He looked at her gravely. “Ef he’s goin’ away I wouldn’t be seein’ too much of him Melissy.” Old as he was he could remember the way of men with maids. “’Twouldn’t do for you to set too much store on him, and him goin’ away and all. You wasn’t thinkin’ of marryin’ him, wuz you?”
“No,” she said promptly, and hated herself for the lie.
“’N I wouldn’t see him too much nohow,” he continued gently. “Never can tell about even the best of these city fellers. Gone to-day and here to-morrow, that’s their motter. Always gone to-day. ’N don’t you fergit it M’lissy. And another thing,” he said delicately, “yore ant ’n yore cousin is ben had a powerful lot of trouble—most of it not their fault. ’Twould be a real pity if you wuz to add to it in any way. My advice to you Melissa would be to be good, jes’ ez good as you kin be. . . .”
She smiled up at him, “You make me think of Asshur, Mr. Stede.”
“Me too. It makes me think of Asshur too,” he said bewilderingly. He rested a horny, finger on her brown coat sleeve. “And let me tell you suthin’, there’s the man for you, Melissy, the man in a thousand thousand. . . .”
Melissa, half laughing, wholly provoked, expostulated. “What’s the matter with this town, Mr. Stede, that it can’t ’tend to its own business? Of course I don’t mean you,” she broke in on herself, but she was still vexed. “Here you are tellin’ me to marry Asshur and the other day there was Mrs. Epps ”
He interrupted her, “Mis’ Epps? She ever see you with Forten?” A red spark burned brightly in his eyes.
“Yes and she said ”
“Better run in now, Melissy. Gittin’ too cold fer you out here. Glad you like the swing. Spec’ to see you a-settin’ out in it shortly.”
• • • • •
He would go to see Mis’ Epps. That Melissa should meet Mis’ Epps! “It would’a ben better,” he muttered into his beard, “if she’d a drank cold poison. It’d a ben better if she’d a fell in Redd’s Brook. But I’ll tell her, I’ll tell her that M’lissy’s a gonta marry Asshur. I’ll tell her they both told me. Him, yes, and her too. . . .”
Late that night he left Mrs. Epps’ bungalow gorged to repletion, Pentecost having been in one of its most beneficent moods. . . . He’d had to part with one or two of the choicest secrets which he had stored away in that secretive mind of his. He dared not be too obvious. Then he let it drop. . . . “Big doin’s up at Mis’ Strange’s pretty soon. By summer I reckon. Shouldn’t be surprised now ef’n Laurentine up and married that doctor feller any time now. See his pitcher up in her room one day last week. I wus up there cleanin’ winders.”
Mrs. Epps looked at him sharply, “That makes jus’ one weddin’. What makes it so big?”
He took out a square of terrible tobacco and began to hack at it with a huge rusty jackknife, his foot in his great rusty boot with the unsightly ridges as of cast-iron across the top swaying slowly, comfortably.
“Is Epps’ spitoon handy, Mis’ Epps? . . . Oh, the little one, she’s a cute trick, lotta boys callin’ her up all the time, walkin’ around town with her. Her ant don’t allow them to call no more, ’count she don’t think it fair to Asshur. ’Ceptin’ only that Ben Davis boy, she let him come, yeah she shore let him come, ’cause she knows he’s Asshur’s best frien’.”
Mrs. Epps said unbelievingly, “Asshur! What about that Forten boy?” She watched him narrowly.
His gaze never wavered, his lashless lids steady under his tangled brows. “Whut Forten boy? Kinda slender, runty feller, one who helps her with her farren langwidges?—She sho’ has trouble with them langwidges. ’Pears like I never see no gal what has so much trouble as she has with langwidges. This here Forten feller he speak ’em all the time. Yasm’m. He speak farren langwidges with Melissy all the time. . . . Course these is secrets, Mis’ Epps. B’lieve I won’t wait for Sam no longer.” He pulled a letter from his pocket. “Got to go round by the Post Office to mail this for Melissy. She always sends me ’bout this time ev’ry day I’m there. . . . Sho is a long ways from Red Brook to Alabam!”
• • • • •
In her heart Melissa thought she knew the source of Mrs. Epps’ and even Mr. Stede’s unprecedented interest in her affairs. “It’s that old business of Aunt Sal and Colonel Halloway popping up again,” she told herself disgustedly, “that’s what all the shooting’s for. My hat! Aren’t they ever going to lay off it?”
Her mind had run like the town folks’. Dr. Denleigh, an outsider, might connect himself with the dubious Stranges. He was an unknown and then too he’d been married and presumably knew what he was looking for. If he’d found that in Laurentine—why so much the better for Laurentine, thought her complacent and unenvious younger cousin. “And besides he’s an old man,” mused Melissa who once had privately decided to die at the age of thirty-five rather than to attain to a doddering old majority of forty or thereabouts. Rather recently she had thought of changing this ultimatum. Mrs. Ismay and Mrs. Brown were women in their early forties and seemed to be going pretty well.
But in the case of Malory Forten, the finest young colored man as anyone could see in Red Brook, it was not at all surprising that people should resent his falling into the hands of a relative, however reputable, of the notorious Stranges. Melissa picked the adjective critically, secure in the knowledge that no notoriety could be traced to the door of either her or of her mother with her two most reputable marriages.
Sooner or later some one would make it his business to expostulate with Malory on his choice of a lady only to discover that Malory, far from requiring arguments pro and con, was absolutely ignorant of the whole affair, the lady of his choice having informed him of nothing, just nothing.
“And won’t that put me in a tough spot!” thought Melissa who went regularly to the movies and who therefore saw all the best gangster pictures, acquired their vocabulary and, had not her mind been so completely at another slant, might have acquired also the common or garden variety of their tactics.
Malory, she knew now positively, was a snob. Not in the ordinary sense. Malory would waste no time, no thought, on persons like Pelasgie Stede and Mrs. Epps. On the other hand, something in him reached out with immediate respect to old Johnathan Stede standing like a challenging sentinel under the revealing arc light. That incident on the whole had redounded to her credit.
In likewise he would see the intrinsic superiority so patent in Aunt Sal and Laurentine. He would be, he had been, impressed already by the latter’s beauty and he would be just as greatly intrigued by something finer than beauty in Aunt Sal,—if only he could know her. But he would never be able to forget that Aunt Sal had for years been the storm center of the greatest scandal that had ever touched Red Brook, that Laurentine, with her beauty and her pride, her independence and above all her faithful reproduction of Colonel Halloway’s other two daughters, line for line, feature for feature, had served to increase rather than decrease that scandal. . . .
Only he must be told, and that shortly. “And by me,” said Melissa stoutly. She had the insight to see that her simple confession might be counted unto her for righteousness. But again it might bring with it an enveloping tarnish—she might not appear so white, so desirable in her lover’s eyes. Malory, she knew, wanted his roses dewy, his woman’s reputation, not to say her virtue, unblemished and undiscussed.
“And yet,” said Melissa sensibly, “if he hadn’t fallen in love with me whom would he have fallen in love with, in this town?” Kitty and he were of the same class, but as far apart as the opposite, outer confines of that class. . . . Of course there was Gertrude . . . she knew Malory wrote to Gertrude, she rather thought that Gertrude looked with some favor on Malory. . . . If she and Malory should break and Malory were to go to Boston, his affair with Melissa behind him, and Gertrude still in Wellesley! Oh! she would never be able to endure that! . . . And again she thought of Asshur and remembered with pride but no comfort that in spite of his admonitions he would be ready to
be anything she chose to let him be—yes were she ten times in Aunt Sal’s predicament.
CHAPTER XXXI
MR. STEDE had unwittingly left with Melissa the germ of an idea. That swing now that he had just painted and was leaving out on the lawn! It was well to the rear of the house and rarely used, since Aunt Sal and Laurentine, like Melissa, chose when they sat out doors the shadow of the Chinaberry Tree. The weather was growing milder and the spring warmth was around the corner, even after sundown the air was soft and mild. Why shouldn’t the two of them meet there late in the quiet night, well muffled and protected from stray breezes? In this way they would be safe from prying eyes, they could sit safely and comfortably outdoors and there would be no uncalled-for expression of opinion on the part of Mrs. Epps and others of her kind.
There were endless plans to be made these days. After all four months was little enough time for a boy of twenty-one and a girl of eighteen to make plans for the great adventure of marriage. There was money to be had, clothes to be bought, lodgings to be secured. Over and over they talked of that last day in school, when diplomas bestowed, each should feel equipped to step out into the world and therefore doubly the man or woman which they had been prior to that significant ceremony. More amply able to take care of their affairs and to emerge unhampered by acquaintances or relatives, friends or foes, into the splendid untried world.
Malory had a flair for precision. He would have liked to map out every moment of this intervening time, and to have every action hold some particular significance. In order to save they had decided to elope to Boston by bus and trolley. Malory had already possessed himself of countless maps and routes. He knew already all the stops and changes by heart. Melissa here in Red Brook was at times a little wilful, a little persistent in sustaining her preferences and decisions. But once they should have left Red Brook, the burden of the direction of their small affairs must rest with Malory. He as the man and as the director of their little enterprise must be prepared to meet and conquer any emergency. Melissa loved to hear him on this subject.
All these and many other things they planned sitting late at night in the swing under the quiet stars. Malory in his overcoat, his collar up to his ears, explained and expounded. Melissa, her beret close down over her ears, her little girl figure swathed in an old gray blanket which she had found along with Mr. Stede’s other equipment in the tool shed, listened and offered suggestions. It seemed to her the most wonderful, the most thrilling experience she had ever encountered in her life. Not the marriage itself—of course the thought of that would be calculated to send any young girl into transports. But the knowledge that they two, all unaided, were about to snatch out of a welter of difficulties the peace and security which they both so much courted.
She thought of the numberless, needless objections which their elders would have contrived to place in the way of their marrying so young. She could not imagine what Malory’s people, dim, ineffectual shapes, would say or do. But she knew they would disapprove. But in her own case, Laurentine had already shown her definite unwillingness to subscribe to any such arrangement. Objecting as she did to the idea of Melissa’s receiving callers, certainly she would have used all her influence, all her oratory against marriage.
Not that she seemed to have any objection to Malory; Melissa was sure that her cousin knew nothing specifically of this young man. It would be fun to see her face when she learned that the young girl had disregarded her injunctions, had not only met the youth who had been refused the house, but had even married him and gone off, far off, to live . . . she would probably never come back, yes she would, she would come to see Aunt Sal who had been so heavenly kind, and Kitty Brown and old Mr. Stede. She would probably never see Asshur again, she reflected, her throat constricting a little at the thought of that deprivation. Well of course one couldn’t have everything.
What pleased her most was that, thanks to Malory’s cleverness and foresight, it seemed likely that they would be able to get away without encountering any more of that strange, haunting uneasiness which Mrs. Epps’ and Mr. Stede’s unwarranted opposition awoke within them.
• • • • •
Only one difficulty remained and that was to acquaint Malory with the past history of her connections. She must tell him herself, plainly, explicitly and without varnish that old tale about the colored maid, the white gentleman, the beautiful mulatto child. Sometimes it looked so easy. When Malory spoke as he often did about her Aunt’s charming house, the carefully kept grounds, the spaciousness and equipment of the kitchen, she might have managed some careless rejoinder. Always in his voice at such times as these was the hint of inquiry and she might have replied: “Surely you know all about this. Aunt Sal, well Aunt Sal was just the same as married to one of the Halloways—the Halloways you know. Of course he couldn’t marry her, so he left her this for herself and Laurentine. Lauren-tine’s his daughter, see?”
But when the occasion did arise she was never equal to answering thus. And when she did feel nerved to it, the facts of the sorry dilemma seemed to her so towering, so startingly removed from Malory’s staid sense of decency that her courage failed her after all. But she must make it plain to him. She did not dare permit him to learn of it from some one else. She knew and he knew that she knew of his belief in class, in position, in integrity.
Malory had absolutely no feeling about color. He did not resent it, he did not suffer from the restrictions which his appearance might impose on him, here and there. Of his own racial group he belonged to the cream. Others might have more money—he could make sufficient for his needs. But in birth, gentility, decency, Malory believed, complacently, no one could surpass him. He cared, save in rare instances, surprisingly little for those who could not equal him.
• • • • •
The swing had been well oiled, it moved easily and without a creak. The nights were getting milder, Melissa had discarded her blanket, Malory no longer buttoned up his overcoat. They met now very seldom out of school, reserving their talks, their planning, their rare rapturous kisses for their sessions in the swing, where they met some three or four times a week. In the darkling spring evening Malory strolled through the meadow which lay to the side and rear of Aunt Sal’s grounds, vaulted the low fence of thin, twisted wire and waited in the swing.
Melissa left the house to go to the library, to Kitty Brown’s, to get an assignment from a schoolmate. She made a great to-do of slamming the front gate, without even leaving the yard, then tiptoeing on the short, tender grass she stole back past the far side of the house, past the kitchen, past the tool shed and so on down the long yard until she had reached her lover. At a little after nine she came in mildly, innocently, leaving Malory still ensconced in the swing. Yawning ostentatiously she sat down at a table, glanced at a school-book, at a magazine.
Presently she said sleepily and dutifully: “Goodnight Aunt Sal, ’night Laurentine. Oo-oo-h I’m so sleepy.”
The two older women would hear the door of her room close, could faintly distinguish the raising of her window. By and by it would be ten o’clock and after; the two elder women, except on the nights when Denleigh or Mrs. Ismay were there, put away their work or their books and meandered off to bed. Aunt Sal’s room was in the front of the house, Laurentine’s was back of it and communicating. Melissa’s was farther down the long hall, nearest of the three to the stair-steps. It was great fun later, when she was sure the others were asleep, for the young girl to steal out of her room down the familiar staircase, through the sewing-room and kitchen, and so out, into the back yard where Malory would be alert, waiting. This was the most dangerous part of their evening; once these moments were past it was possible for them to sit and chat, completely at their ease, as far into the night as they would.
• • • • •
Malory, deliberate sentimentalist, grew tired of the swing and its safety, not because it was safe but because with his sure sense of values he knew that the Chinaberry Tree was the place where th
ey really should foregather.
“It’s so beautiful, Melissa; it makes it all seem like a fairy-tale.”
“Yes, I know, Malory darling, but it’s nowhere near as sure. The Tree is right under Laurentine’s window and sometimes if the moonlight comes a certain way you can see right through the leaves and tell who’s there.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be leaning out of her window at this hour of night, would she, like the blesséd Damozel out of Heaven?”
“I don’t know anything about the blesséd Damozel,” said Melissa, forgetting the Rossetti to which he’d introduced her, “but I do know she might just chance to look out one night and see us!”
“And what if she does?” he queried reasonably. “She’s not the Queen of Sheba, is she, and we’re not her subjects even if she is,—and after all, what’s it all about? Come to think of it, I’d like to see your proud Laurentine, Melissa, and tell her what I think of her for making a nice girl like you receive her company out of doors. What’s the matter with her, anyway?”
• • • • •
Well, this was as good a chance as any. With a little guilefulness, she might even contrive to make Laurentine’s pitiful state enhance her own desirability. She leaned back against his arm, looked up into his face. If possible, she’d finish this up tonight.
“You know, Malory, you look awfully nice with all that silvery light about your face. Makes you look very grave and tender like—like the angel Gabriel I guess,” she finished doubtfully. “Anyway it’s quite a swell character and an awful important one.”
“That’s a very nice speech. You deserve a kiss for that. You’re a swell kid yourself, Melissa. . . . But look here, let’s get down to brass tacks. Not that it makes much difference now, we’re so near the end of the whole business. . . . But—just what is eating Laurentine, Honey?”