“One thing, if you do start playing around with Roger be careful. He’s a good bit of a rotter, and he doesn’t care what he says or spends to gain his ends.” She laughed at the inquiry in her friend’s eyes. “No, I’ve never given Roger five minutes’ thought. But I know his kind. They’re dangerous. It’s wrong for men to have both money and power; they’re bound to make some woman suffer. Come on up the Avenue with me and I’ll buy a hat. I can’t wear this whang any longer. It’s too small, looks like a peanut on a barrel.”
Angela was visual minded. She saw the days of the week, the months of the year in little narrow divisions of space. She saw the past years of her life falling into separate, uneven compartments whose ensemble made up her existence. Whenever she looked back on this period from Christmas to Easter she saw a bluish haze beginning in a white mist and flaming into something red and terrible; and across the bluish haze stretched the name: Roger.
Roger! She had never seen anyone like him: so gay, so beautiful, like a blond, glorious god, so overwhelming, so persistent. She had not liked him so much at first except as one likes the sun or the sky or a singing bird, anything jolly and free. There had been no touching points for their minds. He knew nothing of life except what was pleasurable; it is true his idea of the pleasurable did not always coincide with hers. He had no fears, no restraints, no worries. Yes, he had one; he did not want to offend his father. He wanted ardently and unswervingly his father’s money. He did not begrudge his senior a day, an hour, a moment of life; about this he had a queer, unselfish sincerity. The old financial war horse had made his fortune by hard labour and pitiless fighting. He had given Roger his being, the entrée into a wonderful existence. Already he bestowed upon him an annual sum which would have kept several families in comfort. If Roger had cared to save for two years he need never have asked his father for another cent. With any kind of luck he could have built up for himself a second colossal fortune. But he did not care to do this. He did not wish his father one instant’s loss of life or of its enjoyment. But he did want final possession of those millions.
Angela liked him best when he talked about “my dad”; he never mentioned the vastness of his wealth, but by now she could not have helped guessing even without Paulette’s aid that he was a wealthy man. She would not take jewellery from him, but there was a steady stream of flowers, fruit, candy, books, fine copies of the old masters. She was afraid and ashamed to express a longing in his presence. And with all this his steady, constant attendance. And an odd watchfulness which she felt but could not explain.
“He must love me,” she said to herself, thinking of his caresses. She had been unable to keep him from kissing her. Her uneasiness had amused and charmed him: he laughed at her Puritanism, succeeded in shaming her out of it. “Child, where have you lived? Why there’s nothing in a kiss. If I didn’t kiss you I couldn’t come to see you. And I have to see you, Angèle!” His voice grew deep; the expression in his eyes made her own falter.
Yet he did not ask her to marry him. “But I suppose it’s because he can see I don’t love him yet.” And she wondered what it would be like to love. Even Jinny knew more about this than she, for she had felt, perhaps still did feel, a strong affection for Matthew Henson. Well, anyway, if they married she would probably come to love him; most women learned to love their husbands. At first after her conversation with Paulette about Roger she had rather expected a diminution at any time of his attentions, for after all she was unknown; from Roger’s angle she would be more than outside the pale. But she was sure now that he loved and would want to marry her, for it never occurred to her that men bestowed attentions such as these on a passing fancy. She saw her life rounding out like a fairy tale. Poor, coloured—coloured in America; unknown, a nobody! And here at her hand was the forward thrust shadow of love and of great wealth. She would do lots of good among coloured people; she would see that Miss Powell, for instance, had her scholarship. Oh she would hunt out girls and men like Seymour Porter,—she had almost forgotten his name,—or was it Arthur Sawyer?—and give them a taste of life in its fullness and beauty such as they had never dreamed of.
To-night she was to go out with Roger. She wore her flame-coloured dress again; a pretty green one was also hanging up in her closet, but she wore the flame one because it lighted her up from within—lighted not only her lovely, fine body but her mind too. Her satisfaction with her appearance let loose some inexplicable spring of gaiety and merriment and simplicity so that she seemed almost daring.
Roger, sitting opposite, tried to probe her mood, tried to gauge the invitation of her manner and its possibilities. She touched him once or twice, familiarly; he thought almost possessively. She seemed to be within reach now if along with that accessibility she had recklessness. It was this attribute which for the first time to-night he thought to divine within her. If in addition to her insatiable interest in life—for she was always asking him about people and places,—she possessed this recklessness, then indeed he might put to her a proposal which had been hanging on his lips for weeks and months. Something innocent, pathetically untouched about her had hitherto kept him back. But if she had the requisite daring! They were dining in East Tenth Street in a small cafè—small contrasted with the Park Avenue Hotel to which he had first taken her. But about them stretched the glitter and perfection of crystal and silver, of marvellous napery and of obsequious service. Everything, Angela thought, looking about her, was translated. The slight odour of food was, she told Fielding, really an aroma: the mineral water which he was drinking because he could not help it and she because she could not learn to like wine, was nectar; the bread, the fish, the courses were ambrosia. The food, too, in general was to be spoken of as viands.
“Vittles, translated,” she said laughing.
“And you, you, too, are translated. Angèle, you are wonderful, you are charming,” his lips answered but his senses beat and hammered. Intoxicated with the magic of the moment and the surroundings, she turned her smiling countenance a little nearer, and saw his face change, darken. A cloud over the sun.
“Excuse me,” he said and walked hastily across the room back of her. In astonishment she turned and looked after him. At a table behind her three coloured people (under the direction of a puzzled and troubled waiter,) were about to take a table. Roger went up and spoke to the headwaiter authoritatively, even angrily. The latter glanced about the room, nodded obsequiously and crossing, addressed the little group. There was a hasty, slightly acrid discussion. Then the three filed out, past Angela’s table this time, their heads high.
She turned back to her plate, her heart sick. For her the evening was ended. Roger came back, his face flushed, triumphant, “Well I put a spoke in the wheel of those ‘coons’! They forget themselves so quickly, coming in here spoiling white people’s appetites. I told the manager if they brought one of their damned suits I’d be responsible. I wasn’t going to have them here with you, Angèle. I could tell that night at Martha Burden’s by the way you looked at that girl that you had no time for darkies. I’ll bet you’d never been that near to one before in your life, had you? Wonder where Martha picked that one up.”
She was silent, lifeless. He went on recounting instances of how effectively he had “spoked the wheel” of various coloured people. He had blackballed Negroes in Harvard, aspirants for small literary or honour societies. “I’d send ’em all back to Africa if I could. There’s been a darkey up in Harlem’s got the right idea, I understand; though he must be a low brute to cave in on his race that way; of course it’s merely a matter of money with him. He’d betray them all for a few thousands. Gosh, if he could really pull it through I don’t know but what I’d be willing to finance it.”
To this tirade there were economic reasons to oppose, tenets of justice, high ideals of humanity. But she could think of none of them. Speechless, she listened to him, her appetite fled.
“What’s the matter, Angèle? Did it make you sick to see them?”
“N
o, no not that. I—I don’t mind them; you’re mistaken about me and that girl at Martha Burden’s. It’s you, you’re so violent. I didn’t know you were that way!”
“And I’ve made you afraid of me? Oh, I don’t want to do that.” But he was flattered to think that he had affected her. “See here, let’s get some air. I’ll take you for a spin around the Park and then run you home.”
But she did not want to go to the Park; she wanted to go home immediately. His little blue car was outside; in fifteen minutes they were at Jayne Street. She would not permit him to come inside, not even in the vestibule; she barely gave him her hand.
“But Angèle, you can’t leave me like this; why what have I done? Did it frighten you because I swore a little? But I’d never swear at you. Don’t go like this.”
She was gone, leaving him staring and nonplussed on the sidewalk. Lighting a cigarette, he climbed back in his car. “Now what the devil!” He shifted his gears. “But she likes me. I’d have sworn she liked me to-night. Those damn niggers! I bet she’s thinking about me this minute.”
He would have lost his bet. She was thinking about the coloured people.
She could visualize them all so plainly; she could interpret their changing expressions as completely as though those changes lay before her in a book. There were a girl and two men, one young, the other the father perhaps of either of the other two. The fatherly-looking person, for so her mind docketed him, bore an expression of readiness for any outcome whatever. She knew and understood the type. His experiences of surprises engendered by this thing called prejudice had been too vast for them to appear to him as surprises. If they were served this was a lucky day; if not he would refuse to let the incident shake his stout spirit.
It was to the young man and the girl that her interest went winging. In the mirror behind Roger she had seen them entering the room and she had thought: “Oh, here are some of them fighting it out again. O God! please let them be served, please don’t let their evening be spoiled.” She was so happy herself and she knew that the reception of fifty other maîtres d’hotel could not atone for a rebuff at the beginning of the game. The young fellow was nervous, his face tense,—thus might he have looked going to meet the enemy’s charge in the recent Great War; but there the odds were even; here the cards were already stacked against him. Presently his expression would change for one of grimness, determination and despair. Talk of a lawsuit would follow; apparently did follow; still a lawsuit at best is a poor substitute for an evening’s fun.
But the girl, the girl in whose shoes she herself might so easily have been! She was so clearly a nice girl, with all that the phrase implies. To Angela watching her intently and yet with the indifference of safety she recalled Virginia, so slender, so appealing she was and so brave. So very brave! Ah, that courage! It affected at first a gay hardihood: “Oh I know it isn’t customary for people like us to come into this café, but everything is going to be all right.” It met Angela’s gaze with a steadiness before which her own quailed, for she thought: “Oh, poor thing! perhaps she thinks that I don’t want her either.” And when the blow had fallen the courage had had to be translated anew into a comforting assurance. “Don’t worry about me, Jimmy,” the watching guest could just hear her. “Indeed, indeed it won’t spoil the evening, I should say not; there’re plenty of places where they’d be all right. We just happened to pick a lemon.”
The three had filed out, their heads high, their gaze poised and level. But the net result of the evening’s adventure would be an increased cynicism in the elderly man, a growing bitterness for the young fellow, and a new timidity in the girl, who, even after they had passed into the street, could not relieve her feelings, for she must comfort her baffled and goaded escort.
Angela wondered if she had been half as consoling to Matthew Henson,—was it just a short year ago? And suddenly, sitting immobile in her arm-chair, her evening cloak slipping unnoticed to the floor, triumph began to mount in her. Life could never cheat her as it had cheated that coloured girl this evening, as it had once cheated her in Philadephia with Matthew. She was free, free to taste life in all its fullness and sweetness, in all its minutest details. By exercising sufficient courage to employ the unique weapon which an accident of heredity had placed in her grasp she was able to master life. How she blessed her mother for showing her the way! In a country where colour or the lack of it meant the difference between freedom and fetters how lucky she was!
But, she told herself, she was through with Roger Fielding.
Chapter V
NOW it was Spring, Spring in New York. Washington Square was a riot of greens that showed up bravely against the great red brick houses on its north side. The Arch viewed from Fifth Avenue seemed a gateway to Paradise. The long deep streets running the length of the city invited an exploration to the ends where pots of gold doubtless gleamed. On the short crosswise streets the April sun streamed in splendid banners of deep golden light.
In two weeks Angela had seen Roger only once. He telephoned every day, pleading, beseeching, entreating. On the one occasion when she did permit him to call there were almost tears in his eyes. “But, darling, what did I do? If you’d only tell me that. Perhaps I could explain away whatever it is that’s come between us.” But there was nothing to explain she told him gravely, it was just that he was harder, more cruel than she had expected; no, it wasn’t the coloured people, she lied and felt her soul blushing, it was that now she knew him when he was angry or displeased, and she could see how ruthless, how determined he was to have things his way. His willingness to pay the costs of the possible lawsuit had filled her with a sharp fear. What could one do against a man, against a group of men such as he and his kind represented who would spend time and money to maintain a prejudice based on a silly, time-worn tradition?
Yet she found she did not want to lose sight of him completely. The care, the attention, the flattery with which he had surrounded her were beginning to produce their effect. In the beautiful but slightly wearying balminess of the Spring she missed the blue car which had been constantly at her call; eating a good but homely meal in her little living room with the cooking odours fairly overwhelming her from the kitchenette, she found herself longing unconsciously for the dainty food, the fresh Spring delicacies which she knew he would be only too glad to procure for her. Shamefacedly she had to acknowledge that the separation which she was so rigidly enforcing meant a difference in her tiny exchequer, for it had now been many months since she had regularly taken her main meal by herself and at her own expense.
To-day she was especially conscious of her dependence upon him, for she was to spend the afternoon in Van Cortlandt Park with Anthony. There had been talk of subways and the Elevated. Roger would have had the blue car at the door and she would have driven out of Jayne Street in state. Now it transpired that Anthony was to deliver some drawings to a man, a tricky customer, whom it was best to waylay if possible on Saturday afternoon. Much as he regretted it he would probably be a little late. Angela, therefore, to save time must meet him at Seventy-second Street. Roger would never have made a request like that; he would have brought his lawyer or his business man along in the car with him and, dismissing him with a curt “Well I’ll see if I can finish this to-morrow,” would have hastened to her with his best Walter Raleigh manner, and would have produced the cloak, too, if she would but say so. Perhaps she’d have to take him back. Doubtless later on she could manage his prejudices if only he would speak. But how was she to accomplish that?
Still it was lovely being here with Anthony in the park, so green and fresh, so new with the recurring newness of Spring. Anthony touched her hand and said as he had once before, “I’m so content to be with you, Angel. I may call you Angel, mayn’t I? You are that to me, you know. Oh if you only knew how happy it makes me to be content, to be satisfied like this. I could get down on my knees and thank God for it like a little boy.” He looked like a little boy as he said it. “Happiness is a hard thing to find
and harder still to keep.”
She asked him idly, “Haven’t you always been happy?”
His face underwent a startling change. Not only did the old sadness and strain come back on it, but a great bitterness such as she had never before seen.
“No,” he said slowly as though thinking through long years of his life. “ I haven’t been happy for years, not since I was a little boy. Never once have I been happy nor even at ease until I met you.”
But she did not want him to find his happiness in her. That way would only lead to greater unhappiness for him. So she said, to change the subject: “Could you tell me about it?”
But there was nothing to tell, he assured her, his face growing darker, grimmer. “Only my father was killed when I was a little boy, killed by his enemies. I’ve hated them ever since; I never stopped hating them until I met you.” But this was just as dangerous a road as the other plus the possibilities of re-opening old wounds. So she only shivered and said vaguely, “Oh, that was terrible! Too terrible to talk about. I’m sorry, Anthony!” And then as a last desperate topic: “Are you ever going back to Brazil?” For she knew that he had come to the United States from Rio de Janeiro. He had spent Christmas at her house, and had shown her pictures of the great, beautiful city and of his mother, a slender, dark-eyed woman with a perpetual sadness in her eyes.
The conversation languished, She thought: “It must be terrible to be a man and to have these secret hates and horrors back of one.” Some Spanish feud, a matter of hot blood and ready knives, a sudden stroke, and then this deadly memory for him.
“No,” he said after a long pause. “I’m never going back to Brazil. I couldn’t.” He turned to her suddenly. “Tell me, Angel, what kind of girl are you, what do you think worth while? Could you, for the sake of love, for the sake of being loyal to the purposes and vows of someone you loved, bring yourself to endure privation and hardship and misunderstanding, hardship that would be none the less hard because it really could be avoided?”