A Rose for Emily 原文

A Rose for Emily

by William Faulkner

I

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.

It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and scrolled

balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our most select street. But

garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august names of that neighborhood; only Miss

Emily's

house

was

left,

lifting

its

stubborn

and

coquettish

decay

above

the

cotton

wagons

and

the

gasoline

pumps-an

eyesore

among

eyesores.

And

now

Miss

Emily

had

gone

to

join

the

representatives

of

those

august

names

where

they

lay

in

the

cedar-bemused

cemetery

among

the

ranked

and

anonymous

graves

of

Union

and

Confederate soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.

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.

you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves.

him?

Jefferson.

Colonel

Sartoris.

(Colonel

Sartoris

had

been

dead

almost

ten

years.)

have

no

taxes

in

Jefferson.

Tobe!

II

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.

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.

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.

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.

and if she don't. ..

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.

III

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 riggers 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 riggers, and the riggers 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,

course

a

Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.

said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige- -

without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said,

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,

they said to one another.

satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the thin, swift clop- clop-clop of the matched

team passed:

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

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.

The druggist named several.