Plum Bun

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  She thought of her mother who had loved her father so dearly, and of the wash-days which she had endured for him, the long years of household routine before she and Jinny had been old enough to help her first with their hands and then with their earnings. She thought of the little, dark, shabby house, of the made-over dresses and turned coats. And then she saw Roger and his wealth and his golden recklessness, his golden keys which could open the doors to beauty and ease and—decency! Oh, it wasn’t decent for women to have to scrub and work and slave and bear children and sacrifice their looks and their pretty hands,—she saw her mother’s hands as they had always looked on wash day, they had a white, boiled appearance. No, she would not fool herself nor Anthony. She was no sentimentalist. It was not likely that she, a girl who had left her little sister and her home to go out to seek life and happiness, would throw it over for poverty,—hardship. If a man loved a woman how could he ask her that?

  So she told him gently: “No, Anthony, I couldn’t,” and watched the blood drain from his face and the old look of unhappiness drift into his eyes.

  He answered inadequately. “No, of course you couldn’t.” And turning over—he had been sitting on the grass at her feet—he lay face downward on the scented turf. Presently he sat up and giving her a singularly sweet but wistful smile, said: “I almost touched happiness, Angèle. Did you by any chance ever happen to read Browning’s ‘Two in the Roman Campagna’?”

  But she had read very little poetry except what had been required in her High School work, and certainly not Browning.

  He began to interpret the fragile, difficult beauty of the poem with its light but sure touch on evanescent, indefinable feeling. He quoted:

  “How is it under our control

  To love or not to love?”

  And again:

  “Infinite yearning and the pang

  Of finite hearts that yearn.”

  They were silent for a long time. And again she wondered how it would feel to love. He watched the sun drop suddenly below some tree tops and rose to his feet shivering a little as though its disappearance had made him immediately cold.

  “‘So the good moment goes.’ Come, Angel, we’ll have to hasten. It’s getting dark and it’s a long walk to the subway.”

  The memory of the afternoon stayed by her, shrouding her thoughts, clinging to them like a tenuous, adhering mantle. But she said to herself: “There’s no use thinking about that. I’m not going to live that kind of life.” And she knew she wanted Roger and what he could give her and the light and gladness which he always radiated. She wanted none of Anthony’s poverty and privation and secret vows,—he meant, she supposed, some promise to devote himself to REAL ART,—her visual mind saw it in capitals. Well, she was sick of tragedy, she belonged to a tragic race. “God knows it’s time for one member of it to be having a little fun.”

  “Yes,” she thought all through her class, painting furiously—for she had taken up her work in earnest since Christmas—“yes, I’ll just make up my mind to it. I’ll take Roger back and get married and settle down to a pleasant, safe, beautiful life.” And useful. It should be very useful. Perhaps she’d win Roger around to helping coloured people. She’d look up all sorts of down-and-outers and give them a hand. And she’d help Anthony, at least she’d offer to help him; she didn’t believe he would permit her.

  Coming out of the building a thought occurred to her: “Take Roger back, but back to what? To his old status of admiring, familiar, generous friend? Just that and no more?” Here was her old problem again. She stopped short to consider it.

  Martha Burden overtook her. “Planning the great masterpiece of the ages, Angèle? Better come along and work it out by my fireside. I can give you some tea. Are you coming?”

  “Yes,” said Angela, still absorbed.

  “Well,” said Martha after they had reached the house. “I’ve never seen any study as deep as that. Come out of it Angèle, you’ll drown. You’re not by any chance in love, are you?”

  “No,” she replied, “at least I don’t know. But tell me, Martha, suppose—suppose I were in love with one of them, what do you do about it, how do you get them to propose?”

  Martha lay back and laughed. “Such candour have I not met, no, not in all Flapperdom. Angèle, if I could answer that I’d be turning women away from my door and handing out my knowledge to the ones I did admit at a hundred dollars a throw.”

  “But there must be some way. Oh, of course, I know lots of them propose, but how do you get a proposal from the ones you want,—the,—the interesting ones?”

  “You really want to know? The only answer I can give you is Humpty Dumpty’s dictum to Alice about verbs and adjectives: ‘It depends on which is the stronger.” She interpreted for her young guest was clearly mystified. “It depends on (A) whether you are strong enough to make him like you more than you like him; (B) whether if you really do like him more than he does you you can conceal it. In other words, so far as liking is concerned you must always be ahead of the game, you must always like or appear to like him a little less than he does you. And you must make him want you. But you mustn’t give. Oh yes, I know that men are always wanting women to give, but they don’t want the women to want to give. They want to take,—or at any rate to compel the giving.”

  “It sounds very complicated, like some subtle game.”

  A deep febrile light came into Martha’s eyes. “It is a game, and the hardest game in the world for a woman, but the most fascinating; the hardest in which to strike a happy medium. You see, you have to be careful not to withhold too much and yet to give very little. If we don’t give enough we lose them. If we give too much we lose ourselves. Oh, Angèle, God doesn’t like women.”

  “But,” said Angela thinking of her own mother, “there are some women who give all and men like them the better for it.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s true. Those are the blessed among women. They ought to get down on their knees every day and thank God for permitting them to be their normal selves and not having to play a game.” For a moment her still, proud face broke into deeps of pain. “Oh, Angèle, think of loving and never, never being able to show it until you’re asked for it; think of living a game every hour of your life!” Her face quivered back to its normal immobility.

  Angela walked home through the purple twilight musing no longer on her own case but on this unexpected revelation. “Well,” she said, “I certainly shouldn’t like to love like that.” She thought of Anthony: “A woman could be her true self with him.” But she had given him up.

  If the thing to do were to play a game she would play one. Indeed she rather enjoyed the prospect. She was playing a game now, a game against public tradition on the one hand and family instinct on the other; the stakes were happiness and excitement, and almost anyone looking at the tricks which she had already taken would prophesy that she would be the winner. She decided to follow all the rules as laid down by Martha Burden and to add any workable ideas of her own. When Roger called again she was still unable to see him, but her voice was a shade less curt over the telephone; she did not cut him off so abruptly. “I must not withhold too much,” she reminded herself. He was quick to note the subtle change in intonation. “But you’re going to let me come to see you soon, Angèle,” he pleaded. “You wouldn’t hold out this way against me forever. Say when I may come.”

  “Oh, one of these days; I must go now, Roger. Good-bye.”

  After the third call she let him come to spend Friday evening. She heard the blue car rumbling in the street and a few minutes later he came literally staggering into the living-room so laden was he with packages. Flowers, heaps of spring posies had come earlier in the day, lilacs, jonquils, narcissi. Now this evening there were books and candy, handkerchiefs,—“they were so dainty and they looked just like you,” he said fearfully, for she had never taken an article of dress from him,—two pictures, a palette and some fine brushes and last a hamper of all sorts of delicacies. “I thought if you did
n’t mind we’d have supper here; it would be fun with just us two.”

  How much he pleased her he could not divine; it was the first time he had ever given a hint of any desire for sheer domesticity. Anthony had sought nothing better than to sit and smoke and watch her flitting about in her absurd red or violet apron. Matthew Henson had been speechless with ecstasy when on a winter night she had allowed him to come into the kitchen while she prepared for him a cup of cocoa. But Roger’s palate had been so flattered by the concoctions of chefs famous in London, Paris and New York that he had set no store by her simple cooking. Indeed his inevitable comment had been: “Here, what do you want to get yourself all tired out for? Let’s go to a restaurant. It’s heaps less bother.”

  But to-night he, too, watched her with humble, delighted eyes. She realized that he was conscious of her every movement; once he tried to embrace her, but she whirled out of his reach without reproach but with decision. He subsided, too thankful to be once more in her presence to take any risks. And when he left he had kissed her hand.

  She began going about with him again, but with condescension, with kindness. And with the new vision gained from her talk with Martha she could see his passion mounting. “Make him want you,”—that was the second rule. It was clear that he did, no man could be as persevering as this otherwise. Still he did not speak. They were to meet that afternoon in front of the school to go “anywhere you want, dear, I’m yours to command”. It was the first time that he had called for her at the building, and she came out a little early, for she did not want any of the three, Martha, Paulette, nor Anthony, to see whom she was meeting. It would be better to walk to the corner, she thought, they’d be just that much less likely to recognize him. She heard footsteps hurrying behind her, heard her name and turned to see Miss Powell, pleased and excited. She laid her hand on Angela’s arm but the latter shook her off. Roger must not see her on familiar terms like this with a coloured girl for she felt that the afternoon portended something and she wanted no side issues. The coloured girl gave her a penetrating glance; then her habitual reserve settled down blotting out the eagerness, leaving her face blurred and heavy. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mory, I’m sure,” she murmured and stepped out into the tempestuous traffic of Fourth Avenue. Angela was sorry; she would make it up to-morrow, she thought, but she had not dismissed her a moment too soon for Roger came rushing up, his car resplendent and resplendent himself in a grey suit, soft grey hat and blue tie. Angela looked at him approvingly. “You look just like the men in the advertising pages of the Saturday Evening Post,” she said, and the fact that he did not wince under the compliment proved the depth of his devotion, for every one of his outer garments, hat, shoes, and suit, had been made to measure.

  They went to Coney Island. “The ocean will be there, but very few people and only a very few amusements,” said Roger. They had a delightful time; they were like school children, easily and frankly amused; they entered all the booths that were open, ate pop-corn and hot dogs and other local dainties. And presently they were flying home under the double line of trees on Ocean Parkway and entering the bosky loveliness of Prospect Park. Roger slowed down a little.

  “Oh,” said Angela. “I love this car.”

  He bent toward her instantly. “Does it please you? Did you miss it when you made me stay away from you?”

  She was afraid she had made a mistake: “Yes, but that’s not why I let you come back.”

  “I know that. But you do like it, don’t you, comfort and beauty and dainty surroundings?”

  “Yes,” she said solemnly, “I love them all.”

  He was silent then for a long, long time, his face a little set, a worried line on his forehead.

  “Well now what’s he thinking about?” she asked herself, watching his hands and their clever manipulation of the steering wheel though his thoughts, she knew, were not on that.

  He turned to her with an air of having made up his mind. “Angèle, I want you to promise to spend a day out riding with me pretty soon. I—I have something I want to say to you.” He was a worldly young man about town but he was actually mopping his brow. “I’ve got to go south for a week for my father,—he owns some timber down there with which he used to supply saw-mills but since the damned niggers have started running north it’s been something of a weight on his hands. He wants me to go down and see whether it’s worth his while to hold on to it any longer. It’s so rarely that he asks anything of me along a business line that I’d hate to refuse him. But I’ll be back the morning of the twenty-sixth. I’ll have to spend the afternoon and evening with him out on Long Island but on the twenty-seventh could you go out with me?”

  She said as though all this preamble portended nothing: “I couldn’t give you the whole day, but I’d go in the afternoon.”

  “Oh,” his face fell a little. “Well, the afternoon then. Only of course we won’t be able to go far out. Perhaps you’d like me to arrange a lunch and we’d go to one of the Parks, Central or the Bronx, or Van Cortlandt,——”

  “No, not Van Cortlandt,” she told him. That park was sacred to Anthony Cross.

  “Well, wherever you say. We can settle it even that day. The main thing is that you’ll go.”

  She said to herself. “Aren’t men funny! He could have asked me five times over while he was making all these arrangements.” But she was immensely relieved, even happy. She felt very kindly toward him; perhaps she was in love after all, only she was not the demonstrative kind. It was too late for him to come in, but they sat in the car in the dark security of Jayne Street and she let him take her in his arms and kiss her again and again. For the first time she returned his kisses.

  *

  Weary but triumphant she mounted the stairs almost stumbling from a sudden, overwhelming fatigue. She had been under a strain! But it was all over now; she had conquered, she had been the stronger. She had secured not only him but an assured future, wealth, protection, influence, even power. She herself was power,—like the women one reads about, like Cleopatra,—Cleopatra’s African origin intrigued her, it was a fitting comparison. Smiling, she took the last steep stairs lightly, springily, suddenly reinvigorated.

  As she opened the door a little heap of letters struck her foot. Switching on the light she sat in the easy chair and incuriously turned them over. They were bills for the most part, she had had to dress to keep herself dainty and desirable for Roger. At the bottom of the heap was a letter from Virginia. When she became Mrs. Roger Fielding she would never have to worry about a bill again; how she would laugh when she remembered the small amounts for which these called! Never again would she feel the slight quake of dismay which always overtook her when she saw the words: “Miss Angèle Mory in account with,——” Outside of the regular monthly statement for gas she had never seen a bill in her father’s house. Well, she’d have no difficulty in getting over her squeamish training.

  Finally she opened Jinny’s letter. Her sister had written:

  “Angela I’m coming up for an exam on the twenty-eighth. I’ll arrive on the twenty-sixth or I could come the day before. You’ll meet me, won’t you? I know where I’m going to stay,”—she gave an address on 139th Street—“but I don’t know how to get there; I don’t know your school hours, write and tell me so I can arrive when you’re free. There’s no reason why I should put you out.”

  So Virginia was really coming to try her luck in New York. It would be nice to have her so near. “Though I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing so much of each other,” she thought, absently reaching for her schedule. “Less than ever now, for I suppose Roger and I will live in Long Island; yes, that would be much wiser. I’ll wear a veil when I go to meet her, for those coloured porters stare at you so and they never forget you.”

  The twenty-seventh came on Thursday; she had classes in the morning; well, Jinny would be coming in the afternoon anyway, and after twelve she had,—Oh heavens that was the day, the day she was to go out with Roger, the day that he would put t
he great question. And she wrote to Virginia:

  “Come the twenty-sixth, Honey, any time after four. I couldn’t possibly meet you on the twenty-seventh. But the twenty-sixth is all right. Let me know when your train comes in and I’ll be there. And welcome to our city.”

  Chapter VI

  THE week was one of tumult, almost of agony. After all, matters were not completely settled, you never could tell. She would be glad when the twenty-seventh had come and gone, for then, then she would be rooted, fixed. She and Roger would marry immediately. But now he was so far away, in Georgia; she missed him and evidently he missed her for the first two days brought her long telegrams almost letters. “I can think of nothing but next Thursday, are you thinking of it too?” The third day brought a letter which said practically the same thing, adding, “Oh, Angèle; I wonder what you will say!”

  “But he could ask me and find out,” she said to herself and suddenly felt assured and triumphant. Every day thereafter brought her a letter reiterating this strain. “And I know how he hates to write!”

  The letter on Wednesday read, “Darling, when you get this I’ll actually be in New York; if I can I’ll call you up but I’ll have to rush like mad so as to be free for Thursday, so perhaps I can’t manage.”

  She made up her mind not to answer the telephone even if it did ring, she would strike one last note of indifference though only she herself would be aware of it.

  It was the day on which Jinny was to arrive. It would be fun to see her, talk to her, hear all the news about the queer, staid people whom she had left so far behind. Farther now than ever. Matthew Henson was still in the post-office, she knew. Arthur Sawyer was teaching at Sixteenth and Fitzwater; she could imagine the sick distaste that mantled his face every time he looked at the hideous, discoloured building. Porter had taken his degree in dentistry but he was not practising, on the contrary he was editing a small weekly, getting deeper, more and more hopelessly into debt she was sure. . . . It would be fun some day to send him a whopping cheque; after all, he had taken a chance just as she had; she recognized his revolt as akin to her own, only he had not had her luck. She must ask Jinny about all this.