Flags in the Dust (38 page)

“No such thing!” Miss Jenny shouted. “There never was——”

“Look at her face, if you believe I’m lyin’,” Dr Peabody said.

“Look at her face,” young Bayard echoed rudely. “She’s blushing!”

And she was blushing, but her cheeks were like banners, and her head was still high amid the gibing laughter. Narcissa rose and came to her and laid her arm about her trim erect shoulders. “You all hush this minute,” she said. “You’d better consider yourselves lucky that any of us ever marry you, and flattered even when we refuse.”

“I am flattered,” Dr Peabody rejoined, “or I wouldn’t be a widower now.”

“Who wouldn’t be a widower, the size of a hogshead and living on cold fish and turnip greens?” Miss Jenny said. “Sit down, honey. I aint scared of any man alive.”

Narcissa resumed her seat, and Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next few minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a smoked ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ’possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and squash and pickled beets, and sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes, and rice and hominy, and hot biscuit and beaten biscuit and delicate long sticks of cornbread, and strawberry and pear
preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and stewed cranberries and pickled peaches.

Then they ceased talking for a while and really ate, glancing now and then across the table at one another in a rosy glow of amicability and steamy odors. From time to time Isom entered with hot bread, while Simon stood overlooking the field somewhat as Caesar must have stood looking down into Gaul, once it was well in hand, or the Lord God Himself when He contemplated His latest chemical experiment and saw that it was good.

“After this, Simon,” Dr Peabody said, and he sighed a little, “I reckon I can take you on and find you a little side meat now and then.”

“I ’speck you kin,” Simon agreed, watching them like an eagle-eyed general who rushes reserves to the threatened points, pressing more food upon them as they faltered. But even Dr Peabody allowed himself vanquished after a time, and then Simon brought in pies of three kinds, and a small, deadly plum pudding, and cake baked cunningly with whisky and nuts and fruit as ravishing as odors of heaven and treacherous and fatal as sin; and at last, with an air sibylline and solemnly profound, a bottle of port. The sun lay hazily in the glowing west, falling levelly through the windows and upon the silver arrayed upon the sideboard, dreaming in mellow gleams among its placid rotundities and upon the colored panes in the fanlight high in the western wall.

But that was November, the season of hazy, languorous days, when the first flush of autumn was over and winter beneath the sere horizon breathed yet a spell. November, when like a shawled matron among her children the earth died peacefully, without pain and of no disease. Early in December the rains set in and the year turned gray beneath the season of
dissolution and of death. All night and all day it whispered upon the roof and along the eaves; the trees shed their final stubborn leaves in it and gestured their black and sorrowful branches against ceaseless vistas; only a lone hickory at the foot of the park kept its leaves yet, gleaming like a sodden flame on the eternal azure; beyond the valley the hills were hidden by a swaddling of rain.

Almost daily, despite Miss Jenny’s strictures and commands and the grave protest in Narcissa’s eyes, Bayard went forth with a shotgun and the two dogs, to return just before dark wet to the skin. And cold; his lips would be chill on hers, and his eyes bleak and haunted, and in the yellow firelight of their room she would cling to him, or lie crying quietly in the darkness beside his rigid body with a ghost between them.

“Look here,” Miss Jenny said, coming upon her as she sat brooding before the fire in old Bayard’s den. “You spend too much time this way; you’re getting moony. Stop worrying about him: he’s spent half his life soaking wet, yet neither one of ’em ever had a cold, even, that I can remember.”

“Hasn’t he?” she answered listlessly. Miss Jenny stood beside her chair, watching her keenly. Then she laid her hand on Narcissa’s head, quite gently, for a Sartoris.

“Are you worrying because maybe he dont love you like you think he ought to?”

“It isn’t that,” she answered. “He doesn’t love anybody. He wont even love the baby. He doesn’t seem to be glad, or sorry, or anything.”

“No,” Miss Jenny agreed. The fire crackled and leaped among the resinous logs. Beyond the gray window the day dissolved endlessly. “Listen,” Miss Jenny said abruptly. “Dont you ride in that car with him any more. You hear?”

“No. It wont make him drive slowly. Nothing will.”

“Of course not. Nobody believes it will, not even Bayard.
He goes along for the same reason that boy himself does. Sartoris. It’s in the blood. Savages, everyone of ’em. No earthly use to anybody.” Together they gazed into the leaping flames, Miss Jenny’s hand still lying on Narcissa’s head. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“You didn’t do it. Nobody got me into it. I did it myself.”

“H’m,” Miss Jenny said. And then: “Would you do it over again?” The other did not reply, and she repeated the question. “Would you?”

“Yes,” Narcissa answered. “Dont you know I would?” Again there was silence between them, in which without words they sealed their hopeless pact with that fine and passive courage of women. Narcissa rose. “I believe I’ll go in and spend the day with Horace, if you dont mind,” she said.

“All right,” Miss Jenny agreed. “I believe I would, too. Horace probably needs a little looking after, by now. He looked sort of gaunt when he was out here last week. Like he wasn’t getting proper food.”

When she entered the kitchen door Eunice, the cook, turned from the bread board and lifted her daubed hands in a soft dark gesture. “Well, Miss Narcy,” she said. “We aint seed you in a mont’. Is you come all de way in de rain?”

“I came in the carriage. It was too wet for the car.” She came into the room. Eunice watched her with grave pleasure. “How are you all getting along?”

“He gits enough to eat, all right,” Eunice answered. “I sees to dat. But I has to make ’im eat it. He needs you back here.”

“I’m here, for the day, anyhow. What have you got for dinner?” Together they lifted lids and peered into the simmering vessels on the stove and in the oven. “Oh, chocolate pie!”

“I has to
toll ’im wid dat,” Eunice explained. “He’ll eat
anything, ef I jes’ makes ’im a chocolate pie,” she added proudly.

“I bet he does,” Narcissa agreed. “Nobody can make chocolate pies like yours.”

“Dis one aint turnt out so well,” Eunice said, deprecatory. “I aint so pleased wid it.”

“Why, Eunice! It’s perfect.”

“No’m, it aint up to de mark,” Eunice insisted. But she beamed, gravely diffident, and for a few minutes the two of them talked amicably while Narcissa pried into cupboards and boxes.

Then she returned to the house and mounted to her room. The dressing table was bare of its intimate silver and crystal, and the drawers were empty, and the entire room with its air of still and fading desolation, reproached her. Chill, too; there had been no fire in the grate since last spring, and on the table beside the bed, in a blue vase, was a small faded bunch of flowers, forgotten and withered and dead. Touching them, they crumbled in her fingers, leaving a stain, and the water in the vase smelled of rank decay. She opened the window and threw them out.

The room was too chill to stop in long, and she decided to ask Eunice to build a fire on the hearth, for the comfort of that part of her which still lingered here, soberly and a little sorrowful in the chill and reproachful desolation. At her chest of drawers she paused again and remembered those letters, fretfully and with a little musing alarm, deprecating anew her carelessness in not destroying them. But maybe she had, and so she entered again into the closed circle of her bewilderment and first fear, trying to remember what she had done with them. But she was certain she had left them in the drawer with her underthings, positive that she had put them there. Yet she
had never been able to find them, nor had Eunice nor Horace seen them. The day she had missed them was the day before her wedding, when she packed her things. That day she had missed them, finding in their stead one in a different handwriting, which she did not remember having received. The gist of it was plain enough, although she had not understood some of it literally. But on that day, she read it with tranquil detachment: it and all it brought to mind was definitely behind her now. And lacking even this, she would not have been shocked if she had comprehended it. Curious a little, perhaps, at some of the words, but that is all.

But what she had done with those other letters she could not remember, and not being able to gave her moments of definite fear when she considered the possibility that people might learn that someone had thought such things about her and put them into words. Well, they were gone; there was nothing to do save hope that she had destroyed them as she had the last one, or if she had not, to trust that they would never be found. Yet that brought back the original distaste and dread: the possibility that the intactness of her deep and heretofore inviolate serenity might be the sport of circumstance; that she must trust to chance against the eventuality of a stranger casually picking a stray bit of paper from the ground.……

But she would put this firmly aside, for the time being, at least. This should be Horace’s day, and her own too; a surcease from that ghost-ridden dream to which she clung, waking. She descended the stairs. There was a fire in the living room. It had burned down to embers however, and she put coal on it and punched it to a blaze. That would be the first thing he’d see when he entered; perhaps he’d wonder; perhaps he’d know before he entered, having sensed her presence. She considered telephoning him, and she mused indecisively for a moment
before the fire; then decided to let it be a surprise. But supposing he didn’t come home to dinner because of the rain. She considered this, and pictured him walking along a street in the rain, and immediately and with instinctive foreknowledge, she went to the closet beneath the stairs and opened the door. It was as she had known: his overcoat and raincoat both hung there; the chances were he didn’t even have an umbrella, and again irritation and exasperation and untroubled affection welled within her, and it was as it had been of old again, and all that had since come between them, rolled away like clouds.

Heretofore her piano had always been rolled into the living room when cold weather came. But now it stood yet in the smaller alcove. There was a fireplace here, but no fire had been lighted yet, and the room was chilly. Beneath her hands the cold keys gave forth a sluggish chord, accusing, reproving too; and she returned to the fire and stood where she could see through the window the drive beneath its sombre, dripping cedars. The small clock on the mantel behind her chimed twelve, and she went to the window and stood with her nose touching the chill glass and her breath frosting it over. Soon, now: he was erratic in his hours, but never tardy, and everytime an umbrella came into sight, her heart leaped a little. But it was not he, and she followed the bearer’s plodding passage until he shifted the umbrella enough for her to recognise him, and so she did not see Horace until he was half way up the drive. His hat was turned down about his face and his coat collar was hunched to his ears, and as she had known, he didn’t even have an umbrella.

“Oh, you idiot,” she said and ran to the door and through the curtained glass she saw his shadowy shape come leaping up the steps. He flung the door open and entered, whipping his sodden hat against his leg, and so did not see her until she stepped forth. “You idiot,” she said. “Where’s your raincoat?”

For a moment he stared at her with his wild and diffident unrepose, then he said “Narcy!” and his face lighted and he swept her into his wet arms.

“Dont,” she cried. “You’re wet!” But he swung her from the floor, against his sopping chest, repeating Narcy, Narcy; then his cold nose was against her face and she tasted rain.

“Narcy,” he said again, hugging her, and she ceased resisting and clung to him. Then abruptly he released her and jerked his head up and stared at her with sober intensity.

“Narcy,” he said, still staring at her, “has that surly blackguard?”

“No, of course not,” she answered sharply. “Have you gone crazy?” Then she clung to him again, wet clothes and all, as though she would never let him go. “Oh, Horry,” she said, “I’ve been a beast to you!”

“I was hoping,” he said—they had eaten the chocolate pie and Horace now stood before the living room fire, his coffee cup on the mantel, striking matches to his pipe—“That you might have come home for good. That they had sent you back.”

“No,” she answered. “I wish.……”

“What?”

But she only said: “You’ll be having somebody, soon.” And then: “When is it to be, Horry?”

He sucked intently at his pipe; in his eyes little twin matchflames rose and fell. “I dont know. Next spring, I suppose. Whenever she will.”

“You dont want to,” she stated quietly. “Not after what it’s all got to be now.”

“She’s in Reno now,” he added, puffing at his pipe, his face averted a little. “Little Belle wrote me a letter about mountains.”

She said: “Poor Harry.” She sat with her chin in her palms, gazing into the fire.

“He’ll have little Belle,” he reminded her. “He cares more for her than he does for Belle, anyway.”

“You dont know,” she told him soberly. “You just say that because you want to believe it.”

“Dont you think he’s well off, rid of a woman who doesn’t want him, who doesn’t even love his child very much?”

“You dont know,” she repeated. “People cant—cant—You cant play fast and loose with the way things ought to go on, after they’ve started off.”

“Oh, people.” He raised the cup and drained it, and sat down. “Barging around through a lifetime, clotting for no reason, breaking apart again for no reason still. Chemicals. No need to pity a chemical.”

“Chemicals,” she mused, her serene face rosy in the firelight. “Chemicals. Maybe that’s the reason so many of the things people do smell bad.”