His cast would come off tomorrow, he meant, and he lay smoking his cigarette and talking of what he would do when he was about again. He would see about getting his car repaired first thing; have to take it to Memphis, probably. And he planned a trip for the three of them—Narcissa, Miss Jenny and himself—while the car was in the shop. “It’ll take about a week,” he added. “She must be in pretty bad shape. Hope I haven’t hurt her guts any.”
“But you aren’t going to drive it fast anymore,” she reminded him. He lay still, his cigarette burning in his fingers. “You promised,” she insisted.
“When did I promise?”
“Don’t you remember? That...afternoon, when they were...”
“When I scared you?” She sat watching him with her grave troubled eyes. “Come here,” he said. She rose and went to the bed and he took her hand.
“You won’t drive it fast again?” she persisted.
“No,” he answered, “I promise.” And they were still so, her hand in his. The curtains stirred in the breeze, and the leaves on the branch beyond the window twinkled and turned and lisped against one another. Sunset was not far away; it would cease then. He moved.
“Narcissa,” he said, and she looked at him. “Lean your face down here.”
She looked away, and for a while there was no movement, no sound between them.
“I must go,” she said at last, quietly, and he released her hand .
His cast was gone, and he was up and about again, moving a little gingerly, it is true; but already Miss Jenny was beginning to contemplate him a little anxiously. “If we could just arrange to have one of his minor bones broken every month or so, just enough to keep him in the house...”she said.
“That won’t be necessary,” Narcissa told her. “He’s going to behave from now on.”
“How do you know?” Miss Jenny demanded. “What in the world makes you think that?”
“He promised he would.”
“He’ll promise anything when he’s flat on his back,” Miss Jenny retorted. “They all will; always have. But what makes you think he will?”
“He promised me he would,” Narcissa answered serenely.
His first act was to see about his car. It had been pulled into town and patched up after a fashion until it would run under its own power, but it would be necessary to take it to Memphis to have the frame straightened and the body repaired. Bayard was all for doing this himself, fresh-knit ribs and all, but Miss Jenny put her foot down and after a furious half hour, he was vanquished. And so the car was driven in to Memphis by a youth who hung around one of the garages in town. “Narcissa’ll take you driving in her car, if you must ride,” Miss Jenny told him.
“In that little peanut parcher?” Bayard said derisively. “It won’t do more than twenty-one miles an hour.”
“No, thank God,” Miss Jenny answered. “And I’ve written to Memphis and asked ‘em to fix yours so it’ll run just like that, too”
Bayard stared at her with slow and humorless bleakness. “Did you do any such damn thing as that?”
“Oh, take him away, Narcissa,” Miss Jenny exclaimed.“Get him out of my sight. I’m so tired of looking at you.”
But he wouldn’t ride in Narcissa’s car at first. He missed no opportunity to speak of it with heavy, facetious disparagement, but he wouldn’t ride in it Dr. Alford had evolved a tight rubber bandage for his chest so that he could ride a horse, but he had developed an astonishing propensity for lounging about the house when Narcissa was there. And Narcissa came quite often. Miss Jenny thought that it was on Bayard’s account and pinned the guest down in her forthright way; whereupon Narcissa told her about Horace and Belle while Miss Jenny sat indomitably erect on her straight chair beside the piano.
“Poor child,” she said, and “Lord, ain’t they fools?” and then: “Well, you’re right; I wouldn’t marry one of ‘em either.”
“I’m not,” Narcissa answered. “I wish there weren’t any of them in the world.”
Miss Jenny said, “Hmph.”
And then one afternoon they were in Narcissa’s car and Bayard was driving, over Narcissa’s protest atfirst. But he was behaving himself quite sensibly, and. at last she relaxed They drove down the valley road andturned off toward the hills, where the road mounted presently in long curves among dark pines in the slanting afternoon. The road wound on, with changing sunshot vistas of the valley and the opposite hills beyond at every turn, and always the sombre pines and their faint exhilarating odor. At last they topped a hill Below them the road sank, then flattened away toward a line of willows, crossed a stone bridge and rose again curving redly from sight among the pines.
“There’s the place,” he said.
“The place?” she repeated dreamily, rousing; then as the car rolled forward again, gaining speed, she understood. “You promised,” she cried, but he jerked the throttle all the way down its ratchet and she clutched him and tried to scream. But she could make no sound, nor could, she shut her eyes as the harrow bridge hurtleddancing toward them. And then her heart stopped and her breath as they flashed with a sharp reverberation like hail on a tin roof, between willows and a crashing glint of water and shot on up the next hill. The small car swayed on the curve, lost its footing and went into the ditch, bounded out and hurled across the road. Then Bayard straightened it out and with diminishing speed it rocked on up the hill, and at the top he stopped it. She sat beside him, with her bloodless mouth open, beseeching him with her wide hopeless eyes. Then she caught her breath, wailing.
“I didn’t mean—” he began awkwardly. “I just wanted to see if I could do it,” and he put his arms around her and sheclung to him, moving her hands crazily about his shoulders. “I didn’t mean—” he essayed again, and then her crazed hands wereon his face and she was sobbing wildly against his month.
10
Through the morning hours and following his sleepless night, he bent over his desk beneath the green-shaded fight; penning his neat; meticulous figures into the ledgers. The routine of the bank went on; old Bayard sat in his tilted chair in the fresh August morning while passers went to and fro, greeting him with florid cheerful gestures and receiving in return his half military salute—people cheerful and happy with their orderly affairs; the cashier served the morning line of depositors and swapped jovial anecdote with them. For this was the summer cool spell and there was a vividness in
