Oh, she hoped Sundays in Paris would be gay!
Opal Street came into her vision, a line, a mere shadow of a street falling upon the steadfastness of Jefferson. Her heart quickened, tears came into her eyes as she turned that corner which she had turned so often, that corner which she had once left behind her forever in order to taste and know life. In the hot July sun the street lay almost deserted. A young coloured man, immaculate in white shirt sleeves, slim and straight, bending in his doorway to pick up the bulky Sunday paper, straightened up to watch her advancing toward him. Just this side of him stood her former home—how tiny it was and yet how full of secrets, of knowledge of joy, despair, suffering, futility—in brief Life! She stood a few moments in front of it, just gazing, but presently she went up and put her hand on the red brick, wondering blindly if in some way the insensate thing might not communicate with her through touch. A coloured woman sitting in the window watching her rather sharply, came out then and asked her suspiciously what she wanted.
“Nothing,” Angela replied dully. “I just wanted to look at the house.”
“It isn’t for sale, you know.”
“No, no, of course not. I just wanted to look at it again. I used to live here, you see. I wondered—” Even if she did get permission to go inside, could she endure it? If she could just stand once in that little back room and cry and cry—perhaps her tears would flood away all that mass of regret and confusion and futile memories, and she could begin life all over with a blank page. Thank God she was young! Suddenly it seemed to her that entering the house once more, standing in that room would be a complete panacea. Raising her eyes expectantly to the woman’s face she began: “Would you be so kind—?”
But the woman, throwing her a last suspicious look and muttering that she was “nothing but poor white trash,” turned and, slamming the door behind her, entered the little square parlour and pulled down the blinds.
The slim young man came running down the steet toward her. Closer inspection revealed his ownership of a pleasant brown freckled face topped by thick, soft, rather closely cropped dark-red hair.
“Angela,” he said timidly, and then with more assurance: “It is Angela Murray.”
She turned her stricken face toward him. “She wouldn’t let me in, Matthew. I’m going to France tomorrow and I thought I’d like to see the old house. But she wouldn’t let me look at it. She called me,”—her voice broke with the injustice of it—“poor white trash.”
“I know,” he nodded gravely. “She’d do that kind of thing; she doesn’t understand, you see.” He was leading her gently toward his house. “I think you’d better come inside and rest a moment. My father and mother have gone off for their annual trip to Bridgeton; mother was born there, you know. But you won’t mind coming into the house of an old and tried friend.”
“No,” she said, conscious of an overwhelming fatigue and general sense of let-downness, “I should say I wouldn’t.” As they crossed the threshold she tried faintly to smile but the effort was too much for her and she burst into a flood of choking, strangling, noisy tears.
Matthew removed her hat and fanned her; brought her ice-water and a large soft handkerchief to replace her own sodden wisp. Through her tears she smiled at him, understanding as she did so, the reason for Virginia’s insistence on his general niceness. He was still Matthew Henson, still freckled and brown, still capped with that thatch of thick bad hair. But care and hairdressings and improved toilet methods and above all the emanation of a fine and generous spirit had metamorphosed him into someone still the old Matthew Henson and yet someone somehow translated into a quintessence of kindliness and gravity and comprehending.
She drank the water gratefully, took out her powder puff.
“I don’t need to ask you how you are,” he said, uttering a prayer of thanks for averted hysterics. “When a lady begins to powder her nose, she’s bucking up all right. Want to tell me all about it?”
“There’s nothing to tell. Only I wanted to see the house and suddenly found myself unexpectedly homesick, lonely, misunderstood. And when that woman refused me so cruelly, it was just too much.” Her gaze wavered, her eyes filled again.
“Oh,” he said in terror, “for God’s sake don’t cry again! I’ll go over and give her a piece of my mind; I’ll make her turn the whole house over to you. I’ll bring you her head on a charger. Only ‘dry those tears.’ ” He took her handkerchief and dried them himself very, very gently.
She caught his hand. “Matthew, you’re a dear.”
He shrugged negligently, “You haven’t always thought that.”
This turn of affairs would never do. “What were you planning to do when I barged in? Getting ready to read your paper and be all homey and comfortable?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to do that now. Tell you what, Angela, let’s have a lark. Suppose we have dinner here? You get it. Remember how it used to make me happy as a king in the old days if you’d just hand me a glass of water? You said you were sailing tomorrow; you must be all packed. What time do you have to be back? I’ll put
