Jean looked up from his plate and stared hard but in not unfriendly fashion at Mimi. He answered his wife’s question without looking at her.
“Yes, Mary, I heard her. What about it, Mimi?”
“Carl did take me to the dance, papa. I wanted to see some of these new dances, hear the music, see a side of life among coloured people I had never seen before. We went there, we stayed awhile, and then Carl brought me home. Do you see anything wrong in that, papa Jean?” Mimi ended calmly.
Before Jean could reply his wife burst in upon the conversation, able no longer to restrain her anger.
“Wrong in it? Mimi, haven’t you any sense of decency at all? Even if you didn’t do anything but what you said, think of what the neighbours will say! Think of what—”
“I told my father, Mrs. Daquin, what took place, and I’m not in the habit of lying to him,” Mimi with cold fury, her eyes flaming with suppressed anger, said. “Furthermore, I resent your words ‘even if you didn’t do anything but what you said.’ ”
The two women glared at each other across the table. But Mrs. Daquin’s anger was beyond the heeding of the danger signs in Mimi’s eyes.
“Young woman, you can’t—”
“Mary, keep quiet!” Jean half rose from the table, his hands pressed against it with such force all the blood had fled from his knuckles. “Mimi has told me what happened and that’s enough.”
Jean’s voice held a note which even Mary in her anger could not help but respect and fear.
“But, Jean dear,” she pleaded, her tone changing miraculously, “I’m only thinking of our good name—”
“Damn your good name!” the unfamiliar Jean snapped. “I’m sick and tired of your petty bickering with these little folks you’re so mad about—these busybodies so worried keeping track of other people and meddling into their affairs. As for this present matter, I want it stopped right here. Whether Mimi acted right or not, she’s told us what’s happened and that’s enough of it. Do you hear me?”
It was a long speech for Jean and it was not often that he permitted himself to become so angry: He did not know it but it gave him the opportunity of expressing his opinion of these aliens, so different to those of his own New Orleans whom he missed more and more. And his nostalgia was none the less potent and painful because he knew that even had he remained in New Orleans he would not have been happy. Just as when a man dies, his good traits or those good traits given him by popular belief are magnified after his death and his faults are minimized until they disappear altogether, so Jean remembered as the years passed only the beauties of New Orleans and he forgot the changes which had been so largely instrumental in persuading him to move to Atlanta.
But, though calmed, the fire of Mrs. Daquin’s wrath, hotly burning because she feared any scandal might jeopardize her own social position, was too great to be quenched even by Jean’s outburst.
“All I’ve got to say then, Jean, if that’s all the thanks I get for trying to keep our name clean, is that Mimi had better not see Carl Hunter again, even if he’s the son of my best friend.”
Jean was about to speak again angrily, when Mimi stopped him.
“Neither of you need worry about that—Carl and I won’t see each other again.”
Both Jean and his wife looked inquiringly at Mimi and waited for an explanation but none was forthcoming. But Mrs. Daquin concluded at this unexpected acquiescence that there was more to the incident than appeared on the surface. She privately concluded that Mimi had effectually hoodwinked Jean and that it was fear and guilt which made Mimi so readily consent to the breaking off of the friendship with Carl …
Her interview with Carl was not so easy as Mimi had supposed it would be. He came readily enough when she sent for him. He supposed she wanted to discuss with him the talk which had come to his ears, too. A look of amazement came over his face as she quietly told him of her resolve, followed by an expression that was almost dismay when she guardedly told him of Hilda’s affection for him.
“She likes you, Carl,” Mimi ended, “and she’s been thinking all summer that I, her best friend, have been trying to vamp you away from her. She knows now, though, there’s nothing between us. So for her sake and since this talk’s been started, we’d better see less of each other.” She added, almost as an afterthought: “I do hate, though, the satisfaction we’ll give these old tabbies.”
“But, Mimi,” Carl protested, his face eloquent of the pain within, “Hilda’s an awfully nice kid and I’m fond of her just as I’m fond of my own sister, Mildred. And I’d like to know who saw us at that dance so I could take one good punch at them!” he added with bitterness.
“It wouldn’t do any good—they’d be sure then we’d done something terrible,” she counselled.
“Just now, Mimi, you said there’s nothing between us. I haven’t thought of you that way, Mimi, but—but—” he stammered, trying to take her hand.
“Don’t be silly, Carl,” Mimi laughed, moving away from him. She felt a sense of guilt, of disloyalty to Hilda that she had phrased it so crudely. As Carl repeated her words she was ashamed of them—they sounded almost as though she had uttered them in the hope of a denial from Carl. “We’ve had a good time together and I’ve learned a lot and I’m grateful. You’ve given me a faith in my own people that I have never had before. Before I came to Atlanta I never thought much about ‘white people’
