THE SLEEPER WAKES -- HARLEM RENAISSANCE STORIES BY WOMEN

Double Trouble
JESSIE REDMON FAUSET

I

Angelique came walking delicately down Cedarwood Street. You could see by the way she advanced, a way which fell just short of dancing that she was feeling to the utmost the pleasant combination of her youth, the weather and the season. Angelique was seventeen, the day was perfect and the year was at the spring.

Just before Cedarwood crosses Tenth, she stopped, her nice face crinkling with amusement and untied and retied the ribbon which fastened her trim oxford. Before she had finished this ritual Malory Fordham turned the corner and asked rather sternly if he might not perform the task. "Allow me to tie it for you," he had said with unrelieved formality.

"Sure I'll allow you." Angelique was never shy with those whom she liked. She replaced the subtler arts of the coquette with a forthrightness which might have proved her undoing with another boy. But not with Malory Fordham. Shy, pensive, and enveloped by the aura of malaise which so mysteriously and perpetually hung over his household, he found Angelique's manner a source both of attraction and wonder. To him she was a radiant, generous storehouse of light and warmth which constantly renewed his chilled young soul.

"We're in luck this afternoon," said Angelique resuming her happy gait.  "Sometimes I have to tie my shoes a dozen times.  Once I took one shoe off and shook it and shook it, trying to get rid of make believe dust.  I was glad you didn't turn up just then for I happened to look across the street and there was cousin Laurentine walking, you know that stiff poker-like way she goes --"  Angelique bubbling with merriment imitated it -- "I know she was disgusted seeing me like 'my son John, one shoe off and one shoe on.'"

"It's a wonder she didn't take you home," said Malory, admiring her.

"Oh, no! Cousin Laurentine wouldn't be seen walking up the street with me! She doesn't like me. Funny isn't it? But you know what's funnier still, Malory, not many folks around here do like me. Strange, don't you think, and living all my life almost in this little place? I never knew what it was to be really liked before you came, except for Aunt Sal. I say to myself lots of times: 'Well, anyway, Malory likes me,' and then I'm completely happy."

"I'm glad of that," Malory told her, flushing. He was darker than Angelique, for his father and mother had both been brown- skinned mulattoes, with a trace of Indian on his mother's side. Angelique's mother, whom she rarely saw, was a mulatto, too, but a very light one, quite yellow, and though she could not remember her father, she had in her mind's eye a concept of him which made him only the least shade darker than her mother. He had to be darker, for Angelique always associated masculinity with a dark complexion. She did not like to see men fairer than their wives.

Malory dwelt for several moments on Angelique's last remark. You could see him patiently turning the idea over and over. His high, rather narrow, forehead contracted, his almond, liquid eyes narrowed. His was a type which in any country but America would have commanded immediate and admiring attention. As it was even in Edendale he received many a spontaneous, if surreptitious, glance of approval.

He evolved an answer. "I don't know but you're right, Angelique. I think I must have been home six months before I met you, though I knew your name. I seem to have known your name a long time," he said musing slowly over some evasive idea. "But I never saw you, I guess, until that night when Evie Thompson's mother introduced us at Evie's party. I remember old Mrs. Rossiter seemed so queer. She said --"

"Yes, I know," Angelique interrupted, mimicking, "Oh, Miz Thompson, you didn't ever introduce them! That," concluded the girl with her usual forthrightness, "was because she wanted you to meet her Rosie -- such a name Rosie Rossiter! -- and have you dance attendance on her all evening!"

Fordham blushed again. "I don't know about that. Anyhow, what I was going to say was if I were you I wouldn't bother if the folks around here didn't like me. They don't like me either."

"No, I don't think they do very much. And yet it's different." Angelique explained puzzling out something. "They may not like you probably because you've lived away from home so long, but they're willing to go with you. Now I think it's the other way around with me. They sort of like me, lots of the girls at times have liked me a great deal, new girls especially. But they shy away after a time. When Evie Thompson first came to this town she liked me better than she did anyone else. I know she did. But after her mother gave that big party she acted different. She has never had me at a real party since and you know she entertains a lot -- you're always there. Yet she's forever asking me over to her house, when she hasn't company and then she's just as nice and her mother is always too sweet."

They were nearing the corner where they always parted. Cousin Laurentine did not allow Angelique to have beaux. "Perhaps they're jealous," Malory proposed as a last solution.

The girl's nice, round face clouded. She was not pretty but she bore about her an indefinable atmosphere of niceness, of freshness and innocence. "Jealous of the boys, you mean?" She bit her full red lip. "No, it's not that, none of the boys ever treats me very nicely, none of them ever has except you and Asshur Judson."

"Asshur Judson!" Malory echoed in some surprise. "You mean that tall, rough, farmer fellow? I'd have thought he'd be the last fellow in the world to know how to treat a nice girl like you."

"Mmh. He does, he did. You know the boys most of them" -- for the first time Fordham saw her shy, wistful -- "when I say they're not nice I mean they are usually too nice. They try to kiss me, put their arms around me. Sometimes when I used to go skating I'd have horrid things happen. They'd tease the other girls, too, but with me they're different. They act as though it didn't matter how they treated me. Maybe it's because my father's dead."

"Perhaps," Malory acquiesced doubtfully, but he was completely bewildered. "And you say Asshur Judson was polite?"

"I'd forgotten Asshur. You didn't know him well, I think he came while you were in Philadelphia and he went away right after you came back. We'd been skating everyday. I wasn't with anyone, just down there in the crowd, and I struck off all alone. Bye and bye who should come racing after me but Asshur. I looked back and saw him and went on harder than ever. Of course he caught up to me, and when he did he took me right in his arms and held me tight. I struggled and fought so that I knew he understood I didn't like it, so he let me go. And then that hateful Harry Robbins came up and said: 'Don't you mind her, Jud, she's just pretending, she'll come around!'" Her voice shook with the shame of it.

"And then?" Malory prompted her fiercely.

"I heard Judson say just as mad, 'What the deuce you talking about Robbins?'"

Malory failed to see any extraordinary exhibition of politeness in that.

"Oh, but afterwards! You know my Cousin Laurentine doesn't allow me to have company. Of course he didn't know that, and that night he came to the house. Cousin Laurentine let him in and I heard her say: 'Yes, Angelique is in but she doesn't have callers.' And he answered: 'But I must see her, Miss Fletcher, I must explain something.' His voice sounded all funny and different. So I came running down stairs and asked him what he wanted.

"It was all so queer, Malory. He came over to me past Cousin Laurentine standing at the door like a dragon and he took both my hands, sort of frightened me. He said: 'You kid, you decent little kid! Treat'em all like you treated me this afternoon, and try to forgive me. If you see me a thousand times you'll never have to complain of me again.' And he went."

"Funny," was Malory's comment. "Didn't he say anything more?"

"No, just went and I've got to go. Got to memorize a lot of old Shakespeare for tomorrow. Silly stuff from Macbeth. 'Double, double, toil and trouble.' Bye Malory."

"Good-bye," he echoed, turning in the direction of his home where his mother and his three plain older sisters awaited him. On his way he captured the idea which had earlier eluded him. He remembered speaking once before he had met her, of Angelique Murray to his old subdued household and of receiving a momentary impression of shock, of horror even, passing over his mother's face. He looked at his sisters and received the same impression. He looked at all four women again and saw nothing, just nothing, utter blankness, out of which came the voice of Gracie, his hostile middle sister. "Good heavens, Malory! Don't tell me that you know that Angelique Murray. I won't have you meeting her. She is ordinary, her whole family is the last thing in ordinariness. Now mind if you meet her, you let her alone."

At the time he had acquiesced, deeming this one of the thousand queer phases of his household with which he was striving so hard to become reacquainted. He had been a very little boy when he had been taken so hurriedly to live in Philadelphia, but his memory had painted them all so different.

In spite of his sister's warning Angelique's brightness when he met her, her frankness, her merriment proved too much for him. She was like an unfamiliar but perfectly recognizable part of himself. Pretty soon he was fathoms deep in love. But because he was a boy of practically no ingenuities but mechanical ones he could hit on nothing better than walking home from school with her. She was the one picture in the daily book of his life, and having seen her he retired home each day like Browning's lovers to think up a scheme which would enable him sometime to tear it out for himself.

Angelique, hastening on flying feet, hoped that Cousin Laurentine would be out when she reached home. She could manage Laurentine's mother, Aunt Sal, even when she was as late as she was today. But before she entered the house she realized that for tonight at least she would be free from her cousin's hateful and scornful espionage. For peeping through the window which gave from the front room on to the porch she was able to make out against the soft inner gloom the cameo-like features of the Misses Courtney, the two young white women who came so often to see Aunt Sal and Laurentine. They were ladies of indubitable breeding and refinement, but for all their culture and elegance they could not eclipse Laurentine whose eyes shone as serene, whose forehead rose as smooth and classical as did their own. The only difference lay in their coloring. The Misses Courtney's skin shone as white as alabaster, their eyes lay, blue cornflowers, in that lake of dazzling purity. But Laurentine was crimson and gold like the flesh of the mango, her eyes were dark emeralds. Her proud head glowed like an amber carving rising from the green perfection of her dress. She was a replica of the Courtney sisters startlingly vivified. Angelique, on her way to the kitchen, poising on noiseless feet in the outside hall, experienced anew her thrill at the shocking resemblance between the two white women and the colored one; a resemblance which missed completely the contribution of white Mrs. Courtney and black Aunt Sal, and took into account only the remarkable beauty of Ralph Courtney, the father of all three of these women.

Aunt Sal in the background of the picture was studying with her customary unwavering glance the three striking figures. The Misses Courtney had travelled in Europe, they spoke French fluently. But Laurentine had travelled in the West Indes and spoke Spanish. When the time came for the Misses Courtney to go, they would kiss Laurentine lightly on both cheeks, they would murmur: "Good-bye, Sister," and would trail off leaving behind them the unmistakable aura of their loyal, persistent, melancholic determination to atone for their father's ancient wrong. And Laurentine, beautiful, saffron creature, would rise and gaze after them, enveloped in a sombre evanescent triumph.

But afterwards!

Up in her room Angelique envisaged the reaction which inevitably befell her cousin after the departure of these visitors. For the next three weeks Laurentine would be more than ever hateful, proud, jealous, scornful, intractable. The older woman, the young girl shrewdly guessed, was jealous of her; jealous of her unblemished parentage, ofher right to race pride, of her very youth, though her own age could not be more than twenty-eight. "Poor Cousin Laurentine," the child thought, "as though she could help her father's being white. Anything was liable to happen in those old slavery times. I must try to be nicer to her."

When later she opened the door to her cousin's tap her determination was put to a severe test, for Laurentine was in one of her nastiest moods. "Here is another one of those letters," she said bitingly, "from that young ruffian who pushed his way past me that night. If I had my way, I'd burn up every one of them. I can't think how you manage to attract such associates. It will be the best thing in the world for all of us when your mother sends for you."

Angelique took Asshur's letter somewhat sullenly, though she knew the feeling which her cousin's outburst concealed. In that household of three women this young girl was the only one who could be said to receive mail. Even hers was, until very lately, almost negligible -- a note or two from a proudly travelling schoolmate, some directions for making candy from Evie Thompson or from the girl who at that moment was espousing her inexplicable cause, a card or so from a boy, and now this constant stream of letters from Asshur Judson. As she opened these last or sat down to answer them in the shaded green glow of the dining-room, she had seen Cousin Laurentine's face pale with envy under the saffron satin of her skin.

Laurentine received letters and cards from the Misses Courtney when they were abroad -- a few bills -- she made rather a practice of having charge accounts -- and an occasional note from the white summer transient expressing the writer's pleasure with "that last dress you made me." Once the young divinity student who, while the pastor was on his vacation, took over the services of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, sent her a post card from Niagara Falls. Laurentine exhibited a strange negligence with regard to this card, it was always to be found in the litter of the sewing table. "Oh," she would say casually to the customer whom she was fitting, "that's a card from Mr. Deaver who substituted here last summer. Yes, he does seem to be a fine young man."

Angelique did not at once open Asshur's letter. She had too many lessons to get. Besides she knew what it would contain, his constant and unvarying injunction "to be good, to be decent" coupled with an account of his latest success in some branch of scientific agriculture; he was an enthusiastic farmer. She liked to hear from him, but she wished his interests were broader. Laying the letter aside unregretfully she fell to memorizing the witches' speech in Macbeth and then in her little English Handbook under the chapter on "The Drama-Greek Tragedy," she made a brief but interested foray among the peculiarities of the ancient stage. Reading of Greek masks, buskins and "unities" she forgot all about Asshur's letter until as usual Aunt Sal put her fine dark head in the door and told her in mild but unanswerable tones that it was "most nigh bedtime."

She jumped up then and began to undress. But first she read the letter. Just as she thought it began like all his former letters, and would probably end the same. No, here was something different. Asshur had written:

"My father says I'm making great headway, and so does Mr. Ellis, the man on whose farm I'm experimenting. Next year I'll be twenty-one and father's going to let me work a small farm he owns right up here in northern New Jersey. But first I'm coming for you. Only you must keep good and straight like you were when I first met you. You darn spunky little kid. Mind, you be good, you be decent. I'm sure coming for you."

It was a queer love-letter. "So you'll come for me," said Angelique to her image in the glass. She shook out her short, black, rather wiry hair till it misted like a cloud about her childishly round face. "How do you know I'll go with you? I may find someone I like ten times better." Dimpling and smiling she imitated Malory's formality: "May I tie your shoe for you?"

All night she dreamed she was chasing Malory Fordham. Was it a game? If so, why did he so doggedly elude her? Then when, laughing, she had overtaken him, why did he turn on her with round gaping mouth and horrid staring eyes that transformed him into a Greek tragic mask? Through open, livid lips came whistling strange words, terrible phrases whose import at first she could not grasp. When she did she threw her arm across her face with a fearful cry and fell back convulsed and shuddering into the arms of a dark, muffled figure whose features she fought vainly to discover.

II

Edendale, like many another Jersey town, as well as all Gaul, was divided into three parts. In one section, the prettiest from a natural point of view, lived Italians, Polacks and Hungarians who had drifted in as laborers. In another section, elegant and cultivated, dwelt a wealthy and leisure class of white men of affairs, commuters, having big business interests in Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark and even New York. Occupying the traditional middle ground were Jews, small tradesmen, country lawyers and a large group of colored people ranging in profession from Phil Baltimore, successful ash-contractor to the equally successful physician, Dr. Thompson. This last group was rather closely connected with the wealthy white group, having in far preceding generations, dwelt with them as slaves or more recently as house servants. Sometimes, as in the case of Aunt Sal, Fletcher and the Courtneys, who following the Civil War had drifted into Jersey from Delaware, they had served in both capacities.

Malory and Angelique came to know the foreign quarters well. Here on the old Hopewell Road, beginning nowhere and going nowhither, they were surest of escaping the eye of a too vigilant colored townsman as well as that of the occasional white customer for whom the girl's cousin sewed. Malory was in no danger from a possibility like this last, for the Fordhams on the maternal side had been small but independent householders for nearly a century. Even now Mrs. Fordham lived on a small income which came partly from her father's legacy, partly from the sale of produce from a really good truck-farm. Her husband had showed a tendency to dissipate this income, but he had died before he had crippled it too sorely. Malory was determined to have more money when he grew older, money which he would obtain by his own methods. He never meant to ask his family for anything. The thought of a possible controversy with the invincible Gracie turned him sick.

He would be an engineer, how or where he did not know. But there would be plenty of money for him and Angelique. Already all his dreams included Angelique. He had not told her but he loved her fervently with an ardor excelling ordinary passion, for his included gratitude, a rapt consciousness of the miracle which daily she wrought for him in the business of living. She was so vivid, so joyous, so generous, so much what he would wish to be , hat almost it was as though she were his very self. Every day he warmed his hands at that fire which she alone could create for him.

He it was who fought so keenly against the clandestine nature of their meetings. Not so Angelique. This child, so soon, so tragically to be transformed into a woman, was still a romantic dreaming girl. Half the joy of this new experience lay in its secrecy. This was fun, great fun, to run counter to imperious, unhappy Laurentine, to know that while her cousin endured the condescending visit of the son of the ash-contractor in the hope that some day, somehow she might receive the son of the colored physician, she herself was the eagerly and respectfully chosen of the son of the first colored family in the county. This was nectar and ambrosia, their taste enhanced by secrecy.

But Malory hated it. He had not told his family about the girl because clearly for some fool reason they were prejudiced against her, and as for Angelique's family -- no males allowed. Hence this impasse. But he wanted like many another fond lover to acquaint others with his treasure, to show off not only this unparalleled gem, but himself too. For in her presence he himself shone, he became witty, his shyness vanished. The Methodist Sunday School picnic was to be held the first week in June. His sisters never went; proud Laurentine would not think of attending. He told Angelique that he would take her.

"Wonderful!" she breathed. She had a white dress with red ribbons.

They met on that memorable day, rather late. Laurentine could not keep Angelique from attending the picnic, but she could make her late; she could make her feel the exquisite torture which envelops a young girl who has to enter alone and unattended the presence of a crowd of watchful acquaintances. Angelique, inwardly unperturbed, -- she knew Malory would wait for her forever, -- outwardly greatly chafing, enjoyed her cousin's barely concealed satisfaction at her pretended discomfiture. With a blithe indifference she went from task to task, from chore to chore. "Greek tragedy," she whispered gaily into the ear of Marcus, an adored black kitten.

Malory did not mind her lateness. Indeed he was glad of it. So much the more conspicuous their entrance to the grounds. As it chanced, practically the whole party was in or around the large pavilion grouped there to receive instructions from Mrs. Evie Thompson who had charge of the picnic. A great church worker, Mrs. Evie. When the two arrived, the place was in an uproar, Mrs. Evie balanced perilously on a stool tried to out-talk the noise. Presently she realized that her voice was unnecessarily loud, the sea of black, yellow, and of white faces had ebbed into quiet but not because of her. Malory, just outside the wide entrance, in the act of helping Angelique up the rustic steps, caught that same fleeting shadow of horror and dismay, that shadow which he had marked on the faces of his household, rippling like a wave over the faces of the crowd, touching for a second Mrs. Thompson's face and vanishing. Appalled, bewildered, he stood still.

Mrs. Thompson rushed to them. "You just happened to meet Angelique, Malory? You -- you didn't bring her?" Her voice was low but anxious.

"Of course I brought her," he replied testily. What possessed these staring people? "Why shouldn't I bring her?"

"Why not indeed?" soothed Mrs. Thompson. She herself came from a "best family" in some nearby city. "It's such luck that's all. I was wishing for Angelique. She's such a help at a time like this, so skillful. I want her to help me cut sandwiches."

Malory, rather sulkily accepting this, allowed his guest to be spirited away to exercise this skill. The crowd, drawing a vast, multi-throated breath,dispersed. Mrs. Thompson was anything but skillful herself. In the course of the afternoon she cut her assistant's hand. "I don't anticipate any infection," she remarked, peering at the small wound with an oddly unrepentant air, but you'd better come home with me and let Doctor dress it. Sorry I can't invite you too, Malory, but there's hardly room in the buggy for four. Evie and I are both fat."

Malory passed a night of angry sleeplessness. "I don't know what to think of these people," he told Angelique when they met the next day. "Do you know what I want you to do? You come home with me now and meet my mother and sisters. When they get to know you, they'll like you too, and I know they can make these others step around." It was the first time he had betrayed any consciousness of the Fordham social standing.

Angelique, nothing loth, agreed with him. She too had thought Mrs. Thompson extraordinary the day before, but she had not seen as Malory had the strange shadowy expression of horror. And in any case would have had no former memory to emphasize it.

The two moved joyously up the tree-lined street, Malory experiencing his usual happy reaction to Angelique's buoyancy. Nothing would ever completely destroy her gay equanimity he thought, feeling his troubled young spirit relax. There was no one like her he knew. His people, even Gracie, must love her. He was living at this time in the last years of the nineties, and so was given to much reading of Tennyson. Angelique made him think of the Miller's daughter, who had "grown so dear, so dear." What of life and youth and cheerfulness would she not introduce into his drab household, musty with old memories, inexplicably tainted with the dessication of some ancient imperishable grief!

At the corner of the street he took her arm. They would march into the house bravely and he would say, "Mother, this is Angelique whom I love. I want you to love her too; you will when you know her." He perceived as he opened the gate that Angelique was nervous, frightened. Timidity was in her such an unusual thing that he felt a new wave of tenderness rising within him. On the porch just before he touched the knob of the screen door he laid his hand on hers.

"Don't be frightened," he murmured.

"Look," she returned faintly.

He spun about and saw pressed against the window-pane a face, the small, brown face of his sister Gracie. In the background above her shoulder hovered the head of the oldest girl Reba, her body so completely hidden behind Gracie's that for a second, it seemed to him fantastically, her head swung suspended in space. But only for a second did he think this, so immediately was his attention drawn, riveted to the look of horror, of hatred, of pity which was frozen, seared on the faces of his sisters.

"For God's sake, what is it?" he cried.

Gracie's hands made a slight outward movement toward Angelique, a warding off motion of faintness and disgust such as one might make involuntarily towards a snake.

"I'm going in; come Angelique," the boy said in exasperation. "Has the whole world gone crazy?"

Before he could open the door Reba appeared, that expression still on her face, like a fine veil blurring out her features. Would it remain there forever he wondered.

"You can't bring her in Malory, you musn't."

"Why musn't I? What are you talking about?" Strange oaths rose to his lips. "What's the matter with her?" He started to pull the door from his sister's grasp when Gracie came, pushed the door open and stepped out on the porch beside him.

"Oh Malory you must send her away! Come in and I'll tell you." She burst into tears.

Gracie his tyrant, his arch-enemy weeping! That startled him far more than that inexplicable look. The foundations of the world were tottering. He turned to his trembling companion. "Go home, Angel," he bade her tenderly. "Meet me tomorrow and we'll fix all this up." He watched her waver down the porch-steps then turned to his sisters:

"Now girls?"

Together they got him into the house and told him.

III

Angelique said to herself, "I'll ask Aunt Sal, -- Cousin Laurentine, -- but what could they know about it? No I'll wait for Malory. Can I have the leprosy I wonder?" She went home, stripped and peered a long time in the mirror at her delicate, yellow body.

Next afternoon near the corner of Cedarwood and Tenth she untied and retied her shoes twenty times. Malory did not come. She shook out bushels of imaginary dust. He had not come, was never coming.

At the end of an hour she went to the corner and peered down Tenth Street. Yes -- no -- yes it was he coming slowly, slowly down the steps of the Boys' High School. Perhaps he was sick; when he saw her, he would be better.... He did not look in her direction; without so much as turning his head he came down the steps and started due west. Cedarwood Street lay east.

Without a second's hesitation she followed him. He was turning now out of Tenth north on Wheaton Avenue. After all you could go this way to the old Hopewell Road. Perhaps he had meant for her to meet him there. A block behind him, she saw him turn from Wheaton into the narrow footpath that later broadened into Hopewell Road. Yes, that was what he meant. She began to run then feeling something vaguely familiar about the act. On Hopewell Road she gained on him, called his name, "Malory, oh Malory." He turned around an instant shading his eyes from the golden June sunlight to make sure and spinning back began to run, almost leap away from her.

Bewildered, horrified, she plodded behind, leaving little clouds of white dust spiraling after her footsteps. As she ran she realized that he was fleeing from her in earnest; this was no game, no lover's playfulness.

He tripped over a tree root, fell, reeled to his feet and, breathless, found her upon him. She knew that this was her dream but even so she was unprepared for the face he turned upon her, a face with horrid staring eyes, with awful gaping lips, the face of a Greek tragic mask!

She came close to him. "Malory," she besought pitifully. Her hand moved out to touch his arm.

"Don't come near me!" His breath came whistling from his ghastly lips. "Don't touch me!" He broke into terrible weeping. "You're my sister -- my sister!" He raised tragic arms to the careless sky. "Oh God how could you! I loved her, I wanted to marry her, and she's my sister!"

To proud Laurentine sitting in haughty dejection in the littered sewing-room, fingering a dog-eared postcard from Niagara Falls came the not unwelcome vision of her stricken cousin swaying, stumbling toward her.

"Laurentine, tell me! I saw Malory, Malory Fordham, he says, he says I'm his sister. How can that be? Oh Laurentine be kind to me, tell me it isn't true!" She would have thrown herself about the older woman's neck.

Inflexible arms held her off, pushed her down. "So you've found it out have you? You sailing about me with your pitying ways and your highty tighty manner. Sorry for Cousin Laurentine, weren't you? because her father was white and her mother wasn't married to him. But my mother couldn't help it. She had been a slave until she became a woman and she carried a slave's traditions into freedom.

"But her sister, your mother," the low hating voice went on, "whom my mother had shielded and guarded, to whom she held up herself and me -- me --" she struck her proud breast -- "as horrible examples, your mother betrayed Mrs. Fordham, a woman of her own race who had been kind to her, and ran away with her husband." She spurned the grovelling girl with a disdainful foot. "Stop snivelling. Did you ever see me cry? No and you never will."

Angelique asked irrelevantly: "Why did you hate me so? I should think you'd pity me."

Her cousin fingered the postcard. "Look at me." She rose in her trailing red dress. "Young, beautiful, educated, -- and nobody wants me, nobody who is anybodywill have me. The ash-contractor's son offers, not asks, -- to marry me. Mr. Deaver," she looked long at the postcard, "liked me, wrote me, -- once --"

"Why did he stop?" Angelique asked in all innocence.

Laurentine flushed on her. "Because of you. You little fool, because of you! Must I say it again? Because my mother was the victim of slavery. People looked at me when I was a little girl; they used to say: 'Her mother couldn't help it, and she is beautiful.' They would have forgotten all about it. Oh why did your mother have to bring you home with us! Now they see you and they say: 'What! And her mother too! A colored man this time. Broke up a home. No excuse for that. Bad blood there. Best leave them alone.'"

She looked at Angelique with a furious mounting hatred. "Well you'll know all about it too. Wait a few years longer. You'll never be as beautiful as I, but you'll be pretty. And you'll sit and watch the years go by, and dread to look in your mirror for fear of what you'll find there. And at night you'll curse God, -- but pshaw you won't, --" she broke off scornfully, "you'll only cry --"

Angelique crept up to her room to contemplate a future like Laurentine's.

Hours later Aunt Sal come in, her inscrutable dark face showing a blurred patch against the grey of the room. In her hand something gleamed whitely.

"Thought you might want yore letter," she said in her emotionless, husky voice.

Her letter, her letter from Asshur! Her letter that would reiterate: "Be a good kid and I'll come for you...."

She seized it and fell half-fainting in the old woman's arms. "Oh Asshur I'll be good, I'll be good! Oh Aunt Sal, help me, keep me."

FROM THE CRISIS, AUGUST-SEPTEMBER I923

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