Chapter VIII: Part TWO (2)

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 last word 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 beginning to 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 and manners 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 was effeminate 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 halls which 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.”

“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 “fooling around” 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 too much 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 ... she _was_ attracted 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 spill mine,” 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 induced Koller, 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, he _was_ white 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 he _had_ failed 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 make him 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 what _is_ exceptional 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 she _were_ deceiving 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 how he’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 immediately anxious 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 skinny fellow, 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 they were 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 and _moués_ that 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 3 A.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 unconscious prey--left her entirely, and in spite of Starling’s remonstrances, she drank with a reckless glee. When 3 A.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 the matter.... 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, and yes, 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.