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”:
“Sistuh Ca’line, Sistuh Ca’line,
Can’t yo’ dance the peavine?”
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.
“Light in de grabeyahd outshine de sun,
Outshine de sun, outshine de sun,
Light in de grabeyahd outshine de sun,
Way beyon’ de moon.
“My Christian people, hol’ out yo’ light,
Hol’ out yo’ light, hol’ out yo’ light,
My Christian people, hol’ out yo’ light,
Way beyon’ de moon.”
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.
* * * * *
Employing the mincing step and decorous bearing that had become almost
second nature to her, and that she considered in character in a white
folk’s nigger, Mamba took her way downtown. When she had travelled for
twenty minutes over the scorching pavements she turned from Meeting
Street into a narrow lane shadowed by high buildings that led to the
Negro Quarter. Instantly a change was noticeable in her manner. She
dropped the mincing step for a long, slouching stride, and breathed
deeply of the damp coolness that emanated from the lichen-hung wall
above her. A long happy sigh escaped her lips, and her eyes narrowed to
slits of amused insolence. A waterfront nigger now, and able to hold
her own with the best of them.
Wharf smells blew toward her down the narrow alley; sulphurous fumes
from the mud flats, fish from the smacks on the beach. The stench of
a he-goat filled her nostrils. She sniffed it delightedly and looked
about her. Porgy, the crippled beggar, was across the way, his little
goat cart drawn up in a cool archway. He was eating his lunch, and
he paused to hail her. “Do look at Mamba. War yo’ been all dis time,
Sistuh?” “Oh, Ah jes been tuh gib my white folks a little outin’ tuh de
seasho’,” she threw back at him. She slipped on a rotting watermelon
rind, sprawled flat, and came up smiling. An emaciated cur crept from
behind a garbage can and bared his teeth at her. She cursed it with a
deep and fluent affection, and it recognised her kinship with a gay
bark and a snap at her skirt.
Mamba turned south at East Bay and walked along in the shadow of the
tall brick buildings that had once been occupied by the aristocracy
but which had long since forgotten their proud heritage and gone
black. This was home. Everywhere there was colour, sound. That drab
and profound melancholy which settles upon a house of high estate that
has fallen into a white slum was conspicuously lacking here. Where a
shutter had gone it had been replaced with a new one of parrot green
or vermilion. New spots of plaster were daubed with pink or yellow
wash, and that particular tint of cerulean made by the negroes by the
simple and economical process of dropping washing bluing into their
whitewash was splashed lavishly over gateposts and cook-shop fronts.
Nor was there in the faces of the people either the sullen resignation
or the smouldering rebellion of the white who has fallen to slum life.
Here grievances against Fate were forgotten in song. To-morrow would
be time enough to worry. Thefts and loves were casual, frank and gay
affairs. The corrosion of hidden sin did not mark the faces, for the
consciences that might have been sitting in judgment had not yet been
scourged into consciousness. There was only the police. One was caught
and had sinned; one escaped and was innocent. How marvellously simple.
No wonder that even in the noon heat there were song and laughter in
the houses that Mamba passed.
Arriving at a narrow archway between soaring brick structures the old
woman entered and presently emerged into a court, flag-paved and cool
beneath its surrounding walls. Several women looked up from along the
interlacing clotheslines and hailed her. “Well, ef here ain’t Mamba.
How yo’ does, Sistuh?”
“Po’ly,” she replied happily, “berry po’ly, t’ank Gawd. Whar Hagar?”
Two of the women tittered, and the one who had spoken to Mamba
addressed them sharply: “Shet yo’ damn’ wutless mout’.”
Instantly the visitor’s expression changed: “What wrong, she ain’t
drunk again?”
There was silence. Mamba broke out suddenly in a loud bullying voice
that was oddly at variance with the pain in her eyes. “Ah bet Ah goin’
hab tuh tek de hide off dat black debbil. Ah can’t leabe she fuh a week
widout she git drunk.”
She strode to an entrance, stamped up a flight of loose steps, and
kicked open a door. The embalmed remains of many smells rushed out
to greet her. She knew them all, loved them, but above them now
floated the peculiarly rank effluvium of drunkenness. She crossed
the room to the bed. Upon it a huge negress was sprawled. The arms
thrown over the head were muscled like a stevedore’s, and there was
a strange incongruity between the masculine shoulders rising high on
the pillow, and the full, heavy breasts of a woman. The face, dark and
broad-featured, showed no effects of dissipation, but seemed singularly
childish as it lay there in the oblivion of sleep. Below the chest the
body was not ungainly, the swell of the hips scarcely noticeable, and
the legs, slender and powerfully thewed, seemed wholly masculine. A
creature designed by nature to bear her young, then, single-handed,
to wrench their sustenance from a harsh physical environment; an
enormous maternity and the muscles of a fighting male bound together,
and the face of a simple child set in watch over them. A pre-pioneer
type, not versed in the solving of riddles. And here she was in a land
of paradox. Glass in the windows; Christ in His little church two
blocks down the street; the state liquor dispensary across the way; a
policeman on the corner.
Mamba seized the heavy shoulders with her thin fingers and attempted
to shake the inert bulk. Then she crossed to the washstand, returned
with a pitcher, and dashed a quantity of water into the sleeping face.
Slowly the eyes opened, and instantly an observer would have known by
them that the two women were mother and daughter.
Mamba flung herself forward as though in an effort to drive her words
into the dulled brain: “Yo’ dutty houn’. Yo’ done promise’ me not tuh
git drunk while Ah’s gone, an’ now Ah fin’ yo’ like dis. Wake up an’
tell me--whar’s Lissa?”
The woman moved her arm heavily and drew the covers aside, disclosing
a sleeping child of perhaps three years of age. Mamba pounced on the
little form and carried it to the window. The hot afternoon sun poured
its light over the baby’s face, and it opened its eyes. There they were
again, warm, and of that peculiarly live-brown quality so unlike the
eyes of the usual negro, linking the child unmistakably with the other
two occupants of the room.
The baby threw its arms around Mamba’s neck, and she hid her face
against it, muttering softly into its ear, and stroking its skin,
which, unlike either that of its mother or grandmother, was of a light
bronze hue.
Hagar was up now. She lurched ever so slightly as she crossed to the
washstand, filled a dipper with water, and dashed it over herself
careless of where it fell. She shivered, but the shock brought her
tremendous vitality surging back, waking her drugged nerves, stiffening
and co-ordinating her muscles. By the time that she had finished
dressing her hands were steady. She was childishly shamefaced and
repentant. She said: “Ah sorry, Ma. Ah stay straight ’til las’ night.
But when Ah teck de clo’s tuh de boys on de _Pilot Boy_, dey hab plenty
ob licker an’ dey done drunk me. But yo’ can’t say Ah ain’t tek good
care ob Lissa. Ain’t she well an’ fat?”
Mamba’s voice was scornful: “Ain’t yo’ shame ob yo’self, aftuh all Ah
gib up fuh yo’ chile! Here yo’ ain’t gots nuttin’ tuh do, ’cep’ meet de
steamer an’ wash fuh de sailor. Yo’ gots yo’ own home tuh lib in, and
yo’ frien’ roun’ yo’, an’ yo’ gots yo’ baby fuh pet an’ handle. An’
all Ah ax is dat yo’ keep sobuh an’ don’t git lock up in jail. T’ink on
dat, den ’membuh what Ah’s doin’ fuh yo’ baby so she kin hab chance in
de worl’. Leabe my frien’, an’ de talk an’ all, an’ put up wid de damn’
quality w’ite folks.” The strident voice wavered, then rose to a note
of protest. “Ah swear tuh Gawd my belly fair ache from de pure polite.
Some time Ah t’ink dat ef it ain’t fuh dat boy, Saint, Ah’d hab tuh gib
up tryin’ an’ tell ’em all tuh go tuh hell.”
Hagar’s brain had cleared, and she came back promptly with: “Well, ef
dat’s de way yo’ feel, yo’ can’t blame me fuh gittin’ drunk sometime.
Yo’ is talk lot ob talk, but it look tuh me dat yo’ is done lef’ yo’
w’ite folks now an’ is settin’ here. Yo’ ain’t gots so much tuh growl
’bout.”
“Well, Ah’s goin’ back soon’s day gits tuh town.”
Hagar’s lazy contralto laugh sounded: “Sho yo’ is. An’ ain’t Ah sobuh
now? An’ ain’t Lissa fine? Whut done is done. Fergit ’bout it.”
Several women, hearing the laughter and realising that whatever scene
there might have been was over, came in.
Mamba was lolling back in a wrecked rocking chair with the child in her
arms. She called to one of the new arrivals: “Ah gots somet’ing tuh ask
yo’, Sistuh. How much time Jedge Harkness gib yo’ man de las’ time he
put um up?”
“De las’ time?”
“Sho, de las’ time. Ain’t yo’ ’membuh fuh steal dat butts meat out de
freight car?”
“Oh, dat time! Lemme see--he gib um sixty day.”
“Well, den, pull yo’ chair up here an’ lissen tuh dis.”
Then Mamba gave them the story of the judge’s teeth.
The room shook with spontaneous African laughter. Hands slapped backs
and thighs. In the court homecoming men were calling to their women.
The sea-damp evening air swept cool through the open window, and some
one near by was cooking cabbage for supper. For the old woman life’s
tide was at the flood again. Existence had its compensations, after all.
* * * * *
Autumn in Charleston. A keen sweet wind travelling over the roofs,
causing the leaves on the great trees in the Battery gardens to whisper
their valedictories, edging the choppy waves in the bay with white.
Residents returning after the long summer in Flat Rock, White Sulphur,
Europe. Busy housemaids stripping linen pajamas and nightshirts from
the furniture that had been dozing the days away in hot darkness.
Rugs going down. Cedar and camphor in the nostrils. Legaré Street
and the Battery coming to life again. New people appearing here and
there, renting old houses, secretly purchasing antiques, learning to
say “gyarden” and “cyar,” creating the illusion of indigenousness.
Housewives, with an energy that was in itself a fatally alien
admission, hustling a Duncan Phyfe table into the hall behind the
colonial doorway, and searching for a servant sufficiently antique
to appear at home beside the Duncan Phyfe. Very effective, these old
negroes, looking as though they had been “born in the family” meeting
the guest with a Sheffield card tray. And economical too, for they
could be obtained at from five to seven dollars a week, where an
inanimate hautboy would have cost several hundred dollars.
When the Wentworths returned to town they found that the large frame
house that crowded their lot on the south and which had long remained
vacant had been renovated and occupied. Through the open windows came
sounds of irresistible energy being applied to obstinate masses, and a
loud, clear voice rolling its R’s.
Mrs. Wentworth drew on her gloves with an air of resignation.
“Come on, Polly,” she said, “we might as well have it over with.”
“Oh, what’s the use, Mother? We are never really going to know them.
It’s so silly being polite now, then having to snub people later.”
“You are forgetting your manners, my dear. Calling on neighbours and
making them feel at home in our city is one thing; making friends quite
another. Get your gloves, now. This is a formal occasion.”
In an upper room of the house next door Mrs. George J. Atkinson paused
in the middle of her instructions to an aged negro who was assembling a
four-poster. She took the cards that were handed to her by a breathless
maid and ran her finger appraisingly over them. This was evidently not
reassuring. She looked at them closely and found that they were written
in a fine clear hand. “James,” she said in her incisive voice, “who are
the De Chatigny Wentworths?”
The man looked at her from under grizzled eyebrows. After a moment he
said: “Dey is de Wentworths, Miss.”
“Is that all you know? The card says that they are the Wentworths.”
He hastened to set her straight. “Ah ain’t say dat dey is de
Wentworths, Miss. Whut Ah say is dat dey is _de_ Wentworths.” Then,
after a pause during which he looked hopefully toward her for some sign
of understanding, he added, “Dey lib in de little brick house nex’ do’.”
“Oh, she’s the woman who keeps the summer boarding house and has that
silly-looking, long-legged boy.”
She turned to the maid with her abrupt, efficient manner.
“Tell her that I am not at home.”
But the servant had not reached the door before she was stopped. “Wait
a moment. I’ll go down. It is just as well to be on speaking terms with
one’s neighbours. Stay and help James with that bed and come down in
five minutes and say that I am wanted on the telephone.”
When the maid entered the drawing room with the message, the Wentworths
were sitting very erect in their Chinese Chippendale chairs smiling
wooden smiles, and Mrs. George J. Atkinson was doing the talking.
“Just imagine,” she was saying, “taking boarders all summer. And Mrs.
Raymond tells me that you take in fancy sewing too. I must remember
that when I have some work to be done. Yes, really, you must let me ask
you to help me mark my new linens. What is it, Mary? Oh, the telephone.
Yes, in a moment. Oh, must you really go? Well, thank you for calling.
Very neighbourly, I’m sure.”
In the street Mrs. Wentworth said: “Well, that’s done. Let’s forget it.”
But Polly answered in a hard little voice: “Forget nothing! Talking
down to you in that ‘My good woman’ tone of voice. Be a good Christian
and forget if you want to, but I am going to remember.”
The day following the Atkinson call the three Wentworths were together
in their dining room. They had been discussing the matter, and it was
sour on their tongues. Mrs. Wentworth was hatted and gloved for one of
her many errands. “Well, there’s no use dwelling on the ignorance of
other people,” she was remarking. “They simply aren’t our kind. For me
they do not exist. That is all.” She turned to depart, then she gave a
slight start. A stranger had entered from the kitchen door, and stood
silently in the room watching them. “If you are waiting to see Maum
Netta she will be in the kitchen presently,” she told the negress.
“Close the door, please, as you go out.”
But the woman advanced toward the little group and stood looking
from one to the other with the manner of one who has a thrilling and
mysterious secret in her keeping. She was of medium height and weight
and had about her an air of eminent, almost assertive impeccability.
Her dress was covered by a spotless apron, and upon her head was a
white starched cap with a ruffle that shaded her eyes. Her most salient
characteristics were a large mouth with firmly compressed lips, and
a squareness about the lower face that gave it an expression of grim
severity. During a moment of profound silence she stood surveying the
group, then slowly and deliberately she smiled, revealing a double row
of big masculine teeth.
Saint’s voice, long-drawn and incredulous, broke the silence: “Well,
I’ll be damned!”
The visitor bent double in a paroxysm of silent laughter.
“Mamba!” chorused the room.
Polly came immediately to the point: “Where in the world did you get
them, Mamba?”
“A kind gentleman whut lub de nigger gib dem tuh me. Gawd bless um!”
A picture flashed into Saint’s mind: hot summer sky, sand, Judge
Harkness in full flight, and Mamba swinging aboard the Jim Crow car as
it gathered speed. “_Yes_, he did,” he said.
Suddenly the spark of understanding leaped around the circle. Maum
Netta had entered a moment before, and it brought her up standing, with
a look of horrified disapproval. It confounded Mrs. Wentworth with a
simultaneous compulsion to laughter and the obligation to be stern. It
took Saint and Polly and flung them forward on the table in convulsions
of mirth.
Almost immediately Mamba recovered her composure and stood waiting
for the laughter to subside. She was not there to be amusing now.
Four years had gone into building toward this moment; four years of
cajolery, flattery, clowning. That typical gesture, bent double with
hands on her stomach, had been given only as an unmistakable revelation
of an identity to which she was in the very act of bidding good-bye.
She was emerging as a new entity now. The strange assortment of
accessories that had gone into her make-up: cast-off clothing of Mrs.
Wentworth, teeth of a distinguished jurist, manner sedulously copied
from Maum Netta, apron and cap from God knew where, were losing their
separate identities, merging into the new ego that they were destined
in the future to express.
Finally, while the Wentworths watched, the transformation was
accomplished, the last sense of incongruity departed, and Mamba stood
before them re-created in her own conception of the ideal toward which
she had been striving. In some strange manner she seemed to dominate
the little room in which she had until so recently come and gone on
sufferance. She brought a new, compelling element into the atmosphere
that seemed subtly to disturb the ancestral rhythm of thought and
action. The room was very quiet. The abrupt change from hilarity made
the silence seem ominous. Mrs. Wentworth cleared her throat. Polly sat
with a blank, mystified stare. Only Saint seemed to have his bearings,
and looked up with a faint smile into the shadowy eyes under the stiff
cap ruffle.
When Mamba spoke her voice was low and tense. She must have thought her
speech out with care, for there was no hesitation, no hedging. She was
desperately in earnest. The years of palaver were over. These white
people had given her much, but she had been careful to pile up the
countless little uncompensated tasks against this day. The balance was
in her favour. There need be no talk about it. Real white folks did not
need to bargain. She knew and they knew. Now for the accounting.
“Ah gots tuh get uh pay job now, Miss Wentworth. Ah gots tuh get money
fuh somet’ing p’tic’lar. An’ Ah gots tuh fin’ uh white boss whut kin
look attuh my chillen when dey meets dey trouble. Yo’ an’ Mauma here,
yo’ knows Ah ain’t a real house-raise’ nigger, but dese new w’ite folks
whut comin’ tuh Chas’n now, dey ain’t knows de different, an’ dey is
want ole-time house-raise’ nigger whut use’ tuh b’long tuh de quality.
Ah is axin’ yuh now tuh gib me letter an’ say Ah is raise’ wid yo’
fambly.”
“But, Mamba! That would be an untruth,” exclaimed the dumfounded lady.
The old woman leaned forward and looked into her face:
“Ah gots tuh hab um, Miss. Ah gots tuh.”
Mrs. Wentworth studied the figure before her, a strange fragment of
human flotsam that had been seized and animated by this transfiguring
purpose. How little she really knew of Mamba, after all. Where had she
come from? Why had she sought them out?
“Tell me,” she said, “why are you doing this?”
“’Tain’t fuh me, Miss. Ah kin tek care ob Mamba. But time is changin’.
Nigger gots tuh git diff’ent kind ob sense now tuh git long. Ah gots
daughtuh, an’ she gots daughtuh, an’ all-two dem female is born fuh
trouble. Ah gots tuh be ready when de time come.”
“And this granddaughter of yours, how old is she?”
“Yuh ’membuh when Ah fus’ come an’ bring dem flower fuh Little Missie?”
Her listener nodded.
“Dat when she born.”
“Aw, go on and give old Mamba the letter,” urged Saint.
Polly’s eyes were dancing with excitement. “I’ve got it, Mother,”
she cried. “We’ll get her some recommendations and send her to the
Atkinsons. She’s pretty hateful, Mamba, but she’s rich as all get-out,
and she’s dying to be thought somebody. Only, if we fix it up for you,
you must promise to get everything out of her you can.”
“I think that is a disgraceful proposition,” said Mrs. Wentworth. “In
fact, I am so surprised and shocked that I will leave at once and
attend to my business on Broad Street.” She opened the door, then
turned back for a moment, and the three in the room saw the corners of
her mouth twitching irresistibly as she added, “And I want you all to
behave properly while I am gone and do not do anything that you would
be ashamed of.”
She turned to Mamba. “Good-bye, and good luck,” she said. “Remember we
are old friends, and come and see us sometime.”
The old woman gave her one of her looks, so uncanny in their power to
convey emotion. The eyes were a little misty, but behind that there was
laughter. “Gawd bless yo’, Miss,” she said a little shakily. Then she
whirled her skirts in a courtesy, essayed laughter, and ended by wiping
an eye in a corner of her apron.
“Mother’s a dear, but she’s a ’fraid cat,” commented Polly when the
door had closed.
“She’s a brick,” amended Saint as he rummaged for pen, ink, and paper
in the secretary. “All right,” he said a moment later, “let’s go.
What’s your last name? You’ve got to have one in a recommendation, you
know.”
“Whut yo’ say dat lady name?”
“Atkinson.”
“Now, ain’t dat funny. Dat my berry own name. Ain’t yo’ know my pa use’
tuh b’long tuh de Atkinsons? Yes, suh! My ma raise’ wid de Wentworth,
ain’t yo’ ’membuh? But my pa raise wid ole Major Atkinson who use tuh
own fibe t’ousan’ head ob nigger, an’ de bigges’ plantation on de----”
She hesitated for a moment while she weighed the glories of cotton
against the importance of rice, decided on the latter, and closed with
“Cooper Ribbuh.”
* * * * *
Behold Maum Mamba! Observe her well, for you have never seen her
before. It is the month of November, and the two Atkinson children
are playing among the blowing leaves on the Battery. They are nice
red-cheeked youngsters, and they love their Mauma. It is true that they
love her less when their mother is about, and she sits with folded
hands and solemn face watching their every move. But for the most part
the three of them play together unobserved. Then Mauma has been known
to perform miracles. Before the children’s very eyes she has removed
her teeth and, holding them between thumb and forefinger, has snapped
them playfully at a dandelion or leaf. At times she has even allowed
Jack to wear them to scare the Rutledge children until they have run
screaming to their proper nurses on the benches. Oh, what fun! She is
also content to let her prosy contemporaries have a complete monopoly
on Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf, while she tells her charges of glamorous
and terrible things that happen in real life down where the ships come
in. Then there are other moments when they have seen her cast a careful
look about to make sure that she is unobserved, then slip to the street
at the garden’s edge and engage in long conversations with certain low
hucksters and fish venders who may be passing. To Jack, who is eight
years of age and precocious, these moments are particularly valuable,
for he has learned that by approaching stealthily he can enrich his
vocabulary with words that confound his puerile comrades with their
little hells and damns.
Yes, indeed, Mrs. Atkinson has every reason to feel that fortune has
smiled upon her in sending her Mamba.
“Yes, my dear,” she is saying to a friend with whom she is sitting on
the Battery on this particular November afternoon, while the children
play innocently near by and their guardian angel sits watching them
sternly. “Yes, indeed, my dear. We got her through the most marvellous
luck. She belonged to the South Carolina branch of George’s family, you
know, and with that fine old-fashioned loyalty that one encounters all
too seldom in these days, she came and offered herself to us as soon
as she heard that we were in town. And she had splendid letters, too,
that would have placed her anywhere.”
The listener smiles sympathetically. Nothing more is needed. Mrs.
Atkinson continues: “Not many of them left now, and what I say is that
we should treasure those who are; if for no other purpose but to set an
example to the upstart generation of negroes.”
“Yes, indeed,” as Mrs. Atkinson would say. Patience, application,
singleness of purpose have reaped their reward. Behold Maum Mamba on
the Battery on this particular November afternoon and say if she has
not at last arrived.