Within the hour she had got Paul on the telephone, leaving home to do it, taking what precautions for secrecy her haste would afford her.
“Saturday morning?” he said.
“Yes. I’ll tell mother Phi… he wants to leave early, at daylight. They won’t recognize you or the car. I’ll be ready and we can get away quick.”
“Yes.” She could hear the wire, distance; she had a feeling of exultation, escape. “But you know what it means. If I come back. What I told you.”
“I’m not afraid. I still don’t believe you, but I am not afraid to try it now.”
Again she could hear the wire. “I’m not going to marry you, Elly.”
“All right, darling. I tell you I’m not afraid to try it any more. Exactly at daylight. I’ll be waiting.”
She went to the bank. After a time Philip was free and came to her where she waited, her face tense and wan beneath the paint, her eyes bright and hard. “There is something you must do for me. It’s hard to ask, and I guess it will be hard to do.”
“Of course I’ll do it. What is it?”
“Grandmother is coming home Sunday. Mother wants you and me to drive down Saturday and bring her back.”
“All right. I can get away Saturday.”
“Yes. You see, I told you it would be hard. I don’t want you to go.”
“Don’t want me to…” He looked at her bright, almost haggard face. “You want to go alone?” She didn’t answer, watching him. Suddenly she came and leaned against him with a movement practiced, automatic. She took one of his arms and drew it around her. “Oh,” he said. “I see. You want to go with someone else.”
“Yes. I can’t explain now. But I will later. But mother will never understand. She won’t let me go unless she thinks it is you.”
“I see.” His arm was without life; she held it about her.
“It’s another man you want to go with.”
She laughed, not loud, not long. “Don’t be foolish. Yes. There’s another man in the party. People you don’t know and that I don’t expect to see again before I am married. But mother won’t understand. That’s why I must ask you. Will you do it?”
“Yes. It’s all right. If we can’t trust one another, we haven’t got any business marrying.”
“Yes. We must trust one another.” She released his arm.
She looked at him intently, speculatively, with a cold and curious contempt. “And you’ll let mother believe…”
“You can trust me. You know that.”
“Yes. I’m sure I can.” Suddenly she held out her hand.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
She leaned against him again. She kissed him. “Careful,” he said. “Somebody might…”
“Yes. Until later, then. Until I explain.” She moved back, looked at him absently, speculatively. “This is the last trouble I’ll ever give you, I expect. Maybe this will be worth that to you. Good-bye.”
That was Thursday afternoon. On Saturday morning, at dawn, when Paul stopped his car before the dark house, she seemed to materialize at once, already running across the lawn. She sprang into the car before he could descend and open the door, swirling down into the seat, leaning forward and taut with urgency and flight like an animal. “Hurry!” she said. “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
But he held the car a moment longer. “Remember. I told you what it meant if I came back. O. K.?”
“I heard you. I tell you I’m not afraid to risk it now. Hurry! Hurry!”
And then, ten hours later, with the Mills City signs increasing with irrevocable diminishment, she said, “So you won’t marry me? You won’t?”
“I told you that all the time.”
“Yes. But I didn’t believe you. I didn’t believe you. I thought that when I… after… And now there is nothing else I can do, is there?”
“No,” he said.
“No,” she repeated. Then she began to laugh, her voice beginning to rise.
“Elly!” he said. “Stop it, now!”
“All right,” she said. “I just happened to think about my grandmother. I had forgotten her.”
Pausing at the turn of the stair, Elly could hear Paul and her uncle and aunt talking in the living-room below. She stood quite still, in an attitude almost pensive, nun-like, virginal, as though posing, as though she had escaped for the moment into a place where she had forgotten where she came from and where she intended to go. Then a clock in the hall struck eleven, and she moved. She went on up the stairs quietly and went to the door of her cousin’s room, which she was to occupy for the night, and entered. The grandmother sat in a low chair beside the dressing table littered with the frivolous impedimenta of a young girl… bottles, powder puffs, photographs, a row of dance programs stuck into the mirror frame. Elly paused. They looked at one another for a full moment before the old woman spoke: “Not contented with deceiving your parents and your friends, you must bring a Negro into my son’s house as a guest.”
“Grandmother!” Elly said.
“Having me sit down to table with a negro man.”
“Grandmother!” Elly cried in that thin whisper, her face haggard and grimaced. She listened. Feet, voices were coming up the stairs, her aunt’s voice and Paul’s. “Hush!” Elly cried. “Hush!”
“What? What did you say?”
Elly ran to the chair and stooped and laid her fingers on the old woman’s thin and bloodless lips and, one furiously importunate and the other furiously implacable, they glared eye to eye across the hand while the feet and the voices passed the door and ceased. Elly removed her hand. From the row of them in the mirror frame she jerked one of the cards with its silken cord and tiny futile pencil. She wrote on the back of the card. He is not a negro he went to Va. and Harvard and everywhere.
The grandmother read the card. She looked up. “I can understand Harvard, but not Virginia. Look at his hair, his fingernails, if you need proof. I don’t. I know the name which his people have borne for four generations.” She returned the card. “That man must not sleep under this roof.”
Elly took another card and scrawled swiftly. He shall. He is my guest. I asked him here. You are my grandmother you would not have me treat any guest that way not even a dog.
The grandmother read it. She sat with the card in her hand. “He shall not drive me to Jefferson. I will not put a foot in that car, and you shall not. We will go home on the train. No blood of mine shall ride with him again.”
Elly snatched another card, scrawled furiously. I will. You cannot stop me. Try and stop me.
The grandmother read it. She looked at Elly. They glared at one another. “Then I will have to tell your father.”
Already Elly was writing again. She thrust the card at her grandmother almost before the pencil had ceased; then in the same motion she tried to snatch it back. But the grandmother had already grasped the corner of it and now they glared at one another, the card joining them like a queer umbilical cord. “Let go!” Elly cried. “Let it go!”
“Turn loose,” the grandmother said.
“Wait,” Elly cried thinly, whispering, tugging at the card, twisting it. “I made a mistake. I…” With an astonishing movement, the grandmother bent the card up as Elly tried to snatch it free.
“Ah,” she said, then she read aloud: Tell him. What do you know. “So. You didn’t finish it, I see. What do I know?”
“Yes,” Elly said. Then she began to speak in a fierce whisper: “Tell him! Tell him we went into a clump of trees this morning and stayed there two hours. Tell him!” The grandmother folded the card carefully and quietly. She rose.
“Grandmother!” Elly cried.
“My stick,” the grandmother said. “There; against the wall.”
When she was gone Elly went to the door and turned the latch and recrossed the room. She moved quietly,
