The Chinaberry Tree

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  Melissa crept in the side door, rushed noiselessly up to her room, kicked off her wet boots and unwound her fascinator. Then bethinking herself of Malory’s present reposing in the pocket of her smock, she took it out, pulled off its wrappings.

  A wrist watch! In spite of herself she threw herself face downward across the bed and giggled almost hysterically. Asshur had sent her the selfsame gift, even to the design, from far off Alabama. It had arrived by special delivery just an hour before Malory came. Recovering presently, she arose and bearing the two watches under the electric light on her dressing table, she examined them carefully.

  Yes, they were exact replicas—save that Asshur’s watch had a tiny green jewel in the top of its minute winder, and Malory’s had a blue one. And perhaps there was some slight difference in the monograms.

  She took off her smock, smoothed her hair, applied powder and rouge and went back to the warm, spicy kitchen. Mr. Stede came in with a present from Johnasteen. Aunt Sal emerging from the living-room for a fresh supply of cookies found Melissa in the rôle of Pentecost, staying the insatiable old man with platters of sandwiches and cookies, comforting him with flagons of cider.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  CHRISTMAS came and Christmas sped as Christmas has and will through the eastern section of the United States—a little less thrilling than its anticipation promised; a little unexpectedly fatiguing by reason of a morning spent in strenuous preparation of dinner; a little stodgy in the early evening by reason of that same dinner; a little more desirable and mysterious than ever as night turned the corner and one began to bask in the penetratingly sweet realization that all the bustle and hurry lay behind and that one could live normally for another year. Of course, for another Christmas one would do differently. . . .

  Aunt Sal would have changed none of it, neither the faint disappointment of the early morning, the breathless hurry of preparation, the moment of repletion, and certainly not the relapse into peaceful content. All this she knew to be normal. She who had once flung every convention, every phase of normal living to the winds now revelled, for the sake of her child, in every action that seemed to mark her and hers as being no different from the rest of mankind.

  For Laurentine, of course, the day was actually different inasmuch as she had never known a Christmas so full of the Christmas spirit, so wreathed in happiness and joy. She took part in and loved every phase of the day. Cooking was for her an enjoyable art which she had little opportunity to exercise. It was with great pleasure then that she worked side by side with her mother, letting her artistic sense run riot in gastronomic expression. She thought of untried combinations of flavorings; she it was who arranged the centerpiece of white flowers and bright red haws and berries; she it was who grouped the candles in twos, so that when the lights were extinguished at dinner, the bright spurts of flame illumined the lovely old, dark room.

  Even the “stodginess” that crept over Aunt Sal and Dr. Denleigh and the Ismays after the charming meal did not dismay her. She herself felt none of it; in her nervous excitement she had eaten too little to be affected by it, and rightly she interpreted it for what it was in the others. She thought happily that Christmas would be like this many, many times after she and Stephen had married, he replete with content, she brimming over with the realization of her great good fortune.

  Melissa observed none of the phenomena of the day. She was too young to philosophize. She had surreptitiously examined all her presents the night before anyway, so she had nothing to anticipate in the way of thrills for Christmas morning. And far from being wearied by the unusual amount of household activities she welcomed them, for would they not fill in the day and wouldn’t the passage of the day bring her closer to Kitty Brown’s party and to Malory? After dinner Dr. Denleigh drove her over to her destination—she was all in yellow and looked just as a young girl ought to look on going to a party, happy, vital, sparkling. You knew that her clothes, her pretty inexpensive costume jewelry, her dainty shoes were of no real importance in the ensemble of her appearance. She enhanced them more than they enhanced her; fig leaves, had they been in style, would have done just as well, since their only office could be to lend the assurance which comes to one who knows she is superlatively and modishly dressed.

  Malory was mounting the steps as she appeared, so the two entered the house together, handed their wraps to the watchful and sullen Pelasgie; at the entrance to the reception rooms the young man placed his arm about Melissa’s slender figure and the two drifted off into the strains of a sensuous, tender, enrapturing waltz.

  • • • • •

  Denleigh drove back through a lightly whirling flurry of snow. The air was fine for him; it braced him, dissipating completely the slightly sickish effect of the rich food and the warm rooms. Rather leisurely he drove, savoring deliberately the comfort of home-coming, the dear joy on Laurentine’s lovely face. So it would be many times in the future he mused with no thought at all for his tragic past life. Of course life was full of petty annoyances, but outside of those, there was no reason at all why he and his wife should not know a blissful, enjoyable existence. He could not think of a single possibility which might mar Laurentine’s and his own serenity, he assured himself,—and flicked away as one might an insect his tiny insistent wonder as to why it upset him, frightened him a little to see Melissa, so confidently, so matter-of-factly at ease in the company of Malory Forten.

  Laurentine’s face did beam as she let him in; his reception held all the promise of peace and comfort for which one could wish. Men fought and died to preserve just this sort of homelife. They would go on forever fighting and dying for its preservation. . . . And homelife itself would always go on; it would exist for ever in spite of all the disquisitions in the magazines and the Sunday newspapers to prove it was disappearing.

  “We may disappear,” he broke out somewhat to Laurentine’s bewilderment, “as a matter of fact we, this very race, will disappear. And other races will take our place both here and in Europe, and all over the world, but certain basic things will remain. Just as the old-fashioned furniture,” he tapped with his fine nervous hand, the frame of the highly modernistic arm chair in which he was sitting in the sewing-room, “has disappeared into all this angular, geometric stuff. But the comfort stays—I’ve never sat in a more comfortable chair, Laurentine. I didn’t know Red Brook grew such things. . . . We’ll have to be keeping our eyes open, won’t we, for sales and bargains and what not. I suppose you’ll like that Miss Strange. . . . Well, I have a confession to make. I like it, too.”

  From the living-room came the murmur of placid voices. Dr. Ismay was instructing his wife and Aunt Sal in the intricacies of a card game which he had brought with him from Jamaica but which he was rarely able to induce anybody to play, its tempo being considerably slower than that of any corresponding American game.

  Denleigh and Laurentine in the sewing-room, he in the modernistic arm chair, she on a lower chair beside, sat before the beautiful artificial fire and talked out their plans for their new lives.

  “By next Christmas, we’ll be in our own house,” Denleigh said confidently . . . “perhaps before many more months. Perhaps we’ll put our house-warming off till Christmas. I’ve never had a house-warming though I’ve always wanted one . . . it sounds so real, so sort of—warm,” he finished lamely.

  “It certainly does sound warm,” Laurentine conceded with equal inanity. They snickered a little over their common lack of sparkle and wit.

  “It’s because we’re too comfortable,” Stephen pointed out. “You know Laurentine I’m constantly amazed at the manner in which things, chance, happenings change one’s point of view. When I was a boy, yes and a young man too, I always wanted to be different from the person I was. I imagine that the reason why I was able to triumph over my quota of poverty and lack of recognition and finally to obtain my education was because secretly in my heart I wanted to do such wonderful, difficult things that the attainment of my immediate ambitions seemed m
ere child’s play.”

  Amazed, she stared at him. “Why what on earth could you have wanted to be Stephen? Certainly the road to your medical training was rocky enough.”

  “I know it; as I look back now, I am simply petrified with astonishment at the thought of what I tackled and overcame. But in those days I wanted to be an outstanding giant. I was sorry I couldn’t have been a Crispus Attucks and strike the first blow for American Independence. I wanted to be a genuine, literal Moses for us colored people, conscious of my leadership while I was initiating and practicing it.

  “I would have been glad, indeed as soon as I knew something of history, I ardently yearned to have been born back in Reconstruction Days. So sure I was that all single-handed, I would have founded a course which would immediately have brought all ex-slaves up to the highest level of any American white man, which would have established cordial relationships, equal civil rights—you know brother-hood-of-man-business completely and at once.”

  “And now?”

  “And now,” he said slowly, “I’m quite content to live anywhere, any place and do my best. I who once thought that nothing less than the halls of Congress could content me, am equally as eager to settle down in the little town of Red Brook, marry Miss Laurentine Strange, and serve my fellow man. Disappointing and yet somehow vastly satisfying,” he admitted, a trifle rueful.

  But she would have none of his rue. “Silly, not to see that in your way you’re doing just as much as Crispus Attucks and those Reconstruction statesmen ever did. I don’t know much about them, but I’m quite sure none of them grew up with the idea in mind of being great or renowned. They just ‘seen their duty and they done it,’” she told him, laughing.

  “You’re benefitting Red Brook’s colored youth marvelously, you must know that. Just think not a single colored boy around here thought of studying medicine until you and the Browns and the Ismays came into this community to show them what was what. And as for you personally, these Italian mothers round about, think you dropped. Why Mary Ricardi, the fruit woman, told me she often says a novena for you—and she’s going to name her next boy after you.”

  “The deuce she is! Well, all I have to say is she’s darn likely to have a ‘next boy.’ Talk about replenishing the earth! Tony and Mary Ricardi certainly believe in doing their bit.”

  “After all,” she went on, “a man can only offer his little quota of nobility to the people among whom he lives. And if you had done nothing but what you have done for me, you’d have more than acquitted yourself.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about and showed it. “Here, you’ve sort of mixed matters up, haven’t you? It’s you that have ministered to me. What on earth have I ever done for you, Laurentine,—asked you to marry me? Good heavens, you don’t think I consider myself as God’s gift to women, do you?”

  Disregarding his badinage, she answered very low: “You restored me; you made me respect myself. You made me alive to my own inner resources. No matter what fate may spring on me, Stephen, I can never be that wretched, diffident, submissive girl again. It’s possible I might become a force for evil as well as a force for good. But I’ll never be a tame cat again.”

  Much amused and yet pleased and happy, he only rejoined: “Take care not to turn into such a wild one that you’ll scratch my eyes out. . . . My sweetest girl. . . . Laurentine just trust me, believe in no matter what stress that I am yours as I believe you are mine and—well, we can simply face all the punishment the world has to offer—that’s all there is to it.”

  “I do believe in you, Stephen,” she said, her eyes shining.

  “After all, if I’d been Crispus Attucks, I’d never have had a girl like you. So you see as I said, chance changes us. I’d rather have you than live the lives of a thousand Crispus Attucks. There goes my oldest ideal.” He snapped his fingers gaily.

  “Let’s go in with the others and see if we can get a little good dance music out of that radio I sent you this morning. Somebody besides Melissa has got to remember that this is a Merry Christmas.”

  • • • • •

  Kitty had an orchestra, a caterer and an imported beau. Jerry Adamson had come at her behest all the way from New York to show his allegiance and to have it shown, and to make things go. With Kitty’s willing and surprisingly capable aid he introduced a series of new dance steps, which were utterly unlike any dance steps that Red Brook and its environs had ever seen. You hopped, skipped, slid, gyrated, turned, twisted, it seemed to Melissa, all in one. Also, you danced with your whole body and all over your body. It was really the first intimation of the Lindy Hop, though no one but Jerry and the members of the orchestra knew this. Then there was the rhumba. The saxophonist played and then moaned something about playing this dance as they did

  “On the tuba

  Down in Cuba.”

  Melissa flushed with the heat and the excitement and the wicked music, and the unsuspected qualities of the heady potion which she had heedlessly gulped down under the impression that it was an unusually palatable variant of punch, hopped, skipped, slid, gyrated, twisted and turned until she was, Jerry Adamson told her, holding her close to his straight, handsome figure, as proficient, “more p’ficient,” he mumbled a little thickly than Kitty herself. He showed a disposition to dance with her all evening. Melissa liked this. Jerry was new, Jerry was handsome, Jerry was some one’s else beau she thought, forgetting how much she owed that some one else. It would be fun to show these girls from New York and Newark and Trenton, yes and to Pelasgie Stede, broodingly gathering up punch glasses, what she poor, lonely, little Melissa Paul could do simply because she was young and good-looking and—vital.

  “I must have, ‘it,’” she thought to herself quite simply in the unveiled idiom of the day.

  But Malory did not like it. Melissa glancing past Jerry’s arm saw him stalking proudly and as correctly as might be, considering its exigencies, through the measures of the tantalizing dance. His arms were about Gertrude Brown arrayed in slim sophistication in a smart black gown, which suggested what it covered as plainly as it revealed where no covering was meant to be.

  Melissa had observed Gertrude’s tactics before; she knew that reserved, flaunting aloofness of the older girl which said: “I have ‘it,’ too, don’t forget that. But I’m saving it for you, you, you!” She saw the tense look which Malory’s face always assumed when he was deeply annoyed, changing, softening to one of interest. Abruptly, she signaled to Herbert Tucker to cut in on her and when Malory glanced her way again she was treading the measures of the fantastic music as correctly as he. He came over to her as soon as he could leave Gertrude, a lengthy process, and asked her for the next dance.

  She carried the war into his camp. “Goodness, what a washout you proved to be! Here I’ve been turning and twisting my head and raising my eyebrows—have I got any left or have they climbed permanently into my hair?—doing everything possible to get you to cut in on me and rescue me from that Adamson boy.”

  He said in simple male bewilderment: “Cut in on you? That would have been the last thing to come into my mind!”

  “Oh, certainly,” she broke in, “you were enjoying yourself too much with Gertrude Brown.” Melissa was certainly enjoying herself. She gave him little quick bird-like glances, fanning herself the while.

  “Enjoying myself with Gertrude Brown! H’m. Any interest I showed in her wasn’t a patch to what you showed in Jerry, doing all that hopping and bumping and twisting ”

  “I had to follow him, didn’t I?” she asked sweetly. “But I didn’t like it, he held me too tight.” She looked suddenly all innocence, all wistful girlhood. “Come on, let’s dance this together, Malory. I like to dance with you, you’re so restful.”

  Relieved, he would have danced every number with her until the dancing stopped. But she remembered in time that she was to spend the night with Kitty and Gertrude. It would be only in this way that she could get away with Malory to-morrow to eat Christmas Dinner at Pompton
Lakes. So she sent Malory off to dance again with his hostesses, paying no attention to Gertrude’s carefully careless stalking and refusing Jerry Adamson’s repeated invitations to dance out in the hall with him—he’d show her a few new steps,—or to sit out for a little while in his car. He assured her on his word of honor that she wouldn’t be cold out there, he’d see to that.

  Instead, conducting herself like a “gay, good girl,” as she and Kitty privately daubed the lively, futile girl unblessed by “it,” she danced again demurely with Herbert Tucker and with no visible show of reluctance in the arms of Ben Davis who danced against time. After that unequal struggle she came to rest in the offing of Doctor Brown’s mother, a stout, sturdy, elderly woman, whose badly dyed black hair lent a hard and forbidding aspect to the real softness of her worn lineaments. The older woman told her daughter-in-law that she didn’t know that such mannerly girls as that Melissa Paul were to be found any more. She only wished Kitty and Gertrude were more like her.

  When the guests left Malory said a surprising thing. He drew aside Melissa who, secure in her assumption that she had scotched, not to say completely pacified his former irritation, was smiling up at him blandly. Holding the hand which she had extended to him in farewell tightly between his own, he said thoughtfully:

  “You know, Melissa, perhaps I did neglect you a little to-night and that’s how you came to be dancing with Adamson. I didn’t know I did it, and I certainly didn’t mean to do it. But anyway, I’m telling you again, I didn’t like your dancing that vulgar dance. That sort of thing isn’t—er—well, Melissa it just isn’t the kind of thing I like from a girl whom I’m expecting to be my wife.”

  Her only answer was a faint “good-night, Malory,” and an amazingly satisfactory realization that he couldn’t kiss her “before the Browns and all.”

  He said self-consciously: “I’ll be waiting for you to-morrow by the Presbyterian Church. We’ll take the bus there for Pompton Lakes. You haven’t forgotten, Melissa?”