Read Flags in the Dust for Free Online

all.”
    “Miss Jenny! How can you talk that way, after John’s——after——”
    “Fiddlesticks,” Miss Jenny said. “The war just gave John a good excuse to get himself killed. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been some other way that would have been a bother to everybody around.”
    “Miss Jenny!”
    “I know, my dear. I’ve lived with these bullheaded Sartorises for eighty years, and I’ll never give a single ghost of ’em the satisfaction of shedding a tear over him. What did Horace’s message say?”
    “It was about something he was bringing home with him,” the other answered, and her serene face filled with a sort of fond exasperation. “It was such an incoherent message.
    ……Horace never could say anything clearly from a distance.” She mused again, gazing down the street with its tunnel of oaks and elms through which sunlight fell in spaced tiger bars. “Do you suppose he could have adopted a warorphan?”
    “War-orphan,” Miss Jenny repeated. “More likely it’s some war-orphan’s mamma.” Simon appeared at the corner of the house, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and crossed the lawn with shuffling celerity. His cigar was not visible.
    “No,” the other said quickly, with grave concern. “You dont believe he would have done that? No, no, he wouldn’t have. Horace wouldn’t have done that. He never does anything without telling me about it first. He would have written: I know he would. You really dont think that sounds like Horace, do you? A thing like that?”
    “Hmph,” Miss Jenny said through her high-bridged Norman nose. “An innocent like Horace straying with that trusting air of his among all those man-starved European women? He wouldn’t know it himself, until it was too late; especially in a foreign language. I bet in every town he was in over seven days his landlady or somebody was keeping his supper on the stove when he was late, or holding sugar out on the other men to sweeten his coffee with. Some men are born to always have some woman making a doormat of herself for him, just as some men are born cuckolded.…… How old are you?”
    “I’m still twenty-six, Miss Jenny,” the younger woman replied equably. Simon unhitched the horses and he stood now beside the carriage in his Miss Jenny attitude. It differed from the bank one; there was now in it a gallant and protective deference. Miss Jenny examined the still serenity of the other’s face.
    “Why dont you get married, and let that baby look after himself for a while? Mark my words, it wont be six months before some other woman will be falling all over herself for the privilege of keeping his feet dry, and he wont even miss you.”
    “I promised mother,” the other replied quietly and without offense.…… “I dont see why he couldn’t have sent an intelligible message.”
    “Well.…” Miss Jenny turned to her carriage. “Maybe it’s only an orphan, after all,” she said with comfortless reassurance.
    “I’ll know soon, anyway,” the other agreed, and she crossed to a small car at the curb and opened the door. Miss Jenny got in her carriage, and Simon mounted and gathered up the reins.
    “Let me know when you hear again,” she called as the carriage moved forward. “Drive out and get some more flowers when you want ’em.”
    “Thank you. Goodbye.”
    “All right, Simon.” The carriage moved on again, and again Simon withheld his news until they were out of town.
    “Mist’ Bayard done got home,” he remarked, in his former conversational tone.
    “Where is he?” Miss Jenny demanded immediately.
    “He aint come out to de place yit,” Simon answered. “I ’speck he went to de graveyard.”
    “Nonsense,” Miss Jenny snapped. “No Sartoris ever goes to the cemetery but once.… Does Colonel know he’s home?”
    “Yessum, I tole him, but he dont ack like he believed I wuz tellin’ him de troof.”
    “You mean, nobody’s seen him but you?”
    “I aint seed ’im