After bidding the other two farewell, Starling hailed a cab and gave Blanche’s address to the driver. She passed out completely in the cab, with her arm around his shoulder and her head on his breast, and as he thought it over he began to regret his decision. He would be forced to carry her to the door of her apartment and wake up her family, and since they were obtuse proletarians, they might imagine that he had plied her with liquor to achieve her seduction. In that case there would be a sweet rumpus, all right! He was not afraid of a possible fight—swinging fists was nothing new to him—but if one did occur, her folks would probably order her never to see him again, or would look him up and discover his negro blood. Again, the ever-blundering “cops” might also interfere in the matter.... In this world it was often imperative to avoid the sordid misinterpretations of other people, for otherwise you would simply be expending your energy to no purpose. No, the best thing would be to take Blanche to his apartment and let her sleep it off, for then she could return home with the usual story of having “stayed over” at some girl-friend’s home. Fearful lies, lies, lies—sometimes he thought that the entire world was just a swamp of them. Well, hell, you’d get very far, wouldn’t you, trying to hold out against it!
He tapped on the pane and told the driver to switch to a Harlem address. After he had paid the driver and was half carrying Blanche over the sidewalk, the man called after him: “That’s the way to get ’em, Bo!” Starling turned and was about to leap at the leering chauffeur, but burdened with Blanche, whom he could scarcely deposit on the walk, and fearing to arouse the neighbors in his building, he ignored the remark.
His apartment consisted of two rooms and a kitchenette, and after he had placed Blanche on a couch in one of the rooms, he closed the door and changed to his slippers and a dressing-gown. Then he sat down in an armchair and grinned, in a sneer at himself, as he lit a cigarette. This was exactly like one of the impossible climaxes in a cheap movie-reel. The handsome hero had the proudly beautiful girl at his mercy, but nobly and honorably refused to compromise her. Oh, rats, why not walk in and take the only crude, gone-to-morrow happiness that life seemed to offer. Otherwise, she would find out about his negro blood, before their achievement of finality, and depart from him or tell him to be “just a dear friend,” and what would he have then?—not even the remembrance of a compensating night. Hell, he ought to regard her as just another blood-stirring girl, and ravish her, and forget her afterwards. If you failed to trick and abuse women, they usually sought to turn the cards on you—he’d found that out often enough.
He arose and paced up and down the room. No, he was a mawkish fool, a sentimental jackass—he couldn’t do it. The dirty nigger couldn’t leap on the superior white girl, damn it. He loved this girl—no doubt about that. She had a clear, honest, stumbling-on mind, and her heart was free from pretenses and hidden schemes, and a unique essence, tenderly simple and defiant by turns, seemed to saturate her. It wasn’t just her body and face—he had known prettier girls by far—but it was something that clung to this body and face and transformed them to an inexplicable but indubitable preciousness. She was unconscious now, and her inert surrender would mean nothing to him except a cheap and empty triumph. He wanted her to come to him joyously, spontaneously, madly, and with quiverings and shinings on her face!
He sat down again in the armchair. Damn his luck, why couldn’t he have fallen in love with another negro girl? He wasn’t like some of the men of his race—always chasing after white girls because it gave these men a thrill to boast of having captured them, and soothed their miserable inferiority complex. He had nearly always stuck to the girls of his own race, and yes, he had loved two of them ... in a way ... but it hadn’t been the surging, frightened, and at times abashed thing that he was feeling now. He was in for it now, oh, how he was in for it! He would undoubtedly be rejected, and pitied, and reduced to every kind of helpless writhing. It was in him to curse the very day on which he had entered the earth.... Good God, why couldn’t he shake off this morbid hopelessness? How did he know what would happen, after all? Perhaps her love for him was as overwhelming as his. Perhaps she would be forced to cling to him, in spite of every enormous warning and obstacle.
He passed into a fitful and often dream-groaning sleep. When he awoke it was noon. His room seemed uglier than usual—the straight, oak furniture, and the worn, brown carpet, and the rose-stamped wallpaper were like slaps against his spirit. Money, money—the devil sure had been in an ingenious mood when he invented it.... And Blanche Palmer was in the next room—all of him tingled incredibly at the thought of her proximity, and his heavy head grew a bit lighter. Then the door opened and she walked out, slowly, with a sulky, half sleepy, questioning look on her face, and rumpled hair, and a wrinkled gown.
“Eric, what’m I doing here—what happened last night?” she asked.
“Sit down, dear, and let your head clear a bit—I’ll tell you,” he answered.
She dropped into the armchair and he drew another chair beside her.
“You passed out in the cab after we left Tony’s, and I decided to bring you here,” he said. “It would have been rather ticklish, carrying you in my arms and waking up your, u-um, intellectual family. Their response might have been just a trifle excited, you know. You’re not angry with me, are you, Blanche?”