“No—no—Mimi! You don’t understand what I mean. The whole world’s gone mad over power and wealth. The strongest man wins, not the most decent or the most intelligent or the best. All the old virtues of comradeship and art and literature and philosophy, in short, all the refinements of life, are being swallowed up in this monster, the Machine, we are creating which is slowly but surely making us mere automatons, dancing like marionettes when the machine pulls the strings and bids us prance. I know you’re thinking I sound like a masculine Cassandra—but some day, perhaps long after I’m gone, maybe you’ll think back to this day and agree with me.”
To Mimi most of this was rather baffling—she was glad that Jean obviously did not expect her to answer. It was true that she had been fascinated by the song they had heard, she loved the colourfulness of the life she saw around her and she had noticed that in her few contacts with white people she had felt a certain chill that she was not aware of when with her own people.
“Her own people.” The phrase interested her. In New Orleans she had thought all people were hers—that only individuals mattered. But here there were sharp, unchanging lines which seemed to matter with extraordinary power. This one was white—that one black. Even though the “white” one was swarthy while the “black” one might be as fair as the whitest of the white.
And within the circle of those who were called Negroes she found duplications of the lines between the two major groups. She in the few days she had been in Atlanta had heard enough to know there were churches attended in the main only by coloured people who were mulattoes or quadroons, others only by those whose complexions were quite dark. At Mrs. Hunter’s the uniform lightness of skin had impressed itself upon her. And when she had sought to make overtures to Mrs. Plummer’s girl, Iwilla (Mrs. Plummer had told Mrs. Daquin proudly her daughter had a Biblical name—it was taken from the verse, “I will arise and go unto my Father”), Mrs. Plummer had called her child into the house and Mimi had heard her being scolded: “How many times I got to tell you to leave these yaller children alone? First thing you know, you’ll be coming home saying some of them’s called you ‘black.’ ”
All this perplexed Mimi. She was too young and inexperienced to know that these people were in large part the victims of a system which made colour and hair texture and race a fetish. Nor did she know how all too frequently opportunity came in a direct ratio to the absence of pigmentation. It was baffling, annoying. And so too were Jean’s criticisms of his new environment. Mimi missed the romance of her old home, it is true, but the new scene with all its rawness and lack of beauty intrigued and fascinated her through its vigour and progressiveness. She began to feel a sympathy, at first faint but growing in strength, tinged with pity, for Jean in his unwillingness to adapt himself to newer ways and customs.
Not that she consciously put these into words nor even into tangible thought. She loved Jean too dearly, too wholeheartedly for that, and any criticism of him, real or implied, would have made her miserable for its imputation of disloyalty. No. It was simply that Jean was the follower of an older day, of an age that was passing even in Louisiana, that definitely had passed here in Georgia and to an even greater degree farther North. …
And Jean’s efforts to find his place in the new order and to make that place as comfortable, as little irritating as possible, met with but indifferent success. He found that he could not with any degree of pleasure nor of comfort join in the social activities of his business associates. They were too vigorous, too forthright for his simple taste. He had no puritanical streaks in his nature but the lusty laughter with which the men greeted the stories which were current, usually of a ribald and smutty nature, at first surprised him, then slightly nauseated him. It was the one thing he disliked in Mr. Hunter, whom he liked better than most of the others.
He could always tell when Mr. Hunter had heard a new one—for these stories the older man had a particular smile that at times bordered on a leer, and a manner of portentous and cryptic winking. The stories themselves did not so much disgust him—he had indulged frequently in racy wit and repartee with his old cronies at home—it was their general stupidity and their clinging to one theme.
Jean formed more and more the habit of spending his time at home, despite his wife’s constant urging that he go out and “mingle more with the men and make himself more sociable.” He read indefatigably, sitting in his room, summer and winter, until the early hours of the morning, or until his wife forced him to retire. She, on the other hand, berated and criticized him much less than in those last few months before he consented to move from New Orleans. Jean quite frankly and with an equanimity which amazed him realized they had grown farther apart than ever and were continuing to find their pleasure in widely diverse fields. Mrs. Daquin, under Mrs. Hunter’s dexterous management, had been extended and had accepted an invitation to join the Fleur-de-Lis Club. More and more Mrs. Daquin, to her intense delight, found herself accepted into the inner circle of Negro society and she soon was able with entire naturalness to speak pityingly of those who were not of the elect.
She had won, too, her efforts towards religious conformity by Jean and Mimi, though this victory had come from an unexpected ally. She had gone, not unprotestingly, with Jean
