Flags in the Dust

with her cold, sad eyes, proprietorial and deprecatory, touching little Belle’s hair with a meagre passionate hand.

Then they drifted doorward, with their shrill polite uproar. Little Belle slid from among them and came, a little drunk with all the furor and her central figuring in it, and took Horace’s hand “What do you think was the best,” she asked, “when I played, or when I danced?”

“I think they both were,” he answered.

“I know. But what do you think was the best?”

“Well, I think the dancing was, because your mamma was playing for you.”

“So do I,” little Belle agreed. “They could see all of me when I was dancing, couldn’t they? When you are playing, they can’t see but your back.”

“Yes,” Horace agreed. He moved toward the door, little Belle still clinging to his hand.

“I wish they wouldn’t go. Why do they have to go now? Can’t you stay a while?”

“I must take Narcissa home. She can’t go home by herself, you know.”

“Yes,” little Belle agreed. “Daddy could take her home in our car.”

“I expect I’d better do it. But I’ll be coming back soon.”

“Well, all right, then.” Little Belle sighed with weary contentment. “I certainly do like parties; I certainly do. I wish we had one every night.” The guests clotted at the door, evacuating with politely trailing phrases into the darkness. Belle stood responding to their recapitulations with smoldering patience. Narcissa stood slightly aside, waiting for~ him, and Harry was among them again, strident and affable.

“Daddy’s gal,” he said. “Did Horace see her playing the piano and dancing? Want to go up andtake one before you leave?” he asked Horace in a jarring undertone.

“No, thanks. Narcissi’s waiting for me. Some other time.”

“Sure, sure,” Harry agreed, and Horace was aware of Belle beside him, speaking to little Belle, but when he turned his head she was moving away with her silken swishing and her heavy, feint scent. Harry was still talking. “How about a couple of sets tomorrow? Let’s get over early, before Belle’s gang comes, and get in a couple of fast ones, then let ‘em have the court.”

“All right,” Horace agreed; as he always did to this arrangement, wondering as usual if that boy’s optimism of Harry’s really permitted him to believe that they could or would follow it out, or if he had just said the phrase so many times that the juxtaposition of the words no longer had any meaning in his liquor-fuddled brain. Then Narcissa was beside him, and they were saying Goodnight, and the door closed upon little Belle, and Harry’s glazed squat dome and upon Belle’s smoldering and sullen rage. She had said no word to him all evening.

He turned away and found that his sister had descended the steps and was half way -down the dark walk to the street. “If you’re going my way, I’ll walk along with you,” he called to her. She made no reply, neither did she slacken her pace, nor did she increase it when he joined her.

“Why is it,” he began, “that grown people will go to so much trouble to make children do ridiculous things, do you suppose? Belle had a house full of people she doesn’t care anything about and most of whom don’t approve of her, and kept little Belle up three hours past her bedtime; and the result isHarry’s about half tight, and Belle is in a bad humor, and little Belle is too excited to go to sleep, and you and I wish we were home and are sorry we didn’t stay there.”

“Why do you go there, then?” Narcissa asked coldly. Horace was suddenly stilled. They walked on through the darkness, toward the next street light. Against it branches hung like black coral in a silver sea.

“Oh,” Horace said. Then: “I saw that old cat talking with you.”

“Why do you call Mrs. Marders an old cat? Because she told me something that concerns me and that everybody else seems to know?”

“So that’s who told you, is it? I wondered...” He slid his arm within her unresponsive one. “Dear old Narcy.” They passed through the dappled shadows beneath the light, went on in the darkness again.

“Isit true?” she asked after a time.

“You forget that lying is astruggle for survival,” he said “Little puny man’s way of dragging circumstance about to fit his preconception of himself as a figure in the world. Revenge on the sinister gods.”

“Is it true?” she persisted. They walked on, arm in arm, she grave and constant and waiting; he shaping and discarding phrases in his mind, finding time to be amused at his own fantastic impotence in the presence of her constancy.

“People don’t usually lie about things that don’t concern them,” he answered wearily.“They are impervious to the world, even if they aren’t to life. Not when fact is so much more diverting than their imaginings could be,” he added. Narcissa freed her arm with grave finality.

“Narcy—”

“Dont,” she said. “Don’t call me that” The next corner, beneath the next light, was theirs; they would torn there. Above the arching feathery canyon of the street the sinister gods stared down with their yellow, unwinking eyes. Horace thrust Ids hands into his jacket pockets, and for a space he was stilled again while his fingers learned the unfamiliar object they had found there. Thai he drew it forth: a sheet of heavy notepaper, folded twice and tinged with a fading heavy scent, a scent as of flowers that bloom richly at night A familiar scent, yet baffling , too for the moment, like a face watching him from an arras. He knew the face would emerge in a moment, but as he held the note in his fingers and sought the face through the corridors of his present distraction, his aster spoke suddenly and hard at his side.

“You’ve got the smell of her all over you. Oh, Horry, she’s dirty!”

“I know,” he answered unhappily, and the face emerged clearly, and he was suddenly empty and cold and sad. “I know.” It was like a road stretching on through darkness, into nothingness and so away; a road lined with black motionless trees O thou grave myrtle shapes amid which Death. A road along which he and Narcissa walked like two children drawn apart one from the other to opposite sides of it; strangers, yet not daring to separate and go in opposite ways, while the sinister gods watched them with cold unwinking eyes. And somewhere, everywhere,