Mary said in utter astonishment: “Coloured, why what are you talking about? Who’s coloured?”
“Angela, Angela Murray, that’s who’s coloured. At least she used to be when we all went to school at Eighteenth and Oxford.”
Mary said again: “Coloured!” And then, “Angela, you never told me you were coloured!”
Angela’s voice was as amazed as her own: “Tell you that I was coloured! Why of course I never told you that I was coloured! Why should I?”
“There,” said Esther, “see she never told Mary that she was coloured. What wouldn’t she have done with our money!”
Angela had picked up her books and strolled out the door. But she flew down the north staircase and out the Brandywine Street entrance and so to Sixteenth Street where she would meet no one she knew, especially at this belated hour. At home there would be work to do, her lessons to get and the long, long hours of the night must pass before she would have to face again the hurt and humiliation of the classroom; before she would have to steel her heart and her nerves to drop Mary Hastings before Mary Hastings could drop her. No one, no one, Mary least of all, should guess how completely she had been wounded. Mary and her shrinking bewilderment! Mary and her exclamation: “Coloured!” This was a curious business, this colour. It was the one god apparently to whom you could sacrifice everything. On account of it her mother had neglected to greet her own husband on the street. Mary Hastings could let it come between her and her friend.
In the morning she was at school early; the girls should all see her there and their individual attitude should be her attitude. She would remember each one’s greetings, would store it away for future guidance. Some of the girls were especially careful to speak to her, one or two gave her a meaning smile, or so she took it, and turned away. Some did not speak at all. When Mary Hastings came in Angela rose and sauntered unseeing and unheeding deliberately past her through the doorway, across the hall to Miss Barrington’s laboratory. As she returned she passed Mary’s desk, and the girl lifted troubled but not unfriendly eyes to meet her own; Angela met the glance fully but without recognition. She thought to herself: “Coloured! If they had said to me Mary Hastings is a voodoo, I’d have answered, ‘What of it? She’s my friend.’ ”
Before June Mary Hastings came up to her and asked her to wait after school. Angela who had been neither avoiding nor seeking her gave a cool nod. They walked out of the French classroom together. When they reached the corner Mary spoke:
“Oh, Angela, let’s be friends again. It doesn’t really make any difference. See, I don’t care any more.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should it have made any difference in the first place? I’m just the same as I was before you knew I was coloured and just the same afterwards. Why should it ever have made any difference at all?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure. I was just surprised. It was all so unexpected.”
“What was unexpected?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But let’s be friends.”
“Well,” said Angela slowly, “I’m willing, but I don’t think it will ever be the same again.”
It wasn’t. Some element, spontaneity, trustfulness was lacking. Mary, who had never thought of speaking of colour, was suddenly conscious that here was a subject which she must not discuss. She was less frank, at times even restrained. Angela, too young to define her thoughts, yet felt vaguely: “She failed me once—I was her friend—yet she failed me for something with which I had nothing to do. She’s just as likely to do it again. It’s in her.”
Definitely she said to herself, “Mary withdrew herself not because I was coloured but because she didn’t know I was coloured. Therefore if she had never known I was coloured she would always have been my friend. We would have kept on having our good times together.” And she began to wonder which was the more important, a patent insistence on the fact of colour or an acceptance of the good things of life which could come to you in America if either you were not coloured or the fact of your racial connections was not made known.
During the summer Mary Hastings’ family, it appeared, recovered their fallen fortunes. At any rate she did not return to school in the fall and Angela never saw her again.
V
Virginia came rushing in. “Angela, where’s Mummy?”
“Out. What’s all the excitement?”
“I’ve been appointed. Isn’t it great? Won’t Mother and Dad be delighted! Right at the beginning of the year too, so I won’t have to wait. The official notice isn’t out yet but I know it’s all right. Miss Herren wants me to report tomorrow. Isn’t it perfectly marvellous! Here I graduate from the Normal in June and in the second week of school in September I’ve got my perfectly good job. Darling child, it’s very much better, as you may have heard me observe before, to be born lucky than rich. But I am lucky and I’ll be rich too. Think of that salary for my very own! With both of us working, Mummy won’t have to want for a thing, nor Father either. Mummy won’t have to do a lick of work if she doesn’t want to. Well, what have you got to say about it, old Rain-in-the-Face? Or perhaps this isn’t Mrs. Henrietta Jones whom I’m addressing of?”
Angela giggled, then raised an imaginary lorgnette. “Er—really I think you
