Requiem for a Nun

REQUIEM FOR A NUN 309

then, that bubble had ever been immune to the ephemerae of facts) );

perhaps, probably-without doubt: apparently she had been standing leaning

musing in it for three or four years in 1864; nothing had happened since,

not in a land which had even anticipated Appamattox, capable of shaking

a meditation that rooted, that durable, that veteran-the girl watched him

get down and tie the mule to the fence, and perhaps while he walked from

the fence to the door be even looked for a moment at her, though possibly,

perhaps even probably, not, since she was not his immediate object now,

he was not really concerned with her at the moment, because he had so

little time, he had none, really: still to reach Alabama and the small

hill farm which had been his father's and would now be his, if-no, when-he

could get there, and it had not been ruined by four years of war and

neglect, and even if the land was still plantable, even if he could start

planting the stocking of corn tomorrow, he would be weeks and even months

late; during that walk to the door and as he lifted his hand to knock on

it, he must have thought with a kind of weary and indomitable outrage of

how, already months late, he must still waste a day or maybe even two or

three of them before he could load the girl onto the mule behind him and

head at last for Alabama-this, at a time when of all things he would

require patience and a clear head, trying for them ((courtesy too, which

would be demanded now)), patient and urgent and polite, undefeated, trying

to explain, in terms which they could understand or at least accept, his

simple need and the urgency of it, to the mother and father whom he had

never seen before and whom he never intended, or anyway anticipated, to

see again, not that he had anything for or against them either: he simply

intended to be too busy for the rest of his life, once they could get on

the mule and start for home; not seeing the girl then, during the in-

terview, not even asking to see her for a moment when the interview was

over, because he had to get the license now and then find the preacher:

so that the first word he ever spoke to her was a promise delivered

through a stranger; it was probably not until they were on the mule-the

frail useless hands whose only strength seemed to be that sufficient to

fold the wedding license into the bosom of her dress and then cling to the

belt around his waist-that be looked at her again or ((both of them)) had

time to learn one another's middle name);

That was the story, the incident, ephemeral of an afternoon in late May,

unrecorded by the town and the county because they had little time too:

which (the county and the town)