The Chinaberry Tree

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  Dr. Denleigh, it was true, was constantly at the house, there was no mistaking what his intentions were; he was no Phil Hackett. But on the other hand it did not look as though a wedding were in immediate prospect. Melissa knew how much time would be consumed in preparations for the wedding which she would have had, had circumstances been different.

  She bustled about this morning, lively and singing the latest song hits: “Give Me Something to Remember You By,” “Lady Play Your Mandolin,” and an old melody of her childhood, “It Had to Be You.” This was one of the days she enjoyed so much just because she was grateful for her youth and good-fortune and eminent decency, for her pretty home and above all for her dazzling prospect. . . . But she was just as* glad to postpone seeing Malory until to-morrow.

  So dressed in her little snug brown suit, with the chic, snug fur collar, and her little fur muff, her clever little hat with its green feather pulled down well over one eye, she went alone to the school play. On her way she passed Dr. Denleigh driving carefully in his car. He thrust his head out the window and shouted, “Probably I’ll see you to-night.”

  “And how nice that is for Laurentine!” she thought to herself wistfully, plodding on and on through the streets whose whiteness the sun had turned into slush. The play was charming; the boy who took the part of Perrichon was amazingly, unaccountably good in his rôle. Ben Davis was there and he came and sat beside her and the two laughed with the unfettered heartiness of youth. Afterwards he walked home with her. She was reviewing how to give him his congé when they reached her gate. And unbelievably when they arrived Aunt Sal came to the front door and beckoned them in. “How do you do, dear?” she said to Ben, “I hope you’ve had a very merry Christmas!”

  She pressed him to stay to supper and he accepted her invitation and ate great quantities of food and a lot of cocoa and afterwards French bon bons which Aunt Sal called “Christmas candy.” She said it was nice to see him there and urged him on to a fourth piece of cake, and in answer to his apologies she said it did her good to see him eat. It reminded her of Asshur.

  “Oh yes,” said Ben, “how is Asshur? He’s given all us fellows the air, but I guess you hear from him, Melissa.”

  Melissa unaccountably blushing, said she did, and Laurentine noting her rising color thought: “Perhaps she does care about him after all. Perhaps my not letting her have company hasn’t been so hard on her.” And relieved, she too joined in the light talk.

  Later Dr. Denleigh did come in; the five of them played parchesi and whist from which last Melissa or Ben alternately “rose and flew.” The one who did not play, performed distractingly on Melissa’s ukelele. Melissa recalled snatches from the farce which they had seen that afternoon and rolled them off; Ben donned his overcoat, stuffed his own and the Doctor’s mufflers under it and converted himself into a rotund, portly Perrichon, speaking execrable French. Laurentine recalling little scraps of her own High School French, applauded whenever she caught a single recognizable word. Denleigh, whose own French was pretty good, abetted her. Aunt Sal, understanding none of it, enjoyed it most.

  They passed a shockingly noisy, agreeable evening. When Ben rose to go Aunt Sal told him he must look in often and Laurentine said, “Yes, do come—soon.”

  Melissa went with him to the door, waved him good-night, thinking: “What a break that would have been for me, if that had only been Malory! . . . Poor Malory! I suppose he’s sitting all hunched up at home, alone, with those terrible sisters. My, it’s certainly been one swell day!”

  • • • • •

  As a matter of fact, Malory that evening deserved any other epithet than the word “poor.” About six o’clock he’d strolled into the village somewhat forlornly to hunt up a magazine, the intention formulating rather slowly in his mind to go in later and try some chess at Herbert Tucker’s when he heard a nice voice say:

  “And what are you about wandering ‘lonely as a cloud?’

  “The words he knew couldn’t possibly be meant for him, but curious to see who was quoting Wordsworth in the midst of the streets of Red Brook, he turned to reconnoiter. Having done so he found himself looking four-square into the eyes of Gertrude Brown.

  She dropped him a curtsy: “How now Mr. Forten? Whither away, if a mere maid may ask?”

  “Nowhere, Miss Brown. And may one inquire your errand in these parts?”

  “Nothing,” she said, smiling and showing very white teeth, “if not to catch up stray young men and carry them home to supper.”

  He said guilelessly and regretfully: “Oh I’m so sorry. I’ve had my supper.”

  “Well, come along then and watch us eat,” she laughed at him. “You’re not absolutely bound to partake of food just because you see us doing it. . . . Sure you haven’t anything better to do?”

  Nothing he could think of, he assured her, would be better anyway. Pleased and charmed he followed her home to a sparkling, bountiful table where after all he did break bread. And above all he had the pleasure of some good man talk with Dr. Brown. For all his scoffing he was missing the stout old codgers who had persisted in calling on Aunt Viny up to the very end—seeing in her incomprehensibly the sprightly young girl of their pasts. . . . Since coming to live in his gloomy, manless home, Malory had missed the stiffish arguments of those elderly fellows, their dogmatic asseverations, their quips and jests of another day.

  Of course it was lovely, it was great being with Melissa but “Oh boy, isn’t it good to get into this regular home life!” he thought. He noted with sharp pleasure the little sparring bouts between Kitty and her father, the lazy, wise interpolations of Mrs. Brown, the apposite witty shrewdness in Gertrude’s remarks.

  “A smooth girl,” he thought to himself. “Gertrude’s a shrewd girl, but mighty nice.”

  It was the first time he’d ever seen the family like this, all together, not entertaining, completely themselves, relaxed and at ease like people in dressing gowns and slippers.

  After supper they played the radio. Dr. Brown wanted to hear Amos and Andy and surprisingly some race-track news; Kitty switched all this off as quickly as possible, got some jazz and practiced a few intricate steps which she said she had picked up from Jerry Adamson. Mrs. Brown, wrapped up in a paper-covered book, forgot them completely. Even Gertrude puffing fastidiously on a cigarette dipped into the evening paper, of which she generously offered him half.

  He was not quite sure that he liked to see women smoke, but Gertrude did her smoking as she seemed to do everything, easily, naturally.

  By and by she tossed the paper aside, picked up a fat volume, and indicated a seat at her side.

  “Ever see these?” she asked him. The book was one of verses by Hardy. “You looked as though you liked poetry and you look as though you read it well. Read me some.”

  He read well and with pleasure Hardy’s homely verses with their strangely turned diction, their rugged sincerity.

  When the time came to go he thanked Gertrude warmly for a wonderful evening. “You can’t guess what it’s been for me.”

  “Well,” said Kitty to her sister after they had gone upstairs and while they were making ready for bed: “I am surprised! The sophisticated, the ultra Miss Gertrude Brown falling—and how!—for a country bumpkin.”

  “He isn’t a country bumpkin,” her sister retorted. “You know that as well as I. And anyway Kitty lay off him. I like that lad.”

  “Oh yeah!” said Kitty derisively, “And so does Melissa Paul like him and unless I am very much mistaken Mr. Malory Forten likes her.”

  “Well,” replied Gertrude amiably and without relevancy, “stranger things have happened.”

  • • • • •

  Malory thought to himself in the curiously vivid phrases of modern youth: “What a girl! Of course different from Melissa, but still and all smooth, smooth, and what-a-girl!”

  He thought about her a great deal that night and many other days and nights. She had about her what he greatly admired, an air, poise, self-assuranc
e. She was well-trained too, and not, as many young people are, ashamed of that training. On the contrary it was so much a part of her that not to show it would have been a deliberate alteration of her integrity. Malory liked and respected this quality. In his new found need for life and cheer he had forgotten the promptings of his own intense but narrow standards. Melissa, now, he considered dispassionately, gave no promise of possessing or ever succeeding to a similar development. She would never be a finished product; he would always have to mould her and shape her. Not that that in the deeper inner consciousness of the true male was so undesirable. After all she was really very dear.

  Unwittingly, Melissa, the very next time she saw Malory emphasized this dependence of hers. She had had to go to Newark for Aunt Sal, and Malory, meeting her in Madison, accompanied her, and the two went together to a movie. The scene depicted Commander Byrd’s visit to the South Pole and Melissa so clearly needed information with regard to penguins, ice floes, “huskies,” sledges and what not that her companion quickly regained his opinion of her as the most charming girl he had ever known.

  Add to this the fact that during an intermission the heightened illumination revealed Melissa with her abundant, bright hair brushed back plainly and smoothly in little girl fashion, as being so childish, so confiding that his instinct to protect received an unexpected fillip. Moreover, she was thinner for no better reason than that she had overeaten of the Christmas plenitude and so was forced for a day or two to fast. Naturally she said nothing of this and the unaccountable fragility made its appeal. . . . The frightfulness of the dream recurred to her too when she saw Malory and made her cling to him and bend toward him with the manner of one who says: “Here I know is security.” All in all a combination bound to flout Gertrude’s momentary intrusion.

  • • • • •

  Gertrude telephoned him that night. She was leaving the next day, she said. The volume of Hardy which adroitly she had lent him the night before, would be, she was sure, quite safe with him. He need not bother mailing it to her, but if he would just be kind enough to copy out “Welcome Home” and send her that. It was one of her favorites.

  Malory thought again that she was an awfully nice girl. No trouble about her. Lots of other girls would have had him traipsing with the book back to their houses before they left. Or more annoying yet would have had him send the volume, and there’d be all that wrapping up to do, and going for stamps and having it weighed and waiting interminable moments in line at the Post Office and all. There were so many foreigners in Red Brook and they were always buying postal money orders when one entered the Post Office, making the purchase of even a two cent stamp a matter for consideration.

  He certainly appreciated her giving him permission to keep the volume and of course he would copy the poem for her. “And send a line with it telling you how I like it,” he added unconscious that his suggestion followed hers as the night follows the day.

  Her cool, clear voice with its barely perceptible hint of satisfaction in it replied that that was mighty fine of him. “I’d certainly like to hear from you though I must confess I’m a very poor correspondent. But we won’t dwell on that. . . . Good-bye and Happy New Year, Malory!”

  Smiling he hung up the receiver, ensconced himself in the arm chair with the volume in question, all ready for a pleasant hour of reading. But before long his thoughts were wandering far from the venerable poet. He was thinking that this would be indeed a happy New Year because he himself would make it so. . . . The possibility of his own potentialities in this field had never before occurred to him. Hitherto he had only wished for such a condition never consciously taking steps to insure it. But now he himself Malory Forten would bring it to pass.

  And while his little gas heater hummed and sputtered he fell to thinking in its cheerful light of how differently placed he would be this time next year. Away from this hateful, dismal place, at school in Boston, studying, talking with clever people, married to and living with Melissa, gaining warmth and mellowness from her cheerfulness and radiance . . . he went to sleep thinking how much he loved her and, apart from love and its implications, how very, very much he liked her.

  • • • • •

  Once at his Aunt Viny’s he had heard a crony of hers relate with some detail the chronicle of a young girl, the grand-daughter of a mutual friend of their childhood days, and how her marriage conceived and entered upon with such high hopes had withered and broken.

  “And for no reason at all,” said Mrs. Crockett, “except that a lot of people were jealous of her happiness and so had wished her ill luck.”

  He had been a boy of seventeen then, indifferent and incurious regarding the subjects of most of the conversations that wound endlessly on between his great-aunt and her host of aged friends. But this idea had struck him.

  “Why Mrs. Crockett they couldn’t bring Evie bad luck by just wishing it.”

  “Oh couldn’t they though!”

  “Why how ridiculous! Why Aunt Viny you know that couldn’t be true.”

  Aunt Viny without removing for one second her faded glance from contemplation of the “busy-body” which adorned her second story window, yet contrived to give the impression of lending to the matter her fervid consideration.

  “I ain’t so sure of that son. . . . There now Carolina Crockett, you can see for yourself . . . there’s that man comin’ out of Mrs. Harper’s. And he’s there every afternoon from two till four, just as punctual. And her husband don’t come home till six. It’s amazing the brazenness of some people. . . .

  “Well Malory I don’t know . . . we always feel we do better for having the good-will of those who know us. Now ain’t it reasonable to suppose we might suffer a’count of their ill-will too?” She was an old woman and had seen many strange things. She had a mind and a reason of her own too. “After all ain’t that the idea behind God and the devil? God has good intentions toward you and the devil has bad ones. If you follow the devil his bad intentions will get you just as surely as if, when you follow God, his good intentions will save you.” A hard-headed practical Christian she was.

  The memory of this conversation had always remained, but well in back of the boy’s consciousness. It would have leaped to the fore to-night if he could have seen and heard Pelasgie Stede.

  Pelasgie on her way home from Newark where she had spent the day cleaning had dropped in at the movies. She was in a morose condition, partly because it went against her grain to work “for them hinckty, cullud folks, thinks-themse’fs-so-much,” partly because as soon as she saw the opening scene of the picture she knew she had made a mistake. What were Commander Byrd and his exploits at the South Pole to her? Less even than she to Commander Byrd. Pelasgie had come to the theatre to see a modernized version of King Cophetua and the beggar girl.

  A thrifty maiden she nevertheless sat through the end of the picture and waited for it to come on again for she had missed the first part. It was then in the brief up-blazing of the lights that she had caught sight of Melissa and Malory—Melissa, confident and yet appealing, Malory confident and protecting. And because she was young and ugly and squire-less and Melissa was young and pretty and escorted, the envy and jealousy which always lurked in Pelasgie’s heart when contemplating those more fortunate than herself, flared into a sudden flame of hatred and malice which would, if it had been a palpable thing, have seared the innocent boy and girl.

  “Settin’ there, thet gal, one of them turrible Stranges jes’ as though she was as good as anybody,” she complained to her uncle Johnathan Stede, sole occupant of the house when she arrived. John-asteen had gone to a “social.”

  The old man sitting in his rusty wrinkled clothes before the fire, let her rave on. Very rarely did he speak of the Stranges—certainly almost never in their defense. To have done so would have been to admit that they, somehow, someway were at fault and this he would never have acknowledged. Sarah Strange, to him, since the first day he saw her had been an absolutely right person, a law unto he
rself.

  “Who,” fumed Pelasgie, “does she think she is? Comin’ there to Mrs. Brown’s just as big as any of them real big colored folks from New York or some of those places! ‘Tell Kitty, I’m here will you Pelasgie’ she says, ‘or no, I’ll run up and tell her myse’f.’ Just as though I was nothin’ er nobody.

  “I’m an honest girl,” continued Pelasgie, “many’s the time I feels like goin’ to her with her fine airs and tellin’ her I may not be the high yaller she is, but at least if I’m black I’m honest. My family ain’t never been mixed up with white folks yit, neither my cousin Johnasteen ner me. No ner I ain’t likely to be neither,” she concluded virtuously. Which was certainly true.

  She went on, fanning her wrath. “Got Johnasteen all wrop aroun’ her little finger because she work for her high and mighty cousin in that nice house that ole w’ite man lef’ her mother. The wages of sin I calls it. . . . Always lookin’ at the fellers too,” complained Pelasgie whom no amount of looking at the fellers would have availed anything. “And now that she’s got this Forten boy. . . .”

  The old man erect and motionless became if possible even more erect, more motionless. Something within him signaled attention.

  “Whut Morton boy, niece?”

  “I ain’t said Morton, I said Forten ; boy lives way over toward the south end way other side the Eppses. His sisters is caterers, you don’t hardly ever see them—two dumb women.”

  Mr. Stede spoke with a certain breathlessness, somewhat at variance with his immobile posture. “She goes out with that Davis feller sometimes.”

  “Well she was out with this Forten feller tonight,” Pelasgie rejoined shortly. “Always makin’ up to him too when he’s over to Mis’ Brown. I do hate a girl’s always makin’ up to a feller. . . . One thing it can’t last long. He’s got to go off some-wheres to school; hear him say he’s goin’ in June. Ain’t that a funny time to be goin’ off to school? Bet he’s just goin’ to get shet of her. Do you see him much roun’ Mis’ Strange house, uncle?”