Not only was Sophie there, patting his hand, placidly fond of him, but also there was that jittery and courteous Southern Liberal, Mr. Lucian Firelock, of Wargate’s, discussing the part of Negro sculptors in a black world that had once seemed to Neil a mass of dark pathos or of dark poison but that seemed now as lively and multicolored and unpredictable as a tropic aviary.
Lucian was apologetic: “The Davises and Nora have been so nice to my kids that I thought I’d drop in and—and so I’ll be running along.”
Neil wanted to stay with Sophie in the warmth, but he could feel Vestal and Biddy alone at Christmas twilight. As he limped home through the snow, he meditated that he could conceivably have for Sophie a love that was altogether spiritual, but that he had for Vestal a fleshly love, and that of the two, it was the flesh that was likely to endure.
Sophie was his sister, his other self. As he had once shared toys and all the small rebellions against their father with Kitty, so with Sophie he shared the greatest rebellion he had known. But Vestal—she was his love. Every thought that the brownskin Alabama girl might have was natural to him and familiar; every thought of the woman with whom he had gone to high school, played tennis, shared a bedroom for seven years, was exotic and amazing, and so he loved her most of all and hoped some day to captivate her and even to understand her.
Oh, he had understood her once, had known everything that she would do and would say, but that had been in a day when she had nothing to do that was not perfectly scheduled, when she had not been called upon to say anything upon the topic of a man who seemed prepared to ruin her and ruin himself for the love of a God in whom he did not very ardently believe.
Vestal looked bright as a candle at his return. She seemed to Neil little older than Biddy and more defenseless. That child would always attack life and scare it into obedience; the humble and unexacting Sophie would always get along, in hospital or nunnery or low cabaret; but the brisk Vestal, pride of the Junior League, would always be forlorn and bewildered without a man: a father, a husband, a son, a priest.
He kissed her fairly, and they were happy cooking their supper. Shirley had gone off to a Balkan carnival. They put Biddy to bed and sat at the shiny kitchen table, eating scrambled eggs and agreeing about the viciousness of Curtiss Havock and the virtues of Father Kenneth, and the putative cost of a “picture-window” in the living-room.
Yes, they really might get the new window, they said joyfully, on this black night after a black Christmas.
Chapter 36
No Jew, no musician, no teacher and very few Democrats had ever belonged to the Federal Club. Not that there was any bylaw against them. There was no need of one.