the peaceful hours given to sleeping. It was not a sound Horace heard now;
it was something in the air which the sound of the running feet died into.
When he went down the corridor toward the stairs he did not know he was
running until he heard beyond a door a voice say, "Fire! it's a . . ." Then
he passed it. "I scared him," Horace said. "He's just from Saint Louis,
maybe, and he's not used to this." He ran out of the hotel, onto the
street. Ahead of him the proprietor had just run, ludicrous; a broad man
with his trousers clutched before him and his braces
SANCTUARY 167
dangling beneath his nightshirt, a tousled fringe of hair standing wildly
about his bald head; three other men passed the hotel running. They appeared
to come from nowhere, to emerge in midstride out of nothingness, fully
dressed in the middle of the street, running.
"It is a fire," Horace said. He could see the glare; against it the jail
loomed in stark and savage silhouette.
"It's in that vacant lot," the proprietor said, clutching his trousers. "I
cant go because there aint anybody on the desk . . . ...
Horace ran. Ahead of him he saw other figures running, turning into the
alley beside the jail; then he heard the sound of the fire; the furious
sound of gasoline. He turned into the alley. He could see the blaze, in the
center of a vacant lot where on market days wagons were tethered. Against
the flames black figures showed, antic; he could hear panting shouts;
through a fleeting gap he saw a man turn and run, a mass of flames, still
carrying a five-gallon coal oil can which exploded with a rocket-like glare
while he carried it, running.
He ran into the throng, into the circle which had formed about a blazing
mass in the middle of the lot. From one side of the circle came the screams
of the man about whom the coal oil can had exploded, but from the central
mass of fire there came no sound at all. It was now indistinguishable, the
flames whirling in long and thunderous plumes from a whitehot mass out of
which there defined themselves faintly the ends of a few posts and planks.
Horace ran among them; they were holding him, but he did not know it; they
were talking, but he could not hear the voices.
"It's his lawyer."
"Here's the man that defended him. That tried to get him clear."
"Put him in, too. There's enough left to burn a lawyer."
"Do to the lawyer what we did to him. What he did to her. Only we never
used a cob. We made him wish we had used a cob."
Horace couldn't hear them. He couldn't hear the man who had got burned
screaming. He couldn't hear the fire, though it still swirled upward
unabated, as though it were living upon itself, and soundless: a voice of
fury like in a dream, roaring silently out of a peaceful void.
XXX
THE TRAINS AT KINSTON WERE MET 13Y AN OLD MAN WHO drove a seven passenger
car. He was thin, with gray eyes and a gray moustache with waxed ends. In
the old days, before
168 WILLIAM FAULKNER
the town boomed suddenly into a lumber town, he was a planter, a landholder,
son of one of the first settlers. He lost his property through greed and
gullibility, and he began to drive a hack back and forth between town and
the trains, with his waxed moustache, in a top hat and a worn Prince Albert
coat, telling the drummers how he used to lead Kinston society; now he drove
it.
After the horse era passed, he bought a car, still meeting the trains. He
still wore his waxed moustache, though the top hat was replaced by a cap,
the frock coat by a suit of gray striped with red made by Jews in the New
York tenement district. "Here you are," he said, when Horace descended from
the train. "Put your bag into the car," he said. He got in himself. Horace
got into the front seat beside him. "You are one train late," he said.
"Late?" Horace said.
"She got in this morning. I took her home. Your wife."
"Oh," Horace said. "She's home?"
The other started the car and backed and turned. It was a good, powerful
car, moving easily. "When did you expect her? . . ." They went on. "I see
where they burned that fellow over at Jefferson. I guess you saw it."
"Yes," Horace said. "Yes. I heard about it."
"Served him right," the driver said. "We got to protect our girls. Might
need them ourselves."
They turned. following a street. There was a corner, beneath an arc light.
"I'll get out here," Horace said.
"I'll take you on to the door," the driver said.
"I'll get out here," Horace said. "Save you having to turn."
"Suit yourself," the driver said. "You're paying for it, anyway.
Horace got out and lifted out his suit case; the driver did not offer to
touch it. The car went on. Horace picked up the suit case, the one which
had stayed in the closet at his sister's home for ten years and which he
had brought into town with him on the morning when she had asked him the
name of the District Attorney.
His house was new, on a fairish piece of lawn, the trees, the poplars and
maples which he had set out, still new. Before he reached the house, he saw
the rose colored shade at his wife's windows. He entered the house from the
