Plum Bun

by Jessie Redmon Fauset

  She clung to him weeping, weeping with the heart-broken abandonment of a child.

  A bell shrilled four times.

  He jumped up. “It’s Sanchez, he’s forgotten his key; thank God he did forget it. My darling, you must go. But wait for me. I’ll meet you,—we’ll go to your house, we’ll find a way. We can’t part like this!” His breath was coming in short gasps; she could see little white lines deepening about his mouth, his nostrils. Fearfully she caught at her hat.

  “God bless you; good-bye Anthony. I won’t see you again.”

  Halfway down the black staircase she met the heedless Sanchez, tall, sallow, thin, glancing at her curiously with a slightly amused smile. Politely he stood aside to let her pass, one hand resting lightly against his hip. Something in his attitude made her think of her unfinished sketch of Life. Hysterical, beside herself, she rushed down the remaining steps afraid to look around lest she should see the thin dark figure in pursuit, lest her ears should catch the expansion of that faint meaning smile into a guffaw, uproarious, menacing.

  Chapter VI

  ONCE long ago in the old days in the house on Opal Street she had been taken mysteriously ill. As a matter of fact she had been coming down with that inglorious disease, the mumps. The expense of having a doctor was a consideration, and so for twenty-four hours she was the object of anxious solicitude for the whole house. Her mother had watched over her all night; her father came home twice in the day to see how she felt; Jinny had with some reluctance bestowed on her an oft-coveted, oft-refused doll. In the midst of all her childish pain and suffering she had realized that at least her agony was shared, that her tribulation was understood. But now she was ill with a sickness of the soul and there was no one with whom she could share her anguish.

  For two days she lay in her little room; Mrs. Denver, happening in, showered upon her every attention. There was nothing, nothing that Angela could suggest, the little fluttering lady said sincerely, which she might not have. Angela wished that she would go away and leave her alone, but her experiences had rendered her highly sensitive to the needs of others; Mrs. Denver, for all her money, her lack of responsibility, her almost childish appetite for pleasure, was lonely too; waiting on the younger, less fortunate woman gave her a sense of being needed; she was pathetically glad when the girl expressed a desire for anything no matter how expensive or how trivial. Angela could not deprive her entirely of those doubtful pleasures. Still there were moments, of course, when even Mrs. Denver for all her kindly officiousness had to betake herself elsewhere and leave her willing patient to herself and her thoughts.

  Minutely, bit by bit, in the long forty-eight hours she went over her life; was there anything, any overt act, any crime which she had committed and for which she might atone? She had been selfish, yes; but, said her reasoning and unwearied mind, “Everybody who survives at all is selfish, it is one of the pre-requisites of survival.” In “passing” from one race to the other she had done no harm to anyone. Indeed she had been forced to take this action. But she should not have forsaken Virginia. Here at this point her brain, so clear and active along all other lines, invariably failed her. She could not tell what stand to take; so far as leaving Philadelphia was concerned she had left it to seek her fortune under more agreeable circumstances; if she had been a boy and had left home no one would have had a word of blame, it would have been the proper thing, to be expected and condoned. There remained then only the particular incident of her cutting Jinny on that memorable night in the station. That was the one really cruel and unjust action of her whole life.

  “Granted,” said something within her rooted either in extreme hard common sense or else in a vast sophistry, “granted, but does that carry with it as penalty the shattering of a whole life, or even the suffering of years? Certainly the punishment is far in excess of the crime.” And it was then that she would lie back exhausted, hopeless, bewildered, unable to cope further with the myterious and apparently meaningless ferocity of life. For if this were a just penalty for one serious misdemeanour, what compensation should there not be for the years in which she had been a dutiful daughter, a loving sister? And suddenly she found herself envying people possessed of a blind religious faith, of the people who could bow the head submissively and whisper: “Thy will be done.” For herself she could see how beaten and harried, one might subside into a sort of blind passivity, an acceptance of things as they are, but she would never be able to understand a force which gave one the imagination to paint a great desire, the tenacity to cling to it, the emotionalism to spend on its possible realization but which would then with a careless sweep of the hand wipe out the picture which the creature of its own endowment had created.

  More than once the thought came to her of dying. But she hated to give up; something innate, something of the spirit stronger than her bodily will, set up a dogged fight, and she was too bruised and sore to combat it. “All right,” she said to herself wearily, “I’ll keep on living.” She thought then of black people, of the race of her parents and of all the odds against living which a cruel, relentless fate had called on them to endure. And she saw them as a people powerfully, almost overwhelmingly endowed with the essence of life. They had to persist, had to survive because they did not know how to die.

  *

  Not because she felt like it, but because some day she must begin once more to take up the motions of life, she moved on the third day from her bed to the easy chair, sat there listless and motionless. To-morrow she would return to work,—to work and the sick agony of forcing her mind back from its dolorous, painful, vital thoughts to some consideration of the dull, uninteresting task in hand. God, how she hated that! She remembered studying her lessons as a girl; the intense absorption with which she used to concentrate. Sometimes she used to wonder: “Oh what will it be like when I am grown up; when I won’t be studying lessons . . .” Well, this was what it was like. Or no, she was still studying with the same old absorption,—an absorption terribly, painfully concentrated,—the lessons set down by life. It was useless to revolve in her head the causes for her suffering, they were so trivial, so silly. She said to herself, “There is no sorrow in the world like my sorrow”, and knew even as she said it that some one else, perhaps only in the next block, in the next house, was saying the same thing.

  Mrs. Denver tapped lightly, opened the door, came in closing it mysteriously behind her.

  “I’ve a great surprise for you.” She went on with an old childish formula: “Will you have it now, or wait till you get it?”

  Angela’s features twisted into a wan smile. “I believe I’d better have it now. I’m beginning to think I don’t care for surprises.”

  “You’ll like this one.” She went to the door and ushered in Rachel Salting.

  “I know you two want to talk,” Mrs. Denver called over her shoulder. “Cheer her up, Rachel, and I’ll bring you both a fine spread in an hour or so.” She closed the door carefully behind her.

  Angela said, “What’s the matter, Rachel?” She almost added, “I hardly knew you.” For her friend’s face was white and wan with grief and hopelessness; gone was all her dainty freshness, her pretty colour; indeed her eyes, dark, sunken, set in great pools of blackness, were the only note,—a terrible note,—of relief against that awful whiteness.

  Angela felt her strength leaving her; she rose and tottered back to the grateful security of her bed, lay down with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness for the asylum afforded her sudden faintness. In a moment, partly recovered, she motioned to Rachel to sit beside her.

  “Oh,” said Rachel, “you’ve been ill,—Mrs. Denver told me. I ought not to come bothering you with my worries. Oh, Angèle, I’m so wretched! Whatever shall I do?”

  Her friend, watching her, was very gentle. “There’re lots of awful things that can happen. I know that, Rachel. Maybe your trouble isn’t so bad that it can’t be helped. Have you told John about it?” But even as she spoke she sensed that the difficulty in some way
concerned John. Her heart contracted at the thought of the pain and suffering to be endured.

  “Yes, John knows,—it’s about him. Angèle, we can’t marry.”

  “Can’t marry. Why, is he,—it can’t be that he’s—involved with some one else!”

  A momentary indignation flashed into Rachel’s face bringing back life and colour. For a small space she was the Rachel Salting of the old happy days. “Involved with some one else!” The indignation was replaced by utter despair. “How I wish he were! That at least could be arranged. But this can never be altered. He,—I, our parents are dead set against it. Hadn’t you ever noticed, Angèle? He’s a Gentile and I’m a Jew.”

  “But lots of Jews and Gentiles marry.”

  “Yes, I know. Only—he’s a Catholic. But my parents are orthodox—they will never consent to my marriage. My father says he’d rather see me dead and my mother just sits and moans. I kept it from her as long as I could,—I used to pray about it, I thought God must let it turn out all right, John and I love each other so. But I went up to Utica the other day, John went with me, and we told them. My father drove him out of the house; he said if I married him he’d curse me. I am afraid of that curse. I can’t go against them. Oh, Angèle, I wish I’d never been born.”

  It was a delicate situation; Angela had to feel her way; she could think of nothing but the trite and obvious. “After all, Rachel, your parents have lived their lives; they have no business trying to live yours. Personally I think all this pother about race and creed and colour, tommyrot. In your place I should certainly follow my own wishes; John seems to be the man for you.”

  But Rachel weeping, imbued with the spirit of filial piety, thought it would be selfish.

  “Certainly no more selfish than their attempt to regulate your life for you.”

  “But I’m afraid,” said Rachel shivering, “of my father’s curse.” It was difficult for Angela to sympathize with an attitude so archaic; she was surprised to find it lurking at the bottom of her friend’s well-trained intelligence.

  “Love,” she said musing to herself rather than to her friend, “is supposed to be the greatest thing in the world but look how we smother and confine it. Jews mustn’t marry Catholics; white people mustn’t marry coloured——”

  “Oh well, of course not,” Rachel interrupted in innocent surprise. “I wouldn’t marry a nigger in any circumstances. Why, would you?”

  But Angela’s only answer was to turn and, burying her head in her pillow, to burst into unrestrained and bitter laughter. Rachel went flying to call Mrs. Denver.

  “Oh come quick, come quick! Angèle’s in hyterics. I haven’t the ghost of an idea what to do for her!”

  Once more the period of readjustment. Once more the determination to take life as she found it; bitter dose after sweet, bitter after sweet. But it seemed to her now that both sweetness and bitterness together with her high spirit for adventure lay behind her. How now was she to pass through the tepid, tasteless days of her future? She was not quite twenty-seven, and she found herself wondering what life would be like in ten, five, even one year’s time. Changes did flow in upon one, she knew, but in her own case she had been so used herself to give the impetus to these changes. Now she could not envisage herself as making a move in any direction. With the new sullenness which seemed to be creeping upon her daily, she said “Whatever move I make is always wrong. Let life take care of itself.” And she saw life, even her own life, as an entity quite outside her own ken and her own directing. She did not care greatly what happened; she would not, it was true, take her own life, but she would not care if she should die. Once if her mind had harboured such thoughts she would have felt an instant self-pity. “What a shame that I so young, so gifted, with spirits so high should meet with death!” But now her senses were blunting; so much pain and confusion had brought about their inevitable attrition. “I might just as well be unhappy, or meet death as anyone else,” she told herself still with that mounting sullenness.

  Mrs. Denver, the Sandburgs and Ashley were the only people who saw her. It did seem to Mrs. Denver that the girl’s ready, merry manner was a little dimmed; if her own happy, sunny vocabulary had known the term she would have daubed her cynical. The quasi-intellectual atmosphere at the Sandburgs suited her to perfection; the faint bitterness which so constantly marred her speech was taken for sophistication, her frequent silences for profoundness; in a small way, aided by her extraordinary good looks and the slight mystery which always hung about her, she became quite a personage in their entourage; the Sandburgs considered her a splendid find and plumed themselves on having “brought her out”.

  The long golden summer, so beautiful with its promise of happiness, so sickening with its actuality of pain ripened into early, exquisite September. Virginia was home again; slightly more golden, very, very faintly plumper, like a ripening fruit perfected; brimming with happiness, excitement and the most complete content, Angela thought, that she had ever seen in her life.

  Jinny sent for the older girl and the two sat on a Sunday morning, away from Sara Penton and the other too insistent friends, over on Riverside Drive looking out at the river winding purple and alluring in the soft autumn haze.

  “Weren’t you surprised?” asked Jinny. Laconically, Angela admitted to no slight amazement. She still loved her sister but more humbly, less achingly than before. Their lives, she thought now would never, could never touch and she was quite reconciled. Moreover, in some of Virginia’s remarks there was the hint of the acceptance of such a condition. Something had brought an irrevocable separation. They would always view each other from the two sides of an abyss, narrow but deep, deep.

  The younger girl prattled on. “I don’t know whether Sara told you his name,—Anthony Cross? Isn’t it a dear name?”

  “Yes, it’s a nice name, a beautiful name,” said Angela heartily; when she had learned it was of no consequence. She added without enthusiasm that she knew him already; he had been a member of her class at Cooper Union.

  “You don’t talk as though you were very much taken with him,” said Jinny, making a face. “But never mind, he suits me, no matter whom he doesn’t suit.” There was that in her countenance which made Angela realize and marvel again at the resoluteness of that firm young mind. No curse of parents could have kept Virginia from Anthony’s arms. As long as Anthony loved her, was satisfied to have her love, no one could come between them. Only if he should fail her would she shrivel up and die.

  On the heels of this thought Virginia made an astounding remark: “You know it’s just perfect that I met Anthony; he’s really been a rock in a weary land. Next to Matthew Henson he will, I’m sure, make me happier than any man in the world.” Dreamily she added an afterthought: “And I’ll make him happy too, but, oh, Angela, Angela, I always wanted to marry Matthew!”

  The irony of that sent Angela home. Virginia wanting Matthew and marrying Anthony; Anthony wanting Angela and marrying Virginia. Herself wanting Anthony and marrying, wanting, no other; unable to think of, even to dream of another lover. The irony of it was so palpable, so ridiculously palpable that it put her in a better mood; life was bitter but it was amusingly bitter; if she could laugh at it she might be able to outwit it yet. The thought brought Anthony to mind: “If I could only get a laugh on life, Angèle!”

  Sobered, she walked from the ’bus stop to Jayne Street. Halfway up the narrow, tortuous stair case she caught sight of a man climbing, climbing. He stopped outside her door. “Anthony?” she said to herself while her heart twisted with pain. “If it is Anthony,——” she breathed, and stopped. But something within her, vital, cruel, persistent, completed her thought. “If it is Anthony,—after what Virginia said this morning,—if he knew that he was not the first, that even as there had been one other there might still be others; that Virginia in her bright, hard, shallow youthfulness would not die any more than she had died over Matthew,—would console herself for the loss of Anthony even as she had consoled herself for the los
s of Matthew!” But no, what Jinny had told her was in confidence, a confidence from sister to sister. She would never break faith with Jinny again; nor with herself.

  “But Anthony,” she said to herself in the few remaining seconds left on the staircase, “you were my first love and I think I was yours.”

  However, the man at the door was not Anthony; on the contrary he was, she thought, a complete stranger. But as he turned at her footsteps, she found herself looking into the blue eyes of Roger. Completely astounded, she greeted him, “You don’t mean it’s you, Roger?”

  “Yes,” he said humbly, shamefacedly, “aren’t you going to let me in, Angèle?”

  “Oh yes, of course, of course”; she found herself hoping that he would not stay long. She wanted to think and she would like to paint; that idea must have been in the back of her head ever since she had left Jinny. Hard on this thought came another. “Here’s Roger. I never expected to see him in these rooms again; perhaps some day Anthony will come back. Oh, God, be kind!”

  But she must tear her thoughts away from Anthony. She looked at Roger curiously, searchingly; in books the man who had treated his sweetheart unkindly often returned beaten, dejected, even poverty-stricken, but Roger, except for a slight hesitation in his manner, seemed as jaunty, as fortunate, as handsome as ever. He was even a trifle stouter.

  Contrasting him with Anthony’s hard-bitten leanness, she addressed him half absently. “I believe you’re actually getting fat!”

  His quick high flush revealed his instant sensitiveness to her criticism. But he was humble. “That’s all right, Angèle. I deserve anything you choose to say if you’ll just say it.”