It was the bell of the outer door, and Hertha went to the kitchen to
push the button that released the latch. Who could be coming to see
Kathleen, she thought, on such a wretched night? Of course, some one who
needed her services as nurse; and, going into the hall, she opened the
outer door of the flat the better to guide the stranger upstairs.
"May I come in?"
It was a very wet figure that stood before her clasping a hat in one
hand and in the other a large cotton umbrella that dripped puddles of
water upon the floor. The question was asked in a jovial tone, and yet
the man's attitude betrayed something like timidity.
"Certainly," Hertha answered. "Give me your umbrella; it's very wet."
"No, tell me where to put it; you mustn't get any of this rain on you,"
and Richard Shelby Brown followed Hertha as she led the way into the
kitchen.
Together they put the umbrella into the washtub where it could drip
harmlessly, and then, divested of his coat and hat, the young man went
with his hostess into the front room where she insisted that he sit
close to the radiator to get dry.
When she had seated him to her satisfaction and was back in her chair by
the table there was silence. Now that Dick Brown's bodily wants were
cared for, Hertha began to question herself how he had ever gotten
there, and to wonder whether she should not be angry with him for
following her uninvited to her home. But she was too homesick, too much
in need of companionship, not to feel a little pleasure in seeing him,
his long legs tucked under his straight chair, his thin face making a
grotesque silhouette against the window shade. He was certainly homely
and a pusher, just an ordinary "hill billy," as he had described
himself. She decided that since he had come uninvited he must begin the
conversation.
Dick Brown, as though appreciating his position, opened his mouth to
speak and then sneezed--not once, but a number of times.
"You've taken a cold already," Hertha said sympathetically. "You
shouldn't have come out to-night."
"No, I haven't, indeed I haven't. I'm just getting over one."
"How long have you had it?"
"About a month."
"I believe you got it that morning in the park. You shouldn't have given
me your overcoat."
"That had nothing to do with it!" Brown spoke with a kindly bluster.
"Nothing to do with it. Don't you think that for a minute. You see,
after you left, I got playing with the kids and they squeezed snow down
my neck and I lambasted them and we had a grand lark. It was mighty
fine, but I learned that snow melts and then----"
He sneezed again.
"It was too bad," Hertha exclaimed. "It's so hard to be ill away from
home."
"I reckon it is! Your meals set down by the side of your bed, the gruel
cold and full of lumps, no one to growl at when your head aches and you
can't go to sleep! It's a mighty poor state of things."
"I'm afraid you were pretty sick."
"Just missed pneumonia."
"You ought not to have come out to-night." Hertha spoke with emphasis.
"Oh, I'm all hunky now. I've sat in the library most every night since
they let me out. Wouldn't they grin at home if they saw me fooling this
way with books! Why, I know more news out of the magazines this month
than all of Casper County ever knew since the first moonshiner set up
his still! I'm reeking with information. But I bet you're reading one of
those three-volume novels they tell about that last a year. I couldn't
wait any longer, so I came to headquarters."
"How did you get my address?" Hertha had not meant to ask the question,
but it slipped out unawares.
"Don't make me explain, please. It's against all the rules and
regulations and the librarian only told because at times I'm a beautiful
liar."
His thin face, looking thinner than ever from his sickness, wore a
worried expression, and one of his long hands moved nervously against
his side. At home he was accounted a confident youth who could grab up a
girl and swing away with her a little faster than the next man, but here
in New York he was off his ground. Moreover, this very pretty young
woman with her aristocratic ways gave him no help, but sat quite silent
as though questioning what right he had in her home. Awkwardly he rose
and played his last card.
"I've a letter I want you to see," he said, "it's from my mother. I
wrote and told her about you and how I hoped we'd get acquainted, only
New York's such a big place a girl has to be careful. It ain't much like
our country towns in Dixie, is it? Anyway, she wrote in answer, and
here's the letter. You can read it, postmark and all. Seems like it was
written for you."
He handed the letter to her with an attempt at self-confidence; but she
took it with so serious a face that, saying nothing further, he stood,
almost humbly, awaiting her decision.
Hertha read the letter through. It was badly written and showed more
than one lapse in spelling. Two pages were filled with admonitions to
keep sober and serve the Lord; the third contained bits of local news:
Cousin Sally Lou's visit, the number of partridges Uncle Barton had
brought in for dinner. But on the last was the message that was
doubtless meant for Hertha's eyes. "The young lady, from all you say,
must be mighty grand, but she needn't be afraid of you. You weren't one
to hang round the station every evening, or to steal out nights with the
fellows to get whisky. You've been a good son, Dick, and every mother
can't say that. Look at Jim Slade's mother, now----" and the letter
ended with an account of Jim's latest escapade.
Hertha handed it back with a pleasant smile. "It reads just like the
South, doesn't it?" she said cordially. "Down there we know every little
happening, while in New York you have to tell a story to learn where I
live."
The young man laughed noisily; his relief was great.
"You're right, all right," he said, sitting nearer her. "It's like one
big family down there, and if a visitor drops in there ain't a person in
town from the Baptist preacher to the poorest nigger who won't have the
news. Are you a Baptist, Miss Hertha?"
"No, I'm an Episcopalian."
"Whew! We only know 'em by name our way. It's Baptist or Methodist with
us, with once in a while a Christian place of worship. Ever seen a
revival now?"
"Yes."
"Have you? I wouldn't have supposed that an Episcopalian would so much
as go to one. But it's a wonderful sight, don't you think, when the
sinners come to the penitent seat? I've seen 'em, big men, crying like
babies. And then the preacher with his great voice calling 'em to repent
and showing 'em the way to righteousness. And out from somewhere a
woman'll start a song, perhaps 'Rock of Ages,' and the whole room'll be
full of the sound of the hymn."
He grew eloquent as he spoke, picturing the scene he knew so well. In
his narrow life the church and its emotional appeal had occupied an
important place. He wanted to tell her that he had been among that group
kneeling in repentance, that he was a sinner saved by grace; but there
was an aloofness about her that kept him from going further. He could
not guess that she had wholly forgotten him, and was sitting in a bare
room where the dim lamp lighted a multitude of black faces; where the
cries of "Amen" rang from the penitent seat, and where the black
preacher, the only father she had ever known, called upon the Lord to
give to His children mercy and forgiveness. Her visitor had never
listened to such a revival as she!
There was a long silence. Then Richard Brown strove again to make
conversation.
"The niggers, now, they're a worthless lot, don't you think?"
Hertha started nervously. "I don't think so," she said.
"Don't you? I suppose you've had 'em in your family for a long time--old
mammies and uncles. They don't grow that kind round our way, only a lot
of worthless coons that won't do a lick of work unless they're driven to
it."
"There's the funniest nigger minstrel show at the Hippodrome," he went
on, "you ought to see it. Greatest thing out. There ain't anything much
funnier, anyway, than to see a black buck dressed in a high hat and a
pair of fancy shoes, opening his frog mouth and singing a coon song.
Mighty funny songs they've got there, too. Wish you could hear one of
them."
He wanted to ask her to go to the show with him the next week, but she
looked further removed from him than ever. Had he said anything to
warrant it he would have thought that she was angry; but that could
hardly be the case. She just wasn't his kind and he had better accept
the fact and go home. But as he sat crossing and recrossing his knees,
wishing inexpressibly for the relief of a smoke, her face in the
lamplight was so lovely that he shut his teeth and resolved to hang on.
Then a sneeze came to his relief, a big-throated sneeze, followed by a
second and a third.
"Oh," Hertha cried, rousing herself, "aren't you warm enough? Perhaps
it's warmer in the kitchen."
"Don't bother."
"It isn't any bother. I often sit there."
He followed her into the bright little kitchen, hoping that in a new
environment he might be able to break through her reticence; but Hertha
herself helped him.
"I'm going to make you a cup of cocoa," she said. "You're cold and you
need something to warm you up."
Beyond allowing him to light the gas stove, she refused all assistance,
and as he stood watching her go through her deft movements, measuring,
stirring, and at last pouring a foaming liquid into their two cups--for
to his delight she was to share the meal--he was more attracted and yet
more puzzled than ever.
"You cook mighty well," he said as she poured the hot cocoa.
"I'm used to doing little things about the house," she answered. "Before
I came here I was a companion in a family."
The statement was made on the spur of the moment, but as Hertha thought
it over she was delighted that she had been able to say something that
opened up a way to live in the past without embarrassment, almost
without falsehood. To conjure up the world of white people in her
grandfather's home had been beyond her power; even in her thoughts she
had stumbled in her endeavor to climb the ladder that led to their
eminence. But as a companion in the Merryvale household she was in
familiar surroundings.
Richard Brown on his part was a little disappointed. He had been
dreaming of a princess in disguise and he found only a poor relation. In
the large families of the South there were sometimes girls like this,
though when they were so pretty they usually soon married, girls who had
to do the odd tasks, give up the good times, go to live with some
distant cousin or aunt as the case might be. That sort of thing made a
girl shy and quiet. For the first time that evening he felt at ease.
"I bet there ain't anybody in New York can make cocoa to beat yours,",
he declared emphatically. "I never liked the stuff before."
"I should have made you coffee," Hertha said regretfully. "I forgot,
because coffee keeps me awake."
"Does me, too." He was ready to agree with anything. "Now, down home,
tramping through the woods, I could drink a dozen cups a day. But it's
different in the city."
"Were your woods pines?" she asked, "and were there streams with
cypresses by the banks?"
Here at last they had found a meeting place, a common ground. If she
would not play or laugh with him, they could wander through the woods
together, tasting the tang of the evergreen or watching the buds burst
on the wild plum. Drawing his chair a little forward, he hugged his knee
and sang the song of the country of his birth.
Outside the rain splashed upon the street, making great puddles at the
crossings, the wind blew fiercely down the narrow roadways and shook the
windows in their frames; but within the little tenement the southern boy
moved without a cloud to shadow him through the playtime of his years.
Sometimes it was winter and he was among the hills trapping birds and
shooting rabbits. Again it was early spring and with rod in hand he
trailed the brown stream until the trout rose and brought him all
attention to the game they played that through his skill ended in death
and victory. Or it was summer and too hot to walk, but glorious to
gallop in the early morning over the rough road and down the hollow to
where the brook broadened into a swimming-pool that called him to bathe
in its reviving water. Again he moved among the woods in autumn,
hunting, but not too intent upon his game to fail to find the nuts
scattered upon his path or to stop and, putting his hand in a hole of a
decaying tree, bring out a blinking, monkey-faced owl.
"Why, it's half past ten," he cried, looking at the clock on the shelf
above the stove. "I must go, for we both have to work to-morrow."
He ventured this at a hazard, but she did not contradict him.
"Your coat is quite dry," she answered, feeling it as she came to take
it from the hook where it hung.
They stood in the narrow hallway and as he swung the coat upon his high
shoulders he was a little awkward and brushed against her arm. She
laughed away his apology, but he felt this slight contact as something
tender, exquisite. As he opened the door he could only mutter an
embarrassed good-evening.
"Thank you for coming out in the rain," she said, "and you mustn't take
cold or I shall think you ought not to have risked it."
"I'm tough." He moved out onto the stair. Wasn't she going to ask him to
come again? "By the way," he called out, "I've read _Sherlock Holmes_.
It's great!"
"I'm glad you liked it," she replied, "and I'll try to find another good
story for you next Saturday evening."
He went away rapturously happy in having won the chance to know so
beautiful a southern girl. Whether she lived as a worker in a tenement
or as a companion in an old family mansion, she was the most refined
person he had ever met and he planned great days when they should be
together. The rain fell unheeded. Despite the bright light from the
electric lamp, he walked into a deep puddle, drenching his feet and
ankles and splashing his best clothes with dirty water. Oblivious of
such trivial happenings, dreaming of the future, counting the evenings
to Saturday night, he reached his home, where, lying down to sleep, the
lady of his heart followed him in his dreams.
Hertha, as she washed the cups and tidied up the kitchen, was happy,
too, for a time, recollecting with pleasurable excitement the look of
admiration in her visitor's eyes. But shortly her cheeks grew hot with
anger at him and at herself. He had insulted the colored people, "her
people," as she had so recently called them, and she had said no word of
protest. If she could not talk, she argued to herself, she could refuse
to see this young man again. It was men like this who stole the Negro's
crops, who kept their children in ignorance, who even broke down jail
doors and lynched black prisoners. Why had she ever allowed herself to
be kind to such a man? Then as she looked about her, as she seemed to
see Dick in the chair by the table, she smiled a little. Probably it was
foolish to get so excited on the matter. Mammy's last instructions were
not to try to stand in two worlds, and if the white world showed more
indifference, more antagonism to the black than even she had expected,
she was in it and it was as well to know it as it was. In her loneliness
she taught herself to believe that she had a right to become acquainted
with this southern youth, but she resolved firmly not to let him have
the conversation all to himself if he should again broach the Negro
question. However bashful she might be, it should be possible for her to
utter some forceful word.