“Yes, interrupted would be better there,” Donovan replied, as the

others laughed.

“Why d’you want to vote for a fellow like Kelly?” Blanche asked. “He’s

just a wind-bag--always telling how much he’s going to do for the

public, but that’s where he ends.”

Kossler lifted his eyebrows--women were not supposed to be interested

in politics (middle-aged club-women, and professionals in both parties,

and socialists excepted).

“Now, girlie, what d’you know about it?” he asked, indulgently.

“They’ve all got to promise a lot--that’s in the game--but old Kelly’s

better than the rest of them at that. He’s dead honest and he can’t be

bought.”

“So’s ’n elephant,” Blanche retorted. “You can buy one cheap at the

Bronx zoo and put him up at the next election.”

Donovan looked pityingly at her and said: “My Gawd, another socialist.”

“I’m not, but I come from the Hell’s-Kitchen district and I’m wise to

politics, all right,” Blanche answered.

“Everything you say is right with me,” Simmonds interjected. “It’s a

foxy-pass, anyway, to argue with a woman at a party--you’ll end up by

singing: ‘Sitting in a co-orner, that’s all I do-o.’”

“Maybe it is,” said Blanche, while the others laughed.

Flo and Grace regarded her with a petulant suspicion--she was of the

smart, snippy kind, and furthermore, she’d better not try to go after

_their_ men; they’d pull her hair out if she did.

“Now, you all stop razzing my Blanche,” Campbell broke in. “She’s just

a little girl trying to make both ends connect in the big, wicked city.”

“Razzing her!--it’s just the other way,” Simmonds said. “D’you ever

balance a hot coal on the tip of your nose?”

“It only looks that way--I was out on a party last night,” Campbell

replied. “I heard a good one, though, the other day. Tom Jarvey was

walking along the street, and he runs into Hammond, the village

cut-up. ‘I hear you was seen walkin’ with your grandmother the other

day--that’s a nice thing to do,’ said Hammond. Jarvey comes back: ‘She

didn’t look that way when I married her--you know how it is.’”

The rest of them laughed, and Grace said: “That’s like the husband I

ditched last year. He was a prize-package until I saw him putting his

false toofies in a glass uh water one night. Hot snakes!”

“Let’s call it a draw and put the phonograph on, and fox-trot,” Flo

said.

The party broke into dancing, with regular intervals in which rounds

of cocktails circulated. The silently dark woman sat on a couch, with

a fixed smile, and occasionally chatted with Donovan, and seemed to be

outside of the party, as though she were viewing it with a satiated and

good-natured patience. Blanche sat beside her for a short time.

“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself,” Blanche said, “or maybe this

is how you do it.”

“Oh, I’m a good listener, and I don’t dance if I can help it,” Madge

Gowan replied. “I’m not down on the world, it’s not that, but I like to

sit in the audience now ’n’ then. It’s fine for your nerves and you get

a different slant at what’s going on around you.”

“I’m a little like that, myself,” Blanche answered, “but this is my

night for mixing in, I guess.”

Campbell pulled her away for another dance, and she reflected on the

dark woman, through the touch of haze forming in her own head. Was that

the way you became around thirty-five, if you couldn’t stay blind to

the world and the people in it?

The party became more boisterous, and the innuendoes grew warmer and

less attired, and the chorus girls sat beside Kossler and Simmonds and

exchanged kissing and impolite embraces that were not quite direct.

Donovan had his head on Madge Gowan’s shoulder, while she caressed his

hair. Blanche, who was standing beside the phonograph, with Campbell’s

arm around her waist, felt confused, and merrily indifferent to

everything except the unsteady exaltation in her body and the singing

carelessness of her emotions. As she had done so many times before,

she made an effort to pull herself together and resume some portion of

her secret wariness, but the effort was a weak one, this time, and her

“silly,” lightly unarmored feelings persisted and grew stronger.

“Let’s leave, Joe dear, I’m so-o-o diz-z-zy,” she said.

“Sit down a while, you’ll feel better,” he replied, leading her to the

couch.

The two chorus girls departed with Kossler and Simmonds, after a

loudly gay _mêlée_ of words had flown back and forth, and Blanche, by

this time, was too limp and dazed to bid them good-bye. When Donovan

returned from the front door, Blanche had slumped back upon the couch,

and Campbell said: “Darned if she hasn’t passed out, Jack.”

Donovan grinned at his friend.

“We’ll put her on the bed in the spare room and let her sleep it off.

I’m going to turn in, now, with Madge. Don’t do anything your mother

wouldn’t approve of, Joe.”

Madge Gowan rose and looked steadily at Campbell.

“How about leaving the poor kid alone, to-night?” she asked.

“Don’t be foolish, she’s ’n old flame uh mine,” Campbell answered.

“We’ve been crazy about each other for more than two years now.”

“Well, let her sleep with me, anyway,” Madge persisted. “You can see

her to-morrow morning.”

“Now Ma-adge, don’t butt in where it’s not needed,” said Donovan

chidingly.

“Yes, cut out the guardian-angel stuff,” Campbell said, in a careless

voice. “She’s ’n old sweetie uh mine, I’m telling you.”

Madge turned and looked down at Blanche, in a dully sad way.

“Oh, well, it’s no business of mine,” she said.

* * * * *

When Blanche woke up on the next morning, she looked at the strange

room with an uncomprehending, ferocious ache in her head. Then, in a

detached fashion, incidents of the past night began to bob up in her

head, and she pieced them slowly together, in a stumbling, erratic

way. She’d met Campbell and gone to a party with him, and then she had

become drunk and everything had grown slowly darker. She remembered

vaguely that she had begged him to take her home.... Then, an

indefinable stirring within her heart told her what had happened....

So, he had sneaked off, afraid to face her now--the coward, the coward.

But perhaps he was still in the place, and ... where was she, anyway?

She opened the door and walked unsteadily down the hallway. Yes,

this was the same parlor where the party had taken place--same piano

and furniture. Perhaps Campbell was sleeping in another room in the

apartment.

She returned to the room that she had left, and sat down. The pain

in her head gave an added edge to the anger within her. The skulking

meanness of it--oh, she’d love to break his head in two! Then another

voice within her said: “You know perfectly well that’s what almost any

man’ll do, ’specially ’f he’s drunk, as well as you are. Don’t act like

a school-kid--you knew it all the time, but you kept on drinking last

night, long past your limit ... fool.”

Her anger against Campbell subsided to a more practical disgust. If she

had loved him, she would not have minded this finale, but as it was she

felt like a swindled imbecile. Campbell would have to be put in his

place once more, and treated with a cool aloofness. He had benefited by

an accident wedded to her own weakness, and the only grim satisfaction

left would be to ignore him from now on. She didn’t blame him,

particularly--all men seemed to be cut out of the same stuff--but it

would have to be impressed upon him that his victory had been an empty

one, and that she was still her own mistress. After all, she still felt

intact and undisturbed--it would take more than a dozen Campbells to

break her spirit--and she would sever her relations with him merely as

a matter-of-fact self-protection.

When she had washed, and dressed herself, she walked back to the parlor

and pulled back the shades at the window, and looked down at the street

far below. It was crowded with people and vehicles--the hour might be

around noon. She glanced back at a clock on the top of the sideboard.

Eleven-thirty--she would have to telephone the “Parlor” and give them

the old illness-excuse.... Where had every one disappeared to--where

was Donovan, who lived in the apartment? She heard the front door

close, and she sat down, waiting, and shrinking a little ... she didn’t

care to meet any one at this exact moment. Campbell walked into the

parlor, and when he saw her, he greeted her with a solicitous joviality.

“We-ell, there she is--fresh as a daisy ’n’ everything,” he said. “I’ve

bought some stuff and we’ll cook breakfast on Jack’s little electric

stove. He’s still dead to the world, I guess.”

She rose from the chair, without answering, and walked to the hallway,

where she removed her coat and hat from the rack and started to put

them on. He followed her and dropped a hand on her shoulder.

“Now, what’s up?” he asked.

“We’re never going to see each other again,” she replied, “and I’m not

very anxious to talk to you. I don’t blame you for anything, but you’re

not the kind of a man I’m looking for. You’re just no better ’r worse

than most people, that’s all. I’d feel just the same about it ’f you

hadn’t acted like you did. I held on to you because you could make me

laugh and forget my troubles, but I knew it couldn’t last much longer.”

“Don’t act like desp’rate Tessie in a movie-film,” he said. “Come on,

sit down and let’s talk it over. Nothing so terrible has happened.”

“I’m not worrying about what happened,” she answered. “’F I cared for

you I wouldn’t give it a thought. I don’t, though, and there’d be no

use in risking a second dose of the same fool stunt. We’ll call it

quits now, and stop seeing each other.”

“Well, I’ve got something to tell you, and it won’t hurt you to sit

down a minute and listen,” he urged.

“All right, just a few minutes, and then I’ll be going,” she said,

wearily.

They sat on opposite chairs in the parlor, and as he looked at her, an

irresistible impulse came to him. She certainly did have a marvelous

spirit and independence--no girl of his acquaintance had ever acted

with such a careless, untouched remoteness on the morning after,

unless she was a plain hooker--not in a way that convinced you of

its genuineness, at any rate--and, strangely enough, as he sat here

now, she was still as desirable as she had ever been. Well, guess he

would have to take the plunge--you couldn’t resist it forever. The old

chain-and-jail wind-up.

“I want you to marry me, Blanche,” he said. “I’ll go down to the

Municipal Building with you this afternoon, and we’ll get the license.

I mean every word of it. You’re an ace-high full to me and I can’t give

you up. I guess I’ve always been in love with you, but I didn’t want to

admit it to myself. You’ll marry me to-day and we’ll live happy ever

afterwards, just like they do in the books.”

He looked at her with a confident, admiring smile, as though her assent

were predetermined. She arose and smiled pityingly at him, as she

tucked her hair beneath her hat.

“Listen, Joe, I wouldn’t marry you on a bet,” she replied. “You

prob’bly think I’ve been egging you on to ask me all the time, and

there’s where you’ve made a big mistake, Joe Campbell. ’F I ever marry

any man I’ll have to be wild about him, and ’f I am, I won’t even care

so much whether he marries me ’r not. And, what’s more, I’ll have

to have a pile of respect for his mind, and I’ll have to feel like

listening to what he says, all the time.”

He stared at her, without answering.

“Well, it’s no use talking any more,” she said. “So long, Joe, I’m

going now.”

He had expected that she would first doubt the sincerity of his

proposal and then eagerly accept him. He still believed that she was

merely leading him on, to revenge herself, and that all of her words

had been said for their effect, and that she only wanted him to be

persistently begging and humble. He followed her into the hallway, and

caught her arm.

“I’m sorry for what happened last night,” he said. “I’ll make it up to

you, Blan. I mean it, dear. I’m crazy about you, and I want to make you

happy, and I’ll do anything you say. Why, I’ll even stop drinking, if

you say the word. You’ve just got to marry me, you’ve got to, Blanche.

You know you care for me, you know you do.”

“You’d better guess again, Joe,” she said, coolly, as she broke away

from him. “I’m not going to see you again, and what’s more, don’t

pester me with any ’phone-calls ’r letters, either. It won’t do you a

bit of good.... Good-bye, and good luck, old boy.”

It gave her a surface thrill to slap his face in this dramatic and

careless fashion. He thought that he was a precious catch, didn’t he?

Well, he might lose some of his huge conceit after she had finished

with him.

He caught her arm once more.

“Come on, you’ve razzed me enough now, haven’t you?” he asked. “I’ve

been taking it like a man, but don’t smear it on so thick. Come on, be

good to me, Blanche.”

She broke away again and walked swiftly down the hallway. He started

after her and then halted, still and perplexed, as she reached the

door. Then a rage quickly possessed him--imagine, this hussy turning

_him_ down after he had been really anxious to make amends.

“All right, then, you can go to hell for all I care,” he called after

her, as she was passing through the doorway.

She made no reply as she slammed the door behind her--he could have

said that immediately and spared himself the trouble of his other

words. These men, they thought that all they had to do was to utter

the magical words--ma-arry me--and a girl would be delighted at the

rare, luring condescension and instantly fall into their arms. Well,

perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so conceited from now on--the cheap

sneak. When she married a man it would be soberly and of her own free

will, because she longed to hear his words, and be physically near

him, and because she looked up to his mental gifts, and good taste,

and re-fine-ment. Oh, ye-es, in a way she was an idiot for not having

accepted _Campbell’s_ proposal, since he could certainly have given the

leisure and opportunities which she craved, but ... she’d be damned if

_she_ would ever marry a man just because she was ashamed to leave him

on the day after a drunken party!

After she had telephoned the “Parlor” and told Madame Jaurette that she

could not come down because of an intense toothache, she returned to

her home. Her mother had gone to the butcher shop and Mabel was sitting

alone in the living-room.

“Well, sma-artie, where’ve you been all night?” Mabel asked. “Ma was in

a awful stew about you--she was gonna call up the p’lice, but I stopped

her. An’ _pa_, he’s gonna ask you _some_ questions when he gets back,

believe me.”

“What’s all the fuss about?” Blanche asked, wearily. “I went to a wild

party and passed out, and they had to let me sleep there overnight.”

“An’ Joe Campbell, he got lost in the crush, ’r else he went back to

his place to sleep, I s’pose,” Mabel answered, sarcastically. “You c’n

tell it to ma but not to me. I never thought you’d give in to him that

easy, Blan. He hasn’t asked you to marry him, has he?”

“Yes, but I turned him down,” Blanche replied.

“Turned him down--well, of all the fool things,” Mabel cried. “I’ll bet

you’re jes’ sayin’ you did ’cause you don’t want to admit what a simp

you’ve been.”

“No, it’s true ... he wanted to marry me right this afternoon.”

Mabel was silent for a moment, as she regarded her sister with an

irritated surprise, and then she said: “You’ve got me guessing. Here’s

a fine fella, not so bad-lookin’ either, an’ you’ve been goin’ with

him, off and on, f’r over two years, an’ he’s got loads of money, an’

... you won’t marry him. There’s darn few fellas that’ll ask a girl

right after they’ve slipped one over on her. What’re you waitin’ for,

anyway?”

“Not for anything you could understand,” Blanche responded. “When I

marry a man I’m going to love him first--that’s what you can’t get into

your head--and it’ll have to be real love, too, and not just because he

has a handsome face and knows how to kid now and then.”

“Then why’d you stay with Joe last night?” Mabel asked. “’F you’re so

darn up’n the air about it, you didn’t have to peel your clothes off

f’r a fella you don’t care about.”

“I passed out of the picture, and the next thing I knew it was

morning,” Blanche said, trying to be patient with this querulous,

unseeing sister of hers, but feeling a rising strain.

It was bad enough that it had happened--why did she have to paw over

the details?

“Well, he played a dirty, rotten trick on you then,” Mabel answered,

indignantly, “an’ ’f it was me, I’d sure get back at him some way. ’F I

didn’t wanna marry him, then I’d scare him outa his wits an’ make him

come across with plenty uh money, I would. ’R else I’d see he was sent

to the hospital f’r a nice, long stretch.”

“It was my fault just’s much as his,” Blanche replied, dully. “No man’s

’n angel, and a girl shouldn’t get drunk with him ’f she doesn’t want

to go the limit. I can usually take care of myself, but I took too many

cocktails last night. I was feeling blue and forgot when to stop. ’F

you want to do me a favor, then you’ll talk about something else. I’ll

never see him again, and he doesn’t matter to me.”

“Try an’ talk to you,” Mabel responded, disgustedly. “The last person

you ever look out f’r is yourself. You ought to be sent to the

booby-hatch!”

Blanche went into her room without answering ... what was the use?

Mabel meant well enough, but she couldn’t see that money and gay times

and “getting back” at people were not the only things in the world.

When her mother returned, Blanche pretended to be asleep, and she

remained upon her bed until evening, with all her thoughts darting

about and then hopelessly evaporating, and with occasional intervals of

semi-drowsiness. When she came to the supper-table, where the remainder

of her family were seated, the firing started.

“Well, give an account uh yourself,” her father said. “Where was you

till twelve this morning?”

“I stayed with some friends,” Blanche answered--she wasn’t _afraid_

to tell them the truth, of course not, but she wanted to avoid the

senseless wrangling, and the loud accusations, and the outraged advice

that would ensue if she did. “I drank a little too much and I had to

sleep it off, that’s all.”

“An’ how about Campbell--was he with you?” her father asked, gruffly.

“He was gone when I woke up this morning,” Blanche answered, seeking

only to brush aside her father’s words.

“Well, it sounds damn fishy to me,” her father replied. “’F he did

anything wrong to you I’ll have it out with him, and he’ll have to

marry you then, ’f he knows what’s good f’r him.”

“That’s what I say,” Harry broke in. “I like Joe all right, but he’d

better go slow with any sister uh mine, I don’t care ’f he was the

Gov’ner himself!”

“You’re getting terribly concerned about me all at once, aren’t

you?” Blanche asked, speaking to Harry. “You’d better not jump at

conclusions--you don’t know a thing about it.”

“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Harry answered, looking

steadily at her.

“Well, I’m gonna stick up f’r Blanie this time,” Mabel said. “You’re

both makin’ a big fuss about nothin’, an’ what’s more, you’ve got

no right to be sayin’ she’s a bad girl. You oughta be ashamed uh

yourselves. All she did was stay overnight with some people she knew

’cause she wasn’t in no condition to come home. I’ve done it myself,

once ’r twice, an’ you never waded into me. Blanche may be a nut in

some ways but she’s not fool enough to let Joe Campbell put it over on

her, an’ you oughta believe her.”

Blanche gave her sister a grateful, surprised look--Mabel did have a

good streak in her, in spite of her blind reproaches.

“I’m not accusin’ her of anythin’,” the father said, impressed by this

defense from his favorite daughter. “I only wanted to find out what

happened, like any father would. ’S a matter uh fact, you’d both better

cut out all this booze you’re swillin’. ’F you don’t, you’ll wake up

some fine mornin’ an’ find yourselves in f’r it.”

“An’ they oughta stay home more, too,” the mother said, breaking in

with her endless complaint, not because she hoped to effect anything,

but merely to maintain her position. “I was worried to death, I was,

when I got up this mornin’ an’ Blanie wasn’t here. You never can tell

what’ll happen to a girl, you never. Don’t I read all kindsa things in

the paper ev’ry day--murders ’n’ rapes ’n’ what not!”

“I’ll see that they stay home--they’re runnin’ too loose to suit me,

these days,” the father replied.

He knew that he would do nothing of the kind, but the words soothed his

sense of authority.

When the supper was finished, Blanche put on her hat and coat, and

said: “I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back early, I guess.”

“You’d better,” her father responded. “I won’t swallow another stayin’

over with friends story, this time.”

Blanche turned away without replying--words, words, and what did they

all amount to? Threats, and promises, and “reasons” ... and people

scarcely ever meant them.

After she had left the apartment she strolled aimlessly up one street

and down another, craving the motion that could add a fillip to the

dullness of her thoughts. Would she ever meet people who could help

her, and who would understand her longings and prod her with worthwhile

criticisms and encouragements--people, for instance, as superior to

Rosenberg as Rosenberg had been to the rest of the men whom she knew?

How could she run across them?... As she walked along, different men

stopped beside her for a moment, with their “Nice evening, isn’t it?”

and “You look sorta lonesome, how about it?” and “Pardon me, but

haven’t I met you somewhere before?” and “D’you mind if I talk to you

a while?” Sometimes they called to her from automobiles, but they were

merely irritating reminders of a real and grossly intruding world,

and she ignored them--it never paid to take a chance, for they always

turned out to be common and cheap. It stood to reason--why would an

enticing man be so “hard up” that he would have to solicit women on the

street?

She didn’t know where she was going, but she wanted to imagine that she

was searching for some destination that would greet her unexpectedly--a

vague, half-laughed-at hope--and she kept on strolling down the hard,

flatly dirty, noisy streets.

PART TWO

PART TWO

The night became thickly intense, and all the angular details and flat

expanses of each street--neither hideous nor beautiful but vapidly and

rigidly perched in between--took on the least touch of glamor. Some

semblance of a darkly plaintive heart began to sway and quiver within

the scene, as though the essence of all these human beings pacing down

the sidewalks and sitting or standing in shops, cars, and restaurants,

had joined the night and formed another quality--expectations,

illusions, and promises, all electric in the air. The harshly dreamless

industries and shallow loiterings of the day were replaced by an effort

at romance, soiled but persistent, and a sensual pride preening itself

with gallantries, and a confusion of cruel or softly dozing confidences.

The moving-picture theaters, in dots of red, yellow, blue, and

green light, made proclamations of spurious, quickly attained love,

adventure, and suspense; the United Cigar Stores, framed by red

and gold, displayed their mild, brown opiates, while within them

deferential clerks catered to jovial or importantly sullen men and

women; the restaurants, with food heaped in their windows, and

glistening fronts, were filled with people intent upon turning a

prosy stuffing into an elaborate, laughing ritual; and even the Greek

lunch-rooms, with their stools beside half-dirty glass counters, and

nickel coffee-urns, assumed a hang-dog grin.

Taxicabs in all the cardinal colors darted about, like feverish insects

serving human masters, and the people in them--lazy, or impatient,

or bored, or out for a lark--made a blur of faces sometimes glimpsed

more distinctly as the cabs stopped or slowed down. Policemen in dark

blue uniforms stood at street-crossings, with tired aggressiveness,

looking for a chance to invest their flunky-rôles with a rasping

authority. Motor-trucks lurched along like drab monsters barely held in

leash. Lights were everywhere--in shops, on iron poles in the streets,

mellowly staring from upper windows--desperately seeking to dismiss

the darkly fearful mystery of the surrounding night, but never quite

overcoming it.

Street-cars and “L” trains crawled on, soddenly packed with under-dogs

going to their dab of rest or crude pleasure. A roar was in the air,

with immediate, sharp sounds trailing out into it--a complaining,

shackled savage floating up from the scene. The large buildings were

without individuality, except that some of them rose vertically above

the others, and in their dull shades of red, brown, and gray, they

would all have presented a yawning, meanly barrack-like effect but for

the relieving fancy of their lights. Even the perpendicular strength of

the skyscrapers was marred by filigreed and overcorniced lines.

To Blanche, the scene was a _mêlée_ of delightful possibilities always

just eluding her, and obnoxious intrusions only too ready to seek her

arm. She realized the transforming effect of the night and said to

herself: “Say, I’d never do all this walking if it was daytime--funny,

how everything gets more attractive when the night trots along. Guess

you can’t see things so clear then.... Better chance to kid yourself

along.”

As she strolled through the outskirts of Greenwich Village her legs

began to feel heavy, and the past hour seemed to be nothing more than

a long, senseless walk taken within the confines of a large trap. The

light, hazy sensation of searching oozed slowly out of her body and was

replaced by the old hopelessness.

She stopped in front of a batik-shop window and looked at the soft,

intricately veined gaudiness of the smocks, blouses, and scarves.

“Sorta crazy, yes, but she’d like to wear them--they suited her mood.”

Another girl was standing beside Blanche, and the other turned her head

and said: “Aren’t they beauties, though. I’d just love to buy that

purple and green smock there in the corner.”

“I like the blue one better--the one right next to yours,” Blanche

answered naturally, but she looked closely at the other girl.

It was not unusual for strange girls to speak to you when they were

either lonely or just brightly interested in some little thing, but

still you had to be careful--sometimes they were “fast” players with

men, in need of a feminine accomplice, or grafters intent on securing

some favor or loan. The other girl had a slender torso and almost

slender legs, with all of her plumpness crowded in the buttocks and

upper thighs. She had singed butterflies on her face and they gave a

light, fluttering pain to her smiles. She had the rarity of large blue

eyes on a duskily pale brown face, and small, loosely parted lips,

and a slight hook on the upper part of her nose, and curly bobbed

brown hair. In her tan coat trimmed with dark fur, scarlet turban, and

multicolored silk scarf, she seemed to be a dilettantish, chippy girl,

just graduated from the flapper class.

Blanche noticed something “different” in the other girl and answered

her more readily as they continued their talk.

“D’you live in the Village?” the other girl asked.

“No, I’m from uptown,” Blanche answered. “I’ve heard lots about it,

though. I’d like to meet some of the int’resting artists and writers

down here. There must be all kinds of them in the tearooms and places

like that.”

The other girl gave her a pitying look.

“All kinds of fakers, you mean,” she replied. “They know how to brag

about themselves, but that’s where it ends.”

“But I thought this was the part of town where real artists ’n’ writers

came together,” Blanche persisted. “Of course, I didn’t believe they

were all great ones, but I did believe they were all trying to do

something, well, different, you know.”

“Oh, there _are_ some down here, but you don’t usually find them in the

showplaces or tearooms,” the other girl answered, as she and Blanche

walked down the street. “Those places are for the mediocrities, and

the pretenders, and the students ... and, oh, yes, the slummers. People

from uptown hunting for something gayly wicked.”

“I suppose you think I’m a foolish slummer, too,” Blanche said, “but

I’m not. I’ve just been walking along and thinking things over. I

didn’t realize where I was.”

“I wasn’t being personal,” the other girl replied. “I sort of like the

way you talk. Suppose we introduce ourselves to each other?”

They traded names and the other girl, Margaret Wheeler, went on: “You

know, strangers are always supposed to distrust each other, but I can’t

be annoyed. Every once in a while I talk to some girl on the street,

and I’ve started a couple of interesting friendships that way. I’m not

a Lesbian and I haven’t any other designs upon you.”

“Why, I don’t distrust you at all,” Blanche answered. “I can take

care of myself and I suppose you can, too. You talk like you were

intelligent, and I’d like to know you better, that’s all.”

“Thanks,” said Margaret. “I would be fairly intelligent, if I didn’t

let some male make an idiot out of me every few months. I’m in love

with some one now, but it’ll wind up like all the others.”

“You make me feel envious,” Blanche replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever

really loved any fellow.”

“Are you joking?” Margaret asked.

“No, that’s straight.”

“Well, I’m going on twenty-five now, and I couldn’t count the

infatuations I’ve had. I’m not as easy as I used to be, though. Once

upon a time, if a man had a straight nose, and blond hair, and could

recite poetry and make me believe it was his, that was all I needed.

But no-ow, a man must have some real subtlety, and ability, and

wittiness, before I pay any attention to him.”

“That’s just the kind I’ve been looking for,” Blanche answered. “Where

on earth do you find them?”

“Nowhere in particular--it’s a matter of luck. And don’t forget that a

girl must be unusual herself before she can attract unusual men, unless

they’re just anxious to have a party with her.”

“Yes, that’s where I’d lose out,” Blanche said, heavily. “I’m just a

ha-air dresser in a beauty parlor, that’s all.”

“You certainly don’t talk like one. Maybe you’ve never had much of a

chance to be anything different.”

“You said it”--Blanche’s voice was low and depressed.

“Well, I’m only a steno myself,” Margaret answered, “but I’m taking a

course in short-story writing at Herbert College--three nights a week.

I want to tear off the old veils and tell what people do to each other.”

“Say, maybe I could join it, too,” Blanche replied, eagerly. “I’m not

so strong on grammar, though--stopped in my first year at high and went

to work.”

“Oh, you can pound _that_ part of it into you. The main thing’s whether

you have something to say--something that’s not just ordinary and

hackneyed.”

“I think I have, but ... how do I know,” Blanche asked, uncertainly.

They had stopped in front of a tearoom with a multicolored wooden sign

under an electric light.

“Here’s Clara’s--one of my hangouts,” Margaret said. “I’m going in to

meet my blond-haired devastator. Won’t you come along?”

“Perhaps I’ll be in the way.”

“Nothing of the kind--I’ll introduce you to some of the people I know.”

They entered the place, which occupied the first floor of a two-storey,

attic-topped, brick house. Kitchen tables and chairs painted pale

green and vermilion lined the walls. Paintings and drawings were hung

everywhere--cubistic plagiarisms, slovenly sketches, and illustrations

meant for the average magazine’s check book but not quite reaching

it--and a semidim light came from stained-glass bowls hung from the

low ceiling. Some fifteen men and women were scattered around the two

rooms, and a portable phonograph in the corner was whining one of the

latest fox-trot insinuations--“He Never Gets Tired of Me, No, Boy, Just

Never Gets Tired of Me-ee.”

Three men and a woman at a table effusively greeted Margaret, and after

she had introduced Blanche, the two girls sat down with the others. The

third girl, Dora Ruvinsky, was an unsymmetrically fat Jewess, with a

thin-lipped but salacious face and a shorn disorder of black hair. Her

sex had yielded to a cunning nightmare of masculinity, and she wore

a stiff white collar, a red cravat, and a man’s vest and coat. She

spoke in a husky drawl and perpetually slapped the shoulders of the

men beside her. They regarded her with tolerance contending against a

slight aversion.

One of them, Max Oppendorf, a blond-haired man of thirty, plied her

with whisky from a hip-bottle and strove to trap her into feminine

reactions and remarks, as though he were coldly and listlessly

playing with a desperately hypocritical insect. His narrow, pale,

blue-eyed face glanced around the tables with pity and repugnance

somehow fused into its expression. A recognized poet and novelist,

he was nevertheless known as a distinguished outcast, ostracized,

attacked, and hated by literary and dilettantish groups of every

variety because of his skillful-tongued independence, his careless

violations of etiquettes and conventions, and the ravages of his

unorthodox intellect. His clothes were shabby but not quite untidy,

and as he frequently closed his eyes while speaking, he displayed the

contradictory guise of an aristocratic vagabond.

Men almost invariably detested him, while the reactions of the women

who met him were evenly divided into a distrustful resentment in one

camp and a loyal adoration in the other. His armor was invulnerable,

save when he became hopelessly drunk, in which condition he either

savagely denounced and affronted the people around him or became

unwontedly indulgent and gave them simulations of sentimentality and

affectionate attention. These abdications sprang from his innate

indifference to life and most of its people. Sincerely believing that

most men and women were beclouded, unsearching, and cruelly _gauche_

children, alcohol made his indifference to them more indulgently intent

upon distracting itself, and, when drunk, he stooped to them with loud,

mock-arguments, and exuberant caresses. He felt a moderate degree of

tenderness toward Margaret Wheeler, who appealed to him as an honest

grappler, more unreserved and mentally edged than most other girls of

her age and occupation. She was violently in love with him, and they

spoke together in tones that were almost whispers, and stroked each

other’s hands.

The second man, Bob Trussel--a gorgeously effeminate youth who was

known in Village circles for his not-quite-Beardsleyesque black and

whites--conversed with Dora, while the third, Ben Helgin, talked to

Blanche.

Ben was a robustly tall man in his early thirties, with a huge,

half-bald head, and dark-brown hair inclined to be frizzly. His long,

pointed nose, severely arched eyebrows, and widely thin lips gave him

the look of a complacent, pettily cruel Devil--a street urchin who had

donned the mask of Mephistopheles but could not quite conceal the leer

of a boy intent upon practical jokes and small tormentings. He was

a master in the arts of dramatic exaggeration and belittling, never

quite telling the truth and never quite lying, and his immeasurable

vanity made him always determined to dominate any conversation. He had

an Oriental volubility, and people would often sit beside him for an

hour or more and vainly seek to insert a beginning remark or express an

uninterrupted opinion.

One of his favorite devices was to tell anecdotes about men of his

acquaintance, in which the men were invariably depicted in a childish,

ridiculous, or inferior posture, while he gloated over and embellished

the details of their fancied discomfiture, with a great assumption

of sympathy for the victims. Living in a dream-world entirely of his

own making, he loved to flirt with visions, conquests, world-shaking

concepts, and child-like boasts. On one morning he would appear among

his friends, describing some plan or idea with a cyclonic enthusiasm,

and on the very next afternoon no trace of it would remain within his

mind. Again, he would loll in an armchair and announce that a famous

actress of forty had implored him to reside with her and to become the

leading man in her next play, but he would neglect to mention that the

lady in question was renowned for her generous impulses and included

truck-drivers and cigar-clerks in her overtures. These impositions

caused most people to regard him as an eel-like _poseur_, when they

were removed from the persuasive sorceries of his words, and they

failed to see that his gigantic egotism had sincerely hoaxed itself

into the rôle of a flitting and quickly ennuied conqueror.

For years he had followed the luring dream of amassing a large fortune

through the creation of dexterously dishonest stories, plays, and

press-agent campaigns, and while he had accumulated thousands of

dollars in these ways, the dream of wealth persistently refused to be

captured. He lacked the grimly plodding, blind instinct necessary for

such a goal, and his financial harvests were always quickly gathered

and dissipated. This babbling immersion in the garnering of money,

however, gave him the paradoxical air of an esthetic Babbitt.

His serious literary creations were original and sardonic at their

best, but frequently marred by a journalistic glibness which led him

into shallow and redundant acrobatics, or facetious saunterings.

He had known Max Oppendorf for nine years, and they had passed through

a comical fanfare of recriminations, friendly invitations, sneers, and

respects. Oppendorf secretly disliked him but was at times fascinated

by his charming pretenses of _camaraderie_, and the quickness of his

mind. At one time, the poet had broken off with Helgin for three

years--a withdrawal caused by his discovery of the other man’s peculiar

and somewhat incredible sense of humor. Penniless, and afflicted

with incipient tuberculosis, Oppendorf had written to his friend and

asked for the loan of two hundred dollars. A special-delivery letter

had flown back to him, containing an unctuously sympathetic note and

announcing the enclosure of a two-hundred-dollar check. The rest of the

envelope had been empty, however, and believing that the absence of the

check was merely an absent-minded error, he dispatched another letter

which apprised his friend of the oversight. In response, Helgin had

sent him the following telegram: “It was a nice joke--hope you enjoyed

it as much as I did.”

Helgin had a sincere admiration for the other man’s work and a veiled,

malicious aversion to the poet’s personal side. To him, Oppendorf’s

life held a supreme taunt which had to be demolished with falsehoods

and ridicule. The poet’s unbroken flaunting of moralities, conventions,

and compromises, reminded Helgin that his own life had not been equally

courageous and defiant, in spite of his endless written shots at

average people and their fears, and that, in his personal existence,

he had frequently prostrated himself before the very observances which

he pilloried, or laughed at, in his books and conversation. This

specter could only be slain by the effort to jeer at the opposite man’s

episodes with men and women, and to hold them forth as clownish and

unrewarded capers.

As Helgin sat now, in the boisterous and tawdrily glassy tearoom, he

spoke to Blanche with the gracious casualness which he always publicly

affected with women. It was a part of his jovially invincible pose to

insinuate that he could have been a perfect libertine had he chosen

to follow that denounced profession, and that his enormous sexual

attractiveness was held in bondage only by his lack of desire and his

ability to peer through the entire, violent fraud of sex itself. In

the dream-world of his own making, through which he moved, loftily but

genially immune to all criticisms, adulations, and importunities, women

were the potential vassals whom he disdained to hire.

On the night previous to the present one, his second wife had departed

on a visit to her family in a distant city, and he had telephoned

Oppendorf and arranged a meeting, prodded by one of the irregular

impulses in which his respect for the other man overcame his opposite

feelings of envy and aversion. Now, he sat and chatted with Blanche

while she listened with an almost abject attention. This great writer,

whose pictures she had run across on the literary pages of newspapers,

and in magazines, was actually seated beside her and speaking to

her--it could scarcely be true! She recalled that Rosenberg had often

lauded Helgin, and that a year previous she had read one of the latter

man’s novels and had liked its “difficult,” thumb-twiddling style

and disliked its patronizing, pitying attitude toward the feminine

characters. Well, when men wrote about women, or women about men, they

never seemed able to become quite fair to each other. They were always

mushy and lenient, on one side, or sneering and unsympathetic on the

other. She voiced this thought to Helgin, who advised her to cease

searching for an unhappy medium. To him, she presented the figure of

a worried, heavily questioning peasant girl, dressed and manicured

for a more polite rôle, and he had a whim to lure her into expectant

admirations and play with her stumbling hungers and wonderings.

Usually, he did not waste his time on such girls--they were more to

Oppendorf’s liking--but for the space of one night he could afford to

risk the impending boredom in a more unassuming manner.

“You must get Oppie to compliment you,” he said, glancing in the poet’s

direction. “He does it perfectly. Women cry for it, babies smile, old

ladies jump out of their chairs. Come on, Oppie, say something about

Miss Palmer’s hair. What does it remind you of? A startled ghost of

dawn, the visible breath of afternoon?”

Oppendorf turned from his whisperings with Margaret, and smiled--a

patient but slightly threatening smile.

“Are you ordering a tailormade suit or buying a box of cigars?” he

asked, sweetly.

“The comparison isn’t quite fair to your poetry, Oppie,” Helgin

answered, in the same sweet voice.

“Monseigneur Helgin, apostle of fairness, sympathy, and tolerance--know

any other good ones, Ben?”--the poet’s smile shone like a sleeping

laugh.

“Your hair is like a tortured midnight--that was a nice line, Oppie,”

Helgin answered pensively, as he ignored the other man’s thrust.

“The actual phrase happens to be ‘transfigured midnight,’” Oppendorf

said, in an ominously subdued voice. “You substituted the word tortured

to make the line meaningless, of course.”

“Sa-ay, wasn’t that tormented night stuff in The Duke of Hoboken, Ben’s

last novel?” Dora Ruvinsky asked, poking Oppendorf in the side.

“Yes, among other frantic mendacities,” Oppendorf answered, as he

looked compassionately at Helgin. “The ancient Chinese had an excellent

proverb: ‘When your stilettos have failed to penetrate the actual

figure, erect a ludicrous dummy and belabor it with an ax.’”

“The Chinese usually come to your rescue,” Helgin retorted, “but you

don’t seem to realize that The Duke of Hoboken is simply a gorgeous and

delirious fantasy. It wasn’t meant to be an actual portrait of you.”

“Yes, you were more innocent than you imagined,” Oppendorf answered,

still smiling.

“Oh, stop all of this polite quarreling, Maxie,” Margaret interposed,

as she looked at Helgin with an open dislike. “Helgin sits in his

little phantom palace, bo-ored and genial, and when you cave in the

walls he scarcely hears you.”

“Your own hearing is just a trifle more adoring, isn’t it?” Helgin

asked, as he looked at Margaret with an expression of complacent malice.

“Yes, it needs to be, if only to counteract yours,” Margaret replied,

tartly.

“Call it a draw, and let’s talk about purple chrysanthemums,” Oppendorf

interjected.

When people persisted in clinging to one subject he was always reminded

of scrubwomen endlessly scouring a pane of glass, unless the theme was

exceptionally complex.

“Dear me, can’t I say something else about the sweet Duke?” Trussel

asked, as he stroked his hair with the fingers of one hand. “It’s

screamingly amusing, really. Lots of the critics have always attacked

Mr. Helgin’s books, you know--called them stilted and, well,

overcynical. That sort of thing. But no-ow, dear me, what a change!

Why, they’re all simply showering praise on the dear Duke of Hobok’.

Of course, there isn’t any connection between this change and the

fact that little Dukie is supposed to be a biting caricature of Mr.

Oppendorf.”

“No, of course not,” Oppendorf replied, thoroughly amused now. “In the

same way, three thoughtful chorus girls were observed last night,

floating in a huge balloon as they crossed the peninsula of Kamchatka.”

“People are always talking about the dead,” Helgin said, in a bored

voice. “The indecent vagaries of critics are not interesting to me.

They might be vastly engrossing to some entomologist, though.”

“Oh, you’re all a lot of bugs,” Dora said, as she caressed Margaret’s

arm while Margaret regarded her with a resigned look that said: “Well,

I suppose you _must_ do this.”

“You’re crazy, and you take yourselves so darn seriously it gives me a

pain!” Dora continued. “Come on, let’s have another drink and act like

human beings.”

The conversation changed to a game in which the others bantered with

Dora and laughed at her amiable but scoffing retorts. Blanche, who had

been bewildered and almost awe-stricken ever since her introduction to

these people, began to listen and observe with a clearer, though still

strongly respectful, attitude. They were the people whom she had always

longed to meet, and they knew much more than she did, and they were

bold creators while she was only despairing and partly tongue-tied,

ye-es, but still, they were by no means perfect. They wasted so much

time in slamming each other as cleverly as they could, and while they

were always good-natured about it, you couldn’t fail to spy the malice

beneath at least half of their smiles and remarks. They never expressed

any whole-hearted liking, or sympathy, or placid interest in their

reactions toward each other, and their talk reminded her of a game

in which each one strove to make his “comeback” a little “smarter”

and quicker than that of the others. Yet Oppendorf alone seemed to be

different. The others, with the exception of Margaret, were always

trying to twit or arouse him--something about him seemed to plague them

almost against their will--and never quite succeeding. His eyes were

sleepy and retiring, and he closed them half of the time during his

conversation. When he laughed or raised his voice now and then, it was

in a jerky way, “like some one else” was pulling some strings tied to

him. Funny man ... what had given him this air of tired sadness? Well,

at any rate, she could never fall in love with him--he was too much

like a careful ghost!

The man whom she loved would have to be robust, and natural, and, well

... sort of eager to be alive, in spite of the fact that he knew all

about the shams and meannesses which life held. Yes, that was it ...

he’d be glad, and a little hopeful, in spite of all the rotten things

he saw and heard.

She began to talk more frankly, her tongue loosened a bit by the two

drinks of whisky that Oppendorf had given her.

“Say, why don’t all of you just call each other liars and boobs, and

have it over with?” she asked, with a smile.

“At an early age, I was confronted by the choice of using the other

side’s tactics now and then or becoming a hermit,” Oppendorf replied,

in his deliberate way. “I am still direct enough, however, to be

ostracized by practically every literary party or group in New York.”

“I admire your indignation,” Helgin said to Blanche. “Ride us all on a

rail and tell us what vicious double-dealers we are.”

He had decided to egg her on for purposes of entertainment. “It

wouldn’t have the least effect on any of you,” Blanche answered,

composedly. “Besides, I’m only a stranger and I really haven’t any

right to criticize. You’re all doing things--real things that amount to

something--and I’m just a hair-curler in a Beauty Shop.”

“Listen, here’s a tip--never be modest when men are around,” Margaret

said, gayly. “They think little enough of women as it is, and they’re

_always_ looking for a chance to walk over us.”

“Oh, it’s too much trouble not to be honest,” Blanche retorted,

lightly. “Let them try to wa-alk, for all I care.”

“Have you ever written, or painted?” Oppendorf asked, liking the

contradiction of her humble brassiness.

“I _have_ fooled around with ideas of being a writer, but I’m afraid I

don’t know English well enough for that,” said Blanche, uncertainly.

“Don’t take up writing, Miss Palmer--it’s only an excuse for laziness,”

Helgin said. “That’s probably why so many young people try to toss off

stories and verses. They have just a bit of imagination and they don’t

like the prospect of slaving in father’s shoe store or helping mother

bake the evening pies.”

“There must be a more important reason than that,” Blanche replied,

soberly.

“Yes, it’s barely possible,” Oppendorf interjected. “It’s a habit with

us to take our profession somewhat flippantly. That’s to avoid giving

the impression that we’re too much in love with ourselves.”

“Funny, you do manage to give the impression, anyway,” Blanche

answered, as she made a grimace.

Oppendorf and the others laughed, and Helgin said: “So, you’ve been

carrying that little dagger all the time. Bright gal.”

“Not at all--just trying to imitate your style,” Blanche retorted,

merrily.

The others had been regarding her as a meek and abashed apprentice

in their realms, but now they began to pelt her with more respectful

badinage, with the exception of Oppendorf, who watched her with a

sleepy stare of approval and remained silent. This girl wasn’t half

stupid at bottom, but just ignorant of many things.

The group repaired to Margaret’s nearby studio and danced to a

phonograph and slipped into varying stages of tipsiness. Helgin did not

dance, but sat in a corner and talked to Blanche. He became mellowly

garrulous and somewhat less malicious, and he regarded Blanche as a

fumbling but slightly diverting barbarian--diverting for a night or two

at least. They were mildly interesting as long as they clung to their

ferocious sassiness, but they always wound up by becoming girlishly

wistful, and pleading, and more disrobed. He began to tell her

anecdotes of his past, in which he was always laughing, penetrating,

and triumphant at somebody else’s expense, and she listened eagerly.

My, but this man certainly knew how to talk! He was always getting the

best of people--you had to take at least forty per cent off from any

fellow’s claims in that direction--but he really was a great writer,

and he knew so many words and handled them so gracefully.

Urged by a perverse whim, he invited Blanche to come with him to a

party which he had promised to attend on the following night. The

affair was to be a gathering of literary and theatrical celebrities

and near celebrities, together with their latest fads and fancies in

human form, and it might be amusing to bring this blunt, would-be

highbrowish, young hair-dresser and see whether the assembled pedestals

would overwhelm her.

While Blanche suspected that he was playing with her and had only the

impulse to grasp a flitting distraction, she felt delighted at this

second opportunity to meet “famous” writers, and artists, and actors,

and as she accepted the invitation she said to herself: “He thinks I’m

just a snippy nobody, and he wants to show me off and then see what

happens--like letting the puppy run loose in the parlor. Oh, I know.

But what do I care? I might make friends at this party with two or

three people just as intelligent as he is, and maybe more honest.”

While Helgin left her emotionally unaroused, she was nevertheless

dazed by his vocabulary and his mental swiftness, which she frequently

had to stumble after, and a little flattered by his talkative

attention, in spite of herself. The genially wise-cracking, quizzically

aloof, and patronizing air, which he never deserted, irritated her

but did not drive away the spell of her attention. After all, he

made Rosenberg, the most intelligent man in her past, sound like a

stuttering, yearning baby. Funny, how you changed! She had once looked

up to this same Rosenberg, as though he were a luring and puzzling god.

Well, that was life--listening and clinging to people until you grew

beyond them. The only man whom she could permanently love would be one

always a little superior to her, and urging her to catch up with him,

and kindly waiting a little now and then, so as not to get too far

ahead of her.

When she reached her home she felt tired but “up in the air.” A long,

hopeless stroll and a chance acquaintanceship had really led her into

a new world--it was like a fairy tale, wasn’t it? Helgin had remained

in the taxicab, after arranging to meet her at Margaret’s studio on the

following night, and hadn’t even attempted to hold her hand ... not

that that mattered, though she was a little curious to know how men of

this kind “went about it.”

He had refrained from touching her because it would have disrupted his

nonchalant posture--the meticulous avoidance of sexual defeat with

which he kept his egotism intact. He was like a watchman, ever alert in

front of a towering but shaky house of cards.

It was 2 A.M. when she entered her bedroom, but her mind was still

spinning and darting about, in spite of her physical weariness, and,

moved by an irresistible desire, and a sudden confidence that had been

born from her surprising evening, she took a pad of paper from one of

her bureau drawers and sat up in bed until 4 A.M., writing a sketch

of the tearoom she had visited, and the people within it. The sketch

was crude and at times ungrammatical, but it had an awkward sense of

irony and humor which clung to small, insufficient words or hugged

inappropriately long ones, and it was filled with clumsily good phrases

such as: “They made a lot of noise and then whispered like they were

ashamed of it,” or “She had small eyes and they got smaller when she

talked,” “She was wearing a daisy, georgette thing and she acted like

it.” Sturdily, but with little equipment, her thought bent to the

novel wrestle with words on paper, and she felt an odd, half-uncertain

thrill when she had finished the sketch. Did it have anything to it,

or was it entirely bad? Well, she’d show it to Helgin or Oppendorf on

the next night and get ready for the old cleaver. Nothing like trying,

anyway, and curiously, she felt a beautiful relief now, as though

she had emptied herself for the first time in a way that approached

satisfaction.

On the next day she was drowsy but cheerful at the Beauty Parlor,

managing somehow to stagger through the quick-fingered details of her

work, but experiencing a rising strain. This would never do--she would

have to be wakeful and at her best for the coming party. It wouldn’t

be like going out with some silly man, feigning to listen to his “I

am it” gab, and leaving him around midnight, with several yawns and

the usual, semievaded kiss and hug. Through using the reliable excuse

of serious illness in her family, she succeeded in leaving the shop at

three in the afternoon, hastening home and sleeping there until nearly

seven. When she sat at the supper-table with the rest of the family,

Harry said: “Say, I’ve got some news for yuh. Ran across Joe Campbell

on Broadway an’ had a long chin-fest with him. He says he begged yuh to

marry him the other night and yuh turned him down flat, but he’s still

leavin’ the prop’sition open. Believe me, I wouldn’t, if I was him. He

asked me to tell yuh, anyway.”

“How interesting,” Blanche replied. “Suppose you tell your friend,

Mister Campbell, to go to the devil.”

“Now, Bla-anie, that’s a nice way to talk,” her mother cried. “I’m

ashamed of you, I am. He’s never done you no harm, far’s I know, an’

he’s been acourtin’ you for over two years now, an’ besides, he’s

gone an’ made you ’n hon-rable pruposul. You could do lots worse than

marryin’ him, you could.”

“Listen, have I got to go through this whole thing over again?”

Blanche asked, exasperated. “I wouldn’t marry Campbell ’f he had ten

million and owned the subway system, and there’s no sense to this

endless jawing match we put on. You can’t understand me and you never

will--it’s not your fault, you just can’t, and what’s more, you ought

to realize it by this time. I’m going my own way and you might as well

leave me alone.”

“Is that so,” her father replied, with a dull, puzzled anger shining in

his little eyes. “I-is that so. You’re jest a stranger here, I s’pose,

an’ you’ve dropped in tuh have supper with us. Sure, that’s it. I’m not

your father an’ I’ve got nothin’ tuh say about you, huh? You’ve got a

lot of nerve f’r a person your age, you have.”

“Yeh, she’s gettin’ a swelled head, all right,” Harry said. “Guess I’ll

have to beat up ’nother one uh her phony guys, an’ tone her down a bit.”

“Oh, you’re just full of wind,” Blanche answered, indifferently.

Mabel had been listening to Blanche with a mixture of reluctant loyalty

and annoyance--this “nut” sister of hers was certainly impossible

to understand, but Campbell had “done her dirty” just the same, and

Blanche had a perfect right to detest him, and it was about time that

the family stopped nagging her on that subject. Mabel’s antagonism

against men and her regarding them as a would-be preying sex made it

imperative that she should be on her sister’s side in this question,

almost against her will.

“I know Blan’s a nut, but stop razzing her about this Campbell stuff,”

she said, glancing disapprovingly around the table. “The way you all

rave about him a person’d think he was a king ’r something. He’s just

like other fellows--waving his dough around an’ trying to put it over

on ev’ry girl he meets. What do you want to do anyway--tie Blan up

an’ carry her down to the license-bureau? She oughta have some rights

around here.”

Taken aback by this unexpected defense from Mabel, and not being able

to think of any immediate and adequate retort, in spite of their

emotional opposition, the parents and Harry lapsed into a short

silence, after which they returned to minor complaints and jovialities.

It was easy to battle with Blanche, who outraged all of their petted

hopes and ideas, but when Mabel contradicted them, their feeling of

innate kinship with her placed them in a temporarily bewildered state

in which they wondered whether they might not be slightly wrong.

Philip, who had squirmed distressedly in his chair and tried to look

unconcerned, according to his custom, secretly prayed for Blanche to

revolt and leave home. It would be better for her--she’d be happier

then, in her crazy but rather likably independent way--and if she did

there’d be some peace around the flat, for the first time.

Blanche, who had felt relieved and a little unwillingly affectionate as

she heard her sister’s support, drew back her chair to leave the table.

“Going out to-night?” Philip asked casually, as he rose.

“Yes, I’m invited to ’n exclusive party ... artists and actors--real,

famous ones that people talk about,” Blanche replied, not being able to

resist the desire to voice her proudly anticipating mood.

“Fa-amous, huh,” Harry said, with a sneer. “Well, you’ll sure be outa

place there, ’f they are.”

“Peddle your wise-cracks somewhere else,” Blanche responded, unruffled.

“We-ell, I don’t care what they are ’cept that you’d better not come

skiddin’ in after breakfast,” her father broke in, gruffly.

What his girls did was their business as long as no one “had the

goods on them” and they kept out of trouble, but at the same time

he didn’t intend to stand for any open flaunting of their possible

transgressions. If a girl came home just before dawn, at the latest,

she might only have been “cutting up” at some wild party or night club,

but if she returned later than that, then it was evident that she had

stayed overnight with some man.

As Blanche stood before her mirror, engrossed in the half-piteous and

half-brazenly hopeful ritual observed by most women--that of applying

cosmetics to her face--a lyric rose and fell in her heart, separated

by skeptical pauses. At last she had a chance to leap from the greasy,

colorless weights of Ninth Avenue, and the cheaply frothy interludes

of Broadway ... but was it only a fair-faced dream? Would the people

in the other impending world laugh at her, or turn their backs? Again,

all of them might turn out to be qualified versions of the group she

had met at Clara’s--mischievous, sneering Helgins, weak and pouting

Trussels, unwomanly Doras, Margarets indifferent to every one save the

men at their sides, and perhaps another approach to Oppendorf--another

intriguing but palely distant figure.

The lyric rose once more and slew the specters. What an expert she was

at borrowing trouble! It was quite possible that at least two or three

of the people whom she was to meet would act friendly toward her and

invite her to other gatherings, or perhaps a really fetching man, more

naked and decent than Helgin, would fall for her.

As she walked down Ninth Avenue to the Elevated station, the scene

incited tinglings of disgust in her whereas, usually, she regarded

it with a passively acceptant dislike, as the great, solid ugliness

from which she could not escape. Now, different objects in the scene

affected her as though she had been pummeled in the face. The garbage

cans at one side of the entrances, frequently overbrimming with decayed

fruit, soiled papers, and old shoes and hats; the pillars and tracks

of the “L” road, stretching out like a still millipede, with smaller

insects shooting over its back; frowsy women, with sallow, vacant

faces, shouting down from upper windows; dirt-streaked boys, wrangling

and cursing in hallways; drab blocks of buildings cramped together,

like huge, seething, shoddy boxes; and clusters of youths on each

corner, leering as though they could scarcely control the desire to

leap upon her.

All of it scraped against her nerves. Why had she remained so long

within it?--it should have become unendurable years ago. Well,

what choice had she ever had?--an unpleasant hall room in some

rooming-shack. She could not afford more than that. But why, oh, why,

was she so depressed on this evening of all others--this evening when

for the first time she had something novel and promising to look

forward to? The lyric started again and the black pause terminated. She

became more in tune with an insidious, dodging gayety that somehow

survived the grossness of Ninth Avenue and sounded in the mildly warm

air of the late spring evening. In the dark-brown duvetyn dress that

stopped at her knees, black chiffon turban, flesh-colored stockings and

brown pumps, she could almost have been mistaken for some society girl

on a slumming tour.

When she reached Margaret’s studio, Helgin and Oppendorf had already

arrived and were immersed in a game of dice for dimes, while Margaret

finished her toilette. The studio had a low, broad couch covered

with dark green taffeta and batik cushions, and gaudily painted

furniture, and a little kitchenette and bathroom adjoined it. Helgin

greeted Blanche in the affable boyish way which he could affect for

moments--the miraculous atom of humility sometimes flitting to the

surface of his poised urbanities.

“Are you prepared to be thrilled?” he asked her, as she seated herself.

“Listen, I’m a hard-boiled egg from Hell’s Kitchen, and I don’t thrill

so easy,” she answered, with the impudent desire to shatter his smiling

condescension.

“Well, well, little tough Annie from behind the gas works,” he said.

“How did you manage to stuff your boxing gloves into that vanity case?”

“Don’t need them--bare knuckles where I come from,” she retorted,

smiling back at him.

“Stop it, Ben, you’ve met your match this time,” Oppendorf called out

from the armchair where he was pensively eying a tiny glass of gin held

in his right hand. “The awkward fighter can always beat the clever one

if he stands and waits for Sir Cleverness to rush him.”

“Oppie always instructs me--he can’t bear the thought of my being

vanquished,” Helgin replied, lightly.

“Well, I don’t know, I _have_ managed to bear it now and then,”

Oppendorf said, before swallowing the gin.

“Didn’t both of you promise me not to be sarcastic for one night?”

Margaret asked, as she entered the studio. “If I had the muscle, why,

I’d spank the two of you!”

“Start with Ben--it might change his entire life,” Oppendorf said,

grinning.

“Oh, you’re not so sweet-tempered yourself,” she replied, as she

pinched his cheek.

“You’re quite right, I’m a snarling, vituperative, vindictive man until

your smile creates a miracle within me,” he said, as he bowed low to

her.

Whenever Oppendorf liked a woman he treated her at times with a

whimsical pretense of courtliness and deference, merrily overdone

enough to make the whimsicality apparent.

“How easy it would be to believe you,” she responded, with a sigh that

carried off the vestige of a smile.

“Emotions are never false--even the masquerade must become real before

it can be persuasive,” Oppendorf answered, quickly changing to a mien

of abstracted, impersonal challenge. “When the reality survives for a

long time it is called sincere and true, and people have faith in it.

It may be just as real for a moment, an hour, six days.”

“You’re a sophist and a promiscuous wretch, and I’ll probably wind up

by hating you,” Margaret said, as she slid into his arms. “Just as a

person begins to depend on you ... you flit away ... I know.”

“Why does a woman hate a man when he departs with an honest

abruptness?”--Oppendorf shifted to the inquiry of a distressed child.

“Or, why do men hate women for the same reason? I am immersed in you

at present because you contain qualities which I cannot find in the

other women around me. To-night, perhaps, or in a month from now, I may

meet another woman who does possess them, together with other qualities

which you lack. In such a case, my immersion would naturally transfer

itself. God, how human beings detest everything except the snug, warm

permanence which is either a lie or an unsearching sleep!”

“There’s nothing logical about pain, Max,” Margaret said. “It _must_ be

deaf, and angry, and blind, and pleading, until it dies down. When a

girl’s lover goes off, her mind can say: ‘He revived and stimulated me,

and I’m glad I did have him for a while,’ but just the same her heart

still cries out: ‘Oh, he’s mean, and selfish, and treacherous, and I

hate him!’”

Although she was conversing with Helgin, on the couch, Blanche had

caught bits of the other couple’s talk, and they brought a worried

tinge to her heart. Oppendorf was wrong--in very rare cases a man and

a woman _could_ love each other forever. Of course, the cases were

rare simply because people deeply harmonious in every way, from their

dancing-steps and tastes in clothes down to the very last opinion in

their minds, hardly ever met each other. That was it. It was simply a

question of luck as to whether you’d find this one person in a million

or not.

Helgin called out: “Well, Don Juan’s defending himself again. He’s more

convincing when he doesn’t talk. Come on, Oppie, stop the necking for a

while and join us. You’re falling into the boresome habit of dropping

into a lady’s arms for hours and spoiling the party.”

“I never object to other people taking the same privilege,” Oppendorf

replied, placidly, as Margaret slipped from his lap.

“Perhaps we’re not as impatient as you,” Helgin said, grinning.

“Or perhaps you hide your impatience more patiently--there are so many

possibilities,” Oppendorf retorted.

“Say, Oscar Wilde once opened a small-talk shop--the store has been

well patronized ever since,” Blanche said, flippantly.

The line wasn’t her own--it had been in the last novel she had

read--but she wanted to see what its effect would be on these men, and

whether it would impress them.

“The gal’s improving,” Helgin replied. “Come on, take off your little

costume. You’re a college-student trying to write, and you thought

you’d be more interesting if you posed as a slangy hair-dresser.”

“The best way to fool you people is not to pose at all,” Margaret said,

smiling.

“It’s not a bad idea--I’ve tried it myself,” Oppendorf interjected.

“Ti-ti-tum, come on, let’s go to the party,” Margaret interrupted. “You

can all keep it up on the way over.”

After they were all in a taxicab and speeding uptown, Helgin said to

Blanche: “Didn’t you give Oppie a manuscript at the studio?”

“Yes, it’s something I wrote about the tearoom where we sat last

night,” Blanche answered. “He’s such a frank man, and I know he’ll tell

me whether it’s just trash, or not.”

“It’s becoming very amusing,” Helgin continued. “Nowadays, if you

meet a manicurist you never know when she’s going to stop polishing

your nails and draw the great, American lyric out of her sleeve, and

the waiter at the café tries to induce you to read his startling,

unpublished novel, and the bootblack shoves a short-story under your

nose. None of these people would dare to attempt a painting or a

sonata. The popular superstition is that literature consists of a deep

longing plus thousands of words thrown helter-skelter together.”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt them to try--they’ll never find out what their

ability is, ’f they don’t,” Blanche replied, defiantly.

“That’s right, don’t let him razz you,” Margaret broke in. “Masefield

was once a bar-room porter, you know.”

“Please pick out a better example,” Oppendorf said.

Then he turned to Blanche.

“Your grammar is atrocious at times, but you have originality, and

there’s a razor in your humor,” he went on. “Keep on writing, and study

syntax and the declensions of verbs--they’re still fairly well observed

by every one except the Dadaists. I’ll have you in several magazines in

another two months. And thank God you’re not a poet. If you were, you’d

get fifty cents a line, mixed in with profound excuses!”

“Do you really mean it?” Blanche asked, delightedly.

“Of course.”

“Why, I’ll work like a nigger ’f I can really make something of myself

as a writer,” Blanche cried, enraptured.

“I hope you’re not giving any pleasant mirages to Miss Palmer,” Helgin

said, wondering whether Oppendorf was not merely seeking to flatter her

into an eventual physical capitulation. “I know your weakness. When we

were getting out The New Age you’d plague me every day with verses from

girl-friends of yours, and they were always rank imitations of your own

style.”

“You seem to have the delusion that every beginner, with a sense of

irony and a deliberate style, is an echo of mine,” Oppendorf replied,

undisturbed. “You’d treat these people with a flippant impatience,

but I’d rather err on the side of encouraging them, unless they’re

saturated with platitudes and gush.”

“Yes, you _are_ apt to make such mistakes, especially in the case of

some pretty girl,” Helgin said, with a malicious grin.

“Have it your way, Ben,” Oppendorf responded, indifferently.

Blanche listened with a serene confidence in Oppendorf--he never lied

about anything connected with writing: somehow she felt sure of that.

Literature was too serious a matter to him.

For a moment Margaret looked a little jealously at Blanche, pestered

by the suspicion that Oppendorf might have praised Blanche’s work as a

first move toward conquering her--a suspicion which Helgin had known

would be caused by his words. Then Margaret remembered how he had

viciously assailed her own short-stories just after her first meeting

with him, when he had known that she would have prostrated herself

before him for the least word of praise, and with the remembrance her

doubts perished.

“Be on your good behavior to-night,” Helgin said to Oppendorf.

“Vanderin didn’t want to invite you, but I convinced him that you had

become a chastened and amiable gentleman. I wouldn’t like to see you

thrown down the stairway--it gives smaller people a chance to gloat

over you.”

“Are you really as wild as all that?” Blanche asked, looking

incredulously at Oppendorf’s subdued pallidness.

“The stairway myth is one in a celebrated list,” Oppendorf replied.

“You’ll find many of the others in Mr. Helgin’s affectionate tribute

to me--his last novel. The list is a superb one. I deceived some

social-radical friends by pretending to defy the draft laws during the

war. I faked a broken shoulder and sponged on some other friends. I

was caught in the act of attempting to ravish a twelve-year-old girl.

I leap upon women at parties and manhandle them while they shriek for

mercy, in contrast to the other men present, who never do more than

audaciously grasp the little fingers of the same ladies. The amusing

part of it is that none of my actual crimes and offenses are on the

list. I could give my admirers some real ammunition if they would only

ask me for it.”

“But why do they tell such hideous lies about you?” Blanche asked

naively.

“I’ll tell you why,” Margaret broke in, indignantly. “It’s because

they hate him and fear him. He gets beneath their skins and mocks at

all their little idols, and squirmings, and compromises. They want to

pulverize him, but he hardly ever gives them any real opportunities,

so they’re reduced to falling back on their imaginations and insisting

that he’s a clownish monster. It’s a beautiful system of exaggerations,

all right! If he happens to be drunk at a party, it’s immediately

reported that he was pushed down the stairs, and if he’s seen stroking

a woman’s arm it’s always said that he hu-urled himself upon her.”

“It must be troublesome to hear your perfect lover so sadly maligned in

spite of his eloquent assertions of innocence,” Helgin said, smiling.

“Most of the stories are really told in admiration of his savage gifts.”

“Yes, the admiration is both profound and imaginative,” Oppendorf

retorted, with a weary return of the smile.

Blanche listened to the others with feelings of uncertainty and dismay.

How could refined, serious, artistic people act so rottenly toward

each other? They weren’t so very much different from the toughs in

her neighborhood, except that they used words while the gangsters

and bullies employed their feet and fists, or fell back on guns and

knives. The gangsters were far less dangerous, too. They could only

hurt a person for a short time, or else kill him and send him beyond

any further injury, but these artist-people with their mean tongues

and their sneering stories could damage some one for the rest of his

life, in different ways. Oh, well, maybe most people were always alike,

except that some of them were clever and had minds, while others were

more inept and stupid. What real difference was there between the

endless digs which her new acquaintances traded and the catty remarks

which she heard every day at the Beauty Parlor? Still, she made a

mental reservation in the case of Oppendorf. He had to retaliate or

keep quiet, and he never started any of the sarcasm, as far as she

could hear, though he certainly could finish it! If he had only been

physically stronger, and more blithely animated, she could have fallen

in love with him. This ideal man of hers!--she’d probably never meet

him. It only happened in story-books. But, at any rate, she intended

to apply herself to writing and feel of some importance for a change.

How relieved and happy she had been after putting down the last word

of her tearoom sketch--it had been almost the first real thrill in her

life.

When she entered Paul Vanderin’s large, high-ceilinged studio and spied

the Juliet balcony that ran around two sides of it, with rooms leading

out on the balcony, and the profusion of statues and paintings--most

of them weird or fiercely unorthodox--and the grand piano, and the

abundance of luxurious furniture in neutral shades, she sighed and

slipped a hand over her eyes. How delirious it must be to live in a

place of this kind--big, and high, and filled with conveniences and

intensely interesting objects--and how different it was from her own

small, ugly room, with the ceiling hemming you in as though you were in

a cage. Life was so darned unfair--lavishing favors, and stimulations,

and beauties on some people and treating others in the most grudging

and miserly fashion. Well, that was an old story--no good to rave over

it. You had to beat life to its knees somehow, sharpening your mind and

trying to express yourself, and praying for luck.

Several people had already gathered in the studio, and as she walked

beside Helgin in the round of introductions, she opened her mouth and

felt stunned at the discovery that some of them ... were negroes! This

was really astonishing--she had never dreamt that cultured, artistic

white people mingled with black and brown men and women on terms of

familiar friendship! Her head felt in a turmoil and she couldn’t decide

whether these contacts were right or wrong, whether she herself could

join them without shrinking. Of course, human beings were all equal

and shouldn’t look down upon each other because the color of their

skins varied, but ... didn’t it go much deeper than that? Wasn’t there

a physical repugnance between the different races--a strong feeling

that simply couldn’t be overcome? Certainly, she had always thought so.

She had spoken to negroes, and Japanese, and Chinamen before, and had

even joked with them--elevator boys, and porters, and waiters, and

laundry-men--but she had never cared for their physical proximity and

had always felt repulsed if they happened to brush against her. But

still, they had been unrefined and ordinary, while these negroes were

intelligent and cultured, and spoke about art and psychology. This

was a revelation, as she had never imagined that negroes of this kind

existed, except in the ratio of one to tens of thousands. She had heard

vaguely of Booker T. Washington, and famous negro lawyers, and, oh

yes, a negro writer named Du Bois, whom Rosenberg had always talked

about, but she had thought that they were rarities and had even felt a

flitting pity for their isolation among their own race.

Of course, she had been foolish and thoughtless--there was no valid

reason why negroes should not voice their feelings and search for

beauty and uniqueness, instead of always clinging to some business or

manual labor. They were human beings, too, and their hearts and minds

were probably often much more restless than those of most white people.

Besides, since these white writers and artists mixed with negroes, it

must be that society was gradually beginning to approve of this union

and was losing its prejudice in the matter. Sti-ill, perhaps these

negroes and whites simply talked to each other, or danced together,

without any sexual intimacies. Surely, there was no harm in that.

As she sat beside Helgin she voiced her perplexity.

“Say, I never knew that black and white people went to the same

parties,” she said. “I don’t quite know what to think of it.”

“Oh, yes, it’s the latest fad among white dilettantes,” Helgin replied.

“They became weary of their other enthusiasms--finding a tragic,

esthetic beauty in Charlie Chaplin and other slapstick comedians, and

raving over East Side Burlesque Shows, and making Greek gladiators

out of flat-nosed prize-fighters, and hunting for love in Greenwich

Village. They are now busily engaged in patronizing and eulogizing

the negro race. Vanderin is one of the ring-leaders in the matter.

It tickles his jaded senses and reassures him of his decadence, and

provides him with material for novels.”

“But isn’t any of it sincere and honest?” Blanche inquired.

“Certainly--negro and white writers and artists are actually starting

to tear down the age-old barriers,” Helgin responded. “What begins as a

fad can end as an avalanche. I really hope it happens.”

“But ... but tell me, do negro and white men and women have anything to

do with each other?” Blanche asked, falteringly.

Helgin laughed.

“Do you see that couple over there?” he asked. “The tall, Nordic kid

and the mulatto girl in red. They’re always together at every party.

Of course, white men have had negro mistresses in the past, with

everything veiled and a little shamefaced, but this is different. It’s

out in the open now, and it’s on the basis of deep mental and spiritual

understanding.”

“I don’t want to be narrow-minded,” Blanche answered, “but I don’t see

how they can love each other--they must be lying to themselves. The

races just weren’t meant to have physical relations with each other.

There’s something, something in their flesh and blood that stands

between, like ... like a warning signal. That’s it.”

As she spoke, though, she had the sensation of uttering sentences

which she had borrowed from books and other people, and which did not

decisively express her opinions.

“Oh, it doesn’t last long, usually,” Helgin said. “It’s not often that

they live permanently together and raise families, but the infatuations

are fierce enough while they last. And even intermarriage is becoming

more common.”

“We-ell, I’d like to talk to a negro boy, ’f he were intelligent and

brilliant-like, you know, but I don’t think I could fall in love with

him, even then,” Blanche replied. “You can’t reason about it ... it’s

there, that’s all.”

Vanderin walked up and spoke to Blanche. He was a tall, robust man with

gray hair and a half-bald head and a ruddy, mildly sensual face. His

speech and manners were genially suave and yet reserved, and there

was something about his large eyes that resembled the look of a child

playing with toys to hide its weariness.

“You don’t mind our mixed gathering, I hope,” he said to Blanche. “I

find the negro race to be very congenial, and just beginning to wake

up. There are negro painters and poets here to-night who are quite able

to stand shoulder to shoulder with white creators.”

“Tell us all about their plaintive, erotic, defiant quality,” Helgin

said. “You do it well, Paul--come on.”

Vanderin laughed as he retorted: “You’ll have to read it in my next

book, old skeptic. I’m not giving lectures to-night.”

“But won’t you tell me something about them?” Blanche asked,

pleadingly. “I’m a frightful simpleton in all these matters, but I do

want to find out about them.”

Helgin rose and joined a group, while Vanderin sat down and conversed

with Blanche. He fascinated her as he told her grotesquely humorous,

slightly bawdy anecdotes of Harlem’s night life and spoke of cabarets

where negroes and whites danced and frolicked with a savagely paganish

abandonment, and described the motives and longings behind negro music

and writing. According to Vanderin, negroes were pouncing upon the

restrained and timorous art of America and revitalizing it with an

unashamed sensuality, and more simple and tortured longings, and a more

grimly questioning attitude of mind.

As Blanche listened to his silkenly baritone voice she reproached

herself for her lack of a warm response toward this persuasive, exotic

man. His mind intrigued her but her heart still beat evenly. She

seemed to sense something of a huge, amiable, carelessly treacherous

cat within him--one who lazily and perversely hunted for distractions

and amusements, without allowing anything or any one to move him

deeply, and who could become cruel or disdainful in the tremor of

an eyelash. Why did all of the mentally luring men she had ever met

fail to overpower her emotions? So far, her heart had been moderately

stirred only by mental weaklings or frauds. Oh, dear, this business of

searching for an ideal was certainly a shadowy mess!

Vanderin excused himself to greet some new arrivals, and Margaret

dropped into his chair.

“How do you like the hectic fricassee?” she asked, half waving her hand

toward a boisterous group of negroes and whites, who stood with arms

interlocked.

“I’m very confused about it,” Blanche said. “One part of me, now, it

says, ‘Come on, Blanie, be a good sport and don’t be prejudiced,’

but there’s another part, you see, and it sort of shrinks away, and

wonders, well ... and wonders how they can kiss and hug each other.”

“Listen, you ain’ seen nothin’ yet,” Margaret answered, jocosely. “I’ve

been to parties where white and colored people were doing everything

but, and they weren’t lowbrows, either. Real artists, and writers, and

actors.”

“Well, how do you feel about it?” Blanche asked.

“I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m not intolerant,” Margaret said. “Some

people have this instinctive, physical aversion to other races, you

know, and some just haven’t. I’ve talked to colored men for hours and

felt very immersed in what they said, but I could never have spooned

with them.”

“Well, I’m probably built the same way, but I’m not at all sure about

it,” Blanche responded. “I’m not sure about anything, to-night. It’s

all too new to me.”

A tall, jaunty, colored youth whisked Margaret away, and a portly,

courtly man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles sat down beside Blanche

and began to tell her all about an immortal play which he had written,

but which the managers were hesitating over because it hadn’t strolled

into the box-office. The playwright was garrulous, using his arms as a

sweeping emphasis for his remarks, and Blanche wondered whether she was

listening to a genius or an untalented boaster. Some day she’d meet a

man who didn’t claim to be superb in his particular line ... some day

snow would fall in July.

The gathering became slowly silent as Vanderin announced that a poet

was about to recite. The poet, a young negro, Christopher Culbert, read

some of his sonnets, in a liquid and at times almost shrill voice. He

had a round, dark-brown face, and a body verging on chubbiness, and his

verses were filled with adored colors and a sentimentality that flirted

with morbidity for moments and then repented. He was effeminate and

jovial in his manner, and after the reading he returned to his place

on a couch beside another negro youth. Then another man, blackish

brown and with the body of an athlete, sang spirituals, with a crazy,

half-sobbing, swaying quaver in his voice. A curious blending and

contrast of elation and austerity seemed to cling to him. As he intoned

the words of one song: “Ho-ow d’yuh kno-ow, ho-ow d’yuh kno-o-ow, a-t

the blo-od done si-ign mah na-a-me?”, Blanche felt shivers racing up

and down her spine. These negroes certainly had something which white

people couldn’t possibly imitate--something that made you feel wild,

and sad, and swung you off your feet! It was hard to put your finger on

it--perhaps it was a kind of insanity.

When the singer had finished, Vanderin announced that Miss Bee Rollins,

of the Down South night club would do the Charleston dance. She stepped

forward--a palely creamish-brown skinned young negress with a lissom

body incongruously plump about the waist, and an oval face, infinitely

impertinent and infinitely sensual in a loosely heavy way. She twisted

and bobbed and jerked through the maniacal obliquely see-sawing and

shuffling steps of the Charleston, with a tense leer on her face, and

inhumanly flexible legs. She was madly applauded and forced to several

encores. Then the party broke up into dancing and more steady drinking,

with different negroes playing at the piano, and the assistance of a

phonograph in between.

The dancers undulated and embraced in a way that surprised

Blanche--even in the cheap dance halls which she had frequented, the

floor-watchers always immediately ordered off all couples who tried

to get away with such rough stuff. Well, anyway, it wasn’t the main

part of these people’s lives--their only thrill and importance--as

it was with the dance-hall men and women. The couples in this studio

were only “cutting up” between their more serious, searching labors

and expressions, and they were certainly more entitled to be frankly

sexual, if they wanted to.

Blanche stepped over the floor with several negro and white men, and

enjoyed the novelty of dancing as extremely as the other couples did,

though she felt the least bit guilty about it--it certainly was “going

the limit.” As she danced with the negroes she felt surprised at her

lack of aversion to the closeness of their bodies. Somehow, they danced

with a rhythmical, subtle, audacious fervor which her white partners

could never quite duplicate, and she was swung into a happy harmony

with their movements in spite of herself.

As she was catching her breath between dances, she watched some of the

negroes around her. One of them, a short, slender girl in a dark red

smock and a short black skirt, was conversing with a white youth in a

dark suit, who looked like a solemnly tipsy mingling of clergyman and

pagan. She had a pale brown skin, black curls of bobbed hair, thin

lips, and a pug nose. She held his hand and gave him distrustfully

tender looks.

Blanche caught fragments of their conversation.

“You don’t love me, hon.... You can get white girls prettier than I

am--I know....”