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Title: There is confusion
Author: Jessie Redmon Fauset
Release date: June 22, 2026 [eBook #78915]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78915
Credits: Gísli Valgeirsson, Tim Lindell, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THERE IS CONFUSION ***
THERE IS CONFUSION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE IS CONFUSION
BY
JESSIE REDMON FAUSET
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble; pain on pain,—
TENNYSON.
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK
1924
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright, 1924, by
BONI & LIVERIGHT, INC.
-------
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, March, 1924
Second Printing, May, 1924
Third Printing, August, 1924
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO MY SISTER
HELEN FAUSET LANNING
WHOSE PERSISTENT FAITH HAS MADE ME
ASHAMED TO FALTER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE IS CONFUSION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXVI
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE IS CONFUSION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
JOANNA’S first consciousness of the close understanding which existed
between herself and her father dated back to a time when she was very
young. Her mother, her brothers and her sister had gone to church, and
Joanna, suffering from some slight childish complaint, had been left
home. She had climbed upon her father’s knee demanding a story.
“What sort of story?” Joel Marshall asked, willing and anxious to please
her, for she was his favorite child.
“Story ’bout somebody great, Daddy. Great like I’m going to be when I
get to be a big girl.”
He stared at her amazed and adoring. She was like a little, living echo
out of his own forgotten past. Joel Marshall, born a slave and the son
of a slave in Richmond, Virginia, had felt as a little boy that same
impulse to greatness.
“As a little tyke,” his mother used to tell her friends, “he was always
pesterin’ me: ‘Mammy, I’ll be a great man some day, won’t I? Mammy,
you’re gonna help me to be great?’
“But that was a long time ago, just a year or so after the war,” said
Mammy, rocking complacently in her comfortable chair. “How wuz I to know
he’d be a great caterer, feedin’ bank presidents and everything? Once
you know they had him fix a banquet fur President Grant. Sent all the
way to Richmond fur ’im. That’s howcome he settled yere in New York;
yassuh, my son is sure a great man.”
But alas for poor Joel! His idea of greatness and his Mammy’s were
totally at variance. The kind of greatness he had envisaged had been
that which gets one before the public eye, which makes one a leader of
causes, a “man among men.” He loved such phrases! At night the little
boy in the tiny half-story room in that tiny house in Virginia picked
out the stories of Napoleon, Lincoln and Garrison, all white men, it is
true; but Lincoln had been poor and Napoleon unknown and yet they had
risen to the highest possible state. At least he could rise to
comparative fame. And when he was older and came to know of Frederick
Douglass and Toussaint L’Ouverture, he knew if he could but burst his
bonds he, too, could write his name in glory.
This was no selfish wish. If he wanted to be great he also wanted to do
honestly and faithfully the things that bring greatness. He was to that
end dependable and thorough in all that he did, but even as a boy he
used to feel a sick despair,—he had so much against him. His color, his
poverty, meant nothing to his ardent heart; those were nature’s
limitations, placed deliberately about one, he could see dimly, to try
one’s strength on. But that he should have a father broken and sickened
by slavery who lingered on and on! That after that father’s death the
little house should burn down!
He was fifteen when that happened and he and his mother both went to
work in the service of Harvey Carter, a wealthy Virginian, whose wife
entertained on a large scale. It was here that Joel learned from an
expert chef how to cook. His wages were small even for those days, but
still he contrived to save, for he had set his heart on attending a
theological seminary. Some day he would be a minister, a man with a
great name and a healing tongue. These were the dreams he dreamed as he
basted Mrs. Carter’s chickens or methodically mixed salad dressing.
His mother knew his ideas and loved them with such a fine, albeit
somewhat uncomprehending passion and belief, that in grateful return he
made her the one other consideration of his life, weaving unconsciously
about himself a web of such loyalty and regard for her that he could not
have broken through it if he would. Her very sympathy defeated his
purpose. So that when she, too, fell ill on a day with what seemed for
years an incurable affection, Joel shut his teeth and put his frustrated
plans behind him.
He drew his small savings from the bank and rented a tiny two and a half
room shack in the front room of which he opened a restaurant,—really a
little lunchstand. He was patronized at first only,—and that
sparingly—by his own people. But gradually the fame of his wonderful
sandwiches, his inimitable pastries, his pancakes, brought him first
more black customers, then white ones, then outside orders. In five
years’ time Joel’s catering became known state wide. He conquered
poverty and came to know the meaning of comfort. The Grant incident
created a reputation for him in New York and he was shrewd enough to
take advantage of it and move there.
Ten years too late old Mrs. Marshall was pronounced cured by the
doctors. She never understood what her defection had cost her son. His
material success, his position in the church, in the community at large
and in the colored business world,—all these things meant “power.” To
her, her son was already great. Joel did not undertake to explain to her
that his lack of education would be a bar forever between him and the
kind of greatness for which his heart had yearned.
It was after he moved to New York and after the death of his mother that
Joel married. His wife had been a school teacher, and her precision of
language and exactitude in small matters made Joel think again of the
education and subsequent greatness which were to have been his. His wife
was kind and sweet, but fundamentally unambitious, and for a time the
pleasure of having a home and in contrasting these days of ease with the
hardships of youth made Joel somewhat resigned to his fate.
“Besides, it’s too late now,” he used to tell himself. “What could I
be?” So he contented himself with putting by his money, and attending
church, where he was a steward and really the unacknowledged head.
His first child brought back the old keen longing. It was a boy and
Joel, bending over the small, warm, brown bundle, felt a gleam of hope.
He would name it Joel and would instil, or more likely, stimulate the
ambition which he felt must be already in that tiny brain. But his wife
wouldn’t hear of the name Joel.
“It’s hard enough for him to be colored,” she said jealously guarding
her young, “and to call him a stiff old-fashioned name like that would
finish his bad luck. I am going to name him Alexander.”
Alec, as he was usually called, did not resemble his father in the
least. He was the average baby and the average boy, interested in
marbles, in playing hookey, in parachutes, but with no determination to
be a dark Napoleon or a Frederick Douglass. Two other children, Philip
and Sylvia, resembled him, and Joel Marshall, now a man of forty, gave
up his old ideas completely and decided to be a good business man,
husband and father; not a bad decision if he had but known it.
Then Joanna came; Joanna with a fluff of thick, black hair, and solemn,
earnest eyes and an infinite capacity for spending long moments in
thought. “She’s like you, Joel,” Mrs. Marshall said. And because the
novelty of choosing names for babies had somewhat worn off, she made no
objection to the name Joanna, which Joel hesitatingly proposed for her.
“She certainly should have been named for you,” the mother told him a
month later; “see how she follows you with her eyes. She’d rather watch
you than eat.”
And indeed from the very beginning Joanna showed her preference for her
father. The two seemed to have a secret understanding. After the first
child, Mrs. Marshall had fretted somewhat over the time and strength
expended in caring for the other little Marshalls, but she never had any
occasion to worry about Joanna. Joel had his office in his residence,
and after Joanna was dressed and fed, all she wanted was to lie in her
carriage and later to ride about on the kiddie-car of that day in her
father’s office, where she watched him with her solemn eyes.
Joel never forgot the first time she asked him for a story. He was in
the habit of regaling his youngsters with tales of his early life, of
himself, of boys who had grown up with him, of ball-games and boyish
pranks. The three older children had a fine catholicity of taste. “Tell
us a story,” was all they asked, its subject made no difference to them.
But on that certain Sunday before Joanna was five years old she perched
herself on her father’s knee and commanded astoundingly:
“Tell me a story, Daddy, ’bout somebody great.”
Joel didn’t know what she meant at first, so far removed was he from the
thought of his old dream. And yet the question did seem something like
an echo, faint but recognizable of a longing that had once loomed large
in his life.
“Great,” he repeated. “How do you mean great, Baby? Tall, great big man,
like Daddy, hey?” He stood six feet and was broad with it.
Joanna shook a dissenting head. “No, not great that way. I want to hear
about a man who did things nobody else could do,—maybe he put out a
fire,” she ended doubtfully, “but I mean something greater than that.”
Joel had her taught to read after that. She was a little frail for
school, and did not start until later than the other children, though
she was far the most studious. So she had three or four years of solid
reading, and always her choice of subject was of some one who had
overcome obstacles and so stood out beyond his fellows.
At first she thought nothing of color, and it was not until she had gone
to school and learned something of discrimination that she began to
ponder.
“Didn’t colored people ever do anything, Daddy?” But Joel was prepared
for that. He told her himself of Douglass and Vesey and Turner. There
were great women, too, Harriet Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner
Truth, women who had been slaves, he explained to her, but had won their
way to fame and freedom through their own efforts.
Joanna had a fine sense of relativity. Young as she was, she could
understand that the bravery and courage exercised by these slave women
was a much finer and different thing from that exercised for instance by
Florence Nightingale. “They were like Joan of Arc,” she thought to
herself, “Joan, wonderful Joan with the name almost like mine.” Only an
innate, almost too meticulous sense of honesty had kept her from
changing her own name to the shorter form.
She used to lie in her bed at night, straight and still with her eyes
fixed on the stretch of sky visible even from a house in Fifty-ninth
Street and dream dreams. “I’ll be great, too,” she told herself. “I’m
not sure how. I can’t be like those wonderful women, Harriet and
Sojourner, but at least I won’t be ordinary.”
She spoke to her father like a little piping echo from the past, “Daddy,
you’ll help me to be a great woman, somebody you’ll be proud of?”
Her words made him so happy; they renewed his life. She was so
completely like himself, and he could help her. “Thank God,” he used to
murmur over his books that daily showed an increase in his earnings.
He took Joanna everywhere with him. One Easter Sunday a great colored
singer, a beautiful woman, sang an Easter anthem in his church, lifting
up a golden voice among the tall white lilies. Afterwards she went home
with Mr. and Mrs. Marshall and stayed to dinner. Joanna never moved her
eyes from her during the ride home.
After dinner she stood in front of the singer in the comfortable
living-room. “I can sing like you,” she said gravely, “and I can
remember the tune of most of that hymn you sang this morning. Listen.”
And with no further introduction she sang most of the anthem. She was
only ten then, yet her voice was already free of the shrillness of
childhood and beginning to assume that liquid golden quality which so
distinguished it later.
Madame Caldwell gasped. She had won her own laurels through bitter
experience in various studios, meeting insult, indifference and
unkindness with an unyielding front, which brought her finally
consideration, a grudging interest, sometimes a genuine appreciation.
She was well on her way to recognition now. Colored people acclaimed her
all over the country and she had some local reputation in her home town
where black and white alike were very proud of her.
“But no daughter of mine,” she used to say bitterly, “if she has the
voice of an angel shall go through what I have suffered.”
Yet when she heard Joanna sing that Easter Sunday, she seized Joel
Marshall’s arm. “Get her a teacher, Mr. Marshall. She has a voice in ten
thousand. Poor child, how you will have to work!”
But Joanna wasn’t listening, her eyes sought her father’s. Both of them
knew at once that the road to glory was stretching out before her.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER II
JOANNA was like her father not only so far as ambition was concerned but
also in her willingness to work. She had a fine serious mind, a little
slow-moving at first, but working with a splendid precision that helped
her through many a hard place. Her quality of being able to stick to a
problem until she was satisfied served in the long run as well as her
sister Sylvia’s greater quickness and versatility. Eventually, too,
Joanna’s laboriousness and native exactness produced in her the result
of an oft-sharpened knife. The method which she applied to one study,
she remembered to apply to another, and if this failed then she was able
to make combinations.
Usually she had to have things explained to her from the very beginning,
either by a teacher or through directions in a book. But to offset this
slowness she had a good sense of logic, a strong power of concentration,
and a remarkably retentive and visualizing memory.
Sylvia and she, destined to be such perfect friends in their maturity,
were not very sympathetic in their childhood. The older girl was
thoughtless, quick to jump at conclusions, natively witty and strongly
disinclined toward seriousness. “Joanna makes me sick,” was her constant
cry, “always thinking of her lessons and how important she’s going to be
when she’s grown-up. So tiresome, too, wanting to talk about what she’s
going to do all the time, with no interest in your affairs.”
Which was not quite true, for Joanna was mightily interested in people
who had a “purpose” in life. Otherwise not at all. This was where she
differed most from her father. With Joel success and distinction had
been his dream, his dearest wish. But always he had realized that there
were other things which might interfere. With Joanna success and
distinction were an obsession. It never occurred to her that life was
anything but what a man chose to make it, provided, of course, he did
choose to make it something. Her brothers’ and Sylvia’s haphazard
methods were always incomprehensible to her, and this gave her the least
touch of the “holier than thou” manner.
Her mother insisted on each child’s learning to do housework. Even the
boys were not exempt from this, indeed they rather liked it. Sylvia made
no complaint though she occasionally bribed Alec or Philip to do her
stint for her. Joanna never complained, either, yet she made up her mind
early that as a woman she would never do this kind of work. Not that she
despised it, she simply considered it labor lost for a person who like
herself might be spending her time in more beautiful and more graceful
activities. Yet in spite of her dislike, she always lingered longest
over her work, and the room or the silver which she had cleaned always
looked the best. It is true she never learned to iron especially well,
but this was about the only thing in which she yielded place to Sylvia.
Sylvia was like a fire-fly in comparison with Joanna’s steady beaconlike
flood of light. Sylvia dashed about, worked as quickly as she thought
and produced immediate and usually rather striking results. Sylvia with
a ribbon, or a piece of lace and a ready needle and thread could give
the effect of possessing two dresses, whereas she had only the one.
Sylvia dressed the dolls, hiring Joanna’s remarkable and usually
disregarded assembly of these so that she might make them new clothes.
She drove an honest bargain. If Joanna would let her play store with her
dolls for a week, one of them could keep the new dress which Sylvia
would have made for her; Joanna’s dolls were usually in Sylvia’s care.
Yet when Joanna did sew or knit, her stitches and pieces bore inspection
much better than Sylvia’s. By the same token, however, they missed
Sylvia’s dash.
In one thing only did Joanna show real abandon, that was in dancing.
Sylvia was as light as thistle-down on her feet, but Joanna was like the
spirit of dancing. She had grace, the very poetry of motion, and she
could dance any step however intricate if she saw it once.
“If you want to get Joanna to play,” Maggie Ellersley, Sylvia’s chum and
school-mate would say impatiently, “you must start some singing or
dancing game. She wouldn’t play ‘I Spy’ or ‘Pussy wants a corner’ with
you for worlds.”
Any sort of folk-song or dance, though she did not know them by that
name, delighted the child. Usually she held herself aloof, but in summer
down on Fifty-ninth Street Joanna was one with the children in the
street, singing, dancing, jumping rope in unexpected and fancy ways.
Sylvia’s and Maggie’s and even her brothers’ rougher scoffing affected
her not at all, not only because she had the calm self-assurance which
is the first step toward success, but also because of old Joel’s strong
belief in her.
Joel believed that all things were possible. “Nothing in reason,” he
used to tell Joanna, “is impossible. Forty years ago I was almost a
pauper in Richmond. Look at me to-day. I spend more on you in a month,
Joanna, than my mother and I ever saw in a five-year stretch. One
hundred years ago and nearly all of us were slaves. See what we are now.
Ten years ago people would have laughed at the thought of colored people
on the stage. Look at the bill-boards on Broadway.”
It was in the first part of the century when Williams and Walker, Cole
and Johnson, Ada Overton and others were at their zenith. Old Joel
believed them the precursors of greater things. Since Joanna’s gifts
were those of singing and dancing, he hoped to make her famous the
country over. Of course he would have preferred a more serious form of
endowment. But such as it was, it was Joanna’s, and must be developed.
Joel Marshall believed in using the gifts nearest at hand.
“And don’t think anything about being colored,” he used to say.
“It might be different if you lived in some other part of the country,
but here in this section it may not interfere much more than being poor,
or having some slight deformity. I have often noticed,” said Joel, who
had used his powers of observation to no small advantage, “that having
some natural drawback often pushes you forward, that is if you’ve got
anything in you to start with. It might even happen,” he added, launched
now on his favorite theme, “that your color would add to your success.
Depend on it if you’ve got something which these white folks haven’t
got, or can do something better than they can, they’ll call on you fast
enough and your color will only make you more noticeable.”
Joanna used to listen interestedly. Not that in those early years she
always understood fully everything her father said, but his talk created
for her a kind of atmosphere which created in turn a feeling of
assurance and self-confidence which was really superb.
Another theory of Joel’s which he had worked out for himself, and which
in no small degree contributed to Joanna’s education was his early
understanding of the natural rights of men inherent in the mere fact of
living. He told Joanna that no class of men remained static throughout
the ages,—he had not used these words, it is true, but he had come
pretty near it. Somewhere in those early days of his in odd scraps of
reading he had learned that Greece had once been enslaved; that Russia
had but recently freed her serfs; that England possessed a submerged
class.
“All people, all countries, have their ups and downs, Joanna,” he would
tell her gravely, “and just now it’s our turn to be down, but it will
soon roll round for our time to be up, or rather we must see to it that
we do get up. So everyone of us has something to do for the race. Never
forget that, little girl.”
Joanna was a memorable type in these days. A grave child, brown without
that peculiar luminosity of appearance which she was to have later on,
and which Sylvia already possessed. She had a mop of thick black hair
which was actually heavy, so much so that the back of her head bulged.
Joanna knew next to nothing at this time of those first aids to colored
people in this country in the matter of conforming to average
appearance. If she had known them, it is doubtful if she would have used
them, for she had the variety of honesty which made her hesitate and
even dislike to do or adopt anything artificial, no matter how much it
might improve her general appearance. No hair straighteners, nor even
curling kids for her.
“Joanna’s ways are so straight, they almost sway back,” Sylvia used to
say aptly. And indeed Joanna wanted one to see her at her very worst.
She did not like to take people by surprise. But as her worst included a
pair of very nice brown eyes, with thick, if somewhat short, and curling
lashes, an unobtrusive nose, small square hands and exquisite feet, it
was not hard to look at. She was always intensely susceptible to
beautiful people and to beautiful things. It was the beauty inherent in
Joel’s ideals, and in all ideals which really underlie success, that
most attracted her. And this passion for beauty while informing and
indeed molding her character, yet by a strange twist influenced
adversely and warped her sympathies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER III
IT was Joanna’s love for beauty that made her consciously see Peter Bye.
It is true that almost as soon as she saw him she lost sight of him
again, for the boy did not come up to her requirements which, even at
the early age at which these two met, were quite crystallized. Joanna
liked first of all fixity of purpose. The phrase “When I grow up, I’m
going to be” was constantly on her lips. She got into the habit of
measuring people, “sizing them up” Joel would have said, in accordance
with the amount of steadfastness, perseverance and ambition which they
displayed. She had little time for shiftless or “do-less” persons.
Sylvia used to say, half angrily, “Joanna, when the bad man gets you, he
isn’t going to torture you. He’s just going to shut you up with lazy,
good-for-nothing folks. That will be torture enough for you.”
Peter Bye, in spite of the dark arresting beauty which first drew
Joanna’s glance to him across the other white and pink faces in the
crowded schoolroom, was undoubtedly shiftless. “Not lazy,” Joanna said
to herself, looking at him from under level brows before she dismissed
him forever from her busy mind. “It’s just that he doesn’t care; he just
doesn’t want to be anybody.”
She was too young to understand the power of that great force, heredity.
She had no notion of the part which it played in her own life. Peter was
the legitimate result of a heredity that had become a tradition, of a
tradition that had become warped, that had gone astray and had carried
Peter and Peter Bye’s father along in its general wreckage.
It is impossible to understand the boy’s character without some
knowledge of the lives of those who had gone before him.
As far back as the last decades of the eighteenth century there had been
white Byes and black Byes in Philadelphia. The black Byes were known to
be the chattels of Aaron and Dinah Bye, Quakers, who without reluctance
had set free their slaves, among them black Joshua Bye, the
great-grandfather of Peter. This was done in 1780 according to the laws
of Pennsylvania, which thus allowed the Quakers to salve their
consciences without offending their thrifty instincts.
Aaron Bye, most people said, was unusually good to his slaves. He had
something of the patriarchal instinct and liked to think of himself as
ruler over the destiny of many people, his wife’s, his children’s and
more completely that of his slaves. Certainly he was very kind to
Joshua’s mother, Judy. She was a tall, straight, steely, black woman
with fine inscrutable eyes, a thin-lipped mouth and a large but shapely
nose. She bore about her a quality of brooding, of mystery, embodying
the attraction which she exercised for many men, white and black. But
apparently she knew little of this. Her only weakness, if such it might
be called, was an inexplicable attachment to the white Bye family. She
married, a few years before receiving her freedom, a man named Ceazer, a
proud, surly, handsome individual, who refused to adopt the surname of
his master; he had belonged to white people named Morton. Since even
after freedom Judy would not hear to leaving the Bye family, Aaron Bye
greatly pleased by this loyalty offered the position of coachman to
Ceazer, which the latter, with his customary surliness, accepted. Later
he not only threw up his job, but ran away, vanishing finally into
legend.
His was a strange truculent character; he hated slavery, hated all white
people, hated particularly the Mortons, hated ineffably Aaron Bye. He
wanted nothing at his hands. Once he knocked down another Negro who
referred to him as “Mist’ Bye’s man.” He was no man’s man, he assured
the stricken narrator, least of all the man of that damn Quaker. His
enmity went to ridiculous lengths. Aaron Bye taught Joshua how to write
and gave him a little black testament for a prize. In it he wrote “The
gift of Aaron Bye.” Joshua, delighted, wrote his own name under the
inscription and ran and showed it to his mother. She, it turned out, had
not been watching his making of pothooks without purpose. Underneath her
boy’s name she fashioned in halting crazy characters her single attempt
at writing, her own name, Judy Bye. Nothing would serve Joshua then but
that he must have Ceazer’s name in the book, too. Remembering that his
father could not write, Joshua wrote out himself with a fine flourish
“Ceazer Bye” and showed the name to its owner, entreating him to make
his mark beside it. Ceazer took up the pen in his strong, wiry fingers.
“Which one ob dese did you say were mine?”
Joshua pointed it out, waiting for the cross. Ceazer made a mark, it was
true, but it was a thick broad line drawn through his name with a fury
which almost tore the thin page. _He_ was no Bye!
It was not long after this that he disappeared, a strange, brooding,
intractable figure.
Joshua, although born in slavery, had never known the institution in its
more hideous aspects. He had been a very little boy when his freedom
came to him. And Ceazer, old Judy told him, had fought in the
Revolution! So that Joshua knew more of warfare to set people free than
of slavery for which war was later to be waged. From him his son Isaiah
heard almost nothing of the old régime, though there were many vestiges
of it on all sides. All he knew was that Joshua had kept on working for
Dinah and Aaron Bye after his emancipation, and that they had given him
on the occasion of his marriage to Belle Potter a huge Family Bible,
bound in leather and with an Apocrypha. On the title-page was written in
a fine old script: _To Joshua and Belle Bye from Aaron and Dinah Bye.
“By their fruits ye shall know them.”_
For a long time to Isaiah, who used to pore absorbedly as a boy over
this book with its pictures and long old-fashioned S, this inscription
savored of vineyards and orchards. The white Byes, as a matter of fact,
were the possessors of very fine peach-orchards in the neighborhood of
what is now known as Bryn Mawr, and Isaiah, even as a little fellow, had
been taken out there to pick peaches.
His father Joshua had spent his life in making those orchards what they
were; a born agriculturist, he had an uncanny knowledge of planting, of
grafting, of fertilizing. Many a farmer tried to inveigle him from Aaron
Bye. But although Joshua’s wages were small, he had inherited his
mother’s blind, invincible attachment for the Byes. His place was with
Aaron.
It was young white Meriwether Bye, youngest son of Aaron’s and Dinah’s
ten children, who told Isaiah what the inscription meant. Joshua had not
married until he was nearly fifty and his single son, black Isaiah, and
white Meriwether were boys together. Meriwether used to come to the Bye
house at Fourth and Coates Streets, which is now Fairmount Avenue, as
often as Isaiah used to appear at the Bye house at Fourth and Spruce.
Isaiah showed the inscription to Meriwether, “By their fruits ye shall
know them.”
“Yes,” said young Merry tracing the letters with a fat finger, “that’s
our family motto.” Isaiah wanted to know what a motto was.
“Something,” Meriwether told him vaguely, “that your whole family goes
by.” The black boy thought that likely.
“Everybody knows Bye peaches, ain’t that so? ’Cause of that everybody
knows the Byes.”
Meriwether, though impressed by this logic, didn’t think that that was
what was meant. A subsequent conversation with his father confirmed his
opinion.
“It means this, Ziah,” he said one hot July afternoon walking home with
the colored boy from the brickyard where Isaiah worked, “it means it
shows the kind of stuff you are. It means—now—you see a bare tree in the
winter time don’t you, and you don’t know what it is? But you do perhaps
know an apple blossom when you see it, or a peach blossom. In the spring
you see that tree covered, let’s say, with apple blossoms. Well, you
know it’s an apple tree.”
“But what’s that got to do with us?” Isaiah wanted to know. He was
interested, he could not tell why, but his slow-working mind clung to
its first idea. “Your father wrote it in the book he gave my father. My
father hasn’t any fruit trees.”
Isaiah never forgot the answer Meriwether made him in the unconscious
cruelty of youth. “When it comes to people,” said the young Quaker, “it
means pretty much the same thing. Now when I grow up, I’m going to be a
great doctor,” his chest swelled, “but nobody will be surprised. They’ll
all say, ‘Of course, he’s the son of Aaron Bye, the rich peach-merchant.
Good stock there,’” he involuntarily mimicked his pompous father; “and
I’ll be good fruit. That’s the way it always is: good trees, good fruit;
rich, important people, rich important sons.”
“What’ll I be?” asked Isaiah Bye, grotesquely tragic in his tattered
clothes, the sweat rolling off his shiny face, so intent was his
interest.
“Well,” Meriwether countered judicially, “what could you be?” He
pondered a moment, his own position so secure that he was willing to do
his best by this serious case. “Your father and your father’s father
were slaves. ’Course your father’s free now but he’s just a servant.
He’s not what you’d call his own man. So I s’pose that’s what you’ll be,
a good servant. Tell you what, Isaiah, you can be my coachman. I’ll be
good to you. And when you’re grown up,” said Meriwether with more
imagination than he usually displayed, “I’ll point you out to some
famous doctor from France and say, ‘His father was a good servant to my
father, and he’s been a good servant to my father’s son.’ How’ll you
like that?” Meriwether tapped him fondly if somewhat condescendingly on
the arm.
“You’ll never,” said Isaiah Bye, drawing back from the familiar touch,
“you’ll never be able to say that about me.” And he turned and ran down
the hot street, leaving Meriwether Bye gaping on the sidewalk.
After that his father could never persuade him to enter again the Bye
house, or the Bye orchards. Fortunately his mother upheld him here.
“’Tain’t as though he had to work for them old Byes,” she said
straightening up her already straight shoulders. “He makes just as much
and more in the brick-yard and in helpin’ Amos White haul.”
“I know that,” Joshua would reply impatiently, “but old Mist’ Aaron
says—now—he likes to have his own people workin’ roun’ him. And I don’t
like to disappoint him.”
Belle Bye told Isaiah. “I’m not one of his own people, Ma,” he answered
stubbornly, “and after that I’m not ever goin’ back.” Belle was rejoiced
to hear this. She would have been an insurgent in any walk of life.
Joshua was the genuine peasant type—the type, black or white, which
believes in a superior class and yields blindly to its mandates. But
Belle had seen too many changes even in her thirty-five years—she was
far younger than Joshua—not to know that many things are possible if one
just has courage.
Isaiah, on being questioned, told his mother with considerable
reluctance about his conversation with Meriwether. Belle, while
regretting the breach, understood. She had been glad to have her boy the
associate of young white Bye. Without expressing it to herself in so
many words she had realized that association with Meriwether was an
education for Isaiah. Already he was talking more correctly than other
colored boys in his group, his manners were good, and though his work
was of the roughest kind, his vision was broad, he knew there were other
things.
“I don’t believe,” his mother told him wisely, “that you kin go as fur
as you dream. Too many things agin you fur that, boy. But you kin die
much further along the road than when you was born. Never forget that.”
So Isaiah was saved from the initial mistake of aiming too high and of
coming utterly to smash. Yet he accomplished wonders. Who shall say how
he increased his slender store of knowledge? How he learned to read wise
books borrowed and bought as best he might? How he learned geography and
history that made his heart-beats go wild since it told him of the
French Revolution and how a whole nation once practically enslaved arose
to a fuller, richer life?
The inspiration for all this lay in those careless words of young
Meriwether. Although Isaiah met the young fellow many times after that
incident, and apparently with friendliness, he never in his heart
forgave him. Like Ceazer he developed a dislike for white people and
their ways which developed, however, into a sturdy independence and an
unyielding pride. No amount of contumely ever made him ashamed of his
slave ancestry. On the contrary, to measure himself against old Ceazer
and Judy gave him ground for honest pride. “See what they were and how
far I’ve gone,” he used to say, pleasantly boastful.
He resented as few sons of freedmen did the assurance with which the
white Byes took their wealth and position and power. “Hoisted themselves
on the backs of the black Byes.” He resented especially the ingratitude
of Aaron Bye to Joshua. For himself he asked nothing; being content to
fight his own way “through an onfriendly world.”
The white Byes had gone far, but the black Byes having now that greatest
of all gifts, freedom, would go far, too. They would be leaders of other
black men.
The upshot of all this was that Isaiah Bye opened a school for colored
youth down on Vine Street. No name and no figure in colored life in
Philadelphia was ever better beloved and more revered than his.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IV
ISAIAH did not marry until he was thirty-one, which was an advanced age
for his times. Even then he had married earlier than his father. Old
Joshua, who died long before Isaiah’s marriage, had been inordinately
proud of his one son.
“Jes’ wouldn’t work fer white folks,” Joshua used to say, “that weren’t
good enough fer him.”
Isaiah and Miriam Sayres Bye had one son. “Meriwether,” Isaiah wrote in
Aaron and Dinah Bye’s old gift, and under it in a script as fine and
characteristic as that of the original inscription: “By _his_ fruits
shall ye know—_me_.” It was a strange but not unnatural bit of pride,
the same pride which had made him name this squirming bundle of
potentialities, “Meriwether,—Meriwether Bye,” a boy with the same name
which old white Aaron Bye’s son had borne and with as good chances. The
Civil War was on the horizon then and Isaiah Bye, with that calm
expectation of the unexpected which was his mother’s chiefest legacy,
was sure that in that grand mêlée all his people would know freedom. So
black Meriwether Bye, born like himself in freedom, would know nothing
but that estate when he began to have understanding.
Isaiah had accumulated a little, though how that was possible, no one
aware of his tiny stipend could guess. It is true he not only taught
school, but he had outside pupils, ex-slaves, freedmen, men like himself
born in freedom, but unable through economic pressure to enjoy it except
in name,—all these crowded his home at night on Vine Street, and sweated
mightily over primers and pothooks and the abacus. Twenty-five cents an
hour he charged them, giving each a meticulous care such as would bring
a modern tutor many dollars. He wrote letters, pamphlets, too, for that
marvelous organization already well established, the A. M. E. Church.
His wife had a sister whose husband kept a second-hand shop and from
this source he earned an occasional dollar. When Meriwether was eight,
Isaiah owned two houses in Pearl Street, the house in Vine Street, a
half interest in his brother-in-law’s store and a plot in Mount Olivet
Cemetery.
From the very beginning Meriwether knew he was to be a great man—a
doctor, his father had said emphatically. And Meriwether repeated it by
rote. He was a clever enough child though without his father’s solid
trait of concentration. But he liked the idea of greatness—that and the
profession of medicine came to be synonymous with him as it was already
with his father. Otherwise it is likely that both of them would have
seen earlier the boy’s inaptitude for the calling thus thrust upon him.
Meriwether went to his father’s school, to Mr. Jonas Howard’s catering
establishment, which he loved, to Sunday-School and to his Uncle Peter’s
second-hand store. In any one of these places he was at home. He might
have made a good teacher, caterer, minister or storekeeper. Yet he
meandered on, doing absolutely mediocre work, never failing, never
shining, and always rather purposely waiting the day which should bring
him to the Medical School.
He was waiting for something else, too, though this Isaiah never
guessed. He was waiting for some sign of help or recognition from the
white Byes. His father had told him of the slaveholder’s great debt to
old Joshua; he had taken him riding past the Bryn Mawr peach orchards.
“By rights part of them ought to belong to us. But I don’t mind, no
sir-ee! Let ’em have ’em. See where we are to-day without their help.
Think of it!”
Meriwether did think of it and did mind it. He learned that he had been
named after the son of his grandfather’s patron and somehow it seemed
impossible to him that that mere fact should not result in something
tangibly advantageous. He lacked the imagination to understand the pride
which actuated Isaiah to name his boy as he had. The year before
Meriwether was to enter medical school, Isaiah, fortunately for himself,
died.
A few months later Miriam died, too. Meriwether was left sole heir to
the three houses and two or three hundred dollars. He was tired of
school and not at all displeased with the idea of being his own master.
He would like a little vacation, he fancied, and a chance to see the
world. Somebody told him of a good way to do this—why not get a job as
train porter? The idea pleased him; there was travel, easy money,
besides his little property in Philadelphia. And afterwards perhaps
there would be the patron for whom he had been named, Dr. Meriwether Bye
of Bryn Mawr.
Isaiah’s mother, Belle Bye, used to say, “Things you do expect and
things you don’t expect are sure to come to pass.” It took Isaiah many
years to see the reasonableness of this apparently unreasoned statement.
Certainly one of the things he never expected to come to pass was that
his boy Meriwether should, first, give up altogether his project of
studying medicine and, second, that bit by bit, through sickness,
gambling, and a hitherto unsuspected penchant for sheer laziness, he
should run through his Philadelphia property, thus wiping away all that
edifice of respectability and good citizenship which Isaiah Bye had so
carefully built up.
Colored Philadelphia society is organized as definitely as, and even a
little more carefully than, Philadelphia white society. One wasn’t “in”
in those old days unless one were, first, “an old citizen,” and, second,
unless one were eminently respectable,—almost it might be said
God-fearing. Meriwether having been born to this estate suffered all the
inconveniences coming to a member of a group at that time small and
closely welded. His business was everybody’s business. His Uncle Peter
had upbraided him for not studying medicine. Jonas Howard, the caterer,
knew about his first real estate transfer. The young Howards and his
cousins knew about his gambling and rebuked him admiringly. On one of
his “runs” Meriwether spent a week in New York. This was in 1889. Not a
single colored person knew him or cared about him. He rented a room in
Fifty-third Street and made that his headquarters. Later he rented two
rooms and married a young seamstress who died in 1891 when her boy was
born.
Meriwether did do two things after that. First he wrote to Dr.
Meriwether Bye telling him who he was and implying he would not disdain
a little aid. It is doubtful if the doctor, who at that time was
traveling in Europe with his tiny grandson, ever received the letter.
Second, he took to drink. More than anything else he fell into a deep,
ineluctable mood of melancholia. Here he was, Meriwether Bye, destined
to be a great man, a famous physician. Why, he had been a man of
property once, with money in the bank! And now he was just a poor
nobody, picking up odd jobs, paying his room rent fearfully from week to
week, sometimes pawning Isaiah Bye’s chased gold watch.
How he worked it out he himself could not have told. But he saw himself
a martyr, “driven by fate” from the high eminence of his father’s dreams
to his own poor realities. Think how he had struggled, sacrificed—he
believed it—the fun and freedom of youth to come to this! “How,” said
Meriwether Bye harking back to Sunday-School days, “how are the mighty
fallen!” And how easily might they have remained mighty.
He named his boy Peter after his Uncle Peter, in whose second-hand shop
in Philadelphia he had spent delightful hours.
Now see the perversity of human nature. Just as his father Isaiah Bye
had talked to his son Meriwether about the reward of effort and faithful
toil, just so Meriwether talked to Peter about the futility of labor and
ambition. And in particular he talked to him about the ingratitude of
the white Byes—of all white people.
“It makes no difference, Peter, what you do or how hard you work. The
rewards of life are only for such or such. You may pour your heart’s
blood out,”—he had a fine gift of rhetoric—“and still achieve nothing.
Think of your great-grandfather. Fate favors those whom she chooses.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed.”
Or, “Peter, if life has any favors for you, she’ll give them to you
without your asking for them. The world owes you a living, let it come
to you, don’t bother going after it.”
How completely his son might be absorbing all this, Meriwether never
knew, for Peter, vocal enough with his playmates and others, maintained
an owlish silence when his father thus harangued him.
But his aunt knew. She was a tall, stout, yellow woman, with that
ineffable look of sadness in her eyes characteristic of a certain type
of colored people. She was the sister of Peter’s mother, and when
Peter’s father died, suddenly, inconsequently, she accepted
uncomplainingly his son along with her other burdens.
Peter was then twelve; extraordinarily handsome, vivid and alert. Miss
Susan Graves riding home from the cemetery reflected that he might be
not such a burden after all. Clearly he would soon want to be taking
care of himself.
“Peter,” she said thoughtfully, “what do you want to do when you grow
up?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” her nephew replied, temporarily removing his gaze
from the window-pane where it had been glued for twenty minutes. “I’m
not bothered about that, Aunt Susan. You see the world owes me a
living.”
She noticed in him then the first fruits of his father’s shiftlessness.
But far more deeply rooted than that was his deep dislike for white
people. He did not believe that any of them were kind or just or even
human. And although he could not himself have told what he wanted from
the white Byes, if indeed he wanted anything, he grew up with the
feeling that he and his had been unusually badly treated. His
grandfather’s connection with white people resulted in pride, his
father’s in shiftlessness; in Peter it took the form of a constant and
increasing bitterness.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER V
IT may seem a cold-blooded thing to say, but the dying of Meriwether Bye
was about the best thing he could have done for his son, Peter.
Certainly that was what Miss Susan Graves thought as she viewed rather
grimly the small and motley collection of belongings which Peter
transferred to her home in his little express wagon from his father’s
former landlady, Mrs. Reading. The collection consisted of a well-worn
extra suit of clothes, another pair of shoes, some underwear in sad need
of patching, some books chiefly on physiology and anatomy, the Bye
Family Bible, a little old black testament, and a box of letters. There
was also a big railroad map which Peter lugged along under his arm and
from which he stubbornly refused to be parted. Meriwether, in his
brighter moods, used to refer to his “runs” as “business-trips” and
would point out to Peter just where he would go on such and such a date.
The boy learned a lot of geography in this way, and was talking to his
playmates about Duluth and Jacksonville, Sacramento and Denver, before
most of them knew that they personally were living in the country’s
metropolis.
The books on medicine and anatomy had been well thumbed by Peter, too.
Meriwether had received them from old Isaiah, his father, and had
carried them around on his runs to impress his co-workers in the Pullman
service.
Later he got into the habit of reading from them to Peter who always
listened in the grave silence which he usually reserved for his father’s
effusions. For some reason the little boy’s brain retained the various
and amazing things which his father read to him from the dry old books.
Long before he knew his multiplication tables he knew the names of the
principal bones of the body and the course of the food. In fact these
books were his first readers, for Meriwether, more interested in this
dry stuff, now that it was too late to profit him anything, taught his
boy how to pronounce the difficult names, so that the latter could read
to him. Perhaps the poor fellow, dissolute and weak failure though he
was, thought that some of the old “greatness” might still accrue to him
by this fiction of studying at medicine.
The Bible was the one thing that Peter knew least about. He looked into
it once or twice and hitting on Isaiah Bye’s tragically proud
inscription: “By _his_ fruits ye shall know—_me_,” spelled it out
laboriously,—he always had trouble in reading script,—and asked his
father with some natural perplexity what it meant. But Meriwether
snatched the book away from him with such a black look and took such
pains to put it out of his reach, that Peter for a long time thought the
Bible, or at any rate that inscription, must be something decidedly off
color. He waited until his father had gone on his next “business-trip”
before investigating again, but finding the book nowhere as exciting as
his beloved Anatomy, he gave up the puzzle and attributed his father’s
defection to the inscrutable whims and vagaries of the genus called
parents. He valued that old Bible the least of all his possessions. That
was the bitterest day of his life when he found out what it ought to
mean to him.
Miss Susan, though not an “old Philadelphian” herself, knew something of
colored Philadelphia’s pride in the possession of family and tradition.
She would have been glad of course if Meriwether Bye had left Peter some
money. But of the two she would very much rather have had the Bible with
its absolute assurance of the former standing and respectability of the
black Byes. She had a family tradition of her own, for she was a member
of the Graves family of Gravestown, New Jersey, a clan well known to
colored people not only in that vicinity, but also throughout
Pennsylvania.
The story is that two white sisters in the middle of the eighteenth
century fell in love with two of their father’s black slaves. The
Negroes may have been African Princes for all any one knows to the
contrary. Since nothing they could do or say would win their father’s
consent to such a union, the girls ran away with their lovers, and
married them, with or without benefit of clergy it is impossible to
relate. Nature and God alike, instead of being disconcerted at this
utter contravention of the laws of man, presented each couple with
numerous children. When these reached mating age, finding themselves out
of favor with both black and white of their community, the cousins
solved the problem by marrying each other. The children of each
generation did the same, whether driven to it by like necessity or not,
history does not say. But by the time the next brood appeared a
precedent had been established, and Graves married Graves not only as a
matter of course, but as a matter of pride. They were able to do this,
being automatically rendered free by the fact that a white woman had
married a black man.
Miss Susan Graves had not married for the simple and sufficient reason
that in her day there were not enough male Graves to go around. She
would as soon have thought of marrying outside her family as a Spanish
grandee would have thought of marrying an English cockney. In those days
the position of old maid had its decided disadvantages—few people if any
gave her the benefit of the doubt that she might have remained single
from choice. Yet Miss Susan Graves, in spite of three other offers,
soared on family pride above all this and made her career that of
housekeeper for the family of a wealthy merchant on Girard Avenue, in
Philadelphia. (You must marry a Graves, but obviously you obtained work
where you could find it.)
There was a younger sister, Alice Graves, not as direct in purpose as
Susan, yet in some respects curiously strong. She had always considered
the Graves’ tradition silly: it was so unexciting marrying someone whom
you had known and seen all your life. What was marriage for if not for a
change?
When the oldest son of Merchant Sharples of Girard Avenue married and
went to New York, Susan Graves went along as housekeeper. And thither
Alice Graves followed shortly to do sewing for that intricate but
orderly household. Meriwether Bye, who had known both ladies in
Philadelphia—for Miss Susan Bye was a frequent visitor both at his
father’s and his Uncle Peter’s house—came to see them in his rare fits
of loneliness, and between runs courted Alice Graves in Central Park. Of
course it would have been better if Alice could have married a Graves,
but Susan resigned herself easily to the matter—for Bye belonged to old
stock and must, she thought, make good eventually. But she developed a
strong dislike for him before his death, and took Peter not only for his
mother’s sake but also to dispel if possible his father’s doubtless
harmful influence.
Peter was a surprise to his aunt. She found him kind but thoughtless,
industrious on occasions but unspeakably shiftless, not too proud, not
very grateful and with no sense of responsibility. His father of course
spoke there. Yet the boy was indubitably charming, never complained, and
usually did as he was told. Miss Susan found herself between two
minds—she had an impulse to work her fingers to the bone and thus spare
Alice’s beautiful son the tussle with poverty which he must know, and
again a desire to speak and act forcibly and drive him into an
acknowledgment of what her loyalty to her sister was leading her to do
for a homeless, friendless lad. Actually she struck a medium, made him
keep clean, insisted on his regular attendance at school, took him to
Sunday-School and Church entertainments and induced him to work on
Saturdays and holidays by refusing pocket-money to “a boy as big as
you.”
She could not understand why he chose a job in a butcher’s shop.
Doubtless Peter hardly knew himself. “I like to watch the man saw the
bones,” he would have said vaguely. “I can do it, too. I can cut up a
chicken or a rabbit just as neatly!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VI
IT was Joanna who first acquainted Peter with himself. But neither of
the children knew this at the time. And although Peter came to realize
it later it was many years before he told her so. For, though he went
through many changes and though these two came to speak of many things,
he kept a certain inarticulateness all his lifetime.
Joanna and all the older Marshalls went to a school in West Fifty-second
Street, one after another like little steps, with Joanna at first quite
some distance behind. They were known throughout the school. “Those
Marshall children, you know those colored children that always dress so
well and as though they had someone to take care of them. Pretty nice
looking children, too, if only they weren’t colored. Their father is a
caterer, has that place over there on Fifty-ninth Street. Makes a lot of
money for a colored man.”
Peter, unlike Joanna, had gone to school, one might almost say, all over
New York, and nowhere for any great length of time. Meriwether had
stayed longest at Mrs. Reading’s but as, in later years, he more and
more went off on his runs without paying his bills, Mrs. Reading
frequently refused to let Peter leave the house until his father’s
return.
“For all I know he may be joinin’ his father on the outside and the two
of them go off together. Then where’d I be? For them few rags that Mr.
Bye keeps in his room wouldn’t be no good to nobody.”
This enforced truancy was the least of Peter’s troubles. He did not like
school,—too many white people and consequently, as he saw it, too much
chance for petty injustice. The result of this was that Peter at twelve,
possessed it is true of a large assortment of really useful facts,
lacked the fine precision, if the doubtful usefulness, of Joanna’s
knowledge at ten. When Miss Susan settled in the Marshalls’ neighborhood
and brought Peter to the school in Fifty-second Street he was found to
be lacking and yet curiously in advance. “We’ll try him,” said the
principal doubtfully, “in the fifth grade. I’ll take him to Miss
Shanley’s room.”
Miss Shanley was Joanna’s teacher. She greeted Peter without enthusiasm,
not because he was colored but because he was clearly a problem. Joanna
spied him immediately. He was too handsome with his brown-red skin, his
black silky hair that curled alluringly, his dark, almost almond-shaped
eyes, to escape her notice. But she forgot about him, too, almost
immediately, for the first time Miss Shanley called on him he failed
rather ignominiously. Joanna did not like stupid people and thereafter
to her he simply was not.
On the contrary, Joanna had caught and retained Peter’s attention. She
was the only other colored person in the room and therefore to him the
only one worth considering. And though at that time Joanna was still
rather plain, she already had an air. Everything about her was of an
exquisite perfection. Her hair was brushed till it shone, her skin
glowed not only with health but obviously with cleanliness, her shoes
were brown and shiny, with perfectly level heels. She wore that first
week a very fine soft sage-green middy suit with a wide buff tie. The
nails which finished off the rather square-tipped fingers of her small
square hands, were even and rounded and shining. Peter had seen little
girls with this perfection and assurance on Chestnut Street in
Philadelphia and on Fifth Avenue in New York, but they had been white.
He had not yet envisaged this sort of thing for his own. Perhaps he
inherited his great-grandfather Joshua’s spiritless acceptance of things
as they are, and his belief that differences between people were not
made, but had to be.
Joanna clearly stood for something in the class. Peter noted a little
enviously the quality of the tone in which Miss Shanley addressed her.
To other children she said, “Gertrude, can you tell me about the
Articles of Confederation?” Usually she implied a doubt, which Gertrude
usually justified. But she was sure of Joanna. The tenseness of her
attitude might be seen to relax; her mentality prepared momentarily for
a rest. “Joanna will now tell us,—” she would announce. For Joanna,
having a purpose and having been drilled by Joel to the effect that
final perfection is built on small intermediate perfections, got her
lessons completely and in detail every day.
It was at this time and for many years thereafter characteristic of
Peter that he, too, wanted to shine, but did not realize that one shone
only as a result of much mental polishing personally applied. Joanna’s
assurance, her air of purposefulness, her indifference intrigued him and
piqued him. He sidled across to the blackboard nearest her—if they were
both sent to the board—cleaned hers off if she gave him a chance,
managed to speak a word to her now and then. He even contrived to wait
for her one day at the Girls’ entrance. Joanna threw him a glance of
recognition, swept by, returned.
His heart jumped within him.
“If you see my sister Sylvia,—you know her?—tell her not to wait for me.
I have to go early to my music-lesson. She’ll be right out.”
Sylvia didn’t appear for half an hour and Peter should have been at the
butcher’s, but he waited. Sylvia and Maggie Ellersley came out laughing
and glowing. Peter gave the message.
“Thanks,” said Sylvia prettily. Maggie stared after him. She was still
the least bit bold in those days.
“Ain’t he the best looker you ever saw, Sylvia? Such eyes! Who is he,
anyway? Not ever Joanna’s beau?”
“Imagine old Joanna with a beau.” Sylvia laughed. “He’s just a new boy
in her class. He _is_ good looking.”
Some important examinations were to take place shortly and Miss Shanley
planned extensive reviews. She was a thorough if somewhat unimaginative
teacher and she meant to have no loose threads. So she devoted two days
to geography, two more to grammar, another to history, one to the rather
puzzling consideration of that mysterious study, physiology. Perhaps by
now the class was a bit fed up with cramming, perhaps the children
weren’t really interested in physiological processes. Joanna wasn’t, but
she always got lessons like these doggedly, thinking “Soon we’ll be past
all this,” or “I’m going to forget this old stuff as soon as I grow up.”
Poor Miss Shanley was in despair. She could not call on Joanna for
everything. Pupil after pupil had failed. Her eye roved over the room
and fell on Peter’s black head.
She sighed. He had not even been a member of the class when she had
taught this particular physiological phenomenon. “Can’t anyone besides
Joanna Marshall give me the ‘Course of the Food?’”
Peter raised his hand. “He looks intelligent,” she thought. “Well, Bye
you may try it.”
“I don’t think I can give it to you the way the others say it,”—the
children had been reciting by rote, “but I know what happens to the
food.”
She knew he would fail if he didn’t know it her way, but she let him
begin.
This was old ground for Peter. “Look, I can draw it. See, you take the
food in your mouth,” he drew a rough sketch of lips, mouth cavity and
gullet, “then you must chew it, masticate, I think you said.” He went on
varying from his own simplified interpretation of Meriwether Bye’s early
instructions, past difficult names like pancreatic juice and thoracic
duct, and while he talked he drew, recalling pictures from those old
anatomies; expounding, flourishing. Miss Shanley stared at him in
amazement. This jewel, this undiscovered diamond!
“How’d you come to know it, Peter?”
“I read it, I studied it.” He did not say when. “But it’s so easy to
learn things about the body. It’s yourself.”
She quizzed him then while the other children, Joanna among them, stared
open-eyed. But he knew all the simple ground which she had already
covered, and much, much beyond.
“If all the children,” said Miss Shanley, forgetting Peter’s past,
“would just get their lessons like Peter Bye and Joanna Marshall.”
She had coupled their names together! And after school Joanna was
waiting for him. He walked up the street with her, pleasantly conscious
of her interest, her frank admiration.
“How wonderful,” she breathed, “that you should know your physiology
like that. What are you going to be when you grow up, a doctor?”
“A surgeon,” said Peter forgetting his old formula and expressing a
resolve which her question had engendered in him just that second. He
saw himself on the instant, a tall distinguished-looking man, wielding
scissors and knife with deft nervous fingers. Joanna would be hovering
somewhere—he was not sure how—in the offing. And she would be looking at
him with this same admiration.
“My, won’t you have to study?” Joanna could have told an aspirant almost
to the day and measure the amount of time and effort it would take him
to become a surgeon, a dentist, a lawyer, an engineer. All these things
Joel discussed about his table with the intense seriousness which
colored men feel when they speak of their children’s futures. Alexander
and Philip were to have their choice of any calling within reason. They
were seventeen and fifteen now and the house swarmed with college
catalogues. Schools, terms, degrees of prejudice, fields of
practice,—Joanna knew them all.
“Yes,” said Peter, “I suppose I will have to study. How did you come to
know so much—did your father tell you?”
“Why, I get it out of books, of course.” Joanna was highly indignant: “I
never go to bed without getting my lessons. In fact, all I do is to get
lessons of some kind—school lessons or music. You know I’m to be a great
singer.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Perhaps you’ll sing in your choir?”
Then Joanna astonished him. “In my choir—I sing there already! No!
Everywhere, anywhere, Carnegie Hall and in Boston and London. You see,
I’m to be famous.”
“But,” Peter objected, “colored people don’t get any chance at that kind
of thing.”
“Colored people,” Joanna quoted from her extensive reading, “can do
everything that anybody else can do. They’ve already done it. Some one
colored person somewhere in the world does as good a job as anyone
else,—perhaps a better one. They’ve been kings and queens and poets and
teachers and doctors and everything. I’m going to be the one colored
person who sings best in these days, and I never, never, never mean to
let color interfere with anything I _really_ want to do.”
“I dance, too,” she interrupted herself, “and I’ll probably do that
besides. Not ordinary dancing, you know, but queer beautiful things that
are different from what we see around here; perhaps I’ll make them up
myself. You’ll see! They’ll have on the bill-board, ‘Joanna Marshall,
the famous artist,’—” She was almost dancing along the sidewalk now, her
eyes and cheeks glowing.
Peter looked at her wistfully. His practical experience and the memory
of his father inclined him to dubiousness. But her superb assurance
carried away all his doubts.
“I don’t suppose you’ll ever think of just ordinary people like me?”
“But you’ll be famous, too—you’ll be a wonderful doctor. Do be. I can’t
stand stupid, common people.”
“You’ll always be able to stand me,” said Peter with a fervor which made
his statement a vow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VII
SYLVIA and Joanna, walking through Sixty-third Street on an errand for
their mother, came upon groups of children playing games. Italians,
Jews, colored Americans, white Americans were there disporting
themselves with more or less abandon, according to their peculiar
temperament.
“Look,” said Joanna suddenly, catching at Sylvia’s hand. “See those
children dancing! Wait, I’ve got to see that!”
Out in the middle of the street a band of colored children were dancing
and acting a game. With no thought of spectators they joined hands, took
a few steps, separated, spun around, smote hands sharply, and then flung
them above their heads. One girl stood in the middle, singing too, but
with an attentive air. Presently she darted forward, seized a member of
the ring:
“Say, little Missy, won’t you marry me?”
Their voices were treble and sweet, though shrill, and rang with a
peculiar, piercing quality above the street noises and the sounds of the
other children’s games. The little players were absorbed, enraptured
with the spirit of the dance and the abandon of the music. Joanna, too,
was in a transport. She watched them going through the motions several
times. Presently she caught all the words:
“Sissy in the barn, join in the weddin’,
Sissy in the barn, join in the weddin’”
The child in the center here chose a partner. The others sang:
“Sweetest l’il couple I ever did see.
Barn! Barn!
They stamped here.
“Arms all ’round me!
Barn!
The two children in the center embraced each other while the rest sang:
“Say, little Missy, won’t you marry me?”
Then the two in the center pointed fingers at each other, shrilling:
“Stay back, girl, don’t you come near me
All them sassy words you say!
Then all:
“Oh, Barn! Barn!
Arms all ’round me!
Say, little Missy, won’t you marry me?
Marry me?”
The last line came as a faint echo.
Joanna rushed forward: “I can play it! Girls let me play it, too!”
The children stared at her a moment, then, with the instinct of
childhood for a kindred spirit, two of them unclasped hands and took
Joanna in. She outdid them all in the fervor and grace of her acting.
Two white settlement workers stopped and looked at her.
“Come on, Joanna,” Sylvia called impatiently.
Joanna came running, a string of the children after her. She bade them
good-by. “I must go now, but I’m coming back sometime soon, to learn
some more.” She blew them a kiss, “good-by, oh, good-by!”
She came up to Sylvia flushed and excited. “We’ll play it home, Sylvia!
Wasn’t it lovely and dear? Oh, I could dance like that forever!” She
went almost all the entire remaining distance on tip-toe.
Life in Joel Marshall’s house was not always a serious discussion of the
Marshall children’s future. Like many of the better class of colored
people, the Marshalls did not meet with the grosser forms of color
prejudice, because they kept away from the places where it might be
shown. This was bad from the standpoint of development of civic pride
and interest. But it had its good results along another line. The
children took most of their pleasures in their house or in those of
their friends and devoted their wits and young originality to indoor
pastimes.
The Marshall house was a great center for this kind of thing, and
already Friday and Saturday nights were being regularly set apart for
the children’s amusement and for the reception and entertainment of the
various young people who dropped in.
Joanna taught her dance. Sylvia and Philip and Alexander were willing
pupils; Joanna was magnetic when in this kind of mood. By the time Harry
Portor and Maggie Ellersley arrived, they were all singing and stamping
and twirling. Peter came in late, held up by the butcher. “Had to go on
an errand for the grand white folks,” he explained briefly.
“You’ll wear out my carpet to-night for sure,” said Mrs. Marshall, but
she loved the dancing as much as any of them, and got up and took a
turn. Joanna taught the tune to Peter, who had a good ear, and he ran
over to the old-fashioned square piano and rattled it off to a wild
thumping accompaniment. When Brian Spencer came in, who even in those
days was pretty sure to be where Sylvia was—the fun was at its height.
Peter, strumming a haunting, atavistic measure; Joanna, dancing like a
faun, instructed Maggie Ellersley.
“Now, Maggie, dance up to one of them. All right, take Philip. You point
your finger at him,—no both of you. Yes, you’re right, Peter. I forgot
that. See, Phil, Peter’s learned it already. Here I’ll do it by myself;
all of you stand back.”
She went through an elaborate pantomime, stretching out her hands as
though clasping a partner on each side. She described an imaginary
circle for the ring and ran into the midst of it. An imaginary partner
was before her and she drew him in, pointed a slim, brown finger at him,
rested both hands on her young hips, pirouetted, sang to him gayly:
“Stand back, boy, don’t you come near me!”
“My,” laughed Brian Spencer, clapping loudly. “Can’t you see it all just
as plainly? Really, Jan, you ought to go on the stage as an
impersonator, I don’t believe you could be beat.” He was a tall dark boy
with fine proud features that looked chiseled. He and Alexander were
home from college for the Easter vacation.
Maggie Ellersley, as it happened, had been at a matinée the week before.
“It was vaudeville, Joanna, and there was an actress there who took off
different people and then she did some Irish folk dances, but she
couldn’t hold a candle to you. Too bad we’re colored.”
“It’s not going to make any difference to me,” said Joanna determinedly.
“Mother and father are willing. If I want to go on the stage I’ll get
there.”
“Joanna has the faith that moves mountains,” laughed Peter. “If anybody
can make it she can.”
Peter was a regular visitor at the Marshall home now. Ever since that
day four years before when he had told Joanna of his new-born
determination to be a surgeon, he had spent all his spare time near her.
Miss Susan Graves did not like this at first, not that she resented
Peter’s absence from her so much, but he was a Bye and she did not
choose to have him associate too much with people whom she did not know.
It was no part of her plan for Peter to retrograde into the wreck which
Meriwether had become. She made it her business to meet Mrs. Marshall at
a church affair.
“I think,” said Miss Graves, eyeing Joanna’s mother with her clear,
square gaze, “that my boy has spoken to me of you.”
Mrs. Marshall looked puzzled. She thought this was a _Miss_ Graves.
“Peter Bye,” his aunt continued, “he’s my nephew. He often speaks of
Joanna Marshall.”
“Oh, Peter! Yes, we like to have him at the house. The girls find him
great fun. So you’re his aunt. You must come to see us, too. Get him to
bring you.”
Miss Graves came and was impressed enough to let Peter continue, though
he would have continued without her permission. But Miss Susan, like
Belle Bye nearly a century ago, recognized atmosphere when she saw it.
She was poor; Peter was penniless. These were the sort of people her
nephew ought to know. She liked Joel’s success, his pride, his air of
being somebody. She estimated rightly the correctness of the
old-fashioned walnut furniture, the heavy curtains, the kidney table in
the parlor, the massive silver service and good linen. It is true Sylvia
changed much of this—except the silver—for cretonnes and wicker chairs
and gay rugs. But as Miss Susan went to the house only a few times she
did not know of this.
What she especially liked was the spirit of life, of ambition and
hopefulness that pulsed in that household. As Miss Graves grew older,
she began to see that her younger sister had had some pretty good views
after all, that it did not do to stick to settled views,—“this for me,
and that quite other thing for you.” The great things of life were for
the taking, it was true, but the result of deliberate planning. One did
not simply stumble into success. She had lived too long with “the best
white people” not to find that out.
Joel knew this, too, she realized. His whole life was devoted to the
mapping out of his children’s future. His own and Joanna’s high
enthusiasms had borne fruit. Of late the boys, Philip and Alexander, had
talked good solid man-talk.
“Colored people will be going big pretty soon. We’ll have to get in it,
too, Pa.”
Miss Susan decided this was a good place for Peter. Even if she had the
money to do so, she could not send him to a school where he would meet
with more inspiration in both precept and actual concrete example.
Already in the lesser things this association was bearing fruit. Peter
was too handsome, too graceful, too charming ever to be considered a
boor. But he had lacked finish, that fine courtliness of manner which
Miss Susan noted could convert a man of most ordinary appearance into a
prince. She had marked it among Jacob Sharples’ grandsons. Peter had not
possessed a knowledge of that delicacy, of that attention to trifles
which, once gained by a man, gives him passport everywhere. Miss Susan
had noticed, to her regret, the boy’s tendency to let her carry bundles,
to look after even the heavier household duties. It had never occurred
to him if the weather were cold or stormy, to offer to go errands for
her. And his aunt, practical though she was, shrank from calling his
attention to these things. She did not want him to think of her as
exacting a return for her kindness.
Now the Marshall boys were fine gentlemen. Joel had made them so by
teaching, as well as by his attitude toward their mother and sisters.
Joanna and Sylvia, particularly Sylvia, helped the boys out with an
occasional stitch, an occasional sewing on of a button. When Alexander
was getting ready for college, and was working at nights to help with
his expenses, Sylvia used to arrange sandwiches and milk for him when he
came in late. And Joanna had recopied his chemistry and history notes.
These were only kind trivialities, but the boys treated their sisters
like queens. Philip was a little like Sylvia, only neither as handsome
nor as lithe and quick. Alexander—Alec, Sandy, the girls called him
variously—was slower, like Joanna. Both boys were tall and well set-up.
The girls used to thrill a little—sisters to them though they were—over
the very real and thoughtful gallantry of these two young men.
Miss Susan had remarked this quality as soon as she met them. And she
was beginning now to see its reflection in Peter. And as he had beauty
and great personal charm to go with it, it distinguished him even more
than the Marshall boys. She half way suspected a conscious assumption of
this on his part.
“But if he keeps it up, it will become part of him,” she thought to
herself, “and then—girls be careful.” She would have been a little
fearful for Joanna had she not noticed immediately in the young girl
that indomitable desire for distinction. “Joanna will never fall in love
with anybody,” she said once to a common friend of herself and the
Marshalls. “She’ll never be able to take her mind off long enough from
her high falutin dreams.”
Of course Peter had no conception why his aunt liked him to visit the
Marshalls. He was only too glad that she didn’t disapprove. He was
seventeen now and beginning to know himself in some ways pretty well. He
liked Sandy and Philip and Sylvia Marshall—liked them very well, and
Joanna! It could hardly be said that he loved her at this time. But he
knew that what he liked best of all in the world was to be near her, to
watch her, and to listen to her plans. She had little shadowy gleams in
her dark thick hair, glints of light that ended abruptly in wavy
blackness. He would like to touch it. He remembered that he had once
pulled her hair. He had done it often! But now, though she was only
fifteen, he did not dare. Yet he often touched Sylvia’s.
The night that Joanna taught them all the barn dance, Peter maneuvered
until he got Harry Portor at the piano, and said:
“How does that part go, Joanna? Here I am in the center. Then I take you
in. Then——”
“Put your arms around her,” said Sylvia. “That’s it. Now,——
Barn! Barn!”
He went home and fairly babbled to his aunt about it. “Joanna is the
most wonderful!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER VIII
IF Peter was unconscious of the utter desirability of association with
the young Marshalls, Maggie Ellersley was not. Ever since her childhood
when she had overheard a conversation between a cousin and her mother,
she had made up her mind to attach herself to some such family and see
what came of it.
The cousin and her mother worked together for some wealthy white people.
Maggie’s mother was a laundress, a spare hard-working woman to whom life
had meant nothing but poverty and confusion. On Thursdays and Fridays of
each week she washed and ironed and gossiped with “my cousin Mis’
Sparrow” who was cook at the house on Madison Avenue. Maggie used to
come there for dinner and go home with her mother.
“Mis’ Sparrow,” small and spidery, had a perpetual complaint against the
world. In particular she experienced envy toward those who were better
off than herself. Her jaundiced disposition may be excused, however,
when one reflects that hers was a lot which had been hard ever since she
could remember. She was poor, she was weak, she was ignorant. Add to
that the fact that she was black in a country where color is a crime and
you have her “complex.” Some people would say she had really done well
in one sense with her life. She had attained by her own unaided efforts
to a comfortable, even if menial, position, where she had heat, light
and enough to eat. They would ask: Considering her beginnings what more
could she want? Alas, in that dull soul unknown aspirations stirred,
amazing questions took form. “Why, why, why?” asked Mis’ Sparrow in her
own peculiar dialect, “are all the sweetness and light of life showered
on some and utterly denied to me?”
At present Mis’ Sparrow had fastened a resentful eye on Mrs. Proctor,
the bride of the son of the “white folks” for whom she worked. Edmonia
the maid had told her about the newcomer, and over the supper table she
retailed it to Mrs. Ellersley.
“She wan’t nobuddy. Jes’ a little teeny slip of ole white gal. No money,
no fambly, no nuthin’.”
“Where’d he meet her then?” asked Mrs. Ellersley, uninterested but
polite.
“Young Mr. Proctor’s sister met her in boardin’-school, poorest thing
there,” replied Mis’ Sparrow, wiping a puckered mouth with her apron.
“’Monia says Miss Dorothy sorry for her and got her a job in her
father’s office. Mr. Harry was jes’ home f’um college; he saw her, took
a fancy to her and jes’ married her. Jes’ wouldn’t listen to nobuddy
a-tall.”
“Don’t it beat all,” pondered Mrs. Ellersley, “how some people have all
the luck? Now if that kind of thing could just happen to my Maggie.”
Mis’ Sparrow was unmoved by the irrelevant allusion to Maggie. Where
would she get such a chance?
“’Monia says she don’t even love him. Liked some young travelin’
salesman she’d known all her life. ’Monia declares she cries about him
when she’s by herself.”
“What she marry him for then?” asked Maggie Ellersley, aged twelve, and
an interested listener.
“H’m child, wouldn’t you do anything to get away f’um hard work, an’
ugly cloes an’ bills? Some w’ite folks has it most as bad as us poor
colored people. On’y thing is they has more opporchunities.”
Maggie, visualizing the life which she and her mother endured, thought
she probably would. She thought it again after they had reached the
tenement in Thirty-fifth Street where the two of them lived. It was the
famous “Tenderloin” of those days and Maggie’s spirit revolted with a
revulsion of feeling which never ceased to amaze her mother against the
sordidness of that place. There were three rooms. The front one looked
on the street and so was well lighted, but the other two got light only
from the air-shaft. Mrs. Ellersley, a widow who considered herself
fortunate to be one, rented the front room out, usually to train-men
(perhaps some of Meriwether’s acquaintances were among them),
occasionally to a married couple.
She and Maggie slept and lived in the two wretchedly ventilated rooms,
in a perpetual gloom penetrated ever so slightly by a flickering blue
flame. A confusion of clothes, obscene old furniture, boxes, stale
newspapers was littered about them. For some reason the rooms were
everlastingly damp, perhaps because, although rain could get down the
air-shaft, the sunlight never could. The rooms gave Maggie a constantly
eerie feeling, which in later more fortunate years she was always able
to recall by the sight of a gas-flame burning low and blue.
They never, in those days, enjoyed a really bright flame. Saving was
Mrs. Ellersley’s insistent because necessary fetish. Maggie’s tea was
always weak, and never sweet enough. The bread—baker’s with holes in it,
yesterday’s, two loaves for five cents—was always stale; the meat
usually salt and sometimes tainted.
Out of it all Maggie bloomed—a strange word but somehow true. She was
like a yellow calla lily in the deep cream of her skin, the slim
straightness of her body. She had a mass of fine, wiry hair which hung
like a cloud, a mist over two gray eyes. Her lips, in spite of her
constant malnutrition, persisted unbelievably red. When she met
excitement those gray eyes darkened and shone, her cheeks flushed a
little, her small hands fluttered. And she was nearly always excited.
Something within her frail bosom pulsed in a constant revolt against the
spirit of things that kept her in these conditions.
“I will not always live like this, Ma—I’ll get out of it some way.”
And her mother, though always scoffing, believed her with a dreary
hopefulness. “If there’s a way to be found out, Maggie’ll find it.”
Maggie found early that one avenue of escape lay through men. They were
stronger than women, they made money. They did not give the impression
of shrinking from spending the last penny lest when that cent was gone
there should be no more. All the train-men liked her. She could not get
much order in that abominable home, but she could and did keep herself
clean and neat. She washed her few garments over night; she wound a
stray ribbon, from a box of cigars or a box of candy, through her hair.
Some of the men, young students, “on the road” during their summer
vacations, used to flirt with her.
“Hurry and grow up, Mag. When I get through school I’ll come back and
marry you. How’d you like to live in a little house—not like this!—in
Washington?” Or Wilmington or Savannah as the case might be. “I’d give
you pretty dresses.”
Poor Maggie. Her calla-lily charm visibly lessened in those days when
she opened her pretty mouth. She disclosed herself then for what she
was, a true daughter of the Tenderloin.
“Aw quit your kiddin!”
But she came slowly to realize that here was a way out. If she could
only grow up—if she were—say—seventeen.
She was persistently frail, else her mother might have put her to work.
As it was she was sent to school very regularly—to save fuel and gas.
Evenings she went to the houses where her mother worked and got her
dinner.
On the night after she had listened to Mis’ Sparrow’s comments about
young Mrs. Proctor, she sat thoughtful a long time. She had sense enough
to know that very often these train-men stayed poor. They made pretty
good money—they did, too, in those days—but not enough to save their
wives from labor. Maggie did not want to wash and iron, to go through
the dreary existence which had been her mother’s when her father was
living; he had run on the road.
Suppose, just suppose, there were some colored men who were fortunate,
successful, who had enough to eat, who could give their wives help. Her
mother knew of ministers like that. There were colored doctors and
lawyers somewhere. Their very titles connoted prosperity.
“Ma,” she spoke out of her brown study, “are there any very rich colored
men?”
“Not any very rich ones, I don’t think,” Mrs. Ellersley replied
thoughtfully, “but lots very well off, comfortable, with servants to
wait on ’em.” She sighed.
“I’m going to meet one,” said Maggie solemnly, and henceforth she
thought, she dreamed of nothing else.
When she was fourteen young John Howe, who was occupying the front room,
came down with a spell of typhoid fever. He begged Mrs. Ellersley not to
send him to the hospital, and it was impossible to get him to his home
in Oklahoma. He had enough money to see him through, and he put his
fortunes and his case into her withered hands. All the train-men knew of
Mrs. Ellersley’s absolute honesty. She did what she could for him, sat
up long nights, gave him his medicine faithfully, “counted out his
money.”
But it was Maggie who gave real service. She stayed out of school to
attend him. The doctor gave her a list of directions which she followed
with meticulous care. In that shabby house down in that terrible
district John Howe met with an attention, a devotion from the humble
woman and her delicate daughter, such as no money could have bought him
in the seats of the mighty.
John Howe was a Lincoln divinity student, intermittently working his way
through college. He sat up gaunt and weak in the scratched bed of cheap
cherry wood and picked with long skeleton fingers at the thin blue and
white checked coverlet.
“Maggie, you and your mother’ve been mighty good to me. Look here, I’ve
got to pay you back somehow. After this illness I’ll have to stay out of
school a year. What do you want?”
Maggie stared at him, her gray eyes going black in the yellow oval of
her face.
“There’s only one thing I want, Mr. Howe, and you couldn’t give me
that.”
“I could try. What is it?”
“Oh Mr. Howe, if you could just get us out of this awful place, this
house, this street! If I could just get to know some decent folks——”
“Well, I don’t see how I could arrange about the folks. Where do you
want to live, if you go from here? There’re not many places for colored
folks in New York.”
“There are houses for colored people up in Fifty-third Street, and
decent folks living in them.”
“But my goodness, Maggie, it costs a fortune to rent one of those
houses.”
“I know, oh, I know. But if we could just get started. Mother could fill
the house with roomers. Why there’ve been twelve men here for this room
since you’ve been sick. The rest of the rooms aren’t much, but mother
always keeps this room tidy, and we’re honest. They all know that. Never
missed a penny here, any of them. And they tell their friends about us.
Lots of times they tell Ma if she only had more room she’d have all the
roomers she wanted.”
“But you’ve no furniture.”
“We could buy on the instalment plan.” She had her scheme all worked
out. Clearly she had nursed her project. “Mr. Howe, if you could just
help us to begin.”
He would, he told her, convinced by her earnestness. “What exactly do
you want me to do, Maggie?”
She wanted him to make his headquarters with them for the year, and to
pay as much as he could in advance. It was still early summer. He must
write and tell other men, who would want rooms, and get a few of them to
pay in advance, too. “Train-men won’t mind that,” she told him shrewdly,
“they’ll like to know they have some place to go to when they’ve cleaned
themselves out at cards, or whatever it is they do. That will pay a
month’s rent, and leave something, and with what we pay on this—this
_hole_, we’ll have something to put on the furniture.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Howe, “I’ll speak to your mother about it.”
But that was useless. Mrs. Ellersley was sure of her livelihood, her
mere existence here, but she was doubtful about a great venture. “Of
course, for Maggie’s sake I’d like to get away.”
“Oh, Ma, do—do, Ma,” Maggie had pleaded in an ecstasy of longing. “This
is our one chance. You see if we don’t take this we’ll never get away.”
Fortunately she had Howe to back her. “She’s right, Mrs. Ellersley, and
this is no place for a young girl to grow up. You can count on me. I’ll
go look for a house, and see about some furniture. I know plenty of
fellows would be glad to come.”
Miraculously the scheme worked. It gave Maggie her first insight into
the workings of life. If you wanted things, you thought and thought
about them, and when an opportunity offered, there you were with your
mind made up to jump at it.
Of course they were poor, but at least they were decent. John Howe,
staying for that year in New York, realizing more and more how truly he
was indebted to Maggie and her mother, took a proprietary interest. He
laid the cheap rugs, he set up the cots, three in a room, he did
mysterious jobs in the bath-room which to Maggie was always so
marvelous. He bought tools and fixed window-cords which the landlord
neglected. Maggie darned his socks for him, and he bought some
wall-paper, cheap but clean and virginal, a soft yellow, and papered her
square box of a room. A good job he made of it, too. Another roomer at
his instigation made a dressing table out of a packing box which Mrs.
Ellersley, re-invigorated, covered with scrim.
Gradually, word of her rooming-house spread among the better class of
transients. All her lodgers gave her their mending to do, she washed for
some of them, gave breakfast to a few chosen spirits, and they paid
willingly and well.
Maggie was in transports. This was something like a home. Of course, she
had to attend school in the district. Her mother took her as soon as
matters were settled. She looked fresh and neat in a dark blue serge
dress trimmed with black braid, the gift of melancholy Mis’ Sparrow who
in turn had had it from young Mrs. Proctor. The dress was worn, but it
was whole, and Maggie had tacked a tiny turnover of white lace in the
high collar.
She was assigned to the eighth grade. There were two of them in the
school. Her star was in the ascendant, for she was assigned to the one
of which Sylvia Marshall was a member. She would have fared differently
if it had been Joanna, for unless she were markedly clever, Joanna, who
was intellectually a snob, would probably never have seen her. But
Sylvia spied her at once. She came over to Maggie at recess.
“You’re a new girl, aren’t you? Want me to show you your way around?”
Maggie looked at the pretty girl, charming in a soft dark red cashmere
dress made with a wide pleated skirt. She had on little patent leather,
buttoned shoes with cloth tops, and a big red bow perched butterfly
fashion on her dark head. Joanna wore her hair rather primly back from
her face, but Sylvia’s was parted and rolled in waves over her ears,
then it was caught up and confined by the bow. She had a thin gold
bracelet on one arm. And about her hung the aura of well-being and easy
self-assurance which marked all the Marshall children.
“I wish you would,” said Maggie.
Sylvia in those days was an ardent worker in Old Zion Sunday School and
had promised to help in a campaign for more students. She told Maggie
about it within the next two or three days.
“My mother is going to entertain the new folks whom I get to join. Will
you join?”
Maggie would and so went to Sylvia’s home as her mother’s guest.
She never forgot that home with its quiet dignity and atmosphere of
prosperity. The Marshall children were a revelation to her. She had not
known of colored people like these.
“At last I’m getting to know decent people,” she told her mother.
She had a passion for respectability and decency quite apart from what
they connoted of comparative ease and comfort, though she coveted these
latter, too, and meant some day to have them.
“Two months ago,” she thought, “I was still in that horrible house on
Thirty-fifth Street, and I got away. If that could happen, anything
could happen.” She lay in her bed at nights in the little yellow room
and saw visions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER IX
SHE played her cards with an odd mixture of deliberation and
spontaneity.
“Maggie adores you, Sylvia,” said Joanna.
“I think she does,” Sylvia replied modestly. “I don’t know why, I’m
sure. She certainly is nice to me.”
Maggie’s obvious admiration and Sylvia’s naïve acceptance made the way
easy. It is hard not to be nice to someone who shows plainly that you
are her ideal, your company her supreme satisfaction. Maggie wore her
hair like Sylvia’s, she copied when she could her manner of dressing,
she spent half her time at the Marshall house.
She saw the value of absolute honesty. No need to pose when telling the
exact truth brought what one wanted without the strain of living up to a
false position. The Marshalls soon knew of Maggie’s poverty, of the
quick wit and determination which had brought them from that
“dump-heap”—Maggie’s word—to the respectable and comfortable if still
cheap boarding-house. Sylvia used to talk to her mother about it. Mrs.
Marshall suggested that she hand over to Maggie one or two of her
perfectly good but discarded dresses.
But Sylvia objected with a very real delicacy. “She goes to the same
school I go to and to Sunday-School. I wouldn’t want the other children
to see her in my things, she’d feel so badly.”
Her mother saw the justice of that. “I suppose I have one or two things.
There’s that old brown Henrietta of mine and the silk poplin. How’ll she
get them made over though, Sylvia? Now don’t expect me to help.”
“Oh, mamma, you darling! You really are a brick! That poplin is old
rose, isn’t it? She ought to look lovely in it. I can fix them. You know
how I love to fix things over and Maggie knows how to sew on the
machine. If she stayed here three or four days, the rest of this week,
we could finish them.”
Mrs. Marshall agreed, Maggie’s mother was consulted, Maggie came in an
ecstasy. Her first sojourn away from home! And what a sojourn! Naturally
neat though she was, she learned of toilet mysteries, of rites of which
she had never dreamed. Nightly hair-brushings and the discovery that of
course each one had her own brush and comb! Frequent washings of both,
talcum powders! Joanna the ascetic used scentless ones, but Sylvia’s
were highly fragrant. These Maggie preferred. A bath every night.
“If you don’t mind,” said Sylvia, “I’ll take mine first and then you can
stay in as long as you like. I hope that pig Joanna hasn’t used up all
the hot water!”
Delicacies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Dinner at six instead of
the middle of the day! Mrs. Marshall complained of a headache Saturday
morning and Joanna took her breakfast up to her on a silver tray. Mr.
Marshall kept box on box of cigars in his den. Sandy and Philip wore
superlatively blackened shoes.
Maggie looked, listened, stored in her memory. The dresses were a
success. The rose poplin, being the prettier, was finished first; Sylvia
had longed so to get her hands on it. Maggie put it on Saturday morning
and stood in front of the cheval mirror in Mrs. Marshall’s room admiring
her own and Sylvia’s handiwork, and herself with it.
“It’s too pretty to wear in the house. Oh, don’t let’s have to wait till
to-morrow. Mamma, couldn’t the boys take us to the matinée? Maggie, have
you seen Peter Pan?”
Maggie, it transpired, had seen nothing, had never been inside a
theater.
“What fun!” Sylvia’s native delicacy hit on the right expression. “Fancy
going to your first matinée. Can you spare us, Mother dear?”
The party could be arranged. Philip and Alexander expressed their
willingness. Joanna did not care to go, to Maggie’s astonishment, which
increased when she saw how wonderful the theater was. But there were
other things. The girl never forgot the thrill that came over her as
Philip took her arm and led her over dangerous crossings, arranged her
seat and program for her, took off her coat. He held it during the
performance and wrinkled it shamelessly. Sylvia scolded him.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Phil.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maggie interposed happily. She was beginning to
have her good time like other people. Oh, God bless John Howe!
The acquaintanceship progressed. All through the high school the two
were nearly inseparable. It is true, Maggie sought Sylvia more than
Sylvia sought her, but on the other hand Maggie’s presence was taken as
a matter of course by the Marshalls and their friends. Maggie went to
parties with Sylvia, the two escorted by Brian Spencer and Philip. Often
she slept at her house after the parties and at Christmas time and
week-ends. Once, when Mrs. Marshall took Joanna to visit relatives in
Philadelphia, Maggie stayed with Sylvia a whole month.
In her junior year in the high school she had a long talk with Mr.
Marshall. Of course they were still poor, the house just kept them in
comfort. Maggie had become addicted to the wearing of good clothes. Her
mother was getting older. They needed help from time to time. If Mr.
Marshall would assist her in getting some work. She was young and strong
and willing.
“No, no, Mr. Marshall!” she objected as Joel—they were sitting in his
office—spoke of a loan and reached for his check-book. “Not that! When
could I ever pay you back? No, I mean work, real work. I could take
orders, count the silver, look after the napery, pay off the men if
you’d care to trust me.”
Perhaps a man of another race might have stopped to consider such a
proposition coming from the lips of a young and dainty girl. He might
have been suspicious and realized that his younger son was working in
the business with him just then and the boy and girl would be bound to
be thrown together. But colored men of old Joel’s type are obsessed with
the idea of a progressing younger generation. “They must advance,”
thinks the older man, “I must do all in my power to help them. This is
my contribution to mine own.”
Joel taught her his simple system of bookkeeping and installed her. She
proved herself efficient, willing, and—her mother’s teachings spoke
here—absolutely honest. Her energy and interest were surprising. “You
might think it was her own business,” said Joel. He had no desire to see
either her or any of his children become caterers, but he did like to
see a job well done. Philip was the only one who had evinced any
interest in the business, and that was only during his last year before
entering college. He had to make some extra money somehow—both he and
Sandy had a healthy dislike of burdening their father with their college
expenses—and since he had to work he preferred to spend his time and
energy in his father’s interests.
His chief work consisted in directing his father’s various squads of
waiters. He met them at the house where Joel was catering, started them
off, checked over necessities, looked after the thousand details which
lent to Joel’s service the perfection that so justly brought him fame.
Maggie often accompanied Philip on these trips. Sometimes she went to
one house and he to another, and he would call for her and take her
home. She pondered deeply over the possibility of these meetings.
He was usually jolly, unsentimental, almost brotherly. Maggie took care
to follow his lead. But to her great surprise she was beginning to be
conscious of a deep affection for him. At first she had only yearned for
respectability and comfort, and Philip represented such a convenient
short cut to her heart’s desire. But now things were different.
Sometimes when they came home quite late he would take her arm and the
two would walk slowly and silently down the strangely quiet streets. A
curious little sense of intimacy used to brood over them at times like
these. Philip would laugh a little nervously.
“Awfully jolly being out late like this by ourselves, isn’t it, Maggie?”
She would nod him a smiling yes. “Some day,” she thought, “he must say
more.”
Her studies, her work and these trips with Philip took up most of her
time just now. She and Sylvia of course still saw a great deal of each
other and once in a while went out together. She went to the theater
still more rarely, or to a church festival with Henderson Neal, one of
her mother’s boarders. A mysterious tall brown figure of a man, twenty
years older than Maggie and a thousand years older in experience, he
caught and not infrequently held her attention. He had lived with them
two years, paid his bills regularly, asked no questions and vouchsafed
no explanations.
Maggie wondered what he did. Whatever his occupation, it certainly paid
him well. More than once she had seen him display without ostentation a
huge roll of bills, which apparently was static in bulk. His speech was
often ungrammatical, but so deliberate that one thought he must be
speaking correctly. He had a rather grand air, and listened to both Mrs.
Ellersley and her daughter with a somewhat ponderous attention. Maggie
thought he was rather interesting for such an old man—he must be nearly
forty! She was a little afraid of him, though, and decided it would be
rather unpleasant for any one who chanced to make him angry.
Once he met Sylvia and Maggie on the street and offered to take them to
the matinée. His interest was clearly in Maggie but he politely included
her friend. Sylvia later told Philip about it.
“I hope you didn’t go,” he replied quickly.
“No, I didn’t, Maggie didn’t, either. But there’s no reason why I
shouldn’t have. She goes with him sometimes.”
“But that’s different. Maggie’s known different people from any you’ve
ever known. She can take care of herself.”
“What’s the matter?” Joanna asked, putting her head in the door. “What’s
old Phil so excited about?”
“You might just as well hear this, too, Jan. I won’t have you and Sylvia
going about with a man like Henderson Neal. Maggie can go with men that
my sisters can’t afford to associate with.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER X
SUNDAY was always an important day in the Marshall household. Its
importance, it is true, took on a different character as the years sped.
In the early days Mr. Marshall looked forward to it as the outward and
visible sign of an inward worth. He was a steward in his church, Old
Zion, and on Sundays in a long frock coat with a correct collar, a black
Ascot tie surmounted by a gold horseshoe, he passed the collection box
from pew to pew. He liked to bend his rather stately iron-gray head in
recognition of various greetings. He felt he looked the part, as indeed
he did, of an upright, ambitious, aspiring citizen.
Many a small boy unconsciously stored away a memory of the erect
wholesome figure as a possible exemplar for future consideration.
His wife found Sunday a rather distracting day. It was eminently
satisfying, doubtless, to be able to show off such a number of stylish
costumes. Joel had always been able to have her dress well. There was
one wine-colored cashmere with a polonaise and bustle which she had
considered particularly fetching.
“I never put the dress on in the old days,” she said to her girls,
showing them the truly awe-inspiring picture, “without thinking to
myself: ‘I certainly am glad I married Joel.’ I always did love fine
clothes. Sylvia, I think you must have inherited my taste.”
Sylvia groaned. “Oh, no, mamma, I don’t deserve that!”
Clothes, however, had not quite compensated Mrs. Marshall for the
arduousness otherwise entailed in the observance of the Sabbath. There
was always company. Joel, a caterer, knew “how it ought to be done.”
Then there were the four children to dress and get off, and the constant
oversight of them when they came home to see that they did not break the
thousand inhibitions which made the day sacred.
“I used to hate it so,” Sandy laughed. “Remember, Phil, how we used to
try to find those awful sailor collars—I think they’re called Buster
Browns now—and see if we couldn’t hide them or mark them up before the
next Sunday? Mother must have had a million of them, for we were never
able to exhaust her supply.”
“Weren’t you sights!” Sylvia teased. “You were fat, Alec, and your face
rose large and round over your collar like a full moon. You had two eyes
set away back from your fat cheeks and you had to bend your head way
over to look down——”
“And you wore a grayish-brownish-greenery-yallery round straw hat,”
interposed Joanna.
“Don’t you talk,” Philip jeered at them, “I remember two poke bonnets,
reddish, with fuzzy stuff sticking up over them.”
“Astrakhan. Yes, I remember,” Sylvia told him. “Weren’t they awful? And
the deadliness of Sunday afternoon! You boys sitting around knocking
your feet against the rungs of the chairs. Such glooms!”
“Yes, and you,” said Sandy, assuming a solemn countenance. “Looking
dejectedly out of the window, your face propped in your hands!”
“Joanna was the only one who got anything out of those Sundays,” Philip
mused. “I can see her now flat on her tummy reading the life of some
exemplary female.”
“Notable women of color,” laughed Joanna. “I adored Sunday.”
Certainly no flavor of those past days spoiled the Marshalls’ enjoyment
in these later years. Rather remarkably the whole family still went to
church, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall from years of long habit, Sylvia because
she rather liked to please her mother and because it amused her to have
Brian Spencer, whom church-going bored to the point of agony, obey her
wish that he should go. Sandy, now in the real estate business, thought
it gave him standing in the community.
Philip’s reasons were various. Chiefly he went to church as he went to
many meetings, because he was interested in seeing groups of colored
people together. He had a strong desire to sense the social
consciousness, for he was trying to learn just what stirred mass feeling
and into what channels it could be directed. A minister of the poorest
type was an unfailing source of study to him. How would this man sway
the people? And what would he ask of them once he had them ready to
listen to his will? Philip always dreamed of a leader who should
recognize that psychological moment and who would guide a whole race
forward to the realization of its steadily increasing strength.
He dreamed many dreams sitting crosswise in the far corner of his pew,
his back partly against the wall, partly against the seat, his lean,
brown, slightly haggard face bent forward. He had already the somewhat
remote glance of the thinker, though his firm chin pronounced him no
less the man of action. Maggie Ellersley, sitting across the church from
him, watching him a little covertly under her drooping hat brim, used to
think he looked like a man who would take what he wanted.
“If only he knew _what_ he wanted,” she half sighed.
Joanna was the soloist of the choir these days, sole _raison d’être_ of
_her_ church-going. Her mezzo voice full and pulsing and gold brought
throngs to the church every Sunday.
“There is a green hill far away,” she sang, and the puzzled, groping
congregation turned its sea of black and brown, yellow and white faces
toward her and knew a sudden peace. Even Philip stopped his restless
inner queries.
At times like these Peter Bye felt his very heart leap toward her.
Joanna with her cool eyes and steady head cared almost nothing about
this. She never saw herself in this scene. Always in her mind’s eye she
was far, far away from the church, in a great hall, in a crowded
theater. There would be tier on tier of faces rising, rising above her.
And to-morrow there would be the critics....
The Sundays passed thus week-end to week-end. One of them stood out in
Joanna’s memory. Philip, a Harvard junior, was home on his summer
vacation, but he and Sylvia and Sandy had gone to visit their mother’s
folks in Philadelphia.
Joanna, Brian Spencer, Peter, and Maggie Ellersley stepped out of church
and walked down the torrid street. It was early June, but the weather
was that of August.
“Our children are growing up,” said Mrs. Marshall to Mrs. Ellersley,
lingering a moment in the shady vestibule. “See how tall Joanna and
Maggie have grown. They were the littlest things!”
Mrs. Ellersley followed the group with a wistful eye. Of late she had
begun to have some idea of Maggie’s unspoken desires. She wished it were
Philip instead of Brian walking down the street with her daughter. She
was very tired, tired enough to die, but she could not, she felt, leave
Maggie alone, unplaced in the world.
The four young people turned the corner and prepared to separate.
“Brian is coming to the house for dinner,” said Joanna. “You coming,
Maggie and Peter?”
Maggie had an engagement for the afternoon. Peter refused, too, sulkily,
to Joanna’s vast satisfaction.
“Jealous,” she thought with some pride. It was an exhibition with which
she seldom met. Most of the young men of her acquaintance were a little
afraid of Joanna with her intent and serious air. “High-brow” they
called her and she knew it, liked it, too, though it had its
inconveniences.
“Peter’s mad,” she laughed as the two moved off, “because I told him I
was going to the benefit concert with you, Brian, and so he couldn’t
come to-night.”
“Sorry if I spoked his wheel,” said Brian, “but you just have to take
pity on me, Jan, I’m so lonely without Sylvia.”
“Of course. Isn’t it funny that he doesn’t realize that? He thinks you
are making up to me. As though I would come between you and Sylvia.
Great chance I’d have.”
“About as much as _I’d_ have, trying to come between you and Peter. Not
that I know anything about you, Janna. Heaven only knows what you mean
to do with the boy. But I wouldn’t want to face Peter, if I were aiming
to be his rival. Wonder what he’ll do when he goes to the University in
Philadelphia. What’s he going off there for, anyway? Can’t he do just as
well here?”
“The penalty of being colored,” said Joanna soberly. “He can get much
better hospital work in Philadelphia. Of course he could take his
pre-medic work here, but he thinks it best to begin where he plans to
finish.”
“How long will he be away?”
“Forever and ever, six or seven years, I think. Of course, we both have
relatives in Philadelphia. His great-uncle Peter, for whom he was named,
is still there, you know. Peter’s counting on living with him. It will
save expense.”
“Six or seven years!” said Brian disregarding anything else. “Golly what
a wait! It would kill any girl but you, Janna.”
“Sylvia didn’t die while you were in Harvard,” Joanna returned meanly.
“Not much she didn’t! But she kept me in the back of her head, I’ll
swear. While you with your singing and dancing and your wildcat schemes
of getting on the stage! Better stick to your own Janna, and build up
colored art.”
“Why, I am,” cried Joanna, astonished. “You don’t think I want to
forsake—_us_. Not at all. But I want to show _us_ to the world. I am
colored, of course, but American first. Why shouldn’t I speak to all
America?”
“H’m, I suppose you’re right. You ought to win out if anyone can. You
work hard enough, Janna. You’re eighteen now, aren’t you? Well, you’ve
got a good ways to go. How old is Peter?”
“Twenty. He lost a lot of time when he was little. That’s why he’s so
late entering college.”
“Well look here, what are you going to do with him?”
“I may not have a chance to do anything with him, Mr. Busybody.”
“Phew, isn’t it hot! Thank goodness here’s the house. Run along and get
your brother-in-law a long, cold drink.”
He stayed after dinner—they had it on Sundays at three—and talked away
the rest of the afternoon to Joel in the long dark dining room.
“It’s cool here,” said Joel, handing him a cigar. “Light up and tell me
how’s Harlem?”
“Great, sir. It’s the place for colored people. Let us get you a house
up there. Pick you up something fine in One Hundred and Thirty-first
Street.” Brian, too, had gone into real estate as Alexander’s partner.
Joel rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Don’t
know but what I might. This neighborhood’s gone down. Let me see your
house.”
“Yes, sir, I will. Has—er—Sylvia said anything to you about me? I’m
getting along pretty well now, sir.”
“What should she say? Here Joanna, come take this lovesick boy off my
hands!”
Joanna came, serene and cool, a little prim in her pale yellow dress and
soft floppy hat of tan chiffon. She handed Brian his Panama.
“I’m ready, Brian.”
Joel stopped them for a moment, clapped the boy on the shoulder. “It’s
all right as far as her mother and I are concerned, Brian.”
The two went off and heard a gracious, mellow-voiced woman fill a hall
with sound that made them forget the heat.
“My collar’s wringing wet, and I never thought of it. Wonderful how
music can make people forget.”
“Even color,” said Joanna thoughtfully. “Did you see that white woman
next to me edge away when I sat down? But when she heard me humming
after it was over, she leaned over and asked me if I knew the words.”
“I wondered what you were talking about. Awfully jolly of you to have
taken pity on me to-night, Janna dear. You marry Peter and all four of
us will go to these concerts and sit in the gallery and come home
praising God from whom all blessings flow.”
“It certainly sounds nice. Only we mustn’t forget Philip. Don’t ring the
bell, here’s the key.”
He took it. “All right about Philip. Maggie is fond of music, too.”
Joanna, in the act of entering the door, stepped back and faced him
sharply. “What’s Maggie got to do with it?”
“Well, she and Phil. They’ve always paired off together, haven’t they?
Just like you and Peter, just like Sylvia and me.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” said Joanna fiercely. “Why, Philip—he’s going to be
somebody great, wonderful, a Garibaldi, a Toussaint! And Maggie,
Maggie’s just nobody, Brian. Why, do you know what she’s taking up? Hair
work, straightening hair, salves and shampoos and curling-irons.”
“Joanna, you’re an utter snob. I always knew you looked down on people
unless they were following some mad will o’ the wisp. Maggie’s as good
as any of us. Why look here, she graduated from high school with Sylvia.
You can’t look down on her.”
“Sylvia’s my sister, thank you. She’s Joel Marshall’s daughter. She has
background, she knows good music and pictures and worth while people.”
“You talk like a silly book. What’s that got to do with it? And, anyway,
you can’t stop it now.”
“What’s the reason I can’t?”
“Well, good Lord, it must be as good as settled. Why Maggie thinks—only
to-day—Oh—here, I’ve said enough. Thanks awfully for a nice evening,
Jan——”
“What’d she say, Brian?”
“Well, you know we were coming home from church and you and Bye were
ahead and I said, ‘Look at the lucky pair.’”
“Yes, never mind me. Well, well?”
“And she said, ‘You miss Sylvia, don’t you, Brian?’ ‘You bet,’ I told
her.
“And she looked at me—you know how Maggie can look—she said, ‘Just like
I miss Philip, I guess.’”
Joanna grew visibly taller. “You let her say that, Brian Spencer?”
“Well, how could I stop her? Of course she misses Phil. And quit acting
‘offended pride,’ Joanna. Heavens, doesn’t Sylvia sometimes do sewing?”
“Oh, but that’s different, she creates, she’s an artist——”
“Artist your grandmother! Sleep it off, Janna. Good night.” He went off,
striding down the quiet street.
Joanna closed the door and crept quietly up to her room. Seated in a
wicker arm-chair in a stream of gold summer moonlight, she spent a long
time in deep thought.
Maggie and Philip! Maggie! Of late she and Philip had had many a long
talk. He’d lean against the mantelpiece—his restless fingers caressing a
little black statuette:
“Jan, I’ll talk to you, because you’ve always cared about this kind of
thing. Raise a monument—more-enduring-than-bronze sort of business, you
know. When I graduate—by the way, I think I’ll be elected Phi Beta Kappa
next year—I’ve got a scheme, I’ve got a plan that will work all right.
Father will be proud of me, you’ll see. And you, too, old girl, you’ve
always been a bright beacon light. You stick to this stage business,
you’ll win out. There’ll be a twin star constellation. ‘The well known
Marshalls, Joanna and Philip.’ We’ll make the whole world realize what
colored people can do. Nothing short of ‘battle, murder or sudden death’
is to interfere.”
He, too, had been bitten by the desire to make the most of his life. And
now here was Maggie Ellersley.
“What ambition has she?” Joanna asked herself fiercely, forgetting to
measure the depth of the abyss of poverty and wretchedness from which
Maggie had sprung. “She shan’t spoil my brother’s chances.”
Rushing over to her little desk, she pulled out a piece of tan
stationery and began a note.
“Dear Maggie——”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XI
PETER had accompanied Maggie as far as the subway station. “You won’t
mind if I don’t go all the way home with you, Maggie? Fact is, I don’t
feel so well to-day, so if you’ll excuse me——” His voice trailed
indeterminately.
Maggie smiled at him nicely. She was oddly happy at this moment. Linking
her name with Philip’s, as she had, gave her an odd sense of freedom, of
sureness. “And Brian didn’t seem at all surprised,” she kept thinking to
herself over and over.
She answered out loud, “That’s all right, Peter. Go home and rest. I’m
going to be in the house only a minute, anyway.” She looked at him
meaningly. “I guess both of us have a lot to think of. Good-by.” She
flashed down the steps, looked back; a second later a slender golden
hand waved to him from the gloom of the subway.
“Now I don’t know what she meant,” thought Peter, pushing his hat back
from his hot forehead, and immediately turning to another idea. “I’d
like to punch that fresh Brian’s head. Oh, Janna, how could you go off
with him?”
Down in the subway train Maggie sat smiling a little inanely. Of late,
her feeling for Philip had taken a definite form; she wanted, as always,
desperately to marry, and to marry well in order to secure for herself
the decent respectability for which those first arid fourteen years of
her life had created an almost morbid obsession. But she knew now that
the one man through whom she wanted to secure that respectability was
Philip Marshall. She loved him.
“If the way I wanted him at first, dear God, was a sin, you must forgive
me. Oh, Philip, Philip, have a good time in Philadelphia to-day. I bet
you’re at a meeting of some kind this minute.” The picture of his
favorite attitude came before her, and she smiled more broadly.
A white man sitting opposite mistook the smile and leaned forward,
leering a little. She turned her head quickly, noting as she did so that
something about his build made her think of Henderson Neal, her mother’s
roomer.
She was to go motoring with him this afternoon. He had asked her very
often of late. Usually she spent Sundays with Philip and Sylvia and
Brian, sometimes with Joanna and Peter. But since the first two were
away, she might just as well spend the time with Mr. Henderson. He would
have a nice car, she knew; twice before he had taken herself and her
mother out. It had really been very nice. She rather fancied he must
work in a garage, he came riding up to the house so often. She wished a
little nervously that she hadn’t promised to go, it would be nice to sit
quietly in her room or in the long, sparsely furnished parlor and think.
Still it was hot, and if there were any air to be got they’d catch it in
an automobile.
She ran up the subway steps and hurried toward Fifty-third Street.
Somehow she didn’t care to keep Mr. Neal waiting.
There was still a quarter of an hour before he might be expected. She
bathed her face, shook out her short, thick hair, twisted it back from
her forehead. Next she crowned her oval, deep-cream face with a wide
black hat, whose somberness was repeated in a broad velvet ribbon around
the waist of her white dress.
But she looked anything but somber as she ran to the door at the whirr
of the motor.
“Going, Ma,” she called back. Mr. Neal climbed out of the car and helped
her in.
He didn’t look so old—elderly—to-day, she thought to herself, noting the
straightness of his flat back and the smooth bronze of his closely
shaven cheek. Evidently his beard was very strong and this had lent
hitherto a somewhat heavy cast to his face. But to-day he was shaven to
the blood. Maggie was used to studying men. It was a legacy from the old
days, when failure to analyze a prospective roomer’s appearance might
jeopardize a week’s rent. She noticed Neal’s hands at the wheel,
powerful and sinewy with broad square finger-tips. He was still
baffling, but not so bad, she thought.
“Of course, not like Philip, but nice enough to go around with, and this
is a dandy car.” She looked at him again sideways. He caught her glance.
“Thinkin’ I ain’t so bad maybe, Miss Maggie?”
She blushed, confused, not so much at his catching her eye as at the
completeness with which he had read her thought.
“You certainly look nice in that suit, Mr. Neal. It’s different from
what most men wear, isn’t it?”
“Likely as not. I picked it up in London last time I crossed the big
pond.”
“You’ve been to Europe?” asked Maggie all ears.
“Yes to England, France, Spain, Germany _and_ Italy. They was a time,”
he said in his deliberately incorrect way, “when I thought I’d stay in
them parts forever, but I come back. Used to valet for a rich white
fellow. Took me everywhere with him. Wanted to carry me to Africa
lion-hunting. But I quit him cold. If you want to hunt lions, go to it.
Me, I’m a-goin’ t’stay right here.”
He spoke with a heavy emphasis on the last word which lent a curious
whimsicality to his speech.
“This is the first time you’ve ever talked about yourself, Mr. Neal.
Tell me some more, it’s mighty interesting.”
He had been everything from a farmer to a chauffeur, he told her,
confirming her idea that his present occupation was concerned with the
manipulation of cars.
“And I’ve been a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of people. But you
don’t want to hear about me, Miss Maggie. They ain’t nothing in me to
interest a little lady like you. Now, on the other hand, seems to me,
you might make real interestin’ talkin’.”
He had a nice smile, Maggie thought.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she smiled back at him. “There’s just my
mother and me. I’m twenty-one and I’ve been out of school three years. I
work in the office of Mr. Marshall, the caterer; you know him?”
“Know of him, Miss Maggie, know of him. Son’s a real-estate agent, ain’t
he?”
“Yes. Well, I’m a sort of overseer-bookkeeper. In my spare time I’m
taking up a course in hair-dressing. You know there’s a Madame Harkness
who’s invented a method of softening hair, and of taking the harshness
out of your folks’ locks.” She laughed at him. “You know I think there’s
a big future in it. It ought to mean a lot to us. Everybody wants to be
beautiful, and every woman looks better if her hair is soft and
manageable.”
“Reckon you don’t need to use no such preparation, Miss Maggie.”
“No, I don’t, fortunately, but I’ll be glad to help those that do. I
love to see people look nice; like to look nice myself.”
“You sure do, you’re like a little yellow flower, growin’ in that
house.” He gave her a keen level glance whose boldness was softened by
his serious manner.
“Let’s stop talking about me,” said Maggie with sudden confusion. “Don’t
you want to hear about my mother?”
“Well, not as much as about some others.”
“Anyway, she’s been a wonderful mother. My father died when I was about
eight, and left us nothing. Mother has been hard put to it at times.
That’s why I want to learn the hair-trade. I want to set up a business
for myself some day. If I succeed, both mother and I can live on easy
street.”
“You’d ought to be living there now. A delicate little girl like you’s
got no business having to worry her pretty head about taking care of
herself.” He bent on her a long considering look. “There’s many a man
would be willing to take that job off your hands. I bet I know of one.”
An odd bashfulness seemed to descend upon him.
“Perhaps he’s going to propose,” thought Maggie innocently enraptured,
“wouldn’t that be great?” She pictured Sylvia’s surprise when she should
tell her. His clumsy circumlocution, his heavy deference, delighted her.
Philip of course was wonderful, but he was inclined, like all the
Marshalls, to be a little superior. Well, why shouldn’t they be?
She sighed.
Her silence seemed to put an end to his sentimental maunderings, for he
began to talk about the car, explaining its mechanism. Once, too, he
turned and swore fluently at a motorist who passed him too closely. At
the sudden passion which convulsed his face Maggie drew back, a little
frightened. He noticed it, and immediately ironed out the lines of
anger.
“You must forgive me, Miss Maggie. It made me so angry to think that
that fool might have caused an accident which would have injured you.”
She thought with the ignorant pride of a young girl that it would be
very easy for her to manage him. Shortly after that they turned around
and came home. Maggie was glad when they reached the house, for she had
many things to think about. Shutting off the motor, he followed her into
the hall and they stood there a minute, his powerful dark figure looming
over her.
She thanked him prettily. “It was very nice of you, Mr. Neal. You’ve
been most kind to mother and me.” As she sped lightly up the stairs she
forgot him completely.
Her windows were open and a full moon flooded her room with light. “Oh,
Philip if I only knew how you felt,” she murmured, getting up and
leaning out the window, gazing into the still, hot air. The people next
door were in their back yard; one of their boys was playing an
accordion. A little thin tinkle of voices floated up to her. How content
other people seemed!
Her mind was feverish—she had concentrated so on her other desires, a
decent home, a reasonable education, the means of making a little extra
money. It seemed to her she couldn’t find the strength to focus the
flame of her ambition on Philip’s kind but immobile attitude. He was so
uncomprehending. She turned back to the room again and stretched her
arms to the shadowy wall.
“If you’d only say one word, Philip. I’d wait forever.” It was the
uncertainty that sickened her spirit. “Yet,” she thought, growing
suddenly cold, “suppose I should be made certain—the wrong way. Perhaps
you’ve met a girl in Philadelphia.”
She determined the suspense was best. “You’ve been my hope so long, if
you should fail me what would I do? Besides, I love you, Philip.”
She lay half the night, very still and very wakeful in her white iron
bed. The morning brought back her old sanguineness, she was to have a
very full day; until early forenoon there was work in Mr. Marshall’s
office, and in the late afternoon Madame Harkness’ Method of Hair
Culture claimed her.
She came home, hot and deliciously tired.
“There’s a letter for you,” her mother told her. “Wash your face and eat
your supper first. I want to get through’s quick as I can. Mis’ Sparrow
and me, we’re going to a meeting.”
Maggie spied the letter in the gloom of the hall. It was from Sylvia
probably; her heart hoped it was from Philip. But she put the thought
away from her as too audacious. “Now just for that,” she told herself
whimsically, “I won’t let you touch that letter till after supper.”
Smiling, she washed her face and changed into something cool and old
that she could lounge in later up in her room, while she read Sylvia’s
letter.
Supper over, the dishes washed and her mother started in the direction
of Mis’ Sparrow’s residence, Maggie went for her letter. Even in the
half gloom she descried with a sudden pang that the superscription was
unfamiliar. “Not from Philip, not even from Sylvia. Well, why should
they write me?” she chided herself bravely.
In the waning but clear light in her room she could see plainly that the
letter must be from a stranger. Yet there was something vaguely familiar
about the writing after all.
She slit the envelope.
“Dear Maggie: [the letter ran]
“You’ll be surprised to get this letter, yet something tells me
I should write it. It’s about you and Philip. [‘What’s this?’
said Maggie, startled.] I have learned, Maggie, that you are
taking Philip’s kindnesses to you too seriously, that perhaps
you are thinking of marrying him.
“I think you ought to know that such an arrangement would not be
at all pleasing to our family, nor would it be good for Philip.
I’ve often heard my mother say that only people of like position
should marry each other, and I hardly think that would be true
in the case of you and Philip. Then you must consider the
future. My father is very ambitious for us and lately Philip has
shown that he means to embark on a real career. You can see that
a girl of your lowly aims would only be a hindrance to him.
Philip Marshall cannot marry a hair-dresser!”
The childish cruel words ran on:
“Then, too, I am sure he does not care for you in the way you
care for him. Don’t you go around sometimes with a Mr.
Henderson, or somebody like that? Sylvia met him somehow and
Phil didn’t like it and raised a big fuss. Sylvia told him that
you knew him and went out with him and Philip said ‘That’s
different. Maggie Ellersley can do things that my sisters
mustn’t do.’ That doesn’t sound as though he had any serious
feeling for you, does it?
“I guess this will be sort of hard for you to read, but I
believe” [Joanna wrote virtuously] “that some day you will thank
me for these words.
“Wouldn’t it be just as well if you didn’t see him for some time
after his return?
“Yours,
“JOANNA MARSHALL.”
“P. S. Papa is thinking of buying a house in One Hundred and
Thirty-first Street, in Harlem, you know. So we may move after
Sylvia and the others come back from Philadelphia. Papa would
still keep his office in Fifty-ninth Street. That puts us pretty
far away, so if you shouldn’t come up so often, no one would
think anything of it.”
Maggie folded the letter carefully and put it on her mantelpiece. Then,
fully dressed as she still was, she lay down on her bed.
“You poor idiot,” she thought to herself, “you simpleton, you fool, why
should the Marshalls want you? They’re rich, respected! Mr. Joel
Marshall—you see the name at the head of every committee of colored
citizens, and you are nobody, the daughter of a worthless father, and a
poor ex-laundress!”
Her mind dwelt briefly on her mother. “Poor Mamma, she expected so much
of me! Yet if Philip really cared about me, he wouldn’t care a rap if
they did object.” She remembered then his slighting words.
“I hate him,” she said fiercely, “and Joanna and her everlasting
ambitions and the pride of all of them. Why, you’re just a beggar to
them.” She resumed her merciless self-attack.
Presently she began to cry great, scalding tears that burned her cheeks
and hurt her throat. At eleven o’clock she heard her mother’s step and
forced herself to an aching quiet. About midnight she realized that her
head ached, that her throat was so dry and parched that it almost
rasped.
“To think I should care like this,” she told herself. “Oh, Maggie,
Maggie, they’re proud, can’t you copy their pride?”
There were some lemons on the table in the dining room, she remembered.
At least she could ease her tortured throat. Hot though it was she put
on her felt bedroom slippers, so that her step on the creaking stairs
might not disturb her mother.
The quiet lower rooms struck her with their awful solemnity, added to
her woe. She sat there at the dining room table, one hand clutching the
forgotten lemon, the other flung on the red-checked table cloth, above
her dark bowed head.
Two conflicts were raging within her. A two-fold stream of
disappointment overwhelmed. Not only had Philip not made love to her but
he had despised her, not considered her the peer of his sisters. And how
was she to mend her precarious fortunes? She was not strong, her mother
was aging; suppose, before she got on her feet, she should fall back
into the old hateful abyss. As it was she would never enter Mr.
Marshall’s office again.
Her shame and despair heavy upon her, she buried her face deeper on her
arm. Some one seemed to say, “Miss Maggie!”
She imagined it, she knew, but even if it were real she did not want to
lift that heavy, heavy head.
A powerful but kind hand strove to lift it for her. She looked up then,
a blinking figure of misery in the flickering gas flame.
“But Miss Maggie, t’aint ever you. Was you asleep or—was you crying?”
Henderson Neal had come in, and spying the light in the dining room had
come to investigate.
She blinked at him stupidly.
“Little Miss Maggie, what’s happened to you? You ain’t in trouble?”
“In awful trouble.” Her lips shaped the words stiffly.
His mind, accustomed to the ways of men, jumped to one dread conclusion.
“You mean some good for nothin’ feller’s took advantage of you?”
She didn’t understand him at first. “What? Oh, that! No, of course not!”
A spasm of horrible amusement crossed her tightly drawn features. “He—he
wouldn’t touch me.”
She broke into passionate yet stifled weeping. Her mother must not hear
her.
Neal’s face twitched. He picked her up in his steely arms, sat down in
an old cavernous morris chair and held her back against him like a baby.
“Tell me about it, Miss Maggie; some of them tony fellers bothering you
to marry them?”
The supposition was balm to her spirit, but she had schooled herself to
honesty. “No, not that—one of them, oh, he never knew—I hoped, oh, Mr.
Neal, you see I wanted him to like me——”
“And he doesn’t, and he’s been leading you on? The damned skunk. I’d
like to kill him.”
“Don’t say that. He was just being kind. He’d probably be all right if
he ever thought about me. You see, it’s his sisters, his sister,” she
corrected herself, “she doesn’t consider me good enough.”
“Well, what’s she got to do with it? Can’t the feller speak for
himself?”
“That’s just it, I used to go to see them, they don’t come to see me. If
the sisters don’t want me, there’s no way I can reach him, particularly
since he isn’t interested. I had just hoped that if he kept on seeing
me, some day he would grow to like me.”
Neal was nonplussed. This was a puzzle.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Oh, I don’t know. And I’m losing my job now. I got it through them.”
“I see.” He sat silent, studying her a moment. “Look here, Maggie,
whyn’t you marry me? I’m old and I’m rough and you see I ain’t no
book-learnin’. But I can take care of you—you and your mother, too, and
I can dress you pretty, like you’d ought to be, and with money and fine
clothes you can do a little lordin’ on your own.”
She hated to offend him. He was so kind. “Mother would never hear of
it,” she quavered for lack of a better answer.
“You don’t have to let her know about it,” he said, encouraged by her
failure to refuse him flatly. “I’ll get a license in the morning and
we’ll slip out after she goes to work. You won’t be sorry. I’ll be kind
to you Maggie—girl. I’ve always wanted you to give me a chance.” He
added a cunning afterthought.
“Show these stuck-up friends of yourn, and show ’em quick that you don’t
have to go beggin’ for favors. There’s others, yes, not a man that comes
into this house that wouldn’t be proud to marry you.”
She began to toy with the idea. Marriage with Neal was not what she
wanted, but it represented to her security, a home for herself and her
mother, freedom from all the little nagging worries that beset the woman
who fights her own way through the world. Perhaps she had aimed too
high. This was the sort of person with whom she had grown up; he would
not, because he could not, look down on her lowliness. On the contrary,
he would place her on a pedestal.
“I’ll think about it,” she promised him finally.
But he knew if she did not take him now, she would never take him. She
knew it, too.
He set her gently in the chair, and knelt in front of her, barring her
escape with his powerful body.
“Listen, Maggie, marry me now, to-morrow. We’ll go to Atlantic City for
a few weeks, and come back and go to housekeeping. I don’t have to live
here. I just stayed on, first because it was clean and your mother was
honest and then because I liked you. I ain’t no lawyer, nor doctor, nor
in none of the fine positions your friends hold, but I handle a good bit
of money and I’ll get you everything you want.”
He did have money, she knew that. She supposed she ought to find out
exactly how he made it. But of course he was honest. And anyway she was
too tired, too weak to bother. She could feel his strong will impinging
on her own, beating hers down.
“I’ll do it, Mr. Neal.”
“My name’s Henderson, Maggie. You will, you mean it?”
“Yes, to-morrow. But I ought to let my mother know.”
“Oh, no, she might object—mothers hate to see their daughters leave
them. But after she sees how well fixed and happy you are, she won’t
mind.”
“I guess you’re right. I—I don’t see how I can ever pack. I’m so tired.”
Her figure slacked weakly against the chair.
“You don’t need to. Just wear something dark and quiet. We’ll get
everything you want in Atlantic City, or maybe Philadelphia.”
“No, no—not in Philadelphia, we won’t stop there now,” she told him
feverishly.
“All right. Now run up to bed. Kiss me, Maggie.”
She gave him her cold, stiff lips.
“Good girl! To-morrow at ten. You ain’t foolin’ me?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Neal!”
“Henderson’s my name. Good night, little girl.”
Shaking, she got up to her room to lie vacant-eyed across the bed,
watching the darkness deepen, shade into gray, vanish. The sun came
bringing a new day, to her a new life.
She wrote her mother a note, then dressed herself carefully in a little
tan poplin suit, a small brown hat and a white veil. “Brides wear
veils,” she thought to herself numbly. “Oh, I didn’t think I’d be a
bride like this!”
Well, it was too late now. At quarter of nine she went down stairs. Her
mother had left long since. Presently she heard a taxi drive up and
Neal, heavy but immaculate, got out. He was coming for her. She walked
stiffly to meet him; they entered the cab together and were whirled
away.
“This was marriage,” she thought, murmuring some words later to a
Justice of the Peace. They entered the waiting taxi again and drove to
the Pennsylvania station. A surprising number of the red-caps seemed to
know Mr. Neal—her husband. Well, of course, of course why shouldn’t
they? They walked down the steps past car after car. Neal ushered her
finally into a drawing-room. She had never dreamed of traveling like
this. As the train pulled out Neal hailed a passing waiter. “Bring us
something to eat as soon as possible.”
He sat down beside her, immaculate in a gray suit, gray tie, carefully
brushed low shoes. His tan overcoat rested in the corner of the seat. He
put his arms around her.
“Poor, sleepy, frightened Maggie,” he said tenderly.
She burst into sharp, strangling sobs, burying her head against his
shoulder.
So she left New York, weeping, to return to it one day dry-eyed but with
a bitterness that was worse than tears.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XII
“Really, Joanna, you ought to treat me better. You know I’m staying in
New York just on account of you!”
“How do you want me to treat you, Peter?”
“Oh, hang it all. Why can’t you be nicer to me? When Brian comes to see
Sylvia she runs to meet him, puts her arms about his neck.”
“But Sylvia and Brian are engaged. You and I are just friends.”
“Just friends! Joanna, have a heart. What do you think I spend all my
spare time with you for? You know how I feel.”
Joanna raised a slim, protesting hand. “None of that, Peter! You come to
see me because both of us are interested in the same things. Each of us
is going to be an artist in different ways. What other girl is there in
New York who would let you talk to her about the joys of surgery?”
“What other girl would want me to?”
Joanna, looking at the long brown figure lying full length on the grass,
thought it highly improbable that any other girl would. She had seen
other girls in the company of Peter, and watched quite without jealousy
their ways with him. She rather prided herself on her own aloofness from
such tactics. Of course, some day she might let Peter talk to her about
things other than work and art, and she might answer him, but at present
the big things of life must be arranged. Love was an after
consideration, she felt, and as far as she knew she meant it.
It was a Saturday afternoon in July and the two were in Van Cortlandt
Park. Peter was to go to school in Philadelphia in the fall, and it was
important for him to earn as much money as possible for his expenses. He
might have gone with a group of other boys to one of the watering places
and worked in a hotel. But that took him too far away from Joanna.
Ragtime was coming into vogue then, and Peter proved himself an adept at
it. The butcher shop was of course a thing long since of the past.
“Here’s where I put my gift of strumming to some use,” he laughed to
Joanna. “You ought to see how glad they were to take me on at that
cabaret.”
“I hope you won’t learn anything you shouldn’t in that atmosphere,” she
had answered primly.
“Oh, of course I won’t,” he returned, thinking how amazed she would be
if she ever looked down from her pinnacle long enough to understand what
life really was. He would have liked her to see that cabaret with its
jostling crowds and blaring lights, and the host of noisy good-hearted
dancing girls. He tried to give her some description of it. But Joanna
turned away.
“Men and women are like that, just the same,” he protested. “Everybody
isn’t living on the mountain-tops like you, Janna. I can’t live there of
my own accord myself. That’s why I haunt you so because you do keep me
on the heights, dear.” She liked that.
“But just the same,” he resumed, rolling over on the short grass like a
lithe handsome animal, “all the big things of life smack of the earth.
Your poet has to eat, or he can’t write poetry. Well, so does the
commonest laboring-man. The queen has children, in agony, Janna, just
like the poorest charwoman. And love is the—the driving force for both
of them.” He mused a little. “Love is the most natural and ordinary
thing in the world.”
But Joanna didn’t believe that. “Love is a wonderful, rare thing, very
beautiful, very sweet, but you can do without it.”
“Not much you can’t. Better not try it, Joanna. You have to found your
life on love, then you can do all these other things.”
“Don’t talk like a silly, Peter. You know perfectly well that for a
woman love usually means a household of children, the getting of a
thousand meals, picking up laundry, no time to herself for meditation,
or reading or——”
“Dancing! That’s through poor management. Marry a man who understands
you, Janna, and he’ll see that you have time for anything you want.
Where is such a man? Behold him!” He struck his chest dramatically.
“Peter Bye! How you talk!”
“All right, I’ll choose something else. Tell me why is it that though
I’ve elected to stay in New York in all this hot weather just to be at
your side, I see less of you than at any time since I’ve been coming to
your house.”
“Does seem queer, doesn’t it? It must be because I have so much work to
do. I am taking extra singing lessons from Brailoff now. And my dancing
takes up a lot of my time; my classes come at such inconvenient hours,
7:30 to 10:00 three times a week.”
“That _is_ bad. Funny time to give dancing lessons. Where’d you say you
took them?”
“At Bertully’s.”
“Bertully’s! That’s in Twenty-ninth Street, isn’t it? How’d you ever
make it? I didn’t suppose a colored girl got a chance to stick her nose
in there.”
“She wouldn’t ordinarily. Bertully refused Helena Arnold last year. ‘I’m
sorry, Mees, but the white Americans like not to study with the brown
Americans. Vair seely, but so. I am a poor man, I must follow the
weeshes of my clients!’” Joanna shrugged her shoulders, spread her
hands.
“You’re a born impersonator, Jan. I can see that little Frenchman now.
How’d you ever get in, then?”
“Helena and I went back this year and asked if he would take a separate
class of colored girls, if we got it up for him. He was very decent,
said he’d be glad to. So we got up a class of eight, he only asked for
six. Of course, we had to take his hours.”
“Who are in it besides you and Helena?”
“Oh, all our crowd.” She named the daughters of several prominent
colored men, a physician, a lawyer, a journalist, a real-estate man
among them. “There’s Gertrude Moseley, Vera and Alice Manning, Elizabeth
Beckett, Sylvia, Helena, and I.”
“That’s seven.”
“Oh, yes, Sylvia meant to ask Maggie Ellersley.”
“H’m, she had other things in her head without bothering about fancy
dancing, hadn’t she? Funny how she went off and married without telling
any of us about it, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Joanna uneasily.
“You’d have thought she’d have let old Phil in on it. I wonder if they
had a falling out of any kind! Philip seemed rather hard hit when he
heard the news.”
“Not a bit of it. Why should he be?” Joanna spoke stoutly. But her tone
belied her convictions. She hadn’t forgotten Philip’s expression the day
Sylvia had come rushing in with the astounding news:
“What do you think? I just met Mrs. Ellersley. Maggie’s
married—married—think of it! She ran away with that man at her house,
that Mr. Neal. And they’re going to live in Philadelphia.”
Philip’s haggard face had turned a trifle more wan, Joanna had thought.
“Has she written to you, Sylvia?” he asked her quickly.
“Not a word. I can’t imagine why she said nothing to me about it. She
must have planned it for ages. If that isn’t the funniest!”
Later Joanna heard Philip asking his mother if she were sure she had
given him all the mail that had come for him while he was in
Philadelphia. Still later he had announced his intention of teaching
summer school in South Carolina.
“Fellow whose place I’m going to fill is sick. They’ve been at me a long
time to come. I think I ought to go, father. It will give me a chance to
see the South.”
Joanna’s throat constricted a little at the thought of Philip’s look,
his general listlessness. She wished she hadn’t written that letter.
Though that couldn’t have brought about the marriage. People don’t
arrange to be married over night. As Sylvia said, it must have been on
Maggie’s mind long since. And then, anyway, Philip couldn’t really have
cared for a girl like Maggie.
“I don’t believe Philip was the least bit interested in Maggie,” she
voiced her thought to Peter. “Well, anyway, Mr. Bye, that’s why my
company is so scarce. Goodness, what are you frowning about?”
“Well, I’m mad to think you swallowed that Frenchman’s insult. To think
of your taking lessons from him after that!”
“But, Peter, he didn’t insult us. He can’t help this stupid prejudice.
‘In my country, Mademoiselle Maréchal,’—he always calls me that—‘you’d
be an honor to any class.’ He says I’ve got a great future. That if
there’s anything that will break down prejudice it will be equality or
perhaps even superiority on the part of colored people in the arts. And
I agree with him.”
“But to be set apart like that!”
“What do I care?” asked Joanna, the practical. “You’ve got to take life
as you find it, Peter. The way I figure it is this. If all I needed to
get on the stage was the mastery of a difficult step, I’d get there,
wouldn’t I? For somehow, sometime, I’d learn how to overcome that
difficulty.”
“You bet you would.”
“Very well, then. Now my problem is how to master, how to get around
prejudice. It _is_ an awful nuisance; in some parts of this country it
is more than a nuisance, it’s a veritable menace. Philip says he’s going
to change all that some day. First, I’m going to get my training up to
the last notch, then I’m going to watch for an opportunity and squeeze
in.”
“You’ll never get it.”
“Oh, yes, I will. Some white people are kind, some of them are so truly
artistic that they’ll put themselves to great trouble for the sake of
art. Look at Bertully. It works him much harder than it does us to hold
those extra classes.”
“Bertully’s one man in a thousand. Besides, he’s a foreigner. Where’ll
you find a white American like that?”
“You blessed pessimist. I know of people like that already. That’s how
Helena Arnold got to Bertully in the first place. A Miss Sharples—why,
they’re the people your Aunt Susan works for, aren’t they? Your aunt
told Miss Sharples about Helena, and Miss Sharples took her, herself, to
Bertully.”
“That was awfully decent, I must say. Of course, the Sharples are
Philadelphia Quaker stock. Not that that makes much difference. The
white Byes were Quakers, and see how they left us stranded, though my
father told me old black Joshua Bye practically coined them their money.
Not many people like those Sharples.”
“There doesn’t need to be. The point is there’s _one_. Miss Sharples’
family, by the way, may have been Quakers, but there’s nothing Quakerish
about her. Helena says she goes with the Greenwich Village group all the
time, and for all their craziness, they’ve got some mighty big ideas.”
“Can’t get anything to eat, if you’re colored, down in their dinky old
restaurants.”
“Awful, isn’t it? Well, we’ll let some other colored person pound away
at that side of it. Me, I’m going to break into art. The public wants
novelty, and _I_ want fame. I’ve got to have it, Peter.”
“You talk about going on the stage as though you had a signed contract
in your hand. How’ll you get the stage-presence?”
“I’m to go on a recital tour next fall among colored people. I’m used to
singing in the choir. If I can stand before them I can stand before any
audience in the world.”
“Yes, we are mighty critical.”
“I should say so. Get up, Peter Bye. We’ve got to go home.”
They started on the long trip back.
“But see here, Joanna,” Peter pleaded when they reached the house, “you
will give me a little more time, won’t you? I don’t have to work in the
morning, you know. And I don’t work Wednesday nights. Promise me that,
won’t you?”
“Yes,” said Joanna, her heart warming to his glowing beauty. “We’ll
remember this summer, Peter, the last before we go off trying our wings
for further flights.”
That was an enchanted season. Peter used to call for her in the morning,
and the two would go off exploring. Joanna liked the foreign quarters,
but she had never cared to stand around too long in those teeming,
exotic streets. She was too conspicuous, attracted too many inquiring
glances. With Peter she felt safe to stand for long moments watching the
children play, to enter queer dark shops, to taste strange messes.
Sometimes she spoke to the women about their dresses, their headgear.
One Spanish woman, grown used to the sight of this dark American girl
and the good-looking boy at her side, took them into her quarters one
day and showed Joanna how she dressed her hair. Another time she taught
her an intricate Spanish dance.
“I’m going to do a dance representing all the nations, some day,” Joanna
told Peter.
They planned for Wednesday nights very carefully at first, but gradually
as the torrid weather increased, Joanna’s desire for the theater and
other indoor forms of amusement yielded to the desire to be cool at any
cost. Central Park claimed them then, and later Morningside, since it
was just a few moments’ stroll from the Marshalls’ new house.
Morningside was usually crowded. The seats were always taken when they
arrived.
“I wonder what time the people come,” Joanna murmured. But they didn’t
mind. The grass, the sloping hillside, was good enough for them. Joanna
would sit down, her dainty summer dress spread around her, her
splendidly poised head turned at first so she could see the passers-by.
She was forever studying types, and eyed them with a grave deliberation.
“You’ll get your head knocked off yet, Joanna,” Peter would remonstrate,
“staring at people so.”
He liked it better when later on in the evening she turned toward the
slope of the hill and looked down at the city, laughing in its myriad
twinkling lights. Her face at that time took on a grave wistfulness
which he could not analyze. Joanna herself could not define the feeling
which prompted that expression.
Peter, leaning on his elbow, would lie beside her, his curly black head
bent toward her, one slender brown hand touching her dress ever so
lightly. He would have given the world to believe she was thinking about
him, but he knew she was not. He would have been astounded if he could
have dreamed of the maze of her thoughts. Joanna was really most human
at moments like these. Through her mind was floating a series of little
detached pictures. She saw a glittering stage, Peter, herself, some
little children. She felt a hazy, nebulous, mystical joy.
Peter adored her at moments like these, but he was afraid of her, too.
One night she astonished him. “Peter,” she said suddenly, “sit up. So.
I’m tired. I’ve had a hard day. Do you mind if I rest my head on your
shoulder?”
Would he mind if she offered him a king’s estate?
He was too ecstatic, too—yes—scared, to speak. He sat as she directed,
he stretched his thin tense arm around her fine young body. He even put
up one hand and pressed her head closer against his shoulder, touched
her hair, let his fingers trail ever so lightly over her cheek. Joanna
in his arms! Joanna!
She felt him trembling. “Am I too heavy, Peter?”
He could hardly articulate, but she heard his ardent “no” and moved
imperceptibly closer.
His breath stirred her thick, dark hair. He let it caress his chin. Its
soft heaviness was a revelation to him, a rapture.
She lay so quietly against him he thought she must be asleep. So he
whispered, “Are you asleep, Joanna?”
“No,” she whispered back, “only very, very tired.”
“Oh, Joanna, Joanna,” he breathed, “be tired forever.”
Somewhere out of the heavenly silence, a girl’s voice, a foreign voice,
broke into song high and shrill. Russian, Peter thought. It was just a
snatch, poignant and sweet, that died away leaving a faint lingering
sadness.
She put her head back then. She opened her dark eyes and looked full
into his.
Their lips were so near, so near. In a second he had pressed his against
hers, briefly yet with passion. She sat up and drew a little away from
him, dazed. But he put his arms around her and held her close. Presently
they walked home, speechless. When they came to an arc-light, they
looked at each other’s faces, eager to study and to reveal these new
selves. Their glances met and clung with a sweet enchantment. Something
leaped, something fluttered within their hearts, like a fettered,
struggling wing. And it was beautifully, it was magically, first love!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIII
THE vacation sped as vacations will. Peter played in the awful cabaret,
saved his money and adored Joanna. Joanna practiced trills, danced,
thought of Peter and allowed him to adore her. As the early September
days spread their golden haze over Harlem and Morningside Park, she
actually shivered a little when she realized that when the month was
over she and Peter would be miles apart.
It is hard to say just how much Joanna cared for Peter at this time.
Certainly the boy worshipped her. He dreamed wordless dreams of her at
night sitting in the noisy cabaret. His visit to her was the one
objective point in his day. When the inexorable moment of separation
came it cost him actual physical pain to bid her good-by.
Joanna was hardly like that. She had a very real, very ardent feeling
for Peter. But it was still small, if one may speak of a feeling by
size. Her love for him was a new experience, a fresh interest in her
already crowded life, but it had not pushed aside the other interests.
At nineteen she looked at love as a man of forty might—as “a thing
apart.” This was due partly to her hard unripeness, partly to her
deliberate self-training. Joanna had read of too many able women who had
“counted the world well lost for love,” until it was too late. “Poor,
silly sheep,” she dubbed them.
She could not, it is true, bundle up her thoughts of Peter and say,
“I’ll think of you to-morrow at three,” but she did achieve a
concentration in her work that made it almost impossible for him to
remain too long in her thoughts. And at nights when he tossed sleepless
on his bed, dreaming fragrant dreams and seeing golden visions, she was
sleeping the perfect sleep of healthy weariness.
The last days were hard for her, however, as they were for Peter. For
Joanna was doomed by her very make-up to a sort of perpetual loneliness.
Sylvia had her own interests, she had Brian and many, many friends. She
was the most popular of all the Marshalls. Alec and Joanna had never
been thrown much together. Philip, once her great confidant, was usually
away from home. And on his return he was apt to relapse during these
days into a rapt sadness.
It followed, then, that while Joanna was Peter’s sweetheart, his heart’s
dear queen, Peter was at once her lover whom she didn’t need very
much—at least she did not realize that need—and more than that her
companion and friend whom she needed greatly. The prospect of the days
stretched long and dreary before her. Even the concert tour, a
remarkable booking for one so young, did not entirely console her.
The two talked about it on the day before Peter left for Philadelphia.
They were in Van Cortlandt Park in a little tangled grove. It was noon
and the September sun streamed down on them making the green wooden
bench on which they sat pleasantly warm. But the leaves about them were
going a little sere; in the shade the air felt chill, and the sunshine,
though warm, was thin and white.
“‘The summer is ended.’” Joanna quoted softly; she sighed. Peter looked
at her, there were tears in her eyes.
“Dear, beautiful Joanna,” said Peter, and his own beautiful face was
full of the woe of parting, “how can I leave you to-morrow? Janna, don’t
send me away, tell me I’m not to go.” He put his arms around her and she
clung to him.
“Peter, you must go, you must, really. We—we can’t go on like this.
We’ve got to prepare ourselves while we’re young for the future.”
“Yes,” said Peter and his ardor chilled a little at the touch of her
cool practicality. But a moment later her light touch rekindled him.
“You love me, Janna? You know I love you?”
“Yes, Peter dear, but we mustn’t say anything more about it.”
“I know, Joanna, I’m not going to worry you any more just now, but
you’ll let me speak sometime?”
“Yes, oh, yes!”
“Dearest girl! Kiss me, Joanna.”
She touched his lips with a light, lingering kiss. He looked at her, his
face haggard with his gusty, boyish passion.
“Ah, Joanna, I’ll never forget that kiss.”
Neither would she, her heart told her. It was the first time she had
ever kissed him.
They walked through the deserted park, their arms frankly about each
other, like children. The dry grass and brittle leaves crackled beneath
their feet, the air hung over them like a thin, misty veil. Joanna sang
a bit from an old Italian song:
“If from Heaven we could but borrow
One day longer of fond affection
It would lessen then our sorrow,
Give fresh joys for recollection.”
She hummed a line here, then her voice rose again in the thin,
shimmering air:
“—The future, dark and lonely!
Dearest Loved One, dearest Loved One
Parting makes these joys so dear!
Ah!—”
“Don’t, Joanna; it’s too sweet. You’ll make me cry.”
“I know it. Oh, Peter, go away and come back great and when you come
back, speak to me.”
She went with him to the train next morning and to his amazement no less
than her own, broke down and sobbed into her handkerchief.
He bent over her. “To think of your crying for me, Joanna! Good-by,
good-by, my sweet. Remember, I’ll be back Christmas.”
He vanished through the gates, was borne out of her vision. A strange
exaltation possessed him. He was sad, but his sadness was as nothing to
his joy, his sense of satisfaction. Joanna loved him. She had been
unusually capricious since that night in Morningside Park. But now he
was sure of her. He smiled steadily from Manhattan Transfer Station to
North Philadelphia.
His cousin Louis Boyd met him at Broad Street Station and took him to
his great-uncle Peter’s in South Eighteenth Street. The old man almost
cried over him.
“You’re Meriwether’s son, but you’re more like your grandfather, Isaiah.
He was darker than you, but he held his head high like yours, and you’re
going to do what he wanted his son to do. It’s good to see you, boy.”
He registered at the University the next day, consulted catalogues, met
professors, wrote a glowing letter to Joanna. By the end of the week he
was desperately homesick. He would have gone over to New York if he had
not been so ashamed, and if he had not been expected to dinner at Louis
Boyd’s.
“Tell you what’s the matter with you, fellow,” said Louis when Peter had
told him of his nostalgia, “you want to meet a few girls. We’ll start
out after dinner.”
Peter did not think this would help much. He wanted Joanna, though he
said nothing about that to Louis. Astonishingly, however, the cure
worked.
Louis seemed to know half of colored Philadelphia. “Mighty nice girls in
this man’s town, I can tell you. They’ll take to you, Peter, because, of
course, you’re a Bye. Mentioned your name to old Mrs. Viny the other day
and she told me to be sure to bring you around. She’d like to meet an
‘old Philadelphian,’ even if he had been living a while in New York.”
The girls deserved the nice things Louis said about them. They were
pretty, nicely dressed and a shining contrast to the dingy streets and
old-fashioned houses in which most of them lived. Peter was pleasantly
struck, too, by the apparent lack of aspiration on the part of most of
them. They seemed to be pretty well satisfied with being girls. A few
were able to live home, many sewed, a number of others taught. There was
no talk of art, of fame, of preparation for the future among them. Peter
spoke of it to Arabelle Morton, the last girl to whose house Louis took
him.
“Well, of course we want to get married, and we’re not spoiling our
chances by being high-brows. Wouldn’t you like to come and play cards
next Friday night, Mr. Bye? There’ll be just two tables, then afterwards
we might dance. I’m sure you’d like it.”
Peter thought so, too. He liked Arabelle already and her friendly
shallowness. He wrote to Joanna:
“Tell you what, Jan, I think I’m going to like Philly very much.
Being Isaiah Bye’s grandson seems to help me no end. They
actually consider me an ‘old Philadelphian’ and on the strength
of that alone I’ve had four dinner invitations from elderly
people to meet other ‘old Philadelphians.’ Some of them old
enough, too, I’ll say. However, the dinners are fine and come in
very handy for a struggling student. I don’t board at Uncle
Peter’s, you see.
“There’re lots of jolly girls here. Of course, they’re not like
yours and Sylvia’s crowd, bent on climbing to the top of a
profession—well, Sylvia wasn’t that way so much—but they’re a
very nice bunch and they have been most kind to your humble
servant....
“Do you remember that day in the Park? Joanna darling, what are
you going to say to me when I come back Christmas?
“PETER.”
“N. B. These x’s are kisses.” [There was a long string of them.]
His letters to Joanna reacted to his own advantage. He felt he must be
able to tell her truthfully of his success in his studies, of his
ability to fit into this new life. Joanna was interested in him with a
deep personal interest such as she had never exhibited before, and he
meant to keep it alive. These were with one exception the most
wholesome, most formative days of Peter’s life. He had youth, he had
inspiration, he had the promise of love, with much hard labor to keep
it.
Many of the colored boys lived in West Philadelphia. They had a
fraternity, and though according to their laws he could not be taken in
during his freshman year, it was plain that this honor would be extended
to him as soon as he became a sophomore. He was pretty well liked, and
was constantly receiving invitations to spend the night across the
river. One or two of the boys lived in the dormitories and he was
frequently offered a chance to see something of this side of college
life.
But his steadiness surprised himself. He got his meals in a restaurant
on Woodland Avenue, worked faithfully in the Library between classes,
and completed the rest of his assignments at night in his Uncle’s
sitting room. The old fellow loved to see him there. He pictured in
Peter the restoration of the Bye family in Philadelphia.
To eke out his scanty bank account, he played three nights a week in a
dance hall at Sixteenth and South Streets. Saturday afternoons he did
track work. Friday and Sunday he spent at Arabelle Morton’s or at Lawyer
Talbert’s on Christian Street. This latter and his family consisting of
two sons and two daughters, were the relatives with whom the Marshalls
stayed on their visits to Philadelphia. He found them very enjoyable.
One of the boys was an undertaker but with a disposition far less
lugubrious than his calling. The other was in the Wharton School of
Finance at Pennsylvania and was to read law later at Harvard. Both girls
were young and both were engaged. They were very much in love, but as
their fiancés were studying medicine at Howard University, they welcomed
Peter with much acclaim.
Thanks to them and Louis, he was soon enrolled in the social calendar,
and if he chose to be lonely, it was his own fault.
At Christmas he went back to New York; Joanna met him at the station and
took him home in her father’s car. Joel was one of the first ten colored
men in Harlem to possess an automobile. The distance between his house
and his business rendered it almost a necessity, and he was old enough
to deserve release from the noise of the subway and the weary climbing
to the elevated.
Joanna had grown very good-looking, Peter thought. More than that, she
looked even distinguished. Her purposefulness gave her a quality which
he had missed in the Philadelphia girls. His ardor had not cooled in the
least, but he had had to force it into second place. Now it surged
uppermost in his heart again.
He was glad that he had been in another city, had seen so many other
girls. It only confirmed his conviction that Joanna was the only woman
in the world for him. He hoped she possessed the same singleness of
desire for him.
“There’s lots going on,” Joanna told him, sitting arm in arm with him in
the car. “Sylvia and Brian are to be married Easter, so mother’s
formally announcing it now. There’ll be luncheons—not for you I’m
afraid, Peter. Then our dancing class is giving a benefit for the Pierce
Day Nursery. There’ll be fancy dancing on the stage, in which your
humble servant will star. And we’re to have a Christmas tree at our
house and a house party. I’m asking you now, Peter. Isn’t it great being
grown up?”
“You bet. Which of these functions comes off first?”
“Sylvia’s engagement party.”
“So she and Spencer are actually going to pull it off. They’ve waited a
long time, haven’t they?”
“Yes, that’s because Brian insisted on getting a good start before he
married. Sylvia would have married him the day after they became
engaged. But I think Brian’s right.”
“They’re both right, but Sylvia’s way is the best. That’s the only
attitude for anyone to have towards marriage. I’m afraid you lack it, my
child. You want to begin with a mansion and three cars.”
“You mean thing! I don’t care about money as money one bit and you know
it. But I do care about success. And a house or a car usually implies
that. Any girl likes her man to look well in the eyes of other men.”
“This man’s going to look well.” He yearned toward her. “Kiss me,
sweetheart.”
“Sir, you insult me. People shouldn’t kiss unless they’re engaged.”
“Then be engaged to me, dearest Joanna. Great Scott, are we here?”
Joanna evaded him after that. Christmas was Tuesday, but as he had saved
his cuts for Saturday classes, he had managed to come away the preceding
Friday night. On Christmas morning he caught her before daybreak. They
had arranged to go to an early service in a large Episcopal church where
Joanna had recently been engaged as a soloist. He was waiting for her in
the dark hall.
“Good! There you are, Peter. We must fly.”
“Not until you’ve told me you love me.”
“I love you, Peter. Come on.”
“No, sir, put your little arms around my neck. So. Now say, ‘Dear Peter,
I love you and I’m going to marry you.’”
“Oh, I can’t say that. Let me go, Peter.”
“Not one step.” He held her so close that she had to poise herself
against him, breathlessly, exquisitely. A clock in the house boomed
five.
“Peter, ask me to-night.”
“I’m asking you now. Answer me this minute, Joanna. Not one step will we
stir till you do.” He shook her gently. “Say it, darling.”
She still had her arms around his neck. “Dear Peter,” she began, her
voice breaking a little, “I love you and I’m going to marry you.”
“You’ve got a smudge on your face,” he told her solemnly.
She burst into hysterical tears at that. “I never thought I’d become
engaged with a smudge on my face.”
“I know you didn’t. I’ll try to overlook it.” He got down on his knees
and kissed her hands. “Darling Joanna, I’ll love you always.”
Between them, they wiped away the traces of the smudge and of her tears.
Then they found their way out, and walked through the dark silent
streets singing “Joy to the World,” like a pair of Christmas waifs.
The lovers found it hard to see each other. There were too many things
going on for that. Peter could have found time, but Joanna, he realized
with a pang, seemed to think of nothing but her dance. When she wasn’t
at a party, or dressing, she was at a rehearsal. The affair for the Day
Nursery was to come off New Year’s Eve.
Monsieur Bertully’s seven pupils danced, swayed, pirouetted. Their slim
silken limbs flashed and twinkled through a series of poses and groups
until one thought of an animated Greek frieze. At the end the seven
girls appeared as school children. Joanna as their leader was teaching
them a game. Peter watched her flashing in a red dress across the stage,
dancing, leaping, twirling. The orchestra struck up something vaguely
familiar. Why, it was Joanna’s old dance, “Barn! Barn!”
She swayed, she balanced, she stamped her foot.
“Stay back, girl, don’t you come near me!”
Miss Sharples was there with a group of Greenwich Village folks, Helena
Arnold told them afterwards.
Peter had to leave on New Year’s Day. It was bitterly cold and the
Marshalls had dinner guests, but Joanna went to the station with him.
She didn’t cry this time, Peter noticed. She didn’t tell him that it was
because of the pain raging at her heart.
“I’ll have to get used to his leaving me,” she told herself stubbornly.
“I’ve got it to stand, for years and years. Talking about it won’t do
any good.”
She had fixed up a box of delicious sandwiches and other goodies for
him, and there was a little letter in the box. But Peter didn’t know
that, so in spite of her wan face he felt aggrieved as he stepped on the
train, for she had barely pressed his hand and her lips were cold.
She cried herself into a headache on her way back.
It was bitter in Philadelphia, too. Peter got off the train at West
Philadelphia. He would call on some of the boys on Sansom Street.
“They’re all out I think,” the landlady, Mrs. Larrabee, told him. She
gave him a friendly smile. “You can run up, though, and see.” She was
right, they were out, but the rooms were warm and comfortable.
“I think I’ll stay up here and thaw out,” he called down.
He sat in a comfortable chair, smoked a cigarette or two, read a few
pages in a novel. Then he remembered Joanna’s box, and opened it. There
was the letter on top.
“Dear Peter,” he read, “isn’t it awful to have to separate this
way? I have a secret I was saving for you. I’m to sing in
Philadelphia very shortly. Aren’t you glad? I love you, Peter.
“JAN.”
His spirits went up, up.
“Good-night,” he called to Mrs. Larrabee. “Happy New Year.”
It wasn’t so cold after all, he thought. Anyway, it wouldn’t do him any
harm to stretch his legs a bit. He’d swing across town through the
University grounds and take a car on Spruce Street.
The car jolted down over the bridge, turned one corner into a dingy side
street, then another, slid ponderously into Lombard Street. It stopped
to let the Twentieth Street car go by. Idly, Peter glanced out of the
window. On the corner stood a woman, neatly, even carefully dressed.
Something about her dejected pose made Peter look at her closely. She
turned just then, and the street light fell full on an old-gold, oval
face, haggard and disillusioned. Peter saw it was Maggie Ellersley.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIV
POOR Maggie! How relentlessly and completely had her illusions flown!
She had enjoyed the ride to Atlantic City. Her husband had surrounded
her with magazines, fruit, candy, even books. She had had a wonderful
dinner and when they got to Atlantic City, he took her to a very
respectable, clean boarding-house. It was nice to be protected, she
realized that. And, when, the day after they were married, he gave her
seventy-five dollars, and told her to send part of it to her mother, her
spirits, which had not yet recovered from the shock of the past two
days, rose considerably.
She thought Mr. Neal remarkably kind and gentle. And he was always
clean. On the whole, while she was not the least bit in love with him,
she considered he did pretty well, though she did wish he knew a little
more about English grammar. His deliberate incorrectness made her
ashamed of him and because he was so kind to her, this feeling on her
part made her a little ashamed of herself.
He was the soul of generosity. Besides giving her money, he had taken
her to two of the best stores, and bought her whatever she wanted. He
would have liked to buy her a complete outfit, but the prices made her
demur.
“Wait till we get to New York again. We can do better there.” But she
did let him buy her a few things: There were a blue silk dress, a white
satin skirt, two or three smart, delicately tinted blouses, a wonderful
wrap, light but warm; tan and white shoes and stockings.
Atlantic City was a revelation to her. She had literally never been out
of New York City, except once to a funeral in Brooklyn in company with
the lugubrious Mis’ Sparrow. This fairyland by the sea with its colored
lights, its human kaleidoscope, its boardwalk, its shops! She did not
know the world held such as these.
But she was more interested in the Atlantic City that lay on the north
side of Atlantic Avenue. There were many cottages here, a score of
restaurants, a good drug store, all of them patronized by colored
people. They were the kind of people Maggie wanted to know, she could
see that at a glance. In the restaurant which she and her husband most
frequented, she sat and watched the happy, laughing faces. They were
like one big family although they came from Washington, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore. She realized then how completely she had depended on the
Marshalls and their immediate entourage. Cut off from them, she had no
way of meeting these people, she possessed no background.
Some of the visitors seemed to know others hailing from the most remote
places. One woman said, “Oh, there’s Annie Mackinaw, she’s been in San
Francisco for five years you know, I must speak to her.” Surely, Maggie
thought, her husband must have met some of these people somewhere. But
although an occasional man nodded to him, even came up and spoke, not
one brought over his wife or daughters. The women looked at Maggie, a
little curiously; once she thought as she passed a large party at a
table that they stopped talking with that queer suddenness which made
her sure they were discussing her. They looked at her clothes,
appraising them, but she could never catch their direct gaze.
She sought to find solace in the theaters, of which she was very fond.
This was an opportunity, plenty of leisure and a willing companion ready
and able to take her whenever and wherever she wished. But Atlantic City
theaters make no secret of their unwillingness to serve colored patrons.
After being told at the ticket office that there were no more balcony
seats, only to see them calmly handed out to the next white person in
line; after enduring an evening in the poorly ventilated gallery with a
feeling of resentment rankling in her breast; above all after seeing how
these mischances awoke her husband’s passionate but futile anger, she
desisted. He had a terrible, devastating temper, which left her
speechless and cowering even though it was not directed toward her.
Better do without the theater forever, she thought, than be the cause of
awakening his savage wrath.
She returned to her survey of the colored visitors. Her husband found
some friends and went off on mysterious trips with them, from which he
returned amiable and pleasant and usually with some small gift for her.
In his absence she sat on the piazza watching happy groups go by, or sat
alone in the pavilion far down the boardwalk, where the colored people
bathed. In time she came to know the characteristics of certain groups,
could even tell from what city they came.
Philadelphians were not as a rule as strikingly dressed as the folks,
say, from Washington, but they had a better time. They seemed bound by
some kind of tie, family, perhaps—which made it possible for them to
group together incongruously but with evident enjoyment. Old women and
young girls, young girls and elderly men, young men and almost
middle-aged women, laughed and bathed and gossiped like brothers and
sisters. These were the hardest to approach; it was impossible to invade
their solidarity. They made the status of the outsider very clear.
The Baltimore people were somewhat like these, only gayer. They were
clannish, too, but more willing to let down bars. Clearly they were a
cross between the Philadelphians and the gay Washingtonians who played
about in very distinct groups, superb in their fashionable clothes and
their deep assurance.
Maggie’s landlady introduced her to one girl, a Miss Talbert from
Philadelphia, who came up on the piazza one day to inquire for a former
boarder. She was brown, not pretty, rather plainly but well dressed,
with a beautiful manner. An atmosphere of niceness hung about her.
She acknowledged the introduction pleasantly. “You’re from New York,
Mrs. Neal—I wonder if you know my cousin Sylvia Marshall?”
Maggie could have jumped for joy. “She’s my best friend.”
Things went a little better, then. Miss Talbert asked her to go in
bathing, introduced her to a few people, beckoned her over to her table
at lunch. But she and her party were staying for only three days more,
and Maggie was almost as badly off as ever when she left.
Her husband took her down to the pavilion the next day, and left her
there. A sharp-faced old woman wearing a plain sad-colored dress and a
formidable false front, beckoned to her.
“What does your husband do?” she asked the girl, looking at her over
sloping glasses.
Maggie, confused, said he was in the motor-business. The old woman
turned incredulously away.
She determined to ask her husband about his work. But he gave her no
satisfaction.
“You wouldn’t understand it. Too much explaining to it. I make money
enough for you, don’t I, girl?” He laid a heavy hand on her frail
shoulder.
He thought he’d go to Philadelphia to live. “Feller told me of some good
prospects there. We’ll just room for a while. If we don’t like it, we
can go back to New York.”
She was satisfied. She didn’t want to return to New York, she realized.
Her mother could make out with the money which, Neal had assured her,
she could send regularly. And it made her sick to think of the
Marshalls.
Without regrets she mounted the train with him one day and went to the
big, sprawling city. Its size, its long stretches of streets appalled
her. The awful silence which seemed to descend over the town when she
got below Walnut Street frightened her. One could be very lonely here,
no doubt.
The “rooming” of which her husband had spoken proved to mean the second
floor of a house in South Fifteenth Street. There were three rooms and a
bath. She liked this because it gave her something to do. She kept them
clean, arranged and rearranged the charming furniture which Neal gave
her, and prepared their simple meals.
It was the first time she had had a really attractive setting. And she
was soothed, bewitched by its effect. Her rather simple plan of life
contained, it must be remembered, only three ideas,—comfort,
respectability, and love. This last had been added to her list very
recently. She would have married Philip any time during the last five
years without loving him, for the sake of the security which he could
have brought her. So it is not strange, then, that she and Neal sailed
their little craft so smoothly. It is true that marriage did not in
reality prove as interesting and picturesque as she in common with most
girls had conceived it to be. But marriage was marriage, and she must
make the best of it. Neal was still kind, almost fatherly, very
generous, clean, and, as far as she could see, had no bad habits. He
smoked one cigar after each meal, and almost never drank.
“Can’t afford it in my business,” she heard him say often. His business!
If only he hadn’t been so mysterious about that. Still it must be all
right. Men called on him pretty often and he would see them in the
middle room, which Maggie had turned into a restful living room.
Certainly he made plenty of money.
She had comfort then and she did not feel the lack of love. Occasionally
it occurred to her, it would be nice to be performing some of her
housewifely duties for Philip. She thought he would enjoy doing some of
them with her. But perhaps that was because he was young. Things seemed
to change so when one became old,—at least elderly. And she did not
think Philip would have been out as much as Neal.
Her passion, however, was for respectable company,—for more than that if
she had but known it. She wanted friends, impeccable young women with
whom she could talk over things, and exchange patterns and recipes, or
go to the matinée. Once she met Miss Talbert on Christian Street. The
girl greeted her kindly but a bit doubtfully, spoke about the weather.
Then came the query:
“What did you say your husband’s name was, Mrs. Neal?”
“Why Neal, of course, oh, Henderson, Henderson Neal.”
Miss Talbert looked at her a little sadly, exchanged a few more
banalities, and went on her assured way.
“I did hope she’d ask me to call,” Maggie murmured. “How am I ever to
get to know anybody in this great town?”
On the floor above her lived a girl and her brother, Annie and Thomas
Mason. The brother played and the girl sewed and kept house. Once Annie
got a letter of Neal’s by mistake and brought it down to Maggie. She was
in her living-room trying to shorten a skirt when Annie tapped.
She stepped to the door. “Oh, come in.”
Miss Mason came in, nothing loth. “I got your husband’s letter by
mistake. He’s Mr. H. Neal ain’t he?” She held out the letter glancing
about the room. “You’ve fixed it up real pretty here. The last roomers
kept the place looking so bad. You going to stay long?”
Maggie didn’t know. She was transported at the sight of the
pleasant-voiced friendly girl and the North Pennsylvania accent which
carried with it something very wholesome and grateful.
Miss Mason was frankly curious. “You here alone all day? What do you do
while your husband’s to work?”
“Oh, clean, and sew and—and nap,” Maggie laughed a little. “Don’t you
want to come to see me sometime, now, this afternoon?”
Miss Mason thought she “might’s well, your room seems bigger’n mine
’cause we’ve got a piano and you’ve got a table there. Say, s’pose I was
to bring my sewing down, and I could help you even off your skirt.”
After that they spent a great deal of time together. They walked in the
quiet autumn evenings down dingy Fifteenth Street, past the hideousness
of Washington Avenue, down, down the stretch of unswerving street to
Tasker or Morris, through to Broad Street which is really Fourteenth.
They sauntered back arm in arm under young but fading trees, past the
hurry of flying automobiles, under the soft silver of the street lights.
Then they turned up Catherine Street, stopped at the bakery for
ice-cream or a bag of cakes and so to the house to bed.
It was a pleasant, almost a bucolic friendship. Both girls had rather
simple tastes. Sometimes they went further up Broad Street to the
theaters, choosing the ones where they met with the least
discrimination. Once Maggie took Annie to the Academy of Music. They
stood in line for their seats and Maggie looked at the bill-boards. One
of them read:
COMING!
THE PHILADELPHIA ORCHESTRA
MR. HUBERT SANDERSON
CONDUCTOR
DECEMBER 27TH, 1910
MR. THOMAS MORSE
WILL PRESENT
MISS JOANNA MARSHALL
MEZZO-SOPRANO OF NEW YORK
She turned away, a little sick.
Maggie usually paid for their outings. Annie’s brother made a pretty
fair salary, his sister told Maggie, for he played at private dances for
wealthy white people in West Philadelphia, Rosemont, Sharon, Chestnut
Hill and various other suburbs.
“But he don’t give me much ’cause he wants to leave the country for good
sometime. I keep house for him and he pays for the lodgings and for most
of our food. I make what little extra I can by taking in plain sewing.
Your husband’s right open-handed, ain’t he?”
“Yes,” said Maggie heartily. “He’s very generous and very kind.” She
wanted to change the subject, for Annie was inquisitive—one never knew
what she’d ask next.
“Funny, ain’t it,” pursued Annie, her mouth full of pins—she was at her
everlasting sewing, turning up the hem of a bath-robe—“I ain’t never
seen him yet, no, nor Tom neither.”
“Well, you will. Come and walk up to South Street with me. I want to get
some postal cards.”
It was an aimless existence, but it had its points. Her mother was
comfortable, she herself had ease, a husband and a companion.
She went out to market one chilly November morning and came back later
than she expected. She had scarcely got in before Annie appeared, an
unusual flush on her yellow, freckled cheeks. Annie had reddish,
crinkled hair, which she wore brushed stiffly back from her high
forehead into a hard, ungraceful knob; “rhiny” hair, Maggie knew Sylvia
and the boys would call it. She could imagine how they would talk about
Annie in their pleasant, unmalicious way. Joanna would strike her
attitude and imitate her accent. Annie broke into these reminiscences.
“I been down here two or three times a’ready. Kind o’ rawish like.”
“Yes, I think it’s going to rain. I’ll light the gas-heater and we can
sit here and thaw out. I enjoy a chilly day if it’s warm inside.”
“Kind o’ that way myself.”
“Oh, you said you’d been here before. Want to see me about anything
special?”
“Oh, aimed I’d come set with you a spell. Me and Tom—now—we saw your
husband last night.”
“That so? Where? How’d you guess it was he?”
“Near Bainbridge Street, then we watched him come in here. Why, Tom
knowed him a’ready. I didn’t know his name was Henderson. I’d heard of
him before myself.”
Outside a steady soaking rain had begun to fall in the gray somberness
of the November afternoon. The gas-heater cast a ruddy oblong of light
on the white ceiling. Maggie, who had been straightening out a paper
pattern, crossed the room and threw her slight figure on the couch,
huddling close against the wall. She shivered a little in the luxurious
warmth.
“Isn’t it grand to be indoors? Where did you ever hear of my husband?”
She was becoming drowsy and did not notice at first that Annie had not
answered her. When she did, she looked up suddenly to catch the girl’s
dog-like brown eyes fixed wistfully on hers.
“What’s the matter Annie?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, but there is. Are you sick? Has Tom been unkind to you?”
“Oh, it isn’t me. It’s you! Oh, Maggie, how could you?”
“What about me? How could I what?”
“Marry him?”
“Marry whom? my husband,—why shouldn’t I?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“For God’s sake speak up, Annie Mason. What is it you know about him?
Has he got another wife? Is he an escaped convict?”
“He’s a gambler.”
“A what?”
“A gambler. Tom knows him well. And I guess I musta saw him when I was a
little girl. He used to live up around Stroudsburg. They run him out of
town.”
“I’ll never believe it.” But in her heart she did. That money—why, of
course, his long hours, especially at night, his reticence—all this
combined to make her recognize the truth.
“You poor thing. Of course you don’t want to believe it. That’s what I
said to Tom. I said, ‘That poor thing, she’s got no notion of it.’”
It was intolerable, such pity! “Where is your brother, Annie?”
“Who, Tom! Prob’ly up stairs, he don’t go out to rehearsal till four.”
“Tell him to come here.”
Annie went out, whimpering a little, twisting her fingers in the folds
of her white apron. She came back followed by a tall thin young man,
dark, with kind, soft brown eyes. Maggie noticed that the hair in front
of his ears was unshaven to form flat side-whiskers. “Siders” the boys
used to call them. They had teased Sandy about them, for he had affected
them in his college days.
She was standing by the table holding the envelope of the paper pattern
in her hand. “Mr. Mason, what’s this you know about my husband?”
“Annie shouldn’t have told you, ma’am,” he said abjectly. “It was none
of her business.”
“Well, she has. Sit down, please, and tell me all you know.”
“I’d rather stand, thank you, ma’am. Well if I must. Even when I was a
little boy, Henderson Neal was knowed to be a card-sharp. There wasn’t
nobody could stand against him. Used to wait for the men on a Saturday
night, white and colored. He’d meet ’em in the bar and treat, and then
ask ’em in on a little game. And they’d play, till they was cleaned out.
Then he’d give ’em another drink, and clap ’em on the back. Perhaps he’d
hand ’em back a dollar. ‘Better luck next time old man!’ And they’d come
back the next Saturday night, the poor fools. Some of them blowed their
brains out, they got so far back in their debts.”
She was tearing the envelope into bits, but her voice was steady.
“You’re sure of this?”
“My uncle was one of them that killed theirselves. They was a colored
minister come to Stroudsburg and he run him out of town. Then he crossed
over to Phillipsburg, then down to Trenton. They made things too hot for
him there, too. Then he got in with a white saloon-keeper in the mining
districts in Pennsylvania. Finally things got too hot for him and he
left the country for a while, was servant to an actor. He come back in
about five years with another name.”
“An alias,” murmured Annie who read the papers.
“But pretty soon he started out again under his own name. You see he got
some political protection in New York, and I guess he’s got the same
here. Most people know about him a’ready. I’m sorry I had to tell you,
ma’am.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure. Would—would you mind leaving me now? You, too,
Annie—please.”
She didn’t lie down and moan and cry as she had done—was it less than
six months ago?—when she received Joanna’s letter. That was child’s
trouble compared to this. She had wanted so to be decent, and she was a
gambler’s wife. God! how funny!
Now she must think, she must think. Oh, what was she to do? Leave him,
she knew that. But afterwards? She had no money. He had given her her
very clothes. Her old ones were at her mother’s. Her mother!
“Poor Mamma!” she said again as on a former occasion. “What a hell her
life’s always been!”
No wonder those people, those men in Atlantic City who knew him didn’t
introduce their women folks to her.
“I suppose they thought ‘You thief! Dressing that girl on other men’s
money!’”
Pretty soon he’d be home for dinner. She heard him presently coming up
the stairs. There! He had stepped on the creaky one. That meant he
was—now—just outside the door. He stepped in.
“Nice and warm in here.”
She barely allowed him time to take off his overcoat. “Henderson, I know
how you make your money. You’re a gambler.”
He didn’t deny it. “Who told you that?”
“The nephew of that man, that Mr. Mason (she hazarded the name) who shot
himself in Stroudsburg.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“What difference does that make? And I’ve been living like a queen off
stolen money. I want you to know I’m leaving you this instant.”
He caught her by the arm. “Don’t be a fool, Maggie!”
She could see the blood mounting, as his temper rose, shadowing his dark
face.
“That’s what I’m trying to do—stop being a fool.”
“Where will you go, how can you live? Off my money? You’ve none of your
own.”
“I’ll make some.”
“I’ll never let you go. I’ll kill you first.” He crushed both slender
wrists in his brutal hand and she went ashen with pain.
“I wish you would kill me.”
He flung her away from him then and she leaned back against the wall,
breathing hard.
“I suppose you’ll go back to that man, that fine gentleman that didn’t
want you.”
“Isn’t it likely he’d want me now? I was a nice girl then, not the wife
of a gambler.”
He broke down suddenly at that, sank in a chair, buried his head in his
hands.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to let me go.” Her voice was hard.
He lifted a wretched face. “You wouldn’t stay even if I was to do
something else—something decent?”
But she couldn’t forgive him for dragging her into this abyss, this
slough of degradation.
“You couldn’t change now, and anyway I wouldn’t live with you.”
To her amazement he got up, took his hat and coat and started for the
door.
“I’ll go. You’re not the one to be turned out. You know I pay for these
rooms a quarter in advance. This here’s the beginning of the second
quarter. There’s some money in the top bureau drawer.”
“I don’t want the money. Take it with you.” She got it and stuffed a
handful of bills—yellow ones—in the pocket of his overcoat. “I don’t
want your rooms, either.”
“You’ll have to keep them. You’ve no money and you’ve no place to go.
You ain’t got a friend in Philadelphia, and you can’t walk to New York.
If you walk around the streets long enough, you’ll find there’s worse
things can happen than being a gambler’s wife.” He straightened up. “If
you don’t promise me to stay, I’ll tag around after you everywheres you
go.”
“If I stay—for a while—will you promise me not to come back?”
“I promise.”
“Pooh, the promise of a gambler!” She hated him.
“I’ll show you. Best not to try me too far though, Maggie.”
“Well, are you going?”
He walked out, closing the door very quietly after him. She had not shed
a tear, she did not now. Instead she sat, with her brow wrinkled, trying
to recall something.
“Oh, yes,” she sprang up and rushed to the closet, pulling with nervous,
shaking fingers at the garments hanging there. In the pocket of her
little poplin suit, the suit in which she was married, she found what
she was looking for.
It was an oblong business card, slightly soiled around the edges. She
had come across it in Atlantic City and for some reason had kept it.
Across the front ran a neat superscription
MADAME HARKNESS
Hair Culturist
270 West 137th Street
New York City
Her glance dropped to the left-hand corner. Yes, she was right, there it
was: Branch offices—Washington, D. C., 1307 U Street, N. W.; Baltimore,
1816 Druid Hill Avenue; Philadelphia, 2021 South Street.
She sat all night brooding wide eyed over the purring gas-stove. In the
morning she made herself tidy and walked up to Twentieth and South.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XV
SYLVIA was arranging the smallest birthday cake in the world. It bore
one very small candle and it was for the very small baby who, propped up
in a high chair, sat and watched the birthday proceedings with round
solemn eyes. A three-year-old youngster, whose nose just rose above the
edge of the table, watched, too, with eyes no less round and far more
interested.
“Look at the darlings!” said Sylvia. “They know just what their mother’s
doing. Aren’t my children intelligent, Brian?”
“What you mistake for intelligence is hunger, much more likely,” laughed
her husband. “I’ve seen Roger look that way before when there wasn’t any
birthday cake, but when there certainly were eats.”
“You watch them,” said Sylvia, “and I’ll see if mother and father are
ready to come. I had a telegram from Joanna this afternoon, so I know
she can’t make it.” Her voice floated up to him as she ran down the back
stairs.
The five years of Sylvia’s married life had brought their changes to the
Marshall household. Mrs. Marshall had insisted on Sylvia’s and Brian’s
remaining with them.
“Else we’d be lonely,” she complained, “what with Sandy gone for good,
and Philip and Joanna everlastingly ‘on the road,’ as they express it.”
Alexander and Helena Arnold, after seeing each other constantly and
unresponsively for ten years, suddenly fell completely in love on that
night of the Pierce Day Nursery dance. Sandy proved himself an impulsive
wooer, for he won Helena’s consent and would have married her before
Sylvia’s and Brian’s wedding came off.
“Gracious, don’t spoil my thunder,” Sylvia had begged him aghast.
“Well, I’m the oldest,” Sandy had retorted. “It’s really my place to
marry first.”
Helena, unaware of all this, announced that she wanted to be bridesmaid
at Sylvia’s wedding, so Alec must wait till after. “Think of all the
extra clothes I can get. Besides, I couldn’t possibly finish my
trousseau before.”
The two had married the June following Sylvia’s wedding and had moved
into a house of their own. The household had hardly become adjusted to
Alexander’s absence, when Philip started on his long tours which kept
him away from home a good part of the year.
He had been graduated from Harvard, with honors and with his coveted Phi
Beta Kappa key. He had come home, happy though not as radiant, Joanna
thought for one, as in the old days. Then he had evolved his new scheme.
He proposed that an organization be started among the colored people
which should reach all over the country.
“White and colored people alike may belong to it,” said Philip, his eyes
kindling to his vision, “but it is to favor primarily the interests of
colored people. No, I’m wrong there,” he corrected himself. “It is to
favor primarily the interests of the country.”
He was speaking to a group of both white and black enthusiasts. “How
shall we start it?” someone asked.
They all liked the plan. He had his project well mapped out, for he had
thought of little else for the past three years. There were to be a
national board and a national office, supported by local boards and
membership. There would be need of organized publicity; he might suggest
a magazine or a weekly newspaper. A huge campaign must be got underway,
an effort at nation-wide support.
“Its objects will be,” he enumerated them on his long brown fingers,
“the suppression of lynching and peonage, the restoration of the ballot,
equal schools and a share in civic rights.”
“A large order,” said Barney Kirchner, Philip’s classmate, “but I like
it. I’ll get my uncle behind it.” Barney was wealthy in his own right,
but his uncle, an Austrian Jew, had built up an immense fortune which
had since supported many a notable cause.
The little nucleus worked well. From that meeting grew up all that
Philip predicted, rather weak and tottering at first, but the five years
had seen the awakening of a great racial consciousness. There were still
tremendous possibilities almost untouched.
The organization had a magazine, “The Spur,” of which Philip was editor.
But he was constantly called to exercise his vision and judgment in the
field. His observation, his constant scrutiny of his own people helped
him here, but he was the born organizer in any event.
Joanna, already started on her concert tours, often met him on the
“road.” Sometimes they were booked at the same place for the same night.
Each was the other’s supporting attraction.
“Oh, is this Mr. Marshall?” Joanna would gush when he met her train. She
put an imaginary lorgnette to her eye. “Any relation to the eminent Miss
Joanna Marshall, the world-famous mezzo?”
“Never heard of her. Haven’t the least idea who she is. Come along,
Silly. Now, Joanna, do be on time and don’t stop to primp. Mind, I won’t
wait for you a minute.”
“Not the littlest, teeniest one?” It was hard to say which was prouder
of the other.
Joanna was in fine feather in those days. She had youth and a certain
grave beauty which did not strike the observer at first as did Sylvia’s
or even poor Maggie’s. But it grew on one and remained. Young men,
though they liked to be seen with a star, were a little afraid of her
queenliness, her faint condescension. She took herself so seriously! Her
own folks and Peter often teased her about this, but they adored it in
her. And she, in turn, adored her little fame, the footlights, the
adulation. Even the smallest church in the quietest backwoods, with a
group of patient dark faces peering at her out of the often smoky
background, had its appeal. At such times, strange to say, she was at
her best, gave of her finest. She would come on the stage, trailing
clouds of glory, and lean toward them—a rosy brown vision. In some misty
colorful robe of Sylvia’s designing, her thick crinkling hair piled high
on her head as the Spanish woman had taught her, she seemed to say:
“I am no better than you. You are no worse than I. Whatever I am, you,
in your children, may be. Whatever you are, I in my father have been.”
She was absolutely sincere in her estimation of her art, or of any art.
It was only in its relation to the other things of life that she lost
her vision and sense of proportion.
She liked most to go to Philadelphia, where she was in great favor.
There she had had three great triumphs, once in Association Hall, twice
at the Academy of Music. Both she and Peter had thrilled when she came
from the Academy the second time. She sent her flowers and her
stage-gown home in the car of a friend, while she and Peter were whirled
in a taxi out to Fairmount Park.
They had driven to the Green Street entrance, and then dismissing the
cab had walked around the drive, up the steps, in front of the mansion
and on to Lemon Hill. It was one of those last, warm, almost hot nights
of Indian Summer. The slopes of the park lay deserted before them, deep
in velvety shadow, with here and there a gold patch bright as day under
the watching arc-light.
They sat down on the dry, short grass. “Like that other evening in
Morningside, long, long ago. How long, Joanna?”
“Oh, ages! How’d I sing, Peter?”
“Divinely. You looked like an angel, Janna. No, not an angel, more like
a siren in that yellow dress. Where’d you get it, dearest?”
“Yellow nothing! That was orange—deep, deep orange. Sylvia planned it
out for me. Isn’t she a genius? Through me she certainly is teaching
these colored people how to dress. We will not wear these conventional
colors—grays, taupe, beige—poor boy, you don’t know what they are, do
you? They’re all right for these palefaces. But colored people need
color, life, vividness.”
“George! I guess you’re right. How’d you come to think of it?”
“I didn’t. It was Sylvia. I started out in a white dress. You should
have seen me looking like an icebergish angel.”
“You are one, you know Janna.”
“Which? Iceberg or angel?”
“Both. One makes me adore you, the other says ‘hands off’.”
“Not a bad thing, do you think, considering all the men I meet?”
“I hate them. Sure you don’t like any of ’em better than me?”
“No, dear, I like you best.”
“‘No, dear, I like you best’,” he mimicked. “For God’s sake, Jan, can’t
you say, ‘Peter, I love you always’? Say it.”
She hesitated, sighed a little. “Peter I love you.”
“Why’d you leave off ‘always’?”
“Dear little boy, how can I say it? I do when I think of it. But, Peter,
I have so much to think about—my tour, my booking, you know, my lessons
in French and Italian, my dancing. I still keep that up; I’d really
rather do that than sing. Dancing makes me——”
“Oh, damn the dancing!”
“Why, Peter!” She looked at his flushed face in amazement.
“Hang it all, talking to me about dancing, when I’m talking to you about
love—_love_, Joanna—and there’s nothing to keep us from getting married.
Some fellows and girls ball their lives up so they can’t ever get them
straightened out. But here we are ‘all set’ as the fellows say. And you
talk to me about dancing! Suppose I were to talk to you about _Materia
Medica_!”
“I think it would be a good thing if you would.”
He was honestly aggrieved at that.
She leaned over and kissed him. “See how brazen I am. That’s the second
time I’ve given you a kiss. Oh, Peter, you big baby!”
“Dear Janna, I love you so! Great Scott! aren’t girls funny! You can’t
guess how hard it is for me to be letting all these stupid years go by.
Sometimes I’ve half a mind to chuck it all.”
“You’d never get me then.”
“I don’t suppose I would. Well, I have you now.”
“Dear Peter, we must be going home. Cousin Parthenia will rave.”
“Pshaw, she knows you’re with me. Love me, darling?”
“You know I do, you dear, dear boy.”
“Come, sit up on the bench. There, that’s it.” He knelt before her.
“Know what I’m going to give you to-night?” He felt in his pocket. “Like
it, Janna?”
He showed her a ring, a tiny gold chased ring, whose facets gleamed like
diamonds.
“Peter, it’s too beautiful. Oh, I love you for it.”
He slipped it on her finger, got up and sat beside her, kissing her
little cold hands. She leaned against his shoulder,—he put his arm about
her. A poignant sweetness seemed to flood in on them out of the solemn,
mellow night.
Peter was the first to stir. “I must get you home, darling. Oh, Joanna,
aren’t you too happy? I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off if we were
resting like this, our arms close about each other, in our grave.”
The inevitable separation came the next day. Joanna was cold, almost
indifferent. It was the way she had taught herself to endure pain. She
hated always to leave Peter, particularly if she were returning to New
York. The excitement of visiting other places healed her loneliness.
Sometimes she wished she weren’t going to see Peter for these brief
visits which lacerated her so.
Unfortunately her lover did not understand this. “How can she melt like
she did last night and then leave me so cool and composed this morning?”
he wondered, staring dejectedly after the departing express. He had not
ridden to West Philadelphia with her because he had to be at a hospital
at Sixteenth Street at one o’clock and it was now noon.
“She used to cry when we separated.” He stood uncertainly a moment on
the corner of Fifteenth and Market. “Guess I’ll go over to that little
Automat on Juniper Street and snatch a mouthful. I won’t feel like
eating after I see Carpenter start in on that slashing. Golly, what a
steady hand he has.”
He walked through the City Hall Arcade to Juniper Street, crossed in
front of Wanamaker’s and forced a passage through the teeming little
by-way.
The Automat was crowded. “Have to eat standing,” he thought, drawing a
glass of water and seizing a knife and fork. “No, there’s an empty
table.” He collected his food and began to eat.
Someone put a plate on the table beside him, rested a hand there a
moment. Peter glanced at it.
“Colored. What a nice hand! Ought to have a peach of a face to match
that.”
He looked up. “Maggie Ellersley! I had heard you lived here. I thought I
saw you once, why—four years ago—one New Year’s night on Twentieth
Street. You’ve been here ever since?”
“Yes, Peter. Oh, it’s so nice to see you!”
“Isn’t it, though! I mean isn’t it great to see somebody from home? I’ve
just seen Joanna off.”
Her face stiffened at that. But he was busy looking at his watch.
“Ten minutes more! Look here, Maggie, what’d you drop us all that way
for? How’s your husband?”
She answered his second question. “I haven’t any.”
He glanced at her apologetically, ashamed of his levity. “Is he dead?”
“No,” said Maggie woodenly. “I’ve left him!”
“Oh!” he was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Maggie. Got to run now. When may I
see you again?”
His engaging manner brought back the old days. “Peter, you aren’t
ashamed of me?”
“My dear girl!” He was younger than she and for that reason he adopted a
paternal air, patting her on the shoulder. “How can you ask that?”
“Would you come to see me to-night, Peter? Come to dinner?”
“Try me. What’s the address?”
She gave it to him. “That’s Fifteenth and Fitzwater.”
“Yes, I know. I’ll see you at six sharp. Until then, Maggie.” He bared
his curly head and flashed out the side door.
He tapped at her door at six.
“I didn’t hear you ring,” said Maggie. “Come in. This _is_ nice, Peter.”
“I should say so. Jolly little place you’ve got here.” He settled back
on the couch, stretched out his long legs. “All these years I’ve been
tramping about Philadelphia, a poor homeless beggar, when I might have
been coming to see you. How long have you been alone, Maggie?”
“Four and a half years.”
“Four and a half years! Why that’s—look here, how long have you been
married?”
“Five years last June. I left him almost right away, or rather he left
me.”
“Deserted you, you mean?”
“No, no, not that. He wanted to stay. I—I couldn’t let him.” She told
him all about it. “Peter, think of it, I’d married a gambler, a common
gambler. And I’d wanted so to be decent!” She wept painfully.
He put his arm about her slender shoulders. “There, there now, Maggie.”
“It’s the first time I’ve shed a tear about it. Seeing you, someone out
of the old happy days, upset me. Sit here, Peter.”
“They were wonderful days, weren’t they? Remember what a bunch we were?
And now we’re scattered everywhere. Joanna and Philip romping all over
the country; Sylvia and Brian married; Sandy too, did you know it?”
“Yes, I read of it in the _Amsterdam News_.”
“You and I here. Harry Portor—do you remember him?”
“Ye—es, big square fellow, wore glasses. He used to go skating with us,
didn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s the fellow. He studied medicine, too, at Harvard. Went to
Washington as interne in the Freedmen’s Hospital. I haven’t seen him for
ages. What’d you leave us for so suddenly, Maggie?”
She couldn’t tell _him_, of all people, about Joanna.
“Oh, I don’t know, girls are crazy, I think. Well, I’m not complaining.
I’m better off than I’ve ever been. That Madame Harkness—you know whom I
mean?”
“The hair-woman—what about her?”
“She’s made me supervisor of three of her branch stores, here in
Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D. C. I have my little home
here, my salary’s good. I make more than enough to live on. My mother
doesn’t have to do anything if she doesn’t want to. And above all, I’m
practically free.”
“How do you mean free?”
“I’m suing for a divorce. Lawyer Talbert has my case.”
“Oh, Mrs. Marshall’s cousin. Have you ever seen your—Mr. Neal since he
left?”
“About once a year. I hadn’t seen him for a long time though, until he
came here six weeks ago, just before I started divorce proceedings.” Her
face changed at the thought of it.
“He didn’t threaten you, Maggie?”
“Yes and no. In his way he cares about me, though not as much as for his
gambling. He’s—he’s got it in his head that I care about somebody else,
and every now and then he writes me a threatening letter. That’s why he
came to see me this last time.”
“You oughtn’t to let him in.”
“Oh, I have to. This Mrs. Davis, from whom I rent these rooms, doesn’t
know there’s any trouble, she thinks he’s a steward on a boat, and I
never have told her differently. She thinks I’m with him when I go away
on these trips. Last time he was here, he stayed half the night right on
that couch. He had a wretched cold, and it was raining!”
“I should think you’d have been afraid.”
“That’s why I let him stay. He’d been harboring such jealous thoughts
toward me. He—he has an idea that I like another man. And he has a
terrific temper. You can’t imagine how it smolders and sulks. He wasn’t
so bad about my sending him away, but since he’s had this suspicion I’ve
really been afraid. I expect he’ll be really violent some day.”
“Well, Great Scott, won’t my coming to see you be dangerous? I was just
thinking what good times we’d have.”
“We will. No, you’re all right. He wouldn’t be interested in you after
he once knew who you were. And there’s Thomas Mason upstairs; he’s not
bothered about him either, though Tom and his sister are in here all the
time.”
Peter pushed his chair back. “That was a mighty good dinner, Maggie.
Mind if I smoke?” He lit a cigarette. “Well, you’ve had hard luck,
haven’t you? But never mind, it’s bound to break even, sooner or later.
That’s what I keep saying to myself.”
“You in trouble too, Peter? I’ve been running on so about my affairs.
Tell me about yours. Studying the way you have to must be an awful
strain.”
He noticed gratefully how quick and ready was her sympathy. That was
just it. Studying itself wasn’t so bad, working wasn’t bad. But the
combination, the struggle to make ends meet, his few social obligations,
and color!
“Why, it’s awful. I’m on the rack all the time.”
“If you could stop for a year or so and take a little rest, do something
entirely different.”
He glanced at her, amused but touched. “Joanna ought to hear you say
that. She’d faint away. She can’t understand anybody’s wanting to let
up.”
Maggie said with a faint bitterness that you must always be top notch
for Joanna.
“I should say so. Here, I’ll help you with the dishes. Well,—if you
really don’t want me.” She washed and wiped so fast that the room seemed
cleared by magic. It had turned cooler and Maggie lit her little
gas-stove.
Peter smoked and relapsed into a moody silence, which he broke now and
then with an account of his struggles. His Uncle Peter had died during
his third year and the house had been inherited by his daughter, Mrs.
Boyd. Of course he couldn’t expect anything of her. Her father was only
his great-uncle, and she had her own children to look after. He had
moved to Mrs. Larrabee’s in West Philadelphia, with some of his
fraternity brothers. Somehow his money sped. His books were expensive,
the cost of his instruments pure robbery.
“I do what playing I can, but I confess I’m up against it,” he ended
ruefully.
“Lots of the boys do waiting, don’t they?” asked Maggie. “Why don’t you
do that?”
He just couldn’t, he told her.
“I never could endure standing around ‘grand white folks.’” Both of them
smiled at the childhood’s phrase. “‘Yes, sir, thank you—Oh, no, sir.’
Then some lazy white banker, or some fat white woman that never did a
day’s work in her life, puts a hand in a pocket and offers you a dime.
God, how I hate it! I did it once at Asbury Park, Phil did, too. We both
said, ‘Never again!’”
“Where do you play?”
“At different dance-halls. They don’t pay as well here as in New York,
though. What’s that, Maggie?”
A thin stream of music, played on a violin, floated down to them.
“That’s good fiddling. Is it in this house?”
“Yes. It’s Tom Mason, the man I told you about. The very thing for you!
He makes barrels of money. Come on, Peter.”
She led him, bewildered, up to the third floor, tapped on a door and was
admitted to a room much like the one she had just left. A young woman
with red crinkled hair and a yellow freckled face sat sewing on a white
apron. The young man who let them in had been putting some resin on his
bow. Against the wall stood a battered, time-worn piano.
“Hello, Annie,” said Maggie. “Hello, Tom. This is my friend Mr. Bye.
I’ve brought him up to hear you play.”
“But I can’t, Miss Maggie. I’ve no accompanist.” He turned soft brown
eyes upon her. “Unless your friend here plays the piano.”
“Well, I do admit to tickling the ivories occasionally,” laughed Peter.
“Let’s see your score.”
He sat down to the piano, ran his brown limber fingers over the keys,
and began to play the accompaniment to a typical syncopated melody,
accenting the time with staccato nods of his well-shaped head.
“Oh, great, that’s great!” cried Tom after a few minutes. “Wait till I
get my violin.”
Together they made some wonderful sounds. “Play that passage again, will
you?” Tom pointed it out with his bow.
“That’s the best accompanist you’ve ever had, isn’t it, Tom?” Annie
asked.
“I should say so. Don’t suppose you’d ever consent to doin’ this sort of
thing in public, Mr. Bye?”
“That depends on the price and the hours,” said Peter.
Tom told him about himself. He played, had all the work he could do, for
the wealthy folks of the town and suburbs. The pay was first-rate. Only
he had never been able to keep a good accompanist.
“They’re so do-less,” he complained. “What’s your regular line?”
Peter explained that he was a student.
Mason liked that. “Then you’d be workin’ because you’d really need the
fun’s. Nothin’ like having a purpose. Do you think you could go out to
Sharon Hill with me to-morrow night and play that? There’d be a few
other odds and ends. Though them white folks don’t let me play nothin’
much but that, once I get started. You might drop in for an hour
to-morrow and take a peep at the others. You can do them easy, if you
can read that.” He pointed to the piece they’d already played.
“Honey-Babe,” declaimed Peter. “Well, Mr. Mason, if we can come to
terms, I’m your man.”
Mason took him aside then, and whispered a few words.
“All right,” Peter told him, shaking hands. “That listens pretty. See
you to-morrow, say at four. Good-night folks. You coming too, Maggie?”
Downstairs he stopped at the landing. “Maggie, you jewel! How well
you’ve managed! No, I won’t come in. You see what was worrying me most
was my operating set. The price of those little steel knives and forceps
is going to touch the sky pretty soon. Wow! This confounded war is
taking everything across seas. Fellow told me to get my order in before
Christmas even if I didn’t pay for them till next year. But where was I
going to raise all that money? Now the way looks clearer.”
“I’m so glad, Peter.”
“It’s me that’s glad, Maggie. Best thing in the world for me that I met
you to-day. Such a piece of fortune! Cheer up, child! Perhaps we’ll
bring each other luck!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVI
THE house on South Fifteenth Street saw Peter often after that. Mason
could have given him work every night if he had wanted it. As it was he
gave him enough to cause him to come for rehearsals three and four times
a week. Usually Peter terminated his practice with a visit to Maggie,
who got home regularly at five-thirty when she was in town.
She appreciated Peter’s company, for she had been very lonely in this
big city with its impregnable social fortresses. “It’s a wonder you come
to see me so often, Peter,” she told him wistfully. “Being a Bye gives
you the entrance everywhere among the oldest of these ‘old
Philadelphians.’”
“Yes,” said Peter cheerfully, “but home-folks are best. And then you
make it so pleasant for me, Maggie. Why, I’ve never eaten in my life
anything so wonderful as that dinner Sunday. You certainly have the
knack of making a fellow feel comfortable.”
She was proud to have him there, he was so handsome and charming, but
much more than that, so clearly a personage. She enjoyed being seen with
him. He took her out occasionally to the park, to the theaters on Broad
Street, once to a bazaar given by some fine ladies at the Y. M. C. A. on
Christian Street. She recognized some of the women as among those whom
she had seen at Atlantic City. The startled stare of Alice Talbert, who
happened to be there that evening, afforded her endless satisfaction.
Maggie realized she spoke to her with a sort of wondering respect.
“Wonder what she thought,” she said to herself. “Well, she can think
anything she pleases.” She had not forgotten Miss Talbert’s cool
reception when she called at Lawyer Talbert’s office on the corner of
Fifteenth and Lombard. Alice was her father’s secretary. She was quite
remote on seeing Maggie, until she learned that the latter’s business
was with the lawyer.
Peter was making money these days, real money he told Maggie.
“I’m better off financially than I’ve ever been in my life. Why, I could
make a real living at this sort of thing. Mason’s got a wonderful
clientele!” As usual he was lounging in Maggie’s little living-room,
smoking, watching her move about in her sober house-dress, arranging her
accounts and orders. She had bought a little typewriter and had learned
to use it. Peter was surprised to find her so methodical. He realized
that she would have been a great help to Philip.
He felt a little guilty about coming to Maggie’s so often. “But it’s so
confoundedly uncomfortable in my room. Of course I could do better now,
but it’s a lot of trouble to move. It’s way up at the top of the house,
clean enough, but with just a few sticks of furniture in it, a green
iron-bed—ugh!—some books and the Bye family Bible. Don’t know why I
lugged that along with me. I never look in it. Well, so long, Maggie,
see you to-morrow or next day.”
“All right, Peter. You’re sure you won’t have me fix a cup of cocoa for
you before you go? You poor, neglected boy! Two buttons off that
overcoat. Bring it in the next time you come and I’ll put them on for
you. I’ll find some that will match up here on South Street.” He said he
could attend to it himself, but she told him no, that wasn’t a man’s
job.
“You certainly are some girl!” He took her hand in his for a moment.
“I’ll bring it with bells. Here, turn me out. I’ve got to get up at six
to-morrow morning. Haven’t put my nose inside of Carter’s classes this
week. Playing out so late with Mason puts me out of commission, you
bet.”
“Carter, Carter, that’s the Professor of Surgery, isn’t it?”
“No! no! That’s Davenant. I never miss one of his classes. Eat it up in
gobs. The old boy’s fond of me. Says I’m his pet carver. Wanted to take
me to see an operation in a private hospital last week—white of
course—but Carter interfered. ‘Not the place for Bye, Dr. Davenant,’ he
said. I hate him with his confounded hypocritical patronage. I’d like to
chuck him in a minute.”
Her sympathy was instant.
“Well, why don’t you, Peter? After all, your music really is in good
shape. All this steady practice these long years must count for
something. Tom says you’re a wonder. He’d like to go into partnership
with you, I’m sure. He says there’s heaps of money in it.”
“Oodles! Absolutely! But nothing doing, Maggie. Too mediocre for Miss
Joanna Marshall. But she deserves the best, she’s the best herself,” he
added in quick loyalty. “Well, that was a false start I made before,
wasn’t it? I’m really going this time. Mr. Peter Bye, exit this way.”
He walked up to Lombard Street, thinking. “That girl can certainly see
along with you. Nice to meet some one with a disposition like that. Of
course I’d rather be a surgeon. But I’m tired of this everlasting
digging. I’ve been nothing but a slave for nearly seven years. And poor
as the deuce in the bargain. Good Lord, when I think of all the money I
might have made out of you!” He looked at his fine slender hands with
their firm square-tipped fingers.
“Ideal surgeon hands,” Doctor Davenant had told his assistant.
An idea struck Peter. “I wonder what Joanna would say to that!” He
rushed in the house, seized a piece of paper and a pen and told her
about it.
“Of course, Jan, I don’t expect you to marry me if I can’t take
care of you. You wouldn’t anyway, you’re not like Sylvia. That’s
not a slam, dearest, that’s just a plain statement of facts. But
I’m making a lot of money right now—guess how?—with my music,
playing for ‘grand white folks’ at all the swell society
functions. Of course it takes me out of my classes sometimes,
but I don’t care, I’m fed up with all that. I’ve got such a
Negro-loving bunch of professors, except my surgical men.
“What say, Joanna, if I quit this, and we get married and I go
about the country with you as your accompanist? That ought to
suit you, for I don’t suppose you ever dream of settling down.
“Did I tell you I met Maggie Ellersley? I see her very often.
The fellow I play with lives in the same house she does. In
fact, Maggie introduced me to him. She’s been no end kind to me.
You’ll be interested to know she’s getting a divorce from that
beast she married. See what Philip has to say when you tell him.
“Mind you write me right away what you think about this.”
The answer came post-haste.
“What I think about this,” [wrote Joanna, infuriated] “is that I
don’t want and won’t have a husband who is just an ordinary
strumming accompanist, playing one, two, three, one, two, three.
Sometimes, Peter, I think you must be crazy.”
A number of irritable and irritating notes followed on both sides until
a couple of weeks before Christmas, when both sank into a mutinous
silence.
What Peter did not understand and what Joanna never knew he needed
explained to him was that she wanted Peter to be somebody for his own
sake. She was really paying him a sincere compliment when she told him
that she did not want an accompanist for a husband. Like many a woman of
strong and purposeful character, she hated a weak man. It followed then
that the man who won Joanna must be even stronger, more determined than
she.
She did not know much about marriage. She had not only the usual
virginal ignorance of many American girls, she had also a remarkable
lack of curiosity on the matter. But she knew vaguely that the man was
supposed to be the head. How could she, Joanna Marshall, ever surrender
to a man who was less than she in any respect? Her dominating nature
craved one still more dominant. But neither Peter nor she knew this, she
least of all. Youth, egotistic though it be, is notably free from this
kind of introspection.
Since American customs of courtship give the girl largely the upper
hand, Joanna was instinctively, if unanalytically, using Peter’s love
for her, and her own desirability, as a whip to goad him on. It was hard
for her, too, much harder than Peter knew, or than she realized. For she
was beginning at last to feel the tug of passion at her heart strings.
It would never have occurred to her to marry Peter before he was in
their common estimation “on his feet,” she would never have asked it of
him, she did not expect him to ask it of her. But unconsciously she was
yearning for the day when the two might join hands and enter the portals
which lead to the house of life.
Very often she found herself vaguely glad that she had her work. Without
it, what would she have done? What _did_ girls do while they waited for
their young men? Heavens, how awful to be sitting around listlessly from
day to day, waiting, waiting! Anything was better than that, even
pounding a typewriter in a box of an office. It was this lack of
interest and purpose on the part of girls which brought about so many
hasty marriages which terminated in—no, not poverty—mediocrity. Joanna
hated the word; with her visual mind she saw it embodied in broken
chairs, cold gravy, dingy linen, sticky children. She would never mind
poverty half so much; she would contrive somehow to climb out of that.
But ordinary tame mediocrity!
Besides, colored people had had enough of that. Not for Joanna!
It must not be thought that at this time she had any intention of
relinquishing her work after marriage. But it was for that reason that
she wanted Peter to come out of the herd. She saw the two of them
together, gracious, shining, perfect! She heard whispers:
“That’s Peter Bye, the distinguished surgeon! His wife is unusual, too,
she was Joanna Marshall. You must have heard of her. Why, she sings all
over the country!”
And here was Peter offering her the vision of herself, standing
glorious, resplendent in her stage clothes, while he trailed across to
the piano, her music portfolio under his arm:
“That’s Peter Bye!”
“Peter Bye? Who’s he?”
“The husband of Joanna Marshall, the artist.”
She would never endure it.
“And I don’t thank Maggie Ellersley the least bit for introducing him to
this music man, whoever he is,” she told herself after she had read the
letter. “Tell Philip she’s getting a divorce indeed! How much would any
decent man be interested in her after that?”
Poor inexperienced Joanna!
Peter’s vagaries were not her only worries. She was undergoing just now
what she would have termed a really serious disappointment. Her dancing,
on which she had spent so many years, so much of her father’s and her
own money, on which she had built so many high hopes, was destined, it
seemed, to avail her nothing.
She had been so sure. Her art was so perfect, so complete that even
Bertully, cynic though he was, believed that in her case the American
stage must let down the bars.
“They have but to see you, Mademoiselle, to _réaliser_ zat you are
somebody, zat you have ze great gift. And when they see you to danse,
v’la!” He snapped his thin fingers. Joanna, he told his assistant,
Madame Céleste, was the best pupil he’d ever had.
“You look at her and she is ze child, so grave, so _sage_. In another
moment she is like a wild creature, a Bacchante. Onless zey are all
fools, these _Américains_, they take her up, _hein_ Céleste?”
Madame Céleste nodded a dark, assenting head.
Bertully himself accompanied her. There were three or four managers for
whom he had done favors.
They went first to a Mr. Abrams, who received Joanna kindly. “I’m sure
of your ability, my dear girl, and you ought to go. You’re young. I can
see you could be made into a beauty. With Bertully recommending you as
he does, you must be a wizard. But the white American public ain’t ready
for you yet, they won’t have you.”
He looked at her reflectively a few seconds.
“I know the day is coming, but not for some time yet. That don’t console
you much, does it? I’ve got an idea of my own, if I think I can put it
over, I’ll send for you.”
“Courage,” said Bertully, helping her into the taxi, “there are some
others.”
The next manager, David Kohler, was explicit and to the point. “Couldn’t
make any money out of you. America doesn’t want to see a colored dancer
in the rôle of a _première danseuse_. How’s that accent, Bertully? She
wants you to be absurd, grotesque. Of course,” tentatively, “you
couldn’t consider being corked up—you’re brown but you’re too light as
you are—and doing a break-down?”
“No,” said Joanna shortly, “I couldn’t. Shall we go, Monsieur?”
By the time they reached the third manager, Joanna for all her natural
assurance had become a little timid. Bertully’s name had gained them
almost instant admission to the manager, but it was hard in the short
wait to listen to the scarcely veiled comments of the office girls and
the other applicants.
“Say, what do you suppose she is?”
“Must be a South American.”
“She ain’t, she’s a nigger or I don’t know one.”
“Say, she’s got her nerve comin’ here. Think Snyder’ll give her
anything?”
“Will he? Not a chance!”
Her cheeks were so flushed when she went in that she really was
beautiful. But Snyder gave her one look, checked himself in the act of
raising his hat, swung around to the Frenchman.
“This your great find, Bertully?”
“_Mais oui_,” the old man began excitedly.
The other calmly lit a big black cigar.
“You needn’t wait, Miss. Like to oblige you, Bertully, but I couldn’t do
a thing for you.” He walked across the office, held the door open for
them, bent over Bertully’s ear. “You’ll ruin your trade teachin’
niggers, Bertully. Better take my tip.”
They rode down in the elevator in silence. Joanna, scarlet to the ears,
saw the conjectures written in the eyes of the other passengers as they
observed her and the Frenchman’s elaborate courtesies. She would take up
no more of his time, she told him, thanking him for his kindness; she
would go home now. He understood and beckoned her a taxi, into which he
helped her with another elaborate display of courtesy, much to the
interest of several spectators.
“So silly of me to mind this,” Joanna scolded herself. But she did mind
it. How could it be possible that she, Joanna Marshall, was meeting with
rebuffs? Not that she was conceited. The point was that she had grown up
in her own and Joel’s belief,—namely, that honest effort led invariably
to success. This was probably the first time in her life that she had
been thwarted. She was like a spoiled child, bewildered and indignant at
being suddenly brought to book.
The week before Christmas a note came from Peter.
“Of course I’ve been planning as usual to come home, Jan. But we haven’t
been hitting it off so well lately. Thought I’d better write and see if
you really wanted me to.”
She wrote him. “Of course I want you.” Heavens, what would Christmas be
without Peter!
He told her on what train he was arriving and asked her to meet it. She
might have done so, but her day was as usual very full and she had a
rehearsal at six—of indefinite length. She would have to cut out
something. Too bad it had to be meeting Peter. But he surely would come
up to the house at once.
Her accompanist appeared promptly and they put in a hard two hours.
Joanna, her ear unconsciously straining for the telephone or the
doorbell, was not up to her usual mark. Eight o’clock and Peter not here
and his train in at four! Well, he wasn’t coming then. She plunged into
hard work. Her father came by the door and watched her, thinking what a
picture she made in her pretty dress. She had put on one of her old
stage frocks, for she usually did better work if she created for
herself, as nearly as possible, the atmosphere of the stage. At
nine-thirty the accompanist left.
“We went rather slowly at first, but you came out splendidly at the end,
Miss Marshall. You were a little bit tired, perhaps.”
“That must have been it. Thank you and good-night, Miss Eggleston.”
Still no Peter! “Mean thing, I’ll fix him for that.”
The bell buzzed softly, she could barely hear it. Yes, that was he. She
heard her father’s voice, “In the back parlor, Bye.”
He came in, came toward her. “Well, Joanna, here’s the wanderer
returned.” He bent to kiss her.
She turned him a cold cheek, which to her surprise he kissed without
expostulation.
He crossed the room, sat down and looked at her. “H’m, how stagy we are
in that get-up!”
He was different somehow, she thought, vaguely hurt by his remark. One
of her reasons for putting on the dress had been so that she might
please him. She asked him a question to hide her chagrin.
“Where’ve you been, Peter? I thought your train got in at four?”
“It did, but since you weren’t there to meet me, I supposed you didn’t
care whether I came late or early, or not at all. I met Vera Manning in
the station and took her to a movie.”
Her spirits went up at that. This was just pique, sheer pique.
“How lovely for Vera! And now I’ve got to send you home almost right
away. I’ve had a hard day and I’m dreadfully tired. Tell you what, dear
boy, come to luncheon to-morrow. We’ll have it together, just we two.”
She thought after he had gone that he had looked at her critically,
impersonally.
“As though he were contrasting me with some one,” she murmured.
The next day confirmed her impression. Joanna asked him to praise the
luncheon.
“I fixed it every bit myself.”
“I should think so, so feminine and knickknackish.” His tone said: “I’m
used to having my taste consulted.”
Joanna did not like the remark, but there was nothing really to be said
about it. She sprang up lightly, began to clear away.
“Come on, lazy Peter Bye, don’t leave everything for me to do.”
He lounged in his chair. “Oh, come, Joanna, I’m used to being waited on,
not doing the waiting.”
She stared at him then. “Well, good heavens! What on earth has been
happening to you in Philadelphia?”
He spoke from a contented reminiscence. “When I have dinner at Maggie
Neal’s, she’s not everlastingly asking me to do this and do that. ‘Sit
still, Peter,’ she says, ‘this isn’t a man’s work.’”
“Maggie Neal has her own methods with her men friends. Personally I
prefer to have mine wait on me.”
He rose to his feet. “Oh, yes, Queen Joanna must be served.”
They finished and went to the parlor. Joanna sang one or two of her
songs to his accompaniment. The incident rankled, though she wouldn’t
let herself speak about it.
“But he certainly is changed,” she said to herself in an angry
bewilderment.
She had to sing in Orange that night and did not intend to return until
the next morning.
“What do we do to-morrow?” Peter asked.
“Remember you said you wanted to hear _Aïda_? I ’phoned them to reserve
tickets for us for to-morrow’s matinée. But they have to be called for.
Better go down there first thing in the morning, Peter.”
He twisted around on the piano stool. “You’ll be down town to-morrow
morning coming from Orange. Why don’t you stop for them?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “Peter Bye, you _are_ spoilt,” she
flamed. “You’re—why you’re absolutely disgusting. We’ll never hear
_Aïda_ if you depend on my getting the tickets. As long as he was well
and not busy, there’s no man in the world I’d do it for.”
“Married women do it for their husbands.”
“Sylvia doesn’t do it for Brian. He wouldn’t dream of asking her.
Besides, that’s different. And, anyway, we’re not married yet. Nor
likely to be, if we don’t get along any better than this. Whatever’s
come over you, Peter?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I think you make a lot of fuss over nothing,
Joanna. But all right, I’ll get you the tickets. See you at one-thirty?”
She sat a long time in her room after he had gone, her hands and eyes
busy with her day’s mail, which Sylvia always placed on her writing
table. But her mind could not take in the written words, it was too full
of something else.
But Peter, Peter of all men to act like this! Both she and Sylvia had
always known that Maggie was unexacting. The marvel was, however, that
Peter should take so quickly to this kind of treatment. Well, she’d just
have to hold him that much closer to the mark. He’d see that there were
some girls who knew what was due them.
It was time for her to dress. As she looked into the mirror she voiced
her real regret. “Two days of the vacation gone, and we’ve done nothing
but quarrel. To-day he didn’t even ask me for a kiss. Peter, you wretch.
Just wait till you come to your senses!”
They were a little stiff next day on the way to the matinée, talking
politely and impersonally about the weather in Philadelphia and New
York, Joanna’s concert, and Sylvia’s children. Walking up Broadway,
however, they thawed a little. Joanna as usual was looking trim. She
wore that winter an extremely trig tobacco-brown suit, with a fur turban
and a narrow neckpiece of raccoon, the light part setting off the bronze
distinction of her face. But Peter was superlative. His financial
success with Tom Mason had made it possible for him to indulge in a new
outfit which emphasized the distinction of his carriage, set off his
handsome face. Several people looked at him on the crowded street.
Joanna herself stole several glances sidewise.
He caught her at it. “Joanna Marshall, if you look at me again like
that, just once more, mind you, I’ll snatch you up in my arms this
minute and kiss you.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I dare you to try it. I’d do it no matter how much you kicked and
struggled. Wouldn’t the people stare?”
Joanna giggled. “Can’t you see the headlines in the papers to-morrow?
‘Burly Negro Attacks Strapping Negress on Broadway!’”
“Yes, and the small type underneath, ‘An interested crowd gathered about
a pair of dusky combatants yesterday. A Negro and Negress——’”
Joanna interrupted: “Both of them spelt with a small ‘n,’ remember! Here
we are at the Opera.”
He caught her hand. “Just because you jockeyed me out of that kiss that
time, clever Joanna, doesn’t mean that I’m going to do without it
forever.”
In her heart she loved him. “Oh, Peter, be like this always,” she
prayed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVII
THEY enjoyed the opera and sang snatches of it coming home as they
walked to the subway. Once in the express train, however, Joanna lapsed
into sadness.
“I don’t think my voice is as big as that prima donna’s, but those
dancing girls! I should have been right up there with them! Oh, Peter, I
believe I’m the least bit discouraged.”
She told him of her trips with Bertully. “I didn’t mind those girls
calling me ‘nigger.’ That was sheer ill-breeding. Remember what we used
to say when we were children when they called us names?” She recited it:
“‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.’
What I minded was that they couldn’t dream of my being accepted. Thought
I had a nerve even to ask it.”
She mounted the steps. “Come in, Peter.”
After dinner they sat in the back parlor and Joanna went on with her
story, Peter listening closely.
“I’m glad you’re telling me about this, Joanna,” he said seriously. “Now
you’ll understand my case better. You know how I feel about white people
and their everlasting unfairness. As though the world and all that is in
it belonged to them! I tell you, Jan, I’m sick of the whole
business,—college, my everlasting grind, my poverty, this confounded
prejudice. If I want to get a chance to study a certain case and it’s in
a white hospital you’d think I’d committed a crime. As though diseases
picked out different races! I’m a good surgeon, I’ll swear I am, but
I’ve got so I don’t care whether I get my degree or not. You can’t
imagine all the petty unfairness about me. Only the other day the barber
refused to shave me in the college barber-shop. Your own cousin, John
Talbert, is a Zeta Gamma man if ever there was one—that’s the equivalent
to Phi Beta Kappa in his school, you know. Do you think he got it? No,
they black-balled him out.”
Joanna sat silent, stunned by this avalanche. And to think she had
precipitated it!
“Arabelle Morton’s sister, Selma,” Peter went on morosely, “took her
Master’s degree last year. The candidates sat in alphabetical order.
Selma sat in her seat wondering whom the chair on the left of her
belonged to—it was vacant. At the last moment a girl came in, a Miss
Nelson, who had been in one or two of her classes. Selma knew she was a
Southerner. ‘Oh, I just can’t sit there,’ Selma heard her say, not too
much under her breath. And some friend of hers went to the Professor in
charge of the exercises and he let her change her place, though it threw
the whole line out of order.”
He paused, still brooding.
“Another colored girl—can’t think of her name—paid for a seat in one of
the Seminary rooms. The white girl next to her, apparently a very
pleasant person, had her books all over her own desk space and this one,
too. They were the best seats in the room. The colored girl asked her to
move them. She just looked at her. Then this Miss—Miss Taylor, that was
her name, took it from one authority to another, finally to the
professor in charge of the Library. He assigned her another seat. Said
the girl had been there four years, and that anyway, she—the white
girl—resented the colored girl’s manner toward her. The damned petty
injustice!”
“But, Peter,” Joanna argued, “you wouldn’t let that interfere with your
whole career, change your whole life?”
“Why shouldn’t I? There’re plenty of pleasanter ways to earn a living.
Why should I take any more of their selfish dog-in-the-manger
foolishness? I can make all the money I want with Tom Mason. If you
aren’t satisfied for me to be an accompanist, I could go into
partnership with him and we could form and place orchestras. It’s a
perfectly feasible plan, Joanna. Why shouldn’t I pick the job that comes
handiest, since the world owes me a living?”
He frowned, meditating. “Isn’t it funny, I felt just then as though I’d
been through all this before. It’s just as though I’d heard myself say
that very thing some other time. Well, what do you say, Joanna?”
“That I don’t want a coward and a shirker for a husband. As though that
weren’t the thing those white people—those mean ones—wanted! Not all
white people are that way. Both of us know it, Peter. And it’s up to us,
to you and me, Peter Bye, to show them we can stick to our last as well
as anybody else. If they can take the time to be petty, we can take the
time to walk past it. Oh, we must fight it when we can, but we mustn’t
let it hold us back. Buck up, Peter, be a man. You’ve got to be one if
you’re going to marry me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “May I light a cigarette?” But she noticed he
did it with trembling fingers. “Just as you say, Joanna.”
She rose and faced him, this new Peter—this old Peter if she did but
know it, with the early shiftlessness, the irresoluteness of his father,
Meriwether Bye, the ancient grudge of his grandfather, Isaiah Bye,
rearing up, bearing full and perfect fruit in his heart. Both rage and
despair possessed her, as she saw the beautiful fabric of their future
felled wantonly to the ground. For the sake of a few narrow pedants!
“Peter, Peter, we’ve got to make our own lives. We can’t let these
people ruin us.” She felt her knees trembling under her. “We’re both
tired and beside ourselves. Come and see me to-morrow, will you?”
What should she say to him now, she wondered next day after a long white
night. And once she had only to raise her finger and he was willing,
glad to do her bidding. Could it be that after all these years she had
failed to touch his pride, worse yet that he had no pride? She had been
longing so for a cessation from all this bickering, so that they might
have time for a touch of tenderness. But she could not afford that now.
His love for her was her strongest hold over him. She was sure she could
bring him back to reason. Perhaps she had been a little severe last
night, calling him a coward.
“I musn’t lose my temper,” she told herself. Yet that was the very thing
she did. The matter took such a sudden, such a grotesque turn.
He came in about eleven, his handsome face haggard, his eyes bloodshot.
She was astounded at his appearance.
“Peter, you look dreadful!”
He glanced over the top of her head at his reflection in the mirror,
lounged to the sofa, threw himself in the corner of it.
“Guess I’m due to look a fright after staying up all night. Didn’t get
to bed till five this morning.”
She thought he’d been worrying over their quarrel. “You poor boy, you
didn’t need to take it that hard.”
He stared at her. “Take what, that hard? Oh, our talk! That didn’t keep
me awake. I spent the night at ‘Jake’s.’”
“Jake’s” was the cabaret, a cheap one, in which he had played years ago.
She couldn’t understand him. “I thought you had plenty of money without
playing there.”
“I have. I didn’t play there. I was a visitor like anybody else, like
Harry Portor; he spent the night there, too. There was a whole gang of
us.”
Clearly she must get to the bottom of this. While she had been tossing
sleepless, he had been in a cabaret, dancing with cheap women, laughing,
drinking perhaps.
“You mean you deliberately went there to have a good time and stayed all
night? You and Harry Portor and the rest drank, I suppose?”
“I don’t think Portor did. He’s a full-fledged doctor now, though he’s
hardly any practice yet. But the rest of us did. There’s nothing in
that, Joanna, fellow’s got to get to know the world.”
Her anger rose, broke. She lost her dignity.
“I suppose Maggie Ellersley taught you that, too.”
“What’s that?” His handsome face lowered. “Say, how’d Maggie Ellersley
get into this? No, she never taught me anything. But I can tell you
what, if a fellow were going with her and went during his holidays to
have a spree at a cabaret she wouldn’t nag him about it, like you nag
me. Yes, about that and about a thousand other things.”
She turned into ice. “I’ll never nag you again. Here, take this thing!”
She drew off the little ring. “I don’t want it.”
A pin dropping would have crashed in that silence.
His voice came back to him. “You don’t mean this, Joanna,—you can’t.”
“I do. Here, take it.”
“You—you mean the engagement is broken?” He ignored her outstretched
hand.
She dropped the ring in his pocket. “I mean I can’t consider a man for a
husband who throws away his career because of the meanness of a few
white men. Of a man who sits all night in a low cabaret where every
loafer in New York can point him out and say, ‘That’s the kind of fellow
Joanna Marshall goes about with.’”
“Oh, I see, it isn’t for my sweet sake, then!”
She pushed him toward the door. “Go, Peter! Go!”
On New Year’s morning he came back, humble, contrite. “I was a fool,
Joanna. I must have been mad. Please forgive me.”
“Of course I do, Peter.”
He fumbled in his pocket, held out the ring. “Will you take this back?”
“I can’t do that.”
“When will you?”
“I don’t know if ever.”
There was a long silence. He came over and put his hand on the back of
her chair, afraid to touch her.
“Joanna, I don’t deserve your love. But you still do love me?”
She nodded slowly.
His face brightened at that. “But you won’t take back the ring?”
“No, Peter, I can’t take back the ring.”
He knelt and kissed her hands.
“Good-by, sweetheart, I must go to Philadelphia to-day. Happy New Year,
Joanna.”
She let him go then. None of their other partings had ever been like
this. Safe in her room she cried herself sick. “Oh, Peter,” she murmured
to herself, “come back like the boy I used to know.” She wished now that
she had been easier with him.
“And yet if I were, he’d let go entirely. Well, it must come out all
right.” But her heart was heavy.
The very next day she got a letter. Peter must have written her as soon
as he arrived in Philadelphia.
“Joanna, I was wrong,” he had written contritely, “I confess I had got
away somewhat from your manner of thinking, and I suppose I was a little
sore, too,—your life seems so full. Sometimes I think there is nothing I
can bring you. But I do love you, Joanna. You must always believe that
and I think you love me, too. We were meant for each other. I am sure
life would hold for us the deepest, most irremediable sorrow if we
separated. Whether we are engaged or not, just tell me that you love me
still and I can be happy.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XVIII
IF she had only answered the letter, then, that very moment!
But she had said to her impulse: “No, I must wait. I can’t let him off
too easily.” Perhaps, too, there was a little sense of satisfaction at
having him again at her knees, suing for her favors, but this was
secondary. Joanna was really sick at heart to think that her beautiful
dreams of success for both of them might not be realized. She wanted to
be great herself, but she did not want that greatness to overshadow
Peter.
Somehow the week slipped by, quickly enough, too. There was always
plenty to do. Love,—the desire to give it and receive it was tugging
persistently at the cords of her being, but she had been too long the
slave of Ambition to listen consciously to that. Yet she found herself
lying awake nights thinking, thinking, more about Peter than about her
singing engagements during the New Year, or about her plan to make her
mightiest efforts just now to enter the dancing world. Yet whatever she
might ponder by night, she spent all her time and strength by day going
to see performances, practicing, inventing new steps and new rhythms.
Through Helena Arnold and indirectly through Vera Sharples she obtained
the promise of an interview with one of the season’s favorites.
“I’ll be able to see you early Thursday evening,” the famous woman
wrote. “You may expect either a note or a telephone call from me.” At
one time such a promise would have sent Joanna into the seventh ecstasy,
without impairing her confidence. But recent discouragements,
persistent—and for her unusual, phenomena—had rendered her timid. She
was nervous. Her assurance wavered. She spent the whole day going
through her repertory. Sometimes she danced like a mænad. Then she
adopted a slow Greek rhythm, posturing and undulating. She struck
attitudes before the mirror, standing in one position for long moments.
“For Heaven’s sake,” said Sylvia, putting her head inside the door on
one of these occasions, “go out and take a walk, Joanna.” She was as
nervous as her sister.
“Not a bad idea, Sylvia, I believe I will. You can answer the phone.
Have you seen my brown cape?”
She came back a little after five, refreshed and soothed.
“No phone message,” Sylvia told her, “but here’s a note. What’s she got
to say, Janna?” She came and looked over her sister’s arm.
“So sorry not to be able to see you to-night,” the noted _artiste_ had
written. “I’m halfway expecting an old friend of mine and must keep the
evening free. I shall try to arrange to have you call, just the same,
not this month I’m afraid, but certainly in February.” She ended with a
meaningless expression of “good wishes.”
“Mercy,” said Sylvia, “why didn’t she say next year?”
Joanna was bitter. “Or next eternity? Sylvia, I wonder if I’m not a darn
fool!” She walked upstairs trailing her long brown cape after her.
All her life she had known and seen success. When she was born her
father was a successful caterer, almost a wealthy man. It is true that
she had seen her own people hindered, checked on account of color, but
hardly any of the things she had greatly wanted had been affected for
that cause. She had had money enough to have her dancing and music
lessons—the very fact that she had had to take separate and special
lessons from Bertully meant to her that some special and separate way
would be arranged whereby she would become a dancer on the stage.
She did not know how to envisage disappointment.
Strangely enough, the defection of the _artiste_ struck home to her more
keenly than the reception which she had had from the stage-managers. She
refused Sylvia’s invitation to come back downstairs and spend the
evening with her and Brian.
“We might go to a movie,” Sylvia had said tentatively. But Joanna had
only made an impatient gesture of refusal, and walking into her room had
closed the door very carefully after her.
She did not cry or throw herself across the bed. It might have been
better for her if she had. Joanna’s creed was that one kept a stiff
upper lip even to oneself. She had not had many occasions to try out
that creed.
There she sat, stiffly, on the spindling chair in front of her small
flat-topped writing desk and brooded over the future which suddenly
stretched dull, stale, and uninvigorating before her. She would never be
able to stand it.
The thought of her marriage flashed across her mind.
“And Peter,” she said to herself aloud, “willing to be ordinary and
second-rate! Where is that letter of his? I might just as well answer it
now as at any other time.”
In spite of her ugly mood a little wave of tenderness welled up in her
heart as she read,—“Just tell me that you do love me still,——”
“Oh, Peter, Peter,” she murmured, “if I tell you that you’ll never
change, never push on. If only you could be strong and let me bring my
troubles to you.”
It would never do to let him know how completely she was discouraged.
And equally she could not let him know how dear, weakness and all, he
was to her. She would make her love conditional. “If you want me to love
you, Peter,——”
She hated that, but some day they would both be glad of it. She actually
cried for the two of them as she wrote her stern little fiction:
“DEAR PETER:
“No, I don’t love you as you are. The man I marry must be a man
worth while like my father or Philip. I couldn’t stand the
thought of spending my life with some one ordinary.
“But I want to love you, Peter. Write me soon and say you are
going to get to work in earnest. Happy New Year.
“Sincerely,
“JOANNA.”
She read it over and over, totally blind to its supreme egotism. Then
she sealed it and, sniffling a little—more like a child than like an
artist—went to bed.
In the morning she awoke with a sense of impending disaster. The phrase
is trite but so, alas, is disaster. At first, as she lay there, her
slender brown arms stretched above her tumbled head, she mused to
herself about it.
“Let’s see why I do feel so rotten? What’s the matter?”
She remembered her engagement with the _artiste_. “But that’s not what’s
making me sick,” she told herself after a momentary probing of her
self-consciousness. Then recalling the letter to Peter, she got up and
walked bare-footed across the room to the desk, shivering a little as
the chilly January morning air struck at her, billowing her thin
nightdress. She thought she would read it again, but the envelope was
sealed. It slipped out of her hand and she ran back to bed again,
cuddling luxuriously.
“Oh, well!” Afterwards when she rose and closed the windows she promised
herself: “If I do send it I’ll write him a sweet, sweet letter soon.”
After breakfast she posted it. It fell with a heaviness into the box
that made her uneasy. “I’ll write him again to-night,” she thought.
“Poor Peter! He’ll be disappointed, I suppose.”
But the night brought her several offers to sing in Southern schools
which she thought she might just as well accept. Apparently nothing was
to come of her dancing. She had about a week in which to get ready.
Just before she left, a little surprised that she had not already heard
from Peter, she wrote him a long letter, her first long love-letter.
“Dearest Peter [she began]
“You can’t think how awfully I want to see you. If you were here
to-night I shouldn’t quarrel with you one moment.”
She quoted lines from one of Goethe’s poems.
“Ein Blick von deinen Augen in die meinen,
Ein Kuss von deinem Mund auf meinem Munde:
She hesitated a moment, a little aghast at this disclosure of her
feelings. “But I might just as well, he deserves it. Dear, dear Peter,
if I could just see you!”
She ended, smiling shamefacedly at her own abandon——
“Mein einzig Glück auf Erden ist dein Wille”——
She might have stopped in Philadelphia on her way South, but she
couldn’t after that letter. In Richmond she received a note from Peter
which Sylvia had forwarded.
“My dear Joanna [she was surprised at the formality]
“I have both your letters. I cannot tell you how surprised I was
at receiving the first or how much I cherished the second.
Joanna, I would give ten years of my life if you had written the
second one first. I am very busy now but I am going to write you
a final letter very soon.
“Sincerely,
“PETER.”
“‘A final letter,’” she quoted to herself. “What a funny thing to say!
Oh, Peter! And I wanted, I needed a real letter, a love-letter!” Her
natural reasonableness helped her. “It’s my own fault. I suppose he
feels like I feel sometimes, don’t-care-y. But ‘a final letter.’ I
wonder what he meant!”
But she did not puzzle long. Richmond was appreciative and gay. Some one
wrote her from Hampton and asked her to do an interpretative dance.
Partly because of the interest and excitement, partly because she had
forced herself to do so often, she resolutely put Peter out of her mind.
“He’ll know when I write him again,” she told herself ruefully.
Two weeks, a month passed; she came into her room one day to find a
bulky letter from Sylvia. “He doesn’t mean it, Joanna, of course, but I
had to send it.” Thus her sister’s note. Puzzled, she read the
inclosure, which turned out to be a letter from Peter to Sylvia.
“DEAR SYLVIA:
“I am writing to let you know that I am to be married in June.
Joanna told me she didn’t love me and so I am going to marry
Maggie Neal; she’s crazy about me. Tell Joanna not to bother
sending back any of the things I’ve given her.
“Sincerely,
“PETER.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XIX
ONE of the mysteries of the ages will be solved with the answer to the
question: Why do men consider women incalculable? Peter had been hurt by
Joanna’s indifference again and again, she had refused a dozen times to
marry him, she had scolded him, teased him, slighted him. Yet she had
always come back to his eager arms. In spite of this he had been unable
to see in her attitude at Christmas and in the unkind letter which she
had written the logical outcome of her earlier acts—all of which by
enduring he had tacitly indorsed.
He read the letter in a maze of anger and wounded pride. Before he knew
it he had caught up his cap and started for Maggie’s house. By the time
the long, yellow, crawling car had jolted him over the uneven reaches of
Lombard Street and set him down at Fifteenth he was in a fever of
bitterness, resentment and self-pity. Maggie hardly knew him when he
entered her little sitting-room.
“Oh, Peter,” she went up to him swiftly, “something awful has happened.”
He showed her the letter, striding up and down the room as she read it.
She lifted her head to say to him: “She doesn’t mean it; you know
Joanna, always making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Instead she heard herself saying: “How could she possibly write such
things to you—you’ve always been so kind.”
“Too kind,” he muttered. “I tell you what, Maggie, Joanna’s got no
heart, she’s all head, all ideas and if you don’t see and act her way,
she’s got no use for you.”
“I do think she thinks herself a lot better than any one else,” Maggie
said slowly, remembering Joanna’s letter to her about Philip.
“Well, she is, you know,” he put in unexpectedly. “Oh, Lord, what am I
going to do without her!”
Genuinely touched, she sat down on the little box-couch beside him and
slid her arm around his shoulder. “After all, you’ve still got me,
Peter.”
He looked up at her, feeling the surge of a new idea in his heart. If he
could only punish Joanna—no not punish exactly, you couldn’t punish her,
she was always too remote for that—but shock her, let her see, as his
boyhood’s phrase would have had it, that she was not the only pebble on
the beach. Besides, what a revenge to cut loose altogether from the
influence of her ideals and ally himself with one whom she would have
characterized as having no ideals at all.
Before the thought was even shaped in his brain he was speaking:
“Of course I always have you, Maggie. How—how would you like to spend
your future with me?”
“What do you mean, Peter?”
“I mean, Joanna’s chucked me. You and I get along famously, you’ve got
your divorce from Neal. Why not marry me?”
It was plain that though surprised she liked the idea. She saw herself
suddenly transformed in this inhospitable snobbish city from Maggie
Neal, alone and _déclassée_, into Mrs. Peter Bye, a model of
respectability.
That he had no money, no accepted means of making a livelihood she
understood would mean nothing. He was a Bye and she as his wife could go
anywhere. She would show Alice Talbert! And afterwards when he got his
degree!
But because she had once loved Philip she could judge what Peter might
mean to Joanna. To her credit she hesitated.
“Joanna probably doesn’t mean to let you go, Peter, she’s just angry and
disappointed. She takes things harder than Sylvia or I. You know she
really cares about you, and so do you about her.”
But he assured her that he did not. “She’s too exacting. Now there’s one
thing about you, Maggie—maybe it’s because you’ve already been
married—you know how to treat a man. Joanna makes you feel as though you
were in a strait-jacket all the time. I always feel ordinary when I’m
with you.”
Neither of them noticed the doubtfulness of the compliment. In the end
she accepted him. After all, she owed nothing to Joanna, who certainly
had not considered her. How surprised she would be to think that Peter
could so quickly find solace in her—Maggie’s—arms! And Joanna should
learn, too, that he could become a success without everlastingly being
pushed and prodded.
Hard on this thought came another. “Peter, you won’t have to work so
hard now to get through school. I’ll help you. You know I’m doing very
well with the hair-work.”
He dismissed the theme airily, one hand on her shoulder, the other
fumbling for a cigarette.
“Oh, I’m going to give medicine up. I’ll just keep on with Tom and the
music. Heavens, it’s so nice to know you won’t mind, Maggie. Can’t think
why I’ve stuck to the old school as long as I have, when here I am all
set with this nice easy job to my hand. Might as well get along with as
little trouble as possible. The world owes me a living.”
* * * * *
Afterwards, back in his room with the green iron bedstead and the Bye
Bible, he felt a difference, a sense of let-down-ness. He threw himself
across the bed and groaned.
“Joanna, how could you?”
She could, that was evident. He was stupefied at the turn in his
affairs. Five hours ago he had expected some day to be a physician and
to marry Joanna Marshall. Now it seemed that he was going to be a
musician and marry Maggie Neal.
“It isn’t true,” he told himself, fiercely. But it was true. There on
the dresser were some cookies wrapped up in a red and white fringed
napkin, Maggie’s gift when he left her.
“I made them for you, hoping you would come in. Now you’ll be in often,
often, won’t you? Oh, Peter, I’ll be good to you. I’ll be as unlike
Joanna as possible.” He did not want her to be unlike Joanna. In fact,
he did not want her at all.
He might as well take her, though, for Joanna did not want him. That was
it, no matter how many women he unaccountably married, Joanna might be
shocked but she would never really care. Or suppose she did care a
little while, she would soon forget it with her singing and dancing.
Still, he supposed he must tell her. He would write her a gay, mocking
letter. “I hope you’ll be as happy with your art as I feel I shall be
with Maggie. She suits me perfectly.”
After he had littered his desk and the floor beside it vainly with a
veritable snow-storm of torn bits of paper, he let his head drop on his
lean brown hands and went to sleep. Perhaps it would not be exact to say
he cried himself to sleep, but there were certainly tears that burnt and
scalded behind his eyelids.
His landlady complained of the torn paper the next morning. “’Tisn’t as
though you didn’t have a nice waste-paper basket ready and waitin’, Mr.
Bye.” As she finished speaking she handed him Joanna’s letter containing
Goethe’s poem. The tenderness, the real love that blazed in the
beautiful lines overwhelmed him. He could not tell her the truth after a
letter like that. So he wrote her, postponing but hinting, he fondly
believed, at the news which he must soon break to her. A month later,
finding himself still unequal to the task, he wrote to Sylvia.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XX
SYLVIA had written. “He doesn’t mean it, of course”——
But Joanna knew better. Even while dumbfounded she stood staring at the
note, trying to believe there must be some mistake, her heart, her every
sense was telling her it was too true.
Peter had given her up. He was going to marry Maggie. _He had given her
up._ That was the important thing. For if he was not to marry her, what
difference did it make whom he married?
She had never been religious, she had never been dramatic. Rather she
somewhat despised any emphatically emotional display. “People don’t
really act that way,” she told herself.
Yet she dropped on her knees beside the pine bedstead in the sparsely
furnished room. Her hands clutched at the counterpane. She could feel
her throat constricting. A scalding hotness seared her nostrils, her
mouth became dry, her eyeballs burned.
“Oh, God! Oh, Peter!” She repeated the two phrases again and again in a
sick agony.
“God, you couldn’t let it be true. You know I always loved him, I didn’t
hide it from you. You knew my heart.”
At first she thought she would go to him. Then the fear that he might
not want to see her, might even refuse to see her, overcame her. That
humiliation she could never endure.
She sat down and wrote him a long letter, her pen flying over the page
like something bewitched. It could not move fast enough to empty her
heart of all she had to tell. If she could only make clear to him that
she had “chastened” him because she loved him. How patronizing, how
silly she had been. She said aloud, “How he and Maggie must have laughed
at me, setting myself up above them and their ideas as though I were
some goddess! Oh, God, why did you let me do it? You knew what I really
meant.”
Her tears almost blotted out her words.
The post-office was a mile away but she trudged the distance
mechanically, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, absorbed and drowned in
the black sorrow which overwhelmed her.
Peter’s answer, which came in four days, brought no solace. She had
never dwelt on any pages as she did on those of his last letter. The
curt, stern phrases both cut her and awakened a new respect for him.
With a sense of responsibility which Joanna had never seen in him
before, he insisted on honoring the claim which Maggie’s complete and
unexacting love made upon him. “Even if I wanted to give her up,” he
wrote in a sort of anguished virtuousness, “I would not, she has been
too kind to me. But I don’t want to give her up, Joanna. Besides, I’ve
got to consider the public. She has told several people that we are
engaged.”
Joanna cried aloud: “If you had only been like this before, ever before,
only once, I’d have known I couldn’t trifle with you. Oh, Peter, you
deceived me.” The tears stood, great wells of water about her eyes.
She finished her engagement in the quiet Southern city before an
audience which wondered vaguely what had happened to make Joanna
Marshall different. Somehow she packed her trunk, thanked the persistent
youth who had constituted himself her cavalier, and boarded the Jim Crow
car. Her cavalier for all his persistence had been unable to obtain for
her Pullman accommodations. After Washington she fell to wondering what
it used to be like in other days, less than a year ago, when she would
be coming up this way, through Baltimore, Wilmington, past Chester,
secure in the knowledge that Peter would be waiting for her at West
Philadelphia. He would never be there again! How could she endure it? It
was not possible that anyone could stand this thing. No wonder people
“crossed in love”—she dwelt on the phrase distastefully—killed
themselves. She toyed with the idea. Of course _she_ couldn’t; that sort
of relief was not for her. In the first place it was cowardly. With her
usual mental clarity she visualized the colored papers of Harlem. There
would be notices telling how the “gifted singer, Joanna Marshall,
daughter of Joel Marshall, died by her own hand——”
Her mind lingered over it, painting in new details, consciously
withdrawing as far as possible from the real cause of her grief.
As the train slid into the long shed at West Philadelphia she pressed
her face against the window-pane and strained out into the dusk.
Sometimes miracles did occur. Perhaps he was there, perhaps none of it
was true. Her tears crept down the glass, the man behind her watching
curiously.
Sylvia met her in New York, got her home and finally to bed. Mr. and
Mrs. Marshall knew nothing of the matter and Sylvia had told even Brian
very little. The two girls said nothing about Peter directly.
“Help me to get to sleep, Sylvia,” Joanna said suddenly after a rambling
account of her trip. Her roving eyes and twitching hands had already
betrayed her need. “Help me to get to sleep or I think I shall go mad.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI
JOANNA was in agony. Her life, hitherto a thing of light and laughter
and pleasant work, became a nightmare of regret and morbid
introspection. She could not blame herself enough. Nothing that Sylvia
could say would make her speak unkindly of Peter.
“No, Sylvia, it wasn’t his fault, really, it was all mine. Of course I
think he was a little stupid not to see that my very interest in him, my
constant fault-finding grew out of my wish to have him perfect. And I
wanted him to be perfect because I loved him. But if I had ever dreamed
how much I was hurting him, I’d never have said a word to him. I’d
rather have had him exactly as he was, faults and all, than to lose him
altogether.”
She suffered intensely, too, from wounded pride. “Just think, Sylvia, he
didn’t, he couldn’t have loved me after all. He just wanted to get
married. See how easily he turned from me. Oh, if I had known that was
all he wished, I’d have been different. I’d have been just the kind of
woman he wanted.”
Her humble sincerity almost made Sylvia cry.
Another girl in Joanna’s place might not have suffered so intensely. But
Joanna, poor creature, was doomed by her very virtues. That same
single-mindedness which had made her so engrossed in her art, now proved
her undoing. Her mind, shocked out of its normal complacence, perceived
and dwelt on a new aspect of life, an entirely different and undreamed
of sense of values. For the first time in her life she saw the
importance of human relationships. What did a knowledge of singing,
dancing, of any of the arts amount to without people, without parents,
brothers, sisters, lovers to share one’s failures, one’s triumphs?
She remembered how interested, how faithfully interested all her family
had been in her small career. Even Brian Spencer, now that her own
brothers were away, felt responsible for her, shifted engagements to get
her to the station on time, met trains at ghastly, inconvenient hours of
the night. And Peter had been her slave, her willing, unquestioning
slave, eager to accomplish any task no matter how troublesome, for a
word of appreciation from her.
And without a thought she had taken all this as her due.
She had failed to realize happiness when she saw it. The bird had been
in her grasp and she had let it go. This was her constant thought. Of
course, she still had her own people. And she was considerate of them
now, painfully anxious to show her gratitude. She tried to stammer out
an apology to Sylvia for her past remissness.
But her sister threw an arm about her and strained her close. “Don’t be
so thoughtful, so good, Jan. You break my heart. I’d rather have you
your old thoughtless, impatient self.”
Of course, this expression of gratitude was really only a gesture to
life, to fate. “If Peter could come back to me now, he’d see how truly I
cared about him. God, couldn’t you let him come back?” Joanna, who had
hardly uttered a prayer outside of “Now I lay me,” spent most of her
thoughts at this time in communion with God—“You Great Power, you great
force, you whatever it is that rules things.” Walking, riding, any
action at all mechanical she utilized in concentrating on her “desire to
have everything come right.”
In the mornings, weak and spent with the wakefulness of her white night,
she picked up her little slim Bible and read portions of the Psalms. The
beautiful words not only soothed her but brought with them a wonderment
at the passion and pain which they revealed. “David, you, too, suffered.
Help me, help me now.” So intense was her thought that she would hardly
have been surprised if she had looked up and seen the Psalmist bending
over her.
She hated the mornings even more than the nights. In spite of her
wakefulness, she was sure that there were some moments when she lapsed
into unconsciousness. But the morning brought with it the promise of
another day of pain, of unprofitable preoccupation. Sometimes after she
had read her Psalm, despite the fact that she had been tossing, tossing
on her pillow, she yielded to an overwhelming sense of apathy and lay
there motionless for hours in the security of her bed.
Her mental agony was so great at times that it seemed almost physical.
Her condition surprised Sylvia greatly. “I never had any idea that Jan
cared so much for Peter,” she told Brian. She had had to share her
sister’s secret with him. Joanna’s persistent sleeplessness had led
Sylvia in her protecting eagerness to pretend to Harry Portor that she
herself was in need of a sedative and Harry had spoken to Brian about
it. There had to be explanations.
Brian was not at all surprised at Joanna’s suffering. “A girl like
Joanna would be bound to feel deeply or not at all. I knew she must have
really cared for Peter, else she’d have chucked him long ago. Joanna did
nag at him, but Peter is really the one to blame, for standing for it.
If he’d given her a piece of his mind now and then she’d have understood
whom she had to deal with; Joanna thought she could treat him as she
pleased. Then when he got tired of it he threw up the whole thing
without any warning, the silly ass.”
“Better not let Joanna hear you call him that,” Sylvia interrupted.
He went on unnoticing. “Of course, what Joanna doesn’t realize is that
she’s up against the complex of color in Peter’s life. It comes to every
colored man and every colored woman, too, who has any ambition. Jan will
feel it herself one day. Peter’s got it worse than most of us because
he’s got such a terrible ‘mad’ on white people to start with. But every
colored man feels it sooner or later. It gets in the way of his dreams,
of his education, of his marriage, of the rearing of his children. The
time comes when he thinks, ‘I might just as well fall back; there’s no
use pushing on. A colored man just can’t make any headway in this awful
country.’ Of course, it’s a fallacy. And if a fellow sticks it out he
finally gets past it, but not before it has worked considerable
confusion in his life. To have the ordinary job of living is bad enough,
but to add to it all the thousand and one difficulties which follow
simply in the train of being colored—well, all I’ve got to say, Sylvia,
is we’re some wonderful people to live through it all and keep our
sanity.”
Sylvia agreed soberly that he was right.
“Now, Peter,” said Brian, warming to his subject, “had a lot of natural
handicaps, he was poor, he had no sense of responsibility, he was never
too fond of work unless he had some one to spur him on to it. In
addition to that he falls in love with a girl who has everything in the
world which he lacks, especially comparative ease and overwhelming
ambition. Jan doesn’t see Peter and herself as two ordinary human
beings, she thinks they have a high destiny to perform and so she drives
Peter into a course of action which left to himself he would never
pursue. I’ll bet a month’s salary Peter had no intention of studying
surgery until he found out he had to do something extraordinary to win
Joanna. Now, just when each needs the most sympathy from the other, when
Joanna’s plans are, I suspect, going awry, and when Peter is suffering
most from his color complex, the two let their frazzled nerves carry
them into a jangle and bang, Peter flies to the first woman who promises
to let him take life easy! Maggie doesn’t see life in the large, she’s
too much taken up with getting what she wants out of her own life.
Perhaps she’s right.”
“I don’t see how you can say that, Brian.”
“Well, it all depends on one’s viewpoint. Personally, I think Peter will
get what he deserves if he marries Maggie. She’s the one that astonishes
me. Of course, if Peter and Jan really are through with each other, he’s
got a perfect right to marry whom he pleases, but I should think
Maggie’s old friendship for you two girls would have held her back
awhile.” A memory stirred vaguely within him. “Or—no, that would really
be too rotten.”
“What would?”
“Maggie, you know. Remember how suddenly she married Neal? I’ve always
thought Joanna had something to do with that. Just the Sunday before,
Maggie had given me a look-in on her feelings for Philip and I happened
to tell Jan about it. My, how she raved! A few days later Maggie married
her gambler.”
This was all news to Sylvia.
“Well, I won’t tell Joanna. She’s got enough to bear.”
Joanna was indeed bearing more than Sylvia could guess. She was feeling
the pull of awakened and unsatisfied passion. It is doubtful if she
could thus have analyzed it, for she had rather deliberately withheld
her attention from the basic facts of life. “Plenty of time for that,”
she had told herself gayly, a little proud perhaps of a virginal
fastidiousness which kept her ignorant as well as innocent. Yet bit by
bit she had built up the idea of a shrine into which, not unwillingly,
she should enter with Peter some day. She had never even vaguely thought
of any one else as a companion. Her whole concept of love and marriage
for herself centered about Peter Bye.
And now Peter was gone—and his departure had opened up this sea, this
bottomless pit of torment. This, this was life. “This is being grown
up,” she told herself through endless midnight watches.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII
TEN months later Tom Mason leaned back against the red plush of the car
seat and jingled some coins in his pocket.
“Tell you what, Bye, we really are cleaning up. I hadn’t expected
anything like this run of engagements. Now suppose you beat it along to
Mrs. Lea’s and find out what special arrangements she wants made for the
musicians to-night and I’ll go on to Mrs. Lawlor and see about
to-morrow.”
Peter stared moodily at the flying landscape. “I wish you’d come
yourself, Mason. I hate to talk to these white people. Their damned
patronizing airs make me sick.”
“What do you care about their patronizin’? All I’m interested in is
gettin’ what I can out of them. When I’ve made my pile, if I can’t spend
it here the way I please, Annie and me can pick up and go to South
America or France. I hear they treat colored people all right there.”
“‘Treat colored people all right,’” Peter mimicked. “What business has
any one ‘treating’ us, anyway? The world’s ours as much as it is theirs.
And I don’t want to leave America. It’s mine, my people helped make it.
These very orchards we’re passing now used to be the famous Bye
orchards. My grandfather and great-grandfather helped to cultivate
them.”
“Is that so? Honest?” Tom showed a sudden respectful interest. “How’d
they come to lose them?”
“Lose them? They never owned them. The black Byes were slaves of the
white Byes.”
“Oh, slaves! Oh, you mean they worked in the fields? Well, I guess
that’s different. Come on, here we are.”
Peter flung himself out of the car after Tom and followed him up a
tree-lined street. The suburban town stretched calm, peaceful and
superior about them. Clearly this was the home of the rich and
well-born. It is true that a few ordinary mortals lived here, but mainly
to do the bidding of the wealthy. A group of young white girls, passing
the two men, glanced at them a little curiously.
“Entertainers for the Lea affair,” one of them said, making no effort to
keep from being overheard.
Peter stopped short. “That’s what I hate,” he said fiercely. “Labeled
because we’re black.”
“Ain’t you got a grouch, though!” Tom spoke almost admiringly. He told
his sister afterwards: “Bye’s got this here—now—temper’ment. Never can
tell how it’s goin’ to take him. Seems different since he started
keeping company with Maggie, don’t you think so?”
Annie admitted she did.
At present Tom patted Peter on the shoulder, and starting him up the
driveway which led to Mrs. Lea’s large low white house, went on himself
to Mrs. Lawlor.
Mrs. Lea received Peter in a small morning-room. She was pretty, a
genuine blonde, with small delicate features and beautiful fluffy hair.
But as Peter did not like fair types, his mind simply registered
“washed-out,” and took no further stock of her looks. What he did notice
was that she was dressed in a lacey, too transparent floating robe, too
low in the neck, and too short in the skirt.
“Something she would wear only before some one for whom she cared very
much, or some one whom she didn’t think worth considering,” he told
himself, lowering.
Mrs. Lea, leading him into the ballroom beyond, barely glanced at him.
“See, the musicians are to sit behind those palms and the piano will be
completely banked with flowers. I’m expecting the decorators every
moment. Your men will have to get here very early so as to get behind
all this without being seen. I want the effect of music instead of
perfume pouring out of the flowers. Do you get the idea—er—what did you
say your name was?”
“Yes, I understand,” said Peter shortly. “My name is Bye.”
“I meant your first name—Bye—why, that’s the name of a family in Bryn
Mawr, who used to own half of the land about here. There’re a Dr.
Meriwether Bye and his grandfather, Dr. Meriwether Bye, living in the
old Bye house now. Where do you come from?”
“I was born in Philadelphia like my father and grandfather and his
father before him.”
She stated the obvious conclusion: “Probably your parents belonged to
the Bryn Mawr Byes.”
“So my father told me,” replied Peter, affecting a composure equal to
her own. “His name was Meriwether Bye.”
She did not like that. She decided she did not like him either—eyeing
his straight, fine figure and meeting his unyielding look. These niggers
with their uppish ways! Besides this one looked, looked—indefinably he
reminded her of young Meriwether Bye. She spoke to him:
“I don’t want you to leave to-night before I get a chance to point you
out to young Dr. Bye. He’ll be so interested.” She looked at Peter
again. Yes, he was intelligent enough to get the full force of what she
wanted to say. “It’s so in keeping with things that the grandson of the
man who was slave to his grandfather should be his entertainer
to-night.”
Peter felt his skin tightening. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I’m
a medical student, not an entertainer. I came here for Mr. Mason, who is
very busy. You may be sure I’ll give him your instructions. Good-day,
Mrs. Lea.”
He rushed out of the house, down to the station where, without waiting
for Tom, he boarded the train. Not far from the West Philadelphia depot
he pushed the bell of a certain house, flung open the unlocked door and
rushed up a flight of stairs.
In a small room to his left he found the person he was seeking, a short,
almost black young fellow who lifted a dejected and then an amazed
countenance toward him.
“Am I seeing things? Where’d you blow in from, Pete? Thought you’d
chucked us all, the old school and all the rest of it.”
“I haven’t, I’ve been a fool, a damned fool, but I’m back to my senses.
I’m going back to my classes and I tell you, Ed Morgan, I’ll clean up.
See here, you’ve got to do me a favor.”
“Name it.”
“You know Mason, Tom Mason on Fifteenth Street? I’ve been playing for
him. But I can’t stick it any longer. Tom’s all right, but I can’t stand
his customers. Besides, I’ve got to get back to work. I’m quitting this
minute—see. But Tom’s got a big dance on, near Bryn Mawr to-night at a
Mrs.—Mrs. Lea,” he gulped. “Good pay and all that. You can play as well
as I can, Ed. Easy stuff, you can read it. You got to do it.”
“Do it! Man, lead me to that job. I’m broke, see, stony broke, busted.”
He turned his pockets inside out. “I was just wondering what I could
pawn. And I need instruments—Oh, Lord!”
Peter gave him some money. “Take this, you can pay me any time. Only
rush down to Tom’s and tell him I can’t come. I’m dead—see?—drowned,
fallen in the Schuylkill. And see here, old fellow, afterwards we’ll
have a talk. I want everything, everything, mind you, that you can
remember, every note, every bit of paper that bears on the work of these
last ten months. And I’ll show them—” he seemed to forget Morgan—“with
their damned talk of entertainers.” Down the stairs he ran, still
talking.
“Mad, quite mad,” said little Morgan, staring. “Glad he’s coming back to
work, though. Now, where’d I put that cap?”
Still at white heat, Peter walked the few short blocks to his boarding
house. Once inside his room he shut himself in and paced the floor.
“The grandson—that’s me—of the man who was his grandfather’s slave
should be his—that’s Meriwether Bye, young Dr. Meriwether Bye—should be
his entertainer, his hired entertainer.
“My grandfather didn’t have a chance, but here I am half a century after
and I’m still a slave, an entertainer. My grandfather. Let’s see, which
one of the Byes was that?”
He went to the closet, pushed some books and papers aside and hauled
down the old Bye Bible. The leaves, streaked and brown, stuck together.
With clumsy, unaccustomed fingers he turned them, until at last between
the Old Testament and the Apocrypha he found what he was looking for:
“Record of Births and Deaths.”
The old, stiff, faded writing with the long German _s_, the work of
hands long since still, smote him with a sense of worthlessness. These
people, according to their lights, must have considered themselves
“people of importance,” else why this careful record of dates?
His lean brown finger traced the lines. “Joshua Bye, born about
1780”—heavens, that must have been his great-great-grandfather. No,
maybe he was just a “great,” for the black Byes, he remembered hearing
his father Meriwether say, lived long and married late.
“Isaiah Bye, born 1830—a child of freedom.” How proud they had been of
that! Yes, that was his grandfather, he remembered now. And he had made
a great deal of that freedom. Meriwether had often dwelt with pride on
Isaiah’s learning, his school, his property, his “half-interest,”
Meriwether had said grandiloquently, in a bookshop. Peter could hear his
father talking now.
“A child of freedom”—Peter was that but what had he made of it? He
wondered what Isaiah in turn had written on the occasion of Meriwether’s
birth. His finger ran down the page, and found it, stopped.
There it was—“Meriwether,” the inscription read, “by _his_ fruits shall
ye know—_me_.”
At first Peter thought it was a mistake. Then gradually it dawned on
him—his fine old grandfather, proud of his achievements, seeing his son
as a monument to himself, seeing each Bye son doubtless as a monument to
each Bye father. Poor Isaiah, perhaps happy Isaiah, for having died
before he realized how worthless, how anything but monumental _his_ son
had really been, except as a failure. And now he, Peter, was following
in that son’s footsteps.
He remembered an old daguerreotype of his grandfather that he had seen
at his great-uncle Peter’s. The face, perfectly black, looked out from
its faded red-plush frame with that immobile look of dignity which only
black people can attain. “I have made the most of myself,” the proud old
face seemed to say. “My father was a slave, but I am a teacher, a leader
of men. My son shall be a great healer and my son’s son——”
Peter put the open Bible carefully on the table and took out a
cigarette. But he held it a long time unlighted.
So far as he could remember he had never had any desire to rise, “to be
somebody,” as Isaiah, he rightly guessed, would have phrased it. He saw
himself after his mother’s death, a small placid boy, perfectly willing
to stay out of school. Until he met Joanna. There was his term of
service in the butcher-shop and himself again perfectly willing to be
the butcher’s assistant. Until Joanna’s questioning had made him declare
for surgery. Once in college his whole impulse had been to get away from
it all, not because he hadn’t liked the work; he adored it, was
fascinated by it. But the obstacles, prejudice, his very real dislike
for white people, his poverty, all or any of these had seemed to him
sufficient cause for dropping his studies and becoming a musician. Not
an artist, but an entertainer, a player in what might be termed “a
strolling orchestra,” picking up jobs, receiving tips, going down in the
servants’ dining room for meals. And when Joanna had objected, he
thought she was “funny,” “bossy.”
And as soon as he had broken with her, he had given up striving
altogether. He had been nothing without Joanna. He wondered humbly if
she had seen something in him which he had not recognized in himself.
How different they had been! After all, Joanna, though she had not had
to contend with poverty, had had as hard a fight as he. “She’d have been
on the stage long ago if she’d been white,” he murmured. “And see how
she takes it!”
Well, he would show her and Isaiah, yes, and Mrs. Lea, too, that there
was something to him. But chiefly Joanna. Some day he’d go to her and
say, “Joanna, what I am, you made me.”
His landlady called up to him:
“Telephone for you, Mr. Bye.”
He went downstairs, took down the receiver.
“Hello, this is Mr. Bye, yes, this is Peter. Who’s this speaking,
please?...
“Oh—oh, yes, of course. Why—why, Maggie!”
He had forgotten all about her!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII
IT had been increasingly easy for him to forget her. When he had first
broken with Joanna, when he had written her that virtuous letter,
Maggie’s rooms, Maggie’s arms were a haven. She was always ready to
listen, always sympathetic. She met his advances half way; if he asked
for a kiss he got it at once. There was none of Joanna’s half-real,
half-coquettish withdrawal. No one could accuse Maggie of a lack of
modesty. Peter would have been the first to fight such an accuser, but
he found himself half-wishing that she were not quite so easy to
approach.
Somehow life grew less stimulating. Presently they were settling down
into the cosy, prosy existence of the long married couple. In the
afternoons Peter came in—he was usually playing with Tom at night—they
exchanged a word of greeting. Maggie gave him a dutiful kiss; there
would be a word or two about the weather, his playing engagements, then
silence. Presently Peter would say: “Mind if I look over the paper a
moment, Maggie? I got up late this morning.”
And Maggie’s bright answer: “Oh, of course not, I’ve got my accounts to
run over.”
Somehow all the easy, “understanding” conversation had vanished. Joanna,
Maggie had soon learned, was not a welcome topic. And Peter no longer
went to his classes, so there was no possible theme there. Peter to his
disgust found himself drawing unwilling contrasts between these seances
and similar moments spent with Joanna. Had there ever been any silences?
If there were they were filled with all sorts of tingling thoughts and
meanings. There was the night when Joanna leaned against him in
Morningside Park. They had said nothing. But the very air about them was
pulsing. How long ago all that seemed! Had it ever been true? Why had he
never felt like that when Maggie, as she frequently did, rested her head
on his shoulder?
He would shake himself angrily out of his reverie. “Silly ass,” his lips
formed.
Maggie seeing his lips move would ask him interestedly: “What’s the
matter, Peter?”
“Nothing at all,” he’d tell her contritely. What should be the matter
with his dear Maggie so near? Sometimes he put an arm around her
shoulder. “Look here, I’ve got an hour yet. Like to go out?”
That never failed to please her. She loved to be seen with him. She had
a very charming, flattering air of deference, of dependence when she was
out. It was singularly pleasing and yet puzzling to Peter. Joanna now
was just as likely to cross the street as not, without waiting for a
guiding hand, a protecting arm. If she had once visited a locality she
knew quite as much about getting away from it as her escort. But Maggie
was helpless, dependent. Strange when they were all growing up together
he would have said she was quite as independent in her way as Joanna,
and she was decidedly capable in her hair-dressing work. Madame
Harkness’ business had increased considerably in Philadelphia and
Baltimore.
Peter had often mused over this.
He had known for some time that he did not love Maggie. But he could not
tell whether or not she loved him. Certainly she had appeared to at
first, and certainly even now she clung to him. Her very submissiveness
would seem to indicate some depth of feeling. He remembered Maggie as
being anything but yielding in their earlier days, and she had never
apparently changed one iota in her resentment toward her husband. She
was making a remarkably good living from her connection with Madame
Harkness, had bought the house in New York and was contributing to her
mother. She could not be marrying him to be taken care of.
Of course he knew nothing of her _flair_, her passion for being
connected with “real” people—for “class” as he would have called it. And
if he had known this, it would have explained nothing to him, for he
never thought of himself in this sense. His most frequent source of
worry consisted in wondering if Maggie realized how lukewarm his feeling
was for her. Apparently she never suspected it.
Maggie may not have let Peter realize it, but she was completely aware
that he did not love her. She understood, had always understood, that
Joanna was the one woman in the world for him. Having loved Joanna once
there was no possibility of his caring about any one else. She had
recognized in Peter’s turning to her a manifestation of the state of
mind which had led her at the time of her marriage to turn to Henderson
Neal.
Her acceptance of Peter had been almost spontaneous, yet it was governed
subconsciously by two or three motives. First of all, while she thought
it extremely probable that Joanna liked, even loved Peter, she did not
believe that Joanna would ever consider marriage with him as important
as her art. Therefore she might just as well take him. Then she enjoyed
the artistic fitness of showing Joanna that a girl whom the latter did
not consider worthy to marry her brother was deemed worthy to marry her
lover. And last and most important, Maggie saw through Peter a second
means of entrance into the society of “real” people. She had glimpsed
this once through the possibility of marriage with Philip. Instead
Henderson Neal had closed this entrance to her, she had once believed,
forever. She must not fail to take advantage of this new avenue.
Already she was beginning to reap its value. Miss Alice Talbert, it is
true, became colder than ever when Maggie’s engagement to Peter was
known. She told Arabelle Morton that she considered “Peter done for,
ruined, if he married that gambler’s wife. Cousin Joanna did well to get
rid of him.” But Arabelle herself had laughed, had said she wanted to
meet the girl who had captured “that good-looking Bye boy.” She had come
to see Maggie, had invited her to the Morton house. Her good-natured
shallowness, her frank determination not to be a “high-brow” and her
complete social assurance captivated Maggie. Arabelle was of as
unimpeachable standing as Miss Talbert, though her choice of friends was
not so exclusive. Maggie was “taken up” by the young women of Arabelle’s
set and henceforth her lines were comparatively easy. Still she met with
an occasional snub from the older women. Mrs. Viny, who turned out to be
the terrible old lady who had asked her about Mr. Neal in Atlantic City,
refused grimly to recognize her and gave it as her opinion that “Peter’s
doings would make Isaiah Bye turn over in his grave—yet. You mark my
word.”
Her hearers got a vision of the dust and nothingness which, for many
years, had been Isaiah Bye, slowly shifting its position in the narrow
quarters of his tomb.
Maggie had her own plans. She did not mean to have Peter following
forever in Tom Mason’s train. But after they had married she would bring
about a change. She was sure she could coax him. It would never do to
let Joanna think, she would tell him, that he could not achieve
distinction without _her_. And when Peter Bye became Dr. Bye, the famous
surgeon, Philadelphia would find that Mrs. Peter Bye had a long memory.
Only Peter, who at first had agreed to marry in June, now some months
later seemed in no haste to marry at all—that was the rub.
When she telephoned him on the day on which he had had his interview
with Mrs. Lea, she made up her mind to hasten the marriage.
He came to see her the next afternoon full of his scheme of returning to
his classes. Maggie noticed a difference.
“You look as though you’d inherited a fortune or found a million
dollars.”
“I have. My senses have come back to me. What do you think, Maggie? I’ve
chucked all this foolishness with Tom Mason. My, I bet he’s cursing mad.
I’m getting down to brass tacks; went back to my classes this morning.”
Surprise and something else altered her face.
“What’s the matter, you don’t like it?”
“Yes—of course—only, but Peter, can’t you see how hard all this is for
me?”
He got up, fiddled with the things on the mantel, turned about and faced
her, the knuckles straining a little in the hand with which he grasped
the back of a chair.
“Just what do you mean, Maggie? What’s hard?”
She told him then that his going back to school naturally meant a
postponement of their marriage. “Oh, Peter, can’t you see I want to be
safe like other women, with a home and protection? I met Henderson,
Henderson Neal, uptown Saturday—I didn’t mean to tell you—but he glared
at me. He made me shiver, I wished you were with me. I’m afraid of him,
Peter, I’ll never be safe till we’re married.”
His level voice answered her: “I can see to your safety, Maggie; if Neal
really frightens you, I can have him bound over to keep the peace. But
we can’t marry now, dear. I want to be able to take care of my—my wife.
And if I go back to my classes, I’ll need all the money I can lay hands
on. I’ve lost so much time that I can’t afford to do any outside work.
I’ll just live on what I’ve made with Mason. But that will leave me
pretty poor. You see, I’ve got to have five hundred dollars cold for my
instruments.”
She looked at him speechless, her gray eyes going black in the pale gold
of her face, her hands submissively folded.
He took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “If you don’t
mind, Maggie, I think we’d better discuss this later. Suppose we think
it over for two or three days, and then we’ll settle upon something.”
His voice, infinitely gentle, infinitely sorry for her, trailed off into
silence.
She said listlessly: “I think I’ll go to New York for a while. I think
I’d like to be with my mother.”
He ignored the pathos of this. “That would be fine. How soon do you want
to go?”
“To-morrow,” she told him. “You needn’t come to the station with me,
Peter, you’d hardly have time to make it. I won’t take much, so I can
manage.”
He felt himself a cad for agreeing with her. “It’s too bad I have to go
now, but I’ve got to read over some notes with Morgan. So this is
good-by for the present. Aren’t you going to kiss me, Maggie?”
She held up her face for her dutiful kiss.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIV
JOANNA stood on the steps of the New York Public Library, gazing at the
paralysis of traffic which at the bidding of an autocratic policeman had
fallen on the massed ranks of vehicles. Subconsciously she thought of a
German story, “Germelshausen,” in which all the life of the village
suddenly ceased, leaving the people statues of flesh and blood. Fifth
Avenue coming to life again, she fell quite consciously to wondering
where she could get a good dinner. All about her flashed the lights of
restaurants, but she was not sure of their reception of colored patrons
and being in a slightly irritable mood, she wanted consciously to spare
herself any contact which would be more annoying. She needed more than
the cup of chocolate and sandwich which she might easily have had at one
of the two drug stores near by. And of course she could get something
expensive, but satisfying, in the station which towered not far away.
But of late the restaurant management in that particular station had
shown a tendency to place its colored patrons in remote and isolated
corners.
Joanna had spent the morning shopping. In one of the more exclusive
stores on Forty-fourth Street she had asked to look at coats. The
saleswoman had been very pleasant, but she had seated Joanna well in the
rear of the store quite away from the lighted front windows and the
mirrors which were so adjusted as to give all possible views of the
figure.
Joanna had not noticed this at first but when she did she proposed going
toward the front of the store “where there was more light.”
“Why not come this way?” proposed the still affable saleswoman, pointing
to the windows in the rear wall which also let in daylight. Yet when
Joanna without answering had walked on to the front, she offered no
further comment.
The incident was a slight one, possessing possibly no significance, but
Joanna had walked out of the store hot and raging, the more so because
she was not completely sure whether the slight was intentional or not.
It had not helped her frame of mind to purchase a less becoming coat in
a department store where she was known and liked by one of the
salesgirls. Gradually she worked herself into a state of contemptuous
indifference, but she meant to be careful in selecting a place in which
to get her dinner. She had to work too hard these days to bring on her
good spirits, she was not going to have them dissipated by galling if
petty discriminations.
Well, there was no help for it, she would have to go over to the
Pennsylvania station at Thirty-third Street. She was sure of pleasant
treatment there. After this solid afternoon of work in the gloomy
library, the walk would do her good.
A hand fell on her shoulder, and she turned to find beside her Vera
Manning, one of the members of her old dancing-class. This surprised
her, for of late hardly any one of Joanna’s group had seen Vera. The
report in Harlem was that she was passing for white and had no desire to
be recognized by her colored acquaintances.
“It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, Joanna,” Vera began confidently. “I
was sitting in the library waiting for a ‘date’—doesn’t that sound
awful?—and then all of a sudden I thought, ‘pshaw, I don’t want to be
bothered!’ Just then you hove on the scene. Where you going?”
“Some place to get a good dinner,” Joanna told her, wondering why she
looked different from the Vera Manning she used to know. Her clothes
showed her usual careful, even modish taste, but her face looked
hard—“reckless”—Joanna suddenly decided; that was the word. She went on
quickly: “See here, you work somewhere down in this neighborhood, don’t
you? Where do you suppose I can get something to eat, without walking a
thousand miles for it?”
Vera frowned thoughtfully. “You see, I’m ‘passing’ just now—I know
you’ve heard of it—and so I go into any of these places around here, but
I never see any colored people. Of course you could try the Automat.”
But Joanna didn’t want that.
“Their food’s all right when you feel like eating it, but I want a
regular dinner—waiter, service, and all the rest of it. Pick out a good
place for me and I’ll take you to dinner, too. Nothing could be fairer
than that.”
Vera agreed smilingly that it couldn’t. “There’s a place over on
Forty-second Street. I remember now I have seen some colored people in
there and they get decent treatment. We could go there—” she checked
herself a moment. “Oh, no, I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“Look here, Janna, I might as well be frank, we were all of us children
together—doesn’t it seem ages ago? You know I wouldn’t ever try to fool
you. But the truth of it is I go to that particular restaurant often
with the other girls in my office and of course the restaurant people
think I’m—I’m white. See? I don’t know just what they’d think if they
saw me with you—some one who definitely showed color—or what might come
of it. You don’t think I’m a pig, Joanna?”
“I think I’d be a pig if I did think so,” Joanna told her heartily.
“Come on and take dinner with me over at the Pennsy station. It’ll be
nice to have a talk.”
The two girls moved down Fortieth Street in the direction of Seventh
Avenue.
“You’d understand it better if you worked among them—white people you
know,” Vera told her seriously. “Of course I suppose there must be some
decent ones, not the high-brow philanthropists and all that crowd, but
people who have too much breeding, too much innate—well, niceness, I
guess you’d call it, to make light of folks just because they’re
different. But that crowd in my office, they never think of being
courteous to a colored person. If they want the janitor it’s ‘Where’s
that darky?’ or ‘I saw a coon in the subway this morning wearing a red
tie, made me think of Jim here,’ always something like that. Of course
they don’t say it to the man’s face. There’d be a fight if they did.”
“I don’t see how you stand it,” Joanna puzzled. “What put it in your
head to work with white people, anyhow?”
“Oh, to get away from everybody and everything I’d ever known.” They
were at the table in the dining-room now and Vera was making criss-cross
marks with her fork on the white cloth, frowning absorbedly.
“You know, Joanna, I wasn’t like you—not one of us girls was. I was more
like Sylvia, I wanted a good time, but most of all I wanted, I expected
to marry. You remember Harley Alexander?”
Joanna did remember him, indeed, a tall personable youth about her own
color, a companion of Harry Portor, Brian Spencer, and to a less degree
of her own brother Alec. But what she especially remembered was that he
had been the constant shadow of Vera Manning.
“Of course I remember him, Vera. He’s a dentist now, isn’t he? Didn’t he
graduate the same year as Harry Portor?”
“Yes, that’s the fellow. Joanna, we really loved each other, and we
planned even before he went to college to get married as soon as he came
out. But as soon as my mother—you know how color-struck she is—realized
we were in earnest, up she went in the air. None of her children should
marry a dark man. It only meant unhappiness. If Harley and I should have
children they’d be brown and would have to be humiliated like all other
colored children.”
She fell to drawing more designs.
“We had a terrible time. I was completely alone in my fight. Father
always follows mother’s lead. Brother Tom refused to commit himself.
Alice is just like mother—she really liked, I’m sure of it, John
Hamilton, but because he was dark, she let him go for Howard Morris,
whom I can’t stand. For a long time I managed to keep it from Harley but
the Christmas of his last year in college, mother told him she didn’t
favor his attentions to me, and told him why.”
“Goodness,” Joanna breathed, “that must have been awful.”
“Awful! It was unspeakable. And nothing I could say to Harley could
destroy the effect of what she said. She must have put it up to him as
to whether he thought he could compensate a wife for the estrangement of
her family. You know how Harley was. We had always been a remarkably
united family up to that time. He said: ‘If your mother objected to my
being poor I could tell her that I could change that, but when it comes
to my color, I can’t do anything with that and, by God, I wouldn’t if I
could.’
“So that,” Vera ended wryly, “was the end of my young romance.”
Bit by bit she made Joanna see the picture of her life since her break
with her lover. Before then she had worked in her father’s office, but
now she was secretary to one of the heads of a big advertising agency.
As she was an unusually swift stenographer and had a level head, she was
getting along famously.
“Of course they think I’m white. There are a lot of young men in the
office and I flirt with them outrageously. At first I did it only to
annoy mother, she hated it so. You know, the funny thing is she doesn’t
like white people any better than I do—she just didn’t want me to marry
a dark man because, she says, in this country a white skin is such an
asset.”
“Do you enjoy yourself going about?”
“Yes and no. When I began I did immensely. You can’t imagine—I
couldn’t—the almost unlimited opportunities that those people have for
work, for pleasure, for anything. As a white girl I’ve seen sights and
places, yes, and eaten food that I never even knew about when I used to
go out with Harley. And then, too, Jan, you can’t imagine the
blessedness of no longer being uncertain whether you can enter such and
such a hotel, or of getting a decent berth if you’re going traveling or
of little things like that, the sudden removal of thousands of
pin-pricks, not only that, of inconveniences.”
“You must be very happy,” Joanna said wistfully.
“No, I’m not. They aren’t, either. That’s the funny part. Oh, of course
I suppose nobody is actually happy, but I do think that colored people,
when they’re let alone long enough to have a good time, know how to
enjoy themselves better than any other people in the world. It’s a
gift.”
“I should think you’d drop it all, Vera.”
“I would if it weren’t for the sense of freedom. It’s wonderful to be
able to do as you like. Sometimes I think I will drop it, then I think:
‘Oh, pshaw, what difference does it make?’ Without Harley I’m bound to
be unhappy, anyway, even if I do go back to my own. Since I can’t have
happiness I might just as well take up my abode where I can have the
most fun and comfort even though it’s making me—well, no saint, I can
tell you.” She laughed recklessly. “I wish I were like you, Joanna.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know—here ever since you were little you’ve had Peter Bye
right at your beck and call—you must have loved him, Jan, he was so
everlastingly good-looking, and charming, too, we all thought. I
remember he took me to a movie one Christmas. Then you fussed with him
or something—some of your high-brow stuff I suppose—and you send him off
without winking an eyelash. How do you stand it?”
Joanna was cautious. “Of course I have my work. I do miss Peter
though—sometimes.”
“Sometimes! Girl, you aren’t human. Well, being heartless isn’t bad!
What do you want to do, go to the ‘Dance of The Nations’ down at the
District Line Theater?”
But Joanna wanted a chance to think, so on the pretext of having to
return to the Library, she left Vera. She realized the tragedy of her
friend’s case, the awful emptiness that had come into her life. Hadn’t
her own life been affected in the same way?
A bus stopped before her and she mounted it, her thoughts weaving
mechanically. She did not blame Vera at all for the change in her mode
of living. In those first few months after Peter had left her she had
wondered often how she could go on with life. For a long while she had
existed simply from day to day, paying an exaggerated attention to small
happenings, making engagements with people whom she had scarcely noticed
before, doing anything to get away from the weariness of her thoughts.
Many a night she had spent meditating on some _coup_, some reckless
expenditure of energy and interest no matter how silly, how scandalous,
so long as it took her out of herself.
She had even tried flirting, a field hitherto unthought of. As it was
she had been too kind to Harry Portor; of late she had consciously
avoided him because she knew only too well what he meant to ask of her
the next time they were alone. She hated to hurt him but that seemed
inevitable, for her heart held not the slightest fraction of love for
him.
Oh, Peter! Peter!
As she rode up Fifth Avenue under the starry reaches of the sky, beneath
the tender budding of April trees, her desperate longing quickened to a
sudden resolve. She would write to Maggie—Maggie, who could not possibly
love Peter. And even if she did, she could not love him as
she—Joanna—loved him. Why, there had been Philip once, and then
Henderson Neal!—Whereas Peter had been the only love of her own life.
She would write to Maggie, very clearly, very frankly and she would beg
her to let him go. It all seemed simple enough. And then she and Peter
would be happy. She would make him love her again, worship her. And
“Peter,” she would tell him, “never another unkind word, I’ll be a new
Joanna, darling.”
Her father’s house, its windows darkened, loomed up before her. Straight
up to her own room she sped, not stopping to enter Sylvia’s apartments,
although the sound of laughing voices penetrated to her.
Alone at the little flat-topped desk, she took out pen and paper and
began the letter—“Dear Maggie”—But that was what she had done years
ago,—written to Maggie to give up Philip. That was in the unconscious
selfishness of youth. Now was she to write her again to give up Peter?
Her courage oozed away, left her helpless. She looked at the pen, put it
carefully away on the rack, slipped the sheet of paper back in the
pigeonhole. She might go down to Philadelphia to visit Alice Talbert.
Yes, she would do that very soon. And then maybe she would see Maggie
Ellersley—on the street, or even go and call on her. Undoubtedly it was
better to discuss such personal matters face to face.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXV
WHILE Joanna was sitting at her desk, Maggie Ellersley some fifty blocks
away brooded over plans of her own. She had hoped, vainly as it turned
out, that her absence from Philadelphia would quicken Peter’s need of
her. His very real regard for her hospitality and kindness had long
since been evident. She knew that he considered the little apartment on
South Fifteenth Street his nearest approach to a home in Philadelphia,
and she had hoped that the loneliness caused by her departure would
induce him to urge her to come back. But Peter’s letters had not been in
the least melancholy. Once a week he had written to her regularly during
the four weeks of her stay in New York, but though he had been kind and
pleasant, not once had he expressed a desire to see her, or even a
passing curiosity as to the date of her return.
When she had first come back to New York, she had had a feeling of shame
and despondency as she thought of her effort in Philadelphia to induce
Peter to take a definite stand about their wedding. But her stay here
with her mother had dissipated all that feeling. The prosy,
uninteresting life which Mrs. Ellersley and Mis’ Sparrow led, the troop
of commonplace, albeit kindly and dependable roomers made her turn again
to Peter for a way out. More than ever she was in the same trap in which
she had found herself years ago when as a little girl she walked home
with her mother from the dinners which she had eaten in some employer’s
house. Now, it was true, her surroundings were no longer dirty and she
was no longer poor—she and her mother had all the money they needed and
almost all that they wanted. Of lowly stock, Maggie had never cared in
the least for the possession of riches. But the old loneliness, the old
sense of unworthiness, of being nobody was strong upon her.
In earlier days she had frequented the Marshalls’ house; plenty of other
girls had frequented it, too. It was to be presumed that the Marshalls
from time to time had returned such visits. But somehow she had never
contrived to be on really intimate terms with those others. They were
all polite, more than polite, even cordial to Maggie, and yet she knew
that while moving with that group, she was not of it.
The difficulty had been, had always been, that she had no background.
Other girls’ fathers and mothers were “somebodies.” Alice and Vera
Manning’s father was a remarkably successful business man, old Joel
Marshall was as famous in his way, she guessed, as Delmonico. Even Peter
Bye—as poor almost, she correctly imagined, as she herself in the old
days—boasted a long, a _bona fide_ ancestry. And, besides, he was a man.
From as far back as she could remember she had had one passion, one
desire unique in its singleness. And that had been to “be” somebody. And
long ago she had realized that the only way out for her was marriage
with a man of distinction. The distinction might consist in a career, in
family, in business,—it made no difference to her. At first she thought
she could achieve her desire through Philip—and she had loved him, too.
She dwelt on this a moment. How wonderful such a marriage would have
been! Loving him as she did she would have let her desire for mere
respectability sink into second place, discounting the fact that she
would have gained it anyhow by such a union. But Joanna had interfered,
and then she had married Henderson Neal, a gambler, a _gambler_ who had
plunged her further back than ever into the obscurity from which she was
beginning to emerge.
“What a fool I was to consider Joanna’s letter. Philip might, just
possibly, have come to like me better—to love me.” She reminded herself
then, a little spasm of pain twitching across her face, that he had
never since her marriage, not even since her divorce, made any attempt
to get in touch with her. “And he could have a thousand times,” she
whispered to herself.
Now here was Peter. She rose from the couch on which she had been lying
and walked restlessly, aimlessly around the room. The light from a
cluster of electric bulbs on the wall struck at and brought out little
flashes of radiance from the silver butterflies which chased each other
up and down across the heavy folds of her black silk kimono. Her hair,
parted in the middle and brushed to a smooth luster, hung in two thick
short braids one over each shoulder. She caught her lip in her teeth,
whitening that mysterious redness which was the only note of color in
the golden oval of her face.
A mirror caught her attention and she stopped before it.
“Oh, Peter, Peter,” she whispered unseeingly to the image in the glass,
“dear Peter, don’t you see you’re my only chance? You’ve got to help me.
It isn’t as though Joanna really wanted you, or as though you’d ever go
back to her.”
Just as Joanna had resolved a few hours ago to cast herself on Maggie’s
mercy, so Maggie determined to open up her heart to Peter and beg him to
remove her forever from the distastefulness of this life.
Her mother tapped on the door and came in, followed by Mis’ Sparrow. The
two of them, great “jiners,” had just returned from one of their
innumerable lodge meetings.
“It was a great sight, Maggie. You’d ought to have been there. Can’t see
why you mope so about the house, anyway. Don’t believe you’ve been
anywhere since you’ve been here this trip—’cept to Madam Harkness’.”
Maggie murmured that she didn’t care to go out, she had come home to
rest.
“Well, stay in the house all you want, chile. Long’s I got Cousin Jinny
Sparrow to go around with me I ain’t carin’. Reckon we’ve done our share
of stayin’ in the house in our time, ain’t we, Jinny?”
Mis’ Sparrow thus addressed admitted she had: “An’ I don’t propose to do
it no more. Come on, Sallie, I c’n see Maggie’s got somethin’ on her
mind.”
Maggie protested, but only faintly. She loved and was deeply attached to
the two thin wrinkled ladies, but they and she had nothing in common.
They lived a separate life from hers entirely, a life which included
much attention to churches, strawberry festivals, lodge meetings, bits
of gossip, funerals, visits to ladies similarly faded and wizened, and a
sort of shrewd indiscriminate charity. Maggie used to envy them their
utter and complete absorption in these matters.
“I’m not the one who wants to be to herself, it’s you who want to get
off and talk over your secrets.” She shook a playful finger. Long after
they had gone, curled up on her couch, she sat watching, as she used to
watch in Philadelphia, the gas-heater cast its ruddy glow on the high
white ceiling.
The morning brought her a momentary shock of pleasure. It was the day
for Peter’s letter. He had written: “I am coming to see you next week.”
Her spirits leaped at that. But afterwards he explained; one of his
classmates had warned him to get his instruments as quickly as possible,
there was going to be a great demand for steel, so he was coming to New
York to see about the things he had ordered. “I’m in deadly earnest this
time, Maggie, and though I don’t like my professors any better than I
did before, I’m making the most of my return. There’s only one thing
that would keep me from finishing and that would be war. It seems
foolish for a colored man to fight for America, but I believe I’d like
to do it. Only I want to pick up a commission somewhere. Not a chance
for a colored fellow at Plattsburg, but some of the boys are whispering
of a training camp for Negro officers at Des Moines. This is still _sub
rosa_, so don’t mention it.”
Her hopes rose, fell, rose again as she scanned the letter.
“He must make some definite plans about me, if he’s thinking of war.”
The next Thursday saw him striding along Fifty-third Street in the
direction of Maggie’s house. His nervous glance at his watch justified
his fear of being late. That was because he had stopped at his Aunt
Susan’s little apartment to talk over his plans. She was just the same
as ever—stout, sane, energetic, ready to be fond of Peter. Before the
afternoon was over she was worshiping him inwardly. For her nephew,
suddenly conscious of his debt to her and realizing as he climbed the
stairs to her rooms that here was his only real home, had taken her at
the door into his arms with a burst of genuinely filial affection. She
had, as she put it, “scared up” something for him to eat, and the two
sitting at the little dinner table had entered into a silent
appreciation of kinship such as lonely Miss Susan had wanted ever since
her sister’s death. Peter had told her of his break with Joanna. “I
can’t talk much about that, Aunt Susan—maybe some other time——”
Her kind hand on his steadied him.
“For a while I kept on playing ducks and drakes with my life—that was
really why Joanna chucked me, you know—but all of a sudden I came to my
senses, and now I’ve gone back to studying and I’ll be all right yet,
Aunt Sue. You and I’ll have a nice little house somewhere. You’ll see.”
He checked himself: “Unless this war intervenes. Of course I’d have to
go into that. America makes me sick, you know, like I used to make you I
guess, but darn it all, she is my country. My folks helped make her what
she is even if they were slaves.”
Aunt Susan beamed on him. “Your great-grandfather fought in the
Revolution, Peter, and two of your uncles, my brothers, were in the
Civil War. If you enlist you’ll only be following their example.”
He looked at his watch. “I must go, dear. Do you know, it’s as though I
had just discovered you to-day.” Her hands were in his and he caught
them up and kissed them, bending his shapely curly head a little. “If I
have to go away suddenly, I’ll send you a few of my things, the Bye
Bible and all that, you know. But you’ll see me again.”
He caught up his hat and ran out.
“That Joanna is a fool and a minx,” said the old lady ungratefully. “I
hope he didn’t suffer much. It’s a wonder some other girl hasn’t got him
now.”
Peter had not told her about Maggie. “Not worth while,” he muttered to
himself, taking the subway steps in four leaps. “Maggie’s got to let me
off. I’ll ask her, I’ll explain. God, what a cad I feel!” He tugged at
his collar. “But she’ll be better off. I know she will. Now I wonder why
she married that Neal fellow instead of waiting to give Philip a
chance?”
He mused over this sitting in the subway train with his watch in his
hand. “I shouldn’t have spent so much time with Aunt Susan.” He had
arranged with Morgan and some other students for a comprehensive review
at his house that same night. It would never do for him not to show up
on time, they were all busy fellows.
Everything depended on Maggie.
He rushed out of the subway and came swinging along the street looking
for her number. As he turned abruptly toward the house he caromed into a
tall, heavily set man standing idly and yet purposefully at the bottom
of the steps. Peter rang the bell, conscious as he did so that the man
had received his apologies only with an odd glare. One last glance over
his shoulder just before he went in showed the stranger staring fixedly
at the front door as though to see who opened it.
Mis’ Sparrow let him in. Maggie was in the “settin’ room” at the head of
the stairs, she told him as she herself went out. He ran up to arrive at
a landing so dark that he knocked over a chair. The door was only
slightly open, so he knocked.
“Come in,” Maggie called listlessly. “Oh, is that you, Peter? I’d been
expecting you all day and then finally gave you up. Was that you
stumbling on the landing? I’m always at mother to keep the light going
there. I don’t know why she won’t. Here, I’ll turn it on now.”
But Peter, unwilling to lose more time, begged her not to bother. “Come
over here and sit down, Maggie. We’ve lots to talk about.”
He hadn’t kissed her, she noticed, observing his nervousness.
“What’s the matter, Peter? You seem so excited.”
“Do I? Well, I’ve had a full day—early breakfast, the trip, and walking
around downtown—and then visiting Aunt Susan and breaking my neck to get
here. That’s moving pretty swift, isn’t it?”
To control her own lack of composure she asked him to let her see his
instruments. “My, aren’t they shiny and pretty and sharp? And each one
with your name on it? That’s splendid. No chance of having them stolen.”
“No,” he replied absently, taking the little leather case from her hand
and placing it still open on the table. “No, not a chance. Listen,
Maggie, I’ve—I’ve got to go pretty soon, must be back in Philadelphia by
nine o’clock, I—I want to talk to you frankly for a moment or two, about
ourselves.”
She sat expectantly. “Maggie, I don’t want you to think me a cad—I’m not
that really—but even if you do think me one I’ve come to ask you to
release me. We—our affair has been a mistake, I had no business dragging
you into it. I am sure you don’t love me—why should you love anyone
who’s trifled with his life as I have? And I—I don’t—you understand,
Maggie, I have and always shall have the highest regard for you. There’s
nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for you, for a girl of your fine
qualities——”
“Except marry her,” she thought.
“But I find—it was unspeakable of me to make the mistake—I find I don’t
love you, Maggie, as a man should love his—his wife. And that’s a bad
way to start a marriage, don’t you think?” He thought he read scorn in
her watching eyes, and hastened to fortify his excuse. “You know, I’ve
been in love once, I know what it ought to be.”
She said in a level, absolutely emotionless voice, “You want to go back
to Joanna.”
That name steadied him. “No, not that, Maggie dear. She wouldn’t take me
back; I’m not worthy of Joanna; she was quite right. I shall probably
never see her again until we are both quite old. Not a chance for me
there,” he ended sadly.
Curiously enough, if he had himself dared to think of returning to
Joanna, if he had told Maggie so, she would have released him instantly.
It was not part of her plan to interfere with love. But if Peter, who
would never love any one but Joanna, were to be left drifting for some
other woman to pick up ten, five years from now, perhaps even
immediately after the war! He would never be able to do the service for
any woman in this world that he could do for her.
He misunderstood her silence. “It isn’t as though you cared such a lot
about me, Maggie. My leaving wouldn’t really mean anything to you.”
“It would mean my death,” she told him. And indeed it did seem to her
that if he left her alone with nothing in her life but Madame Harkness
and those two poor old ladies—her mother and Mis’ Sparrow—she would die
of it. She would die of sheer disappointment at being balked this second
time of her constant desire.
Peter stared at her in sick astonishment. “You mean it?” he whispered.
It had never crossed his mind that she cared for him like this.
Subconsciously he thought, “Suppose this had been Joanna.”
Before Maggie could speak again, someone knocked on the door; one of
Mrs. Ellersley’s roomers stuck in a tousled head.
“’Scuse me, Miss Maggie, I heard you-all talkin’ in here, en they ain’t
no one else in the house. Jest wanted to tell you I’m runnin’ down to
the corner a minute en as I mislaid my key I’m goin’ t’ leave the latch
up, if you-all don’t mind.”
Maggie stared blankly. “Oh, certainly Mr. Simpson, certainly.”
They heard Mr. Simpson shuffling down the stairs and knew by the sound
of the slamming door that he had gone out.
What they did not know was that a moment later a tall, heavily built
man, who had been lounging sidewise against the wall of a neighboring
house, came forward swiftly and ran up the steps. He tried the door
gently and finding to his surprise that it yielded, walked in and closed
it softly behind him. For two weeks, unnoticed, fingering a door-key in
his pocket, he had kept watch on that house and its inmates, until he
had become acquainted with the hours of the coming and going of each. He
knew Maggie was at home in the afternoons; his purpose was to wait for a
time when all of them should be out but her. One by one he had watched
them emerge, Mrs. Ellersley and Mis’ Sparrow finally within fifteen
minutes of each other.
“Those old birds,” he murmured to himself, “they’re just as likely as
not to join up somewheres and go to one of their protracted meetin’s.”
Gradually the house had emptied itself with the exception of Maggie and
this tousel-headed Mr. Simpson who usually left later than this. He had
not seen Bye come out, but thought it likely the visitor had left in the
quarter of an hour he had spent in the saloon around the corner where he
had swallowed an unaccustomed dram to fortify his intention.
In the hall he stood blinking a moment in the darkness, then as the
sound of voices penetrated to him from above he withdrew into the
obscurity of the narrow oblong parlor. Evidently the fellow had not gone
yet. There was plenty of time, he could wait.
Upstairs Maggie was pouring out to Peter her great obsession.
“I know I am amazing you, Peter, but I can’t endure this life, this
utter separation from people who mean something. Take me away from it.
I’ll be eternally grateful to you.”
“But, good God, Maggie, what can I do? I’m only a penniless student with
my way to make. We’d be poor for years. And, anyway, where do you get
the idea that my name carries with it any social asset?”
She murmured something about his long line of ancestors; years ago in
her presence his Aunt Susan had spoken to Mrs. Marshall about it.
“You know how your name gave you the entrance into the best families in
Philadelphia.”
He stared at her. Of all the crazy complexes, this was the craziest. It
was indecent, this situation, agony for both of them. He tried to be
firm, faltered, was lost.
“You know I think all this is idiotic, Maggie. If you think
marriage with me would help you because I know the names of my
great-grandparents—why, it’s absurd, ridiculous. I had a lot of
foreparents—we all did—but they were nobodies most of them, only
slaves.”
“That’s what they all were.”
“All who?”
“All the early settlers, weren’t they, the white ones, too, indentured
servants, outcasts, outlaws, men driven for one reason or other from
their own countries? But certain ones of them have always stood out,
attained prominence.”
Overcome by this interpretation of history, he could make no suitable
answer. He moved over to the little table, picked up his hat.
“Obviously all this will have to be gone over again. If you like I’ll
send my Aunt Susan to see you, she knows all sorts of people both here
and in Philadelphia. If you ask her no doubt she’ll manage to make it
very pleasant for you. I really must go, Maggie. And of course—that is,
if you insist on it—remember that I shall always be at your service.”
He held her hand a moment, passed out and ran sideways, after the manner
of men, down the wide staircase.
The front door closed after him.
Maggie walked back through the room. This was her great interview. Peter
had been here; to prove it there was his box of instruments on the
table—she ran out in the hall again, perhaps she could catch him, for he
could hardly have turned the corner.
An iron hand shot out of the darkness of the landing, caught her wrist
in an agonizing vise. Then some one dragged her back into the room and
she looked up into the raging somber eyes of Henderson Neal. She had not
been frightened at first, but the sight of that face with its snarling
lips and its bloodshot eyes unnerved her. In an instinctive gesture of
fear she threw up her free hand which held the little case. It slipped
from her grasp and some of the knives fell on the floor.
Still holding her he stooped and picked one up.
Her self-control ebbed back to her. Somehow she had never been seriously
afraid of Neal. Her scorn had been too great for that. One does not fear
what one scorns.
She said to him evenly, “Henderson, let me go.”
But he pulled her closer to him. “I’ll never let you go again. Either
you’ll come with me, or I’ll——”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll kill you.” But the thought obviously had just come to him.
“Pooh!” she made a face at him. A trace of her old-time slanginess
returned: “What’s all the excitement?”
His heavy countenance lowered, darkened. “He actually looks black,” she
thought to herself.
“You know you can’t fool me, Maggie girl. You had me believing you
divorced me because I gambled, when what you wanted was to get back to
that high-brow feller of yours!”
“What high-brow fellow?” She knew he was confusing Peter with Philip,
but she must engage him in talk until Simpson could return.
“As though you didn’t know. The one who just left here. Are you gonna
give him up, Maggie?”
“I am not.” Her cool decision drove him beside himself.
“You think I’m foolin’, don’t you? I’ll show you. I know you’re alone in
the house. I’ll give you just three seconds to tell me you’ll come back
to me.”
“I’ll let you kill me first.”
She saw him look at the knife, Peter’s knife, which he was still holding
in his hand. A look of determination settled in his eyes.
Even then she was not frightened. People—the people one knows never do
that sort of thing.
With a flash-like movement he leaned closer and brought the keen,
glittering piece of steel down toward her. When she saw he was in
earnest she threw her arm forward close over her breast. But the knife
bit down, down into the soft flesh. Bewildered she saw the red blood
spurting, gushing over her arm, her dress, a soft green dress which she
had donned for Peter. Now it was turning in spots to a vivid red.
He let go of the arm, looking at her with fascinated gaze. Slowly she
sank, turned her eyes toward him, saw him drop the knife and rush
headlong out of the room.
So she was going to die, killed in a brawl with her divorced husband.
The fires of her life were to go out, extinguished under the waters of
commonness and degradation. After all, what did it matter? Her thoughts
took an odd turn as she felt herself slipping, slipping into the
blackness of what must be death.
“He must have loved me even more than I loved Philip. What a pity that I
have to die without letting Philip know how dearly I loved him.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVI
A FEW moments later Mr. Simpson came rushing up the front steps. He
tried the door gingerly and found to his relief that it was not locked.
That meant Mrs. Ellersley had not yet returned to chide him for his
carelessness. Miss Maggie now was different; she would never carry on,
no matter what a fellow did. It would be just as well for him to stop at
the room at the head of the stairs and let her know he had returned.
The landing was still dark, but long experience had taught him to
navigate the troublesome chair. Without mishap he reached the door of
the sitting-room. Everything was absolutely silent, still he would just
put his head inside to make sure.
He was concluding there was nobody there when his eye caught something
protruding from the other side of the table which stood in the center of
the room. A chair, too, had been overturned, and scattered about on the
floor were several little bright shiny things. He picked one up, looked
at the legend on the handle, “Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye.”
The name of the maker evidently. Queer doings here. Half afraid, wholly
curious, he ventured in further, especially intrigued by that light
brown object which protruded from beyond the table and which
looked—though this, he knew, was imagination—like a hand. He bent over
it, touched it, followed it with eyes and fingers to an arm dripping and
scarlet with blood and beyond the arm a face golden and immobile. Beyond
the head lay still another of those small strange objects. Only this was
neither bright nor shining; it was red, a vivid red and the handle which
he touched with a shaking finger was sticky.
He sprang backwards, his face ghostly under its brown skin, his eyes
goggling. This was—Death. “Oh, God! Help! Murder! Police! Miss Maggie!”
Down the stairs he tore, his hands twisted and fumbled at the locks. The
door opened to disclose Joanna standing on the door-step about to ring
the bell.
She looked past him into the dim hall. “Do you know if Miss Ellersley is
in?”
His eyes widened in horror. “For Christ’s sake, lady, keep out. Don’t go
in there, she’s dead, pore girl, murdered.”
“Nonsense! Maggie murdered! What do you mean?”
Stammering and shrinking he told her of his ghastly find. “Don’t go in
there, lady, don’t know nothin’ about it. _I_ don’t mean to.”
She caught his arm. “Here, come on, you must take me to it—to her; she
can’t be left like this. Be a man.” But for all her brave words her
knees were shaking.
Unwillingly he led her to the quiet form in the green and red-soaked
dress. Joanna dropping beside it put her hand on Maggie’s wrist. A faint
pulse fluttered.
“She’s alive. I must get this dress off her arm and shoulder. Got a
knife?”
“Ain’t they a million of ’em layin’ around you, lady?”
Shudderingly she turned from the red one. “How queer! How awful! Hand me
that clean one over there.” Her eye fell, as she took it from him, on
the handle—“Chilled steel, England, Peter Bye”—rested there stricken.
“Ought to be able to trace the murderer awful quick, don’t you think,
ma’am? This man Bye would know who he sold them knives to.”
Without answering she cut away the cloth, used her
handkerchief—worthless for this—to stanch the blood. “Find me a towel,
there must be one somewhere.” If Peter had done this she must save
Maggie in order to save him. And if this were Peter’s work—he did not
love Maggie.
Ashamed of her thought she bent closer. “There’s a bad cut below the
shoulder but the cut in the arm is worse. Have you a large soft
handkerchief? Quick, I must stop the bleeding. I can’t manage with this
stiff towel.” He was off and back in a jiffy with three handkerchiefs,
immense and happily clean, the testimony of Mrs. Ellersley’s
supervision.
She twisted one of them. “Now a pencil?” Somewhere out of the past
floated a memory of Miss Shanley’s direction how to make a tourniquet,
one of the things Joanna had meant to forget after she grew up.
Subconscious memories guided her fingers. “Now where’s a bedroom? Help
me to carry her there.”
She had already dispatched him to a telephone to get, if possible, Harry
Portor, whose office was in the San Juan district. Puzzled by Mr.
Simpson’s incoherence, the doctor promised to come at once and soon the
chug-chug of his little Ford rose above the sounds of the noisy street.
Joanna ran down to let him in, meeting his astonishment as the two
climbed the stairs with breathless information. Harry praised her
tourniquet. “Good work, Joanna. Fortunately it’s a clean cut, no
jaggedness. I suppose he was trying to get at her heart. Where’s the
knife it was done with?” He busied himself with fresh bandages and
restoratives.
“I don’t know,” she told him faintly. Why had she not thought of this?
Now she must keep him out of the sitting-room. Her confusion escaped
him, but Mr. Simpson hovering in the background had heard the question
and slipping out returned with the knife.
“Here it is, doc. I was just tellin’ the lady, ought sure to be able to
catch that ’sassin; man who sold him the knife’s done got his name
stamped on the handle.”
Harry took it. “H’m, a surgeon’s knife.” He turned it over. “Where’s the
name? Peter—why look here, Joanna, did you see this?”
“There’s a whole case in the other room, sir.”
“Yes, go get it and bring it to me. What do you suppose this means,
Joanna?”
She whispered, “Wait till that man goes.”
“All right, I’ll send him off.” He sent the willing Simpson on his
return with the case, to the druggist.
“Now, Joanna?”
She had her story ready. “I came to see Maggie about—about Peter, Harry.
One of the girls who works at Madame Harkness, saw Sylvia last night and
told her Maggie was in town.” This much was true. “So I came to see her.
Just before I came, it seems, Peter came. She told me about it. I
couldn’t stand it. And I caught up one of his little knives—he’d left
his case here—and cut her. I must have been crazy.”
“You must still be crazy to think I’d believe that. You’re not a good
liar, Joanna. Now tell me the truth, dear. Were you here when he stabbed
her?”
She stuck to her story. “He didn’t stab her.”
The quiet figure on the bed moved ever so slightly, opened its lips,
moaned faintly. “What’s the matter with my arm?”
Harry leaned over her. “A bad cut, Maggie! How’d you come to get it?”
Her attention wandered. “Who’s that standing over there?” Joanna
retreated further into the shadows. “Who are you? Oh, it hurts me here,
too.” She laid her hand on her breast.
“I’m the doctor, Harry Portor, you remember me, don’t you?”
He could see her make an effort. “You’re sure Henderson’s not here? It
would make him angry to see you. Peter was here a little while ago—we’re
going to be married, you know. That’s why Henderson cut me.” Her voice
grew stronger. “I thought he had killed me.”
Harry cast Joanna a fleeting look. “Wait down in my car,” his lips
formed. She slipped down the stairs out of the house.
She sat in the car a long time while the street darkened. She saw Mr.
Simpson return and hard on his footsteps Mrs. Ellersley. He must have
told the news just inside the hall, for Joanna heard a shriek cut short
by the closing door. Presently Harry came running down the steps,
peering short-sightedly through his thick glasses at her crouching
figure.
He said briefly, “A bad business, but she’s not in any danger unless
there’s a breakdown from nervous shock.”
The words were meaningless to her, reviewing Maggie’s statement: “Peter
was here, we’re going to be married, you know.”
When they got to her house Joanna politely asked him to come in.
“No, but wait a moment. I want to tell you something.” He fiddled with
the brake a moment. “Joanna, you’ve been avoiding me lately because you
know I love you and you were afraid I’d ask you to marry me. Don’t avoid
me any more. I’ve got my answer. When a girl loves a man as you do Peter
Bye, so much so that she’ll accuse herself for his sake—oh, it makes no
difference that he was innocent—well, nobody else need think there’s a
chance for him. But I’m your friend, Joanna, believe that.”
She thanked him sadly. “Good-night, Harry.”
Sylvia sent Roger up to her room to tell her that Miss Vera—Vera—“I
forget her other name, Aunt Janna,” had called up. She would call again
the next day.
Joanna thanked him indifferently. “All right, darling, tell Mamma I’ll
look out for her.”
She thought to herself as he pattered down stairs: “Peter and Maggie,
here in New York ... I won’t think of them, I’m not going through all
that sick agony again. I believe I’ll go South to-morrow.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVII
THE day’s excitement made Joanna sleep soundly, and in the morning she
awoke strongly refreshed and rested. No gesture that she could make to
Fate would ever restore Peter. She had been willing to make the greatest
sacrifice of all—to surrender her pride—and even as she was about to do
this, absolute evidence was given that her sacrifice was useless. The
whole affair was over, finished, dead; henceforth Peter was to be in her
life what other men were to other girls when they spoke of them as “old
beaux.” That was the way for her to speak of Peter now. She practiced it
with stiff lips: “Peter Bye, oh, yes, he used to be an old beau of
mine.”
Her romance would hereafter lie behind her. From this day on she would
dedicate herself to one interest, which should be the fixed purpose of
her life; now that she thought of it she would give up the idea of
dancing, too. Her former lover and her former ambition alike were
unattainable; they had merely been means of enriching her experience.
Now she would get down to the business of living; no more sighs, no more
backward glances. And the first thing she would do would be to offer her
services as a director of music to a colored school in the South. Many a
principal before whose school she had sung would extend her a cordial
welcome. Even though the school year was almost near its close she might
get a chance to map out arrangements for the work of the following year.
Her preference would be one of the less-known, poorly endowed schools
where there would be lots of work.
She lay there and watched the April sun mounting slowly, slowly up the
walls of her room. From outside rose the myriad sounds of Harlem; a
huckster calling unintelligibly, some school children on their way to P.
S. 89, shrilling their Iliad of school affairs; from far away came the
echo of a spiritual whistled meditatively, almost reverently. Over
herself crept a sense of peace, of finality, the sort of let-downness
that comes to one voluntarily relaxing from difficult strain. She had
not known such a feeling since when as girls she and Sylvia had been
sent on a vacation trip into the country. The life was lonely for the
two citified youngsters and they sought solace in taking long
walks,—“voyages of discovery” Joanna called them. Once after a tramp of
two or three hours they had come about four o’clock to a little lumpy
field in whose center stood a cluster of trees. Breathless and weary
Joanna had scrambled over the wooden bars and had lain down on the short
stiff stubble in the refreshing shade. All about stretched only sky,
earth, and in the distance rows of trees rimming their pasture. There
was nothing, no one in the world but herself and Sylvia. She felt her
senses lulled by the quiet security into a deep sense of peace.
Now this came back to her and other thoughts, too: their return from the
country to New York—her mother and Peter were at the station. But she
would not think of that. She must get up, write letters, explain to her
father and mother, make arrangements.
Essie, a fixture in the service of the Marshalls, brought her a
breakfast of rolls and chocolate. Joanna devoured it.
“You don’t look bright, Essie.”
“No’m. Got lots to worry about. Them white folks where my girl Myrtle
goes to school act so mean all the time, always discouragin’ her.
‘What’s the good of you comin’ to high school’? they ses. ‘What’re you
gonna do when you finish?’”
How quickly once she would have rejoined with one of her sweeping
platitudes which to her were not platitudes because they represented a
fresh and virile belief: “Don’t let her become discouraged, Essie; just
have her keep on. Success always comes if you work hard enough for it.”
But to-day, remembering her plans for the stage and her courtship with
Peter—both rendered frustrate through this hopeless obstacle of
color—she could only murmur: “Yes, yes, I know. White people are hard to
get along with. Better times coming, I hope, Essie.”
After a bath she slipped into a flame-colored dressing gown and sat down
to her letters. Sylvia coming up noiselessly put her head in the door.
“Not dressed yet, Joanna? She’ll be here soon. It’s 10:30.”
Joanna lifted a startled face. “Who’ll be here?”
“Miss Sharples, Miss Vera Sharples. I sent Roger up to tell you.”
“Yes, he did, but you know how he forgets names. He said ‘Miss Vera’ and
I thought he meant Vera Manning. Wonder what Miss Sharples wants to see
me about?”
“One of her pet charities probably. Get a move on. Here, wear your green
dress.” Joanna, whose thoughts had flown to Peter via Miss Susan Graves
via Miss Sharples, took the green dress absent-mindedly, then dropped it
with a shudder. Maggie had worn such a dress yesterday, a soft dull
green, horribly, fantastically adorned with bright and sticky red.
“No, not that.”
“You _are_ nervous, Joanna. What do you feel like wearing?”
Together they chose a crêpe silk dress of straight and simple lines. The
bodice as flaming as the dressing gown was long, like a Russian blouse.
Its end terminated by hem-stitching into a black shallow-pleated skirt.
A narrow ropelike cord confined the waist.
“Stunning,” Sylvia said, spinning her around. She had designed the
dress. “If Brian just wouldn’t treat me right we’d run away to Paris,
Jan, and set up a dressmaking establishment. You should be my manikin.”
A restatement of Roger’s imperfect message revealed the fact that Miss
Sharples would call at eleven. Sylvia let her in and ran back to tell
her sister who was outlining her plans to her father and mother in the
dining room.
“There’s your ‘grand white folks’ Janna. My Heavens, where _do_ you
suppose she finds her clothes? She hasn’t a bit of color in her face and
there she’s wearing a stone gray suit and a gray hat with a brown, a
_brown_ scarf around it. Her hair is as straight as a poker and she
wears it bobbed.” Sylvia shuddered.
“Oh well, she’s a good sort,” Joanna remonstrated, smiling, “and she
doesn’t say ‘you people.’”
Strange how realization falls short of anticipation. Joanna was about to
scale the path which led to her highest ambition, but she had no sense
of premonition. Instead, she looked at Vera Sharples sitting
insignificantly and drably in an armchair, her graying bobbed hair
straggling a bit over her mannish tweed coat, her feet encased in solid
tan boots. Only her eyes, looking straightforwardly and appraisingly
from under the unbecoming hat, kept her from being dubbed a “freak.”
Joanna, who had not seen her for some years, thought amusedly as she
came with swift rhythmic steps down the long room: “It would be fun to
turn Sylvia loose on her and make her dress worthy of her eyes.”
The two were standing looking at each other now, Miss Vera still
appraisingly. Then the older woman held out her hand. Joanna had
neglected to do this, having, like most colored people of her class,
carefully schooled herself in the matter of repression where white
people were concerned. However, she took the extended hand and gave it a
hearty pressure.
“Yes,” said Miss Sharples as though checking up the colored girl’s
points by a pattern which she carried in her head, “yes, you are the
one. I was sure I hadn’t confused you with anyone else. I haven’t seen
you for several years, you know, not since that Christmas when you
danced for the Day Nursery with Helena Arnold. Do you remember?”
Joanna, slightly nonplussed, nodded yes. As though she could forget that
Christmas when she had become engaged to Peter!
Miss Sharples, still pursuing some train of thought known only to
herself, meandered on. “I said, ‘I know there must be somebody who could
do it,’ and then I thought of you, but I didn’t know your name. So I
called up Helena and she told me. Do you still dance as divinely as you
did that night, my dear?”
“Better,” Joanna told her confidently, “although it doesn’t get me
anywhere. Would you mind telling me what all this is about?”
Her visitor settled herself comfortably in a chair, crossed one leg over
the other, and took out a cigarette. “Mind if I smoke?” Joanna watched
her wide-eyed, picturing her father’s surprise if he should happen to
look in on them.
“It’s a long story. You may or may not know that I am one of the
directors of the District Line Theater. Lately we’ve been putting on a
production called ‘The Dance of the Nations’—dances of the nations it
really should be called. Well, we have one woman to represent France,
another England, etc.; we aren’t featuring Germany or any of her allies.
When it came to America we had to have two or three dances represented,
one for the white element, one for the black and one for the red. Of
course that made the woman representing America practically a star.
Well, she’s all right as a white American, or as a red one, but when it
comes to the colored American, she simply lays down on her job.” Miss
Sharples’ eloquence drowned her sense of grammar.
“You know,” she went on vigorously, “art to my eye is art, and there’s
no sense in letting a foolish prejudice interfere with it. This girl
won’t darken her face and hasn’t a notion, so far as dancing like
colored people is concerned, beyond the cake-walk. Well, I told my Board
I didn’t believe that was either adequate or accurate. I’d seen Helena
Arnold dance, you know, and I’d seen you, and I figured that your way
was the right way,” she concluded sensibly, “because you were colored.
Miss Ashby’s contract expires this week and I persuaded the Board to let
me try to find someone else. What do you think about it?” She paused,
still regarding Joanna shrewdly.
“You mean,” said Joel Marshall’s daughter, “that you are offering me a
chance to dance at the District Line Theater?” She thought: “I know this
isn’t real.”
“Well, yes, if you suit. It would be an experiment. To be frank, my
dear, some of the directors are doubtful about the success of a colored
girl on the stage, but if you dance as well as you did five or six years
ago, I should say there would be no difficulty. Suppose you come with me
now, there’s a rehearsal at the theater this afternoon. Are you free?”
Was she free? She dashed off to get her wraps and stumbled into Sylvia
on the second floor. “Isn’t she long-winded? What’d she come to see you
about?”
Joanna took her by both shoulders and shook her. “About my dancing at
the District Line Theater in the ‘Dance of the Nations.’ Oh, Sylvia, if
I’m dreaming, don’t let me wake up.”
Down in Greenwich Village on the south side of Washington Square, Joanna
found Miss Susan’s “Board.” They were occupying, scattered around, a
large dilapidated room of magnificent proportions and they were talking
of art, of dancing with an enthusiasm and accuracy, an amazing precision
such as Joanna had never heard equaled.
“Valvinov is good, more than good, excellent in her conception of the
dance and the way she carries it out, but her ankles are too clumsy, it
makes me sick to look at her legs.” A short, stocky young man seated at
the piano delivered this dictum. He was very pale, with thick black hair
which he wore plastered back from a low square forehead. His hair was
long, Joanna noticed, and ran in unbroken strands from his forehead to
the top of his coat collar. He spoke absolutely unaccented English, and
his clothes were sharply American, but he was unlike any American the
girl had even seen before.
Miss Sharples introduced her briskly. “This is Miss Marshall,” she said
to the room in general, “the dancer I was telling you of.” Joanna
inclined her head slightly, but the men all rose and bowed gravely, and
the two other women in the room—a Miss Rosen and a Miss Phelps as they
turned out to be—bowed also noncommittally but without hostility.
Evidently the place had frequently been used for rehearsals, for there
was a narrow platform running across the far end of the room. Here Miss
Sharples stationed Joanna. “Just to give them an idea of what you can
do, my dear. There isn’t much space, but I don’t think that will bother
you.”
“No,” said Joanna confidently, “the thing is the music.” She glanced at
the pale young man who had spoken about the Russian dancer’s thick
ankles. “Can you play by ear?”
“I think I could manage it,” he told her seriously. They were all
serious, as unconscious of self and as tremendously interested as though
they were assisting at an affair of national moment. Joanna felt the
atmosphere enveloping, quickening her. She stepped down from the
platform.
“Well, now listen. I’m supposed to have a ring of children around me. I
sing and they answer. At first I’ll have to sing both parts, but
afterwards you can play their answers. See, this is the way it goes.”
She sat down at the piano, and ran through the melody of “Barn! Barn!”
singing it in her beautiful, full voice.
“That’s it, that’s got the lilt,” a tall, dark man said to Miss Rosen.
Joanna yielded the piano to the pale young man—Francis—everyone called
him. He ran over her sketch, filling in with deep, rich chords, while
she flew back to the little platform.
“Now then, you’ve got it. Ready!
“Sissy in the barn! Join in the weddin’!”
Her voice rang out, her slender flaming body turned and twinkled, her
lovely graceful limbs flashed and darted and pirouetted. She was
everywhere at once, acting the part of leader, of individual children,
of the whole, singing, stamping circle.
The Board applauded. “Oh, but that’s great, that’s genius,” cried Miss
Phelps.
“If I could only have some real children,” Joanna suggested, “colored
children. Are there any around here?”
“About five thousand down there in Minetta Lane,” Francis told her
gravely. “Want me to get you some?”
“Oh, if you only would.” He and Miss Rosen disappeared and were back in
fifteen minutes with ten colored children, of every type and shade,
black and brown and yellow, some with stiff pigtails and others with
bobbed curling locks. Most of them knew the game already, all of them
took to Joanna and threw themselves with radiant, eager good nature into
the spirit of what she was trying to display.
The tall dark man, Mr. Hale, came over to her. “You’re all right, Miss
Marshall, if you’re willing, we’ll try you. America’s got some foolish
prejudices, but we’ll try her with a sensation, and you’ll be all of
that. I’ll leave you with Miss Sharples and Miss Rosen, our secretary,
to make final arrangements, while Francis and I go out to see what we
can do about taking on these kids. I suppose you’ll need them.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE District Line Theater was jammed every night now. People came from
all over New York and all its suburbs to see the new dancer—Joanna
Marshall. Her success and fame were instant. The newspapers featured
her, the “colyumists” wrote her up, her face appeared with other members
of the cast, but never alone, on the billboards outside the little
ramshackle theater. Special writers came to see her, took snapshots of
herself and of Sylvia which they never published, and speculated on the
amount of white blood which she had in her veins.
Mr. Hale had taken her on in May. The piece ran all summer with Joanna
as the great attraction, although not the acknowledged star. Miss Ashby,
the girl who danced as an Indian and as an American, was that. From the
first she had resented the colored girl’s success and had held jealously
to all her rights and privileges. But the public, surprisingly loyal to
this new and original plaything, never varied in the expression of its
enjoyment of Joanna. Now that her changed contract was again about to
expire, Miss Ashby announced her inability to remain with the play.
“I’ve really been violating my principles in staying this long,” she
told Mr. Hale with meaning.
Even Miss Sharples was overcome at this news. Joanna could be cast
without any difficulty as an Indian, a wig and grease paint would
accomplish that. But Joanna could hardly pose as a white American. She
was too dark.
Sylvia had a suggestion here. “America” was supposed to come on last as
a regal, symbolic figure, but Miss Ashby had paid more attention to the
dancing than to the symbolism.
“Why not,” asked Sylvia, “have a mask made for Joanna? She could then be
made as typically American as anyone could wish and no one need know the
difference.”
That was the basis on which Mr. Hale worked. On the first night on which
the new “America” was introduced, an inveterate theater-goer in the
first row of the orchestra insisted on encoring her. Joanna returned,
bowed and bowed, was encored.
Somehow the habitué guessed the truth. “Pull off your mask, America,” he
shouted. The house took it up. “Let’s see your face, America!”
Mr. Hale, Miss Sharples, Francis, Miss Rosen and Miss Phelps held a
hurried consultation behind the scenes. “There’s nothing to be done,”
Hale said, “quick, off with your mask, Miss Marshall.” And breathless,
somewhat with the air of a man bracing himself, he led Joanna again on
the stage.
There was a moment’s silence, a moment’s tenseness. Then Joanna smiled
and spoke. “I hardly need to tell you that there is no one in the
audience more American than I am. My great-grandfather fought in the
Revolution, my uncle fought in the Civil War and my brother is ‘over
there’ now.”
Perhaps it would not have succeeded anywhere else but in New York, and
perhaps not even there but in Greenwich Village, but the tightly packed
audience took up the applause again and Joanna was a star.
The very next week Mr. Hale moved the production to Broadway.
Joanna found herself becoming a sensation. Through Miss Sharples, who
was besieged with requests to meet her protégée, she came in contact
with groups of writers, dramatists, “thinkers,” that vast, friendly,
changing kaleidoscope of New York dwellers who take their mental life
seriously. Occasionally, too, she was invited to grace an “occasion,” an
afternoon at the house of a rich society woman. Once at one of these
affairs she met Vera Manning, who grinned at her impishly and announced
to the room that she and Miss Marshall were old friends. They had been
schoolmates.
“When I was a child,” said Vera impudently, “my mother sent me to public
school for almost a year. She said she wanted me to be a real democrat.”
She threw Joanna a droll look. When the afternoon was over, Vera asked
her to go on to tea with her.
Joanna was perfect: “That’s very kind of you, Miss Manning, and I don’t
know but what I will. There are several things I’d like to interest you
in. When I think of the illimitable power for good which you white
people possess——”
Once outside the door the two girls went off into gusts of
inextinguishable laughter.
Joanna did not like these affairs and soon she adopted the habit of
refusing such invitations. She preferred Miss Sharples’ artist
friends—because among them she sensed attempts, more or less tentative
perhaps, toward reality. True, paradoxically enough it was a reality
based on art, rather than on living. But the girl was beginning to feel
the need of something with which to fill her life. Whether her
disastrous love affair, or the frequent discouragements with which she
met, had changed or reshaped her vision she did not know. But life, she
began to realize, was not a matter of sufficient raiment, food, or even
success. There must be something more filling, more insistent, more
permeating—the sort of thing that left no room for boredom or
introspection.
For in spite of her vogue, her unbelievably decided successes, Joanna
frequently tasted the depths of ennui. She saw life as a ghastly
skeleton and herself feverishly trying to cover up its bare bones with
the garish trappings of her art, her lessons, her practice, her
press-clippings.
Miss Sharples put her up for membership in a club whose members were
mostly people that “did” something. And Joanna fell in the habit of
taking her lunch and frequently her dinner, too, at this club, just to
lose herself in the atmosphere which she found there.
Undoubtedly the contact did her good. Joanna, while lacking Peter’s
singularly active dislike for white people, was not on the other hand a
“good mixer.” Following the natural reaction at this time of her racial
group, she had tended to seek all her ideals among colored people and
where these were lacking to create them for herself. As a result of this
attitude, injurious in the long run to both whites and blacks, she was
hardening into a singularly narrow, even though self-reliant egocentric.
She had never met in her family with much opposition to her chosen
career, but then neither with the exception of Joel’s and that of her
teachers had she met with much coöperation.
Now to her astonishment she found herself in a setting where people,
without being considered “different,” “high-brow,” “affected,”—and not
greatly caring if they were—talked, breathed, lived for and submerged
themselves and others, too, in their calling. She met girls not as old
as she, who had already “arrived” in their chosen profession;
incredibly young editors, artists—exponents of new and inexplicable
schools of drawing,—women with causes,—birth-control, single tax,
psychiatry,—teachers of dancing, radical high school teachers.
There were men to be met, too, really eminent men, but Joanna was not
much interested. Following the American idea, she had been too carefully
trained to care for the company of white men. Between them and herself
the barrier was too impassable. Besides, it was women who had the real
difficulties to overcome, disabilities of sex and of tradition.
For a while she was puzzled, a little ashamed when she realized that so
many of these women had outstripped her so early; some of them were
poor, some had responsibilities. There were not many of these last. It
was a long time before the solution occurred to her and when it did the
result was her first real rebellion against the stupidity of prejudice.
These women had not been compelled to endure her long, heartrending
struggle against color. Those who had had means had been able to plunge
immediately into the sea of preparation; they had had their choice of
teachers; as soon as they were equipped they had been able to approach
the guardians of literary and artistic portals. Joanna thought of her
many futile efforts with Bertully and sighed at the pity of it all.
Sometimes she felt like a battle-scarred veteran among all these
successful, happy, chattering people, who, no matter how seriously, how
deeply they took their success, yet never regarded it with the same
degree of wonder, almost of awe with which she regarded hers.
She realized for the first time how completely colored Americans were
mere on-lookers at the possibilities of life. She spent a few happy
months with these people; they made pleasant and stimulating company for
her; she herself suspected that she had made good “copy” for some of
them. They were for the most part unconscious of race, not at all
inclined to patronize, and generous with praise and suggestion. One
woman, it is true, told Joanna that she had always liked colored people.
“My father would insist on having colored servants. He preferred them.”
Joanna had made an impish reply. “My father employs both white and
colored servants. But he prefers the colored ones. However, it doesn’t
make any difference to me.”
Still that had been a rare encounter. Life on the whole smiled on her.
Yet she was not happy. But is anybody so? she wondered. She had
forgotten to sorrow for her break with Peter, her life was too full for
that, even for a new love. Vera Manning’s brother Tom, brought into her
entourage by the flood of publicity and popularity that engulfed her,
asked her to marry him. She liked him; found him charming and
sympathetic, but he was too white and she did not want a marriage which
would keep the difficulties of color more than ever before her eyes.
What she did want, she decided, was to be needed, to be useful, to be
devoting her time, her concentration and her remarkable singlemindedness
to some worthy visible end. After all, she had worked hard and striven
tremendously—to be what? A dancer.
“Is this really what you wanted me to be?” she asked her father
abruptly. They were driving home from the theater, their nightly custom.
“Is this your idea of real greatness?”
And Joel, his voice half glad, half sorry, told her that he, too, had
hoped for something different.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIX
AT first the war presented itself to Peter in a purely personal aspect.
It was a long time before he envisaged the struggle as a great
stupendous whole. Boyishly egotistic, he saw it simply as the next big
moment in the panorama of his life following on his break with Joanna
and his puzzling relationship with Maggie. And always he saw it in
relation to the things which were happening to him like a series of
living pictures against a great impersonal background.
Ignorant of Neal’s attack on Maggie he had returned to Philadelphia,
completed his work and had gone to Des Moines. He sent his books to his
Aunt Susan,—all but one little black testament which bore written on the
fly leaf his father’s and grandfather’s and _his_ father’s names. There
was another name, too, “Judy Bye.” But Peter could not recall this.
“More ancestors,” he said to himself, thinking ruefully of Maggie. He
could not bear to think of their last talk: even the thought of his
forgotten instruments could not induce him to write to her.
In Des Moines he had met Philip. And from that meeting resulted that
first indelible picture. He had rushed forward to Philip, his hand
outstretched.
“Marshall! Say, fellow, this is really great!”
He could hear his voice ringing even now. And then Philip’s contemptuous
rejoinder: “I don’t shake hands with any such damned light of love.”
He thought he must have misunderstood at first. But there was the angry
scorn in Philip’s eyes and there was his hand hanging clenched by his
side.
The contemptuous epithet made him flinch. Of course, Philip’s bitterness
and scorn arose from two sources. Peter had broken off with his sister
and had taken up with the one girl in whom he had ever shown any
interest.
“But hang it all,” Peter said to himself in angry bewilderment. “Why
didn’t he try for Maggie himself, if he wanted her? But no, first he
lets that gambler win her and then he leaves her to me.”
Here again ignorance was the cause. Philip did not know of Maggie’s
divorce until she had become engaged to Peter. Joanna had never told him
and he, considering her first marriage as an answer to his rather
lackadaisical courtship, had not thought it worth while to make
inquiries about her. His own liking for Maggie had taken possession of
him so slowly that he had not realized himself until too late what she
meant to him.
The result of the encounter was to drive Peter back on himself and to
confuse his issues more and more. He did not know which way to turn.
More than ever if Philip loved Maggie, he himself wanted to be freed of
his obligation. Freedom—that was what he wanted—from obligations, from
prejudice, from too lofty idealism. It seemed to him as though the last
two years of his life had been spent in struggling to reconcile ideals.
First his efforts to win Joanna and then his need to get away from
Maggie. He went through the motions of the long days of drill and
preparation, thinking incoherent, unrelated thoughts.
“Poor Maggie, I’ve got her into this. I can’t just chuck her.”
Responsibility began feebly to awaken within him. “But what does she see
in me? Yet she’ll die if I leave her. Joanna, you’ve messed up all our
lives. Oh, damn all women! I hope to God I get killed in France!”
Still in a dream he left Des Moines for Camp Upton and left the camp for
overseas. He was a good sailor and therefore was free to devote himself
to men who were less fortunate than himself. On an afternoon he came on
deck with Harley Alexander. The two had become “buddies” in the camp and
now on the trip over the long days of inaction were awakening one of
those strange intensive friendships between two people, in which each
tries to bare his heart to the utmost before the other. Harley had told
Peter about his disastrous courtship of Vera Manning and Peter had
reluctantly, inevitably returned the confidence.
“Well,” said Harley, “I’ll be doggone. I suppose Joanna did use to queen
it over you, but what’d you go make a door-mat of yourself for? She gave
you what you were biddin’ for. But now as far as this Miss Ellersley’s
concerned—I can’t seem to remember her, Peter—she’s got no claim on you
that I can see. If she’s any sense at all she knows that you came to her
on sheer impulse. If you don’t love her, don’t you marry her. You’ll
regret it all your life if you do. Gee, I’m sick of this boat. Don’t you
s’pose we’re ever really goin’ to get into this man’s war?”
He lurched suddenly and violently against Peter, who dragged him to the
rail where he became horribly and thoroughly seasick. There he remained,
spent and helpless. Peter tried to drag him back to a steamer chair, but
he was too much in a state of collapse to help himself and too heavy for
Peter to drag across the deck. A white officer, a lieutenant whom Peter
had noticed infrequently sitting near the door, was standing looking
gravely on. He came forward.
“Here, let me help you.” Together the two men got Alexander into the
chair. He was the type with whom any physical indisposition goes hard.
Peter noticed he was shivering.
“Wait, I’ll get a rug,” he said, starting toward the door. Alexander
groaned, “Bye, for God’s sake don’t leave me. I’m as weak as a cat.”
“Oh, you’ll be all right,” Peter called back, and left him with the
white lieutenant standing silently by.
Shortly after his return Harley, declaring himself much better, went
below to his room. But first he thanked the lieutenant who bowed with
his pleasantly grave air. Peter, about to sink into the vacant seat,
looked up and caught the intent glance of the white officer who smiled
and nodded and came leisurely toward him.
“May I sit beside you a moment?” he asked pleasantly.
“Yes,” Peter replied shortly. He thought: “I know what you make me think
of. Of myself that first day I put on my uniform. Now why?” It was true
that while there was no facial resemblance, the two men were built
almost exactly alike, tall, with broad shoulders, flat backs and lean
thighs. Peter was at first glance the more comely, his head was more
shapely and his hair so crisply curling gave him a certain persistent
boyishness. The other man, a little older and plainer, had nevertheless
a certain whimsical melancholy about his eyes and mouth which attracted
Peter.
“I heard your friend call you Bye,” he said still pleasantly. Peter
nodded briefly. “That’s my name, too. Bye, Meriwether Bye. I was
wondering where you came from.”
Meriwether Bye! Peter felt his face growing hot as he remembered the
circumstances in which he had last heard that name. “Dr. Meriwether Bye
of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, I suppose.”
Meriwether without surprise acknowledged this. “You know of me then. May
I ask how?”
“I’ve always known of you indirectly,” Peter told him coldly. “My
great-grandfather spent all his life working for yours—for nothing.
There was a black Meriwether Bye, my father, named after him, though I’m
sure,” he added with rude inconsequence, “I can’t imagine why.”
Meriwether looked at him with a sort of gentle understanding. “I’ve
often wondered about those black Byes,” he said musingly. “My
grandfather, Dr. Meriwether Bye—he’s an old, old man now—used to tell me
about them. He was very fond of one of them, Isaiah Bye. Isn’t it
strange that we, the grandsons of those two men, friends way back in
those days, should be meeting here on our way to France to fight for our
country?”
Something, some aching tiger of resentment and dislike, which always
crouched in Peter ready to spring at the approach of a white man, lay
down momentarily appeased.
“Friends! Say, that’s the first time I ever heard a white man speak that
way of the relation between a slave-owner and his slave. You can’t
guess,” he said abruptly, “how I first heard of you.” And he told
Meriwether of his experience with Mrs. Lea, while the doctor watched him
with keen, melancholy eyes.
“I’ll wager you were angry, mad clear through and through. You had a
right to be. Mrs. Lea,” as he pronounced her name his gentle voice grew
a little gentler, Peter thought, “didn’t realize what she was saying.
She’s like many another of us, totally unaware of our shame and your
merits. I hope this war will teach us something.”
He had a nice way with him. “A regular fellow,” Peter thought, listening
to his quiet, unaffected disquisition on many subjects. He had been
literally everywhere, even to Greenland, and had seen all sorts of
people. He had a theory that while not all individuals were equal, all
races averaged the same. Some men were bound to be superior.
“And the differences between the races are a matter of relativity,” he
finished. “I confess my own interest in colored people is very keen.” He
raised a fine hand to disparage Peter’s slight movement. “Yes, I know
you are sick of that and the patronage it implies. But I mean it, Bye,
and when you get back home you must go out to Bryn Mawr and see whether
or not I have tried to express that interest.”
“I should think,” Peter looked at him squarely, “all things considered,
you or your family would have shown some interest in us black Byes. You
are rich men, your family is a powerful one——”
“Was a powerful one,” Meriwether interrupted him. He had flushed a
little. “I suppose you know that my great-grandfather, Aaron Bye, had
ten sons. But only four of them had sons and all of them except my
father died in the Civil War. Isn’t that some compensation? My own
father died when I was very young and I grew up with his father. He was
the one who told me about the black Byes and how he when a boy used to
play about Philadelphia with Isaiah. ‘Proud as Isaiah Bye,’ I’ve heard
him say. Bye,” said Meriwether earnestly, “I tried my best when I became
a man to find if there were any of you left in Philadelphia. It seemed
to me a monstrous thing to have our family and our fortune—for my
grandfather is still a very rich man—reared on the backs of those other
Byes.” He struck the table with a vehement hand. “That whole system was
barbarous.”
“I wish,” Peter told him, “I had known you sooner.” Just to hear this
expression of penitence seemed to ease the long resentment of the years.
“Without those slaves,” Meriwether resumed, “Aaron Bye would never have
got on his feet. His father was just a poor farmer, a Quaker, running
away from England to escape religious persecution. He came over and
received a grant of land. But he could have done nothing without labor,
and free labor at that. He and a friend bought a wretched slave between
them, worked a bit of land, then that old Bye bought out the other man’s
share of the slave; presently he bought a woman. Ah, it’s a rotten
story.” Peter saw melancholy like a veil settle upon his finely drawn
features.
“You really feel it? I didn’t suppose any white man felt like that.
Well, you needn’t mind about me or about any of the black Byes,” he
surprised himself by saying. “After all, it isn’t as though we were
related. It’s just the fortunes of—well, not of war—but of life.”
“No,” Meriwether returned, “we’re not related. Thank God there’s none of
that unutterable mix-up. I don’t think I could have forgiven those
Quaker Byes that. But sometimes it seems to me that just because those
black Byes and thousands of others like them had no claim, that they had
every claim.”
After that day they met daily; Meriwether expounding, explaining,
unconsciously teaching; Peter listening and absorbing. “I’m surprised,”
the young white man said, giving Peter a calculating look, “that you
were content with being an entertainer.”
Peter flushed and explained. It was only a temporary phase in his life.
He had been broken-up, crazy. Haltingly he spoke of Joanna and finally
of Maggie.
Meriwether thought it a bad business. “Stupid of you not to see that the
first girl had your interest at heart. Why, man, by your own account she
had brought you out of the butcher-shop to the University. Well, life
permits these things.” Bit by bit he told Peter of his own love-life. He
had loved Mrs. Lea for years even before her marriage when they were boy
and girl together, but her hard, uncomprehending attitude toward “lesser
peoples” chilled him, really frightened him. He knew he could not live
with a woman like that.
To Peter’s surprise Meriwether was a fatalist. He had strong
premonitions and allowed himself to be guided by them. “From the
outset,” he told Peter, gravely, “I knew that you meant something to me.
That was why I used to watch you so closely. I used to wonder and
speculate about you. Something in you made me think of myself. It was as
though you, all unrelated even racially, represented something which
might have been a part of myself, as though you,” he said dreamily,
“were living actively what I was thinking of passively. I have often
tried to picture my life as a colored man. I think if there had been any
of that selfish admixture of blood between the white and black Byes and
I had heard of it, I’d have gone the United States over but what I’d
have found my relatives, and have claimed them, too, before all the
world.”
One of Meriwether’s strange fantasies was that he would never return
from the war. “I knew it when I came away from America. And listen, Bye,
when I die,” Peter marveled at the sureness of that “when,” “I want you
after you get back home to go to my grandfather and tell him who you are
and how you met me. You are to give him this.” He took a little case
from his pocket in which were the pictures of a man and
woman,—old-fashioned pictures.
“Your father,” Peter exclaimed involuntarily, “you can see he’s a Bye——”
“And my mother,” Meriwether finished. He drew a locket suspended on a
thin gold chain from around his neck. “And take this to Mrs. Lea. She
loves me,” he said very simply. “Here, you might just as well take them
now.” Peter accepted them reluctantly.
He wished he had a picture of Joanna. Death seemed suddenly very near,
very possible. He did not care if he died, but he would like Joanna to
know that he thought of her. But he had nothing to leave for her. Yes,
there was the Testament. He took it from his inside breast-pocket and
showed it to Meriwether. Indeed he looked at it closely for the first
time himself. The two heads so like yet so different bent over the old
faded script. On the top of the page in a beautiful clear hand was
written Aaron Bye, then underneath in crazy drunken letters, Judy Bye.
“I can’t guess who she was,” said Peter.
A little below a familiar name appeared, Joshua Bye, and above it,
evidently written, in the same hand, Ceazer Bye. But through this entry
a firm black line was drawn, drawn with a pen that dug down into the
thin paper. After Joshua’s name came the names Isaiah and then
Meriwether.
“My father,” Peter explained, feeling somehow very near to him. “I guess
I’d better put my name in, too.” He wrote it in his small compact hand.
“I wonder who those two were, Judy and Ceazer,” he mused, smiling a
little at the quaint spelling. “I don’t seem ever to have heard of them;
I thought we started with Joshua.” But Meriwether professed dimly to
remember some mention of Judy.
“I’m sure I’ve heard my grandfather mention her name years ago and
Ceazer’s, too; he was her husband, seems to me. I suppose Aaron Bye gave
them the Testament.”
The little incident threw them into a deeper intimacy. Meriwether
professed himself to be as interested in and as bewildered at the
workings of the color question as Peter himself, though naturally he
lacked his new friend’s bitterness.
“It is amazing into what confusion slavery threw American life,” he
said, launched on one of their interminable discussions. “Here America
was founded for the sake of liberty and the establishment of an asylum
for all who were oppressed. And no land has more actively engaged in the
suppression of liberty, or in keeping down those who were already
oppressed. So that a white boy raised on all sorts of high falutin
idealism finds himself when he grows up completely at sea. I confess,
Bye, when I came to realize that all my wealth and all the combination
of environment and position which has made life hitherto so beautiful
and perfect, were founded quite specifically on the backs of broken,
beaten slaves, I got a shock from which I think sometimes I’ll never
recover. It’s robbed me of happiness forever.”
“I like to hear you acknowledge your indebtedness,” said Peter frankly,
“but I don’t think you should take on your shoulders the penitence of
the whole white nation.”
“No, I don’t think I should, either,” Meriwether returned unexpectedly,
“but that sort of extremeness seems to be inherent in the question of
color. Either you concern yourself with it violently as the Southerner
does and so let slip by all the other important issues of life; or you
are indifferent and callous like the average Northerner and grow
hardened to all sorts of atrocities; or you steep yourself in it like
the sentimentalist—that’s my class—and find yourself paralyzed by the
vastness of the problem.”
He slipped into a familiar mood of melancholy brooding. It was at such a
time that he spoke to Peter of his willingness, of his absolute
determination to lose his life in the Great War. For this reason he had
gone into the ranks instead of the medical corps where he would have
been comparatively safe. “Don’t think I’m a fanatic, Peter. I see this
war as the greatest gesture the world has ever made for Freedom. If I
can give up my life in this cause I shall feel that I have paid my
debt.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXX
THE interminable voyage was over and Peter debarked to spend still more
interminable days at Brest. Dr. Meriwether Bye left immediately for La
Courtine, where Peter later caught sight of him once more on his way to
the front. The somewhat exalted mood to which his long and intimate
talks with Meriwether had raised him vanished completely under the
strain of the dirt, the racial and national clashes, and above all the
persistent bad weather of Brest.
This town, the end of Brittany and the furthest western outpost of
France, always remained in Peter’s memory as a horrible prelude to a
most horrible war. Brest up to the time that Europe had gone so
completely and so suddenly insane, had been the typical, stupid,
monotonous French town with picturesquely irregular pavements, narrow
tortuous streets, dark, nestling little shops and the inevitable public
square. Around and about the city to all sides stretched well ordered
farms.
Then came the march of two million American soldiers across the town and
the surrounding country. Under their careless feet the farms became mud,
so that the name Brest recalls to the minds of thousands nothing if not
a picture of the deepest, slimiest, stickiest mud that the world has
known. All about were people, people, too many people, French and
Americans. And finally the relations between the two nations, allies
though they were, developed from misunderstandings into hot irritations,
from irritations into clashes. First white Americans and Frenchmen
clashed; separate restaurants and accommodations had to be arranged.
Then came the inevitable clash between white and colored Americans;
petty jealousies and meannesses arose over the courtesies of Frenchwomen
and the lack of discrimination in the French cafés. The Americans found
a new and inexplicable irritation in the French colored colonials. Food
was bad, prices were exorbitant; officers became tyrants. Everyone was
at once in Brest and constantly about to leave it; real understanding
and acquaintanceship were impossible.
Peter thought Dante might well have included this place in the
description of his Inferno. Here were Disease and Death, Mutilation and
Murder. Stevedores and even soldiers became cattle and beasts of burden.
Many black men were slaves. The thing from which France was to be
defended could hardly be worse than this welter of human
misunderstandings, the clashing of unknown tongues, the cynical
investigations of the government, the immanence of war and the awful,
persistent wretchedness of the weather.
The long wait turned into sudden activity and Peter’s outfit was ordered
to Lathus, thence to La Courtine, one of the large training centers. It
was at this latter place that he caught sight once more of Meriwether
Bye. He seemed unusually alert and cheerful, Peter thought, and when the
two got a chance to speak to each other, this impression was confirmed.
The young white physician had the look of a man who sees before him a
speedy deliverance.
“He thinks he’s going to die and chuck this whole infernal business,”
Peter said to himself. “Wish I could be as sure of getting out of it as
he is.” Somehow the brief encounter left him more dispirited than ever.
“Come out of it, ole hoss,” Harley Alexander used to say to him. “What’d
your ‘grand white’ friend do to you?”
“Oh, you shut up!” Peter barked at him.
His real depression, however, dated back to the time immediately after
his company had left Brest. The awful condition of things in the seaport
town was general rather than specific, and for the first time since
Peter had entered the war he was feeling comparatively calm. His long
and intimate talks with Meriwether had produced their effect. He had not
realized that any such man as the young Quaker physician had existed in
the white world. He had too much sense and too many cruel experiences to
believe that there were many of Meriwether’s kind to be found in a
lifetime’s journey, but somehow his long bitterness of the years had
been assuaged. Henceforth, he told himself, he would try to be more
generous in his thoughts of white men—perhaps his attitude invited
trouble which he was usually only too willing to meet halfway.
At Lathus, Harley Alexander met him in the little _place_. “Seems to me
you’re got up regardless,” Peter had commented. Alexander, one of the
trimmest men in the regiment, was looking unusually shipshape, almost
dapper.
The other struck him familiarly across the shoulder. “And that ain’t
all. Say, fellow, there’s a band concert to-night right here in this
little old square. I’m goin’ and I’m goin’ to take a lady.”
“Lady! Where’d you get her?”
“Right here. These girls are all right. Not afraid of a dark skin. ‘How
should we have fear, m’soo,’ one of them says to me, ‘when you fight for
our _patrie_ and when you are so _beau_?’ ‘_Beau_’ that’s handsome,
ain’t it? Say this is some country to fight for; got some sense of
appreciation. Better come along, old scout. There’s a pile of loots
getting ready to come, each with a French dame in tow.”
“I’ll be there,” Peter told him, laughing. “But count me out with the
ladies. I can’t get along with the domestic brand and I know I’ll be out
of luck with the foreign ones.”
Some passing thought wiped the joy of anticipation from Harley’s face.
“My experience is that these foreign ones are a damn sight less foolish
than some domestic ones I’ve met. Well, me for the concert.”
But that band concert never came off. At sunset a company of white
American Southerners marched into Lathus down the main street, past the
little _place_. There was a sudden uproar.
“Look! Darkies and white women! Come on, fellows, kill the damned
niggers!”
There was a hasty onslaught in which the colored soldiers even taken by
surprise gave as good as they took. Between these two groups from the
same soil there was grimmer, more determined fighting than was seen at
Verdun. The French civil population stood on the church-steps opposite
the square and watched with amazement.
“_Nom de dieu!_ Are they crazy, then, these Americans, that they kill
each other!”
The next day saw Peter’s company on its way to La Courtine, a training
center, where there were no women. Thence they moved presently to the
front in the Metz Sector.
The injustice and indignity rendered the colored troupes at Lathus, plus
the momentary glimpses which he caught of Meriwether and his exaltation,
plunged Peter into a morass of melancholy and bitter self-communing
which shut him off as effectually as a smoke-screen from any real
appreciation of the dangers which surrounded him on the front.
In the midst of all that ineffable danger, that hellish noise, he was
harassed by the inextricable confusion, the untidiness of his own life.
God, to get rid of it all! Once he spent forty-eight hours with nine
other men on the ridge of a hill under fire. The other fellows told
stories and swapped confidences. But he stayed unmoved through it all,
impervious alike to the danger and the good man-talk going on about him.
When the call came for a reconnoitering party, he was one of the first
to step forward. He went out that night into the blackness, the
hellishness of No Man’s Land. He saw a dark figure rise in front of him,
heard a guttural sound and the next moment his left arm, drenched with
blood, hung useless at his side. Raising himself he shot at the legs
which showed a solid blackness against the thinner surrounding darkness.
Wriggling on his belly, he pushed forward to where he thought he heard
sounds, a struggle. “Something doing,” he told himself, “might as well
get in on that.”
But when he drew near the darkness was so intense that he did not dare
interfere. Two men, at least, were struggling terribly but he could not
tell which was which. They were breathing in terrific grunts, so heavily
that they had not noticed the approach of his smoothly sliding body.
Suddenly what he had hoped for, happened. A rocket shot up in the air
flared briefly and showed him the two men. One was Meriwether Bye, the
other was a German, his hand in the act of throwing a hand grenade.
Peter lurched forward and at that ghastly short range shot the German
through the stomach. But he was too late, the grenade had left the man’s
hand. The earth rocked about him, he could see Meriwether fall, a
toppling darkness in the darkness. He started toward him but his foot
caught in a depression and he himself fell sideways on his wounded arm.
There was a moment of exquisite pain and then the darkness grew even
more dark about him, the silent night more silent.
When he came to, it was still dark, though the day, he felt, rather than
saw, was approaching. His arm hurt unmercifully. He had never known such
pain. He raised himself on his one arm, and felt around with his foot.
Yes, there was a body, he prayed it might not be the German. Crawling
forward he plunged his hand into blood, a depthless pool of sticky
blood. Sickened, he drew back and dried it, wiping it on his coat. More
cautiously, then, he reached out again, searching for the face, yes,
that was Meriwether’s nose. Those canny finger-tips of his recognized
the facial structure. His hand came back to Meriwether’s chest. The
heart was beating faintly and just above it was a hole, with the blood
gushing, spurting, hot and thick.
He sat upright and wrenching open his tunic tore at his shirt. The stuff
was hard to tear but it finally gave way under the onslaught of teeth
and fingers. Faint with the pain of his left arm and the loss of his own
blood, he set his lips hard, concentrating with all his strength on the
determination not to lose consciousness again. Finally grunting,
swearing, almost crying, he got Meriwether’s head against his knee, then
against his shoulder, and staunched the wound with the harsh, unyielding
khaki. His canteen was full and he drenched the chilly, helpless face
with its contents. All this time he was sitting with no support for his
back and the strain was telling on him.
Against the surrounding gray of the coming morning, southward toward his
own lines, he caught sight of darker shapes, trees perhaps, perhaps
men—if he could only get to them! Placing Meriwether’s face upwards he
caught him about his lean waist, buckling him to his side with an arm of
steel, and rising to his knees he crawled for what seemed a mile toward
that persistent blackness. Twice he fell, once he struck his left arm
against a dead man’s boot. The awful throbbing in his shoulder
increased. But at last he was there, at last in the shelter of a clump
of low, stunted trees. With a sob he braced himself against them,
letting Meriwether’s head and shoulders rest against his knees. The
blood had begun to spurt again and Meriwether stirred. Peter whispered:
“Bye, for God’s sake, speak to me. This is Peter, Peter Bye, you
remember?”
The young doctor repeated the name thickly. “Yes, Peter. I know. I’m
dying.”
“Not yet. Man, it’s almost day, they’ll come to us. Pull yourself
together. We’ll save you somehow.”
Meriwether whispered, “I’m cold.”
Could he get his coat off? How could he ever pull it off that shattered
arm? Still he achieved even this, wrapping it around the white man’s
shivering form, raising that face, gray as the gray day above them, high
on his chest, cradling him like a baby.
The chill was the chill of death, a horrible death. Meriwether coughed
and choked; Peter could feel the life struggling within the poor torn
body. Once the cold lips said: “Peter, you’re a good scout.”
Just before a merciful unconsciousness enveloped him for the last time,
Meriwether sat upright in the awful agony of death. “Grandfather,” he
called in a terrible voice, “this is the last of the Byes.”
When the stretcher-bearers found them, Meriwether was lying across
Peter’s knees, his face turned childwise toward Peter’s breast. The
colored man’s head had dropped low over the fair one and his black curly
hair fell forward straight and stringy, caked in the blood which lay in
a well above Meriwether’s heart.
“Cripes!” said one of the rescue men, “I’ve seen many a sight in this
war, but none ever give me the turn I got seein’ that smoke’s hair
dabblin’ in the other fellow’s blood.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAMBÉRY, the capital of Savoy, a town situated toward the south of the
extreme east of France, has not always been as well known to America as
its more important neighbors, Grenoble and Lyons. Up to a few years ago
it was celebrated chiefly because it was the location of the chateau of
the old dukes of Savoy and the birthplace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Now
it is known to thousands and thousands of Americans because during the
great War it was metamorphosed into a rest center for colored soldiers.
To the tourist’s mind it might stand out for three reasons: as a city in
which it is well nigh impossible to get a lost telegram repeated; as a
place where one may procure at very little expense the most excellent of
manicures and the most delicious of little cakes. And, thirdly, as the
scene of a novel by Henri Bordeaux, “La Peur de Vivre,” the story of a
young girl who, afraid to face the perils of life, forfeited therefore
its pleasures.
Certainly Alice Du Laurens, the young woman of Bordeaux’ novel, would
have been no more astonished to find herself in New York than Maggie
Ellersley, whom she so closely resembled in character, was to find
herself in Chambéry. The nervous shock which Harry Portor had predicted
from her encounter with Neal followed only too surely, but for another
reason. The flesh wound itself had been negligible and she might have
recovered without the nervous breakdown, had not Mr. Simpson in an agony
of remorse at the danger to which he had so unwittingly exposed her,
subjected her again with equally complete unconscious thoroughness to
another shock. He was always presenting her with flowers, magazines, and
journals, his eyes silently beseeching her forgiveness. For Maggie had
never betrayed his share in the disaster and had thus made him her eager
servitor forever.
Two weeks after the accident he brought her an evening paper. “Just
picked this up as I come along, Miss Maggie. But there’s some flowers
comin’ later on.”
She took the folded paper listlessly and let her eyes travel over the
front sheet. A tiny paragraph leaped at her from the bottom of a column.
“Negro Leaps In Front Of Subway Train.”
“A Negro, later identified as Henderson Neal, was killed instantly this
afternoon——”
They found it hard to quiet her. “I killed him,” she moaned to Harry
Portor, hastily summoned. “His death is as much due to me as though I
had poisoned him. I did poison his life.”
Portor was at his wits’ end. She was too weak to be sent away from home
by herself. Her mother could not leave the house, for Maggie’s illness
had decidedly crippled her resources. And once more they were dependent
on lodgers for their livelihood.
Once Portor spoke to her of Peter, thinking to comfort her, but the
allusion only made her worse. “Peter! I was getting ready to ruin his
life, too. Oh, how awful everything is. If I could only see him again!”
It was all very odd, Harry thought, wondering if Joanna could interpret
this. The situation was too complex for him to handle.
It was her first cry of penitence, and as she lay there day after day
reviewing her life she came to understand and to analyze for what it was
that quality of hers, that tendency to climb to the position she wanted
over the needs and claims of others. Now that she had no strength, now
that life stretched around her a dreary procession of sullen, useless
days, she realized the beauty inherent in life itself, the miracle of
health and sane nerves, of the ability to make a living, of being
helpful to others.
“Why, Henderson, even Henderson—if I could have taken him back that
first time, I might have changed him, got him to work at something
profitable and interesting. Maybe,” she thought, for the first time
since her marriage, “we might have had a child. And what difference did
it make if I didn’t go with those—‘dickties?’ I could have had a nice
time; I used to have nice times, lovely cosy times with Anna and Tom.”
That brought her to the thought of Peter. “Of course, he didn’t want me.
And I never loved him. He always did and always will love Joanna.
Whether he gets her or not, she’s the woman for him. He needs her as I
need Philip.” She lay quite still then, concentrating, probing her
inmost spirit. “As I need no one,” she said to herself aloud. “If I ever
get well again I shall be what I want to be without depending on
anybody. And I shall always be content.”
Who shall explain the relation between mind and spirit? She grew better
after that, began to sit up and, joining one of her mother’s myriad
committees, engaged in the preparation of outfits for the men overseas.
Very slowly, almost reluctantly her interest in life came creeping back
with her strength. She grew to be like the little girl she had been
long, long ago, before her overpowering desire got possession of her.
But she needed the stimulus of an occupation which would take her out of
herself.
“If I could find something which would make me forget everything that is
past, Harry,” she told the young doctor. He had fallen into the habit of
taking her on his rounds two and three times a week. The air did her
good and the occasion gave him a chance to study her.
“It will turn up, the right thing always does,” he comforted her. “You
know you are lots better already.”
“Yes, so much better than you can guess,” she returned, leaving him
slightly mystified at the peculiar expression with which she was
regarding him. He would have been more astonished if he could have read
her thought. “Once,” she said to herself, “I might have tried to make
him like me, tried to get him to marry me and lift me out of my
obscurity. My, I’m glad that’s over.”
Once on her return from one of these trips her mother came rushing to
her. “Guess who’s here, Maggie? But, pshaw, you’d never guess. John
Howe, do you remember?”
John Howe who had come to her rescue in the early days! “Now you just
set still,” her mother fussed about her, “and I’ll bring him up. He’s
the Reverend John Howe now. I’ll bet he’ll do you good.”
Ministers for some reason are either fat or lean. John Howe ran to the
lean type. He came in looking very much as usual, to stay only “five
minutes,” he told Mrs. Ellersley.
He stayed five hours and Maggie poured out her heart, her first liking
for Philip, her marriage, her discovery of her husband’s “profession,”
her engagement to Peter and her insensate determination to hold on to
him.
“And then Henderson killed himself. Oh, John, I’ve been a wicked, wicked
creature.”
“Not as bad as all that, Maggie, but life has been as unkind to you as
though you had been. That’s the trouble,—whether you burn yourself
intentionally or not, you get hurt all the same. And it’s all over now,
you’ve quite decided to let—to break with this Bye fellow?”
“You were right at first. To let him go. Yes.”
“H’m, what do you suppose he’ll do then, go back to this other girl?”
“It sounds so funny to hear you talk of her that way, so slightingly,
almost,” said Maggie, a little surprised.
“Well, of course, she’s nothing to me. Daresay she’s a nice enough girl,
though she sounds a bit priggish. Do you think she’ll take him back?”
“Oh, I hardly think so. You see, she’s the only one of us who’s kept on
and got what she wanted out of life. She’s on the stage, a dancer, the
success of the season! Peter’s just barely through school, if indeed he
did get through, and, anyway, he’s still as poor as a church mouse. And
I’m just Miss Nobody. The thing is—if Peter wants to go to her, he can.”
“And what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t guess. Something I hope very different that will
take me as completely out of myself as though I had been transposed to a
fourth dimension. Can’t you think of something, John?”
“I don’t know, I believe I have a sort of idea. Are you pretty strong
now, Maggie?”
“The Doctor says I’m as strong as I’ll ever be without change of
interests and surroundings. Let’s hear about your idea.”
“No, that’s enough for to-day. Besides, I’m not sure enough of it.” But
he came back the next day fortified. The Young Men’s Christian
Association had decided to send a few colored women workers among the
colored men at the front. Two had already gone, but more were needed. If
he could get the position for Maggie it would prove just the change she
needed. Did she think she could go?
“Me,” Maggie breathed, “go to France! To help the poor boys! Oh, I’d
love it, John.”
It was the thing for her. Of course, its accomplishment took time and
much handling of red tape, but it did come to pass and Maggie, leaving
behind her an apprehensive mother and cousin—for the day of submarines
was not yet over—set sail for France. She landed at Brest, from Brest
she went to Paris, where she was summoned to Chambéry to help Mrs.
Terry, the colored worker, in charge of the leave-center in the Savoyard
capital.
Maggie was taken out of herself completely. The voyage, the danger, the
foreign language and new customs went to her head like wine. The need of
the men overwhelmed and staggered her. They were pathetically proud of
her—and of Mrs. Terry, too,—glad to be allowed a sight of her bright
face, to exchange a word. To be permitted to dance with her sent any one
of them into a delirium of ecstatic pride. They were brave fellows,
conducting themselves as became soldiers, persistently cheerful in the
face of the hateful prejudice that followed and flayed them in the very
act of laying down their lives for their country. For a time the Negro
soldiers had been permitted to go over to Aix-les-Bains once a week, to
reap the benefit of the baths, but a white American woman seeing in this
an approach to “social equality,” contrived to start a protest which
resulted in a withdrawal of this permission and the black men were
confined strictly to Chambéry.
A new sense of values came to Maggie, living now in the midst of scenes
like these. The determinedly cheerful though somewhat cynical attitude
of “the boys” in such conditions seemed to her the most wonderful thing
she had ever witnessed. It was as though they said to hostile forces:
“Oh, yes, we know you’ll do for us in every possible way, slight us,
cheat us, betray us, but you can’t kill the real life within us, the
essential us. You may make us distrustful, incredulous, disillusioned,
but you can’t make us despair or corrode us with bitterness. Call us
children if you like, but in spite of everything, life _is_ worth
living, and we mean to live it to the full.”
So many impressions, so many happenings crowded in on Maggie during
those days that she failed to differentiate between the strange and the
unusual, the calculable and the unexpected. So that on the night when a
new detachment of men filed into the canteen and she glanced up to find
that the tall lieutenant to whom she was handing a cup of cocoa was
Peter, she did not feel at first astonished. Afterwards it came to her
that, subconsciously, she had noticed how subdued, how cautious his
greeting to her had been. His manner toward Mrs. Terry, whom he had
known slightly in New York, seemed by contrast almost effusive.
“That,” she told herself later, angrily, “was because he didn’t want to
encourage me. How he dreads me! Poor Peter. I’ll put him at his ease.”
She was to make arrangements the next day for a trip to Lake Bourget. On
her way to the station she spied Peter sitting, a desolate and lonely
figure, in the little parkway that ran through the broad street. He did
not see her advancing and she had a chance to examine him. His face,
still handsome, was thin and lined and his eyes were hopeless. She held
out her hand.
He let it drop after a brief pressure.
“I was thinking of you, Maggie.”
“And I of you. How wretched you look, Peter!”
He told her, then, of his wound and of his stay in a hospital in Toul.
“My arm is all right now. I’ve even been in another engagement. In a
month at the most, I expect to return to the front again.”
“Do you dread it?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Dread it? My goodness, no. I think I
prefer war to ordinary living. It is so quick and decisive. Of course,
there are some tiresome delays. We were held up for six weeks at Brest
and the transportation overseas was very slow. But I didn’t care, I made
a fine friend on account of it. I wish I’d met him sooner.” He didn’t
tell her the name. That, he thought morosely, would only start her off
again on his social standing. “He was killed,” he ended hastily.
“I’m so sorry. That’s why you’re so dismal.”
“Perhaps, and then, I don’t understand anything more. Life is all a maze
and I can’t find my way out. I hope I get killed in my next engagement.”
She bit her lip at that. How blind she had been! “Well, I’m going to
obviate one difficulty for you, Peter. I’ve decided not to
marry—anybody. I think I want to try life on my own. No, don’t say
anything. You can’t very well thank me and there’s no use pretending
you’re sorry. It was a bad business, Peter, and I’m glad it’s over.”
Before he could speak she had left him. His wound and the loss of
Meriwether, his constant brooding, had wrought in him an habitual
dejection. But he was conscious of a slight lifting of the pall which
hung over him, a loosening of the web.
They saw very little of each other in the five or six days before his
departure. Maggie was rather glad of this. She wanted no reminders to
spoil her feeling of having begun everything anew with a clean slate.
Her new-found independence was a source of the greatest joy. Each night
she mapped out afresh her future life. When she returned to America she
would start her hair work again, she would inaugurate a chain of Beauty
Shops. First-class ones. Of her ability to make a good living she had no
doubt. And she would gather about her, friends, simple kindly people
whom she liked for themselves: who would seek her company with no
thought of patronage. She would stand on her two feet, Maggie Ellersley,
serene, independent, self-reliant. The idea exalted her and she went
about her work the picture of optimism and happiness.
The boys called her “Sunlight.” They all liked her and she was kind to
them. Some of them were fine fellows, well educated and successful. It
was Maggie’s greatest secret triumph that in these particularly
favorable conditions she felt no impulse to attempt to realize that old
insistent ambition.
On the utmost peak of the Mont du Nivrolet, which towers east of
Chambéry, directly opposite the _Chaîne de l’Epine_, gleams an immense
cross twenty-five meters high, visible from all the surrounding country.
At sunset it stood out boldly and Maggie, looking at it daily at that
hour, came to regard it as a sort of luminous symbol of faith. “Oh, God,
you have brought me peace; perhaps some day I shall know happiness.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXII
INTO the midst of her new-found content came Philip. At first she could
hardly believe it. She supposed vaguely that he had enlisted but she was
and had been out of touch so long with the Marshall family that she knew
nothing definite of his movements. It had been years and years since she
had seen him, had in any sense been connected with him. What a long
stretch of time and events since she had received Joanna’s letter that
fateful Sunday!
He was very much changed, not only older and graver, but weak,
physically. He had been wounded twice and had been gassed slightly.
“I’ve been discharged from the hospital as cured, Maggie, but I’m afraid
I’ll never be any good again.” He smiled with infinite gentleness.
“There was so much I wanted to do.” Fortunately his “Leave” had followed
on his stay in the rest-area at Nice.
He had been in Chambéry for half of his _permission_ then, and the first
embarrassment attendant on their meeting had worn off. Still, both
avoided discussion of the old days, glancing away from possible points
of contact. He seemed to Maggie to be wasting by inches and even Mrs.
Terry, who had seen many cases of gassed men, thought he had come out of
the hospital too soon. Maggie, her old love mingled with a new
tenderness awakening in her, spent as much time with him as she dared.
She did not want him to be ill, but she adored his weakness, it gave her
her first chance to wait on him, to mother him, to pay back, instead of
always taking, something of what the Marshall family had brought into
her life.
He said to her one day seated in the little parkway, “Why did you leave
us so abruptly, Maggie? Why did you marry Henderson Neal?”
Peter had asked her the same question years ago and now as then she
could not answer: “Because of Joanna’s letter.” So she sat silent a
moment.
“Well, Maggie?”
“Because I was a fool, Philip. I was a silly, silly young girl. Without
the sense to know what I wanted. Without the patience to wait for it if
I had known. All young girls are silly, don’t you think? All, that is,
except Joanna. She always knew what she wanted and see, she’s got it.
Wonderful Joanna! Do you know, Philip, I think I’ll have a career, too,
a business one! A chain of Beauty Shops.”
How wonderful to be able to talk like this without false shame to a
Marshall! How wonderful life was! How beautiful to be experienced!
Philip said rather indifferently:
“I’m not surprised at that. My father always said you had one of the
clearest heads for business he’d ever seen. I used to be overwhelmed
myself at your ability to handle people and things. You were always so
sure of yourself. I remember once telling Sylvia and Joanna that you
could afford to go about with people that I didn’t care to have them
meet. Your early experiences rendered you safe. I believe I told them
that when they were speaking to me of your husband, Mr. Neal. I didn’t
know he was going to be your husband then, Maggie.”
So that was what Joanna had meant so long ago. Strange how time
dissolves mysteries. Strange how, after deciding to take life as one
finds it, life comes fawning to one’s hand.
Several days elapsed before another talk could be managed. Then they met
in front of the _Statue des Eléphants_. Philip, examining that marvel
with meticulous care, asked her indirectly about Peter.
“How will you combine the sort of business you contemplate and your
marriage? Seems to me you’ll have to be away from home a lot. Somehow, I
don’t picture you as a ‘new woman,’ Maggie.”
So he was interested! And she had done nothing, not one little thing to
lead up to it. “Oh, God, let me be happy now,” she breathed. “You know I
meant to play the game straight and I really do love Philip.” Aloud she
said joyously, “I’m not going to be married, Philip, at least not to
Peter Bye, if that’s what you’re talking about. That was all a mistake.
We both realized that.”
She glanced at him, hoping to meet an answering joy in his face, but
found instead a deepening mournfulness.
“Philip,” she said very gently. “What is it?”
He lifted a haggard face. “Listen, Maggie, I can speak now. I loved you
long, long ago, when we used to go off on those catering jobs for
father. Do you remember? But I didn’t know it, I didn’t think about it,
until you married. Somehow I had always thought there would be time
enough and that, anyway, matters would adjust themselves. And when I
heard you’d married that fellow, I was so amazed, thrown off my feet. I
said to myself, ‘You poor weak fool, of course, she’d prefer a man, a
real man who, no matter what his character, would have gumption to go
after the woman he loved.’
“I’d have come to you, but I thought you must love him; I had heard the
girls mention seeing the two of you together and I concluded it was an
affair of long standing. To ease myself, to put you completely out of my
mind, I plunged into this public work; I wouldn’t even mention your
name. And the first thing I knew you had left Neal and were engaged to
Bye. I couldn’t understand that, Maggie, since you had grown up with
Joanna and Peter, but that’s all over now. I cursed Bye out at Des
Moines, I remember.”
Maggie, reviewing all that had preceded Peter’s departure for Des
Moines, shivered a little. “Perhaps some day I can tell you all about
it, Philip. It was mostly my fault.”
“It doesn’t make any difference whose fault it was, Maggie; everything
is too late now. You don’t suppose I’m going to ask you, a beautiful
woman, just on the threshold of a successful future, to marry me. My
dear, I’m a wreck. I may live a year and I may live a half century. But
I’d always be good for nothing, sitting around, ailing, getting on your
nerves. I wouldn’t be able even to run your cash register for you,
Maggie. These gas cases are absolutely unpredictable.”
“I don’t care,” she told him stubbornly. “You haven’t asked me but I’ll
tell you. I love you, Philip, I always have. And nothing would please me
more than to nurse you. Why, I love you, my dear. Manage my cash
register! We’ll get you home and Harry Portor will fix you up and then
you’ll take up your magazine again. I’ll be your secretary, your
assistant, your whole force.”
But Philip was adamant. “You don’t know what you’re saying. No, Maggie,
after I leave here I’ll never see you again. I had my chance to win you
once and I let you go, threw you into the arms of Neal. That was bad
enough. But I won’t chain you to an invalid’s chair for life.”
For the first time since she had known him she recognized in him a faint
bitterness.
“You know, Maggie, I’ve never made any kick about being colored. Rather,
I looked at it as a life work ready and cut out for a man, for me, and I
rushed rather joyously into it to do battle. Now as I look back, I think
I realize for the first time what this awful business of color in
America does to a man, what it has done for me. If we weren’t so
persistently persecuted and harassed that we can think, breathe, do
nothing but consider our great obsession, you and I might have been
happy long ago. I’d have done as most men of other races do, settled my
own life and then launched on some high endeavor. But do you know as a
boy, as a young man, I never consciously let any thought of self come to
me? I was always so sure that I was going to strike a blow at this
great, towering monster. And all I’ve done has been to sacrifice myself
and to sacrifice you. And the ironic joke of it is that in the defense
of the country which insists on robbing me of my natural joys, I’ve lost
the strength to keep up even the fight for which I let everything else
of importance in the world go. I’ve been simply a fool.”
She tried to comfort him. “You’ve been everything that is fine and brave
and noble, Philip. And don’t think your suffering, as you call it, is
due only to being colored. Life takes it out of all of us. I have never
spent five minutes in trying to help our cause. Your unselfishness and
Joanna’s persistent ambition have always amazed me. I have been a
selfish, selfish woman, always—looking out for my own personal
advantage, grasping at everything, everybody—who I thought might make
life easier for me. You don’t really know me, Philip. I’ve pursued a
course exactly opposite to yours. And yet I never knew a moment of
happiness from the time we were all children together until I came here
to Chambéry to help these boys.” She thought deeply. “Sometimes I think
no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something
out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its
best is a grand corrective.
“But now we’ve found ourselves, Philip. You have learned ordinary
personal consideration and I have learned unselfishness—to a degree. It
is not too late for us to be happy—together, Philip.”
“How we complement each other,” he mused. His eye fell on his wasted
hand. “Ah, but, Maggie, it is too late. Everything is too late.”
On the last day of his stay she came to him. “You love me, Philip?” He
gave a quick assent. “And you know I love you and you still won’t marry
me?”
“Don’t torture me, Maggie. You’ve no idea what it means to be tied for
life to a peevish invalid. I—I never expect to see you again, my dear.”
“Then,” she said, and the last tatters of her old obsession, that oldest
desire of all for sheer decency—fell from her, “then I’ll be your
mistress, Philip. For no matter where you go I’ll find you and stay with
you, you’ll never be able to send me away from you. You’ll make me the
by-word of all New York but I won’t care, Philip, for I love you. Oh,
Philip, Philip——”
They were in the chapel of the old Dukes of Savoy and the ancient
caretaker, having stayed away the length of time which Philip’s
_pourboire_ warranted, came in, but went out again, quietly, smiling.
For Philip had risen and drawn Maggie to him. “You really mean it,
Maggie, my Maggie! Oh, my little yellow flower, I’ll never let you go.”
She looked at him starry-eyed. “You don’t seem so weak, Philip.”
Outside, the cross on Nivrolet, a luminous symbol of faith, pointed
steadfastly to heaven.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE War was over, the men were coming home. All Harlem was delirious
with excitement. Everything conceivable must be done for “the boys,” for
those boys who having fought a double battle in France, one with Germany
and one with white America, had yet marvelously, incredibly, returned
safely home. There were all sorts and conditions of black men, Harvard
graduates and Alabama farmhands. These last had seen Paris before they
had seen New York and they blessed the War which had given them a chance
to see the great capital.
There were parties, dances, fêtes, concerts, benefits. Everybody who
possessed the least discernible “talent” was called upon; Joanna among
them. She surprised even her most intimate friends by her graciousness.
Night after night, when the performance was over, she appeared,
splendid, glowing, symbolic before those huge dark masses in some uptown
hall. The “boys,” starved for a sight of their own women with their dark
pervading beauty, went mad over her. She was indeed for them “Miss
America,” making them forget to-night the ingratitude with which their
country would meet them to-morrow.
At none of these assemblies did Joanna find what she was looking for—a
sight of Peter. She had gone at first out of sheer graciousness—a
willingness to do something for these brave men. But later, there was
another reason; something happened which led her to expect to see Peter
at any moment, at any turn. She met Vera Manning.
“Vera, you imp! Telling those people that you had gone to school with me
to learn democracy; I nearly died! Where’ve you been this long while?
How wonderful you look! And how different!”
“Oh, Joanna, Joanna, I was coming to see you! First of all I’ve been
South. I got sick of going about with those white people, so I cast
about for something to do. You remember they mobbed some colored
soldiers in Arkansas because they’d worn their uniforms in the street?
Well, it made me sick, it made me think of—of Harley. So I rushed to a
newspaper, Barney Kirchner is the manager—wasn’t he one of Philip’s
friends? And I told them: ‘I’m colored, see, but nobody would guess it;
send me down there. See if I can’t get a line on those people.’”
“Mercy,” said Joanna, “what an idea!”
“And they sent me. And, oh, Joanna, it was wonderful to see how our
folks, those colored people, trusted me and shielded me when they found
I was one of them. And those white bullies, thinking I was one of
_them_, told me the most blood-curdling, most fiendish tales. I really
got an investigation started. Mr. Kirchner has taken it up. Oh, Joanna,
I’m glad I’m colored—there’s something terrible, terrible about white
people.”
She had seen a side of life which had first amazed, then frightened,
then incited her. Joanna had never seen her friend like this, so roused
and quickened, so purposeful. “It was as though at last I had found some
excuse for being what I am, looking like one race and belonging to
another. It made me feel like—don’t laugh—like a ministering angel. Oh,
I hated myself so for having spent all those foolish months, years even,
away from my own folks when I might have been consecrated to them,
serving them, helping them, healing them. You can’t understand just how
I feel, Janna dear. You’ve always had a definite something before you to
make out of your life. I tell you I feel as though I had found a new
heaven and a new earth.”
“Wasn’t it awfully dangerous, Vera?”
“Awfully, and funny, too. Exciting! I’ll never be able to get back to
Little Rock again. They found me out, suspected me. I really had to make
a quick get-away. Something so rotten happened, I just couldn’t control
myself.”
She told her friend that she had finished the investigation on hand and
was quietly preparing to go. It happened that on her last night at the
hotel where she was staying, the hotel management was approached on the
subject of having sold liquor to two young white women, the questionable
guests of three or four white men. Vera, secretly amused to realize that
she had been staying at such a resort, thought nothing of the
disturbance until she learned that the colored bell boys were charged
with aiding and abetting the women in violation of the law.
“So I followed it up, Joanna. And what do you think happened? When the
case came up for trial, the girls who had been taken up on charges of
assignation were adjudged not guilty, but the two bell-hops were held
for serving liquor under orders, and aiding in a crime which this same
court says never was committed. Isn’t it all too absurd! I made so much
row about it that they became suspicious. A colored woman whom I had
never seen before passed me on the street and handed me a note, in which
she told me that my actions had made ‘them’ highly suspicious of me.
Some one suggested that perhaps I was a ‘yaller nigger passin’,’ and if
so I’d better look out. So I got out. Oh, there was plenty of
excitement, but it was worth it. I’m going to play the same game
somewhere else, just as soon as I can. Do you know, I’m—I’m almost glad
that I am forced to devote the rest of my life to it.”
“Forced to devote your life to it,” Joanna repeated, bewildered. “Why,
what do you mean?”
A subtle change came over Vera’s face. It was almost as though one could
see her marshaling her inner forces, her spiritual resources. Despair,
resolve, pride, courage—her friend could descry each in turn. Then she
laughed her old confident laugh.
“Well, it’s like this, Janna. I’ve had a message—indirectly—from Harley.
He—” she bit her lip, “he isn’t coming back to America. He managed to
get his discharge in France and he’s made up his mind to live there.
Isn’t it great for him? It means he’ll have to start his training all
over again, but he says he’d rather do that than waste his life bucking
this color business any more. And there’s all sorts of work for a
dentist in those little French towns. Just imagine old Harley’s being
free to come and go as he pleases. No more insults for him, no more
lynching news. Why, it’ll be life all over for him, won’t it, Jan? And I
can’t blame him,” she broke off breathlessly, “once I might have thought
the thing for him to do was to stay with his own folks, but life cheats
us colored people so. I wish I had understood that earlier. White and
colored people! No wonder Peter used to rave as he did.” She ended
astoundingly: “I suppose you and he have made up.”
“Who?” asked Joanna stupidly. “Peter and—and me? Why, I haven’t seen
him. Why, he’s going to marry Maggie Ellersley!”
“Marry Maggie nothing! Here, here’s an Automat. We’ll be all right in
here. Miss Maggie Ellersley is going to marry your brother. Didn’t you
know it?”
“No, but I’m glad of it, glad of it. How’d you know all this, Vera?”
“Peter told me, of course. I’ve seen him. He’s the most perfect darling
in his uniform! You ought to hear him raving about France, but silent as
the tomb about the War. He says the colored soldiers were all
sold—fighting for freedom was a farce so far as they were concerned. But
France is all right if the white Americans don’t get in too much
propaganda. I’ve been meaning to write to you, to tell you you’d better
go over there. No end of chances for you on the French stage. You might
even get in French opera. Are you sure you haven’t seen Peter, sly
thing?”
“Of course I’m sure. There was really no reason why I should. Mr. Bye
and I haven’t seen or heard from each other for three years, now.”
“Mr. Bye! Well, good evening, Miss High and Mighty. If I see him I’ll
tell him I saw you.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. Stop all this raving, Vera, and explain
to me about Harley. Are you going to France, too?”
Vera looked at her with a too perfect astonishment. “I going? Joanna,
how did you ever get credit for being so brilliant, you’re really quite
thick-witted. Don’t you see Harley’s and my ways are going to lie
separate forever? He is going East and I am going—South.” Her gayety
forsook her. “Joanna, don’t let me cry in this awful place. I got it out
of Peter. I made him tell me. He says Harley is bitter and cynical. He
says, over and over, Peter told me: ‘Look at these little French girls,
they’re really white and they don’t seem to hate me. And yet a girl of
my own race hesitates to marry me merely because she looks like white.’”
She pressed her hand hard against her quivering mouth. “It seems he
can’t forgive me. Peter told me so I could be prepared for anything I
might hear. Oh, Janna, this terrible country with its false ideals! So
you see why I’m glad there’s the South to go to—I’ve got to choose
between life and death. Even if I should lose my life in Georgia or in
one of those other terrible places where they lynch women, too, I’ll
save it, won’t I? I must go. Kiss me good-by, dear Janna.”
She was off in a moment in her pretty, modish costume, leaving Joanna in
a maze of pity and tenderness for her friend, and of sick bewilderment
for herself.
Peter was free; he was, presumably, home, and he had not come near her.
Some of the old pain surged up. She was walking presently along teeming
Lenox Avenue. Some young girls passing turned and stared. “That’s Joanna
Marshall. You know, the dancer.” A dark colored girl wearing Russian
boots and a hat with three feathers sticking up straight, Indian
fashion, came along. Lenox Avenue stared, pointed, laughed and enjoyed
itself, Joanna’s admirer with the rest.
This, this was fame—to be shared with any girl who chose to stick
feathers, Indian fashion, in her hat. An empty thing—different, so
different from what she had expected it to be. It had not occurred to
her that it would be the only thing in her life. Probing relentlessly
into an evasive subconsciousness she evolved the realization that in
those other days she had expected her singing, her dancing—her success
in a word—to be the mere integument of her life, the big handsome extra
wrap to cover her more ordinary dress,—the essential, delightful
commonplaces of living, the kernel of life, home, children, and adoring
husband.
This was too much like examining the bones, the skull and skeleton of
living and then every day tricking it out with the one thing which could
lend it the semblance of flesh and color, though always with the vivid
knowledge that death lay hidden beneath.
If her gift were only something useful! Even Vera Manning, a mere
butterfly, had turned the trick, had used her one specialty, her absence
of color, to the advantage of her people. But she—of course it did mean
something to prove to a skeptical world the artistry of a too little
understood people—but she could do that only in New York. After the
season closed here she was to have a brief showing in Boston, in
Philadelphia and in Chicago. Even there, as here, she would have to
appear in independent theaters. The big theatrical trusts refused her
absolutely—one had even said frankly: “We’ll try a colored man in a
white company but we won’t have any colored women.”
Her manager, who liked and respected her, had told her only last week
that he had nothing in view for her after the brief tour. He felt there
was money in the South, but the southern newspapers had started to
editorialize against her already. “A negress,” a Georgia newspaper had
said, “in the rôle of America. Shameful!”
“We might get a showing among colored patrons, Miss Marshall. But the
South is in an ugly mood just now. Those hoodlums might break the show
up. I’d hate to expose you to it. God, what a country!”
It was just possible that she might get a booking in a high-class
vaudeville house. “And later on we’ll write a play around you. It would
take mighty little to make a fine actress out of you. That’s a fact,
Miss Marshall. And after we’ve had a run here we could cross the pond.”
This, this, was her great success. She loved and hated it. But she would
not have been human if she had not wished for Peter to see her in her
triumph, empty though it might prove to be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXIV
PETER had seen her. His first free hours in New York were spent sitting
segregated in the portion of the balcony set apart for colored people,
watching Joanna in the “Dance of the Nations.” And the result, of
course, was to make her seem farther than ever out of his reach. She was
more wonderful, more mysterious than he had conceived possible. “And why
you should think she would look at you! What if she did write and tell
you she didn’t mean it? Look at the letter you sent her in reply. Do you
suppose a woman like that would stand being thrown down and picked up
again?”
He was living with his aunt until he could open an office. Fortunately,
he had saved up his pay and his aunt had used very little of his
allotment. As soon as possible he would get out his shingle. His first
impulse on receiving his _congé_ from Maggie had been to come back and
have at least a talk with Joanna. But after seeing her on the stage he
rejected that idea completely.
“But I’ll work like fury. I’ll really get ahead. And then I’ll go to her
and tell her I owe it all to her. And I’ll explain to her, as Meriwether
Bye said, that all my training and instincts have been against me. And
then,” he finished to himself lamely, “we’ll always be friends.”
He passed the state-board examinations with a flourish. Then to get an
office. He thought it best to consult Harry Portor about this. The
latter in his own office greeted him, he thought, none too cordially,
ignored his hand.
“Thought I’d look you up, Portor. Gee, what enthusiasm! Nice greeting to
give a fellow who’s just been making your home safe for democracy.”
“Oh, can that stuff, Bye. What I want to know is this. It’s none of my
business but I happen to be interested. What are you going to do about
Maggie Ellersley?”
“Wha-at! Well I’ll be——” Had he been in her train, too? Was this why she
had given him his freedom? His face clouded.
“You’re right, Harry, it _is_ none of your business. May I ask how you
horn in on this?”
“Well, if you’ve got to know. I’m, I’m deeply interested in Miss Joanna
Marshall and—and——”
“Hold on, I thought you were speaking of Miss Ellersley.” Their
politeness was wonderful.
“Now see here, Bye, tell me, are you going to marry Miss Ellersley?”
“I am not.”
“Well, by God! you dirty cad, what do you mean by getting engaged to one
woman after another and not having any intention of marrying either?”
Peter controlled his rising anger. “I don’t want to quarrel with you,
Portor. Miss Ellersley told me in Chambéry that she didn’t want to marry
me, she’d made a mistake.”
“And Miss Marshall,” said Harry, his face clearing, “have you told her
yet?”
“No, I haven’t. Miss Marshall found out she’d made a mistake three years
ago. I don’t make good with the ladies, Portor. And I’d like to know how
the devil it concerns you?”
“It concerns me,” said Harry miserably, “because I’m pretty sure Joanna
loves you, and I want you to make her happy, or else get out of the way
and let me try to do it.” And he told Peter how Joanna, thinking him
guilty, had yet declared herself Maggie’s assailant.
Peter’s natural surprise at Neal’s attack on Maggie vanished into
stupefied amazement at the news of Joanna’s generosity. “She did that
for me? Joanna?”
“Yes,” Portor told him. “Where’re you going, man?”
Peter had snatched up his cap. “You get into that little Ford I saw
standing out there and drive me up to her house. I can’t drive a Ford.
Does she still live home?”
“Still with her father and mother. But they’ve moved on One Hundred and
Thirty-eighth Street. Joanna, I believe, wanted a whole floor for a
studio, and as Sylvia’s children are growing up, she and her parents got
out. The kids are always over at Joanna’s, though.”
They were silent after that. Harry let him off at Joanna’s corner.
“Well, good luck, old man,” he said insincerely.
Sylvia’s boy, Roger, let Peter in. “I know who you are,” said the tall
lieutenant. “You are Brian Spencer’s son.”
“Yes, I am, but I don’t know you. And you’ll have to tell me your name
if you want to see my Aunt Joanna. She might not be at home.”
“Yes, that’s what I was afraid of. See here, son, I knew your Aunt
Joanna before you were born, and I’d like to surprise her. I’ve just got
back from France. Understand, Buddy? I’ve got a German helmet around to
my house——”
“Well,” said Roger, shamelessly, “you go right up those stairs; ’s that
helmet got a plume on it?”
Joanna had been singing Tschaikowsky’s “Longing.” Now she was sitting
still reading the words over and over:
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,
Weiss was ich leide,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ach! der mich liebt und kennt—
She mused over the last line: “Peter, I’m afraid you never really knew
me or loved me.”
He called to her softly from the door of the studio, “Joanna”. She
turned swiftly on the stool and saw him.
“Peter!”
What could they say? Does anyone believe that two people who have loved
dearly and have been parted can say anything adequate at such moments?
Certainly all the explanations, the pleas for forgiveness that Joanna
had meant to utter if they should ever meet again, left her. She only
sat and held his hand and called his name again and again. But he was
silent.
Both became terribly self-conscious, indeed, were very near weeping.
Peter told Joanna long afterwards that he did not dare speak for fear of
bursting into tears. Peter, who had been in two terrible engagements,
and had brought back Meriwether Bye from No Man’s Land!
He told Joanna about Meriwether during those first incredibly beatific
days after they had met again. But Joanna was too astounded at the
happiness which flooded the very atmosphere about them. Almost as though
she were taking a deep sea bath in bliss.
“I used to think,” she told him, “even if Peter does come back, we never
can
‘recapture
that first fine careless rapture.’”
“I don’t think we have, dear,” he told her wistfully, “for with this
happiness is the memory of that awful bitterness that lay between us.
There was nothing like this that first time.”
He persuaded her to go to Philadelphia, to Bryn Mawr in fact. “I’ve got
to give these pictures and the locket to Dr. Meriwether Bye and to Mrs.
Lea. I’m so sorry for them. To think we’re alive and have each other——”
“And their Meriwether is dead. Oh, Peter, if it had been you!”
“Yet I used to long for death, Joanna. I used to wish I’d get done in at
the Front. Did you pray for me?”
“Yes, sometimes. But I didn’t think you’d die. I used to think, though,
that you’d never come back to me. I didn’t see how Maggie could ever let
you go. She’s married Philip, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I told Vera, hoping it would get to you.” He mused over
some mysterious memory. “Well, Maggie certainly is some girl. How’s
Philip?”
“Better, oh, lots better. He has a fighting chance and it’s all due to
her. He’s in a sanitarium and she’s with him. She should have married
him long ago. It’s my fault she didn’t.” And she told him about the
letter.
“Gosh!” Peter exclaimed inadequately, “don’t you do funny things when
you’re kids? Well, here we are at Bryn Mawr. You want to wait here in
the station? I don’t think I’ll be long. If I am I’ll send for you. I
don’t mind going here myself, but I don’t want you to go in until I know
how they’re going to treat you.”
“Oh, go along,” laughed Joanna, “I’ve been in a million of their homes.
Thought you were all over that nonsense.”
He was back in a quarter of an hour, very serious. “The old gentleman is
ill, got bronchitis and they’re afraid it might turn into flu. So I left
a message and the pictures and my address. Your address, rather, Joanna
dear, since I don’t know just when I’m going to move. Now we’ll go to
Mrs. Lea’s. She’s just the next station up the line.”
They boarded the local. “I wish you could have seen that old butler,
Janna. He knew my grandfather. And the moment he saw me, he knew I was a
Bye. Gave me the funniest look. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘you’se the spit of both
families!’ Funny, isn’t it, Joanna; those two families, the black and
the white Byes, lived so long together that they developed similar
characteristics, like husbands and wives, you know. And they say white
and colored people are fathoms apart! Even I noticed that Meriwether Bye
and I were built alike. I’m afraid we weren’t much alike spiritually.
Well, here’s where we hop off again. I’m afraid I’ll be longer this
time. Mind waiting for me, darling?”
“Never, if you’ll only promise to come back to me,” she whispered.
Nothing had been said as yet about a new engagement. But he kissed her
in the Sunday quiet of the tiny station and held her close.
When he came back at the end of an hour she could see he was deeply
stirred.
“Hard on you, wasn’t it, Peter?”
“Yes, and on her, too. Poor little thing. I don’t pretend to understand
white people, Joanna, but I can’t imagine what Meriwether, that big,
fine idealist, could have seen in that little ball of fluff.
Self-centered, narrow and cruel—cruel, Joanna! Oh, such people! Do you
know what she said?”
“I can’t imagine, Peter.”
“I gave her the locket, and she said with the tears streaming down her
face, ‘To think that the Lord would let Meriwether Bye be killed and
would let his nigger live!’”
Joanna fell back against the red plush seat. “She didn’t, she couldn’t!”
“You wouldn’t think so. And then she told me, ‘Go on, tell me every word
he said.’ And I did, all I could remember. He had said to me one day, ‘I
love her and she loves me,’ and I told her that and she leaned back and
moaned—moaned, Janna. I wanted to pick her up in my arms and comfort
her, and if I had, do you know what would have happened to me——”
“Don’t, Peter.”
“Well, this is Pennsylvania, so probably I’d have got off with
imprisonment, here, but if it had been in Georgia, and I’d have dared to
touch her——”
She put her hand over his mouth, “Peter, you shan’t say it.”
“Darling, all the time I was there I was thinking: ‘Suppose this were
Joanna and I were Harley Alexander, or someone, telling her about Peter
Bye!’”
They were very sober after that.
At the West Philadelphia station Peter remembered a restaurant on Market
Street, where he had eaten in his student days. “I guess they’ll still
accommodate us. Where do you think I’m going to take you after we eat?”
“I can’t imagine, Peter.”
“Out to the Park, darling. I used to dream of this in France, when I was
in that hospital.”
Philadelphia, since the War, has changed for the worse in her attitude
toward colored people. But these two contrived to get a decent meal
after which they set out for the Park. It was October again, mellow and
beautiful. Joanna, tingling with memories of the past, asked Peter
nervously to tell her more of Meriwether Bye.
“He was a wonderful man, Joanna, a real, real man and he made me see
life from an entirely different angle. He said white men in their fight
for freedom in America had had tremendous physical odds to face and that
black men had helped them face them. Now it was our turn to fight for
freedom, only our odds were spiritual and mental obstacles, infinitely
more difficult because less tangible. ‘And just as you black men helped
us, Bye,’ he used to say, ‘there’re plenty of white men to help you. You
don’t know it; for one thing, you’ve shut your mind to us. Oh, you’re
not to blame, lots of us aren’t to be trusted; most of us, I’m afraid.
But we’re ignorant and incredulous. Show us what manhood means, Bye.’”
“He must have been wonderful, indeed, Peter.”
“Yes. And yet the queerest chap. You know I told you he had made up his
mind to die. That was the difference between us. I wanted to, but he had
made up his mind to it. And he told me: ‘I knew as soon as I saw you on
the ship that my job was finished, but you would have to carry on.
You’ll have to finish up my life, Peter.’”
Joanna felt tears in her eyes.
“Darling, he told me something else. He said I was a fool ever to have
let you go. My dear, I’m going to try to finish up Meriwether Bye’s
life, to be the man that he would have been. But I can do nothing
without you, Joanna.” Suddenly they were back in the full tide of their
love of long ago. He knelt beside her, kissing her hands. “Sweetest
Joanna, will you take me and make a man out of me? All that is decent in
me already is your work. Are you going to marry me, Joanna?”
An ineffable solemnity hung around them.
“Tell me, Joanna.”
“Of course, I’ll marry you, Peter. Dear, don’t think I don’t understand
how hard things have been for you. I was such a stupid, before, when we
were young. I didn’t allow for the difference in our temperaments. Why,
nothing in the world is so hard to face as this problem of being colored
in America. See what it does to us—sends Vera Manning South and Harley
overseas, away from everybody they’ve ever known, so that they can live
in—in a sort of bitter peace; forces you to consider giving up your
wonderful gift as a surgeon to drift into any kind of work; drives me,
and the critics call me a really great artist, Peter, to consider
ordinary vaudeville. Oh, it takes courage to fight against it, Peter, to
keep it from choking us, submerging us. But now that we have love,
Peter, we have a pattern to guide us out of the confusion. When you left
me for Maggie, I used to lie awake at night and think of all the sweet
things I might have said to you. Oh, if you’ve suffered half as much as
I have, you’ve suffered horribly. I learned that nothing in the world is
worth as much as love. For people like us, people who can and must
suffer—_Love_ is our refuge and strength.”
He kissed her reverently. “Yes, thank God, we’ve got Love. That is the
great compensation. We’ve tried everything else, dear: you, your career;
and I, my self-indulgence. And we’ve found what we wanted was each
other. But you’re right, Joanna, it is frightful to see the havoc that
this queer intangible bugaboo of color works among us. Vera and Harley,
you and I, aren’t so badly off. We’re intelligent, we can choose our own
native land and prejudice, or freedom and a strange, untried country. We
see clearly just what we’re keeping and what we’re letting go. But when
I think of the millions of Negroes, not as lucky as we—there’s Tom
Mason, remember the fellow I used to play with in Philadelphia? I heard
from him this morning. He’s made his pile and he wants to leave the
country. But his sister can’t and won’t stand the idea of taking up a
new life with strange people and a new language. ‘Why should I give up
my country?’ she wails. ‘It _is_ my country even if my skin is black?’”
“‘_Entbehren, sollst du_,’” Joanna quoted softly. “If you’re black in
America, you have to renounce. But that’s life, too, Peter. You’ve got
to renounce something—always.”
“Yes, you do. Unless, like Meriwether, you renounce life itself. Of
course, that is the great burden of being colored in this day. You’ve
got to make the ordinary renunciations which life demands, and you’ve
got to make those involved in the clash of color....
“I’m afraid you’ll have to give up your career, dear Joanna——”
“Of course, of course, I know it.”
“For, if there should be children, I want, Oh, Joanna, I hope——”
“You want them to be different from both you and me, Peter.”
“Not so different from you. You were always so brave, so plucky. But,
Joanna, if they are like me they’ll have so much to fight, and they’ll
need you to help them.”
“We can do anything together, Peter.”
“And, Joanna, of course you know we will be poor at first——”
She broke out crying then. “Oh, Peter, you won’t ever say again that I’m
different from Sylvia.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXV
MAGGIE and Philip had returned from the sanitarium to New York, but
Philip undoubtedly was dying. Peter and Harry Portor were at his bedside
every day, but not because of their ability to help him. They were
simply three friends together. Philip never spoke to Peter of the
incident at Des Moines, though it is probable that he thought of it many
times, but the young doctor seemed so serenely unaware of any former
misunderstanding that Philip, with a deep sense of relief, let the whole
incident slide out of his mind.
Joanna, meanwhile, was experiencing a little private purgatory of
remorse and grief. As she saw Philip’s joy in Maggie, his complete and
unbounded satisfaction in her presence, she became more and more
overwhelmed with the awfulness of that old unconsidered act of hers, the
sending of the letter which had caused Maggie to marry Henderson Neal.
Maggie had never told her this, but she was pretty sure that such was
the case. The mere fact that Maggie had never spoken about it to Peter,
even in the days of their engagement, led her to suspect that her
sister-in-law had attached more significance to it than she had cared to
show. There was only one thing for her, if she was ever to know any
peace, and that was to confess to Philip.
She went to see him in the late October weather. On the way she had
passed Morningside Park and the gorgeous autumn sights and colors had
brought back to her in a sudden heady rush the memories of the old
days,—partings with Peter, concert tours and meetings with Philip,
talks, dreams, ambitions, all the activities of her assured, confident,
determined youth. If she might only relive a few brief scenes—the night
she had dismissed Peter, the time she had spent in writing that cruel
letter to Maggie—how different her memories would have been!
Philip was in excellent spirits. He seemed quite reconciled to dying and
even spoke of it with a cheerfulness and familiarity that never failed
to bring a rush of tears to Joanna’s eyes, though this she was careful
to conceal. “Just think of the luck I’m in,” Philip would say, “I never
expected to come home at all. If Maggie hadn’t found me there in
Chambéry and taken pity on my lonesomeness, I’d probably be lying in a
French cemetery this moment with one of those little white crosses
standing above me. As it is, I’m seeing you all again and I have Maggie.
She has promised to stay with me always. It’s all right, Joanna, old
girl, I’ve had a good run for my money and except for Maggie I’m not so
sorry to chuck it all. Just think, it might have been my luck never to
have found her again at all.”
He said something like that to Joanna on this afternoon. Sobbing she
fell on her knees beside the bed. “Oh Philip, if it hadn’t been for me,
you’d have found her long ago.”
He was suddenly attentive, his eyes bright and keen in his thin
sharpening face as she told him about the letter. With infinite
gentleness he let his hand rest on that proud dark head which life had
taught so hardly to bow.
“Dear Janna, dear little sister, don’t blame yourself one moment. It was
all my fault. If you’d left a hundred letters unwritten, I should hardly
have moved any more quickly. In those days I was so taken up with the
business of being colored! After I’d adjusted that I thought I’d arrange
my life. Ah, Joanna, that’s our great mistake. We must learn to look out
for life first, then color and limitations. My being colored didn’t make
me forget to provide myself with food and raiment. I shouldn’t have
allowed it to make me forget love.” His grasp on her hand tightened.
“Learn this, Joanna, and tell the rest of our folks. Our battle is a
hard one and for a long time it will seem to be a losing one, but it
will never really be that as long as we keep the power of being happy.
And happiness has to be deliberately sought for, gained; even that
doesn’t solve the problem, but it does make it easier for us to fight.
Happiness, love, contentment in our own midst, make it possible for us
to face those foes without. ‘Happy Warriors,’ that’s the ideal for us.
Only I realized it too late.”
That was his last long talk with Joanna. Usually he gave all his
attention to Maggie who was with him always, supplying and anticipating
his wants and radiating an ineffable peace. Her hand was in his when he
died.
His father, remembering his intense patriotism as a child, said with a
touch of bitter pride: “He died for his country.”
“It was what he always wanted to do,” Sylvia said gently. But Joanna
knew that Philip’s real desire envisaged _living_ for his country—to
save her from something worse than war.
His death diffused a gentle melancholy over the others. It was the first
serious rent in the fabric of the Marshall family. Old Joel took to
indulging in long, deep reveries. Mrs. Marshall, quite dry-eyed, took
out all of Philip’s baby things, wrapped them up to send away and quite
suddenly put them back in their places. Her interest in Sylvia’s
children took on an almost feverish intensity. Sylvia herself and Joanna
and sometimes Sandy had many talks, wistful with reminiscences.
Maggie alone remained calm and almost cheerful. “Not because she’s
unfeeling,” Joanna explained to Sylvia, “but because she is so
satisfied.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “Satisfied and Philip dead?”
“Yes, because so easily he might have died without their ever having
come together. But they did. Oh, Sylvia, you and Brian have had such a
simple, easy, jog-trot time of it, you don’t know what it means to have
your life all broken up like Maggie’s and mine have been, and poor Vera
Manning’s.”
Whatever the cause, Maggie spent her days serenely. Secure not only in
the knowledge that she was bulwarked by the Marshall respectability, but
also by the resolve which she had made before she saw Philip in
Chambéry, she started on the project of her Beauty Parlors.
She said to Joel who, she knew, admired her ability: “See if you can’t
make me as great a success in business as you’ve been.” They spent many
pleasant hours in consultation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXXVI
JOANNA and Peter married and Peter came at Joel’s insistent request to
live in the One Hundred and Thirty-eighth Street house. It was marvelous
to see how the two old people renewed themselves in the youth of their
children. Joel was as proud of Peter as he had been of Joanna. Even Mrs.
Marshall’s long allegiance to Sylvia wavered a little.
The first child was a boy; “Meriwether,” Peter had named him after young
Dr. Meriwether Bye. “I’m going to tempt providence,” he said to his
wife. “I hope he’ll not be the sort of Meriwether that my father was.
I’ll see to it that he isn’t. He’s going to be all and more than old
Isaiah Bye ever dreamed of,” and he quoted, to Joanna’s mystification:
“By _his_ fruits shall ye know _me_.”
The two possessed happiness; but more than happiness they had found
peace. They were united by the very pain which each had caused the
other. And the knowledge of how greatly each could suffer created in
them a sort of whimsical tolerance. There is nothing like humor to speed
the wheels of life.
Joanna, having come to understand the nothingness of that inordinate
craving for sheer success, surprised herself by the pleasure which came
to her out of what she had always considered the ordinary things of
life. Realizing how nearly she had lost the essentials in grasping after
the trimmings of existence, she experienced a deep, almost holy joy in
the routine of the day. To see about her, her husband and parents,
little Meriwether usually in Joel’s arms, gave her, she confessed almost
shamefacedly to Sylvia, “thoughts that lay too deep for tears.” She
rarely regretted leaving the stage and although she sang sometimes in
churches and concerts and once even went on a brief tour, she almost
never danced except in the ordinary way.
Still, as her mentality was essentially creative, she found herself more
and more impelled toward the expression of the intense appreciation of
living which welled within her. Luckily her training in music offered
her some outlet. With her slight knowledge of composition she composed
two little songs and glimpsing future possibilities, she began to study
that most fascinating of all the sciences—harmony.
The change in Peter was more fundamental than that in Joanna. She at
least had always had these possibilities of domesticity. Her desire for
greatness had been a sort of superimposed structure which, having been
taken off, left her her true self. It was as though her life had
expanded on the plan of Holmes’ admonition to the Chambered Nautilus:
Leave thy low vaulted Past—
Let each new temple,
Nobler than the last,
Shut thee from Heaven
With a dome more vast
Till thou at length art free,—
Joanna was free.
But Peter had had to undergo a complete metamorphosis. He was a
supersensitive colored man living among hosts of indifferent white
people. Not only had he to change in every particular his theory of how
to maintain such a relationship, but indeed he had to decide what sort
of relationship was worth maintaining. At his father’s death and during
his young manhood he had been absolutely without a notion of the
responsibilities which the most average man expects to take upon
himself. He looked back with a real shame and chagrin to the many favors
which he had accepted without question from his Aunt Susan.
Joanna, clever Joanna, helped him here. She was not only naturally
independent, but she was, for all her talent, essentially practical with
that clearheadedness which artistic people exhibit sometimes in such
unexpected fashion. Perhaps it is wrong to imply that Joanna had lost
her ambition. She was still ambitious, only the field of her ambition
lay without herself. It was Peter now whom she wished to see succeed. If
his success depended ever so little on his achievement of a sense of
responsibility, then she meant to develop that sense. To this end, she
consulted him, she took his advice, she asked him to arrange about the
few recitals which she undertook. In a thousand little ways she deferred
to him, and showed him that as a matter of course he was the arbiter of
her own and her child’s destiny, the _fons et origo_ of authority.
So he grew both in the spirit of racial tolerance and in the spirit of
responsibility. He wanted to live in America; he wanted to get along
with his fellow man, but he no longer proposed to let circumstances
shape his career. No one but himself, not even Joanna, should captain
his ship. He meant to be a successful surgeon, a responsible husband and
father, a self-reliant man.
The memory of Meriwether Bye, never far distant, braced him constantly.
The young physician’s words and ideas had exercised a singleness of
concentration, of influence over Peter such as a friendship of long
standing could hardly have hoped to achieve.
For a long time he expected to hear from Meriwether’s grandfather. Then
as the months and nearly two years rolled by without a sign from Bryn
Mawr, Peter decided that the old gentleman wished to spare himself the
pain of learning more of the circumstances surrounding his grandson’s
death.
Sylvia’s boy, Roger, captivated by his new soldier-uncle, spent most of
his time at Peter’s house serving in the purely impressionistic capacity
of office-boy. He came up to the sitting room one summer morning bearing
a bit of cardboard between his fingers.
“Meriwether Bye,” he pronounced, handing the card to Peter. “Ain’t it
funny he should have the same name as the kid? But he’s no relation
because he’s white and as old as the hills.”
“Meriwether’s grandfather!” Peter said in astonishment. “Come on down
with me, Joanna.”
Together they descended to find an old, old man sitting in an absolutely
immobile silence in Peter’s office. He rose, a tall, straight, white
figure and looked at the two young people, still in silence.
“I’m Peter Bye,” the young man said, coming forward. “Won’t you sit
down? Sit here, Joanna.”
Together they sat in a strange, strained quiet, Joanna watching Peter in
whom she sensed the rising anew of the antagonism of all the years.
There they were, she felt, representing the last of the old order and
the first of the new, since Peter’s generation was the first to escape
the effect of the ancient régime, and he personally had not completely
escaped it. How many things this ancient, stately personage who sat
regarding them with keen though inscrutable eyes could have told them of
the circumstances which had combined to make the two of them what they
were! For this old man’s whole life and fortune had been reared on the
institution of slavery.
Out of the puzzling silence he spoke, in the expressionless, brittle
tone of extreme old age. “Yes, I know you are a Bye, Isaiah Bye’s
grandson. And you were with Meriwether at the end. Tell me about it.”
Very solemnly, almost pityingly, Peter began the recital of his brief,
dream-like acquaintance with Meriwether Bye. “He had quite made up his
mind beforehand that he was going to die. Perhaps you knew. So, I’m sure
he was quite reconciled to it; I don’t think you need grieve for him.
And at the very end I was with him. It turned out that we had been
fighting just a few yards apart. I think I eased him a little; I’m a
doctor, too,” said Peter simply. He put his hand in front of his eyes as
though trying to shut out the vision of the pitiful, needless death.
“His last words were to you, did I tell you, sir? He sat up suddenly
against me, his hand on my arm and called out—Oh, I can hear his voice
now: ‘Grandfather, this is the last of the Byes.’”
They sat again in a deep silence.
“I’m sorry,” Peter continued after a long revery, “that he hadn’t
married, and had no children. It’s hard on you, sir, you who are now the
last of the Byes.”
“Yes,” said the old gentleman laconically, “it is. Now, suppose you tell
me something about yourself.”
But first Peter told him about his father, Meriwether, glossing over the
dead man’s faults and irresoluteness and dwelling on his ambition. “So
you see, I had always had the idea of becoming a doctor before me. But
I’m afraid I should never have realized it if it had not been for my
wife, here.” He smiled gratefully at Joanna, who smiled back at him with
a gratitude of another sort. He had uttered no word of complaint nor of
the difficulties attendant on being a colored man in America. She was
very proud of him. He was so charming, so handsome, growing daily in
independence.
“You have a son,” said old Meriwether. “I believe you said you had a
son, Meriwether? How would you like me to take him and educate him,
bring him up away from all he’d have to go through in this country, let
him spend his life in Paris and Vienna. Perhaps he would be a doctor,
too. When he became a man he could do as he pleased. And probably,
probably, I say, I should make him my heir.”
Neither Joanna nor Peter had ever thought of wealth. And while neither
of them envisaged for a second the possibility of parting from little
Meriwether, they were momentarily stunned at such prospects, Joanna
especially.
“Why,” asked Peter, his old demon of dislike and suspicion flaring up in
him, “should you at this late date show interest in a black Bye?”
“Because,” said Meriwether Bye, getting up and beginning to pace the
floor, “because he _is_ my heir. Because he _is_ the last of the Byes.
Because when my brave boy called out ‘this is the last of the Byes,’ he
meant you, not himself. He had no way of knowing it, but he did know it.
That queer sense in him which warned him he was going to die, probably
told him.
“You’ve heard of your grandfather Isaiah, the boy that grew up with me?”
Peter nodded. “Well, his father, black Joshua Bye, was my oldest
brother; my father—he was Aaron Bye—was his father. Joshua was really
his oldest child. His mother was Judy Bye, old Judy Bye, whom I’ve seen
often sitting in Isaiah’s house, her eyes straining, straining into the
future—perhaps she saw this, who knows?”
“My father,” said Peter in a dangerously level voice, “told me and told
me often that much of Aaron Bye’s prosperity had been due to the loyalty
and hard work of Joshua Bye. But he never told me that Aaron was his
father. And you knew this, have known it——”
“Not while Isaiah and I were boys. Not for many, many years afterwards.
My father,” the word seemed strange on this old man’s lips, “always
meant, I think, to do something for his—his son in his will. But he put
it off and finally just before his death he told my brother Elmer—his
oldest son by his real wife you know—told him about it. But Elmer was
all out of sympathy with the idea, and, although he did not tell my
father so, had no notion of acquainting Joshua either with his real
parentage or with the fact that he should have been one of Aaron Bye’s
heirs. Elmer was one of those men with a sharp dislike, amounting to an
obsession, almost, for Negroes, for all unfortunate people. I’m free
from it personally.”
“Yet,” said Peter harshly, “your conduct has differed not one whit from
his. How long have _you_ known this?”
“Since the close of the Civil War. All my brothers had died but Elmer,
and all _his_ sons were killed in the war. When Elmer was himself about
to die, he told me. He thought the loss of his sons was a curse upon him
because he had failed to obey my father’s wishes. He left their carrying
out to me. I was a young man still. I saw no reason for opening up old
wounds. Besides, I did not know what had become of Isaiah’s son. Isaiah
and Joshua were both dead. I could not see that my father had acted
differently from other slave-holders—it was the custom of the
country—and at least he did not do as many a white man had done, sell
his son into deeper and more terrible slavery.... I can see now that
whatever slavery may have done for other men it has thrown the lives of
all the Byes into confusion. Think of the farce my father’s religion
must have become to him ... and I shall never forget Elmer. Sometimes I
think the shadow of it fell across Meriwether’s life—I meant to tell
him. I know he would have made restitution. Now I shall do it for him.”
He ceased speaking and looked at Peter curiously, wistfully. “I suppose
you find it hard to forgive us. I’m afraid I had not thought until very
recently what this might have meant to you,—to Isaiah.”
Peter ignored this. “If you made my son your heir,” he questioned,
avoiding Joanna’s startled look, “would you be willing to publish to the
world that you were doing it because little Meriwether was your blood
relation—no matter how distant—or would this be the gift of an eccentric
philanthropist?”
The old man’s face grew a dull red. “Surely it would not be
necessary—think of my father. What good would it do the boy to know that
Aaron Bye’s blood flowed in his veins?”
“None,” said Peter triumphantly. He turned to Joanna. “See, dear, there
is the source of all I used to be. My ingratitude, my inability to adopt
responsibility, my very irresoluteness come from that strain of white
Bye blood. But I understand it now, I can fight against it. I’m free,
Joanna, free.”
He walked over to Meriwether Bye, and the two tall straight men—so
alike, so different, one young, one very old—gazed for a long time at
each other.
“I don’t want your gifts,” said Peter gently, “nor does my son want
them—neither your money nor the acknowledgment of your blood. They come
too late.” He turned to his wife after Meriwether had left the house.
“Thank God, Joanna, they have come too late. Perhaps I might have been
like that.”
Afterwards the memory of the little black testament returned to him. He
found it and showed it to Joanna. “I’ll bet that old codger Ceazer knew
that Joshua wasn’t his son and that’s why he scratched his own name out
of the book. _He_ would have been an ancestor worth having.”
Joanna looked at him proudly. “Peter, you are wonderful! Such a man, a
great man!”
He sighed a little wistfully. “There spoke the real Joanna. Greatness,
even in daily living, will always be your creed, I suppose.”
“No,” said Joanna, a shameless apostate, “my creed calls for nothing but
happiness.”
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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