Confidences such as these left Angela unmoved but considerably shaken. There must be something in the life of sacrifice, even drudgery which Rachel had depicted. Else why should so many otherwise sensible girls take the risk? But there, it was silly for her to dwell on such pictures and scenes. Such a life would never come to her. It was impossible to conceive of such a life with Roger. Yet there were times in her lonely room when she pondered long and deeply, drawing pictures. The time would be summer; she would be wearing a white dress, would be standing in the doorway of a house in the suburbs very, very near New York. There’d be the best possible dinner on the table. She did love to cook. And a tall, strong figure would be hurrying up the walk: “I had the best luck today, Angèle, and I brought you a present.” And presently after dinner she would take him upstairs to her little workroom and she’d draw aside the curtain and show him a portrait of a well-known society woman. “She’s so pleased with it; and she’s going to get me lots of orders—” Somehow she was absolutely sure that the fanciful figure was not Roger.
Her lover, back from a three weeks’ trip to Chicago, dissipated that sureness. He was glad, overwhelmingly glad to be back and to see Angèle. He came to her apartment directly from the train, not stopping even to report to his father. “I can see him tomorrow. Tonight is absolutely yours. What shall we do, Angèle? We can go out to dinner and the theatre or run out to the Country Club or stay here. What do you say?”
“We’ll have to stay here, Roger; I’ll fix up a gorgeous dinner, better than anything you’ve had to eat in any of your old hotels. But directly after, I’ll have to cut and run because I promised Martha Burden faithfully to go to a lecture with her tonight.”
“I never knew you to be interested in a lecture before.”
She was worried and showed it. “But this is a different sort of lecture. You know how crazy Martha is about race and social movements. Well, Van Meier is to speak tonight and Martha is determined that a lot of her friends shall hear him. I’m to go with her and Ladislas.”
“What’s to keep me from going?”
“Nothing, only he’s coloured, you know.”
“Well, I suppose it won’t rub off. I’ve heard of him. They say he really has brains. I’ve never seen a nigger with any yet; so this bids fair to be interesting. And, anyway, you don’t think I’m going to let my girl run off from me the very moment I come home, do you? Suppose I have Reynolds bring the big car here and we’ll take Martha and Ladislas along and anyone else she chooses to bring.”
The lecture was held in Harlem in East 135th Street. The hall was packed, teeming with suppressed excitement and a certain surcharged atmosphere. Angela radiant, calmed with the nearness and devotion of Roger, looked about her with keen, observing eyes. And again she sensed that fullness, richness, even thickness of life which she had felt on her first visit to Harlem. The stream of living ran almost molten; little waves of feeling played out from groups within the audience and beat against her consciousness and against that of her friends, only the latter were without her secret powers of interpretation. The occasion was clearly one of moment. “I’d come any distance to hear Van Meier speak,” said a thin-faced dark young man behind them. “He always has something to say and he doesn’t talk down to you. To hear him is like reading a classic, clear and beautiful and true.”
Angela, revelling in types and marshalling bits of information which she had got from Virginia, was able to divide the groups. There sat the most advanced coloured Americans, beautifully dressed, beautifully trained, whimsical, humorous, bitter, impatiently responsible, yet still responsible. In one section loomed the dark, eager faces of West Indians, the formation of their features so markedly different from that of the ordinary American as to give them a wild, slightly feral aspect. These had come not because they were disciples of Van Meier but because they were earnest seekers after truth. But unfortunately their earnestness was slightly marred by a stubbornness and an unwillingness to admit conviction. Three or four coloured Americans, tall, dark, sleek young men sat within earshot, speaking with a curious didactic precision. “They’re quoting all the sociologists in the world,” Ladislas Starr told his little group in astonishment.
Martha, with her usual thoroughness, knew all about them. They were the editors of a small magazine whose chief bid to fame lay in the articles which they directed monthly against Van Meier; articles written occasionally in a spirit of mean jealousy but usually in an effort to gain a sort of inverted glory by carrying that great name on its pages.
Here and there a sprinkling of white faces showed up plainly, startlingly distinct patterns against a background of patient, softly stolid black faces; faces beaten and fashioned by life into a mold of steady, rocklike endurance, of unshakable, unconquered faith. Angela had seen such faces before in the churches in Philadelphia; they brought back old pictures to her mind.
“There he is!” exclaimed Martha triumphantly. “That’s Van Meier! Isn’t he wonderful?” Angela saw a man, bronze, not very tall but built with a beautiful symmetrical completeness, cross the platform and sit in the tall, deep chair next to the table of the presiding officer. He sat with a curious immobility, gazing straight before him like a statue of an East Indian idol. And indeed there was about him some strange quality which made one think of the East; a completeness, a superb lack of self-consciousness, an odd, arresting beauty
