The Chinaberry Tree

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  “Oh don’t start that talk again. I’m sick of hearing about those Stranges and Colonel Halloway. What’s it all about? You’d think a white man had never looked at a colored woman before in these United States.”

  She looked at her mother elfinly. “Do you think Mumsie, if I could coax Melissa to get her cousin or her aunt or whatever she is to make a dress for me that you could manœuver the price out of old Doc Brown?”

  • • • • •

  Melissa moving in a daze finally completed her preparations for bed. Just before she snapped off the light, she opened her diary and wrote happily:

  “To-morrow, I, me, Melissa Paul am going to a sure enough party at Kitty Brown’s. Ain’t that a whole lot better than riding in a Jim Crow coach from Washington to Alabam? Now I ask you, very confidentially, Mr. Asshur Lane, am I stepping out or ain’t I?”

  CHAPTER XVII

  SATURDAY afternoon in August. Even in Red Brook its coming brought with it that promise of festivity which marks the American Saturday in the East. The rush of automobiles, strolling of girls and boys down Main Street, their gaily striped blazers flashing, tennis rackets poised lightly over their shoulders. Johnasteen and Matilda closing down sewing-machines, bending alertly to pick up stray scraps of material from the sewing-room floor before darting off to secret and alluring enterprises of their own. Upstairs Melissa dressing and primping for Kitty Brown’s party. Aunt Sal pottering with absorption in the garden accompanied by Mr. Stede whose usefulness among the flowerbeds was somewhat impeded by his persistent and irrelevant interest in vegetables,—cooked ones.

  “Fried onions now Mis’ Strange. Take fried onions. There’s a dish fit fur any man. With tripe now. With tripe they makes a dish fit fur a king, fur Mr. Booker T. Washin’ton.” His voice grew lyric. “Of course I’m a man don’t never ask for no food. I waits for Pentecost. . . . When I see Johnasteen jes’ now, seemed to me her breath smelt oniony. Guess she had et ’em for lunch.”

  “If she did,” said Aunt Sal gently, “she must have got ’em herself. I didn’t put any on the table. But there is a whole mess of scallions there in the kitchen. I bought some from the huckster this morning.” She smiled at the old man cheerfully. Presently, as he knew, she would play the part of Pentecost and set onions before him. She was almost happy these days. Laurentine seemed to have lost her restlessness, her effect of hopeless brooding.

  • • • • •

  Laurentine was less restless these days, more normal. She saw Mrs. Ismay several times a week, was in her house usually every Wednesday and every Saturday. There was a difference of almost fifteen years between them which Laurentine found charming. It seemed to her that the elder woman had crowded every possible experience into this span. She knew life, this placid, brown person with her slightly angular figure, and big gray eyes. She had known pleasure, and sorrow and disappointment and pain and fulfillment.

  “Lots of pain and lots of fulfillment,” she told Laurentine on a hot, golden summer afternoon, sitting in the quiet and cool of her side porch. Sometimes on Wednesday evenings when Dr. Ismay’s office was, for some inexplicable reason, packed to overflowing, the two women drove down to Newark to a moving picture, talking all the way there and talking again all the way back as though the conversation, not the picture, were the cause of their little excursion.

  As indeed it was for lonely Laurentine. Suddenly her life was full of little incidents of interest. She was learning to drive, practicing on Dr. Ismay’s little Ford; she was playing bridge; because now it meant something to her, she was taking up her music again, playing old, rich ballads, singing them too in a pleasant contralto voice on Sunday evenings after the Ismays had finished supper and she and Mrs. Ismay had washed the dishes. Sometimes a friend of the household dropped in—Herbert Tucker’s father and mother, both of them fat and kind and jolly,—Dr. Denleigh too, sitting in a corner quietly over innumerable cigarettes, dropping a word now and then into the conversation and usually in such a position that he could note inconspicuously Laurentine’s graceful elegance, her shining rippling hair, the rosy curve of her cheek just where it blended into the smooth lower plane of her apricot-tinted face.

  “This,” Laurentine used to tell herself lying straight and relaxed in her dainty room, “This is life, just as one would want it.” She forgot about Phil Hackett, forgot her aching loneliness and her desperate yearnings, she would rise and look out the window, marking idly how the August moonlight went sifting through the thick foliage of the China-berry Tree. Sometimes she would glimpse Melissa in her light summer dress sitting on the hexagonal bench with some boy—probably Asshur. But she felt no pang of jealousy, of sorrow for a lost girlhood which had missed such simple joys. Some day she would have her own little group over. They would have supper, eat and drink. They would make merry under the Chinaberry Tree.

  • • • • •

  On this Saturday she was, as she used to be, alone. The Ismays had gone to Atlantic City for the week-end; they had invited Laurentine to accompany them. But she did not want to go. It was riches to have an invitation and to be able to refuse it; to be lonely because she wanted to be. She would go out into the woods and read a book of Hugh Walpole’s—“Fortitude” which Mrs. Ismay had lent her. It proved to be a chronicle of sorrow, bleak despair and stark courage, but she understood it and liked it. There was a little clearing in the woods well away from the road and after a while, closing the book, she lay on the pine needles at full length looking, through the stiff branches of the tightly-wrapped trees, at the bright broad sky. Vaguely in spite of the pain which Walpole depicted, she felt uplifted, comforted. “Life is a battle; into each life some rain must fall; joy cometh in the, morning.” Smiling she let the platitudes race through her mind, sensing the universal truthfulness of them which made them at once both tame and vital.

  Something moved with a sharp crackle over the needles, stopped. Startled she let her glance run up an interminable length of figure to rest locked in the equally astonished gaze of Stephen Denleigh. She sat up straight, her back toward the pine tree, looking in her green summer frock with her russet face as though she were part of her surroundings.

  “Like a dryad, I suppose,” thought Denleigh swiftly, but he said:

  “You like this place too, Miss Strange?”

  Laurentine nodded, a little shy, disturbed and a trifle provoked at this interruption.

  “I used to play here sometimes when I was a little girl,” she told him, her face clouding with the memory of her clouded girlhood.

  “Oh you’ve always lived here then?”

  “Forever and ever,” she said solemnly, “and I suppose I always will.”

  He thought it a little odd that he saw her about so rarely and told her so. “Though it’s not odd really. I don’t suppose a person like you has much in common with the Snells and Eppses and Robbinses of this place.”

  She thought he was jesting and threw him a dubious glance. He went on: “I suppose it’s the man of it, but it does seem to me in spite of my better judgment that a person as beautiful as you has a right to make her own laws. And when she adds to that beauty, refinement, and real niceness, I suppose she feels almost a queen.”

  Laurentine’s face grew slowly crimson. She a queen! Wait until he should hear of her mother and Colonel Halloway, of their sad romance and of herself the fruit of that romance.

  “I suppose,” she told him slowly, “if I were really bright I’d be able to say something clever, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “But evidently you don’t know anything about me or you’d never call me a queen.”

  He placed his little medical case under his head and lolled full length beside her, looking rather whimsically into her grave, startled eyes. “I’ve just come off a case down here in Little Italy. Gosh it was awful, a poor woman, the victim of such ill-treatment, such bestiality—I’ve been practicing twelve years but it really turned my stout heart, or stout stomach I suppose I should say. I came out here to get a
breath of fresh air and find you all lovely and beautiful and serene—the way a woman should look.”

  “I’ve found my line now,” she laughed down at him, liking but not esteeming his frankness, “I never dreamed, seeing you sitting so quiet and remote on Sunday afternoons at Mrs. Ismay’s, that I’d be saying it to you.”

  “What’s your line? It’s bound to be a good one.”

  “This is it. You’re a mighty fast worker.”

  “Add, and an honest one. I mean it Miss Strange. You know for a long time it’s been impossible for me to look at a beautiful woman without going sick. But from the very first day I saw you two or three months ago in Millie’s dining-room, I regained faith in an old ideal of mine.”

  He was very much in earnest she perceived. Amazed at the turn which the conversation had taken, she asked him gently of what ideal he was speaking.

  “That a beautiful woman must be a good woman. I know you are both.”

  But she didn’t want the discussion to converge about her; she chose the safer topic.

  “Evidently you knew a beautiful woman who wasn’t.”

  According to Mrs. Ismay he was nearly forty and suddenly the face which he turned toward her showed the imprint of the years, it became so haggard and worn.

  “I should say I did. I was married once to the most beautiful woman in the world—and to the most wicked.”

  Her answer was unbelievably banal. “I didn’t know you were married.”

  “Married—and divorced—by law and by death. But not completely disillusioned.”

  Not perceiving the appositeness of this last remark, she rose to go home.

  He fell into step with her matching his long stride with her own.

  At her gate he said he would like to call. She looked at him, noting his fine drawn face, his lean erect frame, his kind eyes and slender hands. Suddenly he vanished and Phil Hackett with his heavy, slow gentility took his place. Shaking her head to emphasize her words she refused him.

  “No, don’t call, Dr. Denleigh. I’m rarely free—I have to work very hard at my trade. And beside—do you mean to tell me that no one in this town has ever told you about me?”

  “Everybody I know has told me about you,” he told her, “because I’ve asked everybody. May I come to call, Miss Strange?”

  But resolutely she told him no.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  “THIS,” thought Melissa to herself, “this is lovely. Oh this is perfect. This is where I belong. I’d like to write mother about it—only she wouldn’t understand—or Asshur. No, not Asshur! Oh good-bye, Asshur! I know I’d never meet up with this kind of life with you.”

  Privately Kitty Brown considered her party rather tame but to Melissa it was the last word in gayety, vivacity and fashion. The well-groomed, good-looking lads in flannels and sports shoes were marvelous. They hailed from Trenton, Newark and even New York. Several of them were students in good Eastern preparatory schools, two of them were freshmen from Dartmouth and Harvard. She knew none of them except Ben Davis and Herbert Tucker, products of Red Brook. Ben had been spending his last six months at Andover and was very impressive. But his innate niceness kept him inoffensive. He had come to the party without company and as he knew Melissa better than any girl there he was not far from her side for the entire afternoon, which made it very nice, she thought, making up her mind none the less to get better acquainted with some of these attractive young blades.

  In and out among the uniformity of male attire flashed the girls in their brilliant and gay summer dresses. Cotton was in vogue and the shimmering freshness of organdy and embroidery and lace lent its special charm. Melissa in a thin peacock blue which set off her clear skin and reddish hair was completely satisfied with her own appearance. She had learned from Laurentine the value of carefulness in detail and so, because she knew her perfection, could afford to be apparently unaware of it. The other girls beautifully dressed had evidently chosen their colorful gowns with regard to their varying complexions. But not one of them could surpass Melissa in the happy spontaneity with which she expressed her joy at being among those present.

  So gay and naïve and joyous indeed was she that Kitty spied in her an aide-de-camp. She came up to her guest, the center of a group of boys and girls with a rather nice-looking slender lad who wore an unmistakable air of ennui.

  “Here Melissa! Take this one off my hands won’t you? He’s just too bored, don’tcha know?”

  “I told you Kitty I was awfully tired. I was traveling all night.”

  “And now you’re going to travel some more with these lanterns down to the end of the garden. Melissa will help you put them up won’t you? Here go with her,” she gave the languid young man a shove. “He answers when you call him Malory, Melissa.”

  Her happy guest laughed. “Let’s hear you. Come Malory, Malory.” She started off at a little run and the lad followed her, lanterns bobbing about in his hands as he pursued her over the slightly uneven ground.

  Together they hung the lanterns, then sat down on one of the green benches scattered about to survey their handiwork. But presently their gaze wandered and came to rest on each other. Melissa saw a slender boy of five feet some seven or eight inches with rather rough, dark brown, curly hair; his skin was light brown, slightly sallow, teeth not so flashing as Asshur’s but white and well kept, eyes as light as her own but gray, not green. His hands were thin and well kept, his feet were slender and arched. He wore a thin gray suit, light blue shirt and dark blue tie. She approved of him and expressed it.

  “You look very nice and clean as though you’d been scrubbed,” she told him nodding her head, “only why the languidness? Do you have to be that way, or are you really that tired?”

  The weariness and defeat which sat so incongruously on his young face deepened perceptibly. “I am tired—I came up from Philadelphia on the bus and that kind of travel always fatigues me. But,” he hesitated, “I don’t suppose that’s what’s the matter with me. It’s my family,” he said desperately. “I haven’t seen them all together for a long time. But I always remembered them as being dreary and melancholy and then finally as I grew older I got to thinking I must be mistaken. Yesterday I came home for good and I found them just the way I pictured them, only more so. The house is like a tomb, quiet and dark and a lot of old musty furniture and mother so depressed. Well of course she’s my mother,” he broke off loyally, “but the girls—well I guess you know them.”

  But Melissa thought she didn’t know any family in Red Brook named Malory.

  “Oh that’s my first name. Our name’s Forten.”

  “I don’t know them either, I’ve only lived here two years but I’ve heard one of my cousin’s sewing-girls mention that name. I think she used to live near them. Would you like,” she asked delicately, “to tell me about them? Families are funny sometimes.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” he said, “nothing really. Only they’re always so depressed and depressing. They make me feel—ugh—so damp.” He smiled at her whimsically.

  “Now I should say they’re just as different from you as they can be. Of course they’re a lot older than you—maybe ten years or so, but I don’t believe you’ll be like them when you’re thirty.”

  “I should hope not,” she said shivering a little at the thought of that advanced age. “I mean to be jolly and happy always. I mean to arrange my life so that I just can’t help being gay. Let’s start off right now by going back to the porch and dancing. Kitty’s got a couple who are going to dance the rhumba. That ought to be great.”

  Reluctantly he followed her; it would have been perfect to sit and talk to this attractive, sympathetic person. But he preferred liveliness, gayety and laughter even to the recital of his own sorrows. Melissa was the embodiment of all these. Presently, his melancholia forgotten, he was enjoying himself, always in her wake, like any other normal boy. His sense of normalcy increased when anticipating Herbert Tucker by five minutes, he had gained the girl’s permission to
see her home.

  Melissa was grateful to life, to luck, to Malory, above all to Kitty. “Oh Kitty, I’ve had such a good time, do let me come again.” Her hostess was charmed with such genuiness. “Of course, of course, come often.” She had observed Malory’s undoubted penchant for her guest. “Come soon, one day next week and we’ll play some contract. Night-night Melissa. ’Bye Malory.”

  Together they stepped out into the solemn moonlight. The night was enchanting. Malory looked about for a belated taxi but Melissa would have none of it. They strolled through dim, tree-bedecked streets, through the mazes of Little Italy to the wide half-built-up section in which the Stranges lived and to Aunt Sal’s gleaming house at the far end.

  “What a beautiful place!” the boy exclaimed. “I’d like to see it in the daylight. I hope you’re going to let me come to see you Melissa.”

  She hesitated, a little uncertain about Laurentine and her coolness. “I don’t know just what to say Malory,” she whispered, stammering. “My cousin with whom I live is sort of off me just now ”

  “Funny about boys,” he nodded with jealous approval. “Well she ought to be, taking care of a girl like you.”

  “No, it isn’t that,” she said truthfully, “she’s—in some way I’ve managed to vex her—she isn’t very happy—Oh, I just don’t know ”

  “Another funny family,” he amended shrewdly. “Red Brook breeds ’em apparently. Well we are certainly going to see each other sometime, somewhere. I heard Kitty ask you to come over next week. Let’s meet there early next Tuesday—and leave early,” he added with apparent irrelevancy. “There must be lots of nice walks around here.”

  “There are,” she told him. “I’ll say good-night now Malory, and—yes, I’ll meet you at Kitty’s.”

  “That’s great. Good-night Melissa.”