Over Tilly’s garage a bleak room echoed all day to the rumble and
snorting down-stairs and the singing of the negro washers as they
turned the hose on the cars outside. It was a cheerless square of a
room, punctuated with a bed and a battered table on which lay half a
dozen books--Joe Miller’s “Slow Train thru Arkansas,” “Lucille,” in an
old edition very much annotated in an old-fashioned hand; “The Eyes of
the World,” by Harold Bell Wright, and an ancient prayer-book of the
Church of England with the name Alice Powell and the date 1831 written
on the fly-leaf.
The East, gray when Jelly-bean entered the garage, became a rich and
vivid blue as he turned on his solitary electric light. He snapped it
out again, and going to the window rested his elbows on the sill and
stared into the deepening morning. With the awakening of his emotions,
his first perception was a sense of futility, a dull ache at the utter
grayness of his life. A wall had sprung up suddenly around him hedging
him in, a wall as definite and tangible as the white wall of his bare
room. And with his perception of this wall all that had been the
romance of his existence, the casualness, the light-hearted
improvidence, the miraculous open-handedness of life faded out. The
Jelly-bean strolling up Jackson Street humming a lazy song, known at
every shop and street stand, cropful of easy greeting and local wit,
sad sometimes for only the sake of sadness and the flight of
time--that Jelly-bean was suddenly vanished. The very name was a
reproach, a triviality. With a flood of insight he knew that Merritt
must despise him, that even Nancy’s kiss in the dawn would have
awakened not jealousy but only a contempt for Nancy’s so lowering
herself. And on his part the Jelly-bean had used for her a dingy
subterfuge learned from the garage. He had been her moral laundry; the
stains were his.
As the gray became blue, brightened and filled the room, he crossed to
his bed and threw himself down on it, gripping the edges fiercely.
“I love her,” he cried aloud, “God!”
As he said this something gave way within him like a lump melting in
his throat. The air cleared and became radiant with dawn, and turning
over on his face he began to sob dully into the pillow.
* * * * *
In the sunshine of three o’clock Clark Darrow chugging painfully along
Jackson Street was hailed by the Jelly-bean, who stood on the curb
with his fingers in his vest pockets.
“Hi!” called Clark, bringing his Ford to an astonishing stop
alongside. “Just get up?”
The Jelly-bean shook his head.
“Never did go to bed. Felt sorta restless, so I took a long walk this
morning out in the country. Just got into town this minute.”
“Should think you _would_ feel restless. I been feeling thataway
all day--”
“I’m thinkin’ of leavin’ town,” continued the Jelly-bean, absorbed by
his own thoughts. “Been thinkin’ of goin’ up on the farm, and takin’ a
little that work off Uncle Dun. Reckin I been bummin’ too long.”
Clark was silent and the Jelly-bean continued:
“I reckin maybe after Aunt Mamie dies I could sink that money of mine
in the farm and make somethin’ out of it. All my people originally
came from that part up there. Had a big place.”
Clark looked at him curiously.
“That’s funny,” he said. “This--this sort of affected me the same
way.”
The Jelly-bean hesitated.
“I don’t know,” he began slowly, “somethin’ about--about that girl
last night talkin’ about a lady named Diana Manners--an English lady,
sorta got me thinkin’!” He drew himself up and looked oddly at Clark,
“I had a family once,” he said defiantly.
Clark nodded.
“I know.”
“And I’m the last of ’em,” continued the Jelly-bean his voice rising
slightly, “and I ain’t worth shucks. Name they call me by means
jelly--weak and wobbly like. People who weren’t nothin’ when my folks
was a lot turn up their noses when they pass me on the street.”
Again Clark was silent.
“So I’m through, I’m goin’ to-day. And when I come back to this town
it’s going to be like a gentleman.”
Clark took out his handkerchief and wiped his damp brow.
“Reckon you’re not the only one it shook up,” he admitted gloomily.
“All this thing of girls going round like they do is going to stop
right quick. Too bad, too, but everybody’ll have to see it thataway.”
“Do you mean,” demanded Jim in surprise, “that all that’s leaked out?”
“Leaked out? How on earth could they keep it secret. It’ll be
announced in the papers to-night. Doctor Lamar’s got to save his name
somehow.”
Jim put his hands on the sides of the car and tightened his long
fingers on the metal.
“Do you mean Taylor investigated those checks?”
It was Clark’s turn to be surprised.
“Haven’t you heard what happened?”
Jim’s startled eyes were answer enough.
“Why,” announced Clark dramatically, “those four got another bottle of
corn, got tight and decided to shock the town--so Nancy and that fella
Merritt were married in Rockville at seven o’clock this morning.”
A tiny indentation appeared in the metal under the Jelly-bean’s
fingers.
“Married?”
“Sure enough. Nancy sobered up and rushed back into town, crying and
frightened to death--claimed it’d all been a mistake. First Doctor
Lamar went wild and was going to kill Merritt, but finally they got it
patched up some way, and Nancy and Merritt went to Savannah on the
two-thirty train.”
Jim closed his eyes and with an effort overcame a sudden sickness.
“It’s too bad,” said Clark philosophically. “I don’t mean the
wedding--reckon that’s all right, though I don’t guess Nancy cared a
darn about him. But it’s a crime for a nice girl like that to hurt her
family that way.”
The Jelly-bean let go the car and turned away. Again something was
going on inside him, some inexplicable but almost chemical change.
“Where you going?” asked Clark.
The Jelly-bean turned and looked dully back over his shoulder.
“Got to go,” he muttered. “Been up too long; feelin’ right sick.”
“Oh.”
* * * * *
The street was hot at three and hotter still at four, the April dust
seeming to enmesh the sun and give it forth again as a world-old joke
forever played on an eternity of afternoons. But at half past four a
first layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the awnings
and heavy foliaged trees. In this heat nothing mattered. All life was
weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance
for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman’s hand on a
tired forehead. Down in Georgia there is a feeling--perhaps
inarticulate--that this is the greatest wisdom of the South--so after
a while the Jelly-bean turned into a poolhall on Jackson Street where
he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old
jokes--the ones he knew.