my housekeeping go to the dogs and spend all my time in that car, that’s what you want Well, I’m not going to do it I don’t mind riding with him now and then, but I’ve got too much to do with my time to spend it keeping him from raining that car fast Neck, too,” she added. She rattled the paper crisply.
She said: “Besides, you ain’t foolish enough to believe he’ll drive slow just because there’s somebody with him, are you? If you do think so, you’d better send Simon along. Lord knows Simon can spare the time. Since you quit using the carriage, if he does anything at all, I don’t know it” She read the paper again.
Old Bayard’s cigar smoked in his fingers.
“I might send Isom,” he said.
Miss Jenny’s paper rattled sharply and she stared at her nephew for a long moment “God in heaven, man, why don’t you put a block and chain On him and have done with it?”
“Well, didn’t you suggest sending Simon with him, yourself? Simon has his work to do, but all Isom ever does is saddle
“I was trying to be ironical,” Miss Jenny said. “God knows, I should have learned better by this time. But if you’ve got to invent something new for the niggers to do, you let it be Simon. I need Isom to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.” She rattled the paper. “Why don’t you come right out and tell him not to drive fast? A man that has to spend eight hours a day sitting in a chair in that bank door ought not to have to spend the rest of the afternoon helling around the country in an automobile if he don’t want to.”
“Do you think it would do any good to ask him? There was never a damned one of ‘em ever paid any attention to my wishes yet.”
“Ask the devil,” Miss Jenny said. “Who said anything about ask? Tell him not to. Tell him that if you hear again of his going fast in it, that you’ll frail the life out of him. I believe anyway that you like to ride in that car, only you won’t admit it, and you just don’t want him to ride in it when you can’t go too.” But old Bayard had slammed his feet to the floor and risen, and he tramped heavily from the room.
Instead of mounting the stairs, however, Miss Jenny heard his footsteps the away down the halL and presently she rose and followed to the back porch, where he stood in the darkness there. The night was dark, myriad with drifting odors of the spring and with insects. Dark against lesser dark, the barn loomed upon the sky.
“He hasn’t come yet,” she said impatiently, touching his arm. “I could have told you. Go on up and go to bed, now; don’t you know he’ll let you know when he comes in? You’re going to think him into a ditch somewhere, with these fool notions of yours.” Then more gently: “You’re too childish about that car. It’s no more dangerous at night than it is in daylight. Come on, now.”
He shook her hand off, but he turned obediently and entered the house. This time he mounted the stairs and she could hear him in his bedroom, thumping about. Presently he ceased slamming doors and drawers and lay beneath the reading lamp with his Dumas, and he lay reading quietly. After a time the door opened and young Bayard entered and came into the radius of the light with his bleak eyes.
His grandfather did not remark his presence and he touched old Bayard’s arm. Then old Bayard looked up, and when he did so young Bayard turned and quitted the room.
After the shades on the windows were drawn at three o’clock old Bayard retired to his office to wait until his grandson came for him. In the front of the bank the cashier and the book-keeper could hear him clattering and banging around. The cashier paused, a stack of silver clipped neatly in his fingers.
“Hear ‘im?” he said. “Something on his mind here, lately. Used to be he was quiet as a mouse back, there until they come for him, but last few weeks he tramples and thumps around back there like he was fighting hornets.”
The book-keeper said nothing. The cashier set the stack of silver aside, built up another one.
“Something on his mind, lately. That examiner must a put a bug in his ear, I reckon.”
The book-keeper said nothing. He swung the adding machine to his desk and clicked the lever over. In the back room old Bayard moved audibly about. The cashier stacked the remaining silver neatly and rolled a cigarette. The book-keeper bent above the steady clicking of the adding machine, and the cashier sealed his cigarette and lit it and waddled to the window and lifted the curtain.
“Simon’s brought the carriage, today,” he said
“That boy finally wrecked that car, I reckon. Better call Colonel.”
The book-keeper slid from his stool and went to the door to the office and opened it. Old Bayard glanced up from his desk.
“All right, Byron,” he said. The book-keeper turned away.
Old Bayard stalked through the bank and opened the street door and stopped utterly, the door knob in his hand.
“Where’s Bayard?” he said.
“He ain’t comin’,” Simon answered. Old Bayard crossed the pavement.
“What? Where is he?”
“He en Isom off somewhar in dat cyar,” Simon answered. “Lawd knows whar dey is by now. Takin’ dat boy away fum his work in de middle of de day, cyar-ridin’. After all de time I spent tryin’ to git some sense inter Isom’s haid,” Simon continued. “Cyar-ridin’,” he said. “Cyar-ridin’.” Old Bayard got in the carriage.
“I’ll be damned,” old Bayard said, “if I haven’t got the triflingest set of foils to make a living for in the whole damn world. There’s just one tiling about it: when I finally have to go to the poor house, every damned one of you’ll be there when I come.”
“Now, here you quoilin’ too,” Simon said. “Miss Jenny shoutin’ at me ‘twell I wuz thru de gate, and now you already started at dis end. But ef Mr. Bayard don’t leave dat boy alone, he ain’t gwine to be no better’n a town nigger spite of all I kin do.”
“Jenny’s already ruined him,” old Bayard said. “Bayard can’t hurt him much.”
