"And I know what you'd say," Hertha cried, interrupting him. "You'd say, 'I was thinking——'" imitating his drawl.
"Yes'm. And then he'd say, 'Get up, man, and go to work. This ain't no place to think.'
"Well, it was like that all day. I went into chapel, a mighty fine building, you could put most of the cabins at home in it without crowding, and I sat down there alone on the back seat, jes' studying the world here an' the world ter come. I hadn't been there a minute when the Captain comes up and says sharp-like, 'What you doin' here?' 'Jes' thinkin',' I says. 'Can't have that,' he says, 'this ain't no place to think. Go to work!' I walks down under the trees at sunset an' watches the pink turn into soft purple, studying ter find the first star, when some one comes along and calls out, 'Get up, man! Don't sit still like that. Go to work!' At night, when every one's in bed, I thought they'd let up, so I looked out the window. The moon was sailing past the stars, you know, and I was studying it out the way we used ter, and thinking, thinking—But, Lord, 'What you up at this time of night for, boy? 'the officer asks, tapping me on the arm. 'Jes' thinkin',' I answers. 'You can't do that here,' says he, 'no time for thinking. Go to bed!' So then I studies how to come to New York and after a while I gets here."
Tom finished his recital and smiled down at his listener.
"But Tom," Hertha asked, "wasn't Ellen terribly disappointed?"
"She's reconciled," he said dryly.
Hertha thought of Ellen and the wreckage of her plans, and surmised that there must have been a stormy period before reconciliation.
"It seems strange, Tom," she said at length, "that you should be here in New York alone."
"I ain't alone," he replied, "not exactly alone. I's boarding with a lady from the South."
"Why, that's just the way it is with me," Hertha said. "Isn't that odd!"
"Do you get enough to eat?" Tom asked.
"Plenty. Don't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," the boy said tolerantly. "It stand ter reason city folks can't feed you like they do at home. When you have to put down a nickel or a dime for every mite o' food you buy, for every pinch o' corn meal, and every orange, it comes hard to set much on the table. And if a feller goes out to one o' these restaurants to feed, why before he's reached the pie, if he don't look out, he's eat up his day's wages."
"Eaten, Tom."
"Yes'm, eaten."
"I do hope you aren't going to be careless in the way you talk, Tom. I hope you haven't learned a lot of new slang."
"Yes'm."
"You look well, anyway!" Hertha said, surveying him carefully.
She was pleased not only at his good health, but at the way he dressed, the evident care he had taken to be neat and cleanly. Her pride in him grew for she could see that he had improved as he had taken on responsibility. Evidently it had thus far worked well for him to break loose from his women folk and school and to shift for himself.
"What you doing, Hertha?" Tom questioned.
She told him a little of her life, her pleasant room upstairs, her work at stenography. But she preferred to listen, and before long he was again the chief talker, retailing every bit of news, no matter how trivial, that had come in the letters from home. Her eagerness was so evident, and her happiness in seeing him so apparent, that Tom wondered to himself why she had never given them the chance to communicate with her during the months she had been away. As though she sensed his question she said, hesitating, the blood rushing to her cheeks:
"You mustn't think I didn't want to hear from everybody; I did so much. And I sent them cards at Christmas that I was well. Were you at school then?"
For answer he drew from his pocket her gift, and spun the top a moment on his sleeve when it fell to the floor. Hertha picked it up as she had picked up so many of his toys and put it in his brown hand where it descended to his pocket again. She was standing now, looking into his face. "Mammy told me," she said, "not to try to live in two worlds, not until I was sure fixed in the new one and," shaking her head, "it takes a long time to get fixed. But that wasn't the only reason. If I'd written and they'd answered—it's such a little place, sometimes not half-a-dozen letters in the post office—why, every one in Merryvale would have known where I was."
She hesitated, blushing, but she had said enough. The look of anger on the boy's face recalled suddenly to her remembrance the Sunday that they had stopped on the porch of the great house and Lee Merryvale had tried to send Tom home alone. Did he guess the shame of the weeks after his departure, weeks that all her pride had not been able wholly to push from her memory? She shrank at his rough answer.
"You're right," he said. "I's glad you won't have nothing to do with that skunk."
There was a rush of feet on the kitchen stairs, and Bob surprised them both by plunging into the room.
"What are you doing up so late?" Hertha demanded, but Bob did not hear her.
"Miss Ogilvie," he said, all excitement, "the cook told me that Tom is here."
"Yes," Hertha answered, and then with a gesture of introduction, dropping into the phraseology of home said, "Bob, meet Tom."
The little boy showed a moment's surprise, then accepting the race of his hero, Tom-of-the-Woods, as a simple fact, asked eagerly, "Did you bring your top?"
Tom, surprised at this greeting, brought out the top again.
"Come along," Bob cried, and leading the way they all three went out of the house down the stoop.
"You must do awfully well," Hertha whispered as under the street lamp the hero of her story began slowly to wind his string.
"What you been giving him?" he asked, nodding to the little boy whose gleaming blue eyes and intense interest in the proceedings augured more than the mere pleasure in seeing a top spin.
"I've just been telling him a few things," she answered lightly.
She stood on the steps and watched with delight Tom's careful choice of the best spot on the pavement for his spin and smiled to see the two boy-faces, one so pink and white, the other so brown, each intent on the business in hand.
It was a queer trick. Despite the many times Hertha had seen it, she was never quite sure at what moment the top, spinning at a marvelous pace, was caught up by the spinner to disappear in his pocket. And if she felt the illusion, despite her familiarity with it, there was no question but that Bob in the dim light, looking for the miraculous, found it. He regarded Tom as a magician and only hoped for some new manifestation of his power when he straightened himself up and stood before them.
"I must go now," he said.
He looked up at Hertha who stood on the step above him.
"Tom," she said, trying to delay him, "do you go to church?"
"Of course!"
"To Siloam?"
"How'd you guess that?"
"It's the biggest church in town."
Tom smiled. "I reckon you know'd I wouldn't go to any but a big one while I was about it."
"And when you write home tell them all about me, won't you?"
"Yes."
"And we won't lose track of one another again."
He did not reply to this, but with a smile for her and a nod to Bob, walked with his slow, steady gait down the street. Hertha stood by her doorstep fearing to go farther, but Bob tore after his hero and with short, trotting steps that sometimes became a run, accompanied him to the street car, watching as he was carried away out of his sight.
When he came back he found Hertha standing just where he had left her.
"Say, Miss Ogilvie," he questioned, "is it staying in the woods so much makes him black?"
"Why do you ask!" Hertha said sharply; "don't you like him the way he is?"
"Oh, I don't care," Bob replied in a catholic spirit; and added meditatively: "In the Arabian Nights all the genii are black."
There are some who make decisions with the sure swiftness of a sensitive film, one moment a blank, the next, by a flash of light, a picture, incisive and clear. Such people, though they may make their share of mistakes, lead on the whole a comfortable existence. But there are others who, like the southern girl occupying the second-story back-room of Mrs. Pickens' boarding-house, find it difficult to determine for themselves the course which they shall take. And to these who wander in the valley of indecision the right path to follow becomes daily more obscured. The more they question the more they are beset with obstacles, mists gather about them, and some have been known to wait in hesitancy, until, without having tasted of adventure, they find that their day is done.
Hertha, however difficult decision might be to her, had determined not to be in this latter group. When her school work was over, she had resolved to settle upon her future; but in the days that followed Tom's visit, when with her lover away there was a chance to stop and think, she had to confess to herself that the paths down which she looked were none of them to her liking. And yet she must apparently choose one of two alternatives or else after seven months of trial start in again with lessened fortune, without a profession and alone.
As she sat at her books late one afternoon, endeavoring to indite a business letter she looked up to find Miss Wood standing at her open door.
"Excuse me," Miss Wood said, "I know you are at work but I wanted to leave you some of my roses. One of our cases—a woman who got into trouble—brought them to me from the country to-day. She did the sensible thing (so few will) and went away with her child to work at domestic service; and now she can come in for the day and leave me something as lovely as this." And she held out a spray of rambler roses.
Hertha took the gift with a shy word of thanks, and after placing the flowers in water invited Miss Wood to sit down.
"No, I'm not going to interrupt you," the older woman said.
"You aren't interrupting," Hertha answered. "Especially," she added, "as I want very much to ask your advice."
To be asked to assume the role of adviser is the most subtle of compliments; and Miss Wood, while murmuring that she feared she would be of little use, took Hertha's rocking-chair by the window and proceeded to look self-conscious, as though she might thus exude wisdom.
"Do you think," Hertha asked, sitting on the little straight white chair opposite Miss Wood, "do you think that it needs any special talent to be a stenographer?"
She put her question hesitatingly, playing the while with her hands, a habit that had lately come to her with the city's insistent hurry and nervous demand for quick thought. Her day at school had been a hard one and only a walk with Bob had brought back courage to face life.
"I certainly think," Miss Wood answered, "that there are plenty of stenographers in New York to-day without talent. I've had some of them work for me."
"Yes," said Hertha with a little smile, "but you wouldn't want me to be that sort!"
The assistant secretary of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Destitute had her share of humor. Smiling back at her interlocutor she proceeded to give Hertha's question the thought it deserved.
"Where do you feel that your talent falls short?" she demanded.
"Oh, everywhere," Hertha answered vaguely, and then added, "it's all so confusing, especially when you have to hurry."
"You haven't been at work long enough to be speeded," her adviser answered. "Perhaps they aren't teaching you well."
"The others get ahead." In the answer lurked a hint of tears.
"I don't believe, then," Miss Wood said, weighing her words carefully, "that you will want to be a stenographer; that is, a stenographer whose whole time is taken up with typewriting and dictation. But you can be a secretary with only moderate skill at stenography if you have other qualifications."
"Probably I haven't got them," Hertha murmured.
"I know you have some of them." Miss Wood became emphatic now, she felt on safe ground. "You have an attractive personality. Why, I should try you in my office, if I had one of my own, the first minute I saw you! You would be courteous to all who came in, and discreet; you wouldn't talk about your employer's business when you went home; and," looking about her, "you are orderly. Oh, you have many qualifications." The last words were vague but Miss Wood left her listener cheered and with returned self-respect. Especially was Hertha pleased that a woman, not a smirking man, expressed a desire to employ her if given the opportunity.
Unfortunately, the next day, in her tussle with a business order, she made such a hodge-podge of words that her teacher laughed. That evening she knocked at Mrs. Pickens' door.
She was welcomed cordially to a comfortable seat while her landlady hastily gathered together the bunch of newspapers that she had been looking over and threw them into a corner.
"What have you been reading about to-night?" Hertha questioned. "A young woman who doesn't know her own mind?"
"I reckon there're plenty of that sort," was the answer, "or if they do know what they want they'll never get it. I just read a modest advertisement in which a refined young woman, graduating from a school of stenography, says she wants a position with an agreeable gentleman. Hours short. How would you like that now?"
"I might like it, but I reckon after he tried me with one of his letters he wouldn't like me."
"Nonsense, then he wouldn't be agreeable."
Hertha was silent, and Mrs. Pickens, seeing that she was in no mood for banter, asked sympathetically, "You're mighty tired, honey?"
Her voice with its southern drawl reminded Hertha poignantly of her mammy. She longed childishly to put her head on the older woman's shoulder as she would have put it on her colored mother's, and be comforted. But she remained in her seat and answered with the single word, "Discouraged."
"It's too hot to work," Mrs. Pickens said soothingly. "I've managed myself to-day to spoil ten pounds of perfectly good fruit."
"What a shame!" Hertha was alert at the disaster. "Why wasn't I here to help you! I know how to cook."
"You're a clever girl. You know the things you ought to know which is a lot more than I do, having been spoilt in my youth. And the things you don't know aren't worth worrying over."
"I don't seem to know how to earn my own living."
"Let some one, who wants to, earn it for you then."
In the silence that followed Mrs. Pickens devoutly hoped that her bluntness had not hurt Dick's cause.
"Of course I can support myself," Hertha said at length in a low voice, "I have already been a companion. I would rather do that again than just to marry for a home. How do you know you are going to like the home you get? If you're a companion you can leave it, but if you're married you're expected to stay on no matter how much you may hate every step you take and dread the thought of to-morrow!"
"Of course," Mrs. Pickens made haste to say, in some consternation, "you mustn't marry if you feel like that!"
Hertha's voice was hardly audible. "I don't feel that way about Dick to-day, but I don't know how I might feel to-morrow."
Her valley of indecision was black indeed; but Bob came to say good-night and she forgot it for a time in her happiness with the child.
June flowered with tropical luxuriance in the city park. Wonderful blue lilies, that Cleopatra might have inhaled for fragrance, floated on the little pond by the side of their less foreign white and yellow neighbors. Roses of all varieties and color grew in straight lines in the Italian garden. Rhododendrons massed the hillside, gorgeous rose color, and honeysuckle and sweet-smelling shrubs lined the paths or clambered over the rustic arbors. There were times when Hertha, country lover that she was, sighed at the studied prettiness of it all and waxed weary at the constant stream of people who never gave Bob or herself a chance to be alone, but it was much better than the view of the East-side elevated; so, though she had made no friend whom she loved as she loved Kathleen, she did not regret her change of residence. But during each day, in the outing that she allowed herself, far back in her mind, whether feeding the ducks and goldfish or retailing a new phase in the history of Tom-of-the-Woods, there was a sense of irksome responsibility, of the necessity shortly of deciding upon the next step in life.
"I had a letter from Dick to-day," Mrs. Pickens announced to Hertha one evening in the third week of his departure.
She had not mentioned him before, except casually, since the night they had talked in her room.
"What does he say?" Hertha asked.
They were sitting out on the stoop, for the evening was a warm one.
"Oh, nothing very much," Mrs. Pickens answered, "chiefly joking about the dreadful food he gets and how glad he will be to come home."
"Men do care a lot about what they have to eat."
"They surely do. I suppose it's partly because after their work they're hungry, really hungry, and food tastes good to them. I work, too, but when I've been over this house, from top to bottom, and seen that Mary doesn't spoil everything she puts her hand to, I haven't the least desire for my dinner."
"You take it all very hard," Hertha said.
"Do I? Well, I suspect that's because I am incompetent, like Mary, and it makes me nervous and doubly anxious over everything."
"That's the way I feel in class."
Mrs. Pickens glanced anxiously at the young girl noting how fragile-looking she had grown in the past weeks.
"You seemed so well when you came here," she said, "and now you are certainly thin. I hope it isn't my incompetence that has brought the change about."
"You know it isn't," the girl answered.
There was a pleasant silence in which neither felt the necessity of speech and then out of the fast approaching darkness Hertha asked: "Have you spent the most of your life in New York?"
"No, I only came here after my marriage. My life has been an ordinary one. A quiet girlhood, fifteen years of perfect married life, and now, a common struggle to keep from being despondent and to make both ends meet. The best for me is done."
"Fifteen years wasn't very long, was it?"
"One way it seems about fifteen minutes but another way it seems an eternity. It was all my life—I'm only existing now. And do you know," speaking in a low voice into the twilight, "I've never said this before, hardly to myself, but I came very near not marrying my husband. I was young and not romantically in love. He was ten years older and that seemed frightening. If it had not been for my mother, who appreciated him better than I, I doubt if I would have accepted him. Afterward, when we had lived together for months and I had given my whole heart to him, I used to waken in the night and shake with horror at the thought of what I might have lost. When I realized what we would have missed without our life together, I would grow chill with a perfectly unreasoning fear.
"I asked him once if he had ever questioned that he wanted me," Mrs. Pickens went on, "and he laughed and said not since the first May morning when I came to church in a blue gown and sat across the aisle from him. He surely knew his mind, but that's often the difference between men and women!"
Another silence and then Mrs. Pickens went within.
Hertha lingered trying to conceive of a love that had in it no romance and yet blossomed into passionate devotion. And as she strove to imagine such a condition, as she called up Dick's image and saw him playing with her in the snow, sitting by her at the opera, rowing with her in the park, her brain proved for a time obedient; and then the air was suddenly filled with the scent of orange blossoms.
"Oh, it's no use," she said despairingly, "I can't decide." And then in a tremor of excitement and determination, "Next Sunday I mean to have one more talk with Tom."
The usher at Siloam Church gave a second glance at the very pretty girl whom with considerable ceremony he escorted to a seat. He did not for a moment think of her as white, else resisting her request to remain in the rear he would have placed her in the front pew; but he recognized her as a stranger and wondered as he continued his duties where she might hail from, and whether she might not be persuaded to regard Siloam as her future church home.
Hertha, her curly hair pushed well about her face, sat in the corner of a seat and scanned the congregation for Tom. She saw him after a few moments in the middle of the center aisle, his forehead knit a little as he followed the service, his whole posture one of comfortable repose. He was enjoying his Sunday rest and, as a preacher's son should, found the church a natural place in which to make himself at home. Hertha thought she heard his voice as the congregation sang the Gospel hymn, and so happy was she watching him that she looked sideways slyly to his seat as with bowed head she listened to the prayer.
"Bless all Thy people, Lord," the preacher was saying, his rich, powerful voice filling the great church like the notes of the organ. "We ask Thy blessing upon us in this our hour of worship. Bless those who live in our midst and those who have come from afar. May they be guided by Thy voice and profited by Thy holy word. Bless all those who are in any ways in affliction or in distress. Send them Thy heavenly light that shines in the eternal brightness of Thy countenance and make plain to them the way of salvation."
"I have come from afar," Hertha thought, "and I surely need guidance." And in reverent attitude she strove to secure the blessing of which the preacher spoke. But the church with its dark-faced congregation recalled her past, and the past brought continually back to her her present problem. She looked over toward Tom and smiled to think that the boy, who when a baby, she had hushed as he lay cuddled up to her in church, should be one to whom she went for counsel. She only dimly realized that to her he was not only her brother, but also the member of a race that she understood better than she as yet understood the white race of which she was now a part. Before the service was over and the preacher's voice gave its last "Amen," she found that the familiar scene, the religious phraseology with its well-worn metaphor but also with its vivid beauty, stirred her to tragic homesickness and brought the hot tears to her eyes.
"Tom!" She had slipped from the detaining hand of the Missionary Sister, a large middle-aged woman who welcomed her effusively to the church, and stopped her boy as he reached the door.
He looked at her in astonishment. "There ain't nothing happened?" he asked in alarm.
"Oh, no," she answered, laughing nervously and moving to one side to let the people pass. "Only that I need to talk with you."
"I don't know where we can go." He stood perplexed, his forehead drawn in thought. His first alarm over it seemed to Hertha that he did not wish to see her and she was hurt to the quick.
"We can walk in the square."
Tom shook his head.
"Yes we can!" she declared, the tears in her eyes. "We've often walked out together." The service with the memories that it called up had shaken her. She had felt her lips trembling more than once this morning and now a rebuff was hard to bear.
"Jes' wait a minute," Tom said. "I'm thinking."
The familiar phrase sent back the tears and brought a smile. Realizing that she must bide her time and confident that Tom would find a way out of any difficulty she stood aside, watching the congregation as it stopped to speak with friend or neighbor or went quickly on its way.
It was the first time she had been to a Negro quarter since her advent to New York and in a short two hours she was wholly at home. Happy in the welcome that came from one after another in the congregation, her loneliness disappeared, and she returned "good mornings" without embarrassment. Before Tom had finished his thinking, two little brown-skinned girls, whose spotless white dresses and gaily flowered white hats were not more fresh and bright than their shining faces, made friends with her. They stood, one on either hand, fingering her dress, and the younger, who was an alert child, asked more than one pertinent question. "Where you run to, chillen?" their mother demanded as she came up, and the soft dialect made Hertha feel as though the query had been addressed to her. As the little girls moved away she turned the question over in her mind, asking it of herself. In these seven months since she had closed the door upon the colored world what path had she taken, down what road had she been running, with whom had she stopped to talk on her way? Naturally mistrustful of herself, she began to question whether she had done any better than one of these children who stopped with her for a moment and then ran on to some new happening.
"I bin fixing to stay here," Tom said coming up to her after a few minutes' absence. "The sexton, he's a friend of mine, and if I lock up after me I can stay right on in the church."
It was a pleasant place to stop for a talk. The windows were open, the air was fresh, and though this auditorium was far larger and more sumptuous than any they had been accustomed to in their childhood, it seemed a natural and good spot for a sober chat.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you about everything that's happened," Hertha declared as they sat down well at the front. Tom nodded assent, and she began her narrative, haltingly at first, but, as she went on, filling it with incidents of her life with Kathleen, her work in the factory, and her decision to move and to study a profession. On her failure to do good work at stenography she laid much emphasis and ended by asking for advice regarding the best way to earn her living.
Tom looked at her soberly and yet somewhere back she felt that there was a hint of a smile.
"You haven't told me about your feller," he declared after she had finished.
During her recital Hertha had been looking straight ahead at the pulpit with its reading-desk and red plush cushion on which rested a huge Bible. Now she turned in her seat and addressed herself directly to Tom.
"What do you know about him?" she asked.
"Nothin'," Tom replied, the smile that Hertha had felt in the background coming to the surface. "It wouldn't be anything but natural if you had a dozen. But Bob told me you had one."
"Bob! How did you have time enough to exchange confidences like that?"
"There weren't any exchange. Before he'd finished the car come. I reckon he was planning to have me give a wave of my hand and send the feller off the earth. What did you give him, Hertha? The kid thought I was a magician."
"Oh, I just told him a story," Hertha answered vaguely, "and used your name. But what did Bob mean? Didn't he like Dick?"
"Jealous, I reckon."
Hertha laughed. "Well, I'll tell you about him," she declared, "I was coming to him when I spoke."
Playing with her handkerchief, her mouth trembling sometimes as she talked, she seemed to Tom both nervous and tired. He had not thought she could so lose her old serenity. But he listened attentively as she told of her meetings with Dick in the library and at the park. As her story continued he grew to like the young southerner for his considerate and unselfish devotion. Looking at Hertha's too slender figure and at her restless hands he felt, as Dick so often felt, that she was not one who should be forced to battle with the world. And he knew, as Dick could not know, her utter loneliness. When he learned that the man was from Georgia he was not altogether unprepared for the close of Hertha's story, the quick breath and furious blush that came with the halting effort to tell of her lover's attitude toward the colored race.
"Oh, I can guess," he said tolerantly, coming to her rescue. "I've heard that kind of man talk. Colored folks are all niggers to him and he ain't got no use for 'em. But lawdy, that don't amount to much."
"But I think it does, Tom," Hertha said tremulously. "When he talks like that, I hate him."
"Have you told him about yourself, Sister?" Tom inquired.
He spoke low, almost in a whisper, looking about him.
"No," was the answer.
"Wouldn't it be easier?"
"Perhaps." And then with a touch of annoyance, "You know how I hate to talk."
"But I wouldn't marry him——"
"Of course!" Hertha stopped playing with her handkerchief and clasped her hands together. "If I decide to marry him of course I'll tell. But I haven't decided, I can't seem to decide!"
Tom looked at her flushed face and said in his slowest, most comforting tone: "What you got to hurry for? Can't a man wait for a girl to take her time? He ain't worth much if he can't."
"But don't you see," Hertha said excitedly, "I can't wait and wait, I've got to decide what I'm going to do. If I have to support myself all the rest of my life I ought to know whether I'm going to be a secretary or not. And then it's easy enough to say to take your time about deciding whether you like a man, but Dick Brown keeps taking things so for granted. And then, just when he seems quite nice, he'll break out with something about the 'niggers' that makes me so angry I can't bear to speak to him again."
"That ain't the worst kind though." Tom spoke with emphasis, a grim look settling about his big mouth. "You can face the one that hates you. The worst is the skulking kind that looks sweet and friendly and acts the devil behind your back."
Again Hertha heard him flay the man to whom she had so unreservedly given her love, and again she shrank from his bitter words. But sitting there in the church, with the homely symbols of religious life about her, with the sun streaming through the crude stained-glass windows, she saw clearly the danger and the sin from which she had escaped. And she saw too that Tom, her young but manly brother, would hate with an animal-like intensity the man who should dare to do her an injury. She listened with deepened respect to what he went on to say.
"You can't make a Georgia cracker like Negroes, Hertha, not if you was to work on him all your life. If you find you get to love him, tell him everything and then let it drop. There ain't no good in going over things. Up here in the North nobody thinks much about folks' past, they're too busy. If he's good to you, and works hard and plays square, there ain't no need for you to worry because he can't see like you do. He ain't good enough for you, of course. No man is. But a husband ain't to be judged by his opinions on the race question."
He touched her arm gently in a caress. "It has to be good-by, Sister," he went on, "the white world don't meet the colored world to-day. Look at this church here. It's close to white folks' homes but no one ever thinks to come in to worship. I've sat here and thought of it many times. We ain't really men and women to them. I reckon they don't think we're children of God."
"That's it," Hertha cried, "and how could I live with any one who thought that?"
"They all think it," Tom answered.
"No, they don't," said Hertha angrily; "my teachers didn't at school."
"They were women," Tom replied. "Women have more religion than men."
He rose from his seat and stretched himself, his long arms extended, his short coat-sleeves revealing a great expanse of wrist and hand.
"What are you growing so tall for?" Hertha asked, looking up at him.
"I reckon I have to." He dropped his arms to his sides. "It's a mistake fer it takes a lot of coat and pants to cover me, and in the bed the sheet don't come up high enough and the blanket's forever slipping by on the floor."
"Oh, you'll get sick," his former sister and nurse cried, looking so troubled that Tom had to laugh.
"Don't you worry," he answered, smiling down at her, "I've had such a good bringing up that I can't go wrong now, not anyways."
Nothing that he could have said would have meant so much. She accepted his words in their fullest meaning and felt uplifted, comforted. Whatever she might make of her own life, she had helped wisely to mold his. If she never saw him again she would know that her influence would stay with him to the end, blossoming in honorable thoughts and kindly deeds.
"And so you advise me to marry?" she said, rising too and trying to speak with a laugh.
"No, ma'am!" with decision. "I ain't advising you to marry. I's just advising you not to give up marrying."
"Well," with a little shrug, "it amounts to the same thing."
"What you got to hurry for?" Tom returned to his old charge.
"If I don't decide I can't stay where I am. There is Miss Wood one evening telling me to go on with my work—she loathes Dick—and Mrs. Pickens the next telling me to accept a good husband. That's what it's like when Dick's away, and it's a million times harder when he's around. I'll move if I give him up.
"I met an old man this winter," she went on, "a friend of Kathleen's. He had a terrible philosophy, everything was going to the dogs. You'd have thought that the world would never get any better. But he said one thing to me. He told me to dance and have a good time and to be sure to keep out of the conflict. That was the way he put it, 'Keep out of the conflict.'"
"That might be good advice if you could."
"I suppose you could," Hertha said slowly, "if you made up your mind to; just to have an easy, comfortable time. Now Kathleen was always in the conflict. She was trying to change the world, to change everybody—at least everybody who was poor. And here I can't decide what to do with my own life."
"It's a heap easier," Tom remarked meditatively, "to run other folks' lives than it is your own."
They had walked down the aisle to the corridor and now stood by the closed door.
"I haven't made my mind up yet about marriage," Tom said. "It's a great risk, it sure is. I was reading the other day about trial marriages. Seemed like that might not be a bad idea—each agree to try each other out for a time and then if things suited, match up for good."
"Where did you read that?" Hertha asked, curiosity surmounting disapproval in her voice.
"In the paper," was the all-sufficient answer. "It were only a suggestion."
"Was, Tom."
"Yes'm."
"I'm afraid it's a suggestion that most people would think wicked," she gave a resigned sigh, "like divorce. Well, I'm glad we had this talk."
"So am I," Tom made hearty response. "And that wasn't a bad idea, Hertha, to keep out of the conflict."
"There's one thing I want you to promise me," the girl's thoughts turned from herself to her old home. "I want you to promise to let me keep in touch with you. You're nearer than the folks down South. Promise that you won't go away without my knowing."
"Sure," he answered.
"And one thing more, if you hear from them at home that any one is ill, or that they're going to move, you must let me know. I mean to write to them before long, I'm going to settle a lot of things in my mind when school's over, but I rely on you to let me know the news."
"Yes."
"It's a promise?"
"Yes, Hertha, it's a promise."
She put her hand in his to say good-by. "You're my boy, you remember." There was a world of gentleness and love in her voice. "Do you know, I told Kathleen and then Dick that I had a brother, a little brother who was in school."
"I's feared you shouldn't have said that, Hertha."
"I had to have some relatives, didn't I? And I just naturally had you. And we'll never forget one another. And I tell you," looking with wet eyes back down the long aisle of the church to where the Bible lay on the reading-desk, "I know what heaven's going to be like. It isn't going to have any golden streets. Think how horrid and hard and glaring they'd be! It will have spreading trees and flowers, lilies and asphodels and green grass—yes, and white sand; and I engage you now to go out walking with me the first Sunday."
The tears were in his eyes as well as hers. "I'll love to be there waiting fer you, Sister," he answered.
She gripped him in her arms for a moment and then with a gulping sob opened the door and went out into the street.
"Keep out of the conflict!"
This admonition ran through Hertha's mind as she went to school Monday morning. She saw herself standing at the little table in the restaurant with the cynical old major looking at her kindly, admiringly. The conflict to which he had alluded had been that of the working-class, but his words might include all battle whether of labor or of race. If she married Dick she would be out of the conflict, out of the eternal worry of earning a living. But she would also be out of the conflict of race, forever removed from the life that had been hers such a short time ago. If she accepted the love of this young man from Georgia with his talk of "black wenches" and "buck niggers," she accepted complete ostracism from her past. And not only ostracism,—she had grown to realize that this was likely whatever course she chose,—but the past that had meant so much, that had helped to make her what she was, gentle-mannered, deft, well-educated, this past she must see despised. Dick might forgive those years but only if she would forget them. He would be ambitious for them both, and she must blot from her mind everything that touched upon the shocking disgrace, for so he would account it, of her world until eight months ago.
Sophie Switsky was in the conflict still, battling with the oppression that centered about her whirring machine. Kathleen was in it, demanding sunshine and health for the many in poverty. But if Hertha Williams married a Georgia cracker she left her conflict, turned from the battlefield into a place of quiet and safety. Ellen had predicted that when her sister went into the white world she would never join in the coarse abuse of the colored race; but if she married Dick she tacitly linked herself to these cruel lies. She abhorred the thought, and yet, all the morning, on her way to work and seated in the ill-ventilated classroom, she found the major's advice buzzing through her head, "Keep out of the conflict! Keep out of the conflict!"
In the afternoon, walking in the park with Bob, a new idea occurred to her. Why not, when school was over, try for a position as nursery governess? Such a place would be a grade above anything open to Hertha Williams, since as a governess she would not be a servant but would be received at her mistress's table. Loving children, inclining, too, to an outdoor life, she might in this way secure a summer in the country and postpone her final decision. Tom's comfortable advice to take her time remained with her, offering encouragement to this new plan. But the difficulty in the way of securing a position, the unfamiliar machinery of employment bureau, of advertisement, made her hesitate. It would mean publicity, the answering of questions, the entering of a new and perhaps unfriendly home. She who hated change ought not to have to make her way in an unfamiliar environment so soon again.
"Tell me about Tom-of-the-Woods," Bob demanded after she had been silent for many minutes.
"No," Hertha answered.
"Aw, come on," Bob said. "Tell about the night with the owl."
"Not now!"
"Aw, come on. That's the part I like best. I bet he could see in the dark like a cat. Couldn't he now? Couldn't he see everything just the same, night or day?"
"There are the ducks!" Hertha cried, and hurried him to where the birds paddled in the lake and gave entertainment enough to push Tom-of-the-Woods into Bob's limbo of forgetfulness if not into hers.
The week went wearily on. The warm days were conducive to idleness and in her discouragement Hertha worked erratically, studying far into the evening one night to drop her books entirely the next. On Thursday as she sat in her room looking idly at the sunset light as it faded from the sky, Mrs. Pickens knocked at the door.
"May I come in?" she asked. "Don't make a light," as Hertha having given her a seat started to strike a match; "it's pleasant to talk in the dark."
The two sat near one another looking into the trees.
"I'm thinking of a plan for the summer." Hertha was the first to break the silence.
"Not one that would mean leaving here, I hope?"
"It would mean leaving here. If I needed it would you give me a recommendation as a nursery governess?"
The question was utterly unexpected, and Mrs. Pickens answered with a jest. "Certainly. Shall I count Dick as the babe whom you have been teaching?"
"I wish you wouldn't think so much about Dick!" There was irritation in the girl's tone and dropping her banter Mrs. Pickens gave assurance of her willingness to be of any service. "I suppose you want me to speak for your character," she went on, "and I can certainly answer for your disposition. You're the easiest person to get along with I ever met. But Bob's mother is the one to testify to your ability with children. You've been a godsend to her this spring. How the child has waked up. He's much brighter and more interesting than before you came."
Stirring a little in her chair, leaning against the window to look out into the approaching night, Hertha made no answer to her friend's praises and seemed to have forgotten the request that she had just made. After a little she said slowly, "I had a brother——"
"Hada brother? Why do you speak in the past? Nothing has happened to him, has there?"
"No, oh, no, but Bob makes me think of him when he was little, when he belonged to me. A little child belongs to you. Partly for that reason I'd like to be with little children."
"I'll do what I can to help you, but why not get references also from the South?"
The question was asked hesitatingly and with no small amount of inquisitiveness. The mystery of Hertha's past, that mystery that so deeply interested Dick, was growing in importance to his landlady. Perhaps this evening in the friendly dark she might be able to probe it. Despite her hope, she expected some monosyllabic reply followed by a silence that would prevent a continuance of the subject. She was totally unprepared for Hertha's frank answer.
"You can see," the girl said, "that I have no connections now in the South. No one writes to me."
"Yes?" Mrs. Pickens ventured. Her voice was tender, sympathetic, trembling with curiosity.
Hertha said nothing further but looked out where the lamps had been lighted and glowed golden against the deep trees. Fearing lest she might lose the confidential talk she was expecting, the older woman continued gently: "I've often wondered what separated you from your people. Do you want to tell me what it was?"
"Some one's sin."
The words were spoken into the night. The girl did not move her head as the older woman, with a cry, came to her.
"Your birth?" she whispered.
In the darkness Hertha nodded assent.
"Oh, my dear," stroking the soft curly head that was turned from her. "And you didn't know your people?"
"No, I was brought up among strangers."
"They were not kind to you perhaps?"
The head that Mrs. Pickens was stroking turned instantly from her touch and a voice said with a note of anger, "Not kind? They were heavenly kind. They did everything they could for me."
"You must have loved them then?"
"Of course, I loved them. I loved them better than any people in the world."
"Then you have some friends in the South whom you can turn to now, haven't you?"
The question was asked in a bright voice as though hoping to bring something of cheer to the listener.
But Hertha with a shake of her head turned away and again looked into the street.
"Have you quarreled? Somehow I can't think of you as quarreling, but I know how clans battle in the South. Did something occur to make you angry before you left? If that's so, you'll soon make it up and everything will be right again."
Hertha breathed fast. "I can't see them any more," she whispered.
"Tell me why. Perhaps I can see some way to make things right."
"You? Why, it's people like you and Dick who separate us!"
"What do you mean?" The woman rose and in the darkness tried to peer into the girl's face. "What have Dick and I to do with it?"
She groped for some clue to this enigmatic statement. What a ridiculous thing to say. What indeed had she and Dick to do with it? What unless that they were southerners? And then there flashed before her eyes a paragraph in one of the southern newspapers that she was always reading, a half-dozen lines telling of a girl hidden among the Negroes, later to receive money and a name. She saw the column in the paper, at the top of the page to the right, where the extraordinary story stood. She had a poor memory but some things she visualized unconsciously but unforgettably, and this had been one. She could see every word now, as though she were reading it, except the name.
"What have Dick and I to do with all this?" she repeated with an attempt at a laugh. "We don't believe in separating families. But it wasn't your own family of whom you were speaking, was it? Didn't they do anything for you?"
"Yes," Hertha answered. "When my grandfather died last October he left me two thousand dollars."
"Ah!"
That was all. The southern woman stood clutching a chair, her head reeling, the floor seeming to move beneath her feet. She was face to face with the incredible tale that her memory told her she must credit as the truth. The mystery then that surrounded Dick's princess, his beautiful lady to whom he gave his humble devotion, was humiliating and sordid. Disgrace, hidden by a life among Negroes. Worst of all, the smut of the blacks upon her since she desired to be with them again. This was the reason she had been so angry at Dick when he had raged against "niggers." She had lived with them in their dark alleys, she had eaten and slept with the kinky-haired slave-race!
Slowly feeling her way past the dainty white bed, Mrs. Pickens reached the door. Her hand was on the knob when Hertha struck a match. Suddenly the room was flooded with the yellow gas-light, blinding them both. The older woman put her hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare, and then resolutely drew it away and stared into Hertha's face. She expected to find some change, some sign of those former detestable surroundings. But in the bright glow of the light the girl was more exquisite than ever. She tried to speak, to announce that she knew the truth, but she could not charge this aristocratic-looking young woman with the disgrace of having lived with "niggers." Without a word she turned the knob and left the room.
Hertha looked after her, startled. She had meant to tell her whole story, but something in the silence that had followed her answer to Mrs. Pickens' last question frightened her, and too timid to speak further she had sought the comfort of the light. Then she saw her landlady, a strange, disgusted expression on her face, her nostrils distended as though detecting some distasteful smell, turn away and leave her alone.
The girl went to the window and pulled down the shade. Turning to the mirror she looked at herself in the glass. The face that looked back at her was thin and white, with sad lines about the dark eyes, but it was familiar, the same face that Mrs. Pickens had seen since she had come into this home. What was there that should make this woman gaze at her with repugnance and then go away? She pressed her hands upon her waving hair. Had she guessed something worse than the truth, something that Hertha herself had believed the truth until a short time ago? Did she think she was a Negro? If she thought that! Leaving the mirror the girl seated herself in a chair and wearily reached out to the table for the book that she was studying. But before touching it she drew back and with a gesture of pain turned and looked across the room to the closed door. A chair stood near the doorway and leaning against it again she saw her landlady, her hand gripping the back, her every feature breathing disgust. She could not rid herself of the figure, it would not leave the room. And worse, shadows were gathering about it, black shadows from which the figure shrank. They moved restlessly about, these shadows, by the door and by the bed. They stood dark in the gas-light—black faces with big, clumsy lips! black hands with red palms; heads with black, woolly hair. Shutting her eyes, she summoned all her strength to efface with life's reality the phantoms of a white world's hate. She saw her old friendly home, her mammy, Ellen, Tom. She looked into their kindly faces and touched their hands. Then with a start her eyes opened and the shadows gathered about the figure at the door.
There were noises in the room—big, deep voices, calling from between thick lips. From heavy throats came coarse words and now and then a grating laugh. The figure shrank again and gripped harder at the chair.
Why was the room so close? She had not closed the window when she had lighted the gas. But the air was full of odors, thick odors, that stifled. The figure drew back, its face drawn with disgust, trembling at contact with the fetid smell.
In her chair at the table Hertha shrank within herself. She drew up her feet, crouching against the cushions. Were they coming to her, too, these figures? She called on them to leave her, but they came on. With staring eyes she implored them to stop, to pass her by, but they only leered and drew the closer. And as they came she shrank back further in her chair.
Then for the first time in her life she felt shame at her uprearing. The home that had been sacred to her, her refuge, was defiled. The black faces danced before her eyes and she cowered, the coarse voices called and she pressed her hands over her ears. The thick odors enveloped her, and her face changed, her nostrils quivered, and with a movement of disgust she dropped her head upon the table on her outstretched arms.
In the meantime, within her room, Mrs. Pickens restlessly examined her piles of papers, seizing and discarding, searching feverishly for a date until at length, on a yellowed sheet, she found what she sought. The incredible was true. There was the forgotten name, "Ogilvie!" Viewed in print, after an hour's reflection, the story was less horrible than when it had flashed upon her in Hertha's bedroom. A judge for a grandfather was an alleviating circumstance. But the reality was bad enough. That the girl still clung to the Negroes was the worst feature. Common sense must soon show her, however, both the wickedness and the folly of such an attitude. She put the paper carefully away, resolved that Dick should see it when he came back home.
"Dick!"
It was Friday afternoon. Hertha had returned from school, her books on her arm, happy in the realization that in one week vacation would be at hand. She had no idea that she should find Richard Brown standing in his doorway, smiling at her.
Never had he seemed so bright and attractive. He had taken off his business clothes and wore a white flannel shirt and white trousers. He looked a young happy boy, and was indeed supremely happy to be back and with her again. "Dick," she had cried and started to shift her books that she might hold out her hand. But before she could accomplish her purpose he had her in his arms. Only for a moment; so swift a moment that she could not draw away or resent it, her surprise was too great.
"I didn't do anything," he cried quickly, "I reckon we were both startled. My, but it's good to be back home! Here! let me take your books. Ain't it hot though! The first hot weather I've struck yet. Makes you think of the South only they can't get it as warm down there as up here where the sidewalks are baking all day. Guess what I saw this noon? A boy frying pancakes on the pavement. Just dropped the mixture on the hot stone and in a jiffy the cake was done, nice and brown and crisp around the edges. That beats it our way, don't it?"
He spoke with reckless extravagance, anxious to retrieve any mistake he may have made, looking at her in the meantime with devouring eyes. There was nothing that he missed, and though he did not speak of it he cursed inwardly the work that made her pale and thin and that he believed had caused the harassed expression in her face.
"You look mighty well in your new clothes," Hertha said, relieving her embarrassment by surveying with exaggerated approval his white apparel.
"Do I? Glad you like 'em. I found some of the fellows were going in for them and I thought I would. I mean to dress better anyway. A man on the road ought to have the latest thing in style and know how to carry it, too. I've improved in neckties, haven't I?"
"Indeed you have. I wish you'd give me that splotchy one. I hate it."
Going to his bureau Dick secured the offending tie and handed it out to her.
"What are you going to do with it?" he asked curiously.
"I'd like to burn it in the kitchen stove, only up here there aren't any stoves where you can burn things up. I'll have to use it for patchwork."
She smoothed the glaring red and orange silk in her hand and then, with Dick carrying her books, went to her room.
As he turned to go, nodding to her from her threshold, she again spoke of his suit. "You're ready for tennis. The men dress like that when they play here in the park."
"Do they? I'll have to play then. Don't know a thing about it, do you?"
"No, I never had a chance to play games."
"Neither did I. They didn't go in for that sort of thing where I came from. But it's never too late to learn. Can't we get a net and play this summer?"
"Perhaps."
Though she only said "perhaps," her face brightened and she looked with pleased expectance at this young man who had brought so much happiness and jollity into her life. Since she had sat on the sled and let him draw her over the snow in the city square, he had given her many gay, entertaining times.
"I'll get some rubber-soled shoes," she called out, "and you must get some too."
Brushing her hair and changing her gown need not have made her hot, but when she had finished dressing, her face was flushed and she sat down trembling. She had slept but little the past night, but more serious than lack of sleep was her new sense of shame. Of a sudden to-day in the classroom she found herself asking what the girls would think if they knew that she had a black mother, that she had eaten with her, performed for her myriad services? What would they think if she told of her black sister who for years had paid her way to school? The white world's phantoms were clouding her spirit, turning her affectionate gratitude into shrinking fear. They were standing between her and a past that she loved. And as the black shadows followed her to her work so she found them back in her room. She dreaded to look toward the door.
The trees without beckoned, and walking to the open window she looked across the street. The familiar scene brought calmness and resolution. She would tell Dick everything. No matter how difficult or humiliating it might be, it would be better to tell him herself than to try, as she had tried last night, to relate her story to some one else. And she must share her secret. She could not stay another night in this house without the comfort of self-revelation. Otherwise the shadows would drive her to sickness and despair. Dick loved her, and love carried with it sympathy and compassion. For the first time her heart warmed at the thought of his protecting affection; and with her resolution firmly taken she walked steadily, head erect, through the doorway out of her room.
It was a gay dinner-table. Mrs. Pickens, who had been constrained in her manner toward Hertha at breakfast, dropped her reserve for the time being and entered into Dick's raillery. Miss Wood was in good humor, and Dick was bubbling over with entertaining stories. He was interesting, too, in describing the country through which he had passed, and made vivid to them the small town up-state with its shaded streets, its growing shops, its dingy hotel and execrable service. The young commercial traveler had become very discriminating in regard to rooms and meals.
"Most of the waiters," he explained, "know only about ten words of English nowadays. You're lucky if you strike one who knows twenty. Once in a while I'd get a darky and you bet I was glad! Sambo's the boy for me! Serves your meals all right and sense enough to laugh at your jokes. We always got along fine."
He did not look at Hertha as he said this, but he hoped that she received it in the spirit of good-will in which it was given. He was friends to-night with all the world.
They lingered long over the meal, and when at length they rose, Dick declaring that he could eat no more, the long twilight was almost over.
"Shall we sit on the stoop?" he asked, and Hertha nodded assent. Mrs. Pickens went out with them, and for a few minutes the three remained together, watching the people who came and went on the broad sidewalk, saying little, feeling much. Then Hertha rose and Dick with her.
"I'm going to say good-night to Bob," she explained to the young man, "and then don't you want to come down and we can take a walk?"
It was the first time, in all their acquaintance, that she had taken the initiative in anything they did together, and Dick's happiness was so great he could only awkwardly nod in assent as she moved away.
"I've been seeing 'em," he said as he watched the bright spot her white dress made down the street, "girls and girls; and there isn't one that could sit in the same room with her without looking like two cents! Why, they aren't in the same class. They aren't on the earth with her, they're just things fluttering round!"
He stopped and waved his hands at the utter futility of language as a means of expressing his admiration. "And she's as good——"
"Dick," Mrs. Pickens interrupted, "don't count on her too much."
She was becoming excited now that they were alone together, and wanted to tell the story that, for the past twenty-four hours, she had been turning over in her mind, aghast at its sordidness, yet fascinated by its extraordinary novelty. The words were on her lips that should reveal Hertha's birth, but her instinct as a story-teller held her back. It was too wonderful a tale to be spoiled by a hasty recital. Later, this evening perhaps, she would retail it with proper deliberation. But her few words had roused Dick's jealousy.
"Why can't I count on her?" he asked sharply. "Has any one been around?"
"No, it isn't that. I've something important to tell——"
"Then I'm going to count on her," interrupting savagely. "I won't stop counting on her till she's my wife or some other man's—and if that happens he'd better not come near me! But, shucks, what's the good of talking! What's she looking so tired about? She mustn't work so hard. Why don't you stop her?"
"She's been speaking, Dick, of taking a place this summer as nursery governess. It would give her a chance to go into the country."
"What!" The young man's voice was excited and angry. His good manners forsook him and he spoke to his landlady as though she were a servant. "Don't you let her do that, do you hear? She needs a vacation and I won't have her going away."
"Really," Mrs. Pickens answered with asperity, "you speak as though I had authority over her. I'm not her mother—far from it!"
"Oh, damn!" and he turned to move away.
His utter ignorance coupled with his rudeness, made his companion, despite her well-laid plan, cry out, "I've something for you to see; it was in one of my newspapers. It concerns you and you ought to know. It's about——"
"Put the old thing in my room," he called back as he walked down the street.
Watching his fast disappearing figure, Mrs. Pickens decided that was just what she would do. He should read the tale for himself, and she would then have the privilege of giving him advice and comforting sympathy. She would put the paper where it would greet him when he returned. She went within, very much excited, and upon his cluttered bureau, with his traveling case tumbling its contents over the fresh linen cover, she laid the important sheet. That it might at once convey the desired news she marked the paragraph with a pencil lying at hand. "Will he mind so very much?" she asked herself. "It's all in the past." And then, expectant, hoping that in the end all would come out right with the young people, she left the room.
Dick, for his part, as he walked off forgot his landlady in his dismay at the thought that Hertha might go away. He had made so many plans for those vacation days! He was hot with disappointment when a stumbling step made him glance down to be soothed by the sight of his white flannels. The remembrance of Hertha's half promise to play tennis made him believe that no governess' place was yet secured, and he resolved to buy a net the next morning that they might that afternoon start in to play. They would play Sunday, too, if she desired. The devil might get him for a Sabbath breaker for all he cared! The grim imagery of his religious teaching came to him and he pictured Hertha and himself, tennis rackets in hand, dragged down to the fiery pit. Then he smiled whimsically. His Georgia home with all its crudities, its rough, unpainted houses, its poorly tilled fields, its ignorant, frenzied religion was immeasurably far away. Turning to the present and its shining hope he followed his lode-star down the street.