Overwhelmed by such an unexpected exhibition of knowledge he made some feeble remarks about their not knowing what kind of rooms they might be able to get. “The rose curtains might clash with the paint.”
But she was ready for him. “Most rooms are painted nowadays in white or cream. But if ours aren’t, all I’ll have to do will be to get one of those little cans of quick-drying paint,—you know you see them in the advertisements of all the magazines. The wife is hustling her husband off to work and then she gets into her apron, seizes her trusty brush, dips it into her little can, and in a moment the whole house is transformed. That day of all days her husband comes home to lunch, but the paint is all dry; he looks anxiously at his coat, at his trousers, not a spot! ‘What a wife’ he cries! Oh Malory, that’s the way it will be with us, won’t it?”
“You bet!” He stooped and kissed her. “Melissa, you are the sweetest girl!”
“I’ll be the sweetest housekeeper! Oh you’re going to love it so. Housekeeping is lots of fun nowadays if you just know how to go about it. Dustpans blue as the sky! Yellow kitchenware; Boston baked beans,—if we’re going to live in Boston we’ll have to eat baked beans,—well, we’ll eat ’em out of green ramekins. I saw some at Barton’s. . . .”
“Eat ’em out of what?”
“Out of ramekins, individual green ramekins. . . .”
“Melissa, what are they?”
“What are what? Ramekins? Why they’re ramekins, like cups, only of course they aren’t cups. The individual ones are about so big.” She indicated measurements vaguely with her hands. “You know.”
“I certainly don’t. I never heard of them before. . . . They sound terrifying to me. Well, anyway, you’re not buying any of them yet are you?”
“Why of course I am! Why they’re practically giving them away down at Barton’s!”
“I bet they’re paying you to take them away! But Melissa—say, Honey, I don’t care such a lot about beans. Aunt Viny used to make me eat plain boiled ones when I was a kid. Gee! Will I ever forget those Sunday dinners! But what on earth are we going to do with all this junk? We don’t have a car you know. I was figuring on our sending our winter-coats ahead, general delivery, and then eloping with a suitcase apiece.”
Strangely she was impressed by this romantic aspect; she wavered. “Tell you what I could do Malory. . . . It really is a shame to pass up these lovely bargains. I could take old Mr. Stede into my confidence just before I go and he’d send the things after us. . . . I wouldn’t dare tell him just now because he’s hell-bent for me to marry Asshur. But when he finds I’m in earnest about you, he’ll do anything I ask just to help me out.”
“I’m sure he would. Thus endeth the battle of the ramekins. But of course it doesn’t settle the fact that we’re hardly going to see each other for a week. Unless you could get your Mr. Stede to run up some gussets and seams and things for your cousin.”
“Cra-a-zy! Good-night, Malory; got to get up early in the morning, Old Precious. Be a good boy and don’t forget me.”
“Listen to the girl talking like a wife already. Good-night Honey . . . be sweet.”
• • • • •
To the unlimited astonishment of the Brown family, Gertrude announced that she was coming home for the Easter holidays. Kitty went over to the junction to meet her.
“Why did you do it, Gert?”
“Don’t you call me Gert. Suppose I was to let the colored population of Red Brook in on the fact that you were really christened Katchen and might at a pinch be called, Cat?”
“Help! Help! . . . Changing the subject. Gertrude Brown why are you darkening your mother’s doors at this time of year, much as you hate Red Brook?”
They were home and up in their room, Kitty dumping the contents of drawers and shelves wholesale on chairs and on the floor so as to afford Gertrude space for her dainty, carefully-folded belongings. Gertrude hung up the last frock, smoothed out its folds for a moment, turned and looked at her sister.
“Kitty,” she said her mouth trembling a little, “don’t you dare laugh. I’ve really got it this time. I’m in love.”
“You don’t mean it! But what did you come home for? To get over it? Where does he live? Boston?”
“You know where he lives. He lives right here. Now don’t tell me you don’t know whom I mean. I’m talking about Malory Forten.”
“Were you in earnest last Christmas? I never thought that! Why I supposed you were over that long ago. Well I don’t think you’ve got much chance there; I’m sure he’s in love with Melissa Paul.”
“And I don’t suppose there’s any chance of his falling out of love with Melissa and falling in love with one, Gertrude Brown on the rebound?”
Kitty became serious. “Ordinarily, Gertrude, you know I’d have nothing to say about what you do. But this is different; it isn’t only that he’s in love with Melissa. I’m sure she’s in love with him.”
“She said she wasn’t.”
“Well, what would you expect her to say? Pour out her life’s secret to you, a girl whom she’s spoken to about three times in her life?”
“Well how do you know such a lot about her? Has she confided in you?”
“No she hasn’t and what’s more I’ve never met him in her house and she’s never spoken to me about him. I think as a rule she hardly ever sees him except right here in our home and in school. I guess I’ve seen them together on the street about twice.”
“Well then how do you know she’s in love with him?”
“How do I know I’m breathing?” asked Miss Kitty succinctly. “I know she’s in love with him because I know she’s in love with him.”
• • • • •
This argument seeming to convince Gertrude more than her own observations, or than her sister’s manner, she relapsed into a rather sulky silence. Kitty, stretched on her stomach across the bed, watched her thoughtfully.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking about, Gertrude,” she continued after a few moments, “but I can tell you now, it isn’t being done.”
“What isn’t being done? And anyway how can you talk? As though you didn’t snatch Jerry Adamson from under Claudia Temple’s very nose and she crying her eyes out!”
“I’ll tell you what isn’t being done,” rejoined Kitty, ignoring alike her sister’s lack of logic and her allusions. “This is what isn’t being done. No girl like you with a chance to meet all the up and coming colored boys in the country is coming into a little hick town like this and snatch away a helpless girl’s one stick of candy.”
“What do you mean ‘helpless’?”
“I mean she hasn’t any breaks. Take Malory away from her and where is she? There’s that crazy story about her aunt and that old Colonel Halloway; there’s her beautiful cousin Laurentine, she’s so handsome and so successful—you ought to see the things she turns out—they’ve all got a mad on her. Then to top it all from the things this miserable little Pelasgie Stede hints at, Melissa’s mother, Judy Somebody, lived here for a while when she was young. She seems to have been a kind of high-stepper, ran around with Phil Hackett’s father and a couple of other married men. Then she left here and married some fellow named Paul in Philadelphia. As far as I can make out these old hens are so mad because Judy didn’t follow in her sister’s footsteps that they’ve taken it out on Melissa ever since.
“The way I see it, Melissa’s got to get away from all this and Malory’s her one way out. See?”
Gertrude’s sole reply was: “I thought you said she had a beau around here.”
“So she did have. Well she didn’t want him when he was here. Now he’s gone to Alabama. Goodness knows we have a hard enough time here in Jersey. What colored person in her senses wants to go to Alabama to live? . . . So you see Gertrude, Mr. Malory Forten is all out as far as you’re concerned.”
Gertrude, yawning, stepped into the bathroom and turned on the water. “Oh Kits,” she called suddenly, “go down and get Pelasgie to brin
g up my other suit-case won’t you? It’s got my bath-salts in it.”
“Right,” said Kitty and descended.
• • • • •
“Hello!” Gertrude said to the sulky Pelasgie as she hove into sight lugging the desired suit-case. “Thanks ever so much for bringing it up. . . . You’ve got thinner, haven’t you? What have you been doing to yourself?” She glanced down at her own svelte, shapely lines suggested through her thin kimona. . . . “And I’ve been getting plumper. . . . I was just wondering what I would do with that white shantung I had last summer. It’s too tight for me now . . . I don’t suppose you know anybody who could use it.”
“If you wus to give it to me Miss Gertrude. . . .”
“Oh if you wouldn’t mind taking it . . . you’d certainly oblige me . . . I think you’d find it very useful.”
“Sure would, Miss Gertrude. . . . Many thanks.”
Dr. Brown, busy and pre-occupied, meeting Pelasgie on the stairs wondered what made her look so different. “I don’t believe I ever saw her smile before,” his sub-conscious mind told him while his conscious mind concocted formulas for the Simmons’ baby.
• • • • •
“Just the same,” said Gertrude to herself, “I’m not going to leave anything to chance. It might just happen that Malory doesn’t care as much for Melissa as he thinks or she may not care as much for him. Perhaps they like each other simply because there isn’t anybody else for them to like in this awful town. . . . I believe I’ll wear those mesh stockings with this dress.”
She drew on the stockings, put on a pair of light shoes with the sides cut almost entirely away; arranged her hair with its not too permanent wave back from her extremely good forehead and into a small flat knot at the nape of her neck, got herself into a crushed strawberry tinted thin wool frock with squares of mulberry embroidery arranged dis-tractingly about the skirt, the sleeves and neck. A mulberry colored handkerchief and a few drops of some devastating perfume completed her ensemble.
“Slick, I calls it,” Kitty commented coming in to freshen herself for dinner. She too in a few moments achieved an effect of smart modernity, choosing and putting on her garments with absolute assurance, never hesitating, never asking her sister’s opinion for one moment about her appearance.
They went down to dinner, the pair of them, all suave and soignées, to the bewilderment of their father who could not understand whence these two capable, sophisticated, entirely self-contained young ladies evolved. It seemed only yesterday since Kitty had been freckled, her front teeth missing, her elbows and knees downright rusty. Recently at a bathing beach he had seen a great deal more of his daughter than it had been his privilege to behold for many years . . . he had been amazed at her velvety fineness. . . .
And Gertrude . . . why Gertrude had been positively ugly! “And now look at her!” he had on this occasion said to his wife who sat regarding her two daughters with complacence. “She looks, the pair of them look, like princesses. How do they do it?” . . . Mrs. Brown murmured something about “blood telling in spite of everything,” very much as though he had buried the precious fluid under an avalanche of refuse but it, in its bright blueness, had seeped through after all. . . . The blood in question came of course from her side of the family.
To-night he was more bewildered than ever. By some tacit agreement, they had united in pouring their charm out on him. They made over him at the table, they passed him pleasant viands; Gertrude at the close of the meal arose and lit his cigar for him. She took out her own delicately tinted cigarette holder . . . but first she leant toward him deprecatingly: “You don’t mind, do you, Dad?” Well he did mind, but it was so nice to have this charming, well-dressed, dainty, deferential creature near him, with her nice voice and her quiet wit. . . . And Kitty . . . Kitty was a nice girl too, a little louder than Gertrude but with a nice boyish sincerity and prettier too, with a prettiness which he could define and understand. . . . She asked him to stay in for once . . . she’d like to play some checkers with him.
But first she went into the next room to the piano and played two or three ballads, then dashed off into a couple of old, crazy jazz favorites, singing them in her sweet crazy voice, keeping time with seductive shoulders.
(Boom! boom!)
“Hello Beautiful!
(Boom! boom!)
How’d you get so beautiful?”
What were they up to, he wondered uneasily; what were they going to ask of him? Well he wouldn’t let them go to Atlantic City or to New York, that was flat. Girls had no idea of the dangers to which they subjected themselves in these days running around without their parents in these resorts, these huge cities, for he knew they wouldn’t want their mother to accompany them. . . . Why in heaven’s name couldn’t they be satisfied to stay at home, just as they were, making music and bedecking themselves? They could ask an occasional boy in to see them; maybe one or two of them might drift over from New York . . . he’d have to speak to his wife about that . . . you couldn’t draw too tight a check-rein on girls these days anymore than you could on boys.
He’d have been amazed if he had known that his state of mind was exactly the condition to which they had planned to reduce him. They didn’t want to go away . . . they wanted to stay right there at home. Only Kitty meant to have Jerry Adamson, far removed from the influence of Claudia Temple, to be in that home too . . . instinctively she knew that her father would not approve of Jerry . . . she doubted if she herself would approve of him long . . . but her father would welcome ten Jerrys if it meant her spending a long holiday at home in contentment.
Gertrude wanted to see more of Malory . . . since there were no contemporaries at whose house she could meet him, what better than to pursue her cautious stalking at home right under her parents’ unsuspecting eyes? They would see in him only a young man repaying in little attentions to their daughter, the many courtesies which he had received at their hands.
Kitty proposed a game of contract, to which Dr. Brown joyously acceded and which Mrs. Brown flatly rejected. Now for a fourth. The girl had foreseen this situation. Jerry played admirable contract. When he came down as he assuredly would in a few days she would have him drop in . . . he could play with her father against herself and Gertrude; the two men would beat the two girls “forty different ways” said Kitty to herself joyously.
From that hour her father would be completely “sold” on the boy. . . . Meanwhile for to-night’s contingency there was Herbert Tucker . . . she telephoned him. Young Tucker came over, played some good bridge. The doctor was to attend a little conference the next morning in Newark, to discuss a social matter with several of his colleagues. Usually the men talked, had a luncheon and then a rubber or two of bridge before adjourning. One of them would be unable to attend in the morning.
“If you’d like to come along, Tucker I’d be glad to take you to fill in his place. I’d like Dr. Sand-borne see you play that club convention.” Herbert, flushing with pleasure, said he’d be glad to go, only he had promised to meet Malory Forten in the Public Library in the morning at ten-thirty. . . .”
“Well we’d have to get going by ten. But that’s all right, call Forten and ask him to let you off . . . tell him it will oblige me . . . he’s a nice fellow.”
“Yes sir. Oh I’m sure it will be all right.”
It was all right. Malory would oblige. “You think you’ll stay in the library until late in the afternoon? All right I may look in on my way back.”
Gertrude avoided Kitty’s eye. “A direct act of Providence. It would be wicked for me not to take advantage of it,” she told herself piously.
• • • • •
Malory, glancing up idly from his article on Kinetics, saw her delicate, amber cheek half-hidden under the brim of her coquettish hat, let that glance travel along her slender form enveloped in its sheath-like gown. No colored girl in Red Brook wore her clothes just like that. The color and arrangement of the dress were too subtle for Melissa; the figure itse
lf was too slender for Kitty; Miss Strange was taller than this perfectly turned-out stranger. Then who could it be? And at once his sense, his memory and his imagination working in concert replied to him “Gertrude Brown.” He rushed over to her; he had forgotten how striking-looking she was; he had forgotten how charming she could be. He returned the book on Kinetics to a disapproving librarian who had gone to some pains to reserve the volume for him.
He followed her out into the street, along an avenue where only the very wealthy lived, a very park of an avenue, with estates set far back, and with so little traffic on it that they were practically alone. Scarcely he knew what they talked about; it seemed to him that they laughed a great deal,—not merely healthy laughter, the happy reflex of youth,—but laughter of a sophisticated sort which made him feel that he had got off many very witty remarks, clever repartee, a collection of bons mots. He walked back with her as far as her gate, all eager and polite attention in his nice blue suit, with his carefully brushed shoes and his rather stiffly curling short hair. He was wearing no hat.
She did not ask him in, but she let drop that she was anticipating a very quiet vacation spent chiefly outdoors; that she felt she ought to spend a good deal of time with her parents; that she would be home that evening and that she was not averse to contract.
Malory was, but he asked just the same if he might come in and take a hand if she was not sure of a fourth, and she said in her nice voice: “That would be splendid, Malory.”
He went back to the library and read his article, went home, ate his dinner and spent an hour dressing, tying, untying and hurling ties aside . . . she always looked so jack-out-of-the-box herself, that he owed it to himself to appear very spic and span. . . .
Again the Brown family was at home and also Herbert Tucker who had shone, positively shone, in his playing in Newark. Dr. Brown praised him so extravagantly that Mrs. Brown opined that maybe with a teacher like that, “a teacher who really knew what he was talking about,” she might be able to get a little idea of the game into her head. . . . That was exactly what happened; after Herbert had laid down successive hand after successive hand and had talked very steadily for two hours, she did get a very little idea of the game into her head. . . .
The Chinaberry Tree Page 23