“Not this papa,” he replied. “I’ll prove it to you.”
She drew back, laughing, while he sought to embrace her. They almost collided with a young negress who was dancing with a middle-aged white man. She was slim, with a straight-nosed, creamy face and straight brown hair, while her partner was floridly jowled and had the symptoms of a paunch, and sparse, black hair. They stopped their dance and stood, talking.
“Have you seen the Russian Players?” she asked.
“Yep, went down last night and took in that version of Carmen—‘Carmencita and the Soldier.’”
“Aren’t they a curious mixture of restraint and hilarity? It’s a contradiction—a sort of disciplined madness, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, they have dark, strange, patient souls, and yet ... they can be wildness itself. And they’re entirely obedient to the designs of the playwright.They never let their personalities swagger all over the stage at the expense of the author.”
The two walked off, still talking, and Blanche eyed them regretfully as she wished that they had remained within hearing. Most of the men and women at the party seemed to be disinclined to talk about impersonal subjects. Their only aims were drinking, dancing, and making love to each other. Of course, they were tired of their more sober professions and the heavier problems in life, and wanted to forget them for one night at least—but this explanation scarcely lessened Blanche’s disappointment. She was longing to hear discussions on art and psychology—matters that were still semishrouded to her. She had been to tens of parties where people were “running wild” and foxtrotting and mauling each other—it was nothing new to her.
She answered the teasing remarks of the man beside her with abstracted monosyllables, and watched another couple—a tall, dark, negro youth, with the face of a proud falcon, and an ample-bodied white woman in her early thirties, with a round face void of cosmetics but like an angelic mask that could not quite hide the jaded sensuality underneath it. She leaned closely against his side while he stroked one of her arms and looked at her with an almost scornful longing on his face. Blanche gazed intently at them—this was an exception. All of the other mixed couples that she had noticed had consisted of negro girls and white men, and she had been on the verge of believing that the women of her own race were only tolerantly “foolingaround” and had no deep response to the colored men. But no, she was wrong. Another white woman and a negro youth were whispering together on the piano-bench, with their heads almost touching and their right hands clasping each other.
How queer it was—even she had succumbed to the spell of the negroes, while dancing with them. They were like wise children—they could be abandoned and serious in such a quick succession, and there was an assured, romping, graceful something about them. Still, loving any one of them would probably be impossible—she still shrank a little from the nearness of their bodies, when the sorcery of the dances was removed.
The teasing man departed, thinking her an odd iceberg, and another man sat beside her. She turned to look at him. He was of her own height and had a muscular body, a pale white skin with the least tinge of brown in it, and straight, light brown hair brushed back. His lips were thin below a narrow nose, and his large, gray eyes seemed to be full of silent laughter, as though the scene were an endurable but trivial comedy to him. In his tuxedo suit, well fitting and distinctive, and with his athletic, graceful body, that was neither too narrow nor too broad, and the high-chinned but not supercilious poise of his head, he could have been mistaken for some movie hero more natural and finely chiseled than most of the other stars in that profession.
He looked at Blanche and smiled—a smile that was respectful but had the least touch of impudence.
“I haven’t been introduced to you—I came in rather late,” he said, easily. “My name’s Eric Starling.”
“Mine’s Blanche Palmer,” she replied.
“Isn’t it rather silly—this trading of names right off the reel?” he asked. “They’re just empty sounds until people get to know each other, and then, of course, they do begin to suggest the qualities within each person.”
“My name’s even more meaningless, if that’s possible,” she answered. “I haven’t done a thing to make it of any importance. Not a thing.”
“Well, you’re not gray-haired, yet—unless you dye it,” he said, with a boyish geniality. “You have still time enough to conquer the world.”
He had a soft and low, but unmistakably masculine voice, that pleased her.
“Yes, a girl can keep on telling that to herself until there’s no time left,” she responded.
“How doleful you sound,” he replied. “Have a heart—you’ll make me confess my own pessimism in a minute, if you keep it up.”
She laughed softly.
“No, you’re still young—you have plenty of time to conquer the wo-o-orld,” she said, mimickingly.
“I was only trying to be pleasantly conventional,” he responded. “Lord knows, I’m a child of night myself—morbid moods, and hatreds, and despairs. I do try to tone it down, though. The world may be a muddled and treacherous place, on the whole, but if you never laugh about it, then you let it interfere toomuch with your work. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this—you’re probably not interested.”
She liked his tone of quiet self-disparagement and understanding resignation—the absence of the usual masculine: “Look me over, kid, I’m there!”
“Of course I’m interested,” she said. “It’s this way—’f you go around and laugh too much, why, then it’s just like taking dope, and then again, ’f you don’t laugh enough, you see, you get too wise to your own smallness. There’s never any cure for anything, I guess.”
Up to this time he had regarded her only as a handsome girl, a bit more unaffected and humorous than the general run, but now he felt a much keener interest. She had something to say—an intriguing oddity among women. Who was this girl, with her dark red hair in bobbed curls, and her jaunty, Irish-looking face, and her words divided between whimsicality and hopelessness? Perhaps she was a talented person, well-known in her profession and amusing herself with this posture of half-smiling and half darkly wistful obscurity.
“You’re probably quite famous and rebuking me for not having heard of you,” he said, after a pause.
“I don’t think Madame Jaurette would agree with you,” she answered, smiling.
“Mother or dancing partner?”
“She owns the Beauty Parlor where I work—I’m just a common hair-dresser, that’s all.”
He looked closely at her—was she persistently jesting?
“No fooling—come clean,” he said. “You’re not really.”
“Oh, I know, I’m not like my type,” she answered. “I think a little, and I don’t use slang very often, though I like it sometimes. Don’t be deceived so easy.”
“Well, I’ll bet you’re trying to do something different, anyway,” he said, convinced now that she was telling the truth and engrossed in this phenomenon of a seemingly intelligent and searching Beauty Shop girl. “You could tell me you were a scrubwoman and I’d still know instinctively that your job had nothing to do with your ambitions. It’s in all your words and all the expressions on your face.”
She felt glad that his response had not been one of veiled pity, or sexy flattery, or the polite ending of interest, and her heart began to quicken its strokes. Say, could he be the man that she had been looking for? Could he? Silly, oh, very silly dream, and one that could scarcely be changed to a proven reality by a few beginning and possibly misleading words, and yet ... shewasattracted by his appearance—stalwart and yet subdued, with no “fizz” about it—and she liked immensely everything he said.
“My family’s poor and I’ve had to work to earn my own living,” she said, simply. “I live in the toughest part of Ninth Avenue—I was born and raised there. The people I come from think that art’s the second word in ‘Thou art bughouse.’ Now you’ve got the whole sad story.”
“Well, seeing that confessions are in order, I’ll spillmine,” he answered. “I was brought up in a neighborhood where they throw paving-blocks at each other to prove the sincerity of their feelings. One of them hit me once, but it didn’t seem able to knock any obedience into me. Oh, ye-es, nice, little neighborhood.”
“’F it’s any worse than Hell’s Kitchen it must be a peach,” she replied, thoroughly unreserved and immersed in him now.
“It is—Peoria Street in Chicago,” he said, smiling. “If I could escape from Peoria Street, you’ll probably be able to get out of Ninth Avenue with one wing-flutter and a little audacity! I’m working for a Harlem cabaret now—Tony’s Club. Publicity man ... writing the blurbs, and arranging the banquets, and getting the celebs to come down.”
“I’m quite sure you’re different from most publicity men, I can just feel it in your words and in the looks on your face,” she answered, in a mocking voice.
“Lady, I’ll never feed you that medicine again—the taste is simply frightful,” he replied.
They both laughed and felt relieved about it.
“D’you know, I’ve got a writing bug buzzing in my head,” she said, after a short pause. “It really started only a night ago—I never dared to believe I could do it before. I was down to Greenwich Village for the first time, and when I came back I wrote a sketch of the tearoom I’d been in. I didn’t think it amounted to very much, but Max Oppendorf, the poet, you know, he tells me it’s really clever and original, in spite of the shaky grammar. I’m going to keep on writing,you see, and he’s promised to criticize my stuff and try to put it over for me.”
“I think I met Oppendorf once,” he replied. “He’s tall and blond, isn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s him—he’s here to-night.”
“You didn’t come with him, did you?”
“No-o, don’t be scared,” she said, in raillery. “He’s with a girl friend, Margaret Wheeler, and my, how they’re gone on each other. It always seems to annoy them when they’ve got to talk to somebody else.”
“Who’d you come with?”
“With Ben Helgin, the novelist. I only met him and Oppendorf last night, and I’m only a curiosity to him. He just wanted to see how the slum-girlie would get along in the mi-ighty studio. I hope he’s satisfied now.”
“Do you know, people who patronize and bend down all the time, do it as a hop-fiend sniffs his cocaine,” he said. “They might have to take a close peek at themselves otherwise.”
“Isn’t it the truth,” she answered. “When I think of all the dopes people use to kid themselves along, I get the Jailhouse Blues. I was just as bad myself, two or three years ago, before I commenced to get wise to myself.”
A pause came, during which they looked at each other with a budding and almost incredulous desire.
“By the way, I have another confession to make,” he said. “Close your eyes and take the blow. I’m one of those dreamy, high-handed, impossible poets you’ve heard about. Vanderin likes my stuff and he’s inducedKoller, the publisher, to take a first book of mine. I grind it out between the times when I’m slaving down at Tony’s.”
“Three cheers,” she answered, delightedly. “Perhaps we can put our heads together now, and maybe you’ll help me with my work. I know you must have much more education than I’ve got.”
“Oh, I did work my way through two years of college, but I stopped after that,” he said. “It was too dry, and heavy, and, well, conservative, to satisfy me. A million don’ts and rules and rules and boundaries. They’re all right to know but they’re not so sacred to me.”
“Well, I envy you, anyway,” she replied, sighing. “You’ve got to help me with my grammar—that’s the big, weak sister with me.”
“You can bet I will,” he responded, eagerly.
She was certainly an unusual girl—one who had somehow commenced to force her way out of a vicious, muddy environment. Since he had partially freed himself from the same thing, it was a sacred duty to help her. But he wouldn’t do it for that reason alone—he liked the jolly and yet pensive turn of her, and the undismayed and candid twist of her mind, and the soft irregularities of her face, which were charming in spite of their lack of a perfect prettiness, and the boldly curved but not indelicate proportions of her strong body. Of course, it was nonsense to believe that you could fall in love after several minutes of talking, and there was Lucia, the clever little hoyden whom he had gone with for two years now, and Clara, savage, beautiful,and dumb, and Georgie, keen-minded enough but a little hysterical at times, and promiscuous, and.... But after all, none of them except Lucia had ever aroused him to any depth of emotion, and even that had long since begun to wear off. She was mentally shallow—women usually turned out to be that, after you penetrated their little tricks and defenses. Would this girl prove to be of the same kind? Maybe, maybe, but there was one thing about her that he hadn’t found in any other women—the instant, frank, ingenuous way in which she had intimately revealed herself, without all of the wrigglings and parryings common to her sex. They sure did hate to get down to brass tacks.
He was an odd confusion of sentimentalities and cynicisms, and the conflict between them was often an indecisive one. As he looked at Blanche, a fear suddenly shot through him.... Lord, he had forgotten. The old, dirty scarecrow that would probably turn her away from him.
“D’you know, I was certainly surprised when I came here to-night,” she said. “I never imagined that negroes and white people—real, artistic ones, I mean—I never imagined that they went around with each other and made love together. I don’t know just how to take it. How would you feel if you met a good-looking, intelligent, negro girl and she became fond of you?”
He winced and his face tightened up. It was just as he had feared—she had mistaken him for a white man. Of course, hewaswhite for the most part ...just a fraction of negro blood, but he was proud of it just the same, damn proud of it, and if people wanted to repulse him because of this fraction, they could go straight to the devil for all he cared.... Should he tell her now and have it over with? He hesitated. Despite his impatient pride he could not bring the words to his lips, as he had done many times before in such cases. White women often made this mistake, and he was inured to correcting it and bearing their constraint, or their shifting to a careful cordiality, but this time his self-possession had vanished. Sometimes hehadfailed to tell women, when he had only wanted a night or two of physical enjoyment with them, for then it never mattered, but ... some miracle had happened. This girl really seemed to have cut beneath his skin, and ... yes, he was afraid of losing the chance to see her again.
He didn’t love her now—in the deep, seething way that was the real thing—but he felt that if he continued to meet her he probably would, and this was a rare sensation to him. She would have to be told some time, of course, but ... not to-night. He simply couldn’t run the risk of spoiling this growing harmony between them, of not seeing whether it might flower out into an actual ecstasy. He couldn’t.
Blanche began to wonder at his lengthy silence, and she looked inquiringly at him.
“Please excuse me,” he said at last. “I was sort of ... sort of waltzing in a dream with you for a while.... Negroes and whites are human beings after all, and the fact that a man’s colored shouldn’t makehim an inferior animal. But that’s an old story to me. I’ve got it all memorized. Race-prejudice, and fun-da-men-tal repugnance, and all the disasters that spring from intermingling. Oh, yes, these things exist in most people, of course they do, but I refuse to believe that exceptional men and women can’t rise above them. If they can’t, then whatisexceptional about them?”
Something in the weary contempt of his words should have suggested to her that he was pleading his own cause, but her delighted immersion in him made her oblivious, and she mistook his words for those of a rarely unprejudiced white man. How eloquently and clearly he talked! He had an unassuming but fervent way that was far more attractive than Helgin’s suave, superior jovialities, or Oppendorf’s tired belligerency, or any of the other postures which she had noticed in different men at the party. Was she really beginning to fall in love with this Eric Starling? Somehow, she felt that no matter what faults she might discover in him afterwards, they would not be huge enough to destroy this present sense of communion with him. You had to trust to your instinct in such matters, and this instinct certainly hadn’t failed her up to date. Hadn’t she always doubted and feared Campbell, and held him at arm’s length, in spite of his smooth protests and promises? But gee, what if sheweredeceiving herself? This time it would be a real blow.
“I think I agree with you.... I’m not sure,” she answered at last. “I guess no person can tell howhe’s going to feel about, well, loving somebody who’s of another race, unless he actually runs up against it himself. I certainly believe negroes and whites ought to talk together, though, and try to understand each other more. There’s too much darn hate and meanness in this little world, as it is.”
“Yes, entirely too much,” he said, in an abstractedly weary way.
Helgin walked up and Blanche introduced him to Starling.
“Found your ideal yet, little gal?” he asked, grinning. “A studio-party’s an excellent place for such delusions.”
“’F I had, I wouldn’t tell you, old boy,” she answered impertinently. “You’d just answer ‘Nice li’l baby, all blind and deaf and everything.’”
“Ideals are out of fashion, Mr. Helgin,” Starling said. “They don’t seem to blend so well with synthetic gin, and the Charleston, and divorces at six for a dollar.”
Helgin countered with one of his bland ironies and then said: “The party’s beginning to break up, now. Are you ready to leave, Miss Palmer?”
“Would you mind if I saw Miss Palmer home?” Starling asked, bluntly, but in a soft voice. “I hope you won’t be irritated at my nerve.”
Helgin laughed.
“Of course not, if it’s agreeable to her,” he replied. “I never have any desire to interfere with blossoming romances.”
“You won’t think I’m being terribly rude, will you?” Blanche asked.
“Go o-on, stop the nervous apologies, child,” he said. “I’m really glad that you’ve found a kindred soul.”
He shook hands with the other two and walked away.
As Blanche and Starling went for their wraps, they ran into Oppendorf and Margaret, and Blanche introduced the two men, who vaguely remembered that they had met somewhere before. Oppendorf looked even sleepier and more distant than usual, while Margaret was in a giggling daze of contentment.
“He didn’t kiss more than two other girls to-night,” she said gayly. “I really think he must be beginning to care for me.”
“I didn’t count more than two in your case, but then we had our backs turned once in a while,” Oppendorf replied.
Blanche promised to visit Margaret’s studio at the end of the week, with another manuscript for Oppendorf’s appraisal, and the two couples separated.
During the taxicab ride to her home, Starling held her hand, but made no effort to embrace her, and although she wanted him to, she felt rather glad at his reserve. How tired she had become of men who desperately tried to rush her at the end of the first night. It almost seemed as though rarely desirable men were never instantly frantic about it—as though their unabashed quietness alone proved their rarity. Naturally, only starved or oversexed men were so immediatelyanxious for physical intimacies, although ... Starling might have kissed her at least.
As Blanche stood in the dirty, poorly lit hallway, she smiled for a moment as she remembered how often she had been in this same spot, permitting men to kiss and hug her, out of pity or as a small payment for the “good time” that they had shown her. And now she was parting with a man infinitely more cajoling than they had been, and merely clasping hands with him. Life was certainly “cuckoo” all right. She had arranged to see Starling at the end of the week and leave a night of rest in between. As she retired to her bed, the satiated remnants of the ecstasy-herald were shifting slowly, slowly in her breast. The dream had finally peered around the corner ... how nice, how sweet, how terrifying....
On the following day, as she worked at the Beauty Parlor, she was in a sulkily grimacing mood. Oh, this endless ha-air-curling, and face-massaging ... beautifying women and girls so that some male fool would spend his money on them, or offer to marry them, or try to caress them. Gold-diggers, and loose women too passionate to be very efficient gold-diggers, and lazy, decent housewives, and sly-faced wives with a man or two on the side, and kiss-me-’n’-fade-away flappers—take away their bodies and what would be left of them? Less than a grease-spot. Drat this empty, tiresome work. She’d have to get out of it pretty soon or go loony. She wanted to write, and describe people, and live in a decent place, and ... see Eric Starling.
He moved about in her mind; his fingers were still touching her hands. What a strong body and well-shaped face he had. Funny about men’s faces ... they were usually either too weakly perfect—movie-hero-like—or too homely, but Starling’s was in between. And he had a curious quality—not humble but sort of sadly and smilingly erect. What was it, anyway?
During the next two days she treated her family with a greater degree of merry friendliness, and they began faintly to hope that she was coming around to their ways of thinking. In reality, they had ceased to matter much to her, all except her mother, for whom she still felt a weak and troubled compassion. Poor, hard-working, patient, stupid ma. But what on earth could be done to help her?
Propped up against the pillows on her bed, Blanche had written an account of the Vanderin party. With more confident emotions now, fortified by Oppendorf’s praise, and with a little, dizzy ache in her head, her fingers had passed less laboriously over the paper. Her sketch was pointedly humorous and disrespectful, and stuck its tongue out at the different men and women who had attended the party. They might be celebrities and all that, but most of them hadn’t acted and talked much different from the business men and chorines whom she had met at other affairs. She enjoyed the task of good-naturedly attacking them—it was like revenging her own undeserved obscurity.
Her sketch was full of lines such as: “She was fat, and when she did the Charleston with a little skinnyfellow, why he looked just like a frightened kid,” and “The negroes and whites, all except the loving couples, they acted like they were trying too hard to be happy together,” and “The party was a good excuse for necking, but they all could have done it much better alone,” and “They introduced him as a poet, but when he started to talk to you, why then you got more uncertain about it, and when he was through talking you were just sure that something must be wrong.”
When she met Starling, on Saturday night, she was in a facetious and tiptoeing mood. Hot doggie, life was perking up again. As they rode in a taxicab down to Margaret’s studio, she showed him the sketch, and he laughed loudly over it.
“You know, the trouble between colored and white people at parties is that they’re both acting up to each other,” he said. “The whites are doing their darnedest to be tolerant and, well, cordial, and the colored people are always a little uncomfortable. They act self-conscious, you know, or too wild, and why? They’re all trying to put their best foot forward, and show that they belong there.”
“But how about all the loving pairs I saw at Vanderin’s?” she asked. “They sure didn’t seem to mind it much.”
He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. Of course, she didn’t know that in eight cases out of ten—perhaps more—these pairs had nothing but a passing lust for each other. And what if they did?—that part of it was all right. There was no earthly reason why they shouldn’t want each other’s bodies, unless theywere too cruel or sneering about it. God, sex could be a wild, clean, naked, beautiful thing, and people were always hurling mud and denunciations at it, or slinking with it behind closed doors, damn them. But he didn’t want just a flitting affair with Blanche ... he was sure of that now. He had been afraid that the encouragement of night, and the highballs, and the party, might have caused him to throw a false radiance around this girl—he had done the same thing before, though never so severely. But now he realized that his feelings for her were made of more solid stuff—realized it just after he had finished reading her sketch. He liked her upstanding, inquiring, impertinent spirit, and the unaffected smiles andmouésthat appeared on her face, and the sturdy and yet soft freshness of her body.
Hell was probably facing him. He was a negro, yes, and proud of it, but suppose it caused him to lose this woman? He would almost hate it, then—this streak of black blood which he had always flaunted so defiantly. He wasn’t like other men of his kind—cringing about it, and claiming to be entirely white, and fawning before every white woman they met. Stupid lily-snatchers! Not he! Yet he was sorely tempted to flee to this lie, in Blanche’s case. If he confessed, then all of his hopes and longings might be shot to pieces. He could picture her in his mind, recoiling from him against her will, summoning pleasant and compassionate smiles, trying to soothe the wound caused by her sorrowful determination never to see him again.
Puzzled by his frowning silence, she said: “What’s the matter, Eric?”
“Oh, I was just brooding over some of the injustice in this world,” he replied. “It’s absurd, of course—never does any good. What were we talking about?”
“You said something about negroes and whites always acting up to each other,” Blanche answered, “and then I said that some of the couples I saw at Vanderin’s seemed to be really gone on each other.”
“Of course they are—for a night, or a month. A year’s the world’s record as far’s I know. It’s nothing but surface sex-appeal, you know, and it’s not much different from the old plantation-owners down South, who used to pick out colored mistresses. The only difference nowadays is that white women are starting to respond to colored men.”
“Gee, I wonder ’f I could care for you, ’f you were colored ... I wonder now,” Blanche said, reflectively. “Of course, I’ll never have to bother about it, but it’s interesting just the same. I guess a woman never knows how she’ll feel about anything until she’s got to make a choice. It’s all right to think it over and say ‘I could’ ’r ‘I couldn’t,’ but that’s just because you’ve got to pretend to know yourself anyway. It kind of keeps up your backbone.”
She did not notice the pain that twisted his face. He tried his best to be humorous ... this dark bugaboo was getting on his nerves.
“Mix black and white together and they make gray,” he said. “I never did like that color. Let’s be more gaudy to-night.”
“You’re a terrible liar—you’re wearing a gray suit,” she replied.
He laughed.
“Well, what’s a man to do?” he asked. “You women can put on lavender, and orange, and cerise clothes, but if a man tried it he’d be howled out of town.”
“It’s all your own fault,” she said. “Men just hate to look different from each other, and besides, they’re always afraid that somebody’s going to think that they’re showing some weakness or other. I know them.”
As they continued the conversation, in a vein of mock-chiding and sprightly rebuke, she knew that she was rapidly descending into the depths of a love for him. She had also been afraid that the giddiness of night and a party, plus her own thwarted longings, might have induced her to throw a glamor over him, and that her next meeting with him might turn out to be somewhat disillusioning. But no, his mixture of frowns and deft gayeties, and his clear, incisive way of talking, were causing her emotions to increase in leaps and bounds. Whenever his shoulder grazed hers, a shamefaced tremor was born within her.
After they had reached Margaret’s studio they became more spontaneously mirthful. Margaret was in a frothy mood and Oppendorf seemed to be more affable and relaxed than usual. He read Blanche’s sketch with a broad grin on his face.
“That’s the stuff, rip it into them, old girl,” he said. “When they’re not strapping their pedestals to their backs and setting them up in this place and that,they’re wildly reaching for each other’s flesh. The very thought of an unassuming naturalness, or a frank and good-natured exchange of challenges, would give them heart failure!”
“Don’t worry—they’ll live,” Starling replied.
Oppendorf was aware of the fact that Starling was a negro, and Starling liked the blunt and impersonal way in which the other man treated him. Congenial, and tossing epigrammatic jests about, the party wended its way to Tony’s Club and danced there until 3A.M.The cabaret was a wild, gargoylish, shamelessly tawdry place, trimmed with colored strings of confetti, and orange and black boxes over the electric lights hanging from its low, basement-ceiling, and atrocious wall-panels of half nude women in Grecian draperies, and booths against the walls, each booth bearing the name of a different state. A brightly painted railing hemmed in the rectangular dance floor, and the jazz-orchestra—one of the best in town—moaned and screeched and thudded, in the manner of some super-roué, chortling as he rolled his huge dice to see who his next mistress would be.
Margaret, who also knew that Starling was a negro, glanced curiously at Blanche now and then, and wondered whether Blanche also knew and whether she had found that it raised no barrier. The subject, however, was too delicate to be broached to Blanche on this night.... It would have to wait.
Since she was with a man whom she practically loved, Blanche’s usual wariness toward alcohol—a caution produced by her desire not to become an unconsciousprey—left her entirely, and in spite of Starling’s remonstrances, she drank with a reckless glee. When 3A.M., the closing time, arrived, she was giggling fondly at him, and trying to balance glasses on her nose, and snuggling her head against his shoulder.
When the party reached the street she was barely able to walk, and had to lean against Starling for support.
“Why don’t you two come down to our place?” Margaret asked. “The poor kid’s going to pass out soon, and then you’ll be in a devil of a fix unless she’s safely inside somewhere.”
“No, I’ll call a cab and take her home,” he said. “Thank you just the same. She comes from a stupid family, you know, and they’d probably raise a vicious row if she came back to-morrow afternoon.”
After bidding the other two farewell, Starling hailed a cab and gave Blanche’s address to the driver. She passed out completely in the cab, with her arm around his shoulder and her head on his breast, and as he thought it over he began to regret his decision. He would be forced to carry her to the door of her apartment and wake up her family, and since they were obtuse proletarians, they might imagine that he had plied her with liquor to achieve her seduction. In that case there would be a sweet rumpus, all right! He was not afraid of a possible fight—swinging fists was nothing new to him—but if one did occur, her folks would probably order her never to see him again, or would look him up and discover his negro blood. Again, the ever-blundering “cops” might also interfere in thematter.... In this world it was often imperative to avoid the sordid misinterpretations of other people, for otherwise you would simply be expending your energy to no purpose. No, the best thing would be to take Blanche to his apartment and let her sleep it off, for then she could return home with the usual story of having “stayed over” at some girl-friend’s home. Fearful lies, lies, lies—sometimes he thought that the entire world was just a swamp of them. Well, hell, you’d get very far, wouldn’t you, trying to hold out against it!
He tapped on the pane and told the driver to switch to a Harlem address. After he had paid the driver and was half carrying Blanche over the sidewalk, the man called after him: “That’s the way to get ’em, Bo!” Starling turned and was about to leap at the leering chauffeur, but burdened with Blanche, whom he could scarcely deposit on the walk, and fearing to arouse the neighbors in his building, he ignored the remark.
His apartment consisted of two rooms and a kitchenette, and after he had placed Blanche on a couch in one of the rooms, he closed the door and changed to his slippers and a dressing-gown. Then he sat down in an armchair and grinned, in a sneer at himself, as he lit a cigarette. This was exactly like one of the impossible climaxes in a cheap movie-reel. The handsome hero had the proudly beautiful girl at his mercy, but nobly and honorably refused to compromise her. Oh, rats, why not walk in and take the only crude, gone-to-morrow happiness that life seemed to offer. Otherwise, she would find out about his negro blood,before their achievement of finality, and depart from him or tell him to be “just a dear friend,” and what would he have then?—not even the remembrance of a compensating night. Hell, he ought to regard her as just another blood-stirring girl, and ravish her, and forget her afterwards. If you failed to trick and abuse women, they usually sought to turn the cards on you—he’d found that out often enough.
He arose and paced up and down the room. No, he was a mawkish fool, a sentimental jackass—he couldn’t do it. The dirty nigger couldn’t leap on the superior white girl, damn it. He loved this girl—no doubt about that. She had a clear, honest, stumbling-on mind, and her heart was free from pretenses and hidden schemes, and a unique essence, tenderly simple and defiant by turns, seemed to saturate her. It wasn’t just her body and face—he had known prettier girls by far—but it was something that clung to this body and face and transformed them to an inexplicable but indubitable preciousness. She was unconscious now, and her inert surrender would mean nothing to him except a cheap and empty triumph. He wanted her to come to him joyously, spontaneously, madly, and with quiverings and shinings on her face!
He sat down again in the armchair. Damn his luck, why couldn’t he have fallen in love with another negro girl? He wasn’t like some of the men of his race—always chasing after white girls because it gave these men a thrill to boast of having captured them, and soothed their miserable inferiority complex. He had nearly always stuck to the girls of his own race, andyes, he had loved two of them ... in a way ... but it hadn’t been the surging, frightened, and at times abashed thing that he was feeling now. He was in for it now, oh, how he was in for it! He would undoubtedly be rejected, and pitied, and reduced to every kind of helpless writhing. It was in him to curse the very day on which he had entered the earth.... Good God, why couldn’t he shake off this morbid hopelessness? How did he know what would happen, after all? Perhaps her love for him was as overwhelming as his. Perhaps she would be forced to cling to him, in spite of every enormous warning and obstacle.
He passed into a fitful and often dream-groaning sleep. When he awoke it was noon. His room seemed uglier than usual—the straight, oak furniture, and the worn, brown carpet, and the rose-stamped wallpaper were like slaps against his spirit. Money, money—the devil sure had been in an ingenious mood when he invented it.... And Blanche Palmer was in the next room—all of him tingled incredibly at the thought of her proximity, and his heavy head grew a bit lighter. Then the door opened and she walked out, slowly, with a sulky, half sleepy, questioning look on her face, and rumpled hair, and a wrinkled gown.
“Eric, what’m I doing here—what happened last night?” she asked.
“Sit down, dear, and let your head clear a bit—I’ll tell you,” he answered.
She dropped into the armchair and he drew another chair beside her.
“You passed out in the cab after we left Tony’s,and I decided to bring you here,” he said. “It would have been rather ticklish, carrying you in my arms and waking up your, u-um, intellectual family. Their response might have been just a trifle excited, you know. You’re not angry with me, are you, Blanche?”
She looked steadily at him, with her head too confused and aching for any definite emotion—for the moment—and then, very slowly, she gave him a tenderly rebuking smile. Somehow, she knew that he had left her in peace while she had slept at his place, and funny, this time she would not have minded an opposite gesture. Things never seemed to intrude upon you unless you were seeking to avoid them! Yet, she was touched by this proof that he had not been hiding a mere, ordinary lust for her. Sweet, sweet boy ... how her head swayed and throbbed, and yet, despite the pain, a happiness tried to lessen it.
“You really shouldn’t have brought me here,” she said at last. “My folks’ll raise the dickens with me now. Their system is wink your eye at daughter ’f she gets back any time before 6A. M., and call her a bad woman ’f she doesn’t. Still, you’d have been in for it ’f youhadbrought me back, I guess. There wasn’t much choice in the matter.”
“Why don’t you leave that dirty den of yours?” he asked. “You can’t go on sacrificing yourself forever.”
“Oh, I’m going to leave pretty soon,” she answered. “I’d have done it long ago, only I didn’t see much difference between living home and staying in some spotty hall-bedroom, and I’ve never had money enough for more than that. Maybe I can get a fairly decentplace in the Village, though. Margaret tells me that rents are much cheaper down there.”
“Yes, you’d better look around,” he said, dully.
He couldn’t ask her to live with him, or to marry him—especially the latter—without telling the secret to her, and once more his courage failed him. While she was bathing and making her toilette, he fixed a simple breakfast in the kitchenette. Afterwards, as they were lolling over the coffee, he said: “You’re looking beautiful this morning. Your face is like ... well, like a wild rose and a breeze flirting with each other.”
“I’m only too willing to believe you, Eric,” she answered, softly. “Don’t make me conceited now.”
An irresistible impulse came to him. He arose, walked around the table, and bent down to her. She curved her arms about his shoulders, and they traded a lengthy kiss.
“I’m in love with you, Blanche,” he said, looking away, after he had straightened up.
She grasped one of his hands and answered: “Why, you’re startling me, Eric—I’d never have guessed it. Would it surprise, you, too, ’f I said I loved you?”
“Say it and find out.”
“Well, I do.”
He bent down and kissed her again. Then he clenched one of his fists and walked away. It would have to be told now ... or never.
“Let’s sit on the couch, Blanche, I want to talk to you,” he said.
After she had acquiesced they were silent for a fullminute, while she looked at him and wondered at his nervous remoteness. Then he turned to her.
“I suppose you don’t know that I’m a negro,” he said.
She stared at him with an unbelieving frown on her face.
“A ... what?” she asked.
“A man of negro blood. My grandfather was white and he married a negress, and my mother married another white man. That’s the story.”
As she stared at him she felt too stunned for any single emotion.
“Eric, you’re fooling me, aren’t you?” she asked at last, slowly.
“No, it’s the truth.”
“But ... but, Eric, you look exactly like a white man! It can’t be true.”
“It is, just the same,” he answered, oddly relieved, now that he had blurted the thing out, and stoically waiting for her words to strike him. “I have just a small fraction of negro blood, as you see, and most people, like you, mistake me for a white man. God, how I wish I were coal-black—it would have saved me from the heartache that’s coming to me now!”
She looked away from him for a while, with a veritablemêléeof fear, brave indifference to the revelation, and self-doubt contending within her. Eric Starling was a negro, and she had fallen in love with him, and ... would she be averse to touching him, now? Would it make any difference? She reached for his hand and held it tightly for a moment, almost in anabsurd effort to discover the answer to the question. Oh, what were words, anyway? He could tell her that he was negro until he became blue in the face, but he didn’t give her the feeling of one. Somehow, he just didn’t have the physical essence which she had always felt in the presence of other negroes, even those at the Vanderin party. He just didn’t have it. There was a fresh, lovely sturdiness attached to his body, and she wanted to be in his arms, and she couldn’t help herself. She loved him with every last blood-drop in her heart.
But the future, with all its ghastly dangers and troubles. If she married him, or if they lived together, her father and brothers would try to kill him, or injure him—she knew whattheywould do well enough, the stupid roughnecks—and her mother would weep and shriek, and perhaps try to kill herself, and other people would shun them, or make trouble for them. Even the dirty newspapers might take it up—hadn’t she read last week about a negro who had been hounded out of a New Jersey town because he loved a white girl and they wanted to marry each other? People were always like wolves, waiting to leap upon you if you dared to disregard any of their cherished “Thou Shalt Nots” ... just like wolves. The whole world seemed to be in a conspiracy to prevent people from becoming natural beings and doing as they pleased, even when their acts couldn’t possibly injure anybody. It was terrible.
And she herself, would she have courage enough to defy everything for his sake, and would her lovefor him continue in spite of all the threats and intrusions? She turned to look at him again. He was slumping down on the couch, with his hands resting limply on his outstretched legs, and his head lowered. All of her heart bounded toward him, and she flung herself against him and cried: “I don’t care what you are, Eric! I love you and I’m going to stick to you. I love you, Eric, dear one.”
With hosannas in his heart, he placed his arms around her, and they passed into an incoherence of weeping, and kissing, and whispered endearments, and sighs, and strainings. A full hour passed in this way before they could slowly return to some semblance of composure. Then, gradually, they tried to discuss the predicament facing them.
“You’re sure that you love me now, dear, but you’ve got to be doubly sure,” he said. “We won’t see each other for the next two weeks, and we’ll have a chance to think things over then. It’ll be hard, hard, but we’ve simply got to do it. Our minds will work better when we’re alone.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Eric,” she said, slowly, “but it wouldn’t change me any ’f I didn’t see you for a year, ’r a lifetime. Don’t be afraid of that.”
“You think so now, and, God, I hope it’s true, but you must realize what we’re going to be up against,” he answered. “Your family will raise hell, of course, and other people will turn their backs on us, and you’ll have to mingle with negro friends of mine and live among them.... Are you sure you’ll be able to face all these things?”
She hid her head on the couch for a while, and then raised it.
“I’ll be honest with you, Eric,” she said. “I’ll love you for the rest of my life, and I’ll never have anything to do with any other man, but I don’t know whether I’m brave enough to marry you and ... and take all the blows you’ve been talking about. I just don’t know.”
“If I were less selfish I’d give you up for your own good,” he answered, moodily.
“How about myself?” she asked. “Don’t you know I’m afraid that my father and my brothers will try to hurt you, ’r even kill you? Why, I can see the anger and the meanness on their faces right now, and it won’t do any good to talk to them! ’F I were less selfish, I’d want to giveyouup, just to save you, Eric.”
He kissed her again, and they murmured promises and were loath to withdraw from each other. Finally, she rose from the couch and tried to bring a brave smile to her face.
“I’ve simply got to be going now, Eric,” she said. “I’ll come up here the Saturday after next, two weeks from now, dear, ’r I’ll write you ’f I just must see you sooner.... I know Iwillmarry you, Eric, in spite of everything—I know I will—but it’ll be better for both of us ’f we take our time about it.”
“Yes, that’s true,” he answered, as he fondled her cheek. “I’ll spend most of the two weeks writing poems to you, when I’m not in harness down at Tony’s. It’ll be some consolation, anyway.”
She donned her hat, and they exchanged several “last” hugs before they descended to the street, where he called a cab for her and, in spite of her protestations, slipped a bill into the driver’s hands. When she reached her home, the family were seated in the kitchen, smoking, reading the Sunday papers, and occasionally debating on the subject of her whereabouts.
“Well, give ’n account of y’rself, come on,” her father said, gruffly, as she removed her hat and desperately tried to straighten out the wrinkles in her dress. “’F you was out with Campbell again, I’ll make him talk turkey this time. He can’t fool around with one of my girls and not expect to do the right thing by her.”
His little eyes were tense with irritation and suspicion as he watched her.
“Yeh, you’ve got a nerve, all right,” Mabel piped up. “Inever come trotting in at three in the afternoon! You’re just losing all respect for yourself, that’s what.”
“Say, listen, I’m not a child, any more,” Blanche answered, wearily resuming the old, useless blah-blahing. “I went to a party down in the Village and stayed overnight at my girl-friend’s studio, Margaret Wheeler, but I don’t see why I have to make any excuses about it. If the rest of you don’t like the way I act, I’ll pack up my things and leave, that’s all.”
“You will, huh?” her father asked. “Well, maybe we’ll tell you ourselves to clear outa here. ’F you can’t show any respect for your folks, then it’s high time somethin’ was done about it!”
“Yeh, that goes for me, too,” Harry said.
He suspected that his sister had rejoined Campbell, and he determined to look Joe up and frighten him into marrying her. The damn fool—she didn’t have sense enough to look out for herself, and if she kept it up, she’d wind up by becoming little better than the easy skirts he knocked around with. He wouldn’t let that happen tohissister—not he.
Kate Palmer stuck to her invariable rôle of peacemaker, though she felt sick at heart at her daughter’s silliness and looseness. She was staying out overnight with men and getting to be a regular bad woman. It was really terrible.
“Of course, we won’t let you leave home,” she said, “but you’re actin’ sim-ply awful nowadays. You’ll be disgracin’ all of us the next thing we know, gettin’ into some trouble ’r somethin’. Won’t you promise your ma not to stay out all night? Won’t you, Blanie?”
“You know I don’t want to hurt you, ma,” Blanche replied, as she stroked her mother’s hair, “but just the same, I’ve got to lead my own life from now on. I’m a grown-up person, ma, and not a slave.”
“You know we’re just askin’ you to act decint-like, you know it,” her mother said, sadly. “We’re none of us tryin’ to hold you down.”
“Yeh, that’s right, you’re getting too bold,” Mabel cut in, with disguised envy.
Shescarcely ever “went the limit” with men, and why should her sister be privileged to be more brazen about it.
During all of these tirades, Blanche had wonderedat her own indifference—the battle was on again, but now it had only a comical aspect. These pent-up, dense, jealous people—could they really be related to her own flesh and blood? They seemed to be so remote and impossible. None of them, except her mother, stirred her in the least, and even there it was only a mild compassion. Yet, once she had loved them in a fashion, and felt some degree of a warm nearness that even wrangling had never quite been able to remove. What marvels happened to you, once your mind began to expand. That was it—their minds were still and hard, and little more than the talking slaves of their emotions—while hers was restless and separate, and had slowly overcome the blindness of her former emotions toward them.
And now ... ah, if they had only known what they really had to rave about. How they would have pounced upon her! The sick fear returned to her as she reclined upon the bed in her room. Perhaps it might be wiser to pack up and leave home immediately. Yet, that would only be a breathing spell. If she married Starling, or lived with him, they would inevitably investigate and discover his negro blood, and the storm would burst, anyway. She tossed about in a brooding indecision.
During the next week she surprised her family by remaining in her room each night. What had come over her?—she must be sick, or in some secret difficulty. When a girl moped around and didn’t care to enjoy herself at night, something must be wrong, especially a girl like Blanche, who had always been“on the go” for the past four years. They suspected that Campbell or some other man might have given her an unwelcome burden, and they questioned her in this respect, but her laughing denials nonplussed them. Harry had an interview with Campbell, and had grudgingly become convinced that Blanche was no longer going out with him. The Palmer family finally became convinced that she had really taken their objections to heart and had decided to become a good girl.
Blanche wrote feverishly in her room, every night, with a little grammar which she had purchased to aid her—descriptions of places which she knew, such as cafeterias, dance halls and amusement parks. Her anger at human beings, and her sense of humor, fought against each other in these accounts, and the result was frequently a curious mixture of indignations and grimaces. Starling was ever a vision, standing in her room and urging on her hands ... she was writing for his sake as well as her own. If the rest of her life was to be interwoven in his, she would have to make herself worthy of him, and try to equal his own creations, and give him much more than mere physical contacts and adoring words. Otherwise, he might become quickly tired of her!
Her courage grew stronger with each succeeding night, and a youthful, though still sober, elasticity within her began to make plans that slew her prostrate broodings. Eric and she would simply run off to some remote spot—Canada, Mexico, Paris, anywhere—and then the specters and hatreds in their immediatescene would be powerless to injure or interfere with them. What was the use of remaining and fighting, when all of the odds were against them, and when the other side was so stubbornly unscrupulous, so utterly devoid of sympathy and understanding? In such a case, they would only be throwing themselves open to every kind of attack and intrusion, if not to an almost certain defeat. Eric might be a “nigger,” yes, but he certainly didn’t look like one, and he was better than any of the white men she had ever met ... dear, sweet boy ... and she loved him with every particle of her heart. She was sure of that now. She had never before felt anything remotely equal to the huge, restless emptiness which her separation from him had brought her—a sort of can’t-stand-it-not-to-see-him feeling that rose within her, even when she was in the midst of writing, and kept her pencil idly poised over the paper for minutes, while in her fancy she teased his hair, or chided some witticism of his. She’d go through ten thousand hells rather than give him up!
After a week and a half had passed, she determined to visit Margaret and “talk it over” with the other girl. It wasn’t that Margaret could convince her one way or the other—she had made her decision—but still, she craved the possible sympathy and encouragement of at least one other person besides Eric. It was hard to stand so utterly alone.
After telephoning, and finding that Margaret would be alone that night, she hurried down to see her.
The two girls sparred pleasantly and nervously with each other for a while as though they were both dreadingthe impending subject—which Margaret had sensed—and futilely trying to delay its appearance. Finally, Blanche blurted out, after a silence: “I suppose you know I’m in love with Eric Starling, Mart. You must have guessed it, the way I fooled around with him at Tony’s.”
“Yes, I’ve been worrying quite a bit about that,” Margaret answered. “Do you know that he’s, well—”
“Yes, I know that he’s a negro,” Blanche interrupted. “It’s true, Eric has just a little negro blood in him, but you must admit, dear, that he’s the whitest-looking one you ever saw.”
“Of course, he’d have fooled me, too, when I first met him, if Max hadn’t told me about it,” Margaret said. “I like him, too. He’s certainly not fatiguing to look at, and he has a lovely sense of humor, but still, can you quite forget about his negro blood when ... oh, when you’re petting together, I mean.”
“Can I forget it?—why, I go mad, stark mad, ’f he just puts his hand over mine,” Blanche cried. “I’ve never fallen so hard for any man in all my life—I mean it, Mart. I arranged not to meet him for two weeks—just to see ’f I wouldn’t cool down about him, you know—but it’s only convinced me all the more. I’ll never be able to get along without him ... never.”
“Well, after all, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a little affair with him, if you’re careful about it,” Margaret replied.
“But it’s much deeper than that,” Blanche said slowly. “We’re both perm’nently in love with each other, we really are. It’s a big, precious thing, andnot just ... well ... not just wanting to have a few parties, you know. I’m going to live with him for years and years, and maybe marry him right now. It’s the first time I’ve ever loved any one.”
“But, Blanche, you’re going to let yourself in for an endless nightmare, if that’s the case,” Margaret replied, sorrowfully. “Your people will simply raise the roof off, if they’re anything like you say they are. And then, all the other things—children, and living among his negro friends, and getting snubbed right and left.... Are you really sure you love him enough for all that? Are you, really?”
“Yes, Iamsure,” Blanche said, in a slow, sick-at-heart, stubborn voice. “I’ve thought of everything, don’t worry about that, and it hasn’t given me much rest, either. Oh, how I hate this blind, mean world of ours!”
“Yes, I know, but hating it never solves anything,” Margaret answered, dully.
“Well, I’m going to solve it by running off with him,” Blanche continued. “We’ll go far away, to Paris or London—some place where nobody’ll know that Eric’s a negro, and we’ll stay there for the rest of our lives, that’s all. I don’t care ’f we both have to wash dishes for a living, I don’t. It’s all right to fight back when you’ve got a chance, but not when everything’s against you.”
“Funny, I never thought of that,” Margaret said, more cheerfully. “It might work out that way. Of course, itiscowardly in a way, but after all, there’s little sense to being brave in the lions’ den and gettingdevoured. It might work out fine, if you’re both certain your love’s going to last. Somehow or other, it’s hard for me to believe in a permanent love. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it in any of the people around me. Are you sure you’re not just in a sentimental dream, Blanche?”
Blanche reflected for a while.
“Well, ’f we’re both making a mistake, we’ll be happy, anyway, till we find it out,” she said at last. “Good Lord, ’f you never take any risks in life, why then you’ll be sad all the time, and you won’t have any happiness at all, no matter how short it is!”
“Yes, I agree with you there,” Margaret answered, with a sigh.
They fell into a discussion of the practical details of Blanche’s possible departure, and the money that would be required, and the difficulty of earning a living in Europe, both trying to lose themselves in a bright animation. When Blanche parted with Margaret, a little after midnight, she felt more confident, and almost light-hearted. After all, if two human beings were wise, and brave, and forever alert, they simply couldn’t be separated from each other, no matter what the dangers were.
The mood remained with her and grew more intense each day, and when she rang Starling’s bell at the end of the week, she was almost fluttering with hope and resolution. For the first hour they did little more than remain in each other’s arms, in a daze and maze of kisses, sighs, and simple, reiterated love words. To Starling, huge violins and cornets were ravishing theair of the room, and the street sounds outside, floating in through an open window, were only the applause of an unseen audience. After all, only times like this gave human beings any possible excuse for existing—the rest of life was simply a series of strugglings, and dodgings, and tantalizings, and defeats. The least pressure of her fingertips provoked a fiery somersault within him, and the grazing of her bosom and face against his aroused revolving conflagrations within his breast. Blanche had become a stunned child, scarcely daring to believe in the compensations which were ruffling her blood to something more than music, and yet desperately guarding them, incoherently whispering over them, endlessly testing them with her fingers and lips, lest they prove to be the cruellest of fantasies.
When Blanche and Starling had made a moderate return to a rational condition, they began to discuss their future.
“Don’t you see that we must run away, Eric, dear?” she asked. “We’ll just be crushed and beaten down, otherwise. My brother Harry, he’d never rest till he’d put you in a hospital—oh, but don’t I know him—and he might even try to do worse. I get the shivers when I think of it.”
Her words were an affront to his courage, and he said: “Listen, I can take care of myself—I’ve been through a pretty tough mill.”
“Of course you can, but they wouldn’t fight fair,” she answered, impatiently. “They’d just proceed to get you by hook or crook. And that’s not half of it. Why, I can just see ev’rybody turning their backs onus, ’r making nasty remarks, ’r trying to poison us against each other. We’ve just got to run away and live where nobody knows us!”
“No, it would be too yellow,” he replied, stubbornly. “All the things you mention will only be a test of our love for each other. If we can’t stand the gaff, then our love isn’t what we thought it was.”
“I’m not afraid of that,” she said. “I’d go through anything with you ’f I thought it was the best thing we could do, but why should we stay here and run up against all kinds of suff’rings and insults, and dangers, too, just to show how darn brave we are? It’s not cowardly to run off when everything’s against us—it’s not.”
“Well, let’s think it over for another week, anyway,” he answered, slowly. “I don’t like to slink away, with my tail between my legs, but maybe it’s the only thing to do. If we were only starting a little affair, like most of the mixed couples that hang out at Vanderin’s shack, then it would be different, of course, but we’re probably facing a whole lifetime together, and it’s a much more serious matter. The trouble is I’ve a great deal of pride in me, honey, and it always wants to fight back.”
“I have, too,” she said, “but in a time like this it’s just foolish to be so proud—it’ll only help other people to make us unhappy, that’s all.”
They were silent for a while, and then he said, with a smile: “Good Lord, we’re getting morbid and theatrical. The whole thing may not be half as bad aswe think it is. Anyway, let’s forget it for one night, at least.”
They spent the remainder of the evening in an idyllic way. He read her his sensuous, symbolistic poems, and talked about them, and told her exciting stories of his past life, while she tried to describe some of the struggles and hesitations which had attended the birth of her mind, and her search for happiness in the face of sordid punches, and stupid jeers, and all the disappointments with which ignorance slays itself. They resolved not to become complete lovers until they were really living together and removed from fears and uncertainties. When they parted at 2A. M.they were both wrapped up in a warmly exhausted but plotting trance. They arranged to meet on the following Wednesday, at Tony’s Club, and Blanche felt feathery and on tiptoes, as she rode back to the uninviting home which she would soon leave forever.
The next four days were excruciating centuries to her, and she was barely able to stagger through the nagging, drab details of her work at Madame Jaurette’s. She spent her nights writing in her room, and the even trend of her days remained uninvaded until Tuesday evening, when she found a letter waiting for her at home. It was from Oppendorf, who told her that he had polished up her account of the Vanderin party and had sold it to a New York magazine of the jaunty, trying-hard-to-be-sophisticated kind. She was overjoyed as she stared at the fifty-dollar check which he had enclosed, and she could scarcely wait to tell the news to Eric. Now she had proved her mettle, andwas on the road to becoming a creative equal of his—blissful thought.
When she met him at Tony’s, she gayly extracted the check from her purse and waved it in front of his face.
“Now what do you think of your stupid, hair-curling Blanche?” she asked elatedly.
He laughed at her excitement as he led her to a table.
“You haven’t made me believe in your ability just because you’ve been accepted by a frothy, snippy magazine,” he said. “I knew all about it the first night I met you.”
“Never mind, this means I’m going to make a name for myself,” she answered, proudly.
He gave her a fatherly smile—what a delicious combination of naïvetés and instinctive wisdoms she was.
“I felt the same way when I first broke into print,” he said. “The excitement dies down after a while, and then you don’t care so much whether people like your stuff or not. You get down to a grimly plodding gait, old dear, and you start to write only for yourself. Then each acceptance means only so many dollars and cents.”
She retorted merrily: “Wet ra-ag—don’t try to dampen my spirits. It can’t be done.”
The brazenly sensual clatter and uproar of Tony’s pounded against their minds, and even Starling, more skeptically inured to it, and knowing every hidden, sordid wrinkle in the place, became more flighty and swaggering as he danced with Blanche. It meant something,now that the girl whom he really loved was stepping out beside him, and it had become something less gross than a collection of rounders, sulky or giggling white and colored flappers, fast women, and hoodwinked sugar-papas spending their rolls to impress the women beside them. Now it was an appropriate carnival-accompaniment to his happiness.
Immersed in Starling, Blanche did not notice the group of newcomers who had seated themselves two tables behind her. They consisted of her brother Harry, another wooden-faced, overdressed man of middle age, and their thickly painted, sullen-eyed ladies of the evening. Harry was settling the details of a whisky-transaction with Jack Compton, the other man.
“We’ll have the cases there by midnight on the dot,” he said, in a low voice. “I’ve got a cop fixed up, an’ he’s gonna stand guard for us an’ say it’s K.O., ’f any one tries to butt in. We’ll have to hand him a century, though.”
“That’s all right with me,” Compton replied. “You put this deal through without slipping up and there’ll be a coupla hundred in it for you.”
“It’s as good as done,” Harry answered, with a heavy nod.
Then, glancing around, he spied Blanche at the other table.
“Say, there’s my crazy sis, Blanche,” he said, pointing to her. “In the red pleated skirt, two tables down by the railing. See her, Jack?”
“Yeh ... she’s a good looker, Harry,” Compton replied.
“Say, I know the fellow with her,” one of the woman broke in. “He works here—he’s public’ty-man for the joint. Name’s Starling—Eric Starling. I met him down here about a week ago. What’s your sister doing out with a nigger, Harry? She seems to be mighty thick with him from the way she’s cutting up.”
“Go o-on, he looks damn white to me,” Harry answered, intently scowling toward the other table.
“Well, heisa nigger just the same,” the second woman said. “It’s known all around here—he don’t deny it any. I’ve seen them like him before. They’re only about one-eighth black, I guess.”
“Can’t your sister get any white fellows to go around with?” Compton asked. “She must be hard up, trotting around with a shine.”
“Yeh, she’s sure crazy about dark meat, I’ll say,” the first woman commented, with a laugh.
The taunts pierced Harry’s thick skin, and a rage grew within him. He’d stood for her going with Jews, and wops, and dopey weak-sisters, but a nigger was too much! It affronted his family-pride and erectness, and made him feel that his friends had been given a chance to ridicule him in an indirect way. For all he knew, Blanche might be having intimate relations with this coon, or might be even fixing to marry him. The thought was like a red-hot iron. His own sister, acting like a slut, in a black-and-tan dive, and consorting with a nigger there, or maybe with more of them.... By God, he wouldn’t stand for that!
“I’m gonna go over an’ bust him in the nose,” hesaid, half rising from his chair. “He’ll be leavin’ white girls alone after I’m through with him!”