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.
Just before sunrise Porgy left his room and hitched up his goat. In the upper air over Catfish Row a single buzzard hung poised. Slowly it careened to a current of air, and its belly and under-wings lit to a ruddy glory from the sun, which was still below the horizon. Porgy saw it and winced. But as he went about his task there was no indecision in his face. He harnessed the goat with steady hands, drove out of the court and to the pier-head.
He experienced no difficulty in finding his man. Mingo accepted the mission and the handful of pennies and nickels; and Porgy, having closed the bargain, returned at once to the court.
Maria was opening her shop as he entered, and paused with a shutter in her hands. She could scarcely believe her eyes. The beggar’s face was bright, and he was humming a tune.
“Wut de news?” she asked. “Bess done git well?”
“Not jus’ yit,” he replied. “But I done had me a dream las’ night; an’ de dream say tuh sen’ tuh de conjer ’oman; an’ Bess goin’ break she feber tuhnight.”
“Da’s right, my Brudder,” Maria responded heartily. “Dat ’oman good as well now. You watch!”
All day, sitting by Archdale’s office, Porgy hummed his tune, and counted off the hours of the steamboat’s voyage. Now she would be passing Kittiwar, and, in only a few hours more, she would be coming to rest for the night at Ediwander.
The counting off continued after he went to bed, and he was strangely undisturbed by Bess’s mutterings. Now the boat had arrived, he finally told himself. Maria had said that the cabin was near the landing. Surely it would not take the woman long to brew the spell. His excitement increased to a mood of exaltation. He lay with his hand upon Bess’s forehead, waiting.
Far away St. Christopher struck the hour. The mellow bells threw the quarter hours out like a handful of small gold coins to ring down upon the drowsy streets. Then, very deliberately, they dropped ten round, heavy notes into the silence.
This should be the moment. Porgy pressed his hand harder, and sweat broke out upon his brow. For a moment it seemed to him that life hung suspended.