The Chinaberry Tree

He muttered: “He’s got to give her up . . . he’d be the first one to give her up if he only knowed.”

  “Knew what Mr. Stede?”

  He was so old; he was so tired. He didn’t like this girl, who, he suspected, had all her life succeeded in getting what she wanted, who always would succeed. . . . She would probably marry Malory though what would become of Melissa in that event he could not guess. . . . On the other hand what would become of Melissa if she did marry him?

  “Well,” he said feebly, “they’s two reasons, Gertrude, they’s two reasons why he hadn’t oughta marry her. One of the reasons I knows fer a fac’. The other one I don’t know but I guesses. If the fust reason is true Malory won’t want to marry her . . . and if they’s both true. . . .”

  So then he told her.

  She was pale, she was frightened, she was in tears when he had finished. She knew then that in all probability some day she would marry Malory, but in her heart her triumph lay like ashes in her mouth.

  • • • • •

  She drove him to his house and he dismounted sad and creaking and wordless, hoping very ardently that he would never see this woman again. And yet bearing in his heart a nameless sense of freedom since he knew with no word, no promise from her that Gertrude would handle this situation; he could not leave the matter in more capable hands. But he liked her none the more for that. For all his age and weariness, for all his accumulation of his own and others’ woes his reaction toward this sex remained definitely Victorian. He did not like capable women.

  Gertrude drove off slowly, thoughtfully, down past Redd’s Brook where the willows drooping and weeping as willows really should, made her think of Malory . . . she was an even more deliberate sentimentalist than he. . . . She would have liked to savor with him the delight of an hour passed beneath, within, their foliage. “Well,” she sighed to herself, “that will probably never be, because of course he won’t want to live here. . . .” And anyway one couldn’t have just everything. There was the song that Jerry was lately forever singing to Kitty:

  “Got the house, got the car

  But I haven’t got you . . .”

  Substituting for house and car, willow-trees and the sweet romance of April, what difference did their absence make since undoubtedly,—yes with time and tact she could be sure of it,—she had her man!

  Her father and mother had gone to Newark to attend a meeting of the convention which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was holding there. Kitty was off somewhere with Jerry Adamson flirting with him and being flirted at. She came home, rummaged about in the ice-box, bore a carefully arranged tray upstairs, ate to her delicate satisfaction, got into her lounging pajamas and so to bed where she could think. Kitty coming in about half-past ten, breathless, humming, happy, turned on the light and stared in astonishment at her recumbent sister, who lolling in her little bed returned the stare.

  “Oh, hello!” Gertrude welcomed her amiably, “you thinking of living here now?”

  For answer, Kitty, her eyes, very bright, went over and kissed her.

  “And isn’t it nice to run into a session of old home week in your own room?” the older girl murmured holding tightly none the less to her sister, and rejoicing at this tacitly implied conclusion of the great civil war. “What’s on your mind, Kitten? Having a sangwidge?”

  The younger girl plumped herself just any which way down on the bed. “You know, Gertrude, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if I were to marry him.” She rose and walked over to the dressing table, powdering her pretty face anew, needlessly revising her mouth with a vivid lip-stick.

  “Sit down and tell me all,” her sister encouraged seductively. And Kitty needing nothing more than this told her of Jerry and his sudden conversion to a bigger and better life all brought about, it appeared, as the result of his becoming more and more acquainted with the fine and really womanly character of Miss Katchen Brown. “I even told him my real name,” said Kitty, in proof of her newly awakened trust in him,” and he liked it, and he said I was his ideal. Of course we’ll have to wait, the parents would never hear to our marrying so young, but still and all it’s wonderful to be engaged. . . .” She ate a sandwich, musing brightly over her changed estate.

  Gertrude watched her in silence, a little enviously. Things would always work well for Kitty. Still she didn’t mind a little struggle. . . . It was thrilling to breast circumstances . . . bend them to one’s will.

  “I’ve got something to tell you too, Kitty,” she said quietly and something in her tone made her sister turn sharply. . . . “What would you say if I told you that I think,—no I know,” she corrected herself firmly “that I’m going to marry Malory Forten?”

  “I’d say,” said Kitty roughly, even angrily, “that you’d have to tell me another funny story. Why I just saw Malory and Melissa a half hour ago, looking more in love than I’ve ever seen two people in my life. . . . Now Gertrude remember, none of your tricks.”

  “I’m not playing any tricks. I’m telling you,” said Gertrude for once deeply excited, “only what I know. And that is that Malory Forten isn’t going to marry Melissa Paul.”

  “Well if he doesn’t, all I’ve got to say is he’s a nasty cad. What’s the reason he isn’t going to marry her?”

  “Because he can’t marry her. He won’t want to marry her.”

  “What are you talking about Gertrude? Not that old Colonel Halloway business?”

  “Well yes and no . . . don’t you suppose he knows about that already? . . . but when he comes to know something else, he’ll think of that too and it will drive him away from her as far as the North is from the South pole!”

  “What do you mean?” Kitty asked, frightened, whispering. “You don’t mean, Gertrude, you don’t mean she has some terrible disease, leprosy, or—or—something?”

  “No,” said Gertrude, “I don’t. I almost wish I did,” and suddenly and bewilderingly began to cry.

  Regardless of her dainty dress, Kitty got down on her knees beside the little bed, clasped her sister about the neck. Only a disaster of cosmic import could reduce Gertrude to such misery. . . . “Darling you’ll have to tell me about it.”

  They were only three years apart . . . they had shared all their secrets since both had been able to talk; they had disagreed and fought and respected each other. They had been each to each a confessor; they knew each other’s weaknesses, generosities, limitations, but never had they known such oneness as during these moments.

  • • • • •

  “Oh God!” Kitty said again and again as Gertrude, using Mr. Stede’s very words minus only their crudeness, told her what she had learned. “Oh God!” she murmured, hiding her face, as though in pain, in the pillow. “But Gertrude, Gertrude how could He, how could He permit it?”

  “Who?” asked Gertrude in some natural bewilderment.

  “God. . . .” She lifted her pallid face, ravaged with tears. “Gertrude, that poor girl! . . . You know for the first time I’m really afraid . . . I’m afraid of life, Gertrude . . . I think I’ll sleep with you to-night . . . I’m scared.”

  “Yes,” said Gertrude, “do sleep in my bed . . . I’m scared too.”

  It was pleasant to realize that the other was so near. In the small, eerie morning hours, Kitty spoke to her sister knowing full well that the latter was awake. “What are you going to do about it, Gertrude?”

  “Me? Nothing.”

  “But darling, you just have to. You can’t just leave it alone. Even if only the one thing is true they have to be told. . . . And if the other is so. . . .” Words failed her at that terrible thought.

  “Yes of course they’ve got to be told. But it can’t be from me. Darling I’m sorry but you’ll have to see that they find out about it.”

  “You’ve gone crazy . . . why Gertrude you’re stark staring mad! What have I got to do with it?”

  “Nothing. That’s true. But don’t you see? He will go crazy And I must save him. . . . I honestly lo
ve him Kitten, I do want him. . . . But you don’t suppose I wanted him with all this awful trouble, do you? But now that it has come on him, and because I loved him when I thought he was just like any other boy, I’ve got to stand by him now. . . . Well he’d never come near me if he thought I knew a word about it. . . . And he’s got to come near me. . . . I’m the only one who could save him except, if things had broken differently, Melissa. And she’s out of the picture. Malory can be happy only with two kinds of women, either one like Melissa whom he’ll take care of, or one like me who’ll make him think he’s taking care of her, but who will really take care of him.”

  For this kind of reasoning Kitty had no answer; she saw its essential truth. “But what’ll I do?” she wailed. “Will I tell Mother?”

  “Not now, not yet . . . she might interfere and—Kitty, I mean to marry him. . . . I’m afraid you’ll have to tell Laurentine.”

  “Not much I won’t . . . with all the trouble she’s had! I think I see myself.”

  In the end Kitty with a sick reluctance promised to tell Dr. Denleigh. “Everybody says they’re engaged and he’s a doctor. Dad says doctors have to meet up with all sorts of problems.”

  She fell, finally, much later than Gertrude, placid now because of shifted responsibility, into a troubled sleep.

  • • • • •

  On Sunday afternoon, Gertrude, serene, assured and unostentatiously triumphant, left for Boston. Within an hour, Kitty, fuming, but reliable as Horatius at the Bridge, called up Dr. Denleigh’s office to receive no answer. Well she must get this thing off her chest she told herself fretfully, so, greatly daring, she called the Strange home. Aunt Sal, answering, told her mildly that Dr. Denleigh had driven Laurentine and Mrs. Ismay to New York . . . “they’ll be gone for a week maybe. Did you want him very particular, Kitty?”

  “No,” the girl fibbed quickly, hating the lie. “I just promised Dad I’d try to find him for some old meeting. . . . Say ‘hello’ to Melissa for me won’t you Mrs. Strange?”

  “Of all the rotten breaks! What am I going to do?” she moaned. And thought of her mother. She went and found her sitting comfortably and enthralled on the little glassed in side-porch deep in her sugary novel. . . . She had been to church . . . she had seen that her husband had received a good dinner . . . she had seen one daughter off to college with less money than that daughter had demanded and yet with content. And here was her youngest daughter at her knee. . . . Kitty made no mention of Gertrude, but after all she didn’t need to . . . if Gertrude was her mother’s daughter, Mrs. Brown was also Gertrude’s mother and knew more than her pretty, placid face implied.

  “Mummy,” said Kitty miserably, “I can’t tell you how I know it but I know it.” And told her.

  Afterwards she was so glad she had. Mrs. Brown was moved and shocked and sorry but she was not worried. “We’ll keep them apart,” she soothed her daughter. “Nothing much can happen in three months. They’re too poor to marry, and Melissa’s as decent as Malory. He’s going away as soon as school closes. And then we’ll get word to him and he’ll never come back. It’s too bad for Melissa but she’ll get over it. . . . Women have to get over many things,” she ended with surprising sagacity.

  “But Mummy how can we keep them apart?”

  “That’s true. . . . Well I’ll have to tell Dr. Denleigh and he can speak to Laurentine . . . she’s the one I’m sorry for.”

  “I’m sorry for all of them, Mother,” Kitty said soberly. “But your way seems pretty good. That way Melissa’ll never have to know about it. . . . Her cousin can manage that; she could keep her awfully busy or even she could send her away.”

  She was unaware of Gertrude’s suspicion which the latter had forgotten to mention, that the young couple were meeting, almost nightly, under the Chinaberry Tree.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  ON the morning on which Laurentine was to go to New York she awoke, yawned, stretched, lay for a few moments deliberately relaxed and sleepy. “Oh!” she groaned, “if only we were going to-morrow instead of to-day; I’m so tired! I wish, I wish I didn’t have to get up!”

  Denleigh had had a difficult week. Mary Ricardi had had another baby,—and had died of it. It was Denleigh’s first death in Red Brook; he couldn’t recover from it; he couldn’t forget the trusting look in Mary’s eyes. Even in the midst of all her outrageous pain she had been so sure Denleigh could pull her through. “You see me outa all this, Doc, yes?” she murmured between her terrible spasms of pain.

  And then her poor strained heart rebelled and she had died after all. And the baby, the little boy who was to be named Stephen, after the doctor, had breathed a few times and he too had passed out like a slowly extinguished flame. The awful waste of it had made Denleigh deathly sick,—too sick for a doctor. It had given him a sudden depth of distaste for his calling; he wished he were a brick-layer; he wished that he too had been blotted out; he thought of the French word, “anéanti” with its awful suggestion of nothingness.

  It was in no holiday mood therefore that he started off with Laurentine and Mrs. Ismay on the trip which both he and “his girl,” as he loved to call Laurentine, had so long envisaged. “Goodness,” he thought to himself, “I hope I won’t keep on feeling like this!” In a way he half welcomed Laurentine’s silence. Usually his expert driving made all sorts of gay badinage possible, but to-day he was driving Dr. Ismay’s large car; he had not yet quite got the “feel” of it and was very glad to be able to give his task undivided attention.

  The weather too which had been so promising, so divine, had definitely changed into chilliness and wind and a disheartening grayness which might have been all right by virtue of its very contrast had they been in better spirits. As it was even Mrs. Ismay, after a few forlorn attempts at cheerfulness, relapsed into thoughtfulness, though she did comment once smilingly on their fallen spirits.

  “But you’re both of you worn out,” she said with ready understanding. “You’ve both tried to do too much this week. You’ll be all right after a night’s rest and then be that much more ready to plunge into the excitement of New York.”

  They were destined to run into immediate excitement for within the next hour, Denleigh, for all his careful driving, experienced a blowout,—and Dr. Ismay had forgotten to leave his “jack” in the car! It had begun to rain; they were a full mile from the nearest repair station. Maliciously enough, not a car seemed to get their signal of distress, and Denleigh had to walk half the distance back before anyone slowed down and picked him up. By the time they reached New York, worn, weary and provoked, they were only too glad, after dinner, to forego their carefully planned sortie into the gay streets and retire to their respective lodgings. Laurentine, recovering somewhat under the influence of the nourishing food and the glimpse which she had caught of her large, comfortable room, said smiling. “We’ll be snapping out of all this to-morrow, Stevie. You know they sometimes say: ‘A bad beginning makes a good ending.’”

  Sunday turned out to be cool but beautifully clear. They went all three of them to Fosdick’s Church on Riverside Drive and heard a fine sermon, scaled down to human needs. In the afternoon Denleigh took them driving along the beautiful Drive itself. Laurentine whose few previous visits to New York had been of the slightest possible duration and always for business reasons gave herself up to a girlish, almost countrified appreciation of this unexpected gorgeousness; the swift, clear river, the massive Washington bridge, the frowning Palisades across the way matched so marvelously by the towering palaces on the New York side. It made her think of what Babylon must have been and she was amazed when Denleigh reasonably pointed out that Babylon, of course, knew of no such marvels of architecture and beauty as these dwellings housing millionaires, politicians, bootleggers and other city magnates.

  Then they had gone to a large colored restaurant for dinner and afterwards, Denleigh and Laurentine had gone down town to one of the immense moving picture houses with their curious combination of garishness, comfort, richness
and over-ornateness. “Still,” she thought, “it must be wonderful for poor people to escape to all this!”

  The rest of the week sped. They went to the Lafayette Theatre where Laurentine looked at the audience more than at the stage sensing that oneness which colored people feel in a colored crowd, even though so many of its members are people whom one does not want ever to know.

  She liked that and she was also intensely taken by the night-clubs, because she could not puzzle out why people should care for places such as these . . . in a Harlem cellar where a drunken black woman suddenly lurched forward and slapped a handsome yellow girl across the face and the surrounding crowd looked on as unmoved as though this were some part of the entertainment, unmindful of the tragedy destined to follow without those walls . . . where a dark, sinuous dancer, singing a song, whose words she could not catch, and making movements with her supple body, whose meanings she could not fathom, pranced and postured and gestured before a fascinated lad of twenty-one. Mechanically, he handed her, at five minute intervals, dollar bills, moistening his feverish lips, gazing unwinking into her mesmeric eyes as a bird might look at a snake.

  After this she was glad to get out into the air and to ride with her lover up the mighty Concourse and through the reaches of Van Cortlandt Park where they would have liked to rest and chat a little; but vigilant policemen appearing suddenly from nowhere hurried them on since city ordinances were more important than the transports of lovers.

  In the day Denleigh went to medical conferences and visited clinics and sanitariums of Harlem. And then Mrs. Ismay and Laurentine shopped and explored the huge emporiums, taking lunch in their dining-rooms, or at Schrafft’s and the better class of confectioners. She loved this, for though she had, in the course of her life, run into little active prejudice, it was pleasant, aside from the convenience, not to have to stop and ponder on the wisdom or the consequences of entering this place or the likelihood of having one’s feelings hurt because one was hungry and wanted his pangs relieved as soon as may be.