Delta Wedding Read online

  "Your tea would be nice and warm now if you had tea in the pot," said Aunt Primrose in an airy voice, and gave a dainty sound—almost a smack.

  "Oh," said India gravely, "it's precious, isn't it?"

  "You'll find it a friendly little thing," said Aunt Jim Allen, "if you're ever by yourself. Look! Only to light it, and you see the Great Fire of London, in the dark. Pretty—pretty—" She put it in Dabney's hand, still lighted, with its small teapot trembling. Aunt Primrose, with a respectful kind of look at Dabney, lifted the pot away and blew out the light.

  Dabney held it, smiling. Then the aunts both drew back from the night light, as though Dabney had transformed it.

  "Are you going to take it with you when you go on your honeymoon with Troy?" cried India.

  "India Primrose Fairchild," said Aunt Primrose, looking at her own sister.

  "Little girls don't talk about honeymoons," said Aunt Jim Allen. "They don't ask their sisters questions, it's not a bit nice."

  "It's just that she loves the night light too," said Dabney. India took her around the waist and they went out together.

  "Uncle George's coming from Memphis today. He's bringing champagne!" said Dabney over her shoulder.

  "Mercy!" said both aunts. They smiled, looking faintly pink as they came to the door in the late sun. "I declare!" "George—wait till I get hold of him!" "He'll bring all the champagne in Memphis! We'll be tipsy, Primrose! He'll make this little family wedding into a Saturnalian feast! That will show people," Aunt Jim Allen said without hearing herself.

  "Bless his heart," said Aunt Primrose. "When's he coming to see us? Tell him we expect him to noon dinner day after tomorrow. Ellen can have him first."

  "You'll be coming up to dinner," said Dabney. "Aunt Tempe and Lady Clare and Uncle Pinck will be there and dying to see you."

  "Mercy! Lady Clare!" said Aunt Primrose. "Don't let her do your mother the way she did at Annie Laurie's funeral, stamp her foot and get anything she wants."

  "She's grown up more and been taking music," said Dabney, "and I've made her a flower girl."

  She kissed them, with both hands around her present. Now that she was so soon to be married, she could see her whole family being impelled to speak to her, to say one last thing before she waved good-bye. She would long to stretch out her arms to them, every one. But they simply never looked deeper than the flat surface of any tremendous thing, that was all there was to it. They didn't try to understand her at all, her love, which they were free, welcome to challenge and question. In fact, here these two old aunts were actually forgiving it. All the Fairchilds were indulgent—indulgence was what she couldn't stand! The night light! Uncle George they indulged too, but they could never hurt him as they could hurt her—she was a little like him, only far beneath, powerless, a girl. He had an incorruptible, and hence unchallenging, sweetness of heart, and all their tender blaming could beat safely upon it, that solid wall of too much love.

  "I declare I don't know how you're going to get a wedding present home on horseback—breakable," said Aunt Primrose rather perkily.

  "Of course she can, and run out and cut those roses too, Dabney. You've got India to help carry things."

  "Dabney can carry her night light home," said India. "I'll tote the little old bunch of flowers."

  The others sat in the porch rockers and watched Dabney cut the red and white roses. "That's not enough—cut them all now, or we'll be mad."

  "It's not like you were going away, or out of the Delta. Things aren't going to be any different, are they?" called Aunt Jim Allen. "Put those in something, child, and carry 'em to your mother. Tell her not to kill herself."

  "Yes'm."

  Aunt Primrose lifted one rose out of Dabney's bouquet as she went by. "What rose is that?" she asked her sister loudly.

  "Why, I don't recognize it," said Aunt Jim Allen, taking it from her. "Don't recognize it at all."

  They're never going to ask Dabney the questions, India meditated. She went up to Aunt Jim Allen and worried her, clasped and unclasped her harvest-moon breastpin, watching the way her sister went just a little prissily down the hall, being sent after a vase.

  They don't make me say if I love Troy or if I don't, Dabney was thinking, clicking her heels in the pantry. But by the time she came back to the porch, the flowers in a Mason jar of water, she knew she would never say anything about love after all, if they didn't want her to. Suppose they were afraid to ask her, little old aunts. She thought of how they both drew back to see her holding their night light. They would give her anything, but they wouldn't touch it again now for the world. It was a wedding present.

  But, "I hope I have a baby right away," she said loudly, just as she passed in front of them. India saw Dabney's jaw drop the moment it was out, just as her own did, though she herself felt a wonderful delight and terror that made her nearly smile.

  "I bet you do have, Dabney," said India. She came up behind her and began to pull down on her and rub her and love her.

  Aunt Primrose took a little sacheted handkerchief from her bosom and touched it to her lips, and a tear began to run down Aunt Jim Allen's dry, rice-powdered cheek. They looked at nothing, as ladies do in church.

  "I've done enough," Dabney thought, frightened, not quite understanding things any longer. "I've done enough to them." They all kissed good-bye again, while the green and gold shadows burned from the river—the sun was going down.

  Dabney's cheeks stung for a moment, while they were getting on their horses. The sisters rode away from the little house, and Dabney could not help it if she rode beautifully then and felt beautiful. Does happiness seek out, go to visit, the ones it can humble when it comes at last to show itself? The roses for their mother glimmered faintly on the steps of the aunts' house, left behind, and they couldn't go back.

  They rode in silence. It was late, and the aunts might have been going to insist that they stay to supper, if Dabney hadn't said something a little ugly, a little unbecoming for Battle's daughter.

  "The thorns of my hat hurts," said India.

  She looked over at Dabney riding beside her, but would Dabney hear a word she said any more? Through parted lips her engaged sister breathed the soft blue air of seven o'clock in the evening on the Delta. In one easy hand she held the night light, the most enchanting thing in the world, and in the other hand she lightly held Junie's reins. The river wind stirred her hair. Her clear profile looked penitent and triumphant all in one, as if she were picked out and were riding alone into the world. India made a circle with her fingers, imagining she held the little lamp. She held it very carefully. It seemed filled with the mysterious and flowing air of night.

  II

  Just at sunset at Shellmound, meanwhile, Roxie and the others heard the sound of stranger-hoofs over the bayou bridge. Then coming over the grass in the yard rode Mr. George Fairchild—in his white clothes and all—on a horse they had never seen before. It was a sorrel filly with flax mane and tail and pretty stockings. "She's lady broke. She's wedding present for Miss Dab." But just then the little filly kicked her heels. "Bitsy always think he knows." "Wouldn't it be a sight did Mr. George pull out and take a little swallow out of his flask made all of gold, sitting where he is—like he do take?" "Miss Ellen! Here come Mr. George!"

  "Where's Robbie?" Ellen called, running down the steps, lightfooted as always at the sight of George coming. "Little Uncle!" she called to both sides, and Little Uncle came running.

  Ranny, barefooted, came flying over the grass, and George put out an arm. Ranny leaped up and was pulled on beside him. He rode up with him sideways, both bare feet extended gracefully together like a captured maiden's. The little red filly almost danced—oh, she was so wet and tired. George was bareheaded now and his Panama hat was on the head of the little filly and she tossed at it.

  "I came on Dabney's wedding present—where's Dabney?" he called.

  "A horse! Ranny, look at Dabney's horse! Oh, George, you shouldn't. —Ranny, I thought you were in b
ed asleep."

  "She was up at auction—I got on her and rode down." George dismounted and Little Uncle led the horse around the house with Ranny riding. "Little Uncle!" George ran after, and gave some kind of special directions, Ellen supposed, and accepted his hat from Little Uncle who bowed.

  "All the way from Memphis? How long did it take you?" Ellen took hold of him and kissed him as if he had confessed a dark indulgence. "Just feel your forehead, you'll have the sunstroke if you don't get right in the house. Roxie!"

  "Where's Dabney?" he asked again at the front door, and suddenly smiled at her, as if she might have been whimsical or foolish. She told him but he did not half listen. He was looking at her intently as they went through the hall and into the dining room. Nobody was there. He threw his coat and hat down and fell with a groan on the settee, which trembled under him the way it always did. "Warm day," he said at last, and shut his eyes. Roxie brought him the pitcher of lemonade, and he lifted up to drink a glass politely, but he would not have any cake just then. "I'll stretch a minute," he told Ellen, and at once his eyes shut again. She took his shoes off and he thanked her with a distant groan. She pulled the blinds a little, but he seemed far gone already with that intensity with which all the Fairchilds slept. In the darkened room his hair and all looked dark—turbulent and dark, almost Spanish. Spanish! She looked at him tenderly to have thought of such a far-fetched thing, and went out. The melting ice made a sound, and suddenly George did sigh heavily, as if protesting in his sleep.

  "Poor man, he rode so far," she thought.

  "I'm in trouble, Ellen!" he called after her, his voice wide and awake and loud in the half-empty house. "Robbie's left me!"

  She ran back to him. He still lay back with his eyes shut. The Spanish look was not exhaustion, it was misery.

  "She left me four days and nights ago. I'm hoping she'll come on here—in time for the wedding." He opened his eyes, but looked at her unrevealingly. All the affront of Robbie Reid came in a downpour over Ellen, the affront she had all alone declared to be purely a little summer cloud.

  "I never saw anybody get here as wrinkled up in my life." She kissed his cheek, and sat by him wordlessly for a little. "Why, Orrin's meeting the Southbound, just in case you all came that way," she said, still protesting.

  "She took the car.—That's how I thought of a horse for Dabney." He grinned.

  Bluet, barefooted, with a sore finger, and with her hair put up in rags, came into the dining room to be kissed. "Don't give me a lizard," she decided to beg him.

  He asked for his coat and gave her some little thing wrapped up in paper which she took trustingly.

  Shelley came in chasing Bluet, and listened stock-still. "She'd better not try to come here!" she cried, when she understood what Robbie had done. Her face was pale. "We wouldn't let her in. To do you like that—you, Uncle George!"

  He groaned and sat up, rumpled and yawning.

  Battle came in, groaning too, from the heat, and was told the news. He closed his eyes, and shouted for Roxie or anybody to bring him something cold to drink. Roxie came back with the lemonade. Then he fell into his chair, where he wagged the pitcher back and forth to cool it.

  Ellen said, "Oh, don't tell Dabney—not yet—spoil her wedding—" She stopped in shame.

  "Then don't tell India," said Shelley.

  "And we can't let poor Tempe know—she just couldn't cope with this," said Battle in a soft voice. "Hard enough on Tempe to have Dabney marrying the way she is, and after Mary Denis married a Northern man and moved so far off. Can't tell Primrose and Jim Allen and hurt them."

  "Of course don't tell any of the girls," George said, staring at Shelley unseeingly, his mouth an impatient line.

  "Look, George," Battle said at length. "What's that sister of her's name? Rebel Reid! I bet you anything I've got Robbie's with Rebel."

  "I've a very good notion she is," George said.

  There were voices in the hall, Vi'let's and somebody's, a vaguely familiar voice.

  "Troy's here. What's he doing here?" Ellen looked at Battle. "Oh—he's invited to supper."

  "Man! Why don't you go get her, are you paralyzed? Then wring her neck. Did you go—are you going?" Battle turned his eyes from George to Ellen, Shelley, Bluet, and around to Troy—standing foxy-haired and high-shouldered in the door, his slow smile beginning—to invite indignation.

  "What else is in your coat, Uncle George?" Ranny asked politely in the silence.

  "No, I'm not going," George said. He watched Ranny and Bluet mildly as they went through his coat pulling everything out, and kept watching how Ranny squatted down opening a present with fingers careful enough to unlock some strange mystery in the world.

  "Oh, George," Ellen was saying. "Oh, Battle." She looked from one to the other, then went to watch helplessly at the darkening window, where they could hear the horses coming. "Here's Dabney."

  As Dabney and India rode in, Uncle George was coming down the front steps to meet them. He always met them like that, and they could tell him from anybody in the world. He called Dabney's name across the yard; his white shirt sleeve waved in the dark. He helped them down with the night light, and Dabney took it from him with a little predatory click of the tongue.

  "Everything's fine with you, I hear," said George. "Troy's in the house," and Dabney brushed against him and kissed him.

  India saw Troy—he was a black wedge in the lighted window.

  "It's all right," Dabney said, coolly enough, and ran up the steps.

  But they heard it—running, she dropped the little night light, and it broke and its pieces scattered. They heard that but no cry at all—only the opening and closing of the screen door as she went inside.

  India ran up to Uncle George and flung herself against his knees and beat on his legs. She could not stop crying, through Uncle George himself stayed out there holding her and in a little began teasing her about a little old piece of glass that Dabney would never miss.

  3

  It was so hard to read at Shellmound. There was so much going on in real life. Laura had tried to read under the bed that morning, but Dabney had found her and pulled her out by the foot. Now with Volume I of Saint Ronan's Well inside her pinafore, next to her skin, she went tiptoeing in the direction of the library, where no one ever went at this hour. She could hear nothing, except the sounds of the Negroes, and the slow ceiling fan turning in the hall, and the submissive panting of the dogs just outside under the banana plants, lying up close to the house. Even Mary Lamar Mackey had gone to Greenwood.

  Laura generally hesitated just a little in every doorway. Jackson was a big town, with twenty-five thousand people, and Fairchilds was just a store and a gin and a bridge and one big house, yet she was the one who felt like a little country cousin when she arrived, appreciating that she had come to where everything was dressy, splendid, and over her head. Demonically she tried to be part of it—she took a breath and whirled, went ahead of herself everywhere, then she would fall down a humiliated little girl whose grief people never seemed to remember. The very breath of preparation in the air, drawing in or letting out, hurried or deep and slow, made Dabney's wedding seem as fateful in the house as her mother's funeral had been, and she knew the serenity of this morning moment was only waiting for laughter or tears.

  Even from the door, the library smelled of a tremendous dictionary that had come through high water and fire in Port Gibson and had now been left open on a stand, probably by Shelley. On the long wall, above the piles of bookcases and darker than the dark-stained books, was a painting of Great-Great-Uncle Battle, whose name was written on the flyleaf of the dictionary. It was done from memory by his brother, Great-Grandfather George Fairchild, a tall up-and-down picture on a slab of walnut, showing him on his horse with his saddlebags and pistols, pausing on a dark path between high banks, smiling not down at people but straight out into the room, his light hair gone dark as pressed wildflowers. His little black dogs, that he loved as a little boy, Great-Grand
father had put in too. Did he look as if he would be murdered? Certainly he did, and he was. Side by side with Old Battle's picture was one of the other brother, Denis, done by a real painter, changelessly sparkling and fair, though he had died in Mexico, "marching on a foreign land." Behind the glass in the bookcases hiding the books, and out on the tables, were the miniatures in velvet cases that opened like little square books themselves. Among them were Aunt Ellen's poor mother (who had married some Lord in England, or had died) and the three brothers and the husbands of Aunt Mac and Aunt Shannon, who could not be told apart from one another by the children; but no matter what hide-and-seek went on here, in this room where so many dead young Fairchilds, ruined people, were, there seemed to be always consciousness of their gazes, so courteous and meditative they were. Coming in, gratefully bringing out her book, Laura felt it wordlessly; the animation of the living generations in the house had not, even in forgetting identity, rebuked this gentleness, because the gentleness was still there in their own faces, part of the way they were made, the nervous, tender, pondering forehead, the offered cheek—the lonely body, broad shoulder, slender hand, the long pressing thigh of Old Battle Fairchild against his horse Florian.

  She turned, and there by the mantel was Uncle George. Uncle George, every minute being welcomed and never alone, was alone now—except, that is, for Vi'let, leaning from a stepladder with one knee on a bookcase, very slowly taking down the velvet curtains. He was rearing tall by the mantel, the gold clock and the children's switches at his head, wearing his white city clothes, but coatless, and his finger moved along the open edge of a blue envelope, which, in his hand then, appeared an object from a star. He gave Laura a serious look as she stood in the middle of the room, unconsciously offering him her open book with both hands. Over his shoulder stared the small oval portrait of Aunt Ellen in Virginia, stating flatly her early beauty, her oval face in the melancholy mood of a very young girl, the full lips almost argumentative.