In time the continuation of these practices began to work a decided and noticeable change in her outlook on life in general. She found herself in time thinking of practically all things, it mattered not what their nature nor how remotely connected with race or colour problems they were, in terms of race or colour. This distorted vision seriously handicapped her but she was unaware of it for it coincided so completely with the viewpoints of her friends. “Poor white trash” became the ultimate of scorn, of contumely, of disparagement. In marked contrast with her former jovial and friendly manner she became almost malicious in little cruelties to tradesmen, to hucksters, to clerks in stores who happened to be white. In these episodes she took acute delight in the fact that her cream-coloured skin, her Gallic name and her French accent gave her immunities she might not have possessed had she been more distinctly Negro.
When first she had come to Atlanta she had been captiously critical of the foibles and petty vices of her new friends. She had recoiled from their bearing of tales, their tearing down of reputations on scanty and imperfect reports of alleged shortcomings. She had hated the obsession of the men on the making of money, the vying of woman with woman in dress, in grandeur of entertainment and of homes. But with the passing of years and particularly after the scenes she had witnessed in the rioting, she began to take these as a matter of course and she found they no longer shocked nor annoyed her. She did not know if she were becoming inured to the new order, if she were succumbing to the new point of view.
Her association with Jean and the lack of contact in her youth with children of her own age had given her a maturity of mind far in advance of her years. She was pained now when she realized that her talks with Jean were becoming more and more infrequent and when they did come they were somewhat less understanding than they had been before. Her sense of loyalty kept her from thinking consciously that Jean was being rapidly left behind by the procession of events, that she who once had seen life eye to eye with him was far beyond him. But though she would not admit it, nevertheless it was true and therein lay the reason why both he and she sought less and less for the old comradeship which had meant so much to both.
Jean, however, saw with clear eye the changes being wrought in Mimi. Her new attitude towards race grieved him though he fully understood the reasons for that change. He knew that a blind race obsession would materially arrest her development and he deplored its rapid growth. He knew that argument and direct attack would be of little avail—Mimi’s face on that memorable and terrible night had revealed to him the bitter travail of soul which was going on underneath. Nor would he have argued against her feeling of hatred towards the whites with whom she came into infrequent contact, had he felt that good would have come of it.
He sought instead to counterbalance it through carefully casual remarks regarding the genuine worth of this man or that one, to place in Mimi’s hands, or where she would surely come upon them, articles, newspapers, books which would fill her mind with beauty and truth. Once it was an excellent translation of the short stories of Balzac. Another time it was The Way of All Flesh. Or a Thomas Hardy novel, though he kept from her Tess—that, he felt, was too—well, a little too advanced for one of Mimi’s tender years. He did not know that before they had left New Orleans Mimi had spent many hours locked in her own room while she surreptitiously devoured (almost literally, her nose was so close to the pages) the tragedy of Tess. Nor did he know she had read every one of the morocco-bound volumes of Maupassant he had so carefully placed on the topmost shelf. Now Mimi read (or reread) the volumes he gave her, she listened to his long talks and she answered the questions he at the most unlikely moments would ask her about her reading, for she knew it would have given him pain had she not done so.
And Jean’s strategy was not wholly a failure. It gave Mimi a sense of almost malicious delight when she found in classrooms that she was more or less familiar with a sonnet of Shakespeare, that she knew who Chaucer was, that Tennyson was something more than the shadowy figure of a man who had “written poetry or painted pictures or something.” Only with Hilda did she refrain from stressing, ever so gently, the advantages she possessed in having chosen a father like Jean. With Hilda she shared the stories that gave her pleasure, with Jean’s permission she loaned Hilda books and therein was built another link between them. …
To the trumpet-heralded tune of the martial “God of our fathers, whose almighty hand … ,” Mimi and Hilda, clad in white, filmy dresses identical of material and design with thirty others, marched forth one sunshiny June morning when the new century had reached its eleventh year. In their hands were clutched rolls of paper, each tied with a bow of ribbon. The required tasks for completion of the normal school course had been done, the seal of official approval was bestowed. There were presents and congratulations, parties and sighs of relief that it was all over.
Jean sat in the throng of parents and relatives in the seats reserved for them,
