VI

Mimi dated thereafter her consciousness of being coloured from September, nineteen hundred and six. For her the old order had passed, she was now definitely of a race set apart. At times this created within her moods of introspection which veered dangerously near the morbid. At other times it inculcated a deep and passionate scorn of those who were her own and her race’s oppressors. She chuckled when she read or heard of or saw their imbecilities, their shortcomings. She looked with scorn on their provincialism, their stupidity, their ignorance. Conversely, she found herself magnifying the virtues, the excellencies of her own people and, at the same time, she tried to explain away through a process of subtle sophistry all their faults.

In time the continuation of these practices began to work a decided and noticeable change in her outlook on life in general. She found herself in time thinking of practically all things, it mattered not what their nature nor how remotely connected with race or colour problems they were, in terms of race or colour. This distorted vision seriously handicapped her but she was unaware of it for it coincided so completely with the viewpoints of her friends. “Poor white trash” became the ultimate of scorn, of contumely, of disparagement. In marked contrast with her former jovial and friendly manner she became almost malicious in little cruelties to tradesmen, to hucksters, to clerks in stores who happened to be white. In these episodes she took acute delight in the fact that her cream-coloured skin, her Gallic name and her French accent gave her immunities she might not have possessed had she been more distinctly Negro.

When first she had come to Atlanta she had been captiously critical of the foibles and petty vices of her new friends. She had recoiled from their bearing of tales, their tearing down of reputations on scanty and imperfect reports of alleged shortcomings. She had hated the obsession of the men on the making of money, the vying of woman with woman in dress, in grandeur of entertainment and of homes. But with the passing of years and particularly after the scenes she had witnessed in the rioting, she began to take these as a matter of course and she found they no longer shocked nor annoyed her. She did not know if she were becoming inured to the new order, if she were succumbing to the new point of view.

Her association with Jean and the lack of contact in her youth with children of her own age had given her a maturity of mind far in advance of her years. She was pained now when she realized that her talks with Jean were becoming more and more infrequent and when they did come they were somewhat less understanding than they had been before. Her sense of loyalty kept her from thinking consciously that Jean was being rapidly left behind by the procession of events, that she who once had seen life eye to eye with him was far beyond him. But though she would not admit it, nevertheless it was true and therein lay the reason why both he and she sought less and less for the old comradeship which had meant so much to both.

Jean, however, saw with clear eye the changes being wrought in Mimi. Her new attitude towards race grieved him though he fully understood the reasons for that change. He knew that a blind race obsession would materially arrest her development and he deplored its rapid growth. He knew that argument and direct attack would be of little avail⁠—Mimi’s face on that memorable and terrible night had revealed to him the bitter travail of soul which was going on underneath. Nor would he have argued against her feeling of hatred towards the whites with whom she came into infrequent contact, had he felt that good would have come of it.

He sought instead to counterbalance it through carefully casual remarks regarding the genuine worth of this man or that one, to place in Mimi’s hands, or where she would surely come upon them, articles, newspapers, books which would fill her mind with beauty and truth. Once it was an excellent translation of the short stories of Balzac. Another time it was The Way of All Flesh. Or a Thomas Hardy novel, though he kept from her Tess⁠—that, he felt, was too⁠—well, a little too advanced for one of Mimi’s tender years. He did not know that before they had left New Orleans Mimi had spent many hours locked in her own room while she surreptitiously devoured (almost literally, her nose was so close to the pages) the tragedy of Tess. Nor did he know she had read every one of the morocco-bound volumes of Maupassant he had so carefully placed on the topmost shelf. Now Mimi read (or reread) the volumes he gave her, she listened to his long talks and she answered the questions he at the most unlikely moments would ask her about her reading, for she knew it would have given him pain had she not done so.

And Jean’s strategy was not wholly a failure. It gave Mimi a sense of almost malicious delight when she found in classrooms that she was more or less familiar with a sonnet of Shakespeare, that she knew who Chaucer was, that Tennyson was something more than the shadowy figure of a man who had “written poetry or painted pictures or something.” Only with Hilda did she refrain from stressing, ever so gently, the advantages she possessed in having chosen a father like Jean. With Hilda she shared the stories that gave her pleasure, with Jean’s permission she loaned Hilda books and therein was built another link between them.⁠ ⁠…

To the trumpet-heralded tune of the martial “God of our fathers, whose almighty hand⁠ ⁠… ,” Mimi and Hilda, clad in white, filmy dresses identical of material and design with thirty others, marched forth one sunshiny June morning when the new century had reached its eleventh year. In their hands were clutched rolls of paper, each tied with a bow of ribbon. The required tasks for completion of the normal school course had been done, the seal of official approval was bestowed. There were presents and congratulations, parties and sighs of relief that it was all over.

Jean sat in the throng of parents and relatives in the seats reserved for them, his eyes moist as he watched his tiny Mimi pass another milestone between that day when he had anxiously hovered outside Margot’s door and womanhood. As the music rolled its sonorous way upward, growing more and more faint as the huge chorus followed the graduates from the chapel, he lived once more the twenty short years that had so miraculously sped by on winged feet.

It was as though it were yesterday he had stood waiting eagerly for some word from Margot’s room. As he had heard her agony he had hated this newcomer who was causing his Margot to descend into the shadows. When finally he had been admitted to the room he had rushed to the bed, refusing even to look at the intruder, and had fallen on his knees weeping bitter tears of suffering and relief. He had taken a solemn oath Margot would never go through the ordeal again, an oath which later the doctor had confirmed as necessary⁠—another child would have killed Margot.⁠ ⁠… The years of happiness the three of them had spent together came back to him. The first step, the first word, the first tooth. Long walks wandering through the old winding streets of New Orleans, little fat hands clutching his and Margot’s fingers. The first days of school. Margot’s illness and death. A sharp pain went through him that shook him like a convulsion.

“What’s the matter? Sick?” inquired Mrs. Daquin. “No⁠—I’m all right,” he whispered, resenting the intrusion into his reverie of her who had come after Margot.

The years of indecision, days followed by lonely nights when he had sought to achieve oblivion in the mottled green wineglass. Mary. The coming to Atlanta. Years of discontent. Years of unhappiness. He was better off, materially, of course. He had made money, it’s true, but he wondered if he would have even held his job had it not been backed by Mary’s father with his money and his influence. Good Lord, he had been slowly achieving the respectable status of solid citizenry under the combined urging and guidance of Mary and Mr. Robertson. And what was it all worth? Was any of this petty striving and scrambling worth half the things it took out of you?

And Mimi⁠—she had grown away from him, too. There was between them of course the old affection⁠—he never doubted that for a minute. But the little ways that revealed the bond beneath, they were becoming fewer each passing year. Oh, well, she is young, he thought, while I’m old and away behind the new generation. He was proud of her, nevertheless. As she marched from the chapel and passed successively the long, narrow windows, the sun streaming in had made her beautiful hair burst into a wild, exotic, flaming red beauty. It stood out against the blacks and browns of the heads of the other girls like a radiant setting sun in a sky of rain clouds. He was happy she was so pretty⁠—he hoped she’d be married before he joined Margot. He had watched the little ways, the growth of tiny revealments of the warm blood which coursed beneath Mimi’s laughing exterior. He was afraid, terribly afraid, of leaving her alone. Alone? Yes, he concluded, that’s exactly what would be the case if anything happened to me. Mary and Mimi would never agree were he not there.⁠ ⁠…

“Come on, Jean,” Mary roused him. “It’s all over.⁠ ⁠… Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Lewis? Yes, it’s sad, in a way, to see our little Mimi become a young woman right before your very eyes. Yes, she did look nice⁠ ⁠… and she’s a dear⁠—Mr. Daquin and I adore her.⁠—Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Thompson.⁠—Where’s Mrs. Thompson?⁠—There she is! My dear, that was a beautiful gift you sent. I was just thanking your husband for it but I want to thank you both.⁠ ⁠…”

Here, there, everywhere Mrs. Daquin nodded or flung a cheerful, religiously proper phrase. Jean and Mimi owe all this to me, she was thinking. It was I who brought them into a civilized community.⁠ ⁠…

It was that summer that Carl Hunter came home. Mr. Hunter told Jean why.

“That boy’s been there at school all these years, spending money and having a good time. I told him if he flunked any more of his studies he would have to come home and work. I guess he thought I was fooling but he’ll see whether I am or not. Either he’s going to come back here and work or else I’m through with him.”

“Aren’t you a little hard on the boy?” Jean ventured to inquire. “He’s young yet⁠—hasn’t found himself⁠—he’ll come around in time.⁠ ⁠…”

“Come around?” Mr. Hunter snorted. “He’s twenty-three now, and when I was his age I had been working for six years. No, I’m through coddling him and he’s got to strike out for himself or go under.⁠ ⁠…”

It was at a picnic late in June that Mimi saw Carl again. She remembered the curt manner in which he had greeted her at the party years before and she found on seeing him again that she still resented the cavalier way in which he had acted. She determined to treat him with the same coolness and lack of interest. As he spied her and Hilda a three-piece orchestra began to play in the covered pavilion.

“Hello,” he casually greeted them both. Mimi stiffened, it was the same word he had used five years before.

“How do you do?” she questioned but in a tone that said plainly she did not expect nor did she want an answer to her inquiry.

Carl grinned.

“My! You’re upstagy. Will you dance with me?”

“Thanks, no. You’d better dance with Hilda,” was Mimi’s answer as she turned away.

Hilda had stood there, saying nothing, but fighting to keep her eyes free from tears. She felt the electrical current that flashed between the two of her friends heavily charged with antagonism⁠—but Hilda was too wise to let that ill feeling reassure her. His five years’ absence had not changed Carl⁠—she knew he cared no more for her now than he did then. And here was Mimi, the only girl with whom she had ever felt completely happy, the girl she loved passionately, catching and holding Carl’s interest and attention. Hilda knew Mimi was not doing so deliberately. She knew Mimi too well to believe that. She knew, too, Mimi would rather have done almost anything than hurt her. Despite these reassurances of herself Hilda felt the first bitterness in her heart against her friend, the first twinges of jealousy. Her pride was hurt, it was true, but beneath that and far deeper was the pain caused by the sudden realization that Carl had never been, was not now, and never would be interested in her. She wanted to cry, to dash madly through the woods nearby, to get away from everybody and everything and cry until no more tears would come.

All this raced through her mind at Mimi’s words. She smiled bravely.

“No⁠—no. I don’t want to dance,” she lied cheerfully. “You two go ahead.”

She watched them leave trying hard to keep from herself the certainty that her best and dearest friend had created in an instant, with two or three meaningless words, an interest which she had hoped and dreamed she would arouse. It was hard⁠—terribly hard. Consciously, she held Mimi blameless. But underneath it was a bitterness, a feeling almost of nausea, a pain that made her think of the Spartan youth smiling while his abdomen was being gnawed underneath his tunic or shirt or whatever they wore in those days. The figure gave her a bit of cold comfort. She toyed with the idea, turning it over and over in her mind as she went and sat silent with her mother.⁠ ⁠…

Mimi was wholly unaware of the emotions she and Carl had roused in Hilda. She knew of Hilda’s carefully shielded affection for him, but she had been so absorbed in her own reactions towards him she had neither noticed the expression on Hilda’s face during the brief episode nor had she caught the too elaborately casual way in which Hilda had urged her to dance with Carl. As she walked with him towards the pavilion all her old resentment against him surged through her. She detested his cool and aloof superiority, his calm assumption that she would gladly dance with him. Carl too was silent. His thoughts were of this girl who was Mimi, yet was not the Mimi he had only casually noticed before. Her flaming hair intrigued him, he had always loved that torch-like shade of gold and red. And she had a temper, too. That was fine⁠—he liked folks to show some spirit.

They danced. Mimi loved to dance. She found herself forgetting her resentment, she had to keep reminding herself that she was angry. And Carl did dance well. No stepping awkwardly all over her feet as did most of the other boys. The big bass fiddle moaned. The violin chirped. The mandolin pertly strummed. Every few minutes the players joined in the song. From near at hand came the smells of meat being barbecued. With it mingled the fragrancy of pines and the shout of children. It was going to be hard to remain aloof.

The music stopped. Its spell broken, she found her resentment rising. But Carl only stood and grinned happily at her.

“That’s the best dance I ever had,” he announced.

“How many times and to how many different girls have you said that?” she countered.

“Many, many times and to countless girls! But I meant it each time I said it.”

At any rate he didn’t protest he had never said such a thing before.

“Shall we sit over there and talk? I’d like to,” he asked, simply.

They sat down and watched the crowd. Over near the pavilion sat a little cluster of middle-aged women, heads close together but not so close that they missed anything going on around them.

“The anvil chorus commences,” Carl commented, nodding his head at the group. “The old tabbies will now proceed to dissect every soul around here.”

“Oh, they mean no real harm. Why bother about them? That’s about all they care about,” Mimi easily remarked.

“Why? The hit dog yelps. They’ve begun again on me right where they left off when I went away to school nearly six years ago. I am discovering that I’m an extremely worthless fellow⁠—I smoke cigarettes, I don’t see much use in going to church and listening to a lot of platitudes about religion mixed with bum philosophy and worse science⁠—the direct opposite of most of the things I learned in school. I haven’t sense enough to listen to it and keep my mouth shut⁠—I go around mouthing my own disagreement with a lot of ignorant preachers!”

“Why go to the trouble of expressing your own opinions? Why not ignore the things that annoy you by their falseness? It would be much easier⁠—”

“Ignore them? Lord, I’ve tried a thousand times and just when I think I’ve tied my tongue, out pops an objection and I’m in hot water again. My dad’s disgusted with me⁠—he says I’m a conceited, useless young fool and I’m more than halfway inclined to believe he’s right. He’s yanked me out of college ’cause I flunked math and physics again even though I did fairly well in languages and literature and one or two other things. He says I’ve got to go to work in the insurance business or he’s going to wash his hands of me.”

“What makes you so restless⁠—makes you kick against the traces all the time?” Mimi found herself taking delight in siding with Mr. Hunter against Carl.

“I don’t know,” Carl answered, a faint note of bafflement, almost of despair, creeping into his voice. “All my life I’ve been just what you called me a kicker. I’ve tried to conform⁠—but all the time I find myself saying: ‘Is that so?’ when some greybeard starts to lecture me. And most of the things that everybody accepts as axiomatic, as truths never to be questioned, seem to me false and absolutely without value. In college I ran across a passage one day from Spinoza that fits it exactly where he says that ‘truths are the falsehoods grown hoary with age.’ ”

“You’re just pessimistic⁠—you’ll settle down in time,” counselled Mimi, finding herself interested in spite of herself.

Carl picked up her words.

“Pessimistic! Settle down! I’ve heard those words with variations a thousand times! Why should I settle down? If I’d only work like a slave for ten or fifteen years, make some money, marry some respectable but dull girl who’d have a lot of babies and get fat in a few years, and then drop into a rut from which I’d never get out, then I’d meet the approval of all those tabbies over there as a ‘fine, upright, Christian young man’!” His last five words were filled with distaste for the respectability the community wished for him.

“I don’t want a lot of money,” he went on vehemently. “I want to see things and live things and⁠—and⁠—” He peered at Mimi, somewhat doubtfully and hesitantly, then blurted it out as though he expected to be spanked: “write.” It was almost a shout of defiance. To Mimi there was much of the childish in his gesture of defiance, but there was also something fine about it. The burden of the conversation of the other boys of her acquaintance usually was: “When I’m making such-and-such a number of dollars” or “When I’m a doctor and have established a big practice.” Carl interested her much more than she had believed he would. Indeed, she had not thought about his interesting her. There was some, thing of her own spirit in his defiance of local mores, his words made her realize just how deeply she herself had sunk into the rut of conventional standards.

“But why can’t you write or do whatever you want to do and at the same time work in your father’s insurance business?” she asked sympathetically. “We’re living in a material world⁠—money is necessary⁠—and you don’t have to sell your soul simply to earn a living, do you?”

“The whole thing gives me a pain and I hate it⁠—I hate it!” was his answer. “All I’ve heard since I’ve been back is a lot of men telling dirty stories and confessing the loss of their sexual powers by boasting of their amorous adventures. If it isn’t that, it’s these old women spitting out lies about every woman who isn’t present. I’ve gotten to the place I wince every time I hear something nice about a person⁠—I know it’s liable to be only the preface to a whopping big story tearing that same person to pieces.”

“You’re exaggerating⁠—you’re letting a handful give you an obsession that puts the same stamp on all of them,” she protested. “There are lots of women and men who’d fit into neither of the classes you’ve given.”

“I know it⁠—there are lots of folks like Mrs. Adams, for example, and Hilda, but the trouble is they’re the kind who attend to their own affairs. It’s this other kind that sets the example and they’re the ones who do the talking you’ve got to listen to.⁠ ⁠… Say, I guess we’d better not sit here too long or they’ll begin talking about you.”

“Let ’em,” retorted Mimi, and she was rewarded by his smile of thanks.

“Nope. You can’t afford it. But you’re the only person I know I could have talked to like this and who’d have understood.⁠ ⁠…”

Hilda sat beside her mother, silent for a long time. Seldom did her eyes leave Mimi and Carl. Though she could not hear what they were saying, she knew from the absorbed, eager way they were talking they had found some subject of deep mutual interest. To her their blissful ignoring of others was as excruciating as though red-hot irons were being applied to her own flesh. At first she furiously rejected the thought that Mimi was deliberately seeking to attract Carl. As the distant conversation continued she began to toy idly with the notion, turning it over and over in her mind, though it pained her, much as one will constantly probe a sore tooth with one’s tongue.

Then she hugged the belief closely to her, firm in the conviction Mimi was maliciously trying to take Carl⁠—her, Hilda’s, Carl⁠—away from her. She knew this wasn’t true, she hated herself for her distrust of her friend. But back she went each time to that same distrust which bordered dangerously near hatred. It was like meeting a person afflicted with some facial or bodily affliction, a harelip or a glass eye, determining not to notice the deformity, yet fascinatedly unable to keep one’s gaze from returning to the very thing one determined not to watch.

Hilda was all the more ashamed of her feeling toward Mimi because, so far as Carl knew, there was no reason why Hilda should have any claim upon him. There had never been any word of love between them, he had always been rather fond of her in an offhand way, had called her, as long as she could remember, “Little Sister.” She hated the term not alone because it seemed to her banal but more because of the mild affection it implied, vastly inferior in intensity to her own emotion. Reason, however, plays but small part when one’s love is concerned, thought Hilda, and she returned to her brooding.⁠ ⁠…

“It seems to me you’re making a mistake,” Mimi meanwhile was saying to Carl. “You keep harping on the way the women here gossip⁠—that’s no practice peculiar only to Atlanta and the folks you and I know. Women do that everywhere, it seems to me, and I often think men do more gossiping than women. Does it ever occur to you there are a lot of things on the other side of the shield?”

“That’s the only reason I came back here,” Carl eagerly replied, the look of morbid unrest changing quickly to one of alert cheerfulness. “When I get most pessimistic about our own folks all I need to cheer me up is to look at unhappiness of white people. You ever notice that no matter how hard the luck he may be in, the Negro can laugh and sing and forget all his worries? They call it shiftlessness and laziness but, Lord, when I see the terribly unhappy way these white people live, so busy making money and keeping ‘the nigger in his place,’ I think we’re mighty well off. Say, would you like to go with me sometime to a camp-meeting or some of these other places where you’ll see the thing that’s kept the Negro from being wiped out⁠—this thing they call ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ of the race?”

“I’d love to,” answered Mimi as they walked back towards where Hilda was sitting. Hilda was able to manage a smile but Mimi noticed all during the day that she was strangely silent and aloof. The first coolness of consequence during their friendship had come between them. Mimi was at first puzzled and wondered what might have caused it. Then she remembered Hilda’s shy admissions of her interest from childhood in Carl. Mimi knew then, or rather she sensed, the reason for Hilda’s attitude. Mimi said nothing to her, knowing the unwisdom of mentioning the subject and fearing that the breach might be widened if she spoke of it. And, being human, Hilda’s pouting irritated her.

“She’s silly,” thought Mimi, “getting angry with me simply because Carl and I talked for a few minutes. If that’s the kind of friend she is⁠—” Mimi did not complete the thought but she felt vaguely amused and annoyed at Hilda. At the same time she looked forward to talking with Carl again. He was different.⁠ ⁠…