (though at least it was bloodless, which would have contented neither Harpe): not just the lock gone from die door nor even just the door gone from die jail, but* the entire wall gone, the mud-chinked axe morticed logs unjointed neatly and quietly in the darkness and stacked as neatly to one side, leaving the jail open to the world 1'ke a stage on which the late insurgents still lay sptawled and various in deathlike slumber, the whole settlement gathered now to watch Compson trying to kick at least one of them awake, until one of the Holston slaves — the cook’s husband, the waiter-groom-hosder — ran into the, crowd shouting, ‘Whar de lock, whar de lock, ole Boss say whar de lock.’

It was gone (as were three horses belonging to three of the lynching faction). They couldn’t even find the heavy door and the chain, and at first they were almost betrayed into believing that the bandits had had to take the door in order to steal the chain and lock, catching themselves back from the very brink of this wanton accusation of rationality. But*the lock was gone; nor did it take the settlement long to realise that it was not the escaped bandits and the aborted reward, but the lock, and not a simple situation which faced them, but a problem which threatened, the slave departing back to the Holston House at a dead run and then reappearing at the dead run almost before the door, the walls, had had time to hide him, engulf and then eject him again, darting through the crowd and up to Compson himself now, saying, ‘Ole Boss say fetch de lock’ — not send the lock, but bring the lock. So Compson and his lieutenants (and this was where the mail rider began to appear, or rather, to emerge —