"Nothing especial."
"Well, you missed it."
"I suppose I did," said Hertha, with more than a touch of crossness, "but that doesn"t prevent my eating my supper."
"Indeed you are not seeing that any of us are helped," Mrs. Pickens cried, calling d.i.c.k"s attention to his duties at the head of the table, and Hertha soon found herself making the best of the left-overs of the previous meal.
No one seemed in good spirits. Mrs. Wood told them all a half dozen times that her head ached, and her daughter showed on her face that she had heard the same tale at regular and irregular intervals during the day. She looked more than ever as though she wished she were a man, a desire that was rarely absent from her thoughts. "A man," she was wont to say, "is not expected to earn the family income and also be a companion and nurse, and if by any chance he did take all three positions he would make sure to be paid well for them." Mrs. Pickens was tired, she was always tired on Sunday, it being the maid"s easiest and her hardest day; and d.i.c.k was disgusted that yesterday"s happiness had been spirited away with the morning. So the conversation lagged and only as the meal was almost concluded did it take an unexpected and exciting turn.
It was Miss Wood who began it. "You are from the South, I think, Miss Ogilvie?" she said, addressing Hertha.
"Yes," answered Hertha.
"So am I," called out d.i.c.k.
"I am aware of that fact," Miss Wood went on in anything but a cordial tone, "but I wished to ask Miss Ogilvie"s opinion on a certain question.
I was reading in a magazine to-day," she looked across at Hertha, ignoring the young man at the table"s head, "in an article by a southern physician, a man, I understand, of some note, a very sweeping statement.
In writing of the Negroes he said that he was confident there was not a pure colored woman in the country above the age of sixteen."
Mrs. Pickens choked over her bread and b.u.t.ter. She had not been brought up to discuss sociological questions and she deeply disapproved of the way Miss Wood frequently introduced them, especially at meal time. Last week they had been treated to a shocking tale of reformatories, but this was the first time they had been drawn into the social evil. Looking at Hertha, she expected to see her with drooping head murmuring a gentle nothing. But she was mistaken. The southern girl"s face was on fire, with anger, not shame.
"It"s not true," she said.
"And I say it _is_ true," cried d.i.c.k, bringing his fist down on the table. "That doctor knew what he was writing about. It"s d.a.m.ned true, every word of it."
He gulped as he realized he had been guilty of swearing, but Miss Wood, who was in control of the conversation, paid no attention to him. "I am interested in what you say," she went on to Hertha, "for it agrees with my own impression. I have not met many colored people in my work, but I have had a few cases among them, and while I have seen degradation it has not seemed to me any greater than that among the whites of the same cla.s.s. Such a sweeping statement as this is unjust."
"It"s wicked," said Hertha, addressing Miss Wood. Despite every effort at control, she found her chin trembling and her voice shaking a little.
"I have known many colored women, servants and teachers, and I know they were pure and good."
"You were fooled," d.i.c.k cried excitedly. "That doctor knew what he was talking about. A n.i.g.g.e.r wench is always rotten. Why, every southern man knows it."
"Indeed?" Miss Wood looked at him for the first time.
"d.i.c.k!" said Mrs. Pickens, in real consternation at the turn the conversation was taking. "You should not talk like that. You owe us an apology."
"I didn"t start the subject."
"That"s quite true," his landlady replied, "and we"ll drop it."
d.i.c.k was still defiant. "I"m sorry I swore," he said, speaking more quietly, "but it"s a swearing subject. And I won"t be picked up as meaning what I didn"t intend. A man needn"t be rotten to know what a woman"s like. And the n.i.g.g.e.r women are all the same. They don"t understand what it means to be pure. And I tell you, the men are worse.
Why, every white woman down South"s afraid of them. And good reason, too. It ain"t safe for them to go out alone at night. Some places it ain"t hardly safe day or night. If we didn"t string up a black buck every now and then for an example, we"d never be safe. They"re a bad lot, the whole crew of them, and they"re getting more blasted impertinent every day."
He brought his fist down again and faced them all, his mouth set in its narrow, ugly line, his eyes hard as steel.
Miss Wood smiled over at Hertha. "I"m glad you don"t agree," she said.
She was genuinely interested in the subject, and she also rejoiced in showing Richard Brown at a disadvantage. It was her earnest hope that he would not win so attractive a girl as Hertha for his wife.
"No!" said Hertha, "I don"t agree." She was close to tears. Unless she told her whole story, nothing that she might say about the Negroes would count, and she was not prepared to tell her story. But her heart was hot with anger, and turning to d.i.c.k for the first time in the discussion she cried out, "What do you know about it? You"re nothing but a cheap Georgia cracker!" and with this retort rose from the table and hurried to her room.
"d.i.c.k, how could you?" Mrs. Pickens asked when the two were left alone together.
"I didn"t begin it," he said again.
"No, but you certainly went on with it. How can you expect a girl like Hertha to like you when you talk so coa.r.s.ely and say such terrible things? She was right, anyway; I"m a southerner and I don"t believe such a sweeping statement as that."
"Well, I do," said d.i.c.k emphatically, back at the dispute again. "I"m not a n.i.g.g.e.r lover." He wiped his face with his handkerchief and, getting up, began to pace the room. "That stiff old maid with her darned talk makes me want to kill somebody."
He stopped in front of Mrs. Pickens and took up the subject again.
"Haven"t I known the n.i.g.g.e.rs? They worked my father"s land, when they didn"t loaf and get drunk. Pure women! Every mother"s child with a different father! I know "em. Ain"t I seen "em, the splay-footed, stinking devils!"
Mrs. Pickens looked at him, surprised at the intensity of his feeling.
She had taken the black people all her life as a matter of course, accepting their failings and shortcomings, never questioning their inferiority, but also never questioning their good qualities and their value in the world in which she was reared.
"I think you ought not to talk that way about any human being," she said gently, "and on Sunday, too."
"They ain"t human," d.i.c.k declared, and then added sulkily, "anyway not more than half human."
"You don"t believe," Mrs. Pickens spoke a little hesitatingly, "you don"t think, d.i.c.k, that they"re our brothers in Christ?"
"No," he roared in answer, "they"re no brothers of mine, the dirty, big-lipped, splay-footed bucks. What are you giving me? Want me to take "em into my parlor, marry "em to my sisters----"
"Oh, come!" said Mrs. Pickens, with a little laugh, "I"m a southerner, you know! You don"t have to talk that stuff to me."
"Well, and ain"t I a southerner? No, I"m nothing but a cheap Georgia cracker, that"s what I am. But I ain"t a n.i.g.g.e.r lover, anyway. Pretty way to talk to a feller, ain"t it, now?" he said, facing Mrs. Pickens, the anger dying in his eyes.
"It was very unkind; I don"t wonder you"re angry." Then she added, looking keenly at him, "If she thinks that way about you, why don"t you give her up?"
"Oh, don"t say that!" The lad"s whole appearance changed, his mouth softened, the tears started to his eyes. He gripped the table and looked at his woman friend as though she had struck him a blow. "I couldn"t stand that. I love her so."
"But you know, d.i.c.k," there was a teasing smile on Mrs. Pickens" face, "an attractive girl like Hertha is sure to have a lot of beaus, and she can"t marry all of them."
"There isn"t anybody else; you can see for yourself there isn"t anybody else. I"ve got to have her. I"ll go to the devil if I don"t!"
He was so changed, so shaken with feeling, that Mrs. Pickens took the hand that hung by his side and patted it. And then to her amazement and her happiness, for it was good to mother this long-legged piece of masculinity, she found the boy kneeling by her side, his head buried on her shoulder.
"I suppose," he said, looking up after a minute and blinking, "she had an old black mammy that took care of her and loved her and that she loved. Perhaps," contemptuously, "she played with n.i.g.g.e.r babies when they were cute and small. n.i.g.g.e.r babies can be awful cute."
Mrs. Pickens smoothed his ruffled hair, but said nothing.
"Well, I"m a Georgia cracker," he declared next, with desperate calmness, "and she"s right in thinking I come cheap."
"She didn"t mean it like that!"
"I don"t know what she meant," he went on wearily. "I don"t half understand her. The only time we get along together is when neither of us says a word."
Mrs. Pickens laughed, and d.i.c.k, rising sheepishly to his feet, walked to the open window. When he turned back he seemed his usual self again.