“You, Caspey!”Miss Jenny called, raising her voice. But he went steadily on down the drive, insolent and slouching and unhurried. “He heard me,” she said ominously. “We’ll see about this when he comes back. Who was the fool anyway, who thought of putting niggers into the same uniform with white men? Mr. Vardaman knew better; he told those fools at Washington at the time that it wouldn’t do. But politicians!” She invested the innocent word with an utter and blasting derogation, “If I ever get tired of associating with gentlefolks, I know what I’ll do: I’ll run for Congress...Listen at me! tiradin’ again. I declare, at times I believe these Sartorises and all their possessions just set out to plague and annoy me. Thank the Lord, I won’t have to live with ‘em after I’m dead. I don’t know where they’ll be, but no Sartoris is going to stay in heaven any longer than he can help.”
The other laughed. “You seem very sure of your own destination, Miss Jenny”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” Miss Jenny demanded. “Haven’t I been storing up crowns and harps for a long time?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and stared down the drive. Caspey had reached the gate and he now stood beside the road, waiting for a ride to town. “Don’t you stop for him, you hear?” she said suddenly. “Why won’t you stay for dinner?”
“No,” the other answered. “I must get on home. Aunt Sally’s not well today…” She stood for a moment in the sunlight, with her hat and the basket of flowers on her arm, musing. Then with a motionof sudden decision she drew a folded paper from the front of her dress.
“Got another one, did you?” Miss Jenny asked, watching her. “Lemme see it.” She took the paper and opened it and stepped back out of the sun. Her nose glasses hung on a slender silk cord that rolled onto a spring in a small gold case pinned to her bosom. She snapped the cord out and set the glasses on her high-bridged nose, and behind them her gray eyes were cold and piercing as a surgeon’s.
The paper was a single sheet of unmarked foolscap; it bore writing in a frank, open script that at first glance divulged no individuality whatever; a hand youthful yet at the same time so blandly and neatly unsecretive that presently you speculated a little.
“You did not answer mine of 25th. I did not expect you would yet. You will answer soon. I can wait. I will not harm you. I am square and honest as you will learn when our ways come together. I do not expect you to answer Yet. But you know where.”
Miss Jenny refolded the paper with a gesture of fine and delicate distaste. “I’d burn this thing, if it wasn’t the only thing we have to catch him with. I’ll give it to Bayard tonight.”
“No, no,” the other protested quickly, extending her hand. “Please, not that. Let me have it and tear it up.”
“It’s our only evidence, child—this and the other one. We’ll get a detective.”
“No, no; please! I don’t want anybody else to know about it. Please, Miss Jenny.” She reached her hand again.
“You want to keep it,” Miss Jenny accused coldly.
“Just like a young fool of a woman, to be flattered over a thing like this.”
“I’ll tear it up,” the other repeated. “I would have sooner, but I wanted to tell someone. It—it—I thought I wouldn’t feel so filthy, after I had shown it to someone else. Let me have it, please.”
“Fiddlesticks. Why should you feel filthy? You haven’t encouraged it, have you?”
“Please, Miss Jenny.”
But Miss Jenny still held on to it. “Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “How can this thing make you feel filthy? Any young woman is liable to get an anonymous letter. And a lot of ‘em like it We all are convinced that men feel that way about us, and we can’t help but admire one that’s got the courage to tell us about it, no matter who he is”
“If he’d just signed his name. I wouldn’t mind who it was. But like this...Please, Miss Jenny.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Miss Jenny repeated. “How can we find who it is, if you destroy the letter?”
“I don’t want to know.” Miss Jenny released the paper and Narcissa tore it into bits and cast them over the rail and rubbed her hands on her dress. “I don’t want to know. I want to forget all about it.”
“Nonsense. You’re dying to know, right now. I bet you look at every man you pass and wonder if it’s him. And as long as you don’t do something about it, it’ll go on. Get worse, probably. You better let me tell Bayard.”
“No, no. I’d hate for him to know, to think that I would—might have...It’s all right: I’ll just burn them up after this, without opening them...I must really go.”
“Of course: you’ll throw ‘em right into the stove,” Miss Jenny agreed with cold irony. Narcissa descended the steps and Miss Jenny came forward intothe sunlight again, letting her glasses snap back into the case. ‘It’s your business, of course. But Td not stand for it, if ‘twas me. But then, I ain’t twenty-six years old...Well, come out again when you get another one^ or you want some flowers.”
“Yes, I will. Thank you for these.”
“And let me know what you hear from Horace. Thank the Lord, it’s just a glass-blowing machine, and not a war widow.”
“Yes, I will. Goodbye.” She went on through the dappled shade in her straight white dress and her basket of flowers stippled against it, and got in her car. The top was back and she put her hat on and started the engine, and looked back again and waved her hand. “Goodbye.”
The negro had moved down the road, slowly, and had stopped again, and he was watching her covertly as she approached. As she passed him he looked full at her and she knew he was about to hail her. She opened the throttle and passed him with increasing speed and drove swiftly all the way to town, where she lived in at brick house among cedars on a hilt
She was arranging the larkspur in a dull lemon urn on the piano. Aunt Sally rocked steadily in Her chair beside the window, clapping her feet flatly on the floor at each stroke. Her work basket sat on the window ledge between the gentle billowing of the curtains, her ebony walking-stick leaned beside it.
“And you were out there two hours,” Aunt Sally said, “and you never saw him at all?”
“He wasn’t there,” Narcissa Answered. “He’s gone to Memphis.”
