Welty - The bride of the Innisfallen and other stories

Copyright 1955, 1954, 1952, 1951, 1949 by Eudora Welty

Copyright renewed 1980, 1979, 1977 by Eudora Welty

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Some of these stories have appeared, a few in different form, in Accent, Harper's Bazaar, and Sewanee Review. The following appeared originally in The New Yorker: The Bride of the Innisfallen, No Place for You, My Love, and Kin. For permission to reprint them here the author is grateful to the editors.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Welty, Eudora, 1909
The bride of the Innisfallen, and other stories.
A Harvest/HBJ book.
I. Title.
PS3545.E6B7 1985 813'.52 84-22560
ISBN 0-15-614075-6

eISBN 978-0-544-10551-5
v2.0318

TO ELIZABETH BOWEN

They were strangers to each other, both fairly well strangers to the place, now seated side by side at luncheona party combined in a free-and-easy way when the friends he and she were with recognized each other across Galatoires. The time was a Sunday in summerthose hours of afternoon that seem Time Out in New Orleans.

The moment he saw her little blunt, fair face, he thought that here was a woman who was having an affair. It was one of those odd meetings when such an impact is felt that it has to be translated at once into some sort of speculation.

With a married man, most likely, he supposed, slipping quickly into a groovehe was long marriedand feeling more conventional, then, in his curiosity as she sat there, leaning her cheek on her hand, looking no further before her than the flowers on the table, and wearing that hat.

He did not like her hat, any more than he liked tropical flowers. It was the wrong hat for her, thought this Eastern businessman who had no interest whatever in womens clothes and no eye for them; he thought the unaccustomed thing crossly.

It must stick out all over me, she thought, so people think they can love me or hate me just by looking at me. How did it leave usthe old, safe, slow way people used to know of learning how one another feels, and the privilege that went with it of shying away if it seemed best? People in love like me, I suppose, give away the short cuts to everybodys secrets.

Something, though, he decided, had been settled about her predicamentfor the time being, anyway; the parties to it were all still alive, no doubt. Nevertheless, her predicament was the only one he felt so sure of here, like the only recognizable shadow in that restaurant, where mirrors and fans were busy agitating the light, as the very local talk drawled across and agitated the peace. The shadow lay between her fingers, between her little square hand and her cheek, like something always best carried about the person. Then suddenly, as she took her hand down, the secret fact was still thereit lighted her. It was a bold and full light, shot up under the brim of that hat, as close to them all as the flowers in the center of the table.

Did he dream of making her disloyal to that hopelessness that he saw very well shed been cultivating down here? He knew very well that he did not. What they amounted to was two Northerners keeping each other company. She glanced up at the big gold clock on the wall and smiled. He didnt smile back. She had that naive face that he associated, for no good reason, with the Middle Westbecause it said Show me, perhaps. It was a serious, now-watch-out-everybody face, which orphaned her entirely in the company of these Southerners. He guessed her age, as he could not guess theirs: thirty-two. He himself was further along.

Of all human moods, deliberate imperviousness may be the most quickly communicatedit may be the most successful, most fatal signal of all. And two people can indulge in imperviousness as well as in anything else. Youre not very hungry either, he said.

The blades of fan shadows came down over their two heads, as he saw inadvertently in the mirror, with himself smiling at her now like a villain. His remark sounded dominant and rude enough for everybody present to listen back a moment; it even sounded like an answer to a question she might have just asked him. The other women glanced at him. The Southern lookSouthern maskof life-is-a-dream irony, which could turn to pure challenge at the drop of a hat, he could wish well away. He liked navet better.

I find the heat down here depressing, she said, with the heart of Ohio in her voice.

WellIm in somewhat of a temper about it, too, he said.

They looked with grateful dignity at each other.

I have a car here, just down the street, he said to her as the luncheon party was rising to leave, all the others wanting to get back to their houses and sleep. If its all right withHave you ever driven down south of here?

Out on Bourbon Street, in the bath of July, she asked at his shoulder, South of New Orleans? I didnt know there was any south to here. Does it just go on and on? She laughed, and adjusted the exasperating hat to her head in a different way. It was more than frivolous, it was conspicuous, with some sort of glitter or flitter tied in a band around the straw and hanging down.

Thats what Im going to show you.

Ohyouve been there?

No!

His voice rang out over the uneven, narrow sidewalk and dropped back from the walls. The flaked-off, colored houses were spotted like the hides of beasts faded and shy, and were hot as a wall of growth that seemed to breathe flower-like down onto them as they walked to the car parked there.

Its just that it couldnt be any worsewell see.

All right, then, she said. We will.

So, their actions reduced to amiability, they settled into the cara faded-red Ford convertible with a rather threadbare canvas top, which had been standing in the sun for all those lunch hours.

Its rented, he explained. I asked to have the top put down, and was told Id lost my mind.

Its out of this world. Degrading heat, she said and added, Doesnt matter.

The stranger in New Orleans always sets out to leave it as though following the clue in a maze. They were threading through the narrow and one-way streets, past the pale-violet bloom of tired squares, the brown steeples and statues, the balcony with the live and probably famous black monkey dipping along the railing as over a ballroom floor, past the grillwork and the lattice-work to all the iron swans painted flesh color on the front steps of bungalows outlying.

Driving, he spread his new map and put his finger down on it. At the intersection marked Arabi, where their road led out of the tangle and he took it, a small Negro seated beneath a black umbrella astride a box chalked Shou Shine lifted his pink-and-black hand and waved them languidly good-by. She didnt miss it, and waved back.

Below New Orleans there was a raging of insects from both sides of the concrete highway, not quite together, like the playing of separated marching bands. The river and the levee were still on her side, waste and jungle and some occasional settlements on hispoor houses. Families bigger than housefuls thronged the yards. His nodding, driving head would veer from side to side, looking and almost lowering. As time passed and the distance from New Orleans grew, girls ever darker and younger were disposing themselves over the porches and the porch steps, with jet-black hair pulled high, and ragged palm-leaf fans rising and falling like rafts of butterflies. The children running forth were nearly always naked ones.