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Bess lay upon the bed in Porgy’s room and stared at the ceiling with hard, bright eyes. From time to time she would pluck at the sheet that covered her and utter hurried, indistinct sentences that bore not the slightest relation to existing circumstances. A week had passed since her release, and its seven interminable days had been spent in this fashion.
Porgy was out upon the day’s rounds. Occasionally the door to the sick-room would open, and an awed, black face peer in. The mystery of delirium frightened and perplexed the negroes, and limited the manifestations of kindness and sympathy that they usually bestowed upon unfortunate friends. Even Maria was not proof against this dread, and the irrelevant observations that greeted her when she went in with the daily lunch sent her hurrying wide-eyed from the room.
Porgy returned early in the evening. His face was deeply marked, but the lines were those of anxiety, and his characteristic firmness of mouth and jaw was gone. He closed the door on the curious glances of his neighbors, and lifted himself to a seat upon the bed.
“How Bess now?” he asked softly.
She shifted her gaze from the ceiling to his face.
“Eighteen miles tuh Kittiwar!” she muttered. “Rattlesnake’, palmettuh bush, an’ such.”
Her eyes were suddenly fearful, and she closed her hand tightly upon his.
Porgy cast a hurried glance over his shoulder. Then, reassured, stroked her brow, and comforted her in his deep, gentle voice.
“Yuh hyuh wid Porgy now; an’ nuttin’ can’t hurt yuh. Soon de cool wedder comin’ an’ chill off dese febers. Ain’t yuh ’member how dat cool win’ come tuh town wid de smell ob pine tree: an’ how de star is all polish up lak w’ite folks’ silber? Den ebbery body git well. Ain’t yuh know? Yuh jus’ keep still, an’ watch wut Porgy say.”
She was silent after that, and closed her eyes. Presently, to his relief, he saw that she was sleeping. This was the moment for which he had been waiting. He went out, closing the door very gently, and joined a group of sympathisers in the court.
“Wut we goin’ do now?” he asked. “A week gone, an’ she ain’t none better.”
Peter knocked out his clay pipe on a flagstone, with three staccato little raps, thus gaining the attention of the circle.
“Ef yuh wants tuh listen tuh me,” he remarked weightily, “I adwise yer tuh sen’ she tuh de w’ite folk’ hospital.”
His words were received with a surprise amounting to incredulity.
“Fuh Gawd sake, Daddy Peter!” an awed voice said at last. “Ain’t yuh knows dey lets nigger die dey, so dey kin gib um tuh de student?”
But the old negro stood his ground.
“De student ain’t gits um ’til he done dead. Ain’t dat so? Den he can’t hurt um none. Ain’t dat so, too? An’ I gots dis tuh say. One ob my w’ite folks is er nuss tuh de hospital; and dat lady is er pure angel wid de sick nigger. Ef I sick tuhmorruh I goin’ tuh she; an’ wut she say is good wid me. I wants dis carcase tek care ob w’ile he is alibe. W’en he done dead, I ain’t keer.”
“Yuh ain’t keer whedder yuh is cut up an’ scatter, ’stead of bein’ bury in Gawd own grabe-yahd?” someone asked the iconoclast.
Under this direct attack, the old man weakened.
“Well, mebbe I ain’t sayin’ I jus’ as lief,” he compromised. “But I t’ink Gawd onduhstan’ de succumstance, an’ mek allowance.”
Serena Robbins broke the silence which followed.
“How come yuh ain’t ax me fuh pray ober um?” she enquired in a slightly offended voice. “Mus’ be yuh is done fergit how Gawd done answer we las’ prayeh, and sen’ dat goat tuh sabe yu’ life, when starbation done stan’ dey an’ look yuh in de eye.”
Porgy brightened at that, and turned eagerly from the dark horror of Peter’s suggestion.
“Dat so, my Sister,” he commenced; but her eyes were already closed, and her body was swaying from side to side, as she sat cross-legged on the flags. Presently she began to intone:
“Oh, Jedus, who done trouble de wateh in de sea ob Gallerie—”
“Amen!” came the chorus, led by Porgy.
“An’ likewise who done cas’ de Debbil out ob de afflicted, time an’ time agin—”
“Oh, Jedus!”
“Wut mek yuh ain’t lay yo’ han’ on dis sister’ head?”
“Oh, my fadder!”
“An’ sen’ de Debbil out ob she, down er steep place intuh de sea, lak yuh use’ tuh do, time an’ time agin?’
“Time an’ time agin!”
“Ain’t dis po’ cripple done lif’ up out de dus’ by we prayeh?”
“Da’s de trut’, Jedus.”
“Eben so, lif’ up he woman, an’ mek she well, time an’ time agin!”
“Time an’ time ag’in! Allelujah!”
After the prayer the group scattered, each going silently away in the late dusk, until there remained only Porgy, who sat with bowed head, and Maria, massive and inscrutable, beside him.
When the last retreating footstep died away, the great negress bent her turbaned head over until it almost touched Porgy’s face.
“Listen tuh me,” she whispered. “Yuh wants dat ’oman cure up; ain’t yuh?”
“Yuh knows I does.” And, already suffering from the reaction from religious enthusiasm, his voice was flat and hopeless.
“Berry well den. De ribber boat leabe fum de wharf at sebben o’clock, tuhmorruh mo’nin’. Yuh knows dat deck-han’ by de name Mingo?”
Porgy nodded assent, his eyes intent upon her face.
“Well; git on de wharf early, an’ gib um two dollar. Tell um w’en de boat done git tuh Ediwander Islan’ at eight tuhmorruh night, tuh go right tuh Lody cabin, an’ tell she tuh mek a conjer tuh cas’ de debbil out Bess.”
“Yuh tink dat cure she?” asked Porgy, with a glimmer of new hope in his eyes.
“I ain’t tink. I knows,” came in tones of absolute conviction. “Now, min’; an’ do wut I say.”
The big negress shuffled away to her room, leaving Porgy alone in the gloom.
The bent, solitary figure raised its eyes to the square of sky, with its bewildering profusion of stars, that fitted like a lid over the high rim of the court. There were no sounds except a weary land breeze that fingered the lichens on the south wall, and a whisper from the bay, as the tide lifted its row of shells and pebbles a notch further up the littered beach.
Now that all human companionship had been withdrawn, the watcher felt strangely alone, and smaller than the farthest star or most diminutive shell. Like a caged squirrel, his tired mind spun the rounds of his three alternatives: First, the white man’s science, gaunt, clean, and mysterious, with the complete and awful magistracy which it assumed over the luckless bodies that fell into its possession. He knew that it returned some healed in body. He knew that others had passed into its portals, and had been obliterated utterly. Then his second alternative: the white man’s God, vague and abstract as the wind that moved among the lichens, with his Jesus, who could stir him suddenly to his most beautiful songs and make his heart expand until, for a moment, it embraced all mankind with compassionate love, but who passed, as the wind passes, leaving him cold and disillusioned. One of these he must choose, or else turn his face back to the old blurred trail that receded, down, down, down to the beginning of things: to the symbols one might hold, tangible and terrifying; to the presciences that shuddered like dawn at the back of the brain and told one what to do without the process of thought.
As though bent beneath a great physical weight, Porgy sat without moving, until the pattern on his glittering ceiling had changed and shifted. Then he lifted his face slowly, drew his sleeve across his moist forehead, and entered his room.