Plum Bun

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  He blurted out miserably, “But, Miss Murray, you never told me that you were coloured.”

  She felt as though she were rehearsing a well-known part in a play. “Coloured! Of course I never told you that I was coloured. Why should I?”

  But apparently there was some reason why she should tell it; she sat in her room in utter dejection trying to reason it out. Just as in the old days she had not discussed the matter with Jinny, for what could the latter do? She wondered if her mother had ever met with any such experiences. Was there something inherently wrong in “passing”?

  Her mother had never seemed to consider it as anything but a lark. And on the one occasion, that terrible day in the hospital when passing or not passing might have meant the difference between good will and unpleasantness, her mother had deliberately given the whole show away. But her mother, she had long since begun to realize, had not considered this business of colour or the lack of it as pertaining intimately to her personal happiness. She was perfectly satisfied, absolutely content whether she was part of that white world with Angela or up on little Opal Street with her dark family and friends. Whereas it seemed to Angela that all the things which she most wanted were wrapped up with white people. All the good things were theirs. Not, some coldly reasoning instinct within was saying, because they were white. But because for the present they had power and the badge of that power was whiteness, very like the colours on the escutcheon of a powerful house. She possessed the badge, and unless there was someone to tell she could possess the power for which it stood.

  Hetty Daniels shrilled up: “Mr. Henson’s down here to see you.”

  Tiresome though his presence was, she almost welcomed him to-night, and even accepted his eager invitation to go to see a picture. “It’s in a little gem of a theatre, Angela. You’ll like the surroundings almost as much as the picture, and that’s very good. Sawyer and I saw it about two weeks ago. I thought then that I’d like to take you.”

  She knew that this was his indirect method of telling her that they would meet with no difficulty in the matter of admission; a comforting assurance, for Philadelphia theatres, as Angela knew, could be very unpleasant to would-be coloured patrons. Henson offered to telephone for a taxi while she was getting on her street clothes, and she permitted the unnecessary extravagance, for she hated the conjectures on the faces of passengers in the street cars; conjectures, she felt in her sensitiveness, which she could only set right by being unusually kind and friendly in her manner to Henson. And this produced undesirable effects on him. She had gone out with him more often in the Ford, which permitted a modicum of privacy. But Jinny was off in the little car to-night.

  At Broad and Ridge Avenue the taxi was held up; it was twenty-five minutes after eight when they reached the theatre. Matthew gave Angela a bill. “Do you mind getting the tickets while I settle for the cab?” he asked nervously. He did not want her to miss even the advertisements. This, he almost prayed, would be a perfect night.

  Cramming the change into his pocket, he rushed into the lobby and joined Angela who, almost as excited as he, for she liked a good picture, handed the tickets to the attendant. He returned the stubs. “All right, good seats there to your left.” The theatre was only one storey. He glanced at Matthew.

  “Here, here, where do you think you’re going?”

  Matthew answered unsuspecting: “It’s all right. The young lady gave you the tickets.”

  “Yes, but not for you; she can go in, but you can’t.” He handed him the torn ticket, turned and took one of the stubs from Angela, and thrust that in the young man’s unwilling hand. “Go over there and get your refund.”

  “But,” said Matthew and Angela could feel his very manhood sickening under the silly humiliation of the moment, “there must be some mistake. I sat in this same theatre less than three weeks ago.”

  “Well, you won’t sit in there to-night; the management’s changed hands since then, and we’re not selling tickets to coloured people.” He glanced at Angela a little uncertainly. “The young lady can come in——”

  Angela threw her ticket on the floor. “Oh, come Matthew, come.”

  Outside he said stiffly, “I’ll get a taxi, we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “No, no! We wouldn’t enjoy it. Let’s go home and we don’t need a taxi. We can get the Sixteenth Street car right at the corner.”

  She was very kind to him in the car; she was so sorry for him, suddenly conscious of the pain which must be his at being stripped before the girl he loved of his masculine right to protect, to appear the hero.

  She let him open the two doors for her but stopped him in the box of a hall. “I think I’ll say good-night now, Matthew; I’m more tired than I realized. But,—but it was an adventure, wasn’t it?”

  His eyes adored her, his hand caught hers: “Angela, I’d have given all I hope to possess to have been able to prevent it; you know I never dreamed of letting you in for such humiliation. Oh how are we ever going to get this thing straight?”

  “Well, it wasn’t your fault.” Unexpectedly she lifted her delicate face to his, so stricken and freckled and woebegone, and kissed him; lifted her hand and actually stroked his reddish, stiff, “bad” hair.

  Like a man in a dream he walked down the street wondering how long it would be before they married.

  Angela, waking in the middle of the night and reviewing to herself the events of the day, said aloud: “This is the end,” and fell asleep again.

  The little back room was still Jinny’s, but Angela, in order to give the third storey front to Hetty Daniels, had moved into the room which had once been her mother’s. She and Virginia had placed the respective head-boards of their narrow, virginal beds against the dividing wall so that they could lie in bed and talk to each other through the communicating door-way, their voices making a circuit from speaker to listener in what Jinny called a hairpin curve.

  Angela called in as soon as she heard her sister moving, “Jinny, listen. I’m going away.”

  Her sister, still half asleep, lay intensely quiet for another second, trying to pick up the continuity of this dream. Then her senses came to her.

  “What’d you say, Angela?”

  “I said I was going away. I’m going to leave Philadelphia, give up school teaching, break away from our loving friends and acquaintances, and bust up the whole shooting match.”

  “Haven’t gone crazy, have you?”

  “No, I think I’m just beginning to come to my senses. I’m sick, sick, sick of seeing what I want dangled right before my eyes and then of having it snatched away from me and all of it through no fault of my own.”

  “Darling, you know I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re driving at.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you.” Out came the whole story, an accumulation of the slights, real and fancied, which her colour had engendered throughout her lifetime; though even then she did not tell of that first hurt through Mary Hastings. That would always linger in some remote, impenetrable fastness of her mind, for wounded trust was there as well as wounded pride and love. “And these two last happenings with Matthew and Mr. Shields are just too much; besides they’ve shown me the way.”

  “Shown you what way?”

  Virginia had arisen and thrown an old rose kimono around her. She had inherited her father’s thick and rather coarsely waving black hair, enhanced by her mother’s softness. She was slender, yet rounded; her cheeks were flushed with sleep and excitement. Her eyes shone. As she sat in the brilliant wrap, cross-legged at the foot of her sister’s narrow bed, she made the latter think of a strikingly dainty, colourful robin.

  “Well you see as long as the Shields thought I was white they were willing to help me to all the glories of the promised land. And the doorman last night,—he couldn’t tell what I was, but he could tell about Matthew, so he put him out; just as the Shields are getting ready in another way to put me out. But as long as they didn’t know it didn’t matter. Which means it isn’t being co
loured that makes the difference, it’s letting it be known. Do you see?

  “So I’ve thought and thought. I guess really I’ve had it in my mind for a long time, but last night it seemed to stand right out in my consciousness. Why should I shut myself off from all the things I want most,—clever people, people who do things, Art,—” her voice spelt it with a capital,—“travel and a lot of things which are in the world for everybody really but which only white people, as far as I can see, get their hands on. I mean scholarships and special funds, patronage. Oh Jinny, you don’t know, I don’t think you can understand the things I want to see and know. You’re not like me——”.

  “I don’t know why I’m not,” said Jinny looking more like a robin than ever. Her bright eyes dwelt on her sister. “After all, the same blood flows in my veins and in the same proportion. Sure you’re not laying too much stress on something only temporarily inconvenient?”

  “But it isn’t temporarily inconvenient; it’s happening to me every day. And it isn’t as though it were something that I could help. Look how Mr. Shields stressed the fact that I hadn’t told him I was coloured. And see how it changed his attitude toward me; you can’t think how different his manner was. Yet as long as he didn’t know, there was nothing he wasn’t willing and glad, glad to do for me. Now he might be willing but he’ll not be glad though I need his assistance more than some white girl who will find a dozen people to help her just because she is white.” Some faint disapproval in her sister’s face halted her for a moment. “What’s the matter? You certainly don’t think I ought to say first thing: ‘I’m Angela Murray. I know I look white but I’m coloured and expect to be treated accordingly!’ Now do you?”

  “No,” said Jinny, “of course that’s absurd. Only I don’t think you ought to mind quite so hard when they do find out the facts. It seems sort of an insult to yourself. And then, too, it makes you lose a good chance to do something for—for all of us who can’t look like you but who really have the same combination of blood that you have.”

  “Oh that’s some more of your and Matthew Henson’s philosophy. Now be practical, Jinny; after all I am both white and Negro and look white. Why shouldn’t I declare for the one that will bring me the greatest happiness, prosperity and respect?”

  “No reason in the world except that since in this country public opinion is against any infusion of black blood it would seem an awfully decent thing to put yourself, even in the face of appearances, on the side of black blood and say: ‘Look here, this is what a mixture of black and white really means!’

  Angela was silent and Virginia, feeling suddenly very young, almost childish in the presence of this issue, took a turn about the room. She halted beside her sister.

  “Just what is it you want to do, Angela? Evidently you have some plan.”

  She had. Her idea was to sell the house and to divide the proceeds. With her share of this and her half of the insurance she would go to New York or to Chicago, certainly to some place where she could by no chance be known, and launch out “into a freer, fuller life”.

  “And leave me!” said Jinny astonished. Somehow it had not dawned on her that the two would actually separate. She did not know what she had thought, but certainly not that. The tears ran down her cheeks.

  Angela, unable to endure either her own pain or the sight of it in others, had all of a man’s dislike for tears.

  “Don’t be absurd, Jinny! How could I live the way I want to if you’re with me. We’d keep on loving each other and seeing one another from time to time, but we might just as well face the facts. Some of those girls in the art school used to ask me to their homes; it would have meant opportunity, a broader outlook, but I never dared accept because I knew I couldn’t return the invitation.”

  Under that Jinny winced a little, but she spoke with spirit. “After that, Angela dear, I’m beginning to think that you have more white blood in your veins than I, and it was that extra amount which made it possible for you to make that remark.” She trailed back to her room and when Hetty Daniels announced breakfast she found that a bad headache required a longer stay in bed.

  For many years the memory of those next few weeks lingered in Virginia’s mind beside that other tragic memory of her mother’s deliberate submission to death. But Angela was almost tremulous with happiness and anticipation. Almost as though by magic her affairs were arranging themselves. She was to have the three thousand dollars and Jinny was to be the sole possessor of the house. Junius had paid far less than this sum for it, but it had undoubtedly increased in value. “It’s a fair enough investment for you, Miss Virginia,” Mr. Hallowell remarked gruffly. He had disapproved heartily of this summary division, would have disapproved more thoroughly and openly if he had had any idea of the reasons behind it. But the girls had told no one, not even him, of their plans. “Some sisters’ quarrel, I suppose,” he commented to his wife. “I’ve never seen any coloured people yet, relatives that is, who could stand the joint possession of a little money.”

  A late Easter was casting its charm over the city when Angela, trim, even elegant, in her conventional tailored suit, stood in the dining-room of the little house waiting for her taxi. She had burned her bridges behind her, had resigned from school, severed her connection with the Academy, and had permitted an impression to spread that she was going West to visit indefinitely a distant cousin of her mother’s. In reality she was going to New York. She had covered her tracks very well, she thought; none of her friends was to see her off; indeed, none of them knew the exact hour of her departure. She was even leaving from the North Philadelphia station so that none of the porters of the main depôt, friends perhaps of the boys who came to her house, and, through some far flung communal instinct familiar to coloured people, acquainted with her by sight, would be able to tell of her going. Jinny, until she heard of this, had meant to accompany her to the station, but Angela’s precaution palpably scotched this idea; she made no comment when Virginia announced that it would be impossible for her to see her sister off. An indefinable steeliness was creeping upon them.

  Yet when the taxi stood rumbling and snorting outside, Angela, her heart suddenly mounting to her throat, her eyes smarting, put her arm tightly about her sister who clung to her frankly crying. But she only said: “Now, Jinny, there’s nothing to cry about. You’ll be coming to New York soon. First thing I know you’ll be walking up to me: ‘Pardon me! Isn’t this Mrs. Henrietta Jones?’”

  Virginia tried to laugh, “And you’ll be saying: ‘Really you have the advantage of me.’ Oh, Angela, don’t leave me!”

  The cabby was honking impatiently. “I must, darling. Good-bye, Virginia. You’ll hear from me right away.”

  She ran down the steps, glanced happily back. But her sister had already closed the door.

  MARKET

  Chapter I

  FIFTH AVENUE is a canyon; its towering buildings dwarf the importance of the people hurrying through its narrow confines. But Fourteenth Street is a river, impersonally flowing, broad-bosomed, with strange and devious craft covering its expanse. To Angela the famous avenue seemed but one manifestation of living, but Fourteenth Street was the rendezvous of life itself. Here for those first few weeks after her arrival in New York she wandered, almost prowled, intent upon the jostling shops, the hurrying, pushing people, above all intent upon the faces of those people with their showings of grief, pride, gaiety, greed, joy, ambition, content. There was little enough of this last. These men and women were living at a sharper pitch of intensity than those she had observed in Philadelphia. The few coloured people whom she saw were different too; they possessed an independence of carriage, a purposefulness, an assurance in their manner that pleased her. But she could not see that any of these people, black or white, were any happier than those whom she had observed all her life.

  But she was happier; she was living on the crest of a wave of excitement and satisfaction which would never wane, never break, never be spent. She was seeing the world, she was
getting acquainted with life in her own way without restrictions or restraint; she was young, she was temporarily independent, she was intelligent, she was white. She remembered an expression “free, white and twenty-one”,—this was what it meant then, this sense of owning the world, this realization that other things being equal, all things were possible. “If I were a man,” she said, “I could be president”, and laughed at herself for the “if” itself proclaimed a limitation. But that inconsistency bothered her little; she did not want to be a man. Power, greatness, authority, these were fitting and proper for men; but there were sweeter, more beautiful gifts for women, and power of a certain kind too. Such a power she would like to exert in this glittering new world, so full of mysteries and promise. If she could afford it she would have a salon, a drawing-room where men and women, not necessarily great, but real, alive, free, and untrammelled in manner and thought, should come and pour themselves out to her sympathy and magnetism. To accomplish this she must have money and influence; indeed since she was so young she would need even protection; perhaps it would be better to marry . . . a white man. The thought came to her suddenly out of the void; she had never thought of this possibility before. If she were to do this, do it suitably, then all that richness, all that fullness of life which she so ardently craved would be doubly hers. She knew that men had a better time of it than women, coloured men than coloured women, white men than white women. Not that she envied them. Only it would be fun, great fun to capture power and protection in addition to the freedom and independence which she had so long coveted and which now lay in her hand.

  But, she smiled to herself, she had no way of approaching these ends. She knew no one in New York; she could conceive of no manner in which she was likely to form desirable acquaintances; at present her home consisted of the four walls of the smallest room in Union Square Hotel. She had gone there the second day after her arrival, having spent an expensive twenty-four hours at the Astor. Later she came to realize that there were infinitely cheaper habitations to be had, but she could not tear herself away from Fourteenth Street. It was Spring, and the Square was full of rusty specimens of mankind who sat on the benches, as did Angela herself, for hours at a stretch, as though they thought the invigorating air and the mellow sun would work some magical burgeoning on their garments such as was worked on the trees. But though these latter changed, the garments changed not nor did their owners. They remained the same, drooping, discouraged down and outers. “I am seeing life,” thought Angela, “this is the way people live,” and never realized that some of these people looking curiously, speculatively at her wondered what had been her portion to bring her thus early to this unsavoury company.