But they did not confine their visits to churches. Carl took her to parties where usually to the music of a three or four-piece orchestra of strings they danced or watched others dance with a lissom grace and abandon that intoxicated them like old, rare wines. Among all sorts and classes of their own people they rambled, oblivious of the criticism that came to them occasionally. The storm was rising though they did not know it. It broke with disturbing fury when one night Carl suggested they go to what he termed a “honky-tonky” dance. To Mrs. Daquin’s rather sharp inquiry regarding her destination, Mimi answered shortly that that was her own affair, and she thought no more of the matter at the time.
The dance was held in a small, poorly lighted and ventilated hall. The floor was so crowded they did not attempt to dance but sat and watched the others as they somewhat noisily but gaily swung and swayed about the floor. Carl acted as guide, interpreter, expositor.
“That’s what they call the ‘eagle rock,’ ” as he pointed to a dusky couple whose shoulders swayed in a fascinatingly free, peculiar rhythm. Many years afterwards when Mimi saw blonde chorus girls on Broadway swaying their shoulders and bodies as these two were doing, she remembered always where she had first seen it done. “Those two over there are ‘ballin’ the jack,’ ” Carl explained as he pointed in the throng to another couple whose knees were in motion in contrast to the shoulders of the first pair. Here, there, all around the hall he pointed out to the fascinated Mimi the originality of the dancers, moving according to no set form other than their own impulses as stirred by the weird, feet-moving strains of the Negro orchestra.
And the orchestra was doing its share with the same joy as the dancers, as though it too had paid its way in for the pleasure of playing. Carl explained that practically none of its members had ever taken a music lesson, none of them knew anything about the theory of music.
“They’ve just got instinct and rhythm—and, well, what else do they need?” he ended with a smile.
Mimi had never known that anything like this existed before. Over it all there was a primitive note, a freedom from inhibitions that gave grace and ecstasy to the dancers and the musicians. It exhilarated one and made him forget the stuffiness and dimness of the hall and the sometimes fetid smells which arose as the dance went on. She knew that here was something original—she could not explain it nor could she tell how or why she felt that here was a vital and living thing. She only knew it had a vibrant, warming quality, and that was enough.
“Remember Dunbar’s lines?” Carl asked. Without waiting for a reply he recited them softly:
“Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced that flo’ frum side to middle.
Throwed away his crutch an’ hopped it, what’s rheumatics ’gainst a fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los’ his grace,
Had to take bofe feet an’ hold ’em, so’s to keep ’em in deir place,
An’ de Christuns an’ de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo’,
Dat I don’t see how dey’s pahted ef de trump had chonced to blow.”
She smiled appreciatively at the quotation.
“It does just that to you,” she remarked. “I’m seeing better every day just what you mean.” …
It was not chance that caused Mrs. Plummer and Mrs. King to see Mimi and Carl as they left the hall. Always they took a shortcut homewards from prayer meeting which carried them past the two-storied brick building which housed on its top floor the hall.
“Look there, Mis’ King!” whispered Mrs. Plummer. “Ain’t that that Day-quinn girl with that Carl Hunter coming outa that joint?”
“It’s her, sho’s you born,” Mrs. King assured her. “I told you she’d bear watching. Playing off respectable and going in such places—”
“That’s just what I say,” eagerly put in Mrs. Plummer, determined that her friend should not get ahead of her in the discovery made by her own sharp eyes. “An’ her ma’s such a good woman—though they tell me she ain’t her own ma, only her step-ma. But you remember I tol’ you befo’ they come here you couldn’t depen’ on these here Cath’lics—I’m a good Methodist and I ain’t got much use for Baptists but they’re regular Christians, anyhow—” Mrs. Plummer shook with quick breaths, the combined result of her eagerness and the speed at which Mrs. King was hurrying down the street so that she could keep the couple ahead within sight.
“That girl’s headed straight for trouble—carrying on like that!” Mrs. King affirmed. “Hurry up, can’t you? I want to see where they’re going now!”
“Ain’t I hurryin’ as fast’s I can?” Mrs. Plummer grumbled. “And ain’t I as anxious as you to follow ’em? Oh! They’ve gone in her house,” she complained, a note that closely approximated disappointment in her tone. The chagrin was deepened a minute later when she saw Carl leave and turn down the street towards his own home. …
It was Hilda who first told Mimi of the talk that was being spread about her and Carl. Mrs. Daquin had heard it, too, and had spoken to Jean about it, demanding that he forbid Mimi from seeing Carl again. This Jean had hesitated about doing. He trusted Mimi implicitly and he was fond of Carl. He had liked him ever since the day on which Mr. Hunter had confided in Jean his disappointment at Carl’s failure to show a keener interest in the insurance business.
With Hilda it had been different. When the story put into circulation by the Mesdames Plummer and King had first come to her, she had undergone a variety of emotions. First was indignation against those who dared say anything against Mimi. She resented, too, any disparagement of Carl for whom her affection, unexpressed though it yet remained, had grown instead of
