Penelope wrote to Deborah accepting her invitation. Forty-eight hours later Penelope and Sarah had packed a trunk with what was thought to be required for a country visit in the season. Ricey would accompany and attend them. On their last evening at Broughton Street before setting off the next morning, Penelope and Sarah sat together in the family parlor. Penelope held on her lap a cat named Prudence, and a copy of As You Like It in one hand, lowered to the circle of light provided by the oil lamp. She was reading the play again with particular attention to the part Rosalind played in it and trying to think of Lauretta’s acting it. It was absurd, of course, but then one never knew. Lauretta certainly had a flair for the dramatical. The large arc of gesture, the full tone, a tendency to hysteria in all her feelings which is the heightened mood of drama surely—yes, it might be. Sarah sat, the embroidery firmly in her lap, the two locked wooden hoops solid and definite as doomsday and resurrection. Sarah worked, Sarah silent, mild and meek. Looking at her, Penelope thought: Very well then—and the meek shall inherit the earth.

16

The members of the two households of Oaks and Beulah Land felt themselves to be waiting, at least for some sign of the future, if not a good clear word of direction. Felix and Bonard had returned from Savannah without, of course, having called at the Pennington house on Broughton Street. Staring at Selma’s trunk which remained at one side of his bedroom Bonard could, depending upon his mood, tell himself that if Selma rejoined him—and he had every confidence that she would in time—her clothes were already there; and if she did not, the clothes were packed and ready to go and could be out of the house in five minutes. It was a fact that Selma was the only virgin Bonard had ever lain with. When he thought of that hour, he tried to remember detail, but never was able to. If he thought of it with wounded pride and something akin to shame, he thought of it also with excitement that pushed him to lust, and one night when he retired to his room and saw the trunk suddenly as he entered from the hall with his lighted candle, he paused and set the candle down on top of the trunk. His mind seemed to follow his actions, as one may watch oneself in a dream, for he had not thought what he was going to do until he had actually loosened his trousers and pulled out his dick and masturbated it until his semen shot out over the trunk in insult and homage.