PART IV (continued 2)

“Yes, that’s the big trouble with us here in the South. It takes so much to even reach a starting point, and there is so little to do it with.”

Lissa hesitated on the edge of a vital question, then framed it, with her wide warm gaze on the woman’s sympathetic face:

“How much money do you think it would take?”

Mrs. Prescott considered a moment. “Oh, I suppose it would take at least a couple of years to do it properly—even to get a good start, and living is high up there, somewhere between two and three thousand dollars, I imagine.”

Lissa received the information in blank silence. The older woman saw the disappointment in her face and patted her hand sympathetically. “But don’t you worry about that. Something is sure to turn up sooner or later.”

They were joined by several others, and the talk turned on North’s paintings. Presently the party commenced to break up and leave, and Lissa’s new acquaintance asked if she would like to be dropped at home, as they were driving downtown and would pass near the Atkinsons’.

In the privacy of the comfortable sedan the girl seemed wrapped around with an atmosphere of security and luxury. Looking out upon the familiar streets from such a vantage point anything seemed possible, even a New York career, even two thousand dollars. She talked to the others, a light answer here, an inconsequent question there, but beneath the surface, her mind hung blinded in a dazzle of radiance, possessed by a dream and deluded by a dreamer’s illusion of actuality.

The car came to a standstill at the curb, and Lissa met the questioning eyes of her friend. “Yes, this is the house,” she said, “and thank you so very much for bringing me home.”

She stepped out and closed the door behind her, then stood for a moment waving farewell as the car drew away. Across the street a group of white people were standing before a handsome Georgian dwelling. Lissa looked up and caught their gaze fixed upon her with that frank amusement which in the old city is always provoked by the sight of a negro attempting what they would have described as putting on airs. There was nothing inimical in their regard. The girl was merely very amusing.

The effect on Lissa was actually physical, like that produced by the violent awakening of a hypnotic subject. She swayed slightly, pulled herself together with an effort, and climbed the stairs to the room over the garage.

Mamba was sitting on a large chair, her eyes fixed on a sun-drenched roof across the way upon which pigeons were strutting and making soft drowsy talk. Her hands lay in her lap, and between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand, much as a reader might pause and rest, spectacles on lap, she held Judge Harkness’s large gleaming teeth.

Lissa flung herself down beside the old woman, buried her face in her lap, and burst into a storm of weeping. The paroxysm was so violent and so unexpected from the habitually self-restrained girl that Mamba was frightened. She patted Lissa’s head with her gnarled brown hands and begged her with tremulous urgency to tell her of her trouble.

Finally Lissa looked up into the familiar face that was dimming a little now with the advancing years. The girl was getting herself in hand again. The sobs ceased, and a bitter little smile thinned and stiffened her full lips.

“It’s no use, Grandma,” she said, and there was a new hard tone in the low-timbred voice. “I’ve just been wanting something like hell that I’m never going to get. There’s no use breaking our hearts over it. You better forget it, and not let it fret you.”

“But all dem new frien’ yo’ got—ain’t dey yo’ kind? What’s de matter wid dem?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lissa said wearily. “They seem to spend all their time saying how glad they are to be negroes and all the time they’re trying their damnedest to be white.”

“Hush yo’ mout’, chile,” Mamba chided. “Ain’t yo’ knows swearin’ ain’t fuh ladies?”

“I’m not so sure I want to be a lady, after all,” Lissa exclaimed. She got to her feet and strode to the open window, then turned and faced Mamba again. Her body was drawn taut against the brilliance of the Southern noon, her fists were clenched at her sides and shaking slightly from their muscular tension.

“Oh, I don’t know what the hell I want,” she flung out in a reckless voice, “but if I don’t find out soon and get it I’m going crazy.”

Lissa had never been on intimate terms with Gardinia Whitmore. This was strange, because their music had thrown them together constantly, and as their voices were perfectly suited to each other’s they were always in demand for duets at recitals and concerts. The explanation probably lay in Lissa’s instinctive good taste. She was not herself aware that she possessed such a characteristic. But she realised that, while she was attracted by the flamboyant personality of the popular soprano, she experienced an involuntary withdrawal into herself at the other’s frank advances. She knew also that Gardinia did not hold the same position in society that she did, for while Gardinia was accepted everywhere on account of her voice, it was obvious that she did not belong.

Seen in the Broadens’ drawing room Gardinia immediately made one think of a Bengal tigress in a zoo. She was magnificently proportioned, with a slack sinuousness of body and dark, heavy-lidded eyes in which the banked fires of desire smouldered and glowed. She seemed at times to move among the furniture with a desperate and scarcely veiled hostility. By turns she would be seized by a gaiety so reckless that it seemed almost violent; or sit watching the others with her sardonic and sultry gaze. But over her lay, like a transparent gauze, a surface sleekness which, while it did not in the least disguise her essential self, gave her hostesses something upon which to fix their attention while they introduced her to their friends. But when Gardinia sang, everything was forgotten, and people ceased explaining her even to themselves.

It would have been difficult to find a more interesting contrast than that which the two girls presented in one of their appearances in a duet. They were of the same height, but Lissa was more slender and showed a greater refinement of form and feature. She gave the impression of holding her powers in reserve, and there was behind her art an indefinable suggestion of tragedy that made even her lighter numbers poignant. Gardinia, on the other hand, was an emotional geyser, and except when she was under the rigid discipline of the Monday Night Musical Club, she captured her listeners with a power that was almost physical.

The Sunday following Lissa’s outburst to Mamba she found herself on the pavement before the Reformed Church, with the congregation from the morning service streaming past her. The week had increased rather than diminished her feeling of unrest. In spite of Mamba’s entreaties, she had not confided in her. In the first place her own feelings were too vague to put into words. There was no use to tell her grandmother that she wanted two thousand dollars with which to go away. She knew that the old woman had been putting something aside for her every week, every cent that she could spare, in fact. It was to be hers to help her along when she no longer had the loving care of the shrewd old head and busy hands. She had never let herself think of it, for to do so brought the tragic prescience of the human loss that it would imply. And what would that pitiful sum amount to, anyway? No, she could not ask Mamba for money, and what the other things were that she wanted she did not know.

Overhead, the portico of the church hung against a soft gray-blue sky, and the air was voluptuous with the warmth of early summer. About her many feet shuffled on the pavement, friendly greetings filled the air. A girl slipped an arm through hers—“Going my way?” Lissa shook her head, and the girl moved on.

The crowd was thinning, breaking away in ones and twos, laughing in the bright summer weather that the negroes loved, bound for Sunday dinner, or long idle walks through the quiet street. Lissa saw the Prescotts getting into their car. North was with them again, and Nella Taylor, her music teacher. They all saw her together and beckoned and waved. Lissa shook her head and watched them drive off with a feeling akin to relief. Then she heard Gardinia’s voice behind her. She had a heavy, rather husky speaking voice. “What’s the kid waiting for?” she asked. “Got a date?”

“No, I am going home. Just waiting for the crowd to scatter. I hate crowds.” Then she gave Gardinia a faint smile and added, “But I am surprised not to see you with a feller. Thought you always had one on a string.”

“Did, but I forgot my umbrella and had to go back for it. Now he’s gone. I bet that yeller cat Lila snitched him while I was inside.”

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” Lissa opined.

“Say, you ain’t so chummy, are you?—regular chilly sister. But I’m going downtown too, and I just as lief trot along with you.”

“Sure, glad to have you.”

They walked in silence for a while, then Gardinia turned and looked with frank curiosity into Lissa’s face.

“Do you know,” she said, “I can’t somehow make you out. You look just like a human bein’—got hands and feet ’neverything, but you don’t seem to get no kick out o’ life. All bus’ out with the blues all the time. Say, what do you do nights, anyway?”

Thus challenged Lissa gave the matter thought. “Oh, I don’t know,” she answered. “Of course, there’s the Monday Night Musical——”

“Good Gawd!” her companion exploded. “You don’t call that life, do you?”

“Well, most nights, when I am not singing, I just sit round with Grandma and talk.”

“You little hell-raiser,” Gardinia mocked. “Aren’t you ’fraid the cops’ll get you?”

“Sometimes Frank North comes around, and we walk out.”

“Frank North—so that’s it! Don’t you know, bright eyes, if you keep that up you’ll end highbrow?”

Lissa drew away and regarded her companion coldly. “Look here,” she challenged. “You’ve a great way of throwing off on my friends. Frank’s the only boy I know who’s got something to talk about. You could learn a lot from him yourself.”

Gardinia refused to accept the challenge. She remained silent for a moment, then yielded to an impulse.

“Say, kid, wouldn’t you like to try just one real party? You think you’re gettin’ life with that highbrow crowd, just because you don’t know what life’s like. What you say I fix up a date for a dance with a coupla fellows for next Saturday night? What you say? You jus’ try it once, life with a red lining, and night turned on bright——”

Gardinia shocked Lissa’s sensibilities, as she always did when she let herself go, but the girl was conscious of a vague excitement over the idea. Also she was acutely aware of the physical attraction of the girl at her side, whose sheer animal spirits called to something hidden deep within herself.

“I wonder,” she whispered.

“Oh, hell, don’t wonder, come along. Nothin’ ain’t goin’ to happen that you can’t get over. Meet us on the corner by the post office at half-past eight, and we’ll be ready to pick you up and highball up the road.”

“All right. I guess I’ll go. What’ll I wear?”

“The best you got, kid, and your dancin’ shoes. And maybe you better not say anythin’ ’round at the Broadens’ to-morrow night. It ain’t their stuff. But, believe me, it’s got class of its own.”

At the next corner Gardinia bid Lissa a breezy farewell and left her to continue on her way with a chaos of contending emotions as an accompaniment to her thoughts.

Saturday night found Lissa pacing slowly back and forth before the post office. All day she had vacillated between an overwhelming desire to go, and a deep premonitory fear that prompted her to stay with Mamba. When the late dark finally gathered she had dressed with a desperate speed and without telling her grandmother where she was going had kissed her passionately, then rushed out, leaving the old woman’s questions unanswered.

After all, she had arrived at the rendezvous ahead of time, for she had been standing several minutes when St. Michael’s chimed the half hour. About her the streets were quiet, and high over her head mellow tones of the old bells ran their double trill and left the air singing. Lissa caught the faintly throbbing note and held it until the last vibrations fluttered out and died. The corner on which the girl was waiting was one of the most beautiful and significant in the old town. Opposite her the church lifted its straight white spire out of the yellow glow of the street lamps into the cool faint glimmer of the early stars. Diagonally across the way the clusters of lamps were aglow on the City Hall steps, with the building darkling above them like frowning brows over watchful eyes. Behind the City Hall lay the dim quietude of the park, with its stained marble busts and shafts ghost-like under the spreading trees.

Under the spell of the familiar beauty the reckless mood that had finally decided Lissa to come commenced to pass. Her gaze followed the pointing finger of the steeple into the vast serenity of the summer night, and she gave an involuntary start. She was standing out at the pavement’s edge, at the intersection of the two broad thoroughfares, and now, as she gazed up, she realised that they marked the sky off above her into a gigantic cross, its head and foot pointing north and south and its arms dipping east and west into the two rivers.

A fear that was neither superstition nor religion but a little of both assailed her, making her suddenly long to be safely at home with Mamba. What if she cut Gardinia and her crowd now and ran home? They were late, anyway, and that would give her a good excuse.

Then abruptly the moment of quiet was broken and with it the spell that it had woven upon the girl. Several automobiles approached the corner, sounding their claxons. Down the rails from the north a great double-truck trolley hummed and rattled, then passed with a series of deafening jars over the switch.

Two white men came out of the post office and passed close to her, smoking and talking together. One glanced at her curiously in the half light. They sauntered on, and she heard laughter and, very distinctly, the words “high yellow.”

A moment later a dilapidated Ford came to an abrupt and noisy stop before her, and she heard Gardinia’s husky, voluptuous voice.

“Here’s th’ lady friend—all dressed up and bells on, eh, Lissa? Good girl. Meet my friends. This here’s Charlie, and that’s Slim in the back seat. Boys, this is Lissa. No Miss and Mister in this gang. Hop in there with Slim. He’s going to be your feller for to-night. Look him over and see if he ain’t got class.”

Charlie called “Hello, Lissa” from the driver’s seat. Slim jumped out and shook hands. “Glad to know you,” he said, and he held the door open for her to get in. Then they were seated. The machine seemed to crouch for a moment, took a spasmodic leap, then settled down into a brisk steady gait.

The couple on the front seat paid no further attention to their companions but sat close together talking in low voices that were absorbed in the rattle of the vehicle.

At first Lissa could think of nothing to say, and Slim seemed to experience the same difficulty, for he sat well over on his side of the car and let the moments pass in silence. When they drove under the arc lights Lissa took advantage of the transient illumination to appraise her partner. He was dark, a full-blooded negro, with a receding forehead, a broad flat nose, and a very large mouth. Once he looked up, met her scrutiny, and broke into a broad, friendly grin. She saw the whiteness of his teeth spring out against the black, and his eyes laughing shyly into her face. She was reassured and began to feel that they would get along together. There was nothing about him to make a girl afraid. Then the lights were behind them, and ahead the road, a broad grey band of concrete, plunged straight out between dense patches of woodland and nebulous distances of open field.

The car, like a wild creature that has broken long captivity, flung the city behind it and leaped for the open. Gardinia’s voice came back with the whistling wind to the silent couple behind her.

“Hey, there, you two—what do you think this is—a funeral? What’s the matter with you, Slim, you don’t hold that gal in—don’t you know she ain’t use’ to country ridin’?”

Thus encouraged, Slim allowed himself to be bounced over to Lissa’s side of the car and put his arm around her shoulder. For a moment the girl’s body remained rigid. Then, on another bounce, the man’s arm fell lower and closed firmly about her waist. A tremor shook the girl. Then suddenly she relaxed into Slim’s arms and closed her eyes.

“Don’t you worry,” he said in a low husky voice. “Ah ain’t goin’ to let you get thrown out.”

For half an hour the car drove steadily northward; then from the dense shadows of massed live oaks a row of lights leaped out. Charlie jerked the machine hard over. It left the concrete for a rough side road, executed a series of jackrabbit bounds, and brought up short before the door of a dance hall. A rush of talk, laughter, song, and instrument-tuning greeted them, shattering the peace of the night and challenging the new arrivals with a mood of wild gaiety. Slim waited with the girls while Charlie parked the car.

The wide doorway was swarming like a hive; couples came and went between the tawdry brilliance of the room and the piled blackness of night under the live oaks. A group of young bucks lounged near the door, smoking and passing a flask from mouth to mouth.

Charlie rejoined the party just as the music flung its unifying rhythm into the discordant babel. They elbowed their way through the press and entered the hall. The room was a-flutter with tissue-paper streamers of every shade that depended from the rafters and responded with an agitated waving to the sound and motion beneath. There were eight men in the orchestra, and Lissa noted immediately with the colour snobbery of the Broaden set that they were all full-blooded negroes. There were two guitars, two banjos, a fiddle, a cornet, and trombone, and a man with drum and traps. The sound was unlike anything that the girl had ever heard. Strive as she might, she could not recognise the tune. As a matter of fact, it was not an orchestra in a strict interpretation of the term, but merely a collection of eight individuals who had taken some simple melody as a theme and were creating rhythm and harmony around it as they played. Her immediate sensation was one of shock at the crude and almost deafening uproar. Then, as she stood listening, a strange excitement commenced to possess her. Music had never moved her like this before. It had made her cry—and it had shaken her with delight, but this seemed to be breaking something loose deep within her—something that seethed hot through her veins and set her muscles jumping.

The crowd came jamming into the room, black girls with short knappy hair, tall long-limbed negroes from the wharves, sailors from the Navy Yard, dark and heavy, with here and there the pallor and passivity of a Filipino. There were many couples out from town who, like themselves, had the mark of the city on them in their straightened hair and well-made clothes.

Slim caught Lissa closely to him. His shyness had vanished, but to the girl that did not matter, for she was no longer afraid. The music snatched them up, and they were off into the thick of it. It is unlikely that anywhere else in America at that moment there were more and different steps being trod on a dance floor. The old fundamental rhythm of the turkey trot prevailed, but the more sophisticated were dancing a one-step or fox trot. In a corner out of the jam a group of country negroes were dancing singly. The dance was a strange, fascinating, and wildly individual affair. They stood two and two, facing each other, as though dancing in competition rather than together, and the basic step consisted of rising on alternate feet while the free leg was hurled outward and backward, knees touching, and toes turned in, parrot fashion.

Lissa made Slim stop with her to watch, and immediately the desire to dance it possessed her. Slim laughed. “Come along,” he urged, pulling at her arm. “That’s nothin’ but a ole country nigger dance.”

She would not listen. Presently she had the step and started in at the edge of the circle. When the music stopped she was angry. “Oh, I almost had it, Slim,” she exclaimed. “One more try and I’ll get it pat. Why did they have to stop just then?”

Her partner led her out of doors, then slipped his arm around her and guided her toward the automobile. Gardinia and Charlie were there already, and when the four of them were together, Gardinia handed Lissa a flask. “Hit her up, Sister,” she invited.

Lissa hesitated. “What’s it—whisky?”

“Sure—go ahead, ain’t goin’ do you no harm.”

The girl lifted the flask and took a swallow, with the result that she choked and coughed.

They all burst into laughter.

“My Gawd,” Gardinia mocked, “can’t you even take a drink o’ hooch?”

Lissa snatched the bottle back from Slim. “Can’t, eh? I’ll show you.” She wasn’t going to be laughed at by Gardinia, that was certain.

What a night! Life with a red lining. The orchestra was at it again. That new dance. Lissa must master that if she kicked the floor boards loose.

During an intermission, when they crowded to the door for air, a wicked-looking stripped Ford, painted scarlet, jerked itself into the light and stopped. Gardinia grabbed Lissa by the arm. “Here’s Prince,” she cried. “You got to meet him. Hello, Prince, here’s a lady friend I want you to know.”

The new arrival was evidently a favourite, especially with women, for a number ran forward and crowded about the car. He got languidly out and, with casual greetings to right and left, came forward and joined the girls. They met where the shaft of light from the open door stabbed the darkness and splayed out on the gravel. “Lissa, this is the Prince I been tellin’ you about,” Gardinia introduced.

“Glad to know you,” he said, and took her hand, while he slid his glance over her in deliberate and frank appraisal. Then he raised his eyes to her face, and the grip on her fingers tightened. He gave a low whistle and, still gripping Lissa’s hand, addressed Gardinia—“Some class, baby; where’d you find her?”

A shudder of repulsion started under the man’s hot, moist clasp, flashed up the girl’s arm, and communicated itself to her whole being. The man sensed it with evident satisfaction, his loose sensuous lips parted, and he gave a low, confident laugh. He bent forward, and Lissa got an impression of a light muddy complexion, heavy-lidded eyes, and a long scar across the forehead close under the hair. The air was heavy with its warning of danger; she felt her skin creep under it. And yet, in spite of the repulsion that she felt at his touch, there was a compelling power that drew her toward him and made her pulses race. She summoned all her strength and snatched her hand away.

Prince laughed again and turned toward the hall. “Me an’ you’s goin’ to be buddies,” he said. “Come on in an’ let’s have a drink on it.”

His glance included Lissa’s party in the invitation, and the four of them followed him across the hall to the gaily decorated booth in the corner where soft drinks were being served.

“What’ll you take?” he asked largely.

They made it “dopes,” and when the glasses stood before them their host produced a silver flask and poured a generous drink in each tumbler.

Charlie exclaimed, “Hot damn! None of dat moonshine rotgut for Prince. Nuttin’ but de bes’.”

Lissa noticed that Slim’s bashfulness had descended upon him again and that he accepted the drink from Prince with reluctance.

The music crashed out, smiting the air with the flat impact of a blow, causing the fluid in the tumblers to quiver. They emptied their glasses in gulps.

Prince drew his hand across his mouth and said, “All right, girlie, le’s go.”

Slim seemed to have suffered a sort of paralysis. When Lissa looked toward him, he said nothing, but stood looking at her with wide mournful eyes. Prince put his arm around her, and she looked into his face with a shaken, reckless little laugh. “I’m on,” she said, and was snatched from the corner into the maelstrom of the dance floor.

They danced three dances together. Prince looked older than the boys with whom they had come, but he could dance circles around them. Lissa was delighted to find that he was an expert in the step that she had just discovered, and she made him go to a corner near the band and teach it to her.

It was while they were there that the musicians broke into a medley of old jazz tunes, launching from their wild syncopated improvisations into that early ragtime classic of the Johnson brothers, “Under the Bamboo Tree.” In Lissa the music ceased to be a thing external, apart. It became a fire in her body taking her suddenly like sheeting flame about a sapling, cutting her off from the others, possessing her, swaying her irresistibly forward toward the players. She did not realise that she was singing until her gaze rested on the face of the leader, and over his fiddle she saw the white flash of his grin and the surprised delight in his eyes. He waved his bow in invitation and called, “Come up, Sistuh. Up here’s whar yo’ b’longs.” Then she was among the swaying bodies, the smashing harmonies of the band. Her muscles twitched to the rhythm, moving her feet and legs in the intricacies of the new dance, her arms were thrown wide with fingers snapping the time. She forgot that there would be a solo in church to-morrow and that her voice needed saving. She remembered nothing except the words and music that came in a rush out of an old forgotten memory, beating out from lungs and throat in a torrent of song.

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.

With an intoxicating thunder of applause sounding in her ears, Lissa stepped down from the platform. Charlie was waiting there for her, and before Prince could reach her side he slipped an arm about her and elbowed a way for her through the stamping, shouting crowd. When they were finally out of doors they were joined by Gardinia, who flung her arms about Lissa in a hug that left her breathless. “Where did you get it, kid?” she asked in wonder.

“Heaven knows! I guess I was as surprised as you.”

Gardinia gave her a second embrace, then turning to Charlie dismissed him with: “Run along. I got something to say to this sister.”

When he had passed out of earshot she said to the girl: “Look here, bright eyes, you want to watch your step with that feller they call Prince. Did he ask to drive you home?”

“Yes, he did say something about it.”

“Well, I hope you told him no. After all, Slim’s settin’ you up to the party to-night, and he’s got some rights coming to him.”

“All right,” Lissa replied obediently. “I’ll turn Prince down.”

“An’ look here,” the big girl said seriously, “don’t you go losin’ your head over that nigger. He’s free with his money, and he’s always good for a swell time, but the sky’s his limit—watch your step. I ain’t so sure you’re his sort, anyhow. Now, me—that’s a different matter.”

Lissa gave a confident laugh. “Don’t you let that worry you, Sister,” she replied. “I’m a pretty good hand at taking care of myself.”

Charlie and Slim came up and joined them.

“All right,” Gardinia warned, “just watch your step—that’s all.”

It was well after midnight when the Ford bounced out onto the concrete road and headed south with the four revellers. Slim sat in his corner glum and silent. He evidently felt that he had been rather hardly used. Lissa made several attempts to draw him out and finally yielded to a growing exasperation. If he thought that she was going to apologise and eat humble pie, he had another think coming. Her anger rose. He ought to thank his stars that she had even gone with him, she, a member of the Reformed Church, a friend of the Broadens. She did not need to worry. There was Prince, now, ready to show her a good time. The premonition of danger that she had felt toward him at first had abated until it had left only an exciting element of mystery and adventure. She smiled at the memory of Gardinia’s warning. As if she couldn’t take care of herself. No. She was out on her own now, and she didn’t have to ask favours of anybody.

When Lissa entered her room she found Mamba sitting just as she had left her; the lamp was turned low, and the old woman was slouched deep in her big chair, her gaze fixed beyond the open window to where the late fragment of a moon was climbing over the housetops. She did not scold as the girl had expected. Instead she turned her eyes, which had a slight film of weariness over them, in mute questioning toward the door.

Lissa exclaimed, “Why, you ought to be ashamed, Grandma, sitting up at this hour. How come you didn’t go to bed?”

The old figure drew itself together in the chair and spoke. “Turn up dat lamp so Ah can see yo’ an’ come here.”

Lissa did as she was bidden, and Mamba took her hand and drew her down upon her lap, then peered searchingly into her face.

She said, “Yo’ been drinkin’, chile.”

“Oh, nothing much, Grandma, just a couple.”

“Yo’ ain’t been bad?”

The girl laughed and patted the old face lightly.

“Not on your life, Grandma. You needn’t worry about me. I had a swell time dancing, but I’m nobody’s fool.”

“Well, go ’long to bed, an’ in de mornin’ yo’ got to tell me all ’bout it.”

“Sure thing,” Lissa replied, “but you mustn’t wait up for me like this. You need your sleep, you know. I got to take care of this old lady. I can’t get along without her.”

She caught the old woman for a moment in her strong young arms, then got to her feet and commenced to undress.

“Ain’t no use to say dat, chile,” Mamba replied. “When you gone out nights Ah all de time gots a feelin’ you might need me, an’ Ah ain’t likes to take off my clo’es till yo’ gets back home.”

Lissa brought Gardinia to meet Mamba with some trepidation. She feared the impression that her now constant companion would make on the astute old woman. She thought that her grandmother would be easier in her mind if she had only her account of the dances and late motor rides that were becoming more and more frequent as the summer passed.

But one Sunday after morning service the girls were walking together on the Battery and Gardinia came as far as the gate of the Atkinson garden. Suddenly she was seized by one of her characteristic impulses.

“Say,” she exclaimed, “I believe I’ll go in and meet that old grandma of yours you’re always talking about. She must be a rare old dame. I want to know her.”

There was nothing to be done but to accede, and after an imperceptible moment of hesitation Lissa said, “Sure, come on in. I reckon she’s in the room now.”

Gardinia’s glance was busy as they passed through the well-kept garden and to the neat two-storied building in the rear, with the garage below, and a glimpse of clean white curtains showing in the windows above.

“Pretty swell dump,” she admired. “Pretty soft thing you’ve got here, I’ll say.”

“Grandma,” Lissa said on entering the room, “this is my friend Gardinia; she wanted to meet you, so I brought her in.”

Mamba came forward and took the younger woman’s hand. From their network of wrinkles the old eyes looked searchingly into her face. Then she smiled, showing her big white teeth.

“The kid’s been telling me so much about you,” Gardinia explained, “that I just wanted to come in and get acquainted. Guess you think I’m a funny sort of friend for that highbrow gal of yours, eh?”

Mamba murmured something about being glad to meet her. But as is so often the case with first remarks, her words meant little or nothing, serving merely as a screen from behind which each of the women was exploring for the real ego that lay secreted behind words, eyes, lips.

Lissa, watching closely, realised that they liked each other. That in spite of the differences of age and outlook there was a hidden bond of intimacy to which they both responded. It mystified her. She was still too unknowing to recognise it as the sisterhood of the unchaste. It was something that needed no words. There it was in each. In Mamba a thin echo from an incredibly vanished past; in the girl, only yesterday, and perhaps again to-morrow, but across the years it sent its spark of understanding and was tacitly accepted by each. Strange to say, it was not prejudicial. It was a phase of their world, and it was a phase that belonged to the generous, the kind, as well as to the penny-grabbing, the depraved.

Gardinia burst through the reserve that she had been wearing like a strait-jacket. She laughed heartily, her eyes looking into the old woman’s and sparkling mischievously.

“I bet you were a gay one yourself once,” she said. “I’ll bet you knew what it was like to hit the ceiling on a big night—eh, Mauma?”

Lissa was shocked. Mamba had taught her to treat age with great respect. But to her amazement she saw that Mamba was pleased.

She answered with her surprisingly young, vital laugh:

“T’ings was diff’ent in dem days, an’ if Ah is broke loose den dere ain’t nobody libin’ to tell on me now. But nowadays gals gots to behabe.”

“Sure,” Gardinia agreed, as she took a seat and let her admiring gaze take in the cozy and tastefully furnished room, with the sunny garden showing beyond the window. “Sure, and don’t you worry about Lissa. If she’ll just listen to me she’ll have a good time and she won’t get into no trouble.”

She looked around for her friend, but Lissa had gone into the next room to change from her Sunday dress. At the same moment Mamba also noticed that they were alone and immediately took advantage of the opportunity.

“Tell me,” she begged in a lowered voice, “who dis yaller nigger Lissa goin’ roun’ wid? She won’t tell me nuttin’ ’bout um, but Ah seen um t’other day when he come by for she, an’ Ah wouldn’t trus’ um far as Ah could t’row um.”

Gardinia said, “Prince ain’t so bad. He’s too mashed on himself to last long with anybody else. But he flings the long green high and far, and he’ll show her a good time.”

Mamba leaned forward and said confidentially, “Ah ’fraid for my gal. She ain’t like yo’ an’ me, Sistuh—she ain’t seen nuttin’ ob mens, an’ dat yaller nigger gots woman-chaser wrote all ober um.”

“Don’t you worry, Mauma,” Gardinia said reassuringly, “the first thing I did was to put Lissa wise, and besides, she’s one of them cool sisters. Ain’t no danger of her losing her head.”

“Well, all Ah asks is dat yo’ keep an eye on she for me, an’ ef trouble breaks any time let me know. Ah is ole but Ah ain’t no fool at takin’ care ob my chillun.”

“That’s right, old lady, I just bet you ain’t no fool. But there ain’t goin’ be no trouble.”

Lissa came in then, and the three chatted for a few moments. Then Gardinia took her departure.

“Dat’s a good gal yo’ gots fuh friend,” Mamba said when the girl had gone. And Lissa stood wondering just what the definition for good could be in Mamba’s lexicon.

Labor Day—steaming and hot, with an opaque sky and a red sun burning through it. Underfoot the pavements streaming with condensed moisture and flinging back reflections of houses, shop windows, sky, in colours soft and wonderful to see. Summer’s fag end, with its spent ardours behind it, and autumn around the next corner. And for to-day nothing for the negroes to do but to be glad, to leave the wharves, the bakeries, the buildings of the houses, the stoking of furnaces, and tell the world how good a thing it is to be alive, to have laboured, and now to claim a respite.

September weather.

Down in the white residential streets, block after block of closed mansions sleeping away the hot hours in gardens where nature spent her beauty with open hands, and still had more each day to fling over deserted piazzas in a foam of climbing roses, to pour in pools of oleander bloom between moss-hung live oaks. On King Street the fashionable stores dozing behind their drawn blinds. Here was a town that the winter tourist would not recognise, a town claimed for the day by its darker half. Its pavements swarming with noisy ragamuffin black children watching eagerly for the parade. Bands passing across street ends blaring for a moment, then gone. Down on Broad Street the massed trombones and horns of the Jenkins orphanage, assailing the offices of the morning News and Courier with a blast of good will that temporarily paralysed the editorial brains within and traffic without. The parade: all of the unions in line. The dignity of labour might be well enough for the white brotherhoods, but among the negroes the pompous old institution was finding it difficult to maintain its pose. Hand saws, carried over shoulders, fluttered incongruously with coloured ribbons, and hammers were wearing gaudy streamers. The bakers, attired in white aprons and starched chef’s caps, bore aloft a gigantic loaf of bread that was dressed for Mardi Gras. Bands kept the steamy air vibrating, and the crowds sweated and cheered with complete abandon. The afternoon would see an exodus to all of the negro parks, and along the wharves several dilapidated excursion steamers waited in nervous and asthmatic expectancy for their gala freight.

Lissa was awakened early by the laughter and talk in the street. For a while she lay luxuriously in her bed and through the morning haze watched pigeons strut and gossip on the wet purple of a slate roof. How different the day was from the usual workdays. She felt a pleasurable excitement in the air. Everybody would be having fun to-day—cutting loose—forgetting troubles—just living.

Mamba lay in her bed across the clean airy room with heavy sleep still upon her. With her eyes closed and her alert spirit off guard, how different, how shrunken and old, she seemed. Why, she wasn’t Mamba at all. Lissa wouldn’t look at her like this. It made her feel suddenly alone and unprotected—out of key with the day. Soon that strange, quiet figure would open its eyes again, and then the person Lissa knew would return, watchful and sure, to see that nothing could harm her.

The girl stretched lazily, got out of bed, and went to the window. Outside the lawn lay wet and sweet with dew. The sunlight was a faint pink now, and the shadows purple. It was going to be a hot day, a mild sea air moved the curtains and fanned her skin through her sheer nightdress. She conquered a sudden impulse to strip off the garment and yield her body to its seductiveness: to let its soft fingers stroke her breasts and follow the curves of hip and thigh. No, Mamba wouldn’t like that. It was the sort of thing that she mustn’t do.

Well, she had a lot to be thankful for, more than most of the girls she knew. The Atkinsons were away at Flat Rock cooling their heels in the mountains for the month and had left Mamba to look after the house. It was almost like their own now, with the kitchen to prepare their meals in, and the lovely things in the big dim rooms to be looked at and enjoyed at leisure.

She had a full day ahead of her. Dinner at two with the Broadens, and after dinner the other members of the Club would come in for some music. Then at night a party up the road with Prince. They would dance that exciting dance together. Funny—that story she heard, that they were taking it up now in New York—calling it the Charleston. White folks going wild over a black folks’ dance. Well, she for one could understand that. Then home when the night was late and cool—splitting the air in Prince’s red racer—“Life,” as Gardinia would say, “with a red lining.” But she mustn’t talk too much about that. Mamba had a way of worrying when she went to a dance, and she didn’t want to fret her.

And yet, for all of its bright prospects, when Lissa came in to supper she had the feeling that, so far, at any rate, the day had been disappointing. She had set out early for her dinner engagement, planning a long leisurely walk through the more shady of the streets, but at the intersection of one of the main thoroughfares she had run foul of the parade. At first she was annoyed. The jostling crowds of negroes, the impact of small black, sweating bodies offended her senses. Why couldn’t they enjoy themselves quietly and decently, anyway—why did they have to be so dirty? But it was impossible to cross the street, and she was forced to be an onlooker. She supposed, after all, that people had a right to enjoy themselves in their own way. But what a racket they made. The carpenters passed, with their absurd ribbons fluttering from work-scarred tools, grinning and calling to friends in the crowd. Then a band went crashing by, giving her a funny twist inside and plucking at the muscles of her legs and feet. She started to mark time and unconsciously to drift in unison with the crowd. When the masons came abreast of her she looked up and met the eyes of a bright-faced young negro. He had a large trowel in one hand and a small one in the other, and he was beating time in rhythm with the band. “Hello dere, Sistuh,” he called with a grin. There was something infectious about that grin with its gleaming teeth and full dark lips. She laughed back with sudden camaraderie, “Hello yourself!”

He stopped for a second before her and said boldly: “What boat yo’ goin’ on dis ebenin’? De Planter, de Pilot Boy? Le’s make it de same.”

Still laughing, she shook her head, and the marchers swept him away while he looked back with a rueful glance.

She came to herself and glanced around sharply. Had any one she knew seen her? But what fun they did have! A sudden pang of envy assailed her. She wrenched herself out of their holiday mood and stemmed the tide in the direction of the Broaden home.

Later, all through the eminently polite conversations, the excellently rendered music of the club, the artistic pronouncements of North, she kept seeing the face of the young mason, and picturing him dancing on the deck of the excursion boat—eating watermelon and spitting seeds over the rail, grinning boldly at the girls. “Hello dere, Sistuh, what boat yo’ goin’ on dis ebenin’?” and his comical, rueful face as he passed out of sight.

During supper Lissa was silent and preoccupied. Mamba studied her closely with anxiety showing in her keen old eyes. At last she asked, “Yo’ goin’ out wid dat nigger Prince to-night, chile?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“How come yo’ nebber bring him to meet me like yo’ done promise long ago?”

“Oh, that’s so—you did ask me to, ’way back in July. I’ve been meaning to bring him, but I keep forgetting.”

Mamba spoke sadly: “Yo’ ain’t forget, Chile. Ah ask yo’ in July, an’ Ah ask yo’ in August—an’ yo’ ain’t de forgettin’ kin’. Why yo’ don’t want fo’ me to see um?”

Lissa looked up into the old woman’s face. “All right, Grandma,” she answered, “since you put it that way, it’s because you wouldn’t like him and he wouldn’t like you. He’s different. He’s new time—you’re old time. You’d be thinking things about him that aren’t so. I’ve known him three months now—I know just where he begins and just where he leaves off. We had a good talking out, and since then we haven’t had any fooling—just a good time—dancing, riding in his car—that’s all.”

“Ah saw um at de gate once,” Mamba told her. “It been half daak, but Ah could see woman-chaser writ all over um. Ah ain’t want yo’ fuh know dem kin’.”

The girl sprang up impulsively, ran around the table, flung herself into Mamba’s lap, and gave her a hug.

“Oh, quit worryin’, Grandma,” she begged. “I’m just as hard as nails, I tell you. I never saw a man yet who could keep me from coming back home to you. But I’m not an old woman—I’ve got to play a little bit—I’ve got to dance and cut loose now and then, and Prince is the swellest sport between Savannah and Norfolk—and he sure can show a girl a time. Now, you leave him to me.”

Mamba said nothing more then, only patting the head that was buried against her breast, and swaying a little in her chair, as though she were rocking a small child in her arms. But an hour later, when Lissa left the room attired in her red party frock, the old woman lock-stepped her down the stairs and out to the car that stood at the curb beyond the Atkinsons’ garden. She was going to have a look for herself.

What she saw was a small evil-looking scarlet roadster with two low seats side by side, and in one of them, with his legs extended indolently before him, a man who looked as though he had lived about forty years and had lived them hard. In the faint glow of a street lamp she could see that there were pouches under his eyes. The eyes were shadowed beneath the visor of a checked cap where they could tell no secrets, but when he turned toward Mamba she felt that they were laughing at her from their safe retreat.

Lissa must have sensed it too, for her body stiffened, and she pressed defensively against the old woman.

Mamba and Prince looked at each other for a moment of silence, then Mamba said: “Yo’ been seein’ a lot ob my gal.”

She was answered by a low confident laugh, and: “A lot’s a big word, ole lady. Ah ain’t seen nuttin’ of her yet.”

That the sinister implication of the reply was not lost on Mamba was evidenced by a tremor of the hand that she closed upon the side of the car as she leaned over and spoke directly into his face.

“Ah ain’t expectin’ no hahm to come to she, an’ Ah ain’t tryin’ to baby my gal. Ah trus’ she anywhere wid anybody any time. But when she go away from here wid yo’, yo’s ’sponsible for she. Ef enyt’ing happen to she yo’ gots me—Mamba—to settle wid. Yo’ gets dat?”

The man looked her up and down. It was not in him to feel the spiritual power that animated the fragile old creature who hung to the side of his car. He could only see a rather comic little figure with great false teeth gleaming in the lamplight against the black of her face, and a hand that trembled absurdly and impotently on his car. He laughed at her frankly, throwing his head back so that she saw the insolent challenge in his eyes, and a livid scar that crossed his forehead like a long centipede.

Lissa put her arm around the old woman and drew her close to her side. “Here, cut that out,” she cried sharply to the man. “Nobody’s going to laugh at Grandma and take me out—you can just get that straight now.”

Prince’s change of front was almost comical in its suddenness.

“Me laugh at de ole lady?—Honey, yo’ don’t know me. Ah jes laugh because she think anything can happen while Ah takin’ care of yo’.”

He reached over and patted Mamba’s hand reassuringly. “Don’t yo’ worry, Gran’ma. Make your min’ easy. Your gal ain’t never been so well fix’ befo’.”

During the brief parley the engine had been running slowly. Now he advanced the accelerator, and the sound swelled suddenly and ominously in Mamba’s ears.

“Get in, Lissa,” he called. “We’s late enough already.”

But there was no disguising the fact that he had laughed at Mamba. He had not supposed that Lissa would care, and he had taken the chance. Now the girl stood with her arm tight about the old woman and hesitated, looking at him with anger and distrust in her eyes. For a moment it seemed as though she would let him drive away alone. But she had longed so for the night to come. The mason in the parade that morning had started a hunger in her for youth that could forget itself and send worries flying—and she had been such a lady all afternoon—and there, half an hour away, were waiting music—dancing—throbbing young bodies—“Life with a red lining.”

She caught Mamba to her, half smothered her with kisses, and sprang into the machine beside Prince. There was a hoarse triumphant cry of metal as the gears meshed, and the red car lunged northward.

Mamba stood and watched it go, first a crimson blotch that came and went as it passed under successive arc lights, then only a tiny red spark that zigzagged around other cars and went out slowly like a star in blowing smoke.

Mamba sat at the open window. There was a tensity about her attitude as though she were waiting by prearrangement for a certain occurrence and that she was unsure only of the hour. St. Michael’s chimes had spoken to her every quarter hour, and each time at the first mellow note she had sat forward, counted with an inaudible movement of the lips, then, in the ensuing silence, let herself go slowly back in her chair to wait for the next. She was fully clad, even to the sedate black straw bonnet which was an emblem of respectability without which she was never seen upon the street.

Midnight had passed, heavy-footed and weary, then, almost staccato by comparison, came the single clear note announcing the new day.

A ramshackle automobile rattled noisily up the quiet street and stopped with a sigh before the Atkinsons’ gate. At the same moment that Mamba’s form strained from her window, Gardinia Whitmore arrived breathless on the grass below.

“Lissa home yet?” she asked.

Mamba disappeared immediately and a moment later stood beside the young woman, her fingers closed in a grip that was almost painful about Gardinia’s arm.

“No,” she said briefly; then: “Ah been waitin’ fer yo’ to come fo’ me. Whar yo’ t’ink she gone?”

Gardinia’s voice was edged with hysteria. She had been drinking, and exhaled an effluvium of corn whisky.

“I swear to Gawd I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, Gran’ma,” she began. “I did just like I promised, I kept an eye on her, but there was something about that licker of Prince’s. It knocked me out, an’ it knocked out Slim, an’ we ain’t no babies. When I come ’round, the first thing I looked for was Lissa and Prince, and when I ain’t seen them I made Slim burn it down here to you, just like I promised.”

Mamba’s voice came urgent, steadying: “Where dat nigger Prince lib? Tell me all yo’ know ’bout um, gal.”

“Nobody don’t know much about him, and he’s such a liar, you can’t count on what he says about himself. All I know is he lives across the bridge. He says he runs a big truck farm and a lot of stores over there.”

“What he name? He mus’ hab more ob a name dan jus’ Prince.”

Gardinia stood silent, trying to remember. Then she called Slim. With maddening deliberation he detached himself from the car and slouched indolently forward.

“What’s Prince’s real name?” the girl demanded.

The man stood shuffling one foot backward and forward on the grass, his mouth sagging open, while he pursued the glimmer of a memory through the labyrinth of his befuddled brain. At last he announced, “Ah got it. Ah done heard some of the mens call him Bluton—Gilly Bluton.”

The word shocked Mamba into instant activity. She spun around and re-entered the house, emerging a moment later with a big old-fashioned pocketbook in her hand. She took each of the young people by an arm and propelled them toward the gate, her body rocking with her speed and the intensity of her purpose. At the car she stuffed a bill into Slim’s hand. “Ober de bridge, boy,” she ordered, “an’ fuh Gawd’ sake hurry.”

Then, while he was obediently cranking the car, she turned and laid a hand on Gardinia’s shoulder. “Go home an’ sleep it off, gal,” she said in a gentle voice. “Yo’ ain’t a bad gal, an’ yo’ done what yo’ can.”

Slim sat silent, giving his whole attention to the task of getting the utmost out of his dilapidated machine. Mamba’s thoughts wrestled with the problem that confronted her. It was useless to plan. She would have to depend on Hagar, who knew the ground. But she had an almost superstitious fear of the consequences that might result from such a dependence. Always it had been the well-meant bungling of her great awkward daughter that had precipitated trouble. She remembered vividly the summer dawn when Hagar had sent for her to come to the East Bay tenement after she had jeopardised all of her hopes for Lissa by rescuing Bluton and bringing him to the city to be found and cared for by the police. The malign and ironical fate that prompted Hagar’s good impulses had never played a more cruel joke on her than that. She had risked everything to save Bluton—for what? To attempt the ruin of her own daughter. The thought stabbed the old woman like a blade, and she broke her silence, urging Slim to greater speed.

It must have been between two and three o’clock when Mamba reached the cabin in which Hagar lived with old Vina. Overhead the great void of sky was filled with drifting mist, dark to the east, and showing a luminous area over the western treetops where the moon was tilting toward the horizon. In the faint light the cabin had a ghostly, deserted look. Mamba sprang from the car, and knocked upon the door, calling urgently, “Hagar—Hagar!”

Almost instantly the door was opened, and the woman stood in her white nightdress, looming huge against the dark.

“Lissa’s ober here with dat damn’ nigger Bluton,” Mamba shot at her; then she strove by repetition to drive the idea into the sleep-dulled brain. “Here—here—do yo’ unnerstan’?—wid Bluton.”

“Can’t be, Ma—not Lissa.”

“Ah tell yo’ she is. We got to find her quick. Where’d he take her? Yo’ knows him, yo’ know his ways wid women.”

Hagar was awake now, and she responded to Mamba’s old power over her. It was almost as though the older brain had assumed control of nerve and muscle in the big body, telling them what to do. Hagar reached into the room and caught up a cloak that she flung over her nightdress; then, with Mamba, she sprang for the car.

Over the uneven road the machine bounded, plunging through tunnels of blackness under live-oak avenues, racing between broom-straw fields under a wide emptiness of sky. And always Hagar, sitting on the rear seat and leaning forward with her face at Slim’s shoulder, told him which turnings to take. About them the night, under its shroud of mist, lay as quiet, as indifferent to human urgency, as death. The steady pulsing of the motor and the rattle of the vehicle served only to accentuate the awful loneliness of the country.

They rocketed past the huddled cabins of a settlement and struck a narrow dirt road that led out through a stand of yellow pine toward the swamp that lay black and solid against the horizon. Hagar’s fingers clamped down on Slim’s shoulder.

“Stop,” she whispered.

Under her hand the machine seemed to die in midair, gasping, and settling suddenly to earth. The trees that had been rushing past them stopped in their tracks, crowded close, and looked down on the three intruders.

“We got to get out here an’ walk,” Hagar said. “Come on, we ain’t got no time to lose now.”

But the man did not leave his seat. Mamba turned back and asked why he waited.

He settled forward in the seat, his body relaxed, his head propped against the back.

“Nuttin’ doin’, Gran’ma,” he drawled. “Ah’s a hired driver. Ah ain’t got nuttin’ against Prince. Ah ain’t see nuttin’. Ah ain’t hear nuttin’. When yo’s ready to go home, yo’ can wake me up.”

But now the initiative had passed to Hagar. She caught Mamba by the arm and urged. “Come on, Ma, we ain’t need no man to help.”

They would soon be there now, Hagar explained as she hurried the old woman forward. This was the place where Bluton ran his crap game. A little farther, at the swamp’s edge, they would find the cabin. Then they were upon it. There was a small opening in the trees, and through it the sky let down a dim grey light. The cabin was a black cube with one candlelit window. Before the door in spidery outline stood the red racer.

Not until the women were at the door did they hear the first sound. Lissa’s voice in a sort of desperate monotony: “Not that, Prince—not that—not that.”

Hagar kicked the door open, and they entered together. Lissa was seated on the floor with her back to the wall, her knees drawn up, and her chin on them. Her arms were locked about her legs below the knees. The candlelight flickered upon the golden brown of her shoulder and upper arm where her dress had been torn. Bluton was hanging over her in a threatening attitude.

At the entrance of the women both faces were flung toward the door.

With a shrill cry Lissa was up and in Mamba’s arms. Between them and Prince stood Hagar, her feet planted wide apart. Her arms held akimbo under the full coat exaggerated her already massive bulk to a preposterous breadth, and her head, held low and thrust menacingly forward, was scarcely visible to the women who stood in the shadows behind her. No word had been spoken. There had been no sound except Lissa’s cry, and the waiting silence of the night had seemed to suck the shrill note from her lips and leave the four occupants of the room suspended as though in a vacuum. From the swamp came the demoniac scream of a cat—a struggle—a strangling death wail—and again silence. A subtle change became manifest in the appearance of the girl. She ceased trembling. Her form drew to its full height. A ripple of tautened muscle stirred under the smooth bronze of her skin where the shoulder rose above her tattered clothing. Then in a flash she was out of Mamba’s arms, past the gigantic form of her mother, and upon the cowering man. Words that rose to her lips were broken there into strange, savage utterance unintelligible as speech, but more eloquent—more terrifying. One slender hand clawed downward and four livid streaks followed the flensing nails from forehead to chin. Hagar reached out an arm and caught the girl in its curve, pressed her to her side for a moment, then passed her back to Mamba.

As suddenly as it had come, the girl’s passion left her. Her head went down on the old shoulder. “Oh, Grandma, he tried to—he tried to——” and her voice broke into uncontrollable sobbing.

The deep compassionate voice soothed her: “Ah know, Chile, Ah know—but dat all done now, yo’ wid Mamba now.” She drew the shaking girl from the room and into the heavy stillness of the night. There was something terribly complete about those two, about their entire sufficiency to each other. The enfolding devotion of the old woman covering the girl and isolating her from every evil, every alien touch—Mamba and Lissa—no one else.

Hagar stood for a moment like one who has been blinded by sudden intense light. Her eyes still held the image, quiveringly alive, of the splendid thing that was her child. The dream pattern that she had treasured of the slender little girl was shattered, and as yet she could not take in this new and marvellous being. She was dizzy from the revelation. She was also vaguely conscious of a loneliness deeper than any that had gone before.

The chaos of her mind was shot through by an instinctive warning. Suddenly her brain cleared, her body tensed. She spun around and faced Bluton. The naked fear in his face gave her an exquisite pang. Something deep and elemental broke free inside of her. She stood watching him, catlike, as he moved along the wall in the direction of the crap table which stood at the farther end of the room.

She knew what he wanted now. She let him get almost to the drawer with its brass knobs, her eyes and his locked all the time. She saw his face change, glimmer with hope, relief. Then she was before him, with the table at her back. As he had advanced slowly, with his studied attempt at casualness, so now he retreated before her, while she closed the distance between them. It was like some ghastly rehearsal, carried out with utter absorption, for some momentous event that was set for the future. It was so deliberate, so mechanical in its studied advance and retreat. Then at last the wall was against the man’s shoulder blades.

The touch of the unyielding timber seemed to turn his limbs to water. His knees gave, and he had difficulty propping his body upright. He raised his arms before his face in a weak defensive gesture.

Hagar said, “Yo’ rattlesnake! Yo’ would be dead now ’cept fuh me—an’ now—my own gal Lissa——” Then, after a pause, “You!”

The man found voice in a screech. It was so weak that it scarcely filled the little room—at its peak it plunged suddenly into silence.

Mamba wanted to be going. She wanted to get Lissa away from that horrible place, back into the ordered peace of streets and houses. But Hagar did not come. Why couldn’t the woman hurry and let them get to the automobile and away? She put the girl, who was quiet at last, out of her arms and started back to the shack. The door was open, and the draught played with the candle flame, peopling the room with lurching shadows and half lights.

The old woman entered, with Lissa peering fearfully over her shoulder. Hagar stood with her back to them, her arms hanging straight and long at her sides, her bullet head thrust forward. Her huge shoulders flung a black arch of shadow over half of the wall before her. Bluton lay in a huddle at her feet. His head was twisted at a preposterous angle. The yellow of his face had gone a dark purple, and the candle flame was flung back in two cold high lights from his wide, unblinking eyes.

Lissa screamed. Hagar turned heavily in her tracks and looked at them dully from raised eyes under lowered brows.

Mamba advanced toward her. In her extremity her voice seemed heavy with hatred for her big bungling daughter.

“Yo’ damned fool,” she said. “See what yo’ done now, eberybody at dat dance know Lissa been wid Prince. People seen me come out here. Ah ought to ha’ known if Ah turned my back on yo’, yo’d play hell——”

Hagar buried her face in the crook of an arm and commenced to sob. “Oh, Gawd, Ma, Ah ain’t stop to t’ink. Ah only know he been hurt Lissa.”

Mamba wasted no sentimental pity on the broken thing upon the floor. Her whole being was focussed on the staggering predicament that confronted her.

“Get outside,” she ordered. “Ah got to t’ink.” She blew out the candle and followed them into the open, thinking aloud: “Ah got to sen’ Lissa away quick, an’ she got to go far. But Ah can’t let she go alone, an’ she ain’t got no frien’ to go to.”

Between broken sobs Hagar said surprisingly, “Ah got a frien’.”

Mamba looked at her skeptically. “Yo’ has? Where?”

“Ah got a frien’ what’s a Reverent, an’ he lib in Noo Yo’k.”

“Yo’ know whar he house is?”

Hagar was getting herself in hand now and had stopped crying. “Ah got it writ in a book he gib me. He a good man—yo’ needn’t be ’fraid to sen’ Lissa to he.”

“Oh, he dat Yankee nigger what use’ to be down here?”

Hagar nodded assent.

“Come, den,” Mamba commanded. “We ain’t got no time to lose.”

They waked Slim, who grinned sleepily and leered when he saw the girl, and started him back to the village. When they reached Hagar’s cabin she ran inside and returned in a moment with a small black book in her hand. She pressed it on Mamba, who had followed her to the door.

“De name an’ number is writ inside,” she said. “Lissa can tell he dat she Baxter gal—an’ to ’member what he say ’bout always bein’ my frien’.”

Then Mamba handed Hagar a ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook and gave her instructions: “Listen! Ah been t’inkin’ hard. Now yo’ hit it out an’ hide. Dat’s bad, but if yo’ stay roun’ here, you’ll be gibbin’ yo’self away by mornin’; so dere ain’t nuttin’ fo’ it. If Baggart catch yo’, keep yo’ mout’ shet. Don’t say so much as yes or no ’til Ah sen’ my boss or Mr. Saint to talk for yo’. Ef yo’ open dat fool mout’ ob yourn, nottin’ Ah can do’ll sabe Lissa. Now you unnerstan’?”

Full of her plan-making, Mamba turned to leave her daughter. She felt a gentle tug at her sleeve and faced Hagar again, impatient at the delay.

“Well,” she snapped, “what yo’ want now?”

Hagar made one of her gauche childish gestures toward the automobile. “She wouldn’t care so much—ef Ah go an’ tell she good-bye?”

Mamba caught her breath sharply, and suddenly she was no longer merely the fierce intelligence that drove that inarticulate, powerful machine in the service of the grandchild, but Hagar’s own mother, feeling her child’s loneliness and sorrow in her own spirit.

She took one of the big, beautifully made hands and drew Hagar forward, speaking gently as they plodded through the heavy white sand: “Ah sorry, Daughter, Ah mighty sorry—Ah get t’inkin’ so hahd Ah fuhget. Ah say hahd t’ings Ah ain’t mean. It ain’t fuh me—Ah jes study all de time ’bout dat gal, an’ my mind seem like it dry up on odder t’ing.”

Hagar stopped beside the car. The girl sitting alone on the rear seat looked up, and the eyes of the two met. For a moment they stood so in a silence that was eloquent with emotions that speech could only have cheapened and tarnished. So long since the cord had been severed. Centuries lay between them now—and yet, in that fractional part of a minute life beat out again from the heart of the big black woman, throbbed in her child, and coursed refluent and warm back through her own being. Hagar lifted one of Lissa’s hands and humbly, yet with a certain possessive pride, kissed it upon the open palm. But in a sudden tumult of emotion the girl snatched her hand away, flung her arms around her mother’s neck, and kissed her again and again.

The car gave a warning shudder, and the women separated. Hagar said, “Good-bye, chile. Don’t be ’fraid. Nuttin’ goin’ hahm yo’.” And the next moment they were gone among the mists and shadows.

Saint Wentworth sat in the lobby of the Pennsylvania Hotel and impatiently watched the hands of a clock that seemed to have been stricken with creeping paralysis. At noon he was to meet Valerie over on the Avenue and select the ring. It was a terribly complicated business, getting married in New York. Saturday they had got the license. Simple enough, he had been told—a few minutes at the Municipal Building—that was all. They had gone together, blinded by a new glamour in the air, and feeling themselves marked for public notice by the magnitude and unusual nature of the step that they contemplated. But upon their arrival at the vast downtown structure, they had been both reassured and chagrined to find themselves in a queue half a block long, sandwiched between a frankly infatuated negro couple and a pair who made love in foreign liquid syllables. It was odd how many people had the same idea. Then there was the big room with long tables where couples sat, while Eros, in the guise of an officious elderly man, leaned between them and explained in lucid and complete detail the meaning of certain perfectly obvious and embarrassingly personal questions. Saint, very red, tried to forestall him by explaining that they both understood. It was no use. The man was filled with the zeal of a public servant who glories in doing well and conspicuously work that occasions no effort.

And now to-day there were more details—more complications. The minister had to be seen again, and forms prepared. Saint had telegraphed home for a copy of his birth certificate and had not received a reply. It seemed that you could not be married in New York without documentary evidence that you had been born. The fact that you could be seen, touched, even separated from a fee, were inconclusive evidences of existence. Only eleven-twenty. No use to start yet and have to cool his heels on the Avenue.

His thoughts drifted to another matter.

He was brought to earth by the sound of his own name droned in a loud monotonous voice. Good: that would be the wire about the certificate. He signalled the boy and tore open the envelope. The telegram was from his mother. It said:

Mamba’s granddaughter Lissa in trouble arrives New York noon train. Mamba begs you to meet and assist her.

Good God: Couldn’t he even be safe from the old responsibilities here, and at the one time in life when a man should be free? And Val—just about their biggest moment—buying the ring—then blissful hours at the stores and decorators, planning for the new furnishings. And now at the exact hour when she would be awaiting him he was expected to respond to this unreasonable and insane summons. Well, he’d be damned if he would. Mamba, yes—but not to the third generation.

Perhaps he could still catch Val by ’phone and postpone the engagement. But why think of that when he had decided against going? He tore the yellow slip, balled it up, and volleyed it at a waste-paper basket. Then he went through an instinctive hand-washing gesture. Well, that was that.

He got up and strode restlessly about the vast lobby. When he came to a standstill he found to his dismay and anger that he had paused before a telephone booth. “Go to hell!” he apostrophised it fiercely under his breath, and turned away. But a power that he was at a loss to explain kept dragging him back, filling him with a deep and inexplicable misery as long as he moved away. Mamba out of the long past with the funny string-wrapped hair, the solitary fang—her savagery—her understanding tenderness. Mamba with her one idea and her everlasting persistence. What did she care if it upset his plans?—Lissa—Lissa! He was reminded of the time she had made him take Hagar in at the mines. Would he never be free of Mamba’s daughters? What was there about her that could hound a man across the miles and make him feel like a cur until he did her bidding? A comical old negress a thousand miles away, and yet, somehow, he felt that he dare not go back and meet her eyes unless he had responded to her summons for help.

He found himself calling a familiar number. Valerie’s voice—even over the ’phone, that dewy early morning quality that made his heart hang a beat. Good God! he hadn’t thought yet what to say. How could he put it?

“Val, I’m desolated, broken-hearted. Promise you’ll forgive me for what I am going to say. No. Not that—not that—I am sorry I scared you. It’s that I can’t meet you at noon. There’s something else I have to do.... Well, it’s awfully hard to explain over the ’phone. There’s a girl coming up from Charleston I’ve got to go and meet.... Mamba’s granddaughter Lissa. You remember her, don’t you?... Yes, she’s in some sort of trouble, and Mamba has gotten Mother to telegraph asking me to meet her at the noon train.... Jove, you’re a dear. Three o’clock, then—at Tiffany’s. You’re an angel, Val.”

Wentworth did not at once recognise his protégée when she came up the stair from the lower level in the stream of passengers. He had been looking for the girl whom he remembered vaguely as being slender and pretty with eyes like those of Mamba and Hagar, and who, alas, would now be in trouble. It was not until he could have touched her with his hand that he recognised her. Taken from her familiar matrix and placed before Saint against the novel setting of the vast station, she stood out for the first time, not as Mamba’s grandchild to be taken as a matter of course, but as Lissa Atkinson, with an individuality of her own. Wentworth was startled. It was as though he saw her for the first time.

She was clad in a modish tailored suit of dark blue with a flash of bright embroidery on collar and cuffs, and carried a small blue silk umbrella suspended from her wrist by a loop. Wentworth’s glance took in the slender, superbly carried figure and the expressive face with its small full-lipped mouth and Mamba’s eyes.

She met his gaze and flashed him a look of surprised, almost incredulous, recognition. “Why, Mr. Saint!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Hello, Lissa,” he answered. “Didn’t you know that Mamba sent me a message to meet you and help you get settled?”

“Why, no. You see I left in a hurry. She must have heard of your being here after she told me good-bye. That’s just like Grandma. She thinks of everything.”

The girl’s self-possession was colossal, almost disconcerting. Saint took her small valise. There was something at once flattering and embarrassing about the unquestioning way that she put herself in his hands.

They stood under the vast dome, with scurrying humanity brushing past them, and Wentworth wondered what to do next.

“Have you any place to go?” he asked.

Lissa opened her handbag and produced a Book of Common Prayer. Then she opened it at the flyleaf and presented it to Saint.

He studied the inscription for a moment. Of course—the Reverend Thomas Grayson. In his mind’s eye arose a picture of a broad imaginative face with heavy earnestness of purpose.

“What luck!” he exclaimed, his expression clearing. “We’ll hop in a taxi and go right up.”

Safely in the cab, which was threading its way toward Harlem, Wentworth was free to give his whole attention to the problem of his travelling companion.

“What’s the trouble, Lissa?” he asked.

She sat back in her corner and with that complete faith in his willingness to assume her responsibilities that had embarrassed him in the station, told him simply and with complete self-possession what had occurred.

When she had finished he gave a low expressive whistle.

“Well, I must say,” he commented, “you don’t seem to be afraid of the consequences as far as you are concerned.”

“I am not,” she replied confidently. “Grandma and Mamma’ll fix it at home; there’s nothing they can’t fix. And I have you to look after me here.”

This alarming surrender to his care provoked a very pertinent question.

“How are you fixed for money?” he asked bluntly.

She opened her handbag and gave him a roll of bills and a pass book on a Charleston bank. He counted the money—three hundred dollars. Then he opened the pass book. It showed an account in the name of Lissa Atkinson that had been opened nineteen years previously. He spun the pages that exhibited columns of deposits of one dollar—sometimes two—here and there a week was skipped. That was when Hagar was up for a fine, he thought. After each of these eloquent breaks the amounts would run to one fifty or even two fifty until the deficit had been made good. He came to the final page and found the balance: fourteen hundred and twenty-five dollars. For a moment he sat struck dumb by the utter beauty of the thing that lay behind the prosaic columns of figures. Mamba—a maker of bricks without straw, a disciple of a single transcendent ideal, in the name of which she had worked her obscure miracles, with none to know, none to applaud.

Wentworth turned with a new curiosity to examine the girl who had been the cause of such devotion. The very magnitude of the sacrifices which she represented endowed her with an importance out of proportion to herself as an individual. She was a symbol into which had gone the blind upward urges, the stumbling aspirations, the great fantastically conceived dreams of the old woman, and behind Mamba, of millions of her inarticulate kin.

During the brief space of time that he had been with the girl Wentworth had been conscious of a growing annoyance at her calm acceptance of the sacrifices that were being made for her, at the coolness with which she had precipitated a wreck, then left the débris for others to clear away. Mamba, Hagar, Grayson, himself, would attend to details. Why should she worry? Now the little book that he held suddenly explained her attitude. It went farther and convinced him in some inexplicable fashion that her assumption was justified.

Lissa would attain her goal because she, like her grandmother, had never once removed her gaze from it. He knew, of course, of the girl’s reputation in coloured circles as a singer, and of Mamba’s faith in her future. Now he saw that this faith was the only thing that mattered in their lives. It had been born and bred into the girl. Her own belief in herself was supreme. Of the great faith that she and Mamba held in common there were certain articles that she must perform. Mamba had others. It was their job to carry through together: the job of believing in a thing so intensely, so single-mindedly, that the day would come when that belief should become an accomplished fact. If Lissa hesitated now, if she removed her gaze from the steady light to which it had become accustomed, and turned back, dazzled and blundering, she would have broken faith with Mamba. She would be guilty of unpardonable weakness. She must look only forward, and leave the road that she had travelled to the watchful eyes of the old woman.

A pang of envy assailed Wentworth. Of late he had been enormously pleased with himself. He was a success. Charleston said so, and, as it had watched him from boyhood, it ought to know. The symbols of conquest were his. Next week he would return to town with Valerie; then comfort—love—probably children—an ordered and beautifully complete existence. Yet there he sat envying an unknown mulatto girl, and seeing with a sudden and terrible clarity a seedy youth in a country store hunched over a guitar, groping for the unattainable with eager, clumsy fingers. But the past had reached dead hands after him, guiding him imperceptibly this way and that. Forces that had driven forward in grooves for generations had pulled against his amorphous longings, his only half-realised dreams—had held him true to form and tradition. Behind Lissa there had been nothing; before her, Mamba’s one immovable idea. An old loneliness that he had known in that far-gone time stabbed up through his complacence, and now he knew that it had been a singular and beautiful thing, and that there exists for certain solitary spirits a loneliness that holds more ecstasy than the delight of any human companionship. And so to-morrow was to be his wedding day. And there was Lissa following her dream.

He realised that his hands were trembling, and he tensed them savagely. He was a sentimental fool. His mother had been right. Val had been right. Life would still be an adventure.

He stole a glance at his companion and realised that she was no longer conscious of his presence. She was sitting forward with her gaze fastened upon the crowds, the towering buildings, the surging traffic. Over their heads the Elevated hurled its mechanical thunders. From a yawning excavation almost directly under their hurrying wheels thudded the heavy detonations of blasting. Faces hurtled by in taxis. Faces intent and watchful swept in full tide along the pavements. After a while the girl turned toward Saint, and in her first remark showed that already she had sensed a thing that the Southern white man had never felt, that in the vast unconcern of this city there was escape; that in the very heart of this crowd there was a strange and private hiding place where no one had time to wonder who you were or what you were doing.

“This is where I belong, Mr. Saint,” she said. “Nobody here has time to wonder whether I am even white or coloured.”

Presently they were on Lenox Avenue north of the line, and the white faces were behind them. Lissa saw the change instantly, and her composure vanished. She clapped her hands with a delight like that of a child. “Here are my folks, Mr. Saint,” she exclaimed. “See, everywhere—and such big houses.”

The taxi swerved to the right, and they were in a street that showed a glimpse of the East River under the high-flung bridge of the Elevated. Then they drew to the curb and stopped.

Wentworth awakened to the realisation that he was sitting with Lissa’s money and bank book still in his hands. He put them hastily back into her bag, took the valise, got out, and discharged the driver.

They found themselves on the pavement before a three-story brownstone building. Over a push button beside the door was a brass plate which stated: “Rectory of St. John’s Episcopal Church.”

The mulatto maid who admitted them said that the Reverend Thomas Grayson lived there, was at home, and would be with them presently.

In the few minutes during which they sat in the quietly furnished room Saint was again impressed by Lissa’s ease and appearance of belonging. Once their eyes met, and she gave him the bright transfiguring smile that linked her with Mamba and Hagar, but, except in that moment, he felt she was already at home in the alien metropolis and that he was the provincial visitor.

Grayson entered, holding Saint’s card in his hand. He was older than as Wentworth remembered him, and his expression of seriousness had deepened almost to one of solemnity. His shoulders and chest had grown heavy with his greater maturity. The large head set firmly on his short neck gave an impression of rock-like solidity to the figure. His ears were small and close-set, and the closely clipped graying hair revealed the lines of his skull and stressed the negroid formation. The years that had passed since his residence in the South had produced in some subtle way an appearance more characteristically negro, a race consciousness that had become definitely assertive. He conveyed a sense of power, but it was the power of one who moves slowly, predicating action upon a laborious logic, not to be swayed by an appeal to the emotions until the matter had been thoroughly weighed. Knowing his history, one would have said that his experience in the South had taught him to fear and distrust emotional hysteria, and had swung him to pure reason as a basis for behaviour. As a result his position in Harlem was one of unique importance, for his church had attracted the rising intellectual element, and through them he was in contact with the leaders of advanced thought among the white people of the metropolis, thus profiting by this first opportunity of the race in America to meet the Caucasian upon an equal basis of give and take.

Grayson showed no surprise at the visit, and sat in an attitude of easy attention while Lissa told him her story. Then the girl drew the little prayer book from her bag, opened it at the flyleaf, and handed it to him.

“My mother said to show you this,” she said simply, “and ask you to look out for me.”

He sat looking at the page for a moment, then he raised his eyes to Saint’s. “The mills of the gods, Mr. Wentworth,” he said; “perhaps my venture into the mission field has borne fruit after all.”

He turned to Lissa. “And you will stay here for a while, at any rate, with my wife and me. We have no children of our own. She will be glad.”

Saint thanked him and, feeling an enormous relief from the burden of responsibility, took his departure.

The maid appeared to show him out, and while she was handing him stick and hat he caught from the drawing room a fragment of conversation that he was never to forget: the deep voice of Grayson said, “And you, my child, have you any plans? Is there anything that you can do?” And immediately into the ensuing hush like the cry of a bird at dawn came the answer:

“I can sing.”

PART V