She thought to herself as he pattered downstairs: “Peter and Maggie, here in New York … I won’t think of them, I’m not going through all that sick agony again. I believe I’ll go South tomorrow.”
XXVII
The day’s excitement made Joanna sleep soundly, and in the morning she awoke strongly refreshed and rested. No gesture that she could make to Fate would ever restore Peter. She had been willing to make the greatest sacrifice of all—to surrender her pride—and even as she was about to do this, absolute evidence was given that her sacrifice was useless. The whole affair was over, finished, dead; henceforth Peter was to be in her life what other men were to other girls when they spoke of them as “old beaux.” That was the way for her to speak of Peter now. She practiced it with stiff lips: “Peter Bye, oh, yes, he used to be an old beau of mine.”
Her romance would hereafter lie behind her. From this day on she would dedicate herself to one interest, which should be the fixed purpose of her life; now that she thought of it she would give up the idea of dancing, too. Her former lover and her former ambition alike were unattainable; they had merely been means of enriching her experience. Now she would get down to the business of living; no more sighs, no more backward glances. And the first thing she would do would be to offer her services as a director of music to a colored school in the South. Many a principal before whose school she had sung would extend her a cordial welcome. Even though the school year was almost near its close she might get a chance to map out arrangements for the work of the following year. Her preference would be one of the less-known, poorly endowed schools where there would be lots of work.
She lay there and watched the April sun mounting slowly, slowly up the walls of her room. From outside rose the myriad sounds of Harlem; a huckster calling unintelligibly, some school children on their way to P.S. 89, shrilling their Iliad of school affairs; from far away came the echo of a spiritual whistled meditatively, almost reverently. Over herself crept a sense of peace, of finality, the sort of let-downness that comes to one voluntarily relaxing from difficult strain. She had not known such a feeling since when as girls she and Sylvia had been sent on a vacation trip into the country. The life was lonely for the two citified youngsters and they sought solace in taking long walks—“voyages of discovery” Joanna called them. Once after a tramp of two or three hours they had come about four o’clock to a little lumpy field in whose center stood a cluster of trees. Breathless and weary Joanna had scrambled over the wooden bars and had lain down on the short stiff stubble in the refreshing shade. All about stretched only sky, earth, and in the distance rows of trees rimming their pasture. There was nothing, no one in the world but herself and Sylvia. She felt her senses lulled by the quiet security into a deep sense of peace.
Now this came back to her and other thoughts, too: their return from the country to New York—her mother and Peter were at the station. But she would not think of that. She must get up, write letters, explain to her father and mother, make arrangements.
Essie, a fixture in the service of the Marshalls, brought her a breakfast of rolls and chocolate. Joanna devoured it.
“You don’t look bright, Essie.”
“No’m. Got lots to worry about. Them white folks where my girl Myrtle goes to school act so mean all the time, always discouragin’ her. ‘What’s the good of you comin’ to high school’? they ses. ‘What’re you gonna do when you finish?’ ”
How quickly once she would have rejoined with one of her sweeping platitudes which to her were not platitudes because they represented a fresh and virile belief: “Don’t let her become discouraged, Essie; just have her keep on. Success always comes if you work hard enough for it.” But today, remembering her plans for the stage and her courtship with Peter—both rendered frustrate through this hopeless obstacle of color—she could only murmur: “Yes, yes, I know. White people are hard to get along with. Better times coming, I hope, Essie.”
After a bath she slipped into a flame-colored dressing gown and sat down to her letters. Sylvia coming up noiselessly put her head in the door.
“Not dressed yet, Joanna? She’ll be here soon. It’s 10:30.”
Joanna lifted a startled face. “Who’ll be here?”
“Miss Sharples, Miss Vera Sharples. I sent Roger up to tell you.”
“Yes, he did, but you know how he forgets names. He said ‘Miss Vera’ and I thought he meant Vera Manning. Wonder what Miss Sharples wants to see me about?”
“One of her pet charities probably. Get a move on. Here, wear your green dress.” Joanna, whose thoughts had flown to Peter via Miss Susan Graves via Miss Sharples, took the green dress absentmindedly, then dropped it with a shudder. Maggie had worn such a dress yesterday, a soft dull green, horribly, fantastically adorned with bright and sticky red.
“No, not that.”
“You are nervous, Joanna. What do you feel like wearing?”
Together they chose a crêpe silk dress of straight and simple lines. The bodice as flaming as the dressing gown was long, like a Russian blouse. Its end terminated by hemstitching into a black shallow-plaited skirt. A narrow rope-like cord confined the waist.
“Stunning,” Sylvia said, spinning her around. She had designed the dress. “If Brian just wouldn’t treat me right we’d run away to Paris, Jan, and set up a dressmaking establishment. You should be my mannequin.”
A restatement of Roger’s imperfect message revealed the fact that Miss Sharples would call at eleven. Sylvia let her in and ran back to tell her sister who was outlining her plans to
