Free Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty Page A

did. "Warm day," he said at last, and shut his eyes. Roxie brought him the pitcher of lemonade, and he lifted up to drink a glass politely, but he would not have any cake just then. "I'll stretch a minute," he told Ellen, and at once his eyes shut again. She took his shoes off and he thanked her with a distant groan. She pulled the blinds a little, but he seemed far gone already with that intensity with which all the Fairchilds slept. In the darkened room his hair and all looked dark—turbulent and dark, almost Spanish. Spanish! She looked at him tenderly to have thought of such a far-fetched thing, and went out. The melting ice made a sound, and suddenly George did sigh heavily, as if protesting in his sleep.
    "Poor man, he rode so
far,
" she thought.
    "I'm in trouble, Ellen!" he called after her, his voice wide and awake and loud in the half-empty house. "Robbie's left me!"
    She ran back to him. He still lay back with his eyes shut. The Spanish look was not exhaustion, it was misery.
    "She left me four days and nights ago. I'm hoping she'll come on here—in time for the wedding." He opened his eyes, but looked at her unrevealingly. All the affront of Robbie Reid came in a downpour over Ellen, the affront she had all alone declared to be purely a little summer cloud.
    "I never saw anybody get here as wrinkled up in my life." She kissed his cheek, and sat by him wordlessly for a little. "Why, Orrin's meeting the Southbound, just in case you all came that way," she said, still protesting.
    "She took the car.—That's how I thought of a horse for Dabney." He grinned.
    Bluet, barefooted, with a sore finger, and with her hair put up in rags, came into the dining room to be kissed. "Don't give me a lizard," she decided to beg him.
    He asked for his coat and gave her some little thing wrapped up in paper which she took trustingly.
    Shelley came in chasing Bluet, and listened stock-still. "She'd better not try to come here!" she cried, when she understood what Robbie had done. Her face was pale. "We wouldn't let her in. To do you like that—you, Uncle George!"
    He groaned and sat up, rumpled and yawning.
    Battle came in, groaning too, from the heat, and was told the news. He closed his eyes, and shouted for Roxie or anybody to bring him something cold to drink. Roxie came back with the lemonade. Then he fell into his chair, where he wagged the pitcher back and forth to cool it.
    Ellen said, "Oh, don't tell Dabney—not yet—spoil her wedding—" She stopped in shame.
    "Then don't tell India," said Shelley.
    "And we can't let poor Tempe know—she just couldn't cope with this," said Battle in a soft voice. "Hard enough on Tempe to have Dabney marrying the way she is, and after Mary Denis married a Northern man and moved so far off. Can't tell Primrose and Jim Allen and hurt them."
    "Of course don't tell any of the girls," George said, staring at Shelley unseeingly, his mouth an impatient line.
    "Look, George," Battle said at length. "What's that sister of her's name? Rebel Reid! I bet you anything I've got Robbie's with Rebel."
    "I've a very good notion she is," George said.
    There were voices in the hall, Vi'let's and somebody's, a vaguely familiar voice.
    "Troy's here. What's he doing here?" Ellen looked at Battle. "Oh—he's invited to supper."
    "Man! Why don't you go get her, are you paralyzed? Then wring her neck. Did you go—are you going?" Battle turned his eyes from George to Ellen, Shelley, Bluet, and around to Troy—standing foxy-haired and high-shouldered in the door, his slow smile beginning—to invite indignation.
    "What else is in your coat, Uncle George?" Ranny asked politely in the silence.
    "No, I'm not going," George said. He watched Ranny and Bluet mildly as they went through his coat pulling everything out, and kept watching how Ranny squatted down opening a present with fingers careful enough to unlock some strange mystery in the world.
    "Oh, George," Ellen was saying.