It seemed to her that this was sound—that what had been true in the ’60’s was doubtless true sixty years later. War had become the great objective of all peoples of the Western world, their religion had become the religion of brute strength instead of the doctrines of peace and decent treatment of all others. Arrogant, intolerant, impervious to new ideas unless they be ideas for greater destructiveness in time of war.
Her gloomy thoughts made her shiver though the bitter cold outside was fully overcome by the roaring fire in the wide fireplace. I am becoming moody again, she decided, seeing things and imagining all sorts of horrible things. But she could not shake off her feeling, for her mind had seen too clearly the things which lay back of her own discontent and the restlessness of the life around her.
As she left the window and moved towards the fire, the telephone sent tiny shivers of sound through the quietness of the house. It was Jimmie. “Terribly sorry, dear, but Horace and I’ve got to go to Chicago on the Century this afternoon. Throw a few things in a bag like a good girl and give it to the boy I’m sending up. Bert Bellamy happened to be in the office and I asked him to take you to the theatre tonight—hope that’s all right with you. If it isn’t, you can tell him you’ve got a headache or something. Sorry, got to rush along now—got loads of work before I leave. Take care of yourself—I’ll be back in three or four days. …”
He was gone before she had a chance to say much. She was annoyed that he without consulting her had delegated Bert to go to the theatre in his place. She was rather glad, however, to have the house to herself for a few days. Jimmie was a dear but he was frightfully boisterous and uncouth and boring at times. And he annoyed her with his smug little prejudices. He didn’t like Jews or Japanese or Italians or any other group that wasn’t his own. She remembered his patronizing sneer at the Jews the night before as they drove to the Crosbys’. There were certain classes of Jews she preferred not coming into contact with just as there were classes of Negroes and classes of white people she very much sought a dear have the home his place to avoid. I’m probably a snobbish creature myself, she admitted, but at least it seems to me that the only people on earth who are not afraid of intellect are the Jews. …
Wearied with her gloomy mental peregrinations and her perfervid seeking into the causes of her own restlessness, she ate an early luncheon and, wrapping herself warmly in her furs, set off with free swinging strides up the Avenue, exulting in the sweeping, stinging wind which rushed down the canyon formed by the towering buildings. As she hurried along, little circles of carmine took shape in her cheeks from the lash of the wind, growing redder and redder until it almost matched the bits of hair which peeped from underneath the close-fitting toque of vivid green. I do wish, she thought as she abandoned her thoughts of the morning in the joy of the battle with the stinging wind, I had been so constituted that I did not feel things so much, that I did not have the capacity for suffering as I do. But then, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy things so much, so I suppose it all balances up in the end. …
For two and a half hours Mimi and Bert sat through a show in which slightly aged jokes and chorus girls suffering from the same malady sought to keep alive a tenuous plot. Bert started humming an improvised verse to an old tune which sounded like “Just another good show gone wrong,” until a purposeful-looking woman in front of them turned and glared at him through an imposing pair of lorgnettes. Whereupon he subsided into abashed silence. But not for long, for he soon was whispering to Mimi that “the only good spots in the show are the dirty ones,” furnished as they were by a Jewish comedian in blackface. “If they’d only lower their voices a bit we could all take a nap and thus the evening wouldn’t be entirely wasted,” was Bert’s comment along towards the middle of the last act. And Mimi was thinking that this was just the sort of show Jimmie would choose and enjoy.
Outside, the snow had ceased falling. Hurrying crowds flowed towards the subway and elevated, pouring in seemingly endless floods from countless theatres.
“What next?” Bert asked as he sought to shelter her from the rushing throng.
“I’ll tell you—I want to see a Negro cabaret in Harlem. I’ve hinted to Jimmie but he had never offered to take me. Though he seems to know a lot about them himself—” she thought, leaving the last sentence unuttered.
Bert hailed a taxi and they were on their way. Mimi wondered just why she had suggested Harlem. It had been nearly ten years since she had been north of 125th Street—she wondered if she would meet any of the people she had known there years before. The vogue of Negro shows on Broadway, Shuffle Along, Runnin’ Wild and others, the popularity of Miller and Lyles and of Florence Mills, had not touched her directly. She suddenly realized that she had stayed away from them for fear she would meet some of her former friends or acquaintances and thereby suffer possibly embarrassing situations in explaining to Jimmie why she knew these people. She laughed at herself for a silly little goose as she leaned comfortably back in the warm cab—she had long since been forgotten in the ever-changing life of
