Requiem for a Nun

322 WILLIAM FAULKNER

on: not to prove nor even to feet, touch, if there actually was a girl

under the calico and the shawls; there was no time for that yet; but

simply to get her up so they could start), to ride a hundred miles to

become the farmless mother of farmers (she would bear a dozen, all boys,

herself no older, still fragile, still workless among the churns and

stoves and brooms and stacks of wood which even a woman could split into

kindlings; unchanged), bequeathing to them in their matronymic the

heritage of that invincible inviolable ineptitude;

Then suddenly, you realise that that was nowhere near enough, not for that

face-bridehood, motherhood, grandmotherhood, then widowhood and at last

the grave-the long peaceful connubial progress toward matriarchy in a

rocking chair nobody else was allowed to sit in, then a headstone in a

country churchyard-not for that passivity, that stasis, that invincible

captaincy of soul which didn't even need to wait but simply to be, breathe

tranquilly, and take food-infinite not only in capacity but in scope too:

that face, one maiden muse which had drawn a man out of the running pell

mell of a cavalry battle, a whole year around the long iron perimeter of

duty and oath, from Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, across Tennessee

into Virginia and up to the fringe of Pennsylvania before it curved back

into its closing fade along the headwaters of the Appomattox river and at

last removed from him its iron hand: where, a safe distance at last into

the rainy woods from the picket lines and the furled flags and the stacked

muskets, a handful of men leading spent horses, the still-warm pistols

still loose and quick for the hand in the unstrapped scabbards, gathered

in the failing twilight-privates and captains, sergeants and corporals and

subalterns-talking a little of one last desperate cast southward where (by

last report) Johnston was still intact, knowing that they would not, that

they were done not only with vain resistance but with indomitability too;

already departed this morning in fact for Texas, the West, New Mexico: a

new land even if not yet (spent too-like the horses-from the long

harassment and anguish of remaining indomitable and undefeated) a new

hope, putting behind them for good and all the loss of both: the young

dead bride-drawing him (that face) even back from this too, from no longer

having to remain undefeated too: who swapped the charger for the mule and

the sabre for the stocking of seed corn: back across the whole ruined land

and the whole disastrous year by that virgin inevictable passivity more

inescapable than lodestar;

Not that face; that was nowhere near enough: no symbol