NINETY-NINE NEGROES
Peggy and Elizabeth were lying on the beach in their bathing suits.
Peggy had hollowed out a careful seat in the sand, and built arm rests
and a slanting support for the head, which she was trying to recline on
and enjoy. Elizabeth, who had made no such elaborate preparations for
relaxation, was really comfortable. She was wearing a black mohair suit
with a patent leather belt and silk stockings, and a blue rubber cap put
on with great care, so that tendrils of soft brown hair framed her face.
Peggy wore a rubber diving cap that made her look as if she had been
scalped, but her blue jersey suit was trimmed with blue and green
stripes and slashed up the side and laced fetchingly.
"Did you get your birthday wish, or did you wish for a handsome husband
in the sweet bye and bye?" Peggy asked, lazily. "I always wish for
things that will happen right away, because I can't stand the strain of
not knowing whether I'm going to get them or not."
"I didn't wish to get anything. I wished to be something. I can't tell
yet whether I'm going to succeed in being it."
"Oh, I know--occasions like that always make you feel noble, but I hate
to waste a wish on wanting to be a better girl. You can't tell your
wish, and if you don't, there's nobody that can judge whether you've got
it or not."
"Can't we judge for ourselves?"
"I suppose we can, but it's kind of embarrassing to award yourself
prizes for virtue."
"I know it, but in a kind of general way you have to keep tabs on your
own piggishness, because you're the only one that can."
"Did you say pig or fig?" Peggy had all of "Alice in Wonderland" on the
tip of her tongue.
"I said pig, but I guess prig was what I meant, really. You're not a
prig--but I am."
"Well, speaking of wishes," Peggy said, "do you know the very latest way
of telling who you'll marry? You count ninety-nine niggers, twenty-seven
white horses, and three red-heads, and then the next man you shake hands
with, you'll marry. Let's begin and do it. I've been meaning to for a
long time, but I wanted to wait until I had somebody to do it with.
Those things are not so much fun alone. Kindly remove that inquisitive
sand flea from my back. Oh! Ouch! Lots of people claim they don't bite."
Elizabeth took the offender between thumb and forefinger.
"He's a funny looking beastie," she said. "He's got a kind of solemn,
long face."
"I think he looks interrupted," Peggy said. "I guess he liked my
flavour. Shall we start counting to-day?"
"There aren't many Negroes on the Cape, unless you count Portuguese."
"There are two kinds of Portuguese--black Portuguese and white
Portuguese. We'll have to count the black ones. My mother once went to
the Azores--that's inhabited by Portuguese, you know--she says that the
high-class women all wear a kind of nun's costume, with a huge black
head-dress made exactly like a pea-pod, and they are all quite
light-skinned in spite of their black hair and eyes. Well, let's go in
swimming."
Elizabeth swam her hundred strokes, and then stood breast high, watching
Peggy's fearless performance as that young person displayed all the
latest spectacular swimming feats, diving and wallowing and spouting
like a young whale. The raft, which was usually rocking in at least
seven feet of water, had at first filled Elizabeth with terror, but
Peggy's adventurous spirit was beginning to animate her, and she
followed courageously when Peggy cried, "Now, the raft," and climbed up
its slippery sides with very little hesitation.
"You're an amphibious animal," Elizabeth said. "I don't just know what
kind, but I do know what your mind is like--the way it flies around, up
one thing and down another. It's exactly like a squirrel."
"I don't know whether that's a compliment or not. Look who's here,
Elizabeth. A little fish, see. A perfectly good fish. I wonder how he
got here."
"Is he dead?" Elizabeth asked, shrinking a little.
"He's either dead or sleeping. I think he's alive. He hasn't any eyes,
that's his trouble. Let's put him back in the water--but let's wish on
him first."
"Wait a minute," Elizabeth cried. "I know a perfectly lovely poem out of
the Kipling book. I'll try it on the poor little thing.
"Little blind fish, thou art marvelous wise.
Little blind fish, who put out thine eyes?
Open thy eyes, while I whisper my wish;
Bring me a lover, thou little blind fish."
"He couldn't very well open his eyes, on account of never having any,
but I guess he got the general idea. Back you go into the water, you
little blind fish."
"You wish, too."
"I did--one of my next week wishes. You know how they tell your fortune
with cards. 'What you expect, What you don't expect, What's sure to come
true. Next week.' My wishes are all on that principle. There goes
fishie, swimming away for dear life."
"Bring me a lover, thou little blind fish." The raft was rocking gently
under a fleece-lined sky, and the water was blue-green and full of
little thrills and ripples. Peggy took off her cap, and let her black
hair stream on the breeze.
"Have you ever thought much about lovers?" Elizabeth said.
Peggy blushed. "Have you?"
"Not about my own. That is, I mean not about anybody I ever knew or saw,
but have you ever thought about anybody else having a lover? Any
relation of yours?"
"About Ruthie, yes, but I don't believe she would ever really care about
that. Except in a very friendly way. All the engaged people I ever knew
were so mushy! I can't imagine Ruth being mushy."
"I never think about the engaged people I know. That isn't what I call
being engaged--the way people _are_ engaged. I always think of the way
people in books get engaged, and that makes it easier to imagine."
"Yes, it does. That would be the only way Ruth would ever do it. But I
don't think she would."
"Do you think she would be the kind of girl to get engaged by letter?"
"Well, I don't know. I don't like to think about her getting engaged.
She's too useful around the house. You wouldn't like to think of your
brother being engaged, would you?"
"I might, if he were very unhappy."
"Well, don't you worry about your brother being unhappy. The thing about
being grown up is that you can do just about what you please. If a man
wants to get married, he can do it, when he's as old as that."
"There might be things to prevent him--health and things."
"Say, I wouldn't worry about my brother and any girl if I were you. He
isn't the marrying kind. I heard Sister tell Mother that. Mother was
quizzing her, I guess; you know how mothers are about this suitor
proposition. Well, Ruth said that John Swift was the one man she knew
that was perfectly satisfied to be a friend, and a good friend to a
girl, and that he had told her so. She said she had a perfectly
tranquil, lovely friendship with him."
"Oh, dear!" Elizabeth thought.
"Buddy has got a very beautiful nature," she said aloud. "I think a girl
of his own age would like him very much, and he would make a good friend
to her."
"Ruth would make the best little friend in the world. I think friendship
is much more beautiful than love. I don't think I should altogether like
it, if my sister and your brother were the other kind, and wanted to
behave, well, you know--that way. Would you?"
"I don't know," said Elizabeth, faintly.
On the way home she was very silent, while Peggy chattered, but at her
own gate she looked at her friend speculatively.
"Do you know, Peggy," she said, "that there are ways in which I feel a
whole lot older than you are?"
"Are there?" said Peggy, uncertainly. "Look, Elizabeth, there's the
third Negro. I'll bet we'll really get our fate settled before the
summer is over."
That afternoon Elizabeth took her knitting--she was making a scarf for
Buddy, who had demanded one to bind himself round, soldier fashion,
during the period of his anticipated convalescence on Cape Cod--and sat
in Grandfather's chair by the living-room window. Her grandmother was
darning stockings on the other side of the branching fern. Elizabeth's
knitting would have progressed more rapidly if she had not been keeping
a sharp eye on the street, in order that no Negroes should escape her.
"Did you ever do any stunts to see who you would marry?" she asked her
grandmother.
"My sister and I used to hang horseshoes over the door, and the first
one that passed under them was supposed to be the one we was going to
marry."
"Did somebody pass under?"
"We did it a good many times. I remember one time we did it, and the
first one that passed under was to be my husband, and the second was to
be Alviry's. The first one turned out to be young Pork Joe, who was one
o' the unlikeliest boys that ever put his waistcoat on hind-side before;
he never would dress himself proper. I was pretty well discouraged at
the idea of young Pork Joe for a husband, but Alviry she made me hang
around watching for her beau to turn up, and lo and behold the very next
person to set foot over that threshold was your grandfather. I thought I
felt bad enough before, but when I saw John Swift's shoulders thrusting
themselves through that door frame, I just bolted off upstairs and had a
good cry. Alviry she wasn't pleased, either. She had her eye on Martin
Nickerson at the time."
"Maybe it was the second one you were to marry, and the first didn't
count. Who was young Pork Joe?"
"Old Pork Joe's son. He used to keep pigs to sell, and so they finally
got calling him that."
"The way they call the plumber Pump Peter. I think Cape Cod is the
funniest place."
"It ain't so different from other places."
"In other places you don't associate so much with--the baker and the
butcher."
"Maybe they ain't so well worth associating with."
"My friend Jeanie Forsyth is a direct descendant from the _Mayflower_."
"Well, so're you. Don't you know it?"
"Have we really got _Mayflower_ blood?"
"Those old pewter spoons on the dining-room mantle, that you was
examining the other day, was made from a mold that Peregrine White
brought over on the _Mayflower_. My mother was a White, you know."
"I didn't know. I guess I don't know much about anything, Grandmother."
"Live and learn. Babies ain't born with any great amount of contrivance,
nor yet much of an idea of what's what."
"I've learned a lot since I've been down here."
"You ain't so sure as you was about the way things was meant to be. At
first, we're pretty sure that things was meant to be just one way, and
that way the one we've picked out. After living along a while, we get to
realize that the other feller has his way, too. Then we have to kinder
arrange our ideas again."
"Buddy thinks I'm a snob."
"Well, what do you think?"
"I--I think Buddy's right."
"Well, he ain't going to be right very long if you _think_ so. When I
was growing up, I used to have a stylish city friend that I spent a good
deal of time with. She was the daughter of the biggest man we had had
from these parts, and she used to spend her summers at home, in the big
white house on Main Street--the one with the pillars and the cedar
hedge, just opposite the post office. She used to get her dresses from
Paris, and let me make copies of them, too, and she was courted by a
member of the governor's staff. I don't know as she ever had a
brother-in-law that was a count----"
"Oh, Grandmother!"
"Well, let Grandma have her joke--as long as she can keep Grandpa quiet.
Well, when we was little girls, she used to love to go to my grandma's
with me."
"Not Grandmother Elspeth's?"
"No, my grandmother; Grandmother White. Well, Mary's folks mostly lived
away from here, and most of the ways and doings of home folks was a
novelty to her. She liked to get Grandma telling about old times on Cape
Cod. You see, when Grandmother was a little girl, her mother was
bedridden, and the whole family was taken care of by her and a
neighbour's daughter, a little girl called Hopey D.--I never knew what
the rest of her name was. As fast as the babies come along, they was put
in the old settee cradle, and she and Hopey used to have to change
places sitting and rocking there all the time they wasn't doing
housework. That's the same settee you got in your room upstairs. Grandma
used to tell how the fire would go out in the old fireplace, on account
of she and Hopey not keeping it going right. Those were the days before
matches, you know; and she used to have to run through the woods to the
nearest neighbour, who lived a mile away, to borrow fire and bring it
home in a swinging pail."
"Oh," Elizabeth cried. "Oh, that doesn't seem possible. I thought that
the days before matches were way back in Columbus's time, or something."
"No. I've got a piece o' flint and a tinder box upstairs somewhere that
came from Grandma's. Supposing you had to strike a spark from a piece o'
flint before you could get the kettle to boiling."
"Supposing I had a bedridden mother, like poor Grandma White. Oh, I hope
that Hopey D. was a nice little girl, and that she and great--no,
great-great-grandmother had good times together."
"When Grandma used to tell all those old stories to my stylish friend,
do you know how I felt? I felt mortified at having a grandma that wasn't
more high toned, and I used to try to get Mary not to go there, so's we
wouldn't have no more talk about running after a pail of fire, and
rocking babies on the old settee and such."
Elizabeth bent her head over her knitting, and the colour mounted slowly
to her forehead, but she did not speak.
"So you see, girl nature is pretty much girl nature, wherever you find
it."
"I was going to write a letter to-night, Grandmother," Elizabeth said,
after a period of silence, "and it wasn't going to be a very nice kind
of a letter, because it--it was going to misrepresent things some. Now,
I am going to write entirely differently, because things you've been
saying have set me to thinking. I'd be willing to show you the letter,
if you thought you ought to see it," she added, anxiously, but her
grandmother only smiled.
"I ain't never very particular about reading other folks' letters," she
said. "I have trouble enough reading those I write myself, and those
that is sent to me."
"All right," Elizabeth said, in a very small voice, "I guess it's going
to be hard enough to write it, anyway." This was the fateful epistle:
DEAR JEANIE:
I want to begin by correcting an impression I was snobby enough
to give you when I first came down here. I wrote you about this
place and my grandparents in an entirely false way. I did it
because I was too proud to own up the truth. I was surprised and
shocked when I got here, to find how things really were. I
hadn't been here since I was a little girl, and then only for
very brief visits. I imagined a kind of Farm de-luxe and a
grandmother in real lace and mitts, and a kind of Lord
Chesterfieldian grandfather, and all the comforts of a château.
Instead, my dear Granddaddy and dearest Grandmother are
just--natives. They murder the President's English, and they sit
around in their shirt sleeves--the former, not the latter--and
they, well, they aren't like anything I've ever known. So I got
started pretending, in my letters to you, and kept right on. The
"car" is an old, rattletrap Ford, and Granddaddy drives it in
his suspenders when he wants to. The chauffeur I sort of gave
you the impression we had is a regular, farm hired man. Our
hired girl sits at the table with us, and she is nice, too. They
are all nice, nice people--nicer than I am. My grandmother is
beautiful looking. I wish you could see her. I didn't care for
any one to see her, for a while. Now, I am getting anxious for
everyone to.
Jeanie, can you understand me or not? I'm just a prig, snob,
liar, and I don't feel fit to live. I don't know what got into
me. I always tell you everything, and now I deliberately did
this awful thing, and I've got something else that I can't tell
you, but that is not my secret.
Can you love me any more? I ask this seriously, because I know
you won't mind my humble origin half as much as the deception. I
knew this all the time, and yet I could not seem to help the way
I was behaving.
I am afraid to read your letter in answer to this, so don't
write me one. Let me hear from you by return mail, but don't say
anything, not much, about this anyway. If you love me, though,
please begin your letter by saying so. I don't deserve you for
my most intimate friend. I've taken a new name. My
great-grandmother's name, and I am going to live up to it. I
took it so to be thoroughly part of my family, and to cultivate
the old-fashioned virtues with. It's
ELSPETH.
P. S.--Call me by it. Everything I told you about my birthday
was so. They did all those beautiful things for me. I slightly
camouflaged details, but it was all the way I said, except that
Judidy _ate_ with us. Aren't I a pig?
ELSPETH again.