IV

“I meant to tell you on Sunday,” telephoned Mrs. Hunter the latter part of the week, “to bring your lovely little girl with you to my party next Tuesday. Mrs. Adams is bringing her girl, Hilda, and the two of them can play together.”

And so it was that Mimi, dressed in her best dress, a pale yellow confection of lawn, set out with Mrs. Daquin for Mrs. Hunter’s house and the Fleur-de-Lis Club meeting. Mrs. Daquin, too, dressed carefully and elaborately. She spent an hour arranging her hair in the style of the day, brushed back from the forehead high over a “rat” that made her head appear as though soldiers had thrown up breastworks, carefully smoothed over. From behind this amazing rampart peeped coyly a lacy hat perched perilously on the back of the head. Mrs. Daquin’s modified leg-o’-mutton sleeves, her lightly fitting waist with high neck supported by whalebone stays, her long skirt flaring wide and with a train were all of the latest design, as were the half-mittens of black lace from which Mrs. Daquin’s fingers, short and round, emerged shyly like little fat sausages. She knew her sex⁠—she would be on inspection and much depended on the first impression. She was determined that that first glance should establish her as one of the elect.

Mrs. Hunter had said “four o’clock sharp.” Mrs. Daquin and Mimi therefore arrived at the Hunter domicile, a huge pile of towers and turrets and bulging bay windows adorned at the most unlikely and unlooked-for places with startling varieties of woodwork, at twenty minutes of five. Mrs. Daquin knew the value of a dramatic entrance, of the desirability of being just late enough to have permitted everybody else’s arrival prior to her own.

She was not wrong. In the warm April afternoon the door and windows were open. As they ascended the steps there floated out to them the hum of well-bred voices, pitched at just the right angle. Mrs. Hunter rushed to greet them and from the sudden stilling of the animated conversation Mimi knew the talk had been about her stepmother and herself. They were conducted around the large living-room and presented to each of the carefully dressed women who sat in a circle whose circumference was only a little less than that of the room. “Pleased to meet you’s,” “Happy to form your acquaintance’s,” “My compliments,” and “How do you do’s” greeted Mrs. Daquin; “What a pretty little girl’s,” and “How cute’s” were Mimi’s portion.

The ordeal ended, Mrs. Daquin subsided into a chair near Mrs. Hunter’s standing approximately at the point where they had started on their circumnavigation of the room. The buzzing conversation began again. Mimi listened to the exchange of recipes and ideas, discussions of the best manner in which jams and jellies and rolls should be prepared, gentle arguments as to the relative desirability of this store or that one.

Mimi looked around the room for Hilda Adams but there were no younger people except herself. She began to feel out of place, to wish she were at home with her sewing or at her piano. Knowing there was no escape she began to examine the women around her. She remembered few of their names but that did not worry her. She noticed that none of the women present were darker than a light brown, their complexions varying from that shade to one indistinguishable from white. Just as this fact came to her she caught a snatch of conversation from a group near her that linked itself startlingly with her own observation.

A slender, very slender, woman with lips which she pressed together closely whenever she began or ended a sentence was talking.

“… it seems Mrs. Adams has been going to the Grand Opera House and buying seats in the orchestra, ‘passing’ for white, and seeing all the plays that’ve been coming here. Well, the other day, as she was going in, some coloured person saw her and went and told the manager. She tried to bluff it out but it didn’t work⁠—they made her get out.”

“Serves her right,” sweetly commented one of the informative one’s companions, satisfaction in her tone. “Going where she isn’t wanted. She always did think she knew more than the rest of us. They tell me she and Hilda wash their own clothes after dark and hang them up in the yard when nobody can see them⁠—and then get up before daybreak to take them in⁠—Oh! how do you do, Mrs. Adams?⁠—I didn’t see you come in. And how sweet you look! That’s a beautiful new dress you’ve on,” she broke off as the subject of their conversation came up.

Mimi wondered how so miraculous a change could come over the group which now chatted easily and cordially, very cordially, with her who had been ejected from the local theatre and who laundered her clothes after nightfall. She felt a deep warmth within her for this woman who, because she wanted so avidly the entertainment, the touch with the world of ideas, the stimulus that came from the plays which came to Atlanta, and which her race barred her from seeing respectably, made her run the risk of discovery. And to the same degree that she felt a yearning to touch, to smile at Mrs. Adams and thereby let her know that she sympathized with her, did Mimi detest with a burning intensity the pettiness and envy of her detractors.

So engrossed had she been in Mrs. Adams, Mimi had not seen Hilda, who stood silent just beyond her mother. Mrs. Adams started to move away to another group and the motion brought Mimi face to face with a girl of her own age with wide, placid black eyes. Hilda and Mimi stood looking at each other, each caught and held fast by some power, neither of them knew what nor even that there was such a power holding them. For a minute⁠—an hour⁠—a century they stood there unable either to move or speak. The spell was broken when Hilda smiled shyly and moved toward Mimi. At that instant Mrs. Adams turned to Mimi.

“You must be Mrs. Daquin’s little girl. This is my Hilda⁠—” she began. “Oh, I see you’re friends already,” she smiled.

“Come on, let’s sit over there on the steps and talk,” said Hilda simply, taking Mimi’s hand.

Through the buzz of conversation, through the games of flinch (these gentle ladies got a delicious sense of near-wickedness from this simple game played with pasteboard cards which were not playing-cards), even through the stir created by the announcement that refreshments would be served in the dining-room, Mimi and Hilda sat there and talked. They began with questions of each other, about school, about their childhood, revealing little intimacies that subtly wove between them a gossamer band of friendship, fragile and almost invisible, yet with the strength of piano wire. Nor was this union born of spoken words. Much more came to each of them from the other in the little moments of silence, when by accident hand touched hand or smile met smile. Mimi, through all of her fourteen years, had had no confidante other than her father and, despite deepest bonds between father and daughter, there are some secrets too precious to be told even to a father like Jean. Mimi felt tender affection surge through her for this newfound friend. She longed to stroke her hair, to kiss Hilda on the cheek, just under her chin, to pour out devotion lavishly, without stint. And she could tell from Hilda’s smile, her tiny gestures of tenderness, that her love was returned, and happiness filled her being.⁠ ⁠…

Mrs. Hunter brought them back to realities.

“Oh, there you are, little chickabiddies,” she cooed. “Come along, I’ve fixed a cute little table for you two where you can be to yourselves and where you won’t be bothered by us old folks.”

Hilda gave Mimi a fleeting, wry smile at the blundering condescension of the dowager-like hostess.

“Looks just like a battleship trying to be cute,” whispered Hilda. Mimi rewarded her with a spontaneous but subdued little laugh as they followed Mrs. Hunter into the dining-room.

As they sat at the table near the huge bay window Hilda told Mimi in whispers about the women who chattered and ate at the large table.

“That skinny one over there,” pointing to the woman who had been telling of the ejection of Hilda’s mother from the theatre, “is Mrs. Watkins. Her husband’s a doctor and he was crazy about mamma but she didn’t like him like she did daddy. They say,” and here Hilda leaned across the table and whispered, “that Dr. Watkins is still in love with mamma and it makes Mrs. Watkins furious. She doesn’t like mamma and the main reason, I think, is because mamma is so much better-looking and knows so much more.”

Mimi wriggled ecstatically at this revelation. She felt the delicious sense of being a conspirator, as the repository of a secret told only to one very dear and close.

“That one with the gold tooth who laughs all the time is the wife of a schoolteacher⁠—her name’s Mrs. Tompkins⁠—she’s been to New York twice⁠—but it didn’t seem to do her any good. She laughs as much as ever and hasn’t anything new to talk about except the new clothes she’s bought and how she and her husband could go to all the shows in New York and sit in any part of the theatre they wanted to.”

Mimi, as discreetly as she could, turned and surveyed her of the gold tooth. She was not very impressed⁠—she expected anyone who had twice been to New York to have some distinguishing mark or characteristic which revealed two journeys to Manhattan. Mimi did not know what form this mark should have taken, she only felt that Mrs. Tompkins should have differed in some way from those who had not journeyed so far.

The cataloguing was interrupted by Hilda, who asked suddenly, and to Mimi with an eagerness which she could not at the time fathom, if Mimi had met Carl Hunter.

“Mamma tells me I’m a silly little goose,” proceeded Hilda when Mimi told her she had not met their hostess’ son, “but Carl’s the most thrilling boy in Atlanta. He’s seventeen and not a bit like the other boys around here⁠—they’re so⁠—so babyish. But Carl’s different and mamma says he doesn’t get along any too well with his mother and father⁠—his father wants Carl to study insurance and banking and Carl doesn’t want to.”

“Does he know you’re⁠—that you like him so?” asked Mimi.

“Ooh-no!” gasped Hilda. “But he is different⁠—” she ended.⁠ ⁠…

That night Mimi told Jean of the things she had seen and heard during the afternoon. To her piquant recital of the things said and done and to the vivid little pictures, each etched so graphically and clearly Jean could see the women and their mannerisms, he listened eagerly.

“And how did Mary seem to like it?” he asked.

“She was right at home! I heard her tell two or three of them she just adored Atlanta⁠—reminded her of her Chicago⁠—and so different from that sleepy old New Orleans!” Mimi grimaced.⁠ ⁠…

“I’m happy you’ve found Hilda,” Jean told her. “You need the companionship of young people⁠—when you’re as old as I it won’t be so easy to find somebody whose ideas fit in with your own.”

“How are things going at the office?” asked Mimi, remembering that she in her excitement had almost forgotten him and his affairs.

“About as well as can be expected⁠—better than I thought they would,” he answered. “They’re a fine bunch⁠—very much in earnest⁠—and I suppose I’ll have to admit Mary and her father are right⁠—they do put things over. Mr. Hunter’s the best of the lot⁠—and, well, I suppose in time I’ll get myself fitted into the groove⁠—” he ended lamely.

“You’re whistling in the dark to keep up your courage!” Mimi challenged him. “You’re not happy here and you never will be.”

“Not entirely so, I am afraid, but⁠—well, I’ll be contented after a fashion,” Jean smiled bravely. “I miss the old houses, the old ways. I’d give anything almost to walk once more down to the Basin, to sit in St. Louis cemetery⁠—do you remember the gold and green lizards scampering round, in and out of the vines over the graves, that day we walked and talked there, Mimi? I miss the calmness, the placidity, the smell of the water. Here things are rushing, bustling, matter-of-fact. I feel as if some power has pulled me out of a quiet pool where I was lying on my back floating on the water and thrown me head first into a deadly revolving whirlpool.

“And what are they getting out of all this, these minnows who are squirming and fighting each other?” he demanded with the old gesture of questioning she knew so well. “Here are these coloured people with the gifts from God of laughter and song and of creative instincts⁠—do you remember that man who sang as he went past the house our first night in Atlanta?⁠—and what are they doing with it? They are aping the white man⁠—becoming a race of moneygrubbers with ledgers and money tills for brains and Shylock hearts.”

“But, papa Jean, they’ve got to do it! They’re living in a world where they must either make money or else perish.”

“No⁠—no⁠—Mimi! You don’t understand what I mean. The whole world’s gone mad over power and wealth. The strongest man wins, not the most decent or the most intelligent or the best. All the old virtues of comradeship and art and literature and philosophy, in short, all the refinements of life, are being swallowed up in this monster, the Machine, we are creating which is slowly but surely making us mere automatons, dancing like marionettes when the machine pulls the strings and bids us prance. I know you’re thinking I sound like a masculine Cassandra⁠—but some day, perhaps long after I’m gone, maybe you’ll think back to this day and agree with me.”

To Mimi most of this was rather baffling⁠—she was glad that Jean obviously did not expect her to answer. It was true that she had been fascinated by the song they had heard, she loved the colourfulness of the life she saw around her and she had noticed that in her few contacts with white people she had felt a certain chill that she was not aware of when with her own people.

“Her own people.” The phrase interested her. In New Orleans she had thought all people were hers⁠—that only individuals mattered. But here there were sharp, unchanging lines which seemed to matter with extraordinary power. This one was white⁠—that one black. Even though the “white” one was swarthy while the “black” one might be as fair as the whitest of the white.

And within the circle of those who were called Negroes she found duplications of the lines between the two major groups. She in the few days she had been in Atlanta had heard enough to know there were churches attended in the main only by coloured people who were mulattoes or quadroons, others only by those whose complexions were quite dark. At Mrs. Hunter’s the uniform lightness of skin had impressed itself upon her. And when she had sought to make overtures to Mrs. Plummer’s girl, Iwilla (Mrs. Plummer had told Mrs. Daquin proudly her daughter had a Biblical name⁠—it was taken from the verse, “I will arise and go unto my Father”), Mrs. Plummer had called her child into the house and Mimi had heard her being scolded: “How many times I got to tell you to leave these yaller children alone? First thing you know, you’ll be coming home saying some of them’s called you ‘black.’ ”

All this perplexed Mimi. She was too young and inexperienced to know that these people were in large part the victims of a system which made colour and hair texture and race a fetish. Nor did she know how all too frequently opportunity came in a direct ratio to the absence of pigmentation. It was baffling, annoying. And so too were Jean’s criticisms of his new environment. Mimi missed the romance of her old home, it is true, but the new scene with all its rawness and lack of beauty intrigued and fascinated her through its vigour and progressiveness. She began to feel a sympathy, at first faint but growing in strength, tinged with pity, for Jean in his unwillingness to adapt himself to newer ways and customs.

Not that she consciously put these into words nor even into tangible thought. She loved Jean too dearly, too wholeheartedly for that, and any criticism of him, real or implied, would have made her miserable for its imputation of disloyalty. No. It was simply that Jean was the follower of an older day, of an age that was passing even in Louisiana, that definitely had passed here in Georgia and to an even greater degree farther North.⁠ ⁠…

And Jean’s efforts to find his place in the new order and to make that place as comfortable, as little irritating as possible, met with but indifferent success. He found that he could not with any degree of pleasure nor of comfort join in the social activities of his business associates. They were too vigorous, too forthright for his simple taste. He had no puritanical streaks in his nature but the lusty laughter with which the men greeted the stories which were current, usually of a ribald and smutty nature, at first surprised him, then slightly nauseated him. It was the one thing he disliked in Mr. Hunter, whom he liked better than most of the others.

He could always tell when Mr. Hunter had heard a new one⁠—for these stories the older man had a particular smile that at times bordered on a leer, and a manner of portentous and cryptic winking. The stories themselves did not so much disgust him⁠—he had indulged frequently in racy wit and repartee with his old cronies at home⁠—it was their general stupidity and their clinging to one theme.

Jean formed more and more the habit of spending his time at home, despite his wife’s constant urging that he go out and “mingle more with the men and make himself more sociable.” He read indefatigably, sitting in his room, summer and winter, until the early hours of the morning, or until his wife forced him to retire. She, on the other hand, berated and criticized him much less than in those last few months before he consented to move from New Orleans. Jean quite frankly and with an equanimity which amazed him realized they had grown farther apart than ever and were continuing to find their pleasure in widely diverse fields. Mrs. Daquin, under Mrs. Hunter’s dexterous management, had been extended and had accepted an invitation to join the Fleur-de-Lis Club. More and more Mrs. Daquin, to her intense delight, found herself accepted into the inner circle of Negro society and she soon was able with entire naturalness to speak pityingly of those who were not of the elect.

She had won, too, her efforts towards religious conformity by Jean and Mimi, though this victory had come from an unexpected ally. She had gone, not unprotestingly, with Jean and Mimi to one of the local Catholic churches. There they had been refused admission in a firm and unmistakable rebuff, amazement having been expressed that they had even dared to think they could attend services there. Jean, grieved, his faith shaken, had gone later to see the priest, protesting against the refusal of admittance, but he had received cold comfort⁠—even his question (that was more a protest than an interrogation) as to whether or not the Virgin Mary blessed or withheld blessing from Catholics whose skins were dark, remained unanswered.

That he might be forced to sit in a segregated section of the church had occurred to Jean. Of late years that custom had grown in popularity even in New Orleans in the churches not attended wholly by Negroes. But that he might be refused even admittance had been a terrific shock from which he never completely recovered. Mrs. Daquin had said nothing, but a faint smile which seemed to Mimi to shout exultantly: “I told you so!” wreathed her face. Mrs. Hunter’s gentle hints that “the” church to attend was the Congregational had not fallen on barren ground. It was not long therefore before Sunday morning found her and Mimi and Jean in one of the pews there.⁠ ⁠…

Not many months passed before Mrs. Daquin was as much at home as though she had lived since birth in Atlanta. Mimi, too, was accepted in time, though with reservations. Her affection for Hilda was so apparent there was no mistaking that she esteemed her above all the other girls she met. Both of them had completed their grammar-school careers when Mimi came to Atlanta⁠—both entered high school at Atlanta University in the same class that fall. They walked to school together and they walked home together. They confided each to the other their innermost secrets, they aired their grievances against whatever displeased either of them, secure in the knowledge that the other would understand and would be in complete sympathy. There came, of course, little differences, but these soon evaporated in the warm surge of reconciliation.

This very friendship in a manner prevented Mimi’s acceptance into the fold of complete conformity. Mrs. Adams was invited to all the parties and she in turn did her share of entertaining. But always there was an air of detachment in her social relations she seemed merely to be going through the motions of things which did not greatly interest her, if indeed she did not derive a kind of quiet amusement from the frantic efforts to out-entertain each other.

Instead of attempting to serve courses more in number and elaborateness, to decorate her house more gorgeously than the member of the Fleur-de-Lis Club who had entertained the last time, Mrs. Adams served simple but well-prepared “collations,” as they were called. The sensing that they were more attractive for their very simplicity did not serve to sweeten the tempers of those who depended on elaborateness. This same simplicity governed all Mrs. Adams’ actions whether in social or other relations. It had brought to her the damning reputation of being “stuck-up” and there is none other accusation more certain to gain a measured unpopularity. This reputation, though unfounded in fact as in the case of her mother, had been attached to Hilda and, in turn, to her friend, Mimi.

To about the same degree Mimi’s lack of religious conformity militated against her. She felt a certain bitterness against the Catholic Church for its surrender to a race prejudice which to her seemed silly, but her animosity towards that Church was based most largely on the fact that the surrender had hurt Jean. With the fortunate tendency of youth not to bother itself too greatly about creeds and dogmas, Mimi might quickly have forgotten or at least put into the limbo of half-forgotten things most of the religious duties which to her in New Orleans had seemed so natural⁠—as natural as eating or sleeping. Though Jean rarely mentioned it now, Mimi knew he grieved deeply that he could not attend mass⁠—that down deep beneath the calm exterior he presented to the world and even to his family, Jean felt the loss keenly of church attendance. And when Mimi saw this hurt, it caused her frequently to speak of the differences she noticed between Catholic and Protestant devotees. Usually these were, quite naturally, more critical of the Protestant, and this constant reiteration of her own unconformity to local creeds and beliefs in time caused the phrase “those Catholics” to be instinctively synonymous with her name and Jean’s.⁠ ⁠…

But it was the instinctive cruelty towards and jealousy of woman to woman which created difficulties for Mimi. Something of the colourfulness of the sapphire and purple and jade green waters round New Orleans had gone into the making of Mimi. There was in her too something of the grace of the languorous waves of the Gulf of Mexico as they lapped the jagged shores of Barataria. In her too was the luxuriousness of tropic plants bursting into startlingly vivid and beautiful reds and yellows and greens and blues. Her reddish hair in the sunlight was a magnet that caught and held the eye, the mind meanwhile feasting on its brilliant decorativeness.

And in combination with these reminders of tropic warmth and colour was Mimi’s air, piquant, vaguely mysterious and seductive. Not that she was aware of all this, nor did she do other than laugh when Hilda compared her to some other girl, always to the disparagement of the other one. There were other pretty ones⁠—several of them, in fact, more beautiful than Mimi. Yet, none of them possessed the combination which was hers and, not having lived in Atlanta all her life and thus newer to the eye, Mimi without apparent volition drew to her side most of the younger men. And the eyes of even the older ones she drew to her, covered, if the wife of the beholder was at his side, by a studiously casual remark like “That little Daquin girl is certainly a pretty child!”⁠ ⁠…