Delta Wedding (7 page)

"Won't she take our present?" Aunt Primrose began to fan herself a little with the palmetto fan she had bound in black velvet so that when anyone wanted to pull it apart it couldn't be done.

"I hate to—I hate to take something you love!"

"Fiddlesticks!"

"We've never really
seen
Troy," Aunt Jim Allen said faintly. She did sound actually frightened of Troy. "Not close
to
—you know." She indicated the walls of the green-lit parlor with her little ringed finger.

"You'll
have
to see him at the wedding," India told her loudly. "He has red hair and cat eyes and a
mus
tache."

"I'm going to have him trim that off, when we are married," said Dabney gravely.

"It's not as if you were going out of the Delta, of course," Aunt Jim Allen said, looking bemused from her little deaf perch on the sofa. "Now it's time you chose something."

Dabney stopped, and her hand reached out and touched a round flower bowl on the table in front of her. It was there between the two china retrievers—was it the little bunny in one mouth that looked like Aunt Jim Allen, and the little partridge in the other that was Aunt Primrose? "I'd love a flower bowl," she said.

"You didn't take the prettiest," warned India.

Both aunts rose to see.

"No, no! No, indeed, you'll not take that trifling little thing! It's nothing but plain glass!"

"It came from Fairchild's Store!"

"Now you'll take something better than that, missy, something
we'd
want you to have," declared Aunt Primrose. She marched almost stiffly around the room, frowning at all precious possessions. Then she gave a low croon.

"The night light! She must have the little night light!" She stood still, pointing.

It was what they had all come to see when they were little—the bribe.

"Oh, I couldn't." Dabney drew back, holding the flower bowl in front of her.

"Put that down, child. She must have the night light, Jim Allen," said Aunt Primrose, raising her small voice a clear octave. "Dabney shall have it. It's company. That's what it is. That little light, it was company as early as I can remember—when Papa and Mama died."

"As early as
I
can remember," said Aunt Jim Allen, making her little joke about being the older sister.

"Dabney, Dabney, they're giving you the night light," whispered India, pulling at her sister's hand in a kind of anguish.

"I love it." Dabney ran up and kissed them both and gave them both a big hug to make up for waiting like that.

"And Aunt Mashula loved it—that waited for Uncle George, waited for him to come home from the Civil War till the lightning one early morning stamped her picture on the windowpane.
You've
seen it, India, it's
her
ghost you hear when you spend the night, breaking the window and crying up the bayou, and it's not an Indian maid, for what would she be doing, breaking our window to get out? The Indian maid would be crying nearer your place, where the mound is, if
she
cried."

"Jim Allen wants all the ghosts kept straight," said Aunt Primrose, flicking a bit of thread from her sister's dress.

"When did that Uncle George come back?" asked India.

"He never came back," said Aunt Primrose. "Nobody ever heard a single word. His brother Battle was killed and his brother Gordon was killed, and Aunt Shannon's husband Lucian Miles killed and Aunt Maureen's husband Duncan Laws, and yet she hoped. Our father and the children all gave up seeing him again in life. Aunt Mashula never did but she was never the same. She put her dulcimer away, you know. I remember her face. Only this little night light comforted her, she said. We little children would be envious to see her burn it every dark night."

"Who's Aunt Maureen?" asked India desultorily.

"Aunt Mac Laws, sitting in your house right now," said Aunt Primrose rapidly. It made her nervous for people not to keep their kinfolks and their tragedies straight.

"Oh, it'll be company to you," Aunt Jim Allen said, while India, just to look at the little night light, began jumping up and down, rattling and jingling everything in the room. "There's nobody we'd rather have it, is there, Primrose, having no chick nor child at the Grove to leave it to?"

"I should say there isn't!" called Aunt Primrose to her. "Though George loved it, for a man. Where would that little Robbie put it, in Memphis? What would she
set
it on?" And taking a match from the mantelpiece she walked over to the little clay-colored object they all gazed at, sitting alone on its table, the pretty one with the sword scars on it. It was a tiny porcelain lamp with a cylinder chimney decorated with a fine brush, and an amazing little teapot, perfect spout and all, resting on its top.

"Shall we light it?"

India gave a single clap of the hands.

Aunt Primrose lighted the candle inside and stepped back, and first the clay-colored chimney grew a clear blush pink. The picture on it was a little town. Next, in the translucence, over the little town with trees, towers, people, windowed houses, and a bridge, over the clouds and stars and moon and sun, you saw a redness glow and the little town was all on fire, even to the motion of fire, which came from the candle flame drawing. In two high-pitched trebles the aunts laughed together to see, each accompanying and taunting the other a little with her delight, like the song and laughter of young children.

"Your tea would be nice and warm now if you had tea in the pot," said Aunt Primrose in an airy voice, and gave a dainty sound—almost a smack.

"Oh," said India gravely, "it's precious, isn't it?"

"You'll find it a friendly little thing," said Aunt Jim Allen, "if you're ever by yourself. Look! Only to light it, and you see the Great Fire of London, in the dark. Pretty—pretty—" She put it in Dabney's hand, still lighted, with its small teapot trembling. Aunt Primrose, with a respectful kind of look at Dabney, lifted the pot away and blew out the light.

Dabney held it, smiling. Then the aunts both drew back from the night light, as though Dabney had transformed it.

"Are you going to take it with you when you go on your honeymoon with Troy?" cried India.

"India Primrose Fairchild," said Aunt Primrose, looking at her own sister.

"Little girls don't talk about honeymoons," said Aunt Jim Allen. "They don't ask their sisters questions, it's not a bit nice."

"It's just that she loves the night light too," said Dabney. India took her around the waist and they went out together.

"Uncle George's coming from Memphis today. He's bringing champagne!" said Dabney over her shoulder.

"Mercy!" said both aunts. They smiled, looking faintly pink as they came to the door in the late sun. "I declare!" "George—wait till I get hold of him!" "He'll bring all the champagne in Memphis! We'll be tipsy, Primrose! He'll make this little family wedding into a Saturnalian feast!
That
will show people," Aunt Jim Allen said without hearing herself.

"Bless his heart," said Aunt Primrose. "When's he coming to see us? Tell him we expect him to noon dinner day
after
tomorrow. Ellen can have him first."

"You'll be coming up to dinner," said Dabney. "Aunt Tempe and Lady Clare and Uncle Pinck will be there and dying to see you."

"Mercy! Lady Clare!" said Aunt Primrose. "Don't let her do your mother the way she did at Annie Laurie's funeral, stamp her foot and get anything she wants."

"She's grown up more and been taking music," said Dabney, "and I've made her a flower girl."

She kissed them, with both hands around her present. Now that she was so soon to be married, she could see her whole family being impelled to speak to her, to say one last thing before she waved good-bye. She would long to stretch out her arms to them, every one. But they simply never looked deeper than the flat surface of any tremendous thing, that was all there was to it. They didn't try to understand
her
at all, her love, which they were free, welcome to challenge and question. In fact, here these two old aunts were actually
forgiving
it. All the Fairchilds were indulgent—indulgence was what she couldn't stand! The night light! Uncle George they indulged too, but they could never hurt him as they could hurt her—she
was
a little like him, only far beneath, powerless, a girl. He had an incorruptible, and hence unchallenging, sweetness of heart, and all their tender blaming could beat safely upon it, that solid wall of too much love.

"I declare I don't know how you're going to get a wedding present home on horseback—breakable," said Aunt Primrose rather perkily.

"Of course she can, and run out and cut those roses too, Dabney. You've got India to help carry things."

"Dabney can carry her night light home," said India. "I'll tote the little old bunch of flowers."

The others sat in the porch rockers and watched Dabney cut the red and white roses. "That's not enough—cut them all now, or we'll be mad."

"It's not like you were going away, or out of the Delta. Things aren't going to be any different, are they?" called Aunt Jim Allen. "Put those in something, child, and carry 'em to your mother. Tell her not to kill herself."

"Yes'm."

Aunt Primrose lifted one rose out of Dabney's bouquet as she went by. "What rose is that?" she asked her sister loudly.

"Why, I don't recognize it," said Aunt Jim Allen, taking it from her. "Don't recognize it at all."

They're never going to ask Dabney the questions, India meditated. She went up to Aunt Jim Allen and worried her, clasped and unclasped her harvest-moon breastpin, watching the way her sister went just a little prissily down the hall, being sent after a vase.

They don't make me say if I love Troy or if I don't, Dabney was thinking, clicking her heels in the pantry. But by the time she came back to the porch, the flowers in a Mason jar of water, she knew she would never say anything about love after all, if they didn't want her to. Suppose they were afraid to ask her, little old aunts. She thought of how they both drew back to see her holding their night light. They would give her anything, but they wouldn't touch it again now for the world. It was a wedding present.

But, "I hope I have a baby right away," she said loudly, just as she passed in front of them. India saw Dabney's jaw drop the moment it was out, just as her own did, though she herself felt a wonderful delight and terror that made her nearly smile.

"I bet you
do
have, Dabney," said India. She came up behind her and began to pull down on her and rub her and love her.

Aunt Primrose took a little sacheted handkerchief from her bosom and touched it to her lips, and a tear began to run down Aunt Jim Allen's dry, rice-powdered cheek. They looked at nothing, as ladies do in church.

"I've done enough," Dabney thought, frightened, not quite understanding things any longer. "I've done enough to them." They all kissed good-bye again, while the green and gold shadows burned from the river—the sun was going down.

Dabney's cheeks stung for a moment, while they were getting on their horses. The sisters rode away from the little house, and Dabney could not help it if she rode beautifully then and felt beautiful. Does happiness seek out, go to visit, the ones it can humble when it comes at last to show itself? The roses for their mother glimmered faintly on the steps of the aunts' house, left behind, and they couldn't go back.

They rode in silence. It was late, and the aunts might have been going to insist that they stay to supper, if Dabney hadn't said something a little ugly, a little unbecoming for Battle's daughter.

"The thorns of my hat hurts," said India.

She looked over at Dabney riding beside her, but would Dabney hear a word she said any more? Through parted lips her engaged sister breathed the soft blue air of seven o'clock in the evening on the Delta. In one easy hand she held the night light, the most enchanting thing in the world, and in the other hand she lightly held Junie's reins. The river wind stirred her hair. Her clear profile looked penitent and triumphant all in one, as if she were picked out and were riding alone into the world. India made a circle with her fingers, imagining she held the little lamp. She held it very carefully. It seemed filled with the mysterious and flowing air of night.

Just at sunset at Shellmound, meanwhile, Roxie and the others heard the sound of stranger-hoofs over the bayou bridge. Then coming over the grass in the yard rode Mr. George Fairchild—in his white clothes and all—on a horse they had never seen before. It was a sorrel filly with flax mane and tail and pretty stockings. "She's lady broke. She's wedding present for Miss Dab." But just then the little filly kicked her heels. "Bitsy always think he knows." "Wouldn't it be a sight did Mr. George pull out and take a little swallow out of his flask made all of gold, sitting where he is—like he do take?" "Miss Ellen! Here come Mr. George!"

"Where's Robbie?" Ellen called, running down the steps, lightfooted as always at the sight of George coming. "Little Uncle!" she called to both sides, and Little Uncle came running.

Ranny, barefooted, came flying over the grass, and George put out an arm. Ranny leaped up and was pulled on beside him. He rode up with him sideways, both bare feet extended gracefully together like a captured maiden's. The little red filly almost danced—oh, she was so wet and tired. George was bareheaded now and his Panama hat was on the head of the little filly and she tossed at it.

"I came on Dabney's wedding present—where's Dabney?" he called.

"A horse! Ranny, look at Dabney's horse! Oh, George, you shouldn't. —Ranny, I thought you were in bed asleep."

"She was up at auction—I got on her and rode down." George dismounted and Little Uncle led the horse around the house with Ranny riding. "Little Uncle!" George ran after, and gave some kind of special directions, Ellen supposed, and accepted his hat from Little Uncle who bowed.

"All the way from Memphis? How long did it take you?" Ellen took hold of him and kissed him as if he had confessed a dark indulgence. "Just feel your forehead, you'll have the sunstroke if you don't get right in the house. Roxie!"