The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

  Cleo gave a little gasp. Cole was Thea’s fiancé. He was poor, but as a Hartnett he belonged to a family even older than the Binneys. The Hartnetts had been freemen for five generations, and no one of them in those hundred years had been born or schooled outside of Boston.

  The first Hartnett had been a coachman, the second had had his own hack for hire, the third had owned two and money enough to pay a man to drive one of them, and the fourth, Cole’s father, had operated a livery stable covering half a city block. There the rich had rented sleek riding horses, and boarded their splendid thoroughbreds, and kept their magnificent carriages, and lounged in the perfectly appointed waiting room with ebony underlings to jump to orders. There was even an unhallowed place for some of the city’s workhorses, though these lumbering beasts used a back door and never nosed their betters.

  The senior Hartnetts and son were able to live like lords. They did not save. For were not horses the delight of kings, and what could supplant them in the hearts of civilized men? The automobile, the dirty sputtering automobile. The rich, who should have had more taste, began to buy them. Mr. Hartnett failed in business, and blew his brains out just like a white man. Everybody was a little proud of his suicide.

  “Cole Hartnett was just entering Harvard Medical. He was a brilliant student. He had a brilliant future. And then his father’s death made his career uncertain. It was my mother’s plan to finance his education, close this house, and go abroad until after my marriage. She intended to ask Carter Binney to act as my guardian. She hoped that Althea and I would be like sisters to compensate for her lost relationship with Althea’s dead mother, whom she had never been able to face after Thad. Carter Binney’s social position was secure. As was Cole’s. If I became the ward of one and the wife of the other, no one would question my right to belong to society. Nor my mother’s right to be received by my friends.”

  Cleo felt a surge of helpless anger. What was this business of belonging? What was it worth? A tailor and a stable-owner were the leaders of society. And the Duchess was saying this seriously. This woman, who could have crossed the color line and bought her way into any worldly circle, preferred to yearn for a counterfeit of the Brahmin cult.

  “And Cole refused?” she asked, rather irritably.

  The Duchess misunderstood her irritation. “I’ve never thought ill of Cole. I doubt that he’s ever known what my mother’s letter to Carter Binney contained. Carter went straight to Mrs. Hartnett. They decided that Cole and Althea should quietly enter into a long engagement. Carter didn’t believe he would never rebuild his business. He thought he could afford to promise his daughter to a poor student and help him establish a practice when it was time. He answered my mother’s letter in person. He did not address her by name. He would not sit down. He would not remove his gloves, nor let her servant take his hat or cane. None of the millionaires my mother had known had shown her such contempt. That was the day her death became certain. She had her severest heart attack. It was heartbreak. She kept alive until I could come. God rest her soul, my mother died the next day. But not before she had my promise to marry into her circle.”

  The low voice shook. She rose. Her eyes were remembering the look of her mother, the look of shriveled pride.

  “I didn’t want Cole Hartnett then. I wanted Carter Binney.”

  The little French clock on the mantel was quietly ticking away the moments that remained to a gentleman in Cambridge, who was dying of his disgrace, as a tawny-eyed woman in this West End house had died of hers. They had been born into a world which took no real notice of their existence. Their leave-takings were as unceremonious. Yet there is no life that does not contribute to history. One added to one is the eternal abundance, the greatness and baseness of man, the mortification of his flesh, the purification of his spirit. The death of those done with living opens the door for the new life. And in that tender, terrible moment of birth there is a renewal of belief. As long as there is a child alive, man can look upward toward the stars.

  The Duchess heard the time ticking away. The hour she had set for her wedding had almost run out. She was twenty-four. She felt tired and old. She was virginal, and she wanted the nun’s way. The world outside the cloister walls was too violent. But how could she enter God’s house until she was shriven of hate? How could she be God’s bride if she was thought unworthy to be sinful man’s? What could she do with a Catholic heart among uncaring people? Better to bury that heart. Better to turn apostate.

  It was six years now since she had made confession. She could not seek absolution for an unfinished sin. She had stayed on the fringe of her class, neither in it nor quite out of it. She had attended Mass, and she had entertained gentlemen at roulette. But she had not been a communicant at the sacred functions of either.

  “There is little left to tell,” she said tonelessly. “After my mother’s death, this house was closed to white men. I sent her houseboy to South Station to talk to the redcaps. So many young men were working their way through Harvard by red-capping. Cole was one of them. I knew that he would pass on the news to Carter. His creditors had closed his doors, and he needed money.

  “Cole and Carter and their friends won hundreds here that first night. They felt that they had won fortunes in this house where my mother had seen millionaires win and lose thousands. They came again, and won again, and for a long time I let them win.” She paused, then said proudly, “And the young men have never lost, the young men putting themselves through college.” Her face closed. “But the married men began to lose. I wanted to keep them coming back to try their luck again. These were the men who would make their wives receive me in return for my silence concerning their activities here. For it is the nature of women to imagine more than is true.” The imperial eyes emptied of expression. “And now it is finished.”

  She turned away and crossed the Brussels carpet to the Hepplewhite desk. Cleo sighed and saw herself crossing a Brussels carpet to a Hepplewhite desk in her fine new house where such appointments would match its magnificence more than the Mission sets Mr. Judson was bound to buy. She would give her soul to sit behind this exquisite tea-table and pass these fragile cups to the admiring ladies of her acquaintance.

  The Duchess turned back to her. In her hand she held a small packet.

  “These are Carter Binney’s deeds and legalized documents transferring his properties to me. And every penny of the money from his cashed-in insurance and his wife’s jewels. Give them to him or to his son.”

  This was what Cleo had come for. The Duchess had put in her hand Thea’s inheritance, Thea’s happiness. There would be money to marry Cole, to outfit his office, to live without hunger while he was building up a practice. And the Cambridge house would be sold to strangers. Simeon had no need for it. His shabby rooms above The Clarion’s offices better suited his bachelor inclinations. With his looks, his education, his name, Simeon should have been the catch of Boston, but he had no prospects. His time and talents and every penny went into his unpopular paper. Only a woman with the Duchess’s wealth could afford to trust her future to a man who couldn’t half-feed himself, let alone a wife.

  She gave a little start. Simeon had no respect for any woman’s intelligence. He had never wanted anything a woman had to offer. Well, he might as well get ready to climb off his high horse and let the Duchess sit in the saddle.

  “Would you have Simeon?” asked Cleo softly.

  The Duchess looked bewildered. “I am asking for nothing in return. I have no hate for Simeon Binney. I read his paper. I know his humanity.”

  “His paper needs money,” said Cleo encouragingly. “You’ve helped so many young men through college. You could help Simeon save The Clarion.”

  “Would he accept my money?” asked the Duchess earnestly. “It’s the money of white men, and he despises them.”

  “Why, that’s all the better,” said Cleo quickly. “It’s using their money against them. He takes their money and tells them off. That’s really hitting where
it hurts.”

  “I will write him a check for whatever amount he needs. Please see him soon and telephone me.”

  Cleo gave her a look of sheer exasperation. Here was a woman who wanted respectability, and didn’t have the horse sense to take it off the platter.

  “He won’t accept your money as a gift,” she explained patiently. “That would cause talk. People would say you were keeping him. They would boycott his paper. But as his wife, you would have their respect. You could help Simeon become a great man.”

  “If he will have me, I will be honored to share his beliefs,” the Duchess said, with humility.

  “Leave it to me,” said Cleo briefly.

  “Is there some way I can thank you?” the Duchess implored.

  “If I’ve given you hope, that’s thanks enough,” Cleo said prettily, and waited to be urged.

  “Please,” the Duchess pressed her. “I have heard that your husband is rich, but isn’t there some small service that I am able to do for you?”

  “You’ve received a somewhat false impression of my husband,” Cleo corrected gently. “Mr. Judson is not exactly rich. Men in business spend as much as they make. And my husband spends more. He’s helping my sisters. It isn’t them I’m concerned about as much as it is their children. I suffer for children. I lie awake nights wondering if those poor little things have enough to eat, or proper clothes to wear, or a decent place to lay their heads. I persuaded my husband to let me send for them, and their mothers, too. I won’t know peace until we’re all under the same roof, where I can tend my flock to the best of my ability.”

  “The saints preserve you,” the Duchess said tenderly. “Your hand is held out wherever there is need of help.”

  Cleo made a modest little sound in her throat. “I searched and searched, and today I found a house.” She was going to beg, but she had to brag first. “A lovely place in Brookline. Ridiculous rent, sixty dollars a month,” she exaggerated with a weary little shake of the head. “But what can you do when there are children to consider? Whatever the cost, you owe them a good address. We’re having to furnish ten rooms to fit us all into. I hope I don’t sound shameless. But I haven’t taken my eyes off your furniture since I’ve been here. Everything is perfectly beautiful. If there’s an odd piece or two tucked in your attic, don’t think you would offend me by letting me use it.”

  “Everything in this house,” said the Duchess tightly, “was bought by Thad Tewksbury. You are welcome to any or all of it. I only ask you not to think of it as payment for what you have given me.”

  The little mantel clock whose ticking had been the toll for the dying now gave a merry muted chime to foretell a wedding. Cleo rose. For she ought to stop in at Simeon’s. With the paper due out tomorrow even his father’s passing couldn’t keep him away from his desk. It would only take a few minutes to reach home from his office. After all, she had left home on an errand of mercy. The strain of death was unendurable when there was no money for decent burial. It would hearten Simeon to know he could make proper arrangements. Besides, she wanted to see his face when she told him the West End Duchess was demanding her pound of flesh.

  The Duchess held out her hand. “Will you call me Lenore? I was named for Althea’s mother. When — if — it is settled with Simeon, I will close this house and go away for his time of mourning. I will stay in a retreat. Sinner and saint are accepted. When Simeon is free to join me, we can be quietly married in a civil ceremony in New York. I want to return to Boston as Mrs. Simeon Binney.” Her voice was low and tremulous. “Yet I will never be married in the eyes of the Church.”

  Impulsively Cleo pressed her cheek against Lenore’s. Here was a woman who wanted the love of God. And she had given her Simeon. A small trickle of shame wet her eyes. Women were better without men. The enemy had made one more victory. She had passed him the spoils.

  But Simeon had great intelligence. Lenore had depth and loveliness. Their children would inherit this richness. The race would be strengthened. Lenore belonged to her unborn daughters. Her soul was not hers to give or keep while the life strain was in her loins.

  “Good-bye and good luck, Lenore.”

  Lenore said softly, “Go with God.”

  CHAPTER 12

  SIMEON BINNEY bent over his desk. Behind him, in the dingy back room, the two small presses were noisily clattering. But his ear was turned inward. He was writing his father’s obituary. The doctor had said that his father would die before morning. He had felt no shock nor sorrow, and he had come away as soon as Thea returned to relieve him. She would give their father her tears, as he could not.

  Simeon had been born in this house when the neighborhood was wholly Caucasian, except for the Binneys, who, according to their neighbors’ praise, represented the best in the colored race. They behaved as if they were white. Simeon played with the neighborhood children and sat beside them in Sunday school. But his brownness made him seem different to them, just as Thea’s fair skin made her seem the same.

  He was darker than either parent, a throwback to a paternal grandfather. He was not an undesirable shade by the standards of his parents’ set. Indeed, he was considered the handsomest colored child in Boston. In the usual way, most people made the unamusing witticism that it was a pity that a boy should be prettier than his sister. He was tan, with fine features, great black eyes, and black curls. He was tall for his age and strongly built, in every way giving a manly appearance. Nobody guessed the extent of his sensitiveness, his insecurity in what was considered his safe and happy world.

  He felt that he lived in two worlds. There was the world outside, peopled with whites, whites everywhere. He couldn’t understand why his parents were proud that he and Thea were always the only colored children in school, in church, in their block. Didn’t they know that made him feel lonely? It was good to come into the other world, the narrow nursery world, and play with Thea, and pretend that this was the whole, that he and she alone existed.

  He hadn’t had any inherent dislike of white children. He hadn’t known there was anything special about them at first. For Thea and his father were fair, his mother was very light. He had never noticed that he was darker. Nor had he known that their skin shades were preferable to darker ones.

  The five-year-old boy, big enough now to play outside without his Irish nurse’s supervision, approached the children on the block with vulnerable innocence. He had never heard any discussions about the difference in man. All that he knew was that there was a favored race of people called Bostonians, and that he was fortunate enough to be one of them.

  The group of children he approached stared at him open-mouthed. They were also five-year-olds, and their world had been as prescribed as his. They, too, knew they were little Bostonians, and they thought all little Bostonians looked alike. They were unprepared for the exotic appearance of this brown boy. He might have stepped out of one of their picture books of strange boys in strange lands.

  “Hello,” Simeon said.

  “Hello,” they said soberly, somewhat surprised that he spoke their tongue.

  “I’m Simeon Binney,” he offered cheerfully.

  They were silent. They did not know whether they wanted to tell this odd boy their names or not.

  Simeon stuck out his hand. He had been taught to do that. And he was used to hearing delighted murmurs at this charming display of grown-up manners.

  The boys backed away. They had never seen a brown hand extended. Then one asked shyly, “Will it come off?”

  “What?” asked Simeon blankly.

  “The brown on your hand,” the boy explained.

  “It isn’t dirt,” he said indignantly. Then he felt surprised. What was it?

  “Where do you come from?” a pink-cheeked boy asked.

  “Over there.” He pointed to his house, the corner house, the finest in the block of brownstone dwellings.

  “No,” the pink-cheeked child said patiently, “I mean, what country?”

  “Boston,” Simeon
answered in a shocked tone, for he had supposed that all Bostonians recognized Bostonians. Certainly he had known without question that these children, whose dress, whose accent, whose houses were identical with his, were his fellow countrymen.

  One of the boys drew a sputtering breath. “I think you’re a colored boy,” he said. It frightened him a little to make this pronouncement, for he didn’t know whether it was good or bad.

  “I’m a Boston boy,” Simeon said with a sob. “Same as you.”

  Plainly this didn’t make sense to them. They looked at each other, shifted self-consciously, and began to sidle away. This was something they wanted explained by a grown-up as soon as they could reach one. They chorused Good-bye, for, after all, he was a small person like themselves, and the inherent humanity of children evoked this gesture of brotherhood.

  Simeon played by himself. He could not go in to his mother. He felt ashamed, though he could not explain his feeling. When a reasonable time had passed, he mounted the stone steps quietly and scooted up the back stairs. In the bathroom he scrubbed his hands vigorously, but it was just as he had known it would be, there was no whiteness under the brown. He was not like the other boys. He was not a Bostonian.

  He waited for his father to come home and explain to him what a colored boy was. He was reluctant to ask his mother. He knew that she was modest, and did not speak of unseemly things. His father failed him. He was prepared for this moment, and said deftly: “Everybody is colored, Simeon. Some skins are colored lighter than others. Like Thea’s. Some look as if they were not colored at all. Like those boys. But put them beside a sheet of white paper, and you will see that they look pale gray. Those boys had never seen a brown boy. Had you been red-haired, they would have asked you if your hair was on fire.” Simeon was supposed to smile at this, but his face stayed solemn. For he knew that a red-haired boy wouldn’t have smiled either. “You’re the color of an Indian, Simeon, and the Indians are the oldest Americans. If any boy ever asks you again why you’re brown, you may say it’s because your grandfather was a full-blooded Indian.”