“I’d love to,” answered Mimi as they walked back towards where Hilda was sitting. Hilda was able to manage a smile but Mimi noticed all during the day that she was strangely silent and aloof. The first coolness of consequence during their friendship had come between them. Mimi was at first puzzled and wondered what might have caused it. Then she remembered Hilda’s shy admissions of her interest from childhood in Carl. Mimi knew then, or rather she sensed, the reason for Hilda’s attitude. Mimi said nothing to her, knowing the unwisdom of mentioning the subject and fearing that the breach might be widened if she spoke of it. And, being human, Hilda’s pouting irritated her.
“She’s silly,” thought Mimi, “getting angry with me simply because Carl and I talked for a few minutes. If that’s the kind of friend she is—” Mimi did not complete the thought but she felt vaguely amused and annoyed at Hilda. At the same time she looked forward to talking with Carl again. He was different. …
VII
To Mimi there was no more fascinating thing in the life she saw around her than the song, the laughter, the deep religious faith and the spontaneous humanity of the people of whom she was now a part. In New Orleans she had been stirred by the music which had a distinctive Negro note but which had been influenced to a definite extent by French songs that made it a sort of Africanized French. Here she felt much more vividly the rhythmic surge and sweep of the Negro music untouched by other influences the ecstatic pouring forth of melodies that often were not melodies but a wild and intoxicating thing that made little chills run up and down her spine and filled her eyes with tears. With Carl she came upon new phases of this life in out-of-the-way places which had hitherto been unknown to her. She began to see and understand the deep spirituality which lay back of this people of hers, to comprehend the gifts which had enabled them to withstand oppression which would long since have crushed a weaker race.
The day when a convict gang began to repair the street in front of their home was one Mimi never forgot. She awoke hearing a wild, plaintive, poignantly simple melody so strange she thought herself yet asleep. Drawn by the music, she dressed hastily and hurried to see from whence it came. In the street a strange sight met her eyes. A crowd of Negro convicts, clad in the broad-striped and ill-fitting garb of rough material, huge balls of iron attached to their ankles by heavy chains, were tearing up the street with synchronized strokes of their pickaxes. Up and down the sidewalks strode the guards, sawed-off shotguns on their shoulders. One of these was a stalwart fellow with stooped shoulders, unshaven, his mouth stained by the tobacco he constantly chewed. Another was of shorter and stockier build, equally unshaven and tobacco-stained, one eye missing, the empty socket shrunken until it gave his face a curiously unbalanced and evil look.
Up and down the guards strode, keeping ever-watchful eyes upon their charges, who worked and sang, apparently in blissful ignorance of guards or toil or any external thing. Occasionally one would stop for a drink of water brought by a remarkably ragged young Negro who nearly all the time was playing when he was most needed. The thirsty one would dawdle, invent all sorts of ingenious methods of delaying, take as long as he could in assuaging his thirst. If the operation consumed too much time there would come a warning from one of the guards, ominous, threatening, but shaken off as lightly as the water from the proverbial duck.
The convicts were of all shades and sizes and shapes. In the awkward garb they were a ludicrous, ill-assorted lot. Some there were with the shifty, roving eyes of tricksters. Others wore on their faces the hallmark of the criminal of dangerous type. The faces of a few of these bore livid scars of varying lengths gained by knifings in desperate fights. But to Mimi most of the men were kindly of expression, were obviously those arrested and convicted on petty charges because the city needed them or men like them to work its streets.
There was one item only in which this motley crowd was as one. A stalwart Negro with a ringing baritone led them in the song which had awakened Mimi. On and on he sang, verse after verse of a wildly sweet and simple song, joined in the chorus by the others. Like the beat of a giant metronome there came a grunting “Hunh!” as the shining points of the pickaxes were plunged into the red clay. There was little rhyme and little melody in the song, but rhythmically it was without flaw.
“Oh, she ast me—hunh!—in de parlour—hunh!
An’ she cool me—hunh!—wid her fan—hunh!
An’ she whispered—hunh!—to her mammy—hunh!
Mammy, I love dat—hunh!—dark-eyed man—hunh!
Well, I ast her—hunh!—mammy for her—hunh!
An’ she said she—hunh!—was too young—hunh!
Lawd, I wish’d I’d—hunh!—never seen her—hunh!
An’ I wish’d she’d—hunh!—never been bawn—hunh!
Well, I led her—hunh!—to de altar—hunh!
An’ de preacher—hunh!—made us one—hunh!
An’ she swore by—hunh!—God that’d made her—hunh!
She’d never love hunh!—another man—hunh! …”
Mimi’s heart beat faster and faster as she watched and listened. She
