MICHAEL
FORTH
_by_
MARY JOHNSTON
AUTHOR OF
"TO HAVE AND TO HOLD" "AUDREY" "LEWIS RAND"
"SIR MORTIMER" "FOES"
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
BOOKS BY
MARY JOHNSTON
MICHAEL FORTH
FOES
SIR MORTIMER
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
[Established 1817]
Michael Forth
Copyright, 1919 by Mary Johnston
Printed in the United States of America
MICHAEL FORTH
CHAPTER I
I was born at Restwell, two miles from the small town of Whitechurch,
in the county of ---- in Virginia. The night of my birth, by going
to the top of Lone Tree Hill behind Restwell, one might see the smoke
and flare of a dying battle and hear in diminuendo the guns of North
and South. I know this because Daddy Guinea went up there and heard
and saw and told me about it when I was six years old and sitting
with him in his cabin over the fire.
"'Fo' de Lawd, dat's so!" said Daddy Guinea. "De tree shivered an'
Guinea shivered. De sky low down wuz on fire lak you burnin'
breshwood, an' de guns holler hoarser 'n bullfrogs! Dey soun' jes'
lak de folks in hell buttin' dey haids togedder. 'N' yo' father was
dere an' yo' grandfather an' yo' uncle Gilchrist an' mo' ob yo'
cousins dan you could shake er stick at! An' er passel ob other
folk. An' de folk on de other side--de Yanks. An' de light flicker
lak breshwood burnin', an' de guns holler lak bullfrogs in hell, whar
dere ain't no water! An' de tree shiver an' Guinea shiver."
"Did I shiver, Daddy Guinea?"
"I don' know 'bout de shiverin', but I sho know dat you hollered! I
come down from Lone Tree Hill, an' de big house wuz lighted up, an' I
heard you hollerin' befo' I got to de kitchen door."
"What was I crying about?"
Daddy Guinea scraped the sweet-potatoes that we were roasting out of
the ashes. "Dat's er question with er powerful lot ob joints! Dar
now! De ashes off de little, long 'tater, jes' lak you laks hit!"
My father, my grandfather, and Uncle Gilchrist came safely from the
battle visible from Lone Tree Hill. But three months later in a
skirmish a hundred miles from Restwell my father was killed. So I do
not remember him. A daguerreotype and a photograph--_carte de
visite_--show a strong, irregular face. He was twenty-six when he
died, and I was his only child. I was born and he was killed in the
second year of the war. I was three years old when came the
Surrender. At present my native region found itself midseas in that
long and trying episode called Reconstruction. South of Mason and
Dixon at this moment in history it was called Domination. War,
Surrender, Reconstruction, or Domination--they were but words to a
six-year-old, yet words with something mystic, awful, wrapped around
them. He could not but feel that, watching the faces of the
grown-ups who spoke them.
Daddy Guinea was old and bent and charcoal black and seamed. He had
been born at Restwell, but his father and mother were born in Africa.
He was one of the handful of men and women, slaves once but now free,
who stayed on at Restwell after the war. He was free, but made no
great fuss over it, took his wage in kind and in the very few dollars
my grandfather could give him, and once told me, "I wuz all de time
free in er place inside!"
Now, sitting in the cabin that was dark save for the hearth-fire,
waiting for the sweet-potato, watching Daddy Guinea's manipulations,
all of a sudden he linked and brought together for me the feel of all
the negro folk that I knew intimately or had casually viewed. He was
like them and not like them, as all the others were like one another
and yet had their differences, so that I never mistook Uncle Plutus
for Mandy's Jim, nor Mandy for Aunt Esther, nor Mammy for either of
these, nor one of the children with whom I played for another. Daddy
Guinea, now bending, now rising, from the fire, was certainly Daddy
Guinea. Yet, like the giant shadow upon the wall and ceiling, there
was something around that was holding Daddy Guinea and Uncle Plutus,
Mandy's Jim and Mandy and Aunt Esther and all the others. I don't
suppose in the least that sitting there, a small boy roasting
sweet-potatoes, I consciously entertained an idea of race or
accomplished a considerable synthesis. Yet I did, with a sudden
sense of wideness, of novelty, open into a perception, not of Daddy
Guinea or Mammy or Uncle Plutus or Esther, but of colored people. I
was due to meet often in life, am due still to meet often, that sense
of generalization. It came then, as it comes now, with the breath of
space, with a dawnlike, happy surprise.
I sat staring into the embers. "Don' you lak yo' sweet-potato?"
asked Daddy Guinea. "Eat hit!"
When it was eaten he took me home to the big house. Outside the
cabin was darkness and stars, the sound of the river and wind in the
oaks. Also a whippoorwill was crying: "Whip-poor-will!
Whip-poor-will!" I pressed close to Daddy Guinea.
Mammy waited for me in the kitchen door. "Never wuz such a chile for
gallivantin' off to cabins! Come in an' say yo' prayers an'
'celerate yo'self into bed!"
I always said my prayers kneeling beside my mother. Now I said them
and climbed into my bed and she kissed me good night. She went out
of the room, and Mammy, who had a bed in the corner, sat at a table
by the lamp and hemmed a great white neckerchief. It was a warm
night. Moths came in at the windows and flew around the light.
Mammy's shadow moved on the wall. Her head nodded, up and down went
her arm. I lay upon my side and watched the shadow. The room was
large and square and the whippoorwill's voice, no less than the
moths, came in at the window. I grew lonely, and to brighten matters
sat up and demanded a drink of water. Mammy brought it to me in my
silver mug and told me to go to sleep. I held her by her ample apron.
"Daddy Guinea saw them fighting from Lone Tree Hill. Did you see
them, Mammy?"
Mammy looked down at me, and with a large, brown hand pushed the hair
from my forehead. "You go to sleep, honey! Yo' haid's as damp as a
dish-rag! It's a hot night. You go to sleep!"
"Did you see them?"
"No! Where'd I fin' time to go up to Lone Tree Hill? First I wuz
wukkin' with yo' mother, an' den I wuz holdin' you in dese two hands.
Now you lay right down an' go to sleep!"
I obeyed her, but in the nighttime I woke, terribly afraid. At my
loud crying my mother came in.
"Dar now!" said Mammy. "First you waked yo'self, an' den you waked
Mammy, an' den you waked yo' mother!"
I clung to my mother. "Daddy Guinea said the sky was like brushwood
and the guns were like bullfrogs in hell, where there isn't any
water!"
My mother sat down beside me on the bed. "There, Michael--there,
Michael!"
"And I wouldn't ever tell! I was down at the big gate and a colored
man came by and he came over and made a face at me. And he said,
'You were beaten poor--and I hope you'll be beaten poorer!' And he
pulled my hair and he said, 'I couldn't useter do that!' And he
said: 'Don't you dare go tell! If you do I'll come at night and make
mincemeat of you!'" I burst into a loud cry. "I've told--I've told!"
"Michael! Michael!"
"Will he make mincemeat of me?"
"No! He can't. He was a poor fool!"
Mammy's voice came from the other side of the room. "Dat's jest what
he wuz! Some no-'count, po' colored trash!"
I lay for a moment, quieted, in the bend of my mother's arm. But
then came new perturbations, salt tears. "What did we do to the
colored people? What did they do to us?"
"My Lawd!" exclaimed Mammy. "Listen to dat chile!"
My mother moved upon the bed. "Mammy, I'll stay with him until he
goes to sleep. Suppose you go lie down upon the little bed in my
room."
"Ef you wants to talk to him, Miss Cary, I ain't gwine listen!"
"What should I care if you did! But, Mammy, you go get your sleep--"
Mammy, sheets and pillow in her arms, went into the next room. My
mother retook her place beside me. "Michael, I think sometimes that
you are as old as I, or that I am as young as you! Now let's talk to
each other and get rid of being afraid!"
She had on a muslin wrapper tied with a blue ribbon. I remembered it
always, I thought. In the years since I could notice she had had few
new clothes. Now I wiped away my tears with her flowing sleeve.
"What did we do to the colored people?"
After a moment she answered. "There isn't anybody here but just
ourselves. I am going to tell you how I see things. You've got a
mind under that tousled hair. Let us straighten out things together!
... Our great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers and
great-great-great-grandfathers robbed the colored people out of
Africa. They didn't ask to come out of Africa. The white folk,
North and South, and English, and everybody else, just stole them or
bought them from other robbers that were black. The white folk
wanted to make wealth with them or out of them. They brought them
over the sea in ships called slave-ships. The white men who took
them were slavers. The white folk who bought them were
slave-holders. The words, slave, slaver, slaveholder were written
over everything. For all the words of goodness that were written,
these words were written, too!"
"Written where, mother? Written over where we live?"
"Yes! Written over where we live. But it isn't to be forgotten,"
said my mother, with a kind of passionateness, "that on a time--and
no such far time, either--they were written over everywhere else on
earth! They are written over some places still. It's a matter of
progression in time and place, and over varying obstacles, and they
wouldn't always have been written over us!"
I hardly think that she was speaking directly to me now, though we
did talk all manner of things over together, she and I. She was
genial, with vision and reach and an independence of speech that
brought her into disfavor with many. Now she sat upon the bed in the
white wrapper and blue ribbon and seemed to brood upon the darkness
outside the window. The lamp had been lighted again and the moths
flew around it. There came, too, the odor of the lilies in the
garden. The whippoorwill had stopped calling, but there mounted and
entered a whole tide of little cricket sounds.
"Was the war about the colored people?"
My mother turned her face to me. "As I see it, it was partly about
that and partly about another thing, called Theory of Government, and
partly, I reckon, about other things.... Oh, Michael, it was a
dreadful war!"
She bent herself and clung to me, and I cried again because she was
crying. But she did not cry a long time. She shook her tears away
and made a face at me and laughed so that I might laugh. "It's over!
We're all in the Union again, or will be one day when those we fought
think we're punished enough! And the slaves are free!"
"Are you sorry, mother?"
"No!"
"And they're not sorry?"
"The slaves? No!"
"Well--"
"Well--isn't it--we should be happier than we were? And some day we
shall be--some day we shall be, Michael!"
"The war killed father and made us poor."
"Yes, yes! It killed father and made us poor. So many fathers and
so much poverty! And pain and humiliation.... Everybody concerned,
through long ages, might have been wiser, I think! Our
great-grandfathers everywhere, our fathers, ourselves, and all.
North and South and over all the world. Pain and wreck and
darkness.... But if nights are long, days are long, too, Michael!
And there is a place--I believe it!--where there is no night. And we
are going to travel out of the night, Michael, Michael! You and I
and father and all of us--"
"And the colored people--"
"Yes, yes--and the colored people!"
"Mammy wouldn't hurt us. Nor Daddy Guinea, nor Uncle Plutus, nor
Mandy's Jim, nor Mandy, nor Aunt Esther--"
"No, no! They're good people. Almost all the colored people I've
ever seen were good people."
"But the man at the gate--"
"He was giving back the harm of the past. But maybe at the bottom he
wasn't wicked. Don't be frightened at him, Michael, and don't be
angry at him. All your life try to understand and to like all colors
of people."
She rose from beside me and walked up and down in the room, and then,
going to a window, stood there looking out. The warm wind lifted her
hair. When she came back to me her voice was gay and rich and kind,
as I liked it--as I like it now, down all the years, around me and
with me in the midst of the years! "Now I am going to sing 'Happy
Land!' And you are going to shut your eyes and go to sleep."
She sang and I went to sleep. And in the morning, when I waked, the
sun was shining and Mammy was making her bed, and I remembered that I
was going for blackberries with Ahasuerus, Aunt Esther's
twelve-year-old. I seem somewhere to have heard that, had the old
régime continued, Ahasuerus would have been given to me for
body-servant. But it had not continued, and Ahasuerus was my equal
before the law. It did not trouble me then, nor has it troubled me
since.