Flags in the Dust (24 page)

“There’s Mr Mitchell,” she said. Harry Mitchell had come out, in tight flannels and a white 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, dont she?”

Belle spoke his name again, mellifluously, lazily peremptory. Mrs 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 some day, 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 bewildered pugnacity.

“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 said, “your tea is getting cold.”

It had been fetched out by the combination gardener-stableman-chauffeur, temporarily impressed in a white jacket 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 cant compare with him. You were lucky to have him for a partner, child.”

“Yessum,” the girl agreed. “I guess he wont risk me again.”

“Nonsense,” Mrs Marders rejoined. “Horace enjoyed playing with you, with a young, fresh girl. Didn’t you notice it, Belle?”

Belle made no reply. She poured Horace’s tea, and at this moment her 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, with the teapot poised above the cup, and Harry set his cup on the table and went and knelt on one knee in her path, as though he were cajoling a puppy. The child came up, still watching Horace with radiant and melting diffidence, and 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.

“Dont 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 and stood diffidently beside her mother’s chair.

“Speak to the company,” Belle said. “Dont 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 and patted at her straight soft hair. “Now, go on and play. Why do you always want to come around 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 repeated with a final pat. “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 open the kitchen door and speak to her as she passed, saw her turn and mount the steps into the kitchen.

“What a beautifully mannered child,” Mrs Marders said.

“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, how about a set? These squirrels think they can beat us.”

“Frankie wants to play again,” Belle interposed. “Let the child have the court for a little while, Harry.” Harry was busy uncasing his racket. 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.”

“Dont be silly,” Belle said. “They can play any time. Make them let her play, Harry.”

“Sure the little lady can play,” Harry said. “Help yourself; play as long as you want to.” He bent again and returned his racket to its intricate casing, twisting nuts here and there; his back was sullen, with a boy’s sullenness.

“Please, Mr Mitchell,” the girl said.

“Go ahead,” Harry repeated. “Here, you jelly-beans, how about fixing up a set with the little lady?”

“Dont mind him,” Belle told the girl. “He and Horace can play some other time. He’ll have to make a fourth, anyway.”

The two players stood now, politely waiting.

“Sure, Mr Harry, come on. Me and Frankie’ll play you and Joe,” one of them said.

“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 overrode their polite protests and 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’ oclock in de evenin’. And you aint helpin’ none, neither,” she told Horace. “Gimme a dram, Mr Harry, please, suh.”

She held her glass out and Harry filled it, and waddled heavily from the room; they heard her descend the stairs slowly and heavily on her fallen arches. “Belle couldn’t get along without Rachel,” Harry said. He rinsed two glasses with ice water and set them on the lavatory. “She talks too much, like all niggers.” He poured into the two tumblers, set the bottle down. “To listen to her you’d think Belle was some kind of a wild animal. A dam tiger or something. But Belle and I understand each other. You’ve got to make allowances for women, anyhow. Different from men. Born contrary; complain when you dont please ’em and complain when you do.” He added a little water to his glass; then he said, with astonishing irrelevance: “I’d kill the man that tried to wreck my home like I would a dam snake. Well, let’s take one, big boy.”

Presently he sloshed water into his empty glass and gulped that, too, and he reverted to his former grievance.

“Cant get to play on my own dam court,” he said. “Belle
gets all these dam 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 dam day I get home from work and find a bunch of young girls and jelly-beans, using it like it was a public court in a dam park.” 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 cant give picnics on it. There’s plenty of room down there by the lot fence. No trees, too. Put it out in the dam 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 when 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 heavy irony. It was later still when they returned. Mrs Marders was gone and Belle sat alone, with a magazine. A youth in a battered ford had called for the girl Frankie, but another young man had dropped in, and when Horace and Harry came up the three youths clamored politely for Harry to join them.

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.

“Take Horace here,” Harry said, obviously pleased. “He’ll give you a run for your money.” But Horace demurred and the three continued to importune Harry. “Lemme get my racket, then,” he said finally, and Horace followed the heavy scuttling of his backside across the court. Belle looked briefly up.

“Did you find a place?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, uncasing his racket again. “Where I can play myself, sometimes. A place too far from the street for everybody that comes along to see it and stop.” But Belle was reading again. Harry unscrewed his racket press and removed it. “I’ll go in one set, then you and I can get in a fast one before dark,” he told Horace.

“Yes,” Horace agreed. He sat down and watched Harry stride heavily onto the court and take his position, watched the first serve. Then Belle’s magazine rustled and slapped onto the table.

“Come,” she said, rising. Horace rose, and Belle preceded him and they crossed the lawn and entered the house. Rachel moved about in the kitchen, and they went on through the house, where all noises were remote and the furniture gleamed peacefully indistinct in the dying evening light. Belle slid her hand into his, clutching his hand against her silken thigh, and led him on through a dusky passage and into her music room. This room was quiet too and empty and she stopped against him half turning, and they kissed. But she freed her mouth presently and moved again and he drew the piano bench out and they sat on opposite sides of it and kissed again. “You haven’t told me you love me,” Belle said, touching his face
with her fingertips, and the fine devastation of his hair. “Not in a long time.”

“Not since yesterday,” Horace agreed, but he told her, she leaning her breast against him and listening with a sort of rapt voluptuous inattention, like a great still cat; and when he had done and sat touching her face and her hair with his delicate wild hands, she removed her breast and opened the piano and touched the keys. Saccharine melodies she played, from memory and in the current mode, that you might hear on any vaudeville stage, and with shallow skill, a feeling for their oversweet nuances. They sat thus for sometime while the light faded, Belle in another temporary vacuum of discontent, building for herself a world in which she moved romantically, finely and a little tragical; with Horace sitting beside her and watching both Belle in her self-imposed and tragic rôle, and himself performing his part like the old actor whose hair is thin and whose profile is escaping him via his chin, but who can play to any cue at a moment’s notice while the younger men chew their bitter thumbs in the wings.

Presently the rapid heavy concussions of Harry’s feet thumped again on the stairs mounting, and the harsh wordless uproar of his voice as he led someone else in the back way and up to his bathroom. Belle stopped her hands and leaned against him and kissed him again, clinging. “This is intolerable,” she said, freeing her mouth with a movement of her head. For a moment she resisted against his arm, then her hands crashed discordantly upon the keys and slid through Horace’s hair and down his cheeks tightening. She freed her mouth again. “Now, sit over there.”

He obeyed; she on the piano bench was in half shadow. Twilight was almost accomplished; only the line of her bent head and her back, tragic and still, making him feel young again. We do turn corners upon ourselves, like suspicious old
ladies spying on servants, Horace thought. No, like boys trying to head off a parade. “There’s always divorce,” he said.

“To marry again?” Her hands trailed off into chords; merged, faded again into a minor in one hand. Overhead Harry moved with his heavy staccato tread, shaking the house. “You’d make a rotten husband.”

“I wont as long as I’m not married,” Horace answered.