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FLIGHT


Also by
WALTER WHITE
THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
SINCLAIR LEWIS writes:
“The Fire in the Flint
is splendidly courageous,
rather terrifying and of
the highest significance.”


- º
WALTER WHITE
F L I G H T
NEW YORK & LONDON
A L FR E D - A - KNO PF
MCMXXVI


CoPYRIGHT, I 926, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PUBLISHED, APRIL, I 926
sEco ND PRINTING, J ULY, I 926
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


(2a, 2 º'ck
P 2.
w) 5 & 57
pºſ
For my daughter
JANE





FLIGHT





FLIGHT
Incisive Mr. Robertson kissed Mary and Mimi brusquely,
shook hands with Jean and hustled them through the waiting-
room labeled “For Coloured” to the sidewalk where a horse-
drawn surrey was waiting.
“No-No,” shouted Mr. Robertson as the driver started
down the street. “Go around by Pryor Street and from there
down Auburn Avenue.” To the Daquins he explained: “If
he’d gone that way he'd have carried you through Decatur and
Ivy Streets—that's the slum district—saloons and houses 25
He paused significantly, looking at Mimi. “Pretty bad,” he
added. “Lowest kind of Negroes.”
But Mimi did not hear him nor even the newsboy who
ran alongside the cab shouting: “Extry! All about the Japs
licking the Rooshians! All about th' big battle!” Because
it was terra incognita to her she tried to see everything as
eagerly as she had watched the land from the car window
in the long ride from New Orleans. Spring was in the air.
The cab, to the accompaniment of various cluckings, “gid-
d aps,” 64
go-long-theres” of the ancient driver, joggled and
bounced over the Belgian block pavement. Mimi sniffed the
air eagerly, anticipatorily.
The carriage rumbled and jerked through the ghostly con-
fines of shut business houses, turned into Auburn Avenue
lined with blowzy boarding-houses, their porches lined with
men and women, a loud, staccato, mirthless laugh occasion-
ally floating on the breeze. Soon the scene changed. Black
and brown and yellow faces replaced the white, the laughs be-
came more frequent, more rich, more spontaneous. The April
evening seemed more filled with the sheer joy of living. To
Mimi the sudden change was pleasant, warming, inviting.
Jean, sunk dejectedly in the seat beside the driver so that
only the top of his black, crumpled felt hat showed above the
high seat, was too engrossed in delightfully painful nostalgia
for his New Orleans to notice anything. Mary and her father
[10]


F LIGHT
were eagerly discussing the change in the lives of the Daquins,
which to them both seemed so altogether admirable and de-
sirable there was no questioning of its wisdom.
“Got to rush right back to Chicago Thursday—election this
fall and two or three important deals—had to see you get
started off right—” floated in Mr. Robertson's crisp tones
to Jean.
“You were a darling to come all the way to Atlanta,”
gushed Mary.
“Nothing at all—nothing at all,” declared her father. He
pronounced it “nothing a-tall.”
“Wanted to see you get introduced in the right circles, too.
Gene thinks his Creole crowd's stuck-up and exclusive—these
Atlanta Negroes'll show him a trick or two for fair. Got
to get in right—or you’ll never get in.”
Jean, who squirmed every time Mr. Robertson familiarly
called him “Gene,” found his old hostility to Mr. Robertson,
his voice, his ideas, his coarseness, rising higher than ever
before. His gratitude to him in the train began to vanish.
He wished fervently his father-in-law had remained in Chicago.
He hated his high-handed method of interfering in his and
Mary's and Mimi's most private affairs.
Money—money—money—how much is it worth?—how
much can I make out of it?—these were the first, last and
intermediate stages of Mr. Robertson's every thought, every
statement, every action. I’ll go through with it, thought
Jean, but I’ll never let my soul be turned into a money-
grubber's. The resolution, even though he knew it couldn't
possibly be carried out completely in this new world he was
entering, nevertheless gave Jean some comfort. . . .
Mrs. Plummer waddled down the hall, pushed open the
screen door, and slapped with the corner of her gingham
apron at the insects which buzzed inside. “These nasty bugs’ll
be the death of me yet,” she complained to her com-
[11]


FLIGHT
panion, Mrs. Sophronisba King, lean, acidulous, suspicious
of all humans and their motives save her own. Mrs. King
was as curveless as a young sapling as she went around the
room giving quick little jabs at the furniture with an oiled
cloth, pursuing relentlessly bits of dust which had settled
upon the chairs and table and mantelpiece since late after-
In OOn.
“Heard the news about that Lizzie Stone?” she asked Mrs.
Plummer. “You ain’t?” she demanded incredulously when
Mrs. Plummer shamefacedly admitted she had not. The pos-
session of a juicy morsel which had not yet come to her
friend's ears caused Mrs. King's skinny frame to swell with
prideful importance. “Why, honey, it's all over town!”
“She always seemed to me such a nice, Christian girl—so
quiet and respectable—”
“Mis’ Plummer, them's the very ones who'll fool you nine
times out of ten—they go to church and they's sweet as pie
in the daytime—but slipping and sliding into all sorts of
devilment.”
Mrs. Plummer's ears seemed to stretch out from her head
in her eagerness to learn the derelictions of Lizzie Stone.
“Tell me what she's done. You know my heart's bad and the
doctor told me I couldn't stand much excitement,” she
pleaded.
“You know Jerry Reed—he's head of the Royal United
Order of Heavenly Reapers?”
“’Cose I do—ain't I a member of the Ladies Auxil’ry?”
“You know, Mis’ Plummer, I ain't one of these no-count
women who runs around town meddlin’ in other folks's
business—I stays at home and tends to my own bus'ness.”
“’Cose you don't, Mis’ King—ev'rybody knows you don’t
gossip. But what's Lizzie and Jerry Reed been doing?”
“I’ll tell you, Mis’ Plummer, though I ain't vouching for
[12]


FLIGHT
the truth of it 'cause I wasn't there to see it with my own
eyes—but they tell me they saw Lizzie getting in Jerry Reed's
automobile down on Auburn Avenue late last Tuesday night
—and he had all the curtains up.”
“You don't say! A body'd think she'd have mo’ sense than
to do her dirt so bold like! I always heard that Jerry Reed
wouldn't have a girl work for him unless he could get fresh
with her. The nerve of her—she was at church last Sunday,
struttin’ round just as brazen as any fancy woman!”
“Lord, Mis’ Plummer, I don't know what's gettin' into these
coloured folks—they gettin' mo’ like white folks ev'ry day.
Comes from workin’ in white folks' houses and in these here
hotels—seein’ all their dirt and thinkin’ they got to do the
same things white folks does.”
“That's the God's truth! And say, Mis’ King, did you know
these new folks is Cath’lics? Well, they is—their name's
‘Day-Quinn' or ‘Day-kin’ or something Frenchy like that.
He's goin’ to work down to the Lincoln Mutual Life Insurance
Company—that's the company got them swell offices down
Auburn Avenue.”
“Cath’lics, is they? Any time I hear tell of coloured folks
bein’ anything 'cept Baptists or Methodists I know some white
man's been tamperin’ with their religion. That's what Booker
T. said once and he sho’ did know what he was talkin'
*hout.”
“That's the God's truth! Wonder where these folks goin'
to church? They tell me down in N’Awleens where there's
so many furriners most anybody can go where they please
long's they ain’t black. But they better not try it in Georgia.”
“Is you got a picture, Mis’ Plummer, of any coloured folks
no matter what kinda religion they got stickin’ their heads
in that ‘Sacred Heart” church out Peachtree Street? White
folks talk about Jesus but the only Jesus they thinkin' 'bout's
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F LIGHT
got a white skin. An’ the only heaven they want's one got
a sign on it ten foot high, “No Niggers Allowed in Here.’”
“Lord, Mis' King, there they come. An' me settin' here
talkin'. I bet them 'taters done boiled to death!”
Mrs. Plummer rocked briskly in the chair wherein she had
rested her weary frame. The needed momentum gained, she
heaved her bulky person to her feet and disappeared in the
general direction of the kitchen as through the open door
Mr. Robertson's hearty voice came: “Well, folks, here we
are!” . . .
Mimi and Jean and Mary climbed down from the surrey
and entered the house. Mrs. Plummer, her potatoes looked
after with incredible speed considering her size, greeted them
as though she were welcoming them into her own home.
“Come right in! Come right in! I know you must be as
tired as all-out-doors. My name's Mrs. Plummer—I live right
down the street and Mr. Robertson got me to sorter fix things
up—” she poured forth. -
“Mrs. King! Mrs. King!” she called. Mrs. King hastened
from the kitchen, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand
as she came, scanning the arrivals from head to foot in one
swift, critical—very critical—glance.
“This is Mrs. King,” introduced Mrs. Plummer grandly.
“She was nice enough to help too.”
Mrs. King nodded in rapid succession to the three, adding
one for Mr. Robertson though she had seen him only an
hour before. He had employed only Mrs. Plummer to clean
up the house and arrange everything but it had not been a
difficult matter to persuade Mrs. King to assist—it gave both
women ample opportunity to examine at their leisure each
piece of furniture and to speculate on its probable cost.
Without taking off her hat, Mme. Daquin (Mrs. Plummer
called her Mrs. Day-queen) rushed from room to room of
the two-storied house. On the first floor there was a living-
[14]


F LIGHT
room, “the parlour,” to the left as one entered the door, back
of that the dining-room and then the kitchen. To the right
were steps leading to the floor above, behind them a small
room to be used instead of the more formal parlour and
dining-room which apparently were opened only when com-
pany came. Above stairs were two fairly large bedrooms
above the parlour and dining-room, while a small bathroom,
its woodwork painted a yellowish white, and a third and
smaller bedroom opened on the other side of the narrow
hall.
“This big front room will be mine,” decided Mme. Daquin,
half to Mrs. Plummer and Mrs. King, who had accompanied
her on the tour of discovery and appraisement, and half to
herself, “Jean will sleep in the next room, while Mimi gets
the little room off the hall.”
“That po” little skinny man downstairs with the funny
moustache don't seem to have much to say in this house,”
whispered Mis’ King to her companion as they followed Mme.
Daquin. “”Tain't hard to see who wears the pants in this
family.”
Like beagles they followed every word, every expression.
Their scanty store of information about the new-comers would
be sufficient, when amplified during their mutual discussions
on the morrow, as foundation of the extensive tales they would
bear to eager ears in the neighbourhood.
Downstairs Mimi sat in the parlour, wearied, but interested
in sizing up her new home. She was perched in a huge chair,
of brilliantly polished oak, the seat and back of plum-
coloured damask. The chandelier was of intricately twisted
bands of metal painted a dull gold which formed weird and
awesome designs on the ceiling in the reflections from the flick-
ering gas lights. Underneath it there sat an oak table with
elaborately, fantastically carved legs, covered with a faded tap-
estry centre-piece. On it rested a fat family album of red
[15]


FLIGHT
plush, a diamond-shaped mirror in the centre. Near it rested
an odd-shaped instrument that Mimi longed to examine but
which she contemplated from afar for fear of incurring a frown
from Mr. Robertson, who was advising or, rather, ordering
Jean regarding the steps he must take to “get on” in his new
position. The object was of dark polished wood, a long rod
serving as a sort of backbone. At the end was a glass partly
enclosed with a little wooden fence, on the rod below was a
handle. At the other end was a slotted rack. Near this odd
object rested a pile of cards. Gently raising herself by her
elbows pressed against the arms of the chair, Mimi could
see a brightly coloured picture of a mountain scene on the
topmost card. She made a mental resolution to explore this
mystery at the earliest possible time.
“. . . And to-morrow morning right after breakfast you'll
go with me to the office, Gene, where I’ll introduce you to
Hunter—he's the president of the Lincoln—Watkins, Jones
and the rest of the crowd. They're a live bunch—that is, live
for this town but pretty small potatoes up in Chicago, and
they've got a gold mine insuring all the coloured folks here
in the South. I want you to stick to the job—no monkey
business or I’m through, you hear me?—and you'll make so
much money you’ll wonder how you ever managed to stick
in that dead old hole of New Orleans.”
Mr. Robertson's words came to Mimi sharply as his voice
rose. He took a fat cigar from his pocket, bit the end from
it and tossed the severed bit through the open window. She
disliked this bossy old man intensely. She looked at Jean,
wondering that he so calmly submitted to the dictatorial at-
titude of the man who, though his father-in-law, was not many
years his senior. But Jean heard his words only vaguely, if
he heard them at all. He sat beside his wife's father on the
couch that matched the chair on which Mimi perched and
gazed through the window, the thin white curtains opening and
[16]


F LIGHT
closing as a faint breeze stirred them. Somewhere outside, a
voice, throaty but rich, plaintively sang of his woes and his
“blues”:
“I’m jes' as misabul as I can be,
I'm unhappy even if I am free,
I'm feelin' down, I'm feelin' blue;
I wander round, don't know what to do.
I'm go'na lay mah haid on de railroad line,
Let de B. & O. come and pacify mah min’.”
The voice died away in the distance but the poignant,
nostalgic longing of the unseen singer remained. Jean and
Mimi, used to the Creole dilution of the Negro songs, sat
straining their ears to catch every note of this barbaric, mel-
ancholy wail as it died in the distance, a strange thrill filling
them. The swiftly moving tragedy of the song, dying off
abruptly as though the singer was too full for further words,
stirred them both to the exclusion of all else. Again a voice
was heard, this time a woman's:
“These men I love, honey,
Sho’ do make me tiahed,
These men I love, honey,
Sho’ do make me tiahed.
They got a han'fulla gimme
An' a mouth fulla much oblige.”
A loud laugh greeted the end of her song.
“Hey dere, Babe, what'cha doin’?” called the first voice,
and in response to the reply: “Nothin' much. Come on in!”
the two voices mingled in indistinct words, punctuated fre-
quently with laughter, gay, rich and in unison.
“Gene, are you listening to what I'm telling you?” snapped
Mr. Robertson, and Jean came back to realities with a start.
“Certainly! Certainly!” Jean hastened to assure him.
Mr. Robertson eyed him suspiciously and then, as the look
of apparent interest on Jean's face seemed to satisfy him, he
[17]


F LIGHT
continued his instructions. No sooner had be begun again,
however, before Jean's mind began to wander once more.
He hoped fervently the singers would again begin but the
warm night wrapped them in its vast silence.
Mimi welcomed her step-mother, who came briskly down
the stairs followed at a respectful distance by her two com-
panions.
“Everything's just lovely and I don't know really how to
thank you, papa,” she bubbled. “Mimi, you’d better run
upstairs and get your face and hands washed. Mrs. Plummer
tells me she's fixed supper for us and we don't want it to get
cold. Jean, you and papa'd better do the same thing and
don't take all night getting back.”
Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander never spoke to common soldiers
more brusquely nor with greater assurance that their commands
would be obeyed. Nor did it occur to Mimi or Jean to
protest—both were too much under the domination of this
person who would never be familiar to either of them.
[18]


CHA PTER II
URING the meal Mme. Daquin and her father talked ani-
matedly of the new life of the Daquins, for which the
two of them were so largely responsible. But the
thoughts which ran through the heads of Jean Daquin and
Mimi dealt with the past and especially with the rapid changes
which a few weeks had wrought. Though neither of them
knew precisely what the other was thinking, their minds were
going over the events which had taken place since that
morning which had been the beginning of the new order of
things. Had some person possessing the powers of wizardry,
an adept in the process of thought amalgamation, been present
and woven a picture made of the fragments which filled Jean's
and Mimi's minds, the product of his labours would have re-
sulted somewhat after this fashion. . . .
It was a sunny morning in New Orleans several weeks
past. Jean Daquin tapped gently on the door. No answer
came. Again he tapped—tapped—tapped. Again there was
silence. Carefully he pushed open the heavy door, which
groaned dismally on its ancient hinges. From within there
came the rhythmic inhaling of breath of a sound sleeper.
Jean tiptoed to the deep casemented window and drew aside
the heavy curtains of dusty wine-coloured velvet.
Warm, intoxicating Louisiana sunshine tumbled into the
room as though a giant hand had loosed a celestial sluice-
gate. With the yellow flood poured the sensuous blend of
odours—of wild honeysuckle, of Cherokee rose in full bloom,
of hyacinth, of oleander. Jean stood at the window, his arms
[19]


FLIGHT
raised clutching the draperies, and took deep draughts of
the air heady as old wine. The trees and flowers sparkled
in the sunshine, covered with glittering beads of water from
the recently ended shower.
His tiny garden enclosed with the crumbling brick wall
had never seemed so beautiful. He picked out one by one
the flowers he had planted and tended—the oleander-bush by
the house, which, a generation before, had quartered the slave
house servants. It was in bloom now, the ground beneath it
covered over with salver-shaped white petals. There near it
was the bed of pansies—Bernard Dieux, sleeping the long sleep
in old St. Louis cemetery this year and a half had given him
the cuttings. Over to the left was the Cherokee rose in whose
shade he had spent many happy hours, reading a part of the
time, more often just sitting and dreaming. Many a day he
had sat there or in the cool quietness of the decaying servant
house, two-storied, of brick laid between heavy posts, briqueté
entre poteaux. Its walls were slowly crumbling these late
years and its bricks were covered with greenish mould but the
old house was sturdily standing up, despite its years, against
all the furies of rain and sun that beat upon it. There Jean
had sat in the rickety chair and sucked into his nostrils the
faint fragrance of his orange-trees that grew just inside and
along the old wall. He loved to rest his eyes grown weary with
the printed page on their blackish green foliage that provided
so perfect a background for their tiny fruit—little globules of
deep yellow gold. But he loved these best when they were
shedding their flowers—“a steam of rich distilled perfumes,”
Bernard, who was given to quotation of poetry, used to say of
the orange-trees.
“Jean! Why don't you come down?” a strident, querulous
voice from below stirred him. Jean hastily quitted the win-
dow and shuffled over to the huge and elaborately carved bed.
“Mimi" Mimi! Wake up! Your mother's in an awful
[20]


FL I G HT
humour this morning! Get up quickly before she comes and
gets us both!”
The sleeper stirred, turned over and recommenced her
steady breathing. The rays of the sunlight touched her hair
as her head rolled to one side. In the shadow it had seemed
brown. Before Jean's eyes it underwent a miraculous trans-
formation as the tiny rays of light picked out the coppery
brilliance that here was auburn, and there shaded off into a
deeper reddish colour. It was like spun gold dipped in flam-
ing cochineal. The curls in tangled disarray framed the
oval, cream-coloured face. Half full lips were slightly
parted, even teeth gleaming from the red frame. Mimi lay
stretched on the bed, the bed-clothes pushed towards its foot,
her slender body covered only with the thin night-dress.
Small soft breasts rose and fell gently, the promise of ap-
proaching womanhood revealed in the curves of her rapidly
maturing body.
Jean looked at his daughter, his eyes half filled with joy at
her warm beauty, half with troubled anxiety. He had seen
too much of life to be unaware of what his child's delicate
and fragile beauty might bring to her. At times he had al-
most wished she were less attractive—when he walked with
her along the streets he watched with envious, jealous eyes the
glances Mimi, though not yet fourteen, drew instinctively
from the men, young and old. He was proud of her, of
course—many girls of eighteen or nineteen were not half so
well formed. Yet, he feared for her and, more often than not,
his apprehension swept over and wiped out his joy in her
comeliness.
“Holy Mother, keep me alive—not for life alone, sweet as
it is for me, but that I may be with her to guide her steps and
protect her!” he often prayed as Mimi knelt beside him at
mass, innocent of the anxiety bordering on agony which
filled the breast of her father.
[21]


F LIGHT
“Jean! Must I come up for you?” came again the voice
from below, anger sharpening its usual petulance.
“Mimi'ſ Get up, chérie! At once, or we’ll both be raked
over the coals!” Jean pleaded.
Mimi stirred again, opened her eyes, sat up and smiled.
“Here's your coffee—I’m afraid it's cold but drink it quickly
and slip on your clothes. Your mother's all out of sorts this
morning and we'll both catch it if you keep breakfast waiting
much longer.”
“Let her fuss, papa. It's too pretty a morning to bother
with maman. She’ll quarrel anyhow,” smiled Mimi as she
took the cup of black coffee and stirred it slowly. “Ugh—
it's all cold—I don't want it!” she grimaced as she pushed
the cup away. “You go down, papa, and I’ll be ready in a
few minutes.”
Jean took the cup but made no motion of leaving.
“Mimi, we're going to move away from New Orleans—'
“Move away? Where? Why? Leave this old house?”
the questions tumbled out of her mouth, her eyes now wide-
awake with surprise.
“It’s your mother—she's had her way at last—we're going
to move to a more ‘progressive' town where folks get ahead
faster—” His words, despite conscious effort to sound
matter-of-fact, were tinged with a bit of irony, with a fragment
of bitterness and pain. “Your mother 23
“Stop calling her my mother!” Mimi half angrily de-
manded, all the cheerfulness gone from her voice and face.
“She’s only a step-mother!”
“All right! All right!” Jean hastily agreed. “I can't tell
you all of it now—but I can't stand this nagging any longer.
I’ve got to have peace even if I have to go to the North Pole
to get it—”
“Why do you yield so easily to her? Why don't you tell
her right out you won't go and she must stop fussing at you
9
[22]


FLIGHT
all the time? If I were you I certainly wouldn't let her run
all over me!” Mimi declared as she slipped out of the bed
and began to dress.
“Mimi!” Jean chided; the hurt her words caused were evi-
dent in his voice.
“Forgive me, papa. I wouldn't hurt you for anything.”
Mimi caught him as he started to the door, tray in hand, and
kissed him warmly. Even as he forgave her, he was troubled
at the moist softness of her lips.
“After breakfast we’ll go for a walk down to the Basin.
I'll tell you all about it then and a lot of other things I’ve
been planning to tell you for a long time. Don't be long
now!” he cautioned as he left the room.
Mimi smiled as she heard his carpet slippers pat-pat-patting
down the hall. Poor, gentle, lovable old Jean. He would
never learn the combination to the intricately devised safe
called Life, Mimi thought for the thousandth time. Fumbling
in his aimless way, living in a world of his own filled with
ghostly figures of silken clad ladies and velvet garmented gen-
tlemen—Mandevilles, Marignys, de Pontalbas and Gayarres—
he would never understand nor master bustle and hurry and
pep of the newer years.
She did not consciously think these things as she dressed
hurriedly, yet Mimi sensed that Jean was living in a day that
had passed and would never return. Though her step-mother
irritated her almost to frenzy, Mimi was aware of the fact that
Mme. Daquin was better armed for present-day life than either
Jean or herself. She who was Mary Robertson of Chicago,
American for many generations, was unencumbered with the
hoary traditions which kept Jean with his pride of Creole an-
cestry content with his dreams, caring little whether his house
was better furnished than those of his neighbours and friends,
worrying not at all and wholly free from envy if his bank
balance was more or less than the man's next door.
[23]


F LIGHT
Jean had often told Mimi how Mary Robertson had come
to New Orleans on a visit at Mardi Gras time two years after
Margot had died and just when he had become most lonely
and afraid. His grief had dulled his senses so completely
that for more than a year after his wife had died Jean had
lived in a state that bordered on coma. When he grieved
most was at night and then he sought forgetfulness in wine.
Night after night he sat down after dinner, a wicker-covered
demijohn by the side of his chair. On the table in front of
him rested two objects—a faded photograph of Margot in her
wedding gown and an ample-proportioned wine-glass of mot-
tled green.
Mimi used to steal into the room in her night-dress and
crouch in the shadows back of the door and watch him, fasci-
nated by his varying moods. One thing only was constant—
as soon as his glass was emptied Jean reached down, hooked
the first two fingers of his right hand in the handle of the gal-
lon container. Steadying it with his thumb, he raised the demi-
john up and over with a flip until its bowl rested on his biceps.
Pouring his glass full, Jean lowered the jar to the floor again.
The process was repeated at regular intervals. In time
Jean's head would sink lower and lower until it rested on the
table, his arms his only pillow. Mimi would then cover his
shoulders with the damask cover from the couch and creep
back to her own bed.
Mary Robertson did not herself know why she had been
attracted by Jean Daquin. She knew that, in part, she had
been drawn by his gentle manner, so different from the bluster-
ing, raw, at times tiresome aggressiveness of her own Chicago.
Even to herself she sternly denied that this had caused her in-
terest in Jean to grow. Her father had used his earnings as
a physician to speculate in real estate. Through shrewd and
clever means he had accumulated considerable wealth in
[25]


FLIGHT
mined she would capture Jean, distaste for her life in Chicago
growing daily as she stayed on in New Orleans long after she
had originally intended to leave. She was beguiled by the
romance and languorous charm of the Creole quarter where
she, for the first time, could forget the petty meanness and
prejudice she felt as a Negro elsewhere in America. Mary
Robertson swiftly but without Jean's realizing it led him to
propose to her.
To him, blundering along like a pilotless balloon, blown
unresistingly this way or that by every passing breeze, she
seemed the embodiment of all the virtues he himself lacked.
Energetic, purposeful, dynamic, she supplied a driving force
which smoothed out numerous little difficulties which to him
had seemed insurmountable. Under her influence he walked
with her in the evenings, methodically answering the soft
“Good-nights” which floated down to them from shadowed
balconies or from doorways, instead of sitting at home drink-
ing his usual half-gallon of double port. His mind clearer
from alcohol, he brought some semblance of order to his in-
surance business, which had suffered greatly during his year
of neglect.
He resisted sturdily and successfully her slightly less than
tactful suggestions that more modern business methods be in-
stalled.
“No, Mary, I don't want a big business—then I’d be only
a slave to it—just a creature run this way or that by the
machine I've created. I get my living as things are—and I’m
satisfied.”
She was too wise to pursue the matter further but his ada-
mant resistance did not prevent her from resolving, silently
of course, to bide her time until she had the right and the
power to have her way. Her intention was not consciously
unkind nor meddlesome. He's got a gold mine practically
[27]


FLIGHT
untouched, she thought, and I’ll convince him he can make ten
times as much as he does. Jean, meanwhile, thought he had
ended the discussion for all time.
Mimi, christened “Annette Angela Daquin” but thereafter
known only as “Mimi,” was eleven when Mary Robertson en-
tered Jean Daquin's life. From the beginning Mimi had
felt a barrier within herself arising against the overtures of
friendship Mary Robertson made. There was no dislike which
Mimi felt. Nor was there affection. Had Mimi analyzed
her feelings towards this new and alien creature who had
come, whirlwind-like, into their placid lives, she would have
found indifference or perhaps passive acceptance of the new-
comer as one of the vagaries of fate. This calm acceptance
was in no small degree caused by Mimi's realization that
this new creature furnished a much needed stimulating influ-
ence on Jean. For Mimi was wise beyond her eleven years.
So Mimi accepted her without audible protest even when
Jean hinted Mary Robertson might come and take Margot's
place. . . .
So Jean and Mary were married first by Father André at
the little Catholic church Jean had always attended, and then
by the Rev. George W. Brown of the Ebenezer Baptist Church,
to which denomination Mary belonged.
To the marriage there arose storms of protest from the
relatives and friends of both Mary and Jean. He was alter-
nately reviled and pitied for marrying an outsider, one who,
though respectable and worthy, yet was not of Creole blood.
“Le pauvre Jean,” they wailed, “grief and drink have weakened
his understanding.” From Mary's relatives, her father in par-
ticular, there came an outburst that overshadowed the protest of
Jean's friends as a tornado outsweeps the gentle breeze of a
woman's fan. Mr. Robertson rushed to New Orleans, stormed,
[28]


FLIGHT
denounced, ridiculed, pleaded, but in vain. Mary met his
every mood in kind until, wise from his years of political
training, he yielded, remained for the Protestant ceremony,
refused to attend the Catholic one, and returned to Chicago,
where he boasted to his friends of the “high Creole society”
into which his Mary had married.
For a year they were happy. Mary was too clever to at-
tempt revolutionary changes in her new milieu, even in the
home where the to her slipshod methods of management
irked her sorely. Towards Mimi she adopted a conciliatory
policy, sensing the girl's latent hostility to her who had
taken, in physical ways at least, the place so long filled by
the adored Margot.
Mary made few friends among the intimates of Jean and
Mimi. They with gentle but unmistakable signs let her know
that despite her marriage to Jean she yet was and would
ever remain an outsider. Time and time again Jean and Mimi
received invitations to dinner, to parties which did not in-
clude Mary. The mellow old families, militantly proud of
their Creole and Negro ancestry, yielded not an inch to that
which went on in the world outside. Deadlines there were
which they never permitted crossing. One of these was
family. Another was colour. Mary offended in both. She
was an outsider. And her skin was deep brown, in sharp
contrast to the ivory tint of Jean and Mimi.
For the first year of her marriage Mary was oblivious of
these things. She was too intelligent not to notice them but
they either amused her or were ignored by her as evidences
of narrow-mindedness by those who too long had lived in a
world apart. She loved gentle, irresponsible Jean with her
whole heart, with a woman's inconsistency, though he offended
in almost every particular the canons of efficiency and prog-
ress which were a part of her very being.
She was content to spend her time at home, learning to cook
bºr
[29]


FLIGHT
It seemed to say to her: “Silly woman, you are so much in
error, it's useless even to discuss the matter with you—you
couldn't understand if you tried.”
Had Jean sought the manner which most surely would
infuriate Mary, he could have found none so efficacious as
this. Slowly at first, then with increasing vigour, she argued,
pleaded with him, scorned or ridiculed his easy-going ways.
She found him adamant and her irritation rapidly changed to
excoriation. Morning, noon and night she nagged him. She
wrote her father, who had invested heavily in an industrial
insurance company operated by Negroes in Atlanta. His judg-
ment vindicated, Mr. Robertson used his influence, and Jean
received a flattering offer to associate himself with the Atlanta
company. As a belated wedding present Mr. Robertson
offered them a home in Atlanta, furnished and ready for im-
mediate occupancy.
Then the real struggle began. Mary might not have suc-
ceeded even though easy-going Jean was becoming almost
frantic at her eternal nagging. He yet loved her and she
gave him no cause for divorce, even if such a way out of his
dilemma had ever occurred to him, that would have been
approved by the Catholic Church.
Two things began to make him weaken. The first of these
and of slighter influence was that Mary's darkness of skin pre-
vented him from eating at the old restaurants, Antoine's, Dela-
toire's, Mme. Begue's. He and Margot and Mimi had often
gone there in the old days and without trouble though the
proprietors and waiters and the regular patrons knew of his
Negro blood. He and Mary had gone once or twice until slight
but unmistakable hints had been given him that he was welcome
but his wife—“We are most sorry but our American guests,
on whose continued patronage we are largely dependent, object
to une femme de couleur.”
There were stormy, very stormy scenes. Jean, his white
[32]


FLIGHT
hair and waxed moustache and goatee bristling, his face an
apoplectic crimson, refused to listen to the profuse apologies,
strode, shoulders back, head high in the air, from the places,
vowing “never again to darken your doors, sir!” This vow
he kept and the old places knew him no more.
Of greater moment, even, were the changes in the Creole
quarter. The old families were dying off, poverty was forc-
ing others to sell their homes. One by one the old houses
were razed by boisterous, unfeeling house-wreckers and in
their places were going up cheap, viciously plain and garishly
ornate apartment houses. One by one the old places dis-
appeared. Graceful lines of sloping roofs were replaced by
harshly severe brick or wooden eaves, leaded glass dim with
years was ruthlessly removed for plain sashes turned out by
thousands by unimaginative factory hands, newel posts of
carved brass and delicate balustrades of ancient mahogany
were thrown away and in their stead came cheap pine ones,
all carved alike.
The new houses were filled by new people, as cheap and
noisy and brazen as their homes. Tenants of six months
thought themselves old residents and, compared to their
neighbours, they were. But to Jean and his diminishing ac-
quaintances of an older day, they were noisily vulgar aliens
and barbarians. Strident, unpleasant voices rose in ever
increasing numbers and volume so that no longer could
one enjoy the stroll of an evening through the once quiet
streets.
“It can’t be worse even in Atlanta,” said Jean to Mimi
sorrowfully one day. “I can’t stand to see the changes any
longer—it's too much like watching at the bedside of a dearly
loved one who rapidly wastes away from a loathsome dis-
ease.”
Then did Mimi know they would some day soon leave New
Orleans never to return. The prospect at times frightened
[33]


F LIGHT
her—at times, with the venturesomeness of eager youth, she
looked forward to new faces, new scenes, new experi-
€1106 S. . . .
“Good morning, Mme. Daquin,” was Mimi's greeting to her
step-mother as she entered the dining-room and slipped into
her place at the table.
“Morning? It's nearer afternoon,” acidulously replied
Mme. Daquin. Jean winced and looked appealingly at Mimi.
“You’re as shiftless and slow as your father,” continued
Mary. “You know we'll be busy as can be with packing all
this junk your father insists we take to Atlanta—”
“Junk?” Mimi inquired with suspicious sweetness.
“That's what I said and that’s what I mean. Junk!
J-u-n-k! I’m going to get rid of some of this worn-out
fantastic stuff and get me some nice fresh oak. Mahogany's
too gloomy and funeral-like.”
“I suppose you'd like to throw away that bed you sleep in
—over two hundred years old and brought from France—and
get a nice, shiny brass one?”
“That's exactly what I’m going to do
“You’ll do nothing ” burst out Mimi, but at a sign
from Jean she stopped talking. The meal was finished in
silence. Mary, her broad face, deep brown of colour and
framed with black hair that curled attractively, set in un-
relieved displeasure, grimly ate without speaking until Jean
rose to leave the table.
“You’ll find on the table in the hall the telegram to Atlanta
telling them you’ll be there ready for work on the first.
Wait until I finish,” she demanded when Jean started to speak.
“To-day is the sixteenth—that gives us less than two weeks in
which to pack and move. Papa writes me he has sent his
cheque for the house he's giving us and it's all ready for us
to move into—”
22
[34]


FL I G HT
“But what about this house?” Jean broke in, panic in his
voice at the unexpected imminence of quitting his beloved
New Orleans for ever.
“I’ve seen to that, too,” Mary answered methodically but,
withal, a note in her voice of pride in her own far-sightedness
and efficiency. “Laroux, the real-estate man on Canal Street,
telephoned me yesterday he's found a buyer—a company that
plans to build an apartment house here—and Laroux tells me
he'll be ready to close the deal by the end of the week.”
“Sell this house, papa!” broke in Mimi. “No–no! We
can’t let them tear our house down!”
“Yes, sell this house,” affirmed Mary before Jean could
reply. “I can't for the life of me see why you are so crazy
about these draughty, moth-eaten old places. If I had the
money I'd tear all of them down, build nice, modern places
and make ten—twenty times the money off of them.”
Before Jean could speak Mary swept conqueringly from the
room. Mimi slipped her hand into Jean's and squeezed it
comfortingly, the pair of them too full for speech.
Ignoring the dreaded telegram, Jean and Mimi left the cool
shadows of the house for the cheery brightness of sun-swept
Dumaine Street. Oblivious of passers-by, answering saluta-
tions and the greetings of friends methodically, they walked
slowly through the streets, down the Esplanade, on and on
until they found themselves at the gates of St. Louis cemetery.
Yet in silence they wandered through the confused, close-
packed vieux carré of the dead, past tombs piled one upon the
other, their walls lined with row upon row of ghostly store-
houses, “the ovens” like those of a baker-shop, each large
enough only to hold a coffin. Crumbling bricks, covered with
vines within which scampered in the dazzling, warming sun-
light lizards of green or of gold. Here and there the Ci-git
and the Ici Repos and the names, birth and death dates of
[35]


F LIGHT
those buried within had been eaten away by countless storms
of rain and sunlight until none could tell who had been buried
there.
“It's just as well,” thought Jean. “If there are those, rela-
tive or friend, who yet remain alive, they know which tomb
holds their friends. And if there are none left—what differ-
ence does it make? Silly curiosity-seekers who ramble
through a place like this as they would a penny arcade during
Mardi Gras seeking new thrills—what do their wishes count?”
Their reveries were unbroken until they heard a noise be-
hind them. From beyond a pile of “ovens” a silver crucifix
flashed in the sunlight, raised high above the tombs. Soon
the cortège appeared, winding its slow way through the tor-
tuous maze of irregularly built tombs, the “Chant for the
Dead” rolling out on the still air in lugubrious and chilling
melody, rising or dropping as the tombs opened or closed in
about the procession. Here and there, where the turning of
a passage was too narrow to permit the carrying of the
casket at its usual height, Jean and Mimi saw it raised high
on a level with the crucifix. They stood hand in hand until
the chanting died down in the distance.
“Mimi, that's how I feel to-day,” said Jean softly. “Leav-
ing New Orleans, the old houses, the old friends—it makes me
feel as though it were I in that coffin 22
“Papa, why don't you put your foot down?” burst out
Mimi; “tell Mme. Daquin you just won't go—let her go on
back to Chicago if she dosen’t like it—and you and I stay
here and be happy?”
“It’s too late now, petite Mimi,” he answered. “My word's
been given—they're tearing down so many of the old houses
—my old friends are dying off, one by one 22
“But you're not old! You're only fifty-two, yet you talk
as though you were a hundred 92
“Sometimes I feel a hundred—a thousand. Oh, well, I've
[36]


FLIGHT
made my decision and I’ll stick to it. It wasn't about that
I wanted to talk with you. It's related to it but—but it isn't
easy to talk about—” he broke off.
They walked slowly in silence as she waited for him to
speak. An inexpressible tenderness filled her for this gentle
old man—he seemed very old to her to-day. The growing
surliness and quarrelsomeness of her step-mother, the alien
who would never fit into the scheme of things as she and
Jean knew it, infuriated her for the pain it was causing her
dear Jean. She felt within her a steadily growing bitterness
against Mary and her petty shopkeeper attitude, her scorn
for traditions so dear to Jean and herself. As she had
dressed, the notion of leaving New Orleans (she had never
been more than a few miles beyond the city's limits) had
appealed to her, offering as it did new experiences, new
scenes, new people, naturally attractive to a girl of fourteen.
Her mind had dwelt more on the favourable aspects of the
change than on the severance of old and dear ties of tradi-
tion and friendship, of quitting familiar scenes, with all the
instinctive optimism and disregard of consequences of youth.
But now she felt, on seeing Jean's reluctance to go, as though
she were in some subtle manner guilty of disloyalty to Jean.
Suddenly contrite, her eyes filled with tears and she clung to
Jean in passionate repudiation of her joy at leaving. She
realized Jean was speaking—had been talking to her for
some minutes. “. . . And yet it ought not to be hard for me.
Neither Margot nor I have ever consciously sought to keep
from you the fact that the Negro blood in you set you aside,
here in America, as one apart, though we have tried to shield
you as much as we could from the embarrassments that blood
can bring you.”
“Oh, is that all that was troubling you, papa Jean?”
laughed Mimi.
“You can afford to laugh here in Creole New Orleans,”
[37]


F LIGHT
Jean cautioned. “But away from here it's a different matter.
Here in the place we know I want to tell you of some
of the stock from which we Daquins come. It's a record
we're proud of—we've helped build this Louisiana of ours
—much of what we did's been forgotten but it's there, just the
same. I’m telling you, for when you run up against hard
situations later on in life—and we all do—the knowledge of
what's back of you will give you strength and courage.”
Mimi said nothing. Jean went on.
“We Daquins trace our history a long ways back—back to
the early days of the convent Louis XV founded here in
1727—the Ursalines—to teach the Negro and Indian girls.
You know of beloved Madeline Hachard—she who was a
postulant in the Ursaline Convent in Rouen—Rouen beloved
of Flaubert and Maupassant. Her letters home tell of their
perilous voyage to Louisiana in 1728, of shipwreck and
shortages of food and water, of sickness and discomfort.
Soon after Madeline Hachard—who called herself “Hachard
de St. Stanislas” after she took the veil—and the others
opened the doors of their convent, there was need of wives
for the young men of character and means. Girls of good
family were sent to the colony—les filles a la cassette they
were called. From these matings sprang many of the great
families of Louisiana—and to one of them you and I owe our
being. From her who nearly two hundred years ago took
the long and perilous voyage there comes down to us a
path—at times clear and distinct—at times faded and shad-
owy—from that path innumerable branches shoot like the
limbs of that ancient oak over there.”
Jean's words had begun to weave a mysterious spell over
Mimi. She looked at the tree to which Jean pointed—vaguely
disappointed that instead of its leaves she did not see fami-
lies, faces with laughing eyes and alluring mysteriousness.
Jean had never talked to her like this before—she felt a thrill-
[38]


FLIGHT
ing pride that he spoke to her as to one of mature years and
understanding.
“You’ve many relatives, Mimi, of whom you can justly
be proud—and some of whom the less said, the better. Like
two great rivers from the same mother source, plunging, roar-
ing, or gently purling they flow—parallel much of the way,
touching at others, then springing apart to seek their way
through diverse lands. We of the so-called coloured branch
—many of our ancestry of the proud gens de coleur libre—
we too have had a large share in making Louisiana what it is
to-day.”
“Tell me about some of them, Jean,” demanded Mimi
eagerly. “Tell me of the ones of whom you're proud—tell
me of those you're not so proud of.”
The sun was high in the sky and beating down upon them
with vigour before Jean had finished his story. Mimi was
too absorbed to notice the heat or to note the passing of the
hours. Jean, with the mellowness acquired only through
an unhurried life, had great pride in his ability as a racon-
teur-when he fancied he detected a waning interest on Mi-
mi's face as he delved into the more abstract historical part
of his tale, he quickly injected anecdotes, dramatic episodes,
colourful vignettes. When Mimi seemed wearied of too
great stress on the part Negroes had played as soldiers or
labourers or if she appeared surfeited with tales of too great
virtue and exemplary constructiveness on the part of those
who were her forebears, Jean would, almost shyly and im-
perceptibly, relate a tale of derring do by one who lived at
Barataria with that great pirate and freebooter—Jean La-
fitte. Mimi felt a delicious tingle titillating her body as
Jean told of that other Jean—he of the swart skin, midnight-
black hair and eyes, beard shaven clean from the front of
his face. She was glad—very glad one of her line had
known this intrepid, carefree adventurer who, a marine
[39]


FLIGHT
Robin Hood, had plundered and smuggled and risked death
a thousand times as though he were passing the time of day
on the street corner.
She, too, was fascinated by Jean's picture of the coming
into being of the Creole.
“The white Louisianian will tell you the Creole is white
with ancestry of French or Spanish or West Indian extrac-
tion. There may be some of that kind—but I’m not sure—
but most Creoles are a little bit of everything and from that
very mixture comes the delightful colourfulness which is
their greatest charm. To them the cardinal sin is avarice or
stinginess. Dalliance at love—too great devotion to the cup
—poverty—all these are minor faults to be forgiven and for-
gotten. We are not a nation of shopkeepers, thank God, even
though you and I, Mimi, are about to desert to the enemy.”
Many other stories he told her there. He told of that
Governor Perier who armed Negroes in 1729 and sent them
to fight that fear-inspiring tribe of Indians, the Chonchas,
with whom the black slaves were becoming too friendly, and
how, with an ease that should have frightened Perier, these
blacks wiped out the Indian enemy. Proudly Jean told how
this example and others gave impetus to the later freeing of
the slaves which had come largely through their own efforts
—the revolt of the slaves led by the Chickasaws and Ban-
baras and other stirring uprisings—gentle, kindly Jean—
who would not have crushed an ant—exultantly told of car-
nage, of slaughter, of death.
He took great pride in telling Mimi of Jeannot, stalwart
slave offered freedom by Kerlerec if he would become the
public executioner, a job no white man would take. Mimi
lived again the agony of Jeannot, now dead some one hun-
dred and fifty years, who in horror and anguish cried out:
“What! Cut off the heads of people who have never done
me any harm?” She could almost see him pleading, even
[40]


CHA PT E R III
NDER the efficient management of Mme. Daquin, it was
not long before they became adjusted physically to
their new surroundings in Atlanta.
“I wish you'd stop calling me ‘Madam Daquin,’” she
querulously demanded one day of Mimi. “I don't want people
here being reminded constantly we're outsiders or think we're
trying to put on airs. Call me “Mrs. Daquin’ or “mamma,” or,
if you insist on being high-toned, call me ‘mother.’”
Mimi vigorously protested, to herself and Jean, against
either of the latter terms and compromised on “Mrs. Daquin.”
Soon after their arrival they received formal calls. These
came usually in the afternoon and were more or less elabo-
rate ceremonials. Mrs. Hunter, willowy spouse of the presi-
dent of the Lincoln Mutual Life Insurance Company, came
with her husband the Sunday after they reached Atlanta.
She was cordial—very cordial. Mimi wondered why Mrs.
Hunter felt it necessary to implant a slightly moist kiss upon
her lips, though she permitted herself to be fondled by the
effusive one without audible or visible protest. She sub-
mitted and that was all.
“What a darling little girl you have, Mrs. Daquin!” she
exclaimed. “And what's her name?” On being told she
went on: “Mimi? How very cute. Just like a stage name
or opera.”
“That's where it does come from. La Bohème. Do you
know the opera?” Mimi assured her.
“No, I can't say I do—no, I don't believe I know that
one,” Mrs. Hunter, somewhat embarrassed, answered. She
[42]


F LIGHT
did not feel altogether sure that Mimi wasn't trying either to
poke fun at her or test her learning.
“My real name's Annette Angela Daquin—but no one ever
calls me that. They only call me Mimi,” innocently replied
Mimi.
Yet not sure of herself, Mrs. Hunter felt it necessary that
she justify herself before this queer infant.
“We don't get much chance here to see good plays or hear
such music as comes this way. The only play I’ve seen was
“Ben Hur’ and Mr. Hunter has never forgiven me for climb-
ing up the back stairs to the peanut gallery at the Grand
Opera House where the coloured people sit. That was
grand, though, and almost worth the quarrel I had with Mr.
Hunter about going.”
And Mrs. Hunter beamed at her husband in a benign
fashion. Her duty done in commenting on Mimi's cuteness
and beauty, Mrs. Hunter turned her attention to Mrs. Daquin
and subjects near to housewifely hearts. They wondered if
there would be a late spring—“it’s been years since it's been
so cool in April as it is now,” affirmed Mrs. Hunter—they
talked of the rising price of cloth and food and shoes—the
art of cookery—“you must teach me some of those spicy
dishes they tell me you have in New Orleans”—of local social
life in Atlanta and how it compared with that in Louisiana.
Mimi listened alternately to the two and to the more re-
strained conversation of Jean and Mr. Hunter. The latter
speculated, somewhat idly, as to the probable chances of
Japan's defeating Russia, Mr. Hunter told Jean of business
prospects in the fall if cotton sold well. Her attention was
caught, momentarily, by Mr. Hunter, who was deploring the
general shiftlessness of the younger people in general and his
own son in particular.
“I’ve always maintained that hard work's what boys and
girls need. When I was a youngster my daddy put me in the
[43]


FLIGHT
fields at six o'clock in the morning and I stayed there until
six or seven o'clock at night. But these young ones coming
along nowadays have got funny ideas. Take my own boy, for
example. He's pretty nearly seventeen and for the life of me,
I can't make him out. Always talking about doing some-
thing big but never knows from one day to the other what
line he's going to do big things in. I tell Molly,” he con-
fided, leaning closer to Jean and lowering his voice, “it’s all
her fault. She coddles him too much—”
“Now, William, you aren't going into that here,” chided
his wife, who had overheard him. “Carl's nothing but a
child as yet and he and Mildred are all we’ve got. He'll
come round all right.”
Back and forth the discussion raged, Mr. Hunter appeal-
ing to Jean for confirmation of his contentions, Mrs. Hun-
ter relying on Mrs. Daquin for aid and succour. On only
one point could they agree and that was Carl's essential dif-
ference from other children. Not until Mrs. Daquin, in her
desire to help Mrs. Hunter and thereby gain her favour, in-
troduced the matter of religion did Carl Hunter's name cease
being bandied back and forth like a tennis ball between his
parents.
Mrs. Hunter, tired of the argument over her son, swooped
down upon the new topic with avidity. It was wholly a
verbal swoop. It was difficult to imagine one of Mrs. Hun-
ter's proportions and dignity swooping in any other manner.
“I knew there was something I intended asking you and
I almost forgot it. What church’re you planning to attend?”
“Well—er—that's a problem we haven't met yet,” Mrs.
Daquin, somewhat flustered, replied. “You see, in Chicago
I was a Baptist—and you know the Baptist saying, “Baptist
born and Baptist bred, be a Baptist till I'm dead,” she some.
what incorrectly quoted. “But my husband and his daugh-
ter, they're Catholics 92
[44]


FLIGHT
“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Hunter, her eyebrows mak-
ing a rapid ascent until they seemed to mingle with the
hairs that straggled down from beneath her elaborate coiffure.
Mrs. Hunter's ears were not so keen as Mrs. Plummer's—the
news regarding the religious beliefs of the Daquins had not
reached her. Now she uttered the exclamation as though
Mrs. Daquin had said: “My husband and his daughter have
leprosy!” or “They suffer from epileptic fits.”
Mrs. Daquin unmistakably caught the implication—she
flushed and twisted the handkerchief in her hands and laughed
a silly, titterish and mirthless laugh. Mrs. Hunter turned and
surveyed Jean and Mimi as though they were specimens of
some new flora or fauna of a weird and unfamiliar species.
Her inspection lasted but a minute but it was long enough to
make Mimi squirm uncomfortably and she felt vaguely as
though she had been caught in the act of doing some loathsome
and criminal thing.
They did not pursue the subject. Mrs. Hunter rose soon
afterwards, her husband following her lead.
“My dear, on Tuesday of next week I’m entertaining my
club, the Fleur-de-Lis—Mr. Hunter calls it ‘the eating bri-
gade' but that's because he's jealous, we don't let any men
attend our affairs except once a year. You must come, for
there you'll meet the right people—it's fatal to get mixed up
with the wrong crowd,” she smilingly warned.
Mrs. Daquin eagerly accepted the invitation, too eagerly
Mimi thought. As she bade the Hunters a formal good-
bye, she was thinking to herself: “Why can't she accept the
attentions of Mrs. Hunter as though she were used to decent
society instead of fawning all over herself?”
After the Hunters had left, there was a silence which was
unbroken until they sat at supper. Mrs. Daquin several
times looked inquiringly at Jean as though she were about
to speak but each time desisted. Mimi noticed the words
[45]


FLIGHT
shut off as they were about to be said but knew the flood
would not be long in coming. She was right.
“What are you and Mimi going to do about attending
church, Jean?” began Mrs. Daquin. “There's no coloured
Catholic church here—and you saw from Mrs. Hunter's man-
ner that—er—well, we aren't going to get along as well here
as we might if The abrupt ending of her uncompleted
sentence and the eloquent silence which followed it were
sufficient.
“You mean you think we should give up our religion to
make money and get into ‘society’?” queried Jean in aston-
ishment, his last word tinged ever so slightly with irony.
“Well, I don’t mean exactly that,” his wife answered. “But
you can't attend a white Catholic church here and I just
thought you might—well, you might refrain from mention-
ing you’re a Catholic, for you can see from the way Mrs.
Hunter acted it puts you in a different—er—it makes you
different from the others,” she ended lamely.
“What if it does make us different?” Jean demanded, al-
most belligerently. “Coloured people here, from what I’ve
seen, are always talking about ‘prejudice’ and they're just
about as full of prejudice against Catholics, Jews and black
Negroes as white people themselves. You can do what you
want, Mary, but Mimi and I will stick to our own religion.
And I’m sure we can attend some Catholic church here, so
that's an end to that.”
There was no mistaking the tone. Being a wise woman,
Mrs. Daquin dropped the subject. Afterwards, Mimi hugged
Jean in the hallway.
“You were gorgeous, papa Jean. That's one time you
bearded the lioness. And if you did it oftener—there'd be
fewer times you'd have to do it.” Jean grinned at her hap-
pily, proud of her approval.
[46]


CHA PTE R IV
the latter part of the week, “to bring your lovely little
girl with you to my party next Tuesday. Mrs. Adams
is bringing her girl, Hilda, and the two of them can play
together.”
And so it was that Mimi, dressed in her best dress, a pale
yellow confection of lawn, set out with Mrs. Daquin for Mrs.
Hunter's house and the Fleur-de-Lis Club meeting. Mrs.
Daquin, too, dressed carefully and elaborately. She spent
an hour arranging her hair in the style of the day, brushed
back from the forehead high over a “rat” that made her
head appear as though soldiers had thrown up breastworks,
carefully smoothed over. From behind this amazing ram-
part peeped coyly a lacy hat perched perilously on the back
of the head. Mrs. Daquin's modified leg-o’-mutton sleeves,
her tightly fitting waist with high neck supported by whale-
bone stays, her long skirt flaring wide and with a train
were all of the latest design, as were the half-mittens of
black lace from which Mrs. Daquin's fingers, short and round,
emerged shyly like little fat sausages. She knew her sex—
she would be on inspection and much depended on the first
impression. She was determined that that first glance should
establish her as one of the elect.
Mrs. Hunter had said “four o'clock sharp.” Mrs. Daquin
and Mimi therefore arrived at the Hunter domicile, a huge
pile of towers and turrets and bulging bay windows adorned
at the most unlikely and unlooked-for places with startling
"I MEANT to tell you on Sunday,” telephoned Mrs. Hunter
[47]


FL I GHT
varieties of woodwork, at twenty minutes of five. Mrs. Da-
quin knew the value of a dramatic entrance, of the desira-
bility of being just late enough to have permitted everybody
else's arrival prior to her own.
She was not wrong. In the warm April afternoon the door
and windows were open. As they ascended the steps there
floated out to them the hum of well-bred voices, pitched at
just the right angle. Mrs. Hunter rushed to greet them—
and from the sudden stilling of the animated conversation
Mimi knew the talk had been about her step-mother and her-
self. They were conducted around the large living-room and
presented to each of the carefully dressed women who sat
in a circle whose circumference was only a little less than
that of the room. “Pleased to meet you’s” “Happy to form
your acquaintance's,” “My compliments” and “How do you
do’s” greeted Mrs. Daquin; “What a pretty little girl's,” and
“How cute’s” were Mimi's portion.
The ordeal ended, Mrs. Daquin subsided into a chair near
Mrs. Hunter's standing approximately at the point where
they had started on their circumnavigation of the room. The
buzzing conversation began again. Mimi listened to the ex-
change of recipes and ideas, discussions of the best manner
in which jams and jellies and rolls should be prepared, gen-
tle arguments as to the relative desirability of this store or
that one.
Mimi looked around the room for Hilda Adams but there
were no younger people except herself. She began to feel out
of place, to wish she were at home with her sewing or at her
piano. Knowing there was no escape she began to examine
the women around her. She remembered few of their names
but that did not worry her. She noticed that none of the
women present were darker than a light brown, their com-
plexions varying from that shade to one indistinguishable from
white. Just as this fact came to her she caught a snatch of
[48]


FL I GHT
conversation from a group near her that linked itself start-
lingly with her own observation.
A slender, very slender, woman with lips which she pressed
together closely whenever she began or ended a sentence was
talking.
“. . . it seems Mrs. Adams has been going to the Grand
Opera House and buying seats in the orchestra, “passing’ for
white, and seeing all the plays that’ve been coming here.
Well, the other day, as she was going in, some coloured per-
son saw her and went and told the manager. She tried to
bluff it out but it didn't work—they made her get out.”
“Serves her right,” sweetly commented one of the informa-
tive one's companions, satisfaction in her tone. “Going
where she isn't wanted. She always did think she knew more
than the rest of us. They tell me she and Hilda wash their
own clothes after dark and hang them up in the yard when
nobody can see them—and then get up before daybreak to
take them in Oh! how do you do, Mrs. Adams?—I
didn't see you come in. And how sweet you look! That's
a beautiful new dress you’ve on,” she broke off as the sub-
ject of their conversation came up.
Mimi wondered how so miraculous a change could come
over the group which now chatted easily and cordially, very
cordially, with her who had been ejected from the local
theatre and who laundered her clothes after nightfall. She
felt a deep warmth within her for this woman who, because
she wanted so avidly the entertainment, the touch with the
world of ideas, the stimulus that came from the plays which
came to Atlanta, and which her race barred her from seeing
respectably, made her run the risk of discovery. And to the
same degree that she felt a yearning to touch, to smile at Mrs.
Adams and thereby let her know that she sympathized with
her, did Mimi detest with a burning intensity the pettiness
and envy of her detractors.
[49]


FLIGHT
So engrossed had she been in Mrs. Adams, Mimi had not
seen Hilda, who stood silent just beyond her mother. Mrs.
Adams started to move away to another group and the mo-
tion brought Mimi face to face with a girl of her own age
with wide, placid black eyes. Hilda and Mimi stood looking
at each other, each caught and held fast by some power,
neither of them knew what nor even that there was such a
power holding them. For a minute—an hour—a century
they stood there unable either to move or speak. The spell
was broken when Hilda smiled shyly and moved toward
Mimi. At that instant Mrs. Adams turned to Mimi.
“You must be Mrs. Daquin's little girl. This is my Hilda
” she began. “Oh, I see you're friends already,” she
smiled.
“Come on, let's sit over there on the steps and talk,” said
Hilda simply, taking Mimi's hand.
Through the buzz of conversation, through the games of
flinch (these gentle ladies got a delicious sense of near-
wickedness from this simple game played with pasteboard
cards which were not playing-cards), even through the stir
created by the announcement that refreshments would be
served in the dining-room, Mimi and Hilda sat there and
talked. They began with questions of each other, about
school, about their childhood, revealing little intimacies that
subtly wove between them a gossamer band of friendship,
fragile and almost invisible, yet with the strength of piano
wire. Nor was this union born of spoken words. Much
more came to each of them from the other in the little mo-
ments of silence, when by accident hand touched hand or
smile met smile. Mimi, through all of her fourteen years,
had had no confidante other than her father and, despite
deepest bonds between father and daughter, there are some
secrets too precious to be told even to a father like Jean.
Mimi felt tender affection surge through her for this new-found
[50]


F LIGHT
friend. She longed to stroke her hair, to kiss Hilda on the
cheek, just under her chin, to pour out devotion lavishly,
without stint. And she could tell from Hilda's smile, her tiny
gestures of tenderness, that her love was returned, and happi-
ness filled her being. . . .
Mrs. Hunter brought them back to realities.
“Oh, there you are, little chickabiddies,” she cooed.
“Come along, I’ve fixed a cute little table for you two where
you can be to yourselves and where you won't be bothered
by us old folks.”
Hilda gave Mimi a fleeting, wry smile at the blundering
condescension of the dowager-like hostess.
“Looks just like a battleship trying to be cute,” whispered
Hilda. Mimi rewarded her with a spontaneous but subdued
little laugh as they followed Mrs. Hunter into the dining-
IrOOrn.
As they sat at the table near the huge bay window Hilda
told Mimi in whispers about the women who chattered and
ate at the large table.
“That skinny one over there,” pointing to the woman who
had been telling of the ejection of Hilda's mother from the
theatre, “is Mrs. Watkins. Her husband's a doctor and he
was crazy about mamma but she didn't like him like she did
daddy. They say,” and here Hilda leaned across the table
and whispered, “that Dr. Watkins is still in love with mamma
and it makes Mrs. Watkins furious. She doesn’t like mamma
and the main reason, I think, is because mamma is so much
better-looking and knows so much more.”
Mimi wriggled ecstatically at this revelation. She felt the
delicious sense of being a conspirator, as the repository of a
secret told only to one very dear and close.
“That one with the gold tooth who laughs all the time is
the wife of a school-teacher—her name's Mrs. Tompkins—she’s
been to New York twice—but it didn't seem to do her any
[51]


F LIGHT
good. She laughs as much as ever and hasn't anything new
to talk about except the new clothes she's bought and how
she and her husband could go to all the shows in New York
and sit in any part of the theatre they wanted to.”
Mimi, as discreetly as she could, turned and surveyed her
of the gold tooth. She was not very impressed—she ex-
pected anyone who had twice been to New York to have some
distinguishing mark or characteristic which revealed two
journeys to Manhattan. Mimi did not know what form this
mark should have taken, she only felt that Mrs. Tompkins
should have differed in some way from those who had not
journeyed so far.
The cataloguing was interrupted by Hilda, who asked sud-
denly, and to Mimi with an eagerness which she could not
at the time fathom, if Mimi had met Carl Hunter.
“Mamma tells me I’m a silly little goose,” proceeded Hilda
when Mimi told her she had not met their hostess’ son, “but
Carl's the most thrilling boy in Atlanta. He's seventeen and
not a bit like the other boys around here—they're so—so
babyish. But Carl's different and mamma says he doesn't
get along any too well with his mother and father—his
father wants Carl to study insurance and banking and Carl
doesn’t want to.”
“Does he know you're—that you like him so?” asked Mimi.
“Ooh—no!” gasped Hilda. “But he is different—” she
ended. . . .
That night Mimi told Jean of the things she had seen and
heard during the afternoon. To her piquant recital of the
things said and done and to the vivid little pictures, each
etched so graphically and clearly Jean could see the women
and their mannerisms, he listened eagerly.
“And how did Mary seem to like it?” he asked.
“She was right at home! I heard her tell two or three of
them she just adored Atlanta—reminded her of her Chicago
[52]


FLIGHT
—and so different from that sleepy old New Orleans!” Mimi
grimaced. . . .
“I’m happy you’ve found Hilda,” Jean told her. “You
need the companionship of young people—when you're as old
as I it won't be so easy to find somebody whose ideas fit in
with your own.”
“How are things going at the office?” asked Mimi, remem-
bering that she in her excitement had almost forgotten him
and his affairs.
“About as well as can be expected—better than I thought
they would,” he answered. “They're a fine bunch—very
much in earnest—and I suppose I’ll have to admit Mary and
her father are right—they do put things over. Mr. Hunter's
the best of the lot—and, well, I suppose in time I’ll get my-
self fitted into the groove—” he ended lamely.
“You’re whistling in the dark to keep up your courage!”
Mimi challenged him. “You’re not happy here and you
never will be.”
“Not entirely so, I am afraid, but—well, I’ll be contented
after a fashion,” Jean smiled bravely. “I miss the old
houses, the old ways. I'd give anything almost to walk once
more down to the Basin, to sit in St. Louis cemetery—do you
remember the gold and green lizards scampering round, in
and out of the vines over the graves, that day we walked
and talked there, Mimi? I miss the calmness, the placidity,
the smell of the water. Here things are rushing, bustling,
matter-of-fact. I feel as if some power has pulled me out of
a quiet pool where I was lying on my back floating on the
water and thrown me head first into a deadly revolving whirl-
pool.
“And what are they getting out of all this, these minnows
who are squirming and fighting each other?” he demanded
with the old gesture of questioning she knew so well. “Here
are these coloured people with the gifts from God of laugh-
[53]


F LIGHT
ter and song and of creative instincts—do you remember
that man who sang as he went past the house our first night
in Atlanta?—and what are they doing with it? They are ap-
ing the white man—becoming a race of money-grubbers with
ledgers and money tills for brains and Shylock hearts.”
“But, papa Jean, they’ve got to do it! They’re living in
a world where they must either make money or else perish.”
“No-no—Mimi' You don't understand what I mean. The
whole world's gone mad over power and wealth. The strong-
est man wins, not the most decent or the most intelligent or
the best. All the old virtues of comradeship and art and liter-
ature and philosophy, in short, all the refinements of life,
are being swallowed up in this monster, the Machine, we are
creating which is slowly but surely making us mere auto-
matons, dancing like marionettes when the machine pulls the
strings and bids us prance. I know you're thinking I sound
like a masculine Cassandra—but some day, perhaps long
after I’m gone, maybe you'll think back to this day and agree
with me.”
To Mimi most of this was rather baffling—she was glad
that Jean obviously did not expect her to answer. It was
true that she had been fascinated by the song they had heard,
she loved the colourfulness of the life she saw around her
and she had noticed that in her few contacts with white
people she had felt a certain chill that she was not aware of
when with her own people.
“Her own people.” The phrase interested her. In New
Orleans she had thought all people were hers—that only in-
dividuals mattered. But here there were sharp, unchanging
lines which seemed to matter with extraordinary power. This
one was white—that one black. Even though the “white” one
was swarthy while the “black” one might be as fair as the
whitest of the white.
And within the circle of those who were called Negroes she
[54]


FLIGHT
found duplications of the lines between the two major groups.
She in the few days she had been in Atlanta had heard enough
to know there were churches attended in the main only by
coloured people who were mulattoes or quadroons, others
only by those whose complexions were quite dark. At Mrs.
Hunter's the uniform lightness of skin had impressed itself
upon her. And when she had sought to make overtures to
Mrs. Plummer's girl, Iwilla (Mrs. Plummer had told Mrs.
Daquin proudly her daughter had a Biblical name—it was
taken from the verse, “I will arise and go unto my Father”),
Mrs. Plummer had called her child into the house and Mimi
had heard her being scolded: “How many times I got to tell
you to leave these yaller children alone? First thing you
know, you’ll be coming home saying some of them's called
you ‘black.’”
All this perplexed Mimi. She was too young and inex-
perienced to know that these people were in large part the
victims of a system which made colour and hair texture and
race a fetish. Nor did she know how all too frequently,
opportunity came in a direct ratio to the absence of pigmen-
tation. It was baffling, annoying. And so too were Jean's
criticisms of his new environment. Mimi missed the romance
of her old home, it is true, but the new scene with all its
rawness and lack of beauty intrigued and fascinated her
through its vigour and progressiveness. She began to feel a
sympathy, at first faint but growing in strength, tinged with
pity, for Jean in his unwillingness to adapt himself to newer
ways and customs.
Not that she consciously put these into words nor even into
tangible thought. She loved Jean too dearly, too whole-
heartedly for that, and any criticism of him, real or implied,
would have made her miserable for its imputation of disloy.
alty. No. It was simply that Jean was the follower of an
older day, of an age that was passing even in Louisiana, that
[55]


FLIGHT
definitely had passed here in Georgia and to an even greater
degree farther North. . . .
And Jean's efforts to find his place in the new order and to
make that place as comfortable, as little irritating as possi-
ble, met with but indifferent success. He found that he could
not with any degree of pleasure nor of comfort join in the
social activities of his business associates. They were too
vigorous, too forthright for his simple taste. He had no
puritanical streaks in his nature but the lusty laughter with
which the men greeted the stories which were current, usu-
ally of a ribald and smutty nature, at first surprised him,
then slightly nauseated him. It was the one thing he disliked
in Mr. Hunter, whom he liked better than most of the others.
He could always tell when Mr. Hunter had heard a new one
—for these stories the older man had a particular smile that
at times bordered on a leer, and a manner of portentous and
cryptic winking. The stories themselves did not so much
disgust him—he had indulged frequently in racy wit and re-
partee with his old cronies at home—it was their general
stupidity and their clinging to one theme.
Jean formed more and more the habit of spending his time
at home, despite his wife's constant urging that he go out and
“mingle more with the men and make himself more sociable.”
He read indefatigably, sitting in his room, summer and
winter, until the early hours of the morning, or until his wife
forced him to retire. She, on the other hand, berated and
criticized him much less than in those last few months before
he consented to move from New Orleans. Jean quite frankly
and with an equanimity which amazed him realized they had
grown farther apart than ever and were continuing to find
their pleasure in widely diverse fields. Mrs. Daquin, under
Mrs. Hunter's dexterous management, had been extended and
had accepted an invitation to join the Fleur-de-Lis Club.
More and more Mrs. Daquin, to her intense delight, found
[56]


FLIGHT
herself accepted into the inner circle of Negro society and
she soon was able with entire naturalness to speak pityingly
of those who were not of the elect.
She had won, too, her efforts towards religious conformity
by Jean and Mimi, though this victory had come from an
unexpected ally. She had gone, not unprotestingly, with
Jean and Mimi to one of the local Catholic churches. There
they had been refused admission in a firm and unmistakable
rebuff, amazement having been expressed that they had even
dared to think they could attend services there. Jean,
grieved, his faith shaken, had gone later to see the priest,
protesting against the refusal of admittance, but he had re-
ceived cold comfort—even his question (that was more
a protest than an interrogation) as to whether or not the
Virgin Mary blessed or withheld blessing from Catholics
whose skins were dark, remained unanswered.
That he might be forced to sit in a segregated section of the
church had occurred to Jean. Of late years that custom had
grown in popularity even in New Orleans in the churches not
attended wholly by Negroes. But that he might be refused
even admittance had been a terrific shock from which he never
completely recovered. Mrs. Daquin had said nothing, but a
faint smile which seemed to Mimi to shout exultantly: “I
told you so!” wreathed her face. Mrs. Hunter's gentle hints
that “the" church to attend was the Congregational had not
fallen on barren ground. It was not long therefore before
Sunday morning found her and Mimi and Jean in one of the
pews there. . . .
Not many months passed before Mrs. Daquin was as much
at home as though she had lived since birth in Atlanta.
Mimi, too, was accepted in time, though with reservations.
Her affection for Hilda was so apparent there was no mistak-
ing that she esteemed her above all the other girls she met.
Both of them had completed their grammar-school careers
[57]


F LIGHT
when Mimi came to Atlanta—both entered high school at
Atlanta University in the same class that fall. They walked
to school together and they walked home together. They
confided each to the other their innermost secrets, they aired
their grievances against whatever displeased either of them,
secure in the knowledge that the other would understand and
would be in complete sympathy. There came, of course, little
differences, but these soon evaporated in the warm surge of
reconciliation.
This very friendship in a manner prevented Mimi's accept-
ance into the fold of complete conformity. Mrs. Adams
was invited to all the parties and she in turn did her share
of entertaining. But always there was an air of detachment
in her social relations—she seemed merely to be going
through the motions of things which did not greatly interest
her, if indeed she did not derive a kind of quiet amusement
from the frantic efforts to out-entertain each other.
Instead of attempting to serve courses more in number and
elaborateness, to decorate her house more gorgeously than the
member of the Fleur-de-Lis Club who had entertained the last
time, Mrs. Adams served simple but well-prepared “colla-
tions,” as they were called. The sensing that they were more
attractive for their very simplicity did not serve to sweeten
the tempers of those who depended on elaborateness. This
same simplicity governed all Mrs. Adams' actions whether
in social or other relations. It had brought to her the dam-
ning reputation of being “stuck-up” and there is none other
accusation more certain to gain a measured unpopularity.
This reputation, though unfounded in fact as in the case of
her mother, had been attached to Hilda and, in turn, to her
friend, Mimi.
To about the same degree Mimi's lack of religious con-
formity militated against her. She felt a certain bitterness
against the Catholic Church for its surrender to a race prej-
[58]


FLIGHT
udice which to her seemed silly, but her animosity towards
that Church was based most largely on the fact that the sur-
render had hurt Jean. With the fortunate tendency of youth
not to bother itself too greatly about creeds and dogmas,
Mimi might quickly have forgotten or at least put into the
limbo of half-forgotten things most of the religious duties
which to her in New Orleans had seemed so natural—as
natural as eating or sleeping. Though Jean rarely mentioned
it now, Mimi knew he grieved deeply that he could not at-
tend mass—that down deep beneath the calm exterior he
presented to the world and even to his family, Jean felt the
loss keenly of church attendance. And when Mimi saw this
hurt, it caused her frequently to speak of the differences she
noticed between Catholic and Protestant devotees. Usually
these were, quite naturally, more critical of the Protestant, and
this constant reiteration of her own unconformity to local creeds
and beliefs in time caused the phrase “those Catholics” to be
instinctively synonymous with her name and Jean's. . . .
But it was the instinctive cruelty towards and jealousy of
woman to woman which created difficulties for Mimi. Some-
thing of the colourfulness of the sapphire and purple and
jade green waters round New Orleans had gone into the mak-
ing of Mimi. There was in her too something of the grace
of the languorous waves of the Gulf of Mexico as they
lapped the jagged shores of Barataria. In her too was the
luxuriousness of tropic plants bursting into startlingly vivid
and beautiful reds and yellows and greens and blues. Her
reddish hair in the sunlight was a magnet that caught and held
the eye, the mind meanwhile feasting on its brilliant decora-
tiveness.
And in combination with these reminders of tropic warmth
and colour was Mimi's air, piquant, vaguely mysterious and
seductive. Not that she was aware of all this, nor did she
do other than laugh when Hilda compared her to some
[59]


FLIGHT
other girl, always to the disparagement of the other one.
There were other pretty ones—several of them, in fact, more
beautiful than Mimi. Yet, none of them possessed the com-
bination which was hers and, not having lived in Atlanta all
her life and thus newer to the eye, Mimi without apparent
volition drew to her side most of the younger men. And the
eyes of even the older ones she drew to her, covered, if the
wife of the beholder was at his side, by a studiously casual
remark like “That little Daquin girl is certainly a pretty
child!” . . .
[60]


FLIGHT
daughter was that they're women—they can get away with
lots more than we can because they are women. No, Daquin,
you might as well let the matter drop and forget it. Protest
will do no good and you haven't a chance in the courts.” . . .
On another occasion one of Jean's associates whose skin
was brown but whose wife's was fair, assisted his own wife
in boarding a car. A crowd of whites jumped down from
the vehicle and pummelled him viciously before his wife
could explain that she too was a Negro. . . .
Jean bought for their use a horse and surrey and thereafter
they never rode in the cars. He was conscious that this was
an ineffective compromise with principle but he was happy in
that compromise in that it gave him greater peace of mind.
With such exceptions their lot was not a very difficult one.
In the stores Mrs. Daquin was not allowed to try on hats or
shoes or dresses before purchasing them and they frequently
were forced to wait until whites who had entered after they
had were served. But with time they became accustomed to
these slights and particularly when they found that with but
few exceptions these were accepted by their friends as the
expected thing, unpleasant but inevitable. “You can get used
to being hung if you're only hung often enough,” seemed to
be current philosophy, except in the cases of the younger
OIl6S. . . .
Beside their regular lives of work and play they found an
additional outlet in various affairs at the colleges which were
situated in Atlanta. There were occasional musical evenings,
now and then some speaker of note came and lectured. There
were basball and football games between the teams of the lo-
cal schools and a few with teams from institutions located in
other cities. In the local papers they read of events going on
in the outside world, some of them exciting lengthy comment
and interest, others less. General rejoicing greeted the vic-
tory of Japan over Russia, the nation of smaller men being en-
[64]


FLIGHT
thusiastically supported largely because they were a coloured
nation. “Teddy” Roosevelt was acclaimed a great friend of
the Negro despite the Brownsville affair, though to Jean it
seemed much of his popularity among the coloured people in
Atlanta was due to the fact that he was a Republican. The San
Francisco earthquake elicited a certain degree of interest and
sympathy, though, being far away, its maximum reaction usu-
ally was summed up in the remark, “Isn't that too bad!”
Twice the world thrilled to stories that men had at last
plunged through the frozen wastes of the North and come
to the top of the world. And because one of them was dis-
covered to be a liar many, many wiseacres shook their heads
portentously and opined that the other one might be lying
too. Among the younger men there were frequent discussions
of the relative merits of a promising young Negro prizefighter
named Johnson recently emerged from Texas who was achiev-
ing a considerable reputation with his fists.
One cloud that had appeared first as a tiny speck began to
grow with distressing speed during the summer of 1906 and
brought deep concern to the more thoughtful ones. By these,
certain ominous signs had been seen all through the long hot
months of the summer when nerves are frayed and tempers
sharpened to razor-blade keenness by the sultry heat. A
period of unemployment had caused a marked loafing of
whites and Negroes followed by a long series of petty crimes.
Saloons and dives and “social clubs” sprang up like mush-
rooms and throve. A bitter political campaign was waged,
its central issue the question of disenfranchisement of Ne-
groes and “Negro domination.” A play, “The Clansmen,”
a distorted picture of Reconstruction filled with venom and
hatred, came to Atlanta and stayed during this time of strain,
and whipped into fury bitterness between white and black.
Some crimes against women were reported, others were not
chronicled. A man named Turnadge committed a crime ter-
[65]


FLIGHT
rible in detail but little was said of it. Turnadge was white.
Other white men committed other crimes and the press said
little of it. Twelve or more Negroes were charged with rape
or attempted rape. Circulation-seeking newspapers brought
out “extra” after “extra,” screaming in twelve-inch head-
lines, “THIRD ASSAULT,” “FOURTH ASSAULT,” “NEGRO
ATTEMPTS TO ASSAULT MRS. MARY CHAFIN NEAR
SUGAR CREEK BRIDGE,” “ANGRY CITIZENS PURSUE
BLACK BRUTE.” It meant little at the time that later it was
to be discovered that all but two of these reports were with-
out foundation in truth.
To most of the citizens he encountered, Jean found, the
tenseness meant little. It was considered variously as a bit
embarrassing, rather unfortunate, and mostly as the slightly
aggravated condition of the usual state of affairs. But to
him, unused to the ominous rumbling which terrified him, the
situation seemed grave, very grave indeed. In the few con-
tacts he had with white people, on his daily visits to the bank
uptown, in his contacts with tradesmen and men and women on
the streets, he saw with troubled eyes the glances of suspi-
cion, of hostility, of hatred. Once on entering the bank he
stood near the desk of the cashier, who had always had a smile
and cheery word for Jean, whom he liked. Now he looked
grimly at Jean and demanded, in what was almost a snarl:
“What do you want, Daquin?”
“I came to see you about some notes, Mr. Stewart,” Jean
answered, troubled, “but—I wonder why you've changed—
you're usually so pleasant and to-day you're—why, you're—”
“There's reason enough, Daquin. You've read the papers.
Why don't you better-class Negroes do something to stop
your criminals from attacking our women?”
“We’re as bitterly opposed to attacks on women, whether
they're white ones or coloured ones, as you are, Mr. Stewart.
That is, we're opposed when they really are attacks.”
[66]


F LIGHT
“What do you mean—when they are attacks?” the cashier
demanded.
“Just what I say—how many of these attacks reported in
the papers are really attacks? They spread the story of an
alleged or a reported attack all over the front page—but
when they found the woman was mistaken or hysterical from
reading all these other wild tales, they stick it in an insignif-
icant item on the inside, if they mention it at all. There's
trouble ahead if these inflammatory stories aren't stopped,
Mr. Stewart. And it seems to me it's up to men like you
who’ve got sense to stop them—the crowd that makes up the
mob isn't going to do any thinking for itself—it never does.”
“That isn't the point, Daquin,” Stewart asserted. “You
Negroes have got to stop these real attacks!”
“There are more ways than one of looking at that,” was
Jean's troubled rejoinder. “In the first place, nearly every
one of these ‘attacks’ has on investigation been found to be
untrue. Yet, your papers are screaming madly every day
without much investigating of their stories beforehand that
more and more assaults are being committed. A second thing
is that it's up to the police and the sheriff's office to catch and
put in prison any man suspected or accused of a crime what-
ever his colour. If one of your race kills somebody or at-
tacks a woman, you don't rush around saying that it's up to
the white people to catch him—quite properly you say it's
up to the police. And a third thing—there’ve been several
attacks on coloured girls by white men of late but I haven't
seen those listed as part of the record of assaults.”
“That kind of talk won’t get you anywhere, Daquin.
You're only fooling yourself and the fact there's a certain
degree of truth in what you say only makes it the more dan-
gerous for you to be talking that way—you'd make most of
these white people mad because you have done some thinking
about the situation.”
[67]


FLIGHT
other than with her friends and with shopkeepers who care-
fully concealed their feelings, scoffed at his forebodings.
“You’re not used to anything like this and you're too easily
scared,” she laughed. “Mrs. Hunter tells me they have lots
of situations here just as delicate and they've all blown over
in time. Same as this one will blow over as soon as the
hot weather ends.” Her air of finality in citing Mrs. Hunter
as authority convinced Jean there was little need of pursuing
the subject further in that direction.
Mimi was more sympathetic but she showed by her puzzled
frown she did not comprehend his reasons for worrying.
“White people—and coloured people—you didn't used to
separate people into such definite classes before you left
New Orleans, papa Jean!” she declared, somewhat confused.
“After all, what real difference does it make? A difference
in colour, different hair, different features, but what do those
matter in the long run? Why can't people be just people
and stop all this meanness?”
“That isn't the point right now, Mimi,” he explained. “I
suppose it's silly but I'm worried—this thing's mighty seri-
ous and it may be you and I and the rest of us may see
some pretty dark scenes. Oh, why did I ever leave New Or-
leans? I'd never have had all this trouble—at least, it
wouldn't have been so terrifying—”
“It’ll blow over,” Mimi comforted him.
“Blow over”! There was that phrase of Mrs. Hunter's
again. He was miserable. He saw his old house in Louisiana,
his garden, his flowers. He could almost see his old friends,
Bernard, Pierre, André. He wished he were sitting once more
in the old café on Chartres Street, with his friends spending
long hours in comfortable, soothing conversation, sipping their
glasses of le petit gouave, that heart-warming, gently exhil-
arating concoction from old San Domingo. He could smell
the wild odours of the tropical, luxuriant flowers, the mildly
[69]


FLIGHT
intoxicating smell of the wild orange, the honeysuckle, the
roses, fragrant pines. He could close his eyes and see the
delicate pink and white of the oleanders, could hear the
soft-throated cries of the hucksters, many of them with huge
gold ear-rings and brilliantly coloured dresses, their heads
bound with gay headkerchiefs. “Belles des figues! Belles
des figues! Pralines, pistache! Pralines, Pacanes!” they
called. A violent nostalgia assailed him, its accompaniment
a bitter distaste for the harsh scenes of his new home. . . .
Long, tense days crept into anxious nights. Feverishly
busy with the making of money, men and women, white and
black, good citizens and Christians all and in their own minds
true to their own various standards, did nothing. Along
towards the middle of September a few of them began to
be disturbed. Calls were sent out for mass meetings to check
the wave of hatred and passion that rapidly was mounting.
Somnolent, apathetic city officials began to become vaguely
apprehensive. The grand jury was called to meet on the
twenty-fourth. Slowly, terribly slowly, the Gargantuan crea-
ture of public opinion began to rub its eyes sleepily and
grumblingly bestir itself. . . .
On a Saturday afternoon when September had crawled its
torrid way two-thirds into October, Mrs. Daquin took her
turn entertaining the Fleur-de-Lis Club. Jean closeted him-
self in his own room, alternately reading and taking short
cat naps. He did not want to be forced to hear the rumble
of chatter and gossip nor was he unaware of the shortness
of his wife's temper had he blunderingly impeded the smooth
running of the carefully constructed plans for the afternoon's
pleasure. Mimi and Hilda brought him his supper, which
he ate slowly as he gazed into the dusty, sere garden backing
the house next door. The leaves of the corn stalks, the
tomato plants, the cabbages were yellowed and dried, mute
appeals for saving showers.
[70]


F LIGHT
He must have fallen asleep, for it was night when Mimi
rushed into the room and shook him until he was awake.
“Come quick, papa Jean! Mrs. Daquin is sick!” she urged.
Jean rushed downstairs. All the women had gone save
Mrs. Adams, who had loosened Mrs. Daquin's corsets and
clothing.
“I think it's indigestion,” was Mrs. Adams' calm reply
to Jean's fearful questions. “Hilda's telephoning for the
doctor. You and Mimi help me get her upstairs.”
Jean was grateful for her cool command of the situation.
They got Mrs. Daquin into bed before the doctor came. He
came, examined, looked grave, then more cheerful. His orders
Were terSe.
“Keep her quiet—hot applications—give this prescription
every two hours—this one every four hours. Afraid all the
drug stores round here are closed, so you’ll have to go down
town—probably to Jacobs'—they stay open late.”
Mimi remembered the conversation with Jean as he started
to leave the house.
“Wait a minute until I get my hat. I’m going with you,”
she announced. He protested, told her she should remain
at home with Mrs. Daquin.
“Mrs. Adams and Hilda will stay. I've just asked them.”
She had returned, hat on, before he could answer. Real-
izing that further argument would be unavailing, he and Mimi
set out for the distant drug store. . . .
A hot Saturday afternoon, traditionally a half-holiday, had
brought into town hundreds of country people. Saloons
were doing a rushing business, those labelled “For White”
and those bearing signs, “For Coloured Only.” Late in the
afternoon an elderly white woman had gone to a window
to close the shutters. A Negro was passing on the sidewalk.
Her mind inflamed with the news stories she had read, she
screamed. Someone telephoned for the police. Newspapers
[71]


FLIGHT
got wind of the story, rushed “extras” on the street bear-
ing letters five inches high, “ANOTHER WOMAN AS-
SAULTED.” Before the police could reach her house, the
woman telephoned it was all a mistake—she had only been
hysterical. In the meantime, too late to be stopped, presses
had begun to rumble and roar and belch forth flaming sheets
of alarm, the ink smearing in its freshness. Others followed,
“SECOND ASSAULT,” “THIRD ASSAULT,” “FOURTH
ASSAULT.”
At first it was a gentle murmur of hatred. Then it began
to swell. Papers were snatched eagerly from panting news-
boys. Over the shoulders of each purchaser hung a group,
standing on tiptoe to grasp the story of the latest outrage.
The grumbling grew. Little flames of violent words shot
up. They grew in number. They shot higher. They com-
bined in volume until one great peal of implacable Negro-
phobia went up like the din of a continuous thunderclap,
like a pipe organist treading angrily on his foot-pedals in
dissonant roaring. The entire city was as a huge boil, packed
tight with putrescence. A pin-prick was applied, the fester-
ing, purulent tumour burst open and flung high its venom.
Spattering, smearing, befouling matter came down and
sprang, like the sown dragon's teeth, into howling, murder-
bent mobs. . . .
Jean and Mimi had noted the little knots of angry men
gathered on street corners muttering and cursing. They had
hurried past these, hoping that they might safely reach the
drug store and return home.
“I don’t like the looks of these men,” said Jean. “They're
in a nasty mood and it wouldn't take much to start trouble.”
Here and there they noticed a policeman, paunchy, helmeted,
swinging night sticks but doing little to disperse the rapidly
growing crowds. It was with a deep sigh of relief that Jean
reached the drug store. They had to wait nearly an hour
[72]


FLIGHT
while the prescriptions were being filled. Leaving the store,
they found the embers had burst into flame. A huge man,
shirt-sleeved and collarless, his eyes bloodshot and venomous,
was perched high on a box haranguing the crowd, which
swayed and eddied and shouted approval of the speaker's
remarks.
Fascinated, Jean and Mimi stood in the doorway and
watched the spectacle. “Five Points,” the intersection of five
heavily travelled streets, was rapidly becoming filled with
a milling, motley throng. Other speakers ascended hastily
improvised rostrums, the tail end of a delivery wagon, a fire
hydrant, the projecting ledge of a show-window. The move-
ment of the crowd became swifter, the blood lust was roused,
the killer was eager for the victim. . . .
A Negro was seen walking down Marietta Street, one of
the five thoroughfares focusing in Five Points, unaware
apparently of the scene he was approaching. Mimi saw him
and wanted to shout a warning to him. It would have been
fruitless—the roar was too great and her voice would have
been as the falling of a single drop of water on the shore
while near-by boomed the surf. It would have been almost
suicidal—the pack might easily have turned on them. Never-
theless she wanted to cry out to this unknown man to flee.
It was too late. One man in the crowd spied him just as
Mimi saw him, just as she uttered a little scream of terror.
Up went the roar, “There's a nigger now!”
Too late the Negro saw his danger. He turned to flee but
before he had gone many yards the pack was upon him.
Mimi saw him strike out, dodge, attempt to elude his at-
tackers. It was useless. Down he went and a great bellow
of hatred, of passion, of sadistic exultation filled his ears
as he died. Mimi covered her eyes with her hands and
pressed close to Jean as she saw the flashing jack-knives.
She was never able to tell, even in her own thoughts, what
[73]


FLIGHT
happened to her in that terrible moment. To her before that
dread day, race had been a relative matter, something that
did exist but of which one was not conscious except when
it was impressed upon one. The death before her very eyes
of that unknown man shook from her all the apathy of the
past. There flashed through her mind in letters that seared
her brain the words, “I too am a Negro!” . . .
“Come on, Mimi, we’ve got to get out of this!”
Jean's words made her uncover her face. From near-by
Decatur Street, thoroughfare of saloons and dives, of pawn-
shops and rooming-houses, of cheap restaurants and tailor
shops, there came the crash of breaking glass.
“They're breaking into the pawnshops to get weapons,”
was Jean's correct conjecture. Here—there—everywhere the
howling mobs rushed. Street cars were stopped, Negroes
pulled from them, stabbed, kicked, beaten to death. Few
shots were fired—the quarters were too close—some member
of the mob might get hurt.
A shout went up that made all others seem puny. Out of
a side street lurched a carriage drawn by two horses. On
the box there half crouched a white man. Taut reins in left
hand, in the right he held a long, winding, cruel-looking whip.
In the back crouched two frightened Negroes. On and on the
carriage swayed and rushed. The driver with one motion
lashed the foaming horses, with almost the same sweep he
swung backwards and across at the yelling men who sprang
at the carriage like starving wolves at a dangling carcass.
Shouts of pain and fury from the lashed, who fell back,
huge welts on their faces, mingled with the pounding of the
horses’ hoofs. Above it all there came a piercing yell from the
driver, an obbligato of exultation and challenge welling above
the deeper-throated rumble of the crowd. Breathlessly Jean
and Mimi followed the carriage as far as they could see it,
[74]


F LIGHT
a prayer in their hearts for the escape of the three. There
came a subtle change in the sounds growing fainter in the dis-
tance. A note of bafflement entered the deeper tones. A final
roar of disappointment told them the carriage had escaped
with its human burdens, and happiness filled them.
Clutching Mimi's hand, Jean cautiously sped from doorway
to doorway as the crowd, lessened by those who had gone in
pursuit of the carriage, thinned out. Across the broad expanse
of Marietta Street they scurried. Once they crouched in a
doorway while a crowd sped in pursuit of a crippled Negro
bootblack who hopelessly sought to distance his pursuers. He
fell, the mob atop him. Mimi screamed. A member of the
mob heard her, turned and thrust his face into Jean's. He
snatched off Jean's hat and peered into his face in the dim
light.
In terror, Jean lapsed into French.
“Mon Dieu!” he cried, in dismay.
“’Scuse me, brother! I thought you were a nigger!”
apologized Jean's tormentor, handing Jean his hat. . . .
On they sped, down Peachtree Street, to Auburn Avenue,
down Auburn Avenue to Pryor Street. There, as they started
to cross, a shout welling into a roar made them draw back
into the shelter of a doorway. Up Pryor Street sped a young,
well-dressed Negro. Inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard
he gained on his pursuers. One by one he left them behind
until only one was near him. Here was one who ran as swiftly
as the intended victim. Mimi and Jean saw the Negro glance
over his shoulder. From his pocket they saw him take a
pocket-knife and open it. In so doing he lost a few feet.
As the two racing figures were abreast the hiding-place of
Jean and Mimi, the pursuer lunged forward, clutching at the
shoulders of the Negro to drag him to the earth. Twisting,
turning, the Negro plunged the knife to its hilt in the
[75]


/ FLIGHT
breast of his pursuer, who gasped, groaned and ludicrously
sank to the ground. Without pausing, the Negro turned down
Auburn Avenue and soon was lost in its shadows. . . .
The mob rushed up, gathered around the victim, peered
indecisively down the street where the Negro had fled, dis-
cussed and voted against following him as the street led to
the Negro section. A cry went up. Another victim had been
sighted. Off it sped its death cry again in full volume. Down
the street and home scurried Jean and Mimi, weak with fright
and the horror of the scenes they had witnessed. . . .
All during Sunday and Monday the three remained at home.
Reports came to them of bloody fighting in South Atlanta,
of Negroes in despair fighting bravely and successfully to
check the mobs, of the coming of troops. The ghastly epi-
sode ended, slowly the town returned to its normal state. To
Mimi there came whenever she remembered it a chill terror
that almost became unconsciousness. In the still hours of the
night she would awaken from a sound sleep screaming with
terror which turned on awakening into hysterical sobbing
until Jean came to her and comforted her. The healing
brought alone by time lessened her spasms, but many days
passed before she could smile again.
[76]


CHAPTER WI
IMI dated thereafter her consciousness of being col-
M oured from September, nineteen hundred and six.
For her the old order had passed, she was now defi-
nitely of a race set apart. At times this created within her
moods of introspection which veered dangerously near the
morbid. At other times it inculcated a deep and passionate
scorn of those who were her own and her race's oppressors.
She chuckled when she read or heard of or saw their imbecili-
ties, their shortcomings. She looked with scorn on their pro-
vincialism, their stupidity, their ignorance. Conversely, she
found herself magnifying the virtues, the excellencies of her
own people and, at the same time, she tried to explain away
through a process of subtle sophistry all their faults.
In time the continuation of these practices began to work
a decided and noticeable change in her outlook on life in gen-
eral. She found herself in time thinking of practically all
things, it mattered not what their nature nor how remotely
connected with race or colour problems they were, in terms of
race or colour. This distorted vision seriously handicapped
her but she was unaware of it for it coincided so completely
with the viewpoints of her friends. “Poor white trash” became
the ultimate of scorn, of contumely, of disparagement. In
marked contrast with her former jovial and friendly manner
she became almost malicious in little cruelties to tradesmen,
to hucksters, to clerks in stores who happened to be white.
In these episodes she took acute delight in the fact that her
cream-coloured skin, her Gallic name and her French accent
[77]


F LIGHT
gave her immunities she might not have possessed had she been
more distinctly Negro.
When first she had come to Atlanta she had been cap-
tiously critical of the foibles and petty vices of her new
friends. She had recoiled from their bearing of tales, their
tearing down of reputations on scanty and imperfect reports of
alleged shortcomings. She had hated the obsession of the
men on the making of money, the vying of woman with
woman in dress, in grandeur of entertainment and of homes.
But with the passing of years and particularly after the scenes
she had witnessed in the rioting, she began to take these as a
matter of course and she found they no longer shocked nor an-
noyed her. She did not know if she were becoming inured
to the new order, if she were succumbing to the new point of
view.
Her association with Jean and the lack of contact in her
youth with children of her own age had given her a ma-
turity of mind far in advance of her years. She was pained
now when she realized that her talks with Jean were becoming
more and more infrequent and when they did come they were
somewhat less understanding than they had been before. Her
sense of loyalty kept her from thinking consciously that Jean
was being rapidly left behind by the procession of events, that
she who once had seen life eye to eye with him was far beyond
him. But though she would not admit it, nevertheless it was
true and therein lay the reason why both he and she sought less
and less for the old comradeship which had meant so much to
both.
Jean, however, saw with clear eye the changes being
wrought in Mimi. Her new attitude towards race grieved him
though he fully understood the reasons for that change. He
knew that a blind race obsession would materially arrest her
development and he deplored its rapid growth. He knew that
[78]


FLIGHT
argument and direct attack would be of little avail—Mimi's
face on that memorable and terrible night had revealed to
him the bitter travail of soul which was going on underneath.
Nor would he have argued against her feeling of hatred
towards the whites with whom she came into infrequent
contact, had he felt that good would have come of it.
He sought instead to counterbalance it through carefully
casual remarks regarding the genuine worth of this man or
that one, to place in Mimi's hands, or where she would surely
come upon them, articles, newspapers, books which would fill
her mind with beauty and truth. Once it was an excellent
translation of the short stories of Balzac. Another time it was
“The Way of All Flesh.” Or a Thomas Hardy novel, though
he kept from her “Tess”—that, he felt, was too—well, a little
too advanced for one of Mimi's tender years. He did not
know that before they had left New Orleans Mimi had spent
many hours locked in her own room while she surreptitiously
devoured (almost literally, her nose was so close to the pages)
the tragedy of Tess. Nor did he know she had read every one
of the morocco-bound volumes of Maupassant he had so care-
fully placed on the topmost shelf. Now Mimi read (or re-
read) the volumes he gave her, she listened to his long talks
and she answered the questions he at the most unlikely mo-
ments would ask her about her reading, for she knew it would
have given him pain had she not done so.
And Jean's strategy was not wholly a failure. It gave Mimi
a sense of almost malicious delight when she found in class-
rooms that she was more or less familiar with a sonnet of
Shakespeare, that she knew who Chaucer was, that Tennyson
was something more than the shadowy figure of a man who
had “written poetry or painted pictures or something.” Only
with Hilda did she refrain from stressing, ever so gently, the
advantages she possessed in having chosen a father like Jean.
[79]


FLIGHT
With Hilda she shared the stories that gave her pleasure, with
Jean's permission she loaned Hilda books and therein was built
another link between them. . . .
To the trumpet-heralded tune of the martial “God of our
fathers, whose almighty hand . . . ,” Mimi and Hilda, clad in
white, filmy dresses identical of material and design with
thirty others, marched forth one sunshiny June morning when
the new century had reached its eleventh year. In their hands
were clutched rolls of paper, each tied with a bow of ribbon.
The required tasks for completion of the normal school course
had been done, the seal of official approval was bestowed.
There were presents and congratulations, parties and sighs of
relief that it was all over.
Jean sat in the throng of parents and relatives in the seats
reserved for them, his eyes moist as he watched his tiny Mimi
pass another milestone between that day when he had anx-
iously hovered outside Margot's door and womanhood. As
the music rolled its sonorous way upward, growing more
and more faint as the huge chorus followed the graduates
from the chapel, he lived once more the twenty short years
that had so miraculously sped by on winged feet.
It was as though it were yesterday he had stood waiting
eagerly for some word from Margot's room. As he had heard
her agony he had hated this new-comer who was causing his
Margot to descend into the shadows. When finally he had been
admitted to the room he had rushed to the bed, refusing even to
look at the intruder, and had fallen on his knees weeping bit-
ter tears of suffering and relief. He had taken a solemn oath
Margot would never go through the ordeal again, an oath
which later the doctor had confirmed as necessary—another
child would have killed Margot. . . . The years of happiness
the three of them had spent together came back to him. The
first step, the first word, the first tooth. Long walks wander-
ing through the old winding streets of New Orleans, little
[80]


F LIGHT
fat hands clutching his and Margot's fingers. The first days
of school. Margot's illness and death. A sharp pain went
through him that shook him like a convulsion.
“What's the matter? Sick?” inquired Mrs. Daquin. “No-
I’m all right, he whispered, resenting the intrusion into his
reverie of her who had come after Margot.
The years of indecision, days followed by lonely nights
when he had sought to achieve oblivion in the mottled green
wineglass. Mary. The coming to Atlanta. Years of discon-
tent. Years of unhappiness. He was better off, materially, of
course. He had made money, it's true, but he wondered if he
would have even held his job had it not been backed by Mary's
father with his money and his influence. Good Lord, he had
been slowly achieving the respectable status of solid citizenry
under the combined urging and guidance of Mary and Mr.
Robertson. And what was it all worth? Was any of this
petty striving and scrambling worth half the things it took out
of you?
And Mimi–she had grown away from him, too. There was
between them of course the old affection—he never doubted
that for a minute. But the little ways that revealed the bond
beneath, they were becoming fewer each passing year. Oh,
well, she is young, he thought, while I'm old and away behind
the new generation. He was proud of her, nevertheless. As
she marched from the chapel and passed successively the long,
narrow windows, the sun streaming in had made her beauti-
ful hair burst into a wild, exotic, flaming red beauty. It
stood out against the blacks and browns of the heads of the
other girls like a radiant setting sun in a sky of rain clouds.
He was happy she was so pretty—he hoped she'd be married
before he joined Margot. He had watched the little ways,
the growth of tiny revealments of the warm blood which
coursed beneath Mimi's laughing exterior. He was afraid,
terribly afraid, of leaving her alone. Alone? Yes, he con-
[81]


FLIGHT
cluded, that's exactly what would be the case if anything hap-
pened to me. Mary and Mimi would never agree were he
not there. . . .
“Come on, Jean,” Mary roused him. “It’s all over. . . .
Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Lewis? Yes, it's sad, in a way, to
see our little Mimi become a young woman right before your
very eyes. Yes, she did look nice. . . and she's a dear—
Mr. Daquin and I adore her.—Oh, thank you so much, Mr.
Thompson.—Where's Mrs. Thompson?—There she is! My
dear, that was a beautiful gift you sent. I was just thank-
ing your husband for it but I want to thank you both. . . .”
Here, there, everywhere Mrs. Daquin nodded or flung a
cheerful, religiously proper phrase. Jean and Mimi owe all
this to me, she was thinking. It was I who brought them into
a civilized community. . . .
It was that summer that Carl Hunter came home. Mr.
Hunter told Jean why.
“That boy's been there at school all these years, spending
money and having a good time. I told him if he flunked any
more of his studies he would have to come home and work.
I guess he thought I was fooling but he'll see whether I am
or not. Either he's going to come back here and work or
else I’m through with him.”
“Aren't you a little hard on the boy?” Jean ventured to
inquire. “He’s young yet—hasn't found himself—he'll come
around in time. . . .”
“Come around?” Mr. Hunter snorted. “He’s twenty-three
now, and when I was his age I had been working for six
years. No, I'm through coddling him and he's got to strike
out for himself or go under. . . .”
It was at a picnic late in June that Mimi saw Carl again.
She remembered the curt manner in which he had greeted her
at the party years before and she found on seeing him again
that she still resented the cavalier way in which he had acted.
[82]


F LIGHT
She determined to treat him with the same coolness and lack
of interest. As he spied her and Hilda a three-piece orches-
tra began to play in the covered pavilion.
“Hello,” he casually greeted them both. Mimi stiffened,
it was the same word he had used five years before.
“How do you do?” she questioned but in a tone that said
plainly she did not expect nor did she want an answer to her
inquiry.
Carl grinned.
“My! You're upstagy. Will you dance with me?”
“Thanks, no. You'd better dance with Hilda,” was Mimi's
answer as she turned away.
Hilda had stood there, saying nothing, but fighting to keep
her eyes free from tears. She felt the electrical current that
flashed between the two of her friends—heavily charged with
antagonism—but Hilda was too wise to let that ill feeling re-
assure her. His five years' absence had not changed Carl—
she knew he cared no more for her now than he did then.
And here was Mimi, the only girl with whom she had ever
felt completely happy, the girl she loved passionately, catch-
ing and holding Carl's interest and attention. Hilda knew
Mimi was not doing so deliberately. She knew Mimi too
well to believe that. She knew, too, Mimi would rather have
done almost anything than hurt her. Despite these reassur-
ances of herself Hilda felt the first bitterness in her heart
against her friend, the first twinges of jealousy. Her pride
was hurt, it was true, but beneath that and far deeper was
the pain caused by the sudden realization that Carl had never
been, was not now, and never would be interested in her. She
wanted to cry, to dash madly through the woods near-by, to
get away from everybody and everything and cry until no ,
more tears would come. #.
All this raced through her mind at Mimi's words. She
smiled bravely.
[83]


FLIGHT
“No-no. I don't want to dance,” she lied cheerfully.
“You two go ahead.”
She watched them leave trying hard to keep from herself the
certainty that her best and dearest friend had created in an in-
stant, with two or three meaningless words, an interest which
she had hoped and dreamed she would arouse. It was hard
—terribly hard. Consciously, she held Mimi blameless.
But underneath it was a bitterness, a feeling almost of nausea,
a pain that made her think of the Spartan youth smiling while
his abdomen was being gnawed underneath his tunic or shirt
or whatever they wore in those days. The figure gave her a
bit of cold comfort. She toyed with the idea, turning it over
and over in her mind as she went and sat silent with her
mother. . . .
Mimi was wholly unaware of the emotions she and Carl had
roused in Hilda. She knew of Hilda's carefully shielded affec-
tion for him, but she had been so absorbed in her own reac-
tions towards him she had neither noticed the expression on
Hilda's face during the brief episode nor had she caught the
too elaborately casual way in which Hilda had urged her to
dance with Carl. As she walked with him towards the pa-
vilion all her old resentment against him surged through her.
She detested his cool and aloof superiority, his calm assump-
tion that she would gladly dance with him. Carl too was si-
lent. His thoughts were of this girl who was Mimi, yet was
not the Mimi he had only casually noticed before. Her flam-
ing hair intrigued him, he had always loved that torch-like
shade of gold and red. And she had a temper, too. That was
fine—he liked folks to show some spirit.
They danced. Mimi loved to dance. She found her-
self forgetting her resentment, she had to keep reminding her-
self that she was angry. And Carl did dance well. No step-
ping awkwardly all over her feet as did most of the other
boys. The big bass fiddle moaned. The violin chirped.
[84]


FLIGHT
The mandolin pertly strummed. Every few minutes the play-
ers joined in the song. From near at hand came the smells
of meat being barbecued. With it mingled the fragrancy of
pines and the shout of children. It was going to be hard to
remain aloof.
The music stopped. Its spell broken, she found her re-
sentment rising. But Carl only stood and grinned happily at
her.
“That's the best dance I ever had,” he announced.
“How many times and to how many different girls have you
said that?” she countered.
“Many, many times and to countless girls! But I meant it
each time I said it.”
At any rate he didn't protest he had never said such a
thing before.
“Shall we sit over there and talk? I'd like to,” he asked,
simply.
They sat down and watched the crowd. Over near the
pavilion sat a little cluster of middle-aged women, heads close
together but not so close that they missed anything going on
around them.
“The anvil chorus commences,” Carl commented, nodding
his head at the group. “The old tabbies will now proceed
to dissect every soul around here.”
“Oh, they mean no real harm. Why bother about them?
That's about all they care about,” Mimi easily remarked.
“Why? The hit dog yelps. They've begun again on me
right where they left off when I went away to school nearly
six years ago. I am discovering that I'm an extremely worth-
less fellow—I smoke cigarettes, I don't see much use in go-
ing to church and listening to a lot of platitudes about re-
ligion mixed with bum philosophy and worse science—the di-
rect opposite of most of the things I learned in school. I
haven't sense enough to listen to it and keep my mouth shut—
[85]


FL I G HT
I go around mouthing my own disagreement with a lot of
ignorant preachers!”
“Why go to the trouble of expressing your own opinions?
Why not ignore the things that annoy you by their falseness?
It would be much easier—”
“Ignore them? Lord, I’ve tried a thousand times and just
when I think I’ve tied my tongue, out pops an objection and
I'm in hot water again. My dad's disgusted with me—he
says I’m a conceited, useless young fool and I'm more than
half-way inclined to believe he's right. He's yanked me out
of college 'cause I flunked math and physics again even though
I did fairly well in languages and literature and one or two
other things. He says I’ve got to go to work in the insurance
business or he's going to wash his hands of me.”
“What makes you so restless—makes you kick against the
traces all the time?” Mimi found herself taking delight in
siding with Mr. Hunter against Carl.
“I don't know,” Carl answered, a faint note of bafflement,
almost of despair, creeping into his voice. “All my life I’ve
been just what you called me—a kicker. I’ve tried to con-
form—but all the time I find myself saying: ‘Is that so?'
when some greybeard starts to lecture me. And most of the
things that everybody accepts as axiomatic, as truths never
to be questioned, seem to me false and absolutely without
value. In college I ran across a passage one day from
Spinoza that fits it exactly where he says that “truths are the
falsehoods grown hoary with age.’”
“You’re just pessimistic—you'll settle down in time,” coun-
selled Mimi, finding herself interested in spite of herself.
Carl picked up her words.
“Pessimistic! Settle down! I’ve heard those words with
variations a thousand times! Why should I settle down? If
I’d only work like a slave for ten or fifteen years, make some
money, marry some respectable but dull girl who'd have a lot
[86]


F LIGHT
“You’re exaggerating—you're letting a handful give you
an obsession that puts the same stamp on all of them,” she
protested. “There are lots of women and men who’d fit into
neither of the classes you've given.”
“I know it—there are lots of folks like Mrs. Adams, for
example, and Hilda, but the trouble is they’re the kind who
attend to their own affairs. It's this other kind that sets the
example and they're the ones who do the talkng you’ve got
to listen to. . . . Say, I guess we'd better not sit here too
long or they'll begin talking about you.”
“Let 'em,” retorted Mimi, and she was rewarded by his
smile of thanks.
“Nope. You can't afford it. But you're the only person
I know I could have talked to like this and who'd have under-
stood. . . .”
Hilda sat beside her mother, silent for a long time.
Seldom did her eyes leave Mimi and Carl. Though she could
not hear what they were saying, she knew from the absorbed,
eager way they were talking they had found some subject of
deep mutual interest. To her their blissful ignoring of others
was as excruciating as though red-hot irons were being
applied to her own flesh. At first she furiously rejected the
thought that Mimi was deliberately seeking to attract Carl.
As the distant conversation continued she began to toy idly
with the notion, turning it over and over in her mind, though
it pained her, much as one will constantly probe a sore tooth
with one's tongue.
Then she hugged the belief closely to her, firm in the con-
viction Mimi was maliciously trying to take Carl—her, Hilda's,
Carl—away from her. She knew this wasn't true, she hated
herself for her distrust of her friend. But back she went each
time to that same distrust which bordered dangerously near
hatred. It was like meeting a person afflicted with some facial
[88]


FLIGHT
or bodily affliction, a hare-lip or a glass eye, determining not to
notice the deformity, yet fascinatedly unable to keep one's
gaze from returning to the very thing one determined not to
watch.
Hilda was all the more ashamed of her feeling toward Mimi
because, so far as Carl knew, there was no reason why Hilda
should have any claim upon him. There had never been
any word of love between them, he had always been rather
fond of her in an off-hand way, had called her, as long as
she could remember, “Little Sister.” She hated the term not
alone because it seemed to her banal but more because of
the mild affection it implied, vastly inferior in intensity to
her own emotion. Reason, however, plays but small part
when one's love is concerned, thought Hilda, and she returned
to her brooding. . . .
“It seems to me you're making a mistake,” Mimi meanwhile
was saying to Carl. “You keep harping on the way the women
here gossip—that's no practice peculiar only to Atlanta and
the folks you and I know. Women do that everywhere, it
seems to me, and I often think men do more gossiping than
women. Does it ever occur to you there are a lot of things
on the other side of the shield?”
“That's the only reason I came back here,” Carl eagerly
replied, the look of morbid unrest changing quickly to one
of alert cheerfulness. “When I get most pessimistic about
our own folks all I need to cheer me up is to look at un-
happiness of white people. You ever notice that no matter
how hard the luck he may be in, the Negro can laugh and
sing and forget all his worries? They call it shiftlessness
and laziness but, Lord, when I see the terribly unhappy way
these white people live, so busy making money and keeping
‘the nigger in his place, I think we're mighty well off. Say,
would you like to go with me sometime to a camp-meeting
[89]


FLIGHT
or some of these other places where you’ll see the thing
that's kept the Negro from being wiped out—this thing they
call “spirit’ or “soul” of the race?”
“I’d love to,” answered Mimi as they walked back towards
where Hilda was sitting. Hilda was able to manage a smile
but Mimi noticed all during the day that she was strangely
silent and aloof. The first coolness of consequence during
their friendship had come between them. Mimi was at first
puzzled and wondered what might have caused it. Then she
remembered Hilda's shy admissions of her interest from
childhood in Carl. Mimi knew then, or rather she sensed,
the reason for Hilda's attitude. Mimi said nothing to her,
knowing the unwisdom of mentioning the subject and fearing
that the breach might be widened if she spoke of it. And,
being human, Hilda's pouting irritated her.
“She's silly,” thought Mimi, “getting angry with me simply
because Carl and I talked for a few minutes. If that's the kind
of friend she is Mimi did not complete the thought but
she felt vaguely amused and annoyed at Hilda. At the same
time she looked forward to talking with Carl again. He was
different. . . .
[90]


CHAPTE R W II
she saw around her than the song, the laughter, the
deep religious faith and the spontaneous humanity of
the people of whom she was now a part. In New Orleans she
had been stirred by the music which had a distinctive Negro
note but which had been influenced to a definite extent by
French songs that made it a sort of Africanized French.
Here she felt much more vividly the rhythmic surge and
sweep of the Negro music untouched by other influences—the
ecstatic pouring forth of melodies that often were not melo-
dies but a wild and intoxicating thing that made little chills
run up and down her spine and filled her eyes with tears.
With Carl she came upon new phases of this life in out-of-the-
way places which had hitherto been unknown to her. She
began to see and understand the deep spirituality which lay
back of this people of hers, to comprehend the gifts which
had enabled them to withstand oppression which would long
since have crushed a weaker race.
The day when a convict gang began to repair the street in
front of their home was one Mimi never forgot. She awoke
hearing a wild, plaintive, poignantly simple melody so
strange she thought herself yet asleep. Drawn by the music,
she dressed hastily and hurried to see from whence it came.
In the street a strange sight met her eyes. A crowd of Negro
convicts, clad in the broad-striped and ill-fitting garb of
rough material, huge balls of iron attached to their ankles by
heavy chains, were tearing up the street with synchronized
strokes of their pickaxes. Up and down the sidewalks strode
T o Mimi there was no more fascinating thing in the life
[91]


FLIGHT
the guards, sawed-off shotguns on their shoulders. One of
these was a stalwart fellow with stooped shoulders, unshaven,
his mouth stained by the tobacco he constantly chewed.
Another was of shorter and stockier build, equally unshaven
and tobacco-stained, one eye missing, the empty socket
shrunken until it gave his face a curiously unbalanced and
evil look.
Up and down the guards strode, keeping ever-watchful eyes
upon their charges, who worked and sang, apparently in
blissful ignorance of guards or toil or any external thing.
Occaionally one would stop for a drink of water brought
by a remarkably ragged young Negro who nearly all the time
was playing when he was most needed. The thirsty one
would dawdle, invent all sorts of ingenious methods of de-
laying, take as long as he could in assuaging his thirst. If
the operation consumed too much time there would come a
warning from one of the guards, ominous, threatening, but
shaken off as lightly as the water from the proverbial duck.
The convicts were of all shades and sizes and shapes. In
the awkward garb they were a ludicrous, ill-assorted lot.
Some there were with the shifty, roving eyes of tricksters.
Others wore on their faces the hall-mark of the criminal of
dangerous type. The faces of a few of these bore livid scars
of varying lengths gained by knifings in desperate fights.
But to Mimi most of the men were kindly of expression, were
obviously those arrested and convicted on petty charges be-
cause the city needed them or men like them to work its
StreetS. -
There was one item only in which this motley crowd was
as one. A stalwart Negro with a ringing barytone led them
in the song which had awakened Mimi. On and on he sang,
verse after verse of a wildly sweet and simple song, joined
in the chorus by the others. Like the beat of a giant metro-
nome there came a grunting “Hunh!” as the shining points of
[92]


FLIGHT
She was afraid she would not have been that optimistic—she
doubted that she could have used song even as an opiate to
forget hard circumstance as these men were doing. She mar-
velled at their toughness of fibre which seemed to be a racial
characteristic, which made them able to live in the midst of
a highly mechanized civilization, enjoy its undoubted advan-
' tages, and yet keep free that individual and racial distinctive-
ness which did not permit the surrender of individuality to the
machine.
In slavery it had kept them from being crushed and exter-
minated as oppression had done to the Indian. In freedom it
had kept them from becoming mere cogs in an elaborately or-
ganized machine. Some people called it shiftlessness, laziness,
inherent racial inferiority. Mimi herself at times had heard
these charges made and frequently she had believed them and
had been ashamed of them, especially during the years she had
lived in Atlanta and particularly since that terrible night dur-
ing the riot. The forced growth of her race-conscious attitude
had accelerated this shamedness of her people's apparent lack
of assimilation by industrialism—now she began to feel glad
that this was so.
She wished she could make up her mind just what she
would have them be. When she listened to Mr. Hunter and
the type of hustling, progressive, acquisitive men which he
represented, she doubted seriously the wisdom of the Negro's
doing anything other than acquire wealth, forge ahead in
business and commerce and manufacture as many of them
were doing. But when she talked with Carl or, more strongly,
when she heard Negroes sing or laugh, she wondered which
road would lead to greater happiness.
On Communion Sundays she went through the same process
of ratiocination. The passing of the bread and wine after
the sermon, the bread hard and tasteless, the wine in a huge
silver cup passed from hand to hand, was followed always
[94]


FLIGHT
by a silent prayer ending with the singing of a Spiritual,
“Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” She
never forgot the emotions which the song created within her
as plaintive, eerily sweet, stirring verse after verse winged
its way through the small church and lost itself among the
age-stained rafters. For years afterward the song made her
imagine she had pains in her neck and back, for the song
was always sung bent forward in prayer. It was with this
weariness that she associated the terrifyingly real agony of
Jesus which the words evoked. “Were You There When
They Nailed Him to the Tree?” “When They Pierced Him
in the Side?” “When He Bowed His Head and Died?”
“When They Laid Him in the Tomb?”
Verse after verse told with terrible inevitableness the grim
story of His agony and sacrifice and to Mimi she lived each
time she heard the song the tortures of the Crucified One. Al-
ways she longed for them to come to the verses of hope and
happiness, when they rolled away the stone, when He rose from
the dead. The rising and falling “Oh-oh-oh–o 39
which preceded the wail, “Sometimes it causes me to tremble—
tremble—tremble,” changed now from dolour and pity and
pain to an exultant, happy paean of exuberant joy in the resur-
rection. Always Mimi was glad to reach the open air out-
side—the song did too many things to her down inside. Af-
terwards she felt as though she had been the victim of some
peculiar metempsychosis—that during the minutes of the song
her soul had taken flight from her own body to that of some
other rarer, more sentient, more delicately strung being of in-
finite beauty and understanding, to return only when the spell
had been broken.
The other spirituals worked spells upon her of varied kinds.
Carl took her frequently to out-of-the-way churches, some of
them housed in miserably poor, ramshackle edifices, others
in more pretentious buildings. In them all she found that
[95]


FLIGHT
deep earnestness, that abiding faith and hope and patience
which she found herself able more and more to understand.
Humble, simple folk most of the worshippers were, with envy
and malice and smallness like all other humans, but blessed
with that rare gift of lifting themselves emotionally and spir-
itually far, far above their material lives and selves. She
was filled with inarticulate rage when she sensed all too often
that the preacher was far inferior to his flock, that he played
upon their emotions and fears and hopes only to earn for
himself a comfortable livelihood free from too much toil.
These leeches, fattening on the sacrifice of washerwomen and
other humble ones who worked terrifically hard to earn their
small wage, stirred in Mimi and Carl the desire to wreak
some sort of vengeance upon them. Their rage usually re-
sulted in avoiding such churches and there were many to
which they never went a second time for this reason. Mimi
soon was convinced she had found an accurate measuring-
rod of worth in Negro preachers—the worse the preacher, the
longer the coat he wore.
But they did not confine their visits to churches. Carl took
her to parties where usually to the music of a three or four-
piece orchestra of strings they danced or watched others dance
with a lissom grace and abandon that intoxicated them like
old, rare wines. Among all sorts and classes of their own
people they rambled, oblivious of the criticism that came to
them occasionally. The storm was rising though they did not
know it. It broke with disturbing fury when one night Carl
suggested they go to what he termed a “honky-tonky” dance.
To Mrs. Daquin's rather sharp inquiry regarding her destina-
tion, Mimi answered shortly that that was her own affair, and
she thought no more of the matter at the time.
The dance was held in a small, poorly lighted and venti-
lated hall. The floor was so crowded they did not attempt
to dance but sat and watched the others as they somewhat
[96]


FLIGHT
“Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced that flo' frum side to middle.
Throwed away his crutch an' hopped it, what's rheumatics 'gainst a
fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los’ his grace,
Had to take bofe feet an’ hold 'em, so’s to keep ’em in deir place.
An' de Christuns an’ de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo’,
Dat I don't see how dey's pahted ef de trump had chonced to blow.”
She smiled appreciatively at the quotation.
“It does just that to you,” she remarked. “I’m seeing bet-
ter every day just what you mean.” . . .
It was not chance that caused Mrs. Plummer and Mrs.
King to see Mimi and Carl as they left the hall. Always they
took a short cut homewards from prayer meeting which car-
ried them past the two-storied brick building which housed
on its top floor the hall.
“Look there, Mis’ King!” whispered Mrs. Plummer. “Ain’t
that that Day-quinn girl with that Carl Hunter coming outa that
joint?”
“It’s her, sho's you born,” Mrs. King assured her. “I told
you she'd bear watching. Playing off respectable and going
in such places—”
“That's just what I say,” eagerly put in Mrs. Plummer, de-
termined that her friend should not get ahead of her in the
discovery made by her own sharp eyes. “An' her ma's such
a good woman—though they tell me she ain't her own ma,
only her step-ma. But you remember I tol’ you befo' they
come here you couldn't depen’ on these here Cath’lics—I'm a
good Methodist and I ain't got much use for Baptists but
they're regular Christians, anyhow Mrs. Plummer shook
with quick breaths, the combined result of her eagerness and
the speed at which Mrs. King was hurrying down the street
so that she could keep the couple ahead within sight.
“That girl's headed straight for trouble—carrying on like
that!” Mrs. King affirmed. “Hurry up, can't you? I want
to see where they’re going now!”
[98]


FLIGHT
“Ain’t I hurryin’ as fast's I can?” Mrs. Plummer grum-
bled. “And ain't I as anxious as you to follow 'em? Oh!
They’ve gone in her house,” she complained, a note that
closely approximated disappointment in her tone. The cha-
grin was deepened a minute later when she saw Carl leave
and turn down the street towards his own home. . . .
It was Hilda who first told Mimi of the talk that was being
spread about her and Carl. Mrs. Daquin had heard it, too,
and had spoken to Jean about it, demanding that he forbid
Mimi from seeing Carl again. This Jean had hesitated about
doing. He trusted Mimi implicitly and he was fond of Carl.
He had liked him ever since the day on which Mr. Hunter
had confided in Jean his disappointment at Carl's failure to
show a keener interest in the insurance business.
With Hilda it had been different. When the story put
into circulation by the Mesdames Plummer and King had first
come to her, she had undergone a variety of emotions. First
was indignation against those who dared say anything against
Mimi. She resented, too, any disparagement of Carl for
whom her affection, unexpressed though it yet remained, had
grown instead of decreased since he had begun to show so
deep an interest in Mimi.
And, being human, she found herself just a little bit glad
this had come to them. She had two reasons for this feeling,
the first of them being summed up in the words, “It serves them
right!” Had Hilda cared less for Mimi and Carl, her momen-
tary elation on hearing that they were being talked about would
have been far slighter, if indeed she had felt the emotion at all.
The very intensity of her passionate love for them both made
her capable of greater cruelty, a vindictiveness that bordered
on gloating over their descent into disfavour. A second reason
for her fleeting satisfaction was wrapped in the possibility
that through some means, she knew not what, there might
come a break in the friendship between Carl and Mimi.
[99]


TLIGHT
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FLIGHT
Then she would, if the fates were kind, gain the interest and
perhaps later the deeper affection for herself which she was
sure Carl was lavishing on Mimi. Who can tell? she re-
flected; stranger things than that have happened.
As soon as this emotion became a conscious one, Hilda furi-
ously rejected it as treachery of the basest kind to her friends.
Filled with remorse, she rushed to see Mimi, fearing a return
of the unworthy feeling. Her task there was made less easy
by the somewhat cool manner in which Mimi greeted her.
A very decided chilliness had entered into their hitherto warm
relations which they both very distinctly dated from that
day of the picnic early in the summer. Hilda through an es-
sential honesty that governed all she did or thought found
herself unable to act towards Mimi with the old cordiality
and, to save both of them embarrassment, had stayed away
from Mimi as much as she could. Mimi noticed this change
and wondered what had caused it. Waguely she felt it was
due to her own friendship with Carl but she could not see
why this should affect Hilda—it was only a friendship and
nothing more. She had become vexed with Hilda and hurt
that Hilda by her actions had shown there was a certain dis-
trust of Mimi's loyalty. Thus the breach had widened and
the intense pride of the two had kept each from making any
advance that might have closed it.
The two girls faced each other, praying for an opening
while they talked of little and unimportant things which
served, rather ineffectually, as a mask for their real feelings.
Ineffectually, for both knew the other was eager for some
chance phrase, some little thing, which might put them at
ease. Five—ten—fifteen minutes passed. They still talked
of inconsequentialities. The air was becoming more tense.
They each longed, ached desperately, for some way out of the
difficult situation between them. Hilda began to wish she had
[100]


F LIGHT
not come, to think of excuses for leaving, her mission un-
fulfilled.
It was Mimi who in desperation and uneasiness broke the
spell.
“You’ve been acting queerly all summer, Hilda,” she chal-
lenged. “Why have you acted so?” She hated herself for
the awkward way in which she had spoken, the almost bel-
ligerent note in her voice when she had intended to speak with
utmost casualness.
“Why?” Hilda echoed. “Don’t you know why?”
“No-I can’t see— Has it anything to do with Carl?”
she blurted out, knowing, as she spoke, it had wholly to do
with Carl.
Hilda flushed and twisted her hands. Now that it was out,
she felt a sense of nakedness, of being stripped bare and forced
to walk through crowded streets, as she had often dreamed—
a dream that always awoke her with fright. Even to her
mother, close as she was to her, and to Mimi she had never
dared reveal the extent of her love for Carl. A natural shy-
ness and a fear of being made or thought ridiculous had
forced her to keep her real feeling to herself. Now that Mimi
had put it into words, she wished fervently she had kept to
her former secretiveness. Not knowing the extent to which
Carl's and Mimi's friendship had developed, she felt she had
laid herself open to ridicule. Her perturbation was answer
enough for Mimi.
“But why have you acted as you have?” she pursued the
inquiry. “You of all people ought to know there's nothing
between Carl and me—”
Hilda silenced her with a raising of her hand.
“Tell me—truthfully—Mimi–is that true?”
Her tone was so earnest, so appealing and fraught with
apprehension, Mimi was startled.
[101]


F LIGHT
“Of course I am telling you the truth,” she answered, irri-
tation creeping into her voice despite her efforts to keep it
out. “Don’t be silly, Hilda. And you might at least have
trusted me.”
“I have trusted you—I have trusted you, Mimi, and I’ve
hated myself for ever doubting you, but you know how I've
always liked Carl ” she ended miserably.
Mimi's heart filled with pity and her eyes with tears. She
clasped Hilda in her arms and Hilda clung to her passionately,
pleading through her tears for forgiveness. All the misun-
derstanding was wiped away and they smiled happily through
their tears. It was some time before Hilda could tell her the
thing which had brought her. She felt great relief when
Mimi merely laughed at the slanderous tales which were go-
ing the rounds.
“Oh, I’m not paying any attention to these gossipy old
women around here. Why should I? If I had done any-
thing of which I felt ashamed, it might worry me, but why
worry one's head over something that doesn't exist? Life's
too short for that.” . . .
[102]


CHA PTE R W III
IMI went to her room after Hilda had gone, and lay
M | across the bed for a long time in deep thought.
Hilda was a silly little goose for her anxiety, she
thought, but she must care a great deal more about Carl than
she, Mimi, had cver dreamed of. She determined to see Carl,
tell him as much as was necessary about Hilda's affection for
him, and then refuse to see or go out with Carl herself. It
was little enough for her to do for Hilda who had been so
loyal a friend. And it would be a service, too, for Hilda's
shyness would prevent her from ever indicating to Carl that she
cared for him. She herself would hate to break off the com-
panionship with Carl which had come to mean so much to
them both and from which she had derived so much. His
alert mind appealed to her, the reading he had done and the
eager, lovable way in which he rushed to share with her any-
thing he had come across in his reading which he thought
would interest her, his keen interest in things other than those
right under his nose, his quick and unforetellable changes of
mood, at one minute happy and carefree and an excellent com-
panion, at another changing abruptly to a serious-minded, at
times morose and dissatisfied individual. With a woman's love
for the unusual, the unstable, the unforeseen, she was attracted
by these various moods. She had grown tired of most of the
other boys of her acquaintance, for she could tell in ad-
vance, almost to the exact words, what each of them would
say under any given circumstance. She had never had this
feeling with Carl and he seemed to be possessed of an unend-
ing and never uninteresting variety of humours, most of them
of mercurial state.
[103]


FL I G HT
But with all these varied characteristics there was among
them nothing which even remotely resembled a tendency to
become mushily sentimental. Here, too, he was different from
the others. Mimi had learned on several unpleasant occa-
sions the proneness of the youth she knew to wax tender often
when there was not the slightest provocation or encourage-
ment. Their friendship had never been marred in this fash-
ion and that was the reason, Mimi was certain, it had grown
so beautifully and naturally. It had been a frank, eager
companionship based on mutual interests and mutual under-
standing.
No, it would not be easy to give up this friendship, but she
owed it to Hilda, who, in her way and as one of her own sex,
had been equally if not a better friend than Carl. Certainly
their companionship had been of longer duration and there-
fore made greater demands upon the parties to it. She was
glad now there had been no word of love nor even any thought
of love between her and Carl. He had never entered her
mind in this guise and she could soon forget him.
But could she? The thought made her pause in the smooth
course of her reasoning. Now that Hilda had brought the
fact tangibly to her consciousness, was it true that her feeling
towards Carl was so wholly Platonic? She began to have her
doubts. It wouldn't be so easy to give him up as she at first
so glibly promised herself and Hilda. Who would there be
who could take his place—who could interest her as Carl had
done? Knowing the futility of attempting to answer a ques-
tion when there was in her own mind no question existing,
nevertheless she went slowly, painstakingly through the list of
all the young men she knew. One by one she discarded them
until she came to the point she knew she would reach—only
Carl remained.
Rousing herself from the lethargy into which the circle of
thought had plunged her, she went back to her original de-
[104]


FLIGHT
ward signs was intently examining the plate of salad before
him. No help obviously to be expected from that quarter,
Mrs. Daquin braced herself and proceeded.
“They're saying you and Carl were seen coming out of a
disreputable dance hall one night last wee 92
“It’s true. What of it?” broke in Mimi.
“What of it? What of it?” Mrs. Daquin's second interro-
gation was almost a thin scream. “Jean, do you hear what
your daughter is saying? She brazenly admits she and that
Hunter boy went to a disreputable, vile place and then she
asks: “What of it?’”
Mrs. Daquin's anger was fast mastering her, despite her
previously determined plan to retain mastery of the situation
through calmness and scorn. Mimi's willing admission of
her guilt, as Mrs. Daquin considered it, had taken some of the
wind out of her sails. Or, better, instead of a strong head
wind Mrs. Daquin's craft had been suddenly assailed by a
veering wind from port. Like an inexperienced sailor she
sought to bring her helm around and steer her boat into wa-
ters where there was less danger of squalls.
Jean looked up from his plate and stared hard but in not
unfriendly fashion at Mimi. He answered his wife's ques-
tion without looking at her.
“Yes, Mary, I heard her. What about it, Mimi?”
“Carl did take me to the dance, papa. I wanted to see
some of these new dances, hear the music, see a side of life
among coloured people I had never seen before. We went
there, we stayed awhile, and then Carl brought me home.
Do you see anything wrong in that, papa Jean?” Mimi ended
calmly.
Before Jean could reply his wife burst in upon the conversa-
tion, able no longer to restrain her anger.
“Wrong in it? Mimi, haven't you any sense of decency
at all? Even if you didn't do anything but what you said,
[106]


FLIGHT
think of what the neighbours will say! Think of what—”
“I told my father, Mrs. Daquin, what took place, and I’m
not in the habit of lying to him,” Mimi with cold fury, her
eyes flaming with suppressed anger, said. “Furthermore, I
resent your words “even if you didn't do anything but what
you said.’”
The two women glared at each other across the table. But
Mrs. Daquin's anger was beyond the heeding of the danger
signs in Mimi's eyes.
“Young woman, you can’
“Mary, keep quiet!” Jean half rose from the table, his
hands pressed against it with such force all the blood had
fled from his knuckles. “Mimi has told me what happened
and that's enough.”
Jean's voice held a note which even Mary in her anger could
not help but respect and fear.
“But, Jean dear,” she pleaded, her tone changing miracu-
lously. “I’m only thinking of our good name—”
“Damn your good name!” the unfamiliar Jean snapped.
“I’m sick and tired of your petty bickering with these little
folks you're so mad about—these busybodies so worried keep-
ing track of other people and meddling into their affairs. As
for this present matter, I want it stopped right here. Whether
Mimi acted right or not, she's told us what's happened and
that's enough of it. Do you hear me?”
It was a long speech for Jean and it was not often that he
permitted himself to become so angry. He did not know it
but it gave him the opportunity of expressing his opinion of
these aliens, so different to those of his own New Orleans
whom he missed more and more. And his nostalgia was none
the less potent and painful because he knew that even had he
remained in New Orleans he would not have been happy.
Just as when a man dies, his good traits or those good traits
given him by popular belief are magnified after his death and
39
[107]


FLIGHT
his faults are minimized until they disappear altogether, so
Jean remembered as the years passed only the beauties of New
Orleans and he forgot the changes which had been so largely
instrumental in persuading him to move to Atlanta.
But, though calmed, the fire of Mrs. Daquin's wrath, hotly
burning because she feared any scandal might jeopardize her
own social position, was too great to be quenched even by
Jean's outburst.
“All I’ve got to say then, Jean, if that's all the thanks I
get for trying to keep our name clean, is that Mimi had better
not see Carl Hunter again, even if he's the son of my best
friend.”
Jean was about to speak again angrily, when Mimi stopped
him.
“Neither of you need worry about that—Carl and I won't
see each other again.”
Both Jean and his wife looked inquiringly at Mimi and
waited for an explanation but none was forthcoming. But
Mrs. Daquin concluded at this unexpected acquiescence that
there was more to the incident than appeared on the surface.
She privately concluded that Mimi had effectually hood-
winked Jean and that it was fear and guilt which made Mimi
so readily consent to the breaking off of the friendship with
Carl. . . .
Her interview with Carl was not so easy as Mimi had sup-
posed it would be. He came readily enough when she sent
for him. He supposed she wanted to discuss with him the
talk which had come to his ears, too. A look of amazement
came over his face as she quietly told him of her resolve,
followed by an expression that was almost dismay when she
guardedly told him of Hilda's affection for him.
“She likes you, Carl,” Mimi ended, “and she's been think-
ing all summer that I, her best friend, have been trying to
vamp you away from her. She knows now, though, there's
[108]


FL I GHT
nothing between us. So for her sake and since this talk's
been started, we'd better see less of each other.” She added,
almost as an afterthought: “I do hate, though, the satisfac-
tion we'll give these old tabbies.”
“But, Mimi,” Carl protested, his face eloquent of the pain
within, “Hilda's an awfully nice kid and I’m fond of her—
just as I’m fond of my own sister, Mildred. And I’d like to
know who saw us at that dance so I could take one good
punch at them!” he added with bitterness.
“It wouldn't do any good—they'd be sure then we'd done
something terrible,” she counselled.
“Just now, Mimi, you said there's nothing between us. I
haven’t thought of you that way, Mimi, but—but—” he
stammered, trying to take her hand.
“Don’t be silly, Carl,” Mimi laughed, moving away from
him. She felt a sense of guilt, of disloyalty to Hilda that
she had phrased it so crudely. As Carl repeated her words
she was ashamed of them—they sounded almost as though
she had uttered them in the hope of a denial from Carl.
“We’ve had a good time together and I’ve learned a lot and
I’m grateful. You've given me a faith in my own people
that I have never had before. Before I came to Atlanta I
never thought much about ‘white people’ or ‘coloured peo-
ple.’ I just thought of people as people. And then came
that terrible night of the riot. After that I hated all white
people and began to think every Negro was perfect even
though my common sense told me I was foolish. Now I be-
gin to see the good and the bad, in white people and coloured
people—and that’s something.”
But Carl heard none of the things she was saying. He sat
with his face in his hands, his shoulders drooping dejectedly.
He raised his head as she finished speaking. Mimi was
touched with the look of pain upon it.
“Mimi,” he pleaded, “let’s forget all this silly talk and
[109]


FLIGHT
let things go on like they were before. I was wrong in tak-
ing you to that hall—it wasn't wrong in itself but wrong in
the eyes of these people here—so I shouldn't have let you
go. You're the only person here I care about seeing. Oh,
Mimi, don’t let's break off here. I’m a weak and foolish
creature and the only thing that's held me up has been you.”
Desperately, despairingly, he pleaded, but Mimi, though
she felt herself weakening, steeled herself against the almost
overwhelming impulse to take Carl's head into her lap and
hold it to her breast as she would a child's. The confident,
rebellious man had become a child and the mother instinct,
strong within her, almost overpowered her. She found her-
self swept by a flaming, consuming affection for Carl. Had
he remained assertive, sure of himself, she would have mas-
tered it easily. But his self-revilement, his dependency upon
her touched her deeply. Love had come to her and now
she must put it from her. Loyalty to Hilda and the prom-
ise she had made to her demanded it.
“No, Carl,” she firmly reiterated her resolution. . . .
[110]


CHA PTER IX
the golden haze of Indian summer but its beauties
brought little happiness to three young people of At-
lanta. Hilda had listened with tearful gratitude to Mimi's
recital of her talk with Carl. Hopefully she had waited for
some sign of interest, some word, some gesture from Carl,
but day followed day and she yet was looking in vain. Lan-
guidly she prepared for the opening of school when she
would begin her career as teacher, the customary interlude
between student days and marriage for the girls to whom
custom forbade pursuit of any other calling. Hilda passed
through various periods of hope, of despair, of rage against
herself, against Mimi, against Carl. At times she consoled
herself that all affairs of this sort took time, that she need but
wait and then her own excellencies would become so apparent,
Carl would see how desirable it would be for him to follow up
the opening she had made through Mimi's intercession.
At other times she reviled herself as a hoyden, a brazen
creature, a person without shame. Her talk with Mimi as-
sumed gigantic proportions as a stripping bare of all her
inner self, shamelessly flaunting her affection for a boy not
worth the sacrifice. She castigated herself with all the cru-
elty of some zealot, crazed by religious fervour, who sub-
jects himself to all manner of barbarities. Tartarus itself
nor the Spanish inquisition contained such instruments of
torture as those with which unrequited love can flagellate
its victims, Hilda learned, and her unhappiness was not les-
sened by her lack of one in whom she could confide. She
T; blazing suns of August and September cooled into
[111]


F LIGHT
dared not risk further pain even from her mother, who might
not understand, she thought, and whose lightest word would be
as salt to a raw, quivering wound if she should speak lightly
or with uncomplete understanding. Hilda's conviction that
her procedure had been wrong and very unwise, certain to
drive Carl further from her than achieve any other end, only
added to her unwillingness to confide even in her mother.
She thought several times of talking again with Mimi but
each time, upon reflection, she rejected this procedure. As
time passed with no sign from Carl other than he seemed to
avoid her now almost obviously, she began to harbour a new
suspicion of Mimi–she wondered if Mimi had said to Carl
exactly what she had told Hilda she had said.
She made for herself greater unhappiness by conjecturing
phrases or sentences (or implications in phrases or sentences)
that Mimi might have used in talking with him. Especially
did such thoughts race through her mind after she had turned
out the light at night and crept into her bed. Like a child
frightened by ghosts and goblins and weird figments of the dis-
ordered brain, she shrank in terror from her own thoughts.
She saw herself being laughed at by Carl and Mimi, being
ridiculed as a brainless, silly little fool.
Daylight always brought relief from these tortures and re-
gret for having entertained such thoughts. She would then
rush as soon as she could to Mimi and try by unexplained
little tendernesses to atone for her distrust. Mimi was often
puzzled by these outbursts and she wondered what caused
them. She was too wise, however, to ask directly—she waited
for some voluntary word from Hilda, which Hilda, in her shy-
ness and because she was so thoroughly ashamed of her sus-
picions, never vouchsafed.
Nor was Mimi so free from her own worries that she could
expend much thought on the problems of others. After her
dismissal, Carl had resolutely avoided her, his pride too great
[112]


F L I G HT
to permit him to risk a second rebuff at her hands. Three
times she had seen him approaching her on Auburn Avenue.
Twice he had turned into a side street. Once he had entered a
grocery store where she was certain he had no reason for going
other than to avoid her. With a woman's perversity of mind,
she was annoyed that he should so explicitly obey her com-
mand that their friendship be kept on a mere disinterested
plane. Mimi had never before been touched by the flaming
torch of love nor even of affection despite her volatile and
tender nature. The self-imposed abstention from companion-
ship with Carl which had formed, she now discovered, so large
a part of her thoughts, was resulting in the steady growth of
an interest that before the rupture had been largely an im-
personal one. As he continued to avoid her, Mimi determined
to tell Carl how foolish she thought him to carry out her
quixotic request too literally. Many days passed, though, be-
tween the making of the resolution and its execution.
Then one Sunday morning she saw him enter with his mother
and sister and father the pew they always occupied near the
front of the church. With all the eager impulsiveness of youth
in love or youth imagining itself in love, Mimi felt a delight-
fully pleasant sensation in watching the back of Carl's head, in
being near him. She wanted to put in place the rebellious lock
of hair which sprang in disarray from the top of Carl's head
like the feather from an Indian's head-dress. She wanted ea-
gerly to talk with him again as they used to, she wanted to
ramble from subject to subject in that comradely way which
she missed now that the talks had been ended. The gossip
which had partly led to that abrupt severance of their com-
panionship had died down, though Mimi knew from experi-
ence that rumour, apparently dead and forgotten, was many-
lived and any misstep of the future could and would resurrect
all previous reports. She knew they could arise again and
always did, springing into life with new vigour like that myth-
[113]


FLIGHT
ical being whose name she could never remember who, thrown
to earth, received new strength by contact with it, and entered
the struggle again invigorated and more powerful than before.
To regain the friendship she had lost, however, she was will-
ing to risk the wagging of tongues. She stood with bowed
head watching Carl with irreverently slitted eyes as the serv-
ices neared their close. “The Grace of our Lord and Saviour,
Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father . . . now and for
evermore, Amen!” droned the minister, his head tilted back,
closed eyes raised to the low-hung ceiling.
The human impulse to talk, to move, to be saying or doing
something, anything rather than endure introspection however
slight, found gushing release as soon as the minister finished.
Cloaks and wraps half donned as the benediction was being
pronounced were adjusted and feminine hats given the final
pat of arrangement, while little eddies of gusts of greeting
and conversation flew back and forth. Comments, most of
them admiring, were made on the sermon; inquiries, most of
them perfunctory, regarding the health of those absent and
those present; remarks on the weather, all the petty chit-chat
which serves as the mucilage that holds together everyday so-
cial relations.
Mimi manoeuvred her way from the pew into the aisle, tim-
ing it so exactly that she reached the end of the seat just as the
Hunters were passing up the aisle. She greeted them inclu-
sively but her eyes were on Carl. He sought to avoid her but
as his parents passed on he was left standing face to face with
Mimi. She smiled easily, he somewhat embarrassedly.
“I haven’t seen you lately—that is, only at a distance,” she
said. “I saw you enter Wright's grocery rather hastily one
day, though,” she added maliciously.
Carl flushed and seemed anxious to escape.
“Why should you see me?” he demanded, half angrily.
[114]


F LIGHT
“You practically told me to stay away from you just because
of some silly old fools gossiping 22
“You know that isn’t the truth,” she corrected him. “But
I didn't mean for you to avoid me as though I had some sort
of contagious disease.”
Carl's aggressiveness vanished, a tortured, hurt look in his
eyes.
“It’s best things go along this way, Mimi,” he pleaded. “If
we can't be the kind of friends we were, it's wisest I stay away
from you altogether.”
His earnestness, for some reason she could not explain, cre-
ated within her a vague uneasiness. He went on hurriedly
before she could speak, his voice lowered to prevent those near
overhearing.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking during the last few weeks and
I think you were right in breaking off our friendship. No, I
don’t mean on account of Hilda—I wish I did care for her,
it would make things easier. But I don't and that's all there
is to it. I was happy with you, Mimi, because you made me
content to go along and try to satisfy Dad by working. But
now I see I was just fooling myself—I never will be an in-
surance man—”
“But, Carl, you've no right Mimi interrupted him.
“Right? What do I care about right? And who's to say
what is right for me and what isn’t? I’m no fool—I know
pretty well what I’m doing and I know I'm a pretty rotten
sort—you'll know what I mean by that before long—as soon
as the anvil chorus starts on me again.”
“Why don't you come to see us any more, Carl? You know
papa and I’ll always welcome you.” Neither of them noticed
that Mrs. Daquin had not been included.
“No-I’ve caused enough talk about you already,” he an-
swered cryptically as he lost himself in the crowd. . . .
29
[115]


FLIGHT
For many days Mimi thought of the talk she had had with
Carl. Naturally his mysterious statements of the talk he was
certain to create piqued her interest. As discreetly as she
could, she sought to find out what he referred to but with no
success until Mrs. Hunter called at the Daquin home a week
or two later and asked to speak to Mimi, alone. Mrs. Daquin,
bursting with curiosity, regretfully complied with the sugges-
tion that she absent herself.
As soon as the door closed, Mrs. Hunter explained her mis-
sion. She prefaced her story with a disconcerting question.
“Mimi,” she demanded, her eyes fixed on Mimi's face, “do
you love my Carl?”
“Oh, Mrs. Hunter, why do you ask me such a question?”
Mimi, startled, parried the query. She was amazed—she had
never asked herself so directly the question Carl's mother had
flung at her.
“Don’t be frightened or worried—I was so in hopes you did
care for him. His father and I are terribly worried about him
—he has always been a restless, queer sort of a child but as
long as you and he were friendly he seemed satisfied. Oh, yes,
I know the silly talk that was going around,” she put in as
Mimi started to speak, “but nobody who counted ever believed
that rot.”
“That wasn’t the reason we did what we did, Mrs. Hunter,”
Mimi quickly broke in. “It was on account of Hilda 22
“Hilda? What did she have to do with it?”
Mimi told her the story while Mrs. Hunter showed on her
face the amazement she felt.
“Silly little fool!” she pontifically announced when Mimi
had finished.
“She isn't a silly little fool and she's far too good a girl for
Carl or any other boy I’ve seen around here!” Mimi hotly
declared, her anger flaming high at the disparagement of her
friend. It never occurred to her that she had applied the same
[116]


F LIGHT
term to Hilda or at least terms suspiciously similar in mean-
Ing.
“Oh, don't misunderstand me, dearie,” Mrs. Hunter hastened
to cover her hasty statement. “Mind you, I didn't mean she
wasn't good enough for my Carl but that she didn't show very
good judgment. But that isn't what I came to talk about.
It's this. Carl, since you and he stopped seeing each other, has
taken to staying out nights with all sorts of people and three
times this week he's come home drunk. He's in such a nasty
temper I’ve been afraid to say anything to him and I know
there'll be a terrible scene when his father finds out about his
carryings-on.”
“I’m sorry to hear Carl's acting this way, Mrs. Hunter, but
what have I got to do with it?” Mimi, puzzled, asked.
“I was wondering if you'd let him see you occasionally—and
—and I thought maybe you cared enough to be willing to do
that and see if he would stop. Oh, Mimi, he's my boy and I
want you to help me to save him from himself.”
Mimi did not know what to say. She felt sorry, terribly
sorry, for Mrs. Hunter—knowing her, she knew the ordeal
through which the older woman was going, imperiously proud
as she was, in abasing herself before a younger woman, an out-
sider, and confessing her weakness, her impotence in saving her
own son. On the other hand there was her promise to Hilda.
True, Carl had said twice he did not care and would never
care for Hilda, but that made her own promise none the less
binding. She felt impatience with Carl coming over her. She
was not puritanical by nature but Carl's rapid succumbing to
temptation vexed her, he was destroying the ideal she had cre-
ated in her mind of which he was the embodiment.
Her indecisiveness was due more than to any other cause to
her own lack of understanding of the full importance of Mrs.
Hunter's words. This was not because of stupidity, it was be-
cause of Mimi's amazing innocence of life. She had never
[117]


FLIGHT
fully realized why there should have been so much talk re-
garding the visit she and Carl had paid to the dance hall.
The people she saw there she knew were not of her class nor
were they of the kind she ever encountered. Margot and Jean
had closely guarded Mimi from all influences which they felt
might contaminate her mind. They had seen to it that her
playmates were from families which observed indentically
the same customs and beliefs as did the Daquins. At school
Mimi had heard phrases which would have shocked her had she
understood their import but, knowing nothing of what they
meant, she had given them no particular thought.
The same circumstance had existed during the years in At-
lanta, where it was considered highly immoral to mention even
the most rudimentary facts about oneself. Mimi had asked
questions but these had been more or less skilfully evaded.
She had asked only once about certain amazingly distressing
things she noticed in her body and the answer to that query,
implying as it did that she had said something she should not
have mentioned, had sealed her lips. But in her own mind
she had wondered at and been distressed by these things, by
periods of intense depression when the most minor incident
made her cry or laugh. Thus Mrs. Hunter's dark suggestions
regarding Carl's deviations meant little to her and she won-
dered that his own mother and father could be so lacking in
control over him that she had to appeal to her to help save
him.
“I asked Carl at church two weeks ago,” she began, Mrs.
Hunter meanwhile waiting anxiously for Mimi's decision,
“why he never came to see us any more and he told me he
didn’t want to.”
“Oh, please, Mimi,” the mother pleaded, begging almost
piteously for her boy, “ask him again and again until he does
come. You can save him—if you will.”
[118]


F LIGHT
“I’ve asked him once and if he doesn't want to come to see
me then I won't ask him again,” Mimi said firmly.
Mrs. Hunter rose, her eyes wet with tears. She jabbed them
jerkily with a tiny square of linen, ludicrously small for one
of her bulk, Mimi thought irrelevantly even as she pitied the
older woman's plight. . . .
Mrs. Daquin sought skilfully to pry from Mimi the reason
for Mrs. Hunter's visit but Mimi evaded her questions and went
to her own room. Her resentment against Carl increased. It
was so silly of him to act as he was doing. Mrs. Hunter was
an old frump, it was true, but she was a decent old sort after
all. Mimi wondered just what he had been doing. Getting
drunk was pretty bad for a young man who was yet in most
respects a boy. Mimi remembered Jean and his demijohn of
double port-wine after Margot died and before Mary Robert-
son came to New Orleans. Her loyalty to Jean and the con-
tact with intoxication having removed some of its terrors made
her maintain stoutly that getting drunk wasn't the worst sin in
the world. She wondered what sort of people Mrs. Hunter was
referring to when she spoke of Carl's new associates. There
had been a note in Mrs. Hunter's voice when she said it that
brought little chills of apprehension to Mimi. Suppose Carl
were killed by these shadowy and horrible creatures. Mimi
felt an iciness gripping her that took her breath from her.
The very indefiniteness of the danger that threatened Carl made
it all the more terrifying and horrific. . . .
[119]


CHA PTE R X
sons for Mrs. Hunter's apprehension. Like a great orches-
tra beginning pianissimo upon a symphony, the tongues
started clacking in soft and cryptic whisperings. Carl, with
reckless disregard of the conventions, made no attempt to con-
ceal his derelictions, his wandering from the ultra-strict codes
which governed his family and the set in which it moved. He
gave the prying eyes and clattering tongues an abundance of
fuel, his flaunting of local standards serving much as the up-
ward sweep of a conductor's baton would draw forth a great
swelling tone from his players. Carl was seen no more at
church despite several acrimonious discussions on the subject
with his father. Twice he was seen at a moving-picture show
with a girl who was déclassée—years before, her name had
been linked in somewhat opprobrious fashion with that of a
married man of the town. It was true no proof had been pro-
duced of any wrongdoing on their part and, as was the usual
custom in such affairs, the man's connexion with the embryonic
scandal had been long since forgotten. With the passage of
years the blot on her name had grown through the very in-
definiteness of the original rumour. For years she had been
considered by the good Christians of the town almost as though
her offence had been that of being “a fancy woman.”
Carl had known the girl for many years, as long, in fact, as
he could remember. When Mimi had refused to see him, he
had by chance met and talked with the girl one day and she had
interested him. Even when he said to her one day: “Why
haven’t we been friendly all these years?” she had made no
T was not long before Mimi knew in greater detail the rea-
[120]


F LIGHT
defence of her reputation nor had she complained of the years
of ostracism she had undergone. Had she done either of these,
Carl's interest in her would probably have died instantly.
Knowing in a hazy sort of way of her story, he was attracted
by her calm acceptance of it, and he found himself more and
more drawn to her. Neither of them thought of their friend-
ship save as friendship. But it would have been a feat of no
mean proportions to convince those who saw them together
that there was nothing questionable about their relationship.
Her halting suggestion to Carl that he might bring unpleasant
comment upon himself if he were seen too frequently with her
had angered him—he resolved to go with her wherever and
whenever he chose.
This affair, together with the known fact that Carl was drink-
ing rather heavily, was all that was needed to consign him to
the outermost circles. His family's standing saved him from
complete condemnation, though at the same time it brought
more criticism upon him. He knew that had he come from a
less respected family little would have been said regarding his
derelictions. But the fact of his dissipation, which he took
little pains to conceal, only furnished the groundwork for the
reputation that grew with startling speed. Bandied about over
tea-cups and back fences, across pews and shop-counters,
through telephone and letter, a character of infinitely intricate
pattern was woven around him.
All this meant little to Carl, however. He knew now that
his feeling towards Mimi was not the disinterested, impersonal
affair he had thought it. Women were queer, he concluded.
At times they can be as ruthless and as without scruples as
pirates or highwaymen and then turn right around and permit
far-fetched and ultra-chivalrous and foolish little consciences to
destroy happiness for themselves and for others. He knew
Mimi did not love him but he could not understand why she
had insisted, all because she felt she owed some vague sort
[121]


FL I G HT
of duty to Hilda, that they sacrifice all the happiness there had
been for them in their companionship.
And while Carl was rambling through the misty and un-
happy realm of his thoughts, Mimi was treading much the
same path. She heard the stories of his dissipation—her
friends saw to it that she should hear them with all current
elaborations. These, instead of having the intended effect of
driving the wedge between her and Carl deeper, appealed to
her vanity—she rather enjoyed the romantic glow which filled
her on realizing that a man was throwing his life away for
love of her. She found, too, that Carl occupied an increasing
part in her thoughts. At night she lay awake for hours, seeing
his face, hearing his voice. The separation which she herself
imposed began to act as a boomerang upon her emotions—in-
stead of holding herself in check, as she had never experienced
any difficulty in doing when she was seeing Carl regularly, she
now found that she could no longer keep him from her
thoughts. With rapidly growing intensity these moods came
upon her until the mention of Carl's name caused a queerly
delightful sensation within her. . . .
Mrs. Adams took her turn entertaining the Fleur-de-Lis in
October. Jean objected strenuously to going but Mrs. Daquin
insisted. -
“It’s only once a year husbands are allowed to attend and
it's little enough to ask you to go just this once. Besides,
Mrs. Adams will feel badly if you don't go,” she had pleaded,
successfully.
After they had gone Mimi sat on the porch enjoying the
crisp, chilly air. Tiring, she was entering the house when she
saw a familiar figure enter and pass through the circle of light
cast by the corner street-lamp. She waited until the shadowy
form was passing the gate. It turned and looked up at the
darkened house as it passed and she was happy that it did so.
[122]


FLIGHT
“You mustn't talk that way, Carl. You're nothing of the
sort.”
She tried to comfort him but he stopped her with a gesture
of mingled impatience and denial. His abjectness stirred
her deeply. She felt again the wave of tenderness coming
over her that she had experienced the last time she had
talked with him in this very room, the time she had sent him
away. She was a little frightened—her emotion was deeper,
more moving than before. His unhappiness had subtly trans-
ferred itself to her and she found herself filled with an al-
most overwhelming desire to touch him, to hold him near her.
Carl raised his head and looked searchingly at her. His
gaze disturbed her, moved her, made her uncomfortable. She
remembered the day she first met him, the inclusive way in
which he had surveyed her and the resentment his look had
stirred in her. There was no resentment now. Instead there
was a fear he might see way down beneath and know how she
had missed him, how she had longed for him.
“Mimi, there's one thing I want to tell you now that I’m
here. I feel like a dog in telling you—I have no business even
thinking it. But I want you to know—no matter what stories
you hear—that—that—I love you!” His tone was half de-
fiant, half tender, as he nervously flung the last three words
at her.
Mimi sat silent, her eyes in her lap. With Carl's declara-
tion a great peace came upon her. Doubt, fear, uncertainty
left her.
“And I love you, too, Carl,” she said, simply.
With a bound he crossed the room and sat beside her.
“You—love—me—too?” he asked, amazement, doubt that
he had heard aright in his voice.
Mimi, her eyes filled with tears of happiness, could only nod.
“Oh, Mimi darling,” Carl half sobbed, and pillowed his
face on her breast while she pressed him close to her, holding
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F LIGHT
him with all the tenderness that had been pent up within her,
holding him as though he would fly away never to return if
she relaxed for an instant the tightness of her grasp. . . .
It seemed years later when Carl left.
“Mimi, I wonder if we have done right?” he asked as he
stood at the door, his voice worried, uncertain.
Mimi only smiled as she kissed him. . . .
She had been asleep for a long time when Jean and his wife
returned.
After she had undressed and turned out the light she lay
in bed and thought of Carl. Life was funny, she mused. Peo-
ple came into one's life, flickered like the figures in a movie
thrown on an imperfect screen and passed out of one's con-
sciousness leaving no memories of importance behind them.
Most people were like that but every so often there came those,
always few in number, who stayed and, by staying, created all
sorts of difficult and unpleasant or pleasant complications.
She wondered why nearly everybody she knew or had read
about made simple little problems into tremendous ones and
harried themselves with things which, seen later, were of
such slight worth. Conscience? Right? Honour? Justice?
Truth? What were all these except little shibboleths which
man had created in his own mind like little gods and before
which he prostrated himself in abject grovelling? Truth?
She remembered the thing Carl had once quoted to her from
Spinoza—truth is made up of the lies grown hoary with age.
But after all there must be something in these things men
had lived by and for which they had died. She wondered
what it all could be. Were they worth all the agony and
bloodshed and sacrifice they had brought?
Here I am, she mused, a woman, a Negro. Life for me if
I were white would be hard enough, but it's going to be doubly
so when I have race problems added to my own difficulties as
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F LIGHT
a woman. She toyed idly with the notion as to what her lot
would have been if she had been born white—if she were to
cross over the line and forget the Negro blood in her body.
The idea was not attractive. In New Orleans the women who
attracted her most and whom she admired above all others were
not white—at least, they were not Anglo-Saxon. They all lived
in the Creole quarter and Jean had pointed out many of them
who had Negro blood, some of them knowing it and others in
ignorance of it. She had not needed Jean's telling her to pick
them out—there was something tangible yet intangible about
them which indicated it to the observant eye—a warmth, a deli-
cate humanness, an attractiveness which did not belong to the
women who lived north of Canal Street.
And here in Atlanta she had watched them, noting the subtle
differences even in those like herself whose skins were fair.
No wonder that in New Orleans in the old days, as she had read
in the books of French travellers, the men often deserted the
balls where their wives and daughters were, and slipped away
to those more resplendent ones where quadroon women held
sway. Mimi remembered a comparison one of them had made
between these who had Negro blood with the American women
—“frank, warm-hearted . . . with manners more interesting
than the Americans . . . the roundness and beauty of shape in
the women also contrasting with the straightness and angularity
of American figures.”
She had asked Jean, in her innocence, to tell her about these
balls but for some reason she could not explain he had evaded
her question and seemed to be somewhat embarrassed by it.
No, she concluded, with all its faults and petty unpleasant
features, she would rather remain with her own people. They
got, apparently, so much more out of the life they lived with
all its barriers than those who had more but seemed infinitely
less happy with it.
Her thoughts, she realized, revolved always in a circle of
[126]


F LIGHT
which the exact centre was Carl. She wondered why he and
she had not ended their worries sooner by acceptance of the
love which had come to them. It had all been so futile, so
childish, and Mimi, with the reluctance of youth to think of
itself as youthful, felt rather ashamed that they had acted in
such callow and infantile manner. Now that she had stopped
fighting against the love for Carl which she realized had been
in her heart all the time, her fretful and worried air left her.
She lay in her narrow bed and smiled tenderly as she felt
again his lips from which his kisses at first had fallen upon
hers like gentle, soft blows. She stirred happily as she felt
once more the rough possessiveness to which his lips had
changed—she was not conscious of hurt until now when she
realized her own lips were swollen slightly where he had
pressed her close to him, while she had yielded happily. She
was wondering where it would all end as she fell asleep. . . .
It seemed to her she had hardly closed her eyes when she
was rudely awakened. Mrs. Daquin was shaking her roughly,
a dressing-gown thrown hastily over her night-dress.
“Mimi, come quickly!” she was calling. “Something's hap-
pened to your father.”
“What's the matter? Have you called the doctor?” asked
Mimi as she hurried down the hall after Mrs. Daquin. Mimi
was now thoroughly awake, a strange fear in her heart.
“Yes, he's on the way here,” the older woman whispered as
they entered Jean's bedroom.
Jean was lying on the bed stretched at full length. His
breath came with difficulty and his face was covered with a
cold, clammy perspiration. Mimi with a little cry of distress
and fear, quickly checked, flung herself on her knees beside the
bed. She tried to feel Jean's pulse but could find no trace.
She pressed her head against Jean's breast, trying to hear or
feel his heart beating. An icy terror came over her when she
could feel no throbbing. Jean groaned heavily as though in
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F LIGHT
great pain. Mimi was happy to hear it—at least, that was a
sign that Jean was not dead.
The doctor found her there beside the bed while Mrs. Daquin
stood at the foot, weeping and wringing her hands, all her
efficiency and forthrighteousness fled in the face of this phe-
nomenon. He gently led them from the room.
For hours, it seemed, they waited there. Once the door
opened hastily and they heard the doctor, who had rushed past
them without speaking, telephone another physician, speaking
ominously of strychnine and nitroglycerine.
As he re-entered the sick-room he muttered in answer to Mi-
mi's question something about Jean's heart. “He’s a sick man
—a very sick man,” floated back to the two women as he closed
the door. . . .
Morning found them waiting. For the first time Mimi felt
close to Mrs. Daquin. Unconsciously they had clung together,
brought close by the spectre which hovered over them. Mrs.
Daquin brought a wrap and put it around Mimi and Mimi
smiled her thanks. It seemed quite a natural thing that Mrs.
Daquin should let her arm remain around the girl's shoulders
when she had placed the wrap there. Mimi snuggled near her
and in her embrace Mimi felt a security from the dreadful
thing in the room where Jean lay.
The door opened and the two doctors, haggard from their
work, anxiety and loss of sleep, emerged, closed the door softly
behind them. Dr. Adams led them to the lower floor before
speaking.
“Mr. Daquin has had a very serious attack. Heart trouble.
Brought on by acute indigestion. We’ve given him a double
injection of strychnine and nitroglycerine to speed up his
heart action. At first I couldn't get any heart action even
with my stethoscope. Thought he was gone. He's resting
now. Keep him quiet. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
[128]


FLIGHT
Mimi felt, as Dr. Adams uttered his crisp, staccato sentences,
as though she were a condemned criminal standing before a
judge, hearing a terrible sentence pronounced upon her. Jean
—her Jean—gentle, uncomplaining, always kind—dangerously
ill. It didn't seem possible.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Adams and Hilda to come over and do what
they can to help you,” Dr. Adams promised as he left the
house. . . .
The news of Jean's illness spread rapidly. Before Mimi and
Mrs. Daquin could finish dressing they began to come with
offers of help. Mrs. Adams and Hilda were the first. Hilda
and Mimi held each other close, all differences melted away
by the sadness which had come to Mimi. For a long time now
Hilda had known from Carl's attitude that her hopes were of no
avail. She had freely unburdened her woes at last to her
mother and in the telling of them and the ready sympathy
which she received from Mrs. Adams had found the peace of
resignation. She knew through some psychic means that Carl
loved Mimi and her new-found calm enabled her to feel thor-
oughly happy for their sakes. . . .
All day they came. Mimi never knew there could be so much
solicitude, so much genuine kindness. One came and pre-
pared a meal, another tidied the house, another volunteered to
do errands. Mimi felt ashamed of her dislike for some of them
in the past. Affliction had shown her the real worth which
lay beneath the petty malice, the ignominious bickerings and
jealousies which to her had seemed the outstanding character-
istics of many of these folks.
Jean slept the greater part of the day. Late in the afternoon
Dr. Adams gave him another stimulant. Mimi had begun to
show the strain through which she had been and he urged her
to go for a walk. Returning, she found Mrs. Daquin waiting
for her in the hall.
“Your father's been asking for you. Dr. Adams said it
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F LIGHT
like you haven't much patience for the old ways and customs
—you, too, would in time have become unhappy there. But
I didn't intend to ramble off like that. It's about you I
wanted to talk. . . . You've grown into a beautiful woman,
Mimi,” he declared, proudly. “Every day you look more
like Margot did when I first knew her. And you've ways like
hers—only you've more spirit, more fire. . . .”
Again he lay silent and Mimi, knowing instinctively he was
living again his days with Margot, hardly dared breathe lest
she break the spell. The room grew dark but neither of
them noticed it. From outside came the soft cries of chil-
dren at play far away, the bumping of a short, fat street car
as it meandered down Auburn Avenue, the shrill voice of a
woman calling her child to supper.
“I’m worried, Mimi–not afraid—just worried. I’ve had
these heart attacks before but I said nothing about them be-
cause I didn't want to worry you and Mary—but this one last
night was the worst one yet.”
She sought to comfort him, telling him little falsehoods
about the allegedly minor importance which Dr. Adams had
attached to the attack. It’ll pass over and he'll be none the
worse for it, were the words she put in the physician's
mouth.
“Did he say that really?” Jean asked anxiously, yet hope-
fully.
She assured him that those were the exact words. Jean
leaned back on his pillow, a more peaceful look on his face
which removed some of the shame she was feeling on account
of the lie. She would have lied a thousand times cheerfully
if they served to make him more content.
“He didn't seem so optimistic when he was talking to me,”
Jean mused. “I suppose he was trying to scare me so I
would stay in bed.”
“Of course that was what he intended. Doctors assume
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FLIGHT
patients will do just about half what they are told to do, so
they are told to do twice what they need to do,” she encour-
aged him.
“I’m tired, Mimi–so tired. I think I'll take a little nap
now,” he said after a pause. “I wanted to talk to you be-
cause I didn't know how serious this attack might be—tell
you to remember, whatever happened, you're a Daquin, but
now I’ve heard what the doctor said, that can wait. You're
a beautiful girl, Mimi, almost too beautiful. But you’ll
come through all right—just make up your own mind what's
the right thing to do, pay no attention to what other people
say, and then do what you think is right.”
Automatically she thought of Carl.
“Last night, after you and Mrs. Daquin left, Carl came by
the house and I called him in,” she told Jean. “He was very
unhappy—I never saw him so downcast. We talked awhile—
then—then—oh, Jean, he told me he loved me—and it made
me mighty happy—”
“Carl's a good boy, Mimi. A little too flighty—a little
weak, too, I'm afraid—but he'll come around all right, I
think. They don't understand him and they're always rub-
bing his fur the wrong way but—Carl's got the right stuff
in him.”
Jean lapsed again into one of his retrospective moods. His
eyes slowly closed and soon he fell asleep. Mimi kissed him
gently, lowered the shade to keep the light from the street lamp
from disturbing him, and stole softly from the room. . . .
[132]


CHAPTER XI
“He’s resting easily now and I think he'll sleep
through the night. Call me if you need me. And
you'd better get a little sleep yourself or I'll have two pa-
tients,” he advised Mimi as he left.
His words brought realization to Mimi that she was tired.
She sent Mrs. Daquin to bed, telling her she would lock up
the house and see that everything was attended to. She then
tiptoed into Jean's room and found him breathing gently, his
face, with a smile upon it, turned towards the door.
When he called at seven the next morning Dr. Adams said
that Jean had been dead about three hours. Mimi found on
his face the same smile that had been there when she had seen
him last. Mrs. Daquin came into the room weeping but for
Mimi there were no tears. Death had come too suddenly
upon her, its swift snatching away of her Jean had rendered
her incapable of thought, of every emotion. She knelt by
the bed, her head resting beside Jean's, stunned, inarticulate.
Dr. Adams tried to pull her away, telling her it would be
better for her if she did not stay too long there.
“No, Doctor, I’m happier here. I’ve just a few more hours
with Jean now. Leave me here alone, won't you?”
He led the weeping Mrs. Daquin from the room and Mimi
was alone with Jean. Jean dead? She couldn’t believe it
was true. She touched his hand, stiffened, cold. It terrified
her. How many times she might have held it, warm, pulsat-
ing, responsive.
M T midnight Dr. Adams made his last call for the day.
[133]


FLIGHT
No—she had been too busy with her own petty affairs, her
own insignificant worries, to think of him—longing for his
quiet old home, unhappy in an environment and among people
he did not understand and whose ways were not his. She had
known in an indefinite sort of way that Jean was not happy,
that he and Mary grew farther and farther apart each year,
each month, each day. A spasm of remorse swept through
Mimi–remorse that held her in an icy, terrifying grip—when
she realized now how she might have been of comfort, of con-
solation, to Jean, and instead had chased merrily after her
own whims and fancies, giving little thought to him. She
knew now that these later years must have been terribly lonely
ones for him. She felt she would cheerfully have given ten
years of her life to have him back for one year, for one month,
even for one day. Then she would show him the quality of
her love for him. Holy Mother, why did one see these things
only when it was too late?
She was glad they had had their talk yesterday afternoon.
It had been like old times, she and Jean had been so happy to-
gether. Even in his own illness his thoughts had been of her
—he had wanted to live not for his own sake but only for
hers. “You’ll come through all right,” he had said. She
wondered if she would. Without Jean's physical presence
she speculated what her relations with Mrs. Daquin would
be. In his quiet way Jean had had a very real control over
his wife. Mimi sensed now as she had never done before
that despite his gentleness, which sometimes seemed to be al-
most weakness, his apparent softness had had great strength
behind it—strength enough to hold in check Mrs. Daquin's ag-
gressiveness and domineering attitude. Jean had not spoken
sharply often but when he had his wife listened and obeyed.
He had never had to speak twice.
Why don't I cry, she wondered, like all women do and
most men when death comes? She was conscious of a slight
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F LIGHT
feeling of guilt because of her dry eyes. She wondered if
she was showing proper respect. She looked at Jean's peace-
ful face. Her own face was set in hard, tight lines, her
teeth were clamped until the muscles of her jaws ached, but
no tears came. Jean dead? No-no–no—it couldn't be
true. . . .
They found her there, dry-eyed, when the undertaker came
to prepare Jean for burial. She was calm until the dingy
wicker basket, sagging with the weight of its load, was being
carried through the door. She was thinking of that day Jean
had referred to yesterday—that day in the St. Louis cemetery
when the funeral procession passed near them. Jean had said
he felt just as though his own body were in the casket. She
knew now what he had meant—her own body was there in that
straw container.
“Be careful!” she cried as one of the men let the basket
strike against the door. A sharp physical pain shot through
her body, followed by nausea as the men righted the slipping
basket. Then all went dark for her. Without a sound she
sank to the floor, unconscious. . . .
When she awoke she was in bed. Hilda sat near and
smiled at her when she opened her eyes.
“Papa says you must keep quiet, absolutely. Mama is see-
ing after things and Mr. Hunter is taking care of all the ar-
rangements for the funeral 22
The ominous, horrifying word brought a little cry of an-
guish from Mimi. Hilda's eyes filled with tears at her in-
eptness.
“Ask your mother if she'll try and get some candles.
And see if she can get a priest for the funeral. Jean would
be happiest if he was buried that way,” begged Mimi.
When Hilda had hurried away to execute her wishes, Mimi
tried to get up but found herself too weak. She was glad to
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FLIGHT
sink back into the soft pillows. Yes, Jean would be happiest
if he had a Catholic burial. He hadn't been to mass for
years now but he had never allowed the narrowness and prej-
udice of priests who after all were human and with human
fear and cowardice and prejudice to destroy his faith. Rever-
ently, Mimi made the sign of the cross. . . .
The morning passed before she had strength enough to rise.
She talked over with Mrs. Daquin, Mrs. Adams and Mr.
Hunter plans for the funeral. Jean's sister in New York
whom Mimi had never seen had been telegraphed and had
wired she was leaving for Atlanta at once. They decided
the services were to be held on Friday. Mrs. Daquin thought
it best to have a Protestant service but Mimi was obdurate,
immovable. This was the last thing she could do for Jean
and she was determined that it should be done, if possible.
Late in the afternoon, in the lull of visitors who were called
home by household duties, Carl came. To both it seemed
impossible that less than twenty-four hours before they had
been so happy together in that very room.
“There's no use of my saying I’m sorry, Mimi. You know
it—I loved your father better than anybody except you. He
seemed to understand me—I—I ” His sudden rush of
feeling made it impossible for him to speak. His eyes filled
with tears as he touched Mimi's hand, gently and but for
a second.
“Yes, Carl, I know . . .” she whispered. . . .
By Thursday evening Mimi felt she could no longer stand
the torture of greeting people, answering the same questions
over and over again, performing the many additional tasks
the death had brought. Mrs. Daquin seemed actually to be
enjoying after a fashion the new importance which Jean's
death had brought to her as his widow. Not that she let it
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FLIGHT
show on her face. She saw to it her eyes bore the appearance
of much weeping and her general air was that of a Christian
martyr about to be thrown to the lions. To Mimi she seemed
to have donned the atmosphere of the sorely tried and heavily
bereaved with full attention to the effectiveness of details,
wearing the rôle as an accomplished actress would. Mimi
found all her old antagonism rising again—Jean's life, she
reflected bitterly, would have been much happier had his wife
expended some of that energy now used in simulated grief to-
wards happiness for Jean when alive.
There was but one place where Mimi felt at peace, and
that sitting beside Jean's casket. To-morrow morning Jean's
sister, Mrs. Rogers of New York, would arrive. To-morrow
afternoon the funeral. Mimi crept quietly into the parlour.
The room was unlighted save for the illumination from the
flickering candles. Through the partly opened windows
floated a warm breeze of an unusually balmy late October
evening. The lace curtains swayed lazily back and forth as
though bidding a languid farewell to the body in the casket
just beyond their reach. In the dimness they seemed to Mimi
like long slender fingers seeking vainly to caress the sides of
the box which held all that remained of Jean.
The house was nearly deserted. One by one they had gone
away. Mimi, wearied by the incessant stream, felt a great
eagerness to find the peace she could get nowhere else save
near Jean. It annoyed her to find she was not alone. Mrs.
Plummer and Mrs. King sat near the window conversing in
lowered voices. Mimi ignored them, drew a chair close to
the casket and sat there gazing at Jean's face. On it was un-
mistakable peace—she almost wished that she were there be-
side him. The extent of her loss was creeping upon her.
Without Jean she felt lost, terrified, afraid. To whom could
she turn? Mrs. Daquin? Obviously, no. Mrs. Hunter?
Hilda? Hilda's mother? Carl? Each of them had his
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FLIGHT
good points but none of them were so all-inclusive, so gentle,
so understanding, so unselfish. Nor even was she herself,
she realized. For here I am thinking only of myself—had I
done less of that when Jean was alive, I would have made his
life and my own far happier.
“. . . her eyes ain’t even red . . . if she was so crazy
about him as she pretended to be, she'd . . .”
Mimi suddenly became conscious of the sibilant whispers
which came to her from the two women by the window. Lost
in the grief bottled up within her like turbulent waters held
by a great dam, she had been oblivious of comments during the
days since Jean had died. Even to the undoubtedly sympa-
thetic ones she had replied methodically, listlessly, giving lit-
tle thought to the words, words, words. Now as the sinister,
malevolent whisperings came to her, the inevitable reaction to
the apathy she had felt flamed into being. She rose from her
chair, bitter hatred welling up for the evil-tongued old women.
But even as she opened her mouth to speak, an overwhelming
sense of the futility of it all came over her, a sense of inap-
propriateness, the lack of respect for Jean if she were to en-
gage here in what would be but little more than a fishwives’
quarrel. She checked the hot, bitter words that pressed for
utterance and rushed from the room.
In the security of her own room she lay on the bed and en-
vied the peace on Jean's face. Again and again the picture
melted into the face of Carl as he had left the house the night
Jean died. She wondered if this fantastic trick of her mind
were not sacrilege, if it were not in some manner disloyalty
to Jean. Yet, one was living, the other gone, and she felt a
comforting sense that Jean would not think her disloyal. She
wondered what course her new relations with Carl would
take. Now that Hilda was removed from the problem . . . ?
Weighing, pondering, wondering, she lightly slept. They'll
surely be gone now, she thought, as she on awaking descended
[138]


FL I G HT
to the parlour once more, drawn back to Jean as iron filings
are attracted by a powerful magnet,
The chairs by the window were empty and Mimi was glad.
She sat again by the casket and peace again came to her.
How long she sat there she did not know, lost as she was in
her own rambling, chaotic musings. Again there came to
her a feeling she was not alone. The whispering rose once
more, this time from the shadows on the other side of the
casket. She sought to put them out of her mind, to lose her-
self again in her own thoughts. After all, she thought, they
are trying to show their respect for Jean and their willingness
to be of service. It is thoughtful of them to come over here
and sit up. From the kitchen came the sound of voices and
the aroma of coffee. Maybe they'll leave soon if only to get
something to eat.
They did not leave. . Though she made every effort to close
her ears and mind to the words which floated jerkily to her,
Mimi found her resentment rising again. Mrs. Plummer and
Mrs. King discussed the probable price of the casket, the fur-
niture. They speculated as to what the widow and daughter
would do now, in what sort of financial circumstances the de-
ceased had left them. Mimi heard Carl's name linked with
her own—followed by an appreciative chuckle from Mrs.
King in response to some remark made by her companion
which Mimi could not hear. It was obvious the women had
not seen or heard Mimi re-enter the room, for the frankness of
their comment indicated their assumption they were alone.
On and on they roamed, by innuendo and by unqualified as-
sertion destroying, maligning, tearing to pieces. .
A cold, blind fury seized Mimi. She jumped to her feet.
The women gasped as Mimi's bloodless face framing flashing
eyes filled with fury rose at the head of the casket, the light
from the tall candles giving it a terrifying, ghostlike ap-
pearance.
[139]


FLIGHT
“You two get out!” Mimi demanded. “You might have
had enough respect for my father here to have silenced your
filthy, lying tongues! Get out! Get out! Get out!”
Her voice at first was but little more than a sharp whisper.
As her anger mastered her it rose until her words carried to
the hall beyond. Mrs. Plummer and Mrs. King, thoroughly
frightened, hastily edged around the room towards the door,
keeping as great distance as was possible between them and
Mimi, who slowly circled her body so that her eyes remained
upon them. The two gossips hurried through the little knot
which had gathered at the door, drawn there by the com-
motion. As the door shut behind them Mimi sank into her
chair and wept as Mrs. Adams came in and put her arms
about her. . . .
Down the street hurried two indignant, surprised women.
Mrs. Plummer speculated plaintively in an aggrieved tone as
she panted her way homeward.
“I wonder what was the matter with her,” she asked her
companion. “We didn't say nothing to make her r'ar and
tear like that—and over her dead father's body at that!
Some folks sho’ is funny!”
“Mis’ Plummer,” her companion declared portentously,”
it's the truth that hurts! You remember the old sayin's, “The
hit dog yelps!” and ‘Where there's smoke there's fire!’
Guess we weren't so far wrong at that. . . . Guess that gal will
bear watchin'.”
Early the next morning Mrs. Rogers came. As she entered
the house Mimi rushed to meet her. Her aunt took her in
her arms, murmuring gentle words of consolation to Mimi,
who felt instantly the presence of a friend and ally. Mrs.
Rogers was of medium height, younger than Jean but so like
her brother that Jean seemed only a replica to which white,
[140]


FLIGHT
close-cropped hair, a moustache and a little beard had been
added.
“Poor, dear Mimi,” she whispered, her eyes wet. She
pressed Mimi to her in a warm outpouring of real affection,
affection which sprang into existence unreservedly, binding
them together in a flash of understanding and love. . . .
Mimi and her aunt talked a long time together just before
Mrs. Rogers returned to New York two days after the funeral.
“What are your plans, Mimi? What are you going to do?”
“I don't know, Aunt Sophie—this thing has come on me so
suddenly I’m all upset. I suppose I’ll stay on here as long
as I can get along with Mrs. Daquin 92
“Why did Jean marry her? She's not our sort at all—an
estimable woman, I suppose, but—well, she just isn't the sort
—not Margot's type at all.”
Mimi told her the circumstances of the marriage, of the
years of misunderstanding which had followed the union.
“Just like Jean to do a thing like that,” his sister observed
when Mimi had finished. “Why stay on here with her?
Won't you go back to New York with me?”
“Oh, Aunt Sophie, I'd love to-but I can't leave Atlanta
right now 32
“What's his name?” Mrs. Rogers demanded with what to
Mimi seemed uncanny shrewdness.
“Carl Hunter,” she answered frankly, her face reddening.
“You see, he needs me.” And she told the story simply,
fully, knowing that her aunt would understand. When she
finished, Mrs. Rogers smiled sympathetically.
“I see—I see. But if ever things get unpleasant here, send
me a wire and come on to New York. I've been pretty lonely
since Henry died and I’ve always wanted a daughter. I’d
try to make you happy and I don't think there's overmuch
happiness here for you with Jean's widow. And up North
[14]]


FLIGHT
you'd have a much better chance than here where all you can
do is to teach school or get married. The last isn't bad if
you get the right man—but, don't hurry—a girl with your
looks and brains can go a long way if she only keeps her
head. . . .
[142]


CHA PTE R XII
she could find herself settling back into a routined life.
At first there had been the long, empty days and the
longer nights when the house seemed a vast, empty place
from which the spirit or thing or whatever it might be called
which had made it different from other places had fled. But
Mrs. Daquin had removed most of the things which too vividly
brought back memories of Jean.
“There's no use of keeping things that only make you sad,”
she had said. “I get the creeps every time I go to see Mrs.
Simpkins—those dried flowers from her husband's funeral
hanging in the frame in her parlour. There'll be nothing like
that around here—a dead person's dead and you can't bring
him back, no matter how much you loved him.”
At first Mimi had objected strenuously to Mrs. Daquin's
seemingly ruthless disposal of all the things which to her were
so intimately associated with Jean. They had, however,
brought little furniture from New Orleans, only Jean's books
and a few odds and ends. These latter Mimi removed to her
own room and then she willingly consented to whatever
changes her step-mother desired. A new parlour set was pur-
chased as soon after the funeral as was decently possible.
New wall-paper appeared in the long dark hall and in Mrs.
Daquin's bedroom. Out, too, went the bedroom furniture of
mottled walnut. A brass bed with frolicsome curves and
angles of shiny metal contrasting with the cloudy dullness
of the heavier portions took its place. The imperfect set of
plain white china with the narrow border of gold and blue
S. would not have believed that so soon after Jean's death
[143]


F LIGHT
was stored in the attic. In its stead appeared china of awe-
inspiring combinations of bluebirds kissing on the wing, many
cupolaed pagodas, sampans rowed by fat-bellied Chinamen,
and trees of a design never produced even by a profligate
Nature. Mimi took only a perfunctory interest in these
changes other than vouchsafing a listless “They're pretty,”
when pressed for comment by Mrs. Daquin.
Mimi at times was amazed at her ready acceptance of the
uneventful life. She was grateful that she had apparently
been wrong in her estimation of her step-mother. Mrs. Da-
quin seemed changed, chastened by Jean's death. She had
really loved her husband in her own fashion even when she
had been most irritated by what to her seemed his lack of in-
telligence in grasping opportunities for advancement or gain.
Now that he was dead, she found herself regarding him not
in the light of the later years but more as she had during their
short courtship and the first year of their marriage. This
mood was sustained by the very evident advantages which she
found coming to her as a recently bereaved widow. She
knew that in time this too would pass. In time Jean would
be but a faint memory to most of those with whom she asso-
ciated.
It was not conscious dishonesty nor was she a deliberate
poseuse when she accepted the little attentions, the deference
which they bestowed on her. Mrs. Daquin found herself for
the first time a personage in her own right. All her youth
she had lived under the dominating influence of her father,
and even after her marriage to so retiring a person as Jean,
she found that her handicap in being a woman in a conven-
tional society was very great. Her father had not attended
the funeral but he had wired and written her repeatedly urging
her to return to Chicago. This she resolved not to do—at
least not unless circumstances compelled such a step—for she
[144]


FLIGHT
forts and even a few necessities which before had seemed to
her so natural she had never given thought to their source.
She did not grumble but began at once to prepare for the
examination as a school-teacher in the spring. In fact, she
was glad to find a definite thing on which to concentrate—it
served as an opiate when Jean's loss seemed too great to
bear. . . .
Into this new life Carl came with much larger importance
than Mimi had supposed was possible. In time Mrs. Daquin,
who had never been able to find out from Mimi the purpose
of Mrs. Hunter's mysterious call but who had linked it up
after a fashion with Carl and Mimi, offered no objection to
Carl's visits to the house. This lack of hostility changed in
time to actual welcome due to the increased cordiality of Mrs.
Hunter towards Mrs. Daquin which the latter sensed was in
large measure because of his visits. This welcome was
strengthened by Carl's evident reformation. No longer was
he seen with questionable companions. He had not been seen
under the influence of liquor since he had begun again to visit
Mimi, and every Sunday now he was to be seen with his par-
ents and sister at church.
The old comradeship, deepened and enriched in a subtle but
unmistakable way, was returning. Memory of that night dur-
ing which so much had taken place, their reunion, Jean's death
and all the rest, had kept them from the torridity of feeling
which had swept over them then. Instead there was a com-
forting sense of unity which ripened and deepened through the
unspoken avowals of their love that flashed between them
whenever they met.
This feeling was always deepest as they walked out in the
evening. During the latter part of September and the early
part of October there had been many crisply cold nights.
Dying October and budding November brought that year balmy
[146]


FLIGHT
nights and pleasant days that were reminiscent of late summer.
Through the darkened streets they strolled arm in arm. Here
and there were street lamps which shed little light more than
to a radius of fifteen or twenty feet. Back in tidy little yards
sat squat little houses or imposing two-storied ones with an
occasional light peeping from them in friendly manner. Up
above, a moon, slender and graceful like a fragile, spreading .
horseshoe of coruscation, or full-bodied and vigorous in its
yellowish brilliance. Mimi always liked the new moon best—
it stirred her by its slender grace. But Carl preferred the full
ones—“no wonder the Greeks and Romans gave a ‘corona’ as
a badge of victory—those old boys were poets, and real ones—
they saw that there could be no greater beauty and splendour
than in an award resembling that band of light up yonder.”
It was not long before they were accepted as “going to-
gether.” With the ready forgiveness accorded a man who has
transgressed against local codes of conduct, Carl's derelic-
tions of the past were forgotten, or, if not forgotten, thrust
into that indefinite realm of things not to be mentioned again
save in most intimate conversations. It was assumed that,
now Jean was dead, Mimi would soon be marrying, and the
assumption more or less naturally followed that she would
marry Carl.
Between them, however, there was no thought of to-morrow
nor, for some inexplicable reason, did there come to their ears
the now friendly discussions regarding what they would do
which were going on. They floated along happily on the
stream of their new-found contentment, as oblivious of the
future as two bits of wood held together by a string on the
bosom of some placid pond. On rainy nights or evenings
when Mimi did not feel like walking or going to a moving-
picture show, they sat at home, Carl talking or reading some
bit of verse, or some story he had come across, while Mimi
sat and sewed or just sat. Carl's restlessness had almost left
[147]


FLIGHT
him, he seemed more contented, he now actually took a deeper
interest in the work his father wanted him to do. More and
more there entered his conversations his plans, his hopes, his
eagerness to please his father. Mimi learned that even under
his former discontent there was a deep respect and a sort of
affection that Carl had for his father. She saw that the older
man's will worked with great effect upon that of his son—
too much so, she feared. . . .
Early in November she found that this was even more true
than she had suspected. One morning she was awakened by
a dream. In it she saw Jean again, standing beside her bed,
his eyes sad, his finger pointing accusingly at her. No word
came from his lips, but his face had on it an expression she
had never seen in life, one that made her shrink from it into
the warm, comforting embrace of the bed-clothes. She lay
awake and then fell again into troubled slumber.
When she awoke she felt a violent nausea and a dizziness
that made her glad to lie down again. She called Mrs. Da-
quin, who listened to her recital of her ailments and then
gave her some medicine, advising her to remain in bed.
Later Mrs. Daquin brought her breakfast and sat with her
as she toyed with it, eating little. It's nice of her to do this,
thought Mimi. She's getting more lovable every day.
As she still felt badly in the afternoon, Mimi went at her
step-mother's suggestion to see Dr. Adams. A few questions,
an examination, and then Dr. Adams looked gravely at Mimi.
“You’re going to have a baby, Mimi,” he told her.
Mimi gasped, echoing his words. A great happiness filled
her, happiness mingled with a sweeping flame of love for
Carl. A baby! Hers and Carl's! Her face shone with a
great light, the light of contentment and love. There was no
feeling of shame nor could she clearly understand why Dr.
Adams' face should remain so grave and worried. On that
[148]


FLIGHT
eventful night she and Carl had been caught up and swept
on by a great tide of passion, an emotion overwhelming, beauti-
ful, sacred. She had given of herself freely, without thought
of consequences and without any sense of shame. To her it
had been a magnificent, a pure and holy giving. Her smile
puzzled Dr. Adams.
“Mimi, I'm afraid you don't realize how serious a thing
this is. Do you know what'll happen to you and your repu-
tation? And who's the man?”
She told him simply and freely. Still her manner was a
source of wonder to him. Ordinarily such a message would
have brought forth tears, protestations of innocence, pleas for
help. Mimi did none of these.
His face was set in grim lines as she told of Carl.
“The scoundrel! We'll make him marry you and save
your name from being dragged in the mud.”
“No-no, Doctor, you don't understand. We've done noth-
ing wrong, and if we have I’m as much to blame as Carl.
Please don't say anything about this until I see him. . . .”
She telephoned Carl, who came over to her house at once.
She greeted him happily, the light of love yet shining in her
face.
“Carl,” she cried as soon as he entered, “I’m going to have
a baby!”
“You’re what?”
“I’m going to have a baby—Dr. Adams told me so this af.
ternoon—I’m so happy,” she ended, a puzzled tone creeping
into her voice.
“Did he ask you who was the father?”
“Yes, of course he did.”
“Who did you tell him?”
“Why, you, of course.”
He turned on her roughly.
[149]


F LIGHT
“You little fool, what did you want to do that for?”
She gazed at him in dismay. She had expected a happiness
equal to her own. Instead Carl glared at her as though he
wanted to spring at her throat. With his anger was mingled
fear—humiliation—she knew not what emotions passed rap-
idly over his countenance.
“Don’t you tell anybody else,” he demanded. “And to-
morrow I'll take you to a doctor who'll fix you up—”
“Fix me up?”
“Yes—fix you up! Don't you understand?”
Realization of what he meant came slowly to her. A bit-
terness filled her, bitterness that knew no end, bitterness worse
than any she had ever known before. This, then, was the
Carl she had loved, a shrivelling coward. What a fool she
had been to have believed that to him their love was the
beautiful thing which it had been to her.
“My dad’ll kill me for this—he'll drive me away like a
dog . . .” Carl was saying hoarsely.
He straightened up, fear leaving him.
“No-no–Mimi. We'll go straight to mother and she'll
help us. We’ll go away and get married—pretend we
eloped.”
He sought to put his arms around her. In his gesture
there was a new note of possessiveness, his indecisiveness of
the minutes before now gone.
She shrank from his touch. Her head went high and in her
eyes was a look that frightened him.
“We'll do nothing of the kind!” she cried. “I was a fool
—you are right. I thought you were fine—clean—different
from the others. You're not. You're just the same weak,
vile sort that you were always hating and denouncing.”
“That's all right, Mimi,” he sought to quiet her. “You’re
all unstrung now. We’ll get married and give the kid a clean
name—”
[150]


FLIGHT
Mimi looked at him and in that glance was something that
silenced him.
“Unstrung? Give the baby a clean name? After what
you just suggested? You'll do nothing of the sort! I'm go-
ing to have this baby, do you hear me? I’m going to have
him and he's going to be all mine. I guess he can get along
lots easier with just a bad name than he can with a cowardly
father—”
“Mimi, you don't know what you're saying!” Carl,
now thoroughly alarmed, pleaded. “We’ve got to get mar-
ried!”
“Got to? Well, we haven't got to and we won't! I'll get
along somehow, don't you worry, but all the love I had for
you has turned to black hate! This baby’ll be mine—all
mine!”
She rushed from the room, leaving him standing there. . . .
Safe in her room, she let the tears she had fought so hard
to check in the parlour below flow without hindrance. As
from a distance, she heard the front door slam and she
breathed more easily, knowing Carl was no longer in the
house.
She wondered why she had acted as she had, knowing as
she did the full reason. Bitterness filled her as she went
again and again over the scene just ended. Faith, deep, un-
limited, had been killed. A bitter laugh mingled with her
tears. She saw Carl now for the insincere poseur that he was
—him whom she had thought decent and clean. For the first
time there came over her a sense of shame—a feeling of
guilt. She wondered how Mrs. Daquin would take it. Mimi
determined resolutely that if there were a scene or recrimina-
tions of any sort she would leave and never return.
From below came the sound of Mrs. Daquin's voice, call-
ing her. Mimi dried her tears away and went down. Mr.
and Mrs. Hunter sat in the parlour. Behind them stood Carl,
[151]


FLIGHT
his head down. Mrs. Hunter rose and attempted to take
Mimi in her arms. Mimi evåded her.
“You poor, dear child!” Mrs. Hunter consoled her.
“Thank you, Mrs. Hunter, but I don't need any pity—it's
your son who needs it more,” Mimi told her. Her voice was
hard, flat, cold.
Mrs. Hunter was not to be deterred.
“But you and Carl must get married right away and save
your name. When the baby's nearly here, you two can go
off on a long trip. Oh, dear, I’m so terribly upset—I almost
feel like I’m the guilty one, pleading with you to save
him—”
Back and forth the discussion raged. Mr. Hunter urged.
His wife pleaded. Mrs. Daquin stormed. But Mimi re-
mained firm. . . .
After they had gone Mrs. Daquin took her turn.
“You silly little fool. You're crazy. You're going to
get these crazy notions out of your head and marry Carl. I
never in all my life heard of so silly a thing as this idea of
yours. What if Carl is a weak and worthless scamp? Any
kind of a man for a husband is better than none when a girl's
in your fix. . . .”
On and on she went, denouncing, pleading, scorning, ap-
pealing.
Mimi listened to the Niagara of words but they served
only to make her more determined to do as she had declared
she would. Jean's words came to her—the advice he had
given her long ago as they were about to leave New Orleans—
“decide in your own mind the wisest, the best thing to be done,
and then do it.” As she looked at the four faces she wondered
what Jean would say if he were here now. Even as Mrs.
Daquin stormed, Mimi knew there was much right in what
she said. She would be condemned, her name derided. She
knew she could not remain in Atlanta. Even if she could,
[152]


FLIGHT
the looks of disdain, the insults, would be unbearable. They
had done that for years to the girl Carl had been going
to see and they had had no definite proof on her of wrong-
doing.
She wondered what she could do. Where could she go?
She had no training by which she could earn a living. And
she certainly would not go to any city where she was liable
to meet anybody who knew her. She thought of Aunt Sophie
and her invitation to come and live with her in New York.
No, she couldn't accept that invitation now. Aunt Sophie
would be just like these people here, would hate her for her
misdeed. Suppose she did marry Carl. His parents would
see that they wanted nothing. But always there would be
in their minds, she was sure, the thought that she had come
to them under a cloud—that she had done something dis-
graceful and by that means had married into their family.
Mimi felt sure in time they too would hate her as much as
she now hated Carl. No, her mind was made up. Whatever
she might have to suffer, it was better that she keep her own
soul free. That would certainly not be true if she married
Carl now.
Wearily she faced her step-mother and spoke. The words
came slowly, painstakingly, as though she were explaining a
complex matter to a rather stupid child.
“Yes, I know all that you say is true. I am foolish. I am
bringing on myself a terrible responsibility. But I can't
marry Carl—not now. He wanted me to go to a doctor—to
fix me up—those were his very words. I hate him—and if I
live to be a thousand years old I’ll hate him more every day
I live. Don't you worry—I’ll go away—I don't know where,
but anyway you won't be bothered with me any more. But
I won't marry Carl. My mind's made up and I won't change
it. . . .”
A few weeks later Mimi boarded a train for Philadelphia.
[153]


F LIGHT
She could give no reason why she chose that city to which to
go. The nearest she could explain her choice was that Phila-
delphia was large, she knew no one there and she was sure she
could lose herself in its vastness. Mr. Hunter offered her
money but she took only that which was due her through his
purchase of half, her half, of the stock Jean had owned.
Mrs. Daquin pleaded with her to the hour of departure
to marry Carl, but Mimi's determination grew stronger with
her pleading. As the train wound its way through the maze
of tracks and puffed its way northward through the bare red
hills of Georgia, she gazed from the car-window with the
feeling that she had definitely closed the pages of the first
book of her life. She stared at the darkening landscape long
after the lights in the car were turned on, and wondered what
was written on the pages of that second book whose cover she
now was lifting. . . .
[154]


CHA PTE R XIII
oNTH by month the time rolled slowly by for Mimi.
She slept late in the morning, went out for walks in
the afternoon or to a moving-picture show, retired
early every evening. On Sundays she stole unobtrusively
into the Catholic church near where she lived, varying this
occasionally with attendance at the Methodist church to which
the elderly couple with which she boarded belonged. They
were simple, kindly people who made a comfortable living
from a small catering business which kept them away from
home a great deal. Mimi thus had the house to herself a
large part of the time, for which she was grateful, as it relieved
her of the strain of meeting and talking to people and an-
swering embarrassing questions.
The old couple frequently speculated to themselves who
and what she might be. To the woman's indirect and friendly
questions Mimi gave evasive answers which seemed to satisfy
the simple and uninguisitive nature of the elderly woman.
To her neighbours she said that Mimi was a young widow
grieving for her dead husband, which explanation, in view of
the mourning garments Mimi yet wore for Jean, was accepted
in good faith. Mimi often wept at the expressions, either by
word or unobtrusive actions, of sympathy which came to her
from the elderly couple and their friends. And often, too,
guilt assailed her, for she felt she was accepting these minis-
trations under false colours. There were moments when she
felt she could not accept them any longer, that she must tell
them the true story. Always before taking such a step, how-
ever, she restrained her impulses. She knew no one else
[155]


FLIGHT
in Philadelphia who would take her in, she was paying for
her room and excellent food a ridiculously low sum, and her
little store of money which had seemed so large when Mr.
Hunter had given it to her, was shrinking with dismaying speed.
When the long, dreary, slushy days of winter had given way
to the invigorating and friendly warmth of an early spring,
she spent most of her days sitting in the park. Used to the
tropical heat of New Orleans, the biting winds and driving
snows of the North made her miserable and depressed, though
her years in Atlanta had inured her to a degree against the
cold. But she did not like cold weather, and the coming of
the days when she could see the delicate green of the sprouting
grass and budding trees made her very happy.
She would take with her to the park a book or more often a
newspaper but she seldom read. She was content to sit and
watch children at play or gaze at friendly squirrels who so
ludicrously sat rapidly revolving a nut disentombed from
earthy caches in their little forepaws as they bit into its hard
shell.
Even the sinking of a huge vessel like the Titanic after col-
lision with an iceberg off the Canadian coast with great loss
of life could not stir her. Nor could the hectic days of an
election year stir her from her apathy. A former school-
teacher from New Jersey, a prominent member of Congress,
a twice-defeated candidate for the Presidency, a fat, jovial and
weak President, and a vigorous ex-President were scrambling
madly for nominations, but so far as Mimi was concerned,
they might just as well have been struggling for the rulership
of an obscure island in the South Seas.
As the time of her ordeal approached she achieved a calm-
ness of which she had never believed herself capable. Her
hatred, her contempt for Carl had passed and in its stead had
come a complete lack of feeling towards him. She saw him
now in perspective more and more clearly as the weak individ-
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FLIGHT
ual he had proved himself to be. She wondered why she had
not seen it sooner, why traits of his which now were revealed
all too clearly had been invisible to her. His indecisiveness,
his succumbing to indifference and easy vices when they had
first parted on Hilda's account, should have been a clear warn-
ing to her. She did not object to his drinking or other derelic-
tions on moral grounds. As a matter of fact Carl's associa-
tion with the girl who was déclassée had not seemed to her
as a thing to be condemned. Towards the girl Mimi had had
a very kindly and sympathetic feeling and she had had no
word of condemnation or scorn for her. Mimi now realized
that she should have seen in these little strayings from which
she had saved Carl at such a cost to herself the true measure
of Carl's character. But even as she saw now what might
and should have been, she knew that at the time she had been
so blinded by her love for Carl she could never have re-
alized the full importance of the things then under her very
eyes.
Her sense of contentment had its roots in a deep spiritual
awareness which gave her great comfort. She seldom
thought now of the condemnation she was doubtless receiving
in Atlanta. Instead she was happy, very happy she had acted
as she had. She and the baby would get along somehow and
they would be very happy together. Lacking respect, de-
spising Carl, she would never have been happy with him,
and her religion would not have allowed her to divorce him.
What though her money was disappearing so rapidly? By
economy she would surely have enough to last her through her
confinement and permit her to spend a few weeks in the
country until she was strong again. Then she could easily
get a job and she and the baby would be happy together.
She loved the restless stirring within her body, she was
happy at the signs of creation. It was a sensation at times
beautiful, at other times she was overwhelmed with the mar-
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FLIGHT
boy would be less trouble and there would be fewer people to
demand of him the story of his parentage than would be the
case with a girl. Day after day this speculation went on end-
lessly, and she always came back to the exact spot in her
reasoning from which she had begun. . . .
It was a boy. A hot night in early July saw his entry into
the world after two days and two nights of pain which tore
Mimi's body with its burning shafts of agony. When it was
all over she lay in her narrow cot in the maternity ward of
the public hospital and passed her hand lovingly over the
tiny, shapeless mass of red flesh. There had never been any
question in her mind regarding the name she should give
him . . . Jean, of course. For his sake she had cheerfully
lied in answering the usual form questions. . . . She had
hoped to take at least a private room. But she had spent her
money faster than she had realized and the private room
would have made the weeks in the country impossible. . . .
She was glad afterwards she had put up with the lack of
privacy and the other inconveniences of the public ward.
Mr. Manning had arranged for her to stay with a friend of
theirs in New Jersey and there Mimi was so contented, so
happy, in the little cottage near Camden, she wished she could
have remained there always. She loved to give Jean his bath,
to feed him, to shower on him little attentions and superfluous
affections. His clutching hands dug into her flesh as he
nursed and the exquisite pain of it sent deliriously exhilarat-
ing tingles throughout her body. And she talked to him as
though he were old enough to understand, whenever she was
certain no one could overhear her.
“You’re mine, baby Jean, all mine. . . . No other person
owns any part of you. . . . I’ll work for you, sacrifice
everything for you . . . and we'll be happy, so happy, to-
gether. . . . You'll never know the agony your mother went
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F LIGHT
through. . . . I’ll give everything gladly to save you and
keep you free. . . .”
All too soon she was forced to return to Philadelphia. Up
to this time Mimi had refused to permit herself to worry over
the problem of earning a living for herself and little Jean.
She told the Mannings frankly of her financial condition.
They so readily showed their willingness to help her, it
brought tears of gratitude that could not be checked. Her
regular hours during the long months when she was awaiting
Jean's arrival, the willingness she had always shown to help
with any task around the house, her regular church attendance,
had all combined to endear her to the elderly couple who had
no children of their own.
“Don’t you worry one little bit, honey,” Mrs. Manning told
her. “You’ll never have to worry about rent or food—so
long's we've got anything to eat and a roof over our heads
you’ve them too.”
They sat in the dining-room until long after midnight the
evening Mimi returned from the country, devising ways and
means of Mimi's earning in some way enough to supply the
needs of herself and “Petit Jean,” as she called the baby, to
differentiate him from the Jean who had gone. Mr. Manning
scratched his white head and pursed his lips as he gazed at
the ceiling.
“You say you haven't been taught a trade—you're too good
for housework—hm—let me see—let me see-e-e,” he spoke
half to himself, half to the two women. Mimi volunteered
the information that she could sew rather well. “You can?
Why’n’t you tell me that before? Why, that settles it all!
I’ll speak to some of my customers and get you plenty of
work doing sewing by the day.” A smile, beautiful in its
radiant joy at solution of the vexing problem, wreathed his
face.
“But what about the baby?” his wife inquired. Mr. Man-
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F LIGHT
ning's face fell, wiped as clean of its elation as a blackboard
when a damp cloth is passed over it. “I’ll tell you what we
can do,” Mrs. Manning went on. “Days when I'm away we
can put him in a day nursery.”
Mimi was not allowed to begin her new life for some time,
however. On one pretext after another her day of beginning
work was deferred by the Mannings. The most frequent ex-
cuse was that most of the people who needed the services of
a seamstress had gone away for the summer. Though Mimi
had now been in Philadelphia more than eight months she
knew little of the city. Her life before the baby was born
had been so limited a one she had seldom been farther from
home than a few blocks. The hugeness of the city, its teem-
ing streets, the roar of traffic, the hurrying throngs, each
person in it set on his own affairs to the exclusion of every-
thing and everybody else, frightened her. When she ventured
out alone she always had the feeling as though some huge hand
had picked her up and thrown her into a raging torrent. And
always she regained the haven of home with a prayer of thanks-
giving in her heart that she had not been killed in the bustle
by one of the wagons or trucks that rushed down upon one with
such terrifying speed. Used to the somnolence of New Orleans
and the lesser traffic of Atlanta, she often wondered why she
had ever chosen Philadelphia as her city of refuge—“City of
Brotherly Love” was certainly an anachronism to a stranger
like herself.
She was happy with the Mannings but her inaction worried
her. Except for a few dollars she was now completely with-
out funds. She had had to buy a number of things for the
baby but even though she had made most of his clothes her-
self, cloth and thread and buttons cost. She did not tell the
Mannings of her worries, for they invariably sought to dismiss
them from her mind. But she had overheard snatches of
their conversation when they did not know she was near—in
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FL I G HT
the small house a secret conversation was most difficult—and
she had noticed little economies they practised, and not because
of parsimony. The two were getting old, there were fewer
and fewer calls every year now for their services. Younger
and more progressive people were gobbling the bulk of the
catering jobs. Their older customers they yet retained, but
some of these were dying off and others entertained less, for
they too were getting old. Their sons and daughters who now
had their own homes went to the established firms where
newer and fresher and more bizarre effects could be obtained
than those of the old order furnished by the Mannings.
Having always been thrifty, the Mannings had saved some
money, but they knew and Mimi knew that they would need
all of this in the years to come when even the little work they
now did would be gone and they would be too old to do any
work at all. Mimi was miserable when she thought of this and
she seemed to herself to be a leech feeding off the bodies of
these two who had been so generous to her, a stranger.
And this guilty feeling was added to when she thought, as
she frequently did, that she had eaten of their bread under
false colours. Mrs. Manning might as well have applied hot
irons to Mimi's flesh unwittingly as to mention Mimi's “late
husband.” Never was there any malice or inquisitiveness in
her voice, and that lack of suspicion hurt Mimi a thousand
times more than accusations and recriminations.
“If your poor husband had only lived to see the baby!”
or “Does the boy take after you or your husband?” she
would say gently, and her innocent words would make Mimi
feel like a distillation of all the Judas Iscariots, the Benedict
Arnolds, the Tartuffes, the Pharisees and all the other de-
ceivers and hypocrites of history. Now that she had regained
her strength, her inaction annoyed her, the very food she ate
at times almost choked her because after all it was charity
and more, charity granted through deceit and lies. Time
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FLIGHT
men whom she passed on the street and she knew what these
looks meant. She hurried along with downcast eyes to es-
cape them, frightened by their boldness. She felt safe, for
she seldom ventured forth after nightfall, but even in the
daytime these unmistakable glances caused a nausea to well
up within her. In the episode with Carl, Mimi had given
herself freely and with no sense of shame or guilt but she
had loved him when that had taken place. But these un-
solicited attentions caused a revulsion within her which swept
through her like a physical illness.
One of her best-paying customers for whom she sewed reg-
ularly every Thursday lived in Germantown. Often the work
was so great she did not leave until very late but she was glad
of this, for she was paid generously for her overtime and re-
ceived her dinner, which meant an additional saving. One
Thursday afternoon as she came down the stairs from the room
where she always worked she met the husband of her em-
ployer.
“Hello,” he greeted her, “and who are you?”
She told him. After answering various questions regarding
the length of time she had worked there and listening to his
surprised comment that he had not seen her during all that
time, he let her pass. But the following Thursday he was
there again, this time earlier than before. He came into the
room where she was hurrying through her work.
“Tell me about yourself,” he demanded, pleasantly, too
pleasantly Mimi thought.
“There's little to tell. I work for my living.”
“Your husband's dead, then?” he remarked, looking at her
black dress. Mimi yet wore mourning, partly because she
could afford no new clothes. She began to gather her work
to avoid his questions.
“You don't mean to tell me you're coloured?” he pursued,
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FLIGHT
“That's really very nice of you—very generous indeed,”
Mimi observed, her amusement now rapidly conquering her
apprehension.
“Oh, no, not at all—not at all!” he protested, thinking her
serious. “Even when I lived in the South I had none of the
usual prejudice.”
“How very remarkable!” cooed Mimi. Her voice had in
it the velvety smoothness of swan's-down.
To himself he thought, this is easier than I expected, as he
advanced possessively towards her.
“How soon am I going to see you?” he queried softly.
“Don’t be silly!” Mimi calmly advised him. “In the first
place you are fat. In the second, you are old and bald. In
the third, you are white. Fourth, you are vain and stupid
and ignorant and repulsive. Don't think I'm falling back
on the sentimental melodramatics of the ‘poor working girl.”
I'm not—I let you run along just to set the stage for telling
you my opinion of you.”
Her voice was as dispassionate as that of a schoolgirl
monotonously listing the products from Brazil. There were
no heroics, no tears, but only a relentless cataloguing of the
physical and mental defects of the would-be Casanova. He
gasped.
“You little fool—you ought to feel proud that I, a white
man, would even want you—a nigger!”
Her face flamed at the despised word but she kept her
temper.
“I’m not surprised at your thinking that. I suppose even
that such a notion is natural—you've made your own ideas
about your own attractiveness and irresistibility and you've
told yourself so often you're invincible you believe it your-
selves. Seducers of servant-girls! A noble accomplishment!”
Infuriated at her impassivity and her ridicule, so markedly
a contrast to what he had assumed was complacence, he
1”
[167]


CHAPTER XIV
IMI was not greatly surprised when she received a
message that she would no longer be expected on
Thursdays at the Germantown home. At first it
amused her. Had she resorted to tears or pleading for re-
lease or any of the usual methods of damsels in defence of
their virtue, she reflected, the curt note of dismissal would
not have been sent. Man is a peculiar creature. So long as
by implication or any other means he is allowed to imagine
himself the superior being, whether that superiority came
through brute strength or intellect or wealth or any other
means, he is manageable and easily guſled. But when he is
made ridiculous and the little bubble of his conceit is pricked
by a woman's obvious contempt, he becomes a vengeful and
ridiculous person.
Mimi was sustained by her elation at the ease with which
she had escaped an unpleasant and possibly dangerous situ-
ation. She was glad she had retained her poise. She felt
angry only when she remembered the nasty way in which he
had implied and later definitely stated that in his opinion she
should have been happy, being coloured, to have attracted his
notice. For the first time she saw the reasons for Jean's ap-
prehension in those talks which seemed to have taken place so
many years ago. Life for any woman who was unprotected
and who sought to live up to certain ideals was hard. But
when that woman was coloured she was more than ever at
the mercy of those who were her constant pursuers. She
found her old race-consciousness surging up again. Bitter-
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FLIGHT
ness against the husband of her former employer welled in
her not so much because he had assumed she would be
amenable to his suggestions but more because he had so read-
ily assumed that she, being coloured, would offer no objec-
tions whatever.
But when her joy in her victory and her bitterness at the
vanquished had passed, she found that the revenue lost in
this manner was seriously affecting her. She found other
jobs but none of them were as regular nor did they pay as
well. Every dollar counted, every fraction of a dollar earned
or expended made a difference. Once or twice she had been
a few days late in paying the rent for the small room in
which she and Petit Jean lived. The lessened cordiality with
which her landlady greeted her pleas for more time for pay-
ment made this an ordeal she avoided even when it meant, as
it frequently did, the forgoing of meals for herself.
Petit Jean thrived and grew, singularly free from the mala-
dies of childhood. With what to Mimi seemed amazing speed,
his monthly birthdays sped by and accumulated—the fifth, the
sixth, the seventh, the eighth. As long as he was well and
clothed and fed, Mimi's own difficulties seemed of little more
than passing moment. Nothing greatly matters, she com-
forted herself, when seen in perspective—it is only when a
thing is happening that it frightens and pains one. She
found a new strength coming to her out of the problems and
perplexities she was meeting. It was, she found, like looking
into a mirror. When one did look the image was there and
if one was sick or unhappy it gave back a reflection of that
condition or mood. But as soon as one removed himself from
a place in front of the looking-glass the image was gone.
She consoled herself with this convenient philosophy and
found in it a courage of which she would not have believed
herself capable.
But inevitably there came to her periods of depression.
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F LIGHT
Most frequently these occurred when she thought of Jean's fu-
ture. Suppose her own health failed. She could not go on
indefinitely this way, common sense told her, going without
food, improperly clothed, saving nothing. Her rather ample
wardrobe which she had brought from Atlanta was nearly
threadbare and she just could not afford to spend money on
adornment for herself. Little garments for Jean, talcums,
soaps, and the infinite variety of essentials which an infant
required for his comfort took all she could earn and more.
It seldom occurred to her she could have asked and received
aid from the Hunters, Mrs. Daquin or her Aunt Sophie. The
idea at times of greatest need came fleetingly to her, hazily,
but she resolutely put it from her mind before it could find
lodgment there. Whatever else might come to her, she would
never yield to such temptations, at least she would never per-
mit herself to beg from her step-mother or Carl's parents.
To do so would have been surrender of the principle for which
she had so bravely fought—the determination to keep her
own soul free. However adroitly worded, a plea to them
would have been admission of defeat, of her failure to make
good the lofty words of determination she had spoken. She
knew they did not understand the motives which had driven
her on. In truth, she sometimes wondered if she herself
knew them. But when she held Jean in her arms, when his
toothless smile greeted her on her calling for him at the
nursery, when his warm flesh rested against her side in bed,
she was happy to a degree which she knew would never have
been possible had she accepted the easier way out of her diffi-
culties. No, despite all, she knew, her course had been the
only one she could have taken in the face of Carl's abject fail-
ure to measure up to the high qualities with which she had in
fancy endowed him.
One extravagance, a pitifully small one, she permitted her-
self. In the late spring she passed an old second-hand book
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F LIGHT
shop on a side street. She lingered at the weather-beaten old
table outside the shop, fingering, examining, peeping into the
battered and worn books displayed there. Volume after vol-
ume she looked into but most of them were dull and prosy
stuff which bored her. She lingered so long the proprietor
came to the door and stood there looking everywhere except
at her, with too great casualness, Mimi reflected with a smile.
It amused her to watch him with equal lack of obviousness,
knowing that his suspiciousness led him to remain there. She
named him “Old Scrooge,” for he looked at though he had
stepped from Dickens' pages with his fringe of dusty grey
hair, his square, steel-rimmed spectacles, his baggy and non-
descript clothing.
The game interested her and she lingered, idly fingering
book after book. Her delay was repaid when a dingy, much-
handled volume seemed to spring from the table, bringing
with it a strange thrill. Jean had had a copy of this same
book. So had Carl. Both of them had with elaborate indi-
rection kept it from her and, with natural curiosity, she had
always been eager to know why. And, with equal naturalness,
she had made a solemn vow to read it from cover to cover
when she could put her hands upon a copy. It was “Leaves
of Grass.” She opened it eagerly. Her eyes fell on the yel-
lowed page. They read:
O ME! O LIFE!
O Me! O Life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself for ever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?),
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle
ever renew'd,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see
around me,
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FL I GHT
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me inter-
twined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these,
O me, O life?
Answer
That you are here—that life exists and identify,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
The old man, the shop, the passers-by, everything was blotted
out by the words, powerful, true, so applicable to her own
case. “That the powerful play goes on, and I may contrib-
ute a verse,” she repeated softly, consciously changing the pro-
noun. She paid the man for the book, cheerfully giving up
the food which the book would cost, and hurried home with it.
When she had put Jean to bed she sat and read over and
over again the words. “Foolish and faithless.” “For who
more foolish than I, and who more faithless?” She had
been foolish, to the dead Jean she had been faithless. To
herself, but a wild happiness filled her that in the hour of
difficulty, at the time when she had been forced to make the
biggest decision of her life, she may have been foolish but not
faithless. She fell asleep whispering: “That the powerful
play goes on, and I, Mimi Daquin, may contribute a verse.”
The words gave her a comforting sense of direction. She
had been blindly wandering, groping, striving towards a goal
that had never been clear, indeed she had never even vaguely
visualized any destination other than the struggle to do those
things which seemed to her to be right. Even for this indefi-
nite rightness or wrongness she had no tangible definition—
she sought only by instinct or conscience or some other in-
definable guide the path to truth and beauty and happi-
Ilê88. . . .
This new consciousness gave her faith and courage at a
time when she needed these things more than she had ever
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FLIGHT
needed them before. Summer came with the usual migration
of the few regular customers she had to the seashore or the
mountains. Mimi no longer called on the Mannings, for she
could no longer conceal even from their unsuspecting eyes
the extent of her distress. She saved the small fee at the
day nursery, for it was seldom now that she had to be away
from home. Her rent was several weeks overdue and the rela-
tions between Mimi and her landlady had reached an actually
strained point.
“Stuck-up niggers think they can sponge off of common
ones—humph! I'll show her she can't make no footmat out
of me!” she overheard her landlady saying to her husband
one evening. “An I ain't never been satisfied she's respect-
able—if that baby's got a daddy he must have had some rela-
tives she could get money from. I'm tired of foolin’ with
her and if she don't pay me by Sad'dy I'm goin’ to put her
and her baby right out there in the street!”
Sick at heart, hungry, discouraged, Mimi slowly struggled
up the stairs to her room. Even Petit Jean's coos of welcome
could not cheer her up. She lay on the bed beside him and
wept.
And as though she had not already enough to bear, she
found new trouble awaiting her that dwarfed all that had
gone before, when she returned to the house the following
evening after another day of fruitless search for work. Mrs.
Williams, her landlady, had volunteered to care for Jean while
she was out, despite her words of the night before. When
the rickety screen door banged behind her, Mimi heard Mrs.
Williams calling from the rear of the house. On an old
davenport lay Jean, vomiting wretchedly. Intermittently he
screamed, writhing in the paroxysmal pain which recurred
every few minutes. On his face was a ghastly pallor and he
seemed in a state of complete collapse.
Mimi rushed to the cot and fell on her knees beside Jean
[174]


FL I G HT
as she flung anxious questions at the perspiring, frightened
woman above her.
“Yes'm, I called a doctor—my doctor—and he said it wasn't
nothing but cramps. . He gave your baby some castor oil, but
soon as the doctor left he began throwin' up and yellin' mo'
than ever.” . . .
Mimi, frightened as she was, remained calm.
“While I take him up to my room, will you get Dr. New-
ton?” she asked. She knew him by sight, having seen him
at church often when she had gone there with the Mannings.
His name came instantly to her, for she had been told many
times of his eminence among the coloured physicians of Phil-
adelphia. He came at once, trim, alert, intelligent. His
brown face was a mask as he asked questions and examined
Jean. Long brown fingers probed the baby's abdomen, me-
thodically, confidently he measured pulse and temperature.
Coolly he recited the symptoms as he found them:
“. . . vomiting, at first contents of stomach, then bilious
. . . collapse . . . pallor . . . feeble pulse . . . temperature
normal . . . abdomen relaxed . . . increasing prostration
. . . rising temperature . . . tumour, sausage-shaped, curv-
ing . . .” He turned to Mimi. “What's been done for
him?” Mimi told him of the doctor called by Mrs. Wil-
liams, of the administration of castor oil.
“He said somepin about 'fectious diarrhoea,” Mrs. Williams
added, her fright now gone with the coming of Dr. Newton.
“Gave him castor oil?” Dr. Newton asked, incredulously.
“The blithering fool!”
Mimi, and Mrs. Williams showed their dismay at his words.
“Thank goodness he's probably vomited it all up by now.”
His words were punctuated by Jean's pathetic screams.
“Mrs. Daquin, your baby's got a bad case of intussuscep-
tion—folding back of a part of the intestine over another
part,” he added as she showed her lack of comprehension of
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F LIGHT
the longer word. “Or, to make it simpler, it's acute intestinal
obstruction. The only chance of saving him is through an
operation—and it’ll have to be done without an hour's de-
lay.” -
Mimi sank her head into her hands. Had she just heard
the death sentence pronounced on her, she would have felt
not half as terrified as the thought of her Petit Jean going un-
der the knife. She felt sick, disheartened, beaten. She
raised a haggard face, her hair dishevelled, to the doctor.
“Isn't there anything else than operating?” she pleaded.
“Nothing,” he told her. “And even then the chances are
somewhat less than one in ten. This sounds hard and bru-
tally frank—but it's best you know the truth,” he added
kindly, deep pity in his voice for her distress.
“Then operate,” she declared, firmly, all panic gone from
her face and voice. . . .
They drove rapidly to the coloured hospital where Dr.
Newton was to operate on Jean. Mimi held his tiny form
close to her, stifling its screams in the softness of her breast.
On her face was fear, despair, agony without hope. She was
haunted by the spectre of death, she saw before her Petit
Jean lifeless, never again to coo and smile and welcome her
with soft little cries. Not until now did she realize how much
he meant to her. She felt guilty of a great crime, of putting
food into her own body when it might have averted this hor-
rible thing. Even Dr. Newton's assurance in answer to her
timid questioning that physicians did not know the cause of
the malady other than that it was due to the thinness of the
intestinal walls of an infant, that most frequently it occurred
in apparently perfectly healthy and well-cared-for children,
her feeling of guilt did not leave her. Jean's eyes were
closed. He seemed to be in a deep stupor from which he
roused only when another spasm of pain came over him.
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F LIGHT
pale moon was sheathed in dusky blue swirls of clouds, so deli-
cate and wispy they looked like graceful twistings of chiffon,
but this beauty she did not see. From near at hand the fast-
dying noises of the city came to her, the hum imperceptibly
fading away as the crowds thinned out, but she heard none
of these. Any minute Jean might be dying, she thought with
a shiver. And then she would hurry down the stairs to tele-
phone the hospital. Always she received the same answer,
he's resting easily.
Though she tried to keep the thought from her mind, she
knew she had come to the parting of the ways. I wonder I
ever thought I could go through with it, she reflected. For
my own sake I don't care. But I’m not making enough money
to keep us and I won't be able to save anything at this rate
for the future—for Petit Jean's future, she amended. Rent
due Mrs. Williams, the surgeon's fee, bills for the hospital.
She cudgelled her brains for some way of making money. The
Hunters? No! Mrs. Daquin? A thousand times no! The
man in Germantown? A bitter smile came over her face.
It wouldn't be wise for him to make such an offer now.
The thought brought her to herself with a shock. Defi-
antly she answered her own question—I’d do even that if it
would save Jean! She had reached the stage of desperation.
The long months of anxious toil and uncertainty, of worry
and undernourishment, had gathered their toll. Now that
Jean's life hung in the balance, she felt that there were no
means to which she would not go. But all the possible
sources of help she could think of would serve only to help
her out of her present dilemma and would offer no lasting
solution. Only one thing was certain—it was not only im-
possible to go on as she had during the last few months but
she was seriously jeopardizing Jean and his future. She did
not know but that she might have a serious accident or be-
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FL I G HT
come dangerously ill, perhaps die. What then would happen
to him if he should live? She had sacrificed so much for
him already, she would under no circumstances want him to
go to the Hunters or to her step-mother, even if either of
them would take him.
She wrestled with her problem but morning found her no
nearer its solution. As soon as daylight came she dressed
and went to the hospital. Jean had come out from under the
anaesthetic. He greeted her with a faint smile, infinitely pa-
thetic in its unconscious bravery. She sank to her knees gaz-
ing into his face as though he had died and had come to life
again before her very eyes. And as she looked deep into his
brown eyes and pallid face she offered a prayer of thanksgiv-
ing to the Virgin for life for Jean. . . .
Dr. Newton found her there.
“Well, he pulled through all right and, barring set-backs
or complications, he’ll be well before long,” he cheerfully told
her.
After they left the room Mimi told Dr. Newton frankly of
her financial position. It galled her to be forced to confess
her poverty but she could see no other way out of it and she
was unwilling to do other than be truthful about it.
“Oh, that's all right,” he assured her. “We doctors are
used to waiting for our money. And the Mannings have told
me about you—I’m not worried. Pay me when you can—no,
I'll tell you what. Operations like the one I did on your
baby are mighty rare. I’ve been practising medicine for
fourteen years now and it's the first one I've ever seen outside
of a clinic. You pay the hospital bills and I'll just dismiss
the bill. The case is so remarkable a one that I’ll gladly
let the fee go 32
She protested vigorously against his proposal. She was
grateful, so grateful the tears stood in her eyes. But, fol.
[179]


F LIGHT
lowing so closely upon her confession of poverty, it smacked
too much of charity, and she would not, she could not permit
that.
“Well, have it your own way,” he finally agreed. “But
don't hurry.”
She was touched by his kindness. He hurried away. When
he was gone a dozen phrases of thanks came to her mind,
vexing her that she had been too stunned by his generosity to
think of them before he had gone. . . .
As if Fate felt ashamed of the blows it had dealt her,
there came to Mimi several profitable jobs during the four
weeks Jean was in the hospital. One of these lasted more
than a week, the making of the trousseau of a girl who be-
longed to one of the old Philadelphia coloured families.
She never knew that she had been recommended by Dr. New-
ton, but the money she earned enabled her to pay not only
the hospital bill but to settle a part of the debt she owed Mrs.
Williams. Now that Jean was out of danger and well on the
road to recovery, Mimi worked with a song in her heart and
happiness in the belief that her darkest days were past.
And when he was returned from the hospital she bought little
things for his amusement, toys, games, dainty bits of the
foods he was allowed to eat. She was envious of everything
which separated her from him even for a short time, she be-
grudged the hours they spent in sleep, for they robbed her,
she felt, of so many moments of conscious knowledge of and
contact with him.
The acuteness of her desire to be with Jean was rooted
not alone in the to her more than miraculous escape he had
had. It was, too, in the decision she had reached through
that illness and the inevitability of execution of that deci-
sion pained her beyond measure. Mimi had faced during
her dark hours when Jean's life hung in the balance the
practical situation before her. Ruthlessly she had cut away
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FLIGHT
all the entangling meshes created by her love for Jean and
had considered as dispassionately as she could the question as
to what course would be for his greatest good. She found
she could not approach the Hunters or her stepmother and
she would rather have died herself than to have surrendered
Jean to either of them. Those contingencies therefore were
definitely out of the question.
So too was the possibility of her attempting to carry on the
struggle she had now been making for more than a year. If
only I could get some money saved and secure a steady income,
perhaps start a small dressmaking establishment of my own, I
could see my way clear. But these possibilities seemed to her
much more remote than the probability of her jumping safely
to the moon. Another thing was certain. There was little
chance of her making any great progress in Philadelphia.
New York to her seemed the only field in which any marked
advance could be made, but here again there were the same
problems if not greater ones.
Mimi found a certain grim amusement in remembering
the tenuous plans she had so confidently builded and which
now had tumbled about her. Realizing her own weakness for
the first time, comprehending that she could not make the
fight alone, she wrote tentatively of her distress to her Aunt
Sophie. The second day after her letter was posted there
came an answer—a warmingly cordial letter—scolding Mimi
because she had not called upon her aunt for aid long before,
offering Mimi whatever aid she needed. From the envelope
there fell a cheque of generous size. And the letter ended:
“Alone you will have little trouble, especially if you come to New
York. But with the baby it will be harder—you would have to be
away all day—and people, even here, do talk. I know just how you
feel about it, but why don't you put Jean in a home until you can
get on your feet? I don't urge this—I merely suggest it. Do what
you think is wisest and best.”
[181]


F LIGHT
Finally a decision had been made, the only possible way
out, and she wept many bitter tears before she would let her.
self even consider this solution. Always, however, she had
come back to it—the suggestion of Aunt Sophie—the one
stable thing in a sea of uncertainties. She would put Jean in
a children's home, work as hard as mortal could toil, save her
money until she had accumulated enough to assure herself and
him freedom from their more immediate wants, and then get
him again when she had gained her objective.
And here she was confronted with another problem. She
was unwilling to put him in a Negro orphanage, for their all-
too-slender resources made it problematical if he would re-
ceive the care and attention he needed. She would rather
struggle along in her present hopeless way than have him
neglected. Nor would she want to place him in a white or-
phanage as a Negro child—she knew the insults and slights
he would be forced to suffer. The only recourse left to her
and the one she decided upon was to place him in a Catholic
orphanage and say nothing about his Negro blood. This had
been done, she knew, even with children not nearly so fair
as Jean. His French name would be an additional safeguard
to him and further assurance he would be given all the ad-
vantages available.
She had had some qualms of conscience about this pro-
cedure. She had wondered if she were doing the right thing,
if she were not placing Jean at such a disadvantage in the
event his coloured blood were discovered that it would be
greater than if his race were told of at the beginning. But she
soon dismissed these fears from her mind. In the first place,
it would be only for a short time, and in the second, he had
so little coloured blood there was really little question that
could be raised. Overshadowing both of these was the mood
of desperation in which her ill fortune had forced her. Just
as in the hours of that night when Jean was lying at the hos-
[182]


CHA PTE R XV
she had closed the pages of a volume in the story of her
life, so now did Mimi sense intuitively that the second
book was being shut, never to be opened again. Through
the fading light of a dreary, cold day the train sped across
the desolate Jersey meadows. Just dipping below the horizon,
a frigid sun gave a sickly brilliance but no warmth. Mimi
shivered. The dreariness of the landscape was relieved only
by the lank chimneys of factories belching turgescent billows of
smoke. From these dingy buildings poured streams of men
as dingy as the factories from which they were emerging.
Dinner-pails in hand, they plodded wearily across the waste
places in knots of twos and threes, home to slatternly, wasp-
ish wives.
Into the murky darkness of Newark the train rumbled,
paused momentarily, and then went its way into the gather-
ing darkness. Lights began to twinkle in the dusty windows
of the factories and the nondescript homes along the tracks.
Into Manhattan Transfer and out again, past a fertilizer fac-
tory that filled the car with the fetid odours of offal, and the
train plunged into the roaring, alarming bowels of the earth
beneath the Hudson River. Mimi knew of the tunnel and was
prepared for it but the shock coming so suddenly following
the dismal screeching of the whistle blowing for the tunnel
frightened her. Midway where there is an opening going up
from the tunnel to the air above she felt relieved that the or-
deal was over but again the train rushed on into darkness
after the flash of grey. Her ears pounded. She pressed the
J; as she had had the feeling on leaving Atlanta that
[184]


FLIGHT
heels of her hands against them to relieve the roaring in them.
She was glad when at last the electric engine pulled its way
into the maze of winding tracks on the New York side. .
Bewildered by the hugeness of the Pennsylvania Station,
made timid by the rushing throngs all seemingly with some
definite destination the reaching of which in the shortest pos-
sible time was apparently of vast importance, Mimi with pro-
test yielded her shabby bag to the porter and followed him up
the narrow stairs. She peered upwards at the faces which
scanned the incoming passengers through iron fences which
made her think of prisoners or animals eager to escape.
She was gripped with fear—no Aunt Sophie was to be seen,
but that fear was changed to happiness when she was inun-
dated with affectionate greeting by her aunt.
“You poor dear, I ought to be angry with you for not com-
ing to me sooner, but I’m so glad to see you I just can't be,”
her aunt welcomed her.
Threading her way deftly through the crowd, she led Mimi,
her eyes distended at the bewildering massiveness of the build-
ing, down into the earth again. Ashamed of her greenness,
Mimi shrank from the roaring monster that leapt upon them
from the yawning blackness of a cavern made blacker by dim
lights but faintly discernible in the cavern. With a horrible
grinding of brakes the creature came to a stop and Mimi found
herself shoved into it. Station after station they passed and
once more they came to the street, this time in a setting more
familiar to her, yet strange, and her bewilderment was de-
creased but little.
For here was a new life, teeming, exotic, individual. Hur-
rying along the streets, coming out of restaurants, standing
in doorways and on street corners were groups of Negroes,
well dressed, jubilant, cheerful. Here and there hurried col-
oured men in twos and threes, clad in smartly fitting dinner
[185]


FLIGHT
jackets, snow-white bosoms peeping from heavy overcoats,
musical instruments, violins, saxophones, mandolins in cases
clutched in their hands. They hastened into the subway kiosk
Mimi and her aunt had just quitted and were swallowed up.
From near by there came to them the bewitching odours of
frying corn and chicken, of pig's-feet. They came from a
stand where a middle-aged coloured woman was serving her
wares to passers-by.
“That’s ‘Pig-Foot Mary'—she's making lots of money at
that little stand and she's saving it, too,” Mrs. Rogers informed
Mimi.
She was thrilled by the new scene. Gone was the morbid,
morose, worried air of the people she had encountered at the
other end of the subway. Here there was spontaneous laugh-
ter, shrewd observations which brought loud and free laugh-
ter from listeners. There was an exhilarating sense here that
these people knew the secret of enjoying life. Black and
brown and yellow faces flitted by, some carefree, some care-
worn. Mimi sensed again the essential rhythm, the oneness
of these variegated colours and moods. It was all vivid, col-
ourful, of a pattern distinctive and apart, and she warmed to
the friendliness of it all. . . .
Behind them stood two flashily dressed coloured men as
they took it all in. The voice of one worried, the other con-
ciliatory.
“Say, Sam, I sent the fifty dollars and my application to
Jim Washington like you told me to,” the worried voice com-
plained, “and I ain't heard nothing a-tall from him or the
Idlehour Social Club either.”
“Ain’t you heard you was blackballed?” the other in-
quired with a markedly incredulous air.
“No, I ain’t. I wonder who could’ve blackballed me,” he
speculated, the worry in his tones increasing. “There's
Pudd’n’ Jones—he's a friend of mine and he wouldn't do that
[186]


F LIGHT
to me. And there's Babe Carter and Spider and Bill John-
son—they’re friends of mine and they wouldn't blackball me,
I know. Say, was there many black balls in that box?” he
inquired, hopefully.
“You’ve seen a bowl of Russian caviare, ain't you?” his
friend asked.
“Yeh—but what's that got to do with them blackballing
me?”
“Well, boy, just this—that box when they voted on your
name looked just like a bowl of caviare.” . . .
“Come along, Mimi, we can't stand here all night—dinner's
ready at home,” urged Mrs. Rogers. Mimi could have stood
there for hours. The colourful scenes fascinated her, made
her want to stay there and watch the comedies, the tragedies,
the shifting panorama of life as it flowed, now swiftly, now
slowly, by. Down Lenox Avenue they walked. Harlem,
which first had been Dutch “Haarlem,” then Irish, afterwards
Jewish and German, was in the flood-tide of transition to a
Negro city within a city. From the doorway of a former
private dwelling in a side street near bustling Lenox Avenue
came a resonant flooding swell of music. High above the rest
sounded a heavy barytone, chopping off of the words like little
sausages, setting the beat like a metronome for the other sing-
erS.
“What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.”
Verse after verse poured forth, mingling with the clatter and
roar of the crowds outside. Mimi and her aunt paused un-
wittingly outside. The song had ceased. The barytone voice
of the preacher was lifted in prayer, his words punctuated by
fervent “Amens!” and “Hallelujahs!” and “Praise Gods!”
“We are vile, sinful creatures, O Lord, strayed from the
path You tol’ us to follow. (Ain't it the Gospell) Reach
[187]


FLIGHT
down from Thy heaven with a sword of flaming fire and wipe
from the face of the earth these hell-holes of vice that’re send-
ing the souls of our boys and girls to damnation! (Yes,
Lord, reach down!—Amen!) Wipe out, Jesus, the dance
halls and theatres, the gamblers and the drunkards, the
wolves in sheep's clothes who're workin' 'gainst Thy cause.
. . . Purify us, Lord! Save us! Save us! . . .”
The preacher's voice swayed and rumbled, excoriating the
sinners, pleading for redemption of their souls, damning to
everlasting hell-fire those who were unrepentant. The un-
seen voice was talking to a God who was no mystery to him,
a very real and ever present and potent Deity. Down the
street his words followed them as they went home. . . .
Mimi looked back on her days of suffering and poverty al-
most as though it had been a terrible dream. Her aunt deluged
her with kindness, delicately drew from her the story of her
unsuccessful struggle in Philadelphia against odds that proved
too great for her. The one link with that nightmare of pain
and worry and anxiety was her aching need of Petit Jean.
Night after night she cried herself to sleep. Night after night
she awoke when all the rest of the household was asleep, feel-
ing him near her, his warm flesh nestled against her side.
She could feel his tiny lips against her own, his hands clutch-
ing at her breast, his laugh sounding in her ears. Only the
thought that some day soon she would be able to have him
with her again comforted her, only the realization that she
could not possibly make her way as fast towards that goal .
if he were with her restrained her from going back to Balti-
more and taking him from the home.
Her Aunt Sophie was, she found, gifted with a fund of hard
common sense but with it she possessed a warmth of feeling
that made Mimi know the older woman understood all her
difficulties without the necessity of putting into words her
[188]


FLIGHT
various moods. Mr. Rogers had held for a number of years
before his death a responsible position in a bank down town.
He had left his widow some money and a few shares of stock
in various corporations that brought her a steady, but small,
income. By practice of rigid economy Mrs. Rogers could
have lived in fairly comfortable circumstances but she was
unwilling to do this. She had married young and was of a
more progressive nature than her brother, although she un-
derstood Jean as well as had Margot. After her husband's
death Mrs. Rogers had taken a course in manicuring, massag-
ing and the treatment of the hair and scalp. She then had
opened a small “beauty parlour,” from which she derived a
small income after all expenses were paid. Best of all, it
kept her busy, and that was of greater importance to her than
the money she earned. With a widowed sister of her husband
she kept a small flat near Lenox Avenue, and it was to this
she welcomed Mimi. . . .
The morning after her arrival Mimi had a long talk with
her aunt.
“You’ve had a hard time, Mimi,” the older woman said.
“You’ve made what people call a serious mistake—it's not
for me to judge you nor am I going to. If you did, you've
paid for it—and you've done a mighty brave thing, to my way
of thinking, in sticking it out as you have. Your problem
now as I see it is to forget the past and decide what you're
going to do with your future. You're young yet—just
twenty-one, aren't you?—you're much better-looking than the
average. The best part of your life's ahead of you. The ques-
tion you've got to decide is what you're going to do with it—
make it fruitful and full and happy? Or let the past swal-
low you up?”
She paused while Mimi sat in thought.
“Jean—and his future count much more than mine, Aunt
Sophie.”
[189]


FL I G HT
“Yes, I know how you feel. What I’m going to say may
sound mighty hard and unfeeling but you know I don’t feel
that way. With Jean you’ll be so handicapped you’ll settle
into a rut out of which you’ll probably never emerge. He's
well fed, he's sheltered, he's clothed, he's being trained, edu-
cated. He hasn't your care and training, I know, but work.
ing all day, you wouldn't be able to give him much attention
if he were with you. . . . In Philadelphia you by some
miracle were able to avoid meddling inquiry about Jean's
parentage. Here you wouldn't be so successful, I know.
There are gossips everywhere—and in every race. So my ad-
vice is to let Jean stay there a few years, run down to see him
whenever you can afford it, and get to the place where you
can have Jean with you again. And—who knows?—perhaps
the right man 92
“No, no, Aunt Sophie. That's all done for now. I’m
through with men 23
Mrs. Rogers smiled.
“You say that now. But wait awhile. Youth and espe-
cially youth like yours can work wonders. Standards are
changing—New York isn't New Orleans or Atlanta—the man
who may come may have sense enough to see what's back of
your—well, your so-called misfortune. Men are simple crea-
tures after all though we women make of them in our own
minds an insoluble riddle.”
Wise in the ways of the world, tolerant and understanding
of human foibles and weaknesses, Mrs. Rogers smiled reminis-
cently.
“I’ve seen lots of things in my time, Mimi, and I’ve learned
a lot of things, too. There are some people whose notion of
getting along in the world is to butt their brains out against
the walls that come up in front of them. Others go to the
other extreme and dodge every obstacle, taking the easiest
way out. Maybe they’re both right—but I doubt it. The
[190]


FLIGHT
stories her aunt told her of her own people in New York.
She insisted that Mrs. Rogers take her to the sections where
Negroes had lived in years past; they wandered through
Broome and Spring Streets, where Negroes had lived before
the Civil War, through Sullivan and Bleecker Streets and
Minetta Lane in Greenwich Willage, now settled thickly with
Italians, among them little groups of coloured people who
had never lived anywhere else.
But neither of these settlements nor the former habitats in
the Twenties and Thirties interested her nearly so much as the
section which Negroes had but lately quitted for Harlem. She
made her aunt tell her of the Maceo and Marshall's and other
rendezvous of Negro and white musicians and writers and
bohemians. She asked many questions about Williams and
Walker, about Aida Overton, Jim Europe, Buddy Gilmore who
served as model for trap drummers in all the orchestras, Ernest
Hogan, Cole and Johnson, and many others of the stars of the
stage. Mrs. Rogers had lived near the Marshall and had
known everybody who was worth knowing. She told Mimi of
the brilliant Sunday nights when they used to dine to the music
of a Negro orchestra at Marshall's, when one was always sure
of finding interesting companions and acquaintances. She
told of this orchestra, the members of which played and sang
and danced and established the vogue out of which sprang the
modern cabaret. Mimi wished fervidly she had been a part
of this brilliant scene, might have known in the flesh these of
whom she had heard so often even in New Orleans.
She was new enough to this growth to enable her to see how
it formed itself and gradually spread over a greater territory.
It seemed that every month saw the opening up to coloured
tenants and buyers of new blocks. A group of white property-
owners became alarmed and formed a holding company to
buy all property occupied by Negro tenants and eject them.
This step was promptly met by a countermove on the part
[193]


F LIGHT
of an intelligent coloured real-estate dealer who formed a
Negro realty company to purchase for coloured tenants apart-
ment houses of the best class. Then came panic among the
whites, who deserted houses long before there was any inva-
sion of their neighbourhoods by coloured tenants. Prices
dropped and Negroes reaped the benefit by buying at these
figures. The district spread with increasing rapidity and the
new city was definitely in the making. . . .
Mimi kept track of these changes through the interesting
circle of friends which frequented her Aunt Sophie's house.
There were types she had not known before—business men
who had a broad vision of the city that was to be, men who
were eager, of course, to make money but who made personal
gain secondary to the deep love of race and pride in the ad-
vances of that race toward a more secure foothold than was
theirs in most parts of the country. There were the wives of
these men, some of them of small minds fixed on nothing but
dress and gossip and petty, unimportant social affairs, but
others of them intelligent and valuable aids to their hus-
bands. Some of the women were in business for themselves
like Mrs. Rogers and they were no less shrewd and far-seeing
than the men, in a number of cases more so. It was through
these and their conversations, to which was added her own
deductions and observations, that she saw the thing which
interested her develop. This live, pulsating, vigorous move-
ment fascinated her, for it gave her interests which kept her
mind alert, and free from too great concentration on her own
problems.
So too, in addition to Aunt Sophie's friends, who soon be-
came her friends as well, she and her aunt found great joy
in modest excursions down town to the theatres and greater
happiness in music. They purchased the cheapest seats avail-
able and climbed the innumerable stairs at the Metropolitan
or at Carnegie Hall to hear a favourite opera or singer. To
[194]


F LIGHT
Mimi these were as drugs or liquor to addicts—they swept
her up, up above her narrow, difficult existence to a world
where cares and sorrows and toils did not exist, where there
was an ecstatic abandon to the intoxicating music that thrilled
her so. She would have enjoyed the music under any circum-
stances but it gave her greater happiness because she knew
she could not afford even these inexpensive and harmless de-
bauches. It was her aunt who urged her to take them, who
frequently paid for the tickets, telling Mimi they had been
given to her because of Mimi's insistence upon bearing an
equal share of all costs of their journeys. On this point they
often had good-natured quarrels—Mimi had a violent hatred
of sponging, of feeling under obligations to any person, even
to one so near as her aunt. She knew her aunt had obliga-
tions she must meet, rental of her apartment and shop, the
current expenses at both places, the care of her sister-in-law,
a chronic invalid who seldom left her room and who played
as little a part in the household as the decrepit chair in the
closet on which old newspapers were piled. She was unwill-
ing to add further to her aunt's burdens and insisted upon
paying for her room and board as though she had been merely
a boarder. . . .
Another spring came and went, this time a happier one than
Mimi had known for several years, merged imperceptibly into
summer, when the only variations she permitted to her regu-
lar routine of work were trips to Coney Island with her aunt
and some of their friends or rides down town and back of an
evening on the Fifth Avenue buses. Mimi had decided that
she could never make the progress which was so necessary if
she continued only to do plain sewing. She always had a
knack for devising new and unusual designs, many of them
impractical but all of them touched with a distinctiveness that
separated them from other clothes. She began in the fall a
course in designing at a trade school, taking the course in the
[195]


CHA PTE R XVI
IMI forgot the days of her misery. The years spent
M in Atlanta became hazy and unreal in the eager hap-
piness of her new life. Again she had the feeling
that the things which had distressed her so had never really
happened—that they were either the phantasmagoria of a
nightmare or the sorrows of an existence she had lived prior
to this life. Her step-mother she rarely thought of, she had
returned to Chicago and there had married again. The
Hunters she equally had removed from her thoughts. When
she did think of them or of Carl they seemed unreal, like
apparitions of an indistinctly remembered dream. She had
completely recovered from even her hatred of and contempt
for Carl. In the light of her life since she had left Atlanta,
she saw him now even more clearly as the weak individual he
was. She was amused now when she remembered how devot-
edly, how passionately she had loved him during those short
months. “I was a silly little fool then,” she laughed amus-
edly at herself when she did remember. The entire episode
seemed to her now a rather cheap and worthless thing. The
only comfort she could extract from it was the satisfaction
that she had not succumbed to a dishonest compromise.
Even her years in Philadelphia began to fade into the land
of half-remembered, half-forgotten things. She occasionally
corresponded with the Mannings but as the months sped by
she found her interest lessening even in this contact with the
old couple who had been so kind to her. The one link to
both of these episodes in her life, for she now looked upon
them only as episodes, was Petit Jean, and he served as a link
[197]


F LIGHT
and as the centre of all her hopes for the future. Under the
skilful guidance of her aunt she had thrown off her moroseness
and spells of despondency and was working indefatigably
towards securing all the things which would bring happiness
to her and Jean.
Back of her lay disappointment and sadness, ahead of her
lay only hope. It was in this mood that she went with her
aunt one Friday evening to a dance at Manhattan Casino.
They had been invited to join a box party in which were in-
cluded several younger people, three or four young men and
three girls beside Mimi, in addition to Mrs. Rogers and two
older persons. For the dance Mimi had made for herself a
party dress of pale green charmeuse—green with the green-
ness of young leaves in springtime—a green that was indefin-
ably between jade and Eau-de-Nil.
“You look like a rosebud-a marvellously golden flower
springing out of its leafy greenness,” Tom Henderson whis-
pered to her as they danced together.
The not very subtle compliment pleased Mimi. She was
happy, too, she was capable of pleasure from such a source—
she had thought herself impervious to polite remarks of this
sort—she fancied she had put all this behind her for ever.
She was glad that this was not so—after all, she yet was
young. And he had seemed so sincere when he had said it.
All the evening she danced, danced with a lightness and
ease that brought young men in droves to the box when she
rested there between dances. Her feet seemed endowed with
wings, for she moved over the floor without conscious effort.
And the music! She had heard of Ford Dabney, had been
told of the way in which his orchestra could play. But she
had never dreamed that any human beings could entice from
inanimate objects such intoxicating, inspiriting music. Once,
and once only, was she able to sit in the box and watch the
dancers.
[198]


F LIGHT
“Nobody's told on her yet—and when she's through with
her work she comes back to Harlem. She's got mighty little
use for white people—hates them—she was born in Georgia
and her brother was lynched when he beat up a white man in
a quarrel.”
“Who’s the fellow over there—the one with the black hair
who looks like a Japanese?” Mimi queried, now thoroughly
interested. She scanned the flaming chequer-board of colour,
picking out the ones who interested her.
“Where is he? Oh, that's Tod James—he's assistant cash-
ier of a bank down in the financial district. He's married
white but ever so often the call of Harlem is too great and he
bobs up here again. He's had an amazing career—born in
Texas, was mixed up in two or three revolutions in Mexico
and South America, has travelled all over the world, made
and lost three or four fortunes, and now has settled down to
a comfortable, placid existence in Wall Street.”
“Does his wife know he's coloured?”
“That's she dancing down there with the slender brown
chap—looks like she knows what he is. And she was born in
Tennessee but had sense enough not to stay there.”
“And who's the flashily dressed fellow standing there look-
ing on?”
“I don't know his name but he runs a club where they have
entertainers and music for dancing—they call them cabarets.
You'll find all sorts of people here—it's a pay dance and
anybody who's got the price can get in. There are women
who are being kept and men who live the same way, doctors
and lawyers, and about every class in the world represented
here.”
Mimi felt a thrill of adventure run through her. Perhaps
she had brushed against some of these fearful characters and
it made her tingle with adventure.
[200]


FLIGHT
“Goodness, haven't they any lines they draw?” she wanted
to know.
“Strictest in the world—you've noticed you've been asked
to dance only by folks you know and who move with our set.”
Mimi laughed.
“I don't know about that. See that nice-looking chap over
there in that box? I’ve never seen him before and he asked
me if I wanted to dance with him.”
Mrs. Rogers peered in the direction of Mimi's nod.
“No, you haven't seen him,” she told Mimi grimly, when
she had located him. “He’s probably one of the most notor-
ious gamblers in New York—has never been known to do a
lick of work. I told you you'd see all sorts of people here,
didn't I?”
The music began again and there was a wild rush to the
dance floor. Mimi sat and watched the kaleidoscopic scene,
brilliant, colourful, fascinating. New York is the only place
on earth where such a crowd could be got together, she mused.
Like one body the crowd on the huge, densely packed floor
swayed and moved with an easy grace, laughing, carefree,
exuberant. There was a natural spontaneity to the movement,
a rhythmic unity that gave Mimi the impression that the
dancers had been rehearsed with great pains by an expert
maitre de danse. They moved with graceful animation, with
a decorous but fascinating abandon. Her aunt was speak-
Ing.
“It’s lucky for the Negro he was given the ability to forget—
there are at least a dozen people down there I’ve recognized
who probably don't know where they’ll get money enough to
pay their rent. Yet there's not a soul having a better time
than they. He can work all day methodically and steadily as
long as he knows there will be opportunities to forget harsh
and unpleasant things.” . . .
[201]


FLIGHT
Mimi did not see Mrs. Plummer as she descended the stairs
when the music began for the next dance. That estimable per-
son had come that afternoon to New York and she now was
receiving her first glimpse of New York life. She wore a
brilliant purple confection of velvet, adorned with extraordi-
nary little flowers of an indescribable and unknown species
and shape. She seized the arm of her cousin, with whom she
was staying, and though in the noise there was no need of cau-
tion, she whispered:
“Who is that girl with the green dress and red hair—I mean
what name does she go by here?”
“That's Miss Daquin—she's Mrs. Rogers' niece and she's
very popular—some of the women don't like her but that's be-
cause she's better-looking than most of them. Men like her be-
cause she pays no attention to them—”
Mrs. Plummer snorted.
“Miss Daquin! So that's how she's getting by, is it?”
She was in her element. New York did not terrify her any
more by its hugeness and strangeness. The eyes of her friend
picked out Mimi's form as it appeared and disappeared
through the dancing forms. Mrs. Plummer was giving a com-
plete, more than complete, account of Mimi and her life.
“These society coloured folks make me tired,” Mrs. Plum-
mer was saying. “They look down on us ordinary folks but
they're carrying on their deviltry just as much as any of us.
And they do some of the craziest things! That girl was car-
rying on round Atlanta with this Hunter boy and when they
found out she was going to have a baby she just went crazy—
said she didn't want to marry the boy! Can you imagine any-
body doing such a fool thing?” she demanded rhetorically.
“I always did think there was something funny about her,”
her vis-à-vis answered satisfactorily. “You can't fool me—I
can spot 'em a mile off. What became of the baby?”
[202]


F LIGHT
“The Lord only knows! I heard tell she had it and I don't
know whether it lived or not. Must not of if you say you ain't
never heard about it. Some funny things happen in this
world—”
On and on the thread was unspun. In the years since Mimi
had left Atlanta, the stories about her, with the facile growth
that age always brings, had gained almost the proportions of
a myth. Never had any girl taken so absurd a position as she.
Always they had been only too glad to marry even when they
had lived with their husbands but a short time. Not under-
standing, gossip had assumed there was more to the story than
appeared on the surface, and various inventive minds specu-
lated as to the untold part.
Rumour had scoffed at the notion Mimi had refused to marry
Carl even though he and his parents were willing. That was
too improbable, too far-fetched. The Hunters had volunteered
no information and tongues had run wild. Some had it that
the father of the child was uncertain—every man under seventy
years of age who had ever been on the most casual terms of
friendship with Mimi was discussed as the possible father.
Others were firmly convinced Mimi had trapped Carl with an
eye on the wealth which his father was credited with possessing.
Those of this persuasion were convinced she had been bought
off or frightened by the Hunters.
Forgotten except by a few, Hilda and her mother among
them, were the derelictions popular report had credited to or
charged against Carl. Mimi had fled, therefore she was the
guilty one. “The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth,” the
wise ones said. The scandal was a juicy morsel that served
its purpose well over many back fences and at innumerable
parties, at church and on front porches. Only Hilda and Mrs.
Adams championed the cause of Mimi, but soon, because
[203]


F LIGHT
their views were well known, the subject was not mentioned
to them. Scandal thrives only when it is retailed to those with
open ears and credulous minds. . . .
Mrs. Plummer's friend was well capable of holding her own
in the dissemination of interesting news. Mimi alone would
have been a target almost too small for the guns of the talka-
tive ones. But as the niece of Mrs. Rogers, in business, well
known, and with enemies gained through the frank comment
and eyes with which Mimi's aunt saw readily through pre-
tence and sham, Mrs. Rogers herself could be hurt through
the mud plastered on her niece. Mimi found herself being
avoided at church, on the street, at the few affairs which she
attended. At first she paid no attention to them but in time
they were too obvious to be ignored. She had not seen Mrs.
Plummer during the two weeks that she had visited in New
York. The first intimation Mimi had of the talk which was
going on was given her in a weekly publication, The Blabber.
Modelled upon Town Topics, it devoted its pages to not too
cryptic references, almost invariably scandalous ones, to per-
sons of prominence. Its editors had been handled roughly
several times, the paper had been sued frequently, but seldom
were any copies left on Harlem newsstands more than a few
hours after it appeared on Thursday mornings.
Mimi read the reference to herself three times before she
could realize that once again she was confronted with sus-
picion.
“All Harlem is agog,” the paragraph ran, “with some hith-
erto hidden chapters in the life of one of our most attractive
and popular young women. She and the relative with whom
she lives have been seen often at the smartest affairs and the
breath of scandal which has been stirred will undoubtedly
prove a nine days' sensation. Innocence, according to all who
know the young lady of French extraction, has been her most
[204]


FLIGHT
its were good or bad. She tried to keep her mind on the com-
forting flow of words with which Mrs. Rogers was seeking to
bolster her courage.
“People have gossiped from the beginning of time and I
suppose they’ll keep right on until Gabriel blows his trump.
I don't know why it is but there's one thing that's always true
—they tear you to pieces not for what you’ve done but for get-
ting caught. Take some of the biggest men in America—men
who everybody knows have stolen railroads and banks but
who've never been caught at it—why, they're popular idols.
There are lots of magazines with big circulations that fill their
pages with stories of how these giants have gained wealth and
fame by ‘honesty, hard work, sticking to the job.” That's
bunk! Do you remember the story of one of these ‘self-made”
men who was telling a college class that his secret of success
was ‘pluck! pluck! pluck!’ and the irreverent boy who asked
the pompous one who he had plucked? That's the true story
of a lot of these people who haven’t been caught with their
hands in the other fellow's pockets.”
Mimi smiled a wan smile. This was interesting, perhaps,
but it didn't help her much. Mrs. Rogers went on.
“And coloured people are no better than anybody else.
The motive is the same everywhere in the world and with all
races and sexes and classes. If you aren't of any importance
they don't gossip about you because nobody's interested. But
they’ve got to have something humiliating, something that’ll
bear down a person's reputation, something malicious and
spiteful. It's got to be about somebody who's got something
to lose, it’ll have to be something that’ll stick, something that’ll
be dangerous but not too dangerous for the person who's gos-
siping. And above everything else it's got to be spread with
a high and lofty manner—the biggest spreader of tales I ever
knew always started her most vile story the same way. She'd
say: “I stay at home attending to my own business and I
[206]


FL I G HT
don't meddle in other people's affairs, but have you heard
that—” and then she proceeds to give you a long account of
what some person has done, all of it told in a tone of Christian
forbearance and pity and tacit regret.”
“That’s a very interesting and logical analysis but it doesn't
offer much comfort. It's just like a doctor explaining why
your leg broke when you're lying in a hospital bed.”
“You’re depressed and worried—there's no need giving in
to what these people say. Just face it and it will all blow
over. And I’ll stick with you always, Mimi.”
Mrs. Rogers watched Mimi, more worried over the girl's
troubles than she would admit even to herself. In a few
months Mimi had become a part and a very important part
of the household. Younger people came and she had always
preferred associating with young people. “It keeps me
young, too,” she would say when the subject was mentioned.
The house would be unbearable if Mimi went away or did any-
thing desperate. She feared this though she laughed at her
fears. But the set look on Mimi's face, the despondency which
was greater now than when Mimi had first come to New York
after putting Petit Jean in the orphanage, the utter dejection
so evident in Mimi's face and body, made her definitely ap-
prehensive.
“You’re a darling, Aunt Sophie, but I just can't stick it out.
I can stand a lot of things—I’ve had to—but what's happened
here will just keep on happening every place I go. I’ve tried
to go straight—God knows I have. But these meddling peo-
ple won't let me have any peace. Do you remember that
night at the dance you pointed out a girl to me who was work-
ing down town, passing for white?”
Mrs. Rogers admitted she had, but wondered what that had
to do with Mimi.
“Just this,” was the answer she received. “I never thought
I’d want to leave my own people. I wouldn't leave them now
[207]


FL I G HT
but they've driven me away—driven me to the point where
I’ve either got to drop out of sight where I won't be hounded
again or else I'll do something terrible. If that girl can pass
I think I can too. My name is French, I speak French—at
least well enough to fool anybody who isn't French—I can
sew, and they'll never think me anything else but French.
I’ll see you, of course, but I’m leaving Harlem, leaving coloured
people for good. I’ll live my own life, make more money
than I can here, I'll be able sooner to have Jean with me, and
—well, there's no other way out. . . .”
[208]


CHA PTE R XVII
her life and opening a new one. Just like a novel by
Rolland, she thought. Or, better, her life to her was
like one of those Harlem apartments of seemingly interminable
length, with no hall and with each room opening into the next
one. Railroad flats, she had heard them called. She felt she
was always opening the door of another room, passing through
it, then opening and closing behind her, never to be reopened,
the door of the next cubicle. Those years of childhood in New
Orleans had been the first one, happy and carefree years when
she was more content than ever afterwards. The next had been
Atlanta, then Philadelphia, then Harlem. Four separate lives,
and here was a new one opening before her. She wondered
how many more through which she must pass before the final
exit. Sometimes now she wished she could skip all the rest
and make that last step, wherever it might lead. In her mo-
ments of greatest depression she thought of suicide but these
morbid thoughts did not remain with her long. Petit Jean and
thoughts of his future would have driven them away even if
she had not felt a deep aversion to death by her own hand.
From a newspaper advertisement she was able to secure a
small room with a private family, living in the lower Nineties,
respectable but commonplace. In the matter of linear feet and
rods and miles she was not far distant from Harlem but in
other ways she might as well have been halfway round the
world from the scenes she had once known. Here the towering
apartment houses, most of them five or six stories in height
. GAIN Mimi had the feeling she was closing a book in
[209]


FLIGHT
Sing Sing, for not even the oldest inhabitant of the house, who
had been living there now for a year and a half, had ever seen
anyone sitting in them. But they added class, tone, éclat.
And they likewise added a few dollars to the rent of each apart-
ment in the house so adorned.
She had not wanted to leave Harlem. Mrs. Rogers had ar-
gued, pleaded, almost wept. At times Mimi had been on the
point of weakening, had almost thought seriously of trying to
stick it out. Each time that she had almost convinced herself
that this was the wisest and only course, some new evidence
of the ordeal would come to her and make her vow anew that
she would not attempt to live it down. Years before she had
heard a story which Booker Washington had told in which
he likened Negroes to a basket of crabs—when one of them
had with great energy climbed almost to the top of the bas-
ket and freedom, the others less progressive than he would
reach up with their claws and pull him back to their own level.
This had seemed to her then merely an effective story coined
for oratorical purposes, but now its applicability was forced
upon her with painful truth.
Though she had to a considerable degree recovered from
the intense consciousness of race which her experiences in the
riot at Atlanta had engendered in her, yet Mimi, despite the
shortcomings which she saw in her own people, had a loyalty
to and an affection for them that was almost an obsession. She
never spoke of this feeling, for she felt that to those who under-
stood, explanations were unnecessary, while to those who
needed an explanation, whatever she might say would have been
obscure and difficult of understanding. In other words, to her
it was as useless for her to attempt the depiction of her loyalty
as it would be for a man to maintain loudly and persistently the
faithfulness of his wife. She had always felt an instinctive
distrust of those Negroes who boasted of their loyalty and devo-
tion to their race. It had seemed to her that if such faithful-
[211]


FLIGHT
ness were genuine and unselfish it needed restatement no more
than did the affirmation by a woman that she was respectable.
Thus her passing from the race seemed to Mimi persecution
greater than any white people had ever visited upon coloured
people—the very intolerance of her own people had driven her
from them. And in the deception she would have to practise
as one ostensibly white, she felt she was doing a mean and dis-
honourable thing. She would do so, she determined, for there
was no other course open to her. But in her new life she
missed the spontaneity, the ready laughter, the naturalness of
her own. She saw morose, worried faces. Here there was lit-
tle of that softness of speech to which she was accustomed.
Here there was an obsession with material things that crowded
out the naturalness that made life for her tolerable. I’ve made
my bed now, she reflected, and there's nothing for me to do ex-
cept lie in it. . . .
She did not experience the difficulty in securing employment
that she had feared. There had been vague rumblings of dis-
cord and war in Europe, but all that seemed very far away,
too distant ever to affect America. The mad rush that ushered
in Easter and spring, the return like homing pigeons of the
wealthy from Palm Beach, the momentary pause in New York
before taking wing again for Europe or the mountains or the
sea-shore, taxed to the limit the shops of the modistes and milli-
ners, the makers of boots and gowns and habiliments of a thou-
sand kinds for those vaguely classed as “society.”
Deft fingers flew, the needles of sewing-machines flashed in
and out like pelting raindrops of silver in a summer shower.
Yards and bolts and tons of filmy silks and crêpes de Chine
and organdie turned overnight into dainty dresses. A long,
nastily cold winter was gasping its last long breath and little
wisps of softer breezes fanned the cheeks of the scurrying
throngs, telling them spring was near.
[212]


FLIGHT
And when the visitor had made her wants known she was con-
ducted, if her need was of gowns or tailored suits or hats, up
the winding marble stairway to the miniature theatre on the
floor above. She was aided in the ascent by the balustrade of
metal covered with mull velvet.
Madame Francine's sense of the appropriate and impressive
setting rose to its heights in the room she entered at the top of
these stairs. Here the rugs were of grey, the woodwork and
walls and draperies blending unobtrusively in the colours of
the show-room below. On a marble mantel to the left stood in
solemn dignity a marvellously fashioned clock, so beautifully
made, one felt it almost a profanation that it should measure
unimportant things like minutes and hours. To each side of it
there stood a delicately carved candlestick of shiny brass, their
brightness matching the framework of the long table with mar-
ble top on which rested sketch-books of designs and models.
The tiny stage fitted with footlights and drops, its flooring of
squares of black and white marble, glowed with impressive and
anticipatory dignity. Daintily clad and perfumed and mani-
cured ladies lolled at ease upon divans or in straight-backed
chairs, according to tastes and sizes, while mannequins pirouet-
ted and posed and paraded around and across the stage. Every
detail had been minutely scrutinized, every bit of unobtrusive
allure had been utilized to induce the dawdling audience to the
point of conviction and purchase. Instinctively one lowered
one's voice—the temple must not be profaned. One bought,
too, for few were strong enough to resist the feeling that all
this had been designed and executed solely for one's own pri-
vate delectation, and certainly one could not be guilty of base
ingratitude through failure to render homage by ordering one
or more of the creations displayed. . . .
But all this magnificence was terra incognita to Mimi for
many, many months after she had begun work as a finisher
[215]


FLIGHT
at Francine's. There were four other floors occupied by work-
rooms and tailoring-rooms and lunch-room. There was the
basement used as an office and stockroom and shipping-room.
In the upper stories the finishers and drapers and drapers' as-
sistants and fitters and clerks and stenographers and tailors
moved and had their being. These were never seen by cus-
tomers, nor were the first two floors ever seen by any employees
save the sales persons, except when viewed in hasty peeps af.
ter hours. These workers entered through rear or side doors,
ascended to their work tables by rear elevators, saw nothing
of the pageant enacted daily in the same building.
Timidly Mimi told the imposing and business-like fitter her
qualifications as a wielder of the needle and thimble. In these
less dignified purlieus there was no need of lowered voices,
and the rush of work in the pre-Easter season had shortened
tempers and sharpened tongues. Mimi would have fled madly
from the scene had not she so eagerly wanted work, and work
at Francine's. Timidly, yet desperately, she emphasized her
ability and experience. She clinched her claim to fitness by
her training at the Manhattan Trade School, though the diffi-
dence with which she advanced this argument would have de-
feated its purpose had not there been need of a finisher at
Francine's and a very pressing need on that particular day
when Mimi made her application.
Deftly, quickly, she did the work assigned her. From eight-
thirty each week-day morning until five-thirty she plied her
needle, head bent low at the table given her in the long work-
room on the fourth floor. She seldom spoke to any of the
other thirty girls except when addressed directly, but she stole
many a furtive glance at them, envying their pert assur-
ance, their complete lack of awe at their surroundings save
when the eyes of the fitter or a very rare visit from Francine
herself hushed their whispered chatter. “Talking and work
don't go together—one or the other will be neglected and al-
[216]


FL I G HT
ways it will be the work that suffers,” the fitter had told Mimi
on her first day. The other girls obeyed this injunction—to
have done otherwise would have brought reproof and in time
dismissal. But no sooner did the fitter leave the room than
they gushed forth a torrent of whispered comments, of subdued
snickering. And even when the coldly efficient fitter was with
them but her eyes not upon them, they found ways of com-
munication to relieve the tedium of silence.
Because her wages were small as a finisher and because her
need of work was great, Mimi obeyed implicitly the instruc-
tions given her. She made few friends, and even these few
were kept at a distance. Only one girl progressed beyond the
barrier Mimi imposed. Sylvia Smith was the name she gave
Mimi, and their tables adjoined.
“How do you like Old Faithful?” Sylvia inquired as she
led Mimi to the lunch-room where the girls were provided with
tea or coffee at noon while they ate the lunches they had
brought.
“Old Faithful?” Mimi, puzzled, inquired.
“Yeah—the fitter we got,” Sylvia mumbled as she bit deep
into a sandwich.
“Oh—she's very nice.”
“You don't know her, kid. She's a pain—just wait until you
do something wrong—you'll want to jump down her throat
when she bawls you out with all the other girls grinning at you
behind her back.”
“I hope then I'll never make any mistakes,” Mimi mur-
mured.
“Don’t worry, kiddo. You'll make 'em. And the best way
to handle Old Faithful is to keep your mouth shut and let her
gab on until she runs out of breath. The one we had before
she came was a coloured girl—she knew her stuff and we didn't
try no monkey business with her, either. But she treated us
like we were human—”
[217]


F LIGHT
“A coloured girl?” Mimi asked, alarm creeping into her
voice.
“Yeah. Say, where you from?”
“New York, now. New Orleans was where I was born.”
“Oh—I thought you talked like you was from the South.
Well, up here being coloured don't count as much as it does
down your way 22
Mimi hastened to disclaim the imputation in Sylvia's voice.
“That's all right, dearie. I wasn't accusing you of preju-
dice.”
“No–no, I'm not prejudiced,” was Mimi's reply. She felt
a sense of guilt at her duplicity, but at the same time Sylvia's
words gave her assurance that the task of passing would not
be as difficult as she had feared.
“Race prejudice is a lot of bunk,” Sylvia was philosophiz-
ing. “Take me, for instance. I went to Manhattan Trade, too.
My real name's Bernstein—but you can't get by in some of
these places if they think you're a Jew. So my name here is
‘Smith.’ I’m starting at the bottom just like you, to learn the
tricks of the trade, but some day I’m going to have my own
business. You see, my mother's French and I took after her,
so I can pass for French even if I don't speak any of that
lingo. So I know what prejudice means, dearie. Some of the
girls tried to get nasty when they put Miss Lawrence over us—
Miss Lawrence was the coloured woman—but I liked her and
she soon had 'em under her thumb, believe me.”
As Sylvia chattered on, Mimi felt an urge to tell her new
friend that she too was sailing under false colours, but she
feared to reveal this fact so early in their acquaintance. Cau-
tion urged her to remain silent though she felt she could trust
Sylvia implicitly despite the fact she had seen her for the first
time a few hours before. She liked Sylvia. She was slangy.
She was coarse, after a fashion. But it took no very keen eye
to see that beneath these externals she was made of fine stuff.
[218]


F LIGHT
Ambitious, too. Just like a Jew, Mimi thought, and though
she meant nothing derogatory, she was ashamed she had used
a phrase so often spoken in dispraise of Sylvia's race. Yes,
she was going to like Sylvia.
“Say, Mimi–you're French, too, aren't you?—let's have
lunch together every day. I don't have anything to do with the
rest of the girls—all they think about is clothes and lovers—but
I like you.”
“And I like you, too, Sylvia,” Mimi shyly answered, stirred
by the prompt offer of friendship.
“That's O.K., then. We’ll be real pals. And any time you
want to know anything, just call on me.
“Tell me, Sylvia, what became of Miss Lawrence—the col-
oured woman who was a fitter? Is she still working for Fran-
cine?”
“Nope—some of the girls objected to her and raised such a
row she left. She's got a place of her own in Harlem—she's
married now and Francine don't know it but a lot of these
swells go all the way up there to get Miss Lawrence to do their
clothes. Francine would throw a fit or two if she found it
out.”
Mimi liked her work. She started at fifteen dollars a week
but before many months had passed her pay was increased.
The hours were not as long as they seemed and she learned
to like Sylvia more and more as each day brought forth some
new sign of the determination and keen intelligence that lay
back of Sylvia's rather slangy and disrespectful manner.
With Mimi there was none of the subtle antagonisms Sylvia
felt towards the other girls. This hostility was born of Syl-
via's contempt for their greater polish and worldly cleverness,
their air of distinction with which they aped the manners of
the patrons of Francine's whom they watched when the girls
walked on the Avenue during the lunch hour. Sylvia would
[219]


FLIGHT
never have admitted it, but there was, too, envy in her heart
of these among whom she felt like the proverbial ugly duck-
ling. Mimi saw without difficulty the motives which inspired
Sylvia's distrust and dislike, but she never hinted even that
she understood. Sylvia would have been hurt, pained terribly,
had she felt Mimi ascribed her emotions to such sources. But
whatever their source, they served as a driving power of tre-
mendous strength in Sylvia's life. She often told Mimi her
plans and dreams, at first shyly, then freely.
“I was born way down on the East Side—father and mother
came here from France when they had only one child. I was
the third and there were four after me—no chance down there
at all. So I made up my mind I was going to get somewhere
and I pulled out of that hole and here I am. I had to sew
on men's clothes that mother brought home from the factory—
started sewing when I was eight years old. I didn't get much
education, and living down there, I soon lost what little I had,
got to talking rough and using slang—oh, you needn't try to
save my feelings—I know I’m rough as a dockhand. But I'm
going to night school—and some day I'm going to be some-
body.”
Sylvia's face, dark and in moments of intense feeling strong
with the mark of Israel upon it, lighted up as she looked down
the years and saw herself sitting as Francine now did in a
delicately beautiful “studio” of her own, while all around her
bustled employees of Madame Sylvia.
“Take Francine, for instance. She says she is French, but
you and I are lots more French than she is—every time she
opens her mouth and spills some French words, you can hear
Killarney all through it. And if she can get away with it—
well, I can put it over, too.”
Under Sylvia's direction Mimi began to see new worlds in
New York she had never thought of penetrating. At first to
occupy her mind, later because the pursuit of knowledge was
[220]


FLIGHT
an intriguing and comforting thing, she began to spend her
evenings at night school. She finished her course in designing,
she studied French, soon regaining her old-time proficiency in
the tongue which had once been more native to her than Eng-
lish, she took courses in English literature and economics and
psychology. With Sylvia she attended lectures at the Rand
School and at Cooper Union. Most of the theories advanced
there seemed to her visionary and impractical—the burning
intensity of most of the students and hearers frightened and re-
pelled her. Like alchemists of old searching, probing, seeking
diligently for the mysterious and elusive secret by which baser
metals could be changed into gold, so many of these seemed
intent on finding some panacea which could be applied willy-
nilly to all problems, economic, social, political, and in a
flash solve them all. Though she kept her thoughts to herself,
nevertheless the test tube in which she tried all these solutions
and solvers was in their reactions towards Mimi's own people
—her own, even though she had deserted them. Do they in-
clude consideration of the Negro as a human being just like
themselves when they talk glibly of the “comrades” and “the
brotherhood of man”? was the question she found herself con-
stantly asking.
It was at the very beginning of Mimi's work at Francine's
that an Austrian archduke was assassinated at Sarajevo. Aus-
tria, Serbia, Germany, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Japan
—one by one they tumbled into the whirlpool of slaughter and
blood and bullets. Headlines screamed and front pages were
filled with stories of Belgium invaded, of the Marne and Lou-
vain. Francine apparently was untouched except there was
more work to be done now that Paris and its energies were
turned to the making of guns instead of gowns. Mimi was
deeply moved by the stories of scores, hundreds, thousands of
deaths, but in time she scanned the headlines as she hurried
home in the evenings on the subway with the calm acceptance
[221]


CHAPTER XVIII
occasional visits to her Aunt Sophie or Mrs. Rogers came
down town for a hasty luncheon or a leisurely dinner
with her. She told her aunt glowingly of the progress she was
making, gave her vivid little pictures of her life at Francine's,
of the girls with whom she worked. Once or twice a year, she
went to Baltimore and spent a few days with Jean. These vis-
its cheered, saddened and comforted her. She treasured each
minute spent with him, watching with eager eyes the rapid
growth of the infant into a sturdy, intelligent child. He had
Mimi's reddish hair and her brown eyes. His mouth was
sensitive like Carl's but the chin was that of his maternal
grandfather. The authorities gave excellent reports of him
though they hinted broadly that Jean was—well, inclined
strongly towards mischief. Mimi's passionate sadness on leav-
ing him was tempered always with the assurance he was being
cared for as well as could be hoped for in such surroundings
and she always returned to New York filled with determina-
tion to work twice—three times as hard as ever until she could
bring Jean back with her and care for him properly. She was
reaching the point where she could take care of his immediate
wants from her earnings. But she knew it was best she let him
remain there until she could more nearly assure that he could
be taken care of even if she herself should get sick or die.
Of social relations she had none. Sylvia invited her fre-
quently to go to Coney Island, to the movies, to dances, but
these Mimi always declined. She liked Sylvia very much as an
individual but she was always afraid she would not like the
T: was little variation to the life Mimi led. She paid
[223]


FLIGHT
young men and women of Sylvia's set. Having been all her
life unsuccessful at dissembling or pretence, Mimi was cer-
tain Sylvia would detect any dislike of Sylvia's friends and she
did not want this possible breach between them.
But this was not the deeper reason for Mimi's refusal nor
was even she aware of the cause of her abstention from all
relations other than those of her work and school. As a girl
Mimi had had a fragile, flower-like beauty. The hardships
she had undergone—the agonies of flesh and spirit—had not
coarsened or embittered her. Instead they had given her an
air of hard brilliancy like the glistening surface of porcelain,
beautiful, alluring but chilling to the touch—and as impenetra-
ble. Men instinctively turned and looked at her again as they
passed her on the street. She was, of course, not unaware of
these attentions nor did they altogether displease her. But her
experiences with men, the disastrous one with Carl, the unpleas-
ant ones in Germantown and New York, had made her frankly
sceptical of men and their motives. She was frankly repelled
by the contacts she had had with men and she had definitely
vowed that she would concentrate on her work and Jean's fu-
ture to the exclusion of everything else. She was strengthened
in this vow by the realization that she would never be able to
give up Jean and that his existence with the necessity of ex-
planation of his existence would mean almost inevitably the
rupture of any friendship other than a most casual one which
she might form.
So year after year Mimi went ploddingly along the way she
had laid out for herself. One by one girls left Francine's em-
ploy, some to get married, some to work elsewhere, some be-
cause they were discharged. Yet others, usually very pretty
ones who had served as mannequins or in other ways had
come in contact with men who had accompanied customers to
Francine's, left mysteriously. Some of these paid visits later
at Francine's as customers themselves or visited the workrooms
[224]


FL I GHT
don't go very far with me. Oh, excuse me! Sit down, won't
you?”
Mimi sat. The request was more a demand. She poised
on the edge of the blue and gold chair as though she was not
at all sure it would sustain her weight. Must learn something
about furniture, she resolved. This room's Louis XIV, I think,
she thought to herself, as she gazed around the room with
quick glances while waiting for Madame Francine to continue.
“How'd you like to go with me to Paris next month to get
new styles?”
Mimi came back to the subject at hand with a start. She
gasped.
“Go with you to France?” she echoed.
“Certainement!” came the answer as Madame Francine re-
membered her French. “You speak French, don't you? And
you've a keen eye. And you can use your own head—your
imagination. I’m not so young as I once was. It's a real
bother for me to chase around as I must—going to the shops,
the races, the theatres and the opera, the smart hotels and res-
taurants, everywhere I can pick up ideas. You see, my dear,
I always carry an artist with me who's got a mind like the
sensitive, so sensitive plate of a camera—he sees a gown or a
hat and he never forgets a single detail until he has sketched
it on paper.”
“I see,” murmured Mimi, though she didn't see at all. Her
mind was too filled with the prospect of going to Paris. But
she must have made her reply sound interested and intelligent
enough, for Francine went on.
“Only the department stores and wholesalers buy models—
we only absorb ideas and then develop them ourselves. That's
why we can ask and get two hundred dollars and up for a gown
while the department stores sell theirs for seventy-five.” In
her voice there was a tinge, faint but unmistakable, of scorn
when she spoke of “wholesalers” and “department stores.” So
[228]


FLIGHT
Francine, who had been born Margaret O'Donnell, to reach
the heights she had attained. But the Madame Francine who
sat opposite Mimi had travelled a long way from the Irish im-
migrant girl who had looked with startled eyes upon the ex-
panse of New York bay as she clutched feverishly the hand of
her squat and unimaginative father. She must be fifty if she's
a day, Mimi reflected. No, that can't be so. She's been in
business for over thirty years—she must be sixty. Anyway,
the old girl's certainly taken care of herself, Mimi decided, as
she gave polite and reassuring answers to the questions which
occasionally interrupted the even flow of Madame Francine's
narrative. . . .
“In the meantime, you'll give up your workroom and spend
most of your time with me. There are a lot of little points
about the business you need to learn—I need a pair of strong,
young shoulders on which to rest a part of my burdens”—
here Madame Francine gave a gentle upward motion of her
shoulders that would have convinced even a Parisian of her
Gallicism—“and from all I can see, you're the best one here
to share these burdens with me.” . .
For six weeks while the shops above them rushed through
young mountains of work, making creations of all sorts for the
Palm Beach migration of the socially and financially elect,
Mimi and Madame Francine spent several hours together each
day in the sheltered quietness of Madame Francine's private of.
fice—“my studio” she called it. Mimi saw and met and heard
about women and men whose names she had seen in society col-
umns and in the smartest magazines but whom she had never
seen in the flesh. She heard of the idiosyncrasies, the foibles,
and the predilections of each of them. She learned the things
each liked to hear. More important, she memorized the things
they did not like to hear. She listened to lengthy accounts of
[230]


FL I G HT
the business routine until her head swam and she felt sure she
could never by any means digest a tenth of it.
And there were other things she learned too—phases of the
business which she had never suspected before, marooned as she
had been in the workrooms. Had she gossiped more with the
girls, she reflected, she would have known these things sooner.
She learned the names of the men customers whose wives and
whose mistresses both purchased their gowns at Francine's.
And she was properly impressed with the necessity of never—
never—permitting any mix-ups in the delivery of gowns or
hats. She learned the necessary precautions in advising the
book-keepers about the bills for these goods—which bill was
to be sent to the man's home and which to his office, marked
“Personal.”
Too, she was admitted to the secret of the victimizing of these
men both by their wives and their mistresses. She heard Ma-
dame Francine explain suavely how many of the wives, per-
mitted unlimited charge accounts at as many shops as they
chose, were given little cash by their husbands. Madame Fran-
cine answered Mimi's guileless question why husbands with
money to give did not give it to their wives with a knowing lit-
tle laugh. “Wives with too much money to spend might—
with interesting young men around—well, they might forget
they’re wives.” Mimi listened with amazement as Madame
Francine told her how the wives—and the mistresses—fre-
quently came and bought gowns costing three hundred dollars
for which a bill was sent to the man for four hundred.
“And what becomes of the extra hundred?” Mimi asked.
“We give that in cash to the customer, little innocent! . . ,
What will happen if we don't? They'll go to another shop and
we’ll have lost a customer.”
Despite all she had undergone, Mimi realized that she knew
pitifully little about the ways of the world. Duplicity, deceit,
[231]


F LIGHT
lying, dishonesty, all around her and she had never even sus-
pected it. I am a silly little innocent, she mused. In a flash
Whitman's lines came back to her:
“Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill'd with the foolish,
Of myself for ever reproaching myself (for who more foolish than I, -
and who more faithless?) . . .”
She was faithless and foolish. If she weren't she'd drop the
whole thing and get herself a job scrubbing floors, washing
dishes, anything rather than be a willing part of this sort of
trickery. But even as she scourged herself and despised her-
self for her weakness, she knew she wouldn't scrub floors or
wash dishes. There's Jean to think of, was her dominant
thought. But she resolved she'd get out of the whole business
and work at home when she had earned and saved the money
she must have. Miss Lawrence had done it and some of her
customers had followed her all the way to Negro Harlem.
She could do it too—perhaps open a shop of her own as Syl-
via had done.
She was glad she had done nothing so foolish when a few
days after Christmas she stood on deck and watched the ser-
rated sky-line of New York, clad mistily in a blanket of snow
that fell like a great celestial curtain, drop silently in the dis-
tance. The thrill and mystery of departure no longer of in-
terest to her, Madame Francine had already gone to her state-
room, while Percival Edwards, the sketch artist, had fallen an
easy victim to sea-sickness before the hawsers had been cast
off and the huge ship had nosed its way from its slip. The
long, dark pier with its distinctive odour of things nautical,
the crowds of passengers and of others who had come to bid
them a snowy and chilly farewell, the trim officers of the lux-
urious vessel that seemed so immense Mimi felt an immediate
sense of security replacing her fear of the sea, all these ex-
cited and delighted Mimi. Only in short trips of a few hours
on the Gulf of Mexico before they had left New Orleans had
[232]


F LIGHT
Mimi ever before been on a ship. Those little boats of her
childhood could have been stored away and forgotten in the
hold of this huge boat, she reflected, as the shore became fainter
and fainter in the greyish white curtain of snowflakes. She
drew her shoulders deeper into the collar of her fur coat until
there was but a thin slit of creamy flesh visible between the
collar and the tight-fitting little toque that covered her head.
This is life, she thought comfortably. A big liner, Paris, the
boulevards, the shops, the theatres, the opera, the restaurants,
all the life of la plus belle ville du monde—the phrase came
to her from the text-book she had used but a short time be-
fore. . . .
Even Madame Francine's at times crotchety querulousness
and Percival Edward's effeminacy could not ruffle her spirits
in Paris—it was all too marvellous, too intoxicatingly beauti-
ful, that she was at last in the one place she had always
dreamed of visiting. The torn and unkempt streets could not
destroy her happiness—c'est la guerre,” she heard on every side,
but for her there was no destroyed beauty—she saw beyond
the disorder and envisioned the city as it was before shells and
neglect had ruffled its beauty. She loved the reviving splen-
dour and gaiety of fashionable life, loved it so well that Ma-
dame Francine was forced several times to remind her not too
gently that she was in Paris for work and not as a lady of
leisure. These reminders brought her back to herself for a
time but soon her thoughts were again far from sketching frocks
or absorbing ideas. All too soon for her the six weeks one by
one began and ended, one after the other. She did not want
to return to America. She wanted to stay for ever in Paris.
She would do it, she promised herself, with the recklessness of
those infatuated with the charm of a place when leaving it.
She would bring Jean to France, educate him there, and blot
from her memory and his all the dark days in their own
[233]


F LIGHT
America. This dream remained with her for a long time
after they returned to New York. . . .
“My dear, I’m an old woman now and I can't make the trips
I used to,” Madame Francine told Mimi after they had made
their second trip to Paris. “It’s nice of you to deny my age,”
she smiled at Mimi's eager protestations that she was not old.
“But it's true, nevertheless, and I’ve got to shift even more of
the burdens on you. Do you think you could go without me to
Paris next time?”
With a woman's eye for such signs, Mimi had noticed the
telltale wrinkles in Madame Francine's chin which, despite
massages and all the other means she had used to retain her
youth, had become each year more evident until now when she
held her head at a certain angle they reminded Mimi of
the neck of a plucked hen. Under Madame Francine's eyes
hung revealing pouches that of mornings were dark and wrin-
kled. Francine had had a desperate struggle to establish and
maintain her position—the comp tition had been cruelly keen,
any lessening of her efforts would have meant the swift relega-
tion of the business she had built to a place in the rear of the
procession. This strain was now telling on her. She was
weary. She no longer was able to drive herself and those un-
der her at high speed. Only the will to make Francine's the
place where smart New York came for its clothes remained.
She would always keep a supervisory eye on the shop. But
she was glad she had Mimi. Under her direction the pace
would be maintained, Francine’s name would not die out,
Francine's gowns would yet be known as the last word in fem-
inine circles.
Closely she had watched Mimi and she had been satis-
fied. She had given the younger woman many useful hints
and her delight had known no bounds when these hints
had been taken, elaborated, overhauled and embellished in
[234]


F LIGHT
such fashion the books had shown a decided increase in busi-
ness transacted. Francine was forced to admit, though her
confessions were rueful ones and kept to herself, that Mimi's
tactful handling of several wealthy customers who had been
wont to buy the bulk of their wares at other modistes' had re-
sulted in the transfer of practically all their business to her
own place. And there were, she noted, a number of women
with wealth and little else, who under no circumstances would
permit any other individual to advise with them on colours and
fabrics and designs save Mimi. Madame Francine was con-
tent—Mimi would do. Some day, who knows but Mimi will
be able to take her own place and she could with satisfied mind
retire for the long rest and the leisurely life she had always
promised herself?
[235]


FL I G HT
of dilapidated and abandoned stores through the hanging of
vivid strips of Turkish gauzes and calicoes across the dusty
windows, the thronging of the streets of love-making young
girls and boys, of surprisingly agile old women and stalwart
men with fierce and terrifyingly strange faces. Or perhaps she
wandered on the lower East Side through streets packed from
curb to curb with Jews, arguing, strolling slowly of an evening
under the garish lights from stores selling jewellery and cloth-
ing and food and amusement. Sometimes she ate in a res-
taurant on Houston Street where she could obtain white caviare
and strange, exotic dishes served nowhere else, while the propri-
etor, who had come to America from Roumania, played the
cymbalom, accompanied by a pathetic old blind man. She
found down here a new standard of appraisal of these peo-
ple, who, if for no other reason than that they, like her own
race, had known bitter persecution, appealed to her with col-
our and romance and kindred emotions. She was often re-
pelled by the bustling, noisy, aggressive younger generation,
for ever concerned with profits and losses. But the older gen-
eration, the women of the calm eyes and heavy wigs, the men
with magnificent beards and extraordinarily well-formed fea-
tures, appealed to her more than almost any other type she
had ever seen.
Through the Italian section she wandered along sidewalks
littered with fruit and vegetable stands, listening to voices sing-
ing to guitar accompaniment songs of Venice and Genoa and
Naples. Diminutive Sicilians slithered past her in the shad-
ows, huge Calabrians swaggered, haughty and handsome men
and women from Milan and Tuscania occasionally strode
proudly by. But most of all she loved the lightness and
gaiety of the streets where the French lived, to listen to their
gay love-making and the delicately beautiful songs which flowed
forth as naturally as did the speech which she understood and
loved. She sat in cafés and lazily watched men and women
[238]


FLIGHT
Though she denied it to herself, sometimes with a trace of bit-
terness that her own people had forced her to live a life of du-
plicity and deceit, nevertheless she felt frequently a yearning v2.
for contact with her own people, for whom she had the same
passionate love of the days following the riot in Atlanta de-
spite all she had suffered at their hands.
She was lonely, for despite her success she had no intimates,
none she could call friend, though she might have had them
had she chosen. She missed the warm colourfulness of life
among her own, she had never been able to shake off the chill
she felt even when her present-day associates sought to be most
cordial. And she resented bitterly the airs of superiority they
assumed. Frequently when she heard contemptuous remarks
about “niggers,” “coons,” “darkies,” from those who showed
by their words their complete ignorance of Negroes, she felt
like reminding them that to her there were two ways of achiev-
ing and maintaining superiority: one, by being superior; the
other, by keeping somebody else inferior. And she felt no bet-
ter that her life made her keep silent when these attacks were
made. Once or twice she had sought to disprove the contention
of some obviously biased person. Her face had flamed and she
had relapsed into a silence that galled her when she had been
met by the curt statement that in itself was a challenge: “Oh,
you're a “nigger-lover'—and from the South too!” . . .
Steadily she kept to the course she had set despite these and
other distractions. Madame Francine's visits to the new shop
in Fifty-seventh Street became more and more infrequent, now
that she spent most of her time in her home at Mount Vernon
and her winters in Florida. Mimi was now actually the mis-
tress of the place and she occupied the room which would have
been Madame Francine's, though there was always a desk ready
for her when she chose to come in and consult with Mimi on
matters of importance. . . .
[241]


FLIGHT
Mrs. Horace Crosby, late of Chicago, where her Rotary Club
husband had manipulated certain markets in grain, very much
to the advantage of the Crosby exchequer, waddled puffingly,
her succession of chins joggling with jelly-like quiverings above
her ample breast, across the narrow pavement of the Rue de la
Paix to her waiting motor-car. Her rotund, much bepowdered
and berouged face broke into a cherubic smile that spread like
ripples on a placid pond when a stone is dropped into it, as
she saw a trim, reddish-haired young woman approaching.
She turned and effectively blocked the passage of the young
woman, making non-recognition even less possible by extend-
ing her fat arms adorned with numerous bracelets and her fin-
gers much bedecked with diamonds.
“Well, now, if this ain't lovely—to run across you like this
in Paris, Miss Daquin! You must get right in and come to
the hotel for luncheon with me. I just must show you some
of the lovely things I’ve bought—real antiques and pictures
and lots of pretty things—but Horace says I’m a fool to spend
so much money on these ‘Frog' things—tells me they sting me
every time I go in a place—”
Mimi tried to plead a multiplicity of engagements, but to no
avail. Mrs. Crosby as a poor woman had had a knack of mak-
ing people do what she wanted them to do. Now that her ag-
gressiveness was backed by wealth far greater than she had
ever dreamed as a girl the world possessed, she could be evaded
now only by one's abrupt taking to one's heels. Mimi made a
wry face as she entered the lavender car adorned by the huge
Crosby monogram in gilt. Resistance was useless, she realized,
and Mrs. Crosby did buy a lot of things from Francine.
Though her gowns always looked as though they had been pur-
chased on Fourteenth Street in New York, somewhere east of
the Avenue.
“My dear, I bought the cutest, sweetest little statue yesterday
—the darlingest little Cupids with bows and arrows you ever
[242.]


FLIGHT
Luncheon finished, Mimi began taking surreptitious peeps at
her wrist watch as she waited for some lull in the Niagara of
words which poured from the Crosby mouth. She thought she
saw her chance when the telephone rang.
“Answer it, won't you, Miss Daquin, for me? That's a
dear! These silly little French phones annoy me so—why
don't they show some initiative and put in telephones like we
have in America?”
“There's a man named Forrester calling,” Mimi told her
when she had answered the telephone.
“Oh, Jimmy Forrester! Tell them to send him right up!
No—no, dear, you can’t run away now. Jimmy is the cutest
and sweetest boy—even though he does laugh at me and some
of my ways. He swears he doesn't but some of the things he
says sometimes sound suspiciously like he's chaffing—that's
a nice word, isn't it? I picked it up in London last week—
. . . Oh, dear! you really must go? I do wish you'd take
the afternoon off and come along to help me buy a few little
things I need. . . .”
But Mimi already had put her hat on and was half-way to
the door, with elaborate indefiniteness promising to look in on
Mrs. Crosby again “the very first time I can steal a minute or
two.” Privately she was vowing to have no minutes free for
her rotund hostess as long as she was in Paris. These prom-
ises and Mrs. Crosby's reiteration of her demands that Mimi
spend all her spare time with her took a longer time than Mimi
knew. She wanted to get away but her hostess had launched
into a life history of Jimmy Forrester and resignedly Mimi lis-
tened.
“. . . He comes of a very good family in New York—they
haven't much money but they've got position—Jimmie's con-
nected with a big brokerage house in New York that handles
a lot of Mr. Crosby's business—Jimmie does practically all of
Horace's buying and selling of stocks or bonds—frightfully
[245]


F LIGHT
smart, Jimmy is, and bright as a steel trap—Jimmie's just like
he's my own son. . . .”
“Hello, Jimmie dear—I want you to meet a friend of mine
who's been trying her hardest to slip away before you came.
Miss Daquin, this is Jimmie Forrester. You two ought to
know each other real well”; and Mrs. Crosby beamed with ma-
ternal benedictions upon them.
Jimmie Forrester—James H. Forrester was the name en-
graved on his stationery—bowed and scanned Mimi from head
to foot as he bowed. He was tall and slender, brown hair greying
at his temples, his face lean and tanned. His face in repose,
was indistinguishable from thousands of carefully groomed
and tolerably handsome young men to be seen any afternoon
on Fifth Avenue or in the fashionable streets near Piccadilly.
But when he smiled Jimmie Forrester became an in-
dividual. He had a trick of opening wide his eyes, and Mimi
saw that they did not match. One of them was brownish
while the other veered more towards hazel, giving him an
exotic air which interested her mildly. And his smile revealed
oddly crooked teeth, disarranged in a way that brought dis-
tinction to an otherwise uninteresting and commonplace mouth,
a distinction, she decided, which modern dentistry would have
destroyed had the teeth been straightened. All this she no-
ticed in the hasty glance she gave him as they uttered the usual
set phrases accompanying an introduction.
“Awfully sorry my coming ran you away—didn't know I
was such an ogre,” he apologized as Mrs. Crosby hurriedly
gathered the more intimate garments she had brought forth
for Mimi's inspection.
“You didn't run me—I should have been gone long
since 22
“The Holy Behemoth's been talking you deaf, dumb and
blind,” he whispered with a nod in the general direction of
Mrs. Crosby, who was humming a music-hall air she had heard
[246]


FLIGHT
the night before. Or, rather she hummed with a peculiar dis-
sonance the tune she thought she had heard.
“Not so bad—she has her good points. I wish I could have
saved her the job of buying a lot of the things she's been show-
ing me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself—neither wind nor wave nor howling
storm can stop her from dumping Horace's money all over the
place. There's a glitter that springs to the eyes of shopkeep-
ers all over Europe whenever Eulalia appears on the scene—
they hustle to drag out all the junk they think they've been
stuck with and unload it on her, telling her it's genuine Rodin
or Millet or whatever springs to their minds at the moment.
Even Horace, who has twisted the tail of Wall Street dozens of
times, is powerless before Eulalia—she’s irresistible when she
sets out to do a thing Gosh, here she comes!”
Some undefinable bond had sprung into being between them.
By the time Mrs. Crosby had puffed her way around the room
once or twice bearing armfuls of clothing into the bedroom
beyond, they felt they had known each other much longer than
the few minutes they had stood there.
“Let me take you wherever you're going,” he asked her but
she declined and hurried away. But when she reached her
hotel in the Rue DuPhot that evening she found there had been
three telephone calls from Mrs. Crosby. As she turned away
from the desk determined to change her dress and slip away
for a quiet meal alone, the telephone rang again and she heard
the girl say: “Yes, Mam'selle Daquin has just come—I’ll con-
nect you at once!” Fearing it might be Mrs. Crosby, Mimi
went to the telephone and found her fears well-grounded.
Even through the machine one got a distinct sense of gushing
good will, of sweetness and light.
“My dear, I was so afraid I’d never get you—we're having
dinner to-night—just a little comfy party of us—and you must
come—I won't take ‘no’ for an answer. All the shops are
[247]


FLIGHT
closed now and you can't work all the time, it's not good for
any of us—all work and no play, you remember. . . .” Mrs.
Crosby's voice was laden with little unexpected thrills and
flute-like runs that she fancied were quite cute and fasci-
nating. She never got out of practice, for she generously be-
stowed the silveriness of her tones on male and female alike,
even on the servants, who could not as easily flee from them.
Mimi knew she would go even as she felt herself a spineless
sycophant as she agreed. Hardly had she washed her face be-
fore the car was announced. She got some small satisfaction
from seeing the new respect on the faces of the hotel attendants
as they looked with awe upon the lavender Rolls-Royce with
its shining silver trimmings and silken upholstery.
She knew Forrester would be in the car, having sensed that
he had been responsible for the dinner invitation. As they
were whirled through the Boulevard Madeleine and down the
Rue Royal to Maxim's she listened to Mrs. Crosby's cooing ex-
clamations of pleasure that she had accepted, while she watched
the rounded broadness of Mr. Crosby's back and the straight
lines of Forrester's in the seats in front of them.
“Jimmie went quite mad about you this afternoon,” Mrs.
Crosby whispered as she sought to maintain her perilous bal-
ance while the car slithered around corners and came to an
abrupt stop. “Raved about you, my dear—said you were the
most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. You should be proud
—there have been loads of women who’ve run their fool heads
off after him and he never even looked at them.”
Mimi was not at all certain that Forrester had said all this,
nor even that he had been the hard-hearted, stern woman-
dodger Mrs. Crosby tried to make of him. But she did notice
that he managed to bring his chair as close to hers as he could
and that he took advantage of every occasion, which were not
few, to say meaningless little things in a confidential tone,
when Mrs. Crosby became interested with little squeals, as
[248]


FLIGHT
some acquaintance was spied in another part of the dining-
room. His manner was entirely open but the way in which he
said these things seemed to imply that they had a bond of un-
derstanding between them, a bond secret and very precious.
This disturbed Mimi in a way she could not explain even to her-
self. Jimmie Forrester interested her, there was something in-
tangible about him that made her afraid of herself. Once he
leaned over as Mrs. Crosby was excitedly pointing out a friend
who had just entered. “You are more beautiful now than you
were even this afternoon!” he whispered. The remark was not
brilliant nor was it one she had not heard before. But it made
queer little tingles chase each other through her, she felt her-
self blushing as though she were a girl of sixteen.
“Don’t be silly,” she admonished herself. “You’d be a
pretty fool to let yourself get interested. It's hopeless. It
can’t lead anywhere but to bitterness and disappointment.
Keep your head! Keep your head!”
She gave herself this sage advice and found herself promptly
disregarding it. She was glad when the dinner was over and
she escaped, pleading headache and weariness. Safe in her
room, she tried to shake Jimmie Forrester's mismated eyes and
crooked teeth from her mind. She failed. She was afraid—
terribly afraid. She knew it was folly, suicide, madness. But
the vision persisted. For years she had in an indefinite way
been lonely, had wanted the companionship of some man who
would be to her the summation of the ideals she cherished as
the most desirable. These spells had come infrequently, only
with great rareness breaking through the vitreous shell with
which her experiences had encased her. But they had been af-
ter all easy to shake off, for there had been no one man but in-
stead an ideal of her own construction which had never taken
form in the flesh. Now that she had met Jimmie Forrester,
she vaguely realized that she was not as immune as she had
fancied herself. She fell asleep, worried.
[249]


F LIGHT
feeling that he had gone to all that trouble to find out why she
had gone. “Chasing around to modistes and steamship offices
instead of enjoying Paris 22
“Mimi, don't you know why I did it?” he pleaded. Neither
of them noticed that he had called her by her first name.
“No, I don’t,” she prevaricated and then was immediately
sorry, not because she had told an untruth but because he
might consider it as an invitation to tell her why he had fol-
lowed her. That was exactly what he did.
“Don’t think me foolish, silly, childish. Perhaps I’m all
three and if I am I don't care. I’ve always laughed at the
notion of ‘love at first sight' but I won’t do it again 92
“Don’t be foolish. You have seen me twice. You know
nothing whatever about me other than that I work for my liv-
ing at Francine's. I might be an adventuress—”
“Please don't,” he pleaded. “Be serious. Let me finish.”
“No, I can't let you go on. There are very good reasons
why there can never be anything between us—and I shan’t
see you again,” she said firmly, as she rose from the table.
“It’s best we let this drop right here—and oh, Jimmie, it
must end now.” Her voice, which had begun so bravely and
positively, faltered. At the end it was almost a sob. She left
him there and was gone before he could follow her. . .
Three times the next day she picked up the receiver of the
telephone on her desk and hung it up again when she heard his
voice. As she started to leave the building for the day, she
saw him waiting outside just in time to dart back into the
building and go out by the back door. He wrote her but his
letters were unanswered. Once she saw him crossing peril-
ously Fifth Avenue, dodging taxicabs and buses by a hair's-
breadth while their drivers cursed and shouted at him fluently
but a near-by shop gave her friendly refuge.
She prayed he would become disheartened, angry with her.
[252]


F LIGHT
And even as she prayed, a malevolent spirit within her was
battling with her prayer and making her hope fervently he
would not forget. She knew that if she saw him she would
not be able to check the seeds of love which she found had
taken root miraculously and sprouted alarmingly. She did
not call it “love”—“silly infatuation which will pass away”
was her name for it. She debated the wisdom of her course,
wondered what would happen if she surrendered to the im-
pulse to yield to this feeling towards him which came to her
after she had switched off the night-lamp beside her bed and
lay there between the cool sheets and listened to the street
noises that came faintly up to her. She shielded the keen sen-
sitiveness to each tiny impact of experience and of thought
from heavy blows by trying to keep the heart of reality away
from her. For reality frightened her while it fascinated her,
made her long to creep away from it and find refuge in some
realm of forgetfulness where she would be safe. Warring re-
lentlessly and ruthlessly against that timidity was her common V
sense, which had been so largely increased by the experiences
she had encountered.
Suppose I should marry him? I’d live in constant terror.
all my life, fearing that he would find out about Jean, about v
my race. The latter did not seem so important, but could she
give up Jean for ever? She knew she couldn't. Fanciful
plans sprang to her mind and as quickly were rejected. She
thought of telling him Jean was a nephew, the child of some
mythical and deceased sister or brother. No, she couldn't do
that—she couldn't live a lie like that. She thought of leaving
him with the family in County. They had learned to love him
as their own child and had looked alarmed when she had
mentioned that some day she would take him with her. She
could establish a trust fund with all the money she possessed
and insure at least reasonable comfort for him. No, that was
impossible—she could never give him up that way.
[253]


F LIGHT
drama, I have gloated as I saw you humble while I stood cold
and impassive. Oh, yes, Mimi, I’ve gone through all this and
more—more than ever a boy of sixteen in love for the first time
has suffered.
“Yet I find that despite all I do to pluck you and the mem-
ory of you out of my heart I love you more devotedly every
day that passes. Take pity, Mimi, just let me talk with you—
see you, sit beside you and hear your voice. I know now
there's nothing you can do which can kill my love. I cannot
understand why you act as you do—surely you do not hate me
completely. If you won't let me see you, won't you write me
just one little note and tell me why you have acted as you
have?” -
That night Mimi read the letter over and over again. She
knew what it had cost him to write it—to make such con-
fessions of his inability to stop loving her despite all she had
done to kill that love. For a long time she sat by the window
and gazed out into the quiet street below. The roar of the
East Side elevated trains came faintly to her like the gentle
rumbles of far-off thunder. One by one the little groups of
children playing near at hand dispersed with shrill shouts of
parting until the morrow. A slightly chilling breeze from the
East River swayed the yellowish silk curtains lazily. Ever
and again it bustled through the windows in little gusts that
swept in and were gone. She heard leaves of paper on the
table behind her blowing to the floor but she made no move to
pick them up. Life for her was like that, she thought. Little
gusts came and swept her out of life just as she was beginning
to find her way about in the new spot where she had been
placed. They took her and tossed her about, this way and
that, dropping her willy-nilly into some new place, some new
situation in which she had to begin all over again the process
of adjusting herself.
There was no pity for herself in Mimi's reflections. She had
[255]


FLIGHT
been flung this way and that, buffeted by winds that often
threatened to capsize the tiny boat which was her life. But
with it all her lot had not been as hard as it might have been.
There had been compensation—Jean and Petit Jean, her work,
the love of people, human beings she had studied at first to
take herself out of herself, and later because she found in them
interest and joy in that interest. But all the things hitherto
now seemed easy, for through them all she had kept her soul
free. Now she was threatened with inundation, the great ris-
ing of a wave that rose up—up—up and, bursting into a mil-
lion silver bubbles, took shape again and formed the face of
Jimmie Forrester. That face haunted her with its pleading, its
suffering, eloquent of the struggle which he too was making.
From below voices came to her. She recognized one of them
as that of Mrs. Mahoney, the wife of the janitor, out for a
breath of air before going to bed.
“And I says to him, says I,” Mrs. Mahoney was declaring in
tones redolent of shamrocks and St. Patricks and harps, “you
can't get nowhere by dodging the truth. If you got a hard job
in front of you, the only thing to do is to jump at it and clean
it up. . . .”
Mrs. Mahoney was probably speaking of housework but her
words filtered through the fog of thoughts which enveloped
Mimi. “You can’t get nowhere by dodging the truth!” The
only thing to do is to jump at it and clean it up! She had
been dodging the truth and shrinking from doing the very
thing which she had known from the beginning she must do.
There could be no happiness either for her or Jimmie if there
was deceit or concealment of facts which he should know. She
determined to tell him everything. If he was repelled by these
facts, as she felt sure he would be, then the telling would end
this strain for both of them and they could pass quietly out of
each other's lives.
[256]


FLIGHT
Fearing that if she waited until morning her mind might be
changed, she rose from the window and hurried, head held high
and all her indecision and haggard fears fled, to the telephone.
Her lips were set in a grim line, pressed so tightly together
they made a thin red gash across her chalky-white bloodless
face. Perversely, her mind flew back to that other crisis—
when she waited outside the door which closed her from the
operating-room in which Petit Jean was being put to sleep,
perhaps never to waken again. Then, nerves raw and tingling,
she had hovered dangerously near the brink of a collapse in
the consciousness that flesh of her flesh was about to die.
Now she felt the same quivering nerves stabbing her with fiery
daggers as she knew that a thing, close and beautiful and
precious, closer to her even than flesh, was even at the moment
in danger of destruction, yes, was almost sure to wither up and
pass into oblivion. She took the telephone in her hand, for
some minutes holding down the receiver with the forefinger of
her right hand, even then fearing to take the step which she
feared but which she knew must be taken. . . .
Jimmie was at home. Incredulously he spoke to her, hardly
daring to believe that it really was she. Come over, Jimmie, I
want to talk with you—to tell you some things you must know,
she whispered hoarsely. As she sat on the side of her bed
after hanging up the receiver, she stared vacantly ahead of her,
wondering, wondering. . . .
Hardly had she had time to dash a bit of powder on her
face and arrange her hair before he rang the bell. She was
shocked when she saw him, the first time in several weeks.
His face was drawn and there were telltale hollows in his
cheeks, and his eyes were far back in his head.
“Mimi, tell me, have you decided? You need not answer
now about marrying me—if you don't want to answer—but
[257]


FLIGHT
velvet jacket.” But Mr. Crosby, gruff and kindly and intensely
practical, gave them a cheque—“You youngsters’ll know what
you want better'n an old man like me—get what you want with
it.”
Madame Francine wept throughout the ceremony and her
tears were because she loved Mimi and not—well, not very
much because she did not know what she would do now that
Mimi was going to leave the shop. Mimi had wanted to keep
on working but Jimmie had been adamant. “You’ve worked
long enough already—now you’re going to play!” he had de-
clared, and there was no changing his mind. Jimmie's mother
was there, white-haired and kindly and self-effacing, but she
had kissed Mimi tenderly and said: “My dear, you're the only
woman I’ve ever seen who's good enough for my Jimmie!”
Jimmie became mildly tipsy from the imbibing of many
glasses of champagne drunk as toasts, and the breakfast was yet
in progress, that is, the liquid portion of it, when Mimi, more
lovely than ever in a coral green gown with a hat to match
which Madame Francine herself had designed, slipped away
with Jimmie at three in the afternoon.
[261]


FLIGHT
In the mornings, négligé-clad, she poured Jimmie's coffee
and commented with more or less interest on the things he
read to her, between mouthfuls, from the morning paper. She
rather wished he wouldn't read to her, for it spoiled in a
measure her own reading of the paper after he had gone.
He liked to tell her what had happened, usually prefaced by
the exclamation, “Oh, look here! Here's a pretty how-to-do!
Listen!” And dutifully she would hear him read how Harry
Thaw was about to gain his freedom at last or how Babe Ruth
had hit another home run, or learned that another woman
had shot a man who had betrayed her. Such items together
with the market pages ended Jimmie's interest in the sheet,
for he shunned all news from Washington or Europe as he
would have dodged the plague—“I leave such heavy stuff to
the spectacled birds who like it!”
Jimmie dutifully kissed and sent to the office, Mimi did what
household duties she wanted to do, went shopping or to a
matinée, and then waited for Jimmie's homecoming and din-
ner. In the evening they went to the theatre or to a supper
club or cabaret or, occasionally, they dined at the Crosbys' or
with other friends or in turn entertained at dinner. Her placid
existence was so restful, so different from the stormy life which
had been hers that Mimi wished it could be for ever the same
simple one. When Jimmie had swept aside her attempts to
tell him why she could not marry him, Mimi had resolutely set
her will towards securing some of that happiness which had
eluded her. Grimly she resolved that she would be happy,
she would forget all that had gone before and by devoting her
every energy towards making Jimmie content, she would
achieve contentment for herself too. There were two or three
times during the first year they were married that she fancied
she saw a quizzical, indecisive look in Jimmie's eyes, but some
jovial remark had always followed, proving he had not been
thinking, as she had suspected and feared, of the things she had
[263]


FLIGHT
these kikes and Catholics and niggers got to be kept under
control. . . .” - *
Mimi listened only half-heartedly to Jimmie's selection of
the news which interested him—in fact, did not hear him.
She interrupted him as he paused. º,
“Here's a note from Mrs. Crosby—wants us to come to din-
ner Friday night—they're having a few people in to meet some
Chinaman—Wu Hseh-Chuan.” -
“That’s the bird Horace met when he was in China—official
or something Horace had to deal with to get some concession
he wanted. Guess we'll have to go.” -
“You go along, Jimmie, and let me stay at home, won't
you?” Mimi asked. “I’m fed up on dinners and parties—you
see the same people and hear the same things and drink the
same liquors at all of them.”
“But Horace and the Holy Behemoth, Eulalia, will get sore
if you don’t show up, Pet.”
“They’ll get over it. I really am sick of the same old rou-
tine, there's never anything new and it all seems so futile, wast-
ing so much time—”
“That comes from reading these stories by fellows like
Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis—I told you they'd make you
unhappy. That's why I leave those birds alone—they’re
always picking flaws in the best civilization the world's ever
Seen 32
“Bathtubs and radio and big business, eh?” Mimi murmured
softly, perhaps a shade too softly.
“Yes—bathtubs—and radio and all the other things you
sneer at-but just the same you’d be darned unhappy and un-
comfortable if you didn't have these same benefits this civili-
zation's brought you,” snapped Jimmie testily.
“Oh, well, if you're going to get angry about it, I’ll go.
Only, please don’t raise your voice so—remember the maid is
[265]


FLIGHT
“Seems to me,” Jimmie interrupted triumphantly, “you've
granted about everything that's worth considering.”
“No-no, Mr. Forrester, I haven't though. We've developed
the printing-press and the telephone and telegraph and the
radio, but what has been the result? We've made it possible
to spread faster and more easily bigotry and hatred and intol-
erance and give more power to the mob, whether represented
by the crowd that beats up a crowd of Jews or Germans or
Russians or Negroes or whether it's represented by nations
fighting each other for spoils in some part of the world. And
we call ourselves free men, boast of it. Such a notion is
silly—we are all of us petty little creatures who are slaves to
the newspaper and the radio, to politicians and mouthy preach-
ers, to our employers and the movies, to the telephone and every
other regimented idea or thing.”
“But you forget our art, our literature, all the other things
we've created beside the machine you hate so,” Jimmie, now
thoroughly aroused and interested in spite of himself, chal-
lenged.
“Our art? Our literature? As if other civilizations didn't
have art and literature, ethics and philosophies of life and
codes of conduct many of them much better than anything we,
busy as we are with material things, have created. Through
luck and abundant natural resources we've become immensely
wealthy—not through any particular effort on our part yet we
pat ourselves on the back and think we're God's elect.”
Meekins was happy in finding an opponent who gave him op-
portunity to show the discovery he had made, even though the
thing he had discovered had been in existence several thousands
of years. Mimi had sat without speaking, glad to see Jimmie
aroused from his habitual complacency, glad to hear Meekins
confirm and make more concrete some of her own vague dis-
satisfaction.
[271]


CHAPTER XXII
home. As their car worked its way up the Avenue
through the throngs of Jewish clothing workers that
poured from the cross streets south of Madison Square, Jimmie
recited, with an airy wave of his hand at the homegoing toil-
ers:
M. and Jimmie dutifully made their way to the Crosby
“How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.”
He looked at Mimi, expecting the hoped-for smile at his clev-
erness, but she continued to gaze at the throngs of work-
deadened, stoop-shouldered men and women, the chattering
groups of younger people dressed in brave but unsuccessful
imitations of their sisters who were strolling the same avenue
a mile or two northward. She watched the swirling eddies of
humans, swept this way and that from curb to building line,
rushing to subway kiosk or surface car, going homeward to
close-packed apartments to sleep until time to begin another
day of work. Mimi did not breathe freely until the car had
swept on past the Waldorf and east to Park Avenue. But the
sad, weary faces remained with her.
They were not surprised to find that Mrs. Crosby had run
true to form when she had written: “We’re having only a few
people to meet Wu Hseh-Chuan.” As was her custom, the word
“few” meant the same thing as a “crowd” to most people.
And Mimi, with a smile at Jimmie, noticed that Mrs. Crosby
[274]


FLIGHT
had shown her usual lack of tact in selecting her guests. It
was a heterogeneous assemblage—“she must have written the
names of every person she ever met, put them in a hat, and then
pulled out the first forty,” was Jimmie's whispered comment.
Mimi saw seven or eight of Mr. Crosby's business associates
whom Mimi had met. There were two elderly couples, dressed
properly, but obviously ill at ease and uncomfortable, who
Mimi learned were relatives from Iowa of Mrs. Crosby.
At the other extreme from these unsophisticated folks were
several representatives of the stage, at the moment “at leisure.”
Mimi had heard from Jimmie of Mr. Crosby's recently acquired
interest in the theatre. Jimmie had told the story with much
archness and numerous elaborately meaningful winks—“Hor-
ace hints he may put some money into a show or two, said a
man ‘ought to have other interests besides his business.’ I’d
like to know what her name is and what she looks like,” Jimmie
had ended his story. Between the guests from Iowa and those
from Broadway ranged representatives of various groups such
as can be gathered only in a city like New York. And off in
one corner, surveying with wise, calm and inscrutable eyes the
throng of vivaciously chatting individuals, stood the man Mimi
rightly guessed to be the guest of honour, listening to Horace
Crosby, who was talking with unusual volubleness.
“So glad you came, Mimi dear,” Mrs. Crosby came up and
whispered, patting Mimi's arm quickly. “I told Horace he
oughtn't expect me to entertain this Chinaman—Chinks al-
ways give me the creeps—but he would have me do it. Said
it'd mean money to him—it's about some big deal he's trying
to put over. I did the best I could—even went down to an
employment agency on Madison Avenue and hired special
Japanese waiters to serve the dinner—wanted to make him feel
right at home. But I’ve had all sorts of trouble to-day try-
ing to keep Maggie from hitting one of the Japs with a skil-
let. . . .”
[275]


FLIGHT
most valuable asset towards that rôle, then he was undoubtedly
the man for it.
For Bert Bellamy went everywhere, knew everybody and, to
him most fascinating, he knew everything about everybody.
He had with admirably masked intentions sought to suggest
to Mimi that he would enjoy taking her to dine some evening
when Jimmie made infrequent business trips. When Mimi,
seeing his hidden meaning, had only laughed gently and told
him she did not make a practice of dining out when her hus-
band was away, he had recognized at once that his efforts
there were futile ones. So he had returned her laugh, called
her a “little mid-Victorian,” and let the subject drop, never
to be brought up again. Thereafter they had been friends of
a sort. For he was amusing and often relieved the boredom
of stupid dinners and parties by his scandalous dissection of
the lives of the others present.
“Tell me, Bert, who are all these people?” she asked him.
“The Holy Behemoth alone knows—and I doubt if she knows
them all! She's certainly outdone herself to-night!” he ex-
claimed as they stood looking over the crowd.
“There's Miss Gloria Russell acting literary—no, not that
one—the girl in the pink dress with the teeth sticking out like a
circular awning over a window. She reads the Times Book
Review every Sunday—and if you haven't read the books your-
self, you’ll believe she's read every book that's ever been pub-
lished. My, how that gal can quote Dante and Homer and
Housman—she must have a bookshelf of Bartletts! She's
hoping some man will seduce her but she's had no luck
yet—"
Mimi laughed.
“Why so bitter? She rebuff you, Bert?” she inquired,
mockingly. -
“Lord, no! I'm no saint but I have got taste. . . . There's
[277]


F LIGHT
so much to gain further information as to keep the fast-dying
conversation going.
“Know her? I should say I do! Why, she and I used to
be sweethearts when we was little—I used to carry her books
home from school.” a
Mimi regretted at once her unwise question, for her com-
panion went at great length into the course of the childhood
love affair he had had with the to him resplendent woman who
sat at the head of the long table. Oh, well, she concluded
philosophically, as the story went on and on, he doesn't expect
comments from me, so I won't have to listen. She looked
about her and examined the queerly assorted lot, ignoring Bert
Bellamy's grin of amusement as he nodded towards the gentle-
man from Iowa who was regaling Mimi with his childhood
reminiscences.
Dinner finished, the guests spoke briefly to the guest of hon-
our and most of them left as soon as they decently could.
Mimi sensed the bewilderment of the Chinese (she wasn’t sure
whether the most proper word for him was “the Chinese” or
“the Chinaman”). His calm dignity interested her—beside
the uneasy and garrulous, the sophisticated and unsophisti-
cated, the smartly and the not so smartly dressed group in the
room, he seemed to her to possess the wisdom and the dignity
of a bronze Buddha. She went over to him and sat down be-
side him.
“I was talking last night to a young professor who's spent
some time in your country, Mr. Chuan” (she wished she had
asked beforehand what the proper form of his name was),
“and he was telling us you of the East are beginning to look
on Western civilization with considerable less enchantment
than you used to.”
He looked at her fleetingly but sharply and with acute in-
quiry. Mimi met his eyes frankly and he seemed satisfied
with what he saw in them.
[280]


F LIGHT
“There is a change taking place in China—all over the
world, in fact,” he assented in precise Oxford English.
“Gandhi in India, we in the Far East, in Africa, in Turkey,
in the whole Near East—there is a stirring going on. But it
isn't against what you call your “Western civilization’ nor is
it primarily against white people as white people—it’s a
healthy movement of people who for centuries have been
asleep—it's a rising, given form by the late war, of peoples
who have been exploited.” -
“But isn’t that the same thing?” Mimi inquired. “These
peoples are rising because they have been exploited—and who
has done the exploiting but the white nations? I seem to
remember a story of a Chinese who told a white man the
Chinese could never attain to the marvellous civilization of
the white man because, as he put it, ‘I can't shoot straight
enough.’”
He looked at her again sharply as he smiled.
“We Orientals are accused of being inscrutable—impossible
to understand, mysterious. But to us you of the West are just
as difficult to comprehend. For example, you spend millions
of dollars every year on missions in our country, you send us
hundreds of missionaries to win us from our religion to yours.
Do you wonder we think you inscrutable when we see unbe-
lief spreading throughout your Christian nations, see you quar-
relling and bickering among yourselves over creed and dogma,
not apparently understanding just what you do believe? It
seems to us that a doctor who is dying of a disease for which
he has the cure does not go out and try to force a man passing
in the street to take the medicine he himself needs. And you
preach to us of your Jesus whose life was built on meekness
and love, yet you use guns and warships to force us to accept
your religion. And you have just fought a war among your-
selves that was more terrible than any non-Christian nations
have ever known. And yet you call us of the East inscrut-
[281]


F LIGHT
Jimmie and though she had acted with the ruthless courage
born alone of mother love when Petit Jean's welfare required
it, she could not bring herself to take this step now that she
was able to care for him and to assure him every comfort he
needed.
As she sat by the window she thought of the dinner the night
before. The calm dignity, the far-sighted wisdom of the
Chinese had stood out in bold relief against the background
of the tawdry, shallow people around him. She thought of
the concept which had always sprung to her mind when she
had heard the word Chinese or Chinaman—it always had been
of a slant-eyed Oriental shuffling across a laundry floor or a
bestial, treacherous villain upon the stage or moving-picture
screen. But even allowing for the contrast between that stereo-
typed concept and the man she had met at the Crosbys', Hseh-
Chuan had towered far above the other guests, she decided.
It wasn't fair to compare him, who must be an exception even
in his own country, with poor pathetic Mrs. Crosby nor even
with Bert Bellamy, product of the sophistication of his age.
She remembered a phrase she had read in an essay by James
Branch Cabell—“Man is, they say, the only animal that has
reason; and so he must have also, if he is to stay sane, diver-
sion to prevent his using it.” Cynical, scoffing, it was true,
but after all was that not the premise upon which life now-
adays seemed to be conducted? And were not the Eulalia
Crosbys and the Bert Bellamys and the Jimmie Forresters, yes,
the Mimi Forresters too, restlessly, blindly, neurotically, un-
ceasingly seeking diversions to prevent the use of that thing
they called their intellect?
Again she came back to the figure of countless millions of
worried and insignificant little people obeying blindly the
implacable bidding of a huge, insatiable machine. Horace
Crosby seeking release and forgetfulness in an empty, sordid
affair with a woman, beautiful though she was, like Dolores
[286]


F LIGHT
from the reflection that the humans caught from their bedroom
mirrors. Above all, they demonstrated through their prayers
that they believed only in themselves and they were unable to
accomplish the miracles they sought.
Morality meant merely the observance, usually in the breach,
of certain man-made rules and regulations. It seemed to her
there was a far greater amount of immorality practised by cer-
tain married couples she knew between whom all love had died
than in relationships which she could easily imagine but which
conventions would condemn with ferocious bitterness. The
mouthings of stupid and sensational preachers who ranted and
shouted that the solution of all the ills of the world and of
mankind could be cured by blind acceptance of outworn theo-
logical doctrines that had served their day and then rightly
died, sickened her and made her more intolerant than ever of
creed and dogma. She did not at all know what she would
have desired but she did know that these empty-pated figures
were of infinitely more harm than good. They to her seemed
parallel figures to the absurd members of bodies like the Ku
Klux Klan. She hazily remembered a passage in Thayer's
“Cavour” which fitted these groups. She searched the shelves
until she found the book she wanted, and read:
“Moribund institutions, whether lay or religious, usually press their
most virulent claims. . . . A singular parallel can be drawn between
the Papal Party in Italy and the Slave Party in the United States
during the sixth decade of the 19th Century. When new ideals began
to undermine the civilization from which they had risen, both the
Papacy and the Slavocracy adopted a policy of no compromise. Both
arrogantly proposed to extend their dominion at the very time when
this doom was at hand.”
It seemed to her that this was sound—that what had been
true in the '60's was doubtless true sixty years later. War had
become the great objective of all peoples of the Western world,
their religion had become the religion of brute strength instead
[288]


CHA PTE R XXIV
white and black, that were swallowed up in the vast
building. Their car finally edged its way towards the
curb close enough for them to alight. Inside, Mimi noted that
every seat seemed to be taken as she followed Jimmie down the
aisle in the wake of the grey-clad usher. The tiers of seats
on the platform too were rapidly filling. The rumble of
voices hushed. Out of a door on one side of the platform
came a short dark figure followed by a taller one whose skin
was brown. A salvo of applause welled up and swept over
the bowing figure as he faced the shifting panorama of up-
turned faces.
Silence. The pianist leaned low over his instrument, and
long brown fingers lightly touched ivory keys, prodding them
gently in light, gentle touches. A chord. The immobile figure
of the singer galvanized into tense attentiveness. Back
went the head on which crisply curled hair hung close. Eyes
shut, gleaming teeth were revealed as a thin pure note poured
from parted lips. The harsh guttural tones of the German
were transmuted into a finespun sound as pure and delicate
as a silken thread. Out it poured.
Cº. HALL was surrounded by streams of people,
If thou art near me, I will go with joy to death and rest;
Ah, how happy were my end, with the pressure of thy fair hands and
the glance of thy true eyes.
Through songs by Bach and Schubert, by Brahms and
Franck, by Quilter and Jensen, the singer made his way.
And then he sang the songs of his own people. Not a sound
[296]


F LIGHT
disturbed the spell he had woven, the auditors dared hardly
breathe. “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See,” he sang, a
strange, wistful sadness pervading the music.
As from a fountain of bronze, tiny jets of gold and silver
sound were flung in a pellucid stream high above the heads of
the silent throng. It broke against the ceiling, the iridescent
bubbles bursting in radiant glory, dissolving into myriad lit-
tle drops of sound, each perfect and complete in itself. Down
they were wafted in gentle benediction upon the heads of the
listeners. Soothing, comforting, they brought peace and rest
and happiness. Before them fled all worries, all cares, all
lines of sex and class and race melting the heterogeneous throng
into a perfect unity.
Upon Mimi the music served as magic metal keys which
opened before her eyes mystic rooms, some of them long
closed, some of them never opened for her before, all of them
musty through long dark days and longer nights of disuse.
“Nobody knows the trouble I see,
Nobody knows but Jesus. . . .”
Ghostly figures moved shadowily across the rooms—figures
with eyes sad with the tragedies of a thousand years, eyes
bright with the faith which is born of strength in trial. Fig-
ures which by some strange legerdemain began as she watched
them to lose their unearthly diaphanousness and, like Galatea,
to become flesh and blood. The transformation did not startle
nor alarm her—instead, held fast in the spell woven by the
black singer, the re-creation of life in the figures before her
seemed the most natural thing in the world.
A vast impenetrable tangle of huge trees appeared, their
pithy bulk rising in ebon beauty to prodigious heights. As
she gazed, half afraid of the wild stillness, the trees became
less and less blackly solid, shading off into ever lighter
greys. Then the trees were white, then there were none at all.
. . [297]


A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN
WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET
This book is composed on the Linotype in Bodoni, so-
called after its designer, Giambattista Bodoni (1740–
1813) a celebrated Italian scholar and printer. Bo-
doni planned his type especially for use on the more
smoothly finished papers that came into vogue late in
the eighteenth century and drew his letters with a
mechanical regularity that is readily apparent on
comparison with the less formal old style. Other
characteristics that will be noted are the square serifs
without fillet and the marked contrast between the
light and heavy strokes.
SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND
BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALL OU PRESS,
INC., BINGHAMT ON, N. Y. • ES-
PARTO PAPER MANU FACTURED
IN SCOTLAND AND FLJ RNISHED
BY W. F. ETHERINGTON &
C.O., NEW YORK.