VIII

Mimi went to her room after Hilda had gone, and lay across the bed for a long time in deep thought. Hilda was a silly little goose for her anxiety, she thought, but she must care a great deal more about Carl than she, Mimi, had ever dreamed of. She determined to see Carl, tell him as much as was necessary about Hilda’s affection for him, and then refuse to see or go out with Carl herself. It was little enough for her to do for Hilda who had been so loyal a friend. And it would be a service, too, for Hilda’s shyness would prevent her from ever indicating to Carl that she cared for him. She herself would hate to break off the companionship with Carl which had come to mean so much to them both and from which she had derived so much. His alert mind appealed to her, the reading he had done and the eager, lovable way in which he rushed to share with her anything he had come across in his reading which he thought would interest her, his keen interest in things other than those right under his nose, his quick and unforetellable changes of mood, at one minute happy and carefree and an excellent companion, at another changing abruptly to a serious-minded, at times morose and dissatisfied individual. With a woman’s love for the unusual, the unstable, the unforeseen, she was attracted by these various moods. She had grown tired of most of the other boys of her acquaintance, for she could tell in advance, almost to the exact words, what each of them would say under any given circumstance. She had never had this feeling with Carl and he seemed to be possessed of an unending and never uninteresting variety of humours, most of them of mercurial state.

But with all these varied characteristics there was among them nothing which even remotely resembled a tendency to become mushily sentimental. Here, too, he was different from the others. Mimi had learned on several unpleasant occasions the proneness of the youth she knew to wax tender often when there was not the slightest provocation or encouragement. Their friendship had never been marred in this fashion and that was the reason, Mimi was certain, it had grown so beautifully and naturally. It had been a frank, eager companionship based on mutual interests and mutual understanding.

No, it would not be easy to give up this friendship, but she owed it to Hilda, who, in her way and as one of her own sex, had been equally if not a better friend than Carl. Certainly their companionship had been of longer duration and therefore made greater demands upon the parties to it. She was glad now there had been no word of love nor even any thought of love between her and Carl. He had never entered her mind in this guise and she could soon forget him.

But could she? The thought made her pause in the smooth course of her reasoning. Now that Hilda had brought the fact tangibly to her consciousness, was it true that her feeling towards Carl was so wholly Platonic? She began to have her doubts. It wouldn’t be so easy to give him up as she at first so glibly promised herself and Hilda. Who would there be who could take his place⁠—who could interest her as Carl had done? Knowing the futility of attempting to answer a question when there was in her own mind no question existing, nevertheless she went slowly, painstakingly through the list of all the young men she knew. One by one she discarded them until she came to the point she knew she would reach⁠—only Carl remained.

Rousing herself from the lethargy into which the circle of thought had plunged her, she went back to her original determination to end the companionship at once. She felt like a squirrel who had been madly racing in one of the barbarous, treadmill cages, rushing, but always remaining at the same point. She would give Carl to Hilda⁠—she smiled irrelevantly at the conceit of physically handing over to another one who outweighed her by many pounds and end the stupid misunderstandings at one time. She smiled again at the gratification of those who had been gossiping about her and Carl⁠—they would smugly congratulate themselves that they had caused her to break off her friendship with him, little knowing how far from the truth they were. Well, let them smile, she concluded.

Mimi went down to supper filled with a warming sense of having done something noble, sacrificial. It pleased her to have this feeling, she almost felt for herself a little of the pity of martyrdom. It was this mood which enabled her to answer Mrs. Daquin’s elaborately casual bringing up of the scandal.

“Oh, by the way, Mimi, I’ve been hearing something about you and Carl Hunter that doesn’t sound so nice⁠—” Mrs. Daquin began.

Mimi smiled easily at her, even encouragingly, and went on eating.

This attitude was not at all what Mrs. Daquin had expected. She had looked for tears, violent storms, protestations. In truth, she had feared what might come and her fear had kept her from mentioning for several days the stories she had heard. She had laid her plans for a gentle, casual opening and had steeled herself for an outburst. Mimi’s placidity made her feel uncertain, rather foolish.

“Yes?” Mimi inquired sweetly, too sweetly Mrs. Daquin thought, when the opening was not followed up. “Just what did you hear?”

Mrs. Daquin looked appealingly at Jean but he to all outward signs was intently examining the plate of salad before him. No help obviously to be expected from that quarter, Mrs. Daquin braced herself and proceeded.

“They’re saying you and Carl were seen coming out of a disreputable dance hall one night last week⁠—”

“It’s true. What of it?” broke in Mimi.

“What of it? What of it?” Mrs. Daquin’s second interrogation was almost a thin scream. “Jean, do you hear what your daughter is saying? She brazenly admits she and that Hunter boy went to a disreputable, vile place and then she asks: ‘What of it?’ ”

Mrs. Daquin’s anger was fast mastering her, despite her previously determined plan to retain mastery of the situation through calmness and scorn. Mimi’s willing admission of her guilt, as Mrs. Daquin considered it, had taken some of the wind out of her sails. Or, better, instead of a strong head wind Mrs. Daquin’s craft had been suddenly assailed by a veering wind from port. Like an inexperienced sailor she sought to bring her helm around and steer her boat into waters where there was less danger of squalls.

Jean looked up from his plate and stared hard but in not unfriendly fashion at Mimi. He answered his wife’s question without looking at her.

“Yes, Mary, I heard her. What about it, Mimi?”

“Carl did take me to the dance, papa. I wanted to see some of these new dances, hear the music, see a side of life among coloured people I had never seen before. We went there, we stayed awhile, and then Carl brought me home. Do you see anything wrong in that, papa Jean?” Mimi ended calmly.

Before Jean could reply his wife burst in upon the conversation, able no longer to restrain her anger.

“Wrong in it? Mimi, haven’t you any sense of decency at all? Even if you didn’t do anything but what you said, think of what the neighbours will say! Think of what⁠—”

“I told my father, Mrs. Daquin, what took place, and I’m not in the habit of lying to him,” Mimi with cold fury, her eyes flaming with suppressed anger, said. “Furthermore, I resent your words ‘even if you didn’t do anything but what you said.’ ”

The two women glared at each other across the table. But Mrs. Daquin’s anger was beyond the heeding of the danger signs in Mimi’s eyes.

“Young woman, you can’t⁠—”

“Mary, keep quiet!” Jean half rose from the table, his hands pressed against it with such force all the blood had fled from his knuckles. “Mimi has told me what happened and that’s enough.”

Jean’s voice held a note which even Mary in her anger could not help but respect and fear.

“But, Jean dear,” she pleaded, her tone changing miraculously, “I’m only thinking of our good name⁠—”

“Damn your good name!” the unfamiliar Jean snapped. “I’m sick and tired of your petty bickering with these little folks you’re so mad about⁠—these busybodies so worried keeping track of other people and meddling into their affairs. As for this present matter, I want it stopped right here. Whether Mimi acted right or not, she’s told us what’s happened and that’s enough of it. Do you hear me?”

It was a long speech for Jean and it was not often that he permitted himself to become so angry: He did not know it but it gave him the opportunity of expressing his opinion of these aliens, so different to those of his own New Orleans whom he missed more and more. And his nostalgia was none the less potent and painful because he knew that even had he remained in New Orleans he would not have been happy. Just as when a man dies, his good traits or those good traits given him by popular belief are magnified after his death and his faults are minimized until they disappear altogether, so Jean remembered as the years passed only the beauties of New Orleans and he forgot the changes which had been so largely instrumental in persuading him to move to Atlanta.

But, though calmed, the fire of Mrs. Daquin’s wrath, hotly burning because she feared any scandal might jeopardize her own social position, was too great to be quenched even by Jean’s outburst.

“All I’ve got to say then, Jean, if that’s all the thanks I get for trying to keep our name clean, is that Mimi had better not see Carl Hunter again, even if he’s the son of my best friend.”

Jean was about to speak again angrily, when Mimi stopped him.

“Neither of you need worry about that⁠—Carl and I won’t see each other again.”

Both Jean and his wife looked inquiringly at Mimi and waited for an explanation but none was forthcoming. But Mrs. Daquin concluded at this unexpected acquiescence that there was more to the incident than appeared on the surface. She privately concluded that Mimi had effectually hoodwinked Jean and that it was fear and guilt which made Mimi so readily consent to the breaking off of the friendship with Carl⁠ ⁠…

Her interview with Carl was not so easy as Mimi had supposed it would be. He came readily enough when she sent for him. He supposed she wanted to discuss with him the talk which had come to his ears, too. A look of amazement came over his face as she quietly told him of her resolve, followed by an expression that was almost dismay when she guardedly told him of Hilda’s affection for him.

“She likes you, Carl,” Mimi ended, “and she’s been thinking all summer that I, her best friend, have been trying to vamp you away from her. She knows now, though, there’s nothing between us. So for her sake and since this talk’s been started, we’d better see less of each other.” She added, almost as an afterthought: “I do hate, though, the satisfaction we’ll give these old tabbies.”

“But, Mimi,” Carl protested, his face eloquent of the pain within, “Hilda’s an awfully nice kid and I’m fond of her just as I’m fond of my own sister, Mildred. And I’d like to know who saw us at that dance so I could take one good punch at them!” he added with bitterness.

“It wouldn’t do any good⁠—they’d be sure then we’d done something terrible,” she counselled.

“Just now, Mimi, you said there’s nothing between us. I haven’t thought of you that way, Mimi, but⁠—but⁠—” he stammered, trying to take her hand.

“Don’t be silly, Carl,” Mimi laughed, moving away from him. She felt a sense of guilt, of disloyalty to Hilda that she had phrased it so crudely. As Carl repeated her words she was ashamed of them⁠—they sounded almost as though she had uttered them in the hope of a denial from Carl. “We’ve had a good time together and I’ve learned a lot and I’m grateful. You’ve given me a faith in my own people that I have never had before. Before I came to Atlanta I never thought much about ‘white people’ or ‘coloured people.’ I just thought of people as people. And then came that terrible night of the riot. After that I hated all white people and began to think every Negro was perfect even though my common sense told me I was foolish. Now I begin to see the good and the bad, in white people and coloured people⁠—and that’s something.”

But Carl heard none of the things she was saying. He sat with his face in his hands, his shoulders drooping dejectedly. He raised his head as she finished speaking. Mimi was touched with the look of pain upon it.

“Mimi,” he pleaded, “let’s forget all this silly talk and let things go on like they were before. I was wrong in taking you to that hall⁠—it wasn’t wrong in itself but wrong in the eyes of these people here⁠—so I shouldn’t have let you go. You’re the only person here I care about seeing. Oh, Mimi, don’t let’s break off here. I’m a weak and foolish creature and the only thing that’s held me up has been you.”

Desperately, despairingly, he pleaded, but Mimi, though she felt herself weakening, steeled herself against the almost overwhelming impulse to take Carl’s head into her lap and hold it to her breast as she would a child’s. The confident, rebellious man had become a child and the mother instinct, strong within her, almost overpowered her. She found herself swept by a flaming, consuming affection for Carl. Had he remained assertive, sure of himself, she would have mastered it easily. But his self-revilement, his dependency upon her touched her deeply. Love had come to her and now she must put it from her. Loyalty to Hilda and the promise she had made to her demanded it.

“No, Carl,” she firmly reiterated her resolution.⁠ ⁠…