“Persuaded her,” he said. “Lewis Randolph at the Nonconnah Guards ball. Charley Gordon, and now Gavin Blount. How did you do it?”
“How do you think? What’s the one sure way to persuade any woman, maiden wife or widow, to go anywhere? I told her there was an eligible bachelor who wanted to marry her.”
And so, three weeks later still, sitting among his guests above the fine linen and crystals and silver and cut flowers of his heavy diningroom he thought maybe Gavin Blount never saw her before at all but by God this is the first time I ever saw her at a table with actual linen on it and more than one dish and knife and fork and drinking vessel—the thin erect figure with perfectly white hair, in a shawl and an absolutely unrelieved black silk dress which still showed the creases and still smelled of the thin pungent bark in which it had been folded away, reaching Memphis at last who had been on the road for a few months under twenty years, arriving once more in a dissolving December dusk and entering the house which she had never seen before, the cold sharp unfaded eyes glancing once at the bouquet of red roses which the servant and not the donor presented, who (the donor) peered up the hall from within the room which Gordon called office after the old fashion, and cried: “That can’t be her. It can’t be. Yes it is. It can’t be anyone else,” saying, “No. Not in to table. I want to sit across from her. So I can look at her, watch her,” and the son said,
“Watch her what? Get tangled up in a lot of new-fangled knives and spoons?” and the other:
“Tangled up? Lewis Randolph? Do you think the woman that carried that derringer around in her apron pocket for three years until the time came to use it could be outcountenanced or confounded by all the Post-postulations in existence?”
And she was not. The son watched Heustace precede the butler and draw her chair and saw her pause just an instant and look at the array of silver with a quick comprehensive country woman’s glance, and that was all. So he knew then that he need not have worried about her at all, telling himself with the old humor that it was a good thing for him she did not know he had worried. Because, as Blount might have put it and as his, Gordon’s, son actually did, she had already stolen the show, not only on the part of Heustace, the only guest present approximating her own generation, but of the other couple of Gordon’s own time and of the young woman who was his son’s guest and the young man who was his daughter’s, not to mention the face which hung opposite her above a bowl of flowers like a stricken and fading moon about to sink beyond a hedge: so that he stopped watching his mother and began to watch Blount; he saw his mother raise a spoon full of soup and he thought She ain’t going to like it and she is going to say so out loud and then he began to watch Blount thinking He’s the one that needs worrying about, thinking Yes. A damn sight sicker than anybody knows. So he was taken by surprise too, not, he realized later, that he actually had expected the evening to pass without incident but that it had begun so quickly, before they had even got settled at table; he was watching Blount, aware that Heustace was talking to his mother about the war days in Memphis, the Yankees in the city, which Heustace remembered; he heard Heustace say, “Conditions in the country were different, of course. There was not even a moral check on them there,” when he saw Blount move a little, thrust his chair back, the sick moonlike face leaned forward above his untasted soup as he began to speak with a curious rapid intensity; and then suddenly Gordon knew what was coming as if he had read Blount’s mind, he saw the other faces leaning forward into the abrupt silence as though Blount’s intensity had communicated somehow even to them.
“The trouble is,” Blount said, “We never could keep our Yankees in the right proportion. We were like a cook with too much raw material. If we could just have kept the proportion down to ten or twelve to one of us, we could have made a good war out of it. But when they wouldn’t play fair, when the overflow of them took to prowling about the country where only women and children were left, a single woman and a child maybe, and a hand full of scared niggers—” The mother was staring at Blount. She had just bitten a piece of bread, the bread still lifted and she chewing as people without teeth chew, and now she had ceased chewing and was watching Blount exactly as she used to watch the nigger plowing beyond the fence. “Half of them prowling around the back doors of houses away back in the country while all the men were away fighting the other half million of them, gone in good faith, believing that the women and children would be safe even from Yankees—” Now she chewed again, twice; Gordon saw the two rapid motions of her jaw before she ceased again and glanced both ways along the table, at the other faces leaning forward with an identical expression of intense amazement, the glance rapid and cold, the cold eyes pausing no longer on the son’s face than on any other. Then she put her hands on the table and began to thrust her chair back.
“Now mother,” Gordon said; “now mother.” But she was not rising: it was as though she had merely pushed her chair back to give herself room to talk in, thrusting it sharply back and leaning forward, her hands, one of which still held the bitten bread, on the edge of the table, staring at the man who sat opposite her in exactly the same attitude, and now her voice, though not rapid, was as cold and efficient as her gaze had been: and the son, waiting for his body to obey him and move also, thought How hope to stop it, when she has had to wait seventy years for some one to tell it to.
“It was just five of them that I ever saw,” she said. “Joanna said there were more out in front, still on their horses. But I never saw them. It was just five that came round to the kitchen door, walking. They came to the kitchen door and walked in. Walked right into my kitchen without even knocking. Joanna had just come down the hall yelling that the whole front yard was full of Yankees and I was just turning from the stove where I was heating milk for him—” she did not move, she did not even indicate Gordon with a movement of her head or eyes. “I had just said ‘Hush that yelling and take that child up off the floor’ when those five tramps came right into my kitchen without even taking off their hats—” And still Gordon could not begin to move. He sat too, ringed by the amazed faces from among which the faces of his mother and Blount leaned toward each other above the bowl of flowers, the one cold, articulated beneath the white hair, the other resembling something expensive and fragile and on the point of falling from a mantel or shelf onto a stone floor, the voice coming from it in a passionate and dying whisper:
“Yes. Yes. Go on. And then what?”
“The pan of boiling milk was sitting on the stove like this. I took it up, just like this—” Then she moved; she and Blount both rose at the same instant as though they were two puppets worked by a single wire. They faced each other for a second, an instant, motionless like two dolls in a Christmas window above the bright glitter of the table, against the background of amazed and incredulous faces. Then she took up her bowl of soup and flung it at Blount’s head, then, facing him, her butter knife clutched in her hand and pointed at Blount as though it were a small pistol, she repeated the phrase with which she had ordered the soldiers out of the house—a phrase such as steamboat mates used and which Gordon believed she did not even know she knew until that moment seventy years ago when she needed it.
Later, after the tumult of cheering and yelling had ceased, he was able to reconstruct it somewhat—the two of them, both small, rigid, back-leaning, facing each other, the one with the gleaming little knife clutched and steady at Blount’s middle, the other, his face and shirtfront splashed with soup, his head erect and the sick face exalted like that of a soldier having a decoration pinned on him, about them both the roar, the tumult of cheering voices. When Gordon finally overtook her she was sitting in a chair in the parlor, trembling though still bolt upright. “Call Lucius,” she said. “I want to go home.”
“Why it was fine,” he said. “Can’t you hear them still? You never heard more noise than that even on that other night when you came up to the ball.”
“I’m going home,” she said. She rose. “Call Lucius. I want
to go out the back door.” So he took her back into that room he called his office until the car came.
“Is it those words you forgot and used?” he said. “That’s nothing nowadays. You find them in all the books. Some of them, that is.”
“No,” she said. “I just want to go home.” So he put her into the car then, and returned to the office. Blount was there, sitting quietly in a chair, clutching a damp stained napkin.
“I’ll get you a fresh shirt,” Gordon said.
“No,” Blount said. “Never mind.”
“You’re not going to the ball that way, are you?” The other didn’t answer. A decanter sat on the table. Gordon unstoppered it and poured a neat drink and pushed the glass toward Blount. But the other did not move to take it.
“I know why you stopped feeling the derringer now,” he said. “It wasn’t that the need for it had passed away. Because they might have come back, another lot of them. Maybe they did. You wouldn’t have known it. It was because she found out she wasn’t worthy to be protected by a bullet, a clean bullet that Charles Gordon would have said was all right, when she found out she could be surprised and tricked into using language she didn’t even know she knew, Charles Gordon didn’t know she knew, that Yankees and niggers had heard her use.” Now he looked at Gordon. “I want your pistol.” Gordon looked at him. “Come, Ran. I can go home and get one. You know that.” For an instant longer Gordon looked at him. Then he said, quietly, immediately:
“All right. Here you are.” He took the pistol from the desk and gave it to Blount. And yet, after the other had gone, Gordon’s mind misgave him a little—this man whose business was judging character, anticipating the progression of human actions, who had done it for so long that at times they appeared to be snap judgments but were not, and in which he had complete faith, not only because they had been almost invariably right. Never-the-less, this time he had misgivings, though presently he admitted to himself that they were not due to his affection for Blount so much as to his pride in his judgment. However, right or wrong, it was done now, so he sat smoking quietly until he heard the car return and presently the negro, Lucius, entered. “I’m expecting a message,” Gordon said. “I don’t think it will come until in the morning, though it may come to-night. But when it does, bring it up to me.”
“Yes sir,” the negro said. “Even if you are asleep?”
“Yes,” Gordon said. “Whether I’m asleep or not. As soon as it comes.”
It did not arrive until morning however. That is, he did not get it until it appeared on the tray with his early cup of coffee, though when he saw that it was a package and not just an envelope he did not even listen for an answer to his question as to why he had not been wakened last night to receive it but instead he merely extracted the note and returned the newspaper-wrapped object to the negro. “Put this back in the desk,” he said.
So it was relief he felt, an emotion such as any woman might feel, not the vindication of a man’s, a banker’s, judgment (I’m getting old he thought) as a penance, for the strengthening of his soul, he did not even read the note until he had drunk his coffee. It was written in pencil on the back of a soiled handbill announcement of a chain store grocery: You seem to have been right again, if being told you are right can be any satisfaction to you anymore. I said once that she and her kind can take it and we can’t and so that’s what’s wrong with us and you said Maybe and I was wrong, which both you and I expected. But you were wrong too because I can take it because why shouldn’t I? because Gavin Blount beat him at last. It might have been Charles Gordon she gave the rose to but by God it was Gavin Blount she threw the soup plate at.
A Dangerous Man
Women know things that we dont know, haven’t yet learned, may never learn, I suppose. Perhaps it is that a man has everything, what he believes is right and what he believes is wrong and what he believes ought to happen and must happen and what he believes ought not to happen and cant happen, all neatly ticketed and catalogued and fitted into a pattern.
We called Mr Bowman a dangerous man, because he reacted in a proper and thoroughly masculine way, co-ordinating to a certain simple masculine creed with a kind of violent promptitude, without misgiving or remorse. One morning Zack Stowers came into the express office, a naked pistol in his hand. A drummer had insulted his wife; he had overtaken the man just as he sprang into the station bus and drove away from the hotel.
“Hey?” Mr Bowman said—he is a little deaf—leaning into the grille, cupping his ear. Stowers repeated, waving the pistol. The drummer had a friend with him; he himself might need support.
“Sure,” Mr Bowman said immediately. He took from the cash drawer the pistol that belonged to the company and dropped it into his hip pocket and paused at the rear door to call back to his wife: “Going down to the depot a minute.” He came around the partition without stopping for his coat and followed Stowers to the street. Stowers’ buggy was there. They got in and drove to the station at a slashing gallop while people along the street turned to look after them.
There were two of them. “There they are,” Stowers said. “See that tall one in the green hat, and the short one carrying two grips?”
“You mean that narrow-sterned man with his coat on his arm?” Mr Bowman said, leaning a little forward as they galloped across the broad plaza before the station. They spoke in tense, calm, impersonal voices, like two men raising a long pole or a ladder.
“No, no,” Stowers said, reins, whip and pistol indiscriminate in his hands; “that tall fellow in the green hat just turning to look this way.”
“Oh, yes,” Mr Bowman said, “I got him. Now he’s looked at us, you want to shoot him now?”
“No, no. You just keep them covered. I want to talk to him first.”
“Better shoot him now,” Mr Bowman said. “He’s done looked around.”
“No, no; you wait like I say.”
“All right,” Mr Bowman said. “But it wont be in the back now, since he’s looking at us.”
They descended, not waiting to hitch the team. The fat drummer had turned too now, and still holding the two bags he watched them approach with a kind of grave horror. His hat was on the back of his head, and with his round eyes and his round mouth he looked like the photograph of a small fat boy in a sailor hat. He cast over his shoulder one glance: he and his companion were now as completely isolated as though they were the last two men.
“Which one you want?” Mr Bowman said, producing his pistol, contemplating the two drummers like a not particularly hungry dog would two quarters of dressed beef.
“Wait, now, durn you,” Stowers said. “Just watch them.”
“Hey?” Mr Bowman said, cupping his ear with the hand that held the pistol. Stowers laid his pistol down and began to take off his coat.
“What’s this, friend?” the tall drummer said.
“You going to fight him fist-and-skull, are you?” Mr Bowman said.
“Here, friend,” the tall drummer said. He looked over his shoulder. “Here, folks, I demand—”
“Let me fight him,” Mr Bowman said. “You hold the pistol on them so they wont run.”
“No,” Stowers said, flinging his coat down. “It’s my business.”
“I’ll fight them both,” Mr Bowman said. “Fight them both at once.”
“No,” Stowers said through his teeth, glaring at the tall drummer.
“Here, folks,” the tall drummer said, glancing quickly about, but not daring to look too long away from Stowers; “I demand—”
Stowers struck him, leaping bodily from the ground to do so, then they were swinging at one another. Mr Bowman moved aside and approached the fat drummer, who still held the two bags.
“It’s a mistake, mister,” the fat drummer said. “I swear to God. I swear to God he aint done nothing to his wife. He dont even know her. And if he did, there aint a man living has more respect for a woman than him.”
“You want to fight too?” Mr Bowman said.
“I swear so help me God, mister.”
“Come on. I’ll lay the gun on the ground between us. Come on.”
The train came in, roared down and past, jarring. The tall drummer looked over his shoulder, swung again at Stowers, then turned and leaped away. Stowers sprang after him, then whirled and ran back and caught up his pistol, and then two bystanders caught and held him, struggling and cursing.
“Now, now;” they said, “now, now.”
When the train pulled out Mr Bowman and Stowers returned to the buggy, Stowers dabbing at his mouth and spitting. “Durn it,” he said, “I kind of got carried away for a minute. I was so mad.… He kept on saying he wasn’t the one I was hunting.”
“No matter,” Mr Bowman said. “He put up a pretty good fight. Mine wouldn’t even do that.”
He is the express agent—a thick-built man who shows no age at all. Ruddy faced, his nose hooks a little and his hot hazel eyes hook a little, and he has a thatch of sparse, fine, vigorous reddish hair, and what would be, with a man more careful or aware of his appearance, a bald spot. He walks on the balls of his feet, with a light, mincing step like a prize-fighter gone a little stiff in the joints, and his clothes are always a little too short or too tight and too gaily colored in an innocent, slovenly way.
He looks like he might be thirty-eight, yet he has a nephew grown, married and a father; a boy whom Mr and Mrs Bowman said was Mr Bowman’s nephew. Yet my aunt says he is an adopted child, taken by them from an orphanage. He grew up in the tight, small house where they live, and went to school and worked in the express office on Saturday when he got big enough, and got to be a man and went away and married; and now they own two dogs, fox terriers, fat, insolent, illtempered beasts with red choleric eyes, that ride with them in the car on Sundays and follow Mr Bowman around all during the week, at the office and on the street, and snarl and snap viciously at our hands when we offer to pet them. They snarl and snap at Mr Bowman too, but at Mrs Bowman they do not snarl. They do not exactly avoid her, but they regard her with a certain respect, insolent but alert, remaining in the office only when Mr Bowman is there.