III

From the pinnacle of her satisfaction in her studies, in her new friends and in the joke which she was having upon custom and tradition she looked across the classroom at Miss Powell who preserved her attitude of dignified reserve. Angela thought she would try to break it down; on Wednesday she asked the coloured girl to have lunch with her and was pleased to have the invitation accepted. She had no intention of taking the girl up as a matter either of patronage or of loyalty. But she thought it would be nice to offer her the ordinary amenities which their common student life made natural and possible. Miss Powell it appeared ate generally in an Automat or in a cafeteria, but Angela knew of a nice tearoom. “It’s rather arty, but they do serve a good meal and it’s cheap.” Unfortunately on Wednesday she had to leave before noon; she told Miss Powell to meet her at the little restaurant. “Go in and get a table and wait for me, but I’m sure I’ll be there as soon as you will.” After all she was late, but, what was worse, she found to her dismay that Miss Powell, instead of entering the tearoom, had been awaiting her across the street. There were no tables and the two had to wait almost fifteen minutes before being served.

“Why on earth didn’t you go in?” asked Angela a trifle impatiently, “you could have held the table.” Miss Powell answered imperturbably: “Because I didn’t know how they would receive me if I went in by myself.” Angela could not pretend to misunderstand her. “Oh, I think they would have been all right,” she murmured blushing at her stupidity. How quickly she had forgotten those fears and uncertainties. She had never experienced this sort of difficulty herself, but the certainly knew of them from Virginia and others.

The lunch was not a particularly pleasant one. Either Miss Powell was actually dull or she had made a resolve never to let herself go in the presence of white people; perhaps she feared being misunderstood, perhaps she saw in such encounters a lurking attempt at sociological investigations; she would lend herself to no such procedure, that much was plain. Angela could feel her effort to charm, to invite confidence, glance upon and fall back from this impenetrable armour. She had been amazed to find both Paulette and Martha Burden already gaining their living by their sketches. Miss Burden indeed was a caricaturist of no mean local reputation; Anthony Cross was frankly a commercial artist, though he hoped some day to be a recognised painter of portraits. She was curious to learn of Miss Powell’s prospects. Inquiry revealed that the young lady had one secret aspiration; to win or earn enough money to go to France and then after that, she said with sudden ardour, “anything could happen.” To this end she had worked, saved, scraped, gone without pleasures and clothes. Her work was creditable, indeed above the average, but not sufficiently imbued, Angela thought, with the divine promise to warrant this sublimation of normal desires.

Miss Powell seemed to read her thought. “And then it gives me a chance to show America that one of us can stick; that we have some idea above the ordinary humdrum of existence.”

She made no attempt to return the luncheon but she sent Angela one day a bunch of beautiful jonquils⁠—and made no further attempt at friendship. To one versed in the psychology of this proud, sensitive people the reason was perfectly plain. “You’ve been awfully nice to me and I appreciate it but don’t think I’m going to thrust myself upon you. Your ways and mine lie along different paths.”

Such contacts, such interpretations and investigations were making up her life, a life that for her was interesting and absorbing, but which had its perils and uncertainties. She had no purpose, for it was absurd for her, even with her ability, to consider Art an end. She was using it now deliberately, as she had always used it vaguely, to get in touch with interesting people and with a more attractive atmosphere. And she was spending money too fast; she had been in New York eight months, and she had already spent a thousand dollars. At this rate her little fortune which had seemed at first inexhaustible would last her less than two years; at best, eighteen months more. Then she must face⁠—what? Teaching again? Never, she’d had enough of that. Perhaps she could earn her living with her brush, doing menu cards, Christmas and birthday greetings, flowers, Pierrots and Pierrettes on satin pillow tops. She did not relish that. True there were the specialities of Paulette and of Martha Burden, but she lacked the deft sureness of the one and the slightly mordant philosophy underlying the work of the other. Her own speciality she felt sure lay along the line of reproducing, of interpreting on a face the emotion which lay back of that expression. She thought of her Fourteenth Street “types”⁠—that would be the sort of work which she would really enjoy, that and the depicting of the countenance of a purse-proud but lonely man, of the silken inanity of a society girl, of the smiling despair of a harlot. Even in her own mind she hesitated before the use of that terrible word, but association was teaching her to call a spade a spade.

Yes, she might do worse than follow the example of Mr. Cross and become a portrait painter. But somehow she did not want to have to do this; necessity would, she was sure, spoil her touch; besides, she hated the idea of the position in which she would be placed, fearfully placating and flattering possible patrons, hurrying through with an order because she needed the cheque, accepting patronage and condescension. No, she hoped to be sought after, to have the circumstances which would permit her to pick and choose, to refuse if the whim pleased her. It should mean something to be painted by “Mory.” People would say, “I’m going to have my portrait done by ‘Mory.’ ” But all this would call for position, power, wealth. And again she said to herself⁠ ⁠… “I might marry⁠—a white man. Marriage is the easiest way for a woman to get those things, and white men have them.” But she knew only one white man, Anthony Cross, and he would never have those qualities, at least not by his deliberate seeking. They might come eventually but only after long years. Long, long years of struggle with realities. There was a simple, genuine steadfastness in him that made her realize that he would seek for the expression of truth and of himself even at the cost of the trimmings of life. And she was ashamed, for she knew that for the vanities and gewgaws of a leisurely and irresponsible existence she would sacrifice her own talent, the integrity of her ability to interpret life, to write down a history with her brush.

Martha Burden was as strong and as pronounced a personage as Paulette; even stronger perhaps because she had the great gift of silence. Paulette, as Angela soon realized, lived in a state of constant defiance. “I don’t care what people think,” was her slogan; men and women appealed to her in proportion to the opposition which they, too, proclaimed for the established thing. Angela was surprised that she clung as persistently as she did to a friendship with a person as conventional and reactionary as herself. But Martha Burden was not like that. One could not tell whether or not she was thinking about other people’s opinions. It was probable that the other people and their attitude never entered her mind. She was cool and slightly aloof, with the coolness and aloofness of her slaty eyes and her thick, tawny hair. Neither the slatiness nor the tawniness proclaimed warmth⁠—only depth, depth and again depth. It was impossible to realize what she would be like if impassioned or deeply stirred to anger. There would probably be something implacable, godlike about her; she would be capable of a long, slow, steady burning of passion. Few men would love Martha though many might admire her. But a man once enchanted might easily die for her.

Angela liked her house with its simple elegance, its fine, soft curtains and steady, shaded glow of light that stood somehow for home. She liked her husband, Ladislas Starr, whom Martha produced without a shade of consciousness that this was the first intimation she had given of being married. They were strong individualists, molten and blended in a design which failed to obscure their emphatic personalities. Their apartment in the Village was large and neat and sunny; it bore no trace of palpable wealth, yet nothing conducing to comfort was lacking. Bookcases in the dining-room and living-room spilled over; the Nation, the Mercury, the Crisis, a magazine of the darker races, left on the broad arm of an easy chair, mutely invited; it was late autumn, almost winter, but there were jars of fresh flowers. The bedroom where Angela went to remove her wrap was dainty and restful.

The little gathering to which Martha had invited her was made up of members as strongly individual as the host and hostess. They were all specialists in their way, and specialists for the most part in some offshoot of a calling or movement which was itself already highly specialized. Martha presented a psychiatrist, a war correspondent⁠—“I’m that only when there is a war of course,” he explained to Angela’s openly respectful gaze⁠—a dramatist, a corporation lawyer, a white-faced, conspicuously beautiful poet with a long evasive Russian name, two press agents, a theatrical manager, an actress who played only Shakespeare roles, a teacher of defective children and a medical student who had been a conscientious objector and had served a long time at Leavenworth. He lapsed constantly into a rapt self-communing from which he only roused himself to utter fiery tirades against the evils of society.

In spite of their highly specialised interests they were all possessed of a common ground of knowledge in which such subjects as Russia, Consumers’ Leagues, and the coming presidential election figured most largely. There was much laughter and chaffing but no airiness, no persiflage. One of the press agents, Mrs. Cecil, entered upon a long discussion with the corporation lawyer on a Bill pending before Congress; she knew as much as he about the matter and held her own in a long and almost bitter argument which only the coming of refreshments broke up.

Just before the close of the argument two other young men had come in, but Angela never learned their vocation. Furthermore she was interested in observing the young teacher of defective children. She was coloured; small and well-built, exquisitely dressed, and of a beautiful tint, all bronze and soft red, “like Jinny” thought Angela, a little astonished to observe how the warmth of her appearance overshadowed or rather overshone everyone else in the room. The tawniness even of Miss Burden’s hair went dead beside her. The only thing to cope with her richness was the classical beauty of the Russian poet’s features. He seemed unable to keep his eyes away from her; was punctiliously attentive to her wants and leaned forward several times during the long political discussion to whisper low spoken and apparently amusing comments. The young woman, perfectly at ease in her deep chair, received his attentions with a slightly detached, amused objectivity; an objectivity which she had for everyone in the room including Angela at whom she had glanced once rather sharply. But the detachment of her manner was totally different from Miss Powell’s sensitive dignity. Totally without self-consciousness she let her warm dark eyes travel from one face to another. She might have been saying: “How far you are away from the things that really matter, birth and death and hard, hard work!” The Russian poet must have realized this, for once Angela heard him say, leaning forward, “You think all this is futile, don’t you?”

Martha motioned for her to wait a moment until most of the other guests had gone, then she came forward with one of the two young men who had come in without introduction. “This is Roger Fielding, he’ll see you home.”

He was tall and blond with deeply blue eyes which smiled on her as he said: “Would you like to walk or ride? It’s raining a little.”

Angela said she preferred to walk.

“All right then. Here, Starr, come across with that umbrella I lent you.”

They went out into the thin, tingling rain of late Autumn. “I was surprised,” said Roger, “to see you there with the highbrows. I didn’t think you looked that way when I met you at Paulette’s.”

“We’ve met before? I’m⁠—I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to remember you.”

“No I don’t suppose you would. Well, we didn’t exactly meet; I saw you one day at Paulette’s. That’s why I came this evening, because I heard you’d be here and I’d get a chance to see you again; but I was surprised because you didn’t seem like that mouthy bunch. They make me tired taking life so plaguey seriously. Martha and her old highbrows!” he ended ungratefully.

Angela, a little taken back with the frankness of his desire to meet her, said she hadn’t thought they were serious.

“Not think them serious? Great Scott! what kind of talk are you used to? You look as though you’d just come out of a Sunday-school! Do you prefer bible texts?”

But she could not explain to him the picture which she saw in her mind of men and women at her father’s home in Opal Street⁠—the men talking painfully of rents, of lynchings, of building and loan associations; the women of childbearing and the sacrifices which must be made to put Gertie through school, to educate Howard. “I don’t mean for any of my children to go through what I did.” And in later years in her own first maturity, young Henson and Sawyer and the others in the tiny parlour talking of ideals and inevitable sacrifices for the race; the burnt-offering of individualism for some dimly glimpsed racial whole. This was seriousness, even sombreness, with a great sickening vital upthrust of reality. But these other topics, peaks of civilization superimposed upon peaks, she found, even though interesting, utterly futile.

They had reached the little hall now. “We must talk loud,” she whispered.

“Why?” he asked, speaking obediently very loud indeed.

“Wait a minute; no, she’s not there. The girl above me meets her young man here at night and just as sure as I forget her and come in quietly there they are in the midst of a kiss. I suspect she hates me.”

In his young male sophistication he thought at first that this was a lead, but her air was so gay and so childishly guileless that he changed his opinion. “Though no girl in this day and time could be as simple and innocent as she looks.”

But aloud he said, “Of course she doesn’t hate you, nobody could do that. I assure you I don’t.”

She thought his gallantries very amusing. “Well, it relieves me to hear you say so; that’ll keep me from worrying for one night at least.” And withdrawing her hand from his retaining grasp, she ran upstairs.

A letter from Virginia lay inside the door. Getting ready for bed she read it in bits.

“Angela darling, wouldn’t it be fun if I were to come to New York too? Of course you’d keep on living in your Village and I’d live in famous Harlem, but we’d both be in the same city, which is where two only sisters ought to be⁠—dumb I calls it to live apart the way we do. The man out at the U. of P. is crazy to have me take an exam in music; it would be easy enough and much better pay than I get here. So there are two perfectly good reasons why I should come. He thinks I’ll do him credit and I want to get away from this town.”

Then between the lines the real reason betrayed itself:

“I do have such awful luck. Edna Brown had a party out in Merion not long ago and Matthew took me. And you know what riding in a train can do for me⁠—well that night of all nights I had to become carsick. Matthew had been so nice. He came to see me the next morning, but, child, he’s never been near me from that day to this. I suppose a man can’t get over a girl’s being such a sight as I was that night. Can’t things be too hateful!”

Angela couldn’t help murmuring: “Imagine anyone wanting old Matthew so badly that she’s willing to break up her home to get over him. Now why couldn’t he have liked her instead of me?”

And pondering on such mysteries she crept into bed. But she fell to thinking again about the evening she had spent with Martha and the people whom she had met. And again it seemed to her that they represented an almost alarmingly unnecessary class. If any great social cataclysm were to happen they would surely be the first to be swept out of the running. Only the real people could survive. Even Paulette’s mode of living, it seemed to her, had something more forthright and vital.