THE PINES

CHAPTER I

In the far south of the United States, where through the winter months the sun holds in warmth the blue encircling sky, opening the buds of the roses in December, where palmetto and white sand meet deep green swamp and heavily scented magnolia, there flows a great river. From its narrow source it deepens and widens until toward the end of its course it becomes an estuary, and for many miles dwellers on one side can dimly distinguish the contour of the opposite shore. The dwellers, as it happens, are not many, and the little boat that makes its daily trip to and from the busy city at the river’s mouth is not overburdened with freight or passengers. It zigzags from shore to shore, stopping at one port for timber, at another to land an itinerant preacher, at a third to receive a fragrant load of oranges or grapefruit destined for a market in the north.

Merryvale is one of the oldest and most important of its stops. As long as the state has had a history there has been a Merryvale living on the river bank. In the days when the alligators climbed up the long wharf to sun themselves, and the moccasins dropped from the overhanging trees into the stream, the Merryvales owned thousands of acres at the water’s edge and other thousands back in the pine forests. Then there was a Merryvale in Congress and another in the State Senate, while scores of slaves tilled the land and tended the cherished orange groves. But with the passing of time the alligators slipped from the wharf, the moccasins retreated to where gunshots were less frequent, and vast stretches of pines and of river-front passed into other hands.

Nevertheless, in the year 1910, when Lee Merryvale came back from college, there was astonishingly little apparent change in the old estate. To be sure, the timber had been depleted, acres of pines had been shipped down the river to some sawmill; and, worse, noble trees had been gashed in the trunks, their lifeblood drawn from them, drop by drop, and then left to decay and fall. But the hyacinth still choked the river near its bank where the gaunt cows waded in to chew the tough leaves, and the great house at the front among the live-oaks and the little cabins in the rear among the pines held descendants of old masters and old slaves and viewed life in much the timeworn way.

You approached Merryvale, of course, from the water; only the ignorant newcomer drove or motored the weary miles along the sandy road from the railway station. The true approach from the city was up the wide river for some three or four hours to the Merryvale landing. Here, disembarking with a friendly good-by from the captain, you walked down the long wharf, and, turning to the right, followed a narrow path in the white sand until you came out upon the great house.

Unchanged since the first Merryvale built it many decades ago, it stands a beautiful mansion of cool, high-ceilinged rooms and broad hallways. Across the front, which faces east, are spacious verandas or galleries that protect the rooms from the summer heat and afford pleasant places to sun oneself on chill winter days. The kitchen and sheds, screened by hardy bamboo, are in the rear; but at the front, before the house, as far as the bank at the river’s edge, is a broad open expanse that in the North would be a lawn, but that here is sand dotted with tufts of grass and strewn with fallen leaves. For the glory of the open space is the live-oaks. These immense spreading trees stand well apart with huge roots that twist along the ground to disappear in the sand, there to send out other roots whose hungry mouths drink up the hidden moisture. The leaves are small, a dark rich green; but neither the leaves nor the great trunks attract your gaze; you are fascinated by the bunches of white, fibrous moss that hang from each bough. On a still day they are motionless, but the slightest breeze sends them softly waving, and in a storm they swing back and forth, the wind tearing through their long, thin strands, dragging off a bit here and a bit there, but in the end leaving them still companions of the live-oak. Birds use the moss for their nests, and probably no child in the Merryvale household has failed at some time to fashion of the soft fibres a long white beard with which to make the magic change from youth to venerated age. On either side of the house, extending in both directions, are orange groves, and back of the groves comes the second world, the world of the black folk.

As the world of the rulers has been among the live-oaks, so the world of the workers has been among the pines. Back of the great house you come to the clearing dotted with cabins that belong to the period before the war, rough affairs of hewn logs, well-ventilated by their many cracks. Whether of logs or the more modern clapboard, they are all set on supports away from the earth, and under their flooring hens with their chickens move about industriously scratching with their toes and penetrating the inhospitable-looking sand with their strong beaks. Occasionally a dog or a pig joins them and there is a general, but since they are all good friends, quite senseless cackle of dissent. Numberless weeds grow in the sand and flowers are about all the cabins; in the spring, violets and red lilies, in the summer, cosmos and zinnias, and the year through, red roses at the cabin doors.

Kindly monotony has been the keynote of Merryvale. To live on what you have, parting when necessary with a piece of timberland among the pines or a stretch of acres at the waterfront, this has been the history for many years at the great house. And monotony has triumphed, too, among the pines. After the war there were heart-throbbings and a sense of portentous changes; but when freedom had come and gone; when the Negro learned that he was still wholly dependent upon his old master, a liberated laborer but without the tools that made possible a new life, he turned to work again in his old surroundings at his familiar tasks. Industrious and ambitious colored fathers and mothers at Merryvale had been known to save enough to buy their homes; but their children, fed too by ambition, left them for the North. Thus Aunt Lucindy had a son who was head waiter in a hotel in Philadelphia, and Brother Jonathan’s daughter made a thousand dollars a year teaching school in Washington. These depletions, so common in the country that pours her best stock into the city, held the settlement back. Altogether, the old place was full of pleasant, uneventful life touched with kindly decay.

And then Merryvale experienced a change. It came to black Merryvale first. In 1905 the colored school lacked a teacher and the colored Methodist church a preacher. These positions had been held by the same person who, to the lasting benefit of the community, was called to a wider field. Word came that the Church was sending a worthy and well-known brother who had filled a pulpit in a distant city, but whose failing health necessitated a change. With him was a daughter who would teach school. Then of an autumn evening the Williams family arrived and with them a multitude of envied possessions. Wealth entered the four-roomed cabin that was scrubbed with furious intensity before the white iron beds, the modern cooking-stove, the books in all, a multitude of bewildering furnishings were placed within its walls. A period of whitewashing followed, of fencing in of chickens and garden, of trimming and pruning. It was as though some modern machine with its driving power, its whirring engine, had dropped into a medieval town.

Brother Williams was a feeble, kindly old man who preached but a short six months before death came and the Methodist church was again without a spiritual guide. After his death the preaching was by an itinerant, but by that time the church had lost its preeminent place in the community life. Salvation was taught indeed, but in a new guise and under a new roof, and the leader and prophet of the new gospel was the school teacher, Brother Williams’ daughter Ellen.

Ellen Williams had been educated in one of the Negro colleges, founded shortly after the Civil War by northern philanthropy, and conducted by white women, and she had been filled with an unquenchable zeal to help her race. She went into this poor, remote country school with the zeal of the missionary to Africa; and if she was confronted by no wild beasts or savage chieftains she met with disheartening indifference, with envy and even with malice. But the true missionary burns with so pure a flame that she destroys in her bright fire the obstructions that are placed in her path. Moreover, she is made to rule and men and women obey, first critically, then enthusiastically, her decrees. There were mutterings at Ellen’s demands. First the children must be washed beyond the strength and dignity of those who have to tote their every pail of water; then an unprecedented amount of needlework was needed to close up rents; and, last, they must forever give money, money that might go for whisky, for patent medicine, for the lodge or for the church, money needed to fill out the meager four months’ salary by the county to the seven months demanded by the teacher as a minimum school year. Like all fanatics, Ellen saw one supreme duty the bringing of education to the children of Merryvale. Other things, even preaching, might languish if this could be accomplished.

Ellen had her triumph at the end of seven months, when all the pupils of the school took part in the spring exhibition, from five-year-old Samantha Johnson who recited an evening hymn, to twenty-year-old Ebenezer, a half-witted youth and former laughing-stock, who displayed a beautifully woven basket that had already been sold for two dollars to some Rockefeller of the north, ("and the school is to have one dollar of it for books,” the teacher said emphatically). The Negro parent is ambitious for his children, he looks forward with unfaltering hope to the recognition of merit that shall come when his boy enters the world and acquits himself like a man. And though the recognition be never accorded, though to the average American the Negro who is not performing humble tasks is a cross between an impudent upstart and a “nigger” minstrel dude, the parent hopes on until death comes and his son, like himself, turns for his hope to his offspring. Ellen had builded on this firm foundation of parental ambition, and after the first year she received the cooperation of the people among whom she had come to give her life. A few evil spirits mocked, but they did not affect the success of the Merryvale school. And indeed marvels can be accomplished in a small community where, day and night, one may keep watch over one’s charges, and where the county superintendent is too indifferent or too lazy to interfere with suggestion or criticism. So Ellen, a modern in educational methods, with the zealot’s untiring energy, taught her children to keep clean and decent, to work steadily and to relate their study to their daily life. As they learned to write they indited letters to absent uncles and aunts, and (the teacher was judiciously blind to this) begged stamps from old Mr. Merryvale. They did number work, counting their chickens and multiplying their eggs with sober intentness. When readers grew scarce they got the discarded newspapers from the great house, and the older boys and girls began to watch the happenings in the outer world. They dug in the school garden and planted vegetables in gardens of their own. They even learned to cook and introduced new dishes into the limited regimen of their homes.

It would not have been possible for Ellen to have carried her school to the final triumph of the spring exhibition had she not been in touch with the college, as it was somewhat grandiosely called, at which she had received her education. Gifts of discarded blackboards, old but still useful maps, song-books, tools, many essentials to her undertaking, arrived at odd times on the river boat. Nor could she have kept always well and strong, neatly dressed and abundantly fed, had it not been for her mother’s presence. Aunt Maggie, as Mrs. Williams was called, while not as energetic as her daughter was a capable woman who contributed her full part to the school’s success. She earned more at laundry-work than Ellen could at teaching; and the two, by selling eggs and chickens and pork, by making jellies and candies for the hotel people four miles away whose laundry more than anything else kept them in funds, lived in decent comfort and put by for the future.

The second change that came to Merryvale dropped upon the great house. Five years after the Williams’ advent, Lee Merryvale, only son of an only son, came back from college. He had made but two brief visits home since he had left to take up his freshman work, offering the expense of the trip as his excuse; and while his father missed him more with each year of slackened strength, he confessed that Lee made small demands upon his purse. He would write in affectionate and wondering solicitude that no land need slip from the estate to be converted into bank-checks, and would receive answer from his son that the college had given him a scholarship and that he worked in the summer months. It was wisest not to question but to wait until Lee returned to take up law, the traditional Merryvale profession.

With long explanations, with pacing up and down what remained of the old plantation, Lee Merryvale expounded to his father his ambition to become a grower of vegetables and fruits. In his summer months, it seemed, he had earned his way sweating on other men’s farms, and he returned eager to bring life and prosperity to the old place. Other people were making money in his state, northerners of course, and why not he? He knew the secret of northern success the careful oversight of workers and the willingness to pitch in and do things yourself. What if frost did come every few years and destroy all you had? You made allowance for that in your years of plenty. And so he argued, answering expressed doubts and unexpressed questionings, until at length his father answered: “How should I object when it will keep you by my side? You have your mother’s energy.”

Lee had only a few recollections of his mother, but one was a bright picture of a young girl with golden-red hair digging energetically at the roots of a rose-bush. It was pleasant to think that, like him, she had loved the taste of the earth and the fragrance of growing things. His ambition was to down all the scoffers along the river and in the city who thought his ambition a passing amusement, and predicted abandonment and a season of gaiety during the coming winter.

Of the other members of the two households there were, at the great house, Miss Patty, as every one called her, John Merryvale’s sister who came to him after his wife’s death; and at the cabin in the pines, Tom, the son of the household, a serious, reliable boy, deliberate to slowness.

And lastly, there was Hertha. Ellen had insisted when they moved to Merryvale that Hertha remain a second year at her college, and the girl stayed away for that time; but the next season, the year Lee Merryvale went North, she made her entrance, a girl of nineteen, into Merryvale life. It was a modest entrance and she played her part shyly in the background. Hertha bore no resemblance to her sister and brother. Among the cabins in the pines you noticed her tightly curling hair and deep brown eyes, but as she moved about the great house you saw her graceful figure, her slender feet and hands, her small head on its long neck, her delicate nose and mouth, her white skin. She was a good needlewoman, and Miss Patty quickly seized upon her as her maid, and, for a pittance, Hertha worked for her by day, while at night and on Sundays she joined mother and brother and sister in the cabin. “You’s a contented chile,” her mother used to say, “an’ ’member, dat’s a gift.” She had not been so contented in the city where she spent her childhood, but this new world by the river touched her spirit. She loved the quiet days, sewing and waiting on Miss Patty whose indolence and advancing years made her increasingly dependent. She loved on Sundays to take walks with Tom through the woods to where the creek set in, black, mysterious, a long line of cypresses guarding the stream. She was contented with her home, and her mind sometimes wandered when Ellen talked in the evening of plans for the future. Ellen was full of plans, she lived not for to-day but for to-morrow, but Hertha lived in to-day. Life was not always pleasant, the autumn tempests that lashed the great oaks and uprooted the pines were terrifying, but there were more days of sunshine than of storm. Lee Merryvale might sweat over his orange grove and swear at his workers, Ellen might lead out the whole settlement in a mad orgy of whitewashing, but no one expected anything disturbing from Hertha. Tom, once, painstakingly reading through a collection of poems acquired by Ellen in her school days as a prize, found the lines that suited the lady of his home; for, to Tom, Hertha was not only sister but queen.

“And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence, and the calm
Of mute, insensate things.”

CHAPTER II

In a week Tom was going away to school. It should not come as a surprise, Ellen repeatedly told him, for she had from time to time apprised him of the approaching fulfilment of her plans; but Tom had rested, like Hertha, in the present moment, believing, too, that Ellen’s plans might go astray. This, however, was little likely to take place, for in his older sister he dealt with a general, intelligent, resourceful, and with a contempt for the enemy, poverty. Her efforts had at length secured a scholarship, and four years of savings were to be expended for traveling and necessary clothes. The rest depended upon Tom who would be equipped to go out and do his share in gaining an education.

“Surely,” Ellen said at the supper-table when the announcement of the final arrangements was made, “you know I’m right, Tom, and that a colored boy needs an education more than a white boy.”

Aunt Maggie wiped her eyes. “We sure need Tom,” she said.

The older sister looked around the table, at Hertha’s sad face, at Tom’s sullen one, at her mother’s tears, and for a moment felt the severity of the coming catastrophe; but for a moment only. Emotion soon gave place to reasoned thought.

“Tom has a right to an education,” she said solemnly. “If he doesn’t learn a trade at school he never will learn one, and we shouldn’t keep him here no matter how much we shall need him and miss him.”

Aunt Maggie rose. “You don’ know what it means,” she said, “to part a mudder f’om her only son.” Her rich voice sounded with a certain finality as though, while appreciating Ellen’s power, she wished her to understand her responsibility. “You’s taken a deal upon you’self.” And she left her children and went into her room.

Tom and Hertha slipped out of doors. In time of trouble they always got away from the house, and now in silence they made their way to the river.

It was a hot night in late September with a wind blowing from the east. In the summer, unless held home by some imperative need, all the people of the plantation, black and white, came in the evening to the wharf to taste the fresh breeze. But the wharf was long and seclusion possible, so the two slipped to their favorite place at the far end, and leaning against a post dangled their feet over the water.

“If it would do any good,” Tom said morosely, “I’d run away.”

Hertha laughed.

“Ellen thinks she can boss the whole of us,” he went on, “but the time am coming when she can’t boss me.”

“‘Is,’ Tom.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Tom’s speech was a queer mixture of good English acquired from his sisters, who had been drilled by northern teachers, and colloquial speech picked up from his surroundings.

“It does seem too bad,” Hertha declared, “to leave just now when Mr. Merryvale has come back and you can have work with some pay.”

“I ain’t going for more’n a year,” Tom declared.

“You’ll be grown up by that time.”

“I’m as tall as you now.”

Hertha looked across the water into the deep, velvet sky, and thought of the long days in which she would have to go about her work without her baby. Tom was seven years younger than she and since his birth had been her special charge. Hundreds of times she had washed his face and his soft little brown hands to which the grubby earth was as dear as to the roots of a flower. She it was who had always shielded him from severity, finding many and ingenious excuses for him. He had grown up a quiet, serious boy of a meditative cast, and sometimes came out with unusual, even startling remarks. Tom’s “thinking” was one of the jokes of the family. Hertha found it hard to imagine life without him.

“Do you remember,” she said after they had sat silent for a time; “once I struck you?”

“Naw!”

“Of course you don’t remember, you weren’t more than three. We were out visiting at Aunt Mary’s and I had dressed you for the afternoon. We were on the steps. I had some sewing and you slipped away and went off berrying. Oh, but weren’t you a sight when you came back!”

Tom grunted.

“You came right up to me and leaned against my knee, not a bit afraid. I scolded and you looked up and smiled. You were very little then, seems to me you weren’t more than a baby.”

“Yes?”

“I slapped you on your cheek!”

“Whew! I don’t believe it would have killed a mosquito.”

“You were so grieved! You looked at me as though I had bruised your heart. Your mouth trembled and you hid your face in my lap and cried.”

“And then you took me in your lap and petted me and told me about the three little pigs and washed me and got me into another dress without Mammy’s knowing!”

“You can’t remember, Tom!”

“Yes, I can.”

“I don’t believe you were as old as three.”

“Well,” meditatively, “if I don’t remember that time I remembers heaps of others like it. You never went back on me.”

“Probably Ellen is right,” Hertha remarked later, “she usually is, though I don’t think it was worth while my spending that last year in school, I was so homesick.”

“You can never tell about an education,” Tom said, wise in another’s case.

Behind them came the sound of conversation, broken occasionally by a boisterous laugh. Some one was thrumming on a banjo and now and then singing a few lines from a popular song.

“What do you reckon it’ll be like at school?” Tom asked.

“Oh, doing things. First one thing and then another until you’re so tired at night you fall at once to sleep and wake up and start to do more things.”

“That ain’t much different from home.”

Hertha did not answer. She never disputed but she thought Tom would find a difference.

They looked out into the starlight. “I was thinking,” the boy said, “you’re like that star up there.” He pointed to a planet, bright in the heavens. “That’s like you, beautiful and alone.”

“Well!” She gave his arm a little squeeze. “But I’m not alone and neither is the star. See the little stars about.”

“They don’t count.”

They sat for two hours looking into the starlight, talking a little and dreaming a good deal more until, growing sleepy, they rose and went home.

“What do you two find to say to one another?” Ellen asked, not unkindly, as she met them on their return. But part of their pleasure in one another’s company was that they did not need to talk.

The days before a long parting are always difficult. We see the inevitable before us, we try to adjust ourselves, we wait impatient and yet anxious to make each minute last, watching the closing in of time. Mammy got some consolation in looking over and over again her son’s clothes that Hertha always attended to and kept in neat repair, and in cooking his favorite dishes. “After the feast he’ll surely feel the famine,” Ellen thought, remembering the scanty fare of her school days; but she tried in every way to be as considerate as she could, appreciating that she had brought a sorrow, though a necessary one, to the household. For Hertha, who had known a year’s tragic homesickness, the future looked black for Tom as well as for herself. She dared not face it and lived each day trying to forget the dark hours that were to come.

Lee Merryvale had been genuinely provoked at losing one of his best hands. He talked earnestly to Tom, who sent him to Ellen, and after a lengthy but fruitless controversy with the older sister he turned to the younger one. “See here,” he said to Hertha one day as she was arranging the living-room of the great house, “can’t you keep Tom at home?”

“I’d like to.”

“He doesn’t want to go.”

“It seems best,” was all Hertha could answer.

“There isn’t much in learning a trade these days. Everything is done in the factory. A carpenter doesn’t make his doors or his sashes, his sills or his windows; he simply puts together other people’s work. I can teach Tom a lot about orange-growing right here, and then he can go off if he wants and have a grove of his own and grow blossoms for his bride.”

He laughed at his joke, but added seriously, “Why don’t you keep him at home?”

“Ask Ellen,” was all Hertha could answer.

As she went home that night Merryvale met her in the grove, and again held her in conversation about her brother until Tom himself came upon them.

“I’m trying to get your sister to persuade you to stay at home,” said Merryvale, addressing the boy but looking at the girl. “You know you don’t want to go. Why do you let a woman boss you?”

“Perhaps,” said Tom cannily, “ef I let her do a big bit o’ bossing now, I’ll be rid of it fer good by-and-by.”

“You mean you’ll be your own boss when you get away? Don’t you think it! They’ll boss you every hour of the twenty-four at school. Better stay here and work for me.”

“I like you, boss, all right,” the boy answered soberly. Then, turning to walk away, he called, “Coming, Sister?” and Hertha went with him.

“Sister, rot!” said Merryvale impatiently, looking after them. “They adopted that girl. She never came out of that nest.”

That evening, seated at the table about the large lamp, Ellen went over, not for the first time, Tom’s school course, and explained from the catalogue the studies he was to pursue. His mother was all interest, examining the pictures depicting the boys at their various tasks. Hertha sewed at the flannel shirt that was a farewell gift and occasionally put in a word. Tom was profoundly silent. Except when questioned he refused to make any contribution to their discussion. “One ’ud think,” his mother said at last, “as it was Ellen goin’ ter school, not you.”

“Why don’t she?” was his sole answer.

Ellen looking into his sullen face was both indignant and troubled. Many colored boys, she knew, had walked hundreds of miles to secure entrance at this institution and, once admitted, had accepted privations without a murmur, intent only on gaining the power that comes through knowledge. Tom was to travel in comparative comfort, he would have money for his actual needs, and yet he did not wish to avail himself of this unique opportunity. It was not as though he were a stupid boy; he had done well for every one for whom he had worked. Evidently he simply did not wish to leave home.

The older sister rose and closed the catalogue. “It’s time we all went to bed,” she announced. “To-morrow you and Hertha will want to have a long walk together, I know,” turning to Tom, “and we’ll have dinner when you get back; and then it’ll be Mammy’s turn to be with you.”

She put herself in the background, genuinely anxious to do all she could to make endurable her immutable decree. Life to her was like a quilt made up of great, glowing patches, each patch an achievement; and if the weaving together of the patches brought with it pricks of pain they were essential to the completed whole. But Tom not only objected to the pricking, but had his own ideas as to the color and fabric of his quilt.

The next day found him with Hertha two miles down the river. It had been very warm in the pine country, and they had followed the open stream.

“I’s gwine the way they all go,” Tom said meditatively, looking to the north. “The brooks flow to the rivers and the rivers to the sea. Don’t you want to go too?”

“I? No, indeed.”

“I’ve been thinking, Sister, it must be mighty slow here fer you; and when I’m gone it’ll be worse. Why don’t you settle in the city this winter and go out to work?”

At Merryvale the city always meant the port, twenty-five miles away.

“What a strange notion, Tom. I’d be lonesome there.”

“Oh, there’d be lots to do. Church every Sunday, and picnics, and excursions. You’re so pretty, you’d be the best liked girl in the place.”

Hertha laughed. “Now, don’t you begin to plan for me! I like it right where I am at home.”

“Most girls marry,” Tom remarked after a few moments, “and so do most fellers. The boys round here ain’t your kind. I don’t wonder you don’t notice ’em. But they’s fine chaps down there,” pointing down the stream, “lawyers, and doctors and teachers.”

The girl looked at her brother a little curiously as though wondering if he meant more than he said.

“Well, this is the first time you’ve tried to marry me off! Mammy talks that way and Ellen wants me to choose a career, but I thought you loved Merryvale like I do and were only sorry to go away.”

“It’s natural for the human being ter marry,” Tom went on sententiously. “Don’t think I will though,” he added, “Ef you marry you don’t have a chance to think. Now it might be, jest as I was thinking something very important, my wife ’ud interrupt and have a baby!”

There was a finality in this remark that left them in silence, and dropping plans for the future they watched the light clouds gather in masses in the deep blue sky until it was time to start homeward.

When they were within a short distance of the great house, rain began to fall, and by the time they had reached the live-oaks there was a downpour.

“Come up here,” Lee Merryvale called authoritatively from the porch.

It was the front porch and they had no thought of setting foot on it, expecting instead to run for shelter to the kitchen door. Hertha moved forward but Tom drew back until Merryvale again commanded them to come.

“You’re wet,” he said to Hertha as she stepped on the porch. And then turning sharply to Tom: “Can’t you take care of your sister better than this?”

“I’m all right,” Hertha said quickly, abashed at the importance given to her. “Come up, Tom,” she said calling to him, but he remained standing in the rain.

“You can go home if you want,” Lee Merryvale nodded his head toward Tom, “and Hertha can stay here until it stops. Don’t you know we’re sure to have a shower in the afternoon?”

“It arrived ahead of time to-day,” Hertha explained. And then noting Tom on the wet sand, the rain beginning to soak through his coat, her motherliness got the better of her embarrassment. “Come up on the porch,” she said coaxingly. “I’ll run upstairs and get a coat I keep here for just such a time as this. I won’t be a moment. Please!”

He mounted the steps to please her and then walked to the end that was furthest from Merryvale.

The white man sat down in a porch chair, threw his head back, crossed his knees, and began to smoke.

“You smoke, Tom?”

“No, sir.”

“The first thing you’ll do when you go to school will be to smoke; not because you like it but because it’s against the rules. Break all the rules you can, my boy, and get sent home, for you’re needed here.”

“Naw,” Tom replied turning at him and almost snarling, “I ain’t no use.”

Young Merryvale regarded the boy with some amazement, then noting the grimness of his expression, said nothing further. In a moment Hertha, wearing her long coat, came down the stairs and she and her brother went on their way.

Before he went to his room that night, Tom spoke a word alone with
Ellen. “Don’t let Sister grieve too much,” he said.

Ellen looked at him sadly. “You put me in a very hard position, Tom. You make me seem almost cruel.”

“Never mind about that. What’s done can’t be mended. But don’t let Hertha grieve not if you can help it.”

He kissed his older sister good-night and went into his little room, there to sit upon his trunk and with his face in his hands bury himself in thought.

“Ef I was any use,” he said, “Ellen couldn’t drag me away; but I ain’t the brother she needs.”

He stepped up the gangway into the little boat the next morning like a man. They were all there to see him off: his mother wiping her eyes and telling him to be her good boy; Ellen, resolute, not giving way to her sorrow; and Hertha, his beautiful sister, waving her handkerchief, her lips trying to smile. He watched them until the boat was far out in the stream; and then, with a very sober face, took his seat where he could look ahead toward the nearing sea.

CHAPTER III

It was still early morning when the boat left the dock and the three women walked back toward their home after their good-by to Tom. No one spoke for a time and then Aunt Maggie said impressively, “Dere ain’t no use in cryin’ ’bout what yer can’t help. Tom’s gone, but maybe it’ll make a man o’ him; maybe it were best fer him ter leabe de women folk. Heah ‘tis, Monday morning. Ellen, hab yer settle in yer mind which o’ de boys gits de washin’ ter my folks?”

“I suppose,” said Hertha, “it will be either Thaddeus Jackson or Obadiah Thomas.”

“It will be Thaddeus,” Ellen answered. “He will do it all right, Mammy, because his father lets him save his money.”

“I hope he isn’t saving to go to school,” said Hertha; and then, quite unexpectedly to herself, laughed. She had been living so many days weighted with sorrow that the sailing of the boat had come as a relief. There was no good, as her mother said, to rebel against the inevitable; and while she would miss her brother, who had grown to be a companion in thought and interests, and who yet could never outgrow his place as her baby, it could not be right to look upon his absence as a calamity like sickness or death. So she gave her little laugh and her mother looked at her with pleasure and relief.

“Dere goes Ellen,” Aunt Maggie said, as her elder daughter went past them the sooner to get to her work. “You an’ I believes as de door o’ heben’s open ter dem as walks slow. I’s glad you kin laugh, honey. We ain’t lose Tom fer good. An’ soon de winter’ll come, an’ moe folks a-staying at de great house, an’ den de summer an’ de dear boy home ag’in.”

Talking on in slow, comfortable phrases, stopping often to get her breath, Hertha’s mammy walked with her among the pines to their tidy front yard where golden glow and asters told of the autumn.

“It seems later than it is, doesn’t it?” said Hertha, “we’ve been up so long. I think I’ll go to Miss Patty right now.”

There were two paths to the great house. The well-traveled one led past a number of cabins, and ended near the kitchen door. It was the shorter but Hertha chose a more attractive way among the pines to where a cypress marked the beginning of the orange grove. She had taken this route long before Lee Merryvale’s return; and while he had closed it generally to dwellers among the pines, Miss Patty assured her maid she could use it as much as she wished.

She had only walked a little way when she saw Merryvale himself examining his cherished possessions.

“Come over here, won’t you?” he called out. “There’s no one up at the house yet.”

Hertha went shyly toward him. He was a handsome man with reddish gold hair, clear eyes, and a glowing skin. His hat was off, he wore a soft shirt with collar thrown open, and altogether looked an attractive combination of the farmer and the gentleman.

As she came up he said sympathetically, “You must be feeling pretty badly to-day at saying good-by to Tom.”

“Yes,” said Hertha, and added almost confidentially, “you see, Tom’s the baby. I took care of him when he wasn’t any longer than that,” indicating the length with her hands.

“You couldn’t have been much longer yourself.”

She shook her head smiling and then turned to go away.

“Can’t we have a little talk?” he asked. “Don’t run into the house such a wonderful morning as this. I say, what a day it is! A day for the gods Zeus, Apollo, Diana we ought to worship the sun!”

It was a wonderful morning. The newly risen sun sent its golden light through the grove, brightening the deep green leaves, showing the pale yellow in the ripening fruit; and then danced on to the river where it lay, a limitless mass of golden mist, upon the shining stream.

As Hertha stopped and looked out over the river, Merryvale stepped to her side. “You’re as beautiful as a goddess,” he said.

“Don’t go, please,” he cried as she moved away from from him. “Stop and play! Let’s play ball. The goddesses, you know, did that. Here, catch!” and he threw an orange into her hands.

He was so near that she could scarcely fail to catch it, yet it slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground where she picked it up, awkwardly enough, and threw it back again.

He had moved away from her but was quick to catch her wavering throw. “Better next time,” he said.

She grew more expert, lost her shyness, and the ball flew back and forth until, squeezed too hard in the man’s strong hand, it collapsed into a sticky mass of skin and pulp.

“It was extravagant of you,” Hertha laughed, as she watched him wipe his fingers. “You wouldn’t let any one else waste good fruit.”

“It wasn’t wasted,” he declared, “it gave us a good time. Isn’t that a worthy way to end life?”

She did not answer. The play over, she was self-conscious again.

“Try once more,” he cried, picking another orange.

“No, no,” she answered. “I must be going.”

“You aren’t needed yet.”

“Yes I am, truly. Miss Patty is wondering why I’m not there with the hot water.”

He tossed the orange, but she dodged it and ran through the trees. Pursuing her, in a few seconds he was at her side.

“Please don’t go,” he pleaded.

“I must.”

“Well, promise you’ll come and play again.”

“Perhaps.”

“Promise!”

“Perhaps,” and she left him.

The blood was throbbing in his temples as he went back to his trees. He had admired her beauty from the time he had first noticed her, three months before, moving about his home. What must her father have been to have given her such poise, such a delicate throat, such a pure white skin! And her charm did not end with her face or her carriage. Her speech was that of the white girl, not of the Negro careful speech, learned, as it happened, of her northern teachers. He had not encountered her often these summer months, for she was Miss Patty’s personal servant and spent her days in his aunt’s upper rooms or on the gallery; but he never saw her that he did not want to speak with her, to see the light come to her questioning face. She seemed to him in every way a lady. What was she doing living in a black woman’s home?

The mid-day meal at the great house was stirred from its usual quiet by a discussion of the visitor who was expected by the evening boat. The Merryvales had never taken boarders, but from time to time they had staying with them what the English call “paying guests.” Every winter, two or three northerners, visitors from the year before or carefully introduced by former visitors, came to Merryvale and made a substantial payment for the privilege of living in the old house. Usually these guests were elderly ladies, either unmarried or with busy husbands who could not take the time to accompany them, and they lived quietly on the place; taking little walks, knitting, playing cards, and occasionally going by boat to the city for a day’s shopping. Miss Patty depended on them for her entertainment more, perhaps, than she was ready to admit. They taught her a new game of solitaire or a new way of making a baby’s sack, and they listened, with every appearance of attention, to her innumerable tales about her family. To-day’s arrival was a Miss Witherspoon, a friend of one of their pleasantest Boston guests, and everything was being planned for her comfort.

“Put my best linen on the bed, Hertha,” Miss Patty said as she came upstairs after her mid-day meal, “and you can take your sewing to the gallery while I have my nap.”

Hertha did as she was bidden, and, the guest-room in perfect order, went out upon the shady corner of the upper porch. A wind was blowing from the river, tossing the gray moss of the live-oaks, and brushing against her fingers the thin lace she was trying to sew upon a dress. It called her to play, pushed the little curls in her eyes, and spilled the spool of thread upon the floor. She laughed to herself as she picked it up, and then sat, her work in her lap, looking wistfully out into the swaying moss and the green leaves.

So the gods and goddesses played at ball. Which god was he? Apollo, of course, the god of the sunlight, the gold gleaming in his ruddy hair. What good times they must have had in those old days when no one seemed to be busy, when you might run through the meadows singing as you went, when no one minded if you danced in the moonlight and played in the morning. Why should you not do such simple, happy things!

She took up her needle again, and of a sudden thought of Tom going away alone. The remembrance of the boy’s face held her to her task.

Along the lane came an automobile, its horn tooting as it bumped over the uneven road. Hertha started, and putting down her work watched to see the car stop in front of the Merryvale door. It was most unusual to have guests arrive in this fashion and at this hour. The men were not about; Pomona, the cook, was unequal to receiving such a visitor, so though it was not her specified task, Hertha, mindful for the good ordering of the house, went to the door.

Descending from the automobile was an alert-looking lady, neither young nor old, in a plain, good-fitting, tailor-made suit and small hat, with the business-like air of one who has done much traveling and is accustomed to finding herself in new surroundings.

“I am Miss Witherspoon,” she said at once. “I had expected to arrive later in the afternoon by boat, but it seemed wiser at the last to come part of the way by train. I hope I am not inconveniencing you by my early arrival.”

“It is no inconvenience,” Hertha replied, “but I am sorry that Miss Merryvale is lying down.”

“Don’t think of disturbing her,” the newcomer said. And then, smiling at Hertha, asked, “Is this another Miss Merryvale?”

“No,” Hertha answered, “I am Miss Merryvale’s maid.”

She was quite accustomed to being taken for a white girl, and felt no embarrassment; but the same could not be said of Miss Witherspoon. That well-bred lady almost stared; and then, turning, dismissed her car and followed Hertha, who had laden herself with bags, to the bedroom.

“I hope everything is as you like it,” the girl said to the “paying guest” who looked with approval at the cool room, high-ceilinged, with white walls, white iron bed and simple furnishings.

“Thank you,” said Miss Witherspoon, “I am sure I like it very much; and really, I believe there is nothing I should like better than to lie down myself.”

She smiled again at Hertha, this time the pleasant, patronizing smile of one who praises a good servant’s work.

“I’ll bring you some hot water,” Hertha said.

When she had completed her arrangements for the new guest, she went back to her seat, and laboriously, intently, worked on the white muslin with its fine white lace.

There was a good deal to tell when she got home that night. Her mother wanted all the details of Miss Witherspoon’s appearance, and after a lengthy description, ventured her opinion of the newcomer’s laundry value. “I reckon she don’ wear any o’ dem crinkly gowns an’ chemises dat you do up yoursel’. Dey matches de folks wid der money bangin’ agin der knees in der petticoat pockets. Did she duck down, dearie, ter git her purse?”

“No, Mammy,” Hertha answered.

“But she’ll be de keerful kin’, allus ‘memberin’ ter tak’ off a white skirt if it begin ter rain, an’ half de time dryin’ her han’chiefs on de winder-pane. Dat’s de kin’ as comes here. It takes de hotel folks ter make a payin’ business.”

“She’s younger than our boarders usually are, anyway,” Hertha said. “Not that she’s young but she looks so.”

“Everybody looks young these days,” Ellen remarked; “or if they don’t they let you know they’re trying to.”

“Was dere laughin’ an’ carr’in’ on at de table?”

“Yes, a little. Yes, Mammy, I think she’s entertaining.”

“Dat’s good. I hope she ‘spectin’ ter stay de winter.”

“I think not, Mammy. I think she’s to leave next month.”

“Dat’s too bad. Ef I was Miss Patty I’d hab some nice gal or udder heah all de time ter keep Mister Lee company. If dey don’t gib him a good time he’ll up an’ leab de family an’ de orange an’ grapefruit business. Dere ain’t nottin’ a boy needs so much as de right kin’ ob a lil’ gal ter play wid.”

“You’re to have Tom’s room now, Sister,” Ellen said as they started for bed.

Hertha expostulated. “You need a room to yourself, Ellen, I know you do.”

Ellen knew it too, but she was desirous to give her sister everything within her power. “No, I’m all right,” she said decidedly. “It’s all arranged. Mother and I didn’t say anything before because we wanted to surprise you. You’ve wanted, I know, to be by yourself, dear; and Tom would be glad to think you were in his room.”

She showed her sister the little things she had done for her comfort, and with a kiss left her to herself. It had been a long day and the young girl went at once to bed and fell asleep. But after a little she awoke and lay for hours in the still heat of the night, living again the morning’s happenings. She went over in her mind, her heart beating fast, the foolish little game that carried with it so much happiness. He thought her as beautiful as a goddess; and he had not said it cheaply as though she were some common, gaily daubed plaything that one dangled to-day to throw away to-morrow. His eyes looked honestly into hers. He was strong and capable, loving the fresh air and sunshine and the green trees. He was gentle, kind to the people here, kind to her. With her eyes fixed on the dim window square that saved the room from utter darkness, she dreamed of his near presence, feeling his breath upon her cheek, until, her whole body swept with emotion, she clenched her hands and pressed them to her lips to keep back the welling tears. For then came the dread reality: her color, her station, these two facts loomed above her, fell and crushed her with their weight. No young white man should choose as his companion a Negro servant. She must forget the morning playtime, and never commit the fault again. Striving to drive him from her thoughts, she made plans for the morrow the finishing of Miss Patty’s dress, the letter she would write to Tom. And, tossing on her bed, between her new-found happiness and her misgivings, she cried herself to sleep.

Is there any greater difference than that between night and morning? All the hobgoblins, the fears, the morbid misgivings disappear with the bright sunlight and the feel of cold water. As the fresh drops fell from Hertha’s face she was sure she had misjudged the pleasant facts of yesterday. She coiled her hair that fell in little curls as the brush left its silky fineness, and hummed a song to her smiling face in the glass. Fastening the last hook of her blue cotton dress, the soft, gray-blue that she and Miss Patty liked, she went in to help the others with the breakfast, master of her fate. There was no hesitation in her step when, a little earlier than her wont, she turned toward the orange grove.

“Honey,” her mother called after her. “Jes’ ask Pomona ef she’ll gib me her big stew-pot to-day. I’s layin’ ter make some jelly. An’ don’ work too hard. Dat olé black woman’s allus tryin’ ter git you ter do her work.”

CHAPTER IV

“Good morning, Princess.”

“Good morning.” And then, shyly, “It isn’t nice to drop from a goddess even to a princess.”

“Wait until I tell you the princess that you are! You’re Snowdrop who was given to the dwarfs to keep. You remember her, don’t you?”

“I think she had a cruel mother who wanted to get her out of the way.”

“Yes, but it was all because Snowdrop was the most beautiful woman in the world; no one else was half so fair. How was it? When the mother looked into her mirror and asked if any one were fairer than she, she saw Snowdrop’s face. Of course, no woman could stand that, so she cast Snowdrop out and the ugly dwarfs took care of her.”

“The dwarfs were kinder to her than her own people.”

Merryvale, with a hasty glance at the girl, sensed the ugly reality of his story and, turning very red, began plucking the dead leaves from the nearest tree.

“It must be wonderful,” he remarked, rather clumsily, “to be a new person every day. Who will you be to-morrow?”

“Miss Patty’s maid.” All her brightness had gone and she moved as if about to leave him.

“Oh, no,” he exclaimed, “not that! Cinderella, perhaps. To-morrow you will be Cinderella before the fairy godmother came to take her to the ball.”

“Yes, because nothing had happened then.”

“Not before the ball, but after; the next morning when the prince searches with the golden slipper in his hand.”

“If I were going to be Cinderella at all,” Hertha was gently emphatic, “I would be at the ball itself, a beautiful ball in a long, golden room filled with lights and blooming flowers, where every one wore filmy silk dresses and danced to swaying music.”

“You and I would dance together, you in soft blue silk, the color of the dress you have on, and I what should I wear?”

“Pale pink satin,” she answered, laughter in her eyes, “and your hair in long curls.”

He chuckled. “What fools they must have looked, those Fauntleroy princes. I wonder if they ever did a stroke of work?”

“No, others planted while they picked the blossoms.”

“There’s a heap of that in this world, isn’t there? Do you know,” earnestly, “one reason I came home was because I thought I’d like to see a Merryvale digging his own garden.”

“You do it very nicely.”

“Thank you.” He said this seriously, and then, realizing for a moment her station, turned away.

“What’s this?” She was running among the trees; he dashed after her and in a moment had her cornered.

“The clock struck twelve.”

“No it didn’t! Truly it didn’t. Besides, you’re not Cinderella to-day, you’re Snowdrop. You mustn’t change parts as fast as that. It isn’t Cinderella until to-morrow.”

“I’m afraid I forgot.”

“Of course you did. Come now, and play.”

She shook her head, and then half whispered, looking wistfully into his face, “My clock is always striking.”

They stood close to one another. The sun shining through the leaves on her young face showed all its beauty; the small mouth with its delicately curved upper lip; the line of hair over the forehead, two graceful curves that came together in a little peak; the deep, shining eyes that dropped now under his gaze.

“Just one kiss,” he pleaded.

She shook her head, and he could see her hand clench as though to stop her trembling.

His own trembled as he placed it over hers and stood so close that, though he did not touch her, his presence felt like an embrace.

All the emotions of the night of which she had believed herself master returned, but with redoubled strength. Her whole self, the slender body, the delicate senses, the shy spirit that before had rested happy in the love of home and wood and river, was a wild tumult of passionate desire. To lift up her face and kiss him would be to enter through the golden gates of paradise. But while her heart beat so fast that the blood flooded her cheeks and she was Snowdrop no longer, she did not raise her head.

And then a cock that had strayed from its family among the pines and wandered in their direction raised itself upon its toes and began to crow.

They both started, the pink on Hertha’s cheeks turned to lifeless white, and like a shadow she slipped away.

Merryvale stood motionless for a time among the trees. “You wouldn’t think it,” he said to himself, looking out upon the golden river, “but it’s a black world.”

“You’re late,” declared Pomona shortly, as Hertha entered the kitchen. The girl did not answer, but, glancing at the clock, saw that she was on time.

Pomona was not in good humor; indeed, Pomona’s gloomy moods were frequent, and the household, to some extent, revolved about them. “I don’t know what I should do without Hertha,” Miss Patty was fond of saying, when Pomona was especially exasperating, “she is always the same.”

But on this day, if Miss Patty had noticed, she would have found in her maid’s manner a little trembling unquiet. She did not notice, however, being deeply occupied with Miss Witherspoon, who was proving a stimulating companion. The two had exchanged notes upon the subject of religion to find themselves in pleasant accord, and now were on that most dangerous ground, domestic service.

“You have a wonderful maid,” Miss Witherspoon said, after examining the delicate, handmade waist which Hertha had just finished.

“Hertha is surely a treasure. But she likes it here, so don’t, my dear lady, hope by offering her better wages, to entice her North.”

“I had no thought of anything so basely ungrateful to you.”

“Others have, then. But Hertha’s not restless like that sister of hers, Ellen though I’m sure they’re no relation. I can’t endure that girl. Her influence isn’t good over my maid.”

“Have I seen Ellen yet?”

“No and you won’t see her about this place. She teaches in the colored school.”

“How interesting! I shall have to go to her.”

Miss Patty’s face showed disapproval bordering on disgust. Miss Witherspoon was not the first of her guests who had at once expressed an interest in Ellen, and, later, helped on the already over-prosperous school. She turned the conversation back to her favorite.

“There are not many girls like Hertha to be found to-day. She has a natural aptitude for service, and her white blood makes her very intelligent. My cousin, Carrie (she died in Savannah two years ago), had a maid like that who was the most faithful creature her constant nurse for fifteen years.”

“Indeed!”

“I’m fixing to have Hertha with me for as long as I live.”

“But don’t you think she’ll get married she’s so pretty.”

“I hope not; I certainly hope not. I don’t encourage her to go out to any of the parties with the rough boys and girls here. But she herself realizes that she’s above them in station. No, Hertha will do much better not to marry. I can understand her falling in love with a colored man of her own complexion, but we haven’t confidence in the ’yaller niggers,’ as the darkies call them. They have the bad qualities of both races, you know; they’re a thieving lot.”

“Yes?” ejaculated Miss Witherspoon, and then, a little maliciously, “Does Hertha steal?”

“Hertha? Why, of course not!” Miss Patty looked very indignant. “Have you lost anything?”

“No, no,” Miss Witherspoon answered quickly, anxious to make her question clear. “I only thought you said that all mulattoes stole.”

There are few things more exasperating than to have one’s generalities taken literally. Miss Patty felt provoked both for herself and for her maid. “Hertha,” she explained, with some feeling, “is an unusual girl, with, I reckon, an unusual heritage. It is of benefit to her to stay here in private service with a lady. She is an affectionate child and a great favorite with me. As I grow older I hope she will want to stay and make life pleasant for me as I have tried to make it pleasant for her.”

At that moment Hertha came to where they sat upon the porch.

“Haven’t I, honey?”

“Haven’t you ” Hertha questioned.

“Made life pleasant for you?”

“Oh, yes indeed.”

“Miss Witherspoon was talking like she thought you ought to get married, but I told her you were happy here with me and not thinking of anything of the sort.”

“No,” Hertha said, “I’m not expecting to get married.”

“I’d like to have you get your work and show Miss Witherspoon the dress you’re making. She does her own sewing here as well as mine,” Miss Patty explained as Hertha left, “and I’m as much interested in it as she is.”

It was a long day for Miss Patty’s maid, but when she was released she did not at once go home, but walked to the river bank and wandered a little time by the shore. Every one was within the great house, the twilight had come, and she could stop, as Tom loved to stop, and think.

As she went slowly along the path that she and Tom had traversed only two days ago, she felt as though it were she, not he, who had gone away from home and all its surroundings out to the open sea. Every landmark with which she was familiar was left behind, her reserve, her modesty, her pride. Two days ago she was anchored to her home in the cabin, to her black mother and sister and brother; they were first, supreme in her thoughts. She was attached to Miss Patty, who petted her and made her feel less a servant than a loved child. Two days ago as she walked over this path, she was at peace, and every murmuring sound, every flicker of sunlight, every sweet, pungent odor sank into her spirit, and held her, as she would have put it, close to God. Her religion, as she had unconsciously evolved it from the crude, but poetic gospel of the colored preacher, and from the commune she had held with nature, was harmony, the oneness of man’s spirit with the eternal goodness. It had been largely an unconscious belief, born of her own tranquillity. But now the tranquillity was broken, and peace would not return. Shutting her eyes, she listened to the air singing in her ears; she tried to feel herself carried out of the turmoil of the morning into the tabernacle of the spirit.

But it was of no use. It was gone, home, work, religion. She had left the shore and was in a little boat, blinded by the spray, tossed on a sea of tumultuous desire. Tom, too, was out there somewhere on the ocean, but it was the same Tom who had walked with her Sunday. If their boats should meet, his and hers, he would not know his sister. She did not know herself, and stopped amazed to find that she was weeping.

A cow, wearied with her attempt to get some nourishment out of the tough hyacinth, moved out of the river, and, shaking the water from her wet flanks, started home. Hertha suddenly found herself hungry and tired and very much ashamed. The excitement that had brought the tears to her cheeks was gone, leaving a dull depression behind. She turned on her way, and as her mother’s cabin came in sight, with a light in the window, for it was late, she felt relieved and safe. After all, nothing had happened, nothing. She was the same girl she had always been and needed only to forget the happenings of the morning.

Her supper tasted good, and when it was over she thought that she was ready to write a letter to Tom. The table cleared, however, and her pen in hand, she could not find a word to say. How could she forget those two meetings, the only events worth recording, of which Tom must never learn a word? So she bit her pen, and at length, at her mother’s suggestion, postponed the letter to another day.

“Honey-lamb,” mammy said, “you’ eyes look close ter tears. Don’t you want Ellen to go wid yer down ter de dock? She jes’ step out a minute ter see de Theodore Roosevelt Jackson baby, but she’ll come ef I call.”

“Don’t call, Mammy; I don’t want to go. Miss Patty kept me running all day and I’m tired. I’ll stay here with you and read.”

“Dar are de books, den; but you mostly knows ’em by heart.”

“I suppose I do,” Hertha said drearily.

She picked up The Life of Abraham Lincoln. Almost all the books in the Williams household had been bought of agents and paid for on the installment plan. There were volumes of universal knowledge and other volumes of the world’s best literature all eminently instructive, but none calculated to soothe an aching heart. Turning over the pages idly, looking at a picture here, reading a paragraph there, Hertha occupied a few minutes and then went to where her mother sat in her big, comfortable chair. Leaning over, she put her arms around the old woman’s neck.

“Um, um,” the mother crooned, patting the girl’s hands.

“Sing for me, Mammy.”

“You must git inter my lap, den. Reckon it’ll hold a lil’ flower like you.”

“This is better.” The girl knelt so that her head came on her mother’s breast. “Now sing.”

“What’ll I sing fer yer?”

“Oh, anything. Sing ‘Nobody knows de trouble I’s seen.’”

“Laws, chile, does yer feel as bad as all dat! Poor lil’ lily. An’ you was lookin’ a rosebud dis mornin’. Dey cer’enly don’ know much ’bout carin’ fer my flower up dar.” Then, smoothing the girl’s hair with her strong hand, she sang:

“Nobody knows de trouble I’s seen,
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows de trouble I’s seen,
Glory Hallelujah.”

The people at the great house were nervous, tiring; but mammy was restful like the deep, lower waters of a stream. Her mellow voice sang on:

“I know de Lawd, I know de Lawd,
I know de Lawd has laid his hands on me.”

“De Lawd” came out in three long, rolling syllables, descending from the high call, “I know.” Hertha found herself breathing slowly, quietly, her mother’s hand smoothing her forehead and soft, curling hair.

“I was a wandering sheep ”

Mammy had slipped into a hymn that belonged to the church where for many years she had worshiped, proud in being the wife of the holy man who occupied the preacher’s desk. She had sung all her children to sleep with this hymn.

“I was a wandering sheep,
I did not love the fold,
I did not love my shepherd’s voice,
I would not be controlled.
I was a wayward child ”

Hertha rose from her knees. Quietly going into her mother’s room, she turned down the bed, a task she performed every night for Miss Patty and her guests.

“Honey,” her mother called, “what yer up ter?”

“Nothing,” Hertha answered, “only fixing to do something for you and Ellen, and now I’m going to bed myself.”

For a week she never let the thought of the morning’s happiness take possession of her mind. It might press close, but it encountered a wall of resolution that held it back. She made her way to her work among the chickens and pigs through the pines to the kitchen door. Miss Patty liked to have her about, and when the work in the rooms was finished often called her to her side. She and Miss Witherspoon had taken to spending a part of their afternoons over a new and elaborate kind of embroidery, and Hertha was essential to Miss Patty’s accomplishment. Indeed, after Hertha had counted stitches and drawn threads and outlined the pattern, Miss Patty’s part became a last triumphant progress. During this period of the day, when the women were on the gallery, Lee would often join them. He and Miss Witherspoon found many things to talk about, for the Boston woman had a keen interest in this southern youth who had gotten the best out of his studies and returned ambitious to bring new life to his ancestral acres. “You’re quite a missionary,” she said once to his aunt’s disgust. Lee might fuss about his trees if he liked, but business acumen was a little vulgar and at the least should be concealed, while criticism of the South, the suggestion that it was a mission field, was rank impertinence.

Sometimes Lee brought a book and read to them here and there, for Miss Patty did not care for a continuous story. One afternoon it was a poem written by a classmate who had died before his college days were over. Coming from one who left the earth so young, its promise of future endeavor, of service to humanity, made it a tragic little verse. Miss Patty wiped her eyes when it was over and called on Hertha to set her work right. During these times Lee never spoke to Hertha nor seemed to look in her direction, but he always knew when she had left the porch and rarely stayed long after her absence. Miss Patty felt pleased that her Boston guest was interesting her boy so that she had more of his company.

On Sunday Ellen proposed to her sister that they take a walk, and they went among the pines and dark cypresses, through the swamp, and by the black creek. It was hot and humid, the mosquitoes were annoying, and they were both tired when they returned to the cabin steps.

“I don’t like this time of year,” Hertha said when they sat down. “It’s so silent. The birds ceased singing long ago; they only call to one another now.”

“The mosquitoes haven’t ceased singing, I notice,” Ellen replied, laughing. “Now I like this time of year best of all. October means the beginning of cool weather and work.”

When Hertha went to her room that night a little breeze greeted her as she sat down by her window. It was cloudy at first, but in a few moments the clouds broke and the moonlight streamed upon the dark trees and the white sand. She watched the moon sailing through the clouds, she smelt the roses by the porch, and the wall that her will had built against her sweet and rapturous thoughts broke down, and with a rush her spirit was swept with tumultuous love.

“Cinderella,” Lee said to her the next morning as she turned into the orange grove, “you’ve been a shockingly long time coming.”

“I know it,” she answered, “but there were so many things to think of, sitting by the fire.”

“Don’t think,” he urged. “I’ve given it up. Don’t think, but live.”

And this time she lifted up her face and, without a thought, gave him a kiss.

CHAPTER V

“Hertha,” Ellen said the next afternoon, “have you any plans for the future?”

School had just closed, Miss Patty had given her maid an afternoon off, and the two sisters were walking together toward their home.

“Any plans?” Hertha was startled. “I thought our plans were made for good when we came here.”

“I hope not!” Ellen declared decidedly. “I’m willing to work here now for next to nothing, but I shall try for a bigger job some day; and you, honey, you don’t always want to be Miss Patty’s maid.”

“I don’t know; why shouldn’t I?”

“This is a dull life for you, Hertha. Sometimes I think we ought never to have come here.”

“Ellen!”

“It’s different for mammy and me; we’re older.”

“You’re only four years older than I.”

“I think that really I’m a great deal older than you. But I get so much more out of Merryvale than you do. The people who live in these cabins well, they’re problems to me, human problems that I’m trying to solve. There’s hardly a home that hasn’t in it some boy or girl whom I’m watching almost as though he were my child. I’m working for the children, Hertha, the colored children who will soon be men and women and who ought to have just as good a chance as white children in this world.”

“They never will in America.”

“I’m not so sure,” Ellen answered.

They were walking in the pine region back of the river. To a newcomer many of the cabins would have looked untidy; the ubiquitous hog would have been pronounced a public nuisance, and the facilities for washing inadequate; but to Ellen the settlement in which she had been working for five years was a garden of progress, and if a few of the plants made a determined stand to remain weeds, she did not let them hide her numerous hardy flowers. In her heart she meant ultimately to uproot them. Old Mr. Merryvale would never stand for severity, but the next generation was at work upon the place and might be induced to aid her in exiling the degenerate few.

“I love it here!” Ellen exclaimed, stopping and looking about her. “I never worked in a school before where it was so easy to get at the people, or where the children seemed so anxious to learn. Do you know, I suppose no one would believe me if they heard it, but I’m glad that I’m colored.”

“Why not?” Hertha asked sharply. “If you love your work and these people, why should you want to be white?”

“You know that’s a foolish question,” and Ellen looked sadly at her sister. “You know as well, better than I, the handicap of color. Haven’t I seen you have to bear it? But still it’s great to belong to a rising race, not to one that’s on top and likely to fall.”

“To fall? How silly.”

“Is it? Well, perhaps it’s improbable. But, anyway, that isn’t what I started to talk about. I didn’t mean to talk of myself, but of you. I’m afraid this isn’t the right place for you.”

“I love it here, too!” Hertha cried, showing more animation than was usual with her. “I like the country; you know I do. Why, I love everything about the place, all the flowers in our yard, the pigs, the chickens, the pines. I think it’s the most beautiful spot in the world, and so does Tom.”

She drew in a long breath and threw out her arms as though to take in the whole of Merryvale.

“That’s all right, but you can’t live just on flowers and views; you need people.”

Hertha made no response, and they walked on for a time in silence.

“It’s like this,” Ellen continued. “You’re a generation ahead of these cabins, and you don’t enjoy the people socially who live in them. It isn’t snobbish to say this; it’s just true. You haven’t a single friend here. I can’t think what it would mean if you went away. It would be like losing the color out of the sky; everything would be dull gray. But if you ought to go, you ought, and I should help you.”

“Haven’t you made unhappiness enough, Ellen, with your plans, making Tom go, but you must get rid of me too?”

“That isn’t fair.”

“That’s what it seems like.”

“Let’s talk reasonably. Of course it isn’t the same with you as with Tom; you’re not a child.”

“I’m glad you realize that.”

“Why, Hertha, you’re almost cross. Please let me explain what I mean. I’m glad you like it here, but we all have to look ahead, and I can’t look ahead and see you a servant in a white man’s home.”

“Why not?”

“You’re too refined, too delicate. You ought to enter the front door, and if you can’t enter there, isn’t it better not to enter at all?”

There was no answer.

“I know I’ve talked this way before, and I’ll try not to do so again, but I want to make myself quite clear. It isn’t as though I didn’t believe in colored girls going into domestic service; I do. There are lots of people who belong at the back door, and it would be silly to deny it and to put them at work beyond their ability; but you’re not one of them. Because Miss Patty is white is no reason that she should have a maid who has a better education and knows more than she does.”

“Aren’t you drawing on your imagination?”

“No, I’m telling the exact truth. Miss Patty is getting something she has no right to, and you’re not getting your birthright, to be yourself, to develop the highest in you.”

“What great talent have I neglected?”

Ellen threw her arm over her sister’s shoulder. “You have talent, Hertha, you know you have, only you won’t recognize it, but keep dancing attendance on that old lady. With a little instruction you would be a skillful dressmaker, an artiste, as the advertisements say. You sew beautifully and have lots of taste, and you’ve style. With such a gift in any large city you could surely get ahead. You could have custom, too, if you wanted, from our people.”

“I don’t expect to get ahead.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know.” The girl stopped a moment and then said slowly, “I don’t believe I’ve as much ambition as you. I don’t like study. I hate the city, and I’m contented and happy here. When work is over I’ve you and mother to go to; I belong to you two and I don’t want to leave you.”

Her face was aflame as she said this, realizing that it was only a partial truth. Her deception made her angry, and she turned in retort upon her sister. “Why does it worry you so that I should love Miss Patty? Are you jealous?”

“You know as well as I do that it isn’t that.”

“It sounds like that to me. I like my work. Why should I accept a lot of responsibility, set up a shop, which I should hate, or go about making cheap gowns for stout black people when I can stay at home and wait on a sweet, refined person like my mistress?”

The “my mistress” was given with an emphasis that closed the subject. Ellen had said that her sister was not a child like Tom, and for the time at least she must accept the verdict against her.

“Well, chillen,” their mother said as they came up to the cabin, “de best o’ news, a letter f’om Tom!”

They both were upon her, but Hertha got the letter.

“Mister Lee were walkin’ dis-a-way an’ bring it ter me. It were kind o’ him; he knowed I wan’ ter see it mighty quick.”

“How short!” Hertha said, reading it through rapidly.

Mammy was at once up in arms for her son. “What done you ‘spec’? Dar’s de paper civered. He tells ‘bout de journey, an’ what he gits fer his meals, an’ how big de ocean look, an’ how he can’t rightly say no mo’ ’kase de bell done ring fer chapel. Dat a heap, but it ain’t much fer waitin’ hearts.”

“He doesn’t say what studies he’s taking,” Ellen remarked when she had finished with the sheet.

“We’re foolish, Mammy,” Hertha exclaimed, seeing the disappointment on the old woman’s face. “It’s a dear letter, and it’s Tom’s handwriting I’d know it in Timbuctoo. Oh, how I wish he were here!”

“You sho do, honey; but dere ain’t no use in wishin’. Come, git yer supper an’ den we-all’ll jes’ go down to Uncle Eben, an’ Granny Rose an’ de folks as ain’t gittin’ letters ebery day.”

There was no need to go out. The news of the letter reached the settlement before sundown, and many were the visitors who came to see it and who departed to tell all and more than it contained. It was really a gay evening, and when the three women were left alone they sat up a little longer than usual talking about it.

“Everything all right?” Ellen asked as she kissed her sister good-night.

“Yes,” Hertha answered, smiling; but when she was alone in her room the smile left her lips. Did Ellen suspect anything? Probably not, but how strange to have a secret from those at home.

CHAPTER VI

Never before did an October boast so many wonderful mornings. Sometimes it rained in the night, but the rising sun dispersed the clouds and brought a golden day to Hertha’s world. And as she went about her tasks, her brief playtime over, she still sensed the fragrant orange grove and moved among the trees, her lover by her side. Deftly helping Miss Patty with her hair or dress, guiding Miss Witherspoon in her embroidery, cheering Pomona through an intricate dinner, his voice was in her ears and his touch upon her cheek. From morning until night was a lovely, precious, fearsome dream.

For there was reality in the dream that brought fear. Her lover wanted so much. She was content to stand on the threshold, but each day he asked that they might enter within the gates. It was hard to resist his pleading. If for a moment he had been rough, if he had endeavored to take by force what she hesitated to give, she could have resisted him; but his gentleness was his power. And each morning as she saw him leave her to go into the world of white men and women, a world as irrevocably closed to her as the world of light is closed to the blind, her fear took form. Would he remain faithful if she failed to give him all that he desired? If she dallied, if she strove to keep him at love’s portal, some time he might not be there when she turned from her path to make her way among the orange trees. If that should happen, if he should neglect her, she would die of angry shame. Within her nature there was modesty and self-effacement, but also pride that could not brook a slight. She had never wooed; it had been he who had called, beckoning her from her place among the cabins in the pines. She had not given a glance or said a word to draw him from his favored place; he had come because he loved her beauty and her shy reserve. To hold him and yet not to sacrifice herself. This was the problem, when fear crept into her heart.

She had pushed it from her day after day, but she could not wholly ignore it; and this autumn morning as she sat in church, seemingly intent upon the preacher’s word, she told herself that she must decide what she was willing to give. He had pleaded with her to meet him that night within the orange grove, promising to wait for her near the cypress where her world met his. His passion was in the ascendant; he begged her to trust him, to give herself to his keeping.

“An’ de mantle ob Elijah was blue wid de blue ob de eternal heaben,” cried out the preacher, “an’ de linin’ was rose wid de blood ob de Lamb.”

Could she go? Why did the world give her such a terrible problem? Why, why was she colored! She felt a momentary revulsion to be listening to an ignorant preacher amid these clumsy black folk. It was wicked that a few drops of Negro blood forced her to this seat when she should be yonder with the white people where the clergyman read the beautiful service of the Church of England. Why was she not at Lee Merryvale’s side? As Ellen had said, she was no maid; she was his equal, and only those drops of colored blood kept her here. No, not the drops of blood, but the hideous morality of a cruel race.

But the world was here as the white people had made it, and you had to accept it and then decide what you should do. Perhaps he was holding the hymnal now and Miss Witherspoon was singing with him from the same book. There would always be some one like that to come between him and herself. Always a white face, but no whiter than her own; always a world that claimed him and despised her. But if she gave herself to him, if she trusted that he would love and protect her as he so passionately promised; if she left mother and sister and brother for his sake; then no other face would blot out hers. What her life would be she could not picture, but it would not be a life without him.

The service over, she walked with her mother and sister among the cabins that Ellen so loved. The people standing outside their doorways were dressed in their best and a pleasant Sunday air pervaded the place. Every one was decorous, and yet with an undercurrent of jollity; for the sermon had stirred their imaginations, and ahead was a good dinner. Uncle Ebenezer talked with authority of Elijah and eagerly awaited the preacher’s presence that he might discuss his theory of the color of the mantle of the prophet. “It were white as de wool ob de Lamb,” he declaimed as he saw the man of God in his long black coat walking up to him. “Jes’ riccolec’, Brudder, de waters dat it smote apart an’ dat wash it whiter’n snow.” Aunt Lucindy was on ahead, a little boy’s hand in hers, a waif for whom she was caring; for, though old and frail, Aunt Lucindy was always mothering some child. One of Ellen’s pupils walked proudly at his teacher’s side, carrying her Bible. “I knows what I’s gwine ter be when I grows up, teacher,” he said. “I’s gwine ter be a preacher; I’s gwine ter preach de word o’ God.” “I hope you will, Joshua,” Ellen answered, “but remember you must first practise what you preach.” “Yes’m, I know dat;” and then, proudly, “I’s practising ter pray an’ holler right now. I can holler as good as Aunt Lucindy when she gits happy.” Mammy had gone ahead to visit Granny Rose, who was too feeble to attend church. It was all usual to Hertha; she had seen such Sundays without comment all her life. She let the scene slip by as she tried to make her choice.

On one of the cabin steps sat an untidy, ragged girl who turned and went inside as she saw Ellen draw near. Maranthy, Sam Peter’s daughter, was one of Ellen’s failures. She was a bold, ignorant young woman of eighteen, who worked as little as she could and, brazenly open in her ways, strove to allure the growing boys whom their teacher was training in health and cleanliness and decent living. She looked maliciously at both the sisters as she went within her house.

Slipping away from her sister, Hertha sought one of the little paths in the sand that led toward the river. It brought her out behind the small, ecclesiastical-looking church at which the white people worshiped. Stopping to listen, she could hear Mr. Merryvale’s voice through the open window reading from the prayerbook. Often the little settlement was without a clergyman and the owner of the place himself conducted the service. Now there was the rustle of people rising to their feet and the morning’s devotion was done.

In the background where she could see, yet not be seen, Hertha watched the congregation as it emerged from the church. It was a small group the Merryvales and some dozen neighbors from up and down the river. She knew them all, and yet this morning they took on sinister significance. The stylishly dressed women, the men in their well-fitting clothes, the gestures and modulations of voice, these were not of her world. As they went down the path she saw one of the women beckon to Lee Merryvale, who turned, all attention, to listen to what she had to tell him. With head bent toward his companion, he walked on and at a turn of the path was gone. Soon their voices, too, died away and there was nothing left but the empty path and the endless murmur of the wind among the pines.

Erect, head thrown back, hands clenched, the colored girl stood for a moment staring down the path. Her lips parted as though to cry out against the cruelty that denied her the right to walk among these white people, white herself, by the side of the man she loved. But no cry came, and presently her hands relaxed, her face resumed its pallor, and with drooping head she turned toward home.

Always quiet, at the afternoon dinner her preoccupation was so noticeable that her mother, the dishes cleared away, tried to draw her from it.

“Come an’ sit wid me on de step, honey,” she called. “You don’ want ter go an’ do mo’ work like Ellen. I neber knowed a chile befo’ so greedy. She can’t help eatin’ up oder folks’ jobs. You come hyar an’ talk ter yo’ mammy.”

“You talk to me,” Hertha said.

“What woll I talk ’bout?”

“Tell me about it again. Tell me about how I came to you.”

The mother gave a big happy laugh. “You allays likes dat story, don’ you, honey? An’ I likes it too. Reckon dis would hab been a poor home widout you was in it. Well, sit hyar an’ I tell it ter yer, jes’ as ’twas.”

Looking down on the little garden, gay with autumnal flowers, Hertha took the step below her mother’s on the porch so that she might lean against her. As she sat there, listening to the rich drawling voice, she rested as she had not rested before that day. With mammy one felt safe. Both she and Tom had noticed it.

“Well, honey, it were twenty-t’ree year ago las’ September ”

“The twenty-ninth,” Hertha interrupted.

“De twenty-nine. You’ pappy, Ellen an’ me, we gwine ter de church fer a celebration. We was spectin’ ter git home early in de ebenin’, but it done pour so we wait round till it were night. Den we see de rain weren’t gwine ter stop, not fer t’ree ’fraid-cats, so we start off. My, how de trees shake in de roarin’ wind. Ellen, she hung close ter daddy, an’ once she give a lil’ sniffle, like she want awful ter cry, but jes’ wouldn’t.”

“I know,” Hertha broke in, “Ellen is like that now. If I’d been there, I’d have cried and daddy would have taken me in his arms, wouldn’t he?”

“I reckon so. You was a delicate chile an’ dere weren’t not’in’ he wouldn’t do fer you. But you weren’t dere, an’ we jes’ push on till de house were in sight. We went in by de kitchen do’ an’ fer a space stan’ by de fire, our coats drippin’ pails o’ water on de flo’. Den, when we was feelin’ mo’ like libin’, I leabes de odder two an’ goes inter de bedroom.”

Hertha slipped up close.

“Dere was a candle burnin’ on de dresser by de bed. I was all in a wonder! I neber lef’ a light burnin’ in my house when I gwine out, no, sir; I don’ wan ter waste no candle grease. But dere was a lil’ yeller flame shinin’ straight up fer me ter see. I done look hard, an’ rub my eyes, an’ den I look down ter where it drop its light on my bed.”

Mammy made a dramatic stop, and Hertha, ready with her part, gave the knee against which she leaned an impatient shake.

“On de bed,” Mammy went on, prolonging every word, “wid its head on my pillow, was a new-born chile. It were wrop in a sof white shawl, its tiny face turned ter de light. I bent ober ter look. It were fast asleep.

“I don’ know how long I stayed watchin’, but I heard daddy call, an’ by-’n-by he come inter de room. He gib a cry an’ dat wake de baby, an’ it cry too. In course, dat bring Ellen, an’ when she see de chile on de bed she jes’ clap her hands an’ call, ’It done come! My baby sister done come!’

“She were dat cute; wen’ right up an’ loosen de shawl an’ croon an’ croon till it stop its cryin’. Me an’ my olé man jes’ look; we couldn’t do a t’ing, not at fust.

“Well, by-’n-by we send Ellen away ter de kitchen ter fetch some t’ings she don’ want ter leab dat baby, not fer an instant an’ we look at one anudder an’ can’t say nuthin’. Den I picks up de mite, taks off de shawl, an’ foun’ one lil’ garment unnerneath. But fasten ter dat wee slip were a letter. We tear it open an’ I reckon we both tremble. But we tremble mo’ when we see what it hol’ ten ten-dollar bills! Dat were it, jes’ one hunnerd dollars.

“Ellen come sidlin’ back an’ snuggle up close ter me where I hol’ de lil’ ting. She done see no money, but dat wouldn’t ha’ made no diff’ence. What’ll a chile care fer such trash? She were all eyes an’ heart fer dat bit er flesh an’ blood.

“We took de baby inter de warm kitchen an’ I gits Ellen ter hold it while I fin’ her olé nursin’ bottle, an’ gibs de chile some food. My olé man move about restless-like. ‘What yer mean ter do?’ he ask. ’I mean ter feed an’ clothe it,’ I says. ‘What else could I do?’ He didn’t make no answer, but sit down an’ watch his lil’ gal o’ four croonin’ to de baby in her arms.

“Sech a pretty baby! I done nurse a heap er babies, black an’ white, but neber sech a pretty one as my baby. Jes’ sof an’ pink, wid sech deep eyes an’ a mouf dat look like it couldn’t hardly feed at its mudder’s breast. Dere weren’t nuttin’ ’bout it ter make it seem right in a house whar black folks libed, ‘cept de lil’ curls on its head, an’ dey mought er bin a white chile’s.

“My olé man an’ me, we set an’ talk an’ talk ater de baby been fed an’ put ter sleep an’ Ellen done shut her eyes at las’. We was honest folk, maybe we hadn’t oughter kep’ de baby?”

Mammy bent over to kiss Hertha. “But we did, you knows dat, chile, an’ we ain’t neber regret it. Dat chile’s bin a blessin’ eber since she open her eyes, lyin’ dar in de candlelight. Dat chile were her daddy’s delight an’ her mammy don’t know how ter go tru a day widoud her. An’ as fer her sister, Ellen, she’d walk tru fire ter git her what she ought ter hab. She come into a poor home, sure ’nough, but she welcome ter all it hold.”

Mammy finished her recital with a broad wave of the hand, while Hertha clasped her round the neck and gave her a hug that ruffled the pretty curls, the curls that alone linked her to the colored race.

“Now tell me about my name?” she questioned when they had settled back again.

“You asks dat, honey, an’ de ain’t nuthin’ ter tell. Seems like I made it up, an’ den agin, seems like it were meant fer Bertha, but kinder gentler an’ deeper, same as you.”

“You never heard any least thing about my people?”

The question was asked with a certain knowledge of the answer, and yet with a wistful interrogation. Never before had this foundling, dropped into a black preacher’s cabin, desired so much to know something of the two lives that gave her birth.

“No, neber.” Mammy’s answer was final. “Dey gib yer a start an’ leab de res’ fer us. I used ter fear as some un ud claim yer, but I stop dat now. De pusson I fears is de man as my baby’ll say yes to when he axes her ter be his wife.”

“He won’t come, Mammy.”

“Quit yer foolin’!” The old woman laughed into the serious young face. “Don’ I know how de fellers at school broke der hearts ober yer, an’ out in de city you was de putties’ gal o’ de lot. I’s feared sometimes dis ain’t de place fer a young t’ing like you.”

“I’m very happy here,” Hertha made answer.

“I’s glad o’ dat. Ellen, now, she’s t’inkin’ as yer need company.”

“I wish Ellen wouldn’t worry over me.”

“She ain’t worryin’, honey.” The mother spoke soothingly, seeing that her remark had awakened annoyance. “She jes’ wants yer ter hab what’s rightly yours.”

“I’m very happy,” Hertha reiterated. “Only,” she added, “I do miss Tom. He used to love to be on the porch with us Sunday afternoons, didn’t he?”

“Yes, dearie.”

“I think Tom’s going to be a splendid man; you can always trust him.”

“Dat’s so, dat’s so. An’ dat’s de bes’ t’ing yer can say ob any man.”

They sat together a little longer, the sun lengthening the shadow of the cabin upon the white sand, and then, with the coming twilight, went within.

CHAPTER VII

John Merryvale was growing old, people were beginning to say; and then would add that the world, when he should pass away, would miss an old-time gentleman. He was a tall, thin man, long of limb and deliberate of speech. The impatient northern guest who tried to hurry him with the mail could fidget to her fill without decreasing by a moment the time he chose to spend upon his task. He could not be hurried but he could easily be duped, and many of the acres that Lee Merryvale coveted, but saw in other hands, had slipped from his father’s by reason of over-confidence in some speculator or old acquaintance. But, no matter how often he was imposed upon, he never lost his equanimity. The man who took advantage of him was not to be condemned; it was not his fault if he had not been born a gentleman; the overreaching tradesman was to be pitied. That he, John Merryvale, was to be pitied did not even enter his thoughts.

The Negroes of the place loved and looked up to him, and he on his part treated them as beloved children. When they were ill he doctored them; when they quarreled, he acted as judge, and, without the cost of a lawsuit, gave them more rational judgment than they would have obtained in a court. While bearing a large part of the expense of the Episcopal church under the live-oaks at the water’s edge, he helped to keep open the Methodist meeting among the pines where his black children went on Sunday mornings. He looked askance at first at Ellen; and while he never grew to like her ways, believing that she put false notions of equality into the children’s heads, he was just and admitted that she had improved the morals of the place. For himself, he should always look upon the Negro as the white man’s charge and make every allowance for his wrong-doing. What would be a sin in a white man, in a Negro would be only the misdemeanor of a child. Once, when one of his Negro tenants murdered a black neighbor in a drunken fight, he urged the judge to show clemency, to make the sentence lenient. “Remember,” he admonished, “this man is black, and it is not one-tenth as bad for a black man to do a deed like this as for a white one.” This attitude did not prevent his treating with respect the Negroes, men and women, whom he knew both at his own place and up and down the river, and they in their turn loved to drop a word with him, and looked with affectionate regard upon the tall figure in its well-worn cutaway coat, its straw hat with the black ribbon, its big, comfortable collar. One might see him of a Sunday walking among the pines, inquiring for Lucindy or Rose or Ebenezer, as the case might be.

On this Sunday afternoon, while Hertha sat with her mother on the steps, John Merryvale was walking with his son in the orange grove. They had been examining the trees when two colored lads, dressed in their Sunday best, bowed in crossing their path. Lee nodded carelessly to the young men, but his father raised his hat. The son noticed it, and spoke, half jestingly, of this act of courtesy.

“There isn’t another man in the state would do that, Father. A nigger’s a nigger to the folk I know about here.”

“I remember,” his father answered, “the retort Jefferson Davis gave when questioned for returning the bow of a black man. ‘I can’t afford,’ he said, ‘to be less of a gentleman than he.’”

Young Merryvale was silent, wondering whether the day had passed of both the old-time white and colored gentleman.

“This is a beautiful tree,” his father said, stopping to look with pride at a plant filled with fast ripening fruit. “It’s bearing well this season.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot tell you, Son, how happy I am that you are redeeming these old acres.”

“So you’re converted,” Lee said, with a bright smile.

“Yes, entirely. And the best of it is the realization that you are busy in your old home and do not stay in it merely for Patty and me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t keep away! This place grips me. It’s well enough to go to New York for a month to study the market, but this is the land of my choice, darkies and all. I wish they could do a good day’s work; but, then, I don’t pay them for a day’s work, white man’s reckoning.”

A few steps further brought them to the tree where he and Hertha had first played together.

The older man stopped again. “Why, here’s a blossom at the end of a bough,” he said.

“Yes, but don’t pick it!” Lee seized his father’s arm. “I’ve a fancy to keep it there for good luck,” he added, somewhat lamely.

Over the blossom, the previous morning, Hertha had bent like a happy child, blowing upon the petals and calling on them to open.

“Lee!” The young man started at his father’s voice; there was in it a note of admonition, almost of severity. But there was nothing of severity in the words that followed:

“I wish I could express to you my happiness that this old home that my father and my father’s father loved and strove to make beautiful will now be guarded by you. And you will do better with it than we did.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Lee said.

“Yes, this is a mere fragment that comes into your hands.”

“A pretty good fragment, I think.”

“Only a fragment. The acres stretching back through the pines should be yours, and other acres by the river’s edge. I did not know how to use the place aright, but you will be wiser than I.”

“Well, if I am wiser about such things,” Lee admitted, “it’s because the world is wiser to-day than when you took over the place. People have learned a heap of science since then.”

John Merryvale did not heed this remark, but, turning his gaze from his son, looked away down the river. “I could not give you the heritage in land which should be yours,” he said gravely, “but I hope I have given you a heritage of kindly relationship to those about you, of friendliness and honorable dealing.”

“Indeed,” Lee answered, “I know how you are loved and honored.”

“And you, too, shall be honored by all on this old estate down to the humblest colored child. It is a great consolation to me,” he went on, still looking away from his son and out over the water, “that the rights of the poorest black girl have been respected from my father’s father’s day through my own. There are no white faces among these cabins to tell of our passion and our shame. I think of this sometimes when I see that young servant of your aunt’s. In her beautiful countenance is the sin and the disgrace of the Southern gentleman.”

“Don’t you believe,” Lee answered sharply, “that her mother thought she was honored?”

“That’s as it may be, but she was not honored, and her child was left to the chance care of a black woman.”

“He was a beast who did that!”

The father turned at this heated speech to see his son, face flushed, anger in his eyes.

“If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it.”

Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the thing that he was doing.

“Whoever started the damned business going,” he went on, with an attempt at a laugh, “got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start it, and here they are, women well, women such as you speak of, with all the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don’t you believe a woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who loved her than if she took up with some coarse fellow as black as her shoes?”

“No,” John Merry vale answered, “the life of such a woman is the loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the black world casts her off.”

“Aren’t you mistaken?” The question came quickly, with an undertone of anxiety. “It seems to me that the black race must understand that there’s nothing for it but to get whiter.”

“There’s nothing for it but to get blacker, Son. All, black and white, are learning to know this. Within its own circle it may build up a civilization that shall be a humble imitation of the civilization of the white race, a race that has had a start of thousands of years. We must be patient, helping when we can, not hindering.”

Lee scanned his father’s face, but could see nothing to show that he was thinking of any present issue; rather he was striving to express his belief on a vexed question that would trouble this country long after he was gone. Nor did he glance at his listener, but stood, a tall, thin figure in his long black coat, kindly, serious.

“It is a great problem, that of the two races,” he continued musingly, “a problem that the South alone can solve, since we know the black man, his virtues and his limitations. He has come to us in his trouble and we have helped and advised him. That is as it should be, but increasingly he will have to live without our surveillance. For after all, no man is fit to be the master of another; and not even the gentlemen of the South were wise enough to be entrusted with the lives of other men. My father fought to perpetuate the peculiar institution of slavery, and as a boy I put a gun on my shoulder and went out in the last year of the war. We thought that we were right, but we know now that we were mistaken.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I am afraid that as the country develops, as industry increases, the friendly relations between the whites and the blacks will wholly cease, and each will go his way, regardless of the other. But that will never happen while you are here, I feel sure.”

“Oh, no,” Lee answered cheerfully, glad of the turn the conversation had taken, “I like the darkies all right.”

“That is not enough.” John Merryvale turned and for the first time looked straight into his son’s face. “Men have stolen my acres from me, but I have stolen from no man. I have tried to do no one an injustice, honoring the least of His children. I have little to give you in money and in acres; but I can give you this: the assurance that I have wittingly wronged no man or woman. And I shall believe that when you stand here, your hair gray, moving with slow feet, you will be able to say to your son, ‘I have wittingly wronged no man or woman.’

“It’s getting late,” he concluded, turning to leave. “I’ll go to the house to see if your aunt is needing me.”

Lee stood alone for some minutes under the orange tree. He ran his hand caressingly along the trunk as though he were touching something dear and precious. Then, with sober face, as slowly as his father, he walked through the twilight to the great house.

CHAPTER VIII

It seemed to Hertha as she sat at the open window after the others had gone to bed that it was the most beautiful night she had ever known. Utterly still, except for the eternal sound of the wind among the pines, it yet was full of music; for, borne on the breeze from the river, some one was calling, beseechingly, insistently, and she was answering in her heart.

The young moon was sinking in the west. She could not see it, but she could see the fleecy clouds that reflected its light. How lovely they were, moving wherever the light wind, high in the heavens, might desire. They had no will, these clouds, but were wafted into the shadow or the silvery brightness, living as they had the right to live, pliant to the spirit of the strong wind.

The house was perfectly still. The little watch that Ellen had given her when she went away to school told her that it lacked but a few minutes of the hour when he had called her to come. All day she had questioned and doubted and hesitated. She had asked her black mother to tell her the story of her adoption that she might surely guard her virtue and resist temptation; but now, looking into the night, she refused to believe that this was temptation, rather it was a glorious opportunity to give generously, without stint or questioning.

She slipped a coat over the white dress she was wearing, walked stealthily into the hallway, lifted the latch and was under the stars. No one had heard her, and she ran swiftly across the open yard, bright in the moonlight, to the darkness of the trees.

Standing in the gloom of the path and looking back at the cabin she hesitated. There were the roses by the porch and the goldenrod and aster, bits of bright weed, growing in the sand. Close to her were the chickens asleep upon their perches. She was leaving this friendly, familiar home to enter the white world; and to enter, not even at the kitchen door, but through a dark, hidden passage that no one but herself could tread. She did not want to say good-by. Doubting, she took a step toward the little house, and then the wind from the river blew in her face and she fancied some one called her by name.

No, she would not go back. His love lifted her above her home, above her doubting self, on, up to the clouds, the moon, to paradise. Love was an immense power that hewed its way through the routine of life. It was eternal, from the creation of the world.

The way was very dark to the grove, but overhead were the stars, and if for a moment she felt fear, she stopped peering through the trees to look to them for reassurance. There is no starlight so beautiful as that of the southern sky where the heavenly bodies are not cold, sparkling pinpricks, as in the North, but luminous globes that breathe a soft radiance to the warm earth. They are companions, and the slave who followed the North Star through the swamp and bed of the black stream must have felt warmed and comforted by its near and tremulous light, only later to see it grow distant and cold. So Hertha looked to the stars for light and courage and with pounding heart at length reached her trysting-place.

He had not come. It was the hour, she felt sure, for she had set her watch by the clock in the living-room of the great house. He had never been late in the morning. Perhaps Miss Patty had detained him, or his father; sometimes they sat up for a long time, though, she thought, never so late as this. But he must soon arrive when she would no longer be alone, but safe from fear with him.

Waiting, she cheered her heart recalling the many pretty things that he had said to her. Whether, knowing her station as a servant, he realized that she was happy to be wholly lifted from it, or whether he believed her really to be above any other woman, he never failed to call her by some new and lovely name. Yesterday she had been the good fairy who brought him her best gift in her outstretched hands. Though it was chill, she threw off her dark coat and in her white dress ran for a minute out beyond the cypress into the grove. She longed to dance, to sing, to call him to her in the stillness of the night. Moving a little among the trees and peering down the long vista of straight trunks and arching branches, within her heart she pleaded with him to hurry, not to let her stay here alone. But no figure came to meet her, only a firefly twinkled in the distance, and above her head a mockingbird gave a sleepy chirp. The earth was asleep, breathing deep, fragrant breaths, wrapped in the soft air of night. She only was alert, listening, a vivid spirit of wakefulness in the deserted grove.

Returning to the gloom of the cypress she put on her coat and waited, slow-ticking minute following slow-ticking minute, until the young moon set and the chill wind made her shiver and crouch in terror and loneliness and miserable shame.

The night that had been so still as she crept back was full of evil noises. The sand crackled under her feet, and the twigs upon which she stepped gave a quick, explosive sound. Sometimes she imagined she heard people coming toward her and left the path for the trees, to wait in trembling terror until the fancied tread had died away. In one of these manoeuvers she lost her bearing and stood for many minutes close to the path, not recognizing it, terrified to go or to remain. And when at length she found her way again and walked ahead, her little mouth and childish chin working in a paroxysm of fright, a screech owl called and made her almost scream with terror. Then she pulled herself together. She and Tom had often listened to the owls and he had mimicked them. The thought of him gave her courage and she went on, trembling and determined, until the end of the path was reached and she could look upon the open yard and home.

Then she did hear people coming. Off to the right were voices, a girl’s loud, coarse laughter and a man’s rough tones. She crouched down that her white dress might not show among the trees. The figures came into sight, Maranthy, with old Jim, an ill-natured, ugly fellow, known to neglect his wife and children. The two walked boldly over the white sand, and as Hertha watched them the man caught the girl and hugged her hard. She laughed and swore, pushing him away, and then, with an animal-like motion, sidled up to him. Together they moved across the yard, his arm tight about her waist, while she, lolling on his shoulder and calling on Christ and God to damn him, gave him a smacking kiss upon the mouth.

The room was reached at last. Hertha tore off her clothes, slipped into her nightdress, and lay, a little huddled mass of shame and woe, upon her bed. Her feet and hands were icy cold, her teeth were chattering, but her brain was on fire. Pride and shame took equal possession of her spirit. She had risked everything, she had been ready to give everything, only to find herself despised. Ellen was right, her place belonged with her own race. She was black, and she must never again trust the white race that felt for her only an amused tolerance or scorn. She was black, and hers was the black man’s table, the black man’s home, the black man’s burial-place. Never again would she think to enter the white man’s world.

And the beauty of her love was wholly gone. The courage with which her lover had armed her had disappeared, and her affection, that had seemed to her something pure and delicate, almost holy, became a common lust that this man had awakened and then, disgusted at his choice of anything so cheap, had cast aside. Nothing was left to her of the glory and gladness of the morning.

But while shame and hurt pride swept over her, there came in their wake an inexpressible relief. She was safe from harm. She was not like Marantha but just Hertha Williams who had slipped out of her room to see the stars and then slipped back again. She was safe here, in Tom’s room, at home.

Kneeling beside her bed she prayed for strength, strength to be good though she was young and pretty and colored. She could not see ahead, probably it would be wise to go away somewhere, she wished it might be near Tom it was hard to be alone; but she must never again trust the white man’s world.

Back in her bed terror crept over her once more and she shook with fear; but at length, in sheer exhaustion, she lay quiet, and when the first morning light entered the room it found her asleep.

CHAPTER IX

“Mercy on us!”

Miss Patty was overcome. She fell back in her chair, her hands trembling violently, her breath coming short and quick.

“My dear,” cried Miss Witherspoon hurrying toward her and fanning her with the newspaper that lay on the table with the morning mail.

“It’s incredible,” the southern woman said. She picked up the letter she had been reading, scanned it a moment, and put it on the table again. Her companion, devoured with curiosity but strong in the belief that good manners required that she should show indifference, continued her ministrations for a few seconds and then turned to her own mail.

“You’ll have to advise me,” Miss Patty said tremulously, the letter wavering in her hand, her small head with its white hair shaking up and down as she talked. “Why should John and Lee have gone away this morning! I don’t know what to do.”

“If I can be of any service ”

“This letter is from an old friend, my dear, a very old friend. I haven’t seen him for a long time I’m such an invalid, you know but he writes as an old friend should and asks me to break the news to the dear child as best I may.”

“The dear child?” Miss Witherspoon echoed, interrogation in her voice.

“Yes, and she always has been a dear child; you know how I have cared for her and shown an interest in her. And to think that this should have happened! It’s incredible.”

“What has happened?” The northern woman’s tone was peremptory. If she was to offer advice she would no longer be kept in suspense.

“Why, this amazing story. I should never believe it if it came from another source, but Bostwick Unthank is the best lawyer in the state. It is very considerate and polite, I must say, for him to write to me instead of to John, though Hertha of course is my maid and then I used to know him very well indeed. But I can’t believe it, I can’t believe that such a thing could have happened.”

Impatient at such incoherence and nervous garrulousness, Miss Witherspoon yet understood that something of vital importance was in the letter which Miss Patty waved back and forth, and unable longer to maintain her indifference she touched the old lady on the arm.

“Shall I read what your lawyer writes?” she asked, “or will you read it to me?”

“Oh, he isn’t my lawyer,” Miss Patty exclaimed, “I never had a lawyer in my life, I have never believed in getting into lawsuits. He’s only an old friend. But his letter is of such importance that I will ask you to read it aloud to me. I want to be sure that I understand it.”

Nothing could better have pleased Miss Witherspoon. She took up the typewritten sheet and in a clear, distinct voice began:

“’BostwickUnthank,
Attorney and Counsellor-at-law,
Jonesville, Florida.

“‘My dear Miss Merryvale ’”

“How strange it seems,” Miss Patty interpolated, “to have him address me in that formal way.”

“It’s a business letter,” the reader explained.

“I know that,” Miss Patty said tartly, “otherwise I should not have given it to you to read.”

“‘My dear Miss Merryvale,’” Miss Witherspoon began again, “’I am inclosing a letter to your maid, Hertha Williams, retailing to her an extraordinary piece of news. George Ogilvie, whom you will remember, I am sure, has died and in his will he leaves a small legacy to a granddaughter, Hertha Williams, the illegitimate child of his daughter Lillias who died two days after its birth. The birth was successfully concealed by placing the infant with a colored family. Evidently Ogilvie, at the last, felt unable to keep the secret for he leaves an account of the extraordinary proceeding, recognizes his granddaughter, and asks that she take the family name. It is likely to be a great shock to the young woman and I am inclosing the firm’s letter to your care, knowing that you will understand in your great kindness how best to break the news.

“’Believe me, Madam, with esteem,

“’Your obedient servant,

“‘BostwickUnthank.’”

As Miss Witherspoon put down the letter and looked at her hostess’s shaking head she wondered whether the lawyer had made a careful choice in his method of relating the story to Hertha; and she resolved to take a part herself, if advisable, in the breaking of the news. While extraordinary, it was tidings that a colored girl might easily bear. Two legacies, one of money, one of race, were wonderful gifts. “Where is Hertha?” she asked.

“Ellen stopped in this morning to say that she had been awake with a bad headache and had then overslept. The dear child, she should have all her strength for this news.”

“Did you ever hear of anything like it before?”

“No, no, it is most extraordinary, most extraordinary. I remember George Ogilvie well, a handsome man. His wife was a pretty woman with a small mouth. They said she spent every penny he had. She died two years ago. You may be sure she would never have allowed the story to be known.”

“Hertha should have known it years ago.”

“No, my dear, no.” Miss Patty sat erect ready to dispute such a suggestion. Her voice quavered and her head had not ceased to shake, but she was alert to defend her conception of what was right and proper. “She should never have known it. This has put a stain forever upon her mother’s name.”

“Her mother is long since dead,” the northern woman answered sharply, “while the child is living. I can think of nothing more cruel than to save a daughter’s honor by giving her infant to be reared by Negroes. It’s frightful.”

“I don’t agree with you.” Miss Patty was herself once more. “The whole thing is very sad and wicked, of course, but life among the Negroes is not frightful, they are the happiest people in the world. One day is just as good as another to them. If the sun doesn’t shine this morning it will the next. Hertha won’t know what trouble means until she becomes white.”

“It’s too bad, then, that you don’t have more white children brought up by blacks,” Miss Witherspoon retorted. “Why not give the poor unfortunates a fair chance in life?”

Sarcasm was lost upon her companion. “Grown-ups must take responsibility whether they like it or not,” Miss Patty said sententiously. “Negroes are a child race and the white race must govern them. Hertha will be a grown person now, one of the ruling class, and seeing she’s an Ogilvie it’s likely she’ll take easily to the position.”

“Hertha has always seemed grown-up to me, too serious for her youth. She loves to day dream, but I don’t believe she ever dreamed of anything so wonderful as this. What do you suppose she’ll do?”

“Marry, of course, as every white girl should. The fact that you and I sent away our beaus makes us all the surer that others shouldn’t. Her legacy should be a help in getting her settled.”

“Now I hope she won’t get married for some time.”

Miss Patty was indignant. “And I hope she’ll marry at once before she becomes too fond of her liberty. When she was colored it was different. I always discouraged, as you know, her going with the men of her race. Dear me, how mixed up I am getting. And she is really white! I shall have to remember that. Dear, dear!”

“Here comes Hertha now.”

Looking up Miss Patty saw Hertha in her maid’s dress, her cheeks a little whiter than usual, dark shadows under her eyes, but modest, quiet, standing in the doorway. “My dear,” she began, and collapsed again.

Hertha ran to her all anxious attention. “Is it bad news?” she asked turning to Miss Witherspoon while she rubbed her mistress’s hands.

“No, Hertha,” was the answer, “it isn’t bad news. It’s about you.”

The girl grew sick with fright. What had they found out?

“It’s this,” Miss Witherspoon said, pushing over the letter inclosed in Miss Patty’s and addressed to the girl.

“What are you doing?” Miss Patty recovered at once when she saw her prerogative as vendor of news about to be destroyed. “Bostwick Unthank wrote to me that the shock might not be too great. Don’t look at that letter, honey,” turning to Hertha with deep affection and concern in her voice. “Wait till I’ve told you about it. It’s from a lawyer, my dear, and it seems a little money has been left you. We don’t know how much but it should be a little help, I’m sure.”

“Who has left it?” Hertha asked.

She was tense with excitement, afraid. She could not dissociate this happening with the night through which she had passed. She dared not trust herself to tear open her own letter before these two women. Despairing, she turned to Miss Witherspoon who stood quiet, composed, just as one of her teachers would have stood at school. “Please tell me at once,” she asked, “what this means?”

And Miss Witherspoon answered in a matter-of-fact tone such as a teacher might have used: “It seems, Hertha, that you are not colored but white.”

The girl turned from one woman to another. “Don’t mock me,” she gasped.

“My darling!” Miss Patty held out her arms to her favorite. “There, dear, there, don’t look so frightened, though I must say,” glancing with scorn at her guest, “it would be enough to frighten any one into her grave to be told a piece of news that way. You are white, dear, and you have been left some money, and you ought to be very happy.” And with many pats and kisses she told all of the story that she knew.

Hertha’s letter was brief and ended by stating that she had been bequeathed two thousand dollars, and that, as all legacies left by the late George Ogilvie were to be paid at once, she was requested to come at her earliest convenience to the lawyer’s office.

“What is she thinking about?” the two women asked themselves as the girl read her letter and said no word. But could they have looked into her mind they would have been perplexed to find an answer. Her brain was a blur of strange, magnificent impressions. A dying mother, an old man delaying restitution until after his death, money, freedom. As she looked down at her maid’s dress, as she thought of herself last night crouched under the trees, she drew a deep breath. She was white, of good name. No one should play with her again and throw her away. In the multitude of emotions that rushed through her being the one that held her longest in its grip was pride. No white man now should expect her to give everything and in return receive only humiliation. “I’m white, I’m white,” she repeated over and over to herself.

“Two thousand dollars is a good deal of money to get all at once, Hertha or Miss Ogilvie, as I suppose I ought to say,” Miss Witherspoon remarked, more to take Hertha’s mind from herself than anything else. “I hope you’ll use it wisely.”

“Some of it,” Hertha replied, “belongs to Mammy.”

“She’ll never touch it,” Miss Patty said sharply; and in this she prophesied aright.

Hertha rose slowly and went into her mistress’s bedroom.

“What are you doing?” Miss Patty called out.

“Making your bed,” was the answer. “And then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home.”

Calling the girl to her, Miss Patty rose and said tenderly, “You’re your own mistress now and you mustn’t think of work this morning. Pomona can come upstairs and put things to rights. This has been a terrible excitement for you, terrible! If only John and Lee were home. How could they go away this particular morning!”

“I don’t see that that makes any difference.”

“Yes, of course it does; one needs a man in a case of business. But sit down, dear, get your sewing and we’ll talk about it.” Miss Patty settled herself again. “To think that you’re an Ogilvie! Almost as good a family as the Merryvales.”

“Miss Patty, I’m afraid I can’t sit down and talk about it now.”

“Of course, you must be excited, though you appear wonderfully calm. Don’t you want to lie down on my bed?”

“No, I think I want to go home.”

“Very well, you’ll want to tell your mammy. And then you can begin packing your things.”

“Packing my things?”

“Of course. You mustn’t sleep another night in a darky’s house.”

“Oh,” Hertha gasped.

Until now she had been thinking of herself in her relation to the white world. The past night had racked her, body and spirit, and to-day had brought release. She was white, she was rich, she had a name. Now, at Miss Patty’s words she saw that in the world she was to enter she must walk alone. Her mother, the only mother she had ever known, who had given her home and food and tender care, who had prepared her breakfast for her that morning, who had washed the dress she had on, who had kissed her when she went away and told her not to work so hard, that her mammy could always make enough to care for them both this mother was a “darky” under whose roof she must not sleep again.

“I’m going home,” she said; and without another word left them.

“Poor little thing,” remarked Miss Witherspoon, “it’s very grand to be white, but she will find it lonely.”

“Perhaps at first,” the other answered, “but she’ll soon get used to things. When I was little I cared more for Lindy, our cook’s little girl, than for any one else in the world. We two played together the whole day long. She was a dear child, with big soft eyes and a laughing mouth. What fun we used to have! And if we got into a scrape her mammy’d see to it that no one knew more about it than was good for them. I cried my eyes out the day my mother said I was too old to play with Lindy any more. For months I couldn’t bear to go by a pine tree where we’d had our best times together. And when I’d see Lindy she’d look so wistfully at me! But other things came to fill my life and they’ll come to fill Hertha’s.”

“It’s not at all the same thing,” Miss Witherspoon said, “you had your home.”

“And Hertha will make hers. You shall see.”

CHAPTER X

Hurrying past the kitchen and by the cabins, Hertha’s mind began to work quickly. At first she had been too full of the remembrance of the previous night to recognize fully what had befallen her; but now, with a sharp delight that carried pain with it, she saw herself in the white world. She was so accustomed to the circumscription of the world of black people that only when freedom was granted did she fully realize her slavery. As the slave was bound to its master so she was bound to the Negroes, unable, except through deceit or sin, to leave their world. And suddenly the bond was gone and she was free. With her little fortune she could go out into a marvelous new life without a thought of race. A white-skinned girl among black people, she had often winced at the coarse jokes or pitying remarks that had been made upon her appearance. White men had leered at her, and she had never known when she would be free from insult. But after to-day she would take the place that belonged to her. She would no longer be a “white-faced nigger,” but Hertha Ogilvie Miss Ogilvie, as Miss Witherspoon had said the granddaughter of a distinguished southern judge.

As the Williams cottage came into sight, Hertha’s thoughts suddenly changed and the white world slipped from her as she saw her black mother standing in the doorway. Running forward, she threw her arms about the old woman’s neck and broke into passionate sobs, half of excitement, half of dread, but that to her mother meant only sorrow.

“Honey, baby, why you cryin’? Who hurt my baby? You ain’t rightly been you’self, not since Tom lef’. Tell you’ mammy, dear.”

Her mother led her into her room, and there, as they sat together on the bed, Hertha tried to tell her story. She made one or two excited attempts, and then, pressing her hands together, said simply: “I’m white!”

“Oh, my Gawd!” her mother cried.

The two women stood up, the black one looking into the beautiful white face with its clear, dark eyes, its sweet mouth, its little trembling chin. As Hertha thought of it afterwards it seemed to her that her mother said good-by to her at that moment. Then the big, heavy mouth broke and it was the mother who was sobbing in her child’s arms.

Hertha was a long time telling her story. When she described the little that she knew of her birth the colored woman cried angrily: “De dirty hogs! Dat’s de way dey treats de black chillen I allays knows dat t’row ’em out fer us ter care fo’; neber a helpin’ hand fer de chile o’ der sin. But ter treat der own like it was an outcast, oh, Lawd.” At the story of the will she grew much excited. “You’s got some money, honey, I’s glad o’ dat. Seems like I can see you gwine away ef you’s somet’ing dat’s you’ own.” The suggestion, timidly given, that some of it belonged to her was received with regal anger. “You want ter pay me?” she asked. And Hertha’s swift, tearful denial ended with a kiss and the agreement between them that that subject be forever closed. Her pleasure in the thought of the name Hertha was to bear was real indeed. “An’ dere ain’t no borrowed finery ’bout it,” she declared in triumph.

It was a hard day. Hertha did not return to Miss Patty, and by the time afternoon arrived the news had spread, and neighbor after neighbor came to learn more of the amazing story. How the girl wished them away! She wanted to be by herself, to think what it all meant. Above all she wanted to talk to Ellen, to Ellen who had not yet come in and who might learn the story from some child. As soon as she could find a chance to get away, she ran from the cabins on through the pines to the school. Her heart beat violently and then stopped for a moment as she saw Lee Merryvale coming toward her. Turning, she hurried back to her home, entered her bedroom and shut the door. He would not dare to obtrude there.

“Hertha, Hertha darling!” It was Ellen who was knocking and in a moment she had her sister in her arms.

“I’m so glad for you, dear,” Ellen said.

She had been told the story and was sitting very soberly by the window. “This colored world is too hard and ugly for you. I don’t mind much because I’m so busy, but if I stopped to think about it I’d go half mad. I have felt that way for you at times. I want you to have everything that’s fine and beautiful and you’ll have a chance to now.”

“I suppose white people have ugly lives,” Hertha put in.

“Yes, but they have a chance for something else, while when you’re colored you might have the genius of a Shakespeare but it wouldn’t give you the opportunity to be a playwright. Or if you wrote a play, they wouldn’t let you into the theater to see it. And it’s just the same with everything else. You were shut out because you were black. But you won’t be shut out any longer now; you’re free and I’m so glad.”

She showed her gladness by breaking down. Hertha had not seen her cry since she was a child. Even at her father’s death she had kept dry-eyed while she comforted the others; but now she sobbed pitifully. “I’m glad,” she reiterated through her tears. “I’d give my life for you, and I reckon that’s what it’ll be. It won’t seem like living when you’ve said good-by.”

“It’s going to be awful,” Hertha said choking over the words: “you’ve always advised and encouraged me, Sister. I wouldn’t have kept on in school but for you; and now I’ll have to go ahead alone. I feel lost.”

Ellen, much ashamed of her emotion, dried her eyes. “I’ve done all I can, Hertha,” she said solemnly, “after this you’ll have to go alone.”

A step was heard on the porch and a voice asked: “Is Miss Hertha there?”

“Yes, Mr. Lee,” Mammy’s voice answered; “Miss Hertha, she’s right hyar. Was you wantin’ ter speak wid her?”

“Tell her I came to fetch her up to the house. My aunt is expecting her.”

“I won’t go,” Hertha whispered. “Tell him I won’t go.”

Ellen rose and left the room. Hertha heard her explain to the young man that the white girl could not go away yet. “She is very tired, Mr. Lee,” she declared, “and wants to remain here at present.”

Lee seemed to demur but after a few minutes he left the house.

When he had gone Hertha walked into the living-room. There was the familiar table, the straight-backed chairs, and the comfortable rocker; there was the reading-lamp with its green shade and the china with the pink flowers set upon the sideboard; there were the books upon the shelf; and yet everything seemed strange. Did her own thoughts give it unreality, her thoughts that roamed continually through the white world that she was soon to enter, or was it the two people whom she so loved who were already oddly constrained? “Miss Hertha,” she had heard her black mother say the mother who had cared for her, had fed and clothed her, had watched by her bedside in her illnesses. “Miss Hertha”! Was her home to slip from her like this?

“Ellen,” she cried, “I shall have to go away before long, I know that, but don’t push me out upon the Merryvales because I don’t want to go.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Ellen answered.

“Honey,” her mammy exclaimed, “it don’t seem like we could eber let you leab us. Dis home been you’s mo’n our own. But you is white, now, baby, an’ you can’t be wid colored folks no mo’.”

“Why can’t I if I choose to?” Hertha asked, her mouth quivering. “I want to stay here until I leave. I have to visit that lawyer soon and get my money, and then, I suppose, I’ll go somewhere up North. But while I’m in Merryvale I want to be with you.”

“Baby, I’s feared it ain’t de right way.”

“Have you had anything to eat, Sister?” Ellen inquired. “This must have been a terribly exciting day for you. I’ll hurry and get supper.”

Hertha rose to help but her black mother pushed her back into her chair. “You jes’ stay hyar while Ellen an’ me gits de t’ings.”

“But I want to work,” the white girl insisted. “I don’t want you two to do everything.”

“It ain’t much we kin do,” the old woman went on as though apologizing for the house, “not much fer an Ogilvie. Miss Hertha Ogilvie, dat’s what dey’ll call yer. Miss Hertha Ogilvie! Oh, my Lawd!”

Hertha rose from the seat into which she had been pushed and began to set the table. But while handling the knives and forks and smoothing the tablecloth into place, she found herself repeating, “Miss Hertha Ogilvie, Miss Hertha Ogilvie, Miss”!

How the white people had steadily refused to give her that title! No matter how refined she was, how well educated, since she had colored blood she must always hear her first name. But Lee Merryvale had said, “Miss Hertha,” and Miss Witherspoon had said, “Miss Ogilvie.”

“Sister,” she said, turning to Ellen with attempted gaiety, “can’t we have sugared sweet potatoes to-night to celebrate? You cook them so well. Just think, I’m going to have two thousand dollars. Isn’t that rich?”

“It depends on how you use it,” replied the always practical Ellen. “If you want you can get rid of it quickly enough; but I do hope, Hertha, you’ll use some of it for your education.”

“What do you want me to study?”

“You know what I told you the other day, but now you’ll have a better chance of success.”

“You mean dressmaking. I think myself I’ll try stenography.”

It was a wild statement, an exciting jump into an unknown business world.

“Why, Hertha,” Ellen said in surprise, “I didn’t know you had any bent that way.”

“I haven’t, but I believe I should like it. Stenographers work in offices, and have short hours and good wages.”

“Not colored ones. Oh, I forgot.” Ellen lost her composure, and to cover her slip went into the kitchen.

There was a knock and Mammy went outside to admit Mr. John Merryvale. He at once entered the room and seeing Hertha walked up to her and took her hand. “My dear,” he said, “we have done you a great injustice.”

“Yes?” Hertha said, questioning.

She was angry at his coming, but his kindly manner made it difficult for her to maintain her anger. He crossed over to where her mammy stood, saying gravely: “Aunt Maggie, it seems like you were the only one who did the right thing in all this tangle. You and your husband opened your hearts and brought up this forsaken child. You surely deserve your reward.”

“I don’ want no reward,” the colored woman replied. “I had my reward ebery day dis chile lib. Wat you t’ink a lil’ bread an’ a shelterin’ roof mean to yer when yer hab a lily like dis by you’ side? An’ oh, how is I eber ter git on wid her away?”

“I haven’t gone yet, Mammy,” Hertha said with an attempt at a laugh. “I’m right here.”

“No, but I can’t keep you no longer; you’s crossed de line when you is Miss Hertha Ogilvie. You’s gone across.”

“Well, I’m Hertha Williams just at present, and I’m going to see how Ellen’s sweet potatoes are getting on,” and she left the room.

When she returned a few minutes later she found Mr. Merryvale seated in the rocker while Aunt Maggie stood by the table. He rose as she entered, a tribute he had never paid her before. The girl felt it acutely as the old woman had remained standing while the man sat. “White, white, white,” she said to herself. “That’s the way the people treat you when you’re white. I’m white now, and they’ll rise when I enter the room, and they’ll serve me instead of my serving them.”

“Supper is most ready, Mammy,” she called out. “Ellen will bring in the potatoes as soon as you tell her to.”

She tried to ignore their visitor, but he was oblivious of her attempt.

“Your mammy and I have been talking things over,” he said, “and we think, Hertha, that it would be well for you to go home with me. I came to reiterate Miss Patty’s invitation. Come and visit with us until you decide what you will do and whether you desire to go away to complete your education.”

“This is my home.” The girl’s voice trembled despite her efforts to control it. “Mammy has told me she won’t turn me out.”

“Turn you out, my baby!”

“Yes, I’m the baby you took in, Mammy, and I want to stay on here now with you. Don’t send me away! Ellen,” she called into the kitchen, “come in, won’t you?”

Ellen appeared at the doorway and all three turned to her expectantly: Mr. Merryvale, tall, quiet; Mammy, tearful, bewildered; and Hertha with the new excited look upon her face. “Ellen,” she cried again, “don’t let them take me from my only home!”

The colored girl put down the dish that she was carrying and said to the gentleman who stood looking at her so pleasantly and yet with such a gently persistent manner: “Hertha is very tired, Mr. Merryvale, I think she had better eat a little supper and then go right to bed. She looks like she hadn’t slept a wink last night, and to-day’s news is enough to get any one crazy! You’ll excuse her, I know, if she doesn’t go back with you.”

“You’re a right good woman, Ellen,” Mr. Merryvale replied, “and likely you’ll understand. We want Hertha to be with us very much.”

The white girl moved to where Ellen stood and, clasping her erstwhile sister by the arm, pressed close to the strong figure as though nothing should draw her away.

“Hertha is over twenty-one,” Ellen remarked, “I suppose that gives her the right to do as she likes.”

Mr. Merryvale looked at the two young women and then addressed himself directly to Hertha. He seemed very impressive as he stood before her clad in his long coat. His voice was more serious than usual, and he spoke gently, with deliberation.

“Everybody in Merryvale has heard of your good fortune, Hertha,” he said, “and I reckon the earth won’t be a day older before everybody knows it up and down the river. It’s a wonderful story and if you lived in the city the newspaper men would be rushing in and taking your picture, and they only know what foolishness they might say. For a little time you’ll be a person of prominence. Now, I understand there isn’t anything your mammy wouldn’t do for you, but right now she can’t help you, you need the protection of my home. Everybody’s wondering if it’s true, and asking themselves and others all sorts of questions. If you come with me the questions will stop, and you will be Hertha Ogilvie to all the world. Miss Patty would have come herself,” he added, “but she didn’t feel rightly that she could walk so far.”

“Of course not,” Hertha assented, her affection for her mistress at once asserting itself, “she never walks as far as this.”

“Don’t you think then that you had better come with me like a wise young lady? Mammy and Ellen will know that your affection for them has not changed, and they will be glad to have you escape any gossip or unkind talk. It isn’t like we were strangers to you. You love my sister and she loves you and will be glad to advise you regarding the new place you will take in the world. Maggie,” he said, turning to the older woman, “you understand, and I think Ellen is beginning to. I leave it to you both to convince Hertha that she will do best by coming with me. Your chickens look likely this year,” he said with apparent irrelevance, “I’m going out to see them;” and with a slow step he left the room.

Ellen was the first to speak. “Look after the supper, Mammy,” she said, “while Hertha comes with me.” And she led the girl into Tom’s bedroom.

“Is there a special reason why you don’t want to go?” she asked; and then, as Hertha did not answer, in a lower tone, “Has it anything to do with Mr. Lee Merryvale?”

Still Hertha did not speak.

“Hertha!”

“Oh, you needn’t worry.” The girl looked up quickly. “Nothing has happened. Only,” and she spoke with bitterness, “I found out he despised me.”

“Well,” Ellen observed after a pause, “you’re a white girl now, you can despise him.”

“Yes,” Hertha answered, but her tone did not carry conviction.

Ellen looked at the delicate face, at the slender hands, at the shy figure, and swallowed hard. “Sister,” she said authoritatively, “the time has come for you to hold up your head. You’ve got to make your own way. You’ll be lonely and frightened and you’ll miss home, but you’ve got to do it. As for Mr. Lee, I’m pretty sure he won’t bother you if you let him see you don’t like it. He’ll have to take a little time to find his bearings, now he knows you’re white.”

“I don’t want him around.”

“If he wants to be around he can see you one place as well as another. You can’t stay forever in these few rooms.”

“Then you send me away?” Hertha turned to her former sister, her head up.

“You’re going to your lawyer, you’re taking the name of Hertha Ogilvie, you’re coming into two thousand dollars from your grandfather’s estate; isn’t that so?”

“Yes.”

“Then, Hertha, haven’t you gone away already? You know the South. You can’t be both white and black.”

Hertha took down her hat from the shelf and put it on. It was a pretty white straw with a blue ribbon. She had trimmed it herself but the straw and the ribbon were a gift from Ellen.

“I suppose I may come back to pack up my things?” she asked angrily.

“Little sister, little sister!” Ellen cried.

Throwing off the hat Hertha flung her arms around her sister’s neck. “Let me stay just a little longer,” she beseeched. “Tell him I will come after supper. Tell him that I am too ill to come now but that you will bring me later in the evening. Let me stay and have supper with you and Mammy and then you may take me to his house. I’ll go with you but not with him.”

“Oh, you darling!” Ellen said, hugging her. “You’re the truest! And I’m glad for you, I am, I am! You’ll never forget, oh, I know you’ll never forget! You know that black and white mean nothing, just nothing, that it’s hearts and souls, it’s whether people are mean or generous, whether they’re kind or cruel, that counts. You’ll never talk about ’cute niggers’ the way the women do who come to my school. You won’t think black people can’t feel shame and mortification the same as white. You won’t say the women are all immoral and the men are all ”

“Oh, Ellen,” Hertha cried, “I’ve said good-by to Tom!” She sat down at the window and shook as though she were ill. “I can’t help loving him most. I love him the way you love me; I took care of him when he was a baby.”

“Yes, dear!”

“Go and tell that man that I’m coming by and by with you, and let me stay here a while alone.”

It was dark among the pines, but the clouds broke and the silver moonlight greeted them as they turned under the live-oaks to Hertha’s new home. For the first time since they had come to Merryvale and the great house they made their way to the front door. There, on the porch, they kissed each other good-by; and standing outside, Ellen saw Hertha Ogilvie, the baby that she had nursed, the child for whom she had made daily sacrifice, leave her in the darkness to enter the white man’s world.

CHAPTER XI

“I never knew lawyers before to be so expeditious,” Miss Witherspoon was saying, “I shall not talk again of the dilatoriness of the South.”

“It has all happened very quickly,” Hertha answered.

A week had passed since the receipt of the letter, and Hertha and Miss Witherspoon were sitting together on the gallery while Miss Patty took her afternoon nap. The younger woman was sewing on some underwear but the older sat with empty hands, looking now at the girl, now at the landscape.

“You have been wise at once to bank your money, Hertha.” Miss Witherspoon had started with Miss Ogilvie, but had slipped back into the familiar appellation. “You can draw it any time, but this way will make you careful.”

Hertha smiled.

“I am glad that you have decided to accompany me and enter upon work in Boston. It seems a special providence that I should have come to Merryvale at just this time, when I can be of use.”

“I’m sure it is fortunate for me.”

“I have made all the arrangements that we spoke of, and I know that you will like the Institute. The course there in dressmaking is admirable. It’s a little late to enter, but as a special favor to me you will be allowed to go at once into your class. I said that you were clever with your needle and could easily make up the lessons you had missed.”

“I hope I can.”

“Of course you can, my dear. You have only to exert yourself, and everything will go as it should. And about your board. I have written to Clay House, and they will take you in with their first vacancy. It is always so crowded. You see, it is the best place for working-girls in Boston for the money. You might have to share your room with some one but I don’t believe you would mind that. A single room is seven dollars a week, but with another girl it costs only five dollars. You wouldn’t want to start in spending more than that, I presume. You agree with me?”

If Hertha was in disagreement she did not show it in her face, but neither did she express approval of Miss Witherspoon’s plans; she simply allowed the lady to talk on.

And she did talk on. She told Hertha about Boston, its streets, its public gardens, its library, its admirable educational facilities. Her knowledge of the city was prodigious and she apparently was on the boards of half its institutions. When she was through, for the time being, with Boston, she turned to Hertha’s personal affairs. It had been arranged that the two should leave together in three days, going by train to New York and on to Boston. Miss Witherspoon had definite ideas of what Hertha would and would not need for the trip. She cautioned her at present against buying any clothes beyond absolute necessities. There would be time for that later. And from this she turned to the general question of expenditure. “Two thousand dollars, you know, Hertha, is a very small sum. You must not think of it in terms of principal but of interest. At five per cent it means only a hundred dollars a year, or a little less than nine dollars a month. Of course you cannot live on that.”

“No, of course not.”

“And while I approve an immediate expenditure for education you will need continually to remember that your little patrimony as far as possible should be kept intact. If you touch the principal try to make it up afterwards. It is a great comfort to have a bank account.”

Miss Patty came in at this point, fresh and pretty from her nap, and took the comfortable rocker near Hertha.

“What is Miss Witherspoon advising you now?” she asked, smiling.

“To be careful of my money,” Hertha answered.

“A great mistake,” the southern woman said, rocking lazily back and forth. “I would advise your spending at the outset at least five hundred dollars for clothes.”

“What!” cried Hertha.

“Yes!” said Miss Patty, enjoying the annoyance on Miss Witherspoon’s face. “I don’t approve of your learning dressmaking, you know, my dear, it will lower your station. Get a lot of beautiful clothes in New York and then let me persuade Cousin Sally to take you about with her this winter. I’m sure she would enjoy toting a pretty southern girl around and if she didn’t have you married in six months she should never have been born in Baltimore.”

“It sounds very attractive,” said Hertha, smiling. She knew Miss Patty was only half in earnest and that she liked above all things to shock her northern guest. “But think how terrible it would be for her if I didn’t marry and Cousin Sally was left with me and the dresses!”

“If you wanted to support yourself at the start,” Miss Witherspoon said, exactly as though no one but herself had spoken, “you could take up operating work.”

“Operating work?” asked Hertha.

“Yes, operating power-machines. Good workwomen begin at ten dollars.”

“I like the sound of that,” Hertha said with more animation than she had yet shown. “I always enjoy using a machine.”

Miss Patty was genuinely horrified. “Factory work!” she cried. “Factory work for this child! You’re crazy. It would ruin her social position.”

Hertha was startled. It was hard for her to remember that being an Ogilvie she had a social position.

“Take my advice,” Miss Patty went on, “and if you must work, get a genteel job. Why not go as a companion? Now I had a pretty little relative, Dolly Simmons, not exactly a relative but we were kin, her father’s brother and my nephew’s wife were cousins. The Simmonses never had anything, or if they did they only kept it long enough to lose it in a jack-pot, and Dolly had to support herself. She was a nice little child, with eyes like yours, and she went into a family as companion. It was in Chicago and the woman, she had an immense fortune, took Dolly with her to Palm Beach. There Dolly was a raving success, so much so that she had three proposals in one winter. The Chicago woman was quite nasty about it, jealous of course, and sent Dolly off, but not before she had captured a widower with five children and three houses, one in the country, one at the beach and one in St. Louis. That was doing well for a Simmons. How I wish,” Miss Merryvale looked affectionately at Hertha, “that I had the strength to take you away and give you a season. I wouldn’t be jealous, my dear, but proud of all your conquests. But I fear it’s out of the question.”

“Yes,” Hertha made haste to say, “you couldn’t possibly, though it is very kind of you to want to.”

“It’s hard your not having any near relations. I’d love to have you stay with me, but I can understand your leaving. You’re white and you don’t want to remain where you’ve been black. But when you get North, don’t make the mistake of lowering your social position, Hertha.”

Hertha made no response, and then Miss Witherspoon, who had kept silent as long as was humanly possible burst out: “It is natural that Miss Merryvale and I should not agree on this matter, Hertha, but as long as you are going to live in the North I want you to understand northern conditions. I really believe you will be more likely to marry and to marry happily if you think nothing about it. Take up work that interests you and that you can do well. When you can take care of yourself then you may accept the man who wants to take care of you.”

“Well, of all the extraordinary pieces of advice,” Miss Patty murmured. But at this point Hertha arose and announced that she was going to her room.

Once by herself she drew a sigh of relief. These two women, she feared, would drive her to do something desperate. She had at once accepted Miss Witherspoon’s invitation to travel with her to the North and had been grateful for her suggestions as to her education; but she had not expected to have everything arranged before she set foot in Boston. She would have preferred to look about and to plan for herself. Of Miss Patty’s scheming she gave no thought, she was not in a humor to consider getting married; but her future career did interest her and she could but wish that it did not have an equal interest for Miss Witherspoon. Would she want to be closely in touch with this energetic woman? She reminded her of a teacher she had had at school, a Miss Smith also from Boston. Miss Smith, who was a terror to the idler or the dreamer, had never missed a day from her work for twenty-two years. Was Miss Witherspoon like that? She was very particular about her room. Would all the people in Boston be so thorough and so emphatic?

She bestirred herself for a few minutes and then sat down idly by the window. She could see the broad stream and against the sky was a line of birds. They were too far away at first for her to name them, but suddenly the sunlight glistened on their snowy wings and she saw that they were ibises flying south. In a little while she would be flying North. What would her welcome there be like?

Of one thing she was sure. She wanted with all the intensity of her nature to get away, to leave Merryvale and all its inhabitants, black and white. Why, there was no place to which she could go! To turn down the path to her black mother’s cottage, there to find herself a stranger, was more than she could bear; she would not go again until she went to say good-by. But here at the great house life was always difficult. She wearied of Miss Witherspoon and even of her dear Miss Patty; they were so bent upon running her as though she were a private show. She liked Mr. Merryvale sincerely, but she often avoided him, for once he asked her to walk with him and on the way they met his son; and she was in terror lest they two be left together.

For it was the younger man who made life difficult. He would not give up trying to speak with her, while never for a moment would she permit him to see her alone. She had resolved upon this course the night that she had come into his home and she did not mean to swerve from it. If Hertha Williams had not been worthy of a lasting love neither was Hertha Ogilvie. She avoided him, and when he had written her put back the letter unread in his room. But as she saw him at table, his bright face looking all attention if she spoke the simplest word; as she was the recipient of every courtesy from him, when, with the others, they sat in the living-room; as she caught his eye, the rare times that she glanced up when he was near and saw the old look in his face; she feared she could not trust herself if he should speak.

A knock at her door. She did not open it but asked who was there.

There was no answer; and though the knock was repeated she made no motion to open the door.

No, she would not talk with him. He had despised her, and now, as Ellen said, she could despise him. There was tonic in the thought.

“Hertha!” a voice called.

She was standing at the window and despite herself looked down to where Lee Merryvale stood below.

“Come!” he cried.

It sounded like a command. She shook her head angrily and walked back into the room. This was persecution. There was no place for her. Mammy’s home was closed and in this she must continually evade one of the household.

Another knock. This time it was Miss Witherspoon. “May I come in just for a moment?” that lady said.

Hertha smiled pleasantly but inwardly felt resentment.

“I want so much to let you know what I’ve been thinking about,” Miss Witherspoon announced as she entered the room. “I’ve just remembered a nice old couple whom I haven’t seen for more than a year who live only a block from the Institute. I believe they would be delighted to take you to board.”

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Palmer Field. I remember her well now. Her husband at one time was a clerk in a bank, though I don’t know what he may be doing at present. The last time I saw him he looked too old to be a clerk. Probably they would be very glad to take you in, and would charge you only a dollar more than at Clay House. And there is something, you know, in what Miss Merryvale says about your having some social life. They are quiet, elderly people who sometimes take a student to board. I’ll write and tell them about you and see whether they will take you in.”

“I would rather wait, Miss Witherspoon; we start North in a few days.”

“It doesn’t do any harm to write; then when we go to see them they will know who you are.”

“Are you telling every one about me?” The question came with a touch of anger.

“Why, yes, what else should I do? You have to tell something of your past, and how much better to have it known so that there will be no questioning. I assure you every one will be most considerate. Your story, with the legacy left you, has a touch of romance; and what a pretty name, too, ‘Hertha,’ Is it German?”

“Perhaps.”

“Please excuse me,” the Boston woman said as she moved apologetically toward the door, “I shouldn’t have come in for I know you’re tired of all our talk, but I had a new idea and I wanted you to hear it.”

She looked pleasant as she spoke and Hertha smiled back, but when the door was shut the girl threw herself face downward upon the bed. It was a new thought to her that people would know her story, and she resented it. It was partly to escape the story that she was leaving here, and now she was to be discussed and pointed at in Boston as the white girl who grew up among Negroes. Instead of escaping from her past it was to follow her into the land where she had expected to be free.

Another knock at the door. Hertha rose slowly, and without opening, called, “Who is it?”

“Jes’ me, Miss Hertha.”

She opened, to find the cook, Pomona, outside.

“Some one wantin’ ter speak wid you, Miss Hertha.”

“Who?” Hertha asked.

Pomona rolled her eyes and grinned. Her sides shook as though with repressed laughter. “I can’ guess, honey, an’ he don’ gib his name.”

“I won’t see any one,” Hertha said angrily.

“You’s mighty hard on folks now you’s white.” Pomona did not go away but continued to stand in the door grinning at the girl who had recently been a servant like herself. “Ain’t yer gwine ter do nuthin’ fer him? Seems like ater all dat huggin’ an’ kissin’ in de orange grobe ”

“Come in!” Hertha drew the woman into the room and shut the door behind them. Her face was drawn with fear.

“Don’ you worry, chile,” the black woman said kindly. “I won’t tell on yer; but I’s Mr. Lee’s frien’ an’ I ain’t gwine ter see him put about, not for no white-faced brat.”

Hertha’s eyes were very bright as she looked the big woman in the face. “Pomona,” she said, “you must help me. Go down to him and ask him not to try to speak to me. Tell him that I ask him as a gentleman not to try to see me alone. I’m going away in three days, it isn’t long for him to do as I ask. Go down to him, Pomona, and bring his answer back to me.”

She spoke with such earnestness that the colored woman was impressed, and muttering, “I’ll t’ink about it,” turned to go.

Hertha ran to her and clutched her arm. “Do it for me,” she whispered.

In a few minutes the woman came back. “He’s gone,” she said. “Went down de road an’ he says ter tell yer he won’t trouble yer agin.”

Then she closed the door with much dignity.

Through the open window came a gentle rustle of the wind among the live-oaks. Hertha stood in the middle of the room, her head drooping, the shadows dark under her tired eyes. She felt utterly alone. The old world was lost to her and she had closed the door upon the new.

Going to the window she looked beyond the oaks and down the road, and in the warm afternoon light saw the man she loved slowly walking away. Moving across the room she put her hand upon the knob of the door; but after a moment’s hesitation she turned back, a determined look on her face.

“Reckon I won’t trouble him again,” she echoed.

CHAPTER XII

In the dim twilight of a November morning, before the sun was up, a young lady stood outside the Williams’ cabin. She wore a dark blue traveling suit and a small hat set stylishly on her curling brown hair. In her right hand was a little leather hand-bag and in her left a neatly rolled silk umbrella. Above her well-cut pumps were silk stockings. She looked surprisingly out of place, and seeming to realize it herself, she hastily lifted the latch and went into the house.

The table was set with three places; from the kitchen the steaming coffee-pot sent forth a delicious fragrance, while the scent of frying bacon mingled with the almost imperceptible odor of hot rolls. A big bunch of red roses lay by one of the places that was also graced by a cup decorated with pink and white flowers.

“Is that you, Hertha?” came a voice from the kitchen.

“Yes, Sister,” was the answer.

Ellen appeared at the kitchen doorway and after a glance gave a little laughing bow, saying, “Good morning, Miss Ogilvie.”

There are few people who look always the same; we vary in our appearance with a headache or a drop in the thermometer; but perhaps nothing is so quick to change our aspect as a reversal in our fortunes. Hertha had worn a pretty suit before, she had been well-shod, but never previously had she stood with such a quiet air of self-confidence. She blushed at Ellen’s greeting, her head drooped, and she was Hertha Williams again.

“Oh, it’s great!” Ellen exclaimed. “Don’t droop your head. Think what a pity it would have been if Hertha Ogilvie had turned out to look like Minnie Barker!”

A picture of Minnie Barker, very freckled, with a snub nose, reddish hair and a shirtwaist that was always pulling up from her skirt at the back, came to Hertha and she laughed. Then sobering, she said, “I’m not going to any one who’ll care. If I had a relative or two!”

“There are relatives and relatives,” Ellen answered sagely. “This world is such a raffle you might not have inherited the right kind.”

“It isn’t likely,” Hertha added, “that I’d have gotten another set as good as the first,” and she smiled at her former sister.

“Good morning, honey,” said Mammy, appearing with a plate of biscuit.

They joked a good deal during the meal to which Hertha had invited herself and which she had planned even to the guava jelly, slightly liquid, amorously sweet, which Miss Witherspoon assured her she would never get in the North. The meal over they went outside and the visitor stood with Mammy while she fed the scraps to the chickens, watching them peck and push at one another, each trying to get the best piece.

“Hertha,” Ellen said hesitatingly, “there’s something Mammy and I want to say.”

Hertha shrank within herself. She was fearful when Ellen started in this serious tone, dreading too careful an analysis of their emotions. Understanding this the older woman spoke.

“Honey, dear,” she said looking at Hertha with moist eyes, “you’s gwine away alone, for we’s alone ef we ain’t wid some’un we lobes. I ’spects it gwine ter be mighty hard fer you, but ef eber you’s discouraged jes’ ‘member dat here in dis lil’ cabin dere’s you’ sister an’ you’ mammy, lobin’ yer an’ prayin’ fer yer day an’ night. You’s close in our hearts, foreber and eber, an’ we knows we’s close in yours.

“But, honey, dar’s anudder t’ing. Keep us in you’ heart, but don’ try ter lib in our worl’, not at fust. It ain’t gwine ter be so easy, allus ter remember as you’s white. You can’t fergit a lifetime in a day. An’ it’s mighty mean ter be swingin’ fust on one foot, den on de udder, not knowin’ whar you stan’. When yer gits yer place firm in de white worl’, den yer kin turn back ter look at de black. But not now, dearie, not now.”

Hertha could not speak, but she nodded her head in acceptance of her exile.

“We don’t need to worry,” Ellen said with a laugh that had a sob in it. “We sha’n’t have to wait long. You’ll soon stand on both your feet.”

“I ain’t gwine ter de dock,” Mammy announced when Ellen in a moment said it was time for them to leave. “I don’t wan’ no white folks starin’ at me an’ talkin’; I’se gwine to say good-by hyar in my home. Baby,” turning to the child of her adoption, “you’s so pretty-like, allus be good.”

“Yes, Mammy,” Hertha promised.

“Lay you’ head on my breas’. Dere! Lil lamb, you’s gwine out inter de worl’ alone. But you know de way ter safety. Lobe de Lord Jesus. Don’ never forgit Him fer a moment, but keep close ter His bosom.”

On the dock Miss Witherspoon was fidgeting among the hand-luggage. She looked annoyed when Hertha came up with Ellen. “Oh, here you are,” she said. “Don’t you think you had better express this bag? No. Why not? But I thought I explained to you that you could express it on the train. However, it doesn’t much matter. How many pieces of hand-luggage have you? Two? And you have two other things to carry, your hand-bag and your umbrella. It’s always well to count the number of pieces you have and then when you get up from your seat you can go over them one, two, three, four. Do you see? I’m sorry though that you didn’t pack so that you could express one of the bags through.”

Ellen looked on, feeling that she was only beginning to realize how much of tragedy there was in this good-by. Not even she had appreciated, until she stood there on the dock, how far removed was the world of white and black. There was something terrible and ridiculous in sending her little sister away with a stranger, and denying to her the right to know again the people among whom she had been reared and who had given her the training and the education that made it possible for her so easily to take her place in the white world. “Well, I’m mighty glad I was ambitious,” she thought with a rush of pride as she looked at the well-bred, ladylike figure in its stylish traveling dress. “Supposing she’d been handed over to poor white trash!”

“Ellen,” Hertha whispered, “I’m going to try to make something of myself but I’m more easily discouraged than you.”

“You must be courageous, Hertha. Go ahead and do things.”

“I don’t know how to do that. But perhaps things will happen.”

Miss Patty had said good-by at the house, but now Pomona came hurrying down with a basket of Japanese persimmons for the journey. With the bunch of red roses these made two more things not to be forgotten when you left your seat, and Hertha felt Miss Witherspoon look disapprovingly at them. Then with the rising sun the boat came toward them around the bend seeming, to the young girl who stood there, like some sea monster that would drag her away from everything familiar and carry her to an alien land. She grew almost sick with fear, but a glance at Ellen made her rally. A step up the gangplank and she had left the world of friends, of mother and sister and brother, of lovely skies, of beautiful trees, of mockingbirds and whistling quail, the world of long walks with Tom and of evenings out under the stars; the world that had been a world of rest and peace until Tom left it on this same boat less than two months ago.

“The porter has both your bags, I hope,” said Miss Witherspoon anxiously. But it proved that Lee Merryvale was carrying them, and as she spoke he deposited them at Hertha’s side. Then, taking off his hat, he said good-by. “I am coming North this winter,” he remarked decisively, “and I shall expect to see you. I hope you’ll enjoy going into a new land.”

“I think I shall,” Hertha managed to answer, and was grateful that he had not tried to shake hands. When he left them the moorings were cast off, and the boat turned out into the stream.

On the dock stood the Merryvales, father and son. A little way from them, by herself, was Ellen. Now they were going past the great house, the trees were tossing their mossy beards and from the gallery Miss Patty was waving to her. Cows grazed in the river, and high above a turkey buzzard soared, gazing down to find death on the earth. Then the river made a bend and the familiar world was gone.

Before she left the boat Hertha took out a letter from Tom and read it once again. Tom had shown his thoughtfulness in every line. There was no surprise in his receipt of the news and there was much gladness for her. “Sister,” he wrote, “we are all in a cage, we black folk. It’s a big cage, and we get used to it and have a good time in it, and after a while we don’t much notice when we strike our wings against the bars. But it’s a cage. Do you remember that funny, old white woman in the city who used to let us look in her room and see her family of canaries? They were breeding right there in her parlor, building their nests and bringing up their young. Those canaries were just as busy and as much taken up with their goings on as if they had been out in the trees. But they were prisoners all the same. Well, they’ve opened the cage door for you and set you free. It wasn’t right for you to be shut up; it weren’t meant for you. Now you’re free and folks won’t come just to play with you in your cage. I’m glad, Sister, and don’t forget you’re free.”

“I wonder if I really am free,” Hertha said to herself. “I’d like to find out.”

The railroad journey was uneventful to Miss Witherspoon, but full of novelty to Hertha. Accustomed to the jim-crow coach, the Pullman with its comfortable bed, its luxurious dining-car, was a revelation. But she showed no sign of unfamiliarity and moved through the day, and even climbed to her high perch at night as though it were a usual routine. But all the time she was revolving a plan and wondering whether she would have the courage to carry it out. She had told Ellen that she could not go ahead and make things happen, but she felt that it was possible, if you did not like a thing, quietly to avoid it. The conception of freedom of which Tom wrote was taking a strong hold upon her. As she lay awake looking up at the lighted ceiling of the car, feeling the presence of the many people traveling like herself to the strange North, people who were now of her world, she grew impatient at the circumscription that was being prepared for her. The story of her life had been told to Miss Witherspoon’s friends, Miss Witherspoon had planned her future, and she would be an ever pervasive factor in her life in the months to come. Hertha suspected that to be with her would be like going to school again. But the cage door was open and she might, if she had the courage, make a genuine flight, alone. Yes, alone. If she could not be with those she loved, she did not wish at once to link her life to some one whom she was growing to dislike, some one who intended to fashion the order of her ways. Why not slip away from this new chaperon who, after all, was only a chance acquaintance? So she reasoned as she lay awake at night, and as she looked out of her window during the day while the train swung steadily northward and prosperous cities, belching factories, well tilled fields, great barns, and spacious farmhouses whizzed past, her courage and her desire for adventure grew. She had money, she was white, she would learn what it meant to be free.

“We shall soon be in New York,” Miss Witherspoon said on the second day. “We arrive, you know, at the Pennsylvania station and we take a taxi there for the Grand Central. I am sorry that I can’t stop to show you New York, but I delayed my departure from Merryvale longer than I expected, that I might bring you with me, and it is imperative that I go at once to Boston.”

“I certainly do not want to put you to any inconvenience.”

Hertha’s tone was polite, but at heart she felt angry. She wanted to see New York and her companion had killed all desire she might have had to see Boston. She was hot with excitement when later they drew into the station.

“What did you give your bags to another boy for?” Miss Witherspoon questioned.

They were in a crowd of people, hurrying off the trains. Miss Witherspoon had seized upon a porter to whom she had given her luggage, and, on turning around, had found that her companion had extravagantly engaged another.

The young girl murmured an unintelligible reply and her chaperon, intent upon getting a taxi, hurried on ahead.

“Let’s not walk so fast,” Hertha said to her boy, who answered, smiling, “Reckon you’re from the South.”

“Reckon I am,” was the reply.

“Your friend’s getting away from us!” he announced after they had moved slowly down the platform.

“I want her to.”

Meanwhile Miss Witherspoon, reaching a taxi, had her luggage settled in it and then looked back for her charge, who was nowhere to be seen. Nervous, yet sure that Hertha would appear in a moment, she stood by her cab, refusing to get inside.

“I got ter go,” cried the chauffeur.

“I’ve got to wait,” said Miss Witherspoon emphatically, “until my companion comes.”

Without a word the man drove off to take his stand in the rear of the line while another taxi swept up, gathered in a group of travelers, and went on.

“How provoking,” Miss Witherspoon cried. She was separated from her luggage and from Hertha. Never was anything so stupid.

Suddenly some one spoke at her elbow. “The young lady asked me to give you this.”

It was Hertha’s porter, holding out a note.

Miss Witherspoon opened it and read the few words written in the girl’s careful hand.

“Thank you so much for your kindness, but I have decided to stay in New York. I think I shall prefer to be where no one knows anything about me. I’m sorry I put you to so much trouble.” And below, written more hurriedly: “Don’t worry over me, and thank you again.”

“Where did she go?” Miss Witherspoon asked the boy, who was watching her with interest.

“I don’t know,” he answered, “I put her on a street car.”

“Here’s your taxi again,” called out the starter.

Miss Witherspoon was startled and indignant. She looked about as though hoping by some miracle Hertha would appear at her side. Then, appreciating the futility of attempting any search, she got into the taxi with her bags and, chagrined and disappointed, was driven through the crowded streets.

“What shall I say to them in Boston?” she asked herself.