THE War was over, the men were coming home. All Harlem was delirious
with excitement. Everything conceivable must be done for “the boys,” for
those boys who having fought a double battle in France, one with Germany
and one with white America, had yet marvelously, incredibly, returned
safely home. There were all sorts and conditions of black men, Harvard
graduates and Alabama farmhands. These last had seen Paris before they
had seen New York and they blessed the War which had given them a chance
to see the great capital.
There were parties, dances, fêtes, concerts, benefits. Everybody who
possessed the least discernible “talent” was called upon; Joanna among
them. She surprised even her most intimate friends by her graciousness.
Night after night, when the performance was over, she appeared,
splendid, glowing, symbolic before those huge dark masses in some uptown
hall. The “boys,” starved for a sight of their own women with their dark
pervading beauty, went mad over her. She was indeed for them “Miss
America,” making them forget to-night the ingratitude with which their
country would meet them to-morrow.
At none of these assemblies did Joanna find what she was looking for—a
sight of Peter. She had gone at first out of sheer graciousness—a
willingness to do something for these brave men. But later, there was
another reason; something happened which led her to expect to see Peter
at any moment, at any turn. She met Vera Manning.
“Vera, you imp! Telling those people that you had gone to school with me
to learn democracy; I nearly died! Where’ve you been this long while?
How wonderful you look! And how different!”
“Oh, Joanna, Joanna, I was coming to see you! First of all I’ve been
South. I got sick of going about with those white people, so I cast
about for something to do. You remember they mobbed some colored
soldiers in Arkansas because they’d worn their uniforms in the street?
Well, it made me sick, it made me think of—of Harley. So I rushed to a
newspaper, Barney Kirchner is the manager—wasn’t he one of Philip’s
friends? And I told them: ‘I’m colored, see, but nobody would guess it;
send me down there. See if I can’t get a line on those people.’”
“Mercy,” said Joanna, “what an idea!”
“And they sent me. And, oh, Joanna, it was wonderful to see how our
folks, those colored people, trusted me and shielded me when they found
I was one of them. And those white bullies, thinking I was one of
_them_, told me the most blood-curdling, most fiendish tales. I really
got an investigation started. Mr. Kirchner has taken it up. Oh, Joanna,
I’m glad I’m colored—there’s something terrible, terrible about white
people.”
She had seen a side of life which had first amazed, then frightened,
then incited her. Joanna had never seen her friend like this, so roused
and quickened, so purposeful. “It was as though at last I had found some
excuse for being what I am, looking like one race and belonging to
another. It made me feel like—don’t laugh—like a ministering angel. Oh,
I hated myself so for having spent all those foolish months, years even,
away from my own folks when I might have been consecrated to them,
serving them, helping them, healing them. You can’t understand just how
I feel, Janna dear. You’ve always had a definite something before you to
make out of your life. I tell you I feel as though I had found a new
heaven and a new earth.”
“Wasn’t it awfully dangerous, Vera?”
“Awfully, and funny, too. Exciting! I’ll never be able to get back to
Little Rock again. They found me out, suspected me. I really had to make
a quick get-away. Something so rotten happened, I just couldn’t control
myself.”
She told her friend that she had finished the investigation on hand and
was quietly preparing to go. It happened that on her last night at the
hotel where she was staying, the hotel management was approached on the
subject of having sold liquor to two young white women, the questionable
guests of three or four white men. Vera, secretly amused to realize that
she had been staying at such a resort, thought nothing of the
disturbance until she learned that the colored bell boys were charged
with aiding and abetting the women in violation of the law.
“So I followed it up, Joanna. And what do you think happened? When the
case came up for trial, the girls who had been taken up on charges of
assignation were adjudged not guilty, but the two bell-hops were held
for serving liquor under orders, and aiding in a crime which this same
court says never was committed. Isn’t it all too absurd! I made so much
row about it that they became suspicious. A colored woman whom I had
never seen before passed me on the street and handed me a note, in which
she told me that my actions had made ‘them’ highly suspicious of me.
Some one suggested that perhaps I was a ‘yaller nigger passin’,’ and if
so I’d better look out. So I got out. Oh, there was plenty of
excitement, but it was worth it. I’m going to play the same game
somewhere else, just as soon as I can. Do you know, I’m—I’m almost glad
that I am forced to devote the rest of my life to it.”
“Forced to devote your life to it,” Joanna repeated, bewildered. “Why,
what do you mean?”
A subtle change came over Vera’s face. It was almost as though one could
see her marshaling her inner forces, her spiritual resources. Despair,
resolve, pride, courage—her friend could descry each in turn. Then she
laughed her old confident laugh.
“Well, it’s like this, Janna. I’ve had a message—indirectly—from Harley.
He—” she bit her lip, “he isn’t coming back to America. He managed to
get his discharge in France and he’s made up his mind to live there.
Isn’t it great for him? It means he’ll have to start his training all
over again, but he says he’d rather do that than waste his life bucking
this color business any more. And there’s all sorts of work for a
dentist in those little French towns. Just imagine old Harley’s being
free to come and go as he pleases. No more insults for him, no more
lynching news. Why, it’ll be life all over for him, won’t it, Jan? And I
can’t blame him,” she broke off breathlessly, “once I might have thought
the thing for him to do was to stay with his own folks, but life cheats
us colored people so. I wish I had understood that earlier. White and
colored people! No wonder Peter used to rave as he did.” She ended
astoundingly: “I suppose you and he have made up.”
“Who?” asked Joanna stupidly. “Peter and—and me? Why, I haven’t seen
him. Why, he’s going to marry Maggie Ellersley!”
“Marry Maggie nothing! Here, here’s an Automat. We’ll be all right in
here. Miss Maggie Ellersley is going to marry your brother. Didn’t you
know it?”
“No, but I’m glad of it, glad of it. How’d you know all this, Vera?”
“Peter told me, of course. I’ve seen him. He’s the most perfect darling
in his uniform! You ought to hear him raving about France, but silent as
the tomb about the War. He says the colored soldiers were all
sold—fighting for freedom was a farce so far as they were concerned. But
France is all right if the white Americans don’t get in too much
propaganda. I’ve been meaning to write to you, to tell you you’d better
go over there. No end of chances for you on the French stage. You might
even get in French opera. Are you sure you haven’t seen Peter, sly
thing?”
“Of course I’m sure. There was really no reason why I should. Mr. Bye
and I haven’t seen or heard from each other for three years, now.”
“Mr. Bye! Well, good evening, Miss High and Mighty. If I see him I’ll
tell him I saw you.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. Stop all this raving, Vera, and explain
to me about Harley. Are you going to France, too?”
Vera looked at her with a too perfect astonishment. “I going? Joanna,
how did you ever get credit for being so brilliant, you’re really quite
thick-witted. Don’t you see Harley’s and my ways are going to lie
separate forever? He is going East and I am going—South.” Her gayety
forsook her. “Joanna, don’t let me cry in this awful place. I got it out
of Peter. I made him tell me. He says Harley is bitter and cynical. He
says, over and over, Peter told me: ‘Look at these little French girls,
they’re really white and they don’t seem to hate me. And yet a girl of
my own race hesitates to marry me merely because she looks like white.’”
She pressed her hand hard against her quivering mouth. “It seems he
can’t forgive me. Peter told me so I could be prepared for anything I
might hear. Oh, Janna, this terrible country with its false ideals! So
you see why I’m glad there’s the South to go to—I’ve got to choose
between life and death. Even if I should lose my life in Georgia or in
one of those other terrible places where they lynch women, too, I’ll
save it, won’t I? I must go. Kiss me good-by, dear Janna.”
She was off in a moment in her pretty, modish costume, leaving Joanna in
a maze of pity and tenderness for her friend, and of sick bewilderment
for herself.
Peter was free; he was, presumably, home, and he had not come near her.
Some of the old pain surged up. She was walking presently along teeming
Lenox Avenue. Some young girls passing turned and stared. “That’s Joanna
Marshall. You know, the dancer.” A dark colored girl wearing Russian
boots and a hat with three feathers sticking up straight, Indian
fashion, came along. Lenox Avenue stared, pointed, laughed and enjoyed
itself, Joanna’s admirer with the rest.
This, this was fame—to be shared with any girl who chose to stick
feathers, Indian fashion, in her hat. An empty thing—different, so
different from what she had expected it to be. It had not occurred to
her that it would be the only thing in her life. Probing relentlessly
into an evasive subconsciousness she evolved the realization that in
those other days she had expected her singing, her dancing—her success
in a word—to be the mere integument of her life, the big handsome extra
wrap to cover her more ordinary dress,—the essential, delightful
commonplaces of living, the kernel of life, home, children, and adoring
husband.
This was too much like examining the bones, the skull and skeleton of
living and then every day tricking it out with the one thing which could
lend it the semblance of flesh and color, though always with the vivid
knowledge that death lay hidden beneath.
If her gift were only something useful! Even Vera Manning, a mere
butterfly, had turned the trick, had used her one specialty, her absence
of color, to the advantage of her people. But she—of course it did mean
something to prove to a skeptical world the artistry of a too little
understood people—but she could do that only in New York. After the
season closed here she was to have a brief showing in Boston, in
Philadelphia and in Chicago. Even there, as here, she would have to
appear in independent theaters. The big theatrical trusts refused her
absolutely—one had even said frankly: “We’ll try a colored man in a
white company but we won’t have any colored women.”
Her manager, who liked and respected her, had told her only last week
that he had nothing in view for her after the brief tour. He felt there
was money in the South, but the southern newspapers had started to
editorialize against her already. “A negress,” a Georgia newspaper had
said, “in the rôle of America. Shameful!”
“We might get a showing among colored patrons, Miss Marshall. But the
South is in an ugly mood just now. Those hoodlums might break the show
up. I’d hate to expose you to it. God, what a country!”
It was just possible that she might get a booking in a high-class
vaudeville house. “And later on we’ll write a play around you. It would
take mighty little to make a fine actress out of you. That’s a fact,
Miss Marshall. And after we’ve had a run here we could cross the pond.”
This, this, was her great success. She loved and hated it. But she would
not have been human if she had not wished for Peter to see her in her
triumph, empty though it might prove to be.
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