his still little eyes. She whipped the bowl through a towel with a fine show of derogatory carelessness, and with her nose at a supercilious angle she clattered on her high heels across the kitchen, still under Simon’s unwinking regard, and slammed a door behind her. Then Simon turned his head again.
“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated, “I been eatin’ icecream too long to quit at my age.”
“Dey won’t no vittle hurt you ez long ez you kin stomach ‘um,” the cook agreed, raising her saucer to her lips again. The girl returned with her head still averted and set the bowl of viscid liquid before Simon who, under cover of this movement, dropped his hand on her thigh. The girl smacked him sharply on the back of his gray head with her flat palm.
“Miss Rachel, can’t you make him keep his hands to hisself?”
“Ain’t you ‘shamed,” Rachel demanded, but without rancor. “A ole gray-head man like you, wid a family of grown chillen and one foot in de cemetery?”
“Hush yo’ mouf, woman,” Simon said placidly, spooning spinach into his soft ice-cream. “Ain’t dey erbout breakin’ up in yonder yit?”
“I reckon dey’s erbout to,” the other guest answered, putting another laden biscuit into her mouth with a gesture of elegant gentility. “Seems like dey’s talkin’ louder.”
“Den dey’s started playin’ again,” Simon corrected. “Talkin’ jes’ eased off whiles dey et. Yes, suh, dey’s started playin’ again. Dat’s white folks. Nigger ain’t got sense ernough to play cards wid all dat racket goin’ on.”
But they were breaking up. Miss Jenny Du Pre had just finished a story which left the three players at her table avoiding one another’s eyes a little self-consciously, as was her way. Miss Jenny travelled very little, and in Pullman smokerooms not at all, and people wondered where she got her stories; who had told them to her. And she repeated them anywhere and at any time, choosing the wrong moment and the wrong audience with a cold and cheerful audacity. Young people liked her, and she was much in demand as a chaperone for picnic parties.
She now spoke across the room to the hostess. “I’m going home, Belle,” she stated. “I think we are all tired of your party, I know I am.” The hostess was a plump, youngish woman and her cleverly rouged face showed now an hysterical immersion that was almost repose, but when Miss Jenny broke into her consciousness with the imminence of departure this faded quickly, and her face resumed its familiar expression of strained and vague dissatisfaction and she protested conventionally but with a petulant sincerity, as a well-bred child might,
But Miss; Jenny was adamant and she rose and her slender wrinkled hand brushed invisible crumbs from the bosom of her black silk dress. “If I stay any longer I’ll miss Bayard’s toddy time,” she explained with her usual forthrightness, “Come on, Narcissa, and I’ll drive you home”
“I have my car, thank you, Miss Jenny,” the young woman to whom she spoke replied in a grave contralto, rising also; and the others rose with sibilant gathering motions above the petulant modulation of the hostess’ protestings, and they drifted slowly into the hall and clotted again before mirrors, colorful and shrill Miss Jenny pushed steadily toward the door.
“Come along, come along,” she repeated. “Harry Mitchell won’t want to run into all this gabble when he comes home from work.”
“Then he can sit in the car out in the garage,” the hostess rejoined sharply. “I do wish you wouldn’t go. Miss Jenny, I don’t think I’ll askyou again.”
But Miss Jenny only said “Goodbye, goodbye” with cold affability, and with her delicate replica of the Sartoris nose and that straight grenadier’s back ofhers which gave the pas for erectness to only one back in town— that of her nephew Bayard—she stood at the top of the steps, where Narcissa Benbow joined her, bringing with her like an odor that aura of grave and serene repose in which she dwelt. “Belle meant that, too,” Miss Jenny said.
“Meant what, Miss Jenny?”
“About Harry...Now, where do you suppose that damn nigger went to?” They descended the steps and from the parked motors along the street came muffled starting explosions, and the two women traversed the brief flower-bordered walk to the curb. “Did you see which way my driver went?” Miss Jenny asked of the negro in the car next her carriage.
“He went to’ds de back, ma’am.” The negro opened the door and slid his legs, clad in army o.d. and linoleum putties, to the ground. “I’ll go git him.”
“Thank you. Well, thank the Lord that’s over,” she added. “It’s too bad folks haven’t the sense or courage to send out invitations, then shut up the house and go away. All the fun of parties is in dressing and getting there, I think.” Ladies came in steady shrill groups down the walk and got into various cars or departed on foot with bright, not-quite-musical calls to one another. The northward-swinging sun was down beyond Belle’s house, and in the shadow of the house the soft silken shades of the women’s clothes were hushed delicately until the wearers reached the edge of the shadow and passed into a level spotlight of sun, where they became delicately brilliant as the plumage of paroquets. Narcissa Benbow wore gray and her eyes were violet, and in her face was that serene repose of lilies.
“Not children’s parties,” she protested.
“I’m talking about parties, not about having a goodtime,”Miss Jenny retorted. “Speaking of children: What’s the news from Horace?”
“Oh, hadn’t I told you?” the other said quickly.
“Was it a straight message?”Miss Jenny asked, and when the other said Yes, she added: ‘‘Horace must have got rich, like the soldiers say all the Y.M.C.A, did. If it has taught a man like him to make money, the war was a pretty good thing, after all.”
“Miss Jenny! How can you talk that way, after John’s—after—“
“Fiddlesticks,” Miss Jenny said. “The war just gave John a good excuse to get himself killed. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been some other way that would have been a bother to everybody around.”
“Miss Jenny!”
“I know, my dear. I’ve lived with these bullheaded Sartorises for eighty years, and I’ll never give a singleghost of ‘em the satisfaction of shedding a tear over him. What did Horace’s message say?”
