Requiem for a Nun

192 WILLIAM FAULKNER

you reckon he aims to get out of this? A rewardT But that was wrong; they

all knew better than that.

'He's already getting what he wants,' Compson said, and cursed again.

'Confusion. Just damned confusion.' But that was wrong too; they all knew

that too, though it was Peabody who said it:

'No. Not confusion. A man who will ride six hundred miles through this

country every two weeks, with nothing for protection but a foxhorn, aint

really interested in confusion any more than he is in money.' So they

didn't know yet what was in Pettigrew's mind. But they knew what he would

do. That is, they knew that they did not know at all, either what he

would do, or how, or when, and that there was nothing whatever that they

could do about it until they discovered why. And they saw now that they

had no possible means to discover that; they realized now that they had

known him for three years now, during which, fragile and inviolable and

undeviable and preceded for a mile or more by the strong sweet ringing

of the horn, on his strong and tireless horse he would complete the

bi-monthly trip from Nashville to the settlement and for the next three

or four days would live among them, yet that they knew nothing whatever

about him, and even now knew only that they dared not, simply dared not,

take any chance, sitting for a while longer in the darkening room while

old Alec still smoked, his back still squarely turned to them and their

quandary too; then dispersing to their own cabins for the evening

meal-with what appetite they could bring to it, since presently they had

drifted back through the summer darkness when by ordinary they would have

been already in bed, to the back room of Ratcliff e's store now, to sit

again while Ratcliffe recapitulated in his mixture of bewilderment and

alarm (and something else which they recognized was respect as they

realized that he-Ratcliffe-was unshakably convinced that Pettigrew's aim

was money; that Pettigrew had invented or evolved a scheme so richly

rewarding that he-Ratcliffehad not only been unable to forestall him and

do it first, he -Ratcliffe--couldn't even guess what it was after he had

been given a hint) until Compson interrupted him.

'Hell,' Compson said. 'Everybody knows what's wrong with him. It's

ethics. He's a damned moralist.'

'EthicsT Peabody said. He sounded almost startled. He said quickly:

'That's bad. How can we corrupt an ethical manT

'Who wants to corrupt himT Compson said. 'All we want him to do is stay

on that damned horse and blow whatever extra wind he's got into the

damned horn.'

But Peabody was not even listening. He said, 'Ethics,' almost dreamily.

He said, 'Wait.' They watched him. He said suddenly