Mrs. King watched her, cold, immobile. “I believe that fool Lily Cranston is right. I believe that man has some criminal power over you. I just thank God he has not used it for anything except to try to make you kill yourself, make a fool of yourself. Not yet, that is—”
“Stop,” Louise said; “stop!” She continued to say “Stop. Stop,” even when Mrs. King walked up and touched her. “But you let me down! And now Hubert has let me down. He told you about that horse after he had promised me he wouldn’t.”
“I knew that already. That’s why I sent for him. I could do nothing with you. Besides, it’s anybody’s business to keep you from riding it.”
“You can’t keep me. You may keep me locked up in this room to-day, but you can’t always. Because you are older than I am. You’ll have to die first, even if it takes a hundred years. And I’ll come back and ride that horse if it takes a thousand years.”
“Maybe I won’t be here then,” Mrs. King said. “But neither will he. I can outlive him. And I can keep you locked up in this room for one day, anyway.”
Fifteen minutes later the ancient porter knocked at the locked door. Mrs. King went and opened it. “Mr. Jarrod wants to see you downstairs,” the porter said.
She locked the door behind her. Jarrod was in the lobby. It was empty. “Yes?” Mrs. King said. “Yes?”
“He said that if Louise would tell him herself she wants to marry me. Send him a sign.”
“A sign?” They both spoke quietly, a little tensely, though quite calm, quite grave.
“Yes. I showed him the ring, and him sitting there on that bench, in that suit looking like he had been sleeping in it all summer, and his eyes watching me like he didn’t believe she had ever seen the ring. Then he said, ‘Ah. You have the ring. Your proof seems to be in the hands of the wrong party.
If you and Louise are engaged, she should have the ring. Or am I just old fashioned?’ And me standing there like a fool and him looking at the ring like it might have come from Woolworth’s. He never even offered to touch it.”
“You showed him the ring? The ring? You fool. What—”
“Yes. I don’t know. It was just the way he sat there, the way he makes her do things, I guess. It was like he was laughing at me, like he knew all the time there was nothing I could do, nothing I could think of doing about it he had not already thought about; that he knew he could always get between us before — in time. . . .”
“Then what? What kind of a sign did he say?”
“He didn’t say. He just said a sign, from her hand to his. That he could believe, since my having the ring had exploded my proof. And then I caught my hand just before it hit him — and him sitting there. He didn’t move; he just sat there with his eyes closed and the sweat popping out on his face. And then he opened his eyes and said, ‘Now, strike me.’”
“Wait,” Mrs. King said. Jarrod had not moved. Mrs. King gazed across the empty lobby, tapping her teeth with her fingernail. “Proof,” she said. “A sign.” She moved. “You wait here.” She went back up the stairs; a heavy woman, moving with that indomitable, locomotivelike celerity.
She was not gone long. “Louise is asleep,” she said, for no reason that Jarrod could have discerned, even if he had been listening. She held her closed hand out. “Can you have your car ready in twenty minutes?”
“Yes. But what — ?”
“And your bags packed. I’ll see to everything else.”
“And Louise — You mean—”
“You can be married in Meridian; you will be there in an hour.”
“Married? Has Louise — ?”
“I have a sign from her that he will believe. You get your things all ready and don’t you tell anyone where you are going, do you hear?”
“Yes. Yes. And Louise has — ?”
“Not a soul. Here” — she put something into his hand. “Get your things ready, then take this and give it to him. He may insist on seeing her. But I’ll attend to that. You just be ready. Maybe he’ll just write a note, anyway. You do what I told you.” She turned back toward the stairs, fast, with that controlled swiftness, and disappeared.
Then Jarrod opened his hand and looked at the object which she had given him. It was the metal rabbit. It had been gilded once, but that was years ago, and it now lay on his palm in mute and tarnished oxidation. When he left the room he was not exactly running either. But he was going fast.
But when he re-entered the lobby fifteen minutes later, he was running. Mrs. King was waiting for him.
“He wrote the note,” Jarrod said. “One to Louise, and one to leave here for Miss Cranston. He told me I could read the one to Louise.” But Mrs. King had already taken it from his hand and opened it. “He said I could read it,” Jarrod said. He was breathing hard, fast.
“He watched me do it, sitting there on that bench; he hadn’t moved even his hands since I was there before, and then he said, ‘Young Mr. Jarrod, you have been conquered by a woman, as I have been. But with this difference: it will be a long time yet before you will realize that you have been slain.’
And I said, ‘If Louise is to do the slaying, I intend to die every day for the rest of my life or hers.’ And he said, ‘Ah; Louise. Were you speaking of Louise?’ And I said, ‘Dead.’ I said, ‘Dead.’ I said, ‘Dead.’”
But Mrs. King was not there. She was already half way up the stairs. She entered the room. Louise turned on the bed, her face swollen, with tears or with sleep. Mrs. King handed her the note. “There, honey. What did I tell you? He was just making a fool of you. Just using you to pass the time with.”
The car was going fast when it turned into the highroad. “Hurry,” Louise said. The car increased speed; she looked back once toward the hotel, the park massed with oleander and crepe myrtle, then she crouched still lower in the seat beside Jarrod. “Faster,” she said.
“I say faster, too,” Jarrod said. He glanced down at her; then he looked down at her again. She was crying. “Are you that glad?” he said.
“I’ve lost something,” she said, crying quietly. “Something I’ve had a long time, given to me when I was a child. And now I’ve lost it. I had it just this morning, and now I can’t find it.”
“Lost it?” he said. “Given to you . . .” His foot lifted; the car began to slow. “Why, you sent . . .”
“No, no!” Louise said. “Don’t stop! Don’t turn back! Go on!”
The car was coasting now, slowing, the brakes not yet on. “Why, you . . . She said you were asleep.” He put his foot on the brakes.
“No, no!” Louise cried. She had been sitting forward; she did not seem to have heard him at all. “Don’t turn back! Go on! Go on!”
“And he knew,” Jarrod thought. “Sitting there on the bench, he knew. When he said what he said that I would not know that I had been slain.”
The car was almost stopped. “Go on!” Louise cried. “Go on!” He was looking down at her. Her eyes looked as if they were blind; her face was pale, white, her mouth open, shaped to an agony of despair and a surrender in particular which, had he been older, he would have realized that he would never see again on any face.
Then he watched his hand set the lever back into gear, and his foot come down again on the throttle. “He said it himself,” Jarrod thought: “to be afraid, and yet to do. He said it himself: there’s nothing in the world but being alive, knowing you are alive.”
“Faster!” Louise cried. “Faster!” The car rushed on; the house, the broad veranda where the bright shawls were now sibilant, fell behind.
In that gathering of wide summer dresses, of sucked old breaths and gabbling females staccato, the proprietress stood on the veranda with the second note in her hand. “Married?” she said. “Married?” As if she were someone else, she watched herself open the note and read it again. It did not take long:
Lily:
Don’t worry about me for a while longer. I’ll sit here until supper time. Don’t worry about me.
J.M.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “About me.” She went into the lobby, where the old Negro was pottering with a broom. “And Mr. Jarrod gave you this?”
“Yessum. Give it to me runnin’ and tole me to git his bags into de cyar, and next I know, here Miss Louise and him whoosh! outen de drive and up de big road like a patter-roller.”
“And they went toward Meridian?”
“Yessum. Right past de bench whar Doctor Jules settin’.” “Married,” the proprietress said. “Married.” Still carrying the note, she left the house and followed the path until she came in sight of the bench on which sat a motionless figure in white. She stopped again and
