“Who’s the scrawny neophyte with the J. Pop-eyed Potters?” from the reputedly wealthy Cornelia, who was tall and regal in bearing and thoroughly, beautifully Ethiopian in appearance.
“There are two,” said Hernie. “Which one?”
“Where’s the two?” demanded Cornelia.
“One’s off dancing with Nora Byle.”
“Nothing scrawny about him,” said Sarah Long.
“No,” agreed Cornelia, “and nothing dumb. The way he’s learning, it won’t be long now—that Nora Byle is a dog.”
“Jealous!” grinned Hernie. “After the way you extracted Jimmie Polio from her clutches?”
“Don’t be a damn fool, Hernie. Wonder where Jimmy ran off to, come to think of it? Hasn’t reported to headquarters for an hour—Sarah”—to Mrs. Long, “I want you and that bad-haired husband of yours over to a little stomp-down Saturday night. Consider yourselves flattered—Con and Betty’ll be the only other shines present.” Her eye fell again on Miss Agatha Cramp. “That’s the homeliest woman in the world, bar none,” she avowed.
Peter Long, who was “tight,” rose and sang in a loud voice:
“Oh her face was sharp as a butcher’s cleaber,
But dat did not seem to grieb ’er—”
“She’s looking right at you, Cornelia,” said Hernie.
“Yea,” said Cornelia, “and I bet ten dollars she’s saying ‘Beautiful savage’ or ‘So primitive.’ ”
Conrad said, “Potter’s got a sense of humor anyhow. Hooking her up with Gloria Dunn and Nora Byle. I’ll bet Gloria snubbed her.”
“No, Con. You’re the only fay I know that draws the color line on other fays.”
“It’s natural. Downtown I’m only passing. These,” he waved grandiloquently, “are my people.”
“Yea—so you seem to think, the way you sell ’em for cash,” said Cornelia.
“They enjoy being sold,” returned Con.
Betty said, “Don’t you think that Nora Byle has the most beautiful hands in the world?”
“I never pay much attention to her—hands,” grinned Con.
“All the girls I know in Harlem have beautiful hands,” Betty complained.
“You don’t know many, then,” Cornelia remarked.
“Just look at mine,” Betty went on. “Pudgy as a poodle’s paw. This Caucasian superiority stuff is a lot of bunk.”
“Don’t let your liquor out-talk you, Betty.”
“No danger,” said Betty. Then, “Say—do you know what I’m going to do?”
“Commit suicide,” suggested Cornelia.
“In a way. I’m going to write a novel much better than anything Con has done—”
“Not much of an ambition—”
“—and present it as the work of a Negro.”
“Negress,” corrected Hernie with irony.
“Well,” said Con, “you can be sure of two things.”
“What?”
“You can be sure some critic will call it the best thing ever done by a Negro.”
“Yes,” said Cornelia, “as if that’s paying you a hell of a compliment.”
“And,” Con continued, “you can be sure that some fay will insist that it should have been more African.”
“And the critic’s name,” said Cornelia, “will probably be Rabinowitch.”
A tall, very blond young man with rosy cheeks, whose eyelids were ptotic with alcohol, came clambering into the box as if he had six pairs of feet.
“Where’s my Ethiopian?” he cried at the top of his lungs, peering about myopically and waving his arms like antennae. “Hey!—where’s my Ethiopian queen?”
“Jimmy!” called Cornelia. “Bottle that racket. Come here and sit down, you imp.”
“Where?” pleaded Jimmy Polio. “Can’t see you at all, really. Can’t seem to get my silly eyes open—”
“Look, Con,” said Betty, indicating Miss Agatha Cramp, who had heard Jimmy’s cry and was now observing from a distance. “Look at the horror on that poor woman’s face. She’s just about ready to die.”
Together they looked at the wide-eyed Miss Cramp and together they chuckled with merriment.
“Well,” sighed Miss Cramp, “Mr. Potter told me that this would be an excellent chance to observe different types of Negroes.”
“It seems to be an excellent chance to observe different types of Caucasians, also,” said Merrit.
“Disgusting, isn’t it? I can’t understand why people of apparently our own kind, Mr. Merrit—It’s humiliating, isn’t it?”
“They out-Herod the Romans, don’t they?”
“Unpardonable. How can we hope to help these others if we set so poor an example ourselves?”
“An excellent point. If we are not careful, instead of helping them, we will find them helping us.”
“Helping us?”
“Yes. Or more. Transforming us. If things go on like this, one of these days this country’s going to wake up with dark brown skin and kinky hair.”
“Horrible!”
“Horrible? Why?”
“Oh, Mr. Merrit!”
“I really see nothing horrible about it. I rather think the country would enjoy it.”
“Well—I for one shouldn’t.”
“But think, Miss Cramp,” he prodded, “how much better off our country would be—”
“With dark brown skin? I can’t imagine—”
“No. Figuratively of course. With a spiritual attitude—an emotional makeup like the Negro’s.”
“Just what do you mean?”
“This tropic nonchalance, as Locke calls it. This acceptance of circumstance not with a shrug, like the Oriental, but with a characteristic grin. Nobody laughs at the miseries of life like the Negro. He laughs at himself, at his own pains and dangers and disappointments and oppressions. He accepts things, not with resignation but with amusement. That, it seems to me, should be a most alarming thing for his enemy to see.”
“I don’t understand at all.”
“No? Suppose you were fighting somebody, and at every blow you delivered, your antagonist simply grinned and came on. Wouldn’t you soon get scared? Wouldn’t you begin to lose your nerve? Would you begin wondering if maybe the other fellow wasn’t grinning at the futility of your blows—if maybe he wasn’t just biding his time in the certainty of his power? How could you wound a fellow who simply laughed? How could you be sure what he was laughing at? Himself? Maybe. But I know I’d begin to think he might be laughing at me.”
“It isn’t easy to follow you, Mr. Merrit. But it seems to me that the Negro would be far better off if he didn’t laugh so much, no matter at whom. He doesn’t take anything seriously. If he did, if he worried more, I think he’d be
