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Title: Mamba's daughters
        A novel of Charleston

Author: DuBose Heyward

Release date: June 2, 2025 [eBook #76211]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Literary Guild, 1928

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, Mary Fahnestock-Thomas, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAMBA'S DAUGHTERS ***





MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS




BOOKS BY DU BOSE HEYWARD


  ANGEL

  SKYLINES AND HORIZONS

  MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS

  PORGY: A NOVEL

  PORGY: A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS
  (WITH DOROTHY HEYWARD)

  CAROLINA CHANSONS
  (WITH HERVEY ALLEN)




  DU BOSE HEYWARD

  MAMBA’S
  DAUGHTERS

  A
  NOVEL
  OF
  CHARLESTON

  [Illustration]

  THE LITERARY GUILD
  NEW YORK      1929




  [Illustration]

  COPYRIGHT, 1929
  BY DU BOSE HEYWARD
  COPYRIGHT, 1928
  BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING CO.
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
  GARDEN CITY. N. Y.




AUTHOR’S NOTE


Because I believe that regional literature, even though it be avowedly
fictional, should be unequivocal in its identification with its
locale, I have not hesitated in this novel to apply the correct names
to the city, streets, and outlying districts of which I write. Lest
this course should lead the reader into confusing the narrative with
either history or biography, I desire to stress the fact that the
work is purely imaginative and is concerned only with certain social
and spiritual values existing in Charleston and its environs. For the
purposes of the novel the material has been subjected to an intense
synthesis. Thus the phosphate mining camp stands not merely as an
exposition of an isolated industry, but as a focal point for the
drawing together of a number of mental attitudes and incidents typical
of the industrial black belt. With the exception of allusions to people
whose correct names are used, and who will be readily recognized, the
characters who appear in the book are fictional creations and are not
intended as representations of actual characters either living or dead.

                                                        DU BOSE HEYWARD.

  Charleston, South Carolina,
    October, 1928.




PART I




PART I


It was no mere chance that, during the first decade of the new century,
brought Mamba out of the darkness of the underworld into the light of
the Wentworths’ kitchen. Casual as that event seemed, there is good
evidence for the belief that it had its origin in some obscure recess
of the woman’s mind; or in perhaps some deep and but half comprehended
instinct that drove her, against the reasoning of her brain, to embark
upon what must have seemed a fantastically hopeless venture. For Mamba
had arrived at an age that lay on the downhill side of fifty, and her
habitat had always been the waterfront.

The amazing thing is that, having arrived at her decision, she was able
to muster the courage necessary to take the step.

In the Charleston of Mamba’s day the negro population might have been
divided into two general classes: the upper, consisting of those who
had white folks, belonged to the negro quality and enjoyed a certain
dolorous respectability; and the lower class, members of which had no
white folks and were little better than outcasts.

How long Mamba had incubated her amazing plan there is no way of
knowing. It is quite certain, however, that she reinforced the
initial whisper with a “cunjer” that promised success, and that then,
armed only with an enormous and devious experience and a remarkable
histrionic talent, she selected her point of attack. But in the last
step she showed the genius that was to predestine her to ultimate
success.

The Wentworths, as was well known, had been wealthy plantation people
before the war. But that fate which arranges the rise and fall of
aristocracies had placed the original grant from the British Crown
directly across the line of march to be taken six generations later by
General Sherman. The condition of the Wentworths after the army had
passed through their plantation was a sustained corroboration of the
general’s famous definition. Immediately after the war the family had
abandoned the charred remnants of what had once been the ancestral
home, sold the land to liquidate old debts, and moved to Charleston.
There they settled in the little brick dwelling near the Battery that
they still occupied when they were elected by Mamba as her point of
attack.

At that time there were four members of the family. Mrs. Wentworth
was a widow in the early forties, possessed of intelligence,
unquenchable industry, and a personal charm that the exigent years
were stiffening into a manner almost too rigid for so soft a word. It
was so desperately important for her children to hold their place in
the society in which they had been born. It was as though, knowing
the material odds against her, she dared not give an inch. The boy,
St. Julien de Chatigny Wentworth, was now fourteen years of age. He
had inherited an ancestral curse in the nickname of Saint, and was at
the stage of being torn between a genuine desire for knowledge and
the frustrating public-school system of the period. Polly, the girl,
was altogether charming. A slender blonde of twelve, she was now in
attendance at the Misses Sass’s school for young gentlewomen, on Legaré
Street, and in accordance with the custom of the old city was just
beginning to attend her first dancing-school soirées in the company
of her brother. The fourth and by no means the least important member
of the family was Maum Netta. She was a small intensely black woman
of great delicacy of feeling, and with a sense of social values that
was infallible. If she lacked anything that one had a right to expect
it was, strangely enough for her race, a sense of humour, and one
shrewdly suspected that she had deliberately suppressed this quality
as jeopardising the dignity of her position. It is certain that she
requited the Wentworths for their protection and love with a loyalty,
devotion, and faith that imposed upon the two children an obligation of
fulfilment almost as deep as that implicit in the relationship of child
to parent.

It will be readily seen that the Wentworths just described presented
a highly vulnerable front to the invasion of the Four Hundred planned
by Mamba. Had the family been larger and wealthier she could not have
gained the attention of the white folks and would probably have been
given scant courtesy by the new-time negroes in the kitchen. Here
was a family born in the slave-holding tradition of amused and even
affectionate tolerance toward the negro once that negro had detached
himself from the mass and become identified as an individual. Here,
too, in the person of Maum Netta was a gentle and highly competent
instructor in the intricate technique that the aged tyro must acquire.
True, she knew that the old servant would treat her with well-bred
condescension, but, with the true spirit of the social climber, she was
prepared to pocket her pride until it could be worn with dignity.

The exact moment of attack was timed to a nicety, and slipped into
its place with that appearance of casualness which is the result
of infinitely calculated preparation. It was spring in Charleston,
and almost overnight the sudden uprush of life from the soil had
transformed the town. Wisteria dropped its purple stalactites from
the trees and gateposts, and the roses lifted in a foam of colour and
perfume over the garden walls. Even the air had a soft velvet on it,
like pollen on a petal. It was inconceivable that at such a time hearts
could be hardened or harsh words spoken.

The evening was one of unusual excitement in the little brick house.
Saint was to escort his sister to her first soirée. Polly was slim and
lovely in her white dress with its hand-worked border made after hours
by Mrs. Wentworth. But there were no flowers for the début. In all the
city of bloom the little brick house was without a garden, its four
massive walls crowding the little lot to the limit of its accommodation.

The child was breathless with longing.

“Please, Mother, please; May, and Damaris, and the Hugers all have big
gardens. It won’t take a minute to run over to Legaré Street and ask
for some roses. Saint will go. Won’t you, Saint?”

But the mother said: “I am sorry, dear, you can’t, you know. We are too
poor to have our own, and that is the very reason why we cannot ask.
Remember what Landor says, ‘You have already paid the highest price for
a thing when you have asked for it.’”

“Yes, I know. Horrid, rich old thing. I bet he never wanted anything in
his life that he couldn’t run to a shop and buy.”

Saint put in: “Aw, they have millions and millions of them. It wouldn’t
be really giving, they wouldn’t miss ’em.”

“I know, dears, but they will have to be offered. We cannot ask.”

Tears then--tragedy in that gay moment of departure; high-strung little
nerves jumping from tears to laughter and back again. And a mist in
Mrs. Wentworth’s eyes, the obstinacy of an idealist in her firm mouth
and lifted chin.

And Saint: “Aw, come on. Don’t get all messed up over a few flowers.”

Maum Netta opened the door from the kitchen into the dining room where
desire and ethics were grappling. “Dere’s uh ’oman outside wot say she
want fuh see Missie. She ain’t berry clean. Maybe Missie better come in
de kitchen fuh see um.”

The three Wentworths adjourned to the immaculate little kitchen, and
there they beheld an incongruous picture. Mamba stood just within the
door, and as they entered she dropped a deep courtesy. She was a woman
of medium height, frail almost to a point of emaciation. She was not a
full-blooded African negro, but her prominent nose, and the coppery
cast to her dark skin suggested a strain of American Indian rather
than an admixture of white blood in her veins. Her face had reached
the point at which it tells nothing of age. As it looked now with its
multitudinous wrinkles, it would still look at her death. She smiled
a little timidly and revealed a lonely yellow fang in the middle of
her lower gum. Then she took a step forward into the full light of the
kerosene lamp and looked into the face of the slender blonde girl.
From the network of wrinkles the woman’s eyes, large and of a peculiar
live-brown brilliance, looked startlingly out, bright with the fire of
indomitable youth. Standing directly before Polly she courtesied again
and brought from behind her back a large shower of Dorothy Perkins
roses. The stems were wrapped with tinfoil and tied with floss that had
been fashioned into a cord with tassels exactly like those displayed in
the florists’ windows on King Street.

“Ah tink how my Little Missie goin’ tuh dance tuh Miss Snowden party
to-night, an’ Ah say dat de p’utties’ lady dere ought fuh hab flower.”

She swung her rags about her in another courtesy, and extended the
bouquet.

Polly gave a gasp of pleasure and held out her hand to take the
flowers. The terrible ogre of ethics again raised its head. If one
could not ask a neighbour for roses, could one accept a gift of
roses that had undoubtedly been stolen over the wall of the selfsame
neighbour?

“I think that we must know where those flowers came from before we take
them,” Mrs. Wentworth interposed a little weakly.

“Ah gots frien’ who gardener on Legaré Street, Miss. He gib me lot ob
flower.”

Saint cut the Gordian knot: “Take the old flowers and let’s go. We’ll
be late, anyhow, with all this talk.” Then, seizing his sister by one
arm as she caught the bouquet to her breast with the other, he rushed
her to the door, and before Mrs. Wentworth could say anything more,
their feet had pattered into silence down the street.

The mother turned and looked at Mamba. There was a moment of silence,
then the strange old woman gazed up into her face with her amazing
girl’s eyes, and smiled her wide single-toothed smile. Mrs. Wentworth
threw back her head and laughed. “Where did you come from?” she asked.

“Oh, not so fur. Ah been see Little Missie go by ebery day, an’ Ah jes
can’t wait no longer tuh put dem flower whar day b’longs.”

Mrs. Wentworth turned with her hand on the dining-room door knob. “I
am sure it was very good of you,” she said, “and now you must let Maum
Netta give you some supper before you go away. It was so very odd, your
coming just to-night.”

But was it odd, after all? Was it not rather one of those inevitable
happenings that are so often mistaken for coincidences but are in
reality the mathematical result of a premise originating in some remote
but unswerving human purpose?

       *       *       *       *       *

There was that about the invisible comings and goings of Mamba,
after that first night, which tended to confirm Mrs. Wentworth’s
grave misgivings. It suggested a proficiency that smacked of the
professional, like a game of poker or billiards that is almost too
expert for a gentleman. She would prowl about the kitchen door-yard as
silent and as unswervingly watchful as a neighbourhood cat, and then,
without having been seen in the house, she would leave the evidence of
a visit there in some gift for Polly or service for a member of the
family.

On the morning following the soirée there were fresh roses, with
dew still on the petals, heaped on the girl’s breakfast plate. Mrs.
Wentworth, who was a sharp observer, noticed that they had been torn
from the vine. Gardeners on Legaré Street were well trained and were
provided with shears. Most certainly she must tell Maum Netta not to
allow the woman to return. She was not of the type to be encouraged.
But after breakfast, when Mrs. Wentworth repaired to the kitchen, she
encountered a new complication.

Maum Netta was seated in unaccustomed ease eating her breakfast and
Mamba was just drying the last of the dishes. During the moment that
Mrs. Wentworth stood unobserved in the doorway, she was an eavesdropper
upon a masterpiece of diplomacy. Mamba was saying: “Tek yo’ ease,
Mistress Netta, tek yo’ ease. Ah knows dishwashin’ ain’t fuh de quality
cullud folks. Attuh yo’ done git up, an’ comb yo’ putty gray hair, an’
cook dis fine breakfus, an’ ’splain tuh yo’ white folks what tuh do all
day, yo’ ought fuh tek yo’ ease an’ studdy ’bout yo’ frien’ Gawd, while
some poor-folks nigger like me cleans up attuh yo’.”

Maum Netta, with great dignity, expressing itself in a heavy
lugubriousness, but already making social concessions:

“Well, it use’ tuh be dat-a-way. Dey was always kitchen niggers in de
ole days. But t’ings is change’ now, t’ings is change’.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s cool high-bred syllables fell chill across the
gathering warmth and requested Maum Netta’s presence in the dining
room. When the door was closed she turned to the old negress.

The mistress could have bungled then. A single flat order could have
done it. But instinctively she closed with a question, thereby throwing
the burden on Maum Netta, and at once rebuking her and re-establishing
her integrity.

“I am really provoked, Mauma” (she had not gone as far as that in
years); “I was just going to ask that woman to leave the premises, and
I find you accepting favours of her. You know we have no money to pay a
servant. Now, what am I to do?”

“Ah sorry, Miss. Dat a hahd ’oman tuh say no tuh. See if yo’ can find a
ole dress or somet’ing an’ Ah’ll gib it tuh she an’ sen’ she away.”

There was silence in the kitchen, and the tension of impending crisis
when Mrs. Wentworth returned with some old clothing thrown over her
arm. In a cool, positive tone of finality which dismissed a mutual
future and expunged the past, she said:

“Maum Netta will attend to those dishes. Thank you for helping us. Here
are some old clothes.”

But she got no further. Mamba courtesied almost to the floor, with her
rags trailing grotesquely about her. Then she raised a face that was
radiant with gratitude. She started talking rapidly while she took the
clothes, and her volubility increased as she backed toward the door.
Twice Mrs. Wentworth attempted to stem the tide, then gave it up.

“Oh, t’ank yo’, Miss. Ah’s too t’ankful. Ah’s been too ’shame’ tuh come
roun’ yo’ an’ Little Missie in dese ole rags. Now Ah’s goin’ be dat
clean my own ma wouldn’t know me. Now Ah t’ink dat de nex’ time Little
Missie go to dance she ain’t goin’ be ’shame’ fuh let me go long wid
she an’ carry she slipper bag.”

The queer bobbing figure paused for a moment in the open door; then,
with its hand on the knob, raised its head. Out of the meshed wrinkles
and folds of skin looked the woman’s astounding eyes, audacious and
mocking, then for a second in the closing door they caught the mood of
the toothless smile and overflowed with laughter.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two days passed and a Sunday came. No sign of Mamba. Mrs. Wentworth
dismissed the whole episode as closed. The day was glorious with spring
sunshine, and the air was throbbing to the music of St. Michael’s
chimes. Mamba rounded a corner a block away from the front door of
the Wentworth residence, then stopped and lingered unobtrusively in a
recessed gateway. She could not keep her feet still while the chimes
were playing, and the shabby, broad toe that extended from beneath
the hem of her recently acquired neat gray dress tapped gently on the
pavement. She knew well the rotation of the tunes: “Shall We Gather at
the River?” “There Is a Blessed Home,” and the way the music dropped
an octave on a high note where a bell was missing. George Washington
Christopher Gadsden, the ancient bell ringer, was a crony of hers, and
she smiled now at the thought of his favourite joke on the white people
in the pews. Yes, there it was, slipped in between “There Is a Blessed
Home” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers”:

  “Sistuh Ca’line, Sistuh Ca’line,
    Can’t yo’ dance the peavine?”

Two lines of the old song that the negroes loved, then on into the next
hymn without missing a beat. He’d be laughing now at his joke, up there
by himself in the steeple.

Suddenly the tune stopped and the bells commenced to toll. Three
minutes now before service. Mamba peered from her retreat, and an
expression of satisfaction overspread her features as the three
Wentworths stepped from their front door and proceeded decorously
toward the calling bells.

In the Wentworth kitchen Maum Netta was washing her dishes and singing
a spiritual in her high, slightly cracked soprano. She reached for a
high note and held it with evident pride. Then through the open window
there entered a melodious contralto note that met it and rang with it
in resonant chord. Maum Netta’s eyes widened with pleasure while she
held her note to the limit of her lung capacity. Then she crossed to
the window and looked out. Mamba was seated immediately below her on
the doorstep, and she met the older woman’s gaze with an expression
of awe. “My Gawd, Mauma,” she half whispered, “how come nobody ain’t
nebber tell me yo’ kin sing like dat?”

“Cose Ah kin sing.” Then slowly the necessity of being firm with this
person began to triumph over flattered vanity. “But dat’s neider here
nor dere. Ah gots orders from Miss Wentworth not fuh leabe yo’ come
’roun’ here no mo’.”

“Cos yo’ has, Mauma, cose yo’ has. Ain’t Ah knows Ah ain’t yo’ kind ob
folks? Ain’t Ah knows my place? Now, don’t yo’ worry none about dat. Ah
ain’t goin’ let dese feet go ober dat do’ no matter how hahd dey begs
me. But sence all de white folks done gone to church, why can’t yo’ an’
me set here, jes as we is, yo’ in yo’ place, and me jes in de outdoors,
an’ sing some tuhgedder. Ah jes been a-wonnerin’ if yo’ knows ‘Light in
de Grabeyahd Outshine de Sun!’”

Without waiting to risk further parley, Mamba raised the tune.

  “Light in de grabeyahd outshine de sun,
   Outshine de sun, outshine de sun,
   Light in de grabeyahd outshine de sun,
   Way beyon’ de moon.

  “My Christian people, hol’ out yo’ light,
   Hol’ out yo’ light, hol’ out yo’ light,
   My Christian people, hol’ out yo’ light,
   Way beyon’ de moon.”

Deep, tender, and true, and slurring only a little from the toothless
gums, her contralto notes lifted to the window where the older woman
stood, and called with that same irresistible quality of youth that
shone in the woman’s eyes. Mamba was not merely singing for her supper
now. The gratification of that mysterious urge that had started her
on her adventure hung in the balance. She let the whole force of her
longing throb in the mysterious music.

Maum Netta listened for a moment. No negro can resist harmony, and
while soprano voices of great beauty are common enough among them,
contraltos are rare. Mamba’s tone dropped almost into the baritone
register, and throbbed there full and true. She commenced to sway
slowly from side to side as she sat there on the step. Maum Netta
tried the harmony with one light note, and it was as though she had
unlocked floodgates, for the spiritual swept irresistibly from her
lips. She returned on tiptoe to her dishes, her head thrown back, and
her soul going out in that strange communion that comes from merging
two separate and imperfect voices into a rare and beautiful common
offering. The little kitchen, and the small brick-paved yard rocked to
the enchantment of it. The rhythm possessed itself of its creators. In
the dining room the little mahogany clock on the mantel sent its hands
spinning on toward noon.

Church was over, and Mrs. Wentworth approached the little brick house
chatting with several neighbours.

“I did not know there was a negro church near,” one of them remarked.
“Why, that singing seems to be right in our block.”

“And Sunday too!” contributed a little woman with arched eyebrows and a
chronically shocked voice.

Mrs. Wentworth did not like this neighbour, so she said sweetly: “Well,
after all, they are spirituals, you know. The negroes evidently still
think that Sunday is the Lord’s Day.” But her defensive attitude wilted
suddenly. She was before her own door now, and grim forebodings were
upon her. She excused herself hurriedly and entered. A moment later she
stood surveying a scene that, while it tempted her to laughter, told
her in no uncertain terms that she was in that moment witnessing her
own defeat.

Maum Netta sat just inside of the room with her turbaned head nodding
back and forth to the measure of the spiritual. The door stood wide
open, and upon the step sat Mamba swaying and patting with her large,
flat feet and throwing her whole being into the music. But the visitor
had not been idle, and therein lay her triumph. Before her on the
marble step, fairly sparkling in the sun, were ranged all of the shoes
possessed by the family. The last one, a dancing pump of Saint’s, was
just being given a final polish.

Mrs. Wentworth was obliged to speak a second time before she could make
her presence known.

“Maum Netta, have you gone raving crazy?”

Instant silence in the kitchen, and the slow gathering together of
faculties in the two before her, like people waking from a daze. What
was the use! Mrs. Wentworth re-entered the dining room, closed the door
behind her, and gave herself over to impotent laughter.

With the success of the shoe-shining episode, Mamba attained her first
definite objective. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Wentworth was predestined
for failure in such a situation by reason of her virtues rather than
her weaknesses, and where such is the case, a cause is indeed hopeless.
Mamba, born of a race that owed its very existence to its understanding
of the ruling white, knew just how vulnerable those virtues were, and
so she had only to direct her attack against them and bide her time.
Her position was now fairly secure. She had only to keep a favour ahead
of her victim, leaving upon her the burden of an unrepaid obligation.
The Wentworths had no money wherewith to compensate her, and so, in
lieu thereof, she must be given food in the kitchen and the outworn and
easily recognisable garments of her new mistress. To the neighbourhood,
and even in her own eyes, this soon gave her the superficial
colouration of a retainer of the aristocracy. Presently, when she was
safely out of earshot of Maum Netta, she commenced to refer to the
Wentworth household as “my white folks.”

Mamba had no regular hours for her comings and goings, but she had
a way of materialising dramatically in the moment of emergency, and
she delighted in certain conspicuous services of a social nature. To
Polly’s great pride she insisted on following her to the soirées and
carrying her slipper bag ostentatiously to the dressing-room door.
Then, while the dance was in progress, she would play the ladies’ maid
with the waiting negresses who had come with the wealthy girls from the
Battery homes. More than one amazing story of her daughter’s talents
and her own wealth circled back to Mrs. Wentworth, and were easily
traced by her to these below-stairs gatherings at the dances.

Mamba’s logic in these cases was simple: what could possibly give her
more distinction than to be the maid of a young lady of quality, who
was sufficiently distinguished to have a maid! But around the little
brick house she was humility personified.

How the old woman must have longed to adopt the head kerchief such as
was worn by Maum Netta and was the traditional badge of the house-bred
servant! But she was well aware that this would be a fatal presumption.
For the present, at least, she must depend on the neat, partly worn
clothing of Mrs. Wentworth for her borrowed respectability. As for
her head, it was still treated in the astonishing manner common among
older negroes who had not been born to the dignity of the kerchief, and
whose generation had not yet adopted kink-remover. The wool was divided
into a dozen or more equal tufts. Each of these was tightly wrapped
with string, commencing at the tip and ending at the scalp; then the
collection, resembling rope ends, was drawn together and united in a
tight knob on the crown. The general effect was as though an enormous
gray tarantula had settled upon the head, and was holding on tightly
with outstretched legs. But if Mamba dared not essay the head kerchief,
she did the next best thing, and was seldom seen thereafter without her
hat.

When the first autumn arrived neighbours were commencing to identify
Mamba as “that new negro of the Wentworths’.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Three years passed without a change in the relative positions of Mamba
and her adopted white folks, except that by her continued association
with them she became a copartner in their fortunes. She received no
wages, and this gave her an independence that she loved. She had a
way of dropping out of sight for days at a time. The Wentworths never
speculated as to her private life. They took her as they found her. But
so subtle are the forces that knit human relationships together that
the time arrived without their realising it when no matter of serious
importance could affect either of the participants in the strange
partnership without bearing upon the destinies of the other.

Fortunes had waned in the little brick house. Polly was approaching
the time when she would graduate from her school. She could name the
English kings forward and backward, speak French, spell perfectly, and
do sums in elementary arithmetic. So much for what might have been
classed as commercial assets with which to meet the exactions of the
Twentieth Century. But from the gentle and charming old ladies she
had absorbed the old Southern gentlewoman tradition that had lingered
on in the disintegrating old school like rose leaves in a jar. She
danced beautifully, and in her eyes was that unutterable word that men,
seeing, answered. She already had a host of beaux, and the career to
which she was predestined by birth, tradition, and instinct resolved
itself in its particular detail to a matter of selection when the
proper time should arrive. But she must be given an opportunity of
appearing to advantage during the momentous period that would lie
between graduation and marriage.

Saint was a disappointment to every one but Mamba. He had failed
utterly to yield to the standardising process of the public school. He
was sensitive and took refuge from humiliating realities in a dream
world of his own. The result was absent-mindedness. Teachers told him
that he was a fool, and he believed them. A gangling adolescent of
seventeen, out of school and not yet at work, practically penniless,
with the look of a hurt animal in his eyes, he spent most of his time
roaming the waterfront. His acquaintances who caught glimpses of him in
those days decided that he was definitely a failure, and potentially a
confirmed ne’er-do-well. Not that he was dissipated. It was probably
worse. The old town looked with indulgent eyes upon youth in its
wild-oats stage. That was something rooted in tradition, understood.
Good blood could be counted upon to win through in that reckless
period. Fathers and uncles would exchange sly winks that condoned the
indiscretions of to-day, while they implied a vanished but far more
adventurous youth of their own. “Get it safely over with, then marry
and settle down.” “Better before than after.” “Young blood, young
blood.” Yes, undoubtedly boys not only would, but _should_, be boys.
But Saint was a boy who obviously did not even have the initiative
to be one. It was too bad. And poor Kate Wentworth a widow too. The
boy felt it rising in the air about him like a tangible wall--a wall
against which he could bruise himself cruelly, but from which he could
not escape.

Sometimes at the waterfront he would forget. There were sights there
that had nothing to do with the personal equation, that were detached
from actuality and seemed to invade the territory of dreams. Negroes
crossing a dock head single file, with cotton bales on their trucks--a
frieze of rhythmic bodies against a blue-green sea horizon. He’d like
to catch that so that it could not elude him again; fix it in some
medium that he could carry away with him--paint, maybe. But one could
not study to paint, one could not study anything until one had passed
in algebra. There it stood like a Chinese wall about all knowledge.
It had to be mastered before one could go on. Well, he had been born
without that kind of a brain. His friends had been more fortunate and
were getting ahead. He had been dropped from his classes--the fate
of the fool. He was at least logical enough to follow that to its
conclusion. But here he was--and what next?

Only Mamba seemed to understand the boy. Days would come when the old
woman would grow restive under her strait-jacket of respectability,
and the two would be discovered by Mrs. Wentworth in a corner of the
kitchen yard seated on an empty packing case. Mamba, with her disguise
laid aside, and a look of low and humorous cunning on her lined face,
would be nodding her gray tarantula up and down while she told a story.
Saint was always the listener, laughing his shy, quiet laugh and
forgetting himself in the tale.

       *       *       *       *       *

Summer came, and with it a desperate decision on the part of Mrs.
Wentworth; a decision that quite unexpectedly resulted in an important
step in Mamba’s social evolution. That one may know how desperate the
situation in the little brick house had become, it is only necessary
to say that a cottage was to be hired at the shore, furnished with the
Wentworth plate and linen, and that a limited number of “paying guests”
were to be permitted to share the sanctity of a Wentworth home.

Mamba decided to accompany the family; Maum Netta went as a matter of
course, and at the ferry that was to convey them on the first phase of
the journey they were joined by a round-bellied negro who had about him
a look of great importance. Upon arriving at their destination this
individual was found to possess a reputation for cooking, an enormous
white chef’s cap, and, to the delight of the two women, an entirely
adequate tenor voice.

Mamba was living well now, and she should have been happy. She
performed only such light work as suited her fancy. The kitchen was
far enough from the house to allow almost constant singing. There was
a shady breeze-swept piazza for the hot mornings, and at night the
unremitting flow of broad sea winds under the soft summer stars. But
that mysterious fire in her spirit would not let her rest. The other
negroes tried to laugh her out of her preoccupation, but without
avail. Sometimes in the middle of a song she would leave and stand at
the piazza rail, gazing over the bay to where the lights of the town
created a false illusion of dawn against the west, and her eyes would
be filled with a nostalgic longing.

By August Mrs. Wentworth’s venture had proved itself to be a distinct
success. The house was well filled, and the pleasant uneventful days
were yielding a financial profit that promised well for the future. But
to Mamba the month was tremendous and memorable, for it brought to that
opportunist the epoch-making episode of the judge’s teeth.

Judge Harkness had arrived for a rest immediately after the June term
of court. It is unlikely that a more distinguished figure had trod the
sands of Sullivan’s Island since the historic days of General Moultrie.
He was tall, and of a commanding presence, and the proper finish was
added to his appearance by a well-clipped beard, and pince-nez. Maum
Netta placed him socially with the tribute:

“Me an’ you, Cook, we talks cullud folks’ talk. Miss Wentwort’, she
talk white folks’ talk, but de Jedge, now--he ain’t speak nutting but
de grammar.”

But the judge was too closely allied with the law for Mamba to admit
his superiority. She had a way of sucking her tooth with a loud,
derisive sound, and she employed this method of expressing her disdain
to the kitchen whenever he was discussed. Once she contributed her
comment, and with it stripped him to the fundamental weakness of the
male.

“Yas, Ah seen um once, a-settin’ on he bench wid he long black robe
on, sendin’ nigger tuh jail, like he been Gawd. But don’ yuh fergit,
onnerneat’ dat black wrapper he gots on two-leg pants same like Cook
dere.”

Now the cook had acquired a reputation among the negresses of the
neighbourhood, and the connotation freighted her remark with outrageous
implication. The cook beamed with unctuous satisfaction. Maum Netta
pretended at first not to understand, then frowned her disapproval.
Mamba, enjoying her own audacity immensely, closed her eyes to narrow
slits, and sat there looking darkly mysterious.

This particular August morning was in the midst of one of the hottest
spells of the season. From the Wentworth cottage the waves could be
seen crawling far up the beach and dissolving into low, monotonous
breakers, as though reluctant to release their cooling spray into the
close atmosphere. The judge had risen early and gone in for his morning
dip. Several guests sat listlessly on the piazza, waiting for breakfast
with pre-coffee indifference to life so common in the American home.

Mamba was cleaning a pan of fish in the kitchen when her keen ears
caught sudden exclamations of interest from the front of the house. She
dropped her pan, and, trailing a suggestion of whiting behind her, ran
to the piazza and gazed over the heads of the guests who were gathered
at the piazza rail, their coffee for the moment forgotten.

In the shallow surf, not a hundred yards away, a most amazing sight
presented itself. The judge was on all fours, roaming back and forth
over a section of beach that might have measured twenty-five feet
square. The agitated movements of the body, the turning at a given
point as though stopped by steel bars, inevitably suggested the caged
animal.

“Why, he’s gone crazy,” one of the women shrilled.

Suddenly the strange performance ceased. The judge got to his feet
and started toward the house. As he passed the piazza on his way to
the rear entrance, it seemed to the onlookers that his dignity had
fallen from him. His figure in its wet bathing suit gave the effect
of shrinking away. One hand was held over his face but was unable to
conceal the blight of senility that seemed to have settled upon it. In
a final blundering rush he gained his room and closed the door behind
him.

A babblement of speculation and comment burst forth, but was
immediately met by Mrs. Wentworth’s instinctive generalship. “The
judge seems a little upset,” she remarked quietly. “I am sure he will
appreciate silence in which to collect himself. Saint, you must go at
once and see what you can do for him.”

It is unlikely that the shy, self-conscious boy ever experienced a
more cruel moment. But there was actual physical propulsion in Mrs.
Wentworth’s voice that morning, and it seemed visibly to lift the
reluctant lad to his feet and thrust him through the dreaded portal.

The guests waited eagerly for Saint’s return, but when he came they
were doomed to disappointment, for he went straight to the kitchen door
and summoned Mamba.

When he had conducted her out into the middle of the road, safely out
of earshot of the house, he said:

“What do you think?--the old boy’s lost his teeth.”

The woman bent double in the silent folding contortion that served her
for laughter. The boy continued: “And, as he never wears his glasses
in, of course he could not find them. I thought of you right away and
told him you’d go down and look for them. That cheered him up a lot.
Says he’ll give you five dollars if you find them before the next car
to town.”

Mamba was very serious now. “Yo’ ain’t forget yo’ frien’, does yo’,
Mistuh Saint? Ah’ll git right down.”

The morning advanced and the heat became intense. There was no breeze
from the sea and the sun was a white dazzle on the broad, flat beach.
It would be noon before the judge could get his car to the city, and up
to the last moment Mamba could be seen engaged upon her search. Then,
almost in the moment of the judge’s departure, drama developed at the
little station. The unfortunate man left the cottage and hurried toward
the tracks with a furtive air. Mamba approached from the beach and was
joined at the house by Saint.

“Any luck?” he whispered.

Mamba raised her eyes, and for a moment the boy was puzzled by what
he saw there. He got the odd impression that some conflict was taking
place behind them, some working of the brain that the old woman
wanted to keep to herself. This was not like his friend. She told him
things, just as he did her. A question was on his lips. Then suddenly
she looked down, and her old body seemed to wilt. Her face quivered
slightly and she mopped the moisture from her brow with a corner of her
apron.

“No, Ah ain’t fin’ um,” she muttered, “an’, Gawd, Ah’s hot an’ wore
out.” The hand that held the apron corner trembled.

“Well, he’s got to give you something, anyway,” the boy asserted with a
new note of authority. “Come along quick.”

The cars were pulling in when they reached the station. They had no
time to lose. Saint touched Judge Harkness on his sleeve, and a face
was turned toward him that would have been mirth-provoking had it not
been for its pitiful defencelessness.

The authority in the boy’s voice was going, and he spoke hurriedly on
the last of its ebb: “This old woman has been searching the beach all
morning. She did not find--anything. But she’s awfully hot and tired
and all that.”

The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out a two-dollar bill which he
handed to Mamba.

“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.

Judge Harkness climbed the steps. The wheels commenced to grind on the
sandy tracks. Saint felt his body thrust sharply aside, and a figure
leaped past him and on to the platform of the Jim Crow car. Wheels were
humming now, and windows sliding past in a blur of glass and faces.
Then suddenly Mamba’s face and an arm waving to him from a rear window.
Dumfounded, he looked into the wide, laughing eyes. Then Mamba smiled
that broad, unforgettable, single-toothed smile of hers, that was
unlike any one else’s that Saint had ever known. A sudden premonition
smote the lonely boy and etched the strange picture indelibly into his
memory. It was well that he caught it then, for it was more than twenty
years before he saw it again on Mamba’s face.

Under the pelting heat of the August sun two passengers left the ferry
the moment that it landed in the city and, taking opposite sides of
the street, set off briskly toward the retail section. One of them was
Judge Harkness; the other, Mamba.

Taking the least frequented streets, they cut across the city, the
man furtive and ill at ease, the woman smiling the secret smile of
a Mona Lisa, while the sun hurled its vertical rays down upon her
unprotected head. When they arrived at King Street, with its shop
windows and hanging signs, their ways parted. The judge crossed the
thoroughfare, hesitated for a moment before an unobtrusive brass plate
marked DENTIST, then plunged through a door into welcoming gloom. Mamba
continued on her way until she came to a glass case, fastened against
the front of a building, that had often engaged her fascinated regard.
In it were a number of examples of dental art, and in its centre a
complete set of teeth operated by a mechanism that kept them chewing
with a slow hypnotising rhythm upon an imaginary cud.

Mamba knew this place by reputation. It was here that her wealthy
friends came for their gold teeth. She entered and climbed a flight of
stairs to the office. Through an open door she saw a young man in a
dirty white coat sitting in a dentist’s chair, reading a newspaper. She
smiled, and the young man raised his eyes, then threw away his paper
and stepped eagerly forward.

“Can I do anything for you, Auntie?” he asked superfluously.

In portentous silence Mamba hoisted her apron up and untied a large
knot in one corner. Then she exhibited to the astonished gaze of the
dentist a dollar bill, eighty-five cents in change, and a formidable
set of teeth, which, upon examination, revealed the fact that their
interstices were filled with sand.

“What do you want me to do with these?” he asked.

“Fit ’em tuh me.”

“Were they made for you?”

“Not zactly, but most.”

The man handed them back. “Sorry, but you have to get them made
especially for you. Now, for forty dollars----”

Mamba laid her hand on his arm. He stopped speaking and looked up in
surprise. He had not noticed her eyes before. Now he saw in them an
agony of longing that made him hesitate. She had his hand now, and was
fumbling with his fingers, keeping her eyes on his all the time. She
pressed the money into his hand that still held the teeth, then closed
it tightly between both of hers.

The man tried to protest, but Mamba, still holding his hand closed
so that he could not return her possessions, plunged into her plea.
“Here’s yo’ an’ me an’ dem teet’ an’ one dolluh an’ eighty-five cent
all right here togedder now. It done tek me ober six yeah tuh arrange
um. Ef we ebber get separate’ now, Gawd know ef it eber happen again.
We gots tuh fix ’em somehow, Boss. We jus’ gots tuh!”

“But, Auntie, it’s like I told you.”

“No, yo’ mus’ lissen tuh me fust. Ah gots tuh hab ’em fuh somet’ing
p’tic’lar. Now, how’s dis? Dere’s a fambly Ah knows whut jus’ gots dere
pa’s lodge insurance, an’ dey is all goin’ get gol’ teet’. Now yo’ go
long an’ fit me tuh dese an’ Ah’ll bring ’em all tuh dis shop. Yo’ see
ef Ah don’t.”

The dentist laughed. He could not help it. He was entirely unconvinced
as to the existence of that family. Thin!--did she think he’d be
taken in by that sort of stuff? He stood looking down at her, and his
laughter stopped. Now he felt something about the comic old figure that
was not comic at all. A force was being exerted against him that he
could not define but that somehow stirred his rudimentary imagination.
He commenced to feel that there was something big here, too big for the
pitiful subterfuge that it had employed. Slowly he became aware of the
conviction that some tremendous and forlorn hope hung in the balance,
and that it rested with him whether it should triumph or fail. Charity.
No, not that, somehow. Chivalry, then. Absurd, for this funny old negro
woman. A far glimmer came to him from a boyhood buried under ugly years
of negro dentistry, a figure in armour, Sir Galahad, or something
of that sort. This must have been the way he used to feel when he
went to do those silly things for women and knew he wasn’t going to
get anything out of it. Then at this picture of himself, he laughed
outright.

Mamba knew then that she had won. Now she must clinch her victory.
“Gawd bless yo’, Boss,” she exclaimed. “When, now?”

The transformed young man was smiling down at her. “There’s no saying
no to you, is there, Auntie?” Then, after a moment, “No, not to-day.
But come in to-morrow and we’ll see.”

Mamba started to carry her treasured possession away with her, but
at the door she thought better of it, returned, and handed it to the
dentist. “Yo’ look aftuh dese fuh me,” she begged. “Dey is too val’able
tuh carry ’bout de street.” Then, wagging her head up and down, while
she rolled her eyes mysteriously, she added in a deep-throated,
dramatic whisper: “Yas, suh, yo’ mightn’t b’leabe me, but dem quiet
teet’ whut yo’ is holdin’ so safe an’ purty in yo’ han’ come out a
mout’ what has done sen’ plenty ob nigger tuh meet dere Gawd.”

The dentist started and looked down again. Against his palm the passive
double row of ivories seemed suddenly to become ferocious, almost
carnivorous.

When he looked up for further explanations Mamba had gone.

       *       *       *       *       *

Employing the mincing step and decorous bearing that had become almost
second nature to her, and that she considered in character in a white
folk’s nigger, Mamba took her way downtown. When she had travelled for
twenty minutes over the scorching pavements she turned from Meeting
Street into a narrow lane shadowed by high buildings that led to the
Negro Quarter. Instantly a change was noticeable in her manner. She
dropped the mincing step for a long, slouching stride, and breathed
deeply of the damp coolness that emanated from the lichen-hung wall
above her. A long happy sigh escaped her lips, and her eyes narrowed to
slits of amused insolence. A waterfront nigger now, and able to hold
her own with the best of them.

Wharf smells blew toward her down the narrow alley; sulphurous fumes
from the mud flats, fish from the smacks on the beach. The stench of
a he-goat filled her nostrils. She sniffed it delightedly and looked
about her. Porgy, the crippled beggar, was across the way, his little
goat cart drawn up in a cool archway. He was eating his lunch, and
he paused to hail her. “Do look at Mamba. War yo’ been all dis time,
Sistuh?” “Oh, Ah jes been tuh gib my white folks a little outin’ tuh de
seasho’,” she threw back at him. She slipped on a rotting watermelon
rind, sprawled flat, and came up smiling. An emaciated cur crept from
behind a garbage can and bared his teeth at her. She cursed it with a
deep and fluent affection, and it recognised her kinship with a gay
bark and a snap at her skirt.

Mamba turned south at East Bay and walked along in the shadow of the
tall brick buildings that had once been occupied by the aristocracy
but which had long since forgotten their proud heritage and gone
black. This was home. Everywhere there was colour, sound. That drab
and profound melancholy which settles upon a house of high estate that
has fallen into a white slum was conspicuously lacking here. Where a
shutter had gone it had been replaced with a new one of parrot green
or vermilion. New spots of plaster were daubed with pink or yellow
wash, and that particular tint of cerulean made by the negroes by the
simple and economical process of dropping washing bluing into their
whitewash was splashed lavishly over gateposts and cook-shop fronts.
Nor was there in the faces of the people either the sullen resignation
or the smouldering rebellion of the white who has fallen to slum life.
Here grievances against Fate were forgotten in song. To-morrow would
be time enough to worry. Thefts and loves were casual, frank and gay
affairs. The corrosion of hidden sin did not mark the faces, for the
consciences that might have been sitting in judgment had not yet been
scourged into consciousness. There was only the police. One was caught
and had sinned; one escaped and was innocent. How marvellously simple.
No wonder that even in the noon heat there were song and laughter in
the houses that Mamba passed.

Arriving at a narrow archway between soaring brick structures the old
woman entered and presently emerged into a court, flag-paved and cool
beneath its surrounding walls. Several women looked up from along the
interlacing clotheslines and hailed her. “Well, ef here ain’t Mamba.
How yo’ does, Sistuh?”

“Po’ly,” she replied happily, “berry po’ly, t’ank Gawd. Whar Hagar?”

Two of the women tittered, and the one who had spoken to Mamba
addressed them sharply: “Shet yo’ damn’ wutless mout’.”

Instantly the visitor’s expression changed: “What wrong, she ain’t
drunk again?”

There was silence. Mamba broke out suddenly in a loud bullying voice
that was oddly at variance with the pain in her eyes. “Ah bet Ah goin’
hab tuh tek de hide off dat black debbil. Ah can’t leabe she fuh a week
widout she git drunk.”

She strode to an entrance, stamped up a flight of loose steps, and
kicked open a door. The embalmed remains of many smells rushed out
to greet her. She knew them all, loved them, but above them now
floated the peculiarly rank effluvium of drunkenness. She crossed
the room to the bed. Upon it a huge negress was sprawled. The arms
thrown over the head were muscled like a stevedore’s, and there was
a strange incongruity between the masculine shoulders rising high on
the pillow, and the full, heavy breasts of a woman. The face, dark and
broad-featured, showed no effects of dissipation, but seemed singularly
childish as it lay there in the oblivion of sleep. Below the chest the
body was not ungainly, the swell of the hips scarcely noticeable, and
the legs, slender and powerfully thewed, seemed wholly masculine. A
creature designed by nature to bear her young, then, single-handed,
to wrench their sustenance from a harsh physical environment; an
enormous maternity and the muscles of a fighting male bound together,
and the face of a simple child set in watch over them. A pre-pioneer
type, not versed in the solving of riddles. And here she was in a land
of paradox. Glass in the windows; Christ in His little church two
blocks down the street; the state liquor dispensary across the way; a
policeman on the corner.

Mamba seized the heavy shoulders with her thin fingers and attempted
to shake the inert bulk. Then she crossed to the washstand, returned
with a pitcher, and dashed a quantity of water into the sleeping face.
Slowly the eyes opened, and instantly an observer would have known by
them that the two women were mother and daughter.

Mamba flung herself forward as though in an effort to drive her words
into the dulled brain: “Yo’ dutty houn’. Yo’ done promise’ me not tuh
git drunk while Ah’s gone, an’ now Ah fin’ yo’ like dis. Wake up an’
tell me--whar’s Lissa?”

The woman moved her arm heavily and drew the covers aside, disclosing
a sleeping child of perhaps three years of age. Mamba pounced on the
little form and carried it to the window. The hot afternoon sun poured
its light over the baby’s face, and it opened its eyes. There they were
again, warm, and of that peculiarly live-brown quality so unlike the
eyes of the usual negro, linking the child unmistakably with the other
two occupants of the room.

The baby threw its arms around Mamba’s neck, and she hid her face
against it, muttering softly into its ear, and stroking its skin,
which, unlike either that of its mother or grandmother, was of a light
bronze hue.

Hagar was up now. She lurched ever so slightly as she crossed to the
washstand, filled a dipper with water, and dashed it over herself
careless of where it fell. She shivered, but the shock brought her
tremendous vitality surging back, waking her drugged nerves, stiffening
and co-ordinating her muscles. By the time that she had finished
dressing her hands were steady. She was childishly shamefaced and
repentant. She said: “Ah sorry, Ma. Ah stay straight ’til las’ night.
But when Ah teck de clo’s tuh de boys on de _Pilot Boy_, dey hab plenty
ob licker an’ dey done drunk me. But yo’ can’t say Ah ain’t tek good
care ob Lissa. Ain’t she well an’ fat?”

Mamba’s voice was scornful: “Ain’t yo’ shame ob yo’self, aftuh all Ah
gib up fuh yo’ chile! Here yo’ ain’t gots nuttin’ tuh do, ’cep’ meet de
steamer an’ wash fuh de sailor. Yo’ gots yo’ own home tuh lib in, and
yo’ frien’ roun’ yo’, an’ yo’ gots yo’ baby fuh pet an’ handle. An’
all Ah ax is dat yo’ keep sobuh an’ don’t git lock up in jail. T’ink on
dat, den ’membuh what Ah’s doin’ fuh yo’ baby so she kin hab chance in
de worl’. Leabe my frien’, an’ de talk an’ all, an’ put up wid de damn’
quality w’ite folks.” The strident voice wavered, then rose to a note
of protest. “Ah swear tuh Gawd my belly fair ache from de pure polite.
Some time Ah t’ink dat ef it ain’t fuh dat boy, Saint, Ah’d hab tuh gib
up tryin’ an’ tell ’em all tuh go tuh hell.”

Hagar’s brain had cleared, and she came back promptly with: “Well, ef
dat’s de way yo’ feel, yo’ can’t blame me fuh gittin’ drunk sometime.
Yo’ is talk lot ob talk, but it look tuh me dat yo’ is done lef’ yo’
w’ite folks now an’ is settin’ here. Yo’ ain’t gots so much tuh growl
’bout.”

“Well, Ah’s goin’ back soon’s day gits tuh town.”

Hagar’s lazy contralto laugh sounded: “Sho yo’ is. An’ ain’t Ah sobuh
now? An’ ain’t Lissa fine? Whut done is done. Fergit ’bout it.”

Several women, hearing the laughter and realising that whatever scene
there might have been was over, came in.

Mamba was lolling back in a wrecked rocking chair with the child in her
arms. She called to one of the new arrivals: “Ah gots somet’ing tuh ask
yo’, Sistuh. How much time Jedge Harkness gib yo’ man de las’ time he
put um up?”

“De las’ time?”

“Sho, de las’ time. Ain’t yo’ ’membuh fuh steal dat butts meat out de
freight car?”

“Oh, dat time! Lemme see--he gib um sixty day.”

“Well, den, pull yo’ chair up here an’ lissen tuh dis.”

Then Mamba gave them the story of the judge’s teeth.

The room shook with spontaneous African laughter. Hands slapped backs
and thighs. In the court homecoming men were calling to their women.
The sea-damp evening air swept cool through the open window, and some
one near by was cooking cabbage for supper. For the old woman life’s
tide was at the flood again. Existence had its compensations, after all.

       *       *       *       *       *

Autumn in Charleston. A keen sweet wind travelling over the roofs,
causing the leaves on the great trees in the Battery gardens to whisper
their valedictories, edging the choppy waves in the bay with white.
Residents returning after the long summer in Flat Rock, White Sulphur,
Europe. Busy housemaids stripping linen pajamas and nightshirts from
the furniture that had been dozing the days away in hot darkness.
Rugs going down. Cedar and camphor in the nostrils. Legaré Street
and the Battery coming to life again. New people appearing here and
there, renting old houses, secretly purchasing antiques, learning to
say “gyarden” and “cyar,” creating the illusion of indigenousness.
Housewives, with an energy that was in itself a fatally alien
admission, hustling a Duncan Phyfe table into the hall behind the
colonial doorway, and searching for a servant sufficiently antique
to appear at home beside the Duncan Phyfe. Very effective, these old
negroes, looking as though they had been “born in the family” meeting
the guest with a Sheffield card tray. And economical too, for they
could be obtained at from five to seven dollars a week, where an
inanimate hautboy would have cost several hundred dollars.

When the Wentworths returned to town they found that the large frame
house that crowded their lot on the south and which had long remained
vacant had been renovated and occupied. Through the open windows came
sounds of irresistible energy being applied to obstinate masses, and a
loud, clear voice rolling its R’s.

Mrs. Wentworth drew on her gloves with an air of resignation.

“Come on, Polly,” she said, “we might as well have it over with.”

“Oh, what’s the use, Mother? We are never really going to know them.
It’s so silly being polite now, then having to snub people later.”

“You are forgetting your manners, my dear. Calling on neighbours and
making them feel at home in our city is one thing; making friends quite
another. Get your gloves, now. This is a formal occasion.”

In an upper room of the house next door Mrs. George J. Atkinson paused
in the middle of her instructions to an aged negro who was assembling a
four-poster. She took the cards that were handed to her by a breathless
maid and ran her finger appraisingly over them. This was evidently not
reassuring. She looked at them closely and found that they were written
in a fine clear hand. “James,” she said in her incisive voice, “who are
the De Chatigny Wentworths?”

The man looked at her from under grizzled eyebrows. After a moment he
said: “Dey is de Wentworths, Miss.”

“Is that all you know? The card says that they are the Wentworths.”

He hastened to set her straight. “Ah ain’t say dat dey is de
Wentworths, Miss. Whut Ah say is dat dey is _de_ Wentworths.” Then,
after a pause during which he looked hopefully toward her for some sign
of understanding, he added, “Dey lib in de little brick house nex’ do’.”

“Oh, she’s the woman who keeps the summer boarding house and has that
silly-looking, long-legged boy.”

She turned to the maid with her abrupt, efficient manner.

“Tell her that I am not at home.”

But the servant had not reached the door before she was stopped. “Wait
a moment. I’ll go down. It is just as well to be on speaking terms with
one’s neighbours. Stay and help James with that bed and come down in
five minutes and say that I am wanted on the telephone.”

When the maid entered the drawing room with the message, the Wentworths
were sitting very erect in their Chinese Chippendale chairs smiling
wooden smiles, and Mrs. George J. Atkinson was doing the talking.

“Just imagine,” she was saying, “taking boarders all summer. And Mrs.
Raymond tells me that you take in fancy sewing too. I must remember
that when I have some work to be done. Yes, really, you must let me ask
you to help me mark my new linens. What is it, Mary? Oh, the telephone.
Yes, in a moment. Oh, must you really go? Well, thank you for calling.
Very neighbourly, I’m sure.”

In the street Mrs. Wentworth said: “Well, that’s done. Let’s forget it.”

But Polly answered in a hard little voice: “Forget nothing! Talking
down to you in that ‘My good woman’ tone of voice. Be a good Christian
and forget if you want to, but I am going to remember.”

The day following the Atkinson call the three Wentworths were together
in their dining room. They had been discussing the matter, and it was
sour on their tongues. Mrs. Wentworth was hatted and gloved for one of
her many errands. “Well, there’s no use dwelling on the ignorance of
other people,” she was remarking. “They simply aren’t our kind. For me
they do not exist. That is all.” She turned to depart, then she gave a
slight start. A stranger had entered from the kitchen door, and stood
silently in the room watching them. “If you are waiting to see Maum
Netta she will be in the kitchen presently,” she told the negress.
“Close the door, please, as you go out.”

But the woman advanced toward the little group and stood looking
from one to the other with the manner of one who has a thrilling and
mysterious secret in her keeping. She was of medium height and weight
and had about her an air of eminent, almost assertive impeccability.
Her dress was covered by a spotless apron, and upon her head was a
white starched cap with a ruffle that shaded her eyes. Her most salient
characteristics were a large mouth with firmly compressed lips, and
a squareness about the lower face that gave it an expression of grim
severity. During a moment of profound silence she stood surveying the
group, then slowly and deliberately she smiled, revealing a double row
of big masculine teeth.

Saint’s voice, long-drawn and incredulous, broke the silence: “Well,
I’ll be damned!”

The visitor bent double in a paroxysm of silent laughter.

“Mamba!” chorused the room.

Polly came immediately to the point: “Where in the world did you get
them, Mamba?”

“A kind gentleman whut lub de nigger gib dem tuh me. Gawd bless um!”

A picture flashed into Saint’s mind: hot summer sky, sand, Judge
Harkness in full flight, and Mamba swinging aboard the Jim Crow car as
it gathered speed. “_Yes_, he did,” he said.

Suddenly the spark of understanding leaped around the circle. Maum
Netta had entered a moment before, and it brought her up standing, with
a look of horrified disapproval. It confounded Mrs. Wentworth with a
simultaneous compulsion to laughter and the obligation to be stern. It
took Saint and Polly and flung them forward on the table in convulsions
of mirth.

Almost immediately Mamba recovered her composure and stood waiting
for the laughter to subside. She was not there to be amusing now.
Four years had gone into building toward this moment; four years of
cajolery, flattery, clowning. That typical gesture, bent double with
hands on her stomach, had been given only as an unmistakable revelation
of an identity to which she was in the very act of bidding good-bye.
She was emerging as a new entity now. The strange assortment of
accessories that had gone into her make-up: cast-off clothing of Mrs.
Wentworth, teeth of a distinguished jurist, manner sedulously copied
from Maum Netta, apron and cap from God knew where, were losing their
separate identities, merging into the new ego that they were destined
in the future to express.

Finally, while the Wentworths watched, the transformation was
accomplished, the last sense of incongruity departed, and Mamba stood
before them re-created in her own conception of the ideal toward which
she had been striving. In some strange manner she seemed to dominate
the little room in which she had until so recently come and gone on
sufferance. She brought a new, compelling element into the atmosphere
that seemed subtly to disturb the ancestral rhythm of thought and
action. The room was very quiet. The abrupt change from hilarity made
the silence seem ominous. Mrs. Wentworth cleared her throat. Polly sat
with a blank, mystified stare. Only Saint seemed to have his bearings,
and looked up with a faint smile into the shadowy eyes under the stiff
cap ruffle.

When Mamba spoke her voice was low and tense. She must have thought her
speech out with care, for there was no hesitation, no hedging. She was
desperately in earnest. The years of palaver were over. These white
people had given her much, but she had been careful to pile up the
countless little uncompensated tasks against this day. The balance was
in her favour. There need be no talk about it. Real white folks did not
need to bargain. She knew and they knew. Now for the accounting.

“Ah gots tuh get uh pay job now, Miss Wentworth. Ah gots tuh get money
fuh somet’ing p’tic’lar. An’ Ah gots tuh fin’ uh white boss whut kin
look attuh my chillen when dey meets dey trouble. Yo’ an’ Mauma here,
yo’ knows Ah ain’t a real house-raise’ nigger, but dese new w’ite folks
whut comin’ tuh Chas’n now, dey ain’t knows de different, an’ dey is
want ole-time house-raise’ nigger whut use’ tuh b’long tuh de quality.
Ah is axin’ yuh now tuh gib me letter an’ say Ah is raise’ wid yo’
fambly.”

“But, Mamba! That would be an untruth,” exclaimed the dumfounded lady.

The old woman leaned forward and looked into her face:

“Ah gots tuh hab um, Miss. Ah gots tuh.”

Mrs. Wentworth studied the figure before her, a strange fragment of
human flotsam that had been seized and animated by this transfiguring
purpose. How little she really knew of Mamba, after all. Where had she
come from? Why had she sought them out?

“Tell me,” she said, “why are you doing this?”

“’Tain’t fuh me, Miss. Ah kin tek care ob Mamba. But time is changin’.
Nigger gots tuh git diff’ent kind ob sense now tuh git long. Ah gots
daughtuh, an’ she gots daughtuh, an’ all-two dem female is born fuh
trouble. Ah gots tuh be ready when de time come.”

“And this granddaughter of yours, how old is she?”

“Yuh ’membuh when Ah fus’ come an’ bring dem flower fuh Little Missie?”

Her listener nodded.

“Dat when she born.”

“Aw, go on and give old Mamba the letter,” urged Saint.

Polly’s eyes were dancing with excitement. “I’ve got it, Mother,”
she cried. “We’ll get her some recommendations and send her to the
Atkinsons. She’s pretty hateful, Mamba, but she’s rich as all get-out,
and she’s dying to be thought somebody. Only, if we fix it up for you,
you must promise to get everything out of her you can.”

“I think that is a disgraceful proposition,” said Mrs. Wentworth. “In
fact, I am so surprised and shocked that I will leave at once and
attend to my business on Broad Street.” She opened the door, then
turned back for a moment, and the three in the room saw the corners of
her mouth twitching irresistibly as she added, “And I want you all to
behave properly while I am gone and do not do anything that you would
be ashamed of.”

She turned to Mamba. “Good-bye, and good luck,” she said. “Remember we
are old friends, and come and see us sometime.”

The old woman gave her one of her looks, so uncanny in their power to
convey emotion. The eyes were a little misty, but behind that there was
laughter. “Gawd bless yo’, Miss,” she said a little shakily. Then she
whirled her skirts in a courtesy, essayed laughter, and ended by wiping
an eye in a corner of her apron.

“Mother’s a dear, but she’s a ’fraid cat,” commented Polly when the
door had closed.

“She’s a brick,” amended Saint as he rummaged for pen, ink, and paper
in the secretary. “All right,” he said a moment later, “let’s go.
What’s your last name? You’ve got to have one in a recommendation, you
know.”

“Whut yo’ say dat lady name?”

“Atkinson.”

“Now, ain’t dat funny. Dat my berry own name. Ain’t yo’ know my pa use’
tuh b’long tuh de Atkinsons? Yes, suh! My ma raise’ wid de Wentworth,
ain’t yo’ ’membuh? But my pa raise wid ole Major Atkinson who use tuh
own fibe t’ousan’ head ob nigger, an’ de bigges’ plantation on de----”
She hesitated for a moment while she weighed the glories of cotton
against the importance of rice, decided on the latter, and closed with
“Cooper Ribbuh.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Behold Maum Mamba! Observe her well, for you have never seen her
before. It is the month of November, and the two Atkinson children
are playing among the blowing leaves on the Battery. They are nice
red-cheeked youngsters, and they love their Mauma. It is true that they
love her less when their mother is about, and she sits with folded
hands and solemn face watching their every move. But for the most part
the three of them play together unobserved. Then Mauma has been known
to perform miracles. Before the children’s very eyes she has removed
her teeth and, holding them between thumb and forefinger, has snapped
them playfully at a dandelion or leaf. At times she has even allowed
Jack to wear them to scare the Rutledge children until they have run
screaming to their proper nurses on the benches. Oh, what fun! She is
also content to let her prosy contemporaries have a complete monopoly
on Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf, while she tells her charges of glamorous
and terrible things that happen in real life down where the ships come
in. Then there are other moments when they have seen her cast a careful
look about to make sure that she is unobserved, then slip to the street
at the garden’s edge and engage in long conversations with certain low
hucksters and fish venders who may be passing. To Jack, who is eight
years of age and precocious, these moments are particularly valuable,
for he has learned that by approaching stealthily he can enrich his
vocabulary with words that confound his puerile comrades with their
little hells and damns.

Yes, indeed, Mrs. Atkinson has every reason to feel that fortune has
smiled upon her in sending her Mamba.

“Yes, my dear,” she is saying to a friend with whom she is sitting on
the Battery on this particular November afternoon, while the children
play innocently near by and their guardian angel sits watching them
sternly. “Yes, indeed, my dear. We got her through the most marvellous
luck. She belonged to the South Carolina branch of George’s family, you
know, and with that fine old-fashioned loyalty that one encounters all
too seldom in these days, she came and offered herself to us as soon
as she heard that we were in town. And she had splendid letters, too,
that would have placed her anywhere.”

The listener smiles sympathetically. Nothing more is needed. Mrs.
Atkinson continues: “Not many of them left now, and what I say is that
we should treasure those who are; if for no other purpose but to set an
example to the upstart generation of negroes.”

“Yes, indeed,” as Mrs. Atkinson would say. Patience, application,
singleness of purpose have reaped their reward. Behold Maum Mamba on
the Battery on this particular November afternoon and say if she has
not at last arrived.




PART II




PART II


Affairs had gone badly in the little brick house. If, at fourteen,
Saint had been a problem to his mother, he was now, at eighteen, her
despair. It was not that he was unwilling to work. On the contrary, he
hailed each new position that was found for him with shy eagerness. But
the habit that had been given to him in school had deepened rather than
dissipated when met by the harsher realities of life. The immediate and
inexorable array of facts that faced him with each new vocation brought
bewilderment to his untrained mind. His thoughts veered from the task
of meeting and arranging them, leaped the gap between the bottom and
top of the ladder, and solaced him with a fool’s paradise of pictured
triumphs.

Unfortunately there were only certain occupations that a gentleman
could follow in Charleston without sacrifice of family dignity, and if
one were handicapped by the lack of a professional training these were
reduced to a minimum. One could work in a bank, or one of the bond and
real estate offices on Broad Street. One could become a cotton expert,
or even a broker in the wholesale district along East Bay. Strange
to say, in spite of the unholy stench and overalls, one could seek
employment in the great fertilizer factories beyond the city limits.
But a gentleman seeking a livelihood in the early nineteen hundreds
could not engage in any branch of the retail business without imposing
upon his humiliated family the burden of incessant explanation.

Through the intercession of a distant relative, an outdoor clerkship
with one of the banks had been obtained for Saint. It had been a fatal
beginning. He had approached it with enthusiasm, slightly blurred by
his distrust of arithmetic, but genuine nevertheless. Now he could see,
after the short period on the street, a high standing desk in the big
banking room, then a roll-top desk in a small outer office, and finally
the directors’ room with himself seated in the massive chair at the end
of the table. On the first day he had stood looking down that alluring
perspective until he had to be spoken to twice by the cashier before he
heard. This so distressed him that he penalised himself by memorising
a cotton warehouse receipt, although he could not make head or tail of
the legal verbiage. His outdoor work took him to the cotton offices
on the wharves, and therein lay his complete undoing, for there were
the ships and the negroes waiting to betray him into long unexplained
absences. At the end of the first week his banking career came to an
abrupt end.

Other jobs followed: a swift disillusioning procession of them.
Bewildered and baffled, the boy met them, groped among their intricate
mechanisms, felt them slipping through his hands, and was powerless
to retain them. Finally, on a dark winter morning, he stood before a
door with a panel of ground glass, upon which was painted in large
black letters, PRIVATE. The palms of his hands were wet and cold, his
tongue felt like a withered pea in a dried pod, and his kneecaps were a
quaking jelly. In the distance St. Michael’s chimed and struck eleven.
He made a solemn vow to himself to stick it out for another quarter
hour. If he did not get in then and have it over with, he could not
keep his body there any longer. The last man who had hired him had
smiled over his head at another occupant of the room all the time that
he had talked. He had been sitting where he could not see the other
man, but his back had quivered under the derisive answering smile. He
prayed now that this man would be alone and that he would not ask him
where he had worked before. Fertilizers! This was about the end of the
procession; the last stand. He’d have to get it, and he’d have to
stick it out when he had it. His thoughts touched on his mother and
her hope for the success of the interview. A warm, tender wave swept
upward from the pit of his stomach and broke in a blinding mist before
his eyes. The big, black PRIVATE on the door swam and quivered. Panic!
Suppose the door should open now! He dashed his knuckles across his
eyes and gritted his teeth.

A low-pitched man’s voice had been rumbling monotonously in the room
beyond the door that he was watching. Now it stopped. He heard the
sound of a chair pushed over a bare floor; then the words: “That will
do now. Tell the young man outside that I will see him.”

The door with its shaking letters swung inward. A woman passed him and
said: “You may see Mr. Raymond now.” He set the machinery of his legs
in motion, and the woman closed the door behind him.

The room was large and bare. It smelled faintly of phosphates. In its
centre a heavy man sat in a swivel chair behind a flat-top desk. Behind
rimless spectacles his eyes were keen and appraising.

“So you are Katherine Wentworth’s boy,” he said in a deep,
hearty voice. “I am glad to know you. Knew your father too--boys
together--fine, both of them. Got a lot to live up to, Son.” He shook
hands cordially and waved his guest to a chair at the end of the desk
where the light struck his face, and took a good look at him. What
he saw was a tall, slender lad with loosely hung arms and legs and
a sallow face that flinched away from his look like an open wound
under a probe. He saw brown hair with a cowlick over the forehead,
and slate-coloured eyes that were too conscious of their own tragic
admissions to meet his glance.

Mr. Raymond busied himself deliberately with a silver cigar-cutter
and a long, black cigar. He scratched a match, applied it, and blew a
funnel of smoke toward the ceiling. He threw a sidelong glance at the
boy. Yes, the respite had helped. They could talk now.

“Think you’d like to try the fertiliser business, eh?” There was a
twinkle behind his glasses.

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t mind starting at the bottom?”

“No, indeed, sir, almost anything. That is, I don’t mind doing anything
at all.”

“That’s the proper spirit!” exclaimed the big man. “Now, how’d you like
to start just where I did and work up?” The deep voice filled the room
with warm vibrations; they entered into the boy’s body and started
something glowing there. No one had been so understanding before. He
felt suddenly that he would like to show this friend what he could
do. Perhaps there would be a riot at the factory, all of the other
white men gone, and he there alone reasoning with the mob. Or perhaps
it would be a fire. He saw himself grown suddenly to splendid stature
smashing down a barrier with an axe, manning the hose. He saw the flame
leap, gather headway, and roar down the great funnel of a building.
Horrors! Mr. Raymond had been talking to him. The big hand slapped the
table, and across Saint’s vision crashed the words: “What do you say to
that?”

What had it been? Saint groped back among the spent words that had
scarcely grazed his consciousness. It was no use, they were gone. His
benefactor was leaning forward expectantly, waiting for an answer.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Raymond,” he said lamely, and wondered wildly
what he was being grateful for.

“Good! You accept, then?”

“Yes, indeed, sir.”

“Well, we’ll start you with five dollars a week. I am going out to
the mines myself to-morrow, and I’ll take you along. Be here at nine
o’clock and bring your grip, so that you won’t have to come back for
your clothes.”

The big man got to his feet and put his hand on the bewildered boy’s
shoulder. “Started with one myself, ended up with a chain, then came on
in here. So you see it can be done,” he said, smiling.

In the street Saint stopped and looked up at the window of the room he
had left. “Ended up with a chain,” he muttered dubiously. “What kind of
a chain, I wonder.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning found Saint occupying a third of a seat in a dirty
little day coach, with a shabby telescope bag tucked behind his legs.
The remaining two thirds was snugly filled with the substantial bulk
of Mr. Raymond, bulwarked behind an outspread copy of the _News and
Courier_. During the half hour of train travel the boy remained in
ignorance of their destination and the nature of that chain which
apparently represented the goal toward which he was to fight his way.

When they arrived at the little station the paper was folded and
stuffed into the man’s overcoat pocket, and they climbed into the rear
seat of a waiting buckboard. Then the employer turned his attention to
the business of the moment. He had a straight man-to-man way of talking
to the boy that both put him at ease and held his attention. He watched
him closely but kindly, and he drove his ideas in with short, pointed
sentences that ended with “_understand?_” It kept his listener’s wits
on tiptoe. There were no heroic visions now. It developed that he had
been engaged as storekeeper in the commissary for the negroes at one
of the mining camps. There were other camps, each with its commissary
in charge of a storekeeper, and over all of them there was a general
manager. One of the storekeepers was destined some day to rise above
the others to the managerial position and have the direction of the
chain. So there it was at last! Saint experienced a feeling of relief.
“In the meantime,” the genial voice informed him, “you must watch your
stock, send in requisitions for supplies when they run low, and stop a
nigger’s credit when it runs through his next week’s wages. Think you
can manage it?”

Out of the bitter past a fear leaped upon the boy. “The money--making
change--keeping accounts. Do I have to do that too, Mr. Raymond?” he
faltered.

“Oh, that’s no bother. Everything’s charged, and you won’t be hurried.
It don’t matter how long you keep the niggers waiting.”

The road that had approached the mines through the woods now left the
trees behind and passed between abandoned fields that had been left
to go to broom straw. The brisk January wind changed and veered over
the warm brown expanse, roughening its surface like a squall at sea.
Presently through the silence of the country there came to Saint a low
insistent rumble.

Mr. Raymond pointed: “That’s the washer,” he explained, “where the rock
is cleaned for shipment.”

Saint followed the pointing finger with his gaze and saw, far out over
the marshes where the river drew a thin S of silver, a great building
crouched at the water’s edge like an antediluvian monster that had gone
down to drink.

Before them the road widened. The ancient negro who was driving drew to
one side of the open space and brought his mule to a standstill.

“Well, here we are,” said Mr. Raymond.

Saint looked up and saw before him a small clapboarded building with
its front gable covered by the false square that always denotes the
country store. Across its front ran a low, wide piazza, and upon the
piazza three curs and an old negro were dozing in the sun. Behind
the little building a wide broom-straw field travelled east until
it merged its gold-brown with the silver-brown of the winter marsh,
carrying the vision in an uninterrupted flight on to the bright thread
of the Ashley River. North, south, and west the little clearing was
walled with virgin long-leaf pine. The towering trees swayed gently on
their long naked trunks and stopped the shrill cry of the wind down to
a grave sustained monotone. Overhead swung a vast empty sky, blue-green
over the treetops and almost purple where it dipped behind the warm
line of the marsh.

“All out,” commanded Mr. Raymond. “Well, how do you like it, Wentworth?”

The boy stood looking about him. His mouth had dropped a little
open, giving his face an expression of vacuity, almost stupidity. In
a clairvoyant flash he saw himself from outside his being; as his
mother would see him, a failure facing this disgraceful surrender,
conventionally respectable only because in his penny traffic with
negroes he was safely out of sight, and could be spoken of vaguely as
being “in phosphates,” and he pitied her terribly. He saw himself with
the eyes of his employer, and he knew what he was thinking at that
moment: that he’d never go any higher; that he would stay here until he
rotted down into the very soil of the camp. And yet, deep within him,
a frozen core was melting; warm new currents were stirring. Standing
there, he almost caught the first faint answers to the passionate
questions that his youth had flung against the wind. He turned to his
employer and gave a strange answer for a man who presumably had his
foot on the bottom round of the commercial ladder. He said: “Thank you,
sir. I’ll stay. I will be happy here.”

       *       *       *       *       *

On a certain frosty January night Mamba sat in her immaculate room in
the servants’ quarters over the Atkinsons’ coach house and took stock
of her gains and losses. With the blinds carefully drawn she had
allowed herself the luxury of stepping out of character. Her teeth, to
which she had never grown accustomed, and which had become symbolic
of the innumerable restraints and prohibitions of her servitude, had
been cast aside for the solacing stem of her clay pipe. About her the
Atkinson air, no longer clean and naked, coiled and eddied intimately
in a visible garment of smoke. A familiar gurgling sound rippled the
hated quiet of the Atkinson premises. As she sat relaxed in a golden
oak rocker with her bare feet thrust from the folds of an old wrapper
straight before her upon the spotless bed spread that Mrs. Atkinson
was wont to inspect at regular intervals, she gave an impression of
physical well-being. But under the veiling fog of smoke her eyes had in
them the look of an unsatisfied hunger.

Six years had passed since she had turned her back on the delights of
a bland and care-free senility among her own kind and had bound her
forces together for her final adventure with life. In the big white
house on Church Street her enterprise had been crowned with unqualified
success. She had to an amazing degree the racial adaptability that
even age cannot stiffen into a set pattern, and in the part that she
had played so long and sedulously she was now letter perfect. She was,
in fact, more than that, for she lived with that complete immersion
in her impersonation that made her for the time being the character
itself. With the passing years the old almost unendurable longings had
dimmed to a faint nostalgic yearning so far beyond attainment that
it was as impersonal as the hunger of some remote acquaintance. The
real pang of separation had come two years ago, when it had become
necessary for her to leave her quarters with Hagar and Lissa, and
live in a room over the Atkinsons’ kitchen so that she could be near
the children when the master and mistress were away in the evenings.
Those first days had been cruel. She had missed the strong talk of
the court, the broad, frank humour, the smells, the clashing colours,
the curs, goats, buzzards, and tumbling black babies. She had missed
her pipe in the long summer dusks with the old men and women who were
drifting happily with the days, gossiping and scolding the young
negroes to their heart’s content. But later her wild longings had found
a tame consolation in retrospection. Then she was able to see her
compensations. She had a genuine fondness for her white children. She
was proud of them. There were moments when she doubted whether she was
making a lady of Gwen, but she had at least made a man of Jack, for he
could outswear and outfight any boy in the neighbourhood. Yesterday she
had seen him meet the neighbourhood bully in the alley beneath her back
window, pound him gloriously, and scorch his retreating back with a
collection of epithets that would have won the reluctant admiration of
Catfish Row. Yes, in spite of Mrs. Atkinson, Jack would do. Now there
were food and clothing in abundance. Every week she returned half of
her wages to Mrs. Atkinson to put in the bank for her, until now she
had a tidy sum awaiting the inevitable emergency. And above and beyond
all other considerations, she now had her white folks to stand between
Hagar and Lissa and the impersonal justice of the state should evil
fortune bring them to that.

But if Mamba had moulded her life according to her plan as far as the
big Church Street house was concerned, the same could not have been
said of the course of events in the East Bay tenement. Hagar had been
in trouble several times. There had been nothing serious; no charges
that involved a stay of more than a fortnight, or perhaps a month, at a
time in the county jail. But she was getting a bad name with the police.

When Mamba had told Mrs. Wentworth that her motive for seeking
permanent white folks of her own was that she had a girl who was born
for trouble, she had been as wise as she was prophetic. In the building
with Hagar there lived a dozen women who made trouble. In the great
honeycomb to the south, as many again. But they had attained the high
art of complete invisibility in time of peril. Hagar, on the other
hand, with her huge frame and her big wondering child’s face, stood
dangerously out of the picture. Also the police knew where she could
be found. Mamba had given the woman a religion in Lissa. Deep into the
simple intelligence she had driven the need to care for the child,
to give it a chance. A Saturday night would come when the mercurial
spirits of the neighbourhood would leap beyond bounds. There was always
a quantity of the peculiarly deadly corn whisky, marked with the seal
of the great commonwealth of South Carolina, and known among the
negroes as rotgut. Hagar would drink with the rest, and her enormous
body, released from its slight control, would become one of the
gesticulating, whooping dervishes in the ensuing orgy that inevitably
resulted in a riot call.

In the panic the big woman could be counted upon to rush to her room
to see if Lissa was safe. The police knew this. A fruitless raid was
humiliating to the force. There must be something to show for it at the
recorder’s court in the morning. All else failing, the officers would
stand at the bottom of the steps leading to Hagar’s room and whoop for
her to come out. At the sound of the summons she would become suddenly
cowed. Still a bit dazed by the liquor, dumb and bewildered, she would
come down the steps looking like a great child in disgrace. Then some
one would go to the Atkinsons’ gate and whisper to Mamba, who would
come with money and arrange with a neighbour to care for Lissa until
Hagar’s return.

       *       *       *       *       *

And while Mamba sat in her room on that certain January night dwelling
on the past and speculating upon the hazards of the future, in a very
different room six blocks away in the black belt Hagar was putting her
child to bed. Lissa was a well-grown child for her six years, with a
faint colour in her cheeks under the light bronze of her skin. This
seemed miraculous to her dark mother, who loved to stroke it with her
finger tips. She got the little figure into bed, and sat beside it,
singing in her deep contralto which, with her eyes, made up the sum
total of her physical heritage from Mamba. It was a week-night, and
the court was quiet. Far away on the tracks of the East Shore Terminal
a switch engine laboured with a heavy burden. Hagar was singing a sad
little lullaby full of minors:

  “Hush, li’l’ baby, don’ yuh cry,
   Mudder an’ fadder born tuh die.”

The soft tossing sounds beside her ceased and were followed by the
rhythm of faint steady breathing. The mother tiptoed over, dimmed the
kerosene lamp, picked up a large bundle of clean wash, stepped out of
the room, and closed the door behind her.

Across the street and down the dim perspective of the wharf her gaze
travelled and rested on a side-wheel river steamer lying at the pier
head. The boat was motionless, but a steam exhaust beside the funnel
wheezed and blew a film of mist between her and the frosty stars. Steam
was up. An hour now and perhaps the boat would be under way. Her wash
was for the fire-room crew, Sam and Abel. She had never seen the men
before they had brought the clothes to her. And she did not know the
boat. Perhaps it was just touching port for supplies and was going
South. She did not trust the men altogether. Her eyes must be kept
open; one could not tell about strange river niggers.

When she arrived at the pier head she saw that the fire-room hatch was
open--just a square hole flush with the deck. She looked down and saw
an iron ladder that descended into flickering orange light and sounds
of low laughter. She stooped over the hatch and called:

“Yuh Sam an’ Abel. Heah Hagar wid yo’ wash.”

The laughter stopped and a lazy voice called: “All right, Sistuh, bring
um down.”

Silence for a moment, then: “No, I ain’t gots de time. Come on up an’
bring yo’ two dollah.”

Sam appeared at the bottom of the ladder with his face thrown up toward
her. His voice was beguiling. “Aw, come ’long down, Sistuh. Whut mek
yo’ so onsociable?”

The thought came to Hagar that they might touch at the port regularly
and that customers were not to be discouraged. She still felt vague
misgivings, but she lowered her heavy bulk through the opening. It was
so low between decks that she could not stand upright. The men, who
were both shorter than she, laughed openly and good-naturedly at her.
This served to allay her suspicions. She chuckled at her own expense,
and her teeth sent a white flash across the darkness of her face.
Seating herself on an empty box, she said: “Well, dar’s yo’ cloes.”

Abel had not moved when she entered, but continued to sit on the edge
of a bunk with a guitar in his lap. He had a round face with a spurious
expression of ingenuousness upon it. Now he bent over his instrument
and plucked a chord.

Sam said: “Dat’s right, go on an’ play fuh de comp’ny while Ah git de
money.” Then, as though on second thought, he lifted a pint flask from
behind him and handed it to Hagar. “Go on, Sistuh,” he urged, “he’p
yo’self.”

Abel was picking away steadily now: not a tune, but the intricate
improvisation of chords so loved by the negro. The music filled the
close space. Before Hagar the red fire box, cut into segments by
the black grate bars, grinned like a friendly mouth, and above her
the winter stars beyond the hatch showed infinitely remote and pale
through the warm light of the fire room. She drew the cork from the
flask, and instantly the air was pungent with the rank fumes. She
tipped the bottle and took a long pull, then passed it to Abel. He
drank sparingly, returned the flask to Hagar, then took up his playing
again. The music beat through the woman in recurrent waves of ecstasy.
One broad foot commenced to tap the floor. She lifted the flask, and
it seemed as though she would never put it down. Her eyelids dropped
slowly, narrowing her eyes to bright slits, then closing them. One
might have thought her asleep but for the fact that she remained erect
on her box and swayed slowly from the hips with the rhythm of the music.

Through the hatch fell a hail from a passing tug, and the vessel’s wash
travelled landward under the waiting steamer, lifting it, thrusting it
forward, allowing it to settle back, then lifting it again. Across the
harmony of the guitar chords rang the bright, certain notes of a ship’s
bell--seven crystal beads of sound strung with beautiful precision on
a thread of music. Sam and Abel exchanged meaning glances, and Sam
grimaced the words “Not yet.” Overhead a crisp, authoritative step
smote the deck, then another, and rapid footsteps dwindled away forward.

Suddenly the shattering blast of a steam whistle filled the night.
It stilled the guitar which dropped from Abel’s hands. It galvanised
the two men into intense activity. They seized Hagar by the arms and
hoisted her up until her head struck the ceiling. She opened bewildered
eyes and looked blankly about her.

“Step it, Sistuh,” Sam commanded. “Dat’s de cast-off whistle.”

Hagar blinked. Where was she--what was it all about? Her fingers were
asleep. They opened slowly and let an empty flask fall to the floor.
Sam hustled her up the ladder that eluded her groping hands and feet.
Then she was on deck with the cold night air washing over her hot body.

Her conductor gave her a final shove and she was on the wharf. Behind
her a negro threw a painter from a bullard, and it fell overboard with
a heavy splash. The steamer’s rail was commencing to slide past her
now, close, where she could still touch it with her extended hand.
Sam’s face came into her range of vision. He was leaning against the
rail, and as she looked at him he threw back his head and laughed. She
saw the wide mouth and white teeth. Suddenly a thought was thrown out
sharp and clear from the slow moiling in her brain. They were going
now. They had tricked her out of the two dollars. The money that she
needed for Lissa. Red passion burst deep within her and flooded her
body. Her eyes were fixed on the laughing face that was drifting away
from her into the night. Across the yard of space that divided them
her long arms flashed, and her hands closed on the shoulders of the
man. He was wearing a tightly buttoned coat. The stuff balled up in
her palms, giving her a firm grip. The face that stared into hers
changed ludicrously from laughter to fright. She set her knee against a
bullard, and threw her whole weight into a backward heave. The man made
a frantic clutch at the rail, but the pull on his shoulders jerked his
arms up, and he missed. A second later he lay sprawled upon the wharf
with Hagar standing astride of him. Behind them sounded a bright jingle
of engine-room bells and the noisy threshing of the paddles. The boat
regarded its former fireman with a green and sardonic starboard eye,
then gathered speed and was engulfed by the aqueous darkness.

Hagar never nursed a grudge. Always her anger was defensive rather than
punitive. Had the man kept his head and made payment of what he owed
her it is likely that she would have let the matter drop there. But
fatal panic was upon him, and he was smitten with that madness which
the gods lay upon those whom they are about to destroy. He scrambled
to his feet and attempted to make a dash. A swift, clubbing stroke
caught him between the shoulders and hurled him forward against a pile
of barrels. He cannoned off at an oblique angle and again tried to
bolt, but it was too late. The negro who had cast off the steamer heard
the noise and came running. A single lantern hung suspended from the
ceiling and only served to make the vast cavern of the shed a place
of reeling shadows and elusive half lights. The wharf hand rounded a
double tier of barrels and was brought up standing by what he saw.

Hagar had her man in a cul-de-sac between two rows of piled freight.
She was not blaspheming like other fighting negresses, nor was she at
it with teeth and nails. But there was something strangely, almost
grotesquely feminine about her, for she was sobbing loudly and
bitterly, and through the sound ran a monotone of two words said over
and over, and the words were “two dolluh.” Her victim was attempting
to speak, but she would not let him, and presently he was so beset
that he gave over trying. The watcher saw him emerge from the shadows
and balance before the woman. He was small, but quick and wiry. He
seemed obsessed with a single idea, to pass the woman and escape into
the open. Hagar stood braced across the exit like a Colossus, her arms
moving in swift downward strokes from the shoulder as a labourer works
with a sledge. The terrified wharf hand saw the man venture too near.
A blow took him on the forehead and hurled him back into darkness.
“Godamighty!” exclaimed the onlooker, and with eyes showing high lights
in the faint lantern glow he turned and raced to give the alarm.

Out of the shadows emerged Sam, driven forward by a single
idea--escape. And waiting for him was another fixed and unalterably
opposed idea that had possessed itself of the devastating human machine
that barred his way. They met, but this time the smaller figure struck,
and remained impinged upon the larger one, smashing terribly up at the
big sobbing face. Down they went together, striking a pile of boxes
that toppled and fell with a crash.

People were coming now, the white watchman swinging his lantern, and
men from the boats. They drew together in a little circle and waited.

The bundle that rolled in the shadows lay quiet for a moment, then
resolved itself into two individual parts that staggered uncertainly
upright. They faced each other, and their breathing sounded above the
slap and suck of waves against the bulkhead. Then the man drew himself
together and launched himself at the opening in a last desperate
attempt. Hagar bent forward and met him with a thrust of the shoulder,
her whole tremendous weight flung into the effort. Shock--recoil. The
man’s body described an arc, struck the planking, and lay where it fell.

The woman’s lips moved inaudibly. She bent over the inert body, turned
it over, and fumbled laboriously through its pockets. At last she found
some bills, opened them, retained two, and returned the remainder with
an air of detachment. Then she rose, sighed heavily, drew her arm
across her face with an incredibly weary gesture, and started home.

In the tricky lantern light the men saw her coming, a gigantic figure,
her massive torso bare to the waist, the great breasts of a woman, and
the knotted man’s shoulders, blood on her face, and in a dark rivulet
between her breasts. No one attempted to stop her. The circle opened as
she approached, and with the fixed stare of a somnambulist she passed
through, crossed the street, went up to her room, and closed the door
behind her.

Twenty minutes later when a policeman came for her she was sitting on
the edge of her bed with Lissa pressed to her breast. She was swaying
back and forth crooning her lullaby:

  “Hush, li’l’ baby, don’ yo’ cry,
   Mudder an’ fadder born tuh die.”

She raised her face and looked at the officer over the laxed form in
her arms. Then she rose, placed the child on the bed, and tucked in
the covers with meticulous care. Without a word she got a long coat
from a hook, slipped it on, and buttoned it over her nakedness. The
officer stood patiently in the doorway watching her. He had slipped his
gun back into the holster. He had come for her before, and he knew the
woman with whom he had to deal. There would be no trouble.

Hagar got several garments from a trunk and bundled them together. Then
she returned to the bed and stood looking down at Lissa.

“Come along, Big Un,” the officer said not unkindly, “let’s get it over
with. It don’t get no better from waitin’!”

His prisoner bent and pressed her wounded mouth against the smooth
cheek of the child. Then she turned obediently and went to the door.

While the policeman stood waiting for her to precede him down the
steps, she paused and looked back into the familiar room. It was not
until then that the realisation seemed to dawn upon her that this was
different from the other departures. From behind the blind veil of the
future a faint prescience of some vast disaster flickered its warning.
Slowly her eyes filled, and through the tears she looked upon the big,
dim room with its familiar disorder, the bed, and the slim form of the
child. In the half light of the lowered kerosene lamp she could see
the imprint of her farewell kiss showing dark against the light tan of
the cheek. She turned and felt her way down the dark stairs with the
policeman clumping heavily behind her.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was nothing of the chameleon about George P. Atkinson. His ten
years spent in the South had not blurred his Mid-Western outline in
the smallest particular. Two years in Virginia had left him guiltless
of a broad A, and now he went about the Charleston streets obliviously
rolling his R’s before him. He refused to attend formal functions
because formality bored him. For the same reason he neither played
golf nor shot. But he knew cotton-seed oil from the seed to the
olive-oil label. He could tell you the Texas cotton crop for 1907,
the best market for linters, the advantages of “cold pressing,” and
the crude-oil market for any given day in the past half year. Every
morning he would breakfast at eight o’clock, read the paper for fifteen
minutes, walk briskly to his office and say in that snappy tempo with
which employers launch a busy day:

“Morning, Johnson. Yesterday’s reports ready?” He would have told you
that he was a specialist, and, as such, he was not to be despised
even by his wife, for the net result to the family was ten thousand a
year in a city where many of the socially distinguished families were
existing at a shade above life’s stark necessities. He might well have
been a problem to Mrs. Atkinson in her social ascension, for his ego
was strongly marked and assertive, and he showed in raw contrast to
the urbane, rather ceremonious, and commercially unambitious men whom
he would have met in most of the Charleston drawing rooms in the early
nineteen hundreds. But fortunately he asked only to be left at home
when she sallied forth on her career, and refused to attend dinners
except in his own home. Even on these occasions, Mrs. Atkinson decided
that he might have been much worse, for while he said little, she
noticed that the men gave him respectful attention when he spoke. He
offered cigars and liqueurs to her guests with a natural quiet dignity,
insisting on taking them from the butler, and making a little ceremony
of passing them himself after they had adjourned to the drawing-room
fire. He had the clean-cut “Gibson type” of figure, which was then at
the height of its vogue, and he looked well leaning against the Adam
mantel. It is true that at times he would break through her restraint
and militantly pronounce a spade a spade. But he had mellowed in his
fortieth year, and now, at forty-five, did most of his bristling with
his close-cropped moustache, no longer giving her the lie when she
offset one of his breaks with: “Mr. Atkinson has such a droll sense of
humour.”

On a murky morning two weeks after Hagar’s arrest George P. Atkinson
sat with his paper open before him. It was then in the eighth minute
of the fifteen allotted to that daily rite, and he had not yet been
allowed to commence. He made what he hoped was a decisive effort to
dispose of the interruption.

“I can’t see it, my dear,” he told Mrs. Atkinson. “We go out and hire
a woman to work for us. Very good. We pay her adequately. If she is
injured in our employ we may be responsible under the Employer’s
Liability Law, but, in South Carolina, I doubt even that. Not that I
would not do the right thing by Mamba. She’s a good soul and, white or
black, I’m fond of her. But when a disreputable creature of the slums
with a police record is dragged in, claimed to be her daughter, and
goes to court to take her medicine for setting upon and breaking up a
law-abiding negro, I am out. Business is business. Charity is charity.
Once in a thousand years justice is even justice. I would be an ass to
interfere. I won’t. That’s final.”

“But, George dear, you miss the point. It won’t be going out of your
way to do it. It’s the thing to do. The right sort of people here do
look after their negroes. They take pride in it. Most likely you will
not be the only one there. You’re as apt as not to find a Ravenal,
Waring, or Pinckney doing the same thing. The other afternoon at the
Saturday Club some of the ladies had the most entertaining stories of
scrapes that their husbands had gotten their negroes out of.”

“Their negroes! Am I to assume that this person charged with aggravated
assault and indecent exposure of the person is my negro?”

“Of course, George. Everybody knows that Mamba’s people used to belong
to the Atkinsons, and now, since the South Carolina branch of the
family has died out, you are in a way the head.”

The head of the Atkinson clan balled his paper up in a knot and threw
it on the floor, looked his wife in the face, and said rudely: “Bah!”
Then he cleared his throat, raised his voice, and deliberately repeated
the offensive monosyllable.

It was the secret of Mrs. Atkinson’s success that she never lost either
her temper or her head. Now, in a voice like a cold douche she said:
“You can’t bah away an obligation, George, and you know it.”

Thirteen minutes of newspaper time gone. Was ever a man so put upon!
He snapped: “You know as well as I do that there never was an Atkinson
plantation on Cooper River. Why, I asked some of the men at the club
about it the other day, and I could see that they were laughing at me.”

To many wives this would have meant utter rout, but not to this
adroit campaigner. She veered suddenly and took her husband in a most
vulnerable spot. “Very well, then,” she said, as though the matter were
concluded, “be inhuman, and while you are enjoying your pride that
justice is being done, imagine your own daughter in desperate trouble
with no one to help her, and then perhaps you’ll know how poor old
Mamba feels.”

“Eh, what’s that?” exclaimed Atkinson in a startled voice.

“And you don’t know the whole story, either. You just read what your
hateful paper says. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Just let Mamba come in
and give you her version of the tragedy; then, if you refuse to help,
I’ll promise never to say another word about it.”

Atkinson emitted a short grunt that was intended to convey scepticism
of his wife’s promised silence, but she seized it and interpreted it as
assent. Opening the pantry door, she summoned Mamba.

The old woman entered with a promptness that suggested prearrangement,
and advanced until she stood before her master, then waited with bowed
head and hands that clenched each other tightly before her.

“Go ahead,” he said, “I suppose I’ll have to listen before I can get
any peace.”

Mrs. Atkinson said in her crisp compulsive voice: “Now, Mamba, tell him
exactly what happened.”

When Mamba finished her recital she was sobbing into her apron, and her
listener was sitting forward in his chair with his moustache bristling.
“So he tried to rob her, did he?” he exclaimed. “When’s the trial?”

“To-morruh mornin’, suh. Ah ain’t want foh bodder yuh ’til Ah can’t
wait no longer.”

“Very well, we’ll see what can be done.”

Into his overcoat, then, and out of the door on his last word. He’d be
ten minutes late at the office. Wouldn’t do. Bad example. Loose morale.
Rotten position he’d be in to-morrow, too. Tacitly backing up his wife
in that absurd fiction about the plantation Atkinsons. They’d have a
damned good right to laugh at him at the club now. Pretending himself
a Carolina aristocrat. Pretence, of all things that he hated. But that
poor old nigger and her story about her girl. Well, he was in for it.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Atkinson entered the courtroom on the following morning he saw
Mamba waiting for him just inside the door. Then he noticed that she
was accompanied by a child--a mulatto girl about six years of age. It
was the old woman’s attitude toward her charge rather than the child
herself that first caught his attention. The entrance was jammed
with negroes who elbowed their way to the spectators’ inclosure, and
a bailiff was attempting to clear the doorway. In the confusion of
opposing bodies Mamba was managing to keep the space about the child
free. She was silent, but stood with the slender form held before her
and gazed into the faces of the milling negroes with an expression of
such cold ferocity that they instinctively drew back. Then he noticed
the girl. He saw a slender, delicately made body, a small sentient
face, and eyes that seemed to note everything that passed before them
with that precocity which is characteristic of children with negro
blood.

A trial was already in progress; a jury trial at that. It would be
afternoon before they could get to Hagar’s case. A whole day gone. Five
perfectly good business hours. Well, he was in for it. He’d stick it
out. Might pick up something that would be of use when the woman’s time
came. With characteristic economy of movement, he went straight to one
of the swivel chairs behind the attorneys’ table and motioned Mamba to
a seat behind him. From under level brows his keen gray eyes appraised
the room.

Against the rear wall of the courtroom were the two sections reserved
for the public. There was a scattering of nondescripts behind the
railing of the rectangle occupied by the whites. Across the aisle, the
coloured space was packed to the walls. Black, brown, yellow, with
intent faces and wide eyes, the crowd appeared as thought welded into a
unit by its common and utter absorption. The overheated air was tinged
with a faint exotic odour compounded of fertiliser dust, fish, and
unwashed negro bodies inseparable from such a gathering. It offended
the visitor at first, but soon he lost consciousness of it, for he
followed the gaze of the crowd to the prisoner in the dock.

She was a big yahoo of a girl about sixteen years of age, very black,
and with heavy negroid features. Her eyes set wide apart, and with the
broad, flat nose between them, gave her an expression of bucolic calm.
She was a creature for the simple rhythms of the country, and seemed
out of place in the complex machinery of a city court.

Continuing his survey of the scene, Atkinson met the eyes of the
prosecuting attorney, who was seated at a table directly in front of
his own. He had a pleasant acquaintance with the young court official,
but was unprepared for the informal and cordial reception that he
received. The attorney was a man in the early thirties, blond, with
that instinctive graciousness of manner toward a guest that Atkinson
always admired, and secretly envied, in the men of his adopted city.

“Delighted to see you here, Mr. Atkinson,” he said, extending his hand
across the table. “Just looking us over, or are you interested in one
of our cases?”

Atkinson explained that he was there to do what he could for Hagar.

“Splendid!” exclaimed the young lawyer. “One can’t help liking
the woman. She’s not a criminal type. Do you know whether she is
represented by counsel?”

“I think not. As a matter of fact, Mr. Dawson, the woman is guilty of
the charge. I understand that the man is still in the hospital, and
there is no doubt as to who put him there. But there are extenuating
circumstances, and I’m here to vouch for them.”

The prosecutor leaned forward and gave his instructions briefly: “You
must make her plead guilty. Whatever you do, do not agree to a jury
trial. We’ll talk it over with the judge when her case is called and
see what can be done.”

The bailiff bawled for order in court, and the judge inquired formally
if counsel for prosecution and defence were ready to proceed with their
speeches in the case of the negro girl. Both men rose and bowed. The
state’s attorney traversed the ten feet of the space that separated
him from the jury box and faced its occupants over the low railing.
Instantly the suave and urbane individual who had been talking to
Atkinson vanished, and in his place stood a tense, truculent figure.
Swiftly, and with a deadly precision, he counted off the salient points
of the case on his fingers. The woman had stolen clothing valued at
forty dollars; three competent white witnesses had nailed down the
evidence; the clothing had been found in her room and identified by
owner. A moment of dramatic silence ensued, then an abrupt transition.
Leaving the damning facts hanging, as it were, in the air before the
jurors, Dawson’s body became electric with that facile violence which
characterises the successful prosecutor and can always be depended upon
to galvanise his auditors into attention. For ten minutes he poured out
a vitriolic arraignment against the type of petty criminal who has the
audacity to engage a lawyer to come and monopolise the valuable time
of the court and the services of a “highly intelligent” jury. “Taking
your time, gentlemen, I submit, to wade through the sordid details of a
case upon the very face of which, I again submit, she is as guilty as
Judas Iscariot.” On then in the teeth of the jury itself, calling upon
them to make a proper example of the case in question, that the culprit
and those of her friends who were present might be impressed with the
dignity and importance of the court. Turning away abruptly as from a
finished task with a foregone conclusion, Dawson took his seat.

“Great Godamighty!” exclaimed a woman’s voice in the negro section, and
“Silence in court,” bawled the bailiff.

Counsel for the defence got to his feet and commenced to speak. He
was a big man with a heavy lethargic body and a stupid face. His lips
were loose and crafty. He gave the immediate effect of one who was
going through a familiar routine, saying the trite phrases with noise
but without conviction. That tension which one expects to find at a
criminal trial, and that Dawson had attained, was now wholly lacking,
except in the tranced attention accorded by the tightly packed negro
section. The jury lounged at ease in their chairs. The judge and clerk
were busy with papers of other cases on the docket.

Atkinson transferred his attention to the prisoner in the dock. She was
sitting forward following every gesture of the lawyer with a hypnotic
gaze. One got the impression that her interest in the proceedings
was impersonal, detached. She was caught by the drama of it but had
not succeeded in relating the obscure process that was under way to
herself. She was in the grip of forces as remote from her comprehension
as are the workings of destiny. Words, words, filling the air with
strange, exciting sound. Later there would come a silence, then that
fate which was approaching, and was already determined, would be
revealed to her. It would make her happy or sad. It would have to be
accepted as had other crises in her uncertain advance through life.

The lawyer ended his speech in a burst of noise, an oratorical
invocation to the blind goddess who held the scales over the portal and
who dispensed justice to rich and poor alike. He turned to his seat
followed by such an admiring and unself-conscious gaze from his client
that for a moment Atkinson feared that she might altogether forget
herself and burst into applause.

The speech over, the court became animate. The judge charged briefly
for conviction. The jury marched out and returned almost immediately
with the verdict of guilty. The clerk ordered the prisoner to arise
and receive sentence. The judge gave her a severe lecture, and, in the
midst of a dramatic pause, seven years in the state reformatory.

A composite involuntary sound that was half wail, half moan, sounded
from the negro section.

“Order in court,” bawled the bailiff.

A deputy led the prisoner from the dock. She cast a final admiring
glance toward her attorney. There could be no doubt about it; he had
delivered a satisfactory performance.

Atkinson gasped at the severity of the sentence; then he went around
and took an empty chair beside Dawson.

“Good God!” he exclaimed. “Seven years for a few dollars’ worth of
second-hand clothes. It’s inhuman.”

The younger man smiled into his earnest face. “I see you haven’t got
the hang of it yet,” he said, “but don’t be too scandalised at us. She
is not going to do her full time. I’ll keep a note of the case, and
later she’ll be let out on good behaviour. You see, there are a lot of
shyster lawyers around here who take the nigger’s money in advance and
promise to clear them when they know there isn’t a chance. The only
way to convince the poor devils that they’re being done is to throw it
into them good and deep every time a case goes to a jury. But God! They
learn slowly.”

Hagar’s case was called, and Atkinson saw her enter, dwarfing the
deputy who led her to the dock. This was his first glimpse of his
charge, and he was at once struck by the candour of the big, childlike
face, and the questioning, live-brown eyes that were so much like
Mamba’s. He was anything but an imaginative man, but in that moment he
had a flash of divination. He saw the court, the officers, the jurymen,
as these simple souls must see them; akin to the High Gods of Greek
mythology, manipulating the vast mysterious force that was the law,
looming suddenly and inexorably against the gaiety of life, to smash
families--even to mark for death.

Dawson was speaking to him, and he turned with a start. “You had better
have a talk with your client,” he was saying. “Tell her to plead guilty
when the clerk finishes reading the indictment and puts the question.”

He beckoned to Mamba, and together they stepped to the prisoner’s
dock. There he commenced an involved explanation of the reasons why
it would be best for her to plead guilty. Hagar did not take her eyes
from his face, but he saw that her look was that of a drowning person
who watches the shore rather than one of understanding. He stopped
speaking. Then she said:

“What dat wo’d Ah’s tuh say?”

“Guilty,” Atkinson told her.

“Berry well, den. Yo’ nod yo’ head at de right time, an’ Ah’ll say um.”

Mamba retired to her seat, and Atkinson joined the prosecutor. The
clerk rose, read the indictment, and put the question. Atkinson nodded
his head, and, in her deep contralto voice, Hagar said clearly,
“Guilty.”

The judge leaned over his desk and raised his eyebrows in
interrogation. Dawson beckoned to Atkinson and stepped forward. “Your
Honour,” he said, “I would like to present Mr. George Atkinson of the
Southeastern Cotton Seed Products Corporation, one of our leading
citizens, who is interested in this case.”

The judge shook hands warmly; then, leaning forward on his elbows,
spoke in a leisurely conversational tone: “I am delighted to know you,
sir. You are from the North, I understand.”

Atkinson had been busy with plans for his client’s defence, wondering
whether he had not better bring Mamba forward and let her tell her
story. The social turn taken by the court jarred him from his line
of thought. He uttered a surprised affirmative to the comment.
The judicial features above the desk smiled pleasantly down upon
him, and the agreeable voice with its almost imperceptible drawl
led the conversation among the amenities that usually preface an
acquaintanceship.

Beyond the small circle of their talk the courtroom waited. Here
and there a chair leg creaked or a foot shuffled. Beyond the window
a huckster cried his fish in a deep baritone song. In the negroes’
section the tension drew out until it became almost tangible in the
air of the room. And at the desk the three men chatted of the relative
merits of the Charleston and New York climates. They might have been in
a club, or at a chance meeting after business hours. Finally the judge
touched on the case.

“And so you are interested in this woman, Mr. Atkinson. Very good of
you to assist us, I am sure. Perhaps you will tell me what you know of
the affair.”

Atkinson explained his connection with Mamba and Hagar. His interest
seemed to be entirely understood by his hearers. The fact that he had
espoused the woman’s cause was taken as a matter of course. As briefly
as possible he told the story as he had got it from Mamba.

When he had finished the judge looked inquiringly at the prosecutor,
and asked: “And what do you know about her, Mr. Dawson?”

“She’s been in the police court several times, Your Honour. Nothing
serious: hot suppers, lodge meetings, and the like. There’s nothing
vicious about her.”

His Honour pondered: “Still, she has a police record. That’s got to be
considered. Evidently the town is no place for her. Ought to get her
out of it and give her another chance.” He continued to speak, but now
his glance took the other two into consultation: “A two-year suspended
sentence ought to do. Give her six hours to get out of the city. Then
put her on her good behaviour. If she is arrested anywhere in the
county, or enters town again for any purpose whatever, the sentence
will become immediately operative. Does that appeal to you as a fair
adjustment, Mr. Atkinson?”

It had never occurred to that gentleman that he would be consulted
in so important a matter as the actual measure of punishment, but he
managed to say that he thought it not only very fair but decidedly
generous.

“I am glad that you feel that way about it, sir,” His Honour replied,
then shook hands over the desk, expressed pleasure in the meeting, and
nodded to the clerk.

An involuntary whisper lifted and died in the negro section. The
bailiff bawled for order in court. The clerk called upon Hagar to arise
and receive sentence.

Slowly and lucidly the judge made his pronouncement and explained its
purport. Then he ordered court adjourned for the day.

The deputy who was to take charge of Hagar until she should leave the
city led her from the room, and a bewildered George Atkinson got to his
feet and made for the open.

When he was on the pavement again he found that Mamba had accompanied
him. She had been so quiet during the proceedings that, in his
absorption, he had forgotten her, and the presence of the child which
she held tightly by the hand struck him with the impact of a fresh
surprise. Mamba caught his hand, shook it, tried to speak, then turned
suddenly and followed Hagar. He stood looking after the strange old
figure. Age with its back to the wall, fighting for something against
great odds. His heart contracted with an unfamiliar spasm of pity, then
expanded with a desire to protect. All feeling of boredom had passed
during the trial. He had espoused a cause. For the moment he had put
his best into it. Now, with the fight behind him, he could not let it
go. It kept tagging along beside him, plucking at the sleeve of his
mind. It made him think about something that had nothing to do with
cotton seed. It started something in his brain like the slow turning
up of a light. This negro business; millions and millions of them.
Race problem. What to do with the whole mass. You came up to that, and
it was there before you like a wall without a gate. One either stood
there battering his hands to pieces on it, or he walked away and made
it his business to forget. But this old woman, now, and her great
ungainly daughter, and that child that they had a way of speaking about
with their voices lowered; this was something different. These three
were not a race problem. They were individual entities battling with
destiny, needing a leg up most terribly. The weak throwing themselves
on the mercy of the strong. Mamba--Hagar--the child--not negroes now:
but to his mind just isolated human beings driven by some obscure urge
toward a vague elusive goal, as he was--his wife--his children. Was
that the feeling behind the law as he had found it in the court that
morning? Was it the key to the puzzling attitude of the men he knew who
could be so callous to the mass, yet who responded with exaggerated
generosity to the need of a known individual?

He came to a street crossing, and his alert mind leaped to grapple
with actualities, suddenly and keenly cognisant of the world about
him. Over the cobbles at his feet a low cart was being dragged by an
aged goat. In it sat a crippled negro. His head was bare to the sun,
and his face wore the vacuous look that is common to both dreamers and
fools. His hat lay upward in his lap, and there were a few pennies in
it. The sight was a familiar enough one to Atkinson. He had seen the
beggar every day, and yet his existence had never impinged upon his
consciousness. Now he saw him differently. “God!” he thought. “What a
hell of a joke for life to play on a man.” He fumbled in his pocket,
drew out a dollar bill, and dropped it in the hat. The face below
him became incredulous. Slow fingers picked the bill up and felt it,
turning it over and over. Atkinson pulled himself together. “Can’t
stand here all day looking like Santa Claus,” he told himself.

He turned on his heel and stepped briskly away, but his half-solved
problem was not to be outdistanced; it was with him again, insinuating
itself between his mind and the image of yesterday’s quotation board.
Individuals--human beings--that’s the answer, perhaps. Can’t lift the
mass. No use to try, it’s too vast. Can’t get hold of the edges of it,
and if one did it would probably drop and smash things to pieces. But
when you know of one who is catching hell, got to be decent, human. And
leave the race problem to God and the great-grandchildren.

He was at his office now. Squaring his shoulders, he took the steps
two at a time, opened the door, and exclaimed briskly, “Afternoon,
Johnson. Got yesterday’s reports ready?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Saint Wentworth sat in the little room behind the camp commissary, his
brow furrowed with the intensity of his mental concentration. Before
him, propped upon a table, was a self-instruction book of music, and
his fingers were busy finding chords on the neck of a battered guitar.
The open page showed diagrams of the strings with black dots where the
fingers were to fall for each chord. Some of the combinations were
awkward for his unaccustomed hands, but he hung doggedly to each until
he could find it with his eyes lifted from the page before he passed on
to the next. At first glance one would have said that his three years
at the phosphate mines had changed him but little in appearance. As he
sat in the half light of the little room between the fading day against
the small window and the flickering illumination of the open fire, he
showed the same slightly stooping shoulders, the colourless hair with
its flaring cowlick, and the old lack of compression about the mouth
which is to the conventional mind an infallible symbol of weakness.
Only when he finally closed the book, laid the guitar aside, and, with
hands jammed deep into trousers pockets, commenced to wander about the
room, would one have noticed differences. Changes that became evident,
not so much in the physical appearance of the man himself as in his
interrelation with the room. He was one of those not uncommon people
who find expression in the things with which they surround themselves;
people for whom no evaluation can serve that does not take the setting
into account. There were books on a shelf, plays, biography, poetry, a
modern novel or two; the astonishingly varied collection that in age
may mean only the dilettante, but in youth the seeker. An etching was
given one of the four walls to itself: an extremely well done piece of
work by a young Charleston artist--the gateway of old St. Michael’s
with its wrought-iron urns and scrolls. A small but fine plaster of the
Nike was given the mantel. A couch against one of the walls was covered
with brown burlap, and had pillows of orange and lemon upon it. The
draperies at the single window were the colour of sunlight. Now day was
retreating rapidly behind the panes. The fluctuations of firelight grew
more noticeable on walls and furnishings, thrusting mellow shafts under
the table and into corners--possessing the room. Saturday night, and
the negroes would soon be coming to do their shopping.

Wentworth cast a long look about him, sighed, and passed through the
door into the commissary with its familiar odours--kerosene from the
barrel in the corner, cabbages--the smells seeming stronger and more
sour in the dusk. Then he caught a clean wholesome whiff from a pile
of print cotton goods at his elbow. He threw some wood on the coals in
the small open fireplace, lighted the lamps, and stepped through the
outer door onto the little piazza. A cold red sunset burned low behind
the serried pines, and over the eastern marshes the mists thickened and
swirled, bringing night in from the Atlantic wrapped in their folds.

A group of negroes approached, their resonant voices preceding them.
They were in high humour. To-night they could commence to buy on next
week’s wages. The exhaustion of credit that invariably pinched them
during the latter half of each week was now happily at an end until
next Wednesday, or even Thursday if one were careful. Maum Vina, with
her kind, peering eyes, and Reverend Quintus Whaley, fat and unctuous,
were the first to enter. Behind them groups of twos and threes gathered
before the store, climbed the steps, and entered the building. Loud
chaffing and banter filled the air. Most of the women were swinging
bottles by strings to be filled with kerosene for their lamps, and
some brought jugs for molasses. The men were covered with dust from the
mining pits. This was the hour when labour was forgotten, friends met,
and gossip was exchanged. The commissary building glowed hospitably.
The open fire crackled on the hearth, and several oil lamps flickered
in the draught and sent ribbons of smoke up among the rafters.

Wentworth waited on Ned first because he knew that he was in trouble
and ought to hurry back to Dolly. His customer was a small black negro
in late middle life, with a grizzled moustache, and large teeth between
which was clenched a cheroot that added a smell like burning leather
to the other odours in the room. He was pondering over a selection
from several bolts of black and white cambrics and cotton flannels. He
smoked steadily while he held the widths of cloth against a soap box,
black for the outside and white for the lining, appraising the effect
with his head cocked speculatively on one side. From time to time he
would look up and speak to an acquaintance. It seemed to Saint that he
was deliberately protracting his errand, enjoying the importance that
it gave him. And there was a smugness about him that was annoying.
Saint remembered the sounds of weeping that he had heard when he had
passed his cabin, and the stricken face of Dolly as she looked from the
door. Now he spoke sharply, “If you’re sure the box is large enough,
say what cloth you want and get through. I haven’t all night to give
you.”

Ned produced a stick about eighteen inches in length and placed it in
the box, where it fitted nicely. “Ain’t yo’ see, suh, dat he size? He
ain’t but a six mont’ ole baby, an’ he always been puny.”

“Well, come along, then. Cambric or flannel?”

“Gib me dis”--and the man indicated the cambric--“two yahd black and
two yahd white. Dat flannen cos’ too much, anyhow.” He added a package
of tacks to his purchase. His gaze went longingly to a glass jar
filled with large candy balls of striped red and white. “An’ put in
t’ree ob dem candy ball fuh sweeten my mout’,” he concluded. He spat
the cheroot loudly into the fire and put one of the candies in his
cheek, where it looked like the symptom of an acute toothache. Then
around the obstruction he said, “Now, suh, please gib me a cherry
bounce an’ I’ll be gone,” and he started optimistically toward the keg
which contained the sticky sweet drink that the negroes loved.

“No, I don’t,” said Wentworth sternly. “Get on back to Dolly. You ought
to be ashamed to be hanging around the store and your woman alone with
your dead baby.”

“Dolly tek on too much, Chief. Baby is plentiful. Dey comes an’ dey
goes.” And with this philosophical comment he took his departure.

A young woman who was passing behind the speaker heard his remark and
sucked her teeth loudly at him. “Ole rooster wid young pullet oughtn’t
to crow so loud,” she flung after his retreating figure.

There was some laughter from the group at the fire, but an old woman,
Maum Vina, with the bright peering eyes, spoke soberly. “Yo’ hadn’t
ought to laugh at ole Ned like dat. Dat can’t do no good. What if Gilly
Bluton is run after Dolly, he done de same by plenty odder gal roun’
here. When a man know dat anodder man is runnin’ after he ’oman, dat
one t’ing. But when he know dat odder people know, den he goin’ fight.
Yo’ mus’ want to hab killin’ in dis camp, enty?”

“Well, he ain’t gots no right to strut so,” the young woman said
defiantly. “An’ Gilly ain’t no gawd. He can bleed same as any odder
man. What de matter wid dese mens roun’ here, anyhow, dey ’fraid um
so?” She cast a look of scorn around the circle which the men chose to
ignore. But old Vina was undaunted: “Yo’ ain’t use’ to talk like dat
’bout Gilly,” she said. “Mus’ be he done quit goin’ to yo’ house now.”

Saint turned to wait on the next customer, then instinctively followed
her gaze toward the door. A stranger had entered. In the small and
intimate neighbourhood a new face was sure to claim attention, but this
arrival was such a striking figure that her sudden appearance created
a minor sensation. The noise around the fire seemed to recoil upon
itself, leaving a poised question in the air. All eyes were fixed upon
the open door, and the great bulk of the woman who filled it. She stood
for a moment blinking in the light, then crossed with a heavy tread and
faced Wentworth across the counter. In a deep, mellow voice, she said:
“Is yo’ know me, Mr. Saint?”

He shook his head in mystified denial.

“Well, Ah is hear lot ’bout yo’. Ah is Mamba’ gal. Ma sen’ me down here
an’ ax can yo’ fin’ me some work.”

Saint had heard about the trouble during his last week-end in the
city. It had only confirmed him in an antagonism that he had always
felt toward Hagar. She was a thoroughly bad lot. Mamba’s excuses for
her delinquencies had never convinced him of her innocence. She would
undoubtedly be a bad influence in the camp, and if he let her stay he
would be answerable to the company for her behaviour. Mamba had no
right to put her problem up to him in that fashion. Well, anyway, there
was no work for a woman in the camp. He would only have to tell her so
and send her on her way.

“That would be simple enough if you were a man,” he said. “There’s
plenty of work in the pits, but we don’t use female labour. You’ll have
to hunt somewhere else.”

But his visitor did not take his dismissal. Instead, she drew a step
closer and looked at him incredulously out of eyes that might have been
Mamba’s own. “Ma didn’t tell me no other place to go,” she explained.
“All she say was for me to come to yo’ an’ tell yo’ she done sen’ me.”

Saint thought: “Confound the old woman. Is there no limit to her
audacity?” He met the singularly bright gaze that was bent upon him. In
some uncanny way it seemed to evoke Mamba herself. It gave him the same
melting twist in the pit of his stomach that he had felt when she had
cozened those spurious letters of recommendation out of him three years
before. “But I tell you we only employ men,” he repeated in a voice
that was weakly argumentative.

She unbuttoned her sleeve and jerked it back to the shoulder, then held
out her arm, turning it slowly. Under the dark skin the muscle of the
forearm rippled. She bent the arm upward at the elbow, and the biceps
bunched. She gave a low, confident laugh. “Ain’t dat all right?” she
asked.

The negroes began to laugh and whisper. A woman in the pits--who ever
heard of such a thing!

Saint regarded the demonstration of muscle and laughed. “It certainly
is,” he answered her. Then, quite to his own surprise he found himself
adding: “If you want to try it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.” He took
down an account book. “And while you’re here you might as well give me
your name.”

The woman hesitated, biting her full lower lip with strong white teeth.
Finally she asked: “Ain’t yo’ gots one in dere dat Ah can use?”

Saint wondered if she hadn’t one of her own.

“Ah did hab one what Ma gib me, but it’s done wore out.”

He spun the pages of his book and stopped at one that showed an open
account. There had been the usual purchases--rice, grits, molasses,
candy, cheroots, amounting to perhaps a dollar, pleading mutely
from the page for settlement. He read the name at the top of the
sheet--“Baxter--how’ll that do?” he inquired.

The woman repeated the word slowly as though to accustom her tongue to
its use.

The negroes were regarding the performance with undisguised interest.
Now Maum Vina spoke impulsively: “Do, Mr. Saint, don’t gib she dat
bad-luck name. Don’t yo’ ’member Baxter done got drownded loadin’ a
schooner?”

There was a moment of superstitious silence, while the negroes’ eyes
seemed to grow as they watched her, placing an absurd importance on
the simple matter. The woman’s voice broke the silence: “Ah guess
Ah’ll take it, anyhow. It gots a good sound to it, an’, aftuh all, Ah
ain’t so lucky mahse’f.” Then she seemed arrested by the drama of her
predecessor. She reached across the counter and dropped a long index
finger on the writing.

“When he buy dat bittle he been well an’ hongry, an’ he nebber lib long
’nough to pay for um. Ain’t dat so?”

Saint nodded assent.

“Po’ Baxter,” she apostrophised. “Yo’ ain’t mean to cheat nobody. If Ah
lib long ’nough Ah’s goin’ settle dat bill fuh yo’.”

Saint had to leave her then to serve his customers. It was an
interminable business--two cents’ worth of grits, three cents for
molasses, a penny invested in a herring, salt pork, kerosene--and so
it went with each shopper. When he had time to notice Baxter again she
had joined the group in the doorway and seemed already to have made her
place among them.

Near closing time Gilly Bluton came in. They heard his buggy drive up
and stop outside. Then he entered, elbowing his way through the crowd
around the door, with a young woman clinging to his arm. “What make yo’
don’t stand back an’ gib de lady room!” he demanded irritably.

They crowded back then, not breaking up and scattering, but opening for
him in two closely standing divisions. There was a hostile significance
in the way they massed, leaving the man and his partner more room
than they needed, as though their touch were evil. But Bluton chose to
ignore them and swaggered over to the show case where luxuries were
exhibited. The man was a mulatto with negro predominating, but among
the negroes of the camp, most of whom retained the sooty blackness
indicative of undiluted Gullah blood, he seemed of a different race.
The contrast was accentuated by the fact that he could read and write,
and figure with great rapidity. Talents which, applied with energy
and cunning and without conscience, resulted in his acquisition of
most of the wages of the labourers that were not previously retained
by the commissary or appropriated by the magistrate. He always wore
store clothes of extreme cut, and never spent money unless he had an
audience. The woman who accompanied him was not a resident of the camp,
but lived at Red Top, a neighbouring hamlet. She glared her defiance
and flaunted her triumph before the local belles.

With white people Bluton had an ingratiatingly confidential manner,
and he now made the purchase of a highly coloured box of candy for the
young woman appear as an especially intimate transaction between Saint
and himself. Not that he presumed an equality, he was much too astute
for that. But he always managed to give an impression to watching
negroes that his basis of contact with the whites differed from theirs.
Finally he purchased a real cigar from the solitary box which was
housed under the cash till, lighted it, and turned leisurely to survey
the group at the door.

Saint despised the man, and the necessity of serving him was the one
real humiliation of his humble vocation. But Bluton was a person of
importance and the one negro who had it in his power seriously to
inconvenience the company if he were given a grievance. This had been
intimated to Saint when he came to work at the mines. It had been
pointed out that the negro’s position as the confidential employé of
Proc Baggart, the magistrate, would enable him so to demoralise the
labour that the operation of the camp would be thrown decidedly out of
gear. They would like to have sent him packing, but he was too deeply
entrenched, and he knew it, and the power that it gave him.

He stood for a moment lolling against the counter and looking
disinterestedly at the group around the door that was now breaking
up into pairs and individuals and straggling away toward the cabins.
The older ones left in silence. The younger women and men told Bluton
good-night, some boldly calling him Gilly, and the timid ones Mr.
Bluton. Some regarded him with fawning wonder in their stupid eyes. The
man nodded absently in response, then he shot after them: “What’s the
use yo’ boys sayin’ good-night? I ’spec’ I’ll be seein’ yo’ all at de
game ’bout nine o’clock. Dis Saturday night, ain’t it?”

Baxter had been sitting on a box beside Maum Vina, who had promised to
put her up for the night. Now she and the old woman rose and called a
good-night to Wentworth.

Bluton turned slowly and met her gaze. Without shifting his eyes he
removed the cigar from his mouth and crossed slowly until he stood
before her; then he looked her up and down.

“Whar did yo’ come from, Big Gal?” he asked at length, his large,
facile mouth mocking her with its smile.

The woman was standing in the doorway, with the night behind her, and
the flickering lamps pointing up high lights in her boldly modelled
face, bringing out glints of dark amber in her wide eyes. As the man
approached, her body tensed defensively, and lifted itself to its
full height. There was nothing humorous about the wrapped wool of her
head--the shabby clothes. She was invested in a sudden natural dignity.

“Ah come from Sabannah,” she told him. “Ah come ’cause Ah wants to.
An’ my name ain’t Big Gal. It’s Baxter.” Her gaze never wavered, the
glints of amber giving it a strange lucence as it held Bluton’s eyes.
For a moment they stood without movement. A sense of impending drama
drew wire-tight through the room--twanged the nerves of susceptible
onlookers.

Maum Vina’s cackle, timid but urgent, jangled across it. “Come on,
daughter. Time to go home,” she said gently. She took Baxter’s hand and
drew it toward the door.

Bluton laughed shortly, uncomfortably, lowered his eyes, and folded his
loose lips tightly over the cigar. The girl by the show case, who had
been standing with a chocolate in her fingers, ran over and caught her
man by the arm, glaring defiance at Baxter. The big woman regarded her
with a look of supreme contempt, then turned without a word and went
with Maum Vina. Behind her the tense atmosphere went suddenly slack.

Bluton collected his faculties and, stressing each word exaggeratedly,
called after the disappearing figure: “All right, Sistuh, jus’ as _you_
say, ob course.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Saint experienced some difficulty in getting Baxter on the pay roll.
No one could look at her and doubt her ability to perform even that
gruelling labour. But this was the fatal objection: there was no
precedent for it. Women worked in the fields, the home, bore children.
But the mines were for the men. Then, too, the mining was done by
gangs composed of two negroes each, and no man was willing to risk the
ridicule of having a female partner. The prospect was becoming dark
indeed when Saint discovered that an aged negro called Drayton was
going to be laid off because he was becoming feeble and none of the
younger negroes would take him on as pit partner. He arranged that
Baxter should have a try-out with the old man. The woman had no idea
what the work would be like, but she had superlative confidence in her
muscle. And, too, the open country, the sense of space, and the cool
yielding sand beneath her feet gave her a sense of harmony with her
surroundings.

At the field’s edge on that first morning she was joined by Drayton, a
grizzled little man with a wisp of a moustache and old, stubborn eyes.
There was a story that when he was in his prime and a schooner was
being loaded with rock against time, he had wheeled and dumped five
hundred barrow loads of four hundred pounds each without pausing even
for food and had earned the record wage of seven dollars in a single
day by his feat. Ever since this achievement he had strutted like a
little cockerel, and the story was always on his lips. He would say to
the big lazy bucks: “How much barrow can yo’ load in a day?” When he
got the answer he would always cluck his tongue in scorn and tell of
his own record. He knew well that they would be glad to turn upon him
when his hand grew feeble and his ultimate hour of humiliation arrived.
But his worst fear had never conjured up the idea of having to work
with a woman. To-day the sweet winter air was as wormwood on his tongue.

They stood in the open looking each other up and down, these strangely
mated partners. Then, in a deep, bullying voice that no one had ever
heard him use before, the old labourer took the offensive. “Spec’
me tuh make mine han’ out ob yo’, enty! Well, Ah ain’t gots no time
fuh foolin’. Ah spec’ yo’ done heah ’bout dat time Ah done roll fibe
hundred barrow in a day, enty? Well, dat de kin’ ob a man yo’ gots fuh
partner. Ef yo’ can’t keep up wid me, Ah goin’ quit, yo’ onnerstan’!”

Baxter looked at the agitated little figure and saw the surrender
masquerading behind bluster and noise, and her heart went out to him,
but before she could reply the other negroes caught sight of them, and
whoops of derision rent the air.

“Do look, Daddy Drayton gots he nurse wid um.” “Whar dem fibe hundred
barrows now, Daddy?” Hats were hurled into the air, and bodies bent
double in spasms of laughter.

Baxter had been missing Lissa terribly, and now a flood of maternal
yearning rose and overwhelmed her. She saw the old man turn on his
tormentors and grimace fiercely at them, like an old and toothless
dog who must seem so much fiercer than a young one because he is so
uncertain of himself. She was full of tenderness for him. She would
have debased herself if she could have propped up his toppling dignity
thereby. She was sorry that her huge body made him seem all the smaller
by comparison. She wished that she could shield him, help him over his
bitter hour.

“Ah t’ank yo’ fuh take me on,” she said humbly. “Ah heah how yo’ is de
bes’ man on de field. Ah ain’t nuttin’ but a ’oman, but Ah is goin’ do
de bes’ Ah can.” And so they turned their backs on the jeering crowd,
and entered upon their strange partnership.

The field to be mined was a large one. The axe men had gone before
them and cleared it of forest, and it waited, clean and bare, for the
diggers. Presently the foreman came around and assigned a “task” to
each pair of workers, or, if they were industrious, two together, while
he was about it. A “task” was a rectangle four by six feet in size.
The labour consisted in digging one’s way slowly downward, throwing
out the earth, which was called the overburden, and uncovering, at a
depth of about six feet, the layer of phosphate rock deposit. Then the
real labour commenced, for the rock, which lay in a stratum of about a
foot in thickness, had to be broken into small pieces with a pick and
thrown up out of the pit with a shovel by hand. This work was usually
done by one of the partners, while the other had the far easier task of
wheeling the rock in a barrow to the little railroad and dumping it in
a pile for the cars.

Baxter spat upon her hands and closed them about the pick handle.
The first stroke drove the implement into the soil up to the handle
socket. Drayton’s eyes widened, and he could not restrain a grunt
of admiration. The woman dug most of the day, and when they got to
the rock, she elected to pick it out while he rolled it to the cars,
telling him that she wanted to keep away from the men who were gathered
at the tracks.

Once the foreman came up and looked into the pit. He was a gentleman,
and his people had for generations been used to appraising negro
labour. The hole had reached its depth of six feet, and the woman was
standing on the bare floor of rock into which she was driving her pick.
She paused and looked up. The pit had been full of sun all day, and the
work terribly heavy. Baxter had thrown off her outer waist, and through
her undershirt the man could see the swell of powerful shoulder and
back muscles, the high lift of her chest as it rose and fell on long,
unhurried breaths. He turned to Drayton with a wink. “You’re not such a
damned bad picker, after all,” he observed.

The old man smiled; then, in the new, deep voice of authority, he
ripped out some unnecessary instructions to the woman. She answered
submissively: “Yas, suh. T’ank yo’, suh.” And he wheeled his barrow off
toward the tracks.

She glanced up out of the pit full into the amused eyes of the white
man, and a look of absolute comprehension passed between them. “You
know men, Baxter, you’ll do,” he said with a grin as he turned away.

By the time that Saturday night came the jibes at Drayton’s expense had
ceased and he was the secret envy of most of the lazy young pit men in
the field.

Baxter for her part had earned eight dollars for the week’s labour.
She had settled in old Maum Vina’s cabin, and she owed half of her
income to the commissary for supplies which she had contributed to
their living. That first Saturday night she turned her back on the
allurement of gossip and laughter at the store, took her four dollars,
tied it up in a corner of her handkerchief, dropped it in her bosom,
and went home to bed. There would be a long journey to-morrow, and she
must be up and on her way in the early morning.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next morning Baxter found that Maum Vina was going to spend the
day at Red Top, and, as their way would be the same for several miles,
they started off together. The day was flawless, and the early sun
sent its level radiance over the broad marshes, flooding the barren
winter wastes with gold until they looked like fields of ripened grain.
Down the tunnelled road under the live oaks the light shot, edging
the stalactites of Spanish moss with filaments of fire. A red bird
fell like a live coal out of the sky into a roadside casena bush and
whistled three confident notes up into the face of the new day. The
air had a tang to it and lifted the travellers into a good stride.
As Baxter strode along life throbbed upward through the soles of her
Sunday shoes and filled her with a sense of well-being. This was
reinforced when she lifted her hand to her breast, where she could feel
her four big silver dollars tied in the corner of her bandana.

As the pair stepped briskly along Baxter stole a sidelong glance at
her companion, studying her in this first moment of leisure that they
had enjoyed together. The old woman had a strange habit. In the house
she was just like every one else, but as soon as they were out upon
the open road she walked with bent head. Her large clay pipe clenched
between her jaws wreathed her face in rank tobacco smoke, and through
it her eyes could be seen, bright and eager, sliding from side to side
of the road, missing no crevice or rut in their scrutiny. Presently she
referred to this unusual behaviour, and told her companion the cause.

Twenty years before, when her old man had died and left her penniless,
a conjure woman had told her not to worry, that she would find money
in the road before she was too old to look after herself, and that she
would die in affluence. Since then the years had been cruel. She had
seen her two children go into the little graveyard with the father. Age
had stripped her down to that last pitiful hope. But there was not a
shadow of a doubt in her mind that some day she would find her fortune
lying at her foot. But already her sight was failing a little, the keen
eyes missing things that they would have seen easily enough even a year
ago. So she must hurry and cover many miles of road while she could,
and she must be careful, too. Who knew but what the money would be
there in the road right around the next corner? Once, in the excitement
of the recital, she raised her eyes while she talked to Baxter, then,
in a panic, she made her wait for her while she trotted back and
returned, searching the ground.

The younger woman was impressed. “Ah wish tuh Gawd Ah had somet’ing
like dat tuh look forward tuh,” she said enviously. “Ah ain’t gots
nuttin’ but bad luck gib tuh me when Ah talks tuh one ob dem cunjers.”

Presently they approached a bend in the road and heard the rattle of a
rapidly driven vehicle. Then a light buggy swung the curve into full
view and raced toward them behind the finest span of trotters that
Baxter had ever seen. Before her the fore legs flashed up and down
with the precision of pistons, and she got a fleeting impression of
broad muscular chests under glistening chestnut coats, eyes showing
glints of white, and mouths quivering open to the relentless pull on
the bits. The driver was pushing them hard, using the whip against
tight lines, and they were upon the two pedestrians in a flash. As
Maum Vina snatched Baxter’s big, slow-moving body to the side of the
road, the woman looked up in sudden anger at the man. Not personal
resentment so much as a militant pity for the horses which were being
so hardly used. The appraising of strangers was not a calculated
business with her. She had always had instinctive first impressions,
and experience had taught her that they were far more accurate than
subsequent pondered judgments. Now, for the first time in her life, she
was actually frightened at what she saw in a human face. The head was
held straight on the rather spare shoulders, and a broad-brimmed felt
hat shaded a long face that was shaped like a coffin--broadest at the
high cheek bones, and tapering only slightly to an extravagantly long,
square chin. The eyes were narrowed against the wind, and a broad, thin
gash of a mouth was drawn in a tight, fixed smile. Under the shading
hat brim the skin showed with a fungous-like pallor, most unusual
in a country where the white men were used to working out under a
subtropical summer sun. A shower of sand from the spurning hoofs stung
the women’s faces. They stood watching the vehicle diminish down the
perspective of the avenue, take a far curve, disappear.

“Sweet Jedus!” ejaculated Baxter in a hushed voice. “Who dat
rattlesnake, Mauma?”

Then, while they pursued their way, the old negress told her about
Proc Baggart and the part that he played in the lives of the negroes
of his section. She was an amazingly astute old creature. In the
moments when her eyes were not employed upon their eternal quest they
had looked into people’s souls and minds and told her what they saw
there. She knew much more about the operation of Baggart’s magisterial
office than a negro was supposed to know. She also knew enough to feign
ignorance, which for one of her race is the ultimate in human wisdom.
Baggart was the law for the mining district. First as constable, then
as magistrate, he had killed six negroes. The last killing had been
rather spectacular and had served well to put the fear of God into the
onlookers. The victim had been drinking, and instead of scurrying to
the roadside at the approach of the buggy had remained in the middle of
the road. He shouted something unintelligible at the magistrate, who
replied by shooting him dead from the buggy seat with a shotgun; then,
with a Saturday night gang of fifty negroes about him, driving the
vehicle over the body and proceeding deliberately upon his way to give
himself up and go through the form of a trial.

The magistrate, it seemed, made more money than any man in the county.
There were things called taxes that the negroes were supposed to pay,
but they were afraid to go to the house in town to find out about
them, because it looked like a jail. So the magistrate waited awhile
until the taxes got penalties--a process which to Maum Vina’s mind
was similar to that by which an evil she-dog will eventually come
home with a litter of still more evil puppies--then he sent for the
negroes to come and pay him what he claimed. Sometimes he would send
official-looking little blue papers by the constable. At other times
he would just send word that such a negro was wanted. Once a new negro
in the camp had asked for a receipt for his tax money, but after that
he was hounded so that he had to go away. Then there were the dogs.
That was where Gilly made most of his money, it was said. He would come
slipping around when no one was looking, and if he saw a dog in a yard
he’d report it to the magistrate. If the negro didn’t have a license,
and of course no one ever did, he’d have to raise ten dollars for
Baggart, or sometimes twenty, if he wasn’t civil. Gilly would get half
of that as informer. That gave him mighty keen eyes. And Gilly also ran
the big crap game just outside of the Company’s land. Everybody knew
that the building belonged to Baggart and that he must be in on the
game, because it was never raided. They all knew that the dice were
crooked, but it was the only safe place to play. An independent game
out in the bushes always managed to leak out, and the offenders were
given stiff fines or jail sentences. When the old woman finished her
recital she was at her turn-off, and without lifting her glance from
the white sand of the road she said good-bye and left Baxter to her
meditations.

For the greater part of an hour the big woman’s road led between woods,
and she strode along with bowed head. Her thoughts were now upon her
errand, and her darkly brooding expression gave place to a smile of
happy anticipation. Abruptly the road left the woods, and her glance
leaped free over the broad marshes and the silver ribbon of the Ashley
to the city lying low along the horizon with the glamour of the morning
sunlight upon it. Up the river, faint but very clear, came the familiar
music of St. Michael’s bells calling the white folks to service. An
exquisite pang of nostalgia twisted the listener’s heart. Now, in the
crowded court on East Bay, in the long Sunday leisure, she would have
been combing Lissa’s hair out for her, trying to straighten it so that
she could be in the new style and not have to wear it wrapped like the
older negroes. And while she worked she would have been listening to
the talk, and sharing the laughter. Then to-night there would have been
church, and singing with her friends.

She came in sight of the bridge--a taut thread of white stretched
between the city and her destination at the end of the road. Fear
assailed her. Perhaps she was late. She quickened her pace to a
lumbering trot.

When she reached the bridge two figures were waiting: Mamba in her
Sunday black, and Lissa in a new cloth coat, a recent gift of her
grandmother, and of which not even one of the Battery white folks need
have felt ashamed.

Baxter panted up, huge, hot, and dusty. She greeted Mamba hastily,
“Hello, Ma! How yo’ been?” then fell on her knees in the dirt of the
road and strained the child to her breast, drawing her finger tips
along the soft cheek with her characteristic gesture. As always she
was awed by the miracle that this fragile thing could be the fruit of
her great crude body. After a moment, with gentle pushing movements,
the child released herself from the enfolding arms and stood looking at
her mother. Then, with the frank callousness of youth, she sidled over
and leaned against Mamba’s clean, stiff Sunday black. A little dashed
in spirit, Baxter got to her feet and fumbled in her bosom for her
handkerchief. Then she untied the knot, biting it free with her strong
white teeth, and handed Mamba four silver dollars.

“If Ah is careful, Ma,” she said, “Ah can count on dat each week, an’
when Ah git hardened some more, maybe Ah can do better.”

The old woman took the money and put it in a handbag that she carried.
She was preoccupied with her calculations for the child, half
forgetting the mother, who stood there waiting for a word of approval.
But after a moment Mamba smiled her new smile, grim and rather
terrifying with its big masculine teeth, and admitted: “Dat ain’t so
bad.”

She stood pondering a moment longer, her lips moving silently to some
thought, then she went on more brightly: “Now, if yo’ can keep dat up
steady, we can start dem music lessons for Lissa. Ah got her in the
infant choir las’ Sunday ebenin’, an’ de leader say she gots de bes’
voice in de Sunday school. She say dat fuh three dolluh a week she can
tek she right on up so she can earn a libbin’ singin’ out ob books an’
teachin’.”

They stayed for a while longer, sitting beside the road and saying
the inconsequential things that always crowd up in the moments before
a parting, while the real words that should be carried away to be
remembered afterward elude the mind. For Baxter the glory had somehow
gone out of the sunlight. The sight of Lissa leaning against her
grandmother filled her with a new sort of loneliness that hurt her more
than the past days of separation. Finally she rose to go. This time she
did not take the child in her arms and kiss her, but patted the little
head gently with her big hand. “Well, so long,” she said, and turned
abruptly away.

       *       *       *       *       *

The winter passed slowly for Baxter that first year at the mines, for
it was not merely a succession of days and weeks, but one of those
periods in a human life when a new agony yields slowly to custom, and
custom becomes a commonplace with which one can go on living without
flinching.

Every Sunday brought Mamba to the bridge head, but Lissa was in the
regular Sunday school now and did not want to miss the singing and
companionship of the other children. So she came only occasionally to
see her mother. When she did she was strange and diffident, preferring
to sit by Mamba on the roadside embankment as they talked. The child’s
music teacher had got her into the Sunday school of the stylish mulatto
church which was attended by only the most prosperous of the coloured
citizens. Rumour in the negro quarter had it that there was a door at
the entrance of the church painted tan and that, when an applicant for
a pew passed through it, his complexion was observed by the vestry. If
it showed darker than the door there were no pews for rent. Whether or
not this was malicious humour on the part of the full-blooded negroes,
there is no way of knowing, but the fact remained that, while they
might scoff, it could not be denied that membership in the Reformed
Church meant entrée to the coloured _haut société_. And so Mamba had
gladly let Lissa go with her friend while she continued to attend her
humble place of worship near the old East Bay tenement.

No better method could possibly have been devised in the old city,
where the caste system among negroes went to exaggerated extremes, of
making a colour snob of Lissa. The mother felt this instinctively,
but her first definite impulse to try to prevent it was immediately
suppressed by Mamba’s inflexible determination to give the girl
her chance to the new negro life that she felt to be so full of
possibilities.

“Yo’ an’ me, Hagar--what de hell is we?--Nuttin’! But Ah ain’t no fool
at schemin’, an’ yo’ gots de strength. Look like we ought fuh gib dat
gal a chance ’tween us.”

And so the spring wore away. The green and brown of the winter woods
gave place to the spilled gold of jessamine, and the wood lilies
marched in white battalions through the swamp proclaiming the Easter
season. In the open, deciduous trees hung like puffs of yellow smoke
against soft horizons, and in the swamps pollen spread a glaze coloured
like verdigris over the pools.

Then came the hot days, with the sunlight trembling in waves over the
denuded mining fields, and impounding its heat in the pits where Baxter
laboured with her great body for her child and learned to spend her
thwarted maternity on Maum Vina and old Drayton, who had to be humoured
like a child while he was kept happy by her apparent submission to his
authority. But the physical labours, at any rate, had not been without
compensation. Her muscles were like iron and were no longer a vast
half-directed force but a perfectly disciplined machine.

       *       *       *       *       *

July came, and in its second week a spell of record-breaking heat.
Baxter’s pit was out in the centre of the field and would get no shade
all day. Wednesday--and to-night there would be a church service, and
after that a “love feast” under the auspices of the lodge. All over
the fields the men were taking it at half speed. As they were paid by
the output they were not pushed by the foremen, and when they carried
a barrow to the cars they would sprawl for a few moments in the strip
of shade. But Baxter could not afford to lag. The sun had come up in
a smother of red haze; later it had climbed above it, but the moisture
had flowed sluggishly along the earth and settled in the pits. Out of
an intolerable grey-blue dome the sun struck directly down into the
humid excavations, making of each a veritable Turkish bath. Baxter had
stripped to the limit that her self-respect would allow and swung along
steadily, lifting ten pounds of rock with every hoist of the shovel and
hurling it out for old Drayton to barrow to the cars.

When knocking-off time came she was conscious of physical exhaustion
for the first time since she had got her muscles hardened to the work.

Church night, lodge meeting, and “love feast” all rolled into one! What
a night it was going to be! Everywhere the negroes were beginning to
show excitement, cutting pigeon wings and shuffling. Mouth organs were
coming from pockets and overwhelming the evening birds in the casenas
and scrub oaks.

For two months the white men who worked at the plant had been spending
the nights on the high sandy ridge three miles away where there was no
fever in hot weather. They would scurry off at sundown as though the
devil were after them, and would not dare to return until after sunup.
But the negroes were immune to malaria. They could stay. Unnumbered
generations behind them along the swarming Congo--in the swamps of
Angola--had tolerated the breed to the poison, had given them this
heritage of safety and these months of freedom from the surveillance of
the white man. What a God-given dispensation of nature! From moonrise
until to-morrow’s sun--a negro country. Even Proc Baggart, who feared
neither god nor devil, wouldn’t dare to prowl in the malarial lowlands.
When the white men were there no liquor was sold on the mining
company’s property, and there was comparatively little drinking among
the negroes. But now! Negro country! Who cared for rules with no one to
enforce them!

Bluton appeared with a buggy load of half-pint dispensary flasks which
he had brought from town and which he resold at double price, until
every cent left of last week’s wages in the camp went into his pockets.
The negroes hated to patronise him--the yellow hound, the rattlesnake!
Why hadn’t one of them thought of going for it?--but they never
did--and Bluton always remembered and had the jump on them every time.
Now he got in his empty buggy and drove off with the money, telling
them frankly that, if he came back later, he wasn’t going to risk a
pocketful of change in that gang.

In the air of celebration, with the spirits of every one about her
vaulting, Baxter felt by contrast tired and depressed. She dawdled over
to Bluton’s rig. What a scramble there was for the flasks! She hadn’t
touched a drop since she came to the camp. Perhaps just a half pint
might pick her up. She pulled the bandana out of her bosom and handed
the mulatto fifty cents. The hot liquor was strong in her throat. It
did not take long to saturate the system, like beer or wine. There was
a great scramble for the last few bottles. Suddenly, as though animated
by some overpowering force outside of herself, Baxter brushed the
squabbling men aside, seized the last flask, and, flinging her bandana
out, emptied it on the floor of the vehicle. Then everybody laughed as
she shied the first flask, now empty, at a distant yellow pine. Near by
half a dozen young bucks were skylarking, tussling with each other. A
splendidly proportioned young black threw a larger one for a solid fall
and turned to the onlookers with a shout of boastful laughter. Baxter
sauntered amiably toward him, took him by the collar, snatched him
suddenly across her knee and administered a resounding spank where his
pants were stretched the tightest. She probably owed her easy success
in some degree to the surprise of her attack, but it delighted the
onlookers, who held their sides for laughter.

She felt her spirits soar. Life was glowing and singing for her again.
What use were the lonesome blues, anyhow!

Time for meeting. The lodge members all wore their regalia--broad,
flat blue sashes edged with silver fringe, crossing their breasts from
shoulder to hip. The keeper of the great key arrived and elbowed her
way through the crowd to the door of the building that served as both
church and lodge room. Suspended about her neck on a silken rope was
a silver key a foot in length. It was tremendously impressive. She
fumbled beneath it in her bosom and finally brought out a small, rusty
key with a dirty red string tied through its ring. Then with this she
opened the ten-cent padlock that held the two panels of the sagging
portal together. Ready hands opened the doors wide and placed props
against them, and the crowd surged into the steaming room and seated
themselves noisily on the unstable backless benches to await the coming
of the preacher.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Reverend Quintus Whaley let his large and cherished body through
the door of his well-kept cabin and turned his steps toward the church.
He had a broad sensual mouth and a pair of small cunning eyes that
gleamed avidly under heavy eyelids. As he walked ponderously through
the twilight the alternate advance of right and left thighs kept his
pendulous belly swinging, not without a certain massive dignity,
from side to side. He wore a new black tail-coat, a recent gift from
the mining company, and the watch, which he presently hauled from a
pocket in his alpaca vest, had come as a Christmas reminder of the
fact that the white folks not only gave him his bread but buttered
it as well. Astute as he was, he little realised the fact that,
for the investment that he represented, he was the most valuable,
though unproclaimed retainer of the corporation. The allowance at the
commissary for supplies, the best cabin in the village--these were
good, but the coat and watch that invested him with all the dignity
of a city preacher--well, they made it very easy for him to see the
hand of God behind all of the labour policies of the Company. He
smiled now to himself as he remembered the threatened exodus of labour
during the past autumn. One of the more intelligent and daring men
had gone North to work and had sent home such good reports that much
unrest resulted. A land with big wages--and no Proc Baggart. Then,
fortunately for the Company, the man had died of pneumonia. Acting upon
a brilliant inspiration, they had telegraphed instructions to have the
body cremated before shipping. But it was the Reverend Quintus whose
magnificent rolling rhythms had pointed to the hand of God in the fate
that had befallen their brother. And it was he who had exhibited to the
awed negroes the ashes that alone remained of the daring adventurer.

He entered the church, smiling and bowing from right to left. The
sisters greeted him effusively, craning forward to warm themselves
in the light of his smiles. But the men sat unmoved and, for the
most part, silent. The reading desk was quite high, reaching to the
preacher’s shoulders, and there was a shelf beneath the open Bible to
which the Reverend, with remarkable dexterity for so heavy a man, now
transferred a pint flask from beneath his coat.

A shrill leading soprano flung the first clear notes of a spiritual
into the close silence. A tenor rang in and chimed with it from the
last bench, then the full chorus lifted and beat against the thin
clapboarded walls in recurrent waves of melancholy beauty.

The Reverend Quintus dropped to his knees behind the high reading desk
and, safe from view, drew the cork from his bottle and took a long
preliminary pull. He was not always so lucky. To-night he would speak
with the tongue, not of men, but of angels.

       *       *       *       *       *

Baxter had not entered the building with the crowd. Her high spirits
had not endured, and now she wanted to be alone. Maum Vina had
lingered, watching her a little anxiously, but she sent the old woman
in and promised to follow soon. The cool of evening was creeping up out
of the swamp, sending low, flat layers of mist over the parched and
tortured mining fields, banking up in the avenues under the live oaks,
swimming out over the marsh to blur the horizon. As night grew heavy in
the East, a gleam like phosphorus under dark water commenced to fringe
the skyline, and the watcher knew that the lights were going on in the
city. Mamba would be putting Lissa to bed.

Of late the pain of missing had become almost more than the mother
could bear. She almost never saw the girl now. Mamba could only leave
the Atkinsons on Sunday morning while the children were at Sunday
school and church; and that was Lissa’s opportunity to sing in the
choir and meet the well-to-do members of her race. Mamba had pointed
this out, and it had been accepted with that blind obedience that made
Baxter still seem so much of a child. But the mother’s spirit was the
prisoner of a past from which it would not free itself because the
present offered it no harbourage. And she could no longer visualise
Lissa clearly--the child of even a few months ago was becoming confused
with an imagined portrait of the young girl into which she was growing.

She dashed a hand across her eyes; she looked at the moisture streaked
along the dark skin that she was holding before her face in the gloom.
She forced a laugh, short and bitter, there by herself in the night.
Deliberately she lifted her second flask, half emptied it, then set it
mechanically beside her. Now the bitterness and the pain were ebbing.
She let her memory go back into the old days, and, instead of the ache
of longing, she experienced a warm sense of immediacy--an illusion of
reality so intense that she almost felt the touch of soft skin against
her hands. The image was quite clear now--no longer confused with
physical change--the child that had been hers was hers to keep now,
always, like this, near her.

She was happy now with her head bowed upon her lifted knees. Over the
eastern marshes the moon pushed its flattened disk of copper, pulled
free of the horizon, rounded out to a perfect sphere and brightened to
polished brass. Then it sailed confidently up toward the zenith.

Maum Vina left the church building and came to hunt for Baxter. She was
relieved to see her sitting so still. Touching her on the shoulder,
she dispelled the reverie. There was a new peace in the big face with
its features of a child that Baxter raised. The moon was well up now,
pouring its light down on the cabins and church, arranging the little
settlement rigidly in a cubist pattern of sharp blacks and whites,
planes and angles. The church windows were three yellow slabs on a
black rectangle. Baxter sighed heavily and got to her feet. Then she
remembered the flask, picked it up with an odd detachment of manner,
drained it, and threw it in a clump of bushes.

Maum Vina led her by the hand toward the church, and she went
submissively, moving hugely behind the wiry little figure.

       *       *       *       *       *

They entered the building at a dramatic moment. The Reverend Quintus
was sending his mellifluous syllables against the walls in a call for
confession and repentance, when a violent and misdirected gesture
dislodged his nearly emptied flask from its snug retreat and sent it
clattering, naked and blatant, down on the floor beneath fifty pairs of
astonished eyes.

There was a moment of silence; then a crashing roar of laughter from
the congregation. That was dangerous. The cloth could endure anything
but ridicule. He leaned forward over the desk, and his tremendous
voice rose over the babblement among the benches. In his extremity he
relapsed into the thick Gullah dialect that he seldom employed in the
pulpit.

“Onnah heah me condemn de hypocrite--enty? Onnah heah me say
confess--enty? If onnah confess and repent when onnah ain’t gots no
sin, den onnah is hypocrite. An’ God despise hypocrite worse dan
rattlesnake. So now, in de presence ob dis congregation, I done t’row
my licker down an’ confess my sin. An’ I calls on ebery nigger in deese
walls fuh t’row he licker down! Yeah, verily, if dere be one among
yo’ what is widout de sin ob hypocracy, let him be de fus’ to cas’ he
licker down!”

He paused for breath, and there was an uneasy fidgeting on the benches.
He was quick to follow up his advantage.

“Remembuh what de hymn say: ‘Hypocrite, hypocrite, God despise. He
tongue so nimble an’ he will tell lies.’”

He was glaring down at them now, and there was none to meet the
condemnation in his eyes. He allowed the silence to grow for a full
minute, then snapped the tension with a thundering blow on the desk
and, without preface, flung his great, resonant voice into the opening
line of a spiritual. Old tactics! But they could always be counted
on in an emergency. Sitting protectively over their own flasks, his
brethren were well content to let bygones be bygones and to hurry the
present into the past with song.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was time for the love feast. The committee had the refreshments
ready--gaudy little factory-made cakes from the commissary, cherry
bounce, thinned economically with lemonade. But the spirit of song
had seized the bodies of the congregation, and the gross appetites of
the stomach were forgotten. They passed the plates to a few, but the
singers would have none of them. Benches were being thrown back and the
floor cleared for a shout. Already splay feet were slapping the loose
boards of the floor. The spiritual rang out:

  “Oh, mornin’ star is in de West--
     Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
   An’ I wish dat star was in my breast.
     Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb....”

Now the shouters were in full swing, bodies that could give themselves
utterly to a rhythm swayed and bent; here two facing each other, the
rest forgotten; there several together with a more concerted interplay.
But always the feet hit the same time, swaying and rattling the whole
building.

  “Oh, way down yonder in de Harbes’ Fiel’--
     Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
   Angel workin’ on de cha’iot wheel.
     Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!”

One of the larger groups started to circle, and a ring shout was under
way. The refreshment committee knew that this could last until morning.
They put their plates aside to be eaten by those who would drop out
later from exhaustion.

Shrill and piercing above the more measured rhythm of the spiritual,
with its worship of the new Christ, cut the voice of a soprano in the
Gullah shouting rhythm:

  “Simmi yubba leaba, simmi uyh,
   Ronda bohda simmi yuh....”

Only the two lines, but repeated interminably in a heavily syncopated
measure, with the concerted stamping of the feet crashing through it
like the thunder of a tribal tom-tom.

Some of the older people began to drop out and reach gratefully for
the cooling drink. But, with the younger, the excitement mounted. Women
screamed. Men emptied their flasks openly, their feet holding the
rhythm the while.

Ned was there. He had tried to persuade Dolly to come, but she never
went out with him now, and had said she was ill and would go to
bed. They had a sort of understanding now. He did not ask much of
her--except not to go around openly with Bluton. She was not to shame
him before everybody. Now he looked up from his shouting and saw
them in the door. Dolly was good-looking, the best-looking woman in
the room. Her full figure was pressed close to the man to whose arm
she clung. Gilly had been drinking, and the beast that he was looked
unguarded out from his face. The cunning, bestiality, hypocrisy--there
they were. His eyes were fixed on Ned, gloating with insolent
amusement. The man and woman left the doorway and sauntered into the
room. Then, with the rhythm of the shouters, who were so rapt that they
were dazed, rushing it up to a swift dramatic climax, tragedy was upon
them.

Ned had his razor out, holding it as the old razor fighters used to,
the handle clenched lightly in his hand, and the blade with back
resting against the closed fingers of his fist. Held so, it could not
close on its owner and could be hurled downward with the full weight of
the fist behind it. Some one snatched up one lamp and hurled it from a
window, but one remained hanging from a beam and could not be reached.
There was a rush for doors and windows. When the crowd gained the open
and looked back, it was over. Ned had vanished as if by magic. Dolly
was gone. Of the three principals in the drama Bluton alone remained.
He lay under the lamp that was swinging slightly, casting his shadow
eerily from side to side, creating a terrifying illusion of movement.
He was not alone. Baxter loomed above him. She stood as though
hypnotised, looking down at the dark venous blood that flowed out of
the slashed clothing and sent the arc of its sinister circle rapidly
toward her. Now it was under one of her great bare feet. She moved. A
foot slid sickeningly and waked her suddenly from her trance.

“Sweet Jedus!” she ejaculated and dropped to her knees.

Knife wounds were nothing new to her. She opened a slashed sleeve and
examined the cut. It was as clean and incisive as surgery--but, God!
she didn’t know a man had so much blood to spill. She hoisted her
skirt, snatched off her petticoat and tore it into strips. She saw the
windows and doors, then, filled with wide eyes and sullen faces.

“Gimme a han’, somebody,” she called. “Can’t be yo’ goin’ stan’ dere
an’ let a man dead!”

No one moved. Their hatred of Bluton seemed to make the air dark and
thick about the kneeling woman. Ned had done it for them. They had
only to go away and leave him. But no one could muster the courage to
call her off. They could only watch and see which way the dice would
fall--“Good Luck Gilly”--or the rest of them. He lay with his face
toward her. There was a slash across the forehead close to the hair
and, below it, the yellow skin had gone a ghastly grey. Alone--he was
worse off than she, for all his money and his dubious good luck. His
hand lay flung open beside her. It was long-fingered, sensual, soft,
with that beauty of modelling so often found in the hand of a negro.
The palm was scarcely lighter than the outer skin. She took it in both
of hers, his plight forgotten for the moment. Her brain had been cloudy
with liquor, but the excitement had charged across it like an electric
storm and left it clear and ringing, but it was a thing separate from
herself, working irresistibly from premises of its own choosing. The
slender hand lying between her strong, dark ones held her fascinated
gaze. It dissociated itself from the personality of Bluton. The touch
of it made her flinch, but she could not release it. Then she knew
why: it was an enlarged replica of Lissa’s, shaped and coloured the
same. A warm smothering sensation took her suddenly, making her senses
lurch and waver. Then her starved maternity took Bluton in. It was
instinctive but it was utter. For that night, while he lay alone and
near to death, she gave him all that she could have given to her own
flesh and blood.

She worked with frantic haste. A band tied above a wound and drawn
tight with her bare hands was as effectual as a tourniquet. He was
deeply slashed in both arms as he had shielded his face with them,
and there was that gash across the forehead. After the uproar in the
room its poisoned atmosphere now hung in a dead and ominous quiet. The
silent watchers at the window waited, their eyes following Baxter’s
every movement. No arteries had been cut, but the veins had poured
out the man’s life until he was in desperate straits. The ghastly
visage thrown up toward the light showed that something must be done
immediately. Baxter bound the wounds, staunching the bleeding. Then she
stood up and met the eyes that were fixed on her.

“We gots to get um to town quick,” she said. “If we can get um in de
hospital, maybe dey can pull um t’rough.”

Not a body moved. They kept on standing there staring at her
inimically. She faced them desperately. Oh, if she only had Mamba now!
Mamba who always made plans, pushed things through. She turned back on
her own resources, and a plan began to form. She met old Drayton’s eyes
peering in a window, and in a second she had him by the arm.

“Listen!” she shot into his face. “Yo’ go an’ break in de commissary
stable an’ get de wagon here soon as yo’ can. Ah’ll fix it wid Mr.
Saint.” The old man hesitated. “If dat wagon ain’t here in fibe minute
I ain’t nebber goin’ dig anoder pit wid yo’. Onnerstan’!”

She loosed him and he started for the stable at an unsteady run.

A voice that was unable to conceal its satisfaction called out, “Dat
ain’t no use. Dey ain’t le’s nuthin’ but city niggers free to de
hospital. Country nigger gots to pay in exvance.”

“Dat all right,” Baxter answered. “Gilly always gots money.”

She dropped on her knees and went through Bluton’s pockets. Not a
penny. Then they all remembered at once. The man had stripped the
settlement of every cent on the whisky sale and had carried the money
away to hide. The irony of the situation struck the negro humour and
they began to laugh.

“Sarve um right,” some one called. “Can’t trus’ we--now he can dead.
Ain’t nuttin’ but a low white-folks nigger nohow.”

The big woman glared at them.

“He ain’t goin’ dead. Yo’ hear dat, yo’ dirty passel ob yellow-liver
nigger?--He ain’t goin’ dead. ’Cause Ah’s goin’ see um t’rough.”

The wagon rattled up. Baxter heard it, stooped, lifted her charge in
her arms, and, taking him from the building, lay him on the floor of
the vehicle. There was an old tarpaulin on the seat. She spread it
carefully over him and climbed in. Then she looked down at the sullen
crowd about the wagon and lashed them with her parting words.

“Yo’ gawd-damned low-livered niggers. Yo’ fair mak’ me ’shamed tuh be
black.”

No one answered, and the vehicle started off under the live oaks with
the horse moving soundlessly between the deep sandy ruts and the
passenger lying, awful in his immobility, under the tarpaulin.

       *       *       *       *       *

Baxter brought all of her faculties to bear on the problem of getting
him into the hospital. If she could only have Mamba here now--she
would know what to do. Then, slowly, under the urge of necessity,
her brain began to evolve a scheme. What if he were found near the
hospital--lying unconscious in the street--who would know that he was
not a town nigger? She had had friends who had been found so by the
police and carried to the hospital, where they were cared for. She
knew the city well. The police were few in the quiet part of the town.
Perhaps she could slip through the darkened streets and leave Bluton on
one of the beats.

They had covered several miles before she finally decided to risk the
plan. She had been so intent upon it that no other consideration had
entered her mind. Now she was aware of a menacing shadow--a prescience
that all was not right. Then it came down upon her like a physical
blow--what if she were caught? Two years in jail. Immediately the
horror elaborated itself in her quickened imagination. What would Mamba
say? Lissa!--All the young girl’s toney friends--her music--and her
ma in the jail! They would throw Lissa out--she knew it. Instantly it
loomed insurmountable before her. But here was Bluton--she could not
let him die now. Sweat burst out on her face, cold and clammy in the
night air.

With the odd instinct of dumb animals, the horse had sensed her
hesitation and stopped in the middle of the road. She mopped her
streaming face. Then, with a decisive gesture, she slapped the animal’s
back with the slack lines. She’d have to gamble on her luck. Maybe it
had changed. Anyway, she’d have to see it through.

She was on the main road now, and the going was good. In the distance
she could see the taut thread of the bridge, white under the moonlight,
and the red light at the draw glowing like a single ruby at its centre.
Then came a short drive over the flats, with the marsh talking to her
in its soft plopping monosyllables.

On the planking now, the loose timbers making a thunder of sound in her
apprehensive ears as the shod hoofs fell rhythmically against them.
The draw was closed. That made it final. She must go ahead now. Had it
been left open to-night, as was sometimes done, fate would have turned
her back. A high tide ran under the bridge, sweeping the moon’s silver
under it in a shining flood. Overhead the luminous disk--no longer
brass, but a cold platinum--was so brilliant that its light had drowned
out all of the lesser stars. The vehicle, with its silent passenger and
the great hunched figure of its driver, moved toward the dark clustered
buildings of the city as though it advanced beneath a vast flood light
upon a gargantuan stage.

The toll office was closed for the night, but Baxter’s approach had
been heralded by the noise of the vehicle, and as she left the bridge
she saw the night watchman waiting. He was a very old, bent man, and he
stood swinging his stick and peering up in surprise.

“Where you goin’ this hour of the night?” he called querulously,
with the pettishness of one who has just been awakened. Then Baxter
remembered that she had no money to pay toll.

“Jus’ takin’ some truck to town,” she said lamely. “I’ll pay comin’
back when de office open.”

But the persistent old creature would not let it go at that. She had
stopped the wagon, and he now came up and peered over the side. He
was standing there, undecided what to do. Baxter’s mind was in panic.
Should she risk bolting for it with the old horse and heavy wagon?
They were both silent, trying to make up their minds. Bluton became
the deciding factor. There was movement beneath the canvas and a low,
agonized groan. With an instinctive reflex action, Baxter’s foot shot
out and caught the horse full on the rump. An astonished spring jerked
the vehicle clear of the watchman. Then the animal gathered himself
together and set off with the vehicle clattering and jouncing over the
cobbles. The din would bring the whole town down about her ears if it
continued, and so, as soon as the driver collected her wits, she threw
her weight on the right line with the result that they were plunged
into the immediate peace of an unpaved side street. She pulled the
animal down to a walk and listened with her heart thumping heavily in
her throat. There was no sound of pursuit. Evidently the watchman had
gone back to his nap and the policeman had been at the remote end of
his beat.

She waited a moment under a shade tree to quiet the trembling animal
and to gather courage for the plunge from the pool of shadow into the
relentless moonlight. Confidence that her luck had changed began to
come. She had won the first break. The horse was quiet now. She must
get on with it.

She moved out of the shadow, driving slowly and soundlessly in the soft
deeply rutted earth. Now her whole being seemed concentrated in her
sense of hearing. In the remote residential section through which she
was passing the stillness was so absolute that she even heard faint
snoring in one of the houses. Then, with a sudden intrusion of humour
into tragedy, came a fretful female voice waking the offender and
telling him to lie on his side. Then came footsteps on the pavement of
a side street, indolent, heavy, maddening in their deliberation. Baxter
pulled the wagon under the wide-flung branches of a tree and waited.
Around the corner a half block away came a policeman. He was swinging
his club by its thong, and his head was thrown back while he gazed up
into the wonder of the night. Without looking down, he pursued his
leisurely way down the street past where Baxter was waiting.

She saw his broad back receding ahead of her and knew that for the
second time luck had been with her. Now she had only to wait until
he was out of earshot, then follow, discharge her passenger near the
hospital, and the officer would find him on his next round. Presently
she was under way again and covered the three blocks to her destination
without adventure.

She pulled the wagon into the shadow of a palmetto. A faint air was
talking to the tree, and it was answering in its harsh gutturals, so
different from the voices of other trees. The sound frightened Baxter,
but she conquered her qualms. She climbed down and removed the canvas
from Bluton’s form. Then she saw that his eyes were open and fixed upon
her.

“Oh, dat yo’, Baxter?” he said in a weak voice. “What de hell is all
dis about, anyhow?” Then he moved, became aware of his wounds, and
groaned loudly.

“Shut yo’ damn’ mout’,” she answered fiercely; then gathered him up,
carried him into the light, and placed him on the pavement. Bending
down, she spoke almost savagely into his face.

“Yo’ want fuh dead?”

“Fuh Gawd’s sake, no! You wouldn’t----”

She cut him off. “Berry well, den. Listen! Keep yo’ eye an’ yo’ mout’
shet. Don’t tell nobody who yo’ is or whar yo’ come from. Got dat
straight?”

He nodded. Then she saw that the exertion had caused him to faint again.

She drove the rig down a side street, tied the horse beneath a tree,
and crept back to watch. She had not long to wait. The deliberate steps
were coming back. She saw the figure now, a black, solid bulk in the
white light.

Now he was fairly on the supine form of Bluton. Had he gone blind?
Then, “Well, I’ll be god damned!”

He stooped, made a swift examination, then rose quickly, trotted to a
box on the corner, and put in a call. Scarcely had he got back to the
inert form before the wagon came. Two alert figures sprang out and
lifted the wounded man in. Then, with a single clang of the bell, the
vehicle lunged away toward the hospital.

       *       *       *       *       *

Baxter slipped back around the corner of the fence that had been
shielding her and returned to the wagon. There, suddenly, in her
moment of triumph, she knew that she had lost. The bridge was the only
way back, and the irate watchman would be waiting for her there. There
would be no disguising her great body that always got her into trouble.
She was caught in a trap. The realisation came with a numbing shock
and paralysed her initiative. Mamba! She must get to her and ask her
what to do. The recklessness generated by the whisky had gone from her
blood; the maternal impulse that had driven her blindly into her danger
was passing. She was suddenly terribly afraid; a little whimpering
sound escaped her.

Then she heard a human voice, casually conversational, expressing
amused surprise. “Well, if here ain’t the big un back in town!”

She looked down and knew the man instantly. He had called for her more
than once in the room on East Bay, and he had been the officer who had
carried her off that last fateful night.

She was speechless, sitting massively above him, sobbing freely now
into the crook of her arm. Down on the pavement the Celtic intuition in
the big square body was beginning to put two and two together.

“So, it’s you that just dumped the high yaller on Calhoun Street? Well,
I got to hand it to you; you ain’t fergot how to take ’em to pieces!
Reckon you better drive back there to the box while I call a special to
take you in.”

“I swear to Gawd, chief, I ain’t cut dat nigger up. Listen ’fore yo’
call, fuh Gawd’ sake! an’ lemme tell yo’ how ’tis!”

He led the horse out into the light where he could see the woman
plainly and told her to go ahead. When she had finished her story he
stood silent a moment. Then he said, “You know, Big Un, it’s funny, but
I don’t believe you’re lying. I think you’re just about that damned a
fool.” Then he asked, “This the first time you been in town?”

“Yes, Boss. I swear tuh Gawd.”

He fairly snapped his answer at her: “Well, git out o’ it damn quick!
An’ I ain’t seen no woman nor wagon since suppertime, I don’t care what
the hell anybody says.”

He turned and walked briskly away. In a moment he had rounded the
nearest corner, and his footfalls were fading into silence.

Hagar must get to Mamba now. That was the only thing to do. Her own
mind had stopped working. She had to cross the city in a diagonal
direction, and it was more instinct than conscious judgment that
selected the deserted byways and alleys for her passage. But luck was
with her--luck and a sharp retrenchment in the police department with
a resultant cut in personnel--and she traversed the distance without
being again in jeopardy. Finally, just before day, she drove the wagon
into the court in East Bay Street.

She routed out a startled friend and sent her to wake and fetch Mamba;
then sat waiting like a child who knows that she has done wrong and
will be punished.

An hour after the old woman came cursing into the court arrangements
were complete. The wagon had been washed down until it was scarcely
recognisable as the mud-covered country vehicle; a half-grown boy had
been engaged at an honorarium of two dollars to drive it over and
deliver it to the commissary, and a fisherman had contracted, for the
sum of three dollars, to row Baxter around the city and across the
river where she would be within safe walking distance of the mines.

Mamba peered from the gateway and scanned the street. It was absolutely
empty, its air astir with that indefinable thrill of expectancy which
is the precursor of dawn. There was silence save for the far panting
of a freight engine. Growling bitterly over the injustice of a fate
that had imposed such a daughter upon her, the old woman conducted the
culprit across the street and to the pier head. At the foot of a ladder
a boat could be discerned, its rower waiting with oars ready.

Silently Baxter descended and took her seat. In the moment of
departure, the old face, hanging above her against the thinning night,
softened, and the deep-timbred voice said gently, “Good-bye, Daughter.
Fuh Gawd’ sake take care ob yo’self an’ keep out ob trouble.”

The oars dipped, and Baxter was once again out of the city. Behind her
the night seemed to cower suddenly down into the narrow streets and
beneath the dock. Far out beyond Fort Sumter a new day lifted, washed
and shining, from the Atlantic. The oarsman pulled steadily ahead.
Above the crouching woman, and looming fabulously into the morning
skies, hung the great Battery mansions, their high-flung columns and
façades showing rose and saffron in the young day. To her left the
“mosquito fleet” was putting to sea for its day at the fishing banks,
sailing straight into the eye of the rising sun, and, under Baxter’s
dazzled gaze, seeming to founder and vanish eastward in a flood of
intolerable glory. Close by her now, where she could touch them with
her hand, small, plangent waves sprang up and caught the light. She
looked for a long moment, lifted out of herself by the splendour; then
her large bullet head fell forward on her crossed arms.

“Sweet Jedus,” she muttered, “in a worl’ like dis, why Yo’ gots to make
me such a damn’ fool!”

The oarsman pulled doggedly ahead toward the distant line of trees.




PART III




PART III


Mrs. George J. Atkinson dropped upon a Chinese Chippendale chair in the
drawing room of the big house in Church Street, buried her face in her
hands, and burst into tears. Before her, lying open on the Duncan Phyfe
table, was a sheet of heavy cream-coloured notepaper. In the centre of
the page a single paragraph had been inscribed in a small, delicate,
but positive hand. It was the sixth “regret” for a luncheon party for
eight to be given during the succeeding week. The High Gods--or, at
least, Goddesses--of the social Olympus had decided that, if she was
not impossible, she was at least highly improbable.

Of course it was George’s fault. He never had held up her hands in the
fight that she had been waging for years for their social recognition.
There was nothing worth having that was not worth working for. And, by
inverting cause and effect, there was nothing that could not eventually
be won if you worked hard enough for it. A simple and pragmatical
philosophy, and a proven one, for it had brought her well along toward
middle life with an unbroken record of successes. Unfortunately for
her, the methods took small account of the personal equation, and
she was not attuned to the subtleties or skilled in the tactics of
alternate advance and retreat by which conservative and observant
strongholds are taken. She had made the fatal mistake in the beginning
of assuming that wealth was, as a matter of course, an effective
weapon, not realising that, with a number of the old families in
straitened circumstances, simple living had become the criterion for
good taste, and the ostentation had become, by contrast, mere vulgarity.

For several years now she had been entertaining with an industry that,
taken merely as an example of unflagging effort, was little less than
superb. Of course, she had had her snubs, but she had blanked her
mind to them and concentrated on her more responsive acquaintances.
Her parties had for the most part been well attended, and she had had
many invitations to teas and large functions, but, as time passed
and few acquaintanceships mellowed into friendship, she began to
have misgivings. She consoled herself, however, with the knowledge
that the old city was socially the most conservative in America and
consequently, while the most difficult, the most desirable to claim
as one’s own. She had at last concluded that the time had arrived for
the major movement. She knew well that there was no halfway ground in
the society of the old town. Membership in the St. Cecilia Society and
attendance at its balls was the one criterion. For a hundred and fifty
years the managing board of the organisation had gathered annually,
sipped their port, champagne, or Scotch, with the changing fashion,
and decided whether any of the “new people” in town were eligible for
recognition by their hereditary aristocracy. Within that charmed circle
one belonged, one was a member of the family. Outside of the fatal
line, one was always more or less a stranger stopping temporarily in
the city. The fact that such a sojourn might be protracted for several
generations was powerless to change the transitoriness of the visit or
the chill and punctilious politeness with which an aspiring ineligible
was received. He was relegated to the class the existence of which is
admitted, but not encouraged. Yes, the time had arrived, she felt, when
her husband might safely put his letter in for the St. Cecilia Society,
and, in preparation for the event, she would put down a barrage that
could be counted upon to blast out final obstructions.

Accordingly the misguided tactician had released a scourge of social
activity upon the inner circle. It had been bridged, dined, tea’d--at
first formally--and later with a certain creaking and ponderous
informality that whispered over the teacups, “just among ourselves--you
understand--” At first the attack, by reason of its surprise, seemed
destined for success. But it had been launched too far in advance.
There came a lull, and, as soon as the bewildered dowagers had time to
draw sufficient breath, they laughed. Laughter--the most deliberately
cruel sound that the human animal can make. Poor Mrs. Atkinson! Thumbs
down.

In the meantime Atkinson had fought his way blindly through the
turmoil. That fall he christened his evening clothes “the overalls,”
and he climbed into them obediently every night and went on duty. He
had not the vaguest idea what it was all about. At times he would
become aware of his wife’s eyes fixed stonily upon him; then he would
pull himself together and turn wearily to his dinner partner and the
weather. But he had a robust constitution, and the daylight was still
kind to him. He manufactured his cotton-seed oil, did a stiff trick
or two for the chamber of commerce, dropped into the Yacht Club for a
cocktail and a word about nothing in particular with the men, and did
not have a single social aspiration upon him.

Now he opened the door and stood gazing at his wife. He rubbed his
eyes, blinked, and gazed again, incredulous of the evidence of his
senses.

“The children!”

“No. They’re all right. Read that.”

Atkinson picked up the note, glanced at it, and patted his wife’s
shoulder consolingly.

“There, there!” he said. “I didn’t know you were so fond of her.
Grippe, eh? We’ll send over some flowers.”

She was always suspicious of George when he was as stupid as that. A
man who was that great a fool could never have made such a success of
his life. She had concluded once that because he never laughed aloud
and had a way of smiling at things that any one could see were not in
the least amusing, he had no sense of humour. Had it not been for this
she might have suspected him of the supreme audacity of making fun of
her. Now this suspicion fluttered in her mind, and she regarded him
with a long, penetrating look. His mouth, which had been twitching at
the corners, stiffened under the bristly moustache, and his eyes met
hers with candour. While she gazed, they actually mirrored sympathetic
distress.

Yes, George was devoid of perception, and she was an unfortunate
woman, but she would not go into that now. She could tell him about
his stupidity later. Now she could only say in a bleak voice, “She had
grippe last month. She has been at three affairs this week.”

“But she says, my dear, that she must save her strength.”

She looked at him almost curiously. “Are you really as simple as that?”
Then her voice went on in a wail of despair, “Oh, I ought to have known
that it was no use trying with you around. You’ve never backed me
up--you’ve never even understood what I was trying to do for your own
children.”

He kicked a gilt Louis Quinze chair out of the way, jerked up a
substantial product of modern America, sat squarely upon it, and said:

“Right. I haven’t understood. If there is a forest, I’m glad to hear
it. I haven’t been able to see it yet for the trees. Now try to tell me
in words of not over two syllables exactly what it is you want.”

“Very well,” she answered. “I will. The point is that you simply have
to get into the St. Cecilia Society this year because I have been
counting on it; in fact, I was so sure that when I was in New York last
summer I invited Valerie down to make her début with us. Now, if we
don’t get in, we’ll be in the pleasant position of having to tell your
sister that she can keep Valerie at home because we are not good enough
to be acceptable socially. Now, do you understand?”

He was callous enough to smile. “Good God!” he said, “is it all really
as simple as that? My dear, you have surprised me--and we have been
married fifteen years. Tell me, please, who are some of the managers of
the St. Cecilia Society.”

She mentioned several names of the sort that the tourist might be seen
any spring day deciphering from the oldest tombs in St. Michael’s
churchyard.

“It is sort of hopeless,” she concluded, “because I never seem to see
them at the teas and things that I go to.”

His smile broadened into a laugh. “Those chaps--teas! I fancy not. Why,
my dear, you have been tearing me away from them at the Club every
evening to doll up and go to your accursed parties.”

That night the House of Atkinson recalled invitations for two dinners,
a tea, and a luncheon, and the following afternoon George settled his
wife comfortably aboard the New York express. His parting words were:

“Better get several ball gowns--quiet ones. Outfit Valerie too. Bob’s
usually too strapped to give her nice things, you know.”

During the succeeding weeks Atkinson had more time to spend with his
friends. Two cocktails of an evening at the Club now, with plenty
of time to talk markets and the economic aspect of the new city
paving programme. Nice chaps, these, urbane, fastidious about rather
unexpected things; not smart dressers; insular, yes--not too greatly
concerned with the opinions and behaviour of the insignificant residue
of the globe lying to the north of Magnolia Cemetery and the south of
the Battery. Younger ones, who addressed him as “sir,” secure in a
breeding that kept the courtesy from appearing servile--older men, who
knew a horse, a mint julep, and a gentleman when they met one--men
who, like himself, were quite content to leave teas, the Sunday
concerts, the Poetry Society, and the Episcopal ritual to their wives.
Pleasant evenings those, with one’s own kind and no fuss about it.
And then, in the third week of his wife’s absence, that flying trip
to Washington to appear before the Interstate Commerce Commission on
a rate hearing of vital importance to the old city. The Committee had
asked Atkinson to act as spokesman. The clean, hard drive of his brain
against a problem always brought concrete results. He could talk to
the Yankees in their own language. Pleasant chats in the smoker. Nice
chaps surely. No putrid smoking-room humour. And the homeward trip with
the concessions in their pockets, a fight behind them, and a genial
comradeship in the air.

It was during the last hour of that railroad journey, while the four
of them were enjoying final cigars, that Atkinson spoke his first
words bearing on the matter of the coveted membership. One of the
men had been saying something to him--the fellow whose name always
reminded him of an heroic phrase from early American history--“Damn the
torpedoes--go ahead!”--not that--that was Farragut--oh, yes--“Millions
for defence, and not one cent for tribute”--that was the chap!...

When the man had finished his question, Atkinson smiled and said,
“Say, that’s awfully hospitable of you fellows. Hadn’t given the balls
much thought before. Suppose there’ll be a quiet corner of refuge for
middle-aged knee joints?--Not much of a dancer, you know-- Yes? Well,
I’ll send the letter over by messenger to-morrow.”

Mrs. Atkinson returned from the North at an opportune moment. Mamba
was receiving a thick, cream-coloured envelope from an elderly negro
who had the bearing of an ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. She
lifted the missive from the tray and, with shaking fingers, removed it
from its two envelopes--

“The Managers of the St. Cecilia Society request the pleasure....”

       *       *       *       *       *

And while the social gods had been playing upon the hopes and fears
of the Atkinsons, Saint Wentworth, having attained his majority, was
journeying to Charleston in accordance with the family tradition to
attend his first St. Cecilia ball and represent his generation of the
line among his social peers.

But the years had wrought a change in the temporal, if not the
spiritual, aspect of the pilgrimage. Two generations ago the Wentworth
carriage, followed by a wagon for luggage and servants, would have
driven down from the plantation and drawn up impressively before the
hospitable Planters’ Hotel. The tailor and an army of mantua makers
would have been awaiting its arrival to put the finishing touches on
the new broadcloths and brocades for the all-important début. To-day,
Saint, with a week’s vacation ahead of him, served his last negro,
turned the store over to the malaria-bitten poor-white who was to
take his place, washed up, and caught a lift on a wagon as far as the
bridge. Over the ancient wooden planking he footed it to the city,
caught a trolley, and finally arrived at the little brick house in
Church Street.

The premises were deserted. Doubtless Mrs. Wentworth had gone out with
Polly to purchase some consummating touch for the girl’s costume. But
the magnitude of the impending event had charged the inanimate walls
of the building, and, as he let himself in, he caught the contagion
of excitement in the air. He took the steps two at a time to his
room--what a brick Mother was!--how absolutely invincible! His father’s
dress suit had been lifted from its long oblivion and made ready. He
could see that the old broadcloth lapels had been faced with silk in
the prevailing mode. The trousers lay beside the coat, beautifully
pressed and folded. A new white vest, a shirt, a tie, and gloves were
ranged beside the suit, and, under the edge of the bed, beside his
old slippers, stood a pair of new patent-leather pumps with the light
flowing and settling over them like some gleaming liquid.

Saint was caught by one of his rare waves of emotion. It choked him
up, left him shaken. It meant so much to her--all this. His solitary
life had given him leisure for thought, and he had developed a habit of
passionate search into causes, a feeling that surfaces didn’t matter;
that behind every physical expression of a personality there lay the
deep secret impulse. Now he lost sight of the makeshift wardrobe before
him and stood abashed before the unswerving purpose of which it was
an expression--the determination to hold a place for her children in
the class to which they had been born. Out in the country he had not
thought much about being a gentleman. It had seemed rather absurd in
the only life in which he seemed capable of succeeding--of course,
gentility was a state of being: you were born a Wentworth and you
refrained from doing certain things because instinctively they put your
teeth on edge. There you were--and that was all there was to it. But
being a gentleman as a career--that was different. To be done properly
it would involve so many things that were utterly beyond him: setting,
education, attainments--what was the use! There were still things
within reach--books, pictures, out of doors, and--yes--even the negroes
there at the mines with their humour, tragedy, and the flattering
respect and frank liking that they gave him. He was finding happiness
there. What did clothes matter?--dances, girls, surfaces--what was
the use of it all? And, God! what a lot of herself his mother had put
into it--saving for years, sewing, taking boarders, catering--and his
savings too, for he knew that a part of the money he sent home every
week had gone into the bank for the “coming out.” She could have taken
things easier all of these years but for her determination to be ready
when the time came to give Polly and himself these things--these--and,
to her, the intangible, but incalculably valued significance that lay
behind them.

He had things that he had wanted terribly to do with this week. The
fossils that the negroes were always turning up in the mines had
started him off on geology, and the director at the Museum had offered
to show him books and specimens. Then there was the Art Gallery. A
friend there had promised that he should meet some of the painters so
that he could see how pictures were made. Now the precious week had to
go in a round of entertainments--an ancient fetish. Of course he hadn’t
hesitated when his mother made the plans. In fact, he knew that he had
been predestined from birth for this moment. But he felt that it was
something to be done and--God willing--forgotten.

But the clothes, lying mutely before him, pulled against his mood and
brought him back to his mother and the vague intangible thing that she
was so determined to save from the wreckage of the past. He picked
up the coat and carried it to the window. In the light he could see
that the broadcloth was distinctly green in shade and shiny on the
shoulder blades. Oh, well, it didn’t matter. He had heard it said that
many of the boys of his set went in their fathers’ old suits, and the
waiters--most of whom were family retainers--in their grandfathers’;
that, in these lean years since the war, a dress suit was not worth
the name that hadn’t the vitality to see three generations of St.
Cecilias. He slipped off his coat and tried the garment on. With the
amazing adaptability of its kind the swallowtail fell snugly but easily
over his shoulders. He surveyed himself in the glass and was surprised
to see how broad it made his shoulders appear, how slender his waist.
He had outgrown his adolescent stoop and ranginess of arms and legs,
and the boyish grace and co-ordination of body, that had made him
a star pupil in dancing school, had come back and waited unnoticed
under the cheap, poorly fitting clothing that he usually wore. Now, as
he surveyed himself, he became conscious of the change. Odd--when he
went to the country he had always been tortured by the thought of his
appearance--of how he looked to strangers; and yet, in retrospect, he
realised that, for those four years, he had forgotten to think about
himself one way or another. Now he was again acutely conscious of
the impression that he would make, and yet no longer afraid. Perhaps
it was the coat that had put a charm upon him. Poor old Dad! He had
had a terrible struggle of it, but what a gentleman he must have
been!--gentleman, no doubt of that....

He heard the front door open and the animated voices of his mother and
Polly, like two girls going to their first party--a great night in the
house of Wentworth. Well, he’d play up--give them everything he had for
this week. It was little enough, that.

They supped early; then, while they were waiting for the carriage,
Mamba slipped over from the house next door to see them dressed for the
ball. She had retained calling acquaintance at the little brick house.
In fact, among these white folks who knew her past, she rejoiced in
a partial reversion to type, perpetrating outrageous audacities and
assuming an intimacy that brought dignified rebukes from Maum Netta
down upon her unregenerate head.

She had brought Lissa with her to see the dresses, and the girl entered
the sitting room quietly and stood near the door, her hands locked
loosely against the front of her dress, her eyes taking everything in
with a roving, eager glance. Saint had never seen the child before, but
his interest in Mamba and Baxter caused him to notice her closely as
she stood there. She must be about ten or eleven, he thought, and her
lack of embarrassment in the alien setting struck him at once. Also she
was beautiful. He knew that it was in bad taste to think of beauty in
a negro, but there was no other word that would serve. She was no more
a pretty child than an ugly one. Beauty was the one word. Those eyes
that were both Mamba’s and Baxter’s were like lamps in the small oval
of her face. A moment of wild conjecture came to the boy--where would
this child end?--what destiny did America hold for her?

Mamba stood surveying the three Wentworths--the mother in a black silk
that fitted perfectly over her mature but beautifully modelled figure;
Saint, wearing his swallowtail with an air; and Polly, radiant in the
cloudy whiteness of her first ball gown.

“Yeah,” the old woman ejaculated with emphasis, “dese is _my_ buckras!
Maum Netta now is jus’ bawn wid um an’ can’t help sheself, but me--Ah
is pick um fuh choice.” She turned to Polly. “Goin’ let Mamba carry dat
slipper bag, ain’t it?”

“Why, Mamba, I thought you’d be carrying Mrs. Atkinson’s. I hear they
are going to-night.” Then she patted the old woman coaxingly on the arm
and begged, “Do tell us how they got in. We’re just dying to know.”

Mrs. Wentworth spoke sharply: “Polly, I _am_ surprised! Do you call
_that_ being a lady?”

But Mamba bent over in one of her silent spasms of laughter, and when
she straightened up her eyes were snapping with mischief.

“Ah gots tuh tell,” she said. “Ah jes gots tuh! Ah been fair bus’ wid
de inside laugh, an’ Ah gots tuh let um out. De boss is fine,” she said
by way of preface. “But--well, Ah jes gots tuh say it straight--de
missis, she’s good tuh me, but she ain’t one ob us, Miss Polly.”

Mamba had memorised the words overheard in Atkinson’s report to his
wife upon her return to the city, and she gave them in a perfect
reproduction of his crisp, incisive speech, bringing her narrative to
a close just as a loud rap fell on the door and Maum Netta announced
the carriage.

The driver, a grizzled veteran of many seasons, held the carriage door
open, bowed them in, then banged it shut with that sound, at once loud,
restrained, and almost ritualistic, which, heard up and down the silent
downtown streets during the brief “season,” denoted a St. Cecilia night.

“Oh, Mother,” Polly gasped in ecstasy, “a slam-door carriage!--and me
in it! Don’t let anybody wake me up!”

Balls should always be given in buildings with high porticoes supported
by Corinthian columns, and with wide pavements before them traversed
by canvas canopies. There is something awe-inspiring, something out of
Greek mythology about such a temple of Terpsichore, with the up-flung
light accentuating height, and up above the soaring capitals the dark,
pregnant with mystery. And the canopy that crawls like a striped canvas
caterpillar down the steps and across the pavement to present its mouth
to the carriage doors adds just the frivolous touch that bridges the
gap between an ancient ecstasy and a modern one. It was before just
such a building that a carriage presently drew up with a flourish and
disgorged the family of Wentworth.

Up the wide stairway, with the covering of gleaming white, Kate
Wentworth, on the arm of her son, led the way--then on through the soft
glow of the ballroom and the warm cross-play of greetings and smiles,
to the spot before the second fireplace where Wentworth mothers had
chaperoned their broods for the greater part of a hundred and fifty
years. Her cousins, the De Chatigny Ravenels, would be next to them,
she remembered, and the Cooper River Heywards directly across the
floor. Yes, there was Aunt Sarah Huger with her turkey-tail fan. She
must be seventy now, but to see her to-night no one would believe it
were it not for the fan, which dated her definitely with the débutantes
of the late ’sixties.

There was constant visiting between the groups. Older cousins and
family friends came to welcome Kate Wentworth back to her accustomed
place and to cast an appraising eye over Polly and Saint. For the
first time in the boy’s life he was conscious of being regarded
with popular approval. In the background of his mind there loomed a
strange conviction that he had been there before. His usual diffidence
was gone, and in its place he experienced an exhilarating sense of
congruity, of measuring up to expectations.

Polly was immediately surrounded, her card taken from her fingers
and scrutinised by eager eyes--“What, nothing saved for me, Miss
Polly!”--“The sixteenth--no? Well, please--one for the next ball!”--“We
can’t let the season pass without one, now can we?”

Saint stood looking about him. Even the magnitude of the moment was
forgotten in the beauty that surrounded him. The hall was large, with
a high ceiling and tall, slender windows on both sides. An atmosphere
of home, and traditional hospitality, was given by four open fires
under Adam mantelpieces, two on each side of the apartment. About the
fires groups were gathered, laughing and talking with hands spread to
the glowing coals. But it was the colour that fascinated Wentworth. It
trembled softly from shaded lights, glowed in only a slightly lower key
from the women’s costumes, and lay banked in a profusion of flowers
on the mantelpieces and the musicians’ dais. Last night he had been
serving his negro labourers. A contrast. The sudden and unexpected
beauty and colour of the room created a mood of unreality; yet an
unreality in which he was intensely alive and in which he felt a glow
of possessive pride.

He saw a broad, squarely planted back near him that looked familiar
under the swallowtail coat--Mr. Atkinson. An awe that he had always
felt for his successful neighbour was immediately forgotten in a sense
of his individual responsibility as host. He stepped forward and held
out his hand.

“It’s a great pleasure to see you, Mr. Atkinson,” he said. “But perhaps
you don’t remember me. I’m Wentworth.”

The older man gave him a firm grip. “Why, thank you, Wentworth,” he
answered. “It is all rather new for us.”

A kick on the ankle from Mrs. Atkinson’s evening slipper brought
the sentence to an abrupt end, and Saint replied quickly: “That’s
interesting. This is my début too. I hope that you will enjoy it as
much as I intend to.”

Atkinson smiled his thanks and turned toward his wife. “My dear, this
is Mr. Wentworth. Surely you remember him.”

“Indeed I do. But you hardly ever give us a glimpse of you now. You
spend all your time at your--er--country place, don’t you?”

“And this,” interposed Mr. Atkinson, while Saint groped for an answer,
“is my niece, Valerie Land. Valerie, let me present Mr. Wentworth.”

The boy’s first impression was one of eyes, dark brown and very intent,
fixed upon his face with an earnest scrutiny. “Serious,” he thought,
“and at a dance, too. She won’t be a go here.” Then she smiled, and
he knew that he had been wrong. Daring and mischief were there now.
And beauty. And the swift fluctuations of a colour that could come and
go. There was a distinct air of worldliness about her that was new to
Saint in the women that he met. Even in that first casual moment of
meeting, he knew that she was definitely motivated. That she would know
quite well what she wanted. He responded to that with an instinctive
masculine withdrawal. Then he met the mischief in her smile again and
forgot to be afraid.

“May I see your card?” he asked. “I should like tremendously to have
the pleasure.”

He found a number of blanks. She had not met any one. Suddenly behind
the smiles of the little group he saw actual distress. They did not
know that rescue was sure to come, that guests on that ballroom floor
were never left to their own resources. They were standing there
smiling quite steadily without the least idea of what to do next.

A glance over his shoulder assured him that Polly was labouring amid
an embarrassment of riches. He could catch glimpses of her bright
young head through the milling circle of evening suits. Rapidly he
scribbled his name twice on the card that he held, then asked if he
might present some of his friends. His task was not a difficult one.
Valerie Land was a light that, under no circumstances, could long have
remained obscured. Soon she was having to smile her regrets and exhibit
her completed card to new arrivals. The men who had secured dances
thanked Saint. The Atkinsons beamed upon him. He had several dances for
himself. Being a gentleman was becoming interesting after all. At least
there was something to be said for it.

Behind its banked palms the band crashed into a Sousa march. Saint
hastened to his mother and led her into the line that was forming for
the cotillion. Everywhere about him couples were meeting, young men
with white-haired women on their arms, gay old gentlemen playing the
gallant to the débutantes--all of an age to-night, with the first-year
boys and girls eyeing their seasoned partners for fear that they might
miss some fine point in the old-world courtesy that still prevailed
upon a St. Cecilia floor. There were things that ladies and gentlemen
still refrained from doing and saying here that would be both done and
said at to-morrow night’s informal hop.

The dances--a sadly inhibited fox trot, a flapper dance tucked primly
back into petticoats for the night. But the waltz! You could give
your body to three-quarter time, it would seem, without violating the
niceties. Saint took Valerie into the curve of his arm and launched
her without a word upon the broad limpid tide of the “Blue Danube.”
The floor was just crowded enough to require perfect guiding in the
man and instinctive divination of his mood and tempo in his partner.
The surge and lift of the peerless old waltz, and the girl in his
arms, submissive to his slightest suggestion, yet so separate, so
passionately individual, worked on Wentworth like a drug. The small
brown head lay against his shoulder, and the girl never raised her face
to his. Before his eyes colours swam and wove as they drifted between
the couples. Colour always moved him deeply, and now the many-tinted
dresses whirling and streaming across his vision blurred into one
another, creating an effect like a rainbow with a frieze of faces
sliding along its upper edge. When the music stopped it was as though
the rainbow had fallen about them in a thousand gleaming fragments.
They drew apart slowly. The girl pressed Saint’s hand, then she raised
her face and gave him a long and preternaturally solemn gaze. They did
not join the promenade of couples, but turned away and found a corner
under the palms by the band.

An old bent negro appeared in the doorway with a tray in his hand.
Upon the tray gleamed a row of diminutive wedges of yellow fire. They
looked rather like the illustration in Saint’s old Bible story book of
the coming of the Holy Ghost. He looked up and saw them there. Then he
broke a tenet of the society by going and bringing one to a débutante
on the ballroom floor. He felt that he must do something spectacular;
substitute some memorable symbol for the inadequacy of speech. She took
the glass by its slender stem and touched his own gravely with it, then
they drained them without a word and put them down.

The touch of glass on wood seemed to break the spell. They laughed into
each other’s faces, the girl daringly, the boy a little shamefaced.
“Silly, aren’t we?” he said.

“Divinely.”

“Well, if it is sentimental and all that, I don’t care,” he defended.
“One does not have to apologise for being sentimental at a St. Cecilia
ball. It is a part of the show, like the old silver, and the sixteenth
dance. By the way, whom did you give the sixteenth to?”

She extended her programme, and her escort frowned heavily over it.
“This will never do,” he assured her. “Mr. Jervais is one of the
managers, and every one will think that you were stranded and he had to
come to your rescue. You must give it to me and let me tell him that
there was a mistake.”

“No,” she told him firmly, “I understand that the sixteenth is saved
for wives and sweethearts. I am not going to let you be gallant to a
stranger and break some Charleston girl’s heart.”

Feeling very masterful, Saint wrote his name boldly down for the dance
and handed the card back with a bow just as the band crashed into a
march.

The couples were forming for the march, and Saint, who was unengaged,
picked his way between them and returned to the great doorway, the old
negro, and the little lambent flames. “To carry your liquor like a
gentleman.” The phrase was a commonplace worn thin by long usage. It
did not really matter how much one got away with. It was knowing your
limit and stopping just on the safe side of it. It meant becoming more
and more and more of a gentleman with each drink until one emerged
the supreme and effulgent personification of all gentility. But until
to-night the question had been entirely a hypothetical one to the
boy. In youth drinking is a habit of the gregarious, and Saint had
always been a solitary soul. It had never occurred to him to go to
the sideboard in the little Church Street house and help himself from
the decanter that was always kept there. Now, as he downed his third
sherry he experienced that expansion toward his own kind that comes
from sharing a convivial glass. The bent old negro was an archangel
of reverential persuasiveness. Other men were in the group around
him. Barriers of reserve and restraint were crumbling. Now the low,
habitual hum of life leaped to a higher, clearer note; lights went up;
colours brightened, formed into beautiful accidental patterns, broke
and fluttered out again among the dancers, hovered shimmering, in the
corners. Roses heaped on the mantelpieces released perfume of an almost
unbearable poignancy. Music was no longer an external delight. It had
entered into his being and raced out in the pound of his arteries to
sting exquisitely in his feet, so that waiting for his next dance to
start was actual pain.

The hours rushed together and telescoped. The supper march formed,
coiled about the hall like an iridescent serpent, and headed for the
door. Saint, with his mother on his arm, stood near the end of the
column, and as its head turned and moved toward him, he got a swift
impression of the leading couple. Major Barker, the president of the
society, was carrying his seventy years like a familiar jest to which
he already knew the answer, but which was unfailingly amusing. He wore
the red rosette of office on his lapel, and his face with its ruddy
cheeks and white beard was bent smilingly toward his partner. She
seemed scarcely more than a child, and her roving, mischievous glance
passed from one girl to another with conscious triumph.

“Hello!” exclaimed Saint. “What is Betty LaGrange doing there?”

“Hadn’t you heard?” his mother whispered. “It’s the talk of the town.
June Mayrant was married last week and expected to be the bride of
the ball. But Betty has always hated her, so she ran off day before
yesterday and married Herbert Deas. She returned this morning and,
of course, as the newest bride, was asked by the Major. June was so
furious that she stayed at home.”

With incredible swiftness the supper march was followed by the ritual
of the midnight repast--oysters, then boiled rice, duck, boned turkey.
Champagne, and the rise and fall of talk that seemed gradually to
become rhythmic, advancing and receding like surf. Champagne again,
stinging the tongue deliciously, sending streams of tiny bubbles from
the bottom of slender-stemmed glasses to burst soundlessly under your
nose as you drank. Questions; and answers that you made from somewhere
outside of yourself, while you sat apart and were amazed at their
brilliance.

Dessert--and the moment when, according to the old custom, the men left
their own partners to circle among the tables, drinking healths to
old sweethearts, débutantes, visiting girls. Across the narrow table
Saint could see his mother’s face smiling at him through a faint, pink
haze. Behind the smile he saw something that pulled him up. His glass
was halfway to his mouth, but he replaced it carefully on the table.
“Sure,” he said as though she had spoken, “depend on me.” Some one had
stopped beside them. Saint looked up and saw his employer’s big frame.
Raymond held out his glass. “Twenty-three years ago to-night, Kate. Our
last St. Cecilia together.”

“Twenty-three years is a long time, Charles, but I still remember.”

Saint saw the pink haze deepen over his mother’s face. He experienced
a shock of surprise, then a swift, clairvoyant moment of revelation.
He remembered her reluctance to send him to Raymond for work, doubly
strange he had thought at the time because of that gentleman’s
eagerness to do what he could for him, his almost paternal kindness
during the interview. Now he saw his own father with a sudden intensity
of visualisation. Usually he had remained in the memory only as a
succession of impressions: a bafflement as keen as pain in the evenings
when he would come from work--rare days when the child would be
awakened in the dawn by the barking of dogs, smell of gun grease, old
hunting togs, and those nights when his father would return bringing a
sense of space and a shining joy with him from the woods. The house had
seemed bigger on those evenings, there would be laughter and sometimes
music with his mother at the old square piano. Then in a black wave
he would sometimes be overwhelmed by the impressions clustered around
that brief, sudden illness--whispers--darkened rooms--lilies--and the
dramatic finality of death in its first impact against the child mind.
But now, with his gaze resting on his mother’s face, he was aware
of his father standing there with them sharply etched against the
retina. The picture faded, and in its stead he saw Raymond, his eyes
upon Mrs. Wentworth’s. In his highly attuned state Saint then became
the possessor of certain knowledge--a fact that was there before him
renascent in the thoughts of the other two. His mother could have
married Raymond if she had wanted him. There would have been the big
house on Meeting Street--ease. But she had taken his father, Dad, who
had been born for the plantation and had been no better a fit in town
than his son had proved to be.

In a flash it had come and gone. He saw that his mother’s lifted
glass was just meeting Raymond’s and touching for the toast. The
supper toast! The moment for old romances to be remembered. He rose
and muttered his excuses, but the two who remained at the table were
smiling into each other’s eyes over their glasses, the woman with a
flash of girlish coquetry that made her suddenly a stranger--the man
with a flicker of an old pain about his mouth--romance. He turned
slowly and surveyed the room. Where was the Atkinson table? he
wondered--the Atkinsons--and Valerie Land.

While he searched, the dining room commenced to tilt slowly, like the
saloon of a liner in a sea way. Finally, at the far upper edge of it
he caught a glimpse of the face that he sought. The space between
the tables was crowded with men going and coming, pausing to drink a
health, then moving on. Heavy bodies jostled him from his balance,
and the angle of the floor became more and more acute. Suddenly, when
he had almost reached his goal that side of the room descended with a
swoop, and carried him to the girl in a headlong rush. She looked up
and regarded him gravely, speculatively, waiting for him to speak. But
now he encountered a new difficulty. Something strange had happened to
his lips. They were alien to his face, like a circle of rubber, and
when he bit them cautiously he could not feel his teeth. He could still
move them, but they had lost their identity and could not be trusted
with the things that were clamouring to be said. Suddenly he saw a way
out. He placed his hand over his heart, as he had been taught to do in
dancing school, bowed from the waist, and touched the rim of Valerie’s
glass with his own as he had done earlier in the evening--just that--a
silent toast--something too beautiful and significant for words. She
smiled and sipped her glass. He gave her a long look heavily freighted
with meaning, and executed a dignified retreat. Only, when he was
safely back at his mother’s table, his exultation over his achievement
commenced to give place to a vague doubt. Why, at the last, had Valerie
caught her lower lip under her small white teeth, and why, as soon
as his back was turned, had there been that suddenly hushed burst of
laughter at her table?

After supper--dances--one that impinged upon his consciousness--the
sixteenth. Out over the polished floor flowed the strains of “Auf
Wiedersehn,” weaving their old, sentimental spell about the feet of the
callous new generation, deluging them with their flood of associations.
Mothers, grandmothers who had danced their sixteenths to that air, and
had in turn endowed it with their own romances, watched with a happy
mist in their eyes. Something strange and new seemed to enter into the
boy, clearing his brain, sharpening his perceptions, infusing him with
an illusion of grandeur. He knew that he would speak clearly, that his
thoughts would be brilliant, his logic irrefutable. He went confidently
in search of his partner.

As she went into his arms, Valerie exclaimed: “What a perfectly
gorgeous orgy! Isn’t it marvellous to throw shame to the winds and
revel in it once more with the old darlings? I never want to be young
again. I want to die a rank sentimentalist.”

They plunged into the tide of music and movement. After the first
measure the boy was no longer conscious of the floor’s solidity beneath
his feet. He circled through a rarefied ether, guided and sustained
by the music. Around him again flowed the rainbow with its frieze of
drifting faces. Now and then, out of the blur, eyes, wide and eloquent,
close to his own--poignantly intimate for a moment--gone--the sixteenth!

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, when Saint kissed his mother good-night in the hall of the
little brick house, he asked: “Well, dear, did I carry it off like a
gentleman?”

She answered with a shadowy smile: “By a very narrow margin, dear boy;
a shade too narrow, I would say. For a moment at supper you frightened
me a little, but that was silly of me.”

He turned toward the stairs. Polly had said her good-nights and had
preceded them. Now for a moment mother and son were alone together.
He hesitated, turned, and saw her standing under the hall lamp. The
girlish look was still upon her face, she was smiling faintly, and
although her gaze rested upon him he realised that it was unaware
of his presence because of its projection into some far place where
her spirit had gone alone. He felt that shock of strangeness which
comes with a sudden glimpse of the familiar from a new angle. In the
down-flung light of the rose-hued lamp he saw his mother as a stranger
might have, dissociated from all preconceptions; a woman still young,
beautiful, and a thoroughbred in every line of her figure, a woman who
had fought a lone cause with such dauntlessness of spirit that even the
honourable scars of the combat were hidden from prying eyes.

Saint harked back to the earlier moment of revelation, and almost
unconscious of the fact that he was speaking aloud, said tentatively:
“Mr. Raymond--at supper?”

She came back to him slowly as though returning by gradual stages
from her far land. Finally she was there again under the rose lamp,
beautiful still, but familiar. She did not answer the implied question
that hung in the air between them, but beckoned the boy to her in
silence. When he reached her side she took both of his hands in hers.
Then she said: “Do you remember your father, Saint?”

“Sometimes, just barely--but to-night at supper----”

“Yes, I know. It was when Charles Raymond came to our table. I saw him
then too. You’re a strange boy. Sometimes I’m glad. Charles’s son would
never have gotten that.”

She stood for a moment considering, her glance lowered, then she looked
him full in the eyes and continued: “You’ll be wondering why we had
that flash. You’ll be thinking it strange, maybe, but it’s not strange
at all, really. You see at the first ball of the season twenty-three
years ago both Mr. Raymond and your father proposed to me. I loved your
father--everybody did. To-night everywhere I looked I seemed to see him
again. That’s all--that’s the story.”

Saint said huskily: “And these things that mean so much to you--things
that you could have had--you let them all go--for him?”

Kate Wentworth’s form stiffened. Saint felt her fingers tense in his
grasp. “Certainly I did not give them up. You could not have said that
if you had known him well. We were both willing to wait awhile, that
was all, until he had won them for me. We were gambling with all the
odds in our favour--there was only one thing that we did not count
on--it happened--and we lost--that was all.”

His hands gripped so that she flinched. “Listen,” he said, and his
voice came in an odd constricted whisper, “I don’t know whether you’ve
lost or not. I’ve been wasting an awful lot of time with my silly head
in the clouds, but I’m not old yet--I am going to try.”

She drew him to her and kissed him, holding him close for a moment, but
when she spoke it was with her usual serenity. “Now run along,” she
said. “You’ll only want coffee in the morning, and you may have it in
bed.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The next afternoon Saint came face to face with Valerie in an alcove of
the Gibbs Art Gallery. Meeting any one there was a little surprising,
as there were several teas in progress, and at that period art found it
difficult to hold its own in competition with society in Charleston. He
stopped short, his surprise and pleasure plainly evident. “You here!”
he exclaimed.

“Of course,” she smiled at him. “This is where I belong. But you! I did
not gather from the men I met last night that they went in very much
for art.”

“They don’t, and I suppose that is why I have always been rather
lonely. After all, friends have to more or less like the same things,
don’t they?”

“They do nowadays, I am afraid. Life is so short, and being bored can
kill so much of it.”

They had drifted to a window and stood looking across the street
into an old churchyard where great live oaks were bronzed by the
late sun. “That’s the sort of thing I like,” he said--“funny old
tombstones--pictures--music--books.”

Valerie looked up quickly, and he closed his catalogue with “and brown
eyes.”

“And champagne,” she supplemented.

He was immediately embarrassed. “That’s unkind of you. Last night was
an event, a sort of initiation. It won’t happen again. And now that I
come to think of it, you were unkind last night too. You laughed when I
toasted you at supper.”

“God forbid,” she replied piously. “A nobody from New York laugh at a
Charleston gentleman!”

A suspicion caused Saint to bend and glance under her lowered lashes,
then they laughed together in the quiet echoing room. “Oh,” she gasped,
“you were _such_ a gentleman. I did not know that they made them like
that any more. I suppose it takes lots of grandfathers to get away with
a jag like that.”

She swung him around and slipped her arm through his. “Come,” she said.
“It will soon be getting dark, and we must see what your local artists
can do. I am out discovering Charleston to-day.”

“You know pictures. What luck!”

“I ought to. I have starved for them long enough. There, those etchings
are rather nice. Who is the artist?”

“Oh, she is a Charleston woman. Been plugging away mostly alone for
several years, but she has taken several awards lately. I love her
work, but I don’t know enough about etchings to say why.”

Valerie coolly removed the thumb tacks and carried the picture to the
light. “Feel that surface. Get that texture? Good strong work. You know
how they’re made, don’t you?”

Saint shook his head, and she gave him a brief account of the
process--scratching the design on the protected plate, then biting the
picture out with acid. “I wish I had you in Dad’s studio for a while.
I’d show you. And that group over there. That’s interesting.”

She hurried Saint across the gallery to a small collection of misty
low-country landscapes. At a distance they gave the impression of
pastel, but on close scrutiny they appeared to be treated by some
process of colour wash.

“Say, here’s something new,” Valerie exclaimed. “Strong Japanese
influence, and yet how individual, and how they have captured the mood
of your country. It is local work, of course.”

“Yes, and I know her quite well,” Saint boasted. “You must meet her.
And I don’t think the Japanese influence is conscious. She is much too
unspoiled for influences. Like most of us here, she has had to work out
her own salvation. I’ve seen her out doing the marshes near the mines,
sitting day after day like a tiny wren, painting away at a certain mood
until she got it.”

“We’ll all be hearing of her some day,” Valerie affirmed with
conviction. “She’s got something of her own.”

Saint insisted on her seeing the permanent exhibit in the main gallery.
They were portraits, for the most part, and the girl moved quickly
along the big room. “These are interesting,” she said after her
inspection, “but not as art. I like them because they help to explain
you. I suppose most of them were colonels, and I am sure they all
carried their liquor like gentlemen.”

For an hour they loitered through the pleasant rooms, and Saint got his
first glimpse behind the surface of paper and canvas into processes
and methods. He watched the girl avidly while she talked. Down the
street St. Michael’s flung out the quarter hours. He did not hear them
strike. She had the thing that he had always wanted. She lived it,
breathed it as naturally as air. He had waked that morning with a firm
resolve to let the old dreams go, to find some solid terrain where he
could plant his feet and renew his struggle, to give his mother and
Polly their chance. But his motive had not been altogether unselfish.
There had been something about his own experiences of the night before
that had shifted values. Somehow the affair had assumed a greater
significance than he could possibly have imagined. Now he stood as
the recognised head of the family. There was a new and pleasurable
sense of self-importance in the thought. His mother had accomplished,
by being quietly and serenely exactly what she was, what no amount of
argument could have brought to pass, and behind his mother that sharp
invocation of his father. Then there had been the approval of the older
people at the ball, an approval that tacitly assumed that he was being
what was expected of him, that made him understand that measuring up
to those expectations was after all a fulfilment. But now the cross
current of Valerie’s talk threw his mind into confusion. A longing that
had nothing to do with reason twisted him with a pain that was almost
physical. In a moment he had blurted out:

“I have always meant to go in for this some day. I am going to paint.”

She turned and studied his face seriously, her own very grave. “I
didn’t know you felt that keenly about it,” she said at length. “Tell
me more about yourself, please. I really want to know.”

He asked to escort her home, and they took their way through the crisp
January evening around the Battery, where a winter sunset burned low
across the Ashley and flooded the river with crimson lacquer. But
now Valerie had turned from the contemplation of beauty to the more
practical aspects of life. She asked bluntly: “What do you do for a
living?”

Saint flushed. Her forthrightness challenged his own, but habit
prevailed, and he gave the old, vague answer: “I am employed across the
river in Phosphates.”

“Phosphates,” she wondered, “suggests something to do with soda water
to my uninitiated mind, but I don’t suppose a gentleman has anything to
do with soda fountains.”

“No,” he said, too preoccupied with the threadbare deception to smile,
“I have the management of the Phosphate Mining Company’s commissary.”

She gave him her wide gaze. “That sounds important. I am duly
impressed.”

Under her look his own eyes began to waver. Suddenly he blurted out:
“No, that’s all rot. It isn’t important. In plain English I serve a
gang of phosphate negroes all the week, then on Sunday I wash up, come
to town, sit in the family pew, and play the gentleman. So there you
are.”

She patted his arm in the gathering gloom. “I am so very glad you told
me that,” she confided. “Now we’re going to be real friends.”

“Not until you have told me something about yourself,” he qualified.

“It’s an awfully short story,” she said, “and a grey little one. You
see, Father is one of those artists who missed greatness. He even
missed distinction. He thought that because he loved painting he could
be a painter. Now he knows how little that has to do with it, and he
is too old to start over at anything else. Mother--Uncle George’s
sister, you know--oh, she’s such a brick. She works too, at lots of
things, and helps, and when I get home I will have to turn in too and
find something to do--not painting. Father says one artistic failure
in the family is enough. But in spite of everything we do, we don’t
get anywhere. Father can’t leave New York because he can get odd
jobs there--something from the scenic studios, interior decorations,
dribbling little things that keep us chained there yet won’t give us
enough to really live on. And New York is such a bitter place to be
poor in.”

Saint slipped his arm through hers, found her hand and pressed it. She
let her fingers remain in his, and, after a moment of silence, looked
up at him with her long scrutiny. “The two of us,” she whispered.
“Cinderellas at the ball. That was why I was so glad that you told me
about your work too.”

       *       *       *       *       *

After his week in the rarefied air of the social world, Saint’s descent
to the earth of the mining camp had been a gradual one, during which
he was still enveloped in trailing clouds of glory. The events of the
brief sojourn had remained so vividly in his mind that they seemed for
those first few days more actual than the humdrum routine through which
he moved by habit rather than thought. He measured cloth and weighed
out provisions, but there was a shimmer over his tasks, as though an
iridescent gauze floated between his hands and the things that they
touched. It was not until the fifth day that he could actually be said
to have arrived. He was dining as usual at the mess maintained by the
white employés in a cottage near the washing shed. He was always silent
at his meals, and the other men usually took him as a matter of course
and discussed their poker and hunting across him as though he were a
part of the room’s furnishings. But to-day one of their number returned
from town, where he, like Saint, had gone for the ball and a taste
of the social season. He ragged the boy rather unmercifully, and the
others joined in, with the result that when he stepped again through
the commissary door the shimmering illusion was gone--salt pork,
cabbages, and herrings were again salt pork, cabbages, and herrings.
The swallowtail was definitely back in camphor, and his actual wage was
twelve dollars and fifty cents a week.

He seldom had customers in the afternoon, as the negroes were still
in the mining fields, and as the hours dragged by he came into a
realisation of what the week had meant to him. Now, with the glamour
gone, he could see quite plainly that its luminous centre had been
Valerie Land. Sitting in his little sanctum behind the store, with his
face buried in his hands, he looked for the first time into youth’s
keenest tragedy: a vast aspiration and the overwhelming conviction of
his own inability to attain it. He tried to consider it impersonally
and debated it as a purely academic question. Was it better to have
caught a glimpse of the unattainable or to have stayed in ignorance of
it all, sweating it out in the obscurity of the camp, finding escape
only in his reading, music, pictures--the sort of things that couldn’t
hit back? Now even the little that he was sending home was desperately
needed there. If Polly was given this year, and perhaps next, she would
probably marry, and marry well. In the meantime she and his mother must
have the best possible background.

Looking back on his parting from Valerie, he realised that some
protective divination had been at work within him, for he had made the
farewell deliberately casual, as though they were mere acquaintances
parting after a week of festivities. She had said that surely she would
see him on the following Sunday when he would come to town as usual.
He had replied evasively, telling her that there would be a lot of
work to be made up, and he did not know when he would be free again.
He remembered that she had looked surprised and hurt. Now he thought
bitterly that even that was best. There was no use to go ahead toward
an agonising smash. A clean break--and a memory--surely that was the
wisest. Now he must pull himself together--buck up--face it squarely.

Through the heavy stillness came the sound of an automobile engine
throbbing in the sand of the main road some little distance away. It
fretted the structure that the boy was commencing to build--challenged
its permanence. He dropped his face in his hands. “A bunch of tourists
on their way to see the Ashley River gardens,” he thought. They were
commencing to discover them now. Coming from way up North in their
great new machines that looked so out of place in the ancient solitudes
of marsh and forest. He wished they’d stay away. Their appearance
stressed differences so heavily, started absurd longings.

He heard a step in the store, got wearily to his feet, shook himself
together, and went out. The large room was gloomy, and by comparison
the doorway seemed almost dazzling in the afternoon sun. It framed a
foreground of white sand road, and a towering back drop of straight
pine boles. In the centre of the picture, showing only in silhouette,
stood Valerie.

She hesitated a moment, then advanced toward him. While he thought,
“This isn’t right. This will upset everything again,” his quick
perception of beauty caught the sinuous flow of the little body,
carried now with a childish bravado. He said, “Oh, good God,” and stood
motionless. On his face was the old look that had counted so heavily
against him when he was a child--the wide-eyed, almost vacuous gaze.
Finally he broke into movement, holding out his hand--“Valerie.”

“Yes,” she said, laughing a little shakily, “right you are, but don’t
be so frightened. I haven’t come to call. That wouldn’t be proper. I
have come on a mission. I have come to save you. Is there some place
where we can talk?”

She had spoken in a light manner but with a serious undertone in her
voice. Saint was mystified. He locked the store and opened the door
into his own room. She entered, and he followed her in silence. He was
bewildered by her sudden and unexpected appearance, and by the faint,
exciting vibrations that her presence released in the familiar room.
She did not look about her, saying at once: “Uncle George was taking
the children to see the gardens, so I got him to drop me off here.”
Then with her characteristic directness, she came immediately to the
point.

“You remember what I told you about Father and the bad time he has had?”

Saint nodded assent.

“Well, I have been thinking about him a lot since, and I couldn’t
help thinking about your saying that you were going in for
painting. It made me see you in a new light, and it made me see
your great danger. I thought maybe no one else would see it and
tell you. You see, it struck me suddenly that Father must have been
awfully like you when he was young--his passion for beauty--for
knowledge--reading--painting--confusing the love for a thing with the
ability to create it.” She was talking now in short, rushing sentences,
watching his face for any revelation that it might give her of his
response, but not giving him a chance to interrupt her. “And Dad isn’t
the only one that made the mistake. I have seen lots of others go
the same way. You see, they are two such different things. I knew a
real artist once--he almost hated his art--it was such a relentless
taskmaster--he was a terribly lonely soul--but his things are in the
Metropolitan now. At first, at the gallery that afternoon, you said
you loved pictures. Then, after I had talked to you about them, you
said suddenly that you were going in for it. That made me feel terribly
responsible. I could not rest until I could come to say _don’t_. Hold
on to the thing you have. Try to make it pay the way. Then you can have
beauty too. That’s all. Am I forgiven?”

She had been standing tensely before him while she spoke. Now her body
went slack. She sighed and let herself go into the depths of Saint’s
big chair.

The boy stood looking down at her with preternatural solemnity. “You
are right to have come,” he said, “but I don’t know yet. I can’t
think quickly, you know. There has always been a dream. It seemed so
far, so hard to get hold of. I kept doing all sorts of things like
those fossils there, hoping I would stumble on it and see it clearly.
Then came the ball. It changed values, made me see other things as
important, and on top of that, the day with you and the pictures. Now
here I am back on earth again. I see this job for what it is. I am
beginning to loathe it all--the ugliness--the cheap hypocrisy. And yet
I know now that I can’t let it go. I am even beginning to see some
justification for the hypocrisy. Polly’s got to have her chance. I’ve
got to play up for Mother. So there we are!”

“But there’s more than just that,” she told him earnestly. “You see, I
have been thinking terribly hard about it. It took a lot of courage to
come, and I would not have dared if I had not had an idea.”

She was so small and so desperately in earnest that Saint could not
help smiling down at her.

“Oh, don’t take this lightly,” she begged. “It hasn’t been easy for me,
and I can’t just waste it all. You must see it like this: Now you are
in a job that you can do. I bet you can do it better than other men
could, even not thinking about it. But you have lots of imagination
that you have just been playing in this room with, keeping that door
into the store closed all the time. Why can’t you spend some of it
on the job? Whatever it is, you can make it grow. Then when you have
succeeded you will have time and money for Beauty too, and she won’t
disillusion you then as she has Dad.”

Saint sat down opposite his guest and looked into the fire that
crackled on the hearth between them. After a while he said: “Dreams are
funny things. They had me mastered when I was a kid--shoulders right
to the mat--but out here I have learned to keep them in their place
a little. I only let them come into this room, and never across that
threshold into the store. It was hard keeping them shut up at first, I
can tell you. But now they behave. Then I started reading, playing a
little, thinking things out, studying. It seemed that if I could only
keep alive by what I got beyond that door, I could keep on finding my
happiness alone in here. Then there was always the vague hope that
sometime, somehow, a miracle would happen and I’d find myself writing,
or painting, and would never have to open the door into the store
again.”

“But don’t you see, you can’t keep on that way. That’s drifting. You
must carry your imagination over that threshold--into life--and make it
work for you. You are young, and no one can count on always meeting
life alone.” She blushed hotly, stole a sidelong glance at him that
brought reassurance, then hurried on: “I mean life is something to be
gone after--fought for--not just dreamed over.”

She broke off suddenly, then mocked herself, “Here I am getting as
intense as anything, positively preaching to you--and my pose in ruins.
My nice casual little self gone moralist. Well, don’t lie awake over
what I have said. We’ve all got to think things out for ourselves,
anyway.”

She stood up, saying that the car would be back any minute and she
had promised to be at the roadside to be picked up without delaying
the homeward journey. She had an overdone air of indifference about
her and held out her hand with impersonal coolness. Saint took it and
held it for a moment. Then he said with the solemnity of youth, “Thank
you, Valerie. I have to think this all out. But I’ll never forget your
coming.”

“Oh, that’s all right, quite all right,” she replied in a deliberately
passionless voice. “It is the sort of thing that my sort of meddling
person can’t help doing for a friend. You’ve taken it nicely. And now I
feel better for having done it.”

In the moment of departure she hesitated, turned slowly, and for the
first time examined the room, noting the etchings, the books, the
guitar; and on the table the rather absurd self-instruction book. She
completed her survey in silence; then she came and took both of his
hands impulsively. In the up-flung light of the fire her face was
luminous.

“Oh,” she said, “I am sorry for you and I’m proud of you. This little
room--can’t you feel it? It is not a playhouse, after all. It is your
battle ground, and you’re going to win.” She dropped his hands suddenly
and turned her back upon him, leaving him inarticulate and embarrassed.
Then she looked over her shoulder and laughed audaciously.

“There’s something else I came to say too, and I had almost forgotten.
It’s this: you need not be afraid to come and see me in town. I’ll
promise not to marry you unless you ask me.”

The boy goggled at her, his face a mask of comedy. Finally he achieved
a grin.

“Poor boy,” she laughed. “The Wentworths have never had to contend with
my sort before, but you’re young. You’ll learn.”

He walked with her to the road, and they saw the Atkinson car
approaching, a great, shining limousine, nosing its way along the
winding sand road. Atkinson was at the wheel, and the children had a
friend with them in the deep rear seat. Saint helped Valerie up beside
him while he responded to the cheery greetings, then stood and watched
the car diminish toward a far vanishing point. Instinctively he turned
back into the old avenue of escape--the splendid abstract dreams that
had pulled him through the bitter moments of his adolescence. He opened
his mind to them, and suddenly they were upon him, bright and amazing,
more actual than life. The great machine vanishing under the trees
turned the trick--its incongruity in that primitive setting. Under the
rubber tires, a scant six feet deep--carcases of dinosaurs, their great
teeth and bone fragments waiting for the shovels of the negroes to
show them the light again. They rose before him. In the dusk under the
live oaks he saw vast moving shapes oddly balanced on hind legs while
they reached to feed on treetops. They were so real, so marvellously
convincing, he regarded them with a sort of detached pride akin to the
thrill of creation. The last glimmer of a sanguine sunset, broken into
long bars by the tree trunks, penetrated the dusk and burned faintly on
the swaying forms. Then the swamp mists bellied in whitely and blurred
the huge outlines.

Saint became conscious of the roughness of the bark against which he
was leaning. “Yesterday and to-day,” he thought, “and what does it all
amount to, anyway?” He pulled himself up sharply. What would Valerie
say! She thought he had something in him, and she hadn’t put him down
as a quitter. He straightened up resolutely, and jammed his hands deep
into his trousers pockets. Then he strode quickly across the road and
entered the store.

       *       *       *       *       *

One month had passed since Wentworth had been to the city for the St.
Cecilia ball, four years since he had gone on the payroll of the mining
company. Mr. Raymond had sent word that he would call at noon. There
was an important matter to be threshed out. The two men had scarcely
met since the morning when they had driven out together and Saint
had been installed. Mr. Raymond belonged to a world of statistics,
directors’ meetings, and conferences, with his orbit definitely
fixed in the big Broad Street offices and the surrounding financial
district. Wentworth had been directly answerable to the commissary
manager, an extremely low order of human being named Goodlow, to whom
a trade was as the breath of life, and who naturally regarded his
aristocratic subordinate with the traditional suspicion and dislike of
the poor-white. Twenty years of penny-pinching had raised him from the
keeper of one of the smallest branches to the position of purchasing
and managerial head of the chain. Saint knew that the man disliked him
intensely, but he also knew that, having come into the job over the
manager’s head, at the hands of the great Mr. Raymond, he enjoyed a
certain mysterious prestige in the Goodlow mind, and that was why he
was, at least, left largely to himself.

It was odd that Saint felt no nervous apprehension at the prospect of
the visit of his chief. He wondered about this for a while. What had
brought about the difference? Then he got the answer: the ball, not the
event itself, but the things for which it stood, the odd feeling of
importance that it left with him in spite of his disillusioning return
to the realities of the camp. He remembered his panic that day when he
had been given his job, and he smiled at his own expense.

When Mr. Raymond arrived he greeted his employé warmly, but there
was a subtle something in the air that seemed to temper the extreme
cordiality of his attitude toward him when they had driven out to the
store that other morning four years ago. He stood silent while the
outer door was locked, then, at a gesture of invitation, preceded
Wentworth into his little sanctum. Strangely enough, the room seemed
to impair the sense of superiority which an employer has every right
to experience in an interview that deals with policies of the company.
The room was less a part of the store building than it was of the man
before him. It confused the issue, making him feel like a guest in
his own house. Mr. Raymond stood looking about him in silence for a
moment. There were many books, and his roving glance failed to discover
a familiar title upon any of the neatly arranged bindings. There
were several etchings, and odd bits of statuary. In a corner stood a
glass case containing a small collection of fossils from the mines.
His glance came back to Wentworth and rested on him questioningly. He
had had him neatly catalogued. The boy had been hopelessly devoid of
ability, personality, everything that could make for success. He had
taken him on and buried him here because Kate Wentworth was one of
the finest women God ever made, and he wanted to do what he could for
her son. Now, reinforced by this inexplicable background, the boy was
emerging as a mystery, and he was suspicious of mysteries, especially
in business. His employé had changed physically too--filled out--and
there was an ease and resilience about his carriage that denoted
reserves of vigour.

Saint begged his guest to be seated and returned to the store for the
box of cigars. When he re-entered the room Mr. Raymond was standing
before the mantelpiece from which he was in the act of lifting a small
curious object, holding it gingerly in his heavy, blunt fingers.

“What’s this peculiar affair, Wentworth?” he inquired.

Saint took it and held it with a strange sort of deference. It was
about six inches in height, made of some heavy, dark wood. Oddly out of
proportion, it yet resembled a woman in a kneeling posture. The limbs
were massive and primitively modelled, the eyes half-closed, the nose
broad and flat.

The answer came with diffidence. “Oh, that! Why, that’s a piece of
primitive African sculpture. It was almost a duplicate of a piece in a
collection at the museum, and when it was offered the other day by the
British Museum for sale or exchange, the director arranged for me to
take it off their hands.”

He hesitated a moment, while he studied the bit of wood, then he added
impulsively: “Not often a fellow down here gets a chance like that, I
can tell you.”

“Ahem! no--I suppose not,” Raymond replied. Then, seizing the
opportunity offered by the topic, he sat down, relighted his cigar,
and said with some sententiousness: “Negro, eh! Well, that brings us
to the matter in hand. I thought, Wentworth, that we had rather given
you an idea of the policy toward Baggart and his men out here. It’s
not the sort of thing that we issue orders about, you understand, but
there is a general feeling among the men that it is for the good of all
concerned not to interfere with his administration of the law in this
district. Perhaps you haven’t quite realised this?” And he looked at
Saint with raised eyebrows.

“But I do understand, Mr. Raymond, and God knows I’ve minded my own
business. Why, I even let that yellow skunk Bluton hang around the
store, and keep my mouth shut while I wait on him.”

“Oh, it’s nothing about the store,” said Mr. Raymond hastily. “It’s
this matter of Davy something-or-other. I gather that Baggart
subpœnaed him for crap shooting Saturday night, and that you appeared
for him and swore to his alibi.”

“Oh, that!” exclaimed Saint, his face clearing. “Certainly. I see you
don’t understand. I had Davy here helping me take stock until midnight,
then I saw him go home. When he told me about his summons I thought
that there was some mistake, so I offered to go to the hearing and
clear it up for him. That was all.”

Raymond leaned forward with his elbows on the arms of the chair and
regarded Saint intently. The boy was struck again, as he had been that
first day, by the kindliness of his eyes, but when he spoke the bold,
flexible voice had a decisive edge to it.

“I see that I have to be very plain-spoken with you, Wentworth. It
is a hard matter to put into words, but I am going to try to get it
over to you. We--that is, the Company, the labour, the magistrate,
you--have all shaken down into a system that works. It may look unjust,
it certainly is faulty, but I am not sure that it is such a bad
arrangement after all. To begin with, the state put a magistrate here
and requires him to maintain an office, a constable, and live like a
white man on seventy-five dollars a month, and--here’s the joker--such
perquisites as the office may yield. The incumbent holds his office at
the pleasure of the voters--not the mining interests with their few
white votes, but the rank and file of the poor-white, small farmers,
workingmen, who fear the negro in the mass worse than they do the
devil. They give their man the job for what it is worth, requiring of
him two things: to keep the negro, as they say, in his place, and,
with almost no actual police at his command, to maintain order in
the district. From their point of view Baggart is a success. He has
absolute power to cause the arrest and fix the penalty of any man upon
the knowledge and belief of his constable or the invaluable Bluton. Now
you see what will happen to the mining company if it interferes. If we
stand with a negro openly against the magistrate we are going back
on our colour; according to his point of view, we are demoralising
the negroes and putting unsafe notions in their heads. In reprisal,
then, the magistrate has only to flood the village with warrants
under perfectly valid statutes, crap shooting, delinquent road taxes,
dog taxes, and God only knows what not, and in this way pauperise
our negroes, and deprive us of labour. No, we are expected to extend
co-operation, as it is called, and as long as we do we have a right to
expect him not to be too excessive in his demands. At any rate, be the
ethics what they may, we are powerless because Baggart is doing exactly
what his constituency put him here to do.”

“But,” interrupted Saint, “all the money that the fines bring in, what
becomes of that?”

Mr. Raymond inhaled a deep breath of tobacco smoke and blew it toward
the ceiling. “That,” he said with a cryptic smile, “is Proctor
Baggart’s little secret.” After a moment he added: “I may say in the
strictest secrecy that we are trying through an underground route to
have all magistrates required to give receipts for fines. That may be
some small restraint, but I doubt if we can get away with it.”

“But, Mr. Raymond,” Saint asked, “what would you have me do about Davy?
Why, he was working under my eyes at the time. I had to take care of
him.”

“Certainly, take care of him, but in the proper way. What you’ve done
is apt to lay him open for an ungodly disciplining now. It will be
Baggart’s indirect way of enlightening you. He has to come down hard
on insubordination. He has to be invincible. That’s what gives him his
hold over them. Remember that last case? Time Bluton was ripped by that
old fellow Ned? Baggart simply had to get that man. It cost him lots
of money, private detective, and all that, but he put him up for ten
years. Result: no more razor exercise since that night. But to get back
to this specific case--here’s how it stands: Everybody knows Davy’s
weakness for craps. He was due for a contribution, that’s all. You had
only to sit tight, and the next morning he’d have come to you for his
fine. If his credit was strong on your books, you could have advanced
him the ten dollars then and there; if not, you could have sent two
down on account. Baggart makes terms, you know--two down, two a week.
That way you would have been playing the game and everybody would have
been happy.”

Saint said, “I mind most getting Davy in wrong by it. What had I better
do about it now?”

The employer gave the matter thought. At length he said, “I’ll tell you
what. Just go over to Baggart. He’s not a bad sort to talk to. You’ll
have to handle it a little delicately. Compliment him on the way he
keeps order. Tell him that you are just beginning to understand how
he gets such fine results. That he can count on your co-operation in
future. Fine word that--co-operation. Then say offhand that you have a
special interest in Davy and that if he gets in trouble again to let
you know.”

“That’s a nasty dose to stomach,” Saint remarked, “but I can’t have
Davy persecuted. I suppose I’ll end by going.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Raymond approved. “Better take a bull by the horns
and haul him out of the road. Only way to get ahead.” He sat smoking
for a moment or two, then touched on the subject in the abstract.
“Strange tangle, this negro business. Had a talk with a neighbour of
yours about it yesterday. Atkinson--fine chap--open mind. He’s been
thinking a lot about it and had it sized up pretty well. He said that
the Yankee was all for the negro race, and hated him as an individual,
but that in the South, we love the individual negro, while we hate,
or at least fear, him as a race. I told him that if he had been South
during reconstruction and had seen them making laws for us in Columbia,
he’d know mighty well why, as a race, we have to hold him under
control.”

“But in the meantime,” Saint argued, “they’re not getting anywhere, are
they?”

Mr. Raymond’s voice was a little weary. “Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure.
Anyhow, there’s always got to be labour, and they are the best for us.
And you never saw one willing to work out here who had a dollar in
his pocket. It isn’t as though they were unhappy. Come, you have been
working here four years. You keep your eyes open. Are they a miserable
lot?”

“No, I can’t say honestly that they are. They have enough to eat, and,
to tell you the truth, when they actually cut loose for a good time
they seem to get a lot more out of it than I do.”

“Sure they do. The white man’s burden,” said Mr. Raymond, in dismissal
of the subject. “Enough to eat, friends, more time than we have, the
men have women, and the women have men. ‘Sufficient unto the day,’
as the Bible or somebody says. Now tell me how you’re getting along
yourself.”

Saint said, “I’m glad you asked me that. There are some things that I
want to talk over with you, and I want you to have a look at the books.
I have been thinking a lot about the work here, and I believe it has
possibilities. I have started some things already. Do you mind if I go
ahead with suggestions?”

Raymond regarded him with a surprise that was not entirely free from
amusement. He had never considered the commissary in the light of its
business possibilities. “Go right ahead,” he encouraged.

The boy began a little self-consciously, but soon lost all sense
of himself in the telling of his plans. “There’s quite a nice cash
business now among the outside negroes who farm. We could make a small
line of agricultural implements pay, I think. And I’d like to have
Davy as a regular hand. He’s quick at figures”--a wry smile tugged at
the corner of his mouth--“quicker than I am, as a matter of fact, and
he’s the most popular boy for miles around. I could get him for five
dollars a week, and, unless I’m mighty wrong, he’ll pay for himself
from the start.”

Saint, watching intently, could almost visualise the new ideas sink
slowly in, meet the dense wall of unquestioned preconceptions, and
slowly rebound.

“Hmmm, not so sure about that last item. Never use negroes in the
stores. Never thought of it. Can get a white boy just as cheap, and it
has always been white man’s work. Start now and it might put notions in
their heads.”

“Perhaps that’s why the cash business has been going to the little
negro shops over on the main road,” put in Saint quietly.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Then the big man laughed. “All right,” he said
at length. “Go ahead and try it out. Any more surprises for me?”

Half an hour later Mr. Raymond stood on the piazza of the store,
blinking in the glare that the white sand road flung upward. “Well,
good-bye, Wentworth,” he said. “Remember to do your best by us in
straightening out that damned awkward business with Baggart, and watch
your step in future. And about the store: go ahead with your plans, and
I’ll stand back of you with Goodlow and the town office. If anything
new occurs to you, you had better run over to town and take it up with
me personally.”

       *       *       *       *       *

All that afternoon Saint was too filled with elation over the success
of his plans to give thought to any other matter. But the next morning,
plodding through the white sand on his way to Baggart’s office, the
unpleasant nature of the mission upon which he was engaged commenced to
eclipse the brightness of his mood. He had locked the store and started
off through the lemon-coloured winter sunshine whistling the air of
the last waltz that he had danced with Valerie, and while his surface
thought played lightly with that memory, plans for the store had been
taking form in a substratum of his mind. But as he tramped along a
shadow commenced to grow out of the Baggart business and cast a gloom
over his mood. Finally he stopped whistling, then, almost defiantly, he
faced the unpleasant issue.

No longer confronted by the powerful and persuasive personality of his
employer, Saint now saw the incident for exactly what it was. He was
on his way to apologise for having done a thing that, deep within his
instinctive feeling for right and wrong, he knew to have been right.
All of the arguments that he had listened to the day before could
not change that. He remembered now how his simple and unpremeditated
action had affected the magistrate’s court when he had gone in and
sworn to Davy’s alibi. The negroes had regarded him with amazement.
That had impressed him at the time and made him wonder. But Baggart
had immediately suspended the case upon which he was engaged, received
him with an exaggerated courtesy, at once removed the charge from the
books, and thanked him cordially for coming. “The dirty hound,” Saint
thought. “He must have gone straight to the Company’s office and whined
about it.” With that impulse to vent anger upon an inanimate object, he
struck viciously at a wayside bush with the stick that he was carrying.
Then his thoughts veered from the specific case to the ethics involved
in the affair. What an intricate mess it all was. You could not go
about righting a wrong in a perfectly direct and natural way because of
appearances, because of the effect that it would produce upon a number
of minds that had no concern with the actual incident. Everything
had to be done upon such an absurdly personal basis. Davy was his
employé, and so, for personal reasons, he would do what he could for
Davy. Baggart, who was a state official, nevertheless managed to make
everything that he did an obvious personal concession, and expected
private and personal concessions in return. As long as a man looked
after his own negroes in accordance with the customs prevailing in his
particular locality, no one thought anything of it. But if he made an
open move that carried the slightest suggestion of impersonal interest
in the race, that was another matter, and he was due to be cozened
gently back into line.

Well, now that he came to think of it, that was exactly where his
grandfather had stood in 1861. He had enjoyed the reputation of
taking better care of his slaves than any other man in the parish.
He had positively pampered them. Yet he had died at Gettysburg
in defence of certain principles, among which certainly must be
numbered the institution of slavery. But no, that was not quite a
fair comparison. In town, at any rate, there were now good schools.
There was even a state college for negroes. There were coloured
business and professional men who were earning tidy incomes and living
comfortably. Saint’s mind locked with this apparent inconsistency.
Suddenly he saw an explanation--not a solution--there probably wasn’t
any--but at least the motivating principle. Expediency. In town, both
numbers and power rested securely with the white, and so he could
afford to appear in court for a negro, could educate him, give him a
chance in business, indulge his own benign paternalism. Out in the
agricultural region, staying on upon the same soil that had enslaved
their grandfathers, they were held to the old code of behaviour by a
tradition of servitude, reinforced in many cases by an actual affection
to their landlords. There they were safe. Only here in the industrial
belt, thronged as it was by the rag-tag and bob-tail of the race, ten,
twenty, a hundred of them to a single white, the grip could not be
allowed to slacken. White supremacy must remain absolute.

A dazzling idea struck the boy, an idea as fantastic, as improbable
as the old grandiose and heroic dreams. Suppose he should openly
abandon expediency for principle. Suppose he should turn back now,
instead of going on and repudiating his attitude of three days ago.
What would happen? He stopped dead in his tracks, trying to estimate
the consequences. First, according to Mr. Raymond’s reasoning, Davy
would soon be apt to receive another summons. He would be fined,
perhaps even given a term on the chain gang. It would be easy
enough for Baggart to get him in a crap game if he just watched and
waited. Then most certainly his own position would be jeopardised.
He would no longer be one of a group bound together by a wordless,
but absolute, understanding. He’d be out in a no-man’s land of his
own making. He would lose the chance that he was just beginning to
realise in the store. Hunting for work again. Failure again. His
mother--Polly--Valerie.

Out of a job, what good would he be to himself or anybody else?
Supposing that he was really interested in the problems of the
negroes and wanted to help, was it not best to stay here, observe the
conventions, and give them a leg up one at a time? Yes, that seemed the
practical thing to do. But if that was so, why was it so difficult to
go on to Baggart’s? It ought to be plain sailing if he had satisfied
himself that he was right. He searched for a reason that would bring
conviction to himself. Of course, it was his own pride. No gentleman
would relish having to apologise to a man of Baggart’s type. Well,
then, he must make a personal sacrifice in the matter. For Valerie--his
mother--Polly--for the assistance that he might be able to render
to the negroes themselves, he must pocket his pride. He squared his
shoulders, feeling not a little heroic. Before him the broad belt of
white sand swung out to divide at a little distance into two roads, one
cutting straight back between the pines into the vast loneliness of the
black back country, the other swinging a sharp right angle toward the
river and Baggart’s office. Saint stood, his eyes before him, and tried
to force the familiar, objective details of sand, forest, and sky in
upon his mind. He must get out of himself and go ahead with the thing
he had to do. But the picture-making faculty that had so often been
his escape now turned upon him and endowed the way that he must choose,
with its wide-flung alternatives, with a huge and momentous symbolism.
His heroic pose collapsed. With a gesture of utter weariness he set his
face in the direction of Baggart’s office.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Charleston the brief and intense social season had burned itself
out, and the chimes of St. Michael’s, that had carolled it brightly
through its short career, were now, in their Lenten tolling, sounding
its requiem. For Lent still made a sharp line of demarkation in the
behaviour of the old city, with its deeply imbedded Church of England
tradition. The imposing building, with its lofty façade and Grecian
portico, where the St. Cecilia had held sway, had now about it an air
of desertion and neglect. There seemed suddenly to be more old women in
mourning, fewer girls in bright colours, for the visiting débutantes
were packing for homeward journeys, and local belles were fluttering
away on visits to more gala and less godly metropolises.

Saint was in the city for Sunday, but he did not attend church with his
mother and sister. He had two engagements that morning. Mr. Raymond had
made an appointment to talk with him at his home at eleven o’clock,
and, after that, he had to tell Valerie good-bye before she caught a
northbound train at two. Two such different engagements, each with its
train of associations, had made the boy of two minds during a sleepless
night and a preoccupied early morning. He was like a spirit that is
trying to inhabit two separate planes of existence, and the way that
his thoughts soared when Valerie brushed across them made it terribly
hard to hold his feet down to the solid substance of the proposition
that he was going to make to his employer.

It was almost three months since Valerie’s call at the mines, when he
had listened to her solemn warning. That event, and the visit of Mr.
Raymond coming on top of it, had opened up a new phase of existence
for him. Books, music, fossils, even painting had been forgotten for
the time. He had plunged with the thrill of a fresh adventure into
the problem of making the commissary a paying proposition. Once his
interest had been aroused and he had looked over the records, he was
amazed to see what had come to pass even without conscious effort.
He had known that he enjoyed the confidence of the negroes, and that
gradually they had started to bring their friends to shop at his
commissary. But his mind had been absorbed with other matters, and he
had not realised that, from zero, he had built up a very considerable
cash business among non-employés of the mines.

Then had come the impulse that prompted him to ask for Davy as a
helper. Immediately sales had boomed. At his own suggestion the boy
had taken the slack hours in the afternoon to go out on advertising
excursions among his friends, and the result had been that both Saint
and himself were kept going at top speed during the hours when the
negroes came to do their purchasing.

Saint was amazed at the ease with which results were accomplished.
Always before business success had seemed to him a thing separate from
life--a feat of legerdemain requiring a certain sort of person for its
accomplishment. Now he saw it for the first time as the outgrowth of
personality--a by-product of the man himself. He had discovered too
that it brought a thrilling satisfaction entirely aside from the money
that it yielded. It was a game to be played. His imagination was as
busy as ever, only instead of being what he now considered a vague and
demoralising agency, it was wedded to actuality and was building high
dreams over the shabby little commissary.

Some of these dreams he had talked over with Davy, who knew exactly
what the negroes wanted and what they could afford to pay for it.
Finally he had mapped out concrete plans and had asked Mr. Raymond for
this interview, immediately after which he would have to go and tell
Valerie good-bye.

Since the afternoon of Valerie’s visit to the mines he had seen her
as often as possible. At first they had spent their Sunday afternoons
at the museum or art gallery. The pictures were not on exhibition on
Sundays, but Saint had gained admission through the secretary, and he
and the girl had the big echoing room with all of its splendours to
themselves. They would look at the pictures for a while, then sit on a
settee and let their talk drift where it would. Valerie told him about
her father. “The sweetest, the gentlest man alive. Everything to make
an artist but the little essential spark.” Once she said passionately:
“Only geniuses should be allowed to create. It’s cruel to let others
try and fail. You see the pitiful thing is that Father knows good work.
He’s his own judge. And the things that he has to do to keep alive! He
will never go back to see them after they are done, and he won’t let us
go to see them. He has a creed, and he must break it to live.”

Sometimes, in brighter moods, Valerie would tell of the other side of
their life: the casual comings and goings of people who could sing,
paint, act--New York, and the terrible splendour of its nights. Then
Saint would momentarily revert to his old gods and exclaim: “I want
that life, Val, I want it terribly,” or, “That’s the real thing. Can’t
you just feel that, Val?” and she would reassure him with, “But, don’t
you see, you can have all of that and more when you have succeeded at
what you are doing. That’s what I want for you, freedom--then beauty.”

Then Mamba had taken a hand in their affairs. Employing her old
tactics, she had insinuated herself into the good graces of Valerie
and had attached herself to her as personal maid. Then one night, when
Saint was telling Valerie good-night, she stumbled into them at the
front door and asked them with the excessive innocence of manner that
always masked some deep design if they would like to accompany her to
a special midnight service at her church. Saint recognised the manner
immediately and turned a knowing grin upon her. “Old Machiavelli,” he
thought, “she has something up. I wonder whether she is really doing
it for love of us or starting to run up an account against the next
difficulty of one of her precious daughters.” He finally credited her
with the double motive. Valerie was thrilled at the prospect of the
adventure.

Mamba led the way through an alley so narrow that both walls could be
touched at the same moment with the extended hands, and on into the
labyrinth of back-yard passageways of lower East Bay, then suddenly
through a side door into a darkened corner of the large room that
served as a meeting house. This was no ordinary service subject to the
occasional invasion of a white visitor in search of local colour. It
was a section of Africa transplanted to new soil and, with the lapse
of a century, still black with jungle mystery, crimson with jungle
passion. Mamba, seizing a moment when the faculties of the swaying
crowd were locked fast in the grip of a chant, got them unobserved into
a dark corner near the door. Over them, like the crash of breakers,
swept the terrific, cumulative intensity of the worship, now throbbing
with an old terror of jungle gods, again lifting suddenly into rapt
adoration of the new Christ. This, and the pounding rhythms of the
spirituals, the amazing emotional release wrought by the music, so
fascinated and yet frightened the white girl that she sat huddled
against Saint, clinging to his hand with tense fingers, her head
pressed against his shoulder. While between them and the nearest group
of worshippers Mamba sat on guard with her rare and cryptic Mona
Lisa smile playing incongruously about her grim mouth and baring the
formidable teeth in a thin up-curving line.

It was in the art gallery on the following afternoon that the avowal
had come. A silence had grown between them. The high, windowless walls
muted the occasional street noises and surrounded them with a barrier
of beauty against the importunate realities that waited for them out
in the winter afternoon. The young lovers sat so quietly that a casual
observer would have thought the room unoccupied, and in that deep
silence there grew up between them so complete a communion that the
final word seemed almost superfluous. Saint raised his eyes at last
and found the girl’s fixed upon him with their intent, reading look.
He took her hands and said very softly, “I love you, Valerie.” In the
suddenly awakened silence, the words seemed to hover in the air about
the girl, then she answered on a note that was almost one of sadness,
“And I love you, Saint.” They leaned forward then, like two children,
and kissed, and presently took their way home through the darkening
street, carrying their miraculous secret so carefully past the street
windows of their friends that they scarcely spoke again until they said
good-bye.

But gradually, as the weeks passed, they began to substitute long walks
in the country for the hours spent in the art gallery. Saint began
to see his old enthusiasms for his guitar and his pictures as just a
little absurd. It was the store and its possibilities now, and Saint
did most of the talking. The old flair was still there, making him
forget himself in an idea, but the idea now concerned itself with a
bigger store, more stock, perhaps a second store some day. Sometimes,
for nearly an hour, Valerie would have scarcely a word to say, and she
did not always follow the soaring flights of his reapplied imagination.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now, on this momentous morning, Saint stood upon the doorstep
of Mr. Raymond’s colonial dwelling on lower Meeting Street, and
listened to St. Michael’s measured announcement that the hour for his
first interview had arrived. A step sounded beyond the closed door.
He executed a tremendous effort of will, banished Valerie from his
thoughts, and commenced to run over in his mind the things that he
wanted from his employer: “more space--a line of fertilisers, and
seed--new large piazza where visiting negroes could congregate--break
all connection with Goodlow and do his own purchasing.” At that point
the door was opened by a maid.

“Yes, sir,” she said in answer to his inquiry, “Mr. Raymond is
expecting you in the library.”

He passed in and the door closed softly behind him.

Half an hour later he was again on the doorstep, with the big form of
his employer filling the opening behind him. Mr. Raymond placed a large
firm hand on his shoulder.

“Well, you have what you want, haven’t you?” he asked.

“I should say I have, sir.”

“Good luck to you, then. I must confess that I am surprised as well as
pleased with your results. But blood will tell. It will be fine working
directly with you in future. My congratulations, and warm regards to
your good mother, please.”

Had he got what he wanted! Saint had to smile. A new wing for
agricultural implements, fertilisers, and seed, a big piazza that
would attract the negroes to idle and feel at home, authorisation to
do his own buying and to be answerable to Mr. Raymond alone. Then,
right on top of it all--right smack out of the blue--a salary raise to
twenty-five dollars a week. The boy felt just a little intoxicated as
he turned away from the big Meeting Street mansion.

When he arrived at Atkinsons’ Mamba admitted him; then, as nobody was
looking, she gave him a proprietary pat on the back, accompanied by
a leer that was distinctly a throw-back to the East Bay epoch of her
life.

“Ain’t no use to hang back, Mr. Saint. Ah sho knows it when Ah sees it.
She’s in de parlour now waitin’ for you, an’ she’s done all broke out
wid it.”

“You’re a suspicious old devil,” he told her with a grin, “and if I
didn’t have such a deep respect for the law I’d tell you to your teeth
what I really think of you.”

Yes, Valerie was waiting for him. The street windows were closed, as
is the custom in the old city, and the light in the room was dim and
chill. An open fire strove valiantly but only half-successfully to
bring it to life.

The girl came toward him and gave him both of her hands, glancing up
into his face with a new shyness in her own. But Saint, usually so
quick to feel the mood of another, was bursting with his triumph. His
eyes were shining with excitement, and his colour was high under the
tan of his skin. He did not linger over her hands, but gave them a
short, vehement grip and released them.

“I have come for your congratulations, Valerie,” he exclaimed. “I have
just been talking to Mr. Raymond, and he has given me everything I
want. You can’t guess how exciting it all really is.”

“Oh,” she said on a short indrawn breath, “you’re happy to-day, aren’t
you? I am very glad. Sit down and tell me all about it.”

With a new decisiveness of manner Saint led her to the sofa and sat
beside her. He took her hand and held it between both of his, but his
manner was abstracted, and his eyes gave her the odd impression of
being focussed, not on her face, but on some remote point behind her.
He talked rapidly, his enthusiasm vaulting minor details, hurdling
obstacles, leaping at, and beyond, conclusions, so that she had very
little idea what it was all about. Something very like egotism began to
creep into his recital. The girl looked at him in dismayed wonder. She
felt as though the sequence of their meeting--understanding--love had
commenced to reel backward, and that presently she would find herself
talking to a stranger. She drew her hand away from between his relaxed
fingers and saw that he was oblivious of the fact.

When his first gush had spent itself it was as though he came slowly
back into the room from some far place, and his eyes became cognisant
of her face. He stopped speaking and looked at her in surprise.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing, only I am wondering if I was wise when I went out to the
store that day and tried to reform you.”

Instantly he was his old self and very contrite. “I am an ass,” he
announced, “I have been babbling my head off. Please forgive me, dear.
It’s that silly single-track brain of mine.” He took her hand again,
and she let it lie cool and lax in his as he hurried on. “Why, how can
you say that it might have been unwise? I can never tell you all that
it has meant to me. See already what it has done. And I owe it all to
you. I can never thank you enough--never.”

“But you are happy to-day,” she said with apparent irrelevance.

He was conscious of a note of accusation in her voice, and it mystified
him. He said, “Why, yes, it’s a big day. The biggest in my business
career, I guess.”

Her eyes rested searchingly on his face. “Yes, that’s what counts with
men,” she said wearily. “We are different, after all. Well, I am glad
for your success, but you must let me go and finish packing now. My
train goes in an hour, you know.”

“Good God, Val, I forgot. Can you ever forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” she told him. “It hurts.”

“But I lay awake all last night thinking about you. And this business
to-day--I wanted that for you.”

She looked into his rueful face. Suddenly her own changed and softened.
She answered slowly, translating an idea into speech as it grew in
her own mind: “Yes, I can forgive you. I understand you now. I never
guessed that you could lose yourself in an idea like that. It makes you
different.”

She stood with her face very close to his. Her eyes seemed to widen
with the intensity of her gaze until at last Saint saw fright in them.

“What--what’s the matter?” he stammered.

“Oh,” she cried, “I was so sure that I was right until now. I was
so certain I was saving you from defeat. But now I am frightened.”
Suddenly her arms were about his neck, her face strained to his breast.
“Oh, my dear,” she pleaded, “if you did have it in you to paint and I
have blundered--please forgive me, please forgive me!”

Saint laughed softly, reassuringly. He was himself again, and vastly
relieved that her fright was not the result of his neglect, but merely
a fancied mistake on her own part.

“You funny, intense child,” he said, “of course you were right. I was
always meant for business, only I didn’t have the sense to see it until
this winter. And then you came and showed me how to go about it.”




PART IV




PART IV


The coming of the Reverend Thomas Grayson to the Phosphate Mining Camp
created surprisingly little comment at the time. Later, when the man
became an all-absorbing topic to both white and black, it was said that
he had deliberately misled the Company, from whom he had rented the
cabin in which he lived and the larger one near it that he converted
into a church. He had come, it was then remembered, in rather shabby
clothes, and had been civil-spoken enough, although reticent as to his
plans. It is a more plausible theory, however, that he went about his
business in a perfectly natural manner, having not the least suspicion
that he would encounter any opposition. He attended to his affairs with
his characteristic deliberation and persistence, and said very little
about them, for the man was not a large talker. It is possible that
the season might have contributed to the lack of questioning, for he
arrived during that period that lies between summer and fall, when the
long pressure of the sultry months had laid a lethargy upon both white
and black, reducing their vitality to a point at which they did only
what became absolutely necessary with the hands, and waited to reason
until the bracing days should come to wake them for their season’s
work. Grayson had simply gone to the office and asked whether they had
any vacant cabins. They had taken his money for six months’ rent in
advance, and, if the tide had been at flood, had continued to doze on
the veranda, if at the ebb, to fish in a shady spot on the river bank.

It was not until well into October, when the scrub oaks were commencing
to blaze against the dark green of the pines, that the new preacher
finished the little belfry that he had erected over the gable end of
the larger of his cabins, hung a cheap farm bell in it, installed
some benches and a reading desk, donned his vestments, and opened for
service.

The negroes, in the meantime, were becoming aware of his presence.
He had been visiting quietly among them, talking his strange speech,
like that of a white man, telling them of the new church that he was
going to open, and inviting them to attend. Slowly their interest in
him awakened. He was so utterly unlike any preacher, or negro for
that matter, that they had ever seen, that the element of curiosity
accomplished for him what no eloquence could have done.

It is likely that Saint Wentworth alone guessed the potentialities of
his advent. Grayson had gone to the commissary immediately after his
arrival, purchased some supplies, and asked Saint if he could recommend
some good woman whom he could get to come and cook for him.

The hour of the visit was a quiet one at the store, and after he had
waited on his customer Saint seated himself on the counter with his
legs swinging and asked idly: “Going to settle here?”

“Yes,” the man answered, and Saint noticed that he did not use the
“sir” in addressing him, “yes, I think I am needed here, and, in God’s
name, I am going to do what I can.”

The white man studied him intently from under half-closed lids. Grayson
was rather under middle height, about thirty-five years old, and
probably a shade darker than quadroon. His face was serious to the
point of solemnity, and there were directness and sincerity in his
gaze. He spoke with deliberation and with a careful choice of words,
but neither then nor at any subsequent time did Saint detect so much
as a single gleam of racial humour or imagination in the otherwise
strongly marked negroid face.

“Preacher?” Wentworth inquired.

“Yes, but I hope to be a little more than just that. There are so many
things that my people need here. I hope to do more than merely preach
to them.”

Saint’s interest in the man extended to his attitude. It was different,
strange. He was neither servile nor assertive. He seemed to take for
granted a relationship that did not exist in the camp. He appeared to
think it a matter of course that he and Saint should discuss on an
equal basis. Neither respectful nor lacking in respect, he was merely
himself. The white man was intrigued and continued his questioning.

“From the North, I suppose?”

“New York City, and I studied divinity in New England. But I don’t like
the big cities, I want to get started in the home mission field, and
this is my first venture. You will realise that all of this is very new
to me,” and he swept his arm inclusively toward the settlement.

Saint felt a pang of pity for his customer, more acute because it was
the last thing that he would have wanted of him. He spoke impulsively:

“Say, I’m not much of an advice giver, but you had better go slow
around here. Take your good time and learn the lay of the land. There
are lots of things you ought to know about. The magistrate, for
instance--your rival, Reverend Whaley--the way your own people feel
about certain things.”

“That’s very good of you, but, to be quite frank, I haven’t a great
deal of money. My mission is not backed by the board, and must get
quick results. The people whom I have interested in the venture expect
me to open for service in a month. They said up North that ought to be
time enough.”

“All right, only remember this isn’t New York. Better watch your step.”

Saint went to the back door and whooped for Davy. The young negro
entered smiling. He had a dark intelligent face quick with an
irrepressible sense of humour.

“The Reverend wants a cook,” Saint said. “Can’t your ma go and look
after him?”

“Ah reckon so, suh.”

“Well, take him along with you and see. She’s level-headed, as well as
a good cook, and she knows how things stand around here. You better see
something of the Reverend yourself, and, for God’s sake, try to keep
him out of mischief.”

Saint smiled at his visitor. For the moment he had spoken in the usual
offhand manner employed with the negroes that he knew, but he was now
conscious of the fact that it had not been understood by Grayson. The
man stood before him, trying in his deliberate way to decide how it
had been meant--whether the white man was taking him and his mission
trivially. Finally, without answering Saint’s smile, he said briefly,
“Thank you,” and went out with his guide.

Saint thought, “He can’t laugh--that’s bad. No matter how bad a tangle
things get in out here, if we can laugh together there’s a chance. He
can’t get hold here without it-- I wonder.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The first Sunday in October had the blue cleanness of a tempered blade.
It clove the sluggish September vapours to ribbons and rang audibly
against the straight, naked boles of the pines.

The new church stood at a little distance from the old meeting house.
Brave in a coat of fresh whitewash and topped by its small sky-blue
belfry, it stood sharply transfigured by the clear autumnal sunlight.

From a comfortable cabin at the end of the village, the heavy form
of the Reverend Quintus Whaley lowered itself into the road, and
proceeded ponderously toward the old meeting house. At the same time,
Thomas Grayson arrived at the door of the new church. Presently the
Sunday silence was sent clattering by the rival clamour of the two
bells.

During the last month the Reverend Quintus had elected openly to ignore
the presence of Grayson in the village, in private, however, poking sly
fun at his speech and referring to him as “Dat Yankee nigger.”

But now the gauge was fairly cast. There was the new church, and there
was no denying that its bell had at least as loud a voice as the old
one.

Presently the negroes began to leave the cabins and straggle toward
the summoning bells. They gathered in little knots midway between the
two buildings and discussed the situation. The talk grew in volume and
bred excitement. Whaley was by no means a universally popular figure.
The men especially distrusted him, and, with that play instinct that is
so often their undoing, they now recognised in the situation a game of
large possibilities. Eyes rolled toward the old meeting house, where
the Reverend could be seen through a window peering hopefully toward
them while he tugged away at the bell rope.

They hung on in the middle of the road deliberately, tantalisingly,
and emitted explosive bursts of frank African laughter. The laughter
increased in shrillness as the women became infected by the spirit
of the occasion. No one thought of God now, and His gentle Son. Even
the devil was a pallid figure of the imagination. They stood there
deliberately baiting the two perspiring divines, and having the time of
their lives in the doing of it. They knew what Whaley could give them,
and even those who doubted his sincerity had always been proud of his
ability to “slap it to them good and hot.” There was no other preacher
for miles around who could kick up such a lather in a sermon or shake
the timbers as he could with a spiritual. But across the way hid the
lure of the unknown.

A quarter of an hour passed, and the hilarity increased rather than
diminished. Upon which one should they lay their bets? That was the
all-absorbing question. Then a small negro boy came from behind the
new church, his eyes showing white. He arrived at the group scarcely
able to speak for excitement. Finally he managed to articulate: “Great
Gawdamighty! De new preacher done all dress up in a long white shroud,
same like uh corpse.”

They had never seen a surplice, Whaley having always preached in his
vaunted tail-coat. Now a silence fell upon them. Here was a sensation
indeed.

Davy seized the opportune moment and announced: “Ah goin’ to de new
church. Come on, folks.” He took his mother by the arm and, followed
closely by Maum Vina and Baxter, who had postponed her Sunday morning
visit with Mamba in order to be present, started toward the new
building. In a moment the whole crowd was stampeded. They jammed their
way through the door and stood looking about them. They were impressed
by what they saw. The benches had backs, and the reading desk was an
imposing structure covered with fair white cloth. Behind the desk stood
the preacher in his flowing robe, and at the side of the platform a
small organ glistened in a shaft of sunlight.

Across the way the old bell gave up the fight slowly, dying, as it
were, by inches--a clap--a wait--a clap--silence. A face was thrust
from a window and regarded the new church with an expression that one
would have scarcely expected to discover upon the visage of a man of
God. Then, after a moment, Whaley emerged like a black and menacing
cloud and set off in the direction of the Company’s office.

In the new church Grayson stood face to face with a tremendous
opportunity. The congregation was in a state of repressed excitement,
and, had he possessed the touch of a true evangelist, he could have
bound them to his cause then and there. His rival would have known
so well how to go about it. He would have flung the coils of his
mellifluous voice about them and released that excitement into the
all-possessing rhythm of a spiritual.

But Grayson saw in the moment a miraculous turning to his God from the
half-pagan, and wholly undignified, worship of the old church. He saw
them as already converted, and asking merely that he lead them. Hymnals
and prayer books had been placed in the pews, but as scarcely any of
his flock could read they were useless. And so he read the full morning
service through by himself. Strange words flowing out over the serried
benches--a beautiful rhythm--a vague loveliness of sound--a thing
utterly separate and apart from themselves. Slowly the excited faces
went cold. Feet commenced to shuffle, benches to creak under shifting
bodies. Now and then there was a brief recrudescence of life when
Grayson seated himself at the organ and sang the hymns, but in this, no
less than in the reading, he was alone, and after the brief animation
of each hymn the congregation’s interest went flat.

The sermon was long, for in it he told them of his plans and all that
he hoped to mean to them. The collection followed, and was both a
financial and social failure. Not that the congregation was stingy.
Every one there had a coin for the occasion, but Grayson’s system
was new to them. In Whaley’s church this was a moment replete with
exquisite humour. It was during the collection time that the great man
was truly at his best. A plate would be set before the reading desk,
and the congregation would be cajoled, flattered, wheedled, twitted
with sly personal allusions, told pointed jokes, until at last, in
a gale of high spirits, they would disgorge the last penny and feel
themselves well repaid.

Now, when Davy, who had been unwillingly commandeered for the occasion,
passed a plate among them, they kept their pennies, hoping against hope
that at last the new preacher would break through his restraint and
give them the usual final run for their money.

When at long last the service was over, and the recessional hymn sung,
it was after one o’clock. The exit was a hasty and a noisy one. They
were anxious to escape in a hurry, and they did.

A strange sequel to Grayson’s first Sunday morning service was the
fact that he did not in the least realise what had happened. He had
triumphed, but he was not vainglorious over it. It had been God’s
work. Now it remained for him to till the fertile field. He was up and
out early on Monday morning, intent upon launching the first of his
schemes for the village. By the merest luck, he hit upon the one thing
that could possibly even temporarily have stemmed the tide that had
started to ebb the day before, and that would have swept the entire
congregation back to Whaley on the following Sunday.

       *       *       *       *       *

This first inspired act was the installation of a vested choir. Robes
for the ten best singers in the congregation! The men had gone to the
fields when the new preacher set out to unfold his plan to the village,
but the women gathered, and when they heard that the choir was to be
given the robes and allowed to sit on the platform with the preacher,
their flagging interest was immediately revived. Grayson set an hour
during the afternoon for testing voices, and left them to talk it over
among themselves.

That afternoon when he went to the church he found practically all the
women in the camp present, dressed in their best, rolling their eyes,
giggling, and nudging each other. But there was not a man to be seen,
proving that his visit to the pits which had followed the talk with the
women had been unproductive of results. Well, he would start without
bass or tenor, and hope to bring them in later. In the meantime there
was no lack of enthusiasm among the women. In fact, Grayson was a
little at a loss how to cope with their lack of reverence, and decided
that it would be wise to curb it at the start. He stood for a moment
looking over the benches with their rows of laughing faces, their
gorgeous accidental colour combinations wrought by head kerchiefs,
hats, and dresses. Finally, the inevitable occurred, and his gaze was
arrested by the vast magenta-clad bulk of Hagar.

“What is your name, my daughter?” he inquired.

She hesitated, then gave her adopted title of Baxter, her broad,
ingenuous face wreathed in smiles. Immediately a chorus of giggles
burst free among the benches.

Across the irreverent sound the pastor’s voice fell chill and
authoritative: “Sing something, please. I want to try your voice.”

Baxter was undoubtedly enjoying the situation. She stood like a child
at a party, deliberately hesitating for effect.

“Go on,” he encouraged, “sing anything. I only want to test your voice.”

Instantly from her silence, her deceptive air of embarrassment, she
launched full-voiced into song. The voice might have been that of Mamba
herself. It had the same depth and tenderness in the lower register,
the same whimsical way of catching for an imperceptible beat on the
high notes with the effect of laughter broken by a sob. But where
Mamba’s voice lacked volume Hagar’s came from her great lungs with
the magnitude of organ music. Unfortunately, in common with the other
aspirants for robes, she had remained impervious to the reproof in the
voice and manner of the pastor, and now her song, beating with the
spirit of irrepressible and eternal youth, rolled forth and filled the
building:

  “My mammy tell me long time ago,
   ‘Gal, don’t yo’ marry no man yo’ know.
   Take all yo’ money, steal all yo’ clo’es.
   What will become of yo’ Gawd only knows.’”

The performance was greeted with whoops of delight from the floor, and
cries of “Dat right, Baxter.” “Tell um, Sistuh!” “Gawd know dat de
trut’.” And after the general laughter had died down a fresh outburst
was provoked by an ancient Gullah negress who called in a high cackling
voice: “Dat gal woice loud succa guinea hen.”

Grayson stood regarding them in stern silence until the noise abated.
Then he pointed out in a few brief but well-chosen words that the
occasion was not one for ribaldry and that they were in the house of
God. Down, down slid the mercurial spirits of the sisterhood. They sat
in solemn rigid rows while one after another of their number was called
forward to go through a constrained and self-conscious test on some
familiar spiritual.

Finally Grayson singled out ten of the number, including Baxter, and
dismissed the others. Then, seating himself at the organ, he commenced
to whip the raw material into shape for the début on the following
Sunday.

The week that followed was a busy one in the village. Grayson had
purchased the entire stock of white longcloth from the commissary, as
well as many yards of black cotton goods. He had engaged the services
of several women who could sew, and himself supervised the designing
and fitting of the vestments. Then, late every afternoon, he called a
rehearsal at the church, thus dislocating the supper hours of a number
of hungry and tired negro labourers.

But during those days of busy preparation Grayson was not the only
energetic divine in the neighbourhood. The huge bulk of the Reverend
Quintus could be seen at all hours visiting among the cabins, and to
judge by the gales of laughter that attended him wherever he went he
must have been in his most entertaining vein. Also he paid several
visits to the office of the Company. These last, however, were not
humorous in intention, to judge from the denunciatory exclamations that
punctuated the conferences.

But when Sunday again dawned, victory returned to perch upon
the little sky-blue belfry. Not one shroud now, but eleven!
The lure was irresistible. Again the Reverend Quintus swung
in vain upon his bell rope. Again the cheerful summons lost
heart--clanged--waited--clanged--stopped. Once more an irate face
glared from the window.

The service was more effective in holding attention than it had been
the previous week. The choir was an unqualified success. It knew the
hymns, and even a simple chant, and the presence of the vestments
awakened a new awe in the worshippers that held them sitting quietly
with solemn faces. When Grayson commenced the sermon they were ready to
listen.

He preached upon “the powers of darkness.” He had learned something
during the week, and that was the necessity of plain speech. He had
flown over their heads, perhaps, but now he would talk to them so
simply that a child could understand. Accordingly, with directness and
lucidity he struck at the hold of superstition upon the minds of his
hearers. Fortune tellers and conjurers were children of hell, and their
utterances were lies. Charms were devices of the devil, and those who
believed in them were destined for destruction, unless they turned from
their evil ways and prayed for forgiveness.

From where Baxter was sitting in the choir she saw a long shudder
run through the frail old body of Maum Vina. She looked keenly at
her friend and saw her eyes blur under a film of tears. Baxter had
been listening to the sermon, but it had been a thing apart from her
own needs. She had made no effort to personalise it, to relate it
to herself. But Maum Vina, for all her years, took things in with
remarkable clearness. What the new preacher was saying was meant for
her. Had he not fixed her with his gaze while he talked? She made an
heroic struggle to control herself. Baxter felt it, while only dimly
beginning to grasp its cause. She got quickly to her feet and half
carried her old friend into the open. Then she was shocked at what she
saw in the ancient negress’s face. It seemed to have been suddenly
extinguished, and there was a sag to the whole body. Then Maum Vina
commenced to shake violently, as with a palsy, and to sob in long, weak
breaths.

“Yo’ heah what he say, Baxter?” she asked between her sobs.

“Sho, but dat don’t mean nuttin’. Le’s we forget it an’ get ’long home.”

“Yes, it do mean somet’ing. Dat man ain’t like Whaley. He tellin’ de
trut’. Ah know dat, an’ Ah ain’t nebber goin’ fin’ dat money in de road
what de cunjer ’oman promise me.”

They were joined by several other members of the congregation who had
walked out and had been none too quiet in the manner of their going.

“Don’t yo’ b’liebe um, Aunt Viny,” an old negro advised; “go ask
Rev’rent Whaley. He know what he talkin’ ’bout.”

Baxter led her friend away, trying to console her with clumsy, tender
pats, as though she were a child. Then she noticed that the eager light
had gone out of the old eyes, and that they no longer searched the road
with their incessant weaving motion.

“Better watch whar yo’ goin’,” Baxter cautioned. “Fus’ t’ing yo’ know,
yo’ goin’ miss dat money.”

“’Tain’t no use, gal,” came the answer. “Ah’s goin’ be a care on
strangers long as Ah las’. ’Tain’t no use to s’arch no mo’.”

       *       *       *       *       *

During the ensuing week the new pastor was an industrious parochial
visitor. There was something definitely wrong, some maladjustment
between himself and his flock that pointed toward disaster if it
were not quickly located and rectified. He reasoned that by adroit
questioning he could draw his parishioners out and ascertain the
trouble. But when he found the negroes at home he had encountered an
attitude with which he was incapable of dealing. If they could not
avoid him, they greeted him with a sort of negative cordiality. They
would smile and ask him to sit, then disappear within themselves, speak
only of abstractions, be deliberately vague and noncommittal. When he
had touched on the subject of church or religion they had smiled again,
and if it seemed the part of politeness to say something in reply,
they had, still smiling, remarked that times were certainly hard for
a country nigger, that last winter had been unusually cold, or that
no food served so well to sweeten the mouth as hominy and a fat fried
porgy.

There was nothing to lay hold upon. He began to experience a sense of
vast futility. And his money was nearly exhausted. The experiment had
been his own idea, and he had had to depend upon what he could raise
from private sources. He had hoped to make an instantaneous success
that would win full backing for the mission from the board. But now
failure was staring him in the face.

Grayson was particularly puzzled by the behaviour of Cora, the mother
of Davy, who served him as housekeeper. She had been a regular
attendant at church, and when he had talked with her in her small,
immaculately kept kitchen, she had a way of looking into his face with
a candid and trustful gaze that seemed incapable of concealment or
deception. But now, as the momentous week advanced, he noticed that
there were long, unexplained absences, and that the dishes often stood
unwashed after a meal. Finally, upon entering the kitchen silently, he
found her with her face buried in her apron while her body shook with
deep elemental sobs.

An overwhelming wave of pity rendered him suddenly speechless. He
had tried so hard and so unsuccessfully to be understood that his
self-confidence was shaken. This was the sort of opportunity for
which he had been hoping, when he might enter into the sorrows of his
people and let his heart speak in actions as well as words. But now he
experienced a feeling of utter impotence. It came to him that the words
that he would speak would be mere empty symbols uttered in a foreign
tongue. He crossed the room and dropped a hand gently on the heaving
shoulder. The startled woman looked up into his face with an expression
that changed from grief to sudden fright.

“Tell me, Cora,” he urged, “what can I do for you?”

“Lemme go home,” she sobbed. “Ah gots to go now.”

“Certainly,” he assured her, “go at once, and I’ll go home with you. If
you are in trouble I want to share it with you.”

“No, no,” she cried in panic. “Yo’ stay here. Ah’ll come back. Ain’t
nuttin’ yo’ can do.” Then she was gone in a heavy lumbering run down
the road in the direction of her cabin.

Two days passed and Cora failed to reappear. Now Grayson’s visits
seemed even more fruitless than early in the week, for the village
was deserted. For the most part he found only children at the cabins,
children and the ubiquitous yellow curs. The pickaninnies gaped at
him when he questioned, but the curs with their singular instinct for
sensing the moods of their owners followed him to the gates, hanging
just out of reach, with their small sharp teeth bared. Finally, on
Friday morning, he met Wentworth, who was swinging along the sandy road
with a package under his arm.

“I suppose you’re on your way to Cora’s,” hazarded the white man. “It’s
too bad about her trouble, and Davy’s badly knocked out by it too. He
was devoted to the little fellow, used to bring him to the store pretty
much every afternoon.”

“Cora’s trouble?” inquired Grayson, and Saint was surprised by the
agitation reflected in his face.

“Why, yes. She lost her youngest child last night. It has been in
desperate shape for the week. The whole village has been sitting around
out there with her. I thought you might have noticed. I am taking her
along some mourning and a little money for the burial saucer.”

While the two had been talking they had proceeded in the direction of
the cabin, which lay well beyond the regular confines of the village,
and now, through the clear, resonant air they caught the distant
strains of a spiritual. Very distinctly the music sounded across
the distance, not the robust shouting like that of a Sunday morning
service, but the shrill, agonised voices of many women, each of whom
had personalised the desolation of the mother and made it her own, and,
tramping along an octave below them, the mellow, flexible beauty of a
single tremendous bass.

Saint cast a sidelong glance at his companion and saw the broad
benevolent face go ashen, the eyes light with a spurt of naked pain.
He spoke impulsively: “I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t think you cared so
much, and I thought you would have known. They sent for Whaley three
nights ago, and he hasn’t left the house since. He is going to hold the
funeral services to-morrow afternoon. They don’t change quickly back
here, you see, and he knows their ways.”

There was silence except for the sound of singing that shook the air
with its unearthly harmonies. Grayson had stopped in the road. Finally,
in a shaken voice, he said: “I can’t go on, Mr. Wentworth. My heart is
breaking with that woman’s sorrow, and if I went to her I’d only give
her pain.”

For a full minute he stood silently, his face working with emotion.
Habit had carried his hand to a small gold cross that hung on a black
cord from his neck, and he fingered it absently.

Saint could think of nothing to say but a trite, “I’m sorry.” Then he
saw the face that he had come to think of as being insensitive, almost
stolid, quiver, and the eyes fill slowly with tears. At last, still
fingering the little cross with an unconscious mechanical movement,
Grayson turned slowly on his heel and commenced to retrace his steps
toward his cabin.

From the house of mourning swept the music of the dirge. Shrill,
monotonous, unvarying, it throbbed across the sunny afternoon with its
burden of human desolation, and always under the shrill grief of the
women marched the sustaining beauty and power of the single enormously
vital bass.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sunday morning was ushered in with a triumphant clanging from the old
meeting house. Groups arrived, laughing and chattering, and filled the
building to its doors. When the crowd had jammed its way in, Reverend
Whaley started them off with a rousing spiritual. With one accord they
flung themselves into it. It was good to be back with the old agreeable
God again, the God who wanted them to sing and shout, to pour their
sorrow out in a flood of song, who minded his own business most of the
time and had a pleasant, laughing way with him when he touched upon
theirs. Yes, they were foolish to have strayed for even a few misguided
weeks.

In the new church Grayson sat alone, listening to the uproar with an
expression of deep sadness upon his habitually solemn face. Yes, this
was the end. They needed so much--and they would not let him give it to
them. He had come full of confidence to bring enlightenment. His own
people! Now he saw no use remaining in the empty building that was so
eloquent a reminder of failure.

He rose to go, then he saw that a woman had entered silently and was
sitting on the last bench, just inside the door. He walked down the
aisle and stopped before her. Then he saw that it was the woman known
as Baxter.

“Have you come to worship with me?” he asked.

Hagar nodded violently but said nothing.

Grayson’s heavy face caught a fleeting gleam from an inner light. “Then
we’ll have our service just as though the church was full,” he assured
her.

He retired and donned his vestments, then asked her to come and sit
just below the reading desk on the front bench while he held service.
Vast and submissive, she went forward and took her seat before him.

While he went through the service, omitting only the sermon, she kept
her eyes on his face with an expression of dumb, uncomprehending
steadfastness.

Grayson pronounced the benediction, then came and sat beside her. Then
he said, “I am very grateful to you for coming to-day. You have put new
heart into me.”

Baxter was overcome with embarrassment, but she managed to say, “T’ank
yo’, suh.”

A silence followed during which the woman’s embarrassment heightened to
actual distress.

At last Grayson urged, “You do believe in the God that I preach about,
do you not? A God of beauty and light and loving-kindness?”

Baxter’s gaze was on the floor. She was absolutely still. Then suddenly
she shook her head in a violent negative.

Grayson almost jumped, so unexpected was her answer.

“Then why did you come in to-day?” he asked.

She had trouble getting started. Words eluded her, and she was trying
terribly hard to be honest and yet not hurt him. At last she said, “Ah
been lonely a lot too. Ah ain’t likes tuh be by myself in my trouble.
Ah done set out fuh de ole church, and when Ah pass, Ah see yo’ here,
an’ Ah can see yo’ lookin’ lonely. Den Ah come in. Dat’s all.”

The preacher got to his feet without a word and commenced to close the
windows. Baxter sat on, watching him, not knowing what to do next. When
finally the building was made fast and only the door remained open he
came back to her and held out his hand. Then she saw that it contained
a book.

“I want you to keep this to remember me by,” he said. “It is called
the Book of Common Prayer. And see, here in the front is my name
and address. You must remember it always as that of somebody who is
grateful to you, who wants always to be your friend. You have been a
real Christian to-day. And now, good-bye.”

He held out his hand, and Baxter took the book; then she dropped
an awkward curtsy and said, “Good-bye, suh,” and stepped over the
threshold into the bright autumn weather.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the very moment when Baxter entered the new church, a conference
which also bore directly upon the destinies of the Reverend Thomas
Grayson was taking place upon the sunny piazza of a bungalow near the
Company’s office. It had an appearance of great casualness about it.
Two white men had been sitting there since breakfast, enjoying their
pipes and the long Sunday quiet. The rattle of a vehicle sounded in the
distance, the rumble of hoofs over a wooden bridge, and presently Proc
Baggart turned into the private road behind his span of trotters. He
alighted, hitched his horses, and stepped up on the piazza.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “this is a mighty pretty spell of weather
we are having.”

One of the white men motioned toward a chair. “Have a seat, Cap’n, and
make yourself at home. Yes, the weather’s set fair, I guess. When you
can hear the town bells up here, it usually means a pretty spell.”

Silence then for a moment, except for the far, faint throb of chimes
that followed the river all the way from the city, and stirred the air
about the men with a soft humming. Baggart lighted a cigar, gripped it
in his strong, stained teeth, and smiled his mirthless, muscular smile.

“They tell me that the Reverend Quintus is having a nervous spell,” he
commented.

“Yes, and hard luck too,” remarked the taller of his two companions.
“The old fellow has put in the greater part of his life working among
these niggers, and he ought not to be interfered with.”

Baggart’s eyes met those of the speaker, and his muscular smile
broadened into a grin. “Yes, a nigger’s a simple soul,” he remarked,
“and he’s got simple ideas on religion. It would be a pity to have them
upset. This crowd here’s well behaved and an easy-going lot. They know
what’s good for ’em, and they ain’t ready for new ideas yet.” He puffed
in silence for a moment, then asked casually:

“How’d that fellow Grayson get in here, anyway?”

The shorter white man flushed slightly under his tan as he explained:
“Oh, he came in one day when we were just shutting up and said he
wanted to work here. Looked straight enough and laid the money down for
the empty shacks. I never thought much about it at the time.”

“What sort of a lookin’ cuss is he--how dark?”

“High yaller, I guess you’d call it. Comes from New York, I hear, and
talks like a college president.”

“Bad morals in New York, ’specially among the niggers. Can’t have these
God-fearing labourers perverted, as you might say.” Baggart permitted
a moment to pass, and a glint in his eyes like the refraction of light
from blue granite paid tribute to his humorous subtlety.

The two white men laughed softly, and Baggart’s next question fell
casually into the conversation: “Anybody told him yet that it’s pretty
unhealthy ’round here?”

One of the men said, “Well, to tell you the truth, Cap’n, we’d rather
not mess up in the affairs of the labour. We make it our business to
keep hands off in matters that are their own concern.”

“Yes, very wise policy, I am sure, but some kind-hearted citizen ought
to warn him. It’s a mighty sickly country for a stranger, ’specially
one with a touch of white blood, what with malaria and all that. If you
gentlemen would like, I’ll be passin’ through the village to-night, and
I could stop and give him a friendly word of advice as easy as not, or
I could get Bluton to stop and see him.”

The two white men were obviously relieved. The taller one said, “Well,
that’s mighty good of you, Cap’n. And don’t forget, any time we can do
any little thing for you, you know where to find us.”

“Sure,” Baggart answered, and his voice was almost hearty. “Always glad
to co-operate in any way, and I know you gentlemen feel the same way
about it.”

Suddenly all three men sat forward in listening attitudes, then
exchanged glances of satisfaction and understanding. From the direction
of the village came the full-bodied music of a spiritual, swelling out
across the marshes and ringing clear and sweet along the river.

“Hello!” ejaculated the short man who had rented the cabins to Grayson.
“Sounds like old Quintus has ’em all back in the fold again.”

Baggart got to his feet and threw away the stump of his cigar. “Sure
he has,” he said. “They know what they want better’n we do. Anyhow, I
may just as well drop by to-night--never believe in leaving loose ends.
Good-day. See you gentlemen again.”

But that night when the trotters pulled up before the cottage in which
Grayson had set up his simple housekeeping there was no one to answer
Baggart’s peremptory hullo. He got down from the rig and rapped smartly
on the door with his whip. Inside the empty house there was a desolate
momentary reverberation, then silence.

The trotters were feeling the chill night air and were pawing trenches
in the soft sand with their fore feet. Baggart went to their heads
and caught a muzzle in each hand with a sudden fierce affection. They
whinnied, and he felt the brush of soft, warm velvet against his jaw.
“We all know what we want,” he thought. “Niggers--horses. You don’t
have to tell a horse to leave spaghetti alone and eat hay.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The spring of 1917, and half the world in fiery dissolution. America
in at last. Money. Ships. Then, suddenly--man power. Up north at
Washington the daily minting of beautiful illusory phrases--“A world
made safe for democracy”--“Self-determination for all peoples”--“The
war that will end war”--The mobilisation of a nation’s advertising
power--the press--Committee on Public Information--Four-Minute
Men--Ministers of the Gospel gone militant--The flag and the
cross side by side on Sunday morning. That indomitable good
fellow, the community song leader, abroad in the land--febrile
meetings--campaigns--campaigns--campaigns.

Atrocities. Handless children. Violated women. Nuns. “The mad dog of
nations” loose, and the clamour of the hunt ringing around the globe.
Charleston, the deliberate old city, deliberate no longer, separate
and self-sufficient no longer. Fort Sumter forgotten at last, and the
futile agonies of the ’sixties. All one people now. One flag.

Again and again, from the stage, the pulpit, the press, atrocities. The
women. Smashing like a cannonade against the traditional sanctities.
Suppose it were your mother. Your wife. Saint Wentworth’s blood crawled
cold to his heart, then flung back in a burning tide, leaving a red
haze before his eyes and a taste like brass on his tongue. Now, if
ever, he needed the heroic dreams to help him through. But they would
not come to him. On the contrary, after the first flush of anger, there
were hideous little tremors at the pit of his stomach. But he had
certain knowledge of what he must do.

He turned the store over to Davy and went to town. In a week he was
back. Crops were essential to victory--phosphates to crops--Saint,
according to unanswerable departmental logic, was essential to
phosphates. He was told to stick to the mines until he was called.

Back again into the quiet of black Carolina. He could scarcely believe
that he inhabited the same planet as his friends a few miles away in
town. Out in the wide solitudes of marsh and pine forest the shocks
that were being delivered against the inertia of public opinion were
muted to a far, faint murmur.

Then slowly the change commenced to come. Invading committees
arrived. Groups of negroes from the coloured organisations in town,
for the most part. Keen young mulattoes, very much in earnest,
discovering their backwoods brethren for the first time, telling
them that this was the great opportunity for the race--“A world made
safe for democracy.” “After this war--the Negro’s chance”--getting
pitiful little contributions to war funds. Then a young white lawyer
from town with a gift for oratory, and two lovely girls in nurses’
costumes. The Red Cross. Not vague abstractions now like bond
issues and saving stamps, but suffering humanity--the welter of the
battlefield--blood--agony--“The Good Samaritan”--Who was going to
help? The realism of the speaker was cut short by a piercing scream.
A babblement of sobbing filled the room, punctuated by wails of agony.
An unsteady voice called, “De blood put he maak on me.” The line was
caught up by the packed assemblage, and the spiritual crashed out in
the little meeting house.

In twos and threes the congregation commenced to slip out, while those
that remained kept the spiritual going. Finally there were only a few
left. The young lawyer was frankly disgusted. He had been wasting
his time on a bunch of crazy negroes, and they had walked out on him
without so much as a single donation. He got into his overcoat, and
called the two pretty nurses. There was no use fooling around with this
sort of thing.

Suddenly the chorus swelled up again, and he saw that they were coming
back. Into the church they packed and commenced to come forward to the
platform. Then he saw that they had money in their hands, coppers,
nickels, and here and there even a dollar bill. They came and piled it
before him. Every penny in the village. They gave their tears, and the
outpouring of human sympathy was a presence in the room.

After that, in the black belt, there was the first glimmer of
realisation of the stupendous tragedy that was raging beyond the city
somewhere out in the void.

Then the draft: thirty prime boys from the camp, dressed in
their Sunday clothes, waiting in the road before Baggart’s
office, not knowing a great deal about it all--very excited and
self-important--boasting inordinately. Women--lots of them, crowding
about, with the memory of the Red Cross speech in their minds, and an
old, dark jungle terror of the unknown stiffening their faces, widening
their eyes, and here and there ripping free in a gust of hysteria. An
incredibly ancient crone, whose mind had slipped a cog and snapped back
seventy years, peering from half-blind eyes and wailing: “Dey’s goin’
tuh sell um tuh de sugar-cane fields. Ah knows it. Dey’s goin’ sen’ um
tuh Louisiana, an’ we ain’t nebber goin’ see um no mo’. Oh, Gawd hab a
little pity.”

A month since the men had gone; then, one bright day, Saint called
the women to the commissary piazza and distributed envelopes from the
government that contained the first separation allowances. Everybody
rich now--excitement--laughter--and the dark fear forgotten. The thirty
women who had been wept over when the men went away were now objects of
envy in the village.

Strange talk in the air--something about “Gold Star mothers”--mystery.
Then the spry little dentist who came and explained it all to
everybody’s satisfaction. So it was not “Gold Star” after all, but
gold-tooth mothers, and the government wanted the women to come to
the dentist’s office in town every month and get a gold tooth out of
the check--one tooth a month to make them beautiful and to show how
long their men had been away. After that, Midas moving through the
village--smiles showing wide, and ever wider stretches of glittering
yellow metal. And the spry little dentist happening by now and then to
see how things were getting along, driving a twin-six that pulled up a
great dust cloud wherever he went.

Now the commissary was getting its share of checks that seemed to
vie with one another to see how soon they could vanish the day they
arrived, and Gilly Bluton, who, strangely enough, had not been called,
with his eyes everywhere, keener than ever at discovering unlicensed
curs about the yards, and participants in hidden crap games.

Now labour was growing scarce and wages were soaring. The result was
obvious: three days a week in the pits for the men who were left,
instead of six. Why should a man in his good senses work a whole week
when in half that time he could earn enough to keep alive and have a
plenty of time to lie perfectly flat in warm sand, absorbing sun, or
gossip on the store piazza? And so the camp developed a leisure class
that loitered gloriously through the late summer and into the long
autumnal quiet.

Letters came from the boys in concentration and training camps which
were brought to Saint to read. They were having the time of their lives
and sent photographs of themselves with chests straining at bronze
buttons. Truly the war cloud that hung over half the world and cast its
malign shadow across millions of hearts had nothing for this forgotten
corner of black America but a gleam from its silver lining.

       *       *       *       *       *

But over the old city across the narrow Ashley the shadow was widening.
When Saint went to church now with his mother he saw the service flag
with its fifty-five stars hanging in the vestibule, and, as the months
passed, gold commenced to take the place of the white. Three of his
boyhood friends gone now!

He went to headquarters and made another effort to be transferred to
active service. He told them the whole truth about his job. But they
were too busy now to listen to old stories with new twists to them, and
he was sent back to the mines to wait.

Valerie Land wrote from her Red Cross unit in France:

  “I wanted you to be in it, dear, until I got here and saw it. But now
  I am _glad_, _glad_ that you were made to wait. It is not a bit like
  the posters. At first, in the canteen at Havre, it had the thrill
  of adventure about it, and I wished for you. But then the boys were
  going out. Now, here in the hospital, they are coming back, and my
  heart breaks into little pieces every day. If it were not for two of
  the old New York crowd who were wounded while serving in a camouflage
  unit and who are here in the hospital, I don’t know what I would
  do....”

Then another time she said:

  “My boys are getting better, but their nerves are gone. Imagine
  sending an artist into it! Of course, camouflage is playing an
  important part in the war, but it is a terrible thing to keep the
  boys under fire. They are tremendously brave about it, but they have
  spent their lives learning to see clearly and feel keenly, and they
  can’t protect themselves as well as the others, and they have to pay
  so dearly.”

Saint’s fingers closed over the insensate letter as though it were a
part of the girl who had written it, and he felt her slipping out of
his grasp. For the first time in his life he was furiously jealous.
His blood seethed with rebellion. He strode about the little room with
fists clenched and angry tears forcing themselves into his eyes, making
him feel more useless and futile than ever.

He heard some one rapping on the counter to call him to the store. The
sound came as the crowning and ultimate indignity. He flung open his
door and stood glaring into the room.

Bluton was leaning against the counter. “Lemme have a coupla cigars,”
he called, and like an insult Wentworth heard the metallic ring of
silver on wood.

Instead of going behind the counter he crossed the floor, his heels
hitting hard, his fists clenched. When he was within two feet of
Bluton the negro looked up and saw his face. His expression was one of
ludicrous surprise. He backed away several steps, with the white man
closing them in upon him. Then the surprise in his eyes gave place to a
flicker of fear.

A wave of exultation swept over Wentworth. Exquisite tremors shook his
muscles, then passed, leaving them pulled tight. He said in a hard,
level voice: “Get out!”

The negro backed rapidly toward the door; then, with the opening at his
back, he spoke: “What de matter? Ah ain’t done nuttin’.”

He was palpably afraid, and the knowledge of it flamed through Saint
like an intoxicant. He closed the remaining distance that separated
them and caught Bluton by the coat collar. The negro went slack in his
grasp, waiting, terrified and inert, babbling softly and incoherently
with loose lips. Saint swung him around, thrust him through the door,
and kicked him squarely off the piazza.

Bluton lit and drew himself together for a bolt.

“Stop,” Saint commanded.

The word brought the negro up like a tautened lariat, catching him in
the very act of springing and pulling him about.

Saint looked him squarely in the eyes and said:

“I just want to tell you that I’ve got something on you that will put
you up for ten years. It’s all ready for you, and it’s locked up in the
office of a town lawyer. If you ever stick a leg in this store again
I’ll have you arrested. Get that? And if you take it out on any of my
negroes, it’s the same thing. Now, get to hell out of here.”

There was an ashy tinge to Bluton’s complexion. Without a word the man
turned on his heel.

Wentworth opened and closed his fists several times, examining them
in an impersonal and detached manner. Then he gave a short exultant
laugh and put a question to the pines: “Now, where in the world did I
get that from?” He stood pondering the question, his head bowed, his
brow furrowed. Slowly the answer came to him. In the beginning he had
unthinkingly taken the estimate of others on Bluton. The negroes feared
him, and fear is contagious. The white men at the mines believed him
dangerous on account of his connection with Baggart, and he had adopted
their attitude of tactful and expedient handling. Now, suddenly, he
had encountered the negro in a moment when his own rebellion had freed
him from an habitual attitude of mind. He had been no one but himself.
He had acted spontaneously on instinct, and the result had been
electrifying. For the first time in his life he experienced that wonder
and elation that comes from a successfully executed bluff. For the
first time he realised the advantage that lies with the aggressor.

The two men who represented success to him came to his mind: Atkinson
and Raymond. They did not sit waiting on the defensive. They had gone
out and taken the world by the collar as he had done Bluton. Very well,
he would do the same. If he couldn’t go to France, he would at least
get after the job here with hammer and tongs. He would go to town
to-morrow and put himself at the service of the central committee for
work in the mining district, and at the same time he would drop in and
tell Mr. Raymond the straight story of the episode with Bluton.

The following morning, when Wentworth appeared at the general offices
on Broad Street, he was shown at once into the sanctum of the manager.
Mr. Raymond rose and shook hands warmly. His eyes were quizzical as he
rested them on the face of his storekeeper. He never knew quite what to
expect from Wentworth. He said: “I have just sent a message out to the
mines asking you to come in. Something has happened out there that I
want to discuss with you.”

Saint reddened, but he said firmly: “I kicked him out of the store;
that’s all. I knew I would have to some day, and yesterday was the day.
If you don’t mind I’ll tell you my story now, then leave it to you.”

The employer regarded him with a grin. “Oh, so you kicked him out, did
you? Go ahead. Who was he, and why?”

Saint told his story briefly, then sat back in his chair awaiting the
verdict.

In a voice that gave no indication of his feelings Raymond remarked:
“You have your own way of running things rather independently of the
Company, haven’t you?” Then, without waiting for a reply, he continued,
“Well, I didn’t know about the Bluton kicking. There was something else
that I wanted to talk over with you. Yesterday Goodlow chucked his job.
War pickings are too fat for him to resist. He’s just the sort who
would go in for them. Left us high and dry without a manager for the
stores.”

The completeness with which Saint had given himself to his new
philosophy was demonstrated in his immediate response. He leaned across
the desk, looked point-blank into his employer’s eyes and said: “You’ve
got to give me that job, Mr. Raymond. You’ve just got to.”

“And have you kick my customers out of the front door?”

“You’ll have to leave that to me, sir. You’ll have to let me run things
my own way. But if you do, I’ll promise to give you everything I’ve got
in me.”

The big man got to his feet and held out his hand. “That’s all that an
employer can ask,” he said with a smile. “Shake on it, and I’ll be out
to-morrow at ten to go over the details with you.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Nineteen hundred and eighteen--a hectic year. Stupendous energies
were hurled into colossal tasks and accomplished miracles over night.
Winter--spring--summer trod on each other’s heels in their haste to
finish the job. But out in the mining camp dew was still unshaken from
the morning grass, sun still poured gracious warmth on laxed bodies,
full moons lifted over vast marshes, pulled their flood tides high
into salt creeks, then released them to dwindle seaward again. Nothing
was changed deeply. It was as though the fossils beneath the feet of
the living spoke to them out of their long death, telling them of the
transitoriness of human existence, the futility of all human effort
in the changeless face of time. The great pines towered above the
scattered villages. The broad marshes rimmed their world with silence.

The men who had gone from that district were in a labour battalion.
Their letters told of a world full of wonders but little of the
horror of war. And, in the meantime, wages were mounting to still
higher levels, separation allowances continued to arrive monthly with
unfailing regularity, and the smiles of the “gold-tooth mothers” grew
always broader and more effulgent. And why not indeed! In the last war
had not Mr. Lincoln come South and smitten the chains from their legs
with his own hands, as shown in pictures upon many cabin walls? And
now, was this war not making them rich? Why then should one be stingy
in the dispensing of golden smiles?

Then suddenly a new word crossed the Ashley and made its début in
the camp. The word was “Armistice.” It had a ringing sound like
smitten brass; it filled the mouth, and it mated well with other fine
reverberant words. The Reverend Quintus Whaley heard it first in the
office of the mining company, memorised it then and there, and the
following Sunday employed it three times with great effect. The first
occasion was: “Ah say unto yo’ sebenty time seben, button on yo’ sword
an’ armistice, an’ battle wid de debil.” Ten minutes later a subtle
change of meaning was revealed in this usage: “An’ dere war t’ree angel
singin’ at de golden gate, an’ one been name’ Gabriel, an’ one been
name’ Philadelphy, an’ de las’ one, an’ de greates’ ob all been name’
Armistice.” But the final appearance of the glittering new acquisition
was at the same time the most audacious and mystifying, for it popped
suddenly into the benediction and associated itself upon terms of such
intimacy with the Trinity that, had an orthodox believer been present,
the result must certainly have been a heresy trial for the Reverend
Quintus.

It was a great word. There was no gainsaying that. But later, when its
meaning became definitely associated with the cessation of hostilities,
there was general disappointment at its obvious temporal limitations.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Armistice! To not only the Reverend Quintus Whaley did the word
reverberate with varied and significant shades of meaning. From
the Atlantic to the Pacific it rang from a hundred million throats,
clanged from frantic bells, and bellowed from a continent’s factory
whistles. Peace. An end to the slaughter. Then, like a starting gun in
a stupendous race, it thundered back and launched the country upon its
brief and preposterous epoch of post-war extravagance, expansion, and
inflation.

Across the Atlantic the masks were off at Versailles. The Fourteen
Points, impractical, perhaps, but born of the agonies and aspirations
of a people who would have done with war, were being manipulated
cleverly as decoys, then, when the exhausted game had fluttered to
hand, forgotten. Everywhere nations, business, individuals, in a mad
stampede for the spoils. On the exchanges stocks were rocketing,
dazzling unaccustomed eyes, piling up illusory fortunes. Over mountains
and across the plains the rails were humming beneath vast movements of
freight. Wages were soaring. Every one had something to sell--something
to buy.

In the little room behind the store at the mining camp sat a very
different Saint Wentworth from the self-effacing boy who had entered
the employ of the Company as its commissary keeper. The flaring
cowlick still played havoc with all attempts at a disciplined part,
and gave his hair an appearance of sprouting in various directions
from a given point over his left forehead. But the brow seemed to have
heightened with his greater maturity, and the old daydreams that had
filled his slate-coloured eyes with a vague chaos had made way for a
purposefulness that rendered them intensely aware of the physical world
upon which they rested. His figure was slender but muscular and lent an
air to the sombre and rather undistinguished suit that he wore.

He had just completed the final reports on his various war work
committees--the draft board--the work for the Committee on Public
Information--food conservation--agriculture. He had done his best by it
all, but now he was glad that it was over. Glad, with the exception,
perhaps, of the last. That had been largely his own idea. He had
realised the uselessness of attempting to educate the local negroes in
the vast abstraction of the European conflict. He had cast around for
some one concrete and logical use to which they could be put, and had
hit upon the scheme of encouraging them to farm. He had gone to town
with his plan and had made arrangements for the financing of a number
of small tracts that had been put in truck by negro families. He had
become tremendously interested in the experiment, and now that they
had been given a start he intended to keep behind the movement for
the benefit of the negroes themselves, and to prove to his financial
backers that the proposition could be made to pay on its own account.

He glanced around the little room with a rather grim smile. As it
had reflected the boy, with its books, guitar, specimens, so now it
offered dumb but eloquent testimony upon the man. The centre table had
given place to a large flat-top desk, and a filing cabinet stood in
the corner once occupied by the bookcase. The guitar, the collection
of fossils, the treasured bit of African sculpture, the etchings, had
vanished. Valerie had once said that the room was his battlefield.
Well, here it was after the first engagement, and, as Saint surveyed
it on the day of casting up accounts, there was in his own mind not
the least doubt that the fight had gone well. He smiled a little
indulgently as he remembered the doubts, the vague gropings, the boyish
passion that he had put into the quest for something that always eluded
him, something that glimmered now and then from a printed page, that
throbbed in a chord of music, that took him sharply when autumn rang
against the pines. He was done with abstractions now. He was face to
face with something actual, something that yielded results that could
be computed upon an adding machine.

He was living in town now, back in the little brick house. Polly had
fulfilled her destiny and had done very well for herself. Her husband,
already out of olive drab, was back in his substantial law practice in
Richmond; and Richmond was one of the very few other cities in America
in which a Charleston girl could contemplate existence without an
instinctive shudder of repulsion. Then there had been another change in
the little house, a sad one from which Saint’s mind still winced when
his thoughts touched it. Maum Netta had gone. Almost a year before,
when the carnage had been at its height, unknown, except in her tiny
orbit, the old woman had joined in the vast migration and answered
the call of the only voice that could proclaim her emancipation from
the Wentworth family. Now, try as he might, Saint could not become
accustomed to the crisp mulatto maid who had come to take her place.

But there were pleasant things to think about. There was the car to be
exhibited as a symbol of success and to serve when he went the rounds
of the several stores under his control. There also was his desk in
the main downtown office. These things meant the realisation of his
mother’s definitely patterned dream, and it was also beginning to mean
a great deal to him. He was now a gentleman with a Broad Street address
and an adequate income. Now he could think seriously about marriage,
and next week Valerie’s unit was due to sail from France.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mamba sat in her window over the old carriage house in the rear of the
Atkinsons’ garden. About her everywhere the spring was busy with its
splendid occupation of the old city. At the pavement’s edge it had
captured a gnarled oak that had not yet waked from its winter sleep,
and had buried it beneath the headlong rush of a wistaria vine. Now,
from this vantage point, flying columns were being flung to right and
left to whelm the chrome and madder of a winter wall beneath invading
mauve and purple. During the night the wind had changed. It no longer
lashed in from the sea with its wintry tang of salt, but swept across
the city from the southwest in a broad languorous tide, heavy with
earthy smells from the waking sea islands. It was the season when youth
strains forward with racing pulses; when age, disturbed and saddened,
takes stock of the past and draws solace from such philosophy as the
years may have brought. With elbows on the sill and her face propped
between her palms, Mamba looked upon the alarming visage of spring with
an expression in which the spirit was still unvanquished but in which
fear was held at bay only by her old indomitable look of determination.

Under her feet the years were gathering speed alarmingly now. There
were black moments when she would wonder whether she had it in her
to hold on until Lissa could take care of herself and make her own
way in that strange new world of hers. The Atkinson children were
growing too, and no longer needed her care. But she had made no mistake
when she had elected the family as her white folk and bound them to
herself by an illusory mutual past. As the boy and girl achieved
emancipation from her watchful eyes and became absorbed by school,
athletics, and the social diversion of the ultra-social old city, she
felt herself gradually taking rank as a pensioner of the family. Now
the thousand-and-one odd jobs that had engaged her time when she first
insinuated herself into the lives of the Wentworths were again her lot.
She no longer carried the slipper bag to dances, for Jack, now a breezy
lad of seventeen, resplendent in his first dinner jacket, and his
sister, who was being beautifully finished at an expensive school, went
rolling out of the gate in the big new car that had come to live under
Mamba’s room in the old carriage house. But there were still shoes to
be shined, flowers to be found, and the front door to be tended on
Mrs. Atkinson’s afternoons. She knew that as long as she could hold
on, could successfully substitute the illusion of being valuable for
actual value, Lissa would fare well. Her large clean room over the
garage gave the girl a good home, and her white folks fed her, just
as they did Mamba, in their kitchen. But if she failed, now at this
most critical of all times for her grandchild, the girl would have no
claim on the Atkinsons--and her mother would be less than useless as a
guiding hand. Sometimes now on Sundays, after the long hot walk to meet
Hagar, there would be moments when she would forget names and faces and
the steady light of her purpose would be obscured by blowing mists.
Then she would summon her forces and pull her faculties together again,
but it was an effort that always left her shaken.

Had she spared herself in any particular in her sacrifices for Lissa,
her hardness to Hagar would have been quite without justification, but
she had given everything that she had looked forward to in her old age
for the girl, and so, as a matter of course, should the mother. When
Lissa reached the age of seventeen, so long had it been since she had
seen her mother that the figure had first grown vague and then been
remodelled in her imagination into at least partial conformity with her
new standards. To her friends Ma, who was now “Mamma,” was employed
“up state” and sent her the money for clothes, music, and all of the
things that enabled her to hold her head up in the Reformed Church set.
The girl’s voice was beginning to attract attention. She was doing
solos in church, and in programmes given at the new coloured Y. W. C.
A. rooms. In appearance she was unforgettable. A large girl for her
age, her figure was well developed and straight as an Indian’s, and
that almost obscured strain of Indian in Mamba had flared up in the
grandchild, as it so often will, and given her a skin of pale lustred
bronze through which the colour beat in her cheeks and her full-lipped
small mouth. Her hair, fine and straight, was worn after the fashion
of the Mona Lisa, and beneath it she held in reserve small close-set
ears, which, like her beautifully modelled hands, were a heritage
from her mother’s people. But her glory lay in her eyes, which under
stress of emotion would deepen and brighten until they glowed like
dark amber in sunlight. She had the negro’s faculty of giving her
whole being to an emotion, so that under stress every gesture became a
graphic interpretation, but her years of hard drilling in music, and
her teacher’s directions for posture and platform presence were in
danger of overdisciplining the emotions as well as the body. Her early
natural charm was becoming a studied attitude. Now, only when she was
singing for fun, as she would say, could she let herself go and forget
herself in music. But the cultivated air of well-bred restraint was the
charm that presently admitted her to the most exclusive circle of negro
society in the city.

Among the girls that she knew it was said by many that she was
hard--that what she wanted she took regardless of others. But in a set
rife with jealousies, and with her conspicuous attainments, talk of
this sort was no more than was to be expected.

In the old city that was so strong in its class consciousness among
the whites it was singular that there was so little realisation of the
fact, that, across the colour line, there existed much the same state
of affairs. There were, in the opinion of most of the white residents,
two general classes of negroes--those who knew their place, and those
who did not--and of late years the latter class was drawing upon the
former in lamentably large numbers. If they thought at all of the
innumerable distinct segments that comprised negro society it was apt
to be with mild and, on the whole, indulgent amusement. For it was
well known that the sharp cleavages between full-blooded negroes and
mulattoes, between the waning power of the ministerial union and the
new secular leaders, the labour element and the young but powerful
business class, all served to make any dangerous concerted negro
movement improbable.

In the set in which Lissa moved she seldom met a full-blooded
negro--the barrier of mistrust and prejudice that rose between her
fellow members of the Reformed Church and Mamba’s friends on East Bay
was scarcely less formidable than that separating white from black.
The atmosphere that she breathed was that of the Victorian drawing
room. Music, which had always found a spontaneous outlet in the
spiritual and work chant, colour which was flung with a lavish hand
over house fronts and clashed and rang in the women’s dresses down in
the waterfront district, had, in that rarer air, become “culture,”
and found expression in the Monday Night Music Club, and exhibitions
of paintings. The untrammelled hilarity and broad humour of Mamba’s
friends was here muted to the restrained mirth of the late ’nineties.
The pendulum had swung with a vengeance and was then at the limit of
its range. Far above, in the life of the aristocracy, the new freedom
was beginning to be manifest, smashing conventional usage; talking its
Freud and Jung--rearranging moral standards, and explaining lapses in
its pat psychoanalytical jargon. But in the Monday Night Music Club
ladies were ladies, those who were pale enough blushed, a leg was still
a limb--and gentlemen asked permission to smoke cigarettes.

It was all a little absurd, one might say--copybook gentility with
its middle-class taboos and reticences. Neither the one thing nor the
other in the amazing old city of colourful extremes on the one hand and
interesting tradition on the other. But it must always be remembered
as a beginning. It was establishing standards, putting a premium on
chastity. Drawing-room pioneers, perhaps, but adventurers none the
less, and leading the way into a terrain that was new and strange.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Monday Night Club held its meeting at the home of Thomas Broaden,
a fine old frame building of the conventional Charleston type with
piazzas along its south façade, overlooking a square of garden on upper
Coming Street.

Seen about the street Broaden was an inconspicuous figure, of middle
height and age and light in colour. He habitually wore a soft felt
hat pulled well down over his eyes, and always walked, although he
was known to be exceedingly well-to-do, and a number of his friends
now owned machines. In his office of the new negro bank, however,
and facing a caller across his desk, he emerged as an individual.
Immediately one would notice the high broad structure of the forehead
and the deep thoughtful eyes. Mrs. Broaden was a perfect partner--small
and delicately made, she carried her fifty years as though they were
thirty and managed the home with that consummate skill which conceals
itself in its work and gives an effect of effortlessness and ease. Both
Mary and Thomas Broaden had taken degrees, but his was from Tuskegee,
while she was a graduate of Howard University.

On the first night that Lissa attended a meeting of the club, such was
her eagerness that she was the first member to arrive at the Broaden
residence. Her hostess greeted her affectionately. “I am so glad that
you have come early,” she exclaimed. “Now I’ll have a chance to make
you feel at home before the others arrive.” Explaining that her husband
had been detained at the bank, she took the girl by the hand and led
her over the lower floor of the house, through large, high-ceilinged
rooms in which periods gave the impression of being superimposed
upon each other like geological strata--red plush--horsehair--down
to several pieces of beautiful old Hepplewhite and Chippendale--for
the Broadens had always been free negroes, and some of the furniture
had been in the family for more than a century. Lissa was amazed at
all that she saw and heard. Here was a life among her own people that
she never knew existed. Finally her hostess stopped before a picture.
It exhibited a group of mansions on East Battery at the time of the
earthquake, porticos down, and great fissures zigzagging across the
walls. She spoke of it sadly as one might of a friend who has received
a hurt.

“Say,” said Lissa with a note of surprise, “you really love this old
town, don’t you?”

“Why not?” she replied with a smile. “It’s home.”

“That’s funny: most of the crowd in the choir and at the Y. talk of
nothing now but a chance to go to New York. That’s where the money is
these days--that’s where coloured people have a chance.”

“I wonder,” said Mary Broaden wistfully; then, with a kind earnestness,
added, “You mustn’t say coloured people, my dear--that doesn’t mean
anything--Japanese, Indian--all are coloured. You are a negro--doesn’t
it make you proud to say it?”

Lissa looked at her closely to see whether she was serious.

“No,” she replied; “my friends don’t like that word. It’s a new idea,
being proud of it.”

Her hostess gave a light indulgent laugh and patted her on the
shoulder. “I am glad that you didn’t wait to say that when the others
are here. Frank North, for one, would have withered you with a look.”

“Frank North?”

“Yes; he’s the painter, you know--and he plays the violin too.”

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a sharp ring at the bell. Mrs. Broaden stepped to the door
and opened it. From the drawing room Lissa heard several voices
pleasantly blended in a composite greeting. Then they drew apart and
she distinguished a suave low-pitched man’s voice, a higher one with a
bright vital quality that she decided must belong to the artist, and
several women’s voices still interwoven in talk.

When they entered, the owner of the higher man’s voice was at once
presented, confirming her guess as to his identity. He was pale and
slender, with an eager look in his sensitive face. Not more than
twenty, Lissa thought as he held out his hand. Bowing slightly from
the hips, he said, “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss
Atkinson.”

Nella Taylor, her music teacher, was there, and she put her arm around
the girl’s waist and faced the others. “This is my star pupil,” she
said, “and we’re going to give you a treat this evening--aren’t we,
Lissa?”

She felt by the sudden stiffening of the girl that she was embarrassed,
and she hurried on with the introductions. They proved to be an
interesting group. There was Dr. Vincent, a short motherly woman in
late middle life, a graduate of a Northern university who had turned
her back on a promising practice in a large city above the line and had
come back home to the old town to work at a minimum income among the
women and children of her own race.

The owner of the deep, suave voice proved to be Frederick Gerideau, a
contractor and builder who was an authority on colonial architecture
and who had restored most of the old dwellings in the lower part of the
city. He placed a ’cello on the sofa and greeted the girl warmly.

Gardinia Whitmore Lissa already knew--she was the soprano in the
Reformed Church choir, a large girl with a magnificent voice and a
bold mulatto beauty that she flaunted like a battle flag. Lissa liked
Gardinia, and her youth and obvious good-fellowship helped her to feel
at ease in an atmosphere that was commencing to have an overpowering
effect upon her.

They fell into groups, standing about in the large rooms. Others
entered: the secretary of the Y. W. C. A. and a young social worker
from the new civic bureau; both were young mulatto women, and both
exhibited the flawless approach of the trained worker.

In spite of the fact that Lissa was standing with her teacher, to whom
she was devoted, and young North, who was obviously interested in her,
she found herself talking in a constrained half whisper. She felt as
though they were all playing parts and that she alone was not letter
perfect.

North said, “I heard you sing the aria the other night at the Y.
concert and have been wanting to congratulate you. The performance was
entrancing.”

She could only manage an embarrassed “Thank you very much.” Then was
relieved to see that the performers were gathering at the piano. One of
the young women was playing first violin, North second. Gerideau seated
himself with his ’cello against his knee, and Miss Taylor was at the
piano.

“Shall we start with Beethoven?” she inquired with a crisp professional
accent. “How about the ‘Moonlight Sonata’?”

There was a turning of sheets on the stands--silence--then they
launched into an excellent rendition of the piece. Lissa could see
that they were all highly trained musicians, and that technically the
performance was of a very high order. But they played with their eyes
on the notes, and instead of releasing the music that was prisoned
there to fill the room with its magic, they seemed to hold the
performance down to a technical demonstration.

Some one asked for Chopin, and Miss Taylor beckoned to Lissa. The girl
rose unhesitatingly and crossed the room. Her teacher had been drilling
her in the fifth nocturne, and she felt confident of her ability to
acquit herself well. The piece was open, ready. She made a striking
picture seated before the grand piano.

“Ready?” she asked, then, after a moment, commenced to play. She knew
the nocturne by heart, and she loved it, but there was something in the
air about her that kept her from throwing herself into it. This wasn’t
playing for fun. There was a weighty seriousness about it. She found
herself, like the others, reading the page, desperately intent on a
finished technical performance, thinking with an intensity that almost
hurt, conscious of notes--notes. Bound together by the relentless
exactitude of the score they advanced toward its conclusion with a
precision that evoked a round of applause. Later Lissa sang Gounod’s
“Serenade,” and although it was enthusiastically received she knew that
the restraint under which she laboured had rendered it a colourless
performance.

Mrs. Broaden called the girl to her and made a place on the sofa beside
her.

“We shall be very proud of you some day, my dear,” she said. “You have
genius, and we will all be telling that we knew you when you were a
young girl.”

Some one suggested spirituals. Lissa had learned dozens of them from
Mamba, and still sang them with the old woman in their room. She saw
the ice breaking at last and rose impulsively. “Oh, do let’s sing
them,” she cried. “Do you know ‘Play On Your Harp, Little David’?”

“You will find the Burleigh arrangements at the back of the piano,
Nella,” Mrs. Broaden called. “There is a quartette of ‘Swing Low, Sweet
Chariot’ that is quite charming.”

North, Gerideau, and two of the young women took the parts, and Miss
Taylor accompanied.

Lissa took a seat beside her hostess and told herself quite positively
that she was realising a cherished ambition, that this life was
the thing that she most greatly desired, and, finally, almost
argumentatively, that she was enjoying the evening immensely. She
wondered about the others. They were so different from her childhood
associates. What were they thinking, feeling, behind their drawing-room
reserve? North, for instance. She raised her eyes and met his
singularly intense, bright gaze. It gave her a faint pleasurable shock,
and for a moment they sat with the breadth of the room between them,
and a tingling sense of each other’s presence bridging the distance,
drawing them subtly together. Then he smiled and dropped his eyes to
the music. Lissa’s face grew hot, she looked quickly away and noticed
Gardinia Whitmore observing her with open and mocking amusement.
Gardinia was seated alone in a shadowed corner and with her full,
dark body held in forced inertia seemed literally to smoulder in the
gloom. But her smile was not only for Lissa, the girl noticed. From
her retreat it took in all of them one by one. There could be no doubt
about it--she was deliberately laughing at them all. The eyes of the
two girls met, Gardinia’s openly inviting Lissa to share her amusement.
For a fraction of a second there was an instinctive response, then
Lissa’s look changed. It became deliberately unresponsive, obtuse,
ranging her definitely on the defensive and with the club. What right
had Gardinia Whitmore to be pretending a superiority? she thought
angrily. She was lucky to have been taken up by them. She ought to be
thanking her stars.

When the music ceased Mrs. Broaden smiled upon Lissa.

“You see, my dear,” she said, “what our race is accomplishing
artistically--when we have Burleigh, a poet like Paul Laurence Dunbar,
and in painting, Tanner, to speak for us, we have something to be proud
of; and, by the way, you must ask Frank to tell you about Tanner. He
has some photographic reproductions of his pictures, I believe.”

They lingered awhile over ice cream and cakes, and then, to her relief,
the girl found herself out under soft spring stars with the April
night cool against her face. North had asked to see her home, and they
took their way downtown through the deserted streets. Lissa sighed and
stretched her arms in a wide and deliberately undignified gesture.
Then she stole a glance at her companion. He seemed to have brought
the atmosphere of the room with him, and was regarding her with polite
inquiry in his face.

She said, “If I ask you a straight question, will you give me a
straight answer?”

“Why, of course,” he assured her.

“This evening--was that your idea of a good time?”

North was mildly shocked. “I thought the evening was a great success,”
he said on a note of reproof. “What’s your idea of a good time?”

“Oh, I don’t know--I thought I’d rather sing than anything else, but it
doesn’t seem to be the fun that it used to. Don’t let’s talk about it
any more. Tell me about yourself and who was it?--oh, yes, Tanner.”

“You know his work?” he said eagerly, taking up the end of her request
first. Then, without waiting for an affirmative, he plunged into a
description of the artist’s triumphs and methods.

Lissa was sorry that she had started him, it kept the drawing-room
atmosphere tagging along with them. When he paused she asked, “Now tell
me about yourself.”

“Oh, there isn’t much to tell,” and she was relieved to notice that he
was embarrassed. “Graduated from Avery here in town and Dad gave me two
years in an art school in New York. Now I am going in for portraiture.
I want to paint my own people, and they are good about sitting for me.”

Their way had led them through wide unpaved back streets under large
shade trees. A faint air smelling of the sea moved through the young
leaves and made them whisper. At a far street intersection a big
double-truck trolley passed. Lissa heard the clank-clank--clank-clank
and the hum of the motors as it drew away in the distance. Then she
became cognizant of another sound: the unmistakable rhythm of a
spiritual. “Where is that coming from?” she asked.

“I believe I heard that a church near the jail was having a revival
this week,” he said without interest. “We can go that way if you want,”
and he turned into a dark and rather forbidding byway.

Beyond her Lissa saw the menacing battlemented tower of the jail
against the soft stars. Soon they arrived at the church, a small frame
building behind a fence of whitewashed palings. The door and windows
were wide to the spring night, and the building was jammed with black
humanity. The service was well advanced, and the congregation was
swaying to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” This was not the Burleigh
arrangement. Thought had little to do with this performance. The
air rocked to a deep solid chorus, yet a chorus of individuals each
creating his own part--shaving harmonies with fractional notes so fine
and so spontaneous that no written page could ever capture and prison
the sound.

Lissa gripped the palings with her hands. She was trembling with
excitement. “There,” she said, “that’s what I mean. They’re having fun
when they sing. They don’t care whether the notes are right or not.
They are just naturally cutting loose, can’t you feel the difference?”

The rhythm beat in waves against the soft spring night--the air was
heady with the faint, indefinable, yet intoxicating odour of untamed
bodies rocking in a close mass, one with the song that they were
creating.

North’s voice, held on a deliberately casual note, cut across the
music. “Oh, that’s all right for these ignorant negroes, I suppose, but
where’d we be if we stopped at that? We’ve got to go beyond it. We’re
living in a civilised community.”

“Oh, hell!” the girl cried, “forget it, will you?” She caught him by
the arm and urged him forward. He was so amazed at the change in her
that he went a step before he collected himself. Then he stopped and
looked at her. But she kept on tugging at his arm and pleaded, “Oh,
let’s step in and cut loose just once--listen to that,” and she started
to hum the tune. “How can you stand there like a dummy with a chance to
sing like that?”

She felt his arm relax for a moment in her fingers. “Good boy,” she
said, “here we go.”

Suddenly he pulled back sharply. “No,” he said sternly. “It won’t
do--we’ve got to get away from here. I must get you home. This isn’t
our sort of crowd, and we must stand for something, you know. Think
what Mrs. Broaden would say if she heard that we were seen at a
revival--shouting our heads off with a lot of dirty negroes.”

He took her firmly by the arm and was surprised at her sudden and
complete capitulation. She turned away and walked without a word by his
side. Only a few more steps and they were passing the jail. Above them
the high buttressed wall soared, cutting the sky away almost to the
zenith, and above the wall the loom of the battlemented tower hanging
dizzily in sharp outline against the milky way.

Lissa looked up, and the black wall seemed to swoop forward and hang
poised above them. The night was suddenly dank with the suffering of
the thousands who had lain there in the cages--slaves, freemen, her own
people. Her mother’s face sprang vividly up before her, and she thought
that she must go to see her with Mamba next Sunday morning.

Then they were under a bleary gas lamp. She had not said a word since
leaving the church, and now North looked at her curiously. “Why, you’re
crying,” he exclaimed. “What in the world’s the matter?”

“I am lonely,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’m the loneliest girl
in the world, I reckon. Just let’s hurry, please: I want to get home.”

       *       *       *       *       *

But the following Sunday found Lissa at church as usual, where she had
a small solo part in the offertory selection. She had forgotten all
about it that night when she had that strange brain-storm near the
jail and had decided to cut church and go to see her mother. She would
go some time, of course, but this was her career. Mamba said that her
mother would be the last person to want her to miss an opportunity to
sing.

The solo went well, she did not feel the restraint in church that she
had experienced at the Broadens, and she let herself go into the music.
Everybody spoke about it when service was over and the congregation
went streaming out into the spring sunshine. Absurd, that fancy of hers
that she was lonely. Why, no girl ever had more friends.

North came and asked her to join a party that was going to his studio
to see his pictures, and she found herself stepping into a closed
car with several well-dressed men and women. North introduced her to
Mrs. Prescott, and then, with punctilious observance of the social
code, presented Mr. Prescott to her. His introductions were always
ceremonious.

The Prescotts occupied the front seat, and the man’s large, faultlessly
gloved hands lay in an attitude of easy familiarity upon the wheel.

Lissa had never touched such luxury before. The handsomely dressed
woman gave her a welcoming smile over a cloudy fur collar. The car
exhaled a faint but pervasive violet perfume.

North and Lissa crowded into the rear seat with another young couple,
and while the car glided smoothly over the asphalt he told her how
their hosts had made their money. Prescott had started out as a
carpenter, then climbed into a small contracting business, and now
owned several blocks of negro tenant houses which yielded him a
handsome income. They had just returned from a visit to New York where
they had heard Roland Hayes in a recital, and had seen Paul Robeson in
an O’Neill play, and North asked Mrs. Prescott to tell them about it.
Lissa listened greedily while she told of the successes of the new
negro artists, and the life in Harlem with the theatres and concert
halls, its dances, and its emerging intellectual group.

“Some day I am going there to have my try,” the girl said with flashing
eyes.

“Of course you are, my dear,” Mrs. Prescott assured her; “you can’t
bury a voice like yours here forever, you know.”

North pressed her arm and smiled. “That’s what I’ve been telling her,”
he said, “but she wouldn’t believe me.”

The studio was a large airy second-story room, and a number of
portraits were already hung, while many more were stacked against the
walls. The group scattered, examining the paintings and exclaiming
over them. Lissa was left standing alone before two portraits, a man
and a woman in middle life. Then she recognised them as the Broadens.
She wondered why she had been so slow in knowing them. The likenesses
were good, she could see that the features were those of her host and
hostess of a few nights ago. What was the difference? She turned and
examined other portraits that hung near, puzzling out the problem as
she looked from one to another. Then in a swift revealing moment she
had the answer. In spite of the fact that the drawing was well done and
the features characteristically negro, they gave an effect of not being
negroes at all, but white people painted in darker shades--some subtle
racial element was lacking. While she pondered, this inexplicable lack
commenced to associate itself with other impressions in her mind--the
Broadens’ drawing room, the music that she had heard there that night.

North came and stood beside her, looking eagerly at her face for her
verdict. She tried to find words for her inchoate impressions.

“I can see you know a heap about painting. Those pictures are just like
Mr. and Mrs. Broaden, only they don’t look just like coloured people
and the Broadens do.” North was slightly dashed in spirit. “That’s a
matter of artistic technique,” he explained. “You learn to paint in
the academy by a certain method, a method that has been used by great
artists, then you apply that technique to your own subjects. After all,
if the pictures look like them, that’s about all that we can do, isn’t
it?”

The girl noticed a defensive tone in his voice and hastened to reassure
him. “Oh, I think they’re fine. And I know what you mean about
technique. It’s the same with music. You are awfully smart to catch
them so well.”

They were joined by Mrs. Prescott, and the girl returned at once to the
subject of New York.

“I wish you’d tell me some more about the coloured people up North,”
she begged.

“Certainly, my dear. And Frank must listen too. Things have changed
a lot even in the three years since he has been there.” She stepped
between the young people and slipped her arms through theirs. “Come and
sit down,” she said. “Frank can leave his pictures to entertain his
guests for him. That’s the good of being a painter.”

“Those men you told me about. Do white people go to hear them sing?”
Lissa asked.

The older woman laughed. “Do they? Why, my dear child, if a negro wants
to hear one of his own colour he has to get a seat in the gallery. We
are not good enough to sit in the orchestra yet, but they will pay
three dollars a piece to hear us sing or act.”

North said, “When I was there Charles Gilpin was about the only one. I
saw him in _Emperor Jones_.”

“That’s ancient history,” she asserted. “Why, there are a dozen or more
top-liners now, and lots of capable artists earning handsome incomes.”

“I suppose it would take an awful lot of money to go on and study?”
Lissa queried.

“Yes, that’s the big trouble with us here in the South. It takes so
much to even reach a starting point, and there is so little to do it
with.”

Lissa hesitated on the edge of a vital question, then framed it, with
her wide warm gaze on the woman’s sympathetic face:

“How much money do you think it would take?”

Mrs. Prescott considered a moment. “Oh, I suppose it would take at
least a couple of years to do it properly--even to get a good start,
and living is high up there, somewhere between two and three thousand
dollars, I imagine.”

Lissa received the information in blank silence. The older woman saw
the disappointment in her face and patted her hand sympathetically.
“But don’t you worry about that. Something is sure to turn up sooner or
later.”

They were joined by several others, and the talk turned on North’s
paintings. Presently the party commenced to break up and leave, and
Lissa’s new acquaintance asked if she would like to be dropped at home,
as they were driving downtown and would pass near the Atkinsons’.

In the privacy of the comfortable sedan the girl seemed wrapped around
with an atmosphere of security and luxury. Looking out upon the
familiar streets from such a vantage point anything seemed possible,
even a New York career, even two thousand dollars. She talked to the
others, a light answer here, an inconsequent question there, but
beneath the surface, her mind hung blinded in a dazzle of radiance,
possessed by a dream and deluded by a dreamer’s illusion of actuality.

The car came to a standstill at the curb, and Lissa met the questioning
eyes of her friend. “Yes, this is the house,” she said, “and thank you
so very much for bringing me home.”

She stepped out and closed the door behind her, then stood for a
moment waving farewell as the car drew away. Across the street a group
of white people were standing before a handsome Georgian dwelling.
Lissa looked up and caught their gaze fixed upon her with that frank
amusement which in the old city is always provoked by the sight of a
negro attempting what they would have described as putting on airs.
There was nothing inimical in their regard. The girl was merely very
amusing.

The effect on Lissa was actually physical, like that produced by the
violent awakening of a hypnotic subject. She swayed slightly, pulled
herself together with an effort, and climbed the stairs to the room
over the garage.

Mamba was sitting on a large chair, her eyes fixed on a sun-drenched
roof across the way upon which pigeons were strutting and making soft
drowsy talk. Her hands lay in her lap, and between the thumb and
forefinger of her right hand, much as a reader might pause and rest,
spectacles on lap, she held Judge Harkness’s large gleaming teeth.

Lissa flung herself down beside the old woman, buried her face in her
lap, and burst into a storm of weeping. The paroxysm was so violent and
so unexpected from the habitually self-restrained girl that Mamba was
frightened. She patted Lissa’s head with her gnarled brown hands and
begged her with tremulous urgency to tell her of her trouble.

Finally Lissa looked up into the familiar face that was dimming a
little now with the advancing years. The girl was getting herself in
hand again. The sobs ceased, and a bitter little smile thinned and
stiffened her full lips.

“It’s no use, Grandma,” she said, and there was a new hard tone in the
low-timbred voice. “I’ve just been wanting something like hell that I’m
never going to get. There’s no use breaking our hearts over it. You
better forget it, and not let it fret you.”

“But all dem new frien’ yo’ got--ain’t dey yo’ kind? What’s de matter
wid dem?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lissa said wearily. “They seem to spend all their
time saying how glad they are to be negroes and all the time they’re
trying their damnedest to be white.”

“Hush yo’ mout’, chile,” Mamba chided. “Ain’t yo’ knows swearin’ ain’t
fuh ladies?”

“I’m not so sure I want to be a lady, after all,” Lissa exclaimed.
She got to her feet and strode to the open window, then turned and
faced Mamba again. Her body was drawn taut against the brilliance of
the Southern noon, her fists were clenched at her sides and shaking
slightly from their muscular tension.

“Oh, I don’t know what the hell I want,” she flung out in a reckless
voice, “but if I don’t find out soon and get it I’m going crazy.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lissa had never been on intimate terms with Gardinia Whitmore. This was
strange, because their music had thrown them together constantly, and
as their voices were perfectly suited to each other’s they were always
in demand for duets at recitals and concerts. The explanation probably
lay in Lissa’s instinctive good taste. She was not herself aware that
she possessed such a characteristic. But she realised that, while she
was attracted by the flamboyant personality of the popular soprano, she
experienced an involuntary withdrawal into herself at the other’s frank
advances. She knew also that Gardinia did not hold the same position
in society that she did, for while Gardinia was accepted everywhere on
account of her voice, it was obvious that she did not belong.

Seen in the Broadens’ drawing room Gardinia immediately made one think
of a Bengal tigress in a zoo. She was magnificently proportioned, with
a slack sinuousness of body and dark, heavy-lidded eyes in which the
banked fires of desire smouldered and glowed. She seemed at times
to move among the furniture with a desperate and scarcely veiled
hostility. By turns she would be seized by a gaiety so reckless that
it seemed almost violent; or sit watching the others with her sardonic
and sultry gaze. But over her lay, like a transparent gauze, a surface
sleekness which, while it did not in the least disguise her essential
self, gave her hostesses something upon which to fix their attention
while they introduced her to their friends. But when Gardinia sang,
everything was forgotten, and people ceased explaining her even to
themselves.

It would have been difficult to find a more interesting contrast
than that which the two girls presented in one of their appearances
in a duet. They were of the same height, but Lissa was more slender
and showed a greater refinement of form and feature. She gave the
impression of holding her powers in reserve, and there was behind her
art an indefinable suggestion of tragedy that made even her lighter
numbers poignant. Gardinia, on the other hand, was an emotional geyser,
and except when she was under the rigid discipline of the Monday Night
Musical Club, she captured her listeners with a power that was almost
physical.

The Sunday following Lissa’s outburst to Mamba she found herself on
the pavement before the Reformed Church, with the congregation from
the morning service streaming past her. The week had increased rather
than diminished her feeling of unrest. In spite of Mamba’s entreaties,
she had not confided in her. In the first place her own feelings were
too vague to put into words. There was no use to tell her grandmother
that she wanted two thousand dollars with which to go away. She knew
that the old woman had been putting something aside for her every week,
every cent that she could spare, in fact. It was to be hers to help her
along when she no longer had the loving care of the shrewd old head
and busy hands. She had never let herself think of it, for to do so
brought the tragic prescience of the human loss that it would imply.
And what would that pitiful sum amount to, anyway? No, she could not
ask Mamba for money, and what the other things were that she wanted she
did not know.

Overhead, the portico of the church hung against a soft gray-blue sky,
and the air was voluptuous with the warmth of early summer. About her
many feet shuffled on the pavement, friendly greetings filled the air.
A girl slipped an arm through hers--“Going my way?” Lissa shook her
head, and the girl moved on.

The crowd was thinning, breaking away in ones and twos, laughing in the
bright summer weather that the negroes loved, bound for Sunday dinner,
or long idle walks through the quiet street. Lissa saw the Prescotts
getting into their car. North was with them again, and Nella Taylor,
her music teacher. They all saw her together and beckoned and waved.
Lissa shook her head and watched them drive off with a feeling akin to
relief. Then she heard Gardinia’s voice behind her. She had a heavy,
rather husky speaking voice. “What’s the kid waiting for?” she asked.
“Got a date?”

“No, I am going home. Just waiting for the crowd to scatter. I hate
crowds.” Then she gave Gardinia a faint smile and added, “But I am
surprised not to see you with a feller. Thought you always had one on a
string.”

“Did, but I forgot my umbrella and had to go back for it. Now he’s
gone. I bet that yeller cat Lila snitched him while I was inside.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” Lissa opined.

“Say, you ain’t so chummy, are you?--regular chilly sister. But I’m
going downtown too, and I just as lief trot along with you.”

“Sure, glad to have you.”

They walked in silence for a while, then Gardinia turned and looked
with frank curiosity into Lissa’s face.

“Do you know,” she said, “I can’t somehow make you out. You look just
like a human bein’--got hands and feet ’neverything, but you don’t seem
to get no kick out o’ life. All bus’ out with the blues all the time.
Say, what do you do nights, anyway?”

Thus challenged Lissa gave the matter thought. “Oh, I don’t know,” she
answered. “Of course, there’s the Monday Night Musical----”

“Good Gawd!” her companion exploded. “You don’t call that life, do you?”

“Well, most nights, when I am not singing, I just sit round with
Grandma and talk.”

“You little hell-raiser,” Gardinia mocked. “Aren’t you ’fraid the
cops’ll get you?”

“Sometimes Frank North comes around, and we walk out.”

“Frank North--so that’s it! Don’t you know, bright eyes, if you keep
that up you’ll end highbrow?”

Lissa drew away and regarded her companion coldly. “Look here,” she
challenged. “You’ve a great way of throwing off on my friends. Frank’s
the only boy I know who’s got something to talk about. You could learn
a lot from him yourself.”

Gardinia refused to accept the challenge. She remained silent for a
moment, then yielded to an impulse.

“Say, kid, wouldn’t you like to try just one real party? You think
you’re gettin’ life with that highbrow crowd, just because you don’t
know what life’s like. What you say I fix up a date for a dance with a
coupla fellows for next Saturday night? What you say? You jus’ try it
once, life with a red lining, and night turned on bright----”

Gardinia shocked Lissa’s sensibilities, as she always did when she let
herself go, but the girl was conscious of a vague excitement over the
idea. Also she was acutely aware of the physical attraction of the
girl at her side, whose sheer animal spirits called to something hidden
deep within herself.

“I wonder,” she whispered.

“Oh, hell, don’t wonder, come along. Nothin’ ain’t goin’ to happen
that you can’t get over. Meet us on the corner by the post office at
half-past eight, and we’ll be ready to pick you up and highball up the
road.”

“All right. I guess I’ll go. What’ll I wear?”

“The best you got, kid, and your dancin’ shoes. And maybe you better
not say anythin’ ’round at the Broadens’ to-morrow night. It ain’t
their stuff. But, believe me, it’s got class of its own.”

At the next corner Gardinia bid Lissa a breezy farewell and left her
to continue on her way with a chaos of contending emotions as an
accompaniment to her thoughts.

       *       *       *       *       *

Saturday night found Lissa pacing slowly back and forth before the post
office. All day she had vacillated between an overwhelming desire to
go, and a deep premonitory fear that prompted her to stay with Mamba.
When the late dark finally gathered she had dressed with a desperate
speed and without telling her grandmother where she was going had
kissed her passionately, then rushed out, leaving the old woman’s
questions unanswered.

After all, she had arrived at the rendezvous ahead of time, for she had
been standing several minutes when St. Michael’s chimed the half hour.
About her the streets were quiet, and high over her head mellow tones
of the old bells ran their double trill and left the air singing. Lissa
caught the faintly throbbing note and held it until the last vibrations
fluttered out and died. The corner on which the girl was waiting was
one of the most beautiful and significant in the old town. Opposite
her the church lifted its straight white spire out of the yellow glow
of the street lamps into the cool faint glimmer of the early stars.
Diagonally across the way the clusters of lamps were aglow on the City
Hall steps, with the building darkling above them like frowning brows
over watchful eyes. Behind the City Hall lay the dim quietude of the
park, with its stained marble busts and shafts ghost-like under the
spreading trees.

Under the spell of the familiar beauty the reckless mood that had
finally decided Lissa to come commenced to pass. Her gaze followed the
pointing finger of the steeple into the vast serenity of the summer
night, and she gave an involuntary start. She was standing out at the
pavement’s edge, at the intersection of the two broad thoroughfares,
and now, as she gazed up, she realised that they marked the sky off
above her into a gigantic cross, its head and foot pointing north and
south and its arms dipping east and west into the two rivers.

A fear that was neither superstition nor religion but a little of both
assailed her, making her suddenly long to be safely at home with Mamba.
What if she cut Gardinia and her crowd now and ran home? They were
late, anyway, and that would give her a good excuse.

Then abruptly the moment of quiet was broken and with it the spell
that it had woven upon the girl. Several automobiles approached the
corner, sounding their claxons. Down the rails from the north a great
double-truck trolley hummed and rattled, then passed with a series of
deafening jars over the switch.

Two white men came out of the post office and passed close to her,
smoking and talking together. One glanced at her curiously in the half
light. They sauntered on, and she heard laughter and, very distinctly,
the words “high yellow.”

A moment later a dilapidated Ford came to an abrupt and noisy stop
before her, and she heard Gardinia’s husky, voluptuous voice.

“Here’s th’ lady friend--all dressed up and bells on, eh, Lissa? Good
girl. Meet my friends. This here’s Charlie, and that’s Slim in the back
seat. Boys, this is Lissa. No Miss and Mister in this gang. Hop in
there with Slim. He’s going to be your feller for to-night. Look him
over and see if he ain’t got class.”

Charlie called “Hello, Lissa” from the driver’s seat. Slim jumped out
and shook hands. “Glad to know you,” he said, and he held the door open
for her to get in. Then they were seated. The machine seemed to crouch
for a moment, took a spasmodic leap, then settled down into a brisk
steady gait.

The couple on the front seat paid no further attention to their
companions but sat close together talking in low voices that were
absorbed in the rattle of the vehicle.

At first Lissa could think of nothing to say, and Slim seemed to
experience the same difficulty, for he sat well over on his side of the
car and let the moments pass in silence. When they drove under the arc
lights Lissa took advantage of the transient illumination to appraise
her partner. He was dark, a full-blooded negro, with a receding
forehead, a broad flat nose, and a very large mouth. Once he looked
up, met her scrutiny, and broke into a broad, friendly grin. She saw
the whiteness of his teeth spring out against the black, and his eyes
laughing shyly into her face. She was reassured and began to feel that
they would get along together. There was nothing about him to make a
girl afraid. Then the lights were behind them, and ahead the road, a
broad grey band of concrete, plunged straight out between dense patches
of woodland and nebulous distances of open field.

The car, like a wild creature that has broken long captivity, flung the
city behind it and leaped for the open. Gardinia’s voice came back with
the whistling wind to the silent couple behind her.

“Hey, there, you two--what do you think this is--a funeral? What’s the
matter with you, Slim, you don’t hold that gal in--don’t you know she
ain’t use’ to country ridin’?”

Thus encouraged, Slim allowed himself to be bounced over to Lissa’s
side of the car and put his arm around her shoulder. For a moment the
girl’s body remained rigid. Then, on another bounce, the man’s arm fell
lower and closed firmly about her waist. A tremor shook the girl. Then
suddenly she relaxed into Slim’s arms and closed her eyes.

“Don’t you worry,” he said in a low husky voice. “Ah ain’t goin’ to let
you get thrown out.”

For half an hour the car drove steadily northward; then from the
dense shadows of massed live oaks a row of lights leaped out. Charlie
jerked the machine hard over. It left the concrete for a rough side
road, executed a series of jackrabbit bounds, and brought up short
before the door of a dance hall. A rush of talk, laughter, song, and
instrument-tuning greeted them, shattering the peace of the night and
challenging the new arrivals with a mood of wild gaiety. Slim waited
with the girls while Charlie parked the car.

The wide doorway was swarming like a hive; couples came and went
between the tawdry brilliance of the room and the piled blackness of
night under the live oaks. A group of young bucks lounged near the
door, smoking and passing a flask from mouth to mouth.

Charlie rejoined the party just as the music flung its unifying rhythm
into the discordant babel. They elbowed their way through the press and
entered the hall. The room was a-flutter with tissue-paper streamers
of every shade that depended from the rafters and responded with an
agitated waving to the sound and motion beneath. There were eight men
in the orchestra, and Lissa noted immediately with the colour snobbery
of the Broaden set that they were all full-blooded negroes. There were
two guitars, two banjos, a fiddle, a cornet, and trombone, and a man
with drum and traps. The sound was unlike anything that the girl had
ever heard. Strive as she might, she could not recognise the tune. As a
matter of fact, it was not an orchestra in a strict interpretation of
the term, but merely a collection of eight individuals who had taken
some simple melody as a theme and were creating rhythm and harmony
around it as they played. Her immediate sensation was one of shock at
the crude and almost deafening uproar. Then, as she stood listening,
a strange excitement commenced to possess her. Music had never moved
her like this before. It had made her cry--and it had shaken her with
delight, but this seemed to be breaking something loose deep within
her--something that seethed hot through her veins and set her muscles
jumping.

The crowd came jamming into the room, black girls with short knappy
hair, tall long-limbed negroes from the wharves, sailors from the Navy
Yard, dark and heavy, with here and there the pallor and passivity of a
Filipino. There were many couples out from town who, like themselves,
had the mark of the city on them in their straightened hair and
well-made clothes.

Slim caught Lissa closely to him. His shyness had vanished, but to
the girl that did not matter, for she was no longer afraid. The music
snatched them up, and they were off into the thick of it. It is
unlikely that anywhere else in America at that moment there were more
and different steps being trod on a dance floor. The old fundamental
rhythm of the turkey trot prevailed, but the more sophisticated were
dancing a one-step or fox trot. In a corner out of the jam a group
of country negroes were dancing singly. The dance was a strange,
fascinating, and wildly individual affair. They stood two and two,
facing each other, as though dancing in competition rather than
together, and the basic step consisted of rising on alternate feet
while the free leg was hurled outward and backward, knees touching, and
toes turned in, parrot fashion.

Lissa made Slim stop with her to watch, and immediately the desire to
dance it possessed her. Slim laughed. “Come along,” he urged, pulling
at her arm. “That’s nothin’ but a ole country nigger dance.”

She would not listen. Presently she had the step and started in at the
edge of the circle. When the music stopped she was angry. “Oh, I almost
had it, Slim,” she exclaimed. “One more try and I’ll get it pat. Why
did they have to stop just then?”

Her partner led her out of doors, then slipped his arm around her and
guided her toward the automobile. Gardinia and Charlie were there
already, and when the four of them were together, Gardinia handed Lissa
a flask. “Hit her up, Sister,” she invited.

Lissa hesitated. “What’s it--whisky?”

“Sure--go ahead, ain’t goin’ do you no harm.”

The girl lifted the flask and took a swallow, with the result that she
choked and coughed.

They all burst into laughter.

“My Gawd,” Gardinia mocked, “can’t you even take a drink o’ hooch?”

Lissa snatched the bottle back from Slim. “Can’t, eh? I’ll show you.”
She wasn’t going to be laughed at by Gardinia, that was certain.

What a night! Life with a red lining. The orchestra was at it again.
That new dance. Lissa must master that if she kicked the floor boards
loose.

       *       *       *       *       *

During an intermission, when they crowded to the door for air, a
wicked-looking stripped Ford, painted scarlet, jerked itself into the
light and stopped. Gardinia grabbed Lissa by the arm. “Here’s Prince,”
she cried. “You got to meet him. Hello, Prince, here’s a lady friend I
want you to know.”

The new arrival was evidently a favourite, especially with women, for
a number ran forward and crowded about the car. He got languidly out
and, with casual greetings to right and left, came forward and joined
the girls. They met where the shaft of light from the open door stabbed
the darkness and splayed out on the gravel. “Lissa, this is the Prince
I been tellin’ you about,” Gardinia introduced.

“Glad to know you,” he said, and took her hand, while he slid his
glance over her in deliberate and frank appraisal. Then he raised his
eyes to her face, and the grip on her fingers tightened. He gave a low
whistle and, still gripping Lissa’s hand, addressed Gardinia--“_Some
class_, baby; where’d you find her?”

A shudder of repulsion started under the man’s hot, moist clasp,
flashed up the girl’s arm, and communicated itself to her whole being.
The man sensed it with evident satisfaction, his loose sensuous lips
parted, and he gave a low, confident laugh. He bent forward, and Lissa
got an impression of a light muddy complexion, heavy-lidded eyes, and a
long scar across the forehead close under the hair. The air was heavy
with its warning of danger; she felt her skin creep under it. And yet,
in spite of the repulsion that she felt at his touch, there was a
compelling power that drew her toward him and made her pulses race. She
summoned all her strength and snatched her hand away.

Prince laughed again and turned toward the hall. “Me an’ you’s goin’ to
be buddies,” he said. “Come on in an’ let’s have a drink on it.”

His glance included Lissa’s party in the invitation, and the four of
them followed him across the hall to the gaily decorated booth in the
corner where soft drinks were being served.

“What’ll you take?” he asked largely.

They made it “dopes,” and when the glasses stood before them their
host produced a silver flask and poured a generous drink in each
tumbler.

Charlie exclaimed, “Hot damn! None of dat moonshine rotgut for Prince.
Nuttin’ but de bes’.”

Lissa noticed that Slim’s bashfulness had descended upon him again and
that he accepted the drink from Prince with reluctance.

The music crashed out, smiting the air with the flat impact of a blow,
causing the fluid in the tumblers to quiver. They emptied their glasses
in gulps.

Prince drew his hand across his mouth and said, “All right, girlie,
le’s go.”

Slim seemed to have suffered a sort of paralysis. When Lissa looked
toward him, he said nothing, but stood looking at her with wide
mournful eyes. Prince put his arm around her, and she looked into his
face with a shaken, reckless little laugh. “I’m on,” she said, and was
snatched from the corner into the maelstrom of the dance floor.

They danced three dances together. Prince looked older than the boys
with whom they had come, but he could dance circles around them. Lissa
was delighted to find that he was an expert in the step that she had
just discovered, and she made him go to a corner near the band and
teach it to her.

It was while they were there that the musicians broke into a medley of
old jazz tunes, launching from their wild syncopated improvisations
into that early ragtime classic of the Johnson brothers, “Under the
Bamboo Tree.” In Lissa the music ceased to be a thing external, apart.
It became a fire in her body taking her suddenly like sheeting flame
about a sapling, cutting her off from the others, possessing her,
swaying her irresistibly forward toward the players. She did not
realise that she was singing until her gaze rested on the face of the
leader, and over his fiddle she saw the white flash of his grin and
the surprised delight in his eyes. He waved his bow in invitation
and called, “Come up, Sistuh. Up here’s whar yo’ b’longs.” Then she
was among the swaying bodies, the smashing harmonies of the band.
Her muscles twitched to the rhythm, moving her feet and legs in the
intricacies of the new dance, her arms were thrown wide with fingers
snapping the time. She forgot that there would be a solo in church
to-morrow and that her voice needed saving. She remembered nothing
except the words and music that came in a rush out of an old forgotten
memory, beating out from lungs and throat in a torrent of song.

  “If you lika me lika I lika you,
   An’ we lika both the same,
   I’d lika say this very day
   I’d lika change your name....”

On the floor couples were still dancing, whirling more wildly under the
added excitement of the song. The drive of the music through the girl
wrought in her for the first time the almost miraculous duality which
is the gift of only the true artist. It seemed mysteriously to divide
her into two separate entities, one of which floated over the heads of
the dancers through the wide doorway to go blundering inconsequently
about among the soft summer stars. This part of her was concerned only
with beauty--with far thrilling things--Mamba’s love--the harbour at
dawn--Battery gardens under summer moons--all of these things it must
capture and prison in the music that she was making. The quest seemed
suddenly more holy than her prayers. It lifted her to the point of
exaltation that trembles on the brink of tears. Then there was the
other part of her that followed her gaze here and there across the
dance floor, cool, deliberate, detached, arresting first one couple,
then another, holding them tranced and gaping where they stood. This
Lissa was egotistical, supremely self-confident. “I will make them all
stop and listen,” it boasted. “I shall possess them all before I let
them go. I can. I will.” It was the personification of this second
self that stood there on the dais, clad in close-fitting red silk, her
sinuous body a fluid medium through which the maddening reiteration
of the rhythm beat out to the listeners and forced them to respond,
her voice with its deep contralto beauty the very spirit of youth, yet
shading the edges of laughter with a shadow of a sob.

When the song ended the leader merged it without an appreciable break
into “Yip I aidy I ai I ai.” The choice was an inspiration. Lissa had
them all now. Out under the fluttering paper streamers the crowd stood
motionless except for those who, while they held their eyes fixed
upon the singer, swayed their bodies unconsciously in unison with
her own. She had made good her boast. She had captured the last one.
The new song with its devil-may-care note of triumph lifted over the
weaving accompaniment of the band and beat against the flimsy walls
like a living thing. It said: “You are all mine--mine.” It flung it at
them arrogantly with a trace of indulgent contempt, then it wavered,
softened, and said it again in a torrent of passionate gratitude and
love. Her very own--her first audience.

  “Sing of joy, sing of bliss,
   Home was never like this.
   Yip I aidy I ai....”

With an intoxicating thunder of applause sounding in her ears, Lissa
stepped down from the platform. Charlie was waiting there for her, and
before Prince could reach her side he slipped an arm about her and
elbowed a way for her through the stamping, shouting crowd. When they
were finally out of doors they were joined by Gardinia, who flung her
arms about Lissa in a hug that left her breathless. “Where did you get
it, kid?” she asked in wonder.

“Heaven knows! I guess I was as surprised as you.”

Gardinia gave her a second embrace, then turning to Charlie dismissed
him with: “Run along. I got something to say to this sister.”

When he had passed out of earshot she said to the girl: “Look here,
bright eyes, you want to watch your step with that feller they call
Prince. Did he ask to drive you home?”

“Yes, he did say something about it.”

“Well, I hope you told him no. After all, Slim’s settin’ you up to the
party to-night, and he’s got some rights coming to him.”

“All right,” Lissa replied obediently. “I’ll turn Prince down.”

“An’ look here,” the big girl said seriously, “don’t you go losin’ your
head over that nigger. He’s free with his money, and he’s always good
for a swell time, but the sky’s his limit--watch your step. I ain’t so
sure you’re his sort, anyhow. Now, me--that’s a different matter.”

Lissa gave a confident laugh. “Don’t you let that worry you, Sister,”
she replied. “I’m a pretty good hand at taking care of myself.”

Charlie and Slim came up and joined them.

“All right,” Gardinia warned, “just watch your step--that’s all.”

It was well after midnight when the Ford bounced out onto the concrete
road and headed south with the four revellers. Slim sat in his corner
glum and silent. He evidently felt that he had been rather hardly used.
Lissa made several attempts to draw him out and finally yielded to a
growing exasperation. If he thought that she was going to apologise
and eat humble pie, he had another think coming. Her anger rose. He
ought to thank his stars that she had even gone with him, she, a member
of the Reformed Church, a friend of the Broadens. She did not need
to worry. There was Prince, now, ready to show her a good time. The
premonition of danger that she had felt toward him at first had abated
until it had left only an exciting element of mystery and adventure.
She smiled at the memory of Gardinia’s warning. As if she couldn’t take
care of herself. No. She was out on her own now, and she didn’t have to
ask favours of anybody.

When Lissa entered her room she found Mamba sitting just as she had
left her; the lamp was turned low, and the old woman was slouched deep
in her big chair, her gaze fixed beyond the open window to where the
late fragment of a moon was climbing over the housetops. She did not
scold as the girl had expected. Instead she turned her eyes, which had
a slight film of weariness over them, in mute questioning toward the
door.

Lissa exclaimed, “Why, you ought to be ashamed, Grandma, sitting up at
this hour. How come you didn’t go to bed?”

The old figure drew itself together in the chair and spoke. “Turn up
dat lamp so Ah can see yo’ an’ come here.”

Lissa did as she was bidden, and Mamba took her hand and drew her down
upon her lap, then peered searchingly into her face.

She said, “Yo’ been drinkin’, chile.”

“Oh, nothing much, Grandma, just a couple.”

“Yo’ ain’t been bad?”

The girl laughed and patted the old face lightly.

“Not on your life, Grandma. You needn’t worry about me. I had a swell
time dancing, but I’m nobody’s fool.”

“Well, go ’long to bed, an’ in de mornin’ yo’ got to tell me all ’bout
it.”

“Sure thing,” Lissa replied, “but you mustn’t wait up for me like this.
You need your sleep, you know. I got to take care of this old lady. I
can’t get along without her.”

She caught the old woman for a moment in her strong young arms, then
got to her feet and commenced to undress.

“Ain’t no use to say dat, chile,” Mamba replied. “When you gone out
nights Ah all de time gots a feelin’ you might need me, an’ Ah ain’t
likes to take off my clo’es till yo’ gets back home.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Lissa brought Gardinia to meet Mamba with some trepidation. She feared
the impression that her now constant companion would make on the astute
old woman. She thought that her grandmother would be easier in her mind
if she had only her account of the dances and late motor rides that
were becoming more and more frequent as the summer passed.

But one Sunday after morning service the girls were walking together
on the Battery and Gardinia came as far as the gate of the Atkinson
garden. Suddenly she was seized by one of her characteristic impulses.

“Say,” she exclaimed, “I believe I’ll go in and meet that old grandma
of yours you’re always talking about. She must be a rare old dame. I
want to know her.”

There was nothing to be done but to accede, and after an imperceptible
moment of hesitation Lissa said, “Sure, come on in. I reckon she’s in
the room now.”

Gardinia’s glance was busy as they passed through the well-kept garden
and to the neat two-storied building in the rear, with the garage
below, and a glimpse of clean white curtains showing in the windows
above.

“Pretty swell dump,” she admired. “Pretty soft thing you’ve got here,
I’ll say.”

“Grandma,” Lissa said on entering the room, “this is my friend
Gardinia; she wanted to meet you, so I brought her in.”

Mamba came forward and took the younger woman’s hand. From their
network of wrinkles the old eyes looked searchingly into her face. Then
she smiled, showing her big white teeth.

“The kid’s been telling me so much about you,” Gardinia explained,
“that I just wanted to come in and get acquainted. Guess you think I’m
a funny sort of friend for that highbrow gal of yours, eh?”

Mamba murmured something about being glad to meet her. But as is so
often the case with first remarks, her words meant little or nothing,
serving merely as a screen from behind which each of the women was
exploring for the real ego that lay secreted behind words, eyes, lips.

Lissa, watching closely, realised that they liked each other. That in
spite of the differences of age and outlook there was a hidden bond of
intimacy to which they both responded. It mystified her. She was still
too unknowing to recognise it as the sisterhood of the unchaste. It was
something that needed no words. There it was in each. In Mamba a thin
echo from an incredibly vanished past; in the girl, only yesterday,
and perhaps again to-morrow, but across the years it sent its spark of
understanding and was tacitly accepted by each. Strange to say, it was
not prejudicial. It was a phase of their world, and it was a phase that
belonged to the generous, the kind, as well as to the penny-grabbing,
the depraved.

Gardinia burst through the reserve that she had been wearing like a
strait-jacket. She laughed heartily, her eyes looking into the old
woman’s and sparkling mischievously.

“I bet you were a gay one yourself once,” she said. “I’ll bet you knew
what it was like to hit the ceiling on a big night--eh, Mauma?”

Lissa was shocked. Mamba had taught her to treat age with great
respect. But to her amazement she saw that Mamba was pleased.

She answered with her surprisingly young, vital laugh:

“T’ings was diff’ent in dem days, an’ if Ah is broke loose den dere
ain’t nobody libin’ to tell on me now. But nowadays gals gots to
behabe.”

“Sure,” Gardinia agreed, as she took a seat and let her admiring gaze
take in the cozy and tastefully furnished room, with the sunny garden
showing beyond the window. “Sure, and don’t you worry about Lissa. If
she’ll just listen to me she’ll have a good time and she won’t get into
no trouble.”

She looked around for her friend, but Lissa had gone into the next room
to change from her Sunday dress. At the same moment Mamba also noticed
that they were alone and immediately took advantage of the opportunity.

“Tell me,” she begged in a lowered voice, “who dis yaller nigger Lissa
goin’ roun’ wid? She won’t tell me nuttin’ ’bout um, but Ah seen um
t’other day when he come by for she, an’ Ah wouldn’t trus’ um far as Ah
could t’row um.”

Gardinia said, “Prince ain’t so bad. He’s too mashed on himself to last
long with anybody else. But he flings the long green high and far, and
he’ll show her a good time.”

Mamba leaned forward and said confidentially, “Ah ’fraid for my gal.
She ain’t like yo’ an’ me, Sistuh--she ain’t seen nuttin’ ob mens, an’
dat yaller nigger gots woman-chaser wrote all ober um.”

“Don’t you worry, Mauma,” Gardinia said reassuringly, “the first thing
I did was to put Lissa wise, and besides, she’s one of them cool
sisters. Ain’t no danger of her losing her head.”

“Well, all Ah asks is dat yo’ keep an eye on she for me, an’ ef trouble
breaks any time let me know. Ah is ole but Ah ain’t no fool at takin’
care ob my chillun.”

“That’s right, old lady, I just bet you ain’t no fool. But there ain’t
goin’ be no trouble.”

Lissa came in then, and the three chatted for a few moments. Then
Gardinia took her departure.

“Dat’s a good gal yo’ gots fuh friend,” Mamba said when the girl had
gone. And Lissa stood wondering just what the definition for good could
be in Mamba’s lexicon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Labor Day--steaming and hot, with an opaque sky and a red sun burning
through it. Underfoot the pavements streaming with condensed moisture
and flinging back reflections of houses, shop windows, sky, in colours
soft and wonderful to see. Summer’s fag end, with its spent ardours
behind it, and autumn around the next corner. And for to-day nothing
for the negroes to do but to be glad, to leave the wharves, the
bakeries, the buildings of the houses, the stoking of furnaces, and
tell the world how good a thing it is to be alive, to have laboured,
and now to claim a respite.

September weather.

Down in the white residential streets, block after block of closed
mansions sleeping away the hot hours in gardens where nature spent
her beauty with open hands, and still had more each day to fling
over deserted piazzas in a foam of climbing roses, to pour in pools
of oleander bloom between moss-hung live oaks. On King Street the
fashionable stores dozing behind their drawn blinds. Here was a town
that the winter tourist would not recognise, a town claimed for the
day by its darker half. Its pavements swarming with noisy ragamuffin
black children watching eagerly for the parade. Bands passing across
street ends blaring for a moment, then gone. Down on Broad Street the
massed trombones and horns of the Jenkins orphanage, assailing the
offices of the morning _News and Courier_ with a blast of good will
that temporarily paralysed the editorial brains within and traffic
without. The parade: all of the unions in line. The dignity of labour
might be well enough for the white brotherhoods, but among the negroes
the pompous old institution was finding it difficult to maintain its
pose. Hand saws, carried over shoulders, fluttered incongruously
with coloured ribbons, and hammers were wearing gaudy streamers. The
bakers, attired in white aprons and starched chef’s caps, bore aloft a
gigantic loaf of bread that was dressed for Mardi Gras. Bands kept the
steamy air vibrating, and the crowds sweated and cheered with complete
abandon. The afternoon would see an exodus to all of the negro parks,
and along the wharves several dilapidated excursion steamers waited in
nervous and asthmatic expectancy for their gala freight.

Lissa was awakened early by the laughter and talk in the street. For
a while she lay luxuriously in her bed and through the morning haze
watched pigeons strut and gossip on the wet purple of a slate roof. How
different the day was from the usual workdays. She felt a pleasurable
excitement in the air. Everybody would be having fun to-day--cutting
loose--forgetting troubles--just living.

Mamba lay in her bed across the clean airy room with heavy sleep still
upon her. With her eyes closed and her alert spirit off guard, how
different, how shrunken and old, she seemed. Why, she wasn’t Mamba at
all. Lissa wouldn’t look at her like this. It made her feel suddenly
alone and unprotected--out of key with the day. Soon that strange,
quiet figure would open its eyes again, and then the person Lissa knew
would return, watchful and sure, to see that nothing could harm her.

The girl stretched lazily, got out of bed, and went to the window.
Outside the lawn lay wet and sweet with dew. The sunlight was a faint
pink now, and the shadows purple. It was going to be a hot day, a
mild sea air moved the curtains and fanned her skin through her sheer
nightdress. She conquered a sudden impulse to strip off the garment and
yield her body to its seductiveness: to let its soft fingers stroke her
breasts and follow the curves of hip and thigh. No, Mamba wouldn’t like
that. It was the sort of thing that she mustn’t do.

Well, she had a lot to be thankful for, more than most of the girls she
knew. The Atkinsons were away at Flat Rock cooling their heels in the
mountains for the month and had left Mamba to look after the house. It
was almost like their own now, with the kitchen to prepare their meals
in, and the lovely things in the big dim rooms to be looked at and
enjoyed at leisure.

She had a full day ahead of her. Dinner at two with the Broadens, and
after dinner the other members of the Club would come in for some
music. Then at night a party up the road with Prince. They would dance
that exciting dance together. Funny--that story she heard, that they
were taking it up now in New York--calling it the Charleston. White
folks going wild over a black folks’ dance. Well, she for one could
understand that. Then home when the night was late and cool--splitting
the air in Prince’s red racer--“Life,” as Gardinia would say, “with a
red lining.” But she mustn’t talk too much about that. Mamba had a way
of worrying when she went to a dance, and she didn’t want to fret her.

And yet, for all of its bright prospects, when Lissa came in to
supper she had the feeling that, so far, at any rate, the day had
been disappointing. She had set out early for her dinner engagement,
planning a long leisurely walk through the more shady of the streets,
but at the intersection of one of the main thoroughfares she had run
foul of the parade. At first she was annoyed. The jostling crowds
of negroes, the impact of small black, sweating bodies offended her
senses. Why couldn’t they enjoy themselves quietly and decently,
anyway--why did they have to be so dirty? But it was impossible to
cross the street, and she was forced to be an onlooker. She supposed,
after all, that people had a right to enjoy themselves in their own
way. But what a racket they made. The carpenters passed, with their
absurd ribbons fluttering from work-scarred tools, grinning and calling
to friends in the crowd. Then a band went crashing by, giving her a
funny twist inside and plucking at the muscles of her legs and feet.
She started to mark time and unconsciously to drift in unison with
the crowd. When the masons came abreast of her she looked up and met
the eyes of a bright-faced young negro. He had a large trowel in one
hand and a small one in the other, and he was beating time in rhythm
with the band. “Hello dere, Sistuh,” he called with a grin. There was
something infectious about that grin with its gleaming teeth and full
dark lips. She laughed back with sudden camaraderie, “Hello yourself!”

He stopped for a second before her and said boldly: “What boat yo’
goin’ on dis ebenin’? De _Planter_, de _Pilot Boy_? Le’s make it de
same.”

Still laughing, she shook her head, and the marchers swept him away
while he looked back with a rueful glance.

She came to herself and glanced around sharply. Had any one she knew
seen her? But what fun they did have! A sudden pang of envy assailed
her. She wrenched herself out of their holiday mood and stemmed the
tide in the direction of the Broaden home.

Later, all through the eminently polite conversations, the excellently
rendered music of the club, the artistic pronouncements of North, she
kept seeing the face of the young mason, and picturing him dancing on
the deck of the excursion boat--eating watermelon and spitting seeds
over the rail, grinning boldly at the girls. “Hello dere, Sistuh, what
boat yo’ goin’ on dis ebenin’?” and his comical, rueful face as he
passed out of sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

During supper Lissa was silent and preoccupied. Mamba studied her
closely with anxiety showing in her keen old eyes. At last she asked,
“Yo’ goin’ out wid dat nigger Prince to-night, chile?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“How come yo’ nebber bring him to meet me like yo’ done promise long
ago?”

“Oh, that’s so--you did ask me to, ’way back in July. I’ve been meaning
to bring him, but I keep forgetting.”

Mamba spoke sadly: “Yo’ ain’t forget, Chile. Ah ask yo’ in July, an’ Ah
ask yo’ in August--an’ yo’ ain’t de forgettin’ kin’. Why yo’ don’t want
fo’ me to see um?”

Lissa looked up into the old woman’s face. “All right, Grandma,” she
answered, “since you put it that way, it’s because you wouldn’t like
him and he wouldn’t like you. He’s different. He’s new time--you’re
old time. You’d be thinking things about him that aren’t so. I’ve known
him three months now--I know just where he begins and just where he
leaves off. We had a good talking out, and since then we haven’t had
any fooling--just a good time--dancing, riding in his car--that’s all.”

“Ah saw um at de gate once,” Mamba told her. “It been half daak, but Ah
could see woman-chaser writ all over um. Ah ain’t want yo’ fuh know dem
kin’.”

The girl sprang up impulsively, ran around the table, flung herself
into Mamba’s lap, and gave her a hug.

“Oh, quit worryin’, Grandma,” she begged. “I’m just as hard as nails, I
tell you. I never saw a man yet who could keep me from coming back home
to you. But I’m not an old woman--I’ve got to play a little bit--I’ve
got to dance and cut loose now and then, and Prince is the swellest
sport between Savannah and Norfolk--and he sure can show a girl a time.
Now, you leave him to me.”

Mamba said nothing more then, only patting the head that was buried
against her breast, and swaying a little in her chair, as though
she were rocking a small child in her arms. But an hour later, when
Lissa left the room attired in her red party frock, the old woman
lock-stepped her down the stairs and out to the car that stood at the
curb beyond the Atkinsons’ garden. She was going to have a look for
herself.

What she saw was a small evil-looking scarlet roadster with two
low seats side by side, and in one of them, with his legs extended
indolently before him, a man who looked as though he had lived about
forty years and had lived them hard. In the faint glow of a street
lamp she could see that there were pouches under his eyes. The eyes
were shadowed beneath the visor of a checked cap where they could tell
no secrets, but when he turned toward Mamba she felt that they were
laughing at her from their safe retreat.

Lissa must have sensed it too, for her body stiffened, and she pressed
defensively against the old woman.

Mamba and Prince looked at each other for a moment of silence, then
Mamba said: “Yo’ been seein’ a lot ob my gal.”

She was answered by a low confident laugh, and: “A lot’s a big word,
ole lady. Ah ain’t seen nuttin’ of her yet.”

That the sinister implication of the reply was not lost on Mamba was
evidenced by a tremor of the hand that she closed upon the side of the
car as she leaned over and spoke directly into his face.

“Ah ain’t expectin’ no hahm to come to she, an’ Ah ain’t tryin’ to baby
my gal. Ah trus’ she anywhere wid anybody any time. But when she go
away from here wid yo’, yo’s ’sponsible for she. Ef enyt’ing happen to
she yo’ gots me--Mamba--to settle wid. Yo’ gets dat?”

The man looked her up and down. It was not in him to feel the spiritual
power that animated the fragile old creature who hung to the side of
his car. He could only see a rather comic little figure with great
false teeth gleaming in the lamplight against the black of her face,
and a hand that trembled absurdly and impotently on his car. He laughed
at her frankly, throwing his head back so that she saw the insolent
challenge in his eyes, and a livid scar that crossed his forehead like
a long centipede.

Lissa put her arm around the old woman and drew her close to her side.
“Here, cut that out,” she cried sharply to the man. “Nobody’s going to
laugh at Grandma and take me out--you can just get that straight now.”

Prince’s change of front was almost comical in its suddenness.

“Me laugh at de ole lady?--Honey, yo’ don’t know me. Ah jes laugh
because she think anything can happen while Ah takin’ care of yo’.”

He reached over and patted Mamba’s hand reassuringly. “Don’t yo’
worry, Gran’ma. Make your min’ easy. Your gal ain’t never been so well
fix’ befo’.”

During the brief parley the engine had been running slowly. Now he
advanced the accelerator, and the sound swelled suddenly and ominously
in Mamba’s ears.

“Get in, Lissa,” he called. “We’s late enough already.”

But there was no disguising the fact that he had laughed at Mamba.
He had not supposed that Lissa would care, and he had taken the
chance. Now the girl stood with her arm tight about the old woman
and hesitated, looking at him with anger and distrust in her eyes.
For a moment it seemed as though she would let him drive away
alone. But she had longed so for the night to come. The mason in
the parade that morning had started a hunger in her for youth that
could forget itself and send worries flying--and she had been such
a lady all afternoon--and there, half an hour away, were waiting
music--dancing--throbbing young bodies--“Life with a red lining.”

She caught Mamba to her, half smothered her with kisses, and sprang
into the machine beside Prince. There was a hoarse triumphant cry of
metal as the gears meshed, and the red car lunged northward.

Mamba stood and watched it go, first a crimson blotch that came and
went as it passed under successive arc lights, then only a tiny red
spark that zigzagged around other cars and went out slowly like a star
in blowing smoke.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mamba sat at the open window. There was a tensity about her attitude as
though she were waiting by prearrangement for a certain occurrence and
that she was unsure only of the hour. St. Michael’s chimes had spoken
to her every quarter hour, and each time at the first mellow note she
had sat forward, counted with an inaudible movement of the lips, then,
in the ensuing silence, let herself go slowly back in her chair to wait
for the next. She was fully clad, even to the sedate black straw bonnet
which was an emblem of respectability without which she was never seen
upon the street.

Midnight had passed, heavy-footed and weary, then, almost staccato by
comparison, came the single clear note announcing the new day.

A ramshackle automobile rattled noisily up the quiet street and stopped
with a sigh before the Atkinsons’ gate. At the same moment that Mamba’s
form strained from her window, Gardinia Whitmore arrived breathless on
the grass below.

“Lissa home yet?” she asked.

Mamba disappeared immediately and a moment later stood beside the young
woman, her fingers closed in a grip that was almost painful about
Gardinia’s arm.

“No,” she said briefly; then: “Ah been waitin’ fer yo’ to come fo’ me.
Whar yo’ t’ink she gone?”

Gardinia’s voice was edged with hysteria. She had been drinking, and
exhaled an effluvium of corn whisky.

“I swear to Gawd I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, Gran’ma,” she
began. “I did just like I promised, I kept an eye on her, but there
was something about that licker of Prince’s. It knocked me out, an’ it
knocked out Slim, an’ we ain’t no babies. When I come ’round, the first
thing I looked for was Lissa and Prince, and when I ain’t seen them I
made Slim burn it down here to you, just like I promised.”

Mamba’s voice came urgent, steadying: “Where dat nigger Prince lib?
Tell me all yo’ know ’bout um, gal.”

“Nobody don’t know much about him, and he’s such a liar, you can’t
count on what he says about himself. All I know is he lives across
the bridge. He says he runs a big truck farm and a lot of stores over
there.”

“What he name? He mus’ hab more ob a name dan jus’ Prince.”

Gardinia stood silent, trying to remember. Then she called Slim. With
maddening deliberation he detached himself from the car and slouched
indolently forward.

“What’s Prince’s real name?” the girl demanded.

The man stood shuffling one foot backward and forward on the grass, his
mouth sagging open, while he pursued the glimmer of a memory through
the labyrinth of his befuddled brain. At last he announced, “Ah got it.
Ah done heard some of the mens call him Bluton--Gilly Bluton.”

The word shocked Mamba into instant activity. She spun around and
re-entered the house, emerging a moment later with a big old-fashioned
pocketbook in her hand. She took each of the young people by an arm and
propelled them toward the gate, her body rocking with her speed and the
intensity of her purpose. At the car she stuffed a bill into Slim’s
hand. “Ober de bridge, boy,” she ordered, “an’ fuh Gawd’ sake hurry.”

Then, while he was obediently cranking the car, she turned and laid a
hand on Gardinia’s shoulder. “Go home an’ sleep it off, gal,” she said
in a gentle voice. “Yo’ ain’t a bad gal, an’ yo’ done what yo’ can.”

Slim sat silent, giving his whole attention to the task of getting the
utmost out of his dilapidated machine. Mamba’s thoughts wrestled with
the problem that confronted her. It was useless to plan. She would
have to depend on Hagar, who knew the ground. But she had an almost
superstitious fear of the consequences that might result from such a
dependence. Always it had been the well-meant bungling of her great
awkward daughter that had precipitated trouble. She remembered vividly
the summer dawn when Hagar had sent for her to come to the East Bay
tenement after she had jeopardised all of her hopes for Lissa by
rescuing Bluton and bringing him to the city to be found and cared for
by the police. The malign and ironical fate that prompted Hagar’s good
impulses had never played a more cruel joke on her than that. She had
risked everything to save Bluton--for what? To attempt the ruin of her
own daughter. The thought stabbed the old woman like a blade, and she
broke her silence, urging Slim to greater speed.

It must have been between two and three o’clock when Mamba reached
the cabin in which Hagar lived with old Vina. Overhead the great void
of sky was filled with drifting mist, dark to the east, and showing
a luminous area over the western treetops where the moon was tilting
toward the horizon. In the faint light the cabin had a ghostly,
deserted look. Mamba sprang from the car, and knocked upon the door,
calling urgently, “Hagar--Hagar!”

Almost instantly the door was opened, and the woman stood in her white
nightdress, looming huge against the dark.

“Lissa’s ober here with dat damn’ nigger Bluton,” Mamba shot at her;
then she strove by repetition to drive the idea into the sleep-dulled
brain. “Here--here--do yo’ unnerstan’?--wid Bluton.”

“Can’t be, Ma--not Lissa.”

“Ah tell yo’ she is. We got to find her quick. Where’d he take her? Yo’
knows him, yo’ know his ways wid women.”

Hagar was awake now, and she responded to Mamba’s old power over her.
It was almost as though the older brain had assumed control of nerve
and muscle in the big body, telling them what to do. Hagar reached into
the room and caught up a cloak that she flung over her nightdress;
then, with Mamba, she sprang for the car.

       *       *       *       *       *

Over the uneven road the machine bounded, plunging through tunnels of
blackness under live-oak avenues, racing between broom-straw fields
under a wide emptiness of sky. And always Hagar, sitting on the rear
seat and leaning forward with her face at Slim’s shoulder, told him
which turnings to take. About them the night, under its shroud of mist,
lay as quiet, as indifferent to human urgency, as death. The steady
pulsing of the motor and the rattle of the vehicle served only to
accentuate the awful loneliness of the country.

They rocketed past the huddled cabins of a settlement and struck a
narrow dirt road that led out through a stand of yellow pine toward the
swamp that lay black and solid against the horizon. Hagar’s fingers
clamped down on Slim’s shoulder.

“Stop,” she whispered.

Under her hand the machine seemed to die in midair, gasping, and
settling suddenly to earth. The trees that had been rushing past them
stopped in their tracks, crowded close, and looked down on the three
intruders.

“We got to get out here an’ walk,” Hagar said. “Come on, we ain’t got
no time to lose now.”

But the man did not leave his seat. Mamba turned back and asked why he
waited.

He settled forward in the seat, his body relaxed, his head propped
against the back.

“Nuttin’ doin’, Gran’ma,” he drawled. “Ah’s a hired driver. Ah ain’t
got nuttin’ against Prince. Ah ain’t see nuttin’. Ah ain’t hear
nuttin’. When yo’s ready to go home, yo’ can wake me up.”

But now the initiative had passed to Hagar. She caught Mamba by the arm
and urged. “Come on, Ma, we ain’t need no man to help.”

They would soon be there now, Hagar explained as she hurried the old
woman forward. This was the place where Bluton ran his crap game. A
little farther, at the swamp’s edge, they would find the cabin. Then
they were upon it. There was a small opening in the trees, and through
it the sky let down a dim grey light. The cabin was a black cube with
one candlelit window. Before the door in spidery outline stood the red
racer.

Not until the women were at the door did they hear the first sound.
Lissa’s voice in a sort of desperate monotony: “Not that, Prince--not
that--not that.”

Hagar kicked the door open, and they entered together. Lissa was seated
on the floor with her back to the wall, her knees drawn up, and her
chin on them. Her arms were locked about her legs below the knees. The
candlelight flickered upon the golden brown of her shoulder and upper
arm where her dress had been torn. Bluton was hanging over her in a
threatening attitude.

At the entrance of the women both faces were flung toward the door.

With a shrill cry Lissa was up and in Mamba’s arms. Between them
and Prince stood Hagar, her feet planted wide apart. Her arms held
akimbo under the full coat exaggerated her already massive bulk to a
preposterous breadth, and her head, held low and thrust menacingly
forward, was scarcely visible to the women who stood in the shadows
behind her. No word had been spoken. There had been no sound except
Lissa’s cry, and the waiting silence of the night had seemed to
suck the shrill note from her lips and leave the four occupants of
the room suspended as though in a vacuum. From the swamp came the
demoniac scream of a cat--a struggle--a strangling death wail--and
again silence. A subtle change became manifest in the appearance of
the girl. She ceased trembling. Her form drew to its full height. A
ripple of tautened muscle stirred under the smooth bronze of her skin
where the shoulder rose above her tattered clothing. Then in a flash
she was out of Mamba’s arms, past the gigantic form of her mother, and
upon the cowering man. Words that rose to her lips were broken there
into strange, savage utterance unintelligible as speech, but more
eloquent--more terrifying. One slender hand clawed downward and four
livid streaks followed the flensing nails from forehead to chin. Hagar
reached out an arm and caught the girl in its curve, pressed her to her
side for a moment, then passed her back to Mamba.

As suddenly as it had come, the girl’s passion left her. Her head went
down on the old shoulder. “Oh, Grandma, he tried to--he tried to----”
and her voice broke into uncontrollable sobbing.

The deep compassionate voice soothed her: “Ah know, Chile, Ah know--but
dat all done now, yo’ wid Mamba now.” She drew the shaking girl from
the room and into the heavy stillness of the night. There was something
terribly complete about those two, about their entire sufficiency
to each other. The enfolding devotion of the old woman covering the
girl and isolating her from every evil, every alien touch--Mamba and
Lissa--no one else.

Hagar stood for a moment like one who has been blinded by sudden
intense light. Her eyes still held the image, quiveringly alive, of
the splendid thing that was her child. The dream pattern that she had
treasured of the slender little girl was shattered, and as yet she
could not take in this new and marvellous being. She was dizzy from the
revelation. She was also vaguely conscious of a loneliness deeper than
any that had gone before.

The chaos of her mind was shot through by an instinctive warning.
Suddenly her brain cleared, her body tensed. She spun around and
faced Bluton. The naked fear in his face gave her an exquisite pang.
Something deep and elemental broke free inside of her. She stood
watching him, catlike, as he moved along the wall in the direction of
the crap table which stood at the farther end of the room.

She knew what he wanted now. She let him get almost to the drawer with
its brass knobs, her eyes and his locked all the time. She saw his face
change, glimmer with hope, relief. Then she was before him, with the
table at her back. As he had advanced slowly, with his studied attempt
at casualness, so now he retreated before her, while she closed the
distance between them. It was like some ghastly rehearsal, carried out
with utter absorption, for some momentous event that was set for the
future. It was so deliberate, so mechanical in its studied advance and
retreat. Then at last the wall was against the man’s shoulder blades.

The touch of the unyielding timber seemed to turn his limbs to water.
His knees gave, and he had difficulty propping his body upright. He
raised his arms before his face in a weak defensive gesture.

Hagar said, “Yo’ rattlesnake! Yo’ would be dead now ’cept fuh me--an’
now--my own gal Lissa----” Then, after a pause, “_You!_”

The man found voice in a screech. It was so weak that it scarcely
filled the little room--at its peak it plunged suddenly into silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mamba wanted to be going. She wanted to get Lissa away from that
horrible place, back into the ordered peace of streets and houses. But
Hagar did not come. Why couldn’t the woman hurry and let them get to
the automobile and away? She put the girl, who was quiet at last, out
of her arms and started back to the shack. The door was open, and the
draught played with the candle flame, peopling the room with lurching
shadows and half lights.

The old woman entered, with Lissa peering fearfully over her shoulder.
Hagar stood with her back to them, her arms hanging straight and long
at her sides, her bullet head thrust forward. Her huge shoulders flung
a black arch of shadow over half of the wall before her. Bluton lay in
a huddle at her feet. His head was twisted at a preposterous angle. The
yellow of his face had gone a dark purple, and the candle flame was
flung back in two cold high lights from his wide, unblinking eyes.

Lissa screamed. Hagar turned heavily in her tracks and looked at them
dully from raised eyes under lowered brows.

Mamba advanced toward her. In her extremity her voice seemed heavy with
hatred for her big bungling daughter.

“Yo’ damned fool,” she said. “See what yo’ done now, eberybody at dat
dance know Lissa been wid Prince. People seen me come out here. Ah
ought to ha’ known if Ah turned my back on yo’, yo’d play hell----”

Hagar buried her face in the crook of an arm and commenced to sob. “Oh,
Gawd, Ma, Ah ain’t stop to t’ink. Ah only know he been hurt Lissa.”

Mamba wasted no sentimental pity on the broken thing upon the floor.
Her whole being was focussed on the staggering predicament that
confronted her.

“Get outside,” she ordered. “Ah got to t’ink.” She blew out the candle
and followed them into the open, thinking aloud: “Ah got to sen’ Lissa
away quick, an’ she got to go far. But Ah can’t let she go alone, an’
she ain’t got no frien’ to go to.”

Between broken sobs Hagar said surprisingly, “Ah got a frien’.”

Mamba looked at her skeptically. “Yo’ has? Where?”

“Ah got a frien’ what’s a Reverent, an’ he lib in Noo Yo’k.”

“Yo’ know whar he house is?”

Hagar was getting herself in hand now and had stopped crying. “Ah got
it writ in a book he gib me. He a good man--yo’ needn’t be ’fraid to
sen’ Lissa to he.”

“Oh, he dat Yankee nigger what use’ to be down here?”

Hagar nodded assent.

“Come, den,” Mamba commanded. “We ain’t got no time to lose.”

They waked Slim, who grinned sleepily and leered when he saw the girl,
and started him back to the village. When they reached Hagar’s cabin
she ran inside and returned in a moment with a small black book in her
hand. She pressed it on Mamba, who had followed her to the door.

“De name an’ number is writ inside,” she said. “Lissa can tell he
dat she Baxter gal--an’ to ’member what he say ’bout always bein’ my
frien’.”

Then Mamba handed Hagar a ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook and gave
her instructions: “Listen! Ah been t’inkin’ hard. Now yo’ hit it out
an’ hide. Dat’s bad, but if yo’ stay roun’ here, you’ll be gibbin’
yo’self away by mornin’; so dere ain’t nuttin’ fo’ it. If Baggart catch
yo’, keep yo’ mout’ shet. Don’t say so much as yes or no ’til Ah sen’
my boss or Mr. Saint to talk for yo’. Ef yo’ open dat fool mout’ ob
yourn, nottin’ Ah can do’ll sabe Lissa. Now you unnerstan’?”

Full of her plan-making, Mamba turned to leave her daughter. She felt a
gentle tug at her sleeve and faced Hagar again, impatient at the delay.

“Well,” she snapped, “what yo’ want now?”

Hagar made one of her gauche childish gestures toward the automobile.
“She wouldn’t care so much--ef Ah go an’ tell she good-bye?”

Mamba caught her breath sharply, and suddenly she was no longer merely
the fierce intelligence that drove that inarticulate, powerful machine
in the service of the grandchild, but Hagar’s own mother, feeling her
child’s loneliness and sorrow in her own spirit.

She took one of the big, beautifully made hands and drew Hagar forward,
speaking gently as they plodded through the heavy white sand: “Ah
sorry, Daughter, Ah mighty sorry--Ah get t’inkin’ so hahd Ah fuhget. Ah
say hahd t’ings Ah ain’t mean. It ain’t fuh me--Ah jes study all de
time ’bout dat gal, an’ my mind seem like it dry up on odder t’ing.”

Hagar stopped beside the car. The girl sitting alone on the rear seat
looked up, and the eyes of the two met. For a moment they stood so
in a silence that was eloquent with emotions that speech could only
have cheapened and tarnished. So long since the cord had been severed.
Centuries lay between them now--and yet, in that fractional part of
a minute life beat out again from the heart of the big black woman,
throbbed in her child, and coursed refluent and warm back through her
own being. Hagar lifted one of Lissa’s hands and humbly, yet with a
certain possessive pride, kissed it upon the open palm. But in a sudden
tumult of emotion the girl snatched her hand away, flung her arms
around her mother’s neck, and kissed her again and again.

The car gave a warning shudder, and the women separated. Hagar said,
“Good-bye, chile. Don’t be ’fraid. Nuttin’ goin’ hahm yo’.” And the
next moment they were gone among the mists and shadows.

       *       *       *       *       *

Saint Wentworth sat in the lobby of the Pennsylvania Hotel and
impatiently watched the hands of a clock that seemed to have been
stricken with creeping paralysis. At noon he was to meet Valerie over
on the Avenue and select the ring. It was a terribly complicated
business, getting married in New York. Saturday they had got the
license. Simple enough, he had been told--a few minutes at the
Municipal Building--that was all. They had gone together, blinded by a
new glamour in the air, and feeling themselves marked for public notice
by the magnitude and unusual nature of the step that they contemplated.
But upon their arrival at the vast downtown structure, they had been
both reassured and chagrined to find themselves in a queue half a
block long, sandwiched between a frankly infatuated negro couple and
a pair who made love in foreign liquid syllables. It was odd how many
people had the same idea. Then there was the big room with long tables
where couples sat, while Eros, in the guise of an officious elderly
man, leaned between them and explained in lucid and complete detail
the meaning of certain perfectly obvious and embarrassingly personal
questions. Saint, very red, tried to forestall him by explaining that
they both understood. It was no use. The man was filled with the zeal
of a public servant who glories in doing well and conspicuously work
that occasions no effort.

And now to-day there were more details--more complications. The
minister had to be seen again, and forms prepared. Saint had
telegraphed home for a copy of his birth certificate and had not
received a reply. It seemed that you could not be married in New York
without documentary evidence that you had been born. The fact that you
could be seen, touched, even separated from a fee, were inconclusive
evidences of existence. Only eleven-twenty. No use to start yet and
have to cool his heels on the Avenue.

His thoughts drifted to another matter.

He was brought to earth by the sound of his own name droned in a loud
monotonous voice. Good: that would be the wire about the certificate.
He signalled the boy and tore open the envelope. The telegram was from
his mother. It said:

  Mamba’s granddaughter Lissa in trouble arrives New York noon train.
  Mamba begs you to meet and assist her.

Good God: Couldn’t he even be safe from the old responsibilities here,
and at the one time in life when a man should be free? And Val--just
about their biggest moment--buying the ring--then blissful hours at the
stores and decorators, planning for the new furnishings. And now at the
exact hour when she would be awaiting him he was expected to respond
to this unreasonable and insane summons. Well, he’d be damned if he
would. Mamba, yes--but not to the third generation.

Perhaps he could still catch Val by ’phone and postpone the engagement.
But why think of that when he had decided against going? He tore the
yellow slip, balled it up, and volleyed it at a waste-paper basket.
Then he went through an instinctive hand-washing gesture. Well, that
was that.

He got up and strode restlessly about the vast lobby. When he came to a
standstill he found to his dismay and anger that he had paused before a
telephone booth. “Go to hell!” he apostrophised it fiercely under his
breath, and turned away. But a power that he was at a loss to explain
kept dragging him back, filling him with a deep and inexplicable misery
as long as he moved away. Mamba out of the long past with the funny
string-wrapped hair, the solitary fang--her savagery--her understanding
tenderness. Mamba with her one idea and her everlasting persistence.
What did she care if it upset his plans?--Lissa--Lissa! He was reminded
of the time she had made him take Hagar in at the mines. Would he never
be free of Mamba’s daughters? What was there about her that could hound
a man across the miles and make him feel like a cur until he did her
bidding? A comical old negress a thousand miles away, and yet, somehow,
he felt that he dare not go back and meet her eyes unless he had
responded to her summons for help.

He found himself calling a familiar number. Valerie’s voice--even over
the ’phone, that dewy early morning quality that made his heart hang a
beat. Good God! he hadn’t thought yet what to say. How could he put it?

“Val, I’m desolated, broken-hearted. Promise you’ll forgive me for what
I am going to say. No. Not that--not that--I am sorry I scared you.
It’s that I can’t meet you at noon. There’s something else I have to
do.... Well, it’s awfully hard to explain over the ’phone. There’s
a girl coming up from Charleston I’ve got to go and meet.... Mamba’s
granddaughter Lissa. You remember her, don’t you?... Yes, she’s in some
sort of trouble, and Mamba has gotten Mother to telegraph asking me
to meet her at the noon train.... Jove, you’re a dear. Three o’clock,
then--at Tiffany’s. You’re an angel, Val.”

Wentworth did not at once recognise his protégée when she came up the
stair from the lower level in the stream of passengers. He had been
looking for the girl whom he remembered vaguely as being slender and
pretty with eyes like those of Mamba and Hagar, and who, alas, would
now be in trouble. It was not until he could have touched her with his
hand that he recognised her. Taken from her familiar matrix and placed
before Saint against the novel setting of the vast station, she stood
out for the first time, not as Mamba’s grandchild to be taken as a
matter of course, but as Lissa Atkinson, with an individuality of her
own. Wentworth was startled. It was as though he saw her for the first
time.

She was clad in a modish tailored suit of dark blue with a flash of
bright embroidery on collar and cuffs, and carried a small blue silk
umbrella suspended from her wrist by a loop. Wentworth’s glance took in
the slender, superbly carried figure and the expressive face with its
small full-lipped mouth and Mamba’s eyes.

She met his gaze and flashed him a look of surprised, almost
incredulous, recognition. “Why, Mr. Saint!” she exclaimed. “What on
earth are you doing here?”

“Hello, Lissa,” he answered. “Didn’t you know that Mamba sent me a
message to meet you and help you get settled?”

“Why, no. You see I left in a hurry. She must have heard of your being
here after she told me good-bye. That’s just like Grandma. She thinks
of everything.”

The girl’s self-possession was colossal, almost disconcerting. Saint
took her small valise. There was something at once flattering and
embarrassing about the unquestioning way that she put herself in his
hands.

They stood under the vast dome, with scurrying humanity brushing past
them, and Wentworth wondered what to do next.

“Have you any place to go?” he asked.

Lissa opened her handbag and produced a Book of Common Prayer. Then she
opened it at the flyleaf and presented it to Saint.

He studied the inscription for a moment. Of course--the Reverend Thomas
Grayson. In his mind’s eye arose a picture of a broad imaginative face
with heavy earnestness of purpose.

“What luck!” he exclaimed, his expression clearing. “We’ll hop in a
taxi and go right up.”

Safely in the cab, which was threading its way toward Harlem, Wentworth
was free to give his whole attention to the problem of his travelling
companion.

“What’s the trouble, Lissa?” he asked.

She sat back in her corner and with that complete faith in his
willingness to assume her responsibilities that had embarrassed him in
the station, told him simply and with complete self-possession what had
occurred.

When she had finished he gave a low expressive whistle.

“Well, I must say,” he commented, “you don’t seem to be afraid of the
consequences as far as you are concerned.”

“I am not,” she replied confidently. “Grandma and Mamma’ll fix it at
home; there’s nothing they can’t fix. And I have you to look after me
here.”

This alarming surrender to his care provoked a very pertinent question.

“How are you fixed for money?” he asked bluntly.

She opened her handbag and gave him a roll of bills and a pass book on
a Charleston bank. He counted the money--three hundred dollars. Then
he opened the pass book. It showed an account in the name of Lissa
Atkinson that had been opened nineteen years previously. He spun the
pages that exhibited columns of deposits of one dollar--sometimes
two--here and there a week was skipped. That was when Hagar was up for
a fine, he thought. After each of these eloquent breaks the amounts
would run to one fifty or even two fifty until the deficit had been
made good. He came to the final page and found the balance: fourteen
hundred and twenty-five dollars. For a moment he sat struck dumb by
the utter beauty of the thing that lay behind the prosaic columns of
figures. Mamba--a maker of bricks without straw, a disciple of a single
transcendent ideal, in the name of which she had worked her obscure
miracles, with none to know, none to applaud.

Wentworth turned with a new curiosity to examine the girl who had been
the cause of such devotion. The very magnitude of the sacrifices which
she represented endowed her with an importance out of proportion to
herself as an individual. She was a symbol into which had gone the
blind upward urges, the stumbling aspirations, the great fantastically
conceived dreams of the old woman, and behind Mamba, of millions of her
inarticulate kin.

During the brief space of time that he had been with the girl Wentworth
had been conscious of a growing annoyance at her calm acceptance of the
sacrifices that were being made for her, at the coolness with which
she had precipitated a wreck, then left the débris for others to clear
away. Mamba, Hagar, Grayson, himself, would attend to details. Why
should she worry? Now the little book that he held suddenly explained
her attitude. It went farther and convinced him in some inexplicable
fashion that her assumption was justified.

Lissa would attain her goal because she, like her grandmother, had
never once removed her gaze from it. He knew, of course, of the girl’s
reputation in coloured circles as a singer, and of Mamba’s faith
in her future. Now he saw that this faith was the only thing that
mattered in their lives. It had been born and bred into the girl.
Her own belief in herself was supreme. Of the great faith that she
and Mamba held in common there were certain articles that she must
perform. Mamba had others. It was their job to carry through together:
the job of believing in a thing so intensely, so single-mindedly, that
the day would come when that belief should become an accomplished
fact. If Lissa hesitated now, if she removed her gaze from the steady
light to which it had become accustomed, and turned back, dazzled and
blundering, she would have broken faith with Mamba. She would be guilty
of unpardonable weakness. She must look only forward, and leave the
road that she had travelled to the watchful eyes of the old woman.

A pang of envy assailed Wentworth. Of late he had been enormously
pleased with himself. He was a success. Charleston said so, and, as
it had watched him from boyhood, it ought to know. The symbols of
conquest were his. Next week he would return to town with Valerie; then
comfort--love--probably children--an ordered and beautifully complete
existence. Yet there he sat envying an unknown mulatto girl, and seeing
with a sudden and terrible clarity a seedy youth in a country store
hunched over a guitar, groping for the unattainable with eager, clumsy
fingers. But the past had reached dead hands after him, guiding him
imperceptibly this way and that. Forces that had driven forward in
grooves for generations had pulled against his amorphous longings, his
only half-realised dreams--had held him true to form and tradition.
Behind Lissa there had been nothing; before her, Mamba’s one immovable
idea. An old loneliness that he had known in that far-gone time stabbed
up through his complacence, and now he knew that it had been a singular
and beautiful thing, and that there exists for certain solitary spirits
a loneliness that holds more ecstasy than the delight of any human
companionship. And so to-morrow was to be his wedding day. And there
was Lissa following her dream.

He realised that his hands were trembling, and he tensed them savagely.
He was a sentimental fool. His mother had been right. Val had been
right. Life would still be an adventure.

He stole a glance at his companion and realised that she was no longer
conscious of his presence. She was sitting forward with her gaze
fastened upon the crowds, the towering buildings, the surging traffic.
Over their heads the Elevated hurled its mechanical thunders. From a
yawning excavation almost directly under their hurrying wheels thudded
the heavy detonations of blasting. Faces hurtled by in taxis. Faces
intent and watchful swept in full tide along the pavements. After a
while the girl turned toward Saint, and in her first remark showed that
already she had sensed a thing that the Southern white man had never
felt, that in the vast unconcern of this city there was escape; that
in the very heart of this crowd there was a strange and private hiding
place where no one had time to wonder who you were or what you were
doing.

“This is where I belong, Mr. Saint,” she said. “Nobody here has time to
wonder whether I am even white or coloured.”

Presently they were on Lenox Avenue north of the line, and the white
faces were behind them. Lissa saw the change instantly, and her
composure vanished. She clapped her hands with a delight like that
of a child. “Here are my folks, Mr. Saint,” she exclaimed. “See,
everywhere--and such big houses.”

The taxi swerved to the right, and they were in a street that showed a
glimpse of the East River under the high-flung bridge of the Elevated.
Then they drew to the curb and stopped.

Wentworth awakened to the realisation that he was sitting with Lissa’s
money and bank book still in his hands. He put them hastily back into
her bag, took the valise, got out, and discharged the driver.

They found themselves on the pavement before a three-story brownstone
building. Over a push button beside the door was a brass plate which
stated: “Rectory of St. John’s Episcopal Church.”

The mulatto maid who admitted them said that the Reverend Thomas
Grayson lived there, was at home, and would be with them presently.

In the few minutes during which they sat in the quietly furnished room
Saint was again impressed by Lissa’s ease and appearance of belonging.
Once their eyes met, and she gave him the bright transfiguring smile
that linked her with Mamba and Hagar, but, except in that moment, he
felt she was already at home in the alien metropolis and that he was
the provincial visitor.

Grayson entered, holding Saint’s card in his hand. He was older than
as Wentworth remembered him, and his expression of seriousness had
deepened almost to one of solemnity. His shoulders and chest had grown
heavy with his greater maturity. The large head set firmly on his
short neck gave an impression of rock-like solidity to the figure. His
ears were small and close-set, and the closely clipped graying hair
revealed the lines of his skull and stressed the negroid formation. The
years that had passed since his residence in the South had produced in
some subtle way an appearance more characteristically negro, a race
consciousness that had become definitely assertive. He conveyed a sense
of power, but it was the power of one who moves slowly, predicating
action upon a laborious logic, not to be swayed by an appeal to the
emotions until the matter had been thoroughly weighed. Knowing his
history, one would have said that his experience in the South had
taught him to fear and distrust emotional hysteria, and had swung him
to pure reason as a basis for behaviour. As a result his position in
Harlem was one of unique importance, for his church had attracted
the rising intellectual element, and through them he was in contact
with the leaders of advanced thought among the white people of the
metropolis, thus profiting by this first opportunity of the race in
America to meet the Caucasian upon an equal basis of give and take.

Grayson showed no surprise at the visit, and sat in an attitude of easy
attention while Lissa told him her story. Then the girl drew the little
prayer book from her bag, opened it at the flyleaf, and handed it to
him.

“My mother said to show you this,” she said simply, “and ask you to
look out for me.”

He sat looking at the page for a moment, then he raised his eyes to
Saint’s. “The mills of the gods, Mr. Wentworth,” he said; “perhaps my
venture into the mission field has borne fruit after all.”

He turned to Lissa. “And you will stay here for a while, at any rate,
with my wife and me. We have no children of our own. She will be glad.”

Saint thanked him and, feeling an enormous relief from the burden of
responsibility, took his departure.

The maid appeared to show him out, and while she was handing him stick
and hat he caught from the drawing room a fragment of conversation
that he was never to forget: the deep voice of Grayson said, “And you,
my child, have you any plans? Is there anything that you can do?” And
immediately into the ensuing hush like the cry of a bird at dawn came
the answer:

“I can sing.”




PART V




PART V


For several minutes after the departure of Lissa and Mamba, Hagar stood
in the road. Her eyes, still resting on the spot where the car had
stood when Lissa had embraced her, were wide and intent, like those of
a sleep-walker, and a faint, fixed smile was upon her lips.

In a scrawny cedar close by there sounded a drowsy flapping of wings,
then Maum Vina’s big rooster stood erect on a limb, arched his neck
eastward, and flung a ringing challenge into the teeth of the advancing
day.

With a start Hagar recovered herself and looked about her. She was
quite alone now, and there was something to be faced there in the dark
without Mamba, without any one; all by herself now she must make plans
and carry them out. She thought of Bluton lying in the shack, but
with neither regret nor terror at what she had done. Only out of that
thought there seemed to grow a blackness that menaced Lissa and that
was unendurable.

She turned and entered the cabin, and with a clumsy meticulousness,
as though every simple movement was the result of an elaborate mental
process, she made her preparations for departure. In the faint glow
of the lowered kerosene lamp that stood beside Maum Vina’s bed, she
dressed herself and made up a small package of cornbread and cold meat
that she found in a closet. For a moment she stood looking down at the
old woman who had been first her guide, then her charge for so many
years; then she slipped quietly out and closed the door behind her.

The fowls had quieted down again after the first cock-crow, and she
saw them, misty blobs of darkness, ranged along a limb against the
sky--that meant a good hour of darkness ahead of her. She drew her
skirt up and tucked it high like a field hand’s, leaving her long legs
bare to the knees and unimpeded. Then she set off with a free stride in
the direction of Bluton’s shack.

The moon had set, withdrawing its diffused radiance from the misty
west, so that now even the solid mass of the swamp toward which she
journeyed was invisible against the horizon. But the tides of life had
definitely set toward the new day, faint as yet, but stirring along the
earth in little exhilarating waves, filling the air with those subtle
vibrations that are the precursors of light. Through the gloom the big
free-striding figure of the woman advanced. The movement about her
quickened. She threw a glance behind her, and, high in the east, she
saw a finger of light touch the mist. Then suddenly she was upon that
hour of the twenty-four when Earth recapitulates her creation, when in
a brief cosmic atavism she slips back to her wild beginnings.

The void through which Hagar moved no longer hung poised in inertia.
Free-running tides of life set it swinging and pulsing. The mist lifted
and divided itself into vast slow-moving bodies that hung close to the
ground and hesitated until some unseen force seized them and whirled
them together in silent chaos. The woman stopped in the road, touched
by the magic of it, and stood gazing about her. She saw vague inchoate
masses heaped upon the dim earth. She saw these masses obliterated by
the mist, and when she looked again, the curtains were withdrawn and
the young day had modelled them into forests, fields, and cabins. The
light gathered speed. It poured along the ground, dividing tree from
tree. It lifted into the branches that still clutched at retreating
mists and peopled them with separate leaves. Then, as at a given
signal, the world burst into sound. Birds shrilled from the casena
bushes, and like an ominous call Hagar heard the teeming life of the
swamp awake and lift its composite voice. She had been tricked by
beauty, and day had taken her unawares.

She broke into a dog trot. It was imperative that she reach the shack
before people were up and about. The voice of the swamp grew louder,
and now, against its gloom, she saw the squat ugly bulk of the shack.

Bluton was lying where she had left him. Quickly she bent over,
gathered him up and flung him upon her shoulder. Then, casting a hasty
glance around, she went out and closed the door. She had only a hundred
yards to travel for cover, and this was fortunate, for, as she left
the shack, the sun pierced the mist and drenched the clearing with
light. It outlined the huge figure of the woman with fire, and cast a
gargantuan shadow before her as she laboured forward beneath her rigid
and grotesquely posturing burden.

She extended an arm and parted a curtain of vines, then she passed
through into welcoming gloom. Black ooze squirted between her toes and
covered her feet. She heaved a deep sigh of relief and paused to take
her bearings.

First she must dispose of the body, and to do this most effectively she
must penetrate to the heart of the swamp where no one would be likely
to find it. She bent forward and shifted the burden from her shoulder
to her arched back. Then she set off as briskly as possible, tearing a
way through the matted growth with her right hand while she steadied
the body with her left. But this position caused her to advance with
lowered head, and eyes fixed on the pools of shallow water through
which she waded. At first this pleased her, for the little mirrors
flung back pictures of sky seen through swaying cypresses, with small
white clouds tangled in their branches. But presently she became aware
of the reflection of an object that projected over her shoulder and
looked down into the water, as she was doing. She paused, and the
reflection did likewise. Then she recognised its cause as the head of
the corpse which hung over her shoulder close to her own.

With the first sense of uneasiness that her deed had brought to her
she shifted her load so that it would no longer gaze downward and
started forward again. But with an almost animate persistence the body
moved with each stride, and gradually the round, blank silhouette
again eclipsed the miniature skies through which she waded. Now her
anger rose, and she splashed heavily through the water, shattering and
dispersing its reflections.

An hour passed, and the sun, now well over the treetops, commenced to
draw a thin steam out of the swamp. The din of voices that had heralded
day commenced to abate, settling in drowsy diminuendo into an almost
complete silence. Then, as Hagar reached the dense growth that clogged
the central area of the morass and made progress difficult, the air
about her broke into a shrill ominous whine, and a black cloud of
mosquitoes enveloped her, settling like dust on head, shoulders, and
legs. Involuntarily she struck out with both hands. With a heavy splash
her burden fell from her back and commenced to settle slowly into the
semi-fluid ooze. Slapping wildly at the maddening cloud, and with
her skin on fire from the poison, Hagar turned her back on the body
and broke savagely through the tangle in search of one of the little
islands that rise through the water of the swamp and offer a slight
harbourage from the pest.

At last she found it, a knoll of high ground, lifting out of the
cypress knees, and having above it an irregular circle of opaque
blue-grey sky. Crouched over almost on all fours, with prehensile hands
tearing her way through the undergrowth, the great woman emerged like
a prehistoric creature quitting its primal slime, and climbed out upon
the knoll.

For a moment she sat panting heavily, her face and arms streaming with
sweat and blood from stings and thorn lacerations. Then from her pocket
she drew a bandana handkerchief, a clay pipe, tobacco, and matches. She
mopped her face, filled the pipe and lighted it, then sat gulping the
acrid smoke in great draughts and blowing it in a cloud about her. The
last of the mosquitoes took reluctant flight, and with a long sigh she
lay back on the tough swamp grass to think things out.

She realised with relief that there was no occasion for speed. Beyond
the swamp lay a broad belt of open and populous land planted in truck
farms, and this must be crossed at night if she would escape detection.
She need not resume her journey, then, for several hours, and this was
the best place to wait.

She ate breakfast from her package of provisions, and refilled her
pipe. Already her fatigue was passing, and her mind commenced to turn
over her problem, dwelling upon its various aspects. Usually, when
Mamba had told her what to do, that ended it, and she gave the matter
no further thought. But now, with the realisation that the guiding
genius of that intelligence had gone from her, perhaps forever, a sense
of individual responsibility bore down upon her and forced her to study
and reason on her own account. Mamba had had to think mighty quickly
there in the dark with Lissa waiting to hurry away to safety. And Mamba
did not know this country as she did. Did not know Proc Baggart, for
one thing. Mamba’s plan depended for success entirely upon her escape;
her ability to traverse the mainland and reach one of the Sea Islands
where there were almost no white folks, and where the negroes would
hide that big clumsy body of hers from the police so that she could not
be caught and questioned.

Her train of thought broke off, and for a moment her mind was a clean
blank; then vividly the image of Bluton intruded itself. She saw
his limbs jutting woodenly from the water, and black ooze creeping
toward his open eyes. Poor Gilly--she couldn’t hate him now. Then she
wondered if he would hate her. If he would forget that she had saved
him once and remember only that she had strangled him and left him to
rot in the black mud of the swamp.

Well, what was done was done, and there was no use to worry about it.
Now, if she reached the outer edge of the swamp by sundown and waited
an hour, then set out to the southward---- _But Gilly hated the dark._
“_Bright lights_,” he would say, “_gimme de bright lights_.” Yes,
to the southward, that was what she must think about--thirty miles
to Edisto Island. By fast travel she could do that by sunrise. Her
thoughts came slowly, they made short rushes, stumbled, brought up
against obstacles, like a child learning to walk. By sunrise.... She’d
not risk the bridge--but swim across below it.... _Perhaps if Gilly
hated the dark so he wouldn’t stay where she had left him._ “Saint
Helena Island,” she said suddenly, out loud. She had heard lots of talk
about Saint Helena--two nights farther away--maybe three--thousands
of niggers there--lodge members--if she could get there and tell a
lodge sister that she was a “Vestal Virgin” they’d hide her sure. The
“Virgins” always stood together--even their own men couldn’t find
out their secrets.... _When dark came on and Gilly couldn’t see the
stars--only black water--what then...._ Yes, the “Virgins” always stuck
up for each other. She remembered once when--_He’d be so frightened
maybe he’d break loose._ In the hot sunlight Hagar’s blood was suddenly
chill. She mopped her face with the bandana. Then she refilled and
lighted her pipe. The Reverend Grayson knew what he was talking about.
He had said right out in church that spirits couldn’t walk. Even old
Maum Vina believed that--and she had been almost a conjure woman
herself with her herbs, and her money in the road. She would think
about the Reverend awhile.... He always wore that shroud.... _Yes,
Gilly would forget that she had saved his life once.... He’d only
remember that she had strangled him and left him with his eyes full of
black water._

The Reverend--the Reverend---- Hagar made a desperate effort to
visualise him, but his face eluded her--he was only a column of
whiteness against a wall that had a cross painted on it. What had he
said that day when he took Maum Vina’s hope away from her?... Spirits
only lived in heaven or hell.... That was it. The terror that had been
pressing in upon her was suddenly dissipated. Again her mind was a
clean blank. She got to her feet and moved about the island, stretched
her limbs, and again became conscious of the hazy sunlight that beat
down upon her.

She saw that the sun was directly overhead, and she realised that she
was hungry. Opening her lunch she ate heartily of her cornbread and
cold meat, then lay on her belly and drank a few swallows from the
side of the island where the water was clearest. A sense of well-being
pervaded her body. Why worry? She’d be on Edisto by to-morrow morning.
Likely as not they would never find Bluton and think he had gone away.
Then Lissa would always be safe. Some day, a long time off, she might
even get back and see Mamba again and hear all about Lissa from her.
She stretched her length on the grass, and presently, in the steamy
narcotic noon heat, she dropped into sleep.

_She saw Bluton turn slowly over in the mud. She saw the rigid knee and
elbow joints give and the man stand upright. Then she saw him following
her path through the swamp, but without effort, and this was strange,
for his eyes were blind with swamp ooze. Briers that had impeded her
did not detain him. He parted the vines and thrust his face into the
clearing._ She opened her eyes in a stare. _And there he was._ After
the passage of an indeterminable space of time, the apparition faded.

Hagar was terrified, but she knew what she would have to do before
she proceeded on her way. Fighting mosquitoes with tobacco smoke and
flailing arms, she retraced her steps and with incredible labour of
body and agony of spirit dragged the corpse to the island. Rigor mortis
was passing, and Hagar composed the limbs decently, and bathed the face
and eyes with her handkerchief. Then, leaving it gazing up into the
open sky, she set off for the outer edge of the swamp.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her spirit soared, her step became light and sure. It seemed that only
now was she free of the actual physical incubus. She stretched her arms
wide and straightened her broad shoulders. Gilly would rest easy now
with the sun in his face all day and the stars keeping him company at
night. She was shed of him at last--free.

She made surprisingly good time, and it was still afternoon when she
noticed that the trees before her were no longer a solid wall but
showed thin places where the light filtered through from the open
fields beyond. She was in splendid trim for the journey, her senses
keen, her muscles vigorous. In contrast to the depression of the
morning she waited in excited anticipation for the coming of night.

Out beyond the trees, where the sun still lay heavy and warm, an
abominable mongrel hound rolled over in a broom-straw field, yawned,
lifted a fretful hind leg and scratched his mangy ribs. Twenty feet
away a cottontail took alarm, hoisted its white ensign astern, and
sailed silently away toward the cover of the swamp. A vagrant air
caught the scent of the rabbit and trailed it past the nostrils of
the somnolent cur. The animal raised its muzzle and tongued, long and
quaveringly. From a neighbouring hamlet half a dozen answers sounded,
bell-like in the heavy silence, and the broom straw commenced to sway
to the threshing of excited tails.

With her confidence at its height, Hagar heard them coming. An icy
hand seized her heart, contracted about it, and her blood crawled
frozen through her veins. _Dogs!_ A primal terror that was proof
against argument and reason silenced both and paralysed her brain.
The clear, high unceasing rhythm of the tonguing shook along her
nerves in waves of exquisite terror. A strange guiding force broke
the inertia of her body and worked a subtle change in her appearance.
Her nostrils quivered. Her hearing became more acute. She faced the
sound and commenced to retreat silently, warily. Her back touched the
trunk of a great live oak. She spun around. Then she found herself
climbing, reaching always for higher limbs, swinging herself up,
panting--trembling. When she reached the top branches she crouched in
the heavy foliage and peered down through the leaves and moss.

They were nearer now, and the cry had accelerated until it was a taut
rope of sound that had one end in her body and that shortened with
every second.

_The dogs had gotten Ned. He had been loose for two weeks after he had
cut Bluton. He would have got clean away but for the dogs._

The pack passed almost directly beneath her perch. She could scarce
retain her hold upon the branches as she peered down. Then she saw it
for what it was: the flash of a small tawny body with a bobbing white
spot, and the parcel of yelping mongrels.

Slowly reason returned. They could not have found Gilly yet. Nobody
knew he had been killed. She took herself in hand and fought the
weakness of fear. She became conscious of sunlight about her, sky
above, and, just below, the plateau of treetops.

A shadow swept over her, and she raised her eyes. Scarcely twenty
feet away she saw a buzzard, the rondure of his belly--the blue-black
wings--the baleful, questing eyes. He was not sailing idly, but winging
purposefully eastward. Then another and another flashed past with a
soft purring sound of wings against air.

A black premonition caused her to turn her head and follow their
flight to its destination. She knew in that moment that she had lost.
To the eastward, over the spot where the island lay among the trees,
the air was black with flying shapes. They sailed in the formation of a
waterspout, wide and slow moving at the top, but narrowing and whirling
faster and faster as it descended until the base disappeared among the
treetops like a pointing finger. She looked westward again and saw the
air lanes dotted with still other shapes winging steadily down from the
rookery at the western extremity of the swamp.

_So Gilly had won. He hadn’t been afraid of the dark after all. What he
had in his mind was that she must bring him out into the open where the
buzzards could find him and tell Proc Baggart._

Now she knew that it was useless to proceed. The strength of her
muscles that could carry her through a race with the living would be
unavailing against the cunning of the dead. Gilly had proved that
Grayson was wrong.

Her gaze was drawn back to the eastern skyline and the whirling column
of wings. In the great emptiness of sky it would be visible for miles.
Perhaps already Gilly had been missed and searching parties were
hurrying along the trail that she had broken that morning.

Suddenly, there, in the moment of acceptance of the inevitable, a
miracle occurred. Somewhere in the inner depths of the woman’s soul,
in some remote and secret abiding place, a bolt snapped back, a door
opened, and a new courage flooded her being. This was not merely the
old force that had always fortified her against physical suffering. It
was something radiant that shook through her body in a swift, clean
ecstasy. It made her suddenly and astonishingly glad to be there; to
wait expectant for a supreme moment of revelation that she knew was
coming. All feeling of urgency left her. No need for speed now. No
need even for Mamba. She herself would be sufficient for the event.
A strange and beautiful sanity lay across her mind like a shaft of
light. She turned it this way and that, and many dark and obscure
things were made plain to her. She knew that Mamba had been right
about Lissa all the time, that she did not matter of herself, except
that now, at last, she was going to give her child something of value;
something that she could always remember.

Squatting on her limb, with only sky above her and treetops below, her
mind turned on Mamba’s plan for her, and she saw its great flaw. The
white men would take her, and they would want to know everything in her
mind. She might try to hide Lissa away in some dark corner where they
could not find her, but she knew that would not avail. She had seen
other negroes try concealment, but Baggart and the others had so many
ways. Their minds could dig and dance and circle until, at last, out
it came. Then suddenly she was upon the answer. Her mind seized upon
the idea, turned it over, discarded nonessentials, built logically,
beautifully, completely. The moment had come. She was ready.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was past ten o’clock, and Davy wanted to shut up shop and go home.
He was the commissary manager now and he frequently kept open until
late hours, especially in fever season, when there were no white folks
around and the negroes would gather and talk. Wentworth had agreed to
the plan, and Davy had showed with pride that, like most of his ideas,
it had a sound commercial value, the sales on “bounce” and candy during
the social hour amounting to a tidy sum.

Now the commissary manager commenced to clear his premises by the
simple process of moving among the boxes, stools, and barrels upon
which his customers were seated and dislodging them forcibly from their
perches.

“Git on home, yo’ lazy niggers,” he ordered. “What yo’ t’inks dis is,
anyhow--a white gentlemen club?” He called to a negro who was standing
in the doorway: “Hang up dem outside shutters, Ben, den come an’ gib me
a han’ wid dese no’ ’count niggers.”

But some one was about to enter, and Ben stepped aside to allow her to
pass. With one accord the negroes looked up, and there stood Baxter,
very dishevelled and appallingly muddy, with bare legs and her skirts
tucked up above the knees.

Keen observers all, they were immediately aware of a change in the
woman. They had known her as a rather silent person who upon occasions,
such as lodge meetings, passed suddenly to the other extreme of
temperament and indulged in almost violent bursts of animal spirits.
Now, looking into her face, they sensed something new and disturbing.
Her heavy features were in repose, but she conveyed an impression of
smiling down upon them from a height. Her eyes were wide and unusually
bright, and as she crossed the room toward Davy there was immediately
evident a new co-ordination of movement that invested her great bulk
with a sort of massive dignity and made her appear almost majestic to
the mystified onlookers.

When she reached the high counter, she turned her back to it, rested
her elbows on it, and stood looking out over the heads of the negroes,
who had resumed their seats and were regarding her in watchful silence.

For a long moment she stood so. She did not seem to realise that it was
time to shut up the store and go home. She seemed to think that she had
all the time in the world. Finally, as though she were not speaking
to them at all but to some one who stood at their backs, she put her
first, inexplicable question:

“Any ob yo’ folks eber hear ob a nigger killin’ heself by what de white
folks calls committin’ suicide?”

Before her, eyes showed white glints here and there. Heads turned as by
a common impulse, then faced her quickly again.

A woman’s voice said, “Fuh Gawd’ sake, Baxter, don’t talk dat talk!”

Silence.

Then a man said, “Everybody know nigger nebber kill heself.”

“Why dat is?” Baxter persisted in her strangely impersonal catechism.

“’Cause nigger ain’t worry heself dat much,” came the answer.

“’Tain’t always goin’ be like dat,” Baxter said in a slow musing voice,
as though she were thinking aloud. “Time comin’ when nigger goin’ worry
jes like white folks, an’ den Gawd goin’ show ’em what to do when he
trouble get too deep fur he to wade t’rough.”

The fixed attention of the group broke before a wave of uneasiness.
Bodies shifted, and some one started to speak. But now Baxter looked
down, and her glance travelled from face to face.

“Anybody seen anyt’ing ob Gilly to-day?” she asked in a matter-of-fact
voice.

The tension broke. Several of the negroes laughed nervously. A number
of voices were raised in negative answers. But her next question
alarmed them again by its irrelevance.

“Anybody seen any buzzard roun’ here to-day?”

Yes, they had all noticed buzzards over the swamp. Somebody had lost a
hog, no doubt, or maybe a dead mule had been dragged out there.

Hagar stood apparently debating the matter, her gaze again fixed upon
the air over the heads of the negroes. Then with a faint smile she
turned to Davy and motioned to a shelf where several dusty account
books lay.

“Get down dat oldes’ book, Davy, an’ bring um here.”

The man obeyed and placed it on the counter before her, studying her
the while with his bright disturbed eyes.

“Now turn back twelve year ’til yo’ comes to a man by de name Baxter.
Ah gots a promise to keep.”

Davy spun the yellow pages, found what he sought, then raised his eyes
interrogatively.

“How much he owe when he done get drownded?”

The man peered at the fading pencil scrawl. It was a dollar and a
quarter, he informed her.

Hagar drew a ten-dollar bill from her pocket. The yellow-back was an
unusual sight in the commissary, and the negroes, their curiosity
getting the better of their alarm, crowded forward to see.

Still holding the money, she indicated the large glass jar of
“jaw-breakers” on the counter. “An’ how much for dat bottle ob candy?”

“De whole t’ing?” he asked in amazement.

“Sure, de whole t’ing.”

“Well, dere mus’ be two hundred in dere. Dat’ll be two dollar.”

With a broad gesture Hagar lifted the jar, withdrew the stopper, and
poured the contents in a cataract of red and white out over the counter.

“Help yo’selves,” she invited.

“An’ now dat keg ob bounce. How much dat?”

Davy, in an incredulous voice, opined that three dollars would pay for
it.

“You niggers get to dat keg and fill yo’selves up,” she commanded. “Ah
all de time been wanting to gib yo’ a party, but Ah ain’t had no free
money till now.”

Slowly they withdrew in the direction of the keg, and Hagar stood
looking after them with something of her old childlike wonder in her
smile.

She turned back toward Davy. “Poor ole Baxter,” she mused. “Ah done
keep yo’ waitin’ a long time, but we’s quits now. An’ Ah ain’t done so
bad by yo’ name.” Then she spoke directly to Davy: “What he all come
to, Son?”

He computed the account at six dollars and a quarter.

She handed him the bill, and, as he took it, she said with a spurt of
fierce and uncontrollable exultation in her voice: “Don’t gimme de
change, Son. Take um to de do’ an’ t’row um far an’ high. Ah’s done wid
money. Ah’s free now,” then after an almost imperceptible hesitation,
added, “free as Gawd.”

The amazed youth looked up, but already the mood had passed. It was as
though the Baxter whom he had known, and even the strange creature who
had been there a moment before, had gone quietly out and another woman
had entered.

She said in an incisive tone of command, “Now get a pen ’n’ paper, an’
take down what Ah say. Time’s passin’, an’ Ah got to be gettin’ along
soon.” She raised her voice and called, “Come here, all yo’ niggers. Ah
want yo’ to swear to dis writin’ Ah’s goin’ to gib Davy.”

When he was ready she dictated in a clear steady voice, never
hesitating for a word, retarded only by the deliberation of the writer.

“Las’ night Ah strangle Gilly Bluton to deat’ wid my two han’. Ah kill
um ’cause he use’ always tuh be my man, an’ he git sick ob me an’ t’row
me ’way. Dere ain’t nobody dere but me when Ah kill um. Dere ain’t
nobody know nuttin’ ’bout um ’cep’ me. Dat’s all. Now sign um Baxter
an’ gimme de pen so’s Ah can make de mark.”

The negroes stood goggling at her, petrified into attitudes of
incredulity, horror, fear. Davy leaned over the paper like an automaton
that had run down, its motive power ceasing while the pen point hovered
over the sheet.

Hagar stamped her foot impatiently. “Get on and sign um,” she
commanded. “De time’s close now, an’ Ah got to go.”

A woman broke through the circle, pushing the paralysed negroes to
right and left. It was old Vina. She was as frightened as any one, but
she had courage. She laid hold upon Baxter’s arm and pulled her around.

“Wake up, gal, wake up an’ talk de trut’,” she pleaded. “Dere ain’t
been a night sence yo’ come here dat yo’ ain’t slep’ all night in my
room.” She turned to the gaping crowd. “Don’t yo’ b’liebe she. Yo’
niggers--ain’t yo’ see she ain’t right in she head?”

Baxter brushed the old woman away like a fly. She was shaken by a storm
of passion that flung the circle from her like physical force. They
backed away, knowing at last that their first impression when she had
entered was right. Baxter had lost her wits. She glared at them and
stamped thunderously upon the floor.

“Ah’s talkin’ trut’,” she shouted, “an’ ef any pusson in dis shop say
Ah ain’t, Ah’s goin’ make um sorry ’til he done dead.”

She spun around again on Davy and shocked him into action. “Write
Baxter.” The pen descended upon the paper and the letters fell from
its point in jerky succession: “B A X T E R.” Hagar took the pen from
Davy’s fingers and made a firm black cross.

“Now,” she said, “to-morrow yo’ take dat to Proc Baggart an’ tell him
Ah sen’ it.”

She dropped the pen, and in the dead silence of the room, it rang a
sharp clear note as it struck the counter. Then she turned, and the
watchers saw that her passion had passed and she again wore the odd
aloofness of expression with which she had entered. She turned her gaze
to the door with its square of misty, moonlit night.

“De time’s come,” she said. “So long, eberybody.”

For a moment they saw her, a huge black silhouette set on frosted
silver; then she was gone.

Maum Vina’s scream cut the silence and loosed the negroes from their
trance. “For Gawd’ sake, stop dat gal,” she shrilled. “She out she
head, an’ she goin’ do sheself hahm.”

They jammed through the doorway and scattered out on the piazza.

Only the night was out there; vast and tranquil it lay upon the square
of white sand, the pine forests. Above them it was an infinitude of
moonstruck mist, its utter silence not even broken by the far whisper
of a star. They waited bewildered, not knowing what to do next.

Suddenly from the river came the loud bark of a dog, a single shout,
then a confused babel of voices. The negroes broke into a run, and
presently they crowded out on the narrow wharf.

Beside the pier, seeming to strain its spars upward, lay a schooner
that had been moored there the day before. Its crew were already at the
pier head gesticulating and pointing downward.

All afternoon the September spring tide had been pumping its vast
burden of water into the low flat river lands, saturating porous
marshes and setting the grass tops awash, piling incalculable tons of
brine into salt creeks, brimming secret lagoons. Now the great heart
that lay somewhere out beyond the moon turned from systole to diastole
and called its tide home.

On the pier head the negroes stood in silence and looked down. There
was nothing to do--nothing to say. Below them, so close they could
have reached down and touched it, the river drummed against the piles.
Beneath its surface sleekness the currents writhed and turned like
giant muscles under a velvet skin. So fast it sped. An hour, and its
crest would be free of the little rivers and out again into the open
sea.

       *       *       *       *       *

Above the metallic roar of the subway a brassy voice shouted “One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street,” and, like a succession of enormous
exclamation points flung for emphasis after the words, a series of
posts flickered across Lissa’s vision. Gradually the perpendicular bars
lessened their speed until finally each exhibited the numerals 125 in
black against glaring white. Behind the girl the hurtling darkness fell
away. The train shot out into a pool of light and came to rest with a
jerk that precipitated her through a newspaper and against a hostile
breast. Doors sprang open with mechanical precision, and with a sigh of
relief packed white and black broke their enforced common imprisonment,
the negroes pouring out on the platform, the whites appropriating
their places and regarding their retreating backs with resentment and
relief. On the platform the dark mass hesitated for a moment, drew
deep breaths, stretched limbs, then, like a breaker that has found the
shore, it lifted, caught Lissa up on its crest, hurled her before it
up the stairway, and deposited her breathless, but triumphant, on the
pavement. Saturday afternoon--her first thrilling week of study under
Salinski behind her--his grudging word of praise singing in her ears.

The day was warm, but the sun lacked the torrid pressure that had
enervated Lissa during the Southern summers. Over her head the sky
was no longer the throbbing cobalt of a Charleston noon, but a thin
ultramarine that seemed to lessen the power of gravitation and lift her
along with a new buoyance. She swung east in the direction of her home.
In her new liberating environment an inherent elegance in her carriage
and manner that had impressed her Charleston neighbours as merely
amusing lent her distinction and gave her that air of self-assurance
which in Harlem differentiates the cosmopolite from the newly arrived
provincial. She was clad briefly in dark blue tailored silk. The colour
was a concession to Mamba, the brevity to Harlem. A scarf of flamingo
red was knotted loosely about her throat, and a small jaunty hat of
the same shade fitted closely about her head. Below the dress a rather
astonishing length of champagne silk stocking was evident, and,
symbolic of her complete emancipation, these terminated in a pair of
red high-heeled pumps. She carried a modish vanity case, and a small
umbrella in the accenting colour was pendent from one elbow.

With that power to evoke memory which contrast possesses to an even
greater extent than similarity, the alien setting switched the girl’s
thoughts back to her last eventful night in Charleston. She had been
a member of the Grayson family for ten days, and with her faculty for
expelling from her mind all that caused her discomfort, the tragedy of
Bluton’s death and her hurried departure were already as completely
dissociated from her life as a printed story in a book that has been
replaced upon its shelf. Out of the experience only one impression
remained sharp and actual--Hagar, who in that hour had suddenly
materialised out of the characterless parent that it had pleased her
to imagine, had taken matters into her own hands, and at the last
had surprised her into that overwhelming surrender to maternal love.
It was strange that she could feel no horror over her mother’s act.
On the contrary, a latent savagery in her own nature caused her to
feel a curious pride, a deep sense of sympathy with her mother, and a
realisation of a kinship closer even than that which existed between
Mamba and herself. Out of the sheltered life that Mamba had provided
for her with its dependence upon the protection that civilisation
throws about the weaker individual, she had crashed suddenly into
conflict with life in the raw, and she had been helpless. During that
hour when Bluton had held her captive, and behind the shack the swamp
voices had shrilled and wailed in implacable nocturnal conflict, she
had had it in her heart to kill, and only the man’s preponderance of
strength had kept her fingers from tearing at his throat. Then Hagar
had come, terrible in her direct and unfettered simplicity, and had
put Bluton beyond the power ever to harm her again. After the years of
separation Hagar had stood forth in that one illuminating hour more
real, more vividly alive, than Mamba, for all of the old woman’s shrewd
planning and untiring devotion. Then, in the moment of parting, had
come the climax when the big, inarticulate woman had kissed her hand
and she had found herself in her arms. Her reason told her that here
was a specific act for which she should be ashamed of her mother, yet
by some strange paradox the thought of her was a swift infusion of
warmth--a feeling of completeness where before there had been a sense
of want--a sudden and inexplicable pride of birth. For the first time
in her life she quickened to the realisation of all that Hagar had
done for her--the money that she had sent each week for her music--her
clothes. And she had never even gone to see her. It made her feel
ashamed. “Well,” she told herself, “I’ll be able to make it up to her
before long.” Now that Salinski had undertaken her training, and with
the money that could be made in New York.

She took the brownstone steps of her new home two at a time. In a vivid
flash she saw Mamba’s face wearing its mask of ferocious disapproval.
Do you call that being a lady? What the hell! Now she was free--neither
a lady of the Broaden set nor a waterfront nigger. Lissa Atkinson with
at last a will of her own--nothing behind her, and everything that she
wanted from life waiting for her around the next corner.

She let herself into the dim coolness of the hall. In the drawing room
a song stopped in the middle of a bar, and Ada Grayson parted the
portières and kissed the girl affectionately. With her glasses, her
slow, kind smile, she was ridiculously like her husband in appearance.
Lissa had liked her from the moment when the three of them had sat
together after Saint had left her in the drawing room, and Ada had
watched her husband’s face with divining intensity; then, realising
that under his words he had really wanted the girl to stay and was not
merely submitting to a command of conscience, had taken her into her
affections without reservation.

“Now, I sha’n’t detain you, my dear,” Ada told her smilingly. “You’ll
find a letter from home on your dresser, and I know you’re anxious for
news.”

Her new buoyance lifted Lissa up the stairs with the effortless spring
that had brought her down the street and up the front steps. It shot
her breezily into the room and across to the dresser, where the letter
lay with her name staring boldly up into her face. Then her mood went
slack. The air of the room seemed suddenly chill, inhospitable. She
picked the letter up gingerly between a slender thumb and index finger.
Whose was the bold, disjointed handwriting? It startled her like the
shouting of her name by an unfamiliar voice. Slowly, reluctantly, a
slender flexible index finger slid beneath the flap. She paused and
examined her hand with an impersonal admiration, deliberately putting
off the opening of the letter. The colour, neither black nor white, had
never before interested her. Now, in contrast with the dead white of
the paper against which it lay, it seemed rather lovely to her with its
warm bronze tint, its pointed and polished nails that glittered like
little blades in the light. Finally she rolled her finger beneath the
flap and pried it gently open. She turned the envelope over and shook
out a number of newspaper cuttings and a brief note. Her gaze focussed
on the signature: Saint Julien de C. Wentworth. It was a moment before
she identified the august name with Mamba’s Mr. Saint. Then she read:

  “These clippings will pain you, but you ought to know what they say.
  In no other way can you realise the sacrifice that Hagar has made
  for you. To the few of us who know the whole story, she has revealed
  herself as heroic, a mother of whom you should be proud as long as
  you live. The body has not been recovered and was probably carried
  far out to sea. It took Hagar’s death to show us what she really was,
  and I for one am proud to have known her.”

The body--sacrifice--the awful clippings with their sharp and
uncompromising black type.... The room where she stood had gone chill
with warning. Mr. Saint shouldn’t have done that to her. Mamba wouldn’t
have let him if she had known. She wasn’t used to pain. _Hagar dead._
She felt the warmth that had infused her being from her mother’s last
kiss slowly ebbing, while a strange numbness took its place. She had a
premonition that if she read the clippings she would find herself to
blame--would have to accept the responsibility--be answerable for the
event. Why not simply accept the facts--death--loss--and destroy the
papers that lay defenceless before her, yet which menaced her peace of
mind? She should save herself for the sake of her art--Mamba had wanted
that--Hagar herself. How could she be expected to sing and be gay with
her mind full of trouble?

Still undecided, she lifted the printed strips. One of them dropped
face up on the dresser. NEGRESS MURDERS LOVER THEN TAKES OWN LIFE. But
that wasn’t so. Her mother had never loved Prince. Now she was impelled
to proceed. She commenced to read, her eyes taking in the words and
transmitting them to her brain, and all the while her old self in utter
panic, flinging the words of a silly song at her, trying to distract
her, to get her away to the old protected plane of consciousness. “If
you lika me lik I lika you an’ we lika both the same.... _Unusual case.
A search of old files reveals no other case of suicide in a local
negro--had saved Bluton’s life ten years before_--I’d like to say,
this very day, I’d like to change your name-- _Evidently the result
of a jealous rage followed by remorse...._ Under the bamboo tree. A
great night that, when she had first realised that she could take an
audience--knock them cold--smash of the band--the air full of paper
streamers--and, far away, stars out of the open door--Prince!! _Las’
night I strangle Gilly Bluton to deat’ wid my two han’. I kill um
’cause he use’ always tuh be my man, an’ he git sick ob me an’ t’row
me away. Dere ain’t nobody dere but me when I kill um. Dere ain’t
nobody know nuttin’ ’bout um ’cep’ me._ (_Signed_) _Baxter._ I’d lika
to say....”

In a sudden violent synthesis the story before her rushed to
completion--assumed form--unity--silencing the indecent irrelevance
of the song, confronting her with its tremendous implication: if it
hadn’t been for her, Hagar would be alive to-day. After a while, with
a conscious physical effort she wrenched her gaze from the words of
the confession; then, with deliberate thoroughness, read the clippings
one by one and piled them with mechanical exactness before her. The
papers had given an unusual amount of space to the commonplace of a
negro murder. In spite of its colour, it held the elements of excellent
copy--human interest--passion--jealousy--and the culminating touch of
the confession, superb in its stark simplicity.

Lissa folded the last strip, placed it upon the others, and stood
gazing out over them at nothing that the room contained. Her brain,
busy in estimating the cost to herself, told her that she was safe,
that so beautifully had Hagar built her plan that at no point could
danger touch her. Her mother was known only as Baxter, a vagrant
negress who had come to the mines ten years before, had once saved
Bluton’s life, and had later, presumably in a fit of jealous rage,
destroyed him. But while her mind assimilated these facts, coolly
felicitating her upon her escape, upon the final complete erasure
of the record of her own origin, an inexplicable tremor seized upon
her body, shaking her so that she fell into a chair, seized the arms
with her sallow expressive hands, and gripped desperately while the
tremor possessed her like the sustained tension of a galvanic current.
Presently the seizure abated. Then came weakness as from a protracted
illness, and a pang of loneliness and longing that swelled, mounted,
and overwhelmed her, flinging her head down upon her arms, and blinding
her with a gush of tears.

With every one there is some picture etched into the child mind by the
bite of some early and penetrating emotion. It stands there always,
isolated, marking the beginning of memory, obscuring lesser subsequent
impressions. Up now from under the drifted years this picture flashed
into Lissa’s consciousness--a great bruised figure standing in a
doorway with a policeman beside it--a strange salty taste upon her
child lips where her mother had pressed a farewell kiss. The girl sat
waiting. Her tranced gaze had found the window and had escaped the
confines of the room into an infinity of sky. Then another picture
began to brighten, assume colour, form--a gigantic black woman kneeling
in the dirt of the public road, patting her with great clumsy hands,
while her body mingled a tang of sweat and phosphate dust with the
druggy perfume of roadside honeysuckle. This memory held a poison
that she could not at once identify. Then it came--the beginning
of a fastidiousness in herself that had turned her away from the
great creature who might soil her dress to the cleanness of Mamba’s
arms. A gap. A time of things wanted because of a strange loneliness
that needed assuaging--a fire in her blood that had driven her in
a half-desperate search for the unattainable to the Broadens--the
roadhouse dances--the last night with Prince. Her last picture of
Hagar, the dominant figure of that insane night looming like destiny
over the body of Bluton, taking her in her arms and giving her for one
brief moment a sense of refuge, of sudden arrival at some remote and
illusory goal. It was strange now that she could not remember a word
that her mother had ever said. She imagined her as vast inarticulate
power--encompassing love, possessing her all the more now because of
her silence.

She saw now with agonising clarity all that Hagar had given, and now
that she had gone there would never be anything that she could offer
in return. She felt an impulse to wound herself in some way, believing
vaguely that pain would expiate her thoughtlessness, her indifference.
She closed her hands in a muscular spasm that drove the nails into her
tender palms, and imagined a slackening of the grip upon her heart.
Now she was fiercely glad that she was alone. For the first time in her
life she was glad to be free of Mamba and her indomitable will. The
old woman would tell her to look ahead and forget what had happened.
Now her only comfort came from sending her thoughts back to the three
impressions of her mother, and in a blind search for some way in which
she could punish herself for her selfish neglect.

Beyond the window the shortening September day dwindled into twilight.
In the street the cooling pavements called the dark children from the
serried houses. They swarmed down, noisy as blackbirds, and flung a gay
chattering sound up to Lissa’s room. From the two adjacent Elevated
lines sounded roar and answering roar as the trains hurtled with
mechanical punctuality over the darkening streets. To Lissa they seemed
like the tick-tock of a titanic clock dividing the present into minute
segments and hurling it into the limbo of the past. On the Avenue the
windows of an apartment house lost the red of the sunset, stared blank
for a moment, then winked to life again, restless in the blue dusk.
But these things that Lissa had loved as symbols of her new life had
lost their magic. She sat staring through them into the Carolina Low
Country. Once she rose from her chair, got from a bureau drawer the
prayer book that Hagar had given her, opened it at the flyleaf with its
inscription, then sat again with the volume in her hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was not until after breakfast the following morning that Lissa left
her room. She wore the clothes that she had had on when she came from
her music lesson the preceding afternoon, and she went directly to the
study of Thomas Grayson, opened the door without knocking, and entered.

He sat at a large square desk in the middle of the room looking over
the notes for the sermon that he would deliver at the morning service.
The massive severity of the desk made a fitting base for the bust and
head of the man who sat there.

Lissa closed the door behind her, and stood with her back against it as
though taking refuge from some pursuer. Grayson looked up and saw her
face. The live bronze had gone a lustreless brown, except where it had
darkened to violet under the eyes. From swollen lids the eyes looked
with a hard brilliance. The hint of tragedy that had been latent in
her expression was suddenly all that he saw there, rendering the face
drawn and haggard. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress looked as though
it had been slept in. There was a shocking incongruity in the pair of
frivolous red pumps on her feet.

His response was characteristic. He said in a deliberately
matter-of-fact voice: “Don’t be afraid, Lissa. Come here and tell me
your trouble.”

Without rising, he motioned to a chair that faced him across the
polished mahogany with its piles of meticulously arranged papers. The
girl hesitated. He seemed unsympathetic--more rock-like than ever in
his unyielding power. Then she saw his face soften. He leaned forward
and extended a hand across the desk. “Sit down, daughter, and tell me,”
he urged. “Ada and I have been fearful that your letter brought bad
news.”

She sank into the chair, then she placed the letter, clippings, and
prayer book before him. “Read that letter and those papers please,” she
begged. “They’re about Ma.”

She watched him take the papers in his heavy, well-kept, hairless
hands, and read them through with his habitual thoroughness. Now that
she was close to him her feeling toward him changed. Out of his massive
silence strong emanations of sympathy flowed toward her. She felt his
power now, not as opposition, but as a sustaining force. She was glad
that he had not spent it in easy volubility.

He finished the last clipping, then folded them all carefully and
returned them. When he spoke his voice seemed stilted, inadequate in
contrast with his unspoken sympathy. “Your mother was a truly great
woman, Lissa. The just God who knows everything will forgive her. She
has given her life for you. You should be proud of your parentage--your
race.”

She did not comment upon this tribute. Her reply struck out at a
tangent, as though she had waited for him to finish speaking to say
what had long been on her mind. She leaned forward, swaying slightly in
her chair. Her speaking voice had caught the tragic timbre of her low
singing notes. Her short sentences were spoken in unconscious rhythm.
“I can’t stay here now. I can’t let it stand like that. See what she
says--that he was her lover. She despised him--it took me to put up
with his kind--I’ve got to go home and tell them the truth--I’ve got to
face the Broadens and their crowd with it--I’ve got to claim her now
before everybody. It’s all I can do.”

Grayson sat heavy, solid, his arms resting on the desk before him, his
eyes on her face. Without speaking he made Lissa feel his attitude as
it changed from the sympathetic to the coolly judicial.

“You’re emotionally upset to-day, Lissa,” he said at last. “You’re in
no condition to arrive at such an important decision. You must wait a
day or two.”

Her form stiffened. She eyed Grayson with distrust. Immediately she
was on the defensive. “I thought I could count on you,” she said. “I
thought you’d see it as my Christian duty and help me, or I wouldn’t
have told you. But you can’t stop me now--nobody can--not even Grandma.
I always did what other people thought. Now I am going to think for
myself, and I know I’m right. I’m going.”

Grayson made no reply; then Lissa realised that he had not been
listening to what she had said. He had not moved, but sat gazing past
her, his eyes intent behind their glasses, his brow deeply furrowed.
In one of her violent reversions she sprang to her feet.

“A hell of a lot you care for other people’s troubles!” she flung at
him; then she turned to go.

“Wait!”

She was arrested by the impact of the single word and faced him again,
her beautiful expressive body fixed in an attitude of fear like that of
an animal at bay.

“Now sit down and keep quiet,” he commanded.

For a moment longer her defiance lasted; then suddenly she bent her
head and commenced to cry softly into the crook of her arm in the
manner characteristic of Hagar when faced by overwhelming difficulties.
Then obediently she resumed her seat.

When Grayson broke his portentous silence his voice was compassionate
but firm. He said: “I’ve thought it all out now, daughter. Look at
it this way”: he picked up the clippings and selected the one which
contained Hagar’s confession. Lissa raised her tear-stained face, and
he pointed to the words. “That,” he said, “is your mother’s last will
and testament. In it she has left you something that she has conceived
to be of inestimable value. It was all that she had to give. You cannot
repudiate it. You must give her silence in return.”

“But it’s a lie. I can’t go on always living a lie. What am I to do?”

“You must carry on. Make your life worth the price that has been paid
for it. There’s no turning back now without breaking faith with your
mother. There’s nowhere for you to go but ahead; no way to praise her
but in your works.”

“I won’t go on,” she rebelled. “I hate music. If it hadn’t been
for that Ma’d be alive to-day. I didn’t know until that night how
much I was missing her. I was always lonely, and I didn’t know why.
Grandma never gave me time to think. Now she’s gone, an’ I’m sick of
everything. I’m the loneliest girl in the world.”

“I know,” said Grayson gently, “you think now that it is this great
loss that makes you so. It isn’t. Like Ishmael, you were born for
loneliness. But you have this to be thankful for--you were also born
for success. I had a talk with Salinski yesterday. He’s extravagant
in his praise of your voice. He has never taken a negro before, and
it took all of the influence that I could bring to bear to interest
him in giving you a trial. It’s a great chance for you. It’s more than
that. It’s a great chance for the negro race. If you drop it now, go
South and perhaps run the risk of being arrested as an accessory to
the murder, certainly, at the least, returning to start over again
handicapped by a scandal, you will have thrown that chance away. For
Hagar--Mamba--all of us--you’ve got to carry on.”

He picked up the little prayer book that he had given Hagar, opened it
at the flyleaf, and let his gaze rest upon the inscription. “Strange,”
he said, “that this should be here with us now. When I gave it to your
mother I was face to face with my great disillusionment. I had thought
that the fight should start at the bottom. I had put everything that
I had in me into it, and I had failed. I have learned since that the
battle is on here--not in the South. Not that we receive more kindness
here. There is a certain kind of cruelty that we meet in New York that
is not known in South Carolina. We have been taught to expect things
here, and then when we come we find these things denied us. But here
we find a market for our own peculiar gifts--talents that are our
heritage, and of these yours is the greatest--the gift of song. Nothing
can take that from you. You must put the past behind you as I did--as
all of our people must do. You must succeed.”

Lissa’s tears had ceased. She sat with her eyes fixed upon the desk
before her. The room bore inward upon her, exerting an invisible force
against her body--holding it powerless in the chair. Even Mamba had
never been so implacable as this will that had assumed magistracy over
her destinies. She knew that the moment when she met Grayson’s eyes
would see her complete and ultimate surrender. And yet through sheer
weakness she longed to turn to that power for support.

She knew that Grayson had risen. She heard him moving behind her, then
softly the door closed, leaving her alone. Through the open window
came stray notes from the complicated symphony of human existence--the
shrill ecstasy of a child--deep, careless negro laughter--a piano
lingering over a sentimental song in a neighbouring apartment--slow,
rambling talk in two women’s voices on the pavement--Harlem
obstinately opposing its lazy rhythms to the headlong theme of the
metropolis--flinging an alien syncopation of laughter and song against
the measured reiteration of the Elevated, the sustained monotone of
hurtling traffic on the avenues. Her own people about her everywhere.
But different. Singing for fun--just cutting loose--crying when they
wanted to--living up to the limit and never thinking about it. Why
couldn’t they let her be like that? Why couldn’t they let her alone?

       *       *       *       *       *

Saint Julien de Chatigny Wentworth, up from Charleston with his wife
and his mother for a fortnight of music and the theatre, settled the
ladies of his party in the third orchestra row of the new Metropolitan
Opera House, and, appropriating the vacant seat between them, abandoned
himself to the mood of the unique performance. Individual as he
appeared in the heterogeneous audience, he yet had upon him the mark
of a type. Upon him a dinner jacket seemed a more formal garment than
it did when worn by the men who were seated near him, and his tie, too
wide for the prevailing mode, had about it the quaint suggestion of
a stock. Already, while only in the middle thirties, his figure was
commencing to show the comfortable outlines of one who appreciates
the pleasant things of life at their full value and who has learned to
meet the unpleasant ones with an amiable acquiescence. Yet the face,
with its high forehead and thoughtful slate-coloured eyes, showed
evidences of having passed through some spiritual conflict. The strong
line of the chin indicated sufficient courage for an individual course
of action, but the sensitive mouth suggested that when this course
violated the standard of good taste of his class its pursuit would be
at a cost that would amount to a minor heroism.

It was now seven years since his marriage. Seven years since he had
responded to Mamba’s summons and had placed Lissa in the care of Thomas
Grayson. That this should occur to him now was natural enough, for the
performance, which had already commenced, was the occasion of Lissa
Atkinson’s début. Presently, with that faculty of submergence of self
in the contemplation of a work of art, which is in itself an art, he
became a disembodied presence moving in a realm of illusion upon the
darkened stage, and, by the stage’s magical power of projection, beyond
that again into a pine barren of the coastal South.

Beyond the pines glimmered a faint red dawn that cast a vague radiance
over the bent or recumbent figures of a number of people. From the
figures came a chant, hypnotic in its interminable reiteration of a
single strongly syncopated phrase. A limpid mezzo-soprano drew upward
from the monotonous level of the chant. Instantly Wentworth recognised
the voice--Lissa’s--Hagar’s--Mamba’s. The song lifted and hovered above
the shadowed figures in a repressed agony of yearning and supplication.
Wentworth’s emotions attained that height at which delight and pain are
fused into one and become pure ecstasy. Then the curtain descended in a
swift obliterating rush and stilled the voice. But in the wide silence
of the auditorium its vibrations kept beating on like a pulse.

High in the dome constellations of incandescents commenced to glow
faintly. A stir went over the audience. Saint felt sudden anger. Why
couldn’t they leave him alone in the actuality of the music? Why drag
him back into the make-believe of people, walls, lights? The glow
brightened and flooded the auditorium, calling him back into full
possession of his faculties, and he became aware of the well-dressed
audience that seemed to be pressing in upon him. For a moment longer
they hung breathless, then shattered the silence with a spontaneous
thunder of applause.

From the people near Wentworth stray ejaculations and comments leaped
clear of the clamour and impinged upon his consciousness. “Good God,
where’d she come from?” some one queried. “What’s it anyway, a play--an
opera--a pageant?” And the rejoinder, “For Heaven’s sake, don’t label
it. That’s the trouble with us. What we can’t label we damn. Can’t you
see it’s new--different? Can’t you feel that it’s something of our
own--American--something that Stallings and Harley got a glimmer of
in ‘Deep River’--that the Theatre Guild caught the pictorial side of
in _Porgy_; that Gershwin actually got his hands on in spots of his
‘Rhapsody in Blue’? It’s epoch-making, I tell you.” Behind Wentworth
a man said in a tone of finality: “Well, they’ve done it. It’s native
from the dirt up--it’s art--and it’s ours.” “Ours?” a voice inquired.
“Do you mean negro?” “Negro, if you will, yes, but first, American.”

The auditorium was aglare now, and the fused single entity of the
audience had melted back into its component atoms. The ugly blur of
confused talk swelled suddenly and drowned individual voices. Wentworth
let himself go back into his chair. The experience had left him shaken.
He hoped that Valerie and his mother wouldn’t talk. Sometimes they
didn’t seem to understand that there were moments when silence can be
richer than speech. His emotion had broken his thoughts free from their
habitual moorings. Now he’d like just to let them drift. With relief he
saw that his companions remained silent, evidently lost in their own
thoughts; Valerie with a bright, forward look in her eyes; his mother’s
lost in reverie. He returned to himself: “God! What music!” he thought.
“Primitive?--Sophisticated?--Neither--both. Savage, tender, reckless.
Something saved whole from a race’s beginnings and raised to the _n_th
degree by Twentieth Century magic--a blues gone grand opera.... Not a
bad idea that. Make a note of it and use it when I start to write....
No, it’s too late now--Mother--Valerie--the _boy_.... By God, he’ll
have his chance--painting--music--literature--it’s up to him now....
Three generations to make a gentleman. Rot. Five. Ten. Then, war.
Two more generations to gather up the pieces--to carry on until the
tide turns. Well, those two can’t expect everything.... Lissa! What
a voice--power--beauty--everything, and that heart-breaking pure
negro quality--Hagar--Mamba. Rotten time of it, like as not, for
all the laughter and singing--climbing up out of the mud--making a
gallant fight of it.... Others too--back at home--different kinds with
different sorts of trouble. That banker Broaden, for instance--good
citizen--hoeing a hard row and not bellyaching about it--precious
little recognition.... What would he think if I addressed him as
Mister?... What would my white friends think? That’s easy: ‘Turn their
heads,’ ‘Black menace.’ Absurd, looking from this distance.... ‘Good
morning, _Mister Broaden_,’ saying it like that--meaning it.... Why
not?... Little enough, God knows!...”

       *       *       *       *       *

And Kate Wentworth, sitting close to her son, where she could feel
the warmth of his arm touching her own, not understanding his mood,
but sensing its existence, feeling him asking to be let alone. “What
in the world is opera coming to!” she is thinking. “This mania to be
different is at the bottom of it, I suppose.... Verdi--now he gave
us music.... Or if one wants to be modern, there is Puccini. But
this--outlandish, I call it.... Libel on the South--nothing less than
plain libel.... Who, in pity’s name, from a section which is famous
for its aristocracy, elected to go and hunt up negroes to be sung
about?... Mamba’s Lissa! Hagar’s! Still more incredible. The girl’s air
of distinction--style--they must have come from somewhere.... I wonder
who could have been her--No, don’t say it--don’t _think_ it. Shame upon
you, Kate Wentworth. You are forgetting yourself. To a lady, the ----’s
of mulattoes do not exist.... But if it had to be negro music, why not,
at least, the beautiful old spirituals?... Lissa--what a remarkable
looking child she was, with her speaking eyes and that air of being at
ease in the drawing room when Mamba brought her in.... Now a famous
person.... ‘Practically born in my back yard.’... Well, then, ‘_raised_
in my back yard.’... Well, then, ‘the grandchild of _our_ dear old
Mamba.’... Now that song of hers at the end of the act--no, I wouldn’t
call that outlandish--strange and different.... Perhaps after all they
did suffer at times on the plantations.... But not at the hands of
the aristocracy--overseers--poor-whites--and, of course, traders....
Saint--how distinguished he is looking now--so like his father--a
Wentworth! Silly of me to sit here crying when I’m so happy--when the
fight is all over--when my children have won.... What a sensitive
profile he has--a thoroughbred--a success--a manager of the St. Cecilia
Society--youngest on the board.... Valerie--a fitting mate for my
boy--lovely now with that smile on her lips--living in the memory of
the music, no doubt--well, she’s of the new generation, perhaps she
gets more out of it than I do.... A good mother to my boy’s son--a good
daughter to me.... Shall I go behind the scenes with Saint afterward?
Shall I take Valerie instead right after the curtain and leave him to
follow?... These new negroes--so different--wouldn’t understand who I
am--something awkward might happen--expect to be addressed as Mr. and
Mrs. no doubt--No, I couldn’t manage that.... Now, Lissa, she would
understand with her Southern raising.... But the others! No, it would
not be wise to stay. Saint can wait if he wants to and join us later.
It is different, less complicated, with a man.”

And on Wentworth’s left, with the smooth ivory of her shoulder brushing
his broadcloth sleeve, sits Valerie, lost in her own reverie. “The
boy,” she is wondering. “Is Miss Jones taking proper care of him? He’s
such a restless sleeper--needs watching.... He’s so absurdly like
Saint.... It is good to know that once, at an important turning, you
thought straight, acted for the best, threw your weight on the right
side.... Good to know that your child will have every comfort--every
chance--that your husband is happy--respected--successful.... Lissa!
What a strange upside-down place the world is.... Mamba! That night
when she took Saint and me to her church.... I knew then that I had to
have him.... Funny old thing, Mamba--knew my heart before I did--wanted
to help us along.... The wedding.... The boy! Is he missing me? Wish I
knew more about Miss Jones--still she _was_ well recommended--looked
competent.... Will he sing, I wonder, or paint--or write?--It means so
much to his father.... But I’m not so sure.... Dad’s failure! Yes, but
money makes such a difference--gives talent its chance. We’re secure
now--Saint--_the boy_....”

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly the light in the big auditorium commenced to ebb, dimming the
modern decorations and endowing them with a mysterious beauty, then
plunging the audience into interstellar night. The slow throb of music
filled the dark, then the curtain of the final act drew up on a stage
of swirling mists and vague half lights. Instantly the mood of the
play was re-established, fixing the watchers in attitudes of rigid
expectancy.

Dawn again, but no longer the red of an old despair. A thin essential
radiance breathed upward behind the massed towers of a metropolis. It
gathered strength, spraying out like the corona of an aurora, gilding
the towers, then dominating them. The music caught the mood of the sky.
The arresting dissonances, the sharp syncopations of the early acts,
were no longer individually evident but seemed to merge into a broader
irresistible current of sound. The rhythm, too, was no longer a thing
separate. It became a force as indistinguishable and pervasive as the
life current. It was a fundamental law that moved light, music, the
sway of the crowd, the passage of time, in a concerted and inevitable
progression. The artificial declamations of operatic convention were
gone. The cast was reduced to two elemental forces. The crowd with
its heavy mass rhythms and reiterated choruses was the body, and the
single transcendent mezzo-soprano that soared above it was the spirit,
aspiring, daring, despairing, lifting again. The movement became
faster. The voice commenced to lift the chorus from its inertia and
carry it along on short, daring flights. Then, in a final acceleration,
the scene soared toward its tremendous climax. The light, the movement,
the music, merged into a sweeping crescendo, the chorus sprang from its
lethargy, while the voice of the woman climbed triumphantly above it
until it shook the air like a storm of beating wings. Then the curtain
shot downward.

When Wentworth recovered from his trancelike absorption the house was
applauding; the large negro chorus was taking a curtain call. The
demands of the audience became deafening. Lissa’s great hour! She
advanced to the footlights and bowed. Now, in the full light she was
plainly visible for the first time, a mulatto, a little above medium
height, and of superb proportions. Wentworth noticed that she wore no
make-up except a slight darkening of the lips that made them seem
fuller, more deliberately negroid. This struck him as significant. From
the light bronze of her face her eyes looked out, large, expressive,
and extraordinarily brilliant--Mamba’s eyes--yes, and Hagar’s. Now, for
the first time, he noticed that she appeared self-conscious, anxious
to be away. She bowed for the second time, and without waiting for the
curtain, withdrew among the chorus.

But the audience would not let it rest at that. They got to their
feet and cheered. They kept the clamour going with a sort of mad
persistence. After five minutes of it the curtain was seen to move,
rising slowly on a bright vacant stage.

Lissa stepped from the wings, and the clamour plunged into silence. The
trace of embarrassed self-consciousness was gone. She seemed detached,
oblivious of both herself and her audience. The conductor rose and
looked up to her for his cue. Apparently she did not see him, for she
gave no sign. Instead she stopped where she was just out of the wings,
and unaccompanied commenced to sing the National Anthem of the American
Negro.

Apparently most of the audience had never heard of it. Wentworth never
had. From the first note he was aware of an absolutely new sensation.
Against his perception beat the words of James Weldon Johnson’s
inspiring poem swept forward in the marching rhythm of Rosamond
Johnson’s music:

  “Lift every voice and sing
   Till earth and heaven ring,
   Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
   Let our rejoicing rise
   High as the list’ning skies,
   Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
   Sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,
   Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us:
   Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
   Let us march on till victory is won.”

Wentworth, listening, felt suddenly the impact of something
tremendously and self-consciously racial; something that had done with
apologies for being itself, done with imitations, reaching back into
its own origin, claiming its heritage of beauty from the past.

On the stage, as the song progressed toward its conclusion, the singer
commenced to sway--sway as Mamba always did toward the end of a
spiritual. Only in this young voice to which art had brought discipline
there was a difference. It wasted nothing in hysteria, but released the
full torrent of its pent emotion into the words and music. Now she was
singing the final stanza:

  “God of our weary years,
   God of our silent tears,
   Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
   Thou who hast by Thy might
   Led us into the light,
   Keep us ever in the path, we pray.
   Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
   Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
   Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
   May we forever stand.
   True to our God,
   True to our native land.”

The song ceased, and the curtain descended. In the auditorium the
audience paid it the tribute of a breathless silence. Then they rose
quietly and filed out into the street.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is a Saturday in late May, and Mamba, happy in the gifts that the
gods have left her, sits upon the doorstep of her crumbling mansion
and lets the new and altogether mad world go hurtling past. Beneath
her feet the multi-coloured flagstones have given place to a cement
pavement. Before her eyes the old cobbles have been superseded by an
asphalt roadway from which the heat quivers visibly upward, shaking the
geometric perfection of lines that converge toward vanishing points
northward and southward. Upon the buildings to her right and left the
restorers have been at work. It is now several years since this army
of invasion appeared, determined and zealous, to restore the district
to its ancient high estate. Strangely enough, Mamba recognises among
the invaders faces of those who, earlier in the century, came to tear
the cobbles from their century-old beds, to smash the flagstones to
atoms and haul them away. But now they are bent upon a frenzied quest
for the antique, buying the ruined mansions, banishing the negroes, and
preparing the street for white occupancy. Only the great four-story
structure where Mamba sits and suns herself, and which is said to
contain some of the finest Georgian panelling and ironwork in the city,
is impregnable, for its title stands in the name of one Lissa Atkinson,
and Saint Julien Wentworth, who manages the property, states definitely
that it is not for sale.

Unmindful of the direct rays of the morning sun, Mamba is sitting, as
is her custom, to watch the New York steamer put to sea. As though in
mute protest against the invasion of law and order, she is attired
in an old wrapperlike garment, faded and far from immaculate. Her
legs, thrust straight out before her, are stockingless, and her feet
disappear into disreputable-looking men’s shoes. An old clay pipe
juts at a rakish angle from between her toothless jaws, and from it
smoke fumes in a lazy cloud about her face and drifts away to offend
the sensitive nostrils of the white passers-by, who are becoming more
and more numerous as the houses fall one by one into the hands of the
restorers. Her age is a matter for speculation, as it is a subject
upon which there is no one left to speak with authority. Her body
is shrunken with the actual physical contraction of age. Under the
tired flesh the bones are commencing to assume undue prominence,
foreshadowing their grim survival. Through gaps in the sparse gray hair
the skull shows in sharp outline, and the brows are ridges beneath
which the eyes are lost when the head is lowered. But this inevitable
physical mutation which in another would denote senility has, instead
of diminishing the force of her personality, in some strange way
intensified it, so that those who speak to the old woman as she sits
there feel it in the air about her like an aura. The negro children who
come and go sense it and grin delightedly at her word of affectionate
abuse. The cur now lying beneath her knees with only his muzzle showing
under the folds of the wrapper knows it, and has gone there for refuge
from a world that has no pity upon an unlicensed mongrel.

Mamba has at last accomplished what she believes to be her final
adjustment to the changing exigencies of life, and she has no complaint
with Fate. The old room one flight up where Lissa was born, and from
which Hagar was led to her banishment, is again her stronghold. But
now how different in appearance! Papered with pictures of Lissa--Lissa
at a steamer’s rail, off to Europe--Lissa smiling from the centre of a
rotogravure page in the costume of her latest opera--Lissa in a hundred
poses, a hundred settings.

But Mamba, scorner of limitations, has at last learned the necessity of
their acceptance, for only by so doing can she project her memory back
into a past shared by her daughters. Across the way, where the muddy
beach once lay, where the mosquito fleet was wont to dock, and where
the negroes would swarm and chaffer; where the smacks, when they were
sea-weary, would leave their bones awash in the warm tides, all is now
quiet--barren--orderly. If she moves her gaze ever so slightly to the
north it encounters the long line of a modern pier; to the south, and
her happiness is ambushed by the spectacle of a dozen gleaming yachts
belonging to rich Yankees who have invaded her familiar precincts. And
so she has schooled her eyes to span the distance and dwell unimpeded
upon a rectangle of sunny harbour. Beautiful, familiar, unchangeable,
it lies as always mirroring the first dim fires of dawn or sparkling
in the bright windy afternoons. And across it, as they used to do when
Lissa was a baby, the New York steamers come and go, bellowing their
deep hails and farewells.

Over the hot roofs come the measured tones of St. Michael’s chimes
announcing the hour of ten. From behind the pier sound shouts and
commands. Mamba sits forward, tense, expectant. Then, majestically,
across her rectangle of harbour moves the lofty cut-water of the New
York steamer, folding back the flat blue into a thin green line lipped
with white, drawing after it the steep, black wall of the hull, the
high, gleaming superstructure.

This is the moment for which Mamba has been waiting. Now that the
vessel has drawn its full length into her sphere of vision she sees
in it more than the form of a familiar friend out of a loved past. It
is no longer a great and mysterious adventurer putting forth from her
little world into a vast unknown. No. To-day she is watching a sure
voyager of that fabulous distance which lies between the wish and the
rainbow’s end--between her first fantastic dream for Lissa and the
consummation of that dream.

Now from the whistle a plume of steam is blown against the stark blue
of the sky, and a hoarse, baying note wakes the echoes along the
waterfront. Far below the crowded decks, the soaring funnel, on her
own private doorstep, Mamba draws herself together, and her eyes light
with a gleam of her old impudent spirit. “Git along, den,” she says
patronisingly. “Git along. Ah ain’t holdin’ yo’. An’ when yo’ get whar
yo’ is goin’, ’member what Ah tol’ you’ an’ gib my gal huddy fuh me.”


THE END




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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