In Harlem too she met charming and amazing people of wealth and culture and ambition which they were satisfying according to their ability to present themselves as being just a little more advanced than anybody else; New York not caring greatly who serves it as long as it is served.
On Saturday they were to return home. By Friday, with all her enjoyment Laurentine had had sufficient. She was weary of the crowded streets, of the stares which her beauty brought her on Seventh Avenue. She would be glad to see not only Aunt Sal, yes and Melissa, she wanted to behold her comfortable home once more, to let her gaze wander over Mr. Stede’s handiwork in the yard and garden, to stand beneath the Chinaberry Tree and dream dreams which were surely coming true. . . .
This last afternoon, Denleigh assured her was her very own. Originally they had planned to go to a matinée, have dinner and go back to the theatre, but the day turning unseasonably warm, they were both seized with a sudden nostalgia for the sweet openness of Red Brook and chose as a substitute a drive through the Parks. They rode, in the electric atmosphere of a New York spring afternoon, through Van Cortlandt Park, across Mosholu Parkway, out through the Bronx River Road, through an intricacy of turns and stretches to Hutchinson River Drive and across its wide perfection to the Boston Post Road. Denleigh, apologizing for its hideousness, turned as quickly as might be into Pelham Parkway. Along the road, lacy with young foliage, they drove to the Bay, stopped and looked awhile at the water, rippling and smiling in the April sun, loving every second of this precious, passing intimacy. “If ever I make any money again,” Denleigh said, laughing but serious, “we’ll go abroad and see London and Paris and Rome, but we’ll do our actual living in the little French towns by the side of rivers and ponds and lakes.”
A little later they were on their way again toward Pelham, the lure of exploration thick upon them. A road branched off at right angles bearing a sign with the legend: “City Island.” The idea of an island was too inviting. “Shall we try it?” Denleigh asked. He had already pointed the car in that direction. At first it was charming but twenty minutes of driving brought them to the familiar array of hot-dog stands, filling stations and small restaurants where one might obtain sea-food. “I’m so hungry!” Laurentine breathed mournfully.
Finally they came to the end of the long street; Denleigh took out his watch. “Quarter of six,” he announced. “Suppose we got out here, darling and look at the water and get something to eat. The sea-food here should be delicious; it’s bound to be fresh.” A moment they loitered on the homely little fishing-dock then entered the nearest restaurant, a wide, rather low, square dwelling, very clean with the slightly festive air which belongs to places in such localities.
A colored waiter darted forward to seat them, stood for a moment aghast, then recovering himself ushered them to a table against the farthest wall, as remote as might be from the half-dozen couples sitting quietly, unobservingly at their tables in the bright, lingering light. Laurentine sensed what was to happen. She leaned toward Stephen, “Do you think we’d better try a little Italian?” They had both picked up a few phrases in “Little Italy.” Denleigh indeed had become really proficient.
Being colored, the doctor knew what she meant but he shook his head. “No I hate that sort of thing. Everything will be all right, don’t worry.” A shadow fell athwart the table. They looked up to see, not the friendly though distressed face of the courteous Negro, but into the sallow, furious mask of a white man. A short, thin fellow he was speaking with an accent which neither recognized.
“What do you want?” he asked insolently. Denleigh, determined to see this through, quietly ordered dinner. The little fellow bustled about, making every motion, every word an insult. The menu called for soup and clam chowder. Without consulting his guests he brought them the chowder which neither of them wanted and therefore refused, ordering the soup. “The soup isn’t ready,” he snarled and bearing off the chowder with no word of apology returned with their order for dinner. . . . Some other guests arrived, sat down at the table next to the two colored people, regarded them negligently, and gave their order. But this the lordly white could not stand. Bending over the ladies, he whispered effusively and sibilantly and finally bore them off in triumph to a table distant the full width of the room.
One of the women looked back, her glance clearly asking: “How does it feel I wonder to be a poor colored thing . . . so different . . . to be shunned?” Laurentine feeling sorry for herself, felt sorrier for her escort and yet sorriest for the woman . . . it seemed sad to be a free agent and yet voluntarily to be a party to any action so petty and yet so cruel. . . . And suddenly while the colored waiter, keeping away from his two compatriots, passed with melancholy ostentation relishes and sauces to all the other diners, the white waiter went about, dropping a word here, accenting there his speech with a glance directly levelled at the table where the two brown Americans sat with only their courage to ease their discomfort.
People turned about and eyed them, people who would have sat beside them in the subway, theatre, drugstore and class-room without a second thought, now suddenly became overwhelmingly aware of their presence because of the machination of one little sallow-skinned foreigner whose country Denleigh, fighting in 1918, had perhaps helped to keep from dissolution.
A couple, starting to go out, engaged in a whispered conversation with the waiter . . . who talked on and on in voluble whispers. The guests nodded approvingly. The fellow grew more and more self-confident. “Yes,” he announced for all to hear. “That’s what I always do. Freeze ’em out.”
“Quite right,” announced the departing guest.
Flushed with victory the little man returned to the fray, asking Denleigh what he would have for dessert and in the same breath announcing that out of the eight items mentioned in the menu, typewritten for the day, only vanilla ice-cream and rice-pudding were to be had.
Denleigh curtly, and without consulting Lauren-tine, refused both.
“Suit yourself,” the man said with renewed insolence and went off to get his change. Denleigh uneasy, angry, powerless, tingling to knock him down, decided to tip the colored waiter. When the white man returned he told him to ask him to step over.
“What do you want him for?”
“None of your business,” Denleigh retorted, his patience snapping.
The little man raised his voice. “That’ll be enough out of you.” His venom, too long restrained, poured forth. “I’ll have a policeman in to look after you.”
“A policeman!” Denleigh almost laughed in the midst of his discomfiture. “What for?”
“Didn’t you tell me to mind my business? I don’t have to take that. I served you didn’t I? What have you got to do with any of the other waiters? I’m in charge here.”
Laurentine knew Denleigh was aching to be up and at him. She intervened. “Stephen, don’t, for my sake! You know he’s been talking to all these people here. You don’t know what they might back him up in doing.” . . .
It would have been sheer folly to do anything but go. . . .
• • • • •
All in all it would not have taken very much imagination to have pictured a more pleasant trip. Both Laurentine and Denleigh entering Red Brook the next day, a little blue a little depressed under this last unnecessary onslaught of fortune, felt themselves scarcely benefitted by their outing, almost wished they had stayed at home. Denleigh, the man, naturally felt it worse than the woman.
Laurentine tried to comfort him. “You mustn’t mind Stephen, there wasn’t a thing you could do without running into grave danger. They might have ganged you. It was just the fortune of war, darling!” . . . They had already left Mrs. Ismay at her house together with her husband’s car. Denleigh had brought Laurentine home in one of Mr. Tracey’s cabs, had carried her bags in and, resisting Aunt Sal’s invitation, had gone directly to his office in North Street. . . .
• • • • •
The telephone was ringing when he entered the door
. With unusual irritation he thought to himself: “How can any body possibly know I’m home! I’ve a good mind not to answer.” But the thought of Mary Ricardi was always with him . . . perhaps he might be able to save some one else in dire distress.
His irritation was not in the least mitigated on hearing Mrs. Brown’s voice coming clearly over the wire. “Dr. Denleigh, my daughter just caught sight of you on the street. I’m so glad you’re home. I must see you.”
In natural bewilderment he asked: “Is Dr. Brown ill?” But even then he thought why in the devil didn’t she call Ismay?
“No,” the voice squeaked in shrill emphasis, “no indeed he’s all right, but I must see you, Doctor.”
His bewilderment increased. “But what about?”
“Well I just can’t tell you over the phone. Could I come down?”
He didn’t want her in his office just then; he didn’t want any one, scarcely Laurentine. He wanted to be at peace for a few moments and go over in his mind that series of incidents in the restaurant. . . .
He should have knocked the man down. “God!” he, a man not given to profanity, exploded. “Isn’t this nonsense about color ever going to stop . . . isn’t a man ever going to get a chance to be a man and not an eternal compromise?” And yet he couldn’t, he couldn’t throw his life away because he preferred raspberry ice to vanilla ice-cream. . . . He wanted a bath, he wanted to get the strain of the traffic incurred between New York and Red Brook out of his weary head. . . . And now here was this woman with some problem. . . . He swore suddenly. “If it’s about her daughter, she’ll have to get her husband to help her out. . . . I won’t be a party to anything irregular.”
But she hadn’t come to see him about her daughter. She had come to see him about Judy Strange’s daughter. He listened to her improbable tale looking at her, speechless. She was a short, plumpish woman, very beautifully dressed to disguise her size. She had a round face that was not only still pretty and far from vapid but which was moreover, quite strong. He had never noticed it before because she had one or two fascinating, if rather foolish, tricks—one of closing her eyes, for instance, for quite a long time and then opening them and looking at you clearly, disconcertingly. The last time she closed them he thought: “Isn’t she ever going to open them again?”
But he said: “My God! Mrs. Brown, are you sure this is true? You know the people around here are awfully hard on the Stranges. Jealousy I suppose. They like to think the wages of sin is death. . . .”
“Well,” she said, unclosing her eyes and giving him her long, unwavering scrutiny, “it is, isn’t it? In the case of Laurentine’s mother it meant the death of her own and the colonel’s good standing in the community didn’t it? And in the case of this poor child, if she’s told, it means the death of hers and Malory’s love. And if she isn’t told, if somehow we manage to tell just him, and spirit him away without letting her know, which, I own, is my choice,—it means the death of illusion for both of them.”
He thought to himself quite frankly: “Now who would have supposed you’d have the sense to work that out?”
Aloud he asked her why she had come to him.
“Well I thought you might want to consult Laurentine.” . . . But of course he knew that she wanted to get rid of the terrible responsibility.
“You’re sure that part, anyway, of this matter is true, Mrs. Brown? Even part of it is enough to separate them.”
Mrs. Brown assured him. Kitty had acknowledged that the original information came from Mr. Stede. Every one knew the old man’s devotion to the Stranges.
“Well,” he said sighing heavily and wishing he’d never been born, “I’ll look into it. Of course this rests here?”
She hadn’t, she assured him, closing her eyes in her intensity, informed even her husband of what she had heard. And, although, at the time he thought this queer, he was constrained to believe her.
By the time she left he was so numb with fatigue, dismay and distaste of life that there was nothing left for him but to go to bed. He fell into an immediate stupor.
• • • • •
As soon as he woke up it all came rushing back on him . . . the death of Mary Ricardi, the incident in the restaurant and last of all Melissa. “Poor little girl,” he thought, “poor little innocent kid. And poor Laurentine too.”
He called on all his patients. He went and smoked a pipe with Dr. Ismay, sitting in his office and reading the huge edition of a Sunday paper from cover to cover. But at last he could put it off no longer. He must go to see Laurentine. He found her alone, expecting him. Melissa had gone with Aunt Sal to a gospel meeting, one of a series being conducted by the Reverend Mary Lewis in Madison. . . . He simply did not know how to begin. In a moment she was aware of his confusion; his strange aloofness.
“Why Stephen, what’s the matter?”
His manner was so strange and his hands, when they tried to catch at her own, were so icy, that she was frightened, and then poor girl, since she had never been able quite to forget Phil Hackett, she was suspicious.
“Stephen!” she said again, but made no movement toward him. He remained where he was.
“Laurentine,” he began, “if you’d only let me know at the beginning about Melissa,”—and knew immediately that this was the wrong approach.
“Don’t you think if you’d let me know about her mother? . . .”
She interrupted him furiously, “Why, what difference could it have made to you?”
“Well of course, actually, it couldn’t make any difference to me. But it would have been fairer,”—he was going to say, “to Melissa,” but she wouldn’t let him, so obsessed she was with her great fear of seeing her house of life tumble into nothingness because of Melissa.
“Listen, Stephen! Melissa and her mother have nothing to do with me. I have nothing to do with them.”
“Oh, Laurentine, you can hardly say that. Well I feel I have something to do with them.”
“You mean that they affect our relationship?”
He said in amazement: “You know I couldn’t mean that. On the other hand this is a really serious matter and you and I have just got to face it.”
“Face what?”
“Well here she is going about with young Malory . . . why I’ve seen them together on the streets myself . . . she’s clearly in love with him . . . well Great Scott don’t you think she ought to be told? A girl with—with that blood in her veins—why there’s no telling what might happen. And then you’d never be able to forgive yourself. . . .”
She said icily. “She has the same sort of blood in her veins that I have. I suppose it will affect her as it has affected me. . . . But anyway I’ll attend to Melissa and the case of this boy. . . .”
Not quite satisfied he said: “It’s all so distasteful.” In her blind misunderstanding, she could have screamed at him. But she said mildly: “I guess we Stranges are a difficult morsel for anyone who is a bit squeamish.”
“Squeamish? Why Laurentine you couldn’t call my concern over a case like this ‘squeamish,’ could you? Why considering her antecedents, . . . well it’s enough to drive one almost crazy.” He really wondered if it hadn’t affected her somewhat.
She said in a low voice: “Crazy! Drive one crazy! You’re right Stephen, I should have told you this from the very beginning . . . then it wouldn’t have affected you so. I’m afraid it’s too upsetting for you. I think I’d better attend to my own and my family’s affairs entirely by myself now and hereafter. . . . Don’t bother coming round to discuss them with me ever anymore.”
He said roughly: “What are you driving at Laurentine? What’s happening to us?”
“Nothing except that I don’t want to hear any more about our blood and our antecedents even from you . . . it’s all over.”
He asked her one more question. “Do you understand what I’ve been talking about?”
“I certainly do . . . about Melissa and her mother and this horrible boy whom she shouldn’t have known.
. . . Did his family send you over here to me?”
“No,” he said, “but naturally they would if they knew anything about it,—me or some one else.”
“Well I’ll ’tend to it for them and for you too. Now Stephen there’s the door. Please go. I’ve no more to say and I’m going up to my room.” Resolutely she mounted the stairs and left him.
• • • • •
She could have cursed Melissa. Melissa so smug, so sure of herself, so pitiful of “poor Laurentine,” and yet doing her best to pull down that reputation which Laurentine had so hardly built up. . . . What, she wondered, could the child have been doing? . . . It was not like her thus to fling proprieties to the winds; like Gertrude Brown she, too, recognized in her cousin that strong leaning toward sheer respectability. And this Malory boy, who could he be? Why had she never seen him? Of course it must have been the lad whom she had seen kissing Melissa that night under the Chinaberry Tree. . . . In a sense she blamed herself for that,—but in her heart she had always trusted Melissa. . . .
Evidently this boy’s parents had found out about the affair,—it couldn’t actually be an “affair” she said to herself aghast,—and they had also made some inquiries. New people, as they evidently were, naturally they had misjudged her poor mother and if they had heard the old gossip revived of Judy and her amorous poachings it had not tended to allay their natural anxiety. . . . Well she’d promised Stephen to keep them apart . . . she could easily do that by loading Melissa down with work and by seeing that she no longer got out of the house at night. And as soon as school was over the child should go away . . . she could go to Chicago to her mother. . . . There was no reason why she should bother her own mother about it.
And later on in the summer she’d go away herself, to New York, maybe. . . . She had no especial fitness for the theatre except her looks but those together with her rather fair singing voice were a considerable asset. She’d forget Stephen; there’d be plenty of men, she realized, with a new icy assurance, who would care nothing for a woman’s “blood and antecedents” provided only she had beauty and youth.
The Chinaberry Tree Page 26