Tammy out of Time

by Cid Ricketts Sumner

  “They are——” He shivered.

  “And you would tell her that if she showed them to you?”

  “So help me, I will.”

  “Then I will not let you make pictures of me.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, but I think you are Mr. Fernan, maybe.” He did not look like a great man. His skin had a curdled look, like cheese; his face was wide and flat. But she had never seen a great man, so he might be one after all.

  “Yes, I am Fernan. Do you still refuse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to lie about those paintings?”

  “No. But you could be kind about it.”

  “My business is to paint, not to go through life saying things that are not true.” His speech went up and down like the speech of those who came from the French-speaking parts.

  “It is a little thing to do. Miss Renie is kind.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I will, for you, do what I can.”

  “Then you may make my picture. But why do you want it?”

  “It is a long time that I have been looking for one face and one form. Now I find the two together. I make a great painting, to cover one large wall, many figures, showing the building of this country and what has gone into it and how the country is now. One woman I want in the center, a pioneer woman, looking forward now, as she has always looked forward and seeing clearly. I find her here by chance, after all my looking.

  “Me?” Tammy asked with wonder.

  “You.”

  “It would be a great honor to be so painted, by a man whose renown is in the streets.”

  “Yes.”

  Tammy leaned over, elbows on knees, chin in hand. He could not have seen Barbara or he would not be wanting her to be in his picture. She had better tell him. “There is someone you haven’t seen—in there.”

  “You speak of the one in the dining room?”

  “Yes,” Tammy said with sadness, “wearing a dress like a morning cloud the sun has shone on before the sun comes up. But she is a barbarian at heart.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It is the meaning of her name.”

  “I do not wish to paint a barbarian. And your name—has it a meaning?”

  “Immortal is the meaning of my name.”

  For the first time he smiled. “I am very pleased with you. Now tell me something of these other people in this house where I am to stay.”

  “There is Miss Renie, who paints.”

  “Yes, what of her? Besides her painting.”

  “She thinks she will be a cat when she dies. She does good and reviles it, and she works hard at staying sane.”

  “Who else?”

  “Mrs. Brent. She is in the parlor in a red-brown dress.”

  “I know how she looks, for I came first through the house. What is she like, really within? That is what I would know.”

  “A bug in a bottle. She finds consolation in...in making arrangements. She is a respectable woman and quickly shocked.”

  “And the Mr. Brent? In the library, without doubt?”

  “Professor Brent. He is a man of quick mental parts, but his words weigh him down and delay him. He knows the science of matter. That’s what he teaches in a college.”

  “And the young man? He who welcomes those who come?”

  “Pete. Pete——” She was silent, trying to think how to tell about Pete, trying to separate thought of him from feeling. “How can I say?” she said at last. “I see him only with my heart.”

  Mr. Fernan smiled again. “I shall have great pleasure in painting you. But now, here they come, the thirsty ones. Will you sing for me while you give them to drink?”

  “Sing?” Tammy looked back over her shoulder to him as she hurried to get into her place again.

  “But yes. Have you no more songs?”

  “I can sing a sight of songs—‘Lord Lovel He Stood at His Castle Gate’ and ‘Make Me a Cambric Shirt’ and ‘One Saturday Night as We Set Sail’ and ‘Last Night I Dreamed of My Truelove’.”

  “Then sing them for me, please. Begin with ‘Cambric Shirt.’ I like that name for a song.”

  As the people came down the steps, she began filling the cups and singing at the same time:

  “Make me a cambric shirt

  Without a stich of needlework,

  And you shall be a true lover of mine,

  Rosemary and thyme.

  “And wash it in yanders well

  Where water never flowed and rain never fell.

  And hang it on yanders thorn

  That never bloomed nor blossomed since Adam

  was born.”

  She sang it through many verses, her voice thrown back and echoed by the house, so that it rang out clear and true. Mr. Fernan nodded his pleasure and the people clapped. So she went on to another and another song, through all the afternoon.

  18.

  ONE day followed the other in the Pilgrimage and each was like the other in the way it took up everyone’s time and attention, and in the way the crowds came swarming in to hear Tammy’s songs and the story she told of her bonnet and gown. There was just one wonderful difference. Every day after the first, when she came singing to the steps with-the bonnet swinging on her arm, Pete was there. When she looked up at him, he took her hand and bent and kissed her, according to her words. Then she put an end to her story, saying, “That’s how I come to the great house, and how I lived here till I died.”

  What Pete was thinking inside himself, she did not know. It seemed as if he had somehow, for the time of the Pilgrimage, fled into the past, like it might be a city of refuge in the land of Canaan. But for Tammy every day went up to one high point, as she mounted the steps to meet him. All the days of her life gathered themselves together and waited for that moment, then added it and mounted higher. Pete did his part in dumb show, putting out his hand at the right time, bending to give her the kiss, waiting for the final word of the story, then walking with her down the steps while people clapped and laughed. First he kissed her on the forehead, then on her cheek, and Tammy thought that if the Pilgrimage would only last long enough, he might make it all the way to her lips.

  Mrs. Brent had come to the ell gallery the second day. Tammy had seen her there behind the rose vine watching, amazement on her face. Tammy didn’t know how she looked when Pete kissed her because when that happened she knew nothing else in the world. But when Pete was hurrying away toward the front door to receive other guests, she heard his mother say, “Really, Peter, is that necessary?”

  And Pete had answered, “No, Mother, but it’s fun—and people seem to like it.” Then all Mrs. Brent’s friends went crowding around her on the porch, saying nice things and congratulating her. She put off her sour look and bowed and smiled and said, Yes, she had thought they would like it, and Yes, it was one of her best inspirations.

  It was the newspaper a few days later that really upset her. Every morning there was a great cleaning to be done because of the passing of many feet over the carpets and because of the dust that seemed to create itself each day anew. Pete worked in the yard and the garden with old Prater helping, for people were untidy, throwing papers and trash that had to be gathered up before the new day’s guests arrived. This morning Tammy was sweeping the front gallery. Mrs. Brent was among the roses, gathering fresh bouquets for the vases when Pete came up from the drive with the morning’s mail and the newspaper.

  “See this, Mother,” he said, stopping by the circular rose bed below the steps and holding the open paper out for her to look at. “Good picture, isn’t it?”

  “How on earth——” Mrs. Brent began. “Why, I didn’t know this was going on!” She stood with her arms full of roses, staring at the paper. “Why wasn’t I called out to see to it? And of course, Barbara should have been in the picture. Really——”

  Tammy went on sweeping, but when she heard her name, she stopped in wonder, listening.

  “Is it all about T
ammy?” Mrs. Brent said.

  “Mostly,” Pete told her. “Except this about her grandfather.”

  “Her grandfather!” Mrs. Brent leaned over the paper. “Oh, dear me, why did they have to——”

  Tammy came slowly down the steps, the broom clutched tight in her hands. Something was wrong, something had happened to Grandpa. She stood frozen at the foot of the steps while Pete and his mother read on, her heart pounding.

  “It’s outrageous! They should be sued for putting such things in print. And who told them? Tammy, of course!” She turned and caught sight of her standing there. “Oh, Tammy, why did you? I told you not to talk. I begged you not to and here——” She made a gesture of despair and turned away. “It’s too late now.”

  “Wh-what is it?” Tammy faltered. “I...I wasn’t going to talk, but then you told me to. You said——”

  “It’s all right, Tammy,” Pete said. “It’s only the truth, and very interesting, at that.”

  “If you’d only called me, Tammy. If you had only let me know the reporters were here, I could have managed everything.”

  “I didn’t know...I haven’t seen any...but what is it? Has something happened to Grandpa?” She came up to Pete quickly. “Please tell me.”

  “Your grandpa’s all right.” He turned on his mother. “You can’t blame Tammy, Mother. Mike could get information out of a stone. I saw him here the first day of the Pilgrimage.”

  “Mike?” That was what the redheaded man was called, Tammy remembered.

  “There,” Mrs. Brent said with indignation. “She knows all right. Oh, I might have known!” She went off with her roses, snapping the scissors at the empty air.

  “See, Tammy,” Pete said, holding the paper out for her. “Not a bad picture of you.”

  “Me?” Tammy turned troubled eyes from Mrs. Brent, disappearing around the corner of the house, and looked at the newspaper. “Goshamighty!” she whispered, seeing herself standing on the ell gallery steps, the lacy black ironwork making a frame for her. “I never seen myself in a picture before in all my born days.”

  Pete laughed. “You probably didn’t even know when he took it, did you?”

  Tammy shook her head. Then her eyes ran down the page. “There’s printing about me, too,” she said in wonder She read with haste, skipping in her excitement. “...original touch to the usual Pilgrimage routine...charming sketch given by Miss Tambrey Tyree in the gardens of Brenton Hall...authentic costume belonging to the Brent family...family tradition and river folklore...romantic story back of her presence...granddaughter of John Dinwoodie...daring river rescue of Peter Brent after plane crash below Vicksburg...Old Deadwood, as he is known on the river...now an inmate of the Forestville jail...claims to be victim of a court ‘unfavorable to human freedom’...especially with reference to the making and selling of corn liquor...preaches daily to his fellow prisoners...”

  “I reckon that-there is what your ma don’t like,” Tammy said with a sigh. “That-there about the jail and corn liquor. What gets me is how they knew all that.”

  “Did you talk a while with Mike? The redheaded chap?” Tammy nodded. “He asked me a sight of questions, but how was I going to know?”

  “Of course you couldn’t. Never mind Mother; she’ll get over it when she sees the crowds this will bring.”

  “You mean people will read it and come?”

  “Sure they will.”

  Tammy looked toward the corner of the house where Mrs. Brent had disappeared. “I reckon I’d better just shut my mouth and act like I’m dumb the rest of the time.”

  “You can’t do that, Tammy. Why, you’re the best part of the Pilgrimage.”

  “Am I, Pete?”

  He looked down at her smiling. “Of course you are.”

  Then Osia called from the front door, “Miss Tammy? Miss Tammy? That there Mr. Fern, he want you to come set while he draws your picture.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there soon as I finish sweeping the steps.”

  Miss Renie came out on the gallery. “Tammy, run quick! He wants you. Never mind the steps, for heaven’s sake! What are you thinking about? Give me the broom.”

  Pete stood watching as Tammy ran up the steps, handing Miss Renie the broom as she passed. Miss Renie began to sweep in long strokes, flinging the broom as high as her head each time. “I never expected to see you sweeping, Aunt Renie,” he said.

  “You never expected to see the world’s greatest artist on the back gallery either, did you?” Miss Renie snapped.

  “Is he really the world’s greatest?” Tammy called back over her shoulder.

  “He’s the world’s greatest that we ever had on the back gallery, I can promise you that.” She gave a final flip of the broom and hurried back into the house, saying, “I’ve got to go and watch.”

  Tammy sat on the ell steps, holding herself stiff, her face set and still. Mr. Fernan was in Grandpa’s chair on the brick wall in front of her, drawing pad and pencil in hand. “But no,” he said looking up, “it is not necessary that you stop breathing for me. Relax—” he smiled—“and talk to me.”

  “You mean I don’t have to be still.”

  “Not that still.”

  Tammy drew a long breath and leaned back, resting her elbows on the step above her. “I just seen myself in the paper, Mr. Fernan. I never seen my life and my name put down in print before.”

  “No? It happens often to one.” He glanced up to the gallery where Miss Renie was sitting, sheltered by the vines, but near enough to see and hear. “Me also, the young man has put through a series of questions. I escaped him for several days but he caught me on the walk yesterday.”

  “Maybe I should not be so puffed up,” Tammy said.

  Mr. Fernan nodded gravely, looking at Tammy and back to his busy pencil. “The first time it happens, one is apt to be puffed up.”

  “The young man led me on. It’s maybe a way he has learned.”

  Miss Renie rested her arms on the iron railing and peered down at Mr. Fernan’s drawing. Though she had fairly gone wild at the thought of his coming, she was hushed by his presence. A kind of awe seemed to have come on her and she had even avoided him as he went to and from his room in the ell. This was the first time Tammy had seen her come near him.

  Mr. Fernan paid her no mind but went on talking with Tammy as he worked. “I see that you make a study of people. Each day when they come, the pilgrims, as you say, I watch you, how you watch them.”

  Tammy said, “I have to, to catch up, because I have no learning and I’ve lived all my remembering life away from people.” Then she told him how when she was on her way here she had pretended she was a pilgrim on a pilgrimage and then when she got here the Pilgrimage had come to her. “It is a wonder how many kinds of people there be, coming from all parts and talking strange ways. But they all have two eyes and two ears and members alike one to the other. They breathe this same air and smell the sweet olive all in the same manner. And they have a living and a dying and a begetting in between.”

  Mr. Fernan nodded. “It is the common ground to all, that of which you speak. One of the great aims of art is to make apparent this common ground, to show this large likeness by way of the small, and so pass into the region beyond time.”

  “Beyond time,” Tammy repeated. “I reckon I been living outside of time all my born days. Not just account of having no clocks to mark its passing but because——” She paused, trying to find the words.

  “Because,” Miss Renie said all at once, “because you have been concerned with the fundamentals of living, the universals.”

  “Exactly.” Mr. Fernan looked directly at her for the first time. “It is in her face. It is what I have been seeking. Here I find it at the moment when I give up looking and come for vacation. Le bon Dieu has sent me.” He was silent, working steadily, his feet planted on the footrest.

  Miss Renie could make no answer. Her hands were locked tightly together and she sat stiff and tense, breathing quickly.

&nb
sp; “Another thing I have found—it is your little pupil, Miss Renie, the little black boy you call Roots. You have taught him well, not too much.”

  Miss Renie’s hand rose to her throat. Her black eyes were fixed on him now with a fierce bright light.

  “Some of his drawings—the charcoal, I think of now—they go back farther yet, beyond even the fundamentals of which we have spoken. They are the thing before it becomes the thing, the thought before it is conceived.”

  “But Roots said that,” Tammy cried. “About the one that looks like something coming out of a mist. He said ‘That’s something before it gets here.’ And about another one, with a far line like the rim of the sky or the end of the sea and with only a near small curve at the front, he said ‘That is me and the...the bigness.’”

  “Exactly.” Mr. Fernan turned to Miss Renie. “Your pupil will go far, Miss Renie. It should satisfy you that you have put the brush in such a hand. It is enough to have lived for that alone.”

  Miss Renie bowed her head and hid her face in her hands.

  “Continue in the same manner,” Mr. Fernan went on. “Give him the simple arrangements for line and perspective and balance, and for the rest, let him be free.”

  Tammy brought her hands together silently. Mr. Fernan had been kind after all. This was better than talking of Miss Renie’s paintings. Miss Renie knew her own work was nothing to talk about.

  Then Mr. Fernan added, his eyes on Tammy: “This, too, I can say in all truth. I like your batiks very much, Miss Renie—that gown you wear for the pilgrims, the hanging of the gryphon and the papyrus plants, the one of figures dancing in the woods. They have a softness of texture and color, a vagueness of outline. Nice, very nice, indeed.”

  Miss Renie’s hands, pressed close against her cheeks, could not hide the radiance of her face. She made a little choking sound but no word came.

  Mrs. Brent came down the gallery with a basket of red japonicas and some glass bowls. She set them on the table beside Miss Renie, looked at her and said, “What on earth’s the matter, Aunt Renie? You look as if you’d been struck by lightning.”

  “I have,” Miss Renie said in a whisper. “Be still, can’t you?”