390
PARTISAN REVIEW
w.iuch was cool and dim, with dully glittering floors, and
in
the sil–
ence of the house, recalled that period, some seventy years before, of
the covert glances, the guarded whispers, the abrupt rustling of silk
in the silence (the costume of the period certainly had not been de–
signed to encourage casual vice), the sharp breath, the reckless sighs.
Well, all of that had been a hell of a long time before, and Annabelle
Trice and Cass Mastem were long since deader than mackerel, and
Mrs. Miller,. who came down to give Jack Burden a cup of te;,t (she
was flattered by the "historical" interest in her house, though she
didn't guess the exact nature of the case), certainly was not "agile"
and didn't look "resourceful" and probably had used up
all
her energy
in the Ladies Altar Guild of Saint Luke's Episcopal Church and in
the D.A.R.
The period of the intrigue, the second phase of the story of Cass
Mastem, lasted all of one academic year, part of the summer (for
Cass was compelled to go back to Mississippi for his plantation af–
fairs and to attend the wedding of his. sister Lavinia, who married a
well-connected young man named Willis Burden) , and well through
the next winter, when Cass was back in Lexington. Then, on March
19, 1854, Duncan died, in his library (which was a "protected nook
or angle" of his house), with a lead slug nearly the size of a man's
thumb in his chest. It was quite obviously an accident.
The widow sat
in
church, upright and immobile. When she once
raised her veil to touch at her eyes with a handkerchief, Cass Mas–
tern saw that the cheek was "pale as marble but for a single flushed
spot, like the flush of fever." But even when the veil was lowered he
detected the fixed, bright eyes glittering "within that artificial
shadow."
Cass Mastem, with five other young men of Lexington, cronies
and boon companions of the dead man, carried the coffin.. "The cof–
fin which I carried seemed to have no weight, although my friend
had been of large frame and had inclined to stoutness.
As
we pro–
ceeded with it, I marvelled at the fact of its lightness, and once the
fancy flitted into my mind that he was not in the coffin at all, that
it was empty, and that all the affair was a masquerade or mock–
show carried to ludicrous and blasphemous length, for no purpose, as
in a dream. Or to deceive me, the fancy came. I was the object of
the deception, and all the other people were in league and conspiracy
against me. But when that thought came, I suddenly felt a sense of
great cunning and a wild exhilaration. I had been too sharp to be
caught so. I had penetrated the deception. I had the impulse to hurl
