William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice by William Styron Page A

arrived on the run, tripping on the roots of the cedar trees, and Maudie, who had had a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth and whose little face for a moment had been quite blue, began to breathe again. Her face turned a glowing red in an endless spasm of fear or pain, or both, and she emitted finally an agonized scream which, mingled with those of La Ruth still echoing hysterically from the terrace, gave Loftis a sudden sense of unearthliness. Helen swept Maudie up to her breast. The withered leg dangled pitifully and Helen began to walk about in little circles beneath the cedars, talking in soft muffled tones to the child who, becoming calmer, sobbed in a tortured, broken fashion against her mother’s face. Vainly Loftis cast about for something to do or say. Somehow, as he stood there helplessly, the scene possessed a vast unseemliness, now that he knew Maudie was safe, and he wished that everything might suddenly vanish like smoke, leaving him in a lawn chair once more. Yet all that he could do, it seemed, was to stand there making futile motions with his hands and groping around in his pockets for a cigarette.
    “Poor child,” Dolly exclaimed, moving toward Helen with a comforting gesture, but Helen avoided her, turned away with Maudie and started toward the kitchen door just as Peyton and Melvin emerged from beneath a big hydrangea, four eyes in the shadows big with fright.
    They all stood watching. Very gently Helen deposited Maudie in Ella Swan’s arms, whirled then savagely and in silence before the sight of everyone—including a large chow dog that had wandered over from the neighboring house, his silly violet tongue lolling out—strode over to the place where Peyton stood with sudden-imperiled eyes and gave her a hard, vicious slap across the cheek. Then she spoke in a whisper, but they all could hear her. “You little devil!” she said and turned, head bowed, and took Maudie, who was still sobbing quietly, once again tenderly from Ella’s arms and walked up the steps into the house. The screen door banged behind her, and Peyton began to shriek. Each of them watched this in silence—stock-still, rigid there beneath the bending cedars: Loftis and his guests and finally the two Negro women, who with shy and puzzled yet oddly comprehending grins had drawn near the others—each perhaps conscious of a clean spring twilight laden with cedar and the smell of the sea, and of something else, also: the cluster around them of quiet, middle-class homes, hedged and pruned and proper, all touched at this moment by a somber trouble; while each mind, too, perhaps turned inward for an instant, like the soul that forever seeks a grave, upon his own particular guilt. The bell, from afar, dropped seven jangling notes upon the stillness, and Peyton, weeping desperately, crept back beneath the hydrangea.
    The door of the room where they stood, he and Peyton together, her hand in his, confronted the edge of darkness, like a shore at night facing on the sea. Beyond them in the shadows arose swollen, mysterious scents, powders and perfumes which, though familiar to both of them, never lost the odor of strangeness and secrecy—to him, because they stung his senses with memories of dances and parties in the distant past, and of love, always the scent of gardenias. In Peyton they aroused wicked excitement, a promise, too, of dances and parties, and—since she was still nine years old—hope that when the Prince came finally with love and a joyful rattling of spurs, the day would smell like this, a heartbreaking scent, always of roses. A breeze stirred somewhere in the room, shook a piece of paper with a tiny clattering noise, like toy hooves echoing down a tiny road. He and Peyton stood still, listening; the paper chattered endlessly, small hooves galloping across the silence: the breeze died with a whisper and the paper, hooves, horse and rider, vanished without a sound, tumbled into some toy abyss. They listened, hesitant,