“He’ll do it someday.
But Narcissa wouldn’t be satisfied, even then,” she said.
“Some women wont want a man to marry a certain woman.
But all the women will be mad if he ups and leaves her.”
“You hush, now,” Narcissa said.
“Yes, sir,” Miss Jenny said.
“Horace has been bucking at the halter for some time now.
But you better not run against it too hard, Horace; it might not be fastened at the other end.”
Across the hall a small bell rang.
Stevens and Benbow both moved toward the handle of Miss Jenny’s chair.
“Will you forbear, sir?” Benbow said.
“Since I seem to be the guest.”
“Why, Horace,” Miss Jenny said.
“Narcissa, will you send up to the chest in the attic and get the duelling pistols?”
She turned to the boy.
“And you go on ahead and tell them to strike up the music, and to have two roses ready.”
“Strike up what music?” the boy said.
“There are roses on the table,” Narcissa said.
“Gowan sent them.
Come on to supper.”
Through the window Benbow and Miss Jenny watched the two people, Narcissa still in white, Stevens in flannels and a blue coat, walking in the garden.
“The Virginia gentleman one, who told us at supper that night about how they had taught him to drink like a gentleman.
Put a beetle in alcohol, and you have a scarab; put a Mississippian in alcohol, and you have a gentleman——”
“Gowan Stevens,” Miss Jenny said.
They watched the two people disappear beyond the house.
It was some time before he heard the two people come down the hall.
When they entered, it was the boy instead of Stevens.
“He wouldn’t stay,” Narcissa said.
“He’s going to Oxford.
There is to be a dance at the University Friday night.
He has an engagement with a young lady.”
“He should find ample field for gentlemanly drinking there,” Horace said.
“Gentlemanly anything else.
I suppose that’s why he is going down ahead of time.”
“Taking an old girl to a dance,” the boy said.
“He’s going to Starkville Saturday, to the base ball game.
He said he’d take me, but you wont let me go.”
4
Townspeople taking after-supper drives through the college grounds or an oblivious and bemused faculty-member or a candidate for a master’s degree on his way to the library would see Temple, a snatched coat under her arm and her long legs blonde with running, in speeding silhouette against the lighted windows of the Coop, as the women’s dormitory was known, vanishing into the shadow beside the library wall, and perhaps a final squatting swirl of knickers or whatnot as she sprang into the car waiting there with engine running on that particular night. The cars belonged to town boys.
Students in the University were not permitted to keep cars, and the men—hatless, in knickers and bright pull-overs—looked down upon the town boys who wore hats cupped rigidly upon pomaded heads, and coats a little too tight and trousers a little too full, with superiority and rage.
This was on week nights.
On alternate Saturday evenings, at the Letter Club dances, or on the occasion of the three formal yearly balls, the town boys, lounging in attitudes of belligerent casualness, with their identical hats and upturned collars, watched her enter the gymnasium upon black collegiate arms and vanish in a swirling glitter upon a glittering swirl of music, with her high delicate head and her bold painted mouth and soft chin, her eyes blankly right and left looking, cool, predatory and discreet.
Later, the music wailing beyond the glass, they would watch her through the windows as she passed in swift rotation from one pair of black sleeves to the next, her waist shaped slender and urgent in the interval, her feet filling the rhythmic gap with music.
Stooping they would drink from flasks and light cigarettes, then erect again, motionless against the light, the upturned collars, the hatted heads, would be like a row of hatted and muffled busts cut from black tin and nailed to the window-sills.
There would always be three or four of them there when the band played Home, Sweet Home, lounging near the exit, their faces cold, bellicose, a little drawn with sleeplessness, watching the couples emerge in a wan aftermath of motion and noise.
Three of them watched Temple and Gowan Stevens come out, into the chill presage of spring dawn.
Her face was quite pale, dusted over with recent powder, her hair in spent red curls.
Her eyes, all pupil now, rested upon them for a blank moment.
Then she lifted her hand in a wan gesture, whether at them or not, none could have said.
They did not respond, no flicker in their cold eyes.