Chapter X: Part IV (3)

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.