“That kind of talk won’t get you anywhere, Daquin. You’re only fooling yourself and the fact there’s a certain degree of truth in what you say only makes it the more dangerous for you to be talking that way—you’d make most of these white people mad because you have done some thinking about the situation.”
Jean interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.
“Mr. Stewart, have you ever tried to look at this thing from our side of the fence?”
“No‑o‑o. I haven’t given much time to it, I reckon,” Mr. Stewart answered reflectively, his face indicating a degree of surprise that there was another side which had not occurred to him.
“Well, just let me tell you a little about it then. The son of a friend of mine, a lad of twenty or thereabouts, yesterday morning was coming out of his own father’s home, rather hurriedly as he was late for an appointment. Reaching the street, he remembered he had forgotten a package and he turned to go back when he brushed against someone behind him. As he started to apologize he saw it was a white woman. This woman was telling my wife about it and she said the boy’s face became a mask of terror, realizing as he did what would happen if she had screamed. He stood still a minute, too frightened to move, and then he turned and ran for dear life down the street. Now suppose, Mr. Stewart, that woman had been easily frightened—you’d have seen in the papers that same day the report of another ‘attack.’ ”
“Yes—yes—I know it’s hard for you, too. But we’re sitting on a keg of dynamite and none of us can tell when some fool’s liable to set it off. We can only hope for the best,” Mr. Stewart ended piously.
Jean did not know that after he had left the bank, having forgotten the business matter which had brought him there, so engrossed had he become in his conversation that a little group of men had gone to the cashier’s desk and demanded that Mr. Stewart tell them what Jean had said. This Mr. Stewart did not do—he did not know how Jean’s words and thoughts might be taken. …
At home Jean found but little more understanding. His wife, busy with her own affairs and having little contact other than with her friends and with shopkeepers who carefully concealed their feelings, scoffed at his forebodings. “You’re not used to anything like this and you’re too easily scared,” she laughed. “Mrs. Hunter tells me they have lots of situations here just as delicate and they’ve all blown over in time. Same as this one will blow over as soon as the hot weather ends.” Her air of finality in citing Mrs. Hunter as authority convinced Jean there was little need of pursuing the subject further in that direction.
Mimi was more sympathetic but she showed by her puzzled frown she did not comprehend his reasons for worrying.
“White people—and coloured people—you didn’t used to separate people into such definite classes before you left New Orleans, papa Jean!” she declared, somewhat confused. “After all, what real difference does it make? A difference in colour, different hair, different features, but what do those matter in the long run? Why can’t people be just people and stop all this meanness?”
“That isn’t the point right now, Mimi,” he explained. “I suppose it’s silly but I’m worried—this thing’s mighty serious, and it may be you and I and the rest of us may see some pretty dark scenes. Oh, why did I ever leave New Orleans? I’d never have had all this trouble—at least, it wouldn’t have been so terrifying—”
“It’ll blow over,” Mimi comforted him.
“Blow over”! There was that phrase of Mrs. Hunter’s again. He was miserable. He saw his old house in Louisiana, his garden, his flowers. He could almost see his old friends, Bernard, Pierre, André. He wished he were sitting once more in the old café on Chartres Street, with his friends spending long hours in comfortable, soothing conversation, sipping their glasses of le petit gouave, that heartwarming, gently exhilarating concoction from old San Domingo. He could smell the wild odours of the tropical, luxuriant flowers, the mildly intoxicating smell of the wild orange, the honeysuckle, the roses, fragrant pines. He could close his eyes and see the delicate pink and white of the oleanders, could hear the soft-throated cries of the hucksters, many of them with huge gold earrings and brilliantly coloured dresses, their heads bound with gay headkerchiefs. “Belles des figues! Belles des figues! Pralines, pistache! Pralines, pacanes!” they called. A violent nostalgia assailed him, its accompaniment a bitter distaste for the harsh scenes of his new home. …
Long, tense days crept into anxious nights. Feverishly busy with the making of money, men and women, white and black, good citizens and Christians all and in their own minds true to their own various standards, did nothing. Along towards the middle of September a few of them began to be disturbed. Calls were sent out for mass meetings to check the wave of hatred and passion that rapidly was mounting. Somnolent,
