s





TO
My Sisters
Caroline, Anna and Beatrice Fauset
". . . loved long since,
And lost awhile."





CONTENTS
PAGE
I. The Plot 3
II. The Characters 33
III. Teresa's Act 69
IV. Oliver's Act l87
V. Phebe's Act 229
VI. Curtain 321





I
THE PLOT





CHAPTER I
ONCE, before Olivia had attained to that self-absorption
and single-mindedness which were to stamp her later
life, she had remarked a text in Sunday School which had
given her considerable pause. It read: "Behold how great
a matter a little fire kindleth." She had gazed at it with
unimaginative and wholly preoccupied concentration, struck
for the moment with the solemnity and awfulness inhering
in the words. After a few moments' reflection she came to
the conclusion—she was nine at the time—that "the little
fire" was a match and "the great matter" of course was a
great fire. The Bible had such a roundabout way of saying
things!
It is likely that never again in her whole life did she con-
sider that text. For it was not many years later that a little
fire kindled for her a great matter with which she was
destined to combat all her life. But she herself did not
know that she was engaged in any struggle nor was she
oftener than once even dimly aware of the vastness and
extent of the conflagration.
The little fire was really kindled by two events. The first
took place one glacial January afternoon when a snowball
aimed none too adroitly by her small tawny hand found a
more direct mark than she anticipated. The girl whom she
had hit lived in the same block with her, but had never
before spoken to her little colored neighbor. Now she
3


4
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
turned and called out with raucous fury: "Don't you ever
hit me again with a snowball, you nasty little nigger!"
The other children had been perfectly cognizant of
Olivia's bronze-brown father with his crisp black hair and
his merry eyes. But Olivia and her pleasant-spoken mother
had been so completely like themselves in appearance that
they had not let all the implications creep into their minds.
Now suddenly awareness came upon them. Some with-
drew, glancing at her aloofly. Others went on with their
play apparently oblivious and yet contriving with some
show of ostentation to leave her out. But one little girl as
nut-brown and as curly-haired as Olivia herself, placed a
warm tender hand on hers. "Olivia," she whispered with
an insight far beyond her years, "it doesn't make any dif-
ference."
Olivia could brook neither the insult nor the pity. Brush-
ing aside her playmate's hand she rushed into the house
where she brooded long and bitterly over this awful thing
which had happened to her. To be considered different!
... All ignorant as she was of the laws of heredity she
knew that her father's original brownness was in some way
responsible for her own. . . . He was lying ill then with
pneumonia in an adjoining room . . . her mother, wan and
pale and drooping with the apprehension entailed upon her
by the illimitable love which she bore him, hung mutely,
despairingly over him. . . .
Olivia almost hated them both with a flaring intensity no
less violent for the immaturity of the heart which engen-
dered it. How could they—how could they have made her
colored? How could they lead the merry, careless life that
was theirs with this hateful disgrace always upon them?
... A question which she was never able to answer, since


THE PLOT
5
neither at nine nor at thirty-nine was she ever able to com-
prehend, much less experience, the perfection of rapture
which may spring from human relationships.
Within a month her father had died, their little house-
hold was broken up and her mother, suddenly destitute but
unresentful, had moved Olivia and her slender effects to
another Massachusetts town in which there was a possi-
bility of work in a mill. By chance she found a tiny house
skirting an Italian neighborhood and sent her daughter to
school within the district. And it was thus that the second
event added its own contribution to "the great fire."
If only a god could have intervened! If he could have
set his stern lips to the rosy ear of Olivia's new, young and
completely unobservant teacher. If he could have said to
her with the awful gravity of a god: "Refrain from those
words, for in them lie Pain, Death, Weariness and Utter
Futility!"
But either he was totally dumb or she totally deaf, for
as the line was passing her room she called out: "Here,
that little girl right there, come here a moment." They
were all little girls and they were all "right there," so that
Olivia, for whom the words were intended, kept serenely
on. Miss Baer, continuing in the somewhat raucous voice
which she reserved for stupid pupils, called again: "Come
here, you; that little Italian girl, I mean."
Olivia, now more than ever unsignalled, was blandly pur-
suing her way when she felt her two shoulders grasped
firmly by the strong Polack girl behind her, and found her-
self propelled toward the irate instructor.
"My goodness me!" exclaimed Miss Baer. "My goodness
me! Don't you know enough to come when you're called?"
Before Olivia could open her bewildered mouth the tute-


6 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
lary Polack rushed to her defense. "She's new, teacher;
she don't mean nothin'."
"Wait a moment," said the teacher. "Take this note to
Miss Sawyer in Room 17." Unexpectedly she found her-
self moved by the aspect of the forlorn little girl in the black
dress. "You didn't mind my speaking of your being an
Italian, did you? You know," said Miss Baer, whose grand-
father under a difficult name ending in ewski was at that
moment painfully tilling a field in a far-off town in Poland,
"you know I think that you Italian children are quite as
good as us Americans. You didn't mind, did you?" she
asked again anxiously, for her heart was, at bottom, as kind
as her head was empty.
Olivia, looking at her unblinkingly, assured her with
great firmness that she had not minded in the least. She
was, she said, proud to be an Italian. .
Over the chocolate soda which had occasioned the note,
Miss Baer discussed the matter with her friend, Miss Saw-
yer.
"And you should have seen the change which came over
her face when I told her I considered Italians just as good
as the rest of us Americans. I always believe in straighten-
ing these things out. Poor little tyke!"
The poor little tyke could hardly wait for her mother to
return from the mill. Never a demonstrative child, she
surprised her parent from the settled depression, from the
almost complete obliviousness to extraneous matters in
which long brooding on a happy vanished past had en-
veloped her. For a brief moment about her heart she ex-
perienced a feeling of warmth. Perhaps this cool, small
daughter of hers had awakened. Perhaps between them
there would spring something of the affection of which one


THE PLOT
7
reads between mother and child—an affection which as yet
Olivia had never exhibited.
But she was wary. She said nothing. For her daughter,
up to this point within her experience, had been like a cun-
ningly fashioned instrument without, so to speak, a sound-
ing-board. Touch it, play on her feelings ever so cleverly,
and the response was nil. There was nothing there with
which to afford an answer. Some inkling of this even in
Olivia's most childish days had penetrated to the minds of
her father and mother.
Like a picture film a certain memory swept in panorama
over Mrs. Blanchard's mind. For the first time she and
her husband had taken a complete "day off from the baby,"
then a child of four. With another couple who also had
left their two children in the care of a kind but none too
familiar aunt, they had gone to a beach. All through
the lovely drowsy hours the parents had worried. "We
shouldn't have left her without either of us, Lee," Mrs.
Blanchard had kept repeating. "Oh, she'll be all right,
Janet," he had retorted. But she had known that he was
distracted.
As the four entered the aunt's house the two little Porter
children dropped a medley of sticky books, blocks and
crackers and with loud cries of "Mummy and Daddy!" had
fallen upon their gratified parents. But Olivia had not
even turned around. Instead she had taken this opportunity
to annex a small, brightly colored booklet belonging to the
older Porter boy. Earlier in the day he had fought her and
her predatory efforts most doughtily. But now from the
coign of his father's shoulder he was coldly indifferent.
Lee and Janet had taken Olivia home, laughing—but then
they were always doing that—at their own discomfiture.
"It appears to me," Lee said, glancing at the child sleeping


8
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
placidly, lying straight and prim in her little bed, "it ap-
pears to me that your child isn't so fond of us."
For once without laughter Janet looked at him. "I'm just
wondering, Lee, how she can be the child of either one of
us. Do you know she's never hung around us or clung to
us the way that little Porter boy clung to his mother to-
night."
"The more reason why we should cling to each other,
then," Lee had replied with his ready laughter. But pres-
ently in the moments between his trips on the train—he
was a graduate of a medical school working as a railroad
porter for the money to purchase his equipment—and in
those brief interims when they were not completely en-
grossed in the wonderment of their perfect companionship,
they fell to considering her with a mingling of amazement
and wistfulness, of a somewhat wry humor and of no little
chagrin.
"She's a changeling," Lee said and thereafter to them-
selves they frequently referred to her as "C."
All this and much more was passing through Janet
Blanchard's nimble mind as Olivia waited on her with
unusual and thoughtful ministrations. "Perhaps she is go-
ing to be a real daughter," she thought, leaning back in the
shabby rocker which Olivia had drawn forward for her.
She let her weary aching feet relax in the grateful roomi-
ness of old and tried slippers, which her daughter had
amazingly slipped on for her.
A momentary flash of her old whimsicalness returned.
"Perhaps she's going to become unchanged." For a sad
sweet moment she fell to musing on how completely satis-
fying and compensating a child of Lee should be. There
was that girl whom she had met only last week on her way


THE PLOT 9
to this soul-destroying mill, a girl who had looked up to
greet a rather ordinary woman advancing toward her down
the street.
"There's my mother!" she had called out in an ecstasy of
joy. "Oh, Moth!" she had cried. "Oh, Moth!" The sweet
intimacy of the little abbreviation had almost brought the
tears to Janet's eyes. Suppose Olivia should greet her like
that!
Olivia made the final gesture; she brought her mother
the glass of cool tart lemonade which her parched throat
so craved. "Now," the child thought beneath her unre-
vealing exterior, "now she certainly must be rested enough
for me to talk to her." She plumped on a stool at her
mother's feet. Of all the things which Janet had hoped her
daughter might say she surely had never anticipated this.
"Mother," said little Olivia, "have you ever told anybody
in this town we are colored?"
"What!" said her mother, startled even out of her initial
disappointment. "What are you talking about? No, I've
never told anybody I am colored. Don't suppose I have to.
Why?"
Olivia proceeded carefully, feeling her way. If she
couldn't gain her mother's consent or at least her silence,
her own dimly worked out plans might be entirely shat-
tered. "I don't think anybody around here things we're
colored, because nobody knows we're colored. I think,
Mother," said Olivia, struggling with an idea destined to
become the cornerstone of many a latter-day cult, "that if
you really are one way and people see you another way,
then it's just as easy for you to be their way as your way."
"Well, what about it?" said Janet coldly, thinking what
an intensely irritating child this was. "I hope you're not
getting any silly notions in your head. Color doesn't mean
»


10
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
anything, anything at all. It's what you are." She was
talking ineptly and knew it. "There are many white people
in the world who are no better off than we today. You're
too young to understand all this just now, Olivia, but you'll
find out that you'll have a much better time as a colored
girl who eventually will come to know some of the best
people of her group than as an ordinary white girl who will
always know and go with ordinary white people.
"I come of ordinary colored people myself, Olivia. I was
a maid in a hotel in a summer resort when fortunately I
met your dear father. He was working his way through
medical school . . . but he would marry me . . . where
was I? Now he was from a fine family. His father knew
men like Booker Washington and John Durham. Fellows
in school with him are already making names as teachers
and doctors and business men. When we got on our feet
we were going to Boston. We might have remained in
moderate circumstances for years, but we could have min-
gled always with the best."
But neither then nor at any other time did Olivia have
any taste for such mingling. Much of what her mother
had said was beyond her, but she could always see the facts
which would support the cause of her immediate espousal.
So she only said with no slightest trace of the triumphant
winner in her tone: "Mother, do the people at the mill
know you're colored?"
"No," said Janet shortly. She would have little chance
to earn even this pittance, she knew, if her color were
guessed at.
"Well, then," Olivia finished, coming to her point, for
her clear mind told her no further discussion was necessary,
"since the girls, and the teachers too, at school think I'm
white, don't you think I'd better be white?"


THE PLOT
II
CHAPTER II
JANET BLANCHARD always traced her determination
to marry a second time back to that conversation with
her daughter. Her heart cried to her not to forget Lee. . . .
"As though I could," she murmured at night into her fever-
ish pillow. But her head told her she could not forever en-
dure this awful loneliness which her daughter's presence
rendered, paradoxically enough, so palpable. She had no
friends and as she was of the type of colored people who
look with scorn on what they call with special intention
"poor whites," she made no attempt to mingle with the
mill-hands about her. As she was always courteous and
sufficiently approachable her attitude caused no rancor.
Indeed, her aloofness, coupled with a certain innate refine-
ment, obtained for her respect and at length a measure of
appreciation.
Her work was rapid and accurate and brought with it
an annual slight increase which she, with much more in-
sight than she had ever shown during her life with Lee,
placed in a savings bank. She, too, could plan. Finally a
harassed foreman, noting that she had a way with her with
the foreigners by whom the place was overrun and com-
menting to himself that here was an "honest-to-God" Amer-
ican who might be able to get some sense into the heads of
these "wops," made her an assistant forewoman. And saw
to it that she received not only better hours but an appre-
ciable difference in wage.
And now, between this mother and daughter a strange
contest began—a contest, however, of which only the former
was aware. Olivia, with little or no thought as to the class
of people with whom she was associating, was daily cherish-


12
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
ing within herself the idea of emerging into a world which
knew nothing of color. On the other hand, within her
heart Janet was nursing the image of the day when she
could break with all this sordidness of occupation and peo-
ple and return to her own. She would migrate to a college
town—to Boston or even to Cambridge itself.
How well, through Lee, she knew the type of man that
there she might possibly meet. She could picture, as com-
pletely as though he were standing before her, the rather
serious, slightly over-earnest Southerner desperately pursu-
ing a belated education. She hoped she would not be ap-
portioned by the gods to a type such as that. He might so
easily be un-humorous and self-important!
Of course there were others. Men coming back for re-
search and graduate work. Some of them already with
scholarships in pursuit of other scholarships to carry them
abroad in their quest for further knowledge. . . . "But such
men would hardly glance at me and my ignorance," she
told herself with her honest, clear-sighted candor. "Lee,
darling Lee, what shall I do?" For always she communed
with him thus, feeling no disloyalty to him in the ideas that
she was contemplating. Lee, she knew, would be the first
to want his girl guarded safe and warm with the strength
even of another man's arm.
And immediately the answer came to her. She had kept
her husband's books—many from his high-school days and
all those he had used in his undergraduate college years.
Everything else, even his clothes, she had sold during those
first black weeks, but the books, despite the problem they
presented in weight and expense, she had clung to, know-
ing how he had cherished them.
At night now, not so weary as she had once been, she
read, she made notes, she remembered. Some remarks of


COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
bit of it. And behind and through all that enjoyment was
the constant realization that she was not standing still;
that certainly she was not the same woman in whose arms
poor Lee had died and that somehow, somewhere, some-
thing was bound to happen.
Naturally all this activity cured her physical loneliness.
Yet never had she felt so completely, so spiritually apart as
on the day, five years from the date of Lee's death, when
she and her sullen daughter set out for Cambridge to em-
bark on her grand adventure. . . . She had had a frightful
scene with Olivia, who, with that strange undemanding
complacency which so distinguished her from both her
parents, had been spending five happy years in the company
of shop-girls, soda-water jerkers, small seamstresses . . .
who were white.
Janet had met them from time to time, treating them
with courtesy and gentleness not only for her daughter's
sake and safety but also for the maintenance of her own
economic position. She knew—as what colored person
thirty years ago did not?—the rancor of the poor small-
town white who saw in his Negro working competitor only
the menace of the wanton interloper.
The thought of going again to a colored church, of play-
ing a quiet game of whist in a decent colored parlor with
its family 'album and what-not; of gradually working one's
way into membership of small committees, of receiving the
polished, if not always grammatical, gallantries of colored
men—all these things bore for Janet's imagination the same
charm that the sight of fresh water might bear to a ship-
wrecked sailor.
To Olivia, however, all this meant nothing. "But," said
Janet, "do you really like these people, Olivia? Or is it


THE PLOT
15
just because they are white? And if that is why you're so
anxious to remain with them do you mean to tell me you're
willing all your life to sail under false pretenses? Good
heavens, Olivia, you wouldn't want to marry one of these
rats, would you? Why, Olivia, think of the decent, kindly
cultivated fellows you'll be meeting in Boston! The worst
of them would be better than that horrid little Janska you
had here last night."
Olivia, it appeared, had thought of the young men whom
she might meet in Boston. "All of them black or brown,"
she raged, "and all of them looked down on! If you think
I want my children to feel toward their father as I felt
toward"
She stopped then, realizing that she had gone too far.
Janet finished the sentence for her. "As you felt toward
your father! Toward Lee Blanchard, the best and finest
man that ever lived!" How horrible this was, she thought,
to almost hate one's own child.
"Listen, Olivia. I'm going to Boston. I'm going to live
there with my own people as completely colored as though
I were the color of coal. If you want to stay here and work
in the mills—well, you're seventeen, and you may do as
you choose. But if you want food and warmth and shelter
and decency you'll come with me. And as long as you live
under my roof you'll treat my friends—and I mean to have
plenty of them, all colored—with respect."
Olivia did not want to work in the mills.
The Harvard Extension course brought results not listed
in the catalogue. It had taught Janet her way about Cam-
bridge; and the intelligence of her answers made her name
immediately recognizable to the professor when she went
to consult him about her little project of opening a rooming-


i6
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
house for colored students. The problem of housing them
was just sufficiently acute to make her proposition worthy
of attention. In the end Professor Inness allowed her to
use his name both in order to obtain a house and as security
for credit.
"Since you're going into this business," he told her wisely,
"you might just as well operate on a worthwhile scale.
Better get yourself some good furniture while you're at it.
Cheap stuff never pays."
She was astounded at his generosity. "But you know
nothing about me," she reminded him. "You can't pos-
sibly know whether I'm honest or not."
"I know you've told me you are a colored woman when
you might just as well have let me think you white. That
assures me that you may be foolish but you certainly are
honest," he told her dryly. After this encounter she thought
better of white people.
For a time everything worked miraculously and mag-
ically just as she had planned it. She found the house, an
old-fashioned roomy one with four large bedrooms and
three small ones. Two of the small ones were next to each
other on the second floor. These she took for herself and
her daughter. But almost from the start she realized that
she would have to abandon her scheme of taking graduate
students only. In those days there were probably fewer
than a dozen colored graduate students in the whole United
States. Certainly if there were any at Harvard they made
no application to her, nor were they sent to her. But the
four large double rooms went very quickly.
Her lodgers were all over age—their entrance into, or
their continuance within, college represented to each one
of them a definite struggle and sacrifice. But this effort,


THE PLOT
*7
this determination to attain an end, brought with it a
steadfastness and a reliableness which resulted in tangible
benefits for Janet. None of these serious, earnest young
men would ever cheat her—she could tell that. And if a
man fell into arrears she never dunned him. Instead she
hunted up some extra piece of work for which sooner or
later she would have had to call in carpenter or painter and
turned it over to the delinquent.
In this way she was able to pull through that first difficult
semester not only without debt but even with a very slight
surplus to her credit. Her young men tended the furnace,
painted the whole interior of the house, swept the heavy
carpets, cleaned windows and jointly and collectively took
the place of the best hired man that money could have se-
cured.
And not one of them after the first week or two ever
glanced at, or, apparently, ever thought of Olivia. But then
Olivia herself had a hand in this. On the contrary, it was
no unusual thing to find two or three of them grouped
about Janet in her quaint comfortable parlor in the eve-
nings, in those first comfortable relaxing hours of what had
been for many of them a tense and gruelling day.
On Sunday evenings, especially, the boys sought her;
sometimes they brought with them the feminine attraction
of the moment. Occasionally on a stormy New England
night almost all of them would be there. Janet would play
the hymns which most of them, children of praying, god-
fearing parents, had heard in their youth; or from time to
time she would dash off into a captivating waltz or one of
the stirring marches of the day.
No matrimonial material here. But Janet, happy and
comfortable for the first time since her husband's death,


i8
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
was uncaring. Indeed, secretly, she rather rejoiced, since
it meant that the memories of Lee still held full sway in
her heart. All in all a happy six months' interim in her
life; a pleasant backwater of usefulness; increasing knowl-
edge and comfort where she would, perhaps, spend the rest
of her days.
The third small room on the top floor was still un-
tenanted. Janet was pondering the idea of fixing it up as
a small private study whither one or even two of her boys
could retreat when in need of extra quiet and seclusion.
But at the beginning of the second semester Professor
Inness sent her a note which she conned in the quiet of her
little room. The bearer, declared her former instructor's
concise missive, was an older man who had just come
through an intense emotional and spiritual strain.
"I think the atmosphere of your house may do something
to restore him, Mrs. Blanchard. I'll esteem it a personal
favor if you'll contrive to make room for him. I think
he'll be best off by himself."
She was not anxious to give up the extra room; she was
no longer even anxious for another student, but in the case
of Professor Inness refusal was, of course, impossible.
Rather slowly she went down to see her caller.
"My goodness," she said to herself as soon as, rather lan-
guidly, he began to speak, "here's my real Southerner!"
And at first sight he seemed to run more truly to type than
the type itself—so gaunt he was, so serious, even to sadness,
so insistent on absolute seclusion and quiet because his work
was so important. Impishly she ventured a pleasantry or
so, but he was in no mood for pleasantries. Without de-
mur he accepted her terms, informed her that he would
move in late that afternoon, asked for a door-key and was


THE PLOT
*9
off without further delay to complete his program and to
procure his luggage.
Later in the week she passed him in the hall and on Sun-
day morning he drifted into her little office, which she had
converted from a pantry, and made some trifling inquiry.
He was, she found, a man of perhaps thirty-eight, about
three years older than herself, of her own general com-
plexion, bluish-grey eyes, tall, thin almost to emaciation
and with marks of real suffering in his face.
It was two months before he joined the boys at her little
Sunday gathering and even then he brought with him a
sense of not so much seeking company as trying to avoid
his own. By summer, in spite of the sparseness of the
actual words between them, Janet began to feel in his pres-
ence a certain satisfaction and more than that an actual
lack if he were not there. A certain expression in his eyes,
the merest turn of one of his brief remarks, a lingering
quality about his unwilling withdrawals gave her the be-
lief that this satisfaction was felt and returned.
When the summer came her boys scattered. They were
all of them now Sophomores and Juniors. All of them
elected to return. Some of them, obtaining jobs as porters
on New England trains or as bell-hops on the big coast-
wise steamers, opined that they would be in from time to
time to rest during their brief lay-overs. Blake, however,
made no attempt to leave. In answer to Janet's question
as to his need for a brief vacation he told of his desire to
spend it there in her house in Boston if it did not incon-
venience her.
Inevitably the two were drawn together. Before long
he had told her of his youth, of his ambition to study
medicine, of his graduation with distinction from Atlanta
University.


20
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"In those days, Janet, I had about me a sense of consecra-
tion. I suppose all of us young colored fellows of that day
took ourselves too seriously. Education was and still is
such a novel possession. So although I wanted to come
North and study medicine, when a call came for a man to
take charge of a new struggling school in a small Alabama
town I listened to the insistent urging of one of my pro-
fessors and went there.
"You never saw such benighted people as there were in
that town, both black and white. I married a classmate to
whom I had become engaged during my junior year and
the two of us, heads and hearts high, set out—poor, little
puny fools—to attempt a reform at which the angel Michael
might well have blenched.
"The colored people there, poor things, wanted the school
because they thought there was necromancy in higher edu-
cation. That it would bring palpable and material results.
Of course a few of them saw beyond that. The white
people didn't want the school because they were afraid it
might make their 'nigras uppity' and they didn't mean to
stand for that. Yet they realized the benefit to the town.
"Well, we were young and brave and dead sure not only
that we could succeed but that we were genuine crusaders
embarked on a holy cause. I won't burden you with the
details, Janet. You read the papers. But after fifteen years
of heart-breaking work, after seeing a school turn from a
little elementary primary institution into an academy of
high-school rank—after going about hat in hand half over
the country to gain funds with which to construct new
buildings—after all this I came home from one of these ex-
peditions two years ago to find my school a mass of still
smoking ruins; my wife at death's door; all hope of our


THE PLOT
21
baby gone; my life's work vanished; and the vandals laugh-
ing, jesting, skulking like jackals among the debris."
"Oh," said Janet, "and I thought you were just a self-
conscious, belated student. I thought you had no sense of
humor. What did you do, Ralph? Where did you live
during those years before you came here? How have you
been existing?"
"I tell you, Janet, I hardly know what I did. My wife
and I had about a thousand dollars saved in a bank in New
York. And I had, thank God for it, always carried heavy
insurances for both her and myself. A classmate of mine
spirited me away, helped me collect and bank my insurance
and sent word to the professor at Atlanta through whom I
had first undertaken the building of the school. He was,
by the way, an uncle of your Professor Inness. For two
years I've been wandering up and down the country, work-
ing at whatever came my way, provided only it induced
sufficient weariness.
"I've worked on great Western farms, on forest reserva-
tions, even in mining camps, talking to as few people as
possible, making no friends, seeking only sleep and forget-
fulness. Recently I've felt some slight stirrings of my old
desires to be useful. As wretched as I have been I've come
across others in still worse condition—though I doubt if any
of them had gone through experiences as harrowing as
mine.
"Professor Inness' uncle had wound up my affairs in Ala-
bama. I shall never return there. Indeed, my only desire
is to stay in this section of the world and to be quietly and
unnoticeably useful. And," he finished simply, "I should
like very much to be near you."
Janet looked at him smiling, but with tears in her eyes.
"Do you think you could learn to laugh?"


22 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"I used to be a great hand at it. If I learn again, will
you let me stay near you?"
"I think so."
"For ever and ever?"
"For ever and ever. . . . Oh, Ralph, you won't mind if I
keep a little place in my mind, in my heart, for Lee? . . .
I loved him so ... we were so happy."
"My dear girl, of course. ... If we can just help each
other not so much to forget the past—as to endure what
life has left . . . that would be incalculable. And you
might like to know I love you. If you ever love me, will
you tell me?"
"I love you now."
• • • • •
Many weeks later he asked her: "What about your daugh-
ter? You know she's around so little. I see her so rarely.
Do you think she'll mind our marriage?"
Janet's face went wry. "Ralph, if you could only guess
how little she'll mind! I am the least cog in Olivia's wheel.
She has only one consuming ambition. I suppose she'll
hardly know she has a stepfather. But in any event, I
think she likes you."
"She always speaks to me pleasantly, and I notice that's
more than she does to any of the other men in the house
except to young Christopher Cary."
"That's because you're the only ones that in any sense
fulfill her requirements."
"What requirements?"
"It's all so silly! Olivia is simply hipped on color. She
wouldn't speak to her own grandfather on the street, I be-
lieve, if he showed color."
"Absurd!"'
"Of course, but absurdly truthful!"


24 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
by the colored Presbyterian minister. Not even Olivia was
present. They had made their plans. She would keep up
the lodging-house until he should finish his medicine, so
as not to deplete his small store of money. Then they
would take a small house right there in Boston and live
quietly "and happily too," he told her, "ever after."
CHAPTER III
OLIVIA, exactly as her mother had prophesied, said
nothing whatever about the marriage. When her
mother and new father came home the day of their wed-
ding, Ralph kissed her and said smiling: "Now, Olivia, you
have a new dad. How do you like that?"
And she answered serenely: "Very much, I am sure."
And extricating herself from his kindly arm she had gone
on about her small and intensely secret affairs.
Also she said very little when during Christmas week of
the following year the twins, David and Janet, made their
initial appearance. Without expressing any especial affec-
tion for the children she did show more interest in them
than Janet had ever known her to manifest in any one.
They were very striking children, with Janet's mat white
skin, and with their father's thick dark hair and blue eyes.
Olivia played with them, wheeled them about the narrow
twisting streets, and was willing to watch them for hours.
She really made a very nice picture in the evenings sitting
there, the firelight loitering upon her young, serious face
with its great thick mane of chestnut hair. She had a look
of distinction, really as of one who had consecrated herself,
very young and very completely, to some cause of magni-
tude and vitalness.


THE PLOT
25
As it happened, all the young men who had engaged
rooms when her mother started her initial enterprise were
still there. One or two of them, Stephens, Hall and Cary
had graduated, but they had remained, the first two to
study law, the third to attend medical school. Any one of
these men would have gladly offered his hand and name to
the young woman. Olivia was barely twenty now. She
was never pretty, but she possessed the comeliness of youth
and the lure and provocativeness of extreme aloofness. The
three young men took themselves pretty seriously. They
realized that a wife of distinction and some culture might
help considerably to establish and to round out the niche
which each meant to carve out for himself after graduation.
Of these three Cary, perhaps, was the least concerned
with himself and with his career from a purely social stand-
point. Assuredly he meant to succeed, equally assuredly
he realized the sacrifice which his parents had made to
assist him to stay in school and he meant neither to dis-
appoint their expectations, which ran pretty high, nor to
permit their self-denial to be in vain.
But aside from this he was entirely without the slightly
self-righteous attitude which characterized so many young
colored people of his day and station. Christopher never
talked about "my people," never mouthed pompous phrases
pertaining to the "good of the race." He was in this respect
the forerunner of the modern young colored man who
takes his training as a matter of course for himself pri-
marily and for the race next.
On the other hand, although the color of his skin was
actually whiter than Olivia's—for except for his rather
closely curling, sandy hair he might easily have been taken
for the average white American—he was not in the slightest
interested in exploits of "passing." He hadn't the remotest


26
AMERICAN STYLE
COMEDY:
concern, really never thought about color except on the
rare occasions when there seemed to be some possibility of
discrimination at a time and in circumstances which might
prove inconvenient or embarrassing. Thus in spite of the
law if he felt by "laying low" and saying nothing he might
avoid not the indignity so much as the discomfort of a "Jim
Crow" car he would certainly with no sense of racial
betrayal avail himself of such a fortuitous attribute as his
general appearance. Yet when one of the Southern col-
leges sent out an ultimatum that its athletes would counte-
nance no competition with colored contestants, Cary went
to the Athletic Manager and left no doubts as to his identity.
But he made it clear that if he were excluded from the meet
with this particular school he could not be expected to put
the shot for "fair Harvard" on any other occasion.
As Cary was too good a man to lose, there was no con-
test that year with that particular Southern school.
One thing is certain, it was not Olivia's color or rather
the lack of it which so intrigued Christopher. He knew
though that his mother, a staunch "old Philadelphian" twice
removed from Charleston, would approve of such a selec-
tion. Left to himself he found himself far more attracted
to a warmer, more vital type. And that in spite of the fact
that, in his day, men of his general appearance were in-
clined to choose their mates from a feminine group which
almost completely matched them in color.
But Cary was by instinct the iconoclast. Later on when
Life hardened him and remoulded him he did break
through many social and professional precedents. But at
this point in his development he either would not or could
not think through any but the simplest matters. He was
still the child not only of his impulses but of the earliest,
most elemental training which he had received from his


THE PLOT
27
mother when Sex and Girls first obtruded themselves on
his far from unwilling consciousness.
His mother had set forth: "A really nice girl never lets a
the lad puzzled him a great deal.)
"Never bother with a woman who runs after you. If
she runs after you, she'll run after other men."
"A good woman comes to her husband entirely ignorant.
She learns everything direct from her husband." The more
completely Chris became acquainted with the elementals
of biology, physiology and therapeutics, the more he ques-
tioned the wisdom of such ignorance, but he supposed that
was just the hard luck of being a woman.
"You can always tell a good woman because she Is so
Well, certainly Olivia lived up to all this dicta. She was
cold enough, freezing, in fact! She did not run after him.
She gave him no inkling of any liking. And he would lay
money on her being completely "ignorant"—only of course
a man didn't lay money on his wife!
His courtship could never be described as ardent, for
there was nothing about Olivia's chill aloofness to pique
him into ardor. None of the "come-hither" about Olivia.
. . . But his courting was as persistent as it might be be-
tween two people who had almost nothing to say to each
other in the house; who met only occasionally on Boylston
Street as they both came in, he from medical school, she
from training school in the late afternoon. Within four
years they had attended together perhaps a half-dozen ath-
letic events.
Yet these last made a far greater impression on Olivia's
mind than any words of her somewhat lackadaisical lover.
man know she likes him.'

cold.'
»


28 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
For Cary was a great favorite. At any meet he was con-
stantly being hailed "H'lo Chris!" "Hey there, Cary,
how're you making it?" "Wait a minute, Cary, I want you
to meet Miss Pennypacker. Hazel, this is the guy that
^ played in such good form at the Penn Relays. Do you re-
member him?"
He was always being asked to dine, to attend banquets,
to be present at tryouts; to look over the new batch of
athletes who were coming along in the undergraduate
schools. Olivia thought, mistaking the easy good comrade-
ship for something more essential than it could possibly be,
that if he wanted to he could keep up such contacts forever.
She saw his later professional life a long succession of
quasi-social events in which Cary remained the lion and
the woman who might be his wife would of necessity be a
lioness.
Suddenly to Cary's and to her own mother's complete
amazement she married him. They would have been still
more amazed, completely indeed, taken off their feet, if
they had known the course of reasoning which had made
her decide to act.
It was the twins who turned the trick 1
They were so completely white.
Olivia had long since broken loose from the idea of a
life spent with the soda-jerker, the mill-hand, the small-
town clerk. She began to understand her mother's insist-
ence that it was important for one's husband to belong to
such or such a class. She knew now that it was highly
unlikely that she would meet with and marry a white man
of Cary's education, standing and popularity. Certainly
not in this section of the country where her affiliations
could be so easily traceable.
Of course she could go away from home where she was


THE PLOT
39
unknown. But strange to say she was in no respect the
adventuress. Whatever she might accomplish toward the
fulfillment of this strange desire of hers she expected to be
brought about more or less by mere verisimilitude; she did
not at this time expect to have much to do with the mar-
shalling of events. . . .
Why not take advantage of what already lay to her hand?
Cary's friendships, his contacts, the enthusiastic welcomes
and greetings which seemed to rain down upon him wher-
ever he went. . . . With a background such as this, to
what heights might not their children attain? And she as
dowager would share all their triumphs, their opportuni-
ties, their advantages. They should know from the very
beginning, and quite naturally, the desires of which her
young life had been balked. . . .
She and Cary were as fair as her mother and Dr. Blake.
They would have white children. The twins had shown
her that. So at last she would obtain her desire.
And for that reason and no other she married Christopher
Cary.





II
THE CHARACTERS





CHAPTER I
MRS. OLIVIA BLANCHARD CARY glanced out
of the window of her pleasant residence in West
Philadelphia and saw her daughter Teresa, her books under
her arm, strolling down the street, with two other little
girls similarly laden. One of her companions, a very fair
blonde with dark blue eyes and gay gilt hair, Mrs. Cary
identified immediately as Phebe Grant. She was not so sure
of the identity of the third youngster. Closer inspection
revealed to her however the dark brown skin, the piquant
features, the sparkling black eyes and the abundant, silky
and intensely curly locks of Marise Davies. Mrs. Cary
frowned. "As often as I've told Teresa to keep away from
that Davies child!" she murmured angrily to herself.
She met them at the front door. The countenances of
the three children were in striking contrast. Teresa's wore
a look of apprehension, Phebe's of bland indifference,
Marise's of acute expectancy.
"Good-afternoon, Teresa," Olivia said. "Good-afternoon
children. I'm afraid it's not best for Teresa to have so
much company today. She gets excited and worn out and
it's hard afterwards for her to settle down to her lessons. I
don't mind if one of you stays. Phebe, suppose you come
in and play with her a while, and, Marise, you can come
back another time."
"Tomorrow?" asked Marise, whose black eyes had never
left Olivia's face.
"Well, hardly tomorrow," the woman replied, flushing a
33


34
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
little. She really disliked this child. "Horrid, little pushing
thing," she inwardly apostrophized. But aloud she con-
tinued. "Hardly tomorrow, but some other day very soon,
I am sure. Come on in Phebe."
"No, thank you, Mrs. Gary," the child answered, pushing
back the thick gilt hair which framed her face. "I was
with Marise first, so I'll go on with her. We were just
going to ask you to let Teresa come along with us. My
mother expects me to be at Marise's if I'm not home." She
spoke simply, no trace of the avenging angel about her.
The two children, hand in hand, backed off the bottom
step on which they had been precariously teetering. Marise,
ignoring Olivia completely, waved a slender hand toward
Teresa. "Come on over whenever you can. My mother
doesn't mind."
From the pavement both looked back once more to wave
a careless farewell to their school-mate. "G'bye, Treesa!"
"Treesa!" Olivia echoed angrily. "Why can't they pro-
nounce your name right?" She glanced sharply at her
daughter's tear-stained face. "What's the matter, Teresa?"
The little girl wiped away a tear with the back of her
hand.
"Mamma, why can't I play with Marise? Of course
Phebe's all right and I like her very, very much. But I like
Marise best. She's such fun."
Her mother sighed. "I have," she thought, "the stupidest
children and husband too in the world. Why can't they
see this thing the way I want it?" Not unkindly she took
out her handkerchief and wiped the child's eyes.
"Now, Teresa, it isn't worth while going all over this
matter again. I don't mind your having Phebe here; in
fact I rather like Phebe. But I don't like to have colored
people in the house if we can possibly avoid it."


THE CHARACTERS
35
"But, Mamma, Phebe is colored too."
"I know she is but nobody would ever guess it."
"They don't have to guess it; she tells it; she stood right
up in class and said so."
"What nonsense!" Olivia countered angrily. "What oc-
casion would a girl, looking like her, have to talk about
color?"
"She didn't say it of her own accord, Mamma. The
teacher was having a review lesson on races one day and
she asked Phebe what race she belonged to and Phebe said:
'I belong to the black or Negro race.'"
"What did the teacher say?"
"She just giggled at first and then she said: 'Well, Phebe,
we all know that isn't true. Don't try to be funny. Now
tell us what race you do belong to, dear!' And Phebe said
it all over again. She said: 'I belong to the black or Negro
race.'"
Olivia gasped. "Silly little thing! The idea of a girl as
white as she saying that! What happened then?"
"The teacher had her stay after school and Phebe showed
her the picture of her mother. She wears it in a locket
around her throat all the time. And her mother is colored.
Not black, you know, Mamma, but real, real brown. Al-
most as brown as Marise, you know. You should have seen
how surprised Miss Packer was!"
In spite of herself her mother was interested. "What did
she say then?"
"She looked awful queer and asked Phebe if she looked
like her father and Phebe said she looked exactly like him
. . . and that he didn't live here and that he was married
to someone else. . . . And then Miss Packer turned kind
of red and never said another word. . . . How can Phebe's
father not be married to her mother, Mamma?"


36
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Oh, I don't know • . . probably they couldn't get along
so they separated. Married people often do that. They
call it getting a divorce." Hurriedly she changed the sub-
ject: "Did the children act any different to Phebe after
that?"
Teresa considered this a moment. "Well, you see,
Mamma, the children don't act any special kind of way to
Phebe anyway, because Phebe don't care anything about
them. The only child Phebe likes a whole lot in school is
Marise."
"I thought she liked you."
"O she does, but not the same way she likes Marise.
Marise is so smart you know. She can think up all the
most wonderful things. Why she changed her name her-
self. It used to be Maria. And she said that was all wrong.
She said she didn't look like a Maria person and she didn't
feel like a Maria person. . ,. Isn't that funny, Mamma?
And she can sing and play and dance. You never saw any-
one dance like her. And she can think up such smart
things* to say. I don't see why you don't like her, Mamma."
"I don't dislike her," her mother retorted in exasperation.
"You don't understand these things, yet, Teresa. But you
will when you're older . . . and you'll be grateful to me.
I just don't want you to have Marise and people like that
around because I don't want you to grow up among folks
who live the life that most colored people have to live . . .
narrow and stultified and stupid. Always pushed in the
background . . . out of everything. Looked down upon
and despised! . . .
"Teresa, how many times must I tell you these things?
You and your father and Christopher almost drive me
crazy! You're so willfully perverse about it all! Here we
could all be as white as the whitest people in Philadelphia.


THE CHARACTERS
37
When we moved in this neighborhood not a soul here but
thought we were white! And your father is never happy
unless he has some typical Negro hanging about. I believe
he does it to tease me. And now here you are, all wrapped
up in this Davies child!"
"But, Mamma, what difference does it make? And any-
way, there's Oliver!"
■ • • • •
There indeed was Oliver.
Olivia with very little love for her husband, Dr. Cary,
with no enthusiasm, as such, for the institution of matri-
mony and with absolutely no urge for the maternal life,
had none the less gone cheerfully and willingly into both
marriage and motherhood because she believed that through
her children she might obtain her heart's desire. She could,
she was sure, imbue her offspring with precept and example
to such an extent that it would never enter their minds to
acknowledge the strain of black blood which in consid-
erable dilution would flow through their veins.
She could be certain of their color. Her twin sister and
brother, only two years older than her own children, had
proven that. It was worth every one, she felt, of her labor
pains not to hold in her arms little Teresa, her first-born,
—but to gaze on that tiny, unremarkable face and note the
white skin, the thick, "good" dark hair which covered the
frail skull; to note that the tell-tale half-moons of which she
had so often read were conspicuously absent. It seemed
to her that the tenuous bonds holding her never so slightly
to her group, and its station in America, were perceptibly
weakened. Every time she appeared in public with the
little girl she was presenting the incontestable proof of her
white womanhood. . . .
And when Christopher, the second child was born, she


38 "COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
was not the least fraction worried over the closely curling
tendency of his slightly reddish hair. She had known Jews
with hair much kinkier. Time and care would attend to
all that. And meanwhile his skin was actually fairer than
that of his little sister, his features finer and better chiselled.
He had, she felt, a look of "race," by which she meant of
course the only race which God, or Nature, for hidden, in-
scrutable purposes, meant should rule.
But she had not reckoned with the children's father.
Christopher had finally established in his mind the fact of
his chaste wife's frigidity. When he fully realized that her
much-prized "aloofness," instead of being the insigne of a
wealth of feeling, was merely the result of an absolute
vacuum of passion, young as he was, he resolved not to
kick against the pricks.
He had, he told himself, been sold, as many a man before
him had; tricked as completely by his deliberate submission
to ideals, entirely false to his nature and his desires, as a
young girl might be by her first surrender to a passion
which her heart tells her is natural, though her mind and
breeding might warn, her of its inexpediency. The first of
that hardening process which was so to change him did
have its inception during this period, but as he had some
humor and a sense of justice beyond his years he refused
to let the iron enter his soul'.
Moreover, Olivia, though not a "comfortable" house-
keeper, was a clean and a considerate one. She really never
interfered with his "papers"; she never, even from the be-
ginning, troubled him with the delinquencies of the help.
And in those days, and for some years to come, she never
exceeded the budget which he allowed her. Also her obvi-
ous willingness, even eagerness, to have children pleased
and touched him. In his total ignorance of the plans which


THE CHARACTERS f 39
1 f-v-t c*~cZu~ X>I-p^t
nestled eternally in the back of her sleek, dark head, he
reasoned that a woman so fond of children must by a very
natural extension develop eventually a certain tenderness for
their father. So he hoped for many things and forgave her
much with a somewhat rueful and yet amused indulgence.
Until he found in her the unalterable determination to
carry himself and his children definitely across the narrow
border-line of race! This too he at first regarded with some
indulgence, but her unimaginative persistence finally irri-
tated him. He was too busy to undertake completely the
education of the children—he was responsible for their
maintenance. But he could let them see his manifest re-
spect and liking for many men who had been his boyhood
friends and who bore the badge of their mixed blood
plainly upon them.
He told the children every story he knew about the
heroes of the race. Olivia would have preferred them to be
ignorant of their own remote connection with slavery. But
he did strive to make them realize the contrast between
their present status and that of their black forebears. He
emphasized the racial progress, stressing the brief span of
years in which it had been accomplished.
And the children, straightforward, serious little things
without an ounce of perversity in their make-up, were en-
tranced, thrilled. Perhaps because they never met with any
open expression of prejudice they seemed to find their
greatest interest and amusement among the children of
their father's friends who most definitely showed color.
For a brief while Christopher's hero was Crispus Attucks;
Teresa's brave Sojourner Truth. But later, through lack
of nourishment, their interest in this phase of history died.


40
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
When the children were four and a half, and six, respec-
tively, Olivia found she was going to have another baby.
She was really very happy about it with a naivete and a
frankness which, Dr. Cary, as before, found inexpressibly
moving and charming. Within herself she was making
plans. This child should be her very own. She would
make her husband believe that she needed a change, she
would take the child away and live with him apart for two,
three, perhaps for five years. In appearance, in rearing, in
beliefs he should be completely, unrelievedly a member of
the dominant race. She was a much wiser woman than.
she had been six years ago. The prospect made her gay
and charming, almost girlish; far younger too than her
twenty-eight years, younger indeed it seemed to her hus-
band than she had ever been in those remote, so precious
years of training.
"This one will be a boy," she told big Christopher gaily.
"He'll be the handsomest and most attractive of us all.
And I'll name him after myself. An Oliver for your
Christopher."
Her prophecy was, except in one respect, absolutely true.
She had boasted of the ease with which her children had
entered the world. But this one she was confident would
outstrip them all.
"I'm sure I'll be up very soon, Chris," she told her hus-
band. She adopted one of her rare moods of coquetry.
"And when I do get up, you ought to reward a dutiful
wife. How would you like to send her and your baby son
on a little trip to England?" Her eyes were bright with
secrecy. He would, he assured her, do anything, give her
anything she wanted within his range.
But the unforeseen happened. The baby arrived in due
course. "Hale and hearty," said his beaming father. There


THE CHARACTERS
4*
never was a baby haler and heartier. But Olivia did not
fare so well. She had one sinking spell after another. For
the first time she was unable to nurse her child. She was
to meet with no excitement or shock and as the baby was
doing very well it was best for her not to be concerned with
him for a while. She was to concentrate on recovering her
strength. So that it was a full month before the baby was
set before her, crowing and laughing and persistently and
futilely striking his little hands together.
Olivia sat up, arms outstretched to receive him. Her
baby! Her eyes stretched wide to behold every fraction of
his tiny person. But the expectant smile faded as com-
pletely as though an unseen hand had wiped it off. She
turned to her husband sharply:
"That's not my baby!"
But it was her baby. It was a boy, handsomer and more
attractive than the other children. He was named Oliver.
. . . They had been calling him that for a month, her de-
lighted children assured her ... his hair was black and
soft and curly . . . and he had the exact bronze gold com-
plexion of Lee Blanchard!
She had reckoned without her own father!
For the first time since she had known the futile anger of
her early childhood she slipped into a black, though silent,
rage. Her early anger had been directed against her father.
This later ebullition included both her husband and her
helpless little boy. She had no special beliefs about pre-
natal influences but she did observe to herself in the dark
and tortuous recesses of her mind that if big Christopher
had not been so decidedly a Negrophile, the appearance of
their child would have been otherwise.
The little fellow was of a remarkable beauty. Through one


42
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
pretext and another Olivia contrived not to be seen on the
street with him. But the two older children and his father
would proudly conduct him anywhere. And wherever he
went he attracted attention . . . infinitely more so than his
brother and sister had ever earned. Added to this was an
undeniable charm of manner and of mind. He possessed
not only a winning smile and a genuine sweetness of atti-
tude and conduct but he was unquestionably of remarkable
mental endowment. ... If he had possessed an ounce of
self-confidence, or even of the ordinary childish conceit
which so often marks the "bright boy," he might easily
have become unbearable. But even from babyhood little
Oliver sensed in himself one lack which early automati-
cally destroyed any root of undue self-esteem. He knew he
did not have his mother's love. . . . Worse than that
through some strange childish, unfailing perception he was
sure of her active but hidden dislike for him.
When he was home Olivia fed him with the same food,
watched over and satisfied his physical welfare as com-
pletely and meticulously as she watched over that of the
other members of her household. But she never sought his
company, she never took him riding or walking as she did
the others, never bestowed on him more than the perfunc-
tory kiss of salutation. . . . When people, struck with his
appearance and healthy grace, praised him before his face
as so often they did, he would turn sometimes toward her
thinking dimly that now she must be proud of this fine
little boy who was her son. But he never surprised on her
countenance a single flash of delight or pride or love.
It saddened his childish days. ... As soon as he became
old enough to be from under her surveillance Olivia saw to
it that he spent most of his time with her own mother in
Boston or with her husband's mother in South Philadelphia.


THE CHARACTERS
43
In both of these homes he met with the intense affection
and generous esteem which his finely keyed little nature
so craved. Gradually he became able to adjust himself to
the inexplicable phenomenon of a mother who not only did
not love with especial signal fondness, but who did not
love at all, her youngest son. By sheer strength of will he
forced himself to steel his brave and loyal heart against this
defection and to crush down his pain.
His father had some sense of what was happening and in
his heart he bore his wife a deep and unyielding dislike.
CHAPTER II £^ ,, A a
TERESA loved the atmosphere of Marise's house. It
was not at all like her own. Olivia saw to it that the
walls were freshly "done over" every year. Sometimes a
cherished piece of furniture which just suited the curves of
your thin growing body would suddenly disappear to be
replaced by another intensely new and different and un-
comfortable. But in Marise's house the decorations were
rather dark and worn and indistinguishable; nobody cared
if occasionally a small soiled finger traced over a scroll or a
twisted design on wall or table cover. The furniture too
was old and restful. And in the large old-fashioned sitting-
room in the second story back you could make as much
noise, laughing, singing, romping as you pleased.
Years afterward when all the details of her childhood,
despite its unsatisfactory character, seemed to merge into a
delectable vision, Teresa always saved the memory of her
sparse visits to Marise as the acme of the few enjoyments
which life had offered. Once in later, listless days she read
a line from a poem by Claude MacKay:


44 comedy: American style
"We were so happy, happy, I remember—"
It seemed so wonderful that she had ever been truly
happy. She especially recalled how on the few hectic (as it
seemed to her) afternoons that she had spent at her
friend's house, Marise's mother, Mrs. Davies, had come and
stood for a few moments in the doorway surveying them
all with her wide, jolly smile.
"Have a good time, children," she would intone. "I want
you all to be happy." Marise and Phebe Grant and
Nicholas Campbell and any other children who would be
there used to look up and smile with the careless gratitude
of familiarity. But Teresa would cross over to the billowy
dark woman, standing in the doorway exhaling such a
sense of comfort with her benisons, and slip her little hand
into hers.
It seemed so wonderful to the child that Marise's mother
instead of talking of Ambition, or Standing or Racial Su-
periority should mention only Happiness.
• • • • •
There were the two weeks when her mother went to
Chicago to attend a Convention of Welfare Workers. . , .
Teresa found herself at the Davies' home almost every
afternoon. . . . There were so many things to talk about;
so much to discuss with these girls from whom she felt she
would one day be ruthlessly separated. Already, though so
far off, she could begin to descry Fate walling her in . . .
away, apart.
Today Marise was to read them her story. She had been
working on it for a month. They had not even known the
title. Marise triumphantly pronounced it aloud: "I Was A
Moonshiner's Wife." Even Phebe, knowing Marise as well
as she did, was impressed. Teresa for her part was com-


THE CHARACTERS
45
pletely overwhelmed. How could a girl of thirteen know
all these things! The story teemed with bloodshed, terrible
threats, gallons of whiskey, strong men, glamorous women,
unbridled passion, sharpshooting and the moon!
Toward the end Nicholas Campbell lounged in and
laughed loud and long at some of the context.
"'"Leave me alone," he hissed.' Go on. Marise, you
can't say a thing like that!"
"What's the reason I can't?"
"Because there's nothing in that sentence to hiss with.
. . . And then that's not the way men talk, not moonshiners
anyway. A lot you know about moonshiners. You were a
moonshiner's wife! You'd run a mile to get away from
one!"
"She's using her imagination," Teresa interposed, a trifle
timidly. She rarely spoke to young Campbell, a slender,
swarthy youth with hair that curled and waved itself into
peaks, so that his head looked sculptured. His skin al-
though dark had a reddish tinge; so thin it was, one seemed
always to glimpse the hot blood coursing beneath. Such a
boy, Teresa thought, when she pondered on him at all,
could probably upset a girl's mind very much. But reso-
lutely she kept her thoughts away from him. Let him be
destined for whom he might. He and his kind, she knew,
were not for her.
"Nicky's right," said Phebe, suddenly, stoutly. "Of
course a girl, especially a girl like us, wouldn't know any-
thing about a moonshiner. But, come on, Marise, read us
the rest of the story. Let's see what happens to you. Did
you shoot your wicked husband, or did you remain his
humble slave?"
But Marise knew, none better, when her great moment


. 46 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
had passed. "I'm tired of reading," she yawned. "Let's
play theatre."
She found costumes for them: for Nicholas, a little red
velvet jacket, for Phebe, trailing white silk with a veil; and
red silk again for herself. Teresa accepted only a faded
garland of flowers; she would be audience, she said. No
one demurred; it was at times like this her favorite role.
Nicholas sang in a breathy, boyish soprano that would
soon now be changing.
Marise played and sang and danced; her voice even at
that age was thrilling. Already she possessed charm, assur-
ance, savoir faire. She was going to be an actress when
she grew up, she always declared. Her dancing was begin-
ning to show something of a professional quality, there was
more to it than the spontaneous abandon of a child at play.
Even with this unexacting audience it was plain that she
was doing her best; Marise would never be second in any
line. She would either excel or withdraw.
Usually Nick's eyes, at times like these, were fastened
upon her. And indeed it was to capture his unwilling
attention that she performed her graceful antics. Between
these two there was something half-sensed and deeply hid-
den. ... As though his latent masculinity were lying in
wait for her ... as though some as yet undeveloped fem-
inine quality in herself were luring him, spurring him on
and yet evading him.
But today, Nicholas' attention wavered; it wandered to
Phebe, flickered once more to Marise and returned again
to the little blonde girl, lost in the wonder and halo of her
bright gilt hair; caught by the mystic chasteness lent her
by her swathing, snowy robe and the foamlike, diaphanous
aureole with which her veil invested her. Phebe did a solo
dance. In the fantasy which they were evolving together


THE CHARACTERS
47
with an ease born of many spontaneous rehearsals, she was
a butterfly. There was about her none of the sinuous vir-
tuosity of Marise . . . whatever Phebe did, she did from a
need to express herself, so, and not otherwise. She was a
quiet, intense, independent little girl, made up of strange
loyalties and predilections and almost as single-minded as
Olivia Cary, the mother of her little playmate, Teresa.
Today, feeling within her the need for light, airy move-
ment, she bent all her attention to expressing her concept
of not only the motion, but the essential feeling, of the
butterfly. She could not have explained to anyone what
she was trying to depict; but she knew, it seemed to her,
the special thrill which the lovely creature must feel when
it knows itself able to yield completely to the caress of light
and sun and air ... to feel itself one with the essence of
nature. Absorbed in this bewildering and yet related con-
geries of whirling and dipping and fluttering, she forgot
her audience until she looked up to catch the eyes of
Nicholas fastened upon her with the admiration and aston-
ishment which she had sometimes seen in the glances she
had occasionally intercepted in their course toward Marise.
This phenomenon brought her to herself; she subsided
blushing and confused. Phebe did not want to be an
actress. She did want, however, someday to read in the
eyes of one man, just such admiration as she had read in
the eyes of Nicholas . . . only it should be many times
intensified. . . . And she hoped the man would be
Nicholas.
Mrs. Davies appeared with a tray of small, delicious sand-
wiches and cakes. She and her husband were caterers,
serving the city's most exclusive. "I'm awful busy today,"
she told her delighted guests, "but I just put my head in to
tell you I hope you're all happy."


48
AMERICAN STYLE
COMEDY:
As usual Teresa gravitated toward her and, as usual, re-
ceived a word and a slight caress. For a fleeting moment
Mrs. Davies put a warm arm about her. "You look a little
peaked, Honey. Eat a lot of them sandwiches and join in
and sing and dance with the rest of them. Don't let your-
self be too quiet, you're only young once, you know."
The homely, kindly words lit a glow about the child's
chilled, apprehensive heart. Riding home in the Girard
Avenue car, she saw visions ahead of her in the misty twi-
light and forgot all about Olivia's silly plans and her own
fears and quakes. She would grow up and have four chil-
dren. All of them should be like her little brother Oliver
and she would be a mother like Mrs. Davies. ... In her
own house her brother Christopher greeted her uproari-
ously; glad to have someone to serve as auditor of his
baseball exploits. . . . Presently Dr. Cary came in and they
had dinner, Teresa presiding with pride and solicitude.
. . . Her father produced a little letter from Oliver, blotted,
but otherwise quite clean and remarkably free of errors.
. . . The house was full of a warm cosiness and a sense of
home. . . . Teresa hoped that her mother would not return
for a long time,
CHAPTER III
T afternoon Nicholas walked home with Phebe as
stood back to back with each other; his on the main street,
hers on the small one with the inevitable Philadelphia alley
between. They had as a matter of fact met in the alley,
each from the vantage of a mother's side as their respective
parents bought "fresh Delaware porgies."

For their houses


THE CHARACTERS 49
///IN
The handsome little brown boy had stared at the amaz-
ing feminine apparition of snow and gilt. He had stared
at her so intensely that he scowled and the apparition had
retreated behind a broad back. Once more within his own
domain he asked his mother: "Ma, is she a fairy?"
Mrs. Campbell laughed. "No, son. She's a real little girl
just like you're a real little boy."
"Was that her mother?"
"I think so, son."
Son considered. "But, Ma, how can that be her mother?
She's white, ain't she?"
"No, son. She's colored."
"But, Ma, how can she be?"
"Well, she just is. Lots of colored people look like that.
But they're colored right on."
"But if she ain't white, why ain't she white? She's whiter
than lots of those white girls at our school. What makes
her colored and makes those white girls white?"
"Well, son, I can't tell you that. You'll have to wait till
you're grown up. . . . You'll understand those things better
then, I think."
Nicholas spoke with a conviction unwarranted by his
years. "I'll never understand that."
He was, even at eight, a popular boy, an only child of
people well-established in the undertaking business. He
was indulged, active and busy with school and play. But
he remembered that Friday was "fish day" and that his
mother sometimes bought porgies in the alley. On the
next Friday he assisted again at the operation. As the man
was counting out the change, Mrs. Grant ("as she calls her-
self," some people said) appeared, accompanied by a wide-
eyed Phebe. The parents withdrew, the children lingered.


50 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"My name's Phebe," said the young lady.
"I'm Nicholas Campbell," countered the sturdy young
man. "Do you put stuff on your hair to make it look like
that?"
"Oo—ooh, no!" exclaimed Miss Phebe and immediately
fled.
Baffled, Nicholas returned to his back yard. Presently
glancing up he perceived a gay gold head outlined against
the window-pane.
"Come on down to the gate again," he shouted. The
window was gently raised and the small girl showed some
inclination to parley.
"You ain't mad, are you?"
She shook her head.
"Well, come on down to the gate again."
Immobile she regarded him.
"Kin I come over? . . . Say! Ask your Ma, kin I come
over?"
Consultation in the remote hinterland of the second story
back. Then Phebe returned, her small chin not far above
the window sill.
"She says you ask your Ma, kin you come over."
Appeal was made to Nicholas' parent. "Why, yes, I
suppose so," Mrs. Campbell was somewhat taken back at
the sudden turn of affairs. "I never knew you to be inter-
ested in any little girl before, Nicky. Put on a clean collar,
son, and wash your hands. . . ."
The two children advanced a few steps toward each
other. "What you got to play with?" Nicky demanded.
She hadn't much.
"Well, say, you come on over to my house. I got a base-
ball bat and a teeter-board and some sliced animals and a
bean-bag and a lot of things.


THE CHARACTERS
51
"Say, Mis' Grant, kin she come over to my house? I'll
take care of her."
Phebe told her mother gravely that she would like to see
the sliced animals.
• • • • •
Nicholas, some of the new-found admiration shining in
his eyes, reminded her of this as they walked home that
afternoon from Marise.
"You were the funniest little girl, Phebe. Look, did you
know your name meant the sun? . . . Let's walk through
the park as far as we can. ... So you see Phebe's just the
name for you. I hope it will always shine."
Not a bad sentiment for a boy of fourteen.
"It should have been given to Marise," she said in all
sincerity. "She's the only one of us three I guess who'll
ever do any shining."
"What about you? Say, Phebe, I never saw anybody
dance, I never saw anybody look like you looked this after-
noon. You were wonderful, you were a peach. I never
saw anybody dance like that. What are you going to do,
go on the stage some day?"
Phebe stared in astonishment. "Oh my, no! Not for
me. I wouldn't have—you know, Nick—I wouldn't have
the gumption to do that. I can't push myself enough.
. . . Marise now, she would be just the one. So pretty and
smart and all. And she can dance and sing."
He frowned a little, pursuing the subject, he knew not
why, so intently. "She won't have much chance, you know.
I don't think they have colored dancers on the stage much."
"Oh but I bet they will by the time we all grow up.
There's been a few already. And I bet there'll be oodles by
the time we're all coming along. If not, then there
wouldn't be any chance for me either."


52
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Yes, there would too. You could always pass."
"Oh, but I wouldn't want to."
"No, I wouldn't want to either, but what about you? Do
you think it's so great to be colored?"
"Why, I don't think anything about it," said Phebe, sur-
prised. "I think it's all right to be what you are. . . . And
then anyway something we have nothing to do with set-
tles things for you, don't you think? Jews and colored
people—they're the people we're always hearing about being
persecuted . . . but look at the things you read about in the
histories and in the newspapers. There are a lot of other
people who have a terrible hard time of it too."
"Yes, you're right, I guess. . . . But isn't it funny! Here
you're a white colored girl and here's Teresa a white colored
girl. And she's half the time trying to be white and you're
always crazy about being colored."
"I don't think that's Teresa's fault, do you? That's her
mother. I don't know why she's like that." She was silent
a moment. Then she added, the hot blood creeping up into
her face: "You know, Nicky, white people haven't treated
my mother very well. Perhaps that's why I can't get ex-
cited about them."
He nodded, feeling himself suddenly very grown-up and
protecting. "That's all right, Phebe. Don't you care." He
patted her arm boyishly. "Here we are. Gosh, I'm hungry!
After all those sandwiches I ate, too! Here, let me go
through your house so I won't have to go around the
block."
"Sure, come on." She saw him through the gate. "G'bye,
Nicky; maybe I'll see you tomorrow at Marise's."
"I don't know. Maybe you'll see me tonight. Shouldn't
wonder."


THE CHARACTERS
53
CHAPTER IV
NOW they were all in the high school. Nicholas was
almost ready to graduate. He was a year older than
any of the girls. Later he would go to college and study
medicine. He would do it all right there in the Old Quaker
City. . . . Young Christopher Cary was to be shipped off
to a preparatory school in New England. His mother's
doings; he was sure of that. She talked about his making
contacts! . . . Tight-lipped but outwardly calm he talked
about it to his father.
"It doesn't make any difference whom I meet, Dad. I
know there are lots of swell white guys. I've met plenty
of them. But she can't change me. I'm not going to be
white. I'm perfectly satisfied the way I am. Dad, can't I
stay right here and go off to college somewhere else, later
on?"
Dr. Cary hesitated a moment. "I'd keep you here in a
moment, Chris, but your mother has set her heart on your
going away. I know it won't change you any. You've got
too much common sense for that. . . ." He placed his hand
on the lad's shoulder. "It's really on account of Oliver, son,
that I want you to go. . , ."
"Oliver? What's he got to do with it?"
His father consumed some time lighting a cigarette and
watching the end of it deepen and glow. "You know how
she is, Chris. . . . You know how she's always been about
Oliver? .... Well, it seems she's set her heart on having
you and Teresa go off to school. I told her I didn't like it
and when I objected she . . . er . . . well, she expressed a
willingness to have Oliver come home and stay. She said
she felt she had sort of neglected him and now with you


54
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
two off her hands she would make it up to him. . . . Well,
I thought Oliver might like that."
"I know he would, Dad. . . . That makes it quite differ-
ent. All right then, since it's for Oliver. . . . But, Father, I
want to come back to the University of Pennsylvania for
college and medicine."
"I thought you might like Harvard, but I'll let you de-
cide on that when you're older."
"Honor bright, Dad?"
"Honor bright. That'll be entirely up to you."
Christopher, as his father had secretly hoped, explained
the matter to Teresa.
"See, Tess, it won't be so bad; you won't mind it so much
when you think it's for Oliver."
His sister looked at him wanly; shook her young head.
"I'm glad for Oliver, that is if she'll really be nice to him.
. . . But she won't be, Chris, she just can't bear any dark
people . . . she simply doesn't see them. And I think she's
mad at Oliver for being as brown as he is and daring to be
her son! And he's so crazy about her! . . . But anyway
Oliver and you are boys; you can get out of it all. But
I'm a girl and I know myself, Chris. I'm not stubborn and
I'm not willful. I know it's the end of everything for me.
Mother's not going to let me rest until I've made some of
her old 'contacts' that she's always talking about. ... I
know what she's hoping. She thinks either you or I, or
both of us, will marry white; and then she'll come and
live with us."
Christopher's eyes showed his astonishment. "You know
I never thought of that! She'll never live with me. I'll
show her. . . . And I won't marry any of her white girls
either."


THE CHARACTERS
55
"That's just what I said. But she'll keep after me. . . .
Chris, do you know," she said solemnly, "I can just feel that
I'm going to be awfully unhappy. I can feel it closing in
on me."
He scoffed at her, but he was impressed.
"What nonsense! What's closing in on you?"
"Life," she said seriously. "I feel like a fly in a spider's
web. I know I'm going to be caught and I know I'm going
to hang there. I won't have a lot of pain. I'll just live on
stupid and dull and unable to stir. Hating everything."
He considered this, shifting her toilet articles about on
her little dressing table. "You don't have to do everything
mother says, you know. Of course you'll have to now. But
when you're older. . . ."
"I haven't got the stuff in me to disobey her. And I'm
not smart, Christopher. ... If I were just someone like
Marise."
"Oh, you don't want to be like Marise . . . she's a great
girl, but not the kind of girl I'd like you to be," said Chris-
topher, an advocate of conservative sisters.
"I thought you liked her, Chris!"
"I do . . . sort of so-so. You know. But she ain't the
girl of my dreams, not by a long shot."
"Well, anyway I wish I were like her and I wish I looked
like her."
"She is easy to look at, I'll admit. . . . Brace up, sis.
We're having our hard times now. Ten years from now
we'll be on the top of the world."
But Teresa had her own visions and they included no
such lofty station.
Marise wanted to give her a farewell party. To Teresa's
immense surprise, Olivia was willing for her to go. Her


56
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
mother was bland now because she was going to have mat-
ters her own way and because, according to her way of
thinking, her life-long project was at last within her range
of vision. Her daughter had never known her so com-
plaisant and so beneficent. Teresa was to choose her own
dress, material, and style. As a rule her mother dressed her
in pastel shades with the thought that in some way this
brought out every possible delicacy of coloring and even of
feature; refining her and taking away every possible vestige
of connection with a cruder race.
The result was that Teresa usually presented something
of. the personality, if not the appearance, of a mouse. The
light pinks and blues and tans of her mother's choice dulled
the creaminess of her rather thick but perfect mat skin;
they killed the sheen and the tone of her soft, abundant
chestnut hair. In common with most girls the child felt
that she needed warmth; she realized how even the sight of
the glowing, gay colors adopted by Marise cheered and en-
livened her. . . .
She chose then a very soft, supple silk of the shade known
as burnt orange . . . the blouse was made simply with
round girlish neck and baby puff sleeves. A brown velvet
girdle, fine and glowing, was to surround her slender waist
and for her nice narrow feet there were bronze slippers
and cobwebby bronze stockings. . . . Phebe, who had a
natural gift for sewing, made the dress and indeed bought
her own with the money she received for it.
Teresa never forgot that evening. The time was Septem-
ber; the weather was soft, melancholy, wistfully sweet. The
glow of the summer remained without its heat; evenings
were periods of sensuous delight; the air, balmy and
scented, afforded the stimulus of wine; stars, twinkling like


THE CHARACTERS
57
huge fireflies, seemed as near as the lanterns in the Davies'
small but perfect backyard. . . .
Teresa knew that in appearance and feeling she was in
perfect harmony with her surroundings. Her dress, said
a boy, a student at the Art School in Cherry Street, was the
incarnation of the season. . . . There were some small,
rather hard but perfect, little flowers of the aster variety
scattered about in bowls and vases. Of these young War-
wick thoughtfully selected a tiny nosegay in graduated
shades of gold and yellow ... he brought them to her and
fastened them into the folds of her glowing girdle. They
struck an inspired note of transition between the brown of
the girdle and the orange of her dress that made him for
the moment surfeit with happiness.
"After I've had the pleasure of a couple of dances with
you," he told her gravely, "my evening will be complete.
I shall just sit down and watch you and that dress until
the party is over."
Afterwards a laughing comparison with Phebe and
Marise disclosed the fact that he had made somewhat simi-
lar remarks to them with regard to their dresses of white
and red respectively, though he did not bring them flowers.
Teresa did not mind. . . . Usually she did not even share
the compliments which other girls took casually as their
accepted portion.
Her joy, her increased and tingling vitality, her complete
satisfaction in being openly and without apology with the
people she preferred in no wise took from her that quality
which she had unconsciously cultivated, of being the in-
terested and thoughtful spectator. . . . Besides, tonight, she
wanted to etch this picture on her mind. She wanted to
remember this warmth and gayety and happiness; the rich


58 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
mingling and contrast of coloring not only in clothing but
in faces. ...
Long afterward for no particular reason she remembered
the vividness of Marise's nut-brown skin with its hint of
red on the cheek-bones beside the pale lemon-clear skin
of Sylvia Raymond. For a moment her brother Christo-
pher's head with his extraordinarily white skin and his
burnt hair was thrust between them as he engaged both
girls for succeeding dances.
She danced every dance but between the lovely, lively
numbers she took particular note of Phebe's ethereal fair-
ness with her thick straight cap of pale gold hair against
the background of Nicholas Campbell's statuesque dark-
ness. . . .
Later on when she came to know the classics she realized
that there was about him a peculiar faun-like quality that
would never be held though it might be caught for a day,
for a month, for a year, by a woman's obvious devotion.
. . . He would need an attraction, as errant, as willful, as
pre-emptive as his own, with perhaps more deliberateness,
even more selfishness behind it.
But this the young girl could not clearly foresee. . . . She
only marked the happiness shining so vividly from behind
Phebe's face and personality and soul, and felt with a cer-
tain chilling knowledge about her heart that no one could
both know such bliss as that and have it last.
But it was great to feel such joy as that, she reflected
soberly, dancing through her second engagement with
young Holland ... a great deal better, her sadly fatalistic
sensibilities told her, than to go through life drably, know-
ing nothing, feeling less. But on matters such as these she
would not allow herself to linger.
She danced with Nicholas, surrendering herself sensu-


THE CHARACTERS
59
ously, consciously to the male charm of him. He was the
type that holds his partner lightly but firmly, so closely that
a girl's soft shoulder must know faintly the hardness of his
own, the steeliness of his arm. Instead of revolving dizzily
and senselessly, he partly guided her, partly drove her be-
fore him, in long forward strides, something on the order
of the redowa, an older and statelier mode of dancing. . . .
Something in all this of the notion of a faun pursuing a
nymph, with the latter like the classic maiden of Keats'
Grecian Urn forever and tantalizingly out of his reach.
Thus, unconsciously revealing, Nicholas' manner epito-
mized the type his real self would be seeking. . . . Even
though his head might be telling him: "Here are Happi-
ness, Peace, Sincerity . . . here, here within your grasp!
Stay with them." . . . But he would not be able to stay.
Teresa, pursuing determinedly, even under the soft ba-
dinage of Nicholas' charming voice, her storing up of little
pictures to be reviewed another day, noticed the swift, keen
look with which her hostess surveyed her chief guest,
clasped for the moment in her partner's arms. Marise had
been rather ostentatiously unobservant of Nicholas as long
as he was with Phebe.
Now her manner seemed to say: "As long as I ignore
this other thing it does not exist. . . . But what is this in-
terest in someone else whom he has never noticed before?"
Teresa recalled then that in all the years she had been
coming to play with Marise, never once before had she
danced with Nicholas. Indeed beyond his pleasantly fa-
miliar: "Hello, Treese," she could not recall ever having
sustained any conversation with him. At the recollection
of this she glanced up at him; at the moment he happened
to be looking down on her with the intent, engrossed look


6o
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
which was as much a part of his dancing equipment as his
dancing shoes.
Something in her prompted her to smile into his eyes . . .
and immediately he asked her for another dance. "I think
I'm engaged," she told him sweetly, "but you may try the
fourth from now and if I'm free you may have it." . . .
Promptly at the fourth he was there to claim her but she
gave it to Bob Allan, who declared aggrievedly that she had
cut him all evening. . . .
Nicholas gave her a look which made the blood come to
her face. "I'm sorry you're going away, Teresa," he mur-
mured. "We might have been great pals!"
Toward the close of the evening, things began to blur a
little; she could not carry away with her all the bright, gay
scene. . . . She saw Christopher for the third or fourth
time dancing with Marise, a slow dreaming waltz which
mysteriously they seemed to convert into a ritual more than
usually sinuous and significant.
Nicholas drifted over to Phebe where she stood, all snow-
white and crystal, listening to Pete Holland's stereotyped
compliments. . . . With immediate radiance and confidence
she turned to meet his light touch . . . her arms went out
in a touching gesture of willingness and satisfaction. . . .
You knew she would have danced with him over burning
plowshares. . . .
Later on there was supper . . . such salad! such sand-
wiches! superlative cakes! Philadelphia ice-cream—the
best! slightly heady punch! . . . Someone made a speech
about Teresa's beauty and charm. . . . Someone else said
she was leaving just as they were all getting to know her
better. But when she came back! After all their present
loss—who knew?—might be their future gain!
At the end Marise came up to her—glowing, beautiful as


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COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
won't be by again for a long time. Then we'll ride, over
to Girard and walk to your house. ... I like to walk along
sleeping streets. I wonder," he said whimsically, "if they
ever remember the woods and forests they used to be."
Phebe loved to hear him ramble like this . . . she knew
he expected no answer; it was as though he were commun-
ing with himself in his own mind . . . how close to him-
self he must feel her!
"I often think of telegraph poles," he went on, smoking
with the negligent languor that she so much admired. "I
think it's so hard on them to lose all their lovely, graceful
leaves and branches and stand so stark and plain on ugly,
city streets." . . . They were on the Hill now and the great,
ungainly city sprawled before them. ... "I wonder how
these fortunate trees in the Park feel about it"
Phebe heard him, not listening. She was thinking no
one, just no one in the world looked like Nicholas. His
hat lay on the bench beside him; his dark face with that
Apollo-like look, which the sculptured waviness of his hair
bestowed upon him, was finely silhouetted against the
moonlight with the softness of the black night for an im-
mediate background. His careless beauty, his masterfulness
made her heart turn over. ... If they were only older! . . .
She meant to be a perfect wife, very sweet and true and
kind . . . and loyal. She would be very loyal! "A rock,"
as the hymn said, "in a weary land."
Everybody had trouble; her mother had taught her to
accept it stoically, philosophically. But her mother had told
her too: "I didn't mind my trouble so much after you
come, little daughter. . . . Always you loved yore ole
mammy so! ... It don' make much difference about
trouble if you has someone who you kin always depend
on. . . ."


THE CHARACTERS
63
She had pronounced it "depind." . . .
So Phebe had always been dependable. . . . And that was
the quality she would bring some day to Nicholas.
He had forsaken the telegraph poles and begun to talk
of Teresa. "I wonder what she's going to be like. . . .
Wasn't she different tonight? What was it? Just her dress,
I wonder? She was almost pretty. Not really pretty like
you or Marise . . . but she made you want to look at her
and dance with her. . . ."
"She was happy," interpreted happy Phebe. . . . "But her
dress helped a lot. Her mother let her get it herself and
we picked it out together. It was like her, you know; warm
and cool too. . . . And because it made her look the way
she ought to look and she liked it, that made her happy.
And that made her pretty."
"H'm, think you know all about it, don't you, Miss?"
"I do," said Phebe sagely, "know everything about clothes.
I can feel it. . . . Clothes can do everything to you. . . .
You know, Nicholas, I'm not really pretty either but I know
how to make the most of myself."
"Fm not going to pay you compliments," he assured her
unsmiling.
"Don't want them." Was her heart not already singing
with his former spontaneous praise?
Nicholas was musing again. "I feel, Phebe, that after
tonight things are going to be different for our little bunch.
Teresa's gone, Christopher's going next year. I've got to
go to work this summer. You're coming out of high
school. . . . What did you decide to do? Teach?"
"Here comes the car," she reminded him. "I must get
home. . . . No, I don't like teaching. . . . My mother sews
for Mrs. Morton Rogers; she sent me this coat, Nicky;
didn't you wonder how I could be so grand? She's taking


64
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
my mother to Florida with her next winter, and she's giv-
ing me courses in dress designing this summer and next
winter . . . I'm going to look after her daughters' clothes
while she's away. ... If she likes me and I make progress,
she may set me up. . . . Pretty nice?"
"Can't say I like it so much." Nicholas scowled at the
two white men opposite them in the car who, he thought,
were regarding Phebe too intently. "Has she ever seen
you? She may not like you. Lots of white people don't
like these white colored people, you know."
She nodded gravely. "Yes, that is so. I had a teacher in
the graded school who couldn't bear me after I told her I
was colored."
"You certainly are straight about that, aren't you? Not
a bit like Teresa."
"I always told you that wasn't Teresa's doing. That's
her mother's foolishness. Come on, Nick, we must get off
here."
As they passed the other two passengers she distinctly
heard one of them say: "That certainly is a white girl
with that coon!" She hoped Nicholas didn't hear them.
As they passed through the quiet streets it seemed to her
that he was unusually silent.
"Marise," she said desperately, "Marise is going to have
the nicest time of anyone. She's always wanted to go to
Chicago and her father's going to take her there for a
graduation present this summer. Then in the fall she's
to study music and dancing . . . perhaps in New York. I
wouldn't be at all surprised," she said, stopping before her
unremarkable dwelling, "if she were to go on the stage.
Marise always gets what she wants."
"Does she?" He spoke absently. "Good-night, Phebe.
I'll stand here till you lock the door."


THE CHARACTERS
Good-night and he hadn't kissed her! The last time they
had been to a party, he had put his arm about her—she
could feel it now—and he had bent down to her uplifted,
unsuspecting face; had set his lips against hers.
The summer evening turned cold. The charm of the
party was ashes.
Mrs. Morton Rogers, thrifty social registerite, would have
been surprised to see her blue velvet cloak a dishevelled
careless heap on the floor where a disappointed girl had
dropped it in her hurry to bury her face in a friendly pillow.


Ill
TERESA'S ACT





Ill





CHAPTER I
CHRISTIE'S ACADEMY, the prospectus said, catered
to a small select group of girls; girls whose parents
felt that the contact of young minds with superior and
highly cultivated mentalities was more educative than the
assimilation of the contents of many volumes.
Not that learning from books was to be despised. It was
simply, the prospectus hinted, that Christie's was able to
offer more than that. Thus while its college preparatory
course was surpassed by no other school, parents, who did
not intend to give their children more training after they
had left these academic walls, would find their offspring
still remarkably fitted to join battle with Life.
This desirable end was wrought by the "contact of young
minds with superior and highly cultivated mentalities." In
order to further this end, only a few, and highly recom-
mended students were admitted each year.
Dr. Cary felt the selectiveness and paucity of numbers,
too, was really caused by the certainly unusually high tui-
tion and boarding fees. But no other school, it seemed,
would suit Olivia. Teresa was barely consulted on the
matter, but since she did not want to leave Philadelphia
anyway it is possible that one school seemed as good to her
as another.
Olivia did not inform either her husband or her daughter
of the precaution which she had taken which had really
made her choice of this school unshakeable. On one of
her rare visits to her mother and to Oliver, she had slipped
69


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COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
away from Boston and gone just over the state border-line
to Christie's in New Hampshire. She had been delighted
with the comparative inaccessibility of the place and with
the appearance and type of girl whom she had found there.
Most of the students were the children of people belong-
ing to the upper middle-class; people whose names never
appeared in the papers, who took themselves and their posi-
tions seriously and sensibly. The men of this group were
probably pillars in their respective communities, thoroughly
American and for the most part New England American.
A few girls were recruited from the West and one or
two from the South. When Olivia was there, the catalogue
contained the names of two girls registered from Virginia.
By careful questioning she elicited the information that
while the school had no objection to foreigners, Negroes
nor Jews, it happened that none had ever registered within
their portals. And since the school advertised very little it
seemed most improbable that any would apply; although of
course you never could tell.
• • • • •
Accordingly Teresa was registered at Christie's with the
understanding that she should enter college under its
auspices. It was the acquaintances and "contacts" which
Teresa should make in college on which her mother based
her ultimate hopes. But she was sending her daughter to
a preparatory school in order to provide her in the first
place with a perfect spring-board from which to make her
leap into such college circles as should best further her, or
rather Olivia's, interest.
Teresa proved unexpectedly docile. She had to get her
education someway, somewhere, she supposed. Lots of girls
were crazy to get away from home. She would make the
best of this. She would be uncomplaining, studious and


Teresa's act
71
contented. There were two or three sports in which she
would like to excel, notably tennis and rowing. . . .
Perhaps if she kept to herself, made practically no friends
under these false pretenses, her mother might give her up
as a bad job and when the two years were over she could
go comfortably to Howard or Fisk. All this optimism was
engendered in her as a result of Marise's party and the
definite promises of that young lady and of Phebe never to
forget her and never to let anyone else take her place.
But presently in the charm and novelty of the new life
to which she was introduced she forgot all about her inten-
tions. The girls, of course, unquestionably accepted her as
white; the absence of any other colored girl took away any
sense of strain or disloyalty to her own.
She herself was totally without either social ambition or
the desire to advance herself in any particular. Her father's
people on his father's side had been in Philadelphia long
before 1782; her paternal grandmother had an almost simi-'
lar record of family integrity, only changing the milieu to
Charleston. Dr. Cary, her father, was finely and ade-
quately trained. And the Great War had made him almost
affluent. Her mother was a product of the Boston Latin
School and of a refinement almost overwhelming—Teresa
thought when she gave the matter any attention. There
was little, she recognized, that these students could give her
which she did not already possess.
The last week in September, the whole month of October
passed. Teresa was naturally studious and not dull. While
never interested in making a record she would have de-
spised herself if she had slipped back in her classes. And
in spite of her lack of ambition she was beginning to attract
attention with her tennis which she played with an ardor
quite at variance with her habitual restraint. This interest


72
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
in sports threw her in touch with some of the more out-
standing girls in the school; already her outlook was broad-
ening; her mind maturing.
She was registered of course with Juniors. For some rea-
son the girls of her class averaged from eight months to a
year older than she and acted accordingly. In order to
offset the essential childishness of her own viewpoint she
could feel herself cultivating self-confidence and assurance.
Among these girls, she had no particular chum. Young
as she was she felt a delicacy about striking up an intimacy
based on an implication of falsehood. About her there was
never any sense of racial inferiority. If her mother had
left her to herself she would have spread casually the fact
of her mixed blood to her immediate associates, but even
then only as occasion demanded it. And she knew that
without any doubt many of these girls would have been
her friends; they would have known her absolutely as she
was without reserves. . . . Marise, for instance, patently
colored, was one of the most popular girls ever known in
West Philadelphia.
These New England girls with their orderly decorous
minds appealed to her strongly. . . . Among them she
would have liked to find a comrade. . . . On the other
hand the infiltration of such Negro blood as flowed in her
veins lent to her a warmth and ready friendliness which
the Yankee girls admired and were ready to welcome.
If she could only have been herself, she thought. Per-
haps later on when she came to know them better, she
could entrust her secret to a select few. Her very frankness
might make them admire her more. . . . Again there
would always be some who would resent the hoax. And
too, she knew that these girls would hardly be able to
understand what it was that her mother was evading. . . .


Teresa's act
73
In this part of the world they would never see her, for
instance, subjected to the heartbreak, the worry and dis-
crimination which people of her appearance, carefully
marked and tagged by public memory, would meet in their
communities in the South; or with the deadly insult and
indignity which her darker racial kinsmen would encounter
anywhere.
One girl, however, Ellen Ware, could not be gainsaid.
She was a splendid athlete, a good student, with original
somewhat iconoclastic ideas. She liked to talk, and as
Teresa was both a good and a retentive listener, so that she
really knew where you left off, Ellen's slightly super-
egocentric needs fastened upon her. Gradually, Teresa,
sensing the real and generous self which underlay all this
superficial self-expression, grew to be very fond of her.
Partly because it pleased her immensely, a girl so rarely
sought after, to be the preferred chum of one of the wealthi-
est, most capable and most influential girls in the school,
but still more for another reason. Ellen, who talked about
everything under the sun, discoursed from time to time on
problems of race, color, religion and social preferment.
These were a few of her hobbies which really, Teresa dis-
covered, included everything that could be discussed within
the realm of her knowledge under the sun. What she had
to say pleased the young Philadelphian immensely.
"She's all straight on this race business," Teresa wrote
Chris happily. "I'd get her to come home with me Christ-
mas if I'd only told her about things in the first place. . . .
As it is she wants me to go home with her. But I'm not
going to do that either. I don't thin\ it's quite the thing.
. . . What do you say, Chris?"


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COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Life now, she had to admit, was very pleasant. . . . She
loved the cold, hard New Hampshire fall, the small in-
formal classes, the granite farmer folk of the neighborhood,
the simple pieties of many of the girls, the slight formal
quality of the frequent teas designed to bring students into
"contact with superior minds."
Christie's, save for these qualities, was very little different
in its curriculum from any other good high school ... it
was the absence of the continual strain under which she
lived at home that endeared this experience. She missed
pleasantly her mother's feverishly concentrated ambitions,
her father's frustration showing so plainly even through
his material success; she felt the falseness of her mother's
stand drop away from her and with that the consequent
resentment and opposition which she and young Christo-
pher were so often forced futilely to display.
Gradually even Marise and Phebe and Nicholas faded
into a background of distance and dimness. Compared
with the cool sexlessness of this life with its quota of sports
and games, of lessons, of self-imposed scholastic tasks, of
endless debates on what she felt were "real things," Marise
and her pleasures seemed needlessly exotic, prematurely
forced and useless. Phebe and her difficult, narrow httle
life struck her as pitiful and empty.
It seemed to her that she herself was living in a vortex, a
pleasantly manageable vortex, of many choices of interest.
She felt proudly, immensely, free to make a selection which
should carry her off once more into newer, increasingly
splendid fields of interest. She was, of course, too young
to understand that having once chosen her pursuit or fields
of endeavor, her profession or hobby, life would begin to
dwindle again until it reached the proportions accepted and
endured by most people.


76 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
around. You know I've never spoken to a Negro in my
life. I've never seen them anywhere except on the street
and in the street cars. I wouldn't know what to say to
one."
"Oh, they're all right," affirmed Ida Yates. "My mother
has a colored cook. She has two children, a little black boy
and a little brown girl. And they are the funniest! You
ought to see them dance!"
"My goodness me!" Marian exclaimed. "What would we
do with one dancing around here like Topsy, and her hair
sucking up all over her head!"
Ellen raised her voice indignantly. "It shouldn't make
any difference to us how they look! Suppose she should
be someone like Topsy! It would still be our duty to teach
her deportment and cleanliness and neatness. It's our fault
that they're here. We brought them."
A tall, slender girl with a fine, tanned face had been loll-
ing back in a chair listening intently to the others' com-
ments, but up to this time saying nothing. Now she spoke:
"You girls make me sick! How can you be so dumb?
You don't suppose the kind of colored girl who would be
coming to a school like this would still be in the Topsy
state, do you? There are all sorts of colored people, just as
there are all sorts of us. Don't you know that, dumb-
bells?"
"Yes; Jennie's right," Maud Parker replied. "There're
a lot of them very fair, almost as white as we; only they
have funny hair and their nails are dark, so you can always
tell them. Well, some of them are quite comfortable. They
don't go out to work as servants, you know. And they
send their children to school. And then the others are
quite dark just as though they had just come from Africa.


Teresa's act
77
And they are the working class." She leaned back, com-
fortably satisfied with her disquisition.
"How ridiculous!" Jennie Hastings sat upright. "Color's
got nothing to do with it. It's simply that some are ambi-
tious and some aren't. Some get ahead and some don't.
Just like anybody else. There were lots of colored girls
and boys too in my high school. And there was as much
difference among them, in proportion to their number, as
there was among us."
Teresa emerged from the daze of bewilderment and as-
tonishment into which this conversation had thrown her.
"Jennie's right," she said. "Of course there's as much dif-
ference. I've always gone to school with colored girls too.
And I've never yet seen one of the pure Topsy type; though
I suppose there are lots of them. And color has nothing to
do with their ambition or success." She thought of Marise
and Phebe. "Why, when I was in the graded schools, the
prettiest and the most popular girl there was a dark, brown
girl; not black, you know, but brown, like—like a young
chestnut. Her skin was just as thin. You could see the red
under it."
She paused, wondering if she could ever make them see
from a description, the singular beauty of Nicholas Camp-
bell. An afterthought convinced her that she'd better not
say anything about colored boys.
"And I can tell you something else," she resumed.
"There was one girl in that school—very, very blonde, with
hair so gold it was almost gilt . . . and she was colored!"
"I know," Maudie Parker abetted her. "You could tell
from her finger nails."
"I don't know about that," Teresa countered. "I never
noticed that. No, she stood up in class and said she was
colored."


78
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"My!" exclaimed Ellen Ware. "Wasn't that fine of her!
Wasn't she brave! Imagine anyone doing a thing like that
if she didn't have to! I'd like to know a girl like that.
She's got hero blood in her veins!"
Jennie snorted. "Hero nothing! Why should it take any
courage to acknowledge you are what you are? That girl
probably doesn't mind being colored, because, oh, because
—how can I make you see? Being colored is being her
natural self and she can't imagine being any other way.
Any more than I can imagine being a boy, or a giant, or a
Scandinavian or what have you!"
They were all silent a little, trying to adjust their minds
to this entirely revolutionary idea.
"And then anyway," Marian Tilbury appended thought-
fully, "she has good blood in her veins. Teresa said she
looked like white. And of course she's so proud of her
white blood that she won't let her black blood pull her
down and let her be a coward."
"Oh Lord!" Jennie groaned. "You don't think you've
got one-half or two-thirds of your veins filled with one kind
of blood, do you, and the other filled with another? And
that you can let one part of it govern you and the rest not
affect you at all? . . . Ooo-f, this crazy talk makes me
sleepy! . . . I'm going to bed. Good-night, Terese . . .
good-night, gang!"
CHAPTER II
TERESA could have gone to Philadelphia for the Christ-
mas vacation but she preferred the calmness and the
cold of the New Hampshire village to the bleak uncertain-
ties of home. The thought of her mother's catechism
brought back all her timidities and inhibitions. ... It


Teresa's act
79
would be impossible, she knew from the tone of Olivia's
letters, to convince her that she had done little or nothing
toward gaining a foot-hold in this world that meant so
much to her mother. • . .
So she stayed at Christie's along with Jennie Hastings
and a half-dozen other girls. They skated, they hiked, they
played like children in the feathery, drifted snow. Two of
the "Academicians" lived just beyond the township in large
farmhouses. They invited the stay-overs out to sit after
jolly boisterous sleigh-rides before roaring fireplaces where
they toasted pop-corn, listening to tall Indian stories as
they fell from the lips of oldest inhabitants.
A happy, happy season.
• • • • •
Like a flash the winter and summer vacations were over;
the girls had returned and school life was on at full tilt.
. . . Examinations lurked around the corner. . . . Some
girls were leaving to enter college—although at this time
of the year the number was noticeably few.
Teresa let herself be caught up in the flurry of all these
activities, feeling almost that she had never known any
other existence, so intensely vivid did she find this. . . .
She loved a certain hour late in the dim afternoon when
girls might drop into the long drawing-room of one of the
residence halls for a cup of tea, a chat, a reflective silence in
the embrasure of a deep arm-chair or couch, a bit of music
or sometimes, best of all, conversation, desultory but real,
with one of the instructors.
As in a dream she remembered one particular tea hour.
The January day was intensely cold and still, the grey sky
lowering so that it seemed, with the deep snow, to shut the
little town into an atmosphere and an aura all its own. . . .
Lights were not on full, curtains were still up, without, a


8o
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
lazy determined snow-storm beat gently against the
window-pane. Within the drawing-room figures moved a
little dimly in the fire-dusk; girls worn out with "mid-
years" relaxed in easy-chairs, faintly, sorrowfully reminis-
cent as they reviewed silently, careless or too hurried replies
to questions. . . .
Tonight Miss Cathcart was the presiding genius. . . .
The girls, remembering the prospectus, used occasionally to
murmur adolescent but pointed sarcasms on the subject of
"contacts with superior mentalities . . ." But they liked
Miss Cathcart. . . . She was young and pretty, but more
than pretty. . . . She had the fine broad brow of the idealist
and the brave firm mouth of the doer. The sweetness of
the mouth, an index of her entire personality, was, you felt,
an extra, supernumerary quality ... so much the essential
she was worthwhile and acceptable.
Without any preliminary of "Attention, please," she be-
gan to talk in her clear, distinctive voice which afforded
such a clew to her personal niceness. ... In a moment
everybody was listening.
"We're going to try an experiment in the school," she
told them, "and yet not an experiment, since we are simply
planning to proceed along certain lines which have been
indicated for years in our charter. . . . You know we are
pledged to open our doors to any pupils of approved
scholastic and moral training. . . .
"A girl, answering to these requirements, has made, or
rather her parents have made for her, application to be
admitted here. She is colored. She is coming from a group
which, I am pretty sure, is essentially no different from our
own. But most of us don't know sufficient about her people
to be sure of this. ... It doesn't seem to me fair to her to
make a special plea for her. ... I am simply asking you to


Teresa's act
81
reserve judgment until you really know her. . . . She'll be
here the first of the term."
In the excitement and comment that followed Teresa
could hear Ellen Ware: "I'll take her under my wing. I'll
see she's treated all right."
"You'll give her some hair pomade, won't you, Ellen?"
asked Jennie Hastings dryly. "And be sure to warn her not
to break out into a cakewalk in chapel."
Teresa wrote her brother about it and received a warning
along with some surprising news.
"Since you life your old school so much, for Pete's sa
don't tell Mother that a colored girl is coming. She'll yan\
you away so fast. . . . She's simply rabid now about color.
. . . Christmas wee\ she had a gang of white women there,
some old Welfare Workers to lunch . . . and there's been
no holding her since. . . .
"She put a mean one over on Oliver that day too. The
poor \id doesn't feiow it though, which is a lot better for
him. . . . I'll be looking after him from now on. . . .
(Teresa opened her eyes at this and reread the phrase.)
I'm going home for good in a few days. . . . Your bright
little brother managed . . . and I mean managed, ... to
fail in all his subjects, sis, so he's being dropped. . . . Ain't
that something?"
February brought the new term and Alicia Barrett. She
was a slender girl, golden brown, with carefully "made"
hair, soft and wavy. Teresa knew her immediately for
what she was, a girl of family, breeding and tradition. She
had known a certain sort of prominence too. Her father
was a judge in Chicago; her mother a well-known musician


82
AMERICAN STYLE
COMEDY:
of an earlier day. She was young, she was new, she was of
a different milieu.
But nothing about this position terrified her or rendered
her timid. She was not, of course, rich. But then equally
of course, she not only was not poor, but she had never
known poverty. Yet with the elasticity of the social tenets
which her kind observed she numbered among her friends
more than one girl who was genuinely poor. But such a
girl possessed education, tradition and undeniable breeding.
In the midst of this new environment Alicia moved freely
and easily and with little curiosity. She had always at-
tended schools in which there were large numbers of white
people and yet her identity had never been lost or over-
shadowed. She was a brilliant student; she dressed with a
deliberate regard for her coloring; she was perfectly aware
of her social background and completely satisfied with it.
In a school such as this she had nothing to gain but a
superstratum of the much vaunted Eastern culture plus
the poise which comes from being forced to meet new
people and to cope with new conditions. She was really
expecting, in 1923, neither blind prejudice nor blind patron-
age. And she was quite able to bide her time and await
issues.
As a result, then, she did not rebuff nor did she accept too
gratefully Ellen Ware's zealous overtures nor did she resent
the frankly curious scrutiny of Marian Tilbury. As a mat-
ter of fact she was herself engaged in some not too overt
appraisal. From her angle she had nothing to gain from
these girls; her whole concern was really with the curricu-
lum. But she did hope to live in peace and harmony.
She was rather inclined to like Jennie Hastings' matter-
of-fact courtesies and she liked Teresa's unobtrusive acts


Teresa's act
83
of kindness and thoughtfulness, sensing in both these girls
attention based on real and spontaneous liking.
Teresa, especially, felt drawn toward her not so much
because of the unsuspected tie of blood secretly binding
them as because of her admiration. Both proud and sadly
envious of Alicia's assurance and independence she could
not but compare the condition of her new friend with her
own. Alicia's whole attitude said serenely: "Here am I,
the best of my kind and I am perfectly satisfied with my
kind." Thus she arrived at a tie plus ultra at once per-
sonally satisfying and completely baffling to all conjectures
on superior bloods, racial admixtures, hybridizations and all
the sociological and biological generalizations of the day.
Neither she nor Teresa, of course, was consciously aware
of this stand. And yet the latter knew that she had behind
herself no such pride either of race or of personality as
Alicia constantly displayed. For Oliva's teachings had
urged not so much: "Be white," as "Don't be colored."
It was impossible for the child to know esteem for either
group.
• • • • ■
Something very fine and sweet began to grow up between
the three girls, the clearly white Jennie, the apparently
white Teresa and the frankly colored Alicia. It became
natural for them to be found together at work, at play, at
study. And if one were missing, then the other two were
certain to be in each other's company. But Jennie was a
senior this term which meant that after January Alicia and
Teresa would see each other almost constantly.
By the time of the arrival of the shy New England spring
the pair were inseparable. . . . They walked and played
tennis and swam; and in the sweet chilly evenings told each


84 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
other secrets. ... Or at least Alicia did, for save for her
one great mystery, secrets Teresa had none. But Alicia
had many. . . . Her brother was to study medicine and
she was to become a great bacteriologist. Her parents were
unaware of this but her brother Alex and she wrote reams
to each other on the subject. Her present training was
being given to her with a view of affording her a broad
cultural background for an intensive future study of music.
And indeed she played already with great accuracy and
delicacy but with no special warmth, since her heart had
never been in her practice.
And then she had been in love!
"Oh, Alicia," said Teresa, amazed. "You haven't!"
"Yes I have . . . more than once! You don't mean to
tell me you haven't, Tessa!"
"Believe it or not. I never have."
"But, Teresa, you must have seen some boy you liked."
She couldn't explain, how could she, that not until the
night of Marise's party had she come in contact with the
boys she'd like to know. . . . That the few boys, brothers
of uninteresting white girls whom she had met through a
falsely stimulated intimacy, had appealed to her in no way.
That the only colored boy, Nicholas Campbell, to whom
she had given a second lingering thought, barely, she was
sure, remembered her existence.
So she laughed and shook her sleek head. "No, I've never
known any boy well enough to like him, really, you know.
Is it such a crime? . . . Tell me about your beau. ... Is
he very handsome?"
Alicia, for a fleeting moment, dropped her arm about her
friend's slender shoulders.
"You know, Tess, you're such a surprise to me—you're
so different from most white girls I've known. Usually


Teresa's act
»5
your folks think that no colored person is good-looking be-
cause he isn't white."
Teresa smiled but was silent thinking once more of Nick
and his dark splendor.
"He isn't my beau any more," Alicia resumed. "That's
all over now. But it was pretty serious while it lasted. And
he's still as good-looking as ever. He's just a little bit
darker than I, very dark brown curly hair and dark grey
eyes. . . . Funny I didn't like the eyes themselves, but I
did like the way they looked in his face. . . . You see, Tess,
you don't know anything about colored people. If you did
you'd know of the surprising differences among them in
appearance, I mean. . . . You ought to see a lot of colored
girls at a party. . . . Why it's just like looking at a flock of
lovely birds. . . .
"Don't I make you tired? . . . Did you know Miss Cath-
cart gave us fifteen pages of 'Le Monde Oil l'On s'Ennuie'?
She may be sweet but she certainly can hand out a mean
lesson."
CHAPTER III
ALICIA wanted Teresa to spend the vacation with her.
t "Do come, Tess. . . . Chicago is hot but it's wonder-
ful and there's the lake. We've got a big house with a
swell porch. . . . And a little shack in a place not far off
called 'Idlewild.' Alex and Mother and I go up there week-
ends with a bunch. We have the best times! Swimming
and dancing. And old Alex and Henry Bates—that's that
boy I used to go with—getting off such crazy remarks.
They're as funny as end-men in a show. . . . Colored peo-
ple can be so funny, Teresa! . . . Come along, darling, and


Teresa's act
87
hope you won't fail to take advantage of your new rela-
tionships."
m • • • ■
The long trip half way across the continent drew the
girls ever more closely together. The immediate effect of
this, however, was to fasten upon Teresa a sense of guilt.
She felt herself burdened, worn down with secrecy. At
times she knew hardly whether to laugh or to cry at the
two-edged complication which her duplicity had begun to
assume. To pretend to Caucasians that she was white was
one thing; but to pretend it with her best friend, whom she
truly loved and who was also colored, was different.
On the train many glances of curiosity were directed
toward them; toward Alicia's air of style and breeding;
toward Teresa's quiet distinctiveness; toward the still some-
what curious sight of a white and colored girl travelling
together. Of the two Alicia was by far the more self-
conscious though she made a successful effort to conceal
this fact. But her friend's serene, unnoticing demeanor
seemed to her worthy of the utmost admiration which she
could bestow. In a final burst of appreciation she bestowed
on Teresa her highest praise.
"You really are wonderful, Tess. You know if—if only
things were different, I wish you and Alex would fall in
love with each other and marry."
"Tell me what you mean by 'different'."
"If you were only colored."
Teresa considered. How wonderful it would be to live,
act, breathe, be one's very own self. . . . "Alicia, darling,
can I really trust you? I want so much to tell you . . . but
I always have to think of my mother. I'm not white
really. . . . I'm colored. I love being colored . . . but
Mother has always been so set on passing. . . . She was


88
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
never willing for a colored girl even to come and play with
me. . . . She wouldn't even have them work for us."
"But she knows you're with me. . . ."
"But she doesn't know you're colored. . . ."
Alicia stared at her, astonished and admiring. "Why,
Teresa, I never thought you had it in you. . . ."
The vacation was heavenly. Mr. and Mrs. Barrett were
youngish people ardently beloved by their family and
usually included in all their doings. The judge was on his
vacation and as keen on making the most of it as a youth.
Both were interested in the plight of Teresa. The two
elders enjoyed quietly the joke which she was playing on
her mother and determined that her good times should
have no limit.
With real delicacy they pledged themselves not to let her
new friends and acquaintances know of the strange conflict
in which she had been participating. To them she was
frankly a "white colored girl" who struck them at times as
being "more white than the average white person."
Such after all had been the influence of the young girl's
earlier training that for a time she found herself no more
at home with this large colored group than she had felt
with the white group when she first went to Christie's.
Estranged, through lack of interest, from the latter group
she was equally estranged, at least, from the first group, by
lack of experience. For a little while it seemed as though
they did not speak the same language. All her acquaint-
ance and intimacy with Alicia had been based on the
common school-life which they shared. Her carefully pre-
served secret of those days kept the two of them from
building or developing the qualities of sympathy, under-
standing, pride, even joy around their common heritage.


Teresa's act /
/
So with these new acquaintances. In her compreh
of their conversation and intercourse there were oru...
strange lacunae, even strange ignorances because Teresa
was not fully aware of underlying, fundamental causes
prompting the conditions which were being discussed. . . .
"Race Topics" interested her without piquing her. Dis-
cussions of overt acts against Negroes, prompted by rank
prejudice, left her indignant, as a humanitarian might be
indignant, but not disturbed as a member of the mal-
treated race should be.
Emotionally, as far as race was concerned, she was a girl
without a country. . . . Later on in life it occurred to her
that she had been deprived of her racial birthright and that
that was as great a cause for tears as any indignity that
might befall man.
With no conscious volition on her part a metamorphosis
had been achieved. She had become, and she would al-
ways remain, individual and aloof, never a part of a com-
ponent whole.
Alicia's brother Alexander came swimming into her ken.
He was as fine looking as Alicia but with more distinction,
both because he was older and because from his childhood
he had carried within himself a great sense of seriousness
with regard to his chosen profession. . . . His father would
have liked him to enter political life. . . .
The older man had found Chicago politics a source not
only of profit and power but of amusement and lasting in-
terest. . . . But his son had other visions. . . . He would
be not only a physician with a desirably lucrative prac-
tice ... he would be a great healer alleviating the woes of
mankind. . . . Excepting for his sports, to which he was


90 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
passionately devoted, he kept this serious attitude toward
most of the happenings of life.
Mrs. Barrett had acquainted him with something of
Teresa's earlier history. It was from herself that her son
inherited both his seriousness and his broad outlook. Her
own sensitiveness divined the impression which the prob-
lem of their young guest would leave on Alex's mind. And
as she wanted the girl to meet, this one summer at least,
with all compensatory attentions possible she could, she
felt, do nothing better than to turn her over to the wise
and delicate ministrations of her boy. All through her life
Teresa possessed the faculty of awakening in all women,
save in her mother paradoxically enough, reactions of the
most maternal and tender type.
Without this special knowledge, Alex, who at this point
was manifesting practically no interest in girls, would have
seen in the young Philadelphian only another one of Alicia's
occasional crushes. . . . But this girl, he quickly divined,
was someone different and apart. He had, of course,
known many people who consistently or intermittently
"passed" either as a matter of desire or as a matter of con-
venience. . . .
But Teresa was the first person in his ken who had so
thoroughly rebelled against the deception. . . . Other ac-
quaintances had carried on this gesture of whiteness with
pride, with amusement, with a sense of perpetrating a huge
joke. But to this eighteen-year-old girl the process had al-
ready brought misery, embarrassment and the hint of fu-
ture wretchedness. Alexander perhaps was to be the only
acquaintance of her whole life who was able to realize
how unspeakably distasteful the whole sorry performance
was to such a character. . . .
He liked America. A year in Europe had taught him


Teresa's act
something of the imperfections of most governments. He
was not the type of Negro to disassociate the value of a
creed of race equality from the worth of economic oppor-
tunity. ... At twenty-three, being an American of some
training and thought and of his national quota of material-
ism, he had no doubts as to the desirability of being a tech-
nically free, but starving, Negro in France or England and
a practically free Negro living in the northern United
States in relative security and comfort. . . .
But he did think America might by now try to live up
to some of the tall sayings and implications of her found-
ers .. . if only there could be some way of showing her
the spiritual waste which annually she inflicted on a beauti-
ful and deserving group!
Meanwhile he could help.
At first he approached Teresa purely, one might say, from
the standpoint of spiritual therapeutics. . . . He could be
the physician for her wounded soul as completely as later
on he hoped to be the physician for many an aching and
wounded body. . . . But gradually, as the charming golden
days slipped by, his boyish patronage took on the tinge of
something deeper. Teresa walked with him, played ten-
nis, swam, and above all, rowed with him a few times late
in the hot summer evenings . . . she strummed inexpertly
at "a slim guitar," for so she always thought of the ukelele
in her hands; she told him slowly and painfully of her
father's baffled efforts to establish himself definitely as a
"race man." She spoke of her own and Christopher's dis-
gust and resentment at having to live a sham . . . which
after all got them, in Philadelphia at least, exactly no-
where. . . .
"The neighbors, I'm sure, think we are just what we
arc . . . colored people trying to be white . . . they see


COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
father's colored patients . . . they've probably seen mother
practically driving, when we were children, our little
colored friends from the door. . . . Now that we're grown
up, very few colored people invite us to their houses, ex-
cept those folks I'm always talking about, Phebe and
Marise and Nick Campbell.... You see, we can't ask them
back in turn." She was silently trailing her fine creamy
hand in the curling water. ... "I don't think that's the
reason though . . . there are all sorts of causes, all mixed
up. You know how colored people are about passing. . . ."
Alex, looking at her through a cloud of smoke, nodded,
thinking how nice and fine she was and truly different with
her slightly bewildered air of a child trying to find her way.
"Yes, I know. A combination of cooperation and resent-
ment. They don't want to cramp your style. Yet on the
other hand no one likes to think that he just isn't, in your
eyes at any rate, good enough for your association."
"That's just it."
He fell to dreaming how he would take her out of all
this; this nice gentle lady who treasured honesty and un-
pretentiousness above many apparent advantages. She was
restful; as intelligent as Alicia, whom he so deeply admired,
but not so brilliant. . . . The three of them could live to-
gether. She was so young now. Within the next two or
three years he would tell her about it. . . . Meanwhile they
must finish school. There would be long revealing letters
flashing across the continent from Chicago to some place in
the East. . . . Thus they would become truly acquainted.
It would be much more expedient, even kinder, to wait.
He might have spared himself his chivalry. Teresa had
already fallen in love with Henry Bates.


Teresa's act
93
CHAPTER IV
THE old aphorisms are basically sound. First impres-
sions are lasting. It would never have occurred to
Teresa to fall in love with Nicholas, certainly not as long
as Phebe was in the offing. Or Marise. A little wave of
vicarious fear for Phebe swept across her whenever she
thought of Marise and Nicky.
As she had told Alicia when they spoke of love in the
dormitory at Christie's, she had never been in love. But
Nick unconsciously (was he really so unconscious of his
own power?) had stirred her . . . she had known that the
type for her. And here was Henry, just as hopelessly, heart-
breakingly, attractive, the possessor of that same devastat-
ing masculinity, just as he possessed that same combination
of color, recklessness, hair, manner which marked Nick.
It is a combination which belongs to one special type of the
American Negro of mixed blood, the chestnut brown. And
there is no other species of mankind which possesses just
that same fatalness of charm except perhaps a certain
type of Irishmen. Such men begin to know their power
early. . . .
Alex was grave, studious, kindly, dependable. Henry was
carefree, with little interest for anything except his hobbies
which might range from engineering to aviation. His kind-
ness had about it a carelessness as of one bestowing largess.
His emotions were, to say the least, of the school of the will
o' the wisp. • . . For all these reasons Teresa loved him.
With his reckless gayety he represented to her all the
good times she had missed during her life. So sincere was
she in her obvious admiration, even adoration, that Henry,
all serenely used as he was to the "falling of frails," went


94 comedy: American style
from passive endurance to something warmer, from that
degree to a genuine gratitude, from gratitude to a love that
not only amazed the scoffing and totally unenvious Alicia
but even himself. . . . The quality of his feeling surprised
least of all its recipient—Teresa. Love, if it existed at all,
should be just like this of Henry's—ardent, tender, raptur-
ous, laughing.
They became engaged.
"But of course," said Teresa tardily, "my mother will
never consent to it." She had never mentioned to Henry
her great secret which now seemed so trivial.
"I know," he agreed sagely. "She'll say you're too young.
But time will remedy that. Bofe on us has got to get heaps
an' heaps mo' education than we has yet, Honey." She
loved him to relapse into the soft lingo of the southern im-
migrant whom he mimicked so perfectly. "By the time I
am a full fledged engineer, and that's two years off, you'll
be old enough. An aged woman of twenty and a dodder-
ing old man of twenty-three. That's old enough for any-
body to marry."
"Two years from now," she mused. "Wonder what we'll
be like then."
"We won't have to wonder, Hon. You forget we'll be
seeing each other right straight along, watching each other
grow. We won't have to ask: 'How high is the baby?'
We'll know."
He was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology.
"I keep forgetting," she said, "that you spend most of
your time in the East. ... It doesn't seem possible that you
could have been so near me these past two years and I
never even knew anything about it."
"Dumb, I calls it," he acquiesced. "But you see old Fate


Teresa's act
95
knew what was what. So all of a sudden she horned in
and brought us together. Darn near close job she made
of it too. . . . You know I've always worked in the sum-
mers, Teresa. Bell-hop on the big coastwise boats. It was
literally touch and go with me as to whether I should take
up my old stand this summer. But gosh I was so tired.
Six years now I've been at this Higher Education working
hard all term and almost all of every summer. So I de-
cided to take some time off."
"Are you glad now?"
"I won't say I'm sorry."
"Coming to see me soon?"
"And often," he promised with a whimsical accent on
the and. She loved his deliberate negroid inflection from
which her mother had so carefully guarded her.
For a moment she considered telling him about that
strange unreal life of hers in Philadelphia with its pain and
deception. But after all what was the use? ... It was all
over now. There would be just these two years to wait.
He would be sure of a position; Judge Barrett had promised
to see to that. All he had to do was to graduate. . . .
"Which I'll over do," he promised her.
They would of course have to marry in secret. Probably,
since there would be simply no means of converting Olivia,
they would have to elope. She might of course invoke her
grandmother's or even Christopher's aid. But on the whole
she rather clung, in her secret thoughts, to the idea of keep-
ing the project within her own and Henry's extremely ca-
pable hands. . . . After all she was to have love, excitement,
life, experience just like other girls.
Alicia was not to go back to the East. She was to at-
tend Northwestern. Teresa had already matriculated at


96
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Smith. But before registering at Northampton she would
return to Philadelphia to spend the last two weeks of her
vacation. Her mother would shortly be returning and the
girl was eager to face her—with this new dear secret locked
so tight in her breast. Her mother, as Christopher had
warned her, would probably after this triumphant tour be
at the point least consonant with her ideas of motherhood
based as they were on pleasant memories of Mrs. Davies
and Mrs. Barrett. . . . But, preceding all this strain, there
would be the pleasant'fortnight spent with her father and
Christopher and Oliver. Dear Oliver! She told Alicia
about him, sketching in with some reluctance her mother's
neglect.
"Poor kid," sympathized Alicia. "When you come back
here to live, Teresa, you must bring him with you. Then
you can make up to him for everything."
"I will," her friend vowed warmly. . . . "How good it
sounds to hear you say: 'When you come back here to
live!' . . . Oh, Alicia, isn't it too grand? . . . You're sure
you don't mind?"
"Mind what?"
"Why, about Henry and me. . . . You know I never
thought once of this when you told me about him back
there at Christie's. . . . Doesn't it all sound 'far away and
long ago' now? . . . You said you and he had all broken
up."
"Teresa, don't be silly. You don't know me. When I
am through I am absolutely through. Not that he isn't a
darling. Henry is positively the sweetest. But we prob-
ably wouldn't remain together five months. Too much
alike. Both selfish, you know, and demanding. While you,
Old Sweetness, you never ask for anything . . . and so you
get it all.


teresa's act
97
"You were simply made for Henry, though I still rise to
state that it would have made me much happier if you had
fallen for old Alex. Perhaps you'd have been happier
too. . . . But there, taste is taste; and if anybody likes the
kind of a man that Henery Bates is going to be, why, then I
say Henery Bates is just the kind of man for a person like
that. . . . Only, Teresa, I'm warning you don't ever let him
get a mad on you. . . ."
"Why should he get a mad on me? And if he did, what
about it?"
"Well, there's this color business. Just don't do it I'm
warning you ... at least not until after you get married.
That boy is terribly hard-headed . . . the kind that goes
rushing off into space . . . once he gets started, with no
return ticket."
"Oh piffle!" said Teresa, happily slangy. "You can't
scare me. He's not going rushing off into space without
me right in his inner pocket."
At the train she remembered to ask him about it. "You
know I'm awfully in love with you, Henry. I've meant
everything I've said. . . . You won't ever let anything or
anyone come between us?"
"I'd like to see them try!"
His kisses left her surer of his love than his grammar.


98
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
CHAPTER V
HOME was strange but everything was delightful. It
was even nice to be driving out dingy Market Street
from the West Philadelphia station, recalling the torn-up
streets with which the city seems eternally cursed.
"Look, dad, that same heap of dirt and cobble-stones was
on that identical corner when I left last September."
She had arrived home in the middle of the afternoon.
By dinner she had restored to dining- and living-rooms
some semblance of their usual orderliness and attractiveness.
The boys, and her father too, commented on the table with
its flowers and fine linen, and the grand meal which she
had prepared with the very real aid of Oliver.
"Thank you, gentlemen, and tomorrow I'll start on your
rooms. So look out for papers and secrets! . . . But what
became of Sally, Dad? Didn't go to Carpathia this sum-
mer, did she?"
"No," her father retorted, "but your mother went to
Switzerland. And you had to have some change and your
carfare back from Chicago. And this rascal," he patted
Christopher's arm affectionately, "got himself expelled last
term and had to go to summer school for make-up work.
So your old dad, in order to save somewhere, let Sally off
for the summer and decided to keep house himself with the
help of Oliver." He sighed a little wearily. "But it's been
mostly Oliver, I guess."
Teresa pushed her chair back slightly and beckoned to
the lad.
"Come here, Sugar."
Oliver rose, tall and fine and beautiful. It seemed to his
sister that he was really dazzling, so completely did happi-


Teresa's act
99
ness and satisfaction transfigure his sensitive face. For all
his height and his splendid physical poise he gave an effect
of childishness both pleasing and pathetic. It was pleasant
to discover a young modern minus the pertness and for-
wardness so often apparent in the American child of twelve.
On the other hand you realized at once his fearful sensitive-
ness to pain. He might eventually even learn to endure it.
But his intense stoicism would always be accompanied by
keen suffering.
He looked down now at Teresa, his eyes bright with
their apprehension of happiness. "I'm so glad you're home,
Tess. . . . It's been so long since I've seen you. . . . You're
even nicer than I remember." . . .
He leant his shapely head, with its thick roughened
mane, against her sleek one. He whispered: "I liked you to
call me Sugar. ... I never heard you say that before,
though Grandma used to. . . ." He whispered even lower:
"Will you come in my room and bid me good-night?"
"Darling, of course I will." How well she understood
what lack, what longing, lay back of that request. She
thought swiftly to herself. "But things will change for
him. . . . I'll change them," she vowed proudly. "Mother
tried her best to ruin things for me but see how perfect
everything is turning out. . . . He'll get a break, too!"
• • • ■ •
After dinner they sat for a while on the little side porch
and later in the living-room. Teresa told her father and
Christopher, her head against Oliver perched so happily on
the arm of her chair, about her precious summer . . . but
said never a word about Henry. The two men, legs out-
stretched, cigarette in hand, thought in varying degree of
consciousness: "This is what home should be like." The
elder Christopher found himself framing the wish that he


teresa's act
ioi
"Yes, she is . . . and I try not to bother her. You know,"
an expression of wistfulness shadowed the mobile face, "I
—I think she likes me better than she used to."
"Why, darling, she's always liked you! All mothers love
their children."
"Do they? But it always seemed to me that Mother was
different somehow. Not like Granny is to David and Janet
—isn't it funny to have an uncle and aunt as young as they
are? Granny fussed over me much more than Mother
does. . . . She doesn't think I'm a baby ... just because I
like someone to be nice to me. . . ."
"I'm sure Mother doesn't think that either, dear. If she
said so she was probably joking."
He looked a little doubtful at this, then his face bright-
ened. "Anyway I know how to please her now. We play
a sort of game together and she's always nice to me after-
wards."
"A game?" Teresa's face showed her surprise. . . .
"Yes, you know she likes to entertain those ladies that
belong on her committees; she has them here for tea, lots
of times. And I play at being the butler and serve the tea
for her. ... I have never spilled a drop or broken anything
yet."
Her voice was aghast. "You play at being the butler!"
"Yes, I put on a white suit and slick my hair back . . .
they think I'm Japanese or Mexican."
"And she tells them afterwards what a smart little son
she has?"
"Oh, no! She doesn't tell them anything. You see most
of the other ladies have butlers and foreign servants. And
Mother felt so bad because Dad couldn't afford to let her
have one. ... So she said if she just had somebody who


102
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
could make believe for her. . . . She said of course I
couldn't ... I was such a baby!"
"So now she doesn't think you're such a baby any more?"
"No, I don't guess she does. . . . Chris doesn't like me to
do it though. The first time I did it he was home from
boarding-school. And he came in and found me in my
suit. . . . He was very angry. I never let him know about
it any more. Why should he mind my helping Mother?"
"I don't know, dear."
Oliver leaned closer. "I'm sure he'd tell you, Tess. But
that was the reason why he got himself expelled from that
school. He said since both Mother and Dad were so busy
he thought he'd better come home and look after me."
She slipped on her knees to the side of the bed, her heart
shaking. "Little boy, can you keep a secret?"
"You betcher!"
"How'd you like to come and live with me and let me be
your mother?"
He considered this. One could almost see the thoughts
racing behind that candid face. "I'd like it fine. Somehow
I don't think you'd be so busy with outside people," he
added with no intention. "And you're young. You'd
understand more about me, wouldn't you? Grown-up
mothers, I guess, sort of forget."
"Well, listen. I'm going to be married. In two years. To
the nicest boy. And we're going to live far away in Chi-
cago, where I've just come from, you know. And right
away as soon as we get our house fixed, I'll send for you;
no, I'll come for you myself. You'll like that, Honey?"
"Will I like it? Boy! . . . Will I like it! What will
your husband do?"
"He's studying engineering; but he's just as likely to
end up being an aviator."


Teresa's act
103
"I like that. Of course I'll be a musician, but I might
just as well," said Oliver eclectically, "be a flier too."
She went to her room and gazed and gazed at a picture
of Olivia on her dressing table. Presently she picked it up
and laid it carefully, face downward, in a drawer. In her
heart was a prayer: "God, God don't let me hate her! I
mustn't hate my mother, God!"
She was so grateful for Henry. She could imagine the
indignation with which he would greet her tale. And yet
he would inject into the whole sorry business a note of
humor. . . . She remembered then that she had never ac-
quainted him with her mother's obsession nor with the
knowledge of her own long-practiced deception. But of
course that wouldn't make any real difference. . . . Dear
Henry!
To her great relief her mother upon her arrival asked
almost no questions about the summer. Olivia, indeed,
was so taken up with her own experiences . . . her tri-
umphs, as she envisaged them . . . that she would have
had no ear for her daughter's exploits even if the girl had
been inclined to relate them.
Mrs. Cary's European experiences had been of the most
ordinary and meager. She had, to start with, gone on a
carefully planned tourist trip. Not a stop, not a sight varied
from the usual. No spontaneous charming little side-trips
based on individual predilection. Impossible to conceive of
anything more horribly cut and dried than Olivia's visit to
the Peace Conference.
The conference itself was a marvel since it was planned
and developed by several of the world's cleverest and most


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distinguished women. Women of brains, of poise, of un-
doubted equipment, of great sincerity. Their ideas were
splendid, their plans of execution rational. Save for their
tendency to disregard the human equation which itself has
no notion of disregarding war—all their suggestions were
even feasible. Add to this, some extraordinary oratory and
the appearance of a score of the greatest publicists and
thinkers of the age and one has some concept of the value
and merit of the gathering.
But none of these things meant anything to Olivia. She
was indeed unconscious of having assisted at a great femi-
nistic gesture. ... It is doubtful if she remembered the blue
of Lake Geneva; the greenness of the confluent Rhine; the
majesty, even when dimmed by distance, of benignant
Mont Blanc; the charm of twisting streets, the allure of the
little restaurant off the beaten path. All she recalled was
the cup of tea shared with Mrs. Bivins of Xenia; the time
she and the Simmons "girls" shopped; their remark when
she had tried on the dark blue dress with the red buttons,
"which set off your Italian coloring, my dear."
"You might have thought," she told her unmoved hus-
band, "that we had been all girls together."
She sighed happily and went off into a secret memory of
the luncheon at the Hotel des Families . . . when dis-
approving Diana Heflin, a native of Georgia, U.S.A., sur-
veyed, through haughty glasses, two young colored Ameri-
cans lunching serenely with two equally content white
Americans. . . .
"Wouldn't you think?" said the Georgian, "that Nigras
would come to know their place and keep it? I believe as
much as anyone else that there should be a place in the sun
for everybody; but there are places and places."
Olivia had risen from her table happily. No one, she


Teresa's act
105
reflected, could ever put her or any member of her family
in his "place." Then for a brief annoying second she had
thought of Oliver. . . .
She said nothing of these things to her family.
CHAPTER VI
THE long golden summer drew to its end. In spite of
the happiness which it had brought her, Teresa was
glad to see it go. The strain of living with her mother was
almost intolerable. Not that Olivia was unkind or un-
pleasant. She had never been less unfriendly. But her
mere presence, the knowledge of her desires and determina-
tion, plunged the young girl into a vortex of new decep-
tions, petty deceits which sometimes rendered her almost
desperate.
It was imperative that she keep her engagement to Henry
a secret—for two years! The time which, even viewed
with the eyes of young and impatient lovers, seemed a trifle,
stretched off, as Olivia advanced upon the scene, into cen-
turies. She must not, the young girl reasoned, render her-
self in anyway suspect.
To this end she planned to listen with more sympathy
and attention than she had ever shown to her mother's
schemes and plans for the new life opening at college. Te-
resa was to dress superlatively; she was, within limits, to
entertain. Olivia had it in mind to ask Christopher, senior,
to give her a little roadster. Nothing like an occasional au-
tomobile ride to make people chummy. . . .
"Besides, it'll bring you invitations to the homes of girls
in the vicinity. . . .
"Very good people live up that way."


106 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"But, Mother," the girl had said aghast, in spite of her
resolutions: "Father can't afford all that. My room and
board, and Chris in college, too! And Oliver to be got
ready!"
"Got ready for what?"
"Well, he's to go off too to some good school sooner or
later, isn't he?"
Olivia favored her daughter with a cool stare. "Why
should he? You know as well as I, Olivia, that Oliver
hasn't your and Christopher's chances. . . . Why would
your father need to waste money on him? These Phila-
delphia schools are quite good enough. Goodness! That
was all you and Chris ever said when we began to talk of
sending you two off to school."
Ignoring her daughter's disconcerted silence, she resumed.
"I don't need to remind you, Teresa, that Amherst is just
a few miles away. You'll meet plenty of young men.
Now, Teresa, show some sense and spirit and do make the
most of this opportunity. You'll live to thank me for it
yet. . . . There're many colored girls, as white as you, who
would give their eye teeth to have everything made as
smooth for them as I am making it for you."
"Phebe Grant wouldn't," Teresa observed evenly.
"Phebe Grant wouldn't!" For once her mother's equa-
nimity slipped its leash and she showed plainly the ex-
asperation which her children's hard-headed stupidity
awakened in her.
"Phebe Grant has long since come to her senses. Phebe
Grant is working with a first class modiste on Walnut
Street. She told me herself she was passing. And any-
way I've met her twice, no, three times, strolling out Spruce
Street with a young white fellow. The last time I saw her,
I simply forced her to introduce him. Nash his name is.


io8
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Don't make me laugh. Why, I'm a runner-up for Helen
Wills! Sorry, my boy, promised to go out with Oliver."
"Well, what objections do you have to my going too?"
Thus constantly, despite the difference in ages, they sur-
rounded Oliver with the warmth of their love and care.
Teresa enjoyed strolling with him in Fairmount Park.
She was amazed frequently at the breadth and accuracy of
his knowledge, his powers of observation and his memory.
The youngster not only knew his way in every direction
over the vast tract of land; he knew the names of most of
the statues, the history of the park houses. Furthermore,
he had picked up, first hand, an adequate and practical
knowledge of bird-life. Interests such as these were the
merest of hobbies; his real loves lay along the lines of
Music, Poetry, and Aviation.
"Aviation is poetry, Tess," he said gravely. In his boy-
ish idiom he explained his meaning. "It's the finest kind
of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way
of using words."
His sister, greatly impressed, spoke to her father. "Oliver
really is the best of us all, Dad. The smartest and the
finest. . . . If—if you find it hard to give him the kind of
training he should have, you can cut down on me. I won't
mind a bit."
"That's all right," Dr. Cary answered, his arm about her.
"By the time Oliver's ready to try his wings, you'll be
through. ... I guess the old man can manage a bit longer.
Anyway, I'm not going to cut down on my one and only
girl . . . except, dear child, I'm afraid I can't give you that
roadster your mother is always talking about."
"Dad, can I depend upon you for that? What would I
want with a roadster when it frightens me to run a sewing


no
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
this house. I do want Mother to be able pretty soon to stop
work."
"My goodness!" Teresa exclaimed, astounded. "Why,
Phebe, you're only a little bit older than me, aren't you?
And I have never earned a cent yet. Why, you're wonder-
ful, wonderful! Isn't she, Nick?"
Nick nodded. "A bloated plutocrat, if you ask me. Rolls
in wealth every day. Makes a poor medical student feel
just nowhere." But in spite of his complaint his eyes
caressed her.
"Plutocrat nothing! Of course you know, Tessa, the real
plutocrat is going to be Marise?"
"No, I didn't know. What about Marise? I thought
from something Christopher said that she was a student
too, just like the rest of us."
"She is a student. But just by accident she got into a
production of Sol Kessler's in New York: 'Birds of a
Feather.' The show as a whole didn't go . . . lasted only
about a month. But the part written for Marise was
marvelous. . . . Nick went up to see her. . . ."
"Chris went up too," the young man interrupted. "I
saw him there, though I didn't get any chance to speak to
him . . . Marise was so entirely surrounded by every kind
of man." Teresa thought his face clouded a little with an-
noyance. . . . "But there was no question about Marise's
being a whang. . . . She's got something, that girl. . . ."
"She certainly got two hundred perfectly good dollars a
week," Phebe interpolated gaily. . . . "And they're writing
something around her now."
So they were both successful, Marise and Phebe, success-
ful each in her chosen line. But not more successful, Te-
resa thought with immense satisfaction, than what she her-
self would be. Her line was simply to be herself and to


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"Last night I lay dreaming
Of you, hove, lay dreaming
your soft auburn tresses
And tender caresses
Stilled me, and thrilled me
And lulled me to rest. . . ."
Teresa with almost maternal happiness had been watch-
ing the too intense rapture on Oliver's face. . . . But when
Nicholas sang
she lost track of time and place. She saw only Henry that
last night in the boat on the shores of Lake Michigan. She
heard him strumming, strumming on his guitar; his gay
reckless glance softened with real feeling, his young thrill-
ing voice intoning:
". . . I lay dreaming
Of you, Love, lay dreaming. . .
In an ecstasy she accepted sandwiches and iced punch.
But whether the food consisted of Philadelphia scrapple
and boiled tea, or whether, after all, it really was nectar and
ambrosia, she never knew.
OST girls think of college as an objective. It is true
IVx. that they hear many times that the four years which
they plan to spend there are "in preparation for the realities
of life." But such is the stress and storm and strain of
the years of high and preparatory schools before they arrive
Of you, Love, lay dreaming"
CHAPTER VII


Teresa's act
"3
at this goal, that very few, save the clearest thinking, con-
sider that bright and beautiful interval as anything other
than a haven.
In Teresa's eyes it was neither preparation nor consum-
mation. ... It was merely an interim, to be spent by great
good luck in pleasant and advantageous circumstances, until
the great moment of her life should be reached.
She was tremendously excited and happy. . . . On her
way up to school she had stopped in Boston, ostensibly to
visit her Grandmother Blake and her youthful Uncle David
and Aunt Janet. But once there it was tremendously easy
to evade them; to spend whole delightful days with Henry
and more than one heavenly and blissful evening. The
time like that other time, two years before when she had
first left Philadelphia to go to Christie's, was Septem-
ber. . . .
The time was the same . . . but was she, could she pos-
sibly be the same girl? The weather was warm, but with
the tang of a more northern zone ... for the first time she
understood what the poets meant when they spoke of the
"winy" air. . . . The evenings, spent usually loafing along
the Charles, were enchanted.
Useless to tell these young lovers that such days and such
nights had always existed in all ages, in all climes, for peo-
ple in their glorious plight . . . these hours, they knew, had
been made for them alone. . . .
Henry knew "a fellow in Boston who had a little car."
With the free masonry of youth the car became Henry's at
any time, for any occasion which he might require it. . . .
It was an awful little car, a very demon of a little car, with
strange and unexpected internal failings as frequent and as
current as the complaints of a hypochondriac old woman.


Teresa's act 115
Henry? But later her awareness of both student and sub-
ject grew apace for the intrinsic value of each itself. . . .
But she never lost completely her slight detachment from
the life around her. She possessed her mother's single-
mindedness without her mother's objective.
And the days had to be filled in. One could not go on
aimlessly from hour to hour waiting for Henry Bates to
be graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology and for the arrival of nine p.m. on that same day.
For they had decided on the very moment of their mar-
riage! ...
Teresa would have sent her trunk on that morning to
Henry's parents in Chicago; she would have only a little
handbag. As yet she did not know how the dates of the
closing of the two schools would compare. But she meant
to eschew everything and meet and marry Henry. Perhaps
they would get on the train and, picking out from the
window, some quaint New England town, would descend
there and spend the night.
"Only I'm not sure," quoth Henry meditatively, "whether
we'll be able to find a hotel to take colored people or not.
You never can tell, you know."
This was the kind of thing that her mother would hate,
Teresa recalled vaguely. But she was too enthralled with
the thought of herself and Henry going off alone without
espionage to spend the night somewhere, anywhere. . . .
People would never guess that they had just married . . .
she would see to that. She would be very matter of fact
and reasonable and would scold Henry quite audibly about
his flannels.
He had gone off into gales of laughter when she had told
him this.
"Men don't wear flannels in June, darling little dumb


Teresa's act
"7
mother—a most understanding woman, if ever there was
one—with the real state of affairs. No, it was best for this
secret to belong to the two of them alone. . . .
But there were other interests, happenings, which made
her wonder what life really meant and whether her own
existence was as important as she and her mother had made
it appear. Sometimes she spent a week-end in the home of
a school-mate with an entirely unimaginative, placid New
England family who took life entirely at its face value;
whose members went through the motions of living, she
was convinced, in exactly the same fashion and with exactly
the same set of reactions, day in and day out, three hundred
and sixty-five times in a year.
There was the strange and fascinating and bewildering
experience of passing three bitter January days, after her
own mid-year examinations were over, at the house of a
girl whose family was devoted to the teachings of a prophet
of a new, religious cult. At least it was a cult of which she
herself had never heard before.
She was staying in a little half-empty village near the
town of Dover in Maine. . • . All about were leaden sky,
ghostly trees and snow as dry and powdery as dust. All
day long the wind blew a terrible gale. It soughed in the
rattling tree-tops all night.
Mary Giles, her hostess, lived in a great beautiful place;
she was a member of a large family, with several rich and
idle uncles and aunts. And all day and half of every night
the entire Giles family discussed the teachings of the new
cult. . . . They talked endlessly at table; over unfinished
rubbers of bridge and tea in the sullen afternoons; at night
before crackling fires in the big living-room.
In addition, they discussed familiar things in a combina-
tion of which Teresa had never dreamed. Occasionally their


n8
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
talk made her think of some new, deeply significant and
terrible version of Alice In Wonderland. . . . Someone re-
minded the others that nine was the perfect number; some-
one else passionately retorted that ten was the perfect digit
since on it was based the entire decimal system and it, in
turn, was based on the fact that man possessed ten fingers.
An elderly uncle was for the abolishing of ten as a unit
of measure and all for the introduction of twelve since, he
reiterated a dozen times, it was divisible by three, four and
six, (The girl was never able to understand why he never
mentioned the figure two in this connection.) Inexplicably
this led to the discussion of the measurements of the pyra-
mids, of the solar system, of "British Israelites," of mani-
festations . . . and threading in and out of the whole be-
wildering discussion were frequent allusions and quotations
from the sayings of the great prophet.
Through all the maddening controversy Teresa never
doubted the sincerity, kindliness and honest conviction of
the whole group. Amazedly she realized that the placid
serenity of Mary Giles' deportment and attitude was due
to her own acceptance of these unfamiliar tenets.
CHAPTER VIII
HER adventure with Jarvis Seely was not so pleasant.
She had met him on Saturday and Sunday over one
of the February holidays. She had gone in Agatha Bur-
ton's car to Newburyport and Jarvis had come up from
Harvard with Phineas Burton to spend the same occasion.
Phineas, in spite of his staid name, was without distinction
or poise, a gawky, shy youth most unlike the much vaunted
product of his famous school. Perhaps that was why he


teresa's act
"9
himself had formed such a violent attachment for Jarvis.
Young Seely, rather short and square, gave from his very
compactness an effect of steadiness and deliberateness, with,
however, more than a hint of suppressed fire and emotion.
. . . Teresa had found him interesting at sight. She could
not say whether or not she liked him. . . . Her complete
absorption in Henry left her pretty indifferent to the good
qualities of most young men. And she was no person to
try her powers in useless experimentation.
At night she danced in the square, brightly-lighted parlor
with both boys; in the morning she walked with Jarvis in
the direction of the harbor and, in the grey afternoon,
talked with him before the cheerful fire. It was with no
unfeigned surprise that she drew back startled from his
ardent kiss of farewell.
"Why, I can't think what you mean! I'm not . . ."
He interrupted cynically. "For Heaven's sake don't say
you're not that kind of a girl!"
"Well, as it happens, that was just what I was going to
say because I'm not!"
"You're playing a good game but I've met girls like you
before—"
"Then," she interrupted angrily, "it seems to me it's
high time you had learned how to deal with them. I
can't imagine what you can be thinking about." Turning
she left him lowering before the fire.
Agatha, to whom she related her adventure in indignant
amazement, laughed and explained. "You see, he's so
beastly rich. His father is sole manufacturer of a bronzing
powder, which it seems is immensely important in finish-
ing metal articles. Your own radiator in Philadelphia is
probably covered with it . . . Jarvis is the only boy in a
large family of girls . . . he's horribly spoiled . . . thinks


120 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
the world is his oyster. I don't know what Phiney sees in
him."
To Teresa's amazement he came over to Northampton to
see her. If she had planned deliberately she could not have
chosen a better attitude. She refused absolutely to be alone
with him but spent the long cold afternoon at skating and
hockey with a half dozen other girls and some young men
who had come over from Amherst. Also she pled a previ-
ous engagement so as to avoid dinner with him. In spite
of her treatment he came at least three times more and
even wrote her letters in which he veiled his arrogance,
though probably nothing in the world could ever conceal
his assurance.
Such treatment was bound eventually to cool even his
persistence. Finally he ceased his unwelcome visits and
Teresa, who had not even been flattered by his attention,
forgot him entirely. The spring vacation was close at
hand and the girl was entirely absorbed in the thought of
seeing Henry again, for she planned as usual to spend the
time at her grandmother's. . . . She came back happier
than ever. Up to this time she and Henry had been so
completely concerned with the marvel of their mutual
discovery and their future plans that except in the field of
sports where they had first met they had paid compara-
tively little attention to each other's taste and predilections.
This time, in addition to making the explorations which
so appealed to them both, they had spent the happy week
in Art Galleries, at the Opera, at museums. Behind his
whimsicalness and laughter, Henry hid a fine, keen mind
remarkably alert to both scientific and social phenomena.
It seemed to the young girl that no prospective wife ever
glimpsed a brighter or more attractive future than she.


teresa's act
121
Perhaps it was the mellowness induced by this mood that
made her greet young Seely with some hint of welcome.
He came again to Northampton in the late April afternoon;
glorious in the last word in sports attire and in a marvel
of a roadster. Teresa, remembering the little car which
Henry had borrowed despite its evil reputation from his
friend in Boston, fell into a gay mood. She was, these days,
so happy, so confident, so satisfied with life, that Seely
stared at her in amazement. They sallied forth in the car
ostensibly to gather violets. . . .
"But I don't care really where we go," she said. "Every-
thing is so perfect."
It struck her that her companion was rather quiet, his
manner constrained.
In the direction of Holyoke where there was, he insisted,
a woods with violets, he drew up on a quiet bypath. April
sun and April beauty surrounded them, drenched them.
For a moment Teresa closed her eyes—to savor more com-
pletely the peace and contentment that were upon her. . . .
In that moment she felt his hard arm about her, his panting
breath on her cheek ... his hot kisses on her unwilling
mouth.
And she had just told Henry, laughing, coquettish, truth-
ful, that since their engagement she had kissed no one but
him!
In a fury she struck at Seely. But he held her hands
firmly, and laughing, with an ugly light in his eyes, he
kissed her deliberately again and again. Resistance, she
knew, for all her inexperience, would only spur him on to
greater indignities. . . . About her the beautiful day turned
cold and dark. Something hovered above her, indefinable,
lowering.


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COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Jarvis," she asked weakly, she was genuinely frightened,
"What's the matter? What does this mean?"
He looked at her, his eyes like black ice. "You know, you
almost fooled me, Teresa. You seemed to set such store on
yourself. You had me thinking maybe here is a real girl, a
girl I'd be proud to make my wife . . ."
She interrupted him fiercely. "I don't want to be your
wife, I . . ."
"I don't want you either, now," he said rudely. She could
see him framing a further insult. "What I want to know is
why should you be so prudish with me ... a girl who
runs around with niggers!"
So this was what her mother was always talking about.
It was from infamies of this sort that she was ever running
to cover. . . . Teresa's heart turned over within her. She
could, she knew, burst into tears; she might easily become
violently ill.
Instead with a tremendous effort she kept herself con-
trolled. "I don't know what you mean."
"Of course you'd say that," he sneered. "You don't mean
to deny that you were in Boston two weeks ago and that
you went to the Opera."
"I certainly don't mean to deny it."
"And that you were with a nigger!"
To her own amazement she found she had done two
things. In one second with one small, firm hand she had
struck his hateful face and in the next she was out of the
car on the road.
"I didn't slap you for myself," she told him passionately.
"I slapped you for my friend. ... If I choose to go out
with a colored man who is more of a gentleman than you'll
ever be, that is entirely my business, Jarvis Seely."
She took her inadequate handkerchief, rubbed it several


Teresa's act
123
times over her lips and flaming cheeks, threw it on the
ground and stamped on it. "That's what I think of you
and your kisses. . . ." She turned. "If you try to overtake
me or to molest me in any way, I'll have this town about
your ears."
It took every penny which she had on her to get back to
Northampton. Once there, shaken and sick, she locked
herself up in her little room. . . . White-faced and trem-
bling she tried to get herself together physically; her
thoughts might wander as they would. She must get some
perspective on this thing.
For the first time, though still disapproving, she con-
ceded her mother's point of view. It was horrible, crush-
ing, to be thus despised. Why not get away from it?
On the other hand there was the general senselessness of it
all. Suppose Agatha Burton had known she was colored.
Probably, since theirs was a friendship founded on mutual
tastes, they would still have been friends. She would have
been just as welcome a guest at the Burton home and would
undoubtedly have met Jarvis. In that event he would not,
in all probability, have made his advances; on the other
hand, he would also have failed to show his scorn. . . .
What was the catch here? If then she had been her real
self she might have been spared this ignominy. . . .
But then what was wrong in being colored? Whether
she, as a white or a black girl, accompanied Henry to the
Opera, he was still a fine man, of the stuff of which
America is supposed to be proud. In point of fact with the
exception of his skin, he would, with his clear, hard mind,
his straight, supple body, his sense of humor, his beauty,
have been labelled a typical American.
His beauty! Must he then, in order to gain universal
respect and decent treatment, bleach out all that brightness,


124
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
that subtlety of coloring which made him in her eyes, at
least, an outstanding attraction in the midst of these pale
faces?
She thought of two fallacies—how her pale skin had
kept her free from indignities; how earnestly and de-
liberately Americans every summer exposed themselves on
shore and water to the burning sun in order to obtain the
effect which, when natural, they affected so to despise.
No, beyond cavil there was something wrong here, only
she could not put her finger on it. . . . But of this she was
sure; she would not by silent acquiescence, even, lend her
small weight toward furthering this iniquitous thing. She
would be her own self!
Of course since she was already accepted as a white girl
in college she would not tell her secret now . . . her time
here would be so short. But she was through with decep-
tion. She thought of the blow which she had planted on
Jarvis' face . . . for Henry, she had said. Hereafter she
would strike such blows for herself. The world should
know her for what she was if she had to wear a placard.
Swiftly her mood turned into one of revolt at the general
idiocy of a scheme which could make such an idea possible.
For the first time she fell into a brief passion of sobs and
unrestrained laughter, burying her head in her pillow to
keep the girl next door from suspecting her hysteria.
In that moment she saw brightly and clearly one funda-
mental cause for the lagging of colored people in America.
This senseless prejudice, this silly scorn, this unwelcome
patronage, this tardiness on the part of her country to
acknowledge the rights of its citizens ... all these com-
bined into a crushing load under which a black man must
struggle to get himself upright before he could even at-
tempt the ordinary businesses of life.


Teresa's act
125
CHAPTER IX
SPRING of her second year in college . . . and for
Teresa her last term. How glorious it all was! . . .
She looked with love, minus the anguish of longing, at
every dear familiar class-room, at her favorite seat in the
library, at dear cherished walks and hideaways. She found
herself performing acts of kindness and thoughtfulness,
quite at variance with her habitude, for Teresa, while al-
ways courteous, was usually too completely absorbed in her
own plans to mark too clearly the needs of others. Oliver,
Henry, her father alone, struck in her a note of attention.
But now, very much as one under sad necessity, begins
to temper deliberately with kindness one's actions toward
some dear, failing friend, so she shed about her the concrete
manifestation of the happiness and hope that so constantly
sang within her.
"You know," Agatha Burton said to her one day, "I never
thought of you as a sweet girl, before, Tessa. But you really
are one, you grand old sport!"
She could afford to be "sweet" in spite of its saccharine
implications which she, in common with the forthright
youth of her day, professed to loath.
Everything was working marvelously. In two of her
courses she was to hand in papers—no examinations there.
The other finals came early. Three days before Henry's
commencement she would be free to go to Boston. There
she would make her final preparations. For months she
had been saving for this end, not only her pocket money
but part of sums which had been sent for her clothes.
Olivia, in accordance with her own cherished plans, had
been very generous along this score and Teresa, to her


126
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
mother's immense satisfaction, had apparently fallen in line
with her wishes.
What the girl really hoped for was to bring Henry a little
dowry—the smallest possible of dowries she knew, but
enough to tide them over the first few possibly difficult
months. Anything might slip. One could not expect such
unparalleled good luck to go on forever. . . .
The break with her mother, she knew, would be absolute.
Olivia probably would never forgive her for marrying not
only a man of Henry's color but any colored man at all;
she had hoped in Teresa's marriage to break away alto-
gether from this cruelly marked group.
Of her father Teresa had no fear; he might resent, to a
degree, her failure to take him into her confidence and her
marriage at such an age. But Dad, she knew, would come
around. Besides he would be delighted with Henry. . . .
As for Christopher and Oliver! Dear Oliver! he was just
as anxious for her marriage as she ... for one of his years
he had kept her secret with amazing loyalty; yet he had
spoken of it to her in every letter.
Regrettably she had, in order to insure such an uninter-
rupted flow of felicity, been obliged to practice some decep-
tions. Her mother, finally taking note of her persistent
trips to Boston, began to make some inquiries. In a des-
perate effort to lull suspicion, Teresa had, with considerable
coyness, made mention of Phineas Burton at Harvard.
Nothing, she knew, could please her mother more than
such a possibility. The consummation of a romance with
young Burton would bring upon her lavish and unre-
strained maternal blessings.
Olivia might even bring herself to the bestowal of some
kind of love. . . . She would see nothing of the lad's
gawkiness, his red pimpliness, his agonized shyness before


Teresa's act
people. It was true that in every other respect he was most
commendable, being gentle, honest and without the horri-
ble ruthlessness of so many young men of his day and sta-
tion. Mrs. Cary would be neither disgusted with his
physical unattractiveness, nor impressed by his native man-
liness. She would see in him only two things, his whiteness
and his connection with a privileged group.
Teresa, her bags packed, her adieus made, left for Boston.
She had purposely failed to acquaint her grandmother's
family with the time of her arrival. Only Henry knew
this. With the exception of one large bag she was leaving
everything in the check-room at the station . . . until called
for. Henry started to pocket the check, but she took it.
"You're just as likely to put that suit in the very bottom
of your trunk and then where would we be that night?
Everything I value most, except the clothes I'm going to
be married in, is in those bags," she told him happily.
"Including your flannels, I trust," he bantered. "You
know, Tess, you sounded just like a wife when you said
that. But I loved it." They entered the taxi. His laughing
face grew serious and very tender. "You know, darling, I
never had any intention of marrying for ages and ages, not
until I was a veteran of thirty-five or thereabouts. But as it
is," he said, looking amazingly boyish and shamefaced, "I
really thank my lucky stars every minute that we're marry-
ing now; that we're really going to 'commence' life to-
gether. I never saw the sense of calling graduation time
'Commencement' before, but I do now.
"I don't know about flirting," he went on ruminating.
"Something tells me you're not much given to that; and
something tells me equally that I probably shall do some.
But I want you to believe me, Tess—I know I'm saying this


128
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
awkwardly—no girl will ever be able to laugh at you or
pity you. I want you to believe that."
"I do, oh I do," she assured him radiantly. "I like all you
said, Henry, but what I like best is what you said about our
beginning everything together. You can't imagine how
completely my real life is going to begin with you."
At the corner of Boylston Street he left her, thrusting a
bill into her hand for fare, darting out of the cab with his
dear recklessness. "This evening," he reminded her, "be
ready to talk business."
Her youthful Uncle David met her at the door. "Hello!"
he said, kissing her fondly, "how's my contemporary
niece?"
"Fine and dandy," she told him. "Where's Gran? I
want to say hello to her and plunge right into a tub. . . .
Whoever said Boston is cool in summer?"
"No one to my knowledge." He laid a detaining hand
on her arm. "Hold on a sec, kid. . . . Surprise!"
"Surprise?" Her heart fluttered a moment. . . . But of
course it couldn't be about Henry . . . she had just left
him.
"What do you mean, surprise?"
"H'm! Two years of college hasn't affected your diction
much!" He came closer, his face growing momentarily
serious, for his older sister made little appeal to him.
"Olivia's here."
"Mother's here! Dave, you can't mean it. Here! Why,
what for?"
"She came last night. Hope you haven't been up to any-
thing, my girl! She's been raving about some egg at Har-
vard named Burton. I think I know him. Sort of too bad
edition of Ichabod Crane, but a pretty good sort after you


Teresa's act
129
know him. He was very nice to me when I was a fresh-
man."
"You're still a freshman, silly! You're certainly not a
sophomore with all those conditions you carry! . . . David,
where is she?"
"Up in the room you always have, waiting for her dear
daughter. You'd better spill everything to your Uncle
David! You don't suppose Jane and I believe you're inter-
ested in any white boy that ever stepped. And particularly
not in that old white boy! . . . And another thing, Miss
Teresa Cary, you don't think your Aunt Janet and I ever
believed you were so taken up with museums and art. Mu-
seums and Art with a capital M and a capital A! No, no,
my child: Et ego in Arcadia, or words to that effect."
"Oh, stop showing off that little Latin! . . . Dave, this is
serious. Where's Janet?"
"Your aunt, my dear niece, is probably in her room."
"Well, I'm going up there. Here, you bring my bag!
And don't you say one word about my being here to
Mother before we get this fixed up."
Janet met her with outstretched arms. "I see," she said
maddeningly, "your Uncle David's been giving you the
works. . . ."
"Jane, do stop that nonsense. . . . Shut the door, Dave.
. . . Whatever do you suppose made her come?"
"Something tells me you've been laying it on too thick
about this Burton fellow. Who is he, anyhow? Just clear
matters up a little. Of course you never had us completely
fooled but a few details wouldn't hurt."
"Well, I was interested in someone . . . someone here
you know. . . ."
"So we gathered."
"And Granny must have mentioned to Mother every


130
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
time I came here. You know how Mother is. Finally she
asked why and I thought the best way to keep her off was
to tell her I was interested in some boy at Harvard. So I
picked out Phineas Burton because his sister Agatha and I
are great chums and I have visited them at times at New-
buryport. . . ."
"You seem to have brought her on instead of off. . . .
Darling infant she is babbling about taking a place for the
summer in the town where your beloved Phineas lives and
entertaining some of your little school-mates there. She's
willing to have Dave and me come down for a while since
we can both 'get by.'
"'But none of your nonsense,' sez she, 'remember!'"
Teresa was really pale with horror. "Can you think of
anything worse? I doubt if Phineas remembers I exist un-
less I'm with Agatha."
"Who's the real one, Tessie?" David asked her kindly.
"Don't call me 'Tessie,'" she reminded him irritably.
"You two can be the most provoking! Thank heaven
Christopher isn't twins! . . . You've really got to help me.
. . . It's Henry, Henry Bates. . . . We're awfully in love.
We're going to marry; we're engaged." Even yet she could
not bring herself to speak of the proposed elopement.
Janet's eyebrows rose. "Engaged! So soon! Nice work,
my dear. Very great dispatch. You might let your old
aunt in on your technique. Let's see; you met him less
than a year ago, didn't you? And you've seen him perhaps
six times?"
"Don't be silly! I met him in Chicago that summer
after I left Christie's. You know, the time Mother went to
Switzerland."
"In Chicago! What was Henry Bates doing around the
grand white folks?"


Teresa's act
"He wasn't doing anything. I wasn't with any grand
white folks. That girl, Alicia Barrett, isn't white, she is
colored, and Henry is a friend of her brother's. ... I
thought what Mother didn't know wouldn't hurt her."
The twins broke out into happy laughter. "Just a little,
old, gay deceiver!" David chuckled. "You know, Janey,
this is really good. Can't you imagine old Olivia perishing
if she ever finds this out!"
"She mustn't ever find it out," Teresa intervened fever-
ishly. "You've got to help me . . . Henry Bates is coming
to the house to see me tonight . . . he just left me at the
corner. Janet, you'll have to pretend he's calling to see you.
And what's more I'm going to stay right in this room. I'm
not going to stay with Mother."
"Right you are. You came in with an awful headache
and I've put you to bed. . . . David, my lad, your work is
cut out for you. Tonight you just must take Big Sister out
while Henry visits me and my niece whom I'm chaperon-
ing."
Their incurable nonsense calmed Teresa's fears. She al-
lowed Janet to establish her on the couch while David went
to tell Olivia that her daughter had come. . . . The youth-
ful uncle and aunt left the two together.
"Who'd have thought little Teresa had it in her!" David
exulted. "Imagine her putting anything like this over on
Big Sis!" Janet shook her head. "Remember she hasn't
put it all over yet, Big Boy. If she does, all I have to say is
'She's a better man than either you or I, Gunga Din!'"
Teresa had shared in David and Janet's banter because
there was really nothing else to do. No one had ever seen
these two serious; whether they ever knew gravity in each
other's presence it was impossible to say. . . . For herself


132 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
she was really definitely, heavily, worried. She had, it was
perfectly true, deceived her mother completely with regard
to Chicago as well as to her engagement to Henry. But
the success of both these deceptions arose from the fact of
her mother's absence from the battlefield. Now with her
mother on the scene she was losing immediately her sense
of assurance, her belief in herself. Olivia was the type who,
through sheer singleness of purpose and vision, swept every-
thing else out of her path; she did not know there were
obstacles, so intent was she on cleaving her way to her goal.
The young girl remembered an incident of her early
childhood. They had had a laundress, a colored woman,
who used to come to the Cary house for two days a week.
She and Christopher were little children ... it must have
been before Oliver was born for after he came they never
had colored servants.
This laundress used to bring her little boy with her on
Monday mornings and the two would stay overnight until
the work was finished on Tuesday. It was no unusual
thing for Willie to fall foul of his mother's approval. At
such times he would come tearing through the lower rooms,
his mother, a heavily moving avenging Fury on his track;
he would stretch out his little hands with a swimming mo-
tion as though he were pushing people and things away
from him on either side. "Out of my way, chillen," he
would cry. "Out of my way!"
Olivia was like that, Teresa thought, listening to her
mother's determined setting aside of every objection which
her daughter raised. Again and again, the girl pointed out
the absurdity, not to mention the bad taste, of her mother's
plans.
"But, Mother, we just can't go to Newburyport and
thrust ourselves like that on the Burtons."


Teresa's act
"You wouldn't be thrusting yourself upon them. How
could you be when you've already been so friendly with the
daughter?"
"And another thing. They are very well to do; not
millionaires but used to doing things in very good style.
We couldn't keep up with them in any way."
"Your father could certainly manage to keep things go-
ing in the proper manner for two or three months at least,
since the results would mean so much. If they're as wealthy
as you say, you won't be needing anything from us after
you marry."
In her embarrassment and shame she could have
screamed. The headache, which Janet had told her to
feign, descended on her malignantly . . . her temples
throbbing.
"But, Mother, you must, you must listen to me! Phineas
and I are nothing to each other. I can't bear him. It was
all a mistake."
"Oh," said Olivia, understandingly. "You've had a
quarrel. But that's all right. That can be patched up.
You're to go to his Commencement?"
"He didn't ask me," she sobbed, relieved to find herself
speaking the truth in this awful morass of deception. "He's
not staying for it himself—the Burtons are going to Eu-
rope."
"Why didn't you tell me this before, Teresa?" her mother
queried impatiently. "Well, we'll stay here for a few days
and then go home."
r


134
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
CHAPTER X
rLUE to his promise David took his sister out for the
evening to a performance of amateur theatricals given
by the Radcliffe Dramatic Club. But the respite availed
Teresa little. So nervous and distraught was she that Henry
hardly recognized her. He was also considerably disturbed
by the continuous entrances and prolonged stays of Janet,
who seemed unable to remain away from the room in
which the two were sitting for more than ten minutes at a
time.
"What's the matter with her?" he finally demanded with
lawful wrath. "I never knew her to act like this before."
With some trepidation Teresa informed him of her
mother's arrival. "You know, I've never told her anything
about us, Henry. And we're so near the end. I really
thought it best to have Janet around so that if Mother
should come in suddenly, it would—sort of seem as though
you were calling on her."
At this disclosure he was considerably surprised; even
naively discomfited. "My goodness me! Why shouldn't
I be calling on you? She certainly expects you to see some
boys, doesn't she? Well, what's the matter with me?"
Here were fresh quicksands, more shoals of disaster. "Of
course she does, Henry. . . . Darling, I can hardly talk to
you, my head is setting me wild."
"Of course it is . . . you poor, suffering child." He was
immediate contrition. "I've never seen you sick before
Teresa. It makes you look like an infant. . . . This time
next week if you have a headache, I'll be putting you to
bed and soothing your fevered brow . . . and pretty soon
you'll be feeling all better. . . ."


Teresa's act
*35
"Hey!" said Janet, putting her head in the door a mo-
ment. "How's tricks? Listen, they're just in the middle of
that show now. . . . She won't be home for hours. Mind
if I run down to the drug-store a moment?"
She was gone without waiting for an answer. Henry,
mistaking the look of apprehension on Teresa's face for a
new twinge of pain, jumped to his feet. "Know what I
think? That we'd better not wait till next week. You're
to go to bed now."
. "I guess you're right," she told him feverishly. "I just
don't seem able to get myself together tonight." Almost
too hastily she raised her fevered lips to receive his fare-
well kiss.
"Say," he exclaimed anxiously, "you really are all in.
Now mind as soon as you let me out, you go straight to
bed. But I'll be here tomorrow night. . . . And then the
next night will be . . . heaven."
For a second they clung in the dim vestibule. ... A key
grating in the lock made them start apart as David and
Olivia entered. The light from the inside hall fell full on
Henry's startled face. The older woman glanced at him,
then at Teresa drooping in the shadows and walked into
the long parlor.
"Hello, Bates," David said in a clear, carrying voice.
"You're leaving? Where's Janet? Oh, is she out? Here
I'll walk to the corner with you."
Olivia stopped her daughter on her way upstairs. "Was
that some friend of Janet's, Teresa? I can't imagine what
your grandmother can be thinking about, letting her asso-
ciate with that type of young man."
"How'd you happen to come home?" Teresa quavered.
"Oh, David had made a mistake in the date ... so tire-
some. I must say he was really sorry about his error. He's


136 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
usually so scatter-brained. However, I didn't have any-
thing else to do. And the trip was very pleasant. He met
a couple of his Harvard friends in an ice-cream parlor. He
wants to take both of us tomorrow night; I'd like you to
go along too. You might meet some of them."
Teresa climbed to her room in silence.
The following day found her sufficiently under the
weather to make her refusal to venture out at night per-
fectly plausible.
David, after consulting ostentatiously tickets, clocks and
even calendars, started off once more with his older sister
to the performance of the Dramatic Club. "You've got to
keep her out this time," Janet told him, "even if you have
to kidnap her. Teresa's almost to pieces. I've never seen
anyone so nervous."
With the coming of Henry, the girl's apprehension wore
off, however. He was so happy, so sure that everything
would fall into place, that the whole adventure would be
perfect. Only one little note cast a shadow on the calmness
of the evening.
"Look, Tess," he asked her suddenly. "Why didn't you
introduce me to your mother last night? Anyone would
think I had the leprosy the way you keep us apart. She
couldn't have suspected anything about us just from meet-
ing me, could she? I'd really have liked to talk for her a
moment ... to expose her to my fatal charm. Mothers
are supposed to be my specialty."
He flashed his winning smile, thinking momentarily of
other times, other girls, of moments not so significant as
those he had spent with Teresa, but still "mighty pleasant,"
he told himself, "mightee pleasant."
Teresa stammered something about her headache making
her too stupid to know what she was doing. So pitifully


Teresa's act
137
worried she seemed that he ceased to tease her. "It's all
right, darling. Plenty of time yet to meet everybody. Now
you really understand about tomorrow?"
They kissed for the last time in that house. . . . When
Olivia returned the parlor was empty; Janet sat reading
and yawning over a magazine in the little second-story
sitting-room. Teresa, she informed her sister, was in bed.
One last deception, one final turn of the wheel and all
would be over. Teresa had arranged for Virginia Raft, a
former Christie classmate, to call her up and ask her to
spend the day. She would actually go there dressed in her
lovely cream suit and lace blouse in which she was to be
married.
On leaving she would go to Henry's Commencement
and from there to the station where she had left her bags.
Here she would meet Henry, who was to transfer her lug-
gage and leave it with his own in the other station. They
would then have dinner together, marry at nine, and then,
as her lover said, "flee her irate parent to parts unknown."
Everything worked as by magic. Virginia telephoned.
. . . There was a momentary hitch there. Olivia, hearing
of the invitation, wanted to accompany her daughter to
Virginia's house. "After all I've never met any of your new
friends, Teresa. Her mother and I might have some ac-
quaintances in common."
It took all of Janet's ingenuity to thwart this. Neither
she nor David had the slightest idea of Teresa's plans ex-
cept that she wished to attend Henry's Commencement
but they were quite sure that the aforesaid plans did not
include Olivia.
At last the girl was free; she was on the street; she was
at Virginia's, who amusingly enough had used Teresa's visit


COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
for a pretext for carrying out certain projects of her own.
They were to go shopping, she told her mother without
batting an eyelash, then to lunch and the matinee.
"Look for us when you see us," she ended gaily.
Her mother was an old-fashioned woman. "I don't like
to have you out all day like that by yourselves," she de-
murred. "But I suppose each of you can look after the
other. Now mind, don't get run over."
The two young ladies remained together long enough
to absorb an ice-cream soda and to discuss the merits and
evils of parents. Then bidding each other an adieu, with a
regard greatly heightened by the prospect of their immedi-
ate parting, each went on to her own affairs.
• • • • •
Teresa never forgot that Commencement . . . young
men, young men, young men! America's finest! The
streets teemed with them, with their fine young bodies,
their keen fearless faces which never again would be so
keen, so fearless; so quickly would life blunt them and
tame them. . . . And presently she saw Henry starting for
the procession.
He was surrounded constantly by admiring class-mates,
by fellows bringing up parents. "This is Henry Bates,
Dad." "Good-bye, Bates, you old son-of-a-gun!" "Say,
fella, if you ever come to Rochester, just look me up; the
latch-string will always be out for you."
She had known he must be popular, but she had not
thought of his being as popular as this ... it made her so
proud!
He had caught her eye and waved. . . . Within, all
through the long ceremony, she caught him beaming at
her whenever their glances met. For a while she stopped
looking at him so that he could absorb the environment


Teresa's act
i39
and atmosphere for himself. . . . Her husband's Com-
mencement. His Great Day!
And then suddenly it was over. She was out of the
building and into the little restaurant of which he had
told her, before the crowd could engulf her. . . . And
finally there was the long wait in the station. He had
warned her he would be late, there would be so many last
odds and ends to arrange. ... But there he was after all,
tall and strong and radiant. The handsomest man too, she
felt, that she would ever see, except Nicholas Campbell . . .
and she liked him so much more than she could ever like
Nick; there was a ruthlessness about Nicky that might
some day tear a girl's—and his own heart—to pieces. . . .
But Henry was kind.
She came toward him, meaning to congratulate him.
But he had dropped his bag; before she could say a word he
had her in his arms.
"Teresa, you're so lovely ... so nice, so undeceiving!
In that white thing you look just like a bride!"
"Henry, you mustn't, you mustn't kiss me like that right
in the railway station!"
"Why not? That's what railway stations are for. And
anyway what difference does it make? . . . You're going
to be my wife, aren't you? It's barely a matter of hours.
. . . Come on, we'll get your bags and climb into a taxi.
. . . Talk about kisses! Girl you ain't seen nothin' yet!"
The bags were forthcoming, a big one and a little one.
He carried her large one and his own; she walked beside
him with the little one striking him inadvertently on the
shin.
"Gosh!" he said gaily, "you wield a mean weapon. If
we'd been married ten»years, I'd say you were doing it on
purpose. You wouldn't beat me up, would you, Baby?"


140 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Darling, I'll always be so soft about you. ... I bet I'll
let you get away with murder many times and never be
able to do a thing about it."
They were turning the corner of a telephone booth. He
stopped for a second beside it, placing the bags on the
floor.
"After that lovely speech, Mrs. Bates-to-be, how about
another little one?"
"Oh, Henry!" she said weakly, happily, yielding.
A voice like ice said: "Teresa, Teresa Cary! Will you
tell me what this means?"
Bewildered she whirled about, knowing it couldn't be
true. But it was! There stood Olivia, emerging from the
booth, her face actually pale with anger and outrage.
"Oh, Henry," Teresa exclaimed, reverting to terrified
childhood, "it's Mother! Henry, I think you'd better go
and let me talk to heir."
"Like hell, I'll go!" he answered surprisingly and braced
himself to meet this bugaboo. "You don't think I'm going
to run away and leave you to face this, do you? We haven't
been doing anything wrong." He turned to Mrs. Cary.
"You asked what this means? Well, I'll tell you. It means
I love your daughter and she loves me."
"Nonsense!" said her mother brusquely. "She couldn't
love you. . . . Why, why, it's just all impossible! Teresa,
take this bag, if it's yours, and come home with me."
"She is not," said Henry firmly, "going anywhere unless
I go too. I don't know you, Mrs. Cary, but unless you're
very different from most mothers I've met I know you
don't want any racket in a place as public as a railway
station!
"I still can't imagine what there is to get so excited about
but whatever it is unless you consent to having me come


Teresa's act
141
along and explain a few facts to you, you are probably go-
ing to be placed in the most embarrassing position of your
life."
Olivia was too good a general not to know when affairs
were out of control. "We'll all. get in a taxicab and go to
your grandmother's," she ordained, still addressing only
Teresa. Very clearly there were one or two matters on
which she'd have to inform this young man.
In the long cool parlor the two antagonists faced each
other. Henry spoke first. "Mrs. Cary, I'd like formally to
ask you for your daughter's hand. I've known her and
been engaged to her for two years—ever since I met her in
Chicago. . . . She is . . . she is utterly lovely. I've never
seen anyone else like her. I expect to take care of her all
her life and make her a good husband."
Olivia asked irrelevantly. "How could you have met her
in Chicago two years ago? Where would she ever run
across you?"
He was taken off his guard. "Why shouldn't she run
across me? Boys and girls meet in Chicago just as much
as anywhere else."
She ignored his flippancy and turned to her daughter.
"Teresa, I don't understand this. How did you come to
meet him at Judge Barrett's?"
Henry interrupted her. "I don't seem able to get this
straight, Mrs. Cary. Of course she met me at Judge Bar-
rett's. We never speak of the relationship, . . . it's so dis-
tant. But as a matter of fact Judge Barrett's father and my
grandfather were remote cousins."
"You mean Judge Barrett is colored! Teresa, you've been
deceiving your father and me all this time?"
"Not Daddy, Mother," she said miserably. "Daddy al-
ways knew it."


COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
CHAPTER XI
AFTERWARDS everything moved in a whirl. Her
another packed, bought tickets, cancelled one or two
trifling engagements. In her fearful energy she was like
a maenad. By morning they were in Philadelphia and
Teresa was in her own room in her own bed. . . .
Instead of being in some New England hotel in Henry's
arms, as for two weary years they had planned, she was
home . . . nowhere, with life broken off short, with years
of emptiness stretching before her or with new plans, new
hopes to devise again.
Oliver, as heart-broken as she, came to comfort her. As
young as he was he had dreamed dreams about and within
the new life which Teresa had promised to build for him.
He could not understand how anyone loving his sister,
knowing her, could have been willing to leave her. . . . She
was afraid to acquaint him with the whole sorry tale . . .
afraid of what it might reveal to him of his mother's ruth-
lessness, of her terrible obsession; of the insight it might
give him of her attitude toward himself.
Her father was sorry for her, but hurt that she had not
given him her confidence. "Perhaps if you had let me
know, dear, I could have directed you. ... I could have
taken off the worst edges. . . . From what you tell me
about him he must have been a very fine fellow. But he
had the egotism of a boy of his virtues and your mother's
scorn and your own willingness to quibble, pricked him
like a knife. From what you say he had plenty of friends
of both races willing to take him at face value . . . think
then how it hurt him to have two people of his very own
group to tell him: 'You'd be all right if it weren't for your


Teresa's act
i45
skin; you'd be just the fellow if you were only a Mexi-
can.
"But, Dad, I didn't mean it. I wouldn't change him one
bit. It was only that Mother took me so off my feet. I
was thinking maybe I could make matters easier for both
of them. . . ."
He sighed heavily. "I don't know what there is about
color. I only know you can't discuss it or make rules for it,
especially among people of mixed blood in America. • . .
It's easier, I believe, in the Tropics and in South America.
... I know many a time I've wished I were perfectly
black . . . though, like you, I think your Henry's type the
most attractive that the world produces. . . ." He sighed
again, thinking of some lovely creatures, all bronze and gold
and fire, whom he had met in his youth.
Christopher came in and said, "Tough luck, kid!" But
no one, he informed her, was worth a broken heart. "Plenty
of other fish in the sea . . . just don't let Mother catch on
next time. . . . Play your cards better. For further direc-
tions come to your big brother Chris . . . et cet., et cet."
As though anything that anyone said could make a real
difference! As though anything could alleviate the fact
that her hope, her lode-star, her rock, to change the figure,
on which she had built the temple of her whole future had
been torn awayl . . .
Where other girls had chosen a profession, a calling
which should absorb their interest, which would always af-
ford them a shelter in a time of stress and storm, she had
banked her all on making a home for herself and Henry
and Oliver, a home in which she could be real and from
which she could by example, even more than precept, make
clear what her attitude was to be on a certain moot question.


146
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
She remembered how she had meant to relate to Henry,
with laughter and perhaps some tears, all her adventures in
this nebulous world of near whiteness. How she had hated
it, how it had shut out the expression of her true self. She
had meant to make clear to him how infinitely she preferred
his world, which for all of its limitations imposed from
without was yet a free one within. . . . While hers in spite
of the eternal advantages, to which Olivia was always re-
ferring, was within a very morass of secrecy, of deceit.
Yet whom could her deception really harm? No one
actually, physically, for after all white was white. And
there was no difference between her and the thousands of
white girls with whom now she had associated for years ex-
cept the expected differences in shading and coloring. . . .
Her brain, working with pitiless and untiring clarity and
velocity, kept revolving about that last encounter with
Henry; how up until almost the last moment it never oc-
curred to her to modify, in his presence at least, her clear
desire to be known frankly and without reserve as a person
of mixed blood. But at that second when it all meant so
much she had been willing to temporize; she who had
never before thought of introducing a foreign element had
begun to talk about "passing for Mexicans."
Or rather about Henry's passing, because for herself she
was still as unrecognizably white as ever. It was as though
she had said to Henry in a phrase which she had read in
one of DuBois' flaming essays: "My poor unwhite thing!"
If he could chalk over, conceal, explain away that lack of
whiteness he too would be acceptable in that holy of holies
which she and her kind were elected by foreordination to
inhabit.
Something had given way within her. Something had
betrayed her. Her mind plunging on and on, reviewing


Teresa's act
M7
the situation through its thousands of cells, fastened on her
last talk with Jarvis Seely; his scorn, his contempt when he
spoke of Henry, the manner of his branding because of
Henry's brown skin. . . .
That was what had done it, that was what had fashioned
a breach in the wall which her own instinctive racial loyalty
had tried to set up against the ever encroaching sea of her
mother's protestations and revolt. And after all the wall
had not been strong enough.
It had fallen before the first onslaught. And Henry had
been hurt, not by her secrecy nor by her deception, which
they would have been able to laugh away together after a
few days of mutual confidence in their own home. No,
he had been pierced, and to the quick, by the fact that she
had, by her silly request, shown that she had considered
him imperfect in the one respect which he was quite power-
less fundamentally to change or even conceal.
As soon as her thoughts had reached this point they be-
gan all over again. . . . And try as she would she could
meet with no relief. . . . Finally her whirling mind carried
her into a sort of delirium in which for a brief while she
was mercifully unaware of her thoughts.
Her father, examining her with great anxiety before he
called in a consultant, pronounced hers a case of old-fash-
ioned brain-fever. . . . From this state she emerged wan
and pale and meek, perpetually exhausted but without the
hateful whirling in her brain. She was interested, how-
ever, in no one, in no thing. Only Oliver could bring to
her face the slightest vestige of interest. It was as though
something very deep within, something very fundamental,
reminded her that she must not entirely fail her little J
brother.


148 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Even Olivia finally awakened to some feeling of alarm.
For a long time she had refused to give cognizance to Te-
resa's condition. The entire situation involving Henry and
her daughter was so foreign to anything her mind had ever
conceived that she could not believe its effect on the young
people to be anything but on the surface. Indeed if Te-
resa had not so visibly failed before her eyes she would
have been able to dismiss the whole episode. . . . No, there
was one thing to remember . . . that her daughter was no
longer to be trusted.
With these two impressions in mind she did approach
her husband with a plan. She would accompany her
daughter, the following term, to Northampton, take a small
apartment, if she could find one, and keep house for her.
In view of the girl's condition Dr. Cary acquiesced to this,
though he did find himself wincing a bit at the prospect.
. . . None knew better than he the heaviness of his wife's
hand when she dipped into the family purse. At this stage
of her life she was as totally different from the sober
economical young girl whom he had married as though
she had undergone a complete metamorphosis.
Fortunately for him Teresa intervened here. She would
not, she reiterated with all the strength of her weakness,
return to college. No argument that her mother could pro-
duce sufficed to move her. All she needed to do was to
close her eyes and recall those happy, happy days of an-
ticipation and waiting. . . . There was not a path, scarcely
a brick or a stone about Northampton which had not ab-
sorbed something of her blissful hopes. . . . The very at-
mosphere would speak to her of Henry. . . .
Lying wanly on her pillows she reviewed her tortured,
wasted young existence. For twenty-one years, almost a
third of her allotted span, she had yielded to her mother's


150 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Her brothers were delighted. Christopher in these few
months spent more time home than he had in the whole
expanse of the past three years. Teresa came to know all
his innermost thoughts. Dear Chris! He was passing
through his particular purgatory too. Long since, of course,
he had thrown off the yoke of his mother's dominance.
. . . Rarely did he bring colored boys to the house. But
by the simple expedient of telling the truth and by follow-
ing up his own predilections he made himself welcome in
the home of anybody whom he elected to call friend. . . .
Occasionally on a Friday or Sunday evening he was host
to a small group of fellows banded together through some
bond, scholastic or sporting. But as the group was com-
posed of members of various races, there was no occasion
for deception there. Teresa admired his forthrightness; he
possessed, it was true, his father's backing, but even without
it, he would have acted no otherwise. He did not, he told
Teresa firmly, intend to have his life all cluttered up with
a lot of silly deceits and subterfuges.
"If you'd had any grit, you'd have shaken clear of all her
old silly ideas too."
She never resented his frankness, knowing what prompted
his occasional outbursts of irritation. Christopher's natural
inclination to remain within his own racial group, strong
as it was, had been bolstered still more completely by his
liking for Marise. How or when this had started, she could
not tell. Only a little while ago, it seemed to her, they had
all been children together; teasing, criticising, alternately
ignoring or seeking each other.
Chris, she especially remembered, had made a habit of
speaking with a slight disparagement of Marise. Had it
after all been feigned, his sister wondered? . . . Her mind
went back to that farewell dance just before she had gone


Teresa's act
to Christie's. As on a screen she saw again her brother
dancing with Marise; her lithe sinuous figure, almost
blotted out in his tense arms, his thatch of burnished hair
drooping over her glorious, vital curls. . . . Afterwards
they had danced the tango together. . . . Teresa had been
so amazed for Christopher had never been considered adept
at dancing. But with Marise he had whirled and stamped
and postured. . . .
Whatever conditions in the past, she was in his blood
now. He rarely saw her, Teresa knew, for she was still in
New York. Her rare visits to Philadelphia were only for
the sake of her mother between whom and herself there
flourished that complete, perfect undemanding affection
which exists occasionally between personalities, totally dif-
ferent. . . .
She never wrote him letters, only cards with the barest
information in her big careless, sprawling hand. . . . "The
show is really a success. . . ." "Sorry I missed you. . . ."
"Home tomorrow for a few hours!'
Teresa could always tell when the boy had received one
of these scanty missives. "You see she must care for me,
Tess, or she wouldn't take time to send me even this, busy
as she is." And he would fall to scanning the card anew,
to see if he could discern on its chilly surface one word
which could be construed into regard or even esteem.
Teresa, wondered a little sadly if the Cary children were
doomed to disappointment in this vital longing for love.
She was glad Oliver was too undeveloped in years and
disposition to be involved in such matters. . . . He was so
happy these days; just to be in her presence brought him
supreme felicity.
Once thinking idly on the happy days which she had
planned for him and Henry together, she awoke to the


152 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
realization that half of her dream had come true. She was
at least making a home for Oliver. And no amount of
native modesty could keep her from acknowledging to
herself the constant solace which she was affording her
father and older brother. The thought dissipated some of
the soreness in her heart. Gradually by a signal effort each
day she thrust the memory of Henry behind her. Life was
pretty good. And at least there was still the future.
CHAPTER XII
DURING all this time Olivia withheld her hand.
Checkmated she was by her daughter's illness, but
thwarted, worsted, never. In this pursuit, indeed in any
pursuit to which she might have set her hand, she never
once thought of the word defeat. ... It was simply not in
her vocabulary. . . . Teresa had almost eluded her, but the
fact remained that she had not. Just the fact was sufficient
for Olivia. The nearness of failure; its touch and go qual-
ity never entered her mind. Out of the whole mass of
happenings she realized only two things . . . first that Te-
resa was not to be trusted; secondly that she must make
her tactics less obvious.
As always she went about her own activities. She at-
tended her luncheons and teas, her committee meetings in
hotel and parish house and the waste spaces of impersonal
parlors of some rich woman whom lack of success in life
at home had driven to a vaster, less demanding field out-
side. She continued to exchange telephone calls, notes and
telegrams with women to whom she was known only as
an active worker, a chairwoman of some particular sub-
committee, a delegate who could always be counted upon


Teresa's act
i53
to pay her own expenses. . . • And during all this time she
said nothing about Phineas Burton, or the two young Am-
herst men from whom Teresa received an occasional note.
Nor did she object when her daughter spirited Oliver away
on the Saturday on which she had planned to have him in
his white butler's jacket serve tea to the five members of
the sub-committee with whom she felt most closely allied.
She was not a clever woman but she could bide her time.
It was true that she preserved her usual aloofness to such
few colored people as came to the house, but she had little
trouble there. Teresa had literally associated only with
Phebe and Marise and the latter with her tell-tale brownness
was a hundred miles away. ... In any event she would
never have crossed the Cary doorsill, having without one
spoken word analyzed even as a child Olivia's complex.
Already by being her heady, vital wayward self, she had
crossed thresholds, had received in her own tiny jewel of
an apartment, in Harlem, personages whom Olivia, in
order to meet, would cheerfully have thrown away her hope
of heaven. . . .
Mrs. Cary rather welcomed Teresa's undiminished friend-
ship with Phebe. Back in her mind's eye she still bore the
picture of Phebe walking trig and chic out Spruce Street
with young Llewellyn Nash, "social registerite," lounging
by her side. . . . Impossible to tell what might happen. . . .
Oliver, happy at home with his father, Christopher, Te-
resa and his precious piano, rarely felt the need of company.
. . . When he did he visited the homes of a few under-
standing lads, compensating for his own remissness in hos-
pitality with invitations to movies, or passes obtained from
his father to baseball games.
No one in colored Philadelphia society ever bore any re-
sentment against the Cary children. Unerringly the blame


154
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
for their lop-sided social life was placed where it belonged—
on their mother. For years they had been without colored
servants; they lived in an exclusively white section; but
their tastes, failings, leanings, predilections had all been
catalogued, revised, brought up to date with astonishing
and vigilant precision by colored people whom they had
never seen.
• • • • •
In the spring of that school year, Christopher asked Te-
resa if she would consider some tutoring in beginning
French. Two of his "buddies, fine fellows, Tess," were
hopelessly behind. There was a possibility of their being
dropped off some team without which it seemed the whole
University of Pennsylvania would cease to nourish . . . the
situation was intolerable. The boys hadn't much money.
Christopher, ardent sportsman, had remembered, just in
the nick of time, his sister's interest and her fine scholastic
record in the subject.
"How about taking them on, Tess, for the sake of old
Alma Mater?"
"Aren't you getting a bit confused? Penn isn't my Alma
Mater, you know. . . . Why, yes, I might lend the suffer-
ing sailors a little aid. Do they know anything at all?"
"Not even the accents," he answered cheerfully. "I doubt
if they could even say 'yes' in French; not if their lives de-
pended on it."
"But goodness gracious, Chris, they must know some-
thing"
"You'd be surprised. . . ." He rushed to the telephone
shouting, as soon as he got his number, some cryptic nick-
name: "Come on over, Dinty, and bring the other visiting
firemen. I've fixed it. . . ."
They trooped in, four of them. Big stocky fellows all


Teresa's act
155
muscle and brawn. Teresa had never done a moment's
tutoring in her life. But she knew what these boys needed.
"First of all," she asked them, "are you in earnest? Be-
cause it's simply no go if you aren't."
"Are we in earnest?" echoed the one they called Dinty, a
huge white-haired giant. "And how!"
They were slow; their preparation in fundamentals pain-
fully inadequate. Evidently they had never done any real
studying at all except to stay in schools in order that they
might remain as members of their favorite teams.
That was the desire that actuated them now and it
was on this desire that Teresa most depended. . . . She
taught them, as one teaches children, by repetition, by
memory tricks, almost, one might say, by pre-digestion. . . .
It was useless to give them a page in grammar for their
own enlightenment and absorption.
But she did accomplish what seemed well nigh the im-
possible. Everyone of them passed his mid-term examina-
tion in this, the subject that he hated and feared most. . . .
"Some teacher," said Buck Owens, stopping by the house
for one final crow of triumph before entraining to play a
monumental game against some rival team in the hinter-
land of Pennsylvania. "How'd you like to take us on for
good, Teresa? I know lots of fellows that would pay good
money to have a teacher like you."
She'd consider it, she told him. . . . The work had taken
her out of herself, completely absorbed her. ... It was
rather nice to make even the scanty dollars which they had
been able to pay. . . . Wouldn't it be rather wonderful,
she thought to herself, to earn her living in this pleasant
way? Not only need she be of no additional expense to
her father, she could take herself completely off his hands.
The house was large; there was an unused room on the


156
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
third floor which could easily be fitted up with blackboards
and charts and maps for teaching. ... If she were at all
successful she might at the end of a year introduce phono-
graph records for accent and intonation. Why she would
be a business woman, like Phebe and Marise! Here was a
calling right to her hand which she could pursue until she
married. . . .
Marriage! The word brought a wry taste to her mouth.
It made her, for one sickening moment, think of Henry
. . . thus she might have helped him! How far away all
that seemed!
Resolutely she bent to a further consideration of her pro-
ject. When Christopher came in that afternoon she told
him about it—half fearing his hoot of derision at the idea of
her setting herself up to be a business woman.
He did greet her plan with a shout, but it was with a
shout of approval. "Say, that's really great! Say, that's the
best scheme I've heard of yet! And it'll keep you home
too, won't it, Sis? ... I'm as bad as Oliver when you're
away." . . .
"Don't try to softsoap me, my lad. You only say that be-
cause I make you extra waffles when you sleep late on Sat-
urday mornings! How about my missing you when you
go off? Would all the kings' horses and all the kings' men
keep you from going to camp this summer even though
it might save me gallons of bitter tears?"
He began with typical male defence: "That's differ-
ent . . ." then broke off, to stare at her with ludicrous
amazement, running his supple, freckled hands through his
splendid, burnished hair.
She stared back at him. "Christopher, don't stand there
looking at me like that. What's come over you?"
He pushed her back in an arm-chair. "Listen, Tessie,


Teresa's act
157
listen to your big brother. . . . What say you get Father to
let you go abroad this summer to one of those tricky little
summer schools in France? Not the Sorbonne. I imagine
from things I've heard fellows say that Paris would be too
strenuous for you right now, but Grenoble or Clermont sur
Ferrand, or Dijon or the University of Toulouse? There's
a good one . . . Southern France, hot maybe, but not too
far from the sea. . . . Then you could come back with one
of those cute little certificates and hang it up in your class-
room. . . . You really could do it several summers. . . .".
"Chris, I do believe that's an idea! Only I hate to ask
Dad for money and I hate to leave Oliver alone, poor baby!"
"J5aby nothing! Oliver can go with me; time he got
some hardness knocked into him anyway. Always moon-
ing about music and the stars and poetry. I'll make a he-
man out of that lad yet. ... As for expense! Evidently you
don't know that your brother is going to be a counsellor.
Yes, ma'am, counsellor, that's me. So I won't be asking a
thing of Dad, not even carfare. He'll be glad to drive us
up and come back and get us. Or we might even hitch-
hike."
After their father had come in they discussed it at dinner
that night. He would have tried his best to procure the
moon for Teresa if it would restore to her even a tenth of
the fervor and enthusiasm which this scheme seemed to
awaken. Of course she could go, he told her.
"But Dad, I hate to ask you for the money."
So then they talked it all over again, how they could save
here, how the car could be made to hold out another
season; how the boys would hitch-hike if their father
couldn't find time to drive them up.
Dr. Cary politely asked his wife what she thought of it.
A person of very strong tendencies, she turned out to be


158 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
on this occasion, surprisingly noncommittal. Teresa, she
thought, should be careful not to overtax her strength. . . .
Furthermore who knew whether those harum-scarum boys
meant what they had said about coming to her for further
work, let alone bringing her new pupils.
Her comments established a new point of departure. If
enough pupils turned up to make her consider tutoring as
a serious interest for the fall, she would, Teresa decided,
go away for three months' intensive study and the piece of
paper whose importance Christopher so emphasized.
One could always get a sailing at the last moment, her
mother observed. Mrs. John Sturtevant, who was on the
sub-committee of the Welfare Center of which she was a
member, had been talking to her about that only yesterday.
Mention of Mrs. Sturtevant, one of the world's doughtiest
club-women, chilled momentarily the children's ardor. All
of Olivia's colleagues being, except in weight, remarkably
nebulous creatures with whom the children had, because
of their racial proclivities, practically no contact. . . .
Then Oliver began to talk of the joys of camp. He hoped
they would have an archery outfit. . . . He wanted to learn
to shoot, though he would never, never take aim at a bird;
but more than anything else he wanted to be an archer.
"Archery is the poetry of . . . of . . ."
"Ballistics," said his father kindly.
"Of ballistics," Oliver repeated rather warily.
"Pshaw!" said Christopher lunging at him. "Don't you
start any of that poetry business around me. . . . You don't
know what you're talking about, and I know it and you
know it. . . . Trip him, Tess. Don't let him get away."
Even Dr. Cary took part in the young riot which fol-
lowed.
Only Olivia was quiet, biding her time.


teresa's act
i59
CHAPTER XIII
BUCK and Dinty and their other friends of like cog-
nomen were, it turned out, in earnest. After the
spring vacation they came back straight as a die to Teresa,
relying, rather pathetically and with no shadow of pre-
tense, on the young girl's ability. . . . They brought other
young men with them. "She'll get you through," they told
the newcomers, owlishly nodding and with great assurance.
There were a dozen of them in all. She was surprised
herself, not only that she could manage them but at the
manner in which her mind began to devise scheme and
method both to lighten her work for herself and yet to
make it impressive for them. ... By the end of the term
her mind was made up. Only one boy had failed and he
himself had admitted the dubiousness of his state when he
first enrolled. . . . Three of the remaining eleven passed
with considerable credit. . . . Her success brought her new
life, new determination. She thought again of Alicia's in-
terest in Bacteriology, of Marise and her success on the
stage, of Phebe and her shop.
This was great, this was wonderful to be busy, to be
useful, to have her mind and her capabilities, hitherto so
latent, so unsuspected, stretching out, out. Of course she
would go abroad. She knew just the value, just the cachet
that that fact would lend to her classes.
Chris had been right there. . . . Darling Chris! Per-
haps she could help him . . . there was still a long pull for
him through medical school. In that way she could help
her father. . . . Reviewing the matter with more prac-
ticality, she began to see that her business would hardly ex-
tend to this point in time to be really effective. . . . But she


160 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
could help with Oliver! That was it, she would educate
Oliver. She told her father about it.
With the special tenderness which he reserved for his
only girl he listened to her. "Dear child! Don't think of
it! All I want is for you to be amused and busy!"
"Amused!" The idea struck her oddly. "Why, Daddy,
how strange! As though amusement were the only thing!"
"It's a mighty big thing," he told her gravely, a trifle
wearily, it seemed to her, reflecting suddenly how little
amusement he had probably known. . . . She put her arm
about his neck, rested her slight weight for a moment on
his knee. "Dr. Christopher Cary, listen. I am going to
educate Oliver; no, first I'm going to take care of myself;
then I'm going to educate Oliver, then lastly, most im-
portant, and always, I'm going to amuse you." She thought
his face brighter, his shoulders straighter as he left that
morning to go on his rounds.
"He's still a young man, ... for a father," she said to
herself in her room. She calculated a little. "Why, he's
only forty-six . . . not too old for a good time yet. Look
at those movie-actors, forty-five and fifty and older, still
going strong! Well, I'll see he has some fun some of these
days. Amusement! Darned little he's had of it with
Mother, I know!"
• • • •
About a week before it was time for her to sail Olivia
approached her husband with considerable cautiousness.
"How does Teresa's health strike you now, Doctor?" she
asked anxiously. "I've been watching her rather closely,
and I notice that she tires easily, lies down a good bit. I've
been wondering," she added with studied diffidence,
"whether it wouldn't be best for you to go with her?"
He was shaving, as he so often provokingly did, in front


Teresa's act
161
of her dressing table . . . she would have all that litter to
clear away.
Me turned a startled face toward her. "I go with her!
Why, Olivia, what are you talking about? ... In the first
place I'm not thinking . . . I'm not thinking, I tell you, of
letting another man get a thumb-nail hold on my practice.
... I haven't been bothering you or the children about
it . . . but good God, don't you ever read the papers?
Why, the country is in an awful mess. Unless I'm greatly
mistaken, things are going to strike a new low. And the
first class of people to feel it will be your professional man
. . . especially your colored professional man. . . .
"And anyway suppose I could go. What would I be do-
ing fooling around some girls' school, waiting for my
daughter to recite her lessons and then go off on a tour of
sight-seeing? . . . No, I was in France once, that was
enough for me. No decent coffee, or cigarettes . . . and
those newspapers! I can't imagine the poorest little old
town in Texas getting out a paper like some of those I've
seen in Paris. . . ." He gathered up his shaving imple-
ments and barricaded himself in the bath-room.
But she had, and she knew it, impressed him.
"She is a little more tired and nervous than I realized,"
he said to his wife that night, taking off his collar and tie
and flinging them, as he always did, at the first objective.
... "I watched her this evening. Maybe we shouldn't have
let her go into this teaching business so hard. . . . Listen,
Olivia, why can't Sally put my slippers in the same place?
She seems to think she must always play a game with
me. . . .
"I'm afraid to interfere with her going now; she's set her
heart on it so . . . guess you'll have to go with her."
Olivia kept her voice perfectly expressionless. "I don't


162 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
see how I can do that, Doctor . . . I've halfway promised
Mrs. John Sturtevant to go to Los Angeles with her to a
convention. She's going to take her chauffeur and car.
. . . But anyway I doubt very much if Teresa would want
me to go. . . . But of course I'll have to if you think it
best."
He said guiltily, busy with his own thoughts: "Of course
she'll want you to go. I'll fix it." But in his heart he was
thinking boyishly: "Gosh, if I'd only known about this Los
Angeles business! I'd have got Teresa to put off going
abroad until the fall and take her and the boys and go
bumming in this old car before I turned her in. I'd get
Pete Slocum and we'd do some hunting and fishing and
camp wherever we were."
Well it was too late for all that now.
CHAPTER XIV
TERESA took the news of her mother's going with
more equanimity than anyone had expected. Sud-
denly let down from the excitement and novelty of her
pupils she was tired, lonely and dispirited. Thoughts
which she had deemed forever dismissed came crowding
upon her. ... It was June again. . . . This time last year,
she and Henry had been in the midst of their buoyant plan-
ning. . . .
She reviewed once more the tragic and foolish dissolution
of all for which she had so hoped. . . . Strange how com-
pletely he who once had so filled her life, had now left it.
. . . After long weeks of silence Alicia had written . . .
several times but she had mentioned young Bates only once
... to say that he had gone to Panama and that she never


Teresa's act
163
heard from him. . . . After that she tabooed his name com-
pletely.
Consequently Teresa never mentioned it either. Im-
possible to tell just what stand Alicia had taken toward the
affair . . . there were so many angles from which Henry
might have presented it, if indeed in his sorely wounded
pride he had discussed the matter at all. . . . Teresa remem-
bered Alexander Barrett's remark on this subject. "Colored
people are funny, you know, about this business of passing."
She was tired of her thoughts, tired of her memories,
tired to death of her tiredness. . . . She was glad to be get-
ting away from it all; glad not to have on her hands either
the responsibility of choosing the clothes to take, of packing
them, of selecting, refusing, triumphantly accepting a par-
ticular stateroom.
They sailed on the S.S. Paris . . . second class. Nothing,
no promise, no spoken word from her mother could more
completely have allayed the last lurking suspicions which
Teresa might have entertained concerning the older
woman's plans. . . . Usually she insisted on every mani-
festation of pomp and circumstance which she considered
at all consonant with her husband's pocket-book. ... In-
stead she herself suggested unexpected economies, "since
the two of us are going."
Also there were suggestions about clothes. It was indeed
Dr. Cary who broached the idea of the purchase of one or
two Paris frocks for his girl. . . . Olivia said she would
leave this entirely to Teresa. "For myself," she said, "I find
French styles greatly over-rated. I think we can do just as
well in New York. But unless we run across some real
bargains, why buy anything until the fall? Teresa has
plenty of dresses, nice ones left over from school."


164
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Which was indeed true. For shopping for the necessities
of that lost romance, Teresa, planning to be of as little
expense as possible to Henry, had equipped herself most
fully. . . . Her illness during the ensuing year had lessened
greatly her necessity for new clothes so that she was taking
with her on the trip many garments which she had never
donned.
She liked the sea-trip. She liked the free-masonry which
it engendered; she liked to watch the amazing lack of re-
straint which young America displays when she gets on, so
to speak, her sea-legs. . . . All sorts of people on this boat
too besides Americans. French people returning with un-
restrained joy from perpetually unwelcome exile; South
Americans, swarthy, wary, a trifle too urbane, asking few
questions, listening attentively to the answers, volunteering
nothing enlightening about themselves; retiring, when
questioned about themselves, into a sudden baffling non-
comprehension of English.
But mostly the passengers consisted of Americans . . .
school-teachers travelling for amusement or more school-
ing; students; a few business men; a tranquil minister; a
couple of weary doctors and their wives; a few musicians
who kept the salon wearisome with their ceaseless prac-
ticing.
There was an impresario too, who, leaning over the rail
beside Teresa one afternoon, told her that this was his
thirty-sixth trip. . . . His initial voyage had been in the
steerage, coming, a baby, from Russia. . . . Often he
travelled second-class like this because in this way he dis-
covered new talents. People whose paths you would never
cross in New York . . . the only city in the world worth
considering . . . often let themselves go on shipboard. In


Teresa's act
165
the early evening he came and sat beside her watching the
dances. . . .
"That colored girl there," he said, pointing to one of the
passengers, "has something attractive about her. I like to
watch her dance. But she's too civilized. . . . It's a pity
too; she might be another Marise, with a little more aban-
don, a little more give to her ... if you know what I
mean." He watched the girl, an odd expression of min-
gled pleasure and regret suffusing his face.
"It's too bad, she just misses having . . . that certain
something. I don't know what to call it but when colored
people do have it they have it as no other people have it, by
God!" . . . From his superlative cigar, he flicked an inch of
perfect ash. "You said you came from Philadelphia . . .
guess you've never seen Marise. I understand she never
dances outside of New York."
"Why, yes," she began, taken off her guard, "I've seen her
... is she a young girl, perhaps a year or so older than I?"
He turned his head and looked at her squarely for per-
haps the first time; quiet, conventional young women being
out of his line. "I don't know how old she is and that's the
God's truth; she might be eighty, so much poise she's got,
and she might be eighteen. Yes, I guess she is about your
age. Why?"
"Because if she is, she probably is a girl I went to school
with in Philadelphia ... she was a beautiful dancer, even
then."
He stared at her. "Went to school with you! Is that a
fact? In Philadelphia!" He struck his hand on his thigh
and broke into ringing laughter. "The little son-of-a-gun!
And she gives it out that she's from New Orleans, that she
never associated with white people, that that's how she's


166 comedy: American style
kept her art intact! Ain't that something!! . . . And here
she's a Philadelphian of all things and went to mixed
schools!^
"Why, it's as hard for a white person in New York to get
near her ... it would be harder, I'm telling you, for you
to get in and see your little school-mate than it would be
for you to meet the Prince of Wales. . . . She don't see
nobody, that girl, but press agents and people recommended
by her manager. Ain't that good publicity? Bet she
thought it up herself. . . . Well, I wouldn't give her away.
She's clever . . . wish I was her manager. I'd put her so
far past Josephine Baker!"
They landed at Cherbourg and went down to Paris by
easy stages, Olivia proving herself unexpectedly human on
the trip. Teresa felt her spirits rising with the unbelievable
quaintness of places and people; the precious fillip too that
came from speaking a foreign language for the first time
in the land of its origin, and finding it succeed!
"They actually understood me . . . right away" she
wrote to her father. "Never asked me to repeat or any-
thing. . . . I had a little trouble understanding them at first.
. . . Great Scott but they tal\ fasti . . . You should see
Mother open her eyes at me!"
Olivia did indeed open her eyes . . . and her mind to a
new thought.
In Paris they stayed briefly . . . Teresa did not like it.
She could see that it was a great, beautiful city but staying
as they did on the Avenue de l'Opera, near the Rue de la
Paix, she found it too full of the remembered noise and
traffic of New York, too cosmopolitan, not enough French
and far, far too hot. . . .


Teresa's act
167
And over everything and everywhere Americans, loud-
voiced, determined, pushing. . . . They sat in the brilliant
afternoon at a table outside of the Cafe Rue de la Paix and
Teresa met a half-dozen classmates from Smith and Chris-
tie's, accompanied by mothers, fathers, and brothers. There
was a grand re-union, plans for endless sight-seeing excur-
sions ... "if you can ever make these French understand
what you're saying to them ... so dumb! . . ."
They could have accepted invitations for a half-dozen teas
and Teresa could see her mother's interest rising, but she
remembered that they had to be in Toulouse within the
next two days.
On the day they left they paid a final visit to the Ameri-
can Express for that most perfect of foreign luxuries, mail
from home. These two were amply rewarded. There were
letters for both of them; for Olivia all sorts of bulky en-
velopes containing, Teresa divined correctly, a great many
circulars, programs, "notices" and what not; all the "litera-
ture" on her committees which had accumulated in Phila-
delphia which Oliver had incontinently forwarded here.
There was a thin letter too from Dr. Cary, containing a
draft. . . . Teresa knew this from the serene look that
settled on her mother's face. . . . For herself there were
letters from her father, from Oliver and a rather thick
packet from Christopher; and three cards, one from Dinty,
one from Buck and one from Sally beseeching her to bring
her some of that "Cotty face-powder" from Paris.
Teresa decided to postpone the reading of her mail until
she should be in her own room. But then in the taxi out-
side of Morgan and Harjes, waiting for her mother to cash
the draft, she would, she thought, glance at Christopher's
letter. Something simply must have happened to him to
induce him, who rarely sent anything but postal cards, to


i68
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
pen a letter so long and thick. She slit the envelope to find
it contained an enclosure, another envelope in Alicia's writ-
ing. ... In a moment she had it open.
"Dear Tessa," the letter began, "/ want to tell you about
Henry—"
She stuffed the crackling paper into her bag.
At night she locked her door, stretched out on her bed
and took out the letter. He was married . . . Alicia had
told her as tenderly, as kindly as she could. "I wanted you
to hear it from me first," her friend said, "for fear you
might run across it in the Chicago Defender." . . .
Somehow she hadn't thought of that. . . . He had said
"—God, you know he said that he hadn't any intention of
marrying until he was thirty-five; that he had changed his
mind only because he was going to marry me!"
And now he was married ... to Dolores Mendez . . .
"she must be Cuban or Mexican, or something," Alicia said
succinctly. "We're all so surprised! Darling, whatever did
you do to him? ... I hope you're completely over him by
now, Tessa. If you aren't, believe me when I tell you, you
have my sympathy from my heart ... I liked him too
once, you know. . . . He was a mighty sweet boy. . . ."
The old agony surged up anew. . . . She hoped never to
see Paris again.
In the morning there was the hurried dejeuner, which she
barely tasted, and the rush to the Quai d'Orsay. . . . Her
mother liked to look after such things. She sat in the big
empty Gare watching the huge French clocks that showed
the time from one to twenty-four and thought how silly,
how useless, everything was!
For no reason at all she thought of Mary Giles up in the
little Maine town near Dover. She recalled the rich and


Teresa's act
idle uncles and aunts, and their perpetual discussions. How
strange she had thought them! But how much wiser for
them to be sitting off there beside their tea-tables littered
with priceless silver and bric-a-brac and their magazines
bordering almost on the occult; discussing the revision of
the numerical system . . . how much saner to do these
things in their passionless, civilized way than to be sitting
here, breaking your heart.
She followed her mother into the train. . . . And pres-
ently they were dropping down, down across the face of
France, past dun-colored Limoges, so at variance with its
delicate product; down, down till at last at ten o'clock that
night they reached Toulouse. . . . She was never afterward
to be able to reconcile her first impression of that city with
her later knowledge; the town was so still, so peaceful, so
dream-like under the almost tropical sky.
CHAPTER XV
TOULOUSE appealed to her as strongly as Paris had
offended her. For the first time in her life she was
satisfied with the town which afforded a background for the
school which she was to attend. She liked the narrow
twisting streets, the chattering, clattering groups in them;
she found herself a little awed by the age of the University
buildings, the old decaying cloisters.
Some day she would stroll through them . . . and re-
member Henry; she would think and think deliberately of
how his bright boyish slang and demeanor would embellish
and enliven this old-worldness and she would weep, right
there for all the world to see if so she felt minded. Until
perhaps she dissolved into tears.


170
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
But today she could do none of these things. She must
enroll in the classes of Professor Gaspard Deschamps and of
Professor Etienne Leroux. Among the group of neophytes
whom she met in corridors and halls she had heard their
names mentioned again and again. Probably their classes
would be too crowded, but according to her catalogue they
were to give the courses which she would need most to
take.
The enrollment was intricate; it was confusing and took
time . . . but for the services of a rather slender young
man who, after eying her and her evident dismay for a few
moments, came forward and proffered his help, she might
have been there endlessly. . . .
He was a pleasant young man; she found it interesting to
look at him with his very white clear skin, his serious dark
eyes and his small pointed beard which seemed so odd in a
man no older than he. In an American of his age she
would have thought it an affectation. . . . With some dif-
fidence she said a word, a phrase, to him in French and was
immediately rewarded by his congratulations.
"You really speak very well," he said himself in clear
though accented English. . . . She returned the compli-
ment; they were like Alphonse and Gaston, she told her
mother later. "Perhaps we shall have an opportunity to
practice with each other," he told her, "that is if Mademoi-
selle permits me to see her again."
She could not tell whether or not this was a bid for an
exchange of names, for a bit of personal history, for a date
or what not. Hastily recalling all that she had ever heard
about the formalities of French people she thought it best
to thank him and withdraw.
The next morning on entering the class-room where she
was expecting to meet Professor Gaspard Deschamps for


Teresa's act
171
her course in Phonetics she was amazed to find herself as-
signed to another room and section. There were too many
applicants for Professor Deschamps to handle; he had
solved this problem by summarily cutting off the last
twenty-five to enroll and handing them over to his esteemed
colleague, Professor Aristide Pailleron.
Slightly annoyed she moved on to the new division to
find that the presiding genius was the young man who, the
day before, had come to her assistance. . . . After class he
asked her to remain for a moment, walked down the cor-
ridor with her. . . .
"You see we shall have plenty of chance for practice after
all, Mademoiselle Cary (he pronounced it as though it were
spelled Carrie). By the way, are you just come? Tell me
where you live and if you are comfortable? How long do
you plan to stay?"
She told him the name of her hotel. "But my mother
thinks she would like a small apartment."
"You remain for a long time then?"
"No, only for the summer."
"Ah! You Americans who must always be comfortable.
I envy you your ability to get what you want. . . . Perhaps
I can help your mother out ... I know the town well.
. . . When can she be seen?"
Surprised at the business-like turn which the conversation
had taken she invited him to have tea with them in the late
afternoon.
"I shall like that," he said with a smile which invaded his
serious eyes. "See, Mademoiselle, I am very glad that you
and your mother out of all the other cities in our glorious
France have selected our Toulouse for your sojourn. . . .
You must let me show my appreciation by rendering any
service possible."


172
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Pleased, she thanked him with some faint showing of
coquetry: "You must have your hands full if you put your-
self out for all the American girls as much as you have for
me."
"I am not putting myself . . . without . . . how did you
say that? ... I am not putting myself out for you, pas du
tout. I am merely giving myself a great pleasure. If it
seems to you too great a favor to accept from a stranger,
just think then, Mademoiselle, that I am getting an oppor-
tunity to learn very good English at first hand from a very
good teacher. ... If Mademoiselle will permit I will es-
cort her as far as the Place du Capitole and then I will
return to my next class."
She thought him very charming and told her mother
about it. . . . "If he were an American," she said, relapsing
for a moment into the gay vernacular of her age, "I'd say
he was a very fast worker. As it is he seems just a simple,
rather sweet, little man. ... I don't know as he's so little,
though," she corrected herself after a moment's reflection
. . . "he just seemed small compared with Chris. . . ."
"And Henry," her mind added. She sat inert in her
chair reflecting how for several hours she had lost sight of
him and the agony which accompanied the thought of him.
The realization made her both glad and sorry.
Her mother continued polishing her nails. ... "I want
to go this afternoon to see about some trips to the nearby
towns. . . . You ought to make the most of this chance to
visit several of these historical places, it seems to me, Teresa.
. . . But I can be back by five o'clock to give you tea. Did
you say he was a professor? ... I hope he can find a little
apartment for us ... we could entertain a little."
She went on avoiding her daughter's eye. "And I'm sure
it would be cheaper than this ruinous hotel. ... I was


Teresa's act
i73
down in the office just now and they were charging a guest
for a soap dish she had broken! Was she furious!"
He was there promptly at five o'clock. He was charmed
to meet Madame the mother of her so charming daughter.
Drinking many cups of tea and eating innumerable sand-
wiches he talked on many things. He had been born in this
very town and he knew the locality well, having left it to
go to the war. . . . "But yes, I was in the war, Madame,
Mademoiselle. I am older than you think."
He had spent two years in Paris perfecting himself as a
linguist. He spoke German, English and Italian with equal
facility, but he preferred teaching his own so-beautiful lan-
guage. . . . And he had never been out of France. Per-
haps he would go one day, far, far away, as far as America
maybe to seek his fortune.
"I should like," he said, helping himself to cake, "to visit
your Chicago; to see your Red-skins and your bandits."
Teresa lay back in her chair and laughed. "I never ex-
pected to meet a Frenchman like you outside of an English
novel," she said, "picturing our streets full of Indians and
men running about with sawed-off shot-guns."
He took her amusement in good part. "Perhaps you will
be kind enough to correct my errors," he said gaily. "I
would like to know your country better."
Yes, he had news about an apartment. He had hesitated
to mention it because: "See you, it is the house of the cousin
of my aunt."
He himself laughed at this. "That sounds, I know, like a
sentence in an old-fashioned French exercise book. ... I
always have trouble with your apostrophe and s. . . . This
cousin has a large house; to be frank she runs a pension,
but she has no longer many pensionnaires. You could have


*74
COMEDY! AMERICAN STYLE
the second floor and could have your meals either in your
rooms or down in the general salle a manger. It would
afford Mademoiselle a more intimate knowledge of French
life than she could hope to gain in a hotel."
They went to see the rooms in the Faubourg Matabiau.
They consisted of a large sitting-room, two sizable bed-
rooms, a small study for Teresa and a bath-room for which
the water had to be heated at extra cost.
Teresa fell in love with it at once. The fittings of course
were typical. Neither she nor her mother would have
endured for a moment in America the chenille curtains and
table covers, the ginger-bread effect of the furniture. But
for the time being the difference was amusing and stimu-
lating; it added to the sense of foreignness. They had
breakfast served in their rooms but elected to eat in the
general dining-room. . . .
Neither the girl, nor her mother, was completely sur-
prised to find Aristide Pailleron awaiting them there for
their first meal. His mother, with whom he lived in his
little house was in Pau for the summer with their single
bonne. Sa he had availed himself of his relative's good
cooking and hospitality. . . .
Now if it was agreeable he could be almost constantly at
their service. Nothing would please him more than to be
their guide, their general courier. No one, he was quite
sure, could direct them to as many and as fascinating places
of interest as he.
Certainly in this respect he was far from over-rating his
prowess. Not only was he thoroughly conversant with the
history of Toulouse but he had the faculty of transforming
his knowledge into a real and interesting story. He took
them to see the marvellous Church of St. Sernin, which
dates from the third century, and showed them the tombs


Teresa's act 175
of the early counts of Toulouse, making them live again.
. . . For successive days they drove along the Boulevards
Allee St. Etienne, Allee St. Michel and the Grande Allee,
and Teresa, through the eyes of Aristide, was able to re-
construct the old city walls whose place the splendid ave-
nues had taken.
It was he who opened their eyes to the beauties of those
fine old Renaissance buildings, the Hotel Bernuy and the
Hotel d'Assezat. Olivia stood in the court of the latter
structure and listened with an interest which amazed her-
self to the tale of Clemence Isaure and her rich gifts to the
Academie ... a story recalled to Aristide by the sight of
her statue.
But what the two women liked most were their excur-
sions to the Horse, Wine, and Flower Markets, conducted
on a scale of which they had never dreamed. . . . And
afterwards there was the mellow enjoyment to be found in
the consumption of the justly famous pastries of Toulouse,
• eaten in little tea-shops in the surprisingly twisted streets.
At times like these the young man's wit and whimsies lent
just the fillip to their appetites. . . .
Only, he made clear in a somewhat shamefaced seance
with Olivia, he was poor. . . . The war had swept away all
their little savings, he-had nothing but his little house which
really belonged to chere Maman, and his little salary. . . .
No, he wanted nothing for his pains, but if Madame could
arrange for expenses, transportation, meals, etc., on their
little excursions . . .
About this he seemed quite sincere; driving hard bar-
gains with chauffeurs and inn-keepers; figuring out just
the correct pourboire; advising them to postpone the pur-
chase of this or that trinket or souvenir for the next town


176 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
where it could be bought at beaucoup meilleur marche.
He would jump out and return with his spoils at an in-
variably lower price, as happy as though he had achieved a
victory of some note. His whimsicalness, his unfailing
good humor, his devotion added immensely to what might
have been an interesting but slightly monotonous trip.
CHAPTER XVI
THERE was no doubt in Olivia's mind as to his ulti-
mate intentions with regard to Teresa. . . . For her-
self she was more than satisfied. . . . Here there would be
no complexities. Nothing to make Teresa feel that she
was abandoning her own . . . her own were not here to be
abandoned. And if she clung to her wild ideas of mingling
with colored people, here in France they would certainly be
acceptable.
Her mind went on to her own plans. . . . Aristide, to be
sure, was poor. Unless Dr. Cary came to the rescue Te-
resa would have to live very simply indeed. She had seen
the little house in the Faubourg Arnaud-Bernaud. It was
indeed a very little house but it was the kind that ap-
pealed to Teresa, who thought it "too darling" and who
had gone into raptures over its walled garddh, sunnier and
larger than any to which she had ever had access in West
Philadelphia.
But in Olivia's mind the main thing was, with Aristide
and Teresa in the background, maybe her husband could
afford to let her have a little place of her own in one of
these exquisite Riviera towns, Villefranche or Juan-les-Pins.
. . . She could invite Mrs. Sturtevant over to stay indefi-
nitely at her "villa." Mrs. Sturtevant, a woman of inde-


Teresa's act
177
pendent means, was acquainted with everybody, simply
everybody . . . she had numerous friends who visited the
Riviera every year. . . .
Olivia saw herself a gracious hostess, her little house teem-
ing with interesting people from America . . . "my son-
in-law; he is a professor at the University of Toulouse" . . .
all of these people would be white . . . she would be white.
She could not answer for her daughter, she told Aristide.
He would have to do his own wooing. But the wooing
would have her approval, she told him graciously. Oh, yes,
and one thing more. Her husband, she knew, would never
consent to bestowing a dot. . . . But Teresa was his only
daughter, his favorite child. She was sure there would be
many presents. . . .
"Presents?" Aristide echoed dubiously, smoothing back
his already sleek hair with long nervous fingers.
"Of money," Olivia went on. "Her father would always
want her to be comfortable."
"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, succeeding in keeping the
relief out of his voice. "When you spoke of presents I
was thinking of duties, which I might not be able to
pay . . . they are very high. . . . That would be most em-
barrassing."
» • • • •
Teresa listened to him, carefully, a little coolly. Cer-
tainly she did not love him. Certainly he failed to stir in
her any of that ardor which she had felt at Henry's least
touch, his least word. . . . His cool white skin, his long
white fingers, chilled her a little and she wished he were
taller. . . . But unquestionably he loved her; his nervous-
ness, his trembling hands, his reiterated "]e faime," in
French and English told her that.


Teresa's act
179
later they walked in the garden where a nightingale
actually sang. . . . She thought: "It's like a dream but a
nice one. . . ."
CHAPTER XVII
RATHER quickly they settled into an uneventful do-
mesticity. She had not known exactly what she had
expected; she knew that on her part there was no madness
of feeling such as she had felt for Henry . . . which should
make her every meeting with Aristide monumental. But
she did anticipate some depth, some over-emphasis of the
satisfaction of companionship arising from the mere inti-
macy of marriage. . . .
True Aristide remained whimsical and good-humored;
but he was just as good-humored when he failed to please
her, when he forgot some trifling request or engagement as
he was when everything ran smoothly. . . . He was curious
too; at first opening her letters with the utmost sang-froid
and affecting a great surprise at her annoyed rebuke.
And her mother-in-law, to her dismay, returned from
Pau the week after her marriage. Teresa was surprised to
find her a confirmed invalid, almost a cripple, with a shrew-
ish, really a waspish tongue. She made constant demands
on Rose, the maid, on Aristide when he was present, and
evidently intended to make them now on her new daugh-
ter. . . . For one thing she put in a request for the room
which Aristide and Teresa occupied; she had always meant
to take it, she said, but had neglected to move!
Fortunately, Rose, the maid, backed up the young wife's
wavering reluctance. "She is like that always, Madame,
whenever there is anything new, she must take it. If you
give in to her now, you will have to be doing it forever."


i8o
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
... So Teresa, to her own surprise, refused very bluntly to
make the change and in a few days the whole episode had
blown over.
But the elder Madame Pailleron remained peevish, cross
and insatiably curious; she must know the price of every
purchase, she must feel the texture of every garment which
her daughter-in-law donned, and inquire as to its value.
Aristide was out of the house so much that the young girl
through sheer lonelines was forced to keep open house for
the American students at the University, for her husband
seemed to have almost no friends of his own age.
Their only other visitors were the old ladies who came
to gossip endlessly with Madame Pailleron and to make
inquiries about her son's wife.
Every time that Teresa bestowed a cup of tea on her
young acquaintances, she had to expect a tirade of abuse
from the older woman on her extravagance.
To her surprise her husband, to whom half-laughing she
appealed, agreed with his mother. "// ne faut pas gaspil-
ler," he said to her sagely. "We've got to economize; you
must remember, my Terese, that we are not like you other
Americans, we are poor people." . . . Her father sent her
from twenty-five to fifty dollars a month which she had
been hoping to lay by for the proverbial rainy day. She
would use her own money hereafter, she told him. To this
he made no reply, but obviously did not like it.
His insularity amazed her. She had hoped that he would
continue to make many little trips with her, as he had done
during her mother's stay. But usually he was unwilling
to do this, not merely as at first, she suspected, on account
of the expense involved, but because he was literally so
content to remain where he was. "Why go to this place


Teresa's act
181
or that?" was his constant query. "On est si bien id & Tou-
louse." He was not a full professor either at the University,
a fact which concerned him not at all. "I am as I am," he
would tell her with a touch of his old, but now irritating,
whimsicalness.
Once, though, he was detailed to accompany a group of
students to the naval base at Toulon, and Teresa, to her
great delight, went with him. The association with the
young folks, the sense of being on a holiday, made her
light-hearted and cheerful. She loved the blueness of the
sea; the starkness of the little military town impressed and
thrilled her; she saw France as the great world power
which it was. . . .
In spite of his intense insularity Pailleron was almost as
familiar with the topography of this town on the Mediter-
ranean as he was with that of his native city. As they
dropped down into the Department of Var and approached
Toulon, he was able to point out and call by name the
great defensive structures of Mont Faron, Fort Rouge,
Fort Artigues and Fort Noire, with its outlook toward the
fabled Hyeres. He had, of course, the Frenchman's indu-
bitable dramatic feeling toward these evidences of his coun-
try's power. Under his impassioned eloquence his little
group thrilled visibly.
But he was equally at his ease in the quarters where the
women were making lace, naming the various patterns and
able to tell without aid of notes or book the countries to
which the largest quantities would be exported.
However, he was at his best when he was proclaiming the
military prowess of his beautiful country. ... It seemed to
his young wife that his very stature increased as he pointed
out to them the grim arsenal on the north side of the
Petite Rade. Somehow, his pride became hers too and she


Teresa's act
She did not know what to make of her life. It was so
strange, so different from anything she had anticipated.
Was she to spend it thus forever with her vapid, unimagina-
tive man, her scolding mother-in-law, her petty household
duties? Only Rose, hardworking, stupid Rose, was kind
and sympathetic. When Teresa was in the house she tried
to have the maid about as much as possible. . . .
She thought back over her life. School in Philadelphia,
at Christie's, at Smith. She dwelt in some wonder on her
mother's ambitions. Was this all it was to bring to her,
life in this little southern town, bearable only with an ig-
norant peasant woman? . . . Absurd but true. Gradually
her expectation of a change died away and she settled down
into an existence that was colorless, bleak and futile.


I


IV
OLIVER'S ACT


I
I


CHAPTER I
OLIVER lived in a double world. But it was a long
time before he realized this. If he had understood
it earlier, and if, more especially, he had learned the relative
merits of each, he might have been spared many a moment
of pain, many an hour of bewilderment. It was a long
time before it became clear to his childish mind where he
belonged, and which was his actual habitat.
Because of his mother's indifference, he had known, be-
fore he was six years old, three widely different homes. In
his childish way he had made contrasts and had long since
decided which home—by which at that time, he meant en-
vironment—he truly preferred. There was the old, big
house on Eleventh Street where dwelt the parents of his
father, Aaron and Rebecca Cary. The rooms on the first
floor were huge and rather dark. It was always necessary
to have a light in the dining-room when one ate, which
gave to the rite a sense of special significance and mystery.
But upstairs, the rooms, though equally large, were light
and sufficiently airy. They were furnished with all sorts
of objects which, young as he was, he knew perfectly well
belonged to an earlier day, but to a day which was well
worth preserving. He loved the life in this house, perhaps
because so much of it centered around him. Grandfather
and Grandmother Cary loved him with devotion and con-
centration; their manifestations of joy and gratitude were
unlimited for this little lad who had come so miraculously
to liven up their late, declining days. . . .
187


188 comedy: American style
And in addition to their obvious affection, they poured
out upon him also, a sort of fierce protective loyalty, as
though they were trying to compensate him for something
that he was missing—as indeed they were, for they felt very
keenly Olivia's defection where this last, dark child of hers
was concerned. ... In those days of course, Oliver was
unable to define to himself either the cause of this palpable
loyalty, or indeed the feeling itself. . . . He only knew he
felt it.
• • • • •
At his Grandmother Blake's in Boston a different spirit
prevailed. In this dwelling there was more liveliness, more
fun, more life, though never more love. His Uncle David
and Aunt Janet were only two years older than his sister.
They treated him exactly as Teresa and Christopher did,
as a baby brother whom they alternately spoiled and "put
in his place." ,
It was through his contact with them that he learned the
usages which made it possible for him to take his stand in
his own family. And there was a breadth and a brightness
about this household, very different from the atmosphere
of the old house on Eleventh Street in Philadelphia where
there was only a vast, enveloping love and a strange, pal-
pitating, invaluable pride.
His father's house on Thirty-eighth Street in West Phila-
delphia, pleased him least, though it intrigued him most.
It was brighter and more modernly furnished than either
of his other homes, and yet he knew, even at his tenderest
age of discrimination, that it possessed less of the quality
of home.
There was neither the feeling of affection and indulgence
so evident in the dwelling of Grandmother Cary, nor the
vivacity and fun with which Dr. Blake's busy establishment


190 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"pass." But both of these people clung to their own group.
Neither one of them would have married, nor would they
have wanted their sons to marry with Negroes of unmixed
blood. But that was a purely personal taste manifested only
in the matter of marriage. They were both strong "race
people" and numbered among their friends many men
and women of African strain modified only by the effects
of climate and a different civilization.
There is no pride so strong, so inflexible, so complacent as
the pride of the colored "old Philadelphian." Aaron Cary
taught his small grandson that bondsmen who had been
enslaved, as Africans had been enslaved, need feel no shame.
The burden of that was on their enslavers. But when
men rose in less than half a century to positions of inde-
pendence and of signal success, their children had an an-
cestry of which they might well be proud.
His own interests were along business lines. He liked
to be able to speak of his son, "Doctor" Christopher Cary,
but he would have preferred to be able to point to him as
a successful business man or even as a smart "Philadelphia
lawyer." Aaron Cary liked men who possessed and knew
how to exercise native ability.
He told Oliver about Philadelphia families of color who
had made the most of this ability. He took him to the
churches, St. Thomas's; Crucifixion; Central Presbyterian;
"Cherry St." Baptist which was really on Christian Street;
Union Methodist way up in the fastnesses of North Phila-
delphia. . . . After service he stood with the little boy on
the sidewalk and pointed out to him the descendants of the
Augustines, the Trowers, the Dutreuilles, the Bapdstes, the
Allmans, the Stephenses, families which had made a spe-
cialty of catering and undertaking. . . .
He showed him sites of old forgotten undertakings, Mr.


Oliver's act
Jacob White's School where the children of Philadelphia's
best colored families had gone and in which a few of them
had taught. It was the forerunner of the "separate school"
in Philadelphia which, while not based on the truest spirit
of either brotherhood or the much-vaunted Quaker fair-
ness, had yet its points.
There was too an "Institute for Colored Youth" which
he himself had attended—a marvelous school if his descrip-
tion were true. . . . He always referred to it with loving
familiarity as the "I.C.Y." And Oliver for years after con-
nected it inextricably in his mind with the picture of
sleety pavements and slipping pedestrians madly clutching
the air.
As a climax old Aaron saved for the boy the story of his
own success; how he had obtained to his father's business;
how he had saved time and secured patronage by the ex-
pedient of inditing letters written in his distinctive old-
fashioned writing to the whole list of his customers, ask-
ing them at stated intervals, if they did not want him to
come and look over their furniture. ... To his knowledge
of upholstering, he had added that of cabinet-making. . . .
He had the fine feeling of the Negro for family and ca-
tered to the very best . . . exclusively. It was known that
he had declared himself unable to serve certain groups of
nouveaux riches. As a result it gave, through the course
of the years, a certain cachet to have it known that one's
upholstering was handled by Cary and Son.
He had no son in the business since his only boy, Chris-
topher, had studied medicine; his assistant was the son of
one of his older brothers, a man only ten years younger
than himself. This latter had introduced painting into the
firm's activities. Beyond this Old Cary refused to go.


192 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
He thought it best to concentrate in these fields and to give
superlative service on every job.
As a result he had for years served the same group of
families: the Drews, the Charlemagne Cadwaladers, the
Fultons, the Folsoms, the Chestnut Hill Nashes, the Browns
on North Broad Street. ... He had withdrawn from the
active business now, but his name still remained on the
little worn sign in front of the small dark shop on Locust
Street.
Sometimes with the little boy he would walk around
there and inspect a piece of work which had been ordered
by Mrs. Francis Drew or Mrs. Charlemagne Cadwalader,
ladies as old as he. And from families which had settled
in Philadelphia, no earlier than his . . . though with less
coercion. . . . These two elderly scions met with a touch
of distinction and other day politeness which brought them
together by a closer margin than their difference in station
could possibly interpose between them.
Oliver was tremendously impressed by all this. He grew
to have some of his grandfather's feeling for the cultivation
of the inborn talent which was one reason why his father's
efforts to interest him in the professions either of medicine
or law left him cold.
He would be a musician, he told his grandfather, gravely
exchanging confidences for the old man's reminiscences, as
they roamed through the latter's happy hunting ground,
down South Street, teeming with unwashed Negroes and
Jews, through Ninth Street, less picturesque and primitive,
down and across to Seventh and Race where they would
sit in Franklin Square. . . .
He would write, not the kind of music one usually heard,
not simply a medley of sweet sounds, he explained in his


Oliver's act
i93
childish terms, but music that told something, that drew
pictures, that would make you see all this. He pointed to
the forms milling about the vicinity in which they hap-
pened to be.
If his grandfather was disappointed because Oliver
showed no disposition to succeed to him, he never mani-
fested it. . . . He was consistent. He meant what he said
when he remarked that a man should develop his native
talent. ... It took money, he knew, to study music. And
Oliver should have that. He had meant to leave his tidy
fortune, which his patrons the Folsoms had so carefully in-
vested for him, to his son Christopher. But he would
never, he told his wife, his faded eyes hardening, leave his
money to his son for that fool wife of his, Olivia, to enjoy.
In which Rebecca Cary heartily seconded him.
• • • • •
The old man was no scholar. It is doubtful after his
graduation from the "I.C.Y." if he had ever read any book
entirely through except Booker Washington's "Up From
Slavery." . . . But he did read the newspapers and with-
out having formally studied history, he had the historian's
comparative sense.
And some of this he imparted to his grandson, explaining
to the boy that slavery had not been a special curse visited
upon a special people. ... It had been a cause to produce
an effect, a necessity to permit a certain group of people
an opportunity to glimpse and adopt another kind of civili-
zation. All this he had gleaned for himself through a
practical interpretation of newspapers and of the Bible,
which he considered a guide to all situations and problems.
One other thing too he taught the boy—that greatness
knew no race, no color; that real worth was the same the


*94
AMERICAN STYLE
COMEDY:
world over; that it was immediately recognizable and that
it was a mark of genuine manhood to know no false shame.
At Grandmother Blake's home in Boston he was sub-
jected to a more democratic, a more catholic, influence.
The members of that family were intense individualists.
Dr. Blake was born so and unconsciously had forced the
same role upon his wife Janet. . . . The twins had inherited
his tendencies. In that household there was little talk of
race . . . most people, most events were discussed from a
cosmic sense. One heard in the same breath of Roland
Hayes and John McCormack. Oliver learned of Crispus
Attucks, as he learned of Paul Revere, of Sojourner Truth
and Susan B. Anthony, of Burghardt DuBois and More-
field Storey.
Janet and David rather prided themselves on keeping au
courant with modern literature. . . . They read impartially
the works of Sara Teasdale, William Rose Benet, Countee
Cullen, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Langston Hughes, Elinor
Wylie. . . . And in this household Mrs. Blake was just as
apt to be entertaining at dinner, white, as colored, guests.
In the more purely social functions which the two young
people managed, those invited were mainly colored since
the Blakes, like the older Carys, were really in matters of
moment, strong "race-people." Janet, junior, particularly
was in the habit of declaring bluntly that when it came to
marriage, no white colored men need apply.
"I'm going to marry a man that looks exactly like you,
Oliver-ducky. Not quite so good-looking, he'd be too hard
to manage; but you're the type, all right, all right."
It was hard to go from the warmth and pride, the bright-
ness and breadth of these two households to the frigid
sterility of the house on Thirty-eighth Street in Philadel-


Oliver's act
195
phia. It is possible that if Olivia, even while nursing her
projects, had bestowed upon her youngest-born the most
ordinary of maternal attention he would have elected to
stay in these surroundings where he was undoubtedly so
dear. . . .
But as it was, her coldness, her indifference intrigued and
stimulated him. Baffled by the chilly riddle of her attitude
he had to come back to his real home from time to time to
find out what it was all about.
CHAPTER II
STILL most of the time he was happy . . . completely
so if he were with his father, or Christopher or Teresa.
It was only in the presence of his mother that he became
suddenly discomfited, like an awkward boy who does not
know what to do with ungainly hands or feet. . . . But
there was nothing ungainly about Oliver. He was beauti-
fully constructed, he knew it himself, for ever since his
babyhood he had heard sung constantly the saga of his
grace, his fine looks and his accomplishments. He had no
conceit about these matters, accepting them quite casually
as one accepts blue eyes or brown. Indeed he might never
have thought of them with any degree of consciousness, if
his mother's behavior had not induced in him such a degree
of introspection. His appearance, he thought, could not
offend her. There must be some hidden, some inner defect,
which age would reveal to him.
It could not be said that he was truly living at home until
he was about ten, in the year that Teresa first went off to
Christie's. ... By that time he had gathered from the
establishments of his two grandfathers a hundred, subtle


196
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
re-enforcements. His delicately sensuous nature lived for
beauty and there were so many places in which beauty
might be found, so many ways in which it might be ful-
filled.
Because he was of a family well-educated and of com-
fortable means, because also of his Grandfather Cary's
promises for the future, he was able, as few people of any
race or class are, to savor daily, consciously, with a whimsi-
cal deliberateness, the pleasure of being alive.
Long before he knew any Latin he spied a motto, framed
on the wall of his father's office. It read:
"Mens sana in corpore sano—"
He asked his father what it said and big Christopher
translated. "A sound mind in a sound body. ... It
means," he began.
But Oliver interrupted him. "I know what it means,
Father." He had always known.
The prospect of his life enthralled him. But he was
content to live each day. Probably the only condition in
the future which made him want to leap over the host of
intervening days was the thought of the home which
Teresa had planned to make for him and Henry. . . .
Otherwise there were charming people, there were pleas-
antly stimulating lessons, there was the wholesomeness of
outdoor sports. There were specially set apart the weary
paternalness of his father; the jolly chumminess of his
brother Christopher, who unlike many brothers never
seemed to realize the difference in their years; and there
was the sweet, tender steadfastness of Teresa.
She represented to him all that his nature so craved from
his mother and more besides . . . the fulfilment of faith.
If Teresa were to fail him, he could not, he knew, endure


Oliver's act
197
life even with all its peculiar zest and lure. . . . But of
course to speak of Teresa's failing him would be the equiva-
lent of speaking of the falling of the heavens.
• • • • •
At night, and in the early morning too, he liked to lie
thinking on these and many things, quite deliberately shut-
ting his mother out from his thoughts. ... In the deep
quiet places of his mind he could not think about his
mother. ... It hurt him too much. . . . But presently at
these moments of secret meditation, he found himself un-
able too, to think of anything tangible at all. So engrossed
was he with the touch of fresh, smooth linen on his young
cheek; the alluring warmth of the spot where his tousled
hair nested; the virgin coolness of that part of the pillow
which he had not yet touched.
Through the open window strange provocative sounds
would stray in; at night a party of revellers speeding
through the quiet street ... he tried to picture where they
had been, whither they were going to cause them to be so
unrestrained. ... In the mornings the sounds were differ-
ent; very new and fresh and vaguely hopeful as if every-
body were going to have a chance to begin again.
What he enjoyed most at these moments, the phenome-
non which made him least unwilling to go to bed and
most willing to waken, were the lights. At the close of the
day they were so different from what they were at its be-
ginning.
The arc-light on the corner cut out a large square space
on his ceiling. . . . Against the velvet darkness of the
shadowy room it remained there steadfast and immovable.
But very early in the morning the daylight came in, whim-
sically, fitfully, moving uncertainly and timidly on wall and
picture and ceiling ... on his bedspread. . . . Now when


Oliver's act
199
deavor before he could make horn and harp and piano,
oboe, clarinet and viol tell to the ear the vision which his
eyes had seen.
CHAPTER III
BUT of course there were those chilly spaces, those blank
moments when his mother's indifference, her almost
obvious dislike, cast their shadows about him. There were
moments, especially when he first came home to live, when
half harboring in his mind the memory of the constant
attention and tenderness of his two sets of grandparents he
would rush home from school to seek his mother. She
would perhaps be in her room. Sally would tell him and
he would go thundering up the stairs.
"Say, Mother, I got a hundred in Algebra again today."
"Oliver, you are getting too big a boy to come rushing
into my room without knocking on the door. . . ."
"I'm so sorry, Mother. I'll try not to do it again. . . .
But now I'm here, may I stay awhile?"
"I suppose so. . . • What was it you wanted to see me
about?"
Well, what was it he wanted to see her about!
"I thought you might like to hear how I had done in
school today. I was the only one that understood how to
transpose the equation without help. The teacher said she
was proud of me. She said it twice. She said: 'If every
boy would work as intelligently as Oliver Cary . . .'"
He turned his golden appealing face up to her; his face
which itself could not show pride until her own had rati-
fied his teacher's pronouncement.
"That's very nice, Oliver."


Oliver's act
201
want my friends, my friends, those ladies, to think I was
the—the mother of a wild Indian, do you?"
She reduced him as always to a state of abject submis-
sion. He knew he had committed no wrong, that her
explanation was inadequate, trivial. But he was only a
little boy and the sense of filial duty was strong upon him.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
Cruelly she followed up her advantage. "And anyway
what could you have had so important to tell me that it
couldn't wait. Those ladies and I were talking on matters
of the utmost consequence. . . . Why should they have
been interrupted by a little boy?"
If he had been older he would have known enough to
ask her: "What could be of more consequence than a little
boy, particularly your own little boy?"
One would have expected him with his delicate feelings
to betake himself to his room for an orgy of tears and self-
pity. But he had long since learned that no tears could
wash away the anguish of the wounds which his mother
knew so well to inflict. . . . Instead he put on his wind-
breaker and walked over to Mrs. Davies. . . . He had not
expected to see Marise, but amazingly she was home.
She was blue, she told him, "But I won't be blue anymore
now that you're here, Honey. You're a sight for bad eyes."
Kissing him lightly on his forehead, she brushed back his
curling, crisp hair, helped him off with his coat.
"Look," she said, watching intently his dejected counte-
nance, "I couldn't make up my mind whether to eat lunch
first or to practice my dance-steps. Now that you're here to
help me to do both, you shall decide for me."
He told her, thinking shyly how grand she was and how
he meant some day to marry someone just like her, that he
thought it was better to lunch first.


202 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Her face cleared. "Just what I hoped you would say,
Oliver. I'm so hungry. Would you like to watch me get
things together?" She did not make the mistake of some
horrible older people, always thinking that a boy was a
machine to be sent immediately out on an errand. She did
not even ask him to unscrew a stubborn lid from a pickle-
jar.
"I was so afraid," she said, her beautiful hands working
so nimbly, "that you might choose the music first . . .
you're such an artist."
He flushed and stammered. "Please don't make fun of
me, Marise."
She turned her lovely face toward him. He had never
seen it more serious. "None of us could make fun of you,
Oliver. . . . Everybody in Philadelphia, everybody that we
know anyway, is waiting for you to do something great."
Abashed and happy he hid his confusion by eating large
quantities of devilled eggs. But his eyes were bright and
shining. . . . Afterwards she showed him the music for
her dance, a rather intricate routine with an especially un-
usual accent. . . . He took it and read it through as some-
one else might read a manuscript, humming absently a
phrase here and there. . . . He had the gift of absolute
pitch. . . . Then he sat down and played it, his phrasing,
his artistry, his perfect touch converting it into a thing of
beauty.
"It sounds so different when you play it!" Marise told
him admiringly. Then with the same serious intentness
which he had shown she began to rehearse. The room was
large enough for him to be able to see her every gesture.
. . . Presently, for the music was simply a repetition of
three or four patterns, he was able to give her his undivided
attention.


Oliver's act
203
"You're simply grand, Marise," he told her unenviously.
"How do you think it would be if I were to play this part
very rapidly, and the other very legato. . . . You'd get a
chance to try a different step then, wouldn't you?"
He stayed there until the dusk fell and she was a little
worried but she would not tell him to go. Her mother
came in, however, and affectionately shooed him home.
"Time for all boys your age to be thinking about lessons
and bed. . . . Did Marise give you anything to eat?"
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Davies."
"And you've been here helping her?"
"I hope I've been helping her."
"And now you're happy?"
He hesitated for a moment. "Why, yes," he said in sur-
prise as though testing his feelings. "I believe I am."
"Well then, I'm going to tell you good-night." She gave
him a motherly hug and kiss. "And mind you stay happy."
He went off through the thin tingling November rain,
loving them both for their sweet tactfulness.
Slowly, thoughtfully Mrs. Davies mounted the stairs,
stopping a moment before the sitting-room where her
daughter sat at the piano, absently touching a key or two
in the soft light.
"Poor little tyke," she said, "poor little tyke . . . ain't he
too pitiful? ... I wish he was my little boy."
"I wish to goodness he was," said Marise. She went over
to a small desk and began to write a note to Christopher.
• • • • •
Gradually as one who, in order to get rid of a distasteful
object, hides it from sight, so Oliver, in sheer self-defense,
began to hide from himself the consciousness of his mother's
distaste. In the morning he had breakfast with his father,


204 comedy: American style
who, this last year, had returned to his former practice of
early office hours. . . .
It was then time for school which he adored. . . • Phila-
delphia is in many respects unkind to her colored denizens
but, except in the case of the more rabid moving-picture
houses, Oliver never met with discrimination. . . . There
was really something about him which transcended ordi-
nary prejudice. . . . Like Marise in her school-days the
boy was the favorite of both his teachers and classmates.
There was no position in the miniature polity of the school
which might not have been his for the asking.
He learned too to refrain from seeking his mother on his
return from school. Very often she was home, but unless
their paths crossed directly he did not bid her even good-
day. To his own gently inclined mind, this seemed at first
a terrible breach, but she never seemed to notice it. . . .
Sally, who loved him like a son, preferring him infinitely
to the other children whom* she had known much longer,
prepared his lunch with more care and thoughtfulness
than she arranged Mrs. Cary's teas for her committee
women. . . .
After lunch there was his music ... his grandfather had
sent him the baby grand which was formerly installed in
the house on Eleventh Street. The piano was in his room,
a large one on the third floor. So he was able to practice at
his ease. Then there were the long letters from Christopher
and Teresa to be read and to be answered. Lovely tasks
these. At six o'clock his father would come in from his
last round and the exquisite evening would set in.
He might, he knew it, have been infinitely worse off.
And although never once did he in chagrin or bravado say
that he did not care if he did not have his mother's love;


Oliver's act
205
never once did he pretend to himself to be indifferent—yet
his mind was sufficiently and maturely enough balanced to
tell him that he was an exceedingly fortunate boy, leading
save in one respect a singularly blest existence.
CHAPTER IV
TO HERSELF Olivia never acknowledged her inade-
quacy as a mother. It is doubtful if she was ever even
aware of it. Strange as it may seem never once did she see
Oliver's side of the matter, never once was she aware of
having withheld from her child his natural heritage. On
the contrary she believed that Fate had perpetrated on her
a very Cruel Hoax of which Oliver was the perpetual re-
minder. When he was away from her she was actually
able to forget he was hers. But his presence in the house
fretted and humiliated her.
Just as years ago she had felt that Christopher was the
sign apparent of her white blood, so now she felt that
Oliver was the totality of that black blood which she so
despised. And there was too much of it. In her own eyes
it frightened and degraded her to think that within her
veins, her arteries, her blood-vessels, coursed enough black
blood to produce a child with skin as shadowed as Oliver's.
As enough water in a vessel absorbs and dissolves a stain,
so that eventually one thinks there is nothing there but the
liquid itself, so she had been positive that all her Negro
blood had been wrought by her white blood to a consist-
ency as pure, as limpid as that which flowed through the
heart of the whitest woman she knew.
To her Oliver meant shame. He meant more than that;
he meant the expression of her failure to be truly white.


Oliver's act
207
"A house," she said bitterly, "run on the same scale as
the houses of all the other women I know."
When she talked like this he despised her. He turned a
hard gaze upon her. "Those other women have husbands
who could buy and sell me. John D. Sturtevant has a seat
on the stock-exchange in New York. He can't conceive of
living on a doctor's paltry income."
"Mrs. Berklebach's husband is a doctor."
"Look at his connections," he said angrily. "The mayor
is his brother-in-law and he has three cousins who are
aldermen. . . • No use kidding yourself, Olivia. It takes
wealth to play around with that class of white people.
Colored folks simply don't handle that amount of money.
Perhaps they will some day. They seem eventually to get a
finger in most pies. But if I had it I wouldn't want to
spend it in that manner. Trailing about with a lot of peo-
ple who would drop you like a hot potato if they knew
what you really are."
That, he knew perfectly well, would bring an end to the
discussion. She did become quiet, but not, as he judged,
because she was annoyed at his remarks. Only she was
thinking that she mustn't try him too far. The household
bills this week were bound to be enormous. She was giv-
ing three luncheons; they were supposed to be simple; but
in her mind the words expanded to "elaborate simplicity."
The new tablecloth alone would run into money. . . . Sally
would be cross at the thought of so much extra cooking and
the dishes and all. It would take something to calm her
ruffled spirits. ... If she just had a butler! Well, she'd just
have to hire an extra waiter that was all.
She told her husband of her decision. . . . "But I should
think you would see, Christopher, that it would be cheaper


208
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
to have a butler of our own. . . • Those Filipino butlers
come very cheap."
"What would three people of our tastes be doing with a
Filipino butler? You talk like a fool, Olivia!" About this
conversation there was none of the gay badinage with
which some couples discuss their expenses. "Then you'd
be giving more parties to show off your butler. . . ."
She said inattentively: "There's Oliver's money." Grand-
father and Grandmother Cary had recently passed on and
the old man true to his promise had left everything to his
youngest grandson, naming Dr. Cary as executor. The
boy, however, with the exception of a definite sum set aside
for his music and education, was to receive nothing until
he was twenty-one.
Her husband stared at her. "I should think you'd be
ashamed to mention him!" Turning he left the room. He
could not endure the thought of discussing this child.
She did not even notice his departure . . . Oliver . . .
there was a thought! . . . He was coming down the stairs,
whistling. She called him.
"Oliver, come here! Here in my room!"
The whistling ceased. Rather apprehensively he stood on
the doorsill of her room. "I—I hope my whistling didn't
annoy you, Mother."
"No, of course not, of course not. Come on in the room."
Still wary he advanced, still standing. Probably for the
first time in years she looked at him attentively. How tall
he was, she thought, surprised. And he was, he really was,
just the color of that Filipino butler at Mrs. Berklebach's.
In his white shirt-sleeves he was immaculate. She half-
closed her eyes, visualizing him in a white linen suit.
"Oliver," she said, "sit down. I want you to help me."
He was surprised, pleasantly so, his senses wanted to tell


Oliver's act
209
him. But he was a boy who needed few lessons. He kept
his pleasure in check.
"Oliver, I'm going to have a lot of ladies here this week;
ladies on my committees, you know. . . . There's a conven-
tion going on in Philadelphia and I'm on the Committee of
Entertainment. I think you know what it means to me to
doit well?"
Privately he thought her committee meetings rather silly;
just a lot of old women gabbing together. He had barely
seen them, for when they were there she insisted on his
keeping his room or else staying out the entire afternoon.
She didn't want any noisy boys about, she had said coldly.
. . . Once he had peeped over the banisters to see if any of
them were pretty, like Marise, or jolly, like her mother. A
single glance had sufficed and he had retired to his room
and his books disgusted and thenceforth incurious. . . .
Well, he couldn't tell her that. He waited.
"I wanted your father to let me get a butler but he says
he's unable to do that ... he can't afford it. . . ."
Under his golden skin he flushed painfully, thinking that
she was referring to his little allowance. "But, Mother, you
know I don't have very much. . . . Grandfather said I
couldn't spend my money till I was twenty-one. If I had
my way you could have it all to get as many butlers as you
wanted. . . ."
"As though I'd take your money! . . . No, I was wonder-
ing if you could help me out ... if you knew some boy
. . . if he was tall enough, no one would notice that he
was very young . . . about your color. Somebody who
wasn't awkward . . . and of course he'd have to be very
clean. . . ."
He said, doubtfully, looking at her with his candid eyes:


210 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"There's Ted Rutherford. He's about my color and my
height . . . only I don't think he's so awfully clean."
"Oh," she said, watching him intently, "that settles him.
I couldn't think of an untidy boy."
"No, of course you couldn't," he acquiesced warmly.
"But I can't think of anyone else. Unless . . . unless you'd
be willing for me to do it."
Even as she hesitated she permitted her face to show her
relief. "I hardly feel like asking you to do that, Oliver.
. . . And then what would your father say? But it would
help me out a lot if you would. And it would be kind of
fun too. . . ."
"Well then, let me do it, Mother! Father doesn't have to
know." Ordinarily he would have been the last person in
the world to suggest keeping anything a secret from his
father. . . . But it was so wonderful to have that secret
with his mother! . . . "You know I'm clean and I'm tall
enough and you can tell me every little thing you want me
to do. And I'll do it just right."
She was a little bit frightened and anxious . . . her half-
thought-out plan was almost too successful. "You know,
you'd have to take orders, Oliver, from the ladies and from
—from me—just like somebody really hired." In her heart,
hard and containing nothing but her hateful obsession, she
had the grace to be ashamed of herself.
In his innocence, his trustfulness, he had no idea of what
she meant. "That would be all right, Mother. I'll probably
never see those ladies again. They'll never dream I'm your
son." . . .
No, she thought, now they would never dream it.
She bought him the white linen suit. Of his own voli-
tion he purchased "Congolene" and slicked back his thick,


Oliver's act
211
wild, curly hair. . . . On these three occasions he waited
at table laughing and joking so about it in the kitchen that
unwittingly he dispelled Sally's surprise and made her take
her additional tasks as pleasantly as he. . . . Later on in
the fall afternoons his mother had a little series of "at
homes" and expected and received his help as a matter of
course. It was quite a joke between them and made his
surface life in the house much more endurable.
Teresa did not come home for that Christmas vacation,
but Christopher did. He was resolved at first to spend all
his time with his brother; there was no end in his mind to
the half-formed plans he had in store for him. But when
he saw the smile, when he heard the occasional playful word
which Olivia directed toward the lad a load rolled from his
spirit. . . . Perhaps after all he need not have taken so
seriously the note which Marise had sent him two months
ago. . . . He began to make plans of his own; plans which
did not include Oliver.
In the late afternoon he came back from a crowded day
spent with Pete Holland, the Talliver boys and Kid Hast-
ings. There had been many reminiscences, a few hands of
"Black Jack," a tasty lunch which the Talliver boys' mother
had provided. ... A small enough price, she considered it,
to pay for the knowledge of the presence of her boys in the
house, instead of the fearful suspicion that they were on
some street corner. They had talked gravely of different
brands of cigarettes; of their schools; of their futures; of
the season's quota of dances; of some girls. . . .
Christopher was to see Marise that night. She was hav-
ing a little party. He would get his bath early; lie around
the house a little; maybe the kid would play for him. He
walked down Girard Avenue, noticing the stark trees
against the clear winter light; the sky was very blue and


212
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
deep. The air struck cold against his cheek but his hands
and heart were warm. . . .
He happened to be one of those people who find Phila-
delphia perfect. A city of homes, he thought gratefully;
he was glad his own home was so quiet and peaceful . . .
and pleasant. Why, the kid and his mother were doing
fine. It was better that he and Teresa had cleared out;
in that way his mother had come to realize the precious-
ness of her younger son.
In the dim half-light in the hall he was surprised to see
carefully descending the stairs a tall, slender figure carrying
a large, rather heavy tray. Somebody in a white suit. . . .
From above came a babel of voices, evidently his mother
was throwing a party; well, he wouldn't be expected at that,
thank the Lord. . . . She must have hired a waiter; pretty
swanky. He looked rather sharply as the man, no, it was a
boy, drew closer. He couldn't believe his senses.
"Oliver! Well, for Pete's sake, what's all this?"
"Mother's giving a tea and I was helping her."
Christopher's eye, travelling over his brother's form,
darkened stormily. "In those clothes? Just what are you
supposed to be doing anyhow? Here give me that tray!"
Oliver yielded, suddenly feeling himself very tired. "It
isn't anything really, Chris. She wanted a Filipino butler
and Dad said he couldn't afford it. So she told me about
it . . ."
"And asked you to be the butler!"
"No, she didn't ask me," said Oliver, not understanding
the rage which seemed to have taken possession of his
brother. "I offered to do it for her. Really I did, Chris.
. . . You'll have to let me go, they're waiting for more lea.
Mother won't like it."
"There are a lot of other things she won't like either,"


Oliver's act
213
the older boy returned grimly. "Here, show me where all
this stuff is. . . ." With Sally's aid he crowded the tray
incontinently with tea, hot water, cakes and sandwiches.
He strode into the sitting-room wishing that he were the
color of jet and that they could all hear him calling her
Mother.
She paled as she saw him, came forward to meet him.
"What's the matter, Chris? Did anything happen?"
"No," he said scornfully. "I just thought the tray was
too heavy for that little Filipino; so I brought it up."
She thought him very distinguished, standing there with
his dead white face, his flashing dark eyes, his burnished
hair. In his presence too she felt so much more securely
white.
Facing the roomful of women she stood beside him.
"Ladies, this is my big boy, Christopher."
Mockingly he bowed low, hating them for the stupid
traditions of themselves and their kind which had made of
his mother a traitor to her own flesh and blood.
Forgetful of the bath, of the party, of Marise, he faced
her in her bedroom when they had all gone.
"Mother," he said, "how could you do this—to Oliver of
all people!" He repeated the title. "Mother! You ought
to be called anything but that!"
Clearly she was frightened. "You won't say anything
about this to your father, will you, Christopher? After all
he was willing. . . . Christopher, promise me, you won't
tell your father?"
He said briefly, irrelevantly: "You've made me despise
you! I never expect to know a sadder day than this!"
At the close of the holidays he returned to school. But
before the coming of February he was back again in Phila-
delphia. His father and he talked for a long time in the


214 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
inner office. To his mother he said, meeting her casually
in the hall: "I'm home for good, Mother. Guess you'll
have to put up with me. I failed all my examinations and
they put me out."
CHAPTER V
NOW of a sudden it seemed to Oliver all the days of
his life were flashing by in an ecstasy of pleasure and
excitement. . . . First of all while there were no repetitions
of the butler episode, he was established in a secret un-
derstanding with his mother. He did not of course under-
stand the deeper significance of what she had done. He
merely thought that he had performed for her, something
which, in his eyes, was very important and which he had
loyally kept from his father.
Then there were the home-comings of Christopher and
Teresa. And the confidence which his sister had bestowed
on him alone and the promise that some day soon he would
go to live with her and Henry in a new place, at the in-
auguration of a new life. . . . Even when all this was
changed and Teresa had returned home heartsick and wan,
he could not suffer too acutely. . . . He adored his sister;
she represented to him not only the perfection of femininity,
and tenderness, she was also his rock on which he raised the
whole structure of his hopes, his expected joys, his con-
fidence.
In a curiously shifting world, a world in which one's
own mother was different from the accepted pattern, she
was the one sure thing. She had not married Henry, she
had not spirited her small brother off to a new environment.
. . . But she had done better than that; she had come back


Oliver's act
215
to make a real home for him in his old surroundings. You
could always depend on Teresa.
Finally his school-life was affording him endless joy. He
was reading poetry now with relish and gusto. . . . "The
Eve of Saint Agnes," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." He
did not care for the "Ancient Mariner," although rather
taken with its simplicity and quaintness, nor was he greatly
charmed with the lush deliberate beauty of Shelley and Ga-
briel Rossetti.
But the "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality" left
him speechless with awe and satisfaction. There were
whole passages which he could not quite interpret and for
which he refused to seek an explanation. Life, he rightly
judged, would eventually discover all their inner mean-
ing . . . and he would read it all his life.
What so pleasantly shocked and thrilled him now was
the realization of how rightly, with what authenticity,
Wordsworth had written. The instinctive artistry in the
lad did reverence to another artist who had the insight and
the genius both to perceive the changing pageantry of the
journey from infancy to old age, and the delicacy, the fit-
ness of thought and word with which to express it.
The beauty of his readings lay about him always. That
quite other beauty of people and of places to which he was
so receptive carried him by analogy back in his thoughts
to this loveliness ... if once he had ever forsaken it. . . .
Thus constantly he lived in a world made magical by the
mingling of rare philosophy enchantingly expressed.
Even when Teresa went to Europe, he experienced no
pang at the separation. She would be back in three months
or less; she would tell him very specially and in detail of her
adventures. She would even make him cognizant of her


216
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
non-adventures so that he would be able to live all oyer
again with her the entire journey. . . •
For himself he moved in a maze of delight and anticipa-
tion at the thought of his summer in camp with Christo-
pher. . . . His father had decided to drive them up . . .
they could easily accomplish the trip in a day and a
night . . . three men, Oliver proudly thought, relieving
each other at the wheel.
The camp was situated in New Hampshire, not far from
the site of some of Teresa's visits. . . . There was a shining
river both fresh and salt since it flowed directly into the
ocean. It wound its way through every variety of ever-
green. . . . Above it the sky curved deep and clear and
blue; time spent on its banks was time enchanted passed in
a world too beautiful to be true.
Oliver, who combined with his artistic leanings the love
of the genuine boy for sports, swam, played tennis, hiked
and took lessons in target practice. There was no chance
for archery here, but he enjoyed with every ounce of him
the new experience of combining eye and nerve and finger.
In his heart he felt he would never endure to go hunting,
but it pleased him to know that if ever he did decide to
accompany his father he could prove a finished companion.
In the cold nights he wrapped himself in his blankets and
thought peacefully and happily of Teresa, of his music, of
The Ode. He did not want even the morrow to hasten on
its appointed way, he would not of his own accord sacrifice
one hour to arrive more quickly at an expected pleasure.
So completely was life just what he would have it be.
The news of his sister's marriage did not affect him as
it did his father and Christopher. He had, even yet, no


Oliver's act
217
concept of her long struggle; of how complete a capitula-
tion this must seem to the two astounded elder men.
Dr. Cary shook his head doubtfully: "I should have fore-
seen this. Young people so often marry on the rebound.
. . . However, we'll just have to wait and see." For it was
too late then to change anything, the marriage having been
consummated before the letter arrived.
Christopher, who usually permitted nothing, except his
mother's defections, to mar his healthy satisfaction, was un-
doubtedly stricken. Like many people of mixed blood and
of his appearance, he had no very decided racial predilec-
tions. His preferences were all based on his own feeling.
He felt within him no obligation to identify himself with
one race more than the other. He simply liked his own
group best. Invariably, he spoke, if circumstances permit-
ted it, of his racial connections, but merely because he de-
tested the rigor and discomfort, no matter how innocently
practiced, of deception. In his own eyes he was simply an
American man with unusual latitude of choice of associates.
. . . His dark blood made it possible for him to range
where he would among people of color; his white blood
made possible a similar procedure among the others.
But his sister, he knew, was not like that. Hers was a
decided leaning toward a definite, marked connection with
colored people. So he feared for her happiness and blamed
his mother bitterly for the part which he was sure she had
to play in this mesalliance.
But of all these thoughts the two elder men made no
mention to Oliver.
• • • • •
Of course he shared none of their fears and apprehen-
sions. To him his sister's marriage meant one chief thing—


218 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
the new home which she had promised him with herself
and husband. He was quite prepared to substitute Aristide
for Henry. The home-life since it was with Teresa, could
not but be the same.
CHAPTER VI
AFTERWARDS events moved so swiftly. ... As it
l. happened Dr. Cary, in the anguished light of such
knowledge as was vouchsafed him, did reconstruct them
correctly. But it was months before he could accomplish
this and meanwhile his hair silvered, his mien altered, his
stature drooped. Something within him, up to this time
incurably young, died completely; something optimistic
never renewed its hope.
• • • • •
In the late October afternoon Oliver, alone in his room
and in the house, was playing. Often those days he worked
on little themes, odd bits of composition, sketches of his
musical thoughts ... to be laid away, carefully guarded,
perhaps to be assembled one day in something complete
and wholly beautiful.
Sally was out marketing. His father had left at last for
his hunting trip. He was to meet Pete Slocum and two
other cronies at Front and Market. They would cross the
river and drive in Pete's car through Jersey to Long Island.
Christopher had accompanied his father as far as the ferry
in order to drive the Cary car back. With Sally's aid the
two boys were to keep house until the return of their
parents. Within the next two weeks Olivia was returning
from Europe and Dr. Cary would complete his vacation
by meeting her in New York.


Oliver's act 219
With his faculty for savoring to the fullest any new ex-
perience, the scheme appealed wonderfully to Oliver. This
afternoon he was not composing ... he was simply play-
ing, reading through his albums, a snatch of Chopin, a few
phrases of Schumann. A long time he lingered over the
sweet tunelessness of Debussy and his echoes of wind and
water. The icy melodiousness of Scriabine held him so
in thrall . . . the rays of the late autumn sun seemed to
lose their warmth. . . .
Jumping up he wandered to the window and hands in
pockets looked down from the height of his room on the
little garden which he and Sally so sedulously tended. It
lay drowsing in the thick swimming haze of autumn.
Across it the light, his precious light, lay like a benison.
. . . On the little rustic table a magazine rested and on the
bench beside it his racquet.
"I know what I'll do," he said out loud. "I'll make my-
self a good big sandwich and eat it out there in the
yard. . . ." He looked at the bushes already a little sere;
noted again the light. . . . "Trailing clouds of glory," he
said to himself softly and ran downstairs whistling.
On the next flight he remembered his father's final hur-
ried words. He had told the boy to take two suits to the
cleaners. . . . "Better look through them for letters or
bills. . . ."
"Or money," Oliver interposed gaily. "And remember,
finding's keeping."
He might just as well get the clothes together now, he
thought; when Chris came he'd pile them in the car and
run around to the tailor's. . . . His practiced hand moved
deftly through the pockets. Nothing in the blue suit. Now
for the grey. Of this one the breast pocket contained a


220 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
telephone bill, a circular with some addresses scribbled on
it, and a letter, minus its envelope, from his mother.
Crossing the room he started to put the papers in the
small drawer of his father's chiffonier when his eyes fell
on the phrase . . . "if it just weren't for Oliver." . . .
Slowly he closed the drawer and as slowly walked down-
stairs. . . . What ... if it weren't for Oliver? "Well, it's
none of my business," he said to himself firmly and went
into the pantry. With the thick untidy sandwich of a
boy's making, he drifted out into the yard, sat on the bench,
opened the magazine. After all he was not so hungry.
Mechanically he broke off bits of bread and ham; me-
chanically he swallowed them. The words swam before
him; he had not read them aloud, but they rang in his
ears. . . . Well, he was going to read the letter eventually,
he might just as well do it first as last. . . .
The letter was an old one. "Just think," he said to him-
self, "whatever it is, Father's known of it for a month, but
I don't know anything about it. And I'm the one whom
it concerns."
It was a letter full of dissatisfactions, of demands for
money, of little regrets, of unfulfilled fancies. Then sud-
denly his mother began praising the beautiful country of
the Riviera:
"It is too heavenly here for words, Christopher. I wish
you could see it too. The little towns are like jewels, each
one lovelier than the other. . . . Yes, I know you're sur-
prised to hear me tal\ like that but that's what these places
do to you. Even their names please, Villefranche, Beaulieu,
Cagnes, Monte Carlo, Juan-les-Pins.
"I li Juan-les-Pins best . . . and they say property is
marvelously cheap there. I'd be willing to live there all


Oliver's act
221
the rest of my fife. And I bet you would too. There's a
nice colony resident the whole year round.
"If you and Chris would come and settle down over here
we could all be as white as we loo\ . . . if it just weren't
for Oliver. I 
ow you don't like me to tal\ about this . . .
but really, Chris, Oliver and his unfortunate color has cer-
tainly been a mill-stone around our nec\s all our lives. . . .
And now that Teresa is going to marry her Frenchman it
would be easy enough for us to establish a pied a terre
here. . . . You see my French is coming along too. . . ."
With the letter in his hand he went back upstairs, very
slowly, very carefully. He was sixteen years old, but no
man of sixty-six ever felt so aged, so finished as he. "If
it just weren't for Oliver." . . . Why, of course he had al-
ways been in her way, in their way.
He flung himself face-downwards across the bed. Across
his shadowed eyes the kaleidoscope of his life flashed. He
saw himself, a tiny child, a baby, at the house of first one
grandparent and then another. He remembered vague
words, broken whispers, suppressed phrases, which now he
translated into pity. All these years they had been pitying
him! . . . And there had been his life here in this house
with his mother. He could see and understand it now—
all so plainly.
This was the cause of her dislike, her immutable cold-
ness. Boy as he was it made him smile with bitter amuse-
ment to think how he had tortured himself; how he had
tried desperately to make himself all over, hoping to please
her. Meanwhile of course the thing which he could not
change—his color—remained!
The only time she had ever been nice to him, had ever
spontaneously smiled at him, had been when he had played
butler for her . . . when he had been her servant! The


224
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Christopher could not understand what had happened
to him. At first he was greatly worried but finally in the
face of the younger boy's repeated denials, he concluded
that his abstractedness, his quietness were due either to
unanticipated fatigue after a strenuous summer, or, much
more likely, to interest in some secret artistic composition.
As far as he could see the boy ate, studied and practiced
with accustomed regularity. Perhaps he did spend a little
more time out walking in the Park. But he had always
been conspicuously fond of that district.
Teresa's letter came in the last mail of a Saturday after-
noon, on the day on which Dr. Cary and Olivia were ex-
pected home. Quickly he put the rather thin envelope in
his pocket and went up to his room. . . . His breath came
short and fast ... he had not known how much he was
depending on this. . . . But of course she would want him
to come.
His eyes ran quickly over her first phrases, her delight in
his letter, the briefness of this reply because she wanted to
catch a certain boat. Then she wrote:
"Darling, I'm so sorry I can't do what you want. It is a
little early to be talking in this way . . . so soon . . . and
I don't want you to tell Father. . . . But I'm afraid my
marriage is going to be different from what I had expected.
Perhaps no marriage is what one things it is going to be.
But you can't understand that yet. . . .
"The funny thing is, Oliver, that even before I received
your letter I had begun to cast about for ways and means
of bringing you over here . . . we could have enjoyed life
here so much together. But the one thing that I never
meant to come between you and me prevents it. . . .
"I have been so foolish. I might have foreseen it. Oliver,
my husband doesn't /(now I'm colored. Perhaps I might


226
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
sat in the big arm-chair, his hands dangling loosely between
his knees. . . . There was something he meant to do.
When he could collect his thoughts, he would remem-
ber. • . .
At last, with a smile, he rose, crossed over to his chif-
fonier and took out the pistol with which he had done
his target practice this summer. . . . He would like to
fall by the window, he thought. . . . Christopher, running
up, as he heard the shot, found him lying there, the light of
the declining day athwart his smiling face.





232 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"I wish you'd call me Llewellyn!"
"It's a nice name, but not for the likes of me to be bandy-
ing about. I hopes I knows my place, may it please your
worship." She was always mocking him.
"My dear, I don't like to hear you talk that way . . . not
even in fun."
"I'm not talking in fun. I mean what I say. Between
you and me there is a great gulf fixed, like those people in
the Bible. Do you ever read it?"
"That's no great gulf," he returned, suddenly traitorous
to his innermost convictions. "I'm rich and you're poor,
but. . . ."
"You're Llewellyn Nash, heir to three millions, and I
am Phebe the poor working-girl. . . . Kings and beggar-
maids don't consort any more. It does make a difference."
She thought of her dark mother. . . . "No matter what you
say there's a great gulf . . . two gulfs between us."
"I don't know what you mean when you talk that way,"
he began despairingly.
"Let's not talk that way, then." She was airy, almost
dancing. "Here we are at Logan Square . . . that's as far
as you can go. Let's sit here and watch the people."
Silent, he sat beside her watching the play of emotions
over her mobile face. For an hour she entertained with
gossip about the shop; the stout woman who insisted that
she had always worn a thirty-eight. "This model simply
must be marked wrong!" . . . There was the thin intensely
feminine girl insisting on the most mannish of tweeds. . . .
"I won't tell you the names of any of them, except Mrs.
Hendrick Harrison. She's so mean about paying her bills.
She has a 'little dressmaker' on the side who 'really could
turn out any of these models and much more reasonably.'"
Phebe imitated Mrs. Harrison's thick suety voice; her


phebe's act
233
pompous manner. . . . "And half the time she sends the
dresses back again. And I know she has had them copied
by the little dressmaker. . . ."
He nodded. "Yes, Mrs. Harrison is just like that. She
was drinking tea at my mother's not long ago; she was
wearing something terrible then which she said came from
your place, but I'm sure it didn't."
"No, of course it didn't," the girl said indignantly. "She's
going to ruin our trade if she keeps that up." She glanced
at her little chromium wrist-watch. "Goodness gracious!
I must go! I have an engagement."
He rose, looking at her crossly. "You needn't be so glad
to be leaving me!"
"But I am glad . . . not to be leaving you, no, not that,
never that. You're nice and I like you. Only I'm awfully
glad to be going where I'm going."
For the first time he voiced his secret fear. "A man?"
"A man! The world's finest. . . ."
"Anybody I know?" His voice broke a little.
"Don't be ridiculous! Where would you meet anybody
in my world? Why, you didn't even go to public school.
Let's see, what did you tell me? ... Tutors, a couple of
years in France, Moses Brown Preparatory in Provi-
dence . . . Harvard, Oxford, Vienna. . . . No, my friend
had all his training right here in Philadelphia."
She remembered the difficulties that colored men in the
old Quaker City experienced in getting interneships. . . .
"He may have to go to New York finally."
"What is he, for pity's sake?"
"A doctor. He hasn't finished yet. He's at a school up-
town."
"If you'd tell me the name of the school, I bet I'd be able
to go up and pick him out. What's he like?"


234
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Like all the things my kind of girl likes best. Tall,
dark, strong, smart. . . ."
"And you're going to marry him?"
It was true he hadn't asked her, but she knew. "As sure
as shooting. . . . Good-bye, Mr. Nash."
CHAPTER II
ON A day like this she did not want to be in the sub-
way. The Market Street car set her down at Fifty-
second Street; she purchased some things for lunch in a
Horn and Hardart Retail Shop. Then boarding another
car, she sped to Parkside Avenue and George's Hill. And
Nicholas!
He was sitting there, wearing the dark blue suit that she
loved so well. His head on his slim firm neck rose sculp-
tured, Apollo-like from his soft white collar. . . . She was
so happy to be with him.
"Nick, it's grand to be alive!"
He caught her hand, kissed her lightly. "I'll say! What
do you want to do?"
"Oh, just anything, as the spirit moves us."
"Let's eat," he recommended most unspiritually.
Afterwards they did all the things they always did and
in the same order. They rode in the little rattling, rocking
Park-trolley to Strawberry Mansion. They boarded the
street-car on Ridge Avenue and dismounted at the Wissa-
hickon. Here in the silvery, unearthly twilight Nicholas
hired a boat and rowed her along the stream. . . . Presently
he shipped oars and they drifted awhile. He liked two of
his new professors very much.
"Very human; they are quite unlike Hughes and Long,


phebe's act
235
whom I had in the same subjects last year. Always so afraid
to give a colored fellow any extra help. . . . I've seen them
lend white fellows the most invaluable books; things I
couldn't find in any of the stores here even if I could afford
them."
She was sorry and told him so softly. "I wish it was me,
Nick! I wish we could change places."
"I know you do, Phebe, you're so sweet . . . but I'd hate
to think of your enduring this kind of thing. It's enough
to break many a man's spirit. So many little meannesses,
unexpected insults. Like the man the week before, demon-
strating on Pellagra. . . . He was from Georgia. After-
wards we were all standing around asking questions. He
said he'd never seen such an enthusiastic bunch. And
Holland—he's the only other colored man in my group—
asked him a question, a good one. He turned to answer it
and when he saw he was colored, damn it, he pulled out
his watch and said he'd overstayed his time; he had a din-
ner engagement."
She laid her soft hand on his arm. "But, Nick, just think
how wonderful of you, and Pete Holland too, to struggle
on in the face of such difficulties."
"Well, of course," he said simply, "there's nothing else
for us to do, No colored man with an ounce of grit is
going to let himself be cheated out of an education by a
bunch of crackers."
"They're not all like that, though," she reminded him
gently. "Look how wonderful Mrs. Morgan Rogers has
been to me. . . . And you know how grand lots of people
have been to Marise in New York."
He acquiesced, lighting his cigarette. "Mrs. Rogers is
one white woman in a thousand, in a million. But even
she advised you not to let anybody know you had Negro


238 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
suppose she meant that I had no business living, that I
should have worn a label?
"It happened that we were all going to the same place on
Market Street, to a movie. You know how nasty those
theaters are down there? They watched me like hawks to
find out where I was going to sit. I had been meaning to
sit in the balcony, for I didn't have much money that day,
but just to spite them I bought a seat in the orchestra. . . .
It's a good thing there isn't anything in the idea of the Evil
Eye. ... If looks could kill, your girl-friend wouldn't be
here today."
"Don't I know it? That's one angle of it. But there are
aspects, too, of which you don't dream. . . ." He checked
himself. "What do you say to our going up into the Park
and finding a nice cosy bench?"
In silence she walked beside him through the night
shades; the radiance of an occasional arc-light threw weird
shadows across their path, played hide-and-seek in the
massed trees and greenness. . . . Back from the road they
sat where some brittle leaves had drifted near the convenient
bench. . . .
In a moment, his arm was about her, his kisses on her
face and lips. Her own arms clung about his hard, broad
shoulders. With all her slender strength she held him to
her. ... If he would only speak, she thought. Yet she
loved him, too, for not speaking before he had finished his
training; she supposed it really would be much better to
wait until he had obtained a footing in his difficult field.
For herself she would have been willing to live, half-
clothed, half-fed . . . but with love ... in the proverbial
garret. But Nicholas, she had found out, was unalterably
opposed to ideas of this sort. Whenever she spoke, as at one
time she did frequently, of couples, young friends of hers


240
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"You're pretty grand yourself, Nicky . . ." she paused,
her heart beating thick and fast. "And I think I have found
someone able to take care of me. . . ."
If he recognized the opening he didn't take it. "Good-
night, Phebe."
"Good-night, Nicholas. . . . When shall I look for you?
Tomorrow?"
"Hardly tomorrow. I'll telephone you. . . ." The look of
disappointment on her face moved him to say hastily, "per-
haps I can manage tomorrow. Pretty late though. Prob-
ably after ten."
"Oh, that's all right, Nick. You know I won't mind.
Nor Mother either. I really believe she looks on you as a
son."
Out of his dark, impassive face, his eyes rested on hers,
with tenderness but without self-betrayal.
CHAPTER III
UP IN her own room, she walked, as a girl does, auto-
matically to her mirror, glanced unseeingly at her
shining hair; at her face, which was shining too. . . . But
as she sat down and composed herself to think the radiance
faded.
What was the matter with Nick? Not only today, but
for many days past? She must think carefully about this
matter . . . without sparing herself, without the soft illu-
sion of her own desires. . . . Had he ever been truly
ardent? Had she not rather read ardor, passion, fire into
his face and bearing because he had been endowed, through
no wish of his own, with all the trappings with which one
associates romance?


phebe's ACT . 241
•
The set of his splendid head on its proud neck, his tall,
hard, thin figure, his flat shoulders, the glance of his eye;
she envisaged his thickly waving black hair, so closely set,
so almost compact that it bore about it the sculptured look
of a Greek head. All these attributes called for fire, ro-
mance, the bestowal of love. She remembered—indeed,
she had never forgotten—his first kiss, so spontaneous, so
tender, so reverent, and yet so intense . . . certainly he had
loved her then. Or thought he had.
She had always admired him . . . ever since that day
when their mothers had bought Delaware porgies in the
alley. But it was on that kiss that she had built up her
assurance of his love; that she had dared to let her own
love assume increasingly greater proportions, until now it
was the greatest thing in her world . . . more than that,
it was a raging fire which had bidden fair to consume her
. . . which she hoped one day would consume her with
Nicholas.
But of late she had not been so sure. Nicky had come
to see her with the accustomed habitude of the years; they
had gone to parties together. Girls had said: "I suppose
you want me to ask Nicky for you."
They belonged to a fortnightly dancing-class which met
with the most commendable regularity; occasionally they
attended St. Thomas' Episcopal Church on Twelfth Street.
But best of all there were these lovely afternoons; these
precious evenings in the Park, at George's Hill; the late,
still hours in the boat on the Wissahickon; the visits with-
out formality or stiffness in her house on Haverford Ave-
nue. . . .
True, there were days when she did not see him at all;
there were enterprises of whose undertaking she had been
unaware, until he had acquainted her of them later. There


242 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
was the time he had taken Pete Holland's cousin to the
Alphas' dance and accompanied the Talliver girl to the
Penn Relays. And she had not dreamed of his going to
see Marise and her new show in New York until he had
gone and returned.
The very fact that he had always told her of these doings
had given her a sense of security. As a matter of course,
she thought rapturously, he must give her an account of
his doings. . . . Now suddenly the awful thought pene-
trated: Did he tell her about his extra-adventures because
he knew it was not imperative; casually, as one tells a mere
acquaintance, as she herself had told Johnny Albans the
other night of her last trip to Atlantic City?
Certainly there was something behind this constant atti-
tude of repression, this wariness, this persistent self-control
which seemed to lurk, when they were together, behind his
every act. She remembered the night at Anna Lucas's . . .
someone had proposed a kissing game . . . Post-office. It
had fallen to Nicholas' lot to kiss Helen Taylor. She could
see yet the unguarded eagerness of that kiss . . . the same
expression had appeared on the countenance of John Albans
when he in turn had kissed Phebe. . . .
But that same night in the dimly lit hall, as they were
standing all alone, as she had raised her trusting face to his
to say good-night, he had just brushed her lips with his
own. . . . She had been conscious of a vague disappoint-
ment which had been gradually dissipated as she came to
realize that he had not released her hand. He must have
stood there for fully five minutes holding her soft, slim
hand in his clasp so hard and warm and strong.
He was not, she was sure, in love with anyone else;
certainly he was not at all perturbed by that old story of
her ill-starred mother and her faithless father. . . . For one


244
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
Disappointed, but smiling, she promised she would. It
took all the taste out of the lovely day. It brought to
Llewellyn Nash the incomparable pleasure of escorting her
that night to a concert.
Young Campbell had had his own bad night. When he
had left Phebe he thought for a moment of wandering
about a bit; perhaps he might stumble across one of the
Talliver boys, shoot a few rounds of pool. . . . But with no
conscious volition his mind decided against this . . . there
were for him certain confusing thoughts over which he
must ponder; there were two or three worries which he
must face and if possible, dispel. . . . Presently he let him-
self into his house on Girard Avenue, and mounted imme-
diately to his room on the third floor. In a deep study and
yet with his mind on no particular thing he got into
pajamas and slippers, threw himself across the bed.
He was worried about his school-work. He was worried
about Phebe. For a brief instant he thought rather seri-
ously of tossing up a coin to see which worry he should
consider first, but instinctively his thoughts moved to, fast-
ened on the girl.
Campbell was without false modesty. He knew his
points, knew that he was young, handsome and in his
world—which was the only one he cared about—attractive.
He knew that he could "have a way with women." When
he was a young boy he rather looked forward to the coming
of his majority. He would, of course, marry eventually,
eventually "settle down." But he thought it might be fun
to sow a few wild oats, reap even a few tares.
However, an experience, while he was still too young,
half-thrust on him, half-invited, one summer while he was
working at a hotel permeated him with an ineluctable dis-


246
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
children circulated so cruelly about herself and her dis-
traught mother.
Phebe had always been so brave, so unconcealing, so
philosophical about the sordidness from which she had
sprung ... he could not, he simply could not, leave her to
slighting words and innuendoes; the sneers of certain girls,
assured daughters of "old Philadelphians"; he would have
been even a worse cad than he now found himself to leave
her to the machinations of the brothers of those same girls.
They would have considered her fair game.
He was still in his teens when he recognized just how
much protection his constant attendance on Phebe lent her.
Wrapped in the dignity of his own preference and his
mother's undoubted liking she had been able to move with
assurance and self-forgetfulness across the arena of their
little concourse.
Sometimes even then when he was still too young to
understand the later complications and expectations for
which he was letting himself in, he used to know a faint
warning which urged him to step out of this situation. And
then immediately his mind, always so rational, so under-
standing, made him see the results. What would their litde
world think if, now, any coolness rose between them?
That perhaps his mother had disapproved, that the Camp-
bells had found the fact of Phebe's illegitimacy too hard
to bear; that the girl had inherited her mother's wild blood
and young Campbell had virtuously withdrawn? . . .
It disgusted him to think on these things; it made him
appear so vainglorious, so conceited. And yet these were
the facts and these the complications which they had made.
Now he saw that if at any time he had broken away the
results simply must have been happier. . . . Phebe would
have recovered long since; she would never have allowed


phebe's act
247
herself to remain prostrate from the shock of it. Inevitably
she would have regained her footing, have made new
friends. What a conceited ass he'd been to think that he
and he only could have raised her to, maintained her in,
her present estate. ... Or she might have gone off forever
into that white world into whose portals she had so easily
stepped.
But now her feelings were involved. "It's all very well
to dissemble your love," she might have misquoted, "but
why encourage mine to bloom and blossom when you
know you never meant to gather it?"
For how could he tell her that during all these days and
months and years that he had spent with her, laughing,
dancing, swimming, yes, and kissing too, though God knew
that wasn't his fault ... he had been in love always, only,
passionately, determinedly . . . with Marise?
Yet what else could he tell her, since anything else but
the truth must cause that old serpent of humiliation and
anguish about her mother raise within her its ugly head?
At this point, as always, the baffling situation overcame
him. . . . One thing was certain, he must break away.
Why, tonight the situation had been almost impossible . . .
what was it she had said to this young Nash? With such
innocence she had told him and yet with such obvious
intention! .'. . "I warned him," she said, "that I already
liked someone else." And again: "I think I've already
found someone to take care of me."
Well, he would get out of it. It meant rejecting a very
great, a very perfect love. It meant, too, that he might
have to carry locked in his heart for years, the responsibility
for a great sorrow, perhaps a great tragedy. . . . But the
ruthlessness which Teresa so uncannily had recognized,
arose within him. He might ruin Phebe's life; he might


248
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
unwittingly be ruining his own. . . . But he wanted
Marise.
Through the open windows he looked out from his dark-
ened room upon the deeper darkness of the autumn night.
... A tree which he loved so, rustled its leaves mysteri-
ously, communed a brief space with his turbulent spirit.
He was very weary . . . these seances always left him
spent. . . .
He had meant to think of some way out of the difficul-
ties which were so surrounding his classes in Anatomy.
. . . Professor Reading and his obvious dislike . . . the
man's attitude of late was beginning to assume proportions
of some moment. If he failed, and Reading had made it
pretty plain that he would fail him ... it meant another
term . . . perhaps another school since it would be folly to
work again under a man who so clearly and unfairly meant
to thwart him. . . .
What a snarl life could become! Inhaling once more
deeply of his cigarette he threw the charred fragment out
the window. . . . The sympathetic tree sighed to him once
more tenderly. Stumbling across his room he fell into bed
where sleep covered him immediately like a pall.
• • • • m
In the morning Pete Holland called him: "Say, Nick, I've
got those notes you were so crazy about. Carter Lister lent
me his. How'll I get them to you?"
In the end they decided to work together that night in
Campbell's room. Nicholas bathed, breakfasted, telephoned
to Phebe and set off for a gruelling day in the laboratory.
• • • • •
The notes which Holland brought him, remarkably suc-
cinct and clear though they were, differed not a whit in
quality from those which Nicholas had taken. He went


phebe's act
through them all with the utmost care; comparing them
wtih his own; noticing specially any marked difference in
diction or emphasis. But invariably the sense was the
same. Lister and he might have been two halves of the
same mind for any difference which appeared in their
accounts of the lectures.
After a long two hours of steady application Nicholas
laid down the books and his pen, took out a fresh cigarette,
stretched his long legs under his study table. Holland some
time since had put aside his book and greatly at ease on the
roomy couch was perusing the sporting sheet of an old
newspaper.
"Now," said Nicholas, "old Reading will really have to
go out of his way to mark me down on those notes . . .
they're as near perfect as they come. . . ." But his face
showed his worry. "Yet I'll bet good money he'll manage
to sock me at that. . . . Wonder what he's got against me,
Pete?"
Holland cleared his throat; he started to speak; then
thinking better of it relaxed into even greater ease, lying
flat on his back the better to blow smoke rings.
His friend continued scowling. "I wish I could get their
point of view. I can't see their logic . . . making it harder
for a colored man because he is colored ... a thing he can't
help . . . and half the time doesn't want to. Remember
that professor in that medical college in South Philadelphia
who held back Julia Anstey three years ago? She told
Julia to her face that no colored woman should ever say
she had passed her course.
"Bob Anstey told me that Julia actually started to kill
herself on account of it . . . she had worked so hard and
she was in debt up to her neck . . . the thought of another
year simply paralyzed her. Fact. But she did buck up,


252
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"And the last time too I butt into any man's private
affairs, I'm telling you," he said to Bob Anstey, whom he
met later at the Talliver boys. "I don't think he liked it
any too well."
Nicholas did not like the situation; did not like it at all.
Holland's narrative added fuel to the smouldering fire of
indignation which burned within him when he thought of
the inconsistencies of his white fellowman. "Not a person
in that bunch that would have been willing to accept Phebe
for white, if they knew her story. And yet all of them
ready to burst with resentment because she is of mixed
blood and elects to associate with a person of the same
combination, only darker."
He would go down to the ice-box and see what he could
find. "I don't see how I'm going to get that over to Read-
ing," he thought to himself, trying to keep his feet from
clattering too loudly on the stairs. . . . He was taking a
bottle of cream out of the ice-box ... his mother would
probably be quite provoked to find she'd have to get more
of it in the morning. He must try to get down early
enough to go to the milk store for her. It was then that the
thought struck him . . . Holland's story had provided him
with a way out of his dilemma with Phebe.
CHAPTER IV
THE more he thought of it, the more his mind clung to
the idea. It was one, he knew, which for many years
had revolved dimly in the back of his head. More than
once in Phebe's company he had winced under the sur-
prised or curious, gaping stares of white people in street-


phebe's act
253
cars, or theaters, or parks. It was an ordeal which never
failed to arouse within him a perfect fury of rage and ex-
asperation. 1
What group of people could there be, he often wondered,
within the United States, who were totally unaware that
the admixture of whites and blacks had been going on,
covertly to say the least, for centuries? How could the
most ordinary feat of ratiocination refuse to acknowledge
the possibility of a type like Phebe as a result of this admix-
ture?
Why should they expect the product of this combination
to run to a fixed, immediately recognizable type? And in
any event what difference did it make? . . . Why should
he himself, even, secure in his knowledge, object so to these
stares and whispered comments?
He could not feel proud of his decision, and yet he won-
dered if after all this fatal difference in appearance had not
worked its effect upon him during the more conscious stages
of his and Phebe's acquaintance. This, even more than his
love for Marise, was the hidden cause of his having stead-
fastly refused in his innermost mind to accept Phebe as his
wife. A man in his marriage sought, he knew, the fulfil-
ment of love, of passion, proved possessorship, security of
affection. But more than any of these he sought comfort
which was the combination of all these qualities and yet
an entity apart.
Well, there it was! In Phebe's presence, he was, if sur-
rounded by white Americans, without comfort. He might,
he knew very well, in some sections of the country be sub-
jected to open insult ... to possible danger. And the
same might be true for Phebe. There were, it was true,
several cases among people whom he knew where the dif-
ference in color and appearance had not proved a deterrent,


phebe's act
255
happy in the happiness with which her whole self was
suffused even before she awoke. She was not, except where
color was concerned, a very sensuous creature. She was
entirely lacking in that ability to savor and to enjoy mere
mood and perception . . . that ability which so character-
ized little Oliver Cary. . . . But for once she was entirely,
objectively aware of her state. It seemed to her a lovely, a
most grateful condition that one should be happy, even
before he was awake. ... To be somnolent in bliss . . .
surely one of the rarest of blessings!
And of course she could trace the bliss to its source. To-
day was Wednesday . . . and Nicholas was coming. The
thought of it colored and suffused her whole day. Because
of it she sold enormous quantities of furbelows at ruinous
prices; she thought of a new note to add to a dressing gown
which changed it from something merely bizarre to a fig-
ment of enchantment and indeed sold it. . . . To Llewellyn
Nash, who lunched with her, she talked on such a tide of
gayety, exhilaration, complete satisfaction with living, that
he felt refreshed as though he had quaffed an elixir. How
wonderful it would be to have this lovely, vibrant, gallant
creature forever beside one. . . . No need then to go to
German Baths ... to French Watering Places. An hour
spent with Phebe was the equivalent of a combination of
ozone, champagne, ambrosia, the waters of the Fountain
of Youth all poured in some classical goblet and mixed and
blessed by some beneficent god.
At last the lovely, strenuous day was over. In a few
hours now, she thought, tripping along the street like some
girl in the pictured advertisement of the perfect shoe . . .
in a few hours all this heady anticipation would be resolved
into realization. Tonight it would be nice to stay at home;


256 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
to talk, to laugh, to have music, to listen to Nicholas sing-
ing, and talking too, in that resonant voice ... to kiss him
good-night. What mattered it if he did not talk of mar-
riage as yet, provided only this could last throughout the
years?
CHAPTER V
HE HAD rung the bell; he was in the house; she could
hear him talking in his deep grave voice to her
mother ... he was always so nice to her mother, treating
her with unfeigned deference and respect. From the lodg-
er's rooms on the third floor, where to Mrs. Nixon's surprise
she was granting all the requests preferred—new blankets
and a rug—she could hear him asking: "Where's Phebe?"
"Down in just a moment," her mother said.
He must have gone across the room to the piano for
presently she heard great music, heard his golden voice,
heard the heartbreaking yearning of those universally felt
words:
"None but the lonely heart. . . ."
In her own room she slipped into her white dress, rum-
maged among piles of costume jewelry for bright, dark
blue beads and bracelets with just a thought of tarnished
gold; she ran her nervous fingers through the thick cap
of hair which tonight had, beyond question, imprisoned the
sun. She was down the stairs; she was beside him. "Such
a sad song, Nicky!"
"Such a beautiful one, Phebe! Such a true one!"
"True or not, no sadness tonight."
Obediently he broke into something else, all bright and


phebe's act
257
sparkling, with a touch of the gamin and yet sincere.
There was a final, haunting line:
"Love me, Hon. That's the only thing that matters!"
"That's from Marise's show. Like it, Phebe?"
"I adore it. Play it again." She took a step or two,
snapping her fingers, pirouetting, and twisting her slender
body in the modern manner, but always with restraint, even
daintiness.
He left off his strumming to watch her.
"Can't dance without music." She gave one final turn,
poised in front of him with hands extended toward him.
"How do you like my dress?"
"It's beautiful," he told her. "And you're beautiful too,
Phebe."
But all beautiful, sweet, glowing as she was, she was still,
he realized, not for him.
She was delighted that he thought her beautiful. "You're
the second person to tell me that today," she confided with-
out conceit. "One of those terrible, real Philadelphia So-
ciety old ladies was in the shop today; you know, the kind
that wears a hat like the Queen of England—only she
doesn't get away with it. ... I tried on a dress for her
daughter who's at Bar Harbor, and she said my face was
my fortune. She bought the dress and paid me two hun-
dred of the best too."
"Two hundred dollars!" He whistled. "Gosh that's a
lot of money for . . ."
"A rag," she interrupted him gayly, "to adorn a bone
and a hank of hair. A lot of it was pure profit too. Getting
along, don't you think so, sonny?"
"I should say so! What are you going to do with it all?"
"Well, of course, my expenses are fairly heavy, though


258
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
not so bad as they were . . . the top floor is rented now
and that helps tremendously. And of course Madame and
I go half and half. But even then," she finished with
touching humility, "when you remember how calamitously
poor we used to be, I am able to put by quite a lot."
"For a rainy day," he appended idly.
"No, for you." It was out before she realized it; she
was just as astounded as he on hearing those words and
then infinitely relieved.
Impossible to ignore the words; impossible to feign un-
awareness of their import.
"Phebe," he admonished her, distressed and at sea. "You
shouldn't say a thing like that, dear. You know how im-
possible it would be for me to accept money from you."
She said, savoring the delicious intimacy of the moment:
"Don't you think you're being a little bit too finicky, Nick?
After all you could pay me back at any time. And—and
it would bring everything that much nearer."
He was resolved to fight to the last ditch. "Bring what
that much nearer?"
"As though you didn't know!" But very faintly she felt
fright. It was unlike Nicholas, famed among their crowd
as a straight shooting sportsman, to hedge like this. "Why,
Nicky . . . why of course I never meant to bring this sub-
ject up. It ... it just popped up of itself . . . didn't it?
But after all, isn't it what we've been thinking about all
these years?"
Well, it had come. Never in his life, had he believed it
could be his lot to feel such a cad. . . . "Only," his waver-
ing mind warned him, "you'll be much more of a cad if
you let her marry you feeling as you do."
On this note with no plan of action ready he plunged
into the miserable fray. For a second he looked at her,


phebe's act
penetratingly, sadly. He rose, extended his hand. "Will
you sit beside me on the sofa awhile, Phebe?"
"No," she answered, her voice a little shrill with fear.
"I'll sit right here."
"Well," he began, "it would only make matters worse,
wouldn't it, if I pretended not to know what is in your
mind? . . . We should have had this out long ago, but
I kept hoping that we wouldn't have to face this issue, that
you would meet and like somebody else. ... I suppose
you've been thinking about marriage, Phebe?"
She nodded; the lump in her throat made it impossible
to speak.
"I tried my best, Phebe, to make it clear to you that I
didn't love you, not as a man loves a woman from whom
he hopes everything. Once or twice, since we've been
grown, I went out with other girls to make you see that
there could be others. ... I expected you to exercise the
same freedom. . . ."
"But you saw I never did."
"No . . . but I couldn't urge you to be more . . . more
catholic so to speak, could I? That would have shown me
up as the world's prize conceited ass."
She said to him evenly: "What's it really all about,
Nicky?"
He couldn't tell her about Marise. Considering the
casualness of his attentions to the young dancer, it would
sound as though he were snatching at a straw. . . . No, he
must parade his other reason which after all was just as
true.
"I'll tell you, Phebe. It's about our color. . . ."
Whatever else she may have been expecting, it was clearly
not this. She could only echo stupidly: "Color?"
"Yes, color! I've been meaning to tell you about this for


260
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
years. But how could I? Still even you must have noticed,
heard what I mean. . • . Haven't you seen people whisper-
ing, and staring when we've got into street-cars? White
men leering at you and looking daggers at me? White
women curling their lips at both of us? I've seen it and I
tell you, Phebe, I've grown sick and tired of it. . . ."
She said in bewilderment: "But, Nicky, as long as I
don't mind. . . ."
"Phebe, you must see that in this connection I have to
think of myself too ... it puts me in such a false, such an
utterly ridiculous position! Why, there have been times
when I've been taken for your servant. . . ."
At this she was plainly aghast, but she said truly and
bravely, "I'd be proud to be taken for yours."
He went over to her chair then; he dropped to his knees
and took her cold hands in his. . . . Once, she told herself
drearily, this would have seemed the happiest moment in
her life . . . now it was ashes.
"My dear, I know you think you mean that, but, Phebe,
we have to take things as they are. ... I remember Miss
Cummings in Sunday School, you had her too, do you
remember? I recall all those things she used to tell us
about love . . . how it is kind, does not vaunt itself . . .
and all that sort of thing. . . .
"It is a beautiful sentiment, it might work for a day, a
month, at a pinch for a year. But for a life-time, to be on
account of color, in jeopardy of one's peace of mind, of
one's pride, of one's life in some places in this democratic
country . . . well, Phebe, it simply isn't being done."
"But, Nicky, you know those things don't happen to the
people we know and see. . . ."
"Only last night I heard of a man whose career may quite


262 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"But you take us . . . 'poor colored people,' as Old
Man Talliver so often says ... we put up a fight of an-
other kind ... we clung to life in the face of the crudest
treatment that the country has ever known. We learned
new ways, new idioms of speech, new adjustments to
climate and food. We even learnt and adapted new ideals
of beauty. . . ."
"Oh," she complained wearily, "what has all this to do
with us, Nicholas?"
"Only this. If we loved each other as we should, and
married and could make it . . . then that would be o.k.,
Phebe. But to marry knowing that here, right here in
Philadelphia, you might see me, your husband, exposed any
day in your presence, and sometimes, on account of your
presence, to the acutest insult, to know yourself able to enter
places, restaurants, movies, homes which I could never
penetrate ... it would be bound to affect us, Phebe. Per-
haps you'd pity me; perhaps you'd only remain mildly
thwarted. . . . But it would be there between us."
He hoped never again to see a woman so stricken, so
desolated.
"Dear, don't grieve for me. . . . I'm not worth it. No
man is worth it. The whole situation isn't worth the pain
it causes. That's why I can't understand a country like
this . . . that started out from the beginning to alleviate
the natural woes of man . . . pain, sorrow, poverty, caste
and all the rest of it, and then went about adding a special
little group of woes for us in addition to the ones which
every man bears."
She rose. "I guess you'll have to go, Nicky. . . . I'm des-
perately tired. . . . Good-night and good-bye."
"Wait a minute, Phebe, don't think I'm hard-hearted.
My dear, I thank you with every ounce of me for what


264
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
countenance of that lad in the Elevated ... it was simply
impossible for him to know peace in his own home. He
must be out and away in the pursuit of something ... or
nothing.
It was all one to him as long as he was spared the sight
of his father's face, which grief had marked so ineffaceably;
as long as he could forget that never again would he hear
the strains of great music floating down the well of the
stairway. Never again tease the lad for the choice of the
high-sounding words in which at times he couched his
ideas.
At the corner of Fortieth and Market he entered a drug
store in order to telephone his father. "I won't be home
till all hours, Dad. Tell them not to wait dinner for me."
"Very well, son. Would you like me to wait up?"
"No, but I'd like you to go down to the Citizens' Club
and play a game of billiards with Doc. Slocum. Suppose
I call him for you and tell him you're coming."
"I guess you might do that, Christopher. Only be sure
to make it plain that if I'm not there by eleven he needn't
expect me."
"All right, Father. See you later." He hung up the
receiver. "That means he has no intention of going
out. . . . Poor Father!"
In five minutes he was at the West Philadelphia Station.
In another five minutes he was on the train, on his way to
New York and Marise. Sitting in the coach, his eyes
straining into the flying darkness, he found himself coming
to a decision. He would not, he told himself, go through
any longer with all this miserable pain and loneliness. He
must change his living conditions . . . for himself and for
his father. It was nonsense to let life drift on as they were
permitting it, waiting for the gods—or for events to shape


phebe's act
265
themselves . . . and you. People could be the masters of
their fates . . . with just a little care, a little more fore-
sight, even a very little telling of the truth Oliver might
have been with them now.
If only they had not been so averse to wounding his feel-
ing! How much better to have acquainted the child with
his mother's obsession. How infinitely better for him to
have held his mother in a certain kind of contempt than
for him to go out in that agony of misunderstanding and
to plunge his brother, his sister, father into these ineluctable
depths of sorrow. . . . Olivia would either have been totally
unaware of his scorn ... or would even have welcomed
it since then, in his effort to evade her, he too would have
been working on her side.
The train rolled into the huge station in New York; he
ate a leisurely dinner in the restaurant, washed up a bit and
sauntered, glad of an opportunity to stretch his legs,
through the hard effulgence of Broadway to the theater
where Marise was playing. He had not seen her now for
six weeks, to such an extent had her indifference on his
last visit piqued him. . . .
She was better than ever tonight. Her voice rose very
true and luscious and slightly husky with the huskiness of
the professional:
"hove me, Hon! That's the only thing that matters!"
The smooth satin of her skin, dusky and yet glowing
like the deep, dark depths of a great crimson dahlia, flashed
its allure beneath and above her scanty garment. Her
lovely shapely legs with their incredibly slender, rounded
ankles, rising from red shoes, moved in a maze of intoxi-
catingly graceful steps from one end of the great stage to
the other. She was the hit of the season, the most fascinat-


266 comedy: American style
ting creature, for the moment, in New York. The incom-
parable Marise!
In answer to his note she sent back a scrawl telling him
to meet her at the stage entrance immediately after the per-
formance. . . . She was there almost as quickly as he; her
chauffeur closed the door of her smart little car upon them.
It seemed to him as though they had barely exchanged
greetings before they were in her large sitting-room in the
house which she had taken on One Hundred and Twen-
tieth Street.
From the doorway she asked him: "How long can you
stay, Chris?"
"I'd better catch the owl-train back, I've a nine o'clock
class in the morning."
"I'll have Peabody send in supper while I'm dressing."
But she was back before Peabody could complete his
change from chauffeur to butler.
He was general houseman too and, after wheeling in the
table, appeared with an armful of logs with which he had
soon built up a creditable fire.
"This is the part I like best," Marise said, dropping down
on a low stool. "Pour me some coffee, Chris, and forget
my poor manners."
She found him very good to look at, sitting there in his
severe rough suit; she liked his strongly built head with
its powerful jaw and its burnished hair. "I didn't see much
of you when you were a boy," she reminded him, "but I
do remember that your hair was always rough. ... I used
to think I'd like to give you something to oil it with."
He laughed, not at all displeased with the personal turn
of the conversation. "I'll bet you never had a rough strand
of hair on your head in your life."
"It's a safe bet," she assured him. "When I was a very


phebe's act
little girl I made as solemn a vow as a little girl knows how
to make always to appear at my best."
"Well, you've certainly kept it. But then you had pretty
good material to start with. . . . Well, this isn't getting us
anywhere. Marise, you know why I'm here tonight . . .
you understand me when I tell you that it's either my last
night or the beginning of many nights. . . . They say
faint heart never won fair lady so I suppose it will scarcely
help my cause when I tell you that I'm pretty nearly sure
it will be my last night."
She was pretty sure of it too, but curious enough to want
him to continue.
"I must confess your resignation seems a little too placid,
too ready as it were. Is it fair for me to inquire its cause?"
"Only this. You know I've liked you for a long while,
Marise. I think I liked you at first not so much for your
beauty, though a man values that, as because you had the
gift of gayety. . . . We weren't very gay in our household
in those days." His face clouded a little remembering
other times.
"But of late my thoughts have been turning to you be-
cause you were the girl I knew best . . . outside of Te-
resa . . . Marise, in my home we are heart-broken, that is
my father and I, and only a woman can heal us. ... I am
asking you to come and be that woman."
She could scarcely believe her ears. "Without love?"
"With a great deal of love . . . and endless gratitude."
"I wouldn't want gratitude from a man . . . from my
husband, Chris. I'd want something much wilder . . .
something that would compel me to give as it would com-
pel him to take. . . ."
He was surprised to find himself not greatly disap-
pointed. "You know you are no more astonished to hear


268
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
me talk in this way than I am myself," he said after a brief
silence. "It always seemed to me that you were a girl to be
courted with castanets, with roses and incense. . . . But life
has done something to me, Marise . . . since Oliver's death.
Many things that once seemed so important . . . among
them pure romance . . . now seem less so. Only human
relationships matter. I am sure that you mean what you
say; you deserve beauty in every form; you've earned it. I
hope your shining knight comes and sweeps you off your
feet. . . . You must forgive me for trying to link you up
to the dull existence which is all I can offer you now."
She said with kindness: "I don't think it's dull. It might
be very sweet. But not for me."
"You seem to have a very definite idea, maybe a very
definite man in view," he said smiling. . . . "Tell me if I
hadn't been so . . . frightfully matter of fact . . . might I
have had a better chance?"
"Not recently . . . but for a while the odds were very
slightly in your favor."
"Then you changed your mind?"
"I changed my mind. . . . Good-bye, Christopher."
• • • • •
She did not tell him all that lay behind that change.
There was that morning about three months ago. She was
sitting in her room drinking her coffee and reading letters.
Peabody brought her a card on a tray.
She picked it up and read: "Mrs. Olivia B. Cary."
Surprised and wondering she told the servant to show
the visitor in.
Her surprise was destined to be of short duration, for
Olivia came directly to the point. "Miss Davies, I shan't be
detaining you long, so I shall be glad to have your un-
divided attention for a few minutes. . . ."


phebe's act
269
"Very well," Marise answered. She could not tell when
she had felt a situation so completely out of her hands.
"I have occasion to believe," Olivia resumed at her chilli-
est, "that you've been seeing a great deal of my son."
"Not so often," the girl replied, more at ease. "I believe
he does come over to New York . • . more than occasion-
ally, he comes to this house but I rarely have any talk with
him."
"You rarely talk to him!"
"No. Usually there are so many people here, Mrs. Cary
. . . people my managers think it best for me to see . . .
that there are times when I have to content myself with
only a word to . . . well, to people like Christopher."
Mrs. Cary, looking as though she did not believe a word
of this, continued inexorably:
"What you say, may or may not be true. I have no man-
ner of discovering that. But I can make myself clear . . .
on this matter at least ... I hope for your own sake that
you are not construing my son's visits into anything seri-
ous."
Marise, lighting a cigarette, and enjoying herself, asked
calmly: "Did Chris ask you to say that to me?"
His mother had the grace to flush. "No, he didn't. . . .
But I wanted you to know that it would not be at all in
keeping with the plans which his father and I have long
since cherished. . . ."
"To see him married to a woman as dark as I," Marise
interrupted brutally. "You needn't warn me, Mrs. Cary.
I have no desire to break into your sacred ranks. . . .
There's not a colored person in Philadelphia who doesn't
know in what regard the Carys hold people who show
color." She called to Peabody, who was passing the open


phebe's act
271
She smiled wryly. Compared with the realities of life
the figments of imagination which every night she pre-
sented on the stage, faded into nothingness. She had al-
ways sought love. What about giving it? If she had loved
Christopher sufficiently, as well as Phebe, she knew, loved
Nicholas Campbell, she might have acceded to his request.
She might have brought some beauty and orderliness into
his troubled life. . . . Confused and inexplicably disap-
pointed she sat for a long time shivering in the chilling
room. . . .
CHAPTER VII
SATURDAY afternoon which a mere six months ago
was to Phebe another name for Rapture, now repre-
sented to her the lowest depth, the ultimate nadir of bore-
dom. She had been known to spend the holiday in the
dress-shop, tabulating the old models, inserting new ones,
reviewing and recopying their simple accounts. Today,
however, she had decided to leave the shop at one o'clock.
She would walk out Chestnut Street, treat herself to the
green hat and the white gloves which she had noticed at
Shaftesbury's, go to a movie, perhaps, then home.
"And if I feel like it," she said, putting the last dash of
powder on her nose before the long mirror, "I'll go with
Johnny Albans to the Fortnightly tonight."
This was the first time since that night, six months ago
when she had bade Nicholas Campbell good-bye, that she
had felt any interest in living. She welcomed these desires
which had sprung so spontaneously within her as a sick
man might welcome manifestations of returning strength.
If she could just hope to recover one tithe of her old joyous-


phebe's act
275
Well, she knew it was coming ... "I haven't any young
man."
"I'm sorry for him," he said with no ulterior intention.
"But you'll be taking him back again."
She was silent.
"And you haven't been going about with anyone else?"
"No one."
"Why, Phebe, think of what I've missed pottering about
Florence. Perhaps you might have been spending some
time with me."
"Perhaps."
"Well, of course, it isn't too late for that yet," he said,
with some attempt to restrain his rising excitement. "How
about me for young-man-in-waiting?"
But she knew it wouldn't be the same thing and told
him so. "And I think I'd better be going home, Mr. Nash."
"H'm, Mr. Nash! I don't like that You'll let me
bring you out here again, Phebe?"
"I think I will."
They rode back to the city almost in silence.
Just before entering her door she thought: "I've had a
pleasant afternoon and all because I made up my mind in
the first place to enjoy myself today and stop moping. . . .
I believe I'll go out with Johnny tonight . . . maybe I'll
feel that much better tomorrow. Staying in is simply no
good."
The Fortnightly was quite a function on all occasions.
Tonight it was rather more so because it was the closing
dance of the season. She was glad of this because it gave
her an occasion to dress. In accordance with a silent re-
solve of hers, to wear as rarely as possible anything which


276 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
she had worn in the company of Campbell, she donned a
simple, almost severely cut, black dress.
The back was very low, but otherwise the frock clung
most lovingly to her figure, as though it could not cling
close enough to her slender, supple figure. Rhinestones
flashed from her ears and arms, and relieved the somberness
of her slender black slippers. Young Albans gasped as she
came running down the steps to meet him.
"Gee, Phebe! If you could just see yourself!"
"I've been seeing myself, as you call it, for several min-
utes. Am I all right?"
"Right as rain. Come on, girl, get into the buggy! If
you don't knock all the Fortnighters dead, I'll eat my hat."
His prophecy came reversely true for instead of knocking
the members—that is to say the male members of the Fort-
nightly—dead, the girl galvanized them into action. There
was no cutting in at this dance; its formality was one of its
chief charms; one of the reasons really for its continued
long existence, since membership in a body so correct and
distinguished constituted a social cachet. . . . But the black
coats and dark heads surrounded Phebe so unremittingly
that she might just as well have been dancing her way
straight down a line of eager suitors.
At intermission, as she stood laughing and excited, talk-
ing rather breathlessly to young Albans, Jerry Talliver came
up, a tall, broad shouldered young man with a thick thatch
of burnished hair, close beside him.
"No use, no use!" Albans cried. "She's engaged to the
last note of Home Sweet Home. Next time I take this girl
to a dance I'm going to engage the Fire Department to
keep the mob back."
"I'm not asking for myself," grinned Talliver. "I was in
the first onslaught and was forced to retreat with heavy


phebe's act
his intentions toward her she knew were nil. Marriage
with a girl so far below him in station would never enter
that aristocratic head. On the other hand he respected her
too much to offer her anything different. Here certainly
she was on safe, middle ground.
The bell rang, pealed violently, but she let it go unan-
swered. Presently she heard Mrs. Nixon, her lodger,
shuffling downstairs. . . . Doubtless she was expecting a
visitor. She closed her eyes only to open them again as a
loud thump resounded on the door of her room. . . . Mrs.
Nixon handed her an envelope. She tore it open, to note
with amazement that it was from Christopher Cary.
He had written to say that unable to find her listed in the
telephone directory he had sent her this by messenger. If
agreeable to her he would call that afternoon. The boy
had instructions to wait for an answer.
ft • • • ■
Characteristically enough she read nothing into the re-
quest except that her resolution, formed the preceding
Saturday, was bringing results. She had rallied her powers
and sallied forth. And behold her days were-filling up once
more; her evenings pleasantly occupied. She did not dare
go far below the surface lest she discover there shoals, depths
on which she might still lose peace of mind. . . . There
were moments when the mere thought of Nick, a still re-
membered gesture, a too completely etched pose of his,
could turn her sick and faint. . . .
Christopher arrived in his father's car, a car not as fresh
and up-to-date as former Cary cars. The older man had
lost his grip. After Oliver's death his interest in his work
died away; he spent long days in his office, refusing to see
patients; the seriousness of his financial plight seemed to
impress him not a whit. At one time he roused himself


phebe's act
281
"And as a matter of fact I didn't come to your house
much. We all used to rush to Marise's if we could. I know
Teresa liked it there . . . and as for me! Mrs. Davies was
always so kind . . . and she gave us such good things to
eat. I guess she was really a blessing in disguise to my
mother. When I wasn't there I was home, studying or
sewing. I never would have got to know anybody if it
hadn't been for Marise and the Campbell boy," she said
very casually, "who lived in the house across the alley."
"Strange how we all got away from each other. I saw
Campbell in New York, not so long ago. Great Scott, isn't
he someone to look at! I don't know when I'd run across
him."
She was glad she had mentioned him.
Christopher wanted her to have dinner with him but she
preferred to go home. "For such a long time I was unable
to offer my friends hospitality," she said frankly. "It gives
me a real thrill to do it now.
After supper she played for him; sang a few old ballads
in her nice, unpretentious voice. It all combined to make
him think of Teresa and the kind of evenings they used to
spend long ago.
Refreshed and curiously restored he rose to tell her good-
night. "You're a great girl, little Phebe. I hope you're
going to let me see you often."


phebe's act
was far from that state now. Life had disciplined her so
severely.
Phebe would never allow Nash to escort her home.
"Mother would be miserable," she told him, daringly,
laughing, "if she knew I was going about with a rich young
man, terribly above my station." Her dancing eyes rested
on him, taking in the details of his curiously white skin
. . . the pallor of aristocracy which certainly lent him dis-
tinction; his light, waving rather thin hair so. carefully
brushed and parted; his shadow of a mustache.
"And she especially would be displeased if she knew you
were blond. She doesn't like blond men."
This girl's father was blond, he rightly supposed. And
undoubtedly had mistreated her mother. It would be like
a woman to dislike thereafter the whole type.
They were sitting this afternoon on the loggia of his
cousin's place in Roselands. Phebe dressed in white, at
ease in a large chair. Llewellyn half-reclining on a swing-
ing couch.
"I can understand about your mother not liking blond
men. I like dark ones much better myself. . . . However,
that can't be changed. But she doesn't have to worry," he
said slowly, thoughtfully, "she doesn't have to worry about
my being above your station. Do you understand mes
Phebe, when I say that any station which you might con-
sent to enter could not fail to be honored?"
She was speechless with surprise.
He went on, his pale face whiter than ever with the stress
of his feeling. "I can see you're surprised. I'm surprised
myself. We Nashes are a proud lot and—don't think me a
conceited fool, my dear—the very fact that my feeling for
you transcends all that I have hitherto thought of my posi-


284 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
tion, measures the depth of that feeling. It's the one thing
that reassures me and makes it plain to me that I am fol-
lowing the right course . . . I'm asking you to marry me,
Phebe Grant."
"Oh, Llewellyn . . . I'm sorry. I can't tell you how
sorry. But, believe me, I never expected to hear you say
those words. If I had I'd have been more careful. . . ."
"Why," he said, utterly incredulous. "You don't mean
to tell me you're refusing me. But, Phebe, why, why?"
She didn't have to tell him. Nothing he could do could
prevent her from walking out of his life. She told him so.
"But you wouldn't want to leave me broken with regret,"
he said wisely. "Nothing that I've done or said could make
me deserve that."
"No, you're quite right." She fell to considering, staring
past him at the careful, cultivated beauty of the garden
which she was now probably seeing for the last time.
"I'm not in love with you, Llewellyn, though I suppose
I might have been very easily. But I do like you immensely.
So much so that since I can't do what you . . . think you
want . . . return your love, I'm going to do the next best
thing. I'm going to make you willing to forget you ever
loved me."
"You couldn't do that," he said with ardor. But she
thought she detected fear in his voice.
"Before I begin," she continued, "I want to make one
thing clear. I owe you a great debt of gratitude which I
can never repay. I was miserable, poor, dejected, almost
despairing. Through no fault of my own I found myself
placed in a dilemma, the strangest, I suppose, that any girl
ever knew. It's an absolutely artificial dilemma and I sup-
pose it could happen only here in America. I wanted to


phebe's act
285
get away from the thought of it ... at almost any cost.
But I didn't want to hurt anybody."
He was sitting upright now, tense, absorbed.
"Well, then you came along, Llewellyn, terribly rich,
terribly proud, terribly secure. See, I knew that nothing,
no action of mine could affect you, because I was so sure
that neither your taste nor your standing would permit
you to stoop to me. I thought you were just playing around
with me until you should become tired, just as I was plan-
ning to play about with you until I had myself in hand
again."
"Phebe," he asked, leaning forward, "in God's name,
what are you talking about?"
"Well," she said, "I've got to tell you. You remember
the day you first brought me here, you expressed surprise
because I had broken with my young man, as you called
him. Llewellyn, I didn't break with him, he broke with
me.
His involuntary start made her smile.
"Honestly, Llewellyn, I didn't think you were as old-
fashioned as that. . . . No, he didn't break with me for
any of the reasons which ordinarily cause a man to break
an engagement. Not because, as far as I know, he was in
love with anybody else; not because I was faithless. . . . He
knew I saw you from time to time, but he never doubted
my loyalty; he knew how completely I was centered on
him. . . . Now can you guess?"
"This isn't a game, Phebe," he reminded her sternly.
"No, you're right, it isn't. Well, how can I go on? ...
You surprised me very much just now when you said you
preferred dark men to blond ones."
"What on earth has that got to do with it?"
"This friend of mine was dark, very dark."


286
AMERICAN STYLE
COMEDY:
"What was he? An American or an Italian?"
"See," she said, smiling ruefully, "you'll never guess it.
My world and yours simply don't touch. ... I told you
once there was a great gulf, two great gulfs fixed between
us. But you wouldn't believe me."
"You've told me a lot of things, one way or the. other,"
he interrupted almost rudely. "And now after all I can't
tell anything about you. . . . For God's sake, Phebe, get on.
What about this dark man?"
"Well, when I said dark, I meant really dark, not in the
sense in which the fortune tellers say it. . . . He's colored."
There was on his face now undisguised astonishment.
There was more than that. Palpable disgust. "You mean
to tell me you're one of these miserable white women who
have traffic with Negroes! . . . You ought to be whipped,
Phebe! And if I could I'd have him strung up. The filthy
black brute!"
"Stop," she said coldly. "I'm a colored woman."
Every trace of color vanished from that face already so
pale.
"I won't allow you to travesty yourself like that, Phebe.
You don't know what you're talking about. You're the
whitest white girl I ever saw. You couldn't have black
blood in your veins."
"I'm probably the whitest colored girl, too, you ever saw,"
she reminded him whimsically. "For I am colored. My
mother is the ordinary brown mulatto type, with rather
straight hair. My father was very white, blond with hair
so light it was almost white, the color of untinted butter.
They call it platinum blond now. I happen to take after
my mother in looks, she really was remarkably like me
before life took it out of her. But my color is my father's
gift."


phebe's act
287
Silently he reviewed this novel array of facts. "But you
said your friend had refused you. That doesn't make sense,
Phebe. Why should he do that?"
"Because I was too white."
"But I thought," he stammered naively, "I—I thought,
that is everyone says that Negroes* are all of them crazy to
marry white people."
"This one wasn't," she commented dryly. "He said to be
seen with me made him too conspicuous, embarrassed him.
He told me of lots of instances where a colored man might
meet with' real danger if seen with a woman fair enough
to be taken for white."
"Oh, I don't think that's likely," he objected.
"Dear Llewellyn, have you forgotten that less than five
minutes ago you wanted to string him up and air because
he had dared to offer attentions to me? Welt, I suppose
you're a pretty fair example, of how America feels. . . . You
know, just because you happen to know I'm colored doesn't
make me look any more so than it did an hour ago."
There really was nothing to say to that and when she
rose a few moments later to pick up her light wrap and
arrange her hat he did not restrain her.
"You don't have to- drive into the city, you know," she
said thoughtfully. "You can drop me at the station and
I'll take the train."
For a second he glared at her. "I'm not altogether an
unmitigated cad, Phebe. These disclosures have, I'll con-
fess, knocked me a little off my stance. You must give me
a chance to pull myself together."
"Of course," she said, smiling. "And let's sit down for a
minute, Llewellyn, there's something I want to say. . . .
You know, of course, that I realize how complete a surprise
all this has been to you. I came near saying how complete


288
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
a blow. Only, I never was able to understand what all the
pother was about color until it began to cut away the
ground under my own feet. . . . Well, I want you to know
that I shall forget everything you've said. . . . You see, it
isn't as though I'd been expecting to marry you, anyway."
He muttered that it was a shame, by God. He blurted
out: "You really are white, you know. Phebe, why don't
you just marry some white man and be through with it?"
"What white man?" she asked him smiling. "The last
one that asked me seemed willing to forget all about my
poverty and my utter lack of position but when he found
I was colored! Well, it was just too much!"
He felt his face burning. "I deserve anything you say.
. . . And I can't make any excuse for myself. You are just
as lovely, just as charming, just as sweet. . . ."
"And don't forget," she interrupted, "just as white. . . ."
"Yes, just as white as you were when I first met you.
But the fact is, Phebe, it isn't being done. . . . Men in my
position simply don't marry colored women. . . ."
"American men in any position don't marry colored
women, do they? You are the nephew of a great banker.
. . . My father was the son of a country grocer, but he
thought his position too lofty for him to marry my mother."
He said sorrowfully: "Try not to be bitter."
There was certainly no bitterness in her ringing laughter.
"That's the first typically 'white' thing I've heard you say,
Llewellyn. I'm not bitter. I tell you something must have
been left out of my make-up. But it's impossible for me to
be impressed with purely artificial, man-made situations.
You see, I faced the realities of life so early ... I think
only of very elemental things. Love, health, food, freedom
from poverty, loyalty, courage. They're the only things that
count, Llewellyn ... I think I've always had courage."


phebe's act
289
"I suppose now," he said after they were seated in the
car, "you'll have no objection to my driving you home."
"None at all. The cat's out of the bag."
"Won't the neighbors think it strange?"
"Why should they?"
"Well, seeing you with a white man."
"Don't be silly. They won't know whether you're white
or colored. There are plenty of colored men just as white
as I, you know; I'm not the only white colored person in
Philadelphia. . . . They are all about you . . . some of
them much closer than you dream. ... I didn't answer
you truthfully when you asked me why I didn't marry a
white man. I could, I suppose, but I just prefer being
colored. The best of us are not to be equalled, I'm con-
vinced, throughout the world."
"You live in a queer world, Phebe. I'd like to live in it
for a few months and see what it was like."
"It's not an easy job. To be a colored man in America
. . . and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid,
greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a
philosopher. . . . Good-bye, Llewellyn, forget me. I shall
certainly forget you."
That was in August. September and October passed by
with no word, no slightest sign from Nash. But she did
not greatly care. He had gone with his allurements, his
disquieting luxuries, just as the summer had gone with its
lush beauties of weather and flower. Of course, she did
not forget him completely . . . but "pouf" she said, stand-
ing before her mirror and blowing a breath off her hand as
one would blow a feather. "He came easily; he went
easily."
She rather admired herself in this mood.


292
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
very thick oblong package about as long and wide as a
large envelope.
"A feller dressed like a shofer come to the door . . . and
there was a car as big as this house outside, Miss Grant.
Guess it's from one of them rich customers of yours."
"Yes, buttons likely," Phebe acquiesced imperturbably.
"Thanks a lot, Mrs. Nixon, and when you go out, do close
the door very tight."
Thus admonished there was nothing for the lodger to do
but to go out and close the door. Phebe strolled over in
her wake and turned the key. Afterwards she was so glad
she had done so. . . . She opened the package, thinking
that it was probably candy from Johnny, and in a moment
the room was adrift with floating money . . . green backs
and gold. She went down on her knees and gathered them
up . . . five thousand dollars in all. Stunned, she read the
note.
"Phebe: 1 cannot forget you. Every waging moment
since that day we talked last August I have thought of you.
1 want you more than I have ever wanted anything or any-
body in my life. On Sunday I am going abroad. Will you
come with me? We will go to Tunis first, away from these
horrid grey days, and then when the spring comes, my
Sweet, we'll go wherever you say.
"Please don't misunderstand the money. I am sending it
to buy yourself anything you need, including passage on the
lie de France. If you do not care to come, will you give
the money to your mother as a token from someone who
admires her vicariously.
"I really love you, Phebe . . . and respect you. I want
you to believe this. If you come with me you need never
fear any contumely or disrespect either at my hands or at
the hands of anyone else. I shall never marry, so no one


phebe's act
293
will ever ta precedence over you. And in case of my
death you'll find provision made for you in my will.
"I'll be home all this evening and tomorrow and will be
honored if you call. Of course, I'd call you but I find your
name not listed ... 7 suppose your customers would worry
you to death if you were. Well, if you want to, you can
dismiss the thought of your customers forever. , ^
"I hope you will ma me happy, Phebe. / £1
"Yours, Llewellyn Nash. -
"P.S. Whatever you decide to do I shall always thin\ you
the grandest girl in the world."
"But not quite grand enough," she said unsmiling, "to
be the wife of Llewellyn Folsom Nash, Esquire, of Chest-
nut Hill, New York, Lenox and Paris."
She threw the letter with its mixture of arrogance and
humility into the little fire . . . not even watching to see it
consumed. She gathered up the little heaps of money from
the table, from the bed, from the floor, found a small box,
in which she arranged it smoothly, neatly, and wrapped and
tied the box. . . . For a moment she remained lost in
thought, then stepped to the telephone and called Johnny
Albans. He was, as she expected, at the Talliver boys.
In spite of the cold fury which possessed her, she had to
smile, as she pictured the surprise on Johnny's freckled face
as Jerry Talliver announced to him that he was wanted on
the telephone "by some woman." She could see his in-
quisitive nose growing sharper, pointing yet further sky-
ward.
"Johnny Albans speaking," he said sharply. "Who is
this, please."
"Don't call my name, Johnny. It's Phebe."
"Oh, hello! Hello! How are you?"


294
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"You can do me a great favor. . . ."
"Name it."
She explained about the recalcitrant customer . . . leav-
ing for France, who just must have this forgotten portion
of her dress. "Have you got the car there?"
"Jerry's got something he calls a car. I can use that.
Where's it to go?"
"To Chestnut Hill," she replied faintly.
"How's zat!"
"To Chestnut Hill."
"Golly, you did pick a night!"
"I know, I'm sorry but it means a lot to me, Johnny."
"I know it does ... to make you call me. I'm really
honored. I'll be right over. Zall right if I bring this brute
Talliver along? He says I can't take his car to unknown
places."
"I'd be glad for him to come. Then the one of you who
isn't driving can hold on to this package. . . . Don't lose
it, Johnny. It's worth about $5000 worth of business to me."
"Gosh, what is it? The Kohinoor?"
"Well it is ... to her. You know how these rich people
are. And listen, Johnny, I know she isn't in. So ask for
Mr. Llewellyn Nash . . . tell him you have a message from
Miss Phebe Grant . . . and put the package right in his
hand."
Young Albans assured her she could bet her boots he'd
place the doodad right in the johnny's mitt. 'Be right over,
Phebe."
In the yard next door grew a large maple tree. It stood
close to the dividing fence, which was made of iron rail-
ings, and half of its foliage and its shade cast their benison
on Phebe's yard. It was partly on account of this tree that


phebe's act
she had decided on this particular house. She never saw it
without thinking of Nicholas and his fondness for trees.
Especially, after her great sorrow came upon her, she liked
to lie in bed at night to try to descry its tracery against the
darkling sky. In the morning it was the first thing her
gaze sought upon awaking. . . . But tonight, the graceful,
bare branches filled her with a sense of futility, with bitter-
ness. For the first time she turned resolutely away, her
back toward the window. She thought of Nicholas, she
thought of Llewellyn; she thought of the Mother Goose
book of her childhood days. One of the jingles read:
"Riddle me, riddle me, reel
Perhaps you can tell me what this may be!"
She was a colored woman loving a colored man. But her
skin was too white for him. So he had given her up. . . .
She was a white woman, deeply interested in a white man.
But for him her blood was too black. So he offered her
insult.
CHAPTER IX
THIS last encounter with Nash left her delicate sensi-
bilities sore and wounded. It actually reduced her to
a state in which she was sunk in melancholy so deep, so
thick ... it was as though she could perceive it, nebulous
yet clinging like a fog. Her old despair began to close in
upon her; she felt helpless and weak; evidently for her,
Phebe Grant, there was no anchorage under the sun.
That week Mrs. Davies came to see her. Pleased, yet
wondering, Phebe came down from her room feeling a
strange foreboding. Her visitor came to the point immedi-
ately.


298 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"Why," she said in bewilderment, "there's no way, is
there, in which I could help you with your medicine?"
"No, I don't mean that. . . . My life's work is to try to
restore my father. He's a broken man since Oliver's death.
Perhaps you'll let me talk to you about that some day. . . ."
She looked into his strained young face. "Oh, Chris,
you've been unhappy. ... I know what it is . . . I've been
unhappy too! Yes, dear, I'll marry you. I'll help you."
"We'll help each other," he said gratefully. They clung
together in the shadowed intimacy of the car.
They would marry in the late spring and they would find
a little house not too far away from the Cary homestead
because Christopher did not want to be too far from his
father.
It seemed so strange to Phebe never to hear him mention
his mother with any expression of concern or regard. She
had gone with him to see both parents and had been very
much struck with the change in Dr. Cary, whom she re-
membered as a big, finely built, even stalwart man. Now,
although actually as tall as Christopher, he seemed curi-
ously shrunken and wasted. Even new clothes recently cut
and fitted hung loosely from his shoulders, his son told her.
His fine ruddy whiteness had turned to a greyish, sallow
cast, which nothing seemed to alter, and in his eyes was a
look of perpetual sadness.
"We must see him often," Christopher said frequently.
"I wish," he added wistfully, "he might live with us."
But of course this was impossible as that would mean
the including of Olivia . . . "with whom I certainly don't
want to live," Phebe told herself.
Olivia had scarcely changed at all . . . just a trifle less
slender, just the merest thickening of her whole neat figure;


304 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
friend. Or it might be that he would need to spend hours
reading up on this baffling case. ... In that event, it helped
him, he said, to have Phebe near him.
There were nights when they woke up, poor tired things,
at three o'clock sitting opposite each other in the little study
. . . the light at full tilt . . . the prospect of another weary
day looming only a few hours ahead.
Was this all there was to marriage, she wondered ... and
thought of the peace and quiet which once were hers when
only she and her mother were together. Even Mrs. Nixon's
officious ministrations took on a charm seen thus in retro-
spect.
For over a year she went through this stress and storm,
soothing her mother, matching her wits with Olivia, sol-
acing Christopher, nursing his father. ... In any other
circumstances she would have been encouraged to mark
his obvious improvement. He was stronger, straighter, his
color markedly better, his interest in things in general much
greater. To no one but Phebe, did he ever refer to his losses
and then only during the early morning walks.
But by this time she herself was too dulled by fatigue and
responsibility to care. She found herself wishing for a way
out, any way. She, Phebe Cary, the girl who all her life
had welcomed the idea of assisting the man she loved,
found herself overwhelmed by the reality of the idea.
The climax came one night when after a hectic day she
came creeping, or so it seemed to her, home. She had
eaten her dinner almost without a word. It took all her
strength of will to force her to offer to accompany her
father-in-law on his evening stroll. At any other time, she
might have experienced a pleasant surprise when he assured
her in unusually hearty tones that he could go by himself.
"Thank you just the same, daughter."


phebe's act
305
All she could think of was that now, now she was free to
rest her weary feet. ... If only her room were not on the
third floor. . • . She would undress completely, don her
gown and get into bed. Heaven, she knew promised noth-
ing sweeter. . . . She pulled the lavender-scented sheet
about her young tired shoulders ... in a moment she
would be asleep. . . . She heard her mother's indignant
voice:
"I cain't stand it, no longer, Phebe. I jest cain't stand it.
Today she had some company . . ."
"You mean Mrs. Cary, Mother?" Phebe tried to struggle
against her overwhelming need for sleep.
"You know I mean that . . . she-devil. ... She had
some of them wite women she's always trailing around
after. She brung 'em in en I happened to pass by the parlor
door en she sez: 'O there you are, Sarah, just bring us a pot
of tea, please, on a tray with four cups. I'll tend to every-
thing else.'"
Her daughter was wide enough awake now. "What did
you do, Mother? You didn't make a scene, I trust."
Her mother looked at her, her thin face working.
"Didn't make a scene! I said to her, I stood in the door-
way so they could all hear me and I said to her, I said: 'If
you want any tea for your poor wite trash you'll have to fix
it yo'self!' That's what I told her!"
"Where is she now, Mother?"
"Gone out and took them with her and she ain't ben back
sence. Heard her tellin' them that I'd ben in the family a
long time and that I was old and had to be indulged. Old!
I'm a good ten years younger than her!" Which was half-
way true.
Phebe felt her head splitting. "I'll talk to her in the
morning, Mother."


phebe's act
3°9
nue because she wants me to have a sanitarium some day.
. . . She won't give me a chance to try my strength."
He paused to light one of his eternal cigarettes. "I'm a
cad to be talking about her. . . . Darling, come and have
supper with me."
She was herself a doctor's wife. "But your appoint-
ments?" she asked in surprise.
"I have none that I have to keep," he said dryly. "But if
I did have them, I'd let them go for you. I've missed you
too terribly, Phebe, to let you go now that I have you again.
Come on, let me show you New York."
They dined down in Greenwich Village in a deliberately
quaint restaurant. A great many glances were directed
toward the pair, but they were glances merely of curiosity
or even of admiration for the striking couple, glances with-
out an ounce of hostility. Phebe, sensitive since Nicholas'
complaint, remarked on this rather timidly.
Her companion nodded. "I know," he assented morosely.
"It's different here in New York. ... I was an ignorant
fool, Phebe. . . . Although even here there are occasional
embarrassments, but then too there are compensations. . . .
Darling, let me drive you up to Van Courtlandt Park.
There is a spot there where I've sat many times to dream of
you."
She knew she should not go. And yet she yielded; it was
too great a temptation to have Nicholas, urging her, beg-
ging her for her favors. . . . She never knew to what part
of the Park they drove. All she knew was that at last she
was crushed close in his arms, feeling his hot kisses, sensing
the ardor of which she had once dreamed. ... It was so
sweet to rest against his heart, to know that this man whom
she had loved so long, so vainly, now desired her greatly.


310 comedy: American style
Presently she stirred. "You must take me to my hotel,
Nick."
He groaned. "Phebe, how can I ever let you go?"
"But, Nicholas, I've got to go home." But even as she
spoke she had a vision of that home . . . her ailing father-
in-law, her tired and sullen mother, her weary, apathetic
husband. And last of all Olivia with her infuriating, selfish
silliness. ... In a sudden gust of repulsion, she sagged
against his shoulder. . . . He could actually feel her weak-
ening; her moral strength ebbing with her physical.
He repeated his question. "I expected," she said, "to
attend to a customer in the morning and leave about two
o'clock. I'll be in Philadelphia at four."
"Don't go, Phebe. Don't leave me yet, my darling. . . .
If we could only be alone somewhere. Where we could
talk . . . and kiss each other."
She knew the danger of the waters that were rising about
her. ... "I don't think that would be wise, Nicholas," she
told him weakly. . . . But he interrupted her.
"That was our whole trouble before. We were too wise
... at least I was. We owe it to ourselves, Phebe, we owe
it to these miserable years that are stretching before us, to
have one memory. . . ."
She was too weary physically, too sick at heart to resist
him completely. In the end she weakened.
A friend of his in San Juan Hill lived by himself in a tiny
apartment. He was in the post office and absent all day.
They could meet there, he explained a trifle shame-facedly.
. . . The enforced secrecy of the meeting detracted, as it
must always, from the anticipation.


316
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
"It seems she had about seven hundred dollars put away
in a bank in New York. How's that for foresight? That's
where she is now, by the way; she's getting her passport
and everything over there. Well, I hope she has a pleasant
voyage."
"Chris, you sound so hard-hearted."
"Well, she's been hard-hearted enough with us. I made
up my mind long ago she shouldn't spoil my life. Dad says
she shan't either."
"How's she going to live over there on seven hundred
dollars?"
"Darling, I tell you, Dad's coming back into form. We're
getting out a new shingle. Like this." He wrote it down
for her.
DR. CHRISTOPHER FIDELE CARY
DR. CHRISTOPHER. BLANCHARD CARY
"Don't it look great? Darling we're going to be on the
up and up. Pretty soon you're going to leave that dress
shop too."
"Oh, don't say that!"
"You'll have to quit it, if we have a lot of little
Carys. . . ."
"Not such heaps of them ... say about three."
"Fine. And I hope they all look like you, Phebe. Ex-
cept the first one, I hope he'll be a boy and I want him to
look just like . . ."
"Oliver," she said gently. "Yes, I understand, Chris. . . .
I hope so too. . . . And, Christopher, I'll love him to
death."
"I know you will, darling. You're a sweet girl, Phebe,
and I want to tell you now a thousand times ... I love you.


phebe's act
317
So when I come in tired and sleepy and stupid you'll reach
back in your memory and haul one of them out."
"Darling Silly!" She put her arms about him. "Hold
me tight, Chris. Don't ever let me get away from you
again."
"You can bank on that. . . . Do you know I had the
queerest feeling last night ... or rather this morning be-
cause Dad kept me up talking until about three ... I kept
thinking: Maybe I've let her in for too much. Maybe she's
gone and chucked us for good. And then I remembered
how sweet and true and utterly decent you were. And I
said to myself: 'Not Phebe, you chump; she's not that
kind.' And I turned right over and went to sleep. . . .
Love me, darling?"
"I adore you, Christopher!"
He could not understand why she cried when he kissed
her.


322 COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
once more. "You might come over to my room for a smoke
and a chat."
Mrs. Reynolds, it transpired, was on her way to the little
patisserie to buy a croissant or two for her simple morning
meal. "If I buy them myself," she said darkly, "I know
they're fresh. . . . Yes, I don't mind if I do go around to
your place, Mrs. Cary. I haven't anything to do this eve-
ning. Though really I shouldn't come over to see you . . .
I've been there so many times. You really must come to
see me next time."
Olivia knew from long experience that the invitation
would never be realized. But that was all right ... as
long as she was not to be lonely this evening.
They walked down teeming rue Sevres, entered the
patisserie, then passed the delicatessens with the horrid little
stuffed larks, reassembled in the window with their miser-
able feathers and their toothpick legs. They turned the
corner past the cobbler, in his five-by-six-foot shop, working
slowly, painfully under the light of a kerosene lamp. At
the far end of la rue Romain they entered the courtyard of
Olivia's pension. Past the concierge's rooms, across the
yard into the hallway, up the beautiful winding staircase.
Then they were in Olivia's room. She turned on the dim
light, which served only to emphasize its shabby neatness.
"It gets chilly in Paris so early," she complained and built
a fire with a few twigs and the fewest possible briquettes.
At least it looked cheerful.
Mrs. Reynolds drew up to the fire; rubbed her hands.
The electric light softened the contrast between the too
youthful vividness of her hennaed hair and her tired dis-
illusioned face. Seen thus she appeared merely a weary,
saddened woman without any of the pride and hardness
with which she faced the customers in the shop.


CURTAIN
323
"I had a letter from my daughter today," she said proudly.
"She always wants me to come home. Her stepmother and
her father, my husband—well, I don't suppose he's my hus-
band now . . . are simply devoted to her. But you know
how girls are . . . they always want their mother. . . .
She says she can take care of me . . . can give me every-
thing I need. But I don't know. I always ask myself:
'Can she give me Paris, its charm, its freedom?' I'd rather
stay here on my own."
Olivia had by now got together her small largesse, two
glasses of sickeningly sweet strop and a few sweet biscuits.
Mrs. Reynolds stopped speaking immediately and picked
up one of the biscuits with a hand that trembled very
slightly. Olivia wondered again if she really got enough
to eat.
Aloud she said: "Oh, yes, I know just how you feel. I
have a daughter too, in Toulouse. She's married to one
of the professors at the university there, a brilliant fellow
and so charming! My daughter is always writing me to
come there and live with them. But I always say young
folks should be by themselves. . . . And when my daugh-
ter isn't writing me from Toulouse, my husband is writing
me to come home to Philadelphia. I had a letter from him
today."
Mrs. Reynolds turned and looked at her. "Your husband
wrote you! Oh, you're not divorced? He isn't married
to anybody else?" she asked hoarsely. "My advice to you,
Mrs. Gary, is to go home to him as quickly as possible."
"Divorced, married?" Olivia echoed in genuine surprise.
"I should say not. . . . But as to going back just now . . .
I'm like you, Mrs. Reynolds, I love the life and the freedom
of Paris. It is so broadening to live here. Think of the
people one meets," said Olivia, oblivious to the fact that


324
COMEDY: AMERICAN STYLE
she had met no one in Paris, not a soul, except this woman
from Connecticut who had a part interest in the world's
smallest hairdressing establishment.
Mrs. Reynolds,- suddenly weary, thought she must go.
Tomorrow she would, she knew, be her old chipper, as-
sured self. But tonight it made her sick to see a woman,
past middle age, with a home and husband in God's coun-
try, pass them up for the fabled freedom of Paris.
CHAPTER II
AFTER her departure Olivia sat ruminating. She had
/i a daughter married to a professor at the University of
Toulouse . . . a brilliant fellow and charming! She had a
daughter married to a Frenchman who was indifferent,
miserly and hardheaded with the cold pitiless logic of the
French.
She had gone to Teresa, so sure of a welcome from both
her and Aristide, whom surely she had benefited.
She found Teresa silent, pale, subdued, the ghost of her
former self, still wearing dresses taken from the wardrobe
which her mother had chosen and bought for her during
her last year in college. The dresses had been turned,
darned, cleaned and made over, combined in new and
bizarre fashions. Their only merit was that they were quite
large enough. Certainly Teresa had put on no weight.
Aristide, furious because those presents of money which
Olivia had so glibly promised, were no longer forthcoming,
refused to give his wife a sou. His mother held the purse-
strings and if it were not for odd jobs of sewing which
Teresa had obtained from American students who once


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327
The strop had made her head ache. Tomorrow she
would stay in bed. Or, if she felt better, maybe she would
look through her diminishing store of clothes, engage in a
little repairing.
But in the morning, although the headache was gone, she
was too listless to' work. She would, she finally decided, sit
by the window in her room and look out at the tangled
garden rendered less dreary than usual by the thin watery
sunshine, which hovered above it.
Presently, as she had hoped, the lady who lived across
the hall came out accompanied by her son. They sat on a
bench together and he began to read to her out of his book.
It must have been a very funny story, for they laughed a
great deal; once, the mother, resting her dark head against
his fair one, looked and laughed long and clearly at some-
thing he was pointing to on the printed page.
He was a slender, rather tall lad, but young. About the
age of Oliver in the days when he used to come running up
to his mother's room to confide in her about his algebra.
Finis