The Living is Easy

by Dorothy West

  When she spoke, her accent and inflection showed no detectable flaws. Her silvery chatter, her low, lovely laugh were bright threads weaving her guests together in a comforting assurance that this party might be taking place in a white lady’s parlor. Even the caterer’s man, who had come with the ices and to serve the highballs and hors d’oeuvres, had got over his initial shock that colored people were briefly his betters, and was passing among them with impeccable politeness, noting behind his bland mask their elegant behavior and supposing they were all very rich and distinguished.

  Among the men arriving were the old judge, a man of some distinction at an earlier date; a criminal lawyer with an important practice and a daughter passing for white at Wellesley; a young lawyer with no practice at all and a complete disinterest in the profession his father’s butler-wages had bought for him; a doctor who privately hated his growing practice because his patients were the colored poor; a valet whose dress and bearing were superior to that of all the men present; a caterer’s helper, on his night off, who accepted a proffered highball with no nervous recognition of a fellow worker; and the man of talent, a violinist, handsome, poor, and gifted.

  And among the ladies arriving were Miss Eleanor Elliot in old finery; an auburn-haired social worker, the first of her race at Thaw House — though hardly representative — also distinguished as a Wellesley graduate but who had had no inclination to pass because her family name was honor enough; a schoolteacher, doomed to spinisterhood by Boston’s ruling, but too contented with her white pupils to yearn to mother a colored child; and a brilliant teacher of piano, who had a growing list of the best colored children because she had been astute enough to start her enrollment with white students, selected from her neighbors’ crop and charged a modest fourth of her dollar fee.

  Cleo, along with the caterer’s man, was storing impressions. The Rabelaisian half of her mind was faithfully recording every word and gesture for devasting mimicry the moment the storm door shut behind her last guest and she could race upstairs, rout Mr. Judson out of her bed, and summon her sisters, with the low-down laughter starting in her throat, to watch her peerless performance.

  But the other half of her mind — that part with which she avidly read the latest books by authors who wrote about the well-born; which she took to the Hollis Street Theater along with Thea where, leaning forward as the houselights dimmed, Thea listened and she learned; which went with her to smart restaurants accompanied by Thea and her tale of woe, to which Cleo closed her ears and absorbed like a sponge the snatches of conversation flowing around her like sparkling fountains — that part of her mind was quite certain that this was the hour which gave her whole life meaning.

  Thea and Cole entered, and Cleo went forward with outstretched hands to draw Thea to her and press her cheek against hers. This effusive greeting, contrary to Cleo’s custom, served as public proof of the intimacy between her and Mrs. Cole Hartnett, born Binney.

  She could sense the excitement Thea’s entrance created in the ladies and gentlemen assembled in the parlor. Thea’s unconscious hauteur made them uncertain of her opinion of them and anxious to evoke a good one. She acknowledged their fulsome greetings with charming detachment, her gracious voice, with its little undercurrent of indifference, keeping her firmly fixed on her pedestal, despite her poverty and lack of pretension.

  Plain-featured, dark-yellow Cole beside her was considered a fortunate man because he had a doctor’s degree and a fair-skinned wife who would give him fair children.

  Miss Elliot, descending the stairs, greeted Thea with enthusiasm as they met on Thea’s way up to remove her wraps. The young matrons like dear shabby Thea assured the succession of colored society. And the out-landers like handsome Mrs. Judson were bringing their money where it was badly needed.

  “It’s so good to see our Thea out again,” she said warmly to Cleo. “And how are your sisters? We’re so sorry not to see them tonight. We hope they’re only away for the holidays. The children are becoming such little Bostonians.”

  “Oh, my sisters are all quite settled here. It was Father’s dream to send us to Northern schools. But teachers in small Southern schools have such impossible incomes that Father could never afford it. He made us promise that if we married and had children, we would educate them in Boston.”

  “Your sisters were very fortunate to marry understanding men,” said Miss Elliot, with her eyebrows asking an explanation.

  “One is beyond understanding,” said Cleo sweetly. “My sister Charity lost her husband in early September. She’s now away on a visit to Father. I wanted him to spend Christmas with us, but the long trip here and back would give him too short a holiday before he returned to his teaching duties. My sister Lily is away, too. Her husband travels for a firm that sells improvements for stubborn hair.” She smiled wickedly at Miss Elliot, whose hair was not an asset to the appearance she liked to present.

  “He telephoned Lily last night to meet him in New York this morning. He found that he had a free day before he leaves for Chicago. That’s why Lily has established her home with me. Her health is rather delicate, and her husband worried at knowing she was alone so much.

  “As for my youngest sister — who sends her apologies, Tim’s quite feverish from too much Christmas excitement — her husband, who is very fair, is working as white in a very prejudiced part of the South. It means an indefinite separation. But when there’s a child to consider, the parents must make almost any sacrifice to insure that child’s future.”

  She smiled brightly at her own ability to taste untruths on her tongue and make no betraying grimace.

  The old judge turned away from a group and lumbered over. His voice boomed over the room. “Dear Mrs. Judson, I’ve the oddest feeling that I’ve been here before. What is the magic you exercise that makes me feel completely at home in your charming house?”

  Miss Codman, the inmate of Thaw House, said ardently, “It’s an enviable house, Mrs. Judson. Did you have a decorator, or is your own taste your wonderful talent?”

  The interest of the room was aroused. The murmurs of conversation died. Every eye made open inventory, then came to rest on Cleo expectantly. In the faces of most of the men a puzzled recognition had dawned. In a moment it was overspread with blank amazement. Darting quick uncomfortable glances at their women, and being reassured by their expressions of innocent envy, they turned on Cleo a frankly curious and faintly mocking stare.

  The color had deepened in her cheeks. She had never expected to be challenged by so many eyes at one time. For her way was to tell a falsehood to an audience of one, thereby leaving herself an opening for a conscienceless denial whenever it suited her. Now before her was an assembled company that could testify for each other that she had actually said what they heard her say.

  She drew a deep breath. “You are very kind, Miss Codman, but my talents are still undiscovered, though I did once yearn to be an actress, and would have made a very poor one. And, my dear Judge, I am not surprised that you recognize a familiar hand in this room. For I am sure that all of you” — she surveyed them with a gentle smile — “knew Lenore Binney before I met her as Simeon’s fiancée. With her generous nature she was good enough to give me the benefit of her exquisite taste when I began to furnish my house.” Now figure that out to suit yourselves, she told them silently.

  Outside a motorcar crunched on the snow. Thea, descending the stairs, at the foot of which Cole stood waiting, knew with the others who it was who could afford that moneyed sound. In a moment Simeon’s head and hand briefly appeared. Then Lenore and Dean Galloway entered the open door.

  Lenore had seen Cleo only once since their first meeting, and then at a distance, on a day that Cleo and the children had been standing by a car stop after dancing school. The three little girls in their velvet coats and beaver hats and buttoned shoes, with their slipper bags dangling on their arms, had made her want to see the face of their innocence. She had ordered her driver to draw to the curb. But the app
roaching trolley had swallowed up Cleo and the children before the chauffeur could invite them into her car.

  She knew that Thea was Cleo’s great friend, and she had no wish to intrude, for she believed that Cleo, with the warm sympathy that she remembered, would insist upon a friendship that might alienate Thea’s. But Cleo had made no overtures outside of harmless inquiries to Simeon about her state of health. She felt that Simeon would consider any greater interest in his wife a disloyalty to his sister. She had got from Lenore what she wanted, fine furniture for the children to grow up with. Thea had a good deal more to give them. She had no intention of jeopardizing that for a woman whose acceptance by society was still undetermined.

  Lenore had come to Cleo’s supper as a courtesy to the Dean. She no longer wanted the rights she had won by her marriage. She had paid too high a price for the privilege of pouring tea. The last years in the West End house and the end toward which she had lived them seemed a nightmare and herself a dreamer slowly struggling awake.

  As she stood in Cleo’s hall, her smile did not extend beyond her hostess. The men had never been important to her, and the women no longer mattered.

  Cleo heard the women’s involuntary intake of breath as they saw the fabulous Duchess for the first time, in chinchilla and French accessories. The Duchess heard the sibilant sound, too. Her face stilled, and over it spread that highborn look that had humbled Cleo the day of their meeting. Cleo read the women’s minds perfectly. The Duchess’s instant barricade had only excited them further. They had been praying for a cheap blond with some betraying negroid feature. They were overwhelmed with what God had given them instead. In an acute rush of color-consciousness each one wondered nervously if it was she who had caused Mrs. Binney’s undisguised disappointment in a gathering of the best people.

  “My dear Lenore, the evening is complete,” said Cleo triumphantly, and touched the Duchess’s cheek with her lips.

  Thea came forward with Cole. There was a polite, unrevealing exchange between the Binneys and the Hartnetts, with Thea thinking that Cleo with her unnecessary kiss had really overdone her effort to make the ex-Duchess feel welcome.

  When the small flurry of family greetings was over, the dark face of Dean Galloway was brought into focus. The disinterested women, for whom he was an anticlimax, faced away from the door and turned back to their men.

  Dean Galloway, with the horror of remembered things rimming his eyes, heard Cleo’s brittle accent miscalling him Calloway, felt her brief handclasp, met her indifferent look. He could not believe that this was the woman whose roots Simeon had said were Southern, who would understand his story, and pledge her support of a mass meeting.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE GREAT SLIDING DOORS between dining room and parlor were open. Both rooms glinted with wax and polish. In the chandeliers the gas-jets flickering green and gold highlighted the somberly glowing furniture and the shining brass of the parlor hearth, and sent shivery streaks along the gleaming surface of glass and silver objets d’art. Holly and evergreen, intertwined with Bart’s practiced touch, lay along the marble mantel and were reflected in the ornamental mirror, in which the grand piano, the room’s dark jewel, gave back its image of truth and beauty.

  The dining-room table had been stretched to its full length and spread with embroidered damask linen. Bart’s centerpiece on a silver tray was a tumble of polished fruit, balanced with exquisite precision to form a horn of plenty.

  A large boiled lobster, its meat removed and replaced, was dramatically couched on a silver platter edged with lettuce. A grapefruit, dotted all over with toothpicks, the ends of which were capped with diced ham and tongue, had been placed at one end of a platter, and at the other a large cucumber, pricked with toothpicks to resemble a porcupine, lay lengthwise, its scooped-out center filled with red seafood sauce. On another similarly sized platter at the opposite end of the table was a molded ginger-ale salad of apples, bananas, celery, carrots, and shredded cabbage. In the center of the mold was a boiled dressing mixed with whipped cream.

  Along either side of the table were covered dishes of creamed mushrooms and welsh rarebit, and plates of the startling white of turkey breast and the dark breast of wild duck. There were thin round crackers spread with a spiced mixture of cream cheese and whipped white of egg, toasted bread of triangle and diamond shapes spread with snappy cheese sprinkled with paprika, and caviar, and minced sardine, and baskets of buttered tea rolls. For the ices that were to follow were little cakes and ladyfingers.

  In the center of the sideboard was the bowl of claret punch, and at either end were the coffee and demi-tasse services, and the cordials. Dishes of pickles, olives, nuts, and mints completed the supper feast.

  To and from the abundant table and buffet filed the enchanted guests. Parlor and dining room hummed with well-being. Cleo moved among the ladies and gentlemen, her cheeks as pink as roses from their praise.

  Lenore, who had listened to the little pleasantries of introduction with the feeling that they were mocking, and not wishing to expose herself to further disguised dislike, sat somewhat apart with Simeon and Dean Galloway. Simeon did not stir from the seat beside her out of a dutiful unwillingness to expose her to its glaring emptiness should he leave her. Dean Galloway flanked her, too, not because he had any awareness that she needed his protection, but because he needed hers in the face of the inattention his Southern accent and plain appearance had received from the guests who, like Cleo, saw him only as the insignificant peg on which to hang this brilliant party.

  Thea, nibbling daintly, knowing that tomorrow Cleo would bring her the leftovers — which would not only keep her from having to cook for a week if she were careful, but would also keep her from having to eat her own burnt offerings — stood in the center of a large group whose lively chatter pleasantly ruffled her amiable detachment. She had entered the opening they automatically made for her, with no inner compulsion to be the focal point of the party, but in her very real desire to give herself to her friends as a queen gives herself to her subjects, while retaining her person inviolate.

  In a corner Cole was earnestly talking to a doctor who expected to be bored by Dean Galloway and did not want to be bored by Cole. He didn’t think there was any future in cancer. Here was that superb Duchess, looking as if she had just stepped out of a bandbox, and here was poor Thea with a hole in the heel of her stocking. Good God, who came first with Cole? Thea or a lot of nameless people with cancerous growths. The trouble with men like Cole, who had suckled on silver spoons, was that when they got poor they still tried to cling to the noble ideals their prep schools had taught them. Yet Cole had gone with the rest of them to the West End house. A doctor’s degree had meant that much to him. Thea should mean more.

  “Look, Cole” — he lowered his voice — “I know a white doctor with a practice that’s more than he can handle alone. He’s looking for someone to help him, preferably a colored doctor. It makes it easier on his conscience not to corrupt his own kind.”

  Cole turned his back.

  The other doctor smiled cynically at his threadbare suit. “The offer is open indefinitely. He wants a very good man. As a matter of fact, he didn’t want me.”

  Mr. Davies, who, with the departure of the caterer’s man, was now the sole representative of his craft, stretched out a hand to Cleo as she gave him a sparkling, unseeing glance on her way across the room. He had been titillated by the sight of her all evening, and he wanted to hear her warm voice addressing him exclusively. The quickening her glowing skin and engaging mouth and lively eyes stirred in him seemed infinitely preferable to the marble dignity of the blond Duchess or the unapproachable apartness of chestnut-haired Thea. There was something about this golden-skinned Southerner suggestive of excitement. She had no business with a middle-aged husband, who might as well have married his store. He was spending the night with his bananas, she had explained in pretty apology earlier. He had just received a shipment of them. She scarcely expected him to sleep at ho
me for a week. No wonder Bart Judson had only given her one dark daughter, Mr. Davies thought jealously. In that magnificent body were golden sons. In that heart beneath those lovely lifting breasts was unrequited passion. On a night like this she must lie alone and toss for love.

  His voice was full of emotion for her unhappy fate. “The lobster was delicious, Mrs. Judson.”

  Her eyes really saw him then and twinkled delightfully. He was part of her party, a contributing factor to its success, and therefore to be regarded with more kindness than if he were simply a male object in the path of her progress.

  “You make me very happy,” she said, in a singing voice.

  Mr. Davies went warm with pleasure.

  “Lenore” — Cleo stood before her, and the ear and eye of every woman gave disguised attention — “have you everything you want?” The question was superficial. She was simply showing the ladies how easy it was if you knew how.

  “There is nothing more I could want except to see your lovely babies,” said the Duchess, whose innocent words seemed pointed to the ladies, who felt rather crestfallen. “Will you bring them to visit me during the holidays? We will have a tea party.”

  “They’ll be delighted,” said Cleo, who knew that they loved long trolley rides. “Will Wednesday suit you if it’s fair?”

  “I shall look forward to Wednesday.”

  Miss Elliot surged across the room, hoping her age, that she rarely referred to, would serve her now as a suitable opening.

  “Forgive a woman, no longer young, for taking the liberty of listening. But children are my greatest interest. I can’t resist pricking my ears when they’re mentioned. I’m devoted to Mrs. Judson’s dear little girls, and would so love to be invited to their tea party. In my Saturday classes I try to teach deportment as well as dancing. It would be a very real pleasure to me to see them on their best behavior.”