"You may go."
The stricken woman reeled out of her mistress's presence, and Mrs.
Oakley told her husband that night, with tears in her eyes, how
disappointed she was with Fannie,--that the woman had known it all
along, and had only just confessed. It was just one more link in the
chain that was surely and not too slowly forging itself about Berry
Hamilton.
Of all the family Joe was the only one who burned with a fierce
indignation. He knew that his father was innocent, and his very
helplessness made a fever in his soul. Dandy as he was, he was loyal,
and when he saw his mother's tears and his sister's shame, something
rose within him that had it been given play might have made a man of
him, but, being crushed, died and rotted, and in the compost it made all
the evil of his nature flourished. The looks and gibes of his
fellow-employees at the barber-shop forced him to leave his work there.
Kit, bowed with shame and grief, dared not appear upon the streets,
where the girls who had envied her now hooted at her. So the little
family was shut in upon itself away from fellowship and sympathy.
Joe went seldom to see his father. He was not heartless; but the citadel
of his long desired and much vaunted manhood trembled before the sight
of his father's abject misery. The lines came round his lips, and lines
too must have come round his heart. Poor fellow, he was too young for
this forcing process, and in the hot-house of pain he only grew an
acrid, unripe cynic.
At the sitting of the Grand Jury Berry was indicted. His trial followed
soon, and the town turned out to see it. Some came to laugh and scoff,
but these, his enemies, were silenced by the spectacle of his grief. In
vain the lawyer whom he had secured showed that the evidence against him
proved nothing. In vain he produced proof of the slow accumulation of
what the man had. In vain he pleaded the man's former good name. The
judge and the jury saw otherwise. Berry was convicted. He was given ten
years at hard labour.
He hardly looked as if he could live out one as he heard his sentence.
But Nature was kind and relieved him of the strain. With a cry as if his
heart were bursting, he started up and fell forward on his face
unconscious. Some one, a bit more brutal than the rest, said, "It 's
five dollars' fine every time a nigger faints," but no one laughed.
There was something too portentous, too tragic in the degradation of
this man.
Maurice Oakley sat in the court-room, grim and relentless. As soon as
the trial was over, he sent for Fannie, who still kept the cottage in
the yard.
"You must go," he said. "You can't stay here any longer. I want none of
your breed about me."
And Fannie bowed her head and went away from him in silence.
All the night long the women of the Hamilton household lay in bed and
wept, clinging to each other in their grief. But Joe did not go to
sleep. Against all their entreaties, he stayed up. He put out the light
and sat staring into the gloom with hard, burning eyes.
VI
OUTCASTS
What particularly irritated Maurice Oakley was that Berry should to the
very last keep up his claim of innocence. He reiterated it to the very
moment that the train which was bearing him away pulled out of the
station. There had seldom been seen such an example of criminal
hardihood, and Oakley was hardened thereby to greater severity in
dealing with the convict's wife. He began to urge her more strongly to
move, and she, dispirited and humiliated by what had come to her, looked
vainly about for the way to satisfy his demands. With her natural
protector gone, she felt more weak and helpless than she had thought it
possible to feel. It was hard enough to face the world. But to have to
ask something of it was almost more than she could bear.
With the conviction of her husband the last five hundred dollars had
been confiscated as belonging to the stolen money, but their former
deposit remained untouched. With this she had the means at her disposal
to tide over their present days of misfortune. It was not money she
lacked, but confidence. Some inkling of the world's attitude towards
her, guiltless though she was, reached her and made her afraid.
Her desperation, however, would not let her give way to fear, so she set
forth to look for another house. Joe and Kit saw her go as if she were
starting on an expedition into a strange country. In all their lives
they had known no home save the little cottage in Oakley's yard. Here
they had toddled as babies and played as children and been happy and
care-free. There had been times when they had complained and wanted a
home off by themselves, like others whom they knew. They had not
failed, either, to draw unpleasant comparisons between their mode of
life and the old plantation quarters system. But now all this was
forgotten, and there were only grief and anxiety that they must leave
the place and in such a way.
Fannie went out with little hope in her heart, and a short while after
she was gone Joe decided to follow her and make an attempt to get work.
"I 'll go an' see what I kin do, anyway, Kit. 'T ain't much use, I
reckon, trying to get into a bahbah shop where they shave white folks,
because all the white folks are down on us. I 'll try one of the
coloured shops."
This was something of a condescension for Berry Hamilton's son. He had
never yet shaved a black chin or put shears to what he termed "naps,"
and he was proud of it. He thought, though, that after the training he
had received from the superior "Tonsorial Parlours" where he had been
employed, he had but to ask for a place and he would be gladly
accepted.
It is strange how all the foolish little vaunting things that a man says
in days of prosperity wax a giant crop around him in the days of his
adversity. Berry Hamilton's son found this out almost as soon as he had
applied at the first of the coloured shops for work.
"Oh, no, suh," said the proprietor, "I don't think we got anything fu'
you to do; you 're a white man's bahbah. We don't shave nothin' but
niggahs hyeah, an' we shave 'em in de light o' day an' on de groun'
flo'."
"W'y, I hyeah you say dat you could n't git a paih of sheahs thoo a
niggah's naps. You ain't been practisin' lately, has you?" came from the
back of the shop, where a grinning negro was scraping a fellow's face.
"Oh, yes, you 're done with burr-heads, are you? But burr-heads are good
enough fu' you now."
"I think," the proprietor resumed, "that I hyeahed you say you was n't
fond o' grape pickin'. Well, Josy, my son, I would n't begin it now,
'specially as anothah kin' o' pickin' seems to run in yo' fambly."
Joe Hamilton never knew how he got out of that shop. He only knew that
he found himself upon the street outside the door, tears of anger and
shame in his eyes, and the laughs and taunts of his tormentors still
ringing in his ears.
It was cruel, of course it was cruel. It was brutal. But only he knew
how just it had been. In his moments of pride he had said all those
things, half in fun and half in earnest, and he began to wonder how he
could have been so many kinds of a fool for so long without realising
it.
He had not the heart to seek another shop, for he knew that what would
be known at one would be equally well known at all the rest. The hardest
thing that he had to bear was the knowledge that he had shut himself out
of all the chances that he now desired. He remembered with a pang the
words of an old negro to whom he had once been impudent, "Nevah min',
boy, nevah min', you 's bo'n, but you ain't daid!"
It was too true. He had not known then what would come. He had never
dreamed that anything so terrible could overtake him. Even in his
straits, however, desperation gave him a certain pluck. He would try for
something else for which his own tongue had not disqualified him. With
Joe, to think was to do. He went on to the Continental Hotel, where
there were almost always boys wanted to "run the bells." The clerk
looked him over critically. He was a bright, spruce-looking young
fellow, and the man liked his looks.
"Well, I guess we can take you on," he said. "What 's your name?"
"Joe," was the laconic answer. He was afraid to say more.
"Well, Joe, you go over there and sit where you see those fellows in
uniform, and wait until I call the head bellman."
Young Hamilton went over and sat down on a bench which ran along the
hotel corridor and where the bellmen were wont to stay during the day
awaiting their calls. A few of the blue-coated Mercuries were there.
Upon Joe's advent they began to look askance at him and to talk among
themselves. He felt his face burning as he thought of what they must be
saying. Then he saw the head bellman talking to the clerk and looking in
his direction. He saw him shake his head and walk away. He could have
cursed him. The clerk called to him.
"I did n't know," he said,--"I did n't know that you were Berry
Hamilton's boy. Now, I 've got nothing against you myself. I don't hold
you responsible for what your father did, but I don't believe our boys
would work with you. I can't take you on."
Joe turned away to meet the grinning or contemptuous glances of the
bellmen on the seat. It would have been good to be able to hurl
something among them. But he was helpless.
He hastened out of the hotel, feeling that every eye was upon him, every
finger pointing at him, every tongue whispering, "There goes Joe
Hamilton, whose father went to the penitentiary the other day."
What should he do? He could try no more. He was proscribed, and the
letters of his ban were writ large throughout the town, where all who
ran might read. For a while he wandered aimlessly about and then turned
dejectedly homeward. His mother had not yet come.
"Did you get a job?" was Kit's first question.
"No," he answered bitterly, "no one wants me now."
"No one wants you? Why, Joe--they--they don't think hard of us, do
they?"
"I don't know what they think of ma and you, but they think hard of me,
all right."
"Oh, don't you worry; it 'll be all right when it blows over."
"Yes, when it all blows over; but when 'll that be?"
"Oh, after a while, when we can show 'em we 're all right."
Some of the girl's cheery hopefulness had come back to her in the
presence of her brother's dejection, as a woman always forgets her own
sorrow when some one she loves is grieving. But she could not
communicate any of her feeling to Joe, who had been and seen and felt,
and now sat darkly waiting his mother's return. Some presentiment seemed
to tell him that, armed as she was with money to pay for what she wanted
and asking for nothing without price, she would yet have no better tale
to tell than he.
None of these forebodings visited the mind of Kit, and as soon as her
mother appeared on the threshold she ran to her, crying, "Oh, where are
we going to live, ma?"
Fannie looked at her for a moment, and then answered with a burst of
tears, "Gawd knows, child, Gawd knows."
The girl stepped back astonished. "Why, why!" and then with a rush of
tenderness she threw her arms about her mother's neck. "Oh, you 're
tired to death," she said; "that 's what 's the matter with you. Never
mind about the house now. I 've got some tea made for you, and you just
take a cup."
Fannie sat down and tried to drink her tea, but she could not. It stuck
in her throat, and the tears rolled down her face and fell into the
shaking cup. Joe looked on silently. He had been out and he understood.
"I 'll go out to-morrow and do some looking around for a house while you
stay at home an' rest, ma."
Her mother looked up, the maternal instinct for the protection of her
daughter at once aroused. "Oh, no, not you, Kitty," she said.
Then for the first time Joe spoke: "You 'd just as well tell Kitty now,
ma, for she 's got to come across it anyhow."
"What you know about it? Whaih you been to?"
"I 've been out huntin' work. I 've been to Jones's bahbah shop an' to
the Continental Hotel." His light-brown face turned brick red with anger
and shame at the memory of it. "I don't think I 'll try any more."
Kitty was gazing with wide and saddening eyes at her mother.
"Were they mean to you too, ma?" she asked breathlessly.
"Mean? Oh Kitty! Kitty! you don't know what it was like. It nigh killed
me. Thaih was plenty of houses an' owned by people I 've knowed fu'
yeahs, but not one of 'em wanted to rent to me. Some of 'em made excuses
'bout one thing er t' other, but de res' come right straight out an'
said dat we 'd give a neighbourhood a bad name ef we moved into it. I
've almos' tramped my laigs off. I 've tried every decent place I could
think of, but nobody wants us."
The girl was standing with her hands clenched nervously before her. It
was almost more than she could understand.
"Why, we ain't done anything," she said. "Even if they don't know any
better than to believe that pa was guilty, they know we ain't done
anything."
"I 'd like to cut the heart out of a few of 'em," said Joe in his
throat.
"It ain't goin' to do no good to look at it that a-way, Joe," his mother
replied. "I know hit 's ha'd, but we got to do de bes' we kin."
"What are we goin' to do?" cried the boy fiercely. "They won't let us
work. They won't let us live anywhaih. Do they want us to live on the
levee an' steal, like some of 'em do?"
"What are we goin' to do?" echoed Kitty helplessly. "I 'd go out ef I
thought I could find anythin' to work at."
"Don't you go anywhaih, child. It 'ud only be worse. De niggah men dat
ust to be bowin' an' scrapin' to me an' tekin' off dey hats to me
laughed in my face. I met Minty--an' she slurred me right in de street.
Dey 'd do worse fu' you."
In the midst of the conversation a knock came at the door. It was a
messenger from the "House," as they still called Oakley's home, and he
wanted them to be out of the cottage by the next afternoon, as the new
servants were coming and would want the rooms.
The message was so curt, so hard and decisive, that Fannie was startled
out of her grief into immediate action.
"Well, we got to go," she said, rising wearily.
"But where are we goin'?" wailed Kitty in affright. "There 's no place
to go to. We have n't got a house. Where 'll we go?"
"Out o' town someplace as fur away from this damned hole as we kin
git." The boy spoke recklessly in his anger. He had never sworn before
his mother before.
She looked at him in horror. "Joe, Joe," she said, "you 're mekin' it
wuss. You 're mekin' it ha'dah fu' me to baih when you talk dat a-way.
What you mean? Whaih you think Gawd is?"
Joe remained sullenly silent. His mother's faith was too stalwart for
his comprehension. There was nothing like it in his own soul to
interpret it.
"We 'll git de secon'-han' dealah to tek ouah things to-morrer, an' then
we 'll go away some place, up No'th maybe."
"Let 's go to New York," said Joe.
"New Yo'k?"
They had heard of New York as a place vague and far away, a city that,
like Heaven, to them had existed by faith alone. All the days of their
lives they had heard of it, and it seemed to them the centre of all the
glory, all the wealth, and all the freedom of the world. New York. It
had an alluring sound. Who would know them there? Who would look down
upon them?
"It 's a mighty long ways off fu' me to be sta'tin' at dis time o'
life."
"We want to go a long ways off."
"I wonder what pa would think of it if he was here," put in Kitty.
"I guess he 'd think we was doin' the best we could."
"Well, den, Joe," said his mother, her voice trembling with emotion at
the daring step they were about to take, "you set down an' write a
lettah to yo' pa, an' tell him what we goin' to do, an'
to-morrer--to-morrer--we 'll sta't."
Something akin to joy came into the boy's heart as he sat down to write
the letter. They had taunted him, had they? They had scoffed at him. But
he was going where they might never go, and some day he would come back
holding his head high and pay them sneer for sneer and jibe for jibe.
The same night the commission was given to the furniture dealer who
would take charge of their things and sell them when and for what he
could.
From his window the next morning Maurice Oakley watched the wagon
emptying the house. Then he saw Fannie come out and walk about her
little garden, followed by her children. He saw her as she wiped her
eyes and led the way to the side gate.
"Well, they 're gone," he said to his wife. "I wonder where they 're
going to live?"
"Oh, some of their people will take them in," replied Mrs. Oakley
languidly.
Despite the fact that his mother carried with her the rest of the money
drawn from the bank, Joe had suddenly stepped into the place of the man
of the family. He attended to all the details of their getting away with
a promptness that made it seem untrue that he had never been more than
thirty miles from his native town. He was eager and excited. As the
train drew out of the station, he did not look back upon the place which
he hated, but Fannie and her daughter let their eyes linger upon it
until the last house, the last chimney, and the last spire faded from
their sight, and their tears fell and mingled as they were whirled away
toward the unknown.
VII
IN NEW YORK
To the provincial coming to New York for the first time, ignorant and
unknown, the city presents a notable mingling of the qualities of
cheeriness and gloom. If he have any eye at all for the beautiful, he
cannot help experiencing a thrill as he crosses the ferry over the river
filled with plying craft and catches the first sight of the spires and
buildings of New York. If he have the right stuff in him, a something
will take possession of him that will grip him again every time he
returns to the scene and will make him long and hunger for the place
when he is away from it. Later, the lights in the busy streets will
bewilder and entice him. He will feel shy and helpless amid the hurrying
crowds. A new emotion will take his heart as the people hasten by
him,--a feeling of loneliness, almost of grief, that with all of these
souls about him he knows not one and not one of them cares for him.
After a while he will find a place and give a sigh of relief as he
settles away from the city's sights behind his cosey blinds. It is
better here, and the city is cruel and cold and unfeeling. This he will
feel, perhaps, for the first half-hour, and then he will be out in it
all again. He will be glad to strike elbows with the bustling mob and be
happy at their indifference to him, so that he may look at them and
study them. After it is all over, after he has passed through the first
pangs of strangeness and homesickness, yes, even after he has got beyond
the stranger's enthusiasm for the metropolis, the real fever of love for
the place will begin to take hold upon him. The subtle, insidious wine
of New York will begin to intoxicate him. Then, if he be wise, he will
go away, any place,--yes, he will even go over to Jersey. But if he be a
fool, he will stay and stay on until the town becomes all in all to him;
until the very streets are his chums and certain buildings and corners
his best friends. Then he is hopeless, and to live elsewhere would be
death. The Bowery will be his romance, Broadway his lyric, and the Park
his pastoral, the river and the glory of it all his epic, and he will
look down pityingly on all the rest of humanity.
It was the afternoon of a clear October day that the Hamiltons reached
New York. Fannie had some misgivings about crossing the ferry, but once
on the boat these gave way to speculations as to what they should find
on the other side. With the eagerness of youth to take in new
impressions, Joe and Kitty were more concerned with what they saw about
them than with what their future would hold, though they might well have
stopped to ask some such questions. In all the great city they knew
absolutely no one, and had no idea which way to go to find a
stopping-place.
They looked about them for some coloured face, and finally saw one among
the porters who were handling the baggage. To Joe's inquiry he gave them
an address, and also proffered his advice as to the best way to reach
the place. He was exceedingly polite, and he looked hard at Kitty. They
found the house to which they had been directed, and were a good deal
surprised at its apparent grandeur. It was a four-storied brick dwelling
on Twenty-seventh Street. As they looked from the outside, they were
afraid that the price of staying in such a place would be too much for
their pockets. Inside, the sight of the hard, gaudily upholstered
instalment-plan furniture did not disillusion them, and they continued
to fear that they could never stop at this fine place. But they found
Mrs. Jones, the proprietress, both gracious and willing to come to terms
with them.
As Mrs. Hamilton--she began to be Mrs. Hamilton now, to the exclusion of
Fannie--would have described Mrs. Jones, she was a "big yellow woman."
She had a broad good-natured face and a tendency to run to bust.
"Yes," she said, "I think I could arrange to take you. I could let you
have two rooms, and you could use my kitchen until you decided whether
you wanted to take a flat or not. I has the whole house myself, and I
keeps roomers. But latah on I could fix things so 's you could have the
whole third floor ef you wanted to. Most o' my gent'men 's railroad
gent'men, they is. I guess it must 'a' been Mr. Thomas that sent you up
here."
"He was a little bright man down at de deepo."
"Yes, that 's him. That 's Mr. Thomas. He 's always lookin' out to send
some one here, because he 's been here three years hisself an' he kin
recommend my house."
It was a relief to the Hamiltons to find Mrs. Jones so gracious and
home-like. So the matter was settled, and they took up their abode with
her and sent for their baggage.
With the first pause in the rush that they had experienced since
starting away from home, Mrs. Hamilton began to have time for
reflection, and their condition seemed to her much better as it was. Of
course, it was hard to be away from home and among strangers, but the
arrangement had this advantage,--that no one knew them or could taunt
them with their past trouble. She was not sure that she was going to
like New York. It had a great name and was really a great place, but the
very bigness of it frightened her and made her feel alone, for she knew
that there could not be so many people together without a deal of
wickedness. She did not argue the complement of this, that the amount of
good would also be increased, but this was because to her evil was the
very present factor in her life.
Joe and Kit were differently affected by what they saw about them. The
boy was wild with enthusiasm and with a desire to be a part of all that
the metropolis meant. In the evening he saw the young fellows passing by
dressed in their spruce clothes, and he wondered with a sort of envy
where they could be going. Back home there had been no place much worth
going to, except church and one or two people's houses. But these young
fellows seemed to show by their manners that they were neither going to
church nor a family visiting. In the moment that he recognised this, a
revelation came to him,--the knowledge that his horizon had been very
narrow, and he felt angry that it was so. Why should those fellows be
different from him? Why should they walk the streets so knowingly, so
independently, when he knew not whither to turn his steps? Well, he was
in New York, and now he would learn. Some day some greenhorn from the
South should stand at a window and look out envying him, as he passed,
red-cravated, patent-leathered, intent on some goal. Was it not better,
after all, that circumstances had forced them thither? Had it not been
so, they might all have stayed home and stagnated. Well, thought he, it
's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and somehow, with a guilty
under-thought, he forgot to feel the natural pity for his father,
toiling guiltless in the prison of his native State.
Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The first sign of the
demoralisation of the provincial who comes to New York is his pride at
his insensibility to certain impressions which used to influence him at
home. First, he begins to scoff, and there is no truth in his views nor
depth in his laugh. But by and by, from mere pretending, it becomes
real. He grows callous. After that he goes to the devil very cheerfully.