Betty Madison had exercised a great deal of self-control in resisting
the natural impulse to cultivate a fad and grapple with a problem. Only
her keen sense of humour saved her. On the Sunday following her return,
while sauntering home after a long restless tramp about the city, she
passed a church which many coloured people were entering. Her newly
awakened curiosity in all things pertaining to the political life of
her country prompted her to follow them and sit through the service.
The clergyman was light in colour, and prayed and preached in simpler
and better English than she had heard in more pretentious pulpits, but
there was nothing noteworthy, in his remarks beyond a supplication to
the Almighty to deliver the negro from the oppression of the "Southern
tyrant," followed by an admonition to the negro to improve himself in
mind and character if he would hope to compete with the Whites; bitter
words and violence but weakened his cause.
This was sound commonsense, but the reverse of the sensational
entertainment Betty had half expected, and her eyes wandered from the
preacher to his congregation. There were all shades of Afro-American
colour and all degrees of prosperity represented. Coal-black women were
there, attired in deep and expensive mourning. "Yellow girls" wore
smart little tailor costumes. Three young girls, evidently of the lower
middle class of coloured society, for they were cheaply dressed, had
all the little airs and graces and mannerisms of the typical American
girl. In one corner a sleek mulatto with a Semitic profile sat in the
recognized attitude of the banker in church; filling his corner
comfortably and setting a worthy example to the less favoured of Mammon.
But Betty's attention suddenly was arrested and held by two men who sat
on the opposite side of the aisle, although not together, and
apparently were unrelated. There were no others quite like them in the
church, but the conviction slowly forced itself into her mind, magnetic
for new impressions, that there were many elsewhere. They were men who
were descending the fifties, tall, with straight gray hair. One was
very slender, and all but distinguished of carriage; the other was
heavier, and would have been imposing but for the listless droop of his
shoulders. The features of both were finely cut, and their complexions
far removed from the reproach of "yellow." They looked like sun-burned
gentlemen.
For nearly ten minutes Betty stared, fascinated, while her mind
grappled with the deep significance of all those two sad and patient
men expressed. They inherited the shell and the intellect, the
aspirations and the possibilities of the gay young planters whose
tragic folly had called into being a race of outcasts with all their
own capacity for shame and suffering.
Betty went home and for twenty-four hours fought with the desire to
champion the cause of the negro and make him her life-work. But not
only did she abominate women with missions; she looked at the subject
upon each of its many sides and asked a number of indirect questions of
her cousin, Jack Emory. Sincere reflection brought with it the
conclusion that her energies in behalf of the negro would be
superfluous. The careless planters were dead; she could not harangue
their dust. The Southerners of the present generation despised and
feared the coloured race in its enfranchised state too actively to have
more to do with it than they could help; if it was a legal offence for
Whites and Blacks to marry, there was an equally stringent social law
which protected the coloured girl from the lust of the white man.
Therefore, as she could not undo the harm already done, and as a
crusade in behalf of the next generation would be meaningless, not to
say indelicate, she dismissed the "problem" from her mind. But the
image of those two sad and stately reflections of the old school sank
indelibly into her memory, and rose to their part in one of the most
momentous decisions of her life.