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. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris
explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records
and satisfy yourselves."
"But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn't you get a
notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"
"I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself
the sheriff . . . I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by
the--"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But, Miss Emily--"
"See Colonel Sartoris." (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.)
"I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!" The Negro appeared. "Show these
gentlemen out."