He touched her arm gently in a caress. "It has to be good-by, Sister,"
he went on, "the white world don"t meet the colored world to-day. Look at this church here. It"s close to white folks" homes but no one ever thinks to come in to worship. I"ve sat here and thought of it many times. We ain"t really men and women to them. I reckon they don"t think we"re children of G.o.d."
"That"s it," Hertha cried, "and how could I live with any one who thought that?"
"They all think it," Tom answered.
"No, they don"t," said Hertha angrily; "my teachers didn"t at school."
"They were women," Tom replied. "Women have more religion than men."
He rose from his seat and stretched himself, his long arms extended, his short coat-sleeves revealing a great expanse of wrist and hand.
"What are you growing so tall for?" Hertha asked, looking up at him.
"I reckon I have to." He dropped his arms to his sides. "It"s a mistake fer it takes a lot of coat and pants to cover me, and in the bed the sheet don"t come up high enough and the blanket"s forever slipping by on the floor."
"Oh, you"ll get sick," his former sister and nurse cried, looking so troubled that Tom had to laugh.
"Don"t you worry," he answered, smiling down at her, "I"ve had such a good bringing up that I can"t go wrong now, not anyways."
Nothing that he could have said would have meant so much. She accepted his words in their fullest meaning and felt uplifted, comforted.
Whatever she might make of her own life, she had helped wisely to mold his. If she never saw him again she would know that her influence would stay with him to the end, blossoming in honorable thoughts and kindly deeds.
"And so you advise me to marry?" she said, rising too and trying to speak with a laugh.
"No, ma"am!" with decision. "I ain"t advising you to marry. I"s just advising you not to give up marrying."
"Well," with a little shrug, "it amounts to the same thing."
"What you got to hurry for?" Tom returned to his old charge.
"If I don"t decide I can"t stay where I am. There is Miss Wood one evening telling me to go on with my work--she loathes d.i.c.k--and Mrs.
Pickens the next telling me to accept a good husband. That"s what it"s like when d.i.c.k"s away, and it"s a million times harder when he"s around.
I"ll move if I give him up.
"I met an old man this winter," she went on, "a friend of Kathleen"s. He had a terrible philosophy, everything was going to the dogs. You"d have thought that the world would never get any better. But he said one thing to me. He told me to dance and have a good time and to be sure to keep out of the conflict. That was the way he put it, "Keep out of the conflict.""
"That might be good advice if you could."
"I suppose you could," Hertha said slowly, "if you made up your mind to; just to have an easy, comfortable time. Now Kathleen was always in the conflict. She was trying to change the world, to change everybody--at least everybody who was poor. And here I can"t decide what to do with my own life."
"It"s a heap easier," Tom remarked meditatively, "to run other folks"
lives than it is your own."
They had walked down the aisle to the corridor and now stood by the closed door.
"I haven"t made my mind up yet about marriage," Tom said. "It"s a great risk, it sure is. I was reading the other day about trial marriages.
Seemed like that might not be a bad idea--each agree to try each other out for a time and then if things suited, match up for good."
"Where did you read that?" Hertha asked, curiosity surmounting disapproval in her voice.
"In the paper," was the all-sufficient answer. "It were only a suggestion."
"_Was_, Tom."
"Yes"m."
"I"m afraid it"s a suggestion that most people would think wicked," she gave a resigned sigh, "like divorce. Well, I"m glad we had this talk."
"So am I," Tom made hearty response. "And that wasn"t a bad idea, Hertha, to keep out of the conflict."
"There"s one thing I want you to promise me," the girl"s thoughts turned from herself to her old home. "I want you to promise to let me keep in touch with you. You"re nearer than the folks down South. Promise that you won"t go away without my knowing."
"Sure," he answered.
"And one thing more, if you hear from them at home that any one is ill, or that they"re going to move, you must let me know. I mean to write to them before long, I"m going to settle a lot of things in my mind when school"s over, but I rely on you to let me know the news."
"Yes."
"It"s a promise?"
"Yes, Hertha, it"s a promise."
She put her hand in his to say good-by. "You"re my boy, you remember."
There was a world of gentleness and love in her voice. "Do you know, I told Kathleen and then d.i.c.k that I had a brother, a little brother who was in school."
"I"s feared you shouldn"t have said that, Hertha."
"I had to have some relatives, didn"t I? And I just naturally had you.
And we"ll never forget one another. And I tell you," looking with wet eyes back down the long aisle of the church to where the Bible lay on the reading-desk, "I know what heaven"s going to be like. It isn"t going to have any golden streets. Think how horrid and hard and glaring they"d be! It will have spreading trees and flowers, lilies and asphodels and green gra.s.s--yes, and white sand; and I engage you now to go out walking with me the first Sunday."
The tears were in his eyes as well as hers. "I"ll love to be there waiting fer you, Sister," he answered.
She gripped him in her arms for a moment and then with a gulping sob opened the door and went out into the street.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
"Keep out of the conflict!"
This admonition ran through Hertha"s mind as she went to school Monday morning. She saw herself standing at the little table in the restaurant with the cynical old major looking at her kindly, admiringly. The conflict to which he had alluded had been that of the working-cla.s.s, but his words might include all battle whether of labor or of race. If she married d.i.c.k she would be out of the conflict, out of the eternal worry of earning a living. But she would also be out of the conflict of race, forever removed from the life that had been hers such a short time ago.
If she accepted the love of this young man from Georgia with his talk of "black wenches" and "buck n.i.g.g.e.rs," she accepted complete ostracism from her past. And not only ostracism,--she had grown to realize that this was likely whatever course she chose,--but the past that had meant so much, that had helped to make her what she was, gentle-mannered, deft, well-educated, this past she must see despised. d.i.c.k might forgive those years but only if she would forget them. He would be ambitious for them both, and she must blot from her mind everything that touched upon the shocking disgrace, for so he would account it, of her world until eight months ago.
Sophie Switsky was in the conflict still, battling with the oppression that centered about her whirring machine. Kathleen was in it, demanding sunshine and health for the many in poverty. But if Hertha Williams married a Georgia cracker she left her conflict, turned from the battlefield into a place of quiet and safety. Ellen had predicted that when her sister went into the white world she would never join in the coa.r.s.e abuse of the colored race; but if she married d.i.c.k she tacitly linked herself to these cruel lies. She abhorred the thought, and yet, all the morning, on her way to work and seated in the ill-ventilated cla.s.sroom, she found the major"s advice buzzing through her head, "Keep out of the conflict! Keep out of the conflict!"