AT first the war presented itself to Peter in a purely personal aspect.
It was a long time before he envisaged the struggle as a great
stupendous whole. Boyishly egotistic, he saw it simply as the next big
moment in the panorama of his life following on his break with Joanna
and his puzzling relationship with Maggie. And always he saw it in
relation to the things which were happening to him like a series of
living pictures against a great impersonal background.
Ignorant of Neal’s attack on Maggie he had returned to Philadelphia,
completed his work and had gone to Des Moines. He sent his books to his
Aunt Susan,—all but one little black testament which bore written on the
fly leaf his father’s and grandfather’s and _his_ father’s names. There
was another name, too, “Judy Bye.” But Peter could not recall this.
“More ancestors,” he said to himself, thinking ruefully of Maggie. He
could not bear to think of their last talk: even the thought of his
forgotten instruments could not induce him to write to her.
In Des Moines he had met Philip. And from that meeting resulted that
first indelible picture. He had rushed forward to Philip, his hand
outstretched.
“Marshall! Say, fellow, this is really great!”
He could hear his voice ringing even now. And then Philip’s contemptuous
rejoinder: “I don’t shake hands with any such damned light of love.”
He thought he must have misunderstood at first. But there was the angry
scorn in Philip’s eyes and there was his hand hanging clenched by his
side.
The contemptuous epithet made him flinch. Of course, Philip’s bitterness
and scorn arose from two sources. Peter had broken off with his sister
and had taken up with the one girl in whom he had ever shown any
interest.
“But hang it all,” Peter said to himself in angry bewilderment. “Why
didn’t he try for Maggie himself, if he wanted her? But no, first he
lets that gambler win her and then he leaves her to me.”
Here again ignorance was the cause. Philip did not know of Maggie’s
divorce until she had become engaged to Peter. Joanna had never told him
and he, considering her first marriage as an answer to his rather
lackadaisical courtship, had not thought it worth while to make
inquiries about her. His own liking for Maggie had taken possession of
him so slowly that he had not realized himself until too late what she
meant to him.
The result of the encounter was to drive Peter back on himself and to
confuse his issues more and more. He did not know which way to turn.
More than ever if Philip loved Maggie, he himself wanted to be freed of
his obligation. Freedom—that was what he wanted—from obligations, from
prejudice, from too lofty idealism. It seemed to him as though the last
two years of his life had been spent in struggling to reconcile ideals.
First his efforts to win Joanna and then his need to get away from
Maggie. He went through the motions of the long days of drill and
preparation, thinking incoherent, unrelated thoughts.
“Poor Maggie, I’ve got her into this. I can’t just chuck her.”
Responsibility began feebly to awaken within him. “But what does she see
in me? Yet she’ll die if I leave her. Joanna, you’ve messed up all our
lives. Oh, damn all women! I hope to God I get killed in France!”
Still in a dream he left Des Moines for Camp Upton and left the camp for
overseas. He was a good sailor and therefore was free to devote himself
to men who were less fortunate than himself. On an afternoon he came on
deck with Harley Alexander. The two had become “buddies” in the camp and
now on the trip over the long days of inaction were awakening one of
those strange intensive friendships between two people, in which each
tries to bare his heart to the utmost before the other. Harley had told
Peter about his disastrous courtship of Vera Manning and Peter had
reluctantly, inevitably returned the confidence.
“Well,” said Harley, “I’ll be doggone. I suppose Joanna did use to queen
it over you, but what’d you go make a door-mat of yourself for? She gave
you what you were biddin’ for. But now as far as this Miss Ellersley’s
concerned—I can’t seem to remember her, Peter—she’s got no claim on you
that I can see. If she’s any sense at all she knows that you came to her
on sheer impulse. If you don’t love her, don’t you marry her. You’ll
regret it all your life if you do. Gee, I’m sick of this boat. Don’t you
s’pose we’re ever really goin’ to get into this man’s war?”
He lurched suddenly and violently against Peter, who dragged him to the
rail where he became horribly and thoroughly seasick. There he remained,
spent and helpless. Peter tried to drag him back to a steamer chair, but
he was too much in a state of collapse to help himself and too heavy for
Peter to drag across the deck. A white officer, a lieutenant whom Peter
had noticed infrequently sitting near the door, was standing looking
gravely on. He came forward.
“Here, let me help you.” Together the two men got Alexander into the
chair. He was the type with whom any physical indisposition goes hard.
Peter noticed he was shivering.
“Wait, I’ll get a rug,” he said, starting toward the door. Alexander
groaned, “Bye, for God’s sake don’t leave me. I’m as weak as a cat.”
“Oh, you’ll be all right,” Peter called back, and left him with the
white lieutenant standing silently by.
Shortly after his return Harley, declaring himself much better, went
below to his room. But first he thanked the lieutenant who bowed with
his pleasantly grave air. Peter, about to sink into the vacant seat,
looked up and caught the intent glance of the white officer who smiled
and nodded and came leisurely toward him.
“May I sit beside you a moment?” he asked pleasantly.
“Yes,” Peter replied shortly. He thought: “I know what you make me think
of. Of myself that first day I put on my uniform. Now why?” It was true
that while there was no facial resemblance, the two men were built
almost exactly alike, tall, with broad shoulders, flat backs and lean
thighs. Peter was at first glance the more comely, his head was more
shapely and his hair so crisply curling gave him a certain persistent
boyishness. The other man, a little older and plainer, had nevertheless
a certain whimsical melancholy about his eyes and mouth which attracted
Peter.
“I heard your friend call you Bye,” he said still pleasantly. Peter
nodded briefly. “That’s my name, too. Bye, Meriwether Bye. I was
wondering where you came from.”
Meriwether Bye! Peter felt his face growing hot as he remembered the
circumstances in which he had last heard that name. “Dr. Meriwether Bye
of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, I suppose.”
Meriwether without surprise acknowledged this. “You know of me then. May
I ask how?”
“I’ve always known of you indirectly,” Peter told him coldly. “My
great-grandfather spent all his life working for yours—for nothing.
There was a black Meriwether Bye, my father, named after him, though I’m
sure,” he added with rude inconsequence, “I can’t imagine why.”
Meriwether looked at him with a sort of gentle understanding. “I’ve
often wondered about those black Byes,” he said musingly. “My
grandfather, Dr. Meriwether Bye—he’s an old, old man now—used to tell me
about them. He was very fond of one of them, Isaiah Bye. Isn’t it
strange that we, the grandsons of those two men, friends way back in
those days, should be meeting here on our way to France to fight for our
country?”
Something, some aching tiger of resentment and dislike, which always
crouched in Peter ready to spring at the approach of a white man, lay
down momentarily appeased.
“Friends! Say, that’s the first time I ever heard a white man speak that
way of the relation between a slave-owner and his slave. You can’t
guess,” he said abruptly, “how I first heard of you.” And he told
Meriwether of his experience with Mrs. Lea, while the doctor watched him
with keen, melancholy eyes.
“I’ll wager you were angry, mad clear through and through. You had a
right to be. Mrs. Lea,” as he pronounced her name his gentle voice grew
a little gentler, Peter thought, “didn’t realize what she was saying.
She’s like many another of us, totally unaware of our shame and your
merits. I hope this war will teach us something.”
He had a nice way with him. “A regular fellow,” Peter thought, listening
to his quiet, unaffected disquisition on many subjects. He had been
literally everywhere, even to Greenland, and had seen all sorts of
people. He had a theory that while not all individuals were equal, all
races averaged the same. Some men were bound to be superior.
“And the differences between the races are a matter of relativity,” he
finished. “I confess my own interest in colored people is very keen.” He
raised a fine hand to disparage Peter’s slight movement. “Yes, I know
you are sick of that and the patronage it implies. But I mean it, Bye,
and when you get back home you must go out to Bryn Mawr and see whether
or not I have tried to express that interest.”
“I should think,” Peter looked at him squarely, “all things considered,
you or your family would have shown some interest in us black Byes. You
are rich men, your family is a powerful one——”
“Was a powerful one,” Meriwether interrupted him. He had flushed a
little. “I suppose you know that my great-grandfather, Aaron Bye, had
ten sons. But only four of them had sons and all of them except my
father died in the Civil War. Isn’t that some compensation? My own
father died when I was very young and I grew up with his father. He was
the one who told me about the black Byes and how he when a boy used to
play about Philadelphia with Isaiah. ‘Proud as Isaiah Bye,’ I’ve heard
him say. Bye,” said Meriwether earnestly, “I tried my best when I became
a man to find if there were any of you left in Philadelphia. It seemed
to me a monstrous thing to have our family and our fortune—for my
grandfather is still a very rich man—reared on the backs of those other
Byes.” He struck the table with a vehement hand. “That whole system was
barbarous.”
“I wish,” Peter told him, “I had known you sooner.” Just to hear this
expression of penitence seemed to ease the long resentment of the years.
“Without those slaves,” Meriwether resumed, “Aaron Bye would never have
got on his feet. His father was just a poor farmer, a Quaker, running
away from England to escape religious persecution. He came over and
received a grant of land. But he could have done nothing without labor,
and free labor at that. He and a friend bought a wretched slave between
them, worked a bit of land, then that old Bye bought out the other man’s
share of the slave; presently he bought a woman. Ah, it’s a rotten
story.” Peter saw melancholy like a veil settle upon his finely drawn
features.
“You really feel it? I didn’t suppose any white man felt like that.
Well, you needn’t mind about me or about any of the black Byes,” he
surprised himself by saying. “After all, it isn’t as though we were
related. It’s just the fortunes of—well, not of war—but of life.”
“No,” Meriwether returned, “we’re not related. Thank God there’s none of
that unutterable mix-up. I don’t think I could have forgiven those
Quaker Byes that. But sometimes it seems to me that just because those
black Byes and thousands of others like them had no claim, that they had
every claim.”
After that day they met daily; Meriwether expounding, explaining,
unconsciously teaching; Peter listening and absorbing. “I’m surprised,”
the young white man said, giving Peter a calculating look, “that you
were content with being an entertainer.”
Peter flushed and explained. It was only a temporary phase in his life.
He had been broken-up, crazy. Haltingly he spoke of Joanna and finally
of Maggie.
Meriwether thought it a bad business. “Stupid of you not to see that the
first girl had your interest at heart. Why, man, by your own account she
had brought you out of the butcher-shop to the University. Well, life
permits these things.” Bit by bit he told Peter of his own love-life. He
had loved Mrs. Lea for years even before her marriage when they were boy
and girl together, but her hard, uncomprehending attitude toward “lesser
peoples” chilled him, really frightened him. He knew he could not live
with a woman like that.
To Peter’s surprise Meriwether was a fatalist. He had strong
premonitions and allowed himself to be guided by them. “From the
outset,” he told Peter, gravely, “I knew that you meant something to me.
That was why I used to watch you so closely. I used to wonder and
speculate about you. Something in you made me think of myself. It was as
though you, all unrelated even racially, represented something which
might have been a part of myself, as though you,” he said dreamily,
“were living actively what I was thinking of passively. I have often
tried to picture my life as a colored man. I think if there had been any
of that selfish admixture of blood between the white and black Byes and
I had heard of it, I’d have gone the United States over but what I’d
have found my relatives, and have claimed them, too, before all the
world.”
One of Meriwether’s strange fantasies was that he would never return
from the war. “I knew it when I came away from America. And listen, Bye,
when I die,” Peter marveled at the sureness of that “when,” “I want you
after you get back home to go to my grandfather and tell him who you are
and how you met me. You are to give him this.” He took a little case
from his pocket in which were the pictures of a man and
woman,—old-fashioned pictures.
“Your father,” Peter exclaimed involuntarily, “you can see he’s a Bye——”
“And my mother,” Meriwether finished. He drew a locket suspended on a
thin gold chain from around his neck. “And take this to Mrs. Lea. She
loves me,” he said very simply. “Here, you might just as well take them
now.” Peter accepted them reluctantly.
He wished he had a picture of Joanna. Death seemed suddenly very near,
very possible. He did not care if he died, but he would like Joanna to
know that he thought of her. But he had nothing to leave for her. Yes,
there was the Testament. He took it from his inside breast-pocket and
showed it to Meriwether. Indeed he looked at it closely for the first
time himself. The two heads so like yet so different bent over the old
faded script. On the top of the page in a beautiful clear hand was
written Aaron Bye, then underneath in crazy drunken letters, Judy Bye.
“I can’t guess who she was,” said Peter.
A little below a familiar name appeared, Joshua Bye, and above it,
evidently written, in the same hand, Ceazer Bye. But through this entry
a firm black line was drawn, drawn with a pen that dug down into the
thin paper. After Joshua’s name came the names Isaiah and then
Meriwether.
“My father,” Peter explained, feeling somehow very near to him. “I guess
I’d better put my name in, too.” He wrote it in his small compact hand.
“I wonder who those two were, Judy and Ceazer,” he mused, smiling a
little at the quaint spelling. “I don’t seem ever to have heard of them;
I thought we started with Joshua.” But Meriwether professed dimly to
remember some mention of Judy.
“I’m sure I’ve heard my grandfather mention her name years ago and
Ceazer’s, too; he was her husband, seems to me. I suppose Aaron Bye gave
them the Testament.”
The little incident threw them into a deeper intimacy. Meriwether
professed himself to be as interested in and as bewildered at the
workings of the color question as Peter himself, though naturally he
lacked his new friend’s bitterness.
“It is amazing into what confusion slavery threw American life,” he
said, launched on one of their interminable discussions. “Here America
was founded for the sake of liberty and the establishment of an asylum
for all who were oppressed. And no land has more actively engaged in the
suppression of liberty, or in keeping down those who were already
oppressed. So that a white boy raised on all sorts of high falutin
idealism finds himself when he grows up completely at sea. I confess,
Bye, when I came to realize that all my wealth and all the combination
of environment and position which has made life hitherto so beautiful
and perfect, were founded quite specifically on the backs of broken,
beaten slaves, I got a shock from which I think sometimes I’ll never
recover. It’s robbed me of happiness forever.”
“I like to hear you acknowledge your indebtedness,” said Peter frankly,
“but I don’t think you should take on your shoulders the penitence of
the whole white nation.”
“No, I don’t think I should, either,” Meriwether returned unexpectedly,
“but that sort of extremeness seems to be inherent in the question of
color. Either you concern yourself with it violently as the Southerner
does and so let slip by all the other important issues of life; or you
are indifferent and callous like the average Northerner and grow
hardened to all sorts of atrocities; or you steep yourself in it like
the sentimentalist—that’s my class—and find yourself paralyzed by the
vastness of the problem.”
He slipped into a familiar mood of melancholy brooding. It was at such a
time that he spoke to Peter of his willingness, of his absolute
determination to lose his life in the Great War. For this reason he had
gone into the ranks instead of the medical corps where he would have
been comparatively safe. “Don’t think I’m a fanatic, Peter. I see this
war as the greatest gesture the world has ever made for Freedom. If I
can give up my life in this cause I shall feel that I have paid my
debt.”
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