The afternoon sun shone obliquely through a window in the Williams"
cabin, striking the foot of a bed where it played upon the faded colors of the patchwork spread, bringing out in sharp outline the rectangles of calico with their once gay figures of blue and red and yellow. It moved on from the bed across the rag-carpet to the washstand with its pitcher and bowl, its crocheted mats of white cotton, to end its journey in the somber wood of the cabin wall.
The rest of the room was in shadow, the dark face of the old woman lying under the patchwork spread looking still darker against the white sheet.
It was an immovable face, with closed eyes and set lips; conveying no sense of life save in the irregular breathing. The strong body that had lived its years of active service, moving through this room on its familiar tasks, was still, its heavy limbs stretched in rest.
Beyond the light, in the quiet of the shadow, Hertha sat in a low chair by the bed. It had been her place since she reached home the day before.
Through the darkness and the light she had watched the still figure, waiting and hoping for a look of recognition. But the heavy features had remained immovable, no shadow of understanding had entered into the deep eyes.
The warm, moist air of the southern summer, fragrant with a mult.i.tude of flowers, stirred the curtain and lightly touched the girl"s face. In the drowsy heat of the afternoon she relaxed her vigil and, her eyes closed, slowly slipped into the dream world, not wholly leaving the world about her, never quite unconscious of the figure at her side.
As with closed eyes she drifted away from the present a song was blown down from the North, blown from the great theater where Billy had taken Kathleen and herself on Christmas eve. "He was despised and rejected."
The words chanted sorrowfully through the window, filling the homely room with their pathos. The voice was soft and tender as though itself "acquainted with grief," and without, the pines, too, sang, through their thousands of tree tops, "despised, rejected"--whispering the words as the wind moved their myriad leaves.
Then of a sudden a trumpet called, the walls of the little room fell, and light--magnificent, terrible--streamed through the place. It glowed triumphant about the bed, it moved among the cabins, their walls glowing like bra.s.s, it touched the pines and their countless needles became each a golden point of radiance. And through the dazzling light sounded the great chorus, blared by the trumpets, sung by a thousand resinous strings, chanted by mult.i.tudes of voices:
"King of kings and Lord of lords!"
The glory of the light, the majesty of the music enveloped the dreamer, caught her up in a cloud, and bore her through the great s.p.a.ces of the universe. She moved along a radiant stream of splendor that pulsed with triumphant harmonies. Voices and instruments sang to the heavens in hallelujah. She left the earth, its narrow leagues measured in clay and dross, and touched the world of heaven.
There was a slight sound in the room, the gurgling of a half-uttered word, and Hertha was back in the cabin, the single line of sunlight shining through the small window.
Mammy was smiling at her from the bed, a happy smile as though laughing a bit that she had caught her baby napping. And Hertha answered with a child"s smile of recognition at being home close to its mother again.
She slipped her hand into the black one lying on the bed by her side.
Holding it close she drank in the look of deep, unstinted love on the dark face. Then the cloud of unconsciousness moved like a mask over the heavy features and the light of life was gone. But to the girl the room was again illuminated with the golden radiance of her dream. Again the trumpets blared, the drums beat. She heard the requiem of the despised.
From across the deep s.p.a.ces of the universe voices sang to her of the poor in spirit. The great majestic syllables throbbed through the little cabin, carrying their triumph to her listening heart.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
It was twilight, and Ellen was sitting on the porch for a little s.p.a.ce to rest and think. Since her mother"s death, three days before, there had been no opportunity for rest or for thinking. The neighbors, kindly but garrulous, had been at the cabin at all hours. Their enthusiasm for ceremonial, their effusive religious expression, had made the past three days wearying and difficult. But the last rites had been performed and the house among the pines was at length peaceful and still. As she idly watched the long shadows cast by the setting sun she felt her mother nearer to her than when, with Aunt Lucindy mourning, she lay panoplied in death upon the bed.
Tom joined her and took his seat on the step below. "How do you feel?"
he asked affectionately.
"All right," Ellen answered, "and you?"
"I"m all right now."
They had spoken in low tones and Tom asked in a whisper, "She"s asleep?"
"Yes, she was so worn she"s slept the whole day through, like a baby."
"I "most wish she was a baby again," Tom ventured. "We-all had good times when we was children."
The virtuous retort regarding a life of service that Ellen would have given a year ago died upon her lips. During the months of their separation she saw that Tom had grown fast in stature and understanding.
"Seems sometimes," he went on in his meditative way, "as if the world"d be better if no one was allowed to grow up. But there"s some as can"t help it. You couldn"t keep them little children, not if you put a hundred pound weight on their heads."
There was a sound from the room within. "I"m coming out soon," a voice said, "and I"m hungry enough to eat two meals in one."
When to the satisfaction of both she had accomplished this feat, the three went to the porch again and sat together in the starlight.
Thus far they had exchanged no word as to their future; there had been no opportunity for the privacy of confidence. Now it was possible to talk into the night without interruption. But the quiet about them, the sense of rest after the days of sorrowful turmoil, the nearness of their grief, kept them for some time bereft of words. It was Ellen who first took up the thought in all their minds.
"We shall have to leave the home here now," she said. "There"s no one but me left, and I"ve a position waiting for me any moment that I say I"ll go."
"Where?" Hertha asked, startled.
"In Georgia. Augusta Fairfax, you remember Augusta, don"t you, Hertha?
She was in the cla.s.s below me. Such a bright girl! She"s started a school by herself and wants me to join her. It"s in the most G.o.dforsaken spot in the United States, not a bit like this, one of those places where the whites hate schools and want to keep the Negroes always ignorant. They make everything as difficult as possible for Augusta, but she has more pluck than all the white folks in the county. Her scholars are all ages, she says, from four to forty. They"re ignorant of everything that they need to know and their knowledge of the things they ought not to know is prodigious; but they"ve the one thing essential, a desire to improve. Augusta is bound to succeed if the whites only give her time."
"They may lynch her first," Tom suggested.
"They don"t often lynch women," was Ellen"s answer.
"You aren"t going to a place like that?" There was alarm in Hertha"s voice.
"Why not? Life isn"t worth much to black people unless they"re doing hard, absorbing work. Tom was saying just now that we ought all to stay children, but there are some of us who have to grow up."
"I wasn"t just thinking of colored folks," Tom struck in. "I was thinking of everybody."
"I reckon I know what you were thinking of, that picture in our old Bible with the little child leading the wolf and the lamb, the leopard and the kid, the calf and the young lion. You used to love that picture.
Well, I hope for that day; but in the meantime here are all these Americans making laws to keep colored children so that they won"t know enough to do anything but lie down and be eaten. The prophet didn"t mean to have the lamb stay with the wolf if the wolf was only prepared to gobble him up!"
Ellen laughed at her own conceit. "Augusta and I aren"t lambs," she announced, "or kids either; and we"re both from the South and have a little sense in our heads. She"s made a start, but she needs some one with her for she"s dying of loneliness. I"ve often thought I"d go there when I was no longer needed at home."
"Could I go too?" Hertha"s voice was almost inaudible.
"You, dear? I don"t believe we could have a white teacher. The white people wouldn"t stand for it."
"I wouldn"t be white," Hertha answered. "I"d be colored."
Ellen turned and kissed her. "I know what you did for Tom. If I worked until I was a hundred in the meanest spot in the Union I wouldn"t be doing as brave a thing as you have done."
"Amen," Tom said.
"Oh, no!" Hertha gasped a little at their praise. "I was only too thankful I had the wit to think of what to say in time."
She leaned over and stroked Tom"s head, touching gently the wound that was healed now. "I"m tired of the white world. I"d truly like to go with you, Sister. Couldn"t I?"
Ellen was slow in giving her answer. "It wouldn"t be possible," she said at last. "I want you more than I can ever say, but it wouldn"t be possible. I"m not young or good-looking, and Augusta is blacker and homelier than I. But you, if you came with us, it would be like putting a jewel in a room with thieves."
In the silence that followed Hertha felt that her sister had again pushed her out of her home. And this time there was no sense of excitement, no wonderment at what the future would bring. She had entered the white world and knew it now. Before her was a second exile, a second effort to make her way among strangers; she believed a second failure. As she looked into the night with dimmed eyes she knew that Augusta Fairfax, in her rough cabin among hostile people, was not so lonely as she.
"What are you going to do, Tom?" Ellen asked.