Carl Van Vechten

“ He loved Mary now that he had awakened an unsuspected fire in her, but he knew that this was a very different Mary from the Mary that had first attracted his attention at Adora's: a passionate, jealous Mary with an unpleasant sense of possession. He would, he was sure, constantly strive to escape from this. He was doomed to hurt her. She frightened him; her hurt frightened him. Why, he had to know women like Lasca! He could never resist women anyway—golden-brown women; Mary, too, was golden-brown—and a woman like Lasca drew him inevitably to her side. ”

“ It was not alone the Sumners that he had neglected, to his own undoing, it was the social background they represented. He had missed all that and he had only himself to blame. His father had provided him with letters which would have opened all doors for him. His dear, old father who had forgiven him his misdeeds, who had even been patient during these last few awful months of futility and strife.
Byron began to comprehend vaguely how superficial his writing must have appeared. He had never suffered before, never really lived; certainly he had never had any self-understanding. ”

“ What a lot of gossip she would be prepared to disseminate on the morrow! thought Mary. Dick Sill was dancing with an unknown blonde in raspberry velvet, so light in complexion and yet so typically Negroid in her movements that it was impossible to be sure whether she were white or coloured. Carmen Fisher, in cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, clasped her brown arms languidly around the shoulders of Guymon Hooker. Galva Waldeck, in a Velazquez dress of orange taffeta embellished with wide bands of lace, was dancing with Léon Cazique. Mary began to wonder if this were a romance. ”

“ The floor was not crowded; only three or four couples were dancing. The music was soft and sensual; the band knew all the tricks of jazz, but it was a jazz made exquisite, refined. The saxophone cooed like a turtle dove, the drumbeat seemed to reverberate from a distance.
As Byron's lips brushed Lasca's cheek, an exotic fragrance assailed his nostrils, a fragrance with which he was becoming more and more familiar, a fragrance it would be impossible henceforth for him to forget. ”

“ With Olive these qualities were instinctive; also with Howard; even with Hester, to some extent; Adora throbbed with this passionate instinct—that was the real reason Mary's heart went out to her. Why, Mary asked herself, is this denied to me?
We are all savages, she repeated to herself, all, apparently, but me! She recalled what she had once been told—and her reason informed her that it was probably the truth—that Negroes never premeditate murder; their murders are committed under the reign of passion. ”

“ Perfection is in unity; prefer one woman first, and then one thing in her: so read the first lines. She laid the book aside. What, after all, did she know about this man? Did Byron, she wondered, prefer one woman first? Was she first? Had there been others? Were there others now? Mary's blood pumped furiously from her heart as she thought what it would mean to her if he cared for another woman. She wanted him for herself and for herself alone. ”

“ How does one go about writing?
Well, to be frank, I've always thought that the best way to go about writing was to write. You have plenty to write about. Gareth swept his eyes around the room.
I don't see any sense in writing about this, Byron protested, rather hotly, Mary thought. It's too much like Edith Wharton's set.
Well, the low life of your people is exotic. It has a splendid, fantastic quality. And the humour! How vital it is, how rich in idiom! Picturesque and fresh! I don't think the Negro has been touched in literature as yet. ”

“ What did Orville say, Hester?
He says he just loves art, mama.
So do I. . . . The old lady positively beamed. . . . I've always loved art, even as a girl. In Washington, where I come from, people—that is, people that we know—have pictures in their houses, paintings. Do you remember the Willetts' house, Hester?
Why, of course I do, mama! What a question! Our dear friends, the Willetts, she explained to her guests. Such elegance! Such taste!
Well, the Willetts have an art gallery, Mary, Mrs. Albright continued, a beautiful, long gallery with paintings in oil of trees and birds. No nudes. ”

“ It had become, Olive observed cynically to Mary, quite the thing for these more affluent folk to take up with the young intellectuals since their work had begun to appear in the Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, the American Mercury, and the New Republic. The young intellectuals accepted these hitherto unfamiliar attentions without undue humility, at the same time laughing a good deal about them among themselves. Times had changed indeed when brains, rather than money, a lighter colour, or straight hair, was the password to social favour. ”

“ The walls, tinted an apple-green, were bare of pictures, save the representation of a nude woman in a silver frame which hung over the white marble fireplace. The French furniture was upholstered in rich brocades of lemon and old rose. Over the Steinway, a black Spanish shawl, embroidered in huge vermilion and orange flowers, was held in place by a rock-crystal lamp in the form of a Chinese goddess. Strewn on the tables, the desk, the mantelpiece, were more Chinese objects, birds, fish and animals, scent-bottles, carved out of ivory, jade, malachite, and moss-agate. ”

“ Mary clutched at Byron's arm and bowed her head.
We were too happy, she moaned. It's a judgment.
Byron's lip was quivering. Mary, he stammered, I haven't told you all the things that have happened to me.
What do you mean?
Things like that.
Oh, she moaned. Why can't they leave us alone or take us in? Can't we live? Can't we breathe without being subjected to these insults? Looks! Words! I'd prefer the lash. Slavery! ”

“ Of course, she said, you can understand those cotton-picking jigs in the South; they've had to put up with centuries of deceit and treachery on the part of the ofays, but we—people like you and me—are that way too. We've never suffered from white deceit and treachery and yet we're more or less like the others when it comes to handing the bunk to the ofays. Whenever my boss asks me a question and the correct answer would be derogatory to my race, I just naturally lie to him, although he's honestly interested. I can't help it. We're all alike that way.
A broad smile spread over Olive's face. ”

“ Yet even Hester subconsciously felt her birthright. She had seen Hester fall under the sway of Negro music that evening at her home. On many other occasions she had observed this phenomenon! How many times she had watched her friends listening listlessly or with forced or affected attention to alien music, which said little to the Negro soul, by Schubert or Schumann, immediately thereafter losing themselves in a burst of jazz or the glory of an evangelical Spiritual, recognizing, no doubt, in some dim, biological way, the beat of the African rhythm. ”

“ I repeat, Adora went on firmly, when Lasca's through, she's through. I know her like a book, in and out. She's as hard as steel.
Don't you dare say a word against her!
I won't even mention her name again if you don't. After all, you spoke of her first. What I want to talk about is Mary.
So she's been blabbing!
See here, young man, if you jump at conclusions like that, it's no wonder you commit impulsive acts that no one in his right senses would be capable of. No, Mary hasn't been blabbing, but it's plain to be seen that she thinks of nothing but you. She loves you, that's the simple fact. ”

“ It could hardly be said that Harlem, generally speaking, had received the tidings of Lasca's wayward adventures with approval, even with equanimity, but those who knew her apparently liked her, and the rest perhaps, when she returned, so thought one of Mary's informants, would be won over by her money, her beauty, her wit, and her charm. She is certainly unconventional, this woman had told her, but she is also Lasca: to know her is usually to forgive her. Now that she had seen the photograph, Mary believed she could understand.
Yes, she's back. Adora was speaking once more. ”

“ Oh, yes, the sycophants echoed, to Mary's success!
Without further preliminary the ladies proceeded to sip their wine.
Thank you, Adora, Mary responded, but I haven't a notion what kind of success I want.
There's only one success for a woman, Adora announced, at least for a coloured woman, and that's a good husband, and a good husband for a coloured woman means a rich husband.
I don't know that I want to be married, Mary protested.
Oh, go on! Now what else can a coloured woman do? You're a librarian, but you'll never get as much pay as the white librarians. ”

“ We should be known as the rainbow race, Byron assured himself.
He marvelled as he reflected that he was bound to a destination similar to that which was the goal of all these others, and yet he was not acquainted with a single person in the car. Perhaps even, he mused, their whole thinking processes, their very ideas, are different. I am no more like them than they are like me, than I am like any of my friends, he assured himself. In temperament and opinions we all disagree. ”

“ Let them in, Adora sighed. It's no use trying to be alone in this place. Let them in, but stow away the champagne and bring out the Scotch.
Been looking for you everywhere, Adora, cried Dr. Lister, the handsome and popular young dentist, as the door swung open. Behind him surged Lutie Panola, fat and merry, dressed in violet muslin and resembling an overgrown doll; Sylvia Hawthorne, smart in her shingle-haired, slender, yellow way, in a dress of écru linen embroidered in bright wools; smiling, smoking a cigarette through an amber holder, she leaned on the arm of Rumsey Meadows ”

“ Do you know anything about Mary? She's always been noted for her coldness towards men. Then you come along and she reacts like a volcano that has smouldered for years and unexpectedly begins to toss hot rocks into the air. . . . It doesn't seem to me that you are particularly unusual or desirable. Oh, you're good-looking enough, but just a light-weightft, after all. Nevertheless, Mary wants you. She almost murdered Lasca at the Charity Ball. ”

“ Olive had often assured Mary that she was cold. Everybody says you're cold, that you have no natural feeling, Olive had complained. Why don't you let yourself go once in a while? There was at least this much truth in this criticism, Mary confessed to herself, that she did not let herself go. She had an instinctive horror of promiscuity, of being handled, even touched, by a man who did not mean a good deal to her. This might, she sometimes argued with herself, have something to do with her white inheritance, but Olive, who was far whiter, was lacking in this inherent sense of prudery. ”

“ But I'm not Lasca, Mary protested. I'm afraid I wouldn't be much of a success at that sort of thing.
Well, Rannie liked you, Adora said, liked you from the first moment he met you in my house, swore you were just what he was looking for . . . Suddenly, she fixed Mary with a gaze full of suspicion . . . You're not sore on account of anything you've heard about Rannie? she demanded.
No, I'm not sore at all, Mary replied. I just don't happen to love him, that's all.
That's all right: I get you when you talk about love. I couldn't marry either, if I wasn't in love. ”

“ There was, for example, Randolph Pettijohn, the Bolito King. Adora had probably invited him because he was rich and goodnatured. Mary conceded the affluence and the good-nature. She even tried not to be a snob when she thought of the manner in which he had accumulated his fortune. Hot-dogs, cabarets, even gambling, all served their purposes in life, no, doubt, although the game of Numbers was a deliberate—and somewhat heartless, considering the average winnings—appeal to a weakness in the ignorant members of her race which she could not readily condone. ”

“ Say, Dick inquired, where have you been living? They do not. You'll have to fight your own race harder than you do the other . . . every step of the way. They're full of envy for every Negro that makes a success. They hate it. It makes 'em wild. Why, more of us get on through the ofays than through the shines.
Now, Dick, you're laying it on pretty hard, Howard suggested.
Not a bit of it. I'll say more. Who supports Roland Hayes? Who supports Florence Mills? Is it white or black audiences?
After all, Dick, be fair, Olive objected. They've got more money, these others. ”

“ Mary, as always, was fascinated by the variations in colour in the faces of the men, the shoulders of the women: black shoulders, brown shoulders, tan shoulders, ivory shoulders.
As the music stopped—they had been dancing the second and last encore—the hall blazed in a brilliant white light. Mary became aware of the presence of many more acquaintances. She bowed to Mrs. Sumner and Campaspe Lorillard, sitting side by side in a box. She also found herself facing Hester Albright, whom she had not previously encountered, as usual accompanied by Orville Snodes. She introduced the pair to Byron. ”

“ No, Miss Melanctha, you see I am a coloured man myself and I ain't sorry, and I want to see the coloured people being good and careful and always honest and living just as regular as can be, and I am sure Miss Melanctha, that that way everybody can have a good time, and be happy and keep right and be busy, and not always have to be doing bad things for new ways to get excited. Yes, Miss Melanctha, I certainly do like everything to be good, and quiet, and I certainly do think that is the best way for all us coloured people. ”

“ You're rich, Byron remarked, with a tinge of bitterness. It's easy for you.
I haven't always been rich, Byron, but I've always found what I wanted—even money.
You're luckier than most—than most Negroes anyway.
Negroes aren't any worse off than anybody else. They're better off, if anything. They have the same privileges that white women had before the bloody fools got the ballot. They're considered irresponsible like children and treated with a special fondness. Why, in Harlem one is allowed to do thousands of things that one would get arrested for downtown. ”

“ Olive was waiting for Howard. Mary had promised to attend a party at Hester Albright's, a prospect which aroused in her no anticipations of pleasure. Hester, a spinster of thirty-eight, lived with her mother, a deaf, querulous, garrulous, tiresome, old lady, on the fourth floor of an apartment building on St. Nicholas Avenue. They had migrated from Washington to Harlem about five years previously. Why, nobody exactly understood, as Washington society, according to Hester, was immeasurably superior to the Harlem variety. ”

“ You even resent Mary because she loves you enough to want to help you and so she can't be bothered to lie to you and flatter you. Why, you poor thing you, if I were Mary I'd wait for a muddy day and use you as a doormat!
Like to hear yourself talk, don't you! he cried. Well, just listen to this: I'm going back to Lasca.
I know all about that, Olive replied wearily. I know how long that'll last. Well, she turned to Adora, I suppose we've done all we can. Let him return to his vomit. Her lip curled.
Yes, echoed Adora, let him go back. She lighted a cigarette. ”