There is lots to love about Faulkner’s choice of words and way with the language, but this was just perfect:
But Quentin was not listening, because there was also something which he too could not pass–that door, the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot, the two women, the negress and the white girl in her underthings (made of flour sacking when there had been flour, of window curtains when not) pausing, looking at the door, the yellowed creamy mass of old intricate satin and lace spread carefully on the bed and then caught swiftly up by the white girl and held before her as the door crashed in and the brother stood there, hatless, with his shaggy bayonet-trimmed hair, his gaunt worn unshaven face, his patched and faded gray tunic, the pistol still hanging against his flank: the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity, speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps, as if they stood breast to breast striking one another in turn, neither making any attempt to guard against the blows. (p. 172)
First thing to note is that this is all one sentence. How much else does it bring into itself however, than the simple face to face confrontation? There are the two different timelines, that of Quentin considering the scenario of Judith and Henry, and the scene itself. He brings in as subtle metaphor what they are wearing: Judith holding up her unfinished wedding dress, white and innocent (as well as telling the story by its design composition of what she’s been through the last four years) while Henry is dressed in his military uniform, tattered as well (and telling a tale) but intimating that he is both aggressor and defender in this personal battle just as he was in the war.
There is also Faulkner’s tendency towards redundancy which simply would not be tolerated in today’s publishing world: “the two of them, brother and sister, curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable, similarity…” two, brother and sister, alike, difference, common, similarity” all saying pretty much that the two appeared almost as one.
The best part of all is the almost metafictional statement that the pair is “speaking to one another in short brief staccato sentences like slaps (great simile here) though Faulkner chooses never to say in three words what could be said in a paragraph. And earlier in the sentence, “the running feet on the stairs beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot” that seems to tell the reader that as many times as he emphasized this particular action in the chapter, if you didn’t, you should have caught this intentional continuation of the bullet flying through to destroy lives.
Amazing, when you really look into it deeply.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology