“Bertully’s one man in a thousand. Besides, he’s a foreigner. Where’ll you find a white American like that?”
“You blessed pessimist. I know of people like that already. That’s how Helena Arnold got to Bertully in the first place. A Miss Sharples—why, they’re the people your Aunt Susan works for, aren’t they? Your aunt told Miss Sharples about Helena, and Miss Sharples took her, herself, to Bertully.”
“That was awfully decent, I must say. Of course, the Sharples are Philadelphia Quaker stock. Not that that makes much difference. The white Byes were Quakers, and see how they left us stranded, though my father told me old black Joshua Bye practically coined them their money. Not many people like those Sharples.”
“There doesn’t need to be. The point is there’s one. Miss Sharples’ family, by the way, may have been Quakers, but there’s nothing Quakerish about her. Helena says she goes with the Greenwich Village group all the time, and for all their craziness, they’ve got some mighty big ideas.”
“Can’t get anything to eat, if you’re colored, down in their dinky old restaurants.”
“Awful, isn’t it? Well, we’ll let some other colored person pound away at that side of it. Me, I’m going to break into art. The public wants novelty, and I want fame, I’ve got to have it, Peter.”
“You talk about going on the stage as though you had a signed contract in your hand. How’ll you get the stage-presence?”
“I’m to go on a recital tour next fall among colored people. I’m used to singing in the choir. If I can stand before them I can stand before any audience in the world.”
“Yes, we are mighty critical.”
“I should say so. Get up, Peter Bye. We’ve got to go home.”
They started on the long trip back.
“But see here, Joanna,” Peter pleaded when they reached the house, “you will give me a little more time, won’t you? I don’t have to work in the morning, you know. And I don’t work Wednesday nights. Promise me that, won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Joanna, her heart warming to his glowing beauty. “We’ll remember this summer, Peter, the last before we go off trying our wings for further flights.”
That was an enchanted season. Peter used to call for her in the morning, and the two would go off exploring. Joanna liked the foreign quarters, but she had never cared to stand around too long in those teeming, exotic streets. She was too conspicuous, attracted too many inquiring glances. With Peter she felt safe to stand for long moments watching the children play, to enter queer dark shops, to taste strange messes. Sometimes she spoke to the women about their dresses, their headgear. One Spanish woman, grown used to the sight of this dark American girl and the good-looking boy at her side, took them into her quarters one day and showed Joanna how she dressed her hair. Another time she taught her an intricate Spanish dance.
“I’m going to do a dance representing all the nations, some day,” Joanna told Peter.
They planned for Wednesday nights very carefully at first, but gradually as the torrid weather increased, Joanna’s desire for the theater and other indoor forms of amusement yielded to the desire to be cool at any cost. Central Park claimed them then, and later Morningside, since it was just a few moments’ stroll from the Marshalls’ new house.
Morningside was usually crowded. The seats were always taken when they arrived.
“I wonder what time the people come,” Joanna murmured. But they didn’t mind. The grass, the sloping hillside, was good enough for them. Joanna would sit down, her dainty summer dress spread around her, her splendidly poised head turned at first so she could see the passersby. She was forever studying types, and eyed them with a grave deliberation.
“You’ll get your head knocked off yet, Joanna,” Peter would remonstrate, “staring at people so.”
He liked it better when later on in the evening she turned toward the slope of the hill and looked down at the city, laughing in its myriad twinkling lights. Her face at that time took on a grave wistfulness which he could not analyze. Joanna herself could not define the feeling which prompted that expression.
Peter, leaning on his elbow, would lie beside her, his curly black head bent toward her, one slender brown hand touching her dress ever so lightly. He would have given the world to believe she was thinking about him, but he knew she was not. He would have been astounded if he could have dreamed of the maze of her thoughts. Joanna was really most human at moments like these. Through her mind was floating a series of little detached pictures. She saw a glittering stage, Peter, herself, some little children. She felt a hazy, nebulous, mystical joy.
Peter adored her at moments like these, but he was afraid of her, too.
One night she astonished him. “Peter,” she said suddenly, “sit up. So. I’m tired. I’ve had a hard day. Do you mind if I rest my head on your shoulder?”
Would he mind if she offered him a king’s estate?
He was too ecstatic, too—yes—scared, to speak. He sat as she directed, he stretched his thin tense arm around her fine young body. He even put up one hand and pressed her head closer against his shoulder, touched her hair, let his fingers trail ever so lightly over her cheek. Joanna in his arms! Joanna!
She felt him trembling. “Am I too heavy, Peter?”
He could hardly articulate, but she heard his ardent “no” and moved imperceptibly closer.
His breath stirred her thick, dark hair. He let it caress his chin. Its soft heaviness was a revelation to him, a rapture.
She lay so quietly against him he thought she must be asleep. So he whispered, “Are you asleeep, Joanna?”
“No,” she whispered back, “only very, very tired.”
“Oh, Joanna, Joanna,” he breathed, “be tired forever.”
Somewhere out of the heavenly silence, a girl’s voice, a foreign voice,
