XIX

The success she was achieving made Mimi happy, as was to be expected. The dark days in Atlanta, since Jean I had died, the pitiful and defeat-crowned struggle in Philadelphia, the abortive effort in Harlem to pull herself from the mire, and her flight away from her own people seemed now fantastic and unreal. At times they were to her almost as though she had read of them in a novel⁠—one of those stories of a “poor working-girl beset by temptation and sin,” a story for backstairs consumption. At other times she shuddered when she realized all that she had been through, wondered how she had ever had the courage, the willpower to keep her head above the lashing, foaming waters instead of sinking restfully beneath them without struggle. Naturally, she was happy when Francine’s virtual surrender of the shop to her had been more than a promotion⁠—it had been an accolade of victory.

But, as is the way of the world, that victory brought with it many things which were not so pleasant to think about. It had now been six years since she had left her Aunt Sophie. Those years had been filled to the brim, packed tight with work all day at a table in the shop, with evenings filled with school work and lectures varied only occasionally by a visit to the theatre or a concert, with dreary, lonely meals and solitary rooms where she had felt as though she were lodged in a cell. Of naturally strong and normal desires common to her sex and to humanity, she had had many bitter struggles with herself. There had been times when she wondered what use, what value there was to the unremitting routine to which she had condemned herself. She had been tempted⁠—sorely tempted⁠—to yield to the “one hour of glorious strife”⁠—to find relief in some folly, some wild breaking of the bands which bound her with terrific solidity. Time and time again she had gone almost to the edge of the abyss and gazed fascinatedly down into the alluring depths below. But each time she had withdrawn in terror, her breath coming in little gasps of fear, every nerve rigid. Only her experiences which had brought to her such misery saved her, they and Petit Jean. She feared the possibility of letting herself be hurt again. Better anything than that, she whispered often to herself when alone in her room at night. And after each temptation she plunged with doubled zeal into her work, seeking to find an opiate there which would absorb the restless urge within her body.

When even work could not dull the ceaseless desires she felt, she would often walk at night through to her unknown and queer sections of the city, peering into doorways, watching the ways of the varied peoples that make of New York a world within itself, packed with races representative of every nook of the world. She rambled through districts where no word except Spanish was heard, ate in tiny restaurants where the faces were all long and brown and where the food was spiced with condiments whose name she did not know but which she was certain had come all the way from Spain. As she ate she listened to soft-throated guitars and love-burdened songs sung with the rich amorousness of a nation of love-makers. She walked past rows of redbrick houses with trellised balconies and beautiful Moorish oriels, past houses reminiscent of the Alhambra, through streets that made it impossible for her to believe she yet was in New York.

Through streets where naught but gaily clad Gipsies with brightly coloured dresses and midnight-black hair, with sparkling yet mysterious eyes and gold necklaces and bracelets, were seen. She loved the touches of colour they gave to rows of dilapidated and abandoned stores through the hanging of vivid strips of Turkish gauzes and calicoes across the dusty windows, the thronging of the streets of lovemaking young girls and boys, of surprisingly agile old women and stalwart men with fierce and terrifyingly strange faces. Or perhaps she wandered on the lower East Side through streets packed from curb to curb with Jews, arguing, strolling slowly of an evening under the garish lights from stores selling jewellery and clothing and food and amusement. Sometimes she ate in a restaurant on Houston Street where she could obtain white caviar and strange, exotic dishes served nowhere else, while the proprietor, who had come to America from Romania, played the cymbalom, accompanied by a pathetic old blind man. She found down here a new standard of appraisal of these people, who, if for no other reason than that they, like her own race, had known bitter persecution, appealed to her with colour and romance and kindred emotions. She was often repelled by the bustling, noisy, aggressive younger generation, forever concerned with profits and losses. But the older generation, the women of the calm eyes and heavy wigs, the men with magnificent beards and extraordinarily well-formed features, appealed to her more than almost any other type she had ever seen.

Through the Italian section she wandered along sidewalks littered with fruit and vegetable stands, listening to voices singing to guitar accompaniment songs of Venice and Genoa and Naples. Diminutive Sicilians slithered past her in the shadows, huge Calabrians swaggered, haughty and handsome men and women from Milan and Tuscania occasionally strode proudly by. But most of all she loved the lightness and gaiety of the streets where the French lived, to listen to their gay lovemaking and the delicately beautiful songs which flowed forth as naturally as did the speech which she understood and loved. She sat in cafés and lazily watched men and women playing bezique at the small tables as they sipped greenish drinks from tall glasses. Shamelessly she eavesdropped on conversations regarding the merits of Anatole France as a writer whose work would live, whether the poetry of Mallarmé or Villon were to be esteemed as highly as some would have it, whether there was any city in the world, past or present or future, which had, has or might have the charm of Paris, whether there had ever been an artist who ranked with Yvette Guilbert. All, all these Mimi loved, not alone because in these varied scenes she could forget her own perplexities, but because they were lovable and exotic and charming in themselves.⁠ ⁠…

Her rise to the position where she was second in command of the rapidly expanding business brought other problems to Mimi no less serious than her own wishes and desires. At Francine’s she had been known as Miss Daquin from the beginning. This had not mattered a great deal, now that she was the virtual head of the establishment. She had long since moved to her own apartment near Gramercy Park but embarrassing explanations would have been necessary had she brought Jean to her. Those could have been met in time but again she worried over the decision as to what would be best for him.

She had partially solved that problem by removing him from the orphanage and placing him with a family in Westchester County where she could see him frequently and where she could direct the training he should receive in the kindly French family with whom he lived. She chose this plan, for she knew that her long hours at the shop, the multiple duties of evenings, and her three months each year in Paris would effectively prevent her from giving Jean the guidance and care that a boy of twelve needed. She ruthlessly put aside her own wishes, plucking them out as though they were malignant growths which health demanded should be uncompromisingly destroyed. She sought only to consider the things which would be of greatest good to him. The change from Baltimore to Westchester County made her happier but yet there was the ceaseless longing to have him near⁠—aching and unappeasable yearning for him that could not be stilled.⁠ ⁠…

She saw Mrs. Rogers several times a year but her aunt was the only coloured person now a part of her life. There had been a number of coloured girls who at one time or the other applied for work under her when she was a fitter. These she had put to the same tests that she gave to the others⁠—if they measured up to them, they were employed⁠—if not, they were refused. At first when such applications had come she had been fearful⁠—had debated whether or not she could take the risk of employing one who might have known or seen her when she lived in Harlem and who might start talking. She had often heard, without giving much thought to the matter, that usually when coloured persons went white, in order to prove their whiteness, they were more anti-Negro than anybody else. When she was faced with the problem herself she understood more fully what lay back of that feeling⁠—she was not altogether free from it herself. But she had employed them and there had been none who had told that she was coloured, though one of them had, on leaving Francine’s, privately told Mimi she knew who Mimi was.

In the early years after she had left Harlem she had on numerous occasions met former acquaintances of hers on the street. Sometimes she had bowed and spoken a few words, sometimes she had passed rapidly by and hated herself for doing so for days afterwards. Six years and more had apparently wiped all trace of her former days from the slates of Harlem, the ever-changing population either too busy or too uninterested to continue their concern with her and her affairs. Though she denied it to herself, sometimes with a trace of bitterness that her own people had forced her to live a life of duplicity and deceit, nevertheless she felt frequently a yearning for contact with her own people, for whom she had the same passionate love of the days following the riot in Atlanta despite all she had suffered at their hands.

She was lonely, for despite her success she had no intimates, none she could call friend, though she might have had them had she chosen. She missed the warm colourfulness of life among her own, she had never been able to shake off the chill she felt even when her present-day associates sought to be most cordial. And she resented bitterly the airs of superiority they assumed. Frequently when she heard contemptuous remarks about “niggers,” “coons,” “darkies,” from those who showed by their words their complete ignorance of Negroes, she felt like reminding them that to her there were two ways of achieving and maintaining superiority: one, by being superior; the other, by keeping somebody else inferior. And she felt no better that her life made her keep silent when these attacks were made. Once or twice she had sought to disprove the contention of some obviously biased person. Her face had flamed and she had relapsed into a silence that galled her when she had been met by the curt statement that in itself was a challenge: “Oh, you’re a ‘nigger-lover’⁠—and from the South too!”⁠ ⁠…

Steadily she kept to the course she had set despite these and other distractions. Madame Francine’s visits to the new shop in Fifty-seventh Street became more and more infrequent, now that she spent most of her time in her home at Mount Vernon and her winters in Florida. Mimi was now actually the mistress of the place and she occupied the room which would have been Madame Francine’s, though there was always a desk ready for her when she chose to come in and consult with Mimi on matters of importance.⁠ ⁠…

Mrs. Horace Crosby, late of Chicago, where her Rotary Club husband had manipulated certain markets in grain, very much to the advantage of the Crosby exchequer, waddled puffingly, her succession of chins joggling with jellylike quiverings above her ample breast, across the narrow pavement of the Rue de la Paix to her waiting motorcar. Her rotund, much bepowdered and berouged face broke into a cherubic smile that spread like ripples on a placid pond when a stone is dropped into it, as she saw a trim, reddish-haired young woman approaching. She turned and effectively blocked the passage of the young woman, making non-recognition even less possible by extending her fat arms adorned with numerous bracelets and her fingers much bedecked with diamonds.

“Well, now, if this ain’t lovely⁠—to run across you like this in Paris, Miss Daquin! You must get right in and come to the hotel for luncheon with me. I just must show you some of the lovely things I’ve bought⁠—real antiques and pictures and lots of pretty things⁠—but Horace says I’m a fool to spend so much money on these ‘Frog’ things⁠—tells me they sting me every time I go in a place⁠—”

Mimi tried to plead a multiplicity of engagements, but to no avail. Mrs. Crosby as a poor woman had had a knack of making people do what she wanted them to do. Now that her aggressiveness was backed by wealth far greater than she had ever dreamed as a girl the world possessed, she could be evaded now only by one’s abrupt taking to one’s heels. Mimi made a wry face as she entered the lavender car adorned by the huge Crosby monogram in gilt. Resistance was useless, she realized, and Mrs. Crosby did buy a lot of things from Francine. Though her gowns always looked as though they had been purchased on Fourteenth Street in New York, somewhere east of the Avenue.

“My dear, I bought the cutest, sweetest little statue yesterday⁠—the darlingest little Cupids with bows and arrows you ever saw. Horace tells me the only place I can put it is in the garage⁠—we’ve got so much stuff now, the house is running over. But I don’t care⁠—it’s a dear⁠—and it must be good, for it cost me twelve thousand francs! And I bought it from the artist himself⁠—oh, Miss Daquin, you should have seen him. Big dark eyes and long hair and the sweetest velvet jacket⁠—he looked just like a Sicilian bandit, though I’ve never seen one, but I just know they look like that. He made me feel all creepy inside⁠—say, I’ll take you down to meet him⁠—he’s such a dear I know you’ll fall in love with him right off⁠—”

“Thanks⁠—you’re very kind but I just can’t possibly make it this afternoon,” Mimi hastily interrupted her. “Ought really to be at work now but just couldn’t resist the temptation of having luncheon with you,” she added as she saw the childish pout of disappointment which fitted instantly over Mrs. Crosby’s face when she met opposition to any wish of hers.

“Well, some other day then⁠—but you must see him!” Mrs. Crosby smiled, mollified by Mimi’s insincere compliment.

Mimi sank into the soft cushions and watched the shops and passersby along the boulevard, her mind only half given to Mrs. Crosby’s chatter. It wasn’t so difficult to get along with this spoiled old woman, she decided. She runs on and on and apparently doesn’t expect answers even to her direct questions. By the time they reached the hotel Mimi had become as used to the incessant chatter as she had to the steady hum of the motor.

To say that Mrs. Crosby, with Mimi in her wake, swept through the lobby of the hotel, would in a measure be an inaccurate statement of that massive lady’s progress. Her movement from one spot to another was to the irreverent-minded and to those crass souls who either did not know or, knowing, were unintelligent enough not to be properly impressed by Mrs. Crosby’s notion of what constituted the grand manner, might be properly described as an astounding combination of waddling, rolling, wheezing, limping and shuffling. Sometimes she seemed like a huge wave of flesh rising and sinking, rising and sinking, until she subsided upon the shore of her objective. At other times Mimi thought of her as one of the puffing, noisy tugboats in the East River⁠—that is, if one of these boats were painted a brilliant pink or blue. Mrs. Crosby was wholly unaware of the disrespectful allusions or comparisons her friends made behind her back. But even those who saw beneath the ludicrous exterior down to the simple soul beneath could not refrain from amusement at the spectacle she presented. Even her closest friends dared not hint that she was other than the impressive, jovial, lovable creature she fancied herself to be.

Luncheon ordered, of truffles and soup and sweets and “just a teeny-weeny little chop⁠—no, garsong, you’d better bring me two chops, because I’m starved,” Mrs. Crosby began presenting for Mimi’s approval the things she had gathered through the modern Aladdin’s lamp represented by her husband’s chequebook. Statuettes and “genuine” laces, oils, and drawings, usually of tender scenes of lovers strolling through sylvan bowers or kissing each other awkwardly under impossible-looking trees, odds and ends of all sorts of trinkets designed by masters of inutility and banality, boxes and closets and trunks disgorged an endless display of loot. Ninety percent of the stuff is junk, Mimi concluded. Had she been asked by Mrs. Crosby to advise her before she had bought them, Mimi was certain she would have done everything in her power to have prevented their purchase. There was no need nor did Mrs. Crosby want criticism now, only exclamations of praise and appreciation of the beauty and value of the oddly assorted variety of things which littered every available object in the room by the time luncheon was ready. So Mimi murmured politely: “How sweet!” or “How very charming!” and tried as hard as she could to make her voice sound sincere.

Luncheon finished, Mimi began taking surreptitious peeps at her wrist watch as she waited for some lull in the Niagara of words which poured from the Crosby mouth. She thought she saw her chance when the telephone rang.

“Answer it, won’t you, Miss Daquin, for me? That’s a dear! These silly little French phones annoy me so⁠—why don’t they show some initiative and put in telephones like we have in America?”

“There’s a man named Forrester calling,” Mimi told her when she had answered the telephone.

“Oh, Jimmy Forrester! Tell them to send him right up! No⁠—no, dear, you can’t run away now. Jimmy is the cutest and sweetest boy⁠—even though he does laugh at me and some of my ways. He swears he doesn’t but some of the things he says sometimes sound suspiciously like he’s chaffing⁠—that’s a nice word, isn’t it? I picked it up in London last week⁠—⁠ ⁠… Oh, dear! you really must go? I do wish you’d take the afternoon off and come along to help me buy a few little things I need⁠ ⁠…”

But Mimi already had put her hat on and was halfway to the door, with elaborate indefiniteness promising to look in on Mrs. Crosby again “the very first time I can steal a minute or two.” Privately she was vowing to have no minutes free for her rotund hostess as long as she was in Paris. These promises and Mrs. Crosby’s reiteration of her demands that Mimi spend all her spare time with her took a longer time than Mimi knew. She wanted to get away but her hostess had launched into a life history of Jimmy Forrester and resignedly Mimi listened.

“… He comes of a very good family in New York⁠—they haven’t much money but they’ve got position⁠—Jimmie’s connected with a big brokerage house in New York that handles a lot of Mr. Crosby’s business⁠—Jimmie does practically all of Horace’s buying and selling of stocks or bonds⁠—frightfully smart, Jimmy is, and bright as a steel trap⁠—Jimmie’s just like he’s my own son.⁠ ⁠…”

“Hello, Jimmie dear⁠—I want you to meet a friend of mine who’s been trying her hardest to slip away before you came. Miss Daquin, this is Jimmie Forrester. You two ought to know each other real well”; and Mrs. Crosby beamed with maternal benedictions upon them.

Jimmie Forrester⁠—James H. Forrester was the name engraved on his stationery⁠—bowed and scanned Mimi from head to foot as he bowed. He was tall and slender, brown hair greying at his temples, his face lean and tanned. His face in repose, was indistinguishable from thousands of carefully groomed and tolerably handsome young men to be seen any afternoon on Fifth Avenue or in the fashionable streets near Piccadilly.

But when he smiled Jimmie Forrester became an individual. He had a trick of opening wide his eyes, and Mimi saw that they did not match. One of them was brownish while the other veered more towards hazel, giving him an exotic air which interested her mildly. And his smile revealed oddly crooked teeth, disarranged in a way that brought distinction to an otherwise uninteresting and commonplace mouth, a distinction, she decided, which modern dentistry would have destroyed had the teeth been straightened. All this she noticed in the hasty glance she gave him as they uttered the usual set phrases accompanying an introduction.

“Awfully sorry my coming ran you away⁠—didn’t know I was such an ogre,” he apologized as Mrs. Crosby hurriedly gathered the more intimate garments she had brought forth for Mimi’s inspection.

“You didn’t run me⁠—I should have been gone long since⁠—”

“The Holy Behemoth’s been talking you deaf, dumb and blind,” he whispered with a nod in the general direction of Mrs. Crosby, who was humming a music hall air she had heard the night before. Or, rather she hummed with a peculiar dissonance the tune she thought she had heard.

“Not so bad⁠—she has her good points. I wish I could have saved her the job of buying a lot of the things she’s been showing me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself⁠—neither wind nor wave nor howling storm can stop her from dumping Horace’s money all over the place. There’s a glitter that springs to the eyes of shopkeepers all over Europe whenever Eulalia appears on the scene⁠—they hustle to drag out all the junk they think they’ve been stuck with and unload it on her, telling her it’s genuine Rodin or Millet or whatever springs to their minds at the moment. Even Horace, who has twisted the tail of Wall Street dozens of times, is powerless before Eulalia⁠—she’s irresistible when she sets out to do a thing⁠—Gosh, here she comes!”

Some undefinable bond had sprung into being between them. By the time Mrs. Crosby had puffed her way around the room once or twice bearing armfuls of clothing into the bedroom beyond, they felt they had known each other much longer than the few minutes they had stood there.

“Let me take you wherever you’re going,” he asked her but she declined and hurried away. But when she reached her hotel in the Rue DuPhot that evening she found there had been three telephone calls from Mrs. Crosby. As she turned away from the desk determined to change her dress and slip away for a quiet meal alone, the telephone rang again and she heard the girl say: “Yes, Mam’selle Daquin has just come⁠—I’ll connect you at once!” Fearing it might be Mrs. Crosby, Mimi went to the telephone and found her fears well-grounded. Even through the machine one got a distinct sense of gushing good will, of sweetness and light.

“My dear, I was so afraid I’d never get you⁠—we’re having dinner tonight⁠—just a little comfy party of us⁠—and you must come⁠—I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. All the shops are closed now and you can’t work all the time, it’s not good for any of us⁠—‘all work and no play,’ you remember.⁠ ⁠…” Mrs. Crosby’s voice was laden with little unexpected thrills and flute-like runs that she fancied were quite cute and fascinating. She never got out of practice, for she generously bestowed the silveriness of her tones on male and female alike, even on the servants, who could not as easily flee from them. Mimi knew she would go even as she felt herself a spineless sycophant as she agreed. Hardly had she washed her face before the car was announced. She got some small satisfaction from seeing the new respect on the faces of the hotel attendants as they looked with awe upon the lavender Rolls-Royce with its shining silver trimmings and silken upholstery.

She knew Forrester would be in the car, having sensed that he had been responsible for the dinner invitation. As they were whirled through the Boulevard Madeleine and down the Rue Royal to Maxim’s she listened to Mrs. Crosby’s cooing exclamations of pleasure that she had accepted, while she watched the rounded broadness of Mr. Crosby’s back and the straight lines of Forrester’s in the seats in front of them.

“Jimmie went quite mad about you this afternoon,” Mrs. Crosby whispered as she sought to maintain her perilous balance while the car slithered around corners and came to an abrupt stop. “Raved about you, my dear⁠—said you were the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. You should be proud⁠—there have been loads of women who’ve run their fool heads off after him and he never even looked at them.”

Mimi was not at all certain that Forrester had said all this, nor even that he had been the hard-hearted, stern woman-dodger Mrs. Crosby tried to make of him. But she did notice that he managed to bring his chair as close to hers as he could and that he took advantage of every occasion, which were not few, to say meaningless little things in a confidential tone, when Mrs. Crosby became interested with little squeals, as some acquaintance was spied in another part of the dining-room. His manner was entirely open but the way in which he said these things seemed to imply that they had a bond of understanding between them, a bond secret and very precious. This disturbed Mimi in a way she could not explain even to herself. Jimmie Forrester interested her, there was something intangible about him that made her afraid of herself. Once he leaned over as Mrs. Crosby was excitedly pointing out a friend who had just entered. “You are more beautiful now than you were even this afternoon!” he whispered. The remark was not brilliant nor was it one she had not heard before. But it made queer little tingles chase each other through her, she felt herself blushing as though she were a girl of sixteen.

“Don’t be silly,” she admonished herself. “You’d be a pretty fool to let yourself get interested. It’s hopeless. It can’t lead anywhere but to bitterness and disappointment. Keep your head! Keep your head!”

She gave herself this sage advice and found herself promptly disregarding it. She was glad when the dinner was over and she escaped, pleading headache and weariness. Safe in her room, she tried to shake Jimmie Forrester’s mismated eyes and crooked teeth from her mind. She failed. She was afraid⁠—terribly afraid. She knew it was folly, suicide, madness. But the vision persisted. For years she had in an indefinite way been lonely, had wanted the companionship of some man who would be to her the summation of the ideals she cherished as the most desirable. These spells had come infrequently, only with great rareness breaking through the vitreous shell with which her experiences had encased her. But they had been after all easy to shake off, for there had been no one man but instead an ideal of her own construction which had never taken form in the flesh. Now that she had met Jimmie Forrester, she vaguely realized that she was not as immune as she had fancied herself. She fell asleep, worried.