She turned the pony into a short sunny road behind the compress that seemed to dip down, although it was level like everywhere, into the abrupt shade of chinaberry trees and fig trees.
Brunswick-town lay all around them, dead quiet except for the long, unsettled cries of hens walking around, and the whirr of pigeons now and then overhead. Only the old women were home. The little houses were many and alike, all whitewashed with a green door, with stovepipes crooked like elbows of hips behind, okra, princess-feathers, and false dragonhead growing around them, and China trees over them like umbrellas, with chickens beneath sitting with shut eyes in dust holes. It was shady like a creek bed. The smell of scalding water, feathers, and iron pots mixed with the smells of darkness. Here, where no grass was let grow on the flat earth that was bare like their feet, the old women had it shady, secret, lazy, and cool. A devious, invisible vine of talk seemed to grow from shady porch to shady porch, though all the old women were hidden. The alleys went like tunnels under the chinaberry branches, and the pony cart rocked over their black roots. Wood smoke drifted and hung in the trees like a low and fragrant sky. In front of Partheny's house, close up to her porch, was an extra protection, a screen the same size as the house, of thick butter-bean vines, so nobody could see who might be home. The door looked around one side, like a single eye around a veil.
The girls climbed out of the pony cart and Shelley led the way up the two steps and knocked three times on the closed door.
In good time Partheny came out and stood on the porch above them. She was exactly as she had always looked, taller than a man, flat, and narrow, the color of midnight-blue ink, and wore a midnight-blue dress reaching to and just showing her shrimp-pink toes. She did not appear mindless this morning, for she had put a tight little white cap on her head, sharp-peaked with a frilly top and points around like a crown.
"Parthenia," said Shelley, speaking very politely, as she excelled in doing, "we wanted to invite you to Miss Dabney's wedding."
"Wouldn't miss it!" Partheny said, rolling her protruding eyes and looking somber.
"Mama says for you to come up with the birds in the morning."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"And Partheny," Shelley said, "Mama is so sad, she missed her garnet pin. It was Papa's present."
"Mr. Battle's present!" Partheny said dramatically.
"Yes, and, Partheny, Mama wondered if maybe while you were cooking for Papa's birthday barbecue, if maybe you might have just seen it floating around somewhere—if maybe you could send word to her where you think it might be. Where to look."
"Oh-oh," said Partheny regretfully. She shook her white crown. "I surely don't know what best to direct your mother, Miss Shell, where she could look. Hush while I think."
"Mama thinks now it's been lost all summer, and she just noticed it was gone," said Shelley.
"Now ain't that a shame before God?"
"Yes, indeed, it is," said Shelley. "Papa gave that pin to Mama before they were married." She was all at once carried away, and fell silent.
"What kind of hat is that?" asked India, passionately springing forward.
"Oh, Miss India Bright-Eyes! It's a drawer-leg," said Partheny, giggling up very high. "Miss Shell, don't you go back tellin' your Mama you caught me with no drawer-leg on my old head!" Then she took a serious step at them.
"Well."
"I like it," said India.
"Yes, it's real pretty, Partheny," said Shelley in a kind of coaxing voice.
"How is your mama—not speaking of garnet present?" asked Partheny.
"She's fine. She's not going out, right now."
Partheny gave them a bright look, like a bird. All of a sudden she gave a little cackle, bent down, and said, "Step inside—don't set your heels down, I've been mindless four and a half days. But let me just look around in parts of the house. Don't suppose that pin could have flown down here anywhere, do you?"
They went inside, Partheny shaking her head somberly, India dragging them forward. Partheny looked, patting the bed quilt and tapping the fireplace, and then disappearing into the other room where they could hear her making little sympathetic, sorrowful noises, and a noise like looking under the dishpan.
The three girls sat on one of the old Shellmound wicker settees, in a row. Laura's mouth was a little open; she was surprised to learn, this way, that Aunt Ellen had ever had such a fine present given to her. Uncle Battle himself had given it to her, she had lost it, and now Partheny was back there playing-like looking for it.
"What don't happen to presents!" Partheny cried out from the other room, in genial outrage.
Laura stole a glance at Shelley. She was sitting caught here in a boxy, vine-shadowed little room decorated with chicken feathers and valentines, with a ceiling that made her almost bump her head and a closeness that did make her droop a little. Now was a good time to ask Shelley something. Just as she opened her mouth, India threw herself abruptly to the floor. She caught a guinea pig.
"Put him down," whispered Shelley.
"You make me," said India, and sat holding the squirming guinea pig and kissing its wrinkled forehead.
Laura put her weight on Shelley's arm. "Can I give Uncle George a wedding present?" she whispered.
"Uncle George? You don't have to give him anything. India, put him down," whispered Shelley. She did not turn her head, but fussed at both of them looking straight in front of her.... This was a lowly kind of errand, a dark place to visit, old Partheny was tricky as the devil. Only—suddenly the thought of her mother's loss swept over Shelley with such regret, indignation, pity as she was not in the least prepared for, and she almost lost her breath.
"I want to give Uncle George a present, and to not give Dabney a present. I chose between them, which was the most precious."
"That was ugly," Shelley whispered, as if she had never heard of such a thing.
"Precious, precious guinea pig," India whispered on Shelley's other side.
Laura tugged her arm.
"Give him a kiss," whispered Shelley. "India, put him down before he bites you good."
India kissed the guinea pig passionately, and Laura said, "No, I want to give him not a kiss but a present—something he can keep. Forever."
"All right! When we go by the store, you can find something to give him, if you have to."
"Will that be my present, all mine?"
"Yes, all yours," whispered Shelley. "You do try people, Laura, I declare!"
"Precious, heavenly guinea pig! I bite thee," said India.
"Just don't you all touch me," said Shelley, and at that moment Partheny appeared in the room again, coming silently on her long bare feet. There was no sign of the guinea pig in India's arms, only a streak on the floor as it ran under Partheny's skirt. The little girl was leaning on her hand, dreamy-eyed.
This time Partheny brought something, which her long hands went around and hid like a rail fence. "Ain't no garnet present anywhere around," she said. She was smoking her pipe as she talked. "I ransacked even de chicken house—felt under de hens, tell your mama. Nary garnet present, Miss Shell. I don't know what could have become of Miss Ellen's pretty li'l garnet present, and her comin' down agin, cravin' it, who knows. Sorry as I can be for her."
"But what have you got?" cried India, jumping up and trying to see.
"But! Got a little somep'm for you to tote back," Partheny said, suddenly leaning forward and giving them all a look of malignity, pride, authority—the way the old nurse looked a hundred times intensified, it seemed. "Little patticake. Old Partheny know when somep'm happ'm at de big house—never fool yo'se'f. You take dis little patticake to Mr. George Fairchild, was at dis knee at de Grove, and tell him mind he eat it tonight at midnight, by himse'f, and go to bed. Got a little white dove blood in it, dove heart, blood of a snake—things. I just tell you enough in it so you trus' dis patticake."
"What will happen when he eats it?" cried India, joining her hands.
"Mr. George got to eat his patticake all alone
, go to bed by himse'f, and his love won't have no res' till her come back to him. Wouldn't do it for ever'body, Partheny wouldn't. I goin' bring Miss Dab heart-shape patticake of her own—come de time."
"How did you know she'd ever gone, Partheny?" Shelley whispered, so India and Laura couldn't hear her any more than they could help.
"Ways, ways."
"Thank you, Partheny, but you keep the patticake."
"No! I bid to carry it! I'll make him eat it!" cried India. "Uncle George will have to swallow every crumb—goody! Oh, look how black it is! How heavy!"
India ran out before Shelley could catch her, the cake in both hands up over her flying hair.
"Then take it!" cried Shelley after her.
"I'm still taking Uncle George my present," Laura said doggedly.
Partheny followed them out to the porch. "Tell Miss Dab I'm comin'. Surely hopes she be happy wid dat high-ridin' low-born Mr. Troy. You all looks pretty." She watched them down the steps and out the gate. As they put up the umbrella she considered them gone, for she nodded over to a hidden neighbor and drawled out, "Got a compliment on my drawer-leg."
"Are we going to the store now?" asked Laura.
"Look. Do you want to go by the cemetery and see your mother's grave?" asked Shelley in a practical voice. "We're near it now."
"Not me," said India, and jumped out of the pony cart with Partheny's cake, when Shelley drew the reins.
"All right," said Laura. "But I want my present for Uncle George before dinner."
The cemetery, an irregular shape of ground, four-sided but narrowing almost to a triangle, with the Confederate graves all running to a point in the direction of the depot, was surrounded by a dense high wall of honeysuckle, which shut out the sight of the cotton wagons streaming by on two sides, where the roads converged to the railroad tracks, the river, the street, and the gin. The school, where the Fairchild children all went, was across one road, and the Methodist Church, with a dooryard bell in a sort of derrick, was across the other. The spire, the derrick, and the flag pole rose over the hedge walls, but nothing else of Fairchilds could be seen, and only its sound could be heard—the gin running, the compress sighing, the rackety iron bridge being crossed, and the creak of wagon and harness just on the other side of the leaves.
A smell of men's sweat seemed to permeate the summer air of Fairchilds until you got inside the cemetery. Here sweet dusty honeysuckle—for the vines were pinkish-white with dust, like icing decorations on a cake, each leaf and tendril burdened—perfumed a gentler air, along with the smell of cut-flower stems that had been in glass jars since some Sunday, and the old-summer smell of the big cedars. Mockingbirds sang brightly in the branches, and Fred, a big bird dog, trotted through on the path, taking the short cut to the icehouse where he belonged. Rosebushes thick and solid as little Indian mounds were set here and there with their perennial, worn little birdnests like a kind of bloom. The gravestones, except for the familiar peak in the Fairchild lot of Grandfather James Fairchild's great pointed shaft, seemed part of the streaky light and shadow in here, either pale or dark with time, and ordinary. Only one new narrow stone seemed to pierce the air like a high note; it was Laura's mother's grave.
All around here were the ones Laura knew—Laura Allen, Aunt Rowena, Duncan Laws, Great-Great-Grandfather George, with Port Gibson under his name in tall letters, the slab with the little scroll on it saying Mary Shannon Fairchild. A little baby's grave, son of Ellen and Battle. Overhead, the enormous crape-myrtle tree, with its clusters of golden seed, was the same.
"Annie Laurie," said Shelley softly, still in that practical voice that made Laura wonder. It always seemed to Laura that when she wanted to think of her mother, they would prevent her, and when she was not thinking of her, then they would say her name. She stood looking at the mound, green now, and Aunt Ellen or Uncle Battle or somebody had put a vase of Maréchal Niel roses here no longer ago than yesterday, thinking of hër for themselves.... It was late in January, the funeral. But all Laura remembered about that time was a big fire—great heaps of cottonstalks on fire in the fields and thousands of rabbits jumping out with the Negroes chasing after them.... "Have you seen my letter?" was all she could say, as Shelley took her hand.
"What letter?" asked Shelley, letting go and looking down at her frowning.
Laura had got a letter from her father which, as usual, somebody else opened first by mistake, and which she then passed around and lost. She nearly cried now, for she could not remember all it said. She suffered from the homesickness of having almost forgotten home. She scarcely ever thought, there wasn't time, of the house in Jackson, of her father, who had every single morning now gone to the office and come home, through the New Capitol which was the coolest way, walked down the hill so that only his legs could be seen under the branches of trees, reading the Jackson Daily News so that only his straw hat could be seen above it, seen from a spot on their front walk where nobody watched for him now.
Why couldn't she think of the death of her mother? When the Fairchilds spoke so easily of Annie Laurie, it shattered her thoughts like a stone in the bayou. How could this be? When people were at Shellmound it was as if they had never been anywhere else. It must be that she herself was the only one to struggle against this.
She tried to see her father coming home from the office, first his body hidden by leaves, then his face hidden behind his paper. If she could not think of that, she was doomed; and she was doomed, for the memory was only a flicker, gone now. Shelley and Dabney never spoke of school and the wintertime. Uncle George never spoke of Memphis or his wife (Aunt Robbie, where was she?), about being a lawyer or an aeronaut in the war. Aunt Ellen never talked about Virginia or when she was a little girl or a lady without children. The most she ever said was, "Of course, I married young." Uncle Battle did talk about high water of some year, but was that the worst thing he remembered?
And it was as if they had considered her mother all the time as belonging, in her life and in her death (for they took Laura and let her see the grave), as belonging here; they considered Shellmound the important part of life and death too. All they remembered and told her about was likely to be before Laura was born, and they could say so easily, "Before—or after—Annie Laurie died...," to count the time of a dress being made or a fruit tree planted.
At that moment a tall man with a bouquet of Memphis roses and fern in green paper strode by. He tipped his hat to Shelley, and then puckering his handsome, pale lips, looked down at the Fairchild graves. "How many more of you are there?" he said suddenly.
"More of us? Seven—eight—no—I forgot—I forgot the old people—" Shelley gripped Laura's hand again. "Dr. Murdoch, this is my cousin—"
"You'll have to consider your own progeny too," said Dr. Murdoch, rubbing his chin with a delicate touch of his thumb. "Look. Dabney and that fellow she's marrying will have three or four at the least. That will give them room, over against the Hunters—have to take up your rose bush." He wheeled about. "Primrose and Jim Allen naturally go here, in line with Rowena and What's-his-name that was killed, and his wife. An easy two here. George and the Reid girl probably won't have children—he doesn't strike me as a family man."
"He is so!" flashed Shelley.
"Nope, no more than Denis. I grew up with Denis and knew him like a book, and George's a second edition. Of course, grant you, he's got that spirited little filly the Reid girl trotting with him. You—what are you going to do, let your little sisters get ahead of you? You ought to get married and stop that God-forsaken mooning. Who is it, Dickie Boy Featherstone? I don't like the white of your eye," and all at once he was pulling down Shelley's lower eyelid with his delicate thumb. "You're mooning. All of you stay up too late, dancing and what not, you all eat enough rich food to kill a regiment, but I won't try to stop the unpreventable."
He turned abruptly and stepped off a number of steps. "You'll marry in a year and probably start a houseful like your mother. Got the bones, though. Tell your mothe
r to call a halt. She'll go here, and Battle here, that's all right—pretty crowded, though. You and your outfit can go here below Dabney and hers. I know how it could be done. How many more of you are there? I've lost track. Who's this?" and he stopped his stepping off in front of Laura and glared down at her.
"Aunt Annie Laurie's daughter," said Shelley and with a trembling finger pointed at the new shaft.
"Ah!" He made a wry face as if he would prefer they hadn't mentioned Annie Laurie. "Jackson's a very unhealthy place, she talked herself into marrying a business man, moving to Jackson. Danced too much as a girl to start with, danced away every chance she had of dying an old lady, and I told her so, though she looked good. It's God's wonder she ever had you, and kept you alive!" He gave Laura a slight push on the shoulder. "Of course you were born here. I brought you into this world and slapped you to ticking, Buster." He flicked her collarbone with his knuckle. "Stay away from Jackson. Hills and valleys collect moisture, that's my dogma and creed."
"We have to go now, Dr. Murdoch, we're so busy at our house. We've got all the company in the world," said Shelley.
"What are you going to do about Virgie Lee, let her in? She'd go in. Be a good thing if Maureen would up and die—that aunt of yours, too, Aunt Shannon—both of 'em, Mac's a thousand years old."
"Will you excuse us, Dr. Murdoch?"
"But—can't do a thing about Delta people," said Dr. Murdoch. "They're the worst of all. One myself, can't do a thing about myself."
He glared at them and swung off.
Shelley stood where she was and rubbed her eye tenderly, like a bruise.
"When are you going to get married, Shelley?" asked Laura faintly.
"Never," said Shelley.
"Me neither," said Laura.
After Dr. Murdoch, how beautiful the store looked!
Any member of the Fairchild family in its widest sense, who wanted to, could go into the store, walk behind the counter, reach in and take anything on earth, without having to pay or even specify exactly what he took. It was like the pantry at Shellmound. Anything was all right, since they were all kin.