“Yeh, that’s right, you’re getting too bold,” Mabel cut in, with disguised envy.
She scarcely ever “went the limit” with men, and why should her sister be privileged to be more brazen about it.
During all of these tirades, Blanche had wondered at her own indifference—the battle was on again, but now it had only a comical aspect. These pent-up, dense, jealous people—could they really be related to her own flesh and blood? They seemed to be so remote and impossible. None of them, except her mother, stirred her in the least, and even there it was only a mild compassion. Yet, once she had loved them in a fashion, and felt some degree of a warm nearness that even wrangling had never quite been able to remove. What marvels happened to you, once your mind began to expand. That was it—their minds were still and hard, and little more than the talking slaves of their emotions—while hers was restless and separate, and had slowly overcome the blindness of her former emotions toward them.
And now ... ah, if they had only known what they really had to rave about. How they would have pounced upon her! The sick fear returned to her as she reclined upon the bed in her room. Perhaps it might be wiser to pack up and leave home immediately. Yet, that would only be a breathing spell. If she married Starling, or lived with him, they would inevitably investigate and discover his negro blood, and the storm would burst, anyway. She tossed about in a brooding indecision.
During the next week she surprised her family by remaining in her room each night. What had come over her?—she must be sick, or in some secret difficulty. When a girl moped around and didn’t care to enjoy herself at night, something must be wrong, especially a girl like Blanche, who had always been “on the go” for the past four years. They suspected that Campbell or some other man might have given her an unwelcome burden, and they questioned her in this respect, but her laughing denials nonplussed them. Harry had an interview with Campbell, and had grudgingly become convinced that Blanche was no longer going out with him. The Palmer family finally became convinced that she had really taken their objections to heart and had decided to become a good girl.
Blanche wrote feverishly in her room, every night, with a little grammar which she had purchased to aid her—descriptions of places which she knew, such as cafeterias, dance halls and amusement parks. Her anger at human beings, and her sense of humor, fought against each other in these accounts, and the result was frequently a curious mixture of indignations and grimaces. Starling was ever a vision, standing in her room and urging on her hands ... she was writing for his sake as well as her own. If the rest of her life was to be interwoven in his, she would have to make herself worthy of him, and try to equal his own creations, and give him much more than mere physical contacts and adoring words. Otherwise, he might become quickly tired of her!
Her courage grew stronger with each succeeding night, and a youthful, though still sober, elasticity within her began to make plans that slew her prostrate broodings. Eric and she would simply run off to some remote spot—Canada, Mexico, Paris, anywhere—and then the specters and hatreds in their immediate scene would be powerless to injure or interfere with them. What was the use of remaining and fighting, when all of the odds were against them, and when the other side was so stubbornly unscrupulous, so utterly devoid of sympathy and understanding? In such a case, they would only be throwing themselves open to every kind of attack and intrusion, if not to an almost certain defeat. Eric might be a “nigger,” yes, but he certainly didn’t look like one, and he was better than any of the white men she had ever met ... dear, sweet boy ... and she loved him with every particle of her heart. She was sure of that now. She had never before felt anything remotely equal to the huge, restless emptiness which her separation from him had brought her—a sort of can’t-stand-it-not-to-see-him feeling that rose within her, even when she was in the midst of writing, and kept her pencil idly poised over the paper for minutes, while in her fancy she teased his hair, or chided some witticism of his. She’d go through ten thousand hells rather than give him up!
After a week and a half had passed, she determined to visit Margaret and “talk it over” with the other girl. It wasn’t that Margaret could convince her one way or the other—she had made her decision—but still, she craved the possible sympathy and encouragement of at least one other person besides Eric. It was hard to stand so utterly alone.
After telephoning, and finding that Margaret would be alone that night, she hurried down to see her.
The two girls sparred pleasantly and nervously with each other for a while as though they were both dreading the impending subject—which Margaret had sensed—and futilely trying to delay its appearance. Finally, Blanche blurted out, after a silence: “I suppose you know I’m in love with Eric Starling, Mart. You must have guessed it, the way I fooled around with him at Tony’s.”