Stories from Everybody's Magazine Part 8

The old Kendrick place sat back in its gra.s.sy yard and concealed behind voluminous chinaberry trees such shabbiness as time had brought it; but on the corner, the home of Ezra Jackson perched proudly above its stone wall and added a considerable touch of elegance to the street.

It was in the early eighties, and the Queen Anne style of architecture was just coming into great popularity in the South.

Jackson, who could well afford it, had let an architect have full sway in producing for him a dwelling in the new mode. Ezra Jackson, a full-blooded negro born a slave, had been a teamster on his master's Georgia plantation, and after the war that master, who still maintained friendly relations with his ex-slaves, gave him a start in life with a mule and a dray. From this the honest, industrious, and enterprising man had built up a transfer business which was the best of its sort in town. There were many teams and drivers now, and Ezra could walk in the garb of other men of means about him; yet he still wrote his name in the manner of the kings of old--he produced it as a sort of landscape effect without any idea of what the separate characters meant. He was a good citizen, a dignified man; and, except for his black skin, he would have been an acceptable neighbor to the Kendricks, and a desirable resident in their quarter of town. The young wife whom he had married rather late in life, and to whose taste the Queen Anne house catered, had a good grammar-school education, gained from those first devoted teachers that the Freedman's Bureau sent to the Southern negroes in the years immediately following the war. At first she had kept his books and made out his bills; and she always insisted on the best of schooling for their children.

Of these latter, only Mary Louise concerns this history, since she chanced to be very near the age of Ellen Kendrick and had become a necessity in the life of that peevish little invalid.

The negro girl had smooth features, and her mother saw to it that she was always spotlessly dressed and that her manners were perfect. The children of her race take to good manners very readily, being usually amiable and eager for approbation. Mrs.

Jackson undoubtedly took pride in the connection with her aristocratic white neighbors, and Mrs. Kendrick was forced to be glad of the chance to have the Jackson child come over and play with Ellen. A nurse she could have hired, but a child near the afflicted girl's age, a sound-natured, sweet-tempered, well-bred little girl, was not to be had for money--love was the only coin current that could pay for that.

And the two girls loved each other--of course they did. Did not Ellen need Ma'Lou and is not service the basis of all love? The flame on the altar of their affection burned always clear and strong, unshaken by the peevish gusts that extinguished many a less st.u.r.dy light of friends.h.i.+p for the Kendrick girl. So that existence to Ellen--the pleasant part of it, anyhow--meant a great deal of Ma'Lou, and there was scarcely an object in her room, a game or a pursuit of her days, that was not a.s.sociated with the brown girl. The pair grew up in a companions.h.i.+p closer than that of some born sisters.

The mere fact of this intimacy was not regarded by the Kendricks with any disfavor whatever. Scott and f.a.n.n.y both had played with negro children, both had been reared by negro mammies. Neither realized that conditions were changed, that the negroes with whom they had a.s.sociated were no longer an enslaved people, hopeless of any equality, nor that, with the coming of freedom, and still more with the growing ferment among the blacks, such a.s.sociation was different from the intimacy of slavery days.

And Ezra Jackson's wife watched jealously that the preponderance of gifts and favors should be always on her child's side. If any present were given Mary Louise in the Kendrick house, her mother always retorted instantly, as one might say, with something better or handsomer. Mrs. Kendrick was a slow woman, and such a point would naturally have been obscure to her; yet she finally came to be aware of the fact, and at last it vexed her a little.

She turned the question in her mind and sought for some substantial favor or patronage which she might offer to the Jacksons, to quiet once for all her offended sense of fitness.

It fell out that about this time she was pa.s.sing their home on her way to her own, loaded down with bundles from the market because her cook, Aunt Dicey, was old and feeble and there had been n.o.body else to go this morning, when she raised her eyes and saw the Jackson back yard full of snowy wash on the line. Mrs.

Jackson stood in the kitchen door, and, at the juxtaposition of the dark skin and the well-washed clothes, an idea promptly occurred to the lawyer's wife.

"Good morning," she called in a friendly tone. "I wanted to ask you something; I guess I'll come through the gate and go out your front way, if you don't mind."

Ezra Jackson's wife ran down the steps and put out a hand to help the tired woman with her packages. Mrs. Kendrick rested them on the railing of the back porch.

"Your clothes look lovely," she said meditatively. "You get them out so early. Aunt Dicey's too old to do the was.h.i.+ng and cooking both any longer. I've been thinking for some time that I would really have to get me a washerwoman."

"It is hard to have the person who cooks wash also," said Mrs.

Jackson, choosing her words carefully, and speaking in that serious tone which the new generation of colored people are apt to use toward their white neighbors. It is always as though they were on guard, or perhaps on parade is the better word, determined not to be guilty of lapses which would be excusable in those whom they address, but which are not permitted to the inferior race.

f.a.n.n.y Kendrick looked at the handsome, well-kept house and its dignified, serious-faced mistress, and a feeling of irritation rose within her.

"I thought maybe you--I want a washerwoman--and seeing your clothes looked so nice made me think that maybe you----"

She came to an uncertain halt, and glanced again half impatiently at the other woman. After all, Ezra Jackson's wife was just a negro, and there was no use in feeling embarra.s.sed or in supposing you didn't know how to deal with negroes. Good gracious! what was the world coming to if you couldn't offer work to folks without blus.h.i.+ng? But she did not complete her sentence.

The Jackson woman waited for a while that she might do so, and finally said, still in that slow, correct utterance which was in itself an offense:

"You thought I might tell you of some one? Mrs. Payson does mine.

As you say she does it very nicely, and is quick about it. Her prices are high. I pay her half a dollar, and she gets done, as you see, a good deal before noon. But the work is satisfactory, and I think it pays better. I don't know whether she has a free day--but--shall I send her to you when she comes next week?"

Mrs. Kendrick blushed burning red, and took up her bundles with a jerk.

"No, thank you," she said shortly. "I couldn't any more afford that than I could fly. I didn't know Sally Payson had got to charging like that--fifty cents for less than half a day's work!

I declare, prices are enough to ruin a body these days."

She went on to her own home smarting. She had called the washer woman "Sally Payson," to be sure, in correction of Eliza Jackson's "Mrs. Payson," which was a minor victory, yet it was not enough to wipe away a feeling of stinging exasperation and a curious sense of defeat. And when she told her husband about it afterward, he received her recital with a sort of humorous impatience.

"Good Lord, Fan," he broke in finally, "don't you know that every woman with a black skin isn't hungry to do your was.h.i.+ng? It's not a question of complexion; it's money that talks. Ezra Jackson could buy me out two or three times over. I'm trying to act all his legal business. He's bringing a big suit against the railroad. If he gives it to me I shall be able to send Ellen to Baltimore this year instead of next."

"Well," said Mrs. Kendrick, submissively but acidly, "if you want me to go and apologize, I suppose I can. The South is getting to be a queer place when white gentlemen have to be under obligation to negro teamsters. I certainly don't want to interfere with your business in any way, Scott," she concluded plaintively. "We're hard up all the time; I feel it deeply that poor Ellen is such an expense to you."

Scott Kendrick's ready arm went round the weary little woman. "An apology would be worse than the offense, f.a.n.n.y," he admonished gently. "It's just this. the Jacksons are in an absolutely new position, and have to be treated in a new way. You wouldn't go and ask Mrs. Ford or Mrs. Brashear to do your was.h.i.+ng; and the Lord knows that neither Jim Brashear nor Bate Ford makes half what Ezra Jackson does. The world is changing, honey, and we have to change with it."

II

As they grew older, the a.s.sociation of the two girls, in spite of the affection between them--perhaps because of it--began to present almost daily problems and embarra.s.sments. Ellen's health was worse, her nerves were shattered, and she clung with more and more insistence to this one healthy companion, who responded with a tireless devotion. Coming in from her wholesome outdoor life and her triumphs at school--where she always stood high--Ma'Lou brought to the sick room a very wind of comfort and cheer, which Mrs. Kendrick had not the heart to deny her pining young invalid.

Once, when she spoke apprehensively of the matter to her husband, Scott Kendrick answered with astonishment:

"Why, f.a.n.n.y, it's only a question of health--a little bodily improvement. We'd break it off to-morrow if Ellen was well.

You'll see; there would never be any more of it if I could send her away for that operation."

But the white people had not, as they supposed, this anxiety all to themselves. The timid, conservative, colored mother regarded the friends.h.i.+p with growing anxiety. And before Scott Kendrick got together the money to send Ellen to Baltimore, Ezra Jackson's wife had coaxed her husband into letting Mary Louise go North to school. The Watauga public schools, with a term or two of Fiske, at Nashville, afterward, had been good enough for the other children. But the mother craved wider opportunities for this, her youngest; money was freer with them now; and Mary Louise went to a preparatory school, then to Oberlin.

Ellen Kendrick returned from the hands of the surgeons in Baltimore much improved in health. She was sent back twice afterward for treatment. Finally she walked as well as other girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail; the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very childishness had its own charm.

Mary Louise Jackson pa.s.sed one of two vacations at home; but, as time went on, there were opportunities for her to have trips of an educational nature, and one summer was spent at a Chautauqua taking a special course, so that after the first break in their a.s.sociation the two girls saw almost nothing of each other till they were women grown. There had been some letters; yet what the white girl had always demanded and received from her friend could not come through the mails, and the neglected correspondence finally died a natural death.

There was one person in Watauga, however, to whom Mary Louise wrote, and from whom she received letters regularly--Ulysses Grant Payson, the washerwoman's son, with whom she had gone to school. Grant Payson was a sober, ambitious, industrious fellow, who seemed to feel from childhood the weight of responsibility for his people. A widow's only boy, he had worked hard and studied hard. With a very fair mental endowment, he was able to get what the Watauga public schools could give him, secure a few years training at Nashville, then read law.

And, when, after her graduation, Mary Louise returned to her father's home, a very well-educated young lady indeed, wearing gla.s.ses and looking older than her years, she found Grant established in a good practice, and with some other prospects that were, for a colored man, flattering. Both families knew that Grant wanted Ma'Lou. Whether the girl would marry him and settle down in Watauga had been a matter of anxiety, often talked over between the two mothers. For they also knew of and discussed Ma'Lou's opportunity to take a position as private secretary to one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her a.s.sociates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race barrier, the sudden achievement of equality. Had Mary Louise been asked, no doubt she could have told them of a social ban at the North quite as definite as that in Watauga, if different; but her father's daughter kept a silence that was not without dignity over what she found irremediable, in the North as in the South.

To warm-hearted Mary Louise, Watauga meant, of course, father and mother; but directly after them--perhaps before them, in the calendar of youth--it meant Ellen Kendrick and Grant Payson. And the colored elders, looking on, felt that as these twin idols of the girl turned out, so rose or fell the chances of keeping her with them in Watauga.

Grant inst.i.tuted at once a courts.h.i.+p as ardent and eager as it was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand with his affections.

Mary Louise received his advances with curious reservations, as though there were positions and premises she defended against him.

It was when the girl's visit was three weeks old that the fine-looking, broad-shouldered, young colored man in his well-fitting business suit--a goodly figure in the eyes of the mother watching from her own room across the hall--left the parlor where he and Mary Louise had been sitting all evening, with so doleful a countenance that the older woman had a quickly suppressed impulse to go to him and speak. She did open the subject to the girl next morning, approaching it obliquely. In her own day a very progressive person, she felt that her daughter had far outstripped her, and she offered advice but timidly to this tall, perfectly dressed young woman who seemed so competent in all the affairs of life, and who knew so much more than she did upon many subjects. But after a little profitless skirmis.h.i.+ng she came out with:

"Looks like you must have said something hard to Grant last night--he never came in to say good-by to me. Ain't you going to have him, Ma'Lou? Don't you care anything about him?"

"I care a great deal about Grant," Mary Louise told her, in a voice of pain. "I could love him dearly--if I'd let myself. But, mother, I just can't settle down to live here in Watauga. There's n.o.body and nothing here for me."

The woman looked at her child, and her mind misgave her sorely that she had done wrong to send the girl away among an alien people, where she would learn to despise her own.

"You're still grievin' about Ellen Kendrick," she said finally.

"If I were you I wouldn't let that go the way it has. Don't--"

she hesitated, with eyes full of helpless solicitude upon her daughter's face--"honey, don't wait for any sign from Ellen, because you won't get it. You just take those postal cards that you got for her on your Canadian trip, and some morning you step over to the side door and ask for her, if you want to see her. I know she thinks a great deal of you. She's stopped me on the street more than once and asked all about you and what you were doing. I don't see why you shouldn't go to the side door and go in and have a nice little visit with her."

Mary Louise considered this suggestion at some length. She had the wider outlook which some travel gives, and, in Oberlin, she had been where the race question was relatively negligible. Her mother's way of putting it jarred on her; yet the hungry craving she felt at this time for a touch of companions.h.i.+p with a girl of her own age, her longing for the beloved Ellen of her childhood, overbore all shrinking. That afternoon she brought the cards down in her hand, and, full of an unwelcome timidity, made her way to the side door of the Kendrick house and rapped. Mrs. Kendrick answered and received her with a certain thin cordiality that suggested reservations. The fact was that Ellen was having a little party that evening, and the colored girl would perhaps be in the way. Among the guests bidden were two young men, upon either one of whom Mrs. Kendrick looked with a hopeful maternal eye, and nothing could be less desirable than for her daughter to seem to "even herself with negroes" in the eyes of these possible suitors.

"Shall I stop and see Ellen a minute, or may I just leave these with you, Mrs. Kendrick?" asked the tall, brown-skinned young woman finally.

"Oh, come in--come right in here to the dining room and sit down," said the mistress of the house, remembering with a twinge how much she owed to this girl. "Ellen will be crazy about these.

She's got a postal card alb.u.m, and she hasn't anything in it from Canada. Ellen! Come downstairs, honey; Ma'Lou Jackson has brought you something pretty."

But even as she called up the stairway, and heard the quick response from above, it crossed Mrs. Kendrick's mind that her daughter would not be willing to put these postal cards in her alb.u.m, for she would be ashamed to tell from whom they came.

She was annoyed when Ellen came flying down the stairs, her thin, blond hair all about her shoulders, and caught both the newcomer's hands--the mother feared for a moment that she would kiss her old playmate.