We love to speak of the maternal instinct, counting it an attribute of every mother who looks down upon her new-born child; yet in the eyes of many women the madonna look never comes however many children they bring into the world. But Hertha was of no such stock. Her mother had turned toward Death when the gift that she had brought into the world might no longer rest in the hollow of her arm. To her daughter, life glowed purest when looking into the eyes of a child. And in the care and companionship of the first baby that she had carried--a squirming lump in its little white frock, its brown feet kicking futilely against her body, its brown head resting upon her shoulder--she had begun to be about her motherly business. It was the madonna look that Mrs. Pickens saw in Hertha"s eyes, the look of pride that her baby was growing up as he should, and of intense antic.i.p.ation at the talk that she would have with him again.
But when the dinner was over, when Mrs. Pickens had gone out and the others had retired to their rooms, a worried expression came into Hertha"s face. She was in the North where color prejudice was not extreme, but she was also in a southern home and she could not decide in what spot to meet her visitor. As she sat in her room she half laughed, half cried over it. Probably in all the house there was no one who, if she explained the situation, would not be glad to have her receive a visit from a boy who had lived in her home town and who could bring her news of her old friends there--such old friends--whether he were black or white. And yet in the whole house there did not seem to be a proper spot in which to receive him. From the kitchen, presided over by a cross and busy white cook, to her bedroom, where only if he were a servant he might enter, he had no rightful place. And in the street or the park--she gasped at the thought of what others would think. There really seemed no possible number of appropriate square feet, except perhaps in the hall.
Eight o"clock found her in the parlor, the lamp sending a circle of light from the round table in the middle of the room, the last glow of twilight entering through the long windows. Hertha sat at one of them watching the pa.s.sers-by, eager and anxious, her heart swelling with love for her old home and for the people there for whom she was hungry, hungry as a baby is hungry for its mother"s breast. The rooms of the cabin, empty in her dream, were all inhabited now, the door wide open, Mammy moving about washing the dishes, Ellen at work setting up sums for her children at school. Outside the chickens were pecking amid the white sand. The chords of memory were ringing louder and louder, ringing with an intensity that came from their long suppression, calling up pictures of the past, striking now a note of happiness, more often a deeper one of pain. The life of the last nine months was disappearing, drifting into a mist of nothingness, and Hertha Williams was sitting in Mrs.
Pickens" boarding-house parlor, watching for a substantial earthly presence out of the life of the past.
"Miss Ogilvie," a voice said from the hallway, "there"s a colored boy downstairs who says he"s got something for you. He says he"s Tom."
"Tom!" said Hertha with a start. Her surprise was no dissimulation. She had surely expected to see him before he entered the house and she could scarcely believe he was really in it. "Why, yes," she stammered, "if it"s Tom he"s from my old home. Tell him to come up here."
"Tom," the cook called as she went down the stairway, "the young lady says you"re to come along." And with this invitation she went back to her work.
Hertha, as she stood there in the parlor, her hands on her boy"s shoulders, looking into his face, his good face with its serious forehead, its kindly mouth, believed that even d.i.c.k, were he there, must cease his nasty screeching about n.i.g.g.e.rs and see that boys were boys, black or white, and that here was a young American of whom to be proud.
"Oh, Tom," she said as she sat down, and looked at him where he stood in front of her, "You"re so good to see!" And again, "Oh, Tom, it"s so good, so good to see you!"
"Now you"ve got to take that chair and tell me every bit of news," she announced when she had stared her fill.
"Reckon that would take quite a s.p.a.ce," he answered cheerfully.
"Sit down," Hertha commanded but with a quaver in her voice.
"Oh, I couldn"t sit down," Tom answered in an argumentative way. "I"s clean forgotten how. I stand so long in the corner of the car, with one hand on the wheel like this," imitating his position in the elevator, "and one arm going out like this," opening and shutting an imaginary door, "that I reckon I"ll soon be doing it in my sleep. It ain"t natural for an elevator boy to sit."
Hertha"s mouth drooped, and yet her heart glowed at her boy"s thoughtfulness. From his entrance at the bas.e.m.e.nt door until he left she knew he would look after her and see that she suffered nothing from his presence in her white home.
"Tell me first if they"re all well?" she asked.
"Yes"m, they"re doing nicely. Mammy"s been ailing some this winter, Ellen says, but she"s a heap better now."
"What"s been the matter?" Hertha questioned sharply.
"Oh, just ailing," Tom said vaguely. "There ain"t anything rightly the matter."
"But she"s better now?"
"Oh, yes, and Ellen"s had a good year at school and the hens are laying.
Mammy told about the eggs they had for Sunday breakfast."
"Truly?" Hertha said. "What Sunday?"
"Last Sunday," Tom answered and drew a letter from Ellen out of his pocket.
As he read her all the homely news of the school and cabin her eyes filled with tears though she did not let them fall; only when he was done she asked for the letter and received it.
"And now," she demanded, turning on Tom with a show of severity, "what are you doing in New York? Don"t you know you ought to be in school?"
"Yes"m," he answered, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and smiling ingratiatingly.
"What"s happened?" Hertha"s voice changed from one of severity to one of curiosity.
"Well," Tom made answer, "it weren"t such a great show there, so I up and left."
"I didn"t suppose you"d do such a thing! What was the matter anyway?"
"They was always rushing a feller. They didn"t give yer any time to think."
"Tom!" Hertha broke into laughter, such peals of laughter that the cook, back in the kitchen, listened and smiled as she wrung out her dishcloth, glad that her favorite in the house, who never made a mite of trouble, was having a good time.
"It weren"t a bad place," Tom went on, indulgent to the school, not wishing to do it an injustice, "there"s some as likes to jump about like a chicken with its head cut off, but I like a chance to think. You"d have found it right pretty, Hertha--a river not so big as ours but full of lights at sunset. The trees were fine, too, with bigger leaves than we have, and when winter come it was white with snow."
"Oh, I know about that," Hertha interrupted. "I was out in the first snowstorm this winter, and on a sled, too. Did you go coasting, Tom?"
"No, ma"am!" His negative was emphatic. It precluded the possibility that even, for a moment, he had indulged in such a pastime. And after the spoken word he shook his head some seconds in further denial.
"It were this-a-way," he went on, "they thought as there weren"t a minute of the day that a feller could have to himself. I reckon they do that way in the army, an" we wore army clothes--play clothes though, for we didn"t have no guns. You"d get up in the morning after a cat-nap, an"
go about your tasks till breakfast, and when you"d eaten that up an"
more too, there"d be drill and lessons and Lord knows what all, I can"t remember such a long while as this. But by and by there"d come a minute when the bell didn"t ring and a fellow would think he could stop to study something. Perhaps he"d sit on a bench and try to figure out what was in his mind when an officer"d come along and call out, "What you doing?""
"And I know what you"d say," Hertha cried, interrupting him. "You"d say, "I was thinking----"" imitating his drawl.
"Yes"m. And then he"d say, "Get up, man, and go to work. This ain"t no place to think."
"Well, it was like that all day. I went into chapel, a mighty fine building, you could put most of the cabins at home in it without crowding, and I sat down there alone on the back seat, jes" studying the world here an" the world ter come. I hadn"t been there a minute when the Captain comes up and says sharp-like, "What you doin" here?" "Jes"
thinkin"," I says. "Can"t have that," he says, "this ain"t no place to think. Go to work!" I walks down under the trees at sunset an" watches the pink turn into soft purple, studying ter find the first star, when some one comes along and calls out, "Get up, man! Don"t sit still like that. Go to work!" At night, when every one"s in bed, I thought they"d let up, so I looked out the window. The moon was sailing past the stars, you know, and I was studying it out the way we used ter, and thinking, thinking--But, Lord, "What you up at this time of night for, boy? "the officer asks, tapping me on the arm. "Jes" thinkin"," I answers. "You can"t do that here," says he, "no time for thinking. Go to bed!" So then I studies how to come to New York and after a while I gets here."
Tom finished his recital and smiled down at his listener.
"But Tom," Hertha asked, "wasn"t Ellen terribly disappointed?"
"She"s reconciled," he said dryly.
Hertha thought of Ellen and the wreckage of her plans, and surmised that there must have been a stormy period before reconciliation.
"It seems strange, Tom," she said at length, "that you should be here in New York alone."
"I ain"t alone," he replied, "not exactly alone. I"s boarding with a lady from the South."
"Why, that"s just the way it is with me," Hertha said. "Isn"t that odd!"
"Do you get enough to eat?" Tom asked.
"Plenty. Don"t you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," the boy said tolerantly. "It stand ter reason city folks can"t feed you like they do at home. When you have to put down a nickel or a dime for every mite o" food you buy, for every pinch o" corn meal, and every orange, it comes hard to set much on the table. And if a feller goes out to one o" these restaurants to feed, why before he"s reached the pie, if he don"t look out, he"s eat up his day"s wages."
"Eaten, Tom."