Then he was gone, with his brother, shut away by the war as two noisy dogs are penned in a kennel far away. Miss Jenny gave her news of them, of the dull, dutiful letters they sent home at sparse intervals; then he was dead—but away beyond the seas, and there was no body to be returned clumsily to earth, and so to her he seemed still to be laughing at that word as he had laughed at all the other mouth-sounds that stood for repose, who had not waited for Time and its furniture to teach him that the end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
Aunt Sally rocked steadily in her chair.
“Well, it don’t matter which one it was. One’s bad as the other. But I reckon it ain’t their fault, raised like they were. Rotten spoiled, both of ’em. Lucy Sartoris wouldn’t let anybody control ’em while she lived. If they’d been mine, now . . .” She rocked on. “Beat it out of ’em, I would. Raising two wild Indians like that. But those folks, thinking there wasn’t anybody quite as good as a Sartoris. Even Lucy Cranston, come of as good people as there are in the state, acting like it was divine providence that let her marry one Sartoris and be the mother of two more. Pride, false pride.”
She rocked steadily in her chair. Beneath Narcissa’s hand the cat purred with lazy arrogance.
“It was a judgment on ’em, taking John instead of that other one. John at least tipped his hat to a lady on the street hut that other boy . . .” She rocked monotonously, clapping her feet flatly against the floor. “You better stay away from that boy. He’ll be killing you same as he did that poor little wife of his.”
“At least, give me benefit of clergy first, Aunt Sally,” Narcissa said. Beneath her hand, beneath the cat’s sleek hide, muscles flowed suddenly into tight knots, like wire, and the animal’s body seemed to elongate like rubber as it whipped from beneath her hand and flashed out of sight across the veranda.
“Oh!” Narcissa cried. Then she whirled and caught up Aunt Sally’s stick and ran from the room.
“What—” Aunt Sally said. “You bring my stick back here,” she said. She sat staring at the door, hearing the swift clatter of the other’s heels in the hall and then on the veranda. She rose and leaned in the window. “You bring my stick back here,” she shouted.
Narcissa sped on across the porch and to the ground. In the canna bed beside the veranda the cat, crouching, jerked its head around and its yellow unwinking eyes. Narcissa rushed at it, the stick raised.
“Put it down!” she cried. “Drop it!” For another second the yellow eyes glared at her, then the animal ducked its head and leaped away in a long fluid bound, the bird between its jaws.
“Oh-h-h, damn you!” she cried. “Damn you! You—you Sartoris!” And she hurled the stick after the final tortoise flash as the cat flicked around the corner of the house.
“You get my stick and bring it right back this minute!” Aunt Sally shouted from the window.
She and Miss Jenny were sitting in the dim parlor. The doors were ajar as usual, and young Bayard appeared suddenly between them and stood looking at her.
“It’s Bayard,” Miss Jenny said. “Come in here and speak to Narcissa, sonny.”
He said “Hello” vaguely and she turned on the piano bench and shrank a little against the instrument.
“Who is it?” he said. He came in, bringing with him that leashed cold violence which she remembered.
“It’s Narcissa,” Miss Jenny said testily. “Go on and speak to her and stop acting like you don’t know who she is.”
Narcissa gave him her hand and he stood holding it loosely, but he was not looking at her. She withdrew her hand. He looked at her again, then away, and he loomed above them and stood rubbing his hand through his hair.
“I want a drink,” he said. “I can’t find the key to the desk.”
“Stop and talk to us a few minutes and you can have one.”
He stood for a moment above them, then he moved abruptly and before Miss Jenny could speak he had dragged the envelope from another chair.
“Let that alone, you Indian!” Miss Jenny exclaimed. She rose. “Here, take my chair, if you’re too weak to stand up. I’ll be back in a minute,” she added to Narcissa; “I’ll have to get my keys.”
He sat laxly in the chair, rubbing his hand over his head, his gaze brooding somewhere about his booted feet. Narcissa sat utterly quiet, shrunk back against the piano. She spoke at last.
“I am so sorry about your wife . . . John. I asked Miss Jenny to tell you when she . . .”
He sat rubbing his head slowly, in the brooding violence of his temporary repose.
“You aren’t married yourself, are you?” he asked. She sat perfectly still, “Ought to try it,” he added. “Everybody ought to get married once, like everybody ought to go to one war.”
Miss Jenny returned with the keys, and he got his long abrupt body erect and left them.
“You can go on, now,” she said. “He won’t bother us again.”
“No, I must go.” Narcissa rose quickly and took her hat from the top of the piano.
“Why, you haven’t been here any time, yet.”
“I must go,” Narcissa repeated. Miss Jenny rose.
“Well, if you must. I’ll cut you some flowers. Won’t take a minute.”
“No, some other time; I—I have—I’ll come out soon and get some. Good-bye.” At the door she glanced swiftly down the hall; then she went on. Miss Jenny followed to the veranda. The other had descended the steps and she, now went swiftly on toward her car.
“Come back again soon,” Miss Jenny called.
“Yes. Soon,” Narcissa answered. “Good-bye.”
2
Young Bayard came back from Memphis in his car. Memphis was seventy-five miles away and the trip had taken an hour and forty minutes because some of the road was clay country road. The car was long and low and gray.
The four-cylinder engine had sixteen valves and eight spark plugs, and the people had guaranteed that it would run eighty miles an hour, although there was a strip of paper pasted to the windshield, to which he paid no attention whatever, asking him in red letters not to do so for the first five hundred miles.
He came up the drive and stopped before the house, where his grandfather sat with his feet on the veranda railing and Miss Jenny stood trim in her black dress beside a post. She descended the steps and examined it, and opened the door and got in to try the seat. Simon came to the door and gave it a brief, derogatory look and retired, and Isom appeared around the corner and circled the car quietly with an utter and yearning admiration. But old Bayard just looked down at the long, dusty thing, his cigar in his fingers, and grunted.
“Why, it’s as comfortable as a rocking chair,” Miss Jenny said. “Come here and try it,” she called to him. But he grunted again, and sat with his feet on the rail and watched young Bayard slide in under the wheel. The engine raced experimentally, ceased. Isom stood like a leashed hound beside it. Young Bayard glanced at him.
“You can go next time,” he said.
“Why can’t he go now?” Miss Jenny said. “Jump in, Isom.”
Isom jumped in, and old Bayard watched them move soundlessly down the drive and watched the car pass from sight down the valley. Presently above the trees a cloud of dust rose into the azure afternoon and hung rosily fading in the sun, and a sound as of remote thunder died muttering behind it. Old Bayard puffed his cigar again. Simon appeared again in the door and stood there.
“Now whar you reckon dey gwine right here at suppertime?” he said. Bayard grunted, and Simon stood in the door, mumbling to himself.
Twenty minutes later the car slid up the drive and came to a halt almost in its former tracks. In the backseat Isom’s face was like an open piano. Miss Jenny had worn no hat, and she held her hair with both hands, and when the car stopped she sat for a moment so. Then she drew a long breath.
“I wish I smoked cigarettes,” she said, and then: “Is that as fast as it’ll go?”
Isom got out and opened the door for her. She descended a little stiffly, but her eyes were shining and her dry old cheeks were flushed.
“How fer y’all been?” Simon asked from the door. “We’ve been to town,” she answered proudly, and her voice was clear as a girl’s. Town was four miles away.
One day a week later old man Falls came in to town and found old Bayard in his office. The office was also the directors’ room. It was a large room containing a long table lined with chairs, and a tall cabinet where blank banking forms were kept, and old Bayard’s roll top desk and swivel chair and a sofa on which he napped for an hour each noon.
The desk, like the one at home, was cluttered with a variety of objects which bore no relation whatever to the banking business, and the mantel above the fireplace bore still more objects of an agricultural nature, as well as a dusty assortment of pipes and three or four jars of tobacco which furnished solace for the entire banking
