"Do you take sugar, Mr.Carraway?" asked Miss Saidie, flushed and tremulous at the head of the overcrowded table, with its massive modern silver service.Poor little woman, thought the lawyer, with his first positive feeling of sympathy, she would have been happier frying her own bacon amid bouncing children in a labourer's cabin.He leaned toward her, speaking with a grave courtesy, which she met with the frightened, questioning eyes of a child.She was "quite too hopeless," he reluctantly admitted --yet, despite himself, he felt a sudden stir of honest human tenderness--the tenderness he had certainly not felt for Fletcher, nor for the pretty, pert boy, nor even for the elegant Maria herself.
"I was looking out at the dear old garden awhile ago," he said, "and I gathered from it that you must be fond of flowers--since your niece tells me she has been away so long."She brightened into animation, her broad, capable hands fumbling with the big green-and-gold teacups.
"Yes, I raise 'em," she answered."Did you happen to notice the bed of heartsease? I worked every inch of that myself last spring--and now I'm planting zinnias, and touch-me-nots, and sweet-williams they'll all come along later.""And prince's-feather," added the lawyer, reminiscently; "that used to be a favourite of mine, I remember, when I was a country lad.""I've got a whole border of 'em out at the back large, fine plants, too--but Maria wants to root 'em up.She says they're vulgar because they grow in all the niggers' yards.""Vulgar!" So this was the measure of Maria, Carraway told himself, as he fell into his pleasant ridicule."Why, if God Almighty ever created a vulgar flower, my dear young lady, I have yet to see it.""But don't you think it just a little gaudy for a lawn,"suggested the girl, easily stung to the defensive.
"It looks cheerful and I like it," insisted Aunt Saidie, emboldened by a rare feeling of support."Ma used to have two big green tubs of it on either side the front door when we were children, and we used to stick it in our hats and play we was real fine folks.Don't you recollect it, Brother Bill?""Good Lord, Saidie, the things you do recollect!" exclaimed Fletcher, who, beneath the agonised eyes of Maria, was drinking his coffee from his saucer in great spluttering gulps.
The girl was in absolute torture: this Carraway saw in the white, strained, nervous intensity of her look; yet the knowledge served only to irritate him, so futile appeared any attempt to soften the effect of Fletcher's grossness.Before the man's colossal vulgarity of soul, mere brutishness of manner seemed but a trifling phase.
CHAPTER IV.Of Human Nature in the Raw State When at last the pickles and preserved watermelon rind had been presented with a finishing flourish, and Carraway had successfully resisted Miss Saidie's final passionate insistence in the matter of the big blackberry roll before her, Fletcher noisily pushed back his chair, and, with a careless jerk of his thumb in the direction of his guest, stamped across the hall into the family sitting-room.
"Now we'll make ourselves easy and fall to threshing things out,"he remarked, filling a blackened brier-root pipe, into the bowl of which he packed the tobacco with his stubby forefinger."Yes, I'm a lover of the weed, you see--don't you smoke or chaw, suh?"Carraway shook his head."When I was young and wanted to Icouldn't," he explained, "and now that I am old and can I have unfortunately ceased to want to.I've passed the time of life when a man begins a habit merely for the sake of its being a habit.""Well, I reckon you're wise as things go, though for my part Ibelieve I took to the weed before I did to my mother's breast.Icut my first tooth on a plug, she used to say."He threw himself into a capacious cretonne-covered chair, and, kicking his carpet slippers from him, sat swinging one massive foot in its gray yarn sock.Through the thickening smoke Carraway watched the complacency settle over his great hairy face.
"And now, to begin with the beginning, what do you think of my grandchildren?" he demanded abruptly, taking his pipe from his mouth after a long, sucking breath, and leaning forward with his elbow on the arm of his chair.
The other hesitated."You've done well by them, I should say.""A fine pair, eh?"
"The admission is easy."
"Look at the gal, now," burst out Fletcher impulsively."Would you fancy, to see her stepping by, that her grandfather used to crack the whip over a lot of dirty niggers?" He drove the fact in squarely with big, sure blows of his fist, surveying it with an enthusiasm the other found amazing."Would you fancy, even," he continued after a moment, "that her father warn't as good as Iam--that he left overseeing to jine the army, and came out to turn blacksmith if I hadn't kept him till he drank himself to death? His wife? Why, the woman couldn't read her own name unless you printed it in letters as long as your finger--and now jest turn and look at Maria!" he wound up in a puff of smoke.
"The girl's wonderful," admitted Carraway."She's like a dressed-up doll-baby, too; all the natural thing has been squeezed out of her, and she's stuffed with sawdust.""It's a pity she ain't a little better looking in the face,"pursued Fletcher, waving the criticism aside."She's a plagued sight too pale and squinched-up for my taste--for all her fine air.I like 'em red and juicy, and though you won't believe me, most likely she can't hold a tallow candle to what Saidie was when she was young.But then, Saidie never had her chance, and Maria's had 'em doubled over.Why, she left home as soon as she'd done sucking, and she hasn't spent a single summer here since she was eight years old.Small thanks I'll get for it, I reckon, but I've done a fair turn by Maria.""The boy comes next, I suppose?" Carraway broke in, watching the other's face broaden into a big, purple smile.
