When Hamilton looked out of the window of his Pullman the next morning
he noticed that the earth was red. He had left the land of dark earth,
the cities of gray streets and walks. He had left the cold North and
was back home in the South. The hills, rolling in every direction to
the slowly rotating horizon, were covered with greenery, and a warmer,
more golden sunshine brightened it. It seemed, too, that the sky was
bluer. And, peeping out from between the trees and shrubs and running
along the roads and ditches--red earth.
At noon he saw for the first time in two years a little patch covered
with scrubby green plants, just bursting into fluffy white blossoms.
In one corner of the field a shack, weather-beaten, gray, unpainted,
with a sagging door and broken windows. A Negro mammy in the doorway,
a half-dozen pickaninnies playing at her feet, all in rags. Out in the
field a white-haired Negro, bent under the load of a crate piled high
with cotton, tottering toward the shack. The heads and backs of other
Negroes bending over their cotton.
It was only a patch. It was too far north for the heavier yields of
cotton. Yet, it was cotton!
It kept growing warmer. Hamilton’s coat became too heavy. He wished
that he had taken his cotton uniform with him. He noticed how the
vegetation kept growing thicker as they proceeded southward. Now the
forests through which they passed were so thick that one could not see
into them. Vines and creepers, heavy moss, thick shrubs, high grass,
all knit the forest into a single being. The grass grew up to the
tracks and even between them.
The towns too were different--smaller, slower, dingier. It was a
different world, a more picturesque world, and a more primitive one.
He noticed, with a new insight into such things, how much of the towns
was wooden--stores, factories, public buildings, and, of course, homes.
Even the sidewalks. Also there were more wagons drawn by horse or
mule. The streets looked crooked and unpaved. The structures unpainted.
Men stood around or moved slowly--at the stations, on the streets. And
everywhere there were Negroes. Negroes moving trucks at the depots.
Negroes lazily driving their teams along the roads. Negroes on the
streets. Negroes on the farms and plantations. Negroes even behind the
counters of stores. He had never before realized how black the South
was, how many less white men than in the North. Previously most of
his life away from home had been spent at school, a world where black
men seldom intruded. But now they seemed like a tide of color, like a
forest pressing down upon the little towns and villages, slowly choking
them with their prolific vegetation.
He thought of Williams and of the Paris salons that had been thrown
open to him and to other colored soldiers who had fought under the same
flag as the white men. He watched the ragged black patiently toiling
under the Southern sun. He wondered whether they would be content to
remain thus. An idea struck him. He examined the individual figures
more closely. Yes! He had noticed something familiar about the shirts
that some of the laborers wore. They were the olive drab of the army.
And there was a husky in olive drab breeches and army shoes.
It was five o’clock. Hamilton looked through his time table again.
He had wired his father to meet him at a suburb one station north of
Corinth. It was about the same distance from home as the main station,
but he wished to avoid anything approaching a public reception. He had
entered the service as a student officer. He was coming back a captain.
Some of the home guards might not understand how automatic promotion
was. They might greet him with a band or something equally nonsensical.
He wished to come home quietly. He wished to rest. He wished--he did
not know--yes, Margaret. He wished to see her again. He wished to have
the wedding as soon as possible and settle down to his new life.
The train was screeching to a halt and through the window he saw them
waiting for him--his father, a little paler than when he had seen him
in New York, it seemed; his mother, clutching his arm, and trying not
to cry--it was the same way she looked when she had bade him good-bye,
only she, too, seemed a little older, and then Margaret, flushed and
radiant, in a bright yellow silk sweater.
The next minute he was down the steps and into his mother’s arms.
Yes, she was older, but not very much, and still beautiful--with her
white hair and girlish complexion, her gentle blue eyes, her refined
features. Hamilton remembered the time that a schoolmate had mistaken
his mother and his only sister, Virginia Ruth, for sisters. Virginia
Ruth was married to a New Orleans banker and had children of her own
now. But no one would any longer mistake the two for sisters. One
cheated time for a while, for a few years; but, in the end, time won.
Hamilton could think of nothing to say, but “Mother, how are you?”
Of the hundred questions that crowded in her brain, all that she could
ask was: “Robert, isn’t your uniform too warm?” The gulf between them
was suddenly bridged and they laughed.
Superintended by Mr. Hamilton, George, the middle-aged Negro chauffeur,
was proudly piling the suitcases into the family automobile. He was
grinning from ear to ear and remarked repeatedly that “the gen’ral
sure do look well” and something about “bein’ mighty scrumptious.”
Father and son shook hands briefly, but Margaret held out her arms
and drew down Hamilton’s head. It was the first time that he had
kissed her in the presence of anybody else, the first time he had
kissed any one, outside the family, before his mother and he felt
awkward and self-conscious. As he bent down, he noticed the sparkle of
emeralds and diamonds in her engagement ring and felt ashamed that he
had eyes for anything but Margaret herself. He noted how calmly she
could kiss him--not exactly calmly, but self-possessedly and without
embarrassment.
With his first glance, too, he saw how beautiful she really was and
how strikingly similar her beauty was, in a way, to that of Dorothy.
Only it had a quality of naiveté. She looked, if not actually younger
in years, younger in spirit. Hers was the naive sophistication of the
rising generation--a generation wise in its own conventionalities, the
conventionalities of breaking older conventionalities.
It was surprising how her set, among the sons and daughters of the best
families in Georgia, could assimilate so readily the spirit of the new
freedom, without, at the same time, absorbing its intellectual aspects.
Margaret, for instance, knew nothing about political or economic
movements save as they came filtered to her through the mind of her
parents. The freedom, therefore, was exhibited mainly in the social
sphere--in attending dances and parties unchaperoned, in driving her
own motor car, in discussing love and sex theories--generally gleaned
from motion pictures or printed stories--in dressing more freely than
her mother had done, in staying away with increasing frequency from
church, in smoking cigarettes surreptitiously and even in drinking away
from home--a little.
She had no real discrimination in her choice of either art, literature
or cigarettes. She had no favorite schools or intellectual movements.
And no theories. She simply liked a picture or a book, or didn’t like
it--her emancipation from the old conventionalities expressing itself
simply in a frankness in expressing her opinion. Whereas her mother
would have admired a painting because she thought that was the thing
to do, with Margaret the thing to do was to say you didn’t like it if
you didn’t. But her taste for fiction--the only kind of literature she
read--was omnivorous. In music, too, her tastes were of contradictory
breadth, preferring Beethoven one night and jazz the next. She played
the piano. Classical music when there were older visitors, old ballads
when alone with her mother, jazz music when in her own set. When there
was no one else with her she played the three categories in the order
of jazz first, then ballads, and lastly classical music.
Margaret was a joy on a horse and a mermaid in the water and altogether
a creditable product of the finishing school which her mother had
selected for her. The best testimony to this being the fact that she
could have married a half dozen of the most eligible young Corinthians,
since her graduation, two years ago in June.
The Hamiltons climbed into the touring car, the returned hero seating
himself between his mother and his fiancée, while the father took one
of the collapsible seats. The home-coming had not been unseen by a
crowd of tatterdemalion colored children, who viewed Captain Hamilton
with awe until he disappeared down the street.
Hamilton was conscious of many things and of many emotions: warm
sunshine bathing the town and fragrant blooming magnolia trees
overarching the road; glimpses of familiar houses; the street down
which he had attempted to elope with Margaret; the public school-house
where he had been set upon and in which he had triumphed in his last
fight of childhood; a magnificent old church which he used to admire
profoundly as a boy; homes of old friends. He was conscious of the love
and pride of the three with whom he rode and the feeling of possession
of Margaret, whose eyes were on him, as much as his mother’s.
“Your wound is quite all right?” asked Mr. Hamilton sitting sidewise in
his seat.
“It’s fine,” Hamilton assured him. “Couldn’t be better. I think I could
even take the sorrel over the fence.”
“Robert, you wouldn’t do that?” said his mother reprovingly, while his
father and Margaret laughed. “Taking the sorrel over the fence” had
become a family joke, an expression for extreme recklessness, because
shortly before leaving for New York, Robert, on a dare, had actually
jumped the stone fence on the sorrel, Annabell Lee. As his father had
said at the time, Robert had risked the knees of a very valuable horse
and the neck of a very heedless rider.
“No, there’s not much chance after the bawling out I got last time.”
Mr. Hamilton smiled.
“But Annabell is waiting for you,” he said, “all groomed up sleek and
shiny by George himself, here.”
The chauffeur’s white-teethed grin was reflected in the windshield as
he nodded his head. “Tha’s right, sir, that’s right. Annabell Lee,
there ain’t no horses slicker than her. She like mahogany.”
“Well, I won’t take any fences. But how are you, mother? It’s wonderful
to be back.”
“Oh, I’ll take you out riding,” suggested Margaret eagerly. “I know
just a ripping place to go, and I’ll race you.”
“Not for a while, Margaret, I’m too lazy for much of anything right
now. If I go I’ll take old Major. How is Major?”
“He’s not with us any more, Robert.”
“Did he die?”
Robert looked from his father to his mother. Her eyes faltered.
“No, we sold him,” said Mr. Hamilton.
“Getting old, I suppose.”
“Oh, have I told you? We’ve got another captain in our set,” asked
Margaret suddenly. “Who do you think? Howard Pinkney. He got his
commission just about the time I got that awful letter telling me you
were wounded. I’ll never forget how I felt.”
“Pinkney?”
“Oh, this town is full of ’em,” the elder Hamilton laughed, with the
faintest suggestion of irony in his voice. “Captains and majors.”
“Oh, no, he’s a real captain. He showed me his commission. He’s captain
of our home guards, and he says it’s the same rank as captain in the
infantry or artillery. Is it?”
“Well, that’s a rather embarrassing question. But perhaps we could say
that it’s not _exactly_ the same thing, although it is very nearly.”
“Oh, of course, you did the _real_ fighting. It was wonderful how you
risked your life and I’m proud of you, oh, ever so proud. I’ve had a
service flag in the window ever since you left, with only one star--for
you. Howard wanted me to have two stars, but, of course, he stayed at
home. He’s one of the organizers now of the Trick Track Tribe. Or is
that a secret, Mr. Hamilton? He’ll be asking Robert to join anyway.”
“It’s probably a pretty open secret.”
“Trick Track Tribe? What an odd name. Trick Track. It sounds like the
cocking of an old-fashioned musket. Trick Track.”
“That’s just what it’s supposed to be. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s to
revive the old Southern chivalry and maintain the superiority of the
white race and promote Americanism.”
“That sounds pretty ambitious,” laughed Robert. “I really didn’t know
the white race was in danger. But if the Trick Tracks can do all that,
I’m for them.”
Now the car was rounding a corner and the next minute the Hamilton
residence appeared at the end of a row of tall trees. There were the
familiar pillars, rising from the floor of the porch to the cornice;
the little grilled window just over the door, looking out from the
landing on the stairs and through which Hamilton had often peered as
a boy; the porch swing; the green shutters, breaking up the mass of
white; the lattice under the porch, behind which Hamilton had often
prowled, playing it was a bandit’s cave. The grass was as green and the
vines clambered as thickly about the sides of the home as his memory
had pictured.
“Your room, dear, is just the way you left it,” remarked Mrs. Hamilton
as the car drove up the path with a scream of the siren.
They dismounted, George springing down in time to open the door and
then bringing up the rear with the suitcases. Robert had expected to
see the colored servants at the door--Mammy Chloe, who baked memorial
corn fritters and candied yams, and her two daughters, Clorabelle
and Susy May (sometimes facetiously called Chlorine by Robert), the
housemaids, and Sam, a white-haired black of uncertain age who looked
after the horses, trimmed the grass and otherwise assisted George. But
only Mammy Chloe appeared, in her best apron, a clean, white kerchief
around her head, rocking her fat sides in happiness.
“Lor’ bless us if it ain’t Genril Robert hisself.”
“Only captain so far, Mammy Chloe,” Robert corrected her, as he took
her hands in his and looked down at her. “Have you got any of those
corn fritters ready for me? I’m sure hungry.” This tribute to her
culinary skill pleased her prodigiously.
“Corn fritters ain’t nothing to what I done fix for you all. An’ I
won’t tell you what they is. You jes’ wait till come dinner. My lan’
sakes, what all them Huns do to you? You wait! You old Mammy Chloe get
you fat again, so Miss Margaret won’t know you.”
After George had deposited the suitcases in his room and Mrs. Hamilton
had kissed Robert and closed the door gently behind her, Robert sank
down in his chair. He was tired and warm. He had almost forgotten about
his wound, yet the simple matter of traveling for thirty-six hours was
telling on him. He slowly unbuttoned his coat, unfastened his puttees
and unlaced his shoes. It would be a good half-hour before dinner.
He removed a cigarette from his pocket, lit it and began looking about
the room. It was exactly as he had left it. The same high-ceilinged
room, with its friendly ivory woodwork; the same inviting bay windows,
half hidden by vines, with the circular window seats; the same rosewood
furniture. In the center of one wall was the fireplace and on either
side the bookcases lined with the old textbooks and his favorite
volumes. Home again.
Robert arose, undressed and slipped into his bathrobe. He walked about
the room to verify the presence of certain objects. Yes, even his class
pipe was there. He removed his wrist watch and laid it on the dressing
table. There would just be time enough for a shower.
His spirits rose under the stinging spray and he began humming’ an old
army tune:
“_I wanna go home,
Gee, but I wanna go home.
The bullets they whistle,
The cannons they roar;
I don’t wanna go back to the trenches no more.
I wanna sail ’cross the sea
Where the Allemand can’t get at me.
Oh, my, I’m too young to die.
Gee, but I wanna go home!_”
As he rubbed himself with a bath towel he thought: “Mammy Chloe is
right at that. I am pretty thin.” He flexed his muscles and posed
before the mirror. Not so much thinner than when he had left home. He
had gained almost fifteen pounds in the army and lost it all and a
little more in the hospital. The scar was barely visible. He remembered
the wound that his grandfather had received in the Civil War and
wondered whether inquisitive children would ever ask him to show his
scar. He inspected his face in the mirror. Not such a bad job for
shaving on the train. He threw on his bathrobe and returned to his
room. In the closet, carefully protected by a wardrobe bag hung his
dinner clothes, perfectly pressed. After he had dressed he again stood
before the mirror. Civilian clothes felt loose. They felt as though he
had forgotten to put something on. They were careless, unrestrained,
individualistic garments.
“Gee, but I wanna go home,” he sang.
When Captain Hamilton, in conventional dinner clothes, reached the foot
of the stairs it was to shock his mother and Margaret.
“Wherever did you get those?” asked Margaret.
“Why, dear,” pleaded Mrs. Hamilton, “I thought you would surely wear
your uniform. A few friends are coming over and I’m sure they would
like to see you in uniform.”
Robert grinned.
“Oh, I don’t know. I just thought it would be rather nice to slip into
these for a change. You know I’ve worn olive-drab for two years now.”
“But they will want to see you in uniform,” urged his mother.
“And Howard is going to be here and I do want him to see you in
uniform. He’s going to wear his,” added Margaret.
“Which is all the more reason why I shouldn’t. Anyway my uniform’s too
hot, and my gabardine is in the trunk.”
But Mrs. Hamilton triumphantly pointed to the fact that George had just
returned from another trip to the depot with Robert’s locker trunks and
would carry them up in another minute, and Captain Hamilton was forced
to turn back and resume the habiliments of war. But he did it happily.
The last time, he thought.