There was the great dance floor, large as a city block, with a fifteen-piece orchestra exhausting itself at the far end. On either side of this dance area, separated from it by railings and extending the length of the building between the dance floor and the lateral walls, a raised level or low terrace, occupied by a tangle of round-top tables and wire-legged chairs. Either terrace broken midway by a wide staircase, that turned at right angles and led up alongside the wall to the upper level, the level of the tier of boxes that encircled the hall and roofed in the two lateral terraces below.
Those who between dances repaired only so far as the terraces and sat at the round-top tables and drank Whistle, perhaps tinctured with corn, were either just ordinary respectable people or rats. But those who mounted the stairs and crowded into or about the boxes, who kept waiters busy bringing ginger ale, which they flavored from silver hip flasks—those were dickties and fays.
Of the people downstairs, a few of the girls wore inexpensive costumes; others wore gaudy habiliments that were just as truly costumes but were probably not so intended. The men wore anything, from clothing so inconspicuous as to attract no attention to outfits positively stunning—light gray suits, cerise crêpe ties and bright yellow, broad-toed oxfords.
Of the dickties, the women were all extravagantly dressed. Whether they wore costume or evening frock, it quite obviously had to outglitter everyone’s else. The men, however, uniformly clad in dinner-coats, performed well their sole esthetic function of background.
Of the usual sprinkling of fays, a few were the friends and guests of dickties; several were members of the Executive Board of the G.I.A., professional uplifters, determined to be broad-minded about this thing; and accompanying these two groups, a third consisting of newcomers to Harlem, all gasps, grunts, and ill-concealed squirms, or sighs and astonished smiles. The first group coming to enjoy not the Negroes but themselves, hence perfectly at ease; the second coming to raise up the darker brother, hence sweetly beaming and benevolent; the third coming to see the niggers, hence tortured with smothered comment and stifled expression. On the whole corresponding pretty well to their hosts, these visitors: usually dull and ordinary, occasionally bright and substantial, once in a blue moon brilliant or beautiful.
So swept the scene from black to white through all the shadows and shades. Ordinary Negroes and rats below, dickties and fays above, the floor beneath the feet of the one constituting the roof over the heads of the other. Somehow, undeniably, a predominance of darker skins below, and, just as undeniably, of fairer skins above. Between them, stairways to climb. One might have read in that distribution a complete philosophy of skin-color, and from it deduced the past, present, and future of this people. … Out on the dance floor, everyone, dickty and rat, rubbed joyous elbows, laughing, mingling, forgetting differences. But whenever the music stopped everyone immediately sought his own level.
One great common fellowship in one great common cause.
VIII
Downstairs at one point on the terrace were Jinx and Bubber, oblivious to everybody, arguing heatedly over the relative speed of corn and gin as intoxicants. Neither had either. At another point a group of girls dressed as gypsies sat laughing around a table. The prettiest of these was Linda, not the dry and quiet Linda that served Agatha Cramp her meals, but a vivacious lighthearted child, out on a lark, being herself. Not far away, leaning against one of the pillars that supported the tier of boxes, stood Henry Patmore, calculatingly watching Linda. Further back, unnoticed, like a great shadow against the wall, Shine stood with his hands in his pockets, motionless, watching Patmore.
He had not long to wait before what he anticipated began to happen.
Henry Patmore was acknowledged among his friends a perfect ladies’ man. He had all the qualifications: money to burn, with a constant large supply of banknotes on his person, after the fashion of bootleggers; excellent taste in dress, as exemplified tonight by a sack suit of light greenish gray, a shirt of slate radium silk with collar to match, a bright green satin cravat caressing a diamond question mark, and a breast pocket polka dot handkerchief, whose crêpe border matched the tie. He was large and self-assured with an engaging manner and a flashing smile. Some people might not have cared for the fishy blankness of Patmore’s gray eyes, nor for his tough-looking tan skin, thickly bespecked with small brown freckles, nor for his rather heavy jowls nor his rather thick neck with its two deep transverse creases behind. But so courteous was his manner with ladies, so deferential, so flatteringly humble his approach, that almost never did a girl deny his request for a dance, whether she knew him or not.
Further, there was about him the reassuring deliberateness of complete self-confidence. He was thirty-five years old, as free of the uncertainties of youth
