heads all gummed up with pomade and things,” Belle added.
“Horace is a poet,” the other woman said in an ad-monitory tone. Her flesh draped loosely from her cheek-bones like rich, slightly soiled velvet; her eyes were like the eyes of an old turkey, mucous and predatory and unwinking. “Poets must be excused for what they do. You should remember that, Belle.” Horace bowed in her direction.
“Your race never fails intact, Belle,” he said. “Mrs. Marders is one of the few people I know who give the law profession its true evaluation.”
“It’s like any other business, I suppose,” Belle said. “You are late today. Why didn’t Narcissa come?”
“I mean, dubbing me a poet,” Horace explained. “The law, like poetry, is the final resort of the lame, the halt, the imbecile and the blind. I dare say Caesar invented the law business to protect himself against poets.”
“You’re so clever,” Belle said. The young girl spoke suddenly:
“Why do you bother about what men put on their hair, Miss Belle? Mr. Mitchell’s bald.”
The other woman laughed, unctuously, steadily, watching them with her lidless unlaughing eyes. She watched Belle and Horace and still laughed steadily, brightly and cold. “ ‘Out of the mouths of babes—’” she quoted. The young girl glanced from one to another with her clear sober eyes. She rose.
“I guess I’ll see if leant get a set now,” she said.
Horace moved also. “Let’s you and I—” he began. Without turning her head Belle touched him with her hand.
“Sit down, Frankie,” She commanded. “They haven’t finished the game yet. You shouldn’t laugh so much on an empty stomach,” she told the other woman. “Do sit down, Horace.”
The girl still stood with slim and awkward grace, holding her racket She looked at Belle a moment, then she turned her head toward the court again. Horace took the chair beyond Belle; her hand dropped hidden into his, with that secret movement, then it grew passive; it was as though she had turned a current off somewhere. Like one entering a dark room in search of something, finding it and pressing the light off again.
“Don’t you like poets, Frankie?” Horace asked across Belle’s body.
“They can’t dance,” the girl answered, without turning her head. “I guess they are all right, though. They went to the war, the good ones did. There was one was a good tennis player, that got killed. I’ve seen his picture, but I don’t remember his name.”
“Oh, don’t start talking about the war, for heaven’s sake,” Belle said. Her hand stirred in Horace’s but did not withdraw. “I had to listen to Harry for two years. Explaining why he couldn’t go. As if I cared whether he did or not.”
“He had a family to support,” Mrs. Marders suggested brightly. Belle half reclined, her head against the chair-back, her hidden hand moving slowly in Horace’s, exploring, turning, ceaselessly like a separate volition curious but without warmth.
“Some of them were aviators,” the girl continued. She now turned the pages of the magazine upon the table. She stood with one little unemphatic hip braced against the table-edge, her racket clasped beneath her arm. Then she dosed the magazine and again she watched the two figures leanly antic upon the court. “I danced with one of those Sartoris boys once. I was too scared to know which one it was. I wasn’t anything but a baby, then.”
“Were they poets?” Horace asked. “I mean, the one that got back. I know the other one, the dead one, was.”
“He sure can drive that car of his,” she answered, still watching the game, her straight hair (hers was the first bobbed head in town) not brown not gold, her brief nose in profile, her brown still hands clasping her racket. Belle stirred and freed her hand.
“Do go on and play, you all,” she said. “You make me nervous.” Horace rose with alacrity.
“Come on, Frankie,” he said. “Let’s you, and I take ‘em on.”
The girl looked at him. “I’m not so hot,” she said soberly. “I hope you won’t get mad.”
“Why? If we get beat?” They moved together toward the court where the two players were now exchanging sides. “Do you know what the finest sensation of all is?” Her straight brown head moved just at his shoulder. It’s her dress that makes her arms and hands so brown, he thought. Little. He could not remember her at all sixteen months back, when he had gone away. They grow up so quickly, though, after a certain age. Go away again and return, and find her with a baby, probably.
“Good music?” she suggested tentatively, after a time.
“No. It’s to finish a day and say to yourself: Here’s one day during which I have accomplished nothing and hurt no one and had a whale of a good time. How does it go? ‘Count that day lost whose low descending sun—’? Well, they’ve got it exactly backward.”
“I don’t know. I learned it in school, I guess,” she answered indifferently. “But I don’t remember it now. D’you reckon they’ll let me play? I’m not so hot,” she repeated.
“Of course they will,” Horace assured her. And soon they were aligned: the two players, the bookkeeper in the local department store and a youth who had been recently expelled from the state university for a practical joke (he had removed the red lantern from the barrier about a street excavation and hung it above the door of the girls’ dormitory) against Horace and the girl. Horace was an exceptional player, electric and brilliant. One who knew tennis and who had patience and a cool head could have defeated him out of hand by letting him beat himself . But not these. The points see-sawed back and forth, but usually Horace managed to retrieve the advantage with stroking or strategy so audacious as to obscure the faultiness of his tactics.
Meanwhile he could watch her; her taut earnestness, her unflagging determination not to let him down, her awkward virginal grace. From the back line he outguessed their opponents with detached and impersonal skill, keeping the point in abeyance and playing the ball so as to bring her young intent body into motion as he might pull a puppet’s strings. Hers was an awkward speed that cost them points, but from the base line Horace retrieved her errors when he could, pleasuring in the skimpy ballooning of her little dress moulded and dragged by her arms and legs, watching the taut revelations of her speeding body in a sort of ecstasy. Girl white and all thy little Oh. Not pink, no. For a moment I thought she’d no. Disgraceful, her mamma would call it. Or any other older woman. Belle’s are pink. O muchly “Oaten reed above the lyre,” Horace chanted, catching the ball at his shoe-tops with a full swing, watching it duck viciously beyond the net. Oaten reed above the lyre. And Belle like a harped gesture, not sonorous. Piano, perhaps. Blended chords, any way. Unchaste —? Knowledgeable better. Knowingly wearied. Weariedly knowing. Yes, piano. Fugue. Fugue of discontent. O moon rotting waxed overlong too long.
Last point. Game and set. She made it with savage awkwardness; and turned at the net and stood with lowered racket as he approached. Beneath the simple molasses of her hair the was perspiring a little; “I kept on letting ‘em get my alley,” she explained. “You never bawled me out a single time. What ought I to do, to break myself of that?”
“You ought to run in a cheese-cloth shimmy on hills under a new moon,” Horace told her. “With chained ankles, of course. But a slack chain. No, not the moon; but in a dawn like pipes. Green and gold, and maybe a little pink. Would you risk a little pink?” She watched him with grave curious eyes as he stood before her lean in his flannels and with his sick brilliant face and his wild hair. “No,” he corrected himself again. “On sand. Blanched sand, with dead ripples. Ghosts of dead motion waved into the sand. Do you know how cold the sea can be just before dawn, with a falling tide? like lying in a dead world, upon the dead respirations of the earth. She’s too big to the all at once. Like elephants... How old are you?” Now all at once her eyes became secretive, and she looked away. “Now what?” he demanded. “What did you start to say then?”
“There’s Mr. Mitchell,” she-said. Harry Mitchell had come out, in tight flannels and a wh
ite silk shirt and new ornate sport shoes that cost twenty dollars per pair. With a new racket in a patent case and press, standing with his squat legs, and his bald bullet head and his undershot jaw of rotting teeth beside the studied picture of his wife. Presently, when he had been made to drink a cup of tea, he would gather up all the men present and lead them through the house to his bathroom and give them whisky, pouring out a glass and fetching it down to Rachel. He would give you the shirt off his back. He was a cotton speculator and a good one; he was ugly as sin and kindhearted and dogmatic and talkative, and he called Belle “little mother” until she broke him of it. Belle lay yet in her chair; she was watching them as they turned together from the court.
“What was it?” Horace persisted.
“Sir?”
“What you started to say just then.”
“Nothing,” she answered. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Oh, that’s too feminine,” Horace said. “I didn’t expect that of you, after the way you play tennis.” They moved on under the veiled contemplation of Belle’s gaze.
“Feminine?” Then she added: “I hope I can get another set soon. I’m not a bit tired, are you?”
“Yes. Any woman might have said that. But maybe you’re not old enough to be a woman.”
“Horace,” Belle said.
I’m seventeen,” the girl answered. “Miss Belle likes you, don’t she?”
Belle spoke his name again, mellifluously, lazily peremptory. Airs Marders sat now with her slack chins in a raised teacup. The girl turned to him with polite finality. “Thanks for playing with me,” she said. “I’ll be better someday, I hope. We beat ‘em,” she said generally.
“You and the little lady gave ‘em the works, hey, big boy?” Harry Mitchell said, showing his discolored, teeth. His heavy prognathous jaw narrowed delicately down, then nipped abruptly off into pugnacious bewilderment.
“Mr. Benbow did,” the girl corrected in her clear voice, and she took the chair next Belle. “I kept on letting’em get my alley.”
“Horace,” Belle repeated, “your tea is getting cold.”
It had been fetched by the combination gardener-stableman-chauffeur, temporarily impressed and smelling of vulcanized rubber and ammonia. Mrs. Marders removed her chins from her cup. “Horace plays too well,” she said, “really too well. The other men can’t compete with him. You were lucky to have him for a partner, child,”
“Yessum,” the girl agreed. “I guess he won’t risk me again.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Marders rejoined, “Horace enjoyed playing with you. Didn’t you notice it, Belle?”
Belle made no reply. She poured Horace’s tea, and at this moment Belle’s daughter came across the lawn in her crocus-yellow dress. Her eyes were like stars, more soft and melting than any deer’s and she gave Horace a swift shining glance.
“Well, Titania?” he said.
Belle half turned her head, still with the teapot raised, and Harry set his cup on the table and went and knelt on one knee in her path, as if he were cajoling a puppy. The child came up, still watching Horace with her radiant arid melting diffidence, arid permitted her father to embrace her and fondle her with his short, heavy hands. “Daddy’s gal,” Harry said. She submitted to having her prim little dress mussed, pleasurably but a little restively; her eyes flew shining again.
“Don’t muss your dress, sister,” Belle said, and the child evaded her father’s hands with a prim movement “What is it now?” Belle asked. “Why aren’t you playing?”
“Nothing. I just came home.” She came arid stood diffidently beside her mother’s chair.
“Speak to the company,” Belle said. “Don’t you know better than to come where older people are, without speaking to them?” The little girl did so, shyly and faultlessly, greeting them in rotation, and her mother turned and pulled arid patted at her straight soft hair. “Now, do go arid play. Why do you always want to come where grown people are? You’re not interested in what we’re doing.”
“Ah, let her stay, mother,” Harry said. “She wants to watch her daddy and Horace play tennis.”
“Run along, now,” Belle added with a final pat, paying no attention to Harry. “And do keep your dress clean.”
“Yessum,” the child agreed, and she turned obediently, giving Horace another quick shining look. He watched her and saw Rachel stand presently in the kitchen door and speak to her, and she turned and mounted the steps and entered the door which Rachel held open.
“What a beautifully mannered child,” Mrs. Marders said. “How do you do it, Belle?”
“They’re so hard to do anything with,” Belle said. “She has some of her father’s traits. Drink your tea, Harry.”
Harry took his cup from the table and sucked its lukewarm contents into himself noisily and dutifully. “Well, big boy,” he said to Horace, “how about a set? These squirrels think they can beat us,”
“Frankie wants to play again,” Belle said. “Do let the child have the court for a little while.”
““What?” Harry was busy evolving his racket from its intricate and expensive casing. He paused and raised his savage undershot face and his dull kind eyes.
“No, no,” the girl protested quickly, “I’ve had enough. I’d rather look on a while.”
“Don’t be silly,” Belle said. “They can play any time.”
“Sure the little lady can play,” Harry said. “Here, you jelly-beans, how about fixing up a set with the little lady?” He restored his racket, with ostentatious care.
“Please, Mr. Mitchell,” the girl said.
“Don’t mind him,” Belle told her. “He and Horace can play some other time. You children go on and play. He’ll have to make the fourth, anyway.”
The ex-student spoke: “Sure, Mr. Harry, come on. Me and Frankie’ll play you and Joe.”
“You folks go ahead and play a set,” Harry repeated. “I’ve got a little business to talk over with Horace. You all go ahead.” He insisted, overrode their polite protests until they took the court. Then he jerked his head significantly at Horace.
“Go on with him,” Belle said. “The baby.” Without looking at him, without touching him, she enveloped him with rich and smoldering promise, Mrs. Marders sat across the table from them, curious and bright and cold with her teacup. “Unless you want to play with that silly child again.”
“Silly?” Horace repeated. “She’s too young to be unconsciously silly yet.”
“Run along,” Belle told him. “And hurry back. Mrs. Marders and I are tired of one another.”
Horace followed his host into the house, followed his short rolling gait and the bald indomitability of his head. From the kitchen, as they passed, little Belle’s voice came steadily, recounting some astonishment of the day, with an occasional mellow ejaculation from Rachel for antistrophe. In the bathroom Harry got a bottle from a cabinet, and preceded by labored heavy footsteps mounting, Rachel entered without knocking, bearing a pitcher of ice water. “Whyn’t y’all g’awn and play, ef you wants?” she demanded. “Whut you let that ‘oman treat you and that baby like she do, anyhow?” she demanded of Harry. “You ought to take and lay her out wid a stick of wood. Messin’ up my kitchen at fo’ o’clock in de evenin’. And you ain’t helpin’ none, neither,” she told Horace. “Gimme a dram, Mr. Harry, please, suh.”
She took her glass and waddled heavily out; they heard her descend the stairs slowly and heavily on her fallen arches. “Belle couldn’t get along without Rachel,” Harry said, rinsing two glasses. “She talks too much, like all niggers. To listen to her you’d think Belle was some kind of a wild animal, wouldn’t you? A damn tiger or something. But Belle and I understand each other. You’ve got to make allowances for women, anyway. Different from men. Born contrary; complain when you don’t please ‘em and complain when you do.” Then he said, with astonishing irrelevance: “I’d kill the man that tried to wreck my home like I would a damn snake. Well, let’s take one, big boy.”
/> Presently he sloshed ice water into his empty glass and gulped that, too, and he reverted to his former grievance.
“Can’t get to play on my own damn court,” he said. “Belle gets all these damn people here every day. What I want is a court where I can come home from work and get in a couple of fast sets every afternoon. Appetizer before supper. But every damn day I get home from work and find a lot of young girls and jelly-beans, using it like it was a public court.” Horace drank his more moderately, and Harry lit a cigarette and threw the match onto the floor and hung his leg across the lavatory. “I reckon I’ll have to build another court for my own use and put a hogwire fence around it with a Yale lock, so Belle can’t give picnics on it. There’s plenty of room down there by the lot fence. No trees, too. Put it out in the damn sun, and I reckon Belle’ll let me use it now and then. Well, suppose we get on back.”
He led the way through his bedroom and stopped to show Horace a new repeating rifle he had just bought, and to press upon him a package of cigarettes which he imported from South America, and they descended and emerged into afternoon become later. The sun was level now across the court where three players leaped and sped with soft quick slapping of rubber soles, following the fleeting impact of the ball. Mrs. Marders sat yet with her ceaseless chins, although she was speaking of departure as they came up. Belle turned her head against the chair-back, but Harry led Horace on.
“We’re going to look over a location for a tennis court. I think I’ll take up tennis myself,” he told Mrs. Marders with clumsy irony.
Horace halted in his loose, worn flannels, with his thin face brilliant and sick with nerves, smoking his host’s cigarettes and watching his hopeless indomitable head and his intent, faintly comical body as he paced off dimensions and talked steadily in his harsh voice; paced back and forth and planned and calculated with something of a boy’s fine ability for fabling, for shaping the incontrovertible present to a desire which he will presently lose in a recenter one and so forget.