“Oh, let me see. Oh, yes, some nigger paper.” He laid it on the table.
“Ah, The Torch.” Levin picked it up and began turning the pages. “It’s one of the leading colored papers in the country now. And—by George—guess who’s running it!”
“How the dickens should I know who’s running a nigger paper? Got a cigarette on you?”
“Never mind, I’ll order cigars. Sure, you know him. The fellow who saved your life in France.”
“The nigger! Williams?”
“Yes, Williams. He’s considered one of the highest literary authorities in the United States. You ought to see him while you’re here.”
“I would,” said Robert. “I would, if he weren’t a nigger.”
“Oh, rats, I thought you had gotten over that!”
A waiter appeared, set a bottle of wine and glasses on the table and offered a box of cigars. Robert took one, laid it on the table and sipped thoughtfully at his wine. Had he changed? And had he changed back again? A nigger was a nigger to him once more. But in Corinth, yes, even in Corinth, he had put in a word for the despised black. Once he had thought that the ideals born of the war, the spirit of democracy and justice and idealism, would last. Here it was—how many months? two months, not quite three, since his homecoming—and he was back again. Or was it simply the pressure of Corinth—Margaret, Pinkney, his father, his set. Catholic. Jew. The Trick Track Tribe. Well, one had to live in his own world. And anyway a nigger was black and ugly and overworked.
“But I really couldn’t go to him. Bah! Shake his hand? No thanks!”