XXIII

Washington Square lay in restful beauty beneath its glittering blanket of snow. Here and there were rounded mounds, hillocks of whiteness whose framework were iron benches that had held countless pairs of lovers in the gentle warmth of spring or the torrid breathlessness of summer. The commonplace, ugly fences had been transformed miraculously into graceful lines of ethereal, ghostlike, shimmering whiteness. The harsh lines of the Arch had been rounded and softened until it seemed like a huge cake of frosted icing baked for some Gargantuan wedding feast. Across the Square loomed the church Stanford White had designed, the cross above the mass of yellow brick purified by its coating of white.

In the little patches of earth enclosed by the fences, gusts of wind were taking the new-fallen snow, swirling it in graceful spirals that danced and pirouetted with such sinuous loveliness that beside them Pavlowa would have seemed a clumsy, heavy-footed rustic doing a barn dance. Here and there scurried along a figure, head bent before the icy wind, or a lumbering Fifth Avenue bus with its green sides visible in spots free from the encrustations of snow. The verdant hue of the buses or the blackness of clothing only accentuated the whiteness around the moving figures. As if awed by the phenomenon of the transformation, old but ever new, all sound was muffled, an encircling blanket of stillness gripped and held all things, animate and inanimate, in its soft grip.

For hours Mimi sat and looked out upon the Square, long hours after Jimmie had ploughed his way down the steps and disappeared in the distance as he forged his way through the snow to the subway. Why, she asked herself⁠—and in presenting the question to herself she placed it before some greater power, some wiser and more farseeing, One beyond the confines of her own mind and spirit⁠—why was I given this restless spirit, this ceaseless inability to be content with what life has brought me? Why cannot I be like other women, able to content myself with whatever comes, refusing to let the tiny mice of search for the unattainable gnaw at my restless heart? She thought of the times when she might have avoided all this seeking, seeking, seeking, by calm and unquestioning acceptance of life as she had encountered it, yielding principles and ideals which conflicted with the ways and customs and accepted standards of the world as she found them. She might have married Carl. She might have yielded to marriage or support without marriage when other men had offered it⁠—acceptance of any one of a number of men whom she did not love and never would have loved but who could have given her ease and comfort and freedom from financial worry. She might have given away or abandoned Petit Jean and dropped for all time memory of his entry in the world. Instead here she was wanting him, longing for him more passionately than she had ever wanted him before.

Jimmie had wanted children⁠—had begged her to give him a son, preferably, but if not a son, a daughter. There had been a time when she might have wanted to give him what he wanted. But she had not had the courage to tell him that the granting of his wish did not rest with her. When the time had gone by with no prospect of an heir she had spoken to Jimmie of a boy quite close to her which he had assumed was the child of a relative. He had urged her to bring him to their home but she had not done so. This simple solution had at first pleased her, as an easy solution, but she had been unwilling to adopt it. It would have seemed like deceit practised upon Jimmie and though she had acted with the ruthless courage born alone of mother love when Petit Jean’s welfare required it, she could not bring herself to take this step now that she was able to care for him and to assure him every comfort he needed.

As she sat by the window she thought of the dinner the night before. The calm dignity, the farsighted wisdom of the Chinese had stood out in bold relief against the background of the tawdry, shallow people around him. She thought of the concept which had always sprung to her mind when she had heard the word Chinese or Chinaman⁠—it always had been of a slant-eyed Oriental shuffling across a laundry floor or a bestial, treacherous villain upon the stage or moving-picture screen. But even allowing for the contrast between that stereotyped concept and the man she had met at the Crosbys’, Hseh-Chuan had towered far above the other guests, she decided. It wasn’t fair to compare him, who must be an exception even in his own country, with poor pathetic Mrs. Crosby nor even with Bert Bellamy, product of the sophistication of his age. She remembered a phrase she had read in an essay by James Branch Cabell⁠—“Man is, they say, the only animal that has reason; and so he must have also, if he is to stay sane, diversion to prevent his using it.” Cynical, scoffing, it was true, but after all was that not the premise upon which life nowadays seemed to be conducted? And were not the Eulalia Crosbys and the Bert Bellamys and the Jimmie Forresters, yes, the Mimi Forresters too, restlessly, blindly, neurotically, unceasingly seeking diversions to prevent the use of that thing they called their intellect?

Again she came back to the figure of countless millions of worried and insignificant little people obeying blindly the implacable bidding of a huge, insatiable machine. Horace Crosby seeking release and forgetfulness in an empty, sordid affair with a woman, beautiful though she was, like Dolores d’Aubigny. Bert Bellamy drugging himself with the opiate of inquisitive prying into the affairs of the prominent and the near-prominent. Eulalie Crosby gaining the sobriquet, so appropriate, of the Holy Behemoth, by her restless rushing about in ponderous worry over trivial things. Jimmie with his lodges and clubs and booster organizations where he could bathe himself in the aura of importance, however brief or illusory. Restless crowds plying themselves with sex or drink or drugs or silly diversions to forget the implacable demands of the forces that drove them on, trying hard to ignore those forces or to hypnotize themselves into believing there are no such powers. The weakest, and often the strongest, realizing the futility of it all, finding peace through a swift snuffing out of life itself.

They have thrown overboard, she reflected, all the spiritual anchorages which gave them security in the past and made them strong. Religion had failed them, for they had made of religion an outer form useful only when it served their own selfish purposes.

Men, as always, prayed to a God of their own creation, a Divinity which only mirrored the petty minds of its worshippers. This man, avid of wealth and power, prayed devoutly and absentmindedly to his conception of God, a being of unlimited wealth, plastered with diamonds, fat, vulgar and, through his wealth, able to dictate the lives of countless millions of creatures scattered throughout a boundless universe.

Another man prayed to a God of vengeance, a God who had wisely taken counsel of man and decreed that this race or that one should be crowned as the chosen people. Blindly by obsessions of superiority, unbelievable cruelties were prayed over and asked of God by these molelike creatures who fancied their own infinitesimal wisdom superior to that of any other beings, human or divine. One thing and another they asked for, Gods of varying stature were sought and found, in no wise differing from the reflection that the humans caught from their bedroom mirrors. Above all, they demonstrated through their prayers that they believed only in themselves and they were unable to accomplish the miracles they sought.

Morality meant merely the observance, usually in the breach, of certain man-made rules and regulations. It seemed to her there was a far greater amount of immorality practised by certain married couples she knew between whom all love had died than in relationships which she could easily imagine but which conventions would condemn with ferocious bitterness. The mouthings of stupid and sensational preachers who ranted and shouted that the solution of all the ills of the world and of mankind could be cured by blind acceptance of outworn theological doctrines that had served their day and then rightly died, sickened her and made her more intolerant than ever of creed and dogma. She did not at all know what she would have desired but she did know that these empty-pated figures were of infinitely more harm than good. They to her seemed parallel figures to the absurd members of bodies like the Ku Klux Klan. She hazily remembered a passage in Thayer’s Cavour which fitted these groups. She searched the shelves until she found the book she wanted, and read:

“Moribund institutions, whether lay or religious, usually press their most virulent claims.⁠ ⁠… A singular parallel can be drawn between the Papal Party in Italy and the Slave Party in the United States during the sixth decade of the 19th Century. When new ideals began to undermine the civilization from which they had risen, both the Papacy and the Slavocracy adopted a policy of no compromise. Both arrogantly proposed to extend their dominion at the very time when this doom was at hand.”

It seemed to her that this was sound⁠—that what had been true in the ’60’s was doubtless true sixty years later. War had become the great objective of all peoples of the Western world, their religion had become the religion of brute strength instead of the doctrines of peace and decent treatment of all others. Arrogant, intolerant, impervious to new ideas unless they be ideas for greater destructiveness in time of war.

Her gloomy thoughts made her shiver though the bitter cold outside was fully overcome by the roaring fire in the wide fireplace. I am becoming moody again, she decided, seeing things and imagining all sorts of horrible things. But she could not shake off her feeling, for her mind had seen too clearly the things which lay back of her own discontent and the restlessness of the life around her.

As she left the window and moved towards the fire, the telephone sent tiny shivers of sound through the quietness of the house. It was Jimmie. “Terribly sorry, dear, but Horace and I’ve got to go to Chicago on the Century this afternoon. Throw a few things in a bag like a good girl and give it to the boy I’m sending up. Bert Bellamy happened to be in the office and I asked him to take you to the theatre tonight⁠—hope that’s all right with you. If it isn’t, you can tell him you’ve got a headache or something. Sorry, got to rush along now⁠—got loads of work before I leave. Take care of yourself⁠—I’ll be back in three or four days.⁠ ⁠…”

He was gone before she had a chance to say much. She was annoyed that he without consulting her had delegated Bert to go to the theatre in his place. She was rather glad, however, to have the house to herself for a few days. Jimmie was a dear but he was frightfully boisterous and uncouth and boring at times. And he annoyed her with his smug little prejudices. He didn’t like Jews or Japanese or Italians or any other group that wasn’t his own. She remembered his patronizing sneer at the Jews the night before as they drove to the Crosbys’. There were certain classes of Jews she preferred not coming into contact with just as there were classes of Negroes and classes of white people she very much sought a dear have the home his place to avoid. I’m probably a snobbish creature myself, she admitted, but at least it seems to me that the only people on earth who are not afraid of intellect are the Jews.⁠ ⁠…

Wearied with her gloomy mental peregrinations and her perfervid seeking into the causes of her own restlessness, she ate an early luncheon and, wrapping herself warmly in her furs, set off with free swinging strides up the Avenue, exulting in the sweeping, stinging wind which rushed down the canyon formed by the towering buildings. As she hurried along, little circles of carmine took shape in her cheeks from the lash of the wind, growing redder and redder until it almost matched the bits of hair which peeped from underneath the close-fitting toque of vivid green. I do wish, she thought as she abandoned her thoughts of the morning in the joy of the battle with the stinging wind, I had been so constituted that I did not feel things so much, that I did not have the capacity for suffering as I do. But then, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy things so much, so I suppose it all balances up in the end.⁠ ⁠…

For two and a half hours Mimi and Bert sat through a show in which slightly aged jokes and chorus girls suffering from the same malady sought to keep alive a tenuous plot. Bert started humming an improvised verse to an old tune which sounded like “Just another good show gone wrong,” until a purposeful-looking woman in front of them turned and glared at him through an imposing pair of lorgnettes. Whereupon he subsided into abashed silence. But not for long, for he soon was whispering to Mimi that “the only good spots in the show are the dirty ones,” furnished as they were by a Jewish comedian in blackface. “If they’d only lower their voices a bit we could all take a nap and thus the evening wouldn’t be entirely wasted,” was Bert’s comment along towards the middle of the last act. And Mimi was thinking that this was just the sort of show Jimmie would choose and enjoy.

Outside, the snow had ceased falling. Hurrying crowds flowed towards the subway and elevated, pouring in seemingly endless floods from countless theatres.

“What next?” Bert asked as he sought to shelter her from the rushing throng.

“I’ll tell you⁠—I want to see a Negro cabaret in Harlem. I’ve hinted to Jimmie but he had never offered to take me. Though he seems to know a lot about them himself⁠—” she thought, leaving the last sentence unuttered.

Bert hailed a taxi and they were on their way. Mimi wondered just why she had suggested Harlem. It had been nearly ten years since she had been north of 125th Street⁠—she wondered if she would meet any of the people she had known there years before. The vogue of Negro shows on Broadway, Shuffle Along, Runnin’ Wild and others, the popularity of Miller and Lyles and of Florence Mills, had not touched her directly. She suddenly realized that she had stayed away from them for fear she would meet some of her former friends or acquaintances and thereby suffer possibly embarrassing situations in explaining to Jimmie why she knew these people. She laughed at herself for a silly little goose as she leaned comfortably back in the warm cab⁠—she had long since been forgotten in the ever-changing life of Harlem. She herself didn’t even know who had taken over her Aunt Sophie’s business when Mrs. Rogers had gone back to New Orleans to live.

It came to her suddenly why the impulse to go to Harlem had sprung to her mind. It was the statement Wu Hseh-Chuan had made⁠—“… only your Negroes have successfully resisted mechanization⁠ ⁠…” was the way he put it. Now that she was once again headed towards Harlem, she felt the old attraction which had come over her that first night in New York when her Aunt Sophie and she had come up in the subway and debarked at Lenox Avenue and 135th Street. Bert Bellamy was singing the latest “Mammy” song in what he fondly imagined to be Negro dialect but Mimi paid no attention to him⁠—she felt an eager interest that contrasted vigorously with her gloom of the morning.⁠ ⁠…

Bert was apparently no stranger when they turned from Seventh Avenue into a side street and alighted before a door guarded by a huge uniformed Negro. Down a narrow stair they went to a barred door which opened when the doorkeeper above pressed a buzzer. Mimi was startled when a roar of sound plunged from the opened door, sound which had been wholly inaudible when the door was shut. Inside, bright lights shone on the rectangle of dance floor but left the tables along the sides in soft shadow. Crowded high upon a narrow platform sat the orchestra, clad in dinner jackets and playing as though they were paying for the privilege of playing. Scurrying waiters hurried and slid and expertly wove their way in and out of the crowd of dancers and diners. A dinner jacketed, sleek-haired head waiter guided Mimi and Bert to a table where they sat watching the dancers. Mimi eagerly took it all in. She noticed that at the tables the parties were either all white or all Negro, there being seldom any mixing of the two groups.

At the table next to theirs sat a noisy group of younger people. With frequent regularity there appeared from underneath the table a large bottle from which glasses were surreptitiously filled. As the evening wore on, the boisterousness of the party increased. Suddenly one of the girls, pretty in a rather coarse way, slumped forward on the table. Two of the men hurriedly carried her out.

“She’s checked out,” Bert coolly commented. “Too much bad liquor.” The orchestra played on. “Funny about these coons,” Bert went on. “They don’t ever seem to pass out like white folks.”

Mimi flushed at the word but Bert was watching the dancers and did not see it. Mimi suddenly hated him for using the detested word. She checked the remark which sprang to her lips⁠—that the swinish guzzling was being done only at the tables at which white people sat. She was amazed at the sudden rekindling of the race-consciousness which had lain dormant for nearly ten years. I’m silly, she chided herself, for after all what difference does it make what a man is called? But immediately there came the answer that it apparently made a great deal of difference, whether one wanted it to or not. She watched the dancers. The floor was crowded mostly with white couples executing all sorts of fancy steps, swaying and bumping the others in their gyrations. Here and there a coloured couple moved with unconscious grace, a rhythmic sweep to their bodies that made the others seem awkward and graceless. She commented on the fact to Bert, whose answer was: “Yeah, all the showgirls down town come up here and get stuff for Broadway.” And as she watched them Mimi began to see for the first time what Wu Hseh-Chuan had meant⁠—it had taken an Oriental from halfway around the world to make her see things she had seen all her life and yet had never seen.

The floor was too crowded. Bert wanted her to dance but one attempt made her content to sit and watch. The music had a strange effect upon her. Analysed, it was all wrong when judged by conventional musical standards. Taken as a whole, it formed a weird and oddly exciting cacophony of chords and exotic rhythms. A muted cornet sent forth hair disturbing peals like an eerie sound heard in a graveyard after midnight. The saxophone grunted and slid up and down a facile scale of gurgling harmonies. Drums and the piano pounded a steady beat that had in them all the power and mystery and inflaming beauty of the tomtom. Suddenly it became clear. Mimi knew that for her this wild music held its greatest charm in its freedom from rules, its complete disregard of set forms. It refused to be tied down, its creators wove harmonies out of thin air and transferred to their notes the ecstasy of a wild, unharnessed, free thing. She thought of nymphs gambolling in a virgin forest, on ground unsoiled by human foot. Dryads and hamadryads, wood and water nymphs every conceived creature of freedom came to her mind as she sat and listened and felt the ecstasy the music made her feel.⁠ ⁠…

The next night she slipped from the house after an early dinner and with the spirit of high adventure hurried through the melting snow towards the West Side subway station. She came to the surface again in Harlem and there she wandered through the streets. She wondered why in the days when restlessness had gripped her after a hard day at Francine’s she had never come to Harlem as she had walked through the streets where French and Italian and Gipsy and Jewish people lived⁠—wondered even as she knew why she had not come to Negro Harlem.

It was a new Harlem she now saw, or rather, though she did not realize it, it was a new Mimi through whose eyes she saw it. Gone were the morose, the worried, the unhappy, the untranquil faces she had been seeing down town for years. Here there was light and spontaneous laughter, here there was real joyfulness in voices and eyes. Here was leisureliness, none of the hectic dashing after material things which brought little happiness when gained. She lingered near a crowd that chatted with frequent outbursts of spontaneous laughter. A wizened little Negro was being bantered by another as the first one sought to prove his nonexistent prowess as a fighter.

“I hit him three or four times and he only hit me once,” he boasted loudly.

“Go on, Mushmouth, that’s all David hit Goliath,” his tormentor cheerfully answered. A third man who had seen the fight completed the boastful one’s rout when he described pungently the expression on the face of the defeated one: “He made a face like a nigger tasting his first olive!”⁠ ⁠…

As Mimi sat in the roaring subway on her way home, she felt within her a renewing of her old eagerness towards life. Here was something real that the unknowing and unseeing had called “native humour” and “Negro comedy.” But, somewhat vaguely, she felt the thing went deeper than that. She speculated as to the lasting value of machines and all that they brought⁠—whether a radio over which came “Yes, We Have No Bananas” added measurably to the sum total of happiness. She was wondering yet when sleep overcame her.⁠ ⁠…

In the days that followed there came to her out of the tangled maze of her thoughts a clearer conception of the causes underlying her discontent. She loved the comforts of her home, from the shiny brass knocker on the snowy white front door to the full-length mirrors in which she loved to gaze at her rounded form after her morning bath in the big blue-and-white porcelain tub. But she wondered if the sombre, cynical companions she met in her home and in other places were worth the price she was paying for these luxuries. People who were playing at enjoying life but whose unhappiness shone through all they did or said. She wondered.⁠ ⁠…