VII

To Mimi there was no more fascinating thing in the life she saw around her than the song, the laughter, the deep religious faith and the spontaneous humanity of the people of whom she was now a part. In New Orleans she had been stirred by the music which had a distinctive Negro note but which had been influenced to a definite extent by French songs that made it a sort of Africanized French. Here she felt much more vividly the rhythmic surge and sweep of the Negro music untouched by other influences the ecstatic pouring forth of melodies that often were not melodies but a wild and intoxicating thing that made little chills run up and down her spine and filled her eyes with tears. With Carl she came upon new phases of this life in out-of-the-way places which had hitherto been unknown to her. She began to see and understand the deep spirituality which lay back of this people of hers, to comprehend the gifts which had enabled them to withstand oppression which would long since have crushed a weaker race.

The day when a convict gang began to repair the street in front of their home was one Mimi never forgot. She awoke hearing a wild, plaintive, poignantly simple melody so strange she thought herself yet asleep. Drawn by the music, she dressed hastily and hurried to see from whence it came. In the street a strange sight met her eyes. A crowd of Negro convicts, clad in the broad-striped and ill-fitting garb of rough material, huge balls of iron attached to their ankles by heavy chains, were tearing up the street with synchronized strokes of their pickaxes. Up and down the sidewalks strode the guards, sawed-off shotguns on their shoulders. One of these was a stalwart fellow with stooped shoulders, unshaven, his mouth stained by the tobacco he constantly chewed. Another was of shorter and stockier build, equally unshaven and tobacco-stained, one eye missing, the empty socket shrunken until it gave his face a curiously unbalanced and evil look.

Up and down the guards strode, keeping ever-watchful eyes upon their charges, who worked and sang, apparently in blissful ignorance of guards or toil or any external thing. Occasionally one would stop for a drink of water brought by a remarkably ragged young Negro who nearly all the time was playing when he was most needed. The thirsty one would dawdle, invent all sorts of ingenious methods of delaying, take as long as he could in assuaging his thirst. If the operation consumed too much time there would come a warning from one of the guards, ominous, threatening, but shaken off as lightly as the water from the proverbial duck.

The convicts were of all shades and sizes and shapes. In the awkward garb they were a ludicrous, ill-assorted lot. Some there were with the shifty, roving eyes of tricksters. Others wore on their faces the hallmark of the criminal of dangerous type. The faces of a few of these bore livid scars of varying lengths gained by knifings in desperate fights. But to Mimi most of the men were kindly of expression, were obviously those arrested and convicted on petty charges because the city needed them or men like them to work its streets.

There was one item only in which this motley crowd was as one. A stalwart Negro with a ringing baritone led them in the song which had awakened Mimi. On and on he sang, verse after verse of a wildly sweet and simple song, joined in the chorus by the others. Like the beat of a giant metronome there came a grunting “Hunh!” as the shining points of the pickaxes were plunged into the red clay. There was little rhyme and little melody in the song, but rhythmically it was without flaw.

“Oh, she ast me⁠—hunh!⁠—in de parlour⁠—hunh!
An’ she cool me⁠—hunh!⁠—wid her fan⁠—hunh!
An’ she whispered⁠—hunh!⁠—to her mammy⁠—hunh!
Mammy, I love dat⁠—hunh!⁠—dark-eyed man⁠—hunh!
Well, I ast her⁠—hunh!⁠—mammy for her⁠—hunh!
An’ she said she⁠—hunh!⁠—was too young⁠—hunh!
Lawd, I wish’d I’d⁠—hunh!⁠—never seen her⁠—hunh!
An’ I wish’d she’d⁠—hunh!⁠—never been bawn⁠—hunh!
Well, I led her⁠—hunh!⁠—to de altar⁠—hunh!
An’ de preacher⁠—hunh!⁠—made us one⁠—hunh!
An’ she swore by⁠—hunh!⁠—God that’d made her⁠—hunh!
She’d never love hunh!⁠—another man⁠—hunh!⁠ ⁠…”

Mimi’s heart beat faster and faster as she watched and listened. She sensed that the song carried the toilers far above their miserable lot. For them the toil and sweat, the louring guards who shouted staccato commands or flung crisp oaths when one of the convicts slackened or appeared to slacken in his labour, did not exist. She began to comprehend the thing Carl had said to her of the “over-soul” the Negro possessed.⁠ ⁠…

“Look at some of these coloured folks around you,” he had said to her, “most of them poor, having to work like dogs for a meagre living, deprived of practically every ordinary outlet in the way of amusement. Are they depressed, morbid, bitter? Not on your life! They can find amusement where nobody else can. But look at the white folks who are just about as bad off financially⁠—they’re grouchy and morose, hating everybody on earth and themselves most of all though they don’t know it.”

Mimi could see, though as yet with some difficulty, just what Carl had meant. She wondered if she were in such a plight as these convicts if she could have had the courage to sing. She was afraid she would not have been that optimistic⁠—she doubted that she could have used song even as an opiate to forget hard circumstance as these men were doing. She marvelled at their toughness of fibre which seemed to be a racial characteristic, which made them able to live in the midst of a highly mechanized civilization, enjoy its undoubted advantages, and yet keep free that individual and racial distinctiveness which did not permit the surrender of individuality to the machine.

In slavery it had kept them from being crushed and exterminated as oppression had done to the Indian. In freedom it had kept them from becoming mere cogs in an elaborately organized machine. Some people called it shiftlessness, laziness, inherent racial inferiority. Mimi herself at times had heard these charges made and frequently she had believed them and had been ashamed of them, especially during the years she had lived in Atlanta and particularly since that terrible night during the riot. The forced growth of her race-conscious attitude had accelerated this shamedness of her people’s apparent lack of assimilation by industrialism⁠—now she began to feel glad that this was so.

She wished she could make up her mind just what she would have them be. When she listened to Mr. Hunter and the type of hustling, progressive, acquisitive men which he represented, she doubted seriously the wisdom of the Negro’s doing anything other than acquire wealth, forge ahead in business and commerce and manufacture as many of them were doing. But when she talked with Carl or, more strongly, when she heard Negroes sing or laugh, she wondered which road would lead to greater happiness.

On Communion Sundays she went through the same process of ratiocination. The passing of the bread and wine after the sermon, the bread hard and tasteless, the wine in a huge silver cup passed from hand to hand, was followed always by a silent prayer ending with the singing of a Spiritual, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” She never forgot the emotions which the song created within her as plaintive, eerily sweet, stirring verse after verse winged its way through the small church and lost itself among the age-stained rafters. For years afterward the song made her imagine she had pains in her neck and back, for the song was always sung bent forward in prayer. It was with this weariness that she associated the terrifyingly real agony of Jesus which the words evoked. “Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?” “When they pierced Him in the side?” “When He bowed His head and died?” “When they laid Him in the tomb?”

Verse after verse told with terrible inevitableness the grim story of His agony and sacrifice and to Mimi she lived each time she heard the song the tortures of the Crucified One. Always she longed for them to come to the verses of hope and happiness, when they rolled away the stone, when He rose from the dead. The rising and falling “Oh⁠—oh⁠—oh⁠—oh⁠—” which preceded the wail, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble⁠—tremble⁠—tremble,” changed now from dolour and pity and pain to an exultant, happy paean of exuberant joy in the resurrection. Always Mimi was glad to reach the open air outside⁠—the song did too many things to her down inside. Afterwards she felt as though she had been the victim of some peculiar metempsychosis⁠—that during the minutes of the song her soul had taken flight from her own body to that of some other rarer, more sentient, more delicately strung being of infinite beauty and understanding, to return only when the spell had been broken.

The other spirituals worked spells upon her of varied kinds. Carl took her frequently to out-of-the-way churches, some of them housed in miserably poor, ramshackle edifices, others in more pretentious buildings. In them all she found that deep earnestness, that abiding faith and hope and patience which she found herself able more and more to understand. Humble, simple folk most of the worshippers were, with envy and malice and smallness like all other humans, but blessed with that rare gift of lifting themselves emotionally and spiritually far, far above their material lives and selves. She was filled with inarticulate rage when she sensed all too often that the preacher was far inferior to his flock, that he played upon their emotions and fears and hopes only to earn for himself a comfortable livelihood free from too much toil. These leeches, fattening on the sacrifice of washerwomen and other humble ones who worked terrifically hard to earn their small wage, stirred in Mimi and Carl the desire to wreak some sort of vengeance upon them. Their rage usually resulted in avoiding such churches and there were many to which they never went a second time for this reason. Mimi soon was convinced she had found an accurate measuring-rod of worth in Negro preachers⁠—the worse the preacher, the longer the coat he wore.

But they did not confine their visits to churches. Carl took her to parties where usually to the music of a three or four-piece orchestra of strings they danced or watched others dance with a lissom grace and abandon that intoxicated them like old, rare wines. Among all sorts and classes of their own people they rambled, oblivious of the criticism that came to them occasionally. The storm was rising though they did not know it. It broke with disturbing fury when one night Carl suggested they go to what he termed a “honky-tonky” dance. To Mrs. Daquin’s rather sharp inquiry regarding her destination, Mimi answered shortly that that was her own affair, and she thought no more of the matter at the time.

The dance was held in a small, poorly lighted and ventilated hall. The floor was so crowded they did not attempt to dance but sat and watched the others as they somewhat noisily but gaily swung and swayed about the floor. Carl acted as guide, interpreter, expositor.

“That’s what they call the ‘eagle rock,’ ” as he pointed to a dusky couple whose shoulders swayed in a fascinatingly free, peculiar rhythm. Many years afterwards when Mimi saw blonde chorus girls on Broadway swaying their shoulders and bodies as these two were doing, she remembered always where she had first seen it done. “Those two over there are ‘ballin’ the jack,’ ” Carl explained as he pointed in the throng to another couple whose knees were in motion in contrast to the shoulders of the first pair. Here, there, all around the hall he pointed out to the fascinated Mimi the originality of the dancers, moving according to no set form other than their own impulses as stirred by the weird, feet-moving strains of the Negro orchestra.

And the orchestra was doing its share with the same joy as the dancers, as though it too had paid its way in for the pleasure of playing. Carl explained that practically none of its members had ever taken a music lesson, none of them knew anything about the theory of music.

“They’ve just got instinct and rhythm⁠—and, well, what else do they need?” he ended with a smile.

Mimi had never known that anything like this existed before. Over it all there was a primitive note, a freedom from inhibitions that gave grace and ecstasy to the dancers and the musicians. It exhilarated one and made him forget the stuffiness and dimness of the hall and the sometimes fetid smells which arose as the dance went on. She knew that here was something original⁠—she could not explain it nor could she tell how or why she felt that here was a vital and living thing. She only knew it had a vibrant, warming quality, and that was enough.

“Remember Dunbar’s lines?” Carl asked. Without waiting for a reply he recited them softly:

“Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced that flo’ frum side to middle.
Throwed away his crutch an’ hopped it, what’s rheumatics ’gainst a fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los’ his grace,
Had to take bofe feet an’ hold ’em, so’s to keep ’em in deir place,
An’ de Christuns an’ de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo’,
Dat I don’t see how dey’s pahted ef de trump had chonced to blow.”

She smiled appreciatively at the quotation.

“It does just that to you,” she remarked. “I’m seeing better every day just what you mean.”⁠ ⁠…

It was not chance that caused Mrs. Plummer and Mrs. King to see Mimi and Carl as they left the hall. Always they took a shortcut homewards from prayer meeting which carried them past the two-storied brick building which housed on its top floor the hall.

“Look there, Mis’ King!” whispered Mrs. Plummer. “Ain’t that that Day-quinn girl with that Carl Hunter coming outa that joint?”

“It’s her, sho’s you born,” Mrs. King assured her. “I told you she’d bear watching. Playing off respectable and going in such places⁠—”

“That’s just what I say,” eagerly put in Mrs. Plummer, determined that her friend should not get ahead of her in the discovery made by her own sharp eyes. “An’ her ma’s such a good woman⁠—though they tell me she ain’t her own ma, only her step-ma. But you remember I tol’ you befo’ they come here you couldn’t depen’ on these here Cath’lics⁠—I’m a good Methodist and I ain’t got much use for Baptists but they’re regular Christians, anyhow⁠—” Mrs. Plummer shook with quick breaths, the combined result of her eagerness and the speed at which Mrs. King was hurrying down the street so that she could keep the couple ahead within sight.

“That girl’s headed straight for trouble⁠—carrying on like that!” Mrs. King affirmed. “Hurry up, can’t you? I want to see where they’re going now!”

“Ain’t I hurryin’ as fast’s I can?” Mrs. Plummer grumbled. “And ain’t I as anxious as you to follow ’em? Oh! They’ve gone in her house,” she complained, a note that closely approximated disappointment in her tone. The chagrin was deepened a minute later when she saw Carl leave and turn down the street towards his own home.⁠ ⁠…

It was Hilda who first told Mimi of the talk that was being spread about her and Carl. Mrs. Daquin had heard it, too, and had spoken to Jean about it, demanding that he forbid Mimi from seeing Carl again. This Jean had hesitated about doing. He trusted Mimi implicitly and he was fond of Carl. He had liked him ever since the day on which Mr. Hunter had confided in Jean his disappointment at Carl’s failure to show a keener interest in the insurance business.

With Hilda it had been different. When the story put into circulation by the Mesdames Plummer and King had first come to her, she had undergone a variety of emotions. First was indignation against those who dared say anything against Mimi. She resented, too, any disparagement of Carl for whom her affection, unexpressed though it yet remained, had grown instead of decreased since he had begun to show so deep an interest in Mimi.

And, being human, she found herself just a little bit glad this had come to them. She had two reasons for this feeling, the first of them being summed up in the words, “It serves them right!” Had Hilda cared less for Mimi and Carl, her momentary elation on hearing that they were being talked about would have been far slighter, if indeed she had felt the emotion at all. The very intensity of her passionate love for them both made her capable of greater cruelty, a vindictiveness that bordered on gloating over their descent into disfavour. A second reason for her fleeting satisfaction was wrapped in the possibility that through some means, she knew not what, there might come a break in the friendship between Carl and Mimi. Then she would, if the fates were kind, gain the interest and perhaps later the deeper affection for herself which she was sure Carl was lavishing on Mimi. Who can tell? she reflected; stranger things than that have happened.

As soon as this emotion became a conscious one, Hilda furiously rejected it as treachery of the basest kind to her friends. Filled with remorse, she rushed to see Mimi, fearing a return of the unworthy feeling. Her task there was made less easy by the somewhat cool manner in which Mimi greeted her. A very decided chilliness had entered into their hitherto warm relations which they both very distinctly dated from that day of the picnic early in the summer. Hilda through an essential honesty that governed all she did or thought found herself unable to act towards Mimi with the old cordiality and, to save both of them embarrassment, had stayed away from Mimi as much as she could. Mimi noticed this change and wondered what had caused it. Vaguely she felt it was due to her own friendship with Carl but she could not see why this should affect Hilda⁠—it was only a friendship and nothing more. She had become vexed with Hilda and hurt that Hilda by her actions had shown there was a certain distrust of Mimi’s loyalty. Thus the breach had widened and the intense pride of the two had kept each from making any advance that might have closed it.

The two girls faced each other, praying for an opening while they talked of little and unimportant things which served, rather ineffectually, as a mask for their real feelings. Ineffectually, for both knew the other was eager for some chance phrase, some little thing, which might put them at ease. Five⁠—ten⁠—fifteen minutes passed. They still talked of inconsequentialities. The air was becoming more tense. They each longed, ached desperately, for some way out of the difficult situation between them. Hilda began to wish she had not come, to think of excuses for leaving, her mission unfulfilled.

It was Mimi who in desperation and uneasiness broke the spell.

“You’ve been acting queerly all summer, Hilda,” she challenged. “Why have you acted so?” She hated herself for the awkward way in which she had spoken, the almost belligerent note in her voice when she had intended to speak with utmost casualness.

“Why?” Hilda echoed. “Don’t you know why?”

“No⁠—I can’t see⁠—Has it anything to do with Carl?” she blurted out, knowing, as she spoke, it had wholly to do with Carl.

Hilda flushed and twisted her hands. Now that it was out, she felt a sense of nakedness, of being stripped bare and forced to walk through crowded streets, as she had often dreamed⁠—a dream that always awoke her with fright. Even to her mother, close as she was to her, and to Mimi she had never dared reveal the extent of her love for Carl. A natural shyness and a fear of being made or thought ridiculous had forced her to keep her real feeling to herself. Now that Mimi had put it into words, she wished fervently she had kept to her former secretiveness. Not knowing the extent to which Carl’s and Mimi’s friendship had developed, she felt she had laid herself open to ridicule. Her perturbation was answer enough for Mimi.

“But why have you acted as you have?” she pursued the inquiry. “You of all people ought to know there’s nothing between Carl and me⁠—”

Hilda silenced her with a raising of her hand.

“Tell me truthfully⁠—Mimi⁠—is that true?”

Her tone was so earnest, so appealing and fraught with apprehension, Mimi was startled.

“Of course I am telling you the truth,” she answered, irritation creeping into her voice despite her efforts to keep it out. “Don’t be silly, Hilda. And you might at least have trusted me.”

“I have trusted you⁠—I have trusted you, Mimi, and I’ve hated myself forever doubting you, but you know how I’ve always liked Carl⁠—” she ended miserably.

Mimi’s heart filled with pity and her eyes with tears. She clasped Hilda in her arms and Hilda clung to her passionately, pleading through her tears for forgiveness. All the misunderstanding was wiped away and they smiled happily through their tears. It was some time before Hilda could tell her the thing which had brought her. She felt great relief when Mimi merely laughed at the slanderous tales which were going the rounds.

“Oh, I’m not paying any attention to these gossipy old women around here. Why should I? If I had done anything of which I felt ashamed, it might worry me, but why worry one’s head over something that doesn’t exist? Life’s too short for that.”⁠ ⁠…