MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS BOOKS BY DU BOSE HEYWARD ANGEL SKYLINES AND HORIZONS MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS PORGY: A NOVEL PORGY: A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS (WITH DOROTHY HEYWARD) CAROLINA CHANSONS (WITH HERVEY ALLEN) DU BOSE HEYWARD MAMBA’S DAUGHTERS A NOVEL OF CHARLESTON [Illustration] THE LITERARY GUILD NEW YORK 1929 [Illustration] COPYRIGHT, 1929 BY DU BOSE HEYWARD COPYRIGHT, 1928 BY THE CROWELL PUBLISHING CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY. N. Y. AUTHOR’S NOTE Because I believe that regional literature, even though it be avowedly fictional, should be unequivocal in its identification with its locale, I have not hesitated in this novel to apply the correct names to the city, streets, and outlying districts of which I write. Lest this course should lead the reader into confusing the narrative with either history or biography, I desire to stress the fact that the work is purely imaginative and is concerned only with certain social and spiritual values existing in Charleston and its environs. For the purposes of the novel the material has been subjected to an intense synthesis. Thus the phosphate mining camp stands not merely as an exposition of an isolated industry, but as a focal point for the drawing together of a number of mental attitudes and incidents typical of the industrial black belt. With the exception of allusions to people whose correct names are used, and who will be readily recognized, the characters who appear in the book are fictional creations and are not intended as representations of actual characters either living or dead. DU BOSE HEYWARD. Charleston, South Carolina, October, 1928. PART I PART I It was no mere chance that, during the first decade of the new century, brought Mamba out of the darkness of the underworld into the light of the Wentworths’ kitchen. Casual as that event seemed, there is good evidence for the belief that it had its origin in some obscure recess of the woman’s mind; or in perhaps some deep and but half comprehended instinct that drove her, against the reasoning of her brain, to embark upon what must have seemed a fantastically hopeless venture. For Mamba had arrived at an age that lay on the downhill side of fifty, and her habitat had always been the waterfront. The amazing thing is that, having arrived at her decision, she was able to muster the courage necessary to take the step. In the Charleston of Mamba’s day the negro population might have been divided into two general classes: the upper, consisting of those who had white folks, belonged to the negro quality and enjoyed a certain dolorous respectability; and the lower class, members of which had no white folks and were little better than outcasts.