look at him, but she could feel the moody, leashed violence of him like a steady glare of light beneath which she shrank and recoiled, and despite the assurance of his helpless immobility she was swept by sudden and unreasoning fear, and she raised her hands between them though he lay two yards away and helpless on his back. “Come over here closer,” he commanded. She rose, clutching the book.
“I’m going,” she said “I’ll tell Simon to stay where he can hear you call. Goodbye.”
“Here,” he exclaimed.She went swiftly to the door.
“Goodbye.”
“After what you just said; about leaving me alone with just niggers on the place?” She paused at the door, and he added with cold cunning: “After what Aunt Jenny told you? What’ll I tell her, tonight? Why are you afraid of a man flat on his back, in a damn cast-iron strait-jacket, anyway?” But she only looked at him with her desperate, hopeless eyes; “All right, dammit,” lie said violently. “Go, then.” And he jerked his head savagely on the pillow and stared again out the window while she returned to her chair. He said, mildly: “What’s the name of this one?” She told him. “Let her go, then. I reckon I’ll be asleep soon, anyway.”
She opened the book and began to read, swiftly, as though she were crouching behind the screen of words her voice raised between them. She read steadily on, her head bent over the book. She finished a sentence and stopped and sat utterly still above the book, but almost immediately he spoke. “Go on; I’m still here. Better luck next time.”
The forenoon passed on. Somewhere a clock rang the quarter hours, but saving this there was no sound from the other parts of the house. Simon’s activity below stairs had long ceased, but a murmur of voices reached her at intervals from somewhere, murmurously indistinguishable. The leaves on the tree beyond the window did not stir in the hot air, and upon it a myriad noises blended in a drowsy monotone— the negroes’ voices, sounds of stock from the barnyard, the rhythmic groaning of the water pump; a sudden cacophony of fowls in the garden beneath the window interspersed with Isom’s meaningless cries as he drove them out.
He was asleep now, and as she realized this she realized also that she did not know just when she had stopped reading. And she sat with the page open upon her knees, a page whose words left no echoes whatever in her mind, watching his calm face. It was again like a bronze made, purged by illness of the heat of its violence, yet with the violence still slumbering there and only refined a little.
She sat with the book open upon her lap, her hands lying motionless upon the opened page, gazing out the window. The curtains stirred faintly, and in the branches of the tree athwart the window the leaves twinkled lighdy beneath the intermittent fingers of the sun.
The clock rang again: a sound cool as stroked silver in the silent house, and preceded by cautious, stertorious breathing someone crept up the stairs, and after more surreptitious sounds Simon peered his disembodied head, like that of the curious and wizened grandfather of all apes, around the door. “Is you ‘sleep, Mist? Bayard?” he said in a loud, rasping tone.
“Shhhhhhhh,” she cautionedhim. “What is it?”
“Ef he ‘sleep, I don’t reckon he wants no dinnernow, do he?” Simon rasped.
“Be quiet. You’ll have to keep it until he wakes.”
“Yessum, I ‘speck so,” Simon agreed, lowering his voice a little. He entered on tiptoe, and while Narcissa watched him in mounting exasperation arid alarm, he scuffed across to the table with sounds as of a huge rat.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered. “You’d better go and tell Elnora to keep his dinner for him. I’ll call you when he wakes.”
“Yessum, I ‘speck so,” Simon agreed again. He now busied himself at the table, upon which the books they had read during the past two weeks werestacked one upon another; and as she rose swiftly and quietly he toppled the stack over and lunged clumsily at it and succeeded in knocking it to the floor with a random crash. Bayard opened eyes.
“Good Lord,” he said. “Why can’t you stay out of here?”
“Well, now!” Simon exclaimed in ready dismay. “Ef we ain’t woke ‘im up! Yes, suh, me en Miss Benbow done woke ‘im up. We wuz gwine save yo’ dinner, Mist’ Bayard, but I reckon you mought jes’ well eat it, long ez you ‘wake.”
“I reckon so,” Bayard agreed. “Bring it up, then. But damned if I wouldn’t like to know what objection you have to
“Des lissen at ‘im! Wake up quoilin’. You’ll feel better when you et some dinner,” he told the patient. Then to Narcissa: “Elnora got a nice dinner fer y’all.”
“Bring Miss Benbow’s up too” Bayard directed. “She can eat here. Unless you’d rather go down?”
In all his movements Simon was a caricature of himself, and he paused in an attitude of shocked reproof. “Dinin’ room mo’ suitable fer comp’ny,” he said.
“Yes, I’ll go down,” she decided promptly. “I won’t put Simon to that trouble.”
“’Tain’t no trouble,” Simon disclaimed. “I jes1 thought you mought like to git out fer a while, whar he can’t quoil at you. I’m gwine put it on de table right away, missy. You can walk right down.”
“Yes, I’ll come right down.” He departed, and she laid the book aside. “1tried to keep—”
“I know,” Bayard interrupted. “He won’t let anybody sleep through mealtime. And you’d better goand have yours, or he’ll carry everything back to thekitchen. And you don’t have to hurry back just onmy account,” he added .
“Don’t have to hurry back?” She paused at the door and looked back at him, “What do you mean?”
“I thought you might be tired of reading.”
“Oh,” she said, and looked away and stood fora moment clothed in her grave tranquility.
“Look here,” he said suddenly, “Are you sick or anything? Had you rather go home?”
“No,” she answered, rousing. “I’ll be back soon.”
