Mamba's daughters

For several minutes after the departure of Lissa and Mamba, Hagar stood in the road. Her eyes, still resting on the spot where the car had stood when Lissa had embraced her, were wide and intent, like those of a sleep-walker, and a faint, fixed smile was upon her lips.

In a scrawny cedar close by there sounded a drowsy flapping of wings, then Maum Vina’s big rooster stood erect on a limb, arched his neck eastward, and flung a ringing challenge into the teeth of the advancing day.

With a start Hagar recovered herself and looked about her. She was quite alone now, and there was something to be faced there in the dark without Mamba, without any one; all by herself now she must make plans and carry them out. She thought of Bluton lying in the shack, but with neither regret nor terror at what she had done. Only out of that thought there seemed to grow a blackness that menaced Lissa and that was unendurable.

She turned and entered the cabin, and with a clumsy meticulousness, as though every simple movement was the result of an elaborate mental process, she made her preparations for departure. In the faint glow of the lowered kerosene lamp that stood beside Maum Vina’s bed, she dressed herself and made up a small package of cornbread and cold meat that she found in a closet. For a moment she stood looking down at the old woman who had been first her guide, then her charge for so many years; then she slipped quietly out and closed the door behind her.

The fowls had quieted down again after the first cock-crow, and she saw them, misty blobs of darkness, ranged along a limb against the sky—that meant a good hour of darkness ahead of her. She drew her skirt up and tucked it high like a field hand’s, leaving her long legs bare to the knees and unimpeded. Then she set off with a free stride in the direction of Bluton’s shack.

The moon had set, withdrawing its diffused radiance from the misty west, so that now even the solid mass of the swamp toward which she journeyed was invisible against the horizon. But the tides of life had definitely set toward the new day, faint as yet, but stirring along the earth in little exhilarating waves, filling the air with those subtle vibrations that are the precursors of light. Through the gloom the big free-striding figure of the woman advanced. The movement about her quickened. She threw a glance behind her, and, high in the east, she saw a finger of light touch the mist. Then suddenly she was upon that hour of the twenty-four when Earth recapitulates her creation, when in a brief cosmic atavism she slips back to her wild beginnings.

The void through which Hagar moved no longer hung poised in inertia. Free-running tides of life set it swinging and pulsing. The mist lifted and divided itself into vast slow-moving bodies that hung close to the ground and hesitated until some unseen force seized them and whirled them together in silent chaos. The woman stopped in the road, touched by the magic of it, and stood gazing about her. She saw vague inchoate masses heaped upon the dim earth. She saw these masses obliterated by the mist, and when she looked again, the curtains were withdrawn and the young day had modelled them into forests, fields, and cabins. The light gathered speed. It poured along the ground, dividing tree from tree. It lifted into the branches that still clutched at retreating mists and peopled them with separate leaves. Then, as at a given signal, the world burst into sound. Birds shrilled from the casena bushes, and like an ominous call Hagar heard the teeming life of the swamp awake and lift its composite voice. She had been tricked by beauty, and day had taken her unawares.

She broke into a dog trot. It was imperative that she reach the shack before people were up and about. The voice of the swamp grew louder, and now, against its gloom, she saw the squat ugly bulk of the shack.

Bluton was lying where she had left him. Quickly she bent over, gathered him up and flung him upon her shoulder. Then, casting a hasty glance around, she went out and closed the door. She had only a hundred yards to travel for cover, and this was fortunate, for, as she left the shack, the sun pierced the mist and drenched the clearing with light. It outlined the huge figure of the woman with fire, and cast a gargantuan shadow before her as she laboured forward beneath her rigid and grotesquely posturing burden.

She extended an arm and parted a curtain of vines, then she passed through into welcoming gloom. Black ooze squirted between her toes and covered her feet. She heaved a deep sigh of relief and paused to take her bearings.

First she must dispose of the body, and to do this most effectively she must penetrate to the heart of the swamp where no one would be likely to find it. She bent forward and shifted the burden from her shoulder to her arched back. Then she set off as briskly as possible, tearing a way through the matted growth with her right hand while she steadied the body with her left. But this position caused her to advance with lowered head, and eyes fixed on the pools of shallow water through which she waded. At first this pleased her, for the little mirrors flung back pictures of sky seen through swaying cypresses, with small white clouds tangled in their branches. But presently she became aware of the reflection of an object that projected over her shoulder and looked down into the water, as she was doing. She paused, and the reflection did likewise. Then she recognised its cause as the head of the corpse which hung over her shoulder close to her own.

With the first sense of uneasiness that her deed had brought to her she shifted her load so that it would no longer gaze downward and started forward again. But with an almost animate persistence the body moved with each stride, and gradually the round, blank silhouette again eclipsed the miniature skies through which she waded. Now her anger rose, and she splashed heavily through the water, shattering and dispersing its reflections.

An hour passed, and the sun, now well over the treetops, commenced to draw a thin steam out of the swamp. The din of voices that had heralded day commenced to abate, settling in drowsy diminuendo into an almost complete silence. Then, as Hagar reached the dense growth that clogged the central area of the morass and made progress difficult, the air about her broke into a shrill ominous whine, and a black cloud of mosquitoes enveloped her, settling like dust on head, shoulders, and legs. Involuntarily she struck out with both hands. With a heavy splash her burden fell from her back and commenced to settle slowly into the semi-fluid ooze. Slapping wildly at the maddening cloud, and with her skin on fire from the poison, Hagar turned her back on the body and broke savagely through the tangle in search of one of the little islands that rise through the water of the swamp and offer a slight harbourage from the pest.

At last she found it, a knoll of high ground, lifting out of the cypress knees, and having above it an irregular circle of opaque blue-grey sky. Crouched over almost on all fours, with prehensile hands tearing her way through the undergrowth, the great woman emerged like a prehistoric creature quitting its primal slime, and climbed out upon the knoll.

For a moment she sat panting heavily, her face and arms streaming with sweat and blood from stings and thorn lacerations. Then from her pocket she drew a bandana handkerchief, a clay pipe, tobacco, and matches. She mopped her face, filled the pipe and lighted it, then sat gulping the acrid smoke in great draughts and blowing it in a cloud about her. The last of the mosquitoes took reluctant flight, and with a long sigh she lay back on the tough swamp grass to think things out.

She realised with relief that there was no occasion for speed. Beyond the swamp lay a broad belt of open and populous land planted in truck farms, and this must be crossed at night if she would escape detection. She need not resume her journey, then, for several hours, and this was the best place to wait.

She ate breakfast from her package of provisions, and refilled her pipe. Already her fatigue was passing, and her mind commenced to turn over her problem, dwelling upon its various aspects. Usually, when Mamba had told her what to do, that ended it, and she gave the matter no further thought. But now, with the realisation that the guiding genius of that intelligence had gone from her, perhaps forever, a sense of individual responsibility bore down upon her and forced her to study and reason on her own account. Mamba had had to think mighty quickly there in the dark with Lissa waiting to hurry away to safety. And Mamba did not know this country as she did. Did not know Proc Baggart, for one thing. Mamba’s plan depended for success entirely upon her escape; her ability to traverse the mainland and reach one of the Sea Islands where there were almost no white folks, and where the negroes would hide that big clumsy body of hers from the police so that she could not be caught and questioned.

Her train of thought broke off, and for a moment her mind was a clean blank; then vividly the image of Bluton intruded itself. She saw his limbs jutting woodenly from the water, and black ooze creeping toward his open eyes. Poor Gilly—she couldn’t hate him now. Then she wondered if he would hate her. If he would forget that she had saved him once and remember only that she had strangled him and left him to rot in the black mud of the swamp.

Well, what was done was done, and there was no use to worry about it. Now, if she reached the outer edge of the swamp by sundown and waited an hour, then set out to the southward—— But Gilly hated the dark. “Bright lights,” he would say, “gimme de bright lights.” Yes, to the southward, that was what she must think about—thirty miles to Edisto Island. By fast travel she could do that by sunrise. Her thoughts came slowly, they made short rushes, stumbled, brought up against obstacles, like a child learning to walk. By sunrise.... She’d not risk the bridge—but swim across below it.... Perhaps if Gilly hated the dark so he wouldn’t stay where she had left him. “Saint Helena Island,” she said suddenly, out loud. She had heard lots of talk about Saint Helena—two nights farther away—maybe three—thousands of niggers there—lodge members—if she could get there and tell a lodge sister that she was a “Vestal Virgin” they’d hide her sure. The “Virgins” always stood together—even their own men couldn’t find out their secrets.... When dark came on and Gilly couldn’t see the stars—only black water—what then.... Yes, the “Virgins” always stuck up for each other. She remembered once when—He’d be so frightened maybe he’d break loose. In the hot sunlight Hagar’s blood was suddenly chill. She mopped her face with the bandana. Then she refilled and lighted her pipe. The Reverend Grayson knew what he was talking about. He had said right out in church that spirits couldn’t walk. Even old Maum Vina believed that—and she had been almost a conjure woman herself with her herbs, and her money in the road. She would think about the Reverend awhile.... He always wore that shroud.... Yes, Gilly would forget that she had saved his life once.... He’d only remember that she had strangled him and left him with his eyes full of black water.

The Reverend—the Reverend—— Hagar made a desperate effort to visualise him, but his face eluded her—he was only a column of whiteness against a wall that had a cross painted on it. What had he said that day when he took Maum Vina’s hope away from her?... Spirits only lived in heaven or hell.... That was it. The terror that had been pressing in upon her was suddenly dissipated. Again her mind was a clean blank. She got to her feet and moved about the island, stretched her limbs, and again became conscious of the hazy sunlight that beat down upon her.

She saw that the sun was directly overhead, and she realised that she was hungry. Opening her lunch she ate heartily of her cornbread and cold meat, then lay on her belly and drank a few swallows from the side of the island where the water was clearest. A sense of well-being pervaded her body. Why worry? She’d be on Edisto by to-morrow morning. Likely as not they would never find Bluton and think he had gone away. Then Lissa would always be safe. Some day, a long time off, she might even get back and see Mamba again and hear all about Lissa from her. She stretched her length on the grass, and presently, in the steamy narcotic noon heat, she dropped into sleep.

She saw Bluton turn slowly over in the mud. She saw the rigid knee and elbow joints give and the man stand upright. Then she saw him following her path through the swamp, but without effort, and this was strange, for his eyes were blind with swamp ooze. Briers that had impeded her did not detain him. He parted the vines and thrust his face into the clearing. She opened her eyes in a stare. And there he was. After the passage of an indeterminable space of time, the apparition faded.

Hagar was terrified, but she knew what she would have to do before she proceeded on her way. Fighting mosquitoes with tobacco smoke and flailing arms, she retraced her steps and with incredible labour of body and agony of spirit dragged the corpse to the island. Rigor mortis was passing, and Hagar composed the limbs decently, and bathed the face and eyes with her handkerchief. Then, leaving it gazing up into the open sky, she set off for the outer edge of the swamp.

Her spirit soared, her step became light and sure. It seemed that only now was she free of the actual physical incubus. She stretched her arms wide and straightened her broad shoulders. Gilly would rest easy now with the sun in his face all day and the stars keeping him company at night. She was shed of him at last—free.

She made surprisingly good time, and it was still afternoon when she noticed that the trees before her were no longer a solid wall but showed thin places where the light filtered through from the open fields beyond. She was in splendid trim for the journey, her senses keen, her muscles vigorous. In contrast to the depression of the morning she waited in excited anticipation for the coming of night.

Out beyond the trees, where the sun still lay heavy and warm, an abominable mongrel hound rolled over in a broom-straw field, yawned, lifted a fretful hind leg and scratched his mangy ribs. Twenty feet away a cottontail took alarm, hoisted its white ensign astern, and sailed silently away toward the cover of the swamp. A vagrant air caught the scent of the rabbit and trailed it past the nostrils of the somnolent cur. The animal raised its muzzle and tongued, long and quaveringly. From a neighbouring hamlet half a dozen answers sounded, bell-like in the heavy silence, and the broom straw commenced to sway to the threshing of excited tails.

With her confidence at its height, Hagar heard them coming. An icy hand seized her heart, contracted about it, and her blood crawled frozen through her veins. Dogs! A primal terror that was proof against argument and reason silenced both and paralysed her brain. The clear, high unceasing rhythm of the tonguing shook along her nerves in waves of exquisite terror. A strange guiding force broke the inertia of her body and worked a subtle change in her appearance. Her nostrils quivered. Her hearing became more acute. She faced the sound and commenced to retreat silently, warily. Her back touched the trunk of a great live oak. She spun around. Then she found herself climbing, reaching always for higher limbs, swinging herself up, panting—trembling. When she reached the top branches she crouched in the heavy foliage and peered down through the leaves and moss.

They were nearer now, and the cry had accelerated until it was a taut rope of sound that had one end in her body and that shortened with every second.

The dogs had gotten Ned. He had been loose for two weeks after he had cut Bluton. He would have got clean away but for the dogs.

The pack passed almost directly beneath her perch. She could scarce retain her hold upon the branches as she peered down. Then she saw it for what it was: the flash of a small tawny body with a bobbing white spot, and the parcel of yelping mongrels.

Slowly reason returned. They could not have found Gilly yet. Nobody knew he had been killed. She took herself in hand and fought the weakness of fear. She became conscious of sunlight about her, sky above, and, just below, the plateau of treetops.

A shadow swept over her, and she raised her eyes. Scarcely twenty feet away she saw a buzzard, the rondure of his belly—the blue-black wings—the baleful, questing eyes. He was not sailing idly, but winging purposefully eastward. Then another and another flashed past with a soft purring sound of wings against air.

A black premonition caused her to turn her head and follow their flight to its destination. She knew in that moment that she had lost. To the eastward, over the spot where the island lay among the trees, the air was black with flying shapes. They sailed in the formation of a waterspout, wide and slow moving at the top, but narrowing and whirling faster and faster as it descended until the base disappeared among the treetops like a pointing finger. She looked westward again and saw the air lanes dotted with still other shapes winging steadily down from the rookery at the western extremity of the swamp.

So Gilly had won. He hadn’t been afraid of the dark after all. What he had in his mind was that she must bring him out into the open where the buzzards could find him and tell Proc Baggart.

Now she knew that it was useless to proceed. The strength of her muscles that could carry her through a race with the living would be unavailing against the cunning of the dead. Gilly had proved that Grayson was wrong.

Her gaze was drawn back to the eastern skyline and the whirling column of wings. In the great emptiness of sky it would be visible for miles. Perhaps already Gilly had been missed and searching parties were hurrying along the trail that she had broken that morning.

Suddenly, there, in the moment of acceptance of the inevitable, a miracle occurred. Somewhere in the inner depths of the woman’s soul, in some remote and secret abiding place, a bolt snapped back, a door opened, and a new courage flooded her being. This was not merely the old force that had always fortified her against physical suffering. It was something radiant that shook through her body in a swift, clean ecstasy. It made her suddenly and astonishingly glad to be there; to wait expectant for a supreme moment of revelation that she knew was coming. All feeling of urgency left her. No need for speed now. No need even for Mamba. She herself would be sufficient for the event. A strange and beautiful sanity lay across her mind like a shaft of light. She turned it this way and that, and many dark and obscure things were made plain to her. She knew that Mamba had been right about Lissa all the time, that she did not matter of herself, except that now, at last, she was going to give her child something of value; something that she could always remember.

Squatting on her limb, with only sky above her and treetops below, her mind turned on Mamba’s plan for her, and she saw its great flaw. The white men would take her, and they would want to know everything in her mind. She might try to hide Lissa away in some dark corner where they could not find her, but she knew that would not avail. She had seen other negroes try concealment, but Baggart and the others had so many ways. Their minds could dig and dance and circle until, at last, out it came. Then suddenly she was upon the answer. Her mind seized upon the idea, turned it over, discarded nonessentials, built logically, beautifully, completely. The moment had come. She was ready.

It was past ten o’clock, and Davy wanted to shut up shop and go home. He was the commissary manager now and he frequently kept open until late hours, especially in fever season, when there were no white folks around and the negroes would gather and talk. Wentworth had agreed to the plan, and Davy had showed with pride that, like most of his ideas, it had a sound commercial value, the sales on “bounce” and candy during the social hour amounting to a tidy sum.

Now the commissary manager commenced to clear his premises by the simple process of moving among the boxes, stools, and barrels upon which his customers were seated and dislodging them forcibly from their perches.

“Git on home, yo’ lazy niggers,” he ordered. “What yo’ t’inks dis is, anyhow—a white gentlemen club?” He called to a negro who was standing in the doorway: “Hang up dem outside shutters, Ben, den come an’ gib me a han’ wid dese no’ ’count niggers.”

But some one was about to enter, and Ben stepped aside to allow her to pass. With one accord the negroes looked up, and there stood Baxter, very dishevelled and appallingly muddy, with bare legs and her skirts tucked up above the knees.

Keen observers all, they were immediately aware of a change in the woman. They had known her as a rather silent person who upon occasions, such as lodge meetings, passed suddenly to the other extreme of temperament and indulged in almost violent bursts of animal spirits. Now, looking into her face, they sensed something new and disturbing. Her heavy features were in repose, but she conveyed an impression of smiling down upon them from a height. Her eyes were wide and unusually bright, and as she crossed the room toward Davy there was immediately evident a new co-ordination of movement that invested her great bulk with a sort of massive dignity and made her appear almost majestic to the mystified onlookers.

When she reached the high counter, she turned her back to it, rested her elbows on it, and stood looking out over the heads of the negroes, who had resumed their seats and were regarding her in watchful silence.

For a long moment she stood so. She did not seem to realise that it was time to shut up the store and go home. She seemed to think that she had all the time in the world. Finally, as though she were not speaking to them at all but to some one who stood at their backs, she put her first, inexplicable question:

“Any ob yo’ folks eber hear ob a nigger killin’ heself by what de white folks calls committin’ suicide?”

Before her, eyes showed white glints here and there. Heads turned as by a common impulse, then faced her quickly again.

A woman’s voice said, “Fuh Gawd’ sake, Baxter, don’t talk dat talk!”

Silence.

Then a man said, “Everybody know nigger nebber kill heself.”

“Why dat is?” Baxter persisted in her strangely impersonal catechism.

“’Cause nigger ain’t worry heself dat much,” came the answer.

“’Tain’t always goin’ be like dat,” Baxter said in a slow musing voice, as though she were thinking aloud. “Time comin’ when nigger goin’ worry jes like white folks, an’ den Gawd goin’ show ’em what to do when he trouble get too deep fur he to wade t’rough.”

The fixed attention of the group broke before a wave of uneasiness. Bodies shifted, and some one started to speak. But now Baxter looked down, and her glance travelled from face to face.

“Anybody seen anyt’ing ob Gilly to-day?” she asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

The tension broke. Several of the negroes laughed nervously. A number of voices were raised in negative answers. But her next question alarmed them again by its irrelevance.

“Anybody seen any buzzard roun’ here to-day?”

Yes, they had all noticed buzzards over the swamp. Somebody had lost a hog, no doubt, or maybe a dead mule had been dragged out there.

Hagar stood apparently debating the matter, her gaze again fixed upon the air over the heads of the negroes. Then with a faint smile she turned to Davy and motioned to a shelf where several dusty account books lay.

“Get down dat oldes’ book, Davy, an’ bring um here.”

The man obeyed and placed it on the counter before her, studying her the while with his bright disturbed eyes.

“Now turn back twelve year ’til yo’ comes to a man by de name Baxter. Ah gots a promise to keep.”

Davy spun the yellow pages, found what he sought, then raised his eyes interrogatively.

“How much he owe when he done get drownded?”

The man peered at the fading pencil scrawl. It was a dollar and a quarter, he informed her.

Hagar drew a ten-dollar bill from her pocket. The yellow-back was an unusual sight in the commissary, and the negroes, their curiosity getting the better of their alarm, crowded forward to see.

Still holding the money, she indicated the large glass jar of “jaw-breakers” on the counter. “An’ how much for dat bottle ob candy?”

“De whole t’ing?” he asked in amazement.

“Sure, de whole t’ing.”

“Well, dere mus’ be two hundred in dere. Dat’ll be two dollar.”

With a broad gesture Hagar lifted the jar, withdrew the stopper, and poured the contents in a cataract of red and white out over the counter.

“Help yo’selves,” she invited.

“An’ now dat keg ob bounce. How much dat?”

Davy, in an incredulous voice, opined that three dollars would pay for it.

“You niggers get to dat keg and fill yo’selves up,” she commanded. “Ah all de time been wanting to gib yo’ a party, but Ah ain’t had no free money till now.”

Slowly they withdrew in the direction of the keg, and Hagar stood looking after them with something of her old childlike wonder in her smile.

She turned back toward Davy. “Poor ole Baxter,” she mused. “Ah done keep yo’ waitin’ a long time, but we’s quits now. An’ Ah ain’t done so bad by yo’ name.” Then she spoke directly to Davy: “What he all come to, Son?”

He computed the account at six dollars and a quarter.

She handed him the bill, and, as he took it, she said with a spurt of fierce and uncontrollable exultation in her voice: “Don’t gimme de change, Son. Take um to de do’ an’ t’row um far an’ high. Ah’s done wid money. Ah’s free now,” then after an almost imperceptible hesitation, added, “free as Gawd.”

The amazed youth looked up, but already the mood had passed. It was as though the Baxter whom he had known, and even the strange creature who had been there a moment before, had gone quietly out and another woman had entered.

She said in an incisive tone of command, “Now get a pen ’n’ paper, an’ take down what Ah say. Time’s passin’, an’ Ah got to be gettin’ along soon.” She raised her voice and called, “Come here, all yo’ niggers. Ah want yo’ to swear to dis writin’ Ah’s goin’ to gib Davy.”

When he was ready she dictated in a clear steady voice, never hesitating for a word, retarded only by the deliberation of the writer.

“Las’ night Ah strangle Gilly Bluton to deat’ wid my two han’. Ah kill um ’cause he use’ always tuh be my man, an’ he git sick ob me an’ t’row me ’way. Dere ain’t nobody dere but me when Ah kill um. Dere ain’t nobody know nuttin’ ’bout um ’cep’ me. Dat’s all. Now sign um Baxter an’ gimme de pen so’s Ah can make de mark.”

The negroes stood goggling at her, petrified into attitudes of incredulity, horror, fear. Davy leaned over the paper like an automaton that had run down, its motive power ceasing while the pen point hovered over the sheet.

Hagar stamped her foot impatiently. “Get on and sign um,” she commanded. “De time’s close now, an’ Ah got to go.”

A woman broke through the circle, pushing the paralysed negroes to right and left. It was old Vina. She was as frightened as any one, but she had courage. She laid hold upon Baxter’s arm and pulled her around.

“Wake up, gal, wake up an’ talk de trut’,” she pleaded. “Dere ain’t been a night sence yo’ come here dat yo’ ain’t slep’ all night in my room.” She turned to the gaping crowd. “Don’t yo’ b’liebe she. Yo’ niggers—ain’t yo’ see she ain’t right in she head?”

Baxter brushed the old woman away like a fly. She was shaken by a storm of passion that flung the circle from her like physical force. They backed away, knowing at last that their first impression when she had entered was right. Baxter had lost her wits. She glared at them and stamped thunderously upon the floor.

“Ah’s talkin’ trut’,” she shouted, “an’ ef any pusson in dis shop say Ah ain’t, Ah’s goin’ make um sorry ’til he done dead.”

She spun around again on Davy and shocked him into action. “Write Baxter.” The pen descended upon the paper and the letters fell from its point in jerky succession: “B A X T E R.” Hagar took the pen from Davy’s fingers and made a firm black cross.

“Now,” she said, “to-morrow yo’ take dat to Proc Baggart an’ tell him Ah sen’ it.”

She dropped the pen, and in the dead silence of the room, it rang a sharp clear note as it struck the counter. Then she turned, and the watchers saw that her passion had passed and she again wore the odd aloofness of expression with which she had entered. She turned her gaze to the door with its square of misty, moonlit night.

“De time’s come,” she said. “So long, eberybody.”

For a moment they saw her, a huge black silhouette set on frosted silver; then she was gone.

Maum Vina’s scream cut the silence and loosed the negroes from their trance. “For Gawd’ sake, stop dat gal,” she shrilled. “She out she head, an’ she goin’ do sheself hahm.”

They jammed through the doorway and scattered out on the piazza.

Only the night was out there; vast and tranquil it lay upon the square of white sand, the pine forests. Above them it was an infinitude of moonstruck mist, its utter silence not even broken by the far whisper of a star. They waited bewildered, not knowing what to do next.

Suddenly from the river came the loud bark of a dog, a single shout, then a confused babel of voices. The negroes broke into a run, and presently they crowded out on the narrow wharf.

Beside the pier, seeming to strain its spars upward, lay a schooner that had been moored there the day before. Its crew were already at the pier head gesticulating and pointing downward.

All afternoon the September spring tide had been pumping its vast burden of water into the low flat river lands, saturating porous marshes and setting the grass tops awash, piling incalculable tons of brine into salt creeks, brimming secret lagoons. Now the great heart that lay somewhere out beyond the moon turned from systole to diastole and called its tide home.

On the pier head the negroes stood in silence and looked down. There was nothing to do—nothing to say. Below them, so close they could have reached down and touched it, the river drummed against the piles. Beneath its surface sleekness the currents writhed and turned like giant muscles under a velvet skin. So fast it sped. An hour, and its crest would be free of the little rivers and out again into the open sea.

Above the metallic roar of the subway a brassy voice shouted “One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street,” and, like a succession of enormous exclamation points flung for emphasis after the words, a series of posts flickered across Lissa’s vision. Gradually the perpendicular bars lessened their speed until finally each exhibited the numerals 125 in black against glaring white. Behind the girl the hurtling darkness fell away. The train shot out into a pool of light and came to rest with a jerk that precipitated her through a newspaper and against a hostile breast. Doors sprang open with mechanical precision, and with a sigh of relief packed white and black broke their enforced common imprisonment, the negroes pouring out on the platform, the whites appropriating their places and regarding their retreating backs with resentment and relief. On the platform the dark mass hesitated for a moment, drew deep breaths, stretched limbs, then, like a breaker that has found the shore, it lifted, caught Lissa up on its crest, hurled her before it up the stairway, and deposited her breathless, but triumphant, on the pavement. Saturday afternoon—her first thrilling week of study under Salinski behind her—his grudging word of praise singing in her ears.

The day was warm, but the sun lacked the torrid pressure that had enervated Lissa during the Southern summers. Over her head the sky was no longer the throbbing cobalt of a Charleston noon, but a thin ultramarine that seemed to lessen the power of gravitation and lift her along with a new buoyance. She swung east in the direction of her home. In her new liberating environment an inherent elegance in her carriage and manner that had impressed her Charleston neighbours as merely amusing lent her distinction and gave her that air of self-assurance which in Harlem differentiates the cosmopolite from the newly arrived provincial. She was clad briefly in dark blue tailored silk. The colour was a concession to Mamba, the brevity to Harlem. A scarf of flamingo red was knotted loosely about her throat, and a small jaunty hat of the same shade fitted closely about her head. Below the dress a rather astonishing length of champagne silk stocking was evident, and, symbolic of her complete emancipation, these terminated in a pair of red high-heeled pumps. She carried a modish vanity case, and a small umbrella in the accenting colour was pendent from one elbow.

With that power to evoke memory which contrast possesses to an even greater extent than similarity, the alien setting switched the girl’s thoughts back to her last eventful night in Charleston. She had been a member of the Grayson family for ten days, and with her faculty for expelling from her mind all that caused her discomfort, the tragedy of Bluton’s death and her hurried departure were already as completely dissociated from her life as a printed story in a book that has been replaced upon its shelf. Out of the experience only one impression remained sharp and actual—Hagar, who in that hour had suddenly materialised out of the characterless parent that it had pleased her to imagine, had taken matters into her own hands, and at the last had surprised her into that overwhelming surrender to maternal love. It was strange that she could feel no horror over her mother’s act. On the contrary, a latent savagery in her own nature caused her to feel a curious pride, a deep sense of sympathy with her mother, and a realisation of a kinship closer even than that which existed between Mamba and herself. Out of the sheltered life that Mamba had provided for her with its dependence upon the protection that civilisation throws about the weaker individual, she had crashed suddenly into conflict with life in the raw, and she had been helpless. During that hour when Bluton had held her captive, and behind the shack the swamp voices had shrilled and wailed in implacable nocturnal conflict, she had had it in her heart to kill, and only the man’s preponderance of strength had kept her fingers from tearing at his throat. Then Hagar had come, terrible in her direct and unfettered simplicity, and had put Bluton beyond the power ever to harm her again. After the years of separation Hagar had stood forth in that one illuminating hour more real, more vividly alive, than Mamba, for all of the old woman’s shrewd planning and untiring devotion. Then, in the moment of parting, had come the climax when the big, inarticulate woman had kissed her hand and she had found herself in her arms. Her reason told her that here was a specific act for which she should be ashamed of her mother, yet by some strange paradox the thought of her was a swift infusion of warmth—a feeling of completeness where before there had been a sense of want—a sudden and inexplicable pride of birth. For the first time in her life she quickened to the realisation of all that Hagar had done for her—the money that she had sent each week for her music—her clothes. And she had never even gone to see her. It made her feel ashamed. “Well,” she told herself, “I’ll be able to make it up to her before long.” Now that Salinski had undertaken her training, and with the money that could be made in New York.

She took the brownstone steps of her new home two at a time. In a vivid flash she saw Mamba’s face wearing its mask of ferocious disapproval. Do you call that being a lady? What the hell! Now she was free—neither a lady of the Broaden set nor a waterfront nigger. Lissa Atkinson with at last a will of her own—nothing behind her, and everything that she wanted from life waiting for her around the next corner.

She let herself into the dim coolness of the hall. In the drawing room a song stopped in the middle of a bar, and Ada Grayson parted the portières and kissed the girl affectionately. With her glasses, her slow, kind smile, she was ridiculously like her husband in appearance. Lissa had liked her from the moment when the three of them had sat together after Saint had left her in the drawing room, and Ada had watched her husband’s face with divining intensity; then, realising that under his words he had really wanted the girl to stay and was not merely submitting to a command of conscience, had taken her into her affections without reservation.

“Now, I sha’n’t detain you, my dear,” Ada told her smilingly. “You’ll find a letter from home on your dresser, and I know you’re anxious for news.”

Her new buoyance lifted Lissa up the stairs with the effortless spring that had brought her down the street and up the front steps. It shot her breezily into the room and across to the dresser, where the letter lay with her name staring boldly up into her face. Then her mood went slack. The air of the room seemed suddenly chill, inhospitable. She picked the letter up gingerly between a slender thumb and index finger. Whose was the bold, disjointed handwriting? It startled her like the shouting of her name by an unfamiliar voice. Slowly, reluctantly, a slender flexible index finger slid beneath the flap. She paused and examined her hand with an impersonal admiration, deliberately putting off the opening of the letter. The colour, neither black nor white, had never before interested her. Now, in contrast with the dead white of the paper against which it lay, it seemed rather lovely to her with its warm bronze tint, its pointed and polished nails that glittered like little blades in the light. Finally she rolled her finger beneath the flap and pried it gently open. She turned the envelope over and shook out a number of newspaper cuttings and a brief note. Her gaze focussed on the signature: Saint Julien de C. Wentworth. It was a moment before she identified the august name with Mamba’s Mr. Saint. Then she read:

The body—sacrifice—the awful clippings with their sharp and uncompromising black type.... The room where she stood had gone chill with warning. Mr. Saint shouldn’t have done that to her. Mamba wouldn’t have let him if she had known. She wasn’t used to pain. Hagar dead. She felt the warmth that had infused her being from her mother’s last kiss slowly ebbing, while a strange numbness took its place. She had a premonition that if she read the clippings she would find herself to blame—would have to accept the responsibility—be answerable for the event. Why not simply accept the facts—death—loss—and destroy the papers that lay defenceless before her, yet which menaced her peace of mind? She should save herself for the sake of her art—Mamba had wanted that—Hagar herself. How could she be expected to sing and be gay with her mind full of trouble?

Still undecided, she lifted the printed strips. One of them dropped face up on the dresser. NEGRESS MURDERS LOVER THEN TAKES OWN LIFE. But that wasn’t so. Her mother had never loved Prince. Now she was impelled to proceed. She commenced to read, her eyes taking in the words and transmitting them to her brain, and all the while her old self in utter panic, flinging the words of a silly song at her, trying to distract her, to get her away to the old protected plane of consciousness. “If you lika me lik I lika you an’ we lika both the same.... Unusual case. A search of old files reveals no other case of suicide in a local negro—had saved Bluton’s life ten years before—I’d like to say, this very day, I’d like to change your name— Evidently the result of a jealous rage followed by remorse.... Under the bamboo tree. A great night that, when she had first realised that she could take an audience—knock them cold—smash of the band—the air full of paper streamers—and, far away, stars out of the open door—Prince!! Las’ night I strangle Gilly Bluton to deat’ wid my two han’. I kill um ’cause he use’ always tuh be my man, an’ he git sick ob me an’ t’row me away. Dere ain’t nobody dere but me when I kill um. Dere ain’t nobody know nuttin’ ’bout um ’cep’ me. (Signed) Baxter. I’d lika to say....”

In a sudden violent synthesis the story before her rushed to completion—assumed form—unity—silencing the indecent irrelevance of the song, confronting her with its tremendous implication: if it hadn’t been for her, Hagar would be alive to-day. After a while, with a conscious physical effort she wrenched her gaze from the words of the confession; then, with deliberate thoroughness, read the clippings one by one and piled them with mechanical exactness before her. The papers had given an unusual amount of space to the commonplace of a negro murder. In spite of its colour, it held the elements of excellent copy—human interest—passion—jealousy—and the culminating touch of the confession, superb in its stark simplicity.

Lissa folded the last strip, placed it upon the others, and stood gazing out over them at nothing that the room contained. Her brain, busy in estimating the cost to herself, told her that she was safe, that so beautifully had Hagar built her plan that at no point could danger touch her. Her mother was known only as Baxter, a vagrant negress who had come to the mines ten years before, had once saved Bluton’s life, and had later, presumably in a fit of jealous rage, destroyed him. But while her mind assimilated these facts, coolly felicitating her upon her escape, upon the final complete erasure of the record of her own origin, an inexplicable tremor seized upon her body, shaking her so that she fell into a chair, seized the arms with her sallow expressive hands, and gripped desperately while the tremor possessed her like the sustained tension of a galvanic current. Presently the seizure abated. Then came weakness as from a protracted illness, and a pang of loneliness and longing that swelled, mounted, and overwhelmed her, flinging her head down upon her arms, and blinding her with a gush of tears.

With every one there is some picture etched into the child mind by the bite of some early and penetrating emotion. It stands there always, isolated, marking the beginning of memory, obscuring lesser subsequent impressions. Up now from under the drifted years this picture flashed into Lissa’s consciousness—a great bruised figure standing in a doorway with a policeman beside it—a strange salty taste upon her child lips where her mother had pressed a farewell kiss. The girl sat waiting. Her tranced gaze had found the window and had escaped the confines of the room into an infinity of sky. Then another picture began to brighten, assume colour, form—a gigantic black woman kneeling in the dirt of the public road, patting her with great clumsy hands, while her body mingled a tang of sweat and phosphate dust with the druggy perfume of roadside honeysuckle. This memory held a poison that she could not at once identify. Then it came—the beginning of a fastidiousness in herself that had turned her away from the great creature who might soil her dress to the cleanness of Mamba’s arms. A gap. A time of things wanted because of a strange loneliness that needed assuaging—a fire in her blood that had driven her in a half-desperate search for the unattainable to the Broadens—the roadhouse dances—the last night with Prince. Her last picture of Hagar, the dominant figure of that insane night looming like destiny over the body of Bluton, taking her in her arms and giving her for one brief moment a sense of refuge, of sudden arrival at some remote and illusory goal. It was strange now that she could not remember a word that her mother had ever said. She imagined her as vast inarticulate power—encompassing love, possessing her all the more now because of her silence.

She saw now with agonising clarity all that Hagar had given, and now that she had gone there would never be anything that she could offer in return. She felt an impulse to wound herself in some way, believing vaguely that pain would expiate her thoughtlessness, her indifference. She closed her hands in a muscular spasm that drove the nails into her tender palms, and imagined a slackening of the grip upon her heart. Now she was fiercely glad that she was alone. For the first time in her life she was glad to be free of Mamba and her indomitable will. The old woman would tell her to look ahead and forget what had happened. Now her only comfort came from sending her thoughts back to the three impressions of her mother, and in a blind search for some way in which she could punish herself for her selfish neglect.

Beyond the window the shortening September day dwindled into twilight. In the street the cooling pavements called the dark children from the serried houses. They swarmed down, noisy as blackbirds, and flung a gay chattering sound up to Lissa’s room. From the two adjacent Elevated lines sounded roar and answering roar as the trains hurtled with mechanical punctuality over the darkening streets. To Lissa they seemed like the tick-tock of a titanic clock dividing the present into minute segments and hurling it into the limbo of the past. On the Avenue the windows of an apartment house lost the red of the sunset, stared blank for a moment, then winked to life again, restless in the blue dusk. But these things that Lissa had loved as symbols of her new life had lost their magic. She sat staring through them into the Carolina Low Country. Once she rose from her chair, got from a bureau drawer the prayer book that Hagar had given her, opened it at the flyleaf with its inscription, then sat again with the volume in her hands.