She had discovered Dr. Anderson sitting at a table on the far side of the room, with a girl in a shivering apricot frock. Seriously he returned her tiny bow. She met his eyes, gravely smiling, then blushed, furiously, and averted her own. But they went back immediately to the girl beside him, who sat indifferently sipping a colorless liquid from a high glass, or puffing a precariously hanging cigarette. Across dozens of tables, littered with corks, with ashes, with shriveled sandwiches, through slits in the swaying mob, Helga Crane studied her.
She was pale, with a peculiar, almost deathlike pallor. The brilliantly red, softly curving mouth was somehow sorrowful. Her pitch-black eyes, a little aslant, were veiled by long, drooping lashes and surmounted by broad brows, which seemed like black smears. The short dark hair was brushed severely back from the wide forehead. The extreme décolleté of her simple apricot dress showed a skin of unusual color, a delicate, creamy hue, with golden tones. “Almost like an alabaster,” thought Helga.
Bang! Again the music died. The moving mass broke, separated. The others returned. Anne had rage in her eyes. Her voice trembled as she took Helga aside to whisper: “There’s your Dr. Anderson over there, with Audrey Denney.”
“Yes, I saw him. She’s lovely. Who is she?”
“She’s Audrey Denney, as I said, and she lives downtown. West Twenty-second Street. Hasn’t much use for Harlem any more. It’s a wonder she hasn’t some white man hanging about. The disgusting creature! I wonder how she inveigled Anderson? But that’s Audrey! If there is any desirable man about, trust her to attach him. She ought to be ostracized.”
“Why?” asked Helga curiously, noting at the same time that three of the men in their own party had deserted and were now congregated about the offending Miss Denney.
“Because she goes about with white people,” came Anne’s indignant answer, “and they know she’s colored.”
“I’m afraid I don’t quite see, Anne. Would it be all right if they didn’t know she was colored?”
“Now, don’t be nasty, Helga. You know very well what I mean.” Anne’s voice was shaking. Helga didn’t see, and she was greatly interested, but she decided to let it go. She didn’t want to quarrel with Anne, not now, when she had that guilty feeling about leaving her. But Anne was off on her favorite subject, race. And it seemed, too, that Audrey Denney was to her particularly obnoxious.
“Why, she gives parties for white and colored people together. And she goes to white people’s parties. It’s worse than disgusting, it’s positively obscene.”
“Oh, come, Anne, you haven’t been to any of the parties, I know, so how can you be so positive about the matter?”
“No, but I’ve heard about them. I know people who’ve been.”
“Friends of yours, Anne?”
Anne admitted that they were, some of them.
“Well, then, they can’t be so bad. I mean, if your friends sometimes go, can they? Just what goes on that’s so terrible?”
“Why, they drink, for one thing. Quantities, they say.”
“So do we, at the parties here in Harlem,” Helga responded. An idiotic impulse seized her to leave the place, Anne’s presence, then, forever. But of course she couldn’t. It would be foolish, and so ugly.
“And the white men dance with the colored women. Now you know, Helga Crane, that can mean only one thing.” Anne’s voice was trembling with cold hatred. As she ended, she made a little clicking noise with her tongue, indicating an abhorrence too great for words.
“Don’t the colored men dance with the white women, or do they sit about, impolitely, while the other men dance with their women?” inquired Helga very softly, and with a slowness approaching almost to insolence. Anne’s insinuations were too revolting. She had a slightly sickish feeling, and a flash of anger touched her. She mastered it and ignored Anne’s inadequate answer.
“It’s the principle of the thing that I object to. You can’t get round the fact that her behavior is outrageous, treacherous, in fact. That’s what’s the matter with the Negro race. They won’t stick together. She certainly ought to be ostracized. I’ve nothing but contempt for her, as has every other self-respecting Negro.”
The other women and the lone man left to them—Helga’s own escort—all seemingly agreed with Anne. At any rate, they didn’t protest. Helga gave it up. She felt that it would be useless to tell them that what she felt for the beautiful, calm, cool girl who had the assurance, the courage, so placidly to ignore racial barriers and give her attention to people, was not contempt, but envious admiration. So she remained silent, watching the girl.
At the next first sound of music Dr. Anderson rose. Languidly the girl followed his movement, a faint smile parting her sorrowful lips at some remark he made. Her long, slender body swayed with an eager pulsing motion. She danced with grace and abandon, gravely, yet with obvious pleasure, her legs, her hips, her back, all swaying gently, swung by that wild music from the heart of the jungle. Helga turned her glance to Dr. Anderson. Her disinterested curiosity passed. While she still felt for the girl envious admiration, that feeling was now augmented by another, a more primitive emotion. She forgot the garish crowded room. She forgot her friends. She saw only two figures, closely clinging. She felt her heart throbbing. She felt the room receding. She went out the door. She climbed endless stairs. At last, panting, confused, but thankful to have escaped, she found herself again out in the dark night alone, a small crumpled thing in a fragile, flying black and gold dress. A taxi drifted toward her, stopped. She stepped into it, feeling cold, unhappy, misunderstood, and forlorn.
XII
Helga Crane felt no regret as the cliff-like towers faded. The sight thrilled her as beauty, grandeur, of any kind always did, but that was all.
The liner drew out from churning slate-colored waters of the river into the open sea. The small seething ripples
