PART TWO
Thenight became thickly intense, and all the angular details and flat expanses of each street—neither hideous nor beautiful but vapidly and rigidly perched in between—took on the least touch of glamor. Some semblance of a darkly plaintive heart began to sway and quiver within the scene, as though the essence of all these human beings pacing down the sidewalks and sitting or standing in shops, cars, and restaurants, had joined the night and formed another quality—expectations, illusions, and promises, all electric in the air. The harshly dreamless industries and shallow loiterings of the day were replaced by an effort at romance, soiled but persistent, and a sensual pride preening itself with gallantries, and a confusion of cruel or softly dozing confidences.
The moving-picture theaters, in dots of red, yellow, blue, and green light, made proclamations of spurious, quickly attained love, adventure, and suspense; the United Cigar Stores, framed by red and gold, displayed their mild, brown opiates, while within them deferential clerks catered to jovial or importantly sullen men and women; the restaurants, with food heaped in their windows, and glistening fronts, were filled with people intent upon turning a prosy stuffing into an elaborate, laughing ritual; and even the Greek lunch-rooms,with their stools beside half-dirty glass counters, and nickel coffee-urns, assumed a hang-dog grin.
Taxicabs in all the cardinal colors darted about, like feverish insects serving human masters, and the people in them—lazy, or impatient, or bored, or out for a lark—made a blur of faces sometimes glimpsed more distinctly as the cabs stopped or slowed down. Policemen in dark blue uniforms stood at street-crossings, with tired aggressiveness, looking for a chance to invest their flunky-rôles with a rasping authority. Motor-trucks lurched along like drab monsters barely held in leash. Lights were everywhere—in shops, on iron poles in the streets, mellowly staring from upper windows—desperately seeking to dismiss the darkly fearful mystery of the surrounding night, but never quite overcoming it.
Street-cars and “L” trains crawled on, soddenly packed with under-dogs going to their dab of rest or crude pleasure. A roar was in the air, with immediate, sharp sounds trailing out into it—a complaining, shackled savage floating up from the scene. The large buildings were without individuality, except that some of them rose vertically above the others, and in their dull shades of red, brown, and gray, they would all have presented a yawning, meanly barrack-like effect but for the relieving fancy of their lights. Even the perpendicular strength of the skyscrapers was marred by filigreed and overcorniced lines.
To Blanche, the scene was amêléeof delightful possibilities always just eluding her, and obnoxious intrusions only too ready to seek her arm. She realizedthe transforming effect of the night and said to herself: “Say, I’d never do all this walking if it was daytime—funny, how everything gets more attractive when the night trots along. Guess you can’t see things so clear then.... Better chance to kid yourself along.”
As she strolled through the outskirts of Greenwich Village her legs began to feel heavy, and the past hour seemed to be nothing more than a long, senseless walk taken within the confines of a large trap. The light, hazy sensation of searching oozed slowly out of her body and was replaced by the old hopelessness.
She stopped in front of a batik-shop window and looked at the soft, intricately veined gaudiness of the smocks, blouses, and scarves. “Sorta crazy, yes, but she’d like to wear them—they suited her mood.” Another girl was standing beside Blanche, and the other turned her head and said: “Aren’t they beauties, though. I’d just love to buy that purple and green smock there in the corner.”
“I like the blue one better—the one right next to yours,” Blanche answered naturally, but she looked closely at the other girl.
It was not unusual for strange girls to speak to you when they were either lonely or just brightly interested in some little thing, but still you had to be careful—sometimes they were “fast” players with men, in need of a feminine accomplice, or grafters intent on securing some favor or loan. The other girl had a slender torso and almost slender legs, with allof her plumpness crowded in the buttocks and upper thighs. She had singed butterflies on her face and they gave a light, fluttering pain to her smiles. She had the rarity of large blue eyes on a duskily pale brown face, and small, loosely parted lips, and a slight hook on the upper part of her nose, and curly bobbed brown hair. In her tan coat trimmed with dark fur, scarlet turban, and multicolored silk scarf, she seemed to be a dilettantish, chippy girl, just graduated from the flapper class.
Blanche noticed something “different” in the other girl and answered her more readily as they continued their talk.
“D’you live in the Village?” the other girl asked.
“No, I’m from uptown,” Blanche answered. “I’ve heard lots about it, though. I’d like to meet some of the int’resting artists and writers down here. There must be all kinds of them in the tearooms and places like that.”
The other girl gave her a pitying look.
“All kinds of fakers, you mean,” she replied. “They know how to brag about themselves, but that’s where it ends.”
“But I thought this was the part of town where real artists ’n’ writers came together,” Blanche persisted. “Of course, I didn’t believe they were all great ones, but I did believe they were all trying to do something, well, different, you know.”
“Oh, therearesome down here, but you don’t usually find them in the showplaces or tearooms,” the other girl answered, as she and Blanche walked downthe street. “Those places are for the mediocrities, and the pretenders, and the students ... and, oh, yes, the slummers. People from uptown hunting for something gayly wicked.”
“I suppose you think I’m a foolish slummer, too,” Blanche said, “but I’m not. I’ve just been walking along and thinking things over. I didn’t realize where I was.”
“I wasn’t being personal,” the other girl replied. “I sort of like the way you talk. Suppose we introduce ourselves to each other?”
They traded names and the other girl, Margaret Wheeler, went on: “You know, strangers are always supposed to distrust each other, but I can’t be annoyed. Every once in a while I talk to some girl on the street, and I’ve started a couple of interesting friendships that way. I’m not a Lesbian and I haven’t any other designs upon you.”
“Why, I don’t distrust you at all,” Blanche answered. “I can take care of myself and I suppose you can, too. You talk like you were intelligent, and I’d like to know you better, that’s all.”
“Thanks,” said Margaret. “I would be fairly intelligent, if I didn’t let some male make an idiot out of me every few months. I’m in love with some one now, but it’ll wind up like all the others.”
“You make me feel envious,” Blanche replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever really loved any fellow.”
“Are you joking?” Margaret asked.
“No, that’s straight.”
“Well, I’m going on twenty-five now, and I couldn’tcount the infatuations I’ve had. I’m not as easy as I used to be, though. Once upon a time, if a man had a straight nose, and blond hair, and could recite poetry and make me believe it was his, that was all I needed. But no-ow, a man must have some real subtlety, and ability, and wittiness, before I pay any attention to him.”
“That’s just the kind I’ve been looking for,” Blanche answered. “Where on earth do you find them?”
“Nowhere in particular—it’s a matter of luck. And don’t forget that a girl must be unusual herself before she can attract unusual men, unless they’re just anxious to have a party with her.”
“Yes, that’s where I’d lose out,” Blanche said, heavily. “I’m just a ha-air dresser in a beauty parlor, that’s all.”
“You certainly don’t talk like one. Maybe you’ve never had much of a chance to be anything different.”
“You said it”—Blanche’s voice was low and depressed.
“Well, I’m only a steno myself,” Margaret answered, “but I’m taking a course in short-story writing at Herbert College—three nights a week. I want to tear off the old veils and tell what people do to each other.”
“Say, maybe I could join it, too,” Blanche replied, eagerly. “I’m not so strong on grammar, though—stopped in my first year at high and went to work.”
“Oh, you can poundthatpart of it into you. The main thing’s whether you have something to say—something that’s not just ordinary and hackneyed.”
“I think I have, but ... how do I know,” Blanche asked, uncertainly.
They had stopped in front of a tearoom with a multicolored wooden sign under an electric light.
“Here’s Clara’s—one of my hangouts,” Margaret said. “I’m going in to meet my blond-haired devastator. Won’t you come along?”
“Perhaps I’ll be in the way.”
“Nothing of the kind—I’ll introduce you to some of the people I know.”
They entered the place, which occupied the first floor of a two-storey, attic-topped, brick house. Kitchen tables and chairs painted pale green and vermilion lined the walls. Paintings and drawings were hung everywhere—cubistic plagiarisms, slovenly sketches, and illustrations meant for the average magazine’s check book but not quite reaching it—and a semidim light came from stained-glass bowls hung from the low ceiling. Some fifteen men and women were scattered around the two rooms, and a portable phonograph in the corner was whining one of the latest fox-trot insinuations—“He Never Gets Tired of Me, No, Boy, Just Never Gets Tired of Me-ee.”
Three men and a woman at a table effusively greeted Margaret, and after she had introduced Blanche, the two girls sat down with the others. The third girl, Dora Ruvinsky, was an unsymmetrically fat Jewess, with a thin-lipped but salacious face and a shorn disorder of black hair. Her sex had yielded to a cunning nightmare of masculinity, and she wore a stiff white collar, a red cravat, and a man’s vest and coat. Shespoke in a husky drawl and perpetually slapped the shoulders of the men beside her. They regarded her with tolerance contending against a slight aversion.
One of them, Max Oppendorf, a blond-haired man of thirty, plied her with whisky from a hip-bottle and strove to trap her into feminine reactions and remarks, as though he were coldly and listlessly playing with a desperately hypocritical insect. His narrow, pale, blue-eyed face glanced around the tables with pity and repugnance somehow fused into its expression. A recognized poet and novelist, he was nevertheless known as a distinguished outcast, ostracized, attacked, and hated by literary and dilettantish groups of every variety because of his skillful-tongued independence, his careless violations of etiquettes and conventions, and the ravages of his unorthodox intellect. His clothes were shabby but not quite untidy, and as he frequently closed his eyes while speaking, he displayed the contradictory guise of an aristocratic vagabond.
Men almost invariably detested him, while the reactions of the women who met him were evenly divided into a distrustful resentment in one camp and a loyal adoration in the other. His armor was invulnerable, save when he became hopelessly drunk, in which condition he either savagely denounced and affronted the people around him or became unwontedly indulgent and gave them simulations of sentimentality and affectionate attention. These abdications sprang from his innate indifference to life and most of its people. Sincerely believing that most men andwomen were beclouded, unsearching, and cruellygauchechildren, alcohol made his indifference to them more indulgently intent upon distracting itself, and, when drunk, he stooped to them with loud, mock-arguments, and exuberant caresses. He felt a moderate degree of tenderness toward Margaret Wheeler, who appealed to him as an honest grappler, more unreserved and mentally edged than most other girls of her age and occupation. She was violently in love with him, and they spoke together in tones that were almost whispers, and stroked each other’s hands.
The second man, Bob Trussel—a gorgeously effeminate youth who was known in Village circles for his not-quite-Beardsleyesque black and whites—conversed with Dora, while the third, Ben Helgin, talked to Blanche.
Ben was a robustly tall man in his early thirties, with a huge, half-bald head, and dark-brown hair inclined to be frizzly. His long, pointed nose, severely arched eyebrows, and widely thin lips gave him the look of a complacent, pettily cruel Devil—a street urchin who had donned the mask of Mephistopheles but could not quite conceal the leer of a boy intent upon practical jokes and small tormentings. He was a master in the arts of dramatic exaggeration and belittling, never quite telling the truth and never quite lying, and his immeasurable vanity made him always determined to dominate any conversation. He had an Oriental volubility, and people would often sit beside him for an hour or more and vainly seek to insert a beginning remark or express an uninterrupted opinion.
One of his favorite devices was to tell anecdotes about men of his acquaintance, in which the men were invariably depicted in a childish, ridiculous, or inferior posture, while he gloated over and embellished the details of their fancied discomfiture, with a great assumption of sympathy for the victims. Living in a dream-world entirely of his own making, he loved to flirt with visions, conquests, world-shaking concepts, and child-like boasts. On one morning he would appear among his friends, describing some plan or idea with a cyclonic enthusiasm, and on the very next afternoon no trace of it would remain within his mind. Again, he would loll in an armchair and announce that a famous actress of forty had implored him to reside with her and to become the leading man in her next play, but he would neglect to mention that the lady in question was renowned for her generous impulses and included truck-drivers and cigar-clerks in her overtures. These impositions caused most people to regard him as an eel-likeposeur, when they were removed from the persuasive sorceries of his words, and they failed to see that his gigantic egotism had sincerely hoaxed itself into the rôle of a flitting and quickly ennuied conqueror.
For years he had followed the luring dream of amassing a large fortune through the creation of dexterously dishonest stories, plays, and press-agent campaigns, and while he had accumulated thousands of dollars in these ways, the dream of wealth persistently refused to be captured. He lacked the grimly plodding, blind instinct necessary for such a goal, and his financial harvests were always quickly gathered and dissipated.This babbling immersion in the garnering of money, however, gave him the paradoxical air of an esthetic Babbitt.
His serious literary creations were original and sardonic at their best, but frequently marred by a journalistic glibness which led him into shallow and redundant acrobatics, or facetious saunterings.
He had known Max Oppendorf for nine years, and they had passed through a comical fanfare of recriminations, friendly invitations, sneers, and respects. Oppendorf secretly disliked him but was at times fascinated by his charming pretenses ofcamaraderie, and the quickness of his mind. At one time, the poet had broken off with Helgin for three years—a withdrawal caused by his discovery of the other man’s peculiar and somewhat incredible sense of humor. Penniless, and afflicted with incipient tuberculosis, Oppendorf had written to his friend and asked for the loan of two hundred dollars. A special-delivery letter had flown back to him, containing an unctuously sympathetic note and announcing the enclosure of a two-hundred-dollar check. The rest of the envelope had been empty, however, and believing that the absence of the check was merely an absent-minded error, he dispatched another letter which apprised his friend of the oversight. In response, Helgin had sent him the following telegram: “It was a nice joke—hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.”
Helgin had a sincere admiration for the other man’s work and a veiled, malicious aversion to the poet’s personal side. To him, Oppendorf’s life held a supremetaunt which had to be demolished with falsehoods and ridicule. The poet’s unbroken flaunting of moralities, conventions, and compromises, reminded Helgin that his own life had not been equally courageous and defiant, in spite of his endless written shots at average people and their fears, and that, in his personal existence, he had frequently prostrated himself before the very observances which he pilloried, or laughed at, in his books and conversation. This specter could only be slain by the effort to jeer at the opposite man’s episodes with men and women, and to hold them forth as clownish and unrewarded capers.
As Helgin sat now, in the boisterous and tawdrily glassy tearoom, he spoke to Blanche with the gracious casualness which he always publicly affected with women. It was a part of his jovially invincible pose to insinuate that he could have been a perfect libertine had he chosen to follow that denounced profession, and that his enormous sexual attractiveness was held in bondage only by his lack of desire and his ability to peer through the entire, violent fraud of sex itself. In the dream-world of his own making, through which he moved, loftily but genially immune to all criticisms, adulations, and importunities, women were the potential vassals whom he disdained to hire.
On the night previous to the present one, his second wife had departed on a visit to her family in a distant city, and he had telephoned Oppendorf and arranged a meeting, prodded by one of the irregular impulses in which his respect for the other man overcame his opposite feelings of envy and aversion. Now, he satand chatted with Blanche while she listened with an almost abject attention. This great writer, whose pictures she had run across on the literary pages of newspapers, and in magazines, was actually seated beside her and speaking to her—it could scarcely be true! She recalled that Rosenberg had often lauded Helgin, and that a year previous she had read one of the latter man’s novels and had liked its “difficult,” thumb-twiddling style and disliked its patronizing, pitying attitude toward the feminine characters. Well, when men wrote about women, or women about men, they never seemed able to become quite fair to each other. They were always mushy and lenient, on one side, or sneering and unsympathetic on the other. She voiced this thought to Helgin, who advised her to cease searching for an unhappy medium. To him, she presented the figure of a worried, heavily questioning peasant girl, dressed and manicured for a more polite rôle, and he had a whim to lure her into expectant admirations and play with her stumbling hungers and wonderings. Usually, he did not waste his time on such girls—they were more to Oppendorf’s liking—but for the space of one night he could afford to risk the impending boredom in a more unassuming manner.
“You must get Oppie to compliment you,” he said, glancing in the poet’s direction. “He does it perfectly. Women cry for it, babies smile, old ladies jump out of their chairs. Come on, Oppie, say something about Miss Palmer’s hair. What does it remind you of? A startled ghost of dawn, the visible breath of afternoon?”
Oppendorf turned from his whisperings with Margaret, and smiled—a patient but slightly threatening smile.
“Are you ordering a tailormade suit or buying a box of cigars?” he asked, sweetly.
“The comparison isn’t quite fair to your poetry, Oppie,” Helgin answered, in the same sweet voice.
“Monseigneur Helgin, apostle of fairness, sympathy, and tolerance—know any other good ones, Ben?”—the poet’s smile shone like a sleeping laugh.
“Your hair is like a tortured midnight—that was a nice line, Oppie,” Helgin answered pensively, as he ignored the other man’s thrust.
“The actual phrase happens to be ‘transfigured midnight,’” Oppendorf said, in an ominously subdued voice. “You substituted the word tortured to make the line meaningless, of course.”
“Sa-ay, wasn’t that tormented night stuff in The Duke of Hoboken, Ben’s last novel?” Dora Ruvinsky asked, poking Oppendorf in the side.
“Yes, among other frantic mendacities,” Oppendorf answered, as he looked compassionately at Helgin. “The ancient Chinese had an excellent proverb: ‘When your stilettos have failed to penetrate the actual figure, erect a ludicrous dummy and belabor it with an ax.’”
“The Chinese usually come to your rescue,” Helgin retorted, “but you don’t seem to realize that The Duke of Hoboken is simply a gorgeous and delirious fantasy. It wasn’t meant to be an actual portrait of you.”
“Yes, you were more innocent than you imagined,” Oppendorf answered, still smiling.
“Oh, stop all of this polite quarreling, Maxie,” Margaret interposed, as she looked at Helgin with an open dislike. “Helgin sits in his little phantom palace, bo-ored and genial, and when you cave in the walls he scarcely hears you.”
“Your own hearing is just a trifle more adoring, isn’t it?” Helgin asked, as he looked at Margaret with an expression of complacent malice.
“Yes, it needs to be, if only to counteract yours,” Margaret replied, tartly.
“Call it a draw, and let’s talk about purple chrysanthemums,” Oppendorf interjected.
When people persisted in clinging to one subject he was always reminded of scrubwomen endlessly scouring a pane of glass, unless the theme was exceptionally complex.
“Dear me, can’t I say something else about the sweet Duke?” Trussel asked, as he stroked his hair with the fingers of one hand. “It’s screamingly amusing, really. Lots of the critics have always attacked Mr. Helgin’s books, you know—called them stilted and, well, overcynical. That sort of thing. But no-ow, dear me, what a change! Why, they’re all simply showering praise on the dear Duke of Hobok’. Of course, there isn’t any connection between this change and the fact that little Dukie is supposed to be a biting caricature of Mr. Oppendorf.”
“No, of course not,” Oppendorf replied, thoroughly amused now. “In the same way, three thoughtfulchorus girls were observed last night, floating in a huge balloon as they crossed the peninsula of Kamchatka.”
“People are always talking about the dead,” Helgin said, in a bored voice. “The indecent vagaries of critics are not interesting to me. They might be vastly engrossing to some entomologist, though.”
“Oh, you’re all a lot of bugs,” Dora said, as she caressed Margaret’s arm while Margaret regarded her with a resigned look that said: “Well, I suppose youmustdo this.”
“You’re crazy, and you take yourselves so darn seriously it gives me a pain!” Dora continued. “Come on, let’s have another drink and act like human beings.”
The conversation changed to a game in which the others bantered with Dora and laughed at her amiable but scoffing retorts. Blanche, who had been bewildered and almost awe-stricken ever since her introduction to these people, began to listen and observe with a clearer, though still strongly respectful, attitude. They were the people whom she had always longed to meet, and they knew much more than she did, and they were bold creators while she was only despairing and partly tongue-tied, ye-es, but still, they were by no means perfect. They wasted so much time in slamming each other as cleverly as they could, and while they were always good-natured about it, you couldn’t fail to spy the malice beneath at least half of their smiles and remarks. They never expressed any whole-hearted liking, or sympathy, or placid interest in their reactionstoward each other, and their talk reminded her of a game in which each one strove to make his “comeback” a little “smarter” and quicker than that of the others. Yet Oppendorf alone seemed to be different. The others, with the exception of Margaret, were always trying to twit or arouse him—something about him seemed to plague them almost against their will—and never quite succeeding. His eyes were sleepy and retiring, and he closed them half of the time during his conversation. When he laughed or raised his voice now and then, it was in a jerky way, “like some one else” was pulling some strings tied to him. Funny man ... what had given him this air of tired sadness? Well, at any rate, she could never fall in love with him—he was too much like a careful ghost!
The man whom she loved would have to be robust, and natural, and, well ... sort of eager to be alive, in spite of the fact that he knew all about the shams and meannesses which life held. Yes, that was it ... he’d be glad, and a little hopeful, in spite of all the rotten things he saw and heard.
She began to talk more frankly, her tongue loosened a bit by the two drinks of whisky that Oppendorf had given her.
“Say, why don’t all of you just call each other liars and boobs, and have it over with?” she asked, with a smile.
“At an early age, I was confronted by the choice of using the other side’s tactics now and then or becoming a hermit,” Oppendorf replied, in his deliberate way. “I am still direct enough, however, to be ostracizedby practically every literary party or group in New York.”
“I admire your indignation,” Helgin said to Blanche. “Ride us all on a rail and tell us what vicious double-dealers we are.”
He had decided to egg her on for purposes of entertainment. “It wouldn’t have the least effect on any of you,” Blanche answered, composedly. “Besides, I’m only a stranger and I really haven’t any right to criticize. You’re all doing things—real things that amount to something—and I’m just a hair-curler in a Beauty Shop.”
“Listen, here’s a tip—never be modest when men are around,” Margaret said, gayly. “They think little enough of women as it is, and they’realwayslooking for a chance to walk over us.”
“Oh, it’s too much trouble not to be honest,” Blanche retorted, lightly. “Let them try to wa-alk, for all I care.”
“Have you ever written, or painted?” Oppendorf asked, liking the contradiction of her humble brassiness.
“Ihavefooled around with ideas of being a writer, but I’m afraid I don’t know English well enough for that,” said Blanche, uncertainly.
“Don’t take up writing, Miss Palmer—it’s only an excuse for laziness,” Helgin said. “That’s probably why so many young people try to toss off stories and verses. They have just a bit of imagination and theydon’t like the prospect of slaving in father’s shoe store or helping mother bake the evening pies.”
“There must be a more important reason than that,” Blanche replied, soberly.
“Yes, it’s barely possible,” Oppendorf interjected. “It’s a habit with us to take our profession somewhat flippantly. That’s to avoid giving the impression that we’re too much in love with ourselves.”
“Funny, you do manage to give the impression, anyway,” Blanche answered, as she made a grimace.
Oppendorf and the others laughed, and Helgin said: “So, you’ve been carrying that little dagger all the time. Bright gal.”
“Not at all—just trying to imitate your style,” Blanche retorted, merrily.
The others had been regarding her as a meek and abashed apprentice in their realms, but now they began to pelt her with more respectful badinage, with the exception of Oppendorf, who watched her with a sleepy stare of approval and remained silent. This girl wasn’t half stupid at bottom, but just ignorant of many things.
The group repaired to Margaret’s nearby studio and danced to a phonograph and slipped into varying stages of tipsiness. Helgin did not dance, but sat in a corner and talked to Blanche. He became mellowly garrulous and somewhat less malicious, and he regarded Blanche as a fumbling but slightly diverting barbarian—diverting for a night or two at least. They were mildly interesting as long as they clung to their ferocious sassiness, but they always wound up bybecoming girlishly wistful, and pleading, and more disrobed. He began to tell her anecdotes of his past, in which he was always laughing, penetrating, and triumphant at somebody else’s expense, and she listened eagerly. My, but this man certainly knew how to talk! He was always getting the best of people—you had to take at least forty per cent off from any fellow’s claims in that direction—but he really was a great writer, and he knew so many words and handled them so gracefully.
Urged by a perverse whim, he invited Blanche to come with him to a party which he had promised to attend on the following night. The affair was to be a gathering of literary and theatrical celebrities and near celebrities, together with their latest fads and fancies in human form, and it might be amusing to bring this blunt, would-be highbrowish, young hair-dresser and see whether the assembled pedestals would overwhelm her.
While Blanche suspected that he was playing with her and had only the impulse to grasp a flitting distraction, she felt delighted at this second opportunity to meet “famous” writers, and artists, and actors, and as she accepted the invitation she said to herself: “He thinks I’m just a snippy nobody, and he wants to show me off and then see what happens—like letting the puppy run loose in the parlor. Oh, I know. But what do I care? I might make friends at this party with two or three people just as intelligent as he is, and maybe more honest.”
While Helgin left her emotionally unaroused, shewas nevertheless dazed by his vocabulary and his mental swiftness, which she frequently had to stumble after, and a little flattered by his talkative attention, in spite of herself. The genially wise-cracking, quizzically aloof, and patronizing air, which he never deserted, irritated her but did not drive away the spell of her attention. After all, he made Rosenberg, the most intelligent man in her past, sound like a stuttering, yearning baby. Funny, how you changed! She had once looked up to this same Rosenberg, as though he were a luring and puzzling god. Well, that was life—listening and clinging to people until you grew beyond them. The only man whom she could permanently love would be one always a little superior to her, and urging her to catch up with him, and kindly waiting a little now and then, so as not to get too far ahead of her.
When she reached her home she felt tired but “up in the air.” A long, hopeless stroll and a chance acquaintanceship had really led her into a new world—it was like a fairy tale, wasn’t it? Helgin had remained in the taxicab, after arranging to meet her at Margaret’s studio on the following night, and hadn’t even attempted to hold her hand ... not that that mattered, though she was a little curious to know how men of this kind “went about it.”
He had refrained from touching her because it would have disrupted his nonchalant posture—the meticulous avoidance of sexual defeat with which he kept his egotism intact. He was like a watchman, ever alert in front of a towering but shaky house of cards.
It was 2A.M.when she entered her bedroom, buther mind was still spinning and darting about, in spite of her physical weariness, and, moved by an irresistible desire, and a sudden confidence that had been born from her surprising evening, she took a pad of paper from one of her bureau drawers and sat up in bed until 4A.M., writing a sketch of the tearoom she had visited, and the people within it. The sketch was crude and at times ungrammatical, but it had an awkward sense of irony and humor which clung to small, insufficient words or hugged inappropriately long ones, and it was filled with clumsily good phrases such as: “They made a lot of noise and then whispered like they were ashamed of it,” or “She had small eyes and they got smaller when she talked,” “She was wearing a daisy, georgette thing and she acted like it.” Sturdily, but with little equipment, her thought bent to the novel wrestle with words on paper, and she felt an odd, half-uncertain thrill when she had finished the sketch. Did it have anything to it, or was it entirely bad? Well, she’d show it to Helgin or Oppendorf on the next night and get ready for the old cleaver. Nothing like trying, anyway, and curiously, she felt a beautiful relief now, as though she had emptied herself for the first time in a way that approached satisfaction.
On the next day she was drowsy but cheerful at the Beauty Parlor, managing somehow to stagger through the quick-fingered details of her work, but experiencing a rising strain. This would never do—she would have to be wakeful and at her best for the coming party. It wouldn’t be like going out with some sillyman, feigning to listen to his “I am it” gab, and leaving him around midnight, with several yawns and the usual, semievaded kiss and hug. Through using the reliable excuse of serious illness in her family, she succeeded in leaving the shop at three in the afternoon, hastening home and sleeping there until nearly seven. When she sat at the supper-table with the rest of the family, Harry said: “Say, I’ve got some news for yuh. Ran across Joe Campbell on Broadway an’ had a long chin-fest with him. He says he begged yuh to marry him the other night and yuh turned him down flat, but he’s still leavin’ the prop’sition open. Believe me, I wouldn’t, if I was him. He asked me to tell yuh, anyway.”
“How interesting,” Blanche replied. “Suppose you tell your friend, Mister Campbell, to go to the devil.”
“Now, Bla-anie, that’s a nice way to talk,” her mother cried. “I’m ashamed of you, I am. He’s never done you no harm, far’s I know, an’ he’s been acourtin’ you for over two years now, an’ besides, he’s gone an’ made you ’n hon-rable pruposul. You could do lots worse than marryin’ him, you could.”
“Listen, have I got to go through this whole thing over again?” Blanche asked, exasperated. “I wouldn’t marry Campbell ’f he had ten million and owned the subway system, and there’s no sense to this endless jawing match we put on. You can’t understand me and you never will—it’s not your fault, you just can’t, and what’s more, you ought to realize it by this time. I’m going my own way and you might as well leave me alone.”
“Is that so,” her father replied, with a dull, puzzled anger shining in his little eyes. “I-is that so. You’re jest a stranger here, I s’pose, an’ you’ve dropped in tuh have supper with us. Sure, that’s it. I’m not your father an’ I’ve got nothin’ tuh say about you, huh? You’ve got a lot of nerve f’r a person your age, you have.”
“Yeh, she’s gettin’ a swelled head, all right,” Harry said. “Guess I’ll have to beat up ’nother one uh her phony guys, an’ tone her down a bit.”
“Oh, you’re just full of wind,” Blanche answered, indifferently.
Mabel had been listening to Blanche with a mixture of reluctant loyalty and annoyance—this “nut” sister of hers was certainly impossible to understand, but Campbell had “done her dirty” just the same, and Blanche had a perfect right to detest him, and it was about time that the family stopped nagging her on that subject. Mabel’s antagonism against men and her regarding them as a would-be preying sex made it imperative that she should be on her sister’s side in this question, almost against her will.
“I know Blan’s a nut, but stop razzing her about this Campbell stuff,” she said, glancing disapprovingly around the table. “The way you all rave about him a person’d think he was a king ’r something. He’s just like other fellows—waving his dough around an’ trying to put it over on ev’ry girl he meets. What do you want to do anyway—tie Blan up an’ carry her down to the license-bureau? She oughta have some rights around here.”
Taken aback by this unexpected defense from Mabel, and not being able to think of any immediate and adequate retort, in spite of their emotional opposition, the parents and Harry lapsed into a short silence, after which they returned to minor complaints and jovialities. It was easy to battle with Blanche, who outraged all of their petted hopes and ideas, but when Mabel contradicted them, their feeling of innate kinship with her placed them in a temporarily bewildered state in which they wondered whether they might not be slightly wrong. Philip, who had squirmed distressedly in his chair and tried to look unconcerned, according to his custom, secretly prayed for Blanche to revolt and leave home. It would be better for her—she’d be happier then, in her crazy but rather likably independent way—and if she did there’d be some peace around the flat, for the first time.
Blanche, who had felt relieved and a little unwillingly affectionate as she heard her sister’s support, drew back her chair to leave the table.
“Going out to-night?” Philip asked casually, as he rose.
“Yes, I’m invited to ’n exclusive party ... artists and actors—real, famous ones that people talk about,” Blanche replied, not being able to resist the desire to voice her proudly anticipating mood.
“Fa-amous, huh,” Harry said, with a sneer. “Well, you’ll sure be outa place there, ’f they are.”
“Peddle your wise-cracks somewhere else,” Blanche responded, unruffled.
“We-ell, I don’t care what they are ’cept that you’dbetter not come skiddin’ in after breakfast,” her father broke in, gruffly.
What his girls did was their business as long as no one “had the goods on them” and they kept out of trouble, but at the same time he didn’t intend to stand for any open flaunting of their possible transgressions. If a girl came home just before dawn, at the latest, she might only have been “cutting up” at some wild party or night club, but if she returned later than that, then it was evident that she had stayed overnight with some man.
As Blanche stood before her mirror, engrossed in the half-piteous and half-brazenly hopeful ritual observed by most women—that of applying cosmetics to her face—a lyric rose and fell in her heart, separated by skeptical pauses. At last she had a chance to leap from the greasy, colorless weights of Ninth Avenue, and the cheaply frothy interludes of Broadway ... but was it only a fair-faced dream? Would the people in the other impending world laugh at her, or turn their backs? Again, all of them might turn out to be qualified versions of the group she had met at Clara’s—mischievous, sneering Helgins, weak and pouting Trussels, unwomanly Doras, Margarets indifferent to every one save the men at their sides, and perhaps another approach to Oppendorf—another intriguing but palely distant figure.
The lyric rose once more and slew the specters. What an expert she was at borrowing trouble! It was quite possible that at least two or three of the people whom she was to meet would act friendly toward herand invite her to other gatherings, or perhaps a really fetching man, more naked and decent than Helgin, would fall for her.
As she walked down Ninth Avenue to the Elevated station, the scene incited tinglings of disgust in her whereas, usually, she regarded it with a passively acceptant dislike, as the great, solid ugliness from which she could not escape. Now, different objects in the scene affected her as though she had been pummeled in the face. The garbage cans at one side of the entrances, frequently overbrimming with decayed fruit, soiled papers, and old shoes and hats; the pillars and tracks of the “L” road, stretching out like a still millipede, with smaller insects shooting over its back; frowsy women, with sallow, vacant faces, shouting down from upper windows; dirt-streaked boys, wrangling and cursing in hallways; drab blocks of buildings cramped together, like huge, seething, shoddy boxes; and clusters of youths on each corner, leering as though they could scarcely control the desire to leap upon her.
All of it scraped against her nerves. Why had she remained so long within it?—it should have become unendurable years ago. Well, what choice had she ever had?—an unpleasant hall room in some rooming-shack. She could not afford more than that. But why, oh, why, was she so depressed on this evening of all others—this evening when for the first time she had something novel and promising to look forward to? The lyric started again and the black pause terminated. She became more in tune with an insidious, dodginggayety that somehow survived the grossness of Ninth Avenue and sounded in the mildly warm air of the late spring evening. In the dark-brown duvetyn dress that stopped at her knees, black chiffon turban, flesh-colored stockings and brown pumps, she could almost have been mistaken for some society girl on a slumming tour.
When she reached Margaret’s studio, Helgin and Oppendorf had already arrived and were immersed in a game of dice for dimes, while Margaret finished her toilette. The studio had a low, broad couch covered with dark green taffeta and batik cushions, and gaudily painted furniture, and a little kitchenette and bathroom adjoined it. Helgin greeted Blanche in the affable boyish way which he could affect for moments—the miraculous atom of humility sometimes flitting to the surface of his poised urbanities.
“Are you prepared to be thrilled?” he asked her, as she seated herself.
“Listen, I’m a hard-boiled egg from Hell’s Kitchen, and I don’t thrill so easy,” she answered, with the impudent desire to shatter his smiling condescension.
“Well, well, little tough Annie from behind the gas works,” he said. “How did you manage to stuff your boxing gloves into that vanity case?”
“Don’t need them—bare knuckles where I come from,” she retorted, smiling back at him.
“Stop it, Ben, you’ve met your match this time,” Oppendorf called out from the armchair where he was pensively eying a tiny glass of gin held in his right hand. “The awkward fighter can always beat theclever one if he stands and waits for Sir Cleverness to rush him.”
“Oppie always instructs me—he can’t bear the thought of my being vanquished,” Helgin replied, lightly.
“Well, I don’t know, Ihavemanaged to bear it now and then,” Oppendorf said, before swallowing the gin.
“Didn’t both of you promise me not to be sarcastic for one night?” Margaret asked, as she entered the studio. “If I had the muscle, why, I’d spank the two of you!”
“Start with Ben—it might change his entire life,” Oppendorf said, grinning.
“Oh, you’re not so sweet-tempered yourself,” she replied, as she pinched his cheek.
“You’re quite right, I’m a snarling, vituperative, vindictive man until your smile creates a miracle within me,” he said, as he bowed low to her.
Whenever Oppendorf liked a woman he treated her at times with a whimsical pretense of courtliness and deference, merrily overdone enough to make the whimsicality apparent.
“How easy it would be to believe you,” she responded, with a sigh that carried off the vestige of a smile.
“Emotions are never false—even the masquerade must become real before it can be persuasive,” Oppendorf answered, quickly changing to a mien of abstracted, impersonal challenge. “When the reality survives for a long time it is called sincere and true, andpeople have faith in it. It may be just as real for a moment, an hour, six days.”
“You’re a sophist and a promiscuous wretch, and I’ll probably wind up by hating you,” Margaret said, as she slid into his arms. “Just as a person begins to depend on you ... you flit away ... I know.”
“Why does a woman hate a man when he departs with an honest abruptness?”—Oppendorf shifted to the inquiry of a distressed child. “Or, why do men hate women for the same reason? I am immersed in you at present because you contain qualities which I cannot find in the other women around me. To-night, perhaps, or in a month from now, I may meet another woman who does possess them, together with other qualities which you lack. In such a case, my immersion would naturally transfer itself. God, how human beings detest everything except the snug, warm permanence which is either a lie or an unsearching sleep!”
“There’s nothing logical about pain, Max,” Margaret said. “Itmustbe deaf, and angry, and blind, and pleading, until it dies down. When a girl’s lover goes off, her mind can say: ‘He revived and stimulated me, and I’m glad I did have him for a while,’ but just the same her heart still cries out: ‘Oh, he’s mean, and selfish, and treacherous, and I hate him!’”
Although she was conversing with Helgin, on the couch, Blanche had caught bits of the other couple’s talk, and they brought a worried tinge to her heart. Oppendorf was wrong—in very rare cases a man and a womancouldlove each other forever. Of course, the cases were rare simply because people deeply harmoniousin every way, from their dancing-steps and tastes in clothes down to the very last opinion in their minds, hardly ever met each other. That was it. It was simply a question of luck as to whether you’d find this one person in a million or not.
Helgin called out: “Well, Don Juan’s defending himself again. He’s more convincing when he doesn’t talk. Come on, Oppie, stop the necking for a while and join us. You’re falling into the boresome habit of dropping into a lady’s arms for hours and spoiling the party.”
“I never object to other people taking the same privilege,” Oppendorf replied, placidly, as Margaret slipped from his lap.
“Perhaps we’re not as impatient as you,” Helgin said, grinning.
“Or perhaps you hide your impatience more patiently—there are so many possibilities,” Oppendorf retorted.
“Say, Oscar Wilde once opened a small-talk shop—the store has been well patronized ever since,” Blanche said, flippantly.
The line wasn’t her own—it had been in the last novel she had read—but she wanted to see what its effect would be on these men, and whether it would impress them.
“The gal’s improving,” Helgin replied. “Come on, take off your little costume. You’re a college-student trying to write, and you thought you’d be more interesting if you posed as a slangy hair-dresser.”
“The best way to fool you people is not to pose at all,” Margaret said, smiling.
“It’s not a bad idea—I’ve tried it myself,” Oppendorf interjected.
“Ti-ti-tum, come on, let’s go to the party,” Margaret interrupted. “You can all keep it up on the way over.”
After they were all in a taxicab and speeding uptown, Helgin said to Blanche: “Didn’t you give Oppie a manuscript at the studio?”
“Yes, it’s something I wrote about the tearoom where we sat last night,” Blanche answered. “He’s such a frank man, and I know he’ll tell me whether it’s just trash, or not.”
“It’s becoming very amusing,” Helgin continued. “Nowadays, if you meet a manicurist you never know when she’s going to stop polishing your nails and draw the great, American lyric out of her sleeve, and the waiter at the café tries to induce you to read his startling, unpublished novel, and the bootblack shoves a short-story under your nose. None of these people would dare to attempt a painting or a sonata. The popular superstition is that literature consists of a deep longing plus thousands of words thrown helter-skelter together.”
“Well, it doesn’t hurt them to try—they’ll never find out what their ability is, ’f they don’t,” Blanche replied, defiantly.
“That’s right, don’t let him razz you,” Margaret broke in. “Masefield was once a bar-room porter, you know.”
“Please pick out a better example,” Oppendorf said.
Then he turned to Blanche.
“Your grammar is atrocious at times, but you have originality, and there’s a razor in your humor,” he went on. “Keep on writing, and study syntax and the declensions of verbs—they’re still fairly well observed by every one except the Dadaists. I’ll have you in several magazines in another two months. And thank God you’re not a poet. If you were, you’d get fifty cents a line, mixed in with profound excuses!”
“Do you really mean it?” Blanche asked, delightedly.
“Of course.”
“Why, I’ll work like a nigger ’f I can really make something of myself as a writer,” Blanche cried, enraptured.
“I hope you’re not giving any pleasant mirages to Miss Palmer,” Helgin said, wondering whether Oppendorf was not merely seeking to flatter her into an eventual physical capitulation. “I know your weakness. When we were getting out The New Age you’d plague me every day with verses from girl-friends of yours, and they were always rank imitations of your own style.”
“You seem to have the delusion that every beginner, with a sense of irony and a deliberate style, is an echo of mine,” Oppendorf replied, undisturbed. “You’d treat these people with a flippant impatience, but I’d rather err on the side of encouraging them, unless they’re saturated with platitudes and gush.”
“Yes, youareapt to make such mistakes, especiallyin the case of some pretty girl,” Helgin said, with a malicious grin.
“Have it your way, Ben,” Oppendorf responded, indifferently.
Blanche listened with a serene confidence in Oppendorf—he never lied about anything connected with writing: somehow she felt sure of that. Literature was too serious a matter to him.
For a moment Margaret looked a little jealously at Blanche, pestered by the suspicion that Oppendorf might have praised Blanche’s work as a first move toward conquering her—a suspicion which Helgin had known would be caused by his words. Then Margaret remembered how he had viciously assailed her own short-stories just after her first meeting with him, when he had known that she would have prostrated herself before him for the least word of praise, and with the remembrance her doubts perished.
“Be on your good behavior to-night,” Helgin said to Oppendorf. “Vanderin didn’t want to invite you, but I convinced him that you had become a chastened and amiable gentleman. I wouldn’t like to see you thrown down the stairway—it gives smaller people a chance to gloat over you.”
“Are you really as wild as all that?” Blanche asked, looking incredulously at Oppendorf’s subdued pallidness.
“The stairway myth is one in a celebrated list,” Oppendorf replied. “You’ll find many of the others in Mr. Helgin’s affectionate tribute to me—his last novel. The list is a superb one. I deceived somesocial-radical friends by pretending to defy the draft laws during the war. I faked a broken shoulder and sponged on some other friends. I was caught in the act of attempting to ravish a twelve-year-old girl. I leap upon women at parties and manhandle them while they shriek for mercy, in contrast to the other men present, who never do more than audaciously grasp the little fingers of the same ladies. The amusing part of it is that none of my actual crimes and offenses are on the list. I could give my admirers some real ammunition if they would only ask me for it.”
“But why do they tell such hideous lies about you?” Blanche asked naively.
“I’ll tell you why,” Margaret broke in, indignantly. “It’s because they hate him and fear him. He gets beneath their skins and mocks at all their little idols, and squirmings, and compromises. They want to pulverize him, but he hardly ever gives them any real opportunities, so they’re reduced to falling back on their imaginations and insisting that he’s a clownish monster. It’s a beautiful system of exaggerations, all right! If he happens to be drunk at a party, it’s immediately reported that he was pushed down the stairs, and if he’s seen stroking a woman’s arm it’s always said that he hu-urled himself upon her.”
“It must be troublesome to hear your perfect lover so sadly maligned in spite of his eloquent assertions of innocence,” Helgin said, smiling. “Most of the stories are really told in admiration of his savage gifts.”
“Yes, the admiration is both profound and imaginative,”Oppendorf retorted, with a weary return of the smile.
Blanche listened to the others with feelings of uncertainty and dismay. How could refined, serious, artistic people act so rottenly toward each other? They weren’t so very much different from the toughs in her neighborhood, except that they used words while the gangsters and bullies employed their feet and fists, or fell back on guns and knives. The gangsters were far less dangerous, too. They could only hurt a person for a short time, or else kill him and send him beyond any further injury, but these artist-people with their mean tongues and their sneering stories could damage some one for the rest of his life, in different ways. Oh, well, maybe most people were always alike, except that some of them were clever and had minds, while others were more inept and stupid. What real difference was there between the endless digs which her new acquaintances traded and the catty remarks which she heard every day at the Beauty Parlor? Still, she made a mental reservation in the case of Oppendorf. He had to retaliate or keep quiet, and he never started any of the sarcasm, as far as she could hear, though he certainly could finish it! If he had only been physically stronger, and more blithely animated, she could have fallen in love with him. This ideal man of hers!—she’d probably never meet him. It only happened in story-books. But, at any rate, she intended to apply herself to writing and feel of some importance for a change. How relieved and happy she had been after putting down the lastword of her tearoom sketch—it had been almost the first real thrill in her life.
When she entered Paul Vanderin’s large, high-ceilinged studio and spied the Juliet balcony that ran around two sides of it, with rooms leading out on the balcony, and the profusion of statues and paintings—most of them weird or fiercely unorthodox—and the grand piano, and the abundance of luxurious furniture in neutral shades, she sighed and slipped a hand over her eyes. How delirious it must be to live in a place of this kind—big, and high, and filled with conveniences and intensely interesting objects—and how different it was from her own small, ugly room, with the ceiling hemming you in as though you were in a cage. Life was so darned unfair—lavishing favors, and stimulations, and beauties on some people and treating others in the most grudging and miserly fashion. Well, that was an old story—no good to rave over it. You had to beat life to its knees somehow, sharpening your mind and trying to express yourself, and praying for luck.
Several people had already gathered in the studio, and as she walked beside Helgin in the round of introductions, she opened her mouth and felt stunned at the discovery that some of them ... were negroes! This was really astonishing—she had never dreamt that cultured, artistic white people mingled with black and brown men and women on terms of familiar friendship! Her head felt in a turmoil and she couldn’t decide whether these contacts were right or wrong, whether she herself could join them without shrinking.Of course, human beings were all equal and shouldn’t look down upon each other because the color of their skins varied, but ... didn’t it go much deeper than that? Wasn’t there a physical repugnance between the different races—a strong feeling that simply couldn’t be overcome? Certainly, she had always thought so.
She had spoken to negroes, and Japanese, and Chinamen before, and had even joked with them—elevator boys, and porters, and waiters, and laundry-men—but she had never cared for their physical proximity and had always felt repulsed if they happened to brush against her. But still, they had been unrefined and ordinary, while these negroes were intelligent and cultured, and spoke about art and psychology. This was a revelation, as she had never imagined that negroes of this kind existed, except in the ratio of one to tens of thousands. She had heard vaguely of Booker T. Washington, and famous negro lawyers, and, oh yes, a negro writer named Du Bois, whom Rosenberg had always talked about, but she had thought that they were rarities and had even felt a flitting pity for their isolation among their own race.
Of course, she had been foolish and thoughtless—there was no valid reason why negroes should not voice their feelings and search for beauty and uniqueness, instead of always clinging to some business or manual labor. They were human beings, too, and their hearts and minds were probably often much more restless than those of most white people. Besides, since these white writers and artists mixed with negroes, it must be that society was gradually beginningto approve of this union and was losing its prejudice in the matter. Sti-ill, perhaps these negroes and whites simply talked to each other, or danced together, without any sexual intimacies. Surely, there was no harm in that.
As she sat beside Helgin she voiced her perplexity.
“Say, I never knew that black and white people went to the same parties,” she said. “I don’t quite know what to think of it.”
“Oh, yes, it’s the latest fad among white dilettantes,” Helgin replied. “They became weary of their other enthusiasms—finding a tragic, esthetic beauty in Charlie Chaplin and other slapstick comedians, and raving over East Side Burlesque Shows, and making Greek gladiators out of flat-nosed prize-fighters, and hunting for love in Greenwich Village. They are now busily engaged in patronizing and eulogizing the negro race. Vanderin is one of the ring-leaders in the matter. It tickles his jaded senses and reassures him of his decadence, and provides him with material for novels.”
“But isn’t any of it sincere and honest?” Blanche inquired.
“Certainly—negro and white writers and artists are actually starting to tear down the age-old barriers,” Helgin responded. “What begins as a fad can end as an avalanche. I really hope it happens.”
“But ... but tell me, do negro and white men and women have anything to do with each other?” Blanche asked, falteringly.
Helgin laughed.
“Do you see that couple over there?” he asked. “The tall, Nordic kid and the mulatto girl in red. They’re always together at every party. Of course, white men have had negro mistresses in the past, with everything veiled and a little shamefaced, but this is different. It’s out in the open now, and it’s on the basis of deep mental and spiritual understanding.”
“I don’t want to be narrow-minded,” Blanche answered, “but I don’t see how they can love each other—they must be lying to themselves. The races just weren’t meant to have physical relations with each other. There’s something, something in their flesh and blood that stands between, like ... like a warning signal. That’s it.”
As she spoke, though, she had the sensation of uttering sentences which she had borrowed from books and other people, and which did not decisively express her opinions.
“Oh, it doesn’t last long, usually,” Helgin said. “It’s not often that they live permanently together and raise families, but the infatuations are fierce enough while they last. And even intermarriage is becoming more common.”
“We-ell, I’d like to talk to a negro boy, ’f he were intelligent and brilliant-like, you know, but I don’t think I could fall in love with him, even then,” Blanche replied. “You can’t reason about it ... it’s there, that’s all.”
Vanderin walked up and spoke to Blanche. He was a tall, robust man with gray hair and a half-bald head and a ruddy, mildly sensual face. His speech andmanners were genially suave and yet reserved, and there was something about his large eyes that resembled the look of a child playing with toys to hide its weariness.
“You don’t mind our mixed gathering, I hope,” he said to Blanche. “I find the negro race to be very congenial, and just beginning to wake up. There are negro painters and poets here to-night who are quite able to stand shoulder to shoulder with white creators.”
“Tell us all about their plaintive, erotic, defiant quality,” Helgin said. “You do it well, Paul—come on.”
Vanderin laughed as he retorted: “You’ll have to read it in my next book, old skeptic. I’m not giving lectures to-night.”
“But won’t you tell me something about them?” Blanche asked, pleadingly. “I’m a frightful simpleton in all these matters, but I do want to find out about them.”
Helgin rose and joined a group, while Vanderin sat down and conversed with Blanche. He fascinated her as he told her grotesquely humorous, slightly bawdy anecdotes of Harlem’s night life and spoke of cabarets where negroes and whites danced and frolicked with a savagely paganish abandonment, and described the motives and longings behind negro music and writing. According to Vanderin, negroes were pouncing upon the restrained and timorous art of America and revitalizing it with an unashamed sensuality, and more simple and tortured longings, and a more grimly questioning attitude of mind.
As Blanche listened to his silkenly baritone voice she reproached herself for her lack of a warm response toward this persuasive, exotic man. His mind intrigued her but her heart still beat evenly. She seemed to sense something of a huge, amiable, carelessly treacherous cat within him—one who lazily and perversely hunted for distractions and amusements, without allowing anything or any one to move him deeply, and who could become cruel or disdainful in the tremor of an eyelash. Why did all of the mentally luring men she had ever met fail to overpower her emotions? So far, her heart had been moderately stirred only by mental weaklings or frauds. Oh, dear, this business of searching for an ideal was certainly a shadowy mess!
Vanderin excused himself to greet some new arrivals, and Margaret dropped into his chair.
“How do you like the hectic fricassee?” she asked, half waving her hand toward a boisterous group of negroes and whites, who stood with arms interlocked.
“I’m very confused about it,” Blanche said. “One part of me, now, it says, ‘Come on, Blanie, be a good sport and don’t be prejudiced,’ but there’s another part, you see, and it sort of shrinks away, and wonders, well ... and wonders how they can kiss and hug each other.”
“Listen, you ain’ seen nothin’ yet,” Margaret answered, jocosely. “I’ve been to parties where white and colored people were doing everything but, and they weren’t lowbrows, either. Real artists, and writers, and actors.”
“Well, how do you feel about it?” Blanche asked.
“I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m not intolerant,” Margaret said. “Some people have this instinctive, physical aversion to other races, you know, and some just haven’t. I’ve talked to colored men for hours and felt very immersed in what they said, but I could never have spooned with them.”
“Well, I’m probably built the same way, but I’m not at all sure about it,” Blanche responded. “I’m not sure about anything, to-night. It’s all too new to me.”
A tall, jaunty, colored youth whisked Margaret away, and a portly, courtly man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles sat down beside Blanche and began to tell her all about an immortal play which he had written, but which the managers were hesitating over because it hadn’t strolled into the box-office. The playwright was garrulous, using his arms as a sweeping emphasis for his remarks, and Blanche wondered whether she was listening to a genius or an untalented boaster. Some day she’d meet a man who didn’t claim to be superb in his particular line ... some day snow would fall in July.
The gathering became slowly silent as Vanderin announced that a poet was about to recite. The poet, a young negro, Christopher Culbert, read some of his sonnets, in a liquid and at times almost shrill voice. He had a round, dark-brown face, and a body verging on chubbiness, and his verses were filled with adored colors and a sentimentality that flirted with morbidity for moments and then repented. He waseffeminate and jovial in his manner, and after the reading he returned to his place on a couch beside another negro youth. Then another man, blackish brown and with the body of an athlete, sang spirituals, with a crazy, half-sobbing, swaying quaver in his voice. A curious blending and contrast of elation and austerity seemed to cling to him. As he intoned the words of one song: “Ho-ow d’yuh kno-ow, ho-ow d’yuh kno-o-ow, a-t the blo-od done si-ign mah na-a-me?”, Blanche felt shivers racing up and down her spine. These negroes certainly had something which white people couldn’t possibly imitate—something that made you feel wild, and sad, and swung you off your feet! It was hard to put your finger on it—perhaps it was a kind of insanity.
When the singer had finished, Vanderin announced that Miss Bee Rollins, of the Down South night club would do the Charleston dance. She stepped forward—a palely creamish-brown skinned young negress with a lissom body incongruously plump about the waist, and an oval face, infinitely impertinent and infinitely sensual in a loosely heavy way. She twisted and bobbed and jerked through the maniacal obliquely see-sawing and shuffling steps of the Charleston, with a tense leer on her face, and inhumanly flexible legs. She was madly applauded and forced to several encores. Then the party broke up into dancing and more steady drinking, with different negroes playing at the piano, and the assistance of a phonograph in between.
The dancers undulated and embraced in a way that surprised Blanche—even in the cheap dance hallswhich she had frequented, the floor-watchers always immediately ordered off all couples who tried to get away with such rough stuff. Well, anyway, it wasn’t the main part of these people’s lives—their only thrill and importance—as it was with the dance-hall men and women. The couples in this studio were only “cutting up” between their more serious, searching labors and expressions, and they were certainly more entitled to be frankly sexual, if they wanted to.
Blanche stepped over the floor with several negro and white men, and enjoyed the novelty of dancing as extremely as the other couples did, though she felt the least bit guilty about it—it certainly was “going the limit.” As she danced with the negroes she felt surprised at her lack of aversion to the closeness of their bodies. Somehow, they danced with a rhythmical, subtle, audacious fervor which her white partners could never quite duplicate, and she was swung into a happy harmony with their movements in spite of herself.
As she was catching her breath between dances, she watched some of the negroes around her. One of them, a short, slender girl in a dark red smock and a short black skirt, was conversing with a white youth in a dark suit, who looked like a solemnly tipsy mingling of clergyman and pagan. She had a pale brown skin, black curls of bobbed hair, thin lips, and a pug nose. She held his hand and gave him distrustfully tender looks.
Blanche caught fragments of their conversation.
“You don’t love me, hon.... You can get white girls prettier than I am—I know....”
“I don’t want them ... you’ve put a song in my blood, right in it.... I’m crazy about you.”
“I don’t think you mean it.... Lord knows, I’d like so to believe you....”
“You will, you will.... I’ll take care of that....”
He kissed her and then she withdrew, saying: “You funny, funny, dear, impatient boy!”
Another young negress with a dark-brown skin and a tall fullness to her body, was laughing violently beside a thin, white man with a little black mustache and a petulant face. She sang: “Mamma has her teeth all filled with goldun bridges ’n’ diamon’s small, but po-oor papa, po-o-or papa, got no teefies at a-all.”