Delta Wedding (16 page)

In the music room there was a stir as if Lady Clare roused out of some trance. "Did you hear me playing 'Country Gardens,' Aunt Ellen?" she cried, running in.

"Yes, dear, I was listening out in the hall," Ellen said. "You're a big strong girl, rounding out a little, I believe."

"I'm bigger than Laura," said Lady Clare. "I'm going out and turn around in the yard until it makes me drunk and I fall down and crack my head open."

"Now, Lady Clare—just because you're visiting!" said Aunt Tempe.

"I'm not going to tell Dabney you know what," said India as she walked out.

"That's a good girl, honey." Ellen looked at her proudly.

"She's got so many secrets from me, I'm not going to tell her mine! Maybe I'll tell her years later."

"Now! Straighten me out," Tempe said to Ellen, leaning not forward, but back.

"I can't imagine how India finds out things." Ellen was brooding. "It's just like magic."

"I don't worry about India!"

Ellen sighed. "I guess not yet.—Well, Dabney's going to marry Troy Flavin, just as we told you, and Robbie has run away from George and he won't say a word or go after her. Not connected, of course, but—"

"Two things always happen to the Fairchilds at once. Three! Have you forgotten Mary Denis having a baby at Inverness at the very moment all this was descending on you here?"

"No, I didn't forget," said Ellen. "I reckon there're enough Fairchilds for everything! But we're hoping this trouble of George's will blow over."

"Blow over! That's Battle's talk, I can hear him now. How, in the world?"

"Robbie might still come to the wedding."

"I'd like to see her! She'll get no welcome from me, flighty thing," said Tempe. "Bless George's heart! He lost his Fairchild temper." She smiled.

"Oh, Tempe, I think he's hurt," Ellen said. "You know George and Battle and all those men can't stand anybody to be ugly and cruel to them!"

"I know. And how can people hurt George?" Tempe asked. She turned up her soft face with a constricted look that was wonder, and searched Ellen's face.

"I don't know.... Remember Robbie's the one among us all we don't know very well," Ellen said, and then she faltered as if somehow she had conspired with Tempe's first thought, her surface of curiosity that had stopped her as she came into the room. "Vi'let, bring the sugar!" she called. "It's too late now for cake, isn't it, Tempe?"

"I don't think so. I know George's headstrong," said Tempe, piteously showing the palm of her little hand. "Nobody knows better than I do—the oldest sister! He's headstrong. Nobody has a bit of influence over him at all! But how can
she
think
she's
fit to take him down, Old Man Swanson's granddaughter? I could pull her eyes out this minute."

"I had led myself to believe they were happy," Ellen said. Vi'let was bringing the sugar on an unnecessarily big silver tray and Ellen watched her treat Tempe very specially and tell her how young and pretty she looked, not like no grandma, and she was going to bring her some of that cake...."We're not telling Dabney about this until the wedding's over," she said, as Tempe sipped her lemonade.

"Pshaw! If Dabney's old enough to marry the overseer out of her father's fields, she's old enough to know what George and every other man does or is capable of doing.
I'll
tell her, the next time she dances in here."

"Tempe," said Ellen softly, "wait. Give Robbie just a little more time!"

"
Robbie?
Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on George's side! And Dabney's side ... George is the sweetest boy in the world, but I think now it's up to Robbie—I think he's left it up to her. Tempe—we don't know—we don't know anything."

"All I know is Denis would have been in here begging my pardon half an hour ago—if
he
had yelled out 'That's enough!' like that with no warning, and my palpitations."

"Plate of cake, Miss Tempe," said Vi'let at her elbow.

"Here come me and Aunt Primrose!" India cried, singing her warning.

"Oh, Ellen—did you see how George tracked up your floor? It breaks my heart to see it. After Roxie spent the morning on her knees—now it all has to be done over.—Of course
he
don't know any better." She and Tempe kissed each other in a deprecatory, sisterly fashion. "He don't mean to. Tempe, we're getting fat. How is Mary Denis today?"

"Well, Mr. Buchanan thinks she looks 'just dandy!'" said Tempe.

"Tch!"

"He wants to raise up a lot of little Yankees in Illinois, regardless."

"Mary Denis is the prettiest thing that ever went out of the Delta."

"Have some cake, Primrose."

"It's a precious baby, too," Tempe sighed. "Looks so much like me, you'd catch your breath. (Oh, Mashula's coconut!) And you ought to see little Shannon—she's delighted. She can stamp her foot and say 'Scat!'"

"Oh, that little thing! I'd give anything if you could have brought her—the baby too!" cried Ellen.

"There is a limit on what I am able to do," Tempe said, and Ellen as if to make amends said, "Dabney will want to ask you all kinds of things, Tempe! I'm not much use to her, I'm afraid. She cried because the altar rocks—and I couldn't do a thing about it. Howard's banging on it, doing his best—I just wish somebody'd come by."

"And Battle is as helpless as a child with
machinery
Well, everybody says Mary Denis's wedding was the most outstanding that has ever occurred in our part of the Delta. I won't say prettiest, because it was planned
al fresco
and it poured down—drenched the preacher—but it was the most outstanding once we'd moved inside."

"I remember it was," Ellen said. "Shelley and Dabney had such a good time being flower girls, scampering around. I couldn't come, being about to have—could it have been India?"

"Ha, ha," gloated India.

"Mr. Buchanan said he never saw so many cousins in his life, all scattering rose petals."

"Dabney's going to have shepherdess crooks, Aunt Tempe," said India.

"Good,
good.
"

"Have you ever heard of such a thing?" Ellen said, marveling. "They haven't come, though. They're up there in Memphis still. Dabney makes Battle phone every day, the crook people and the cake people, and bless them out, but it doesn't do a bit of good."

"Let me at the phone," said Tempe, clutching the arms of her chair as though she were held back. "I'll call Pinck immediately and have him go to Memphis and bring the cake and the crooks in his own hands when he comes. Ah, and the flowers, are you sure of those?"

"We're not sure of anything," Ellen said. "Oh, Tempe, could you? The poor child will soon be beside herself."

"I couldn't do less."

"Pinck will wear himself out! But he's so wonderfully smart about everything in Memphis."

"He ought to be." Aunt Tempe went out to the telephone.

"I've nearly finished the mit." Aunt Primrose held it up, like a little empty net.

"Primrose!"

"I think they should have mits to carry those crooks," she said.

"I believe we're getting somewhere in spite of ourselves." Ellen took a breath. "Everything's done except get Howard's altar up and put the lace cloth over it to hide it good—and put your smilax and the candelabra around and wash all the punch cups from everywhere, got them in baskets—and get the flowers and the cake and the ice cream—Dabney wanted it in shapes, you know—and the crooks! George's champagne came, enough to kill us all. Now I'm thinking about the chicken salad—we've made two or three tubs and got it covered on ice—and do you think frozen tomato salad turned in the freezer would be a reproach on us for the rehearsal supper?"

"Mary Denis demanded a cold lobster aspic involving moving the world," Tempe said, coming in. "Of course we moved it. Pinck said he would be delighted! I had to spell shepherdess—didn't you hear me calling you?"

"Dabney will be so thankful. Better wash a little faster on the windows, Bitsy and Floyd," Ellen called. "The rehearsal's tonight, there's not much time."

"Croesus, Mama!" cried Shelley, who was passing in the hall. "It's tomorrow night! Aunt Tempe, don't let her make it any sooner than it is."

"Have I got my times mixed up again!" Ellen put her hand to her forehead. "I told Troy it was tonight, and he didn't any more correct me than a spook. I was hoping we'd get somebody in the family could keep track of time."

"He just didn't want to be correcting you quite yet," said Tempe, with a brave smile. "I really think the house looks pretty well, Ellen!"

"Oh, do you think it looks all right?" Ellen looked around anxiously and yet in a kind of relief. "There was so little time to do much more than get the curtains washed and starched and the rugs beat."

"Child! They'll grind down so much chicken salad in everything it'll all have to be done over anyway," said Tempe in a dark voice.

"I thought in the long run, Primrose thought of it, we could just cover everything mostly with Southern smilax."

"Of course that will suffer with the dancing," said Primrose timidly.

"I consider our responsibility ceases with the cutting of the cake," Tempe declared. "Primrose, what are you putting your eyes out on now? Have you any idea how many bridesmaids there are in this wedding?"

"I set myself to finish this mit before I take a bite of dinner, and I will." Primrose accepted a little crumb of cake from Ellen. "It's my joy."

"I do hope," Tempe was saying, "you won't have the sliding doors open there in full view of Jim Allen's cornet. Jim Allen is forty-four years old in October and I can't think she would appreciate it."

"Oh, she wouldn't mind, Tempe," said Primrose. "Jim Allen's
beyond
all that."

"We have to have the doors open, so Mary Lamar can be heard perfectly playing for the wedding," Ellen said. "Or it would break Dabney's heart."

"It's a living shame these children don't take music," said Tempe. "India, now,
needs
to have music lessons: look at her." India was lying on the floor with her legs straight up in the air, listening.

"Well, there's nobody in Fairchilds giving lessons now," Ellen said, "since Miss Winona Deerfield married that traveling man that came through. If Sue Ellen would just get up from her bed and come back to these children, they'd be kept out of a lot." She suddenly smiled: Roy had come in, washed and combed, and silently opened
Quo Vadis?

"You used to teach the early ones," said Tempe. "Don't deny it."

"Oh, I tried on Shelley. But I couldn't play pea-turkey now. Dabney's best friend Mary Lamar Mackey from over at Lookback plays if we want music—listen!" In the music room Mary Lamar, restored to the bench, softly began a Schubert song.

"Yes, but she takes it seriously," Aunt Tempe said, lifting a warning finger. "And Laura"—for Laura came in, trailing Roy—"it would be such a consolation to her when she's older."

"I'm not going to be in the wedding, Aunt Tempe," said Laura, veering to her.

"No, poor little girl, you."

"I went to tell Aunt Jim Allen but she was asleep in the dining room on the settee."

"Well, poor thing! She worked too hard counting cut-glass punch cups."

"She said 'Scat!' in her sleep when I looked at her."

"I'm glad it's cats and not rats she's dreaming about," Primrose said. "Oh, Ellen, she knows they're at the Grove—though I smile and don't let on I hear them." Primrose smiled now, a constricted little smile, as she talked. "You remember how rats madden poor Jim Allen, Tempe. If she thought we heard a rat she would be rushing screaming from the house now—maybe be killing us all, I don't know." She looked with her nervous smile toward Ellen. "That's one thing I want to talk over with George—rats. I want to ask him what to do about the rats in the Grove. It's George's house and he ought to know."

"Oh, but I'd wait till after the wedding, Primrose! Wait till—"

"
I know
," whispered Primrose, behind the little mit. "And Jim Allen—what she's been doing is hiding her tears—not wanting George and Battle to see her red eyes." When the music climbed again she whispered, "Spare Tempe!"

"Tempe knows—but Dabney doesn't...." Ellen leaned over her, and walked to the window. Then she gave a cry. "Oh, who on earth can that be coming? Oh—it's Troy. Here comes Dabney's sweetheart, you all!" They peeped behind her. "Don't let him see us!"

"I believe to my soul
he's
got red hair!" cried Tempe.

"Let's us not move." India put her eye on Laura and Roy, but Roy was reading and heard nothing.

"I think he's a very steady, good boy," said Ellen. "And he's going to
learn.
"

"That's a bad sign if I ever heard one," Tempe cried instantly. "My, he's in a hurry about it too. Flavin is a peculiar name."

"He doesn't usually come that fast, does he?" Primrose whispered, as Troy leaped over little Ranny's stick-horse in the drive and hurried toward the steps. "He's bringing something. My, it looks like Aunt Studney's sack, but of course it isn't."

"Let's still don't get up and look," muttered India, lying flat.

"I wouldn't have known him!" said Primrose. "But I always think of him as part horse—you know, the way he's grown to that black Isabelle in the fields."

"It's bigger than Aunt Studney's sack! Is old Aunt Studney dead yet?" asked Tempe, her fine brows meeting as she peered.

"No, indeed," Ellen said. "She still ain't studyin' us, either. She told Battle so yesterday, asking him for a setting of eggs. He's at the door."

"Here's Troy!" cried Dabney's voice. She was rushing down the stairs and letting him in.

Aunt Mac came through the parlor and by their sashes pulled the three ladies neatly away from the window, and went out again.

"You didn't kiss me!" cried Dabney.

But Troy was pushing his way into the parlor, intent. "Look," he said, "everybody look. Did you ever think your
mother
could make something like this? My mammy made these, I've seen her do it. A thousand stitches! Look—these are for us, Dabney."

"Quilts!" Dabney took his arm. "Shelley! Come in and look. Troy, come speak to Aunt Tempe—she's come for the wedding, Papa's sister from Inverness." But he flung her off and held up a quilt of jumpy green and blue. "'Delectable Mountains,'" he said. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am. I swear that's the 'Delectable Mountains.' Do you see how any lady no higher'n a grasshopper ever sewed all those little pieces together? Look, 'Dove in the Window.' Where's everybody?"