_new_. Now, let’s see--what can I _borrow_?”
A lace handkerchief, a diamond bar pin, a pair of earrings were
proffered. She chose the bar pin, and its owner unpinned it proudly,
gladly.
“I’ve got blue garters!” exclaimed another girl.
“Give me one, then,” directed Babe. “I’ll trade with you.... There!
That fixes that.”
More babbling, “Hurry! Hurry up!” ... “Listen, are you _sure_ we’ll be
warm enough? Because we can stop at my house, there’s nobody home.”
“Give me that puff, Babe, I’ll powder your back.” “And just to think a
week ago you’d never even met each other!” “Oh, hurry _up_, let’s get
_started_!” “I’m ready.” “So’m I.” “Ready, Babe? You look adorable.”
“Come on, everybody.”
They were gone again, and the dressing room seemed twice as still and
vacant as before.
A minute of grace, during which Mrs. Brady wiped the spilled powder
away with a damp gray rag. Then the door jumped open again. Two
evening gowns appeared and made for the dressing table in a bee line.
Slim tubular gowns they were, one silver, one palest yellow. Yellow
hair went with the silver gown, brown hair with the yellow. The
silver-gowned, yellow-haired girl wore orchids on her shoulder, three
of them, and a flashing bracelet on each fragile wrist. The other girl
looked less prosperous; still, you would rather have looked at her.
Both ignored Mrs. Brady’s cosmetic display as utterly as they ignored
Mrs. Brady, producing full field equipment of their own.
“Well,” said the girl with the orchids, rouging energetically, “how do
you like him?”
“Oh-h--all right.”
“Meaning, ‘Not any,’ hmm? I suspected as much!” The girl with the
orchids turned in her chair and scanned her companion’s profile with
disapproval. “See here, Marilee,” she drawled, “are you going to be a
damn fool _all_ your life?”
“He’s fat,” said Marilee dreamily. “Fat, and--greasy, sort of. I mean,
greasy in his mind. Don’t you know what I mean?”
“I know _one_ thing,” declared the girl with orchids. “I know Who
He Is! And if I were you, that’s all I’d need to know. _Under the
circumstances._”
The last three words, stressed meaningly, affected the girl called
Marilee curiously. She grew grave. Her lips and lashes drooped. For
some seconds she sat frowning a little, breaking a black-sheathed
lipstick in two and fitting it together again.
“She’s worse,” she said finally, low.
“Worse?”
Marilee nodded.
“Well,” said the girl with orchids, “there you are. It’s the climate.
She’ll never be anything _but_ worse, if she doesn’t get away. Out
West, or somewhere.”
“I know,” murmured Marilee.
The other girl opened a tin of eye shadow. “Of course,” she said drily,
“suit yourself. She’s not _my_ sister.”
Marilee said nothing. Quiet she sat, breaking the lipstick, mending it,
breaking it.
“Oh, well,” she breathed finally, wearily, and straightened up. She
propped her elbows on the plate-glass dressing-table top and leaned
toward the mirror, and with the lipstick she began to make her
coral-pink mouth very red and gay and reckless and alluring.
* * * * *
Nightly at one o’clock Vane and Moreno dance for the Club Français.
They dance a tango, they dance a waltz; then, by way of encore, they do
a Black Bottom, and a trick of their own called the Wheel. They dance
for twenty, thirty minutes. And while they dance you do not leave your
table--for this is what you came to see. Vane and Moreno. The New York
thrill. The sole justification for the five-dollar couvert extorted by
Billy Costello.
From one until half-past, then, was Mrs. Brady’s recess. She had been
looking forward to it all the evening long. When it began--when the
opening chords of the tango music sounded stirringly from the room
outside--Mrs. Brady brightened. With a right good will she sped the
parting guests.
Alone, she unlocked her cupboard and took out her magazine--the
magazine she had bought three hours before. Heaving a great breath of
relief and satisfaction, she plumped herself on the couch and fingered
the pages. Immediately she was absorbed, her eyes drinking up printed
lines, her lips moving soundlessly.
The magazine was Mrs. Brady’s favourite. Its stories were true stories,
taken from life (so the editor said); and to Mrs. Brady they were live,
vivid threads in the dull, drab pattern of her night.
SINGING WOMAN
BY ADA JACK CARVER
From _Harper’s_
Little by little the Joyous Coast was changing.
The old rutted dirt road that fringed the Cane had been abandoned.
The highways cut through the swamps and marshy lands and fields full
of corn and refused to follow the whim of the river. It seemed to old
Henriette relentless and terrible. It even ploughed its way through
people’s dooryards, rooting up ancient landmarks: oaks and chinas
and gnarled crêpe myrtles, their branches bowed to the earth with
bloom--trees under which Henriette in her day had been courted and won.
Isle Brevelle, where the French mulattoes live, is not lonely and
strange as is an island lost in the sea. With the river curving about
it, it is like a maid in the arms of a lover who woos her forever:
“_Lie still, Adored One. Are my arms not around you? Do you not feel
the beat of my heart? Behold the gifts I have brought, the fruit and
the flowers I lay at your feet. You are round and shining like the sun,
more beautiful than the day_----”
The young people on Isle Brevelle liked the changing order, the feeling
of unrest and impatience. Now, in the long summer evenings they could
get in cars and go to town, to see the sights; or take in the coloured
picture show up on the hill. “_Mais non_, we don’t speak to them
niggers,” they assured old Henriette. “We don’t have nothing to do with
them black folks.”
But all this saddened Henriette. For generations now her people had
guarded the blood in their veins. Ignored by the whites, ignoring
and scorning the blacks, they had kept themselves to themselves. But
now there was change all about them. Something was in the air.... In
her black spreading skirts, with her black kerchief about her head,
Henriette sat on the gallery and watched the gravelled road that was
straight and white and went on and on, taking the young folks with
it.... People didn’t die, either, like they used to do, properly in
their beds, with time to receive the sacrament and be shrived for their
sins. They died just any and everywhere, bumped off by trains or the
automobiles that ploughed by on the highway. No wonder the buryings
were often hurried, unworthy affairs, without bell or book; to say
nothing of singing woman!
Henriette and her crony, fat old Josephine Remon, were the only singing
women left on Isle Brevelle. Time was when a singing woman was as
necessary as a priest, when no one who was anything could be buried
without a professional mourner. In those days Henriette and Josephine
were looked up to and respected: the place of honour at table, the best
seat by the fireside, the most desirable pew in the church. Finally,
instead of being sought after, a wailing woman had to offer her
services. Nowadays people seemed to have lost the fear, the dignity of
death.
It was the same way with midwifery. Young women nowadays engaged
trained nurses, or went to town to the hospitals to have their babies.
Nowadays people didn’t care _how_ they died or were born. They just
came in and went out of the world, any old way.... All this troubled
Henriette, and she sat in her corner and mumbled and grumbled to God
about it, “Look like nothing ain’t right, not what it used to be....”
It had been nearly ten years now since Henriette had wailed for a
funeral. Josephine had had the last one, when old Madame Rivet died,
six years ago. That made ninety-eight for Josephine and ninety-nine for
herself. She was one funeral ahead. How proud she was of her record!
She, Henriette, had sung for more buryings than any singing woman in
the parish. Of course, old Josephine ran her a mighty close second.
Henriette kept an account of her own and Josephine’s funerals, in a
little black memorandum book locked up in her armoire. On one page was
her own name, Henriette; and underneath it ninety-nine crosses in neat
little rows of five. On the opposite page was Josephine’s name, and
beneath it ninety-eight crosses, in neat little rows of five. Well,
they had served Death long and faithfully, she and Josephine; where
Death had gone they had followed.... Time was, when, as a special
treat, Henriette would take out her funeral book and name the crosses:
“This one was Marie Lombard, and this one Celeste, her daughter. Here
was Henri, what died the time the cholera come, in 1860.”
Now no one ever thought of Henriette’s funeral book. Six years, since
Madame Rivet died, it had lain in her armoire. Sometimes she wondered
sadly if she would ever wail again. For on Isle Brevelle there was
but one person left who, when he died, would want a wailing woman.
This person was Toni Philbert, the only soul on Isle Brevelle older
than Henriette. Toni and Henriette and Josephine had been young folks
together. Now it had got to be a sort of game between the two women as
to who would get Toni when Toni died. “If I get Toni,” Henriette would
say, “me, I’ll have two more crosses than you. I’ll have a hundred.”
And Josephine, sitting fat in her chair, would chuckle, “_Mais non_,
and if I get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”
Toni himself, an old, old man, sans teeth, sans everything, was pleased
with the fuss they made over him. Sometimes he would joke with them
when he met them at church. “Well, well, old uns. I’m here yet. Hee!
Hee! I’ll outlive both you girls. Just wait--me, I show you!”
* * * * *
The days on Isle Brevelle were long and filled with the drowsy chatter
of ducks and fat red hens. Henriette’s prayers for those in purgatory
took up part of the time. But a person can’t pray forever! Nothing to
do but sit and think of the past, and of death and dying. Henriette
had always, even when a child, known something lovely and secret about
death. What it was she could not have told; but her knowledge made
her a good wailing woman. She minded the time, long ago, when the
husband of Rose, Toni’s daughter, died and left Rose a widow. Such a
pretty slip of a thing and so white in her sorrow! Henriette had, of
course, done her duty to the dead; she had wailed and sung and beat
the earth: “_Under a tree by the river I saw them digging a young
grave. Stricken one, desired of Heaven, your eyes that will not look
at me--what do they see? How long before I can go to you, as I used to
go?... down by the water where the reeds are singing...._” But after
the funeral (Mother forgive her!), she had gone back to comfort Rose,
and unsay all she had said. “Look, Rose, honey, don’t take on so.
A girl as fresh and sweet as you! Look, he is happy. And the world
is full of lovers....” At Rose’s door grew the lily called “widow’s
tear”--“widow’s tear” because the drop of dew in its heart dries so
quickly when the broad, warm sun comes out....
Well, who should know more about death than she, Henriette ... she who
had buried three husbands?
Sometimes when the weather was fine, and the sun not too hot or too
bright, old Henriette would put on a clean “josie,” and take her
stick and hobble down to Josephine’s house to sit and talk of old
times. She would get one of her grandchildren to help her down in the
ditch, beside the highroad, where she insisted on walking to avoid the
automobiles. When there had been rain Henriette got her feet all wet
and muddy, down in the ditch that way. When the weather was dry the
automobiles, shrieking by, sprayed her from head to foot with a fine
white dust. Sometimes she got into nettles, or cockleburs or ants. And
once a rattlesnake had glided across her path. Her grandchildren, who
loved her, were dismayed and indignant. “Ain’t you ’shame, Gran’mamma,
walking down in the ditch! How come you don’t let us take you to
Josephine’s in the car?” But Henriette was afraid of cars. “It ain’t
far. I ruther walk.”
Josephine was always glad to see her. She would grunt and grumble and
fetch out another shuck-bottomed chair. Then Josephine would make
coffee. Josephine was rich. She owned her house and a little store
that her son-in-law managed; and her married children lived with her,
not she with them. She was very, very fat, what with easy living. How
the two old women would gossip, the pleasant air stirred with their
palmetto fans. Now in “American,” now in French; talk, talk, talk,
talk. “Ain’t your tongues ever run down?” Josephine’s daughters-in-law
would ask, laughing but respectful.
What grand living and dying there used to be, back in steamboat days!
It was like recalling a wedding festival or a Mardi Gras to look back
to the yellow-fever scare of 1890. A funeral every day, and sometimes
two. She and Josephine had had their hands full.... Shucks! the land
was too healthy now, what with draining the swamps and such. The people
were getting too uppity, outwitting death like that. Good thing after
all that the automobiles bumped some of them off, else they never
would quit the earth. What if some day folks should rise up and simply
refuse to die! Well, what would God the Father have to say about that?
Sometimes Henriette and Josephine would crack mild little jokes,
slapping at the flies with their untiring fans. “I seen Toni last week,
at the church. He’s looking feeble.” “_Mais non!_” (A cackle.) “He
ain’t here for long.” Sometimes a shrill and sudden chorus of locusts
swelled out of Josephine’s trees, and was gone. A sure sign of death.
And the two old women would cross themselves. “I wonder who it is
_this_ time!”
But after all, what did it matter? Some young fool or other run down by
an automobile. Some boy shot at the dance hall, over some girl. Whoever
it was wouldn’t want _them_. The only person on Isle Brevelle who would
want a singing woman was Toni, old Toni Philbert, who for nearly twenty
years, had had one foot in the grave. Looked like he meant to hang on
to the earth forever and ever, amen. He had always been like that, a
lover of life and living. Heylaw! What a lad old Toni used to be!...
What a way with the girls!
* * * * *
It was on a sultry August day that Toni Philbert had a stroke.
Henriette’s grandson came in and told her about it. “I hear tell down
at the store that Toni is mighty low. He can’t last very long, they
tell me.”
Henriette was excited. So Toni was sick, very low! She gulped down some
coffee and got her stick, and set out for Josephine’s house, walking
down in the ditch. She was so heavy with news she could scarcely
breathe. So Toni was on his deathbed.... Thoughts of Toni came to
her from the long-ago years.... The August sun was veiled in a mist
from the river. Already the cottonwoods were changing colour, and the
goldenrod was in bloom. Henriette crowded close into the dusty bushes
as an automobile flashed past above her on the highroad. So Toni was
dying! Well, sometimes she might forget how many grandchildren she
had; sometimes she forgot her age, or what year it was, this and that.
But she would never forget the time that Toni had kissed her, nor the
dress she had worn when he did it, long, long ago. Little enough she
had thought of death or singing for death in those days, sitting under
the trees by the river in a pink-sprigged challis. What a gallant,
insolent lad he had been, old Toni! Of course, he had kissed every
girl on the island. But hers was a sort of a special kiss, she had
always felt. She was a slim, pretty, green-eyed thing, just turned
seventeen.... Old Henriette groped along, catching against the bushes
and the tumbleweeds at her feet. That was in 1852, long ’fore the
war.... Old Henriette had warts on her cheeks. “Frogs put ’em there,”
she sometimes croaked to curious children. “Toadfrogs, out in the
swamp.” But in those days, when Toni had kissed her, her cheeks were
yellow and smooth. Toni had led her down to the river to look at
herself. “A minute ago, Henriette, your face was a yellow lily. And
now--look!--it’s a rose!”
Ah, well, poor Toni was dying! Which one would he want to sing for him,
herself or old Josephine? Henriette wondered if Josephine had had any
“news.” ... She stopped, heavy with fear. Suppose Josephine had been
“asked?” She began to hurry a little.... Heylaw! Who was that a-coming,
a-coming through the weeds? She screwed up her eyes and peered. It was
Josephine, hobbling along down in the ditch, so fat she could scarcely
wobble.
The two old women began screeching at each other when they were yet a
great way off, and waving their palmetto fans. “Toni, he’s very sick!
They say that this is the end!” They found a nice spot by the roadside,
among the weeds and overgrown summer flowers. It took them a minute or
two to get settled. How Josephine grunted and took on, trying to sit!
How her hips spread all over the place! Well, Henriette was glad she
was thin and could get about some.... Butter-and-eggs and Jimson weed
grew all around them, giving off rank summer odours. A giant cottonwood
reached its arms between them and the sun.... “Is you heard from Toni
yet?” Henriette asked, all a-tremble. And Josephine said, “No. Is you?”
Just so, when they were young, they had sat and talked of Toni. “Is
you heard from Toni yet?” What a boy he had been for love!... Love?
Death, the enchantress, was after him now. “If _I_ get him,” Henriette
cackled, “I’ll have two more than you.” And Josephine laughed, sitting
fat in the weeds till their purple juice squashed on her clothes.
“_Mais non!_ And if _I_ get him, we’ll be even, Etta, my friend.”
A week went by, and another; and it began to look as if old Toni didn’t
mean to die after all. It was just like Toni to keep death waiting, to
flirt with death like that. He always was a tease: “_Well, my beauty,
my proud one--all in good time. Don’t chafe and paw at the bit...._”
And not a word had Toni said about getting a wailing woman! That was
just like Toni, too, keeping everyone guessing up to the last.
Every night now Henriette got out her funeral book: ninety-nine crosses
for herself. A record any singing woman might be proud of! If only she
could get one more, to round out her final five! If only she could get
Toni. How she would crow over Josephine then: “Me, I got one hundred
crosses. One hundred funerals I’ve sung for....”
One night in early September Henriette, sleepless, lay in her bed.
Against her window the trees, uneasy with autumn, pushed and drew away,
sighing a little. The moon was up, looking drunken and sodden. It was
very warm--good funeral weather, Henriette thought; a fine night for
death, with cape jessamine still in bloom and baby owls in the trees.
Henriette loved hoot owls. She felt they were kin to her, sisters
under the skin. They plied the same trade, she and they. She loved
owls and bats and all webfooted creatures, things that live in a green
underworld. There were sounds on the highway, the chugging of cars; and
into her window flashed the light from an automobile; it sought out the
Virgin Mary, wheeled through the room, and was gone. Up and down the
roads they went, the automobiles full of young folks--clatter-chug,
clatter-chug!--past the unnoticed glory of river and moon and swamp.
How little they considered death, the boys and girls on the highway!
The sickly moon went out; and there was lightning in the south. That
meant the rain was ’way off, hiding in week after next.... Henriette
arose very stealthily and crept outdoors to sit on the gallery, where
it was cooler. Maybe right now old Toni was dying.... Once while she
was sitting there her grandson came and poked his head out the door.
“You better come to bed, gran’mammy. You’ll catch cold out there in
your nightclothes.” But she shook her head and mumbled, “Let me be.”
She began to sing, very low, “_He will die, my beloved, my friend, when
the good round fruit is ripe; when the time of courting is at an end;
when the fields are bare, and the sky is black with the low, long cry
of the heron...._”
* * * * *
Two weeks later old Toni passed away. And Toni’s son came to bid
Henriette to the funeral: “Papa, he told us to get you. The funeral’s
to-morrow at ten.”
Henriette, who had moped long ago whenever Toni went off to town, could
not shed a tear now he was dead. She was so excited she could scarcely
speak; she could scarcely put on her clothes. “Come help me fasten
my josie!” she called to her children.... So he had wanted _her_,
after all, poor old Toni. She had her grandson help her down in the
ditch. “Granny!” her grandchildren cried, shocked. “It rained cats and
dogs last night. For shame, a old lady like you, walking down in the
ditches.”
But they couldn’t do anything with her. She couldn’t rest, she said,
until she had seen Josephine. “I must go tell Josie,” she said. “Poor
old Josie----”
When Henriette neared Josephine’s house she began to cackle, her voice
like a reed. But Josephine, sitting in her chair, cut her short. “I
done heard a’ready. You needn’t bother to tell me.... Well, me, I’m
glad for you, Etta.”
Old Josephine sat heavily in her chair, sagging over. How fat and
sloppy she looked! And Henriette wondered what memories passed behind
her lidless old eyes.... Presently Josephine got up and went and made
some coffee. “One hundred for you,” she muttered, “and ninety-eight
for me. Well....” To-day old Josephine laced the coffee with anisette,
peering at Henriette disapprovingly. “You’ll need your strength,”
she said gruffly, deep in her throat. “Getting your feet all wet
that-a-way. You ought to be ‘shame’, at your age.”
But Henriette smiled. She knew Josephine was trying to dull her own
disappointment; she knew that Josephine was low in her mind. Henriette
drank of the hot, fragrant coffee. On either side of Josephine’s steps
the bunched-up rosettes of the altheas were very pink in the sunshine;
and the red yucca shook out its pretty, globular, rain-filled bells....
Henriette didn’t stay very long. “I got lots to do. I got to be up
bright and early,” she said.
But in the morning, when Henriette awakened, she found that something
terrible had happened to her voice. It was gone; she could not speak.
Her grandchildren crowded about her bed, concerned and anxious--an old
woman is frail as glass! “You see what we told you, Gran’mammy! You got
no call yesterday, getting het up and excited just because old Toni is
dead and they want you to sing for his funeral. And didn’t we tell you
stay out that ditch? Walking around in water, just like a duck, at your
age.”
They scolded and fussed and fumed and put warm flannels on her throat.
They gave her a toddy. But it did no good. Her throat hurt, and when
she opened her mouth she croaked like a frog--she who in her wailing
had had as many stops to her voice as a sounding organ.... “Poor
Gran’mammy,” her children said. “Now she can’t sing. And Josephine’ll
have to go and wail for old Toni’s funeral.” Henriette lay and moaned a
little. If she could only cry as children cry, in her disappointment.
But the tears wouldn’t come. They had all dried up long ago.
At dusk the family returned from the burying. But out of respect for
her feelings, as Henriette knew, they forbore to talk of the funeral
and of how nice Josephine had sung and “carried on.” They merely said,
“Josephine was so fat they had to hold her, to keep her from tumbling
down in the grave.” But when she thought no one was looking Henriette
took her funeral book from under her pillow and made a crossmark under
Josephine’s name. Now they were even. Her old hands shook and one
yellow tear rolled out of one eye. “Poor Gran’mamma,” her children
said, in whispers. “Poor old Granny....”