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 of hers 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. “I had a wire yesterday. He landed in New York Wednesday. It was such a mixed-up sort of message, I never could understand what he was trying to tell me, except that he would have to stay in New York for a few days. It was over fifty words long.”
“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 single ghost of ‘em the satisfaction of shedding a tear over him. What did Horace’s message say?”
“It was about something he was bringing home with him” the other answered, and her serene face filled with a sort of fond exasperation. “It was such an incoherent message...Horace never could say anything clearly from a distance.” She mused again, gazing down the street with its tunnel of oaks and elms through which sunlight fell in spaced tiger bars. “Do you suppose he could have adopted a war-orphan?”
“War-orphan,” repeated Miss Jenny. “More likely it’s some war-orphan’s mamma.” Simon appeared at the corner of the house, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and came with shuffling celerity across the lawn. His cigar was not in view.
“No,” the other said quickly, with grave concern. “You don’t believe he would have done that? No, no, he wouldn’t have. Horace wouldn’t have done that. He never does anything without telling me about it first He would have written: I know he would. You really don’t think that sounds like Horace, do you?”
“Humph,” Miss Jenny said through her high-bridged Norman nose, “an innocent like Horace straying with that trusting air of his among all those man-starved European wimmen? He wouldn’t know it himself, until it was too late; especially in a foreign language. I bet in every town he was in over seven days his landlady or someone was keeping his supper warm on the stove when he was late, or holding sugar out on the other men to sweeten his coffee with. Horace was born to have some woman making a doormat of herself for him, just as some men are born cuckolded...How old are you?”
“I’m still twenty-six, Miss Jenny,” the younger woman replied equably. Simon unhitched the team and stood at the carriage step in his Miss Jenny attitude. It differed from the bank one; in place of that leashed military imminence, it was now a gallant and slightly patronizing deference. Miss Jenny gazed at the still serenity of the younger woman’s face.
“Why don’t you get married, and let that baby look after himself for a while? Mark my words, it won’t be six weeks before some other woman will be falling all over herself for the privilege of keeping his feet dry, and he won’t even miss you.”
“I promised mother,” the other replied quietly and without offense...“I don’t see why he couldn’t have sent an intelligible message.”
“Well,” Miss Jenny turned to her carriage, “Maybe it’s only an orphan, after all,” she said with comfortless reassurance.
“I’ll know soon, anyway,” the other agreed, and she crossed to a small car at the curb and opened the door. Miss Jenny mounted with Simon’s assistance, and Simon got in and gathered up the reins.
“Let us know when he does get home,” she called as the carriage moved forward. “Drive out and get some more jasmine when you want it.”
“Thank you. Goodbye.”
“All right, Simon.” The carriage moved on again, and again Simon waited until they were out of town to impart his news.
“Mist’ Bayard done come home,” he remarked, in his former conversational tone.
“Where is he?” Miss Jenny demanded immediately;
“He ain’t come out home yit,” Simon answered. “I ‘speck he went to de graveyard.”
“Fiddlesticks!” Miss Jenny snapped. “No Sartoris ever goes to the cemetery but one time…Does Colonel know he’s home?”
“Yessum, I tole him, but he don’t ack like he believed I wuz tellin’ him de troof.”
“You mean, nobody’s seen him but you?”
“I ain’t seed him neither,” Simon disclaimed. “Section han’ seed him jump off de train and tole me—”
“You damn fool nigger!” Miss Jenny stormed. “And you went and blurted a fool thing like that to Bayard? Haven’t you got any more sense than that?”
“Section han’ seed him,” Simon repeated stubbornly. “I reckon he knowed Mist’ Bayard when he seed him.”
“Well, where is he, then?”
“He mought have gone out to de graveyard,” Simon suggested.
“Drive on!” Miss Jenny said sharply.
Miss Jenny found her nephew sitting with two bird-dogs in his library. The room was lined with bookcases containing rows of heavy legal tomes bound in dun calf and emanating an atmosphere of dusty and undisturbed meditation, and a miscellany of fiction of the historical-romantic school (all Dumas was there, and the steady progression of the volumes now constituted Bayard Sartoris’ entire reading, and one volume lay always on the night-table beside his bed) and a collection of indiscriminate objects—small packets of seed, old rusted spurs and bits and harness buckles, brochures on animal and vegetable diseases, ornate tobacco containers which people had given him oh various occasions and which he had never used, inexplicable bits of rock and desiccated roots and grain pods—all collected one at a time and for reasons which had long since escaped his mind, yet preserved just the same. The room contained an enormous closet with a padlocked door, and a big table littered with yet other casual objects, and a locked roll-top desk (keys and locks were an obsession with him) and a divan and three big leather chairs. This room was always referred to as the office, and Bayard Sartoris now sat in it with his hat on and still wearing his riding-boots, transferring bourbon whisky from a small compact keg to a silver-stoppered decanter while the two dogs watched him with majestic gravity.