"Then," says I, "take the Fernandez family, in the Oldmoxon House.
They're different. They're more different than you and I are. What you
going to do about it?"
Mis' Sykes stamped her foot. "How do you know," she says, "that the Lord
intended them to be educated? Tell me that!"
I sat looking down at her three-ply Ingrain carpet for a minute or two.
Then I got up, and asked her for her chocolate frosting receipt.
"I'm going to use that on my cake for to-morrow night," I says. "And do
you want me to help with the rest of the telephoning?"
"What do you mean?" she says, frigid. "You don't think for a minute I'm
going on with that, I hope?"
"On with it?" I says. "Didn't you tell me you had the arrangements about
all made?"
She sunk back, loose in her chair. "I shall be the Laughing Stock,--the
Laughing Stock," she says, looking wild and glazed.
"Yes," says I, deliberate, determined and serene, "they'll say you were
going to dance around and cater to this family because they've moved
into the Oldmoxon House. They'll say you wanted to make sure, right
away, to get in with them. They'll repeat what you've been saying about
the elegant furniture, in good taste. And about the academic and
scholastic work being done. And about these folks being a distinct
addition to Friendship Village society--"
"Don't, Calliope--oh, don't!" said Mis' Sykes, faint.
"Well, then," I says, getting up to leave, "go on ahead and act
neighborly to them, the once, and decide later about keeping it up, as
you would with anybody else."
It kind of swept over me--here we were, standing there, bickering and
haggling, when out there on the planet that lay around Daphne Street
were loose ends of creation to catch up and knit in.
"My gracious," I says, "I ain't saying they're all all right, am I? But
I'm saying that as fast as those that try to grow, stick up their heads,
it's the business of us that tootle for democracy, and for evolution, to
help them on."
She looked at me, pitying.
"It's all so much bigger than that, Calliope," she says.
"True," says I, "for if some of them stick up their heads, it proves
that more of them could--if we didn't stomp 'em down."
I got out in the air of the great, gold May day, that was like another
way of life, leading up from our way. I took in a long breath of it--and
that always helps me to see things big.
"One Spring," I says, "One world--one God--one life--one future.
Wouldn't you think we could match ourselves up?"
But when I got in my little house, I looked around on the homely inside
of it--that always helps me to think how much better things can be, when
we really know how. And I says:
"Oh, God, we here in America got up a terrible question for you to help
us settle, didn't we? Well, _help_ us! And help us to see, whatever's
the way to settle anything, that giving the cold shoulder and the
uplifted nose to any of the creatures you've made ain't the way to
settle _nothing_. Amen."
Next morning I was standing in my door-way, breathing in the fresh, gold
air, when in at the gate came that colored man of Mis' Fernandez's, and
he had a big bouquet of roses. Not roses like we in the village often
see. They were green-house bred.
"Mis' Fernandez's son done come home las' night and brung 'em," says the
man.
"Her son," I says, "from college?"
"No'm," says the man. "F'om the war."
"From the what?" I says.
"F'om the war," he says over. "F'om U'pe."
He must have thought I was crazy. For a minute I stared at him, then I
says "Glory be!" and I began to laugh. Then I told him to tell Mis'
Fernandez that I'd be over in half an hour to thank her myself for the
flowers, and in half an hour I was going up to her front door. I had to
make sure.
"Your son," I says, forgetting all about the roses, "he's in the
American army?"
"He was," she said. "He fought in France for eighteen months. Now he has
been discharged."
"Oh," I says to myself, "that arranges everything. It must."
"Perhaps you will let me tell you," she said. "He comes back to us
wearing the cross of war."
"The cross of war!" I cried. "That they give when folks save folks in
battle?" I said it just like saving folks is the principal business of
it all.
"My son did save a wounded officer in No-man's land," she told me. "The
officer--he was a white man."
"Oh," I says, and I couldn't say another word till I managed to ask her
if her son had been in the draft.
"No," she said. "He volunteered April 7, 1917."
It wasn't until I got out in the street that I remembered I hadn't
thanked her for the roses at all. But there wasn't time to think of
that.
I headed straight for Mis' Silas Sykes. She looked awful bad, and I
don't think probably she'd slept a wink all night. I ask' her casual how
the reception was coming on, and she kind of began to cry.
"I don't know what you hector me for like this," she says. "Ain't it
enough that I've got to call folks up to-day and tell them I've made a
fool of myself?"
"Not yet," I says. "Not yet you ain't made one of yourself, Mis' Sykes.
That's to come, if any. It is hard," I says, "to do the particular thing
you'll have to do. There's them," I says crafty, "as'll gloat."
"I thought about them all night long," she says, her breath showing
through her words.
"Then think no more, Mis' Sykes," I says, "because there's a reason over
there in that house why we should go ahead with our plan--and it's a
reason you can't get around."
She looked at me, like one looking with no hope. And then I told her.
I never saw a woman so checkered in her mind. Her head was all reversed,
and where had been one notion, another bobbed up to take its place, and
where the other one had been previous, a new one was dancing.
"But do they do that?" she ask'. "Do they give war-crosses to
_negroes_?"
"Why not?" I says. "France don't care because the fore-fathers of these
soldiers were made slaves by us. She don't lay it up against _them_.
That don't touch their bravery. England never has minded dark
skins--look at her East Indians and Egyptians that they say are
everywhere in London. Nobody cares but us. Of course France gives
negroes crosses of war when they're brave--why shouldn't she?"
"My gracious," Mis' Sykes says, "but what'll folks say here if we do go
ahead and recognize them?"
"Recognize _him_!" I cried. "Mis' Sykes--are you going to let him offer
up his life, and go over to Europe and have his bravery recognized
there, and then come back here and get the cold shoulder from you--are
you? Then shame on us all!" I says.
Then Mis' Sykes said the things folks always say: "But if we recognize
them, what about marriage?"
"See here," says I, "there's thousands and thousands of tuberculosis
cases in this country to-day. And more hundreds of thousands with other
diseases. Do we set the whole lot of them apart, and refuse to be decent
to them, or do business with them, because they ought not to marry our
girls and boys? Don't you see how that argument is just an excuse?"
"All the same," said Mis' Sykes, "it might happen."
"Then make a law against inter-marriage," I says. "That's easy. Nothing
comes handier than making a new law. But don't snub the whole
race--especially those that have risked their lives for you, Mis'
Sykes!"
She stared at me, her face looking all triangular.
"It's for you to show them what to do," I pressed her. "They'll do what
you do."
Mis' Sykes kind of stopped winking and breathing.
"I could make them do it, I bet you," she says, proud.
"Of course you could," I egged her on. "You could just take for granted
everybody meant to be decent, and carry it off, matter-of-fact."
She stood up and walked around the room, her curl-papers setting strange
on her proud ways.
"Don't figger on it, Mis' Sykes," I says. "Just think how much easier it
is to be leading folks into something they ain't used to than to have
them all laughing at you behind your back for getting come up with."
It wasn't the highest motive--but then, I only used it for a finishing
touch. And for a tassel I says, moving off rapid:
"Now I'm going home to stir up my cake for the party."
She didn't say anything, and I went off up the street.
I remember it was one of the times when it came to me, strong, that
there's something big and near working away through us, to get us to
grow in spite of us. In spite of us.
And when I had my chocolate cake baked, I lay down on the lounge in my
dining-room, and planned out how nice it was going to be, that night....
There was a little shower, and then the sun came back again; so by the
time we all began to move toward Mis' Sykes's, between seven and eight,
everything was fresh and earth-smelling and wet-sweet green. And there
was a lovely, flowing light, like in a dream.
Whenever I have a hard thing to do, be it housecleaning or be it
quenching down my pride, I always think of the way I see Mis' Sykes do
hers. Dressed in her best gray poplin with a white lace yoke, and hair
crimped front _and_ back, Mis' Sykes received us all, reserved and
formal--not with her real society pucker, but with her most leader-like
look.
Everybody was there--nobody was lacking. There must have been above
fifty. I couldn't talk for trying to reckon how each of them would act,
as soon as they knew.
"Blistering Benson," says Timothy Toplady, that his wife had got him
into his frock-tail coat that he keeps to be pall-bearer in, "--kind of
nice to welcome in another first family, ain't it?"
Mis' Sykes heard him. "Timothy Toplady, you ain't enough democracy to
shake a stick at," she says, regal; and left him squenched, but with his
lips moving.
"I'm just crazy to get upstairs in the Oldmoxon House," says Mis'
Hubbelthwait. "How do you s'pose they've got it furnished?"
"They're thinking more about the furniture of their heads than of their
upstairs chambers," snaps back Mis' Sykes. And I see anew that whatever
Mis' Sykes goes into, she goes into up to her eyes, thorough and firm.
"Calliope," she says, "you might run over now and see how they're
situated. And be there with them when we come."
I knew that Mis' Sykes couldn't quite bear to make her speech with me
looking at her, so I waited out in the entry and heard her do it--I
couldn't help that. And honest, I think my respect for her rose while
she done so, almost as much as if she'd meant what she said. Mis' Sykes
is awful convincing. She can make you wish you'd worn gloves or went
without, according to the way she's done herself; and so it was that
night, in the cause she'd taken up with, unbeknownst.
She rapped on the table with the blue-glass paper weight.
"Friends," she says, distinct and serene, and everybody's buzzing
simmered down. "Before we go over, I must tell you a little about our
new--neighbors. The name as you know is Fernandez--Burton Fernandez. The
father is a college professor, now in the City doing academic and
scholastic work to a degree, as they say. The daughter is in one of our
great universities. The mother, a graduate of a Southern college, has
traveled extensive in Venice and--and otherwise. I can't believe--" here
her voice wobbled just for an instant, "I can't believe that there is
one here who will not understand the significance of our party when I
add that the family happens to be colored. I am sure that you will agree
with me--with _me_--that these elegant educations merit our
approbation."
She made a little pause to let it sink in. Then she topped it off. She
told them about the returned soldier and the cross of war.
"If there is anybody," said she--and I knew how she was glancing round
among them; "if there is anybody who can't appreciate _that_, we'll
gladly excuse them from the room."
Yes, she done it magnificent. Mis' Sykes carried the day, high-handed. I
couldn't but remember, as I slipped out, how in Winter she wears
ear-muffs till we've all come to consider going without them is
affected.
I ran across the street, still in that golden, pouring light. In the
Oldmoxon House was a surprise. Sitting with Mrs. Fernandez before the
little light May fire, was her husband, and a slim, tall girl in a smoky
brown dress, that was their daughter, home from her school to see her
brother. Then the soldier boy came in. Even yet I can't talk much about
him: A slight, silent youth, that had left his senior year at college
to volunteer in the army, and had come home now to take up his life as
best he could; and on the breast of his uniform shone the little cross,
won by saving his white captain, under fire.
I sat with them before their hearth, but I didn't half hear what they
said. I was looking at the room, and at the four quiet folks that had
done so much for themselves--more than any of us in the village, in
proportion--and done it on paths none of us had ever had to walk. And
the things I was thinking made such a noise I couldn't pay attention to
just the talk. Over and over it kept going through my head: In fifty
years. _In fifty years!_
At last came the stir and shuffle I'd been waiting for and the door-bell
rang.
"Don't go," they said, when I sprang up; and they followed me into the
hall. So there we were when the door opened, and everybody came crowding
in.
Mis' Sykes was ahead, and it came to me, when I saw how deathly pale she
was, that a prejudice is a living thing, after all--not a dead thing;
and that to them that are in its grasp, your heart has got to go out
just as much as to them that suffer from it.
I waved my hand to them all, promiscuous, crowding in with their
baskets.
"Neighbors," I says, "here's our new neighbors. Name yourselves
gradual."
They set their baskets in the hall, and came into the big room where
the fire was. And I was kind of nervous, because our men are no good on
earth at breaking the ice, except with a pick; and our women, when they
get in a strange room, are awful apt to be so taken up looking round
them that they forget to work up anything to say.
But I needn't have worried. No sooner had we sat down than somebody
spoke out, deep and full. Standing in the midst of us was Burton
Fernandez, and it was him. And his voice went as a voice goes when it's
got more to carry than just words, or just thoughts.
"My friends," he said, "I cannot bear to have you put yourselves in a
false position. When you came, perhaps you didn't know. I mean--did you
think, perhaps, that we were of your race?"
It was Mis' Sykes who answered him, grand and positive, and as if she
was already thinking up her answer when she was born.
"Certainly not," she says. "We were informed--all of us." Then I saw her
get herself together for something tremenjus, that should leave no doubt
in anybody's mind. "What of that?" says she.
He stood still for a minute. He had deep-set eyes and a tired face that
didn't do anything to itself when he talked. But his voice--that did.
And when he began to speak again, it seemed to me that the voice of his
whole race was coming through him.
"My friends," he said, "how can we talk of other things when our minds
are filled with just what this means to us?"
We all kept still. None of us would have known how to say it, even if we
had known what to say.
He said: "I'm not speaking of the difficulties--they don't so much
matter. Nothing matters--except that even when we have made the
struggle, then we're despised no less. We don't often talk to you about
it--it's the surprise of this--you must forgive me. But I want you to
know that from the time I began my school life, there have been many who
despised, and a few who helped, but never until to-night have there been
any of your people with the look and word of neighbor--never once in our
lives until to-night."
In the silence that fell when he'd finished, I sat there knowing that
even now it wasn't like he thought it was--and I wished that it had been
so.
He put his hand on his boy's shoulder.
"It's for his sake," he said, "that I thank you most."
Mis' Sykes was equal to that, too.
"In the name of our whole town," she says to that young soldier, "we
thank _you_ for what you've done."
He just nodded a little, and nobody said anything more. And it came to
me that most everything is more so than we most always suppose it to be.
When Mis' Toplady don't know quite what to do with a minute, she always
brings her hands together in a sort of spontaneous-sounding clap, and
kind of bustles her shoulders. She done that now.
"I motion I'll take charge of the refreshments," she says. "Who'll
volunteer? I'm crazy to see what-all we've brought."
Everybody laughed, and rustled, easy. And I slipped over to the
daughter, standing by herself by the fire-place.
"You take, don't you?" I ask' her.
"'Take?'" she says, puzzled.
"Music, I mean," I told her. (We always mean music when we say "take" in
Friendship Village.)
"No," she says, "but my brother plays, sometimes."
The soldier sat down to the piano, when I asked him, and he played, soft
and strong, and something beautiful. His cross shone on his breast when
he moved. And me, I stood by the piano, and I heard the soul of the
music come gentling through his soul, just like it didn't make any
difference to the music, one way or the other....
Music. Music that spoke. Music that sounded like laughing voices.... No,
for it was laughing voices....
I opened my eyes, and there in my dining-room, by the lounge, stood Mis'
Toplady and Mis' Holcomb, laughing at me for being asleep. Then they
sat down by me, and they didn't laugh any more.
"Calliope," Mis' Toplady says, "Mis' Sykes has been round to everybody,
and told them about the Oldmoxon House folks."
"And she took a vote on what to do to-night," says Mame Holcomb.
"Giving a little advice of her own, by the wayside," Mis' Toplady adds.
I sat up and looked at them. With the soldier's music still in my ears,
I couldn't take it in.
"You don't mean--" I tried to ask them.
"That's it," says Mis' Toplady. "Everybody voted to have a public
meeting to honor the soldiers--the colored soldier with the rest. But
that's as far as it will go."
"But he don't want to be honored!" I cried. "He wants to be
neighbored--the way anybody does when they're worth it."
"Mis' Sykes says," says Mis' Toplady, "that we mustn't forget what is
fitting and what isn't."
And Mis' Holcomb added: "She carried it off grand. Everybody thinks just
the way she does."
My reception-surprise cake stood ready on the table. After a while, we
three sat down around it, and cut it for ourselves. But all the while we
ate, that soldier's music was still playing for me; and what hadn't
happened was more real for me than the things that were true.