V
It was at one of these little parties, the room ringed with fat, chatting mothers whose conversation did not so absorb them that they failed to notice any action, however insignificant, that Mimi met Carl Hunter. Hilda brought him to her with the simple introduction, “Mimi, this is Carl.” He, giving her a quick glance that seemed to her to take in not only her physical self but to pry down deep into her innermost thoughts, paused a minute before speaking. When he did speak his greeting was only a cool “Hello.” Others passing stopped and the conversation in the little group became general. When she looked again Carl had gone. She did not see him again but on the way home she spoke of him to Hilda.
“I don’t think much of your friend, Hilda,” she said. “He didn’t say anything and he seems to have an awfully good opinion of himself.”
“No—no, Mimi, you mustn’t say that,” Hilda quickly defended him. “That’s just his way—you just wait until you know him and you’ll think differently.”
“Dear, I don’t want to hurt your feelings but from what I’ve seen I’m almost sure I don’t want to know him.”
“It’s too bad he’s going away. He told me his father’s going to let him go away and work this summer and then enter school up North next fall. Oh, dear! I don’t know what I’ll do—he thinks I’m nothing but a little girl but he’s only seventeen and I’m going on fifteen.”
The despair of unrequited love in her voice—and what pangs of love can be more acute, more painful, more deliriously ecstatic than those of youth?—touched Mimi deeply.
“Forgive me, Hilda. I was only joking. I think Carl’s real nice and the way his hair falls down over his head is adorable.”
Hilda smiled bravely through incipient tears and her smile gave forgiveness. …
In the autumn they entered high school together and the long hours they spent together deepened the love they had for each other. Mrs. Daquin was busy with her household affairs, her friends, parties at her own home and at the houses of her friends. They settled down into a calm, routinized existence little touched by events of the outside world. They even were little affected by that other world which lived alongside them in the same city—that realm known as “white.” Except in the stores or on the street cars there was but little contact, and, particularly in the latter, they sought to lessen the number of the contacts as far as possible. Here there were these two parallel existences, meeting but seldom, for Jean and his wife and Mimi soon learned that to avoid meeting was to avoid trouble or at least the possibility of trouble.
On one or two occasions they saw how easily disturbances could come. The laws of Georgia provided that in the street cars white people should sit from the front of the car towards the rear and coloured people should start occupying the rearmost seats and as their number increased they should occupy seats towards the front. One afternoon Mrs. Daquin and Mimi were returning from a shopping tour. They sat towards the middle of the car on boarding it but later several coloured people back of them alighted. The conductor, a short man with small eyes and narrow face adorned with red stubble, came to their seat and in an unpleasant, unnecessarily gruff tone demanded:
“Here, you! Move back there where you belong.”
Mrs. Daquin stared at him in amazement.
“Are you speaking to me?” she demanded.
“I ain’t talking to nobody else,” he replied. “Come on! Don’t give me no argument. Get on back there with the rest of the niggers!”
A titter went up from the staring passengers. Mrs. Daquin felt the blood rising in her face and her anger mounting.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I am going to stay right where I am,” she challenged, her voice shaking with anger, though she was trying hard to control it.
“You’ll move back there or I’ll put you off the car,” the conductor shouted, more angry than ever as he felt the realization coming to him that he had stirred up an argument which might not end as easily as he had supposed.
“Come on back, lady,” a voice from the rear called. “ ’Tain’t no use having no argument and he’s got the law on his side.”
This unasked-for advice only served to make Mrs. Daquin and Mimi, who remained silent but who longed to join the argument, more adamant.
“You want me to stop the car and call a cop?” her tormentor queried belligerently.
“You can do whatever you please—I will not move!” was her answer. …
Muttering something about “biggity niggers,” the conductor retreated to the rear of the car, defeated.
They left the car at their corner and an obscene remark floated back to them from the discomfited conductor. Jean told Mr. Hunter of the affair and asked advice but that which he received was of slight comfort to them.
“I know just how you feel about it. It makes me mad as blue blazes, too, but what can you do about it? If it had been you or me that conductor would have used physical violence and he’d have been helped by every white man on the car. About the only thing that saved your wife and daughter was that they’re women—they can get away with lots more than we can because they are women. No, Daquin, you might as well let the matter drop and forget it. Protest will do no good and you haven’t a chance in the courts.” …
On another occasion one of Jean’s associates whose skin was brown but whose wife’s was fair, assisted his own wife in boarding a car. A crowd of whites jumped down from the vehicle and pummeled him viciously before his wife could explain that she too was a Negro. …
Jean bought for their use a horse and surrey and thereafter they never rode in the
