The Hindered Hand Part 27

"We, the jury, find the prisoner not guilty."

"Murder!" wildly shrieked Eunice. "Doomed! Doomed! They call us Negroes, my son, and everybody knows what that means!" Her tones of despair moved every hearer.

The judge quietly shed a few tears and many another person in the audience wept. The crowd filed out, leaving Eunice clasping her boy to her bosom, mother and son mingling their tears together. Tiara lingered in the corridor to greet Eunice when the latter should come out of the room. She had thought to speak to her on this wise:

"Eunice, we have each other left. Let us be sisters as we were in the days of our childhood."

But when Tiara confronted Eunice, the latter looked at her scornfully and pa.s.sed on. When Tiara somewhat timidly caught hold of her dress as if to detain her, Eunice spat in her face and tore herself loose.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

_Eunice! Eunice!_

With slow, uncertain step, a wild haunted look in her eye, Eunice, clutching her little boy's hand until it pained him, moved down the corridor toward the door leading out of the court house. She was about to face the world in the South as a member of the Negro race, and the very thought thereof spread riot within her soul. The nearer she drew to the door the greater was the anguish of her spirit. More than once she turned and retraced her steps in the corridor, trying to muster the courage to face the outer world in her new racial alignment. At last she stood near the door, her whole frame trembling as a result of the sweeping over her spirit of storm after storm of emotions. Her little boy, unable to grasp the import of his mother's behavior was eagerly scanning her face and weeping silently in instinctive sympathy.

With a sudden burst of courage Eunice stepped out of the court house door and a young white man, who had been awaiting her, stepped up to speak to her. His hat was tilted back on his head, a lighted cigar was in his mouth, and his hands were thrust deep in his trousers pockets.

Eunice looked up at him, saw the wicked leer in his eyes, and recoiled.

"Don't be scared, Eunice. I stayed here to tell you that the hackman who brought you here got a chance to make a little extra by taking some white ladies home and said for you to stay here until he got back. He won't be gone but a few minutes."

The suggestive look, the patronizing tone, the failure to use "Mrs.," on the part of the man that addressed her, and the action of the hackman in leaving her to take some white woman home, served as a tonic to brace up the quailing spirit of Eunice.

Her first brush with the world as a member of the Negro race had aroused her fighting spirit.

"How dare you address me in that manner, you boorish wretch!" exclaimed Eunice, her small frame shaking with indignation.

The young man seemed rather to enjoy Eunice's rage and coolly replied, "Well, Eunice, you know, Eunice, that you are a Negress now and there are no misses and mistresses in that race. If you were a little older I would call you 'aunty;' if you were a little older still I would call you 'mammy;' if very old, 'grandma Eunice.' But as it is, I have to call you plain 'Eunice.' My race would disrespect me if I didn't follow the rule, you know."

"You wretched cur! You yap!" screamed Eunice.

"As this is your first day in the 'n.i.g.g.e.r' race I won't bother you for calling me out of my name. But let me give you a piece of advice. We white folks like a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' in his place only, and you find yours quick.

And remember that you 'n.i.g.g.e.r' women don't come in for all that stepping back which we do for white women. We go so far as to burn your kind down here sometimes. As for that brat there, bring him up as a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' and teach him his place, if you don't want him to see trouble." So saying the young white man turned and walked away, leaving Eunice enraged and amazed at his effrontery.

The refined cla.s.ses among the whites who would not under any circ.u.mstance have wantonly wounded Eunice's sensibilities, had nevertheless issued the decree of caste and the grosser ones among them were to execute it, and Eunice was tasting the gall that the unrefined pour out daily for a whole race to drink.

Typical of that cla.s.s that enjoyed seeing the Negroes writhing under their wounded sensibilities, this young man had craved the honor of being the first to make Eunice taste the bitterness of her new lot in life.

Eunice and her son now proceeded to the street car. A number of white women boarded the car just in front of her and the conductor politely helped them on. When her time came to step up, he caught hold of her arm to a.s.sist her. When a glance at her face told him who she was, he (having seen her picture in the newspapers, and learned the result of the trial) quickly turned her loose so that she fell off the car, badly spraining her ankle.

Eunice did not understand his action and looked up at him inquiringly.

The contemptuous look upon his face explained it all. With her sprained ankle she hobbled on the car and took a seat near the rear door. A number of half-grown white boys were on the rear platform and felt inclined to contribute their share of discomfort to the newly discovered Negro woman. They hummed over and over again the "rag time" song. "c.o.o.n, c.o.o.n, c.o.o.n, I wish my color would fade!"

When Eunice and her son arrived at her hotel she alighted from the car unaided, and painfully journeyed to her room, which was being thoroughly overhauled by an employee.

"Where---- where---- is my room?" asked Eunice, haltingly, fearing that she had somehow made a mistake.

"You haven't any in this hotel," was the gruff response.

"But I have; I am in the wrong room, perhaps," said Eunice.

"No, you have been in the wrong race. You are a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' and we don't run a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' hotel. Your things are piled up in the alley, and you will please get out of the building as quickly as you can."

Eunice's mind now ran back to the occasion of her first stay in that hotel, recalled how royally she was treated then and contrasted it with the treatment she was now receiving. Stepping to the mirror she gazed at herself saying:

"What leprosy, what loathsome disease has befallen me that everybody now spurns me. One cruel little word--Negro--has converted fawning into frowning and a paradise into h.e.l.l."

Taking her boy by the hand she started out of the building as hurriedly as her sprained ankle would permit.

"Back doors for 'n.i.g.g.e.rs,'" shouted the employee, as he saw that Eunice had started toward the front entrance.

Rage mounted the throne in Eunice's heart and she turned towards her tormentor. She parted her lips and the oaths of stern men were upon the eve of bursting forth, but she repressed them and was soon out of the hotel. The railroad station was not far away and she preferred walking to submitting to the indignities that might attend riding on the cars.

Appearing at the railroad ticket office she applied for a berth in a sleeper. Her face was known there, too, and she was told that all the berths were taken. A white woman going on the same train was the next to apply for a berth and was given her choice of a number. Eunice noticed the discrimination and returned to the clerk.

"You must have been mistaken as to the train I am to travel on, for the lady that has just left secured a berth on that train after I had failed," said Eunice pleadingly, for she desired the seclusion of a sleeping car for her mournful journey home.

"You belong to a voteless race and I can't give you a berth," said the ticket agent.

"What has voting to do with my getting a suitable place to ride on a train?" said Eunice, tears of vexation coming into her eyes.

"Everything," said the young man more sympathetically.

"You see it is this way," he continued. "The Governor of this state, who sprang from a cla.s.s of whites, who never had much love for the Negro, happened to take a sleeper that was occupied by a few Negroes who did not conduct themselves properly. Though the great body of Negroes who were able and disposed to occupy berths were genteel and well-behaved, this governor, to properly bolster his dignity resolved upon a course that would work discomfort for thousands. He threatened to recommend to the legislature that a law be pa.s.sed demanding separate sleeping cars for the two races unless Negroes were kept out of sleepers. We lose less by keeping Negroes out than we would by being compelled to operate two sets of cars. If you people had voting power and could stand by us we could stand by you. It is a matter of business with us."

"You are discriminating against me without the warrant of law and are subject to a suit," said Eunice.

"The case will be tried by a white jury and a verdict will be rendered against us. We will be required to pay the cost of the court and to hand over to you one cent!"

Taking her little boy by the hand, Eunice slowly turned and walked away while the tears rolled down her cheeks. She did so much crave the darkness and seclusion of a berth, where she could take an inventory of the new world into which she had come, but there was no escape from the lighted coach occupied by Negroes. Getting on the train she took a seat in the section of the coach set apart for Negroes. The Negro porter thinking she had made a mistake took her into a coach for whites.

"Take that woman back. She is no white woman," bawled out one of the pa.s.sengers, who had in his hands an afternoon paper containing a likeness of Eunice and an account of the trial.

The puzzled porter turned to Eunice and said, "Are you a--are you a--"

He was afraid to ask the woman as to whether she was a Negro fearing she might be a white woman and would have him killed for the insult; and he was equally afraid to ask her as to whether she was a white woman, fearing that if she was white she would resent a question that seemed to imply any sort of resemblance to a Negro. It occurred to him to say:

"This coach is for whites and the one you came out of is for Negroes."

Saying this he left hurriedly, leaving her to select the coach in which she was to ride. Eunice groped her way back to the section of the coach set apart for Negroes.

Earl had heard by means of the long distance telephone of the outcome of the trial, and desiring that the first meeting with Eunice after the sad experience should be private, he had preferred sending to the railway station for her, to going himself. He was now in his library when Eunice and her son reached the house. As Eunice pushed open the library door and stood facing her husband she stretched forth her hands and said in tones that pierced Earl's heart:

"Doomed! Doomed! a.s.signed to members.h.i.+p in the Negro race! Made heir to all the contempt of the world. Doomed! Doomed!"

Earl stood with folded arms and a heart whose emotions cannot be portrayed, and looked at the picture of woe before him, his beautiful wife frantic and despairing and his little son already feeling in his youthful spirit the all pervading gloom that creeps through the Negro world.