Summer had gone. Soon the cotton would be coming through.
It was nine o’clock, and still Porgy lingered in the court. His blood leapt swiftly in his veins, and he experienced that sweet upsurge of life that the North knows with the bursting of spring, but that comes most keenly to the sultry lands with the strong breath of autumn. Yet, when he looked up at the sky, a vague prescience of disaster darkened his spirit. He sat beside Bess in the doorway, with his eyes upon the child in her lap. After a while he took the baby into his arms, and then the foreboding suddenly became pain.
He looked up and met the gaze of the woman. It was there in her eyes also, plain for him to see.
Out in the silence of the street a sound commenced to grow. Only a faint, far murmur at first, it gathered weight until it became a steady rumble, with a staccato clip, clip, clip running through it.
There were a few women and children about, and they ran to the entrance to see. But Porgy and Bess sat and looked fixedly at the bay, where it lay beyond the gate.
Then the drays came, and the bay was blotted out by the procession.
The great mules, fat and strong from their summer in pasture, moved swiftly with a sharp click of shoes, and the drivers cracked their whips and laughed down at the crowd. The low platforms of the vehicles seemed almost to brush the ground; and, upon them, clear to the top of the entrance arch, the bales towered, with the fibre showing in dazzling white patches where the bagging was torn. Twenty or more in the train they passed.
Scarcely had the rumble receded in the distance, than a burst of heavy laughter sounded in the street, and two tall figures strode through the entrance and into the group of women and children. There was a bright flash from bandanas, and one of the men swung a child to his shoulder. Loud greetings followed, and another burst of laughter, heavy, deep-chested and glad.
From an upper window a woman’s voice called, “Come on, Sister; le’s we go down. De stevedore is comin’ back.”
Porgy turned toward Bess, and moistened his lips with his tongue. Then he spoke in a low husky voice: