The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [257]
"Call Mr. Mabry now. She's let loose."
Mr. Mabry, fresh from the barbershop, took Virgie's hands and swung them, then dropped them. She dried her eyes instantly and with-drew, giving him permission to go into the other room. She wondered when she had seen him leave her on tiptoe before. Old country fellows in the hall began to speak of him now, respectfully, as he looked down at the dead with his face so rubylike, so recently complimented upon, that in the next moment it would fill with concern for itself.
"He aims to get closer to Ives. Where he don't have to use hoot owls for roosters and fox for yard dogs, is the way he put it to me."
"Then why on earth don't he come to Morgana? No nicer place than right here, 's what I think, if I wanted to be close in."
"He prefers Ives."
"I see."
But in the parlor it was generally felt polite now to consider Miss Katie as the center of conversation, since the door was now open.
"Virgie might get a little bit of dairyfood savings now, bet she'll spend it on something 'sides the house, hm?" A lady Virgie couldn't place said it halfway in her direction, leaning toward her now and then as she had been doing, with her full weight. "Her pretty quilts, she can't ship those to the Fair no more. What does Virgie care about housekeeping and china plates without no husband, hm? Wonder what Virgie'll do with the chickens, Katie always enjoyed a mixed yard. Wonder who Virgie'll give the deer to if she don't want it. That picture of the deer Miss Katie's mother hooked in Tishomingo with the mistletoe crown over the horns, and the oak leaves, Miss Katie considered it the prettiest thing in the world. The cloth doll with the china head and hands, that she used to let any and all play with—"
"Guinevere! Oh, I wish I had her now!" Cassie Morrison held out both gloved hands.
"Her fern stand. Virgie won't stay here to keep care of ferns, I bet. Her begonia, thirty-five years old. Not much older than Virgie, is it, Virgie? She left her recipes to the Methodist Church—I hope."
"She was a living saint," answered another lady, as if this would agree with everything.
"Look at my diamond."
Jinny MacLain, Ran's wife, was coming in. With her hand out, she showed a ring about the room on her way to Virgie. "I deserved me a diamond," she went on to say to Cassie Morrison, twisting her hand on its wrist. "That's what I told Ran." Softly, abruptly, she turned and kissed Virgie's cheek, whispering, "I don't have to see her—do I, Virgie?"
Then they all rose as Miss Snowdie came in.
"I don't have to see anybody!" whispered Jinny fiercely.
Virgie, still holding a cup of coffee, walked out and waited on the porch, for she knew Miss Snowdie would come outside. She could hear her in the parlor now, staying to take a certain amount of praise. Then Miss Snowdie came out, now as at all times a gentle lady, her face white and graciously folded, gently concerned but no more. She stood and looked out, at once shading her eyes, to the house across the road where she used to live. She kissed Virgie then, almost idly.
"I think she looks all right, Virgie."
Her albino's hands were cruelly reddened. But she never seemed really to feel their redness any more. Her soft black-and-white dotted dress smelled as freshly as always of verbena.
"I saw to her well as I knew how. If Emmy Holifield were still living, she might have thought of things I didn't."
But her eyes went past Virgie, across the road, where the old house was a ruin now. In between where the women were standing and the sight of the old place, in the Rainey yard, the children waiting for their parents stood still, fell still, at that moment, and not knowing where to look all at once, listened—listened to the locusts, perforce, which sounded like the sound of the world going around to them as they suddenly beat their cupped hands over their ears.
"Virgie? You know Lizzie