The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [115]
Irene said: "A great, profane man like all the McInnis men of Asphodel, Mr. Don McInnis. He was the last of his own, just as she was the last of hers. The hope was in him, and he knew it. He had a sudden way of laughter, like a rage, that pointed his eyebrows that were yellow, and changed his face. That night he stood astride ... astride the rooms, the guests, the flowers, the tapers, the bride and her father with his purple face. 'What, Miss Sabina?' he would roar, though she had never said a word, not one word ... waiting in the stiffened gown that took then its odor of burning wax. We remembered that, that roar, that 'What, Miss Sabina?' and we whispered it among ourselves later when we embroidered together, as though it were a riddle that young ladies could not answer. He seemed never to have said any other thing to her. He was dangerous that first night, swaying with drink, trampling the scattered flowers, led up to a ceremony there before all our eyes, Miss Sabina so rigid by his side. He was a McInnis, a man that would be like a torch carried into a house."
The three old maids, who lay like a faded garland at the foot of the columns, paused in peaceful silence. When the story was taken up again, it was in Phoebe's delicate and gentle way, for its narrative was only part of memory now, and its beginning and ending might seem mingled and freed in the blue air of the hill.
"She bore three children, two boys and a girl, and one by one they died as they reached maturity. There was Minerva and she was drowned—before her wedding day. There was Theo, coming out from the university in his gown of the law, and killed in a fall off the wild horse he was bound to ride. And there was Lucian, the youngest, shooting himself publicly on the courthouse steps, drunk in the broad daylight.
"Who can tell what will happen in this world!" said Phoebe, and she looked placidly up into the featureless sky overhead.
"It all served to make Miss Sabina prouder than ever," Irene said. "She was born grand, with a will to impose, and now she had only Mr. Don left, to impose it upon. But he was a McInnis. He had the wildness we all worshipped that first night, since he was not to be ours to love. He was unfaithful—maybe always—maybe once—"
"We told the news," said Cora. "We went in a body up the hill and into the house, weeping and wailing, hardly daring to name the name or the deed."
"It was in the big hall by the statues of the Seasons, and she stood up to listen to us all the way through," Irene murmured. "She didn't move—she didn't blink her eye. We stood there in our little half-circle not daring to come closer. Then she reached out both her arms as though she would embrace us all, and made fists with her hands, with the sharp rings cutting into her, and called down the curse of heaven on everybody's head—his, and the woman's, and the dead children's, and ours. Then she walked out, and the door of her bedroom closed."
"We ran away," said Phoebe languidly. "We ran down the steps and in and out of the boxwood garden, around the fountain, all clutching one another as though we were pursued, and away through the street, crying. She never shed a tear, whatever happened, but we shed enough for everybody."
Cora said: "By that time, her father was dead and there was no one to right the wrong. And Mr. Don—he only flourished. He wore white linen suits summer and winter. She declared the lightning would strike him for the destruction he had brought on her, but it never struck. She never closed her eyes a single night, she was so outraged and so undone. She would not eat a bite for anybody. We carried things up to her—soups, birds, wines, frozen surprises, cold shapes, one after the other. She