In the cedar chest underneath her now lay all the underclothes she had received for graduation presents from high school and college in Virginia, some in little silk sacheted purses made to keep them in until she got married. There was one gown—Aunt Primrose had made it, of all people, Shelley said—of peach chiffon with a little peach chiffon coat that had a train, every edge picoted, and then embroidered all around with lover's knots: it was transparent. Shelley's mantel was wood and white marble, and the hearth was round and raised in a fat apron. The fireplace was now hidden by a perfectly square silk screen painted by Aunt Tempe, with a bayou floating with wild ducks at sunset; a line of the ducks was rising at a right angle from the water and went straight to the upper corner like an arrow. On her mantel shelf was a gold china slipper, a souvenir of Mary Denis Summers's wedding, holding matches, and that was all, except for an incense burner and a photograph of Shelley in a Spanish comb and a great deal of piled hair, taken the year she graduated from Fairchilds High School. Shelley hated it. On the washstand was Shelley's glass with three stolen late-blooming Cape jessamines from Miss Parnell Dortch's yard, now turned bright gold, still sweet. The bed was Aunt Ellen's from Virginia, a high square cool one with a mosquito net over it and a trundle bed underneath it. As a baby Shelley had slept on that, near her mother, and she despised having it still under her bed. There was no way on earth Shelley could get a lamp brought in to read by in bed. A long brass pole dangled from the center of the ceiling ending in two brass lilies from each of which a long, naked, but weak light bulb stuck out. "Plenty light to dress by, and you can read in the lower part of the house with your clothes on like other people," Uncle Battle said, favoring Dabney as he did and she never read, not having time. A paper kewpie doll batted about on a thread tied to the chandelier, that was all it was good for. Shelley wanted to read The Beautiful and Damned which was going around the Delta and to read it in bed, but she was about to give up hope. It was hard for her to even see how to write. In her closet were mostly evening dresses but enough middy blouses and pleated skirts hung at one end. All her shoes were flung in a heap on the floor, as if in despair. One green King Tut sandal was out in the middle of the room. Her peach ostrich mules were on her feet and as she wrote she from time to time lifted up her bare heels and waited a moment, tensely, before going on, like a mockingbird stretching in the grass. Momently, she put her Fatima cigarette ashes in her hair receiver.
"Go away, Laura!" said Shelley. "You aren't supposed to watch us every minute!"
Laura ran off, having the grace not to stick out her tongue as India would do.
Shelley was to go to Europe after the wedding, with Aunt Tempe—it was Aunt Tempe's graduation present; but she could not bring herself to wait that long before beginning to write in the book with the lock and key. The first entry was three weeks ago—"We all went fishing with Papa in Moon Lake, caught 103 fish, home in time, Indianola dance. Pee Wee Prentiss. Stomach ache. Dabney's favorite word is 'perfect.'" But already, so soon, she was writing long entries. Dressing a moment (they were calling her downstairs) and writing a moment, jumping up and down, she succeeded in getting the tulle dress, still hot from the iron, over her head and in filling in almost six pages of the diary. Her chest rose and fell in the little "starlight blue" dress, flat as a bathing suit against her heart.
Tonight again D. was cruel to T. F. and is keeping him waiting and then going out to one last dance. T. does not go home—waits for just a glimpse. He is interested because he thinks she must be smart. To provoke a man like him. Dabney does not even know it. Why doesn't it dawn on T. F. that none of the Fairchilds are smart, the way he means smart? Only now and then one of us is gifted, Aunt J. A. says—I am gifted at tennis—for no reason. We never wanted to be smart, one by one, but all together we have a wall, we are self-sufficient against people that come up knocking, we are solid to the outside. Does the world suspect? that we are all very private people? I think one by one we're all more lonely than private and more lonely than self-sufficient. I think Uncle G. takes us one by one. That is love—I think. He takes us one by one but Papa takes us all together and loves us by the bunch, which makes him a more cheerful man. Maybe we come too fast for Papa. One by one, we get it from Mashula and Laura Allen and Great-Grandfather all, we can be got at, hurt, killed—loved the same way—as things get to us. All the more us poor people to be cherished. I feel we should all be cherished but not all together in a bunch—separately, but not one to go unloved for the other loved. In the world, I mean. Shellmound and the world. Mama says shame, that we forget about Laura, and we loved her mother so much we never mention her name or we would all cry. We are all unfair people. We are such sweet people to be so spoiled. George spoils us, does not reproach us, praises us, even, for what he feels is weak in us.
Maybe I can tell him yet, that I know where Robbie is, but so far I can't. The moment of telling, I cannot bring myself to that. I thought it would be easy at the supper table, but in the middle of supper now we all look at each other, all wondering—before a thing like Dabney's wedding, not knowing just what to do. Sometimes I believe we live most privately just when things are most crowded, like in the Delta, like for a wedding. I don't know what to do about anybody in the world, because it seems like you ought to do it soon, or it will be too late. I may not put any more in my diary at all till after the wedding. I wish now it would happen, and be past, I hate days, fateful days. I heard Papa talking about me to Uncle G. without knowing I was running by the library door not to meet T. when he came in (but waiting, I did) and Papa said I was the next one to worry about, I was prissy—priggish. Uncle G. said nobody could be born that way, they had to get humiliated. Can you be humiliated without knowing it? I would know it. He said I was not priggish, I only liked to resist. So does Dabney like it—I know. So does anybody but India, and young children.
When T. proposed to D. I think it was just because she was already so spoiled, he had to do something final to make her notice, and this did. That is not the way I want it done to me. Nobody tells T. a thing yet, and maybe we will never tell him anything. But I think he never minds at all. I think T. likes to size things up. I would never love him. I think he could tell tonight that Uncle G. has something on his mind, those sweet worry-lines across his brow and eyes—drinking all Papa's Bounce—because T. is the one who is always thinking of ways in or ways out, and I think he gets the smell of someone studying, as if it were one of the animals in trouble. Trouble acts up—he puts it down. But I know, trouble is not something fresh you never saw before that is coming just the one time, but is old, and your great-aunts not old enough to die yet can remember little hurts for sixty years just like the big hurts you know now, having your sister walk into something you dread and you cannot speak to her.
T. just sits and looks at a family that cherishes its weaknesses and belittles its strength. He is from the mountains—very slow. Where is his mother? Father? He is not a born gambler of any description. He considers D. not anything he is taking a chance on but a sure thing and wants her for sure. Robbie is another person like that and wants George for sure. I can't stand her! Maybe Europe will change everything. When I see the Leaning Tower of Pisa will I like Robbie any better? I doubt it. (Aunt T. will be with me all the time!) All of us wish G. did not want her and tell him and tell him, she is not worthy to wipe his feet. But he does want her, and suffers. He goes on. I do not know and cannot think how it was when Papa and Mama wanted each other. Of course they don't now, and don't suffer by now. I cannot think of any way of loving that would not fight the world, just speak to the world. Papa and Mama do not fight the world. They have let it in. Did they ever even lock a door. So much life and confusion has got in that there is nothing to stop it running over, like the magic pudding pot. The whole Delta is in and out of this house. Life may be stronger than Papa is. He let Troy in, and look, Troy took Dabney. Life is stronger than George, but George was not surprised, only he wants Robbie Reid. Life surprises Papa and it is Papa
that surprise hurts. I think G. expects things to amount to more than you bargain for—and so do I. This scares me in the middle of a dance. Uncle G. scares me a little for knowing my fright. Papa is ashamed of it but G. does not reproach me—I think he upholds it. He expects things to be more than you think, and to mean something—something—He cherishes our weaknesses because they are just other ways that things are going to come to us. I think when you are strong you can squeeze them back and hold them from you a little while but where you are weak you run to meet them.
Shelley with a sigh leaned out of her window to rest. A whippoorwill was calling down in the bayou somewhere, and the hiss of the compress came softly and regularly as the sighing breath of night. She heard voices on the lawn. Dabney in a filmy dress was telling Troy good night. Shelley listened; how well she could hear and see from here she had not before realized or tried out.
"Oh, I wish I didn't have to go to the old dance—or that you could dance, Troy!" cried Dabney. She clung to him, her voice troubled and tender. "Never mind, we'll soon be married."
"Sure," said Troy.
She clung to him more, as if she would be torn away, and looked over her shoulder at the night as if it almost startled her—indeed the soft air seemed to Shelley to be trembling with the fluctuation of starlight as with the pulsing of the compress on the river. Troy patted Dabney's shoulder.
"I hear your heart," she said right out, as if imploringly and yet to comfort him.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said.
"Take care of yourself," she said.
"I will."
"It won't be long until I can take care of you."
There were tears in Shelley's eyes; their tenderness was almost pity as they clung together. She nearly cried with them.
"I have to go now, Troy, I have to."
She stood away. He stood with his arms hanging, and she went. Dickie Boy Featherstone put her in his open-top car.
Then Shelley heard Uncle George walk heavily over the porch and down the steps. She saw him strolling toward the gate, and smelled his pipe. "George!" He looked up and said how hot the night was. He went on. She could not say anything, she could not call it out a window. (It would seem so conceited of her, too.) She believed he went and stood on the bank of the bayou to smoke; she could see a patch of white through the Spanish daggers, though the mist drifted there now turning like foam in the luminous night. She leaned her forehead on the wall, the warm wallpaper pressed her head like a hand....
The scene on the trestle was so familiar as to be almost indelible in Shelley's head, for her memory arrested the action and let her see it again and again, like a painting in a schoolroom, with colors vivid and thunderclouded, George and Maureen above locked together, and the others below with the shadow of the trestle on them. The engine with two wings of smoke above it, soft as a big bird, was upon them, coming as it would. George was no longer working at Maureen's caught foot. Their faces fixed, and in the instant alike, Maureen and Uncle George seemed to wait for the blow. Maureen's arms had spread across the path of the engine.
Shelley knew what had happened next, but the greatest pressure of uneasiness let her go after the one moment, as if the rest were a feat, a trick that would not work twice. The engine came to a stop. The tumbling denouement was what made them all laugh at the table. The apology of the engineer, old sleepy-head Mr. Doolittle that traded at the store! Shelley beat her head a time or two on the wall. And Maureen with no warning pushed with both her strong hands on George's chest, and he went over backwards to fall from the trestle, fall down in the vines to little Ranny's and old Sylvanus's wild cries. George did not even yet let her go, his hand reached for her pummeling hand and what he could not accomplish by loosening her foot or by pulling her up free, he accomplished by falling himself. Wrenched bodily, her heavy foot lifted and Maureen fell with him. And all the time the Dog had stopped, and Mr. Doolittle was looking from his little cab saying he was sorry, Mr. Fairchild! But George sat on the ground simply looking at Maureen. She had leaped up with alacrity, a taunting abandon, which seemed to hypnotize him. She leaped up and down on first one foot and then the other, strumming her lip.
There were things in that afternoon which gave Shelley an uneasiness she seemed to feel all alone, so that she hoarded the story even more closely to herself, would not tell it, and from night to night hesitated to put it down in her diary (though she looked forward to it all day). To begin with, there was the oblivious, tomboyish way she had led them all in walking too fast for Robbie in her high heels—a tomboy was only what she used to be, and wasn't now; all day Sunday, fishing and all, she had done it. Of course Robbie would wear the wrong heels, and it was right that she should be shown she dressed the wrong way, and should have to keep taking little runs to catch up, and finally be left as haughty as possible at the approach of a trestle. But then came Shelley's own shame in not being able to walk the trestle herself. No one would ever forget that about her, all their lives! She thought herself that it must have been premonition—with Uncle George along something was bound to happen, it was his recklessness that told her to hold back. Then there was the terror with which the engine filled her—that poky, familiar thing, it was sure to stop—of course she had no born terror of the Yellow Dog. Maureen's assumption that she could stop it by holding both her arms out across its path was more logical than you thought at first. But Shelley's deepest uneasiness came from Robbie's first words, "You didn't do this for me/" In her fury Robbie rose straight up as untouchable, foolish heels and all, away out of their hands all at once.... And how George had looked at her! ("Certainly he thinks nothing of danger, none of us ever has," her father had told Robbie later, when at the supper table she came to tears.) But Shelley felt that George and Robbie had hurt each other in a way so deep, so unyielding, that she was unequal to understanding it yet. She hoped to grasp it all, the worst, but fiercely feeling herself a young, unmarried, unengaged girl, she held the more triumphantly to her secret guess—that this confrontation on the trestle was itself the reason for Robbie's leaving George and for his not going after her. The guess made even his presence at Dabney's wedding take on the cast of assertion: here he was not looking for his wife.... But Dabney felt nothing of this, she felt no more about that black moment since she saw it was not fatal—when the engine stopped a hair's breadth from George and Maureen, she put up her elbows and did a little dance step with herself. After the train passed, Dabney and Troy had simply gone on up the railroad track and got engaged.
Was it possible that it was because of something strong George had felt, that the way a stroke of lightning can blaze a tree she could not forget that happening? Extravagantly responsible just as he was extravagantly reckless, what had he been prepared for—how many times before had something come very near to them and stopped?
Dabney if she knew would tell George in a minute, that Robbie was no farther away than Fairchild's Store this day, hiding from him and crying for him. But she could not enlighten him. She and Robbie had seen each other across the crowded room—a suspended cluster of long-handled popcorn poppers turned gently between them to block their vision—and both their faces, her crying one too, went fixed, the way it was in High School: they did not speak.
She could hear under her window now the faint sound of the idling motor in some boy's automobile, and downstairs the Victrola ending "By the Light of the Stars" and then the dancers catching their breaths.
"Shelley, Shelley! Are you ever coming?" called Mary Lamar Mackey.
Then Shelley put a little coat of peach silk around her and went down, where at the foot of the stairs Piggy McReddy was waiting for her, shouting up, "'I'm the Sheik of Araby!'"
VI
Much later, in her room, Dabney opened her eyes. Perhaps she had only just gone to sleep, but the silver night woke her—the night so deep-advanced toward day that she seemed to breathe in a well, drenched with the whiteness of an hour that astonished her. It hurt her to lift her hand and touch at he
r forehead, for all seemed to be tenderness now, the night like herself, breathless and yet serene, unlooked-on. The daring of morning light impending would have to strike her when it reached her—not yet. The window invited her to see—her window. She got out of bed (her filmy dress like a sleeping moth clung to the chair) and the whole leafy structure of the outside seemed agitated and rustled, the shadows darted like birds. The gigantic sky radiant as water ran over the earth and around it. The old moon in the west and the planets of morning streamed their light. She wondered if she would ever know ... the constellations.... The birds all slept. (The mourning dove that cried the latest must sleep the deepest of all.) What could she know now? But she could see a single leaf on a willow tree as far as the bayou's edge, such clarity as there was in everything. The cotton like the rolling breath of sleep overflowed the fields. Out into it, if she were married, she would walk now—her bare foot touch at the night's hour, firmly too, a woman's serious foot. She would walk on the clear night—angels, though, did that—tread it with love not this lonely, never this lonely, for under her foot would offer the roof, the chimney, the window of her husband, the solid house. Draw me in, she whispered, draw me in—open the window like my window, I am still only looking in where it is dark.