"Wait," Mrs. King said. Jarrod had not moved. Mrs. King gazed across the empty lobby, tapping her teeth with her fingernail. "Proof," she said. "A sign." She moved. "You wait here." She went back up the stairs; a heavy woman, moving with that indomitable, locomotivelike celerity. She was not gone long. "Louise is asleep," she said, for no reason that Jarrod could have discerned, even if he had been listening. She held her closed hand out. "Can you have your car ready in twenty minutes?"
"Yes. But what?"
"And your bags packed. I'll see to everything else."
"And Louise You mean "
"You can be married in Meridian; you will be there in an hour."
"Married? Has Louise?"
"I have a sign from her that he will believe. You get your things all ready and don't you tell anyone where you are going, do you hear?"
"Yes. Yes. And Louise has?"
"Not a soul. Here" she put something into his hand.
"Get your things ready, then take this and give it to him. He may insist on seeing her. But I'll attend to that. You just be ready. Maybe he'll just write a note, anyway. You do what I told you." She turned back toward the stairs, fast, with that controlled swiftness, and disappeared. Then Jarrod opened his hand and looked at the object which she had given him. It was the metal rabbit. It had been gilded once, but that was years ago, and it now lay on his palm in mute and tarnished oxidation. When he left the room he was not exactly running either. But he was going fast.
But when he re-entered the lobby fifteen minutes later, he was running. Mrs. King was waiting for him.
"He wrote the note," Jarrod said. "One to Louise, and one to leave here for Miss Cranston. He told me I could read the one to Louise." But Mrs. King had already taken it from his hand and opened it. "He said I could read it," Jarrod said. He was breathing hard, fast. "He watched me do it, sitting there on that bench; he hadn't moved even his hands since I was there before, and then he said, 'Young Mr. Jarrod, you have been conquered by a woman, as I have been. But with this difference: it will be a long time yet before you will realize that you have been slain.' And I said, 'If Louise is to do the slaying, I intend to die every day for the rest of my life or hers.' And he said, 'Ah; Louise. Were you speaking of Louise?' And I said, 'Dead.' I said, 'Dead.' I said, 'Dead.'"
But Mrs. King was not there. She was already half way up the stairs. She entered the room. Louise turned on the bed, her face swollen, with tears or with sleep. Mrs. King handed her the note. "There, honey. What did I tell you? He was just making a fool of you. Just using you to pass the time with."
The car was going fast when it turned into the highroad.
"Hurry," Louise said. The car increased speed; she looked back once toward the hotel, the park massed with oleander and crepe myrtle, then she crouched still lower in the seat beside Jarrod. "Faster," she said.
"I say faster, too," Jarrod said. He glanced down at her; then he looked down at her again. She was crying. "Are you that glad?" he said.
"I've lost something," she said, crying quietly. "Something I've had a long time, given to me when I was a child. And now I've lost it. I had it just this morning, and now I can't find it."
"Lost it?" he said. "Given to you..." His foot lifted; the car began to slow. "Why, you sent..."
"No, no!" Louise said. "Don't stop! Don't turn back! Go on!"
The car was coasting now, slowing, the brakes not yet on.
"Why, you... She said you were asleep." He put his foot on the brakes.
"No, no!" Louise cried. She had been sitting forward; she did not seem to have heard him at all. "Don't turn back! Go on! Go on!"
"And he knew," Jarrod thought. "Sitting there on the bench, he knew. When he said what he said: that I would not know that I had been slain."
The car was almost stopped. "Go on!" Louise cried. "Go on!" He was looking down at her. Her eyes looked as if they were blind; her face was pale, white, her mouth open, shaped to an agony of despair and a surrender in particular which, had he been older, he would have realized that he would never see again on any face. Then he watched his hand set the lever back into gear, and his foot come down again on the throttle. "He said it himself," Jarrod thought: "to be afraid, and yet to do. He said it himself: there's nothing in the world but being alive, knowing you are alive."
"Faster!" Louise cried. "Faster!" The car rushed on; the house, the broad veranda where the bright shawls were now sibilant, fell behind.
In that gathering of wide summer dresses, of sucked old breaths and gabbling females staccato, the proprietress stood on the veranda with the second note in her hand. "Married?" she said. "Married?" As if she were someone else, she watched herself open the note and read it again. It did not take long: Lily: Don't worry about me for a while longer. I'll sit here until supper time. Don't worry about me. J. M.
"Don't worry about me," she said. "About me." She went into the lobby, where the old Negro was pottering with a broom. "And Mr. Jarrod gave you this?"
"Yessum. Give it to me runnin' and tole me to git his bags into de cyar, and next I know, here Miss Louise and him whoosh! outen de drive and up de big road like a patter-roller."
"And they went toward Meridian?"
"Yessum. Right past de bench whar Doctor Jules settin'."
"Married," the proprietress said. "Married." Still carrying the note, she left the house and followed the path until she came in sight of the bench on which sat a motionless figure in white. She stopped again and re-read the note; again she looked up the path toward the bench which faced the road.
Then she returned to the house. The women had now dispersed into chairs, though their voices still filled the veranda, sibilant, inextricable one from another; they ceased suddenly as the proprietress approached and entered the house again.
She entered the house, walking fast. That was about an hour to sundown.
Dusk was beginning to fall when she entered the kitchen.
The porter was now sitting on a chair beside the stove, talking to the cook. The proprietress stopped in the door.
"Uncle Charley," she said, "Go and tell Doctor Jules supper will be ready soon."
The porter rose and left the kitchen by the side door.
When he passed the veranda, the proprietress stood on the top step. She watched him go on and disappear up the path toward the bench. A woman passed and spoke to her, but she made no reply; it was as though she had not heard, watching the shubbery beyond which the Negro had disappeared. And when he reappeared, the guests on the veranda saw her already in motion, descending the steps before they were even aware that the Negro was running, and they sat suddenly hushed and forward and watched her pass the Negro without stopping, her skirts lifted from her trim, school-mistress ankles and feet, and disappear up the path herself, running too. They were still sitting forward, hushed, when she too reappeared; they watched her come through the dusk and mount the porch, with on her face also a look of having seen something which she knew to be true but which she was not quite yet ready to believe. Perhaps that was why her voice was quite quiet when she addressed one of the guests by name, calling her "honey": "Doctor Martino has just died. Will you telephone to town for me?"