Flags in the Dust (10 page)

This occupation too was just a grave centering of her days; there was no hysteria in it, no conviction that she was helping to slay the biblical Beast, or laying up treasure in heaven. Horace was away too; she was waiting for him to return, marking time, as it were. Then Bayard Sartoris had returned home,
with a wife. She sensed the romantic glamor of this with interest and grave approval, as of a dramatic scene, but that was all; Bayard Sartoris went away again. Narcissa met his wife now and then, and always with a little curiosity, as though, voluntarily associating so intimately with a Sartoris, she too must be an animal with the temporary semblance of a human being. There was no common ground between them, between Narcissa with her constancy, her serenity which the other considered provincial and a little dull, and the other with her sexless vivid unrepose and the brittle daring of her speech and actions.

She had learned of John Sartoris’ death without any emotion whatever except a faint sense of vindication, a sort of I-told-you-so feeling, which recurred (blended now with a sense of pitying outrage, blaming this too on Bayard) when Bayard’s wife died in childbirth in October of the same year, even though she stood with old Bayard’s deaf and arrogant back and Miss Jenny’s trim indomitability amid sad trees and streaming marble shapes beneath a dissolving afternoon. Then November, and bells and whistles and revolvers. Horace would be coming home soon now, she thought at the time. Before Christmas, perhaps. But before he did so she had seen Bayard once on the street, and later, while she and Miss Jenny were sitting in Miss Jenny’s 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, and he came into the room, bringing with him that cold leashed violence which she remembered.

“It’s Narcissa,” Miss Jenny said testily. “Go on and speak to her and stop acting like you dont 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, and 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 cant 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 holland 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 wont 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. Wont take a minute.”

“No, some other time; I—I have—I’ll come out soon and get some. Goodbye.” 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. “Goodbye.”

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 payed 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 cant 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 supper-time?” 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 back seat 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.

After that the significance grew slowly. He received intimations of it from various sources. But because of his deafness, these intimations came slowly since they must come directly to him and not through overheard talk. The actual evidence, the convincing evidence, came from old man Falls. Eight or ten
times a year he walked in from the county farm, always stopping in at the bank.

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 force from president to janitor and for a respectable portion of the bank’s clientele. Weather permitting, old Bayard spent most of the day in a tilted chair in the street door, and when these patrons found him there, they went on back to the office and filled their pipes from the jars. It was a sort of unspoken convention not to take more than a pipeful at a time. Here old man Falls and old Bayard retired on the old man’s monthly visits and shouted at one another (they were both deaf) for a half hour or so. You could hear them plainly from the street and in the adjoining store on either side.

Old man Falls’ eyes were blue and innocent as a boy’s and his first act was to open the parcel which old Bayard had for him and take out a plug of chewing tobacco, cut off a chew and put it in his mouth, replace the plug and tie the parcel neatly again. Twice a year the parcel contained an entire outfit of clothing, on the other occasions tobacco and a small sack of peppermint candy. He would never cut the string, but always untied it with his stiff, gnarled fingers and tied it back again. He would not accept money.

He sat now in his clean, faded overalls, with the parcel on his knees, telling Bayard about the automobile that had passed him on the road that morning. Everyone had seen or heard of young Bayard’s low gray car, but old man Falls was the first to tell his grandfather how he drove it. Old Bayard sat quite still, watching him with his fierce old eyes until he had finished.

“Are you sure who it was?” he asked.

“Hit passed me too fast fer me to tell whether they was anybody in hit a-tall or not. I asked when I fetched town who ’twas. Seems like ever’body knows how fast he runs hit except you.”

Old Bayard sat quietly for a time. Then he raised his voice:

“Byron.”

The door opened quietly and the book-keeper entered—a thin, youngish man with hairy hands and covert close eyes that looked always as though he were just blinking them, though you never saw them closed.

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” he said in a slow, nasal voice without inflection.

“ ’Phone out to my house and tell my grandson not to touch that car until I come home.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel.” And he was gone as silently as he appeared.

Bayard slammed around in his swivel chair again and old man Falls leaned forward, peering at his face.

“What’s that ’ere wen you got on yo’ face, Bayard?” he asked.

“What?” Bayard demanded, then he raised his hand to a small spot which the suffusion of his face had brought into relief. “Here? I dont know what it is. It’s been there about a week. Why?”

“Is it gittin’ bigger?” the other asked. He rose and laid his parcel down and extended his hand. Old Bayard drew his head back.

“It’s nothing,” he said testily. “Let it alone.” But old man Falls put the other’s hand aside and touched the spot with his fingers.

“H’m,” he said. “Hard’s a rock. Hit’ll git bigger, too. I’ll watch hit, and when hit’s right, I’ll take hit off. ’Taint ripe, yit.” The book-keeper appeared suddenly and without noise beside them.

“Yo’ cook says him and Miss Jenny is off car-ridin’ some-wheres. I left yo’ message.”

“Jenny’s with him, you say?” old Bayard asked.

“That’s what yo’ cook says,” the book-keeper repeated in his inflectionless voice.

“Well. All right.”

The book-keeper withdrew and old man Falls picked up his parcel. “I’ll be gittin’ on too,” he said. “I’ll come in next week and take a look at hit. You better let hit alone till I git back.” He followed the book-keeper from the room, and presently old Bayard rose and stalked through the lobby and tilted his chair in the door.

That afternoon when he arrived home, the car was not in sight, nor did his aunt answer his call. He mounted to his room and put on his riding-boots and lit a cigar, but when he looked down from his window into the back yard, neither Isom nor the saddled mare were visible. The old setter sat looking up at his window. When old Bayard’s head appeared there the dog rose and went to the kitchen door and stood there; then it looked up at his window again. Old Bayard tramped down the stairs and on through the house and entered the kitchen, where Caspey sat at the table, eating and talking to Isom and Elnora.

“And one mo’ time me and another boy——” Caspey was saying. Then Isom saw Bayard, and rose from his seat in the woodbox corner and his eyes rolled whitely in his bullet head. Elnora paused also with her broom, but Caspey turned his
head without rising, and still chewing steadily he blinked his eyes at old Bayard in the door.

“I sent you word a week ago to come on out here at once, or not to come at all,” Bayard said. “Did you get it?” Caspey mumbled something, still chewing, and old Bayard came into the room. “Get up from there and saddle my horse.”

Caspey turned his back deliberately and raised his glass of buttermilk. “Git on, Caspey,” Elnora hissed at him.

“I aint workin’ here,” he answered, just beneath Bayard’s deafness. He turned to Isom. “Whyn’t you go’n git his hoss fer him? Aint you workin’ here?”

“Caspey, fer Lawd’s sake!” Elnora implored. “Yes, suh, Cunnel; he’s gwine,” she said loudly.

“Who, me?” Caspey said. “Does I look like it?” He raised the glass steadily to his mouth, then Bayard moved again and Caspey lost his nerve and rose quickly before the other reached him, and crossed the kitchen toward the door, but with sullen insolence in the very shape of his back. As he fumbled with the door Bayard overtook him.

“Are you going to saddle that mare?” he demanded.

“Aint gwine skip it, big boy,” Caspey answered, just below Bayard’s deafness.

“What?”

“Oh, Lawd, Caspey!” Elnora moaned. Isom crouched into his corner. Caspey raised his eyes swiftly to Bayard’s face and opened the screen door.

“I says, I aint gwine skip it,” he repeated, raising his voice. Simon stood at the foot of the steps beside the setter, gaping his toothless mouth up at them, and old Bayard reached a stick of stove wood from the box at his hand and knocked Caspey through the opening door and down the steps at his father’s feet.

“Now, you go saddle that mare,” he said.

Simon helped his son to rise and led him away toward the
barn while the setter watched them, gravely interested. “I kep’ tellin’ you dem new-fangled war notions of yo’n wa’nt gwine ter work on dis place,” he said angrily. “And you better thank de good Lawd fer makin’ yo’ haid hard ez hit is. You go’n git dat mare, en save dat nigger freedom talk fer townfolks: dey mought stomach it. Whut us niggers want ter be free fer, anyhow? Aint we got ez many white folks now ez we kin suppo’t?”