speaking to them?” The little girl did so, shyly and faultlessly, greeting them in rotation, and her mother turned and pulled arid patted at her straight soft hair. “Now, do go arid play. Why do youalways want to come where grown people are? You’re not interested in what we’re doing.”
“Ah, let her stay, mother,” Harry said. “She wants to watch her daddy and Horace play tennis.”
“Run along, now,” Belle added with a final pat, paying no attention to Harry. “And do keep your dress clean.”
“Yessum,” the child agreed, and she turned obediently, giving Horace another quick shining look. Hewatched her and saw Rachel stand presently in the kitchen door and speak to her, and she turned and mounted the steps and entered the door which Rachel held open.
“What a beautifully mannered child,”Mrs. Marders said. “How do you do it, Belle?”
“They’re so hard to do anything with,” Belle said.“She has some of her father’s traits. Drink your tea,Harry.”
Harry took his cup from the table and sucked its lukewarm contents into himself noisily and dutifully. “Well, big boy,” he said to Horace, “how about a set? These squirrels think they can beat us,”
“Frankie wants to play again,” Belle said. “Do let the child have the court for a little while.”
““What?” Harry was busy evolving his racket from its intricate and expensive casing. He paused and raised his savage undershot face and his dull kind eyes.
“No, no,” the girl protested quickly, “I’ve had enough. I’d rather look on a while.”
“Don’t be silly,” Belle said. “They can play any time.”
“Sure the little lady can play,” Harry said. “Here,you jelly-beans, how about fixing up a set with the little lady?” He restored his racket, with ostentatious care.
“Please, Mr. Mitchell,” the girl said.
“Don’t mind him,” Belle told her. “He and Horace can play some other time. You children go on and play. He’ll have to make the fourth, anyway.”
The ex-student spoke: “Sure, Mr. Harry, come on. Me and Frankie’ll play you and Joe.”
“You folks go ahead and play a set,” Harry repeated. “I’ve got a little business to talk over with Horace. You all go ahead.” He insisted, overrodetheir polite protests until they took the court. Then he jerked his head significantly at Horace.
“Go on with him,” Belle said. “The baby.” Without looking at him, without touching him, she enveloped him with rich and smoldering promise, Mrs. Marders sat across the table from them, curious and bright and cold with her teacup. “Unless you want to play with that silly child again.”
“Silly?” Horacerepeated. “She’s too young to be unconsciously silly yet.”
“Run along,” Belle told him. “And hurry back. Mrs. Marders andI are tired of one another.”
Horace followedhis host into the house, followed his short rolling gait and the bald indomitability of his head. From the kitchen, as they passed, little Belle’s voice came steadily, recounting some astonishment of the day, with an occasional mellow ejaculation from Rachel for antistrophe. In the bathroom Harry got a bottle from a cabinet, and preceded by labored heavy footsteps mounting, Rachel entered without knocking, bearing a pitcher of ice water. “Whyn’t y’all g’awn and play, ef you wants?” she demanded. “Whut you let that ‘oman treat you and that baby like she do, anyhow?” she demanded of Harry. “You ought to take and lay her out wid a stick of wood. Messin’up my kitchen at fo’o’clock in de evenin’. And you ain’t helpin’ none, neither,” she told Horace. “Gimme a dram, Mr. Harry, please, suh.”
She took her glass and waddled heavily out; they heard her descend the stairs slowly and heavily on her fallen arches. “Belle couldn’t get along without Rachel,” Harry said, rinsing two glasses. “She talks too much, like all niggers. To listen to her you’d think Belle was some kind of a wild animal, wouldn’t you? A damn tiger or something. But Belle and Iunderstand each other. You’ve got to make allowances for women, anyway. Different from men. Born contrary; complain when you don’t please ‘em and complain whenyou do.” Then he said, with astonishing irrelevance: “I’d kill the man that tried to wreck my home like I would a damn snake. Well, let’s take one, big boy.”
Presently he sloshed ice water into his empty glass and gulped that, too, and he reverted to his former grievance.
“Can’t get to play on my own damn court,” he said. “Belle gets all these damn people here every day. What I want is a court where I can come home from work and get in a couple of fast sets every afternoon. Appetizer before supper. But every damn day I get home from work and find a lot of young girls and jelly-beans, using it like it was a public court.” Horace drank his more moderately, and Harry lit a cigarette and threw the match onto the floor and hung his leg across the lavatory. “I reckon I’ll have to build another court for my own use and put a hogwire fence around it with a Yale lock, so Belle can’t give picnics on it. There’s plenty of room down there by the lot fence. No trees, too. Put it out in the damn sun, and I reckon Belle’ll let me use it now and then. Well, suppose we get on back.”
He led the way through his bedroom and stopped to show Horace a new repeating rifle he had just bought, and to press upon him a package of cigarettes which he imported from South America, and they descended and emerged into afternoon become later. The sun was level now across the court where three players leaped and sped with soft quick slapping of rubber soles, following the fleeting impact of the ball. Mrs. Marders sat yet with her ceaseless chins,although she was speaking of departure as they came up. Belle turned her head against the chair- back, but Harry led Horace on.
“We’re going to look over a location for a tennis court. I think I’ll take up tennis myself,” he told Mrs. Marders with clumsy irony.
Horace halted in his loose, worn flannels, with his thin face brilliant and sick with nerves, smoking his host’s cigarettes and watching his hopeless indomitable head and his intent, faintly comical body as he paced off dimensions and talked steadily in his harsh voice; paced back and forth and planned and calculated with something of a
Presently Harry was satisfied, and they returned. Ifwas later still. Mrs. Marders was gone and Belle sat alone, immersed in a magazine. A youth in a batteredFord had called for Frankie, but another young manhad
