Like any good woman pleased that her new beau is welcomed by the family circle, Sophie Concord watched Neil in his approach to Phil, to Ryan, to Evan’s children, and looked proud. It was Sophie who suggested to Neil, “The Brewsters and Davises have to go to a committee meeting—naturally. They couldn’t get through a night without one. Committees are the most habit-forming drug that exists. But let’s Ryan and Phil and you and I go to the Jumpin’ Jive and see the brownskins at their most uncommitteeized. You’re a typical good-hearted slummer. You meet Ash and Evan and conclude that all of us are intellectuals with pure hearts, who just lead hell out of the race. Let’s go take a look at the ones that get led—and do they hate it! I don’t know whether the dumb fieldhand or the city hep-cat or the rich sepia professional man like Dr. Melody most hates getting taken in hand and being led into the Ethiopian spiritual commonwealth. Anyway, let’s go see the flick-chicks.”

* * * * *

The Jumpin’ Jive was noisy enough and tinseled enough, but it was not as evil as the romantic heart of Neil had hoped. It was a large, L-shaped room decorated with pink and gilt latticework with artificial orchids. An orchestra of drum, piano and clarinet, manhandled by three fat merry Negroes in plum-colored dress-coats with gold derbies, gave Grand Republic versions of Duke Ellington. Colored sailors and soldiers were dancing, some of them with white factory girls, as close-packed as though this were the most expensive resort of gaiety and sweat in New York. With dark or ashen colored girls, laughing but not talking much, danced young Negroes with the elegance and suavity that seem natural to them.

Neil belatedly realized that at another table was Borus Bugdoll, proprietor of the Jive, and that the girl with him, pert in filmy green tulle, was Belfreda Gray, and that they were grinning at him. He complained to his table, “There’s a girl that used to work for us and that hates me—Belfreda. She’s a tough baby. Now don’t go and get socialistic on me, Ryan, and tell me she’s a victim of environment.”

“Why not? Let’s all go over and talk to her. I’ve known her since she was a kid. You’ve probably never had the cultural advantage of being slapped by a hired girl.”

And Neil, vastly surprised, found himself really looking at the Belfreda who for months had slept just down the hall from him, and discovering that she was a Nell Gwyn in ebony, eyes and smile and ruffles and spirited flexibility of morals. With the languidness of that lovely orange-seller insulting a lord, she drawled:

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Kingsblood! I’m surprised, seeing you in a dump like this. I thought you never went no place except to teach Sunday school.”