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26 REQUIEM FOR A NUN

They didn’t even think about it any more, unless perhaps here and there to marvel (a little speculatively probably) at their own moderation, since they wanted nothing least of all, to escape any just blame — but a fair and decent adjustment of the lock. They went back to where old Alec still sat with his pipe in front of his dim hearth. Only they had overestimated him; he didn’t want any money at all, he wanted his lock. Whereupon what little remained of Compson’s patience went too.

‘Your lock’s gone,’ he told old Alec highly. ‘You’ll take fifteen dollars for it,’ he said, his voice already fading, because even that rage could recognise impasse when it saw it. Nevertheless, the rage, the impotence, the sweating, the too much whatever it was — forced the voice on for one word more: ‘Or’ before it stopped for good and allowed Peabody to fill the gap:

‘Or else?’ Peabody said, and not to old Alee, but to Compson. ‘Or else what?’ Then Ratclific saved that too.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Uncle Alec’s going to take fifty dollars for his lock. A guarantee of fifty dollars. He’ll give us the naifie of the blacksmith back in Cal’lina that made it for him, and we’ll send back there and have a new one made. Going and coming and all’ll cost about fifty dollars. We’ll give Uncle Alec the fifty dollars to hold as a guarantee. Then when the new lock comes, he’ll give us back the money. All right. Uncle Alec?’ And that could have been all of it. It probably would have been, except tor Pettigrew. It was not that they had forgotten him, nor even assimilated him. They had simply sealed — healed him off (so they thought) — him into their civic crisis as the desperate and defenceless oyster immobilises its atom