Comedy_American Style

  “Nonsense,” she laughed, unrepentant. “It’s as cool in Chestnut Hill as it is anywhere in this weather.”

  She was having such a good time, she told herself. A little too giddy, a thought too feverish. She was thinner and sometimes there were shadows under her eyes. “But at least I’m forgetting,” she exulted to herself. There were whole days now when the thought of Nicholas never crossed her mind. She was too engrossed in keeping her engagements, long drives with Nash, visits with him to artist friends in New York. “Little” dinners at night, in some perfectly appointed retreat; “little” luncheons at Steve Folsom’s place; such concerts as the city afforded at this time of year.

  And as relaxation and contrast, long, cool, slow, penetrating talks with Christopher Cary.

  She did not know where all this friendship with Nash was going to end. . . . He liked, she divined, her spontaneity, her quick response to joy, her rich vitalness. “You’re unlike anybody I ever saw in my life, Phebe . . . I’d like to know your parents. They’ve endowed you so richly.”

  Her father was dead, she told him evenly—as indeed he was to her. And although her mother, she knew, had once been gay, even to recklessness, she might have added, she was far from that state now. Life had disciplined her so severely.

  Phebe would never allow Nash to escort her home. “Mother would be miserable,” she told him, daringly, laughing, “if she knew I was going about with a rich young man, terribly above my station.” Her dancing eyes rested on him, taking in the details of his curiously white skin . . . the pallor of aristocracy which certainly lent him distinction; his light, waving rather thin hair so. carefully brushed and parted; his shadow of a mustache.

  “And she especially would be displeased if she knew you were blond. She doesn’t like blond men.”

  This girl’s father was blond, he rightly supposed. And undoubtedly had mistreated her mother. It would be like a woman to dislike thereafter the whole type.

  They were sitting this afternoon on the loggia of his cousin’s place in Roselands. Phebe dressed in white, at ease in a large chair. Llewellyn half-reclining on a swinging couch.

  “I can understand about your mother not liking blond men. I like dark ones much better myself. . . . However, that can’t be changed. But she doesn’t have to worry,” he said slowly, thoughtfully, “she doesn’t have to worry about my being above your station. Do you understand me, Phebe, when I say that any station which you might consent to enter could not fail to be honored?”

  She was speechless with surprise.

  He went on, his pale face whiter than ever with the stress of his feeling. “I can see you’re surprised. I’m surprised myself. We Nashes are a proud lot and—don’t think me a conceited fool, my dear—the very fact that my feeling for you transcends all that I have hitherto thought of my position, measures the depth of that feeling. It’s the one thing that reassures me and makes it plain to me that I am following the right course . . . I’m asking you to marry me, Phebe Grant.”

  “Oh, Llewellyn . . . I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. But, believe me, I never expected to hear you say those words. If I had I’d have been more careful. . . .”

  “Why,” he said, utterly incredulous. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re refusing me. But, Phebe, why, why?”

  She didn’t have to tell him. Nothing he could do could prevent her from walking out of his life. She told him so.

  “But you wouldn’t want to leave me broken with regret,” he said wisely. “Nothing that I’ve done or said could make me deserve that.”

  “No, you’re quite right.” She fell to considering, staring past him at the careful, cultivated beauty of the garden which she was now probably seeing for the last time.

  “I’m not in love with you, Llewellyn, though I suppose I might have been very easily. But I do like you immensely. So much so that since I can’t do what you . . . think you want . . . return your love, I’m going to do the next best thing. I’m going to make you willing to forget you ever loved me.”

  “You couldn’t do that,” he said with ardor. But she thought she detected fear in his voice.

  “Before I begin,” she continued, “I want to make one thing clear. I owe you a great debt of gratitude which I can never repay. I was miserable, poor, dejected, almost despairing. Through no fault of my own I found myself placed in a dilemma, the strangest, I suppose, that any girl ever knew. It’s an absolutely artificial dilemma and I suppose it could happen only here in America. I wanted to get away from the thought of it . . . at almost any cost. But I didn’t want to hurt anybody.”

  He was sitting upright now, tense, absorbed.

  “Well, then you came along, Llewellyn, terribly rich, terribly proud, terribly secure. See, I knew that nothing, no action of mine could affect you, because I was so sure that neither your taste nor your standing would permit you to stoop to me. I thought you were just playing around with me until you should become tired, just as I was planning to play about with you until I had myself in hand again.”

  “Phebe,” he asked, leaning forward, “in God’s name, what are you talking about?”

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve got to tell you. You remember the day you first brought me here, you expressed surprise because I had broken with my young man, as you called him. Llewellyn, I didn’t break with him, he broke with me.”

  His involuntary start made her smile.

  “Honestly, Llewellyn, I didn’t think you were as old-fashioned as that. . . . No, he didn’t break with me for any of the reasons which ordinarily cause a man to break an engagement. Not because, as far as I know, he was in love with anybody else; not because I was faithless. . . . He knew I saw you from time to time, but he never doubted my loyalty; he knew how completely I was centered on him. . . . Now can you guess?”

  “This isn’t a game, Phebe,” he reminded her sternly.

  “No, you’re right, it isn’t. Well, how can I go on? . . . You surprised me very much just now when you said you preferred dark men to blond ones.”

  “What on earth has that got to do with it?”

  “This friend of mine was dark, very dark.”

  “What was he? An American or an Italian?”

  “See,” she said, smiling ruefully, “you’ll never guess it. My world and yours simply don’t touch. . . . I told you once there was a great gulf, two great gulfs fixed between us. But you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “You’ve told me a lot of things, one way or the. other,” he interrupted almost rudely. “And now after all I can’t tell anything about you. . . . For God’s sake, Phebe, get on. What about this dark man?”

  “Well, when I said dark, I meant really dark, not in the sense in which the fortune tellers say it. . . . He’s colored.”

  There was on his face now undisguised astonishment. There was more than that. Palpable disgust. “You mean to tell me you’re one of these miserable white women who have traffic with Negroes! . . . You ought to be whipped, Phebe! And if I could I’d have him strung up. The filthy black brute!”

  “Stop,” she said coldly. “I’m a colored woman.”

  Every trace of color vanished from that face already so pale.

  “I won’t allow you to travesty yourself like that, Phebe. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the whitest white girl I ever saw. You couldn’t have black blood in your veins.”

  “I’m probably the whitest colored girl, too, you ever saw,” she reminded him whimsically. “For I am colored. My mother is the ordinary brown mulatto type, with rather straight hair. My father was very white, blond with hair so light it was almost white, the color of untinted butter. They call it platinum blond now. I happen to take after my mother in looks, she really was remarkably like me before life took it out of her. But my color is my father’s gift.”

  Silently he reviewed this novel array of facts. “But you said your friend had refused you. That doesn’t make sense, Phebe. Why should he do that?”

  “Becaus
e I was too white.”

  “But I thought,” he stammered naively, “I—I thought, that is everyone says that Negroes are all of them crazy to marry white people.”

  “This one wasn’t,” she commented dryly. “He said to be seen with me made him too conspicuous, embarrassed him. He told me of lots of instances where a colored man might meet with real danger if seen with a woman fair enough to be taken for white.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s likely,” he objected.

  “Dear Llewellyn, have you forgotten that less than five minutes ago you wanted to string him up and all because he had dared to offer attentions to me? Well, I suppose you’re a pretty fair example, of how America feels. . . . You know, just because you. happen to know I’m colored doesn’t make me look any more so than it did an hour ago.”

  There really was nothing to say to that and when she rose a few moments later to pick up her light wrap and arrange her hat he did not restrain her.

  “You don’t have to drive into the city, you know,” she said thoughtfully. “You can drop me at the station and I’ll take the train.”

  For a second he glared at her. “I’m not altogether an unmitigated cad, Phebe. These disclosures have, I’ll confess, knocked me a little off my stance. You must give me a chance to pull myself together.”

  “Of course,” she said, smiling. “And let’s sit down for a minute, Llewellyn, there’s something I want to say. . . . You know, of course, that I realize how complete a surprise all this has been to you. I came near saying how complete a blow. Only, I never was able to understand what all the pother was about color until it began to cut away the ground under my own feet. . . . Well, I want you to know that I shall forget everything you’ve said. . . . You see, it isn’t as though I’d been expecting to marry you, anyway.”

  He muttered that it was a shame, by God. He blurted out: “You really are white, you know. Phebe, why don’t you just marry some white man and be through with it?”

  “What white man?” she asked him smiling. “The last one that asked me seemed willing to forget all about my poverty and my utter lack of position but when he found I was colored! Well, it was just too much!”

  He felt his face burning. “I deserve anything you say. . . . And I can’t make any excuse for myself. You are just as lovely, just as charming, just as sweet. . . .”

  “And don’t forget,” she interrupted, “just as white. . . .”

  “Yes, just as white as you were when I first met you. But the fact is, Phebe, it isn’t being done. . . . Men in my position simply don’t marry colored women. . . .”

  “American men in any position don’t marry colored women, do they? You are the nephew of a great banker. . . . My father was the son of a country grocer, but he thought his position too lofty for him to marry my mother.”

  He said sorrowfully: “Try not to be bitter.”

  There was certainly no bitterness in her ringing laughter. “That’s the first typically ‘white’ thing I’ve heard you say, Llewellyn. I’m not bitter. I tell you something must have been left out of my make-up. But it’s impossible for me to be impressed with purely artificial, man-made situations. You see, I faced the realities of life so early . . . I think only of very elemental things. Love, health, food, freedom from poverty, loyalty, courage. They’re the only things that count, Llewellyn . . . I think I’ve always had courage.”

  “I suppose now,” he said after they were seated in the car, “you’ll have no objection to my driving you home.”

  “None at all. The cat’s out of the bag.”

  “Won’t the neighbors think it strange?”

  “Why should they?”

  “Well, seeing you with a white man.”

  “Don’t be silly. They won’t know whether you’re white or colored. There are plenty of colored men just as white as I, you know; I’m not the only white colored person in Philadelphia. . . . They are all about you . . . some of them much closer than you dream. . . . I didn’t answer you truthfully when you asked me why I didn’t marry a white man. I could, I suppose, but I just prefer being colored. The best of us are not to be equalled, I’m convinced, throughout the world.”

  “You live in a queer world, Phebe. I’d like to live in it for a few months and see what it was like.”

  “It’s not an easy job. To be a colored man in America . . . and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher. . . . Good-bye, Llewellyn, forget me. I shall certainly forget you.”

  That was in August. September and October passed by with no word, no slightest sign from Nash. But she did not greatly care. He had gone with his allurements, his disquieting luxuries, just as the summer had gone with its lush beauties of weather and flower. Of course, she did not forget him completely . . . but “pouf” she said, standing before her mirror and blowing a breath off her hand as one would blow a feather. “He came easily; he went easily.”

  She rather admired herself in this mood.

  She was no longer living on the heights, it is true. But her lines had fallen into places pleasant enough. Johnny Albans was always on hand eager to “take her places and do things.” She must be careful about Johnny, must see to it that he never knew suffering on account of her. On Wednesday nights she went to Temple University for courses in English and French . . . she might go to Paris some day though “to be frank,” she told Christopher Cary, giggling, “I don’t think the amount of French I’m getting will help me much after I get there.”

  Christopher had just completed his interneship at Mercy Hospital. He was busy establishing his practice but he came to see her frequently and always on Sunday afternoon, if possible. Of late, too, he seemed to find it convenient to drive up to Broad and Berks on Wednesday nights and bring her home.

  But best of all she was getting acquainted with her mother. Through the maze of their difficult life this desolated pair had pulled side by side but it was only of late that they had found time to talk. Phebe knew all the pitiful details of that early disastrous love-making of her mother—such a child she was!

  “I was too young, daughter, to understand what it might mean to my daughter not to have a father.”

  “Darling, don’t mind. What difference does it make, since after all you had me?”

  “That’s what I always said, my dear, after I first saw you. I forgot all about Jim and how he had let me go. I just said to myself ‘I’ve got my baby.’ ”

  “And I have you, Mother. And I’m glad I haven’t him for a father.”

  “You mustn’t be too hard on him, Lamb. He was almost as young as me, an’ as ig’nunt. He was only seventeen. . . . And almost right away they made him marry an’ they kep’ him close. That was when I run away to the big city, Honey. I thought I’d find gold lying here in the streets.” She lapsed unconsciously into poetry. “An’ all the gold I could find was in my baby’s hair.”

  “But after all, your baby did bring you gold.”

  “Indeed she did, Honey. Such a passel of it as I never did expect to see in my life.”

  It was on a rainy November night that the letter and parcel came. Mrs. Grant had gone to prayer-meeting. Phebe was in her room alternately enjoying and not enjoying a story in the Saturday Evening Post and a lesson on French idioms in “The New Chardenal French Course.” . . .

  There was an adorable little fire in her fireplace. Relaxed and tranquil in her worn easy-chair she reviewed between snatches at the story and the grammar the recent doings of her busy days. . . . Last night she had played bridge with the Allen girls across, the street. . . . They were the ones who had first told her a little casually and yet warningly that Nicholas Cary was to interne at Harlem Hospital in New York . . . she would always like those girls for that.

  Today had been both busy and profitable at the dress-shop. It was really marvelous how slightly they were feeling the much advertised depression. Tomorrow she would go to the Fortnightly with Johnny . . . she would
wear that green dress. . . . It was then that the bell rang.

  Burrowing further into her comfortable chair she decided to let the ubiquitous Mrs. Nixon answer the door, thus saving question and parry later on. After the lightest possible of taps the lodger came in bearing a letter and a very thick oblong package about as long and wide as a large envelope.

  “A feller dressed like a shofer come to the door . . . and there was a car as big as this house outside, Miss Grant. Guess it’s from one of them rich customers of yours.”

  “Yes, buttons likely,” Phebe acquiesced imperturbably. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Nixon, and when you go out, do close the door very tight.”

  Thus admonished there was nothing for the lodger to do but to go out and close the door. Phebe strolled over in her wake and turned the key. Afterwards she was so glad she had done so. . . . She opened the package, thinking that it was probably candy from Johnny, and in a moment the room was adrift with floating money . . . green backs and gold. She went down on her knees and gathered them up . . . five thousand dollars in all. Stunned, she read the note.

  “Phebe: I cannot forget you. Every waking moment since that day we talked last August I have thought of you. I want you more than I have ever wanted anything or anybody in my life. On Sunday I am going abroad. Will you come with me? We will go to Tunis first, away from these horrid grey days, and then when the spring comes, my Sweet, we’ll go wherever you say.

  “Please don’t misunderstand the money. I am sending it to buy yourself anything you need, including passage on the Ile de France. If you do not care to come, will you give the money to your mother as a token from someone who admires her vicariously.

  “I really love you, Phebe . . . and respect you. I want you to believe this. If you come with me you need never fear any contumely or disrespect either at my hands or at the hands of anyone else. I shall never marry, so no one will ever take precedence over you. And in case of my death you’ll find provision made for you in my will.