All the evening she danced, danced with a lightness and ease that brought young men in droves to the box when she rested there between dances. Her feet seemed endowed with wings, for she moved over the floor without conscious effort. And the music! She had heard of Ford Dabney, had been told of the way in which his orchestra could play. But she had never dreamed that any human beings could entice from inanimate objects such intoxicating, inspiriting music. Once, and once only, was she able to sit in the box and watch the dancers.
“It’s a pretty sight,” her aunt said to her.
“Pretty? That isn’t the word for it!” she enthusiastically declared.
It was a waltz. Faces of all colours, peeping from gowns of all shades ranging from delicate pinks and blues and lavenders to gorgeously passionate reds. There were faces of a mahogany brownness which shaded into the blackness of crisply curled hair. There were some of a blackness that shone like rich bits of velvet. There were others whose skins seemed as though made of expertly tanned leather with the creaminess of old vellum, topped by shining hair, blacker than “a thousand midnights, down in a cypress swamp.” And there were those with ivory-white complexions, rare old ivory that time had mellowed with gentle touch. To Mimi the most alluring of all were the women who were neither dark nor light, as many of them were, but those of that indefinable blend of brown and red, giving a richness that was reminiscent of the Creoles of her own New Orleans.
“Look at that girl over there, Aunt Sophie the one with that marvellous black hair and that brownish red skin—the Spanish-looking one with the dress of cornflower blue. There is my ideal of beauty—no sallow, colourless type but the warmth of a thousand Caribbean suns is in her face.”
Mrs. Rogers laughed easily.
“No—you’re right, there is no colourlessness there—but those you see who are so fair they can pass can get ahead lots faster than those with lots of colour. Do you see that girl who looks like white—the one with the black dress covered with passementeries? She works down town in one of the most exclusive shops in New York. She’s a forewoman and makes more money than three-fourths of the men in Harlem.”
“What’s she doing up here?” Mimi asked. “Isn’t she afraid she’ll be seen or that some coloured person will go down and tell she’s a Negro?”
“Nobody’s told on her yet—and when she’s through with her work she comes back to Harlem. She’s got mighty little use for white people—hates them—she was born in Georgia and her brother was lynched when he beat up a white man in a quarrel.”
“Who’s the fellow over there the one with the black hair who looks like a Japanese?” Mimi queried, now thoroughly interested. She scanned the flaming chequer-board of colour, picking out the ones who interested her.
“Where is he? Oh, that’s Tod James—he’s assistant cashier of a bank down in the financial district. He’s married white but ever so often the call of Harlem is too great and he bobs up here again. He’s had an amazing career—born in Texas, was mixed up in two or three revolutions in Mexico and South America, has travelled all over the world, made and lost three or four fortunes, and now has settled down to a comfortable, placid existence in Wall Street.”
“Does his wife know he’s coloured?”
“That’s she dancing down there with the slender brown chap—looks like she knows what he is. And she was born in Tennessee but had sense enough not to stay there.”
“And who’s the flashily dressed fellow standing there looking on?”
“I don’t know his name but he runs a club where they have entertainers and music for dancing—they call them cabarets. You’ll find all sorts of people here—it’s a pay dance and anybody who’s got the price can get in. There are women who are being kept and men who live the same way, doctors and lawyers, and about every class in the world represented here.”
Mimi felt a thrill of adventure run through her. Perhaps she had brushed against some of these fearful characters and it made her tingle with adventure.
“Goodness, haven’t they any lines they draw?” she wanted to know.
“Strictest in the world—you’ve noticed you’ve been asked to dance only by folks you know and who move with our set.”
Mimi laughed.
“I don’t know about that. See that nice-looking chap over there in that box? I’ve never seen him before and he asked me if I wanted to dance with him.”
Mrs. Rogers peered in the direction of Mimi’s nod.
“No, you haven’t seen him,” she told Mimi grimly, when she had located him. “He’s probably one of the most notorious gamblers in New York—has never been known to do a lick of work. I told you you’d see all sorts of people here, didn’t I?”
The music began again and there was a wild rush to the dance floor. Mimi sat and watched the kaleidoscopic scene, brilliant, colourful, fascinating. New York is the only place on earth where such a crowd could be got together, she mused. Like one body the crowd on the huge, densely packed floor swayed and moved with an easy grace, laughing, carefree, exuberant. There was a natural spontaneity to the movement, a rhythmic unity that gave Mimi the impression that the dancers had been rehearsed with great pains by an expert maître de danse. They moved with graceful animation, with a decorous but fascinating abandon. Her aunt was speaking.
“It’s lucky for the Negro he was given the ability to forget—there are at least a dozen people down there I’ve recognized who probably don’t know where they’ll get money enough to pay their rent. Yet there’s not a
