The usher at Siloam Church gave a second glance at the very pretty girl
whom with considerable ceremony he escorted to a seat. He did not for a
moment think of her as white, else resisting her request to remain in
the rear he would have placed her in the front pew; but he recognized
her as a stranger and wondered as he continued his duties where she
might hail from, and whether she might not be persuaded to regard Siloam
as her future church home.
Hertha, her curly hair pushed well about her face, sat in the corner of
a seat and scanned the congregation for Tom. She saw him after a few
moments in the middle of the center aisle, his forehead knit a little as
he followed the service, his whole posture one of comfortable repose. He
was enjoying his Sunday rest and, as a preacher's son should, found the
church a natural place in which to make himself at home. Hertha thought
she heard his voice as the congregation sang the Gospel hymn, and so
happy was she watching him that she looked sideways slyly to his seat as
with bowed head she listened to the prayer.
"Bless all Thy people, Lord," the preacher was saying, his rich,
powerful voice filling the great church like the notes of the organ. "We
ask Thy blessing upon us in this our hour of worship. Bless those who
live in our midst and those who have come from afar. May they be guided
by Thy voice and profited by Thy holy word. Bless all those who are in
any ways in affliction or in distress. Send them Thy heavenly light that
shines in the eternal brightness of Thy countenance and make plain to
them the way of salvation."
"I have come from afar," Hertha thought, "and I surely need guidance."
And in reverent attitude she strove to secure the blessing of which the
preacher spoke. But the church with its dark-faced congregation recalled
her past, and the past brought continually back to her her present
problem. She looked over toward Tom and smiled to think that the boy,
who when a baby, she had hushed as he lay cuddled up to her in church,
should be one to whom she went for counsel. She only dimly realized that
to her he was not only her brother, but also the member of a race that
she understood better than she as yet understood the white race of which
she was now a part. Before the service was over and the preacher's voice
gave its last "Amen," she found that the familiar scene, the religious
phraseology with its well-worn metaphor but also with its vivid beauty,
stirred her to tragic homesickness and brought the hot tears to her
eyes.
"Tom!" She had slipped from the detaining hand of the Missionary Sister,
a large middle-aged woman who welcomed her effusively to the church, and
stopped her boy as he reached the door.
He looked at her in astonishment. "There ain't nothing happened?" he
asked in alarm.
"Oh, no," she answered, laughing nervously and moving to one side to let
the people pass. "Only that I need to talk with you."
"I don't know where we can go." He stood perplexed, his forehead drawn
in thought. His first alarm over it seemed to Hertha that he did not
wish to see her and she was hurt to the quick.
"We can walk in the square."
Tom shook his head.
"Yes we can!" she declared, the tears in her eyes. "We've often walked
out together." The service with the memories that it called up had
shaken her. She had felt her lips trembling more than once this morning
and now a rebuff was hard to bear.
"Jes' wait a minute," Tom said. "I'm thinking."
The familiar phrase sent back the tears and brought a smile. Realizing
that she must bide her time and confident that Tom would find a way out
of any difficulty she stood aside, watching the congregation as it
stopped to speak with friend or neighbor or went quickly on its way.
It was the first time she had been to a Negro quarter since her advent
to New York and in a short two hours she was wholly at home. Happy in
the welcome that came from one after another in the congregation, her
loneliness disappeared, and she returned "good mornings" without
embarrassment. Before Tom had finished his thinking, two little
brown-skinned girls, whose spotless white dresses and gaily flowered
white hats were not more fresh and bright than their shining faces, made
friends with her. They stood, one on either hand, fingering her dress,
and the younger, who was an alert child, asked more than one pertinent
question. "Where you run to, chillen?" their mother demanded as she came
up, and the soft dialect made Hertha feel as though the query had been
addressed to her. As the little girls moved away she turned the question
over in her mind, asking it of herself. In these seven months since she
had closed the door upon the colored world what path had she taken, down
what road had she been running, with whom had she stopped to talk on her
way? Naturally mistrustful of herself, she began to question whether she
had done any better than one of these children who stopped with her for
a moment and then ran on to some new happening.
"I bin fixing to stay here," Tom said coming up to her after a few
minutes' absence. "The sexton, he's a friend of mine, and if I lock up
after me I can stay right on in the church."
It was a pleasant place to stop for a talk. The windows were open, the
air was fresh, and though this auditorium was far larger and more
sumptuous than any they had been accustomed to in their childhood, it
seemed a natural and good spot for a sober chat.
"Perhaps I'd better tell you about everything that's happened," Hertha
declared as they sat down well at the front. Tom nodded assent, and she
began her narrative, haltingly at first, but, as she went on, filling it
with incidents of her life with Kathleen, her work in the factory, and
her decision to move and to study a profession. On her failure to do
good work at stenography she laid much emphasis and ended by asking for
advice regarding the best way to earn her living.
Tom looked at her soberly and yet somewhere back she felt that there was
a hint of a smile.
"You haven't told me about your feller," he declared after she had
finished.
During her recital Hertha had been looking straight ahead at the pulpit
with its reading-desk and red plush cushion on which rested a huge
Bible. Now she turned in her seat and addressed herself directly to Tom.
"What do you know about him?" she asked.
"Nothin'," Tom replied, the smile that Hertha had felt in the background
coming to the surface. "It wouldn't be anything but natural if you had a
dozen. But Bob told me you had one."
"Bob! How did you have time enough to exchange confidences like that?"
"There weren't any exchange. Before he'd finished the car come. I reckon
he was planning to have me give a wave of my hand and send the feller
off the earth. What did you give him, Hertha? The kid thought I was a
magician."
"Oh, I just told him a story," Hertha answered vaguely, "and used your
name. But what did Bob mean? Didn't he like Dick?"
"Jealous, I reckon."
Hertha laughed. "Well, I'll tell you about him," she declared, "I was
coming to him when I spoke."
Playing with her handkerchief, her mouth trembling sometimes as she
talked, she seemed to Tom both nervous and tired. He had not thought she
could so lose her old serenity. But he listened attentively as she told
of her meetings with Dick in the library and at the park. As her story
continued he grew to like the young southerner for his considerate and
unselfish devotion. Looking at Hertha's too slender figure and at her
restless hands he felt, as Dick so often felt, that she was not one who
should be forced to battle with the world. And he knew, as Dick could
not know, her utter loneliness. When he learned that the man was from
Georgia he was not altogether unprepared for the close of Hertha's
story, the quick breath and furious blush that came with the halting
effort to tell of her lover's attitude toward the colored race.
"Oh, I can guess," he said tolerantly, coming to her rescue. "I've heard
that kind of man talk. Colored folks are all niggers to him and he ain't
got no use for 'em. But lawdy, that don't amount to much."
"But I think it does, Tom," Hertha said tremulously. "When he talks like
that, I hate him."
"Have you told him about yourself, Sister?" Tom inquired.
He spoke low, almost in a whisper, looking about him.
"No," was the answer.
"Wouldn't it be easier?"
"Perhaps." And then with a touch of annoyance, "You know how I hate to
talk."
"But I wouldn't marry him----"
"Of course!" Hertha stopped playing with her handkerchief and clasped
her hands together. "If I decide to marry him of course I'll tell. But I
haven't decided, I can't seem to decide!"
Tom looked at her flushed face and said in his slowest, most comforting
tone: "What you got to hurry for? Can't a man wait for a girl to take
her time? He ain't worth much if he can't."
"But don't you see," Hertha said excitedly, "I can't wait and wait, I've
got to decide what I'm going to do. If I have to support myself all the
rest of my life I ought to know whether I'm going to be a secretary or
not. And then it's easy enough to say to take your time about deciding
whether you like a man, but Dick Brown keeps taking things so for
granted. And then, just when he seems quite nice, he'll break out with
something about the 'niggers' that makes me so angry I can't bear to
speak to him again."
"That ain't the worst kind though." Tom spoke with emphasis, a grim look
settling about his big mouth. "You can face the one that hates you. The
worst is the skulking kind that looks sweet and friendly and acts the
devil behind your back."
Again Hertha heard him flay the man to whom she had so unreservedly
given her love, and again she shrank from his bitter words. But sitting
there in the church, with the homely symbols of religious life about
her, with the sun streaming through the crude stained-glass windows, she
saw clearly the danger and the sin from which she had escaped. And she
saw too that Tom, her young but manly brother, would hate with an
animal-like intensity the man who should dare to do her an injury. She
listened with deepened respect to what he went on to say.
"You can't make a Georgia cracker like Negroes, Hertha, not if you was
to work on him all your life. If you find you get to love him, tell him
everything and then let it drop. There ain't no good in going over
things. Up here in the North nobody thinks much about folks' past,
they're too busy. If he's good to you, and works hard and plays square,
there ain't no need for you to worry because he can't see like you do.
He ain't good enough for you, of course. No man is. But a husband ain't
to be judged by his opinions on the race question."
He touched her arm gently in a caress. "It has to be good-by, Sister,"
he went on, "the white world don't meet the colored world to-day. Look
at this church here. It's close to white folks' homes but no one ever
thinks to come in to worship. I've sat here and thought of it many
times. We ain't really men and women to them. I reckon they don't think
we're children of God."
"That's it," Hertha cried, "and how could I live with any one who
thought that?"
"They all think it," Tom answered.
"No, they don't," said Hertha angrily; "my teachers didn't at school."
"They were women," Tom replied. "Women have more religion than men."
He rose from his seat and stretched himself, his long arms extended, his
short coat-sleeves revealing a great expanse of wrist and hand.
"What are you growing so tall for?" Hertha asked, looking up at him.
"I reckon I have to." He dropped his arms to his sides. "It's a mistake
fer it takes a lot of coat and pants to cover me, and in the bed the
sheet don't come up high enough and the blanket's forever slipping by on
the floor."
"Oh, you'll get sick," his former sister and nurse cried, looking so
troubled that Tom had to laugh.
"Don't you worry," he answered, smiling down at her, "I've had such a
good bringing up that I can't go wrong now, not anyways."
Nothing that he could have said would have meant so much. She accepted
his words in their fullest meaning and felt uplifted, comforted.
Whatever she might make of her own life, she had helped wisely to mold
his. If she never saw him again she would know that her influence would
stay with him to the end, blossoming in honorable thoughts and kindly
deeds.
"And so you advise me to marry?" she said, rising too and trying to
speak with a laugh.
"No, ma'am!" with decision. "I ain't advising you to marry. I's just
advising you not to give up marrying."
"Well," with a little shrug, "it amounts to the same thing."
"What you got to hurry for?" Tom returned to his old charge.
"If I don't decide I can't stay where I am. There is Miss Wood one
evening telling me to go on with my work--she loathes Dick--and Mrs.
Pickens the next telling me to accept a good husband. That's what it's
like when Dick's away, and it's a million times harder when he's around.
I'll move if I give him up.
"I met an old man this winter," she went on, "a friend of Kathleen's. He
had a terrible philosophy, everything was going to the dogs. You'd have
thought that the world would never get any better. But he said one thing
to me. He told me to dance and have a good time and to be sure to keep
out of the conflict. That was the way he put it, 'Keep out of the
conflict.'"
"That might be good advice if you could."
"I suppose you could," Hertha said slowly, "if you made up your mind to;
just to have an easy, comfortable time. Now Kathleen was always in the
conflict. She was trying to change the world, to change everybody--at
least everybody who was poor. And here I can't decide what to do with my
own life."
"It's a heap easier," Tom remarked meditatively, "to run other folks'
lives than it is your own."
They had walked down the aisle to the corridor and now stood by the
closed door.
"I haven't made my mind up yet about marriage," Tom said. "It's a great
risk, it sure is. I was reading the other day about trial marriages.
Seemed like that might not be a bad idea--each agree to try each other
out for a time and then if things suited, match up for good."
"Where did you read that?" Hertha asked, curiosity surmounting
disapproval in her voice.
"In the paper," was the all-sufficient answer. "It were only a
suggestion."
"_Was_, Tom."
"Yes'm."
"I'm afraid it's a suggestion that most people would think wicked," she
gave a resigned sigh, "like divorce. Well, I'm glad we had this talk."
"So am I," Tom made hearty response. "And that wasn't a bad idea,
Hertha, to keep out of the conflict."
"There's one thing I want you to promise me," the girl's thoughts turned
from herself to her old home. "I want you to promise to let me keep in
touch with you. You're nearer than the folks down South. Promise that
you won't go away without my knowing."
"Sure," he answered.
"And one thing more, if you hear from them at home that any one is ill,
or that they're going to move, you must let me know. I mean to write to
them before long, I'm going to settle a lot of things in my mind when
school's over, but I rely on you to let me know the news."
"Yes."
"It's a promise?"
"Yes, Hertha, it's a promise."
She put her hand in his to say good-by. "You're my boy, you remember."
There was a world of gentleness and love in her voice. "Do you know, I
told Kathleen and then Dick that I had a brother, a little brother who
was in school."
"I's feared you shouldn't have said that, Hertha."
"I had to have some relatives, didn't I? And I just naturally had you.
And we'll never forget one another. And I tell you," looking with wet
eyes back down the long aisle of the church to where the Bible lay on
the reading-desk, "I know what heaven's going to be like. It isn't going
to have any golden streets. Think how horrid and hard and glaring they'd
be! It will have spreading trees and flowers, lilies and asphodels and
green grass--yes, and white sand; and I engage you now to go out walking
with me the first Sunday."
The tears were in his eyes as well as hers. "I'll love to be there
waiting fer you, Sister," he answered.
She gripped him in her arms for a moment and then with a gulping sob
opened the door and went out into the street.