Authors of "Return, A Story of the Sea Islands," etc.
"Is Ellen worse to-day?" The opening and closing of the front
door brought in a swirl of red and yellow leaves from the porch
outside. There came, too, a breath of sharp, sweet October air to
tired little Mrs. Kendrick where she paused, foot on stair, the
tray steadied in her hand, looking back at her husband.
"No. It's just that I got Mary Louise Jackson to come over and
play with her. I can't ask Aunt Dicey to wait on a negro child
like Ma'Lou is, and she's got to eat with Ellen; so I'm----"
"So you're waiting on her yourself," supplied Kendrick, hanging
up a shabby overcoat on the hall rack.
"I'd do more than that to keep her here," his wife returned
almost fiercely. "I tell you nobody knows till they've tried it
what it is to have a child like Ellen, always lonesome and pining
for company, and quarreling with every girl that comes about her.
Sometimes I think it would be better if we moved away from
Watauga. Everybody pities her--they all notice that she's
backward in her studies--how can she help it, poor dear, with
that hip joint the way it is?"
Kendrick came closer; he laid a kind arm along the frail, bent
shoulders of his wife, and her senses were aware of the fresh
outdoor air as he put his cool cheek to hers. "Don't you grieve,
Fanny," he said. "Ma'Lou's a good companion for Ellen. The kid's
better trained and better educated than half the white girls of
her age in Watauga. If things go well, in a year or two we'll
send Nellie to Baltimore and see what the big man there can do
for her. You shall have a daughter that can dance like you used
to, honey," and he patted her shoulder gently.
She turned with a little, gasping sigh to put up her tired face
for his kiss. "You're good, Scott," she murmured, then went more
cheerfully upstairs and to Ellen's room, glancing as she entered
at the two girls, who were playing happily with paper dolls.
"Here's your feast," she called to them in the gay tone we use
with sick children. "Come, Ellen. I'll go down and give your
father his dinner, and you two can play any kind of party you
want to with this."
The little girl with skin like white cotton cloth rolled her big,
gray eves toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for
dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her
carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was
scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to
the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came
forward to arrange the meal.
"They's molasses pie, Nell," Ma'Lou said joyously. "Oh, I'm going
to bring it over there and fix it by the side of the lounge.
We'll play you' a sick lady, and I'm you' trained nurse. Just
wait till I fix my handkerchief into a cap like they wear."
Mrs. Kendrick turned away and left the children at their play.
Mary Louise Jackson had been kept at home from school that she
might come over and spend the day with Ellen. For when Ellen
Kendrick was ill, her cry always was, "Oh, send for the
doctor--and Mary Louise."
The old Kendrick place sat back in its grassy yard and concealed
behind voluminous chinaberry trees such shabbiness as time had
brought it; but on the corner, the home of Ezra Jackson perched
proudly above its stone wall and added a considerable touch of
elegance to the street.
It was in the early eighties, and the Queen Anne style of
architecture was just coming into great popularity in the South.
Jackson, who could well afford it, had let an architect have full
sway in producing for him a dwelling in the new mode. Ezra
Jackson, a full-blooded negro born a slave, had been a teamster
on his master's Georgia plantation, and after the war that
master, who still maintained friendly relations with his
ex-slaves, gave him a start in life with a mule and a dray. From
this the honest, industrious, and enterprising man had built up a
transfer business which was the best of its sort in town. There
were many teams and drivers now, and Ezra could walk in the garb
of other men of means about him; yet he still wrote his name in
the manner of the kings of old--he produced it as a sort of
landscape effect without any idea of what the separate characters
meant. He was a good citizen, a dignified man; and, except for
his black skin, he would have been an acceptable neighbor to the
Kendricks, and a desirable resident in their quarter of town. The
young wife whom he had married rather late in life, and to whose
taste the Queen Anne house catered, had a good grammar-school
education, gained from those first devoted teachers that the
Freedman's Bureau sent to the Southern negroes in the years
immediately following the war. At first she had kept his books
and made out his bills; and she always insisted on the best of
schooling for their children.
Of these latter, only Mary Louise concerns this history, since
she chanced to be very near the age of Ellen Kendrick and had
become a necessity in the life of that peevish little invalid.
The negro girl had smooth features, and her mother saw to it that
she was always spotlessly dressed and that her manners were
perfect. The children of her race take to good manners very
readily, being usually amiable and eager for approbation. Mrs.
Jackson undoubtedly took pride in the connection with her
aristocratic white neighbors, and Mrs. Kendrick was forced to be
glad of the chance to have the Jackson child come over and play
with Ellen. A nurse she could have hired, but a child near the
afflicted girl's age, a sound-natured, sweet-tempered, well-bred
little girl, was not to be had for money--love was the only coin
current that could pay for that.
And the two girls loved each other--of course they did. Did not
Ellen need Ma'Lou and is not service the basis of all love? The
flame on the altar of their affection burned always clear and
strong, unshaken by the peevish gusts that extinguished many a
less sturdy light of friendship for the Kendrick girl. So that
existence to Ellen--the pleasant part of it, anyhow--meant a
great deal of Ma'Lou, and there was scarcely an object in her
room, a game or a pursuit of her days, that was not associated
with the brown girl. The pair grew up in a companionship closer
than that of some born sisters.
The mere fact of this intimacy was not regarded by the Kendricks
with any disfavor whatever. Scott and Fanny both had played with
negro children, both had been reared by negro mammies. Neither
realized that conditions were changed, that the negroes with whom
they had associated were no longer an enslaved people, hopeless
of any equality, nor that, with the coming of freedom, and still
more with the growing ferment among the blacks, such association
was different from the intimacy of slavery days.
And Ezra Jackson's wife watched jealously that the preponderance
of gifts and favors should be always on her child's side. If any
present were given Mary Louise in the Kendrick house, her mother
always retorted instantly, as one might say, with something
better or handsomer. Mrs. Kendrick was a slow woman, and such a
point would naturally have been obscure to her; yet she finally
came to be aware of the fact, and at last it vexed her a little.
She turned the question in her mind and sought for some
substantial favor or patronage which she might offer to the
Jacksons, to quiet once for all her offended sense of fitness.
It fell out that about this time she was passing their home on
her way to her own, loaded down with bundles from the market
because her cook, Aunt Dicey, was old and feeble and there had
been nobody else to go this morning, when she raised her eyes and
saw the Jackson back yard full of snowy wash on the line. Mrs.
Jackson stood in the kitchen door, and, at the juxtaposition of
the dark skin and the well-washed clothes, an idea promptly
occurred to the lawyer's wife.
"Good morning," she called in a friendly tone. "I wanted to ask
you something; I guess I'll come through the gate and go out your
front way, if you don't mind."
Ezra Jackson's wife ran down the steps and put out a hand to help
the tired woman with her packages. Mrs. Kendrick rested them on
the railing of the back porch.
"Your clothes look lovely," she said meditatively. "You get them
out so early. Aunt Dicey's too old to do the washing and cooking
both any longer. I've been thinking for some time that I would
really have to get me a washerwoman."
"It is hard to have the person who cooks wash also," said Mrs.
Jackson, choosing her words carefully, and speaking in that
serious tone which the new generation of colored people are apt
to use toward their white neighbors. It is always as though they
were on guard, or perhaps on parade is the better word,
determined not to be guilty of lapses which would be excusable in
those whom they address, but which are not permitted to the
inferior race.
Fanny Kendrick looked at the handsome, well-kept house and its
dignified, serious-faced mistress, and a feeling of irritation
rose within her.
"I thought maybe you--I want a washerwoman--and seeing your
clothes looked so nice made me think that maybe you----"
She came to an uncertain halt, and glanced again half impatiently
at the other woman. After all, Ezra Jackson's wife was just a
negro, and there was no use in feeling embarrassed or in
supposing you didn't know how to deal with negroes. Good
gracious! what was the world coming to if you couldn't offer work
to folks without blushing? But she did not complete her sentence.
The Jackson woman waited for a while that she might do so, and
finally said, still in that slow, correct utterance which was in
itself an offense:
"You thought I might tell you of some one? Mrs. Payson does mine.
As you say she does it very nicely, and is quick about it. Her
prices are high. I pay her half a dollar, and she gets done, as
you see, a good deal before noon. But the work is satisfactory,
and I think it pays better. I don't know whether she has a free
day--but--shall I send her to you when she comes next week?"
Mrs. Kendrick blushed burning red, and took up her bundles with a
jerk.
"No, thank you," she said shortly. "I couldn't any more afford
that than I could fly. I didn't know Sally Payson had got to
charging like that--fifty cents for less than half a day's work!
I declare, prices are enough to ruin a body these days."
She went on to her own home smarting. She had called the washer
woman "Sally Payson," to be sure, in correction of Eliza
Jackson's "Mrs. Payson," which was a minor victory, yet it was
not enough to wipe away a feeling of stinging exasperation and a
curious sense of defeat. And when she told her husband about it
afterward, he received her recital with a sort of humorous
impatience.
"Good Lord, Fan," he broke in finally, "don't you know that every
woman with a black skin isn't hungry to do your washing? It's not
a question of complexion; it's money that talks. Ezra Jackson
could buy me out two or three times over. I'm trying to act all
his legal business. He's bringing a big suit against the
railroad. If he gives it to me I shall be able to send Ellen to
Baltimore this year instead of next."
"Well," said Mrs. Kendrick, submissively but acidly, "if you want
me to go and apologize, I suppose I can. The South is getting to
be a queer place when white gentlemen have to be under obligation
to negro teamsters. I certainly don't want to interfere with your
business in any way, Scott," she concluded plaintively. "We're
hard up all the time; I feel it deeply that poor Ellen is such an
expense to you."
Scott Kendrick's ready arm went round the weary little woman. "An
apology would be worse than the offense, Fanny," he admonished
gently. "It's just this. the Jacksons are in an absolutely new
position, and have to be treated in a new way. You wouldn't go
and ask Mrs. Ford or Mrs. Brashear to do your washing; and the
Lord knows that neither Jim Brashear nor Bate Ford makes half
what Ezra Jackson does. The world is changing, honey, and we have
to change with it."