Delta Wedding and the Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

Delta Wedding and the Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty

Author:Eudora Welty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt


VI

Primrose and Jim Allen came in through the archway behind George, wearing their Sunday hats, and both gave little screams—first the little screams of mild surprise or greeting with which they always entered Shellmound, and then second screams of dismay. “Oh, Primrose,” said Jim Allen, and stopping still they shook their flowered heads at each other as if there were no more to be done.

Tempe, coming that instant into the room with a pastry cornucopia on a napkin, shrieked to hear her sisters and then to see Ellen being lifted in George’s arms. Then she said calmly, “Fainted. I have these spells myself, semi-occasionally. They are nothing to what I used to have as a girl.—I bet the bird came in here!” She shuddered.

The new screams in the dining room brought in a roomful of Fairchilds with amazing quickness. Robbie backed against the china closet. Orrin was carrying a stunned or dead bird in his cupped hands. The girls, fingers still darting reminiscently to their hair, all fell kneeling, in a stair-steps, around the settee. George was taking off their mother’s shoes, Ellen lay with her eyes closed, and with her childlike feet propped shallowly on the inclining end under the fern.

George pushed the children a little. He rushed from Ellen’s side to fill a glass from a decanter on the sideboard, and as he went back to her with it, he leaned out and brushed Robbie’s wrist with his free hand. Next time he went by, for water, he bent and kissed her rapidly, and asked in pure curiosity that gave her a fierce feeling of joy, “Why did you throw the pans and dishes out the window?” Then he was touching Ellen’s lips with various little glasses of stuff, frowning with concentration.

“I thought I saw Battle go by with a wild look, did you?” said Tempe. “Battle! You can come in, she’s not dying!”

Battle came in and roamed up and down the room and now and then gave a touch or shake to Ellen’s shoulder. Bluet climbed up beside her mother and sang to her softly and leisurely, “Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day,” crowding her a little where she was stretched out. It was taking some time to revive her, she was too clumsy now for other people to make easy. There was a tight ring of Fairchilds around her. Maureen every now and then went around the table, arms pumping, long yellow hair flying.

Roxie pressed her forefinger under her nose. Poor Miss Ellen just wasn’t strong enough any longer for such a trial. She wasn’t strong enough for Miss Dabney and Miss Robbie and everything right now. One time before, Miss Ellen fainted away when everybody went off and left her—it was when the gin caught fire—and she had lost that little baby, that came between Mr. Little Battle and Ranny. Wasn’t it pitiful to see her so white? Poor Miss Ellen at this time.

Robbie caught glimpses of the white face from her distance outside the ring.



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