THE PORTER'S STORY
From the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping car
had attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps best
describes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirty
years of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something which
manifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunate
stress of circumstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He was
a blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certain
dignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practical
certainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood had
come in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of the
Anglo-Saxon.
He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down to
Africa, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of the
monasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsula en route,--but
certainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man,
could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that this
big blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under too
sinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which might
be told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps most
interestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to be
the psychological moment.
"Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said--he had learned the
porter's name the day before, but half hesitated at the
familiarity--"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of the
rest of us. Will you let us know what it is?"
The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. It
could be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing human
being and he rose to the occasion.
"I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save as
possibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, but
it may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come to
think of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell my story
to intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm going
to tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdict
cannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but this
is the story:
HIS PROBLEM
Is it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what I
am?
Some time ago I read an exceedingly clever poem in some magazine,
describing the sufferings of Pierrot, that inimitable and fascinating
French modification of Harlequin, ever vainly seeking his elusive
Columbine.
"I, who am Pierrot, pity me! Oh pity me!" he cries in his helpless
desire for sympathy. Sometimes I feel like Pierrot, though my suffering
is not as his.
I hesitate, somehow, at telling my own story lest I be misunderstood or
offend in some manner. I have some courage and I'm not asking sympathy
in any weak or maudlin way. I am but stating a case, a case with a
problem attached and one which I have, so far, been unable to solve,
though the quality of my life must depend upon the nature of the
solution. I am neither whining nor begging. The story may or may not
possess a degree of interest. I wish I could tell it better.
I am thirty-four years of age, and I think I can fairly say, am well
educated; so thorough was my college course and so diligently did I
apply myself, that I excel most graduates in the extent of my real
acquirements. I have forgotten neither my classics nor my mathematics
and I read and speak French and German fluently. I keep myself familiar
with what occurs in the field of literature. I chance to have a
retentive memory and my perceptions are, it seems to me, at least
reasonably keen.
I am six feet in height and, absurd as it may seem in me to say it, am a
well formed, well set up man. I have clean cut features, rather aquiline
than otherwise, grey eyes, light hair, which curls slightly, and a fair
complexion. I am an athlete, trained from boyhood, and have borne
myself, I hope, as a man should in encounters in the southwest, where
brawn has for the moment counted for more than brains. I describe myself
thus directly, but not conceitedly, because I want to be known as you
see me, for just what I am. To discredit myself unjustly in the least,
to tell less than the truth, would mar the justice of the premises upon
which I make my case and from which I make clear, or at least try to
make clear, the nature of the problem which has proved too difficult for
me.
I have had ambitions, hopes and love. I have known men and women. I have
become familiar with the affairs of the world. I am naturally of a
buoyant and hopeful disposition and yet I, a strong man, am to-day
perplexed, sad, almost hopeless. I have no incumbrances. A healthy,
educated man of thirty-four, with no burden of the ordinary sort, and
yet disheartened! I can imagine you saying, with an inflection of either
pity or contempt. Well, what I have told of myself is the truth and I
must take the consequences.
I was born in one of the southern states. One of my grandfathers was a
man of standing, and one of my grandmothers was, I am told, a very
beautiful woman. My father was also a man of note, a distinguished
officer in the civil war who did well in battle. My mother was a woman
of exceptional charms of person and character, but died when I was a
mere child. I was educated by a wealthy brother of my father, who
chanced to take an interest in me. Until the age of twelve I was the
almost constant companion of his own son.
At the age of twelve, my cousin and I who had been so much together were
separated, he going to a school in one of the great cities, I to one in
a smaller town. After graduation at school we were each sent to college.
My cousin went to one of the great universities and I was sent to one of
the smaller colleges of the country, but one where the curriculum was
extensive and the requirements severe. I studied hard and graduated in
the same year with my cousin. We met again at the old homestead and I
found that, because of my close attention to my studies, perhaps, too,
because of a somewhat quicker apprehension, I excelled him decidedly in
acquirements. We passed a not unpleasant month together, hunting and
fishing in the old way, but, somehow, it was not the same as it had been
when we were boys together. I noticed a change in my cousin's demeanor
toward me. His manner was not unkindly, for he is one of the best and
most generous of men, but there was a certain change, a certain distance
of air which made it plain to me that we could never again be to each
other what we had been as boys in the past. We separated each to go out
into the world to struggle for himself; I, alone; he, with the
influential family and a host of influential friends behind him. I have
never seen him since.
Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be to
adopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it,
but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital which
might enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without much
difficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a course
of three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thus
obtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studied
diligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I was
clerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but the
distinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to say
that I was the most thorough student he had ever assisted and prophesied
flatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with compliments
from the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at once
established an office in a town of about two thousand people, where the
outlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in the
little city, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. I
knew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries,
possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men to
an exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them important
ones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as a
public speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform or
political rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. My
future seemed assured. I found friends among the best people, my income
was more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was accumulating
books of the world's literature. My law library was the best in the
county. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright to
me.
One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a young
man who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did what
I could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperament
and tastes, and his associates and friends had all been different from
mine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed a
surprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longer
received invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings. No reason was
given me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by my
former friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as much
importance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed their
legal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only an
occasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me a
livelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions I
gave up. I closed my office and left the city.
It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hoped
to become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.
I drifted east and found myself in Boston. There I met two young men,
seniors in college, but poor, who had engaged themselves as men of all
work--partly as a midsummer lark, but chiefly for the money to be
gained--to work in a great summer hotel in the mountains. A third man
was needed, and they asked me if I would not go with them. I was ready
for anything, and accepted the invitation.
The hotel was one of the largest in the mountains, and the numerous
guests included wealthy and distinguished families from all parts of the
country. That we were college-bred men and had students' ambitions also
became known, and it came to pass, at last, that our duties for the day
accomplished, we appeared in evening dress, and joined in the evening's
amusements, laughed at in a friendly way, and jesting ourselves in
return.
I cannot go into further details of the happenings of that summer at the
mountain resort, where all was healthy and healthful except my own
mentality, which had been made what it was by conditions over which I
had no control. I prayed, and prayer, while it strengthened me, did not
help me bow to the injustice under which I suffered. I thought and tried
to find what a logical brain, a broad view of things, and a keen
intelligence might do, and that did not help me. Ever, ever came the
same inevitable deduction. I was a hunted wretch, pursued by a social
and partly natural law, driven ever into a cul de sac, into a side gorge
in the mountains of life, a short gorge with precipitous walls on either
side and ending suddenly and briefly in a wall as perpendicular and high
and smooth. True, I had for the moment escaped, for the instant I was
free, but I knew that soon, inevitably, the cordon would hem me in and
that I would be at the mercy of the pursuers--the unmalicious but
instinctively impelled pursuers. Then came a respite from the torturing
thought, a forgetfulness for the moment, a forgetfulness to be paid for.
I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conducted
individuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spots
of the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewd
capitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I met
all, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet,
knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good ones
made me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little children
leaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman who
thought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go out
alone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. There
was one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was one
among those--may the good God ever have her in his keeping--who, from no
thought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happiness
and also such sorrow as few men know.
Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thought
deep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I held
communion on lake and shore in that enchanted summer with the woman who
held my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfully
guilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. I
drifted and drifted. I cannot analyze my own feelings at the time. I
knew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, even
then, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into a
church and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.
Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky it
disappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds part
slowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leaving
blackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things,
and then came silence. There was only the information that one fair
guest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.
Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor,
principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am a
wanderer. What am I to do? I am a man without a country as much as was
poor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan,
I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without a
country because my country will not give me what it gives to other men.
I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects me
and with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing in
common. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me by
inches.
I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some African
chieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors?
I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying law
of God and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of the
different races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. A
negro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is to
me as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All my
thoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, to
sympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have him
help me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am a
white man. But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pity
me, oh pity me."
As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all the
story. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way I
have traveled.
Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freight
train on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, named
me Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing at
my pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a book
in my hand.
One day, while we were waiting on a siding near a small station, a tramp
recognized me. He was a man I had defended in court for some small
offense, in the distant western town where I practiced law. I had him
kept out of jail by my pleading. I had believed that his arrest and
trial would be a lesson such as would keep him from the idle and vicious
ways he was just beginning to follow at that time.
The tramp rode a few miles on our train. After that the train crew
ceased to consort with me. They looked sullenly upon me and muttered
among themselves when I came near them. The engineer looked the other
way when he had to speak to me. His face was grim and sad, as well, but
he looked the other way. There was no outbreak, but I could not endure
my position. I left the railroad work as soon as our train arrived in
the city where the company made its headquarters.
Once again, some years after the railway episode, I thought to work on a
street-car line. I applied for the position of motorman, and was well
received by the superintendent to whom I reported after he had in reply
to my letter, asked me to call at his office. I gave, at his request,
the names of a half a dozen responsible men as references as to my
character and responsibility. I arranged with a security company for
giving the required bond, and was told that as soon as favorable answers
were received from my friends I would be put to practice work; I felt
assured of a position, laborious and nerve testing, it is true, but
respectable and reasonable well paid.
After two weeks I called upon the superintendent again, although he had
not written, as he promised to do, after hearing from the men I had
referred him to.
He was a hard man of business, that superintendent, but he spoke to me
kindly, regretfully, almost shamefacedly. The testimonials to my
character and life were, he said, very flattering to me. No one had said
anything but good of me. But it would never do, he explained, for me to
be set to work on the road. The men would be sure to find out the truth
about me, sooner or later, and then the officials of the road would be
blamed. There was sure to be trouble. Personally, the superintendent
had, he said, no "race prejudices," but he could not answer for the
feelings of others less free from the influence of tradition and natural
aversion.
I stood silent while the man of my own race calmly, even tenderly, waved
me back into the ranks of a people of whose blood a few drops only run
in my veins. So another gate was closed. So I was once more forced into
the narrow bounds of an invisible prison.
My mother had one-sixteenth of negro blood in her veins and was a slave.
Now what explains my most unfortunate condition? Is it because this
ancestor had this trace of the blood of another race, and that I have
one thirty-second part of the same blood, though I chance to be whiter
than most Caucasians? Well, God made the races. Is it because this
ancestor was a slave? So were the Britons slaves of the Romans. My
father was a descendant of some slave. He is not responsible for the
chase of his mother in ancient woods and for her capture by some fierce
avaricious Roman legionary who knew the value of a breeder of sturdy
Teutonic brawn in making Roman highways. It was through no fault of mine
that the Arab trader chased my great-great-great-grandmother or
grandfather down in the jungle and sold her to the sallow-faced slave
dealer who brought her to America. The blood of my father's ancestors
became intermixed with that of the captors. My father's race became
free. So has mine. The difference is but in time. Why is it, then, that
I am as I am? I do not want to become a barber, nor a porter, nor an
attendant in a Turkish bath, nor to serve other men. I do not want to
work upon the streets, though I am not afraid of manual labor nor do I
count it dishonorable. But I am a cultivated man, a man skilled in a
profession where intelligence and training are required, a man of moral
character and refined tastes. I am starving for the companionship of my
own kind. Brain and heart, I am starving. What am I to do?
Pity me, good people, Oh, pity me!