always had a fish course athome,” she added. “But you can’t wean these Mississippi country folks away from bread and meat to save your life. Here, Simon.” Simon set a stack of plates before old Bayard and he now came with his tray and Miss Jenny set twocoffee cups on it, and he served them to old Bayard and Dr. Peabody. Miss Jenny drewa cup for herself, and Simon passed sugar and cream. Old Bayard carved the fish, still rumbling heavily.
“I ain’t ever found anything wrong with fish at any time of year,”Dr. Peabody said.
“You wouldn’t,” Miss Jenny snapped. Again he winked heavily at Narcissa.
“Only,” he continued, “I like to catch my own, out of my own pond. Mine have mo’ food value.”
“Still got your pond, Doc?” young Bayard asked.
“Yes. But the fishin’ ain’t been so good, this year. Abe had the flu last winter, and ever since he’s been goin’ to sleep on me, and I have to sit there and wait until he wakes up and takes the fish off and baits my hook again. But finally I thought about tyin’ one end of a cord to his leg and the other end to the bench, and now when I get a bite, I just give the string a yank and wake ‘im up. You’ll have to bring yo’ wife out someday, Bayard. She ain’t never seen my pond.”
“You haven’t?” Bayard asked Narcissa. She had not. “He’s got a row of benches around it, with foot-rests, and a railing just high enough to prop your pole on, and a nigger to every fisherman to bait his hook and take the fish off. I don’t see why you feed all those niggers, Doc.”
“Well, I’ve had them around so long I don’t know how to get rid of ‘em, ‘less I drown ‘em. Feedin’‘em is the main trouble, though. Takes everything I can make. If it wasn’t for them, I’d a quit practicin’ long ago. That’s the reason I dine out whenever I can: every time I get a free meal, it’s the same as a half holiday.”
“How many have you got?” Narcissa asked.
“I don’t rightly know,” he answered. “I got six orseven registered ones, but I don’t know how many scrubs I have. I seea new yearlin’ every day or so.” Simon was watching him with rapt interest.
“You ain’t got no extra room out dar, is you, Doctor?” he asked. “Here I slaves all day long, keepin’‘um in vittles en sech.”
“Can you eat cold fish and greens every day?”Dr. Peabody asked him solemnly.
“Well, suh,” Simon answered doubtfully, “I ain’t right sho’ erbout dat. I burnt out on de fish once, when I wuz a young man, en I ain’t had no right stomach fer it since.”
“Well, that’s about all we eat, out home.”
“All right, Simon,” Miss Jenny said. Simon was propped statically against the sideboard, watching Dr. Peabody with musing astonishment.
“En you keeps yo’ size on cole fish en greens? Gentlemun, I’d be a bone-rack on dem kine o’ vittles in two weeks, I sho’ly would.”
“Simon!” Miss Jenny raised her voice sharply. “Why won’t you let him alone, Loosh, so he can ‘tend to his business?” Simon came abruptly untranced and removed the fish.
“Lay off of Doc, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard said. He touched his grandfather’s arm. “Can’t you make her let Doc alone?”
“What’s he doing, Jenny?” old Bayard asked. “Won’t he eat his dinner?”
“None of us’ll get to eat anything, if he sits there and talks to Simon about cold fish and greens,” Miss Jenny replied.
“I think you’re mean, to treat him like you do, Miss Jenny,” Narcissa said. She sat beside Horace; beneaththe cloth her hand was in his.
“Well, it gives me something to be thankful for,”Dr. Peabody answered. “That I’m a widower. I want some mo’coffee, Jenny.”
“Who wouldn’t be, the size of a hogshead, and living on cold fish and turnip greens?” Miss Jenny snapped. He passed his cup and she refilled it.
“Oh, shut up, Aunt Jenny,” young Bayard commanded. Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next few minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a cured ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ‘possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, and squash and pickled beets, and rice and hominy, and hot biscuit and beaten biscuit and long thin sticks of combread, and strawberry and pear preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and blackberry jam and stewed cranberries.
Then they ceased talking for a while and really ate, glancing now and then across the table at one another in a rosy glow of amicability and steamy odors. From time to time Isom entered with hot bread, while Simon stood overlooking the field somewhat as Caesar must have stood looking down into Gaul, once he had it well in hand, or the Lord God Himself when he looked down upon His latest chemical experiment and said It is well.
“After this, Simon,”Dr. Peabody said, and he sighed a little, “I reckon I can take you on and find you a little side meat now and then.”
“I ‘speck you kin,” Simon agreed, watching them like an eagle-eyed general who rushes reserves to the threatened points, pressing more food upon them as they faltered But even Dr. Peabody allowed himself vanquished after a time, and then Simon brought in pies of three kinds, and a small, deadly plum pudding, and cake baked cunningly with whisky and nuts and fruit and treacherous and fatal as sin; and at last, with an air sibylline and gravely profound, a bottle of port. The sun lay hazily in the glowing west, failing levelly through the windows and upon the silver arrayed upon the sideboard, dreaming in hushed mellow gleams among its placid rotundities and upon the colored glass in the fanlight high in the western wall.
But that was November, the season of hazy, languorous days, when the first flush of autumn was over and winter beneath the sere horizon breathed yet a spell November, when the year like a shawled matron among her children dies peacefully, without pain and of no disease. Early in December the rains came and the year turned gray beneath the season of dissolution and of death. All night and all day it whispered upon the roof and along the eaves; the leafless trees gestured their black and sorrowful branches in it: only a lone stubborn hickory at the foot of the park kept its leaves yet, gleaming like a sodden flame against the eternal azure; beyond the valley the hills were hidden within chill veils of it.
Almost daily, despite Miss Jenny’s strictures and commands and the grave and passive protest in
