Mamba's daughters

It was no mere chance that, during the first decade of the new century, brought Mamba out of the darkness of the underworld into the light of the Wentworths’ kitchen. Casual as that event seemed, there is good evidence for the belief that it had its origin in some obscure recess of the woman’s mind; or in perhaps some deep and but half comprehended instinct that drove her, against the reasoning of her brain, to embark upon what must have seemed a fantastically hopeless venture. For Mamba had arrived at an age that lay on the downhill side of fifty, and her habitat had always been the waterfront.

The amazing thing is that, having arrived at her decision, she was able to muster the courage necessary to take the step.

In the Charleston of Mamba’s day the negro population might have been divided into two general classes: the upper, consisting of those who had white folks, belonged to the negro quality and enjoyed a certain dolorous respectability; and the lower class, members of which had no white folks and were little better than outcasts.

How long Mamba had incubated her amazing plan there is no way of knowing. It is quite certain, however, that she reinforced the initial whisper with a “cunjer” that promised success, and that then, armed only with an enormous and devious experience and a remarkable histrionic talent, she selected her point of attack. But in the last step she showed the genius that was to predestine her to ultimate success.

The Wentworths, as was well known, had been wealthy plantation people before the war. But that fate which arranges the rise and fall of aristocracies had placed the original grant from the British Crown directly across the line of march to be taken six generations later by General Sherman. The condition of the Wentworths after the army had passed through their plantation was a sustained corroboration of the general’s famous definition. Immediately after the war the family had abandoned the charred remnants of what had once been the ancestral home, sold the land to liquidate old debts, and moved to Charleston. There they settled in the little brick dwelling near the Battery that they still occupied when they were elected by Mamba as her point of attack.

At that time there were four members of the family. Mrs. Wentworth was a widow in the early forties, possessed of intelligence, unquenchable industry, and a personal charm that the exigent years were stiffening into a manner almost too rigid for so soft a word. It was so desperately important for her children to hold their place in the society in which they had been born. It was as though, knowing the material odds against her, she dared not give an inch. The boy, St. Julien de Chatigny Wentworth, was now fourteen years of age. He had inherited an ancestral curse in the nickname of Saint, and was at the stage of being torn between a genuine desire for knowledge and the frustrating public-school system of the period. Polly, the girl, was altogether charming. A slender blonde of twelve, she was now in attendance at the Misses Sass’s school for young gentlewomen, on Legaré Street, and in accordance with the custom of the old city was just beginning to attend her first dancing-school soirées in the company of her brother. The fourth and by no means the least important member of the family was Maum Netta. She was a small intensely black woman of great delicacy of feeling, and with a sense of social values that was infallible. If she lacked anything that one had a right to expect it was, strangely enough for her race, a sense of humour, and one shrewdly suspected that she had deliberately suppressed this quality as jeopardising the dignity of her position. It is certain that she requited the Wentworths for their protection and love with a loyalty, devotion, and faith that imposed upon the two children an obligation of fulfilment almost as deep as that implicit in the relationship of child to parent.

It will be readily seen that the Wentworths just described presented a highly vulnerable front to the invasion of the Four Hundred planned by Mamba. Had the family been larger and wealthier she could not have gained the attention of the white folks and would probably have been given scant courtesy by the new-time negroes in the kitchen. Here was a family born in the slave-holding tradition of amused and even affectionate tolerance toward the negro once that negro had detached himself from the mass and become identified as an individual. Here, too, in the person of Maum Netta was a gentle and highly competent instructor in the intricate technique that the aged tyro must acquire. True, she knew that the old servant would treat her with well-bred condescension, but, with the true spirit of the social climber, she was prepared to pocket her pride until it could be worn with dignity.

The exact moment of attack was timed to a nicety, and slipped into its place with that appearance of casualness which is the result of infinitely calculated preparation. It was spring in Charleston, and almost overnight the sudden uprush of life from the soil had transformed the town. Wisteria dropped its purple stalactites from the trees and gateposts, and the roses lifted in a foam of colour and perfume over the garden walls. Even the air had a soft velvet on it, like pollen on a petal. It was inconceivable that at such a time hearts could be hardened or harsh words spoken.

The evening was one of unusual excitement in the little brick house. Saint was to escort his sister to her first soirée. Polly was slim and lovely in her white dress with its hand-worked border made after hours by Mrs. Wentworth. But there were no flowers for the début. In all the city of bloom the little brick house was without a garden, its four massive walls crowding the little lot to the limit of its accommodation.

The child was breathless with longing.

“Please, Mother, please; May, and Damaris, and the Hugers all have big gardens. It won’t take a minute to run over to Legaré Street and ask for some roses. Saint will go. Won’t you, Saint?”

But the mother said: “I am sorry, dear, you can’t, you know. We are too poor to have our own, and that is the very reason why we cannot ask. Remember what Landor says, ‘You have already paid the highest price for a thing when you have asked for it.’”

“Yes, I know. Horrid, rich old thing. I bet he never wanted anything in his life that he couldn’t run to a shop and buy.”

Saint put in: “Aw, they have millions and millions of them. It wouldn’t be really giving, they wouldn’t miss ’em.”

“I know, dears, but they will have to be offered. We cannot ask.”

Tears then—tragedy in that gay moment of departure; high-strung little nerves jumping from tears to laughter and back again. And a mist in Mrs. Wentworth’s eyes, the obstinacy of an idealist in her firm mouth and lifted chin.

And Saint: “Aw, come on. Don’t get all messed up over a few flowers.”

Maum Netta opened the door from the kitchen into the dining room where desire and ethics were grappling. “Dere’s uh ’oman outside wot say she want fuh see Missie. She ain’t berry clean. Maybe Missie better come in de kitchen fuh see um.”

The three Wentworths adjourned to the immaculate little kitchen, and there they beheld an incongruous picture. Mamba stood just within the door, and as they entered she dropped a deep courtesy. She was a woman of medium height, frail almost to a point of emaciation. She was not a full-blooded African negro, but her prominent nose, and the coppery cast to her dark skin suggested a strain of American Indian rather than an admixture of white blood in her veins. Her face had reached the point at which it tells nothing of age. As it looked now with its multitudinous wrinkles, it would still look at her death. She smiled a little timidly and revealed a lonely yellow fang in the middle of her lower gum. Then she took a step forward into the full light of the kerosene lamp and looked into the face of the slender blonde girl. From the network of wrinkles the woman’s eyes, large and of a peculiar live-brown brilliance, looked startlingly out, bright with the fire of indomitable youth. Standing directly before Polly she courtesied again and brought from behind her back a large shower of Dorothy Perkins roses. The stems were wrapped with tinfoil and tied with floss that had been fashioned into a cord with tassels exactly like those displayed in the florists’ windows on King Street.

“Ah tink how my Little Missie goin’ tuh dance tuh Miss Snowden party to-night, an’ Ah say dat de p’utties’ lady dere ought fuh hab flower.”

She swung her rags about her in another courtesy, and extended the bouquet.

Polly gave a gasp of pleasure and held out her hand to take the flowers. The terrible ogre of ethics again raised its head. If one could not ask a neighbour for roses, could one accept a gift of roses that had undoubtedly been stolen over the wall of the selfsame neighbour?

“I think that we must know where those flowers came from before we take them,” Mrs. Wentworth interposed a little weakly.

“Ah gots frien’ who gardener on Legaré Street, Miss. He gib me lot ob flower.”

Saint cut the Gordian knot: “Take the old flowers and let’s go. We’ll be late, anyhow, with all this talk.” Then, seizing his sister by one arm as she caught the bouquet to her breast with the other, he rushed her to the door, and before Mrs. Wentworth could say anything more, their feet had pattered into silence down the street.

The mother turned and looked at Mamba. There was a moment of silence, then the strange old woman gazed up into her face with her amazing girl’s eyes, and smiled her wide single-toothed smile. Mrs. Wentworth threw back her head and laughed. “Where did you come from?” she asked.

“Oh, not so fur. Ah been see Little Missie go by ebery day, an’ Ah jes can’t wait no longer tuh put dem flower whar day b’longs.”

Mrs. Wentworth turned with her hand on the dining-room door knob. “I am sure it was very good of you,” she said, “and now you must let Maum Netta give you some supper before you go away. It was so very odd, your coming just to-night.”

But was it odd, after all? Was it not rather one of those inevitable happenings that are so often mistaken for coincidences but are in reality the mathematical result of a premise originating in some remote but unswerving human purpose?

There was that about the invisible comings and goings of Mamba, after that first night, which tended to confirm Mrs. Wentworth’s grave misgivings. It suggested a proficiency that smacked of the professional, like a game of poker or billiards that is almost too expert for a gentleman. She would prowl about the kitchen door-yard as silent and as unswervingly watchful as a neighbourhood cat, and then, without having been seen in the house, she would leave the evidence of a visit there in some gift for Polly or service for a member of the family.

On the morning following the soirée there were fresh roses, with dew still on the petals, heaped on the girl’s breakfast plate. Mrs. Wentworth, who was a sharp observer, noticed that they had been torn from the vine. Gardeners on Legaré Street were well trained and were provided with shears. Most certainly she must tell Maum Netta not to allow the woman to return. She was not of the type to be encouraged. But after breakfast, when Mrs. Wentworth repaired to the kitchen, she encountered a new complication.

Maum Netta was seated in unaccustomed ease eating her breakfast and Mamba was just drying the last of the dishes. During the moment that Mrs. Wentworth stood unobserved in the doorway, she was an eavesdropper upon a masterpiece of diplomacy. Mamba was saying: “Tek yo’ ease, Mistress Netta, tek yo’ ease. Ah knows dishwashin’ ain’t fuh de quality cullud folks. Attuh yo’ done git up, an’ comb yo’ putty gray hair, an’ cook dis fine breakfus, an’ ’splain tuh yo’ white folks what tuh do all day, yo’ ought fuh tek yo’ ease an’ studdy ’bout yo’ frien’ Gawd, while some poor-folks nigger like me cleans up attuh yo’.”

Maum Netta, with great dignity, expressing itself in a heavy lugubriousness, but already making social concessions:

“Well, it use’ tuh be dat-a-way. Dey was always kitchen niggers in de ole days. But t’ings is change’ now, t’ings is change’.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s cool high-bred syllables fell chill across the gathering warmth and requested Maum Netta’s presence in the dining room. When the door was closed she turned to the old negress.

The mistress could have bungled then. A single flat order could have done it. But instinctively she closed with a question, thereby throwing the burden on Maum Netta, and at once rebuking her and re-establishing her integrity.

“I am really provoked, Mauma” (she had not gone as far as that in years); “I was just going to ask that woman to leave the premises, and I find you accepting favours of her. You know we have no money to pay a servant. Now, what am I to do?”

“Ah sorry, Miss. Dat a hahd ’oman tuh say no tuh. See if yo’ can find a ole dress or somet’ing an’ Ah’ll gib it tuh she an’ sen’ she away.”

There was silence in the kitchen, and the tension of impending crisis when Mrs. Wentworth returned with some old clothing thrown over her arm. In a cool, positive tone of finality which dismissed a mutual future and expunged the past, she said:

“Maum Netta will attend to those dishes. Thank you for helping us. Here are some old clothes.”

But she got no further. Mamba courtesied almost to the floor, with her rags trailing grotesquely about her. Then she raised a face that was radiant with gratitude. She started talking rapidly while she took the clothes, and her volubility increased as she backed toward the door. Twice Mrs. Wentworth attempted to stem the tide, then gave it up.

“Oh, t’ank yo’, Miss. Ah’s too t’ankful. Ah’s been too ’shame’ tuh come roun’ yo’ an’ Little Missie in dese ole rags. Now Ah’s goin’ be dat clean my own ma wouldn’t know me. Now Ah t’ink dat de nex’ time Little Missie go to dance she ain’t goin’ be ’shame’ fuh let me go long wid she an’ carry she slipper bag.”

The queer bobbing figure paused for a moment in the open door; then, with its hand on the knob, raised its head. Out of the meshed wrinkles and folds of skin looked the woman’s astounding eyes, audacious and mocking, then for a second in the closing door they caught the mood of the toothless smile and overflowed with laughter.

Two days passed and a Sunday came. No sign of Mamba. Mrs. Wentworth dismissed the whole episode as closed. The day was glorious with spring sunshine, and the air was throbbing to the music of St. Michael’s chimes. Mamba rounded a corner a block away from the front door of the Wentworth residence, then stopped and lingered unobtrusively in a recessed gateway. She could not keep her feet still while the chimes were playing, and the shabby, broad toe that extended from beneath the hem of her recently acquired neat gray dress tapped gently on the pavement. She knew well the rotation of the tunes: “Shall We Gather at the River?” “There Is a Blessed Home,” and the way the music dropped an octave on a high note where a bell was missing. George Washington Christopher Gadsden, the ancient bell ringer, was a crony of hers, and she smiled now at the thought of his favourite joke on the white people in the pews. Yes, there it was, slipped in between “There Is a Blessed Home” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers”:

Two lines of the old song that the negroes loved, then on into the next hymn without missing a beat. He’d be laughing now at his joke, up there by himself in the steeple.

Suddenly the tune stopped and the bells commenced to toll. Three minutes now before service. Mamba peered from her retreat, and an expression of satisfaction overspread her features as the three Wentworths stepped from their front door and proceeded decorously toward the calling bells.

In the Wentworth kitchen Maum Netta was washing her dishes and singing a spiritual in her high, slightly cracked soprano. She reached for a high note and held it with evident pride. Then through the open window there entered a melodious contralto note that met it and rang with it in resonant chord. Maum Netta’s eyes widened with pleasure while she held her note to the limit of her lung capacity. Then she crossed to the window and looked out. Mamba was seated immediately below her on the doorstep, and she met the older woman’s gaze with an expression of awe. “My Gawd, Mauma,” she half whispered, “how come nobody ain’t nebber tell me yo’ kin sing like dat?”

“Cose Ah kin sing.” Then slowly the necessity of being firm with this person began to triumph over flattered vanity. “But dat’s neider here nor dere. Ah gots orders from Miss Wentworth not fuh leabe yo’ come ’roun’ here no mo’.”

“Cos yo’ has, Mauma, cose yo’ has. Ain’t Ah knows Ah ain’t yo’ kind ob folks? Ain’t Ah knows my place? Now, don’t yo’ worry none about dat. Ah ain’t goin’ let dese feet go ober dat do’ no matter how hahd dey begs me. But sence all de white folks done gone to church, why can’t yo’ an’ me set here, jes as we is, yo’ in yo’ place, and me jes in de outdoors, an’ sing some tuhgedder. Ah jes been a-wonnerin’ if yo’ knows ‘Light in de Grabeyahd Outshine de Sun!’”

Without waiting to risk further parley, Mamba raised the tune.

Deep, tender, and true, and slurring only a little from the toothless gums, her contralto notes lifted to the window where the older woman stood, and called with that same irresistible quality of youth that shone in the woman’s eyes. Mamba was not merely singing for her supper now. The gratification of that mysterious urge that had started her on her adventure hung in the balance. She let the whole force of her longing throb in the mysterious music.

Maum Netta listened for a moment. No negro can resist harmony, and while soprano voices of great beauty are common enough among them, contraltos are rare. Mamba’s tone dropped almost into the baritone register, and throbbed there full and true. She commenced to sway slowly from side to side as she sat there on the step. Maum Netta tried the harmony with one light note, and it was as though she had unlocked floodgates, for the spiritual swept irresistibly from her lips. She returned on tiptoe to her dishes, her head thrown back, and her soul going out in that strange communion that comes from merging two separate and imperfect voices into a rare and beautiful common offering. The little kitchen, and the small brick-paved yard rocked to the enchantment of it. The rhythm possessed itself of its creators. In the dining room the little mahogany clock on the mantel sent its hands spinning on toward noon.

Church was over, and Mrs. Wentworth approached the little brick house chatting with several neighbours.

“I did not know there was a negro church near,” one of them remarked. “Why, that singing seems to be right in our block.”

“And Sunday too!” contributed a little woman with arched eyebrows and a chronically shocked voice.

Mrs. Wentworth did not like this neighbour, so she said sweetly: “Well, after all, they are spirituals, you know. The negroes evidently still think that Sunday is the Lord’s Day.” But her defensive attitude wilted suddenly. She was before her own door now, and grim forebodings were upon her. She excused herself hurriedly and entered. A moment later she stood surveying a scene that, while it tempted her to laughter, told her in no uncertain terms that she was in that moment witnessing her own defeat.

Maum Netta sat just inside of the room with her turbaned head nodding back and forth to the measure of the spiritual. The door stood wide open, and upon the step sat Mamba swaying and patting with her large, flat feet and throwing her whole being into the music. But the visitor had not been idle, and therein lay her triumph. Before her on the marble step, fairly sparkling in the sun, were ranged all of the shoes possessed by the family. The last one, a dancing pump of Saint’s, was just being given a final polish.

Mrs. Wentworth was obliged to speak a second time before she could make her presence known.

“Maum Netta, have you gone raving crazy?”

Instant silence in the kitchen, and the slow gathering together of faculties in the two before her, like people waking from a daze. What was the use! Mrs. Wentworth re-entered the dining room, closed the door behind her, and gave herself over to impotent laughter.

With the success of the shoe-shining episode, Mamba attained her first definite objective. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Wentworth was predestined for failure in such a situation by reason of her virtues rather than her weaknesses, and where such is the case, a cause is indeed hopeless. Mamba, born of a race that owed its very existence to its understanding of the ruling white, knew just how vulnerable those virtues were, and so she had only to direct her attack against them and bide her time. Her position was now fairly secure. She had only to keep a favour ahead of her victim, leaving upon her the burden of an unrepaid obligation. The Wentworths had no money wherewith to compensate her, and so, in lieu thereof, she must be given food in the kitchen and the outworn and easily recognisable garments of her new mistress. To the neighbourhood, and even in her own eyes, this soon gave her the superficial colouration of a retainer of the aristocracy. Presently, when she was safely out of earshot of Maum Netta, she commenced to refer to the Wentworth household as “my white folks.”

Mamba had no regular hours for her comings and goings, but she had a way of materialising dramatically in the moment of emergency, and she delighted in certain conspicuous services of a social nature. To Polly’s great pride she insisted on following her to the soirées and carrying her slipper bag ostentatiously to the dressing-room door. Then, while the dance was in progress, she would play the ladies’ maid with the waiting negresses who had come with the wealthy girls from the Battery homes. More than one amazing story of her daughter’s talents and her own wealth circled back to Mrs. Wentworth, and were easily traced by her to these below-stairs gatherings at the dances.

Mamba’s logic in these cases was simple: what could possibly give her more distinction than to be the maid of a young lady of quality, who was sufficiently distinguished to have a maid! But around the little brick house she was humility personified.

How the old woman must have longed to adopt the head kerchief such as was worn by Maum Netta and was the traditional badge of the house-bred servant! But she was well aware that this would be a fatal presumption. For the present, at least, she must depend on the neat, partly worn clothing of Mrs. Wentworth for her borrowed respectability. As for her head, it was still treated in the astonishing manner common among older negroes who had not been born to the dignity of the kerchief, and whose generation had not yet adopted kink-remover. The wool was divided into a dozen or more equal tufts. Each of these was tightly wrapped with string, commencing at the tip and ending at the scalp; then the collection, resembling rope ends, was drawn together and united in a tight knob on the crown. The general effect was as though an enormous gray tarantula had settled upon the head, and was holding on tightly with outstretched legs. But if Mamba dared not essay the head kerchief, she did the next best thing, and was seldom seen thereafter without her hat.

When the first autumn arrived neighbours were commencing to identify Mamba as “that new negro of the Wentworths’.”

Three years passed without a change in the relative positions of Mamba and her adopted white folks, except that by her continued association with them she became a copartner in their fortunes. She received no wages, and this gave her an independence that she loved. She had a way of dropping out of sight for days at a time. The Wentworths never speculated as to her private life. They took her as they found her. But so subtle are the forces that knit human relationships together that the time arrived without their realising it when no matter of serious importance could affect either of the participants in the strange partnership without bearing upon the destinies of the other.

Fortunes had waned in the little brick house. Polly was approaching the time when she would graduate from her school. She could name the English kings forward and backward, speak French, spell perfectly, and do sums in elementary arithmetic. So much for what might have been classed as commercial assets with which to meet the exactions of the Twentieth Century. But from the gentle and charming old ladies she had absorbed the old Southern gentlewoman tradition that had lingered on in the disintegrating old school like rose leaves in a jar. She danced beautifully, and in her eyes was that unutterable word that men, seeing, answered. She already had a host of beaux, and the career to which she was predestined by birth, tradition, and instinct resolved itself in its particular detail to a matter of selection when the proper time should arrive. But she must be given an opportunity of appearing to advantage during the momentous period that would lie between graduation and marriage.

Saint was a disappointment to every one but Mamba. He had failed utterly to yield to the standardising process of the public school. He was sensitive and took refuge from humiliating realities in a dream world of his own. The result was absent-mindedness. Teachers told him that he was a fool, and he believed them. A gangling adolescent of seventeen, out of school and not yet at work, practically penniless, with the look of a hurt animal in his eyes, he spent most of his time roaming the waterfront. His acquaintances who caught glimpses of him in those days decided that he was definitely a failure, and potentially a confirmed ne’er-do-well. Not that he was dissipated. It was probably worse. The old town looked with indulgent eyes upon youth in its wild-oats stage. That was something rooted in tradition, understood. Good blood could be counted upon to win through in that reckless period. Fathers and uncles would exchange sly winks that condoned the indiscretions of to-day, while they implied a vanished but far more adventurous youth of their own. “Get it safely over with, then marry and settle down.” “Better before than after.” “Young blood, young blood.” Yes, undoubtedly boys not only would, but should, be boys. But Saint was a boy who obviously did not even have the initiative to be one. It was too bad. And poor Kate Wentworth a widow too. The boy felt it rising in the air about him like a tangible wall—a wall against which he could bruise himself cruelly, but from which he could not escape.

Sometimes at the waterfront he would forget. There were sights there that had nothing to do with the personal equation, that were detached from actuality and seemed to invade the territory of dreams. Negroes crossing a dock head single file, with cotton bales on their trucks—a frieze of rhythmic bodies against a blue-green sea horizon. He’d like to catch that so that it could not elude him again; fix it in some medium that he could carry away with him—paint, maybe. But one could not study to paint, one could not study anything until one had passed in algebra. There it stood like a Chinese wall about all knowledge. It had to be mastered before one could go on. Well, he had been born without that kind of a brain. His friends had been more fortunate and were getting ahead. He had been dropped from his classes—the fate of the fool. He was at least logical enough to follow that to its conclusion. But here he was—and what next?

Only Mamba seemed to understand the boy. Days would come when the old woman would grow restive under her strait-jacket of respectability, and the two would be discovered by Mrs. Wentworth in a corner of the kitchen yard seated on an empty packing case. Mamba, with her disguise laid aside, and a look of low and humorous cunning on her lined face, would be nodding her gray tarantula up and down while she told a story. Saint was always the listener, laughing his shy, quiet laugh and forgetting himself in the tale.

Summer came, and with it a desperate decision on the part of Mrs. Wentworth; a decision that quite unexpectedly resulted in an important step in Mamba’s social evolution. That one may know how desperate the situation in the little brick house had become, it is only necessary to say that a cottage was to be hired at the shore, furnished with the Wentworth plate and linen, and that a limited number of “paying guests” were to be permitted to share the sanctity of a Wentworth home.

Mamba decided to accompany the family; Maum Netta went as a matter of course, and at the ferry that was to convey them on the first phase of the journey they were joined by a round-bellied negro who had about him a look of great importance. Upon arriving at their destination this individual was found to possess a reputation for cooking, an enormous white chef’s cap, and, to the delight of the two women, an entirely adequate tenor voice.

Mamba was living well now, and she should have been happy. She performed only such light work as suited her fancy. The kitchen was far enough from the house to allow almost constant singing. There was a shady breeze-swept piazza for the hot mornings, and at night the unremitting flow of broad sea winds under the soft summer stars. But that mysterious fire in her spirit would not let her rest. The other negroes tried to laugh her out of her preoccupation, but without avail. Sometimes in the middle of a song she would leave and stand at the piazza rail, gazing over the bay to where the lights of the town created a false illusion of dawn against the west, and her eyes would be filled with a nostalgic longing.

By August Mrs. Wentworth’s venture had proved itself to be a distinct success. The house was well filled, and the pleasant uneventful days were yielding a financial profit that promised well for the future. But to Mamba the month was tremendous and memorable, for it brought to that opportunist the epoch-making episode of the judge’s teeth.

Judge Harkness had arrived for a rest immediately after the June term of court. It is unlikely that a more distinguished figure had trod the sands of Sullivan’s Island since the historic days of General Moultrie. He was tall, and of a commanding presence, and the proper finish was added to his appearance by a well-clipped beard, and pince-nez. Maum Netta placed him socially with the tribute:

“Me an’ you, Cook, we talks cullud folks’ talk. Miss Wentwort’, she talk white folks’ talk, but de Jedge, now—he ain’t speak nutting but de grammar.”

But the judge was too closely allied with the law for Mamba to admit his superiority. She had a way of sucking her tooth with a loud, derisive sound, and she employed this method of expressing her disdain to the kitchen whenever he was discussed. Once she contributed her comment, and with it stripped him to the fundamental weakness of the male.

“Yas, Ah seen um once, a-settin’ on he bench wid he long black robe on, sendin’ nigger tuh jail, like he been Gawd. But don’ yuh fergit, onnerneat’ dat black wrapper he gots on two-leg pants same like Cook dere.”

Now the cook had acquired a reputation among the negresses of the neighbourhood, and the connotation freighted her remark with outrageous implication. The cook beamed with unctuous satisfaction. Maum Netta pretended at first not to understand, then frowned her disapproval. Mamba, enjoying her own audacity immensely, closed her eyes to narrow slits, and sat there looking darkly mysterious.

This particular August morning was in the midst of one of the hottest spells of the season. From the Wentworth cottage the waves could be seen crawling far up the beach and dissolving into low, monotonous breakers, as though reluctant to release their cooling spray into the close atmosphere. The judge had risen early and gone in for his morning dip. Several guests sat listlessly on the piazza, waiting for breakfast with pre-coffee indifference to life so common in the American home.

Mamba was cleaning a pan of fish in the kitchen when her keen ears caught sudden exclamations of interest from the front of the house. She dropped her pan, and, trailing a suggestion of whiting behind her, ran to the piazza and gazed over the heads of the guests who were gathered at the piazza rail, their coffee for the moment forgotten.

In the shallow surf, not a hundred yards away, a most amazing sight presented itself. The judge was on all fours, roaming back and forth over a section of beach that might have measured twenty-five feet square. The agitated movements of the body, the turning at a given point as though stopped by steel bars, inevitably suggested the caged animal.

“Why, he’s gone crazy,” one of the women shrilled.

Suddenly the strange performance ceased. The judge got to his feet and started toward the house. As he passed the piazza on his way to the rear entrance, it seemed to the onlookers that his dignity had fallen from him. His figure in its wet bathing suit gave the effect of shrinking away. One hand was held over his face but was unable to conceal the blight of senility that seemed to have settled upon it. In a final blundering rush he gained his room and closed the door behind him.

A babblement of speculation and comment burst forth, but was immediately met by Mrs. Wentworth’s instinctive generalship. “The judge seems a little upset,” she remarked quietly. “I am sure he will appreciate silence in which to collect himself. Saint, you must go at once and see what you can do for him.”

It is unlikely that the shy, self-conscious boy ever experienced a more cruel moment. But there was actual physical propulsion in Mrs. Wentworth’s voice that morning, and it seemed visibly to lift the reluctant lad to his feet and thrust him through the dreaded portal.

The guests waited eagerly for Saint’s return, but when he came they were doomed to disappointment, for he went straight to the kitchen door and summoned Mamba.

When he had conducted her out into the middle of the road, safely out of earshot of the house, he said:

“What do you think?—the old boy’s lost his teeth.”

The woman bent double in the silent folding contortion that served her for laughter. The boy continued: “And, as he never wears his glasses in, of course he could not find them. I thought of you right away and told him you’d go down and look for them. That cheered him up a lot. Says he’ll give you five dollars if you find them before the next car to town.”

Mamba was very serious now. “Yo’ ain’t forget yo’ frien’, does yo’, Mistuh Saint? Ah’ll git right down.”

The morning advanced and the heat became intense. There was no breeze from the sea and the sun was a white dazzle on the broad, flat beach. It would be noon before the judge could get his car to the city, and up to the last moment Mamba could be seen engaged upon her search. Then, almost in the moment of the judge’s departure, drama developed at the little station. The unfortunate man left the cottage and hurried toward the tracks with a furtive air. Mamba approached from the beach and was joined at the house by Saint.

“Any luck?” he whispered.

Mamba raised her eyes, and for a moment the boy was puzzled by what he saw there. He got the odd impression that some conflict was taking place behind them, some working of the brain that the old woman wanted to keep to herself. This was not like his friend. She told him things, just as he did her. A question was on his lips. Then suddenly she looked down, and her old body seemed to wilt. Her face quivered slightly and she mopped the moisture from her brow with a corner of her apron.

“No, Ah ain’t fin’ um,” she muttered, “an’, Gawd, Ah’s hot an’ wore out.” The hand that held the apron corner trembled.

“Well, he’s got to give you something, anyway,” the boy asserted with a new note of authority. “Come along quick.”

The cars were pulling in when they reached the station. They had no time to lose. Saint touched Judge Harkness on his sleeve, and a face was turned toward him that would have been mirth-provoking had it not been for its pitiful defencelessness.

The authority in the boy’s voice was going, and he spoke hurriedly on the last of its ebb: “This old woman has been searching the beach all morning. She did not find—anything. But she’s awfully hot and tired and all that.”

The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out a two-dollar bill which he handed to Mamba.

“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.

Judge Harkness climbed the steps. The wheels commenced to grind on the sandy tracks. Saint felt his body thrust sharply aside, and a figure leaped past him and on to the platform of the Jim Crow car. Wheels were humming now, and windows sliding past in a blur of glass and faces. Then suddenly Mamba’s face and an arm waving to him from a rear window. Dumfounded, he looked into the wide, laughing eyes. Then Mamba smiled that broad, unforgettable, single-toothed smile of hers, that was unlike any one else’s that Saint had ever known. A sudden premonition smote the lonely boy and etched the strange picture indelibly into his memory. It was well that he caught it then, for it was more than twenty years before he saw it again on Mamba’s face.

Under the pelting heat of the August sun two passengers left the ferry the moment that it landed in the city and, taking opposite sides of the street, set off briskly toward the retail section. One of them was Judge Harkness; the other, Mamba.

Taking the least frequented streets, they cut across the city, the man furtive and ill at ease, the woman smiling the secret smile of a Mona Lisa, while the sun hurled its vertical rays down upon her unprotected head. When they arrived at King Street, with its shop windows and hanging signs, their ways parted. The judge crossed the thoroughfare, hesitated for a moment before an unobtrusive brass plate marked DENTIST, then plunged through a door into welcoming gloom. Mamba continued on her way until she came to a glass case, fastened against the front of a building, that had often engaged her fascinated regard. In it were a number of examples of dental art, and in its centre a complete set of teeth operated by a mechanism that kept them chewing with a slow hypnotising rhythm upon an imaginary cud.

Mamba knew this place by reputation. It was here that her wealthy friends came for their gold teeth. She entered and climbed a flight of stairs to the office. Through an open door she saw a young man in a dirty white coat sitting in a dentist’s chair, reading a newspaper. She smiled, and the young man raised his eyes, then threw away his paper and stepped eagerly forward.

“Can I do anything for you, Auntie?” he asked superfluously.

In portentous silence Mamba hoisted her apron up and untied a large knot in one corner. Then she exhibited to the astonished gaze of the dentist a dollar bill, eighty-five cents in change, and a formidable set of teeth, which, upon examination, revealed the fact that their interstices were filled with sand.

“What do you want me to do with these?” he asked.

“Fit ’em tuh me.”

“Were they made for you?”

“Not zactly, but most.”

The man handed them back. “Sorry, but you have to get them made especially for you. Now, for forty dollars——”

Mamba laid her hand on his arm. He stopped speaking and looked up in surprise. He had not noticed her eyes before. Now he saw in them an agony of longing that made him hesitate. She had his hand now, and was fumbling with his fingers, keeping her eyes on his all the time. She pressed the money into his hand that still held the teeth, then closed it tightly between both of hers.

The man tried to protest, but Mamba, still holding his hand closed so that he could not return her possessions, plunged into her plea. “Here’s yo’ an’ me an’ dem teet’ an’ one dolluh an’ eighty-five cent all right here togedder now. It done tek me ober six yeah tuh arrange um. Ef we ebber get separate’ now, Gawd know ef it eber happen again. We gots tuh fix ’em somehow, Boss. We jus’ gots tuh!”

“But, Auntie, it’s like I told you.”

“No, yo’ mus’ lissen tuh me fust. Ah gots tuh hab ’em fuh somet’ing p’tic’lar. Now, how’s dis? Dere’s a fambly Ah knows whut jus’ gots dere pa’s lodge insurance, an’ dey is all goin’ get gol’ teet’. Now yo’ go long an’ fit me tuh dese an’ Ah’ll bring ’em all tuh dis shop. Yo’ see ef Ah don’t.”

The dentist laughed. He could not help it. He was entirely unconvinced as to the existence of that family. Thin!—did she think he’d be taken in by that sort of stuff? He stood looking down at her, and his laughter stopped. Now he felt something about the comic old figure that was not comic at all. A force was being exerted against him that he could not define but that somehow stirred his rudimentary imagination. He commenced to feel that there was something big here, too big for the pitiful subterfuge that it had employed. Slowly he became aware of the conviction that some tremendous and forlorn hope hung in the balance, and that it rested with him whether it should triumph or fail. Charity. No, not that, somehow. Chivalry, then. Absurd, for this funny old negro woman. A far glimmer came to him from a boyhood buried under ugly years of negro dentistry, a figure in armour, Sir Galahad, or something of that sort. This must have been the way he used to feel when he went to do those silly things for women and knew he wasn’t going to get anything out of it. Then at this picture of himself, he laughed outright.

Mamba knew then that she had won. Now she must clinch her victory. “Gawd bless yo’, Boss,” she exclaimed. “When, now?”

The transformed young man was smiling down at her. “There’s no saying no to you, is there, Auntie?” Then, after a moment, “No, not to-day. But come in to-morrow and we’ll see.”

Mamba started to carry her treasured possession away with her, but at the door she thought better of it, returned, and handed it to the dentist. “Yo’ look aftuh dese fuh me,” she begged. “Dey is too val’able tuh carry ’bout de street.” Then, wagging her head up and down, while she rolled her eyes mysteriously, she added in a deep-throated, dramatic whisper: “Yas, suh, yo’ mightn’t b’leabe me, but dem quiet teet’ whut yo’ is holdin’ so safe an’ purty in yo’ han’ come out a mout’ what has done sen’ plenty ob nigger tuh meet dere Gawd.”

The dentist started and looked down again. Against his palm the passive double row of ivories seemed suddenly to become ferocious, almost carnivorous.

When he looked up for further explanations Mamba had gone.