It was too bad that she had to meet her sister,—but she must. Just as likely as not she’d be car sick and then New York was terrifying for the first time to the stranger,—she had known an instant’s sick dread herself that first day when she had stood alone and ignorant in the great rotunda of the station. But she was different from Jinny; nothing about life ever made her really afraid; she might hurt herself, suffer, meet disappointment, but life could not alarm her; she loved to come to grips with it, to force it to a standstill, to yield up its treasures. But Jinny although brave, had secret fears, she was really only a baby. Her little sister! For the first time in months she thought of her with a great surge of sisterly tenderness.
It was time to go. She wore her most unobtrusive clothes, a dark blue suit, a plain white silk shirt, a dark blue, bell-shaped hat—a cloche—small and fitting down close over her eyes. She pulled it down even farther and settled her modish veil well over the tip of her nose. It was one thing to walk about the Village with Miss Powell. There were practically no coloured people there. But this was different. Those curious porters should never be able to recognize her. Seymour Porter had worked among them one summer at Broad Street station in Philadelphia. He used to say: “They aren’t really curious, you know, but their job makes them sick; so they’re always hunting for the romance, for the adventure which for a day at least will take the curse off the monotonous obsequiousness of their lives.”
She was sorry for them, but she could not permit them to remedy their existence at her expense.
In her last letter she had explained to Jinny about those two troublesome staircases which lead from the train level of the New York Pennsylvania Railroad station to the street level. “There’s no use my trying to tell you which one to take in order to bring you up to the right hand or to the left hand side of the elevator because I never know myself. So all I can say, dear, is when you do get up to the elevator just stick to it and eventually I’ll see you or you’ll see me as I revolve around it. Don’t you move, for it might turn out that we were both going in the same direction.”
True to her own instructions, she was stationed between the two staircases, jerking her neck now toward one staircase, now toward the other, stopping short to look at the elevator itself. She thrust up her veil to see better.
A man sprinted by in desperate haste, brushing so closely by her that the corner of his suit-case struck sharply on the thin inner curve of her knee.
“My goodness!” she exclaimed involuntarily.
For all his haste he was a gentleman, for he pulled of his hat, threw her a quick backward glance and began: “I beg your—why darling, darling, you don’t mean to say you came to meet me!”
“Meet you! I thought you came in this morning.” It was Roger, Roger and the sight of him made her stupid with fear.
He stooped and kissed her, tenderly, possessively. “I did,—oh Angèle you are a beauty! Only a beauty can wear plain things like that. I did come in this morning but I’m trying to catch Kirby, my father’s lawyer, he ought to be coming in from Newark just now and I thought I’d take him down to Long Island with me for the night. I’ve got a lot of documents for him here in this suitcase—that Georgia business was most complicated—that way I won’t have to hunt him up in the morning and I’ll have more time to—to arrange for our trip in the afternoon. What are you doing here?”
What was she doing there? Waiting for her sister Jinny who was coloured and who showed it. And Roger hated Negroes. She was lost, ruined, unless she could get rid of him. She told the first lie that came into her mind.
“I’m waiting for Paulette.” All this could be fixed up with Paulette later. Miss Lister would think as little of deceiving a man, any man, as she would of squashing a mosquito. They were fair game and she would ask no questions.
His face clouded. “Can’t say I’m so wild about your waiting for Paulette. Well we can wait together—is she coming up from Philadelphia? That train’s bringing my man too from Newark.” He had the male’s terrible clarity of understanding for train connections.
“What time does your train go to Long Island? I thought you wanted to get the next one.”
“Well, I’d like to but they’re only half an hour apart. I can wait. Better the loss of an hour to-day than all of to-morrow morning. We can wait together; see the people are beginning to come up. I wish I could take you home but the minute he shows up I’ll have to sprint with him.”
“Now God be on my side,” she prayed. Sometimes these trains were very long. If Mr. Kirby were in the first car and Jinny toward the end that would make all of ten minutes’ difference. If only she hadn’t given those explicit directions!
There was Jinny, her head suddenly emerging into view above the stairs. She saw Angela, waved her hand. In another moment she would be flinging her arms about her sister’s neck; she would be kissing her and saying, “Oh, Angela, Angela darling!”
And Roger, who was no fool, would notice the name Angela—Angèle; he would know no coloured girl would make a mistake like this.
She closed her eyes in a momentary faintness, opened them again.
“What’s the matter?” said Roger sharply, “are you sick?”
Jinny was beside her. Now, now the bolt would fall. She heard the gay, childish voice saying laughingly, assuredly:
“I beg your pardon, but isn’t this Mrs. Henrietta Jones?”
Oh, God was good! Here was one chance if only Jinny would understand! In his astonishment Roger had turned from her to face the speaker. Angela, her eyes beseeching her sister’s from under her close hat brim, could only stammer the old formula: “Really you have the advantage of me. No, I’m not Mrs. Jones.”
Roger said rudely, “Of course she isn’t Mrs. Jones. Come, Angèle.” Putting his arm through hers he stooped for the suitcase.
But Jinny, after a second’s bewildered but incredulous stare, was quicker even than they. Her slight figure, her head high, preceded them; vanished into a telephone booth.
Roger glared after her. “Well of all the damned cheek!”
For the first time in the pursuit of her chosen ends she began to waver. Surely no ambition, no pinnacle of safety was supposed to call for the sacrifice of a sister. She might be selfish,—oh, undoubtedly she had been selfish all these months to leave Jinny completely to herself—but she had never meant to be cruel. She tried to picture the tumult of emotions in her sister’s mind, there must have been amazement,—oh she had seen it all on her face, the utter bewilderment, the incredulity and then the settling down on that face of a veil of dignity and pride—like a baby trying to harden mobile features. She was in her apartment again now, pacing the floor, wondering what to do. Already she had called up the house in 139th Street, it had taken her a half-hour to get the number for she did not know the householder’s name and “Information” had been coy,—but Miss Murray had not arrived yet. Were they expecting her? Yes, Miss Murray had written to say that she would be there between six and seven; it was seven-thirty now and she had not appeared. Was there any message? “No, no!” Angela explained she would call again.
But where was Jinny? She couldn’t be lost, after all she was grown-up and no fool, she could ask directons. Perhaps she had taken a cab and in the evening traffic had been delayed,—or had met with an accident. This thought sent Angela to the telephone again. There was no Miss Murray as yet. In her wanderings back and forth across the room she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining with remorse and anxiety. Her vanity reminded her: “If Roger could just see me now”. Roger and to-morrow! He would have to speak words of gold to atone for this breach which for his sake she had made in her sister’s trust and affection.
At the end of an hour she called again. Yes, Miss Murray had come in. So great was her relief that her knees sagged under her. Yes of course they would ask her to come to the telephone. After a long silence the voice rang again over the wire. “I didn’t see her go out but she must have for
she’s not in her room.”
“Oh all right,” said Angela, “the main thing was to know that she was there.” But she was astonished. Jinny’s first night in New York and she was out already! She could not go to see her Thursday because of the engagement with Roger, but she’d make good the next day; she’d be there the first thing, Friday morning. Snatching up a sheet of note-paper she began a long letter full of apologies and excuses. “And I can’t come to-morrow, darling, because as I told you I have a very important engagement, an engagement that means very much to me. Oh you’ll understand when I tell you about it.” She put a special delivery stamp on the letter.
Her relief at learning that Jinny was safe did not ease her guilty conscience. In a calmer mood she tried now to find excuses for herself, extenuating circumstances. As soon as Jinny understood all that was involved she would overlook it. After all, Jinny would want her to be happy. “And anyway,” she thought to herself sulkily, “Mamma didn’t speak to Papa that day that we were standing on the steps of the Hotel Walton.” But she knew that the cases were not analogous; no principle was involved, her mother’s silence had not exposed her husband to insult or contumely, whereas Roger’s attitude to Virginia had been distinctly offensive. “And moreover,” her thoughts continued with merciless clarity, “when a principle was at stake your mother never hesitated a moment to let those hospital attendants know of the true status of affairs. In fact she was not aware that she was taking any particular stand. Her husband was her husband and she was glad to acknowledge that relationship.”
A sick distaste for her action, for her daily deception, for Roger and his prejudices arose within her. But with it came a dark anger against a country and a society which could create such an issue. And she thought: “If I had spoken to Jinny, had acknowledged her, what good would it have done me or her either? After it was all over she would have been exactly where she was before and I would have lost everything. And I do so want to be happy, to have a good time. At this very hour to-morrow I’ll probably be one of the most envied girls in New York. And afterwards I can atone for it all. I’ll be good to all sorts of people; I’ll really help humanity, lots of coloured folks will be much better of on account of me. And if I had spoken to Jinny I could never have helped them at all.” Once she murmured: “I’ll help Jinny too, the darling! She shall have everything in the world she wants.” But in her heart she knew already that Jinny would want nothing.
Chapter VII
THURSDAY came and Thursday sped as Thursdays will. For a long time Angela saw it as a little separate entity of time shut away in some hidden compartment of her mind, a compartment whose door she dreaded to open.
On Friday she called up her sister early in the morning. “Is that you, Jinny? Did you get my letter? Is it all right for me to come up?”
“Yes,” said Jinny noncomittally, to all questions, then laconically: “But you’d better come right away if you want to catch me. I take the examination to-day and haven’t much time.”
Something in the matter-of-factness of her reply disconcerted Angela. Yet there certainly was no reason why her sister should show any enthusiasm over seeing her. Only she did want to see her, to talk to some one of her very own to-day. She would like to burrow her head in Virginia’s shoulder and cry! But a mood such as Jinny’s voice indicated did not invite confidences.
A stout brown-skinned bustling woman suggesting immense assurance and ability opened the door. “Miss Murray told me that she was expecting someone. You’re to go right on up. Her’s is the room right next to the third storey front.”
“She was expecting someone.” Evidently Virginia had been discreet. This unexpected, unsought for carefulness carried a sting with it.
“Hello,” said Jinny, casually thrusting a dishevelled but picturesque head out of the door. “Can you find your way in? This room’s larger than any two we ever had at home, yet already it looks like a ship at sea.” She glanced about the disordered place. “I wonder if this is what they mean by ‘shipshape’. Here I’ll hang up this suit, then you can sit down. Isn’t it a sweetie? Got it at Snellenburg’s.”
She had neither kissed nor offered to shake hands with her sister, yet her manner was friendly enough, even cordial. “See I’ve bobbed my hair,” she went on. “Like it? I’m wild about it even if it does take me forever to fix it.” Standing before a mirror she began shaping the ends under with a curling iron.
Angela thought she had never seen any one so pretty and so colourful. Jinny had always shown a preference for high colours; to-day she was revelling in them; her slippers were high heeled small red mules; a deep green dressing-gown hung gracefully from her slim shoulders and from its open collar flamed the rose and gold of her smooth skin. Her eyes were bright and dancing. Her hair, black, alive and curling, ended in a thick velvety straightness like cut plush.
Angela said stiffly, “I hope I didn’t get you up, telephoning so early.”
Virginia smiled, flushing a little more deeply under the dark gold of her skin. “Oh dear no! I’d already had an earlier call than that this morning.”
“You had!” exclaimed Angela, astonished. “I didn’t know you knew anyone in New York.” She remembered her sister’s mysterious disappearance the first night of her arrival. “And see here, Jinny, I’m awfully sorry about what happened the other night. I wouldn’t have had it happen for a great deal. I wish I could explain to you about it.” How confidently she had counted on having marvellous news to tell Virginia and now how could she drag to the light yesterday’s sorry memory? “But I called you up again and again and you hadn’t arrived and then when they finally did tell me that you had come, it appeared that you had gone out. Where on earth did you go?”
Jenny began to laugh, to giggle in fact. For a moment she was the Virginia of her school days, rejoicing in some innocent mischief, full of it. “I wasn’t out. There’s a wash-room down the hall and I went there to wash my face,——” it clouded a moment. “And when I came back I walked as I thought into my room. Instead of that I had walked into the room of another lodger. And there he sat——”
“Oh,” said Angela inattentively. “I’m glad you weren’t out. I was quite worried. Listen, Virginia,” she began desperately, “I know you think that what I did in the station the other day was unspeakable; it seems almost impossible for me to explain it to you. But that man with me was a very special friend,——”
“He must have been indeed,” Jinny interrupted drily, “to make you cut your own sister.” She was still apparently fooling with her hair, her head perched on one side, her eyes glued to the mirror. But she was not making much progress and her lips were trembling.
Angela proceeded unheeding, afraid to stop. “A special friend, and we had come to a very crucial point in our relationship. It was with him that I had the engagement yesterday.”
“Well, what about it? Were you expecting him to ask you to marry him? Did he?”
“No,” said Angela very low, “that’s just what he didn’t do though he,—he asked everything else.”
Virginia, dropping the hair-brush, swung about sharply. “And you let him talk like that?”
“I couldn’t help it once he had begun,—I was so taken by surprise, and, besides, I think that his ultimate intentions are all right.”
“His ultimate intentions! Why, Angela what are you talking about? You know perfectly well what his ultimate intentions are. Isn’t he a white man? Well, what kind of intentions would he have toward a coloured woman?”
“Simple! He doesn’t know I’m coloured. And besides some of them are decent. You must remember that I know something about these people and you don’t, you couldn’t, living that humdrum little life of yours at home.”
“I know enough about them and about men in general to recognize an insult when I hear one. Some men bear their character stamped right on their faces. Now this man into whose room I walked last night by mistake,——”
“I don’t see how you can do very much ta
lking walking into strange men’s rooms at ten o’clock at night.”
The triviality of the retort left Jinny dumb.
It was their first quarrel.
They sat in silence for a few minutes; for several minutes. Virginia, apparently completely composed, was letting the tendrils of her mind reach far, far out to the ultimate possibilities of this impasse in relationship between herself and her sister. She thought: “I really have lost her, she’s really gone out of my ken just as I used to lose her years ago when father and I would be singing ‘The Dying Christian’. I’m twenty-three years old and I’m really all alone in the world.” Up to this time she had always felt she had Angela’s greater age and supposedly greater wisdom to fall back on, but she banished this conjecture forever. “Because if she could cut me when she hadn’t seen me for a year for the sake of a man who she must have known meant to insult her, she certainly has no intention of openly acknowledging me again. And I don’t believe I want to be a sister in secret. I hate this hole and corner business.”
She saw again the scene in the station, herself at first so serene, so self-assured, Angela’s confused coldness, Roger’s insolence. Something hardened, grew cold within her. Even his arrogance had failed to bring Angela to her senses, and suddenly she remembered that it had been possible in slavery times for white men and women to mistreat their mulatto relations, their own flesh and blood, selling them into deeper slavery in the far South or standing by watching them beaten, almost, if not completely, to death. Perhaps there was something fundamentally different between white and coloured blood after all. Aloud she said: “You know before you went away that Sunday morning you said that you and I were different. Perhaps you’re right, Angela; perhaps there is an extra infusion of white blood in your veins which lets you see life at another angle. If that’s the case I have no right to judge you. You must forgive my ignorant comments.”
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