The place was full of the excited high-pitched chatter of well-to-do, well-dressed women. Melissa caught the sheen of colorful gowns, flashing jewels. The rich tones of the dresses brought out the gold and yellow and cream flesh tints of their possessors. Melissa had never seen anything like this before. Not even Laurentine had been asked to cross this threshold.
“She’d outshine ’em all in dress and looks if she was here,” thought Melissa staunchly. “But I guess it’s too late for her now to get in with this bunch. Well, it’s not going to be too late for me. Some of these days,” she promised herself, glimpsing the lovely ladies as she ran up the stairs in Kitty Brown’s house, “I’ll be right along with you. Nothing doing, Asshur Lane.”
CHAPTER VIII
LAURENTINE stood before her long mirror putting the finishing touches to her costume. She was to go driving with Phil Hackett and the anticipation of it filled her with a sort of wild excitement. “I’m going to surprise you,” he said over the telephone. Of course that remark might mean anything or nothing. In spite of her steadiness and of the restraint to which she had long since accustomed herself, the girl chose to believe the remark meant a great deal.
She glanced at herself in the mirror smiling with an unwonted coquetry. As a rule she was distant to the point of haughtiness. No matter what her feeling she did not, she felt, dare to exercise any of the “come-hither” quality employed by most young women. But she was beautiful, she knew it, she acknowledged it, and if she married Phil she would exercise the spell of her beauty on him to its fullest extent.
Still pleased with the vision, she studied herself. Her slender, well-moulded figure showed to every advantage in a dress of green developed in silk and wool, its uneven hem-line reaching in places to her ankle. Her stockings of tan and her dainty yet sturdy, slender shoes of brown and tan snakeskin afforded just the necessary contrast. Above the trim dress rose her slender, proud neck and her small, perfect head. Her black, waving hair parted smoothly in the middle and drawn to the conventional flat knot in the nape of her neck gave her a slightly foreign look which was accentuated by her long, black, oval ear-rings.
She picked up her rouge but excited anticipation had already given her a beautiful flush, so she put it down again, applying her lipstick ever so slightly. The bell rang and, pulling on her tiny, smart, green felt hat, she got hastily into her green cloth coat with its high mink collar that fitted so beautifully, so snugly. If her trade prospered for the next two years as it had in the past, she would be able to treat herself to an entire coat of the beautiful fur.
But it would be fun, it would be marvelous to receive such a coat from Phil. With her taste, with her skilful fingers and his money she would be able to show Red Brook what dressing really meant. She would show Mrs. Brown and the wife of Dr. Ismay such perfection as they had never seen. Phil visited these houses sometimes, she knew. But she had never crossed their thresholds. They would be glad to cross hers. But she would always be kind, be courteous. “Oh God, you know all I want is a chance to show them how decent I am.”
Aunt Sal’s soft voice floated up the stairs. “Mr. Hackett’s yere, Laurentine.” She came running down pulling on her soft, white gloves.
• • • • •
Hackett rose as she entered the room. He was a big man with the peculiar floridness and dapperness which marks the sport everywhere. Lauren-tine did not like this quality in him. Yet underneath that surface flashiness lurked, she suspected, a steely determination, a forthrightness which would stop at nothing to achieve a desire. She had seen something of the same quality in her mother and Aunt Judy and even more recently in Melissa. She herself was without it. She could be proud, she could suffer. That was all. Perhaps she would not have to suffer much longer.
His first words after his perfunctory greeting dashed her somewhat exalted mood. His greetings were always perfunctory, barely cordial, for this woman moved him terribly and he had to hold himself in leash. Laurentine suspected as much.
He said: “You know I told you I’d have a surprise for you. Look.”
She followed his finger pointing through the upper glass of the door to descry a sleigh in the road. This was his surprise—and she had expected—what?
Still, as he helped her into the smart little turnout, her spirit, crestfallen, rose again. What man would put himself to the trouble and expense of procuring this elegant, well-cut vehicle and the two prancing horses with their jingling bells, unless he were trying especially to impress and to please his lady. She smiled happily into the crisp whiteness of the winter afternoon.
“Be patient, Laurentine,” she chided herself. “You’ve waited twenty-four years for this, can’t you wait longer?”
They flashed, jingling merrily, across the humming town through the Romany Road, a short cut in the woods, to the turnpike and on toward Pompton Lakes. Laurentine was happy and Phil was devoted. Mrs. Brown coming out of the meat-market to get into her runabout over which her husband was mounting guard, stared, called “hello” to Phil and stared again—at Laurentine. Mr. Gathers turned out, in his truck. Mr. Stede and Johnasteen passing on foot, waved at her cheerily, ungrudgingly, glad, Laurentine thought, of her good fortune. When they came to the Romany Road her long constraint seemed to drop from her. She sang first the old sleighing song:
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way.
And afterwards she hummed and sang snatches from the popular songs which Melissa played, amazed at herself for remembering them so well. Phil was entranced, delighted. “I had no idea you were like this,” he told her. She might have replied that she didn’t know it either.
On his admiring gaze, she grew surer of herself, even provocative. They passed some red winter berries and she ordered him to stop and pluck her a spray.
“No, no, not that one. I want that one highest up.” It was almost beyond even his great reach but he caught it finally, pulled it down and hacked it off with his jack-knife. She accepted it calmly with the air of one who knows she has only to ask to receive.
Around the turn of the road they came across a lunch-wagon run by a Greek who sold them unbelievably good, hot clam chowder. Laurentine perched on the high stool feeling the admiring glances of the other customers, all of them men, on her trim figure, on her marvelous face. But her own glances were for Phil only as he hovered about her gallant, assiduous.
When they emerged the stars were out. Hackett lit the two red lanterns on the front of the sleigh. They cast twin shafts of ruddy light before them all the way in, like crimson streamers irresistibly tugging her gently on toward happiness.
Suddenly he began to talk. “You know, Lauren-tine, I’m not satisfied with my life here. I could have struck out for a big city long ago, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, but I believe there’s more chance for me here if I can just manage it. I can’t go on like this—Phil Hackett, son of the ash-man. Dad’s all right, he sure let down his buckets where they were, as Booker Washington used to say. He’s a smart man and he’s done a lot for his family.”
He drew on a cigarette in silence.
“But that’s not enough for me. And the pool room isn’t either. And yet, Laurentine, it’s been there in the pool room that I’ve learned most about men and I’d like to run them, control them, pull wires.”
She was bewildered and showed it. “I want to get into politics. I know no colored man’s gone in for that yet, at least not in this town nor yet in this county. I don’t know as Jersey’s even a good state in which to nurse such an ambition. But that’s my ambition and I’m in Jersey and I’m going to have a try at it here.
“I thought—I wondered—” He stopped, and Laurentine’s heart stopped too.
They went on in silence then, feeling suddenly very close, very near. It was eleven when they came jingling down the quiet street to stop before her gate. He walked to the front door with her, pulled off his fur cap, and stood holding her two hands, his rather splendid head inclining toward her.
She smiled at him and passed in. Aunt Sal was sitting, her hands on one another in her lap, in her favorite corner in the dining-room. As Laurentine entered she made no move except to raise her head, expectant, patient.
Her daughter passed an arm about her shoulders, pressed her face against her mother’s. “I think it will be all right—soon, mother.” These two had always been chary of their caresses. Upstairs she took off her coat and hat and stood again before the mirror.
She had so wanted his kiss—bestowed with love, with ardor, with respect. Yet she knew that his reticence had really been the finest expression of that respect.
But she had wanted that kiss!
“If I weren’t such a fraidy-cat. If only I could have brought myself to flirt a little,” she murmured.
• • • • •
In the morning he telephoned before ten, his voice abject with confusion. “I won’t be able to see you to-night, Laurentine. I forgot I promised long ago to go with Dr. Brown and a party he’s getting up. I’m sorry—I promised,—er—I promised before I thought. I hope you don’t mind?”
She knew he was going with the Browns and the Ismays. But why should she care? It was enough to know that he felt it incumbent on him to explain his movements, to apologize for them in so far as they took him away from her. “Of course I don’t care, Phil. Have a good time.”
His voice came back relieved. “You’re a great girl, Laurentine. I tell you what. Suppose you make an engagement to go with me to the Ice Carnival next year? How’s that?”
“Fine!”
“I’ll see you to-morrow then? And I want to talk about—an omission in our—er—farewell—last night on the porch. And some other things too. Like that?”
“I think I might, Phil.”
“Good-bye Laurentine.”
“Good-bye Phil.”
• • • • •
The afternoon brought a great mass of hothouse flowers. “H’m,” said Johnasteen Stede who, under the pretense of believing that the package contained a long-awaited length of crêpe Ginette, managed to view both blossoms and card before they reached Laurentine’s hands : “H’m, ain’t never see no such flowers sent from one colored party to another, no suh, not since I been b’on. Colored people gettin’ more like w’ite folks every day. I’m tellin’ you, Miss Laurentine Strange.”
CHAPTER IX
REDD’S BROOK, the stream, for which the town of Red Brook had been named deserved its misnomer this night. The Electric Company which for reasons of its own was financing the Ice Carnival had festooned bunches of red bulbs from tree to tree on the banks of the stream. Bonfires and red flares made the place alive and vivid. The hot-dog and hot chestnut vendors and the blare of horns supplied the necessary noise and confusion without which no American out-door sport is complete.
Melissa and Asshur had come early. Asshur had his uncle’s little Ford crammed unbelievably full of wriggling, squirming, giggling, happy, carefree high school girls and boys. Melissa in a dark blue velvet suit of Laurentine’s designing and creation was in gay, almost too wild spirits. Her skirt was circular, her shapely legs and feet were encased in the nattiest possible tan leggings and shoes; her velvet beret assumed of its own volition the jauntiest possible angle.
Almost the mantle of her mother’s former recklessness lay about her. Some of the older colored people had come down to view the proceedings and to exchange comments on the uncontrolled high spirits and actions of Melissa.
“There she is, there, that’s her. That’s Judy Strange’s girl. Calls herself Melissa Paul.”
“Wonder how much she knows.”
“Nothin’. Why should she? Queer though ain’t it, her comin’ to live here!”
“Look at her. Look at that—just rarin’ to go. Ain’t she jes’ carryin’ on though! Jes’ mad about the boys and they around her jes’ thick ez bees.”
“Tell you there’s sumpin’ funny ’bout this Strange blood!”
“Chile, I mean! Wouldn’t want her around my husban’, young ez she is!”
“Young ez she is! Ain’t much younger’n her mammy was before ’er.”
“Oh go ’long Mis’ Tracey. You always puttin’ words in somebody’s mouth.”
“Well, I only repeats what ev’rybody says. Well, will you-all look at thet gal!”
Melissa was no solo skater. But she was a superb natural dancer and she had the nerve and the verve, trusting herself to Asshur’s strength and skill to follow him through a maze of steps and gyrations that would have done credit to a professional.
Crowds of people, both white and colored, drew up to watch them. Sidney Reamer, editor of the Red Brook Record, sauntered up. “Well, we have our niggers with us always. That’s a pretty good exhibition, isn’t it? The fellow’s some kin to those Lanes out Birneysville way, I hear. Farmers, I know ’em. Good substantial people. But who’s that girl? Never saw any colored woman like that in Red Brook before.”
James Spratlin, a grocer, answered. “Let me see. Yes, I thought ’twaz. No, she came from Philadelphy. Niece of that there Strange woman they say old Colonel Halloway set up.” Reamer moved abruptly away. “What’s he gone off like that for?”
“Oh man, don’t you know? Don’t suppose he wants to hear anything about that Strange woman, do you? Colonel Halloway’s wife is his sister.”
“How on earth sh’d I know?”
The ranks of fancy dancers thinned, drew apart, went skimming off like great lovely birds now lost in the shadow of the overhanging boughs of a tree, now reappearing in the bright glow of a bonfire.
In a space unusually dim Melissa skated straight into the arms of Harry Robbins.
“Oh Harry, you frightened me so!” She spoke naturally, choosing to forget his ugliness of a few days previous.
“Skate with me, Melissa?”
She could tell from her momentary contact with him that he’d been drinking. “I think I’d better not, Harry. I’m afraid you’re not quite steady. I’ve just put on an exhibition with Asshur. It would never do for me to spoil my stuff now, would it, with all the grand white folks looking on?”
His arm tightened around her. “I said I wanted you to skate with me, Melissa!”
“Oo! What’s that?” she asked innocently, looking intently over his shoulder.
He was too bemused to recognize the palpable ruse. Involuntarily his arm went slack, he turned his head to look.
Her tantalizing laugh floated back to him as she fled skimming, skimming back to the safe brilliant lights and Asshur.
“Harry’s down there, Asshur. Better get some of the fellows to get him home. He’s drunk, I think. Don’t you go after him.”
“I can manage him, ’Lissa.” He headed in long, graceful glides for the lurching Harry.
“Now Robbins I’m not joking. I want you to keep away from Melissa. Get me? She’s my girl and I’m not going to have her bothered. You heard me.”
He thought he heard Harry say: “Your girl? Anybody’s girl.”
“What was that?” asked Asshur, his voice suddenly dangerously calm.
“Oh nothing,” Harry suddenly alive to his peril began to bluster. “Get the hell your hand off of me, Lane. Who do you think you are, orderin’ me around, God A’Mighty?”
“No, but the devil if you get me started.”
Reverend Simmons came up. “Now boys, boys don’t start nothin’. Too many white folks here for that. We don’t want this kind of thing closed to
“Well, make him keep his damned mouth off me then.”
Asshur, momentarily pacified, made no retort. “I don’t want to start anything, I’m tellin’ you, Reverend.”
“These hot-heads,” Reverend Simmons complained to the first colored man he met who happened to be Phil Hackett.
“What’s the matter?” asked Phil, smiling and showing his splendid teeth.
“I’m
sure I don’t know,” replied the minister irritably. He wished he’d never left the South for this parish. Knowing how quickly the most ordinary fight could develop into a riot, he was nervous and watchful and too old, he felt, for this searching atmosphere, this sharp, penetrating night. He wished he were home in his comfortable slippers before his bright gas range. He would be glad when the festivities were over.
• • • • •
The excitement was increasing, the crowds growing denser. New parties kept joining the company, the Reverend Simmons withdrawing discreetly well beyond the hither edge of the bank, wondered if the ice would hold. But oldest inhabitants assured him of its safety. Dr. and Mrs. Ismay, Dr. and Mrs. Brown, a Mrs. Barron of Newark, Phil Hackett and Kitty Brown came up and spoke to the minister.
Kitty glanced about restlessly, anxious to find some one of her own age and interests. If her mother thought she was going to stodge through the evening, she told herself rebelliously, with this old bartender or billiard player or whatever he was, this old Phil Hackett ancient enough to be her father—well, her mother was mistaken, that was all. She caught sight of Melissa and Asshur, Ben Davis, Mary Tucker and a few others. Ordinarily she made little pretense at mingling with the boys and girls of Red Brook, but anything was better than being bored to death with one’s elders.
“Mummy there’re some High School boys and girls over there. Think I’ll join them for a few moments.”
“All right dear, but be careful. This is the first time you’ve been skating this winter. Better let Mr. Hackett take you over.”
The Chinaberry Tree Page 4