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Title: The fire in the flint

Author: Walter F. White

Release Date: January 25, 2023 [eBook #69877]

Language: English

Produced by: Neal Caren. This file was derived from images generously
             made available by the University of Michigan through the
             HathiTrust.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRE IN THE FLINT ***




                                  
                       THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
                                  
                          WALTER F. WHITE
                                  
                                  
                              NEW YORK
                         ALFRED • A • KNOPF
                              MCMXXIV
                                  
             COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
                     PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1924
                                  
              SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND
          BY THE VAILBALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON N. Y.
       PAPER FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK.
                                  
            MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
                                  
                             TO MY WIFE
                                  
      "The fire in the flint never shows until it is struck."
                      —_Old English Proverb._
                                  
                       THE FIRE IN THE FLINT




                            CHAPTER I


KENNETH HARPER gazed slowly around his office. A smile of
satisfaction wreathed his face, reflecting his inward contentment.
He felt like a runner who sees ahead of him the coveted goal towards
which he has been straining through many gruelling miles. Kenneth
was tired but he gave no thought to his weariness. Two weeks of hard
work, countless annoyances, seemingly infinite delays—all were now
forgotten in the warm glow which pervaded his being. He, Kenneth B.
Harper, M.D., was now ready to receive the stream of patients he
felt sure was coming.

He walked around the room and fingered with almost loving tenderness
the newly installed apparatus. He adjusted and readjusted the
examining-table of shining nickel and white enamel which had arrived
that morning from New York. He arranged again the black leather pads
and cushions. With his handkerchief he wiped imaginary spots of dust
from the plate glass door and shelves of the instrument case, though
his sister Mamie had polished them but half an hour before until
they shone with crystal clearness. Instrument after instrument he
fondled with the air of a connoisseur examining a rare bit of
porcelain. He fingered critically their various parts to see if all
were in perfect condition. He tore a stamp from an old letter and
placed it under the lens of the expensive microscope adjusting and
readjusting until every feature of the stamp stood out clearly even
to the most infinite detail. He raised and lowered half a dozen
times or more the lid of the nickelled sterilizer. He set at various
angles the white screen which surrounded the examining-table, viewed
it each time from different corners of the room, and rearranged it
until it was set just right. He ran his hand over the card index
files in his small desk. He looked at the clean white cards with the
tabs on them—the cards which, though innocent now of writing, he
hoped and expected would soon be filled with the names of
innumerable sick people he was treating.

His eye caught what he thought was a pucker in the
grey-and-blue-chequered linoleum which covered the floor. He went
over and moved the sectional bookcase containing his volumes on
obstetrics, on gynæcology, on _materia medica_, on the diseases he
knew he would treat as a general practitioner of medicine in so
small a place as Central City. No, that wasn't a pucker—it was only
the light from the window striking it at that angle.

"Dr. Kenneth B. Harper, Physician and Surgeon." He spelled out the
letters which were painted on the upper panes of the two windows
facing on State Street. It thrilled him that eight years of hard
work had ended and he now was at the point in his life towards which
he had longingly looked all those years. Casting his eyes again
around the office, he went into the adjoining reception room.

Kenneth threw himself in utter exhaustion into one of the
comfortable arm-chairs there. His hands, long-fingered, tapering to
slender points, the hands of a pianist, an artist, whether of brush
or chisel or scalpel, hung over the sides in languid fashion. He was
without coat or vest. His shirt-sleeves were rolled back above his
elbows, revealing strongly muscled dark brown arms. His face was of
the same richly coloured brown. His mouth was sensitively shaped
with evenly matched strong white teeth. The eyes too were brown,
usually sober and serious, but flashing into a broad and friendly
smile when there was occasion for it. Brushed straight back from the
broad forehead was a mass of wavy hair, brown also but of a deeper
shade, almost black. The chin was well shaped.

As he lounged in the chair and looked around the reception room, he
appeared to be of medium height, rather well-proportioned, almost
stocky. Three years of baseball and football, and nearly two years
of army life with all its hardships, had thickened up the once
rather slender figure and had given to the face a more mature
appearance, different from the youthful, almost callow look he had
worn when his diploma had been handed him at the end of his college
course.

The reception room was as pleasing to him as he sat there as had
been the private office. There were three or four more chairs like
the one in which he sat. There was a couch to match. The wall-paper
was a subdued tan, serving as an excellent background for four
brightly coloured reproductions of good pictures. Their brightness
was matched by a vase of deep blue that stood on the table. Beside
the vase were two rows of magazines placed there for perusal by his
patients as they waited admittance to the more austere room beyond.
It was comfortable. It was in good taste—almost too good taste,
Kenneth thought, for a place like Central City in a section like the
southernmost part of Georgia. Some of the country folks and even
those in town would probably say it was too plain—didn't have enough
colour about it. Oh, well, that wouldn't matter, Kenneth thought.
They wouldn't have to live there. Most of them would hardly notice
it, if they paid any attention at all to relatively minor and
unimportant things like colour schemes.

Kenneth felt that he had good reason to feel content with the
present outlook. He lighted a cigarette and settled himself more
comfortably in the deep chair and let his mind wander over the long
trail he had covered. He thought of the eight happy years he had
spent at Atlanta University—four of high school and four of college.
He remembered gratefully the hours of companionship with those men
and women who had left comfortable homes and friends in the North to
give their lives to the education of coloured boys and girls in
Georgia. They were so human—so sincere—so genuinely anxious to help.
It wasn't easy for them to do it, either, for it meant ostracism and
all its attendant unpleasantnesses to teach coloured children in
Georgia anything other than industrial courses. And they were so
different from the white folks he knew in Central City. Here he had
always been made to feel that because he was a "nigger" he was
predestined to inferiority. But there at Atlanta they had treated
him like a human being. He was glad he had gone to Atlanta
University. It had made him realize that all white folks weren't
bad—that there were decent ones, after all.

And then medical school in the North! How eagerly he had looked
forward to it! The bustle, the air of alert and eager determination,
the lovely old ivied walls of the buildings where he attended
classes. He laughed softly to himself as he remembered how terribly
lonesome he had been that first day when as an ignorant country boy
he found himself really at a Northern school. That had been a hard
night to get through. Everybody had seemed so intent on doing
something that was interesting, going so rapidly towards the places
where those interesting things were to take place, greeting old
friends and acquaintances affectionately and with all the boisterous
bonhomie that only youth, and college youth at that, seem to be able
to master. It had been a bitter pill for him to swallow that he
alone of all that seething, noisy, tremendous mass of students, was
alone—without friend or acquaintance—the one lonely figure of the
thousands around him.

That hadn't lasted long though. Good old Bill Van Vleet! That's what
having family and money and prestige behind you did for a fellow! It
was a mighty welcome thing when old Bill came to him there as he sat
dejectedly that second morning on the campus and roused him out of
his gloom. And then the four years when Bill had been his closest
friend. He had been one wonderful free soul that knew no line of
caste or race.

His friendship with Van Vleet seemed to Kenneth now almost like the
memory of a pleasant dream on awaking. Even then it had often seemed
but a fleeting, evanescent experience a wholly temporary arrangement
that was intended to last only through the four years of medical
school. Those times when Bill had invited him to spend Christmas
holidays at his home they had been hard invitations to get out of.
Bill had been sincere enough, no doubt of that. But Bill's
father—his mother—their friends—would they—old Pennsylvania Dutch
family that they were would they be as glad to welcome a Negro into
their home? He had always been afraid to take the chance of finding
that they wouldn't. Decent enough had they been when Bill introduced
him to them on one of their visits to Philadelphia. But—and this was
a big "but"—there was a real difference between being nice to a
coloured friend of Bill's at school and treating that same fellow
decently in their own home. Kenneth was conscious of a vague feeling
even now that he had not treated them fairly in judging them by the
white people of Central City. Yet, white folks were white folks—and
that's that! Hadn't his father always told him that the best way to
get along with white people was to stay away from them and let them
alone as much as possible?

Through his mind passed memories of the many conversations he had
had with his father on that subject. Especially that talk together
before he had gone away to medical school. He didn't know then it
was the last time he would see his father alive. He had had no way
of knowing that his father, always so rugged, so buoyantly healthy,
so uncomplaining, would die of appendicitis while he, Kenneth, was
in France. If he had only been at home!

He'd have known it wasn't a case of plain cramps, as that old
fossil, Dr. Bennett, had called it. What was the exact way in which
his father had put his philosophy of life in the South during that
last talk they had had together? It had run like this: Any Negro can
get along without trouble in the South if he only attends to his own
business. It was unfortunate, mighty unpleasant and uncomfortable at
times, that coloured people, no matter what their standing, had to
ride in Jim Crow cars, couldn't vote, couldn't use the public
libraries and all those other things. Lynching, too, was bad. But
only bad Negroes ever got lynched. And, after all, those things
weren't all of life. Booker Washington was right. And the others who
were always howling about rights were wrong. Get a trade or a
profession. Get a home. Get some property. Get a bank account. Do
something! Be somebody! And then, when enough Negroes had reached
that stage, the ballot and all the other things now denied them
would come. White folks then would see that the Negro was deserving
of those rights and privileges and would freely, gladly give them to
him without his asking for them. That was the way he felt. When Bill
Van Vleet had urged him to go with him to dinners or the theatre, he
had had always some excuse that Bill had to accept whether he had
believed it or not. Good Old Bill! They never knew during those more
or less happy days what was in store for them both.

Neither of them had known that the German Army was going to sweep
down through Belgium. Nor did they know that Bill was fated to end
his short but brilliant career as an aviator in a blazing,
spectacular descent behind the German lines, the lucky shot of a
German anti-aircraft gun.

Graduation. The diploma which gave him the right to call himself
"Dr. Kenneth B. Harper." And then that stormy, yet advantageous year
in New York at Bellevue. Hadn't they raised sand at his, a Negro's
presumption in seeking that interneship at Bellevue! He'd almost
lost out. No Negro interne had ever been there before. If it hadn't
been for Dr. Cox, to whom he had had a letter of introduction from
his old professor of pathology at school, he never would have got
the chance. But it had been worth it.

Kenneth lighted another cigarette and draped his legs over the arm
of the chair. It wasn't bad at all to think of the things he had
gone through—now that they were over. Especially the army. Out of
Bellevue one week when the chance came to go to the Negro officers'
training-camp at Des Moines. First lieutenant's bars in the medical
corps. Then the long months of training and hard work at Camp Upton,
relieved by occasional pleasant trips to New York. Lucky he'd been
assigned to the 367th of the 92nd Division. Good to be near a real
town like New York.

That had been some exciting ride across. And then the Meuse, the
Argonne, then Metz. God, but that was a terrible nightmare! Right
back of the lines had he been assigned. Men with arms and legs shot
off. Some torn to pieces by shrapnel. Some burned horribly by
mustard gas. The worse night had been when the Germans made that
sudden attack at the Meuse. For five days they had been fighting and
working. That night he had almost broken down. How he had cursed
war! And those who made war. And the civilization that permitted
war—even made it necessary. Never again for him! Seemed like a
horrible dream—a nightmare worse than any he had ever known as a boy
when he'd eaten green apples or too much mince pie.

That awful experience he had soon relegated to the background of his
mind. Especially when he was spending those blessed six months at
the Sorbonne. That had been another hard job to put over. They
didn't want any Negroes staying in France. They'd howled and they'd
brought up miles of red tape. But he had ignored the howls and
unwound the red tape.

And now, Central City again. It was good to get back.
Four—eight—sixteen years had he spent in preparation. Now he was all
ready to get to work at his profession. For a time he'd have to do
general practising. Had to make money. Then he'd specialize in
surgery—major surgery. Soon's he got enough money ahead, he'd build
a sanitarium. Make of it as modern a hospital as he could afford.
He'd draw on all of South Georgia for his patients. Nearest one now
is Atlanta. All South Georgia—most of Florida—even from Alabama. Ten
years from now he'd have a place known and patronized by all the
coloured people in the South. Something like the Mayo Brothers up in
Rochester, Minnesota!

"Pretty nifty, eh, Ken?"

Kenneth, aroused suddenly from his retrospection and day-dreams,
jumped at the unexpected voice behind him. It was his younger
brother, Bob. He laughed a little shamefacedly at his having been
startled. Without waiting for a reply, Bob entered the room and sat
on the edge of the table facing Kenneth.

"Yep! Things are shaping up rather nicely. Everything's here now but
the patients. And those'll be coming along pretty soon, I believe,"
replied Kenneth confidently. He went on talking enthusiastically of
the castles in the air he had been building when Bob entered the
room—of the hospital he was going to erect—how he planned attending
the State Medical Convention every year to form contracts with other
coloured doctors of Georgia—how he was intending to visit during the
coming year all the coloured physicians within a radius of a hundred
miles of Central City to enlist their support. He discussed the
question of a name for the hospital. How would Harper's Sanitarium
sound? Or would the Central City Infirmary be better? Or the
Hospital of South Georgia?

On and on Kenneth rambled, talking half to Bob, half in audible
continuation of his reverie before Bob had entered. But Bob wasn't
listening to him. On his face was the usual half-moody,
half-discontented expression which Kenneth knew so well. Bob was
looking down the dusty expanse of the road which bore rather poorly
the imposing title of State Street. The house was located at the
corner of Lee and State Streets. It was set back about fifty feet
from the streets, and the yard outside showed the work of one who
loved flowers. There was an expanse of smooth lawn, dotted here and
there with flowering beds of pansies, of nasturtiums. There were
several abundantly laden rose-bushes and two of "cape jessamine"
that filled the air with an intoxicating, almost cloying sweetness.

Though it was a balmy October afternoon, the air languorous and
caressing, Bob shared none of the atmosphere's lazy contentment. All
this riot of colours and odours served in no manner to remove from
his face the dissatisfied look that covered it. He listened to
Kenneth's rhapsodies of what he intended accomplishing with what was
almost a grimace of distaste. He was taller than Kenneth, of
slighter build, but of the same rich colouring of skin and with the
same hair and features.

In spite of these physical resemblances between the two brothers,
there was a more intangible difference which clearly distinguished
the two. Kenneth was more phlegmatic, more of a philosophic turn of
mind, more content with his lot, able to forget himself in his work,
and when that was finished, in his books. Bob, on the other hand,
was of a highly sensitized nature, more analytical of mind, more
easily roused to passion and anger. This tendency had been developed
since the death of his father just before he completed his freshman
year at Atlanta. The death had necessitated his leaving school and
returning to Central City to act as administrator of his father's
estate. His experiences in accomplishing this task had not been
pleasant ones. He had been forced to deal with the tricksters that
infested the town. He had come in contact with all the chicanery,
the petty thievery, the padded accounts, that only petty minds can
devise. The utter impotence he had felt in having no legal redress
as a Negro had embittered him. Joe Harper, their father, had been
exceedingly careful in keeping account of all bills owed and due
him. Yet Bob had been forced to pay a number of bills of which he
could find no record in his father's neatly kept papers. These had
aggregated somewhere between three and four thousand dollars.
Various white merchants of the town claimed that Joe Harper, his
father, owed them. Bob knew they were lying. Yet he could do
nothing. No court in South Georgia would have listened to his side
of the story or paid more than perfunctory attention to him. It was
a case of a white man's word against a Negro's, and a verdict
against the Negro was sure even before the case was opened.

Kenneth, on the other hand, had been a favourite of their quiet,
almost taciturn father. Always filled with ambition for his
children, Joe Harper had furnished Kenneth, as liberally as he could
afford, the money necessary for him to get the medical education he
wanted. He had not been a rich man but he had been comfortably fixed
financially. Starting out as a carpenter doing odd jobs around
Central City, he had gradually expanded his activities to the
building of small houses and later to larger homes and business
buildings. Most of the two-story buildings that lined Lee Street in
the business section of Central City had been built by him. White
and coloured alike knew that when Joe Harper took a contract, it
would be done right. Aided by a frugal and economical wife, he had
purchased real estate and, though the profits had been slow and
small, had managed with his wife to accumulate during their
thirty-five years of married life between twenty and twenty-five
thousand dollars which he left at his death to his wife and three
children.

Kenneth had been furnished with the best that his father could
afford, while Bob, some ten years younger than his brother, had had
to wait until Kenneth finished school before he could begin his
course. Bob felt no jealousy of his favoured brother, yet the
experiences that had been his in Central City while Kenneth was away
had tended towards a bitterness which frequently found expression on
his face. He was the natural rebel, revolt was a part of his creed.
Kenneth was the natural pacifist—he never bothered trouble until
trouble bothered him. Even then, if he could avoid it, he always
did. It was not strange, therefore, that he should have come home
believing implicitly that his father was right when he had said
Kenneth could get along without trouble in Central City as long as
he attended to his own business.

Kenneth talked on and on, unfolding the plans he had made for the
extending of the influence of his hospital throughout the South.
Bob, occupied with his own thoughts, heard but little of it.
Suddenly he interrupted Kenneth with a sharply put question.

"Ken, why did you come back to Central City?" he asked. He went on
without waiting for a reply. "If I had had your chances of studying
up North and in France, and living where you don't have to be A
afraid of getting into trouble with Crackers all the time, I'd
rather've done anything else than to come back to this rotten place
to live the rest of my life."

Kenneth laughed easily, almost as though a five-year-old had asked
some exceedingly foolish question.

"Why did I come back?" he repeated. "That's easy. I came back
because I can make more money here than anywhere else."

"But that isn't the most important thing in life!" Bob exclaimed.

"Maybe not the most important," Kenneth laughed, "but a mighty
convenient article to have lying around. I came back here where the
bulk of coloured people live and where they make money off their
crops and where there won't be much trouble for me to build up a big
practice."

"That's an old argument," retorted Bob. "Nearly a million coloured
people went North during the war and they're making money there hand
over fist. You could make just as much money, if not more, in a city
like Detroit or Cleveland or New York, and you wouldn't have to be
always afraid you've given offence to some of these damned ignorant
Crackers down here."

"Oh, I suppose I could've made money there. Dr. Cox at Bellevue told
me I ought to stay there in New York and practise in Harlem, but I
wanted to come back home. I can do more good here, both for myself
and for the coloured people, than I could up there." He paused and
then asserted confidently: "And I don't think I'll have any trouble
down here. Papa got along all right here in this town for more than
fifty years, and I reckon I can do it too."

"But, Ken," Bob protested, "the way things were when he came along
are a lot different from the way they are now. Just yesterday Old
Man Mygatt down to the bank got mad and told me I was an ‘impudent
young nigger that needed to be taught my place' because I called his
hand on a note he claimed papa owed the bank. He knew I knew he was
lying, and that's what made him so mad. They're already saying I'm
not a ‘good nigger' like papa was and that education has spoiled me
into thinking I'm as good as they are. Good Lord, if I wasn't any
better than these ignorant Crackers in this town, I'd go out and
jump in the river."

Bob was working himself into a temper. Kenneth interrupted him with
a good-natured smile as he said:

"Bob, you're getting too pessimistic. You've been reading too many
of these coloured newspapers published in New York and Chicago and
these societies that're always playing up some lynching or other
trouble down here—"

"What if I have? I don't need to read them to know that things are
much worse to-day than they were a few years back. You haven't lived
down here for nearly nine years and you don't know how things are
changed."

"It's you who have changed—not conditions so much!" Kenneth
answered. "What if there are mean white folks? There are lots of
other white people who want to see the Negro succeed. Only this
morning Dr. Bennett told mamma he was glad I came back and he'd do
what he could to help me. And there're lots more like"

"That's nice of Dr. Bennett," interjected Bob. "He can afford to
talk big—he's got the practice of this town sewed up. And, most of
all, he's a white man. Suppose some of these poor whites get it into
their heads to make trouble because you're getting too
prosperous—what then? Dr. Bennett and all the rest of the good white
folks around here can't help you!"

"Oh, yes, they can," Kenneth observed with the same confident smile.
"Judge Stevenson and Roy Ewing and Mr. Baird at the Bank of Central
City and a lot others run this town and they aren't going to let any
decent coloured man be bothered. Why, I'll have a cinch around this
part of Georgia! There aren't more than half a dozen coloured
doctors in all this part of the country who've had a decent medical
education and training. All they know is ladling out pills and fake
panaceas. In a few years I'll be able to give up general practising
and give all my time to major surgery. I'll handle pretty nearly
everything in this part of the State. And then you'll see I'm
right!"

"Have it your own way," retorted Bob. "But I'm telling you again,
you haven't been living down here for eight or nine years and you
don't know. When all these Negroes were going North, some of these
same ‘good white folks' you're depending on started talking about
‘putting niggers in their place' when they couldn't get servants and
field hands. You'll find things a lot different from the way they
were when you went up North to school."

"What're you boys fussing about? What's the trouble?"

Bob and Kenneth turned at the voice from the doorway behind them. It
was their mother. "Nothing, mamma, only Bob's got a fit of the blues
to-day."

Mrs. Harper came in and looked from one to the other of her sons.
She was a buxom, pleasant-faced woman of fifty-odd years, her hair
once brown now flecked with grey. She wiped the perspiration from
her forehead with the corner of her apron, announcing meanwhile that
supper was ready. As he rose, Kenneth continued his explanation of
their conversation.

"Bob's seeing things like a kid in the dark. He thinks I'll not be
able to do the things I came back here to accomplish. Thinks the
Crackers won't let me! I'm going to solve my own problem, do as much
good as I can, make as much money as I can! If every Negro in
America did the same thing, there wouldn't be any race problem."

Mrs. Harper took an arm of each of her sons and led them into the
dining-room where their sister Mamie was putting supper on the
table.

"You're right, Kenneth," Mrs. Harper remarked as she sat down at the
table. "Your father and I got along here together in Central City
without a bit of trouble for thirty-five years, and I reckon you can
do it too."

"But, mamma," Bob protested, "I've been telling Ken things are not
what they were when you and papa came along. Why—"

"Let's forget the race problem for a while," Kenneth interrupted.
"I'm too hungry and tired to talk about it now."

"That's right," was Mrs. Harper's comment. "Draw your chairs up to
the table. You're not goin' to have any trouble here in town, Ken,
and we're mighty glad you came back. Mrs. Amos was in this afternoon
and she tells me they're having some trouble out near Ashland
between the coloured sharecroppers and their landlords, but that'll
blow overjust as it's always done."

"What's the trouble out there?" asked Kenneth. He wasn't much
interested, for he could hear Mamie, in the kitchen beyond, singing
some popular air to the accompaniment of chicken-frying.

"It's a case where coloured farmers claim they can't get fair
settlements from their landlords for their crops at the end of the
year," explained his mother.

"Why don't they hire a lawyer?" Kenneth asked, with little interest.

"That shows you've forgotten all about things in the South," said
Bob with mingled triumph and despair at his brother's ignorance.
"There isn't a white lawyer in Georgia who'd take a case like this.
In the first place, the courts would be against him because his
client's a Negro, and in the second place, he'd have to buck this
combination of landlords, storekeepers, and bankers who are getting
rich robbing Negroes. If a white lawyer took a case of a Negro
share-cropper, he'd either sell out to the landlord or be scared to
death before he ever got to court. And as for a Negro lawyer," here
Bob laughed sardonically, "he'd be run out of town by the Ku Klux
Klan or lynched almost before he took the case!"

"Oh, I don't know so much about that!" Kenneth replied. "There are
landlords, without doubt, who rob their tenants, but after all there
are only a few of them. And furthermore," he declared as Mamie
entered the room with a platter of fried chicken in one hand and a
plate of hot biscuits in the other, "supper looks just a little bit
more interesting to me right now than landlords, tenants, or
problems of any kind."

Mamie divested herself of her apron and sat down to the table. She
was an attractive girl of twenty-two or twenty-three, more slender
than Bob, and about Kenneth's height. Her hair was darker than that
of either of her brothers, was parted in the middle and brushed down
hard on either side. Though not a pretty girl, she had an air about
her as though she was happy because of the sheer joy of living. She
had graduated from Atlanta University two years before, and with two
other girls had been teaching the seven grades in the little
ramshackle building that served as a coloured school in the town.
That hard work had not as yet begun to tell on her. She seemed
filled with buoyant good health and blessed with a lively good
nature. Yet she too was inclined to spells of depression like Bob's.
She resembled him more nearly than Kenneth. As has every comely
coloured girl in towns of the South like Central City, she had had
many repulsive experiences when she had to fight with might and main
to ward off unwelcome attentions—both of the men of her own race and
of white men. Especially had this been true since the death of her
father. Often her face overclouded as she thought of them. She, like
Bob, felt always as though they were living on top of a volcano—and
never knew when it might erupt. …

The four sat at supper. Forgotten were problems other than the
immediate one of Kenneth's in getting his practice under way.
Eagerly they talked of his plans, his prospects, his ambitions. Bob
said nothing until they began to discuss him and his plans for
returning to school the following fall, now that Kenneth was back to
complete the settling of the small details that remained in
connection with Joe Harper's estate. …

It was a happy and reasonably prosperous, intelligent family
group—one that can be duplicated many, many times in the South.




                             CHAPTER II


SITUATED in the heart of the farming section of the State, with its
fertile soil, its equable climate, its forests of pine trees,
Central City was one of the flourishing towns of South Georgia. Its
population was between eight and ten thousand, of which some four
thousand were Negroes. The wealth and prosperity of the town
depended not so much on the town itself as it did on the farmers of
the fertile lands surrounding it. To Central City they came on
Saturday afternoons to sell their cotton, their corn, their hogs and
cows, and to buy in turn sugar, cloth, coffee, farming-implements,
shoes, and amusement. It was divided into four nearly equal sections
by the intersection of the tracks of the Central of Georgia Railroad
and of the Georgia, Southern and Florida Railway. Drowsy, indolent
during the first six days of the week, Central City awoke on
Saturday morning for "goin't town" day with its bustle and
excitement and lively trade. Then the broad dustiness of Lee Street
was disturbed by the Fords and muddied wagons of farmers, white and
black. In the wagons were usually splint-bottom chairs or boards
stretched from side to side, occupied by scrawny, lanky "po' whites"
with a swarm of children to match, clad in single-piece garments,
once red in colour and now, through many washings with lye soap, an
indeterminate reddish brown. Or, if the driver was a Negro, he
generally was surrounded by just as many little black offspring,
clad also in greyish or reddish-brown garments, and scrambling over
the farm products being brought to town for sale or exchange for the
simple and few store products needed. And beside him the usually
buxom, ample-bodied wife, clad in her finest and most gaudy clothing
to celebrate the trip to town looked forward to eagerly all the
week.

Crowded were the streets with vehicles and the sidewalks with the
jostling, laughing, loudly talking throng of humans. After the
noonday whistle had blown signalling release to the hordes of whites
working in the cotton mill over beyond the tracks, the crowd was
augmented considerably, the new-comers made up of those who had
deserted the country districts, discouraged by the hard life of
farming, by rainy and unprofitable seasons, by the ravages of the
boll weevil and of landlords, both working dire distress on poor
white and black alike. Discouraged, they had come to "the city" to
work at small wages in the cotton mill.

All the trading done on these days did not take place over the
counters of the stores that lined Lee Street. In the dirty little
alleyways from off the main street, men with furtive eyes but bold
ways dispensed synthetic gin, "real" rye whisky, and more often
"white mule," as the moonshine corn whisky is called. Bottles were
tilted and held to the mouth a long time and later the scene would
be enlivened by furious but shortlived fights. Guns, knives, all
sorts of weapons appeared with miraculous speed—the quarrel was
settled, the wounded or killed removed, and the throng forgot the
incident in some new joyous and usually commonplace or sordid
adventure.

When darkness began to approach, the wagons and Fords, loaded with
merchandise for the next week, and with the children clutching
sticky and brightly coloured candies, began to rumble countrywards,
and Central City by nightfall had resumed its sleepy, indolent, and
deserted manner.

From the corner where Oglethorpe Avenue crossed Lee Street and where
stood the monument to the Confederate Dead, the business section
extended up Lee Street for three blocks. Here the street was
dignified with a narrow "park," some twenty feet in width, which ran
the length of the business thoroughfare. Over beyond the monument
lay the section of Central City where lived the more well-to-do of
its white inhabitants. Georgia Avenue was here the realm of the
socially elect. Shaded by elms, it numbered several more or less
pretentious homes of two stories, some of brick, the majority of
frame structure. Here were the homes of Roy Ewing, president of the
local Chamber of Commerce and owner of Ewing's General Merchandise
Emporium; of George Baird, president of the Bank of Central City; of
Fred Griswold, occupying the same relation to Central City's other
bank, the Smith County Farmers' Bank; of Ralph Minor, owner and
manager of the Bon Ton Store.

Here too were the wives of these men, busying themselves with their
household duties and the minor social life of the community. In the
morning they attended to the many details of housekeeping; in the
afternoon and early evening they sat on their front porches or
visited neighbours or went for a ride. Placid, uneventful, stupid
lives they led with no other interests than the petty affairs of a
small and unprogressive town.

The young girls of Central City usually in the afternoon dressed in
all their small-town finery and strolled down to Odell's Drug Store
where the young men congregated. Having consumed a frothy soda or a
gummy, sweetish sundae, they went to the Idle Hour Moving Picture
Palace to worship at the celluloid shrine of a favourite film actor,
usually of the highly romantic type. Then the stroll homewards,
always past the Central City Hotel, a two-storied frame structure
located at the corner of Lee Street and Oglethorpe Avenue opposite
the Confederate monument. In front were arm-chairs, occupied in warm
weather, which was nearly all the year round, by travelling salesmen
or other transients. Often a sidelong glance and a fleeting,
would-be-coy smile would cause one of the chair-occupants to rise as
casually as he could feign, yawn and stretch, and with affected
nonchalance stroll down Lee Street in the wake of the smiling one. …

At the other end of Lee Street from the residential section of the
well-to-do whites, past the business section of that main artery of
the town, lay that portion known generally as "Darktown." Fringing
it were several better-than-the-average homes, neat, well painted,
comfortable-looking, fronted with smooth lawns and tidy, colourful
flower-beds. It was one of these at the corner of Lee and State
Streets that the Harpers owned and occupied.

After crossing State Street, an abrupt descent was taken by Lee
Street. Here lived in squalor and filth and abject poverty the
poorer class of Negroes. The streets were winding, unpaved lanes,
veritable seas and rivers of sticky, gummy, discouraging mud in
rainy weather, into which the wheels of vehicles sank to their hubs
if the drivers of those conveyances were indiscreet enough to drive
through them. In summer these eddying wallows of muck and filth and
mud dry up and are transformed into swirling storms of germ-laden
dust when a vagrant wind sweeps over them or a vehicle drives
through them, choking the throats of unlucky passers-by, and, to the
despair of the dusky housewives, flying through open windows. The
houses that bordered these roads were for the most part of three and
four rooms, the exteriors unpainted or whitewashed, the interiors
gloomy and smelly. But few of them had sanitary arrangements, and at
the end of the little patch of ground that was back of each of them,
in which a few discouraged vegetables strove to push their heads
above the ground, there stood another unpainted structure, small,
known as "the privy." In front there was nearly always some attempt
at flower-cultivation, the tiny beds bordered with bottles, shells,
and bits of brightly coloured glass. The ugliness of the houses in
many instances was hidden in summer-time by vines and rambler roses
that covered the porches and sometimes the fronts of the houses.

Around these houses, in the streets, everywhere, there played a
seemingly innumerable horde of black and brown and yellow children,
noisy, quarrelsome, clad usually in one-piece dresses of the same
indeterminate shade of grey or red or brown that was seen on the
country children on Saturday. In front of many of the houses, there
sat on sunny days an old and bent man or ancient woman puffing the
omnipresent corn-cob pipe. …

A half-mile westward from "Darktown," and separated from it by the
Central of Georgia Railroad tracks, stood the Central City Cotton
Spinning-Mill. Clustered around its ugly red-brick walls stood
dwellings that differed but little from those of "Darktown." Here
were the same dingy, small, unsanitary, unbeautiful, and unpainted
dwellings. Here were the same muddy or dusty unpaved streets. Here
were the same squalor and poverty and filth and abject ignorance.
There were but few superficial or recognizable differences. One was
that the children wore, instead of the brown plumpness of the Negro
children, a pale, emaciated, consumptive air because of the long
hours in the lint-laden confines of the mills. The men were long,
stooped, cadaverous-appearing. The women were sallow, unattractive,
sad-looking, each usually with the end of a snuff-stick protruding
from her mouth. The children, when they played at all, did so in
listless, wearied, uninterested, and apathetic fashion. The houses
looked even more gaunt and bare than those in the quarter which
housed the poorer Negroes, for the tiny patches of ground that
fronted the houses here in "Factoryville" were but seldom planted
with flowers. More often it was trampled down until it became a
hard, red-clay, sunbaked expanse on which the children, and dogs as
emaciated and forlorn, sometimes played.

Here there was but one strong conviction, but one firm rock of faith
to which they clung—the inherent and carefully nurtured hatred of
"niggers" and a belief in their own infinite superiority over their
dark-skinned neighbours. Their gods were Tom Watson and Hoke Smith
and Tom Hardwick and other demagogic politicians and office-seekers
who came to them every two or four years and harangued them on the
necessity of their upholding white civilization by re-electing them
to office. But one appeal was needed—but one was used—and that one
always successfully. Meanwhile, their children left school and
entered the mill to work the few years that such a life gave them.
And, in the meantime, the black children they hated so-deprived by
prejudice from working in the mills, and pushed forward by often
illiterate but always ambitious black parents—went to school. …

This, in brief, was the Central City to which Kenneth had returned.
A typical Southern town—reasonably rich as wealth is measured in
that part of Georgia—rich in money and lands and cot—amazingly
ignorant in the finer things of life. Noisy, unreflective, their
wants but few and those easily satisfied. The men, self-made, with
all that that distinctly American term implies. The women concerned
only with their petty household affairs and more petty gossip and
social intercourse. But, beyond these, life was and is a closed
book. Or, more, a book that never was written or printed.

The companionship and inspiration of books was unknown. Music, even
with the omnipresent Victrola, meant only the latest bit of cheap
jazz or a Yiddish or Negro dialect song. Art, in its many forms was
considered solely for decadent, effete "furriners." Hostility would
have met the woman of the town's upper class who attempted to
exhibit any knowledge of art. Her friends would have felt that she
was trying "to put something over on them." As for any man of the
town, at best he would have been considered a "little queer in the
head," at the worst suspected of moral turpitude or perversion. But
two releases from the commonplace, monotonous life were left. The
first, liquor. Bootlegging throve. The woods around Central City
were infested with "moonshine" stills that seldom were still. The
initiated drove out to certain lonely spots, deposited under
well-known trees a jug or other container with a banknote stuck in
its mouth. One then gave a certain whistle and walked away. Soon
there would come an answering signal. One went back to the tree and
found the money gone but the container filled with a colourless or
pale-yellow liquid. … Or, the more affluent had it brought to them
in town hidden under wagon-loads of fodder or cotton.

The other and even more popular outlet of unfulfilled and suppressed
emotions was sex. Central City boasted it had no red-light district
like Macon and Savannah and Atlanta. That was true. All over the
town were protected domiciles housing slatternly women. To them went
by circuitous routes the merchants whose stores were on Lee Street.
To them went the gangs from the turpentine camps on their periodic
pilgrimages to town on pay-day. And a traveller on any of the roads
leading from the town could see, on warm evenings, automobiles
standing with engines stilled and lights dimmed on the side of the
road. Down on Harris and Butler Streets in "Darktown" were other
houses. Here were coloured women who seemed never to have to work.
Here was seldom seen a coloured man. And the children around these
houses were usually lighter in colour than in other parts of
"Darktown."

Negro fathers and mothers of comely daughters never allowed them to
go out unaccompanied after dark. There were too many dangers from
men of their own race. And even greater ones from men of the other
race. There had been too many disastrous consequences from
relaxation of vigil by certain bowed and heart-broken coloured
parents. And they had no redress at law. The laws of the State
against intermarriage saw to it that there should be none. Central
City inhabitants knew all these things. But familiarity with them
had bred the belief that they did not exist—that is, they were
thought a natural part of the town's armament against scandal. One
soon grew used to them and forgot them. The town was no worse than
any other—far better than most.

It was a rude shock to Kenneth when he began to see these things
through an entirely different pair of eyes than those with which he
had viewed them before he left Central City for the North. The
sordidness, the blatant vulgarity, the viciousness of it
all—especially the houses on Butler and Harris Streets—appalled and
sickened him. Even more was he disgusted by the complacent
acceptance of the whole miserable business by white and black alike.
On two or three occasions he tentatively mentioned it to a few of
those he had known intimately years before. Some of them laughed
indulgently—others cautioned him to leave it alone. Finding no
response, he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the whole affair
from his mind. "It was here long before I was born," he said to
himself philosophically, "it'll probably be here long after I'm
dead, and the best thing for me to do is to stick to my own business
and let other people's morals alone."




                            CHAPTER III


KENNETH came into contact with few others than his own people during
the first month after his return to Central City. The first two
weeks had been spent in getting his offices arranged with the
innumerable details of carpentering, plastering, painting, and
disposition of the equipment he had ordered in New York during the
days he had spent there on his return from France.

During the early months of 1917, when through every available means
propaganda was being used to whip into being America's war spirit,
one of the most powerful arguments heard was that of the beneficial
effect army life would have on the men who entered the service.
Newspapers and magazines were filled with it, orators in church and
theatre and hall shouted it, every signboard thrust it into the
faces of Americans. Alluring pictures were painted of the growth,
physical and mental, that would certainly follow enlistment "to make
the world safe for democracy."

To some of those who fought, such a change probably did come, but
the mental outlook of most of them was changed but little. The war
was too big a thing, too terrible and too searing a catastrophe, to
be adequately comprehended by the farmer boys, the clerks, and the
boys fresh from school who chiefly made up the fighting forces.
Their lives had been too largely confined to the narrow ways to
enable them to realize the immensity of the event into which they
had been so suddenly plunged. Their most vivid memories were of
"that damned second loot" or of _beaucoup vin blanc_ or, most
frequently, of all-too-brief adventures with the _mademoiselles_.
With the end of the war and demobilization had come the short
periods of hero-worship and then the sudden forgetfulness of those
for whom they had fought. The old narrow life began again with but
occasional revolts against the monotony of it all, against the
blasting of the high hopes held when the war was being fought. Even
these spasmodic revolts eventually petered out in vague mutterings
among men like themselves who let their inward dissatisfaction
dissipate in thin air.

More deep-rooted was this revolt among Negro ex-service men. Many of
them entered the army, not so much because they were fired with the
desire to fight for an abstract thing like world democracy, but,
because they were of a race oppressed, they entertained very
definite beliefs that service in France would mean a more decent
regime in America, when the war was over, for themselves and all
others who were classed as Negroes. Many of them, consciously or
subconsciously, had a spirit which might have been expressed like
this: "Yes, we'll fight for democracy in France, but when that's
over with we're going to expect and we're going to get some of that
same democracy for ourselves right here in America." It was because
of this spirit and determination that they submitted to the rigid
army discipline to which was often added all the contumely that race
prejudice could heap upon them.

Kenneth was of that class which thought of these things in a more
detached, more abstract, more subconscious manner. During the days
when, stationed close to the line, he treated black men brought to
the base hospital with arms and legs torn away by exploding shells,
with bodies torn and mangled by shrapnel, or with flesh seared by
mustard gas, he had inwardly cursed the so-called civilization which
not only permitted but made such carnage necessary. But when the
nightmare had ended, he rapidly forgot the nausea he had felt, and
plunged again into his beloved work. More easily than he would have
thought possible, he forgot the months of discomfort and weariness
and bloodshed. It came back to him only in fitful memories as of
some particularly horrible dream.

To Kenneth, when work grew wearisome or when memories would not
down, there came relaxation in literature, an opiate for which he
would never cease being grateful to Professor Fuller, his old
teacher at Atlanta. It was "Pop". Fuller who, with his benign and
paternal manner, his adoration of the best of the world's
literature, had sown in Kenneth the seed of that same love. He read
and reread _Jean Christophe_, finding in the adventures and
particularly in the mental processes of Rolland's hero many of his
own reactions towards life. He had read the plays of Bernard Shaw,
garnering here and there a morsel of truth though much of Shaw
eluded him. Theodore Dreiser's gloominess and sex-obsession he liked
though it often repelled him; he admired the man for his honesty and
disliked his pessimism or what seemed to him a dolorous outlook on
life. He loved the colourful romances of Hergesheimer, considering
them of little enduring value but nevertheless admiring his
descriptions of affluent life, enjoying it vicariously. Willa
Cather's _My Antonia_ he delighted in because of its simplicity and
power and beauty.

The works of D. H. Lawrence, Kenneth read with conflicting emotions.
Mystical, turgid, tortuous phrases, and meaning not always clear.
Yet he revelled in Lawrence's clear insight into the bends and
backwaters and perplexing twistings of the stream of life. Kenneth
liked best of all foreign writers Knut Hamsun. He had read many
times _Hunger, Growth of the Soil_, and other novels of the
Norwegian writer. He at times was annoyed by their lack of plot, but
more often he enjoyed them because they had none, reflecting that
life itself is never a smoothly turned and finished work of art, its
causes and effects, its tears and joys, its loves and hates neatly
dovetailing one into another as writers of fiction would have it.

So too did he satisfy his love for the sea in the novels of
Conrad—the love so many have who are born and grow to manhood far
from the sea. Kenneth loved it with an abiding and passionate love
loved, yet feared it for its relentless power and savagery—a love
such as a man would have for an alluring, yet tempestuous mistress
of fiery and uncertain temper. In Conrad's romances he lived by
proxy the life he would have liked had not fear of the water and the
circumstances of his life prevented it. Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant
he read and reread, finding in the struggles of _Emma Bovary_ and
_Nana_ and other heroines and heroes of the French realists mental
counterparts of some of the coloured men and women of his
acquaintance in their struggles against the restrictions of stupid
and crass and ignorant surroundings. The very dissimilarities of
environment and circumstance between his own acquaintances and the
characters in the novels he read, seemed to emphasize the narrowness
of his own life in the South. So does a bedridden invalid read with
keen delight the adventurous and rococo romances of Zane Grey or
Jack London.

But perhaps best of all he admired the writing of Du Bois—the fiery,
burning philippics of one of his own race against the proscriptions
of race prejudice. He read them with a curious sort of detachment—as
being something which touched him in a more or less remote way but
not as a factor in forming his own opinions as a Negro in a land
where democracy often stopped dead at the colour line.

It was in this that Kenneth's attitude towards life was most clearly
shown. His was the more philosophic viewpoint on the race question,
that problem so close to him. The proscriptions which he and others
of his race were forced to endure were inconvenient, yet they were
apparently a part of life, one of its annoyances, a thing which had
always been and probably would be for all time to come. Therefore,
he reasoned, why bother with it any more than one was forced to by
sheer necessity? Better it was for him if he attended to his own
individual problems, solved them to the best of his ability and as
circumstances would permit, and left to those who chose to do it the
agitation for the betterment of things in general. If he solved his
problems and every other Negro did the same, he often thought, then
the thing we call the race problem will be solved. Besides, he
reasoned, the whole thing is too big for one man to tackle it, and
if he does attack it, more than likely he will go down to defeat in
the attempt. And what would be gained? …

His office completed, Kenneth began the making of those contacts he
needed to secure the patients he knew were coming. In this his
mother and Mamie were of invaluable assistance. Everybody knew the
Harpers. It was a simple matter for Kenneth to renew acquaintances
broken when he had left for school in the North. He joined local
lodges of the Grand United Order of Heavenly Reapers and the Exalted
Knights of Damon. The affected mysteriousness of his initiation into
these fraternal orders, the secret grip, the passwords, the
elaborately worded rituals, all of which the other members took so
seriously, amused him, but he went through it all with an out wardly
solemn demeanour. He knew it was good business to affiliate himself
with these often absurd societies which played so large a part in
the lives of these simple and illiterate coloured folk. Along with
the strenuous emotionalism of their religion, it served as an outlet
for their naturally deep feelings. In spite of the renewal of
acquaintances, the careful campaign of winning confidence in his
ability as a physician, Kenneth found that the flood of patients did
not come as he had hoped. The coloured people of Central City had
had impressed upon them by three hundred years of slavery and that
which was called freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation was
signed, that no Negro doctor, however talented, was quite as good as
a white one. This slave mentality, Kenneth now realized, inbred upon
generation after generation of coloured folk, is the greatest
handicap from which the Negro suffers, destroying as it does that
confidence in his own ability which would enable him to meet without
fear or apology the test of modern competition.

Kenneth's youthful appearance, too, militated against him. Though
twenty-nine years old, he looked not more than a mere twenty-four or
twenty-five. "He may know his stuff and be as smart as all
outdoors," ran the usual verdict, "but I don't want no boy treating
me when I'm sick."

Perhaps the greatest factor contributing to the coloured folks' lack
of confidence in physicians of their own race was the inefficiency
of Dr. Williams, the only coloured doctor in Central City prior to
Kenneth's return. Dr. Williams belonged to the old school and moved
on the theory that when he graduated some eighteen years before from
a medical school in Alabama, the development of medical knowledge
had stopped. He fondly pictured himself as being the most prominent
personage of Central City's Negro colony, was pompous, bulbous-eyed,
and exceedingly fond of long words, especially of Latin derivation.
He made it a rule of his life never to use a word of one syllable if
one of two or more would serve as well. Active in fraternal order
circles (he was a member of nine lodges), class-leader in Central
City's largest Methodist church, arbiter supreme of local affairs in
general, he filled the rôle with what he imagined was unsurpassable
éclat. His idea of complimenting a hostess was ostentatiously to
loosen his belt along about the middle of dinner. Once he had been
introduced as the "black William Jennings Bryan," believed it
thereafter, and thought it praise of a high order.

He was one of those who say on every possible occasion: "I am kept
so terribly busy I never have a minute to myself." Like nine out of
ten who say it, Dr. Williams always repeated this stock phrase of
those who flatter themselves in this fashion—so necessary to those
of small minds who would be thought great—not because it was true,
but to enhance his pre-eminence in the eyes of his hearers—and in
his own eyes as well.

He always wore coats which resembled morning coats, known in local
parlance as "Jim-swingers." He kept his hair straightened, wore it
brushed straight back from his forehead like highly polished steel
wires, and, with pomades and hair oils liberally applied, it
glistened like the patent leather shoes which adorned his ample
feet.

His stout form filled the Ford in which he made his professional
calls, and it was a sight worth seeing as he majestically rolled
through the streets of the town bowing graciously and calling out
loud greetings to the acquaintances he espied by the way. Always his
bows to white people were twice as low and obsequious as to those of
darker skin. Until Kenneth returned, Dr. Williams had had his own
way in Central City. Through his fraternal and church connections
and lack of competition, he had made a little money, much of it
through his position as medical examiner for the lodges to which he
belonged. As long as he treated minor ailments—cuts, colic,
childbirths, and the like he had little trouble. But when more
serious maladies attacked them, the coloured population sent for the
old white physician, Dr. Bennett, instead of for Dr. Williams.

The great amount of time at his disposal irritated Kenneth. He was
like a spirited horse, champing at the bit, eager to be off. The
patronizing air of his people nettled him—caused him to reflect
somewhat bitterly that "a prophet is not without honour save in his
own country." And when one has not the gift of prophecy to foretell,
or of clairvoyance to see, what the future holds in the way of
success, one is not likely to develop a philosophic calm which
enables him to await the coming of long-desired results. He was
seated one day in his office reading when his mother entered.
Closing his book, he asked the reason for her frown.

"You remember Mrs. Bradley—Mrs. Emma Bradley down on Ashley
Street-don't you, Kenneth?" Without waiting for a reply, Mrs. Harper
went on: "Well, she's mighty sick. Jim Bradley has had Dr. Bennett
in to see what's the matter with her but he don't seem to do her
much good."

Kenneth remembered Mrs. Bradley well indeed. The most talkative
woman in Central City. It was she who had come to his mother with a
long face and dolorous manner when he as a youngster had misbehaved
in church. He had learned instinctively to connect Mrs. Bradley's
visits with excursions to the little back room accompanied by his
mother and a switch cut from the peach-tree in the back yard—a sort
of natural cause and effect. Visions of those days rose in his mind
and he imagined he could feel the sting of those switches on his
legs now.

"What seems to be the trouble with her?" he asked.

"It's some sort of stomach-trouble—she's got an awful pain in her
side. She says it can't be her appendix because she had that removed
up to Atlanta when she was operated on there for a tumour nearly
four years ago. Dr. Bennett gave her some medicine but it doesn't
help here any. Won't you run down there to see her?"

"I can't, mamma, until I am called in professionally. Dr. Bennett
won't like it. It isn't ethical. Besides, didn't Mrs. Bradley say
when I came back that she didn't want any coloured doctor fooling
with her?"

"Yes, she did, but you mustn't mind that. Just run in to see her as
a social call."

Kenneth rose and instinctively took up his bag. Remembering, he put
it down, put on his hat, kissed his mother, and walked down to
Mrs. Bradley's. Outside the gate stood Dr. Bennett's mud-splashed
buggy, sagging on one side through years of service in carrying its
owner's great bulk. Between the shafts stood the old bay horse, its
head hung dejectedly as though asleep, which Central City always
connected with its driver.

Entering the gate held by one hinge, Kenneth made his way to the
little three-room unpainted house which served as home for the
Bradleys and their six children. On knocking, the door was opened by
Dr. Bennett, who apparently was just leaving. He stood there, his
hat on, stained by many storms, its black felt turning a greenish
brown through years of service and countless rides through the red
dust of the roads leading out of Central City. Dr. Bennett himself
was large and flabby. His clothes hung on him in haphazard fashion
and looked as though they had never been subjected to the indignity
of a tailor's iron. A Sherlock Holmes, or even one less gifted,
could read on his vest with little difficulty those things which its
wearer had eaten for many meals past. Dr. Bennett's face was red
through exposure to many suns, and covered with the bristle of a
three days' growth of beard. Small eyes set close together, they
belied a bluff good humour which Dr. Bennett could easily assume
when there was occasion for it. The corners of the mouth were
stained a deep brown where tobacco juice had run down the folds of
the flesh.

Behind him stood Jim Bradley with worried face, his ashy black skin
showing the effects of remaining all night by the bedside of his
wife.

Dr. Bennett looked at Kenneth inquiringly.

"Don't you remember me, Dr. Bennett? I'm Kenneth Harper."

"Bless my soul, so it is. How're you, Ken? Le's see it's been nigh
on to eight years since you went No'th, ain't it? Heard you was back
in town. Hear you goin' to practise here. Come ‘round to see me some
time. Right glad you're here. I'll be kinder glad to get somebody to
help me treat these niggers for colic or when they get carved up in
a crap game. Hope you ain't got none of them No'then ideas 'bout
social equality while you was up there. Jus' do like your daddy did,
and you'll get along all right down here. These niggers who went
over to France and ran around with them Frenchwomen been causin' a
lot of trouble ‘round here, kickin' up a rumpus, and talkin' ‘bout
votin' and ridin' in the same car with white folks. But don't you
let them get you mixed up in it, ‘cause there'll be trouble sho's
you born if they don't shut up and git to work. Jus' do like your
daddy did, and you'll do a lot to keep the white folks' friendship."

Dr. Bennett poured forth all this gratuitous advice between
asthmatic wheezes without waiting for Kenneth to reply. He then
turned to Jim Bradley with a parting word of advice.

"Jim, keep that hot iron on Emma's stomach and give her those pills
every hour. ‘Tain't nothin' but the belly-ache. She'll be all right
in an hour or two."

Turning without another word, he half ambled, half shuffled out to
his buggy, pulled himself up into it with more puffing and wheezing,
and drove away. Jim Bradley took Kenneth's arm and led him back on
to the little porch, closing the door behind him.

"I'm pow'ful glad t' see you, Ken. My, but you done growed sence you
went up No'th! Befo' you go in dar, I want t' tell you somethin'.
Emma's been right po'ly fuh two days. Her stomach's swelled up right
sma't and she's been hollering all night. Dis mawning she don't seem
jus' right in de haid. I tol her I was gwine to ast you to come see
her, but she said she didn't want no young nigger doctah botherin'
with her. But don't you min' her. I wants you to tell me what to
do."

Kenneth smiled.

"I'll do what I can for her, Jim. But what about Dr. Bennett?"

"Dat's a' right. He give her some med'cine but it ain't done her no
good. She's too good a woman fuh me to lose her, even if she do talk
a li'l' too much. You make out like you jus' drap in to pass the
time o' day with her."

Kenneth entered the dark and ill-smelling room. Opposite the door a
fire smouldered in the fire-place, giving fitful spurts of flame
that illumined the room and then died down again. There was no
grate, the pieces of wood resting on crude andirons, blackened by
the smoke of many fires. Over the mantel there hung a cheap charcoal
reproduction of Jim and Emma in their wedding-clothes, made by some
local "artist" from an old photograph. One or two nondescript chairs
worn shiny through years of use stood before the fire. In one corner
stood a dresser on which were various bottles of medicine and of
"Madame Walker's Hair Straightener." On the floor a rug, worn
through in spots and patched with fragments of other rugs all
apparently of different colours, covered the space in front of the
bed. The rest of the floor was bare and showed evidences of a recent
vigorous scrubbing. The one window was closed tightly and covered
over with a cracked shade, long since divorced from its roller,
tacked to the upper ledge of the window.

On the bed Mrs. Bradley was rolling and tossing in great pain. Her
eyes opened slightly when Kenneth approached the bed and closed
again immediately as a new spasm of pain passed through her body.
She moaned piteously and held her hands on her side, pressing down
hard one hand over the other.

At a sign from Jim, Kenneth started to take her pulse.

"Go way from here and leave me ‘lone! Oh, Lawdy, why is I suff'rin'
this way? I jus' wish I was daid! Oh-oh-oh!"

This last as she writhed in agony. Kenneth drew back the covers,
examined Mrs. Bradley's abdomen, took her pulse. Every sign pointed
to an attack of acute appendicitis. He informed Jim of his
diagnosis.

"But, Doc, it ain't dat trouble, 'cause Emma says dat was taken out
a long time ago."

"I can't help what she says. She's got appendicitis. You go get
Dr. Bennett and tell him your wife has got to be operated on right
away or she is going to die. Get a move on you now! If it was my
case, I would operate within an hour. Stop by my house and tell Bob
to bring me an ice bag as quick as he can."

Jim hurried away to catch Dr. Bennett. Kenneth meanwhile did what he
could to relieve Mrs. Bradley's suffering. In a few minutes Bob came
with the ice bag. Then Jim returned with his face even more doleful
than it had been when Kenneth had told him how sick his wife was.

"Doc Bennett says he don't care what you do. He got kinder mad when
I told him you said it was ‘pendicitis, and tol' me dat if I
couldn't take his word, he wouldn't have anything mo' to do with
Emma. He seemed kinder mad ‘cause you said it was mo' than a
stomach-ache. Said he wa'n't goin' to let no young nigger doctor
tell him his bus'ness. So, Doc, you'll have t' do what you thinks
bes'."

"All right, I'll do it. First thing, I'm going to move your wife
over to my office. We can put her up in the spare room. Bob will
drive her over in the car. Get something around her and you'd better
come on over with her. I'll get Dr. Williams to help me."

Kenneth was jubilant at securing his first surgical case since his
return to Central City, though his pleasure was tinged with doubt as
to the ethics of the manner in which it had come to him. He did not
let that worry him very long, however, but began his preparations
for the operation.

First he telephoned to Mrs. Johnson, who, before she married and
settled down in Central City, had been a trained nurse at a coloured
hospital at Atlanta. She hurried over at once. Neat, quiet, and
efficient, she took charge immediately of preparations, sterilizing
the array of shiny instruments, preparing wads of absorbent cotton,
arranging bandages and catgut and hæmostatics.

Kenneth left all this to Mrs. Johnson, for he knew in her hands it
would be well done. He telephoned to Dr. Williams to ask that he
give the anæsthesia. In his excitement Kenneth neglected to put in
his voice the note of asking a great and unusual favour of
Dr. Williams. That eminent physician, eminent in his own eyes,
cleared his throat several times before replying, while Kenneth
waited at the other end of the line. He realized his absolute
dependence on Dr. Williams, for he knew no white doctor would assist
a Negro surgeon or even operate with a coloured assistant. There was
none other in Central City who could give the ether to Mrs. Bradley.
It made him furious that Dr. Williams should hesitate so long. At
the same time, he knew he must restrain the hot and burning words
that he would have used. The pompous one hinted of the pressure of
his own work—work that would keep him busy all day.

Into his words he injected the note of affront at being asked—he,
the coloured physician of Central City—to assist a younger man.
Especially on that man's first case. Kenneth swallowed his anger and
pride, and pleaded with Dr. Williams at least to come over. Finally,
the older physician agreed in a condescending manner to do so.

Hurrying back to his office, Kenneth found Mrs. Bradley arranged on
the table ready for the operation. Examining her, he found she was
in delirium, her eyes glazed, her abdomen hard and distended, and
she had a temperature of 105 degrees. He hastily sterilized his
hands and put on his gown and cap. As he finished his preparations,
Dr. Williams in leisurely manner strolled into the room with a
benevolent and patronizing "Howdy, Kenneth, my boy. I won't be able
to help you out after all. I've got to see some patients of my own."

He emphasized "my own," for he had heard of the manner by which
Kenneth had obtained the case of Mrs. Bradley Kenneth, pale with
anger, excited over his first real case in Central City, stared at
Dr. Williams in amazement at his words.

"But, Dr. Williams, you can't do that! Mrs. Bradley here is dying!"

The older doctor looked around patronizingly at the circle of
anxious faces. Jim Bradley, his face lined and seamed with toil, the
lines deepened in distress at the agony of his wife and the
imminence of losing her, gazed at him with dumb pleading in his
eyes, pleading without spoken words with the look of an old,
faithful dog beseeching its master. Bob looked with a malevolent
glare at his pompous sleekness, as though he would like to spring
upon him.

Mrs. Johnson plainly showed her contempt of such callousness on the
part of one who bore the title, however poorly, of physician. In
Kenneth's eyes was a commingling of eagerness and rage and
bitterness and anxiety. On Emma Bradley's face there was nothing but
the pain and agony of her delirious ravings. Dr. Williams seemed to
enjoy thoroughly his little moment of triumph. He delayed speaking
in order that it might be prolonged as much as possible. The silence
was broken by Jim Bradley.

"Doc, won't you please he'p?" he pleaded. "She's all I got!"

Kenneth could remain silent no longer. He longed to punch that fat
face and erase from it the supercilious smirk that adorned it.

"Dr. Williams," he began with cold hatred in his voice, "either you
are going to give this anæsthesia or else I'm going to go into every
church in Central City and tell exactly what you've done here
today."

Dr. Williams turned angrily on Kenneth.

"Young man, I don't allow anybody to talk to me like that-least of
all, a young whippersnapper just out of school …" he shouted.

By this time Kenneth's patience was at an end. He seized the lapels
of the other doctor's coat in one hand and thrust his clenched fist
under the nose of the now thoroughly alarmed Dr. Williams.

"Are you going to help—or aren't you?" he demanded.

The situation was becoming too uncomfortable for the older man. He
could stand Kenneth's opposition but not the ridicule which would
inevitably follow the spreading of the news that he had been beaten
up and made ridiculous by Kenneth. He swallowed—a look of indecision
passed over his face as he visibly wondered if Kenneth really dared
hit him—followed by a look of fear as Kenneth drew back his fist as
though to strike. Discretion seemed the better course to pursue he
could wait until a later and more propitious date for his revenge—he
agreed to help. A look of relief came over Jim Bradley's face. A
grin covered Bob's as he saw his brother showing at last some signs
of fighting spirit. Without further words Kenneth prepared to
operate. …

The patient under the ether, Kenneth with sure, deft strokes made an
incision and rapidly removed the appendix. Ten—twelve—fifteen
minutes, and the work was done. He found Mrs. Bradley's peritoneum
badly inflamed, the appendix swollen and about to burst. A few
hours' delay and it would have been too late. …

The next morning Mrs. Bradley's temperature had gone down to normal.
Two weeks later she was sufficiently recovered to be removed to her
home. Three weeks later she was on her feet again. Then Kenneth for
the first time in his life had no fault to find with the vigour with
which Mrs. Bradley could use her tongue. Glorying as only such a
woman can in her temporary fame at escape from death by so narrow a
margin, she went up and down the streets of the town telling how
Kenneth had saved her life. With each telling of the story it took
on more embellishments until eventually the simple operation ranked
in importance in her mind with the first sewing-up of the human
heart.

Kenneth found his practice growing. His days were filled with his
work. One man viewed his growing practice with bitterness. It was
Dr. Williams, resentful of the small figure he had cut in the
episode in Kenneth's office, which had become known all over Central
City. Of a petty and vindictive nature, he bided his time until he
could force atonement from the upstart who had so presumptuously
insulted and belittled him, the Beau Brummel, the leading physician,
the prominent coloured citizen. But Kenneth, if he knew of the
hatred in the man's heart, was supremely oblivious of it.

The morning after his operation on Mrs. Bradley, he added another to
the list of those who did not wish him well. He had taken the bottle
of alcohol containing Mrs. Bradley's appendix to Dr. Bennett to show
that worthy that he had been right, after all, in his diagnosis. He
found him seated in his office, Dr. Bennett, with little apparent
interest, glanced at the bottle.

"Humph!" he ejaculated, aiming at the cuspidor and letting fly a
thin stream of tobacco juice which accurately met its mark. "You
never can tell what's wrong with a nigger anyhow. They ain't got
nacheral diseases like white folks. A hoss doctor can treat 'em
better'n one that treats humans. I always said that a nigger's more
animal than human. …"

Kenneth had been eager to discuss the case of Mrs. Bradley with his
fellow practitioner. He had not even been asked to sit down by
Dr. Bennett. He realized for the first time that in spite of the
superiority of his medical training to that of Dr. Bennett's, the
latter did not recognize him as a qualified physician, but only as a
"nigger doctor." Making some excuse, he left the house. Dr. Bennett
turned back to the local paper he had been reading when Kenneth
entered, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the plug in his hip
pocket, grunted, and remarked: "A damned nigger telling me I don't
know medicine!"




                             CHAPTER IV


TWO months passed by. Kenneth had begun to secure more patients than
he could very well handle. Already he was kept busier than Dr.
Williams though there was enough practice for both of them. Kenneth
soon began to tire of treating minor ailments and longed to reach
the time when he could give up his general practice and devote his
time to surgery. Except for the delivery of the babies that came
with amazing rapidity in the community, he did little else than
treat colic, minor cuts, children's diseases, with an occasional
case of tuberculosis. More frequently he treated for venereal
diseases, though this latter was even more distasteful to him than
general practice while at the same time more remunerative.

A new source of practice and revenue began gradually to grow. The
main entrance to his office was on Lee Street. This door was some
fifty feet back from Lee Street, and the overhanging branches of the
elms cut off completely the light from the street lamp at the
corner. One night, as he sat reading in his office, there came a
knock at his door. Opening it, he found standing there Roy Ewing.
Ewing had inherited the general merchandise store bearing his name
from his father, was a deacon in the largest Baptist Church in
Central City, was president of the Central City Chamber of Commerce,
and was regarded as a leading citizen.

Kenneth gazed at his caller in some surprise.

"Hello, Ken. Anybody around?"

On being assured that he was alone, Ewing entered, brushing by
Kenneth to get out of the glare of the light. Kenneth followed him
into the office, meanwhile asking his caller what he could do for
him.

"Ken, I've got a little job I want you to do for me. I'm in a little
trouble. Went up to Macon last month with Bill Jackson, and we had a
little fun. I guess I took too much liquor. We went by a place Bill
knew about where there were some girls. I took a fancy to a little
girl from Atlanta who told me she had slipped away from home and her
folks thought she was visiting her cousins at Forsyth. Anyhow, I
thought everything was all right, but I'm in a bad way and I want
you to treat me. I can't go to Dr. Bennett 'cause I don't want him
to know about it. I'll take care of you all right, and if you get me
fixed up I'll pay you well."

Kenneth looked at him in amazement. Roy Ewing, acknowledged leader
of the "superior race"! He knew too much of the ways of the South,
however, to make any comment or let too much of what was going on in
his mind show on his face. He gave the treatment required. That was
Kenneth's introduction to one part of the work of a coloured
physician in the South. Many phases of life that he as a youth had
never known about or, before his larger experience in the North and
in France, had passed by him unnoticed, he now had brought to his
attention. This was one of them. He began to see more clearly that
his was going to be a difficult course to pursue. He determined anew
that as far as possible he would keep to his own affairs and meddle
not at all with the life about him.

When Ewing had gone, Kenneth returned to his reading. Hardly had he
started again when Bob came in.

"Can you stop for a few minutes, Ken? I want to talk with you."

With a look of regret at his book, Kenneth settled back and prepared
to listen.

"What world problem have you got on your mind now, Bob?"

"Don't start to kidding me, Ken. I don't see how you can shut your
eyes to how coloured people are being treated here."

"What's wrong? Everything seems to me to be getting along as well as
can be expected."

"That's because you don't go out of the house unless you are
hurrying to give somebody a pill or a dose of medicine. To-day I
came by the school to get Mamie and bring her home. You ought to see
the dump they call a school building. It's a dirty old building that
looks like it'll fall down any time a hard wind comes along. All
that's inside is a rickety table, and some hard benches with no
desks, and when it rains they have to send the children home, as the
water stands two or three inches deep on the floor. Outside of Mamie
they haven't one teacher who's gone any higher than the sixth or
seventh grade—they have to take anybody who is willing to work for
the twelve dollars a month they pay coloured teachers."

Bob's face had on it the look of discontent and resentment that was
almost growing chronic.

"Well, what can we do about it? I'm afraid you're getting to be a
regular Atlas, trying to carry all the burdens of the world on your
shoulders. I know things aren't all they ought to be, but you and I
can't solve the problems. The race problem will be here long after
we're dead and gone."

"Oh, for goodness' sake, shut up that preachy tone of long-suffering
patience, will you?—and forget your own little interests for a
while. I know you think I'm silly to let these things worry me. But
the reason why things are as bad as they are is just because the
majority of Negroes are like you—always dodging anything that may
make them unpopular with white folks. And that isn't all. There's a
gang of white boys that hang around Ewing's Store that meddle with
every coloured girl that goes by. I was in the store to-day when
Minnie Baxter passed by on her way to the post office, and that
dirty little Jim Archer said something that made me boil all over.
And it didn't help any to know that if I had said a word to him,
there would have been a fight, and I would have been beaten half to
death if I hadn't been killed."

"Yes, I've seen that, too. What we ought to do is to try and keep
these girls off of Lee Street, unless someone is with them. If we
weren't living in the South, we might do something. But here we are,
and as long as we stay here, we've got to swallow a lot of these
things and stay to ourselves."

"But, Ken, it isn't always convenient for someone to go downtown
with them. I'll tell you what let's do. Let's get the better class
of coloured people together like Reverend Wilson, Mr. Graham, Mr.
Adams, and some others, and form a Coloured Protective League here
in Central City. We can then take up these cases and see if
something can't be done to remedy them."

Bob leaned forward in his eagerness to impress Kenneth with his
idea.

"You see, if any one or two of us takes up a case we are marked men.
But if there are two or three hundred of us they can't take it out
on all of us."

"That's true. But what about the effect on the white people whose
actions you want to check? If Negroes start organizing for any
purpose whatever, there'll always be folks who'll declare they are
planning to start some trouble. No, I don't think we ought to do
anything just now. I tell you what I'll do. The next time I see Roy
Ewing, I'll speak to him and ask him to stop those fellows from
annoying our girls, The fellows can take care of themselves."

Bob rose and shrugged his shoulders and said nothing more. Kenneth
after a minute or two returned to his book.

Nothing further was said on the subject for several days. When
Mr. Ewing called the following week, Kenneth brought the matter up,
and told him what Bob had said about the boys in front of Ewing's
store.

"I've seen them doing it, Ken, and I spoke to them only to-day about
it. But you know, boys will be boys, and they haven't done any harm
to the girls. Their talk is a little rough at times, but as long as
it stops there, I don't see why anybody should object."

"But, Mr. Ewing, Bob tells me that they say some pretty raw things.
Suppose one of them said the same things to Mrs. Ewing, how would
you feel then?"

Ewing flushed.

"That's different. Mrs. Ewing is a white woman."

"But can't you see that we feel towards our women just as you do
towards yours? If one of those fellows ever spoke to my sister,
there's be trouble, and the Lord knows I want to get along with all
the people here, if I can. If this thing called democracy that I
helped fight for is worth anything at all, it ought to mean that we
coloured people should be protected like anybody else."

Mr. Ewing looked at Kenneth sharply.

"I know that things aren't altogether as they ought to be. It's
pretty tough on fellows like you, Ken, who have had an education.
While you were away, a bunch of these mill hands 'cross the tracks
got Jerry Bird, a nigger that'd been working for me nearly five
years. He came here from down the country some place after you left
for up North. Jerry was as steady a fellow as I've ever seen—as
honest as the day was long. I trusted Jerry anywhere, lots quicker
than I would've some of these white people 'round here. He had a
black skin but his heart was white. One night Jerry was over to my
house helping Mrs. Ewing until nearly ten o'clock. On his way home
this bunch of roughnecks from "Factoryville" stopped him while they
were looking for a nigger that'd scared a white girl. When Jerry got
scared and started to run, they took out after him and strung him up
to a tree. And he wasn't any more guilty of touching that white girl
than you or me."

"What did you do about it?" asked Bob.

"Nothing. Suppose I had kicked up a ruckus about it. They found out
afterwards that the girl hadn't been bothered at all. But just
suppose I had gone and cussed out the fellows who did the lynching.
Most of them trade at my store. Or if they don't, a lot of their
friends do. They'd have taken their trade to some other store and
I'd ‘a' gained nothing for my trouble."

"But surely you don't believe that lynching ever helps, do you?"

"Yes and no. Lynching never bothers folks like you. Why, your daddy
was one of the most respected folks in this town. But lynching does
keep some of these young nigger bucks in check."

"Does it? It seems to me that there isn't much less so-called rape
around here or anywhere else in the South, even after forty years of
lynching. Mr. Ewing, why don't you and the other decent white people
here come out against lynching?"

"Who? Me? Never!" Ewing looked his amazement at the suggestion.
"Why, it would ruin my business, my wife would begin to be dropped
by all the other folks of the town, and it wouldn't be long before
they'd begin calling me a ‘nigger-lover.' No, sir-ee! I'll just let
things rock along and let well enough alone."

"Mr. Ewing, if fifty men like you in this town banded together and
came out flat-footedly against lynching, there are lots more who
would join you gladly."

"That may be true," Ewing answered doubtfully. "But then again it
mightn't. Let's see who might be some of the fifty. There's George
Baird, he's president of the Bank of Central City, and Fred
Griswold, president of the Smith County Farmers' Bank. You can count
them out because they'd be afraid of losing their depositors. Then
there's Ralph Minor who owns the Bon Ton Store. He's out for the
same reason that I am. Then there's Nat Phelps, who runs the Central
City Dispatch. He has a hard enough time as it is. If he lost a
couple of hundred subscribers, he'd have to close up shop. And so it
goes."

"What about the preachers? It doesn't seem much of a religion
they're preaching if the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,' doesn't
form part of their creed."

"Oh, you needn't look for nothing much from them. Three years ago
old Reverend Adams down to the First Methodist took it into his head
he was going to tackle something easy—nothing like the race problem.
He started in to wipe out the bootleggers 'round here, thinking he
could get a lot of support. But he didn't, because most of the folks
he figgered on lining up with him were regular customers of the
fellows he was after." Ewing chuckled at the memory of the crusade
that had died "aborning." "When the next quarterly conference was
held, they elected a new pastor for the First Methodist. No, Ken, it
ain't so easy as it looks. You're asking me to do something that not
a Southern white man has done since the Civil War⸺"

Rising, he walked towards the door and remarked:

"My advice to you is to stay away from any talk like this with
anybody else. There probably ain't another man in town who would've
talked to you like this, and if the boys in the Ku Klux Klan knew I
had been running along like this with a coloured man, I don't know
what'd happen to me. See you later. So long!"

Kenneth walked up and down the room with his hands stuffed deep into
his pockets, his thoughts rushing through his head in helter-skelter
fashion. He was suddenly conscious of a feeling that he had been
thrust into a tiny boat and forced to embark on a limitless sea,
with neither compass nor chart nor sun nor moon to guide him. Would
he arrive? Or would he go down in some squall which arose from he
knew not where or when? The whole situation seemed so vast, so
sinister, so monstrous, that he shuddered involuntarily, as he had
done as a child when left alone in a dark room at night. Religion,
which had been the guide and stay of his father in like
circumstances, offered him no solace. He thought with a faint smile
of the institution known as the Church. What was it? A vast money
machine, interested in rallies and pastors' days and schemes to milk
more dollars from its communicants. In preparing people to die. He
wasn't interested in what was going to happen to him after death.
What he wanted was some guide and comfort in his present problems.
No, religion and the Church as it was now constituted wasn't the
answer. What was? He could not give it.

"Here I am," he soliloquized, "with the best education money can
buy. And yet Roy Ewing, who hasn't been any further than high
school, tells me I'd better submit to all this without protest. Yet
he stands for the best there is here in Central City, and I suppose
he represents the most liberal thought of the South. How's it all
going to end? Even a rat will fight when he's cornered, and these
coloured people aren't going to stand for these things all the time.
What can I do? God, there isn't anything—anything I can do? Bob is
right! Something must be done, but what is it? I reckon these white
folks must be blind—or else they figure on leaving whatever solution
there may be to their children, hoping the storm doesn't break while
they are liv. ing. No! That isn't it. They think because they've
been able to get away with it thus far, they'll always be able to
get away with it. Oh, God, I'm helpless! I'm helpless!"

Kenneth had begun to comprehend the delicate position a Negro always
occupies in places like Central City—in fact, throughout the South.
So little had he come into contact with the perplexities of the race
question before he went away to school, he had seen little of the
windings and turnings, the tortuous paths the Negro must follow to
avoid giving offence to the dominant white sentiment. As he saw each
day more and more of the evasions, the repressions, the choking back
of natural impulses the Negro practised to avoid trouble, Kenneth
often thought of the coloured man as a chip of wood floating on the
surface of a choppy sea, tossed this way and that by every wind that
blew upon the waters. He must of necessity be constantly on his
guard when talking with his white neighbours, or with any white men
in the South, to keep from uttering some word, some phrase which,
like a seed dropped and forgotten, lies fallow for a time in the
brain of the one to whom he talks, but later blossoms forth into
that noxious death-dealing plant which is the mob. Innocent enough
of guile or malice that word may be, yet he must be careful lest it
be distorted and magnified until it can be the cause of violence to
himself and his people. Often—very often—it is true that no evil
follows. Yet the possibility that it may come must always be
considered. But one factor is fixed and immutable the more
intelligent and prosperous the Negro and the more ignorant and poor
the white man, the graver the danger, for in the mind of the latter
are jealousy and ignorance and stupidity and abject fear of the
educated and successful Negro.

His talk with Ewing had crystallized the thoughts, half developed,
which his observations since his return had planted in his mind.
Kenneth began to see how involved the whole question really was, he
was seeing dim paths of expediency and opportunism he would be
forced to tread if he expected to reach the goal he had set for
himself. Already he found one of his pet ideas to be of doubtful
value the theory he had had that success would give a Negro immunity
from persecution. Like a scroll slowly unwinding before his eyes,
Kenneth saw, as yet only partially, that instead of freeing him from
danger of the mob, too great prosperity would make him and every
other Negro outstanding targets of the wrath and envy of the poorer
whites—that jealousy which "is cruel as the grave." Oh, well, he
reflected, others had avoided trouble and so could he. He would have
to be exceedingly careful to avoid too great display, and at the
same time cultivate the goodwill of those men like Roy Ewing and
Judge Stevenson who would stand by him if there was need.




                             CHAPTER V


KENNETH was roused by a light tap upon the door. Opening it, Mamie
stood on the threshold. Inquiring whether Kenneth had finished his
work, and on being told he had, she entered. "Kenneth, why do you
spend all your time here in the office? Don't you think mamma and I
want to talk with you occasionally?"

Mamie seated herself on the arm of Kenneth's chair.

"Seems like you're becoming a regular hermit since you've been back.
Come on in the parlour—Jane Phillips is in there and she wants to
see you. Remember her?"

Kenneth smiled. "Remember Jane Phillips? Of course I do. Scrawny
little thing—running all to legs and arms. She was a homely little
brat, wasn't she?"

It was now Mamie's turn to smile.

"I'm going to tell her what you said," she threatened. "She's lots
different from the girl you remember."

They went into the parlour.

Jane Phillips stood by the piano. She turned as Kenneth and Mamie
entered the room, and came towards them, a smile on her face.
Kenneth, as he advanced towards her, was frankly amazed at the
transformation in the girl whom he had not seen for nine years. Jane
laughed.

"Don't you know me, Kenneth? Or must I call you Dr. Harper now?"

"No, my name is still Kenneth⸺" he answered.

"Tell Jane what you called her a few minutes ago, or I will,"
interrupted Mamie. Kenneth looked embarrassed. Jane insisted on
being told, whereupon Mamie repeated Kenneth's description of Jane
as a child.

Caught between the upper and nether millstones of the raillery of
the two girls, Kenneth tried to explain away his embarrassment, but
they gave him no peace.

"Let me explain," he begged. "When I went away you were a scrawny
little thing, a regular tomboy and as mischievous as they make them.
And now you're a—you're—you're" Jane laughed at his attempt,
somewhat lacking in fullness, to say what she had become with the
passage of the years.

"Whatever it is you are trying to say, I hope it's something all
right you are calling me—though from your tone I'm not at all sure,"
she ended, letting a note of mock concern creep in her voice.

By this time Kenneth had somewhat recovered his composure. He
entered into the spirit of play himself by telling her his surprise
had been due to his finding her unchanged from the little girl he
had once known, but Jane laughed at his ineffectual efforts to
answer Mamie's and her teasing. To change the conversation, he
demanded that she tell him all that she had been doing since he saw
her last.

"There isn't much to tell," she declared. "I went away soon after
you did, going to Fisk University, graduated last June, got a
position teaching in North Carolina, and am home for the holidays.
Next year I want to have enough money to go to Oberlin and finish my
music. That's all there is to my little story. You are the one who
has been having all sorts of experiences. I want to hear your
story."

"Mine isn't much longer," answered Kenneth. "Four years of medical
school. A year's interneship in New York at Bellevue. Three months
in training camps. A year and a half in France. Six months at the
Sorbonne. Then New York. Then exams at Atlanta for my licence. Home.
And here I am."

"Don't you believe him, Jane," said Mamie.

"That's just his way of telling it. Ken has had all sorts of
exciting experiences, yet he has come home and we can't get him to
talk about a thing except building a practice and a hospital."

"What do you want me to talk about?" asked Kenneth.

"Paris—school—army life what did you see?—how do you like New
York?—is New York as good a place to live in as Paris?"

Kenneth threw up his hands in mock defence at the barrage of
questions Jane and Mamie fired at him.

"Just a minute—just a minute," he begged them. "I could talk all
night on any one of the questions you've asked and then not finish
with it or tell you more than half. If you two will only be quiet,
I'll tell you as much as I can."

Mrs. Harper, hearing the voices, came into the room. The three women
sat in silence as Kenneth told of his years at school, of his stay
in New York, his experiences in the army, of the beauties of Paris
even in war time, of study at a French university. He gave to the
narrative a vividness and air of reality that made his auditors see
through his eyes the scenes and experiences he was describing.
Though none of them had been in France, he made them feel as though
they too were walking through the Place de la Concorde viewing the
statues to the eight great cities of France or shopping in the Rue
de la Paix or attempting to order dinner in a restaurant with an
all-too-inadequate French vocabulary. He finished.

"Now you've got to sing for me, Jane, as a reward for all the
talking I've been doing."

With the usual feminine protests that she had no music with her,
Jane went to the open piano. She inquired what he would like to have
her sing.

"Anything except the ‘Memphis Blues,' which is all I've heard since
I came back to Central City," he answered.

Jane ran over the keys experimentally, improvising. A floor lamp
stood near the piano casting a soft light over her. Her long,
delicately pointed fingers lingered lovingly on the ivory keys, and
then she played the opening bars of Saint-Saën's "My Heart at Thy
Sweet Voice." Her voice, a rounded, rich contralto, showing
considerable training, gave to the song a tender pathos, a yearning,
a promise of deep and understanding love. She sang with a grace and
clear phrasing that bespoke the simple charm of the singer. Kenneth
gazed at her in wonder at the amazing metamorphosis of the shy,
gawky child Jane whom he had only rarely noticed, and then with the
condescending air of twenty looking at twelve. In her stead had come
a woman, rounded, attractive even beautiful, intelligent, and
altogether desirable. The chrysalis had changed to the gorgeously
coloured butterfly. Her skin was a soft brown—almost bronze. He
thought of velvety pansies richly coloured—of the warmth of rubies
of great price of the lustrous beauty of the sky on a spring
evening. Her eyes shone with a sparkling and provocative clearness,
looking straight at one from their brown depths. Little tendrils of
her black hair at the back of her neck were disturbed every now and
then by the breeze from the open windows, while above were piled
masses of coiled blackness that shone in the dim light with a glossy
lustre. To Kenneth came visions of a soft-eyed _señorita_ in an old
Spanish town leaning from her balcony while below, to the
accompaniment of a muted guitar, her lover sang to her of his ardent
love. Kenneth blushed when he realized that in every picture he had
cast himself for the rôle of gallant troubadour.

His mother had quietly slipped from the room to retire for the
evening. Mamie had gone to prepare something cool for them to drink.
Kenneth had not heard them go. In fact, lost in the momentary
forgetfulness created by Jane and the song, he had completely
forgotten them. He did not, however, fail to realize that the dreams
he was having were in large measure due to the soft light, to
surprise at the great changes in Jane, to the lulling seductiveness
of the music. He was sure that his feeling was due in largest
measure to a reaction from his unpleasant conversation with Roy
Ewing. He vaguely realized that when on the morrow he saw Jane by
daylight, she would not seem half so charming and attractive. Yet he
was of such a temperament that he could give himself up to the spell
of the moment and extract from it all the pleasure in it. It was in
that manner he put aside the things which were unpleasant, enabling
him to shake off memories like mists of the morning ascending from
the depths of a valley.

The song was ended. Herself caught in its spell, Jane swung into
that most beautiful of the Negro spirituals, "Deep River." Into it
she poured her soul. She filled the room with the pathos of that
song born in the dark days of slavery of a people torn from their
home and thrust into the thraldom of human bondage.

And then Jane sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." The song
ended, her fingers yet clung to the keys but her hands hung
listless. Kenneth knew not how or when he had risen from his chair
and gone to the piano where he stood behind Jane. Something deep
within them had been touched by the music—a strange thrill filled
them, making them oblivious to everything except the presence of
each other. Kenneth lightly placed his hands on her shoulders.
Without speaking or turning, she placed her hands for a moment on
his. He bent over her while she raised her face to his, her eyes
misty with tears born of the emotion aroused by the song. Though
often laughed at in real life and often distorted in fiction, love
almost at first sight had been born within them. Kenneth slowly
brought her face nearer his while Jane, with parted lips, let the
back of her head rest against his breast. Love, with its strange
retroactive effects, brought to both of them in that moment the
sudden realization, though neither of them had known it, that they
had always loved each other. Not a word had been spoken—each was
busy constructing his love in silence. A great emptiness in their
lives had been suddenly, miraculously filled.

Their lips were almost touching when a noise brought them to
themselves with a shock. It was Mamie. She entered the room bearing
a tray on which were sandwiches, cakes, and tall glasses in which
cracked ice clinked coolingly. Kenneth hid his annoyance and, with
as nonchalant an air as possible, went back to his chair.

When they had eaten, Jane rose to go. Kenneth walked home with her.
Neither spoke until they had reached her gate. Jane entered as
Kenneth held it open for her. He would have followed her in but she
turned, extended her hand to him as a sign of dismissal, and asked
him to leave her there. Kenneth said nothing, but his face showed
his disappointment at being hastened away by the same girl who less
than half an hour before had almost been in his arms.

"Please don't say anything, Ken," she pleaded. "It was my fault—I
shouldn't have done what I did. I used to worship you when I was
little, but I thought I had gotten over that—until to-night."

Her voice sank almost to a whisper. In it was a note of trouble and
perplexity. She went on:

"I—oh, Kenneth—what happened to-night must not be repeated."

Puzzled and a bit hurt, he asked her what she meant.

"Don't get the wrong idea, Ken. I wouldn't do anything to hurt you
for the world."

"But what is it, Jane?" begged Kenneth. "I love you, Jane, have
always loved you. I was blind—until to-night⸺"

Kenneth poured forth the words in a torrent of emotion. Whirling
thoughts tore through his brain. He sought to seize Jane's hand and
draw her to him, but she eluded him.

"No—no—Kenneth, you mustn't. I can't let you make love to me. Let's
be friends, Ken, and enjoy these few days and forget all we've said
to-night, won't you, please?" she ended pleadingly.

Kenneth said nothing. He turned abruptly and strode away without
even saying good night. Hands thrust deep into his pockets, his head
hanging in disappointment and wounded pride, he hurried home without
once turning to look back. …

Her ten days of vacation passed all too soon for Jane. She and
Kenneth saw each other frequently, but never alone until the night
before she returned to North Carolina. It was at a dance given in
her honour. All evening he had been seeking a dance with her, but
met with no success until the party was almost over. They danced in
silence. Jane seemed suddenly sad. All evening she had been happy,
gay, even flirtatious, but now that she was with Kenneth, her gaiety
had been dropped like a mask. Half-way through the dance they came
near a door that opened on a balcony overlooking a flower garden.
Saying nothing to Jane, Kenneth danced her through the door and on
to the balcony, where they sat on a bench that stood in the
semi-darkness. Though it was December, the air was warm. No sound
disturbed the silence of the night save the music and voices which
floated through the open door.

"Haven't you anything to say?" Kenneth anxiously inquired, taking
one of Jane's hands in his.

"Nothing except this—I don't know whether I care for you or not,"
said Jane as she freed her hand and drew herself away. Her voice was
firm and determined. Kenneth, ignorant of the ways of a maid with a
man, said nothing, but his shoulders drooped dejectedly.

"What happened the other night was madness—I was very foolish for
allowing it." She paused, and then went on. "Kenneth, I don't know,
I want my music, I want to see something of life I want to live! I
just can't tie myself down by marrying—I don't know whether I'll
ever want to. You'll have to wait—if you care to⸺"

It was half command, half question. He said nothing.

He did not know how she longed for him to argue with her, override
her objections, convince her against her will. She waited a full
minute. Still he sat there silent. She rose and re-entered the
house, leaving him there alone.




                             CHAPTER VI


LIFE moved along evenly with Kenneth, busied with the multitude of
duties with which the physician in the half-rural, half-urban towns
of the South must deal. His days were filled with his blasto work
and he was usually to be found in his office until ten or eleven
o'clock every evening. Often he was roused in the middle of the
night to attend some one of his patients. He did not mind this
except when calls came to him from the outlying country districts.
Not infrequently he made long trips of seven, eight, or ten miles
into the country to treat some person who might just as well have
called him during the previous day. He had purchased a Ford runabout
in which he made these trips.

On a Sunday morning soon after his return to Central City, Kenneth
with his mother, Mamie, and Bob attended the Mount Zion Baptist
Church, but this he did without much eagerness, solely as a duty.

Though years had passed since last he entered the church, Kenneth
noticed that it stood as it always had, save that it looked more
down-at-heel than formerly. Before the door stood the same little
groups, eagerly snatching a few words of conversation before
entering. Near the door were ranged the young men, garbed in raiment
of varied and brilliant hue, ogling the girls as they passed in with
their parents. There was much good-natured badinage and scuffling
among the youths, with an occasional burst of ribald laughter at the
momentary discomfiture of one of their number. As he passed them,
Kenneth smiled to himself as he remembered how he but a few years
since had been one of that crowd around the same door. That is, one
of the crowd until his father, with a stern word or perhaps only a
meaningful glance, had been wont to summon him within the church.
Often had he been teased unmercifully by the other boys when one of
these summonses had come.

Though the jests had been hard to bear, the likelihood of paternal
wrath had been too unpleasant an alternative for him to dare
disregard his father's commands.

Kenneth noticed the vestibule had survived the passage of years
without apparent change, if one disregarded the increased dinginess
of the carpet. There was the same glass-covered bulletin board with
its list of the sick and of those who were delinquent in the payment
of their dues. There was the same dangling rope with a loop at the
end of it, and the same sexton was about to ring the bell above,
announcing the beginning of the morning service. There were the same
yellowed walls, the same leather-covered swinging doors with the
same greasy spots where countless hands had pushed them to enter the
auditorium of the church. Kenneth smiled to himself as he remembered
how he once had declared in a dispute with a boy whose parents
attended the Methodist church near by that the Mount Zion Baptist
Church was "the biggest and finest church in the whole world." He
thought of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, of St. Paul's in
London, as he recalled the boast of his youth.

Inside, the same air of unchanging permanence seemed also to have
ruled. As he followed the officious usher and his mother and sister
to their pew, Kenneth noted the same rows of hard seats worn shiny
by years of use, the same choir loft to the left of the pulpit with
its faded red curtains. The same worn Bible lay open on the pulpit
kept open by a hymn-book. Beside it was the same ornately carved
silver pitcher and goblet. Kenneth felt as though he had never left
Central City when he looked for and found the patches of calcimine
hanging from the ceiling and the yellowed marks on the walls made by
water dripping from leaks in the roof. As a boy he had amused
himself during seemingly interminable sermons by constructing all
sorts of fanciful stories around these same marks, seeing in them
weirdly shaped animals. Once he had laughed aloud when, after gazing
at one of them, it had suddenly dawned upon him that the shadow cast
by a pendent flake of calcimine resembled the lean and
hungry-looking preacher who was pastoring Mount Zion at the time.
Kenneth would never forget the commotion his sudden laughter had
caused, nor the whipping he received when he and his father reached
home that Sunday.

The hum of conversation ceased. The pastor, the Reverend Ezekiel
Wilson, entered the pulpit from a little door back of it. The choir
sang lustily the Doxology. All the familiar services came back to
Kenneth as he sat and looked at the dusky faces around him.

Preliminaries ended, the Reverend Wilson began to preach. He was a
fat, pompous, oily man—with a smooth and unctuous manner. His voice
sank at times to a whisper—at others, roared until the rafters of
the building seemed to ring with its echoes. He played on it as
consciously as the dried-up little organist in the gaily coloured
bonnet did on the keys of the asthmatic little organ. His text was
taken from the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, first verse that
familiar text, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal."

Slowly, softly, he began to speak.

"Breddern and sisters, they's a lot of you folks right here this
mawnin' what thinks you is Christ'uns. You think jus' ‘cause you
comes here ev'ry Sunday and sings and shouts and rants around dat
you is got the sperit of Jesus in you. Well, I'm tellin' you this
mawnin' dat you'd better wake up and get yo'self right with God,
'cause you ain't no mo Christ'un dan if you neveh been to chu'ch
a-tall. De Good Book says you got to have char'ty, and de Good Book
don't lie."

There came from the Amen corner a fervently shouted "Amen!" From
another came as equally fervid a shout: "Ain't it the truth!" The
preacher paused for effect. He mopped his brow and glared around the
congregation. His auditors sat in expectant silence. Suddenly he
lashed out in scathing arraignment of the sins of his flock. Each
and every one of its faults he pilloried with words of fire and
brimstone. He painted a vivid and uncomfortably realistic picture of
a burning Hell into which all sinners would inevitably be cast.
Almost with the air of a hypnotist, he gradually advanced the tempo
of his speech. Like a wind playing over a field of corn, swaying the
tops of the stalks as it wills, so did he play on the emotions and
fears and passions of his congregation. Only a master of human
psychology could have done it. It was a living, breathing, vengeful
God he preached, and his auditors fearfully swayed and rocked to and
fro as he lashed them unmercifully. Lips compressed, there came from
them a nasal confirmation of the preacher's words that ranged from
deep, guttural grunts of approval as he scored a point to a
high-pitched rising and falling moan that sounded like nothing so
much as a child blowing through tissue paper stretched over a comb.
Frequently the preacher would without perceptible pause swing into a
rolling, swinging, half-moaning song which the congregation took up
with fervour. The beat was steadily advanced by the leader until he
and his audience were worked up to an emotional ecstasy bordering on
hysteria. His jeremiad ended, the preacher painted a glowing picture
of the ineffable peace and joy that came to those who rested their
faith in Him who died for the remission of their sins.

A tumultuous thunderous climax—a dramatic pause and then he swung
into a fervent prayer in which the preacher talked as though his God
were an intimate friend and confidant. The entire drama lasting more
than an hour was thrilling and enervating and theatric. Yet beneath
it lay a devout sincerity that removed the scene from the absurd to
that which bordered on the magnificent. To these humble folk their
religion was the most important thing in their lives, and, after
all, what matters it what a man does? It is the spirit in which he
performs an act that makes it dignified or pathetic or ludicrous—not
the act itself.

In spite of his sophistication, Kenneth never was able entirely to
ward off the chills of excitement that ran down his spine at these
weird religious ceremonies. He saw through the whole theatric
performance and yet way down beneath it all there was a sincerity
and genuineness that never failed to impress him. This was not a
mere animalism nor was it the joke that white people sometimes tried
to make of it. Fundamentally, it was rooted and grounded in an
immutable and unfailing belief in the supreme power of a tangible
God—a God that personally directed the most minute of the affairs of
the most lowly of creatures. It had been the guide and refuge of the
fathers and mothers of these same people through the dark days of
slavery. In the same manner it was almost the only refuge for these
children and grandchildren of the slaves in withstanding the trials
of a latter-day slavery in many respects more oppressive than the
pre-Civil War variety.

Kenneth walked home from church running over these things in his
mind. Was this religious fervour the best thing for his people? Why
did not the Church attract more intelligent and able young men of
his race instead of men like Reverend Wilson? Why didn't some
twentieth-century Moses arise to lead them out of the thraldom of
this primitive religion? Would that Moses, when he came, be able to
offer a solace as effective to enable these people of his to bear
the burdens that lay so heavily upon them?

He thought again of his conversation with Roy Ewing. What was the
elusive solution to this problem of race in America? Why couldn't
the white people of the South see where their course was leading
them? Ewing was right. No white man of the South had ever come out
in complete defiance of the present regime which was so surely
damning the South and America. Kenneth saw his people kept in the
bondage of ignorance. Why? Because it was to the economic advantage
of the white South to have it so. Why was a man like Reverend Wilson
patted on the back and every Negro told that men of his kind were
"safe and sane leaders"? Why was every Negro who too audibly or
visibly resented the brutalities and proscriptions of race prejudice
instantly labelled as a radical—a dangerous character—as one seeking
"social equality"? What was this thing called "social equality"
anyhow? That was an easy question to answer. It was about the only
one he could answer with any completeness. White folks didn't really
believe that Negroes sought to force themselves in places where they
weren't wanted, any more than decent white people wanted to force
themselves where they were not invited. No, that was the
smoke-screen to hide something more sinister. Social equality would
lead to intermarriage, they thought, and the legitimatizing of the
countless half-coloured sons and daughters of these white people.
Why, if every child in the South were a legitimate one, more than
half of the land and property in the South would belong to coloured
owners.

Did the white people who were always talking about "social equality"
think they really were fooling anybody with their constant
denunciation of it? Twenty-nine States of America had laws against
intermarriage. All these laws were passed by white legislators. Were
these laws passed to keep Negroes from seizing some white woman and
forcing her to marry him against her will? Or were these laws
unconscious admissions by these white men that they didn't trust
their women or their men to keep from marrying Negroes? Any fool
knew that if two people didn't want to marry each other, there was
no law of God or man to make them marry. No, the laws were passed
because white men wanted to have their own women and use coloured
women too without any law interfering with their affairs or making
them responsible for the consequences.

Kenneth usually ended these arguments with himself with a feeling of
complete impotence, of travelling around like a squirrel in a
circular cage. No matter where he started or how fast or how far he
travelled, he always wound up at the same point and with the same
sense of blind defeat. Oh, well, better men than he had tried to
answer the same questions and failed. He'd stay to himself and
attend to his own business and let such problems go hang. But in
spite of himself he often found himself enmeshed in this endless
maze of reasoning. Just as frequently he determined to put from
himself again the perplexing and seemingly insoluble problems.

It was after one of these soliloquies on his way from church one
bright Sunday in April that Kenneth reached home and found a call
for him to come at once to a house down on Butler Street, in the
heart of the Negro district in the bottoms. Telling his mother to
keep dinner for him as he would be back shortly, he hurried down
State Street. Turning suddenly into Harris Street, which crossed
State, which in turn would lead him to the house he sought on Butler
Street, he caught a fleeting glimpse of a white man who looked like
George Parker, cashier of the Bank of Central City Parker, if it was
he, turned hastily at Kenneth's approach and went up a narrow alley
which ran off Harris Street. Kenneth thought nothing of the incident
other than a vague and quickly passing wonder at Parker's presence
in that part of town.

Kenneth hurried on, instinctively stepping over or around the
numerous children whose complexions ranged in colour from a deep
black to a yellow that was almost white, and mangy-looking dogs that
seemed to infest the street. Approaching the house he sought, he
found a group of excitedly talking Negroes gathered around the gate.
The group separated to let him pass, and from it came one or two
greetings to Kenneth in the form of "Hello, Doc." He paid little
attention to them, but proceeded up the path to the house.

Entering, he was surprised to find it furnished more ornately and
comfortably than usual in that section. He knew the place of old,
remembering that his father had always warned him against going into
this section. Here it was reported that strange things went on, that
a raid by the police was not uncommon. He had upon one occasion seen
the patrol wagon, better known as the "Black Maria," drive away
loaded with bottles of whisky and with a nondescript lot of coloured
men and women. Most of the property in this section was owned by
white people, which they held on to jealously. They charged and
received rentals two or three times as high as in other sections of
"Darktown."

Kenneth found in the front room another excited and chattering lot
of men and women. The men seemed rather furtive and were dressed in
"peg-top" trousers with wide cuffs, and gaudily coloured shirts. The
women were clad in red and pink kimonos and boudoir caps. With an
inclusive "Hello, folks," Kenneth followed a woman who seemed to be
in charge of the house into the next room. In the centre of the
darkened room there stood the bed, dishevelled, the sheets stained
with blood. On them lay a man fully clothed, his eyes closed as
though in great pain, and breathing heavily, with sharp gasps every
few seconds. By the bed, bathing the man's brow, stood a woman in a
rumpled night-dress and kimono. Kenneth recognized the man as Bud
Ware, sometimes a Pullman porter, who used his occupation, it was
rumoured, to bring liquor from Atlanta, which his wife sold. It was
his wife Nancy who bathed his brow and who moved away from the bed
when Kenneth approached. She informed him that he had come home
unexpectedly from his run, and had been shot. Kenneth said nothing
but went immediately to work. He found Bud with two bullet holes in
his abdomen and one through his right leg. It was evident that he
had but a few hours, at most, to live. Kenneth did what he could to
relieve Bud's suffering. Turning to Nancy, he told her what he had
discovered. She stared at Kenneth wide-eyed for a minute and then
burst forth in an agony of weeping.

"Oh, Lawdy, why didn't I do what Bud tol' me to do? Bud tol' me to
let dat man alone! Why didn't I do it? Why didn't I do it?"

Her screams mounted higher and higher until they reached
ear-piercing shrieks. A head or two were stuck interrogatively
through the opened door at the sound of Nancy's woe, and as quickly
withdrawn. Kenneth administered an opiate to Bud to relieve his pain
and sat by the bed to do what he could in the short while that life
remained. The sordidness of the whole affair sickened him and he
longed to get away where he could breathe freely.

Strengthened by the opiate, Bud's eyes flickered and then opened for
a fraction of a minute. He smiled faintly when he recognized
Kenneth. He made several ineffectual attempts to speak, but each
effort resulted only in a gasp of pain. Kenneth ordered him to lie
still. Bud, however, kept trying to speak. Roused by Nancy's
shrieks, he finally managed to gasp out a few words, interrupted by
spasms of pain that shook his whole body.

"I knows I ain't got long, Doc. Dat's a' right, Nancy, I ain't
blamin' you none. I knows you couldn't he'p it."

He fell back on the pillow, coughing and writhing in pain.

"Lif' me a li'l—hiar—on the pillar, Doc. Dat's mo' like—it! Doc—I
ain't been much ‘count. I tol' dat man Parker—to stop foolin' with
my 'oman—but—he keep on—comin' here—when I'm gone. He knew I wuz
sellin' liquor—an' he tol Nancy he wuz gwine—hav' his brudder—She'f
Parker put me on—chain gang—if she tell me he come here—w'en I wuz
gone."

He had another paroxysm of coughing and lay for a minute as though
already dead. Kenneth administered restoratives, meanwhile telling
Nancy to keep quiet, which only made her weep the louder. After a
few minutes Bud began speaking again.

"I come home to-day—an' kotched him here. W'en I got mad an' tol
him—to get out—and stahted towards him—he grabbed his gun an'—shot
me." After a pause: "Doc, whyn't dese white fo'ks—leave our women
alone?—I ain't nevah bothered none of their women.—An' now—I's done
got—killed jus' 'cause—I—I⸺"

He half raised himself on the pillow, looking at Nancy.

"Doan cry, Nancy gal—doan cry⸺"

He fell back dead. Kenneth, of no further assistance, left Nancy to
her grief after promising to send the undertaker in to prepare Bud's
body for burial, and made his way out through the crowd, now greatly
increased in numbers, gathered around the door. He wondered if
anything would be done about the murder, at the same time knowing
that nothing would. The South says it believes in purity. What was
that phrase the Ku Kluxers used so much—"preservation of the
sanctity of the home, protection of the purity of womanhood"? Yes,
that was it. Suppose the races of the two principals had been
reversed—that Bud Ware had been caught with George Parker's wife.
Why, the whole town would have turned out to burn Bud at the stake.
Weren't coloured women considered human—wasn't their virtue as dear
to them as to white women? Nancy and Bud weren't of much good to the
community but if Bud wanted his wife kept inviolate, hadn't he as
much right to guard her person as George Parker to protect his wife
and two daughters? Again he felt himself up against a blind wall in
which there was no gate, and which was too high to climb. He had
determined to stay out of reach of the long arms of the octopus they
called the race problem—but he felt himself slowly being drawn into
its insidious embrace.




                            CHAPTER VII


CENTRAL CITY was the county seat of Smith County. The morning after
the murder of Bud Ware, Kenneth went down to the County Court House
to file his report on the death. It was a two-story building,
originally of red brick but now of a faded brownish red through the
rains and sun of many years. It sat back from the street about fifty
feet and was surrounded by a yard covered here and there with bits
of grass but for the most part clear of all vegetation, its red soil
trampled by many feet on "co't day." The steps were worn thin
through much wear of heavy boots. On either side of the small
landing at the top, there hung a bulletin board on which were pasted
or tacked yellow notices of sheriff's sales, rewards for the arrest
of criminals, and other court documents. The floor of the dark and
narrow hallway was stained a reddish colour by the mud and dust from
the feet of those who had entered the building. Just inside the
doorway, on either side, were rectangular boxes filled with sawdust
for the convenience of those of a tobacco-chewing disposition, which
included most of the male population. The condition of the floor
around the boxes seemed to indicate that only a few of these had
realized for what purpose the boxes had been placed there. Over all
was a liberal coating of the dust that had blown in the door and
windows.

Entering the office of the County Health Commissioner, Kenneth found
that dignitary in his shirtsleeves, feet comfortably placed on top
of his desk.

"Good morning, Mr. Lane. I've come to make a report of a death."

At the sound of Kenneth's voice, County Commissioner of Health Henry
Lane turned in his chair without moving his feet to see who it was
that had entered. Long, lanky, a two days' growth of red beard on
his face, Mr. Lane removed the corn-cob pipe from his mouth with a
rising and falling of a prominent Adam's apple. Seeing that his
visitor was only a Negro, he replaced his pipe in his mouth and,
between several jerky puffs to get it going again, querulously
replied:

"Can't you see I'm busy? Why don't you save up them repo'ts till you
git a passel of them, and then bring ‘em in? Got no time t' be
writin' up niggers' deaths, anyhow. Ev'ry time I turn ‘round, some
nigger's gittin' carved up or shot or somepin'.".

"I understand it's the law, Mr. Lane, that deaths of anybody, white
or coloured, must be reported by the physician at once."

"Drat the law. That's fo' white folks."

He drew himself out of his chair with great reluctance and ambled
over to the counter, drawing to him a pad and pencil as he turned
towards Kenneth.

"What nigger's dead now?" he inquired.

"Bud Ware, who lived at 79 Butler Street," replied Kenneth.

"How'd he die?" was the next question.

"Shot through the abdomen."

"Know who shot him?"

"Yes. George Parker."

"Th' hell you say! And you come in here to repo't it?"

Kenneth was somewhat startled at the ferocity of the Commissioner's
expression, which had replaced that of laziness and resentment at
being disturbed. "I thought it my duty …" he began.

Lane spat disgustedly.

"Duty, Hell! You're a God-damned fool and one of these damned
niggers that's always causin' trouble ‘round here. I always said
eddication spoiled a nigger and, by God, you prove it. Lemme tell
you somepin'—you'd better remember s'long's you stay ‘round these
parts. When you hear anything 'bout a white man havin' trouble with
a nigger, you'd better keep your mouth shet. They's lots of niggers
been lynched for less'n you said this mornin'. Ain't you got sense
enough t' know you hadn't any business comin' in here t' tell me
‘bout Mr. Parker? Don't you know his brother's sheriff? If y' aint,
goin' up No'th tuk away what li'l' sense you might've had befo' you
went."

Kenneth stood silent, a deep red flush suffusing his face, while the
official continued his vituperative tirade. His fists, thrust deep
into his pockets, were Elenched until they hurt, but he did not feel
the pain. He longed to take that long, yellow, unshaven neck in his
hands and twist it until Lane's eyes popped out and his face turned
black. He knew it would be suicide if he did it. He realized now
that he had done an unwise thing in telling Lane who had killed Bud
Ware—he should have remembered and said that he did not know. If he
was going to stay in the South, he would have to remember these
things.

When Lane had paused for breath, Kenneth bade him good morning and
left the room. As he went down the steps, he heard Lane shouting
after him:

"You'd better not lemme hear o'you doin' any talkin' ‘bout this. If
y' do, you'll fin' yo'self bein' paid a visit one o' these nights by
the Kluxers!"

Hardly had Kenneth left the court house before Lane rushed as fast
as his natural indolence would permit him into the office of Sheriff
Robert Parker—known throughout the county as "She'f Bob." Lane was
so indignant he spluttered in trying to speak. The sheriff looked at
him amusedly and counselled:

"Ca'm yo'self, Henry. What's eatin' you?"

"Bob, d'you know George shot and killed a nigger buck over in
‘Darktown' yestiddy mornin' named Ware?" Lane finally managed to get
out.

"Yeh. What about it? George tol me about it las' night," was the
sheriff's easy reply.

"Well, that nigger doctor Harper who's been up No'th studyin' and
come back here las' fall, come into my office this mornin' to repo't
it, and he had the gall t' tell me George done it."

"Th' black bastard! What th' hell's he got to do with it?"

"Said it was his duty. You bet I tol him good an' plenty where he
got off at. Guess he won't come in here repo'tin' no more
‘accidents' like George run into."

Sheriff Parker's face had assumed the colour of an overripe tomato
as he jumped to his feet and banged his right fist on the table with
a resounding thwack.

"I'll keep my eye on that nigger," he promised. "His daddy was as
good a nigger as ever I did see, but they ain't no way o'tellin'
what these young bucks'll do. Roy Ewing was saying only this mornin'
that Bob, that nigger doctor's kid brother, was tellin' him the
other day that he'd have to stop them boys ‘roun' the sto' from
botherin' with th' nigger gals when they pass by. Humph! They ain't
no nigger gal that's pure after she's reached fo'teen years ol'.
Yep, I'll jus' kep my eye on those boys, and the first chance I git,
I'll⸺!"

His eyes narrowed in malevolent fashion as he left his threat
unuttered.

In the meantime, Kenneth had gone home. He hesitated to talk the
matter over with Bob or tell him what had happened to Bud Ware or
what had taken place at the court house that morning. Bob was so
hot-headed and insults made him angry so easily, he was afraid of
what might be the outcome if Bob knew what had occurred. He would
breathe a deep sigh of relief when Bob left in the fall to go back
to er school. Up in Atlanta there wouldn't be so many chances for
Bob to run up against these white people and, besides, Bob's studies
would keep him busy, leaving little time to brood over the
indignities he had suffered. Kenneth determined that when Bob had
finished his course at Atlanta University, he would urge him to go
to Columbia University or Haryard and study law, and then settle
down in some Northern city. It wouldn't do for Bob to come back as
he had done to Central City. Sooner or later Bob's fiery temper
would give way.

He wondered to whom he could turn to talk this thing out. He felt
that if he didn't have a chance soon to unburden his soul to
somebody, he would go insane. He thought of his mother. No, that
wouldn't do. His mother had enough to worry about without taking his
burdens on her shoulders.

Mamie? No, she wouldn't do either. She had no business knowing about
the sordidness of the affair of Bud Ware and Nancy and George
Parker. All her life she had been sheltered and kept away, as much
as is possible in a Southern town, from the viciousness and filth
and brutality of the race relations of the town.

Mr. Wilson, the clergyman? He was ignorant and coarse, but he had
lived in South Georgia all his life and he would know better what to
do than anybody else. He determined to go and talk with Mr. Wilson
that evening as soon as he was free. He had hardly made the decision
when Mr. Wilson non himself entered the reception room and called
out to Kenneth as he sat in his office:

"Good mawnin', Brudder Harper. It certainly has done my heart good
to see you attendin' chu'ch ev'ry Sunday with your folks. Mos' of
these young men and women, as soon's they get some learning, thinks
they's too good to ‘tend chu'ch. But, as I says to them all th'
time, th' Lawd ain't goin' t' bless none of them, even if they is
educated, if they don't keep close to Him."

Kenneth rose and showed his visitor to a seat. He did so with an
inward repugnance as the coarseness of the man repelled him.
Mr. Wilson seemed always overheated even in the coldest weather, and
his face shone with a greasiness that seemed to indicate that his
body excreted oil instead of perspiration. Yet, perhaps this man
could give him some ray of no light, if there was any to be had.

He told Mr. Wilson of his experiences of the past two days. The
preacher's eyes widened with a mild surprise and the unctuous,
benevolent mask which he wore most of his waking hours seemed to
drop rapidly as he heard Kenneth through to the end without comment.
At the same time he dropped his illiterate speech much to Kenneth's
surprise, when he finally spoke.

"Dr. Harper, I've been watching you since you came back here. I knew
that you were trying to keep away from this trouble that's always
going on around here. That's just why I came here to-day. Your case
is a hard one, but it's small to what a lot of these others are
feeling. I have asked a number of the more sensible coloured men to
meet at any house to-night. I think it would be a good thing to talk
over these things and try to find a way to avoid any trouble."

Kenneth looked at him in surprise, not at the idea of holding a
meeting, but at the language the man was using.

"I hope you'll pardon me for asking so personal a question, Reverend
Wilson, but you don't talk now as I've always heard you before. Why,
your language now is that of an educated man, and before
you—you—talked like a—like a⸺"

Mr. Wilson laughed easily.

"There's a reason—in fact, there are two reasons why I talk like
that. The first is because of my own folks. Outside of you and your
folks, the Phil. lips family, and one or two more, all of my
congregation is made up of folks with little or no education.
They've all got good hard common sense, it's true. They'd have to
have that in order just to live in the South with things as they
are. But they don't want a preacher that's too far above them
they'll feel that they can't come to him and tell him their troubles
if he's too highfalutin. I try to get right down to my folks, feel
as they feel, suffer when they suffer, laugh with them when they
laugh, and talk with them in language they can understand."

Mr. Wilson smiled, almost to himself, as memories of contacts with
his lowly flock came to him.

"I remember when I first started preaching over at Valdosta. I was
just out of school and was filled up with the ambition to raise my
people out of their ignorance. I was determined I would free them
from a religion that didn't do anything for them but make them shout
and holler on Sunday. I was going to give them some modern religion
based on intelligence instead of just on feeling and emotion."

He chuckled throatily in recollecting the spiritual and religious
crusade on which he had based such exalted hopes.

"I preached to them and told them of Aristotle and Shakespeare and
Socrates. One Sunday, after I'd preached what I thought was a mighty
fine sermon, one old woman came up after the services and said to
me: "Brer Wilson, dat's a' right tellin' us ‘bout Shakespeare and
Homer and all dem other boys. But what we want is for you t' tell us
somethin' ‘bout Jesus!'"

Kenneth laughed with the preacher at the old woman's insistence on
his not straying from the religion to which they were used.

"I had to discard my high-flown theories and come down to my folks
if I wanted to do any good at all."

He continued:

"These same folks, however, don't want you to come down too close.
Like all people with little education, whether they're black, white,
or any other colour, they like to look up to their leaders. So I use
a few big words now and then which have a grand and rolling sound,
and they feel that I am even more wonderful because I do know how to
use big words but don't use them often."

He paused while Kenneth looked at this man and saw him in a new
light. He had known that Mr. Wilson, many years before coming to
Central City, had attended a theological seminary in Atlanta, and he
had wondered how a man could attend a school of theology of any
standing and yet use such poor English. It had never occurred to him
that it might be deliberate.

"And then there's another reason," continued Reverend Wilson. "The
white folks here are mighty suspicious of any Negro who has too much
learning, according to their standards. They figure he'll be
stirring up the Negroes to fighting back when any trouble arises. I
had to make a decision many years ago. I decided that somebody had
to help these poor coloured folks bear their burdens, and to comfort
and cheer them. I knew that if I came out and said the things I
thought and felt, I would either be taken out of my house some night
and lynched, or else I'd be run out of town. So I decided that I'd
smile and bear it and be what the white folks think they want—what
the coloured folks call a ‘white man's nigger.' It's been mighty
hard, but the Lord has given me the strength somehow or other to
stand it this far."

With his deliberately imperfect English, there had gone from the
preacher's face the subservient smile. Kenneth felt his heart
warming to this man. He found his feeling of distaste and repulsion
dissipating, now that the shell had been removed and he saw beneath
the surface. The simile of the protective device of the chameleon
came to his mind. Yes, the Negro in the South had many things in
common with the chameleon—he had to be able to change his colour
figuratively to suit the environment of the South in order to be
allowed to stay alive. His own trouble with the Parkers and Lane
seemed much more trivial now than before. He looked at Mr. Wilson
and asked:

"What's the purpose of this meeting to-night? How can I help,
Reverend Wilson?"

"It's like this. A good part of my congregation is made up of folks
who live out in the country. They've had a lot of trouble for years
getting honest settlements from the landlords on whose land they
work. Within the last five years, two of my members have been
lynched when they wouldn't stand for being cheated any longer. The
folks out there are in a pretty bad way, and they want us to advise
with them as to the best way to act. I haven't time to go into the
details now, but it'll all be taken up to-night. Can I count on your
being there? We need a man like you, with your education."

Kenneth deliberated several minutes before giving his answer. What
Mr. Wilson wanted him to do was just exactly what he had determined
not to do. But what harm could come from attending the meeting? If
he didn't want to take any part in the plans, he didn't have to.
Anyhow, it seemed that the more a man tried to keep away from the
race question, the mo more deeply involved he became in it. Might as
well do what little he could to help, if he didn't have to take too
prominent a part. He'd go anyway. He told Reverend Wilson they could
look for him that night.




                            CHAPTER VIII


KENNETH was late in reaching the meeting-place that night. When he
arrived he found all there waiting for him. Besides himself and
Mr. Wilson were the Reverend Richard Young, pastor of Bethel African
Methodist Episcopal Church, and Herbert Phillips, Jane's father.
There were also three men from the farming district whom Kenneth did
not know, but who were introduced as Tom Tracy, Hiram Tucker, and
James Swann.

Mr. Wilson opened the meeting after the introductions had been
completed.

"Brothers, we've met here this evenin' to talk over some way we can
he'p these brothers who live out in the country and who ain't been
able to get an honest settlement from the folks they's been farmin'
for. I'm going to ask Brother Tucker to tell us just how things are
with the folks out his way. Brother Tucker."

"Brother" Tucker rose and stood by the table around which they were
seated and on which flickered an oil lamp. He was a man between
fifty and sixty years of age, of medium height and thick-set. His
black skin was wrinkled with age and toil. His hands, as they rested
on the table in front of him, were gnarled and hardened through a
lifetime of ploughing and hoeing and the other hard work of farm
life. It was Mr. Tucker's face, however, which attracted interest.
Out of the rolls of skin there shone two kindly, docile eyes. One
gained the impression that these eyes had seen tragedies on top of
tragedies, as indeed they had, and their owner had been taught by
dire necessity to look upon them in a philosophic and pacifist
manner. One remembered a biblical description: "He was a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief." Kenneth, as he looked at him,
felt that Socrates and Aristotle and Jesus Christ must have had eyes
like Brother Tucker's. His impression was heightened by Mr. Tucker's
hair. Of a snowy whiteness, his head bald on top, his hair formed a
circle around his head that reminded Kenneth of the picture-cards
used at Sunday school when he was a boy, where the saints had crowns
of light hovering over their heads. The only difference was that
Mr. Tucker's halo seemed to be a bit more firmly and closely
attached than those of the saints, which he remembered always seemed
to be poised perilously in mid-air. He had often wondered, as he
gazed intently at the pictures, what would have happened had a
strong gust of wind come suddenly upon the saints, and blown their
haloes away.

Mr. Tucker began speaking slowly, in the manner of one of few words
and as one unused to talking in public.

"Brudders, me ‘n' Brudder Tracy, and Brudder Swann ast Reverend
Wilson here to let us come t' town some time and talk over with you
gent'men a li'l' trouble we's been havin'. Y' see, all of us folks
out dat way wuks on shares like dis. We makes a ‘greement wif de
landlord to wuk one year or mo'. He fu'nishes de lan' and we puts de
crap in de soil, wuks it, and den gathers it. We's sposed to ‘vide
it share and share alike wif de landlord but it doan wuk out dat
way. If us cullud folks ain't got money enough to buy our seed and
fert'lizer and food and the clo'es we needs du'in' de year, we is
allowed t' take up dese things at de sto'. Den when we goes to
settle up after de cott'n and cawn's done laid by, de sto' man who
wuks in wif de landlord won't giv' us no bill for whut we done
bought but jes' gives us a li'l piece of paper wif de words on it:
"Balance Due."

He paused to wipe the perspiration from his face caused by the
unusual experience of speaking at such length. He continued:

"An' dat ain't all. W'en we starts to pickin' our cotton, dey doan
let us ca'y it to de gin and weigh it ourself. De lan'lord send his
wagons down in de fiel' and as fas' as we picks it, dey loads it on
de wagons and takes it away. Dey doan let us know how much it weighs
or how much dey sells it for. Dey jus' tells us it weighs any ‘mount
de lan'lord wants to tell us, and dey says dey sol' it at any price
dey set. W'en we comes to settle up for de year, dey ‘ducts de
balance due' from what we's got comin' t'us from our share of de
craps. I's been wukin' for nigh on to six years for Mr. Taylor out
near Ashland and ev'y year I goes deeper in debt dan de year befo'.
Las' year I raised mo' dan twenty-fo' bales of cott'n dat weighed
mo' dan five hundred poun's each. My boy Tom whut's been t' school
figgered out dat at eighten cents a poun'—and dat's de price de
paper said cott'n sol' at las' year—I oughter got mo' dan a thousan'
dollars for my share. An' dat ain't all neither. Dey was nearly
twelve tons of cott'n seed dat was wuth ‘bout two hundred and fo'ty
dollars. An'den dey was mo' dan three hundred bush'ls of cawn at a
dollar'n a ha'f a bush'l dat makes fo' hundred and fifty dollars
mo'. All dat t'gether makes nearly three thousan' dollars an' I
oughter got ‘bout fifteen hundred dollars fo' my share."

Tucker stopped again and shifted his feet while Tracy and Swann
nodded agreement with his statements.

"Las' year me ‘n' my wife said we wuz gwine t' get along without
spendin' no mo' money at de sto' dan we had to, so's we could get
out of debt. We wukked ha'd and all our chillen we made wuk in de
fiel's too. My boy Tom kept account of ev'ything we bought at de
sto', and when de year ended he figgered it up an' he foun' we'd
done spent jus' even fo' hundred dollars. But when we goes to make a
settlement at de end of de year, Mr. Taylor said he sol our cott'n
at eight cent a poun' and didn'have but sev'n hundred and
thutty-five dollars comin' to us. An' den he claim we tuk up ‘leven
hundred dollars wuth of stuff at de sto' which he done paid for, so
that leave me owin' him three hundred ‘n' sixty-five dollars dat I
got to wuk out next year."

His face took on a dejected look as though the load had become
almost too heavy to bear. His voice took on at the same time a
plaintive and discouraged tone.

"An' when you adds on dat three hundred dollars dat Mr. Taylor says
I owed him from las' year, dat makes neah'ly sev'n hundred dollars I
owes, and it doan look like I's evah goin't git out of debt. An' I
thought we wuz goin' to be able to sen' Tom and Sally and Mirandy t'
Tuskegee dis year off de ‘leven hundred dollars I thought I wuz
gwine t' make."

The discouraged air changed to one of greater courage and
determination. His voice rose in his resentment and excitement.

"Now I's tiahed of all dis cheatin' an' lyin'! Mr. Taylor mus' take
me for a fool if he thinks I'm gwine stan' for dis way of doin'
things all de time. I stahted to tell him dat I knew he wuz cheatin'
me in Janua'y w'en he give me dat statemen', but den I ‘membered
whut happen t' Joe Todd two years ago w'en he tol' dat ol' man
Stanton dat he wukked for, de same thing. W'en ol' man stahted thit
Joe, Joe hit him fust and run. Dey came one night and call Joe to
his do' and tuk him down in de swamp an' de nex' mawnin' dey foun'
Joe full of bullets, hangin' to a tree. De paper say Joe done spoke
insultin' to a white ‘oman, but all de cullud folks, an' de white
too, know dat Joe ain't nevah even seen no white 'oman dat day. Dey
knew dat if dey say he ‘sulted a white 'oman, de folks up Nawth
won't crit'cize dem for lynchin' a nigger down here in Georgy. So I
jus' kep' my mouth close'. Now we wants t' know if dey ain't
somethin' we c'n do t' make dese white folks we wuks for stop
cheatin' an' robbin' us po' cullud folks."

He sat down, evidently greatly relieved at finishing a task so
arduous. Kenneth had listened in amazement to the story of
exploitation, crudely told, yet with a simplicity that was
convincing and eloquent. Having lived in the South all his life, he
naturally was not unaware of the abuses under the "share-cropping"
or "tenant-farming" system in the South, but it had never been
brought home to him so forcefully how close at hand and how
oppressive and dishonest the system really was. No wonder the South
lynched, disfranchised, Jim-Crowed the Negro, he reflected. If the
Negro had a yote and a voice in the local government of affairs,
most of these bankers and merchants and landowners would have to go
to work for the first time in their lives instead of waxing fat on
the toil of humble Negroes like Hiram Tucker. He turned to Tucker to
get further information on the system.

"Mr. Tucker, have you and the other folks like you ever thought of
trying to get loans from the Federal Government through the banks
they have established to aid farmers in buying land and raising
their crops?"

"Oh, yes, Doc. Soon's they started lendin' money to farmers, I
'plied for a loan to buy me a li'l' place dat I wuz gwine t' wuk an'
pay for off whut I raised. But dey tol' me dey didn' have no funds
t' lento niggers an' dat dey already done loaned all dey had to de
white farmers. W'en I ast dem to put my name down on de lis' to get
a loan when some mo' money came in, dey tol me dat it wa'n't no use
‘cause dey already had so many white folks' names down on de lis'
dat dey nevah would come to de cullud folks."

"Did you think about writing to Washington and telling them that
they were discriminating against Negro farmers?" questioned Kenneth.

"Yas, suh, we done dat too. But dey wrote us back dat de onliest way
any loan could be made was th'u' de local agents, so dat didn't come
to nuthin'."

"But, good Lord, they can't discriminate in that way against you
without something being done about it!" was Kenneth's indignant
comment.

Tucker looked at him with a wan smile that was almost pitying at the
ignorance of the younger man. His voice became paternal.

"Son, dat's jes' zactly like de man whut wuz in jail and his frien'
come by and ast him whut dey put him in jail for. When de man in
jail tol' him whut he wuz ‘cused of, de man on de outside said: 'Dey
can't put you in jail for dat! De man dat was lookin' out at him
th'u' de bars laughed and said: ‘But I'se in jail!' An' dat's de way
‘tis wif de cullud folks in de Souf. Dey's lots of things dey can't
do to 'em but dese white folks does it jes' de same. I reckon you
got a lot of things t' learn yet, Doc, spite of goin' up Nawth t'
study."

Kenneth felt properly rebuked by this humble man who, though
illiterate, was far from being ignorant. He joined in, but not very
heartily, at the general laughter at Tucker's homely sally.

Mr. Wilson, as acting chairman, ended the discussion by calling on
Tom Tracy. Tracy was a much younger man than Tucker and was about
Kenneth's age. Tall, well built, intelligent looking, his dark brown
face had worn a scowl of discontent and resentment while Tucker had
been talking. He began talking in a clear voice that but poorly
masked the bitterness he felt but which he tried to keep out of his
voice. Older men like Mr. Tucker were always quick to rebuke any
sign of "uppishness" in the younger generation.

"I graduated from Tuskegee three years ago. My old mother worked
herself almost to death to keep me in school, and I came back here
determined to earn enough money to let her rest the balance of her
life. But she and my father had been living all their lives just
like Mr. Tucker here, and they didn't have anything to give me a
start. So I went to work on shares, taking that thirty acres that
joins on to Mr. Tucker's farm on the South. I took this land that
wasn't thought to be any good, because it had been exhausted through
overworking it year after year. I bought some new ploughs and fixed
it up fine. I thought I could put the things I learned at Tuskegee
into practice and in a couple of years pay off all I owed. But
instead of doing that, I'm getting deeper in debt every year. I rent
my place from Ed Stewart and he knows that I know he's cheating and
robbing and lying to me, but when I try to show him where he is
wrong in his figures, all he does is to get mad and start to cussing
me and telling me that if I don't keep a civil tongue in my head,
the Ku Klux Klan will be hearing about this ‘sassy young nigger
Tracy' and I'll wish I had kept my mouth shut. I'm getting sick of
the whole thing, too. If it wasn't for the old folks, I expect I'd
‘a' started something long ago. They are all talking about me being
a dangerous character out my way already. Say I'm too ‘uppity' and I
need to be taught a lesson to show me that ‘niggers must stay in
their places.'"

Tracy finished speaking in a tone that was almost a shout. It could
be seen that he was very near the breaking-point from brooding over
the wrongs he had suffered.

Mr. Phillips, who had said nothing, broke in with a question.

"Tom, why don't you move away from Ed Stewart's place if he doesn't
treat you right?"

Tracy replied bitterly:

"Yes, suppose I tried to leave, what would happen? The same day I
left, Sheriff Parker would come and get me. They'd put me on trial
for jumping my contract and fine me. Old Stewart would be in court
to testify against me. He'd pay my fine and then I'd have to go back
to Stewart's place and work a year or two for nothing, paying off
the fine. A fat chance I've got with the cards all stacked against
me!"

Mr. Young, of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, nodded
assent to Tracy's statement.

"Brother Tracy's right. Look at what happened to Jeff Anderson down
near Valdosta last spring. He ran away and got to Detroit where he
had a good job working in an automobile plant. They swore out a
warrant against him for stealing, brought him back, and the last I
heard of him he was back down there working out a
three-hundred-dollar fine. No, Brother Phillips, you've been reading
the law that applies to white folks—not to us coloured people."

James Swann's story was along the same lines as the others. The
seven men entered into a discussion of ways and means of taking some
action which would alleviate conditions before the harvesting of the
crop which was now in the ground. One suggestion after another was
offered, only to be as quickly discarded because of local
difficulties. Midnight came, with no decision reached. When it
became apparent that nothing would be settled, Kenneth was chosen
with Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips to work out some plan to be
reported at the meeting to be held one week later.




                             CHAPTER IX


THERE was being held another meeting the same night. Two miles from
Central City, to the North, was a natural auditorium, an
amphitheatre formed by three hills. In this place a meeting alfresco
was in progress. Though the place was far enough from the road to be
reasonably free from prying intruders, sentinels paced the narrow
roads that led to the place of assemblage. Skeleton-like pine-trees
formed an additional barrier to the lonely spot, making as they did
a natural fringe atop the three hills.

There was no moon. Light was furnished by pine torches fastened in
some instances to trees, in others borne aloft by members of the
gathering. About three hundred men were ranged in a circle around a
rudely carved cross stuck in the ground. Each man was garbed in a
long white robe reaching to his feet. On the left breast of each
hood was a cross with other strange figures. Over the head of each
man was a cowl with holes for eyelets. It was a meeting of Central
City Klan, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Realm of Georgia. The
Exalted Cyclops, whose voice bore a remarkable likeness to that of
Sheriff Parker, was initiating new members into the mysteries of the
order. He held in his hand a sheet from which he was reading the
oath which the "aliens" repeated after him with their right hands
upraised. Whether through fright or excitement or because the night
air was chilly, the voices of the embryo "knights" had a strange
quaver in them. Around them, rank on rank, stood the Klansmen, who
followed the ceremony closely.

"… will willingly conform—to all regulations, usages, and
requirements—of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan—which do now
exist—or which may hereafter—be enacted—and will render—at all
times—loyal respect, and steadfast support—to the Imperial Authority
of same. …"

The droning voices ended the monotonous recital. The flickering
torches gave forth a weird light that was lost in the darkness cast
by the trees. The pungent odour of burning resin and the thick
stifling smoke were blown by vagrant breezes into the faces of the
hooded figures, causing a constant accompaniment of coughs, sneezes,
and curses to the mumbled words. A recent rain-storm had left the
low-lying ground soggy and damp and mightily uncomfortable
underfoot. The crowd shifted uneasily as their feet grew cold with
the dampness. Moths, mosquitoes, and other flying insects, attracted
by the flaring lights, swarmed, getting beneath the cowls and robes
and adding to the discomfort of the wearers. Even the imperfect
illumination showed the cheap material of which the disguises were
made, exhibited the wrinkles and dirt around the hems, revealed
every aspect of the ill-fitting garments. Once from a spluttering
torch there fell a bit of blazing resin on the hand of the man
holding the light. With a yell he dropped the torch, danced and
howled with pain, a ludicrous figure, until the agony had subsided.
The torch, flung hastily away, set fire to the underbrush into which
it had been cast. An unlooked-for intermission in the ceremonies
followed as a score of the figures, holding the skirts of their
robes aloft like old maids frightened at the appearance of a mouse,
stamped out the fire, circling and yelling like a band of whirling
deryishes.

Stodgy, phlegmatic, stupid citizens by day, these by night went
through the discomforts of so unprepared a meeting-place, and
through the absurdities of the rites imposed upon them by clever
rogues who extracted from them fees and donations for the privilege
of being made to appear more silly than is usually apparent. Add to
that gullibility a natural love of the mysterious and adventurous
and an instinct towards brute action restrained only by fear of
punishment, by a conjuring of bogies and other malevolent dangers,
and one understands, at least in part, the presence of these three
hundred "white, Gentile, Protestant" citizens of Central City at
this meeting.

The initiation ended, the Exalted Cyclops ordered the Kligrapp or
secretary to read several communications from the Imperial Klan
Palace at Atlanta. This he did, struggling manfully through the
weird and absurd verbiage that would have made any of the men
present howl with laughter had he heard his children using it in
their play. Instead it was listened to attentively, seriously, and
solemnly.

Then followed a recital of the work to be done by the local Klan.
The Kligrapp consulted a sheet of paper in his hand.

"The eye that never sleeps has been seeking out those in our city
who have acted in a manner displeasing to the Invisible Empire.
There is in Central City a nigger wench named Nancy Ware who has
been saying evil things against our brother, George Parker. In the
name of our sacred order, and in the furtherance of our supreme duty
of preservation of white supremacy, she is being watched and will be
treated so as to end her dangerous utterances."

At this statement a robed figure that, even under the disguise,
seemed to resemble him who had been "defamed" by Nancy Ware's tongue
nodded approvingly. The Kligrapp continued after a pause:

"Word has also come to us from Brothers Ed Stewart and Taylor that
there's a young nigger named Tom Tracy out this way who's going
around among the niggers saying that they have got to stop white
people from robbing them on their crops. Tracy hasn't done anything
but talk thus far, but we will keep our eye on him and stop him if
he talks too much." Cowled heads nodded approvingly.

"And then there's a nigger doctor who came in my office I mean, he
went into the office of Health Commissioner Lane—and had the gall to
repo't the death of a nigger bootlegger and say that a white man had
killed him for fooling around with the nigger's wife. This nigger's
daddy was one of the best niggers that ever lived here in this town,
and this boy's keeping away from the other trouble-making niggers,
but we've got to watch all these niggers that's been spoiled by
goin' to school." He added, as an afterthought: "… up Nawth."

And so he droned on. Negroes, two Jews, three men suspected of
Catholic leanings—all were condemned by the self-appointed arbiters
of morals and manners. One or two men were singled out as violating
the code of morals by consorting with Negro women. There was not
much to report on this score, as those who were violating this rule
in Central City had rushed, on formation of a Klan there, to join
the order, that they might gain immunity from attack and yet
continue their extra-legal activities without check or interference.
With the conclusion of the Kligrapp's report, the meeting dispersed,
the members silently entered the woods and there disrobing, and
scattering to their various homes. Some went towards "Factoryville,"
some towards the country districts, others climbed into automobiles
parked near the road and drove towards the residential section of
Central City where lived the more affluent merchants and other
upper-class whites of the town.

The place was soon deserted. The ceremony had been a strange mixture
of the impressive and the absurd. There was underneath the
ridiculously worded language, the amusing childlike observance of
the empty ceremonies, the queer appearance of the robes all designed
alike with little regard for fatness or thinness of the prospective
wearers, a seriousness which betokened a belief in the urgent need
of their organizing in such a manner. They had been duped so long by
demagogues, deluded generation after generation into believing their
sole hope of existence depended on oppression and suppression of the
Negro, that the chains of the ignorance and suppression they sought
to fasten on their Negro neighbours had subtly bound them in
unbreakable fashion. They opposed every move for better educational
facilities for their children, for improvement of their health or
economic status or welfare in general, if such improvement meant
better advantages for Negroes.

Creatures of the fear they sought to inspire in others, their lives
are lived in constant dread of the things of evil and terror they
preached. It is a system based on stark, abject fear—fear that he
whom they termed inferior might, with opportunity, prove himself not
inferior. This unenlightened viewpoint rules men throughout the
South like those who formed the Central City Klan—dominates their
every action or thought—keeps the whites back while the Negro—in
spite of what he suffers—always keeps his face towards the sun of
achievement. …

In spite of the secrecy surrounding the meeting, next morning all
Central City talked of what had taken place on the previous evening.
In such a town, where little diversion exists, the inhabitants seize
with avidity upon every morsel of news that promises entertainment.
Though they had taken fearful oaths of secrecy, it was asking too
much of human frailty to expect three hundred men to refrain even
from mysterious hints of their doings. With the love that simple
minds have of the clandestine, the midnight secrecy, the elaborately
arranged peregrinations to the place of meeting, the safeguards
adopted by the leaders not so much to prevent interference as to
impress their followers, the "inviolable oath," the grips and
passwords—all these added to the human desire to be considered
important in the eyes of family and friends and neighbours. Thus
many of the three hundred dropped hints to their wives of what had
been said and done. Over back fences, at the stores on Lee Street,
in the numerous places where women contrived to meet and gossip, the
one topic discussed was the meeting of the night before. One told
her bit of information to another, who in turn contributed her mite.
Each in turn told a third and a fourth. With each telling, the ball
of gossip grew, and each repetition bore artistic additions of fact
or fancy designed to add to the drama of the story. By noon the
compounded result assumed the proportions of a feat bordering on the
heroic.

At the noonday meal, known as dinner, the men found themselves
viewed in a new and admiring light by their spouses and offspring.
They basked in the temporary glamour and sought to add to the fame
of their midnight prowling by elaborate hints of deeds of dark and
magnificent proportions.

In turn, to the Negro section of Central City were borne the tales
by cooks and laundresses and maids, servants, with acutely developed
ears, in the houses of the whites. Everywhere in the Negro section,
in homes, on street corners, over back fences, the news was
discussed by the dusky inhabitants of the town. In the eyes of a
few, fear could be discerned. Most of the Negroes, however,
discussed the news as they would have talked about the coming of the
circus to town. Some talked loudly and in braggart fashion of what
they would do if the "Kluxers" bothered them. Others examined for
the hundredth time well-oiled revolvers. Most generally the feeling
was a hope the Klan would not bother any coloured person—but if it
did—! …

It was natural that the news should eventually reach Nancy Ware and
Tom Tracy and, last of all, Kenneth. Mrs. Amos, bustling with
importance, hastened as fast as her rheumatism would allow to tell
Mrs. Harper what the Klansmen had said or, to be more accurate, what
Dame Rumour said the Klansmen had said, about Kenneth and Bob. It
was obvious the two men had taken on a new importance in her eyes in
being singled out for the attention of the clandestine organization.

That night in Kenneth's office the brothers talked over the news.
Kenneth scoffed at what seemed to him a fantastic and improbable
tale. He looked searchingly at his brother.

"Well Bob, what do you make of it?"

"Trouble for somebody," said Bob positively. "And I have a sort of
feeling that that somebody is us," he added after a pause.

"I'm not so sure," was Kenneth's doubtful rejoinder. "Some of these
Crackers are just mean enough to start something, but I'm pretty
sure there are enough decent white people in Central City to check
any trouble that might start."

Bob said nothing, though his face showed plainly he did not share
his brother's confidence. Kenneth went on:

"Besides, they must have sense enough to know that a sheet and
pillow-case won't scare coloured folks to-day as they did fifty
years ago. It wasn't hard to scare Negroes then—they'd just come out
of slavery, and believed in ghosts and spooks and all those other
silly things. But to-day⸺"

"I think white people are right sometimes," broke in Bob with
conviction, "when they say education ruins a Negro. One of those
times is when you talk like that."

The irony in his voice was but thinly veiled. He continued:

"The Southern white man boasts he knows the Negro better than
anybody else, but he knows less what the coloured man is really
thinking than the man in the moon. I'll bet anything you say, that
seven out of every ten men in town believe that you and I and all
the rest of us coloured folks are scared to death every time we hear
the word ‘Ku Klux.' They believe the sight of one of those fool
robes'll make us run and hide under a bed⸺"

"Oh, I don't go quite that far," interrupted Kenneth. "I only said I
thought some of the good white people"

"You can name all your ‘good white folks' on one hand," replied Bob
irritably. "A lot they could do if these poor white trash decide to
raise hell. Why, they'd lynch Judge Stevenson or Roy Ewing or
anybody else if they tried to stop 'em. Look what they did to
Governor Slaton at Atlanta just because he commuted the sentence of
that Jew, Leo Frank!" he added triumphantly. "A mob even went out to
his house to lynch _him—the governor!"_

"But that was an extraordinary case," replied Kenneth.

"Call it what you will, it just shows you how far they will go when
they are all stirred up. And with this Ku Klux outfit to stir them
up, there's no telling what'll happen."

"Bob, do you really believe what you said just now about most of
them really believing Negroes will be scared by the Klan? That seems
so far-fetched."

"Believe it? Of course I do. Just use your eyes and see how Negroes
fool white folks all the time. Take, for instance, old Will
Hutchinson who works for Mr. Baird. Will cuts all sorts of
monkey-shines around Baird, laughs like an idiot, and wheedles old
Baird out of anything he's got. Baird gives it to him and then tells
his friends about ‘his good nigger Will' and boasts that Will is one
‘darky' he really knows. Then Will goes home and laughs at the fool
he's made of Baird by acting like a fool." Bob laughed at the memory
of many occasions on which Will had bamboozled his employer. "And
there are Negroes all over the South doing the same thing every
day!" he ended.

"That's true," admitted Kenneth, "but what ought we to do about this
meeting last night?"

"Do?" echoed Bob. A determined look came to his face, his teeth
clenched, his eyes narrowed until they became thin slits. "Do?" he
repeated. "If they ever bother me, I'm going to fight—and fight like
hell!"

Long into the night Kenneth sat alone in his office, wondering how
it was all going to turn out.




                             CHAPTER X


THE next day Kenneth received a letter from Jane Phillips. In it she
announced that she would arrive in Central City on Monday morning.

Kenneth's face took on a satisfied smile and deep down in his heart
there was happiness and contentment. Jane had occupied an
increasingly large portion of his thoughts ever since those
wonderful ten days they had spent together last December. Kenneth's
life had been singularly free from feminine influence, other than
that of his mother. It was not that he was averse to such influence,
but his life had been so busy that he had had no time to spend in
wandering through the Elysian fields of love-making. There had been
one girl in New York. He had met her at a dance in Harlem. Together
they had spent their Sundays and the evenings when he was free from
his duties at the hospital in wandering through Central and Bronx
Parks. Occasionally they had attended the theatre. One night their
hands had touched as they sat in the semi-darkness and watched the
tender love scene on the stage. She had not withdrawn her hand. He
sat there thrilled at the touch and had lived the character of the
make-believe hero as he made ardent love on the stage. Naturally,
the heroine was none other than the girl who sat beside him.
Afterwards, they had ridden home atop a Fifth Avenue bus, and the
whole city seemed filled with romance. He had imagined himself at
the time deeply in love. But that tender episode had soon ended when
he told her he was planning to return to Georgia. "Kenneth!" she had
exclaimed. "How can you think of living down South again? It's silly
of you even to think of it! I could never think of living down there
where they are likely to lynch you at a moment's notice! It's too
barbaric, too horrible an existence to consider even for a minute!"
Kenneth had tried to show her that it wasn't as bad as it had been
painted, that coloured people who minded their own business never
had any trouble. But she had been obdurate. Kenneth left the house
in a huff, and had never gone back again. What silly notions women
have, he had thought to himself. The reason they talked about the
South that way was because of sheer ignorance. As if he couldn't
manage his own affairs and keep away from trouble! Humph! Well rid
of the silly creature, and he felt glad he had found out before
going in too deep.

But now this was different. Jane had no such absurd notions as those
girls up North had. She wasn't the sort that couldn't leave
promenading down Seventh Avenue in New York or State Street in
Chicago or U Street in Washington. It wasn't that she didn't know
what it meant to live in the North. Hadn't she been to Atlantic City
and New York and Washington with her mother? No, Jane was just the
sort of girl who would make the right sort of companion for him in a
place like Central City. Intelligent, with a good education,
talented musically—she would make an ideal wife. Kenneth found
himself musing along in this fashion until aroused by his mother as
she called him to supper.

It was darned silly of him, he thought as he arose to comply, to go
along thinking like this. He and Jane had spoken no word of love
when she had been at home at Christmas. Nor had their letters been
other than those of good friends. But hadn't she written him almost
every week since she left? She must think something of him to have
done that. He determined that as soon as he could he would skilfully
direct the conversation to the point where he could find out just
where he stood. It was time that he was thinking about settling
down, anyhow. He would be twenty-nine his next birthday—he was
making money—if he acted wisely his future was assured. Yes, he
would find out how Jane felt. Both his mother and Mamie liked
Jane—and Mr. Phillips had called him "my boy" several times lately
and had repeated to him snatches of the letters that Jane had
written home. The only doubtful quantity was the attitude of Jane
herself.

On Monday morning Kenneth reached the railroad station long before
the train arrived. He tried to sit in the filthy little waiting-room
with the sign over the door, "FOR COLOURED," but the air was so
oppressive that he chose rather to walk up and down the road outside
the station. At last the train came. He walked down towards the
engine where the Jim Crow car was. It was half baggage car and half
coach. A motley crowd of laughing, shouting Negroes descended,
calling out to friends and relatives in the group of Negroes on the
ground. Standing on tiptoe, Kenneth strained his eyes to get glimpse
of Jane. The windows of the coach were too dirty to see inside. At
last she appeared on the platform, dainty, neat, and looking as
though she had just emerged from her own room, in spite of the filth
and cindery foulness of the coach. Kenneth thought of the simile of
a rose springing up from a bed of noisome and unlovely weeds as he
hurried forward to help Jane with her bags through the crowd of
coloured people that flocked around the steps.

Jane greeted him cordially enough, her eyes shining with pleasure at
seeing him again. Kenneth, however, felt a vague disappointment. He
had let his thoughts run riot while she had been away. So far as he
was concerned, the only things necessary were the actual asking of
the all-important question and the choosing of a wedding-day. As he
followed her to his car, he turned over in his mind just what it was
that disappointed him so in her greeting. He couldn't put his finger
on it exactly, but she would have greeted Bob or any other man just
as warmly and he would not have felt jealous at all. Maybe she's
tired from the ride in that dirty and noisy car? She'll be quite
different when I go over to see her to-night, he thought.

He inquired regarding her trip—was it pleasant? "Ugh, it was
horrible!" she replied, shuddering at the memory of it. "I had a
Pullman as far as Atlanta, but there I had to change to that dirty
old Jim Crow car. There was a crowd of Negroes who had three or four
quarts of cheap liquor. They were horrible. Why, they even had the
nerve to offer me a drink! And the conductor must have told
everybody on the train that I was up front, because all night long
there was a constant procession of white men passing up and down the
coach looking at me in a way that made my blood boil. I didn't dare
go to sleep, because I didn't know what might happen. It was awful!"

She sat silent as she lived over again the horror of the ride. Then,
shaking off her mood, she turned to him with a cheerful smile.
"Thank Goodness, it's over now, and I don't want to think of it any
more than I can help. Tell me all about yourself and what you've
been doing and everything," she finished all in a breath.

He told her briefly what had been going on, of his plans for the
hospital, of the meeting at Reverend Wilson's, and other items of
interest about life in Central City, until they had arrived at her
home. He waited for an invitation to come in, but in the excitement
of seeing her mother and father again, she forgot all about Kenneth.
Placing her bags on the porch, he turned and left after promising to
run over for a while that evening.

The time seemed to go by on dragging feet that day. It seemed as
though evening never would come. It did at last, however, and as
soon as he finished with the last patient, he went over to Jane's
home. Refreshed by a long rest, she greeted him clad in a dress of
some filmy blue material. They seated themselves on the porch,
shaded by vines from the eyes of passers-by. Over Kenneth there came
a feeling of contentment—life had not been easy for him and he had
been denied a confidante with whom he could discuss the perplexities
he had experienced in Central City. The talk for a time drifted from
one topic to another. Before he knew it, Kenneth was telling Jane of
his ambitions, of the plans he had made before coming back to
Central City, of the successes and failures he had met with, of his
hopes for the future. Jane listened without speaking for some time.
Life among coloured people is so intense, so earnest, so serious a
problem in the South, that never do two intelligent Negroes talk
very long before the race problem in some form is under discussion.
Jane interrupted Kenneth in the midst of his recital.

"Kenneth, did you really believe that you could come back here to
Central City and keep entirely away from the race problem?"

"I don't know that I thought it out as carefully as that, but I
hoped to do something like that," was his uneasy reply. He had the
feeling that she didn't altogether approve of him. Her next words
proved that she didn't.

"Well, you can't do it. Just because your father got along all right
is no reason why you should do the same things he did. You are
living in a time that is as different from his as his was from his
great-grandfather's."

"But⸺" he attempted to defend himself.

"Wait a minute until I've had my say," she checked him. "Only a few
years ago they said that as soon as Negroes got property and made
themselves good citizens the race problem would be solved. They said
that only bad Negroes were ever lynched and they alone caused all
the trouble. But you just think back over the list of coloured
people right here in Central City who've had the most trouble during
the past two years. What do you find? That it is the Negro who has
acquired more property than the average white man, they are always
picking on. Poor whites resent seeing a Negro more prosperous than
they, and they satisfy their resentment by making it hard on that
Negro. Am I right—or am I wrong?"

"I suppose there is something in what you say—but what's the answer?
You're damned if you do—and you're damned if you don't!"

"I don't know what the answer is—if I did, I'd certainly try to put
it into use, instead of sitting around and trying to dodge trouble.
If one of your patients had a cancer, you wouldn't advise him to use
Christian Science in treating it, would you?"

Without pausing for a reply, she went on, her words pouring out in a
flood that made Kenneth feel as he did as a boy when spanked by his
mother. "No, you wouldn't! You'd operate! And that's just what the
coloured people and the white people of the South have got to do.
That is, those who've got any sense and backbone. If they don't,
then this thing they call the race problem is going to grow so big
it's going to consume the South and America. It's almost that big
now."

She paused for breath. Kenneth started to speak but she checked him
with her hand.

"I'm not through yet! I've been thinking over this thing for a long
time, just as every other Negro has done who's got brains enough to
do any thinking at all. I am sick and tired of hearing all this
prating about the ‘superior race.' Superior—humph! Kenneth, what you
and all the rest of Negroes need is to learn that you belong to a
race that was centuries old when the first white man came into the
world. You've got to learn that a large part of this thing they call
‘white civilization' was made by black hands, as well as by yellow
and brown and red hands, too, besides what white hands have created.
You've got to learn that the Negro to-day is contributing as much of
the work that makes this civilization possible as the white race, if
not more. Be proud of your race and quit whining and cringing!
You'll never get anywhere until you do! There, I've wanted to get
that out of my system for a long time ever since we talked together
last Christmas. Now it's out and I'm through!"

Kenneth sat quiet. While she had been pouring forth her tirade, he
had thought of several logical arguments he could have advanced. But
she had given him no chance to utter them. Now they seemed weak and
useless. He was resentful—what did women know about the practical
problems and difficulties of life, anyway? His anger was not abated
by the realization that Jane felt that he had been trying to avoid
his responsibility to himself and to his people—that he had been a
coward. And yet she was right in a general way in what she had said.
Masking as well as he could the chagrin he felt at her words, he
told her of the trouble Tucker and Tracy and Swann and the other
share-croppers were having, and gave her further details of the
meeting at Reverend Wilson's.

She sensed the wound to his pride that she had inflicted. She did
not regret doing what she had done—on the long ride home she had
determined that she would tell him those very things as soon as she
could find opportunity—but, with a woman's natural tenderness, she
regretted the necessity of hurting him. She put her hand over his
for an instant, touched at his dejected manner.

"I'm sorry, Ken, if I hurt you, but I did it because you are too
fine a man, and you've got too good an education, to try to dodge an
issue as plain as yours. Why, Kenneth, you've had it mighty
soft—just think of the thousands of coloured boys all over the South
who are too poor to get even a high-school training. You've never
had to get down and dig for what you've got—perhaps it would have
been better if you had. It's men with your brains and education that
have got to take the leadership. You've got to make good! That's
just the reason they try to make it hard for men like you—they know
that if you ever get going, their treating the Negro as they have
has got to stop! They're darned scared of educated Negroes with
brains—that's why they make it hard for you!"

Kenneth threw out his hands, palms upward, and shrugged his
shoulders.

"I suppose I agree with you in theory, Jane, but what are the
practical ways of doing the things you say I ought to do? How, for
example, can I help Tracy and Tucker and all the rest of the farmers
who're being robbed of all they earn every year?"

"Don't get angry now just because I touched your masculine vanity. I
know about the share-cropping system in a general way. Tell me the
facts that were brought out at the meeting."

Kenneth told her in detail the things Hiram Tucker and the others
had said. She sat in thought for a minute, her chin cupped in the
palm of her hand, her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, as she
rocked back and forth. Kenneth sat watching her in what was almost
sardonic amusement. He had been wrestling with this same problem
ever since Thursday night and was no nearer a solution than he had
been then. It would be amusing in a few minutes, after all her
high-flown thoughts and elaborate generalities about bucking the
race question, when she would be forced to admit that when it came
to solving one of the practical problems of the whole question her
generalizing would be of no avail. He was aroused by a question
thrown at him suddenly by Jane.

"Do these folks have to buy their supplies from the landlord?"

"Not that I know of," he replied. "They buy from the landlord, or
the merchant designated by the landlord, because they haven't the
money or the credit to trade anywhere else."

There followed another pause while the rocking began again.

"Do you remember any of the economics you learned at school?" was
the next query. He replied that he supposed he did.

"Have you got any books on co-operative societies?" He doubted
whether he had.

"Well, never mind." She swung her chair around, facing Kenneth, and
leaned forward intently, the light from the arc-lamp in the corner
illumining her face and revealing the eager, enthusiastic look upon
it.

"Kenneth, why can't those coloured people pool their money and buy
their goods wholesale and then distribute them at cost?"

Kenneth laughed, it must be confessed a little cheerfully, that she
had gone from one problem into the mazes of another that was just as
difficult.

"For the very same reason that they are in the predicament they are
in to-day. They haven't got the money. Perhaps you can tell me where
the money to start this co-operative scheme is coming from?"

"That's an easy one to answer. It's going to come from you and papa
and three or four more of these folks here in town who can afford
it! Oh, Ken, can't you see what a big thing you can do? There are
lots of people, white people I mean, right here in Central City,
who'd be glad to help these poor Negroes get out of debt. Papa was
telling us today about a talk he had with Judge Stevenson the other
day. The Judge said he wished there was some way to help without it
making him unpopular with the other folks here in town. Of course,
the folks who are making money off this system, the landlords and
the store-keepers, won't like it, but you can go and talk with folks
like Judge Stevenson and Mr. Baird down at the Bank of Central City.
If this first trial succeeds—and I know it will be a success—it'll
spread all over Smith County, and then all over Georgia, and then
all over the South, and the coloured folks will have millions of
dollars that they've been cheated out of before. That, Kenneth
Harper, is one way you can lead, and it won't get you in bad with
the white people at least the decent ones—either."

Kenneth began to be infected by her enthusiasm. He saw that her idea
had possibilities. But, manlike, he didn't want to give in too soon
or too readily.

"There is something in what you say, Jane, but the details will have
to be worked out first before we can tell if it is a practicable
idea. I'll think it⸺"

Jane interrupted him, showing that she hadn't even been listening to
him.

"When are you to meet again at Reverend Wilson's?" she asked.

He told her.

"Well, I tell you what we'll do. You go home and think over all the
ways we can put this idea into practice. I'll do the same thing. And
then we'll talk it over again to-morrow night. On Wednesday you go
down to see Judge Stevenson and see if he will draw up the papers so
it'll be legal and binding and everything else. Then on Thursday
night you can present this as your own idea, and I'll bet you
anything you say, they'll take it up and you'll be the one chosen to
lead the whole movement."

After some discussion of details, Kenneth left. The more he thought
of Jane's idea, the more it appealed to him. At any rate, she had
suggested more in half an hour than he had been able to think of in
four days. Hadn't the co-operative societies been the backbone of
the movement to get rid of the Czar in Russia? If the Russian
peasants, who certainly weren't as educated as the Negro in America,
had made a success of the idea, the Negro in the South ought to do
it. By Jove, they could do it! Idea after idea sprang to his mind,
after the seed had been sown by Jane, until he had visions of a vast
cooperative society not only buying but selling the millions of
dollars' worth of products raised by the nine million Negroes of the
South. And that wasn't all! These societies would be formed with
each member paying monthly dues, like the fraternal organizations.
When enough money was in the treasury, they would employ the very
best lawyers money could get to take one of those cases where a
Negro had not been able to get a fair settlement with his landlord,
and make a test case of it. What if they did lose in the local
court? They'd take it to the State Supreme Court! What if they did
lose even there? They'd take it clear up to the United States
Supreme Court! They were sure to win there. Kenneth walked home with
his head whirling with the project's possibilities. He saw a new day
coming when a man in the South would no longer be exploited and
robbed just because he was black. And when that came, lynching and
everything else like it would go too. He felt already like Matthew
and Andrew and Peter and John and the other disciples when they
started out to bring the good news to the whole world. For wasn't he
a latter-day disciple bringing a new solution and a new hope to his
people?

It was not until Kenneth had gone to bed that he realized that
though he had been with Jane all the evening, he had had not one
minute when he could have spoken of love to her. Musing thus, he
fell asleep.




                             CHAPTER XI


EARLY the next morning Kenneth rose and rummaged through his books
until he found his old and battered text-books on economics.

Into these he dipped during the intervals between patients, making
notes of ideas which seemed useful in the organization of the
co-operative society. The more he read, the more feasible the plan
seemed. Properly guided and carefully managed, there was no reason,
so far as he could see, why the society should not be a success.
Eighty per cent of the farmers of the South, white and coloured, he
estimated, suffered directly or indirectly from the present economic
system. Though his interest was in the Negro tillers of the soil,
success in their case would inevitably react favourably on the white
just as oppression and exploitation of the Negro had done more harm
to white people in the South than to Negroes. Kenneth felt the warm
glow of the crusader in a righteous cause. Already he saw a new day
in the South with white and coloured people free from oppression and
hatred and prejudice—prosperous and contented because of that
prosperity. He could see a lifting of the clouds of ignorance which
hung over all the South, an awakening of the best in all the people
of the South. Thus has youth dreamed since the beginning of time.
Thus will youth ever dream. And in those dreams rests the hope of
the world, for without them this world with all its defects would
sink into the black abyss of despair, never to rise again.

His work finished for the day, he went as soon as he decently could
to talk with Jane. She, too, had been at work. Eagerly they planned
between them the infinite details of so ambitious a scheme.
Confidently they discounted possible difficulties they might expect
to encounter—the opposition of the whites who were profiting from
the present system, the petty jealousies and suspicions of those who
would gain most from the success of their scheme. They realized that
the Negro had been robbed so much, both by his own people and by the
whites, that he was chary of new plans and projects. They knew he
was contentious and quarrelsome. These things seemed trivial,
however, for with the natural expansiveness of the young they felt
that difficulties like these were but trifles to be airily brushed
aside.

Jane was not too much engrossed in their plans to notice the change
in Kenneth's manner. She had watched him closely during the times
she had seen him since his return. He had been almost morose, his
mind divided between his work and the effort to keep to a
"middle-of-the-road" course in his relations with the whites. The
inevitable conflict within himself, the lack of decisiveness in his
daily life that he consciously developed and which was so
diametrically opposite to that he used in his profession, had begun
to create a complex personality that was far from pleasing. In a
freer atmosphere Kenneth would have been a direct, straightforward
character, swift to decision and quick of action. One cannot,
however, compromise principle constantly and consciously without
bearing the marks of such conflicts.

His compromises were not all conscious ones, though. He believed
honestly it was wisest that he observe some sort of half-way ground
between rank cowardice and uncompromising opposition to the
conditions which existed. In doing so, he had no sense of physical
or moral timidity. He knew no Negro could yet safely advocate
complete freedom for the Negro in the South. He felt there had been
improvement during the past half-century in those conditions. He
believed that in time all of the Negro's present problems would be
solved satisfactorily. If, by not trying to rush things, he could
help in that solution, he was content. In believing thus, Kenneth
was different in no way from the majority of intelligent Negroes in
the South: temporizing with the truth, it may be, yet of such
temporizations and compromises is the life of the Negro all over the
South.

With the evolving of a plan which enabled him to be of help and, at
the same time, involved him in no danger of trouble with his white
neighbours, Kenneth took on an eagerness which was at marked
variance with his former manner. His eyes shone with the desire to
make their plan a success. Of a tender and sympathetic nature,
almost with the gentleness of a woman, he realized now that the
burdens of his race had lain heavy upon him. He had suffered in
their suffering, had felt almost as though he had been the victim
when he read or heard of a lynching, had chafed under the bonds
which bound the hands and feet and heart and soul of his people. But
launched as he now was on a plan to furnish relief from one of the
worst of those bonds, he had changed overnight into a determined and
purposeful and ardent worker towards the goal he and Jane had set
for themselves. Jane rejoiced at the changed air of Kenneth—he
seemed to have emerged from the shell in which he had encased
himself and, womanlike, she rejoiced that he had done so through her
own work.

So absorbed had they been in discussion of their plans that the time
had flown by as though on wings. Ten o'clock was announced by
Mr. Phillips in the room above by the dropping of his shoes, one
after the other, on the floor. Kenneth needed no second signal, he
rose to go. Jane went to the door with him.

"Kenneth, you're entirely different from the way you were yesterday.
I'm so glad. …"

The next morning he called on Judge Stevenson. The Judge's office
was above the Bon Ton Store in a two-story brick building on Lee
Street. Kenneth climbed the flight of dingy, dusty stairs which bore
alternately on the vertical portions tin signs inscribed:

Richad P. Stevenson, Attorney-at-Law

and

Dr. J. C. Carpenter, Dentist.

The judge's office was at the head of the stairs and in it Kenneth
found the old lawyer seated near the window, his coat off, and in
his mouth the long, thin, villainous-looking cigar without which few
persons in Central City ever remembered seeing him, though none had
ever seen one of them lighted. He chewed on it ruminatively when in
repose. When engaged in an argument, either in or out of a
courtroom, and especially when opposition caused his choleric temper
to be aroused, he chewed furiously as though he would have enjoyed
treating his enemy of the moment in similar fashion. He was tall and
thickset, his snow-white hair brushed straight back from his
forehead like the mane of a lion. Skin reddened by exposure to sun
and wind, bushy eyebrows from under which gleamed fiery eyes that
could shift in an instant from twinkling good humour to flashing
indignation or anger, thin nose and ample mouth, his face was one
that would command respect or at least attention in almost any
gathering. He wore loosely fitting, baggy clothes that draped his
ample figure with a gracefulness that added to his distinguished
appearance. Many thought he resembled at first glance that famous
Kentuckian, Henry Watterson, and indeed he did bear an unmistakable
likeness to "Marse Henry."

The judge's life had been a curious combination of contradictions.
He had fought valiantly in the Confederate army as a major, serving
under "Stonewall" Jackson, whose memory he worshipped second only to
that of his wife, who had died some ten years before. He bore a long
scar, reminder of the wound that had laid him low during the battle
of Atlanta. His mode of brushing his hair back was adopted to cover
the mark, but when he talked, as he loved to do, of his martial
experiences, he would always, at the same time in the narrative,
brush, with one sweep of his hand, the hair down over his forehead
and reveal the jagged scar of which he was inordinately proud.

With the end of the Civil War, he had reconciled himself to the
result though it had meant the loss of most of his wealth. He
harboured little bitterness towards the North, unlike most of his
comrades in arms who never were willing to forgo any opportunity to
vent their venomous hatred of their conquerors. Judge Stevenson had
counselled against such a spirit. So vigorously had he done it, he
had alienated most of those who had been his closest friends.
Following a speech he had delivered at one of the reunions of
Confederate veterans in which he urged his comrades at least to meet
half-way the overtures of friendliness from the North, he had been
denounced from the floor of the convention as a "Yankee-lover," and
threatened with violence. Judge Stevenson with flashing eye and
belligerent manner had jumped to his feet, offered to fight any man,
or any ten men, who thought him guilty of treachery to the cause of
the Confederacy, and when none accepted the challenge, denounced
them as cowards and quit the convention.

He had hoped that, with the passing on, one by one, of the
unreconstructed veterans of the Confederacy, a newer and less
embittered generation, with no personal memories of the gall of
defeat, would right things. Instead had come the rise of the poor
whites with none of the culture and refinement of the old Southern
aristocracy, a nation of petty minds and morals, vindictive,
vicious, dishonest, and stupid. Lacking in nearly all the things
that made the old South, at least the upper crust of it, the most
civilized section of America at that time, he saw his friends and
all they stood for inundated by this flood of crudeness and
viciousness, until only a few remained left high and dry like bits
of wreckage from a foundered ship cast up on the shore to rot away,
while all around them raged this new regime, no longer poor in purse
but eternally impoverished in culture and civilizing influences. On
these the judge spat his contempt and he poured upon their
unconcerned heads the vials of his venom and wrath.

The second devastating blow he suffered was the succumbing, one by
one, of his children to the new order. Nancy, his eldest daughter,
had run away from home and married a merchant whose wealth had been
gained through the petty thievery of padding accounts and other
sharp practices on poorer whites and Negroes. Mary Ann, his other
daughter, whom he loved above all others of his children, had fallen
victim to an unfortunate love affair with a dashing but worthless
son of their next-door neighbour. She had died in giving birth to
her child, which, fortunately, the judge thought, had been born
dead. His son had "gone in for politics." He had been successful, as
success was measured by the present-day South, but in his father's
eyes, judged by the uncompromising standards of that member of an
older and nobler generation, he had sunk to levels of infamy from
which he could never recover.

The crowning misfortune dealt the judge by an unkind fate was the
loss of his gentle, kindly wife. She had uncomplainingly borne their
misfortunes one after another, had calmed and soothed her husband's
irascible tantrums, had been a haven to which he could come and find
repose when buffeted by a world which he did not and could not
understand. As long as she lived, he had been able to bear up
despite the bitter disappointments life had dealt him. He had gone
away to try a case in a near-by county, had returned after a two
days' absence and found her with a severe cold and fever.

For three weeks he did not leave her bedside, drove away in anger
the trained nurse Dr. Bennett brought to the house, ministered
gently to his wife's every need, and held her in his arms as she
breathed her last breath. Frantic at this last and most crushing
blow, he cursed the doctor, though Dr. Bennett had done all he could
in his bungling way, cursed God, cursed everything and everybody he
could think of in his grief. He never recovered from this loss. His
hair rapidly became white, he neglected his profession and sat by
the hour, his eyes half closed, dreaming of his dead wife. …

Had he chosen to adapt himself to the new order, he could have made
money. This, however, he refused to do. He boasted proudly that
never had he cheated any man or been a party to any transaction from
which he emerged with any stain on his honour. Friend he was to all
in his gentle, kindly manner—a relic of a day that had passed. …

He started, roused from one of his usual reveries, when Kenneth
knocked on the open door. The gentle breezes of late spring stirred
the mane of white hair as he brought his chair to the floor with a
thump.

"Come in, Ken, come right in." He welcomed Kenneth heartily, though
in accordance with the Southern custom he did not offer to shake
hands with his visitor. "How's your maw? Heard you're doing right
well since you been back. Mighty glad to hear it, because yo' daddy
set a heap by you."

Kenneth assured him he was progressing fairly well, told him his
mother was well, and answered the innumerable questions the judge
asked him. He knew that these were inevitable and must be answered
before the judge would talk on any matter of business. After a few
minutes of the desultory and perfunctory questions and answers,
Kenneth told, when asked, the purpose of his visit. Chair tilted
back again, elbows resting on the arms of the chair, fingers placed
end to end, and his chin resting on the natural bridge thus formed,
the judge listened to Kenneth's recital of his plan without comment
other than an occasional non-committal grunt.

"… And what I would like from you, Judge Stevenson, is, first, do
you think the plan will work, and, second, will you draw up the
articles of incorporation and whatever other legal papers we need?"
Kenneth ended. As an afterthought he added:

"You see, we want to do the job legally and above board, so there
won't be any misunderstanding of our motives."

For a long time Judge Stevenson said nothing, nor did he give any
indication that he was aware Kenneth had stopped speaking. In fact
he seemed oblivious even of Kenneth's presence. Knowing better than
to interrupt him, Kenneth awaited somewhat anxiously the judge's
opinion. When the silence had lasted nearly five minutes, a vague
alarm began to creep over Kenneth. Suppose the judge wasn't as
friendly towards coloured people as he had supposed? A word from him
could start serious trouble before they got started. He wondered if
he had acted wisely in revealing so much of their plans. He felt
sure he had done wrong when he saw a look of what appeared to be
anger pass over the judge's face.

At last the old lawyer cleared his throat, his usual preliminary to
speech. But when he did talk he began on another subject.

"What're the folks out your way saying about these Kluxers? Any of
you getting worried about these fools parading 'round like a bunch
of damn fools?"

"To tell you the truth, Judge, I don't really know yet what the
coloured people are thinking." He felt that on this subject he could
speak frankly to the judge, as he was too sensible a man to take
much stock in the antics of the Klan. Yet, he was not too
sure—coloured people must always keep a careful watch on their
tongues when talking to white people in the South.

"You ain't getting scared out there, are you?" the judge pressed the
point.

"No, I wouldn't call it scared. Most of those with whom I've talked
don't want any trouble with anybody—they want to attend to their own
business and be let alone. But if they are attacked, I'm afraid
there will be considerable trouble and somebody will get hurt." He
paused, then went on: "And that somebody won't be entirely composed
of Negroes, either."

"I reckon you're right, Ken. These fools don't know they're playing
with dynamite." His voice took on a querulous tone. "We've been
getting along all right here, ‘cept when some of these po' whites
out of the mill or from the tu'pentine camps or some bad nigras tank
up on bad liquor or moonshine." He did not say "Negro" nor yet the
opprobrious "nigger," but struck somewhere between the two—"nigra."
"And now these fools are just stirring up trouble Lord knows where
it'll end."

He ran his hand through his hair—a favourite trick of his when
excited, and paced up and down the room.

"I've been telling some of the boys they'd better stay away from
that fool business of gallivanting around with a pillow-slip over
their heads. They talk about being against bootleggers and men
runing around with loose women—humph!—every blamed bootlegger and
blind tiger and whoremaster in town rushed into the Klan 'cause they
know'd that was the only way they could keep from getting called up
on the carpet! A fine bunch they are!"

The judge spat disgustedly.

"Now about this plan you got—have you thought about the chances of
your being misunderstood? Suppose some of these ornery whites get it
into their heads you're trying to start trouble between the races.
What're you going to do then?" he asked.

"That's just why we want to do the job right," answered Kenneth. "We
want to do everything legally so there can't be any wrong ideas
about the society. I know every time coloured people start forming
any kind of an organization besides a church or a burial society,
there are white people who begin to get suspicious and think that
Negroes are organizing to start some mischief. That's why we want
you and the other good white people to know all about our plans from
the start."

"I ain't trying to discourage you none," replied Judge Stevenson
doubtfully, "but do you think you are wise in starting coloured
folks to thinking about organizing when this Klan's raising hell all
over the South?"

"How else are we going to do anything?" asked Kenneth. "Farmers have
been robbed so long they are getting tired of it. If something isn't
done, there's going to be lots more trouble than a society like ours
can possibly cause. This share-cropping business causes more trouble
than any other thing that's done to Negroes. Lynching is mighty bad,
but after all only a few Negroes are lynched a year, while thousands
are robbed every year of their lives."

"That's so. That's so," agreed the judge, but the doubt had not been
dispelled from his voice nor removed from his face. He removed his
cigar from his mouth, viewed its mangled appearance through much
chewing upon it, threw it with an expression of disgust out of the
window, narrowly missing a man passing in the street below. He
chuckled as he placed a fresh cigar in his mouth.

"'Taint no harm in trying, though," he said, half to himself.

"Besides, our plan is to enlist the support of every white man in
the county who stands for something," went on Kenneth, eager to gain
the old man as a staunch ally. "We know there'll be opposition from
some of the landlords and merchants and bankers who are making money
off this system, but we figure there are enough decent white people
here to help us through. …"

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so," replied the judge, though there was a distinct
note of doubt in his voice now. "I wouldn't be too sure, though. I
wouldn't be too sure."

"But, Judge⸺" interrupted Kenneth. The judge silenced him with a
movement of his hand.

"Ken, have you ever thought out what a decent white man goes through
with in a town like Central City? Have you thought what he has to
put up with all over the South? There ain't a whole lot of them, but
just figure what'd happen to a white man to-day who tried to do
anything about cleaning up this rotten state of affairs we got here.
Why, he'd be run out of town, if he wasn't lynched!"

"But, Judge," began Kenneth again, "take lynching, for example. You
know, and I know, and everybody in the South knows that if a Negro
is arrested charged with criminal assault on a white woman, if he's
guilty, there isn't one chance in a million of his going free. Why
don't they bring them to trial and execute them legally instead of
hanging and burning them?"

"Why? Why?" The judge repeated the interrogative as though it were a
word he had never heard before. "You know, and so do I and all the
rest of us here in the South, that nine out of ten cases where these
trifling women holler and claim they been raped, they ain't been no
rape. They just got caught and they yelled rape to save their
reputations. And they lynch the nigra to hush the matter up."

Kenneth was amazed at the old man. Not amazed at what he said, for
that is common knowledge in the South. He was astounded that even so
liberal a man as the judge should frankly admit that which is denied
in public but known to be true. He hesitated to press the inquiry
further, and thought it expedient to shift the conversation away
from such dangerous ground.

"Why don't men like yourself speak out against the things you know
are wrong, Judge?".

"What would happen to us if we did? Count me out ‘cause I'm so old I
couldn't do much. But take right here in Central City the men I've
talked with just like I'm talking to you. How many of them could say
what they really want to? I don't mean on the race question. I mean
on any question—religion, politics—oh—anything at all. Suppose Roy
Ewing or any other white man here said he was tired of voting the
Democratic ticket and was going to vote Republican or Socialist.
Suppose he decided he didn't believe in the Virgin Birth or that all
bad folks were burned eternally in a lake of fire and brimstone
after they died. If they didn't think he was crazy, they'd stop
trading with him and all the womenfolks would run from Roy's wife
and daughter like they had the smallpox. That's the hell of it, Ken.
These po' white trash stopped everybody from talking against
lynching nigras, and they've stopped us from talking about anything.
And far's I can see, things're getting worse every day."

"Couldn't you organize those white people who think like you do?"
asked Kenneth.

"No, that ain't much use either. It all goes back to the same
root—self-interest—how much is it going to cost me? I tell you, Ken,
the most tragic figure I know is the white man in the South who
wants to be decent. This here system of lynching and covering up
their lynching with lying has grown so big that any man who tries to
tackle it is beat befo' he starts. Specially in the little towns.
Now in Atlanta there's some folks can speak out and say most
anything they please, but here⸺" The old lawyer threw out his hands
in a gesture of hopelessness.

"Why can't the South see where their course is leading them?" asked
Kenneth. "Suppose there wasn't a white man in the South who was
interested in the Negro. Suppose every white man hated every Negro
who lived. Why couldn't they see even then that they are doing more
harm to themselves than they could ever do to the Negro? With all
its rich natural resources, with its fertile soil and its wonderful
climate, the South is farther behind in civilization than any other
part of the United States—or the world, for that matter. Aren't they
ever going to see how they're hurting themselves by trying to keep
the Negro down?"

"That's just it," replied the judge. "A man starts out practising
cheating in a petty way, and before he knows it he's crooked all the
way through. He starts being mean part of the time, and soon he's
mean all over. Or he tries being kind and decent, and he turns out
to be pretty decent. It's just like a man drinking liquor—first
thing he knows, he's liable to be drunk all the time."

The judge shifted his cigar to a corner of his mouth and let fly a
stream of tobacco juice from the other corner, every drop landing
squarely in the box of sawdust some ten feet away. He went on:

"That's just what's the matter with the South. She's been brutal and
tricky and deceitful so long in trying to keep the nigras down, she
couldn't be decent if she tried. If acting like this was going to
get them anywhere, there might be some reason in it all, but they've
shut their eyes, they refuse to see that nigras like you ain't going
to be handled like yo' daddy and folks like him were."

"What are we going to do—what can we do?" asked Kenneth. Never had
he suspected that even so fine a man as Judge Stevenson had thought
things through as their conversation had indicated. He felt the
situation was not entirely hopeless when men like the judge felt and
talked as he did. Perhaps they were the leaven that would affect the
lump of ignorance and viciousness that was the South.

"What are we going to do?" echoed the elder man. "God knows—I don't!
Mebbe the lid will blow off some day—then there would be hell to
pay! One thing's going to help, and that's nigras pulling up stakes
and going North. When some of these white folks begin to see their
fields going to seed, they'll begin to realize how much they need
the nigra—just like some of 'em are seeing already."

"But are they seeing it in the right way?" asked Kenneth. "Instead
of trying to make things better so Negroes are willing to stay in
the South, they're trying more oppressive methods than ever before.
They're beating up labour agents, charging them a thousand dollars
for licences, lynching more Negroes, and robbing them more than
ever."

"Oh, they'll be fools enough until the real pinch comes. Far's I can
see, instead of stopping nigras from going North, them things are
hurrying them up. Wait till it hits their pocket-books hard. Then
the white people'll get some sense."

"Let's hope so," was Kenneth's rejoinder as he rose to go. "It's
been mighty comforting to talk like this with you, Judge. Things
don't seem so hopeless when we've got friends like you."

"'Tain't nothing. Nothing at all," replied the judge. "Just like to
talk with somebody's got some sense. It's a pity you're coloured,
Ken, you got too much sense to be a nigra."

Kenneth laughed.

"From all we've been saying, a coloured man's got to have some sense
or else he's in a mighty poor fix nowadays."

He did not resent the old man's remark, for he knew the judge could
not understand that he was much more contented as a member of a race
that was struggling upward than he would have been as one of that
race that expended most of its time and thought and energy in
exploiting and oppressing others. The judge followed him to the door
promising to draw up the necessary legal documents for the
co-operative society. When Kenneth broached the subject of payment,
the old man waved his hand again in protest.

"Ain't got long to live, so's I got to do what little I can to help.
'Tain't much I can do, but I'll help all I can."

Thanking him, Kenneth started to leave, but the judge recalled him
after he had reached the hallway. "Ken, just consider all I said as
between us. Can't tell what folks'd say if they knew I been running
on like this."

There was almost a note of pleading in his voice. Kenneth assured
the judge their conversation would be treated as confidential. As he
walked home, he reflected on the anomalous position the judge and
men like him occupied, hemmed in, oppressed, afraid to call their
souls their own, creatures of the Frankenstein monster their own
people had created which seemed about to rise up and destroy its
creators. No, he said to himself, he would much rather be a Negro
with all his problems than be made a moral coward as the race
problem had made the white people of the South.

The judge stood at the window, dim with the dust of many months, and
gazed at Kenneth's broad back as he swung down Lee Street. Long
after he had disappeared, the old man stood there, chewing on the
cigar which by now was a mangled mass of wet tobacco. At last he
turned away and resumed his seat in the comfortable old chair where
Kenneth had found him. He shook his head slowly, doubtfully, and
murmured, half to himself, half to the dusty, empty room:

"Hope this thing turns out all right. Hope he don't get in no
trouble. But even if he does, there'll be more like him coming
on—and they got too much sense to stand for what nigras been made to
suffer. Lord, if we only had a few white folks who had some sense …"

It was almost a prayer.




                            CHAPTER XII


FROM Judge Stevenson's office Kenneth went directly to tell Jane of
the interview. So absorbed was he in contemplation of the wider
vision of the problem he was attacking which the judge's words had
given him, he forgot to telephone her to ask if it was agreeable for
him to call at so unconventional an hour. He found her clad in a
bungalow apron busily cleaning house and singing as she worked.

They sat on the steps of the back porch while he told her all that
had been said. Taken out of his preoccupation with his own affairs,
Kenneth had shaken off his negative air and now he talked
convincingly of their plans. Jane said nothing until he had
finished.

"That's fine!" she exclaimed when he had ended. "Even if Judge
Stevenson is doubtful of how much we can accomplish, we can do
something. Now all that remains is for you to present your plan⸺"

"Not mine, yours," he corrected

"No, it will have to be yours," she answered. "You know how folks
are in the South—they think all that women can do is cook and keep
house and bear children. If you want the thing to go, it'll be best
to make them think it's your scheme."

Kenneth demurred, but in vain. She would have it no other way. She
felt no jealousy. She knew of the peculiar Southern prejudice which
relegated women to a position of eternal inferiority. Though she
felt the injustice of such arbitrary assumptions, she did not resent
it. Like all women, coloured women, she realized that most of the
spirit of revolt against the wrongs inflicted on her race had been
born in the breasts of coloured women. She knew, and in that
knowledge was content, that most of the work of the churches and
societies and other organizations which had done so much towards
welding the Negro into a racial unit had been done by women. It was
amusing to see men, vain creatures that they are, preen themselves
on what they had done. It was not so amusing when they, in their
pride, sought to belittle what the women had done and take all the
credit to themselves. Oh, well, what did it matter? The end was the
all-important thing—not the means. Jane appreciated Kenneth's
thoughtfulness and felt no tinge of jealousy if her idea—their
idea—should be a success in forming societies to help poor, helpless
Negroes out of the morass in which they were bogged. Of such
material has the coloured woman been made by adversity.

She watched Kenneth as he told her the developments of which he had
thought, the details he had worked out. Each day, it seemed to her,
Kenneth became more keenly alive each day saw a brighter sparkle in
his eyes, a springiness in his step that had not been there before.
There are many men who could willingly have followed—and do
follow—without revolt or much inward conflict a course of
self-abnegation such as he had mapped out for himself. Not so,
however, with Kenneth. He was almost puritanical in his devotion to
the fixed moral code he had worked out for his own guidance. It was
not a superimposed one, but an integral part of his very being.
Nothing could have induced him to surrender to deliberate malice or
guile or what he considered dishonesty or cowardice. His was a
simple nature, free from the barnacles of pettiness which encumber
the average man. He was not essentially religious in the accepted
meaning of the word. He believed, though he had not thought much on
the subject of religion, so immersed had he been in his beloved
profession, in some sort of a God. Of what form or shape this being
was, he did not know. He had more or less accepted the beliefs his
environment had forced upon him. He doubted the malignity of the God
described by most of the ministers he had heard. As a matter of
fact, he was rather repelled and nauseated by the religion of the
modern Church. Narrow, intolerant of contrary opinion, prying into
the lives and affairs of its communicants with which it had no
concern, its energies concentrated on raising money and not on
saving souls, of little real help to intelligent people to enable
them to live more useful lives here on earth, and centering instead
on a mysterious and problematical life after death, he felt the
Church of Jesus Christ had so little of the spirit of the Christ
that he had little patience with it. He went to services more as a
perfunctory duty than through any deep-rooted belief that he could
get any real help from them in meeting the problems of life he
faced. He bore the Church no grudge or ill will—it simply was not a
factor in the life of to-day as he saw it.

Nevertheless he had a deep religious or, better, an ethical sense.
When he was about to return to Central City, that ethical code had
been adapted to conditions he expected to find there. It was galling
to him to accept a position of subserviency to things he knew were
unjust and wrong, tacitly to admit his inferiority to men to whom he
knew he was superior in morals and training and in all the decencies
of life, solely because of the mere accident that they had been born
with skins which were white and he with one which was not white.
When doubts had assailed him, he had quieted or salved his
conscience by the constant reminder that he was following such a
course for greater eventual good. On his return, when he had found a
course such as he had charted for himself was becoming increasingly
difficult, he had refused to face the facts his mind told him were
true and had plunged more deeply into his work, seeking in it an
opiate. Only when Jane had confronted him with the utter futility of
his course and had, in effect, accused him of being a moral quitter
in considering only himself and blinding himself to the far greater
problems of those so closely bound to him by race, did his eyes
begin to be opened. Wearied of illusory hopes of peace through
compromise, he had grasped the tangible reality of work towards a
definite end, through means which he had created and which he would
guide and develop as far as he could. With the buoyant hopes and
ambitions of the young, especially of the very young, he felt that
he had already created that which he was hoping to create.

Like a traveller who has lost his way in a dense forest, an
indefinable restlessness had pervaded his being and made him sorely
discontented. Now that he had found what seemed the path which would
lead him into the clear, open air, the clouds of doubt and
perplexity were cleared away just as the bright sun, as it bursts
forth after a shower in spring, drives away the moisture in the air.

They sat there in the warm sunlight of early summer, dreaming and
planning all the great things they were going to accomplish. It had
rained earlier in the morning and from the ground rose a misty
vapour. The odour of warm wet earth mingled with the aroma of the
flowers. Hens scratched industriously for food to feed the cluster
of tiny chicks around them. A cat sneaking along the fence slyly
crept near. With a great fluttering of wings and raucous cackling,
the hens drove him away. From afar off came the voices of two women,
resting for a minute from their morning toil, gossiping with much
loud laughter. It was a peaceful, restful scene. To Kenneth as he
sat there, problems seemed remote and out of place in that place
where all was so calm.

He looked at the girl by his side. It seemed Jane had never looked
more charming clad in her bungalow apron, dust-cloth in hand. He was
glad she had made no silly, conventional excuses because of her
dress. The usual girl would have tried to rush indoors and change
her dress. Most women, he reflected, looked like angels at night,
but in the harsh glare of morning looked terrible. Jane seemed to
him to be even prettier without powder or the soft light of evening.
He felt a thrill of pleasure as he saw her dusting furniture in
their home.

They rose as Kenneth started to leave. Jane was telling him of some
trivial incident, but Kenneth heard nothing of what she said. He
turned towards her suddenly.

She divined his intentions—she could almost feel the words that were
on his lips. Quickly wishing him success in the meeting to be held
that next evening, she bade him good-bye.

After Kenneth had gone, Jane sat for some time struggling with the
problem she was facing. What was she to do? As a little girl she had
loved Kenneth with a simple, childlike love though he, with the
infinite difference of eight years of age, had paid no attention to
her. She was not at all sure now of the nature of her feelings
towards him. She liked him, it is true, but when it came to anything
deeper than that, she was not so certain. She had been told, and had
always believed, that love came as a blinding, searing, devastating
passion which swept everything before it. She felt none of this
passion and experienced no bit of that complete surrender which she
had believed was a part of the thing called love. Jane was much in
the position of the sinner on the mourner's bench who had been told
that when he became a Christian, angels and all sorts of heavenly
apparitions would miraculously appear before him, and, seeing none,
feels that he is being cheated.

Jane had seen in Kenneth's eyes that soon he would make some sort of
declaration of his love. What was she going to say? She did not
know. …

So pleasant had it been sitting there in the warm sunlight talking
with Jane, Kenneth had forgotten the time. Entering his office, he
found half a dozen patients waiting somewhat impatiently for him. As
he entered his private office, he heard old Mrs. Amos, in her
chronic quarrelsomeness, mutter:

"Dat's just what I allus say. Soon's a nigger begin to get up in the
world, he thinks hisself better'n us po' folks. Thinks he can treat
us any way he please."

Kenneth laughed and, with a few bantering words, mollified the
irascible old woman. The coloured doctor has to be a diplomat as
well as a physician—he must never allow the humblest of his patients
to gain the impression that he thinks himself better than they. Of
all races that make up the heterogenous populace of America, none is
more self-critical than the Negro—its often unjust and carping
criticism of those who stand out from the mass serves as an
excellent antidote for undue pride and conceit. …

The next evening the seven men met again at Mr. Wilson's. Kenneth
stopped by for Mr. Phillips, but he did not see Jane. The Reverend
Stewart, Tucker, Tracy, Swann, and Mr. Wilson sat awaiting them. Tom
Tracy was exhibiting, somewhat proudly it seemed, a note he had
found tacked to his door that morning. It was crudely lettered in
red ink on a cheap-quality paper. It read:

   NIGGER! YOU'VE BEN TALKING TOO DAM MUCH! IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR
   MOUTH WE WILL SHUT IT FOR YOU AND FOR GOOD! LET THIS BE A
   WARNING TO YOU. NEXT TIME WE WILL ACT!

                              K. K. K.

Beneath the three initials was a crude skull and cross-bones. Though
all seven of the men knew that the warning was not to be
disregarded, that it might possibly portend a serious attempt on the
life of Tracy, that any or all of them present might receive a
similar grim reminder of the ill will of the hooded band, there was
a complete absence of fear as they sat around the table and
conjectured as to the possible result of the warning. The calmness
with which they accepted the omen of trouble would probably have
amazed the senders of the warning. Perhaps the clearest indication
of how little the South realizes the changes that have taken place
in the Negro is this recrudescence of the Klan. Where stark terror
followed in the wake of the Klan rides of the seventies, the net
result of similar rides to-day is a more determined union of Negroes
against all that the Klan stands for, tinctured with a mild
amusement at the Klan's grotesque antics. It was fortunate for
Kenneth, in a measure, that Tracy had received the threat on the day
it came. With such a reminder before them, the seven felt there was
greater need than ever before for organization for mutual
protection.

They discussed means of protecting Tracy, but he assured them he was
amply able to take care of himself. He had sent his parents that day
to stay with friends until the trouble had blown over, telling them
nothing of the warning, as he did not want them to be worried by it.
Two of his friends had agreed to stay with him at night. He was well
supplied with ammunition and was sure the three of them could
successfully repel any attack that might be made upon him. Such
trying periods have happened to Negroes so frequently in the South
that they have become inured to them. The subject was soon dropped.

Then Kenneth presented his plan. He outlined in detail how the
society should be organized. He proposed that the first lodge be
formed at Ashland, then gradually spread until there was a branch in
every section of the county. They left until later the problem of
extending the society's activities to other parts of Georgia and the
neighbouring States. Each member would be required to pay an
initiation fee of one dollar. Men would pay monthly dues of fifty
cents each, women twenty-five. The sums thus secured were to be
pooled. Half of the amount was to purchase supplies like sugar,
flour, shoes, clothing, fertilizer, seeds, farm implements, and the
other things needed to satisfy the simple wants of the members. To
make up any deficit, Kenneth and Mr. Phillips agreed to lend money
that the supplies might be purchased for cash, effecting thereby a
considerable saving. The other half was to be used as the nucleus of
a defence fund with which a test case might be made in the courts
when any member was unable to secure a fair settlement with his
landlord.

Similarly were other details presented and discussed and adopted or
modified. A name had to be chosen. Kenneth would have preferred a
short, simple one, but here he was overruled. That it might appeal
to the simple, illiterate class to which most of the prospective
members belonged, a sonorous, impressive name was necessary. They
decided on "The National Negro Farmers' Co-operative and Protective
League."

At first the plan was considered a bit too ambitious, but as Kenneth
warmed up to it in presenting it as simply and forcefully as he
could, the objections, one by one, were overcome. One change,
however, had to be made. It came from Hiram Tucker.

"Ain't you figgerin' on havin' no signs and passwords and a grip
like dey have with de Odd Fellers and de Masons and de Knights of
Pythias?" he asked.

"I didn't think that was necessary," replied Kenneth.

"Well, lemme tell you somethin', son. Ef you figgers on gettin' a
big passel of these cullud folks 'round here to jine in with us,
you'll have t' have some ‘ficials with scrumptious names, and
passwords and grips. Dese here ign'ant folks needs somethin' like
dat to catch their 'magination. If you put dat in, they'll jine like
flies 'round molasses."

Kenneth had hoped that the society would be run on a dignified and
intelligent basis, but he realized that Hiram Tucker might be right
after all. Most of the share-croppers were ignorant—at least,
illiterate. Mere show and pomp and colourful uniforms and
high-sounding names played a large part in their lives, which, after
all, wasn't so much a racial as a human trait. Hadn't the Ku Klux
Klan outdone, in absurdity of name and ceremony and dress, anything
that Negroes had ever even thought of?

This question was disposed of, after more discussion, by the
adoption of Hiram Tucker's suggestion. Kenneth was appointed to work
out the details of organization, and the meeting adjourned. The
National Negro Farmer's Co-operative and Protective League had been
born.




                            CHAPTER XIII


THE days that followed were full of interest for Kenneth and Jane.
The constitution and bylaws were drafted and approved and sent to
Atlanta to be printed by a coloured printing firm. Judge Stevenson
prepared the articles of incorporation and did the necessary legal
work, still refusing any pay for his services. Kenneth had offered
to pay him out of his own pocket, but the judge told him: "Keep your
money, Ken, I c'n wait. I'm gettin' along in years now and I've been
hopin' that this problem that's cursin' the South would be settled
befo' I passed on. But what with these damn fool Kluxers kickin' up
hell 'round here, I don't know whether I'll see it or not. Your idea
may do some good—I don't know whether it will or not—but if I c'n
help, let me know." Kenneth thanked him and had been immeasurably
encouraged by the old man's attitude.

As soon as the literature they had ordered was received, the first
meeting was called by Tucker and Tracy at Ashland. Jane and her
father drove out with Kenneth, who was to present the plan to the
group gathered. The meeting was held at a little wooden church,
whitewashed on the outside, and furnished within only with rude
benches. On the walls were one or two highly coloured lithographs of
religious subjects. The hall seated not more than two hundred and
was crowded to capacity. Even the windows were comfortably filled by
those unable to obtain a seat on the floor. The illumination was
furnished by four kerosene lamps attached to the walls, two on each
side.

Hiram Tucker acted as chairman, while Tom Tracy took minutes of the
meeting. After a preliminary announcement of the purpose of the
gathering by the chairman, Kenneth was called upon to outline the
plan that had been proposed. At the outset, having had no experience
as a public speaker, he stumbled and faltered and knew not what to
do with his hands. After a few minutes he jammed them into the side
pockets of his coat and, warming to his subject, swung into a clear,
forceful, and convincing recital of the purpose and possibilities of
the co-operative societies. His enthusiasm became infectious. His
audience began to share his zeal. Humble and lowly folks, their
vision limited by the life they led, they had the feeling, as
Kenneth talked on, of having been face to face with a blank wall of
immeasurable height and impenetrable thickness. Under the spell of
his words they seemed to see the miraculous opening of a door in
this wall. Hope, which had been crushed to earth year after year by
disappointing settlements for their labour, began to mount.

As for Kenneth, he had forgotten his self-imposed inhibitions and
prohibitions. Gone was the hesitation and doubt. He had seen a light
where he had thought there was no light. His voice rang true and
firm, and there was a look of eager earnestness on his face as the
pale, flickering light from the oil lamps illumined it.

He finished with a flourish so dear to the hearts of coloured
audiences. It was what the old-style coloured preacher used to call
"de 'rousements."

"You husbands and sons and brothers, three years ago you were called
on to fight for liberty and justice and democracy! Are you getting
it?" He was answered by a rousing "No!" "What are you going to do
about it?" he demanded. "Single-handed, you can do nothing!
Organized, you can strike a blow for freedom, not only for
yourselves but for countless generations of coloured children yet
unborn! No race in all history has ever had its liberties and rights
handed to it on a silver platter—such rights can come only when men
are willing to struggle and sacrifice and work and die, if need be,
to obtain them! I call on you here to-night to join in this movement
which shall in time strike from our hands and feet the shackles
which bind them, that we may move on as a race together to that
greater freedom which we have so long desired and which so long has
been denied us! Only slaves and cowards whine and beg! Men and women
stand true and firm and struggle onwards and upwards until they
reach their goal!" He paused impressively while the audience sat
mute. He looked over the assemblage for a full minute and then
demanded in a ringing voice: "What do you choose to be slaves or
men?"

He sat down. A salvo of applause greeted him. A Daniel had arisen to
lead them! Kenneth took on a new importance and affection in the
eyes and minds of his hearers. He had heard their Macedonian cry and
answered it.

As he mopped his brow, Kenneth felt that he had made a good
beginning, although he was a bit ashamed of having made so direct an
appeal at the end to emotion instead of to reason. At the same time
he knew that it had been necessary. "'Rousements" were absolutely
essential to awaken the response needed to get the co-operative
societies under way. Without them his humble audience might not have
been aroused to the point of action that was so necessary.

Following Kenneth, Mr. Wilson made a stirring appeal to the crowd to
come forward and give their names if they wanted to join the newly
formed society. Those who had the money were urged to join at once.
At first, only a few came forward. Then they came in numbers until
around the table at which sat Secretary Tracy there was an excited,
chattering, milling throng.

After the meeting Mr. Phillips accepted Mr. Wilson's invitation to
ride home in his car. Kenneth did not object—it enabled him to be
alone with Jane. They talked of the meeting as they walked to the
car. Jane gave Kenneth's hand a faint squeeze. "Oh, Kenneth, you
were splendid!" she declared.

It was a perfect night—one created for making love. A soft light
filtered through the leaves of the trees, casting a lace-like shadow
on the earth. The air was soft and languorous, as it can be only on
a spring evening in the South, as soft and caressing as the touch of
a baby's hands. From near at hand came the mingled odour of
honeysuckle and cape jasmine and magnolia blossoms and roses. The
world seemed at peace. No sound disturbed the air save the
chattering and singing of a mockingbird, as lovely as the sob of
velvety, full-throated violins, and the voices, growing fainter and
fainter, of the crowd leaving the now deserted church. It would have
taken a much stronger man than Kenneth to resist the spell of so
perfect an evening. He was not mawkishly sentimental—rather he
detested the moon-calfish type of man who rolled his eyes and
whispered empty, silly compliments in the ear of whatever girl he
met. On the other hand, he was amazingly ignorant of women. As a
youngster he had been exceedingly chary of the little girls of the
neighbourhood, preferring to spend his time playing baseball or
shooting marbles. This shyness had never entirely left him. From his
youth on he had had but one strong passion in his life that passion
had possessed his every thought and in it was centred his every
ambition—his desire and determination to become a great surgeon. His
one serious venture into the realm of love-making had been the
affair with the girl in New York, but that had not taken a strong
enough hold upon him to leave much of a mark. So rapidly had it
begun and ended that he had had in it little experience in the great
American sport of "petting." It was thus easy for him to fall head
over heels in love with Jane, for she was, in fact, the first girl
in his life outside of his sister who had come into his life in more
than a casual way.

Jane, on the other hand, had, innocently enough, flirted as every
pretty girl (and many who are not pretty) will do. She appreciated
Kenneth's fine qualities: he was capable, industrious, and handsome
in a way. He annoyed her at times by his almost bovine stupidity in
expressing his love. She naturally liked the idea of having the love
of a man who is naïve, who has not run the whole gamut of emotions
in affairs with other girls; yet, also naturally enough, she did
expect him to have at least some _savoir faire_, to be able to win
her with some degree of the finesse that every girl wants and
expects. She resented his business-like matter-of-factness in
seeking her—as coldly calculating, it seemed to her, as though he
were operating on one of his patients. In this she was doing him an
injustice. Underneath his surface placidity Kenneth's love had
become a raging flame—he cursed the shell of professional dignity
which had crossed over and become a part of himself.

Thus they walked through the soft spring air, she wishing he would
do that which he in his ignorance felt would be the unwisest thing
he could attempt. Thus is life made up of paradoxical situations
where a word, a look, an otherwise insignificant gesture, would
clear away at one fell swoop mountainous clouds of doubt and
misunderstanding.

Jane stood, one foot on the ground, the other on the step, her hand
resting on the opened door of the car. A faintly provocative smile
flitted over her face. Kenneth longed to seize this elusive,
seductive girl in his arms, press her close to him, and tell her of
his love. She wanted him to. Instead he steeled himself against
yielding to the impulse that almost overcame him, and helped her
with complete decorum into the car. …

They did not say much on the way home. Jane bade him good night, he
thought somewhat coldly—as though she were vexed. He told her he was
leaving the next morning for Atlanta to operate on Mrs. Tucker. She
made no comment. He wondered as he drove home what he had done to
offend her. …

As he neared the house, he suddenly remembered that he had promised
to look in on old Mrs. Amos, whose "rheumatics" had been giving her
considerable pain. It was charity work, as she would never be able
to pay him. She had sent for him several times during the day, but
he had been kept so busy he had had no time to go. He was annoyed at
himself for promising to call to see the quarrelsome old woman who
was far more dictatorial and exacting than most of the patients who
paid him promptly. With a muttered imprecation at being bothered
with her just after his annoying experience with Jane and her
inexplicable behaviour, he drove through the darkened streets to
Mrs. Amos' home. He found her sitting in a creaky rocking-chair. She
began immediately to pour maledictions on his head for neglecting
her all day. He answered her shortly, gave her her medicine, and
left.

Carefully guiding the car through the gullies and holes in the
unpaved street, he set out for home. Nearing the corner of Harris
and State Streets, he heard a sound as of several automobiles. He
looked down Harris Street just in time to see three closed cars stop
suddenly at the corner. From one of them two white-robed figures
descended, lifting a large, black bundle that seemed exceedingly
heavy. This done, the figures jumped hurriedly into the car, and it
with the other two speeded away in the direction from which they had
come.

Kenneth, his curiosity aroused, turned his car around and drove to
the spot to see what was going on. As he slowed his car at the
corner, a muffled groan came from the object lying there in the
street. Hastily getting down, he turned it over and in the
half-light found it to be the body of a human being. His hands felt
sticky. Holding them close to his face, he found them smeared with
tar.

He got from his car a small flashlight. Going back to the inert
mass, he turned the ray of light on the body and found it to be that
of a naked woman, covered with tar yet warm to the touch. Between
the dabs of the sticky mess on the woman's back were long welts,
some of them bleeding, as though a heavy-thonged whip had been
applied with great force. The hair was dishevelled and in its
strands were bits of the melted tar. Kenneth experienced a feeling
of nausea at the revolting sight. The woman lay on her face. From
her mouth and nose there ran a stream of blood which already was
forming a little pool beneath her face that became bloody mud as it
mixed with the dust in the road. Seizing her by her left shoulder,
Kenneth half raised the body and turned his flashlight on the
woman's face. It was Nancy Ware, the wife of the Negro killed by
George Parker. Half carrying, half dragging the limp form, Kenneth
managed in some fashion to get Nancy to her own home a few doors
away. The door stood open as though Nancy had left it for a minute
to call on one of her neighbours. On the table in the front room,
there stood a lamp yet burning, the chimney blackened with the soot
caused by the wind blowing upon it. Beside the lamp lay a garment on
which Nancy had been sewing.

Kenneth placed her on the bed and hurried next door to summon help.
His efforts were unsuccessful. He pounded on the door with both
fists, calling out in his excitement to the occupants to open up.
After what seemed an infinite delay, a window to the left of the
door cautiously opened and an inquiring voice wanted to know what
was the matter. Seeing who it was, the owner of the voice
disappeared and a minute later opened the door. Kenneth hastily told
what had happened, brushing aside a muttered excuse that the delay
in answering was due to the fact that "I didn' know but whut you
might ‘a' been the p'lice."

On going back to Nancy's cottage, Kenneth gave her a restorative and
endeavoured to relieve her suffering. She began to revive after a
few minutes. In the meantime the neighbours called by Kenneth
arrived, and they removed as much as they could of the tar from
Nancy's body. Kenneth then examined her back, finding it covered
with long and ugly gashes that bled profusedly. He dressed them and
Nancy was arranged as comfortably as possible. He found himself so
tired after the hard work and excitement of the day and evening that
he was almost ready to drop in his tracks. At the same time he had
an uncontrollable desire to find out just what had happened to Nancy
Ware. He was almost certain the Ku Klux Klan had done it, but he
wanted to hear the story from Nancy's own lips. The neighbours had
gone, with the exception of an evil-looking, elderly woman who had
volunteered to remain with Nancy until morning.

After the application of restoratives regularly for an hour, she
began to show signs of returning consciousness. Kenneth watched her
eagerly. Five minutes later her eyelids fluttered. She gave a low
moan—almost a whimper. Suddenly she cried out in the terror of
delirium: "Doan let ‘em whip me no mo'! Doan let 'em whip me no
mo?!" and writhed in her agony. She struggled to arise but Kenneth,
sitting by the side of the bed, managed with the aid of the other
woman to restrain Nancy and calm her. Afterwards she became more
rational. Her eyes opened. In them was a gleam of recognition of
Kenneth and he knew she was regaining consciousness.

Another wait. Then, at Kenneth's questioning, she began to tell what
had happened. For weeks he had thought but little of her and the
tragedy that had taken place in this same house, other events having
crowded it out of his mind.

"Doc, you won't let 'em get me again, will you?" she pleaded with a
whimper like a child's. Kenneth assured her he wouldn't.

"Doc, I ain't done nuthin' t' them Kluxers. Hones' t' Gawd, I
ain't." Kenneth told her soothingly that he knew she hadn't.

"I was jes' sittin' here tendin' to my own business when dey come a
rap on de do'. W'en I open de do', dere wuz two o; dem Kluxers
standin' dere—befo' I could holler dey grab me and put a rag in my
mouf." A shudder passed through her body as the terror came back to
her at the memory of what she had been through.

"Dey put me in a automobile and ca'ied me way out yonder in de woods
by de fact'ry. Dey pull all my clo'es off me and den dey whip me
till I couldn' stan' up no mo'. Den dey tell me I been talkin' too
much. Doc, I ain't said a word t' nobdy ‘cept dat dey oughter do
somethin't that man George Parker for killin' my man Bud. … Den dey
po'ed tar all over me and kick me and spit on me some mo'. … Said I
oughter had mo' sense dan t' talk 'bout no white gemmen.
Oh—oh—oh—ain't dey nothin' to he'p us po' cullud fo'ks—ain't dey
nobody—ain't dey nobody?"

It was just as Kenneth had suspected. Good God, and these were the
self-elected defenders of morals in the South! What if Nancy wasn't
all that she should have been?—whose was the greater fault—hers or
George Parker's? He could see him now in the bank—smug, a
hypocritical smile on his face, talking about what the white people
have got to do to stop these troublesome "niggers" from getting too
cheeky—about protecting "pure" Southern womanhood from attacks by
"black, burly brutes." And the Klan with all its boasted and
advertised chivalry—twenty or thirty strong men to beat up and
maltreat one lone woman, because she "talked too much" about the
brutal, cold-blooded murder of her husband! Kenneth's optimism over
the organization of the cooperative societies began to cool—in its
stead there came a blind, unreasoning hatred and furious rage
against the men who had done this deed to Nancy Ware. God, but he
would have given anything he owned to get them all together and kill
them one by one—slowly, with all the tortures he could devise! The
damned, cowardly devils! The filthy, smug-faced hypocrites!

Nancy was resting easily Kenneth, shaken by the fury of his anger,
more devastating because he knew that he could do nothing but hurl
silent imprecations on the heads of those who had done this
deed—impotent because his skin was black and he lived in the
South—went home to roll and toss during the few hours of the night
which remained before he took the train to Atlanta.




                            CHAPTER XIV


IT seemed to Kenneth he had just fallen into a troubled slumber when
he was aroused by the tinkling of the telephone bell at the side of
his bed. It was Hiram Tucker.

"Doc, I reck'n you won't have to go t' Atlanty today, after all. My
wife, she tol' me to tell you she's changed her min' ‘bout that
op'ration. … What's dat? … Naw, suh, she's kinder skeered she won'
wake up from dat chlo'form. … Yas, suh, yas, suh, I knows
‘rangements been made but, Doc, you ain't married, so you don't know
nuthin' ‘tall 'bout wimmenfolks. … Some day you'll learn dat when
dey says dey ain't gwine do somethin' dey's done sot dere minds on
not doing, dey ain't gwine t' do it. … Hello. … Hello. … Hello!"

But Kenneth had hung up. He telephoned the local telegraph office to
send a wire to the hospital in Atlanta to cancel the arrangements he
had made for the operation on the following day, and tumbled back in
bed to sleep like a log until late in the morning. He was awakened
by Bob, who informed him that the reception room was half filled
with patients who were no longer patient at being kept waiting so
long. He arose reluctantly, his eyes still filled with sleep. Bob
leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, and looked at his brother
with a smile of amusement. Kenneth, not thoroughly awakened as yet,
paid no attention to him for a time, but at last noticed Bob's
smile.

"Why this early morning humour? I've seen many 'possums with a more
engaging smile then the one that distorts your face now!" he
half-grumblingly, half-cheerfully observed.

Bob but grinned the more at Kenneth's remark.

"I was just thinking that if Jane could only get one glimpse of you
in the morning before breakfast, your chances would be mighty slim
with her."

"Jane? What have my looks to do with her?" Kenneth retorted with
some heat, in a vain attempt to spar for time.

Bob addressed the world in general, calling on it for some aid in
understanding this brother of his.

"Jane?" he mimicked Kenneth's tone of surprise. "You talk like a
ten-year-old boy with his first love affair. Isn't he the innocent
one, though? Why, you poor maligned creature, everybody in Central
City who isn't blind knows that you are head over heels in love with
Jane Phillips. And," he added as an afterthought, "those who are
blind have been told it. But to return to my original observation,
if there was some means by which, with all propriety, all the girls
in the world who are in love could see, and be seen by, the poor
boobs with whom they are so infatuated, marriage-licence bureaus
would be closed that day, never to open again." This last with an
omniscient air of worldly wisdom that caused Kenneth to burst into a
roar of laughter, while Bob watched him, somewhat discomfited.

"What're you laughing at?" he demanded in an aggrieved tone. Kenneth
laughed all the harder. "Why, you poor little innocent, you haven't
gotten rid of your pin feathers, and yet you are talking as though
you were a philosopher like Schopenhauer. You'd better wait until
you finish school and see something of the world. Then you can talk
a little—though only a little as you did just now. By the way, it's
about time for you to be planning for school this fall. Still
thinking about going back to Atlanta?"

"I don't know what I want to do," was Bob's troubled rejoinder.
"I've seen too much of what's going on around this town since papa
died to be satisfied with school again. I've probably seen more of
the real sordidness and meanness and deviltry of this place since
I've been settling up papa's affairs than you'll see in five years.
At any rate, I hope you don't," he finished somewhat doubtfully.

"Bob"—Kenneth walked over and put his arm around his brother's
shoulders—the trouble with you is that you're too darned sensitive.
I know things aren't all they ought to be around here, but we've got
to buckle down and make them that way. And perhaps I've seen more of
this deviltry than you think."

He told Bob of what had happened to Nancy Ware the night before. A
long whistle of surprise escaped from Bob's lips.

"And this happened right here in the coloured section?" he asked in
surprise. Kenneth nodded in assent.

"I felt they were planning some mischief but I didn't think they
would have the nerve to come right here in ‘Darktown' and do it. I
wonder," he said musingly, "if that dirty little Jim Archer who said
those filthy things to Minnie Baxter that day is a member of the
Klan. I passed him on Lee Street this morning and he grinned at me
like a cat that has just eaten a fat mouse."

"He may be," Kenneth replied. "Nancy Ware told me last night she
recognized the voices of Sheriff Parker and Henry Lane and George
Parker and two or three other prominent white people here."

"That settles it," Bob answered determinedly. "When you first came
back here I thought you were foolish to do so after having been in
France. I said I was going to get out of this country as soon as I
could and live in France or Brazil or any old place where a man
isn't judged by the colour of his skin. But I've decided that I'd be
a coward if I did run away like that. Ken," he said in voice that
showed he had passed in spite of his years from childhood into the
more serious things of manhood, "I'm going to Harvard this fall. I'm
going to take whatever course I need to get into the law school. I'm
going to make myself the best lawyer they can turn out. And then I'm
coming back here to the South like you did and give my time to
fighting for my people!"

Bob's eyes flashed. In them was a light of high resolve such a look
as might have shone in the eyes of Garibaldi or of Joan of Arc.

Kenneth said nothing, but he gripped Bob's hand in his and there
passed between the two brothers a look of mutual understanding and
sympathy that was more potent and meaningful than words.

Kenneth went down to attend to his patients and nothing more was
said of the incident between them. Bob took on a new interest in
life. His moodiness, his brooding over the constant irritations and
insults he had to suffer in his dealings as a coloured man with the
whites of the town, his resentment at the attitude of condescension
on the part of the poor and ignorant whites who had neither his
intelligence, his education, nor his wealth—all these disappeared in
his eager preparations for the new life he had mapped out for
himself. He already saw himself a powerful champion of his race and
he gloried in that vision with all of the impetuosity and idealistic
fervour of youth.

As for Kenneth, he divided his time between his practice, Jane, and
the formation of more branches of the N.N.F.C.P.L.

Kenneth knew there was nothing to be done towards the punishment of
the men who had so brutally beaten Nancy Ware. He knew that it would
even be unwise for him to talk too much about it. If Sheriff Parker
was himself a member of the Klan, reporting the outrage to him would
be in effect a serving of notice that he was meddling in the affairs
of the Klan which might bring disastrous results at a time when
Kenneth was most anxious to avoid such a complication, certainly
until the co-operative societies were well under way and actively
functioning. Much as he chafed under the restraint and at his own
impotence in the situation, Kenneth knew that his interference would
be a useless and foolhardy butting of his head against a stone wall.

It occurred to him to tell what had happened to Judge. Stevenson. He
could be trusted and was as much opposed to the outlawry of the Klan
as Kenneth himself. The judge listened gravely to the end without
comment other than a question here and there. "That looks worse than
I thought," he said half to himself. "A few mo' cracks like that and
there'll be hell to pay ‘round here. But 'twon't do no good for you
t' meddle in it," he observed in answer to Kenneth's question as to
what he could do. "If Nancy's right about Bob Parker being in it,
your sayin' anything will only set them on you. You'd better go
ahead and get your societies on their feet and then you'll have
somethin' behin' you. Then you won't be playin' a lone hand."

As for the coloured people, there were several days of excited
gossip over what had happened to Nancy Ware. There was not much to
go on, as she had been so frightened by her terrible experience that
she refused for once to talk. The only tangible effect was that
mysterious parcels marked with the names of household implements
began to arrive at the homes of the coloured people, but which
contained fire-arms and ammunition. There was also a noticeable
tightening of the lips and the development of a less cordial
relationship between white and black. Negroes, feeling that there
was no help they could expect from the law, felt that their backs
were being slowly pressed against the wall. Within a few hours the
old _esprit cordial_ between white and black had been wiped out.
Negroes who had been happy-go-lucky, care-free, and kindly in manner
began to talk among themselves of "dying fighting" if forced to the
limit.

July came with all its heat. August passed with yet more heat. With
the coming of September there had been formed in Smith County alone
seven branch societies of the Co-operative and Protective League
with a membership of more than twelve hundred. Kenneth worked as one
inspired, one who knew neither heat nor cold, fatigue nor hunger.
During the day he was busy with his practice, but it mattered not
how busy he had been, he was always ready and willing to drive five,
ten, fifteen miles at night to aid in establishing new branches or
directing and guiding and advising those already established.

The Ashland Branch, through the hard work of Hiram Tucker and Tom
Tracy, had enrolled three hundred and fifteen members. In its
treasury it had $657.85, to which it was constantly adding as new
members were enrolled. At a meeting held during the latter part of
August the members decided that they would forgo the purchasing of
their supplies in bulk that year but would use the money raised
towards prosecuting one of the cases of dishonest settlements when
the time came for such settlements, usually in December or January.
This step was decided upon after due and lengthy deliberation, as it
was felt that if they could end the cheating of the farmers through
court action, then these same farmers would have more money through
the settlement of their accounts for the present season and could
then begin the co-operative buying and distribution the following
year.

News of the new society that was going to end the unsatisfactory
relations share-croppers had with their landlords spread rapidly
throughout the surrounding counties. Letters, crudely and
cumbersomely worded and with atrocious spelling, came to Kenneth and
often individuals came in person to ask that he come to their
counties to organize societies there. Kenneth was elated at this
sign of interest. He had expected a great deal of opposition from
the coloured farmers. Bickering and carping criticism there was
aplenty, but most of them regarded him as a new Moses to lead them
into the promised land of economic independence. Minor disputes over
authority in the local societies there were in abundance. But none
of them was hard to settle, for the members themselves were too
eager to get out of bondage to tolerate much petty politics and
selfishness on the part of their officers.

As a loyal ally Kenneth learned to rely on Jane more and more. Often
she went with him to attend meetings and to talk to groups not yet
organized. While Kenneth talked to the men, Jane circulated among
the women, who were subtly flattered that one so daintily clad and
well educated should spend so much of her time and energy talking to
lowly ones like themselves.

Her mother's health had not been of the best during the summer. That
had been throughout the summer her only worry. In August her mother
had suffered an attack of paralysis, her second one. Jane decided to
remain at home instead of going to Oberlin to resume her music.
Dr. Bennett had been dismissed and Kenneth was now treating
Mrs. Phillips. During her more serious illness in August, Jane often
sat on one side of her mother's bed until late in the night while
Kenneth sat on the other, ministering to the aged woman's wants.
There came a new and stronger feeling of companionship between the
two. Often Kenneth would look up suddenly and catch in Jane's eyes a
new tenderness. Without knowing what it meant, he felt a subtly
conveyed encouragement in them.

He had, however, spoken no word of love to her, preferring to bide
his time until a propitious occasion arose. He had told her that he
loved her—had he not done so, she would have known—he was content to
wait until she could decide what she wanted to do. At times the task
was hard not to tell her again and again of his love. Often as she
sat by his side and talked of inconsequential things, he would again
be seized by that consuming impulse to sweep away all her objections
and demolish by the very violence of his love the obstacles that
held him back from possessing her. He found himself more and more
filled with a wonderment that bordered on dismay as he tried to
suppress this devastating longing with less success every time this
feeling came over him. He tried staying away from Jane. At first he
had seen her but once a week and that on Sunday evenings. Then he
began dropping by to see her on Wednesdays. Of late his visits had
numbered three and four a week. On those nights when he was away, he
was restless and irritable. This became so noticeable that Mamie
threatened jokingly one night to go over and beg Jane to marry
Kenneth or throw him down hard or anything that would make him less
like a bear around the house. She and Jane had become fast
friends—which pleased Kenneth not a little, as it meant that Jane
would be more frequently in the house than otherwise would have been
the case.

As for Jane, in spite of herself, she found herself more and more
interested in Kenneth and the things he was doing. She found herself
eagerly looking forward to the evenings when he called. She wondered
if she were entirely honest in seeing so much of him.

Why didn't Kenneth say something now? She felt rather annoyed at him
for being so considerate. With a woman's prerogative of
inconsistency, she resented his obeying so implicitly her demand
that he wait until she had made up her mind. Men were so silly—you
told them to do a thing and they went like fools and did it. Why
didn't he talk about something else besides his old co-operative
societies and the Ku Klux Klan and his old hospital and what that
old Judge Stevenson had said to him that day? Life is such a funny
thing.

But Kenneth went along his way, not even suspecting what was going
on in Jane's mind. He was like the majority of men—wise in their own
minds but amazingly naïve and ignorant when they left the beaten
paths of everyday affairs.

The end of the first week in September came. Bob had completed all
arrangements to leave the following week for Cambridge, there to
take his entrance examinations, after studying for them all summer.
Kenneth had written to an old friend there who had made the
necessary negotiations. Bob was an entirely new individual from the
one he had been when Kenneth had returned to Central City. His air
of moody resentment had been replaced by an eager earnestness to
begin the course he had planned for himself. The bond had grown
closer between him and Kenneth, and many hours they spent together
discussing and planning for the years to come. Often the two
brothers and Mamie, sometimes Mrs. Harper also, sat until far in the
night talking of the future. If Mamie felt saddened by the broader
and more active life her brothers were planning which she, as a
woman, was denied, it never showed on her face or in her voice. She
might have been married long before in fact, there had been three or
four men who wanted to marry her. None of them would she have.
Decent enough men they were. But she was unwilling to settle down to
the humdrum life of marriage with a man so far beneath her in
intelligence, in ideals, in education. Being a normal, warmhearted
human being, naturally she often pictured to herself what marriage
in Central City would be like. But, keenly sensitive and ambitious,
she shrank from marrying the type of men available, farmers, small
merchants, and the like—she shuddered when she visualized herself
bearing children to such a man to be brought up in a place like
Central City. She yearned for love and as steadfastly put it from
her. There are thousands of tragedies—for tragedy it is—like Mamie's
in the South, and the world knows it not. When Kenneth or Bob teased
her about marrying, she answered him with a brave and all-concealing
smile-all-concealing, that is, to masculine eyes. Only her mother
and Jane knew her secret, and their lips were sealed in the bond
which women seldom, if ever, break. …

That night Jane looked better than Kenneth had ever seen her look
before. They seldom went out except for a short ride in his car. For
there was no place to which they could go. Central City boasted one
place of public amusement—the Idle Hour Moving Picture Palace. And
to that no Negro could go. Once they had admitted Negroes to the
gallery. None of the better element ever went, as they had to go
through a dark and foul-smelling alleyway to reach the entrance they
had to use. The type of Negroes whose pride permitted them to go
were so boisterous and laughed so loud that even they were soon
barred.

As usual they sat on the vine-covered porch where a breath of cool
air was more likely to be had than in the parlour. That day he had
had one of his more frequently recurring spells when he felt that he
could not keep his promise a day longer to wait until Jane had made
up her mind. At first he had thought of telephoning her and saying
that he was ill or busy—any old excuse to stay away. But he wanted
to see her too much for that patent evasion. He would go over to see
her but would talk of nothing but business or co-operative
societies. That's it, he would keep in "safe" territory. But Jane
had never looked more lovely than on that particular night.
Kenneth's heart jumped as he greeted her after she had kept him
waiting just the right length of time. He likened her instinctively
to a flame-coloured flower of rare beauty. All of the suppressed
passion surged upward in him. He felt himself slipping. He turned
away to gain control of himself. Had he not done so, he would have
seen the swift look of disappointment on her face at his restraint.

Keeping his eyes resolutely in front of him, he talked wearily and
wearisomely of the meeting he had attended the night before, of how
troublesome and irritating Mrs. Amos had been that day with her
rheumatism, of his having at last persuaded Mrs. Hiram Tucker to go
to Atlanta to have the operation she had so many times postponed.
Jane answered him abstractedly and in monosyllables. At last she
moved, almost with obvious meaning, to the canvas porch swing and
there rested against the pillows piled in one corner. And yet
Kenneth talked drearily on and on and on. He spoke at length of a
conversation he had had with Bob that morning—of how glad he was
that Bob was going away to school. Jane swung gently back and
forth—and said nothing. Mr. Phillips came out on the porch and
offered Kenneth a cigar, which he accepted and lighted. Mr. Phillips
sat down and talked garrulously while the two men smoked. Jane felt
that she could hardly keep from screaming. After what seemed an
hour, Mr. Phillips, his topics of conversation exhausted, and at a
sign from Jane that was not to be disregarded, rose heavily and
lumbered into the house again.

Kenneth threw away the stump of his cigar. It had suddenly occurred
to him that Jane hadn't said very much for the past hour. He rose to
go.

Jane sat silent as though unmindful of his having risen. He looked
closely at her. Tears of he knew not what stood in her eyes. He
dropped to the seat beside her, wondering what he had done to hurt
her so. "Jane, what's the matter?" he asked in a troubled voice.
"What have I done?" She looked at him. … He didn't know what
happened next. Suddenly he found her in his arms. He strained her to
him with all the passion he had been restraining for the months that
seemed like years. He kissed her hair. He mumbled incoherently, yet
with perfect understanding, to Jane, tender endearments. At length
she raised her face from where it had been buried on his chest,
gazed straight into his eyes. Their lips met in a long, clinging,
rapturous kiss. …

"How long have you known?" he asked her. Men are such idiots—they
are never satisfied to take what comes to them—they must ask silly
and nonsensical questions.

She told him. Of her long struggle, of her decision, of her
annoyance at his blindness. They talked eagerly until long past the
hour of ten. He heard Mr. Phillips moving chairs and dropping his
shoes—obvious hints that the time to go had long since passed. They
paid no attention to these danger signals but laughed softly to
themselves.

Everything must end eventually. Kenneth walked homewards through the
soft light of the September moon. Amusedly, the phrase "walking on
air" occurred to him. He laughed aloud. "Walking on air" was as the
rheumatic stumping along of old Mrs. Amos compared to the way he
felt. …




                             CHAPTER XV


IT was the next night. In the gully on the road leading from that
one out of Central City which went northward, there was being held a
hastily called meeting of Central City Klan, Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan, Realm of Georgia. Before, there had been three hundred robed
figures. To-night, three months later, the popularity of organized
intolerance was attested to by the presence of fully five hundred.
What had happened to Nancy Ware had acted as a powerful incentive to
the recruiting of new converts. It was mighty fine to have a strong
and powerful organization to shut mouths of those who talked too
much about the night-time deeds of loyal Klansmen. And, by gum, if
you're doing anything you don't want known or stopped, you'd better
be on the inside.

A figure whose arms waved excitedly as he talked was haranguing the
crowd, which paid close attention to him. Had Tom Tracy been there,
he would certainly have recognized the voice of the speaker. Ed
Stewart's wife, had she been there, would also have recognized it
and dragged the speaker home by force had he resisted.

"White civilization in the South is tottering on its throne!" he
shouted. "We who hold in our hands the future of civilization have
been asleep! While we have gone about our ways, the damn niggers are
plottin' to kill us all in our beds! Right now they're bringing into
our fair city great passels of guns and ammunition marked ‘sewin'
m'chines' and ‘ploughs'! They're meetin' ev'ry night in these nigger
churches all over the county and they're plottin' an' plannin' to
kill ev'ry white man, woman an' chile in this county and take the
lan' for themselves! They're led by a damn nigger doctor right here
in Central City named Harper! I know it's so, ‘cause another nigger
doctor named Williams tol' me yestiddy mornin' all about it and said
that this nigger Harper was leadin' this vile plot! He's been goin'
all over the county stirrin' up the damn niggers and incitin' them
to murder all of us! What're you men goin' to do?" he challenged in
a voice that shrilled in pretended rage and terror.

A deep-throated roar answered him. Cries of "Kill the bastards!"
"Lynch 'em!" "Kill every black bastard befo' mornin!" It was the
age-long voice of the mob bent on murder—the pack in full cry. But
it was more than the voice of the mob of the Roman Colosseum, for
that ancient cry was one of pleasure at the death of a single
Christian. This was the shout of those intent on a wild, murderous
rampage that spared neither man, woman, nor child.

"Klansmen!"

A voice like that of a bull roared until the tumult had subsided. It
was the Exalted Cyclops of the Central City Klan. He stood in
silence until the group of hooded figures was still.

"The noble order of the Ku Klux Klan don't handle situations such as
this like a mob!" The figures stood expectantly, eagerly waiting to
hear what would come next.

"We have listened to the story told by our fellow Klansmen. Hol'
yo'se'ves ready for the call of the Invisible Empire at any minute.
We have planned the way to en' this dastardly plot and to punish
those responsible with death!"

"That's right! Kill ‘em! Lynch 'em! Burn th' bastards!" shouted the
crowd.

"That'll be done till ev'ry one is killed!" promised the Exalted
Cyclops. "But it can't be done so's it can be laid to our noble
order! Already our enemies are charging us with crimes! The Fed'ral
Gov'nment will be down on our heads!"

There were cries of "Damn the Gov'nment!" from some of the more
hot-headed. But calmer judgment prevailed. Something was to be done,
but what that ominous "something" might be, was not revealed. Each
man was to be ready for instantaneous duty upon call of the Klan.
Immediate action was not wise, for the Klan investigators had not
completed their work. Action must wait until that had been done, for
it was essential that not one of the plotters should escape.

This last point was emphasized. At last the crowd became more calm
with the determination to postpone its vengeance until it was
certain of being complete. It then dispersed its several ways,
dissolving into separate groups that talked excitedly of the
astounding and terrifying news, the need of prompt action, the great
luck the white folks had had in discovering the plot so soon,
violent denunciation of the Negroes in the plot.

In one of the groups the conversation was different. One of the
group was the Exalted Cyclops, in private life Sheriff Bob Parker;
another was the Kligrapp, otherwise Henry Lane, Commissioner of
Health; the third was the speaker who had revealed the plot, Ed
Stewart, Tom Tracy's landlord.

Sheriff Parker chuckled softly. "Well, Ed, looks like somethin' is
about to break loose, eh?" he observed.

"Yep, I reck'n you're right. Them damn niggers've got a hell of a
nerve! Formin' sassieties to ‘stop robbin' share-croppers'! When we
get through with 'em, they'll be formin' coal-shov'lin' sassieties
in hell!" The other two joined in the laugh at his grim joke. "We'll
put in th' papers they was formin' to kill white folks and they'll
never know but what that ain't true."

Parker laughed again. Waving his hand at the departing Klansmen,
there came to his face a cynical sneer. "An' them damn fools really
think they're sho'ly goin' to be murdered by the damn niggers!"

In another section of Central City there was being enacted at the
same time another scene of poignant drama that threatened to
translate itself into tragedy. The place was a darkened bedroom in
the home of Roy Ewing on Georgia Avenue, and the actors in it were
four in number. Roy Ewing, owner and manager of the Ewing General
Merchandise Store, whom Kenneth had seen but little since Ewing had
discontinued his nocturnal visits to Kenneth's office, was one of
the actors. His wife, whose face still bore evidences of a youthful
beauty that was fast fading, was a second. A third was old
Dr. Bennett, who sat by the bed, his hair dishevelled, his face
lined with perplexity and anxiety, as he apprehensively watched the
fourth actor in the drama, a girl of nineteen who was restlessly
tossing in pain on the bed. Row Ewing stood at the foot of the bed.
His wife sat on the other side uttering little snatches of phrases
of soothing sympathy which her daughter did not hear.

Dr. Bennett was plainly worried and at a loss what to do to relieve
the torture Ewing's daughter was so clearly experiencing. He turned
to Ewing. "Roy, to tell you the truth, it don't seem like I can find
out what's the matter with Mary. When she had that first attack, I
thought she had appendicitis, but she ain't got no fever to speak
of, so it can't be her appendix that's botherin' her. Looks like t'
me she's got some sort of bleedin' inside, but I can't tell."

Ewing and his wife looked anxiously first at their daughter, then
interrogatively and pleadingly at the old physician as he watched
the sufferer in her contortions of pain and agony. Mary, married two
months and her husband working in Atlanta, had lived with her
parents after a short honeymoon. She had her mother's beauty—that
is, the delicate, patrician, statuesque charm that had been her
mother's when Roy Ewing had courted and won her two decades ago in
Charleston, South Carolina. It was not the harsh-lined, blonde
beauty of Georgia but the fragile old-world, French loveliness of
that spot in South Carolina where French tradition and customs and
features had not yet been barbarized by the infusion of that
Anglo-Saxon blood which is the boast of the South. She lay there, a
pitiful sight. Her face was pale, covered with cold, clammy
perspiration; all blood had fled from it. She breathed with great
difficulty in short and laboured respiratory efforts. Her pulse was
failing, very rapid and thready; at times it was barely perceptible.
She had been seized with the attack around seven o'clock, when she
began vomiting. Now she appeared to be so weakened with the pain she
had endured that a state of coma was obviously fast approaching. At
least it seemed so. Dr. Bennett tried to revive her, but with little
success. The absence of fever puzzled him. He feared an internal
hæmorrhage—all signs pointed to such a condition—yet he did not
know. Roy Ewing and his wife were among his closest friends. He
would have tried an operation had they not been. That he feared to
risk with their daughter. Yet, what could he do? Mary was obviously
so weak that he knew she could not be moved to Atlanta, three
hundred miles away. Nor would a physician be able to get to Central
City in time to operate.

"I'm puzzled, Roy, mighty puzzled," he said, turning to Ewing. "I
might as well tell you the truth. Looks like t' me she c'n hardly
last till mornin'." It was gall and wormwood for him to admit his
impotency, but he did it.

"Dr. Bennett, you've got to do somethin'! You've got to! You've got
to!"

It was Mrs. Ewing who cried out in her agony—the piteous cry of a
mother who sees her first-born dying before her eyes. Her face was
as blanched as Mary's—every drop of blood seemed to have been
drained from it. She looked pleadingly at him, chill terror gripping
her heart as she realized from his words that her Mary, who had been
so happy and well that morning, was about to die.

"If you—all wasn't such good friends of mine, I'd try it anyhow,"
Dr. Bennett answered her, his voice as agonized as hers. "But I'm
skeered to op'rate or do anythin' that might hasten her on."

Ewing walked over to the doctor, grasped the older man's shoulders
so fiercely that he winced in pain.

"By God," he shouted at Dr. Bennett, "you've got to operate! I can't
see my little Mary die right here befo' my eyes! Go ahead and do
what you think best. It'll be better'n seein' her die while we stand
here doin' nothin'!".

"Roy," Dr. Bennett groaned, "you know there ain't anythin' I
wouldn't do for you—'cept this." He waved his hand vaguely towards
the bed. As he did so, he looked with keen appraisement at Ewing in
the dim light. He seemed to be debating in his mind whether or not
he dared take a very long chance. If the chance would not be more
disastrous. If Mary's life might not be better lost than that! Ewing
almost stopped breathing as he saw the momentary indecision in the
physician's face. Mrs. Ewing saw none of this by-play, for she had
sunk down on the bed, where her body was shaken with the sobs she
could not restrain.

"There's jus' one chance t' save her," Dr. Bennett hesitatingly
began. Ewing leaned forward in his eagerness.

"There's jus' this one hope," Dr. Bennett repeated, "but I don't
know if you'd be willin' to take that chance."

"I don't give a damn what it is!" Ewing shouted in his anxiety.
"I'll take it! What is it, Doc? I don't care what it costs! What is
it?" He quivered as with a chill in his excitement—the excitement of
the drowning man who sees a possible rescuer as he is about to go
down for the third time. Mrs. Ewing had stopped crying—she seemed as
though she had forgotten to breathe. They both waited eagerly for
the older man to speak. At last he did. He paused after each word.

"Th'only—man—I know—near enough—to op'rate—in
time—is—a—nigger-doctor—here—named—Harper!"

"Oh, my God!" groaned Ewing as he sank to his knees beside the bed
and buried his face in his hands. "A nigger—seein' my Mary—operatin'
on her—Good God! I'd rather see her dead than have a nigger put his
hands on her! No! No! No!" He fairly screamed the last in his fury.

"I didn't think you'd do it," said Dr. Bennett miserably. "I jus'
felt I oughter tell you. He's jus' out of school—studied in one of
the bes' schools up No'th—and in France. He might save Mary—but I
can't blame you none for not havin' him."

While he was speaking, Ewing jumped to his feet and paced up and
down the room like a caged and wounded tiger. On the one hand was
the life of his daughter—on the other his inherent, acquired,
environmental prejudice. None but those who know intimately the
depth and passion of that prejudice as it flourishes in the South
can know what torture what a hell—what agony Ewing was going
through. Prejudice under almost any circumstances is hard enough to
bear—in Ewing's case his very soul was tormented at such an
unheard-of thing as a Negro operating on his daughter.

"Roy!"

He turned abruptly at the sound of his wife's voice, having
forgotten for the time everything—wife, surroundings, all—as he
struggled with the problem he faced.

"Roy!" Her voice was weak because of the ordeal through which she
was passing. She ran to him, seizing his arm and looking up at him
pleadingly.

"Roy! I can't see our Mary die! I can't let her die!"

"Would you have a nigger see her naked?" he demanded of her
fiercely. "Would you? Would you?"

Her head went back sharply at the roughness of his tone. In her eyes
flashed that brilliant, burning look of mother love that submits to
no dangers, no obstacles.

"I'd do anything to save her!" she cried.

"No, no, Mary," Ewing pleaded, "we can't do that! We can't!"

She did not hear him. Brushing past him, she caught Dr. Bennett by
the arm as he rose to his feet. "Get that doctor here quick!" she
demanded of him. …

When Dr. Bennett telephoned him to come to Roy Ewing's home as
quickly as he could, Kenneth was somewhat puzzled. He went at once,
deciding that one of the servants was sick. When told that it was
Mary Ewing he was to treat, he could not conceal his amazement. He
followed Roy Ewing and the doctor to her room, the while he was
trying to make himself realize that he, Kenneth Harper, a Negro
doctor, had been called to treat a white person—a white woman—in the
South. Reaching the bedside, though, he put aside his bewilderment
and began at once the diagnosis to discover what the trouble was. He
listened without speaking to Dr. Bennett as the old man told him the
symptoms Mary had shown and what he thought was the matter. Ewing
was sent from the room. Kenneth rapidly examined the patient—and
decided that she was having severe internal hæmorrhages. It looked
like an acute and dangerous case.

Immediate operation seemed the only hope. And even that hope was a
slim one. He informed Dr. Bennett of his diagnosis.

Ewing was summoned. Briefly Kenneth told him his theory of the
trouble—that the only hope was immediate operation. Ewing faltered,
hesitated, seemed about to refuse to allow it. At that moment a loud
scream of pain was wrung from Mary's lips. He winced as though he
had been struck. He shrugged his shoulders in assent to the
operation. …

Kenneth telephoned Mrs. Johnson, the nurse who had helped him
before, to be ready to go with him for an operation in ten minutes.
He drove rapidly home, secured his instruments, ether, sterilizer,
gown and other equipment, bundled them into his car, called for
Mrs. Johnson, explaining briefly to her the nature of the case as he
drove as rapidly as he could to the Ewing home.

Mary was carried downstairs and placed on the dining-room table.
Dr. Bennett agreed to give the anæsthesic. Kenneth went rapidly, yet
surely, to work. In his element now, he forgot time, place, the
unusual circumstances, and everything else. Swiftly he began the
delicate and perilous task as soon as Dr. Bennett had sufficiently
etherized the patient. Yet, even in the stress of the moment, he
could not keep down the ironical thoughts that crept to his brain in
spite of all efforts to bar them. The South's a funny place, he
mused. Must have been a mighty hard thing for old Bennett to have to
admit that he, a Negro, knew more about operating in a case like
this than he did himself. Roy Ewing must have had a bad half-hour
deciding whether or not he'd let a Negro do the operation on his
daughter. Hope nothing goes wrong—if it does, might as well pick out
some other town to go to. Oh, well, won't let that worry me. Have to
make the best of it—save her if possible.

Weakened by the severe hæmorrhages she had been having, Mary was in
a condition of extreme shock. The least slip, Kenneth realized, and
nothing could save her. Her face wan and drawn, Mary's life hung
precariously in the balance—the odds were all against her while the
grim spectre of death crept slowly but surely upon her.

Beads of perspiration stood upon Kenneth's brow as he fought for her
life. Though he could not have done the operation himself,
Dr. Bennett sensed the gravity of the situation. The older man
leaned forward in his anxiety—hardly daring to breathe for fear of
interrupting the deft, sure touch of the operator.
Ten—fifteen—twenty—thirty—forty—fifty minutes crept by on lagging
feet—to the two doctors and the nurse each minute seemed an hour.

Despite all his efforts, Kenneth knew Mary was rapidly sinking. The
loss of blood and strength, the severity of the shock, the
enervating spasms of pain she had suffered, had sapped her strength
until all resistive power was gone. Kenneth knew that Dr. Bennett
knew this too—even in the desperate struggle he wondered what the
other would say and do—if the girl died. He tried to shake off the
fear that seized him—fear of what would happen if it became known
among the whites that Mary Ewing had died while a Negro was
operating on her. No mortal could have done more. Even were that
known and admitted, it would not save him, Kenneth knew.

The tense situation became too much for him. When he should have
been steadiest, the double strain on his nerves caused his hand to
slip. Blood spurted forth. Kenneth feverishly caught the bleeding
artery with a hæmostatic and sought to repair the damage he had
done.

"Tough luck," muttered Dr. Bennett. Kenneth looked up at him. The
older man grunted and smiled encouragingly. A burden seemed lifted
from Kenneth's shoulders. Mrs. Johnson wiped the perspiration that
streamed from Kenneth's face. She seemed endowed with a sixth sense
that told her his needs almost before he was aware of them himself.

It was a strange sight. Anywhere in America. In Georgia it was
amazing beyond belief. A white woman patient. A white anæsthetizer.
A black nurse. A black surgeon. …

All things must come to an end. Kenneth rapidly sewed up the
incision. He bandaged the wound tightly. She yet breathed.

Kenneth opened the door and admitted Ewing, who had paced the hall
since the operation began. Every minute of the hour he had been
there, he had had to fight hard to keep himself from bursting into
the room and stopping the operation. He had been restrained by the
positiveness with which he had been ejected from the room by
Kenneth—there was something in the physician's air that had warned
him without words that he must not interfere. Something within him
told him Kenneth was right—knew what he was doing. The colour and
race of the surgeon had been almost forgotten in the strange
circumstances. "Will she live?" he asked, his words whispered in so
hoarse a tone they could hardly be heard.

"I don't know—it'll be forty-eight hours before we can tell—if she
lives that long," answered Kenneth. The strain had been greater than
he had known. Kenneth felt a strange weakening—lassitude gripped his
body—he felt a nausea that came with the reaction after the mental
ordeal. Ewing stood by the table on which lay his child. Tears which
he forgot to wipe away stood in his eyes as he watched her laboured
breathing. Dr. Bennett put his hand on Ewing's shoulder.

"He did all he could!" he declared, nodding at Kenneth. There was
admiration in the old doctor's voice.

Ewing rushed off to give the news to his wife. …

The three men carried the unconscious form to her room. With a short
"Good night" to Dr. Bennett, Kenneth left the house with
Mrs. Johnson and drove away. …




                            CHAPTER XVI


THE following day Kenneth was kept busy arranging his affairs in
order to leave the following morning for Atlanta for the operation
on Mrs. Tucker. It had been a most difficult task for him to
persuade her to have it done. He had been at last successful when he
made her realize that it would mean either the operation or death.
She dreaded the trip to Atlanta but Kenneth refused to perform the
operation except at a hospital and there was none nearer than
Atlanta at which a Negro could operate.

During the day he had been kept so busy that he had not had time to
go out of the coloured section except once, and that when in the
late afternoon he drove through Lee Street to see how Mary Ewing was
faring. He had been so busy with his own thoughts that he had paid
little attention to the whites who were standing around on the
streets. He did not see the threatening and hostile looks they gave
nor did he notice the excited whispering and muttering when he came
into their sight.

Ed Stewart had partly told the truth at the meeting of the Klan when
he said that Dr. Williams had informed him of the organization
Kenneth and the others were forming. Kenneth had seen little of the
pompous and intensely jealous physician since the time when he had
forced Dr. Williams to assist him in the appendicitis operation on
Mrs. Emma Bradley. Kenneth had felt nothing but an amused contempt
for his fellow-practitioner, for he knew that Dr. Williams covered
his deficiencies in medical knowledge and skill with the bombastic
and self-important air he affected.

Dr. Williams, on the other hand, had never forgiven Kenneth for the
incident in which Kenneth had shown him up in a manner that injured
the former's pride far more than Kenneth had suspected. Dr. Williams
felt that the younger man had deliberately and with malice
aforethought offered a gratuitous insult to him as dean of the
coloured medical profession of Central City, though that profession
numbered but two members. Kenneth's success as a physician in
Central City, having taken as he had some of the best of
Dr. Williams' own patients whom he had considered peculiarly his
own, the insult plus Kenneth's success had rankled in his breast
until, being of a petty and mean disposition, he hated the younger
man with a deep and vindictive hatred.

He had not, however, intended that his conversation with Ed Stewart
should assume the proportions that it eventually did. On the day
before the meeting of the Klan at which Kenneth had been named as
the one responsible for the organization of the Negroes,
Dr. Williams had met Ed Stewart driving out along a country road
near Ashland. Williams was returning from making a professional call
in that neighbourhood. Stewart, a big, raw-boned, and lanky
"Cracker" or "Peck," as they are called by Negroes in the South, was
going to inspect the cotton crops of his tenant-farmers, that he
might estimate how big the crops would be and might know accordingly
how large the tenants' bills should be for supplies furnished.

They had stopped to pass the time of day and for Stewart to find
which of the Negroes on his place was sick. He wanted to know if
that sick one was too sick to work the crop, as the loss of even one
worker during cotton-picking time was serious, what with the number
of Negroes who had gone North. Having gained the information, he
started to question Dr. Williams in a way that he thought was
exceedingly adroit and clever, but through which ruse the coloured
doctor saw instantly and clearly.

"Say, Doc, you know anything ‘bout these niggers 'round here holdin'
these meetin's nearly ev'ry night? Seems t' me it's mighty late for
them to be holdin' revival services and indo' camp-meetin's?" he
queried in as casual a tone as he could manage.

An idea sprang full-grown to Williams' mind. Kenneth Harper was
getting far too popular through the organization of his co-operative
societies. Williams was shrewd enough to see that if they were as
successful as they gave promise of being, Kenneth would be the
leading Negro of the town, if not of that entire section of Georgia.
And correspondingly he, Williams, would become less and less the
prominent figure he had been before Kenneth had come back from
France to Central City. That was it! Stewart was one of the biggest
planters in Smith County. It was also rumoured he was prominent in
the Ku Klux Klan. Stewart's fortunes would be the hardest hit in the
county if Kenneth's societies achieved their purpose, for he,
Stewart, had as many share-croppers and tenant-farmers as any other
man in the county if not more. Stewart also had the reputation, a
long-standing one, of being the hardest taskmaster on his Negro
tenants in the county—the one who profited most through juggled
accounts and fraudulent dealings. He could have cut, had he chosen,
five notches in the handle of his gun, each one signifying a Negro
who had dared to dispute the justness of settlements for crops
raised.

All these thoughts raced through Williams' brain while Stewart
waited for a reply to his questions. Williams had no intention of
the exaggeration of his statements which Stewart later made. He
merely intended that by telling Stewart of the societies, Kenneth's
rapidly increasing prominence in the community should receive a
check through obstacles which Stewart and his fellow-landlords might
put—in fact, were sure to put—in the way of success of the farmers'
organizations.

"No, sir, they ain't holdin' revivals, Mr. Stewart. I reckon if you
white folks knew what was goin' on, you wouldn't feel so
comfortable."

Williams was playing with Stewart as is done so often by Negroes in
the South with the whites, though the latter, in their supreme
confidence that they belong to an eternally ordained "superior
race," seldom realize how often and how easily they are taken in by
Negroes. Williams enjoyed the look of concern that had come to
Stewart's face at his words.

"What's goin' on, Doc?" he asked in an eager tone, from which he
tried with but little success to keep the anxiety that he felt.

"Heh, heh, heh!" laughed Williams in a throaty chuckle. "These
Negroes are figurin' on takin' some of these landlords to court
that's been cheatin' them on their crops. Of course," he added
hastily, "that don't need to worry you none, Mr. Stewart, but from
what I hear, there are some 'round here that the news will worry."

Stewart flushed, for he was conscious of a vague feeling that
Williams might have been indirectly hitting at him when he had said
that the court proceedings wouldn't affect him. He fell back on the
old custom of flattering and praising fulsomely the Negro from whom
a white man wants information regarding the activities of other
Negroes. Williams, like every other Negro in the South, knew what
value to put on it, but he was playing a far deeper game than
Stewart suspected.

"Doc, why ain't all these niggers good, sensible ones like you? If
all the niggers in the South were like you, there never would be any
trouble."

"That's right, Mr. Stewart, that's right. As I was sayin' to some of
the folks out your way this mornin', they'd better stop followin'
after the fool ideas of these coloured men who've been up No'th."

He looked at Stewart shrewdly and appraisingly to see if he had
penetrated the subtlety of his remark. Stewart, slow of thought, had
not fully done so, it seemed. Williams continued:

"You see, it's like this, Mr. Stewart. Folks like you and me could
live here for a hundred years and there'd never be no trouble.
There'd never be no race problem if they was only like us. But"—and
his voice took on a doubtful and sorrowful sound—"the most of this
trouble we're havin' is caused by fool Negroes who go up No'th to
school and run around with those coloured folks in New York and
Chicago who tell ‘em how bad we po' coloured folks are bein' treated
in the South. They get all filled up with ‘social equality' ideas,
and then they come back down here and talk that stuff to these
ignorant Negroes and get them all stirred up⸺"

Stewart was seeing more clearly what Williams was driving at.

"I see," he said reflectively. "I alw'ys said too much education
sp'iled niggers—that is, some niggers," he added hastily for fear
Williams might take offence before he had done with him. "Co'se it
don't bother sensible ones like you, Doc." The last was said
conciliatingly. "Let's see, mos' this trouble's stahted since that
other doctor's been back, ain't it?" he asked as casually as he
could.

"I ain't sayin' who's doin' it," replied Williams as he started the
engine of his car. "But you're a good guesser, Mr. Stewart," he
threw back over his shoulder as he drove away. …

Stewart clucked to his horse and rode in deep thought down the road.
His mind was busy devising schemes to circumvent the action of the
societies to take into court men like himself who had been robbing
Negroes. They'd lose in the local courts, he knew, but suppose they
raised enough money to take a case to the United States Supreme
Court. No, that would never do! He'd see Parker and talk it over
with him right away! He put the whip to his horse and drove rapidly
into town. Mustn't let the damn niggers organize, that would be
hell! …

Kenneth was going about his business on the day following the
meeting of the Klan that had been caused by Dr. Williams' talk with
Stewart, in blissful ignorance of the storm rapidly gathering about
his head. His mind was intent on a number of things—but trouble on
account of the co-operative societies was furthest from his mind.
Had he been told there was any trouble, such news would probably
have been greeted with a laugh of unconcern. All the white people of
the South weren't scoundrels and thieves like Stewart and Taylor and
their kind! They were but a few. Besides the poor whites, the
majority of whites would undoubtedly heartily approve his plan when
it had been developed to the point where it could be made public.

But Kenneth thought of none of those things. His mind was too full
of other events that loomed on the horizon. First, of course, he
thought of Jane. He thought of his great good fortune in knowing a
girl like her. There was a girl for you! He thought of the home he
would build for her—he was mighty glad his father had been in fairly
comfortable circumstances and that he had been successful in his
practice. He would be able to build a mighty nice home for Jane.
They wouldn't bother with the cheap and flashy furniture, fumed oak
or mission, to be obtained in Central City. Oh, no! Soon's
Mrs. Phillips was better, the three of them would go to Atlanta and
buy everything they needed there. They'd have the best-looking home
in Central City, white or coloured! His mother and Mamie wanted him
to bring Jane into the house. He might do that … but the house which
had seemed so comfortable before, now seemed too ordinary to bring a
girl like Jane to. … He'd talk that over with her to-night. … And
then after a time there might be a little Jane … and a Kenneth,
Jr. … Kenneth laughed softly to himself as he saw Jane and himself
sitting by the fire of an evening with two little rascals playing on
the floor. … And later they'd go off to school. He'd see that they
got the best there was in life. … So his thoughts ran.

And then he thought of Roy Ewing and the operation of the night
before. Must have been a mighty terrible ordeal for them to have to
call a Negro in to operate on their daughter. Race prejudice is a
funny thing! A white man will eat food prepared by black hands, have
it served by black hands, have his children nursed by a black nurse
who most of the time was more a mother to them than their own
mother, let his clothes be taken into a black home to be washed,
allow all the most intimate details of his life to be handled by
black folks. … Even lots of them would consort with black women at
night to whom they wouldn't raise their hats in the daytime. … But
when it came to recognizing a Negro outside of menial service, then
there came the rub. … Yet in a matter of life and death like Ewing's
case, they forgot prejudice. … Maybe in time the race problem would
be solved just like that … when some great event would wipe away the
artificial lines … as in France. … He thought of the terrible days
and nights in the Argonne. … He remembered the night he had seen a
wounded black soldier and a wounded white Southern one, drink from
the same canteen. … They didn't think about colour in those times. …
Wouldn't the South be a happy place if this vile prejudice didn't
exist? … He wondered why folks didn't see it as clearly as he did. …

At last the long, busy day ended. He went over to have supper with
Jane. That dress she had on the night they had told each other of
their love, that reddish-coloured one, that had been a beauty. But
to-night—ah, the other one wasn't nearly so pretty! It was of white,
simply made. Satin slippers, silk stockings, also of white. Her hair
piled high and pierced with a large tortoise-shell comb. Always she
brought pictures to Kenneth's mind. To-night it was again of the
dark-eyed, seductive Spanish señorita on a balcony. After supper,
they sat in the canvas porch swing. They talked of their
plans—impetuously, enthusiastically—with all the glorious dreams of
youthful love. All the little things—little, but so great when one
is young and in love they said to each other. The things they said
when the Pyramids were being built. The things they will say a
thousand years from now.

To-night there were no warning signals from Mr. Phillips when ten
o'clock came. He had been glad, and had said so, when Kenneth asked
him for Jane. "We don't feel we're losing a daughter—we're gaining a
son instead!" he had said.

They talked on until there was no other sign of life discernible in
the neighbourhood, save for the passage of a prowling cat, or the
sound of the crickets in the grass. At last he had to go. Early the
next morning he was to leave for Atlanta with Mrs. Tucker. Three
days he was to be gone. He would return on Friday.

In October they were to be married. Mrs. Phillips' health was not
improving as they had hoped. She was cheerful but she wanted Jane to
be happily married before she died. They had decided to live at his
house with his mother and Mamie. They'd refurnish it and do over all
the rooms. Later on, when he had made lots of money, they'd build.

Mamie and Jane and Kenneth were to go to Atlanta the latter part of
September, there to buy the furniture and all the other things, they
would need. Mrs. Phillips was too ill to stand the strain of the
long journey and the excitement of the shopping.

Jane tiptoed into the house so as not to wake her mother. She
returned in a few minutes with a fluffy white mass in her arms. It
was her wedding-gown which she was to make herself. They sat silent
for a minute at the token of what it meant.

Tears stood in Jane's eyes when he went down the stairs. He saw them
when he looked back to say the last soft good-bye.

"Three days is an awful long time," she said plaintively.

Of course, there was nothing else for him to do but go back up the
steps and kiss her good-bye all over again. …




                            CHAPTER XVII


BOB was packing for his journey to Cambridge, whistling cheerfully
the while. It was certainly great to be going away up to Boston to
school. All his life he had wanted to live there for a while where
he could learn the things which he knew of only at second hand now.
He pictured in his mind how he would arrange his life at school.
There'd be none of the kiddish pranks he had read about that college
boys did. He was too old for that. He had seen too much of the seamy
and sordid side of life to waste his time playing. He'd study every
minute he could. He'd make a record in scholarship that would make
his mother and Mamie and Kenneth proud of him. He'd go to summer
school so as to finish the rest of his college course in two years
instead of three. And then, law school. By jiminy, he'd be the best
lawyer there was! Not the best coloured lawyer. The best lawyer!
Never did youth have more brilliant dreams of life than Bob. He
paused at the sound which came from downstairs through the
half-opened door. It couldn't be in Ken's office, for he had gone to
Atlanta with Mrs. Tucker that morning. It sounded like crying—as one
would cry who had suffered some great bereavement or terrible
misfortune. He went out in the hall and leaned over the balustrade,
the better to find out what was the matter.

It was Mamie and his mother. He looked puzzled, for he could think
of nothing to make Mamie cry that way. His mother was trying to
soothe and calm her as Mamie told her the cause of her weeping. Bob
crept down the stairs as softly as he could to hear.

Mamie between sobs was telling her mother of some accident that had
befallen her.

"I had been—to Ewing's Store and that Jim Archer—and Charley
Allen—and two or three other white boys—that hang around Ewing's
Store—said nasty things to me when I came out—I hurried home they
must have followed me."

Here she broke down again while her mother crooned softly to her,
pleading with her not to cry so hard. Mamie choked back her sobs and
went on. Bob's face became terrible to see. He hung there on the
steps almost breathless, waiting, and dreading what he felt was
coming.

"At that old field-near the railroad—they jumped out—and grabbed me
oh, my God! My God! Why didn't they kill me? Why didn't they kill
me?" Mamie's screams were horrible to hear. "Then—oh, God! God help
me!"

For a minute Bob stood there as one frozen to the spot. Then a
blind, unreasoning fury filled him. He ran up the stairs to
Kenneth's room and got the revolver he knew Kenneth kept there.
Without hat or coat he ran down the stairs. Out the door and down
the street. Mamie and her mother were roused by his action. Mamie,
lying on the floor with her head in her mother's lap, her clothes
torn and bloody, her face and body bruised, struggled to her feet.
She ran to the open door through which Bob had disappeared. An even
greater terror, if such was possible, was on her face.

"Bob! Bob! Come back! Come back!" she cried in ever louder cries.

"Bob! Bob!"

But Bob was too far away to hear her.

In front of Ewing's Store there sat a group of nine or ten men and
boys. They were gathered around one who seemed to be relating a
highly interesting and humorous story. Every few minutes there'd be
a loud laugh and a slapping of each other on the back. Suddenly,
silence. A hatless and coatless figure was running down the street
toward them. The group opened as its members started to scatter. In
the middle of it there stood Jim Archer and Charley Allen. The
former had been telling the story.

Bob walked straight up to Jim Archer, whose face had turned even
paler than its usual pasty colour. He turned to run but it was too
late. Without saying a word, his eyes burning with a deadly hatred,
Bob raised the revolver he had in his hand and fired once—twice—into
Archer's breast. Charley Allen rushed upon Bob to overpower him. He
met head-on the two bullets that came to meet him, and fell gasping
and coughing on the ground at Bob's feet.

The rest of the crowd had fled.

Without hurrying, Bob stepped into a Ford delivery truck that had
been left at the curb, its engine running. Before the crowd which
with miraculous suddenness filled the street could stop him, he
drove straight down Lee Street, turned into Oglethorpe Avenue, and
headed for the country beyond the town. …

Three miles out of town the Ford spluttered, coughed, shook
mightily, and stopped. Its gasolene tank was empty. Shoving it into
the underbrush on the side of the road, far enough to be out of
sight, Bob ran on. If he could only get across country as far as the
railroad going North, he might be able to get to Macon, where he
could hide. When the excitement died down, he could go on farther
North. Perhaps he could eventually reach Canada. He fought his way
through brushes, across vast fields of cotton that seemed to have no
end. Near midnight he could go no farther. He had eaten nothing
since breakfast—he had been too excited over his packing to eat any
dinner. Bitterly he thought of the change a few hours had brought
forth. Twelve hours before, he had been eagerly planning to leave
for school. Now, his sister ruined, he a murderer twice over—fleeing
for his life! He hoped that he had killed both of them! It would be
too ironical a fate for them to live. … He thought for a moment of
what would happen if they caught him. He put the thought away from
him. God, that was too terrible! Mustn't think of that! I'll lose my
nerve. …

What was that? Lord, he must have fallen asleep! What is that? Dogs?
Bloodhounds! Great God!

I must get away! How did they get away from bloodhounds in books?
That was it! Water!

He'd find a stream and wade in it. Then the damned dogs would lose
the scent.

The thought of water reminded him suddenly that he was
thirsty—terribly thirsty. God, but his throat was dry! Felt like ten
thousand hot needles were sticking in it!

His legs and thighs ached. He dragged them along like a paralysed
man. He thought petulantly of a paralysed man he had seen once in
Atlanta. What was his name? Bill? No, that wasn't it. Jim? No, not
that either. Some sort of a name like that.

Wonder how Mamie was? Mamie? Who's Mamie? What had happened to her?
He racked his brain to remember. At last he gave it up. No use
trying. Old—old—brain don't work right.

Wonder what's the matter with it?

His delirious brain was suddenly cleared by an ominous baying close
at hand. Those damned dogs again. They'd never take him alive! He
felt in his pockets to see if the gun was still there. It was. He
felt in the other pocket to count the cartridges there while he ran.
One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight! All there! Seven for the
mob! One—for—Bob!

An old barn suddenly loomed up before him in the rapidly approaching
light of dawn. He dragged himself into it and barred the door. Not
much protection! But—a little! Just a little! Better'n none! He sat
down on an old box by the door, There was a knot-hole farther over.
He dragged the box in front of it. Reloaded the revolver.
One—two—three—four cartridges! Two that hadn't been used! That left
six in the gun! And four more! Listen! The dogs sound like they're
near!

There they are! He wouldn't waste his precious bullets on dogs! Oh,
no! He'd save them for the human dogs! God damn 'em! He'd show 'em a
"damned nigger" knew how to die! Like a man! Here they come! God,
but it was tough to have to die! Just when life seemed so sweet!
Wonder who'd sit in his seat at Harvard! Hope a coloured boy'd get
it! Harvard seemed so far away from where he was! Looked like it was
as far's the moon! Might as well be for him!

Look at 'em spreading out! Whyn't they come up like men and get him?
There's Jim Archer's brother! Bang! Got him! Look at 'im squirm!

That's two Archers won't run after coloured girls any more! Bang!
Damn it, I missed 'im! Can't waste 'em like that! Got to be more
careful! Must take better aim next time! Bang! Bang! Hell, I missed
again! Nope! Got one of 'em!

One—two—three—four gone! Six left! Five for the "Crackers"! One for
me! Bang! Bang!

Got another! Must reload! One—two—three four! Nearly all gone!
Five—ten—fifteen minutes to live! Why did they pick on Mamie?

Whyn't they take one of those girls that live in those houses on
Butler Street? That's always running around after men? Why'd they
bother a nice girl like Mamie?

Bang! Listen at 'im howl? That's music for you! Listen to the damn
"Peck" squalling!

What's th' matter? Looks like they've gone! Wonder if I can make a
run for it? Th' damn cowards! Fifty—one hundred—a thousand—five
thousand—to one! That's the way "Crackers" always fight coloured
folks! Never heard yet of one "Cracker" fighting one Negro! Have to
have thousan' to kill one little fellow like Bob Harper!

Smoke? Can't be smoke! Yes, it is! Goin' t' burn me up! Bang! Bang!
Got one of 'em!

My God! Only one bullet left! Never take him alive! Lynch him! Might
burn him! Burned coloured boy last month 'n Texas! Better not let
'em get him! Good-bye, everybody! Good-bye!

Good-bye! Good⸺ Bang …

It was some time after Bob had died before the posse dared enter the
barn which by this time was burning rapidly. They feared the
cessation of firing was only a ruse to draw them into the open. At
last, after riddling the burning structure with bullets, a few of
the more daring cautiously approached the barn, entered, and found
Bob's body. After the bullet from his own gun had entered his head,
killing him instantly, his body had fallen backwards from the box on
which he had been sitting. His legs were resting on the box, his
thighs vertical, his body on the floor and his head slightly tilted
forward as it rested against a cow-stall. His arms were widespread.
The empty revolver lay some ten feet away, where he had flung it as
he fell backwards. His face was peaceful. On it was a sardonic smile
as though he laughed in death at cheating the howling pack of the
satisfaction of killing him.

The mob dragged the body hastily into the open. The roof of the old
barn was about to fall in. Before dragging it forth, they had taken
no chances. A hundred shots were fired into the dead body. Partly in
anger at being cheated of the joy of killing him themselves. They
tied it to the rear axle of a Ford. Howling, shouting gleefully, the
voice of the pack after the kill, they drove rapidly back to town,
the dead body, riddled and torn, bumping grotesquely over the holes
in the road. …

Back to the public square. In the open space before the Confederate
Monument, wood and excelsior had been piled. Near by stood cans of
kerosene. On the crude pyre they threw the body. Saturated it and
the wood with oil. A match applied. In the early morning sunlight
the fire leaped higher and higher. Mingled with the flames and smoke
the exulting cries of those who had done their duty—they had avenged
and upheld white civilization. …

The flames died down. Women, tiny boys and girls, old men and young
stood by, a strange light on their faces. They sniffed eagerly the
odour of burning human flesh which was becoming more and more faint.

… Into the dying flames darted a boy of twelve. Out he came,
laughing hoarsely, triumphantly exhibiting a charred bone he had
secured, blackened and crisp. … Another rushed in. … Another. …
Another. … Here a rib. … There an armbone. … A louder cry. … The
skull. … Good boy! Johnny! … We'll put that on the mantelpiece at
home. … Five dollars for it, Johnny! … Nothin' doin'! … Goin' to
keep it myself! …

The show ended. The crowd dispersed. Home to breakfast.




                           CHAPTER XVIII


THREE men sat around a table that evening in the office of Sheriff
Parker in the court-house. The sheriff was one. Another was
Commissioner Henry Lane. The third was Ed Stewart.

The latter was talking.

"Yep, after I talked to that nigger Williams, I rustled ‘round among
the niggers on my place. At fust, they wouldn't talk much. But I
found a way to make 'em! By God, a taste of a horse-whip'll make any
of 'em open up! Found they's only two niggers we got to worry 'bout.
One's this nigger doctor. The other's my nigger Tom Tracy. She'ff,
if you hear'n tell of an accident out to my place in the nex' few
days, you needn't bother to come out to investigate. It'll be
se'f-defence. Tom Tracy's goin't come up on me with an open knife.
I'm goin' t' shoot t' save my life."

The three laughed at the good joke. The sheriff agreed not to
bother. "Good riddance!" he commented.

Stewart went on:

"Now ‘bout this other nigger. He's the brains of the whole thing.
But we've got to be mighty careful, 'cause these other niggers
thinks he some sort of a tin god. Ef they think he's bumped off
'cause of these lodges he's been organizing, they might raise hell.
Ev'ry nigger out my way would go through hell 'n' high water for
him. Never seen ‘em think so much of another nigger befo'. Mos' the
time they'll come and tell me ev'rythin' that any them other niggers
doin'. This nigger Harper's got ‘em hoodooed or somethin'."

The sheriff broke into Stewart's monologue in a complaining,
reminiscent fashion:

"Don't know what's gettin' into the niggers nowadays. They ain't
like they useter be. Take this nigger's daddy, f'r example. Old man
Harper was as good a nigger's I ever seen. If he met you on the
street twenty times a day, he'd take off his hat 'n' bow almos' to
the groun' ev'ry time. But these new niggers, I can't make heads nor
tails of ‘em. Take that uppity nigger they burned this mornin'.
Always goin' 'round with a face on 'im like he's swallowed a mess of
crabapples. What if that Jim Archer did have a little fun with the
nigger's sister? 'Twon't hurt a nigger wench none. Oughter be proud
a white man wants her."

His voice took on at the next remark a tone of pained and outraged
surprise.

"Nigger gals gettin' so nowadays they think they're's good as white
women! And what ‘chu think that old fool Judge Stev'nson said t' me
to-day? Had the nerve t' sayt' me that he don't blame that nigger
Bob for killin' Jim Archer!"

He demanded of his companions in an almost ludicrous surprise:
"What's goin't come of the South when _white men_ like the judge say
such things? Guess he's gettin' so old he's kind of weak in the
head! I tol' him he'd better not say that to nobody else. Somethin'
might happen to _him!_"

"Damn Judge Stevenson!" broke in Stewart, anxious to get a chance to
tell his story. "He alw'ys was a sort of ‘nigger-lover' anyway!"

Henry Lane spoke for the first time.

"Reck'n the Gov'nor'd say anythin' ‘bout this burnin'?" he asked in
a tone that anticipated the answer.

Parker laughed ironically.

"What kin he do?" he demanded. He answered his own question.
"Nothin'! Under the laws of Georgy, he can't even sen' a man down
here to investigate unless he's officially asked by citizens of th'
county! And who's goin' t' ask him?" He laughed again. "If anybody's
fool enough to ask him, they'll be havin' a visit paid ‘em one of
these nights! Reck'n we don't need to bother none 'bout the Gov'non
meddlin' in our affairs," he ended assuredly.

"Le's get back to this Harper nigger 'n' quit all this foolin'
'round," Stewart demanded, irritably. "How're we goin' t' settle
him?" He added, after a pause: "Without stirrin' up the niggers all
over the county?"

"An' they ain't all we got to look out for," added Sheriff Parker.
"They's some white folks 'round here who'll kick up a stink if we
ain't careful." "Who'll do that?" asked Stewart contemptuously.
"Judge Stev'nson can't do it all by hisse'f." "Well, there's him an
old Baird an' Fred Griswold. An' then the one's mos' likely to raise
the mos' fuss is Roy Ewing. He thinks a lot of that nigger lately
for some reas'n. Ain't been able t' figger it out as yet, but he
sets a heap by him." He scratched his head in an abstracted manner.
"Tol me over t' the sto' yestiddy that this Harper's a fine type of
nigger t' have ‘round Central City 'n' that we oughter encourage
other niggers to be like him."

"Another one gettin' ol and weak-minded befo' his time!" was
Stewart's comment. "But I want t' know if we're goin' to sit here
all night talkin' ‘bout things that's goin' t' keep us from
punishin' this nigger or if we're goin' to get down to business.
Fust thing we know, we'll be ‘lectin' this nigger mayer the town!"
His sarcasm was thinly veiled, if veiled at all. Parker and Lane
showed by the sudden flush on their faces that the shot had reached
its mark.

"You don't have to be so cantankerous 'bout it, Ed." Parker showed
in his voice, as well as on his face, that he didn't particularly
care for Stewart's brand of irony. "You know we're jus' as anxious
as you to get rid of him. But we got to be careful. You live out in
the country ‘n' you don't know the situation here in town like me
‘n' Henry."

He sat meditatively for a time. Stewart fidgeted in his chair, and
Henry Lane sat lost in thought. Parker suddenly sat up eagerly.

"I got it!" he exclaimed. The others looked at him inquiringly.

"We'll fix it so's we can say that Harper insulted a white woman!"

His companions looked slightly disappointed and doubtful.

"How're you goin' t' do that?" asked Lane. "This nigger, as fur's I
can see, since he been back's been stayin' out where he b'longs in
the nigger section. Only time he comes over this way's when he comes
to the bank or the sto' or here to th' court-house. That's one thing
I can say in his fav'r! Bein'in France ain't sp'iled him none so
fur's white women's concerned. If he ran around with them Frog
women, he never tried any of it 'round here."

"It ain't necessary for him to bother with white women in Central
City for us to put that on 'im," Parker declared defensively.
"Nearly all white folks ev'n up No'th b'lieves that ev'ry time a
nigger's lynched down this a way, its 'cause he's raped a white
woman." His manner became triumphant. "Here's how we'll fix it."

The three men, although they were alone in the dark court-house and
there was none to hear, drew their chairs together. Their heads were
close for more than ten minutes, while they talked excitedly
together. Occasionally there would be a low burst of laughter—again
an oath. At last Stewart rose, took a paper-bound book from the
desk, copied for some time from it, and left the court-house.

The next morning each of fifteen "white, Protestant, Gentile"
citizens of Central City received a letter. There was no writing of
any sort on the envelope save their names and addresses. They were
of ordinary quality such as can be purchased at five cents a package
in any cheap stationery store. In it was a letter typed on plain
paper, of a quality to match the cheapness of the envelope. There
was no printing of any sort on the letter, nor was it addressed
other than: "Dear Sir." It read:

  DEAR SIR: 

  You have been chosen, as one known to be loyal, brave,
  and discreet, to meet a situation affecting the welfare of the
  Nation, the State, and the Community. You are hereby commanded to be
  present at the time and place and date given on the enclosed card. 


  Be wise! Be discreet! Discuss this with no one! Fail not! 

  THE COMMITTEE.

There was a plain card enclosed, also of cheap and easily obtained
quality, on which was typed a date, time, and place. …

_Mirabile dictu_, each of the fifteen recipients of this cryptic
missive was a Ku Klux Klansman. …




                            CHAPTER XIX


MRS. TUCKER was operated on at Atlanta on Thursday morning at the
Auburn Infirmary, owned and conducted by a group of coloured
physicians of that city, as none of them could operate in the white
hospitals. Kenneth keenly enjoyed being in a hospital again, with
all its conveniences. The operation finished and Mrs. Tucker resting
easily, he purchased, after much picking and choosing, Jane's
engagement ring—a beautiful, blue-white diamond solitaire.

That important task performed, he telephoned Dr. Scott, to whom
Judge Stevenson had given him a letter of introduction. So engrossed
had he been in the operation and the purchasing of the ring, he had
almost forgotten the promise made to the judge to see and talk with
Dr. Scott, known to be a liberal leader of Southern public opinion
and one deeply concerned with the problem of race relations.

"That's a mighty intelligent plan you've worked out," Dr. Scott
boomed over the wire. "I'd like to have you talk that over with me
and one or two others here. Can you do it before going home?"

Kenneth told him he had to leave early next morning for Central
City. As Dr. Scott had a meeting that would keep him engaged all
afternoon, it was decided that they should meet that evening at an
office in a building downtown in the business section.

It was with a deal of eagerness—and with some degree of anxiety, for
he did not know how he would be received by Dr. Scott and the
others—that Kenneth set forth that evening for the meeting. He found
three men awaiting him in the office of John Anthony, who was one of
the three. His footsteps echoed in ghostlike fashion as he walked
down the hallway of the deserted building. From the open window
there floated from the street below the subdued clatter of
automobiles, the cries of newsboys, the restless shuffling of the
leisurely crowd as it moved up and down Peachtree Street. Kenneth
sought to weigh the three, who were, he felt, representatives of
that "new South" of which so much was heard, but signs of whose
activities he had so seldom seen. He was seeking to find out their
motives, their plans of accomplishing that spirit of fair play
toward the Negro, to determine how far they would go towards
challenging the established order that was damning the South
intellectually, morally, economically. Kenneth, with too-high ideals
for his environment, was almost naïve in his eager search for the
great champion he had dreamed of who would brave danger and
contumely and even death itself for a newer and brighter day for his
people in the South. That hope had been dulled somewhat by the
things he had seen since his return to Central City, for he was not
of an unreflective mind. Yet he had not seen far enough beneath the
surface of that volcano of passion and hate and greed which is the
South to realize that the South had never produced a martyr to any
great moral cause one who had possessed sufficient courage to
oppose, regardless of consequences, any one of the set, dogmatic
beliefs of the South. True it was that there were some who had
fought in the Civil War with firm belief that the South was
right—even though it had been shown that their idealism was a
perverted one. But even then these had moved with the tide of
sectional sentiment and not against it.

Educated in Southern schools where the text-books of history always
exalted the leaders of the Confederacy, raising Lee and Jackson and
Johnston and Gordon to heights but little lower than the heroes of
Grecian mythology, and ever tending to disparage and revile the
Union cause and its leaders, Kenneth, like many coloured youths, had
accepted the readymade and fallacious estimates set before him. It
was, therefore, but natural that he set his hopes for stalwart,
unafraid leadership too high and, at the same time, failed to
realize that the South had never begotten an Abraham Lincoln, a
Garrison, a Sumner, or even a meteor-like John Brown, bursting into
brilliance born of indignation against stupidity or ignorance or
wrong and dying gloriously for that cause. Kenneth's eyes had
partially been opened by his memorable talk with Judge Stevenson.
Etched upon his mind by the acid of bitter truths were the judge's
words that the boasted Anglo-Saxonism of the South had curdled into
moral cowardice on all subjects by the repression incident to the
race problem. Nevertheless Kenneth was too inexperienced as yet in
the ways of life to comprehend the full import of the older man's
cynicism. He yet sought him who would fulfil his ideal of a great
leader who, like a latter-day Crusader, would guide white and black
together out of the impasse in which the South seemed to be. Kenneth
thus anxiously examined the three before him to see if by chance any
one of them bore the accolade which would stamp him the Moses that
he sought.

Naturally enough, his eyes first went to Dr. Scott, as it was of him
that Judge Stevenson had spoken most favourably. Minister to one of
the larger Atlanta churches, he had spoken frequently and with
considerable vigour for Georgia in behalf of greater kindness and
fairness toward the Negro. He was very tall. His more than ordinary
height with his attenuated and lanky slenderness gave him an almost
cadaverous appearance which the loose suit of black mohair he wore
accentuated. From beneath the folds of a low collar there sprang a
white starched-linen bow tie, the four ends standing stiffly, each
in a separate direction, like the arms of a windmill. His rather
large head was bald on top but around the edges ran a fringe of
yellowish-white hair with curling ends that made his face appear
rounder than it was. Bushy eyebrows shaded pale blue eyes that
twinkled in unison with the ready smile which revealed large yellow
teeth. Into his conversation Dr. Scott injected at frequent
intervals ministerial phrases—"the spirit of Jesus"—"being
Christians"—"our Lord and Saviour." He always addressed his white
companions as "Brother Anthony" and "Brother Gordon." Kenneth he
always called "Doctor."

Kenneth felt a certain doubt of Dr. Scott's sincerity. He tried to
penetrate what seemed to be a mask over the minister's face that
effectively hid all that revolved in the mind behind it. Something
intangible but nevertheless real blocked his path—an unctuous
affability that seemed too oily to be sincere. No, Kenneth
reflected, Dr. Scott is not the man. All of this examination had
taken but a few seconds, yet Kenneth's mind was made up. In
prejudging him so hastily, Kenneth did an injustice to Dr. Scott
that was unconscious but real. In his heart of hearts Dr. Scott had
realized that to accomplish anything at all in the South towards
enlightenment he must necessarily become, at least as discretion
seemed to dictate, a mental chameleon. He had suffered because of
that decision, for had circumstances placed him in a more liberal
and intelligent environment, he would have been far more advanced in
his religious and other beliefs. The traces of gold in the ore that
was his mind had been revealed in the suffering which had come to
him through his speaking out against a system that seemed to him
wrong.

He had been reviled, misunderstood both deliberately and by those
who were not so advanced as he. He had borne in silence whatever had
come to him, even threats of tarring and of death from the Ku Klux
Klan, seeking a course directed by wisdom if not by valour.

While he was being introduced by Dr. Scott, Kenneth examined
critically the other two men. Mr. Anthony, who had volunteered the
use of his office for the conference, as no comment would be likely
if the four of them were seen in the office building, was first
presented.

John Anthony might well have posed as model for a typical American
business man or lawyer. Of rotund figure, well-fed appearance, hair
close-cut, his face clean-shaven, clad in neatly tailored but
undistinguished clothing, he sat leaning slightly forward, his
fingers interlocked, his thumbs and forefingers holding his cravat
while his elbows rested on the arms of his chair. He acknowledged
the introduction to Kenneth with a brief "Pleased t' meetcha." He
did not rise, nor extend his hand in greeting, but he at once
shrewdly appraised and catalogued Kenneth. John Anthony's interest
in interracial affairs had been first aroused by the war-time
migration of Negroes to the North. His personal fortunes had been
touched directly by this loss of labour, and the resultant decrease
in profits had caused him to inquire into the problem of the
labourers who had been always so plentiful. Like most Americans, and
particularly those in Southern States, he had had no idea of, or
interest in, what Negroes were forced to endure. Though near to this
problem, he had been a living example of those in the proverb who
"live so close to the trees, they cannot see the woods." His
inquiry, conducted with the clear-sightedness and energy he had
acquired from long business training, had revealed brutalities and
vicious exploitation that had amazed and sickened him. He was too
shrewd to believe that Negroes would be restrained from leaving the
South by attempts to picture Negroes freezing to death in the North,
or to try to beguile them by transparent falsehoods to the effect
that the Southern white man is the Negro's best friend. Though he
did not voice it save to his more intimate friends, he felt naught
but contempt for the hypocrisy of those who too late were attempting
to flatter the Negro to keep him in the South. His motives were
therefore curiously mixed in his support of efforts toward
interracial goodwill. Economic in part were they, because retention
of Negro labour meant the continuation of his own successful
business career. Equally, almost, did they proceed from a hitherto
latent sense of moral indignation against the treatment which the
South had accorded to Negroes in the past. Direct of speech,
analytical of mind, he went straight to the heart of the problem
with that same perspicacity that had won for him more than usual
success in his business of conducting one of the South's largest
department stores.

Here again did Kenneth figuratively shake his head and decide that
John Anthony was not destined to be the Moses of the new South. He
could not for the life of him dissociate Anthony's interest in
behalf of justice from his direct financial interest in keeping
Negroes in the South, where, with the inevitable working of the law
of demand and supply, a surplusage of Negro labour would mean
continued high profits for men like Anthony. Kenneth was too young
to know that the more largely a man profits from a liberal cause,
the more loyal will be his support of that cause and the lesser
likelihood of his defection when difficulties arise.

Of the three men, Kenneth felt greatest hope in the third—David
Gordon—younger than Kenneth, alert, capable, and with an engaging
frankness of face and of manner to which Kenneth warmed
instinctively. Gordon was a graduate of Harvard, where he for the
first time in his life had learned to know coloured fellow-students
as men and human beings instead of as "niggers." At first he had
rebelled strenuously, his every instinct had revolted against dining
in the same room, however large, with a "nigger." So indignant had
he been that he had taken it up with the president. Benign, kindly,
clearheaded, and patriarchal, the older man calmly and
dispassionately and without rancour had shown Gordon the injustice
of his position—how unfair it was to deny an education to a man for
the sole offence of having been born with a black skin. Before he
quite knew how it had happened, Gordon found himself ashamed of what
now was seen to be petty nastiness on his part. So interested had he
become after his eyes were thus opened that he had made a special
study of the Negro problem. After finishing both his college and law
courses, he had returned to Atlanta to practise law with his father.
His interest in the race question had increased since his return. He
was now one of that liberal and intelligent few who are most free
from prejudice an emancipated Southerner. Some inner voice told
Kenneth instantly that greatest hope of the three lay in David
Gordon—and men like him. …

The introductions completed, Dr. Scott opened the conversation.

"Doctor, we've heard of the society you've started in Central City.
Tell us how you're getting along."

"You have heard of it?" asked Kenneth in surprise. He did not know
his fame had preceded him.

"Oh, yes," answered Dr. Scott. "You see, I know a man in the Klan
headquarters here. They've got, so I understand, a pretty full
account of your movements."

"They honour me," laughed Kenneth, a note of irony in his voice. He
was not a physical coward—threats bothered him little. He had paid
little attention to the report of the Klan meeting at Central City,
though it had worried his mother and Bob considerably. No more would
he be perturbed by any reports of his activities the Klan might have
in their files.

"Then, too, Judge Stevenson's been writing me about you," continued
Dr. Scott. "We are all interested in what you're doing, Doctor, and
we want you to talk frankly. You can to us," he added.

The three men were genuinely interested in the plan on which Kenneth
was working. They were too intelligent to fail to see that something
would have to be done towards adjustment of race relations in the
South to avert an inevitable clash. What that something was they did
not know. They felt the time was not ripe for a challenge to the
existing order, and they would not, in all probability, have been
willing to issue such a fiat had the time been propitious. Yet they
were anxious to examine the plans of this coloured man, hoping
against hope that therein might lie an easy solution of the problem.

Frankly and clearly Kenneth told of the simple scheme. Occasionally
one of his hearers would interrupt him with a question, but for the
most part they heard him through in silence. The story ended, the
three men sat in silence as each revolved in his mind the
possibilities of the plan. John Anthony was the first to speak, and
then he approached the whole race problem instead of Kenneth's plan
for attacking one phase of it.

"Doctor," asked Mr. Anthony, "do you believe there is any solution
to the race problem? Just what is the immediate way out, as you see
it?"

"It would take a wiser man than I to answer that," laughed Kenneth.
"You see, we're in the habit of thinking that we can find a simple
A-B-C solution for any given problem, and the trouble is there are
mighty few that are simple enough for that."

"Yes—yes—I know all that," interjected Mr. Anthony, rather testily.
"What I want to hear is what you, as an intelligent Negro, think. I
want you to tell us exactly what men like you are saying among
yourselves."

"Well, we're talking about lynching—poor schools—the way Negroes are
denied the ballot in the South" began Kenneth.

"Er—that's a thing we can't discuss," hastily interrupted Dr. Scott.
"Conditions in the South are too unsettled to talk about giving the
Negro the vote as yet."

"As yet," echoed Kenneth. "If we can't discuss it now, when can we
talk about it?"

"It'll be a long time," answered Dr. Scott frankly. "There are a lot
of white people in the South who know disfranchisement is wrong. We
know that we can't keep the ballot from the Negro always. But," he
ended with a shrug of his shoulders and a thrust-ing-out of his
hands, palms upward, in a gesture of perplexity and despair Kenneth
was learning to know so well that he was associating it
instinctively with the Southern white man, "we'd stir up more
trouble than we could cope with."

"And while you're waiting for the opportune time, conditions are
getting steadily worse, the problem is getting more complicated, and
it'll be harder to solve the longer you put off trying to solve it,"
urged Kenneth. It was with an effort that he kept out of his voice
the impatience he felt. "Why don't men like you three band together
with those who think as you do, so you can speak out?" he asked.

"That's just what we are trying to do, but we have to go very
cautiously," answered Dr. Scott. "We must use discretion. How much
are Negroes thinking about voting?"

"They think about it all the time," replied Kenneth. "We know the
mere casting of a ballot isn't going to solve all our problems, but
we also know we'll never be able to do much until we do vote."

"You must be patient—wait until the time is ripe⸺" cautioned
Dr. Scott.

"Patience can be a vice as well as a virtue." It was David Gordon
who spoke.

Kenneth looked at him gratefully.

"Your race's greatest asset," continued Dr. Scott, addressing his
remark to Kenneth, yet seeking to impart a gentle rebuke to Gordon,
"has been its wonderful gentleness under oppression. You must
continue to be sweet-tempered and patient⸺"

"That's all very well to advise, but how would you or any other
white man act if you had to suffer the things the Negro has had to
suffer?" demanded Kenneth. "Suppose you saw your women made the
breeding-ground of every white man who desires them, saw your men
lynched and burned at the stake, saw your race robbed and cheated,
lied to and lied about, despised, persecuted, oppressed—how would
you feel, Dr. Scott, if somebody came to you and said: ‘Be
patient'?"

Kenneth poured forth his words like a burning flood of
lava—indicative of the raging fires of resentment smouldering
beneath. He paused, completely out of breath. Dr. Scott flushed
until his face became a dull brick-red in colour. He restrained with
an effort the anger caused by the coloured man's impetuous words.

"I know—I know," he said soothingly. "It's hard, I know, but you
must remember the words of Jesus to his disciples: ‘When men shall
persecute and revile you⸺' The spirit of Jesus is growing in the
hearts of the South—it will come to your rescue in due season."

"We're always hearing about this liberal white opinion," rejoined
Kenneth, nettled by the unctuous suavity of the words, "but we so
seldom see any signs of it—almost never in places like Central City.
Sometimes I think it's like trying to put your finger on
mercury—when your finger is about to touch it, it rolls away—it's
somewhere else. Meanwhile lynching goes on."

"You're right, Doctor," broke in John Anthony, who had been
following the conversation with deep interest though he had taken
little part in it. "We've got to do something, and that soon—the
only problem is how to do it. Now about your society in Smith
County—tell us how we can help you make it a success. Do you need
any money to get it working properly?"

Kenneth turned to the quiet man who had proposed the first tangible
offer to help.

"Thanks a lot for the offer," replied Kenneth. "There are two things
I can think of that'll be immediately helpful. One is that you and
Dr. Scott and Mr. Gordon do what you can to help mould public
sentiment so this liberal white opinion will become a force in the
South against the Ku Klux Klan and lynching and all the other forms
of prejudice. That's what seems to me to be most needed."

"Yes—yes—I agree with you, but tell us just exactly how we can help
you." Anthony, in his direct way, was impatient of theorizing. "Do
you need any money—credit—legal advice—that is, any we can give
quietly without it getting out that we gave it?"

"Yes, there is something," answered Kenneth. "Most of the men in our
societies have been working on shares for so many years that instead
of having any money, they owe their landlords large sums. The big
problem is credit for the things they need until they sell their
crops next fall."

Kenneth gave a detailed statement of their needs and their plans.
John Anthony took notes as he talked and agreed to see what he could
do towards securing credit when they needed it. David Gordon
volunteered his aid as a lawyer. They rose to go. Anthony gazed
intently at Kenneth as he asked gravely:

"Doctor, have you thought of the possibility of—er—trouble if your
motives are not understood? That is, suppose some of the poor whites
are stirred up by the landlords and merchants you're trying to take
these coloured farmers away from—have you figured out what might be
the result?"

"Yes, I have," responded Kenneth. "I realize there might be some
who'd break up our groups⸺"

"No—No—I mean to you personally," interjected Anthony.

"I don't think they'll bother me," was Kenneth's confident reply.
"But if something should happen—well, if I can feel I've perhaps
pointed a way out for my people, I can die happy. … At any rate,
killing or running me away wouldn't kill the spirit of revolt these
coloured people have it might stir it even higher. Not that I've any
ambition for martyrdom," he ended with a laugh.

Kenneth spoke with no bravado, with none of the cant of the poseur.
His words, rather, were uttered with the simplicity of the earnest
seeker after truth—the unheroic but sincere worker in a cause that
is just.

"Let's hope you'll come through," said Anthony. "I'm a Southerner
with all the traditions and prejudices of the South, but I wish you
luck." He added after a pause: "You'll need it."

After Kenneth had gone, the three men looked at each other
questioningly.

"What do you think of him and his plan?" asked Dr. Scott, half to
himself.

It was Gordon who answered.

"It's a good scheme—if it works. I'm mighty afraid, though, he's
going to run into deep water if his societies grow very large. And
the pity of it is that we in Atlanta can't help him if we dared."
Anthony grunted.

"And yet the South is trying to solve the race problem and leave
educated Negroes like Harper entirely out of the equation. It's
about time we woke up."




                             CHAPTER XX


EARLY Friday morning Kenneth left for Central City, before the
Atlanta _Constitution_ appeared on the streets for sale. Soon after
his train left Macon on the way South, the engine blew out a
cylinder head. They remained there until another could be dispatched
from Macon to replace it. There had come to his stopping-place in
Atlanta, a few minutes after he had left, a telegram which had been
sent from a town twenty miles distant from Central City, telling him
to remain in Atlanta until further notice. Jane had paid a man
liberally to drive through the country to get the telegram off in
time. It would not have done to send such a wire from Central City.
All these things had so happened as though the very fates themselves
were in league against Kenneth.

In total ignorance of what had happened to Mamie and Bob and the
eventful chain of happenings since he had left Central City three
days before, Kenneth sat in the stuffy, odorous, and dirty Jim Crow
car, busied with his thoughts. A noisy and malodorous Negro sat next
to him who seemed to know some person at every one of the thousand
and one stations at which they stopped. Kenneth sat next to the
window. His companion leaned over him to stick his head out of the
window to shout loud-mouthed and good-natured greetings to his
friends on the ground. At those few stations where he knew no one,
he would ask foolish, sometimes humorous questions of those he did
not know. Kenneth stood it as long as he could and then requested
the troublesome fellow to be less annoying. Kenneth, though vexed,
was amused at the man's complaint to another of his kind behind him.
"Humph!" he grunted. "Tha's whut I say ‘bout a dressed-up
nigger—thinks he owns the train. I paid jes' as much," he declared
more aggressively, "as he did, an' ef he don't like it, he can git
off and walk." At this, a long laugh at his own witty remark, but
Kenneth looked out of the window and paid no attention to him. His
thoughts were busy with other things.

Every few minutes he would feel the lump in the lower right-hand
vest-pocket with a touch that was almost loving in its tenderness.
He hoped Jane would like the ring—it had cost a little more than he
had expected to pay or could afford, but the best was none too good
for a girl like her. He could see Jane's eyes now when he opened the
little box and she for the first time saw the glittering facets of
the beautiful stone. He smiled in anticipation of her joy. And then
he'd put it on her finger and she'd put her arms around his neck and
he'd feel again her warm, soft, passionate, clinging lips. Lucky he
didn't get too deeply tied up with that girl years ago in New York.
She had kissed as though she'd had long practice at it. Too
sophisticated—nothing like Jane. Jane wasn't experienced in
kissing—but the thrill it gave him! It was funny about girls. Most
of them didn' think a kiss meant very much. He had kissed
one—two—three—four—oh, lots of them! But all of them put together
couldn't begin to equal in warmth, the vividness of one kiss from
Jane.

And just think of it—six weeks from now, and Jane would be
Mrs. Kenneth B. Harper! My, but that sounded good! Reverend Wilson
would marry them. Then they'd go to Atlantic City for their
honeymoon.

Hoped the cotton crop would turn out well. Then he'd be able to
collect some of those long-outstanding accounts from the farmers.
That money would come in mighty handy right now. That's the devil of
being a country doctor. You had to wait until the cotton crop was
gathered and sold before you could collect the bulk of what's due
you. And if the cotton failed or the market was so flooded the price
was down, you'd have to wait on the most of them until the next
year. Sometimes two or three years. Dr. Johnson over at Vidalia had
some accounts that're six years old. Oh, well, they're good anyway.
Couldn't expect to practise in the country districts unless you were
willing to wait for your money.

Wonder why this darned train doesn't make better time. Slow as all
outdoors. Like molasses in winter-time. If it only gets in on time,
I'll surprise Jane by running in on her on the way home. Due in at
five-fifty. Let's see, it's four-thirty now. Where are we now?
Hoopersville. Nearly ninety miles yet to go. Good Lord, won't get in
until nearly eight o'clock! Hope we won't lose any more time. Don't
see why so darned many people are travelling to-day anyhow. Just
slows up the train, getting on and off with their ten bundles and
suitcases each.

Wonder how Bob feels about going to school.

Hope he'll like the shirts I bought him. Ought to. Cost four dollars
apiece. Prices are certainly high. Few years ago you could get the
best shirts on the market for a dollar and a half apiece—not more
than two dollars.

I can see Jane now. Let's see, it's five o'clock. Probably getting
supper. Glad she can cook so well. Most girls nowadays can't boil
water without burning it.

He reflected on the unusual conversation he had had the night before
with Dr. Scott, John Anthony, and Gordon. It was good to know there
were some white men who were thinking seriously on the race problem.
And trying to be fair. Most white Southerners were modern Pontius
Pilates. Figuratively and literally, mentally and morally, they
washed their hands of all personal responsibility for the increasing
complexities of the race question. He wondered how many more men
there were in the South like those three. Broadminded but afraid to
speak out. Ewing, Judge Stevenson, Scott, Anthony, Gordon—all by
word or action seemed mortally afraid lest the public know they were
even thinking of justice. How soon, he wondered, would they gain
sufficient courage to take a manly stand? Would that time come
before the inevitable clash that continued oppression would cause?

Coloured folks weren't going to stand it much longer. They were
organizing up North and even in the South to use legal means to
better their lot. But some of them were getting desperate. Armed
resistance would be foolish. Would be certain death. At any rate,
even that would be better than what has been going on.

Good Lord, he reflected, let's forget the race problem awhile! A
Negro never gets away from it. He has it night and day. Like the
sword of Damocles over his head. Like a cork in a whirling vortex,
it tosses him this way and that, never ceasing. Have to think about
something else or it'll run him crazy. Guess Mary Ewing's about out
of danger now.

Glad when she's all right again. Don't like to be going over there
to those white folks' house. Neighbours might begin to talk. How
much can I charge Roy Ewing? Two hundred dollars? Yes, he can stand
it. Hope he'll pay me soon. Can use it when Jane and I go on our
honeymoon. Just about cover our expenses. Honeymoon. Always thought
it a darned silly name. But it doesn't sound so bad now. Not when it
was mine and Jane's.

Thank Goodness, there's Ashland! Next stop's Central City. Be home
in an hour. Guess I'll go home first and take a bath and put on some
clean clothes. Feel dirty all over and there are a thousand cinders
down my back. Ugh, but this is a nasty ride! Hope Bob'll be at the
train with the car. …

Kenneth descended from the train and looked for Bob. He wasn't
there. He looked around for some other coloured man to drive him
home. He knew it was useless to try and get any of the white
taxi-drivers to take him home—they would have considered it an
insult to be asked to drive a Negro. He thought it strange that
there were no Negroes to be seen. Usually there were crowds of them.
It formed the biggest diversion of the day for white and coloured
alike to see the train come in. It was the familiar longing for
travel—adventure contact with the larger and more interesting things
of the outside world, though none of them could have given a
reasonable statement of the fundamental psychological reactions they
were experiencing when they went to the station. They never thought
of it in that light—it was simply a pleasurable item in the day's
course. That was enough.

When he found no one around, Kenneth picked up his bag and started
down the platform to the street. He noticed, but paid little
attention to, the silence that fell over the various groups as he
passed. He heard a muttered oath but it never occurred to him that
it might have any possible connection with himself. Intent on
reaching home, seeing the folks, telephoning Hiram Tucker that his
wife had passed safely through her operation and was resting
well—eager to get freshened up and go over to Jane's, he cut across
a field that would save a half-mile walk instead of going the longer
route through Lee Street and town. Swinging along in a long, free
stride reminiscent of his army days, he continued the musing he had
done on the train.

He thought nothing of the fact that his house was darkened. He rang
the bell but no one answered. Thinking his mother and Mamie were out
visiting in the neighbourhood, he dug down in his bag, got his keys,
and let himself into the house. His mother was coming down the
stairs, an oil lamp in her hands. As he went up to kiss her, he
noticed her eyes were sunken and red. Anxiously he inquired the
reason.

"Oh, Kenneth, my boy—my boy—haven't you heard?"

She burst into a torrent of weeping, her head on his shoulders. He
took the lamp from her hand perplexedly and placed it on the table.

"Heard what, mamma? What's the matter? What's happened? Why are you
crying like this? What's wrong?"

The questions poured out of him like a flood. For some time his
mother could not speak. Her sobs racked her body. Though she tried
to control herself, every effort to do so but caused her to weep the
more. Kenneth, puzzled, waited until she could gain control of
herself. He thought it funny she carried on this way—she'd never
acted like this before. She had always been so well poised. But his
alarm and feeling of impending disaster increased to definite
proportions when the flood of tears seemed endless.

"Where's Bob?" he asked, thinking that he could find out from his
brother what had gone wrong. At this a fresh burst of weeping
greeted him. He led her into his reception room and sat her down on
the lounge and himself beside her. At last, between body-tearing
sobs, she told him.

"Great God!" he shouted. "No! No! Mamma, it can't be true! It can't
be true!" But even as he demanded that she tell him it was not true,
he knew it was. …

Mrs. Harper's lamentations were even as those of that other Rachel
who wept for her children because they were not. Kenneth sat
stunned. It was too terrible—too devastating—too cataclysmic a
tragedy to comprehend! Mamie—his own dear little sister—torn,
ravished, her life ruined! Bob—with all his fire and ambition, his
deep sensitiveness to all that was fine and beautiful, as well as
his violent hatred of the mean, the petty, the vicious, the unjust,
the sordid-Bob-his brother—dead at the hands of a mob! Thank God, he
had died before they laid hands on him!

He laughed—an agonized, terrible mockery that made his mother look
at him sharply. He had been a damned fool! He thought bitterly of
his thoughts on the train a few hours before. Good God, how petty,
how trivial they seemed now! Surely that couldn't have been just
hours ago? It must have been centuries—ages—æons since. He heard the
crickets chirping outside the window. From down the street there
floated a loud laugh. His wilted collar annoyed him. Cinders from
the train scratched his back. He wondered how in such a circumstance
he could be conscious of such mundane things.

He laughed again. His mother had ceased her loud wails of grief and
sat rocking to and fro, her arms folded tightly across her breast as
though she held there the babe who had grown up and met so terrible
a fate. Low, convulsive sobs of anguish seemed to come from her
innermost soul. … She anxiously touched Kenneth on the shoulder as
he laughed. It had a wild, a demoniacal, an eerie ring to it that
terrified her. …

What was the use of trying to avoid trouble in the South, he
thought? Hell! Hadn't he tried? Hadn't he given up everything that
might antagonize the whites? Hadn't he tried in every way he could
to secure and retain their friendship? By God, he'd show them now!
The white-livered curs! The damned filthy beasts! Damn trying to be
a good Negro! He'd fight them to the death! He'd pay them back in
kind for what they had brought on him and his!

He sprang to his feet. A fierce, unrelenting, ungovernable hatred
blazed in his eyes. He had passed through the most bitter five
minutes of his life. Denuded of all the superficial trappings of
civilization, he stood there the primal man—the wild beast,
cornered, wounded, determined to fight—fight—fight! The fire that
lay concealed in the flint until struck, now leaped up in a
devastating flame at the blows it had received! All the art of the
casuist with which he had carefully built his faith and a code of
conduct was cast aside and forgotten! He would demand and take the
last ounce of flesh—he would exact the last drop of blood from his
enemies with all the cruelty he could invent!

His mother, whom he had forgotten in the intensity of his hatred,
became alarmed at the light in his eyes. He shook off the hand with
which she would have restrained him.

"Oh, Ken!" she cried anxiously. "What're you going to do?"

"I'm going to kill every damned ‘Cracker' I find!" She fell to her
knees in an agony of supplication and clung to him, the while he
tried to loose her arms from around his knees. He shook as with a
chill—his face had become vengeful, ghastly. Filled with a Berseker
rage, he was eager to tear with his hands a white man—any white
man—limb from limb.

"Kenneth, my boy! My boy!" cried his mother. "You're all I've got
left! Don't leave me! Don't leave me! My little Bob is dead! My
Mamie is ruined! You're all I've got! You're all I've got! Don't
leave me, lambkins! Don't leave your old mother all alone, honey!"

In her torture at the prospect of losing this, her last child, she
used again the endearing names she had called him when he was a babe
in her arms—endearments she had not used since.

"Mamma, I've got to! I've got to! God, if I only can find those who
killed him!" he shouted. She, like a drowning person, clutched at
the fragile straw his last words implied. Her voice was almost a
prayer.

"But you don't know, Ken, you don't know who was in the mob!" she
cried. "That Jim Archer and Charley Allen—they're the only ones
Mamie recognized! And they're dead—they've paid! My little Bob
killed them! Who're you going to get? How're you going to find out
to-night who the others were? You can't, Ken, you can't!".

She realized this was her only hope. If she could only keep him in
the house the rest of the night, when morning came she was sure he
would be more calm. He would realize then how foolish and foolhardy
his intentions of the night before had been. She pleaded—she
begged—she moaned in her terror. He tried to shake her off. He did
loosen her grip around his knees where she had clung like death
itself. As he leaned over to pry her hands loose and was about to
succeed, she grasped his arm and held on. He tried to jerk his arm
loose and rush from the house. She was struggling now with that
fierce, grim, relentless tenacity and courage of the mother fighting
for her young. She held on. His jerks dragged her over the floor but
she was conscious neither of the act nor the pain. She would have
died there gladly if by so doing she could restrain her boy from
rushing forth to certain death. Oh, yes, he might get one or two
before he died. Maybe five or ten. But the odds were all against
him. Death would most surely overtake him before morning.

Kenneth raged. He cursed in spite of himself. She did not even
comprehend what he said nor the significance of his words. She did
not even consciously hear them. He damned without exception every
white man living. The damned cowards! The filthy curs! The stinking
skunks, fighting a thousand against one!

"Superior race"! "Preservers of civilization"! "Superior," indeed!
They called Africans inferior! They, with smirking hypocrisy,
reviled the Turks! They went to war against the "Huns" because of
Belgium! None of these had ever done a thing so bestial as these
"preservers of civilization" in Georgia! Civilization! Hell! The
damned hypocrites!

The liars! The fiends! "White civilization"! Paugh! Black and brown
and yellow hands had built it! The white fed like carrion on the
rotting flesh of the darker peoples! And called their toil their
own! And burned those on whose bodies their vile civilization was
built!

Bob had been right! Bob had been a man! He'd fought and died like a
man! He, Kenneth, with all his professed and vaunted wisdom, was the
coward! He cursed himself! Building a fool's paradise! A house of
cards! To hell with everything! What was life worth anyway? Why not
end it all in one glorious orgy of killing?

In his agonized fulmination against the whites and in his vow of
vengeance on those who had dealt him so cruel and heart-sickening a
blow, Kenneth forgot those who had been and were true friends of the
black man—who had suffered and died that he might be free. He forgot
those who, though few in number and largely inarticulate, were
fighting for the Negro even in the South. Kenneth's grief, however,
was too deep and the blow too crushing for him to think of these in
his hour of despair.

At length his raging subsided a little. His mother was pleading with
him with a fervour he had never believed she possessed. Snatches of
her words penetrated his mind.

"… and who'll protect Mamie and me? … all alone … you're all we've
got! … need you … need you now as never before … mustn't leave us
now … mustn't leave …"

He sank to the floor exhausted by the fierceness of his rage. A
feeble cry came from above stairs. "It's Mamie!" his mother
whispered, frightened. She left him lying there to rush to her other
child. Before she left she made Kenneth promise he wouldn't go out
before she returned. He lay on the floor as in a stupor. It was his
Gethsemane. He felt as though some giant hand was twisting his very
soul until it bled. He thought of the hours Mamie had lain in the
field after the fiends had accomplished their foul purpose on her.
Bleeding, torn, rayished! Mamie, always tender, so unselfish, so
unassuming—God, why hadn't he thought more of her and been more
considerate of her? No, he'd been so wrapped up in his own happiness
and future he'd never given her much attention or thought. Why
hadn't he? Why had he been so selfish? How could he make up to her
for all his remissness of the past?

That brought to his mind what his mother had said. They did need him
now! More than ever before! How could he have started on his rampage
of revenge had his mother not held him? Where and on whom would he
have begun?

But wasn't this cowardice not to exact some kind of revenge? He
hated himself at the mere thought of cowardice at this time. Good
God, he had had enough of that all along! Wouldn't Bob in death
curse him if he failed now to play the man? Or wouldn't it take more
courage to live? The thought comforted him.

As though the sounds were worlds away, he heard his mother moving in
the room above as she ministered to Mamie's wants. He heard the
noises of the street. Miles away a dog barked. Nearer a rooster
crowed. He thought of a sermon Reverend Wilson had preached the
Sunday before. Of the Christ in his hour of betrayal. Of Peter
denying his Lord. And the cock crowing thrice. Wasn't he denying his
duty—his family—his conscience—his all? Back again over the same
ground he had already travelled so thoroughly, his mind went. …

For hours he lay there. The noises of the street ceased. He heard no
more his mother above. Exhausted with the ordeal through which she
had passed, she had probably fallen asleep. … And yet he did not
move. He heard the clock in the hall strike eleven. … He counted the
strokes, marvelling the while that time was yet measured in hours
and minutes and days. … His soul was even as the body of a woman in
travail. …




                            CHAPTER XXI


KENNETH lay on the floor he knew not how long. At last he awakened
to the realization that his telephone was ringing furiously.

Subconsciously he was aware of the fact that it had been ringing for
some time. He lay there and let it ring.
Telephone—office—house—profession—life itself—all seemed vague and
nebulous phenomena remote from his existence far from him and as
uninteresting to him as life on Mars.

The raucous dissonance continued. "R-r-r-r-r," the bell seemed to
scream in its existence. It was like a mosquito in a darkened room
when one wanted to get to sleep. "Damn the telephone!" he cried
aloud. "Let the fool thing ring its head off!"…

He thought of Jane. He wondered if she would be content to remain in
Central City after the disasters to Mamie and Bob. If she didn't,
then they'd part. He was going to stay there if all hell froze over
until he found who had composed the mob that had killed Bob. Until
he had wreaked the utmost in vengeance upon them. … But Jane would
feel just as he did. She was no coward! Hadn't she been the one to
awaken him to the asininity of his own course in trying to keep away
from the race problem? No, she'd stick! She wasn't the quitting
kind! …

The telephone bell shrilled as though it were human—it sounded like
a vinegar-dispositioned virago berating her spouse. It paused only,
apparently, to catch enough breath to break forth again. Its
shrieking reverberations beat upon his eardrums in wave after wave
of sound until it seemed as though he would go mad. "Why doesn't the
fool get it through his head that there's nobody here to answer?" he
exclaimed in vexation that bordered on hysteria. He pressed the
heels of his palms against his ears as tightly as he could. That was
better! He could hear himself think now. …

Mamie and her mother couldn't stay in Central City, though. Too
terrible for them—especially for Mamie to stay here where she
couldn't help but see, every day, things that'd remind her of her
awful experience. And where fool people would come in with long
faces to sympathize with her and drive her mad. People were such
asses! Why didn't they have sense enough to show their sympathy by
staying away? Instead of coming in and sitting around, talking empty
nothings by the hour? Old Mrs. Amos would be that way. And
Mrs. Bradley. They were such nuisances. Wonder if he hadn't better
send Mamie and mamma to Philadelphia to his Uncle Will? Or would it
be best to send them to Virginia to his Uncle Jim? No, that wouldn't
do. Best for them to leave the South entirely. Where they could get
away from everything that'd remind them of Georgia. No, they'd go to
Philadelphia. Suppose Mrs. Tucker's about able to take some slight
nourishment now. Good Lord, had he performed the operation only
yesterday morning?

That couldn't be possible! Too much has come in between then and
now. Must have operated on her in a previous existence. And died
since. Reincarnation? Yes, that's the word. Never thought he'd
actually experience it himself. …

His arms and hands became tired from pressing on his ears. His ears
ached. He loosened the pressure on them a bit. The telephone was yet
ringing. Lord, he moaned, the thing will drive me crazy! Won't be
able to live long enough to get those damned scoundrels who murdered
Bob. He decided to answer it, curse the voice on the other end, and
hang up. He tried to get up from the floor. There was a terrible
pain in his legs. He was sore all over. He crawled over to the desk
in his office and painfully pulled himself to a seat in his office
chair. He stretched his arm out to pull the telephone to him. A
sharp twinge shot through his arm and he groaned. He caught the cord
in his hands and slowly pulled the instrument to him and placed the
receiver to his ear. At first he could not speak. He made several
ineffectual efforts. At last a faint, hoarse "Hello" was wafted into
the mouthpiece.

"Oh, Rachel, I'm so glad to hear your voice. This is
Mrs. Ewing—Mrs. Roy Ewing over on Georgia Avenue. I've been trying
to get you for half a hour. Has your son come home from Atlanta
yet?"

The voice went chattering on while Kenneth tried to moisten his
parched throat sufficiently to speak. It seemed to him that his
saliva-producing gland must have died along with his hope of a
peaceful existence in Central City. Finally, he was able to speak.
He answered Mrs. Ewing wearily:

"This isn't Mrs. Harper, Mrs. Ewing. This is Dr. Harper."

"Oh, my God! Why did you come back?" she exclaimed.

Puzzled at her tone, Kenneth abruptly answered: "Why shouldn't I
have come back?"

She laughed nervously

"Nothing—oh, nothing. But I'm awfully sorry about what's happened."
At a disbelieving grunt that came to her over the wire, she hastened
to add: "Really I am—I am from the very bottom of my heart!"

She went on philosophically before Kenneth could reply.

"But everything'll come out all right, don't you fear. Doctor, I'm
so glad for one reason you're back. Mary's had a set-back and she's
in an awful fix. Dr. Bennett can't do nothing for her. I know it's
awful hard to ask you, but can't you come over and see what you⸺"

"No, damn it, no!" shouted Kenneth into the mouthpiece. His voice
mounted higher and higher in the rage that possessed him. "No, I
hope she'll die—I hope she'll die! And every other white beast
that's living! No! No! No! No!" he shouted as though mad.

He started to slam the receiver down upon its hook. The voice of
Mrs. Ewing came to him in an agonized moan and made him pause.

"Oh, Doctor, don't take it out on my po' little Mary. I know just
how you feel, but don't blame it on her! Please, Doctor, please come
over and I'll never bother you again! If you don't come, I jus' know
she'll die!" she begged.

Kenneth's fit of passion had passed. In its stead there came a cold,
terrifying calmness that was but another form of the raging torment
and fury in his breast. He spoke with biting directness into the
telephone:

"Mrs. Ewing, if by raising one finger I could save the whole white
race from destruction, and by not raising it could send them all
straight down to hell, I'd die before I raised it! You've murdered
my brother, my sister's body, my mother's mind, and my very soul!
No, I know that," he said to her interjected remark, which he
repeated. "I know you didn't do it with your own hands! But you
belong to the race that did! And the race that's going to pay for
every murder it's committed!"

He paused for breath and then continued his vitriolic diatribe
against the white race. It was relieving his brain, he found, to be
able thus to vent his spleen on a white person. He went on in the
same voice of deadly calm and precision of statement:

"And where's that cowardly husband of yours?" he demanded in a voice
of rising fury. "Why didn't he come and ask me to save your
daughter? No, he's like the rest of the damned cowards—makes his
wife do it, thinking I'm fool enough not to know he's there at the
telephone telling you what to say. No, no, wait until I'm through! …
He's where? Atlanta? What's he doing there? Why did he leave his
daughter when he knew she might die any minute? Oh, no! You can't
feed me any bait like that! I'm through, I tell you—I'm through
listening to the lying flattery you white folks use to fool ignorant
and blind Negroes like me! What? Why—I don't see—don't understand!
Oh, well, I suppose I might as well, then. Yes, I'll be over within
ten minutes. Tell Dr. Bennett to wait there until I come. What? He's
gone! All right, I'll come! Good-bye!"

Slightly puzzled, he hung up the receiver and sat for a minute
gazing at the desk pad in front of him, but seeing nothing. Why
should Roy Ewing have gone to Atlanta to see him? Ewing knew he'd be
back on Friday. He had told him so before leaving. It was mighty
strange for him to act that way.

His mother entered the room, awakened by the sound of his shouting
over the telephone. She spoke to him apologetically for having left
him so long.

"Mamie was so restless," she explained, "and when I got her quiet at
last, I must have fallen asleep sitting there by her bed." On her
face there came a wistful smile. "You see, I haven't been to sleep
for three days now."

Kenneth went to her and put his arm around her.

"That's all right, mamma, that's all right. I'm glad you did get a
minute's rest. You needed it. What's that? Oh, yes, I feel much
better now. The storm has passed for a time, I reckon. I'm going to
run over to the Ewings' for a minute—Mary's in a bad way. Oh, that's
all right, you needn't worry," he hastily interjected at his
mother's cry of alarm. "The streets are empty now—everybody's in
bed. I'll go there and come straight back as soon as Mary's resting
easily again," he promised in order to quiet her fears. "There won't
be anybody for me to see on the streets, much less start any trouble
with. You go to bed and I'll come in and sit with you for a few
minutes when I come back."

With this promise Mrs. Harper had to be content. Her fears allayed,
Kenneth kissed her and helped her up the stairs to her room. Going
back to his office, he put the things in his bag he would be likely
to need, went out to the garage in the rear, cranked up the Ford,
and drove over to Georgia Avenue to treat a white patient less than
seventy-two hours after the double catastrophe which had descended
upon him and his family at the hands of those same white people.

As he drove out of the yard, he heard his mother call from her
window: "Hurry back, sonny." It had been more than fifteen years
since she had last called him that. … He drove through the darkened
streets of Central City-down Lee Street past the deserted business
houses, past the Confederate Monument, and on across that
intangible, yet vivid line that separated the élite of the whites of
Central City from the less favoured. …

His mind intent on his own tragedy, Kenneth drove on, guiding his
car without conscious volition, mechanically. His conscious mind was
too busy revolving the string of events and trying to find some
solid spot, it mattered not how small, on which he could set mental
foot. …




                            CHAPTER XXII


FIFTEEN men sat around a table in an office on Lee Street. There was
above them a single electric-light bulb, fly-specked, without a
shade over it. At eleven o'clock they had silently crept up the
stairs after looking cautiously up and down the deserted expanse of
Lee Street to see if they were observed. Like some silent, creeping,
wolf-like denizen of the forest, each had stolen as noiselessly as
possible up the stairs. The window carefully covered, no ray of
light could be seen from the outside. Though unsigned, the
mysterious note each of the fifteen had received that morning had
brought them all together promptly.

A fat man, with tiny eyes set close together, looking from amazing
convolutions of flesh which gave him the appearance of a
Poland-China hog just before slaughtering-time, was giving
instructions to the men as they eagerly and closely followed his
words. He occasionally emphasized his points by pounding softly on
the pine table before him with large, over-sized fists covered
profusely with red hair. He was clad in a nondescript pair of
trousers, a reddish faded colour from much wear and the red dust of
his native hills, a shirt open at the neck and of the same colour as
the trousers, the speaker's neck innocent of collar and tie. He was
ending his instructions:

"… Now you-all mus' r'member all I said. You mus'n' fail! When the
accident happens"—here he laughed softly as he emphasized the word
"accident," and was rewarded by an appreciative titter from his
audience "when the accident happens, you ain't t'breathe a word to
anybody ‘bout it! Even th' others here to-night!"

He paused impressively and allowed his eyes slowly to traverse the
group, resting upon each man in turn a penetrating, malevolent
stare. Measuring his words carefully, he spat them out like bullets
from a Browning gun.

"Th' mos'—important—thing—you got to r'member is this! You're not—to
repo't—back to me or any off'cer—of the Invis'ble Empire!" He paused
again. "After—the "accident"—happens!" he added.

"I reck'n that's all you need to know," he said in dismissal. "He
came back t'night from Atlanty! We've got the newspaper fixed! Ef
any of you is arrested, I don't reck'n She'ff Parker'll hol' you
long!" he concluded with a confident laugh in which his companion
joined. …

Though there was none to hear or see, they dispersed with silent and
cautious movements and voices. They crept down the unlighted stairs,
hands extended, fingers touching the walls on either side to aid
them in making as little noise as possible. As the foremost reached
the landing at the botton, he drew back sharply as he was about to
step into the street.

"Sh-h-h-h!" he cautioned the others behind him. "Somebody's comin'
lickety-split down the road in a Ford!"

They all waited with bated breath. The leader peered forth
cautiously to see who it was stirring about at that time of night.
The others waited, poised on the stairs above him.

Lee Street was bathed alternately in moonlight and shadow as a
vagrant moon wove its way in front of and behind small patches of
clouds. The clattering car approached—came abreast the doorway—and
passed rapidly by

"It's that damn nigger himself!" he exclaimed to the men behind him.
"What'n th'hell's he doin' out this time of night ‘round here? An'
headed towards Georgy Avenue, too! It's damn funny!"

There was an outburst of excited whispering. Various speculative
surmises were offered. None was able to offer a sensible reason for
Kenneth's nocturnal pilgrimage. One proposed that Kenneth be
followed to see where he went and why he went there. Afar off could
be heard the puttering of the engine. And then it stopped.

"Ain't gone far," one of them declared. They set out to trail the
automobile. Before they had gone two blocks, they saw Kenneth down
the street as he tinkered with the engine of the car, the hood
raised. One of the wires connecting with a sparkplug had become
loosened. He quickly screwed it tight again, started the engine, and
drove off, as he was closely watched from the shadows of trees and
fences by his trailers. They pushed forward to keep as close as they
could, hoping to be guided by the sound of the engine.

He drove but a few yards more and then drew up and stopped in front
of Roy Ewing's house. Getting out, he took his bag from the floor of
the car and entered the house quickly as the door opened to admit
him.

There was another short session of excited whispering among the
watchers.

"What'n the hell's he goin' to Roy Ewing's house for?" one of them
demanded. "Roy Ewing went t'Atlanty this mornin' on important
business! Heard him tell George Baird down t' the bank to-day he was
goin'!"

"Th' damn sneaky bastard!" another one declared venomously. "I
thought he was mighty slick, but didn't know he was foolin' ‘round
with a woman like Roy Ewing's wife! I allus said these niggers who
went to France an' ran with those damn French-women'd try some of
that same stuff when they came back! Ol' Vardaman was right! Ought
never t' have let niggers in th'army anyhow!"

And so it went. They had caught the "slick nigger" with the goods on
him! They talked eagerly among themselves in subdued tones as to
what would be the best course to pursue. Some were all for rushing
into the house and catching them together. None of them entertained
the opinion that Kenneth could have gone to Roy Ewing's house with
Roy Ewing out of town for any other purpose than for sexual
adventure. Their convictions were strengthened when the light in the
lower hall which had been shining when the door was opened to admit
Kenneth was extinguished, and another appeared in a few minutes in
the bedroom on the second floor which faced on the streets, and the
shades lowered. …

The fat man who had been speaking in the office on Lee Street a few
minutes before abruptly ended the conjecturing.

"‘Tain't no use t' stand here all night talkin?!" he asserted.
"We'll jus' stay here and see what's goin' t' happen! Looks damn
funny t' me! Tom! You ‘n' Sam ‘n' Jake go ‘roun to th' back do' an'
watch there! Bill! You ‘n' Joe ‘n' Henry watch that side do'! Me ‘n'
the res'll stay here and watch th' front do'! Then, when he sneaks
out, we'll get him any way he comes!" …

Within the house, Kenneth, all unaware of what was going on outside,
was listening to Mrs. Ewing as she excitedly told him of Mary's
change for the worse, and as she explained her husband's absence.
She was so worried over her daughter's condition that Kenneth
realized she would never be able to solve the mystery of her words
over the telephone until he had done what he could for Mary. He
therefore asked no questions but followed her up the stairs to
Mary's room, although his brain was whirling, it seemed to him, like
the blades of an electric fan.

Mary Ewing was in a worse condition than even her mother knew. This
Kenneth realized as soon as he looked into her flushed face and
measured her pulse and temperature. He questioned Mrs. Ewing as to
her daughter's diet. The cause of her relapse became clear to him
when she told him with a naïve innocence that since Mary had begged
so hard that day for something to eat, she had, with Dr. Bennett's
consent, given her a glass of milk and a small piece of fried
chicken. Kenneth set to work. He knew it was useless to berate the
mother for disregarding his express orders that Mary should be given
no solid food for at least ten days. He knew that Dr. Bennett's word
counted more than his. This in spite of the fact that Dr. Bennett
had done nothing but the ordinary measuring-out of pills and
panaceas which he had been taught almost half a century ago in a
third or fourth-rate Southern medical school. Dr. Bennett knew
medicine no later than that of the early eighties. But Dr. Bennett
was a white man—he a Negro!

As he laboured, he suffered again the agony of those hours he had
spent on the floor in his reception room earlier that night. It
brought to life again his bitterness. His skin was black! Therefore,
though he had studied in the best medical school in America, though
he had been an interne for one whole year in the city hospital at
New York, though he had had army experience, though he had spent
some time in study in the best university in France, and, save in
pre-war Germany, the best medical school in Europe, his word and his
medical knowledge and skill were inferior to that of an ignorant,
lazy country doctor in Georgia! When, oh, when, he thought, will
Americans get sense enough to know that the colour of a man's skin
has nothing whatever to do with that man's ability or brain?

A fleeting, devilish temptation assailed him. He tried to put it
from him. He succeeded for a time. And then back it came, leering
loathsomely, grinning in impudent, demoniac fashion at him! Here,
lying helpless before him, was a representative of that race which
had done irreparable, irremedial harm to him and his. Why not let
her serve as a vicarious sacrifice for that race? It wouldn't be
murder! He did not need to do anything other than hold back the
simple things needed to save her life. No one would ever know. He'd
tell the Ewings that they had killed their own daughter by giving
food she should not have had. Old Bennett didn't know enough to
detect that he, Kenneth Harper, a Negro, a "damned nigger," had
failed to do the things he could have done.

The thought charmed him. He toyed with it in his mind. He examined
it from every possible angle. Yes, by God! He'd do it! It'd serve
the Ewings right! The punishment would be just what they deserved!
It would be a double one. They'd lose their daughter. And they'd be
eaten up with remorse the rest of their days because by disobeying
his orders in giving food to Mary Ewing they themselves, her
parents, had killed her! Murderers!

That's what they'd be! Like all the rest of their stinking brood!

He pictured the scene in which he'd play the leading rôle on the
following day. The pleasurable tingle this thought brought him
caused a hard smile to come to his lips. Mary'd be lying downstairs
in the parlour in her coffin. Roy Ewing and his damned, snivelling
wife would be howling and crying and mourning upstairs. He, Kenneth
Harper, a Negro, a "damned nigger," would be standing triumphantly
over them, castigating and flaying their very souls with his biting
words of denunciation! Tongue in cheek, he'd rage! He'd tell them
they were fools, villains, murderers, child-killers!

The words he'd use sprang to his mind. "You murdered Mary
yourselves!" he'd say. "Didn't I tell you not to give her any food
for ten days?" he'd demand. And then they'd shiveringly admit that
he had told them those very words. "But, no," he'd go on, "you
wouldn't listen to a ‘damned nigger's' word! Old Bennett, who
doesn't know as much about medicine as a horse-doctor—probably
less—he's got a white skin! And mine's black! Therefore—" his
sarcasm would be great right there as he bowed in mock
humility—"_therefore_ you listened to him instead of me! And, doing
so"—here another low bow—"you killed your own daughter!" Here his
voice would rise in violent denunciation: "You're murderers! Yes,
that's what you are! You're murderers! _You've murdered your own
daughter! And I'm glad of it! I wish every one of you and your dirty
breed lay in the coffin with her! You, who think you're God's own
pet little race! You, who think that all the wisdom in the world is_
_wrapped in your dirty little carcasses! And all the virtue! And all
the brains! Everything! Everything! EVERYTHING!"_

Oh, yes, he'd finish with infinite scorn: _"And you've got nothing!
Nothing! NOTHING! Nothing but lies and deceit and conceit and
filthy, empty pride!"_

Lord, but he'd be magnificent! Booth and Tree and Barrymore and all
the rest of the actors they called great, rolled into one, couldn't
equal his scorn, his raising and lowering of voice, his tremendous
climax! And then he'd walk magnificently from the room, leaving them
huddled there like whipped curs!

His maniacal exultation swept him on and on. He had stopped
ministering to the sick girl on the bed before him. He leaned back
with a terrible leer on his face as he watched the half-unconscious
form before him struggling in her pain. The strain of the horrible
day which had started out so radiantly and optimistically had been
too much for him. He gloried in the kindly fate that had delivered
so opportunely into his hands one who should serve as a vicarious
victim for those who had struck him mortal blows without cause. He
felt that Bob, whatever he was, was smiling even now in approval of
his actions. …

The minutes sped by. Half past twelve! One o'clock! Half past one!
Mrs. Ewing sat anxiously by the bed, not daring to speak. She had
misinterpreted Kenneth's smile. It had frightened her a little. It's
because he'd been through so much to-day, she thought. I'll turn
down the light so it won't be too great a glare. She did. It never
occurred to her that Kenneth's smile could mean anything other than
that he was gaining ground in his fight for her little girl's life.
                                 …

Outside, the fifteen waited. … Minutes, hours passed. It grew cold.
The strain was getting irksome. They watched the room where shone
only a faint light now. They pictured what was going on in that
room. It made their blood boil and grow cold alternately. Two
o'clock! They began to grumble. "Le's go in an' get the damn nigger
and roast him alive!" some demanded. "We can't do that!" the fat man
declared. "The damned bitch'll yell and wake up the neighbours! She,
a _white_ woman, with her nigger lover! Can't let it get out she
consented! We'll get him outside an' say he was unsuccessful in
th'attempt!"… With that they had to be satisfied. They grumbled, but
they knew he was right. Can't let the niggers know a white woman
willingly went to bed with a nigger! … That'd never do! Must
preserve the reputation of white women! …

Kenneth still sat by Mary's bed. His eyelids felt heavy. It was hard
to keep them open. Revenge began to lose its savour. Wasn't so sweet
as it had seemed. What's the use, he thought, of telling what he had
planned to the Ewings? They wouldn't understand. They'd never seen
great actors on the stage. All they'd seen was mushy movie actors
and silly women. Like casting pearls before swine! They'd never
appreciate the wonder of his acting! No, not acting. Irony. Sarcasm.
Vials of wrath. Beakers of gall.

Why does the air seem so heavy? Can't keep eyes open. Feel like
bathing in chloroform.

Kenneth awakened suddenly from his stupor. Mary was coughing
horribly—gasping—strangling. Her mother cried out sharply. Kenneth
rapidly regained his senses. God! That had been an awful dream.
Feverishly he worked. He called to his aid every artifice known to
him. Valiantly, eagerly, desperately he toiled. Mary had been almost
gone. After what seemed hours, she began to recover the ground she
had lost while Kenneth gloated over his fancied revenge. My God!
Just think I was about to let her die! May the Lord forgive me! …

At last she passed the danger point. She sank into a deep slumber.
She was safe!

Kenneth, wearied beyond measure, rose and stupidly, weariedly, made
preparations to go home.

Mrs. Ewing stopped him.

"You haven't asked me to tell you why Mr. Ewing went to Atlanta,"
she said.

Dully he asked why he had gone away with his daughter in such a
critical condition, what she had meant by her cryptic remarks over
the telephone. She spoke gladly.

"I couldn't tell you over the telephone," she explained. "If anyone
had been listening, it would have been bad for all of us. He went to
Atlanta this morning—it's yestiddy morning, now—to do two things.
First, to warn you not to come back to Central City until things has
blown over, because he'd heard threats against you. And most of all
to see the Gov'nor!"

"See the Governor for what?" Kenneth asked.

"Why, to get him to do somethin' to protect you!" she cried as
though amazed at his ignorance in not seeing.

"Protect me?" Kenneth echoed with a rising, questioning inflection.

"Yes, to protect you. Y' see, he knew She'ff Parker couldn't be
depended on 'cause he's in with this gang 'round here. He knew the
only chance was through the Guy'nor."

"But why should _I_ need protection now?" Kenneth asked wonderingly.
"Good God, haven't these devils done enough to my family and me
already?"

She explained patiently as though talking to a child. Neither of
them realized the unusualness of their situation. Both had forgotten
race lines, time, circumstances, and everything else in the
tenseness of the moment.

_"B'cause the Ku Kluxers are after you!"_ she whispered.

"Why should they be after me? I've done nothing! My Lord, I've tried
in every way I could since I've been back in this rotten place to
keep away from trouble⸺" he declared querulously.

"Wait a minute an' I'll tell you!" she interrupted him. She took his
arm and led him into the next room where they would not disturb
Mary. "Roy heard them talking about you and cursin' you out about
some kind of a society you've been formin' among the nig—the
coloured people. He told 'em they oughter let coloured men like you
alone 'cause you were a credit to the community. _The nex' mornin'
he foun' a warnin' on the front po'ch from the Kluxers, sayin' he'd
better stop defendin' niggers or somethin'd happ'n to him!"_

"Oh, that's all tommyrot, Mrs. Ewing!" Kenneth declared in a
disgusted and disdainful tone. "These silly night-riders wouldn't
dare do anything to your husband! I don't believe they'd even try
and do anything to me!"

"You mustn't talk that way!" she sharply broke in. "They'd do
_anythin'!_ Roy says She'ff Parker's one of ‘em, and a whole lot mo'
of the folks you wouldn' believe was in it!"

Kenneth's voice became hard and bitter.

"Mrs. Ewing, I've tried—God knows I have—to keep away from trouble
with these white people in Central City. If they bother me, I'm
going to fight—you hear me I'm going to fight—and fight like hell!
They'll get me in the end—I know that—but before I go I'm going to
take a few along with me!"

He left her standing there and went back into Mary's room. He
secured his bag and started down the stairs. Mrs. Ewing ran after
him and caught him just as he opened the front door. She had to
seize his arm to hold him, as he was impatient to be gone. He felt
as though he never wanted to see a white face again as long as he
lived. He did not know, nor did Mrs. Ewing, that several white faces
were looking at them as he stood there with Mrs. Ewing clinging to
his arm.

"You will be ca'ful until Roy comes back, won't you, Doctor?" she
pleaded.

Promising her impatiently, without even comprehending what he
promised, he ran down the steps, eager to get home.




                           CHAPTER XXIII


KENNETH did not see the dark forms that crouched like tigers in the
shrubbery on either side of the long walk that led to the gate. But
as he reached the ground, he turned just in time to see a shadowy
body hurl itself upon him. Instinctively his right arm shot outwards
and upwards. His clenched fist met flush on the point of the jaw the
man who had attempted to hurl him to the ground. His would-be
assailant gave a deep grunt and fell to the ground at Kenneth's
feet.

Before he hit the ground, however, Kenneth found himself surrounded
by a cursing, howling crowd. He lashed out blindly—hitting wherever
he saw what seemed to be a form. Madly, desperately, gloriously he
fought! For a time he was more than a match for the fifteen that
assailed him. He did not know that they had expected to take him by
surprise. The surprise was now theirs. He heard a voice shout at him
in rage: "Sleepin' with a white woman, eh! You dirty black bastard!"
With superhuman strength born of hatred, bitterness, and despair, he
lunged at the speaker. Almost at the same time that his fist landed
in the man's face, his foot went into his stomach with a vengeance.
He put into the blow and the kick all the repressed hatred and
passion the day's revelations had brought forth.

It seemed to him he had been fighting there for hours, days, months!
The odds fifteen to one against him—his strength was as of the
fifteen combined. No Marquis of Queensberry rules here! He knew it
was a fight to the death, and he yelled aloud for sheer joy of the
combat! In the darkness his assailants could not lay hands on him,
for he was here, there, everywhere—hitting, kicking, whirling,
ducking blows, jumping this way and that—a veritable dervish of the
deserts in his gyrations! One after another his opponents went down
at his feet! Windows began to be raised at the tumult. Shouts and
cries of inquiry filled the air. But still Kenneth fought on.

At last he saw an opening. Out went his fist! Down went the man who
met it with his face! Shaking off one who sought to grasp him from
behind, Kenneth stepped over the body of the one who had just gone
down before him, and, like an expert half-back running in a broken
field, darted out to the sidewalk.
Fifty—forty—thirty—twenty—ten—five more yards and he'd be in his car
and away! At last, he reached it! Feverishly he wrenched open the
door! He started to spring in! They'd never get him now!

A shot rang out! Another! Another! Kenneth's arm flew up. With a low
moan he sank to the street beneath the car. He tried to rise. He
couldn't. The bullet had shattered his leg! On they came, howling,
gloating fiendishly—their rage increased by the mess they'd made of
what was intended should be an easy job! Kenneth saw them come! He
groaned and tried to draw the gun from his hip pocket. It hung in
his clothing, pinned down as he was! If I only can get one or two of
them, he thought, before they get me! On they came! The gun stuck!
They had him! They pulled him out from beneath the car! …

The next morning, in a house in the coloured section of Central
City, there sat a girl. … Her eyes were dry. … Her face was that of
despair. … Her grief was too deep for tears. … In her lap there lay
a soft, white, lustrous, fluffy mass. … It looked like cream
charmeuse … looked like a wedding-gown. … A woman entered the room.
… Her eyes were haggard. … Around her shoulders an apron. … She'd
put it on, thinking it a shawl. …

"Honey! Honey!" she cried. "Mamie was sleeping … so I ran over a
minute."… She put her arms around the younger woman tenderly. … The
dam broke. … The relief of tears came. … Hot, blinding, scalding
tears rained down on the soft mass that now would never be used. …
And the women cried together. …

In the newspapers of the country there appeared the same day an
Associated Press dispatch. It was sent out by Nat Phelps, editor of
the Central City _Dispatch_ and local agent for the Associated
Press. It read:

                ANOTHER NEGRO LYNCHED IN GEORGIA

  CENTRAL CITY, Ga., Sept. 15. — "Doc" Harper, a negro, was lynched
  here to-night, charged with attempted criminal assault on a white
  woman, the wife of a prominent citizen of this city. The husband 
  was away from the city on business at the time, his wife and young
  daughter, who is seriously ill, being alone in the house. Harper
  evidently became frightened before accomplishing his purpose and
  was caught as he ran from the house. He is said to have confessed 
  before being put to death by a mob which numbered five thousand. He 
  was burned at the stake.

  This is the second lynching in Central City this week. On Thursday
  morning Bob Harper, a brother of the Negro lynched to-day, was
  killed by a posse after he had run amuck and killed two young white
  men. No reason could be found for their murder at the hands of the
  Negro, as they had always borne excellent reputations in the
  community. It is thought the Negro had become temporarily insane.

  In a telegram to the Governor to-day, Sheriff Parker reported that
  all was quiet in the city and he anticipated no further trouble.

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