“Oh, quit being sentimental about your father. There’s nothing you can do for him now. But it occurs to me that there’s a lot of things you can do for me and our child. Do you ever stop and think that she is very much your child, too, and so like you in her thoughtlessness? Now that your notorious love of truth and justice has inspired you to turn us into Negroes, just what are your plans for us outcasts? I wasn’t consulted about your public exhibit of yourself, and now I’m waiting to be told what to do!”

“Why, Ves, when you were so wonderful at the funeral–-”

“Maybe I’ve been too wonderful. Just what do you intend to do, if that old horsehair sofa, Prutt, turns you out of the bank?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you better begin to know?”

He nodded.

Chapter 41

They were alone in the evening, sadly reading. At the door-bell’s sound, Vestal speculated, “After ten—what gives? It’s probably Brother Robert, come over to enjoy a little knitting and worry. I better go. I’ll tell him we’re just off to bed.”

There was a jangle of voices when the door opened, and high laughter, rough and derisive. Neil rose, ready for battle, but he heard Vestal, like a flute too shrill, inviting, “Certainly, come right in. Enchanted to see you…. Now that was very thoughtful of you!”

At the living-room door there were three black faces and one plastered dead-white, all maliciously merry, and they were Borus Bugdoll of the Jumpin’ Jive, Hack Riley, a dark ex-soldier, a white Polish girl called Faydis—surname forever unknown—and the black rose, Belfreda Gray, bubbling, “I always swore I’d come in the front door here, and by God, I have!”

“And, by God, so you have!” Vestal said sweetly.

Self-assured yet languid, hard as a flyer, his thin nose dark and bold above a race-track tie, a black hawk that liked to kill little birds, Borus winked at Vestal, glanced derisively at the jangled Neil, and said smoothly, “Good evening. My name is Bugdoll. I am a saloon-keeper. I heard there was a new mixed couple in town, and I always call and welcome them to our gang.”

Faydis crowed, “Yeh, him and me are mixed. He used to go with Bel, but her and Hack have clicked, and Borus is my fellow, and I’m just as white as you folks, maybe more so, but do I love my little brown dumpling! Yeh, I’m just like you, Vestal, living with a colored boy, and is it good cuddling—I’ll say!”