The Chinaberry Tree

Faintly troubled she walked up the path. Clandestine meetings were no part of any plan of hers. “Laurentine will be all right pretty soon and then Malory will be coming right here to see me and we’ll sit out here and talk and talk under the Chinaberry Tree. Oh Malory, Malory!”

  She went to bed without a thought of Asshur.

  • • • • •

  On Tuesday she went to Kitty’s. She wore a white crêpe dress with a cherry colored scarf and red and white sport shoes. Her hair was all curly all over her head and she looked, she knew it herself, exactly as a young girl should look on a summer’s evening walking out with her young man. She met Malory on the path coming away from the house.

  “What’s the matter? Did you think I wasn’t coming?”

  “No,” he answered joyously, “I was sure you’d be coming. But evidently the Browns weren’t. They’re all out. Isn’t it grand Melissa? We’ll take a bus and ride somewhere and then we’ll walk back along some nice quiet road. Are there any parks around here Melissa? I’ve forgotten.”

  There was something better than a park around. There was the Romany Road. “Do you know that?”

  “I think I do,” he answered doubtfully, “but doesn’t just about everybody go there?”

  “No, because you can’t get there in an auto—at least not very well. It’s a dirt road you know and everybody goes on the good roads. It’s very beautiful there.”

  “How do you know?” he queried a trifle sharply. “Here let’s run and catch that bus.” They jogged along in the evil smelling contrivance, talking spasmodically, but both were glad when they stepped out and started back to Red Brook and their trysting place. The little clearing off the Romany Road lay in an enchanted flood of moonlight, almost as bright as day, but with a magic which the daylight never knew. Even Melissa, infinitely more practical than the lad at her side was awe-stricken with the beauty of it.

  “Oh Malory, it’s lovelier than I ever dreamed.”

  “Then you’ve never been here before at night, Melissa?”

  “Oh no, no, only in the day-time.”

  “Then this is our find, and we’ll keep it to ourselves. Let’s sit down,—but you mustn’t get your lovely frock dirty.” He stripped off his gray coat and she sat on it while he flung himself beside her. “Let’s hear all about you Melissa—Honey.”

  She was a little startled, felt suddenly like a small girl. “You’re not going to get gay, are you Malory?”

  He laughed whole-heartedly. “Going to get gay! That sounds like Philadelphia. No, Melissa, I’m not going to get gay. I just like you that’s all and I’m very happy, and your name means honey. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t. But if it does mean that, why it’s all right.” She was very much pleased. “And if I talked like a Philadelphian it’s because I am one. I was born there and went to school there until I came here.”

  “You didn’t, really?”

  “I did, really.”

  “And I was born here in Red Brook and went to school in Philadelphia until I came back here to live. So you see Melissa we were meant to meet. Tell me about yourself.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she replied, ashamed but truthful. “I’m the child of very poor, parents. My father, John Paul, did odd jobs, I think. My mother never spoke about his work. She was a seamstress and did plain sewing. He died when I was a baby and mother looked after me until I was about fifteen. Then she married again and went to Chicago and sent me here to live with her sister. I don’t know why she didn’t take me with her,” she ended, puzzling over this phenomenon for the first time.

  “I’m glad she didn’t take you—I’d probably never have met you. What was she like Melissa?”

  “Well she wasn’t pretty, but she was clean and—and stylish, but not elegant like Laurentine ”

  “Who’s Laurentine?”

  “The cousin ”

  “I live with,” he mocked. “Yes, I remember the proud one who’s sort of off you. Go on about your mother.”

  “Well as I said she was stylish—and—and modern,” said Melissa, surprised at her ability to see her mother so objectively. “And she was always gay ”

  “Happy?”

  “No, I don’t think she was always happy, but jolly and funny—and I can see now she must have been very courageous—I don’t remember ever having seen her down-hearted though we were really awfully poor. Why we were terribly poor,” said Melissa surprised. “Why Malory I don’t believe anything stood between us and the poorhouse but her needle. Yet she was always laughing and gay.”

  “Toujours gai, toujours riant,” he said with a gravity at variance with his words. “And she passed it on to you. That’s a gift, my dear, worth more than money.” He had been very cheerful but he relapsed for a second into the irritable languor which she had first observed in him.

  “Your folks aren’t very gay, Malory?”

  “Gay!” He almost laughed at the preposterous idea. “They don’t know the meaning of the word. I don’t know what’s the matter with them. They have fair health—the girls Reba and Harriett are strong, though—wiry—I suppose you’d call them. They do private catering and make a good living. My mother has enough for her wants—at least as long as she stays in this place, and her father—I’m named for him—left me a little trust fund enough for my education—provided I become either a doctor or an engineer.”

  “Which are you going to be?” she wanted to know, suddenly alert.

  “An engineer. They wanted me to be a doctor, but I couldn’t. I hate ugliness and illness in people.”

  “Where will you, a colored man, get a chance at engineering?” she asked, practically.

  “Well, I could go into civil service and draw plans and bridges or I might go to South America and build them. I’m not bothered about that side of it but I’ve got to stay around here a while yet and I’d like to see my mother in better spirits. I won’t let myself worry about the girls, they seem so deliberately, sort of stubbornly, depressed.”

  Silent, for a few seconds, they watched the broad path of moonlight. Then Melissa stirred.

  “I know something about melancholy people Malory. Laurentine used to be inclined that way. But she’s much better now. What’s back of your sisters’ unhappiness?”

  He shook his head miserably. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine. It seems to me as a little child that our lives were normal enough, even merry. I remember my father very vividly, a jolly, rather noisy man, pretty selfish I fancy. But there was music and life and my mother used to practice little songs and sing them too. And I can remember their doing some dancing steps together. The girls ran in and out of the house like other girls I imagine. They all made over me—I’m the youngest and I wasn’t such a strong youngster—that has always been my big quarrel,” he ended disgustedly.

  She was all interest. “It sounds great. What happened to change it all?”

  “I don’t know. I remember waking one morning and finding my father gone and my mother and the girls perfect wraiths. Ghosts you know. It was as though something, some essence of living had died in them in the night. I don’t know any way to describe the change. At first I thought it would pass away. My mother was always terribly upset over any absence of my father. But they never got back to their old selves.”

  “Not even when your father came back?”

  “He didn’t come back,—at least not for the better part of a year. And when he did he was as much unlike himself, as my mother was, from the gay, lively creature I used to know. He was like a man stricken—with death I guess, for he never was well again and died in a few months.”

  “And of course that only deepened your mother’s grief.”

  “Yes and no,” he answered musingly. “You know I’ve often puzzled over that. As a child I suppose I thought she was heartbroken over his death. But of late as I look back, it doesn’t seem to me that it made any difference. Whatever had happened to her left its permanent mark on her and on the girls too, even be
fore my father died. They sent me off to school in Philadelphia not long after. I lived with an old great-aunt who lived way back in the past. Certainly she wasn’t unhappy but she was old and spent her whole life recalling memories of Isaac this one who was the first colored caterer in Philadelphia and Sarah that one who was the first student at the ‘Institute for Colored Youth.’ Oh I’m fed up with oldness and memories and grief.”

  He stretched out his arms. “I want life, sun, merriment, laughter. They’ve almost all been choked out of me.”

  “Since you love them so, maybe you could bring them into your home here and put some life into your mother and sisters.”

  He shook his head despondently. “No that’s impossible. You can’t picture what the atmosphere of our house is like. It’s a regular dismal swamp. Did you ever read ‘Marianna in the Moated Grange’—Tennyson’s, you know?”

  “No I had too hard a time struggling through the ‘Idylls of the King.’ I never read anything else.”

  “Well, in there it says :

  ‘All day within the dreamy house,

  The doors upon their hinges creak’d;

  The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse

  Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,

  Or from the crevice peer’d about.

  Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,

  Old footsteps trod the upper floors,

  Old voices called her from without.’

  That’s like my home and my folks.”

  She shivered a little as she had once before.

  “Oh Malory, you’ll have to snap out of it. It’s too sad, too blue. I suppose you have to live there, sleep there, but you must spend most of your time outside with these boys and girls around here. They’re jolly and lively, they’ll get rid of your ghosts.”

  They were walking through the sweet-scented night toward her home.

  “I don’t know about them, but I do know about you. You can help me get rid of my ghosts if you’ll let me see you often enough. Do you think you can manage that for me, Melissa?”

  She was so strong, so sturdy in her own health and practicality and courage that she felt sorry for him. “Yes, I’ll manage. I’ll help you. I’ll love it. When do you go away, Malory?”

  “Oh I’m here to stay for quite a while yet. I’m going to the High School here for my Senior year. I’m over age because I’ve been out a lot on account of my health. But I’m O.K. now. Poor old Aunt Viny died last June. So there was nothing for me to do but come home.”

  Impulsively she said without coquetry, “I’ll make it really home for you.”

  He came so close to her then and held her hand so tight as she stood by her gate that for a second she thought he would kiss her. She was confused and planless but she knew she didn’t want this lad to hold her cheaply. So hastily withdrawing her hand she stepped back, ensconced herself safely on the other side of the gate.

  “Good-night Malory. Be happy.”

  “Good-night, Melissa. I sure will. Just thinking of you will make me that.”

  She let herself in thinking with a grave joy how wonderful it was to be a girl. “We really are very responsible creatures.” Her thoughts veered. “It looks as though I might have a pleasant year after all. I guess I won’t be so lonely after all.”

  Up in her room the moonlight picked out a white patch upon her lavender bedspread. A letter. The light turned on revealed Asshur’s familiar writing. He had written immediately on arriving and had despatched the missive by airmail.

  A little thrilled at this evidence of his interest she sat down and read. He was home, he was tired, he was blue, he missed his girl so terribly. Three pages were full of his mourning. He ended with, “Be good Melissa, remember be good until I come and after; no matter what other girls do, you be both good and careful.”

  His constant reiterations sent her yawning to bed.

  CHAPTER XIX

  DR. DENLEIGH walked briskly up the path to Aunt Sal’s house, rang the door-bell with assurance and was already standing with his hat in his hand when Aunt Sal opened the door. There was no mistaking her welcome. “Your smile is certainly a cure for what ails a man,” he told her gayly. “I wish I could bottle it and serve it out to my patients as an elixir. Bottled smiles,—that’s an idea, don’t you think? How’s Laurentine? Do you think she’d let me have lunch with her? I’ve got a lot of calls to make in this neighborhood this afternoon.”

  Aunt Sal’s genial smile and expression brought back some idea of the girl she must once have been. “Come right in Doctor. Laurentine’s well and I know you can have lunch with her. I expected you even if she didn’t, and I’ll have everything ready in a jiffy.”

  She led him into the dining-room and presently Laurentine came in to greet him. “How do you do Dr. Denleigh?”

  “I’ve told you two or three thousand times Miss Laurentine Strange that my name is Stephen. Now let’s hear you say it. One, two, three! Try it. Stephen! Bet you can’t pronounce it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Stephen!”

  “That’s it! Good! Did it break your jaw to say it? Do you feel any internal complications? I have a bargain to make with you young lady. Give a starving fellow something to eat,—only three grains of corn, leddy,—and I’ll take you for a buggy-ride.”

  “A buggy-ride! Oh Stephen, you don’t mean to say you’ve ordered it and it’s come!”

  “The girl guessed right the very first time. Look out the window and you’ll see my first Ford.”

  They looked out at the shining tricky little dark. blue sports model.

  “Oh Stephen isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it great? Will you let me drive her?”

  “In return for one large and nourishing luncheon I will.”

  “H’m I’m not sure of the size but of course it will be nourishing. Mother always sees to that.”

  “It’ll be large too, Doctor,” Aunt Sal assured him. The three sat down to the savory repast. It was a day in September. Melissa was in school. Johnasteen and Matilda were having their meal in the sewing-room.

  “Stephen’s got his new car mother. Look at him bursting with pride.”

  Denleigh laughed. “I am. I admit it. I had a Cadillac in Washington, Mrs. Strange, but never felt half as proud of it as I do of this little Ford.”

  Aunt Sal knew more of his story than Lauren-tine. His car, his house and his savings all had been sacrificed in a long, tireless, vain effort to save his divorced wife in her last devastating illness.

  She admired his pluck and good-humored persistence. “It means a come back for you, don’t it Doctor?”

  “The beginning of one, Mrs. Strange,” he corrected her with a glance at Laurentine.

  All three of them loved these days. The man because it gave him a glimpse of the domesticity which he loved and which he so ardently yearned to possess once more. Aunt Sal because she liked Denleigh for himself and felt she descried in him the qualities she would most like in a son—or a son-in-law. Laurentine because it seemed right and natural to have some one dropping in easily, matter-of-factly—just as guests dropped in on Mrs. Ismay or on the Italian girl across the way.

  Beyond this she would not let her thoughts go.

  In the late afternoon Denleigh returned for Laurentine to try out the little new car. Both of them invited Aunt Sal to accompany them. But she refused, retiring to her room, first to pray, secondly to savor the exquisite Tightness of being a mother waiting for her daughter to arrive home from a drive with her beau. It was Friday she would have baked fish and macaroni for dinner—perhaps he would stay. . . .

  • • • • •

  Denleigh and Laurentine sped along in the warm deep gold of the September afternoon which can be so sad unless it is made rather deliberately very, very happy. He was free until eight; he was beside the woman who, he felt, carried his future happiness in her shapely slender hands. He bent his fine head which the slightly graying hair at his temples rendered so distinguished and regarded her with pride.
br />   “You know I like to look at you Laurentine. You seem so real.”

  She glanced at him, her dark eyes deep unfathomable pools in the apricot satin of her face.

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that Stephen!”

  “Why not? You are the realest thing in the world to me these days. You’re almost the only person I know who has been able vicariously to get down to the feel of life. Of course I know you think you’ve suffered and in a way you have—from awful loneliness and sensitiveness, don’t think I under-rate them dear girl. But you’re already so adjusted to life—without having had to be broken to bits and remoulded as most of us have to be. . . . I think that is why I like you. You’re so ready for living and yet so intact.”

  She parried him lightly, “I thought my face was my fortune, kind sir.”

  “I know it. And in a sense it is. And yet Laurentine although I’m a man who cares a lot about beauty, it wasn’t that, that drew me to you. Irene had cured me of that. I wanted to like a woman again. I needed it. But I knew I never would unless I spied in her first something deeper, more essential than physical beauty—and yet as beautiful as physical beauty. . . . I know I am expressing myself poorly. But that first day I saw you at Millie Ismay’s it seemed to me I glimpsed it. That’s why I came back in and spoke to you again before leaving. I wanted to find out if I had really seen what I thought I had. And it was there. I could see it shining through your lovely face and your exquisite dress like a beautiful jewel in a setting, almost, but not quite as beautiful.”

  She could feel herself growing pale but she said steadily. “I don’t believe you really know about me after all Stephen. I’m just—nobody, not only illegitimate, Stephen, but the child of a connection that all America frowns on. I’m literally fatherless.”

  He frowned, his face almost as pale as her own. “What bosh to talk to a physician! Biology transcends society! Is that over your head darling? I mean to say the facts of life, birth and death are more important than the rules of living, marriage, law, the sanction of the church or of man.”

  She didn’t attempt to argue this.