The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [297]
"Ah, do keep it to yourself then, for the duration of the journey, and not go bragging, will you?" the young wife cried at him. "Irish ghosts are enough for some of us for the one night without mixing them up with the Welsh and them shrieking things, and just before all of us are going on the water except yourself."
"You don't mind the Lord and Lady Beagle now, do you? They shouldn't frighten you, they're lovely and married. Married still. Why, their names just come to me, did you hear that? Lord and Lady Beagle—like they sent in a card. Ha! Ha!" Again the man from Connemara tried to bring that singing laugh out of the frightened sweetheart, from whom he had not yet taken his glances away.
"Don't," the young wife begged him, forcing her eyes to his salver-like palm. "Those are wild, crazy names for ghosts."
"Well, what kind of ghosts do you think they ever are!" Their glances met through their laughter and remorse. She tossed her head.
"There ain't no ghosts," said Victor.
"Now suck this good orange," she whispered to him, as if he were being jealous.
"Here comes the bride," announced the Welshman.
"Oh my God." But what business was she of the Welshman's?
In came the lady in the raincoat beaming from her dinner, but he talked right around her hip. "Do you have to confess?" he said. "Regularly? Suppose you make a confession—swear words, lewd thoughts, or the like: then does the priest make you pay a fine?"
"Confession's free, why not?" remarked the lady, stepping over all their feet.
"You're a Catholic, too?" he said, as she hung above his knee.
And as they all closed their eyes she fell into his lap, right down on top of him. Even the dogs, now rushing along in the other direction, hung on the air a moment, their tongues out. Then one dog was inside with them. This greyhound flung herself forward, back, down to the floor, her tail slapped out like a dragon's. Her eyes gazed toward the confusion, and little bubbles of boredom and suspicion played under the skin of her jowls, puff, puff, puff, while wrinkles of various memories and agitations came and went on her forehead like little forks of lightning.
"Well, look what's with us," said the lover. "Here, lad, here, lad."
"That's Telephone Girl," said the lady in the raincoat, now on her feet and straightening herself with distant sweepings of both hands. "I was just in conversation with the keeper of those. Don't be getting her stirred up. She's a winner, he has it." She let herself down into the seat and spread a look on all of them as if she had always been too womanly for the place. Her mooning face turned slowly and met the Welshman's stern, strong glance: he appeared to be expecting some apology from some source.
"'Tisn't everybody runs so fast and gets nothing for it in the end herself, either," said the lady. Telephone Girl shuddered, ate some crumbs, coughed.
"I'm ashamed to hear you saying that, she gets the glory," said the man from Connemara. "How many human beings of your acquaintance get half a dog's chance at glory?"
"You don't like dogs." The lady looked at him, bowing her head.
"They're not my element. That's not the way I'm made, no."
The man in charge rushed in, and out he and the dog shot together. Somebody closed the door; it was the Welshman.
"Now: what time of the night do you get to Cork?" he asked.
The lover spoke, unexpectedly. "Tomorrow morning." The girl let out a long breath after him.
"What time of the morning?"
"Nine!" shouted everybody but the American.
"Travel all night," he said.
"Book a berth in Fishguard!"
The mincing woman with the red-haired baby boy passed—the baby with his same fat, enchanted squint looked through the glass at them.
"Oh, I always get seasick!" cried the young wife in fatalistic enthusiastic tones, only distantly watching the baby, who, although he stretched his little hand against the glass, was not being kidnaped now. She leaned over to tell the young