Peter Taylor

by Peter Taylor

  “It might have happened to anyone,” Susan answered buntly. She picked up the plate of butter and walked to the icebox at the end of the porch. She opened the top just enough to slip the fresh mould in beside two others and then stepped into the kitchen doorway.

  “If there’s nothing more I can do, Fanny, I’m going around and sit on the front porch and wait for ’em. They’ll begin coming before long.”

  “Yas’m. Soon as I’m th’ough fryin’, my end’s ready. Better tell Tom t’ come freeze this cream, though, ef he got table sat, Miss Sus’n.” Fanny did not take her eyes off her clean, black hands that were covering wings, legs and breasts of chicken with flour, but the tone of her voice was respectful.

  “And, Jessie,” Susan said to Fanny’s half-grown daughter, “as soon as you and little Tom get through cutting those biscuits, you better go out to the house and fix up to serve.”

  Susan and Albert sat on the front porch rocking and fanning. Tom had finished setting the table in the front yard, and everything was ready for the party. Susan’s eyes were glued on the dirt road that led to town and on the dome of the court house four miles away. Occasionally out of the corner of her eye she would steal a glance at Albert who was keeping time to the crunching rhythm of the ice cream freezer with his left foot. The expression on his face was tense and preoccupied. He seemed to be trying to catch the song of the frogs in the pond down by the gate, or hear the howling of the hounds over at the Johnsons’ farm, or even discern the sound of a horn down in town.

  Bill Hardy pressed down on the horn of his automobile and passed the newer car of John Bradley just before he drove off the paved street of the town onto the dirt road. From the back seat the elder Mr. and Mrs. Hardy waved to the two old people on the rear seat of John’s automobile.

  Mrs. Hardy glanced down at her white muslin dress. She brushed off a few ashes that had blown back from Katherine’s cigarette and tugged at the lace dickey in the low neck of the dress with her white, wrinkled hand.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “Clara Bradley and I always come out in our white muslins on the same occasions.”

  “What difference does it make?” Mr. Hardy rolled up the window so he could light his cob pipe.

  “Now, don’t go biting Ma’s head off, Father.” Bill winked at his mother in the little driving mirror above the windshield.

  “Katherine,” Mr. Hardy said to Bill’s wife, “I remember when the parents or grandparents of every one of the boys that will be here to-night lived on a farm and in a house very much like this house Albert Winston lives in now.”

  Katherine turned around and settled herself facing her father-in-law. For five minutes she listened patiently to the sound of his sonorous voice. When he leaned forward and pointed to a house straight ahead at the curve of the road, she listened carelessly to what he said.

  “And that’s the Winston place. Albert’s family left the country same as everybody else did many years ago. They had tenants and poor kin folks livin’ on it off and on for thirty years till Albert got Susan Blackwell to marry him and come live on it with him. But, of course, Bill’s told you all about that.”

  A little black boy dressed in white came around the side of the one-story white house, ran down the dusty drive, and stood breathless at the gate, holding it open and shooing the mare and mule colt away.

  The Hardys drove in, all staring over the round muddy pond, through the grove of big maples and oaks, at the two people descending the wooden steps across the front of the porch. The older couple nodded to little Tom and Mrs. Hardy asked that Bill be careful of the colt. Albert motioned to them to pull up on the lawn beside the magnolia tree and he and Susan came forth to greet the first of their guests.

  Albert and Bill shook hands strenuously.

  “Well, well, Bill. So you’re really back in the old town for once.”

  “Albert, old man.”

  “And Susan Blackwell, the most popular girl in the county.”

  “Welcome back, Bill.”

  “This is Katherine, the city girl who’s come to discover the country.”

  “I certainly am delighted to know you all,” the younger Mrs. Hardy said formally. And there was more handshaking and Mr. and Mrs. Hardy kissed Susan.

  Then the Bradleys’ automobile appeared in the gateway. And a minute later, as the Bradleys were greeting their hosts, Mac Pilcher drove his new car past the whitewashed gateposts and little Tom closed the gate, for all the guests had arrived.

  The voices on the front lawn droned out the crunching of the ice cream freezer on the back porch, but to the ears of Mrs. Johnson, back in the guest room, there was little difference between the sounds. The harsh city voices sounded like the grinding of ice and salt and iron. She smiled at the thought and placed her walking shoes on the floor of Susan’s guest room closet. She strolled to the center of the room and looked at her new white pumps in the mirror over the mahogany dresser. There she saw the reflection of Susan and her seven feminine guests.

  “I didn’t hear y’all coming,” she said, as she turned around.

  “I know.” Susan smiled. “We slipped up on you. We met Mr. Johnson in the hall and he liked to scared me to death. I thought it was Albert’s Uncle Syd come back after all these years.”

  Mrs. Johnson laughed and turned her eyes to the three city girls expectantly.

  “This is Katherine Hardy, Louise Bradley and Marcia Pilcher,” Susan said, “and I think you know these other ladies.” She smiled at her mother and the other three women who had come out from town.

  Mrs. Johnson could hardly believe that three country boys from Gibson County had won such beauties when they had failed so utterly with our beautiful Susan. Everyone gave a little noiseless laugh and the eyes of the older women wandered about the room and the elder Mrs. Pilcher said, “Your flowers are lovely this year, Susan.”

  The young hostess thanked Mrs. Pilcher and thanked the Lord for all the rain in the past week, which had saved the flowers.

  When the older women had pushed their unruly locks of hair back under their hair nets and the girls had reddened their lips and their cheeks, Susan led them through the front, square parlor with the walnut parlor-furniture and the family pictures all over the walls, into the hall and out into the yard.

  Mrs. Johnson greeted Bill Hardy, John Bradley and Mac Pilcher and spoke to Albert and the three older men more casually, but a little more tenderly.

  Tom placed the last two plates of cold food on the table and started to help little Tom and Jessie pour the cool, amber tea. Susan Winston stopped him. “Tom, you go bring in the chicken. The children can pour the tea.” Little Tom and Jessie looked at each other silently.

  “Now, Albert, you seat the party. It’s a man’s job.”

  Albert was standing with the young people beside the little weeping willow tree he had set out last spring. He was pulling leaves off, tearing them up, and listening to reminiscences of a picnic the group had been on in a city park.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mac suggested, “let’s let all the old folks sit at this end and the young ones at the far end.”

  “Anything suits me,” Albert answered. But anything didn’t suit. He did not like the thought of sitting through a whole meal beside any of these strangers. He was trying to shut out of his mind what the amazement of these three old schoolmates of his must have been when they received his letters inviting them down for the party. It was supposed to be a reunion of old friends, but he knew, and they knew, that Albert Winston had never been really intimate with Mac, John and Bill. They had always thought him queer for reading books, but had thought he was going places in this world. When he quit college after two years and came back to live on the farm his worthless Uncle Syd had deserted, the whole town turned against him. He had overheard John Bradley say to Susan Blackwell the first Christmas after he quit college, “It’s just the same thing as his saying to his Uncle Jack, who’s supported him since his mother and father died, that he thought his good-fo
r-nothing Uncle Syd’s life was more admirable than Mr. Jack’s.”

  If he were to talk to these people much, they would certainly discover why he had invited them.

  “Anything suits me.”

  “Mama,” he said to Susan’s mother, who had ridden out from town with the Pilchers, “you sit at this end of the table and I’ll sit down there.”

  He offered his arms to Marcia and Katherine and led them across the grass that looked so much greener after last week’s rains and especially so at twilight. The grass and a sudden thought of his garden put him in a better humor. And as Tom was passing the chicken, he talked to Marcia and Katherine of his cabbage, onions, and turnips and of the chickens that Susan had taken off that morning.

  He looked at Susan. She seemed far away from the chicken yard and the cabbage patch. Her head was thrown back and she was laughing aloud. He did not like her when she laughed aloud for they never laughed aloud together. They only smiled quietly at Fanny’s English, or at Jessie’s and little Tom’s laziness, or at the hen with the little ducks. This loud laughter was too much a part of the days when he was long-legged and awkward and studious and she was popular and no one knew whether she loved Mac or Bill or John.

  “Wait! I want that stuffed egg, Tom,” Mr. Johnson said, louder than he meant to. Tom was removing the farmer’s dinner plate and placing a dish of chocolate ice cream before him. “How I love these devilled eggs,” he said pleasantly to Louise Bradley, who sat on his right. She smiled sweetly and nodded to him, but her ears were listening to Bill’s story of the hard times he had when he first came to the city after college: how he was determined to go with the right people and how he had to forget one of the most beautiful things in his life when he married Katherine. He was talking low so his wife, across the table, could not hear him, and Louise was listening intently so she could tell Marcia the next day that Bill has practically confessed marrying Katherine for her money, and having left a country sweetheart behind.

  “I think the country agrees with you, Susan,” John said to Susan. “You’re more beautiful than you were as a girl.”

  “Agree with her?” shouted Mr. Johnson from across the table. “The country agrees with everybody.” He announced this so loud that everyone at the table turned and looked at him. “I’ll tell you,” he was now addressing the table as a whole, “living on a farm isn’t what it used to be. Why, with the coming of the radio, electricity, the automobile and good roads we have all the conveniences of town and country. Why, before long it’ll be so we can run up and see our friends in the city and be back in an hour or so. A hundred miles to-day is what ten was—”

  “Oh, Mr. Johnson!” Susan burst out. Albert looked at her wildly. Everybody had smelt the old fellow’s breath and was naturally amused, but had she so completely gone back to her bold girlhood? Was she going to ridicule these simple people for the sake of entertaining these old sweethearts who had come back to see her with their urbane wives? But, “Now,” she continued, “I know why you and Mrs. Johnson came in by the back way. And I’ll bet you put Mrs. Johnson up to baking me this cake.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, “the old chocolate cake on your plate is mine but the angel food is a complete surprise to me. It was baked by the competent hands of Mrs. Johnson. This is one part of my dinner that I know will be good.”

  “How can I ever thank you, honey?”

  “What a wonderful neighbor to have!” Mrs. Hardy said from the old folks’ end of the table. And from the same end came:

  “I wish you’d move to town, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “If only my wife could make friends like you.”

  “Oh, it’s delicious.”

  The three young women leaned forward and looked at smiling, blushing Mrs. Johnson and smiled at her. Then they resumed their conversation with the men.

  “Your food was mighty, mighty good, Susan,” said Mrs. Hardy. She stood by the magnolia tree holding Susan’s right hand between her two warm wrinkled hands.

  “Those butter beans just hit the spot, old girl. You could tell they were raised in the Winston garden.” Mr. Bradley patted Susan gently on the back and moved on a few steps to join in the discussion of who was going to ride to town in the Bradleys’ car and who was going to ride in the Pilchers’ new Ford.

  “It’s hard for me to believe that those friers were the same baby chickens that you had so much trouble with this spring,” Mrs. Bradley went on.

  “Now, Mrs. Blackwell, you come with us in Mac’s car,” Mr. Pilcher put his hand on the arm of Susan’s mother.

  “The very same ones,” Susan said, shaking her head. “Y’all make me feel so good about my dinner.” And she kissed Mrs. Hardy good-night.

  “Goodbye, Susan, dear. Tell Fanny how I enjoyed the dinner; and let me hear from you tomorrow,” Susan’s mother said and she kissed her and climbed into the Pilchers’ new Ford.

  “Good-night, Tom!” Mr. Johnson called to the Winstons’ man servant. Tom and Jessie and little Tom were clearing the dishes from the table, disappearing around the corner of the house, and reappearing to get more dishes. The short fat candles were still burning on the table.

  “Good-night Albert and Susan. Best time in years.”

  “Y’all are so sweet.”

  “Good-night. Remember I’m having the next reunion.”

  “Come out to see us.”

  “Goodbye! So long! Little Tom will open the gate for you.”

  And the Pilcher and Bradley cars drove down the dusty road to town, taking the old folks to the movies.

  A loose shutter banged against the house and Katherine seized Albert’s hand and held it tightly. “It’s only the wind,” he said, laughing. “I must fix that shutter after dinner to-morrow.” She still held his hand.

  The shifting clouds had hidden the moon and made the night dark. Albert and Katherine and Marcia and John and Mac and Louise were sitting on the porch steps. Susan and Bill were sitting on the lawn in two rockers they had dragged from the porch.

  “You must come down to see us soon,” Katherine said to Albert.

  “I hope I can.”

  “I think you and Susan are two wonderful people.”

  “Thank you, Katherine.”

  “What are you working up to, Kitty?” Mac put in.

  “Oh, Mac!” Everyone laughed. “I’m working up to the fact that we must all be going if we’re to drive that hundred miles home to-night.”

  “We certainly must.”

  “We should have started an hour ago.”

  Everybody started stretching and pulling himself from his seat.

  “I’m afraid this has been awfully dull for y’all,” Susan said as she followed the three girls up the porch steps.

  “Why, it’s been charming, delightful.”

  “It’s been such a change from the ordinary, stupid dinner party.”

  When they were coming back from the guest room with their hats, Albert was across the hall getting a flashlight from the desk drawer in the library.

  “Why, this is a lovely room!” Louise exclaimed.

  She and Marcia and Katherine looked in at the book cases, the portrait of the little girl with the round arms and legs, the square piano, and the secretary, from which Albert was taking the flashlight.

  “I’m going down to the gate and open it for y’all” he announced as he came forward. Susan had gone out on the porch and was telling the men how much she had enjoyed having them and how much like old times it had been. Albert followed the three girls out. He shook hands with everyone and then hurried down to the gate.

  Each of the girls kissed Susan goodbye before climbing into the car. The old folks had taken the other two automobiles to town, so all six of them had to crowd into Mac’s sedan.

  “Good-night, Susan.”

  “Good-night, Louise. ’Night, Katherine. Goodbye, Marcia. Goodbye, boys.”

  “It was really so much fun, Susan.”

  “Goodbye and thanks.”

&nb
sp; Mac’s car crept slowly down the drive. They all shouted “Good-night!” to Albert and he playfully shone the bright light in their faces as they drove out the gate.

  He shut his gate and started back to the house. It was dark, but he knew every step of the walk back to his house, so he turned off the flashlight.

  He dreaded to see Susan. He was afraid that when he looked at her eyes they would say that she couldn’t go on with this life. Afraid that they would remind him that she had married him only because the other boys had gone away and met city girls and forgotten her. Remind him that he had known that was the reason. And tell him that he had to let her go now.

  He was sorry that he had invited them down. But he could not have stood her silence of the last month any longer. He had to know what she was thinking.

  Susan was waiting for him in the library. He stopped in the doorway a minute and looked at her, sitting there on the piano stool. She seemed to be a part of the room, but he wondered if she would be there to-morrow. She was playing an old song.

  Susan’s eyes followed her own hands across the keyboard. When her fingers touched the keys, there was only the sound of the music. No long, red finger nails kept a metallic rhythm on the ivory notes. Her nails were short, clean, shapely and natural: they did not reach the end of her playing fingers. Tomorrow they would be dirty: but these dancing fingers would be busy. Red nails with white pointed tips would be nicer. But then she could not look at them. They could never dig in the black earth. They could never touch the earth. They could never touch anything. They could only play, and play lightly on polished keys.

  She banged loudly and really, a discord on the century old piano that had never been out of that room. She jerked up her hands and looked at her strong, round fingertips. She saw that none of the nails were harmed by the vigorous blows.

  She whirled around on the piano stool, held her left fist in the palm of her right hand on the lap of her best summer organdy; and Albert looked into her serious face.

  “Well, Susan,” he said finally.