"Hertha," Ellen said the next afternoon, "have you any plans for the
future?"
School had just closed, Miss Patty had given her maid an afternoon off,
and the two sisters were walking together toward their home.
"Any plans?" Hertha was startled. "I thought our plans were made for
good when we came here."
"I hope not!" Ellen declared decidedly. "I'm willing to work here now
for next to nothing, but I shall try for a bigger job some day; and you,
honey, you don't always want to be Miss Patty's maid."
"I don't know; why shouldn't I?"
"This is a dull life for you, Hertha. Sometimes I think we ought never
to have come here."
"Ellen!"
"It's different for mammy and me; we're older."
"You're only four years older than I."
"I think that really I'm a great deal older than you. But I get so much
more out of Merryvale than you do. The people who live in these
cabins--well, they're problems to me, human problems that I'm trying to
solve. There's hardly a home that hasn't in it some boy or girl whom I'm
watching almost as though he were my child. I'm working for the
children, Hertha, the colored children who will soon be men and women
and who ought to have just as good a chance as white children in this
world."
"They never will in America."
"I'm not so sure," Ellen answered.
They were walking in the pine region back of the river. To a newcomer
many of the cabins would have looked untidy; the ubiquitous hog would
have been pronounced a public nuisance, and the facilities for washing
inadequate; but to Ellen the settlement in which she had been working
for five years was a garden of progress, and if a few of the plants made
a determined stand to remain weeds, she did not let them hide her
numerous hardy flowers. In her heart she meant ultimately to uproot
them. Old Mr. Merryvale would never stand for severity, but the next
generation was at work upon the place and might be induced to aid her in
exiling the degenerate few.
"I love it here!" Ellen exclaimed, stopping and looking about her. "I
never worked in a school before where it was so easy to get at the
people, or where the children seemed so anxious to learn. Do you know, I
suppose no one would believe me if they heard it, but I'm glad that I'm
colored."
"Why not?" Hertha asked sharply. "If you love your work and these
people, why should you want to be white?"
"You know that's a foolish question," and Ellen looked sadly at her
sister. "You know as well, better than I, the handicap of color. Haven't
I seen you have to bear it? But still it's great to belong to a rising
race, not to one that's on top and likely to fall."
"To fall? How silly."
"Is it? Well, perhaps it's improbable. But, anyway, that isn't what I
started to talk about. I didn't mean to talk of myself, but of you. I'm
afraid this isn't the right place for you."
"I love it here, too!" Hertha cried, showing more animation than was
usual with her. "I like the country; you know I do. Why, I love
everything about the place, all the flowers in our yard, the pigs, the
chickens, the pines. I think it's the most beautiful spot in the world,
and so does Tom."
She drew in a long breath and threw out her arms as though to take in
the whole of Merryvale.
"That's all right, but you can't live just on flowers and views; you
need people."
Hertha made no response, and they walked on for a time in silence.
"It's like this," Ellen continued. "You're a generation ahead of these
cabins, and you don't enjoy the people socially who live in them. It
isn't snobbish to say this; it's just true. You haven't a single friend
here. I can't think what it would mean if you went away. It would be
like losing the color out of the sky; everything would be dull gray. But
if you ought to go, you ought, and I should help you."
"Haven't you made unhappiness enough, Ellen, with your plans, making Tom
go, but you must get rid of me too?"
"That isn't fair."
"That's what it seems like."
"Let's talk reasonably. Of course it isn't the same with you as with
Tom; you're not a child."
"I'm glad you realize that."
"Why, Hertha, you're almost cross. Please let me explain what I mean.
I'm glad you like it here, but we all have to look ahead, and I can't
look ahead and see you a servant in a white man's home."
"Why not?"
"You're too refined, too delicate. You ought to enter the front door,
and if you can't enter there, isn't it better not to enter at all?"
There was no answer.
"I know I've talked this way before, and I'll try not to do so again,
but I want to make myself quite clear. It isn't as though I didn't
believe in colored girls going into domestic service; I do. There are
lots of people who belong at the back door, and it would be silly to
deny it and to put them at work beyond their ability; but you're not one
of them. Because Miss Patty is white is no reason that she should have a
maid who has a better education and knows more than she does."
"Aren't you drawing on your imagination?"
"No, I'm telling the exact truth. Miss Patty is getting something she
has no right to, and you're not getting your birthright, to be yourself,
to develop the highest in you."
"What great talent have I neglected?"
Ellen threw her arm over her sister's shoulder. "You have talent,
Hertha, you know you have, only you won't recognize it, but keep dancing
attendance on that old lady. With a little instruction you would be a
skillful dressmaker, an _artiste_, as the advertisements say. You sew
beautifully and have lots of taste, and you've style. With such a gift
in any large city you could surely get ahead. You could have custom,
too, if you wanted, from our people."
"I don't expect to get ahead."
"But why?"
"I don't know." The girl stopped a moment and then said slowly, "I don't
believe I've as much ambition as you. I don't like study. I hate the
city, and I'm contented and happy here. When work is over I've you and
mother to go to; I belong to you two and I don't want to leave you."
Her face was aflame as she said this, realizing that it was only a
partial truth. Her deception made her angry, and she turned in retort
upon her sister. "Why does it worry you so that I should love Miss
Patty? Are you jealous?"
"You know as well as I do that it isn't that."
"It sounds like that to me. I like my work. Why should I accept a lot of
responsibility, set up a shop, which I should hate, or go about making
cheap gowns for stout black people when I can stay at home and wait on a
sweet, refined person like my mistress?"
The "my mistress" was given with an emphasis that closed the subject.
Ellen had said that her sister was not a child like Tom, and for the
time at least she must accept the verdict against her.
"Well, chillen," their mother said as they came up to the cabin, "de
best o' news, a letter f'om Tom!"
They both were upon her, but Hertha got the letter.
"Mister Lee were walkin' dis-a-way an' bring it ter me. It were kind o'
him; he knowed I wan' ter see it mighty quick."
"How short!" Hertha said, reading it through rapidly.
Mammy was at once up in arms for her son. "What done you 'spec'? Dar's
de paper civered. He tells 'bout de journey, an' what he gits fer his
meals, an' how big de ocean look, an' how he can't rightly say no mo'
'kase de bell done ring fer chapel. Dat a heap, but it ain't much fer
waitin' hearts."
"He doesn't say what studies he's taking," Ellen remarked when she had
finished with the sheet.
"We're foolish, Mammy," Hertha exclaimed, seeing the disappointment on
the old woman's face. "It's a dear letter, and it's Tom's
handwriting--I'd know it in Timbuctoo. Oh, how I wish he were here!"
"You sho do, honey; but dere ain't no use in wishin'. Come, git yer
supper an' den we-all'll jes' go down to Uncle Eben, an' Granny Rose an'
de folks as ain't gittin' letters ebery day."
There was no need to go out. The news of the letter reached the
settlement before sundown, and many were the visitors who came to see it
and who departed to tell all and more than it contained. It was really a
gay evening, and when the three women were left alone they sat up a
little longer than usual talking about it.
"Everything all right?" Ellen asked as she kissed her sister good-night.
"Yes," Hertha answered, smiling; but when she was alone in her room the
smile left her lips. Did Ellen suspect anything? Probably not, but how
strange to have a secret from those at home.