Plum Bun

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  Such information she picked up as best she might for Virginia vouchsafed nothing; nor did she, on the infrequent occasions on which she ran across her sister, even appear to know her. This Angela pointed out, was silly. “You might just as well speak,” she told Jinny petulantly, remembering uncomfortably the occasion when she herself had cut her sister, an absolute stranger in New York. “Plenty of white and coloured people are getting to know each other and they always acknowledge the acquaintanceship. Why shouldn’t we? No harm could come of it.” But in Virginia’s cool opinion no good could come of it either. Usually the younger girl preserved a discreet silence; whatever resolves she might have made with regard to the rupture between herself and her sister, she was certainly able to keep her own counsel. It was impossible to glean from her perfect, slightly distrait manner any glimpse of her inner life and her intentions. Frequently she showed an intense preoccupation from which she awakened to let fall a remark which revealed to Angela a young girl’s normal reactions to the life about her, pleasant, uneventful and tinged with a cool, serene happiness totally different from the hot, heady, turgid rapture which at present was Angela’s life.

  The Jewish girl, Rachel Salting, who lived on the floor above, took to calling on Angela. “We’re young and here by ourselves,” she said smiling, “it’s stupid for us not to get acquainted, don’t you think so?” Hers was a charming smile and a charming manner. Indeed she was a very pretty girl, Angela thought critically. Her skin was very, very pale, almost pearly, her hair jet black and curling, her eyes large and almond-shaped. Her figure was straight and slender but bore none the less some faint hint of an exotic voluptuousness. Her interests, she informed her new friend, were all with the stage, her ideal being Raquel Meller.

  Angela welcomed her friendliness. A strange apathy, an unusual experience for her, had invaded her being; her painting claimed, it is true, a great deal of time and concentration; her hours with Virginia, while not always satisfactory, were at least absorbing; but for the first time in her knowledge, her whole life was hanging on the words, the moods, the actions of some one else—Roger. Without him she was quite lost; not only was she unable to order her days without him in mind, she was even unable to go in quest of new adventures in living as was once her wont. Consequently she received with outstretched arms anything beyond the ordinary which might break the threatening monotony of her life.

  Rachel Salting was like a fresh breeze, a curious mixture of Jewish conservatism and modernity. Hers was a keen, clear mind, well trained in the New York schools and colleges with many branching interests. She spoke of psychiatry, housing problems, Zionism, child welfare, with a knowledge and zest which astounded Angela, whose training had been rather superficial and who had begun to adopt Paulette’s cleverness and Martha Burden’s slightly professional, didactic attitude toward things in general as norms for herself. Rachel, except when dwelling on the Jewish problem, seemed to have no particular views to set forth. Her discussions, based on her wide reading, were purely academic, she had no desire to proselyte, she was no reformer. She was merely a “nice”, rather jolly, healthy young woman, an onlooker at life which she had to get through with and which she was finding for the moment at any rate, extremely pleasant.

  She was very happy; happy like Virginia with a happiness vastly different from what Angela was calling by that name; a breathless, constant, smiling happiness, palpable, transparent, for all the world to see. Within a few weeks after their acquaintanceship had started, Rachel with smiles and blushes revealed her great secret. She was going to be married.

  “To the very best man in the world, Angèle.”

  “Yes, I’m sure of it.”

  “He’s very good-looking, tall,——”

  “As though I didn’t know that.”

  “How could you know?”

  “Darling child, haven’t I seen him, at least the outline of him, often enough in the hall when I’d come in and turn on that wretched light? I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me for it. It did seem as though I were doing it on purpose.”

  “Oh, I knew you weren’t. Then you have seen him?”

  “Yes, he’s tall and blond. Quite a nice foil for your darkness. See, I’m always the artist.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said slowly, “he is blond.”

  Angela thought she detected a faint undertone of worry in her hitherto triumphant voice but decided that that was unlikely.

  But Rachel confirmed this impression by her next words: “If only everything will turn out all right.”

  Angel’s rather material mind prompted her to ask: “What’s the matter, is he very poor?”

  Rachel stared. “Poor? As though that mattered. Yes, he’s poor, but I don’t care about that.”

  “Well, if you don’t care about that, what’s the trouble then? He’s free, white and twenty-one, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s only—oh you wouldn’t understand, you lucky girl! It’s nothing you’d ever have to bother about. You see we’ve got to get our parents’ consent first. We haven’t spoken of it yet. When we do, I’m afraid there’ll be a row.”

  Some ritual inherent in her racial connections, Angela decided, and asked no further questions. Indeed, she had small chance, for Rachel, once launched, had begun to expound her gospel of marriage. It was an old, old story. Angela could have closed her eyes and imagined her own mother rhapsodizing over her future with Junius. They would be poor, very poor at first but only at first, and they would not mind poverty a bit. It would be fun together. There were little frame houses in the Bronx that rented comparatively cheap. Perhaps Angela knew of them.

  Angela shuddering inwardly, acknowledged that she had seen them, dull brown, high-shouldered affairs, perched perilously on stoops. The rooms would be small, square, ugly,——

  Rachel would help her John in every way. They would economize. “I won’t wash and iron, for that is heart-breaking work, and I want to keep myself dainty and pretty for him, so that when we do become better off he won’t have to be ashamed of me. And all the time even in our hardest days I’ll be trying my luck at play-writing.” She spoke with the unquenchable ambition which was her racial dowry. “I’ll be attending lectures and sitting up in the galleries of theatres where they have the most successful plays. And some day I’ll land.” Her fanciful imagination carried her years ahead. “On our First Night, Angela, you must be in our box and I’ll have an ermine coat. Won’t it be wonderful? But nothing will be more wonderful than those first few years when we’ll be absolutely dependent on each other; I on what he makes, he on the way I run the home. That will be heaven.”

  Confidences such as these left Angela unmoved but considerably shaken. There must be something in the life of sacrifice, even drudgery which Rachel had depicted. Else why should so many otherwise sensible girls take the risk? But there, it was silly for her to dwell on such pictures and scenes. Such a life would never come to her. It was impossible to conceive of such a life with Roger. Yet there were times in her lonely room when she pondered long and deeply, drawing pictures. The time would be summer; she would be wearing a white dress, would be standing in the doorway of a house in the suburbs very, very near New York. There’d be the best possible dinner on the table. She did love to cook. And a tall, strong figure would be hurrying up the walk: “I had the best luck to-day, Angèle, and I brought you a present.” And presently after dinner she would take him upstairs to her little work-room and she’d draw aside the curtain and show him a portrait of a well-known society woman. “She’s so pleased with it; and she’s going to get me lots of orders,——” Somehow she was absolutely sure that the fanciful figure was not Roger.

  Her lover, back from a three weeks’ trip to Chicago, dissipated that sureness. He was glad, overwhelmingly glad to be back and to see Angèle. He came to her apartment directly from the train, not stopping even to report to his father. “I can see him to-morrow. To-night is absolutely yours. What shall we do, Angèle? We can go out to dinner and th
e theatre or run out to the Country Club or stay here. What do you say?”

  “We’ll have to stay here, Roger; I’ll fix up a gorgeous dinner, better than anything you’ve had to eat in any of your old hotels. But directly after, I’ll have to cut and run because I promised Martha Burden faithfully to go to a lecture with her tonight.”

  “I never knew you to be interested in a lecture before.”

  She was worried and showed it. “But this is a different sort of lecture. You know how crazy Martha is about race and social movements. Well, Van Meier is to speak to-night and Martha is determined that a lot of her friends shall hear him. I’m to go with her and Ladislas.”

  “What’s to keep me from going?”

  “Nothing, only he’s coloured, you know.”

  “Well, I suppose it won’t rub off. I’ve heard of him. They say he really has brains. I’ve never seen a nigger with any yet; so this bids fair to be interesting. And, anyway, you don’t think I’m going to let my girl run off from me the very moment I come home, do you? Suppose I have Reynolds bring the big car here and we’ll take Martha and Ladislas along and anyone else she chooses to bring.”

  The lecture was held in Harlem in East One Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street. The hall was packed, teeming with suppressed excitement and a certain surcharged atmosphere. Angela radiant, calmed with the nearness and devotion of Roger, looked about her with keen, observing eyes. And again she sensed that fullness, richness, even thickness of life which she had felt on her first visit to Harlem. The stream of living ran almost molten; little waves of feeling played out from groups within the audience and beat against her consciousness and against that of her friends, only the latter were without her secret powers of interpretation. The occasion was clearly one of moment. “I’d come any distance to hear Van Meier speak,” said a thin-faced dark young man behind them. “He always has something to say and he doesn’t talk down to you. To hear him is like reading a classic, clear and beautiful and true.”

  Angela, revelling in types and marshalling bits of information which she had got from Virginia, was able to divide the groups. There sat the most advanced coloured Americans, beautifully dressed, beautifully trained, whimsical, humorous, bitter, impatiently responsible, yet still responsible. In one section loomed the dark, eager faces of West Indians, the formation of their features so markedly different from that of the ordinary American as to give them a wild, slightly feral aspect. These had come not because they were disciples of Van Meier but because they were earnest seekers after truth. But unfortunately their earnestness was slightly marred by a stubbornness and an unwillingness to admit conviction. Three or four coloured Americans, tall, dark, sleek young men sat within earshot, speaking with a curious didactic precision. “They’re quoting all the sociologists in the world,” Ladislas Starr told his little group in astonishment.

  Martha, with her usual thoroughness, knew all about them. They were the editors of a small magazine whose chief bid to fame lay in the articles which they directed monthly against Van Meier; articles written occasionally in a spirit of mean jealousy but usually in an effort to gain a sort of inverted glory by carrying that great name on its pages.

  Here and there a sprinkling of white faces showed up plainly, startlingly distinct patterns against a back-ground of patient, softly stolid black faces; faces beaten and fashioned by life into a mold of steady, rock-like endurance, of unshakable, unconquered faith. Angela had seen such faces before in the churches in Philadelphia; they brought back old pictures to her mind.

  “There he is!” exclaimed Martha triumphantly. “That’s Van Meier! Isn’t he wonderful?” Angela saw a man, bronze, not very tall but built with a beautiful symmetrical completeness, cross the platform and sit in the tall, deep chair next to the table of the presiding officer. He sat with a curious immobility, gazing straight before him like a statue of an East Indian idol. And indeed there was about him some strange quality which made one think of the East; a completeness, a superb lack of self-consciousness, an odd, arresting beauty wrought by the perfection of his fine, straight nose and his broad, scholarly forehead. One look, however casual, gave the beholder the assurance that here indeed was a man, fearless, dauntless, the captain of his fate.

  He began to speak on a clear, deep, bell-like note. Angela thought she had never heard its equal for beauty, for resonance, for culture. And as the young man had said he did not talk down. His English was the carefully sifted language of the savant, his periods polished, almost poetical. He was noted on two continents for his sociological and economic contributions, but his subject was racial sacrifice. He urged the deliberate introduction of beauty and pleasure into the difficult life of the American Negro. These objects should be theirs both as racial heritage and as compensation. Yet for a time, for a long time, there would have to be sacrifices, many sacrifices made for the good of the whole. “Our case is unique,” the beautiful, cultured voice intoned; “those of us who have forged forward, who have gained the front ranks in money and training, will not, are not able as yet to go our separate ways apart from the unwashed, untutored herd. We must still look back and render service to our less fortunate, weaker brethren. And the first step toward making this a workable attitude is the acquisition not so much of a racial love as a racial pride. A pride that enables us to find our own beautiful and praiseworthy, an intense chauvinism that is content with its own types, that finds completeness within its own group; that loves its own as the French love their country, because it is their own. Such a pride can accomplish the impossible.” He quoted:

  “It is not courage, no, nor hate

  That lets us do the things we do;

  It’s pride that bids the heart be great,—”

  He sat down to a surge of applause that shook the building. Dark, drooping faces took on an expression of ecstatic uplift, it was as though they suddenly saw themselves, transformed by racial pride as princes in a strange land in temporary serfdom, princes whose children would know freedom.

  Martha Burden and Ladislas went up to speak to him; they were old friends. Angela, with Roger, visibly impressed, stood on one side and waited. Paulette and Hudson came pushing through the crowd, the former flushed and excited. Little groups of coloured people stood about, some deeply content with a sort of vicarious pride, some arguing; Angela caught sight of Virginia standing with three young men and two girls. They were for the most part gesticulating, lost in a great excitement. But Jinny seemed listless and aloof; her childish face looked thin and more forlornly young than ever. Anthony Cross and a tall man of undeniably Spanish type passed the little party and spoke to one of the men, received introductions. Presently Cross, swinging about, caught sight of Angela and Roger. He bowed hastily, flushing; caught his companion’s arm and walked hurriedly from the hall, his head very straight, his slender figure always so upright, so élancé, more erect than ever.

  Presently Martha’s party was all out on the sidewalk; Roger in fine spirits invited Paulette and Hudson to ride down town in his car. Paulette was bubbling over with excited admiration of Van Meier. “He isn’t a man, he’s a god,” she proclaimed. “Did you ever see such a superb personality? He’s not a magnificent coloured man, he’s not ‘just as good as a white man’; he is a man, just that; colour, race, conditions in his case are pure accidents, he over-rides them all with his ego. Made me feel like a worm too; I gave him my prettiest smile, grand white lady making up to an ‘exceptional Negro’ and he simply didn’t see me; took my hand,—I did my best to make my grasp a clinging one—and he passed me right along disengaging himself as cool as a cucumber and making room for a lady of colour.” She finished reflectively, “ I wonder what he would be like alone.”

  “None of your nonsense, Paulette,” said Roger frowning.

  Hudson smiled. “Paulette’s a mighty attractive little piece, I’ll admit, but I’d back Van Meier against her every time; she’d present no temptation to him; the man’s not only a prophet and the son of a prophet; he’s pride inc
arnate.”

  Roger said meditatively, “I wonder what proportion of white blood he has in his veins. Of course that’s where he gets his ability.”

  “You make me tired,” said Martha. “Of course he doesn’t get it from his white blood; he gets it from all his bloods. It’s the mixture that makes him what he is. Otherwise all white people would be gods. It’s the mixture and the endurance which he has learned from being coloured in America and the determination to see life without bitterness,——”